Someone was calling her name. Loudly. She groaned at the loud voice. All she wanted to do was sleep. Sleep and never wake up again. “Soo Jung!” her eyes flickered open, revealing Yoongi's concerned face. “Oh, thank god.” He said as she opened her eyes. He pulled her into a tight hug making her wince. “What the hell?” she murmured as he pulled away from her, his hands still resting on her shoulders. “How did you find me?” she asked, her tongue feeling thick and useless in . He managed a faint smirk. “Did you forget that it’s easy to track your mobile phone? You didn’t turn it off.” She cursed quietly at making such a rookie mistake. Everyone knew that it was a piece of cake to trace a mobile phone.

She laughed bitterly, “I can’t believe I forgot to turn off my phone.” Yoongi glared at her. “Thank god you did. How else would I have found you?” he asked as he spotted her injury. “Have you been shot?” he asked, his concern being pushed down, his training taking over as he opened her jacket and pulled up her t-shirt to reveal her wound. He muttered a long string of curses. “Come on. We need to take care of this. Then you can tell me what the is going on.” He said as he scooped her up. She grunted from the pain before falling back into the blissfulness of unconsciousness.

The next time she woke up, she was in her room at home. Yoongi was sitting beside her, the room full of bloody bandages and surgical tools. She turned her head to the side, the small movement making her head spin. She was hooked up to drip and her head felt fuzzy. “How are you feeling?” Yoongi asked as he leant forward in his chair. He looked exhausted. “Felt better.” she said, her voice flat. He sighed quietly, he hadn’t seen her like this in a long time and it terrified him.

“What happened?” he asked gently. “The Institute.” She said, images of Jungkook's look of confusion and horror directed towards her flashing in front of her eyes. She screwed her eyes shut, wishing the images would just go away. “Namjoon was one of them. They sent him to find out my weaknesses. He took Jungkook and told me to give myself up. I went to do that but he hurt Jungkook and I fought back.”

“Where is Jungkook now?” Yoongi asked gently. She took a deep shuddering breath. “I don’t know. I was bringing us back and he told me to stop the car. Yoongi, you should have seen how he looked at me.” She said, her voice breaking. “It hurt more than this stupid gunshot wound. How? How can him looking at me like that hurt so damn much?” she asked, her arm lifting to cover her face. Yoongi looked down at her sympathetically. “I’ll check up on him, ok?” he said, knowing that there was little he could say that would offer her any comfort. She nodded from underneath her arm.

Yoongi sighed. “Soo Jung, I’m so sorry. I got an email from the Institute a while ago asking about you. I didn’t reply and started looking into the programme. I had no idea they were operational again. I've had some people doing some digging and we were planning on taking care of Malcolm before things got out of hand. We were too slow. I’m so sorry.” He said, his head bowed. She moved her arm away from her face, her eyes shining with unshed tears. “Why didn’t you tell me?” she asked softly. “You were happy.” He said as he raised his head to match her gaze. “I’ve never seen you like this before and I thought that if I so much as mentioned the Institute that it would put you on edge and you wouldn’t be happy here anymore. I didn’t want to take that away from you. But it looks like that’s exactly what I've done.”

She shook her head and reached out for his hand. “You didn’t do anything wrong, Yoongi. You’ve always looked out for me. Protected me.” She said. He sighed. “There's a plan underway to take out Malcolm. I’m waiting for an update to confirm how things are going. You should rest. I’ll let you know when I know anything, ok?” he said. She nodded. “I’ll check and make sure that Jungkook made it home safe as well.” Her chest tightened at the mention of Jungkook's name. She looked away from him but Yoongi understood. He gave her hand one last squeeze before leaving her.

She took a deep breath, wincing from the pain radiating from her abdomen. “You shouldn’t have saved me.” She said as she closed her eyes, praying for unconsciousness to claim her again.

She always hated the sensory deprivation chamber. At first it was calming. She couldn’t hear the screaming or fighting of the other children there. No one ever beat her or experimented on her whilst she was in there. But as the hours crept on endlessly, it always became too much to handle. She always tried to get out, to scream and use her superior strength to get out, but nothing ever worked. By the end of her time in there, she would hallucinate vividly. Sometimes horrifying things. Sometimes comforting things. But every single time, she left feeling numb and helpless.

