Pulsing light shone behind his eyelids. He opened them, expecting magic and wonder, but was met with an expanse of darkness. Somewhere nearby, someone was breathing, deeply and sadly. But he couldn't see them, couldn't see anything, and so the Dreamscape took him home.
***
"Jungkookie! How's it going? You've been giving me radio silence for the last week!"
He could hear the pink-haired man pouting through the phone, and it sent him into a whirlpool of guilt.
"I'm sorry Hyung," Jungkook mumbled back into the receiver.
"Jungkook, you okay? You don't sound right."
"I..." he stopped.
Was he alright? He was sat alone during lunch time, while everyone else was out getting food or meeting up with friends and colleagues for a much needed break. But Jungkook was sat there, unable to feel hungry, staring at his clasped hands resting on his work desk. His head felt empty but for the thoughts of lost dreams swirling incessantly. He was trying to concentrate at work, he really was, but everyday was more and more difficult, every night he slept less and less. He was restless, yet he couldn't move. He didn't know how to express what was happening to him, how lost and heartbroken he felt, so he went for the next best thing.
"I don't have the dreams anymore," he muttered without much emotion.
"You mean the realistic ones? With the musician guy?"
"Yeah..."
The 'realistic ones' really didn't cover what was happening, or had been happening. He had really been meeting someone real, he was sure of it. V was no more a figment of his imagination than Jimin was.
"I just can't dream of him anymore," Jungkook's voice tapered off in an unintentional whine. "I just see utter darkness when I close my eyes."
Logically, he couldn't explain why he felt this distraught, this broken, but the last five_ no, eight_ days had felt like they stretched forever. And not knowing why he couldn't see V, or if indeed he would ever see him again, was eating away at him.
"Well... maybe he's sleeping?" Jimin's said, his voice full of pity Jungkook wished he couldn't hear. "If he's sleeping, then maybe you can't dream of him?"
"Yeah, maybe. But I'm really struggling to sleep now too, so my work..." he ran a tired hand through his greasy hair, noting that he should probably shower today, if he could muster up the energy. "Well it's not the most focussed it's ever been. And they start filming tomorrow so..."
"Oh! that reminds me, Mina is leaving for pregnancy leave, so I'm taking over the costume department for your movie project! That's why I'm coming home earlier!"
Jungkook's eyes lit up slightly at the only bit of happy news he'd heard all morning.
"Congrats Jimin-shi!"
"Yah that's 'Hyung' to you, you brat! And if you ever listened to anything I said, you'd know this was happening, you know!"
Jungkook simply chuckled guiltily.
"So I'll see you tomorrow, alright? I'm coming in to go through the first proper filming tests, and then you and I are going to lunch together, " Jimin said over the phone, as lively as ever.
Jungkook didn't have the will to refuse his best friend, so he agreed quietly and they hung up. He pushed himself up and forced himself to make the daunting trek to fetch food, which unsurprisingly ended up tasting as bland as everything else he had forced down that week.
Floating alongside him through the corridors, Lady Han watched carefully, peering at the circles under his eyes and his dragging feet with confusion. Although she had never been involved in the Dreamscape, she'd heard of it, of course. She knew rumours, soft whispers that her fairies would pick up all over the world, legends from her lonely childhood. But here, right when she finally got to see two DreamSouls meet, there was something off. The souls weren't ever supposed to crumble like this; the Dreamscape had specifically been born out of a desire to save lost souls. So with only her limited knowledge, all she could tell, was that something was wrong.
And she had had enough of it.
She was fed up of the Singularity Star saturating the building like a slow moving beast, like nothing she'd seen before, causing painful echoes to bloom in her bones. And she was furious about being unable to leave, her powers crying at her to stay as each day brought more strain. She grit her teeth and shot through the ceiling. Straight up she went, angry wings beating the air into submission, before she pierced through the walls of the fifth dimension and screeched to a halt in front of Mother Fate herself.
