To Catch Heaven In Your Hands

by debbiechan

Sword Saint and Earth Lord, otherwise known as Gwang-taek and Ga-ok, are dead and learning to navigate new realms. Can they, as ghosts, affect which one of two possible futures for Yeo Woon and Baek Dong-soo will come to pass? What is the purpose of the Afterlife, or is it as intangible a realm as Love? Pairings: Gwang-taek/Ga-ok, Dong-soo/Woon, many other characters

To Catch Heaven in Your Hands

by debbiechan

A supplementary story to my Dong-soo/Woon fic "Sanctuary," but it stands alone. Sword Saint and Earth Lord, otherwise known as Gwang-taek and Ga-ok, are dead and learning to navigate new realms. Can they, as ghosts, affect which one of two possible futures for Yeo Woon and Baek Dong-soo will come to pass? What is the purpose of the Afterlife, or is it as intangible a realm as Love? This story is a re-framing of the series' events from other perspectives and includes much canon material.

No warnings. Pairings: Gwang-taek/Ga-ok, Dong-soo/Woon

1.

"I'm sorry," sang a cool Spring breeze. "I didn't care enough for our child when I was alive."

"I'm sorry," moaned the low wind from a hillside far away. "I could not save you."

So would the voices of Gwang-taek and Ga-ok speak sadly to one another for a while until they grew used to being dead. Life's regrets are not easy to abandon, not even in Death. Eventually, as they grew used to their bodiless-ness, the joy of being one another's soul companions overcame some if not all sorrow.

Death like Life was mysterious. Ga-ok felt full of longing, Gwang-taek less so, and tried to comfort her.

One day Gwang-taek would propose that the Afterlife, like Life itself, might be determined by both one's actions and by the whim of the gods. But who knew? Possibilities fanned out like the grasses in a field when the winds blew hard. Would he and his love be together as man and wife one day? Would they see old friends who had died? Would they ever reincarnate—did that matter now? They were the wind; their love soared above the world of the Living.

As in Life, Gwang-taek and Ga-ok were together but not always. Much of the time they blew in different directions. What they had wished for in Life had come true; they appeared to have no true burdens now, no more than the wind—yet when they swept close to the earth, they could stir hairs on the heads of their loved ones and watch Jin-joo, Dong-soo, Sa-mo, so many others walk through their mortal lives. Although the earthly realm was separated from the world of the Dead by a thin veil, the actions of the living walked against that barrier, pushing crosswinds into the space where ghosts flew. Gwang-taek and Ga-ok could see the living, but there came a moment when they discovered that they each saw different futures for their loved ones.

"I want to see our daughter married," Ga-ok said to Gwang-taek one fine morning that they were dancing together. Not kendo or a lover's dance, not sword against sword, neither heart against heart. Two winds had caught one another and were carrying tufts of dandelions for miles.

Gwang-taek laughed. "You can't see it? Look, she's with him now. They are the funniest couple, and Dong-soo still ignores her a good deal, but she seems very happy."

"What? I see Jin-joo-ah with the kind painter," Ga-ok murmured, butterflies on her lips. "She's unhappy. I want her to learn his true heart. If she can do that, then she won't know the suffering I did."

Right then Gwang-taek understood that he and his love saw separate time-lines. Had they earned those abilities because of how they had lived? Could they affect the world of the Living somehow with what they knew?

"Ga-ok-ah, I wonder why we are meant to see things so differently. Can you see the past clearly like I can? When I look across the lives of those we loved, I see Jin-joo so sad because she loved Dong-soo, and he would not take the time to read her heart. Right there, she is pining by the stream and washing his stinky socks because Jang-mi made her—I forget why. Dong-soo, that knucklehead. He looks right past her and squints into the sky. Do you remember that boy? Before he asked me to train him. He was so clueless."

The force of Gwang-taek's laugh made the young trees in a meadow bend.

"I remember that boy. He was in love with the samini the way a child might look at the shape of a cloud and say there, I see the Chinese character for love. Oh, Gwang-taek, I'm sorry I didn't return that girl home safely. What was her name? Ji-sun? I promised you I would save her, but I didn't. I kept everyone a prisoner in Heuksa Chorong along with myself. I'm sorry I didn't return the other one to you either—the child in your care, the son of Yeo Cho-sang. I told him he had to take charge of the assassin guild when Chun left to go play some game tracking down fighters."

"Stop it now, Ga-ok-ah. Stop apologizing."

"Maybe you can forgive me, but when can I forgive myself? Yeo Woon was like me. Like me, he lived under Chun's boot. I helped keep Woon a prisoner. I passed on the former Sky Lord's legacy of pain to that child. He died because of me." Ga-ok waved her hand, and the wheat in a field bowed in reverence. "In this field here. "He died in Dong-soo's arms. He died because I failed you. I failed you so many times."

"Ga-ok-ah, is that what you really see? He's not dead. He's a Royal guard. He's in the palace living with Dong-soo. Ga-ok-ah, how can you believe you caused such sad things to happen? Ga-ok-ah….?"

She was gone. Gwang-taek did not despair; a ghost did not breathe a last breath; the wind never died. He would simply wait for his love to return.

For some reason, Chun had never shown his soul here though.

The sky was empty of all other ghosts (or was it that he and Ga-ok could not see them?), but for some reason, since arriving, Gwang-taek kept expecting Chun to show. Life had been unthinkable without the three of them in constant agitation, but here—no Chun.

No matter if Chun's heart had returned to him before his death, as Gwang-taek believed, and even though the Sky Lord had been loved, that crazy, drunk, manipulative bastard had not earned a place in this sky, the one where Ga-ok and Gwang-taek blew. The sky that Chun had built for himself had been a Heaven built on skill and ingenuity but also on lies, especially the lie that Ga-ok belonged to him. When Chun's Heaven had crumbled, it crushed him. Where are you, old friend? If the gods are just, I will never see you again. If the gods are just, I will always miss you.

Gwang-taek blew far away, amused himself with watching the living. He was training himself to distinguish past, present, and future. From where he wafted now, there was not much distinction—time was a blurry concept. Still, the past was the past, and that's why he, Gwang-taek was no longer alive. His beloved disciple, Dong-soo, walked in the palace courtyard with a notebook. The present? The future? If there were any other future for Dong-soo, it would not make Gwang-taek any less happy to be the wind on this fine morning. There was no imagining being disappointed in Dong-soo in any circumstance. Baek Dong-soo had been born to surpass his master in every way.

"These drawings look like crap." Dong-soo thumbed through the notebook. "But wait until Hong-do redoes them. I'll get him to do more live sketches tomorrow."

Dong-soo wore a military cap with the insignia of the Royal guard on the front of the jeonrip and on the sash of the vest. Next to Dong-soo strode Yeo Woon, in an identical blue uniform. Gwang-taek smiled because Woon's hair was loose and flowing instead of bound in a topknot, but other than that, the young man looked as proper as anyone else within the palace. "I wanted to care for you as my own, Woon," Gwang-taek whispered across the courtyard, and Yeo Woon's long black hair blew across his face. "Did you make your own destiny and come home? You wouldn't let me help you. I'm sorry that I—"

At that moment Dong-soo and Woon exchanged glances and smiles, and Gwang-taek wondered. Was it you, Dong-soo? Did you do for him what this poor uncle could not? And Gwang-taek again thought about how he could not save Ga-ok from Heuksa Chorong.

One night in the world of the Living Jin-joo cried, and the force of her emotions cut across the veil of the Afterlife and sent crosswinds between Gwang-taek and Ga-ok.

"What's the matter, my child?" cried Ga-ok in the thunderstorm. The wind broke twigs of trees and knocked over shovels and hoes. She sent rain smashing against the door of Jin-gi's house.

Another wind stirred leaves in muddy puddles on the streets. "How long are you going to keep atoning for your sins? You won't be free if you don't let go of this guilt. Jin-joo cries. Girls cry. She's not crying because of you."

"Umma," cried Jin-joo. She was hugging a pillow, trying not to wake Jin-gi with her sobs. "Umma."

"See?" Ga-ok was too sad to be triumphant about being right. "She's crying for her mother. I'm afraid. What if something bad is going to happen to her? How do we know which future we see for her is true? My visions are sad. Yours aren't. I don't feel like my visions are illusions—my heart isn't lying to me. It's not, Kim Gwang-taek. Not about Jin-joo."

"Ga-ok-ah." Leaves in the muddy water spun in circles. "Perhaps we see possible futures? We both see and hear the same Jin-joo right now. The one I saw the last time I was with you was married to Dong-soo. You saw her with Hang-do. We've stepped into the world of the Living now. I wonder… I wonder if she can sense us?"

"Umma," Jin-joo continued. "You should be here to talk to me about these things. Jang-mi and the others would only make fun of me. You would understand."

"She thinks I would understand?" The rain fell more lightly. The wind listened.

