soldier!jk + doctor!yn in war!au? or moderntime!au, it’s up to you! :)
↳ A Promise of Freedom
1.7k words || 50% Fluff, 50% Angst || Jeon Jungkook || Wartime!AU
This drabble is continued here
Sometimes if you stand quietly enough, holding your breath and shutting your eyes, you can feel the rumble underneath your feet. The screams aren’t from your imagination, but echoing from the distance. And if you look, happen to squint your eyes at the horizons, you can see the explosions, the fire in the air and the smoke that always follows.
But it’s not often you can be left to your own devices to feel the battlefield come alive.
“What are you doing standing there?” You’re shoved from behind when you’re stagnant for too long. “Get a move on!”
A man is carried on a stretcher with his limbs detached. One is without an arm, the other is holding onto his left leg. There are moans and pleas not to die, for their Gods to save them, and nurses rushing about and crying out for someone to help them save a man they have laying in front of them.
The last camp was bombed. You didn’t die unfortunately. But now there was only you left.
You have no choice, but to rush ahead with them.
“Hand me the needle,” you say to the nurse. “We have to close up his wound, hurry before he bleeds out.”
“R-right. Here you go.”
“Bandages! Someone get me bandages!”
You’re betraying your nation by saving and healing the enemy. But they’ve kept you alive — not because they were merciful, rather your medical knowledge is a weapon. “Water, I need a basin of water!”
You seem to be the only one who they can force to be here to revive the dying.
A soldier’s voice suddenly booms, “Who’s the doctor here?!”
Several nurses turn in your direction, and his boots stomps on the ground, heavy, intimidating. He yanks your shoulder back. “You need to come with me!”
“Not until I finish with this patient,” you spit and tun back to the soldier that you’re suturing.
“Did you hear what I said?!” he shouts, loud enough to ring your eardrums. The soldier gets right up against your face in an act of intimidation, saliva spraying at your cheek. The nurse beside you is terrified and flinches, face scrunched, on the verge of sobbing. But you remain focused. “You dare to ignore my orders, soldier?!”
“I’m not a soldier,” you mutter, almost done as he tries to command you. You finish the last stitch, knotting it and putting your hand out to the nurse. She gives you the scissors after a moment of hesitation and you nod to her that it’s okay.
What you didn’t understand the most was why this war was happening. You were all people — all absolutely petrified internally. There wasn’t much difference. And you’ve never been able to see past that.
“There I’m done. What do you need me for?”
The soldier’s teeth are gritted at your defiance and he grabs a hold of your wrist, yanking you hard — as if your fingers weren’t already bruised, hands bandaged and peeling from working twenty hours a day.
You’re pulled across the room, past the curtain. And you find a man laying on the table, black hair, doe eyes barely blinking up at the ceiling. His face is covered in soot, opened scars and bruises that line his dry skin. Most importantly, his right hand is holding onto his chest, blood seeping past his clothing and in between his fingers.
He dry-heaves.
“What happened to him?”
“He got shot. Save him or die.” The soldier pushes you forward. There are two other nurses in the room, more than you’re used to, and the soldier stays to watch. You approach and everything clicks once you recognize the badges on his uniform.
He’s a corporal. An important figure. It makes sense as to why he has his own room, his own doctor.
The Corporal’s eyes flicker to you. He must recognize the symbols on your own clothes too as he stops you before you can reach down and open his shirt. His fingers curl into the aching parts of your wrist.
He’s still strong despite the dire state he’s in. “I…can’t trust you.”
“Well, you’re going to have to.”
But he still resists. The injured man doesn’t let go of his hand covering his wound. His jaw clenches. You glance at the two nurses, but they choose to stay out of it lest they obtain the responsibility of his condition, and the soldier merely stays silent as if he were wallpaper.
You lean down to the wounded man, speaking softly in his ear, “Listen here, Mr. Corporal, if I try to sabotage you, I’ll die. If you die, I’ll die.”
You lose either way — you can’t kill him even if you wanted to.
Slowly, the Corporal lifts his hand to reveal his chest and you analyze the condition he’s in. He stares at you and you mutter, “I’m a doctor first and foremost. I don’t care about anything else.”
You tell him you need to turn his body to see if there’s an exit point of the bullet. Only then does the nurses step in to help and you shout commands at them, flipping him over again, looking at the damage, beginning to work.
