"No!" I scream. "NO! JUNGKOOK!"
My voice, laced with pain, sorrow, and tragic regret, echoes to the farthest edges of the battleground.
Jungkook seems to fall in slow motion. I watch helplessly as he seems to realize what happened - and that he has no choice but to fall.
"JUNGKOOK!" I yell again, refusing to believe what I'm seeing. I muster all the strength I have to get just a bit closer, but I'm too far out to help him and my energy is all used up - the last of it used to save Namjoon.
We even had our final goodbye under the stars because we knew this could happen...
No... no no no-
I want to extend a hand to his falling figure - his alert, innocent doe eyes, his lost smile, his angelic voice that I'll never hear again, his soft pink hair that I watched him dye in the bathroom so many lifetimes ago, his limp body - as gravity takes him down the crevice that the Earth Guards had broken open earlier. Something stretches between us for just one moment, one of disbelief and silent love and torn futures that will never take place. He falls out of sight too soon.
All that potential and hope...
Gone.
I cry out again and my vision begins to blur when I can't see him anymore.
Jungkook's gone, Jungkook's gone...
"Jungkook..." I mumble. It hurts to say his name.
Because I love him. Loved him, and now he's gone. Gone to a place I'll never get to consciously see in my waking lifetime, gone to the dark depths of the Earth where there will never be daylight again.
Something inside me explodes. My hands crackle with energy and bright threads, white instead of golden this time, emerge from them and it strikes outward like lightning, creating thundering echoes even louder than my cries. Its presence should have calmed me down but it doesn't, it only angers me, angers me to no end because you were there for J-Hope on the truck ride at the beginning of it all and you were there for Namjoon just now but why weren't you there for Jungkook, when I needed you most, I hate you for going against me, I hate this world, why does it have to end like this.
I seethe with anger, rage at the injustice of it all, because aren't good people supposed to win, in the end? What kind of a messed up world is this?
The white light dissipates outwards, carrying all of my emotion, lashing out, raw and disgusted and fuming and dangerous.
It thunders until there's no anger left for it to feed on.
Then it's all quiet.
I come back to my senses. My ears are ringing. Everything's so deafening. I feel empty inside. Devoid of emotion. Like a part of me was just lost with- with... I'm breathing rapidly. Too rapidly. I blink. I look down at my hands. They don't look good. They look like they're supposed to hurt, but they don't feel like they're hurting right now at least. There aren't any Fighters around me. I'm on the ground. I'm shivering. Can't tell if it's shock or the snow. What happened? Why do I feel so empty what's going on?
Out in the distance I see darkness closing in. It looks similar to if thunderstorm clouds were closing in but there aren't any clouds, just pitch black darkness, like a fog. I'm so tired beyond measure that I feel like I might pass out. It approaches too close and then consumes my sight completely.
...
Have I lost consciousness?
I can't see anything - it's the blackest black.
For all I know I could be in a floating abyss. My eyes are closed, not that it makes a difference anyway, and I'm ready to let my thoughts and entire being fall into the shadows, possibly never wake up. Maybe this is what the end feels like. Maybe I'll get to see...
But then... why am I still hearing sounds?
Yells of fright, outbursts of anger. Shuffles of people wandering around. The sounds are muffled but definitely there. I take a deep breath. It still smells like the battlefield from before.
"Y/n, you there?" Jin's voice comes from my left.
JIN?! What- how? You're still alive? How did you cross the crevice-
"Yeah," I say dumbly instead.
"Follow me, quick. We don't have much time."
He's urging me somewhere. I somehow locate his hand in the dark and I pull on it, using his help to get myself off the ground. When I shakily stand, a wave of nausea hits me so I take a moment to steady myself. Then I scramble to follow him as best as I can.
~
"This is funny," the Commander says.
J-Hope stands nervously. Both of them are looking at dead Hologram J-Hope. Real J-Hope hopes that he made the thing look gruesome-looking enough, with blood staining the white snow and all of that, but he isn't so sure he got the burnt texture of skin right. What does a body that's been fire blasted to death even look like?
