-', ❝(030: 𝘁𝗵𝗶𝗿𝘁𝘆) ꒱ ↷👽🛸❞

"서른"

TIME IS AN ODD THING. Aspen always always considered time to be a good thing, a chance for you to grow, to get better, to be better, to forget old mistakes and to look forward towards the future.

Now, Aspen was a prisoner of time. With time, the pain only grew. The mourning loss of her lover was something...that debilitated her. It was the final blow to her already wounded heart. Now the remaining pieces were unrecognizable.

The pain didn't grow alone, no, it had a friend in it's wake. A baby.

It was still small. Only the size of a lime at this stage the doctor tells her. There's only a small, subtle swell of her stomach now, still completely unnoticeable if you didn't know she was pregnant.

He had left her pregnant. Guess he was human enough to impregnate her.

It was hard trying to explain where Taehyung went to the others. At first, she simply excused him from their meet ups with something like work, or that he had other plans, but that could only work for so long.

"He left." She finally told them and almost immediately, the room fell into silence. They all stared at her. Pity, sympathy, shared sadness. She told them that it wasn't his fault, that she told him to leave when he was the one who wanted to stay.

Jin was the only one she told her pregnancy about. She swore him to secrecy, she made him promise. She could only hide it for so long, but she wanted to tell the others at the right time. She needed to find the right way to tell them so she didn't make Taehyung out to be some deadbeat who walked out after finding out.

She didn't even know until a week after she left.

Fuck. How had her life so quickly gone to shit?

Aspen stood in the kitchen, a gentle hand caressing her stomach while she made herself some tea to help relax. She would never get used to silence. She once craved it, but now, she despised it with all her being. Nothing would ever be the same.

It was just her and Yeontan, just as it's always been, even with the small blip of Taehyung in her many years alone.

It truly was a day like any other. Winter was coming to an end and it was beginning to get warmer outside. She didn't feel that anything was different from what it normally was.

She had stopped looking for Taehyung to return a long time ago. For hours on end, she would sit in the backyard and simply wait to see if her lover would return. It was wishful thinking, really. She was the one who told him to leave and there she sat waiting for him to delibrately go against her wishes.

Taehyung was always so obedient.

But maybe he wasn't.

Yeontan was rather quiet for these past few days. He never barked unless something dangerous was around. It was a very sudden shift in the small dog's mood. He was sleeping under the coffee table and then only seconds later, he bolted towards the door, barking like crazy. Yeontan leaped and scratched and barked at the back door.

"Tannie, he isn't here anymore, leave it alone." Aspen dismissed the dog's behavior. Hope that he would return left her entirely about a month ago. There was no point in keeping up hope for something that's hopeless.

But Yeontan continued barking, clawing at the door with his tiny paws. He insisted. Aspen sighed and rolled her eyes and in the brief glance she caught of the outdoors, her eyes caught the going of the sun reflecting off of something metallic.

Her heart seemed to stop dead in her chest and for a moment, just a moment, hope sprouted within her soul once more. She could only think that she was setting herself up for disappointment. It was probably the fence or something, but she couldn't stop herself from trying.

Aspen crept carefully over to the door, closing her eyes in fear that maybe she had gotten way too in over her head. Her hand found the knob and slowly, she twisted it.

It was better to rip the band-aid off quickly, she figured, so Aspen decided to throw the door open and pry her eyes ajar. She thought that her heart stopped then, but no, it mere skipped a beat compared to what she felt now.

Taehgung stood there in the middle of the yard, standing in front of a large metal ball, the very one that had taken him away 3 months prior. He looked just the same, long black hair, astute features, even the same clothes he left with.

Aspen felt as though she couldn't breathe, like the world was caving in at itself. Her sight became tunnel vision, only able to focus on him. "T-Tae." She stumbled back, horrified as if she had seen a ghost.

Taehyung smiled at her, the same charming, endearing boxy smile. "Aspen." He could see the tears swelling in her eyes at the sight of him. She thought he was dead, that he'd never come back, that she'd be left alone with their child.

