Disclaimer: Haven't owned, don't own, probably won't ever own. Enjoy!
There's dirt and blood in Yona's hair, and she tries to lift her hand to untangle it. Her clothes are a write-off as well—rips and tears that for once aren't by design—she tries to straighten out her limbs, rearrange her posture. Her body remains limp, like the arms and legs of the dolls she used to play with. Plastic face and nothing behind it.
The thing is, no one would have bothered taking out Yona if she hadn't watched her father die. The rule is that it's not murder if there's no witness. No witness, no evidence. Simple as that.
But Yona Was there. She saw her father shot by her cousin, Soo-won, and all she could do was stare in shock as he tilted the pistol at her, blood splattered across a pale cheek. Her hands trembling, eyes unblinking, heartbeat thudding under her chin.
It's ironic, really. She's spent her whole life toying with the wrong side of the law from the right side of the scale and never thought what it might be like to have the tables turned. Il had always been careful to not let Yona see the price of the riches she was showered in, only letting her take them for granted.
She's about to cry again—but it's as if she's out of tears, and all she has left are these graceless, hiccoughing yells. Then her voice is fading and her body runs cold, limbs numb as she curls in on herself. She and Hak are in a safehouse by the dock tonight, although it's more of a safeshack.
The rain whips against the thin metal roof, its drumming drowning out the crashing of the waves outside. Yona huddles on the dirt, body tired and mind blank, while Hak leans against the wall, posture tense and eyes alert despite his attempt at nonchalance.
"Why did you save me?" she manages to croak out. Her voice is flat, no inflection of a question or hint of curiosity left.
"Because I promised to stay with you." Hak responds.
She wants to scoff at the word promise, but promises are all she has left. She chooses to cling, and whispers Promise in her heart.
"Then, I promise to give you back your freedom one day." It's all she has to offer, now.
This is how she falls asleep, letting the rhythm of the rain wash her mind from grief to black.
A little context, perhaps:
Yona's father used to affectionately call her "Princess," and somehow, the title had stuck among his subordinates. Princess of the Yakuza, they would say; she had had it all. The wealth, the status, the comfort. She walked passed blood-splattered alleyways without flinching, so naïve the sight had never registered in her mind.
There were only two restrictions:
1. She was to never pick up a weapon. While Yona was no stranger to the smell of gun powder, or the sound of a pulled trigger, she was forbidden from using a gun. Princesses did not dirty their hands with the work of others.
2. She could not marry Soo-won. Elegant, charismatic Soo-won, whom everyone thought Il would name as his successor, whom Yona had harboured a long-standing childhood crush on, who became her father's killer and the head of Kouka in one fell blow.
Il had named no successor, simply the provision that Yona be cared for; he wanted her far from the life he had cut his blood and sweat on. Yona wants to laugh—or cry, she's not sure. If only he could see her now, on the run from the four of the five factions of the Kouka gang with only her bodyguard Hak.
Hak, who would have been the head of the Kaze faction if he hadn't decided to follow her.
Yona doesn't remember waking up. Her days and nights fade in and out of one another, her mind replaying a constant loop of the bullets slamming into her father then staring up at the still smoking gun. She struggles to think beyond, Why why why.
She remembers Hak confronting Soo-won, coming in to check up on her and finding someone he thought was his best friend with the cold eyes of a killer. The way Hak's arm had trembled as he aimed his gun at Soo-won, while Soo-won's steadily pointed at her.
Then, Soo-won's cold command of "Kill them" to the guards Yona had thought were loyal to her father, as if it was nothing to dispatch the two people who would have done anything for him. Hak fighting his way out and clutching her wrist as they ran through the streets of Kouka, the rain mixing with the tears on their faces, warm salt and cool drops. They had both lost more than Il, that day.
She fingers the cold tines of her hairpin—a lasting memento of what might have been. Purple blossoms on a gold pin, wonderfully impractical and deliriously delicate. One of the beads dropped off while they were running, and for whatever reason, it bothers Yona more than anything else. She wants even a final bit of perfection to remember.
It's a week of a constant cycle of memories. Of living like a shell of herself, just basic commands of eat and sleep and survive. She spends the days catatonic, staring at walls, and sleeps living nightmares again and again.
And when Yona finally thinks the world has stopped shaking itself apart around her, someone finds them and any sense of stability is shattered again.
They get ambushed when Hak is out of bullets. Because of course they do, no one ever said life played fair.
The only warning they get is an impassioned shout- "Red hair!" and then Hak is shoving her into a dumpster, never mind that there's coffee trickling down Yona's back and her cheek is smushed up against a half-eaten box of noodles, and pushing a knife into her hands.
"Stay hidden." He orders, and then he's off.
"Where's the Princess?" a voice asks, and Yona knows that voice. It's Kang Tae-jun, second son of the head of the Hi faction.
He had never really been a bad person, per se, just an immature boy with a strange fixation for her. Apparently, he had been convinced that they were destined to get married as a royal couple of the triads and rule the five factions together. Yona had thought he was annoying.
(what she wouldn't give to be taken back to those trivial days)
Still, Tae-jun meant the Hi faction had found them, and she's right as he beckons, and men approach from both ends of the alley to surround Hak.
There's a tense silence before Hak exchanges "Don't know. Sure you weren't hallucinating, Nobody?"
