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Yona is beautiful on her wedding day.
Of course, Yona is beautiful every day, but there is something about her on the morning of her wedding that turns her beauty into something ethereal. She fusses all morning with hair pins and perfumes, draping herself into the gold of her wedding dress, but she doesn’t need all of that. She could wear nothing but her plainest dress but still be the most beautiful woman at the shrine that morning.
Hak stands on the edge of her room and watches, leaning against the wall as he does so. In the next room he knows that King Il paces, nervous and worried, but Hak can’t imagine why. Soo Won would always love and cherish Yona--of that Hak has no doubt.
He’s known that Yona has loved Soo Won since they were children, and that Soo Won has always loved her back. He’s happy for them, if only because he loved them so much. If they were happy, he was happy.
He would be Soo Won’s right hand and Yona’s shield until the day that he died, and he was more than content with that role. As long as he got to stay with the both of them, nothing else mattered.
Yona finishes getting dressed about an hour before the ceremony, and she’s finally forced to sit down. It’s only then that Hak notices that her hands are shaking. She sits quietly for a moment before clenching her fists and looking up at him. All of a sudden her happiness has vanished without a trace, leaving her looking like a sad, pale doll dressed up in fine clothing.
“Hak, do you...do you think Soo Won will be happy, marrying me? You don’t think it’s as father says, and this will put him in danger, do you?”
Hak had gone to see Soo Won earlier that morning, and he had been lost in thought when Hak had walked into his rooms. But when he’d noticed Hak he had smiled, even though his eyes were still serious.
He had probably been thinking about how marrying Yona meant that he was going to become king. Hak had no doubt that Soo Won would be the best king that Kouka had ever seen--Soo Won knew things that other nobles didn’t, and always had. When his time to sit on the throne came, he would do whatever was best for the country he was meant to look.
“You should come sit with me, before Yona wakes and you have to go to her,” he said, and Hak sat. They were silent, the dark cloud of Soo Won’s nerves hanging above them, even though it was his wedding day.
“Do you love Yona?” Hak asked, even though he already knew the answer.
Soo Won looked up, his face softening at the sound of Yona’s name. “Of course I do,” he said.
“Today, that’s all that matters,” Hak said, reaching out to squeeze Soo Won’s shoulder. Soo Won had only smiled, small but real this time, and grabbed his arm. His hand had been warm.
Yona does not have anything to worry about. Hak knows that. “Soo Won loves you,” he says. “As for everything else, don’t you think I can protect you both?”
Yona instantly brightens, her infectious happiness creeping back onto her face. “Soo Won loves me,” Yona says, as though reminding herself, “and I love him. And we’ll always have you, right, Hak?”
“Right,” Hak says, letting a heavy promise settle into that word.
King Il dies in the early days of fall following Soo Won and Yona’s marriage. His sickness comes upon him slowly, beginning with a cough and ending with him in bed with sweat from his fever dotting his brow.
“Keep Yona safe,” King Il tells Hak, his voice a hoarse whisper, after he sent for him. Hak swears, kneeling before the king’s bedside, because he would have done so even if King Il hadn’t made him promise.
King Il looks pleased at that, and Hak is lead out of his rooms. He sends for Yona after that, but as far as Hak is aware, Soo Won is never called to his sickbed. Barely a full day passes after that, and the king dies.
In her rooms Yona sobs, and it punches a hole right through Hak’s gut. He doesn’t know what to say to her--his own parents died too young for him to remember them, and the Old Man is probably never going to die--but he listens to her cry.
Soo Won comes into her rooms and holds her, but does not shed his own tears. Soo Won says all the right wordrs to Yona, and watches when she is taken by her ladies to her other chambers, but when he sits down there is no grief on his face.
“King Il is gone,” Soo Won says, when it is just him and Hak in his rooms, and there isn’t a whisper of grief in his voice.
“He will be missed,” Hak says, because he knows that he at least will miss King Il. Hak would never have followed someone that he didn’t genuinely respect and love. Though many thought that King Il was weak, Hak never would.
“By some, yes. But not by others.” Soo Won locks eyes with Hak, and Hak knows that this is a confession of some sort. Soo Won is studying him, waiting for some sort of reaction. Hak freezes, but otherwise doesn’t give him one.
