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He never thought he’d see them again, honestly.
Su-won should have known better, of course. Should have known better than to think that Yona and Hak would quietly fade away somewhere, that they’d find a forest cottage or something and live out their lives in exile. Instead they’re legends, pirates, bandits, soldiers, and diplomats, digging up old gods and doing Su-won’s job for him.
And now, not only is he seeing them again and again, but Keishuk took the liberty of inviting them to the palace. Heavens knows what Su-won is going to do about that, and his head hurts far too much to make good choices right about now.
Yona and Hak. His big brother and his little sister, the family he could never have, because he’s going to die before he turns forty and his father would never inflict that fate onto two or three children. Only one.
He’ll just have to get better at boxing them up. That’s all. That’s all there is to it. Su-won can smile in the face of anything—he can smile at Yona and her dragons. And if Ju-do has his way, Su-won won’t ever lay eyes on Hak, much less have to talk to him.
It’ll be fine. He can set Yona aside like he always has, and things will go back to normal. He can resume running a kingdom and slowly dying in peace.
——————
It never really stuck until the day that Hak tried to kill him.
That day had been full of revelations. The sheer power of Yona and her company, Yona with a bow held in skillful fingers, the way that she flinched when he took her wrist. The way that she walked away from him, and the quiet calm of her voice, aged from the shrill squeak of a child in a matter of months.
Still, she’d felt like his Yona, the one that he had always known. Her eyes still widened when she saw him—though out of fear this time, not admiration. She still couldn’t control her hair, even though it was short. She still drew people to her effortlessly.
Su-won could almost pretend, if not for the bow.
And then, Hak: protecting Yona and the boy with the yellow hair, taking a stab wound to the arm without so much as wincing, and then reaching for Su-won with blood running down his hand.
Su-won had felt nothing, when Hak had so calmly walked towards him with every intent to murder him where he stood. It felt like staring down the grim reaper, and Su-won had been doing that since he was a child.
It had been when Hak was pulled away that Su-won realized, exactly, what he had done. When the green-haired man had looked on sadly, and the white-haired man had glared with real fury, and the blue-haired boy had hesitated, and the yellow-haired boy had the most unreadable expression on his face. After months of being a king, Su-won finally knew—
It’s all gone.
Yona and Hak will never look at him the same again.
——————
She is standing in front of the chair placed beside him. The chair is cleverness from Keishuk, nothing more.
But Yona isn’t here.
That girl cannot be Yona. Not this teenager with calloused fingers and palms, bruises hidden beneath folds of expensive cloth, wearing her mother’s earrings, the same earrings that she was wearing when he killed her father.
There is nothing left in her of the girl that Su-won knows. Nothing at all. All he can see is the red of the rising dawn and the red of the Crimson Dragon King and the red of blood and red, red, red, red in her violet eyes.
He has to look away.
——————
He got very good at his boxes, over the years. When his father died, his mother ceased to be his mother at all, and became a responsibility instead. The night that Su-won turned eighteen, Keishuk became a mind to use, no longer the family he once was. On the night of her sixteenth birthday, Yona changed from his little sister to the weeping fragile-flower daughter of King Il. Likely dead or dying. Likely accompanied by Son Hak, who became not a big brother, but a blade missing from the armory.
He has always known that Yona would never be important.
He has been ready to put her out of his mind for a very long time.
——————
So why is she still here?
——————
Su-won is dying.
He has been dying his whole life. He has been dying since he was born to the line of Hiryuu. He has been dying since he was six years old, since he was nine, since the death of his father, since his mother first looked at him with fear. He has been dying since the Crimson Dragon King’s soul abandoned his family, since the day he first killed a man. The blood had been as red as Yona’s hair as it dried on his hands and face. How appropriate, for Hiryuu’s descendants to finally be red.
He collapses more often than he sleeps. It would be fine, if it didn’t happen so often. He cares less for the failing of his body than he does for the failing of his mind. And his mind is failing him, as control slips through his fingers and he sees shadows of laughing children in the palace gardens. He cannot remember what he did yesterday. He will not remember these past few hours, spent in writhing agony on the floor, surrounded by books he cannot spare the energy to read.
He dreams of forces of nature: White stone, blue rivers, green wind, yellow sky, pink feathers, and the rising flames of dawn burning through a thunderstorm.
——————
There is a time that he wakes up in her room, hardly conscious enough to think, and the pain in is head is bad enough that he can barely see.
Strangely, he first notices that there is a distinct lack of screaming. That’s what happened the first time Su-won collapsed in front of Yona—he’d been twelve, and she’d been nine, and he’d tried to push through a seasonal illness longer than was wise. He’d woken up to the shrill, broken sound of Yona screaming for her father at the top of her lungs, like she thought he’d dropped dead where he stood. And again, when they were fourteen and seventeen, and Hak had crumpled like a broken doll after fighting off an assassination attempt and refusing to tell Yona anything about it. She’d screamed then, too, but it had sounded more like crying.
