Chapter Text
“‘True Matches' are nothing but a myth, to be considered as fanciful as the notion of Soulmates. Compatability tests conducted between Sentinel and guide matches allow for the discomfort of Guiding to be minimised.A Sentinel without a guide is a sailor lost a sea. A guide without a Sentinel is a dormant tool awaiting use. Though Sentinels and guides complete each other, they do not belong together unless sanctioned and approved by the Authority. Uncontrolled pairings are dangerous and result in damage to Authority property.”
Key Notes from the general address to Academy Third Years, 2034.
Now
“Jimin-ssi,” Jungkook says softly, brushing his fingers over Jimin’s head. “Taehyung! TAEHYUNG!”
Jimin’s fallen like a ragdoll, eyes unseeing, overwhelmed by the sounds around them as explosions rock the ground they’re crouched on. Sector Seven was supposed to be safe for a little while, it was only a stopping point before they boarded a train and escaped the Territories once and for all but—
He pulls on Jimin’s arm, trying to get the Sentinel over his shoulder but the deadweight is too much for Jungkook, strong even for a Guide, to move. Jimin’s in a zone and he can hear the heavy stomp of military issued boots heading his way. He can’t guide right now: it’s not safe and he doesn’t—he can’t--
“TAEHYUNG!”
∆˚∆˚∆˚∆˚∆˚∆˚∆˚∆˚∆˚∆˚
Then
Taehyung drapes himself over Jimin’s lap and knocks the book out of his hands. When he looks up to see an unimpressed look on Jimin’s face, Taehyung just gives him a bright, boxy grin and waits for Jimin’s expression to thaw. It does; it always does. Jimin’s weak for him, just as he’s weak for Jimin. They’d met when they were kids, barely taken from their homes for the Sentinel Program and something inside of them had connected on a level that had never been replicated with anyone else.
Jimin called them Soulmates. A true match in the purest way possible. Their bodies and souls and minds just called to each other. Taehyung knows this to be true: he can pick out Jimin’s heartbeat from across the expansive campus with ease. He always seems to just…know where Jimin is at any given time. Sometimes, it’s like he can feel Jimin inside his chest, nestled beside his heart in the space where their souls intertwine.
Sometimes, though, sometimes he thinks that spot where Jimin resides is a little empty, like maybe there’s room for something else there. Some one else. He doesn’t talk to Jimin about it though. Doesn’t want to upset him. Still, sometimes he thinks Jimin gets it too, when he catches him rubbing at his chest like that’ll chase away the phantom ache they both feel.
***
Taehyung’s the best tracker in their unit, and Jimin’s one of the best strategists. It’s why they’re out in the field when they’ve barely graduated and certainly before they’ve finished their cadet training. The war’s hard on everyone and every Sentinel is expected to perform when it’s asked of them, not matter what that request is, or where it takes them.
A shot whistles past Taehyung’s ear, just a little too close for comfort and it’s enough to send him hurtling into a zone, overwhelmed by the sound and the pressure of Jimin’s fingers as he grabs Taehyung to yank him out of the way, the sudden surge of pain as the bullet clips the very shell of his ear, hot blood pouring down the side of his face and neck, dripping into his clothes.
Jimin catches him before he falls, stumbling under the sudden weight but he’s a Sentinel, stronger than most and certainly stronger than his delicate looks might suggest. He drags Taehyung to the safety of a nearby bunker and radios for Taehyung’s Guide, snappish and terrified down the line as he gently cradles Taehyung’s face and tries to bring him back, soothing in the only way he knew how even if the touch is just more stimulation.
It takes fifteen minutes for the Guide to arrive. She’s a willowy thing but older than them by a country mile. In another life, he might have called her noona. As it is, he clicks his fingers impatient, gesturing to Taehyung with all the dramatics this situation deserves.
“Get him. He’s already been zoned for over ten minutes. What took you so long?”
“I’m sorry, sir,” she says, hurrying over and dropping to her knees. Her olive uniform is covered in dust, grey and sandy powder spackled over her hands and in her hair. “I was trying to help some—”
“I don’t care just get him out .”
She nods, flinching only a little with the harsh tone of Jimin’s voice. He can hear the way her heart’s pounding, see the fine tremble in her hands. In another life, he might have cared. In this one, though, he just needs his soulmate to blink at him and tell him he’s okay.
She closes her eyes and rests a hand on Taehyung’s temple. Jimin watches as she forces her way into his mind and can’t drown out the way Taehyung screams.
***
“She was a good guide,” Taehyung says, hollow and insincere to Jimin’s ears but convincing enough to anyone else listening outside the grieving family. To them, platitudes are nothing but that. “I owe her my life.”
Jimin’s hand rests against Taehyung’s lower back as they both bow deeply. Jimin owes her too, though her death was his fault. After Guide Lee had pulled Taehyung from his zone, she had been disoriented and weakened, her nose bleeding profusely. Enemy forces had caught up to them and Jimin made the decision to save Taehyung instead of the Guide when feasibly he might have been able to carry both.
He hadn’t done. He’d focused on saving Taehyung.
Well done , their commander had said to him when the fighting was over and they’d returned to Sector One. A good commander prioritises the strategically important pieces on the board. She’ll be remembered, but you did well.
Jimin doesn’t say anything. Taehyung wasn’t a strategically important piece in a game of chess. Taehyung was just important. And if he’d been a Guide, Jimin would have done the same thing.
