Unstitched Wounds

Chapter 7: Taste of War

 -too far gone-

The sun set hours ago.

Jeongguk knows that the same way he knows that Namjoon, Seokjin, and Yoongi are back and upstairs form the cramped confinement they stuffed him in the night prior. If he strains his hearing enough, he can hear their heartbeats. Smell the blood pumping in their veins.

The ache in his throat is getting increasingly harder to ignore. The single pack of plasma that the woman belonging to the Sunshine Doctor offered did enough to take the edge off, but he knows he needs to hunt soon. It wasn't nearly enough to sate him. The wound that Jisoo gave him was deep and it'll take a good amount of blood to fully heal it.

Not that it'll matter soon enough. It won't be long until they tire of him and finish it. He tries to find some dregs of anger, grief, or something about his impending demise, but all he feels it the rage that boils in his blood. The same rage that has kept him company for years.

It's rather fitting, he supposes.

Another part of himself, one that he doesn't want to acknowledge, wishes to see Yoongi. If only for a fragment of a second. At the same time, he begs to whatever deity is listening that Yoongi doesn't come down here. That he stays away. There is nothing to be said, even as words pile up and die on the tip of his tongue.

A graveyard of everything he yearns to say and ask.

It's a foolish hope. He can hear Yoongi headed down the stairs. His heartbeat is rapid and loud. A feverish banging against his ribcage and his scent is overwhelming that Jeongguk opens his mouth in a feeble attempt to lessen the barrage of it assaulting his senses.

Instinctively, Jeongguk's muscles tense and coil. He fights to remain still, propped up against the wall, leg bent, and arms resting over his raised knee. He strains his hearing to catch every single sound as they move that blasted cabinet and whispers that he doesn't care enough to decipher. He just stares at the ceiling and breaths through his mouth.

The door to his makeshift prison swings open.

Yoongi's figure is silhouetted by the light of the hallway. It highlights his pearly white hair and reveals the well-muscled figure from his years of academy training. Another silent trademark of his wolf nature.

When Jeongguk was a child, he used to fantasize what they would look as Defenders. What kind of fur coats they would have and if they would have any cool markings to be remembered by. They spent nights talking about what it must feel like to be a wolf- the sights, the smells, and the sounds.

"I bet that you're going to be small like you are now. Every single Nosferatu is going to think that you're just a little puppy who got lost."

"Like you'd be any better. I bet you're going to have floppy ears and a lame coat. Instead of scaring Nosferatu away, they're going to try and adopt you like a little lap dog."

A lump forms in Jeongguk's throat. He wasn't wrong. Yoongi did look awesome as a wolf. A coat white as snow. As a frozen tundra and eyes a molten gold. He wants to see it. In person.

A selfish, childish need that he banishes as quickly as the thought comes.

Pulling his eyes from the ceiling, Jeongguk tenses at the familiar gaze boring into him, and it sends an innate desire to run is a shock-wave to legs.

For a moment, they both stare at one another. Gazes soaking in the shape of adulthood, all traces of their childhood absent, and the blatant lack of humanity. Two sides of the same coin.

Hopelessly, Jeongguk wishes that they could just stay here together. Waiting for answers that'll never come. For a direction to go. To find a way to put the pieces back together and yet he knows that they're too far gone. They will never be the same kids again, eyes in the night sky and planning out life as if they have a clue.