Soo Won is waiting for something, but he will just have to keep waiting. Hak knows that Soo Won is trying to tell him something, but it’s something that Hak doesn’t want to hear. Hak doesn’t want to know.
They have never had secrets between them--or so Hak thought. But they would have at least one now, but Hak will not be the one that will cause the rift between them.
“I’m sure you’re right,” Hak says, and that’s the last they speak of this.
Soo Won and Yona’s coronation is boring and long and terrible, but at the end Hak is the one that kneels to them first.
They both look so removed from him in their crowns, sitting on their thrones. But their eyes are so warm as they gaze down on him. Even Yona, in all her grief, has a warm smile for them.
“You’re our most trusted supporter,” Soo Won says, before all the court, acknowledging Hak’s place as the king’s right hand and the queen’s shield.
He wants nothing else from life but this.
The Fire Tribe rebels, and Hak is right by Soo Won’s side as the general of the Wind Tribe. It’s not a role that he has to take up usually, but Yona had insisted that he go and leave her behind. He’s nervous to leave her back in the tent, but he knows that she is well guarded.
“I only trust you to bring my husband back to me,” Yona had said, as she pleaded with him. In the end, Hak had acquiesced under the weight of her faith in him.
And, in truth, there was a part of him that only trusted himself to bring Soo Won back as well.
When Hak rides up to Soo Won, he’s calmly surveying the empty battlefield. As soon as full light hits the battle will start, but for now there’s nothing but heavy dew and eerie pre-battle stillness. Hak had not slept the night before, never has when there’s a battle to be fought, and he’s sure that Soo Won is the same way.
There’s nothing in Soo Won’s face that betrays tiredness or anxiety. He looks as if this is just a pleasant morning ride before breakfast, not like the future of his country is at stake.
Soo Won smiles when Hak stops at his side. “What are your thoughts on the outcome of this battle, General Son Hak?” Soo Won asks, even his voice placid.
Hak turns his attention from Soo Won to the army camped across the fields. They, too, are settled on a hill. This will be a battle fought in the valley, and as such it will be decisive. There will be nowhere to run, either way this battle goes.
They, too, are preparing for the full rise of the sun. Hak sees the characteristic red of the Fire Tribe, but he spies flags the colors of the Kai Empire flying as well. Soo-Jin is a traitor of the highest order, and Hak’s stomach burns with hate. May the gods help that man if Hak meets him on the battlefield. He will be cut down where he stands as soon as Hak reaches him, though he knows that the honor should go to Soo Won himself.
“I think that we will be victorious, and that I will get you back to your wife as I promised her.”
“You promise us so many things,” Soo Won says. “It’s a wonder that you don’t break under the weight of them.” Before Hak could reply, tell Soo Won that Hak’s devotion to him and Yona went far beyond the realm of promises made to a king and queen, Soo Won speaks again. “I’m glad that you are with me. There’s no one else I’d rather have by my side.”
Hak finds that in the hours before battle he has nothing more to say.
Once the battle is finished and the men return to their camp, Yona comes running to him. She is a bright spot in what had otherwise been a bloody and horrible day, heavy with treachery. The men fought the Fire Tribe men just as they would have any other enemy, but these were men that they had served with before, that were citizens of their own country.
“Hak!” she calls across the campgrounds before flying into his arms. When he finally realizes what’s happening he wraps his arms around her and squeezes her, hard. He buries his face into her hair without thinking, and breathes, deep. She smells clean, not at all like the blood and death that had just surrounded him, and he is so grateful for that.
Yona’s shaking, he realizes dimly. She’s shaking and crying, holding onto his robes with a deathlike grip. Eventually she calms and remembers herself, and steps back, knowing that Hak wouldn’t be the first to let go.
“And where is Soo Won?” she asks, taking a shaky breath. She uses her sleeves to wipe her tears away, and there is no trace of them once she is done. Yona has become very good at that.
“He was injured-” Hak begins, deciding that honesty would be the best policy.
“Injured?” Yona asks, glancing up at him sharply. Her eyes search his face.
