It's not often that Hak stands his ground nowadays about her safety, yet Yona gets it, in a way, it's like opening up your heart and preparing for it to be mutilated, not by your beloved's hands, but by someone else's. After falling in love, there's a certain urgency to war now, a certain urgency that makes one's stomach curl, makes a future seem like an impossible certainty.
What if she didn't make it out alive? What if nothing good came from this, came from her taking her bow or a sword, standing her ground, fighting for Kouka? The good has a way of stretching from beyond just the kingdom to something extra personal as well.
It's sort of like the way she feels when she watches Zeno get beaten up so badly he should be dead, or how she felt when Jae-Ha was shot back in Awa. Except, instead, it's romantic in nature. Like seeing a future you dream about destroyed right before your very eyes.
That's how it has to be with Hak.
"I'm sorry." That it's like this. She's not apologizing for necessity, but the lump in her throat makes even these words difficult.
"I know how it has to be." Hak's looking out into the distance, his blue eyes as rigid as Hak can be, but even so, when she stands on her tiptoes just a tad, she thinks she might be catching the faint glimmer of tears.
"Me too." Yona admits, and curls up at his side, "If things were different..."
"We probably wouldn't have gotten together." Hak tells her as if the world really is that simple.
"We might have." She argues back, and he finally looks at her, and Yona's heart breaks.
"That is unlikely." And it is Hak's hand on her face, comforting, cupping, and Yona wishes she moved quick enough to comfort.
"I know it's scary." Yona tells him instead, hoping her words make up for her own hands' lack of movement, "To see me fight."
"And thrilling." And his lips pull up into a teasing smile, and for a moment, she wants to hit him.
"That too." She thinks of the hammering-racing of her heart when Hak's life is in danger, and she doesn't think thrilling is the half of it. Instead, it's the kind of fear, that old bubble of anxiety, that worry that is no longer whisper soft, that this could be the last time. But Hak's allowed his own interpretation of it too. "But, we can't help it anymore."
"I know. You must fight." He looks at her; his gaze steely before her, "You wouldn't be Yona without it."
She laughs, it's a half-dry sound, "So you say. But we can't help Kouka without defending it."
"That's true." And Hak moves his hand to take hers in his, and his big, steady grip is reassuring. "I'm sorry too." It's a soft admittance, one that is probably hard in some ways, but Yona accepts it, with open arms, the best she can do.
"Peace might still come." Yona tells him, half-reassuring. Maybe they won't grow old on the battlefield and yet still live too.
"It might." He tells her, and Yona feels a very different impulse, a lot like holding on. And she leans forward and kisses him, tries to tell him, hey, I'm with you too.
And maybe this isn't how forgiveness normally comes after an argument, but she and Hak definitely know what this entails, what their life has become, since the day her father was killed. And everything that came tumbling after.
A tender moment might just be what they need though, even if a little bit unconventional.