St. Mary's hospital was a big place, and the incarnation of everything Yoongi could've ever possibly hated. Waiting, order, lies, pretense, and death. And right now he was stuck in a waiting room, waiting for someone to stop lying and tell him the truth.

"I'm so sorry, ahjumma, I can't possibly understand what you are going through." Namjoon held the the hands of Seokjin's mother in his own, head hung low.

Yoongi wanted to break something instead.

"He really wanted you kids to have fun with him for as long as possible." she sobbed. "He didn't want any of you to worry about his condition."

"And that was an excuse to lie to us?" Yoongi finally shouted, making everyone in the room stare at him. Seokjin's parents, Namjoon, Jungkook, Hoseok, Jimin and Taehyung. Everyone but the person who was responsible for this.

It could have been their fault for making Seokjin sleep outside, or run until the little hours of the night. For all he knew, they were the ones who were directly responsible for all of this. It couldn't have been a coincidence that he had been rushed to the hospital right after their frenetic weekend.

"Did he really think he was doing us a favour by hiding everything? Did he think we are some idiots or what? What the did he think we were, children? Playthings?"

"Yoongi, that's enough." Namjoon reprimanded, dropping honorifics in an attempt to get him to reason clearly. It would've worked, except his mind was perfectly clear in that moment.

"Go get some fresh air outside, he's not waking up anytime soon anyway." Seokjin's father said, face perfectly still but irritation evident in his voice. Yoongi felt blood rush to his face and ran out of the room.

He roughly pushed away all nurses that stood in his path, ignoring their protests, and ran past the main door, into the garden. Once he was sure he was out of sight, he crumpled to the ground and sobbed, the fear in his chest completely gone, substituted with simple grief and rage.

He hadn't known a thing. He had joked with him that day like every other day since they had known each other, cursed at him when Jin sent a ball right through Yoongi's legs and made his team lose the match, told him no one wanted to eat his cooking, for being their worst dancer, insulted his looks at least three times during dinner alone. Protested when Jin stuffed his face with fries since he 'wasn't eating enough, how are you ever going to grow up if you eat like that'. Laughed wholeheartedly when he started telling about a misadventure in university and how he had learned the wrong script for acting class without realizing it for three weeks.

He held on to his memories, but he still couldn't shake the grief away, nor push it in a corner. He shouted, not caring if someone heard him or was woken up, shouted until his throat burned, then simply sobbed, losing all pretense of strength, even when he felt someone crouch near him and watch him cry his heart out.

"Hyung, you have to go, it's late." Jimin whispered. "The nurse said he could still wake up. It's not that bad. He's just sick, you know? I'm sick too, I ran a lot and it was cold. Come on, go home."

"Hyung." he heard Namjoon's voice, smaller and more formal, as if silently apologizing for before. "Jungkook is waiting for you."

Yoongi let himself cry for a few more seconds, then forced his legs to hold his weight and raise him up. He ran his sleeve over his face, trying to get the cloth to soak up any disgusting liquid that was there.

When he raised his head, he saw three pairs of eyes that were pitying him and it took all of his willpower not to scream in frustration.

"Let's go home." he whispered because he didn't have the strength to speak any louder, motioning at Jungkook to follow him, ignoring the rest of his friends that were still staring at him.

Once he was home and Jungkook was asleep, he started looking for the alcohol he had stashed away.

As he learned later, Hoseok had spent that night in the hospital, and the nights following too. At first it was out of desire to stay with his friend, then the doctors started noticing his own worsening condition. Pills for his sleep problem seemed to have lost their old effect and the young male fell back to erratic sleeping patterns.

They kept going like before, except all of them had changed. Not just Hoseok. No matter how much they met up to go out for a fast food, how many walls they painted, how many times they ran from the police screaming, they would never feel more than the temporary euphoria given from adrenaline.

Jimin shut everyone off. He stopped smiling as kindly as before. He never danced for pure pleasure. He would've stopped eating too, except both Yoongi and Namjoon forced him to keep himself fed. When he went to his house unnanounced once, Yoongi found a trail of burnt pictures in a corner of his room that the younger failed to mention and whose existence he apparently didn't even realize.

Taehyung too stopped smiling in the same, idiotic way. Whenever he smiled, it was a crooked grin that the boy probably didn't even realize he was giving. He ran away from home too, staying over at Namjoon's place, but never told any of them why.

