Once Upon A December || VKook || HYBEPride 2022

Safe Overnight

Except, if that actually were true, then this story would be over a lot sooner than this.

For if Beomgyu and Soobin had actually stopped to consider their path of trajectory, they would have paid attention to the dining car and the closets alongside the far wall. And once they felt it was safe, Seokjin, Jungkook, and V climbed out of the pantry closet, Seokjin carrying Yeontan safely. They looked both ways, then sneaked back to their partition, finding Hoseok there, recovering from his nasty bump to the head.

"What was that all about?" Seokjin asked as he pulled Hoseok in, taking some of the supplies from the first aid kit every partition had and applying some ointment to Hoseok's forehead.

"There's a warrant out for your death," Hoseok explained once they were all safely inside and there was no danger of anybody else hearing them. "Itr came down from the Musihans. Nobody knows why it was sent out, only that it was. Something about your past and being a student who is very dangerous."

"Well, they've had ten years to kill me, why are they so interested in killing me now?" Seokjin asked.

"Perhaps because they saw your name on the visa list," Jungkook noted. "Students who were part of the rebellion are easy targets. They are also able to check the list of people who enrolled during that time, so from there they can pick them off, slowly, one by one, without a worry."

"It's horrible, what they're doing," Seokjin said with a frown on his face.

Yeontan sneezed, which made the whole partition laugh. The tension was gone. Nobody seemed to mind that Hoseok was missing. Everyone was safe again.

They talked for a while, then converted the seats into sleepers, pulling out the mattresses. There were two beds, and Hoseok fell asleep on Seokjin's shoulder, and Jungkook suddenly panicked. He was going to have to share a pull-out bed with V.

They weren't alone.

But still.

They pulled the bed out and removed their shoes, sleeping in their street clothes. There were pillows and one blanket, and Jungkook was surprised when V rolled over and faced the wall, away from him. "You don't -- don't you want any of this blanket?"

"I'm not used to sleeping with a blanket. We never had blankets at the orphanage." Oh. This finally made sense as to why V had kept denying pillows and blankets while staying in the underground shelter. Jungkook had just thought it was him being considerate. But the truth was, V's life might have even been harder than Jungkook's own. At least Jungkook could remember his childhood. At least Jungkook could remember Prince Taehyung, as he actually had been.

"Are you going to sleep?"

"Not yet. It always takes me a long time to sleep." V looked over at Jungkook, rolling toward him. "I thought you had that figured out by now."

"I just realized you really did have things rough before. Like...in the orphanage, and stuff. Do you mind sharing?"

And V obliged, talking in hushed tones. At the age of eleven, he was discovered lying in a snowbank, unconscious. They had taken him to a nearby hospital ran by the Musihans; the only good thing about the Musihans was that they had socialized their healthcare, and it didn't cost a penny for V's treatment. He had recovered completely from a concussion, but he still couldn't remember who he was or where he had come from, or how he had even gotten in the snowbank to begin with. So the hospital had no choice but to call in the children's services in that town, and they had sent him to the orphanage until someone could claim him.

Nobody ever did.

V had lived for nine long years in the orphanage, helping clean every day, washing dishes, making food, and doing other chores and learning trades from the people in the town. The people would pay the orphanage for V's labor, and the folks running the orphanage were ultimately good people, even though the kids themselves were cruel and mean. They saved back the money V earned from his jobs so that, when he became of age and could no longer stay in the orphanage, he could have some money saved up until he found a suitable job and a place to stay. And before long, V was working in the same town as a carpenter, fixing peoples' broken furniture as they would bring it in. It was good work, and it paid well, but V started to find it very boring, and as the town was small, before long there were no people who needed their furniture fixed. No broken furniture meant no jobs, and no jobs meant no money, and while there were soup kitchens around, V was getting close to running out of savings.

"And that was when I discovered the pendant in my coat," he said. "The one that simply says Paris on it. So I decided to take a chance, and that's how I ended up here. Pretending to be the lost prince."

"Well, whatever is waiting for you in Paris, it has to be more exciting than that old boring town," Jungkook said with a smile. "There are lots more people in Paris than even in Boring. You could get on your feet by fixing a lot of pieces of furniture. And since it's Paris, the stream will be never ending. Who knows? Maybe you'll get to fix some of the pews at Notre Dame."

"Notre Dame du Paris?" V was in shock. "Is that a real place? I have read about it, but I have never seen pictures."

"These days, nobody gets pictures. It's part of the Musihan way. They only want pictures of themselves posted on walls, so people never forget their faces. But yes, Notre Dame du Paris is real. I remember seeing it in pictures when I was in the castle. And I've never seen the Eiffel Tower, but I know that's real, too. Prince Taehyung said he saw it when he traveled to Paris once, a long time ago."

V nodded, then suddenly quiet. "You miss him."

"Ehh." Jungkook looked at the ceiling. "I've done my best to get over him. He's not alive. I know that. No offense to you, you're pretty cool and all that, you're just not him. You're just...V, and whatever V becomes in Paris, once we collect the money."

"What are you going to do with the money from Mr. Bang?"

"Dowager Bang," Jungkook corrected, and then, "I'm...not sure yet. I really don't want to return to Boring, although nowhere else has been home for me. I always figured I would take the money and run, go back to where I came from, maybe take the money and put it into the bank there. But if I put it into the bank in Boring, then the Musihans would take most of it because of their taxes, so maybe I would put it in a bank in Paris, and then I could access it if I ever needed to by money order. It would keep better here, regardless. And then...yeah, I don't really see myself staying in Paris, it marks more sense for me to go back to Boring, but at the same time, if I go back to Boring, it will be the same old same old, and nothing will ever change."

"If Dowager Bang really believes that I'm the Prince Taehyung, who was lost all those years ago, then won't he make me be the leader of the Musihan world?"

"It would be the Borahae Empire again." Jungkook paused. He had thought about that, but he had never asked V, focused instead on his prince lessons. "Honestly...that would be up to you and him. You could stay in Paris, or you could agree to and split and disappear forever, change your appearance, move to London for all we care. But it's your choice. Don't let them take your choice away from you."

Jungkook passed out soon after that, but V was still awake. It didn't feel right to him, duping this old man like this. What if V did continue to be the Prince? What if he could take the Musihan Empire back and make it better than it was now? Anything was better than the current situation. Even if Jungkook knew that the Prince was dead, it didn't mean that the rest of the world had to believe that. Someone had to give them hope. But then again, Jungkook had said it would be V's decision. V was so used to being told what to do that he didn't know how to make a decision. So he forgot about it for now, leaving the decision for later, and with that, he fell asleep.

He dreamed that he was standing on the bridge in the middle of Paris, the only memory he had. He saw the same carvings of lions at the front and the back of the bridge, and V realized he was holding someone's hand. But when he looked up to see who it was, there was no face. Of course. How simple would that have been, if V could only look up and see who might be holding his hand? But not even dreams carried that kind of memory.

He did, however, commit the feeling of those fingers to his mind, secret that, at least at some point in his life, someone had loved him enough to hold his hand.