"If I marry Hang-do, I would be a nobleman's wife, but… but… I don't love him." Jin-joo put down the pillow and talked as if her mother's presence were nearby. "I don't want to live the life of a noblewoman. I want to be free. Like Dong-soo." At the mention of the name, the pillow got a slap and then a kick. "Aish, why does Dong-soo get to do what he wants? I don't love him either. Not anymore. If he can't love me with his whole heart, then my heart has no more room to cry for him. But Umma, tell me what to do. Father wrote me a letter. I think I didn't understand it. I think Father was wrong."

Gwang-taek smiled. The leaves in the puddles were still.

"He said I should give up fighting. Why? I'm his daughter. He trained Dong-soo and not me. It's all not fair at all."

"I wish I could tell her," Gwang-taek exhaled, a cavernous noise in the darkness of the night.

Then Gwang-taek blew more gently through the pouring rain: "Daughter, Jin-joo, it's not that you aren't a good fighter—your skills are extraordinary, and I know that you saved the Life of Dong-soo and so many others and didn't get credit for your heroism. But the Life of a martial artist is a cruel one, and you are a kind woman. There is no Life for a woman who lives by the sword in this world—she is not accepted into the military or the police. Your mother became an assassin because what role is there for a woman who wields a sword but that of an assassin or a bandit? I want a peaceful Life for you. Will you understand that one day? Will you know why I trained Dong-soo and not you? It's not because I care for you less, Jin-joo-ah-I love all my children in different ways."

A thoughtful look came across Jin-joo's face. "Umma, men are ridiculous when it comes to talking about women. My father said he hoped he would see me married one day, but I don't think that's going to happen. I know you're with him now—can you tell him-?" Jin-joo lay down on her side because the storm inside her was dying down along with the storm outside the house. She was sleepy. "Tell him I may be alone in this life and the next. I'm done with men."

Gwang-taek smiled again. Even though Jin-joo's pain was real, he could not help but smile. "She doesn't mean that, does she, Ga-ok-ah?"

Jin-joo yawned. "How did you manage it, Umma? Having two men in love with you? It must have been terrible. I don't want that, no. What a pain and a bother, aish. Two men!"

At that, Ga-ok smiled too. The wind blew so that leaves on a pomegranate tree turned their pale green undersides to the moonlight. "You don't need to repeat anything I've lived through, my child."

After Jin-joo fell asleep, Gwang-taek asked Ga-ok to try to see the future—had it changed? Could Ga-ok see Dong-soo? Because Gwang-taek still saw her married to Dong-soo. In Gwang-taek's vision, Dong-soo would ride, monthly, maybe less often than that, from the palace to a large countryside estate. The many servants were Jin-joo's foundlings from the village, pick-pockets and thieves who Yeo Woon said he didn't trust when he arrived at the front gates. Woon was always at Dong-soo's side. Dong-soo would always wave off Woon's grumblings about increasing the estate's security. A servant girl would announce that Lord Baek and Commander Woon were here, and Jin-joo would run from the house past black chickens—such a pretty lady of a fine house in a proper hanbok, their Jin-joo—to greet her husband and his friend.

The wind sighed, even though the rain had stopped. Ga-ok was sad. "I see her pacing room to room, unhappy with her wealthy painter husband. They are married now. In my previous visions, they were not married yet. She is still unhappy. She doesn't know understand why Hong-do dotes on her. She has no self-confidence, and the restraints of city society wear her down."

The wind tosses a stray twig against Jin-joo's room. The sound of it scratching the wall is not enough to wake her. "Child, I was a prisoner for my first love. He was dashing and adoring, and I didn't know any better because I was young, and I followed him. I hated his world and felt trapped inside it. My second love was your father. Like your Dong-soo, he was a man I knew right away could be trusted-a man of unwavering principles and gentleness-but my heart was already too black to allow Gwang-taek to love me properly. I was not young anymore, but I didn't know any better than when I first fell into the trap of love."

Was Jin-joo's heart listening?

"I have no good advice to give you except to say that you are wiser already than I ever was. You value yourself. For that I thank Jin-gi. He raised you with kindness. Forgive your absent mother. She loves you. Love itself is not wrong. I still love Chun; I will always love your father. In a world of blood and cruelty, that love sustained me. Never throw away your willingness to love. If you do not love this painter, that's that. If you love Dong-soo, but he does not love you back the way you need, then don't despair. He is still your friend. He is a good person."

"Well-spoken, my love," whispered Gwang-taek. "What do you see?"

The wind blew ripples across the grasses. "Gwang-taek, I'm still sad. I see her at the palace now. She's marrying Dong-soo, but it's a political marriage, isn't it? So the Baek line can continue. The young man doesn't love her. Shouldn't our daughter be loved? She deserves to be. Why do you love me when I am so unworthy, and why-?"

"Ga-ok-ah, he loves her in his way." And at those words, the rain and the darkness disappeared. Dawn, without ceremony but with gentle rosy light, threw a veil over the world of the Living. Gwang-taek and Ga-ok could still see through the veil, but the Dead had less influence on the lives of the Living while the veil lay, shimmering, separating two realms.

"I'll return," said Gwang-taek. "I want to follow Dong-soo. I want to read his heart if I can."

Ga-ok lingered near Jin-joo until her daughter awoke later that day. Ga-ok breezed alongside the young woman as she wandered through drenched fields away from the village. Jin-joo did not speak; she no longer called for her umma; she did not look sad, but she did not look settled either.

Ga-ok could see the new future with Dong-soo, but the other one with Hong-do was there still there too. Did that mean that the future was undecided? Or did seeing the Dong-soo future along with Gwang-taek's make one future more likely to happen than the other? Did Gwang-taek have more strength to change the course of events than she did? He had always been stronger in Life; Ga-ok had chosen her path in Life and studied each step, learning to bear pain and more pain along the way. In Death, Ga-ok was bewildered. What was there to bear? She was the wind. She was with her love.

Why do I doubt myself? Why do I doubt anything? Why am I still so afraid for you, Jin-joo, and why am I still so full of longing and sadness?

Was it that some possibilities were meant to always remain possibilities and never come to pass? That they were vivid as paintings, fixed in time, but only visible to ghosts like herself? What earned her the right to see such things? Surely her love for daughter was what gave her the will to try to ensure a good future for Jin-joo; maybe a need to atone gave Ga-ok the need to see the past, present, and future.

If she and Gwang-taek could still protect those they loved, then they must.

In that moment, a voice from a sorrowful past called to Ga-ok, as those voices often did. This man's voice belonged to a dreadful scenario that had not come to pass. Lord Hong speaking in a triumphant tone.

What do we have here? The son of the traitor, Baek Sa-geong. What the gods is wrong with this baby? It's deformed…. What threat would it be? Ah, no matter… Kill it.

The clear-eyed infant, not days old, looked up at the sound of the voice. The quiet baby, because he had no mother or father to answer him, did not cry. He did not understand danger, not even when he was tossed into the air.

A sword cut the baby in half. Blood spattered the faces of onlookers who did not even gasp. So many babies had been murdered that day in the village. So many babies in the search for Baek Dong-soo.

2.

Scanning the past frightened Ga-ok; she was always afraid that she would stumble onto the years of her own Life and what could've been. If there was pain that might be too much to bear in the Afterlife, it would be seeing how much suffering would have been spared if only Ga-ok had run away with Gwang-taek in her youth. How many people died too soon because she stayed with Chun? Jin-joo could have grown up with both her parents. The very idea of that was enough to make the wind moan-but Ga-ok could not see her own past; she could only see the past of those still living.

Why had Gwang-taek mentioned Dong-soo? Ga-ok, in her sorrow, saw all Dong-soo's pasts that did not come to be. What a fortunate man, this Dong-soo.

Dong-soo taken at birth to be slaughtered as the son of a traitor. (Ga-ok knew that his mother saved him then, holding him past term in her womb with herbs and bindings over her belly).

Dong-soo flung as a baby into a vat of boiling water. (Gwang-taek had saved him then. Sacrificing his arm to the guillotine so that the infant would not be executed).

Dong-soo sliced by a sword with a mortal wound. (Jin-joo loved to tell the story that she had saved that poor boy's ass by hitting his assailant with a flour sack). Dong-soo shot to pieces by gunfire in front of Lord Hong's house. (Jin-joo again with a well-timed arrow). And the day for which Baek Dong-soo is most famous, the day about which children still sing songs—the day the mighty warrior fought off the one-hundred assassins who were going to kill the Prince Heir. It so happened that on that day Baek Dong-soo was killed-his body flung across the courtyard by an assault of musket-fire. (Jin-joo had hit one of the shooters in the back, forestalling that whole incident—oh how she had bragged about it).

Then Ga-ok saw something she hadn't heard about at all. The same day of the one-hundred assassins, Dong-soo fell again. Of exhaustion. Cleaved through the shoulder and then stabbed through the heart.

Who saved you then?

