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He dreamt of a silver sky.
Three seconds. Hak was sure, so sure he had succumbed. Fear strikes him in the heart, the cold beads of water on his skin plunging him back into the dark depths of the river, but then the soles of his feet hit smooth tile and his head stays above the surface, and he remembers where he is. The water is clear.
The loud boom of heavy doors wakes him. After that comes the echo of slow, steady footsteps, a sound that reverberates across a high ceiling that is empty and vast. A figure stands between both light and darkness, the grey illuminating the pale strands of his hair, the white of his robes. The king’s face looks hollow. In the gloom of early morning, Soo-Won resembles a ghost.
It is from instinct that his body tenses. Hak’s jaw clenches at the sight of him, his fingers contracting in response. The battlefield hasn’t left him yet. In his mind’s addled, surging state, the distance between them seems large.
Soo-Won says nothing. He presses the box in his hands closer to his chest and wordlessly closes the gap.
Slowly, the king kneels beside the pool’s edge. Hak inches away from him slightly, the water sloshing the sides of the pool. It is cool and clean on his bare skin; surrounded on all sides by silent marble walls, the water reflecting murky patterns on the ceiling, Hak feels as though the whole world was submerged. The feeling is familiar somehow. Hak cannot remember why.
“Open your eyes,” a voice says. The sound is far away, muffled, like the last lingering echoes from a dream.
He does. Soo-Won has his hands in his lap. The box is open beside him, but Hak can’t see what’s inside. He sinks deeper into the bath, his chin resting just below the water’s surface, and winces at the murky light streaming through the large windows. Above him, Soo-Won’s silhouette is an outline of grey shadow. Hak can’t make out the details of his face.
For a moment, everything is still. Fatigue is inlaid in the hollow of his bones, the dull pain piercing through Hak’s lung when he arches back his neck, watching the ripples on the water form and subside. Meanwhile, the quiet room waits with bated breath. Something disturbs the ripples: the hem of a sleeve skimming the surface. Drowsiness laying heavy on his eyelids, Hak barely registers the motion, but then slim, cold fingers come to rest upon his cheek.
How easily his breath is stolen from him. In all his life, Hak had never seen such tender hazel eyes.
“Are you tired?” Soo-Won whispers, and his words are gentle against Hak’s ear.
Hak’s eyes widen. He stares and slowly nods his head.
With a small smile, Soo-Won pulls his fingers away. He reaches for something inside the box, and before Hak knows it Soo-Won is extending his arm, wiping a small cloth over the cuts near his elbow.
Hak hisses with the pain. “Sorry,” Soo-Won mutters. “It will sting.” Hak can feel Soo-Won’s pale fingers trembling as he clasps onto his wrist; his motions are gentle and light, if not slightly uncertain. The faint scent of herbs and camphor seeps into Hak’s skin. It smells familiar, like an ointment his grandfather used to use when he scraped his knees climbing trees as a boy.
Real, Hak finds himself thinking, as his eyelids falter to stay open. Soo-Won’s touch continues to ghost over his skin, only barely there — but it stays.
The wounds are deeper than he’d thought. Many of them have already started to scar over the length of his shoulder and forearm, but then there are some that are still raw and tender. He is sure his arm is broken. He hasn’t the strength not to wince. Soo-Won retracts his hand when Hak recoils from the bitter sting, faltering dubiously over the yellowing bulge where his elbow should be. Hak can see the vacancy in his gaze, how it trembles at the sight of him. It’s strange, Hak thinks, to see the pain of his own mutilation on someone else’s face.
“You need to stitch them,” Hak murmurs, his voice coming out hoarse. The motion on his arm stops.
“They won’t heal on their own?”
“You tell me. Is it ugly to you?”
Soo-Won grimaces. Hak’s arm goes limp in his hand. “It’s…” Eyes travel from Hak’s bruised wrist to the rest of his body, and Hak can hear Soo-Won’s breath catch in his throat. “You’ve been through so much.”
“There are worse things.”
At that, Soo-Won’s gaze flickers away. Hak’s blue eyes crinkle up in a smile. “Hey now. You can touch me, right?” he murmurs reassuringly. “I’m alive.” Gently, Hak frees his arm from Soo-Won’s loose grip, and his hand falls back with a soft splash.
Moments pass. A solemn shadow passes over the edge of the bath, and it lingers within the room. The silhouettes of fluttering wings beat against the wall. Perhaps it’s early morning streaming through the windows, when the birds have not yet begun to sing.
(He sways from the brink of consciousness: black swells, shattered glass that condense into stars. The fear of the ocean deafens the pain, caught up in its arms ten thousand miles away from home. How long did he drift between life and death?)
He sees ghosts hiding in the corners of his periphery, the tricks of pale dawn and blue light in dark places. Soo-Won is only a figment in the darkness.
