Chapter Text
Jimin was used to hiding his Gift.
Luckily, Docile Gifts weren’t very difficult to conceal. They were easier to control, harder for the government to discover. For his entire life, Jimin’s parents made sure to thank their lucky stars that Jimin was born Docile and not an Aggressor.
They were a small, happy family — they had all they needed within the humble walls of their cottage. It was on the outskirts of their small town, bordering a large forest that Jimin loved to explore, singing to the shy flowers and memorizing the frown lines on trees. His heart was filled to the brim with love from his mother and father, and he never wanted for anything else. Just the way his mother smiled at him gently when he brought her back a flower from the meadow, or the way his father kissed the top of his head before he left for work. Life for them was supposed to be easy, full of nothing but warmth and simple pleasures.
But when Jimin was three years old, they discovered he was Gifted. His mother had gotten a sizable cut on her finger from picking up firewood, one that stung with every movement of her hand.
The next day, she noticed that it was completely gone.
Though a bit baffled, she had went on with her day, casting her confusion aside.
Until later that morning, when she went to wake Jimin, she found that her son had a healing cut in the exact same place hers had been.
From then on, for most of Jimin’s early childhood, he healed all of his parents’ injuries. Because he was so young, he had no control over his Gift. Each time he came in contact with one of his parents’ wounds, he would instinctively use his Gift and take the hurt within himself. They discovered that though his wounds healed at a faster rate than the average human, he still felt the pain of the injury as much as the next person. He would cry as he reached out with chubby fingers, placing his hand on the bruise on his father’s arm or a burn on his mother’s hand, every instinct inside of him telling him to heal, to help, but in turn, that caused Jimin to hurt.
When Jimin was around eight, a cat limped onto their porch, a large knife wound in its leg. Cooing at the poor, meowling animal, Jimin reached out his hand and healed it.
He spent the next two weeks in bed, his wound infected, body weak. All he remembered from those days were glimpses of his mom's crying face above him, his father dripping honey water into his mouth, and the searing, endless pain. This was when it really struck them that Jimin, too, was not infallible. If he overestimated himself, if he made one wrong judgment, he could die taking another's wound onto himself. His Gift, as much as it could help others, could just as easily kill him. Once Jimin was finally healed, his parents urged him to learn to control his Gift.
As Jimin got older, wielding his Gift became second nature. At 23 now, Jimin had complete authority over his power, able to resist the pull towards others’ wounds. He was restricted from ever using his Gift, his parents constantly afraid that the government would someday find out and take him away.
But the Gift was a part of Jimin. Ingrained in him like the fact that he was right-handed and the fact that he preferred strawberries over grapes. It just was.
So if he occasionally took a small bruise or cut here and there from his parents in the guise of an affectionate hug, his parents were none the wiser, and Jimin was simply happy to help.
❃
Every morning, Jimin rose with the sun. He pulled on a lined cloak to ward off the chill and stepped into his thick boots, exiting through the back door of their cottage. He meandered along the trail leading towards the forest, crunching leaves under his shoes and watching as his breath fed the trees. Jimin cherished the mornings he spent in the company of the waking sun. It was the only time he had to be alone with his own thoughts and beating heart. When he arrived at a clearing he liked to call his own, Jimin laid on his back and watched dreamily as the sun rose higher and higher into the sky, welcoming the day with her golden, giving arms. Jimin turned towards the warmth like a flower, a content sigh leaving his full lips. Running his hands over the top of the grass gently, his eyes hooded, Jimin smiled. Though the world was in a state of destruction and hatred, Gifteds being hunted like animals, poverty rates rising higher and higher, in the bubble of his home and his forest, Jimin was able to pretend that everything was alright.
It was just him and his flowers and his family — and that was all he would need for the rest of his life.
Jimin pushed himself up on his elbows, about to get up and walk back when a rustling sounded from one of the bushes. He jumped up, his heart suddenly pounding. Their village was small, one in which government typically never searched, but he was wary all the same. After a lifetime of hearing stories of what happened to Gifteds who were caught, Jimin was on edge more often than he’d like to admit.
He shuddered, tensing even more when the bushes rustled again. The thought of being captured, beaten alive, taken away from his family had Jimin silently gasping in fear. He sat so still he swore he could feel his own blood coursing through his veins, pumping along to the frantic beat of his heart.
Out limped a dog.
After a beat of silence, Jimin laughed in relief, tipping his head back and tapping his own chest in amusement and relief. His smile quickly died, however, when he saw the large amount of blood coating the dog’s fur.
“Oh, poor puppy, what’s happened to you?” Jimin walked towards the dog, crouching in front of it and attempting to check its wound.
It laid down with a whine and a huff, laying on its uninjured side so that its wound was facing Jimin. There was a long slash across the side of its belly, starting at its navel and traveling up towards its back. It was steadily gushing blood.
Jimin bit his lip.
He knew the poor animal would die without his help.
