Chapter 1: Warpaint

“Spice and silk and trade and cloth. These are the things one goes to war over, but in my heart of hearts, I know they are not worth it.”  

  - quoted from a letter penned by the Crown Prince to his lover, at the end of the Southern War

The serving-girls call it  warpaint,  in a mocking sort of way.

“Close your eyes,” the servant working on him commands, dabbing a long brush into a pot of white powder that puffs in little mushroom clouds around it.

Yoongi obeys wordlessly, baring his face to her. The powder reacts with his skin, causing red lumps and black marks where it was once smooth, but in this place beauty is measured - differently. Especially for the thing Yoongi has become. The powder goes up his nose when the servant puffs it harsh on his cheeks, but he resists the urge to sneeze. She’d slap him. The first thing he learned, even before he could say his own name, was how to protect himself from unneede

If you could call this lethargic state of coping protection.

At one time, he would have called it cowardice. That was before he had experienced it himself, of course, and now he calls it protection, and survival, and - and.

“Keep them closed,” the servant snaps, although Yoongi had made no move to open his eyes. His hands are folded demurely in his lap, his knuckles brushing the soft fabric he’s wearing, a silky sky-blue garment, embroidered with golden decorations, the script of this country. The clothes here are softer than anything he’s ever felt; luxury, here, in soft things and pale things and everything beautiful.

And so they go through this rigmarole every day before breakfast.

She swipes a smaller brush over his eyes; it’s pale pink paint, water added to powder to make the cold paste. Yoongi resists shuddering against the feel of it. She will line his eyes with black kohl, soon, but not before -

“Keep them closed.”

Without looking, Yoongi knows she’s replaced the pink paste for sky-blue, the colour of Jungyoo’s house. She draws an upside-down crescent neatly in the centre of his forehead, and two blue dots either side of it - from observation, Yoongi has gleaned their meaning. The crescent means he is a servant (hah) to the high family, and the blue dots mean he is forbidden from leaving the castle.

Slowly, he is wilting away. The Earth isn’t close to him anymore; he can hardly feel her, and that has never happened before, not ever.

Slowly, wilting.

“Open your mouth,” she instructs.

He does. He also opens his eyes, because he knows they frighten her more than anything else - inhuman green, inhuman black slits. She jumps, and frowns, and the thumb that presses against his bottom lip is painful and the nail against his skin is sharp. “Open wider.”

He does.

She paints them red, because of his own special function, as though it isn’t immediately obvious. The paint tastes vile, metallic and slimy, but her thumb on his lip means he’s forced to hold it on his tongue, no matter how hard he wants to spit it out.

The last thing she does is hook the chain around his neck from its matching hoop on the wall, leaving him with a sort of golden leash and preventing him from leaving the room. He’s trapped in the little two-metre radius given to him by the collar and chain; as though he could do anything with them removed. His claws are blunt.

And the chain glistens mockingly.

She tugs on it a few times - Yoongi, despite himself, chokes - and then, smiling, she pulls one of his ears, having to reach down for them. Yoongi is, by nature, a head shorter than most of the humans here. “Be ready to attend your master in half an hour,” she says, the voice of the powerless given some modicum of power, and then she leaves.

Be ready.

He could break the lock on the chain if he wanted to, but he doesn’t want to. There are archers stationed in the walls of the castle, overlooking the courtyard and the drawbridge, and in the three months since his -

since he’s arrived here, Yoongi’s seen no other way of escape. And, hunting for brittlebear and wingflesh, far before this life, he learned the most valuable lesson of all.

Patience.

It’s shaping up to be a normal day. The new kind of normal; a normal Yoongi would once have recoiled from - would once have believed impossible.

(But what is the normal? Pinched and prodded and pulled this way and that, and at the end of the day sent to warm Jungyoo’s bed? To sit at the feet of Jungyoo’s wife, and have her feed him cream like some housecat? To have his tail pulled and his ears twisted and disgusting words whispered in his ear, as though that will get him wetter? If that is normal-)

If that is normal, Yoongi finds himself wishing -

His nails, his claws, are filed. He stares at them, these alien hands of his, folded in his lap. Filed and trimmed every other day, keeping them too blunt to use as a weapon, and that first dreadful day, his mouth was wrenched open and his teeth were blunted, too; his sharp canines, scraped down. His ears - sensitive enough to hear a brittlebear snore a mile away - were pierced, golden bars shoved through the tips of them, and they haven’t allowed him to feel the earth under his feet in three months, always forcing his feet into stockings and slip-shoes.

If that is normal -

The stockings and slip-shoes are the insult Yoongi knows them to be. He struggles to put them on, the stockings, long and white and cottony, and the slip-shoes hurt his toes. He is what he is, and without the earth under his feet, he’s going to go mad.

As though he can feel the earth, anyway. This castle is high and thick and impenetrable, and even in the courtyard, they’ve covered the sweet earth with flagstones.

Half an hour.

What a joke.

He spends the time staring at the cracked wall, sitting on his little pallet-bed, thinking of ways to bite through Jungyoo’s jugular, of ways to poke his eyes out, of ways to cut his cock off and stuff it down his throat. He paints the walls with phantom blood, but he doesn’t move.

Patience.

After half an hour, she comes back.

She is actually called Seohyung, and she’s been the subject of Yoongi’s dream-murders more than once. She is intuitive, getting her fun out of the relentless bullying of those worse off than her, and sadistic in the way she tightens his collar, in the way she dangles the golden chain in front of his eyes, then tugs it away from him. Sometimes she laughs.

“Cat. Cat. Come on.”

Yoongi nods and stands, wobbling on the small wooden slip-shoes, the rope between his toes already beginning to chafe. The collar is tight against his throat when she tugs it, far too tight, making spots float to the front of his vision.

He imagines ripping her hair out, strand by delicate strand, and knotting it into a noose to hang her with. He imagines ripping the chain right off his neck, and choking her.

“Come on.”

He doesn’t. He can’t.

Jungyoo’s castle is big; before Yoongi was brought here, he had no idea people lived in such monstrosities, as big as a copse of trees, as fat and stony and grey as a mountain. It holds all of his personal servants and slaves, and there’s a training compound for the provincial army; there are stables around the back, and a courtyard, and cornfields behind it stretching as far as the eye can see, and kitchens and beds and everything a person could want, heavy grey flagstones, heavy grey rocks, heavy grey sky up above him.

No trees, though. No trees, and not a creature in sight. Once, Yoongi saw a bird, high in the sky, flying too high for the archers to accurately aim; a bird, flying from one end of the country to the other, heading for the far-off mountains.

Patience. Even now, Yoongi finds it difficult.

He imagines ripping out his own throat, clawing it right out of his skin, and painting fuck you on the wall with his esophagus while he chokes to death.

Meals are served in the Long Hall; Jungyoo and his wife eat on the raised dais, overlooking their small army of children, cousins, servants, friends, and hangers-on, so they can observe the minutiae of the little civilisation they’ve created for themselves.

The Long Hall is -

It was here that Yoongi first truly realised how different these humans are - how much his clan has underestimated them.

The Long Hall runs the length of the castle, the central room, a log fire burning at one end, a long wooden table the centrepiece of the room. Tapestries hang on the wall, richly embroidered pieces showing Jungyoo, Jungyoo and his wife, their children, the armies marching to war against the South - recently, tapestries depicting the slaughter of the hybrids have begun to appear, and every time he sees them, Yoongi feels the burning heel of humanity kicking him again and again and again and -

The Long Hall is stuffy. Too warm. At the raised dais, there is a silken cushion in between the chairs Jungyoo and his wife usually sit on.

Humans -

Burning with shame and humiliation, Yoongi is led up to the dais. His chain is handed to Jungyoo - lecherous, leering Jungyoo, with wandering hands and wet lips and three chins - and, after he kisses him, Yoongi is allowed to sit on the cushion by his feet.

They feed him their scraps, like he’s a dog - like he’s a cat, like he’s not a - person. Jungyoo’s wife is kinder than the man himself, passing him slices of untouched bread. Strips of meat. Maybe she relates to him, in some small, browbeaten mouse of a way.

Yoongi licks the juices from his fingers, and wipes grease on the beautiful clothes, smiling at the tiny victories, and then feeling empty inside from how glorious it feels to stain fabric.

The day, then, is usually his own while Jungyoo carries out the affairs of the province. Occasionally, he’s tugged along, chain held firmly in Jungyoo’s sweaty fist, and the peasants come for the petty appeals look at him with unbridled curiosity. At the tamed one, of this alien race that’s sprung from the forests and the mountains.

Sometimes -

“Another attack,” Jungyoo reads from the scroll, holding it in his right hand, holding Yoongi’s wrist in his left. “How many dead, do you guess?”

Yoongi is never sure whether the questions are rhetorical - when he doesn’t answer, they aren’t, and when he does, they are. He keeps his lips sealed.

“How many dead?”

And a slap, one that will bruise high on Yoongi’s cheekbone. His teeth throb. The skin is probably ripped - Jungyoo wears heavy rings with sharp-cut jewels, and half the time, the mornings are full of Seohyung’s curses as she tries to cover up the cuts with white powder. It inflames them.

“I don’t know,” Yoongi replies dully. Jungyoo works where he eats - he spends all day sitting on the dais, clearing the table with food and replacing it with papers, clearing the papers and replacing them with food.

“An attack on my border,” Jungyoo clutches the paper in a white-knuckle fist, “By a group of hybrids calling themselves the Min clan.”

Yoongi’s heart hurts.

“How many dead?”

“I don’t know,” he whispers at his feet.

“Twelve,” Jungyoo’s voice steadies when he’s angry, when he’s furious. “Twelve dead. Twelve good men, good solid men, dead because of the Min clan. What do you think about that?”

Yoongi’s heart burns.

“I asked you what you think.”

“I - think it’s a disgrace,” Yoongi whispers hoarsely. (There is a maxim in his clan. It is better to lose your pride and live, because pride means nothing to a carcass.)

(Is it? Is it really better?)

“A disgrace indeed.”

He expects the slap when it comes, but it still knocks him over - hasn’t felt the earth in three months, hasn’t seen the trees, he’s weak and unbalanced with his tail trapped - and the weakness sends him sprawling onto the floor, knocking his cushion aside.

“Pick that up,” Jungyoo says, and Yoongi does.

If this is normal -

It shouldn’t be.

He is patient, and practicing patience, waiting for his teeth to grow back into their sharpness. When that happens - when that happens, then he’ll have his time, and he’ll spring at them all and bite them dead, hands and arms and feet in bloody puddles on the floor, and twelve will be dead at the hands of the Min clan and it’ll be him. He is patient, just as he’s been taught.

But hunting Jungyoo is so very different to hunting brittlebear, pacing through the forest floor with Jeongguk, claws sharp and eyes trained to catch every movement.

Because Yoongi isn’t free to hunt Jungyoo. And he knows, knows, that in reality it’s him being hunted.

But still, he is patient.

And at night he curls up on the wooden pallet, hugging his knees, and he dreams about slitting their throats and bringing their heads home as trophies.

And that is normal.

This is normal.

Back then, in the old normal, Yoongi might have gone a month, two months, without sleeping in a nest of his own. In the old normal, every bush and tree and living thing was a place to stay - in the old normal, he and Jeongguk, or he and Chaeyoung, or he and a hundred other little pairings and trios, would go out on the hunt. Spend days scuttling through unexplored woods, building little stickshrines wherever they went, the Earth beneath them, her presence everywhere, as constant and reassuring as the sun.

In the old normal, Yoongi’s face would be coated in mud by now, not streaked in white. He would be wearing his furs and his leathers with pride, and the tokens of honour for the stickshrines, and his claws would be long and his canines sharp and his feet, his paws, bared to the elements, and his tattoos shining colours -

He would be able to dig his toes into the Earth and feel the life from her sizzling into his skin.

They hadn’t expected this. When people began to die -

“It can’t be the winters,” says Minhyuk, the one who brought the news back to them. “It can’t be the weather. They’re clawed, but not by - claws, or teeth, or brittlebear paws or wingflesh or anything-!”

The two bodies lie in the centre of their meeting, laid to rest one beside the other. Yoongi feels sick when he looks at them. It’s Mina, the newest monther in the clan, Mina and her little son, who celebrated his third month just last week. Their wounds have been cleaned, but left gaping open; long, clean slashes, far straighter than the ribbed marks of claws, far deeper than the digging of teeth, and what could do something like that?

“It’s the humans,” Daesoo says. “I know it is.”

“Those things?”

“They’ve become more adventurous, now,” Daesoo flings nervous glances as the Min, who’s sitting cross-legged in apparent meditation. “Our trees in the foothills are being cut down, faster than ever before, and sometimes they send in humans with sharp knives, going ahead of them, although… most of the time, the brittlebear get them.”

The Min says nothing. Yoongi looks away from the bodies; he feels nauseous. “What do we do?”

Minhyuk growls. “How long is it before they come further? We can’t protect our own against an enemy we aren’t prepared for. We need to know what the humans - we need to know what they’re doing. They’re killing mothers and children and elders, all the ones that can’t hunt, and - and that is cowardice, and they deserve an arrow in the skull.”

Yoongi digs his toes into the Earth. She burns back at him, a warm, golden tingle. “We need to scout them, and try to get at the leaders, at their clan elders.”

“How?”

The Min doesn’t shift. Mina and her son lie, bloodless and horrific, on the forest floor - only a matter of time before the Earth takes them back to her. “We surrender - only one of us,” he says hastily, when it seems as though Minhyuk will riot, “Only one of us. They take us back to their clan, back to their leader, and I - and we, whoever is chosen, they kill the leader. They kill the one responsible for this.”

“And you think it’ll be you?” Minhyuk raises one lofty eyebrow.

Yoongi grits his teeth, equally stubborn.

Daesoo -

“It will be Yoongi,” the Min says, his aged eyes opening, although they haven’t worked in thirty years. “It must be him. Go, the three of you, down to the foothills, and meet this pack of humans, and surrender Yoongi to them.”

“Min,” Daesoo and Minhyuk bow respectfully.

The Min turns his blinded eyes to Yoongi. “Do not return until you’ve killed the one responsible, and do not return until you have his blood on your claws.”

“Grandfather,” Yoongi bows with equal respect. His feet are burning. The Earth herself is watching.

The next morning dawns much the same as every morning has for the last three months. Seohyung wakes him by pulling his tail and sloshing cold water in his face, and when she sees the long, deep cut on his cheek, she curses. Like it’s Yoongi’s fault. And maybe it is, for provoking Jungyoo - for having the audacity to be born as he is.

Twelve dead at the hands of the Min clan, and none dead at the hands of Yoongi. It was probably a search party, searching for him, when Jungyoo’s peasants attacked. He’s been gone too long.

The warpaint is plastered on his face, powder up his nose and paint in his eyes, red paste soaking into his tongue. Seohyung paints him with solemnity, as though he’s actually going to war, and not just going to be some pet hybrid at the feet of a fat, leeching man. He’s given the usual half-hour to himself, to sit cross-legged and think about -

Killing Jungyoo over and over and over and over and over and over again.

Normal.

Seohyung comes for him, as normal, and he struggles to stand, as normal - his tail is trapped under these unfamiliar robes, and without it stretched behind him, balance is difficult. He wobbles on the slip-shoes. She grips his arm hard, in part to support him, in part to bruise him.

It hurts, but Yoongi holds his tongue, biding his time. Patient.

There is a maxim in his clan. He who waits to make the kill shall feast on the whole of his meat; he who hastily makes the kill shall scrabble for scraps in the dirt by their feet.

“Tomorrow is a special day,” she says in a surprisingly conversational tone, tugging him along the corridor by the chain, their slip-shoes clattering dull against the flagstones. “The Crown - the Crown Prince is visiting to cull the hybrid bandits.” She sounds excited; Yoongi thinks of fairy-tales, of princes falling in love with serving maids, and feels uncharacteristically sorry for her.

As usual, he is deposited on the dais, cross-legged on the silken cushion at Jungyoo’s feet.

It’s like hell on earth. Every day, every day the same, in this hulking grey mountain of a building, far away from sun and snow and trees.

(There is a maxim in his clan. They that take on the ways that are not theirs and the garb of a stranger; they take on far more than foreign words. They take danger.)

He takes danger.

Yoongi has heard that the whole country is like this - the whole country, living like barbarians in their towering stone burrows. He has heard Seohyung and the other girls gossiping about knights, and castles, and turrets and parapets and archers and horses and solid, rocky buildings made of stone.

He wants wood.

Jungyoo’s wife coats her fingers in cream, and Yoongi licks, grateful for the cool taste of it. Underneath, her fingertips taste of salt.

Yoongi’s home is different.

Yoongi’s home is snowy, and cold, and in the lowlands there are trees, and in the highlands there are burrows and caverns, and all around them is the glow of the sun and the growl of nature and Earth and shrine and the plain faces of friends and family. Jeongguk and Daesoo, Eunhyun and Chaeyoung - even Minhyuk, although he annoys Yoongi well enough -

Down here, in the east, Jungyoo is close enough to the mountains to feel the attacks of the clans, but not close enough to feel the sting of the cold.

Yoongi misses the bite of it, the sting of snow, the ice on his paws.

Yoongi misses a lot of things.

Jungyoo buries a ringed hand in Yoongi’s hair, ruffling it and pulling his ear between thumb and forefinger. “You have heard about my cousin, then.”

Yoongi ducks his head, a safe enough gesture - both an agreement and a twitch.

“He arrives tomorrow morning. We will scour your hills and find your people.”

No, they will not. As though Yoongi’s people would allow themselves to be found by stumbling flatfoot humans from the plains. As though Yoongi’s people would ever, ever, unintentionally be caught by Jungyoo - by any of his kind.

He is fed another lick of cream, and a wing of chicken, all by Jungyoo’s wife. Yoongi sometimes wonders which of them have it worse, he or her, and he eventually decides that it must be her - at least he has the promise of freedom, or revenge, even if it might be far away. She is stuck here until death, at Jungyoo’s side, while the man himself sucks all of the life from her body as sure as though he were a bloodworm.

Humans get worse and worse, the more Yoongi lives with them.

“Your day is your own,” Jungyoo waves his hand irritably at Yoongi when the Long Hall is cleared of people and the servants are carrying his work in for him. “I said go away.”

Yoongi doesn’t need to be told twice. It isn’t often that Jungyoo decides he would rather be alone, than with anyone near him to harass, but on those occasions Yoongi makes the best use of his time and scurries away before anyone can catch him by the collar and tell him off.

The castle is cold, but not the nice cold of the mountains. It’s cold like the humans are, the cold of metal and corpses and grey flagstones, and it makes Yoongi shiver more than any winter in the forest has.

But down this hall -

And this corridor -

And this staircase -

Yoongi has found the back way to get to the stables. It’s the closest thing he has to good earth and good creatures, the snufflesnort horses, the sweet smell of hay, and he relishes the little flashes of green and plant that he finds in the troughs and on the ground, tramped in on the boots of the coachmen.

So he scuttles there, a rat chased back into its rat-way.

Sometimes, he lets his tail out to breathe. It feels good, oh so good, to be able to balance again - hitching up the long draperies of the robes they put him in, even for a few minutes. Then dropping them again, in case someone sees. Seohyung would not be pleased.

He nods a hello at the horses when he lets himself into the long stall-room, almost tripping on the tack some boy’s left on the ground, hidden in the hay.

Dull earth and the smell of horses - a far cry from the brittlebears and the wingflesh scents, and an even further call from the smell of home and cave and den, but it’ll do for now, until Yoongi finds his way out of this place.

(Hell on earth.)

His clan have a maxim. When in the burrow of the brittlebear, growl as the brittlebear do, groom as the brittlebear do, and shorten your tail as the brittlebear do.

So, if Jungyoo and the rest of these stinking humans are the brittlebear -

And what Yoongi wouldn’t give to be in a brittlebear burrow right now -

Yoongi must carry on. Growl as the brittlebear do.

He sighs, and tucks himself into one of the many empty stalls, the stall nearest the door back into the main body of the castle. Here, there is a small burrow of hay and straw; a little heaped mound of earth, collected from the floor; a dirty horse-blanket the stableboys haven’t missed yet, and here, Yoongi spends all the time he can possibly spare, curled up with his nose in the mound of earth, a hint of the Earth herself, waiting for his teeth to grow back in.

Then they’ll see - they’ll all see - just what a cat can do.

Yoongi is stretching out, considering taking off the slip-shoes and stockings and letting his toes burrow into the soft hay, when the door of the stable creaks open; there’s the sound of wet snuffling, a horse run to its limit.

And a soft laugh.

Yoongi freezes. Spine-cold, tail-broken frozen; if he’s found like this, Jungyoo’s wrath will be all-consuming, and he’ll be lucky to get off with a cut to the cheek. He stays still in his burrow of hay, ears pricked, and hopes that neither of the horses want to be put in the stall that he’s huddled in.

“He won’t like this,” says one voice, low and amused. “He wanted the whole procession.”

“I can’t spare the procession. I can barely spare myself. He’ll have to take what he’s given,” says another. There’s the rattle of metal, reins and stirrups and saddles clunking around as the two riders go about the laborious business of tucking-in.

“Ah, Hoseok-ah, can’t you spare a procession for me?” The first voice does a commendable impression of Jungyoo’s dripthick voice, and then laughs, clear as a bell.

Hoseok. That must be the name of the second voice. As the bootsteps get closer, Yoongi gets stiffer and stiffer, but the horse is led into the stall two down from his - he’s safe enough for now. “If I were myself, I’d tell him to shove his bandits and procession and all, right up his fat-”

“Diplomacy comes easy to you, I see.”

“Oh, shut up.” Hoseok seems friendly enough with the first voice, and neither of them speak with the gruff accent Yoongi has come to associate with the humans - their voices are lighter, and more lyrical, with odd little twangs over certain syllables.

The companionable silence that settles is like a balm to Yoongi’s fraying nerves, settling him down from his initial terror. He can - sneak out, maybe.

“Ai, Seokjin - Jin-hyung, pass me the-”

“This?”

“Yes. Thanks.”

“Mm. Give it back.”

The horses snuffle. There’s the repetitive scritch-scratch sound of rough bristles tugged over rumps, of hay being emptied onto the floor.

“Do we have to see him?”

Seokjin, the first voice, sighs. “I suppose. I don’t want to see him any more than you do.”

“Remember that time-”

“With the wine-boy? - oh, god, that was horrendous-”

Hoseok, the voice closest to Yoongi, laughs lightly. “And now we’re here to solve a fucking bandit problem, of all things. Gods Almighty. If only there were three of me.”

“The South could give up, yet.”

“Fat luck. I still think the ocean is our best bet.”

Seokjin huffs. “The South-”

“They’ll give, I’m certain of it.”

A dawning sort of realisation creeps up on the back of Yoongi’s mind, and pulls his tail.

What was it Seohyung had told him, that morning?

Oh, gods -

Slowly, slowly, he pulls the tip of his tail out from under the blue robe, and bites the end of it, testing the sharpness of his growing-back canines. Are they sharp enough? Could he do it? Could he really kill the Crown Prince, the reason for all this mess-?

Could he really?

“Did you hear that?” Hoseok says carefully, and the scritching noises stop - the boots stop - the snuffling stops.

Which one of them is it?

Yoongi freezes. What is the name of the Crown Prince? Or should he kill them both? How could he do it? Could he do it? And sneak back up to his room, and hook his chain to the wall, blameless and pure as an angel?

“Hear what?” Seokjin’s voice sounds a little closer, stepping nearer to Hoseok. “I didn’t hear anything.”

“I heard… I heard something,” but Hoseok sounds uncertain, and Yoongi curses the rustling of his tail under the robes. “I swear I heard something. Like a mouse.”

“Then it was probably a mouse.”

“But… I just heard something.”

“You’re horsesick.”

Hoseok laughs; there’s the sound of leather creaking against leather, like he’s moving about, and Yoongi relaxes a bit, pushing his hands into the clod of the Earth, seeking some sort of reassurance. This could really, really be his chance - chance to stop it.

Twelve dead at the hands of the Min clan, but how many dead at the hands of the humans?

“Jungyoo won’t be happy to see you this early,” Seokjin says, and the footsteps get a little closer; the two men must almost be done, and they’ll go through the door Yoongi had been using to get in and out of the castle.

He coils up. Waiting.

“Jungyoo’ll just have to deal with it.”

“And he won’t like that either. Elders and betters, Hoseok, elders and betters.”

“That makes you an elder.”

“And a better.”

Hoseok laughs again - it sounds nice. The last time Yoongi heard laughter, proper laughter, he was with Jeongguk, the night before… the night before Minhyuk brought Mina and her son into their midst. He bites clean through his lip, just to stop himself thinking about it, because what help would that be?

“I suppose… time to face the firing squad?”

“Aye,” Hoseok says, so close that Yoongi can almost taste him on the air, “I suppose it is.”

And Yoongi leaps out, hissing.

What -

What he had intended to do was catch them off guard, and shove his thumbs into the eyes of whichever one was nearest, digging his teeth into their throat and ripping. It isn’t the neatest of kills, but it’s the only option available to him, what with how blunt they keep his claws. That will get rid of one, and with the second, he was intending to… make it up as he went along, but he was sure the element of surprise would work in his favour, and in his prime Yoongi could easily take down a wingflesh bird or three - two humans are no match for a furious Min, even one as stunted as him.

That isn’t what happens.

He leaps out, hay flying everywhere, blunted claws arched, teeth bared, and is immediately slammed back against the stone wall. Something in his back crunches, and his head thunks against rock. A tanned forearm presses against his shoulders and throat, cutting his breathing, and he’s clawing at the air with blunted nails, wondering where the hell the surprise went.

“It’s one of the bandits,” says the man that isn’t grabbing Yoongi, “It’s -”

He damns these humans; by nature, Yoongi is a good head or so shorter than this one that’s holding him, and he curses them to the grave and back again.

“It’s got ears,” says the man that’s choking him. Hoseok. “Look, look. It’s got - like a cat.”

“Let me-” Yoongi wheezes, phlegm in the back of his throat, stars in his eyes, “Let me-”

“So Jungyoo wasn’t lying.”

Hoseok pushes harder. Yoongi realises faintly that he isn’t even touching the ground; Hoseok is holding him against the wall, Yoongi’s feet dangling uselessly a foot from the floor. “Why are you here?”

“He’s got the house markings,” Seokjin stretches over Hoseok’s shoulder and presses a thumb to the centre of Yoongi’s forehead, smearing the makeup there. The warpaint. “Maybe-”

“But why’s he got ears?”

Yoongi claws ever-more desperately. (Oh, if Jeongguk could see him now - he’d be a disgrace.)

“Hoseok-ah, I think you’re choking it.”

“Gods!” Hoseok drops his arm abruptly, as though Yoongi’s skin burns, and Yoongi sprawls bonelessly among the hay, coughing and spluttering and waiting for his head to stop spinning. He feels - useless. Useless. He’s been allowing himself to do this, he’s been sitting on cushions and laps and letting Jungyoo fuck him senseless, just for a moment like this, and what has he done with it?

He saves the tears for later, but they’re there. Burning.

“Are you a - are you a member of this house?” Hoseok asks curiously. The hand that touches Yoongi’s shoulder is gentle; another sting in the injury. “What - are you?”

“I am M-” Yoongi coughs again, spluttering until his eyes fill with tears and he’s seeing stars, “I am Min Yoongi, of the - of the Min clan. I - am. Jungyoo - that is to say-”

Seokjin huffs. He sounds a little like one of the horses.

“You’re of the Min clan? What’s…” Hoseok’s knees crack when he kneels, and Yoongi can finally see his face properly. A long nose, and pink lips, and large brown eyes, freckles splattered across the bridge of his nose and the heights of his cheeks; mud, too, from the travelling, and the whole of his face framed with dark hair.

“From the mountains,” Yoongi says. He sits up, back against the wall, and wonders how angry Jungyoo will be with him.

“You’re one of the bandits?”

Yoongi scowls. “There are no bandits.” Just Mina and her son, and hundreds of others, and their trees cut down around them.

The looks that Seokjin and Hoseok exchange are endless and full of words unspoken; while the air between them burns with conversation, Yoongi draws his knees up to his chest, leaning his forehead against them and exhaling.

(He and Jeongguk used to meditate, on the long nights of the hunt, sitting back-to-back, eyes unblinking in the lookout for brittlebears, taking deep inhales, deep exhales, trying to calm their racing hearts in the excitement of the chase.)

His throat will bruise.

He feels them forming, a master at bruising after three months spent in close contact with Jungyoo, a harsh purple line underneath the collar.

(His clan’s maxim: It is better to lose your pride and live, because pride means nothing to a carcass. Words to hold true to his heart and remember.)

“You’re a hostage from one of the bandit clans in the mountains,” Seokjin declares confidently, as though he’s trying to convince himself as well as Hoseok. “Taken so they’ll stop robbing our villages.”

Yoongi shrugs.

Hoseok says nothing. After a long silence, when it becomes clear Yoongi is no longer needed, he stands and tries his best to swish, unaffected, away; but he knows their eyes are on the glistening gold around his neck, and the chain he’s holding in his hand, and he knows -

He knows that he’s failed. Failed once, and not likely to get the opportunity to fail again. Because one of those men is the Crown Prince, and one word from the Crown Prince could see Yoongi’s head on a spike by the border, as a cautionary tale -

Twelve dead at the hands of the Min clan -

Yoongi cleans himself up as best he can. The cut on his cheek has reopened, made worse by the powder he’s wearing, but he can do nothing about it but lick the blood off his fingertips.

He’s always been told to meet his death face-on, or meet it not at all (another maxim) and therefore, making a break for it isn’t an option. To be shot is the worst death of them all. Face-on, or not at all.

He wonders if his claws could ever be sharp enough -

His teeth, his tail, his eyes -

All these things, trained to kill and to hunt and to survive.

His room, the wooden pallet and the pots of makeup, is bare. He sits cross-legged on the floor and stares at the wall and thinks of all the ways he could kill Jungyoo, and it’s almost like it’s - like it’s just like normal.

The night he has chosen to go, he doesn’t say goodbye to Jeongguk. He knows Jeongguk has been looking for him, because the whole clan has heard the news by now, but Yoongi is avoiding him. He doesn’t know why.

“Ready?” Daesoo is the one they send to come get him; Minhyuk is a mile ahead, swinging through trees.

“Of course.” Yoongi scampers up ahead of Daesoo, watched by most of the clan; these big, ancient oaks and ashes are their best way of getting around, flinging their small bodies from branch to branch, steering through the air with tail and hands and pure dumb hope. This is a well-used route, a track from the central village down to one of the outposts - a post not-yet attacked by these new humans.

His teeth are sharp and his claws are pointed and the Earth herself is with him. What can go wrong?

He throws himself out of the tree, wrapping his tail around the branch of the next one, a half-inch ahead of Daesoo. “This will be the last time in a while!”

“No!” Daesoo shouts back over the rush of air as they travel - the best kind of way to travel. “You’ll come right back!”

There’s a strange reluctance in Yoongi’s bones, though. And maybe within them all - these humans aren’t like the bear they hunt, or the wingflesh they shoot from the sky, or even the deep-set magic of the mountains. These humans are something new and dangerous, more dangerous -

“You’ll come right back,” Daesoo repeats when they both land on the same branch as Minhyuk, overlooking the spot where they’ll surrender Yoongi. “I know you will.”

“Of course,” Minhyuk says, uncharacteristically quiet. “You’ll be back by next week.”

