Another member of their group had been grasped in the virus' deadly clutches. This time it was Sasha, Tyreese's sister, she had come to the isolation ward after almost fainting on her way to the cafeteria. But despite only now joining the sick, her pale, glistening skin and the blue bags under her eyes looked worse than Taehyung's.

The latter noticed the way her hands shook and each blink of her eyes was longer than necessary, just like he could hear her wheezing breaths right next to him - blending together with the choked splutters of breath from the man they were currently holding down. But as Taehyung's blurry vision glided down towards the man laying on his back, struggling to breathe through the blood filling his lungs, he realised that neither looked as bad as Henry currently did.

Thankfully Hershel had noticed Henry just in time before he could suffocate from the sickness and join the other fallen members on the other side of the golden gates of heaven. Hershel had called Taehyung and Sasha for help, which the pair provided in the form of holding Henry down while Hershel intubated him. And with a few squishes of the oxygen bag, the choked coughs died out and were replaced by steady breaths, while the blue tint to Henry's skin smoothened into a pale ivory tone.

Taehyung's grip on Henry's wrist loosened and body slumped in relief, his lips parted to release a wheeze as he plopped down on his ass and pulled his hands away from Henry's body. He watched Hershel pump the oxygen bag every few seconds, making Henry's chest rise with each pump.

Tae raised his hand and coughed into his elbow, only for it to be silenced by Sasha's harsher ones. Hershel turned to look at the pair without stopping his pumping, "Drink some tea." Hershel advised, jutting his chin into the direction of the two metal cups sitting on the ground next to Henry's cot.

Taehyung struggled to gather enough energy to turn around and blink down at the cups of tea. He desperately desired to tell Hershel to fuck off before laying down on the ground to take a nap, but the venomous words wilted on his tongue as the surface of the tea whirled into two bambi eyes blinking back at him. Taehyung immediately sat straighter and grabbed the teacups, he stared into them - thinking that he'll see Jungkook's eyes once more, only for his own obsidian gaze to stare back at him.

"Fucking hell." Taehyung huffed as his face scrunched in distaste towards his delusional mind. He slumped back against the bed - the metal edge of it digging into his spine, while the coldness seeped through his shirt and sunk into his skin. He glanced up at Sasha and extended a cup towards her, receiving a small nod and a lazy blink of her eyes in return.

Taehyung raised his own cup up to his lips and sipped on the tea. He gulped the liquid down, feeling the spoonful of honey and handful of squashed elderberries mixed together with the bag of lemon tea. He didn't even feel the liquid slide down his tongue, only felt the soothing caresses against his throat and the blanket of warmth wrapping around his exhausted lungs.

Taehyung lowered his cup and wiped away the droplet of tea hanging off his chin only once it was empty. His obsidian gaze tied together with Hershel's gentle one before the latter broke it in order to turn towards Sasha and explain to her what to do, "Every five to ten seconds squeeze. If you start feeling lightheaded, have somebody take over." His eyes left Sasha and focused on a pale Taehyung, he eyed him for a split second before glancing back at Sasha and assessing her state too, "We'll take turns in shifts."

Sasha nodded and squeezed the oxygen bag just to test out how it felt. Her eyes fluttered shut before snapping back open, she squeezed the bag once more and shifted around to make herself more comfortable - back against the concrete wall and one leg bent to hold up the hand that was pumping the oxygen bag.

Taehyung's cup clattered against the ground when he began to shift around until he was on his knees. His palms scraped against the ground and knees nearly buckled under the weight of the sickness as he stumbled up with the help of Hershel. The wrinkled hand of the old man gripped Taehyung's bicep tightly and didn't allow him to fall as he was gently guided out of the cell with a fleeting murmur of words towards Sasha.

"If you start feeling sick or like you'll pass out, call for me. Don't tell yourself that you can endure for a moment longer." Hershel advised sternly, receiving a confident nod from Sasha and a wave of her hand in his direction.

Taehyung's knees trembled and shoulder pressed against the iron bars. His head tilted back to reveal his sweaty neck and lungs squeezed painfully with each wheeze he exhaled, "This is...embarrassing." Taehyung croaked weakly, sparing a small glance down at Hershel's hand holding him up and stopping him from falling back down to his knees.