Jungkook’s eyes flutter closed, listening to your soothing voice before he’s knocked cold.
//
When he comes to, his vision is blurry and he finds the sunlight of the outside leaking through the fabric of the tent. It’s less chaotic than the night.
Jungkook hears clanging at the end of the room and finds you fiddling with materials. You must notice the heavy weight of his stare since you glance over at him, offering a polite smile. He blinks, and that smile is still there. It wasn’t just his imagination.
“Welcome back, Corporal Jeon. I’m glad to see you’re doing well.”
“Glad to be alive.”
“As am I.”
“Water,” he groans, voice cracking. You nod, quickly moving to grab the few bottles left with a hope the new shipment will arrive soon. He’s assisted in sitting up, feeling the ache in his chest and how he’s been bandaged around with his clothes replaced.
He sips the warm water and it quenches his cracking throat.
“Better?” you ask with a curious stare.
“Yes, very much so.” He hasn’t been taken care of in a very long time, and he’s relieved to wake up in a place where he doesn’t have to worry where the next direction of bullets will come from. Even if it’s just for a brief moment in time. “You saved me.”
“Yes, I did.” There’s a little smile on your features, cheeky as you tease, “At least that’s what it looks like.”
Jungkook muses that you’re pretty up close and in the light where he can see you clearly. He wonders what you look like without dirt smearing your cheeks, without your hair in disarray, without your lip split at the corner. He wonders who hurt you.
He wonders things he shouldn’t wonder for a person like him.
“I thought someone of your kind cou— never mind.”
“What?” You eye him carefully. “You thought someone of my kind couldn’t save you?”
“Why did you save me?”
“As I said, if I didn’t, I would die. I have no choice.” You shift away, looking into the cupboard of supplies with a sigh. You need more bandages. “I was trying to cross the border to find the rest of my family, but I was caught. They took me, but spared me because I was a doctor and they need…my kind. You guys don’t have many doctors willing to be on the front lines, do you?”
“Guess not,” Jungkook groans when he feels a sudden ache in his chest. “How much longer till I can go back?”
“To the field?” Your brows are raised. “There’s enough reason to send you home, corporal.”
“No.” He sighs and lays back down as you help him. “I can’t abandon my men.”
“How noble of you.” You have no reservation in unbuttoning his shirt to check his wound. He wonders if you’re used to seeing men’s bodies if you’re not at all flustered or embarrassed. “Two to three weeks and you can get back on your feet and maybe do heavy lifting.”
“And you’ll take care of me till then?” he inquires, genuinely interested — maybe it’s another thing he shouldn’t wonder.
The corner of your mouth tugs. “If that’s what you want.”
“Thank you for saving me.”
“I told you, I didn’t have a choice.”
“You told me that you’re a doctor first and foremost,” Jungkook says, recalling just last night and surprises himself that he has recollection of it. “What matters is that you saved me, and for that I owe you.”
Owe you?
“I’ve never heard that one before. Sometimes the grateful ones ask me out on a date or for dinner if they’re still alive by the end of the war. Is that what you want, Corporal Jeon?” You check his wound before butting up his shirt again.
And you decide to stay, linger, sitting on the stool for a moment of rest. Jungkook stares at you with his doe eyes. He has remarkably boyish looks if you can see past his injuries.
“If dinner is what you want, then I’ll try to stay alive for it,” he states earnestly, “But is there something you’d like?”
Your tongue rolls in your cheek, doubtful of how you should answer, doubtful of his intentions. But he gazes at you in an intense way that has your face warmer than it should. He doesn’t seem malicious or wary of you anymore. And you decide there’s no reason not to be truthful.
It’s not like he can kill you anyways — not when your hands and skill set saves you from slaughter.
“I…want to leave.”
“Okay,” Jungkook says simply, easily, catching you off guard. “I’ll promise to get you out.”
His hand suddenly lifts, pinky stretched out. It’s an innocent gesture, one that makes you laugh, and you wrap your pinky around his. The pad of your thumbs press together. He smiles softly and you match it. For once, there’s a glimmer of hope on the battlefield.
“I’m a man of my words,” he vows.
A rush of air leaves through your nose and you nod. “Then I’ll be waiting for you, Corporal Jeon.”