Not one of the three of them believes it.

Yoongi is throwing himself whole into the unknown, and without a tree nearby to catch his fall, and not one of the three of them knows what will happen next.

Chapter 2: Meals Among Men

“Our tattoos tell us at a glance who we are and where we come from. What would we be without our story printed on our chest for anyone to read?”

- excerpt from an article written by the Royal Concubine, introducing his people to the populace

Seohyung comes for him before very long, her own face-paint shining with a fresh layer.

Her robes are clean and new, the prettiest Yoongi has seen on her so far; a light pink, tied with a white sash, the hems embroidered with thick red thread, shaping out the oddly lyrical script of this country. Huinden, they call the language. Huindon, they call the country.

If she notices Yoongi’s dishevelment, she says nothing, but her eyes are blazing with uncharacteristic panic. “He’s here!”

Yoongi cocks his head in wordless question. Around his bruised throat, the chain clinks; he’s hooked himself into it and locked it onto the wall, just in case someone tries to accuse him of being in the stables. His hair is a mess, anyway, his robes covered in hay, and he probably (definitely) doesn’t have very long left before the Crown Prince tells Jungyoo exactly what Yoongi tried to do. And where he was.

“The Prince, of course,” Seohyung answers his unasked question, snapping as she begins fumbling with the pots of paste. Her voice is angry and harsh. Scared. “If you aren’t ready to be presented, they aren’t going to let me at the evening meal either, so you better be good, or I’ll…”

Yoongi ducks his head in apology, not bothering to excuse himself - it isn’t his fault.

He doubts she cares.

Bruises on forearms and cuts on cheeks, and now a new line of purple along his throat - same thing. Three months, and everything the same thing.

“Not ready to be presented,” Seohyung mixes the pastes together, scanning a critical eye over Yoongi’s person, “And you’ll need a good robe for the meal… and the Prince…”

Yoongi wonders whether it’s Seokjin or Hoseok.

Neither of them had spoken to the other with any kind of formality, or respect - not like how Yoongi would refer to the Min, even with his family ties. From what he’s seen of Jungyoo’s castle, humans are odd about formalities, both far more and far less formal than any of the clans would be, with more routine but less respect. Take the warpaint. Nothing like that exists in the clans, unless you count the tattoos, which Yoongi - well, he doesn’t.

They tell a story, not a position in a household.

“Stay still,” Seohyung snarls, as though Yoongi isn’t chained to the wall anyway, “I need to get you a new - a new robe-”

Yoongi stays still. It doesn’t take much effort.

Seohyung usually leaves him to dress himself in the morning, seeing as his main function in the household is one that requires very little clothing. (In the dark red of Jungyoo’s bedchamber, naked on his bed, natural lubricant stifling the whole room with the scent of sex and the incense Jungyoo burns, and Yoongi with bruises on his thighs and his body aching, longing for the warm gold of the Earth-)

Point is, Seohyung usually leaves him to dress himself, and Yoongi can do it by now, wrapping sashes and swathes of fabric around himself, hiding his skin, both bruises and tattoos. He has several robes, mostly sky-blue. He hasn’t ever seen one of the special occasion robes.

So he stares at the wall and thinks about ways he could kill Jungyoo and Hoseok and Seokjin and Seohyung, and walk out of this castle in bloody robes, bringing them back as a trophy for the Min.

“Take that off, put this on.”

Seohyung reenters the room with about as much grace as she exited; something heavy and silky flies towards Yoongi’s face, and he’s buried in it before he can duck. It’s so heavy that it hurts.

“Take it off, I said.”

Irritable, and trying to hide it, Yoongi pulls the knot out of the sash around his waist, his dirty robe pooling by his feet. His markings, his story, usually hidden by the cloth, blaze into glory - he hopes Seohyung is stunned into silence, if only because her voice is beginning to grate through his pierced ears.

She just sighs. Like he’s some strange, uncouth bandit. “Put the new one on. Cover that mess up.”

That mess. The marks that spell out his name, Yoon-Gi-Min, and the bear-print on the small of his back that tells what star he was born under, and the wings that show who his mother is, and the -

That mess.

He nods, his blunter canines digging into his bottom lip, and slides his arms into the new robe.

It is - softer than he’s used to, which is already too soft for his tastes. Like being kissed by an angry storm-cloud, little stings running through the hairs on his arms and legs as he pulls it on. And it’s white.

Is that a joke?

White, with something written in Huinden along the hems of the sleeves and the draped-down skirt. Thick gold embroidered, embellished and prettied, just like everything else in this godforsaken country, this godforsaken castle.

(He can’t read it, but it says for love. For love - for love for love for love on his sleeves. Later in life, when he learns to read the Huinden scratches, he will remember this robe, and remember these signs, and he will be angry, ridiculously, painfully so, and he won’t be able to do anything about it. He wore it. Wears it.)

“Now, let me do your face again.”

The chain trapping him to the wall clinks when he turns his head towards her, jerking forward a little too quickly; it presses hard on the forming bruises around his neck and chokes him. He winces.

She ignores it, almost spilling the white powder, and she doesn’t even curse at the split-open cut on his cheek again (it will scar); she just puffs it all around his face, touching up the spots, the sky-blue daubs of ownership and the red-slathered layer of function. Kohl for decoration.

“You’ll do,” Seohyung clicks her tongue, pulling on one of the golden balls in his ears until he yowls. “You’ll do. Come on, before we’re late-”

He follows obediently, the end of his chain clutched tightly in her fist as she marches him down the corridor, slip-shoes knocking wooden against the flagstones, back down towards the Long Hall.

All around them, evidence of the Crown Prince’s unexpected arrival lies.

Serving-girls are flooding from their rooms, newly made-up and panicky, their fresh robes smelling of must hastily covered by floral perfumes. A couple of them knock into Yoongi, which jerks his body away from Seohyung and the chain. His neck hurts. It doesn’t help that Seohyung keeps pulling him, the purpling marks on his neck getting deeper and more irritated by the second - at least, in the Long Hall, he’ll be sitting by the feet of Jungyoo’s wife, out of sight of most people. (The newcomers - because, no matter what the maxims say, Yoongi is still a being with pride.)

“Hurry up,” Seohyung keeps mumbling, and flattening the sash of her robe with the flat of her anxious palm, “Hurry up, hurry up, we’ll be late, hurry up-”

Even the soldiers barracks have emptied for the occasion, the Long Hall divided into two heavy wooden tables instead of one, the dais at the top extended to offer two extra seats, but with Yoongi’s cushion still in place between Jungyoo and his wife, just waiting for them.

The smell of food fills the air, so different to the food Yoongi is used to, but here at least the difference isn’t in a bad way - just odd. In the clans, it’s just meat and vegetables and little treats from the Earth that hang on the bushes; down here, there are pies and spices and sauces and chocolate and cream and sugar and cake, all these things Yoongi’s never seen, or has only heard of in old half-myth stories from the elders as old as the Min. He gets quite a lot of food, really - Jungyoo’s wife is kind, and Jungyoo always has bowls of fruit and sugared treats in his room, and doesn’t mind when Yoongi eats some after he’s fucked him.

The one positive about that role, if Yoongi’s honest.

The two seats meant for the two newcomers are empty. Seohyung leads Yoongi up to the dais, handing his chain to Jungyoo; Yoongi shudders at the hand that gropes his waist, and sits down on the cushion as quickly as he possibly can.

Jungyoo’s hand is stickier than usual when it buries in Yoongi’s hair. “Behave nicely,” he says, clotted-cream voice, “And don’t scratch.”

The humiliation burns the back of Yoongi’s neck more than the wetness of Jungyoo’s mouth does, and when it’s over, he feels spittle drying on the short-shorn hairs there.

Disgusting.

Jungyoo, in an anxious attempt to show power, has Yoongi’s chain fastened to the arm of his chair; the chain is just a little bit too short for Yoongi to sit comfortably, so he leans his back against the chair leg, the pressure of the collar constant against his bruising, and waits for it all to be over.

For all the pomp and preparation beforehand -

Hoseok and Seokjin enter with all the decorum of a rowdy hunting party.

They aren’t wearing robes, like most of Jungyoo’s house does, and they aren’t wearing furs, like Yoongi’s been used to his whole life. They’re in leathers and chainmail, and soft fabric undershirts; daggers are strapped to their hips, much like the teething daggers the clans might give to young children; their eyes are alight with laughter and their voices fill the Long Hall.

Jungyoo stands. His chair scrapes back on the dais, and Yoongi is pulled back with it, letting out a choked gasp. “Cousin! Good of you to join us.”

“Jungyoo,” Hoseok replies, with cold but easy familiarity. So it’s Hoseok, then, that’s the Crown Prince. “It’s good to see you.”

“And the good captain, too…”

Yoongi shuffles as best he’s able, a little closer to Jungyoo’s wife. She places a weak, tremulous hand on his shoulder, but says nothing.

“Hello, Jungyoo,” Seokjin says, no warmer than Hoseok. “How… nice to see you again. And it’s been so long.”

The conversation takes place as Hoseok and Seokjin are ambling up the hall to the dais, taking their easy time about it; Jungyoo is forced to stand until they reach the top, and all the servants and soldiers sitting at the long tables are desperately silent.

It’s awkward.

When Hoseok and Seokjin climb the wooden steps to their seats, Yoongi tucks himself underneath Jungyoo’s wife’s chair, flattening his ears down over his skull, trying to hide himself from view - and it must work. There’s no cry of that’s the attacker, no clash of dagger. Just the scrape of chairs, and the beginning of the meal.

“And how is your brother?”

“Taehyung? Very well. He’s coming on in his swordplay studies. How’s the garrison shaping up?”

“Oh, lovely, lovely… do sit down, cousin…”

Jungyoo’s wife strokes a comforting finger over his head, probably to reassure herself more than Yoongi, but he arches into the softness of the touch anyway. Just this one meal - just this one -

Jungyoo sits in his chair, and the shortness of the chain wrenches Yoongi out of his hiding place, sprawling him on his back in the open.

“Get up!” The man himself is quick to bark, and Yoongi has embarrassed and ashamed him, “Get up and sit down, you foolish-”

“Hold on,” Hoseok is peering around Jungyoo’s shoulder, a strange look on his face, the Long Hall beginning to fill with sound again.

Yoongi squeezes his eyes shut. Tension has already sprawled across the room, across the dais, and the whole meal is yet to come.

“This is one of the bandits,” Jungyoo says roughly, his foot kicking into Yoongi’s side under the table. “From the mountains. Now perhaps you see, cousin, why I say-”

“Shut up,” Hoseok says quietly. Yoongi cracks open an eyelid; he sees interested eyes, so different from the Seohyun’s hatred, Jungyoo’s greedy desire, and Jungyoo’s wife’s pity. “We are not going to war until I say so, and I do not say so.”

“Until your father says so. You’re not as old as you think, Jung Hoseok,” Jungyoo says, resent hanging off his tongue like a fat wasp’s sting.

“And yet, I am the Crown Prince, and you are not,” Hoseok says with the same mild peace as before.

Seokjin says nothing, but Yoongi hears the slither of rough skin against the leather pommel of a dagger - he wonders whether that was audible to the humans around him, too. Across the Long Hall, the dining goes on, the servants and soldiers and farmers unaware of the sharp tension surrounding the dais.

Jungyoo huffs. “These bandits are vicious and evil. They kill our defenceless villages and they burn our crops - all of us across the North, Minwoo and Shihyuk and Chaena, we can testify to that, sire. It is your inactivity-”

“I thought it was my father’s?”

“It is your inactivity-”

“Jungyoo,” Seokjin says, the slide of skin against leather getting louder again, “I would remind you who you are speaking to.”

“The Captain of the Guard,” Jungyoo says. “And the Crown Princeling.”

“I came here to view your villages, not to talk war,” Hoseok says, mild again. “But something makes me ask why you have one of these evil bandits in - in your care.”

“We captured him, and realised his potential.”

“Potential,” Hoseok’s voice is dry and shame is curling up in Yoongi’s belly, “Potential. Of course.” He reads the Huinden on Yoongi’s robe - he must do.

for love for love for love for love

This humiliation is different to the sort he feels when Jungyoo makes him spread his legs, or when he’s being dragged about the castle for all to see. This is worse, because two newcomers, people who have never seen anyone like Yoongi - their first impression of the clansmen will be of him, a scratching, seething, chained-up toy, huddling under a table to hide behind a timid woman’s skirts.

The meal continues, all the same.

And Yoongi -

There is a maxim in his clan. His ears are large for hearing what is truly being said; and if he doesn’t listen, he might just end up dead. Yoongi can listen, properly listen.

This is what he hears.

Jungyoo is not as respected in Huindon as Yoongi initially thought. The country is large, he knew that already, and split into nine provinces; Jungyoo inhabits the northernmost one, and he is bitter about that, and blames Hoseok - at least in part - for his position.

Hoseok is the Prince; Yoongi knew this already, but it’s impossible not to hear it over and over, in the bowing and scraping from everyone but Seokjin. His father is the King, but something is stopping the man himself from carrying out state business, and so responsibility falls on Hoseok’s shoulders.

And Huindon is at war with someone in the South - something about trade, and blockades, and border skirmishes. They are trying to find an alternative route out of the country across land -

And the only land there is, the only alternative, is the long swathe of mountain ranges. Yoongi’s Earth.

It doesn’t make him feel any better, to have an explanation behind why his clans are being attacked over and over again by soldiers and peasants with axes and soldiers again.

But -

“What?”

“We have been trying to establish a trade route,” Jungyoo repeats, digging his ringed finger into Yoongi’s shoulder as if to relieve some of the stress, “And these bandits keep attacking our foray scouts.”

“I hadn’t issued a command to establish a trade route,” Hoseok says slowly. “Did you receive one?”

“Yes.”

Yoongi can tell Jungyoo is lying, but only because his thumb stabs the meat of Yoongi’s neck; to anyone else, even to Hoseok, Jungyoo is the picture of honesty.

“I wonder who sent it,” Hoseok turns to Seokjin, his brow furrowed. “We - we may have a problem.”

“We’ll sort it out back there,” Seokjin murmurs, but his face is set, unfriendly against Jungyoo. “I’d like to know who’s seal was on this command, if you don’t mind.”

“Huinbyeong’s, of course,” Jungyoo says. Yoongi wonders how black the bruising will be; whether his hands are pulling open half-healed cuts and scratches.

“Huinbyeong’s,” Hoseok repeats, humming. “How odd. I want you to stop, do you hear? Stop until we have this business sorted out with the Southerners. These bandits of yours may very well stop their attacking when you stop trying to carve a route through the mountains. We’ll get to the land issue when we get to it.”

“It’s important that we keep exporting,” Jungyoo insists. The meal is endless; Jungyoo’s wife passes Yoongi down a sauce-soaked chicken leg, which he nibbles at, sucking on the grey-white bone after all the meat is gone.

“Export is important, but the sea in the west isn’t blockaded as strongly as in the east. Produce is leaving that way - and we can always ship north from Huinbyeong.”

“Shipping north,” Jungyoo laughs mockingly, “Shipping north? You’ll be killed by rogues. Your grain will sink. The South is starving us out.”

Hoseok hasn’t cracked yet, not really - he keeps the same mild-mannered expression on his face, although every so often his knuckles whiten around the roll of bread in his fist. “I am not going to declare a war with a peaceful ally because of the mistakes of the King.”

“Your father-”

“This is lovely marinade,” Hoseok says with a voice like steel, and the conversation is over. “I must have the recipe sent back with me to Huinbyeong.”

Yoongi gets some bread handed down to him from Jungyoo’s wife, and he rips at it, running a finger between his neck and his collar to loosen some of the pressure. So Hoseok is the Prince, and according to all of these people, Yoongi’s clans are attacking peaceful peasants.

That image is hard to reconcile with Mina and her son, slashed open, bodies wide and drained of blood.

God.

There is a maxim -

“I don’t like this,” Jeongguk says. He’s leaning against Yoongi’s back; they’re out on a hunt, just the two of them, a few months before Mina and her son will be found dead in the remains of the lowland villages. “Do you?”

“Like what?” Yoongi is playing with a loose end of thread hanging from one of his fur bracers.

Jeongguk shrugs restlessly. “There’s no game out, tonight.”

He’s growing into himself - he’ll be taller than Yoongi, over five feet if he’s lucky, and there’s a little jealousy there, but mostly gladness. Yoongi remembers when Jeongguk was thin and scrawny and his head was too big for the rest of him.

“It’s a quiet night. Look, the little bear is twinkling.”

“And the brittlebear.”

They sit and point out constellations, laughing a little, filling the silence of the forest with themselves. Eventually, Jeongguk whispers a maxim under his breath.

“Hyung… they say, they say… that to have a friend in a lonely place, fills your heart with love and peace.”

Love and peace.

None of that to be found amongst these Huinden men and their trades and provinces and servants and castles and kings and princes and warpaint and rock.

Hoseok and Seokjin are diplomatic, he’ll give them that, and the rest of the meal is full of frosty pleasantries and plans for tomorrow - apparently, Jungyoo, Hoseok, Seokjin, and some soldiers are going to saddle up and inspect the borders, the foothills where the clan villages are. Yoongi wonders whether Daesoo and Minhyuk will be there - whether the Min will be keeping Jeongguk out of trouble.

What was it the Min had said?

Do not return until you’ve killed the one responsible.

And that was Jungyoo.

But it could just as easily be -

Yoongi stares up at Hoseok’s face, pulling on the remnants of his roll of bread, wondering -

How much of what Hoseok claims is true. Who, really, gave the order to attack the clans?

And would it stop if Hoseok did?

That night, Jungyoo fucks him hard and deep while his wife sleeps in the bed beside him. Yoongi watches the sweat drip dispassionately down Jungyoo’s chest, and when he comes inside him, Yoongi stops only to snag a fresh apple from the bowl before he goes to the washrooms, cleaning himself as best he can. Jungyoo never cares, once he’s reached the point of orgasm.

The corridors are empty when Yoongi walks back to his room, massaging his throat, his robe undone and billowing around his naked body. It’s late, very late.

And he is thinking about killing -

Well, Jungyoo, as always, and Seohyung, but a new face has entered the fray.

“I don’t trust you,” says Seokjin, leaning against the wall by Yoongi’s room - a clansman is never caught off-guard, and so Yoongi fights down the yelp of shock and fear, and grasps his robe tighter around himself, glaring daggers at the man.

“I don’t,” Seokjin continues. His metallic chainmail glints when he moves. “Your lot… attack. Where did you come from?”

Yoongi doesn’t reply. No point in replying to someone that’s obviously already made up their mind about him.

“And you have another motive for being here,” Seokjin peers at him - peers down, a whole head and a half taller than Yoongi. “Don’t think I can’t see you.”

Yoongi shrugs. “I would like to go to sleep.”

“Why were you wandering around late at night?”

Are they really so stupid? Can’t they see how Jungyoo treats him? “Business,” Yoongi says, gritting his teeth, grinding the human-blunted canines against each other. “I’m wandering on business.”

Eventually, Seokjin moves from the door, and Yoongi fights the urge to lock it - three months in Jungyoo’s care have made him twitchy and jumpy and prone to being overcautious, a habit which Jeongguk would make fun of him mercilessly for, if he knew anything about it.

Yoongi has to work even harder to fall asleep that night than he usually does.

The next morning is his own. “They’re gone already,” Seohyung tells him when Yoongi peeps his head around the door, “And they’re not likely to be back until evening.” She sounds disappointed; Yoongi is overjoyed.  

He has all day, all day to go down to the stables and gather all the earth he can get and feel her, the Earth, under his paws if he’s very lucky - and he doesn’t even have to paint his face, because Jungyoo isn’t going to be back in time to be angry with him.

Ignoring the untreated cut on his cheek (that’s beginning to split open again) and the bruising around his neck and the pain in his shoulder, he practically bolts there.

The horses are all gone from the stalls - the newcomers Hoseok and Seokjin came in with, and Jungyoo’s stallion, and the soft mares and gentle ponies that the farming soldiers use; horses of peacetime, not of war, but that’s what they’re being used for.

(And maybe terror is a better phrase.)

His pile of Earth is still there; the clods from hooves and horseshoes lie strewn about the straw, and he spends an industrious sort of a morning, sorting it out into little piles just to give his hands something to do while he thinks.

He doesn’t reach any kind of satisfactory conclusion.

About anything.

“I want you to eat with us tonight.”

Yoongi freezes, his face turned towards the wall, instantly aware of how many of Jungyoo’s rules he’s breaking. His face isn’t painted - he isn’t wearing shoes - his robe is undone - “I don’t-”

“I want you to eat with us tonight,” Hoseok says again, the sound of leather boots creaking. “Seokjin and I, in our rooms. We find the Long Hall - stuffy.”

“Jungyoo-”

“He’s been told.”

Yoongi swallows, letting his face screw up into a shout of anger, facing the wall where nobody can see him. “So, really, you weren’t asking? I have to go.”

“When you put it like that… yes.” Hoseok, when Yoongi turns around, is leaning against the doorframe, deceptively casual for the most important person in Huindon. “You have to go.”

“And that’s a royal order? Sire?” It’s Minhyuk, probably, speaking through Yoongi and making him hotheaded and angry at nobody and everybody all at once. Minhyuk, Eunkhyun…

Hoseok doesn’t comment on the bare face or the shoes or the robe. “I suppose it is. Come now, please.”

Yoongi considers resisting, but eventually decides against it; there’s no gain in refusing to eat a meal, and it’s suicidal to try and kill Hoseok in the middle of Jungyoo’s castle. He’s - working on his plan. He’ll do the Min proud, and return to the clans knowing he kept them safe.

He sees Hoseok’s eyebrows rise into his hairline when Yoongi ties his robe fast and heads towards the door, barefaced and shoeless, but Yoongi doesn’t answer the unspoken question.

He won’t speak until spoken to. He’ll follow the rules with sullen, disobedient intent.

The Crown Prince and his captain have rooms near Jungyoo’s, and as Yoongi traipses along behind Hoseok, he pretends that Jungyoo’s door doesn’t fill him with white-cold dread - it’s closed, and Hoseok probably -

Wait, what if -

If Hoseok -

Yoongi curls his fists up in the loose fabric by his sides, and although he doesn’t stop walking, he slows down. Hoseok notices. Yoongi knows Hoseok notices, but he doesn’t do anything.

What if -

(There is a maxim that he remembers Eunkyun chanting to Daesoo to calm him down. If all his time is spent on the could-be, the hunter will forget to catch the meat for the now.)

The meat for the now is the meal. Yoongi walks stiffly through the corridors, past Jungyoo’s closed door, and when Hoseok holds the heavy wooden latch open for him, he ducks under his arm with his face schooled into settled, grit neutrality.

Captain Seokjin is sitting on a chair, busy with flashing silver knives and forks, attacking a roasted duck. That at least Yoongi is familiar with.

“Take a seat,” Hoseok says.

Yoongi does. He reaches out for some of the duck, and licks plum sauce off his knuckle, frowning at the fork beside his plate and ignoring it - he’s never eaten with the things, and he’s not about to start now.

Seokjin and Hoseok exchange looks. “So, Min Yoongi,” Hoseok begins, and Yoongi is - surprised, to say the least, that he remembers his name, “Tell me more about the bandit raids.”

To say that is unexpected is the understatement of the century. “Wh…”

Wordlessly, Seokjin pushes the bowl of sliced fruit into the centre of the table, closer to Yoongi’s grasp. Yoongi snatches an apple.

“The bandit raids,” Hoseok prompts. “Tell me about them.”

So Hoseok isn’t looking for him to perform the same duties as he would for Jungyoo, and Yoongi can’t say he isn’t pleased about it. It’s an unpleasant task, one he’d avoid as much as he can. “The - why would you want to?”

“Because you’re the only bandit we’ve been able to see,” Seokjin says, while Hoseok leans back in his chair, huffing in frustration. “We’ve been out all day. We’ve heard movement, but no - none of you.”

Yoongi can’t help but smile into his fist. Minhyuk is hot-headed, but between Chaeyoung and Eunkyun, they ought to have reined him in - and Daesoo, Daesoo is just quiet and peaceful. Jeongguk is a wildcard, but he doesn’t usually do things Yoongi has told him not to. So nobody, then, is in danger so far - the nature of the clan is such that Yoongi can’t help but be close with everyone, and there are hundreds of names in his head, buzzing about, concern for their safety -

He sees Seokjin staring at his smile angrily, and his lips just stretch wider.

“Tell us.”

“What do you want to know?” Encouraged by their inaction, Yoongi finds himself snatching more strips of duck and fruit from the bowl, stripping the bones with his blunted claws and scarfing down plum-saturated meat.

Hoseok is staring at his smile, too. “Everything, please.” He sounds - distracted.

Yoongi shrugs. He won’t tell them anything about the clans that they could use to further -

Mina and her son, bloodless and dying on the forest floor -

He takes another apple quarter.

“Were you injured?” Hoseok prompts. “How did Jungyoo - how did my cousin find you?”

Yoongi shrugs again. “I was separated from my hunting party.” He isn’t going to make any mention of the Min or of Minhyuk or Daesoo or Jeongguk or any of them. Chaeyoung might kill him for it, when he gets home, but he’s been trusted to keep them safe, above all else.

“And the soldiers picked you up?”

Yoongi nods. He’s eaten almost half of the duck on his own, and it’s hardly put a dent in his hunger.

“I find that hard to believe,” Hoseok says - with a start, Yoongi realises he’s using the same mild-mannered tone that he used to talk to Jungyoo in the meal yesterday. Is this diplomacy?

“I didn’t ask you to believe it,” Yoongi says as stolidly as he can with a mouthful of meat, “I just told you what happened.”

“Do you know what you are doing to the kingdom?”

“No.”

“Do you care?” Seokjin butts in, pulling the half-eaten duck away from Yoongi just as he reaches out to swipe it, “Do you care?”

“Why should I?” Yoongi tries again for the duck, his brows screwed up. Why should he?

Hoseok shakes his head. “I don’t think you should care, but - do you know what you’re doing?”

“I don’t think we’re doing anything,” Yoongi says, and reaches for the duck again. Reluctantly, Seokjin pushes it forward.

“The Southern Kingdom have blockaded us,” Hoseok begins, leaning back in his chair, turning his face towards the ceiling, “Blockaded us at sea and at land, over a war that started before any of us were born. Do you know any of this?”

“No,” Yoongi says. Why would I? he resists adding; neither of the two men are eating the duck at all, and so he takes it right in front of him and starts scratching the flimsy strips of birdflesh from the bones, delighting in the moisture that leaks onto his tongue. At the very least, he’s getting good food.

“Then allow me to enlighten you.” Hoseok’s voice is dull and emotionless, his eyes focused on the cracks in the low ceiling. “Thirty-one years ago, the king of Huindon declared war on the Southern Kingdom over a trade deal, yes? Ring any bells?”

Yoongi shakes his head. His fingers are greasy and sticky; he starts licking plum sauce off, wishing he were back with the clans, so he and Jeongguk and Eunkyun could run to the lake and wash.

“Well, the trade deal. Huindon and the Southern Kingdom fought until five years ago - when the king fell sick. Now, we’re trying to work out a peace treaty… and the fighting has stopped, for the most part, but the South hasn’t given up on the trade blockade, so the king decreed that other courses were needed to export out of the country.” Hoseok sighs, turning his gaze downward to Yoongi. “In the South, we’re stuck. In the North, we only have the desert, which is impassable, and the mountains.”

“They’re ours,” Yoongi says, something sick curling up in his gut. “They’re ours. Find some other way. They’re ours.”

“Why are you attacking our people? They’re unarmed. We don’t want to hurt you. We just want a route through the mountains.”

Yoongi thinks of Mina and her son. He thinks of bloodsplattered tree trunks and the bruises on his thighs and the collar of blood around his neck. “Yeah, right.”

Hoseok looks at Seokjin. “We don’t. We just want a route-”

“-Thank you for the food,” Yoongi says abruptly, standing and letting the wooden chair legs scrape angrily across the flagstones. “It was a lovely meal. Now,” and he tips his head to one side, letting the full expanse of his Hoseok-inflicted bruise see the light, “I’m going to go back to my room. I’m sure nobody here would want to hurt me.”

Hoseok’s eyes are dark and angry when they trail Yoongi out of the room, but he doesn’t care.

How dare they.

How -

He and Eunkyun, a few days after Mina’s body was discovered, were hunting brittlebear down in the foothills, where the snow melts into cold forest floor. Eunkyun wandered away - there was five minutes where Yoongi was on his own, sharpening his claws against a rock and wondering where she was - before he heard her yell.

“Eunkyun!” And he was running, barefoot springheel through the bushes and bracken and undergrowth, and the tangy scent of blood was strong in his nose and all he could hear was the thundering of his own heartbeat -

He saw her, standing in a heap of bodies.

Eunkyun had always been tall - taller than Yoongi, taller than Jeongguk, the tallest of them all. Her hair was the dusky red of her mother’s, shorn short just like the rest of the clan, her tail and ears the tabby that the So clan brought in with them. But here, she seemed short, diminished, shadowed.

The men that killed them had piled the bodies up high to make way for a chopped path through the woods. Men, women. All of them familiar to Yoongi - everyone in the clan is familiar to everyone else.

Anger burned through him, and Eunkyun had just been standing there, staring blankly at the black-fur ears of the old man Soo.

So they chased the line of trees, he and Eunkyun both, and Yoongi remembers crying a little bit

tears shed for a brother in need, water the Earth and her crops succeed,

and Eunkyun just looked angry. Angry. Burning burning boiling inside her angry, and when they caught up with the woodsmen and the soldiers and these sharp, steel swords and sharp, steel smiles, they were ready.

The village hadn’t been ready, and that’s how they’d died.

He and Eunkyun were ready, and angry, and Yoongi had felt nothing when he killed them. Just like he was slaughtering a cavern of feral wolfsnakes - he felt nothing, except that he was getting rid of a blight on the side of the mountain. Something that could do no good, and would only kill, and kill, and kill, until culled.

How dare they.

Hoseok and Seokjin stay five days. Every night that Yoongi is called to Jungyoo’s room, he hears them talking in low voices as he passes the door. One memorable night, when his legs hurt too much to stand, he slides down the wall to rest until he can walk; he hears them through the door, although he definitely doesn’t mean to.

“...bring him, get him out of here…”

“...Meiwuko is the most important thing…”

“...I don’t see why we shouldn’t…”

“...but if Jihyung sends an envoy…”

“...trouble in the South…”

“...war, before all this is over…”

“...a feud between you and Jungyoo, or a heart?”

“...let me do something, for godssake…”

Yoongi wrenches himself up and, supporting most of his weight against the wall, he staggers back into his room, with a sick sort of feeling that he knows what they’re talking about.

Hoseok and Seokjin stay five days.

“It’s been a wonderful trip, cousin,” Hoseok says, with enough sweetness that the sarcasm can almost be overlooked. “I’ve enjoyed your input on the current situations, North and South.”

Jungyoo swells with importance, piggy eyes glimmering at Hoseok, his fat hand clutching Yoongi’s wrist, absolutely dwarfing it. Yoongi never used to feel small, back in the clan, but now he does; smaller than everyone in stature and status and pride, now, too. His bones hurt. There are bruises everywhere.

“I’ve enjoyed my stay, too,” Seokjin bows with a little - not a lot - more courtesy than Hoseok. They’re already in riding leathers, swords slung at their hips, and Yoongi knows that their horses - big, speedy stallions that try to outdo all the quieter mares and geldings and foals in the stalls. “Thank you very much.”

