Work Text:
Yoongi first remembers seeing Hoseok just outside the inner city, where the forest bleeds into the backyards of his peoples’ homes. He doesn’t know that Hoseok is his name - not for a long time - but remembers the curves of his face, nose delicate and eyes doe-like. He was standing there with a basket full of flowers cocked on his hips, and a laugh on his lips as he talked to two other children his age.
It was the first time Yoongi had seen anyone like Hoseok - he’d heard of sphinxes and fae and wendigos before, but they had only existed in the tales his mother told him on nights he wouldn’t sleep. Here, for the first time, he sees with his own eyes just how beautiful the dryads were, how his mother had not forgotten or left any injustice to how hypnotic the young boy’s skin glowed golden.
The boy perks his head and glances over to where Yoongi was curled beneath the foliage of the forest floor, and Yoongi holds his breath, not suddenly wanting to be found spying by the beautiful strangers. He counts in his head, a steady 1 2 3 that didn’t match the rapid beating of his heart before he slowly lifts his head.
The boy was still staring at him, a curious look in those bright eyes of his, and Yoongi only notices the smattering of green that snaked up the young boy’s neck in that moment.
Yoongi had had fears that Hoseok would walk over to him, but the other two children run off in the opposite and the young dryad follows them reluctantly, with a final glance in his direction.
Yoongi sighs in relief, and carefully makes his way back through the city, slipping through shadows until he reaches the castle, where he stumbles upon his tutor who looks fit to explode any second.
Though he receives an earful that afternoon for disappearing from his lessons, he was free from the clutches of his own boredom, and his escapades from the palace remained undetected.
The watchful dryad boy had saved him, he supposes to himself, and he’d done so in the unlikeliest of ways.
His memories of the golden boy aren’t forgotten - but it is the only time Yoongi had seen him before The War began.
Yoongi never liked tears. He never liked crying. His tutor would tell him it was because only the weak cried - but Yoongi didn’t like them because tears stung his eyes. When he cried, his chest hurt, and he felt like he couldn’t breathe. So he remembers when he sees the devastation that made itself known on his kingdom’s people that first time his father travels out to mourn for his lost subjects. He hates it, because each weary face he sees sends a stab to his heart, worse than any tear that stung at his eyes.
War wasn’t pretty, not in the houses it burnt down, not in the families it tore apart, not in loss it brought.
He’d looked at everyone’s faces, and tried to remember all those who had suffered, and he then he feels the horrible sensation of his gut twisting into a painful knot when he sees the dryad boy amongst them.
His clothes were singed and dirtied, and his lashes glimmered with the remnants of tears that had been wiped away.
The other two boys he had seen that day were clutching at his clothes, hands burnt and eyes glossy. Yoongi notes how the dryad boy’s arms were now green, a sickly shade that seemed to match the gloom of the ruined town.
He looks down at his hands, gloved and pristine, and feels the weight of his sword against his hip. A sword he couldn’t even wield properly yet. He didn’t need to, not when there were guards stationed around him all the time. How could he measure up to a defenceless town. How would he truly ever understand them? How was he supposed to grow up to lead this kingdom, if he couldn’t stomach their hurt; their pain? Who would ever want to turn to him, who’s knees knocked at the sight of devastation?
Yoongi thought the boy had looked broken, but the dryad’s hands were clenched tight, and his eyes. They were bright; a mark of his grit. And that somehow managed to pull him out of pit of despair that he had been burying himself under.
If the boy who had lost almost everything could still stand tall, then Yoongi had no business backing down.
As Yoongi was ushered out of the despondent town and away from it’s folk, he could only think that the boy had saved him again, but at what cost?
He saw him again a few summers later, when the castle began searching for more soldiers. The resolve he had seen before, the zeal for life - all of it had disappeared from his eyes. He looked older, more drawn, but still beautiful. Fate’s hands had been unkind to him, but Nature’s hand had not. His skin was a vibrant chartreuse green, and iridescent scales clustered around his palms and skins so that they caught the sun whenever he turned. His hair hung below his jaw, brushing against his shoulders in an unruly fashion. The dryad was certainly a sight for eyes, and it was apparent in the glances that were sent his way.
