The Crow (Kim Taehyung Hybrid Au)

chapter 17 (TW; GORE)

"Screws."

It was Wednesday morning, Mirae was currently standing outside her bedroom door trying to regain her courage to speak with Taehyung about the little trip they were having. Eventually she knocked on the door.

The door opened and just like any other morning there was Taehyung with his messy bed hair and dullness all over his face. But there was something else though.

"Your neck..." Mirae gasped when noticing that the same purple bruise had spread further over his neck like a rash, she quickly forced him to turn around and noticed a small trail of dry blood had made its way down from under the collar to underneath his clothing.

"We need to get you checked out immediately!" She announced and walked past him to grab herself a coat and some clean clothes.

Mirae went into the bathroom and got herself dressed before walking back out, she then motioned the hybrid to come into the bathroom.

"Let's just clean this blood up first." She said whilst he made himself comfortable on the side of the closed toilet seat with his wings practically occupying the bathtub next to it.

Mirae grabbed a towel and wet it a little bit before reaching over behind his neck, she couldn't help but feel a little embarrassed due to their weird position. But just by looking at him, Taehyung didn't seem to even care that she was there.

But soon as the little tip of the towel accidentally touched the collar she began to hear a faint buzzing amidst their awkward silence. She frowned.

"Disconnected" A robot generated woman spoke out of the collar, Mirae jumped back in shock and her eyes widened when noticing that the red light had been replaced yet again.

She stared at him, she saw as tears slowly built up in his eyes and how warm and frightened they became as he stared up at her. She finally understood everything, it was so clear yet it never came to her. The collar was defective.

"Kang..." Taehyung said, his voice breaking like a fragile leaf while tears began to stream down his face and his hands made their way up onto his neck.
"Make it stop." He let out a sob before groaning panting in pain.

"Shit shit shit SHIT!!" Mirae cursed under her breath while practically trembling her hand over her phone to call Jin.

He didn't pick up.

"For fuck's sake." She whined and quickly called her second option, Namjoon.

"Mirae--"
"Come to this location right now! Taehyung's collar is going to kill him! Please." She said and hung up, she quickly typed in her address and rushed back to Taehyung.

"Kang...please stop it!" He was then knelt on the floor practically gasping for air with his hands around the collar in desperation to take it off while his wings accidentally moved everything out of her sink and into the floor.

"Stop touching it! You'll make it worse!" Said Mirae who stood there frozen by the doorframe.

"Please stop it, I'm sorry!" He sobbed again, tears falling and soon enough staining her bathroom floor with little puddles.

Mirae couldn't help but frown, she wasn't doing anything. Why was he begging her to stop? And why wasn't she doing anything to help him out?

"What can I do for you? How do I make it stop?" She knelt down in front of him, clenching her jaw as she stared down at his desperate self.

It frightened her. This wasn't the same hybrid she saw everyday, no, this was someone else. He felt pain like her, cried like an actual human being and was just as scared as she was in that very moment. The thought of not knowing how to help him or not even be able to stand closer to him for comfort built up a sort of pain and guilt she never thought would feel again. Again, it frightened her.

Someone started to bang her apartment door and she immediately ran to open it, revealing Namjoon in a white lab coat and a long black skirt with his pink hair brushed back like usual.

"He's here!" She motioned him to follow her and rushed back to the bathroom to where laid a now unconscious Taehyung who was then beginning to bleed again on the back of his neck.

"Shit!" Namjoon ran up to him and knelt down on the floor to pull the Hybrid's body close to his, "Get me a dry towel! Now!" He said, Mirae nodded and opened her wardrobe to grab a small face towel and gave it to Namjoon.

"I need a bigger one!" He demanded.

"Just say so!" Mirae groaned and grabbed the oldest towel she had.

"Spread it on the floor." Mirae nodded and did so, Namjoon eventually grabbed Taehyung and laid him on top of the towel, trying his best not to hurt the Hybrid's wings when doing so, they saw as the small amount of blood leaving his body stained the already crimson towel into a much darker colour.

"How do we take it off??" Mirae asked, her heart almost spilling out of her mouth as it began to beat faster and faster.

Namjoon groaned in distress and began to look around the collar to see if he could find any sort of clue, he gasped. Mirae followed his gaze and spotted two small screws on the back of the collar and exactly situated a few inches away from the small trails of blood that escaped from underneath the metallic material.

"Get me a screwdriver! Or at least a knife, just get me something!!" Said Namjoon, Mirae couldn't help but flinch when he suddenly turned to look at her in the eyes.

After much stress looking around her house for something she ended up giving up and simply grabbing one of the knifes inside her kitchen drawer and ran back to kneel next to Namjoon as he tried to loosen the collar with a spoon.

"I need to take this off, call Jin, now!" Said Namjoon.

Mirae couldn't help but cry a little by her desperation as she struggled to type in Jin's number onto her phone. After three tries he finally picked up.

"Aah...Miss Kang? What's going on?"

"Jin..." Her voice trembled, "Taehyung's collar is killing him and I don't know what to do" She gulped.

"Did you get Namjoon?"

"He's here with me, but I don't know what to do make it stop." She tried to breath but it was no use.

"Calm down Mirae, Namjoon knows way more about these things than me. Just sit down and breathe. Everything's fine." Jin spoke softly on the phone whilst she tried to take in deep breaths.

On the other hand, Namjoon was trying his best to quickly unscrew the collar with the small knife in his hand while one of Taehyung's wings practically covered his vision, eventually, one of the screws was out and Namjoon couldn't help but feel sick to his stomach.

The tip of the screw was practically covered in blood with a little bit of skin or meat attached to it's pointy tip.
"Fuck." He breathed shakily.

"What the fuck..." Mirae grew pale as she stared down at it.

Namjoon gulped down the nausea and tried his best to unscrew the second one, and soon enough he did. When doing so, the collar opened and fell on the floor next to Taehyung, there were two bloody holes punctured on the back of his neck, the source of the bloody trails.