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Where are you?
My Prince.
It’s freezing, up in the mountains and on the highest peaks. Snow doesn’t rush past, it bolts towards, uncaring of the feet planted in the snow that fights desperately against constant gust.
The warrior grunts, teeth biting back on the shivers that nip over the length of his body and feet firmly gripping onto the thick snow. The thick of his sweater hangs on slumped shoulders, but when he tries to bring it closer, the unforgiving howl of wind through the tear creeping from shoulder to sternum has him cowering.
There’s no relief from the bow of his head against the storm, but it isn’t the cold that makes the bend of his limbs a pulsing pain that rips at his skull.
It’s the Southern trail, from the flat lands to the elevations of the heavens, that is his violent mistress. She raged against the scowl of his desperation in dry clearings, tearing open the insignia on his chest and bleeding the navy thread blood red. She sent an arrow through his thigh at the foot of the mountains, glory in the scorching heated sky as he roared his pain back at her.
And yet, Dongho never turns. Out of spite to the changing winter, or to push against the seething bitch that turned a season’s journey into a stretch of blurry lands, he walks miles, nights, and days to find himself on a white canvas.
And all of this journey… for who?
“You can’t.”
“And you can’t stop me,” he argues.
No one can, no one wants to, not when it’s been accepted with bitter tears in their eyes as the clouds come even closer every month. They’ll freeze in their homes, the peculiar frost creeping up to cover their eyes in an eternal frost, so it doesn't matter where Dongho goes, because Dongho isn’t who they need.
He tells Jonghyun this, frustration rooted in unshed tears lining his eyes. He’s angry— sad and confused, but he was chosen for a reason, as a fighter with hot ambition in his heart— and stomping around the kingdom daily doesn’t help.
The frost has already started to claim those who live on the outskirts. Dongho can’t bear to see the grasp of mothers cradling their children to their chest as ice hangs from their eyelashes. He ran to the castle afterwards, but the throne he collapsed at the foot of was empty, his heartache silenced with the echo of the throne room and that was the anger he was raised for.
“I can’t watch this happen,” Dongho says.
He left days later, footsteps pounding against the floor as he ran past Jonghyun, frozen in ageless acceptance with the same forlorn eyes Dongho abandoned him— all of them, rather, Jonghyun was the voice of the kingdom, so with it Dongho had left not only his most loyal friend but his beautiful Mingi and the kingdom that trusted him— with. Down cobblestone paths, past the gates, down onto the fields, he leaves them iced and encaged for beyond.
For him.
Dongho aches for him, anger and longing and a pounding headache brewing so much the days swirl like the snow falling down on his shoulders.
The prince who disappeared years ago, who left an empty throne to weakly glimmer under the moonlight and a bigger rift in the kingdom that depended on his presence. The unending world swallowed him up, never spit him back out, even as Dongho bent on a knee to serve the crownless throne and subsequently ran out on it after it proved too little and too much.
He feels his sword drag just behind his feet. It always does, the power fitting for his cultivated strength, as the low clang of metal slices through stone, dirt, wherever he was needed for his highness. This time, though, the ball-and-chain pull of the hilt in his palm is exhausting. An aching hand meant he was pulling his weight in battles, but the lug of it in the snow is different.
It’s lonely.
The wind howls again, and just as it’s nearly silenced from the thousands of its screams that he’s heard, this one screeches past him up ahead.
Dongho’s tired, so tired he wants to follow the madness of it, because how easy would it be to finally stop and let go of the vows etched into his heart. He doesn’t know why it’s him that stands on two feet, pink fingers grabbing and hauling, when everyone else is settled into eternal youth.
The snow crunches even when he’s stopped. It should be impossible, not when he feels like the only man on top of the soulless world.
Like a sailor, lost out at sea, who spots a single Northern star, he croaks, desperation and misery and hope—
“Aron.”
Snow lands on his eyelids and his cheeks, blinding and burning until he furiously blinks away the white and the figure’s farther than before.
His prince, clothed in his finest white suit, made for the coronation that was supposed to be, stands out even as the brightest star against the snow. It doesn’t matter that the crest of their home, what was once the slumbering kingdom’s pride, is now half of what it was. Missing buttons reveal white silk, torn and dirty, while tassels are caught and pulled apart by the wind.
