Death be not proud, though some have called thee    

Mighty and dreadful, for, thou art not so,    

For, those, whom thou think'st, thou dost overthrow,    

Die not, poore death, nor yet canst thou kill me.    

From rest and sleepe, which but thy pictures bee,

Much pleasure, then from thee, much more must flow,    

And soonest our best men with thee doe goe,    

Rest of their bones, and souls deliverie.    

Thou art slave to Fate, Chance, kings, and desperate men,    

And dost with poyson, warre, and sicknesse dwell,

And poppie, or charmes can make us sleepe as well,    

And better than thy stroake; why swell'st thou then;    

One short sleepe past, wee wake eternally,    

And death shall be no more; Death, thou shalt die.

“Holy Sonnet X”, John Donne

 

 

…

 

 

 

The stained blade falls unceremoniously on the pavement. Yoongi repeatedly mutters to himself and shakes his head in frantic denial. 

 

“I-I did not mean to kill him-”

 

Taehyung falls into Jungkook’s arms, as the latter gets on his knees to support the blond’s weak, limp body that continuously lost more blood as the time passed.

 

“How can you not mean it when you put your dagger through his body not once but four times, Min Yoongi?!” Park Jimin was of sensible, calm temperament, but to get on his nerves and anger him was a sight no one wanted to witness. 

 

He raised his voice so vehemently that everyone in their proximity clearly heard his words- and left a chill down their spines. 

 

His breath uneasy, his round face red and flushed in exasperation and fury, his shoulders stiffly raised and his fist clenched till his knuckles appeared white as all the blood flow had seemingly ceased. 

 

Gone was the ghastly, menacing Min Yoongi who pranced around the kingdom that had belonged to his future wife- who only now seemed like a young, vulnerable child shaking in his boots. 

 

The raven haired boy shakily reached backwards with his pale palms, clumsily stumbling on his own limbs as he attempted to crawl his way back to escape. None of his henchmen or assumed to be trusted right hand men were present as they all fled for their own safety. 

 

Instead, it is the mud trenched leather boot of Park Jimin that meets Yoongi’s pale, calloused hands, crushing his knuckles as the latter screamed in absolute horror in the astonishing, harrowing pain that bolted through his arm. 

 

Jungkook seeks to jump in and pull Jimin away from provoking the Min heir further, but he cannot tear his eyes away from the amount of blood Taehyun was losing by the minute, trickling from the corners of his mouth.

 

“It hurts, Jungkook. It hurts so, so much - I cannot take this anymore. Please stop all of this- A plague on both our houses for this. It’s over for me-” Taehyung exasperates tiredly, catching his breath as he struggles to keep holding on, his grip on Jungkook’s forearm loosening. 

 

“Hyung, you can’t leave us like this-you can’t-” Jungkook feels the tears b his eyes, grasping onto the blond’s military gear and deliriously rushes to cover the stab wound that keep bleeding out - but he was too late. 

 

Just as Jungkook feels Taehyung’s pulse dwindle away from him, his lifeless yet open eyes haunt him as he screams in agony in losing an older brother who was more than family to him. He sobbed furiously onto his shoulder, refusing to let go as if he was going to disappear anytime soon. Taehyung was physically there, but his soul and spirit had left him. 

 

Like a nightmare, Jungkook looks up through his tears and swollen, rubbed eyes, but he wonders, panics, and wishes his eyes were fooling him, He blinked over and over again, trying to prove himself wrong. 

 

Fresh, red blood stains Jimin’s hands as he plunges Yoongi’s own dagger into the Min scion’s chest without mercy, consumed in his anger for taking away the life of the latter’s very own cousin who refused to acknowledge him as family. 

 

“How dare you take Taehyung away from us like this? Your own flesh and blood - how cruel and spiteful for you to let your ridicule of his birth when it was beyond his control-” Jimin screeches hoarsely, his face contorted in anger and the grip on the dagger could not be any tighter.

 

 Yoongi failed to wrestle away the Hanyang clan heir’s attack, as his threatening and vexing resulted in a taste of his own medicine with the very dagger carved in his name and house being the same thing that ends his life. 

 

 

Time stops, and silence envelops the crowded streets of the capital as all fighting is paused by the death of both Taehyung and Yoongi in the devastatingly short-lived, tense fight that had occured right before the matrimony of the Grand Princess.

 

Jeon Jungkook felt his stomach drop, gulping nervously as his throat dried up and no word nor call for help would leave him. He had done nothing to prevent any of this, and would be the shame that would rest on his name for the rest of his life. 

 

How can his father look at him in the eye, when he has brought nothing but chaos and devastation in this world? Who cares about the appearance of besmirch of scarlet blood on him, when it is the very mark of his own brother in bond and connection that will never see the light of life again? 