Three days had passed with her in a state that closely resembled that numb feeling that she experienced at the end of her time in the sensory deprivation chamber. She hadn’t eaten and had barely drank. It was only thanks to Yoongi insisting that she stayed hooked up to her IV drip that was still functioning. She spent the entire three days lying in bed, only moving when she had to visit the bathroom. Yoongi constantly checked on her, making sure to keep her wound clean as she wasn’t doing it herself.

The day after she had been shot, he confirmed that Jungkook had arrived back to the dorm safely and as far as he knew, he hadn’t told anyone about what he had learned about her. He had contacted her university, telling them that she would not be finishing the semester due to health concerns.

Yoongi became increasingly worried about her. He tried to coax her out of her room, but nothing seemed to get through to her. He tried being kind, he tried yelling, but she barely even blinked at him, content to spend her days slipping in and out of consciousness.

He understood why. She had just lost her first friend and she didn’t know how to deal with that. She had never gotten so close to someone before, and for him to have found out about her past and to have rejected her, he knew it was more than she was capable of handling.

On the morning of the fourth day after the incident, he went into her room, not bothering to knock, he knew that she would be where she had been for the past few days. In bed, staring up at the ceiling. “It’s done.” He said as she sat in the chair that was still beside her bed. She slowly turned to face him. “What’s done?” she asked, her voice raspy from disuse. “Malcolm has been taken out. And all of the data available on the Institute has been released to the police. There’s no way they’ll be able to continue.” He said, hoping that this news would gain some kind of reaction from her.

She merely blinked at him before turning back to stare at the ceiling. “Soo Jung.” He said softly, but he could tell that she wasn’t listening. He was terrified. She was slowly returning back to the cold, emotionless state that she had lived in to protect herself when she had been at the Institute. He knew that if she willingly put herself back into that cocoon, that she would never be able to break back out of it. “I think it’s time for us to move on. I’ve already contacted your university. I’ve told them that you're going abroad to receive medical treatment.” She nodded but didn’t say anything. He sighed and ruffled his hair as he got to his feet. He took one last look at her before leaving the room, closing the door behind him.

The next morning Yoongi was surprised to hear movement from Soo Jung’s room. He left the packing boxes in the living room and went up to her room. He knocked on her door, waiting for her soft reply telling him to come in. She was moving around stiffly, both from her wound and from being so immobile for the past four days. Her hair was hanging limply around her face, her clothes in desperate need of a wash. She was standing with a towel in her hands, the IV drip removed from her hand. “You ok?” he asked cautiously. She nodded and held up the towel. “I need to shower. Then I’ll start packing.” She said, her voice hollow. Yoongi nodded as she stepped by him and made her way to the bathroom. He sighed as he watched her shuffle down the hallway like a zombie. “At least she's talking and moving about.” He said as she made his way back to the living room.

She stood under the scalding hot water of the shower, letting it wash away the crusted blood around her wound and the sweat and grime that had built up on her skin. She scrubbed every inch of her body until it was gleaming red and she washed her hair twice before finally stepping out of the shower. She caught sight of her reflection and was startled at how different she looked in just a few short days. Her face was pale, her eyes looked sunken in and she just looked broken.

She turned away from her reflection and made her way back to her bedroom, pulling on clean clothes for the first time in days, the simple task requiring herculean effort. Every item of clothing felt like it weighed a ton to her weakened body. For the past four days, all she had been able to think about was Jungkook and how he had looked at her, how he had flinched away from her. She could see his torn up expression every time she closed her eyes, as if the image had been burned onto the back of her eyelids.

Once she was finally dressed, she made her way downstairs where Yoongi was packing things up. “Hungry?” he asked. She shook her head. She still didn’t have any appetite. “You should at least drink something. I’ll make you some tea.” He said as he made his way through to the kitchen. She eyed the boxes that were scattered around the living room. It wasn’t an uncommon sight. They had moved several times since she had started living with him.

A knock at the door pulled her out of her musings. “I’ll get it.” She called softly to Yoongi who grunted to show that he heard her. She went to the door and pulled it open, her jaw almost hitting the floor. Standing in front of her was the last person she had expected to see.

“Jungkook…”