Author's Note: I haven't written fanfiction in a long, long time. Needless to say these two inspired me. Please bear with me as I shake off the rust and attempt to piece together their lives post that bittersweet CLOY ending.
One.
I have died everyday, waiting for you
Darling, don't be afraid, I have loved you for a thousand years
I'll love you for a thousand more
There's music in the heavy glide of the train against the tracks, a lulling cacophony of rattles, the odd scrape, the whoosh of a dalliance with the early spring breeze. He plays it against his thigh absently, fingers tapping the keys of a phantom piano, and the breathtaking landscape rushes past him, rolling hills and endless green in every shade he can name: forest, sage, emerald, jade, moss, hunter. It's a feast for the senses, and his feel more awake, more sensitive than they have in years.
Last night he stepped off a plane in Zurich and drew the crisp air into his lungs hungrily, almost as if he could taste her breath in it. It's been three long, long years, but he can still feel her presence in his bones, as sharply as that first day in the outskirts of his little village, when she'd turned his world inside out with a cheeky smile and a brave façade. Most days, Ri Jeong-hyeok is logical to a fault, but when it comes to her, truth defies reason. He supposes reasoning with fate is a losing battle anyway, and he smiles a little to himself as he pulls the glossy photo out of his coat pocket, runs the pad of his thumb across her face fondly. Those sad doe eyes will be the death of him.
When she enters the Pyongyang Hotel's café, Seo Dan has her face carefully schooled into an uninviting scowl. She throws withering glances around at society's curious gazes until she spots him sitting by the glass pane. Her demeanor softens as she walks towards him briskly, sliding into the chair across from him before he can come to his feet in polite greeting. It's all quite unceremonious, their third meeting in two years, the first being at his old house in the village when she'd silently confessed what Gu Seung Jun had come to mean to her and that he was gone with a frightening finality. She'd then handed him a camera and brought everything full circle.
"Hello Ri Jeong-hyeok."
"You look well," he says by way of greeting, and he means it. In that very first year after the world spun off its axis, she looked inconsolable, her narrow face sallow and lifeless. They met in the same café last winter, in memory of the ones they lost, each wistful with memories too fresh not to bleed. She'd told him then that Gu Seung Jun had died.
Today, she allows herself a small smile. "I am well," she confirms. "How are you?"
"I'm okay. The orchestra keeps me busy." It does keep him busy. He pours his heart and soul into the piano, creating music that brings her back in little snippets: her humor, her warmth, her bravery. He can write music for an eternity and fall short of capturing the depth of her heart. "How are you? Mother says you've been traveling."
She cocks her head to the side, tucks her chin down and considers him for a moment, an unspoken question hovering between them. "I've been playing the violin in classical music concerts all over Europe." Dan reaches for her purse and rifles through it to produce a white box, the size of his fist. "I found this at Galeries Lafayette in Paris," she says, placing the box on the table between them and sliding it towards him.
Seri's Choice. His heart thumps sickly against his ribcage. He reaches for it like a starving man and picks it up gingerly. "Odnoliub," he reads the unfamiliar word reverently. The package is tasteful and the top comes off smoothly to reveal a candle set against a satiny black cushion.
"Odnoliub," she corrects his pronunciation with slow drawn out syllables. "Russian for someone who has only one love in their life."
The knot in his chest moves to his throat, and his eyes burn hot and wet, blurring his vision. She doesn't notice because she's preoccupied with wiping away the two tears that slide down her cheeks. Jeong-hyeok swallows past the pain and slides the scented candle into his palm. It's labeled 'The Original – Home'. He lifts it to his nose and closes his eyes as he pulls a deep breath into his chest. In an instant, he's back in her living room in Seoul, a touch of sweet vanilla and a wild tangy bouquet of lavender and roses. He can almost see her, dwarfed in an oversized knit sweater, dark eyes sparkling at him teasingly before she gravitates into his arms. Shaking his head, he tucks the candle back into its satiny box and folds it protectively between both hands.
He turns his attention to the woman across the table. With great dignity, she dabs moisture out of the corners of her eyes. "Thank you very much, Seo Dan," he says quietly. "This is very kind."
"There's more," she says and reaches inside her purse again to withdraw a folded manila envelope. "It's a magazine," she tells him before he can open it. "For later."
It's practically contraband. "You don't have to do this," he sighs, embarrassed, but a selfish part of him is nearly delirious with the prospect of a glimpse into Se-ri and her world. "I don't expect it." And he really doesn't; Dan doesn't owe him anything.
"I know. I want to," she shrugs, like she doesn't understand the why either.
"Thank you. I don't know what to say," he confesses sheepishly, awkward in his debt to the woman he once thought he would marry. It feels like a lifetime ago now and such a ludicrous proposition.
She looks back into the hotel, towards the elevators, and for a moment she looks like she's somewhere else. He thinks this must be what his mother calls him out on when she says he's lightyears away. When Dan speaks again, her voice is soft with remembrance. "He helped you, too."
He feels a small empathetic smile curve his lips. "He was a good man."
She dabs at her eyes again, impatiently this time and jerks her head in a quick nod. "Yes, he was." They're quiet for two minutes after that, in respect for the dearly departed. She breaks the silence with a loud rattling breath. "In French, when you miss someone, you say 'tu me manques'. It doesn't mean I miss you. It means you are missing from me, like a piece of you has gone astray," she explains pensively. "Like you are not complete without them."
As the train screeches to a halt at Grindelwald station, Jeong-hyeok comes to his feet and slips the photo into his pocket. The late morning welcomes him with a roaring sun and a crisp breeze that accompany his every step as he wanders across gentle grassy slopes, watching a handful of paragliders float down from snowy peaks and across the sky dreamily. He wonders if that's what drew him here. When he lived in Iseltwald a decade ago, these hills were famous for attracting the most avid paragliders, but he doesn't dwell on that.
