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She didn’t expect to fall for him, but Jyu Viole Grace is in all things a weed, sprouting from the ground when he shouldn’t, sucking up the resources of those around him without any recourse or self-awareness, meant to live fast and die young and in all ways be a testament to the glory of mankind’s ambition, of everyone who would climb the tower and not look back, unaware of the true weight and meanings of their actions.
She didn’t expect to fall for him, but like all things in the tower, she is just energy and dust pressed and pressed and pressed until function emerges, and therein form; she is a resource like any other, being sucked up and consumed by revenge, by desire, by the will to rule that Viole doesn’t even know sleeps within his breast.
“Do you miss them?” he asked her once, when he was still young and she thought she would never fall for him, that she could control him with the right words, the right bait, because like everyone else in his life, who senses his purpose without knowing his meaning, she sought to control him; and she felt the shinsoo stir, like a phantom, wanted to touch her eye.
“No,” she said instead, “I don’t miss anyone. You shouldn’t either.”
She didn’t use his new name then; he didn’t like it, hadn’t settled into it. He’d correct her, correct Jinsung, correct anyone who tried to take Rachel’s last, most final mark on him away. It’s the Twenty-fifth Bam. I was found on the twenty-fifth night, so that’s how she named me, that’s how she named me, that’s how she made me.
But names have power, and so she knew it was only a matter of time until he broke, until he flinched -- as though he’d been physically struck -- but did not correct Hansung. Until even Jinsung had adopted it. Until then, she didn’t call the boy anything; simply waited until he was the one for the name on the tip of her tongue.
She did not expect to regret it. She did not expect to feel complicit in something out of control. It took years before the idea that she was afraid could even grow in her mind, but she was. She was afraid of him.
She knew why Rachel had feared the night, now, watching him sleep peacefully, on the train of the damned and broken, between his two closest friends who had gone so long without him that they wouldn’t recognize him anymore, if she pulled back his human masked and let them bask in the radiance of a god.
Because he was a god; she had given her eye, her will, her soul to make him into a god -- of revenge, desire, the screaming hoard who thrash beneath Jahad’s boots, whose suffering she had endured for centuries as though it were her own, whom she hates the most -- because if he was not the god she had given all this to create, who will he be?
The question gaped before her, like a cave, like a monster, and she refused to run from monsters. She was more than that, teetering precariously over the edge of what was known, walking a tightrope over death, complacency, misery. She had been blessed with the knowledge of the future, and so she stepped as though there was no doubt, and she would walk into the monster of her doubt as though it wasn’t there, as though she’d never been more sure than she was now.
She stepped into the room, and then she stepped across it. Her shadow was swallowed up by Viole’s sleeping form, as she knelt in front of him and wondered why she was here, wondered when she started asking what would happen if the god she gave her all to create simply remained a man; if instead of a weed, he remained something earnest and proud, a carefully pruned garden with no desire for murder or suffering, but no fear of pain or struggle.
Her surety of purpose had been fake, she feared; in the face of his will she realized that what she had was simply the absence of challenge.
He stirred at the touch of her fingertips; he always had.
“Ms. Hwa Ryun?” he asked, hazy and gentle; her fingertips slid over his jawline, until she could place one finger over his lips; immediately he was awake, eyes wide, and he sat up, careful not to make a sound as he followed her from the room.
“What will you do, when you defeat Jahad?” she asked; it’s not what was on her mind. She’d asked him this before and didn’t expect a different answer. But she wondered if something had changed when he didn’t flinch.
She wondered if her heart was braced for that shadow of pain, when she found herself drawing in breath, as though she might sigh in relief.
“Nothing,” he said, “I don’t want to rule over anyone. I don’t want to decide anyone’s fate. I’ll. . . live my life.”
He never asked why she asks this over and over again. He just thought, quietly, and gave her an honest answer, and it was never the answer she wanted.
But what did she want from him?
The question shadowed her, opening its mouth wide, and Bam did not smile to dispel it from her, but his eyes fixated on her, and there were no shadows.
She couldn’t explain this uncertainty in her heart.
“Ms. Hwa Ryun,” he asked, “What do you want to happen after Jahad?”
She looked at him, for real then, and then she looked away and the answer was obvious.
“I want us to be free,” she said, flatly, as though if she kept the emotion out of her voice she could pull it from under her skin and discard it, so that nothing hurt anymore and there was no danger, no pain, no suffering.
They wanted the same thing, really, but one of them would have to give it up. One of them would have to decide to bear the shackles of fate willingly, and she was done wearing shackles, and that was why, no matter that he didn’t flinch, no matter that he didn’t show any fear -- that was why her false, untested certainty would win.
Because he would bear those shackles for another, but she had born them too long and knew the real cost. She could lie to him, she could say it was the only way and he would accept it, but if he knew the real cost, knew the way they chafed, he would deny her.
“We want the same thing,” Bam said, and she knew this was a dangerous conversation to have; he would turn it around, make her believe that by wanting the same thing they were not at odds, and it would suit him just fine, because by the time he realized that it wasn’t true it would be too late -- he said what she was thinking, and her heart felt bruised.
“No,” she corrected him, “We want different things. Good night, Viole.”
Once, he would have resented her calling him that, when he was trapped and chained, and she never thought she would regret those days, away from the light, but he reached out, grabbed her wrist before she could leave.
“Ms. Hwa Ryun,” he said, “Was that all you wanted to say?”
It wasn’t, but she didn’t tell him that; she pulled her wrist away from him, more gentle than she used to be, and said, simply, “Get some rest, Viole. There won’t be much time for it after the Name Hunt Station.”
He watched her go, but she didn’t look back until she’d turned the corner, until she could close her eyes and catch her breath.
Feelings like hers could start wildfires, but she wasn’t sure she was ready to let the world burn for just one person.