Ga-ok right away saw what happened. A man in the black uniform of Heuksa Chorong swept in and pulled out two short blades; the bodies of two assassins fell before their intended target, Dong-soo. The slight figure about to fight with Dong-soo against the remaining assassins? Yeo Woon.

Yeo Woon and Dong-soo.

The pair exchange looks Ga-ok understands from her years in combat. The joy that sort of partnership brings. For the first time in all her visions, she is witnessing a moment of triumph, not despair. Then the gunmen arrive, and without fear or sadness, Dong-soo announces that they are going to die. Woon says, then let's die together.

Ga-ok understands that too.

Jin-joo arrives, and the two men don't die, of course. Ga-ok sees the rest of the day, the ecstatic smile on Dong-soo's face because Yeo Woon has left the assassin guild and returned to him. Curious. Dong-soo is happier about Yeo Woon's redemption than he is about stopping the terrible assassination coup—Ga-ok reads the young man's heart as plainly as if his joy is white light streaming into a room that has been kept dark for years. Dong-soo has so completely forgotten everything else that when he returns to Sa-mo's house and Ji-sun drops the tray she is carrying and rushes to hug him, Dong-soo's eyes widen. It is the young painter, Hong-do, who has to remind Dong-soo, she was worried sick about you all day.

Ga-ok laughs. Clueless boy.

Tufts of dandelions pass Ga-ok's vision. Not many. As if someone has blown apart a single flower.

And Gwang-taek is back.

When he comes to her at times, so does warmth and flower petals. When he catches her, when he enters the direction she flies, they go so high, the mountaintops disappear. If there is a Heaven, maybe it is only with him, but since dying, Ga-ok has suspected that Heaven is beyond even that, that their purpose lies in transcending this place—or else why would there still be sorrow in her heart? Where was the circle of reincarnation she had been taught? Where were the other wandering spirits?

"You can see the joy in the past now?" He asked her the question although he already knew the answer.

She smiled, the dandelions streaming across her hair like ornaments she had worn for him in Life. Did he love her more now? Or was love a constant? She had loved him no more or no less since the moment she knew he wasn't a man like Chun, but she had not stopped loving Chun either.

"I could not find the field I was looking for," he said. "I want to see Dong-soo. I suspect something. Why does Dong-soo keep a distance from our daughter in the future? How did Yeo Woon escape Death?"

"I can't see it," Ga-ok whispered. "I don't want you to see it. It's my fault, like so many other sad endings."

"Ga-ok-ah," The wind was so gentle it barely moved the grasses. "Have you seen how Chun died?"

"I don't want to see it."

"I saw it."

She was surprised. "But I thought you didn't see sad things?"

"It wasn't sad. It was a triumphant moment for Yeo Woon. It was the moment he freed himself. So, you see, you didn't imprison him. He freed himself."

"He—he—" Ga-ok felt pain. The wind stilled itself and no longer blew. "He killed the Sky Lord?" She had never known how Chun died.

"He dealt a fatal blow, but Chun's death was already sealed. A troop of archers sent by Lord Hong were waiting for him. They pummeled him with arrows. They used Jin-joo as bait because Chun still cared for her. In the end, Chun shielded Jin-joo from a barrage of arrows, and a cross-bow ended him."

If Ga-ok had still had a human heart, it would have burst from pain, but because she didn't, the wind bled sadness across the veil separating the Living from the Dead. The sadness melted the veil. And then, there was the field. The field where so often she had seen Dong-soo and Yeo Woon draw swords against one another.

"Curious thing about Yeo Woon the night he fought Chun," Gwang-taek went on, not noticing the field he had been searching for. "He was set on revenge. He believed that here was no Life for him but that as an assassin. He believed every word you had told him, Ga-ok-ah. That he was the successor. That he would be the Sky Lord. But…."

"But?" Gwang-taek's words brought no comfort to Ga-ok. He was reminding her of her sin.

"I could hear his heart after he drove his blade through Chun."

The thought of that was another wound. She would not see Chun's death scene. She would not allow herself to see it.

"The wound would've have made any other man fall, but you know the Sky Lord."

At that, Ga-ok lifted one corner of her ghost mouth in a smile, even though she knew that there was no body for Gwang-taek to see. The dandelions dropped from her hair, one by one, but she smiled. "He was invincible. It is very hard for me to believe he died. So, he did die, didn't he? He died."

"Yeo Woon dealt his mentor a fatal blow, but it was Yeo Woon who fell to his knees as Chun walked away, and Chun said Woon-ah, don't follow my path."

"He said that?"

"Woon wouldn't look at him. His heart was too full of disgust for the man who had lied to him for years. But I heard Woon's heart. It rang like truth. I won't follow it. Today I am no longer an assassin. I forsake the path. I forsake it all, Dong-soo-ah."

It didn't make sense. Why would Dong-soo and Woon cross blades later? Past or immediate future? Their battle felt—yes, it was something that might occur in the immediate future. Why did people's choices save or ruin them? Destiny could be smashed by a single word, by the wave of a hand. Ga-ok felt a terrible sadness.

Her own worst choice had happened the day that she had raised her blade against Gwang-taek and decided not to run away with him. She had thought it was the only way to spare Chun's Life. She exchanged her freedom for that of the other man she loved, and in doing so, damned so many. The Crown Prince, for one, died. Who knows how many others?

"Yeo Woon promised to change his Life for my apprentice," Gwang-taek said in an awed voice. "Not for himself, not for a woman, not in defiance of his mentor. He swore to redeem himself for Dong-soo. That is… that is something that someone who…."

Love, love—it blew back and forth like the wind. It could carry a lost kite across continents, lose a hidden message in the bushes, ravage whole villages like a typhoon, disappear, disappear, and return again. Ga-ok understood love. She had sworn to love Gwang-taek forever, but never in her Life had she changed her path for him.

"I chose Chun and his house of blood," Ga-ok whispered. "But I always kept you in my heart, Kim Gwang-taek. I loved you most of all."

"Ga-ok-ah?"

The wind blew the grasses in the field as he called her name. He was going to request something of her. She could read his heart, which was in the world of the Living now, full of the sadness it had felt there once.

"If you loved me then, will you change your path for me now?"

"What do you mean?"

"Will you let go your sorrow?"

"I don't know how to do that." She turned her head away. She saw the two young men with their swords drawn against one another in the lovely sunlit wheat field. Dong-soo could not kill his best friend. Woon was urging him to kill. Woon wanted to die, like her, for his sins in Heuksa Chorong.

"Maybe, Gwang-taek, I need to face all the sorrow before I can let it go." The wind blew a soft sob across the field. The young men paused and looked at one another. "Help me, Gwang-taek. I need you to help me."

Gwang-taek looked in the direction where Ga-ok was looking. He could see what she saw now. He could help.

Woon pushed Dong-soo away, and Dong-soo clutched his heart.

This is your last chance…. A tear running down Dong-soo's face.

You were my only sanctuary. A clear-eyed declaration of love from Woon.

Then the grotesque and beautiful sacrifice. Woon's sprinting leap, how he dropped his weapons in the air, impaled himself on Dong-soo's sword, gasped as he landed, gasped again as he slid down the weapon.

The wind no longer blew across the field. The stillness was such that the barely audible words spoken next by the two swordsmen cut the hearts of Ga-ok and Gwang-taek, and the sadness pouring from them because the veil was broken, ran with the blood from Woon's mouth over Dong-soo's shoulder.

Then Dong-soo's screams broke the stillness.

The aftermath was unlike anything Gwang-taek had witnessed in Life, not like Dong-soo's pain after the Crown Prince's murder and Ji-sun's kidnapping, not like the foolish boy's terror and tears when Sa-mo was on the brink of dying. Ga-ok, not in any of her wanderings through the past, had seen Dong-soo weep like this, not even after the death of his own master by Chun. Royal guards could not pry the man off Woon's body. He would not allow them to remove the sword. He insisted on carrying the body home, and because it was so awkward for Dong-soo to lift the body with the sword still run through it, one of the mountain boys, Gak, pulled it out quickly, and carried the weapon, dripping Woon's blood, on the solemn path to Sa-mo's house. When Gak offered the sword to Dong-soo, Dong-soo refused it.

Dong-soo stayed with the body, and hours later, it was General Seo who arrived to tell Dong-soo that Cho-rip, upon regaining consciousness, had revealed the truth. That it was not Yeo Woon who had attacked him, that it was members of Heuksa Chorong.

Dong-soo hugged Woon's body close, and the wind, whispering in awe around the house, heard a broken heart that did not want to raise a sword again.

I promised I would never give up on him.

I told him after the coup that I was sorry I had ever doubted him.

This is my fault.

This is not Cho-rip's fault.

This is my fault.

I let you die, Woon-ah. I killed you.

"Stop this, Gwang-taek," Ga-ok said. "We have to stop this from happening. We can't let you lose Dong-soo. He is your greatest-he belongs to the world."

"They are both like my own sons," Gwang-taek said, understanding that his own tears were making Dong-soo's fall harder. "How can I mourn one without mourning the other?"

