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lord won yongha

❛ 𝗬𝗢𝗡𝗚𝗛𝗔 𝗔𝗡𝗗 𝗖𝗛𝗔𝗘𝗬𝗘𝗢𝗡 ❜

i beg you, eat me up. want me down to the marrow. and yet manage it so as to keep me alive. [...] i urge you: bite me. sign my death with your teeth. [...] that’s what love is: falling into the jaws of fire. — héléne cixous, from ‘love of the wolf’ (tr. keith cohen)

his heart is between her talons, piercing at will, and he answers with the same fervor, mouth always poised over her throat, ready to bite. no other way to touch or feel. everything hinges on the ferocity of their interactions. their violent desires, intimacy spoiled by their scorching want, like reaching out and setting each other aflame — all of it thrashes against his rib cage. love. permanence. hunger. her heart as the most delectable item of all, the object of his devouring, the end to his ache. nothing else needed to be satiated than to be by her. 

“forgive me.” “i can’t...” he pinches her chin between thumb and finger and raises her face to his, giving her nothing else but this to anchor her love to. yongha’s other hand curves around his back and he looks at her like he's inspecting something. his mouth hovers before hers, then twists into a snarl, an inability folding into a promise with one changed word, “i won’t.”

he sees tenderness like the exposed belly of a deer and he feels the need to gut it. this is not a lukewarm, timid love. i am not an elixir you drink. the hand that would reach out to her has been cut, and in its place he grew claws. those eyes that craved to see her, trailing after her every gesture, memorizing her against the glow of the moon, the stark orange of the setting sky, are blinded by ambition and annihilation. in his spare time, yongha sought glory to feed the maw in his gut that hungers for her. his hurt leaving all hopes singed. i am the poison you choke on.

In the dimness shine the only familiar face that sees his chest bloom with relief, if he is still capable of such a thing. Her appearance is a far cry from their last meeting. Her gaze has hardened and brings with her a maelstrom. A move to attack him is not an action he would ascribe to her; a woman he thought too dignified for such a thing.

"Chaesol?" Air catches in his throat. Dry, turning the inside into sandpaper. "I'm not here to do you any harm so put down your weapon." His remains, though pointed toward the ground.

"I..." Am glad to see you? Relieved to see you still live? Missed— His lips dry, too. "You are alive, as I thought."

her eyes latch onto the smoke wreathing gray against the black sky like a ghost, a haunting invading the house she’d turned into a harbor. her attention fastens there first as she slows to a stop on the back of her horse, hushing the animal on their approach near the back.

in these parts, in this war, there is neither a haven nor a home. there is only a base, a camp, places to strategize and prepare, but none for a breath of reprieve. still, she had so foolishly hoped she could find it, escaping to abandoned houses and restoring the discarded memories as her own. she looked into their past and pulled them forward, resurrecting the semblance of security that had once lived there as hers.

as if she could pretend her title didn’t command a responsibility beyond this.

the stone is cold under her touch as she creeps around the building, one hand reaching across her hip to unsheathe her sword. chaesol has seen her reflection in it many times now. her, a part of this war, cutting into flesh and drawing blood, every mark now lethal and unforgiving, and every kill another offense against her soul. she tries not to see it, but it bares before her in every death orchestrated by her hand, fighting to be seen and felt and never forgotten. 

she’s only halfway completed her turn when she hears a set of footsteps approach the corner. chaesol’s arm swings out, instinct meeting instinct.  

the metallic ring of her sword to his reminds her of lightning; a whistle tone of the wind, a feeling that arrives like it’s been pulled through her. 

it’s palpable. sense it, feel it, see me. before you stands a devout.

her eyes take to the sky like twin eagles circling between the clouds, wings thrashing and unveiling the eyes of her god so he may peer in. look at me, r’hllor. give me a sign. tell me i must do this, and i will. she stands with her army at the summit, their swords sheathed yet pointing below to the village and soldiers awaiting their call to arms — their call to destiny in blood. she stands there at the charge, armor weighing down to her bones until it feels her skeleton is as malformed as her soul. she leans her head back, face to the clouds and stares at the back of her eyelids, darkness and patience, a last chance at the mercy of this moment. chaesol opens her eyes and sees a flash of light slice through the sky like an arrow.  she nods, her commander announces the order, and men and woman ignite their swords in flames, riding their horses in righteous fury into the arms of bloodshed. this is not a battle. this is a pilgrimage. 

her steps falter with his voice, the whiteness of her knuckles settling for a split-second as the moon chases away the shadows and reveals his face. everything caves in all at once. gi. a man and a mystery she had gotten her hands tangled in. a veiled and malevolent hope she clutched onto with her nails, breaking through skin, several parts of her desperate.

