#yonaxsoowon

Hello, dear! Very sorry it took a while to get this request to you; I’ve had a lot going on with the semester and my 200-follower event and such. However, at long last, here it is! ^.^ Enjoy!

Mad World

The wooden floor of her palace room groaned and moaned with her feverish footfalls as Yona paced back and forth, back and forth, back and back and forth and forth and back again. That was all Yona could do, was pace and think and think while pacing and pace while thinking. Back and forth, think think think, riddle on what the hell she was supposed to do basically imprisoned in her bedroom like this. No dragons, no Yoon, no Hak, just Yona. Yona, alone and pacing and thinking.

It was maddening.

With a sudden, deranged screech of lunacy, she whirled on her heel to tear into the curtains framing the large window overlooking the palace courtyard. Her fingernails ripped into the silken fabric, reaming into the threads and pulling them asunder as she yanked on the curtain with all her might. Little, angry screeches spilled from her mouth while she tugged and tugged, rattling the curtain rod mounted into the stone wall. The linear metal piece desperately tried to cling to the rough surface, but with Yona’s continuous and manic assault, dust began to rain down as the brackets began to wrench loose. Yona wasn’t sure why the poor curtain was the object of her ire, but nevertheless she tore into it like a mangy feral cat, dropping shreds of torn fabric around her slippered feet. Very soon the screws could bear no more and jumped from the wall; the heavy, decorative metal ball welded to the main body made the rod’s plummet all the hastier. Yona jumped violently as it collided into the wooden floor with a massive thunk! and the curtain slipped from her hands to puddle like white milk at her feet. She stared dully at the half-destroyed, dismounted curtains with burning red eyes. It was not satisfying at all; her fingers still itched to maim, to tear into everything in this room and leave it a maelstrom of silk and cotton and splinters.

“Princess! Are you all right?” Of course the noise would attract whoever happened to be nearby. Yona hadn’t much cared of the consequences of her actions at the moment; she was boiling with boredom and anxiety and frustration, and desperately needed an outlet. Normal people might cry, but Yona had elected that tears wouldn’t do. She was beyond tears now, or so she told herself. But…

Why did it have to be Soo-Won?

The young king stared with wide eyes at the curtain rod hanging at a diagonal angle from the wall, the one set of brackets struggling to support its weight, and the tatters of silk curtain surrounding the hem of Yona’s pink kimono. Her eyes were lidded and cold as she just watched him gawk. This was all his fault, really. Sure, Yona had decided to entire an alliance and come to the palace, but if Soo-Won hadn’t set off the chain of events that resulted in that alliance, this wouldn’t be happening.

Yona immediately regretted the thought. She knew better now. If none of this had happened, her people would still be struggling and Yona would be living in blissful ignorance. Sometimes, however, she just couldn’t help but crave that ignorance… Especially when the lingering flames of her love for Soo-Won decided to rear their ugly heads.

Yona’s mouth curled in on itself as her heart lurched in her chest just at the sight of him. It was maddening, the way her desire to dig her fingernails into his cheek mixed with her longing to softly caress it, the way her desire to rip every one of those flax-golden hairs out of his head mixed with her longing to run her hands through him, the way her desire to scream and yell and curse him in a thousand tongues mixed with her longing to throw herself at him and sob and beg and surrender. Maddening, yes it was. It was driving Yona to near insanity, and as she stood there, she was wide-eyed and teetering on an abyss from which there was no return.

“Yona.” His voice was soft and full of concern as he uttered her name. His eyes, still huge with the sight of Yona’s shredded prey, finally flickered up to meet her own fiery ones like dawn. To his credit, he did not flinch away at the inferno there; he just stared, measuring, waiting for her response. “Are you… displeased?” he said finally when she refused to respond. Really, Yona was still so embroiled with her own feelings that she couldn’t formulate a response. His question returned some sense of normalcy to her mind. The fire died in her eyes, cooled by the sheer incredulity at his question.

“‘Displeased,’” she echoed. Slowly, like water trickling from within rocks piled high, her wits returned to her. Her head dropped to do as Soo-Won had, stare numbly at the carnage she had wrought on the poor, innocent drapery. Her hands began to sting terribly with the weight of the own violence she had wrought, as if they were coated in hot, sticky, burning blood and insides. They were just curtains; it wasn’t like she had killed someone. Still, Yona’s stomach flopped about with the unsettling possibility that if someone had stumbled upon her in her mania, she might very well have unleashed on them like a woman possessed. It made the bitter acid of shame flood her tongue. Yona had never been so violent before. Sure, she had done violent things, but always with good reason. This was wanton destruction, and the fact that it was borne of her own hands rattled her to her core.