It's an old insult, from when Tae-jun had first approached Yona and she had had no clue who he was. And so had pretended he didn't exist.
Hak's tone is light, but Yona can see his clenched fist, the way his ankles are lifted just slightly off the ground—she knows he's calculating how to take everyone down. Hak's not called the Thunder Beast for nothing. Yet, she feels inexplicably guilty because she knows he could escape without her—hell, Hak could have been out of Kouka by now without her dragging him down—but here he is, fighting to protect her.
Tae-jun flushes in anger, then barks out a sharp command. Instantly, the men stand to attention. There is a shift of fabric, shine of metal—Yona sees switchblades, crow bars, metal pipes. She hears sirens in the distance though, which thankfully means no guns. On the other hand, Hak is now reduced to the two knives Yona knows he keeps in his shoes, and a bent metal pipe.
One of the men takes a step forward. Hak grabs his ankle and flings him into the nearest wall, stealing his crow bar in one fluid motion.
"Well?" He asks.
The rest of the men yell and charge.
Yona watches from the slit in the dumpster's door. At first, it looks like Hak might win. He's insanely strong, almost unstoppable. But it's Almost unstoppable, and there's 20 men there and although Hak swings and slams and some go down, more and more keep going after him and Hak is starting to bleed and there are less men falling now with more coming, always more. Tension coils tight in Yona's limbs and she grips the pocketknife Hak had given her.
Then Hak is stumbling, and she doesn't think twice before springing from her spot towards the nearest man.
It's desperate, it's futile, but here she is hiding in a garbage dumpster while Hak bleeds out in front her from god knows how many stab wounds. All she knows is she Can't let Hak die, he's all he has left and she promised to pay him back, she promised, and he promised to stay with her and they won't fail each other because of some stupid upstart from the Hi faction.
She lunges forward, hitting something, and oh god, the blood is warm and it's leaking out from around the knife, like a rotten fruit left out too long on a sunny day. The man goes down with a surprised grunt, though, and that's the opening she needs to dash out and shove Tae-Jun away from Hak.
He tries to grab her and tugs at her hair instead, pulling it out from the scalp. Her hair, red as dawn and forever in tangles. Her hair, which Soo-won had called beautiful. Her ridiculously long, impractical hair. She reaches out with the knife and hacks it off, whirling to face Tae-jun.
"Don't. Touch. Him." The words hiss out and for a second Yona forgets she's one girl armed with a pocket knife against a dozen men. It's just Protect Hak, and doing anything to achieve it.
Tae-jun gulps, and Yona thinks Good, but it doesn't change the fact that she's a girl with no training while Tae-jun is the son of the head of Hi and has probably been handling knives since he could walk despite how stupid he is with them.
It doesn't matter, she'll go down fighting whichever way she can. She wipes her hand on her pants and grasps the knife again, letting her eyes dart around the alleyway. There are exits here, ones she knows like the back of her hand, growing up on make-believe adventures and escapades. Breathe, Yona. In, out.
Her blood is pounding in her ears and her hair lies in tatters around her and her grip on the knife is probably wrong, but she'll be damned if she freezes up. Never again, she had told herself when her father died, and she meant it.
Then, a hand claps on her shoulder. Startled, she spins and finds Hak standing, looking for all the world like he hasn't been fighting for his life.
"I thought I told you to stay hidden, Princess."
"Excuse me if it looked like you were going to die!"
"Please, Princess. Like they could take me." Hak smirks, but there's a pained grimace hidden behind it.
"Hak…" She says, hesitant. Almost reaches out to touch him. She stills when his hand brushes her own, gripping it for a second, then letting go.
"It's ok. Promise, remember?"
Yona nods. Tae-jun seems to be suffering from some sort of aneurysm: his brow is twitching and his mouth gaping.
"How are you even standing?!" He asks Hak.
"Just can't keep a guy down, can you, Nobody?" Hak jeers. Yona feels him take her hand again and squeeze it three times. An old code from when they used to run away from Joo-doh's lectures.
Run in three seconds.
Yona counts down in her head: 3…2…1!
She dashes down the alley while Hak flings a metal pipe at Tae-jun's face before turning and following her, knocking aside anyone who tries to stop them. Thankfully, Tae-jun is surprised enough that he doesn't recover until they're out of sight.
As they rest, exhausted and battered in an abandoned drugstore, Yona lets herself think.
She's a princess, or she isn't. There are no two ways about it. She can continue on the run, forever, always hiding, always wondering if she might wake up to bullets in her flesh and her cousin standing over her. Or she can fight.
She mourns, briefly, for what could have been. For hairpins that glittered under the sun instead of bullets in the smoking wake of a shot. For laughter with nothing hidden behind it. For the girl that died when her father did.
Then says—
"Teach me how to shoot a gun, Hak."
He's so startled he chokes on the water he's drinking and for a second Yona's afraid she's killed him. Imagine that, the invincible Thunder Beast felled by the very thought of delicate, fragile, Yona wanting to picking up a weapon. He coughs for a few seconds then hacks out a very faint "What?"
"You heard me."
"Your father wouldn't have wanted—"
"My father is dead, Hak, and I'm not about to end up the same way."
Hairpins and pinwheels and daffodils burnt up in angry orange. Yona may not know much, but she is the rightful heir of Kouka. This is her kingdom to rule, and she can't do that if she's dead
A/N: Still alive, still writing~ might add more to this someday.