The thought of the puppy dying right there in his meadow when Jimin had the means to save it…
He couldn’t let that happen.
He couldn’t let it die.
Jimin raised a hand over the wound, hesitating, heart pounding. He knew he shouldn’t. He wasn’t even allowed to use his Gift inside their home, let alone outside where anybody could see.
“Jimin-ah,” his mother’s familiar words rang through his mind, a vivid memory. “You know you have the purest heart I’ve ever had the pleasure of loving. And I know you were born with this Gift because kindness is the trait that sits at the very root of your soul. You want to help everyone and everything you see, I know. But it’s not worth it, little flower. You must place yourself above anything else. The more you use your Gift, the higher the chances of the government finding out you are Gifted. Guard your Gift, Jimin, and keep it a secret for the rest of your life. For your own sake, you must never tell a soul.”
Biting his lip, Jimin stroked the dog’s head, heart breaking at its quieting whines. It was getting weaker. It looked up at him with large, shiny eyes.
Jimin laid a shaking hand over its wound.
He looked in every direction, and tried to listen past the whistling breeze and rumbling creek.
He was certain he was alone.
It was hard to describe how Jimin felt when he healed.
On one hand, of course, it hurt. As he took the wound for himself, it felt as if the injury was being burned into his skin, and for a couple of moments he completely lost his breath. Fighting through the pain and the tears, Jimin pressed his hand harder against the dog’s stomach, feeling its wound close up, even as warm blood started to seep into his own shirt.
On the other hand, Jimin felt happy when he used his Gift. This was what Jimin was born to do — he was born to help others, to heal others. And even though he had to hide it, even though the government had deemed him and the other Gifteds unnatural and inhuman, Jimin loved his Gift. He loved being able to help others in need, even though he would have to spend the rest of his life doing it in secret.
Once the dog was completely healed, Jimin sat back, dizzy from the blood loss. By now, Jimin had a pretty accurate gauge of which wounds he could handle and which wounds were out of his reach. Though this bleeding laceration on his stomach was painful and relatively deep, Jimin knew it would be completely healed within the next three days, as long as he kept it clean and bandaged.
The dog jumped up with a happy yip, nosing at Jimin’s knees and thighs.
“Good boy, you’re okay,” Jimin crooned, huffing out a little laugh, carding his fingers through the dog’s fuzzy head and ears even though his hands were covered in the dog’s blood.
After a few silent moments of petting, however, the dog tensed under Jimin’s hands, and let out a series of loud barks.
Confused, Jimin looked in the direction of the dog’s gaze.
He sees a figure dressed in all black, standing at the edge of the clearing, watching him.
Jimin’s gaze focuses on the belt slung around the stranger’s hips. It was lined with daggers.
His heart stopped.
He had been seen.
Jimin stumbled to his feet, bitter fear more potent than anything he’d ever known flooding his entire body.
Blood was still dripping from his wound, but Jimin ignored it. He held eye contact with the stranger, backing up slowly. The stranger began to walk towards Jimin, reaching into his pocket. Jimin’s breath became heavy with fear, eyes trained on the large, tanned hand emerging from the fabric.
It came out with a gag.
Before he even had time to think, Jimin spun and ran faster than he ever had before. He didn’t dare to cry for help, couldn’t even if he tried, sobbing and panting and breathless and desperate.
But the reality of it was, growing up in a household that was less than well off, Jimin was shorter and skinnier than the average boy, and his assailant was most definitely a trained warrior, judging by his toned arms and large array of weapons.
The stranger caught up to him quickly, and tackled Jimin to the ground.
Strangely, the man turned to take the brunt of the impact, but flipped Jimin back underneath him before Jimin could even catch his breath.
“Stop!” Jimin screamed now, not caring who heard. “Let me go, let me go! I haven’t done anything wrong!”
The man, whose hair was a striking shade of silver, had a mask covering his nose and mouth, but in his eyes Jimin could see…remorse?
His brief moment of confusion dissipated when the man shoved the gag into Jimin’s mouth, muffling his screams.
His wound was pulsing now, his shirt and pants growing thick and heavy from his own blood, and Jimin’s vision blurred at the edges.
After one last weak, futile push against his attacker’s chest, Jimin went limp.
His world was spinning, and his fear gave way to sorrow.
He thought of his cottage, lined with his paintings on the cracking walls and the tiny tick marks in the kitchen that his mother used to measure his height every year on his birthday. He thought of his mother and father, how heartbroken they would be when he didn’t come home, what they would do without him to help set the table and sing them new songs he heard in town and heal their wounds…
Tears of guilt worked their way to his eyes.
Another face appeared in his line of sight, also covered by a mask.
“Shit. He’s so small. Another young one,” they remarked.
“Make him sleep,” his attacker said, voice gruff, still on his knees on top of Jimin. “He’s in pain.”
The new face looked directly into Jimin’s eyes, and suddenly Jimin felt — different.
