Cut the strings and set me free

Part 3- a puppet tied to countless strings

"(Y/N)... (Y/N)...Your Highness get a hold of yourself!" a voice demands, hands gripping my shoulders as they pull me out of that chasm, wind themselves around me as a safety rope, firm and secure and I find myself drawn to a solid chest, muscled and firm, the sound of a thudding heart entering my ears and pushing away the coldness, the confusion slightly.

I grip tightly into the fabric of whoever holds me, try to follow the pattern of breathing that a calm patient voice guides me through. Helping me when I falter, when I find my lungs closing up and my throat sealing.

Hands catch where mine claws at my throat, trying to tear at it to get air in somehow, in any way possible, the other still tightly wrapped around the pendant.

"Breathe with me, follow the way I breathe." Drawing my fisted hand to another chest, that rises and falls with an even pattern, voice soft and gentle- broken out of its usual stoic tone to deal with this situation.

"I'm trying...I can't." I sob, breath coming out in sharp painful wheezes, head beginning to spin with how much effort it was taking to do something so simple, so mundane.

"(Y/N) we will get you through this. We are not leaving your side. But first you need to calm down dearheart." Jinnie oppa's voice soothes, a balm to the agony that comes with my whole body being raw, stripped and gaping- a wound that would never heal, never settle, never close.

I find myself blindly leaning towards his voice, towards the promise of salvation and security and of dangers passing, the promise of the tide receiving and the water leaving my lungs.

The same voice that had guided me through countless situations, had helped me pursue the rights I wanted every subject of this nation to have. The same voice that had soothed me once I'd walked away from Minnie and Tae the day after I'd woken up and the world had suddenly changed, turned on its axis.

It takes time but I get there. I learn how to breath naturally, how to draw air into my pained constricting lungs, I learn to follow the rise and fall of Yoongi oppa's chest as he breathes with me, I feel the soft caresses to my hair and feel the pain of the cut in my palm as everything recedes, bringing me back into the present.

All of a sudden my grip around the pendant loosens, the delicate chain sliding out of my grip and it falls onto my lap, muffled by the billowy fabric of my nightgown, my eyes dimly stray to the splatter of blood that taints the corner of the miniatures, tiny flecks that speckle the gown I'm pictured in. And find that my eyes cannot avert any longer, not when on either side of me I find the face of two figures who both ruin me and make me anew with just a glimpse.

I can't do it. Can't bear it.

"Oh sweetpea. The worst thing I've had to do as your protector, is stand there and pretend that it doesn't kill me when you nod along to the others, to the ignorant close-minded people the Queen has picked. Pretend that I don't see a piece of you falling away everytime you walk out from an attendance with her." Hobi says, his face twisted with grief and sympathy, eyes shining with the onslaught of tears.

Because for as fiercely protective he was as my guard, as strong as he was as he taught his men lessons and put them in order, he was equally as tender-hearted, felt as much, and with the bond we shared- hurt as much with me.

Namjoon's face is hardened, none of the sweet, honeyed warmth that seeped out of him when we were alone, when the mask of the advisor fell away to reveal the soft, tender-hearted man who melted hearts with one sweet, dimpled smile- all clumsy and shy, at extreme ends to the ruthlessly intelligent man who cut down ridiculous, oppressive rules like wheat stalks being felled.

"Is there really no way out?" I ask, voice having lost all its strength.

Hoarse as if I'd been screaming for hours on end.