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The first time Sungrok stumbled back to camp from a raid that none of the other soldiers had survived, blood all over him and an open wound in his shoulder but still standing upright, his captain had looked at him with a mixture of interest and wariness.
“You’re not a ghost, are you,” he’d said, in lieu of a greeting.
“We Jurchens have tough skin,” Sungrok had said.
He was young, and he’d been proud of himself.
There weren’t a lot of things that Sungrok took pride in beyond this: he was a strong warrior, and he wasn’t afraid of death. It didn’t matter whose side he was fighting on, even less so who he was protecting. He just fought the way that he knew, the way that he’d learned to – never turned his back, always got back up. It wasn’t up to him to worry about anything else.
Taking a sword for Yi Seonggye was what had earned him a position in the general’s guard. After that, he’d just kept surviving.
“You really are made of sterner stuff,” an officer had told him once. “It’s almost a pity there’s no one to care that you keep making it out alive.”
He’d laughed like he’d just made a great joke. Sungrok hadn’t said anything. His life might not be important to anyone, but Sungrok didn’t care much at all about the lives of the people he fought for, either. So long as he could hold a sword in his hand, that was more than fine by him.
Then, Seonho.
*
Sungrok is a strong warrior, and he’s afraid.
That isn’t what he was taught, but it is what he knows now, when he can’t find Seonho in the fray, when there’s a blade aimed at Seonho’s throat.
It tethers him, makes him move faster, but it also makes him less sharp. He parries a blow too hard instead of shifting his weight, just for the raw satisfaction of watching the man who was about to kill Seonho stumble backwards like he’d run into a wall. To look him in the eye as he cuts him down.
That’s what you get, he thinks, a little deliriously. His arm hurts from the strain, but the feeling is almost invigorating. He itches for someone else to try to get past him.
It’s a different way of doing all this, he supposes. To actually have something behind you that you want to protect.
*
It isn’t easier.
Sungrok looks on as Seonho puts his life in jeopardy again and again for a man who doesn’t seem to understand it.
He remembers a fire in Hwi’s eyes in Liaodong when Seonho had sacrificed himself for him. More than once, when Hwi turns his back to him, that memory is all that stays Sungrok’s hand.
The most insignificant thing Seonho has is his life. I can’t stop him. Can you?
Staying by Seonho’s side is all Sungrok can do. Putting himself between him and death – sometimes he gets the chance to do that as well. In a way, it is easy. What scares him is the knowledge that there might be no one else to take his place if he fails.
A warrior may be abandoned by his master, but he never deserts his master first.
As he drifts out of consciousness on the floor of Bangwon’s house, he thinks he hears Hwi’s voice. Sungrok curses him once more, for good measure – but a deeper, truer part of him is just terribly grateful that he made it in time.
He still doesn’t want to leave.
Everything goes dark.
*
Sungrok opens his eyes in the middle of the day to an unfamiliar room, and immediately tries to reach for his sword.
The movement pulls horribly at something in his chest, and he falls back down with a rattle, trying to catch his breath.
His sword isn’t there.
What is there is one of Bangwon’s men – or Hwi’s, Sungrok never was entirely sure with this one. He’s sitting cross-legged by the bed, his eyes closed but his back too straight for him to be asleep.
Sungrok blinks the fog out of his eyes and tries to take stock of his surroundings.
He’s not in Bangwon’s residence, that much he knows. The room is both not grand enough and too tastefully decorated for that. He wonders, briefly, how someone like him began to notice details like these. Too much time spent around nobility, he supposes.
Another pull.
“You aren’t dead,” the man beside him says. He hasn’t moved an inch. “Congratulations.”
“Seonho,” Sungrok says. His throat feels scraped raw. He breathes in. Steels himself for pain when he’ll push himself up.
“He’s in the next room,” the man says, and Sungrok turns to him despite himself. He has strangely piercing eyes for someone who looks like a street thug in borrowed clothes. “Asleep. I doubt that you could carry him out of here in your state.”
You don’t know shit about what I could do, Sungrok thinks.
“You’re very loyal to him,” the man says. “And he clearly cares about you. That’s why you’re still alive. Let’s try to keep it that way.”
Oh, fuck you, Sungrok wants to laugh. Who is he– Who is Hwi to speak to Sungrok about loyalty? Who are these people to grant him anything on Seonho’s behalf, like they care about him or know him better than Sungrok does, like it falls down to them to protect him?
He scoffs, and the burning pain in his lungs is so strong it makes him dizzy.
He can’t keep his eyes open.
*
The next time he wakes up, there’s a hand on his arm.
Sungrok feels it tighten when he shifts, and when he opens his eyes there’s a sharp intake of breath to his right.
The bone-deep relief that washes over him at seeing Seonho alive is something he has rarely experienced in his life. If Sungrok still sent his prayers to the sky goddess, this would be a time to thank her.
He tries to assess the damage. Seonho is sitting awkwardly, hunched in on himself like he could fold down any moment. Sungrok can see that blood has seeped through some of the bandages on his side.
“How bad is it?” he asks. His throat hurts and his voice is still hoarse, but it doesn’t feel like he’s swallowing fire when he speaks anymore, so that’s something.
“I thought you were dead,” says Seonho, like that has anything to do with Sungrok’s question.
“Where–”
“Ihwaru,” says Seonho, scrubbing a hand over his face. The other is still fisted in Sungrok’s sleeve.
The kisaeng house. The Madame is a friend of Hwi’s – Sungrok should’ve guessed.
When he goes to sit up, Seonho’s hands immediately find his shoulders.
“Don't move. You almost died.”
“Fuck off,” Sungrok says, on instinct. He pushes him off, annoyed, ignoring the sudden stab of pain when he moves too quickly. He can decide whether he wants to stand. He’s not going to let himself be looked down on by anyone, not even Seonho.
Seonho’s hands come back, more insistent than before, and Sungrok hesitates when he hears him groan in pain, too.
“I thought you died,” Seonho says again, and his voice breaks on the word. When Sungrok looks at him, there are tears on his face.
Sungrok stops.
“I told you–” Seonho visibly tries to stifle a sob, but it just turns into another wounded sound, like he’s about to start crying for real. Sungrok watches in horror as he hangs his head.
It isn’t as if he hasn’t seen Seonho cry before, but it was never because–
He hastily cuts off that thought.
Seonho’s eyes are fixed to the floor. He takes a deep, shuddering breath, the way he always does when he’s trying to pull himself together. Sungrok swallows around the knot in his throat and prays that he can do it before something much worse happens.
“I told you not to come with me,” Seonho says eventually, still a little unsteady.
“I told you I wouldn’t leave you first,” says Sungrok, feeling numb.
This time, Seonho huffs out a wet-sounding laugh. “Then you fucking suck at keeping your promises.”
For the first time in his life, Sungrok thinks that he might apologise to someone.
Instead, he just raises his hand and places it over Seonho’s where it rests on his chest. He thinks he remembers Seonho holding his hand when Sungrok was dying. He shakes off that thought, too.
“I’m fine,” he says. He never would’ve thought that could be of comfort to someone, but Seonho’s eyes go wide in that vulnerable way of his before he looks down again.
He doesn’t take his hand away, and Sungrok tries to empty his mind and doesn’t move for a long time.