#extra-drabbles

They had hurt her, they had made her believe in freedom where they had never intended to give her any. So much blood, so many lives, all of it on her hands, in the hollow of her bones. Skeletons upon skeletons in her closet, and everytime she closed her eyes she could see them, he knew.

Nothing would undo what has been done.

But what else can he ask? What else can he say? Who is he, in the face of this vast, raw pain, of the enormity of her guilt? Her heart was like a treasure, her ribcage a dragon protecting it all costs, fire raining down on everyone who wanted to get closed. Donghoon knew, he was far from the hero. He was not the dragonslayer. He was nothing, nothing at all in the grand scale of her destruction.

There are no words for grief, for all memories slipping past your fingers and breaking like broken bottles.

So he said nothing, and crossed the distance between them, holding her close. He remembered, during her Tournament, how the earth had embraced her, created her own sanctuary. He wasn’t anything like that, just a coward trying to be a lionheart, just a white lie.

“I love you,” not still and not despite, but just that, just that, just always that. “I’m glad you’re alive.”

“It doesn’t have to be to matter,” HaHa answers, making the starlight dance to then patterns of her fingers, changing the colors like a rainbow. No. Eunhye says, and maybe that’s why he hopes, he prays every night that those words are true. That the ghost of love is as good as love, that the illusion of him as her noona taking care of her, was good enough.

Around them, the beach stretched on and on, endlessly, the water softly washing ashore and pulling away, never touching them, large palm trees swaying softly in the breeze. Hayi kept her eyes on the starlight dancing, her hair spilling over HaHa’s legs, where she had rested her head earlier, when she had whispered I can’t sleep like a secret, like something to be ashamed of.

“Sometimes I dream about them,” she says, quietly, and HaHa changes the stars to a little butterfly, flapping its wings, stretching on endlessly, and doesn’t ask about whom. He had called her Hayi before, and she had smiled like it hurt and said I’m not Hayi anymore, and now HaHa’s afraid it might be true.

She smiles as the starlight butterfly lands on her nose, swirls in light around her, until it’s a blanket. He wishes, for the first time, his illusions had an effect when people slept. He would stay up all night and show her only soft, golden beaches, only fairytales garden, only floating laterns, red apple trees, he would show her a dream prince and take her dancing, make her laugh, all night long, until her heart could heal.