"I will try to move past this sorrow," Ga-ok said. "I will go back. I will go back to all the sorrow I can see, and whatever I can touch, I will try to heal. I will blow on each wound the way I should have done whenever our child cut her finger or scraped her knee. There was a mother I should've been in Life. Maybe I can be her in Death. If I can't atone, I can't. But I will go back. You did everything to make peace in Life. I made sorrow my companion. I gave my daughter, my joy, away."

"Ga-ok-ah."

"Thank you, Gwang-taek. Thank you for helping me understand love."

Woon was buried next to his father. Ga-ok saw that future, and although the veil had been thrown over the world of the Living again, and the faces of the mourners were vague, their voices mumbled, and the emotions harder to reach with each stone that was piled on the grave, Ga-ok still felt Dong-soo's heart because it rang across dimensions as strong as her own regret.

I'll find you again, Woon-ah.

It was decided that Ga-ok would try to reach Woon, and Gwang-taek, who had the stronger connection with Dong-soo, would follow his disciple.

Gwang-taek had the most difficulty. It was painful to imagine a future in which Dong-soo didn't succeed, but in the time-line after Woon died, Dong-soo carried on, not quite himself, completing the book that his mentor had begun. The publication of the Muyedobotongji was a joyous occasion, a legacy that would strengthen the military, but Dong-soo himself weakened after his promise to the Prince Heir, now King Jeongjo. He tried to build a relationship with the girl who loved him, but the two never married. Dong-soo, always a man of his word, had made no promise to her; Ji-sun, knowing this, retreated into loneliness and her mercantile business. When the wind blew at night, Gwang-taek's sadness swept into Dong-soo's dreams and flooded a heart already raging with guilt and despair.

Sunsengnim, uncle, is that you?

Dong-soo-ah, live on. You were not at fault. He was hiding a Lifetime of hurt, and you were his only support. You carried him as far as you could.

I failed him. I'm sorry.

Dong-soo's heart reminded Gwang-taek of Ga-ok's. Gwang-taek did not want to see more of Dong-soo's future—he knew what a heart yearning that much truly wanted….

Dong-soo never raised his sword again. Joseon's greatest swordsman fell ill and never got up from his bed. He died there. He died from not caring to live.

There was the other future, the one in which Dong-soo lived. That future, in which Dong-soo seemed discounting if not a little cruel to Jin-joo, was not as it had first appeared. Jin-joo knew of Dong-soo's relationship with Yeo Woon in the palace. The king had insisted on marriage for his favorite guard; Dong-soo himself wanted an heir for the sake of his nephews who had been murdered in the name of his traitorous father, for the sake of innocent babies in the village who had died in the furious search for the offspring of Baek Sa-geong. Yeo Woon wanted a child too; in fact, it was his idea in the first place that Dong-soo should marry Jin-joo. I can't get it out of my head that it would be best for everyone. And besides, I can't get it out of my head that your child would be my best pupil. Woon had decided that to pass on his skills of acupuncture in order to save lives would be part of his own redemption. At Jin-joo's request, Woon promised that he would train the child in martial arts too—be that child a girl or a boy.

The child was a boy. Woon trained Jin-joo's servant girls, who were like her own children, in the ways of the sword, the bow, and hand to hand combat.

Dong-soo protested at first because the girls would not be admitted into the army. Woon reminded him of how well the Earth Lord could fight and argued that he and Dong-soo would not always be there to protect the women in their lives. Dong-soo said, you know that Sword Saint didn't want a life of killing for Jin-joo.

And what a stunning man of his own principles Yeo Woon had become. What he wanted for her or what he didn't want is none of my concern. Aren't you the one who always said that one should choose one's own destiny? Jin-joo and these girls have made their own choices. I will honor those choices—that is all. To teach them that the sword is to protect, not to kill—that is what I will do. The Living Sword, Dong-soo-ah. You taught me that. The Living Sword.

Gwang-taek was stunned. His two sons fulfilling a legacy he had not imagined in Life.

Jin-joo was happy in the large estate, far from the artifices of the court. She cared deeply for both men who paid regular visits to the home, but they were not part of her daily family life; she relinquished her time, her life as a married woman, to Dong-soo's chosen Life-partner, his best friend, a man who discreetly shared a room with Dong-soo in the palace. Jin-joo's was a marriage of convenience, but her heart had always been generous; she was a kind and loving mother, a person in whom Ga-ok would take pride.

Meanwhile, during her contacts with Yeo Woon, Ga-ok suffered longing and great pain, but unlike Gwang-taek, she was accustomed to such emotions. Chun had taught her to embrace those feelings.

Embrace pain. A heart is the death of an assassin. Chun would whisper these words while kissing the pulse of her wrist.

Try as the great Sky Lord did, though, he never killed Ga-ok's heart. A person is capable of many loves in Life. She herself loved two men. Dong-soo and Yeo Woon loved other women and one another in young flawed ways, not reading hearts, not understanding that pure love isn't selfish, that mature love doesn't try to win favor or appease a lover's desires, that a soul love doesn't require a blood sacrifice.

Kill me. She had spoken those words once to her great love, Gwang-taek.

I don't understand you. Woon had looked at Dong-soo with glistening eyes. Why didn't you plunge a blade into my heart?

Foolish children. They had misunderstood love so many times.

Dong-soo didn't see the loneliness Ji-sun had felt since her father died, how much she had taken to the Crown prince and to Dong-soo because of that loneliness; Dong-soo missed the sweet attraction Jin-joo had for him because what she saw in a man like Baek Dong-soo were qualities she longed for in herself. Woon was drawn to Ji-sun because she paid attention to him—the same way Chun had paid attention to a suffering, beaten, lonely boy. And understanding this, Ga-ok remembered how Chun, with all his charm, his dark humor and surprising affection, had won her own grieving heart even after killing Ga-ok's own father, the Sky Lord of Heuksa Chorong.

Watching the boys make mistake after mistake, Ga-ok saw her own.

Her pain easily bled through the veil between Death and Life. Woon's pain was so much a part of him that she wanted to cling to it as if it were her own. Embrace pain. No, she needed to comfort him. She could not press him against her chest the way she had been able to hug Jin-joo a few times in Life because it was too late; the wind merely stirred his long black hair.

At an open window, Woon was dressing for the day. He hated the top-knot that palace regulations required of guards and raised his chin to feel the breeze against his face. It was sweet to him; for the smallest moment, the wind was a comfort.

It's not your fault, my child. The Sky Lord has a terrible power. Look how he holds me in his hand.

To Ga-ok's surprise, Woon knew that. He was an intelligent, observant young man.

There were events that could not be changed. They marched forward with the force of Destiny. The death of Prince Sado. Inevitable. Like a boulder in history that would not be budged. Chun too, a power that could push that boulder into place. Next to him, Yeo Woon in the uniform of a Royal guard. The chosen successor. Why? What had Chun seen in a twelve-year-old boy?

Whatever he had seen in Ga-ok. Intelligence, beauty, sensitivity and a longing for a father—all irresistible qualities Chun could manipulate to his advantage.

Then there lay the Crown prince, still bleeding from Chun's sword, leaning against a tree. The sun shone on his light hair, and as his soul passed and broke the veil, Ga-ok swept through into tragedy.

The wind wept, a faint whimper through the boughs of the trees. Ga-ok had not witnessed the murder at the time, even though she had not been far from the scene. She knew that Chun had struck the fatal blow; she had always believed, along with the Sky Lord, that the prince's dream of the Northern Expedition was a sad joke—who dreams of such political impossibilities and doesn't consider the magnitude of opposition, the rivers of blood to cross?

But to see a young man, kneeling before the body of the Crown prince, a traitor in the blue uniform of the Royal guard that Gwang-taek had once worn—to see Woon, a single tear running down his face, apologize to the murdered man, and say of the Sky Lord, I cannot overcome him-

Ga-ok decided at that moment. "We will overcome him. You and I, Yeo Woon."

She wasn't sure how. But that legacy of pain had to end. In the realm of the Living, in the Afterlife, who knows where else, or there was no Heaven. No Heaven to be grasped in her hands at all.

3.

Gwang-taek too had seen the immovable nature of Destiny. The wind marveled among the fields that changed color every season; the wind tossed the flowers that would soon be buried under snow or swept dying across streams of mud in the rainy season; the wind understood that the Living world had its ways of persevering, that the paths of rivers could be changed but that the fates of some men were written by the gods.

"It was true what both young men said," Gwang-taek told Ga-ok. "Dong-soo said he would never bow before Destiny, and Woon struggled to escape it, trying to believe Dong-soo, but knowing with his own fine perception that there is such a thing as fixed fate, an inescapable future. I believed otherwise, Ga-ok-ah."

Ga-ok found it hard to believe that Sword Saint would go back on his hard-earned beliefs, but maybe that was what made Gwang-taek a giant among souls. He could shift paths and grow even stronger in Death as he had in Life.

