Mercy - Taehyung (BTS)

Chapter 20

Taehyung's pov

We sat in the forest for hours until late afternoon. I took Eli's hand for comfort, too uncomfortable to carry on. I needed strength before I showed her the cold, bloodstained lab that served as my prison for three years of my life.

The back garden was dead and little grew in the dirt. It was a complete difference from the front which Jimin and my mother had spent years tending to. The back garden was left untouched as if who we were when no one could see us was different to the masks that we showed everyone. The back garden was where I was hidden when I was a child, hidden away from my mother, so close to her but she never heard my screams.

I opened up the trapdoor that led to an underground room that lay hidden beneath the eastern wing of the main house. It was a room that no one but my father knew of. I shivered at the smell of the chemicals that lingered in the air and I grimaced at the sight of the blood stained metal cage that hung from the roof, it stood as a reminder that I was once treated like a wild animal, a beast who would never belong.

Eli walked into the room shakily, horrified by the sight of the dead preserved bodies that hung as if we had entered an abattoir. The body in the center was enough to remind me of why I loathed myself. The sight of her frozen body hung, soulless, reminding me of what I had done.

At ten I was taken by my father and locked in the small cage that sat at the side of the room, only to be taken out when father's human friends would visit. Each one of them was as bad as my father, if not worse as they sold their families off to protect themselves. The humans were scientists with little humanity and they saw me as nothing more than a lab rat. Daily experiments were conducted and over the course of the first month, I had changed drastically, filled with a hunger that no one should possess. My body had been altered in many ways as a result from the experiments but nothing could cure me of my natural eyes.

I was beaten more times than one would believe possible but I said little, too afraid to protest against my father. I withdrew into silence, fearing what my words would do and who they would harm. I was starved for my weakness and every tear that I shed meant another hit. My father was building me and altering me to make the perfect war machine, someone too afraid to question his commands and someone who would feel no emotion as I killed.

Rose was the epitome of beauty and over my years of being trapped she had become my life line, holding me together and showing me strength. She would sneak in food and water, ensuring that I had enough energy to survive the experiments. She could do little more than that though. Rose was one of the scientists' daughters but she was nothing like those bastards. She lacked the cruelty and the inhumanity but her heart was filled with good intent and love. Rose had become like a sister to me, someone who I really cherished and in many ways she was my first love.

Rose thought that by feeding me and taking care of me, she was defying her father but that was not the case because she was doing exactly what they had intended for her to do the moment she entered my cage with a glass of water. She was nothing more than the second variable in their experiments and for that she paid the price.

It was a cold evening and I huddled up in the corner of the steel cage, wrapped up in a very thin blanket, longing for warmth. Rose had stepped into the room, with a pile of blankets in her arms and a smile upon her face, a smile that had the power to make me smile even on the worst of days.