sky at dawn
Summary: He never wanted to be king. OneShot- Soo-Won. (All the lies we tell ourselves.)
Warning: Drabble-esque, introspection.
Set: Story-unrelated.
Disclaimer: Standards apply.
Yona smiles.
The princess is beautiful.
Amethyst eyes; fiery, beautiful hair. Red like the dawn, vivid like life itself: framing her eyes and her face, the face he touched so often when he was a child. When she had a fever, when he wiped away her tears. She is everything she ever was: his best friend, his little charge, something like a sister, a precious treasure to protect. And then, there is: this girl – woman – on the cusp of blooming, the very symbol of the birth of spring. This girl-woman with a face that whispers of promises yet to be fulfilled, with the depths in her eyes that speak of eternal love.
And Soo-Won is lost.
Action. Reaction.
Are you trying to expose yourself, you stupid idiot?
She always cried so easily.
It is for that – maybe self-protection, maybe denial? – that he has learned to not look at her too closely: because her tears were pretty. Soo-Won, even with twelve years and then fifteen and now nineteen, had always known that. Now nineteen, he also knew she was forbidden; unattainable. Still, her tears –
Precious.
There was no way he could ignore them. So he said some silly things he would regret as soon as she was out of sight, and blushed (he was, later, unable to tell whether it had been part of his charade or his true, honest reaction, he had been lying so much he did not believe himself anymore). And gave her a hairpin, and said some other silly things, and –
You really never knew, did you.
Reaction. Action.
"So it indeed is you."
The king. This stupid, boring, weak king, the one that never was anything but unfailingly kind to Soo-Won and yet is his greatest cause of anger. There is sorrow in his voice.
"I wished it would not come to this. At least not for you. I tried, but I failed. Do you now understand why I could never have given her to you?"
"Leave her out of it."
He does. He smiles, instead, and drops his arms to his sides. A lamb walking to its own slaughter, baring its throat to its killers.
The sword in his hand never weighted more than now.
"May the gods watch over you, son of mine," the king says, and Soo-Won runs him through with his father's sword.
They share a mutual love.
Maybe it is not quite love yet, maybe it is too young, too breakable. It is the determined admiration of a girl on the brink of womanhood and the astounded feeling of awe towards that girl from a man who cannot quite believe that the girl he knew grew into the woman he is seeing. A question and its answer, two notes of the same song. Maybe it is something less solid, and softer, than love, but it definitely is there.
What else to call it than love?
Yona's confession might have caught him by surprise, but Soo-Won's own heart did, too. There is no rationality involved, no clear thought. Just the surprise, the realization: beautiful.
She laughs as they walk through the gardens, not quite holding hands. The nobles and guests around them might as well be nonexistent. He listens to her sweet voice telling him stories, bathes in the sensation of her eyes on him, and wills the time to stop. When she touches his hand with hers, briefly, shyly, at the evening of the third day of her birthday celebrations, he feels like being struck by a bolt of lightning.
For the duration of two days, or maybe even forty hours only, their love is two-sided. Reciprocated, beautiful. Received and returned.
"What did you do to King Il?!"
"I killed him."
Far away in the distance, the sound of something precious shattering is drowned out by Hak's mute scream of disbelief and rage.
"You know what you need to do."
Soo-Won always wondered why King Il had let a person like Kye-Sook into his inner circle; the late king, may the Gods rest his soul, might have been a foolish pacifist but he had never been a foolish man. Maybe this was the root of it all, this man who had been able to hide the darkest secrets and treasonous actions from the Head of State in Hiryuu's Grace. And surely, he was not acting on his own behalf only. His exalted position, the closeness to the king and the influence he held at court had to be due to something – someone – else drawing the strings in the background. At least, that was what he thought. But then, maybe Soo-Won was just being paranoid. Because who else was more prone to being usurped than the usurper himself? Who else would be betrayed, in the end, if not the betrayer?
Soo-Won, the traitor.
So he nodded, and schooled his features into the appropriate grimness. On his hands, the blood that had long been washed away still burned, fiery and red.
Kye-Sook, the traitor, bowed his head: enough to appear submissive. But Soo-Won was not fooled.
"All hail King Soo-Won, ruler of Kouka."
There is no other way.
(At least, that is what he tells himself, and is it not ironic how he sees straight through Kye-Sook's lies but that he believes his own?)
Meeting her is one thing.
