4.6 | Dark Ages ✓

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EVERYTHING BEGINS AND ends with her.

He's known, from the beginning, that she's the most important person in his life. The woman of his dreams, forged out of his own loneliness and the remnants of a past long forgotten, his lifeline in the Dark Ages.

But as he waits out in the living room while Jimin makes a call to her, he realizes that she's always been so much more to him.

She's my redemption.

With her creation of the Cypher, she will send him back through time to clean up the mess he'd inadvertently created. He's the man on a mission to save the world, and no one will ever know the woman behind the man who made this all possible to begin with.

He lets out a heavy breath, struck by the brevity of the situation, and buries his face in his hands. For a few minutes, he remains entirely still. But the sound of footsteps make him look up, only to see Jimin stride into the room and toss his phone onto the coffee-table.

Taehyung bolts up. "Did you talk to her? What did she say? Did she ask about me?"

Jimin stares at him strangely. "What's the matter with you? You sound like a young boy with his first crush."

"I do not!"

"Oh, look, you even have the classic case of prepubescent denial down pat." Jimin rolls his eyes and settles down onto a chair. "Anyway, she's on board. To be honest, she didn't seem that surprised to hear it—I suppose she'd kept track of our experiments because she seemed quite familiar with our work. Our secret's safe with her, she's taking the first flight over and she'll meet us at the coffeeshop across the street at ten in the morning tomorrow."

Taehyung stills. "She's meeting us?"

"Of course. I thought it better to discuss our plans face-to-face. Besides, you're the one whose study is closer to her field of work. I'm only useful with our work on the Strand. And I can tell from your voice that you're dying to meet her, lover boy."

Taehyung ignores him, his mind racing with the ramifications of their future meeting. Suppose they do meet her tomorrow, what then? She will know that he's the man who's saved her many times before. Jimin will find out that he knows close to nothing about Strand F. And he'd be more than useless with his wiped memory.

This can't happen. He opens his mouth to tell Jimin some kind of feeble excuse, when another thought hits him.

What if I still meet her—not as me, but as the other me?

There is, after all, a version of himself that exists independently from his time-travelling self. A young Taehyung who'd never helped her down a tree. An adolescent Taehyung who'd never saved her from her bullies. An older Taehyung who'd never learnt the truth about the Dark Ages.

The revelation strikes a stone cold weight in his heart.

Because he'd learnt about Marlow from Jimin during this time-travel, the other Taehyung would never find that out. The other Taehyung would continue to live on wretchedly, assuming sole responsibility for the Dark Ages. This had to be why Seokjin assumed the same—the other Taehyung would blame himself for it.

But that Taehyung is also the man who'd been brilliant enough to create Strand F in the first place.

I will save the world, he realizes. Not as me, but as the other me.

Determination sweeps through him. He understands his purpose now. He clears his throat, looking over at his colleague who's again dropping too many spoonfuls of sugar into his coffee. "Hey, Jimin?"

"Yeah?"

"You need to work on the antidote."

Jimin looks up from his coffee. "I thought we would both work on—"

"And we will," he says, picking his words carefully. He must prevent Jimin from ever meeting that other Taehyung, because if the former does, he'll immediately find out that the version of Taehyung he'd met had been the time-travelling one. "But not here, and not together. This place will soon be overrun by those monsters, and at least one of us needs to be in a safe place away from them."

Jimin's eyes widen. "But what about you?"

"I will meet her and work on time-travel. You said so yourself—between the both of us, I have a better shot at understanding her field. So you need to start work on the antidote or, at the very least, figure out a way to delay the apocalypse until we figure out a way to save it."

The other man stares at him for a while, before climbing to his feet. "Alright," he says. "I mean, I'm almost certain that you just want me gone so that you can make a move on her, but you've come up with such a plausible explanation that I'll grant you your wish—"

"That's not—"

"—because what are friends for, right?" Jimin adds, with a smirk. "I'll head out tomorrow. Our university has a lab down south that should hold while the world descends into anarchy. It's actually somewhere in Antarctica—you and your future missus should come over once you're done declaring your undying love for each other."

Taehyung rolls his eyes, but his mind reels. Antarctica. Once again, he's struck by how easily the future seems to fall into place. So far, he's ensured that Jungkook and Seokjin are safe there.

Now, Jimin will be too.

He nods and mumbles his thanks as Jimin leaves the room. Once the other man is gone, he reaches out to clear the empty bags of biscuits, mindlessly tossing them one by one into the nearby trashcan. As he reaches for the last one, something under it catches his eye.

Jimin's phone.

A swift glance around tells him that Jimin's probably gone to pack. Swiftly, he nicks the cell off the table and scrolls through the contact list until he finds the one he's looking for. He types a quick message, hits 'send', then deletes it. Finally, he removes and blocks the contact from Jimin's phone altogether.

Taehyung,

There's someone I need you to meet.

Tomorrow, 10 a.m., a café called Serendipity.