Gwang-taek went on. "What I knew in my own heart was what Dong-soo believed—that a man creates his own destiny. I told Woon that myself when I sent him back to that awful place, Heuksa Chorong. Sa-mo looked at me as though I were sentencing the boy to an early grave. I knew the weight on Woon; I sent him back to choose for himself; he chose rightly and decided to dissolve the assassin guild, to return to protect the Prince Heir, to come home but… what I did. It was like throwing a child into a swift river and hoping that he would learn to swim. I regret not protecting him."

Ga-ok remembered the words Chun had spoken at the death scene of the Crown Prince: I wonder how far destiny will take you two boys.

"You sound like me now," Ga-ok told her love. "Don't be sad. There are two futures for Dong-soo and Woon, right? No fixed Destiny."

"Yes, yes, you're right." The wind sighed. "I saw the future of the third of the best friends who came down from the mountain camp. They knew him as Cho-rip, but he was a noble in disguise. You would never guess who Cho-rip turned out to be. Hong Guk Yeong. Hong Guk Yeong rises in power because of his abilities; he makes his own path, but at the end of each and every path is death in exile. His political schemes lead to an assassination attempt on the queen. He over-reaches himself. The same way he missed the truth about Yeo Woon; he could sense danger the way a wary animal senses a predator, but for all his kindness and devotion, he could not read hearts, not even the hearts of those closest to him."

"I heard that man in the field," Ga-ok whispered. "I heard what he said to Yeo Woon. I heard the words that crumbled Woon's resolve and broke his heart and allowed all of Chun's pain to rush back inside. I heard a childhood friend tell another childhood friend the cruelest of cruel things."

"You're so angry, Ga-ok-ah."

"Why shouldn't I be? Who betrays a brother like that? He told Woon that as long as Woon was alive, the Prince Heir and even Dong-soo would be in danger. That Cho-rip person—how could he-?"

"I know. I tried to change that. There was no touching Deputy Hong's heart. Or I couldn't do it. He had always honored me, but- It was like trying to topple a mountain by blowing a secret against it, but the mountain could not hear me."

"The gisaeng. The one who will set events into motion that lead to Yeo Woon's death. She too is unreachable," whispered Ga-ok. "Not because of a hard Destiny but because of her softness. I saw that softness when she first she first came to Heuksa Chorong." A gentle laugh. "I was jealous of her because she was so young and beautiful, and I was a little afraid that she would fall for Chun." Another laugh. The clouds drifted further, changing shape across a bright blue sky. "But she was afraid of Chun. It was Yeo Woon she would love. She cannot be swayed from what she believes will protect him; she idealizes Woon; she has no idea how vulnerable he is."

"I've tried so hard," Gwang-taek said. "I've tried to reach Yeo Woon like I did when I was alive. Let me care for you, I've told him the way I did outside Sa-mo's house. He hardens his heart against mine."

Ga-ok knew why. She herself had once found it impossible to understand why the Sword Saint would waste his precious time on anyone from a place so dark and irredeemable as Heuksa Chorong. It would later become dizzying to believe that he could love her, an assassin.

Gwang-taek continued, "He believes that I wanted him dead from the moment I sensed his killer instinct. He believes that I spared him, the way I let Dae-ung walk away over and over, minus a thumb or a limb-alive but warned. Alive but castigated. Woon must've felt each word I spoke to him like a whip across his back."

"It's not like he didn't hear kind words from me." Ga-ok sighed. "I won't stop trying until I reach him."

The visions of a mourning Dong-soo grew stranger with all Ga-ok's failed attempts. The future became lurid, almost too bright to see, and then Ga-ok realized that the scenes were coming to her as a hellfire. The ill-fated future burned, faces of Dong-soo's friends lit with brilliant desperate fire, and then the corners of the vision would crumble to black ash.

Dong-soo's friends could not reach him.

You're drinking too much.

Please eat.

That's enough, Dong-soo-ah. The students are tired. Go to bed.

He was drinking far too much late into the night. The man put up a smiling front and didn't return to guard duty after completing his martial arts book. He trained warriors as if sleep-walking through the fire. Ga-ok knew that fire—it was guilt, and she had never allowed it to eat her alive. Dong-soo was different.

I killed you, Woon-ah. Where are you now? Is this because I hated you once? I deserve this hell? We don't deserve this hell, do we? I need to find you. Where are you? I need a reason to go on….

Ji-sun was watching the setting sun in another town when Dong-soo's fever spiked, and she knew something was wrong. She cancelled her business appointment and rode back in the dark. It was a day and a half's ride. Dong-soo had been ill for less than a week. By the time she arrived at Dong-soo's bedside, Jin-joo was already wringing towels in a bucket and weeping.

Sa-mo, Miso, and even Cho-rip, not caring what sickness he might catch, were in the room, when Jin-joo led Ji-sun inside. She acquiesced her place to Dong-soo's chosen one and handed Ji-sun the wet cloth for Dong-soo's brow. Jang-mi is cooking some broth. He won't eat. He hasn't opened his eyes. Please talk to him. Maybe he'll listen to you—

Ji-sun knelt by the bed, and her voice cracked. I don't understand. I don't understand you. Why-?

Dong-soo's hand caught Ji-sun's. Everyone gasped. Ji-sun's eyes sparkled with hope because the grip was so firm and because Dong-soo was looking directly at her.

I will always love you, he said.

A collective intake of breath in the room. It was louder than the sudden breeze from an open window. The breeze that stirred the small flame on the medicinal candle on the dresser table. The candle's sweet smell blew through the room with sweet words.

I will always love you, Dong-soo repeated, his voice weakening. Until the end of time… Woon-ah.

No one in the room mistook the name. Dong-soo had spoken it with all his strength, as if the word alone were the confession. The two syllables stayed in the room because they had been spoken with such clarity and tenderness. There was no Yeo Woon there, only his name.

Ji-sun's fingers went limp, and her wrist in Dong-soo's grasp would have fallen to the bedside if Dong-soo had not gripped harder. Dong-soo mumbled: Don't leave me, Woon-ah. Don't.

Sa-mo said that the poor child was out of his mind with fever and would be better if only Jang-mi could get more water past his throat. Ga-ok could read Jin-joo's heart, and Jin-joo didn't believe that. The young man who only saw the surface of things, Cho-rip, was waiting for Dong-soo's recovery, but Jin-joo knew the truth. She had always known her Dong-soo. Ga-ok could not read Ji-sun, but from looking at the tiny woman as she lay her head on the mat where Dong-soo lay dying and wept, Ga-ok understood that women's hearts felt the sun begin to set before men's eyes even saw the skies darken.

Dong-soo closed his eyes and the wind left, knowing he would be gone in a few hours.

The wind roared. The wind roared through time, rushing through black tunnels, spinning through the emptiness that was Yeo Woon's history without a mother, without a father; the wind blew the veil off the realm of the Living and sent it flying the gods knew only where. Dimensions broke; they broke like the time-glass Woon had once shattered with a coin in order to save Dong-soo's life during a fight-club match; splinters of time shot off in all directions—each piece sparkling with its own knowledge and cutting through the wind who felt no pain because Ga-ok was a massive force spiraling through the realms, intent on only one purpose.

"You had the nerve to beg for your own life before the Prince Heir. You had the courage to change everything, you built your own castle the way the former Sky Lord did—only my Chun's castle was built on pain and yours was built on redemption—you were going to change everything and then—" Ga-ok had arrived where she wanted to be.

Yeo Woon, dressed as the leader of Heuksa Chorong, wore the uniform so differently from his predecessor. He was mindful of his appearance, tidy and graceful. Pretty as a girl with his small face, slim waist, and delicate hands. Chun had been a large intimidating presence; constant drunkenness only added to his slovenly fearsomeness. Months on pirate ships and long journeys of deprivation from country to country had taught him to care little for appearances and made him look like a man washed ashore, despite his good looks and charm. Those last two traits, along with a sinister way of glaring at nowhere in particular, were enough to inspire awe in anyone who came across the Sky Lord.

Look at you, Woon. Who knows the man you really are? Ga-ok did. She could read his heart right then.

Yeo Woon, was stomping, as he often did, towards Sa-mo's small village home. Woon looked too small and boyish in his elegant black clothes. Like a kid playing a role. It was no wonder he had always worked so hard to earn respect from the members in the assassin guild, from the Norons in the Royal court, from anyone who tried to fight him and didn't realize, until it was too late, that this kid was as deadly as he was young and pretty.

The wind blew so hard Woon's sleeves fluttered. The next gust made his steps falter—he was not that light of a person, and there was no storm brewing, so he stopped, looked up at the night sky and was perplexed.

"Yeo Woon."

He heard Ga-ok's voice in his heart.