Finding her, so suddenly, meeting her on an early morning somewhere in a small town at the coast. She could have been anyone – simple dress, purposeful steps: a lady-in-waiting on an errand for her mistress, the daughter of a merchant, walking through town. A girl on her way to work in the early morning. Instead, Soo-Won sees
sky at dawn
a princess secretly walking her kingdom's streets, a lady in disguise of a merchant's daughter. A person of royal blood, standing too tall, looking too proud and too beautiful for the scenery of a simple harbor village. Yona wears a simple dress and not even a trace of her once childish and spoilt behavior, and the first thing he thinks, oddly is
Oh Gods how I –
how Hak would hate it, having her meander through this place all by herself.
Yes.
Meeting Yona is one thing, but seeing her right in front of him –
Soo-Won had thought that there was nothing that could make him regret his decisions any more than the eyes of the proud girl, suddenly burning with hate and grief at his sight.
Then, he sees Hak's.
You shattered her.
Promises break so easily.
Humans, too.
"You did the right thing, you know."
Han Joo-Doh is not even looking at him, the general's gaze is fixed on the scenery outside. His posture is stiff and unyielding and Soo-Won remembers the young man he, Yona and Hak used to play tricks on: there is nothing of the young guard in the Sky Tribe's general nowadays, nothing. And, at the same time: everything.
"Then why does it not feel like it is?"
Soo-Won means to have his answer come out flippantly and humorously, but the bitterness in it surprises even Joo-Doh. The general does not move.
"Doing the right thing is seldom easy, Mylord."
"As usual, you are right, General." Soo-Won finds his smile somewhere and plasters it back on, and he can see how much it throws his general off track. It is petty, but he enjoys it. Joo-Doh cannot know, can never know. He just does what he believes is his duty: he protects the king. There goes the Sky Tribe, unquestioningly loyal to the end. Han Joo-Doh threw his weight and the weight of his tribe behind Soo-Won and for that, he is grateful. But at the same time, he hates him. Joo-Doh has known them since they were kids. Why has he not realized? Why has he not seen? He should know. He should be able to see through Soo-Won's ruse easily, he of all, and yet – nothing.
You abandoned her. You should have protected her. How could you?
And there it is, greatest irony of all times.
Because Soo-Won should have protected her, too.
Hak is the only one of them who never strayed from his promises.
The hate in his eyes, interestingly, hurts only little more than the emptiness in Yona's.
Hak always was his best friend.
Hak always believed in Soo-Won, more than Soo-Won believed in himself.
That, maybe, is the reason why the Thunderbeast will never be able to forgive him. And why Hak's eyes will forever haunt Soo-Won; why his words will, forever, cut deeper than even a look from Yona's tear-filled eyes.
But the princess does not cry anymore. Soo-Won lost that power over her. He is selfishly glad and perversely devastated over it.
"How could you? She loved you!"
Hak, oh, Hak, ever the idealist, ever the protector. Unable to see the darkness in the shadows, despite being able to see so much. Unable to suspect a spoilt core in the apple that shines so brightly. Soo-Won is rotten to his heart, and he knows.
Yona never would have been able to love all of him.
Except that maybe, she could have?
He would never know.
"Your troops are waiting, Your Majesty."
Kye-Sook, ever-present. Soo-Won is feeding a snake at his bosom, a snake that is only waiting for a signal Soo-Won never will be able to see coming. A venomous snake; one drop of its poison enough to kill him trice-over. He has no doubts the advisor will act accordingly, even expects it to happen. But until then he can only play along; trying to stay alive long enough to find the path that, in the end, might save perhaps not him but Kouka, at least.
Kouka.
The country that his father loved, protected and served to the point that he went mad. The country that stupid King Il sacrificed himself for by letting Soo-Won dispose of him. The country that is, by right of birth and Heaven's Fate, Yona's; the inheritance of the girl standing in the blush of dawn. Kouka: it is Soo-Won's only legacy, his only bequest. His only way to, perhaps, leave a tiny little bit of himself with her once he has finally served his purpose.
Sometimes, he imagines telling her. He doubts she would listen, but he still wishes.
(Or does he? Lies, after all. Lies everywhere; lies, lies and more lies.)
For Hak, too, but that is a past dead and buried. Lamented in the darkness in his former friends' eyes. He does not need friends anymore. He does not need family or love. He does not wish for anything. Nowadays, Soo-Won only needs very few things. Mostly, he just longs for her.
Yona.
Years later, Soo-Won will realize: it was a mutual love they shared, yes. But it also was a child's love. Insecure, absolute. Naïve. Still-born before it had the chance to ever sing.
He never is sure whether to be glad or to mourn this lost path.
The sky is brilliant, fire and blood.
He can feel her eyes on him.
I will never stop loving you, Soo-Won.
This, he thinks, probably is the end.
Soo-Won smiles.