#emilyamiaoc

Wanted to get some painting practice in with these lovely lovely characters

These characters [Mia and Elias Everstied + Yun Chen] are by emilyamiao on youtube and Instagram, go check her out

(close ups under the read more)

Based off this illustration by Emily Amiao as well as some details from her animatic The Other Side (check it out on her yt emilyamiao)

Summary: The rebels have won. Now all that's left for Yun on his long list of plans is for him and Elias to sign the sacred oath of the cherry orchard and formally end the war. But when mysterious characters cause familiar screams and snow bleeds red under the cherry trees, it's up to Yun to make some difficult decisions

Word Count: 3.3K

The cherry trees had been dusted in the fine sugar snow of late winter, but now they were covered in the sweet red syrup of fresh blood.

Pointing a gun at the head of his father, who in turn was ready to blow the brains out of the last prince of the Everstied royal family, Yun couldn’t figure out where everything had gone wrong. The subterfuge, the turmoil, he had thought it was all over. The crumbling remains of the Anwei Democratic Party and the prevailing rebels had come to the sacred cherry orchard, the place where Anwei was first woven together, in order to make an oath of peace, to stop the bloodshed that had torn the nation at its seams. Yun had known the possibility of treachery, expected it even, but not even his meticulous planning and preparation prepared him for what had occurred.

Elias had always been slightly apprehensive about the oath.

“ You’re certain the orchard is secure?”, he had asked earlier, for what was likely the hundredth time since the ceasefire.

“ For the last time, it is!”, groaned Yun, tossing a hair ribbon to Elias before taking a glance back at his uniformed self in the mirror.

It was indeed, for Yun had thought of absolutely everything: sniper in the peach grove, weapons check at the old Capitol entrance, dubious area patrol dismissed. Yun was an expert in pointing out the fatal chinks in his opponent’s armor, the weak spot that guaranteed victory, and there was nothing of the sort in his own. Or so he had thought.

When they had arrived at the cherry orchard, the diplomats from the ADP weren’t there yet. Elias raised his eyebrows at this, but Yun shrugged it off. Unlike Elias, he wasn’t used to people being at his beck and call; at any rate the delay gave him time to strategize terms for the closing treaty, which traditionally occurred after the ceremonial peace oath. Elias started squinting at the distance, shaking his head slightly to himself, before looking again at absolutely nothing. After about thirty seconds of this, Yun started to get irritated.

“Cool it, Elias. The trains from the old Capitol are practically snails with windows, it's no wonder they’re late.”

“ There they are, coming through the peach grove”, Elias responded, pointing to where Yun could now barely see the shadowy bulks of three figures walking through the garden towards them.

The two of them with thuggish bodyguard builds were lugging the sacred scrolls needed for the oath towards them. The man in the middle was taller, with an imposing stature that clearly defined him as the person who people would bow down to and the person who expected it. Yet, he had a cold crookedness to his features that was strikingly familiar. Elias blinked, rubbing his eyes before voicing what Yun had already figured out.

“ That’s-”

“Yes”

Yun knew that he couldn’t harm him, that the old Capitol had been purged of weapons and that the sniper were waiting at the only other entrance in the garden to institute peace by any means necessary. But even if every rifle in Anwei was at his disposal, he didn’t think he’d ever feel completely safe from him, the man who now faced them, sacred scrolls in hand.

“Son”

“ Father”

Both spat the words with so much venom that a string of obscenities would have been a more welcoming greeting. After a few seconds of tense staring (which took Elias jamming his riding boot into Yun’s shoddy shoe to dispel), his father sighed and looked up at the cherry trees, sweet red drops sprinkled with snow.

“Now that your insurrectionists are done tearing up the country it's about time to institute some peace.”

Yun snorted. Only his father could make the rebel’s historic takeover sound like a victory for the ADP.

“ How was your trip?”, asked Elias, his tone dripping with the polite contempt required by his princely position.

“ Rather taxing, but I’m sure it was necessary”

“I take it you didn’t appreciate the weapon screenings?”