Hershel's ghost of a smile faltered at Taehyung's words and gentle eyes turned to drink in the sight of Taehyung's lidded gaze and hollowed cheeks, the colour red had seeped out of his lips, making them chapped and sickly pale, "Being sick is not embarrassing, you have nothing to be ashamed of." Hershel murmured gently, tightening his fingers around Taehyung's elbow as the latter pushed off the bars and began to stumble down the hall.

"Maybe." Taehyung's grumble was followed by a cough and ruby red blood splattering against his palm. His hand dropped just as quickly as it rose and palm pressed against his already stained shirt to wipe it away, "It is a bit embarrassing to not be able to walk without being held up by an old man." Taehyung murmured breathlessly with a choked chuckle, quickly glancing down at Hershel's hand once more.

Hershel's face mirrored his amusement and lips peeled apart to release the words trapped in the back of his throat, "Would you much rather be held up by Jungkook?" Hershel questioned the younger with a quirked brow - knowing what his answer would be.

Taehyung's plastic smile faltered and head shook weakly, knowing he would prefer it that Jungkook stayed outside of the quarantine zone. Hershel hummed at the wordless answer and released his hold on the boy. Tae swayed on his feet but caught himself by latching onto the bars of the cell next to his, "You know..." Taehyung trailed off, making fleeting eye-contact with the woman sitting on the bed in the cell he was holding onto. He offered her a trembling twist of his lips before releasing his hold on the cell and taking a weak step away from it to give the coughing woman some privacy, "...when I said I was embarrassed, I didn't mean that I wasn't grateful to you for keeping me up on my feet."

Hershel shook his head with a comforting smile, reaching towards Taehyung to gently grab his elbow once more. The pair continued to walk forward - their steps slower than usual with Taehyung's aching muscles and chains of exhaustion wrapped around his ankles. His obsidian eyes gulped down the sight of the sick, coughing people in the cells and their blood-stained lips. He tried to ignore their vacant eyes as they stared back at the walls of their cells as if their souls had left their bodies before their last breaths could be released.

One man in particular made Taehyung wince when he turned to look back at him through the slits in the bars. Trails of blood were leaking out of the corners of his eyes and rolling down his cheeks like scarlet tears, yet the man's gaze stayed firmly locked on Taehyung as if the man was used to crying blood.

"Things will be different once it's over." Hershel murmured under his breath, staring back at the same man Taehyung had made eye-contact with. Taehyung could only nod in agreement and avert his gaze to the ground, feeling the worms of depression lay their eggs along his spine and sink him even further into his negative mindset.

"Oh, no.."

Taehyung was ripped out of his sinking boat by Hershel's mumble of grief, followed by the old man releasing his hold on Taehyung and stumbling towards the growing pool of blood spilling out of one of the cells. The previous exhaustion in Tae's eyes was brushed away by the bony fingers of alarm and panic, he stumbled after Hershel until he was looming in the doorway to the cell and gazing down at the dead body of Mr. Jacobson.

The black man's skin was tainted with the blood he had coughed out, eyes were sunken into his skull with trails of ruby red running along his cheekbones and pooling around his mouth. His gaze was blank and empty as if the god of death had inhaled his soul through his parted lips and left behind an empty shell of the man he once was.

Taehyung gathered his emotions and shoved them into a bag, he buried them deep into his chest as he pulled out the dagger strapped to his hip and approached the dead man. And just as he reached Mr. Jacobson and inched the tip of his dagger closer, Hershel quickly grabbed his wrist and hissed, "No." Taehyung stilled and glanced up with a frown of confusion, only for Hershel to gesture behind him.

When Taehyung turned to peer over his shoulder at what Hershel was pointing at, he noticed the intense gazes of a few other members of their group flickering between Mr. Jacobson and Taehyung's dagger. The weapon was lowered before Taehyung slid it back into his holster and turned away from the eyes watching their every movement.

Hershel exhaled softly, grabbing the chair in the corner before pulling it closer to the bed. They shared a solemn look as Hershel grabbed Mr. Jacobson by his armpits and Taehyung grabbed his ankles. His muscles screeched in pain as they lifted the man and placed him onto the rolling chair. His head lolled to the side limply, while the blood in his mouth leaked out and dripped onto his shirt.

Taehyung's nose scrunched up in disgust before he leaned down to grab a bloody sheet and throw it over the man to shield him from the view of others. Hershel wrapped his fingers around the back of the chair and rolled it out of the room with Taehyung lazily dragging his feet after them. His gaze stayed on the ground in front of him and fingers curled and uncurled into loose fists in order to make his attention stay rooted to the ground, instead of the memories plaguing his mind.

