Interwoven ✔️

66~ Healing

[Jiyeon's POV]
The city skyline across the wide river we were walking beside glistened peacefully. Skyscrapers upon skyscrapers rose towards the starless dome above, alit with their own gold and white stars.

I turned to the boy walking beside me. His eyes gazed straight ahead, unseeing. The eerie blankness in his gaze prompted me to gently reach over and brush a few strands of his silver hair from his face. "Are you feeling a little better?" I asked softly.

Jimin had woken up tonight and just barely managed to make it to the toilet before vomiting because of one of the many gruesome nightmares afflicted upon him. After his father's death, all the memories he'd suppressed the past eighteen years had finally swam to the surface. The memories of pain, of anger, of hate, all of it, was what brought these nightmares upon him.

While I had nightmares of running through the bloody halls of the base, Jimin had nightmares of his father whipping him, cracking him into a soldier, and then blowing up in front of his face all over again.

He often didn't go back to sleep afterwards and instead took midnight walks in the small neighborhood where we were currently renting a house together. Sometimes he'd ask me to join him, other times not so. I understood those times he didn't want me by his side. Some walks you had to take alone.

Tonight, however, was one of those nights he'd wanted me beside him. It was perhaps 2 AM, and the world around was cast in shadows and calm. The night air was crisp and refreshing, carrying the smell of the river over us.

Jimin stirred from his stupor at my words. "Well, I don't feel like throwing up anymore," he muttered.

I wrapped my hands around his arm. "If you ever want to talk about it let me know," I murmured the familiar words.

I could feel the raised rough ridges across his bare skin underneath my fingers. Places where the Moonsbane had eaten and scarred his skin forever. Though none of his Marks had gone completely out like some of the Outworlders who'd been ruthlessly tortured, several of his Marks no longer glowed as brightly as the others.

I bore many scars myself, including the one in my leg where the bullet had torn through. But the worst of the scars weren't on the surface. The worst scars were unseen, mere shadows that lurked deep within and slowly poisoned your mind until you didn't know who to trust or who you even were anymore at times.

We finally paused and he leaned against the fence that separated the sidewalk from the banks of the river. He pulled me against him and we stood like that for a few minutes in silence— my arms wrapped around him as he held me by the hips and buried his face into my neck, soaking up each other's presence.

Two months. It had been less than two months since the official signing of surrender ceremony successfully took place. There were still rumblings every now and then between the Outworlders and humans, lingering resentment.

But it was the Infinity Council that people were now beginning to redirect their anger towards. Word had finally gotten out about the lies the Council had fed; lies about how everything was under control, lies that they knew what they were doing, lies about how they were protecting the people under the New Order.

Because they hadn't protected us. Instead, they had used us, hid behind us. When things had gotten out of hand, they had immediately shoved the public in front of them as a shield, letting us suffer and even die for the consequences of their choices.

A turning cycle. A wheel of never-ending corruption and lies and anger. It wasn't the first time a government, a nation's leader, had lied to their people. It wouldn't be the last.

I was wrong when I thought that the New Order had brought peace. That the Infinity Council were any different than past leaderships.

However, there was change beginning to sweep in.