The two guards knit their eyebrows in confusion at this, but Yun’s father took it in stride.

“ Seemed rather out of place for a diplomatic meeting, but then again my son has always liked his smoke and mirrors. Shall we get on to business?” he said.

“Sure.” 

Yun stepped forward, shaking snow off the shoulders of his navy jacket. He extended his frostbitten hand, not trembling a bit in the bitter cold because it was all finally over; his struggles with his father, the arduous battles to take back Anwei, they were all as hollow as cherry trees in the dead of winter. His father’s sneer twisted itself into a satisfied smile as he reached out his hand-

“Yun.”

Yun glanced sideways, but Elias wasn’t there anymore. Instead he was moving closer to the ADP guards, fingers fluttering at the edge of his now empty sword sheath like they always did when he was about to fight.

“Yes?”

Gaze never breaking away from the ADP, Elias continued “ What direction is the old Capitol entrance to the orchard?”

“ East”

“And where did our friends here just enter the orchard from?”

“From the Peach Grove in the -”

Yun stopped short.

“West.”

They had been tricked. No wonder the guards had looked so confused about the screenings, somehow they had bypassed them entirely. But what about the snipers in the Peach Grove and the Pear Garden? Wouldn’t they have sent a message that the ADP was sneaking in another way? Then Yun saw the barely discernible muzzle of a blackmarket gun poking out from between the holy scrolls, and he knew what had happened. For a single moment, nobody spoke, instead flaying each other's eyes, for any remaining sense of humanity, dignity, and civil peace to stop what was inevitable.

The guard on the left reached for the scroll. Whether it was to grab the gun or to pass the oath, Yun would never know, because Elias reached into his elaborate hairdo, whipped out three silver bladed throwing stars, each with the ornate gold accents of the Eversteid crest, and sent the first one ripping straight through the guard’s throat. Any other time Yun would have balked at the failure of his no-weapons plan on two levels, but sudden death appeared to be the ultimate catalyst to snapping out of it.

The resulting scuffle happened so fast that Yun could barely keep track of what he was doing let alone everyone else. The second guard had stooped to the ground in a futile effort to revive his cohort while Yun’s father rushed Elias, who was now swinging five throwing stars at an arm's length. Just when Yun absorbed what had happened, the second guard, thirsty for vengeance of any kind, picked up the gun that had spilled out of the scrolls and aimed it right at him. Yun dove out of the way, just as the first bullet whistled over his head, with a silencer so quiet, he could have missed the sound of gunfire in the falling snow. He scurried over to where a second gun had fallen from the scrolls, feeling it's cold metallic barrel freeze his fingertips, before hastily emerging from the underbrush to confront the second guard.

But the second guard and Yun’s father were several feet away, next to the struggling form of Elias, who the guard had tackled to the ground. His long lavender hair was fanned out behind him, and his treasure trove of throwing stars had been tossed into the snow.

“That one certainly gave us some trouble”, said Yun’s father as he plucked a late cherry off of a tree, the red juice running down his chin as he bit it.

“ That’s for sure. What about the other one?” the second guard replied, binding Elias’s hands with rope, as the latter yelled obscenities muffled by the heel of the guard’s boot.

“My good for nothing son is probably hiding like a coward in one of the other orchards. We’ll find him soon enough”

“Those traitors better pay for what they did to Kierek”, the second guard said, nodding towards the corpse of the first guard, Eversteid throwing star still in his throat.

“ We can take care of this one soon, and my son will be captured and sentenced once we reinstitute order”

“The orders were to kill them bo-”

“I said he will be captured. Do you understand?”

The second guard nodded, noting the violent gleam in his boss’s eyes.

“ But this one has no other use. The royals are too pigheaded to ever give up any information and we don’t have the time for a public execution.” said Yun’s father, spitting out the cherry pit.

“Dispose of him,”

The guard raised the gun to Elias’s head; Yun burst from the bushes and sprinted as fast as he could. He could feel his heartbeat in his ears, his stomach in his chest, he was going so fast that the snow fall had become an endless tunnel of white, with Elias at its center. The guard had no chance. Yun plowed through him like a meteor, driving him straight into the snow bank and knocking the gun out of his hands. Yun turned around to free Elias, but standing in his way was the crooked man who had made his life a series of slanting scowls and stolen smiles.