And that’s to be that, then. Yoongi can feel his chance to do the Min justice slipping dangerously though his fingers, and he doesn’t know what to do.

“I hope you’ll heed my advice, then. A contingency force,” Jungyoo squeezes tighter - Yoongi wonders whether he’ll actually break something, this time. They’re meeting in the Long Hall, cleared of food, but Yoongi is still here with chain and cushion and all, invisible to the world.

“A contingency force,” Hoseok repeats, his smile a farce on his face. “Well. We’ll see.”

There’s a long silence.

Jungyoo presses a sharpened thumb-ring into Yoongi’s skin, just to relieve the tension, and Yoongi feels the hot, sticky wetness trickling past his skin. Hoseok and Seokjin are waiting for something. Something Jungyoo is reluctant to give them.

“Before you leave, I should ask you to ask a gift of me,” Jungyoo says at last, the words torn from his throat against his will.

Hoseok beams. “I’ll have him, thanks.”

Nobody bothers telling Yoongi to pack his belongings, and he doesn’t have any, in any case. The chargers - two stallions, one snow-white and the other jet-black, are saddled and snorting in the cold morning air of the yard. Yoongi isn’t given riding clothes.

Seokjin takes the collar off, and when his knuckle grazes the bruising there, the pale sunless skin, Yoongi flinches far sharper than he’d meant to. Seokjin frowns, but says nothing.

And he can’t get onto the horse. They haven’t provided a third one for him, and he doesn’t know how to ride, in any case, and before he’d been let to follow Seokjin and Hoseok, Jungyoo had pulled him aside and slapped him so hard his cheek went straight into numb, skipping burning, and the cut there reopened again. It will definitely scar.

“Here,” Hoseok is surprisingly gentle when he puts his hands around Yoongi’s waist, lifting him into the saddle. “Ride in front of me.”

Yoongi doesn’t know what to do with his hands, or his feet, but he’s not given much time to think about it - Hoseok slots his heeled boot into the stirrups and hauls himself into the saddle behind Yoongi, his arms closing around Yoongi’s waist to grasp the reins, to pull at straps and adjust buckles and wait for the fumble of the drawbridge to drop.

Seokjin is on the white. Hoseok (and Yoongi) are on the black.

Yoongi wonders whether he’s died during the night, and this is some strange fever dream before the Earth comes to claim him as a stickshrine spirit. He wonders when it’ll be over.

Jungyoo comes to see them off. Yoongi pretends not to see him.

And then they’re riding, and everything is wind and goodness and the whipping of the sun against his face -

Yoongi has missed air, air, clean air and sweet air, and although his whole body hurts, he turns his face to the sun and closes his eyes and imagines himself back at home, Jeongguk stroking his ears, the Min telling them all stories about the Earth and the little people of the stickshrines and -

And the horses are fast.

In no time, the horizon swallows Jungyoo’s castle. They’re riding over a long stretch of farmland and peasant hamlets, following a wide, empty dirt road. Hoseok keeps breathing in his ear; keeps huffing to himself and rising out of the saddle every half-beat, matching the horse - Yoongi doesn’t know what to do, or how to do it, so he just stays put.

Hoseok and Seokjin seem to be wordlessly racing.

Nobody says anything, and there are no stops, until nightfall.

And then Hoseok deposits a pack of leathers and furs at Yoongi’s feet - they’ve stopped to make camp and Yoongi flings the slip-shoes as far away as he can - and folds his arms. “Go.”

Yoongi stares at the leathers, and then at Hoseok, and then at Seokjin, building a fire beside the mounded saddlebags they’re going to use to sleep on. “What?”

“Go. Jungyoo is a bastard. No matter who you are, and how bad your people have treated mine-” Yoongi’s blood boiling - “No matter. Go. Jungyoo is a - a real bastard.”

Yoongi remembers what the Min said.

Do not return until you’ve killed the one responsible.

Chapter 3: The Moon in the Morning

“The Earth is not a god, although it is easy to mistake it for that, as I did. They do not treat the Earth as something to be prayed to. They treat the Earth as though she is alive, and maybe she is, and she cares for them as they care for her.”

- excerpt from “Clans”, a series of articles written by the Royal Advisor

Yoongi throws the slip-shoes away when they stop, right before Hoseok dumped the leathers at his bare feet. He can feel the Earth below him, welcoming him back, and it’s the calmest he’s felt in the three months since he left her. She tells him she’s glad to feel him back; he wriggles his toes into the soil a little further. “Why do you want me to go?”

“I-” Hoseok’s eyes seem fixed on the dirt and soil caressing the arch of Yoongi’s foot. “Because you aren’t meant to be here.”

“I’m a pleasure slave,” and god, with the Earth underneath him again, Yoongi is back home. She’ll tell them all he’s alive, still, and she’ll reassure Jeongguk and Daesoo, and she’ll stop Eunhyun and Minhyuk from doing anything stupid, and she’ll help Chaeyoung and and she’ll -

the Min -

do not return until -

The smile falls from his face.

“You were a pleasure slave,” Hoseok says the words like they pain him, “And you were Jungyoo’s, in any case. I - I’m getting rid of the traditions of my father’s time, and Jungyoo is… just another tradition.”

“I’m a tradition, then, and you want to get rid of me because of what I represent,” Yoongi says, a little harshly. Seokjin has set up the fire next to where the two horses are gently grazing - he guesses they must have travelled far, far enough to be miles away from Jungyoo’s castle, and from the smell of the fire, Seokjin is roasting something. They are (they are) still royal travellers, even if they aren’t travelling with the ceremony and processions Jungyoo might do.

“I’m telling you to go because you obviously don’t want to be here, and you were taken against your will,” Hoseok says through gritted teeth. He turns on the heel of his boot. “So go.”

When Yoongi is sure Hoseok has stomped back down to the campfire, he flings his robe off as fast as he possibly can. Sky-blue and white, peace and purity, and he grinds it into the dirt, jumping up on down on it until it’s rumpled and muddy brown and ripped and torn and unwearable ever, ever again. His throat hurts, and the cut on his cheek has barely scabbed over, not to mention the one on his wrist, but he doesn’t -

“I don’t care,” he tells the robe, feeling stiff in his throat. “I don’t.”

His tail’s been free. It stands, curving, black, almost as long as his torso, before he wraps it around his upper thigh.

To look at, Yoongi has never been anything particularly exceptional. He’s smaller than the usual, which is smaller again than the humans, with furred, pointed black ears parting his mop of black hair - a little too long, after three months without claws to cut it. Snow-stolen skin as pale as the weather in the mountains. Blood-pink lips. Green eyes, the part of him most like the cats that they resemble; green and slitted, a brown iris around a black slit, the strangest hybrid between human and feline of the whole lot.

His tattoos are simple, too. Yoon-Gi-Min, on his back, and a brittlebear paw on his chest; his first kill. The skeletal outline of wingflesh claws on his shoulder-blades. The sizzle of the Earth. A stickshrine spiral. His mother’s hieroglyph; his father’s. The Min’s. (His grandfather’s.)

Nothing very exceptional. The only thing that makes Yoongi important is that he’s the first of his kind that Hoseok is ever seen -

That, and the Earth.

(The Earth talks to him.)

The Earth talks to everyone, of course, he’s not particularly special in that way, but he’s the son of the daughter of the Min, who in his turn was the son of the daughter of the daughter of the son of the daughter of the -

And so on, until it trails back to the person that built the first stickshrine, high in the mountains. Someday, Yoongi’ll be the Min.

The Earth feels cool when he lies down on her, skin against soil, bronze skiplets of light flooding through his skin. He bites the sleeve of the robe, although his canines aren’t getting any sharper, and it’s impossible to rip - then, he gets dressed as best he can from the dregs of the oversized furs and leathers. Hoseok is bigger and broader than Yoongi, with no holes for tails - in the end, Yoongi ends up fashioning a sort of wraparound thing, and tearing the bottoms off the trousers, and draping a fur jacket around his shoulders like a short cloak. His tail flickers out behind him, free, and his ears are perked-up (although he doesn’t trust himself to remove the ball piercings) and his feet are bare.

He feels more like himself again.

Do not return until -

And then he gathers the robe, sky-blue and white, in his arms, and he marches down to the fire.

“I thought you were gone!”

“No,” Yoongi says, dumping the rich fabric on the flames, smiling in satisfaction to see it blacken and ash, “No, I’m not.”

Seokjin glares at him over the fire. “Why?”

“Because I can’t find my way home from here,” Yoongi sits down opposite them both, blinking lazily to see them avoid his inhuman eyes, “And because I don’t want to. You have a duty. You’re the Prince.”

“I’m the Prince of Huindon, not of any other land,” Hoseok snaps back. He’s got a chicken leg held daintily between index and finger and thumb; Yoongi wonders where the rest of the chicken’s gone, if there’s any left.

“Huindon, sure, but you asked for me. You took me, and you could have taken anything else. Makes me your responsibility.”

Seokjin says nothing. Hoseok rips into the chicken angrily. “You’re - why? What sort of purpose would it serve, staying with us?”

“I want to see the world, call it that,” Yoongi says, digging his blunted claws into the Earth - wondering when they’ll grow back. “And you’ve taken me miles from the miles that’re miles from where my home is. How could I possibly find my way back?”

In the end, Hoseok thrusts the half-eaten chicken leg at him and stomps off into the bushes. Seokjin sighs.

“I still don’t trust you.”

“And I don’t trust you,” Yoongi says, suckling on the bone just to give his mouth something to do, “And yet here we are.”

“You do know how to get back to the bandits.”

“No, I don’t.”

Seokjin’s glare could kill. “We don’t have to take you.”

Yoongi smiles, settling in, his back to the blackness of the night. “But you’re going to. Honour, and all that.”

“You wouldn’t know anything about it.”

And that’s a lie, but Yoongi himself is a lie, and he doesn’t care anyway. The Min told him to - not return until he’d - to -

And that’s what he’s going to do. Mina and her son, lying on the ground, and Eunhyun standing next to a pile of bodies, and the sobbing screeching screaming of people who never expected to be attacked, getting slaughtered in their droves just for a trade route.

The Earth is burning with fury, and so is Yoongi.

The next morning, he wakes with the sun and the clouds and the Earth. The fire is dead, and the men and horses are sleeping; Seokjin holds the pommel of a dagger in his clenched-shut fist, but he doesn’t move as Yoongi gets up, silent and stealthy as a wolfsnake in the nest.

Finding water is easy, for someone like Yoongi.

The Earth and the sparkling bronze within her - Yoongi feels the tingle in his tail, the shocks through his bare feet, and he’s walking idly towards where he knows the water will be. Down the hill they’ve made camp at, through the bushes and long grass, there’s a slim shimmer; not a spring, like Yoongi might be used to, but water nonetheless -

The Earth and the sparkling bronze within her settles down. He kneels, tail straight out behind him to help him balance, scooping earthy water into his cupped palms, lapping it up with his tongue. The freedom of -

The freedom of the open ground, so -

So -

Before Jungyoo and the castle, Yoongi never really realised the freedom of the open ground. (Or the wood, or the mountains, or the grass.) Now, he doesn’t think he’ll ever spend a day without thanking the Earth for all of it.

Water is good. He watches freshwater shrimp wriggle their way through his fingers, and the stuff he laps up is cleanish and muddyish and freeish of life. He was thirstier than he realised after the chicken.

In no real hurry to get back up to them - the sun has only just risen, and men are slow risers - Yoongi lies on his back in the mud, staring up into the sky. Birds swirl ahead; not wingflesh, no, ‘cause they’re up in the mountains… these are buzzards, screeching things, looking for mice or rabbits or something, wheeling about with nothing but cold calculation, hunting for things that are too shocked, too small, to possibly be able to fight back.

Eventually Yoongi tugs himself off the ground and wanders back to the camp at the top of the hill.

Hoseok and Seokjin are awake, and he can tell by the surprise and annoyance on their faces that they’d definitely expected him to have scarpered, by now. They’re eating. Yoongi doesn’t ask if there’s any for him.

Hoseok and Seokjin talk in low, quiet voices, rolling up bedrolls and strapping, buckling saddlebags back onto the two horses that stand pawing ready; Yoongi stares at his blunt claws and wonders when they’ll grow back, and ignores the two men as best he can. On the breeze, he smells something dead, and it’s probably a rabbit or something, but all he can see is Mina and her son -

“Are you coming, or not?” Hoseok says impatiently, looking down at him from the height of the saddle.

Yoongi struggles and kicks himself for it, but Hoseok doesn’t say anything when he picks Yoongi up, lifting him as easily as a child’s doll and settling him back in the place he rode yesterday, between Hoseok’s chest and the horse’s neck, right where the - the nub? the hard bit of the saddle chafes against his legs, although it’s better now he isn’t wearing that ridiculous robe.

“Where did you go?”

The question comes a mile or so into their journey, just as Yoongi is falling into the free, unthinking gait of the ride. “I - what?”

“Where did you go,” Hoseok repeats, the words hot on the back of Yoongi’s neck. “This morning.”

Yoongi shivers, looking across the green, grassy land. “To get water. Did you think I’d gone for good?”

“Of course I did.”

“I just wanted water.”

“You could have asked me or Jin-hyung for some,” Hoseok shifts a little in the saddle, his sword belt rattling against the metallic straps on the saddlebags, “The water isn’t safe to drink around here.”

“And you’d have given it to me?”

“Of course I would.”

Yoongi huffs. “Well, I didn’t know that, did I?”

“I thought… that that would have been pretty obvious.”

Yoongi rolls his eyes, safe in the knowledge that it’s invisible to Hoseok. “Where I come from, it’s a given that we share and make sure everyone has enough. But you? You and your - facepaint, and your horses, and your castles. How was I meant to know? I thought you’d want me to lie down and-”

Hoseok presses his spurs into the horse’s flanks before Yoongi can finish his sentence, and the wind angrily whips the words away before Yoongi can let them escape.

Which is fine.

Yoongi knows now, after three months spent in their presence, that all humans are basically the same.

His claws aren’t -

On the second night, it’s been five days since Yoongi’s claws have been filed, and by now they should be long and pointed and curved, the sort of weapon he can use to tear and bite and rip and kill. He’d been -

His claws aren’t growing back.

When he probes his canines with the tip of his tongue, hoping against hope, despite all evidence to the contrary, he finds them slightly slightly sharper; sharp enough to draw blood, but not half like they used to be.

His claws aren’t growing back. He’s broken.

Fist clenched, shoulders shaking, Yoongi stares through the darkness of their camp, fixing on Seokjin’s back, on Hoseok’s profile as they bend together, talking in low voices. Talking as though nothing’s wrong, and as though they haven’t ruined everything, as though Yoongi hasn’t just realised that he’s broken beyond repair. Because of them. Because of him, because of him, because of him, Jungyoo, and above Jungyoo, Hoseok, and it’s because of them that Yoongi will never sink his claws into wingflesh, will never hunt with Jeongguk for brittlebear, will never, will never -

He shoves his fist into his mouth before he lets himself scream.

Never, never -

Never -

Crying isn’t an alien concept to Yoongi, and before Jungyoo, he did it quite a lot - he cried at Mina and her son, and he cried at Eunhyun when she said she loved Daesoo, and he cried when the Min was sick and looked like he might die, and he cried when Jeongguk fell out of that tree and cut his shoulder against a rock. In Jungyoo’s castle, crying felt like defeat, so he didn’t do it.

He’s crying now. Hot salt running over his nose and his cheeks, and dripping off the end of his chin, he’s crying, because his claws aren’t growing back, and Jungyoo’s defeated him.

He wants to go home more than anything he’s ever wanted in the world. If he was home, Jeongguk would be there to hug him, and Chaeyoung would be there to call him an idiot and ruffle his hair, and Minhyuk would be there to propose a hunt, and Daesoo would be there to calm Eunhyun down, and they’d all be there to - just to be there.

With Hoseok and Seokjin, Yoongi is very desperately alone.

And his claws aren’t growing back.

The Min told him. How is he meant to do that, when he hasn’t got any -

“Yoongi?”

“What?” Yoongi croaks, his eyes squeezed shut, hoping against hope that Hoseok’s night vision has been shattered by the fire, and that he can’t see or hear or know or anything - about the tears. “What is it?”

“It’s a cold night,” Hoseok says softly, “And we wondered whether you’d want a bedroll.”

“I’m fine.”

Hoseok leaves him alone, then, which is nice enough. Yoongi sniffles into the night, staring at the greyscale greenscale landscape around him, changing now that he’s relying only on the strength of his eyes to see the world.

“You’ll be cold,” Seokjin says after a while. A massive wool blanket lands with a thump on Yoongi’s head. “You’ll be cold, and we had one to spare anyway. Don’t think too much about it.”

With blunted claws (fingers) (hands) Yoongi pulls it off his head, scowling owlishly up at Seokjin - he, at least, has the grace to look a little ashamed. “I told you - the other one, I told him I was fine.”

“You’re tiny, and it’s freezing, and you don’t have a bedroll and you’re not close to the fire and I can see you shaking from here,” Seokjin holds up a finger for every point he makes, one hand resting on his hip; Yoongi can see Hoseok, back pointedly turned, from the other side of the fire. Seokjin kneels, knees cracking. “Accept it,” he whispers, lower this time.

“Why?” Although the wool is nice and soft, sheep’s wool; trapping the heat of Yoongi’s skin back into it, and keeping out the chill of the wind.

Seokjin sighs. “Because this journey is long. And if you keep -”

“-This is a blanket to try and get me to stop being so bandit,” Yoongi guesses wryly.

Seokjin narrows his eyes. “I told you not to think too much about it. Just come to the fire and sleep.”

Yoongi does. He cries into his elbow, still, because his claws aren’t growing back and he’s so, so, so very sick of humans, but he does it next to the fire, wrapped in a woollen blanket up to his ears, leaving only his tail free to swish from side to side - a natural sensor for the dangers of the night.

“Have you ever heard of Huinbyeong?”

On the third day, they cross a border, and the mountains cease even to be a silhouette in the distance - apparently, they’re crossing across from Jungyoo’s province into someone called Shikyuk’s. Seokjin is leading, now, and the ground is muddier and marshier and there are less trees and hills, more bogs and ditches and a myriad network of streams, puddles, and rivers. It’s colder, too; a different sort of cold to the cold Yoongi is used to up the mountains. This is a leeching, sucking sort of cold, wet and thick, and he wraps himself in the wool bedroll even when he’s riding in front of Hoseok, just to keep the wind from whipping the blood through his skin.

“Huinbyeong? Yes, a little,” Yoongi says slowly. He stares at his blunt claws, splayed out on the shorn-short mane of the horse. How will he do it?

“It’s where we’re going. Huinbyeong,” Hoseok sighs, a little dreamier than usual. “White Walls. Have you ever seen the sea?”

Yoongi snorts. “What age do you think I am? I know it’s not real.”

“I -” Hoseok has to stop as the ground becomes muddier, and all attention is on finding an easy gait that won’t end up with the stallion bucking the both of them off. “What do you mean?”

“The sea’s a fairy story.” How will he do it with no claws?

Hoseok laughs. Not meanly, or anything; just in surprise. “No it’s not! There’s a big, big stretch of land that sticks into it, and Huinbyeong is built on that, and the White Walls are built right on the edge. They’re built out of the cliff.”

“You live in the White Walls?” Yoongi guesses. Hoseok doesn’t strike him as the sort to lie for entertainment, but the sea is a fairy story, and a popular one at that. He remembers being smaller, and he and Jeongguk sitting at the feet of Jeongguk’s mother and begging her to tell them all about the ocean and the big wooden trees that they carve and hollow to float on top of the water.

“The White Walls is what they call the castle,” Hoseok says, instinct making him grasp tighter to Yoongi as the two horses stagger across a muddier piece of land. “I only live in a little part of it. Huinbyeong is the best place in the world.”

Yoongi chuckles a little at that.

“What’s so funny?”

“You, thinking that’s the best place in the world,” Yoongi folds his claws into his palms, unwilling to look at them much longer. “Have you ever been in the mountains? Up high, where the Earth is all around you? I used to - with my - with Jeongguk, we would go, and dig ourselves into the snow and it’s beautiful up there. Everything is white and grey and the Earth.”

“Jeongguk?”

“My -” Yoongi falters, because he’s never had to put a label to what Jeongguk is to him. “My brother, I suppose. We used to hunt together.”

“Hunt what?” Hoseok’s grip is getting tighter on the reins, and when Yoongi realises what he thinks Yoongi’s inferring -

His laugh is humorless. “Not you lot. We’d hunt brittlebear and wingflesh. Wolfsnakes, if there was a den of them nearby. The Earth keeps us safe, anyway.”

“When would you hunt humans?”

“We wouldn’t,” Yoongi snaps. He stares longingly into the distance, at the place he knows the mountains to be, miles and miles and miles away. “We - we wouldn’t. The humans hunt us. We just… like to be left alone.”

“I gave you the chance to be left alone and you didn’t take it,” Hoseok reminds him; the atmosphere, once relaxed, has frosted over once again. Seokjin isn’t riding close enough to hear the conversation, but Yoongi almost wishes he was, just so that the two humans could talk among themselves and he could go back to mourning all the things that allowed him to hunt.

Maybe it’s bitterness at that that bites at Yoongi’s next reply. “Yeah, and long I’d have lasted. I wasn’t lying. I don’t know how to get back home and - and I don’t have my claws-”

Hoseok doesn’t say anything until they stop to camp again that night, miles deep into Shikyuk’s province - Seokjin tells him that they hope to avoid the castle altogether, otherwise they’ll be held back another week or so.

“Where did your claws go?”

Yoongi stops, already a few feet away from the central fire, the Earth below him and his tail swishing in the search for water. “What?”

Hoseok stands up, hands in his tunic pocket, and repeats the question, and he has the audacity to look confused while he does so.

But Yoongi is tired.

So he lets Hoseok fall into step beside him - something he really, really, would never do.

“We hunt with our teeth and our claws,” Yoongi says. Under his paws, the Earth tickles and prickles in bronze spurts, and he changes direction, heading for the steepest downhill slope. “Once I killed a wingflesh beast - I jumped out of a tree when it was flying past us, and I grabbed onto its body and I bit its neck until it snapped and then we all ate it for dinner. That’s how we hunt. That’s how we survive.”

Hoseok doesn’t ask if that’s how Yoongi’s been killing his people, and Yoongi is overwhelmingly grateful.

“When - when I - when Jungyoo came,” Yoongi bites down on the phantom hands on his jaw, the file prising his lips apart, “When I went to the castle, I tried to slash them and bite them, and I won’t pretend that I didn’t. They said I was too dangerous, so they - there was this metal thing, and they filed - my claws down, so they look like yours,” Hoseok’s clutching his hands into white-knuckled fists, “So they looked like yours, and they made my teeth - took them away, and I thought it would grow back. I was hoping they would grow back.”

“And they haven’t,” Hoseok says in the quiet as Yoongi catches his breath. It’s the longest he’s spoken in a long time.

“No. No, they haven’t.”

“I’m. I’m sorry about that.” To Yoongi’s surprise, Hoseok really sounds as though he is. “Jungyoo… he’s part of my father’s generation. The kind that would go to war on anything that moves. I - at the moment, I’m trying to - trying to get rid of them…”

Yoongi bites back the retort on the tip of his tongue. “So if you had come across me, and you had to decide what to do with my claws-”

“I’d have killed you, or I would’ve let you go.”

“That’s good.”

“It is?” Hoseok is less sure in the dark, not as confident with his sight; he stumbles over muddy molehills and clods of grassy earth. “You’d rather I killed you?”

“There’s a maxim in my clan that I hardly remember, but… I think it goes like this. To die without honour is to live without pride, and to live without pride is to live and not die. There’s a hole, there,” Yoongi steps over it, guiding Hoseok too.

Hoseok hums. “So, what does that mean?”

“It means that you have to live no matter what, even if your honour and pride is gone. But - I know, even with that maxim, that I’d rather die with my honour than without it.” Yoongi smiles proudly when he sees the stream, running lengthways through the muddy fields. The Earth smiles too, underneath him, warm and kind.

“So...  your clan. Is that where you live?”

“My clan is your Huinbyeong,” Yoongi says quietly. He kneels, running his fingertips through the cool water, gesturing for Hoseok to do the same - and surprised when he does so. “My clan is my home and my family and - it all.”

“But that isn’t my Huinbyeong.” Hoseok follows Yoongi’s lead, submersing his large hands into the muddy stream. “My clan, it’s my friends and my advisors and I could take them out of Huinbyeong and be as happy with them as I am in the White Walls. Home isn’t a place-”

“Home is people,” Yoongi finishes. He wonders whether it was dumb luck, that Hoseok ended up quoting the first half of a maxim of the clan. “Home is people.”

“You want to go home.”

“More than anything.”

Hoseok sighs, sinking up to his wrists; Yoongi watches Earth fold over his skin. “Then why don’t you go?”

“I have obligations that need to be - need to be done,” Yoongi feels the water beginning to change, just as the Earth commands it, “And home is people, and I haven’t left all the people behind.” As if on cue, the Earth shimmers, and the water freezes and clears and Yoongi laps it neatly from his wrist, grinning a little smugly at Hoseok. Beat that.

Hoseok gapes. “What-”

“It’s the Earth.”

“The Earth?”

“The water’s good. Better than that horse-shit. Try some.”

And so he and Hoseok sit, scooping cool mouthfuls from palm to tongue, and Yoongi almost forgets that his claws aren’t growing in.

Seokjin is an enigma.

“I was born here,” he explains; Yoongi has transferred to ride with him, to give Hoseok’s horse time to relax. They’re going sixty, maybe seventy miles every day, and only stopping at nightfall to eat and sleep, racing past grass and forests and villages, and castles and towns and hamlets. “I was the son of one of Shikyuk’s guards, back when Hoseok was only a baby, and his father was the ruling king.”

“Here-here?” Yoongi waves an expansive arm, then almost overbalances in the saddle. “Woah-”

Seokjin’s hand steadies him, and there’s a friendly laugh, most of the mistrust vanished with the companionship of the ride. “Not right here, no. I was born in Shikyuk’s castle. But I know enough about the place. There’s a marsh, south-west of here, that they say is haunted, and Shikyuk’s castle is built near it.”

“That’s how you know your way through.”

He feels, rather than sees, Seokjin’s nod. “And when I was fifteen, I was already a Captain of Shikyuk’s guard. That’s how I met Hoseok. He was twelve, then.”

Yoongi is curious, and he can’t deny it. But he keeps his lips shut, his vision turned forwards, determined that any extended hand of friendship will come firmly from Seokjin, and not from him.

Seokjin sighs. “He tried to kill me, and then I tried to kill him, and that’s what we did for the entirety of his stay in Shikyuk’s province. It was so much fun that, when the King was about to leave, I latched onto the underside of their carriage and followed them all the way to Huinbyeong.”

Yoongi, despite himself, laughs. “You - that’s impressive.”

And Seokjin laughs too. “Well, I tried. The King would have killed me, but Hoseok insisted I become the Captain of his personal guard.”

“And - and here you are?”

“And here I am.”

Hoseok is watching them curiously, Yoongi realises with a start. The Earth bronzes along below them, a comforting watch, and it’s easy to forget what the Min told him he had to do. Far too easy to forget, when he’s got the image in his head, a gangly Hoseok arguing with some faceless King, telling him that the only person he’d have for the captain of his guard was this boy, this sneak on the underside of a carriage, some marshboy with a suit of armour and a handful of wits.

It makes Yoongi smile.

Seokjin is an enigma, but less of a one.

On the fifth day, they cross from the province full of marshes and coldness and mud into another one - and by now they’ve joined a dirt track road, although they ride parallel to it, never on it. “People recognise the Prince,” Seokjin explains, chewing on gristle from the night’s meal, “They recognise him from the tapestries and things. And this road only really leads to Huinbyeong, where everyone goes to appeal to him for various things. If they find him on the road, they would - mob him, or kill him, or refuse to let him travel until he’s done what they want for him.”

“There is a maxim,” Yoongi murmurs, “That the only people afraid to use the path are the ones that paved it and the ones that steal from it.”

“A clan maxim?” Hoseok asks, close to his ear, smelling of freshwater and horse and wine. “They seem to be everywhere, Yoongi.”

They seem to be everywhere, Yoongi.

“There are maxims for the times in life where we seem to need them,” Yoongi says as haughtily as he dares, his heart beating fast in his chest. “Where did you come from?”

Hoseok grins. “Trying to see how hard it is to catch you off your guard.”

“Hard?”

“Extremely so.”

Yoongi beams, not bothering to wonder why Hoseok seems suddenly so fixated on his face. “In my clan, I was the best at the watch. They said I could see anything.”

“The moon in the morning?”

“What?”

Hoseok laughs, folding up to sit beside Yoongi, their knees barely knocking. “It’s something my old nurse used to say, when I was telling her about training to be a soldier. I’d come in, all excited, and be all you’ll never guess how many targets I saw! and she’d say that when I could shoot the moon in the morning, then I’d be able to see everything.”

“If you’d set sights on the moon, would you have shot it?” Yoongi wraps his arms around his knees, looking side - and up - at Hoseok’s profile.

Hoseok shrugs. “I think I’d have left it. The man in the moon looks too friendly for me to shoot.”

“If you’d set sights on me-”

“I wouldn’t shoot,” Hoseok says firmly, before Yoongi can even get the words out. “I think I’d have waited. My - that was the other thing she always used to say. Don’t be hasty. Wait and wait and wait, and only let go when you think it’s going to be worth it. Oh, my archery instructor used to hate her.”

“You listened to her over him?” Yoongi looks up into the night sky, at the moon and the stars beaming.

Hoseok nods. “She was more sensible.”

“She sounds it.”

Seokjin hollers to them from the fire, and when Hoseok extends a hand to help Yoongi up, Yoongi takes it almost before realising that he shouldn’t.

He still takes it.

The Min said -

“Wake up,” someone’s whispering, and then shaking his shoulder, and Yoongi is jumping up and attacking because he’s being attacked, he’s slashing throats with his claws and wrapping his tail around the forearm of the thing -

Except all he’s doing is thrashing about inside the woollen blanket, the end of his tail clutching Hoseok by the wrist. Yoongi snarls. “What are you doing?!”

“Waking you up,” Hoseok replies, goodwill melting off his face, replaced with annoyance. “I was going to show you how to -”

“Don’t do it again.” Yoongi feels bare and naked without his claws, he already knew that, but now that he’s out of Jungyoo’s castle and in the open, he truly feels how much he’s missing without them. An integral part of his body is gone, and what does he have to show for it?

Hoseok shakes Yoongi’s tail off his arm, taking a few steps back, his eyes narrowed. “I was going to offer to show you how to use a sword.”

“A -”

What did the Min say -

Dumbly, Yoongi stands up. “Why?”

“Because Jungyoo had no right to do what he did, and because - because you might be a bandit, but you aren’t one right now,” Hoseok says, but he’s still angry. It’s there in his voice and his shoulders and his eyes, staring at Seokjin across the camp from them. “We might be enemies, but there’s still six days ‘til we reach Huinbyeong-”

“And what are you going to do with me there? Give me to the King and tell him to do what he wants with me?”

“No,” Hoseok says. Yoongi hears the grit in his teeth.

