It was not easy.

Right from the first step, when Taehyung told him of his true identity, tearfully under a brimming full moon, Jeongguk thought his heart was going to burst. Too much to digest, an Operator instead of the typical visitor he always thought Taehyung was, someone dying and ready to be passed over, so they could be together forever.

"San Junipero is ending. But I love you, Gukkie, I didn't understand love until I met you. And I will fight for us to be together, with everything I got, if you'll have me? If you'll trust me?"

There were tears everywhere, big salty drops that seeped into their kisses, and ripped open his non-existent heart.

How could love hurt so damn much, when you aren't even alive anymore.

Nothing was easy from that point on, but Jeongguk knew what he had to do.

He wanted to survive, to feel again, to gain his humanity back little by little. Whatever the past held, whatever the future may be, he wanted to experience it all. With Taehyung.
Taehyung.

He recites the name on his mind carefully, as if he's afraid to forget.

Never want to forget.

Whatever it takes for them to be together, he's willing to do it. He's already gone through eternity, what's a bit of temporary, fleeing pain. It's not like he can die again, right?

Wrong. He forgets, that memories are tricky things. They linger once returned, night and day, never loosening their grips on the mind.

Taehyung warned him that when he removes the restrictions on his file, the memories may rush back, and it might be overwhelming.

Jeongguk went through that moment alone, sitting in his little seaside abode, with the forever blooming rose garden and the always sunny blue sky. He blinked, and when he opened his eyes again, he screamed out in agony.

Everything rushed back, every single piece of vivid memory. The years of loneliness in a hospital bed, the slow but torturous spiral downwards as the world neglected and forgot his dying self, and the debilitating fear of never seeing his father again after each and every one of his visits - it was all too much, exploding in his head and clamoring to be heard, demons of the past threatening to take over his sanity.

When Taehyung finally rushed back to hold him in his arms, Jeongguk was a sobbing mess curled up on the floor, incoherent and inconsolable.

He mourned for a long time, for the loss of his father, the disappearing of the world as he remembered, for all the pain and sorrow that was stolen from him for a century.

It's as if he died again and suffered through everything again, just to be whole, again. There were moments when he thought he wouldn't make it, gaze disappearing into the infinite horizon, mind drifting away, desperate for an instance of of detached serenity. But each time, he would feel Taehyung's embrace on him tightening just a little, or a kiss grazing by his skin, softly, lovingly, bringing him back, safely where he belonged.

Taehyung stayed with him for a week, at the risk of hurting himself. The living is not meant for San Junipero, saved for the occasional timed visits. The mind cannot stay away from the physical body for too long, it causes separations, confusions that threaten to cease the functioning of his physical body.

But Taehyung stayed, and they got through it together, eventually.

The next step, is much, much harder.