If he reaches out to touch him now, would he vanish?
“We’re both alive,” Hak repeats. “You and I.”
His hand finds a strand of Soo-Won’s hair.
Between his fingertips, Soo-Won’s blonde hair is dry and brittle, having lost its usual silky luster to neglect. Even the color of his hair has dulled and faded, no longer bright like sunlight. Where have you gone? Hak wants to ask. How can I hold what’s left of you?
Perhaps it’s longing; perhaps it’s the mere memory of warmth now shared with a stranger. But Hak still leans forward, resting his head on Soo-Won’s lap, and breathes in the buried scent of his youth. Soo-Won smells like late summer roses and faded cologne, and of a heartache that never goes away. Not that it matters much: his injured back throbs with the pain of leaning over, but warmth surrounds him like a flood.
“You cannot live for the dead,” Soo-Won whispers. His voice brims somewhere within his throat.
Hak’s eyelids flutter open.
“Do you remember?” he begins softly, “That day on the cliff. I slipped and almost fell, but you caught me.”
The words linger in the air for a moment, suspended in static. How tangible are these words, he wonders. Mere conversations that only replay in his dreams.
Spindly fingers brush against the back of Hak’s neck. The movements are slow, subtle, as they comb gingerly through his dark hair. “You almost refused to go.”
“Yeah. But you talked me into it still. We’d been up there so many times already. I couldn’t understand what would be so different.”
You’re listening, aren’t you? He cranes his neck up at Soo-Won, rests a rough hand on top of the other’s that is splayed on the wet, cold floor. Are you looking at me? His friend’s gaze seems vaguely fixed in his direction; but even then, they are distant, looking downward and yet at nothing.
“I followed you anyway,” Hak says, and the memory flashes vividly: he can feel it again, being caught up with the wind, his breath chilled in the clouds, Kouka Kingdom far below his feet. Looking up at the vast, open sky. Being face to face with heaven.
A ghost of a smile passes over his friend’s lips. “You remember far more than me,” is Soo-Won’s low reply. “Hak, you really shouldn’t speak right now.” He lets out a shaky breath, his voice coming out raspy upon exhale, and the sound of Hak’s name seems to bounce off into the darkness.
“Let me dress your wounds at least. Then I’ll leave.”
“Don’t.”
Soo-Won looks down at him, then — hazel eyes locking with Hak’s blue, and as a hand goes to gently push damp bangs from his forehead the breath in Hak’s throat catches; and before Hak is even aware of it, he finds himself leaning in.
Weary, stumbling traveler that he is: often in his dreams, Hak would find he had stepped into memories instead. Often they are accompanied by the scent of rain. They’re bright, startling at first, but then they fade into softer, more tender colors — freshly fallen snow laced upon white wings; golden sun filtering through silver clouds; eyes fixated upon heaven, or looking down toward the ground.
The beautiful smile of a boy he once loved. And before midnight falls upon the palace, before the silver strain of clouds morph into the glint of a sword’s edge, dipped in the blood of betrayal — a passage between death and life — there is the distinct, somber shade of pale blue.
Light flickers. The bleak morning is giving way to a brighter dawn, but the entire room is still bathed in dreary shadow. There is the rustling of clothes and the sound of disturbed water; and then, the weight of someone else’s body upon Hak’s own. Soo-Won sits face to face with Hak, his hair and sheer white robes dripping wet.
They stay like that for a long time: Soo-Won with his head bowed low, Hak resigned to the resounding stillness. The four walls mutely watch over them.
“All of them are wondering why I left the battlefield,” Soo-Won speaks into the gloomy silence. “How am I supposed to tell my men that it was because of you?”
“You’re still playing that charade,” whispers Hak underneath his breath.
Soo-Won gives him a long look. “I do a good job of it.”
Hunched over by the water’s brink, the man had looked so small. It is on him: the cries of those who’d begged heaven for a king; the pact of blood with a brother he’d betrayed; the echoes of centuries past and the weight of a crown he is weary of bearing. He wants to carry it all, see it through to the end — but he is only twenty-one: only a slip of a savior, with bird-bone wrists and porcelain skin and he is — he is waiting.
“They were there,” says Soo-Won. “I saw them fighting the Kai soldiers. All four of them together.
Are they… are they your home?”
Hak nods. Smiles for the very first time in what feels like years. “Yes,” he says, and the warmth is for the sake of remembering.
Soo-Won sees him smile. There is always a chance — maybe there still exists a glimpse of the boys they used to be. But he remembers what they were: the more Hak watches him, the farther Soo-Won gets away.
“I could never return to that place,” Soo-Won murmurs. “Neither of us could — that’s what I believed, just so I could make you stay dead.”