He stood there and thought about her. He did not hear her words, not in the sense that the Living hear the Dead, word for word, because the Dead do not reach the Living that way. But he listened. He thought of her. He remembered that she never left Heuksa Chorong, even though if she had, it would have been with Sword Saint's protection. Why didn't you leave, Earth Lord? How strong she was. How dead she was, despite all her strength. How she had kept running and running all her life from the one person she wanted to be with. Why? There had to be a reason.

"Yeo Woon, you stupid stupid boy. I know what you're going to do. You're not even going to give Dong-soo a chance to speak. You know in your own heart that he would never kill you. You know that. You told the gisaeng as much. You said you wanted to ask his forgiveness if that were true—what happened to that? You're angry, so stop that now. When you're afraid, you get angry."

The wind blew Woon's black hair over his eyes.

"What you can't see right now is that your fear blinds you. The Prince Heir has forgiven you. What else is left? It's over. You can go home. So why are you going to see Dong-soo now to ask him if he was really going to kill you? As if you ever truly believed that? Why the accusation? Why are you going to tell him that you can't be with him, to tell him not to search for you? Why, Yeo Woon?"

Woon starts walking forward, slowly now. He pauses, places his hand on a tree. He doesn't want to keep moving forward. He understands now that he is afraid.

"I saw your fight with Chun. You are indeed amazing. When he brought you to Heuksa Chorong, I knew you had promise, but I never imagined what I saw in that fight. I saw not only skill there but courage. Courage I never had. I heard you tell one of the most feared men in all Joseon that whether it was a heart or a life, you would take it. A heart or a life. That is what you said. What happened? Why are you running away from the one you love most? Why are you going right now to tell Dong-soo that you're leaving somewhere far far away? Chun thought it was the little woman like a fairy with the map tattoo on her back—that she was the one you loved—but it's not her you're going to see tonight, is it? It's not her you're going to see before you set off to the gods know where to live like a monk repenting for your sins. Who is it you are truly running away from? Tell me, stupid child. Tell me!"

Dong-soo is drinking in the front yard. Cho-rip has left moments ago. As it has happened every single time in the vision, Dong-soo looks up, and Woon is standing there, having arrived as noiselessly as a ninja. Were you really going to kill me? Ga-ok has heard Woon say this before. She is disappointed. Was he listening to her heart at all? She thought he was paying attention.

But this time Woon lets Dong-soo speak. Dong-soo rushes forward and sputters an explanation. It isn't necessary; Woon never doubted that Dong-soo would object to killing his best friend in cold blood, but Woon needs the time to compose himself as Dong-soo talks. Woon's eyes are cast downward, and Dong-soo is pouring out his grief over the command, and how the Prince Heir said that Dong-soo didn't have to be a part of any killing of his friend, and how Cho-rip still needed to be convinced—if only Cho-rip could be convinced that Woon posed no threat—

I've been to see his Highness. He's going to give me a chance to redeem myself.

As always, Dong-soo heaves a sigh of relief and puts his hand on Woon's shoulder.

I'm going to disassemble Heuksa Chorong and….

The script has changed. Ga-ok knows that this is the part when Woon tells Dong-soo of plans to leave, don't search for me, annyeong, the stomping away, Dong-soo calling Woon-ahhhh.

Dong-soo and Woon's eyes meet.

"You told Chun." Ga-ok blows Woon's hair. "You said you would not follow his path, and look what you are doing. Lying to everyone and yourself. You told the Prince Heir that it was you and not the former Sky Lord who killed the Crown Prince. Do you want to keep from following Chun's path? Stop lying. Chun was a fucking liar. Don't lie, Woon-ah. Don't."

What's the matter? Dong-soo searches Woon's eyes. Ga-ok has only seen lovers lock a gaze for that long; she is sure the young men are not lovers. The wind holds her breath, the stillness like a moment on a cliff where the slightest breath would send two people plunging off the edge. Ga-ok realizes she wants Dong-soo and Woon to fall.

She whispers: "Tell him the truth, Woon."

And Woon does. Not looking away, he says, I don't know what to do after that, Dong-soo-ah…. His voice is softer but unwavering. I'm frightened.

Dong-soo's face relaxes into a slight smile at Woon's honesty. He wraps his arms around Woon. We'll figure it out, Dong-soo says. Only Ga-ok can see Dong-soo's eyes moisten a little with tears. You've done so much by yourself for so long. Please, please—let someone else lighten the load for you.

By this time Woon is returning the hug. There is no awkwardness. It is a brief hug, and Woon pulls away, not avoiding Dong-soo's overjoyed expression but not matching it. Woon looks fretful. So much can still go wrong. There's going to be resistance within the guild. Cho-rip—

Dong-soo places his large hands firmly on Woon's shoulders. I'll help you. We'll do this together.

Ga-ok is impressed with the intense look Woon gives Dong-soo; she's sure of it now; the young men have stepped off the cliff and have crossed over.

What exactly does that mean, Baek Dong-soo?

Whatever it has to mean. Stay here tonight, and we'll talk about it tomorrow morning.

What? I can't. I have to go ba—

No, you don't. That answer doesn't work anymore. Stay here tonight, or I'll take out my sword and kill you on the spot. Stay.

I—

Do you trust me? There is only one answer. Do you trust me, Yeo Woon?

At those last words, Ga-ok notices a small figure coming into the courtyard and pausing. Ji-sun backs away, her pink skirts darkening with the shadows. She once heard Baek Dong-soo ask her the same: do you trust me?

Woon smiles. Yes, he says.

Fine. Dong-soo's smile is wider than the widest layer of the largest pagoda in all Joseon. Have a drink with me. You can stay in my room. I'll even ride out with you tomorrow.

But—

Do you trust me?

Yes.

Dong-soo pours the rice wine into his own bowl and gives it to Woon to drink.

Ga-ok has fallen off her own precipice. The wind carries her over a fast river into daylight. The splashing water against rocks breaks a prism into her own strength; in the Living world, a rainbow appears.

The loveliness of the sight-the rainbow's colors, the sweet river smells and sounds, and Ga-ok feels a happiness she has not felt since Gwang-taek died and his soul rushed to join hers.

4.

When Ga-ok sensed Gwang-taek, the shock stilled her like a second Death. She saw him stand before her as a man. A young man, the one she fell in love with. Dressed in vivid blue, the elaborate floral pattern of the Royal guard on one shoulder. In the Afterlife, she had only known him as the colorless wind.

"I was at Dong-soo's deathbed," he said with those clear eyes that were sad but never held the depth of despair that Ga-ok had seen in other men. "I spoke to him, and his heart called to me for a moment. He lost me, though. He lost me. He hallucinated, even in his own heart, that I was Yeo Woon, and apologized to me for breaking his promise." Gwang-taek smiled, the sadness in his eyes still there. "Remember Woon's last words? That Dong-soo should never be sad his whole life for a person like him? Dong-soo's last words were I'm sorry, Woon-ah."

Ga-ok couldn't address the story because she was so stunned to see her love in person. "I—I can see what you look like, Gwang-taek. Your face, your body." Her hand reached out. She was afraid she might not be able to touch him. "You look like you did when I met you."

"What do you mean you can see me?"

"You look like a man right now. You're not the wind. You look like a young Royal guard."

A smile, all traces of sadness gone. Amusement. His fond heart for her growing fonder. "Ga-ok-ah." Why was he so happy? "I have always been able to see you. Young, beautiful. Sometimes you look like a little girl I never met; other times you must be near the age you were when Chun killed your father; most of the time you are transparent as the wind, but right now, you are the most beautiful woman I ever saw, the woman with white beads in her hair who looked at me with such sad and thoughtful eyes—ha, I knew the moment I first saw you that I would chase you like the wind forever and ever and—"

"You have always been able to see me?" Ga-ok was frightened. Why was Gwang-taek so happy? "Can we touch one another?"

"No, no, no." He laughed softly. "Please don't worry about that. That is such an earthly thing. What is amazing is that your sorrow must be lifting. You can remember me now. This must be some sort of divine reward, do you suppose?"

"That is why you are glad." Ga-ok cast her eyes downward, as unlike her as it had been in Life to be modest, she felt exposed. At the same time, she was glad to be beautiful in the eyes of a man like Kim Gwang-taek. She had always wanted to be free as the wind; she was not sorry to have not completely discarded her womanly appearance. She was, after all, a ghost. She may as well be a beautiful ghost.

Then she remembered something.

She was an accomplished ghost.

"Gwang-taek." The wind, if it could blow breathlessly, blew in a staggered breathless way, over the fast river. Water sprayed in a fine mist under the wind's excitement. "I spoke to Yeo Woon. Something happened."

"What?"

"The fixed script. It changed. I can't believe still but—"

"What?"

"Yeo Woon told Dong-soo …."

"That he loved him?"

"No, not that. That he didn't know what to do, that he was frightened. He stayed at Dong-soo's home. They were drinking and talking when I left. I think… I think it's all going to be all right."

Gwang-taek blinked. "That may be even more remarkable than a love confession. Woon admitted that he was frightened? Dong-soo will be all over that like a bee on a flower." A laugh. "What did you do to get Woon to say such things?"