“Public execution? Oh, oh!” Yoongi knows he’s being provocative, but he doesn’t care, “Oh! Are you gonna turn me into the streets? Get your nurse to shoot the moon at me?”

“No!” Hoseok yells across the fire. Seokjin, packing up the saddlebags, freezes but doesn’t turn around. “No, you stupid, stupid, stupid cat, I’m not - going to do that! I am not like you!”

Ringing across the sky, the words sear into the horizon.

I am not like you.

“I’m not like you, either,” Yoongi says coldly. His hands burn where he presses his blunted claws into the skin of his palms. “So teach me how to fight like you do, seeing as how you’ve taken that away, too.”

I am not like you!

The camp is as silent as the grave.

Seokjin cuts two birch switches out of the bushes, and that’s all they are. Long, untamed trees, stripped of their twigs, as straight as they could find. Hoseok, silent, fury-bitten, shows him footwork and sword-work and why it’s bad form to strike the edge of a blade, and why the clash of the flat is good, but not needed when all that swordfighting is for is to plunge the metal into the body holding the other sword.

Long, bloodied gashes. Mina and her son. Minhyuk’s fury.

It soon becomes apparent just how much of an advantage Yoongi’s tail is. With it, he’s able to misdirect Hoseok’s gaze; able to balance expertly on the balls of his feet; able to dart like a minnow and whack his stick against Hoseok’s ribs.

Again. And again. And again.

(Receiving his own fair share, bruises and knocks, knocks and bruises.)

“Good,” Seokjin says softly, when the sun is rising high in the sky. “Well done, Yoongi.”

Hoseok mops the sweat from his brow and glares at Yoongi, and Yoongi glares right back.

The scarring cut on his cheek is scabbed over now; by unspoken agreement, it’s Hoseok’s turn to have Yoongi ride in front of him, and as he’s helped into the saddle, nursing his bruised body and bruised - bruised feelings, or something, he picks at the flakes of blood on his skin.

“Don’t do that,” Hoseok says stiffly, like it pains him. “You’ll - you’ll make it worse.”

Silently, Yoongi lets his hand fall.

He knows that Hoseok can see the stripe of bruises fading across his throat, as a reminder that Hoseok is not like him. Hoseok is not like him, and that’s a good thing - if Yoongi were like the humans are, he’d be too ashamed to show his face.

(And, despite everything, Hoseok is-)

Yoongi brushes flakes of blood away from his cheek, chipping away at the silvery scar, and this time Hoseok doesn’t say anything.

“Again!”

The sound of metal on metal is different

“Again!”

to the sound of wood against wood, which is different

“Again!”

from the sound of metal against flesh, which is different

“Again!”

to the sound of claws in flesh.

Sweat drips down Yoongi’s face, but he doesn’t bother to wipe it away. Dusk on the sixth day, just as the twilight is fading into the darkness, and Hoseok’s outburst has faded in the memory of everybody but Yoongi. “Again!” He calls, whipping his tail behind him, waving the hip-dagger Seokjin has lent him for the time being. “Again!”

“It’s too dark,” Hoseok huffs, bent over his knees. “Tomorrow morning.”

“It’s not too dark for me,” Yoongi tips his head back until he’s sure the light of the fire will be flickering over his pupils, grinning when he sees Hoseok flinch away. “I could keep going until the sun rises again.”

“But some of us prefer to rest,” says Hoseok pointedly, sheathing his sword before beginning to unbuckle the belt. “It’s a long ride to Huinbyeong, and - well, we’re coming into Junghyun’s province now. I’ll tell you about it tomorrow, if you like.”

It’s an olive branch - Yoongi sees the offer for what it is.

Handing the hip-dagger back to Seokjin, he shrugs. “If you want to.”

Which isn’t much. But it is something.

“Junghyun and I used to play in the White Walls, when we were younger,” Hoseok says, hoofprints beating the empty road as Seokjin and Hoseok race, Yoongi shook to pieces where he’s clinging to Hoseok’s saddle. “He’s - he’s a good leader, as far as they go. Do you see that?”

That turns out to be a large expanse of water, a lake, puddling in the valleys far below, although Yoongi can’t see the other side of it from where they’re racing. “Is that-” his heart swells for a second, “Is that the sea?”

“The sea? Oh, god, no,” Hoseok chuckles, “No, that’s Kehun-bada. Junghyun’s whole province is built around it. We get most of our fish and things from here, now that the South’s put a trade block on our ships off Huinbyeong’s harbours.”

“So… the sea is bigger?” Yoongi stares in fascination at the fog-collected water.

“Way bigger. So big that nobody’s ever sailed to the other end of it.”

“Quit making fun of me.”

“I’m not!” Hoseok laughs again, and i am not like you! seems a mile away, in the fresh air as they thud alongside a puddling sea. It’s almost, but not quite, easy to forget, after lakes and horses and metal against metal until the sun sets.

Yoongi resists the urge to relax his back and give his aching shoulders a rest against Hoseok’s chest. “So… these provinces, they’re all ruled? By you?”

“By the King,” Hoseok says. Then he sighs. “But by me in practice. My father is… sick, very sick, and he’s been very sick for a long time now. He can’t rule on his deathbed, and so I’m doing it.”

“Why doesn’t Jungyoo like you?”

Hoseok laughs again, but tightly. “Jungyoo? What makes you think-”

“It doesn’t take a genius to see when two of you don’t like each other.” Yoongi feels himself slipping, and has to grab onto Hoseok’s wrist to right himself, letting go as soon as he’s secure. “So, why doesn’t he?”

“He - some of the provinces are led by people from my father’s reign.”

“More traditions for you to get rid of?”

Hoseok doesn’t reply, but he sighs again, long and low and deep. Neither of them say anything else for the rest of the ride - Yoongi sees the Earth beside him, and hopes he’s imagining her disappointment urging from within her. Within him. Within.

It’s on the seventh night that Yoongi’s hand closes around the hip-dagger.

Hoseok was the one that handed to him, that morning, another apology, another wordless branch of peace, and when Yoongi tried to give it back after a battering with Seokjin, Hoseok waved it away. “It’s yours,” he had said, lip bitten nervously, “A - well, I can’t call it a replacement. A… stand-in. For your…”

“For my claws,” Yoongi had realised. Heat suffuses his cheeks just to think about it.

Hoseok had helped him buckle the leather belt around his waist, making another hole with his pocket knife to slip the bronze clip into, and all day long the hip-dagger bounced off Yoongi’s thigh, rattling with the gait of the horse, a reminder that now, as best as they could, they had tried to help.

It’s on the seventh night that Yoongi’s hand closes around the hip-dagger.

He remembers what the Min told him, as much as he wishes he didn’t. Do not return. And Yoongi does have his obligations, and his duties, and he - he -

Eunhyun, staring down at the bodies. Yoongi and her, running through the forest. Yoongi can’t forget that, just because two men have been nice to him on a trip to a city where he’ll no doubt be hunted or shot or used as Jungyoo used him. Yoongi can’t forget that.

So his hand closes around the hilt of the hip-dagger, and he draws it slowly, silently, out of its sheath.

Seokjin is a Captain of the Guard, but he’s been trained to guard against clumsy flat-foot people, not Yoongi. Yoongi could sneak up on a brittlebear mother and her cubs, unnoticed, and he has no problem walking past Seokjin’s head, tail brushing the air, without Seokjin stirring.

The Earth twinkles below him. He knows - she probably - The Earth is peaceful, above all things, but she has to see. She has to know.

Find the one responsible, and kill him.

Yoongi’s hand around the hilt of the dagger is hot and sweaty, and he can’t stop the anxious twitching of his tail, back and forth in the night air, the only thing that’s moving. Hoseok is asleep in his bedroll, his fists close to his face, surprisingly soft in sleep - he’s rolled himself up, all tucked-in and quiet, wool over his shoulders, huffing little breathy gasps of air. He looks younger.

He reminds Yoongi of Jeongguk, a little.

The Earth burns his heels.

He holds the hip-dagger all the same, his blunted claws pressing into the wrapped leather hilt, the silver gilt along the metal, and levels it with Hoseok’s neck. A stripe. A stripe of blood to match the stripe of bruises Hoseok has given Yoongi - it’s an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth, as a clan maxim goes.

So why is he shaking?

He reminds Yoongi of Jeongguk, a little.

The Earth burns his toes.

Yoongi brings the tip of the dagger nearer and nearer, as near as he dares, and right as metal is about to touch flesh -

The Earth -

He draws away -

Hoseok reminds Yoongi of Jeongguk, and that is -

Yoongi bites down on the inside of his cheek until he feels blood, and then, hands trembling, Earth burning, tail flickering, eyes watering impossibly. and he bolts back to his pile of blankets - shaking, the Earth below him, guilt above him, and what - was he about to do - He -  

Sheaths the hip-dagger. Lies down.

Tries to sleep.

And in his bedroll, Hoseok lets out a long, deep breath, and squeezes his eyes shut.

Chapter 4: A Long Way From Winter

“In this first entry to the city, Min Yoongi may have been amazed - certainly, Huinbyeong is astounding. But he later told me that nothing could compare to the sight of his mountains at dawn, not even the shimmer of the ocean on the White Walls.”

- excerpt from “Clans”, written by the Royal Advisor

Before they set out again, Yoongi buries the hip-dagger deep in Seokjin’s saddlebags. Hoseok doesn’t look at him that morning, and Yoongi, burning with guilt, hopes that it’s merely something to do with the i am nothing like you again. The Earth bubbles with resentment.

nothing, nothing, nothing

(like you)

By unspoken agreement, Yoongi rides with Seokjin. He feels a little sick. Seokjin doesn’t say anything, but Yoongi feels his concern resonating off him in thick waves, adding to the dread, the unsettlement, the awful creeping feeling that he’s a long way from home and getting nothing but further from it. Seokjin has mellowed through the journey, no longer so twitchy and glareful - he’s more armed. This is his element, apparently.

Hoseok says nothing.

Yoongi wishes he would.

Why didn’t he do it?

The ground is now totally unfamiliar. Dry grass is rare; Hoseok and Seokjin are riding through small dirt tracks that separate field after field after field of corn, wheat, and freshly-tilled earth awaiting the planting. Occasionally, they ride through little thatched-cottage hamlets; they never stop, but the people run after them, waving scarves and shouting.

“They recognise the breed of our horses,” Seokjin explains quietly, after the third village. “We have to come from Huinbyeong, and probably from the White Walls, because we have royal-bred chargers. See?”

Yoongi nods. Royal-bred chargers. Huinbyeong.

Hoseok’s face is set towards the sun, his eyes searching for something past the horizon, his body moving fluid with the horse, settling into a fast-paced gait that far outruns Seokjin’s own.

“When will we get to Huinbyeong?”

Seokjin hums thoughtfully. “If we’re just reaching Junghyun’s borders now… we’re about to enter the Huin province, and it’s another two days from there. We could reach it tomorrow, if we rode fast and hardly slept at all - Hoseok’ll probably want to go as fast as he can, though. We’re still at war.”

“I thought it was a trade war,” Yoongi mumbles. The corn looks appealing and foreign - sometimes, far-off clansmen would bring some back with them, and sometimes the old women grew corn, but mostly the clan survive off potatoes, carrots, turnips. Hardy vegetables. Yoongi’s eaten corn a few times - three, maybe four - and he likes the way it furrows and boils in the pot, and the way they can chuck the little kernels in the snow to see how strong their arms are. Corn.

“It is a trade war.”

“Then - then Hoseok shouldn’t need to hurry back.”

“He shouldn’t,” Seokjin agrees, and then chuckles grimly. “But if he’s away for too long, the King starts giving orders, or Taehyung will start getting ideas into his head, and we don’t want any full-scale war. Jungyoo and his lot… well, if they had their way, we’d be battling our way through the southern front right now. As it is… there are skirmishes, and battles at sea, but we’ve managed to keep it low-scale.”

“Low-scale,” Yoongi repeats. “And - and the clans-?”

Seokjin shakes his head. “Jungyoo. Jungyoo, Jungyoo, bloody Jungyoo. Him and his band of - of old bastards. They’ll call anyone a bandit and they’ll kill anything if it’s in their way. That’s just how the King was.”

“So you,” Yoongi jabs his elbow back into Seokjin’s ribs, pleasantly surprised at how Seokjin doesn’t flinch too much, “You don’t think my clan’s a bandit clan?”

“I think that Jungyoo will say anything to get what he wants,” Seokjin says carefully. It’s not a no. It’s not a yes, either.

Hoseok storms past them, riding right into the sunset.

Yoongi’s body aches.

He -

When you’re twelve years old, someone will take you up to the heights of the mountains, out of the forests and into the snow and the caves, and they will teach you how to protect yourself. Yoongi’s mother is dead, and the Min is the Min, so it’s Sana that takes Yoongi, one cold day when their breath freezes in the air even down among the trees.

There isn’t much to say, about learning to protect yourself. The journey is long; Sana is used to it, flicking grey-tail out behind her, springing from tree branch to branch, waiting patiently for Yoongi to catch up every time he stumbles and trips. He’s growing into himself, filling his awkward limbs out, but his tail is still too long for him - he can’t balance, although he’s learning. Learning fast.

They climb.

Yoongi is too nervous to say anything, and Sana is caught up in her own mind, so the jumping hopping leaping is done in preoccupied silence. It is, after all, a long way to the top.

“Stay here, and don’t move until I come back for you,” she tells him, and then she leaves.

Up here, the mountains are cold. Snow lies heavy on the ground year-long, and ice underneath it, and the caves are full of hibernating brittlebear and hanging batbirds just waiting to claw out the eyes of any unwise interrupter.

And so Yoongi sits.

There is a way to sit - coil-up tail underneath him, grey and black stripes, ears folded down over head to maximise warmth - and so he sits.

And sits.

And sits.

The way to do it is never made clear beforehand. Eunhyun did it before anyone else, and she was gone three weeks, almost four, but Daesoo did it a month after that - and he returned within five days, flush-face triumphant over his success. Time is fickle, so high up here, and Yoongi doesn’t know how long it’s been since Sana left - days, hours, minutes?

Yoongi sits, and he learns how to be comfortable.

The hunts are often long and boring with nothing to do but to stare at the trees, and before Yoongi sat there, he wondered how they did it. Now he knows, and when Sana comes back for him, he’s smarter, and wiser.

He’s learned how to sit.

So he’s not as sore as he could be. Riding hurts his legs, and even Hoseok and Seokjin seem to be finding it tough, but they’re slowing down today.

“It’s the central road into Huinbyeong,” Seokjin explains unprompted, as Hoseok leads the horses down hilly paths and verges onto a little leak of a dirt road. “We can’t avoid it anymore. There’s only two ways into the city, and one of ‘em’s by sea.”

“I thought the sea was water,” Yoongi says. He stares at Hoseok, although he wishes he couldn’t.

Seokjin laughs. “It is. Haven’t you ever heard of boats?”

“No,” Yoongi scowls down at his hands, twisted in the horse’s mane. “What’re they?”

“Like… hollowed wood things. They float. People get places on ‘em. And trade.”

“Really?”

“Why’d I lie about something like that?”

This road is better to ride on than the fields and pastures they travelled on previously. Seokjin relaxes their gait, the horse slowing just a little; Hoseok, a few horse-lengths in front of them, keeps up the brisk trot. “Come on.”

“You wanna burn it out, be my guest,” Seokjin shouts ahead; the noise so close to Yoongi’s ears makes him shiver away, cringing against the neck of the horse. “Oh - oh, sorry, Yoongi.”

“Mmf.”

“I just want to get to Huinbyeong,” Hoseok says, heaving on leatherstrap reins, slowing his gait until he’s level with Seokjin - and only Seokjin, his cool brown eyes never flickering down to Yoongi, not for an instant. His eyes are cold and regal. “I won’t burn out.”

“You’ll burn us out. We’re carrying two.”

That forces Hoseok’s gaze down to Yoongi, but only for a second; Yoongi thinks about holding hip-daggers, and about learning how to sit, and how difficult it is to meet Hoseok’s eye, knowing how close he was to -

“But one of you is hardly a person at all,” Hoseok says coldly. His spurred boots clink as he presses them, gentle, into his horse, saddlebags tinkling. “Come on. The sooner we get back, the better.”

Seokjin doesn’t have anything to say to that, and neither does Yoongi.

More than anyone, he misses Jeongguk. Oh, he misses Daesoo and Eunhyun and Chaeyoung and Minhyuk and the rest of them, but he misses Jeongguk most of all - Jeongguk, who always knew what to do to cheer him up, and Jeongguk, who would have stopped Yoongi long before he took the knife out of his pack - who would have told him exactly why it was a bad idea. Yoongi feels like an end cut loose, flapping hopelessly in the wind, untethered and lost.

i am not like you

i am not!

The small dirt road joins a bigger one eventually, and the hamlets they meet become villages. Hoseok and Seokjin ride close to the side of the track, and dip their heads when horses pass -

“Just in case they recognise us,” Seokjin whispers to Yoongi -

But overall, it’s a quiet, boring day. Yoongi has nothing to do but stew in his own guilt and sit, leaning against Seokjin’s chest, and think about how fucking lost he is.

What will they do when they get to Huinbyeong?

In their late-night conversations, cold air turning warm with forced friendship, Seokjin and Hoseok talk about Huinbyeong the way Yoongi imagines he might talk about his tree, his home, his clan, if he ever got the chance to really get into the flow. Huinbeyong, a city of oceans and boats and White Walls and men, people living in these great rocky constructions, not a tree in sight. Huinbeyong, which sounds so odd, so alien, that Yoongi isn’t even sure how to picture it.

Huinbyeong. Where he, Yoongi, will surely be put to work (god, no) or to death (god, no) unless he can think of something quick.

But anytime he tries, all he can see is the dying fire reflecting off a hip-dagger -

does a murderer really deserve to live?

Four months ago, Yoongi wouldn’t have called himself so. He killed all those men in the clearing with Eunhyun and he didn’t feel anything but pain and vengeance, the anger, the feeling of having delivered some righteous fury. Now -

And now -

i am nothing like you

But he seems to be similar enough to torture Yoongi endlessly.

They pass a procession of dirty, muddied people carrying dirty, muddied carts full of dirty, muddied things. There’s a brown sheep. It’s thin, even with the fluff of wool. The people look up at them, the whites of their eyes glowing through the dirt, and they say nothing as Seokjin and Hoseok pass - rich men in their leathers and chains - and Yoongi.

When they see him, they shudder.

“Refugees,” Seokjin whispers, more to himself than to Yoongi. “Fleeing the coastal cities. They think - they think Chaena and Jungyoo can give them better protection than they have in Huinbyeong.”

“Why’re they so…” Yoongi looks at wretched bodies from his vantage point, suppressing the urge to leap off the horse and run. “Why’re they so raggedy?”

“They don’t have any money.”

“And? So? Can’t they hunt?”

“No,” Hoseok’s slowed again, the two horses walking sedately through the river of plodding people. “Men prefer a more civilised way of living.”

Yoongi, head bowed, snarls where nobody can see him. “You call this civilised? They don’t look alive at all.”

Hoseok clicks his tongue roughly against his teeth. “That’s their lot in lif-”

“You sound like Jungyoo,” Seokjin says, huffing a laugh that isn’t a laugh at all, but more of a warning. “Relax.”

As soon as the refugees are past them, trailing dirt and sheep and children, Hoseok spurs his animal on again, leaving Seokjin and Yoongi to follow in his wake.

He sees Huinbyeong a day before they’re due to reach it.

Neither of them offer to help him learn swordplay. Yoongi scratches his blunted, stunted claws down his arms until blood beads underneath them, long, painful scrapes, and then he lays his bedroll out by the fire and curls up, back to the flames, staring at the -

The woods either side of the city stretch as far as the eye can see. Yoongi imagines them leading all the way around the edge of the world and back up to his mountains again, back to his Jeongguk, back to his clan and the good places in the world, and the idea makes him smile.

do not return until -

killed the one responsible

I am not like you!

Huinbeong itself is - huge. Enormous. When Jungyoo’s hunting party brought Yoongi back to the castle, he’d been too angry and frightened to properly take a look at it, but he’d explored it often enough to realise the size of it. Huinbyeong’s yellow-white walls look as though they could swallow a dozen of Jungyoo’s castles and still have room to spare; from the top of the crenellated walls, he sees the peep of red rooftops, of flags flying from curved towers, of archers patrolling the inner wall. The gate is closed, now that it’s night. Yoongi can see light, flickering in front of the gate, but he doesn’t want to ask either of them what it is.

He thinks he might know. Crowds of people, the same dirty men as before, building fires for the night before they’ll be allowed into the city.

I am not like you!

What, then, is he like?

Most of all, Yoongi thinks about his claws and his tail and about hunting brittlebear with Jeongguk again. He fantasises about sneaking through the woods, day and night and day and night, until he reaches home. The Min will tell him that it’s alright, that he never expected Yoongi to have to kill someone so - so Hoseok, and that in his absence, they’ve killed all of Jungyoo’s hunters, and now they’re going to have a feast in the mountains. The Earth will glimmer golden with satisfaction. Stickshrines will pile their magic and their fire into the air, and the Earth will be able to give him his claws back, and Yoongi will dance with Daesoo, the Earth under his bare feet, and everything will be just as it was but better.

They’ll hunt. They’ll throw corn into the snow. Wingflesh and brittlebear and happiness, and Yoongi will be able to forget that men exist at all, in such a hell as Huinbyeong.

The Earth prickles underneath him. Maybe she sees what he’s dreaming about.

Maybe she’s telling him it's a hopeless dream.

But Yoongi clings to it anyway, the Earth and the feast and the dreams of a happier future, and he goes to sleep with a rare smile on his face.

There are an equal stream of people heading to and from the city. The people coming from it look hopeful but resigned, as though they’ve given up on expecting anything to be any different, and the people going to it seem eager, green, springs in their steps and singing.

“They’ve heard of Huinbyeong, where the streets are paved with gold,” Seokjin says. Hoseok rides in front, back straightened, head raised, regal in every possible way - even if Yoongi didn’t already know, he’d guess who Hoseok was. The people part for him with whispers, like an ocean of mud and desire.

“Are they?”

“No.” Seokjin is grim, following the path that Hoseok’s presence creates. “Paved with broken dreams, is what Namjoon says. They’ll find nothing but petty work in there.”

“So what makes this any better from what came before it?”

“Just because things aren’t better yet, doesn’t mean we’re not trying.”

Yoongi hums. It sounds very empty - all words and no meaning, but he won’t say that aloud to Seokjin, who must surely already know. Maybe they are trying.

His claws, all blunted and flat. Pressing against his arms. They’ll reach the city by nightfall, or so Seokjin says, and tonight they’ll sleep in featherbeds in the White Walls, and tonight you -

and then he falls silent. Nobody knows what to do with Yoongi.

The closer they get to Huinbyeong, the stiffer Hoseok becomes, his back straightening, his eyes hardening; even his horse picks up the pace, stepping elegant-hoof and gleamsweat flank through the crowds of white-eyed people. Yoongi wraps a loose sleeve around his head, hiding his ears from them, his tail curled inconspicuously underneath him; but for his size, smaller than any human man, he could be one of them. Maybe a child, or a woman.

“We’ll be home by the evening,” Seokjin says, to the air in general. “It’ll be good. There’ll be a warm welcome.”

“There will.” Hoseok stares at the distant, ever-nearing edifice of the gates, of the sandstone walls. “I missed them.”

“Me too. Namjoon will want to meet you,” Seokjin says to Yoongi, quiet and careful. “We are… ridiculously uninformed about your people.”

Yoongi grunts some sort of reply.

The gates get nearer.

At the last few hundred feet, the crowd of bodies is so strong that Seokjin and Hoseok have to stop riding altogether. Seokjin dismounts, leaving Yoongi swaying in the saddle, and pushes his way through the people, shouting to make way for the prince and his guard! as the susurrus of rumor stirs, and more and more people turn to Hoseok with a sort of admiration in their eyes, and unbridled curiosity when they see Yoongi. He ducks his head; covers his ears; sits on his tail.

“Good to see you back, sir,” says one of the chain-mail guards by the gate. She smiles, lips splitting a scar across her lip. “The Royal Advisor-”

“I’ll see him shortly,” Seokjin snaps, swinging his leg over the saddle as they wait for the crowd to move, so they can enter the city. Then he smiles. “Good to see you back, Sokjoo.”

Sokjoo looks at Yoongi - everyone is - but she must be too professional to ask. “Go ahead, sir. Your grace.”

And so, Yoongi enters Huinbyeong.

Huinbyeong has been described by many people, and most of them have fallen short. Apparently, when she first saw the city, the Southern Princess Meiwuko called it a hell on earth, but that story comes from the mouth of those that think the South is full of heathens and demons. Huinbyeong would be described by those who live in it as just a place to call home.

Yoongi -

Huinbyeong is -

Massive. Huge. Unlike anything he’s ever seen before.

It’s a warren, Huinbyeong is, and the Royal Advisor used to say that nobody could truly know their way around the city - they could only know their own little part of it. The main thoroughfare leads from the gate to the entrance of the White Walls, the cliff-cum-castle, but branching off from this road are a million little sideways and backways, a billion little streets and alleys. The streets aren’t paved with gold - it’s yellowy sandstone cobbles. Yoongi’s nose hurts, and his ears hurt even under the fur muffler.

There’s so much.

The smell of something tangy, and the noise of people shouting and laughing and the murmur of crowds all together, and the screams of animals, and birds flying from rooftop to rooftop, and the smell of food and the smell of sweat and the smell of something salty. Huinbyeong bustles with life. Huinbyeong is teeming.

Yoongi squeezes his eyes shut.

the prince, the prince, the prince, the whisper goes out, and Seokjin rides a little closer to Hoseok and Hoseok is sitting straighter than ever, a distant, graceful smile on his lips, the picture of elegance. The picture of a prince.

Yoongi admires it, even if he hates it, too.

(blunted claws and do not return until you have killed the one responsible)

the prince headed back to the white walls

the royal advisor

there’s his captain

who’s that with him

the south the south the south the south

the war the war the war the war

The crowds swell, bigger and louder, ever more curious, ever more inquisitive, as Hoseok and Seokjin (and Yoongi) walk steadily on their royal-bred chargers up the street. Every building here looks like a brighter facsimile of Jungyoo’s castle; every window has something draped out of it, whether it be red-gold flags, or clothes hung out to dry. Somewhere, a cock crows. Somewhere else, there’s the squealing grunt of a pig.

the prince is headed back

who’s that on the captain’s horse

the south the south the south

the south the

war the war the

south the south the south the

princess the south

Yoongi shrinks back into Seokjin. Minhyuk would shout at them, say he’s a proud clansman and not afraid to say it. Daesoo would die on the spot, probably. Jeongguk would hide. Eunhyun would enjoy the attention. Chaeyoung would beam and smile. But Yoongi isn’t any of them. They’d do a better job at - at doing what needs to be done, but they aren’t here.

(Later on, Yoongi will realise that it’s Huinbyeong, this first sight of it, that really forced him to see how different the world out of the mountains is.)

In the moment, he’s just -

“Don’t be scared,” Seokjin says through stiff-lip smiles, practically riding Hoseok’s flank.

“I’m not scared.”

“Could have fooled me.”

Yoongi huffs down at his hands. “Why are there - so many of you?”

“You mean guards?”

“I mean people.” Although now Seokjin’s said that, Yoongi can see the glimmerglint of metal armour, the ruffle-red plumes on helmets lining the streets. There are a lot of guards, behind pillars, on walls, leaning against shopfronts, watching the two horses part the curious sea of the masses.

“This is a normal amount of people,” Seokjin folds himself a little more around Yoongi, clutching the reins tight. “Huinbyeong, all in all, maybe has… oh, a million people living in it. It’s the only real city in all of Huindon.”

“A million-” Yoongi, in all his life, has only ever needed to use numbers up to a thousand. He’s been aware that there are more, of course, but in an abstract sort of a way - they exist to be in existence. No way could there ever be a million people anywhere, ever.

“Mm. In Huindon, at the last census, there was… oh, seven, eight million people? Most of them farm, of course, and then there’s the garrisons at each of the provincial castles. And towns, and villages… it all adds up.” Seokjin tuts. “Hoseok should have changed before he came in. Everyone will wonder why he isn’t wearing royal dress.”

Yoongi stares ahead of him. Stiff-back softsmile Hoseok, in full Prince mode, regal as he falls up and down in the saddle, draped in odds of furs and leathers just like Yoongi is. “You have costumes?”

“Of course we do.”

And he’s looking into the crowd now, and seeing among them the white faces warpainted. Curves, crescents, denoting places in households. He doesn’t see any red lips. No - pleasure slaves. Not yet.

He shudders, and feels cheaper and colder and presses his blunt claws into his skin.

“These are the White Walls,” Seokjin whispers in his ear.

The White Walls -

(It was once written that, when the first King of Huindon carved the first room of the White Walls into the cliff, he looked out of the window onto the raging seas and said here, i have built a temple. The White Walls hold the royal family, of course, but they also hold the spirit of the lioness, and she is the god of the people as well as the Walls-)

The White Walls jut into the city. And, when Hoseok and Seokjin had talked about cliffs and harbours, Yoongi hadn’t had any real idea what they were saying - just meaningless words.

“The harbour is down from the White Walls - at the southern end of the city,” Seokjin tells him, but Yoongi is busy staring open-mouthed at the massive cliff face, stuck right into the city, unshaped, unchanged, but for the massive door carved out of it - and the drawbridge that lies across, connecting the long street to the White Walls. Little speckle-windows are dotted through the rock (“there’s far more on the other side, overlooking the sea,” Seokjin says) and out of these, Yoongi can see spots of candlelight - a cloth towel or two, hung out of the windowsill to dry in the sun that bathes the whole city in yellow light.

They ride in.

Yoongi is forgotten, a little, after horses are led away and a gaggle of facepainted servants flock around Hoseok and Seokjin. He slumps against white-flagstone walls, his shoulders aching, his claws gone.

He feels very, very small.

Clank-metal guards in chainmail and plumed helmets stand either side of a doorway. One of them hollas for Seokjin, raising their sword; Seokjin beams and walks over, leaving Yoongi in the shadows, forgotten.

Forgotten.

Where the fuck does he stand?

Is he a prisoner? A bandit to be killed? A piece of bait to be gambled with? Or a murderer? He killed all those men with Eunhyun, and he never felt any sorrow for it, and the Earth herself supported him.

No Earth here. She’s trapped underneath rock and grey, grey, grey.

(White, white, white.)

They’re standing in some sort of dim-lit entrance hall. Hoseok’s in the centre, all eyes on him, shrugging out of his leather riding coat, standing in tunic and tights before someone’s carrying in robes for him, in muted, stately red. Seokjin is talking earnestly to the guards. The horses have been long led away by stableboys.

Could Yoongi run for it?

He could, but -

Slowly, feeling the cold of flagstones under his bare feet (paws), he creeps along the wall. Fingers clinging to the stone; his fingertips prod out the little nooks and crannies, the holes, the scrapes and pockmarks. He’s lost. Hopelessly lost, and far away from home.

You’re a long way from winter and a summer away from spring. That’s one of Jeongguk’s favourite maxims - he used to recite it, beam-smile and happy, while he and Yoongi were roasting wingflesh over a fire.

What’s Jeongguk doing now?

“Hoseok-ah!”