“Lord Soo-Won, you—”
“Please,” His voice is suddenly sharp. The room shudders. “If you’ve come here to stare at me, then don’t look so gentle. Don’t look at me like that while I’m waiting to die. I never wanted pity!” Soo-Won’s shoulders begin to heave. “I never needed it. I never…”
How badly can a soul be desecrated?
”You never needed anything!” Hak shouts back, anguish burning in his chest. “You never told me the truth. You refused to look at me! And I— I was right there!”
Soo-Won is trembling. “Enough,” he pleads. “Enough.”
”I was the one who abandoned you first. So why—”
”Please.” Over and over, they blur into each other.
“You can’t… you can’t live for the dead, Hak,” cries Soo-Won, his voice near to breaking. “You still have something else to live for.”
It is ingrained, surging through his veins: the gritty taste of iron on his teeth, the scorched scent of chaos on the battlefield, the shouts of soldiers he’d left behind, staggering and staggering towards a single point until he can no longer see the grey sky through his own blood. “Is this your way of asking me why I did it?” Why did I go so far for you?
“No. I’m asking why it had to be you.”
Maybe he’d known all along. The boy he once loved is gone.
He leans forward in the water and embraces him.
Soo-Won’s shoulders are small — smaller than he remembers them, and cold. Hak feels his friend shuddering against the flat of his chest and can only hope that his warmth is enough. Help him, he cries bitterly, though no sound comes, though no one hears him. Help him!
Don’t break. What we have is already too fragile.
“Who will get angry for you?” Hak sobs into his neck, spills hot tears onto the crook of Soo-Won’s shoulder. He hugs him much too tightly and refuses to loosen his grip, because there’s nothing left to hold on to. “Has anyone even cried for you!? Who cries for you?”
“Hak—”
“You won’t even do it yourself!”
Live, Hak begs. It echoes onto the walls, past the ceiling, and a hundred unseen voices repeat it. Live, though he knows it’s selfish to ask. How foolish he’d been to think he had the power to do anything. Live for me, he prays, though the gods are not there to listen, they who had left their people long ago.
Soo-Won is staring up at him, wide-eyed, his hands trembling as he strokes the tears away from Hak’s cheek; and Hak marvels at how even now, in a moment like this, Soo-Won looks serene. With a shaking sob Hak leans into the touch, and oh — he’d missed it. He’d missed his best friend so much, more than anything in this life.
I want you to live, Hak repeats, over and over again until the words finally become audible.
“You won’t ask for it. But I will!”
When he opens his eyes, Soo-Won’s lips are on his forehead. Hak stays there, frozen, unable to comprehend anything besides the last of his grief spilling down his cheeks and the warmth blooming throughout his body. The kiss is tender, only a brush against his skin, and it lasts for only a second. Soo-Won moves away and presses Hak’s forehead against his.
“I remember when we were young.” His voice is breathy, low, like the way it would sound when he’d whisper secrets into Hak’s ear. “Back then, I didn’t care about being king. I never once thought I’d have to do what I would, never cared about anything else. I just wanted to become strong.”
In the water’s reflection, Soo-Won’s lips break into a fractured smile. “For you.”
There he is.
Here they are.
“I loved you, Hak. I really did.”
He’d slipped and lost his footing. Hak falls through ocean, through ceiling, through sky, and in the distance the red peak of Hiryuu Castle glitters like a ruby upon the sea of clouds. Breath escapes from his lungs as he waits for the inevitable: Soo-Won’s distant cries, the sound of shattering bone.
But then there is a tug. The wind knocks out of him just as Hak’s body lands on solid ground instead, and when he opens his eyes heaven is in sight.
Hak, look.
The boy staggers to his feet and brushes dirt from his robes; looking down is impossible now. The rest of the world seems to have fallen away from beneath his feet. Above him there is only sky — golden sunbeams filtering through silver clouds, light shimmering and dancing towards the horizon. Hak senses a fluttering movement in the corner of his eye, but right now his focus is only on Soo-Won — his best friend’s silhouette standing at the edge of the cliff.
Soo-Won, Hak cries out. Soo-Won!
He takes a step forward. The fluttering movement erupts into a rapture of white doves.
Their wings weave patterns in the air, golden sunlight glinting off their feathers as they soar towards the horizon. They take everything with them: the sunlight, Hak’s breath, Soo-Won’s laughter. It echoes and echoes across the mountain peaks until at last it is no more.
In his memories, Soo-Won stands at the edge of the world, caught up in a rapture of wind and white feathers. You are light, Hak thinks, as Soo-Won turns to him and smiles. He glows like gold.
A storm is breaking through the silver sky, but Hak knows it won’t last long. Far removed from the rest of the world, two boys dream of those ten thousand miles toward the sea.