“It was only a small wound, but the physicians still want to look at it closely. I was not allowed to stay with him, because there isn’t enough room in the medical tents. He should be back shortly.”
Yona’s hands tremble a little, but she clenches her fist. “Good,” she says finally. “I am so glad that you both have come back to me, alive and whole. I was so worried...”
“I know,” Hak says. He doesn’t have any other words for her and it doesn’t matter, because Soo Won then comes walking up the hill towards them, and Hak can feel the relief rushing out of him too. He does not run towards him the way that Yona does, straight into Soo Won’s arms, but he would like to.
Seeing Soo Won bleed had been one of the worst moments of Hak’s life. He knew that he couldn’t be everywhere, that the man had come out of nowhere and had only knicked Soo Won’s side, but that had been enough. Hak had cut him down without a second thought at the site of Soo Won’s blood, and would never feel remorse.
That was probably the heaviest fighting that Soo Won had seen, but there’s a part of Hak that can’t believe that he had allowed that to happen. If he had been more vigilant, Soo Won would have been just fine.
As if Soo Won can hear his thoughts, he reaches out to him. “Come with us,” Soo Won says, offering his hand to Hak. Yona is on his other side, gripping at his arm like she will never let go. Hak understands the sentiment. “We should celebrate the victory together.”
Soo Won makes a speech to the men and then ducks into Yona’s tent, where Hak and Yona are waiting for him. There is food piled upon food and Hak doesn’t hesitate to begin eating once Soo Won has been served.
Soo Won, however, only picks at his plate. Hak knows that this is most likely due to the medicine that the physicians had given him in the medical tent, but he still worries. Yona obviously does too, the way she keeps putting food onto his plate as if to entice him to eat.
He finally eats a sizable amount, but it takes a long time. Afterwards he and Yona continue to sit at the table, just talking about anything that isn’t related to the battle. Kouka will grow again, as it always has--one of Soo-Jin’s sons has replaced him as head of the Fire Tribe, and the tribe will reach the height of its glory again one day--and they are not too concerned. They are happy, as if the battle today would not have possibly dethroned them, and Hak’s heart aches a little.
Hak lingers in the tent, knowing that he should leave now. There’s no more reason for him to stay. But the thought of leaving either of them, even if it’s just to go back to his tent, seems like more than he can bear.
Soo Won and Yona both look at him, both lovely and alive, and Hak’s heart twists in his chest. “Hak,” Yona says finally, after she shares a look with Soo Won. She walks towards him and grabs his empty hand with both of hers. “Stay with us. Please.”
“That’s not an order from the king and queen,” Soo Won says from behind her. “This is a request from your friends. Or more, if you’ll have us.”
They don’t say anything else, but Soo Won’s eyes are pleading and Yona’s hands are warm on his. He can’t deny either of them anything, even if he knows that there are reasons that he shouldn’t. He loves them too much to care.
Hak takes a step forward.
Their child is born in the early spring, at the time when the days are warm but the nights still hold a hint of winter.
Hak and Soo Won wait in Soo Won’s quarters as Yona gives birth, both terrified and unwilling to say it. Between them sits a pitcher of rice wine, which Soo Won will drink, as is the tradition to celebrate when the king has a healthy child.
“Yona is strong,” Soo Won says when Hak begins to pace, unable to sit still. Waiting has never been his forte, and Yona has been in labor for hours now. “She’ll get through this.”
Hak knows this. He knows that Yona has been ready for weeks now, but there is still so much that can go wrong. The baby can be born upside down and suffocate as the midwives try to get them out, or something inside Yona will tear and she will bleed to death. And that is just the beginning.
The room that they are waiting in is silent as a tomb. Neither of them feel up to talking. This is the one thing that Hak cannot protect Yona from, and it kills him.
When a midwife finally comes to Soo Won to announce that Yona has given birth to a healthy son, Soo Won deflates. He pours the pitcher of rice wine out into two cups, and then raises his to Hak.
“To my son, the new prince of Kouka, and my queen who has given him to me,” he says, repeating the words that so many kings before him. He drinks his entire cup in one gulp, before slamming it down. Hak repeats the motion once he is done, the rice wine tasting like relief on his tongue, despite his normal distaste for it. If something had gone wrong they would not be drinking at all.
