Author's Note: Here we are with my first change in point of view for this story! I hope that this change will give me and y'all the chance to understand Shelby a bit more, and to keep up with what's going on while Alena's gone. Just know that if she seems odd or a little off at first, that it's intentional. She's still newly finding her way in this whole mess of a world.  All chapters that will be from Shelby's point of view will be indicted by her name being displayed in bold at the beginning of the chapter. Otherwise, the chapters will be from Alena's point of view.

... SHELBY ...

You would have thought there was an earthquake with how hard Yoongi shook my shoulder to wake me.

"Where's Alena?" He demanded, a panic in his voice as he moved on from me without waiting for an answer. He bypassed Taehyung, who stirred from all the noise to Jungkook, using even more force to rouse him from slumber.

Yoongi barked the same question at him, his next statement bringing us all to full attention.

"I heard a gunshot." He clarified, a hand shooting out so fast to grab Jungkook that we may have missed had we not been watching closely. "Where is she?"

Jungkook's brow pinched together for only a moment, his reply low enough that I craned my head to hear. "The sunrise." He muttered.

And he was off.

None of us were fast enough for Jungkook but we sped after, a line forming with Jimin trailing closest behind him but still out of sight. Our hair was still half mussed, the weapons we grabbed in a hurry out of place from the usual lot we carried.

Jungkook halted before reaching the area Alena most often designated for watching the sun rise, among the opening of bushels where we scavenged for berries. My heart was pounding, a constant, low thrum that hadn't ceased since I'd been outside of Carolus. Or maybe it was there before then too. I'd just become used to pretending when it came to everything, my mind a fortress of fantasy.

I hesitated while the others crowded around him, Namjoon's fingertips were smudged in magenta from the smushed berries he touched. They were almost imprinted into the ground and for the first time I witnessed him look utterly lost.

He didn't move from his spot until the others were well ahead, Yoongi taking over the lead. He held out a finger to trace the path he saw in the dirt, rambling in run-on sentences about spilled berries and multiple shoeprints.

From the rear, the scene became pure mayhem. Yoongi quickly tracked her movements to another, smaller break in the trees, their footsteps hurried when his assessment concluded that there'd been a struggle, a third person's path visible to him. It all looked like debris to me.

"They dragged her." He stated flatly, feet planted into the soil that he followed as if it were a map to Alena's location.

There were a few grumbles among them as they noticed jagged lines in the earth. She fought the entire time, leaving evidence of the attack for them to find. Yoongi lifted a floral printed cloth from the ground, the edges frayed and colors faded. Taehyung stood further to his left, lifting the black band that was always strapped to her arm from where it'd been tossed atop the grass, a few strands of bronze hair hanging from the end as if she'd discarded them at the same time.

Jungkook had just brushed his way to the front, squatting with slumped shoulders and limp hands that reached the ground before Yoongi was moving past him again. It was the fastest I'd ever seen him run, and we followed without question, the course only few could see clearly leading to the edge of the road.

He looked back and forth, turning in a full circle in search of a new destination. Dark eyes settled on tire marks skidded against the pavement, bewilderment crossing our faces as we processed the scene. Alena was gone, and we'd just stumbled upon the last traces of her.

More chaos ensued. At first, it seemed they were all looking to Namjoon for our next move, but even he was clueless. When there was no answer, Yoongi pointed his attention at someone to blame.

Jungkook, already defeated, shrunk away from him. I'd never seen him look so small under Yoongi's rage.

"Why weren't you with her?" Yoongi bellowed. No explanation would have sufficed and he didn't wait for one, the first hit to Jungkook's jaw so forceful that the impact could be heard with the crunch of his mandible beneath knuckles.

He didn't fight back, stumbling against the street and on his rear as Yoongi descended upon him in a mad frenzy. My hands quivered in response to the violence and it took every ounce of will for me to mutter, the words barely audible against the noise of his assault.

"Stop him."

It wasn't a demand, but a plea that thankfully broke the other's state of shock. Taehyung hooked his metal-covered arm around Yoongi's chest, feet planted firmly against the ground to haul him back with Jimin making up for the strength that Yoongi used against them.

Jin yelled at him in their shared language, words that I couldn't understand even if they hadn't been spoken so quickly, stalking toward Jungkook with an outstretched hand.