Yoongi freezes, still shadowed, at the sound of the voice. The servants (warpainted) all bubbled around Hoseok freeze too, and then scatter, like woodlice exposed to the sun. There are three doors out of this barren entrance hall - the servants flood towards the innermost one, in a blur of robes and white faces.

Hoseok is beaming. So is Seokjin; he waves a hand, dismissing the guards.

Yoongi’s chance.

He runs, then, because he’s scared and he’s tired and he hurts and he can’t feel the Earth and he’s a long way from winter. Such a long way away. So long away that he doubts he’ll ever see a winter again, not like -

not like they have winter up in the mountains -

He bolts for the door -

“Woah, there,” and a hand grabbing his arm, firm but not unkind. Something smelling sweet. “Um - Hoseok-ah-”

Yoongi lets his body go limp and unresisting. He doesn’t have to look around to know that Hoseok’s staring at him with hatred. “It’s good to see you, Joonie,” Hoseok says all the same. His voice is colder.

“Who’s this?” Joonie lets Yoongi go - not expecting it, Yoongi staggers back against the wall, thudding his shoulder against the hard flagstones and hissing. His cheek stings. The old slap from Jungyoo; the scar.

(Seokjin is looking at him with concern, at least.)

“Jungyoo gave us a bandit for a gift,” Hoseok says. Yoongi risks looking up at him; there’s a golden circlet nestling in his hair, and a golden glint in his eye. “How’re things keeping here?”

“A bandit-” The newcomer, tall and gangly, shoots Yoongi a worried look. The furs draped over his head prevent his ears from being seen, but all the same, Yoongi shies away. “Hoseok, what-”

“I’ll sort it out, Namjoon. Just… give me your worst.” Hoseok sighs. Passes a hand over his forehead. Looks, very suddenly, very old.

“Come with me,” Seokjin says softly to Yoongi. Chainmail clinking.

A bandit for a gift.

A bandit for a gift.

He’s a long way from winter, and a summer away from spring.

Chapter 5: Faultlines

“When I first met him,  the most important playing piece in all of the wars thus far, he seemed cautious. At last, he told me that he believed in the Earth and the Sun and nothing else. I asked him if he believed in humans. He looked at me for a very long time - then, he laughed.”

- excerpt from A Brief History of the Clan War, written by the Royal Advisor

The room Seokjin leads him too is very rich and big, wooden shutters covering a series of windows carved from the same yellow-white rock as the rest of the White Walls. Yoongi is carefully, firmly led to the centre of the room - told to stay - and then left blissfully alone.

He shakes the covering off his ears just in time to hear the key turning in the lock; quiet, but distinct. Yoongi is no longer a stranger to that sound.

Phantom hands. A phantom collar.

Yoongi, shivering in the warmth.

Uncovered, his ears, his tail, both tingle as the blood flow restores, and Yoongi sighs as he’s given the freedom to wriggle them backwards and forwards - flexing much-misused muscles. Back at home, you would be grounded, unable to move without your tail, and Yoongi misses the balance it gives him, the stretch around him.

This room was made for a human far bigger than Yoongi; a normal-sized one. There’s a grate, with wood pellets laid for a fire, but it’s got that musty ash smell that shows how long it’s been since a fire was lit there. There’s a bed

(phantom hands, phantom - Jungyoo -)

but Yoongi doesn’t look at it for too long. A bowl of fruit on a table. A red carpet on the ground, soft and comfortable for him to curl his toes into. A heavy wooden wardrobe, a little silver key hanging from the lock; he wanders over to the table, curling his hands around a pear, and eyes the wardrobe curiously; he’s seen them in Jungyoo’s castle, as places where robes would vanish and reappear from, but he was never allowed to rifle through them. What would he do with the fabric, anyway?

The silver key makes a similar little snick -

phantom noises in the night

and Yoongi entertains himself for a few minutes, turning it back and forth in the lock to hear it snick and unsnick with little reversing, oily metal sounds, a little wrist-flick mechanism. It makes him want to laugh.

(Once, he and Jeongguk found a rock that made a funny noise when it was thrown against a tree. They must have spent hours, until the sun went down, throwing the rock again and again until they could hardly stand for laughing.)

Little silver lock; little silver key.

Inside the wardrobe he finds tunics and robes and drawstring-trousers and tights. Lines of shoes along the bottom. Robes, rich stuff, silk and red-purple-green.

Purple. The colour of Jungyoo’s house.

Yoongi kicks off his furs, the sweaty, sticky, ill-fitting furs, and spends a few moments bareskin and breathing. He knows he must smell like he’s just back from the hunt, all musty and woody and outdoorsy, but he doesn’t really mind.

In the end, he drapes a human-sized red tunic over himself, cinching it at the waist with a leather belt. He wonders whether Seokjin would return him the hip-dagger.

when someone comes a-knocking, beware; it could be a friend, but it could be a bear. Eunhyun made a song out of that maxim, one cold spring morning, and spent the rest of the week dangling upside-down from trees and singing it, until they all went and knocked her down, screaming we’re a bear! we’re a bear!

Someone, now, is knocking.

“The door’s locked,” Yoongi says - he doesn’t raise his voice, particularly, but he doesn’t whisper. Let the humans do what they want with him. He’s gone past fear and into quiet, resigned acceptance. They’ve taken his claws and they’ve taken his teeth and they’ve taken his woods all away from him, and he only really has one more thing left for them to take.

He folds himself cross-legged, tail underneath him, on the carpet - sitting like Sana showed him.

The lock snicksnocks.

phantom sounds, phantom places -

“You must be Yoongi,” says the man in the door. Joonie. Namjoon. The one that had greeted Hoseok so excitedly, so intently, so full of news that Yoongi had almost been able to escape. “I’m Namjoon.”

Yoongi blinks at him. Ears free, eyes black and slitted, he knows he must look a sight, especially to someone who’s probably never seen a clansman before.

Namjoon swallows. “Hoseok told me Jungyoo found you.”

“Did he use those words?”

Namjoon is dressed much like the servants seemed to be, albeit far richer. Red robes, Huinden script in gentle silver embroidery around the hems; an amulet draped around his neck; a few rolled-up scrolls tucked into the silver sash that serves as a belt. His eyes shine with something quite, quite new as he studies Yoongi. “What do you think?”

“I don’t think anything.”

“That, I find hard to believe.”

Yoongi shrugs. Why should he care what some Hoseok-dripper, some human, believes? “I don’t believe anything.”

“Ah.” Maybe that’s what Namjoon is looking for. Quickly, paper spilling out of his sleeves, he sits kneel-tuck on the carpet opposite Yoongi, keeping a few feet of respectable distance. “Ah, then - you can tell me. What is it that the bandits believe in? Where are your cities? Who are your kings? Are you a diplomat? A spy? What-”

“We don’t have cities,” Yoongi says at last, as cold as he can possibly make it, “And I don’t believe in anything but the Earth. Please go away.”

Namjoon doesn’t lock the door after he leaves, but Yoongi feels too listless, too drained, too Earthless to venture out into the White Walls. He lies on the carpet and imagines he’s lying in a puddle of moss, his fingers crooking into soil, the Earth underneath him, lying in wait for some creature to come wandering into his path. Perhaps Daesoo is with him. Maybe Minhyuk. Jeongguk, smiling and squealing with joy to be allowed out on a hunt.

Stifling carpets. Phantom noises.

Yoongi wilts. Why don’t they lie in dirt, like every other fucking thing? Humans, cocooning themselves in shittyfuck rock. Stone. White Cliffs.

He still hasn’t opened the window shutters - hasn’t moved from where he’s lying, face-down on the carpet, nose smelling dust and dead spiders. If Jeongguk were here, now, it’d all be different.

it’s like an adventure, he imagines the kid saying, all fawny ears and beamy smiles, tail twitching behind him. remember the adventure we had up the mountain last winter?

Yoongi laughs at the memory. “That wasn’t an adventure,” he mumbles to himself, to the Jeongguk in his head, “That wasn’t an adventure, though. We almost died.”

but we had fun!

What they’d done was gone out hunting, he and Jeongguk, high in the mountains - looking for brittlebear caves so they could find scrizzy-scrag bears for dinner. What they’d ended up doing was getting stuck in a snowstorm with a caveful of blind snowbats, their white wings as wide as Yoongi’s stretched arms, their teeth long and sharp and fanged. Jeongguk and Yoongi had had to fight them, back-to-back tail-to-tail, claws and teeth flashing until the snowbats were cooling on the cavern floor and they were both laughing at each other, the laughter as they realised just how close to dying they had been. “Sure we had fun,” Yoongi says into the carpet, “But we almost died.”

you could die now, argues the little phantom-Jeongguk, but at least have fun, while you’re doing it. die doing what you want to. i think that should be a new maxim.

It’s that last thought that gets Yoongi hauling his body up, shuffling barefoot paw across the floor, swamped in his belted-shut tunic, all red fabric and black fur. The windows line the wall, three of them, with heavy wooden shutters twice as tall again as Yoongi is; heavy black latches hold them shut, balancing on oiled hinges.

They’re heavier than he expects to wrench open; muscles straining, hands trembling, he hooks his fingers under the iron latch.

And sees -

Imagine never having seen the ocean.

No, that’s not right.

Imagine never having heard of the ocean.

No, that’s not right either.

Imagine having heard of the ocean, but as a myth, just as impossible to believe in as unicorns or dragons or properly good people. Imagine having lived your whole life on fairy stories about a lake as big as the world, on which the land floats; imagine this, incredible, mythologised.

And now imagine seeing the sea.

Yoongi has never seen anything so puddleydeep in his life. The water - and he’s seen lakes, mountain lakes, as deep and as still as the grave - but this water is alive, life in a way Yoongi hasn’t seen since (since riding with Hoseok) since he left the clan, and it doesn’t look like water at all; it looks like something he could walk on top of, solid and reassuring and moving and dynamic and horizonwide, stretch stretch, just like the peaks of the mountains at home.

Breathless, the strength returning to him now, he scurries to the two other shutters, hardly struggling with the latches at all before he flings them open. The smell soaks into the little room. Salty and wet and the smell of fresh air and untamed unclaimed nature.

“You would love it,” Yoongi says to Jeongguk, six, seven hundred miles away. “You really would.”

Jeongguk doesn’t hear him, but he feels infinitely better for having said it. The sea, and sea it is, crashes against the rocks at the base of the White Walls - this cliffy mountain with a city at the base, and if he really leans out the window and looks down, he thinks he can see the edge of what must be the harbour Seokjin told him about.

Boats. Water.

This could give the Earth a run for her money.

“Someday I’ll take you here,” Yoongi says to the Jeongguk in his head, and then he feels better, and then he remembers that the door is unlocked.

And the silk scarves in the wardrobe are easy to wrap around his ears, concealing them from sight; now, he’s normal. Just a little shorter than everyone else.

Maybe the sea is related to the Earth somehow. Yoongi feels the spring in his step, the bronzeburn on his heels as though he were standing with his toes buried in her soil; he walks, sedately, to the door, and lets himself out with quiet, overwhelming joy.

Third time’s the charm -

(There is a maxim. To try and to fail and to try something else is the way. To try and to fail and to try again is madness.)

(Yoongi chooses, carefully, to forget this.)

The corridor he opens out into is long and arching, tapestries and paintings hanging at odds along the walls, wooden doors leading off every which way. At one end is a door; the other end turns sharply to the right, and Yoongi heads this way, vaguely aware of the ocean behind him, vaguely aware of where it is no matter where he turns. The ocean.

The corner he turns reveals more corridor, more corner. No people.

(However, Yoongi has mastered hunting in the mountains, and he’s smarter than to believe something like that. The overstillness spoils the silence, as a clan maxim goes, and that means that somewhere along the way, Yoongi will be approached.)

He finds he doesn’t mind all that much, with so much sea - a cousin to Earth - behind him. Are there clans that love the sea instead? Stickshrines - no, sandshrines - to the help of the sea?

He hopes so. It’s nice not to feel so alone.

The tapestries are done mostly in red and ocean-blue and sand-yellow; red, the colour of the flags fluttering over Huinbyeong, and Yoongi stabs at a guess that this must be their colour, their royal flag. All of the pictures are samey. Men on horses running at other men on horses, with curvy Huinden written underneath them. Sometimes, Yoongi sees embroidered things, big yellow cats wearing crowns and snarls.

He runs into the man on the floor without even meaning to.

The man on the floor is camouflaged, wearing red just like the carpets, lying flat-face to the mat. “I’m sorry,” he says to Yoongi’s feet, as Yoongi starts to panic, “I’ll get out of your way.”

Yoongi, hurriedly, remembers the scarf around his ears, and tucks his tail under the tunic. “Um-”

The man stands, brushing dust off his knees, and offers Yoongi his hand. “My name’s Taehyung.” And then he stares at Yoongi’s face for a reaction.

“That’s a nice name,” Yoongi says weakly. He doesn’t give out his own, but he shakes the hand that’s been given to him, twice as big as his own. Darker skin. Like Hoseok’s.

Taehyung wears what Jungyoo might wear - what Hoseok was changing into, when they first arrived. All red braid edged yellow, sash holding his robe shut, the glimmer of gold in his eyes and the sparkle of silver on his skin, and a smile, because he can’t possibly know who Yoongi is yet. “Are you an indenture? Or someone else?”

“New to the city,” Yoongi says, bewildered. “New to the - I -”

“And you have no jobs to do, now?”

“No-”

“Come with me to the gardens, then,” Taehyung’s hair is too long and too wispy, and when he shakes his head, it settles around his face like a halo. “Jimin says he’s too busy for me.”

go with the flow, hyung, he imagines Jeongguk telling him, and laughing, too. go with the flow and see where it takes you. that’s another maxim i should get the min to add.

Taehyung knows his way around the White Walls, because there are doors behind tapestries that he lifts and unlocks with a flick of his wrist, and staircases that lead to corridors that lead to little rat-way runs, down and down and down. Yoongi gets hopelessly lost. He wants the Earth back. And he wants Jeongguk to be here. Jeongguk would have fun. His scarf keeps shifting on top of his ears, and he’s grasping it desperately -

“Have you heard the news all over the place?” Taehyung opens another door, dragging Yoongi through it. “One of Jungyoo’s bandits has been brought back by Hoseok-ah. Apparently, he tried to kill Namjoon, and only Jin-hyung’s quick thinking saved him.”

Yoongi shakes his head, lips pursed shut. He hadn’t heard that news.

“Oh, it’s all very exciting.”

The sudden sound of guard-feet, chainmetal slaps against the flagstones, and Taehyung freezes. “Shit- shit, they can’t know I’m here. Quick, quick, hide-”

Yoongi lets himself be bundled unresisting in Taehyung’s arms, his scarf knotted tight under his chin, thinking about Jeongguk. And maybe - if Taehyung is some sort of a runaway too, or someone escaping the guards -

“My lord!” Someone shouts. Taehyung swears again, and begins fumbling with tapestries, looking for a doorway. “Prince T-”

“Taehyung,” Hoseok says, opening one of the doors; Yoongi melts into the background and starts biting ferociously at the little shit of a Jeongguk in his head. “What are you doing here?”

Yoongi, naturally, is snaffled before he can run, and the relaxation melts from Hoseok’s face as quick as butter in the sunlight. “What are you doing-”

“I found him,” Taehyung says. Holds Yoongi’s wrist. “Because you told Jimin to do his job instead of talking to me, and I was bored. His job is to talk to me, you-”

“I didn’t tell Jimin anything,” Hoseok sighs, massaging his forehead with thumb and forefinger; he’s changed, all red robes, golden circlet nestled in his auburn hair, glimmering like the sun on the sea. “He does what he does because he does his job. And that is not to entertain you, you ridiculous-”

“Well, I have this one now,” Taehyung says defiantly. Yoongi glares as best he can back at Hoseok when they meet eyes. “He’s mine.”

“He’s mine, actually,” Hoseok snaps - reaches out, looping long fingers around Yoongi’s wrist and tugging. “Go away and, oh, I don’t know… do your job.”

“Hanging around and looking pretty?”

“Fucking matters of state.”

Taehyung pulls Yoongi’s arm - ragdollish, he lets himself fall first to one side, then to the other, as Hoseok wrenches him back. “Matters of state? What fucking matters of state?”

“There’s still a war on, whether you like it or not-”

“A war? I hadn’t noticed, what with you off to Jungyoo-”

“That was matters of state-”

“If Father knew what you were doing to the country-”

“Taehyung,” Hoseok pulls, one last strong pull, and Yoongi is tumbling into the room behind him, stumbling on red carpets, scarf falling off, “Taehyung, go away and do something else, for the love of the gods.”

Taehyung’s mouth hangs open, his wispy hair hanging over his face, and then he kicks Hoseok’s shin - oddly childish, for someone so grown - and bolts from the door, away from the chainmetal clanking of the guards.

“What are you doing here, Yoongi?”

Hoseok’s windows are already open; they face the ocean, too, and not the city, like Yoongi might have expected. They’re wide open, curtains fluttering around them, wafting in the sea scent. There’s a wide wooden table underneath the middle window, piled with papers and waxy dripped candles and pots of half-empty ink; the papers have blobbed and cascaded over the side of the table, stacking in heaps around the chair sitting at an angle, on the floor all about the desk. There’s a fireplace, a little merry crackle in the grate, a stick-basket, a coalscuttle. The floor, flagstones and red carpet. Tapestries and paintings hang on the walls - pictures of the ocean, the sea, and pictures of that big cat with the crown on again. A portrait of Hoseok draped and melting with red robes, beside Taehyung and an old man Yoongi doesn’t recognise - a picture of a tall tree shedding apples, hung right above the fireplace.

“Yoongi?”

Yoongi shrugs. “The door was open.”

Hoseok looks very, very tired. “So you went through it?”

“Obviously.” Yoongi’s eye keeps pulling itself to the window, to the fantastical sea. “Your friend came to see me.”

“Who?”

“Namjoon.”

“Oh.” Hoseok’s robes don’t fit him like the riding leathers had; they scallop around his wrists and fold around his neck and he looks like he’s choking. “And I suppose you tried to kill him, too.”

“I told him to go away.”

“Oh.”

Yoongi stares at the waves, and Hoseok slumps into the chair, all glimmer gone soft. “How did you meet Taehyung?”

“He was lying in the corridor.” Yoongi stares at the silken scarf, but decides against putting it back on. Not like he has anything to hide from Hoseok - Hoseok, who handed him a hip-dagger and tried to teach him swordplay, and Hoseok, who alternates between warm smiles and cold snaps with no apparent warning.

“He wasn’t meant to be.”

“I gathered.”

Hoseok sighs again, plucking the circlet off his head and letting it clatter to the wooden table, on top of the stacks and stacks of papers. “I don’t know what to do with you, Yoongi, you know that?”

“I gathered.”

“You just-” A frustrated fist waved at the papers, “Jungyoo’s been clamouring for a fucking mutiny over you lot, and then I go there and there’s nobody to be found and there’s just you, and I can’t work out what you want. Are you bandits? What the fuck are you doing here? You could have gone home, and I would have let you, and so Seokjin would have too, and you’d be far away from here with no fucking idea about any of this. Why didn’t you go? Why are you still here?”

do not return until -

“Because of you,” Yoongi manages hoarsely, phantom hands and phantom lips all over him, Jungyoo everywhere and nowhere. “I’m still here because of you - you think I want to be here? I want to go home.”

“Then go.”

“I can’t.” How does he explain it? How can Yoongi possibly describe how it looked, how it is, Mina and her son drained and bloodless in the snow? How can Yoongi show him how much the world has changed?

“Why can’t you?”

“I just can’t.”

Hoseok’s lips twist unpleasantly. “So you’re here to cause trouble.”

“Why would I-”

“Why wouldn’t you?” Hoseok thuds his palm down on one of the heaps of inky paper, watching them flutter to the floor unheeded. “Why wouldn’t you? Why else would you be here, even after I - after what Jungyoo did -”

Phantoms. Phantoms shuddering over Yoongi’s skin, and he’s freezing, cold and clammy and everything he wishes he wasn’t. “I’m just here.”

“Why?”

“Why are you here?”

Hoseok stares at him for a moment; Yoongi sees his jaw moving, teeth grinding silently across the room. “I’m - here because I have to be,” he says, after a long and angry second. “I’m here because there’s nobody else to do it.”

me too.

“Me too,” Yoongi says quietly. He thinks about Daesoo, who would have gone if he was told to; of Minhyuk, brave, hotheaded Minhyuk; of Eunhyun staring down at the bodies, and of Chaeyoung grinning and bearing it. And of Jeongguk.

There’s nobody else to do it.

Outside the window, the sea sounds loud and crashing and uncaring. Yoongi misses the Earth, but he supposes this isn’t a bad alternative.

“Thankless jobs, but someone has to do them,” Hoseok says. He’s looking out the window, too. “Taehyung - hates me for it, you know. And I have every-fuck country around us trying to invade.”

“Same thing’s happening to us,” Yoongi offers, perhaps a little blithely. He doesn’t really care.

“Taehyung thinks I’m going to go like Father did.”

What’s Yoongi meant to say? He stays still, foot-shuffling, staring at the despondent Hoseok slumped over the desk, lost to the world. He’s probably forgotten who he’s talking to. In the quiet, the sea bashes again and again against the White Walls, over and over and over.

“Last year, we didn’t even know there was this many of you,” he says at last, when Hoseok seems frozen, sculpted to the chair. “I thought the sea was a fairy story. We thought that men were like us.”

“And aren’t we?”

Yoongi digs his blunt teeth into his lip. “Men are far, far worse.”

That drags a dry little chuckle out of Hoseok’s throat. “On that, Yoongi, we definitely agree.”

And then something cracks, maybe, and Yoongi knows it’s time for him to leave, and he does - Hoseok, striking a lonely figure, silhouetted against the sky.

He finds his way back to the room that is his by pure dumb luck, and inside it is a bed.

Yoongi doesn’t even care about the phantoms. Let the ghost of Jungyoo fuck him as much as he pleases; Yoongi wants to sleep, and he’ll sleep on feather pillows if he damn well pleases, no matter who was here before him. The blankets are soft; the sea is loud; it is very very, almost possible to forget how badly he’s stranded himself.

He staggers into the room and flings himself onto the bed and falls asleep.

me too.

there’s nobody else to do it.

He dreams of the Earth, and the Min, and Mina and her son.

“I told you not to return,” the Min says, hardfaced holding his stick with age-gnarled hands. “Not to return until you had killed the one responsible. You had the ways and the means, so why did you not do it?”

Yoongi ducks his head, respect burning the back of his neck. In a distant sort of a way, he knows he’s dreaming, and he’s mildly irritated at how his claws haven’t come back, just for a little while.

And Mina is silent. She looks blankly into the middle distance, clutching her son in her lap with her tail, blood on her lips and her ears - just rocking back and forth.

“Tell me why,” the Min says. His blackgreen eyes are full of judgement.

Yoongi hears the burning of the Earth. “How could I kill him?” He says quietly, the wrath of the Min turning catlike, growling, but he can’t stop now he’s begun. “How could I kill him when he’s done nothing to us? It’s not him who’s to blame for all of the - it’s not him that’s responsible.”

“Then who is?”

Yoongi feels himself shrinking under the growth of the Min. But he feels phantom lips on his cheeks, phantom hands on his shoulders, phantom legs between his thighs, and he’s shrinking and shrinking and: “Not him,” he says, as the dream darkens into a red bedroom and warpaint and hands, “It wasn’t Hoseok who-”

He wakes up sweatsticky, the tunic clinging to his skin, someone shaking his shoulder.

It turns out to be Taehyung. Silver circlet in his hair, purple robes undone and messy, he’s shaking Yoongi and Yoongi lashes out with blunted claws -

“Gods,” Taehyung says, wonderingly, “You got - you have ears.”

“Go away,” Yoongi pulls the blankets around him, closer, shaking off the dreams of Jungyoo and hands and sweet fruit in the bowl, the curtains pulled over the windows. “Of course I have ears. I have to hear.”

Taehyung rocks back on his knees and hums. “Nobody has ears like that, though. Is that why you came home with Hoseok? You’re the bandit?”

“I’m not a bandit.”

Taehyung shrugs easily, “You never know who’s a bad guy. Me ‘n Hoseok had a nanny when we were young. Knew her for ten years, and when I was twelve she pulled out a big kitchen knife ‘cause her husband had got killed in the army and she thought it was our fault. You could kill me right now.”

no i couldn’t, Yoongi thinks. “Of course,” he says. Burrows further into the bed. He feels uncomfortable and unsettled, thrown off by how sickening his dreams were. “Why are you here?”

“Hoseok wants to see you in his chambers,” Taehyung says. “You and Jin-hyung and Namjoon. And I’m to come if I want to, but I can’t bring Jimin.”

“Why does he want me?”

“He wants to talk about the North,” Taehyung doesn’t call it the bandits, which Yoongi appreciates; underneath childishness and the twitchy attention span, he seems to listen far more than he lets on. “He’s trying to decide what to do with you.”

Yoongi hums. “Now?”

“Now,” Taehyung stands, dust caking on his robe; he doesn’t bother brushing it off. “Come on.”

Yoongi stumbles clumsily out of the bed. His tail snakes out from underneath the tunic, swishing back and forth, long hairs prickling to touch the air and reassure him that everything’s safe, and he wonders whether Jeongguk would do a better job than he is. What can Yoongi do? He’s half the size of most of these men, and they don’t seem to be giving him any opportunities to kill them.

They’re being damnably, unforgivably nice.

Even Hoseok. Looking out his window at the sea, a hollow voice talking about thankless tasks.

Hardly the cold-blooded killer of Mina and her son.

(Phantom hands, phantom hands, the leering lick, the flickering gaze, the ringed hand slapping Yoongi’s cheek so hard it’s scarred-)

Yoongi bites down on his own lip, following Taehyung through the labyrinthine corridors of the White Walls. They meet guards several times, and once a gaggle of facepainted servants, and Yoongi is stared at, but he gives as good as he gets. He isn’t going to be intimidated by a bunch of metal men.

(There is a maxim in his clan. If you cannot stare the brittlebear down, you cannot take the brittlebear crown.)

Yoongi isn’t sure about crowns. He just wants -

To go home.

Taehyung leads him to the place they were the last time, but Yoongi opens the door first, moving the tapestries and twisting the doorknob. He expects a tribunal or something. A trial. How best shall we execute this bandit?

He sees Seokjin, instead, relaxing in riding leathers on the carpet by the fire. Namjoon, the man from earlier, sits at Hoseok’s desk, twiddling a long woodpen between his fingers, ink on his lips. Hoseok is pacing around the flagstones, dressed in the same suffocating robes as yesterday, slipshoes clattering with every step. “Yoongi,” he greets, polite if not cordial, and then - “Tae.”

“Hi,” Taehyung says, shutting the door behind him. Yoongi stares out the window at the sea; he wonders how easy it is to learn to swim, and, conversely, how easy it is to drown.

“Father says he supports Jungyoo,” Hoseok says bluntly, and Namjoon topples off the chair.

Jungyoo. The name sends shivers of revulsion up Yoongi’s spine, and his cheek tingles where the ring dug into his skin, phantomphantomphantom blood dripping down his face. “I-”

“He heard about you from some - some serving-lady or other,” Hoseok continues, pointing at Yoongi while Namjoon picks himself up from the floor, “And he’s demanding either your execution or immediate enslavement. Are you glad you stayed with us, now?”

Yoongi growls. Hoseok looks angry, too - and it’s so infuriating, how much hatred Hoseok stirs in him. “That’s no choice at all.”

“Father doesn’t have to know,” Taehyung says. He’s planted himself sitting on an ornate chest leaning against one wall, drumming his fingers on the leather. “He can’t move.”

“But everyone will talk about someone like Yoongi,” Seokjin points out, stretching; Yoongi switches his glare over to him for a moment.

Hoseok huffs. “That’s not the main issue, and I wish it was - Father wants a contingency sent North immediately.”

“To the clans?”

Every eye flickers to Yoongi. “You’re going to send an army to the clans,” he says, shaking with anger, his blunt blunt blunt useless claws digging into his palms, “You’re going to send men with swords and spears and arrows to my people? To my clans? Unannounced? You’re going to send an army of shiny metal toys to go and destroy us?”

“The King isn’t in his right frame of mind,” Namjoon says softly, mildly, apparently unwavered by the trembling fury in Yoongi’s body. “We can’t afford any men. And - so far, we only have Jungyoo’s word that there’s been bandits.”

“Jungyoo’s word is mud,” Yoongi swills spit in his mouth; mimes hawking it onto the flagstones, revelling in how disgusted Hoseok looks.

“Aye-aye,” Taehyung mumbles.

“Aye-aye, but it’s still the word of a province-head - and a respectable one - against the word of a captured cat-man,” Seokjin points out. “Namjoon-ah, even if the King doesn’t ask questions, the people will. Yoongi is noticeable.”

Hoseok looks, again, twice his age. “I know.”

Outside the window, the sea crashes, and little brown blots are the only indication that a harbour exists.

“The South, too,” Namjoon speaks slowly, like it pains him, “Jihyung and Heonwoo… they only have provincial forces.”

“The Princess assured me this was a blockade. No conflicts.”

“Border skirmishes,” Namjoon waves his hand at one of the flattened papers on the desk, and craning his neck, Yoongi sees provincial blobs and circles and huge red arrows. A map of the land. “To the South, they don’t count as battles at all, but Jihyung’s losing more men than he can afford - especially on Gaigi-bada. We can’t keep going. And if Jungyoo insists on flinging men into the mountains-”

“When we were there, Jungyoo told us it was more than just him,” Seokjin frowns. “That Minwoo and Chaena and Shihyuk supported him too. This could come to-”

“I’ll stop it before Huindon breaks,” Hoseok says. “I’ll stop it. No armies to go North, no armies to touch the mountains. Send envoys to all the border provinces… and to Chaena and Shihyuk, too, then.”

Yoongi looks out the window. “You’re not going to the clans?”

“No,” Hoseok shrugs. “Why would we? If this is just Jungyoo and the Northerners trying to start something with me, then we won’t.”

do not return until  -

There is a hot, hot pressure behind Yoongi’s eyes.

“But what about the South?”

“Border skirmishes,” Seokjin says wrathfully.

“Jihyung hasn’t written in a few weeks,” Hoseok says, waving his arm at the desk, “and Heonwoo is close enough that he can send envoys himself. We-”

“But the blockades-”

“We can’t do anything major without the King realising it,” Namjoon says. Ink spurts out of the end of the pen. “And - and we need to work out what to do with Yoongi.”

First one set of eyes, and then another, and then four of them, all looking at Yoongi. At Yoongi, still sticky with dreamsweat, at tail-twitching ear-swivelling Yoongi.

“I want to stay here,” he says, although he isn’t sure he does, “I want to stay here.”

Hoseok’s eyes flash with a something. But he says nothing.

“That’s just perfect,” sighs Seokjin under his breath, “That’s - exactly what we need right now.”

The garden in the White Walls turns out to be in Huinbyeong itself, accessible only by an underground tunnel hollowed from the base of the cliff up towards the centre of the city. It’s late at night. Yoongi asked directions from Taehyung, right after he’d been dressed in robes suitable to his new official position.

(The Royal Concubine. The words send phantomphantom shudders down his spine, but Jimin - Taehyung’s friend, small and smiley - had explained that it was the only role Yoongi could enter without being first vetted by a selection of the King’s courtiers.)