"I know I said I was going to be a proper mother and try to comfort him, but I'm afraid I ended up getting very angry and scolding him instead. I reminded him of his promise not to be like Chun and yelled at him to quit lying to everyone and to himself."

Gwang-taek laughed long and hard. When he finally stopped laughing, he said, "This is the mother you are, Ga-ok-ah. This is your true self. Thank you."

True self? Had Ga-ok ever known her true self? In Life, she had barely grown into a woman before her father, the Sky Lord, was killed, and then her grief was captured by the Sky Lord's successor and twisted into the shape of an assassin. All Ga-ok had ever wanted was to be as free as the wind and to love freely. To love who she wanted.

Would Dong-soo and Woon have that freedom in Life now?

The rushing water, the wet pebbles alongside the riverbank, the lush green trees—Ga-ok had never been so aware of her surroundings since dying. The moment of her Death, she had looked for a boat that would carry her away. She had prayed for an easy rebirth, hoping against all hope that she would see her loved ones again, and she had been surprised to find herself flying through the night sky, bodiless, not bound to any purpose yet. What am I? Was she going to be a lost spirit? One of those sad souls doomed to stalk the Living, grieving for what might have been? At her incineration, she realized she had become her heart's desire and she blew the flames over her body, the smoke past Jin-joo's disconsolate face when it was all over. My darling daughter, I'm still here. I am the wind. I am on the other side, but sometimes, when your sadness is strong or my love is stronger, I pray we can be together.

It was not until Gwang-taek came to her that Ga-ok knew joy, the happiness she had not felt in Life, and she began to question, at Gwang-taek's urgings, what purpose remained for her.

"The veil between the Living and the Dead is so thin," he had told her. "There has to be a reason for that. We never truly leave, Ga-ok-ah. Take comfort. We are still with our daughter. If we could not guide her in Life, perhaps….?"

As Ga-ok was remembering this, she thought she spotted a human figure behind a tree. Yes, it was a woman. Not anyone she knew—but definitely another ghost, an elderly woman dressed in a simple hanbok and scarf, carrying a basket of fruit. Was it ghost fruit? There were still so many mysteries. Another figure appeared—a child this time. And they came, one by one, until there were dozens, lining the riverbank on the other side from where Gwang-taek and Ga-ok stood. Only the swift white water separated the new ghosts and the wind spirits. The ghosts stared; they offered no greeting to Gwang-taek and Ga-ok.

"Do you see them?" She asked Gwang-taek. "They seem wary. Should we speak to them?"

"The realms have shifted," he answered. "I think that they are seeing us for the first time. We were only the wind to them before. They'll become used to us in time. Remember how it is in Nature? With deer and birds? You walk among them as if you belong. Don't make a display."

The group of ghosts was a few rows deep now, but one young man pushed forward to the front. Ga-ok gasped because he looked like Yeo Woon. On second glance, though, she saw that he wasn't Yeo Woon—he strongly resembled him.

"Who is that man?" Ga-ok knew that Gwang-taek would know.

"Yeo Cho-sang. Woon's father."

"Hyungnim!" The man shouted the word and floated, the way spirits do, without moving arms or legs, across the raging river, to the bank where Gwang-taek stood. He grabbed his old friend by the shoulders. "Hyungnim, I never thought I'd see you again. I had so many sins to atone for, and you are the one who raised me out of the darkness and brought me here."

"Cho-sang-ah." Gwang-taek put his own hands on his blood-brother's shoulders. "I know. I saw. I saw Woon's past. But it's all changed now. Only I—" Tears sprung in Gwang-taek's eyes. "I didn't have anything to do with why you're here."

They're touching. Ga-ok was amazed. The stillness in the air was unnatural because the wind was holding her breath. They're touching one another. Can I touch Gwang-taek too?

"I called and called to my son from where I was. He didn't hear me." No attempt to stifle a sob. "I couldn't reach my own son." Woon's father's voice was so young. He looked so much like his son—tender eyes, a girlish face—but Ga-ok could see that the father was soft in a way that was a weakness; emotions unchecked by reason left a man open to exploitation. So that's why he drank; that's why be believed in fake fortune tellers; that's why Yeo Cho-sang was a weak, stumbling father. Woon, despite his sweet face and even sweeter disposition, had always held himself with a guarded coolness, had always walked with confidence, rarely betrayed any vulnerability—those things were flaws in themselves, but Woon had built himself up in times of despair whereas the father had torn himself down even in times of happiness. Ga-ok did not even have to read the father's heart to know that the son was intelligent and strong, but the father was neither.

"It's all right now," Gwang-taek tried to comfort his friend. "Woon is all right. And you're back from the darkness, right?"

Ga-ok exhaled. Gwang-taek's kindness frustrated her sometimes. Even though Cho-sang was an attractive youth, his face resembled warm porridge. She knew about this man, yes. Accidentally killing his wife, accidentally damning Woon into the hands of a worse monster like Chun—so why wasn't this father reincarnated into an earthworm by now?

"Whatever sin I committed," Yeo Cho-sang went on, "I loved that boy. I loved him." Tears were streaming down the repentant father's face. "I could not reach him from where I was. I suffered and suffered and saw how my sins had sent my own child down a path of pain. I even saw how he imitated his poor stupid father in how he died—impaling himself on the blade of someone he loved. I damned my Woon that way. I tried to tell him how sorry I was. But my hell was that I could not reach him."

"Hyung." Gwang-taek rubbed his blood-brother's shoulders gently. "I am so grieved that you felt that pain. But Woon didn't die the way you saw him die. He didn't go down that path. Your son is safe. I'm sure of it."

"Thank you, thank you, hyungnim. Thank you for saving my boy."

"It wasn't me. It was Ga-ok."

The man who looked so creepily like Yeo Woon and yet was not Yeo Woon turned his face, dropped his arms from Gwang-taek's shoulders. "Huh?" He bowed from the waist at Ga-ok. "I—I am forever in your debt." When he rose from the bow, he recognized her. "You?"

Gwang-taek, whose eyes had been shining with tears only moments before, laughed. The ghosts across the river were staring, soundlessly.

"But, hyungnim, it's not fair. What is she doing here? How-?" There was no restraint in this man, apparently. He could not assume politeness or hold back his feelings. "She's an assassin. How could she save my son? What was she doing here with you? I only killed one person—my wife—and it wasn't on purpose. Why-? It doesn't make any sense at all."

"Cho-sang-ah, I don't have all the answers."

"But you're Sword Saint—you always had the answers." The porridge-faced Yeo Woon remembered his manners. "Oh young Miss, forgive me. I meant no disrespect. I'm sure that it is because of Sword Saint that you were granted by the gods the right to be by his side. Forgive me. Thank you again for saving my son. I used to see his death in a vision that filled my darkness with hellfire. I don't see it anymore. It's gone."

Ga-ok didn't bother to forgive the man in words. She nodded. She knelt by the river and picked up a small, smooth stone, turned it over in her fingers. No, for her the vision of Dong-soo and Woon fighting in the field was still there, fixed like all other events in the past, but it no longer reached her with the hellfire of Dong-soo's guilt, with the crushing pain of Woon's broken heart. It was a dull possibility now, washed gray and smooth like the pebble in her hand, as if currents of pure water had poured over the fire.

"What Gwang-taek said is true," Ga-ok whispered. "I saved your son."

In doing so, had she saved herself?

The ghosts across the river had bored with watching the trio of old companions talking. They broke ranks, wandering back into the forest.

"I wonder why the ghosts can see us now," Ga-ok said.

"I only now returned to this realm," Yeo Woon's father said. "I was trapped in a dark place before, suffering. All I could see was my son suffering in the past and in the future. I saw no other ghosts."

"Shall we look for others?" Gwang-taek waved his arm in a beckoning gesture. It was then that Ga-ok realized that the arm given in sacrifice for Dong-soo's life was the arm Gwang-taek held out, asking Ga-ok and the penitent father to walk into the forest. For some reason, Ga-ok was happier to see that one body part than she had been to see Gwang-taek's handsome face when his bodily form had first appeared to her.

No more blood sacrifices? At least not here. The Living world may be plagued with them, but here—no more blood spilled in the name of love. Redemption doesn't have to come with that price.

The three walked for a long time. Visions came and went with dazzling clarity to all three. There was Woon flinging his short blade into the wind and felling a small rabbit. There was Dong-soo roasting the meat over a campfire in the dark woods—a smile on Woon's face unlike that anyone had ever seen. Of two paths for Dong-soo and Woon, the one with Gwang-taek's legacy of the Living Sword had triumphed.

In a sun-dappled clearing, the three came upon a vision of Sa-mo weeping alone at the table late in the evening.

"Why is he-?" Yeo Woon's father was confused. "Doesn't he know that the boys are ok?"

