Beyond Repair (Min Yoongi) [UPDATED]

34. The Screams All Sound The Same

"Please, please stop, make it stop, I don't want it, I don't want—make it stop—" Yoongi interrupted himself with a scream. It was weak, barely more than a groan, broken apart by sobs that just kept coming, but it was a scream nonetheless.

And Jimin's world blurred.

The sudden ringing in his ears wasn't enough to drown out the screams, the horrible sounds that tore up his insides and left him trembling, his chest aching as he tried to breathe evenly. He was distantly aware of Yoongi's parents trying to calm their son down, but no one was trying to calm him down. No one even seemed to notice that he was trapped halfway in reality and halfway in a flashback of his own.

Effectively blinded by tears, he reached out for Yoongi's hand, not only to calm Yoongi but also to ground himself. It was then that his logical mind kicked back on and he remembered with blinding relief that Yoongi was hurt, but he wasn't being hurt. Jimin wasn't tied up at that dirty, dusty, unfinished office building that had declared itself his living hell and had haunted his dreams since that night. Yoongi was screaming in fear, not pain.

Jimin could work with fear.

"Yoongi?" he managed to say aloud, though getting his voice to come out was a struggle, as was ignoring the noises in his head. He pulled at the neckline of his hoodie so it would stop touching his throat, grasped Yoongi's hand a little tighter, took a breath, and started over. "Yoongi, it's okay, really, you're safe. Nobody's going to hurt you, I—"

I promise, he almost said. But he had made that promise before. And even though he hadn't meant it to be, it had been a lie every single time. What could a promise like that possibly mean now?

All at once, Jimin lost his breath. The room started to tilt. He wanted so badly to help, but he couldn't. Again.He pressed his palms against his ears, trying to block out the screams so he could focus, dammit, you're fine just fucking focus, but he just ended up clawing deep scratches into the sides of his head as if ripping his ears off would make everything stop.

"Jimin," a voice said close to him, closer than he'd thought anyone was.

Jimin looked up—he'd apparently fallen out of his chair at some point—and stared, dazed, into the eyes of Yoongi's brother.

"Come on. Come with me. This isn't good for you, we need to get you out of here," Geumjae told him.

"I-I—"

"I know. Come on. Up you get now," Geumjae said. He heaved him up by a hand on his elbow and led him out of the room.

Jimin followed the direction Geumjae had pointed him with little additional guidance until he ended up in the waiting room. As much as he hated leaving Yoongi in such a time of need, Jimin couldn't really protest. Not when it was getting so much easier to breathe as the screams started to fade.

He let Taehyung ease him down on the nearest sofa, and that was when he became aware enough of his surroundings to realize Geumjae wasn't the only one who had brought him there. Taehyung was there, too, and so was Hoseok. Jimin had half a mind to ask where Seokjin, Hoseok, and Jungkook were, but he decided against it. His brain didn't have room to fit in that many words, syllables, consonants, so he stayed silent.

Taehyung sat next to Jimin and rubbed up and down his upper arm and his back to help ground him, and Hoseok knelt in front of him and gingerly took Jimin's face in his hands, turning his head this way and that to inspect the scratches before taking Jimin's hands and cleaning the skin and blood from beneath his bent fingernails. In the back of his mind, Jimin was glad everyone was giving his neck a wide berth—if anything touched his neck, he was sure it would feel too much like the rope squeezing, cutting off his air, rubbing his skin raw—but he couldn't voice his gratitude. All he could do was sit there, blinking every two seconds to release a fresh stream of tears.