“it cannot be...”

she has survived on half a breath for so long that meeting gi, now, like this, robs her of the last of her air entirely. she meets him as fragments of a woman he had dared to know with a grace that’s been sharpened, made killer, touch that has gone from probing to tearing, and trust that has dissolved almost entirely into fear and paranoia. do you see it? i am scared and furious at this fear. she is the chaesol he knows, and yet, an entirely different entity. a woman made warrior. a woman made weak by blood and cries, and as she takes shape under his gaze, her sword meeting his in a fated display, something in her wretches, crying to be let loose. to let him see and to be wanted as more than she can be. look at me, do you see me? 

this is a pilgrimage, and here she feels like she’s made it to an impasse.

here’s what it’s like to exist in his presence: a splintering. chaesol breaks apart. her mouth parts like the sky, clearing away for the sun, her words so achingly warm and quiet, a hope shining a clear path of relief, “you are actually here.” 

the moon peers over the hill as an untouchable pearl, colored in an angry yellow-orange hue with ravages of the day prior shrouding it in smoke and fog. nature struggles with the heinous deeds, the warfare and bloodshed, fire and fumes. she smells it in the air as she inhales, patient breaths burning down her lungs like a hand reaching in, as if prying at the broken pieces of a girl in her. all of this is a failed distraction. the truth is something she cannot hide or drown. her beating heart is a cacophony of anguish that pulses angrily against her lungs and floods all sound. it’s a sensation that overcomes the entirety of her until she is set ablaze, standing amongst the grass like a quivering flame, throbbing with a forceful need.

“your highness,” half greeting, half growl. he knows of her treachery, but is still unable to forgo formality. familiarity. anger brews in his chest and spreads like wildfire all over. months of radio silence and choking worry, terrified of her disappearance morphing into news of her death culminates in a quiet, rage-induced implosion. with her, he is always cursed with a gnawing violence and twisted vulnerability. his relief disguised as bared canines and a rapacious appetite. he thinks to roar but instead he yanks his restraint back on a leash made of false bravado. when he speaks, his mouth is both sword and shield: “you do not belong here.”

they say the spirits watch everything and take it back to the gods. they peer in through the woods, replicate their visions in fire, and thread strings of fate, destiny bound in each human breath. they whisper, the unconscious voice echoing in one’s mind, and they judge; a millennia worth of wisdom discerning every mistake before it happens, scaling the weight of each transgression before its committed and outlining a sentence before a steps been taken.

she wonders if the spirits can see her now as she peers into his bedroom knowing she cannot resist what’s next. she crosses the threshold, the last vestige of sense parting from her as her fingers skim the familiar belongings on the shelves. do they see her defiance as she steps before this man again? see her recklessness, the cruel nature of need driving every decision, conscious or otherwise? it forces her hand. destiny must understand, she is a slave to this. as life and soul follow a circadian routine, she counts the beats of time to his breaths, his touches, and the seasons of his existence; each shifting variation, from sweet to bristling, gentle to mean.

chaesol hears the weight of his footsteps first. feels the echo of unsaid words in his deep exhale, pulsing with her heart. the moments leading into it are a rehearsal. she skims his clothes on the bed, fingertips inching across the linen, her eyes memorizing ever corner and detail of his temporary quarters, the salve by his bedside, the candles lit aflame in preparation for nightfall, the stone and oak rustic blend of his furnishings. she feels him everywhere before he ever steps near.

she has known hangyul in a thousand different ways, through a thousand different iterations, and each one, regardless of its jarring course, still ceases her breaths; nothing left of her calculative demeanor or the careful way she punctuates silence with her words. she is always left grasping at threads, parsing thoughts for those that may lack even the slightest tinge of emotion, that may not bare her so nakedly before his gaze which always sees through. 