She broke out in sobs, crying just as hard as the day he got into that ship and left. Her hand grasped the doorframe and her other was placed over her mouth. Her eyes had to be deceiving her. He couldn't possibly be here.

Taehgung was the one to approach her, to gather her in his arms and hold her once again. He cupped her face in his hands, caressing her wet cheeks to wipe away her tears. "Don't cry. Please don't cry." He pleaded with her.

Don't cry? How could she not cry. He was gone for 3 fucking months. He left her with a child. How the fuck could he say that for being gone for months?

Aspen slapped his chest, shoving him away from her. "Don't fucking cry? You were gone for three fucking months! I thought you were never coming back!" She looked at him as if he were insane. "You were gone for so long and then you show up out of nowhere unannounced and expect me not to cry?" It was her hormones getting to her, making her so sensitive. She should be happy that he's back, that he's here with her.

Taehgung's brows furrowed with confusion. "Three months?" He shook his head. "That is not right, it has only been 3 days." He never accounted for the the fact that time moved differently in space, especially moving as fast as they were to get back to A'shauu.

Aspen shook her head. "Three months, Tae. Three whole months without you. Do you even know what I've been through?" She had started crying again. She felt his warm hands on his her face, desperately trying to wipe away her tears. "I'm sorry. I didn't want to leave you." He truly didn't. It broke his heart to leave her there on Earth. He cried his very heart out.

"What are you doing here? Why are you back." She spoke into the crook of his neck, taking in the warm scent that count to his skin. It soothed her in a way.

He shouldn't be here. Namjoon made it clear that someone would come find and kill him if he didn't return home. It was better to know that they'd never be together again but he was still alive than that he had been executed.

"Namjoon brought me back." Taehyung pet her head gently, placing gentle kisses everywhere he could reach from this position. "He made a plan so that I can stay with you. We can be together."

Taehyung sat at the back of the ship, curled up to himself as he cried his heart out, unable to stop no matter how much he wanted to. His heart aches for home, his real home, Aspen.

Namjoon sat at the front, navigating the stars as Taehyung wallowed in pain and suffering.

"Taehyung. Please stop leaking water from your eyes, it's unsettling." Namjoon told him, not knowing what crying was as he had never experienced someone leaking water from their eyes before. Was that a human thing that he had learned? He wasn't sure.

Taehyung wanted to stop, but he couldn't. He was a mess, wanting nothing more than to have Aspen in his arms again. This was truly the worst pain imaginable. Worse that any physical pain there could be. To be seperated from a lover was...hell. It was absolute hell.

Namjoon sighed, turning in his chair to look at Taehyung whose face was beat red and whose eyes were puffy and irritated. Everything hurt so much.
Especially his chest.

His heart.

Namjoon looked back ahead. This was sad to see. Taehyung had always been sort of an oddball, a dreamer. He got attached to things quickly in ways that others didn't understand. He was fasinated by things that no one else was.

But Namjoon had never seen Taehyung so broken up before. Over a human, another thing he had grown attached to.

As they continued forward, inching closer and closer to their home, Namjoon rethought his decision. Maybe he should let Taehyung be, figure out a way for him to live on Earth, uninterrupted, peacefully. He wouldn't do well on A'shauu. They would have his head for leaving the planet unauthorized, or at least, he would go into slave labor. That's the best case scenario. Or become a designated stud, whose sole purpose in life was to breed and create offspring.

"Taehyung." Namjoon called out to him. Taehyung didn't say anything, he just sniffled and coughed and cried some more. Finally, after a few seconds, he answered. "What do you want?"

"I think I have a way for you to go home."

Just then, Namjoon came out of the vessel, hopping down onto the solid, green, Earth.

"Taehyung, if you do this you will never be able to come back. You will be human and you will remain here for the rest of you mortal life. Is that what you truly want?" Namjoon asked. This was Taehyung's last chance. He could go with Namjoon or stay here with Aspen for the rest of his life.

