Namjoon knew he looked like a mess, red-eyed, hair sticking up in all directions, hands trembling - the mirrors made sure he knew. The mirrors everywhere.
He had no idea how he had gotten there. One moment he had been cradling Yoongi in his arms, begging him to open his eyes, and then the officials had dragged him away, saying that his race was about to start. They had ripped Yoongi from his arms - Jin and Hoseok had - and told him Yoongi would be alright.
Alright. The very idea was ridiculous. Namjoon could still see his best friend - his brother, lying so limply, corpse like, his entire body scattered with burns. Second degree burns were hard to treat even back in their era. Even with the fanciest technology. And here, he scoffed, here they were claiming they could heal third degree burns. As if.
Faintly, a bell rang somewhere. It seemed like a signal for something. He didn't know. Couldn't care less. Because Yoongi was - was -
His chest constricted, as Yoongi's face swam into view again. Namjoon could still feel the other's weakening pulse under his fingertips. So slow. He fell to his knees. Wrong - it felt all wrong. Because there was this gaping hole where his heart was and he couldn't - it wasn't supposed to hurt this much. None of the books he had read had prepared him for this. This - this feeling of having lost a limb. The emptiness within. And the pain.
The pain.
It never left. And it shouldn't hurt when he felt so empty, but it did. His breaths came in short, stuttering gasps. He pawed on the floor, trying to keep his tears in, but he couldn't. A second bell rang.
A niggling memory. Something about needing to win. But did it really matter anymore?
And then a voice in his head - all too familiar, that Daegu drawl - telling him he needed to get his ass up, because Kook. Kook needed him. The tears flowed faster. What he would give to hear Yoongi scream at him again because he had broken the other's only pair of noise-cancelling headphones or call him a lot of choice names for waking him up at the crack of dawn.
He would trade anything to hear his voice one last - no, who was he kidding. One last time was just a phrase. How would that be enough? How?
It was stifling - every time he thought he was done crying, it would hit him all over again - either the way Yoongi had looked so frail in his arms or how he had gotten out of the place with sheer will power, but at the end -
A choked sob left Namjoon's lips, and maybe it was his imagination, but the air started smelling sweeter. Sickly sweet. Something told him he should know what it was. But whatever it was wouldn't bring Yoongi back to him. It didn't matter.
Nothing mattered other than narrowed cat eyes, pianist hands and - oh god, he - Why him?
How was Namjoon supposed to function without Yoongi?
For as long as he could remember, it had always been them - Namjoon and Yoongi. Yoongi and Namjoon. People had entered their lives and left. Everything changed. But them - what they had - that had never changed. Not once.
Yoongi was coffee at 4 a.m., impromptu diss battles and drunk karaoke nights. He was light and warmth and familiarity and he wasn't there anymore. Namjoon was alone.
