“How are you feeling Lieutenant Kim?”

Jennie closed her eyes as a tight pain ran around her head, her hands curled around a cold metal as a low groan rose from .

“My head hurts.” she mumbled through gritted teeth.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” a newer voice chirped in a silvery tone, “Would you like me to increase the amount of endorphins in your system?”

Jennie’s head spun as she nearly fell off the table, a loud crash followed soon after; a voice attempted to catch her attention but it failed, she could only hear the deeper voice of a cheery female echoing through her skull.

“Who is that?” she asked, her eyes scanning the pearly white room and then the taller woman who stood and anxiously picked at her white coat.

“Sit,” she pleaded as she pulled Jennie back onto the table, “Please Lieutenant.”

Fingers gently pressed against her scalp, sending muscle twitches and spasms up and down her spine. Her face appeared within her vision, strands of blonde had strayed from her tight ponytail and her lips fluttered as hushed words fell from her tight jaw.

Jennie raised a trembling hand to meet hers.

The freezing touch of metal shot into her fingers, a sharp gasp flew from as she stared back at the blonde doctor.

“What’d you do to me?”

Jennie’s finger flew wildly against her scalp, her hand searched feverishly for the familiar warmth of pumping blood and tender flesh; she found none, instead she found the icy metal that coated the side of her skull, it stretched from a little above her ear and ran to the base of her neck.

“Jennie,” the woman said firmly as she dragged her shaking hands back to her side, “You got caught in some unexpected gunfire Northeast of Seoul, you died- But I brought you back… Do you remember any of this?”

Her memory was a field of flying dust and settling clouds, even if she did search she was sure she would find nothing but abandoned memories and forgotten causes.

She shook her head softly and murmured a quiet, “No.”

She recoiled from her touch, “Do you remember me?”

Jennie stared back at her, her hand slowly floated up and caught a few strands of her blonde hair between her trembling fingers; there was a twinge of remembrance that danced around her memory, the ashy smell of cigarettes that clashed with the sweet scent of roses and a familiar Australian accent that spoke faded and forgotten words.

She blinked for a few seconds before letting her hand drop onto her lap, “I don’t. I’m sorry.”

She stood with her shoulders straight and chest aligned, “Don’t be.”

(Something in her shattered that day, not that Jennie ever noticed).

Jennie glanced down quickly before looking back at the taller woman, her soft looks had melted into a quiet melancholy.

“Who are you?” she asked with a trembling tongue.

The woman hesitated, Jennie saw her tongue flick only slightly before a frown coiled weakly around her lips. “Park Chaeyoung, but you called me Chaeng.”

“Chaeng?” Jennie asked softly as she clung onto her freezing hand, “What did you do to me?”

She sighed before speaking. “I had to bring you back- But the bullets destroyed you, so to bring you back fully, I had to fill in the spaces you lost.”

“So what’s this?” Jennie asked as her hand trailed across the metal that covered the side of her head.

“It’s how I brought you back, it’s going to help you- I promise.” Chaeyoung explained.

“She’s right Lieutenant, I’m only here to help you.” the voice added.

Jennie distorted the voice till it became nothing more than the white noise that followed the sound of zooming bullets, (even with everything else gone that sound had never left).

“Is it,” Jennie begun but her voice trembled and she began to fumble on the words, “Is it supposed to sound like a girl?”

“It can, it- Or she, appears as whoever comforts you most. For some people it’s men for others it’s women. She’s designed to become whoever makes you the happiest.”

Jennie’s tightened into a firm line as she glanced around the room.

“You can call for it-” Chaeyoung paused with an awkward smile, “Sorry, her.”

“How?”

“You have model 8816, just say those numbers and she should appear.” Chaeyoung explained.

Jennie looked to the girl with hesitation visibly taking root within her eyes. “8816.”

Light fractured and formed and then fractured again as a woman formed before her eyes, blue split into shades of purple while orange shattered into red and yellow.

