The Tautology of Meetings
No doubt Heaven had a hand in the whole affair, some new intricate threadwork spooling out of Fate's incessant loom to fulfill a fickle God's inscrutable Will. It started long before then, too; but as all Fate-riddled men and women can tell you, one isn't always aware of the pull of Destiny's strings. Only when the events have come to pass can you make note of the minute details; when you are free to look back at the finished tapestry hanging upon Heaven's wall, with all its ends neatly trimmed and tucked in.
It happened that DamDuk decided to visit the gambling dens that day and found a curiosity.
It happened that Sujini's master wasn't just a pitiless slave driver, harrying his pupil to do all the hard work so that he didn't have to move a single lazy muscle; he also had, in her opinion, a rather questionable moral code, for why in Hwanwoong's hell was it wrong to steal from paid thugs? Honestly, Master Hyun Go, that was more than enough to cover her losses, and after all her legwork and the information she gathered for him, whydid she have to be the one to actually stop them ...
It happened that DamDuk didn't quite know what to make of her, except that he found her so damnably interesting - this girl who was a gambler, and then a pickpocket, and then a twisted sort of advocate for fair play, and then a common street urchin hustling for a bottle of wine. Her overfamiliarity both annoyed and amused him; he was almost sincerely sorry he had to leave her to her own troubles, but he had a palace to come home to and a king for a father, and he told himself that the comforts of a prince's bedroom was so much more preferable than getting beaten by angry Julno tribesmen... out in the streets and in the cold, exhilarating, night air...
Well...in any case, he at least got to see Kiha and made her smile.
Lovely, solemn Kiha.
What he would give to see her laugh as breathlessly as that girl.
No matter how hard he tried, she always seemed to be just a step beyond his reach, always torn away from him by tiresome class barriers and his own royal standing. She slips through his fingers like water, as much the enigma as she was when he first met her. Then again, perhaps it was in all women's nature to be enigmatic, to seal away their hearts in secret and leave him in eternal wonderment.
And then, unbidden, came the memory of warm arms slipping companionably around his shoulders, drawing him in. I'll tell you the secret. I'll let you in on it. I'll tell you for three coins. He wondered if she realized she was suppose to be a woman, too.
It followed that he decided to tease her about it, the first chance he got.
It so happened that Sujini didn't think of him as a man, nor of herself as a woman; at least, not in that way; at least, not at first. Her world contained a different set of dichotomies. There were the common folk and the nobility; the poor and the rich; friends and foes; the ones you give your unbending loyalty to and the ones you swindle out of their money and whose pockets you pick without the slightest remorse. An enterprising street rat has to learn to be astute in telling who's which, and it wasn't always apparent at first glance. Can you really blame her, then, for taking the precaution?
For what was she to think of this stranger, who had the gait and posture of a rich lord and the heavy purse to match, yet who consorted with Da Rae girls and helped random troublemaking peasants escape the men who were ready to flay her alive?
She had just about settled on a wary kind of camaraderie, too, (though, of course, still open to whatever profit she might make in the course of their acquaintanceship) when the wily bastard, damn him, went and abandoned her the very next moment she got in trouble again. You can be sure she told him exactly what she thought of that attitude. Because what kind of devious, disloyal, sneaky, unreliable...person does that?
What he was, it turned out, was a man; and his objection being that it was unseemly for her to keep chasing after him in that manner, like the hard-up girls who got thrown out of Da Rae house. For as he had so smugly pointed out, Sujini was indeed a woman, underneath all the grime and dust of the alleys.
It followed that Sujini could only slink back in mortified confusion. This particular rejection was a novel one, and put her at a loss on how to handle it. Ever since she could remember, "proper" women have been turning their noses up at her for not being womanly enough, while men pushed her away for being too much of one. It was all the same to Sujini. She stayed her own true self; dealt with their rejection with good-natured witticisms (or a punch in the mouth, as need be); and went ahead and inserted herself in their company anyway.
Have you no womanly pride?
Until she met this stranger, no one had told her she was suppose to take pride in her being one.
How oddly he had said it, too. He was quite obviously mocking and teasing, but there was something in the impish twinkle of his eye that was already on its way to fondness.
How bewildering, to think of some man's eyes as twinkling.
When next she looked up, Sujini realized she had walked the entire length of the marketplace, lost in the loop of her own thoughts. She scratched her head sheepishly; then chuckled; then laughed out long and loudly at her own foolishness.
Womanly pride, thought Sujini, was decidedly bad for business. Let them have it who can afford it – they who didn't have to drink the dregs at the bottom of someone else's wine goblet, who had no scatterbrained old master to take care of and make sure was eating properly. She was a practical gutter rat; she would put her pride on the deftness of her fingers, in the deadly accuracy of her aim. Right then, she had a moneybag to relieve of its contents; and she raced through the alleyways and was soon back on its trail.
And if it happened that DamDuk relished it, if he unwittingly let himself be dragged by the hand towards his inexorable fate, do not judge him too harshly. Souls tend to remember, and though he had only just met her, he had loved her long before.
disclaimer: some of the dialogue were taken directly from the show/canon. I claim no ownership for them, or for any of the characters I use in my fic.
a/n: I've been trying to work myself up into writing more original scenes but I keep getting distracted, so this is more of the same scene re-writes. I swear one of these days I'm gonna re-write the show's ending.
Over on ao3 i included fanart. Nothing exceptional, but if you find me there, don't be shy about leaving a comment :D