Tomorrow is Monday, the opening day of Se-ri's program for disadvantaged musically inclined youth. Although he's left little up to chance, he doesn't know what to expect. Yoon Se-ri may have moved on, or – and that pains him the most – she may not even show up. He distracts himself from that possibility, eyes scanning the horizon as he sets off on a trek across the vast green countryside.
Somehow he loses sense of time, strolling leisurely from one hill to the next, smiling to the occasional passerby, and marveling at the splendor of it all.
It's one or many hours later when he spots a red, white and blue parachute flailing softly in the wind as the paraglider hurtles unsteadily towards the ground a hundred meters away from him. His first reaction is a flash of concern as she nears the ground faster than he expects, but she's deft with the equipment, quick to coerce it into behaving. There's a beautiful familiarity to the way she moves and the way her jumpsuit engulfs her slender frame, bold red and ebony hair. His breath deserts him in one fell swoop, tangled somewhere in his lungs, but he finds himself walking towards her purposefully, his body instinctively understanding what his mind does not. He gets close enough that he can hear shuffling, muffled by layers of collapsed material, hiding her completely from sight.
"I always do this," she huffs, and her annoyed voice sounds better than the music of a thousand orchestras. He stops several paces away, mindful of her predicament and his slipping self-control. It won't do to startle her. What if everything has changed? His heart clenches agonizingly at the thought. "I do well until right before the landing," she continues, ever the perfectionist. "In life, it's always the end that matters most." It's a philosophical statement to make while wrestling a collapsed glider, and he finds himself fighting an amused tender smile.
"I don't think your landing was that bad," he says, watching her lift the crumpled fabric away from her kneeling form, dark hair endearingly disheveled. It takes every ounce of his willpower to stay put, but Ri Jeong-hyeok has always been a patient man.
"I mean I did land successfully," she concedes, giving herself a little bit of credit but not sparing a single glance in his direction. "But the ropes are all entangled."
"I think you fell on the right spot," he points out as she clears the last piece of rope over her head.
"Look at this," Se-ri mutters and casts it all aside when she finally, finally lifts her gaze to his. For a small eternity, the world stops spinning, and everything clicks into place. He can tell the exact moment his presence registers in her mind by the kaleidoscope of emotions that flicker across her face. He thinks maybe, nothing has changed, and his chest swells with emotion.
"No, let me correct myself," he continues and looks into the distance, as if searching for the right words, but he's always known them. He's held them in his heart for years. "You didn't fall." He tilts his head, gaze drawn back to hers, and favors her with the beginnings of a smile. "You've descended."
She blinks at him in disbelief, lips softly parted, like she can't quite decide if he's a figment of her traitorous mind. Sucking in a quick audible breath, she pushes to her feet in one fluid motion, teary eyes never leaving his.
"I've missed you." A banal understatement to a wealth of emotion he cannot begin to put in words. Tu me manques.Odnoliub. Home. Se-ri.
When she finally deems him to be real, a quiet sob falls from her lips, and then she's running towards him, closing the distance, always the brave one between the two of them, her heart dangling on her sleeve like a worthless possession. He wants to protect her from everything. He wants to protect her from himself. Heedless, she flings herself into his arms, slim arms encircling his neck, and it feels like coming home after a long war. He folds her into him, the missing piece of a puzzle, and his next breath is full of Se-ri, sunshine and sweetness, a hint of something floral that has no name.
"I knew it," she whispers on a trembling sigh, warm breath ghosting against his ear. "I knew you'd be able to find me. But I still can't believe you've come all the way here." Her fingertips graze the back of his neck. "It must've been difficult," she frets. "It must've been dangerous." He closes his eyes, savoring the weight of her body in his arms, the press of her against him, her voice drowning out every other sound in the universe. Nothing has changed. "How?" she asks. "How did you come here?"
"I got on the wrong train," he says with meaning, struck by the literal truth behind his words. She pulls back to look at him, dark eyes bright with longing, tears smeared across her smooth cheeks, and up close she's never looked more beautiful to him. The years have been kind. "And that very train brought me here." He reaches out and sweeps a tress of hair from her brow. His fingertips stay, linger, following the shallow indent at her temple, the outer curve of her cheek, the line of her jaw. Scintillating, devastating desire begins to spill liquid heat through his limbs. He forgets his fear, his restraint. She inclines her head a little, leaning in to his touch. "It brought me to the place I've yearned to come every morning and night. It brought me to my destination." His hand circles to the back of her neck, and she closes her eyes. Gently, he brushes a kiss across her mouth, a sweet, light caress, a whetting of passion. Her lips part a sliver, a shy invitation, and he obliges, pulling her tighter into his embrace, stealing her breath back from her, drawing it in like it gives him life.
His tongue reaches into her mouth, not quickly, like a thief, but slowly, languidly exploring the heated recesses of her mouth. She hums, a pleased little noise that sets him on fire as her tongue finds his, tangling wet and urgent in an open-mouthed kiss. She slides her hands down, beneath his jacket, across his chest and strokes him everywhere, hungry and wanting. It feels new, different to every other time he'd kissed her. Their past kisses were chaste goodbyes that strove to make no promises. This one is electric, laden with possibilities that make his fingers tighten at her waist.
She seems to sense the shift in his body and breaks free of his kiss to trace his bottom lip with her thumb, her heavy-lidded gaze scanning his face, slowing his erratic heartbeat to a steady thump. "Jeong-hyeok," she croons. "Let's go home."
TBC.
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