orange | yoonmin ✔️

epilogue.

|..jimin..|

"Are you ready, Jimin?" voiced Taehyung, much like from the night before, only it was under different circumstances. The two stood shoulder to shoulder in the graveyard, under cloudy skies that were showing clear signs of a coming storm. Yet they were glued together still, eyes on a slab of stone that jutted from the grass by their feet.

"I am," Jimin said softly, his voice still alien to him. "I'm ready to take my voice back. Are you?"

Taehyung laughed, head bowed slightly, and he sniffed from the cold. "Of course. It's been twelve years, Jimin. Twelve years of you coming and going, saying small sentences only to me, and twelve years of me trapped with your voice. I've had enough of your voice," he said, a slight chuckle escaping his mouth in a condensed wispy form. "It's quite annoying, if I had to be honest."

"So you're not real?"

His friend faced him this time, and they were eye to eye. "I am, in a way, but not like you. I know I'm dead, but I'm still here. I'm just living in your mind. But, you know, this could just be your mind making this up, your own thoughts coming out as my words. A whole intricate story you have made for yourself in my absence."

"I can't live without you," Jimin said, voice already splintering at not even the second word.

Taehyung cocked his head to the side and gave him a small cheesy smile. "But you have. I'm just your thoughts, Jimin, or I could be. You made me to rationalize your next decision. You taking back your speech, your voice. Maybe I am real, but not this me. Not the one you see in front of me. The real me is down there," he said, tapping his foot on the hard ground. 

A pause was held between them, but it wasn't an awkward one. It held understanding and sympathy, and a touch of guilt.

"You know, taking back your voice, taking it beyond my grave as it has been all these years, it isn't betraying me. It is yours, after all."

Jimin laughed, a strange sound to be echoing through the empty cemetery. "I know. I..I know. It's just weird, Tae." he sucked air through his nose sharply, before exhaling. "Twelve years. Twelve years, Taehyung. This has lasted twelve years."

"Good thing it was only twelve, hm?" Taehyung leaned in and they hugged tightly, Jimin's tears staining the shirt of someone that suddenly wasn't there anymore. 

_____

Yoongi opened the door to a slightly shaking Jimin and pulled him into a tight hug. They held their embrace for forever, under the doorframe, and not one finger twitched out of place, not one person shifted their weight to the other foot. It was photograph still. 

When he had driven Jimin home that night, he first ranted up a storm about how Jimin should've never even thought about suicide because, duh, that was dumb, and explained Hoseok in a rapid fire speed that he had to repeat several times for the boy to understand.

This was followed by Yoongi bashing himself, and Jimin fruitlessly attempting to stop him.

He had to stay up through the night and keep an eye of Jimin, tempted at the thought of tying a bell around his neck to make sure the boy wasn't going to leave him and try anything stupid. 

"Back from the cemetery?" Yoongi breathed, breaking their comfortable silence. Jimin pulled back and nodded, clutching his hands against his chest. They met in the middle for another hug, nothing more and nothing less, and Jimin was lead into the apartment in silence.

Five days pass and the two find themselves on Christmas. Neither were very religious, but Christmas was a fun holiday. There wasn't a very big party, but there was one, held by Namjoon and Jin, and Jimin happened to be invited.