She’s quiet, now, now that they are seventeen and nineteen and he hasn’t heard her scream in a year, not since she saw the blood on his face, not since Hak took her arm in his grip and ran.
And now she knows—oh, oh, oh, now she knows, and he didn’t even get to tell her on his own terms. She’s going to figure it all out. Yona was never important but he knew she was never stupid, either. And this Yona, this new not-quite-Yona, she knows how he thinks, she knows how he sorts out his pieces. Years and years of childhood are working against him every second that passes. It is inevitable. She doesn’t know that he is dying yet, but she will by tomorrow.
He sits up, certain now that he must move. She looks up at him—she’s still so short—and his vision doubles, and he cannot tell who he is with. Yona, or a stranger with eyes he doesn’t recognize?
——————
He loved Yona. She was his little sister. He loved her as much as he is capable of loving anything. Su-won thinks he might still love her, in a way. Can he still love her, if he doesn’t know her anymore? Hak still loves her like she’s the same girl they knew. Is she the same girl?
She has the same smile. Even after all this time, even with different eyes.
It doesn’t matter.
He loved her, and then he made sure he stopped loving her, but it doesn’t change the fact that he loved her once. He forgets that, sometimes. It was fundamentally better to forget, and easier in a castle that was empty of Uncle Il and the laughter of little Yona, little Yona who wants to hold his hand and hates her frizzy hair, little Yona who hands out expensive apology gifts for her own impulsivity and sits on Hak’s shoulders and watches them play with swords and learns calligraphy for fun and wears her mother’s earrings and loved the world outside of the palace for the short time she got to see it—and she—and—and she—
Su-won holds his aching head in his hands. He eyes the painkiller only inches away from his twitching fingers.
He doesn’t take it.
——————
He used to fantasize about telling them. At night, when they were little and asleep, with Yona’s hand held tightly in his own and Hak on her other side with his arm thrown across them both. He would think about it. For long hours. How would he say it? How would he tell them of the illness in his blood, about his death, as unavoidable as the dusk? How would they react? Would Yona cry? Would she smile and tell him not to cry? Would Hak rage, or would he reach out to hold Su-won’s shoulder so tight it would ache?
Then he would look over at them—and the simple tears of a girl who misses her mother would be drying on Yona’s face, and Hak’s face would be twisted in the way of an orphan that is trying to forget he ever was such a thing—and Su-won would stop.
And he would make the better decision, and say nothing at all, but for the wrong reasons.
——————
Watching them is strange, even separated as they are. Yona and Hak and their healer and her dragons, the oddest little family in the world.
Su-won scavenged his royal council from his father’s corpse, tightly gripping Ju-do’s remaining loyalty and Keishuk’s years-old fervor, and the rest of the Generals fell in line. Su-won is a vulture—crafty, clever, and not very creative.
But Yona—oh, she built it from the ground up, with nothing but a legend and her smile and her fingers calloused and bloody on a bowstring. They are a royal council without even knowing it, the greatest match for Su-won’s carefully-built traditional Kouka structure: four great generals and an even greater fifth, a young advisor at her side. Bound not by revenge or strength or economic advantage but friendship, family, things that don’t ever work in the real world. They call each other brother without a hint of irony, they call Yona master, mistress, dear, miss. They call her Yona. There is only Hak left to call her Princess, or Your Highness.
It’s too perfect. She is usurping him without even trying. Yun is not the strategic rival of Keishuk, but for now he is only a sixteen-year-old boy with injured warriors to worry about. He could very well be, given time. And Su-won is no idiot—despite that sham of a tournament, he has little doubt who the victors would be in a real battle of Su-won’s generals against Yona’s. They’ve been hanging around Hak for too long.
What Su-won would have given to have Hak in Ju-do’s place right now. If only he hadn’t already known that Hak would choose Yona every time—otherwise, he might have had the courage to ask.
But it is Yona who is at his side, and Hak is… joining the Sky Tribe army. Because of course he is. What else would he be doing? Su-won could have guessed that. Should have guessed that.
Hak is familiar to him, and he’s ashamed at how relieving that is. Kingdoms rise and fall and crumble along with their kings, armies topple, and fields are set ablaze, but Son Hak will always remain exactly how Su-won knows him to be: caring far too much for everyone in his line of sight, stronger than any human has any right to be, and loyal to a deadly fault. His family has changed and grown, but he is still the same, still so very Hak in every way.
Yona is unrecognizable.
He doesn’t know this girl. He can’t. Su-won put Yona out of his mind entirely, and she came back a stranger. Keishuk was right all along, as he so often is: she is dangerous.