he arrests her with an unfair ease, years of familiarity giving him an edge she wishes she could evade. it’s not fair. his gaze: the way it cuts into her, parting skin and muscle and desire to rest on the rebellious beating of her heart. his mouth: curving with half truths and lies, a deterrence, a necessary and obvious one considering their circumstances and how out of reach they both are. his touch: an answer even in oblivion, scorching whether he skims her skin or grabs her hard enough to bruise, dangerous passions highlighted in the alabaster stretch of his knuckles as they latch around her hips.

it’s not fair.

her eyes fasten on his in the mirror by the corner and she sighs a breath through her lips. it feels as if her ribs are always bruised by a heart that refuses to settle, and as she breathes, she hurts. “what would you know of where i do and do not belong?” it’s a callous question. he knows everything of where she belongs, and she has always belonged with him. her running through the gardens years ago, him on her heels, arms that would secure around her and hold her there surrounded by green. she’d rest there like a wilting nightshade, and he’d make a garden out of her skin, different shades coloring her flesh like blooming flowers. her, painted anew.

everything holds still until she breaks away to face him. the countdown begins. his hair is dripping wet and his shirt clings to skin. desire strikes her first and then everything else follows. she has felt his hair in her hands before, has touched and soothed him with the press of her fingers to his scalp. the careful way she’d untangle his hair, aware of where his headaches are most prominent and what parts of him are tender. everything in her is desperate to reach out, aware of where to touch and how to feel. months of being apart burrow resentment and want in them. she keeps her need leashed, but feels the restraints inevitably loosen in his presence.

chaesol looks between his eyes, blinking as if catching all she was exposing in the flicker of her gaze. a pause, a brief moment of reprieve, and she crosses the last line, a hand hesitating then settling on his chest. bold, daring, disguising, “we have unfinished business.”

72 BG / year 228 in the era of Kyoshi

heartbeat. that’s the sound that consoles him night in and night out.

“wait right here, yongha.”

when the world is still and ominous, and the earth flexes under his fingers with critters and dirt. his heartbeat is a beacon that echoes to him, painfully and horribly that he is still alive.

“where are you going?”

when darkness swallows him, and he rests, anxiously, in the jaws of a beast, whispers from the unbalanced spirit resonating all around, its mouth splitting open in delight. i will love you in ways they wont. his ribs ache reminding him of what still thrashes in his chest. this is not a dream. you live and you suffer.

love has made you weak.

that is what she had told chaeyeon years ago as she laid in her bed, recovering, crying out to return to something, someone. that is what she had uttered in disgust, as if she could not understand it, as if she had not beared it before.

love conquered everything selfishly and recklessly. it laid over every unsaid thought, in between the hesitation of someone’s touch or the stuttered exhales from a mouth. love blanketed it all, an embrace and suffocation in one; a weapon concealed as tribute.

“love is more powerful than hate,” her gaze evens, voice shadowing familiarity and driven from somewhere deep in her chest, “whether it makes us or destroys us, the basis of many things comes down to loving, or losing.”

love as religion: faith in the shape of a man. love as loss: a mother’s weary form and cold hands. touch that is never felt. love as war: what i would do for you. would do to you.

“ it has been too long of a while indeed. ” she whispered as she finally pulled back. “ what you missed? ” her laugh echoed off the walls. “ quite a bit, i would assume. how come you haven’t congratulated me on my engagement yet? ” akane wanted her voice to sound playful, but there was no way she would ever be able to make jokes about the position she was in and actually mean them. then, her features softened. “ i am so glad you came here to see me. ”

the hall arches around their embrace, the walls a sole witness to the exchange and the expression that warms the harsh contours of yongha’s face; how his cold eyes thaw under her touch, an arm comforting around her waist, lips upturned in a rare sentiment, unbefitting to his stature. there in the open space, their actions are more private than the words that echo between the columns and empty air. 

