(y/n) quickly dodged through the tents until she reached the empty bathhouse. It was the only wooden structure with hand pump showers and a large bath. The bath was two people wide and three people long with the intention of being somewhat communal. However, this early in the morning, nobody was there.
Privacy was an issue she found staying in the camp full of men. She would only get an hour before soldiers would start trickling in before breakfast.
To be on the safe side, she stretched her sense over the circumference of the hut. If anybody were coming, it would at least give enough warning to get out of the water and dressed. (y/n) stripped out of clothes, still keeping hold of her weapon; she had learnt that mistake the hard way.
She slid into the water, letting it block the sounds around her.
The water pooled around her body, her mind faded into dullness, and everything became a foggy illusion. The sensation of the steamy water calmed her; it was a nice change from the cold outside. Her mind swelled and lulled about as rosemary, and lavender-scented soap filled her nose.
And somehow, being suspended in water let her mind think without overrunning.
She had broken down to Jin, but it didn't bother her as much as she thought. Thinking back, it was inevitable with how she had been spiralling out over the past few weeks, and she was glad it was Jin. He had been far too kind and patient compared to what she deserved, and he still let her keep her secrets. Though, as she washed her hair, she decided that as soon as she worked out how to word everything, she would tell him, maybe even hoseok he had said they were fine, even if she had yet to talk to him. Hoseok and Jin were both level-headed, a quality that she lacked at the moment.
Prehapes even Jungkook.
Then there was the awfully strange case of Yoongi, which last night had truly shocked (y/n). He seemed scared of something, of what she had no clue, and he had come to her. Out of all people he had ended up with (y/n)— someone just as terrified, only for a different reason. (y/n) dunked her head completely under the water, letting the suds dissolve away. She had to talk to Namjoon in a few hours; if he had found any information, she needed it for her meeting with Akira. When she came up for air, all she was thinking was how much she dreaded the day.
Worse of all, she was running on no sleep.
Once (y/n) was washed, she left the bathhouse.
As expected, Namjoon was waiting in the main tent. He sat alone, eyes trailing over the table until they stopped to glare at the small figurine painted in black robes. He scoffed. During their last meeting, he had exploded, and since then, he had been stewing alone in a quiet spot he found. Hating himself for still carrying out the task (y/n) had given him.
It was somewhat hypocritical, and his brain wasn't letting him brush that fact aside. Every soldier he had noted down would taunt his soul. How foolish he felt; in so many ways, he regretted lashing out. He had oped up pandora's box, and all the pent-up rage he had been holding in came rushing out. And when he had spent the past night lying outside surrounded by puddles of muddy water, he began picking fights with his reflection, trying to pry out some answers from his crooked self.
His conclusion came quick and accurate, (y/n) had hurt his heart, and subsequently, he had hurt others. She had got the better of him. He had spent his adolescence pinning for a girl day in and day out, and now he hated them. He was jealous of her standings and envied how quick Jungkook seemed to hurry to her after the absence.
Now Namjoom felt like shit; He had convinced himself that that girl was just a chemical that needed to be sweated out. But here, he was practically on his knees at her request, and god, did he hate that even more.
So even as he spent the day and night lost in his sense, it stretched over leagues until he was practically at the enemy base. Studying the pattern, every time he caught his reflection, he saw a pathetic little boy who had come to get everyone down purposely.
Namjoon decided to get the ball rolling, "How many soldiers do we have?" He asked. (y/n) who was still standing at the door looking lost in her thoughts, shot her eyes up to meet his.
"Ten thousand." She answered straight away; the information had practically ingrained itself into her head at this point. Though when Namjoon didn't reply, she said it louder. "Yes, I 'heard' you," he said as if he were some cunning beast and her, his always escaping prey. He expected the girl not to stand as she was, but (y/n) had decided the tone he used was reason enough not to sit. His eyes wandered to the chair, expecting her to take this unsaid directive. That refusal to smile or show warmth was his subtle form of emotional warfare, yet hardly fair.
"How many do the third kingdom have?" (y/n) asked, wanting the small battle to end.
"Around three times that."