“Don’t you dare”,

his father snarled, the third gun cocked at his side, and his foot on a gasping Elias, who he had given a brutal kick in the ribs.

“Let him go!”

Yun had meant to sound intimidating but in the icy cold his voice thinned out to little more than a squeak, prompting a smirk from his father.

“Such big talk from a greasy little nobody. Just stand around waving that toy some more and we can wait until Roklin comes out of the snowbank and captures you.“

His father was where Yun got his ability to spot weak spots. And Yun’s father had always known exactly where his son’s were.

“We both know you’re really not going to do anything. Even when you were little you were always loudmouth with no spine, crying for mommy, so why don’t you-”

While Yun’s weak spots may have been the same as when he was younger, his temper was twice as short. He rushed his father, blood pounding in his ears, but stumbled on a stray root before faceplanting right back onto the snowy ground. He heard the crack before he felt the pain pumping through his broken nose. The brackish tears came instantly as did his father’s wolfish laughter, hoarsely echoing dead wood.

Amidst the relentless pounding in his head and nose, Yun’s foot kicked aside the stray root that had caused his bloody humiliation. A rather metallic stray root. Yun jolted up, reeling as he snatched Roklin’s half buried pistol from the snow and pointed it straight at his father.

“You wouldn’t have the guts,” scoffed his father, aiming his own firearm at the temple of a wheezing Elias.

Click. Yun cocked the gun.

A moment of silence. The cold wind whipped Yun’s bloody, tearstained face; snowflakes melted in his loose, dark hair; his earring, a miniature rebel flag, waved back and forth in the bitter breeze. He couldn’t be that boy, could he? The one holding a gun to his father? The one who had to make a shot that would haunt him for the rest of his days? No. In that moment Yun was nothing but a cherry tree: frosted with snow, watered with blood, and staunchly rooted in a history that would never be chopped down.

“I wish I didn’t have to do this”

Right as he pulled the trigger, a steel wall slammed into him. Smothered under the heavy armor of the second guard, who had managed to pull himself up from the snowbank, Yun extricated himself just in time to hear the dull thud of a bullet meeting flesh. But the low canine howl that Yun had steeled himself for never came. Instead, a sharp, shocked cry, that could only come from one person.

When he was five, Yun and his friends were running around in the grass, when one of them fell and cut their knee on a jagged rock. The world seemed to separate into colors at that moment : the treacherous gray of the rock, an eggshell pale face of shock, and of course, the crimson that had stained the grass below their feet. The injured child was quickly escorted back home by their guardian, where their sobs were staunched with a piece of candy. But Yun couldn’t stop crying. He had felt no physical pain, his skin was intact, his blood was unspilt, but he had seen all of that and more in his friend’s eyes, the fire, the horror, of being at one moment whole and the next moment not, that Yun had felt it more acutely then if the wound were his own. If that was bad, then seeing Elias, prostrate on the snowy ground of the cherry orchard, a red sea flowing out of the gorey hole in his shin, was a thousand times worse.

Spooked, his father lunged aside, just in time to collide with the second guard, who charged past him through the orchard with seemingly endless adrenaline, his icy obligation to his commander melting away to wet fear.

“ Elias!” screamed Yun, running over to him, ripping off his own uniform jacket and wrapping it around Elias’s leg in a desperate attempt to staunch the gushing blood that poured forth like the pulsing rivers of Anwei. Elias’s face had the same shock as the boy from Yun’s childhood, but so much paler, and with every second he resembled more and more a sculpture made from the snow he was dying on. “Hold on hold on hold on” Yun hiccuped, tying the makeshift tourniquet as tight as he could. Tears blurred his vision, but in the periphery he saw a crooked man gathering the torn scrolls of peace from the ground.

