➵ 𝐏𝐑𝐎𝐉𝐄𝐂𝐓: 𝐀𝐑𝐄𝐒 [𝐊.𝐓𝐇]

"What is this... Sherlock? My name is not Sherlock"

"So... you're telling me that if I touch you, you get sucked back into your sword?"

Well... Taehyung's voice was surprisingly calm and soothing in your head, the deep timber of it causing you to involuntary shiver whenever he spoke, okay, maybe that's not the entirety of it, but I'm assuming it's because that you handling my sword somehow created a loophole in the curse Athena invented and let me out before the thousand years were up.

At the moment, you were sitting cross-legged in the floor, with the sword you were supposed to be sending to the museum in a couple of hours sitting calmly in front of you, not a scratch on it despite all it had went through over the course of the last 12 hours.

Unlike you, who happened to be physically and mentally scarred for life, this entire situation almost being far too much for you.

See, after Taehyung had dissolved into red dust and been sucked back into his sword, you'd done the only reasonable thing you could think of at the time and just turned around and continued making your breakfast. First, because you were really hungry, and second because you did not want to deal with this entire crazy situation on an empty stomach.

Your eyes flicked to the plate you'd left out for Taehyung. A shudder ran through you as you thought of him just exploding into a whirlwind of red dust right in front of your eyes. That was some creepy sh*t that you didn't exactly want to get into, but it appeared that you had no choice.

Something was tickling the back of your mind, though.

"Taehyung," you began, feeling a bit odd speaking to thin air, "why were you stuck in that sword in the first place?"

There was a moment of silence. You weren't quite sure why or how you could hear Taehyung in your head when he was in his sword, but it didn't exactly matter at the moment. "Taehyung?"

Disobeying the gods, Taehyung finally answered, his voice low and surprisingly bitter, never ended well for anyone.

That could have meant literally anything, but you got the distinct impression that Taehyung really didn't want to talk about it. The tone of his voice conveyed that much, at least- it was cold, detached. Almost angry.

Honestly, you thought it would do you better not to pry.

"Okay..." you trailed off, treading carefully, "so you were punished by being trapped in your own sword?"

Yes.

"How long?"

Another stretch of silence.

A thousand years, give or take. If you were able to free me, it must have meant my sentence was coming to a close.

You suddenly felt awfully lightheaded. A thousand years? Good god... that was a lot. That was a long, long, LONG time. Before anything you'd known, honestly, and that was what kind of scared you.