Quiet | BTS ✓

54

It's been years.

Or has it been hours? Minutes? Seconds?

Yoongi doesn't know.

He's sitting on his couch with an ice pack on his now swollen hand, the echoes of the notes played earlier lingering in his numb mind.

His old friend has come to visit him in the cold winter night: depression.

How he went from being so hopeful and light to falling back into the dark abyss so quickly has left Yoongi reeling and confused. He's forgotten how this feels; he thought he would never speak to his old friend again.

He calls depression a friend because that is exactly what it is; it is something he could rely on always being there. Depression was loyal; depression never left him, no matter what.

Aren't friends loyal too?

He knows his logic is flawed; he knows his depression is not an actual friend.

But maybe he is too scared to admit what it really is to him.

His hand, now differing shades of royal blue and onyx, is cradled gently into his girlfriend's lap as she holds it between both of her hands, obviously not caring about the ice turning her own hands numb as she gently holds onto him.

"Your hands are going to freeze," Yoongi says quietly, wincing as he pulls the ice pack and his injured hand away from Aria's grip.

She tries to grab his hand again, but he moves it out of her reach.

"Just stop," he whispers. "I don't want you to hurt too."

Aria sighs and places her cold hands onto Yoongi's cheeks, pulling his face so they are eye to eye.

His eyes are a never-ending ocean of despair as Aria tries desperately to search for a single sparkle of hope.

But there is nothing.

The darkness has gripped him tight in his moment of fragility and pulled him back to where he fought to get out of for years.

Aria cannot, and will not, let him drown again. She needs him to know he is not alone and that he is understood.

He is loved.

So, after planting a chaste, yet lingering kiss to his forehead, she moves to his keyboard and sits down in front of it, deciding to tell him a story instead of letting him sit in the suffocating, deafening silence of his agony.

The notes begin to resonate around the couple as Yoongi wishes he could numb the pain in his chest as well as the ice is numbing the pain in his hand.

Aria loses herself into the piece, feeling her own pain intertwining with his as the melody takes on a life of its own, charging the air surrounding the musicians with emotions so strongly felt that goosebumps erupt on their arms.

Aria is reaching into the darkest depths of her being to pull this emotion from within herself; the sorrow she carries with her every second of every day is turning into a living being through the song originating from this girl's fingertips.

Yoongi's eyelids flutter closed, the emotions in the air nearly suffocating him as he feels his own sorrow reflected in his girlfriend's story.

He knows what she is doing; she is showing him, in the best way she knows how, that she understands the raw despair he is feeling.

She has felt it too; she still carries it with her, as such deeply-rooted sadness never leaves the body once it has latched onto it.

He hears how delicately the notes sing, like they're afraid of what they're singing about.

Sorrow, in its rawest form, is a terrifying emotion to feel.

Not only can it ravish someone's mind into pure chaos, but it can be so devastating as to cause physical pain. It can make someone feel like they are close to death itself; as though the grim reaper is reaching out its hand and grasping at the person's heart, squeezing the life out of it.

There are not many people in existence who know the true, all-consuming pain that sorrow can bring to a person; Yoongi wishes he was one of those who lives in ignorant bliss.

But he, along with Aria, have known not only sorrow, but every dark emotion in their extreme forms.

The crippling darkness that can bring a grown adult to their knees; for a long time, Yoongi thought he would never stand tall and proudly again.

Not with the weight of the world on his shoulders.

After coming back to his hometown and reconnecting with his uncle, he felt lighter. He could stand once again.

After meeting Aria and Hoseok, Yoongi could walk forward again.

And through every step of this journey of rediscovering himself, music stood beside him.

That piano stood beside him.

Without that piano, he feels empty.

His hands are desperate to connect to the smooth ivory keys; his fingertips long to feel the ebony beneath them sing just for him as they flourish underneath his touch.

Yoongi squeezes his eyes shut tighter, desperate to get rid of the hurricane he feels within himself, but he begins to become lost in the music. His fists slowly become unclenched as his shoulders become less tense. The music is wrapping around him, comforting him and sending small beams of light into his room of darkness, just bright enough so he isn't completely blind in the void he feels within his mind.

He turns his attention to Aria, who has her eyes closed and is completely lost in her thoughts, her own desperation to speak to Yoongi in her own way radiating from her as she furrows her eyebrows and lets the music speak for her.

She captures perfectly what most people cannot put into words; she captures the feeling of true sorrow.

Yoongi finds himself standing and walking towards Aria; he didn't even realize he had any physical strength left within him.

It's like no matter how weak he feels, emotionally and physically, he still finds himself being drawn to the girl he met in the music room that is now nothing but ash and memories.

Yoongi sighs as he feels the pain in his chest lessen with the contact of his girlfriend's skin against his own as she stands up and embraces him.

"I..."

Aria tilts her head so she can look up at Yoongi, and his gaze meets hers.

"I love you," he says in a tone close to a whisper.

Aria smiles and kisses Yoongi's cheek, pulling him back into an embrace as Yoongi sighs again, feeling the pain in his chest ebb away as he is slowly reminded that though he lost something tonight, he didn't lose everything.

He still has her.