The Fallen

I : BETRAYAL

Park Jimin was no stranger to chilly weather, but he'd never willingly gone out below freezing in the middle of the night. He huffed his breath into his frozen hands, and rubbed them together to try to warm them, cringing down into the neck of his jacket as a gust of icy wind hit him.

"Where the hell is he?" Jimin grumbled, kicking the loose gravel at the centre of the crossroads. "Fucking demons," he muttered.

Summoning a demon wasn't exactly his favourite past time. Unlike what humans like to believe and spew out in their fantastical literature, demons weren't bound by summoning laws. If someone wanted to summon one, the process was more like placing a call, which they could answer or decline at their own leisure. Of course, witches being fucking witches had made it so there was a type of ritual to do, but it didn't involve all the satanic charms and bullshit they showed on the television. Just a clear head, knowing the demon's name (their real name - Jimin had never heard of an actual demon named Balthazar or whatever humans made up in their scriptures), and to be at the correct location. The only thing the humans got sort of right was that there were specific places summonings needed to take place, much like where Jimin was now: freezing his ass off at a naturally occurring crossroads in the middle of nowhere, the same place he'd been every night for the last three weeks.

The demon he wanted to talk to was not answering the call.

Jimin had known it would be difficult. If he'd felt like there was another choice, he wouldn't be putting himself in the path of danger this way. He gnawed on his cold lips and sniffed. He didn't have any other options left. He needed to get this demons help, otherwise he was certain he'd lose his best friend to the increasingly dangerous vigilante mission he was undertaking. One that was giving Jimin all around bad vibes; and that could not happen. He could not lose Taehyung. Even if doing this was going to break their friendship, Jimin was willing to do it, as long as it saved him in the end.

He turned his face skyward. Away from the light pollution of Middleport City an hours drive behind him, the stars were so bright, and so beautiful. One day, he thought with an aching longing, one day he'd get away and find a place to belong where he could see the sky, unobscured in all its beauty. With a deep breath in, Jimin's eyes fluttered closed and he cleared his mind.

"I know you can hear me calling you, Jeon Jungkook," he said softly. There was no point in yelling, the connection wasn't about loudness. "Jeon Jungkook. Jeon Jungkook. Jeon Jungkook."

He chanted the demon's name over and over into the darkness, allowing his desperation and annoyance to seep into his call. He really didn't want to keep driving out into the middle of nowhere for this, for no results. He just needed a moment with him. He had to see if Jungkook was everything he'd been told, and what he'd pieced together through the stories of bitterness and hurt. If he was half the demon Jimin thought he was, he knew that Jungkook would help him because he'd feel unsettled and restless if he didn't see it through.

"You're really annoying."

Jimin's heart stuttered in his chest and he snapped his eyes open, pulling his head down from looking at the sky to see the demon who'd finally deigned answer his call.

He'd appeared in the centre of the crossroads, where the faeries claimed was the thinnest point between the worlds, and the only place where crossing over was possible without a portal. It was a demonic ability - angels couldn't be summoned. No one really knew why, or if they did, it wasn't spoken about or widely known. Witches and their secrets.

Jungkook was tall. It wasn't surprising, all things considered. He was dressed in black pants with thick-soled black leather boots. He had no shirt over his sculpted torso, but he wore two thick black belts crossing over his chest and under his arms that held a sword on his back between his wing joints, and Jimin noted the loops on the side that probably were for daggers or smaller swords. Huge black wings sprouted from his back, making him look bigger than he was.