The King's Sedative
All his life, Jidwi had problems sleeping. He'd learned to live with it. Then he met Ah Ro, who could send him off with a story. Then he met Sunwoo, who soothed him in a different way, but with much the same effect. Sunwoo/Jidwi/Ah Ro.
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Being honest, though I've now watched 18 different k-dramas, Hwarang is the first that has made me want to write fic for it. Hope you like it!
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Ever since the old king died, Sammaekjong had known he was the king. And he had known this was dangerous. He had known that, at any moment, an assassin might burst into his life in order to end it.
The attack on his grandfather had occurred during the night. He had been spirited away during the night. The first three assassination attempts on Sammaekjong himself happened during the night. But attacks didn't only happen in darkness. He was accosted in alleys and restaurants and on the road. The older he got, and the farther from the capital he strayed, the less frequently these attacks occurred, but they never fully disappeared from Sammaekjong's life.
Unsurprisingly, sleeping was difficult at best, impossible at worst.
To most of the subjects of Silla, Sammaekjong was no one. He was simply another face in the crowd. Only Pa Oh knew who he was on any given day, and only Pa Oh despaired whenever Sammaekjong put himself in useless danger. Though his mother claimed to worry about him and to want to protect him, when he was so far from her reach, even she did not know who he really was. Only Pa Oh knew his preferences. Only Pa Oh knew his concerns. But even Pa Oh did not know that his king rarely slept.
Sammaekjong was good at feigning sleep. He would wait until Pa Oh was snoring, then sneak out for walks in the moonlight, or private sword practice, or play a game of baduk against himself. Anything to make his mind and body grow weary, to make himself sleep. There were nights when Pa Oh woke and found him stumbling through sword forms, fit to collapse but unable to shut his eyes and rest.
Tea did not ease the symptoms. Herbal remedies, food, breathing techniques, stretching, exercise, hot baths, steam, aromatherapy, acupuncture. Nothing eased his mind and soothed his body. An hour of sleep was all he could hope for in a night, if that.
Then he returned to the capital. He was a grown man now and he was anxious to enact change in his kingdom. The world kept growing darker around him. He began to doubt his mother's care.
There, in the capital, Sammaekjong sat down to listen to a story being told on the street corner. There, in broad daylight, listening to the teller's voice shift from character to character, through emotions both high and low, in dialogue and narration, Sammaekjong's eyes drifted shut. And he slept. He slept soundly, without fear, for two hours.
Kim Ah Ro was a gifted storyteller. Her words invoked all the emotion her characters were feeling inside the hearts of those listening as well. And no matter what the tale contained, whether murder or passion or betrayal, it always managed to lull Sammaekjong to sleep.
In desperation for that calm, quiet slumber, Sammaekjong became greedy and blind. He found out what Ah Ro wanted and paid her handsomely for her services, regardless of how uncomfortable it made her feel. He approached her whenever possible, whenever he wasn't needed elsewhere for awhile, and used her as the first effective sleep aid he had ever known.
He grew to care for her. More than that, she taught him how to care for someone, how to behave with them, how to express such feelings, and how to take into consideration that someone else's feelings as well.
She did not know who he was. She was fierce and independent, loved her brother more than anything, paid no mind to the fact that she was surrounded by men all day, was a talented doctor and acupuncturist, and was quick to tell Sammaekjong – no, Jidwi – what she thought of him. Which, at times it seemed, wasn't much. But rarely did she turn him away. When he approached her out of genuine need, or with a reward, she would tell him another story. And he could sleep.
Hwarang training left little time to visit the infirmary for hours on end, but Jidwi did his best.
At night, he laid in his room with four other men practically within striking distance, and he faked slumber. For days and days, he managed his training and exams and social interactions the same way he had for most of his life: functioning on one or two hours of sleep just before the sun rose. But he could not find the sweet caress of dreams when surrounded by so many unfamiliar men, especially not when one of them had expressed a desire to kill him.
Kim Sunwoo, Ah Ro's brother. His best friend was dead because of the king and he had vowed to kill the king in return. If he ever found out that Jidwi was the man he sought so angrily, Jidwi honestly wasn't certain how long he would survive. It was like walking side by side with his own assassin, and for weeks it caused him so much anxiety that he got even less sleep than usual.
But then, Sunwoo joked with him. Then, Sunwoo defended him in a fight. Then, Sunwoo said the most profound words Jidwi had ever heard in his life as the hidden king.
