“Please,” Jaejoong begged softly, steadying his grip on her arm and looking at her in disappointment. “Don’t say such things. You know we need you.”

 

“I’m not so sure,” she sighed. “Anymore.”

 

“I am,” countered Jaejoong gently.

 

For a few moments, he watched her as she watched Junsu sleep. Quickly finding himself wondering whether or not he should really be concerned by her words. The way she used her words, the tone in her voice, and the look on her face, were all so unlike the woman he had gotten to know over the last few months. Usually so friendly, so bubbly and kind, she was always a bright spot during the toughest of times. And, now, she felt strangely dim.

 

“Noona,” Jaejoong prompted softly, tugging on her arm. “You shouldn’t be on your feet. Let’s get you back in bed.”

 

She, immediately, shook her head.

 

“I’m fine,”

 

“No, you are not.” countered Jaejoong with a deep sigh. “I can feel you shaking even now. So, please don’t fight me on this.”

 

“Alright,” she sighed sorrowfully, turning her attention back to the man she had come to call a dear friend and allowing him to wrap his arm around her.

 

Silently, they maneuvered back around the partition obscuring the hospital room door and began to make their way towards the bed. But, only after a few steps, Nikki's legs faltered again. Her strength, along with her determination, failing her as she lost her balance and immediately fell against Jaejoong.

 

“This isn’t going to work,” Jaejoong realized as he stood there and listened to how winded she already was and worried that she would truly fall if he didn’t do something.

 

Silently he repositioned his grip around her and bent down, determined to carry her and relieve her of the burden of walking under her own power.

 

“Don’t.” she protested, realizing his intent. “I am no damsel in distress.”

 

“No one said you were,” countered Jaejoong, ignoring her disagreement and immediately scooping her up into his arms. “But, everyone needs help every once in awhile, right?”

 

Nikki did not miss his meaning in that phrase. How he had simply repeated something back to her that she had said to him ages ago. Or, that he was making it a point, to show her; without being cruel, antagonizing, or patronizing; that she was behaving similarly to the way he once did after they had first met. Willing to dismiss the care of others, simply because of her own pain.

 

“Right,” she replied, flashing a soft smile and telling him that she would not argue with him further, as she reached out with one hand and gripped the I.V stand and nodded.

 

Settling her against him, Jaejoong carried her back to her bed before, gently, resettling her on the mattress and pulling her previously discarded blankets back over her.

 

“Dr. Noh should know you’re awake,” he stated softly. “I’ll go tell the nurse.”

 

“No,” she countered, reaching out and grabbing Jaejoong’s wrist before he could disappear from her bedside. “Not yet.”

 

“They need to know, Noona,”

 

“I know,” she sighed. “But I need a little time.”

 

“I’m not ready to face anyone else, just yet,” she admitted, a frown marring her face as she released Jaejoong’s wrist and dropped her eyes into her lap. “Just give me some time.”

 

“Alright,” he acquiesced, sighing softly and settling on the mattress beside her.

 

“Besides,” she added. “We need to talk, don’t we?”

 

“Yes,” Jaejoong nodded. “We do.”

 

“I am so sorry, Noona,” he immediately apologized. “This is all my fault.”

 

“If I hadn’t asked you to be there when I told them about the contract, this would have never happened.”

 

“It’s not your fault I was hurt, Jae,” she countered, understanding and love in her voice. “It wasn’t your fault that I lost my temper, that I said things I shouldn’t have, or that I stormed out. It wasn’t your fault that I was so upset that I didn’t pay attention and it, definitely, wasn’t your fault that some random driver ran a red light.”

 

“But, it is,” Jaejoong admitted. “None of that would have happened if I hadn’t convinced you to support me in telling them.”

 

“I knew,” he admitted, reaching up and rubbing his temple –trying to push away the headache he felt coming. “I knew that what I was going to tell them wasn’t going to go well. I knew that Junsu would react the way he did. That he would be furious. That he would fight it tooth and nail. That he would scream and deny any possibility of agreement.”

 

“That he would, truly, lose his temper,” he sighed.

 

“Which is why you wanted me there,” she concluded almost knowingly.

 

“Yes,” he breathed out regretfully.

 

“You used me,” she replied, her voice slightly hurt.

 

“Yes,” sighed Jaejoong, dropping his hand back into his lap and finally looking back up at her. “And, I’m sorry.”

 

“Why?”

 

“I thought...I thought that if you were there,” he admitted. “If Junsu knew you were sitting beside him, your presence would temper his anger. I thought he wouldn’t allow his emotions to get the better of him and force himself to refrain from acting out. Simply because he would not want you to think less of him. That, he would listen to what I had to say...Not because he wanted to but because he had to."

 

“Not by choice, but by force, then,” she countered, voicing her disappointment with a slightly scolding tone. “Jaejoong...”