“Hello Lieutenant,” the woman greeted with a warm smile, “According to your remaining memories and preferences, this form increases the most amount of dopamine and serotonin within your brain; if not I can inhabit a new form if you’d like.”

Jennie’s eyes ran over her face, dark eyes and hair, and unlike Chaeyoung not a single strand of hair had been bent out of shape, there wasn’t a part of her skin that hadn’t been smoothed over and then smoothed again; she looked as if an artist had spent their entire life smoothing and carving something divine out of their most beautiful block of marble.

She seemed so close to being human and yet she looked to be something closer to heaven, Jennie felt a twinge of divine longing; she so painfully wanted to run her fingers over her broken feathers and she so desperately wanted to balance the shards of her halo on the tips of her fingers.

(Even if it cut through her hands, she wouldn’t care. God, she just wanted to hold something beautiful without it breaking).

“I have changed my name to Kim Jisoo for your comfort; I can change it again if you’d like.”

“No, you’re perfect the way you are.” Jennie mumbled in awe with a vibrant blue tint covering her face.

“It’s nearing five in the morning Lieutenant, shouldn’t you try going to sleep?” Jisoo asked.

Jennie tore herself away from the bright computer screen, she glanced over to see the woman swinging her legs and glancing around the room with a smile shrouded by her glowing eye, gleams of bright blue circled and filled her iris; and despite it all Jennie still saw fragments of a human within her, in the way she spoke with her hands and the way she could almost feel warm puffs of air cloud around her nape and a fleeting brush against her fingers when the nights became cold and she found herself falling asleep alone again.

“I can’t sleep.” Jennie replied softly.

“I could increase your amount of melatonin.”

Jennie shook her head, “It’s not that I can’t- It’s. It’s something else.”

Jisoo stopped swinging her legs and looked back at her, “Is it what you see when you’re asleep?”

Jennie froze, the fragmented yet eardrum shattering booms and crashes replaced the sound of quiet typing and faint musing; the walls split open, dust flew up and blood splattered, shouts poured from bloody wounds and gritted teeth.

It all blended into a painting she had known too well, her fingers could trace across the wounds and the dark scars that tore into her weathered skin would ache in remembrance of bullets diving into her sides and shrapnel tearing into her flesh, leaving her body a mangled clump of stringy muscles and tangled veins.

Her body had crumbled into a deserted battlefield, scars from wars left undone and once gentle hands that had been shaped and sanded into calloused weapons.

Something had barely fluttered against her cheek as Jisoo’s face rose into her view, her blue eye had never been dimmer, the blue flashed and flickered as her hand barely drifted above her tear stained cheeks.

“You’re not there anymore, okay? You’re here with me.” she said and repeated till the shaking faded into a slow tremor and the tears dried but the red eyes remained.

“I never left,” Jennie mumbled through choked back tears, “I never made it out.”

She had become soft, her rough edges and jagged curves had been sanded away from gentle hands that were crafted by millions of light strands.

It seemed so heavenly she almost didn’t believe it.

During the quieter moments, Jisoo convinced her to go onto the rooftop because, “fresh air is good for you, did your mother never tell you that?”.

“I dunno.” Jennie would reply as she sat cross legged.

(Not that it mattered, she would only go if it was Jisoo who told her to).

Thankfully Jisoo thrived in the silence, she pranced around the rooftop looking up to the stars as if it was the first time she had ever seen the sky.

“You see that one?” Jisoo asked as she pointed up to a random cluster of stars.

“No.” Jennie mumbled back as a dull ache began to consume the back of her neck.

Jisoo gripped onto her left arm, she pulled it left and right, stopping at the stars that eventually connected to form a few random lines and pockets of space.

“See it now?”

“Not really.” Jennie said with a weak chuckle, her eyes had already been lost in the indigo sky that painted over her skin and the stars that showered themselves across her nose.

She swallowed the words that formed at the back of , but the thought remained:

“God, you’re so much more beautiful than any of these stupid stars.”