(And - and - in the whole of Huinbyeong, only five people know that Yoongi exists. This outfit, these robes, are designed for privacy; a darkened red veil over the face, a shapeless robe. Yoongi just looks like a moving heap of fabric, and not like a clansman.)

why are you still here, asks the Jeongguk that he wishes was beside him. they’re not coming. come home and let’s hunt for bears and go up the mountains and build stickshrines to the Earth. come home.

Yoongi doesn’t know why he’s still here.

But he thinks that -

How could he go back to the clan, now he knows how big the rest of the world is?

The garden in the night is cool and grassy. The Earth sizzles his bare feet when he places them on her, a little welcome-back, a little buzz as she looks at what he’s done, as she approves of it. Yoongi looks around at fruit trees and flowerbeds and bushes, and at the high-hedge maze in the centre; a little slice of Earthiness, in the centre of a city.

There’s a flag, flying next to a gently-trickling fountain. Red, the Huindon colour, with that crowned cat on it.

Jimin told him it was a lioness. “Back before there was Huindon,” he had said, folding silks and ribbons, “There was the lioness. ‘N she had two sons. One of them was a lion, and he skulked away North and was never seen again, and the other one was the first King of Huindon. Everyone says there’s a little bit of her in - in the King,” Taehyung had scoffed, then, but said nothing, “And in Prince Hoseok. And Prince Taehyung.”

Then Taehyung had made a soft little noise, and Jimin had looked at him so sweetly Yoongi had felt like an intruder.

A lioness.

Why can’t Yoongi go home?

He could tell the Min. Tell him that there’ll be no invasion - that they can relax.

But it would feel unfinished, as it does now. The Earth comforts him as he walks through the dewy grass, and tells him what he already knows - that he has business to complete here. Something to finish. Closure to get, before he can go home.

Min Yoongi. Clansman, future Min, Royal Concubine.

As his steps around the quiet garden take him away from the fountain, towards the other side of the maze, he sees the row of stone benches set among flowerbeds full of blooming roses. Reclining uncomfortably on one of them, his head pillowed on his hands, red robes draped all around him like a weight, Hoseok sleeps fitfully.

The Earth hums.

make a choice, Jeongguk mumbles, from far away. everybody has to make a choice, yoongi-hyung. time you made yours.

Chapter 6: Fountains of Fortune

“Someone once, braver than I, said that Huinbyeong was only a heaven to those that never visited it - to people that knew its harbours and hovels, it was a hell. To us, it was the only flash of humanity we ever saw, and we relished it. When he came to us for the first time, however, I could tell he was one of the first category.”

- from a letter penned by Prince Taehyung to the provincial leader Heonwoo

Hoseok wakes up of his own accord, a few minutes - a half hour - after Yoongi arrives. He feels strange, sitting on the ground and studying him, the long slope of his nose and his high cheekbones and his dusky eyelashes. A little invasive. But when Hoseok wakes up -

“Are you gonna try and kill me again?” The Prince says, grit-gravelly voiced, sleep in his eyes.

Yoongi digs his claws blunt, nails into his leg. “You - were awake? Then?” He remembers hip-daggers and sleep, and the realisation that he couldn't do it couldn't do it

“Yoongi…” Hoseok laughs as he sits up, his robes rustling in the pale moonlight, the circlet askew on his head and glimmering like liquid gold. “Half my life I’m getting warned off assassins and murderers. ‘Course I was awake.”

Yoongi flushes and looks away. “So why didn’t you do anything?”

“Why didn’t you?”

Cat-eyes meet human, blackgreen meets brown, and neither of them are the first to look away. Somewhere in the garden, the moonmuted garden, a bird calls. “I don’t know,” Yoongi says.

“Neither do I.”

Hoseok sits up on the stone bench, blinking clumps of sleep out of his eyes, his hair falling centre-parted in a little heart of curls over his forehead. He’s got slipshoes on, still, and the wood shines with nighttime dew. Apparently, he’s thinking along the same lines as Yoongi; staring at the grass, he says: “How come you never wore shoes?”

Underneath him, the Earth hums, sated. Yoongi shrugs. “Just because,” he says emptily, “No particular reason.Just… don’t like them. Why’d you lot wear them so much?”

Hoseok mirrors Yoongi’s one-shoulder slump. “To stop our feet getting dirty. And sore.”

Like babies, then. (Mina’s son.) Yoongi helped the clanwives, once, that spring when every pregnant woman seemed suddenly to be expecting all at once. Their skin had been soft, their ears had been silky, and they seemed to be ever-so breakable at the slightest touch. Yoongi had passed the child onto a clanwife as quickly as he could, and then he’d ran away, away from how dangerously fragile they seemed.

Dangerously fragile. Something, tonight.

“Come and sit down,” Hoseok sits up properly, leaving a space on the stone bench, patting it with his hand. He watches as Yoongi approaches, all dark eyes watching silk robes, bare feet, air-wet hair. The sea is a sound, somewhere far away. The noises of Huinbyeong seem so far away, in this hedgerimmed garden covered in darkened flowers and ancient sculptures of past kings. A lioness, crowned.

Yoongi sits. The bench is warm from Hoseok’s body, although the chill still seeps into his bones, cold in a way only these human things seem to be able to be. His feet don’t touch the ground. He’s still smaller, much smaller than Hoseok - normal for a clansman, but pitifully small for these people here.

“Did you mean it?” He says after a while, his thumb near Hoseok’s index finger where they grip the edge of the bench. “About the clans?”

Hoseok nods slow. “I - yes. Why didn’t you kill me? You could have.”

“‘Cause it wasn't you killing us,” Yoongi says eventually. Again, that birdcall from somewhere in the garden, and he shifts on the bench. “I - got sent. I was taken by Jungyoo on purpose. The Min told me not to return until I’d killed whoever was responsible for killing… us. It wasn’t us, who were bandits. They were killing our children and mothers and - and our foothill camps, where nobody ever did anyone any harm. So I was going to kill the one.”

And then me and Jin-hyung showed up,” Hoseok mumbles - a realisation.

Yoongi nods. What else, really, is he meant to say?

“But we’re not going to kill you,” Hoseok says, like he’s trying to sort something out in his head, “So why are you still here?”

“I don’t know,” says Yoongi. That’s the truth. “I really don’t.”

The gardens of Huinbyeong are terribly pretty and quiet. Huinbyeong itself seems like the men’s version of the forest - it never sleeps, and it’s always alive with sound and people and teeming with fun things to do. In this little bubble, though, there is respite. The two of them. Sitting on a stone bench, swinging their legs among the dusky roses. Yoongi looks at their differences, the skin tones, the height, the tail and lack of it - and similarities. Eyes and noses and lips.

“You’re - worried about the South,” he says softly.

Hoseok sighs. “I hadn’t… expected an attack. We… the Princess and I, Princess Meiwuko…. we send letters. We try to resolve things. I’ve been building peace from the ground up. I don’t know - I don’t know how -” He falls silent. His foot kicks out, snapping the stem of a brittle sunflower. “Border skirmishes. That means battles in - near Gaigi-bada.”

“Another lake?”

“Yes, but much bigger than Kehun-bada is.” Hoseok prods the broken flower head with his toe. “We get fish from there. Jihyung - he’s the provincial head - he has his fort in the middle of the lake. But their garrison is small, and Heonwoo’s is decimated with the fighting. If Jihyung calls for aid, and he will soon, I’ll have to ride out with a contingency to rescue him… and fight the Princess, or meet her in person. I’ll have to leave the city again, and gods know what my father will do to it. Jihyung has to call for aid soon, but I wish - I wish - fuck.”

Yoongi doesn’t bother saying it’ll be alright. “My clan has a maxim,” he says instead, staring at the flower on the grass, “For things like that. The hunter that bites at the wounded bear has more to fear than the peacetime one.”

Hoseok shrugs. “Explain.”

“The South is the hunter,” Yoongi stretches out his leg, but he’s too short to touch the flower, “And Huindon is the wounded bear. When you hunt… when you hunt bear, you always hunt the healthy ones, because they’ll go down far easier than the ones that are wounded. Wounded bears are likely to do anything, just because they’re so frenzied to survive.”

Hoseok laughs wryly. “You think we’re frenzied?”

“Frenzied enough to attack the mountains.”

“We won’t.”

“If you’re the wounded bear, and the South is the hunter…” Yoongi pauses to work out how to word it. “Then the mountains, we’re baby cubs. When mothers are hurt, sometimes they eat their babies because they’re the closest things to kill, and they’re desperate.”

“That’s horrible.”

“That’s bears.”

“We’re not bears, though.”

Yoongi grins, looking at the lioness fountain, and then at Hoseok. “You’re lions.”

And that, out of everything he’s said tonight, seems to make Hoseok smile.

Yoongi wakes with the sun the next morning. He hasn’t closed the window shutters since he arrived, in this guest of a room that’s become his, and so as the sun dawns crisp over the horizon and reflects off the sea, Yoongi wakes. He’s a restless sleeper, anyway.

(Trained himself to wake up before Seohyung entered his room; before Jungyoo woke up in bed.)

Before he can get up, make any meaningful start on the day, Park Jimin knocks on his door, a wooden platter held tightly in his small fists, a little smile on his face. Taehyung is trailing behind him like some sort of eager puppy, holding his silver circlet in his hands, his robes all knotted wrongly.

(Yesterday - Yoongi was introduced to Park Jimin by Taehyung as the best person in the whole world. Jimin, smiling so widely it seemed like his lips would split his cheeks in two, introduced himself as Jimin, general dogsbody to the royal family. Seokjin called him Just Jimin.)

(Yesterday, Taehyung had dragged Yoongi by the arm to Jimin’s chambers, a series of rooms buried deep in the White Walls, only the slightest of windows revealing the sound of the sea. He’s gonna be the Royal Concubine, Taehyung said, so plainly Yoongi had blushed to the roots of his ears,give him the clothes. Jimin hadn’t said anything - he’d laughed, but apparently he laughs at everything, and he’d gone headfirst into a warren of closets, and emerged with silk drapes and dark robes. Burgundy. Starry purple. Raven-black.)

“Good morning,” Jimin says now, flicking little legs out from underneath the platter and balancing it on the end of Yoongi’s untidy bed. “Sleep well?”

Yoongi shrugs. One half of the platter is dedicated to the robes from yesterday, the ones Jimin decided would fit him, and the other half is covered in food.

Probably for him. They eat like kings, here.

“The King asked to have you presented to him,” Jimin continues, perfectly friendly, as though he and Yoongi are more than just strangers. “But - well, Hoseokie’s with him now.”

Hoseokie. Hmph. “What’s wrong with that?” Yoongi asks carefully, hand snaking out to snaffle a roll of bread, ferrying bite-sized morsels to his mouth as he sits among crumpled sheets.

Taehyung makes a scathing noise and settles to sit on the floor. “Hah. If you’re presented to him looking like this, he’ll order you hung from the battlements so the birds can pluck out your tail. As an example. He’s a rot. Hoseok’ll be lucky to talk him out of you, but you’re dead if you go there.”

“Shut up,” Jimin says. “That’s why he’s got the veil, dummy. Ears get hidden and so does his face. He doesn’t talk at all, and he’s tiny, and the King’s eyes are all gone to pieces anyway - we can pass him off as a harem-slave that Meiwuko sent. He’ll like that.”

“Me, or the King?” Yoongi snaps. Refuses to cower under the sudden gaze of two of them. “What’s going on?”

Taehyung takes a slice of apple from the platter. “The King has heard that Hoseok brought something back with him, and he wants to see you. And if he sees you, he’ll say you’re an abomination against the gods, and he’ll kill you. And we don’t need your lot declaring war on us, too, just ‘cause our King is too bloody-fool to see when peace is a good-” he breaks off. “We just don’t need it.”

Yoongi doesn’t bother explaining that the clans have probably given him up for dead already. He just nods.

Hoseokie, huh.

“And we’re expecting word from Jihyung any day now,” Jimin is unfolding the robes, laying them out neatly on the flagstones with their matching veils and waist-sashes spread over them. “I heard. Gaiga-bada’s been invaded by Southerners in boats, and Jihyung’s -”

“No fucking garrison worth speaking of. Fishermen, the lot of them. Use their armour as bait,” Taehyung spits a seed into his palm, looking forlorn.

Jimin twists his face up, all pained and sad.

And Yoongi is busy looking at the robes. Huinden script.

for love for love for love for love

Jungyoo’s ringed fingers dig ghostly into his cheek, and for a moment, Yoongi feels the burn of hot blood as real as though it’s right in front of him. The trace of fingers over his cheek is enough to prove that nothing’s changed - it’s still just a scar - but it’s enough to remind him of why he’s really here, of who really showed him what these men are capable of. Hot breath in his ear and hands pulling his legs apart, Jungyoo’s wife sleeping comfortably in the bed beside them as though nothing was wrong with what was happening in her marriage - in her chamber.

Royal Concubine. Although Yoongi doubts Hoseok would ask him to do anything like that, the - the implication is still there, and the very thought of it makes him shudder.

Still.

Those in times of peace can afford to pick their worth - those in times of strife must trust the Earth. The old man Soo’s favourite maxim, if Yoongi recalls -

fat lot of good it did him, when he was lying all drained out on the forest floor -

for love for love for love for love

“These will fit,” Jimin runs a set of burgundy-white robes through his fingers, feeling the long sleeves between finger and thumb. “They’re still a little too big, but…”

“It’s fine.” Yoongi stares at them unseeing. What does he want? Why is he still here? In a place where everyone seems to wish him ill - in a place with hardly any Earth to call its own - in a place so far away from the clan that it’s almost as though it doesn’t exist at all - why is he still here?

“Put this on,” Jimin says, unaware of Yoongi’s mental dilemma. “When you come out, we’ll take you to the King.”

“Hurrah,” Taehyung says gloomily.

Yoongi gets Taehyung to drape the veil over his head.

It looks odd, he thinks, trooping up in between Seokjin and Jimin like some prisoner being marched to the block - the veil is translucent black, like the sash holding the robes shut, which means Yoongi can see out but nobody can see in. He looks a bit like a moving pyramid of fabric, when he catches sight of himself reflected in a mirror lining one of the corridors, and to keep up appearances they’ve had to grab Seokjin, who’s holding his forearm like Yoongi could escape at any minute.

He’s squeezing a little too tight. Yoongi makes a soft noise of complaint - immediately, Seokjin drops him as though burned.

“Keep holding him,” Jimin says irritably. “Or the King’ll think we’re tricking him.”

“Of course,” Seokjin takes the arm Yoongi offers him, but in a grip so loose Yoongi has to make an effort to hold himself in the air. “Hoseok up there already?”

“Of course.”

Taehyung says nothing. He’s trudging ahead of them all, shoulders slumped, the picture of dejection - moody anger floods from him like a dam-burst lake. He’s got the circlet on his head now, but rebelliously askew on his long hair, and he still hasn’t done his robes up properly, despite Jimin’s nagging to do so.

The King, then, has found no favour among either of his sons.

Their little party walks through the White Walls uninterrupted. Taehyung is saluted by the guards, and Seokjin is greeted with friendly hollas, and Yoongi is stared at with unabashed curiosity, safe behind his veil, realising for the first time how useful it will be.

The King’s rooms are at the tip of the White Walls, above the Royal Throne. “That’s where hyung accepts applicants and things,” Taehyung whispers as they pass the arched marble doors, open to show a towering room hung with red tapestries and flags. “The King used to sit there ‘til he got too sick.”

They walk past it, and through a door hidden behind a wall hanging. Jimin hums under his breath, tuneless and mirthless, guards bowing before him, and then they’re climbing a curved staircase -

and on, and on, and on -

and on,

and on -

Seokjin drops his hold a few minutes into the climb. Yoongi can’t bring himself to lift his arm again; his legs hurt, and this is different from climbing trees at home, when everything is natural and leaping and his tail is free to balance him and pull his body around branches. “What-”

“It’s at the top of the White Walls,” huffs Jimin, “At - for the air. Fresh air.”

Yoongi nods. He doesn’t understand. He figures it probably doesn’t matter.

The curving staircase continues on until it can’t possibly do so anymore, and exhausts itself along with its occupants at the top - a terse, twitchy Hoseok awaits them, his hands gloved, his robes tucked meticulously into themselves, not a trace of his sleepless night visible on his face. “He’s - going on about Jihyung,” Hoseok informs them, pulling Yoongi toward him by the shoulder almost absent-mindedly, “And - sorry-” As Yoongi wrests his way back out of Hoseok’s hold.

“I’ll go, then,” Jimin says tightly. He brushes his hand against Taehyung’s elbow, and then he’s vanishing down the stairs again.

“Why-” Yoongi and his forloveforlove - “Why is he-”

“The King ordered him executed, last year,” Taehyung says calmly. “He’s dead. Meant to be, anyway.”

“What-”

What?!

“Not important,” Seokjin says, prodding his fingers in Yoongi’s back and pushing him forward, “Not important, go on. I’ll send word if there’s anything from Jihyung while you’re in there. And Joon should already be there, so… so there’s that.”

“Thanks,” and they watch him rattle down the stairs too. Almost unconsciously, Yoongi presses back into Hoseok’s arm, away from the shut wooden door, and can’t even find it within himself to be angry at the hand Hoseok wraps around his wrist. It’s warm, up here, so high in the White Walls that the window is in the ceiling as well as the cliff-face, showing wheeling seagulls high in the sky above.

“S’pose we go in now,” Taehyung mumbles. He’s twitching, pulling at his robes - making them even more of a mess next to his brother’s splendour.

And there’s a story, if Yoongi guesses rightly -

“S’pose we do,” Hoseok says in the same sullen tone of voice. He knocks, sharply, and then calls Namjoon’s name; there’s that schnick noise again as a key turns in the lock, and the door swings inward.

“Be quiet,” Namjoon hisses when he sees them; he doesn’t even look surprised at the small mound of silk and velvet Yoongi has become. “He keeps thinking I’m an assassin.”

So Taehyung parades into the room, shoving past Namjoon’s shoulder, and yells out a “Hello, Father!” before any of them can say anything more.  

“Fucking fantastic,” Hoseok says under his breath.

And there’s the sound of -

Yoongi knows the Min is an old man. The Min was an old man when Yoongi’s mother was born, and an even older man now, but the Earth has given him a vitality he would never have otherwise. If he wasn’t the Min, he’d be dead twenty years ago - but everyone knows that. The Min is the Min for as long as there isn’t a Min to replace him, and he’ll only die when Yoongi is ready to take his place, and that’s fine. But the Min is still an old man, and it shows in his voice and his posture.

This is the sound of an old man.

“Hoseok,” croaks the voice, a voice older than any voice has the right to be, “Show me my son.”

Hoseok leads Yoongi forward, into the chamber proper. “I’m here, Father,” he says, and shoots Taehyung a glare from where the younger Prince has flung himself into a bedside chair, the look returned to him with an extra glower.

The King is tucked into bed.

For someone that, apparently, seems to control the fate of much of the world Yoongi knows of, he’s incredibly small. Withered, like that lone leaf on the tree in winter; withered and shrunken, a shadow of the former self he must once have been. Skin flapped on skin flapped on skin makes folded-white cheeks, and a head bare of hair, and little beetleblack bead eyes that peer, flickering, around the room, skating over Taehyung and Namjoon, fixing on Hoseok. On Yoongi. Hands as thin and translucent as the clouds lie on the bedsheet, twitching. “Hoseok,” he says, and it sounds like a cackle, “Come here. Introduce us.”

“This is - Yoona,” Hoseok says with difficulty, his thumb slotted into Yoongi’s palm. More comfort than Hoseok realises, probably.

“Namjoon tells me - a gift?”

“Princess Meiwuko is generous indeed.”

“Generous indeed,” croaks that froggy, dead voice, and the hand closest to Yoongi begins creeping across the coverlet. “Was instruction given? What are you to do with her? Is she a defective?”

“Perfectly healthy,” Hoseok says, voice strained.

“Let me feel.”

Yoongi allows himself to be shuffled gently forward, clinging almost embarrassingly tight to Hoseok now. And he sees what Namjoon meant - what Jimin meant - he does look small, as small as a human woman might, and the King is half-blind anyway, blinking at him through those black eyes with as much sightlessness as a newborn. Yoongi can easily pass as a woman. As a -

for love for love for love -

The King’s hand is cold and clammy, the grip weak on Yoongi’s fingers. “And have you trialed her yet?” He asks, laughycroak voice, “Will my heirs be born with Southern blood?”

Yoongi shudders so hard that he almost believes Jungyoo is back in the room with him - and Hoseok pulls him back, hands on his shoulders, warm and tight and enveloping and safe. “No, my lord,” Hoseok says coldly; Taehyung begins to look interested in the conversation, perking up in his slump. “Nor do I intend to.”

The King scowls. “Neither of you - first Taehyung and that thing -”

Taehyung hisses under his breath - Yoongi is reminded, startlingly so, of Jeongguk hissing at a woodsnake they found in the trees. Catlike.

“Not yet, my lord,” Hoseok interrupts a little smoother, and he’s practically hugging Yoongi to him now. “If we may be excused - duty calls, and the South-”

“Kill the bitch,” the King croaks into the air. He smiles, corpse-lips pulling up. “Kill her dead.”

Hoseok doesn’t even reply to that. Kill the bitch. Namjoon is bustling ahead of them to open the door, sharing a look worth a thousand words with Hoseok, clasping his hand to Taehyung’s shoulder, and Yoongi can’t get out of the room fast enough.

Kill her dead.

for love -

“Eat with me,” Hoseok says, once they’re down the stairs. Taehyung has long since run off, presumably to find Jimin, and Seokjin is reclining against the wall, talking to Namjoon in a low voice, before they both leave through a door to the left, their conversation fading into the air.

Yoongi stares blankly.

“A meal,” Hoseok presses. “In my rooms. Jihyung - well. Just. Won’t you come?”

“I suppose.” The veil is beginning to constrict his ears, but Yoongi doesn’t want to take it off, not after seeing the King. He feels sticky, and slimy, and the cool air of the forest is a long way away from clammy hands and croaky voices telling him how good he’s being.

“Now?”

“Now?”

“No better time to eat, if you ask me,” Hoseok’s looking from side to side, humming, but he looks uncomfortable - the King’s unsettled all of them, probably. “Seokjin’s to join us.”

Yoongi follows Hoseok wordlessly, back down past the throne room, into the warren of the White Walls again. Huinbyeong the city feels very far off, and Yoongi can’t imagine how - how isolated it must be, living within sight of the people and unable to talk to them.

In the forest, everything is open. And alive.

And through the window, the sea song is restless.

“We’re waiting for him to die,” Hoseok says unexpectedly - a fountain of unasked information, he must be today. “Our father, I mean. He’s been sick for five years, and alive for ninety.”

Yoongi says nothing. He imagines what he used to imagine, slitting Jungyoo’s throat, pulling Seohyung by the hair and pushing her out the window, cutting Jungyoo’s feet off and shoving them in his mouth, but he can’t imagine any of those punishments fitting the King. The King deserves to be stifled to death, in that tower room, uncared for.

“He - tries to run the country from the bedsit,” Hoseok continues. Past tapestries of lions and red banners and kings and conquests; past embroidered images of himself, auburn hair flowing majestic.

“But you don’t let him.”

“We try. There are certain… guards, and people, that remain loyal. When Jimin was told to be executed, I almost emptied the vaults paying bribes to them so he wouldn’t,” Hoseok forces a mirthless smile. “And he wants war. With the South.”

“Princess Meiwuko,” Yoongi remembers. “And the… Jihyung, right?”

“Right.”

Hoseok’s rooms are nearer than Yoongi first thought, and when they get there, Seokjin’s already flopped himself in front of the fireplace, his riding leathers unlaced and laid open to reveal a muddy undershirt. “Fuck,” he says, voice muffled by the carpet below him, “Yoongi, you do look like a girl.”

Yoongi isn’t close enough to kick him, so he kicks the air instead, scowling unseen behind the black veil. “I feel ridiculous.”

“That robe is… odd,” Hoseok agrees, and Yoongi gets the funny feeling like they’re all thinking of the first meal. That time. Jungyoo’s chair, and hybrid bandits, and gold chains glimmering. “You can take it off, if you want.”

Yoongi shrugs, fiddling with sashes and ribbons until the outer robe slips from his shoulders, folding around his elbows in waves and swathes; underneath, there’s a cream-coloured undershirt and stockings.

(Hoseok is looking at him, although he doesn’t notice. Seokjin notices, though, and his brow furrows, and there’s the memory of a conversation in Jungyoo’s castle - half-murmured threats.)

(Anyway, Hoseok is looking at him.)

“I don’t know how you wear so much,” Yoongi mumbles, aiming a hefty kick at the heap of robes piled on the floor. “It’s so heavy.” His veil floats to the ground, and, pleased, he lets his ears twitch and his tail swish from side to side to side.

Seokjin laughs half-heartedly. “You’re not wrong there.”

Hoseok chuckles.

And after a few minutes, a warpainted servant knocks on the door with another wooden platter, heaped with bread and a whole cooked chicken and a little pot of split clementines, setting it on the paperheaped table. There’s only one chair in the room, but it remains empty; Hoseok shifts the tray down to the floor and they sit cross-legged around it.

Yoongi forgets to be uncomfortable, and he forgets the Min. He’s reminded, pleasantly, of campfires with Jeongguk and Daesoo and Minhyuk, just sitting around and talking about nothing.

It’s nice.

“I’m sorry,” Namjoon says. The hand that descended on his shoulder had made Yoongi leap almost out of his skin, but it’s someone familiar. And they’re in the gardens, near the Earth, and Yoongi has the advantage.

“Sorry for what?”

“For - yesterday,” and Namjoon has the grace to blush over his dimples, pink and embarrassed. “Those questions. I appreciate it must have been a lot.”

“It’s okay,” Yoongi says uncertainly, shifting along his stone bench. He’s very tired, too tired to be bitter, and Namjoon seems harmless in any case.

Namjoon takes the unspoken invitation, folding robes underneath him and tucking his hands neatly into his lap. “Did you eat?”

“With Hoseok and Seokjin.”

“Good.” Yoongi sees his thumbs twitching out of the corner of his eye - with some amusement, he realises Namjoon is trying to ask him those questions again, but seems to have to work up to it. “Uh-”

“We believe in Earth,” Yoongi says, when the silence seems to drag too long. “We just believe in the Earth, and that’s all there is to it. Is that what you wanted to know?”

Namjoon turns an even darker red.

“We live in the North, and we believe in the Earth,” Yoongi rubs his bare toes in the grass to feel her tickle, “And that’s all there is to it. Our clans build stickshrines to her.”

“Oh. So - so, nothing like the lioness?”

“Nothing like that at all.”

“That’s strange.”

“I think your lioness is pretty strange, too.”

And there’s a silence, but it’s companionable, and the Earth hums happily below them.

do not return until -

shut UP!

The next day, Taehyung and Jimin drag him all silked and  veiled to the gardens, and the pair of them roll in soil and Earth until they’re muddied and rumpled. Taehyung’s in all tunics and trousers, and Jimin’s in the same sort of costume - when Yoongi asks what they think they’re doing, Jimin tuts fondly, eyes flung towards Taehyung. “His idea.”

“We’re going into Huinbyeong,” Taehyung declares, paddling his dirty hands in the fountain next to the maze and splashing water through his hair. “No point hanging around here all day looking mopey. We can - buy you stuff, and things, and the King can’t ask to see us ‘cause we won’t be around.”

Jimin giggles.

(Why on the Earth would anyone sentence him to death?)

“Do you want to come?”

Yoongi shrugs. Mostly, these days, all he really wants to do is go home. “I guess I do.”

He wants to go home, and maybe find Jungyoo again and kill him while he’s at it. But the bubbling burn for revenge, the kind of thing that kept him going, has faded now - sure, he’s been restless at nights, and the King’s gaze made his skin crawl, but there are people here now. People that don’t -

chains and chairs and collars -

“Keep the veil, but just go in your undershirt,” Taehyung offers a critical eye, his face so plastered in dirt as to be unrecognisable. “And tuck that tail into your trousers.”

Yoongi does. “We’re not gonna get out of the Walls, though.”

“There’s not just one way out, stupid.”

Huinbyeong the city swallows the gardens, of course, and they’re hardly ever used. Apparently only Hoseok, Taehyung, and Jimin ever come out here regularly - the rest of them like to wander down to the harbour for their own glimpse of nature, for the crash of seawave and rock against boat and pier. The Earth, somewhere below him, approves.

And so there’s a brick. Loose in the wall.

“Ta-da,” Taehyung crows, as though it’s something to be - proud of.

“It’s a badly-built wall.”

Jimin pats it, and begins wrestling it out, slowly but surely as the sound of stone against stone scrapes through the empty garden. “We loosened it when we were younger.”

“When Hoseok had time for fun,” Taehyung adds under his breath. Yoongi scoops the sound up in the hollow of his ear, and wishes he hadn’t.

The hole in the wall is soon revealed, and Jimin begins pushing bricks out wholesale, letting them crash down to the other side with dull thunks. “Just… let’s come on. We can spend an hour or two out here.”

Yoongi goes first, the smallest, sliding through the hole they’ve created - it’s big enough for him, and he’s a little bigger than a man-child, so he figures their story must ring true. Jimin slips through with a little more difficulty, and Taehyung has to fold himself practically in half to wriggle his way out of the garden - and into Huinbyeong - before they’re able to start replacing the bricks. Yoongi looks around him, and is -

less than impressed, really, by what he sees.

They’re in an alleyway, a thin sliver of space in between two buildings. The salt and smell of fish is everywhere, permeating the air itself, and Yoongi’s nose is twitching in disgust before he can stop himself. There is noise, lots of noise, torturous amounts of noise, attacking Yoongi’s every sense, and no matter where he turns, there’s something to see. Shadows flashing. Red flags flying. People shouting to each other in coarse, sharp accents; people flapping out of windows; people running down streets and walking down streets and stopping on streets; children darting between their legs, giggling about something or nothing in particular.

“Welcome to Huinbyeong!”

Jimin beams. “Best city in the whole of Huindon.”

“Only city in the whole of Huindon.”

“Same difference.”

Yoongi ends up sandwiched between the pair of them, wandering through the streets of Huinbyeong, through street sellers and beggars and shouting people and horses and cows and chickens and the occasional goat. The streets are hardly paved with gold, and his head spins with the smells, hundreds of millions of them all vying with each other to be the most dominant in the pungent air. Some people have a place to go, and are going there quickly; the streets are clogged with others that have nowhere to go and everyone to talk to, babies balanced on hips, cats slung on shoulders, chatting amicably. The road is so crowded it’s hardly a road at all.

“This is a bad one,” Taehyung whispers under his breath, “A bad street. We’ll take you somewhere pretty.”

Yoongi feels dizzy - dizzy, leaning against Jimin’s arm as the three of them stagger stepwise through the crowd, aiming for a little side street out of the sun. So many people. And free people, talking people, people with no job or purpose. People existing just to be people.

It’s insane.

“This way,” and Taehyung pulls all three of them into a sidestreet, almost as bustling as the thoroughfare but not as claustrophobic. Someone, somewhere, is playing a flute - there’s the sound of shaking bells and a ringing drum.

“I was born here,” Jimin says fondly.

“Really?”

“‘Course. Right there,” his small hand waves at a dark house window, “And when I was… what, ten? Yeah, ten, my older brother got - enlisted, I guess. So my mother got me signed into working in the White Walls, ‘cuz they were the only people that wouldn’t be called to fight, and when she died I just kinda moved into the Walls and ended up being his personal slave.”