Taehyung, too.
***
Once upon a time, right back when they first started at the Academy, Taehyung would sneak into Jimin’s room and curl up in his bed and they’d talk about what it would be like to be matched with their Guides.
Taehyung had always thought it would be a magical moment, the same as it had been when he and Jimin first met. That one day, he’d be paired with a Guide and that small gap in his chest next to where Jimin’s soul sat would suddenly be filled. That he’d be overwhelmed with the love and affection that he felt whenever he looked at Jimin.
Jimin had said it was more likely that they’d just feel slightly less like someone had ripped their skull open after being guided.
“That would be nice,” Taeyhung had said, wistful. The books said Guiding was always a painful process. The stories said something entirely different.
“One day,” Taehyung had said to Jimin, words whispered into the bare skin of his shoulder, “we’ll find our perfect Guide and then we won’t have to hide anymore.”
***
There have been reports of insurgent activity in Sector Eight. Reports of people sympathetic to the enemy that were providing shelter to those trying to break into the inner sectors, providing documents to get past checkpoints. Traitors.
Jimin and Taehyung are on different squads, but there is an open line of communication between all of them, radio static a familiar gentle buzz inside their ears, maddening and reassuring all at the same time. As long as the radios buzz and not squeal with grating feedback, everyone’s earpieces are okay.
Taehyung can hear Jimin’s heartbeat. Jimin can hear Taehyung’s.
They’re both okay.
At least until Taehyung’s unit is ambushed.
It’s a flash grenade that does it.
Taehyung might be imagining it, he probably is, but he’s pretty sure he hears Jimin scream his name.
***
…hi?
Taehyung’s world is melting paintings around him, shapes distorted and out of focus. It’s too bright, too hot, the sun’s a leaking oil palette: it’s dripping burning oil into his eyes. It hurts. It burns. He thinks he’s screaming.
There’s a distorted carnival of music around him, discordant and jeering, and it doesn’t fit. Nothing fits. It’s broken, and he can’t stop the paint from smudging over the world, can’t stop the trees from melting. This isn’t right, he can’t see and—
Hello?
That voice.
It’s soft. Sweet. It doesn’t belong either, but it isn’t hurting him, unlike the cacophony chorus crowing as the sun burns his eyes.
You’re lost. I’m lost too. Maybe we can find our way out together?
Yes, he wants to say, but the oil’s burned his eyes closed and dripped down his face. He doesn’t think he could move even if he wanted to.
Kind hands touch his face, peel the burning away from his skin. Shield him from the melting sun as the oil drips down and away from him. Taehyung thinks he might be doing that. He doesn’t want anyone else to be burned. Doesn’t want this kind stranger to be burned, the fuzzy outline of dark hair and a sweet face.
He can’t see much clearly, retina burned by the dripping of the sun, but he can see the biggest, brightest eyes that contain entire galaxies in them and when the stranger holds out their hand to help him up—
—he takes it.
***
When he blinks himself back, his eyes ache, but he’s not throwing up; there’s no skull-splitting pain that makes him want to be back in the oblivion of a zone. There’s Jimin kneeling beside him and the beige fabric ceiling of a medical tent.
“Baby bear?” Jimin says voice wrecked. He’s got dried blood crusted around his temple, and Taehyung can see dust in his hair. It falls in minute showers with each micromovement of Jimin’s body.
“‘m okay,” he mumbles, throat feeling dry, but otherwise, he…he actually feels fine. Parts of him ache, probably from a fall. Probably from an explosion which might explain why his ear is ringing. He feels singed. Either way, he’s okay and doesn’t feel like he’s been psychically violated.
Jimin looks relieved and rushes in to press a dusty kiss against Taehyung’s dusty forehead.
“God I was so worried. One of the grunts said you zoned?”
Taehyung blinks again. That’s right. He had. He frowns and pushes himself upright, flapping his hands as Jimin tries to make him lie down again.
“I did,” he says. “Someone…someone pulled me out.”
Jimin shakes his head, “That’s impossible. There weren’t any guides with your unit. By the time we got over to you with a guide, you’d come out of the zone but passed out because of your head injury.”
Taehyung doesn’t answer for a moment. He just closes his eyes and focuses on his centre, looks for the part of Jimin that’s curled up in his chest. He prods at the cold, vacant space that’s reserved for someone else, the part of him that’s been an echoing emptiness for longer than he’s ever known.
His eyes fly open.
It isn’t empty anymore.
***
“Alright,” the officer says, bloodied and bruised but not beaten, “load them up.”
The auxiliary unit, dressed in black and grey, are mercenaries for the forces outside of Sector Ten beyond the Wall, pulling at the chain. Just one tug and the chinking sound of resistance tinkles in the air.
“Move,” one of them growls, pulling again, a little harder this time. The chain jolts as the dozen men and women attached to it by thick, heavy rope handcuffs are yanked forward, a couple of them losing their balance and scrambling to get up again, fuzzy and disoriented. “Get in the transport.”
“We have about half an hour before the next patrol, we need to be out past Sector Nine by then so they don’t catch onto what we’re doing.”
Looking over his shoulder, at the end of the chain, is a young man with dark hair and eyes that hold entire galaxies.
Find me, he begs, stumbling a little and falling to his knees and then onto his back when the chain moves unexpectedly and he can’t catch his footing quickly enough. He scrapes his palm. “Please,” he whispers, sending it into the air like a prayer, “ find me.”