Yoongi watches as the boy strides up to the enlistment commissioner, and stands to his full height. He looks deceptively slight, but there was no denying that he exuded some sort of powerful aura. The two children were no longer by his side, and Yoongi realises that that was the reason the dryad’s eyes had lost their radiance.
His heart aches for the male. The young man had saved him twice, but Yoongi couldn’t hope to do the same even once.
The dryad listens to the instructions given to him by the enlistment officer, and frowns a little when he’s told to wait with other hopefuls at being a guard. He complies nonetheless, but appears put out.
Yoongi wants to speak to him, he wants to be able to see him without always being hidden away, but in front of this person, Yoongi always feels powerless. The sword that rested against his hip wasn’t as heavy anymore, and his eyes grew brighter by the day. His father could praise him all he wanted, yet, before this one person - why was it that he felt as if he was out of reach?
Yoongi grips the hilt of his sword, and musters up courage to take a step towards him. He couldn’t understand why he was so nervous now, when he never faltered in their councils against generals twice or even thrice his age and experience. He sits next to the dryad and the green-skinned boy turns to him with a smile. It reminded him of a sapling; small, but with potential and reason to grow. It looked like hope.
“It was you that I saw that day, wasn’t it?” he asks.
Yoongi blinks. Gathers himself. “You’re sharp.” he says, a smile on his face.
The dryad grins, but the expression doesn’t quite cross his eyes. “The trees told me that there was a boy watching me,” he confesses. “but even without them, I knew you were there.”
“I was afraid you would discover that I was a stranger to your town.”
The dryad looks down. “You looked like you wanted to join us. I just wanted to ask you if you would come out, but you looked scared.”
Yoongi huffs with laughter. “I wasn’t supposed to be out of the castle, really. I didn’t want to get caught out.”
They share a quiet chuckle between themselves and Yoongi looks at his feet. “So what are you doing away from home?”
The boy’s smile slides off his face. “My home was burnt to the ground, and nearly everything I held dear to me was razed with it. I’m here to join the war effort,” he allows himself a tiny quirk of the lips “and maybe find myself a friend.”
Yoongi frowns hard. He tries not to be unkind as he replies “Friendship during war is dangerous. Those bonds may come to hurt you in the future, you do realise?”
There’s a sigh. “There will be a time when everything is dangerous, where someone will be there to hurt you. And that’s the truth of our lives right now. But you just have to find the right people,”
The dryad looks at Yoongi, and he thinks that he sees a shine rekindle in them. “The ones who make it worth the suffering.”
And it was incredible how this one person never failed to open Yoongi’s eyes over and over.
“Well, I guess I could do with a friend. Would you mind being one for me?” Yoongi says after a pause.
The dryad grins “I suppose one more friend couldn’t hurt.” he replies.
Yoongi can’t help the soaring sensation that washes over him. He rises, and dusts his clothes. “What did you say your name was, again?”
The male rises with him “I didn’t say. I’m Hoseok. Jung Hoseok, a friend at your service, Prince.” he finishes with a low bow and Yoongi swats at his shoulder.
“Oh stop that, or I’ll revoke my hand in friendship.” he says lightheartedly.
Hoseok laughs.
It was a wonderful sound. One that Yoongi hadn’t heard in years.
Yoongi sees more and more of Hoseok, watches how the trees sway when he chatters, how the blossoms flourish faster when he’s around, and feels the swell of his chest when they talk late into the night.
The times worry Yoongi, and doubt begins to eat away at him, but Hoseok is there to assuage his fears. Hoseok is always there, Yoongi thinks. He thinks that what they have is beautiful. It almost made him forget that there was War upon them. Hoseok looks stronger these days - and Yoongi knows that it’s because he trains relentlessly with blades and magic each day. He works himself to the bone every second that he believes that Yoongi isn’t watching; and to Yoongi, it’s saddening because Hoseok throws himself into saving someone else because he doesn’t know how to save himself. From well-hidden grief and torment. And an excruciating loneliness that Yoongi couldn’t possibly fill.
Everyone’s focus on the war effort increases once again, and now Yoongi finds himself in the throes of battle for the first time. He keeps reminding himself that this wasn’t theory anymore, that the fallen would remain fallen, and that his seconds were running on borrowed time.