They rolled Mr. Jacobs out of the room with the empty gazes of the sick prisoners hanging over their heads like axes. Once the door behind them clicked shut and the gazes of everyone were cut off, Taehyung slumped against the wall and looked up from the floor. His eyes connected with Hershel's and he instantly noticed the grief seep into the room and fill it until it reached his jaw.

"Hershel..."

"I talked to him yesterday about Steinbeck." The older man sliced Taehyung's low murmur of breath apart with his own voice. His eyes slipped down towards the sheet-covered face of Mr. Jacobson and a bitter smile bloomed on his lips, "He told me a quote 'A sad soul can kill quicker than a germ'."

"That's exactly why I didn't want them all to see what happens." Hershel breathed with a small flicker of eyes in the directed of Taehyung's dagger. The latter shifted from foot to foot, pressing his fingers against the hilt of the knife with a small wince. Hershel looked away once again and exhaled softly, "I know they know. But I didn't want them to see it right now."

Taehyung nodded weakly, trying to form some kind of words in his mind to respond with. He managed to grab a handful and wrap them in a bow of sadness, "I know, Hershel, I know. I wish I hadn't seen either." Taehyung reluctantly admitted with a deep exhale, "Every time I see their empty eyes and tears of blood, I realise..." Taehyung sucked in a deep breath and clenched his jaw, his eyes fell on the ground and silver droplets of tears hovered in the corners of his eyes, "I'm scared." He exhaled softly before glancing back up at Hershel.

"I've heard from people of how much they had lost since the start of the apocalypse. Their houses, swept empty, their pet dogs, eaten, friends and family members, scattered across the world or rotting in the bellies of the dead corpses roaming this planet." An empty shell of a chuckle climbed up Taehyung's ribs and brushed through his sore throat, "Me? I can't say I lost much. Perhaps a warm shower and a belly full of food, perhaps a job that I loathed but had to endure in order to pay for a degree in a major I had no interest in. Maybe that's why I wasn't scared of dying before, rather sought it out with eagerness that of an excited child."

Taehyung shook his head and ran his fingers through his hair, he stepped further into the room and tapped his fingers against the back of the chair Mr. Jacobson was sitting on, "Is it wrong of me to admit that I didn't lose much? That the apocalypse gave me another family and the feeling that I finally belong somewhere? A part of me...that little part, that wonders what would've happened to me if the world hadn't gone to shit, is glad that the world is littered with rotting corpses and the traces of grief. Because for the first time in my life...." Taehyung whispered into the empty room, not meeting Hershel's eyes, yet feeling them brush against his skin like the edge of a blade, "I have something to lose."

Pebbles of silence got sprinkled over the room by the hands of time, they mixed together with the passing seconds until Taehyung was curling into himself from not receiving an answer to what he had just admitted. Until, finally, Hershel nodded and lifted his lips into a small smile, "How can I blame you or scorn you for hating the old world, when the old world hated you first?"

Taehyung's eyes bounced up and glimmered with confusion at Hershel's words. A veil of thoughts was laid over his shoulders as Hershel smiled back at him with something that resembled tender fondness, "The world has been cruel to you, just like the people in it. Expecting you to smile back at it, despite the bruises littering your soul would be unfair to you. No one can blame you for hating the old world, but perhaps there'll be someone to teach you to love the new one."

The words uttered to him pulled a trembling breath out of Taehyung's lungs, followed by a cough into the palm of his hand. His obsidian eyes peered over his fingers at Hershel before he dropped the hand to his side and allowed a weak smile to grow on his lips, "Perhaps I've already found that someone." Taehyung breathed just as a low growl popped the balloon of serenity between the pair and plunged them back into the icy sea of reality.

Their heads snapped down to Mr. Jacobson and both watched his bloody fingers twitch and curl around the armrest of the chair. The sheet covering his head fell off, revealing the yellow eyes staring back at them and the tongue licking around his mouth to collect the lingering traces of Jacobson's blood.

That's when Hershel's expression hardened and gaze averted, that's when Taehyung pulled out his knife and stabbed it into the skull of a man that they had seen smiling only a few hours prior.

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  It was hard to be surrounded by the endless misery and depression looming over each person in the isolation ward, almost like a rainy cloud of gloom hovering above their heads. But Taehyung pushed through it, not only because of his promise to Jungkook, but because of the hope and resilience Hershel displayed.

