Darkness Ethereal | K.TH

All Here To Break Rules

Reality comes back to my fingertips.

My mouth feels dry and sticky as I gasp for breath, rubbing my heavy eyes furiously as I flatten my palms against the cold ground. Something thick is covering my body, and I realize that it's my blanket that I'd given to V.

"Now you're awake?"

A hateful voice rings to my right as I struggle to sit up, hair a wild mess as I try to brush it out of my face. V is leaning against the wall of the prison cell, his eyes angry and frustrated.

"I-I'm sorry," I apologize, scrambling for words as my eyes avoid his. When I look at my watch, I realize that sixteen long hours had passed since I'd fainted.

"Why would you just faint like that," V mutters, eyes narrowed into dark slits. My heart trembles a bit when I see his face lined with disgust behind the bars.

"I'm sorry," I repeat, fidgeting anxiously with my outstretched fingers. My face feels cold and pale as I clutch the blanket to my chest. He must've given it to me while I was passed out on the floor.

"I have vas-"

His eyes go wide with realization as he interrupts me before I even finish saying the name of the disorder.

"You have vasovagal."

When I nod, I realize that the lunchbox that I'd left is still completely untouched at the spot I'd placed it sixteen hours ago. Sixteen hours had passed, and he still hadn't eaten a single thing.

"Are you stupid?"

The scorning words snap me out of my disappointed reverie, and I look up to see V's face arranged into an annoyed frown.

"Why would you give me your food if you have vasovagal?"

I wince with the scolding tone of his voice, realizing that this strangely looked like a mother reprimanding a child who'd done something wrong.

"Because the food is terrible here, that's why."

When I say that, his jaw tightens. His entire body tenses up like a rigid statue, his expression freezing over into icy stone. When he speaks, his voice is hard and menacing.

"Why would a person like you care about a person like me?"

At his accusation, I blink my brown eyes in a moment of confusion. When his meaning sinks in, I wave at the blanket that I wrap around my own shoulders.

"V, a criminal can be two different kinds of people." I tell him, eyes sincere and my voice serious. "There are the people who only care for themselves, who kill and steal and do whatever just for their benefit."

"But the other ones are the people who cared too much about other people. They have a motive for the crimes they commit but are too selfless to give up the people that influenced their decision to commit that crime."

Then I tug at the blanket one more time, smiling faintly at him. "And if you only cared about yourself, you wouldn't have given this to me. So that makes me think you're in the other category, V."

His expression suddenly twists so horribly that it makes me look at him in surprise. His hands wrap against the cold metal bars, pale as a ghost from the strain.

"Selfless," He whispers quietly. "I stabbed my father in the heart and my mother I burned to the ground. You still think I'm selfless?"

I fix my eyes straight into his, the calm clashing against chaos. "I told you, V. There has to be a reason. I don't think you'd lay a hand on them without one."

Something shatters in his eyes, and I know that I've hit something. And seeing the confirmation in my irises only makes him even angrier.

"Leave."

"How old are you now?" I ask, and his body stiffens. Fire sparks between us as his lips curve into violent expression.

"Why do you want to know? I told you, leave."

"You still haven't eaten," I stress, genuinely concerned that him starving himself was really going to hurt him. "And no, I'm not going to leave."

A breath hisses through his clenched teeth as he turns away from me, refusing to even look at the food.

"Actually," I say. "Let me rephrase that. I'm not leaving until you finish eating every single thing in that lunchbox."

"Then stay there for a hundred years."

Anger sparks in my system as I hear his uncaring response, so ignorant and so freaking stubborn. I'd stay here as long as it took, as long as my patience let me.

___________________________

"You're not used to the cold." V hisses, clearly enjoying me shiver and tremble violently on the deathly icy ground. "Give up."

My face is pale and deathly ghostlike from the absence of heat, and my heart beats abnormally unstable with the absence of nutrition. The blanket had helped at first, but the wintry cold had eventually sucked all the warmth out of the fabric.

And for me, I didn't have enough body heat to warm it back up.

"No," I hiss back as I watch him smile devilishly in the darkness. He has the ultimate patience- these are the first words that he'd spoken since the last four hours.

With the freezing temperatures and the malnourishment that claws at my chest, it isn't long before I descend back into the familiar darkness.

___________________________

When my eyes flutter open for the second time, the first thing I hear is someone gasping for breath, the sound of crushing sheets. I hurry to get to my feet as I glance at my watch, nearly fainting again when I see that an entire day had passed.

V is collapsed on his bed, nothing covering him except for his clothes to protect him from the cold. Even though I'd had the blanket to at least retain heat when I passed out, he'd had nothing.

Result: Fever.

A curse echoes in my lips as I see his deathly pale face, clawing at his chest in a nightmare-plagued sleep. He looks on the brink of death, with his eyelids heavy and his breath fast between his grinding teeth.

"V." I murmur as I unlock the door and let myself in, sliding my hand over his forehead. Once I do, he immediately flinches- reminding me of his haphephobia. Even though I take my hand off soon later, one thing was clear-

The fever was very, very serious.

After tucking the blanket over his body, I stand and look around the cell in a furious panic of what to do next. When I do, my eyes catch on the lunchbox.

Empty.

My heart leaps in ecstasy when I realize that he'd eaten the whole thing. Judging from the situation, it was most likely that he'd fallen asleep while waiting for me to awake so he could make me leave.

Medicine is the first thing that crosses my mind when V's gasps wake me out of my delighted trance.

Recalling the tour that the jail or had given me before, I rush to the front office where he'd shown me the medicine cabinets.

While remembering that, I also recalled that he'd strictly told me that the medicine wasn't to be touched.

But I don't even give a single second of hesitation as I slip out my keys from my back pocket, sliding the matching key in without a second thought.

We were all here to break rules, weren't we?