Blair stretched a little as she leaned back in Yoongi's command chair and looked to her left to see Ginny nearly asleep, head cradled against the palm of her hand. She smiled lightly at the sight, and then began to move the chair closer to Ginny to wake her up when she heard a knock on the door jamb.
She looked up to see Seokjin leaning against the doorway, the light in the hallway behind him was low enough to not be overpowering in the dim lights of Yoongi's office.
"Did she fall asleep again," Jin asked quietly as he walked into the room. He crouched down besides Ginny's chair and smiled fondly at her before he looked to Blair again.
"She stopped talking a few minutes ago Jin-Oppa. Are you going to take her to sleep now," she asked quietly.
Jin nodded slowly and kept his eyes on Blair.
"The guys have reached Mongolia and are getting into the truck to head towards the border now. That's a journey of about four hours, so I was going to catch a little shut eye now while I had the chance," he said, and Blair nodded.
She too had been following along, trying to read the updating satellite information as fast as Ginny got the updates. Jin was running support for the operation real time, but Ginny was down here running backup support.
Blair had shifted between supporting Sentinel operations with Lara, while also feeding the girls the information Jin and Ginny could share with her and it had already been an exhausting few hours since Yoongi and the rest of Bangtan had left the Tower.
At Blair's nod, Jin had shifted and begun to lift Ginny from the chair.
"We all have couches in our offices for pretty much exactly this scenario little sister, so I'm going to take her up to my office and let her get some sleep. Four hours is just a rough estimate, so you're welcome to stay here, or go back to the apartment and sleep for a bit and then came back down when you're ready," he said as he shifted Ginny in his arms.
Blair watched Ginny snuggle closer into Jin's arms and had the thought that the look of adoration on Seokjin's face was something Ginny should see for herself.
Jin smiled as he shifted Ginny into a better position, and then headed down the hallway back towards the elevator and his own office.
Blair glanced at her phone and saw a text from Lara letting her know she was heading back to Namjoon's apartment for this first night, and then another from Paige saying nearly the same thing. She also saw it was quarter after two in the morning and sighted lightly.
She thought about sleeping for a bit, then shook her head. Pushing back from the desk, she headed back up to Yoongi's apartment. Blair took a few minutes to shower, and then changed into a pair of leggings. Then smirking, she dug into Yoongi's closet and let out a crow of triumph when the lights revealed an entire wall of hoodies.
"Acres and acres, and it's all mine now," she giggled to herself, repeating the punchline to an off-color joke she remembered. Then smiled as she ran her hands over the hangers in the walk-in closet. Acres of hoodies it might be, but the color palette was definitely Yoongi. Black, white, varieties of grays and a few random navy hoodies were tucked in amongst the endless sea of black t-shirts. On the far rack she could see suits, the tuxedo he'd work the other night and a variety of dress shirts. There was a set of drawers built into the wall behind her and she opened them to see one held a beautiful collection of sweaters, while the other was actually a shoe cupboard and held everything from dress shoes to more basketball sneakers.
Blair snagged a black hoodie that was one of the softer one's she touched and assumed it was one of the oldest in his collection. When she slipped it over her head, she was rewarded instantly by the familiar smell of Yoongi's cologne and the unique fragrance that always intrigued her when she buried her nose into his neck as they cuddled.
She brought the edge of the hoodie up to her nose now and inhaled and smiled lightly. Calm is exactly what that brought her, and she shut the lights off in the closet and headed back out.
Blair had given herself fifteen minutes before she wanted to be back at the monitors downstairs and decided to use the last few minutes to just be nosy. She opened the door next to Yoongi's closet and hit the lights.
She was a little shocked when she stepped into a mostly empty closet, and then a grin slid across her face as she realized this was where Yoongi had moved all of her clothes Lara had packed for her.
Her hand covered her mouth, holding in her surprise, and she nodded to herself as she shut the lights off and stepped back into the main room. Blair gathered the cashmere blanket from the edge of the bed and folded it to bring downstairs with her.
She wandered back down the hall, finding the little office Yoongi had set up for her, a storage room, and two more unused rooms. She found Yoongi's own office and blushed at the memories of how they'd used that desk when she first got here.
"We'll have to do that again sometime," she thought to herself as she turned from the hallway back to the small kitchen area.
Yoongi's kitchen was set up like a professional chef's kitchen, and she knew he'd had a hand in the main kitchen that they'd cooked in normally. She raided his fridge ruthlessly, finding bottled juices and then in the cupboard a box of granola bars that she knew he'd favored.
She made a mental note of what she'd taken, because they'd have to do more shopping once he got back so that he could cook for them both and headed back to the stairs and down to Yoongi's office again.
She kept her internal monologue light and positive and as she reached Yoongi's main office and set the bottle of juice down on the desk, she ignored how her hand shook. Of course, he was coming back, and so was her father. Everything was fine, she thought to herself.
Blair shook the mouse to see if the satellite feed had updated the tracking yet and had to take a deep breath when she saw that they were really on the road to the border crossing at Hami. She stared at the unmoving feed for a few more minutes and then took the blanket, heading back to the little couch in the office.
She set her alarm for three hours and prepared to spend those three hours overthinking things. But somewhere between the coziness of the blanket, and the smell of Yoongi's giant hoodie, Blair managed to fall asleep.
"Alright Tower, we're in the truck now. We'll signal when we get across the border," said Namjoon.
Yoongi heard Seokjin acknowledge, then the click as the radio went silent. Sighing a little, he took the earpiece from his ear and tucked it back into the padded pocket that protected the expensive hardware while he was moving around. Yoongi looked back to Namjoon and nodded once, and Namjoon nodded back then looked around the truck.