Someone must walk a path in order for it to become a path. It doesn't exist until someone forges the way. Only then can the healing water find a way through and bring life to the barren, dry land. That is the way of a king.
That night, he visited his mother and told her of his intention to become stronger, to become a king fit for Silla. Much later, he laid down in his bed, his roommates grumbling their way into sleep around him. Unlike the others, Sunwoo quietly got ready for bed and fell asleep. Listening to his soft movement, Jidwi found his eyes shutting and sleep taking over.
The following night, Jidwi slept soundly without any effort.
The night after, as well.
It wasn't until the third night that he recognized what might have caused a change in his sleep pattern. In the dark of the night, with only the moon outside for light, without even the hum of insects to distract him, Jidwi imagined he could hear Sunwoo's breathing, the way the blanket rustled as he shifted in sleep.
That mental image of Sunwoo soothed him. The mere presence of Sunwoo, a half-blood here as his mother's Hwarang, brought with it blissful slumber.
The noble light shining out from Sunwoo calmed the storm that constantly raged within Jidwi. Jidwi knew him to be strong not only in morals but also in body, and knew that Sunwoo was not afraid to fight. Somehow, some way, that knowledge assayed the fear of attack that had swallowed so many of Jidwi's nights
Fitting that both siblings helped him to sleep.
If either Ah Ro or Sunwoo was hurt or in danger, Jidwi's sleep was restless or absent entirely. He woke up feeling exhausted or never shut his eyes at all, staring instead of Sunwoo's bunk while his chest ached and his muscles grew ever more tense.
When all was calm, as it usually was between the tasks Wihwa assigned them, Jidwi enjoyed a full night's rest along with all the other Hwarang. He didn't even need to listen to Ah Ro's stories anymore. Just the idea of her, or her brother, was enough to slow his heart and allow him to drift off.
He grew comfortable around the siblings. Ah Ro found out who he was and acted as his conscience, teaching him how to be proper company. Sunwoo became his dearest companion and taught him how to be a proper king. He could tease them, and them him, and Jidwi's heart felt full.
It wasn't until he saw them kissing, realized that neither one could be his, that he realized he loved them.
He didn't only love Ah Ro, the doctor and storyteller that society would shun for her half-blood status. He also loved Sunwoo, the Queen's half-blood Hwarang. Neither was acceptable for a Scared Bone to marry or court, but Jidwi's heart kept breaking over and over and over every time he remembered that they loved each other, and that neither one loved him.
He stopped sleeping.
There was so much to deal with. Jidwi came out to the world as King Jinheung. He had to learn to stand against the officials, against Minister Park, against his mother. And, he learned, against Sunwoo. A Sacred Bone. A fellow heir to the throne of Silla.
When he challenged Sunwoo in the throne room, Jidwi had not had a good night sleep in so long that he had almost forgotten what it was like. Those nights lying close to Sunwoo, being soothed by his presence, had become a wound that had healed badly and now only caused him pain.
Perhaps that was why he cried. Perhaps that was why he came clean with Sunwoo about all of his hopes and dreams, about how he wanted to build a kingdom with Sunwoo at his side, about how he dreamed they would be together. Perhaps that was why, having concluded that Sunwoo would be as good a king as he himself, Jidwi offered his heart and his life for Sunwoo to take, to end.
He'd never imagined that Sunwoo would accept him, all of him, as he was. But he did. Sunwoo was hesitant, his own heart still bruised from all the wrongs done to it, but he opened himself up to Jidwi fully, willingly, and with hope.
Sunwoo took Jidwi's side and helped him gain his throne. In the midst of this power struggle, at Sunwoo's insistence, Jidwi came clean to Ah Ro as well.
Amazingly, she was more suspicious than her once-brother. She questioned his motives, if not his heart, and only accepted him once she knew he and Sunwoo were on the same side in the battle for Silla. She cared for him as well, though she feared it wasn't as deeply as he cared for her, but he and Sunwoo were as important to her as her father and she vowed to stand by him and protect him, if not by the sword as Sunwoo would.
Jidwi had never felt happier in his life.
Ah Ro said she was worried about his insomnia, that he wouldn't be able to sleep soundly as the king. But Jidwi knew that, with both Ah Ro and Sunwoo by his side and in his heart, no matter how far away they were from each other, he would always sleep soundly.
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fin