The Last Of Us | tk ✓

forty | all the pain, all at once

They say a beating heart infers as a person being alive.

Then how come Taehyung felt so uncharacteristically dead? How come his lungs were filled with strictly cold swept of breaths, making his chest heave with the sadness and fear of losing Jeongguk; his friend, or more beyond — a lover.

The stench of a strong chemical hits his nostrils, yet he appears indifferent of that, dragging Jeongguk's lifeless body inside the confined walls of a room once used as a storage cabin for a detergent factory. With extreme labour, Jeongguk is laid on the floor, a sleeping bag spread beside him with tired arms, and Jeongguk flipped on to it with one final push.

Taehyung lets out a tremendous gasp, his body aching from the pain, his hands clammy with sweat, face completely moist in this jittery weather. His eyes, too, held tears back.

He has to hold himself together, he has to.

But, the wound, overly bloody and deep, evaporates all control from Taehyung. White hot tears slip down his freezing cheeks. "Jeongguk..." He sobs, hands that pat down his knapsack to produce bandages, thread and a needle. "I'm so sorry," he sniffles, admitting thickly, "I am so, so sorry, Gguk."

He is quivering like a leaf, chest aching for air and the amplitude of affliction he felt for Jeongguk, bulldozing against his reasons, churned his gut in a turmoil of vulnerability.

Taehyung chants, biting at his lips:

He needs me.

He needs me.

He needs me.

Ragged visage damp and glowing with his tears and precipitation, Taehyung cleans the wound with his water canteen. It takes him five minutes to slip the thread into the needle.

His hands worked as if divorced from his mind, the cogs that he so dependent on now slow and tedious, yet mayhem inside that skull failed to jeopardize the perilous sitch.

Against Jeongguk's pale, burning skin, with squelching and several gags, Taehyung closed the wound sporadically, hap-hazard stitching between the ribcage that rose and fell at threatenly extensive intervals.

As the night fell, Taehyung weaves, throat closed up and hiccuping for his dehydrated body, the time ticked by, tingling scalp, dusty, dry mouth and a grumbling stomach perceived to be matters of less importance.

It was Jeongguk, all him, who, here onwards, was reliant on Taehyung, the latter mulls this over. There remained odds that drove in oppresion with the young man and his capabilities, yet the sheer brazen and unbeaten love he had for Jeongguk dimmed the doubts of his imperfections.

Taehyung rummages through Jeongguk's backpack to bring out the tupperware, terribly fatigued, and chews the meat sufficiently.

He takes the metal cup of the water bottle and spits the content of his mouth in it. Adding the water to dissolve it, he snuggles one arm aroung Jeongguk's nape and raises his head, trickling the broth into the older's mouth gradually.

Some of the colour returned on the angelic face, and Taehyung almost began to weep again, with relief, however.

He dresses the considerably sealed puncture, trembling and famished. He refuses the idea of eating when Jeongguk lay lifeless beside him, knowing it was Taehyung himself who brought this down on the other.

It was him Jeongguk was on a venture for, to deliver him to the exact place they have left behind with Ara as their get-away ride, the precise one mentioned two months ago by Sam, the leader of Fireflies.

Sam.

Sam could not have known about the hunters and their reign over the Seoul International Hospital. Taehyung have emphasized with her enough to discern her as a friend, not a traitor.

Somewhere at the back of his cerebrum, a tiny voice spoke, But friends can conspire, friends can become hypocrites.

Jeongguk finger's gave a minuscule twitch, and Taehyung deduced he must be cold and chagrin, so he stumbles and slides out of his parka, draping it on Jeongguk.

The cold is bearable for the first hour, but his teeth chatter prior, and Ara who was nestled at the other unlit corner looks over at him in concern.

"I'm o-okay, girl," said Taehyung, his plump lips becoming increasingly blue. "Go to sleep, Ara, I'm fine." More steadily he phrases, but the frost nipped at his exposed neck, numbing him.

Ara neighs softly, as if she saw right through his bullshit; Hypothermia is an old pal, I guess.

Taehyung checked Jeongguk's temperature and cursed. Taehyung could fry an egg on his forehead.

Slithering into his parka that he covered him with and mindfully cocooning his profile on Jeongguk's, he uses his body as a functional cooling pack, readjusting himself so that no pressure of his limbs plunge onto the latter's torpid figure of a rag doll.

Wincing, he recalled the utter toil to extricate the metal rod from Jeongguk's gut, the blood he could not stop from gushing. Blood, ample of it, he could have never imagined to be shed this much by one soulless anatomy.

The hurdle of hauling Jeongguk onto Ara, the torment he was impotent of feeling surges in a wave of culpability for powerlessness.

Taehyung wouldn't deny he bawled all the seven kilometres the three of them travelled to put a significant distance between the aforementioned and the condemned hospital.

Of having no wherebouts where to head next, the concealed storeroom appeared more cozy than the outdoors.

Many thoughts emerged, disintegrated, and reformed as Taehyung digs his nose in the crook of Jeongguk's neck, inhaling his odour.

His eyeballs were shrivelled up from crying excessively. The body heat from Jeongguk conducting to him provided him the warmth of his beloved. 

"Please don't die on me," Taehyung whispered in indistinct decibles in his ear. "God..." He mewls, despite his condition, chest swelling up and eyes stinging, "God, help us."

Please.

For if Jeongguk slips away, away from the tribulation, into the desolate cosmos, with his last dilapidated breath, Taehyung wants to die alongside him, might it be the cause of hunger, notwithstanding the certainty that he can deal with it.

If otherwise, Taehyung would even wage a war to counter whoever and whatever is a hazard to Jeongguk's well-being.

As if a tap turned on that doused Taehyung with newfound tenacity, his brain picks up speed and comes up with expositions that would aid in the long-run to revive Jeongguk, bring him back up to his feet.

He wants to fight back, for Jeongguk's sake.

"Goodnight, Ara," he murmurs, gingerly grasping Jeongguk's unheeding side build,  "Let's go learn archery tomorrow."

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i love taes character
so much wow

oh btw

#standwithpalestine

its not a conflict its oppression

if u dont get this or agree w isr*el: 
get the hell
out of my work .