"Alright gentlemen, let's get comfy. We have probably three hours until we're close enough, and it'll be a light jog until we get through the crossing," said Namjoon and Yoongi heard the others acknowledge.
"Yoongi-hyung, hold still," came Taehyung's voice in his ear, and Yoongi smiled to himself as he felt Tae lean against his right shoulder. A moment later, the weight increased, and he knew Jimin had leaned against Tae and waited until he felt the weight increase once more. He looked over and confirmed that the three youngest had gotten into their normal sleeping positions when they were on the mission and looked back to where Namjoon and Hoseok were speaking in low tones.
Namjoon looked up to see Yoongi holding up the magnae line and laughed a little.
"Hyung, you're the best pillow. I swear they knock themselves out the first chance they get," Namjoon said fondly, and Yoongi looked over the trio again.
"Meh, let them sleep now. It's not like the three of us will be getting a lot of shut eye between now and the next time we're on this side of the fence," said Yoongi and Namjoon's face got more serious as he nodded in agreement.
Hoseok and Namjoon went through the loadouts and the planned targets once more and Yoongi listened in. After a while Namjoon declared that it was a rest period and the three men got into positions that wouldn't cramp their necks entirely and got some shut eye.
Yoongi's last thought before he fell asleep were thinking of Blair and being able to get back to the apartment. Of being able to tell her that they had found her father.
But of course, his thoughts also ran through the opposite end of that scenario.
"I'm so sorry Blair, we were too late to save your Appa."
Yoongi shook his head to clear the negative thoughts and tried again. Her dress and their dragon. The desk, Yoongi remembered with a smirk and had a brief amusing side trip wondering if he should just get a plaque made to hang above his desk, celebrating his and Blair's return to normal.
And with a smile on his face, he fell into sleep.
He woke abruptly but stayed motionless until he identified what had woken him, and it was Namjoon's voice speaking into low tones.
Yoongi cracked an eyelid and saw Namjoon was conversing with Jungkook. He felt a literal weight lift off him as both Jimin and Taehyung finally sat up and decided perhaps it was close enough to the border that he should begin his own prep. Yoongi hit a button on his watch and watched the dials spin up, indicating that around two and a half hours had passed.
He began to do some of the small stretches that Hoseok and Jimin had shown them from their own dance and yoga classes. Focusing on his shoulders, he began to rotate them slowly as best he could within the confines of the truck.
He heard Tae and Jimin going over something then looked across the truck to see Hoseok watching him.
"Green," asked Hoseok and Yoongi smiled a little. Hoseok was asking about his mission status and it amused Yoongi every time he heard Hobi ask.
"Maybe a spring-green today brother," he teased, indicating that he was a little concerned but ready to go. Hobi rolled his eyes and next to him Namjoon had overheard. Namjoon looked up now and grinned a little at Yoongi before turning back to the conversation with Jungkook.
Yoongi heard the truck begin to downshift, and reached into the storage pocket on his vest and pulled out his earpiece again. Fitting it into his ear, he switched on the module. It was too early to check-in with Jin, but they'd use the short band of the radio to talk to each other as they maneuvered across the border.
Bangtan had already been traveling for 13 hours now, and the 72 hours on the ground that Yoongi hold told Blair had been the slimmest of margins on travel. They had chosen to fly in through Delhi to Ulaanbaatar this time, mostly to avoid any problems flying in through Russian, but that would mean an extraction through an even less friendly place of Kazakhstan.
This wasn't going to be anyone's idea of a pleasure trip, but Yoongi just hoped that by the time they were able to fly home, he'd be able to shake the sand of the desert from his boots.
He could hear the truck finish its down shift, whine of the engine changing in pitch enough to be noticeable to the others now. Yoongi looked to Namjoon who was assessing the road through the flap on the back of the truck.
"Alright, same as last time gentlemen. We're going to be taking a nice jog through a bit of desert before we need to cross the low range. We arranged to meet our contact at 04:00, so we need to get a move on," said Namjoon.
As the truck began to crawl, but not fully stop, Jungkook untied to strings on the canvas cover on the frame and used his Glock to sweep the area.
"Clear," Yoongi heard in his ear, and with Namjoon's acknowledgement, Jungkook leapt from the back of the truck.
Yoongi jumped out after Taehyung and waited until Hoseok and Namjoon landed on the road. They quickly moved off to the low desert scrub on the side of the canyon the truck was heading down, and after a few moments, Yoongi heard the aging vehicle rev back up to speed and head off towards the village of Govi-Altai.
Yoongi did a quick check-in with the magnae to make sure all three had made the jump ok and grumbled a bit when Jungkook asked if Yoongi as the oldest had made the jump alright himself.
"I just want to make sure Grandpa is ok," said Jungkook with his best attempt at innocence, causing Jimin to laugh a little.
"Yea, we don't want Grandpa to get hurt while we're out here, it's a long way to hoof it home," said Jimin.
Yoongi scowled then adjusted his pack. He nodded to Namjoon, who checked with Hoseok.
Hoseok took point and began to wind his way through the main canyon, towards the side canyon they had mapped out previously. They'd come out on top of the dunes, then as Namjoon had said, have that nice long jog downhill until they reached the lowest edge of the mountains.
Yoongi hit his watch again and noted they were still on time, then sighed at the six-hour hike in front of him. This was definitely his least favorite part of any operation.
Yoongi waited until the others had moved then slid in with Jungkook into rear guard and the team began their trek towards China.