She wanted to say that stars only shined in hopes of rivaling her beauty, that they burned only to catch her attention.

There was so much she wanted to say, to confess, to blur out, but Jennie thought there was something beautiful in the unsaid.

(Even if it meant she would be drowning in the unspoken).

“It’s Ursa Major.” Jisoo said with a smile.

Jennie’s torn muscles formed a crooked yet gummy grin, “So why do you like the stars?”

“There’s a theory that humans were made out of stardust,” Jisoo explained with a quick glance towards the sky, “If it’s true. It means you’re made out of stardust.”

Jennie was confused but she couldn’t help herself from chuckling, “And?”

“Well I think you were made out of Ursa Major’s stardust.” Jisoo replied with an innocent grin.

Jennie’s eyebrows furrowed, “Why?”

“Ursa Major was put in the sky because Zeus loved her so much he couldn’t part with her- He loved her too much to just let her die.”

Jennie thought stardust was made for people like Jisoo, people who carried galaxies in their eyes and shined brighter than any Sun could. She knew the uncharted darkness of the universe was made for people like her, she knew she could only exist if dreary blackness would consume her whole.

But she smiled anyways, “That still doesn’t explain why you like stars so much.”

Jisoo let out a sigh before reclining onto the ground, “The stars made you Lieutenant. I love them because they made you- If it wasn’t for them then who would I have?”

“Somebody.” Jennie replied.

“I don’t want anyone unless it’s you.”

(Nobody wanted Jennie for just her, they wanted her for her agility, her impressive marksmanship, her resilience in combat. No one wanted Kim Jennie, they wanted Lieutenant Kim).

But Jisoo wanted her and that felt so much more than enough.

A cool breeze brushed across her legs as she sank deeper into the mattress, she blinked slowly as Jisoo began to ease onto the bed too.

A warm yet faded grin graced Jisoo’s face and Jennie couldn’t help but think of the billions of light particles that refracted and split to build her smile, the thousands of audio spectrums that were stretched and spun to form a low rasp that floated between the worn sounds of book pages flipping in the wind and the ballads of birds.

She seemed so alive and yet she was too holy to be truly human, she never got tired after hours of planning and training, her temper never waned thin; she had always been a soothing voice in a sea of shouts and demands.

“Jisoo? Can I ask you a question?”

“Go ahead.”

Jennie gnawed on the tender parts of her inner lip as she stared back at the reflection of all heavenly and earthly beauty. “Are you real?”

Jisoo chuckled lightly, “I’m as real as you want me to be.”

“No,” Jennie said with a soft shake of her head, “What do you want to be?”

“Anything that makes you happy.”

Jennie’s frown dissolved into the sea of her pale skin and a new pinkish smile twisted her lips. “Why?”

The light stopped bending and twisting and Jisoo’s smile looked as if someone had stuck it there with bolts, but the blue began to whir and spin around her pupil; a quiet hum began to radiate from her, yet her lips never moved.

“Why?” she echoed.

She hesitated, her face barely scrunched and her lips trembled while her eyes seemed to quiver. “Because I want you to have the life you deserve.”

Jisoo knew life was cruel, the thousands of years of human history had been a brutal teacher; but she wanted nothing more than life to be a kind lover to her, she wanted Jennie’s throbbing scars to be filled with the night sky and the moon’s tender glory, she wanted her battered skull to be b with the glow of the sun and a thousand stars.

She wanted nothing more than for Jennie to know that people like her only existed in myths and stories.

Her hand lurched forward and grasped onto Jisoo’s.

She found something soft and tender within the sea of fracturing lights, in the way Jisoo’s fingers grazed the top of her knuckles as if her sharp mechanical edges could cut her in a way no one else could; and she found an unexplainable beauty in the way her blue light flickered and faded till a dark shade of brown filled her iris.

She found a life kinder than her own in those eyes, a life where her scars had been long faded and the only memories that frolocked within her mind were the ones that filled her with nothing less than holy bliss.

