serpents and sons | taekook

Interlude: Hoseok (The Chameleon)

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Taehyung knows the signs. He has treated countless cases of it through the years.

Hoseok is dying, body burning and skin boiling. He is dying, and that much is obvious to any who see the man writhing in his bedroll, crying between his bouts of sickness. Blood dried at the edges of his nostrils. Hoseok is dying, and all he mourns is the loss of his adventure, Hoseok tells them in his brief moments of lucidity.

Namjoon brings it up quietly, Hoseok's hacking coughs in the background. Yoongi sits at his bedside, steadfast in how he holds his hand tightly between his own, whispering to him despite how they both know Hoseok cannot hear them.

The apple brings not only immortality but immunity, Namjoon quietly reminds him, and Taehyung is immediately against it. He refuses to force another to his side, refuses to force the decision on a man incapable of making his own.

But in the end, Hoseok continues to defy expectations, and in his ever waning moments of clarity he weakly squeezes Taehyung's fingers and asks if he may be permitted to stay.

And Taehyung has always been weak to those he loves.

He needs help taking each bite and Taehyung cannot stop the trembling of his fingers as he holds the fruit to his lips, watching as his teeth break each piece off. He is in so much pain even the act of swallowing is akin to running across country lines, but they are there at his side through every second of it. When he finishes, when nothing but the golden core is left, he gives them a stunningly bright smile, and then his eyes fall closed.

Hoseok sleeps through the transition into immortality, into godhood, waking up healthier than he has been in days. It is then only another day for him to be good as new, bouncing around their camp with a laugh and an excited dance that lifts all of their hearts.

That night grates on Taehyung's mind for years, even as Hoseok cements himself into their small band of ragtag outcasts. Even as Hoseok learns the tricks of Taehyung's trade, learns to trade backstories and names like cards on a table, the god feels the guilt eat him up from the inside out.

Taehyung convinces himself he stole Hoseok from a life he could have lived and died, tied him to the side of a god hated by all others. Hoseok could have survived, Taehyung tries to tell himself. He could have survived and lived a life outside of their small band of travelers.

For years he had been told he was selfish, uncaring. A trickster who cared little for the consequences of his actions - and he had proven them all right with a single act.

It is not until years and years later that Hoseok sits him down, takes his hands, and tells him that is - in very clear words - stupid,.

'You might have taken my death,' he says with a bright smile, 'but you gave me the life I always wanted.'

Hoseok never wanted the life mortal men seemed to crave. He held no desire to settle down, no want to find a pretty wife and have children and live and die in the town he would never leave. He craved nothing but the thrill of adventure.

'The one you gave me,' he adds, and Taehyung refutes any claims in the centuries to come that Hoseok's words make him cry over their linked hands. Hoseok knows the truth, though, and he simply sighs with a smile as the god's shoulders shake and his cheeks burn red.

It doesn't kill the anxiety, but it helps.

They end up spending quite a bit of time around Europe by their resident performer's request. Hoseok takes many different stages for many different lords by storm, finding himself drawn to large crowds and enticing women. Namjoon finds himself fascinated by the aftereffects of the crusades, while Yoongi stays ever at Taehyung's side, ready for whatever could come their way.

The street rats and petty gangs find themselves drawn to the immortals as they always have and Taehyung wonders if it is simply his lot in life to be responsible for the misfits of the world. Let it be known, however, that Taehyung does not mind. He never has.

Still, with the evolution of the world comes those who would crave more and so comes the age of pirates. Men and women of their own brand of crime, their own taste of freedom.

And it is only natural that Taehyung ends up helming a ship, a crew of criminals and miscreants heeding his every word.

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