Take Me to the Sky | BTS+

Trial

"Uhhh, I'm not really sure," Taehyung answered.

Jungkook started to say, "It was that way when we were...."

Chimin's voice broke into the fray once again, controlled remorse in his voice. "It's some kind of miracle that we got you both back like this." Chimin's voice broke over the word 'both.' Then he said more breathlessly, "And I really am sorry, too. I'm sorry to Tae, to Jungkook and Jin. To Shae and Ava. I'm sorry that there was a whole truth, and none of you got it. And that you all got hurt in the process of seeing this mission through."

Lilith's sad eyes searched Jin's face as she whispered, "We all are." She felt the heave of Jin's sigh beneath her.

"Yeah." Hoseok leaned into that wall with an arm draped over Tae's shoulder now too, tipping his head into his friend's shoulder. "We all are."

Shae noticed that Chimin had left Joon's name out of his list. Her eyes flickered to Chim's warm features, but she knew he was too smart to have simply forgotten. Then it hit her, and her heart began to flutter fearfully. They know. They must have known all this time what Joon has done. Not just Hobi and Yoongi, but Lilith and Chimin too. Her hands tightened around Joon's arms where they wrapped around her and held her.

Then Jung Hoseok, Park Chimin and Lilith's eyes fell onto Kim Namjoon--who'd been strangely silent for the entirety of their flight.

Joon finally looked up at them with recognition.

Hoseok barked, "Now would be the time to say anything. If you've any ounce of a soul left to say anything with."

Yoongi's gaze flickered into his rearview mirror, searching Joon's face for a reaction. The leader of Noon Mool remained relatively blank-faced.

Lilith seethed, "You're not even going to--"

Joon's deep voice interrupted her: "I'm sorry, too."

Joon and Hoseok locked eyes with each other. Shae noticed that the kindness Hoseok's gaze offered so generously to Tae was not extended to Joon.

"What did you do, Joonie-hyung?" Jeon Jungkook asked with an incredulous laugh.

"Yeah," Jin scoffed, "I mean if you're gonna join this swarm of exhausting apologies, you should at least have something to apologize for."

Yoongi's sharp eyes flickered back at Joon in his rearview mirror.

Lilith's cold gaze fell over Kim Namjoon and she leaned just a little closer into Jin's chest.

Hoseok's fists were tightening.

Chimin's sharpened eyes looked ready to kill.

Even in his lighthearted confusion, Jeon Jungkook started looking again at Shae with that same feeling in his chest he had felt standing outside of the parlor door, whenever Shae and Joon had embraced for the first time. Jungkook looked at her sitting in Joon's lap, wrapped in Joon's arms, and there was this warning siren still sounding inside of him--even though he had no idea what the punchline was to it in the least. His brain told him this was all silliness, but his gut told him something else.

Park Chimin said in a sharp, careful voice, "Kim Namjoon. In the presence of all of these witnesses here, do you swear to tell the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth, so help you God?"

"I do."

Chimin went on, "Did you intentionally devise a scheme in which you tricked all of us into attacking and slaughtering and ransacking one of our allies, creating a ruse that they were actually our enemies plotting to murder us, and then proceeded to hide from us the truth of the matter until its completion?"