Namjoon one day shaved all of his hair off, never explaining the exact reason. For the rest he kept being their leader. He tolerated any shenanigans until it grew to a destructive point, and led some of the playful vandalism with a grin on his face. He still was open to listening to anyone who needed help. But nothing could dismiss the fact that he stopped writing songs.

Yoongi kept writing. He wrote at night until the sun was up, until his wrist protested, until he fell asleep in a pile of scattered papers. Most of it was good, he knew it. It didn't even need music. Some of it, he burned, whenever it got too personal, whenever a negative feeling took control of the lyrics, and he watched the words burn with no remorse.

Jungkook was the only one who was exactly the same. He seemed to think a lot more than before, but it didn't really concern him. He looked almost serene. He kept laughing and giving him that innocent smile whenever he pulled a prank. He was what kept Yoongi sane during some nights, when his relaxed face as he slept on the sofa inspired him to write about innocence.

"Hyung, I think we should move on." Jungkook told him one day, making Yoongi freeze in his act of chopping carrots for dinner.

"I mean, I don't think this is what Seokjin hyung would've wanted." he added, looking at Yoongi directly in the eyes. "We're trying to behave as if nothing is wrong and waiting for him to wake up. But the doctors said-"

"Shut up." Yoongi coldly ordered, letting go of his grip on the knife.

"The doctors said he wouldn't probably wake up and this will only hurt you and everyone else more if he dies when you don't expect it."

And that was the moment when Yoongi had lost control for the second time since Seokjin had been rushed to the hospital.

He stabbed the knife in the wooden counter with all his strength, making Jungkook flinch.

"Shut up! Shut the up!" he shouted, then proceeded to bark a long series of insults, not stopping even when he saw tears glistening in Jungkook's eyes. Still, the younger male didn't cry. He kept looking directly at Yoongi until he was done.

"We'll just hurt more if we don't let go, hyung." he repeated, and Yoongi started laughing.

There was nothing funny about it.

He sat in his house, alone for the first time in years, laughing. He realized he must've looked mad to anyone else, but couldn't bring himself to care about anything. Certainly not Jungkook's hurt face as he ran away and slammed the door after him.

He picked up one of the broken shards of the mirror he had broken in his rage, somehow keeping his lucidity enough not to throw a chair directly at the man he had come to consider a brother.

He really felt no remorse at all. It wasn't the first time he hit the kid, but it was the first he fought back, and certainly the first time he knew he was wrong. But no matter how many times he ran the encounter in his mind, no matter how much he remembered Jungkook's cuts and the fear in his eyes as Yoongi started throwing objects, he couldn't bring himself to feel sorry.

He may have been wrong, but he didn't give a . He laughed in his hall, aware of the door that was still open, aware of the fact that he should be chasing the other and apologizing.

He didn't make a single move.

Hoseok's mother called him three days later, and Yoongi felt the same fear when he had received that message. He couldn't even finish cursing the younger boy and his rash decisions before Jimin too attempted to commit suicide that same day. He stopped receiving news from both, the last time he heard from either when their parents told him they had been recovered in the psychiatric ward for their own good.

Taehyung disappeared. Namjoon said he returned home, but Yoongi could feel something was wrong.

The leader too disappeared without leaving notice. Yoongi called him all day but he never picked up. The elder noticed that he was still reading his messages and sent him hundreds of texts, cursing him and telling to come back and face the situation like a man. What situation, he didn't really know.

Jungkook had been staying over at Namjoon's place, and he left. Unlike Namjoon, he picked up his phone to curtly tell him he was just wandering the streets of Seoul, and that he was alright. If Yoongi wanted he could stay alone a few days or find some other place to stay. Yoongi had demanded to know his exact whereabouts.

They had met up at the hotel, the atmosphere awkward for the first few moments, before it heated up again. This time Yoongi couldn't even remember what they were fighting about. He was just furious.

Jungkook ran away again, this time in tears. And Yoongi felt every bit of remorse a human could possibly hold, and a little more.

He flicked the lighter on and off, staring at the soaked sheets.

He needed to end this now.

Throwing one last glance at the shirt the boy who was once his brother had abandoned in his haste, he threw the lighter on the bed and stood still as flames erupted around him.