Interwoven ✔️

63~ An Ultimate Price

It was like a horror movie. My horror movie.

I stared at the scene before me, taking in everything with pristine clarity; each new detail like a stab to the chest.

I stared as Jimin weakly fought, only to flop to the ground limp and gasping like a fish out of water when the hard gleaming gun presses against his head. His eyes were the worst. It wasn't until this moment that I realized just how far self-discipline had been drilled in him— though his face was smooth and fixed like stone, agony reflected in his eyes showed just how much he was suffering from the Moonsbane covering him. His Marks, his beautiful silver marks, crying in blood.

From Jimin my eyes took in my mother, standing triumphantly above him as if she'd finally brought down a monster that had been haunting her. A cruel grin twisted on her face, making her unrecognizable to me, as she pointed the rifle filled with Moonsbane down. So she was the one who'd fired the debilitating shot.

And finally my father. One hand viciously twisting Jimin's arm behind his back as he pressed the silver Outworlder to the ground, the other hand holding the gun, bullet clicked into place, fingers already lightly squeezing the trigger.

Both my parents wore the abhorrent white uniform that was now, and perhaps forever more, burned into my mind. The clean white material of the uniform screamed enemy, screamed at me to squeeze my own fingers on the trigger. But the faces of the white clad people was an impassable brick stop sign.

All these details I'd soaked up in just a few seconds.

It took my parents a couple more seconds to take in me. To recognize me. The cold expressions on their face slowly began to meld into disbelief as they too recognized me.

I probably looked like a stranger to them. The last I'd seen them was over six months ago. Since then, I'd become leaner, more built from all the training and hard courses I'd taken. Lingering injuries from the base attack last week still blemished my skin. On top of all of the physical appearances, I was pointing a gun right at my father's head.

"Jiyeon?" My mother gaped. "What... what the hell do you think you're doing?"

I didn't know what I was doing.

Only a few months ago when I'd began training, I'd been so sure of what I wanted, what I wished to accomplish. I wanted to train, to become strong, to help protect and defend those who needed it. But the bullet that tore through Yoongi was the first moment that had torn through what I thought I believed in.

For every death, for every suffering, for every life taken— both from me and by me— had been another blow to what had once been my solid rock of resolve. I still wanted peace, I still wanted equity— but I was starting to wonder just how high a price I was going to have to pay for that.

The ultimate price was now in direct line of fire from the gun in my hands.

"Jiyeon!" Now my dad was speaking to me, staring as I didn't even lower the gun from him. "Put down your gun!"

"Only if you put down yours." The words leapt to my mouth before my brain could fully function.

Jimin was still panting heavily but even from this distance I could see his breaths were becoming shallower, weaker.

A little thread of desperation spiraled in me and I tightened my grip on my weapon. My own breaths were beginning to come out just as quickly as Jimin's. "Dad, drop the gun!"

I hadn't seen my parents for more than half a year. And this was how I was reunited. With me threatening their lives as they threatened my partner, my friend, my love's life.