Su-won suddenly, desperately, needs to know more.
——————
The dragons will know.
He meets with each of them in turn.
——————
“What was Yona like when you met her?” Su-won asks the White Dragon.
The White Dragon is a village chief, raised by a respected elder. He is a fearsome warrior, with a scaled white claw where his right arm should be, and he is savage on the battlefield, like nothing short of a feral animal. A dragon to his last breath.
The White Dragon is also Kija, and the others respect, are fond of, and are exasperated by him in turns. He screamed at a cockroach found in Su-won’s office, and screamed even louder when Su-won picked it up to set it outside. He has three sets of the same robes, and he sunburns easier than anything. He hates Su-won solely because of Yona and Hak.
He is one of the only people that Hak has ever looked relieved to see near Yona.
He is Yona’s first soldier.
“Why are you asking?” Kija crosses his arms. His claw is clearly in sight. His chin is raised high and haughty, but his voice is flat, and so is his expression. It is nothing at all like how he acts with Yona’s group.
“I just want to know what she’s been through,” Su-won says. It’s as close to the truth as he’s willing to give. “Besides. I only want to hear about her. Not about your powers, or tactics, or fighting strength or anything.” All Su-won needs to do is appeal to the warrior’s mind and the big heart. It’s not difficult.
Kija’s face breaks out into a smile. “She was like nothing I’ve ever seen before. She was amazing. We knew it was her right away, you know. My village knew from her hair, but I knew in my blood. I had been waiting for her my whole life—what else would our meeting be, but incredible?”
“But what about Yona?”
“Incredible, like I just said. Breathtaking. Amazing.”
“She was a few months out of the castle at best. She couldn’t have been that…“
“Oh, I didn’t mean her skills,” Kija waves him off. “That takes time and training. She needed both, and has them now. I meant her soul.”
“…Soul?” On second thought, maybe talking to the most religious of the Four first was not Su-won’s greatest tactical move.
“Yes, her soul. Don’t you people believe in such things?”
“Well—yes, but—“ Su-won hates this hesitation, how his rising headache makes him weaker with every passing second. “I fail to see how her soul is relevant to what she was like when you first met her.”
Kija sighs, like Su-won is a particularly difficult child. “She was dirty, exhausted, and hardly strong enough to pull a bowstring back. Her hair had been hastily cut by a sword’s blade and was neatened just barely enough to be presentable. She could hardly tell one end of a blade from the next, much less give a soldier orders in battle.” Kija is shorter than him, but Su-won still gets the impression of being looked down upon. “I had never seen anyone look so beautiful in my life, and I had never been so sure of someone’s ability to take me exactly where I wanted to go.”
“But…”
“She is my master. She is my Crimson Dragon.”
“It can’t be that simple,” Su-won says.
“I could go on a tirade about how wonderful she is, if you want,” Kija offers. Su-won genuinely cannot tell how serious he is. “I could tell you about the dances she learned in only a few hours, how she shoots better than most anyone I know, about just how much she’s done for us all. But really… really, I think it is that simple. I am a simple man, King of Kouka, and Yona is enough for me.”
“I never said she wasn’t.”
“I know an insult when I hear one, intended or not. But! I must take my leave. My presence is likely required by the others. Who knows how they’re faring without me? It must be a disaster.” Kija shakes his head and stands.
With a flourish and without even a bow, the White Dragon sweeps past Su-won and out the door.
——————
“What was Yona like when you met her?” Su-won asks the Blue Dragon.
The Blue Dragon is a shapeless shadow in the night. He is darkness with unknown power hidden behind his eyes, rumored to be the most beautiful in the world. He a child’s nightmare and savior all at once.
The Blue Dragon is also Shin-ah, and he hardly speaks. He holds small animals in gentle hands, turns his face away when he removes his mask, and dresses warmly no matter the season. The others always seem to know what he means, no matter what he actually says. He has footsteps as quiet as Hyoo-ri’s, and Su-won once watched Yun shout at him for cutting his hair with a knife.
Hak smiles at him like he smiles at Tae-woo.
Yona reaches for him when she is cold.
“Ao liked her,” Shin-ah says.
“But what did you think of her?”
Shin-ah says nothing for a long time. Su-won used to think that he intimidated Shin-ah, and that’s why he kept shrinking away. Su-won knows better than that now—he knows that Shin-ah is holding himself back, always.
“Bright,” is all Shin-ah says. Then he gets up to leave.
He’s halfway out the door by the time that Su-won calls, “Wait!”
Shin-ah stops in the doorway without turning to look at him. “Did you know she gave me my name?”
What? “No, I didn’t.”
“Do you like it?”
“I… suppose I do.”
Shin-ah nods. And then he leaves.
