4.6 | Dark Ages ✓

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HOW FRIGHTENING TO be suddenly made aware.

He goes to bed that night, slotting his gun under the pillow, but doesn't sleep. Pressing his nose against the fabric, he drags in the deep scent of roses. It calms him. He steels his nerves, closes his eyes and forces himself to think.

Fact—he knows that the watch is called a Cypher: I must have seen it before.

Fact—he remembers wondering about the feasibility of time-travel: I must have asked it before.

Fact—he knows the answer to his question: I must have already time-travelled.

He opens his eyes, his heart pounding with a sudden suspicion. Was this why he'd been displaced, four times over, inexplicably and sporadically? Sometime, in a past he has no recollection of, the Cypher had been created. He'd held it in his hands and asked the question. Then he woke up, in the Dark Ages, and time-travelled. He saved a drowning woman. He met Jungkook. He saved a young child. He met Yoongi. Through these jumps, he's found the answer to his question, but what then?

What is to stop him from, say, travelling back to the point prior to the creation of the Cypher to prove that it could be done?

This is a loop, he realizes, his throat dry. I'm stuck in a loop.

He climbs out of bed, suddenly desperate for a glass of water to calm his nerves. He finds Yoongi at the kitchen table, with a radio transceiver in front of him. Ignoring the man, he heads for the sink. He's in the midst of downing a glass when Yoongi breaks the silence.

"I have to leave."

Taehyung blinks. Setting his glass down, he turns to the man. "What?"

"Tomorrow. I have to leave tomorrow," Yoongi repeats.

His is the voice of a man who's accepted death, and Taehyung almost shudders to hear it. Is this what war does to people? He wouldn't know—he can't remember. Feeling a faint pang of sympathy, he pours another glass of water and sets it down in front of Yoongi.

The other man takes a slow sip, then hunches over, looking painfully deflated all of a sudden. "I haven't even found her," he mumbles quietly.

Nor have I, Taehyung wants to say. But he closes his hands around his mug and lets out a sigh. "Maybe she's in Antarctica," he says, trying to be optimistic. Relief and sadness wars within him at the idea of her being there. On the one hand, she'll be safe.

On the other hand, she'll be safe—so far away from him.

"Maybe," Yoongi says, but his tone gives away the fact that he doesn't believe Taehyung's words. Not one bit. In his peripheral, Taehyung feels the man staring him through narrowed eyes, his gaze like flint. "Do you really love her?"

He stills.

"You said so yourself, yesterday," Yoongi continues, studying him closely. "'If you loved her as much as I do'—those were your exact words. So do you?"

Do I? His hands tremble as he lifts his mug for a lengthy sip. Does he? He sets the mug aside and looks down at the table.

"I don't know," he admits quietly. "All I ever have are my dreams of her. She comes, gently into the night; but when I wake in the light of day, she's gone. I came to wonder if I'd gone mad like the rest of the world, then I came to wonder if she even existed to begin with. But I haven't, and she does, and I know her. I know her. I know how she takes her coffee—strong, black, with sugar. I know that she likes scented candles and the smell of men's aftershave. I know that she goes to bed with her hair braided to keep it from frizzing, but she wakes up with her hair in a tangled mess anyway because she moves around so much while she sleeps. I know all these things because of my dreams. I know enough about her to want to find her, because if I did—if I did find her, I could—I could really..."

—love her.

The words are on the tip of his tongue, but he swallows them because they're too raw a confession. He clenches his jaw and braces himself for whatever snide remark Yoongi will make.

To his surprise, Yoongi leans back in his chair, a tacit understanding in the man's eyes. "That's alright," he says. "She's very easy to love, after all."

Not trusting himself to speak, Taehyung simply nods and wraps his hands around the mug. Just like that first night, they sit at the table without exchanging another word, letting the low buzz of static from the radio fill the night.