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He had kissed her before. Once, when they were young. Very young.

Well, she had kissed him, to be precise. But the Princess had probably been too young at the time for her to remember now, anyways.

But Hak remembered, despite having spent most of his early adolescence trying to forget. Yona had been six at the time- a time in which true love might be around any corner, under any pebble, hidden in the brambles of any tree, and the princess always ended up with the knight in shining armor.

For Hak, a strapping boy of nearly-nine-years-old, it was a time when Cooties was a very real and dangerous epidemic, one in which he found himself constantly at risk of catching.

Why couldn't the Princess ever seem to leave him alone? Didn't she know that thumb-warring (he always let her win, of course) and sleeve-tugging were high-risk behavior?

Obviously not, or she wouldn't be dragging him up the stairs to the highest watchtower now, either blissfully oblivious or intentionally ignorant of his protestations. "This will be so much fun, Hak! You can be the prince and I'll be the princess, and we can play that I've been locked away in my tower and you have to come rescue me!" She turned to him as they reached the top, panting but proud as she gestured to the grand view of the surrounding forest and distant mountaintops that greeted them. "It's the perfect place, see? Doesn't it feel like we're in a fairytale?"

Hak, for his part, barely spared the trees and mountains a glance before attempting to coerce the Princess back down the stairs. "Yona! Listen to me, will you? We shouldn't be up here. What if your dad finds out?"

"Father won't be back from Sei for days." she flashed a charming, oh-so-innocent smile.

The boy grimaced. "Your mother then."

"Mother? She's so busy attending meetings in his absence, I think she'd hardly notice if we ran away!" Her eyes lit up. "Hak, we should run away! Now might be our only chance to explore outside the Palace walls! Oh, it will be so exciting, how do you think we should sneak out?" She raced over to the tower's edge and leaned over, measuring the distance to the ground. "We could climb down from here if we had some rope…"

"Yona!" Hak hurried over to her, jerking her away from the precipice. "Are you crazy? Get away from there!"

She pouted. "Oh, c'mon Hak, it's not that far, really! How do you expect to have an adventure without a little danger?" She stepped out of Hak's grasp and made a move towards the edge again, complaining to herself, "If only my stupid hair were longer… then it would be just like Rapunzel…"

Hak was becoming Very. Exasperated. Didn't she realize every touch he had to endure whilst saving her only made the probability of catching her cooties skyrocket? How could she be so selfish? Drawing her back from her teetering position yet again (really, she was an accidental suicide just waiting to happen), he hissed, "Rapunzel? What are you even- you know what, nevermind that, no. No one's going anywhere, no one's climbing down any walls, no one's having any adventures. We're staying right here."

Expecting her to throw a fit over his laying-down-the-law, he was surprised to say the least when her face split into an enormous grin and she threw her arms around him in joy. "Really, we can stay?! You won't regret it, it will be so much fun," she pushed away from him just as whiplash fast as she had engulfed him, rambling on to herself once again, "now we just have to find something we can use for crowns… those arrows maybe? But we have nothing to fashion them together with… oh well, a crown made of arrows is a bit too Brothers Grimm for my tastes anyway…"

Still a bit shell-shocked from the complete intrusion of his personal space (and the compromisation of his immune system, no doubt), Hak slowly pushed a hand back through his hair, vexed but resigned. He sighed. "The Old Man will kill me if something happens to you." An inward shudder accompanied the thought of Gramps' wrath if he ever found out Hak had let the Princess so near to the Palace walls- or to the weapons the tower sheltered, for that matter, a fortitude of hidden crossbows stationed around the circumference of the turret.

She called out to him from across the way, searching through an old chest for jewels or crowns but appearing to find nothing besides armor and weapons of various shapes and sizes. "Nothing's going to happen, Hak! Besides, how will he ever know? This watchtower hasn't been used for years, right? There's no one up here but us."

That much was true. There wasn't a soul in sight but the two of them- not even a whisper of human activity on the wind, just the gentle rustling of leaves and the sweet sound of songbirds chirping in the distance. Unsure of what to do besides cater to the pushy princess' whims, he finally allowed himself to admire the world below, stretching for miles into the distance. It really was quite a view. He could almost convince himself that he could see home from here, though Fuuga was tucked away behind the mountain spires, hidden from the rest of the world. For a moment he imagined he was back at the Wind Tribe, sparring with Han-Dae or napping in the shade of his favorite Oak tree. Free from stuffy palace living. Free from forbidden towers and nonsensical rules. Free from babysitting duty.

A few more days, he reminded himself. A few more days and the King would return and the Generals would be able to head back to their Tribes. A few more days and this lunatic Princess would be out of his hair.

Yona looked up so suddenly, Hak worried for a second he had said that last part out loud. "What's wrong? Don't you want to play? You can be the princess, if you want! I'll be the one to rescue you!"

He spluttered. "I don't want to be the princess!"

"Well then you have to be the prince." She got to her feet and, dusting herself off, continued, "We don't need crowns. It's fine. We can just pretend."