“i thought you would be tired of hearing so many congratulations,” the deeper meaning persists. i would not congratulate you on something i know you’re unhappy about, but he pairs the regard with it nicely, accessorizes a seemingly innocent statement with the slight curve of his mouth. akane can read between the lines. a woman of such confident independence would hate nothing more than to be shackled to an arrangement in which she has no say. yongha, having been imprisoned the same behind enemy lines understands the festering emotions she colors over with a laugh.

a pause follows as she pulls from him. he feels the grief everywhere. the sky. the grass. the mourning silence of the city. strife dilutes all sense of peace and mars each joy. every silence feels like a threat than relief, and every turn of a smile or lilt of laughter is cautioned and hushed. 

“i am only apologetic i could not visit sooner.” two years. he was never meant to return from the war, and yet, here he is, delayed, but here.

his arms pull away from where they fasten behind his back, and he reveals what he’s brought her on his palms, raising it up for her to see. there, rests a sheathed blade, gold tracings lavishing over the inky, metal work that holds a dagger made of the finest steel. he’d held onto it for so long that it felt like surrendering a part of him, something that had seen and been an audience to the horrors and brutality he had observed and performed. bringing it before her ebony stare felt like conducting something treacherous, the darkness of her eyes matching the darkness of the metal, yet he did it boldly.

tw: blood, gore, death.

his worst memory.

a shadow takes shape in the blackness of his mind. a phantom designed of a dark, smoky hue. the woods fill in next; a dense and dark forest his spirit moves amongst, safe in its domain. the ghastly form ducks around trees and its several eyes latch onto yongha between the branches and shrubbery.

his worst memory.

the breath of air in his lungs arrests itself like a viper coiling around its prey. his chest tightens to an impossible degree and he clenches his jaw, trying to keep all the emotions at bay as they burn, furiously, under the pallor of his skin. this is a feeling he's never felt anywhere else but there, but then: an unease festering so deep it carves a void in the cavity between his ribs where he loses himself, stuck in a labyrinth of stress and ache and fear. constantly, fear.

"my worst memory is of my encounter with the dark spirit.” the trembling hands of his youth. the whiteness of his knuckles, skin taut against the grooves of bone. him, remade in horror. his genesis in the embrace of darkness. “the second time,” he specifies.

yongha’s gaze dances around his surroundings, but he cannot avoid how that moment starts over behind his eyes. “i lost everyone, everything to it.” the bloodshed and the grotesque killings. who knew you could be drenched in so much blood? red soaking his clothes to the point they were dripping, red coloring his skin and weighing his hair. that same shade, everywhere, painting over the grass and dirt.

it didn’t look like a forest anymore.

he rolls his shoulders in unease, but he can’t stop it, the memory continues to his battalion resting in pieces and his superior strung up on the bough of an oak. he told them not to go in. he told them they should go around. this place isn’t safe.

they ignored him, of course, and they paid the price.

the spirit curls around him with awful familiarity, its grating breath — if it could be called that — like ice against his neck. he looks at the clearing ahead that’s so close, sees the fringe of the forest like he’d seen it so many years ago, and surrenders. he won’t make it. his eyes shut. it’s already too late.

yongha paid the price.

the next questions are posed and his attention returns.

“accept my fate...” he huffs a breath through his nose, tongue running across the back of his teeth and his lips parting in a hint of cruel intrigue. he has always accepted his marred fate, has always turned himself over to it, “i would,” i have.

His long legs slow in their usual pace. There is no crowd to weave through, no crunching of the dirt roads, no smarmy pickpockets to avoid. How dull and preposterous, he thinks, to live in such pristine security. Only when he arrives at the promenade does he glance back, searching for her reflection in the harbor.

her memory of gi starts with a sound. 

the clash of steel to steel, a metallic echo piercing between her ears and chasing down her spine. a sword parallels her eyes when she turns her neck, close enough for her to discern thin scratches abrading the silver surface, for it to feel like her lashes could touch it should she cower her gaze. she doesn’t. her eyes only dance along the surface, that stern gaze snaking up to where her masked savior meets her assailant. 

a breath lodges itself in her throat, then. if chaesol was an ocean, this sound brought every wave and turmoil to a halt. everything silenced and steadied for half a second as she’s plunged underwater, senses blurred and attuned to just the pulse that hammers against her ribs; a rebellion against the confines of her chest and the steeled resolve she spurns to surrender, even in this moment.

is this what it means to discover yourself? a little death?