Taehyung cries out a protest, and then tries to plant an over-affectionate kiss on Jimin’s cheek; laughing, Jimin shoves him away.

Oh. So it’s that kind of thing.

Well -

Well.

Around the streets of Huinbyeong, nobody gives three muddy, squabbling, rabbling boys any attention, and that’s what they are for the moment. Yoongi huffs a laugh through his veil, slapping Taehyung lightly on the arm - “Quit it.”

Jimin buys them both apples, big and red and round and shiny, with a handful of copper coins. Yoongi dangles his by the stalk, spinning it gently to inspect for bruises; Taehyung doesn’t bother, taking a massive bite while apple juice drips down his chin. Jimin gets himself an orange, splitting the segments with his thumbs as they wander further down the street, watching all the wonders of the world pass them by.

“Apples are, objectively, the best fruit.”

“Oranges.”

“Apples.”

“Oranges.”

“Apples.”

“Oranges.”

The pair of them bicker over Yoongi’s head while he nibbles at the appleskin, stripping it with his sharpish little canines, letting the cool juice settle on his tongue. A woman and a man squawk at each other over a little child playing in the street; a few men in robes from the White Walls swish down the streets, holding their hems above their boots with dainty little steps to hop over the mud and the puddles.

“We should take him to the harbour,” Taehyung says, tossing the apple core behind him carelessly after he’s extracted the seeds from the centre. “He’d like it.”

“You ever tried fish?” Jimin says to Yoongi.

Yoongi doesn’t bother telling them that he never thought fish were real until very recently. “No,” is all he says, smiling into his apple. “But I’d like to.”

“Oh - then we’ll do that!”

“M. Kay,” Jimin smiles fondly at Taehyung again, his eyes all crinkled up in the corners. “And you can see the boats. The South’s got us blockaded, so our whole navy is at port right now, and it looks so cool.”

“And useless,” Taehyung adds. Laughs a little. “But it looks real damn impressive.”

They walk through the streets of Huinbyeong, and it’s the freest Yoongi’s felt since riding over vast swathes of farmland and country with Hoseok and Seokjin. He remembers again that night - hip-dagger aimed at Hoseok’s heart - and cringes uncomfortably away from the thought, the reminder of how stupid he was.

Really, really stupid. But it’s fixed now.

And it’s almost like Jungyoo never existed, and almost like Yoongi is here of his own free will, and almost like he’s been shoved against Taehyung and Jimin by choice and not by circumstance.

He wonders if Jeongguk would like it here.

And as the flags fly from parapets, and as people sing and dance and fight and argue and buy and sell and beg and steal, and horses bleat and sheep neigh and goats butt angrily against the people holding their ropes, Yoongi reckons he would.

“Hold on-”

They’ve entered the thoroughfare again, but there’s a commotion from near the gates, and Jimin turns frowning. “There’s no hunting parties out, right?”

Taehyung’s expression matches Jimin’s. “No. I - who’d be using the Royal Avenue?”

The horse that thunders through the rapidly-clearing street is splattered in mud and foaming at the mouth, eyes wild with exhaustion and fear, its rider battered and bloody in his tin armour, a much-abused red plume fluttering from the top of his helmet, and the lioness of Huindon glowing from scraped paint on his chestplate. In the red plume is a tuft of algae-green.

“Oh my gods,” Jimin breathes.

Slowly, the news spreads like a virus through the claustrophobia of bodies in Huinbyeong -

an envoy from Jihyung.

A summons.

The Southern war -

the choice -

Chapter 7: Moving On

“Building a stickshrine is something far more important to him than he’ll tell you. I helped him once, one cold, cold night, when everything seemed like it was going to be for nothing - when it seemed like it would be our last night together. I helped him build it, but that first time, I just watched. What was I meant to do? The lioness never accepts such roars of love from her followers.”

- from a letter written by the Crown Prince to his brother, years after the war

The man is bloodied and panting when he reaches Hoseok; Taehyung, Yoongi, and Jimin scramble back into the White Walls just in time to see the envoy received in the throne room. Resplendent in hastily-arranged robes, Taehyung sweeps into place, and Jimin makes himself scarce, and - draped in veil and shapeless robe - Yoongi hides himself in plain sight among the courtiers. The Royal Courtesan, just a normal servant, looking at the Crown Prince as the peace crashes around him.

“We’ll go,” Hoseok tells him, an arm around his elbow. The Crown Prince to his lessers. “We’ll go. How many down?”

“An attack on Gai,” the man pants. His face is hidden by the drooping plumes, but his bloodied fingertips are soaking themselves into Hoseok’s robes as he clutches them, royal convention be damned. “Gai is down, but we hold - we hold Gaigi-bada and the other two-”

“Stay here, that man,” Hoseok says. A warpainted man steps out from behind the throne, and the rider collapses gratefully, eyes closing and body slumping.

“You hear that?” Hoseok throws his arms wide; Yoongi imagines the very ocean hearing how loud his shout is, his voice iron with anger. “You hear that sound? Get ready. I’ll leave by sunset!”

Taehyung, by his side, looks mildly pained.

And the White Walls is flung into turmoil.

A quick geography lesson -

Huindon is split into nine provinces, which, of course, you know. These provinces are named after their current leaders; the province of Jungyoo, for example, or of Chaena, or of Minwoo or Junghyun or Youngjin or Shihyuk or Heonwoo or Huinbyeong.

Or Jihyung.

Huindon has two major lakes. Kehun-bada, in the province of Junghyun, and Gaigi-bada, in the province of Jihyung. The latter is the biggest, the Gaigi river leading in straight from the westerly sea, and Jihyung’s castle has been built on the island in the centre of it, the lake providing a natural fortification.

There are three lesser lakes, slightly to the south of Gaigi-bada. Gai, the southerly one is called; Kuo and Suoh, the next two respectively.

Gai is right on the border of the Southern Kingdom. Historically, it’s been the first line of defence in the wars between Huindon and her neighbour.

Gai is down -

“We’re all fucked,” Seokjin says mildly, running his leathergloved fingers over the curve of his hip-dagger. “So you may as well have this.”

Yoongi stares at it. He thinks about Hoseok in his bedroll on the hill, and he thinks about swordplay in the mornings on that long ride to Huinbyeong, and he thinks of stabbings and killings and revengings and suchlikes. “Thank you,” he says, and he tries not to think about them any more. “I - are you going?”

“With Hoseok? Of course.”

“Am I?”

“If you want to.”

Yoongi stares at the hip-dagger, the belt-buckle to tie around his waist, the heavy leather in his hands.

“Do you want to?”

And Yoongi doesn’t answer, but Seokjin doesn’t really need his answer either. He fumbles with the leather belt, the buckles tight around his waist as they’ll go, the dagger hanging as long as a sword on his small frame, the brass supports, the leather-wrapped pommel; the claws he lost, returned to him in kind.

He imagines killing Jungyoo.

He imagines showing Jeongguk all the things he’s seen - and he imagines Eunhyun, and Daesoo, and Minhyuk, and Chaeyoung, and everyone, and -

do not return until

The Min, Yoongi decides, is not in possession of all of the facts. “I think I do.”

“I guessed so,” Seokjin claps him on the shoulder, leaning against the wall, a shadow of their conversation in Jungyoo’s castle. “You have another motive for being here, don’t you?”

you have another motive for being here

“I do,” Yoongi says, when before he’d just pushed Seokjin away. The hip-dagger represents more than just the claws he’s lost, he thinks, and their significance can’t possibly be lost on Seokjin. “Yeah, I guess I do.”

“You ever gonna tell us what it is?”

“Not dangerous.”

Seokjin barks a laugh. “Y’know what? I actually believe you.”

“There’s a maxim in my clan,” Yoongi says, smiling bitterlemon teeth and lips as well, “A - saying, I guess. Something like belief in another in times of snow is false as the drifts when the sun comes again.”

“Belief in you because of Jihyung is false?”

Yoongi shrugs. “It’s just a saying.”

“Then we prove it wrong,” Seokjin pats him again, the veil shifting over Yoongi’s ears, his smile soft and sad. “There’s gonna be far too many times of - of snow to bother about wondering when the sun is coming again.”

“You should be a clansman. Make up maxims like the best of them,” Yoongi plays with the buckle of the hip-dagger. “How far away is - where we’re going?”

“A week’s solid riding. Three days if we were two riders on our own, but we’re a company now.”

“Who’s coming?”

Seokjin looks pained. “A rank platoon. Twenty men. It would be a hundred, but we have to protect Huinbyeong.”

Yoongi frowns a little. “A hundred? Sounds like a bit much.”

“A bit much? A bit much? A hundred men is a speck of dust in a battle between them and us. Twenty is barely a drop in the ocean, but it’s all we can afford - Yoongi, these battles are between thousands of men, not hundreds, not tens.”

The sudden, gaping out of depth feeling returns, and Yoongi is floundering miles away from anything he knows; at the mercy of the Earth, perhaps, or of the Huindon lioness, or of whatever strange deity seems to be looking over him these days. The sea, maybe.

And he’s drowning.

The White Walls are all thrown into chaos, and nobody notices Yoongi squirrelling away to the gardens in his veil and his puffed black robes. The guards, shiny silver and rattling, are running through the halls; the sound of the ocean is masked by the noise of yelling, and a bugle sounds from above the Walls, across Huinbyeong, signalling the arrival of the envoy and the platoon preparing to leave - courtiers are running madly about the place, and tapestries are hanging loose on the walls, and the King is squawking in his turret room, and Yoongi’s ears are so badly battered from the cacophony that he’s almost glad to get into the little tunnel leading through to the garden.

He’s going to build a stickshrine for the Earth, and then he’ll be able to go with his conscience only slightly grubby.

(Hands, lips, legs-)

And the gardens, as usual, are empty. The smell of the sea and the sound of the sea and the cry of the sea is everywhere, and the walls seem impenetrable - Yoongi can’t see the spot where Jimin and Taehyung pulled those bricks loose just a few hours ago.

He pads, shoeless, through the grounds, the Earth underneath him and the sky above him and himself with him. He and Jeongguk used to do this - grass-meditation, before they built their clumsy stickshrines up in the mountain peaks.

This is not a mountain peak.

(Hands, lips-)

(Will he ever see the mountain peaks again?-)

(Hands-)

To build a stickshrine, you need sticks. As the name suggests.

To build a stickshrine, you need sticks, and good hard Earth below you, and good cold sky above you, and the friendship of the place around you. Yoongi reckons he can find the sticks, and there’s Earth and sky aplenty in the gardens, buzzing bronze, comfort, welcome.

He doesn’t notice Hoseok - but then, Hoseok notices him. A little figure, tail-swished, ears-twitched, making his purposeful way across the garden, and Hoseok notices him from his half-hidden spot in a hedge of the maze.

Hoseok wonders what he’s doing, too.

Yoongi moves with purpose. This is something he didn’t need to be taught how to do; ingrained so deep in the cultural memory that it’s second nature to snap branches and strip leaves, piling longish straightish sticks in his arms all bundled up. The Earth sees what he’s doing - she approves, he knows, and she’s helping him along, drawing his eyes to the spot where he’ll build the shrine, pulling branches long and straight to help him find the best ones.

He built his first stickshrine with the Min.

Everyone builds their first stickshrine with the Min.

The Min takes you by the hand - or, in his old age, you take him - and you walk into the depths of the forest with him. You show off your tail-tree-balance, your perception of danger, until you find a spot that feels just right, and the Min shows you what to do.

Gather the sticks. Long and straight as you can. The Earth will show you the way.

Yoongi gathers them. Jihyung, and Hoseok, and hands and lips and legs, all of them mean nothing. He’s just gathering wood.

Find a spot to build upon, flat and wide as you can. The Earth will show you the way.

Yoongi floats in his stupid ceremonial robes, floating all ribboned and veiled over to the corner of the garden near the roses - near the stone bench Hoseok had been sleeping on. There’s a flowerbed there, dirt recently churned, the Earth pleased and content where she lies there, and Yoongi guesses it’s as good a spot as any -

Build it.

(The Earth will show you the way.)

No stickshrine is the same. The Min makes his with purpose, with structure and intent. Jeongguk makes his haphazardly, but with such intense concentration that the Earth can’t help but be glad of him. Eunhyun makes hers like she’s fighting it; Daesoo makes his like a comfort to the Earth.

Now, and in this place, so far away from home, Yoongi makes his like -

He just makes it. He makes it as purposeful as he can, tightly-knit and centred, like the Min; he makes it with passion and confusion, like Jeongguk; he makes it with care, like Chaeyoung, and with ferocity like Minhyuk, and with love for the Earth like Daesoo, and with hatred and sadness.

Like himself.

(Mina and her son and the blood on the snow-)

Hands and lips and legs.

Once you are done, the Earth will show you the way.

It’s only a pile of sticks now, but Yoongi wipes his palms on his knees and takes a few steps backwards and gently, softly, asks the Earth to accept what he’s giving her.

The pile of sticks - the only pile of sticks - alights, crackling and burning merrily away, and the Earth tells him it’s a good stickshrine, and a stickshrine it becomes.

“How did you do that?” Hoseok asks from behind him, and Yoongi almost claws his eyes out.

(Well. If he had cl-)

“I didn’t see you,” he says instead, his stickshrine burning, his face burning, Hoseok open and innocently curious in front of him. “Shouldn’t you be preparing to go?”

“I should,” Hoseok shrugs. “But what’s to prepare? A horse, clothes, food… done.”

“You should speak to the King.”

“I should, but I won’t.”

“Why not?”

Hoseok sits down on the grass and pats the space beside him, seemingly uncaring of his riches and finery. “Namjoon is staying behind to hold the fort. He can tell him, when we’re long gone. It’s easier that way - but, what were you doing? How’d you do it?”

The stickshrine gives off an incredible heat, and in the bright sun of Huinbyeong, it’s almost too warm. They were meant to give heat to hunters in snowy mountains, not to little lost Yoongis in gardens far away - all the same, he shuffles close to it, holding out his palms. “It’s a stickshrine. Before we leave. To - to show that I was here, and to show that I’m grateful to her for not dying.”

“Her?”

“The Earth,” Yoongi says, only a little irritably.

Hoseok smiles. “How’d it get on fire?”

“She did it. It means she likes it. It’s a thank-you.”

“The lioness doesn’t do stuff like that for us.”

Yoongi hums, warmed by the shrine and by Hoseok’s gentle company. “Is she real?”

“She might be.”

“I’d like to meet her.”

Hoseok laughs. “When the King dies, I’ll meet her - in theory. She’ll crown me and come to me and make sure the whole world knows I’m the ruler of Huindon, and nobody else - no fake Kings, no impostors. But I’m never sure. Your Earth seems more and more sensible by the moment, y’know, compared to - Jihyung, and Huindon and the South and the Princess. Princess Meiwuko. What a laugh.”

“Is there going to be a fight?”

“Oh, probably,” Hoseok sounds far too forced to be calm, “And we’ll probably lose. Meiwuko wants our trade, and I don’t blame her for hating Huindon as it is. Fucking provinces. Jungyoo and Chaena and the rest of them, all relics of-”

“Traditions, like me,” Yoongi remembers quietly. Hoseok shouting over a heap of clothes, somewhere grassy and empty. “To be got rid of.”

Hoseok sighs. “Not like that.”

“What’s the difference?”

And they both look at the stickshrine, and Yoongi thinks he knows the answer.

The smell of stressed horse is overwhelming and distinctive. Yoongi trails after Hoseok, all small and quiet, while Seokjin barks orders, while Hoseok strides clean and confident through the mass of men and horses.

“No,” he says, when Taehyung arrives. “No.”

“Hyung-”

“No.”

It doesn’t take a genius - and Yoongi most certainly isn’t - to work out what’s going on.

“You can’t stop me,” Taehyung says. He’s still in his robes, purple and red, silver circlet balancing on overlong hair. “You can’t.”

“Yes I can, and yes I am,” Hoseok mumbles calmly. “Tae - hey, Taehyung, c’mon. You can’t make a scene here. Where’s Jimin-”

“You gonna leave him with me? To babysit?”

“Taehyung.”

Yoongi glides over to the wall, leaning against it, eyes flickering back and forth. Hoseok stands tall and straight, his face smooth and unreadable; Taehyung’s all crumpled up and angry, his fists bunched in his sleeves, as easy-to-read as anyone would be. And he -

“Let me go,” Taehyung snaps.

“No,” says Hoseok indifferently, and turns to the black stallion, a familiar face from the ride to Huinbyeong. Saddlebags and leather buckles tinkle. “Go away, Tae.”

When Taehyung leaves, Yoongi follows.

(He’s good at this - humans are far easier to sneak around than the brittlebear of the mountains, and far easier to trick than the wingflesh.) Yoongi creeps unnoticed in his floaty veil, his floaty robes, past the soldiers and horses and tinkering piles of equipment, and follows Taehyung on his sobstorming path through the White Walls. Where is Jimin? Not here.

“Taehyung.”

Taehyung turns around; not with violence, as Hoseok might. Just with an open curiosity. “I - oh. Yoongi.”

“Do you want to know why he isn’t letting you go?” Yoongi asks, aware that he’s doing something he probably shouldn’t. Getting involved in something that’s definitely none of his business. But he likes Taehyung, he likes him genuinely, as a person and as a symbol and he likes the company he’s been given over the past few days - the past week, maybe.

“So you heard all that, then.”

“I was there.”

“I didn’t see you.”

Yoongi shrugs, and his tail dances out behind him. “I’m good at hiding.”

Taehyung’s face crumples up again, and he looks far younger than he is. “Did he send you to tell me what an idiot I am?”

“Nobody sends me anywhere,” Yoongi says. Tries not to snap. “I go where I want to go.”

“So you want to tell me what an idiot I am of your own accord?”

“I want to tell you why he isn’t letting you go.”

“He told you? Course he’d tell his who-” Taehyung’s jaw snaps shut, and his eyes widen a fraction. “I mean-”

Yoongi ignores it. No point in getting angry over something said in frustration over someone else, and how does that maxim go? Do not unseemly punish those who punish themselves. Something like that, anyway, and Taehyung isn’t angry at Yoongi. “He didn’t tell me,” is all he says, “I worked it out myself.”

“And?”

“And-”

“Will he let me go?”

“He won’t let you go,” Yoongi says, measured. Watching. “He won’t let you go.”

From within the White Walls, there are shouts and hulloahs and the sounds of a castle readying itself for war. Taehyung blinks. “What do you-”

“I can’t tell you.”

“Why not?”

“You have to work it out for yourself,” Yoongi wonders whether he’ll be able to change into better clothes, once they’re out of Huinbyeong and headed to Jihyung’s province. Jihyung’s province. Even further away from the mountains and the clans, from what he’s been able to understand of the maps and the descriptions - at least he has the hip-dagger, and the promise of Hoseok’s protection.

(Not that he’ll need it.)

(If he had claws-)

“I want Jimin,” Taehyung says eventually, sadly, sniffly. “You’re gonna take him, too.”

“Jimin stays with you, I think.”

“He does. But only ‘cause that’s his job.”

“I doubt that,” Yoongi mumbles. The King, and executions, and wriggling out of brick walls, and Huinbyeong. “I really doubt it.”

“What would you know?”

“Apparently, more than you think.”

Taehyung frowns one last time, all ugly and held-together, and Yoongi wonders whether he’ll give any thought to his words at all. Jimin is nowhere to be seen; the place is a mess of masses, a mass of messes, a hurried platoon stuck together from odds and ends to run out to Jihyung, and Yoongi knows as well as most how soon they’ll be leaving. Taehyung swirls around, all robes and ribbons and rage, and -

“He’ll figure it out in his own time,” Namjoon murmurs from beside Yoongi, and Yoongi almost claws his eyes out.

(If he had claws-)

“Where the hell did you come from-”

“I was going to give you this,” Namjoon offers him something all wrapped up in linens, “And some advice. But… is that Jin’s? He has you sorted.”

Yoongi pats the pommel of the hip-dagger. “It was his. Mine now.”

“Slip this in your boot,” Namjoon says, then flushes when Yoongi raises an eyebrow at his own bare feet. “In your belt, then. Just do it.”

Yoongi nods begrudging thanks, tossing through linen scraps to reveal a little sheathed knife, decorated florally. “This works?”

“Jin-hyung brought it to me from the South,” Namjoon explains. He looks harried, still, but less so - sweat sticks his hair to his forehead. “Look, unsheathe it - yeah, see?”

Yoongi doesn’t see. There’s no blade, just the sheath in one hand and the floral handle in his other. “There’s no knife, Namjoon.”

“It’s a flick knife.” Namjoon lets the rolls of papers and the leather belt fall out of his arms, clattering unheeded to the flagstones as he reaches for it over Yoongi’s shoulder. “Look - see this button? Look.” And he thumbs it down, and the knife blade puddles out all shiny and shivery, and Yoongi recoils away from the tip of it far too close to his wrist. “Would you find a use for it?”

“It’s great,” Yoongi murmurs. Takes it out of Namjoon’s unresisting hand and slots the handle in between his fingers, then presses the button. Like claws. A claw, singular.

Better than (no claw-)

“Thank you,” Yoongi says, so sincerely that Namjoon’s face turns scarlet.

He coughs. “No - no problem. And I have some advice for you, too, if you’ll take it.”

Yoongi can’t help but turn the glimmery claw over and over in his palm, fascinated by the turning light within it, but he nods. “I’m listening.”

“You’re going to - going to Jihyung’s, but odds are Heonwoo will be there too.” Namjoon shakes his head. “Heonwoo… Jihyung seems the frightening one, and he is, don’t get me wrong, but Heonwoo is the one you’ll need to look out for. He’ll catch you out when you’re not looking. Be careful, when you go. Not that they aren’t wonderful people, and friends and allies to have in a pinch, but - still.”

Well, that sounds promising. “I will, but - aren’t you coming?”

“I gotta hold fort,” Namjoon scrunches up his nose. “And I can’t fight.”

“Will there be a fight, then?” Yoongi turns the little flick knife over and over in his hands, staring fascinated at the glistening blade, at the hidden button on the knob of it.

Namjoon shrugs. “Isn’t there always a fight?”

Hoseok reaches down, his palm up, dressed all in leathers. The golden circlet stays on his head, askew among his brown curls, and his eyes are glimmering with an excitement Yoongi’s only seen on the open country, horseback away from Jungyoo. “Are you ready?”

“I suppose,” Yoongi takes the hand, revels in the warmth of it, and is used to the swing of his body settling in front of Hoseok’s. The whinnying, the neighing, the stomping and biting, seems endless from the mounted soldiers behind them; Hoseok and Seokjin (and Yoongi) stay at the front.

Yoongi feels -

Odd. And he sees a window opening, from high on the walls, and two heads sticking out. One is wearing a silver circlet. The other is waving; his other hand seems occupied, and the two figures have their fingers tangled together.

“For the honour of our friend!” Hoseok roars to the soldiers; Yoongi flinches at the noise, but doesn’t cover his ears.

“Yah!”

“For the glory of our country!”

“Yah!”

“For the safety of our people!”

“Yah!”

“We ride!”

“We ride!”

And the gates of the White Walls are open, and Hoseok is shouting and Seokjin is shouting and the platoon is riding and Yoongi rides with them, and he thinks he knows why Hoseok looks so overjoyed. He thinks - he isn’t sure - he thinks he might be.

(He knows.)

He knows.

The stickshrine in the gardens burns merrily away, and Yoongi’s throat is heavy and his ears are light and his tail is touching Hoseok’s leg and Hoseok’s arms are around his shoulders and the horses are thundering down the thoroughfare, and for the honour of our friend!

yah!

for the glory of our country!

yah!

for the safety of our people!

yah!

we ride!

we ride!

We ride -

The people of Huinbyeong stare at the chargers and stallions. Yoongi feels like he’s racing through them, but they’re only trotting, so as not to mow down bodies like grass in their path. Hoseok is plainly dressed, although his stallion is draped in red, the lioness painstakingly embroidered on a red cloth hung over its tail.

The people of Huinbyeong stare.

And Huindon goes to war - and Yoongi goes with them.

Here is a story for you.

There is a war-room, and a King. We are South - not South, but Southerly, the compass point and not the country.

(And in any case, it’s only the Huinden people that call it the South. Princess Meiwuko would call her country Sukahli, and she loves it with all the ferocity of the love someone has for a sister, or a mother, or a god.)

There is a war-room and a King, and it’s south, more south than we are currently. Not many people know about this splotch of land that isn’t Huindon or the South, Sukahli, but it exists. A copse of trees on the Southern Front and a small stone hut called the Boundary, and inside it, a war-room. A war-room and a King.

(Two Kings.)

The first King has hard eyes and a cold expression, and he wears a crown so golden and heavy that it glimmers more than the lioness embroidered onto the breast of his robes. The second King is smaller and rounder, his fingers dripping gold and gems, and his eyes are soft and milky and his expression is deceptively soft. Both of them killed their predecessors, although neither of them know the other one has done so, and both of them are convinced the other is a stupid fool.

They are talking. Around them, just a mile to east and west, soldiers they command are flinging themselves at each other and dying on their spears.

There is a war-room, and two Kings, and two children.

A boy and a girl, for equality.

They are the same age, although the girl is a little older. The boy has scruffy brown hair and a little golden circlet, although the curls obscure the band; the girl’s head is hidden behind a purple veil, although her intelligent eyes peer through the fabric at him unhindered, curious.

This is the first time they’ve met, but it won’t be the last.

He crawls towards her under the table, and she crawls towards him. Their fathers kill men with their words, but they’re too young to realise that yet.

They play soldiers under the table, and they smile at each other, and they introduce each other with clumsy words in different languages.

“Ho-seok.”

“Mei-wuko.”

(Yoongi is asleep, when the platoon stops riding for the night. A fire is started, bedrolls are flung out, and the little band of guards and soldiers begin clattering with food, setting out for the long ride ahead. Hoseok stares at the black ears, at the mussed-up hair, at the crooked veil long fallen off.

“Want me to move him?” Seokjin offers, already dismounted and tinkling with leather boots and buckles.

“No,” Hoseok says quietly. “No, no, it’s fine.”

He lifts Yoongi down himself, a soft little bundle, and when Yoongi mumbles into his chest Hoseok kicks open his bedroll and lays him down there. Yoongi doesn’t wake, not once.

Hoseok watches him settle into the bedroll, curling up in the soft woollen stuff, and finds it very hard to walk away to the fire.)

We ride!

Yah!

And Huindon goes to war.

Chapter 8: The Rain That Revives

“Who knows when the Crown Prince first realised there had been a betrayal? Certainly, it was not until very late in the course of things, but then, as one right in the centre of the action, he could not have seen the situation with the fresh eyes the bandit courtesan did. He was able to see, I think from a very early stage, what awaited them. And yet he said nothing - but he stayed.”

- an excerpt from “The Happenings in Huindon”, written by the Princess Meiwuko of Suhkali

Yoongi wakes up in the crisp grey of dawn, looking right into Hoseok’s face.

Accidentally, of course. His bedroll smells odd, and seems bigger than the one he’d been using on the way to Huinbyeong; and he has no memory of the stop to make camp, or of the unrolling and sleeping that must have been done. That’s the first conundrum. The second is Hoseok himself, who hasn’t got a bedroll at all, and is just sleeping under his cloak, his face all twisted up uncomfortably.

Tentatively, Yoongi reaches out with his tail. “Hoseok?” He prods him. “H-hoseok?”

“Mmf.”

“Hoseok.”

Hoseok’s eyes crack open slowly, lazily. He looks confused, his gaze centering on Yoongi. “So early.”

“Where’s your bedroll?” Yoongi asks. It isn’t early - sun’s up, we’re up, a little maxim Jeongguk used to chant. Sun’s up, we’re up.

“You’re in it.”

“Wha - why?”

Hoseok sighs and stretches, all wrists and fingers up to the sky, before he rolls over again to face Yoongi. Relaxed. Like they’re on a hunt up the mountains, talking about nothing. “You fell asleep, remember? And I didn’t want to wake you. So you’re in mine.”

“You should have kicked me out,” Yoongi stares at the rocky ground, and then at Hoseok, “I could have got mine. You’re stupid.”

“I was being nice, actually,” Hoseok grumbles. His ears look faintly pink, and his shoulders look lighter, this far away from the White Walls. “Not that you’d know what that means.”

“Just because I’m not nice to you doesn’t mean I’m not nice, in general.” Yoongi tries not to think about how sad Taehyung had been, because he feels - so much better about everything, now he’s out in the open. The White Walls had been a pretty prison, but a prison nonetheless, and his bed had been far too much like Jungyoo’s.

Jungyoo’s bed. Jungyoo’s hands. Jungyoo’s -

“-gi, Yoongi-” Hoseok taps him lightly on the shoulder. “Did you go back to sleep? You stopped replying.”

Yoongi shudders his way out of the memory. “Something like that, yeah.”

“No time for sleeping on this ride,” Hoseok leans back, looking at the grey of the reddening sky, at the oncoming rumble of thunderclouds. “Gaigi-bada… there’s going to be a battle, you know. And with the situation in Huindon-”

All he can feel are the hot wet lips on his neck and the hot moist hands on his tail and in his hair and on his ears, and all Yoongi can do is nod noiselessly, struggling to pull his mind back to grasslands and to Hoseok and to anything but Jungyoo. There’s going to be a battle, you know. Abattle, you know.

A conversation overhead.

tensions rising between those on the side of the new, and those who fight for the old…

“Hoseok?”

“Mm.” Hoseok, for all his talk of waking, makes no move to get up from underneath his cloak, his head pillowed on his folded hands. “What is it?”

“Would Jungyoo ever fight you?” Saying his name brings something bitter and disgusting onto Yoongi’s tongue, and if he was alone, maybe he would spit. He rolls over in the mass of wool and blankets, tucking the warmth underneath himself, and he doesn’t see Hoseok’s eyes softening.

“What do you mean?”

“Jungyoo had soldiers in his Long Hall,” Yoongi explains patiently, jungyoojungyoojungyoo, “And you have soldiers in Huinbyeong. What's the difference ‘tween Jungyoo and you and the South?”

“Jungyoo is in Huindon, and Meiwuko is in the South,” Hoseok’s brows are narrowed in confusion. “I don’t - what do you mean?”

“What’s to stop Jungyoo marching his soldiers into Huinbyeong?”

“Oh. Well, country alliances, for one,” Hoseok holds up his hand and one tan, narrow finger stretches out as he counts the reasons, “Jungyoo’s a Huinden man the same as the rest of us. And two, he’s sworn allegiance to the King.”

“The King?”

“Yeah.”

The King, Yoongi thinks, and he studies Hoseok’s youthful face, But you are not the King. The King is an old man. The King is a dying man. And nobody seems to have sworn allegiance to you.

“It would never happen,” Hoseok stretches lazily, but it’s a thin veneer over the rising discomfort within him. “Useless to talk about things that don’t happen. I - did you sleep well?”

“Um. Yes?”

“Good,” Hoseok sighs again. “Good. I - hope. I…” and he laughs. “I don’t know what I hope.”

“There’s a maxim in my clan,” Yoongi starts, and Hoseok smiles at the familiar little phrase, and something warm stirs within him as he continues, “A maxim. Hope in nothing is better than hope in something.”

“That doesn’t make much sense,” Hoseok counters. A little smile on his face. A clan maxim, and lions and bears and the South.

