4.6 | Dark Ages ✓

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IT'S NOT ONLY camaraderie that he shares with Seokjin.

It's a blood-tie as well.

So as infuriating and bitter as his brother can get, Taehyung puts up with him. He offers Seokjin the only bed, in spite of his own injuries. When his brother refuses, insisting that he should take it, Taehyung leaves his own blanket and pillow out on the couch for him. He allows Seokjin to study the gun, share his rations and eat out of his mess kit.

As they share cold packeted food for dinner, he looks across the table at his brother and, for the first time, feels his eyes sting with the knowledge that he's not as alone as he thinks he is.

I have a brother, he thinks, blinking hard to keep the tears at bay. A family, here in the Dark Ages.

But when he offers his brother a mug of coffee the next morning, Seokjin offers him such a strange look that he falters.

"What's wrong?" he asks. "Don't you drink coffee?"

"Yes, but you don't." Seokjin takes the mug from him and leans against the counter. "And you've never offered me coffee before."

"Really?"

Seokjin studies him for a moment, then sighs. "You really were wiped, weren't you? You don't seem to remember who I am, or what you've done. It's the only thing that's kept me from kicking your ass—the fact that you don't seem to remember."

Where he'd denied it in front of Yoongi before, he can't keep up the pretence this time. That Seokjin is such an integral part of a past which he can't remember makes him want to remember it even more.

"I think so," he says. "I woke up in this house one morning, and I couldn't remember anything. I don't know who or how or why my memory was wiped—except that it was."

"I see." Seokjin seems to accept the explanation without any surprise. "I can tell you who," he adds, unexpectedly. "The government—simple as that. When the war against Gen F started, a lot of people were traumatized by what they saw. Even the most battle-hardened soldiers became trauma victims after seeing their comrades's heads bitten right off. So the government created a wipe to erase their most traumatic memories and sent them back to war."

Taehyung falls silent, taken aback by the revelation. He's known the government during a more unified time, where they'd kept humanity safe with the base in Antarctica and safe-houses around the world. But this year is brutal. It is what it is. Rulers trying to take back their sovereignty over this earth, innocent soldiers getting caught in the crossfire and civilians becoming one of the monsters in a bid to escape the monsters.

"But why me?" he asks at last, unable to quell the question burning in the forefront of his mind. "Why would they want to wipe me? What is it about me that's so special?"

Seokjin blinks. Then, after a moment's hesitation, he shakes his head. "Nothing," he says, his tone so dismissive that Taehyung knows at once that it's an evasion. "It's nothing. They do it to random citizens, sometimes, to recruit more fighters—"

"Tell me the truth."

"There isn't any to tell."

His eyes narrow. "There is—"

"There isn't!" Seokjin slams his mug down and begins pacing the kitchen. "Stop asking me—I won't tell you. I won't! Isn't it great now that you're starting on a clean slate? I came here because I wanted to know if you were still alive, and you are. And now we can leave while we still can—where, if we're lucky, we can live to see the future instead of living forever in the past. So stop—"

"When you first saw me, you told me that I was due for my retribution," he cuts Seokjin off mid-ramble. "You also said that I don't remember what I've done. So I must've been someone. I must've done something."

Slowly, he sets his own mug down on the table and looks up at Seokjin. It's then that he sees the wary dread in his brother's eyes, not dissimilar to that of cornered prey.

"Who am I?" he asks quietly. "What have I done?"

Seokjin's shoulders slump in resignation as he resumes his place by the counter. "Are you sure you really want to know?"

His voice catches in his throat. For a moment, he tethers on the very edge of a precipice. He hasn't a clue what lies at the bottom, and he will never know unless he takes the plunge.

Taking a deep breath, he nods.

"Fine." Letting out a lengthy exhale, Seokjin braces his elbows on the counter behind him. When he speaks again, his voice so quiet that Taehyung has to strain his ears to catch it. "Your name is Taehyung. You're the world's leading expert in bioengineering. Five years ago, you and your colleague submitted a thesis proposing the viability of a superior form of humans able to survive the world's harshest conditions. You spent the next four years making that idea a reality."

His blood runs cold when his brother looks him dead in the eye.

"You and your colleague created Strand F. You're the reason that this began."