this is how she recalls gi. the fractured glory running a broken seam along the turn of his blade. the thunderous confession as he is pulled away, his baritone burying deep into her chest like he’d struck her there. unhand me, i was only trying to save her. the stretch of silence that followed after chaos, a shuffle of feet, a shout with some commands, a moment of reprieve before she answered to the threat that had been posed under the line of her stare. 

that was just the beginning, and seeing him now, she realizes none of it ended. 

the tremor of his voice uproots her. earth fissures under her and she replicates it, let’s the setting sun split through her for him to see. honest parts, unpolished and impure, but still beautiful. chaesol beams, the upwards bow of a smile pulling with glee and relief. a look she knows he can feel down his backbone, feather light and tantalizing.

“a lucky coincidence,” she echos, joining him at his heels when he glances back. “though, it is not quite safe for you here.” her gaze parts from his to skim the throng of bodies, expecting, always, for mayhem to part from the crowd and race towards her, or him, sharp end poised for the jugular.

“reporting to serve the honourable princess chaesol.” the voice that escapes her croaks unexpectedly and she coughs to cover it up, as composed as one can be in this situation. “it’s, im saebyeok. chaeson’s… of the royal guard.”

the flames grow, the crowd ignites in a proud pandemonium and a body falls to the ground, the price for glory paid in blood. chaesol’s eyes are conveniently downturned for the death, hearing it but refusing to lift her gaze to witness it. that is not something she needs burned to the back of her mind. a branding of murder and victory, and an upheaval in the line of succession — that is not something she needs to see. 

the minutes after are full of urgency. ache coils around her lungs as she weaves through the crowd. the walls close in and she bursts into her room with a hand over her chest, left with just herself, silence, and hours of contemplation that do little to ease her.

an atrocity. one she couldn’t quite believe had occurred. though, at least she was not the one holding the ending sword, severing life and soul from chaeson’s corpse. at least, she was not the one with blood on her hands. (still, she trembled. it didn’t matter who killed him or how he died, they were all guilty of his loss.)

“you were never a monster like this. has our little brother poisoned your mind with his madness?” chaeyul’s voice echoes off the stone walls like a thousand accusations tearing into her, and he inhales sharply, the breath caught in his throat. there’s a brief pause. when he speaks again, his voice is laced with desperation, anger spilling out through the cracks. “speak, chaesol! is he threatening you? how will you explain the bloodshed to me? explain it!”

everything around her is dark and hollow and chaesol hears the echo of her thoughts bouncing off the cell walls. shadows toy with her rumination, passing her remorse and regret around in a ritualistic circle. she knows what this is. a failed repentance. a constant reflection of all that’s ruptured in her and turned to rot. like her eyes, dimmed and cutting; where once they were gentle, she now bares a gaze curved with calculation, always measuring and adjusting. or her hands, dirtied and sullied; where once she held purity, she now wears blood as a permanent stain, spoiling flesh and soul.

disappointment curls and turns itself inside out until it’s revealed as sorrow. yet she refuses to part from her designation, an iron will as strong as the iron bars that contain her. guards come and go, ghosts of her past taunt and lord their victory in having her caged, but her resolve holds steady and her countenance, as always, reveals nothing.

until him. until chaeyul.

in everything she had done, she had not accounted for him. more specifically, her love for him. memories pull and thrash in her mind as he approaches; of soft words, a careful comfort, a home forged between two unlikely siblings.

chaesol visibly shifts, her hands tightening around her knees as they rest against her chest. she keeps her stare trained on the wall opposing her despite every wish to glance upon the brother she hadn’t seen in months, and she forces herself to listen, to soak in every painful word and bear it as it cuts into her.

she turns over his bitter words like a talisman between her fingers, feeling the grooves, the dips and curves, and all the nuances. the way the wicked inflections of his voice deceive him as calm, his next inhalation shuddering as if being pulled in through a narrow confine. he restricts all he doesn’t say in his throat, she can feel it, and as soon as she puts her finger on it, chaeyul crumbles. questions and demands uttered fervently, felt entirely in their painful depth.

explain it!

“i can’t.” her head bows and she blows an unsteady breath silently to herself. in this moment, she feels closer to death than she’s ever felt before, weak and withering with all her suffocating feelings, all her care, knotting itself in her throat and burning against her shut eyes.