"As I said, there isn't much use for light elementalists." The Commander laughs and raises his head to look at his surroundings once more. "Good job creating the illusion of a dead body. But I don't smell burned flesh, Hoseok."
Don't call me that name, J-Hope resists the urge to retaliate.
"I'm here all day," the Commander sings. "Word goes, your six little friends that you chose to abandon are losing in the battlefield. And here you are, unable to move."
J-Hope's eyes dart around for something to dive behind. He could move, but that would make noise, and he knows he would need cover immediately since the Commander would pinpoint him. At the same time, the complex visual of a burned body is taking up all his energy and he doesn't have much left. He reluctantly cancels it, leaving the snow pure white like before. The Commander knows it's fake anyway.
"Running out of energy, Hoseok?" he taunts. "Can't even keep a still visual anymore?"
If he was actually smart he'd just do the firebeam while spinning 360 degrees, J-Hope thinks, leaving no chance of escape. But the Commander's ego is getting the best of him: he wants J-Hope to admit defeat first by revealing himself. If only there was a way to bypass this...
There's a scream.
Blood curdling, full of nothing but panic.
Both of them turn to look, J-Hope with apprehension and the Commander with smirking satisfaction. The battlefield is too faraway to make out individual figures but unmistakably the voice is Y/n's. J-Hope can't even begin to imagine what would've happened for someone to scream with such horror, and for Y/n to make the decision to amplify her voice so loudly, like a terrified cry for help.
"Time is ticking, Hoseok." The Commander turns to him. "Your friends are running out of it. And so are you."
J-Hope tears his gaze away from the battlefield and realizes that the Commander is staring directly at him. He looks down at his body, which is not invisible. Y/n's voice had distracted him.
A firebeam is already charging in the Commander's hand.
J-Hope runs.
Making sure not to stray too far from the stone wall in the meager hope of still finding Jimin, J-Hope dives between the trees nearby in an attempt to escape. As he's doing so, something climbs up his hands and arms. They're threads, strong and glowing. It feels like Y/n is transferring energy to him again, like in that truck getaway when they escaped from school.
The threads aren't golden this time, but white.
J-Hope can feel the terror and desperation in them, a longing for something, or someone, and there is just so much energy building up that the threads weave their way onto his shoulders, torso, and legs as well.
Low energy is dangerous. Too much energy...?
Without thinking, J-Hope pulls on it all at once in an attempt to diffuse its strength.
The world turns black.
The Commander trips, suddenly unable to see. J-Hope barely avoids getting brought down with him. He darts outward, away from the trees, and by luck his hand finds the stone wall that he'd been careful to stay close to. He sprints parallel to it while his hand runs along the smooth stone. Somewhere along here must be a door or window. Next plan: find an entrance, break in, get Jimin, and then Jim-out.
The Commander must've lost him, since J-Hope can't hear anyone running behind himself. He does hear confusion breaking out on the distant battlefield though. Did the black stuff reach that far?
With his new abundance of elemental energy, J-Hope carefully prods at the black stuff in front of his eyes while he runs. It moves out of the way so he can see his hands and the closer bits of the stone wall. With more prodding, he finds himself with more distance in his vision.
This is unlike anything he's ever done before.
J-Hope realizes, with each prod, that everything feels backwards. He's used to controlling elements that help vision instead of obscure it. Which means he probably isn't even controlling light anymore... but instead darkness, the absence of light.
Shadow.
He almost rejects the idea because Shadow isn't even an element, and one person controlling two elements is unheard of. But it still makes sense. Light and Shadow are interrelated, right? So it's not that far of a stretch. J-Hope decides that he has to run his theory by Namjoon later. Y/n's energy changed, which changed his abilities too...
His hands find wood in the midst of stone. A grand set of double doors looms over him, with tons of iron bolts fixing it in place. J-Hope sets his theory aside to focus on the task at hand.
For now, Jimin.