Take Me to the Sky | BTS+

Breaking and Mending

Jin fumed and sass-stomped his way down the hallway. He wondered to himself why everyone couldn't be as perfectly competent as he was—when the sound of muffled crying trickled through a cracked door and made him freeze.

He knew the sound of those tears.

Jin leaned into the door slowly, carefully, feeling his good deed for the day was upon him.

"Oh Chiminieeee...." Jin blinked slowly, mock innocence, as he poked his head out from behind the half open door.

"Go away."

Sunshine Chim was all rainclouds. His cheeks were puffy and eyes looked even smaller than usual. The sleeves of his maroon sweater were folded over each other, rumpled and damp.

He was sitting at a small desk with a transparent monitor screen propped onto it. The room itself was a communal study, with a few skinny bookshelves and two easy chairs tucked into it.

"What's wrong, Chiminie?" Jin walked over to lean against the wall next to Chim's desk, looking down at him with crossed arms. He wasn't letting his young friend off the hook that easily.

"I just...I'm worried about Jungkook."

Jin sighed.

The older, wiser, far more emotionally competent Jin extended a slightly patronizing pat to Chim's shoulder. "There there, Chimie. You do realize that this is Jeon Jungkook we're talking about, right? The golden child? Top marks in every area you can imagine: scouting, swordsmanship, flight maneuvers, being obnoxious...the list goes on."

Chim gave a soft chuckle, but it didn't last.

"You don't understand. I saw the moment, Jin. I saw the data on the screen in real time. There's no way someone could survive those temperatures. If he hasn't contacted us by now...." Chim's voice couldn't choke out the rest. Then anger flashed. He slammed his fists down onto the desk in front of him and growled, "First Dai Yu and Kiara...then Yoongi and Hoseok... now this. I can't take it anymore."

The good doctor liked to think he knew a thing or two about mending broken hearts, as well as broken bones. Or, at the very least, the art of distraction.

He shoved himself into Chim's personal bubble and began fiddling with the computer's keyboard. Click, click, Jin kept clicking his way through files on their cloud server, looking for the one he wanted.

"Well, I'm glad that I found you just now, because I need your opinion on something. Oh great hunter of treasures and secrets."

Jin stepped back from the desk and put a hand on the back of Chim's chair, letting his friend lean in closer to the screen.

His puffy little eyes squinted in intrigue, and then into confusion as he comprehended what he was seeing.

This mood shift in the room out of abject despair: Jin decided that he needed to jot it down later in his journal, among the list of reasons why he was a perfect saint and friend.

"These are old war reports. What are you doing with these, Jin?"

"Indeed. You see the symbol on that arm? And that one? See it?" Jin pointed into the screen and the golden Chim followed carefully, nodding. "Do you know what that is?"

"The symbol of the Departed. Because these are clone drones who got rounded up and executed. Obviously. That's what the headline says." Chim narrowed his eyes up at Jin. "I'm emotionally unstable but I'm not stupid."

"Oh good, I was beginning to wonder."

The death glare intensified.

Jin went on, "Well, I have a riddle for you. What do you call a young woman from Earth...who's completely human, not a trace of a clone...who has this rune in her arm? In the exact same spot?"

Chim looked up at his senior as if he were staring at a mad man. "Are you saying Ava is a—"

"That girl? Please." The memory of his scuffle in the practice room was still ruffling Jin's feathers. "I'm talking about Shae. She almost faded from teleporting onto the platform, Chim. It was because she had this rune in her arm. The security system kicked in and must have sent her quite a shock. But—" he took a deep breath and continued, "she looks like she's never set foot on a spaceship before, let alone handled magical machinery. And all her markers say 'human,' I swear. I checked twice. So I just traced a type of defense rune into her arm so she wouldn't get a stun shock to the heart every time she tried to pass through a security checkpoint or something. I may have lied and told Joon I changed the Departed rune to something else...but that's the thing. I couldn't. For some reason I just don't understand, I couldn't change it. I've never encountered that with a rune before, all the runes I create or work with are NOT permanent. Maintenance required and all that jazz to keep them even working. But hers was...different. Like she was born with it or something--which would be impossible."

Chimin's grief flooded from his features. His calculating, narrowed eyes stared forward into the wall beneath his golden flush of hair as he listened.

"I figured, since you were the one who tracked these ladies down, that if there was anything weird about them you'd be able to tell me. Honestly, I'm at a loss on this one. But this Shae girl is not from her dimension. I do know that."

"I didn't know anything about this when I tracked them down. This is...interesting, to say the least. I'll look into it and let you know what I find." Those sharp eyes softened in a blink. Chim sent a glowing, grateful smile up at Jin. "And thanks. For checking in on me."

Jin patted that maroon sweatered shoulder a few times. "Always here if you need anything. Unless it's advice on how to get the ladies—because I can't teach your face to be as good looking as mine." Jin laughed loudly at his own joke, like faulty windshield wipers squeaking and skurching back and forth.

Chim laughed more at Jin's laugh than at his joke. "Hey, a guy can dream, right?"