It is jarring.
Every night he sits huddled in a tent with his fellow soldiers, trying to press his fingers into his flesh hard enough to shake the haunting feeling of the ghosts of his comrades that wander lost on the bloodied battlefield. And again, Hoseok finds him. Pries the fingertips that singe at pale skin away. Reminds him that his soldiers trust him, that he trusts him - not because he is a prince but because he is Yoongi . There is fierce pride in his voice when he tells Yoongi this, and he can’t help but feel that he truly doesn’t deserve Hoseok; the dryad boy who is so much more.
So then the sun rises again, and Yoongi with it. There is fire in his heart, and a fire in his eyes. He feels ready to take on the world and leads his brethren and subjects into a fight with a roar that feels like a tiger waking up from slumber.
But the battle doesn’t favour him for too long. He is only mortal. A mage prince yes, but a mortal nonetheless. He still bleeds red, and he knows what pain is. Each wound, each spell he casts, every life he sees flash before his eyes is draining. He may be a prince, but he too knows of mortality. He too dances along the Reaper’s palm.
And it is when he sees a too-fast rush of silver, enchanted by a curse, that he tries to think of simpler times.
Memories of Hoseok flash before him, and the blur of life that the tree spirit had coloured for him is blissful enough for him to be at peace with his fate. Not even he, who had been saved countless times, could live forever.
A smile, a laugh, and an emerald hand are all that flicker past his mind like the stolen breaths of his younger years.
And then. Pain.
For a moment, the sheer force of a shoulder colliding with his chest is all that Yoongi knows, as he is shoved aside. All he sees is green, gold and green again.
It is as if the world slows down completely. Like Yoongi has run his hands through the jars of honey in his palace kitchens. A slow-falling syrup; unyielding to the laws of nature and time. When the air freezes, he feels it’s ice pierce his lungs. When life hesitates and when a young prince forgets for a split second that there was that one person who always arrived at every moment when Yoongi had thought he was about to lose himself. The one person who gripped him carefully between taut fingers; encompassing him like a shield with his very life force.
Hoseok.
The steam of corpses from his spree fall slowly to the ground, left behind so hurriedly in his wake like the urgency passing through his eyes.
With the lucidity of a dying man, he almost laughs to himself.
Saved again, it seems.
But then, reality settles in his bones like frost. Horror surges through him, like a flash flood. How could he have been so reckless? To allow himself to amble in the path of selfish desire, tunnel vision consuming his senses? Was it fate or… simply a fault on his behalf to welcome a morbid passion for an end? Was Hoseok a blessing or… simply placed in that moment at the right time?
No.
A cry pulls him back into the present. Seeing Hoseok in his final moments was something Yoongi had wished, but not like this. Never like this.
The rest of the world and it’s bedlam clashed around them. Yoongi could only see Hoseok, lying prone and vulnerable. He was so very still.
Panic and fear shuts Yoongi down.
And then, when the corners of Hoseok’s lips crack into a smile - trembling and threatening to fall away at any moment; a frail leaf in an autumn wind - the flame of Yoongi’s spirit spits viciously as he scrambles to him.
He had never noticed before, but Hoseok’s eyes were a honeyed-orange like his. While Yoongi’s eyes were said to look like fire, Hoseok’s eyes looked like amber, aged tree resin. Eyes taht have been aged with aeons of wisdom, eyes that have trapped within them the very workings of the world. Those eyes glint over with sadness, and then tears - that aren’t Hoseok’s own - dampen his face.
Yoongi shouts, but he can’t hear himself, can’t understand himself yet his lips form rapid words that he yearns for Hoseok to make sense of.
The tree spirit shakily raises a hand to press against Yoongi’s mouth, and silences him.
"I thought it’d be easier for you...if I put a smile on my face." And Hoseok hopes the words leave his throat correctly, because everything hurt too much to say again. "I...remember you always...looked so. Broken. So alone. So scared. I just wanted to be...a friend."
Another wave of hatred for the terror of this War mantles Yoongi’s ambition to finish this fight once and for all, searing inside of him to the point of blind rage. He curses his selfishness, and his inability to reach out for the person who always saw through him.
He was wrong; he was saved - just one time more.
Saved again, by the right person, at the wrong time.