"Why are you pretending to be a princess in the first place? You don't need to pretend, Yona. You are a princess."

She afforded him a sharp glare, which quickly turned into a whiny frown. "Not a proper one," she muttered to herself, crossing her arms and scuffing the ground with one foot. "Not with pretty hair like Aurora and Rapunzel… not with a prince…"

Hak rolled his eyes. "Make Su Won be the prince."

Yona, young, pre-unrequited-love-phase Yona, looked at him like he was crazy. "Su Won can't be the prince! His hair is too long- it's like a girl's! Besides, he can't play right now. He went with Uncle Yu-Hon into town, remember?"

"Fine, Min-Soo then."

"Min-Soo!" she sounded appalled. "Min-Soo can't be the prince, he's like my little brother! That's gross."

"Well I'm like a big brother, aren't I?"

"No you're not. You don't live at the Palace like Min-Soo does. I never see you!"

He dropped his head into his hands, feeling a headache coming on. "That's a weird thing to say because I would say I see far too much of you."

She ignored him, brashly stepping forward to tug insistently on his sleeve. "You're the only one that can be the prince, Hak! It has to be you!"

"Why? Do you like me or something?" Oh God. He really was catching her cooties! He was starting to sound just as whiny and annoying as her!

Well, that got her to let go of his sleeve, at least. "What?" she looked… nervous? Horrified? Stunned? Confused? He couldn't tell. He couldn't care less, though, really. "No! How could you say that? You're mean and not cute at all!"

Another eye roll. "Well if you don't like me, why does it have to be me then?"

Confused. Now she definitely looked confused. "Why? Because… well, because…" He almost felt bad, watching her wacky little six-year-old brain try to compute some valid, semi-sane reasoning.

Almost.

Until her eyes lit up in triumph and a checkmate smirk slid across her face. "Because I am a princess, like you said before, Hak. A real one. And I said so."

Game over. RIP, Hak of the Wind Tribe, victim of Process of Elimination. He could see the words on his gravestone now.

No. Not today.

"Look, Princess. I'll be anything. Anything you want."

"I want you to be the-"

"Just not a princess. And not a prince."

"Hak-"

"No."

"Please-"

"No."

She glared a supreme death glare at him. "You can't say no to me! I could throw you over the tower wall right now for your treasonous behavior!"

He put his hands behind his head, unaffected, and smiled confidently. "Yeah? I'd like to see you try."

Oof. The crazy girl took seemed to take his words as a challenge, because next thing Hak knew he was on the ground with a painful thud, backed into the wall of the turret, Yona basically on top of him, fists flying, screaming a bloody murder of a battle cry.

"For God's sa- Yona, what the hell?! Get off of me! Are you insane?!" Without the element of surprise on her side she was no match for him, and he easily caught both of her hands and held them still with an iron grip. "That's it. We're going down. And we're taking the stairs. I'll carry you if I have to."

"Wait! Wait, Hak! Just…" Scrambling to salvage her fairytale plans from his party-pooping ultimatum, she blanched, panicked. "Just give me a minute…"

He huffed, and tried not to squirm underneath her weight. His hands were getting clammy… he wanted her off of him. Now. "Princess... "

That's when it came to her.

She thanked her royal lessons for teaching her the great art of the Compromise, and opted for her best damsel in distress look to help seal the deal.

"Okay, okay. You don't have to be the prince. Anything I want, you said, right? Well… how about… how about… you be…" she seemed to ponder for maybe a nanosecond, then looked him straight in the eye, "a frog."

He really didn't like the glint in her eye, but… "a frog?" It seemed harmless enough. Stupid, but harmless. "Sure. Whatever. Can you get off me now?"

He really didn't like the mischief in her smile. "And I'm still the princess, right?"

"Obviously."

It was barely a kiss. It hardly even qualified as a peck. Really, it was over before Hak even realized it had happened.

This time, it really was game over, and Yona knew it, if her triumphant grin was any indication. "Did you know," she began casually, rolling off of Hak, smoothing her skirt, and attempt to mat her untamable mane down into a style a bit more fitting for a proper princess, "that when a princess kisses a frog, he turns into a prince?"

Hak hadn't known that, but at the time he was far too flabbergasted to be skeptical, to cleverly insist she check her facts.

"So," she continued, completely ignorant to the dumbfounded look on the older boy's face, "which scenario would you like to play first? We could do lose a shoe, or climb up the tower's side, or wake me from my slumber- actually, I like lose a shoe, I think. Can we start with lose a shoe?"

The poor boy could only nod dumbly in compliance. Oh God. Mentally, he updated the inscription on his gravestone. RIP, Hak of the Wind Tribe, victim of Crazy Redhead. And Cooties.

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A/N: There are a lot of parallels between this chapter and the first one, I think, if you're looking hard. I like that. In my mind, the memory of this little affair wormed it's way into Hak's subconscious and started fueling his horny sex dreams ^_^ Hello, puberty!

Anyways, thank you for reading, reviewing, following, favoriting! Every single notification I receive from Fanfiction means so much to me!

Much love,

Rosie

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