Moonlight. It’s exactly the sort of name that Yona would give terrifying warrior with a mask of bone. Su-won is almost struck with the urge to laugh—but he knows that it would end with the Blue Dragon’s blade against his neck.
——————
“What was Yona like when you met her?” Su-won asks the Green Dragon.
The Green Dragon is a crafty, clever fighter with blades upon blades hidden on his person and a dragon’s clawed leg that he uses to fly. He is older, more experienced than the others, and not so quick to trust. He is dangerous—very dangerous.
The Green Dragon is also Jaeha, and he quietly looks after the others while loudly dramatizing everything else he does. He won’t do anything anyone tells him to, ever, out of sheer stubbornness. He wears foreign clothes, claims to be a pirate without stealing anything, and refuses to take off his shoes.
Hak mutters all of his worst, most Hak-ish jokes to him.
When Hak is gone, Yona always looks for Jaeha in his stead.
“Do you want me to be honest?” Jaeha raises a brow.
“Of course.”
“I thought she was an adorable little dandelion,” Jaeha laughs. “Sweet and fragile, eager to please and to prove herself. Then she earned my loyalty and more when she killed a man in front of me.”
Su-won doesn’t know what to say to that, so he chooses to say nothing at all. Jaeha leans forward, so all Su-won can see is his face, half-covered by the off-putting green of his hair. Like seaweed. Like he’s really a pirate, encrusted by the salt of the ocean.
“Does that bother you, Your Majesty?” Jaeha grins. “Are the bloody hands of the Princess too much for you? I’m so sorry. I won’t bring up such gruesome topics again.”
Su-won does nothing but stare. He will let his eyes speak for him.
Jaeha sees the expression, and ignores it. “After that, I figured out that I would follow her to the end of the universe. But I’m sure that’s nothing you haven’t already heard from Kija.”
“I want specifics,” Su-won says. “I am asking for information.”
“Why? Why do you need to know this now? You’ve known each other your whole lives,” Jaeha leans back, then back farther, until the chair is half-off the ground. Su-won is struck by how much the movement reminds him of Hak. “There should be nothing you don’t know about her. You were her best friend.”
“Hak was her best friend,” Su-won says, weakly.
“You were her best friend,” Jaeha repeats. “You were his, too.”
“You don’t know anything about that.”
“You’re asking me the questions, Your Majesty. You wouldn’t ask if I didn’t know.”
How much has Yona told her dragons? How much has she not told them, and they’ve put together on their own? Su-won cannot tell how clever they are without her here, and it irks him. He shouldn’t need Yona’s presence to talk to Kouka’s own dragons, whether he believes in them or not.
“Are you going to tell me anything else of use?” Su-won finally asks.
“Probably not,” Jaeha says.
“Then you are dismissed.”
——————
“What was Yona like when you met her?” Su-won asks the Yellow Dragon, the first Yellow Dragon, the only Yellow Dragon.
The Yellow Dragon is an enigma, his fraught and frayed legend quietly hidden behind the brilliance of the others. Those who know of it will only say that he is a monster.
The Yellow Dragon is also Zeno, a two-thousand-year-old teenager. He wears layers and layers of flowing clothing, has a necklace tied around his head, and talks in third person. The others can’t seem to decide between treating him like a little brother, a distinguished grandparent, or a weird uncle, so they’ve settled on all three. He grins no matter the circumstances, and Su-won almost thinks he’s stupid, until Zeno glances at him out of the corner of his eyes once and Su-won is struck speechless by the ancient weight of knowledge carved into the face of a short teenage boy.
Hak protects him whether he likes it or not.
Yona does too. She defends him desperately—as though it is worse, that he can’t be hurt while she can.
“She was…” Zeno pauses, tilting his head, and his pendant swings. “It is hard for Zeno to say. When Zeno saw her first, or when Zeno rejoined the dragons?”
“Ah… both, if that’s alright?”
“Mm. Zeno first saw the miss a few days after she was born, after the red dawn and his blood told Zeno his King was back again. There is not much to say about what she was like, except that she cried as strong as anything.” Zeno smiles. He holds the edge of the chair and kicks his legs like a child.
“And when you joined?”
Zeno laughs a little self-consciously. “Zeno had spent an embarrassingly long time trying to make sure that the miss would be a master worth following,” he says. “But Zeno watched her do many incredible things very quickly, and was very impressed, especially at her heart. She showed much the same kindness Zeno remembered from his King. And when Zeno joined them very suddenly, she welcomed him right away, and never even asked where Zeno came from.”
“Kindness is not enough to turn a little girl into a king,” Su-won says.
“Isn’t it?” Zeno smiles.
Su-won sighs, and shakes his head. He won’t get what he’s looking for from the dragons, that much is clear.