It doesn’t matter to Dongho, because what does a warrior on his knees, hanging onto the fire of finally finding the face he scoured across land for as hard as he does the hilt of his now blunt sword, have to judge?
“Aron,” he chokes out again; it’s stuck in his throat now, but he’s damned if he won’t get it out, for Aaron.
His search, his journey, the millions of footprints left on fragile snow and resilient ground and the blunt, scraped tip of his battle-worn sword, it all stops at the foot of his prince’s fragile ground. Snow assaults his eyes in a flurry, even with his head bowed and neck bared, but even if he shivers from the slow crawl of cold up his knees, he grits his teeth and breathes a weight that feels lighter than it’s ever been.
Dongho looks up, finds the prince looking down at him with the tattered cloth waving like a flag in the night sky.
Ah.
It’s really-
The sword falls down into the snow, a muted thud and a near silent sob that catches on the howl of the wind. Dongho’s fingers flex, pain from the cold and the constant clench of them around his weapon as he fought his way to the peak a slow burn in the joints.
There’s still no word, Dongho silences the pain- longing - in his throat and bows his head. It’s just as he did when the sun used to shine down on the crown of his head, and it kissed at Aaron’s golden skin as they bowed to each other.
The bitter winter can finally rest, Dongho knows it, feels it in the crunch of Aaron’s shoes as he slowly walks towards him.
Minhyun flips the compass in his hand, once, twice, five times until the face lands up on his palm. It spins in a dizzying circle until finally pointing towards his index finger— North.
With Minhyun’s footprints to the South, and all of the bodies strewn along the drag of his feet, he heads towards the dark of the night. The compass tilts left and right, rocking like the creak of a ship on thunderous waters, and as he clutches it tight to his palm, he falls into every heavy step of the deep, engulfing snow.
Every one of them had a purpose, he found. They had golden skin, fair hands, and their exhaustion made it so easy for him to sniff the life out of their eyes until they slumped over, beautifully like a statue hardening into eternal place.
And this prince, so delicate, so scared , Minhyun is glad the taste of frostbite on his skin remains. It’s more exquisite, the memories of this particular one, because he can feel the tug of desperation pulling him towards the shaky finger of the compass, but also the urge to escape off into the eternal night the opposite way, a merciful reprieve from the expecting light that shines over the land.
Aaron had hated, and Aaron had loved, but a prince can’t be allowed that, fragile emotions that, if left untouched, could slowly chip away even the most resolute. A strong heart never mixed well with indecisive minds, even from princes dressed in glittering gold with the most furious of eyes.
Minhyun, ever so curious, strokes at the rusted gold. It’ll take a while, thousands of steps in untainted snow until he can reach the reason of Aaron’s disappearance. The kingdom, the frost, the queen—
the knight. All of it, down to the last thread of 'why's.
Crunch. Crunch. Crunch.
The shoes don’t fit easy on him, haven't since his feet grew smaller and unfamiliar joints cracked into place, but it shouldn’t matter. He has miles ahead to fill into it, steadily, nicely, familiarly.
Minhyun coughs, a trail of frost following from his lips and covering the cracked glass of the compass, and he tries it.
“Dongho,” Aaron breathes, relief and loneliness and longing all in one, “Come...”
“Yes,” Dongho gets up effortlessly, the wounds and the aches and the tears nothing to the beckoning.
His eyes never close in the face of hailing ice, even as frost builds on the thick of his eyelashes; he staggers in a slow, continuous path for his prince. Dongho uses the hilt of his sword to stab into the snow with each step. It’s determination and the painful straining of his jaw that he falls once again at Aaron’s buried feet.
Up ahead, the ambiguous shine from behind white clouds lights up the sky. It’s the sun, yet the freeze takes it as well, casting not the golden glow of spring’s coming but a weak blanket of light that taps at the shadows of the prince’s ageless face.
He’s still beautiful, the Prince, and Dongho shakily breathes in the addicting familiarity of looking up at thousands of commands etched on his open lips.
Tell me.
Command me.
I’m Yours to Have.
“... Follow me.”
A kingdom on the verge of spring, filled with prosperity and kindness and valor, thrumming with the life of a flood of thawed youth—
Minhyun fingers the compass in his pocket, traces the line of the knight’s lowered head with Aaron’s eyes, down to defeated, tight shoulders, the clench and unclench of sprained fingers around a worn sword, and smiles.
—it’s destruction will be glorious.