Yoongi doesn’t remember how it felt to be alive, but he imagines it’s not much different from being dead.

He doesn’t remember how it feels to have blood pumping through his veins, but he knows they’re not supposed to feel empty, that there should be movement just under his skin

His rebirth, if that’s what it can be called, was abrupt. He remembered swimming in darkness. There was no gravity to anchor him, no north and south, every direction was up. Until he felt pressure on his wrist. There was a force, a pull, and suddenly he was no longer surrounded by darkness. He landed on the ground, from which direction, he wasn’t quite sure. But at least now there was an orientation. His hair was dripping wet.  He didn’t remember what water was, or if that made up the darkness, but there was no trace of it in this white room.

There was someone else, someone with ash grey hair looking down on Yoongi.

And there was silence. Yoongi held his hand in front of him, clenched and unclenched his fingers, but he couldn’t actually feel them. He pressed the pads of his fingers against his sternum. He couldn’t feel the touch; he anticipated something, anything more than the hollow feeling beneath his fingertips.

“It’s gone,” the person answered.

Yoongi stared at his eyes, yellow eyes, and asked, “What’s gone?”

“It doesn’t matter,” he held out his hand, “You don’t need it anymore.”

Yoongi grabbed the extended hand, he shuddered, the hand was like ice on Yoongi’s skin. Yoongi later learned that everything about Nam Joon was cold.

Why did Yoongi expect warmth?

~~

Nam Joon had been dead for years,

He did not remember the exact number, but it was back when they only needed ten agents to collect the souls of the dead.

“The world kept populating, that’s why he started creating more,” Nam Joon explained.

“He?” Yoongi asked.

Though Nam Joon’s eyes stayed expressionless, his lips quirked to a smile,

“Death.”

~~

The heavens were endless. Corridor after corridor, room after room, none had a label, there were no maps to show the right direction. Yet Yoongi never felt lost.

Some things, like disorientation, were easy to accept.

Others, like the white wings jutting from his back, needed time to adjust.

“Why are they falling?” Yoongi asked while he picked up the feathers peeling off his wings.

“Everyone is reborn with white wings,” He handed Yoongi one of his feathers, his cold touch still made Yoongi shudder, “Then they molt and choose a new color.”

“How is the color chosen?” Yoongi looked at the pile in his hand.

Nam Joon shrugged, “Only he knows?”

Nam Joon’s own wings were a stone grey color, the color of fog in the early morning.

Yoongi’s new feathers were jet black. He stretched out his wings in front of a freestanding mirror where he could see the juncture of his shoulder blade – the place where they attached to his pale skin.

“Can I fly?”

“You can,” Nam Joon answered, “When you visit the living.”

Even after molting, they felt heavy on his back.

~~

Nam Joon’s footsteps were silent.

As were Yoongi’s.

Yoongi assumed everything in the heavens had no sound.

Until Nam Joon showed him the room where they kept the souls of the living.

There were clocks everywhere. Some were large grandfather clocks, tall and imposing. Others were like stopwatches, floating in mid-air. All of them ticked, all at different times.

Yoongi clamped his hands over his ears.

“This is where we keep the clocks of humans,” Nam Joon explained, “here is where the division between the heavens and earth is at its weakest.”

The noise was too much, too many sounds, all at once.  His wings felt heavier. Yoongi hunched down. “Can we leave now?” he pleaded.

Nam Joon didn’t answer; instead, he watched Yoongi huddle over, desperately trying to block out the sound of a thousand hearts beating at once. It felt like years until Nam Joon finally gripped his hand and led him out of the room.

~~

They returned every so often, until Yoongi was able to listen to the sounds of souls ticking without cringing. And after he adjusted to the sound, he found he couldn’t listen to the silence in the hallways without feeling uncomfortable.

Nam Joon found Yoongi leaning against a grandfather clock. “It’s addicting isn’t it, to hear people living.”

Yoongi could only nod in affirmation.

Nam Joon smiled, a genuine smile. “Do you want to see them?”

~~

The first difference Yoongi noticed between the world of the living and that of the dead was all of the sounds. It wasn’t just clocks ticking or people speaking clearly to each other. There was murmuring, muttering, wind rustling the leaves on trees, shoes splashing in puddles and the raindrops crashing against the pavement. There was the sound of open umbrellas and cars honking, and tires grazing against the tar, cars moving so fast Yoongi swore they were flying.

They stood in the middle of a plaza. People walked all around them, running away to hide from the rain. Yoongi held out his hand, water pooled into his palm but he didn’t feel bothered, not like the living were.

The second difference was that he and Nam Joon were the only ones with wings.

“Why?” Yoongi asked.

“So that when they die, they know the difference between the living and the dead,” Nam Joon explained.

A couple walked in their direction, the guy leaned down to whisper in the girl’s ear. She laughed. He wrapped an arm around her. They turned away at the last minute.

“They can’t see us,” Yoongi commented.

“No,” Nam Joon sighed, “they can’t.”

Another difference.

Two young boys, bags bouncing against their backpacks, ran right through Yoongi.

Yoongi gripped his chest, “They can’t feel us?”

“No,” Nam Joon clarified as he side moved out of the laughing children’s way, “They can’t.”

Yoongi continued to clutch his chest. It was only for an instant, but Yoongi felt something beating in the boys’s chest, in the same spot that Yoongi felt was hollow.