His offer to help Jungkook to his feet was refused, even as he winced with every movement. When he was upright, knees bent and road burned forearms draped across them, he didn't move.

Blood dribbled down his nose, staining his mouth until it dried. His lips may as well have been fused shut by the fluid, because he didn't utter another word.

We stood around, eyes seeking out a pair that held some indication of our next step. Every set was vacant until one by one we released the hope that someone would be struck with an idea.

First Yoongi, his leave taken more out of anger than anything. Namjoon opened his mouth a couple of times, the start of a word cut off when he realized he held none that would mend our defeat. He was the fourth to return to our base, Taehyung watching him disappear into the woods a few feet behind Jin.

Taehyung took a few steps to bridge the distance between us. He held out his hand, an offer to guide me back to camp.

I looked down to the extension and then back to Jungkook, his face shadowed from where he cowered into the rest of his body. He had to be in pain, physical and emotional that seemed to cancel each other out so that he was completely numb.

"I'm not going to leave you out here alone." I crouched across from him, offering a hand that I knew he'd refuse. I still needed to make the gesture. "We'll stay out here all night but we're not leaving without you." I urged.

He didn't move until I shifted my position to sit next to him on the road, maintaining his silence as he trudged ahead.

I sat on the top of the trailer, observing as Yoongi wrapped his busted knuckles below. His ire was still too great to begin fixing the damage that'd occurred with Jungkook.

The only sounds were the low murmurs of the others from within the camper, incoherent words that piled over one another and preceded by an extended hush. They stalled from their expressions of discouragement or brainstorming. It had to be one or the other, and Namjoon emerged without a solution but with a task to occupy his racing mind.

He stopped by our spread of supplies for a pail, pouring a small amount of water. Medical supplies were slim, so he opted for a semi-clean rag to assess Jungkook's injuries before gathering more.

Namjoon attempted to speak to him, but I could never make out movement from Jungkook's mouth, not even a nod to affirm that he was listening.

No one spoke to me, not a word since that morning when Yoongi shook me awake. It was him who climbed the ladder, rattling from its continuous bearing of our weight. By then, I'd watched them the entire day. Yoongi hadn't stopped moving, giving himself another task once he settled in a couple of feet away from me.

"I'll tighten the screws in the ladder." His directive was the result of speaking aloud, not a true initiation of conversation. I couldn't be sure if his next statement was. "We'll stay here as long as we can. In case she comes back."

"He hasn't moved or spoken." I nodded toward the wide tree trunk Jungkook still sat against. He kept his eyes forward, but it didn't seem that he was truly looking at anything. His eye, swollen and bruised in a deep magenta, reminded me of the second fight I witnessed between him and Taehyung in Carolus.

Gideon's allegiance had been amping them up, feigning boredom with the fight. They wanted entertainment, and that meant brutality.

Taehyung cried out in aggression with Jungkook pinned beneath him, the younger's punches having split the skin below his eye, blood dribbling down his cheek. There were a few gasps among the crowd as he pulled his right arm back, socking Jungkook with the hard metal that masked the place a hand should have been. They followed with cheers that echoed within the enclosed space.

He didn't mean to hurt him that bad, regret filling his eyes as he reached for Jungkook. Gideon's men pulled them apart for a resetting of the stage before resuming. They went on for another hour, back and forth until they were both barely standing from lack of energy and wounds. It wasn't until Jungkook was unable to raise himself from his knees that Taehyung was declared the victor.

That night I asked Gideon to stop the fights and began to explain that they were too barbaric. He made sure my face nearly matched Jungkook's by morning. I never mentioned the fights again.

"He feels guilty." Yoongi's reply brought me from the moment of memory. "He should."

Usually his voice was clipped and held at least a drop of venom. Now, there was the touch of a tremble at his words. We weren't close enough for me to understand the thoughts causing the change.

"You should talk to him." I said without thinking. It wasn't the right thing to say. It felt as if I rarely said the right thing with most of them, so I spent most of the time keeping quiet.

Except with Taehyung. I'd been talking to him from the moment we escaped Carolus. At first it was to keep him awake, my inner dialogue spilling out as a miniscule distraction from the pain he endured from Gideon's gunshot. Then it became something more for us, me forcing him to disclose his every thought to make sure he was conscious. Now, it felt like the one thing that could keep me here.