 

What about the vanity and impressions of others that cannot be repaired again, with his reputation already on the line that is long gone forever? His father who had given his life for him only to be repaid by preventing any of them from doing anything to balance the uneasy peace and coexistence of ancient grudges and mutinies? 

 

He feels the shame, he feels the remorse, and Jungkook feels everything and nothing all at once. Thinking he has nothing to lose, as if he had anything to begin with. He had nothing to his name, no future prospects and no fate in the future, nothing but his disappointments and what he failed to do. 

 

Jimin had turned pale in consternation and remorse as he realized the grave consequences of what he had just done, his temper had dissipated and left him with the ashes of what had consumed him and ruined him forever. 

 

His cerulean eyes meet Jungkook’s, whose mouth quivers like a poor, scolded child who was unaware of what he had done and punished, and it overcame Jungkook that he had done the same when they grew up. He could not believe what the same child who had played with him in the gardens of the palace was capable of doing and had done in front of his very eyes. 

 

He was so overwhelmed and undone by all that happened around him, that he found himself saying and suggesting to him what he would have never done in other circumstances. Maybe in another life, things would not have had to end up this way. 

 

“Jimin, run away! Now! Leave the palace, anywhere but here! Find Seulgi before it’s too late.” 

 

Jimin drops the dagger and races towards a mounted chestnut stallion as fast as his feet can take him, as authorities are a heartbeat too late to keep up with him. 

 

Jungkook falls to sit on the pavement underneath him, with Taehyung’s lifeless body resting from his chest down to his lap, and the fresh blood continues to cover him but he does not move further. Let them see what the Min heir had done to his friend, and Yoongi had paid for it with his life. 

 

Jungkook, the bringer of curse and havok, the entity of chaos and anarchy - the key to the pandemonium and undoing of the very fibres of the Seven Kingdoms. 

 

...

 

 

Once again, Jungkook hoped he was wrong. And he was. He always was. 

 

His knees are pressed to the ground, numb and lifeless, as the palace guards take Taehyung’s body away from him to be properly buried. Tired. He is covered in the blood of his enemies and his own, fighting for survival as bloodshed strikes between the two factions and it is total war between both. 

 

The Haeyang faction has called its banners over the loss of Min Yoongi’s life under the hands of Park Jimin, who had provoked him bound by their faction loyalty. Yoongi, under the impulse of the moment and defense towards his allegiance, had slain the bastard Kim Taehyung of his blood, calling him “Haeyang filth” and a disgrace to the earth to not only his faction but also his illegitimate status. 

 

Jungkook stood there like a fool, not knowing what to do or say, until the King’s Defense Minister, Kim Junsu, a born Haeyang by blood but neutral by fealty, came in and demanded to know what happened. Junsu is Kim Heechul and Jaejoong’s youngest brother, who has been loyal and served the King Yoochun even as students together under the same teacher. 

 

Junsu stood at the same height as his older brother Jaejoong, his hair resembling more white than the gold infused in his siblings’ locks, with the hues of his eyes closer to indigo than purple, but his nature was the tamest of them all, fighting only if provoked and necessary. He had the same delicate aura of his cousin Taeyeon. 

 

“I come here seeking the truth, nothing but the truth, and serve no interest but the peace of all the Seven Kingdoms and justice to be served. Speak, child, you will not be persecuted nor punished if you tell the tale in its entirety, leaving nothing out and only the truth, the full truth.” Minister Kim Junsu steps down his majestic  stallion, garbed in his full military uniform in time for the matrimonial celebrations, but celebrations will have to pause in what the kingdom will have to rule out. 

 

 A groom who lost his life on the very day his bride was about to become his wife, and a bastard, a child from the outside, who was legalized and supposed to become formally recognized by his family, long gone and dead. 

 

 

 

Jungkook hastily shakes as he gets up from the ground to stand as straight and firmly as he could, just like his father told him, as proud as possible, but only as proud as he could before the shame and humiliation would consume him from the inside. 

 

“My Lord, Lord Min of the Haeyang faction had provoked Lord Kim Taehyung over the insult of his house and loyalty and had taken his life.”

 

 

 “Out of grief for his good friend, Park Jimin had dueled and defended his friend’s dignity and taken Lord Min’s life as a result.” Jungkook splutters, speaking at the speed of lightning and sweating as he admits whatever happened to the best of his ability, no matter how many times he wanted to forget what happened. 

 

To God’s mercy, Jimin is expelled from the capital instead of killed for his red stained hands, and Jungkook sighs in relief. What comes next is worse. 

 

 

…

 

 

Jimin has always been a fool for love. Always has. Always been. Always will. He listened to his heart, and never his head. That’s what brought him to his early death. 

