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The Princess of Kouka Kingdom still wakes up in the middle of the night, breathing too quickly, her hands clenched into fists, her father’s name on her lips like a requiem.
It happens often. Hak is observant; he can tell. It’s in the way the delicate features on her face twitch, the way her eyebrows furrow and her mouth sets itself into a fine, sharp line. The way her arms wrap around her body like she’s trying to keep the visions inside her, pressed inside her chest like that will keep the hurt from being real.
Hak doesn’t sleep much anymore. Instead he sits, and waits, and watches.
It’s a good thing he never thought this world was a just one, because watching Yona suffer is far from fair. She’s not like Hak; she was built of different stuff than he is, spun glass instead of obsidian.
She is cracking, crumbling, pieces of her fragmenting away, and he is trying desperately to catch them before they are lost.
It’s particularly bad tonight. She is shivering, even under her blanket and his cloak, which he threw around her shoulders shortly after she fell asleep. Every once in awhile, a little, muffled scream escapes her lips.
Hak sighs and tightens his grip on his Hsu Quando, wishing to God there was something around for him to stab.
He should wake her up, probably. He wants to wake her up. But he doesn’t think she’d want him to.
He wants to wake her up, but she’d want to prove herself.
He wants to wake her up, but she wants to become strong.
“Let me learn to fight,” she’d said to him, once. “Let me protect my people.”
He wants to wake her up, but there are some battles that cannot be waged with a sword or a bow.
(This is an enemy he cannot protect her from, and it tears him apart.)
A tear traces its way down her cheek. Her hair looks like fire in the moonlight.
Yona has become much, much more than Hak ever expected her to. She has pushed her old self down, buried the girl from the palace beneath layers and layers of blood and grime and tears shed over the bodies of small children, buried in empty fields while their families watched. She hides it well, but Hak knows. He sees. The old Yona is somewhere behind those burning eyes. The old Yona, concealed in trembling fingers and gritted teeth and the soft, subtle sounds of her nightmares.
Is he stronger than she is? He doesn’t think so. He can’t imagine anyone alive being stronger than her.
“Hak,” she mumbles, and he jerks to attention. Her eyes are still closed, though, her forehead still furrowed. Still asleep then, but now she is saying his name again - sobbing it, shouting it.
“Hak! No!”
His resolve shatters and he lunges forward. “Princess! Princess, wake up, it’s just a dream.” His hands close around her shoulders and he shakes her gently.
Let her fight her own battles, let her gain her own strength.
You should, you should, you should. If you really loved her, really wanted to protect her, you’d make her win this one herself.
“It’s just a dream,” Hak repeats, and Yona opens her eyes with a gasp.
She stares at him for a long moment like she doesn’t know where she is. Another silent tear carves a scar on her skin and he wipes it off with his thumb. Understanding dawns across her features, then horror, then shame.
“I’m fine-” she begins quickly, but Hak shakes his head.
“You’re not.”
She hesitates, still looking at him, her mouth slightly open. Her expression doesn’t change, but it is like something has broken inside her and suddenly, she’s crying full-force, shoulders shaking.
She looks so tiny in that moment, folded in on herself, bowed under the weight of the things she has seen.
“Shhh,” Hak says. He reaches out and pulls her to his chest.
They fit together nicely, but then, they always have.
Her hands fist in his tunic and she buries her face in his shoulder with a broken, ragged sob. Hak sighs and presses his lips to the crown of her head, and they stay like that for a long time, limbs entangled, his face pressed in her hair.
The tears slow eventually, and then finally stop, but she doesn’t pull away and he isn’t about to either. He counts the seconds, or tries to, but it’s difficult, because every time she shifts he is acutely aware of her body in his lap.
In the end, she is the one to break the silence.
“You know, don’t you?”
“About what?”
“That I… you know… get bad dreams. Sometimes.”
Hak snorts. “Princess, I sleep next to you every night. I’d have to be stupider than Droopy-eyes to not pick up on that.”
She pushes away from him a little, holding herself away from him with her hands on his shoulders to glare up into his face. “You never said anything.”
He shrugs. “Neither did you.”
“I was… I don’t know! I was embarrassed!”
“That’s why I never said anything.”
Her eyes widen and she says, “Oh.”
“Yeah.” He rolls his eyes and says, “Do you want to talk about it now?”
Yona shakes her head vehemently. Then she hesitates and says, “You were in this one.”
“I know.”
“You know?”
“Yep.” Hak grins at her. “I can read your mind.”
“You cannot, you jerk.”
“You’re right, I can’t. It’s because you said my name.”
“Oh,” she says.
“Yeah.”
“You were dead,” she blurts. “In the dream. I always see Father, but this time, when I went to turn his body over, it was you, instead.” Her jaw clenches down before she adds, “I lost you, too.”
“It was just a dream.”
She scowls and smacks his arm. “Yeah, well, what if it wasn’t, Hak? You go and you fight and you take arrows in the back for me, and then what? You die? You leave me alone?”
“You wouldn’t be alone. Shin-ah and-”
“No.” Yona draws herself up. She looks close to tears again. “Hak, you don’t get it. Without you I’m alone. Can’t you see that?”
She is wrong, but he won’t fight her, because he understands the sentiment. His whole world revolves around her - she is his sun, his moon, his stars - it’s been that way since the very beginning. Like poetry. Like fate. Like truth.
So he shakes his head slowly and reaches out, cups her cheek in his palm. “I’m not going to die, Princess. Not anytime soon. All right?”
“Swear it.”
He looks at her, his princess, all blazing eyes and burning hair and a voice like the dawn, and a small smile twists the corners of his mouth.
“I swear,” he murmurs. Then he leans forward to whisper it again, his lips brushing her ear. “I swear.” Again, against her forehead. Against her throat. Against her lips.
“I love you,” he says, his own personal requiem, and, like a miracle, she says it back.