Marked (BTS Taehyung)

Chapter Nineteen: A Little Bit

"Hey, (y/n)."

"Tae! It's good to hear from you."

"How are things, you know, with Jade?"

"She's still unconscious, but what else is new? The doctors have said that if things continue the way they are now, it's likely that she'll never wake up. How's Namjoon doing?"

"It's hard to say. We're not sure if it's the concert that's stressing him out, or if it's Jade being out of commission right now."

"How've you been?"

"Pretty good, but I miss you, of course. The buzzing's back."

"I'm sorry. Do, do the phone calls help?"

"A little bit."

You could almost see Tae shaking his head a little bit and smiling at your words.

"I miss you, too," you said, idly twirling an earbud cord around your fingers. Even when he was thousands of miles away, he still managed to make you the tiniest bit nervous.

"Are you still at the hospital?"

"Yeah. It feels like we hardly leave nowadays. If Min-Jae has an unhealthy aversion to hospitals and doctors, I will not be surprised. How are the other guys?"

"Jimin and Hoseok started betting on when Jade would wake up. Yoongi told them to stop, but, honestly, I think that it's helping the both of them pretend that this is less serious than it is. Jin feels a little bit guilty, but Yoongi and Jungkook have been trying to talk him out of that. We all know that it's not his fault, but it's hard not to feel like, well, like it kind of is his fault."

"If Jade were awake, she'd tell him to get his head out of his ass and realize that not everything revolves around him."

"I've told him that a few times. Unfortunately, I'm not the alpha female. Have either of you talked to Jane at all?"

"She's staying in Dinah's apartment at the moment. Other than basic pleasantries, all of us have been avoiding one another."

"(Y/n), I don't want to hang up, but we have a fan meet in about twenty minutes, and I've already kept you awake long enough. Try to get a nap in before Namjoon skypes in."

"Bye, Tae!"

"Bye!"

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You set up the laptop by Jade's bed as you did every night, camera facing only her and keeping the machines around her out of frame. Namjoon was due to skype any minute, and you had to be on the other end to accept the call.

He had begun skyping the hospital nightly, only not calling when it was extremely late there, though most of the time he didn't care. You and Dinah had been taking turns in accepting the calls and staying the night at the hospital with her.

Not that it really mattered, because she didn't appear to be waking up any time soon.

Tonight, however, you and Dinah were both returning to Jade's apartment and spending the night there, as Dinah's wasn't fully baby-proofed, and you still lived with your mother. The official reason was that you were cleaning up after the battle, but both you and Dinah knew it was because her apartment was just plain closer to the hospital.

You left with Dinah, navigating the hallways of the hospital, her with a baby carrier, you with a diaper bag.

"I invited Jane to stay over," she said, unlocking the car and hooking up Min-Jae's car seat. "I figured that she probably won't want to stay after we verbally abuse her, though."

"Why would we verbally abuse her?"

Dinah looked away from the road and at you for a moment to make sure that you were joking.

"Because of her, Jade's in the hospital. Whywouldn't we verbally abuse her?" 

_______________________________________________________________________________

Namjoon was staring at Jade's peaceful looking face, trying to collect his thoughts and calm his mind. The lack of anything through the empathy link had been driving him crazy and wearing him out. In his opinion, the lack of anything was worse than the usual buzzing.

Speaking of the buzzing, that was still of course present, but it was accompanied by no ability to sense what Jade was feeling at the moment.

Normally, he would tell her about his day, pretending that she could hear him and would wake up any minute and give him advice.

But tonight, he was not in the mood to talk. He just wanted her to be able to talk to him. He wanted her to wake up and be okay.

"God," he said, "I don't even know what to say anymore."

________________________________________________________________________________

"Look, Jane," Dinah began, crossing her legs and leaning forward, turning the baby monitor next to her down in volume. "We're not saying that you led them to us, and we're not going to discuss that. Neither of us are willing to. You do, however, need to be taught how things work around here. Number one: You don't ever turn your back on any of us. We are not werewolves, so we don't know how your stupid pack-loyalty bond things work, but these are the facts: Jade has never once let her personal feelings about me get in the way of what she does for the pack, and we expect you to do the same. No one could replace Jade, but the fact of the matter is that until she wakes up we have to take on her job. Between the three of us, we should be able to do, at the very least, a fraction of what she does."

You were shocked by the amount of respect in Dinah's tone, but you supposed that having the woman at the birth of her child definitely changed her opinion of Jade.

Jane stuttered for a moment before replying. "I'm sorry, but what?"

"Jade would want Jin to be happy if she were she awake, so I'm respecting that wish and not punching the living daylights out of you, even though I really, really want to. Don't get me wrong," she continued, "I'm sure you'd kick my ass, but not before I landed a few good hits."

"Do you want to go? Right here, right now?"

"Girl, I'll give you one warning; If these earrings come off, you will be in a world of trouble, got it? I don't care how much it would hurt Jin, I have only held myself back for Jade's sake."

"And I'll fight you, too," you added, forcing your way into the conversation. "Jade is the only reason that either one of us is even here to have this conversation with you. Without her, I would have run that first day and never looked back."

"And she means everything to Namjoon. I want you to picture your feelings for Jin. Then multiply that by about ten. That's how important she is to Namjoon. And she means the world to the other members."

"Hoseok and Jimin love her like she's their mother," Dinah continued, "and I really hope that if you think any of the guys other than Jin like you, you realize that you're wrong right now."

You were surprised at how easily you and Dinah were conversing with Jane, bouncing between points, and jumping in to add comments whenever the other had stopped to take a breath before going in to tear out Jane's throat again.

"Wolfsbane," Jane whispered.

"I'm sorry, what?" Dinah said, irritated and looking like she would have rather been doing anything but sitting there listening to Jane.

"What knocked Jade out was wolfsbane," Jane repeated, "I don't know much more than that, but it was a personal favorite of Gun Ho's."

Both you and Dinah looked at each other, realizing that there were going to be more hours in the library to learn everything you could about wolfsbane.