Hershel pushed himself to the limit, creating tea and offering lighthearted conversations to those who were on the verge of losing themselves in the sadness. With his presence the entire block seemed to light up as if Hershel was emitting the light of the sun and crunching the sickness haunting them in the palm of his hand. It was admirable. But Hershel needed help, it used to be provided by Doctor Caleb, but he lost himself to the sickness and realised that he was too weak to be much of help.

That's why Sasha and Taehyung volunteered. And since Sasha had been pumping Henry's oxygen bag the past half an hour, it was finally Taehyung's turn to replace her and give her some time to rest. So, here he was, sitting next to the barely breathing man with his eyes occasionally fluttering open and wheezing breaths escaping through his chapped lips. From time to time, Taehyung squeezed the oxygen bag in his hand and reached forward to sip on his tea to soothe his sore throat.

Taehyung had been there for twenty two minutes, he knew, because he was counting. In Taehyung's defence, he was bored and exhausted, and counting each passing second allowed him to stay grounded to reality and didn't allow him to drift along the winds of sweet slumber.

Taehyung's hand squeezed the bag again and head tilted back to allow his raven locks to squish against the concrete wall behind him. He stared at the cobweb stretching across the ceiling and the small spider crawling over it, watching as it created another string of web to reach the other side of the room. A shiver of disgust rushed along his spine and painted a path of goosebumps over his forearms. Taehyung quickly averted his eyes and pushed himself further into the wall behind him, trying not to pay attention to the spider hovering over his head.

A sudden image of the spider falling off the web and landing behind his shirt made Taehyung hiss and push himself off the wall. He shook his head side to side and spared another brief glance up at the spider. His fingers tightened around the oxygen bag before loosening its grip once more.

Obsidian eyes twisted away from the spider and peered back down at Henry, and that's when Taehyung saw it. The man's chest was still and nostrils didn't flare with an occasion breath he was forced to exhale. He was laying on the ground eerily still with a dust of blue seeping into his skin.

"Fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck." Taehyung gasped and immediately scrambled onto his knees to hover over Henry. He lowered the bag of oxygen to the ground and placed his hands one on top of the other in the middle of the chest. He leaned forward and placed some of his weight into his hands and began to push against the chest in quick, rhythmic compressions.

"Come on, please, please, fight." Taehyung spat at the man, delivering 30 compressions before picking the oxygen bag and squeezing it a few times. When the man didn't breathe, Taehyung lowered the bag once more and continued to deliver the compressions to his chest.

The dread burning in the pit of his stomach began to manifest in the form of sweat on his skin, it licked at Taehyung's brows and sunk into his raven hair, yet Taehyung merely brushed away the obsidian butterflies of fear and continued to push against the man's chest. His arms ached and lungs curled into themselves, splotches of darkness began to knit along his sight, yet Taehyung continued to push forward to try and revive the man.

He still wasn't breathing.

Taehyung gulped down the cough clawing at the back of his throat and lifted his head to bellow through the prison, "Hershel!" His voice bounced off of the walls and slit through the air like the knives he swings.

That's exactly when the god of death stepped out of the shadows in the corner of the room and approached the pair with its greedy eyes set on Taehyung. Death crouched next to the pair, tilting its head to the side and watching Taehyung carefully. Under his white cloak, death smirked before raising a hand to brush it along Henry's chest, only to accidentally glide its slim over Taehyung's thumb.

"Hersh-"

Taehyung's next shout of alarm and panic was cracked and shattered by the coughs splitting apart his ribs and tearing through his lips. He fell onto his hands and tried to pull back the collar of his shirt as he coughed until his lungs crumbled into themselves and squeezed out the blood collecting in them during the past few hours.

The thick, scarlet liquid slid along Taehyung's throat and blocked the oxygen desperately clawing to reach the light of the day. The blood almost seemed to smirk in delight as Taehyung coughed and splattered it against the concrete ground before another mouthful of blood replaced the amount he had just coughed out.

It dripped down Taehyung's chin and stained his shirt, it coated his hands as he forced himself to crawl out of the cell and into the hallway. Taehyung's trembling hands gave out and body smashed into the ground, his lungs abandoned him and left him to stare up at the concrete ceiling of the prison as he drowned in the blood his body had provided.

A single tear rolled down his cheek, only to disappear in the growing pool of blood leaking from his mouth. And just as his eyes fluttered shut and mind found comfort in the pain of his shattered lungs and lack of oxygen, Taehyung heard the sound of a gunshot.