Well, it wasn’t entirely without reason, she rationalized. “Displeased,” she repeated in a hoarse voice. “Displeased” didn’t even scratch the surface of what she was feeling right now. She didn’t have a word for what she was feeling right now. Silent, teeth clenched, she just stared at the mangled curtains and lamented her own sorry state of being. How had it come to this? Cool, calm, collected, and strong to manic, deranged and mad?

“Yona.” His voice called her with maddening power. Of its own accord, Yona’s head rose to obediently meet his beckoning gaze. She hadn’t heard his footsteps, but he had closed the distance and was standing in front of her. She compulsively swallowed. His eyes were the one burning now, pulsing with a soft yet furious heat that made her tremble. It wasn’t anger, or disappointment, or disdain; it was something else entirely, and it both frightened and excited her. He tilted his head to the side slightly as he smiled that gentle reassuring smile that she missed so dearly but wanted to slap off his face. “Tell me what happened.”

 She wanted to lie. She did not want to admit that she had just had a psychotic fit and wrenched the curtain rod off the wall and destroyed the curtains like some kind of beast. Yona, however, felt the pitiful attempts at falsehoods dissolving on her tongue under Soo-Won’s gentle yet critical stare. There was no point in lying and he knew well enough what she had just done. “This alliance isn’t working out the way you wanted it to, is it?” he asked her with a degree of amusement in his voice that made her skin itch with fury.

“No. No, it is not, Soo-Won.” The steel in her voice was sharper than the finest-crafted blade. At the iron on her tongue, the king exhaled deeply and his body sagged sadly. The reaction disquieted her; was he acting for her benefit or truly displeased that she was going crazy cordoned off in this bedroom? His eyes shut for a second, and when they opened, Yona felt electric shocks pulse over every single one of her nerves. The way he was staring at her, apologetic and guilty, was a look she had imagined every day since she witnessed him drawing a bloody sword from her father’s limp body.

It was not satisfying, not at all. Somehow, she wanted more. The madness began to scratch and howl in her ringing skull again.

“How dare you. How dare you look all sad and guilty when I’m stuck here with nothing to do but pace and think and fret all day!” she screamed at him suddenly. She lunged at him, fingers clawing into his kingly robes like they had done the curtains, but rather than shredding them, she only clutched onto them with an iron grip. Her red eyes burned as they bore into his, as if a glare alone could make his combust. “How dare you. You want to know what happened? I am losing my mind! I can’t take it anymore!” A dam erupted inside of her, releasing long-held feelings and tears. They were like rivers of ice and fire as they flooded down her cheeks, and her voice cracked as she hissed again, “I can’t take it anymore. I don’t know what is up and what is down. My mind is reeling. I don’t know what I’m doing, and I don’t know what you’re doing, and the one single comfort I could be afforded while I’m all but your prisoner in here is barred from me!” Her head dropped, chin banging against her chest. Her quivering hands held onto his clothes like the were the lifeline preventing her from being washed out to sea. She hated herself right now, admitted all this to him. But if she didn’t release it to anyone, even if it has to be Soo-Won, she really was going to go insane. What was her country? What was her fate? What was Soo-Won’s plan and how should she respond? These questions plagued her, maddeningly so.

With the weight of her on psyche mounting on her frail body, her knees finally buckled. Soo-Won reflexively caught her under her elbows as her legs folded in on themselves. Sobbing and groaning, she just cried pathetically while he held her up. “And you know… you know what the worst part is?” she choked out between sobs. “I hate you, but I love you. I despise you for what you did but I love you still. I thought I had grown so much, but I came back here, and it all has come crashing down upon me. I’m still that naïve, foolish little girl who wasn’t worth killing.”

“Yona!” She did not expect such harsh bite from his voice. It made her head snap up to look at him with wide and watery eyes. His lips were drawn into a taut line and his eyes were their fieriest yet. “I did not let you go because you were ‘not worth killing.’”

“Then why?” she demanded in an agonized cry. Her fingers dug further into his clothes, probably bruising the skin underneath. “Why, Soo-Won, I don’t under-”

The rest of her words came out as a surprised squeak muffled by his lips crashing into hers. It was not at all kingly, the way he kissed it her; it was passionate, carnal, desperate and mad. If Yona’s legs had been able to support her then, her kneecaps would’ve been obliterated to dust the instant their mouths smashed together. Her eyes fluttered shut with a low, needy whine; as if responding, Soo-Won’s tongue pushed into her mouth and tangled feverishly with her own. She didn’t object. She got drunk off him like she was partaking in the finest wine in the world, her tongue savoring every little bit of his essence. She could vaguely feel his fingers in her dawn-colored hair, caressing and twisting, but most of her senses were dominated by the explosion of feeling fireworking over her body. Oh, oh, how she had wanted this, and how much she hated herself for it.