 

“I know.” he sighed sadly.

 

“It was selfish of me and stupid. And, I am so sorry.”

 

“If your sorry, Jae,” she prompted somberly, closing her eyes and letting out another sigh. “Truly sorry for everything that happened that night, then tell me the truth.”

 

“The truth?”

 

“Yes,” she replied. “Tell me the real reason why you needed me there. Why you knew that Junsu would be so irate. Why you knew that he would lose his temper. ”

 

“Tell me what no one else could know,” she softly demanded.

 

“Speak the truth,” she urged. “For the first time in your life and tell me what we have always wanted to know.”

 

“What really happened between all of you?”

 

“Why did the dream truly end?”

 

 

 

“It was my fault,” Jaejoong admitted, suddenly sniffling as he began to recall the memories from so long ago and his eyes teared up. “Because I was selfish.”

 

“Because I wanted something that the world would never give me. Would never let me have...”

 

“Start from the beginning,” she sighed softly, reaching out and grasping Jaejoong’s hand gently.

 

“I loved him,” Jaejoong softly admitted. “And he loved me.”

 

“It started off, innocent enough. Simple flashes of feeling that we couldn’t really understand. But, after a while, we began to realize how significant those feelings were. So, we secretly began spending time together. And, the more we did so, the more those feelings grew.”

 

“We were so...happy.”

 

“But, we were both naïve and not. We thought we could do whatever we wanted. That we could be happy and stay that way forever but, we also knew that our world wouldn’t accept us for who we were, who we chose to love. So, we kept it secret. Hid our feelings from everyone around us.”

 

“Junsu and Yoochun were the only ones who truly knew how we felt for each other. And they willingly helped us, to keep our relationship a secret from everyone else.”

 

“Especially, Min.”

 

“He was so young. But, so were we, I guess. We thought that he wouldn’t understand the choices we’d made. So, we all did our best to keep him in the dark and kept our...affections to ourselves. Kept them private.”

 

“For years we did our best to keep our relationship a secret from our families, our management, and our fans. But over time, people began to suspect something was up. Things started to become awkward whenever we were at the company. We slowly began to notice that when we were there, we were never left alone. There was always a manager or a bodyguard lingering around us. So much so, that Yunho and I never really got any alone time while there.”

 

“After a while, that sense of being watched grew stronger. And we began to overhear rumors, about how close we were, floating around the company. We denied any truth to them, as best as we could. And for a time, everything seemed to die down.”

 

“But that peace didn’t last long. A year or so before our falling out, Yunho’s parents got wind of the rumors and tried to take matters in their own hands to squash all the things being insinuated about their son. To the point that they threatened Yunho with a forced marriage to some daughter of a electronics company’s CEO if he didn’t put an end to it all.”

 

“That didn’t go over well, I take it?”

 

“No,” sighed Jaejoong. “Not at all.”

 

“His parents had hoped that with that ultimatum Yunho and I would just give in and stop our relationship, but we were selfish. We could see what was going on, knew the consequences of what we were doing, and knew that in the end, our relationship could end up ruining our reputations and careers...But we didn’t want to let go.”

 

“So Yunho lied to his parents. Told them that they were wrong. That there was nothing going on between him and me. And convinced them that everyone was just imagining it.”

 

“We decided to cool it for a while. Kept our distance from one another whenever we weren’t alone. Acted like we were supposed to. And, for a while, they bought it. “

 

“Or, at least, we thought they did.” he sighed mournfully.

 

“What we didn’t realize was; at least not until well after we went our separate ways; was that Yunho’s parents had gone to President Kim about the rumors long before they ever confronted Yunho directly.”

 

“Oh, no,” she sighed softly.

 

“Yeah,” nodded Jaejoong. “And, he was furious. Though, we never really knew it. At least, not until it was too late.”

 

“After the rumors started up again; after Yunho denied our relationship in earnest and we backed off from one another; the President took it upon himself to watch us more carefully than we ever expected and was determined to make sure that our relationship stayed dead.”

 

“Almost immediately our schedules were shifted and changed, and Yunho and I rarely saw each other, anymore. He would be sent off to do this or that, and I would be forced to do dance practices or recordings, until late in the night. So that, by the time we got back to the dorms, we were too exhausted to keep our eyes open. Let, alone, spend time with one another.”

 

“The only time we ever got to see each other was when we had some interview, photoshoot, or performance that required us all to be there. And, still, we were never allowed to be alone.”

 

“It was frustrating.” he sighed with a tinge of anger lacing his words. “And stressful.”

 

“And, that’s when the fighting really started.”

 

“We were both so stressed out, so frustrated that we couldn’t spend time with each other, and so angry that people wouldn’t just leave us alone, that we began to take it out on each other. He would say something; something that in retrospect was so innocuous; and I would overreact. Or, I would do something that was practically nothing and he would get so angry and annoyed that he would start a fight for no real reason.”

