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Hak falls in love with the princess's courage long before they begin to gather the dragons. He falls in love before she takes up a bow, before she impresses a pirate captain by scaling a cliff for a medicinal herb, before she faces down a corrupt lord. He falls in love even before Yona manages to win over a nobility-averse genius. He falls in love with her at each of those moments, as well, but they are not the beginning.
It happens in flashes, each moment eroding his sense like waves eating away a cliff-face. Only in his case, Hak thinks, Yona is a typhoon, a tsunami, and he is a sandbar, helpless in the face of her strength.
Sometimes, keeping watch at night, Hak wonders where the beginning was, going back and back in his mind, but he has known Yona since childhood, and there are so many moments. One night, watching Jae-ha pace in the firelight, visibly agitated at the idea of Yona calling the dragons, at its consequences, Hak thinks he’s gotten it, turning bits of the past over in his mind like flies in amber.
It happened like this.
Hak has brought Yona to the only place she will be safe, has prevented the hotheaded younger members of the Wind Tribe from going to fight the Fire Tribe for blocking their water, and has made arrangements for Yona to live in peace and obscurity for the rest of her hopefully very long life. He doesn’t expect to live long as Kouka Kingdom’s most notorious villain, but that isn’t part of the equation.
He doesn’t expect Yona to stop him. He doesn’t expect her to have the determination to face his denials and jokes and to demand – flat-out demand, fire in her eyes – that he give himself to her.
He doesn’t expect himself to say yes.
Jae-ha jumps up into the crown of a tree and curses as a thin branch breaks under his weight. He catches himself, jumps as only the Green Dragon can, and is aloft and nearly flying in the blink of an eye. Hak wishes him luck: himself, he has never been able to outrun even Yona herself, much less his worries about her.
Hak stares into the fire, not seeing his companions sleeping around it. In his mind’s eye, he sees only Yona’s hair fanning out long and flame-red in the breeze outside Fuuga Village’s gate as she demands his protection, his company. Ultimately, he has learned, she was demanding his assistance in keeping his family safe from her.
No, Hak thinks. It was before that.
Yona is twelve, the king's only heir, and Kan Tae-Jun is wooing her, eyes set on the throne. Hak knows better than to get involved - he does. If he becomes Yona's bodyguard, he will be bound to the castle and the king's will. More importantly, he will be bound to Yona, whose mere presence does terrible things to his peace of mind. Hak is fond of his naps, his relaxation, his peace of mind. He knows better than to piss off the second son of the Fire General.
He should know better.
It appears, Hak thinks, that he really does not know better after all.
All Yona has to do is squeak in pain, and she is behind him, his body between hers and Tae-Jun's. The princess may be strong-willed, Hak knows – and oh, does Hak know she is strong-willed – but she hasn't even the strength of a kitten. Facing down the second son of the Fire General, Hak sets his foot on the path to being her bodyguard, all unaware of where it will lead him.
It’s a bribe, Yona says of a pile of fruit, her voice clear in Hak’s memory even as he stares down an entitled young lord with more status than sense, to reconcile with me.
“I love him,” Yona says, and Hak feels his stomach flip even as he hears the lie in her voice. “I really love him.”
Yona loves Soo-Won: she always has.
Hak shakes his head, clearing Soo-Won’s face from his mind. Even now, after all this time, the mere thought of their childhood friend still hurts. Soo-Won, his former brother in arms, the King of Kouka Kingdom, the assassin of Kouka Kingdom: the man wears too many faces, and Hak will never know which were the masks.
Hak hears the trees rustle and looks back up. Jae-ha has returned from his jaunt, and stalks toward Hak, having clearly made up his mind about something. Hak slouches a little bit, giving off as much of an attitude of “I don’t care” as he can without actively flipping Jae-ha off.
“She almost died,” Jae-ha hisses. “You let her go into battle with a sword and she almost died.”
“I didn’t let her do anything,” Hak says, though he knows this is exactly what he has been distracting himself from. “Zeno was there.”
They’d been damn lucky Zeno was there, and that Shin-Ah noticed right away. Hak has imagined his life without Yona before: he never wants to have to imagine it again.
“It won’t happen again,” Hak says, and they lock eyes.
“It won’t,” Jae-ha agrees. It’s as much a threat in his voice as it is a promise. Uncharacteristically, Hak allows himself to look away first. Jae-ha snorts and stalks over to the far side of the firepit to throw himself against a tree and pretend to sulk.
Hak goes back to his distraction. It wasn’t when he protected Yona from Kan Tae-Jun, Hak thinks, that can’t be it. He’d never have done that if there hadn’t been an earlier cause. Ah, he realizes, that’s right. It happens like this, instead:
Yona’s mother has just died. Hak doesn’t remember his mother, but he remember’s Yona’s, and she was kind and sweet, and killed by an assassin who targeted the royal family. In later years, the knowledge that Yona, too, could have been killed, will sit in Hak’s stomach like a stone, but for now, he is a child, and knows only that Yona’s smiles are false and strange.
The castle is even more confining than usual, but Grandpa insists on Hak being here and even coming to some boring meetings. He insists with that stern look in his eyes, and Hak doesn’t say no. Soo-Won is here too, which gives Hak the same sick-happy-sick feeling it has for longer than he can remember. When the meeting ends, Hak goes out into the courtyard and lies down in the snow. He almost gets up when he hears Soo-Won and Yona come into the courtyard, but he’s nicely covered in a blanket of snowflakes, and finally not too hot. And besides, he tells himself, moving would just be so much trouble.
“I have to keep my spirits up,” Yona says, “so father won’t cry,” and Hak feels something clench in his chest.
Oh. Wait, he thinks, no. That’s Yona, stepping on his chest. He doesn’t know how to tell her it will be all right, that he lost his mother – and his father – and he’s still here, that she still has King Il, that she still has him.
“You’re heavy,” he says, instead.
In the ensuing mock fight, Hak sees Yona smile through a flurry of snowballs. It looks nothing like the smiles she has been forcing, but real and mischievous again, like the real Yona Hak has come to lo – to not dislike. Hak is a grown boy, by now. He knows about these things.
When Mundok storms in to whip him, Hak feels the familiar wash of exasperation the he associates with the old man. When General Yu-Hon visits Soo-Won, Hak gazes in admiration: someday, he thinks, he will be that strong, that fierce. King Il does not appear for what feels like forever.
Yes, Hak thinks. Perhaps this is the moment he was looking for. Yona smiles for her father and eats his terrible chicken porridge.
“What?” Jae-ha says. Hak has caught his eye in the flickering light.
Hak shakes his head.
“We can’t protect her from herself,” Hak says. “We can only protect her from everyone else by staying at her side.”