It happens slowly, agonizingly so, like the first twitch of a corpse awakening — Jungkook’s fingers, numb and trembling and almost foreign to him, begin to stir against the starched hospital sheet, the sedation peeling away from his consciousness like a thick, suffocating fog that retreats in shreds rather than dissolves cleanly, leaving behind a mind that is frantic, half-shattered, unable to piece itself together yet wildly aware of the horror unfolding before him. 

His breath scrapes through his throat like shards of glass as the clarity trickles back, and the very first thing he sees, the only thing he can see, is her— helpless and suspended between those monsters, her body shaking with terror, her voice trapped behind another man’s palm — and something inside him snarls awake with such ferocity that for a moment it feels as though his soul has been set on fire.