AN: Typically, when I write stories I have a certain number of pages I try to hit per chapter before posting.  This chapter, though, is considerably shorter.  This will happen periodically in Six as each chapter follows one specific character.  Sometimes, as with this one, the scene in question will not take very long to play out.  I hope no one is too upset with a shorter chapter.

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"Jin?" A slight shaking at his shoulders woke Seokjin from the deep, thankfully dreamless sleep he had fallen into. Groaning, he swatted in the general direction of whoever was jostling him. There was a faint crack as his hand came into contact with a face, followed by a yelp in a voice he immediately recognized. Sitting up quickly, he turned to grope in the darkness for the person, fingers wrapping around an upper arm.

"Tae?" he hissed quietly, other hand tracing over the body until he found the face. "I'm sorry. Are you okay?" He hated how dark it was in their cell; it was impossible to see if he'd done any damage to his brother with his careless flailing. "Where did I get you?"

"My jaw." Taehyung's voice was equally soft as he whispered back. Gentle fingers removed Seokjin's hands from him and held them. "It didn't hurt me; I was just surprised."

Relieved he didn't do any damage, Jin relaxed the tension from his shoulders. He moved over on his bed enough to allow Tae to slide onto the pallet with him, the thin, straw-stuffed mattress crinkling slightly. "Another nightmare?" Seokjin asked as they settled down together on the meager bed, covering the both of them with the thin blanket they were allotted. He felt his brother nod against his chest as he wrapped his arms around the other. "Did you want to tell me about it?"

There was a pause and he felt his brother's head move in a negative. "I wouldn't want to wake everyone up with my talking."

Seokjin sighed and planted a light kiss on the top of the shaggy dark hair that tickled his chin. "We're whispering. It's fine. And if anyone complains, you let big brother handle it, okay?"

The boy in his arms shrugged slightly. Seokjin knew why Taehyung was so reluctant and wished he didn't worry about it as much as he did. They shared their cell with four others and, while most of them were reasonable, one of their fellows was a piece of work. If fighting wasn't an immediate death sentence, Jin would have smashed the man's teeth out months ago. The problematic cellmate was a newcomer, obtained in some deal with another breeder, and had done nothing but harass and bully his younger brother since the moment they'd met.

Seokjin suspected it was due to Taehyung's appearance. While they shared a mother, Taehyung's father was different than his own. While that was almost always the case with siblings in the slave pens, Tae and Jin differed in that Seokjin's sire was from Hanguk, whereas Taehyung's could not have possibly been a native. The boy looked too different from everyone else to be pure-blooded; his father had to have come from some other country, captured and enslaved by the emperor during his ever-constant expansion. Tae's jaw was too defined, his nose too long, his face slightly wider. The biggest difference, though, was his eyes. In a land where eyes were black or brown, Tae's were the color of slate.

All of those traits mixed together yielded a young man that was ethereally beautiful. His exotic features usually drew attention but, from what Seokjin could see, it was typically the positive variety. Their handlers treated Tae almost like a favored pet, slipping him treats when they thought no one was looking. Of course, Seokjin saw. He saw everything that involved his baby brother.

Before Chiwon joined their cell, Taehyung had been a friendly, almost bubbly, youth. He smiled easily, completed his assigned tasks without complaint, never did anything to get under the skin of the handlers. He was docile and gentle. Despite being bred in the pens and raised almost exclusively by Jin, Taehyung was one of the most positive people his brother had ever met. As far as Tae was concerned, there was a silver lining to everything.

Lost their mother? At least they still had each other. Mucking the stables? Horses were great company if you knew how to talk to them. Lumber duty? He loved the smell of fresh-cut wood and sawdust. Even having to tar rooftops made the boy proclaim happily that fresh air and sunshine were great for your soul.

After Chiwon arrived, though, Taehyung had started to change. It was subtle at first but Seokjin picked up the mood shift quickly. The smiles were less boxy, his laughter more guarded. He still worked with an aura of silent acceptance, never shirking his duties, but the positivity was less than before.

Jin had made a habit of knowing exactly where Chiwon was at any given time, watching the man unobtrusively to see what had been happening.

It was little things at first. An off-hand comment relating to Tae's physical appearance would cause his little brother's lips to twitch downward. If they were assigned to the same detail, Seokjin would notice Chiwon foisting some of his work off on the younger boy, doing so in such a way that made it look like it was Tae's portion to begin with. Sometimes, when they were bathing, Seokjin would see tiny bruises on Tae's sides or thighs. When asked about it, Tae would act surprised, as if he didn't know they were there. He claimed to be clumsy but Jin had seen Chiwon deliver a fierce pinch to his brother's arm one afternoon. It had taken all his will power not to fly into a fury at the sight of his brother's face twist in pain.