"Fate, We need to talk."
***
That night, as restlessness settled in, Jungkook finally forced himself to clean his mess of an apartment. He wandered from one thing to another: a shower, hanging up those posters he'd been meaning to decorate with for months, changing his bed sheets, playing a game of solitaire. He spent some time on a small drawing, painting the story of a boy flying into the night sky, surrounded by music drifting up from a piano and its player. But the joy he'd felt at being a DreamSoul was nowhere to be found in the grey lines, they spoke only of longing and loss, so he discarded it along with half his dinner.
From Fate's nest in the heavens, she and the goddess of the Present watched, both saddened, both worried.
"So the Dreamscape is closed off to them now?"
Fate hummed an agreement, sad eyes gazing at the boy she had hoped would find happiness, against all odds.
"He no longer travels at night"
"But that boy," Han retaliated, pointing down at the earth, "he's falling apart, and the Singularity Star is getting stronger each day, and not in a good way!"
"Wait, you think the star is bad?"
"Of course it is!" Han was gesticulating widely now. "Singularities can be good or bad or both, but this one? Is massive! And ominous, enough to make me shiver. And the only thing I can find that's even remotely supernatural or exceptional anywhere near it, is the bond between those two, which is both. Do you have a better explanation?!"
Fate grit her teeth and looked up into the eyes of the seething half-human goddess.
"There could be many reasons for the birth of the Star, but those two boys aren't able to use the Dreamscape anymore. Thus they cannot be linked to the problem. They no longer seem destined to meet."
"But originally them meeting was supposed to be good, right? The Dreamscape stepped in for a reason, surely?"
Fate sighed, turning around and lifting her hand up to the Curtain of Night, causing a crowd surrounded by fairy lights and lime green leaves to cheer around them. In the memories, V sang Scenery and Jungkook watched. DreamCatcher and DreamSoul connecting, the way they were always meant to, and a new path full of hope and love opening up for the once-dying singer.
"He saved him you know," Fate said sadly. "The DreamSouls don't always save their Catcher, but he did exactly that: gave him enough love and confidence that he stood on that stage and showed his heart to strangers. And when they loved him, it gave him the chance to be reborn as himself, as an artist and a person. Jeon Jungkook was there for his rebirth, and now Kim Taehyung is happy, hopeful, strong. So their fate together came to a close, despite how much we want them to find happiness together."
"And you can't do anything to change that? Aren't you the goddess of love or something?!"
Mother glared viciously at the younger god.
"I can't just change fate, you uneducated snake! What happens to humans will happen to humans; if they are destined to be separated, then so be it, no matter how much it saddens me. My job is to make fates possible, but theirs... theirs just... disappeared."
Han kept glaring, withering disappointment in her eyes, before she spread her wings and got ready to leave. But as she was going to leap, she looked over her shoulder and sneered, sharp canines peaking out from between her carmine lips.
"Well maybe some of us here have power, and some of you, don't."
Left alone, Fate paced the ethereal dimension, before closing the portal into Jungkook's room with a heavy sigh and a flick of her wrist.
She refused to dwell on this, couldn't focus on this one Singularity Star anymore. She had other fates to help along, other humans to keep an eye on, and Jungkook and Taehyung simply weren't part of those protégés anymore.
Unaware of the turmoil above him, Jungkook delved desperately back into drawing, trying to empty his mind of the torment it had been haunted by recently. It was late when he finally passed out from exhaustion, as he was peering out the window at the starless, stormy sky. His slumber was restless, dragging him under and over the crest of meaningless dreams, echoes of past smiles and stars haunting him, waking him up.
"Kookie!"
Jungkook sat up, searched blindly for the covers he'd kicked off his sleep, then fell back into his bed. He buried his face into his pillow, to hide the tears from the darkened world, to get the voice in his head to go away.
"You're not real. Stop. Please. You're not real... and I miss him so much. Please..."