"Dong-soo and Woon have disappeared," answered Ga-ok. "They've fled the province together. No one knows where they are. The Prince Heir wants them to return. Cho-rip is regretful now. Dong-soo and Woon needed time together; they are travelling inn to inn, riding by night and never staying long anywhere to avoid discovery. They argue; Dong-soo says they should go back. Woon says there is no place for him in the palace, nor can he return to his own innocence. They'll find their way and one another; I feel it."

"Sa-mo-nah," the man who looks like the son says in his tender voice. "Please don't cry. Please, people have a way of coming back when you least expect it. In fact, we never leave. Hyungnim, I'm here. The boys will come back. Have faith. Please don't cry."

The butcher raises his head from the table. It's been so long since I've thought of you, his heart spoke. Cho-sang-ah, your son tried so hard to redeem himself, and we all failed him. If he doesn't return to us, I won't blame him. I will miss him and my Dong-soo, though. I will miss him.

"Don't worry," Gwang-taek tells his friend. "In time, Sa-mo will be comforted. In time, may we all be comforted."

The scene shifts. The three see a noisy tavern filled with diners.

You, look upstairs. Cho-rip hands a man a roll of coins. Persuade people to talk. I'm certain they're here somewhere.

At a far table, Woon mutters under his breath. Game's up.

Cho-rip dashes the table, and Dong-soo stands up to embrace him. How did you find us?

Gwang-taek and Ga-ok sense other scenes, but Cho-sang is confused. There was a thunderstorm. The lost boys stayed at an inn for days, spending too much money there. An accident, Cho-rip says. I can't believe I've found you.

Woon is still sitting. Don't lie. The prince has been looking for us.

I'm not lying. Cho-rip pounds his chest. Woonie, I would not do that to you. Not now. The prince gave no such order. It's all been me.

At Dong-soo's urging, Cho-rip sits down, catches his breath and drinks some rice wine. When at last he can speak, he says in a voice that sounds sincere: I was sure you two had left the country. I was ready to give up. There was a tip from someone who had seen two swordsmen spending a lot of money. A tall man and a broody one.

Dong-soo and Woon glance at one another.

I came personally. The prince didn't know I was searching, but he… he wanted you to be found. He was so hopeful that you would both return and continue his father's work. Dong-soo-ah, Woon-ah, please, please. Cho-rip bows his head. Forgive me for what I did to you both. You were my best friends. I'm so sorry.

"So this is the way it will play out," Ga-ok stepped away from the vision. "But I don't believe their Cho-rip will be redeemed."

Squinting, Gwang-taek turned to his face to place where tree limbs in the dark forest made a small blue clearing of blue sky; he seemed to look past the places Ga-ok and Yeo Woon's father could reach. "Not in Life perhaps. Cho-rip—or rather, Deputy Hong-dies in exile. That is Destiny. But who knows what happens after? I mean, look at the three of us now."

The ghost of a small child ran past them, laughing.

The three passed many ghosts in the woods, none of whom were known to any of them.

"I was hoping to see my parents," Gwang-taek confessed. "But maybe another day."

Ga-ok wondered if she would see her own father. Her mother died on a mission for Heuksa Chorong when Ga-ok was very young; Ga-ok had no memories of her mother. Her father? A Sky Lord responsible for the deaths of hundreds. He would not be here—he would be lost to some darkness deeper than where Yeo Woon's father had been trapped, where Chun….

"Gwang-taek?" Ga-ok paused, rested her palm against a tree. It was a tree of the Living world. She felt the roughness of the bark and wondered if the veil had been forever stripped, if she could touch her daughter's cheek now. "Are we ever going to see Chun again?"

"I don't know." Gwang-taek smiled. "I'm not a god, my love. Please don't look to me like I'm one. The heads of Heuksa Chorong taught you to see men that way, but I was only a man and even now, I am only the ghost of a man."

"A great soul." Yeo Woon's father bowed deeply. "I will always be humbled to have called you my blood brother in Life and to have crossed your path here in Death." He turned to Ga-ok, bowed as deeply as he had for Sword Saint. "You are a great soul too. I am humbled to have walked this far with you. But it's here, for this moment, that I am taking my leave. I may have been a fool in my Life, but I always knew when I was in the way. Forgive me."

At those words, Yeo Cho-sang wafted away.

"I thought he would never leave," sighed Ga-ok.

Gwang-taek smiled. "Once upon a time, he was the gentlest soul one could come across. It took him a long time to learn the sword, but once he learned it, he was resourceful, much the way Woon is, and he learned to compensate for his slight body and lack of power with pure speed. He never had any killing intent. That's why he feared it so much. Maybe that's why he projected that fear onto his own son."

"You were close to him."

"My blood brother. I will be with all of them one day. We made a vow."

"I wonder…." Ga-ok felt more at peace now that she ever had in Life or in Death, but she still yearned. "I wonder if my own mother will come looking for me here."

"Ah, Ga-ok-ah, don't you know the answer to that already? Mothers come looking for their children. That's what mothers do."

"Ah look!" Ga-ok's attention had turned to another sparkling vision, this time one in a dimly lit room somewhere in the palace.

Standing before a six-paneled room divider were Yeo Woon and Dong-soo in uniforms that somehow resembled those of the Royal guard but were different. Did they have special appointments? They wore military caps with insignia she couldn't make out. All Ga-ok could see were the smiles on the young men's faces. "They look so happy." They were laughing like schoolboys; Dong-soo's arm was wrapped around Woon's elbow, and the two seemed on the verge of collapsing to the floor in hysterics. Some sense of propriety kept them from laughing too loudly. Dong-soo took off Woon's cap and tossed it to the floor. Shhh. We should be quiet. His Highness' study is just a few rooms away. The laughter stilled; the two young men locked gazes.

Gwang-taek grabbed Ga-ok's hand and led her away from the vision. She startled at the touch.

"There are some things you don't need to see," he said, smiling.

"Gwang-taek?"

They were rising into the air, as they did when they were the wind, but this time they were two young lovers holding hands. "Maybe some things are not just earthly things." Gwang-taek's eyes were playful, the way the eyes of the young men in military caps had been moments ago. "Death isn't all that different from Life, is it?"

"It's different," Ga-ok said. "I prefer it here. Here, I'm with you."

"Remember when the last time my sword crossed yours?" He pulled her by the hand, and they flew even higher. "It felt like we were always pitched against one another, a Royal guard and an assassin, but it was a dance of love, wasn't it?"

"Yes," she said. And they were rising with a whistling noise, flying faster. They were the wind, after all.

"Unlike Baek Dong-soo and Yeo Woon, we never found our balance in Life," Gwang-taek whispered. The wind carried his words across the dimensions. His words were a story for the ages. "But now I know. Heaven isn't a place that exists solely in the Afterlife. It is there in the realm of the Living for anyone…."

"What do you mean?"

"Heaven isn't stagnant; it is a place one creates and exhausts and returns to again and again."

Ga-ok understood. Her fingers clenched Gwang-taek's. The arm he had given up to save a Life was leading her to her true self. No guilt, no blood sacrifices. Heaven was love.

"Where we are going…." The clouds were far beneath her feet now, and the sun shone on her upturned face. When he kissed her lips, she knew that Heaven was impermanent, but more than enough. He pulled away, and his eyes shone with her own happiness reflected in them. "Heaven? Is that where you found me?"

"Yes, Ga-ok-ah. Heaven is where I always find you." The pair paused mid-flight, and he kissed her again, both palms touching her face. "And I've caught you in my hands again. We may come and go, but we will never lose one another."

End

My drawing of Ga-ok and Gwang-taek as ghosts can be found under my debbiechan deviantart account

Written while listening to "Memories" by Dutch symphonic metal band Within Temptation. I saw the canon ending that Ga-ok and Gwang-taek witnessed, and I heard Dong-soo's voice in this song about Woon. There's also a beautiful fan MV that covers all of the series WBDS with the song; I remember the series with a terrible bittersweetness: youtu. be / ulDc 3Ntaz8Q

In this world you tried
Not leaving me alone behind.
There's no other way.
I prayed to the gods let him stay.
The memories ease the pain inside,
Now I know why.

All of my memories keep you near.
In silent moments imagine you here.
All of my memories keep you near.
Your silent whispers, silent tears.

Made me promise I'd try
To find my way back in this Life.
I hope there is a way
To give me a sign you're OK.
Reminds me again it's worth it all
So I can go on.

All of my memories keep you near.
In silent moments imagine you here.
All of my memories keep you near.
Your silent whispers, silent tears.

Together in all these memories
I see your smile.
All the memories I hold dear.
Darling, you know I will love you
'Til the end of time.

All of my memories keep you near.
In silent moments imagine you here.
All of my memories keep you near.
Your silent whispers, silent tears.

All of my memories

Songwriters
MARTINUS J. E. MARTIJN SPIERENBURG, ROBERT WESTERHOLT, SHARON J. DEN ADEL

Published by
Lyrics © Universal Music Publishing Group