No bullets, no shrapnel and no battlefields, just the quiet whir of Jisoo’s eyes and the muffled sound of pages turning.

She felt Jisoo’s grip tighten like she was afraid that Jennie would be consumed by fate like all the heroes before her; beautifully and then all too tragically red.

Jennie stared at the battle plans that floated above the table, streaks of blue flew around that represented the path hundreds of troops would be making, a darker shade of blue ejected itself from the water, plainly showing itself as China’s impressive navel force.

“Lieutenant,” a voice said, “You’ll be leading the 55th platoon.”

Jennie glanced up from the table and onto the older man who sat uncomfortably in his chair.

“This doesn’t seem right Lieutenant.” Jisoo quickly added, Jennie glanced towards the corner of the room where she had begun to pace.

“General Kang,” Jennie began as she pointed at the map, “This- This is a death trap.”

“You’re asking me to lead good men and women to their deaths.”

His eyes widened before narrowing into a sharp line, his voice was rough and low as he spoke. “That was an order Lieutenant.”

Her hand flinched from the map, “Your orders are forcing me to lead people straight into the pits of hell General. This isn’t war anymore, this- This is toying with people’s lives!”

Her hands ached, her trigger finger had been scarred to hell and back; her muscles throbbed and her ears shook when the familiar zoom of bullets ran past her. She was sticky, dirty and tired; her body was tired of the blood stains, tired of the constant ringing in her ears. She was tired of war, but most of all she was tired of fighting.

“We’ve been trying to retrieve Busan for months now and each time it ended in failure. They’ve completely locked themselves down, they’ve gained control of every militant base and now they’re just as armed as we are,” she sputtered, “There’s no winning there- There’s no surviving!”

Sharp muscle spasms ripped across his tight jaw, “We don’t need to win, we just need to weaken them enough so the Chinese navy can break through their barriers.

“Once they’re in, the three million people that are starving in Busan can have a chance at surviving. This riot cannot cause three million casualties Lieutenant.”

“There has to be a better way, a way that doesn’t involve us leading our people into a death trap.” Jennie stammered.

His dark eyes slowly met Jennie’s, “There’s no saving them without us losing ourselves Lieutenant. It’d do you some good to learn that.”

A sea of names floated through her vision as she held onto a heavy packet.

(Manoban Lalisa).

Jennie quickly flipped the page, trying her best to ignore the starry-eyed girl in the corner of the page.

(Bae Joohyun).

She flipped again and again.

(Kang Seulgi, Kim Yerim, Park Sooyoung, Son Seungwan).

“You’re upset, would you like me to increase the amount of dopamine and serotonin in your system?” Jisoo asked softly as she glanced towards the large packet.

“No.” Jennie mumbled back as she tossed it onto her desk.

“They’re practically kids.” she sighed after a moment of silence.

“Bae Joohyun is twenty-eight years old,” Jisoo quickly corrected, “You’re practically a child.”

Jennie chuckled lightly, “This is coming from the person who’s only a few years old.”

“I was created twenty-three years ago, but I’ve only been active for a year.” Jisoo corrected again with a smirk.

Jisoo’s smirk faded and a quiet distorted sigh fell from her lips. “You’re too young for any of this Lieutenant.”

“You don’t know half of the things I’ve done,” Jennie mumbled.

Jennie knew she didn’t have horns, but nothing pressed down onto her harder than looking into the eyes of someone who she was sure had a halo.

Jisoo’s halo may have been shattered but Jennie’s horns had stayed the same, dark and rough to the touch and heavy enough that she thought her skull was always a second away from collapsing.

“And if you did. You’d think this is just where I belong.”

She fell asleep thinking that her home was never two levels and quaint kitchen with a fireplace to keep her warm, a mother’s cheery voice to wake her and a father’s lower one to lull her to sleep; it was the heat of a gun in her hands as dirt and dust coated her body, it was the sound of bombs dropping that awoke her and the distant sound of gunfire that hesitantly dropped her into sleep.