 

“We were so touchy, so testy, that the smallest little thing would turn in to a huge fight in the blink of an eye,” he recalled sadly. “And, the only thing that Su and Chunnie could do was watch.”

 

“They tried to temper our fights, try to calm us down so many times I couldn’t even count, but in the end, it didn’t help. “

 

“And, then,” he admitted, closing his eyes and practically hiding from the very words he intended to say. “Changmin betrayed us.”

 

“He...what?” countered Nikki in utter disbelief.

 

“He went to the company President and outed us,” Jaejoong admitted somberly. “Told the President that all the rumors were true. That Yunho and I had feelings for each other and that we had been sleeping together for years.”

 

“That’s when all hell broke loose.”

 

“The fights got worse. We were constantly screaming at each other, fighting, pushing each other around, and talking about each other behind everyone’s backs. We hated Min, hated that he chose the company over us, and that anger just made everything even more chaotic.”

 

“What trust we built between the five of us, over the years, disappeared in an instant and we could no longer look at each other with any sense of belief in one another again.”

 

“Not long after Min’s betrayal, the company took it upon themselves to make our lives a living hell. Or, more specifically, my life a living hell. They singled me out as the cause for all the discourse, all the fighting. Blamed me for leading Yunho astray. And, made it their mission in life to make me as miserable as they possibly could.”

 

“And Yunho did nothing to stop them?” Nikki questioned worriedly.

 

“Why would he?” scoffed Jaejoong derisively. “After all, it was all my fault. I was the one that pursued him first. I was the one that convinced him that it would be alright. That we could make it work. That the world would let us be who we were.”

 

“He wasn’t an innocent, Jae,”

 

“No, he wasn’t.” he nodded. “But it was because I chose to lose my temper at the President; when he confronted us both about our relationship; and threatened to leave the company, that the President took it upon himself to ruin everything about our relationship and our careers that he could.”

 

“His retaliation to my threat,” he admitted. “Is one of the many reasons why Su, Chunnie, and I finally decided to leave for real.”

 

“So the story about the contract disputes was, what, a lie?”

 

“Not entirely,” he answered with a dismissive shake of the head. “It was just another piece of the larger problem.”

 

“Ultimately, we left because of an accumulation of frustration and anger that had been building up for several years. Min’s betrayal and the President tearing our relationship apart was the final straw. After that, I couldn’t even look at myself in the mirror. Let alone, face my brothers and friends. So we left.”

 

Nikki sighed heavily as the weight of Jaejoong’s confession sunk in more and more. She had always known, deep in her heart, that there was a reason behind all their pain that no one really ever knew. She had hoped that it had been as their official statement had stated. That it was simply because of their terrible contracts and how they were being treated. But, she never would have thought that all of it had been caused by someone so innocent and young as Changmin.

 

“Why?” she questioned slowly. “Why did Min...”

 

“I don’t know,” he answered with a deep sigh. “We never found out.”

 

“And that’s why Junsu is still angry?”

 

“Yes,” nodded Jaejoong. “He hasn’t forgiven Min for what he did all those years ago. Can’t forgive him. Simply because he felt Min’s betrayal harder than even Yunho and I did.”

 

“Min and Su were so close, in the beginning. They were the youngest among us and had built a tight friendship, a brotherhood, even stronger than anyone of us could have ever predicted. They spent every day together, did everything together, and were completely inseparable.”

 

“Junsu...trusted him. More so than he trusted anyone else...”

 

“And took his betrayal harder than the rest of you?”

 

“Yes,” sighed Jaejoong sadly. “He hates Changmin with a passion. Despises him with every fiber of his being, and would love nothing more than to never see him again in this lifetime and the next.”

 

“Now, do you understand why I did what I did?” questioned Jaejoong. “Why I tried to use you?”

 

“I get it,” she answered, forcing a small smile. “And, I’ll forgive you for it if-”

 

“If?”

 

“If you will trust me enough to let me help you fix this,” she offered. “All of this.”

 

“I don’t think it can be,” he breathed out.

 

“And, that’s why you fail,” she scolded. “You cannot accomplish that which is most precious without fighting for it, Jae. Once you bow to uncertainty, you have already lost long before you could ever expect to begin.”

 

“You must,” she added, reaching up and pressing her hand against the mantra inked into his skin just under the light cotton fabric of his shirt. “Always keep the faith.”

 

“And never give up.”

 

“Tell me what I should do, Noona,” he asked softly. “How do I fix this?”

 

“Call Jin Sang,” she advised with a smile. “And tell him that you will sign the contract. That JYJ will accept his company’s offer, and make this work.”

 

 

 

 

A/N: I'm finally back after a very, very long hiatus. <3