The sight made Yun forget all about Elias and he dropped the tourniquet, concentrating all of his drained energy into raising his blood splattered pistol at the back of his fleeing father. Before he could pull the trigger, his target turned around, but instead of booking it out of the orchard, raised his arms in a scorching surrender.

C’mon just do it, just do it, just do it, Yun thought, Prove him wrong just this once. But his steely self commands froze at his finger, which remained entrenched at the top of the trigger, refusing to push down. Amidst his rancid rage, exhausted adrenaline, and salty tears, he knew one glimmering truth. If Yun pulled that trigger, the last remains of his energy would be spent, and he would collapse into the snow next to a wounded Elias. They would die, they would disappear under the earth, and they would be cherry trees half dead in winter, embracing branches, bleeding fruit, screaming snow.

But Yun always had a plan, and even when he didn’t, the end goal was always the same.

Elias.

Yun would never give him up, even as acid burned through his veins when he pried his frostbitten fingers from the bloody pistol and dropped it into the snowbank, even when his father slinked off through the peach garden with an unreadable expression on his crooked, familiar face, even when he realized how far away the orchard gates were and how he had ordered the night patrol to stay away for his goddamn security measures; no matter how beautiful it was, the cherry orchard would never take Elias as long as Yun could still trick his paper form into the softest pulse of life.

Slippery warm blood, bone breaking cold, rotten raw heart; that was all he could remember for weeks afterward. Mia, Elias’s little sister, and her girlfriend Celine visited him at the hospital everyday, trying to coax him into revealing how a simple peace oath led to all of this. They told him that he was a hero, that he had half-carried, half-dragged Elias past the orchard gates, that a little girl had found them collapsed near her swing set, more dead than alive. But the only question he ever wanted an answer to was always met with avoided glances, shaking heads, and uncertain words. Lost a lot of blood, infected wound, critical condition.

But after a lot of begging, bribing, and borderline blackmailing, Yun was finally allowed a brief visit. The doctor took him down an endless fluorescent corridor, stopping in front of a room with a rusty sign reading Post Operation.

“Only ten minutes!” chirped the nurse as she opened the creaking door, and bolted away, green tea pipe in hand for a smoke break.

Yun crashed into the room, but stopped short when he saw Elias, wrapped in a thin blanket on a too small cot, where he could see a single sock-covered foot hanging off the end. The patient, on seeing him, gave a slight smile, and tried to raise himself up to sitting position.

“Let me” said Yun, walking over to the bed, fluffing and stacking the pillows for a head rest as he observed the tinctures and bandages littering the dinky nightstand.

Among them was a pamphlet emblazoned in cheerful yellow with: Adjusting to Your Amputation. Yun snapped his head back towards Elias, who averted his gaze towards the end of the bed. Without asking for permission, Yun yanked the blanket off the cot, exposing next to a bandaged and blistered leg, a stitched up stump connected to a polished wooden crutch.

“ They’re putting a more refined one in next week. I’ll need to use a wheelchair at first, but after some time I can adjust to a cane.”

The guilt took a second to set in, but when it did, Yun wanted to submerge himself in the oiliest, blackest sea and never come out.

“Oh my god, oh my god, oh my god,”

“Why are you crying? I’m the one with the botched leg,” said Elias, the amused tilt to his statement falling flat when he saw Yun’s crushed expression.

“Oh my god, this is my fault, I can’t believe I shot you, I should have aimed better, I should have shot him faster, oh my god, oh my-”

“Hey, HEY!”, said Elias, grabbing Yun’s flailing hands with the reflexes of an ace swordsman.

“Look at me. Look at me. You got me out of there. It’s like I used to tell my sister whenever she messed up at something: whatever mistakes made back there are dead, but you aren’t. It's going to be an uphill battle from here and I need you supporting me, not blaming yourself.”

Yun nodded.

“Okay?”

“Okay”

“Now come over here and tell me about the new siege on the Old Capitol. But first close the door. If that horrid nurse comes back here stinking of burnt tea again, I’m breaking out my sword, prosthetic or not.”

Fanart for my fic I Know You See It (We Both Do) by @havenaxu!

Explanations below :)