~~

Yoongi stole a jacket from the world of the living, one with buckles and straps that clashed together when he walked down the hall, making him the only one who wasn’t silent.

But that didn’t make him any less empty.

“What does it mean to die?” he asked Nam Joon.

Nam Joon shrugged. “If I don’t know it feels to be alive, how am I supposed to know how death feels?”

“But we kill them.”

“Everyone’s clock runs out,” Nam Joon pointed at one of the levitating watches, the glass was cracked, the bronze rusted, and the second hand moved slowly, “It’s our job to collect their souls and take them to heaven.”

“Do we choose who goes to heaven?” Yoongi asked.

“No,” Nam Joon tugged Yoongi to his feet.

“Do we choose if they become one of us?” Yoongi asked.

Nam Joon gave him a sad smile. No, of course not, only he decides, Yoongi had come to accept those answers for the unexplainable.

Yoongi followed Nam Joon through the clock and into the world of the living, just in time to see a crippled man’s heart monitor flat line. He watched nurses scramble to machines, a doctor press against his sternum, trying to resuscitate the old man.

Their efforts were wasted.

He still left hand in hand with Nam Joon.

~~

Yoongi witnessed Nam Joon for most of his assignments, but some of them were too emotional for Yoongi.

“I follow doctors,” Nam Joon explained, “when their patients die, I lead their souls to heaven.”

“This isn’t a hospital,” Yoongi commented. They stood at the doorway to a lonely home in the countryside.

Nam Joon smiled wistfully, “I’m selfish. I steal the doctors I knew from Sojin.”

Yoongi’s eyes widened. He met Sojin once. She was old, like Nam Joon, had held her job for centuries upon centuries. And pretty with a child’s wide smile.

Yoongi made the mistake of asking her about her most recent assignment. To which she described in great detail, how she found the woman in her bathtub, candles placed around the room, rose petals floating in the tub, and razor blade gripped in one hand.

“The candles were still burning, the whole building would have gone down if I hadn’t put them out before I left,” she half laughed, “I guess that was expected from someone with so little care for their own life.”

Yoongi politely left the conversation.

He refused to go on those assignments with Nam Joon. But he still had to pass through and become familiar with the other world.

By wandering through the land of the living, Yoongi learned that while he has the power to kill, he also has the power to heal.

A short walk from the house in the countryside was a stable, and a little further from that was a field. In the field Yoongi found a colt with a broken leg, braying for help.

Yoongi took pity on the poor thing, wanted to put it out of its misery. But when Yoongi pressed his hand on the animal, instead of killing him, his leg snapped back into place.

The colt stood up, shook out its mane, and ran off to the stable.

Yoongi stared down at his hand.

He clenched and unclenched his fingers.

For a brief moment, he had felt something warm pulse under his skin.

~~

Nam Joon told Yoongi that his first assignment was today.

The clock was small with a steady ticking, but the outside was dented and caved in.

“Do you need me to go with you?” Nam Joon asked.

“I can handle this,” Yoongi hesitated when he answered.

Nam Joon gave him a reassuring pat before shoving him headfirst through the rift between the world of the dead and that of the living.

Moonlight spilled through the blinds of the hospital room. The location wasn’t surprising, a majority of Nam Joon’s assignments happened in white sanitary walls. In one bed was a young boy. His leg was wrapped in a cast, his face red and tender, with bruising on one eye and the other covered in gauze. Yoongi tsked, he’d seen this before, a car crash. What a pity, to have to experience something so painful at such a young age.

The next bed was empty.

Yoongi frowned.

He walked to the last bed. It was also empty.

“Who are you?”

Yoongi looked back to the kid on the bed. His bruised eye barely cracked open. “Are you an angel?”

Realization hit Yoongi. No, it can’t be, he was too young. He still had to go through puberty, experience his first heartbreak, fail a class. There was so much he hadn’t done yet.

 “Angels have white wings,” Yoongi answered.

“Your wings are cooler,” the kid said back. And then he smiled, and Yoongi felt his heart drop.

“I’m Jimin. What’s your name?” the kid asked.

Yoongi swallowed, “Yoongi.”

“Yoongi,” Jimin repeated. He grimaced, “Yoongi, am I going to die?”

Yoongi had never killed anyone before. He remembered the colt… Jimin wasn’t much bigger than it…

Yoongi shook his head, “No, you’ll be fine Jimminie.”

The kid smiled before closing his eye. His machines started beeping, the heart monitor slowed down.

Yoongi pressed a hand to Jimin’s heart, willing him to life. He felt Jimin’s ribs reattach themselves, the collapsed lung pumped back to life. He didn’t need to look to know that Jimin’s leg healed itself, but he did watch the purple bruise around his eye turn back to his flesh color.

By the time the doctors and nurse came in, Jimin’s machines stopped beeping, his pace had returned to normal.

Nam Joon was going to scold Yoongi once he returned to the land of the dead - Yoongi had to find another way back, the door for Jimin already closed- but at least the kid would live for many more years.

AN: So if you follow me on tumblr, you know that sometimes I get really emotional over this universe. So many emotions that it would probably be a sin not to write for this timeline from time to time.

I removed the complete option from this story, but I don't promise regular updates. They will all be erratic and at various times, and they won't be linear. (Like this story, this story ends with the first time Yoongi and Jimin met)

Huge thanks to Kelley for being a beta :D

Also here's a song that sort of relates but kind of doesn't but it's where I stole the title from