And he chose Aspen without hesitation, without a second thought.

He'd always choose Aspen.

"I'm staying here. I don't care if I can never go back. This is where I want to be, where I belong." He kissed Aspen's head. He'd rather die before he left her.

Namjoon closed his eyes and nodded, accepting the situation as it was. "It that is what you want." He sighed, turning and got back into his ship. Namjoon turned back to look at Taehyung just before he got in.

"I hope you are happy, that you will enjoy the rest of your life here."

Taehyung nodded in thanks as Namjoon got into his chair, the ball closing back up before it floated upwards and shit into the sky with a strong gust of wind.

Taehyung was free. He was human now and forever.

"What did you do? What deal did you make?" Aspen asked him, panicked that he may have done something that he would regret.

"Namjoon explained that he'll tell the government that he had found me dead on an abandoned planet after I crashed. They'll think I'm dead so they won't come for me, but I can never go back."

Aspen sniffled. "But that's your home Tae." She couldn't ask him to choose her over his home, over everything he's ever known. But she didn't have to ask, Taehyung chose to stay with her by his own free will.

Taehyung shook his head. Oh how wrong she was.

"You're my home. You're my everything and I love you. I regret nothing if I can be with you." The tips of his fingers find her chin, tilting her head upwards. He dipped down and pressed his lips against hers. The first time they've kissed in months (or days depending on who you're asking).

It was full of love and passion, desperation to be one again. Taehyung's hands found her waist, pulling her impossibility closer. Lips meet teeth and tongue as desire overtook them

There was something different about Aspen, besides the fact that her hair was now different, shorter than before. Something about her had changed exponentially, but he couldn't see what was different with his eyes.

Taehyung pulled away from her, eyes scanning over her body in search of that was wrong with her. "You are different. What happened? There's something..." His eyes finally landed upon her stomach. "There is a lifeform living within you." He looked up at her, eyes wide and scared. "Are you hosting a parasite?"

Aspen couldn't help but smile, sniffling softly. "No Tae." She chuckled with tender dismay. She placed her hand on her stomach. "I'm pregnant."

Taehyung looked perplexed at first, looking down at her stomach for a long while. "Pregnant? As in...we procreated?"

Aspen nodded. "We have a baby on the way." She told him with a teary-eyed smile. Taehyung looked...amazed by the news, stunned even. He blinked a few times, staring at her with disbelief.

"Here." She reached out and took Taehyung's hand, bringing it to her stomach for him to feel. He placed his hand flat against her womb, just less than an inch away from his child.

He made that.

Taehyung had created life. The two of them created life out of love.

Aspen watched as he got down on his knees before her, eye to eye with her stomach. He was bright-eyed, a wide grin displayed across his lips as he looked at her. His hands settled at her waist as he drew her closer.

"Hello, little human." Taehyung whispered to the fetus as if it could hear him. "I am your...dad. I can't wait to meet you when you are a seperate being from your mother. I can already tell that I will love you very much." He kissed her stomach with a tender smile.

His ears picked up the sound of sniffling and looked up to see that Aspen was crying once more. Taehyung tilted his head with curiosity, carefully standing back on his own two feet. "Why are yoy crying?" His question was delivered in a gentle tone.

Aspen shook her head, dismissing herself. "You're too fucking cute." She brushed her fingers through his hair, pushing it out of the way so she could see him clearly. "Thank you...for coming back."

Taehgung could never leave her.

"I'll always come back to you."

*.✧ Kᴀʏs Eɴᴅɪɴɢ Nᴏᴛᴇs

I changed this chapter heavily. I actually edited the original chapter and decided that this would be better, where some time passed and Aspen was pregnant. I just thought this would be a better/more interesting version. Tell me what you thing.

Thank you all for reading. I hope you guys enjoyed and I wish you all a wonderful day/night.

사랑해

~Kay ＼(ﾟｰﾟ＼)