Make It Right / V KTH / Suga MYG / BTS Completed

The Encounter (Epilogue)

London

It's been years since he's been back to this part of London. Four years almost exactly. He remembers the gallery with the fancy white finish and the market around the corner. He's avoided this part of London, her part of London, because he knew she wouldn't see him.

He tried to call over the years, with no response. He followed her Instagram account and looked at new images but they were never personal, never of her, always work. He scanned photography magazines for her name. Occasionally seeing an image she had taken and nothing more.

It's been a long four years since she sent him away, closing the door on their future and pushing him out of her light. He went back to New York with Yoongi as she asked, her final request, but neither of them spoke about it. Neither of them could face it. Yoongi was not the same with him after that trip, it was almost as if he blamed him, as though she left them both. How could he dare to be mad when it was clearly all Yoongi's fault?! He told himself at the time, still bleeding from the wound.

He sensed that Yoongi also blamed himself and at the time he was happy that he struggled. But Yoongi had an outlet, he could write thinly veiled songs about his feelings, but he, on the other hand, had to just hide them, mask them, hold them inside until he was numb.

He blamed Yoongi for a long time after, but in his honest moments, he knew that it wasn't true. He knew that nothing Yoongi did made the decision for her. It was his own ultimatum. He might have found another way to make it right between them, to help Yoongi, but in his fear of losing her, he threatened to leave the band and that is what made her end it. So he lost her anyway.

She told him he would understand one day that it was the right choice for him, but he didn't understand. Not for over a year. He was angry and hurt and he kept blaming Yoongi, then himself, then he eventually resigned himself to her idea that it was the right decision. He could see that it was the only choice she thought she could make at the time. But it was hard to think of her alone in London, and to not be able to reach out even to know that she was OK.

Did she find someone else? Someone to share her days with? Someone to look at photographs with, someone's hand to hold and someone to lay close to in the early morning light as they had done?

He hadn't found that. Nothing had been real the way it was with Alexa. And it didn't help that he went into every new relationship knowing it could never be as real as it had been with her. He just let them all fail, with his lack of effort and lack of faith. Each person he encountered after had to compete against the ghost of her memory.

That tour was the hardest they'd ever had. They had both returned from London different. He had to explain what had happened but try not to tell them all of the real reasons. But sometimes, when he was really low, he would talk to Jimin because he knew that he would understand and he would support him.

Everyone else noticed that he wasn't the same, that something was missing and he knew that was true. It took until the end of the tour, 8 months later, before he could feel honestly happy to feel part of that family. Even longer before he could call Yoongi his brother again. Now, it still hurt, but he knew that she had been right.

The next two albums were their biggest success to date. He still had a team of talented people around him, an armful of awards and records broken, and he still had the respect of the music community. His life was as full as it could be.

After the albums and the tours, the band members took time away to do their own solo projects. Yoongi had a big success with his last mixtape, and he had released a mini album of some covers of favorite songs which had done well in the charts. It gave him something else to focus on.