A/N: I know a lot of people are Soo-Won haters, and to be honest, I was for a long time, also... until somewhat recently in the manga. Contemplating the actual politics of the manga-verse made me a little more understanding of Soo-Won's motives, and I honestly don't think he is a horrible guy.

Angsty characters always inspire me, and there's no freakin way he isn't angsty. So my fingers hit the keyboard and the rest is history. Hope you enjoy!

[opening lyrics tweaked to a male version of "The Tower" by Vienna Teng.]

He carries the act so convincingly
The fact is sometimes he believes it
That he can be happy the way things are
Be happy with the things he's done

Reach out, but hold back –
Where is safety?
Reach out and hold back –
Where is the one who can change me?

I feel like I'm the flower trying to bloom in snow
The danger and the power, the friend and the foe.

.

It has always struck him as odd, the familiarity of the sickening lurch he feels in his darkest dreams – the slight squish and give of flesh pierced by his sword, a surprising surrender that he's seen a thousand times, and yet somehow the tangible sensation of skin and fatty tissues and muscle giving way to steel had been different. It had been real, so real, and yet so intimate – just him and his revenge and his uncle and the moon through the window, the subtle ooze and warmth of viscous blood.

The connection had been unsettling, uncanny as the crimson stain spread and the light faded from Emperor Il's eyes – two men so much closer in the final moments of life than they ever had been for the eighteen years they had been uncle and nephew. It had just been them, truth and death and somehow, understanding in the dead of that night.

Until it hadn't been just them, until everything had gone wrong, until a movement in the periphery was identified by the the thundering of his heart as Yona. And it had been a foreign rhythm that began drumming through his veins – pure, unadulterated panic. Because that hadn't been what was meant to happen, not at all; Soo-Won was no simpleton, he had always had a plan, he had always had it all under control until… Yona.

For years, he had watched her play by her own rules, but play she had, all innocence and pure-hearted self-centeredness, and it had been enough. But in the flicker of the lamplight, she knelt by her father and she cried – they were not the tears of repression, they were not the tears of a wish ungranted – he had seen the paths those tears cut across the roundness of her still-childlike cheeks a thousand times. This time they were tears of incomprehension and subconscious horror, disbelief and love warring in her face.

Soo-Won had never been blind, he knew his cousin as well as he knew Hak, as well as he knew himself. He had always known that she fancied herself in love with him. So his ignorance had been an act in verisimilitude, but only that, prompted by his desire to never hurt her. The coup had been many years in the making, and he always knew that when it came, he could not afford to be attached. He had only wished to protect her, to allow Yona to retain some of that near-narcissistic naivete that meant she had not yet had to experience the harsh truth, the raw pain of the real world.

Really, that was partly his own selfishness; they were each twisted and selfish in their own ways, and all the same trying to pretend that they weren't, placating their consciences with lies and soft smiles and a heart-wrenching wish to just go back to how things were. Soo-Won knew that his plan – the whole picture, the real plan – was motivated by a desire to benefit the greater good, to strengthen their country, to make things better. It was a noble cause, really, he told himself, he heard from his supporters, he whispered in the mirror. And yet, standing bathed in moonlight while his uncle was bathed in his own blood, Soo-Won had known: this was undeniably selfish, this was murder, this was revenge.

And so, by the time that Yona barreled in with her doe-eyed incomprehension and tears, it was too late. Everything would be different now, and Soo-Won found his head filled with a thousand thoughts, all narrowed down to the one instinct that had always been just beneath his lust for revenge – protect Yona.

Playing the power-hungry villain had come easier to him than he'd hoped, though the scent of offal and the sense of death had finally begun to weigh on him in those moments. His words of contempt for Emperor Il rang true; spitting the truth like venom at the princess while she trembled before him felt cathartic, a relief. It had been a strange twist of emotions that struggled in his chest – the desire to amplify his misdeeds, to become the nightmare, all to motivate Yona to run, run, run, and somewhere, deep down, the sting of guilt at finally breaking her heart for good.

There had never been any intention to kill Yona, just to scare her, despite the stench of carnage and betrayal that poisoned the air in the palace that night. Soo-Won had no doubts – Hak would come to her, Hak would save her… and Hak would hate him. It was truth like a knife stuck deep in his gut, the certainty of crossing that line, of doing the unforgivable, of never being able to go back, never. But his resolve would not waver, and there was a certain sort of comfort in the notion of forcing them together this way – he'd felt an inappropriate giddiness bubble in his chest, like some kind of blood-stained matchmaker.

Earlier that day, when Hak had given his blessing to the idea of a union between his two best friends, Soo-Won had smiled through his guilt, as he always did. And now, it was free, he was free; this was his twisted gesture of approval to Hak and Yona. He knew how it would play out – he was the evil man who had murdered her father and broken her heart, and Hak would be there for her, as he always had been, except this time she would be able to see it, to appreciate it, and recognize the simple reality that Soo-Won had known all along – Hak and Yona belonged together. He was always the unequal part in their equation, the odd one out in the calculations of fate; destined to watch, frustrated, from the sidelines as they danced around each other, around him.

He had loved Yona, but it was a strange and perverse kind of love, the kind that he had always resented because it forced him to be who she thought him to be instead of who he was. There was never a time where he had felt she could handle the darkness that he hid beneath ethereal blond hair and soft-spokenness and angelic, light-eyed smiles. She wanted her Soo-Won, a prince in regal robes with gentle hands and a pure heart, and that Soo-Won he was not. He was a boy who had learned early in life to become fluid, a fleeting image of whoever he was desired to be, but it was always only skin-deep. After his father had been killed, after the wool had been pulled from his eyes, beneath his placating surface shadows grew and rage festered, and these were things that he knew Yona could not understand.

Now, as his plans moved forward and his nightmares still plagued him, he wondered if he had always been fated to end up alone, playing a different kind of part – ruthless leader, immobile figurehead, monument of a king. It was unsettling, the emotion that contemplating his solitude stirred up; he felt restless, uneasy. He had shown so many faces to so many different people, it was as if he didn't even know which one of them, if any, was real anymore. There was a subtle twinge of some wish or despondency – and maybe something he could not or would not name – in the cartilage of his ribs when he pondered such a bleak future, and when, unbidden, the image of a girl came to mind: because it was not Yona.

Almost worse than his nightmares were these dreams of happy endings. His imagination did not serve up tendrils of red hair or amethyst eyes; there was a waterfall of hair, blue-black, and beauty that was not uncanny in the way Yona's was. Lili was a reflection of her tribe – still waters that ran deep with a force that could not be easily swayed. It was the torturous dangle of almost hope that had struck him when they'd met, for she had not known who he was or what he had done or what he was still prepared to do. He was just a man, and it had felt so good to be a hair's breadth from freedom.

Each time he woke from such a dream he reminded himself that she was still young, he was still "Majesty" and there was still so much for him to do, and then so much to atone for, eventually. Soo-Won knew he should never drag her down with him, should never reach out to taint, to touch her – being king was a different sort of prison, with its own sets of restrictions. But thoughts of her, serene and understanding, reaching out to him through the bars like some kind of angel, betrayed his logic in those nights. He indulged himself in silent hope in the dark, that maybe she could be the one to balance out his heart, to wash away the tired facades and care for him, the real him. She is soft but strong, soothing and supportive, and he aches to let himself get swept away by her current.

But when the sun comes up, he is the king and he is the villain and he will not lose his resolve. So hopes of happiness and love are only like a morning mist that fades away in the rays of dawn, and he will bury his dreams deep down, praying secretly in his heart of hearts that one day, she will find them.