 

He swore never to leave Seulgi’s side. He was a man, a whisper away from a young boy, a child,  who never betrayed his promise. An honourable man he could’ve been had he lived to see the day. 

 

 

Yet he hadn’t. Sometimes the chivalrous knight in shining armour in the fairy tales would’ve gotten himself killed instead of the damsel. 

 

Jimin arrives to the Haeyang mausoleum, a minute too early yet an hour too late, and sees his love pale and cold against her marble tomb, beauty never leaving her by the second, yet life has abandoned her. 

 

“Seulgi, my love? Seulgi? Seulgi, wake up you cannot leave me- How can I live when you are gone?” 

 

Her pulse cannot be felt, and a chilling fear flows through his veins. He panics, screaming into her hear as he shakes her shoulders and sobs as he coddles her face against his chest.

 

He cannot bear to see her dead, gone, to live without her is to not live at all. He takes his life, choking on his own tears, grabs the deathly poison from his pocket with shaking hands and Park Jimin is no more. He falls right by her side. 

 

In a whisper, Seulgi wakes up shortly after the poison had fallen into the deep pits of his throat, and screams at the sight of her plan failing. Her eyes flutter open as she yawns, rubbing her eyes with her knuckles and leaps at the sight of her lover. 

 

“My love, you have arrived-” 

 

She rushes into his embrace, until she inhales the virulent, noxious aroma of the lethal poison that had taken his life, with his lifeless eyes bleeding onto her very own. Seulgi screams in agony, in full realization of what she has done and what she has failed to do. 

 

She had feigned her death, and it had caused her own lover to take his own life. Had his message from her arrived on time, they could have lived happily ever after in a small town away from the political schemes of their factions. Yet it is not in this lifetime. 

 

“O happy dagger.” She pierces the sharp dagger through her skin, blood gushing out and she agonizes in pain, as she lies to rest with her one true love. Her scarlet stained fingers weakly locked between his cold, lifeless hands, as she took her final breath. 

 

Their love forbidden, they died side by side as victims of a cruel fate.

 

 

…

 

 

“Y-Your Royal Highness?” 

 

Seungwan watched as the sunlight dimmed as what seemed like an eternity of waiting, pondering and wondering when it was time for her to walk down the aisle towards her husband. Perhaps she wondered if winter could have arrived early and robbed the gift of sunlight from the kingdom too soon. 

 

Her handmaidens chatter heedlessly, giggling over the colours of their laces, ribbons and pearls without a care for their world. They sat around the princess braiding each others hairs, tangling gemstones into the crowns of their heads, while touching up on the rouges on their cheeks and lips. 

 

 

The Grand Princess turns her head hastily, not minding the weight of the golden sapphire encrusted crown on her head, and the cream lace that covered her body entirely. She rises from her wooden seat, interrupting the murmurs of her handmaidens into silence, as she leaves the room to speak with the messenger. 

 

“‘It is with heavy heart that I must inform you that Lord Min Yoongi has been murdered earlier today, Your Royal Highness.” The hazel haired messenger Lee Taemin mournfully bows his head, burdened by being the deliverer of tragic news. 

 

Seungwan gracefully takes off the pins that attached her crown and laced veil to her head, sighing in exasperated defeat, yet it guilts her that she does not feel remorseful nor contrite but relieved. 

 

She had a soft spot in her heart for the Min scion even with his known temper and impatience, when he has been nothing but kind and selfless to her, making her feel no less free or herself but allowed her to be herself without judgement. 

 

However, it was the idea of living miles and miles away from home in a family known for their intimidating means of conducting business that scared her away. Perhaps this is for the best. She can be relieved from the lifetime burden of motherly and wively duties for a few breaths more. 

 

As if on cue, her older brother the Crown Prince Chanyeol rushes through the maddening crowds around the staircases of servants and palace guards who circled her suite, rushing her into an embrace. 

 

“I am sorry, dear sister. You do not deserve this. No man deserves you.” He presses a gentle kiss on her closed eyelids, before resting his chin on her head as he whispers so quietly, meant only for her to hear. 

 

She crooks her nose against his collarbone, resting her cheeks on his shoulders and envelopes herself in the warmth of his grasp. 

 

Behind his shoulder, Seungwan observes her younger brothers Taeyong, Youngho and Jaehyun rushing behind them. A mix of pity yet relief and alleviation is shared by all the siblings, and she cannot help but hide a gentle smile against Chanyeol’s shoulder in assurance everything will be alright. 

 

 

But her smile drops when she remembers how Jungkook likely was in that crowd. She knows how much he attracts the eye of the storm no matter where he goes. 

 

“Jeon Jungkook? Does anyone know where he is?”

 

…

 

Song: “Crown of Love” by Arcade Fire