The shadow is slowly dissipating, like fog becoming lighter when it starts to clear. It's eerily quiet outside since the fight has long ended, so Jimin and J-Hope walk instead of run as they find their way back to the battleground. They're still careful to keep an eye out just in case.

"I'm surprised you all came back for me," Jimin murmurs. "Wouldn't it have been easier to just let this go?"

"How could we?" says J-Hope. "We're not complete without you."

Jimin kicks snow into the air as he thinks. He doesn't even know how to begin expressing his gratitude that they'd still go back for him even at the risk of their own lives. He wasn't sure he deserved it. "Thank you," he settles on saying. "So much."

"Of course."

They continue trudging through the empty land together.

"Was this dark shadow thing you by the way?" Jimin asks, thinking of other things to talk about.

"Well, kind of." J-Hope launches into detail about how Y/n must have super saiyan-ed in battle after something terrible happened, how the energy was transferred to him, how he didn't really know what to do with it so he tried to diffuse it, and how the shadow stuff was the result. He also compares the energy transfer to the similar experience he had in the truck escape from school.

"That makes sense," Jimin says slowly. "When I was imitating the dark stuff back in, well, you know where" - J-Hope nods in understanding - "it felt like your powers, but it also wasn't you at the same time."

"It didn't feel like me either. I don't think I was controlling light."

"Can you do it again now?"

"Uhm, I don't think so?" J-Hope tries to. "Yeah, not anymore. Maybe it was a one-time thing."

Jimin tries to use his imitation powers but it's picking up on nothing, either. The shadows are fading anyways. "So Y/n's energy is the key here because that's what got you to switch."

"Yeah, and I could feel how sad it was. I didn't think emotion in elementals could be a thing. The threads were also white instead of gold this time... "

They become thoughtful. After another few minutes they enter a clearing where snow has completely melted, trees nearby are burned down, dead bodies of Fighters are dispersed all over the place, terrifyingly large crevices are tearing the ground open, and bridges above them made by Earth fighters are still haphazardly hanging on to each side. The battle must've happened here.

"I can't believe this," Jimin runs a hand through his hair. "Did anyone survive?"

J-hope doesn't answer. Neither of them has any way to know.

They make their way past all the fallen bodies. They don't say anything to each other, but they both know that they're scanning for their friends. Please don't be dead. Please don't be dead.

Jimin can't stop thinking about Y/n. As they wander around, his mind flashes back to the withdrawn look in her eyes when he said "I'm sorry" to the Commander at the abandoned parking lot that day. Again he thinks about what she told him when he tried to take her away - "You don't have to do this Jimin, you have us! We're your friends, remember?" - and he desperately wants to make it up to her, show her that her trust wasn't ill placed. His intentions have changed for the better now because he has learned to stand up for himself.

As they approach one of the crevices, something feels off.

"Hyung, wait."

J-Hope looks up from the ground to see Jimin with a hand out in a "stop" gesture, gazing down at one of the crevices. The wind blows his clothes around his slim figure, which has become visibly weaker from his time in Training Headquarters.

"Did you find one of them?" J-Hope says softly.

Jimin stands still in concentration. J-Hope approaches him and he prepares himself to see a gut-wrenching sight, but the crevice is deep enough that he doesn't see anyone, just a hole that opens into darkness.

The imitation power in Jimin wakes up. As a test, Jimin gently curls his fingers, which redirects the gentle breeze around him and sends leaves scattering in patterns on the ground.

"An air elementalist?" J-Hope wonders.

Jimin nods and steps back. "Whoever's down there can control air. I just imitated it. Which means they're still alive."

They look at each other and then back down at the tunnel, thinking.

"I think it's Y/n," J-Hope says eventually. "She's air, right? And she transferred all her energy to me when something horrible happened to her, which must've been her falling. She's strong so she made it alive."

This is it, Jimin thinks. This is his chance to show her he's changed.

It's fortunate that Jimin has enough elemental energy left within him to pull on the air from the crevice - he wasn't fighting in battle, after all - and he amplifies the source so he can examine it further.

It hugs him.

"Woah, wait," Jimin stumbles backwards a few steps.

"What happened?"

"It-" Jimin laughs. "I think it just hugged me."

"It hugged you?" J-Hope repeats.

"Yeah..." Jimin moves the energy around by waving his hands in the air to get a better sense of what he's feeling. "And it has Y/n written all over it. It's gotta be her!"

"Amazing!" J-Hope claps excitedly and peers down into the crevice again. "HANG ON Y/N WE GOT YOU!"

Jimin examines it further. Sending intentions like this through the elements? How is this even possible? The intent is clear and the hug is so sincere that even though he's essentially intercepting the message, he can still understand it. He flips the energy around again.

Then he frowns.

Maybe it's hidden somewhere in the message, or maybe it's the intuition they've developed with each other as a group, but Jimin locates a distinction between the sender and the receiver, and Y/n's name is constantly shifting in all directions - marking her as the intended audience.