“Zeno knows what this is,” Zeno says. “You’re looking for the moment, aren’t you? The moment that the miss changed?”
“…I am.”
“You won’t find it. There isn’t one. Yona was always capable of this, from the day she was born. She just didn’t know how yet.”
“I don’t know why I bothered,” Su-won says, more to himself than to Zeno.
“King of Kouka, blood of my King… it’s a little sad that you’ve turned out this way.” Zeno looks at Su-won, but he gets the sense that Zeno is looking past him, beyond him. “You could have been a lot like her, if only you’d been a little less smart.”
“That’s not something I can fix,” Su-won says wryly.
“No, Zeno supposes not,” Zeno laughs.
——————
He is thinking of naming Zeno as his successor. That is a conversation for later, when Su-won is more sure of him, but… there is value in a king who cannot die, in one who knows all there is to know about Kouka, who has seen all manner of kingdoms rise and fall. And what could a priest do against his own god? It’s not a perfect solution, but it is one, which is better than Su-won had before.
(What about Yona?)
(But Su-won discounted Yona long ago, and he dismisses the idea out of hand.)
——————
Yun is the only one that is afraid of him.
He’s skittish around all the nobles, ducking his head when he rushes around the palace halls with books and scrolls stacked precariously in his arms. But he’s only afraid of Su-won.
This is evidenced in the slight screech that escapes his mouth when he ‘accidentally’ runs smack into Su-won in the middle of a hallway, and all his books go scattering. (Su-won definitely did not meticulously plan this silly little accident.)
“Um, uh, Your Majesty! I am so sorry, let me just, uh, pick these up—“ Yun scrambles to start gathering his books, avoiding eye contact entirely.
“No need,” Su-won smiles. He bends down to start helping. It’s common decency, after all. People don’t expect common decency from a king.
“Oh. Ah. Thanks,” Yun says, then mutters to himself, “I think.”
Su-won waits until all the books are back in Yun’s hands to start speaking again.
“You’re Yona’s healer, aren’t you?” he asks. He already knows the answer, of course, but that reveals too much of his hand too quickly. He has to be careful with this one.
Yun freezes. “Yes.”
“Are you the only one of them that can heal?”
“I mean,” Yun laughs nervously, “they’re not stupid, even if they look like it. They can wrap their own wounds, if they need to.”
“But you’re the only one who can make poultices and do proper stitches, right.” It’s a statement more than a question.
“I guess.”
“For five warriors, that must be hard.”
“Six,” Yun corrects him, then he realizes what he’s done and his face flushes red. “Uh, Your Majesty,” he tacks on.
“Six?” Su-won tilts his head.
“Yona does a lot of the fighting herself, these days,” Yun shrugs.
Su-won does not need to hear about that. “Well, with… six warriors, plus all the soldiers upon soldiers that claim to owe you their lives—“
“They’ve said that?” Yun looks surprised.
“Of course they have. You’re well-known, especially in the Fire Tribe.” Su-won isn’t even lying. He’s heard plenty from Min-su about how the Fire Tribe healers are just about fed up with all the soldiers’ talk of ‘that boy with the feathers in his hair’ and ‘he was so gentle ’ and ‘this is the fastest I’ve ever healed.’
“Oh. That’s nice of them.”
Yun looks about two seconds away from bolting, so Su-won cuts to the chase. “Your skills are invaluable to Kouka. I’m just curious—why here, and why now?”
Yun blinks.
Su-won smiles again.
“I… I don’t know what you want me to say, Your Majesty,” Yun says. “I’m not here for Kouka. Kouka has done nothing for me. Except bring me to Yona and the beasts, I guess.”
“You’d say that to Kouka’s king?” Su-won isn’t trying to accuse the kid—he does want an honest answer—but he’s curious. He thinks it’s interesting when people react oddly to him.
“You asked,” Yun shrugs, but he looks away. “I’m just here for the library, and it’s now because it’s when Yona said we could. Kouka has nothing to do with it.”
“It has everything to do with it,” Su-won points out. “Without Kouka, there isn’t any Princess Yona, right?”
After all, she’s the Crimson Dragon King, the founder of Kouka itself. They are cyclical. None of them can exist without the other.
And Yun says, “Yona’s a princess whether there’s a Kouka or not.”
Su-won thinks that sounds terribly naive. It’s an immature statement of blind faith, and it doesn’t really answer his question at all. But what is he supposed to say to such determination?
Yun is gone by the time that Su-won thinks of an adequate answer:
What is a princess to a king?
(And which one is she?)
——————
“…What about Hak? What do you think of him?” Su-won can’t help but ask. Later, after he finds Zeno wandering the halls of the palace at night like he’s one of the ghosts that haunt it.