Shortly after Chiwon showed up was when the nightmares started, too. Seokjin hadn't noticed them at first; it was a fact that haunted him. The unpleasant man had shown up near the end of the winter months and, as such, Taehyung hadn't needed to wake Seokjin up to ask to sleep in his bed after a bad dream. He had already been there.

During the winter, it was not uncommon for Tae to share a bed with his brother, seeking warmth. They weren't the only ones to do that, either. Many of the slaves would cuddle in the cold months to share body heat. In their pen, it was an entirely chaste arrangement as all breeding, even if it couldn't lead to offspring, was strictly controlled by the handlers. Not that Seokjin and Taehyung would do something like that. The very thought made Jin feel physically ill. Tae was his brother. That didn't stop Chiwon from alluding to incest when the practice was first noticed by the stranger. It made Seokjin's blood boil that anyone would assume he would do something so base with his sibling. Thankfully, their other cellmates shot the claim down immediately, looking as upset about it as Seokjin felt. The other men that shared their tiny corner of the pen had lived in harmony with the brothers for the past few years and, once they had angrily denied Chiwon's suggestions, the newcomer had dropped the topic.

It wasn't until the warmer weather of spring that Seokjin noticed something was off with Taehyung's sleep patterns. Nights when Tae should have slept in his own bed found the younger still crawling in with Jin. It had taken some convincing, but his little brother had finally admitted to being plagued by dark dreams. He never told Jin the exact content of the dreams, only that they scared him and that they felt too real to be a figment of his imagination. It didn't stop Jin from trying to get more details out of his sibling; he would ask each time it happened. Tae never said anything specific, though, always keeping it to vague, single sentence descriptions, such as 'I couldn't find you' or 'someone was chasing me.' Perhaps that was why it surprised Seokjin so much when his brother started mumbling, his deep voice barely audible.

"Fire," Tae murmured, scrunching up as small as he could against Jin's chest. Considering he was nearly as tall as his brother, it was no small feat. "There was so much fire. And screaming. And smoke. So much death, Jin, everywhere I looked." He took a shaky breath and Seokjin could hear the tears in his brother's voice. The older tightened his arms, rubbing his brother's back through his thin shirt. He didn't speak, though, not wanting to interrupt. "There was..." he hesitated and Seokjin felt fingers tap against his stomach idly: Tae was fidgeting with his hands. "A boy. With hair like that chestnut mare in Master Jang's stables. And a girl with eyes like mine."

Tae fell silent for so long that Seokjin thought that was all he was going to say. He started to tell his little brother that it was just a dream and to try to sleep, but Taehyung started talking again before Jin managed to get any of the words out. Frowning, Seokjin listened intently. His brother's voice had taken on a strange lilt, as if talking to himself. He sounded oddly far away.

"You broke your leg. Here." Fingers touched Jin right below the hip. "Because of the guards. They weren't watching where they were going. They were going to trample him, the chestnut boy. They wanted to kill the girl. But you were there first, with the chestnut boy. I couldn't carry you. I'm sorry. I couldn't do it." His voice cracked, his body shaking as he cried silently. "I'm not strong enough to carry you."

"No. No, it's okay. I'm fine and I'm right here." Jin wasn't sure what to do; he'd never witnessed his brother in so much distress before. He continued to rub his back, murmuring platitudes into his hair in an attempt to calm him. It did nothing and Tae's breath hitched rapidly, his body shivering violently as if much too cold.

"He takes me." His teeth chattered violently. "He leaves you to die and takes me."

Seokjin licked his lips, hoping the others were really sleeping through this. "Don't you mean took? It was a dream, Tae. It's already happened in your head."

"I..." As suddenly as the shaking started, Tae stilled. The silence stretched into the night. Seokjin heard snores from a couple of their cellmates, one of which he identified gratefully as Chiwon's distinct snarl-snarf, meaning the bully hadn't been awake to overhear.

"It's okay," he finally said, running his fingers through Taehyung's hair to sooth him. "It was just a dream, dear one-"

"Yoongi." The name left Tae's lips, barely loud enough for Jin to catch.

Seokjin paused his motions, a chill running up his spine at the hallow tone in Taehyung's voice. "What?"

"The man who takes me. His name is Yoongi."

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AN:  Hi.