Six years ago.
Satisfaction curled the edges of Yoongi's mouth - a rare sight if Jungkook ever saw one - as he fingered through the freshly pressed stack of bills folded into his hands, flipping through the slips of paper, the avarice in his gaze growing with every new number he could add to his count.
Today's haul had been their best yet. The drugs Jungkook had managed to slip from the evidence room in the police station after they'd busted the biggest drug lord on the other side of town brought them more money than would ever fit in their little safe tucked into the warehouse wall.
"You know what we can do with all this money?" Yoongi asked, lifting the stack. For the first time that Jungkook could remember in the last two months, there was emotion glowing behind his eyes. "We can finally upgrade our system to meet our level. This is everything we've been working towards - a real shot at running things around here."
Jungkook didn't say anything.
He didn't tell him that, in the last two years they'd been running this operation, it had never been his dream to rule the streets. That had always been Yoongi's.
He didn't tell him that the real reason he'd ever been in that gambling den in the first place was because he was looking for an easy way to make a couple hundred dollars in a night.
He didn't tell him about the monster that lived in his house, slashing gashes open all across his body only to purr at how sweet the taste of his blood was.
He couldn't live like this anymore. He had to get away. Start a new life far away from the endless nightmare that encircled him, choking the life from him inch by inch with every freedom it stole until he was nothing left but the shadow of the boy he once had been. He knew that if he stayed for a minute longer, he would lose the power to.
And he wanted so much more in this life.
"Jungkook?" Yoongi said, leaning forward to get the younger's attention. "Are you even listening to me?"
"Yeah, I just-"
Before Jungkook could finish his sentence, he felt a cloth being pressed to his mouth, the sickly sweet smell of chemicals hitting him before he could even think to hold his breath. He couldn't even give a muffled cry of protest before the world collapsed around him.
• • •
The first thing Yoongi noticed when he came to was the thick ropes wrapped around his wrists and ankles, binding him to a chair he didn't remember choosing to sit in.
The next was the gun against his head.
"Ah, good," a cool voice said from his side. "You're awake."
A wave of fear surged toward Yoongi's head, threatening to drag him deep into its watery coffin, but he refused to let it crash around him. He had finally gotten his first big break. There was no way he was going to be shaken so easily. He was stronger than that. He had to be stronger than that.
He had to protect Jungkook.
Oh god.
Jungkook-
Forgetting all about the gun resting by his skull, Yoongi desperately whirled around, both hoping and dreading finding his best friend beside him. Before his eyes could focus on the contents of the dark room, he felt the butt of the gun slamming into his temple, sending a starburst of pain exploding through his head.
"Did I say you could move?" the icy voice demanded, now laced with the undercurrent of a growl. The owner slowly shifted into the weak glow filtering down from the only source of light, the flickering bulb swaying unsteadily from the ceiling. Through the blood seeping from his temple to drip down the side of his face, Yoongi could barely make out the maniacal gleam in the man's eyes before a strong hand shot out and grabbed his jaw, forcing him to meet the eyes of his captor.
"You know, I've heard a lot about you, Min Yoongi," he drawled, tilting Yoongi's face from side to side as if he were examining him. As if he were judging his worth. He released his hold on Yoongi dismissively, tossing him aside like he was a broken toy he had grown bored of. "Although I can't say I know why. You're not half of what they make you out to be."
"Oh, yeah?" Yoongi spat, his ire growing with every word that left the man's mouth. "Why don't you untie me so I can show you exactly what I am?"
A humorless grin tugged at the edges of his mouth. "And what would that be?" he purred as he drew near, his dark brown hair falling forward as he moved, resting his hands on the armrests of the chair. Yoongi hated the small shiver that crept down his spine as he leaned closer, his breath tickling the tip of Yoongi's ear. "What makes up Min Yoongi? A father that didn't want to stick around long enough to meet his son? An absent mother that would rather spend her days staring at the bottoms of alcohol bottles?"
A bottomless pit opened up within Yoongi's stomach. "H-How do you-?"
"I know everything," his captor said simply, leaning back on his hands. "Just like I know that you're not nearly as strong as you pretend to be. I can see you for what you truly are - a coward."
"You're wrong!" Yoongi yelled, throwing his body against the restraints.
But the ropes held, chafing his wrists sharply as the man started laughing.
"You're wrong," he whispered again, this time more to himself than his incarcerator. "You're wrong."