He remembers it. He clearly remembers Hak taking a stab wound for a yellow-haired boy protecting Yona. Hak was stupid, to do that. He must’ve had to wait weeks for those severed tendons to heal. He’s lucky he can even still use that arm. And then, to learn that Zeno cannot die at all—and to still keep jumping in front of blades, again and again.
“He is uniquely suited to being an older brother, isn’t he?” Zeno says.
Su-won only runs a tired hand through his hair, and nods.
——————
He goes to sleep late one night. He wakes up two days later. He doesn’t even realize it has been that long, not until he sees Min-su’s white face.
——————
They are keeping Yona confined. Su-won is far too exhausted to think about what it will mean, later, later when the dragons have had enough, later when Hak runs out of patience (he always does).
Confinement must be familiar to Yona, surely? Or has wandering opened her eyes so wide she can only see beyond the palace walls?
She begs him for more freedoms each day. He cannot help but grant a few of them. He could never say no to Yona, not when she made that face.
…What is he even doing?
His head hurts.
___________
This poison farce is just the sort of debacle that Yona would get into. It’s a shame that it’s this new Yona, and not the one he knows. The Yona he knows would have been much easier to get out of trouble.
He is thinking about this, as Keishuk paces behind him.
“It was strange. She was so like you,” Keishuk says, suddenly.
“What?” Su-won asks.
“The princess. In that meeting. She said nearly everything you would have.”
“I’m surprised she even got them to listen.”
“Well,” Keishuk sighs, “she did have to imply that she killed a man.”
Su-won almost laughs. He stops himself, just in time. “Ah.”
“I’m not at all surprised that you’re related now,” Keishuk says. “She even smiled just like you.”
Is that why?
Is that why he can’t recognize her anymore?
Because she is too much like him?
Would he recognize his own eyes in the mirror?
“Nonsense,” Su-won says. “I could never pull off that hair.”
“True enough,” Keishuk shakes his head.
No. That can’t be it. If she were truly like him, she wouldn’t have survived this long. Su-won actually knows how to kill someone that is like him.
——————
Hak knows.
——————
“Su-won!”
It is Yona’s voice, but it sounds nothing like her.
“It has nothing to do with you.”
Please go away. It’s all so loud. Please. Please, please, go away. Let the ghost of Yona rest. Stop wearing her face, wearing her mother’s earrings, saying her father’s words, using Su-won’s smile, using Hak’s methods.
“Look at me!”
Su-won will not. He will not look into the eyes of this stranger. His head hurts. He killed Yona on the same night he killed her father. He doesn’t know anyone named Yona at all. He loves nothing and no one, it does not hurt him to run a man through with his sword.
Yona? Who is Yona? Yona is his little sister. She is a stranger. She is a princess. She is the first king. She is no one important. He loves her.
His vision is starting to go gray at the edges. Only Yona in remains in vibrant, brilliant color. So much red.
“Even if you don’t care or have had enough of me, look me in the eyes when you talk to me!”
And he does. He looks into her eyes, fully and truly, for the first time since she returned to the palace.
Su-won does not know what it is that he sees in them.
So, like a real big brother, Su-won shouts at her.
“It has nothing to do with you!”
——————
Su-won’s consciousness comes back to him in fuzzy, half-remembered fragments of Zeno’s voice and his mother’s. A man in defiance of the heavens. This world is so dark and terrifying. Your illness resembles the fate of the dragons. I was deeply frightened when—
He wakes up at his desk, but hears someone that sounds like Zeno, and so he does not move.
“You look so much like him,” Zeno says. “I wonder how it’s even allowed. How can you wear his face, and do the things you do?”
Su-won keeps his eyes closed.
“My friends must be horrified from the heavens,” Zeno chuckles. “Perhaps I shouldn’t have left the palace. But I wonder, Su-won son of Yong-hi, Su-won son of Hiryuu… I wonder what you would have done to me if I had stayed?”
——————
Su-won is barely conscious of the war with South Kai as it happens, but he pulls himself together enough for strategy talks. If there’s anything he knows like the back of his hand, it’s war strategy.
Yona is here, without his real consent or willingness to cooperate. But Keishuk (unfortunately) can make these decisions for him, since he sleeps more than he doesn’t, these days.
She knows so much about so many strange and specific things. If Su-won thought he would live that long, he would take a journey around the nation as she did, and mark all the same hidden trails and the statuses of the rivers. In a different world, he thinks, they would have done it together: and Yona would be complaining about bugs instead of knowing all about them, and Hak would be their laughing bodyguard right there instead of a faraway soldier at war, and Su-won would have the energy to walk.
He glances over the reports that Yona hands him. Instead of news of success or failure, they’re filled with the scrambled, simple words of young and awed soldiers. All of them are singing the praises of one man, the equivalent of an entire royal army.
——————
He stares at Keishuk, uncomprehending.