Which means she didn't send it.

Which means...

"Wait. Hyung," Jimin glances up. "The hug I got was for Y/n."

J-Hope blinks. "What?"

"That's - I don't know how I know either, but it's coded in the energy as a message, and what I'm deciphering is that the hug isn't from Y/n, but it's meant for her."

"So who sent it?" says J-Hope. "Jungkook?"

"It's gotta be." Jimin gives his attention back to the energy in awe. A hug for Y/n. Jimin thinks about the connection they had together. If their relationship was so strong, maybe it wasn't all that out of the ordinary for feats like this to happen. He thinks of all the times they spent so long together in the practice rooms, of how awestruck and at home Y/n seemed when she entered Jungkook's white-themed room, of her anticipation crawling through the white tunnel leading up to it, of her grin when he talked about Jungkook's multiple white t-shirts.

Oh.

Jimin turns to J-Hope. "What color did you say the threads were this time again?"

"White?"

"Jungkook's tunnel is white. His room is white. His t-shirts..."

Understanding dawns in J-Hope's eyes. "Y/n was thinking of Jungkook."

Suddenly their minds are racing, thinking of possible explanations. "So Y/n freaked out because Jungkook fell down the crevice," Jimin says, "and she was distraught because she thought she'd lost him forever."

"That explains my shadow powers because it's the opposite of happiness and light," J-Hope breathes.

They stare at each other in pure astonishment for piecing together what must've happened.

"You send off the message first," J-Hope nods. "Then we're gonna save Jungkook."

Jimin fights a smile as he looks back down at his hands. He amplifies the signal again and, with a grand gesture, he casts it out into the sky, making sure to include every single detail that he can. If there's a chance that Y/n's still out there then this is the least he could do. For a brief moment he feels like he's hugging the entire world - and then the moment ends.

"I can't believe he's still alive," Jimin shakes his head.

J-Hope smiles. "With any luck we're all okay."

They chuckle at the possibility. Jimin moves toward the edge of the crevice, careful not to get too close. Determined more than ever to save Jungkook and to show Y/n that he can do the right thing, Jimin grabs on to the last remaining threads of the air elemental.

With a lot of effort, he coaxes them to help pull Jungkook out of the crevice.

It's eerily silent. J-Hope keeps watch and says nothing, allowing Jimin to concentrate. Jimin watches with anticipation at the great ravine beneath him, waiting for a body to appear out of its depths.

The presence of an air elementalist gets closer. Jimin feels it. He shifts his stance and shelves his excitement - any emotion right now will destroy his concentration, and another fall is the last thing that they want.

Finally, he's close enough to be seen.

His clothes are really tattered, ripped in a lot of places, and there's a decent amount of dried blood everywhere. But it's already an insane miracle that Jimin can feel the presence of the air elemental inside him, however feeble and small.

Jungkook emerges from the depths of the Earth.

~

I emerge from the depths of sleep.

It's peaceful for the faintest second - that blissful moment when you've just woken up and you don't know where you are or what you're supposed to be doing today, and you're content with not knowing. You don't even want to know. But it rushes back and the entire weight of the world crushes you again.

Him.

I blink to force those thoughts out but they don't go away so I settle on staring blankly above me, at the gray fabric of the tent. My body is still tired.

Outside I hear Namjoon's voice.

"... so, clearly, the Fighters must have been told to cause emotional damage to Y/n. I figure the principal justified it for all the inconvenience she's caused this school year. They just weren't expecting the thunder sound explosion thing, none of us did, so that's why we were able to flee."

"Sound in the physical realm, though?" asks a more muffled voice.

"I mean, yeah," someone else - Suga? - chimes in. "It's not just auditory. You know how you can feel the deep bass sounds when you play music sometimes? Same concept. Y/n just used it to explode the people around her away."

Their conversation leaves a bitter taste in my mouth. Recalling everything in that level of detail makes me dizzy even though I'm still lying down.

I hate it.

I hate myself.

I hate the world for doing this to me.

Why?

Why?

Why him? Why us?

It should've been me instead.

They did this for me. Namjoon, Jin, Suga, J-Hope, Taehyung and Jungkook. They fought for Jimin, Jimin who went through so much because of me. And instead they lost one of their own.

His absence is so painful.

The world spins.

It's the anxiety. The panic. Too familiar.

It brings me back to those stressful days at school in the cramped dormitories.

Breath in, breathe out.

I shift in my sleeping bag to stop the spinning and the headache that's slowly starting to build up. The tears don't stop.

I wrap my arms around myself because I desperately want a hug, but Jungkook isn't here to comfort me anymore. I sigh in guilt and anger and... defeat.

I don't know how long I lay in silence for. It doesn't matter.

Every once in a while I feel the echoes of a hug from somewhere in the distance. It's comforting. I listen to it and hang on to it, thinking of him. But ultimately I know it's not real - I'm exhausted and I know I'm not thinking straight. I must be going crazy after everything that's happened.