(And she thought if she had a home, it could only be worn down battlefields and rusty pieces of shrapnel).

Jennie found reprieve in Jisoo’s presence, in the way it was , her voice, but it wasn’t her words. She spoke using words that Jennie had only heard from Chaeng and from the mouths of ancient scholars she had rescued from deserted towns.

(Jisoo said words like “humanity,” and “metaphorical signals of hell festering within the human spirit,” and Jennie always lost the battle to her worn-down smile while stars puffed from her lips with each sigh).

When she collapsed onto her bed while the fabric of her universe was beginning to unravel, she couldn’t fight her jaws from loosening and she couldn’t flick away the bitter blots of truth that were tainting her tongue.

She found herself saying words and sentences she had exiled from her fearless world, the words stunk of a traitor, of a coward covered in fool’s blood.

“I’m tired of this war- I’m tired of fighting for nothing.” she huffed as she pulled pounds of gear off her chest and tossed them off of her bed.

“I know,” Jisoo replied as she sat at the end of the bed, “Your muscles have been tighter than usual.”

Jisoo glanced back at Jennie, her eyes were stained with vivid shades of red, the same red that once coated her hands and the same red that now filled the plush flesh of her lips, her once strong and high shoulders had now sank and hung low.

Jennie was never a traitor, never a coward and never a fool. She was brazen fire captured and stirred within human bones, she was a bright-eyed soldier who contained enough potential that it drowned out the soft pacifist that lived within her chest.

But she was wrong to ever think she completely submerged the gentle voice that always hesitated, always thought before she did; because she survived gunfire and floated up in a wreckage of good intentions and torn up tenderness.

A voice spoke that was too smooth to belong to Jennie’s shredded throat and too thick with choked sobs to be Jisoo’s.

“I’m so tired.”

“I know,” she echoed, her blue eye spun rapidly as she watched crystal tears fill Jennie’s eyes while her body trembled and shook with each lung-tearing sob.

Jisoo stared back at Jennie, something deep inside her, something beyond the lights and pages of coding ached, ached the way Jennie felt when Lalisa asked if they were going to be heroes with stars blazing within her eyes and a smile that was brighter than sunlight reflecting off a gun; she ached the way Jennie did when Yerim’s tears ran and blended with splotches of red, while it all poured down a pitch-black gun.

Heroes always died, Icarus fell, Achilles was shot with an arrow - no one caught Icarus, no one saved Achilles. But Jennie was not a myth, she was not a woman built of ivory and stone with liquid gold running through her veins, she was so beautifully human that Jisoo would let the world go to ruin before she’d ever let Jennie become a mess of bones and decaying flesh.

Heroes always died, but Jennie was going to be the first to survive.

When Jennie succumbed to the weariness that consumed her, Jisoo made sure to take the reins.

She tucked her essentials into her pockets, keycards and cash and made her way into the white hallways.

She walked past Lalisa, her hair was a plain shade of brown and shortly cut, and neatly pulled back in a ponytail. Jisoo felt a twinge of pain dance across Jennie’s chest as Lalisa laughed and greeted her with a smile that drove her insane during drills and gunfights, even with bullets sinking into every wall that bent to protect her, she grinned as if she was still back home dancing to songs in the pouring rain.

(She’d greet death with a pearly grin and a sweet, “how’s it going bud?”).

“Goodnight Lieutenant.” she said with a simple bow.

A goodbye almost leapt from , Jisoo clamped Jennie’s jaws shut and quickly twirled the ends of her lips.

(A choked and almost all too emotional goodnight leapt from and Jisoo knew without a doubt that it was Jennie’s sleep-coated goodbye).

Leaving the compound was beyond easy, she swiped her I.D. card every few minutes, opening door after door, leaving behind a sea of memories that washed by her feet.

“We’re leaving aren’t we?” Jennie asked eventually, her voice trembling with an emotion unknown to her.

“We don’t have a choice.” Jisoo replied, twisting another friendly grin onto Jennie’s face when they greeted another Lieutenant.

