• M a k t u b : Spirit of the desert • [ Taekook ]

• Epilogue •

June 13, 2013

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It was a quiet morning in the house.

As soon as Jungkook opened his dreamy eyes, he unconsciously looked to his right side of the bed which was empty but somehow still warm.

Taehyung already left for work.

The younger man rubbed his eyes and then with a deep sigh his feet touched the cold wooden floor. He shifted a little on the bed and then, putting on his bathrobe, slowly walked down the stairs to the dining room.

With the smell of the first morning coffee, the house was slowly waking up. It had been his ritual for almost five years since they moved to Boston.

Every morning after Taehyung went quietly to work, Jungkook would get up and make the same coffee that Ali would make him years before.

Ali.

He always thought of him with the first sip and then he would close his eyes for a moment enjoying the taste of it. It's been a while since Jungkook was last heard from him. Maybe even a year, he didn't even remember anymore.

He only remembered their last conversation and Ali's announcement that he was finally getting married. Jungkook was extremely happy but also very sad, because with that information came that same question with the same answer.

- Did you see him, Ali? Have you seen my Zunair? - he would always look at the floor while whispering that question through the telephone receiver.

Taehyung always knew when Jungkook was alone for days and stared out the window of their multi-story house, he was in pain, somehow getting over the fact that he would never see his son again.

Then he found out from Ali that Nadira had remarried a businessman from Sao Paulo, and that she was now living with his son on another continent. Ali convinced him several times that Antonio was a good man and he accepted Zunair as his own child. Eventually, that became quite enought for Jungkook to continue with his life.

He didn't hear anything about Muhammad anymore, nor did he sincerely want to. The young man always felt guilt in the depths of his soul for that first promise given to him and then for the betrayal and all the bad things that happened.

He felt embarrassed in front of him, so he didn't even mention his name anymore, he buried it deep inside himself as a memory of that period of life.

After that conversation with Ali, Jungkook seemed to change. Taehyung could notice how the memory of Morocco was slowly fading in him and that his consciousness was somehow clinging to the present he was living with the elder.

Behind all those events that shook their lives forever, finally, after so much time, everything calmed down. It was the same peace and the same silence which both of them felt before they met.

And all that came back with triumphant jubilation and fell together with new events and beautiful sunny days merging into the most wonderful memories.

Jungkook occasionally went to work, mostly working from home, tasking his new assistant to do everything for him. Now he had more important job, something that was urgent and long awaited.

That's why with the first coffee in the morning he was constantly thinking. When he least expected it, and when he least felt he had the will to do it, when he was already halfway through life, Taehyung brought into their lives that grace which would take him back a few years, to his youth and the life he missed.

When he already felt weakness in his body and listlessness in his soul, when he somehow buried his youth full of incomprehensible longing, she appeared, that girl whom he met by a simple chance.