Missing?
They found his quandao?
That’s not even possible.
It’s Hak. He’s basically invincible. He can’t be dead. It’s inconceivable for him to even go missing like this, much less for nearly a week. Surely he would never leave Yona here? Surely he’d never leave her with Su-won?
But hours later, Yona is crying in front of him. If Hak wasn’t gone, she wouldn’t be here. She’d be crying to him, instead. She wouldn’t be crying at all.
He pulls back the hand that tries to reach for hers, old muscle memory that will always try to betray him in the worst moments. But however much he wishes to, he can’t bring himself to look at her. Every time he tries, his chest hurts in time with his head, like his ribcage is squeezing his lungs, his heart. He doesn’t remember that being a symptom of his illness.
He just doesn’t want to see what she looks like when she loses someone again. Once was enough.
Hak would know what to do.
But Hak isn’t here.
——————
“Do you remember when your parents died?” Su-won asked Hak, one night when they were twelve years old and Su-won found himself missing his own parents desperately, despite all his attempts to the contrary.
Hak made a so-so motion. “I used to, but I’ve been trying to forget it.”
“Why?”
Hak snorted. “Grandpa is basically both of my parents and both sets of my grandparents rolled into one. He’s the only parent I’ll ever need.”
“That’s sweet of you,” Su-won smiled.
“No, it’s not. It means he’s way more than one person can handle,” Hak said, with the flat expression that he knew always made Su-won laugh, even when the joke wasn’t actually funny.
“Be quiet. If you’re not careful, you’ll summon him.”
“I’d be doomed.”
Su-won had waited a moment, for their snickers to die down and for the night to fall deeper.
“How did you get over it?” he’d finally asked.
Hak shrugged. “I was just too young to get it. By the time that I was old enough to understand it, I had already gotten over it.” He paused. “Sorry. This is about your dad, right?”
“Maybe,” Su-won muttered. He hadn’t liked being so easily read.
“Shouldn’t you talk to the Princess about this? She knows what it’s like a lot more than I do.”
Su-won choked on the irony. The daughter of his father’s killer and the son of her mother’s murderer, taking comfort in each other. He could look past it most of the time because Yona had nothing to do with it all. He just… couldn’t, that day.
“Maybe I wanted to talk to you.”
“I’m not any help,” Hak said.
“You are,” Su-won said, very sure of himself. “What would I do without you?”
And Hak had said, “You won’t ever have to know.”
——————
It feels strange to be wearing his armor after so long without it. It’s a heavy weight, but a comforting one, like it’s keeping him on the ground with every breath.
It turns out, with his mind this spotty, all he knows how to do is what Hak would have done:
Go to war.
——————
He slumps against Yona’s shoulder. No matter how hard he tries, he can’t sit back up. His head hurts. Gods, does his head hurt.
Oh gods. Oh, gods. He can’t do this anymore. It’s just not working. He can’t—he can’t think. All that’s left of him is a headache and a slow-burning fire of fear. Fear of what? Of losing everything that he has already lost? Oh, gods. He’s missed them so much. What is he supposed to do now?
Think. There’s a battle right in front of him. Think. Yona is talking to him. He has to answer. Think. Think, Su-won, son of Yu-Hon, THINK!
——————
They manage. Barely, but they manage. Su-won has only just gotten himself standing up straight when the soldiers start shouting about a Kai soldier barreling straight for them.
But Yona lowers her bow.
It’s Hak.
It’s Hak. He’s alive—he’s been alive this whole time. Faithful enough to be invincible, just like Su-won knew he was.
Hak holds out a bag covered in mud and blood that’s both old and new. Drops it into Su-won’s hands. Mutters something that Su-won is too stunned to hear. He looks exhausted. Is—is he alright? What has he been doing, while he was missing? Su-won can hardly see his face, obscured as it is by scabs and splattered blood. He sways on his feet. His eyes glaze over, and Su-won doesn’t hold out his arms in time.
Hak sags against his shoulder and doesn’t move again.
The rising panic in Su-won’s brain drowns out the awful aching in his head.
——————
Su-won never quite got over that old hero-worship of Hak. It’s an annoying weakness, exacerbated by just how much all his generals aren’t Hak.
It was so much easier to set Yona aside. For all that he’d loved Yona, he never really relied on her. Intentionally so. He couldn’t rely on her, not if he wanted to take the throne, and his goals had always been his priority.
But when he was six years old, he met Son Hak in a tree in the palace gardens, and he’d been the second-strongest person that Su-won had ever known. And he’d been loyal, and funny, and kind without being nice, like Father but softer, like Father but more willing to look Su-won in the eyes (like Father but without the weight of a lost crown and blood on his hands), and Su-won wanted to be just like that.