All the colour in (y/n) faces drained. Namjoon watched as her hands began to rub at her head, pulling her head back from her face. That was not the result she had wanted, as he didn't want to admit it, but that brought him small pleasure. After all, he still didn't believe this war would or should be affecting him, and he had plans to flee at the first signs of danger for him and his brothers. She took a breath of composure before walking to the other end of the table.
"Do you know where they all are?"
He nodded. "They have stretched out evenly across the whole border."
(y/n) eyes flashed panic. "There's going to wear us too thin, " she muttered, thinking out loud. It was becoming more apparent how doomed this army was.
"You're a nightblade, aren't you?" Namjoon said, interrupting her thinking, and if she had any hope of a sympathetic word, it was crushed in an instant. "go kill them all yourself then" He sounded flat and unconcerned as he dropped some papers onto the table. They made a thud, and the wind knocked down the little figure in a domino. (y/n) was about to say something until she saw Namjoons back already walking out of the tent.
She was left alone once again. The paper Namjoon had thrown her full of scribbles. On closer inspection, Namjoon filled it to the brim with information. He had written down every enemy location to a point and sat beside them where her soldiers should stand. In so much detail, they told what way the archer would face to a single degree.
He wrote how the entirety of the army would form a thin line across the borders matching the enemy's positions and how the battlefield would easily be three leagues long, giving them the best chance to not let the enemy in. There would be no weaker points, gaps, or broken chain links. Their forces would be stretched, and under a lot of pressure, it would only take one section to fall for them to lose the kingdom, but there was no other way. They had to match the second kingdom.
Even if Namjoon had spoken harshly, he had formed a battle plan, something (y/n) had yet to muster the brain power to do. It was baffling and confusing, and as (y/n) sat there moving the tiny soldier into place, following the instruction Namjoon had made, she couldn't help but wonder why.
(y/n) could only think back to how Him and jungkook fought in the forest, that argument was far worse than the petty fallouts she used to witness, and she knew that it had but s stake in their friendship. By the end of her time in the hut, she had felt no different from Jungkook; only jungkook faced it head-on. She had been cowardly and slipped out away in the dead of night. Even so, Jungkook had convinced them to come along, something she was extremely grateful for, even if she hadn't shown it. (y/n) would eventually, when she musted up the courage.
Still, Namjoon followed Jungkook, and Jungkook was their baby brother; she knew they would do anything for him, so perhaps this was Namjoons's way of saying sorry without outright saying it. She knew from jin that she had yet to speak to each other, jungkook being the one to walk away from any starting conversation.
However, it didn't matter why Namjoon had done it too (y/n), not when it could potentially save her life. She read until she reached the end of the pages before she tired the loose sheets into her book. She closed with a slam and leaned back in her chair. Now that she stopped, (y/n) could feel the exhaustion come over her in a rather large wave. But there was still no time to rest fully. The next best option was to relax her eyes while he waited for Akira to arrive.
In her sleeplessness (y/n) became drunk on the silence. It has seeped into her pores for minutes that felt like hours, dowsing her mind in its thick toxicity. The usefulness of her thoughts was long gone, leaving these fatigued neurones to fire almost randomly- flailing without direction. She wanted so much not to think at all; she wanted to be absorbed into the darkness behind her closed lids, not in the streaming white daylight.
Her eyelids slowly became lead, and she was about to drift off when a sudden thought hit. Namjoon next wrote down one night blade. Hopping it was wiriness and that she had just missed them, (y/n) reached for the book and began scanning.
Her eyes, now wide, trailed every mark. They strained as she over it repeatedly, but no night blades ever showed up. This was worrying. she knew they were there, but Namjoon hadn't sensed them. The only possible explanation was that they all possessed the ability to hide their sense like Hoseok and Taehyung. And if that were the case, everything would be much worse. She couldn't head in there without knowing how many nightblades she was going up against; it was suicide.
(y/n) threw the book back down in frustration. Half of her wanted to find Namjoon again and see if he had made a mistake, but she didn't have the energy to face what would no doubt turn into an argument. Nonetheless, she had no choice. She lifted her body from the chair, ready to rush out of the tent.
However, Jungkook stood in the doorway. He was fidgeting, shifting his weight from foot to foot. His doe eyes flashed from nervous to worried; whatever he had come to say had gone out the window. That no longer mattered right now; what mattered was (y/n).
Thank you for reading xxxx