The man shook his head as he hummed to himself, running his fingertip over the edge of a knife he had tucked into his jacket. "It doesn't matter whether I'm right or not," he said calmly as his hand slipped down to clutch the hilt, his gaze flashing back to Yoongi. "The truth will come out sooner or later. It always does."
Yoongi said nothing as his captor strode toward him, seething in silence as he gently slipped the edge of the blade beneath his chin, lifting his head as he bent down to Yoongi's level. Yoongi fought to raise his head away from the knife, the muscles in his neck straining as droplets of scarlet streaked down his pale skin. "So are you going to tell me what it is you want?" he finally spat.
The man shrugged. "You have nothing I want. I'm merely a distraction. A babysitter, if you will."
Yoongi frowned, but before he could ask any further, the door burst open, an explosion of light shattering through the shadows, coaxing a low hiss from Yoongi's captor as he stumbled backward, causing a gasp of relief to pass Yoongi's lips as the blade's edge left his throat.
"That's enough, Hendery," a stern voice said from the doorway.
Yoongi's captor - Hendery - muttered something akin to a string of curses as he reluctantly stepped away from Yoongi to face the door, the tip of his dagger leaking the other boy's blood onto the ground, splattering the spilled drops onto the floorboards.
Yoongi tensed as a taller boy entered the darkness - the source of the voice, he assumed - flanked on both sides by two shorter boys. He'd been caught up in enough drama between gangs growing up that he recognized the mark of dominance when he saw it.
This was their leader.
Yoongi silently tracked the tallest boy's gaze as he took in the ropes coiled around his hands, the skin beneath red and scraped raw in some places, the blood oozing from the cut on his temple, the thin slice Hendery left along the underside of his jaw, before slowly trailing back to the author of the story of violence laid before him.
"He was not to be harmed." The words were deadly soft.
Hendery's upper lip curled back in a snarl, a low sound dragged out from the back of his throat as he met the opposition held in the tall boy's gaze. "What, so you can pretend like all of us are some kind of saints, pulling kids off the streets and offering them help? To be more than criminals? Murderers?" A dark promise shone in his eyes, the remaining high off of Yoongi's blood sharpening his gaze. "I hate to break it to you, General, but that's what we are. "
Their leader, the General, flexed the muscles in his jaw in barely-contained indignation. His words were nothing more than a tight growl. "The next time you think to disobey me like this is, I won't be as lenient."
Then, finally, he fixated his gaze on Yoongi.
Yoongi met his eyes unflinchingly. He'd been jumped, bound, tortured, mocked, and made a fool of all in one day. He'd be damned before he let another mistake slip by just as he'd finally begun to see the finish line he'd been racing to for years in the distance. He would not become the failure they all thought him to be.
The General was the first one to break the silence. "Your friend's safe," he said evenly as if he were gauging how best to handle him, extending an olive branch across the divide. "He remains unharmed, and will continue to be so unless you should try anything rash."
Yoongi said nothing. Let his face reveal nothing.
The boy to the left of the General scowled, a dark storm cloud enveloping his features the longer Yoongi allowed the silence to stretch. The beginnings of a smirk tugged at the edges of Yoongi's mouth as he shifted his gaze to him. There was something so darkly satisfactory about being the cause of someone's undoing.
But it was the third boy who moved first.
Yoongi's mask of indifference slipped slightly as the other boy raised his hand toward him, gently pressing the tip of his sleeve against the edge of Yoongi's wounded temple, tenderly wiping the blood from his eyes. Yoongi searched for a sign of that fire from the other boy's eyes mirrored in this one's but he found none.
"I'm sorry about Hendery," the boy whispered as he leaned back a little, the corners of his mouth quirking upward into the hints of a tentative smile. "He's nothing but a nasty brute. I promise the rest of us aren't all that bad."
Yoongi opened his mouth to snap something back, anything to take away that soft, pitying gleam in his eyes, but all the words forming in the back of his mind disappeared as the boy pinched the hem of his shirt between his fingers, ripping off a small scrap of the fabric that he raised to the smeared edge of Yoongi's injury, letting it soak up the still-oozing stream of blood.
His fingers were so gentle on his temple-
"Why are you doing this?" Yoongi demanded through clenched teeth, his nails digging into the arms of the chair they'd tied him to so harshly that it sent aches all the way up his hands.
The General, who had appeared to be watching the boy wipe at the blood with an unreadable expression, shifted his attention to Yoongi. Yoongi nearly froze in place as their eyes locked across the room.
"I have a proposition for you, Min Yoongi."