He never could, of course. They both grew up tall, but Su-won grew up thin and willowy, doomed to be sickly, fine-boned and soft-faced and round-eyed. Hak grew up lean and strong-jawed, the look of an unkillable man, scar-speckled hands and scraggly hair hanging down in front of his eyes. Su-won could never be like Hak, no matter how much he wanted it. Especially not as Hak worked harder and harder to be worthy of Su-won’s admiration, like he wasn’t worthy of it from the very beginning.
But of course, Su-won always lacked the one thing that really made Hak into himself:
From the very first day that he met Su-won and Yona, Hak would have died for them.
(Su-won is sure of this. Had the castle began to burn down right at that instant, had arrows rained over the walls, Hak at six years old would have shielded them with his own back in a heartbeat.)
There was nothing that Hak wouldn’t have done for them. And even now, now that Hak wants Su-won dead more than anything, Yona needs Su-won alive—and so Hak will save his life. Anything for Yona, anything for his best friend and anything for his Princess. Hak is just as dedicated to the Crimson Dragon King as the dragons are, but the worst part is that this? This? Su-won knows exactly how it happened. He watched it happen. He lived it, all those twelve, thirteen years. He is watching it happen now.
Yona has done nothing but earn Hak’s loyalty and love since she was three. Since forever. For all the years that she’s been alive.
——————
Hak breathes, weakly, against him.
He tells Yona this, and she tells the dragons, and they cry and smile and hold each other out of sheer relief that one of their number has lived another day.
(In that moment, Yona looks more like the Yona Su-won knows than she has since she came to the palace.)
Then Hak is pulled away from Su-won by a healer, and Su-won is too stunned to do anything but miss the weight and watch as Yona reaches for Hak, clutches him to her, gently rests her forehead on his hair, and she is not crying anymore but it’s a close thing. And Hak, half-dead and unconscious, still turns his face to her.
Su-won can do nothing but look away, gripping the muddy, bloody bag with trembling fingers.
Spots grow in front of his eyes, and he is pulled into a tent just as his vision grows dark.
——————
Oh gods, how he’s missed them. Now they hardly even look his way.
——————
When he wakes up, his head feels better than it has in months, but he still feels the worst he has ever felt.
——————
When he feels like he can walk again (and even that is quicker, easier, clearer) he moves through the encampment, smiling gently at passing soldiers. He walks past Yona’s tent, and he hears the sound of laughter, of teasing, the chittering of a squirrel. He hears Yona’s high-pitched giggle, and the empty spaces in conversation where a low comment from Hak should be.
Su-won moves forward. He nods at Keishuk’s concerned glance and smiles kindly at a woman holding torn and muddy laundry.
Somewhere deep down, he feels… replaced.
It’s unfair of him—oh, it’s so unfair of him. He asked for this in every sense of the phrase. He wanted it. He begged for it.
(Then again, he had also planned to never see either of them again.)
It’s his own fault that he has failed to keep them in their boxes. That he failed to stop, like a good king should. It has nothing to do with Yona and Hak. It doesn’t matter how much he has missed them desperately this past year, and that he is only just now realizing it, like an immature idiot.
There is no Su-won in Yona and Hak’s future. They will love each other forever, and in Su-won’s place will be four dragons and a healer and a squirrel. They will do more for them than Su-won ever could, and they will make them happier than Su-won could ever dream of doing.
There is no Su-won in Yona and Hak’s future. He murdered Yona’s father. He tried to have her killed. The first is an unforgivable sin to Yona, the second an unforgivable sin to Hak. It doesn’t matter how much Yona agrees to sit next to him, or that Gulfan flies to Hak and Su-won both, even now. It especially doesn’t matter that Hak nearly died to save his life, or that Yona still smiles at him sometimes. It doesn’t matter that Yona is a master of dragons and a commander of armies, or that Hak is everything that Su-won knew he could be, more force of nature than man. It doesn’t matter that Su-won will die no matter what. It doesn’t matter that he always was going to die like this. It doesn’t matter that Yona and Hak might have cried over him, had they known it before he cut them apart from him. It doesn’t matter at all. Nothing does.
There is no Su-won in Yona and Hak’s future.
There is no Su-won in Kouka’s future, either.
“This is what I get,” he whispers to himself, and he almost laughs. You spit in the faces of the gods, and your little sister comes back as one of them. Will she kill him? He hadn’t even thought of it—he’d always thought it would be Hak or the illness that would get to him first.
It’s nothing he doesn’t deserve, really. He can see it in her eyes, her hair: the Crimson Dragon King in the shape of the Yona that he used to know, raising a blade, resplendent in the light of dawn, a thunderstorm crackling behind her.
No matter how he dies, it will be the Crimson Dragon King that kills him.
Su-won hopes, more than anything, that Yona will kill him before his illness does.