Yoongi scoffed, shifting to climb back down the ladder. I heard the rusty creak of the nails holding it in place and there I was, with the thought of Alena being gone, dreaming that he loosened each screw instead of tightening them as a consequence of my too soon suggestion.

I had laid back on the roof of the camper, my knees raised in an apex toward the sky. It was too dark to see between the trees growing overhead, closed eyelids providing the same black as the night.

"Come down Shel." A tapping at the toe of my shoe accompanied Taehyung's voice, a mix of a whisper and yell that he called up to me after grunting to reach my foot.

I sat up, peering down and barely able to make out the golden hue of his skin. Out of the ordinary, his structured, boxy smile was absent from his expression.

A large hand that I became more familiar with every day helped guide me down the last few rungs of the ladder. He looked back at Jungkook one more time, a quiet check in that went without so much as a responding glance, before leading us to the opposite edge of our camp where we wouldn't be heard.

"He won't talk to me, to any of us." The ache of his voice made him appear more childlike, eyes expanded from their usual intense gaze and cheeks fuller from where they puffed out in a pout.

"I'm sure he will soon." I replied, chewing at my bottom lip. It was the first time I didn't open up, making him privy to the circulation of anxieties that played on a loop in my mind. Still, his hand completely encapsulated mine. I would have felt somewhere else without it, checked out not in the way of being outside of my body as an observer of pain, but deep inside, in some reality I concocted to protect against it. Even then I wasn't ready to face it, the truth that she was gone, that I didn't know when I would see her next.

I started to imagine her, appearing through the woods at this very moment, maybe a little frazzled but with victory in her eyes at having defeated whoever had taken her. I could even wait until tomorrow, when maybe she'd burst back into the trailer before any of us woke or pop up at the scent of Jin cooking over an open fire.

Taehyung recognized that far away, glazed over look behind my eyes, pulling me back before I could delude myself further.

Neither of us spoke of true, present emotions, choosing to return to memories that still required vulnerability but wouldn't trigger those automatic behaviors that were our unique responses to trauma.

He spent hours telling me about Hobi, who I never had the chance to meet. But when each of them spoke his name, it was with the greatest longing and heartbreak. Taehyung recalled the first weeks of being in lockdown on campus, that they were all incredibly afraid but that he and Hobi shared in the most expression of their fear. Apparently Hobi wasn't shy to the good and bad, though he always brought things back around to the good. It was obviously Taehyung's favorite thing about him, recanting conversations after they lost someone, when they were low on resources, and when Taehyung lost half his arm that gave space for the pain but in the end shed a little light.

I could sense his concern in the silence that followed. He was waiting for me to verbalize something, anything. His hand became lighter, fingertips running along the back of my hand, down my own digits and up again.

"I want to pretend." I pulled my hand away, putting enough space between us that I couldn't feel the realness of him. "Pretending was easy before. I pretended I was a queen. I was married to a king, a king who loved me. Everything before that wasn't real. Until I saw Alena again, nothing was real."

Taehyung didn't judge me for the tears that stained my cheeks or the way my voice rose to a sharp cry. He could have easily shunned me for the desire of my former life, but I think he understood. I didn't want Carolus, or Gideon. I wanted the thing that helped me move through it, something beautiful and perfect.

I studied Taehyung for too long, piecing together an invention of him that was far from the truth. I could shape him as anything. Maybe us as the last two people on Earth. I could find perfection in that, in having so much to discover together, rebuilding the world together. He was perfect enough to be the last.

"Stop." Contact with one hand on my arm, the metal of his other cool against my knee tugging me back. He could see it, the way I looked at him as if he were something else. "Be real with me."

And he was, incredibly real. All of it was too real. Alena being gone again, after I already deceived myself by blurring the lines of actuality until her return. The scars of Gideon's abuse, faded but there so that I was always reminded of every hit, every word meant to tear me down. The undead, the constant threat of an encounter that could easily end in death. Taehyung, who seemed to know me in ways even I didn't, who brought me back from the trappings of my mind. Him, who made me feel everything, fear and joy and connection alike.

At the next sunrise, Jungkook had disappeared from beneath the tree where he'd taken root, without a trace and only the memory of him as evidence he was real.