“When can we see Yona?” Soo Won asks the question that has been plaguing Hak, but one that he is unable to voice. The midwife looks between the two of them slowly, as if she noticed the ‘we’ that Soo Won used, before turning her focus solely on Soo Won.
“Her room should have been cleansed with herbs and incense by now, so Your Majesty should be able to see Her Majesty as quickly as you would like.”
Soo Won stands immediately. He grabs Hak’s hand, just like he did when they were small, and begins to walk to Yona’s rooms.
The room smells like freshly burned herbs and incense, and all the sheets are clean, no blood at all. Yona’s sweat damp hair and the tiny bundle in her arms is the only indication that she had given birth at all.
“Soo Won,” she says, her face lighting up as soon as she sees her husband. “Come look at our boy.” Soo Won sits beside her when she insists, showing her son off in her arms.
She glances up, a tiny frown on her face that clears the moment that she sees Hak. “You too, Hak,” she says, waving him over. When he refuses to sit she tugs on his sleeves with her free hand until he, too, sits down.
Hak is careful not to jostle, but Yona barely seems to notice. She looks exhausted, but her face is still full of joy. “Isn’t he beautiful?” she asks, showing Hak the baby as well.
To be honest, he doesn’t look like much. Just a baby, with dark hair dusted on his head. Hak knows that he can’t say that though. Especially because he looks like a miracle--Hak already loves him as a son just as much as he knows that Soo Won and Yona do now. That is how the three of them are now.
“He’s beautiful,” Hak tells her, and she absolutely lights up, before turning back to her son.
“I’m going to call him Ju-long,” Yona says. “A big name for such a small boy, but I know that he will be able to carry the weight. We will all raise him to.”
Yona gives Soo Won the baby and falls asleep soon after, absolutely exhausted. Ju-long sleeps, his tiny eyelashes fluttering every so often as he dreams. Hak has seen babies before, but never ones this young, and he thinks that this baby is smaller if only because he is Soo Won and Yona’s--and by extension his own.
“Would you like to hold him?” Soo Won asks.
Hak knows that he will be unable to refuse Soo Won’s request so he nods, words failing him. Soo Won hands him the baby as if he was made of glass, and Hak makes sure to be extra careful with his head. In his arms, Ju-long feels as though he weighs absolutely nothing.
“I will protect him too,” Hak tells Soo Won, looking at Ju-long. “I will protect all of you, as I always have.”
“I know you will,” Soo Won says, and when Hak looks up he is smiling. “We always knew that you would.”
Hak looks down at Ju-long again and feels his heart fill with so much happiness that it aches.
Ju-long learns to walk in the castle courtyards, Yona holding onto his hand to make sure that he won’t fall. Hak walks behind them both at a snail’s pace, to make sure that neither of them fall. In his hand he holds a small ball that will more likely than not end up in Ju-long’s mouth, though it is supposed to be to play with. Soo Won has court duties to attend to, but he will join them later. He always makes time to be with his family.
The sky is free from clouds, and Hak thinks that today will be a perfect day.
Yona sits once they get to the grass, and lets Ju-long go. He does not run off too far, his steps still wobbly, but when he falls he laughs instead of crying. Hak and Yona laugh back. Ju-long is a happy child, and brings happiness to everyone around him.
“Hak,” Yona says, when Ju-long as come back to her to get a hug. She holds him tight before he begins to wiggle and starts to walk again, his legs less shaky. “Why have you not married? People have been asking.”
People need to mind their own business, Hak thinks. Court life makes him so weary, sometimes. He has no idea how both Soo Won and Yona deal with even more scrutiny with such grace. He just sighs, already tired. “I am more than happy as I am,” Hak says. “I have no room for a wife--or anyone else--in my life, as long as I have you and the king and Prince Ju-long.”
Yona smiles. “I am glad to hear that,” she says. She opens her mouth to say more, but then Ju-long makes a sound of pure joy and begins to do his estimation of a run. Soo Won is coming, waving as he does so. When Ju-long gets close enough he crouches, and welcomes his son into his arms.
Yona picks up her skirt and runs to him too. She waves Hak over, ball in her hand.
Yes, Hak thinks. He is more than happy.