He was fourteen when his father lost his job. It was a pretty pathetic start to the story but Taehyung didn’t know where else to start. He’d love to say something major like a disease or bankruptcy started the descent into hell but something as small as that was all it took to corrupt his dad. He was sixteen when he came home to his mother on the floor of the kitchen hardly breathing after a night at his friend’s house. It wasn’t until half a year later that he garnered up enough courage to try and fight back.

It all seemed pathetic to him. He didn’t want to talk about it to anyone but the faces around him all looked sullen and withdrawn at the possibility of him never talking about it. Jimin had been okay with never hearing the extent of it but he knew enough to prevent a major breakdown until now. In Jin’s eyes he saw his unwillingness mirrored but also a determination to fix whatever was wrong. Trepidation be damned, he’d help his new friend.

He didn’t really have many friends. They all disappeared when he came to school in rags back in Daegu. Everyone knew of his father’s addiction to alcohol and when his mother was placed into the hospital for her last long-term stay, they all knew of his tendency for physical punishment. No one would step in his way because of the connections in the black market they were sure he had developed and no one cared one way or another if his mother ever recovered.

Once a week he got a phone call from the doctors assuring him of his mother’s safety and stability. She wouldn’t ever wake up from her coma and Taehyung had assumed full responsibility of the bills and while it was hard on him, he never complained. He would drown in debt before removing his mother’s lifeline.

He used to believe that she’d wake up. He slept by her bed everyday for months once he was released himself but eventually hope dwindled. Seven months after his burns healed and he could move freely, something he wished he could pass to the woman on the bed in front of him daily, he moved to Seoul to get away from it.

Everything fit so neatly on a timeline of four years. People got abused for years. Their childhoods were ruined. He was already nearly an adult when it happened and it was embarrassing that he couldn’t stop the abuse. He didn’t want to go to anyone for help because he should have been the help for his mother. He should have been there.

Taehyung didn’t realize when tears started to fall from his eyes but he felt Jimin squeeze his hand and more surprisingly, Yoongi covering their small hands in his own. A doctor came in at the change in levels expressed on the monitors he was hooked up to and he consented to be prodded at a bit more. Anything to delay letting those in front of him know how weak he was.

They had told him it was Namjoon who carried him in and he began to feel suffocation coming over once more. He wasn’t strong enough to deal with it alone and he was relying on near strangers acts of kindness once more. They had been acquaintances before but they never breached friendship past the status of roommates to the untoward lovers respectively.

He hated Yoongi for months for pushing Jimin over the edge. For causing his pillar of strength to waver and the smile to slip from his face. Before that, he hated Yoongi for being the sole reason for the smile to appear. For stealing away his best friend with times promised to be nothing more than a nap or staring into a screen unsure of where to proceed next in a song. Who could be so happy to do something so small?

And Jin. Was it only a few days ago that he had confronted him? They weren’t near close enough for him to care but he was the one who drove in a rush to get him here. He was the one who opened his house yesterday to a cretin who had insulted his friend. They had enjoyed each other’s company but nothing to garner the attention that was now focused on him.

What did he do to deserve these people caring so much? Why did he trust them so much with things he had always kept close to his heart? The doctors were trying to get through to him in the background but now that he had dragged everything up from his past, it wasn’t willing to let him go.

He was transported back to the hallway of Yoongi’s apartment. The house had been destroyed. He didn’t even make it past the entryway and he could see the damage wrought at the hands of Namjoon. It was painful to look at because it reminded him so acutely of the damage his father used to wreak but it wasn’t until he smelled the fire that he was thrown into a spiral. The dark corridor and the damaged walls only added fuel to the terror he was reliving.

It had never happened before. He had never remembered what happened the night of the fire before. The night his mother was taken from him. The night he lost his childhood home amidst screams and the wailing of neighbors.

He could feel the flames at his body and the smoke penetrating his lungs and he knew he was going to die. This time he’d be leaving Jimin instead of his mother but at least Jimin had someone who was standing by his side now that wasn’t Taehyung. Someone who was stronger and could handle something as simple as the smell of a fire in a cold winter.

Except he hadn’t died. The doctors had pulled him back a second time that day and instead of the feel of fire there was the feeling of warm hands and warm words. It was time to try and let go.

So he told them all while staring at the flaking ceiling of the hospital. He told them everything he remembered and didn't stop even when the hiccups started after he felt the tears seeping out once more and when he felt a nurse hovering at the edge of his line of sight.

The feeling was infectious. Once he started it was like a rolling ball was coursing through him and he didn't want to stop, not when talking lifted the ache of loss so acutely. It was almost saddening when he came to the end.

But now marked a time for beginnings. He could finally breathe again when he met the eyes of his listeners and he knew he made the right choice.