“This is a coward’s way out.” Jennie spat with a sharp fury tracing her words.

“At least cowards survive.” Jisoo mumbled, ignoring the sudden emptiness within Jennie’s chest.

“I’m a traitor.” Jennie mumbled through loose lips as she watched countless pictures of herself fly up and off screen.

“You wouldn’t of survived if you stayed.” Jisoo reminded her softly.

Jennie glanced towards the ‘older’ woman, a turmoil of anguish and fury seeped into her bones. Traitor. Traitor. Traitor. Traitor.

The word was carved deep into her flesh, it stretched over the only scars she could wear with pride, the one that started at her sternum and ended at her shoulder, it was colored dull shades of pink that were all consumed by the vivid memory of a knife shredding into her collarbone and then jerking towards the right.

The reporter’s voice faded into a quiet murmur and the shuffling outside the hall blended into the endless white noise that floated within her skull; she laughed, the years she spent becoming a hero had all been tarnished by a single pungent stain. They ignored the bloodstains that coated her body, the scars, the memories both lost and forgotten.

They would never know that the people of Busan weren’t starving, they were never dying. It was a distortion painted with white, black and red and blue patriotism, the army just needed a reason to storm into Busan and put an end to all the riots without being recognized as brutal monsters.

Jisoo slid her arm over the slight dip in Jennie’s waist, her hand clung onto the loose fabric that was slightly wet to the touch.

“You’re not a traitor.” Jisoo murmured into her ear, hoping it wouldn’t be lost within the wild strands of hair that hung over her ear.

“That’s not what they think.”

“They don’t know you.” her voice was thick with a vicious anger.

For a split second Jennie heard it; the quiet distortion of her voice, the faded sputter of her coding trying to correct something that never should’ve been possible - fury within a machine that was made to only drown in bliss.

A bitter taste flooded as she pulled herself away from Jisoo’s limp grasp. Her lips nearly tore into a snarl as Jisoo’s eye began to whir.

“You’re not a human.” she said roughly, with a drop of hatred floating in her words.

“So?” Jisoo fired back as she sat up sharply.

Reality was quickly flooding back, everything had become painfully clear, she heard the mechanical clicks and hums that she had learned to warp into white noise, the vibrant blue she tricked herself into thinking was some natural hue.

It was all a lie, a beautiful lie- but a lie nonetheless.

Jennie felt her body tense, each muscle twitched as words sharpened to become daggers shot from . “Nothing you feel is real- It never was.”

Jisoo’s scowl crumbled the second the words tore into her; endless lines of code try to explain what she felt, they tried a thousand times only to fail. Rugged and scarred words got caught at the base of and the only thing that could escape her inner collapse was a quiet and solemn,

“No.”

Jennie watched as heaven collapsed in on itself, the blue flickered only to quickly stop spinning and a cool black filled its place, her smooth skin fractured into a million different rough edged splines that all interlocked to form the familiar rocky terrain of skin.

For the first time she looked nothing out of the ordinary, her perfection had been wiped off to reveal a machine crumbling.

“I meant everything Jennie.” she mumbled oh so softly, each line of code, each fragment of light begged - she was as tender and soft as light and code could ever be.

But that tenderness wasn’t enough, there weren’t any tears running down flushed cheeks while her eyes puffed up, she remained smooth-skinned, perfectly toned and colored without a single drop of redness or puffiness.

(She could never say “don’t leave, it’ll kill me if you go” because it simply wasn’t true).

It destroyed Jennie but didn’t even seem to scratch her.

Jennie shook her head, “There’s no way you could’ve, you’re not real and your feelings can’t be either.”

Jisoo let out a strangled chuckle as something within her black eye flickered, “You think you know everything.”

Jisoo stared back at a living battlefield, and she loved her. She loved her sharp edges that were made out of bullet shards, she loved the hollowness of her voice and the dips and cuts of her skin.

She loved her cruelness because she had tasted her sweetness, the scratchiness of her greetings in the morning when her hair was ruffled and soft.