She lamented the loss of his warmth and touch as he pulled away, and despite herself, her lips involuntarily chased him. She wanted to spend forever in that kiss. In that hazy fog, she didn’t have to think about the circumstances or how wrong it was; she just had to think about him, her mouth on hers and his hands on her body. It was simple. Easy. Uncomplicated. He permitted her pursuit for a moment, giving her another softer kiss with more feeling, but pulled back again after a few seconds. He said her name and it pulled her out of the fog, back to her confusing and complicated and maddening reality.

“Does that answer your question?” His voice was breathy and laced with a fair bit of irritation. Maybe with himself, maybe with Yona- maybe both. She swallowed and licked her lips, mouth suddenly drying up. Was she supposed to be satisfied with that? A kiss that seals the deal and makes everything all right? The trouble was that she was one hundred percent satisfied with that.

She stepped away from him, trying to hide the tremor in her still-recuperating jellified legs. She felt that her hands needed to be doing something so she smoothed out nonexistent creases in her kimono. Her brain whirled desperately trying to make sense of everything, but nothing made sense anymore. That was her problem to begin with. “I’ll take that as a ‘no.’” He sounded amused, like he had expected it.

“What do you expect?” she huffed. The fight was dying from her voice and spirit, replaced with indescribable weariness. She was so tired. She was so tired of fighting whatever this fight was, but that was the only thing Yona could think to do was fight. Surrender simply was not in the meek, naïve, ignorant princess’ blood, apparently. Her hands continued to fix her perfectly fine kimono while she refused to look at him. “I just… I can’t…” God, she couldn’t even explain herself. This is not how she wanted to look in front of him, flustered and stupid. It was like her previous self had been taken captive and replaced with a bungling imposter, and she was trying so desperately to get it back with little luck. Her hand began stringing through her hair, which was crimping uncomfortably with sweat. All the while, Soo-Won watched her, thankfully without pity. “I hate you,” she grumbled finally, because it was the only thing that sort of made sense.

“I know.” Oh, hell, no, he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t get that sad look on his face and think that it made it all okay. But it did. In Yona’s stupid, manic, mad mind, it made it okay. Defeated, she kicked the curtain rod aside and sank down on the cushioned seat that sat below the windowsill.

“I love you,” she simpered as she put her flushing face in her hands. She didn’t have to look at him to know he had that other look on his face, that soft, gentle smile that made her heart sing and wail simultaneously. That smile that carried a hint of sadness that never faded.

“I know that, too.” A period of silence settled between them. She peered through her fingers to see his own twitching, like he was trying to figure out how to comfort her but arriving at no conclusions. She couldn’t blame him. She didn’t know what to do with herself, either. As she sat there, the moonlight cool on her back as it flood through the unshielded window behind her, Yona finally began to feel a sense of normalcy returning to her. She partitioned off the confusing kiss and focused instead on her situation and what she ought to do about it, and was beginning to feel that clear-headed determination return to her. I just have to keep fighting. That is all I can do. I will resist as long as I have to and find out what Soo-Won wants…

She felt the cushioning dip beside her and heard the slight ringing of the metal as it rolled over the wooden floor when Soo-Won seated himself beside her. “I wish things were simple.”

“You’re the one who made it complicated.” She kept her face buried in her hands because she didn’t know what would happen if she looked at him.

“I suppose that’s true.” His laugh was hollow and mirthless. “I wish I could explain it all to you. I really do. But if I did, I didn’t know if you would believe me.”

“Can’t fault you for that.” Another hollow, joyless laugh that rang through the quiet bedroom, followed by a slight sigh. “I’m not giving up, you know. Don’t think this changes things. I just needed to get it out of my system.”

“No, I expect you won’t.” She finally lifted her head to look up at him, finding him smiling as he looked at her out of his peripheral vision. “You wouldn’t be the girl I loved if that happened.”

Surprisingly, her body garnered no reaction from that bombshell of a statement. It felt more like she had known it all along and she was vindicated now. It made a funny taste tingle on her tongue, one she couldn’t quite place; possibly a mixture of things. He smiled more as he pushed himself up from the seat and began heading for the door. “I’ll send someone to fix that in the morning,” he said with a lazy gesture to the destroyed curtains. Yona watched him go with confliction and a heavy heart.

“Yeah. Sure.” Once the frame of the sliding door clacked against the threshold, she exhaled loudly and flopped onto her side; the cushion embraced her, sinking her down into its fluffy softness. With the adrenaline no longer pumping in her system, her muscles now felt the strain of torturing the curtains. Dully, she stared down at its wispy corpse spread out over the wood floor.

The Celestial Dragons. The usurper King Soo-Won. The displaced princess. The Thunder Beast. The unknown battle for the world as they knew it.

Maddening, it all was to Yona. Somehow, though, the one thing that should be the most maddening was no longer maddening at all. She smiled thinly to herself and rolled onto her back, the moonlight washing over her like enclosing her in a blanket.

You drive me mad, Soo-Won… But still, I love you so.