As if he were suspended in time, lighter, more likely to give in to influence, attached to strings that could yank him up, weightless, at any moment.
“Go to sleep,” the newcomer crooned.
And just like that, Jimin closed his eyes and fell into a deep, fitful slumber.
❃
“I thought they said our team was complete, hyung. Where did he even come from?”
“I don’t know, Jeongguk. All I know is that his name is Park Jimin. Only Namjoon hyung and Jin hyung know what his Gift is. It must be a really strong Aggressor if they’re adding him in this last minute with no training time.”
“He’s small,” the voice called Jeongguk pointed out. “He looks kinda frail, doesn’t he, hyung?”
A deep laugh. “Yoongi hyung is around the same height as him, I’d say. And before training, Yoongi was just as skinny.”
“But this one’s not going to get any training.”
Jimin slowly came to, roused by their loud conversation, exhaling softly. The first thing he noticed was the pain in his abdomen, steadily and relentlessly pulsing. He began to prop himself up, trying to get a look at his wound. He stifled a cry as he rested on his elbows, panting, eyebrows pushed together in pain. The tussle with the stranger in the meadow must have made the wound worse than how it started out. Jimin hoped that it wasn’t infected.
A hand touched his upper arm, but Jimin flinched back.
“Don’t touch me,” Jimin tried to snarl out, but it came out as a whisper instead.
“Jeongguk, go tell the others that he’s awake,” the one attempting to help him sit up looked back towards the other, who nodded and hurried out the door.
“Don’t worry,” he said. “My name is Taehyung. I won’t hurt you.”
Taehyung had dark brown hair and large hands that completely wrapped around Jimin’s skinny arms.
“You kidnapped me,” Jimin accused, moving away so that Taehyung would stop touching him, distrust lining every inch of his features.
“Well,” Taehyung said. “Technically, it was Namjoon and Jin who kidnapped you…”
Jimin clenched his jaw and said nothing, squinting his eyes at the other in anger.
Did he think this was a joke?
The door opened, and six others made their way into the room, followed by Jeongguk. Startled, Jimin pulled his legs up to his chest and scooted towards the wall, defensive and alert. Sitting like this squished his wound into a painful position, but a smaller, more vulnerable side of him felt better with his legs between himself and the strangers.
His gaze immediately fell on the one with pale skin and black, violent eyes.
There was something moving in his eyes, something wild and alive, something that ran deeper than Jimin could understand. It was simultaneously beautiful and terrifying, like the bottom of the ocean or the darkest parts of space.
For reasons unknown to him, Jimin wanted to familiarize himself with that darkness.
Jimin held his eyes for a moment before the other’s face twisted into an unfriendly scowl.
Quickly looking away, face flushed, Jimin let his eyes wander to the others, then froze.
Though their faces were no longer covered by masks, Jimin immediately recognized the two who captured him from the clearing.
One was very tall with tanned skin, with serious eyes and plush lips pressed into a firm line. The other was almost as tall, but his face was delicate, his expression soft.
Seeing the two triggered a reaction in Jimin, and he jumped to his feet, heart pounding once again. He didn’t know whether he wanted to run or to attack his capturers, knowing that he would succeed in either, but the decision was made for him when the beautiful one spoke while looking directly into Jimin’s eyes.
“Sit down,” he said. “You’re only making your wound worse.”
His voice was soothing, lovely.
Jimin hated it.
His legs gave out and he immediately sat back down on the cot.
“You’re Gifted,” Jimin stated.
The boy raised his eyebrows and nodded.
“Of course I am. We all are. That’s why we’re here,” he said.
Despite himself, Jimin sat up straighter. “You all are? You’re all Gifted?”
Jimin’s only ever met one other Gifted in his life.
She had lived in his village, and was two or three years older than him. On a hot summer day when Jimin was thirteen, starvation ate at everybody in the village, and death rates were climbing at a rapid pace. There had been little to no rain that past winter and spring, resulting in a lack of crops for them to eat, and less animals to hunt. Jimin had found her by the river one evening, raising the water into the air in order to easily get some fish for her family to eat.
When she turned around to see Jimin staring at her, wide-eyed, she had frozen in complete fear. Like Jimin, she was afraid of being turned into the government for money, money that could feed Jimin and his parents for the rest of the summer. Of course, Jimin had promised he wouldn’t tell a single soul, then turned away and walked back home. He didn't mention what he saw to anyone, not even his own parents.
Around a year later he woke to the sound of screams. He and his father ran down the street towards the calls, only to see the girl being dragged away by uniformed officials, her mom on her knees on their front porch, screaming and begging for her daughter’s life. Three younger children clung to their mother, watching their sister with terrified eyes.
The girl never came back.
And Jimin never met another Gifted.
Now, he was surrounded by six others who were all like him.
Jimin could barely wrap his head around it.
Taehyung grinned at him, smiling as if Jimin were a friend they’d been waiting on for years and years.
“Jimin, welcome to The Resistance.”