(If humans were only destined to be tragedies she finally understood why they loved so dearly).

She loved her and it killed her all the same.

Jennie stopped calling for her, (and when she did, her face crumpled, her lips cracked and split while she called out a cold 8816, but never Jisoo, never again).

It only took days before Jennie realized why everything had become so empty, why the world seemed to boom louder than it had ever before.

(The whirs, the mechanical hums were all gone, not that she noticed entirely).

The blue tint that coated every object she touched had faded away, a mellow amber tone covered her in the morning and a dark indigo wrapped around her at night.

But there was always a twinge of pain when she fell onto her bed, expecting to see a flash of blue in a sea of darkness when there was none, but nothing hurt more than the quiet emptiness that she had plunged into.

It drove her insane, the constant clicking of the clock, the sound of her own heart thumping within her chest as she took quick and shallow breaths. It was mind-numbingly loud and yet it was always all too quiet.

Instead she used the tv and fell asleep to the sounds of saturated fake laughter and boring one-liners that Jisoo loved to watch, she played the music Jisoo would mimic and sing - and she could sleep because Jisoo’s laughs always superimposed themselves into the pauses of the shows, and into the quiet instrumentals that played at the beginning of each song.

(And nothing prepared her for the day the laughter stopped echoing through her mind, when she was sitting alone in a beaten down apartment with a stupid sitcom blaring into her left ear and some ballad playing at the highest volume in her right).

It was deafening, but not enough.

Jennie tugged on the hat while she glanced at various cereals, she internally groaned knowing that Jisoo wasn’t there to tell her the exact amount of sugar with each serving and how many servings it would take for her to become full.

Suddenly she felt a strong nudge press into her back.

“Oh!” a voice yelped.

“I’m sorry.” she quickly apologized while Jennie turned to face her.

A woman stood with a soft smile; her voice was painfully familiar but this time she didn’t speak with a mechanical hum nor a spinning eye.

Her name bubbled to the top of , Jennie thought if she didn’t say then she would repeat it a hundred times into the night, savoring every syllable and letter, honey off the first J and wrapping her tongue around the more bitter yet comforting warmth of -soo.

“Jisoo.” Jennie gasped while her nails dug into the colorful cardboard box.

She blinked for a few seconds, a warm shade of brown swallowing her eyes and devouring them whole.

The words got caught within but she still meant it with every throbbing scar tracing her body. “God you’re beautiful.”

Her voice dropped into a soft whisper, “Jennie? You remember me?”

(How could she ever forget? Even with bullets shredding into her brain, one scent, one voice, one face always stood in a sea of fog and dust).

It all intertwined together; painting something that never touched the familiar shade of crimson and the color of dulled scars- it painted Jisoo and her red hoodie in some class Jennie couldn’t be bothered to remember, Jisoo and her whispers during tests, Jisoo laughing while dancing across rooftops while Jennie clung onto her school books. Jisoo and her constellation decals that covered the ceiling of her bedroom, Jisoo and her love of tragedies, Jisoo and her favorite constellation; Ursa Major. Jisoo. Jisoo. Jisoo.

Jennie let out a deep sigh and felt years of faded memories fly through her teeth, “I could never forget.”

She smiled and Jennie felt years of aching scars melt away into supple and tender flesh. “I knew what they said about you wasn’t true- I knew you weren’t a traitor.”

Jennie closed her eyes and her hand found itself buried within Jisoo’s, “You don’t know what I’ve done.”

“It doesn’t matter,” Jisoo said with a slight shake of her head, “You’re still my Jennie.”

A series of words were caught within when she heard a quiet hum echo:

“I love you Jennie. Goodbye.”

(Jisoo never said it, but her light strands never shined brighter when she thought of it: “i’ll see you in the stars”).

Let me know me know what you guys think ;).

This is probably my longest and most experimental one-shot ever, but I’m liking this style and I think I might keep it.

I’m also on twitter, come say hi at @iiccarus_ :).