“Hope in something means that the something has to be fulfilled,” Yoongi’s quoting someone, some long-dead clan elder, Soo or someone, “Hope in something means something specific. Hope in nothing means that, no matter what happens, your hope will be fulfilled.”

“What if the thing that happens is bad?” Hoseok asks quietly.

Yoongi shrugs. Hoseok’s bedroll is warm, and it smells of perfume and musk. “At least you still had hope while it was there.”

There’s a long silence. Around them, the soldiers, the platoon, are beginning to rouse and twitch and rise and clatter about, folding up camp and poking the embers of the fire, trying to get pots hot enough for sweet tea and cooked things.

“Do you have hope in nothing, then?” Hoseok asks, unbuckling food supplies from the saddlebags; bread, cold chicken. He hands a slice to Yoongi, who wordlessly accepts, and they both shuffle towards the remains of the fire for the hot water.

“I don’t think so,” Yoongi says eventually. The Earth surrounds him. He wonders if his stickshrine still burns, far back in the gardens of Huinbyeong - of course it does. Stickshrines never stop burning unless someone puts them out, and he doubts anyone will. “I don’t - no, I don’t think so at all.”

“So you don’t follow the maxim.”

“It’s a hard one.”

Hoseok chuckles dryly. “So it is.”

The thunderstorms catch quickly up to them while Yoongi is learning the ins and outs of a Huinden army platoon. Seokjin seems to know the names and families of every soldier in the place, and Hoseok knows a fair few - there’s Heejung, and Eunjin, two twin girls that give Yoongi an odd look under his veil but otherwise say nothing, and Chomin, a skinny blonde man with a greatsword strapped to his back, and Nahan, broad and dark and silent. Yoongi wants desperately to fling the veil off his head and free his ears to the elements, to the thundering storm, but something - the memory of Jungyoo - keeps him from doing so.

“Good men,” Seokjin says over and over, “All good men.”

Heejung and Eunjin ride ahead of the platoon, bows unstrung and slung over their shoulders instead of swords or daggers. Their hair is shorn short, like all the rest of the soldiers in the guard, but Eunjin - slightly taller than her sister - has a golden barrette slid into the hair at the front. Splattered with rain, it glimmers.

Yoongi is cold. Yoongi is often cold, but the rain up the mountains is reviving stuff, the Earth accepting it with open palms and an eager heart -

and this is reviving rain, too. Like all the sticky wetness of Jungyoo is being wiped away, and he’s huddled into Hoseok’s chest anyway, trapped and protected. The thunder of the storm matches the thundering of the hooves, and Hoseok’s laboured breaths in Yoongi’s ear as he flings himself up and down, matching the gait of the stallion beneath them.

Reviving rain.

“Sorry,” Hoseok yells through the weather at him, and the horses gallop through brown mud into a grey sky, and the only light in the world seems to be the glimmer of Eunjin’s barrette.

“For what?”

“The weather,” but his voice is full of nothing but joy and the freedom of the ride, “The weather, and the - and the-”

A bolt of lightning strikes miles away, just as he’s speaking, and Yoongi flings the veil off his ears to hear him better. “What?”

Hoseok leans down. “For everything, I suppose,” he says in a normal tone, right in the shell of Yoongi’s silky ear. “Is that good enough?”

How’s Yoongi meant to respond to that?

Heejung and Eunjin have all but vanished from sight, riding far faster than the rest of the platoon, and Yoongi figures they must be some sort of lookout. He can see the glimmer of gold through the lashing rain, but barely. “I don’t think you have much to be sorry for,” he replies at last, shouting it up at the man.

The Min -

do not return until you have killed the one responsible -

The Min, Yoongi decides, is not in possession of all of the facts. There’s a new order about the world, and it isn’t one that follows rules as solid as that one - Yoongi will bend them and break them as he sees fit. He has to. He has to.

Hoseok is laughing into the rain and the wind, Yoongi realises. He’s laughing and he’s riding and Seokjin is beside them, body close to the neck of the white charger, gloved hands clasping the reins.

The thunder storms, and the soldiers ride right through it.

There is a road, Yoongi learns, that they are following in a roundabout way. A road that leads them to the province of Heonwoo, first, and then to the province of Jihyung, where the attacks have been.

“Heonwoo will send men,” says one of the soldiers when they break for a meal a few hours past noon; he seems a little too tall for his body, although he smiles friendly enough at Yoongi. “Right, sir?”

Seokjin nods. “Heonwoo and Jihyung - they’re allies. Heonwoo will probably be here in person. Like I say - they’re allies.”

And Jungyoo is not? Yoongi thinks.

He hasn’t retrieved his veil from where it hangs, clipped onto his hood, but none of the soldiers pay it much heed. They’re hand-picked by Seokjin, apparently, and high enough in rank that Hoseok knows some of their names - and they laugh among each other, quietly, as a fire is built and horses are let to rest for a while. The storm quietens down; the rain stops.

(The rain stops, but the thunder continues, and the skies ahead are black and ominous.)

“Heonwoo is a good man,” Seokjin says. He’s got two hunks of bread shoved onto a long dagger, holding them over the fire and turning them around and around. “He’ll send men. Not many, maybe, but he’ll send them, and it’ll be good.”

“There’s only twenty of you, though,” Yoongi waves his hand at the camp, at the bunched up men and women around the fire. “What good will you do?”

“There’s me, for a start, and Hoseok,” Seokjin says mildly. His bread is browning. “We’re not so bad that we aren’t feared in the South-”

“They call him the Spear of Death,” Eunjin nudges Yoongi in the shoulder, waving her hand at Seokjin. She’s tall and dark and striking, and her golden accessory is difficult for Yoongi to tear his gaze from.

“No, they don’t.”

“Yes, they do.”

“No they don’t.”

“Yes they do.”

Over the noise, Yoongi slides Namjoon’s gift out of his belt. He’s changed overnight into a mismatch of leathers and furs again, draped all over in a brownish cloak Hoseok slung around his shoulders, and he feels much more at home in these than in the black robes of Huinbyeong - but still he’s made sure to keep the hip-dagger, and this.

What did he call it? A flick knife? A dagger?

Yoongi thumbs the button on the decorative handle, and the blade slicks itself out, shimmering menacingly. The little snick noise reminds him of claws through the air, and the hunt, and being free.

He folds it away before it can be seen, and eats some of the toasted bread Seokjin hands him, and watches Hoseok sponging down his charger - muddied flanks and spitflecked snout, it snuffles and raises its hooves on command, and Hoseok whispers something to it, riding-leathers and golden circlet; juxtaposition, contrast, conflict.

The rain begins again.

Juxtaposition, contrast, conflict. The day goes on. The riders plunge into the storm headlong, and the sun is eclipsed, and it’s only Yoongi’s keenish sense of time that keeps him from wondering whether or not it’s night yet.

(Not yet.)

“How long to Jihyung’s - to the lake?” He asks - yells - into the storm.

“A week,” and Hoseok replies like he did before, against the curve of Yoongi’s ear, “A week if we ride like hell.”

We ride!

Yah!

Sunlight filtered through the trees. That’s what Yoongi will remember Eunhyun for, he thinks, more than anyone else - they used to go out together, her and him and their claws and their teeth, the clan camp behind them, and march into the scrubby woodland at the base of the mountain.

She loves Jeongguk too. They talked about him, on their last hunt together - Jeongguk’s growing up - Jeongguk’s already grown up, stupid - and they’d laughed. Her ears are soft.

(It is the height of intimacy to touch someone’s ears. Yoongi has only ever touched Eunhyun and Jeongguk there; Eunhyun experimentally, and Jeongguk only to comfort him.)

Sunlight filtered through the trees. And Eunhyun lay flat on her back and talked about Daesoo, and how she wondered what she should do about him - should she kiss him, when he kisses her? - and Yoongi lay beside her, had lain beside her, and laughed at how stupid she sounded, and told her so.

Eunhyun laughed too. Chaeyoung is the most merry, of the girls, but Eunhyun laughs like silver bells. “You’ll sound stupid soon enough, Yoongi-yah, and then we’ll be done for.”

“Oh, oh,” Yoongi had mocked her, pitching his voice into a high falsetto and twitching his hands, “Oh, Daesoo, what do I do, will he kiss me - I won’t say stuff like that.”

“You better not. I called Daesoo first. He’s mine for the picking!” Eunhyun teases, teased, and tugged on the end of his tail.

Sunlight filtered through the trees.

“Catch me if you can!”

Eunhyun. If she saw Yoongi now, she probably - well, she probably wouldn’t recognise him, for a start. But then she’d laugh, hands on her hips, and say he looked as stupid as Minhyuk in a brittlebear cave. Maybe Minhyuk would tussle her to the ground and they’d fight - but they’d laugh at Yoongi, in a friendly sort of way, about how stupid he looks.

Wrapped in Hoseok’s cloak, his ears furrowing the woollen hood of it, curled into Hoseok’s chest, riding horseback into the very eye of the storm -

He thinks they’d probably be right -

The next day, Yoongi sort of expects he’ll be swapped onto Seokjin’s horse to give Hoseok - and, presumably his horse - a rest. But as they awaken, and as jokes are sleepily exchanged and woollen tangled bedrolls are wrestled with, and as horses are poked and prodded and buckled up for the day, and people leave in dribs and drabs to wash up in the river nearby, nobody says anything.

“Aren’t you coming?” Hoseok says at last, lifting Yoongi’s pack with a funny look. “Or do you want to leave?”

“What would I do out here?” Yoongi says incredulously, sweeping his hand in a wide arc around the unfamiliar lands. “No, I - just, didn’t know who I was riding with.”

“Me,” Hoseok says. Like it’s obvious. A given fact.

Is the Earth laughing at him?

“Oh,” Yoongi says. “Oh. Alright, then.”

And Hoseok’s black charger is shifting and snorting, and Hoseok puts his hands on Yoongi’s waist and hoists him up over the leathery nub of the saddle, and Yoongi’s looking down at him for a split second before Hoseok clinks his leatherheel boot into the stirrup and swings up behind him. “We’ll have to get you a pony,” he says, and Yoongi’s ears tingle with the closeness.

“I don’t know how to ride,” he replies, after a long moment. Hooves trod into mud. Today, Eunjin and Heejung aren’t riding ahead; their bows remain unslung and hanging over their shoulders, and two men - Chomin and Nahan - take their place, riding first on the watch shift.

Hoseok presses his heels into flanks, and they begin to move in a clinky sort of a way. “You don’t need to know,” he says. Confidence and bravado. “I know well enough for the both of us.”

That makes Yoongi scoff.

Riding all day isn’t as boring as it might seem.

There are long gaps of silence - Yoongi leans back into Hoseok’s chest, and he fights off drowsiness as the landscape passes, as they plunge into the province of Heonwoo, a huge expanse of forest in the near distance, fog rolling over the occasional hill and miniature peak. He wonders whether Jeongguk would enjoy himself down here; decides eventually that he would.

In between the long gaps, they talk.

And not -

There’s not so much friction. Yelling, and the i am not like you! and the scrape of table legs and golden collars seem a long way away from grass and horses and sleeping under the stars, and without the constrict of castle walls, Hoseok isn’t such a bad conversationalist. He makes witty jokes, and pokes fun at Seokjin and Eunjin and Heejung and the rest of them, in a friendly kind of a way. He listens to Yoongi’s maxims, really listens, and offers his thoughts on them.

Not so much friction, then. And the hours pass as they will, Yoongi’s nose full of the smell of horse and Hoseok, his eyes full of the newness of lowland landscape.

Not so much,

“Those forests - have you ever heard of the dreamdeer?”

Yoongi hasn’t torn his gaze from the distant line of ashes and birches and towering treetops since they arrived on the horizon. “No,” he breathes faintly. “Our forests, they - they’re different.”

“Dreamdeer,” the platoon shifts pace, rolls into something a little slower before the next galloping burst, “Jihyung and Heonwoo and I, and Seokjin, we used to hunt them when we were little. You’d get a person of pure intent, and their soul’d draw the dreamdeer close, and then you shoot it.”

Yoongi shifts a little. “Isn’t that cruel to the person of pure intent?”

(He doesn’t say cruel to the deer. Hunting is hunting. Food is food. Sport is - wrong.)

“No,” Hoseok laughs, and leans a little closer, “To be honest, I was - baiting you a little. The person of pure intent was always Heonwoo - that’s my cousin, the one in charge of this province - but he had pure intent to eat dreamdeer for supper. And they’re notoriously difficult to catch. We were lucky to get one in the whole season, and then… oh, gods, the dreams they give you.”

Yoongi’s dreams haven’t been savoury, as of late.

(Hands, lips, fingers, tongues, teeth. Jungyoo’s breath dripping hot wax over his body.)

“Good dreams?”

“Real dreams,” Hoseok sighs, a world away, “They last for years and years. I once dreamed I was a peasant. Nothing exciting happened, mind you, I was just… a peasant, and I lived about thirty years and died ‘cause my leg got cut and went all green. I woke up the next morning and I was stillyoung, but I was thirty years older all at the same time.”

“Dreamdeer.”

“Dreamdeer.”

Yoongi stares into the forest, wondering if that’s a flash of antler he sees - a fawnhide. “Are the dreams always different?”

“Always.”

“Good?”

“Not… not necessarily,” Hoseok murmurs. “The first dreamdeer venison I ate, I dreamt I was a tree. I must have lived for a hundred, two hundred years, watched everything growing around me… watched the world turn, and then I was chopped down to make boats. The loggers took three hours to saw through my trunk. The worst dream I’ve ever had - the worst pain I’ve ever felt.”

(Hands, lips-

-fingers, tongues-

-teeth-)

“I think I’d like to try it, even if I do end up being a tree,” Yoongi says after a while. Chomin and Nahan, lookouts, have burst into the next spurt of a gallop, but the rest of the platoon goes at steady trot.

Hoseok chuckles. “You’re the being of purest intent. I’d bring you, if I was hunting.”

“And Seokjin?”

“Ah - well, if he wanted to.”

Yoongi squirms about. His legs are beginning to numb again, despite all he’s learnt of sitting and stilling in uncomfortable positions, and his tail is cramping. “Are the woods deep?”

“Deep and dark.”

“Best kind of woods.”

Hoseok laughs. “Agree with you there.”

It starts to rain again, then, a pelting bouncing burning sort of rain, and Heejung shouts something joyous out into the sky.

“What did she say?”

Yoongi can hear Hoseok’s smile, even if he can’t see it. “She called it the rain that revives,” Hoseok tells him softly, all so close to his ear, “The rain that brings life. It’s meant to be an omen.”

“An omen of what?” Yoongi wonders.

(“Just an omen. Generally. Generally… omenous.”)

(Seokjin, riding up behind them, cackles with laughter as soon as his joke is over.)

The rain continues even when they stop for the night. Yoongi, drenched and shivering despite himself, huddles next to the stomping horses - it may be the rain that revives, but it’s the rain that freezes too, and Yoongi feels wet to the bone. Pitiful, he must look, all sodden in the cloak too big for him, cuddling close to the horse for the pure warmth of it -

“You’re small,” Hoseok says, hands held over his head as he walks up.

Yoongi scowls. “I’d noticed.”

“No, I meant-” Hoseok checks himself, chucks down at his chest, “I meant you’re small, so you must be colder. We’re - Jin-hyung found a sheet, c’mon, c’mon,” and his arm is around Yoongi’s shoulders, and he’s hurrying him into the wet.

Seokjin stands with pride. There’s a ramshackle shelter of sorts; a huge oilskin sheet that stinks of damp horse, propped up at each corner by solid wooden branches. Underneath it, the platoon can just about fit, at a squeeze, along with a little log fire to keep the rain from nibbling off their toes.

Yoongi can’t feel his ears.

“Go close to the fire,” Hoseok says. “Hey, can you move a moment? Yoongi’s near froze.”

“It’s fine-”

“Your tail’s all stiff,” Hoseok points out, planting Yoongi right by the fire and holding out his hands, “So you mustn’t be able to feel it, right?”

“Observant,” Yoongi says dryly.

And Hoseok goes pink again.

And Eunjin laughs.

Yoongi sits by the fire, though, his leather-clad feet heating up, his cheeks going all hot and red, and nobody tells him to move, although there must be many others far more uncomfortable than he is.

How does that maxim go? Take the gifts given to you; take them ‘til they’re gone. So Yoongi doesn’t move, and nobody tells him to move, and wine is passed around and hunks of hardening bread and dried, salted meat of some sort. Everything smells of wet horse, wet wool, and wet man, but nobody seems to mind.

“Cuddle up,” Eunjin nudges Yoongi in the shoulder as she unwraps her bedroll, “The Captain wants everyone dry. Dry as possible.”

“Cuddle up,” Yoongi repeats. He’s content to use his cloak as a blanket, really, and he’s warm as he could be next to the fire, but Hoseok’s already advancing, bedroll tucked under his arm as he wanders into the space created for him, near the fire - near Yoongi.

“Captain’s orders,” Eunjin repeats to Hoseok, only a little more deferential. “Cuddle up.”

“Cuddle u-”

Yoongi wakes during the night from a ream with Jungyoo and his wife and slaps against his cheek, and stares at Hoseok. He’s close to Yoongi, way closer than he was, and one of his arms is slung loosely around Yoongi’s waist.

He goes back to sleep.

The rain abates next day. Yoongi doesn’t offer to ride with Seokjin, and neither does Hoseok, although the poor black charger must be feeling the extra weight. Eunjin and Heejung take the guard again, and Hoseok informs them they’re riding almost past Heonwoo’s province, about to plunge into Jihyung’s.

“Heonwoo’s been attacked too,” Hoseok says in a low voice, riding past endless stretches of farmland and field, “Really badly. Crops burnt, peasants rehomed… they all fled to Huinbyeong, because of how close it is. Meiwuko - I don’t know what she’s doing, attacking again after how close we were to peace…”

“Meiwuko started the war?” Yoongi asks carefully. He knows she didn’t - he’s met the King - but he wants Hoseok to tell him.

“Of course she didn’t. She’s my age, y’know, a bit older. The King’s the one that did all this,” Hoseok sounds clipped, irritated. “Meiwuko wants peace and prosperity. She’s flung up this trade blockade more as a precaution, I think, not a - not a war, and if her troops would only stop attacking, we could meet and sort something out. But she - I don’t understand why she’d attack Gaigi-bada. Or Jihyung. She’s sensible.”

And the King isn’t, Yoongi notes. Hoseok isn’t?

“You want peace, though, too.”

“Of course I do.”

“For trade, or to stop the fighting?”

Hoseok laughs. “Is this like one of those judgement questions?”

“Just a question,” Yoongi tangles his hands in the shorn mane, resisting the urge to lean against Hoseok again.

“Then… a mixture of both. I want people to stop dying, of course I do. But I want to trade, too, and - I can’t bankrupt Huindon by pretending not to care.” Hoseok chuckles again, but a little drier, a little sadder. “That answer enough to satisfy you?”

Yoongi thwacks him with his shoulder. “Don’t overthink things.”

“You got a maxim for that, too?”

Yoongi thinks for a second, staring into the deep blue sky. “Hm. Uh… something like spend too much time on the traps, and the brittlebear will be fled before they’re ready. That maxim enough to satisfy you?”

This time, Hoseok’s laugh is nothing but genuine.

Heonwoo’s province turns into Jihyung’s without much fanfare. That night, they come upon a village - at first, a few men run out of the tavern, waving blunted swords and shouting slurs against southerners, but as soon as they see the lioness on the saddles, they fall silent. Look ashamed. Maybe a little scared.

(“They probably last saw this flag on these horses when the King was still sending his armies through,” Hoseok whispers to Yoongi.)

“I am the Crown Prince,” he says aloud, swinging out of the saddle and landing with a leathery, crunching thud into the mud of the street. “You have nothing to fear, don’t worry. We’re only passing through on our way to Gaigi-bada.”

The news spreads from the men and into the tavern and through the village - the prince the prince -

prince hoseok? prince hoseok?

prince taehyung? no prince hoseok -

the king

not him, the younger one

soldiers

an army

to protect us?

to protect us?

to protect us!

Yoongi flips the veil over his ears quietly, unnoticed, and slips his tail inside his trousers. No point in scaring people more than they already are, especially when Hoseok is being all regal and princely and charming the world and its wives. More people are pouring out of the tavern, leaning out of the windows, trying to catch a sight of the Crown Prince and his entourage - of Huinbyeong soldiers all shiny and clean.

Seokjin is next to leap down from his mount. “I’m the Captain of the Royal Guard,” he says, shoving his hand out for an awed innkeeper to shake. “Sorry to have disturbed your evening.”

“No, no, it’s wond- it’s fine-”

Eunjin leaps down. Her hair glimmers. “If it’s fine, captain, can I get a drink?”

“Me too-”

Hoseok throws his head back and laughs as the cream of the Huinbyeong crop swarm into some backwoods tavern near the Southern border, yelling rowdy requests for drink. The innkeeper looks like all of his dreams have come true, his eyes drawn to the gold coins in the hands of the soldiers; from nowhere, seemingly, stableboys emerge and take reins and lead them away. The villagers goggle.

“Down?” Hoseok holds his hand out to Yoongi, who ignores it and slides down the saddle, grinning. “Cheeky little shit.”

Yoongi makes a face behind the veil, although he does take the hand that Hoseok offers him once he’s on the ground. “Are we going in for drinks?”

“The innkeeper will probably offer us a room.”

“Free?”

“Of course, but we’ll pay,” Hoseok slaps his tunic pocket to make the coins jingle inside it. “Wouldn’t be fair, otherwise. And - and he’s gonna offer it to you, too. He’ll think you’re the-”

“But I am the Royal Concubine,” Yoongi counters. They hover outside the door of the tavern; inside, he can hear Seokjin yelling for twenty, please, and the muted chatter of the villagers piling in to watch the Huinbyeong show.

Hoseok winces. “Only in theory.”

“But he doesn’t have to know that.”

“Ugh.”

Yoongi shuffles in behind Hoseok, and takes sips from Eunjin’s tankard when she passes it down to him. There are no seats; half of the villagers are standing, and Nahan has decided to just plonk himself cross-legged on the floor. Hoseok gets given a seat in the corner, next to an abandoned harp, and Yoongi hardly thinks twice before he slides to sit on top of him, next to Eunjin and Heejung at the bar, Seokjin on his other side. The tavern is full of music and laughter and drink, the villagers speaking in heavy accents, the soldiers rowdying as good as anyone.

And Yoongi gets to sleep in a bed, too.

(Hoseok insists on taking the floor.)

(Yoongi doesn’t thank him, but he smiles.)

(Sharing a bed -)

(After -)

(That man -)

(He doesn’t want to.)

So he lies on the soft eiderdown, goosefeather pillow under his head, and stares at the Crown Prince, who’s exiled himself to the hard floor. He only looks a little uncomfortable, but there can be no softness in those creaky wooden floorboards -

And Yoongi finds himself sneaking up on Hoseok in his sleep once again. This time, he’s got a pillow in his hands, not a hip-dagger, and this time, he’s successful - Hoseok hardly stirs as his head is gently lifted, as the pillow is slipped beneath it.

And Yoongi goes back to the bed.

And goes to sleep, dreamless.

Jihyung’s province is marshier and wetter and the villages they do pass through are ghost-towns, empty and barren, stable doors knocked open, pots and pans lying in muddy streets. They walk slower through these, and the reviving rain keeps falling, cold and wet between Yoongi’s ears and down the back of his tunic. No life. No blood, either, no bodies, but certainly no life.

And all Yoongi can think about is Eunhyun, the way she stood among the piled bodies, the way she cried. And of Mina and her son. Minhyuk, pale but determined to have justice.

Justice.

When he glances around at the faces near him, he sees much the same expression. Eunjin, biting down on her lip. Heejung, glaring into the middle distance. Seokjin, his eyes silently searching for some sign of life - remembering their own piled bodies, their own Eunhyuns and Minhyuks and Minas and their sons.

Yoongi swallows. He feels faintly sick.

“Gaigi-bada isn’t far from here, so we’ll reach it a little after nightfall,” Hoseok says, their black horse splashing mud and silt up onto the red lioness, staining her. “We get the ferry to the castle. Heonwoo might be there, too, with any luck.”

“And more men?”

“And more men.”

The two watchers fall back to allow Hoseok to take the lead, closely flanked by Seokjin, and now Yoongi can see the glimmer of firelight on water. A lake.

He sees the bodies shortly after.

There aren’t many of them, not really, not compared to the carnage Yoongi saw in the woods with Eunhyun, but there are enough to make Heejung swear under her breath, to make Seokjin scowl. Men in chainmail and men in leathers lie - some have the lioness on their helms, and others have a stylized orange sun - but they lie indiscriminate in death, over one another and under one another. A few limbs are scattered about the place like grotesque confetti, and brown blood stains the grass, stains the marshy puddles.

Yet there are more dead sun-men than lion-men. A victory for Gaigi-bada, a victory for Jihyung, or did the South simply have more soldiers to spend?

“They got this close to Gaigi-bada,” Seokjin says in a hushed, horrified voice. “They’ll do so again. This is - fuck, Hoseok, this is bad.”

“You think I don’t see that?” Hoseok says. Hisses. Angry, then.

twelve dead at the hands of the min clan - slap! - twelve -

Hoseok wouldn’t do that.

The ferry is a boat. A boat of sorts, anyway. A ferryman lies crouched on the floating thing, a lantern-damper clutched in his hand, and Yoongi can’t even feel excited about it being his first time to see - to ride - a boat, not when this shell of a man is shaking and stammering, bodies all around them. A battlefield. Yoongi’s never really seen one of those, not one where both sides were on an equal footing.

Not one like this.

“Calm down,” Hoseok says gently, and Yoongi flips the veil back over his ears, cursing inside himself, “Calm down, sir. Just take us to the castle, and you’ll be allowed a night away from your duties.”

The ferryman’s look of delight is so intense it’s pitiful. “Thank you - tha-thank you,” and they’re allowed four horses onto the ferry before the weight is too much. The other sixteen riders look ill-at-ease on the shore, before the darkness of the night swallows them whole.

It’s Hoseok, Yoongi, Seokjin, Eunjin, and Heejung on the ferry. Eunjin and Heejung leap down to help the ferryman row; Seokjin clamps onto the reins. The water laps around them. Nobody speaks.

Yoongi wonders -

Yoongi wonders -

“Jihyung has a lot to tell us,” Hoseok mumbles grimly.

It’s a long journey across. Twenty minutes, half an hour? The ferryman rows, but he’s shaking so much that eventually Eunjin takes his oar from them and the two twins propel themselves, steering slowly towards the ferry docks on the island in the middle of the lake. The castle glimmers with candles, but it’s a muted glimmer, a hardly-there-at-all shine, and all the doors and shutters and windows are pulled shut. There’s no activity anywhere, even though the night has only fallen.

They dock. A stablegirl walks up, pale-faced and scared - she’s only as tall as Yoongi, barely even, although he notices with pleasure the lack of warpaint on her face. She dips into a curtsey for Hoseok, grabs all four reins in two hands, and almost bolts for the stables.

And -

And Jihyung, Yoongi guesses, is the man waiting for them inside the door. Plumpish but tallish, handsome with a pair of spectacles balanced on the end of his nose, wearing riding leathers instead of robes, he clasps Hoseok by the elbow as soon as they’re through the door into the cold entrance hall. “Cousin.”

“Cousin.”

That appears to be the extent of the formalities - Jihyung’s stolid face crumples, looks pained. “There’s - there’s something you really need to see. I hardly believe it myself, and I was the one to find it.”

Chapter 9: Balance and Best

“During the battle, when it seemed as though all would be lost, I happened to catch a glimpse of them. Through the - I would call it a rain, yes, a rain of mud and blood and hands and arms and screaming, I saw them fighting back to back, inseparable, and that sight seemed to give me the extra strength I needed to continue. [...] through the battle? No - no, I think that was the last I saw of them. [...] that’s all I know.

- excerpts from an overheard conversation in an inn with a survivor of the battle of Gaigi-bada

Jihyung’s castle is far more like the White Walls than it is like Jungyoo’s - tapestries hang heavy from the dampish stone walls, and there are fires in nearly every grate. Less people, though. Far less - and what people there are sit by fires or in secluded corners; soldiers nursing wounds and scowling at the air, or sleeping with their heads pillowed on nothing but the stones. Jihyung greets most of them by name - others he just nods at, lips pursed. And everywhere:

the crown prince!

the crown prince is here?

the crown prince!

huinbyeong!

we’re saved!

the crown prince!

“I thought Gaigi-bada was safe,” Hoseok says, harsh under his breath. “What changed?”

“It is safe, but the safety is an expensive one, in lives,” Jihyung says bitterly. His voice is strong, but it wavers a little, and Yoongi can smell his fear soured like cream. Scared. He hadn’t been expecting this - this attack. “These Southerners, Hoseok, I would swear an oath that there’s something wrong with them. They’re Southerners for sure, but… but…”

“But?”

“I don’t know. I don’t know.”

Seokjin says nothing, but he’s holding onto the pommel of his sword, his knuckles white, his eyes tight and blazing. Yoongi says nothing, too.

And Jihyung is leading them toward some inner chamber - he lifts up a tapestry hiding a door cut into the wall, and all but falls through the entryway. “We retreated, pulled all our forces from the lesser two lakes down to this one. Most of the garrison is on the island already, but some of them are in villages to the north of here, waiting - we’re - the attack was only two days ago, and you’d already left Huinbyeong by then.”

“Has Heonwoo come?” Hoseok looks the least frazzled of the four of them.

Jihyung nods sharply. “Him, and a contingency - ten, ten guards. He has no more to spare. There’s no attacks on his fort, though… if the worst comes to the worst, we can pull all of his defences from the forts, and march them here. Something I - I dearly hope to avoid.”

“They have nothing to gain by attacking him,” Seokjin says, quiet, furious. “Heonwoo is too close to Huinbyeong. God dammit!”

“The King doesn’t know?”

“Of course he doesn’t,” Hoseok snaps. “We’d be at war if he did.”

Jihyung smiles wanly. “And what do you call this, then? Peace?”

Yoongi, although he’ll never admit it to anyone as long as he lives, grasps at Hoseok’s belt as they walk, and holds it as tightly as a little child would. Hoseok looks down, gives him an odd look, and without speaking extends his little finger, snagging it on Yoongi’s own. They keep walking. All is normal, and Jihyung’s castle is cold, and Hoseok is holding onto Yoongi as tightly as Yoongi holds onto him. “I’d call this better than war, if only by a little,” he says, walking closer to Yoongi out of sheer necessity.

“Better for you, but Heonwoo and I - we - we are under constant attack, panic, surveillance. Hoseok, I swear.” Jihyung stops outside a wooden door, and Seokjin sighs. “I swear, cousin, I swear if there was anything else I could call it, I would.”

“I know,” Hoseok says. Apologetic. “I know. I’m - I know.”

Inside the door, a man is sleeping on the table.

The family resemblance between Hoseok and Jihyung is subtle, but obvious in small ways - the arch of the nose, the point of the brows, the set of the jaw. Jihyung is taller, with more meat on his bones, and there’s more of an unfamiliar source in him too - in his hair, in his eyes, in his cheeks and his complexion.

The man asleep on the table is like the perfect blend of Taehyung and Jihyung. His hair is long and unkempt, Taehyung’s greyish brown instead of Jihyung’s black or Hoseok’s auburn. His cheeks are full and pink, and he’s built like a stick insect, his wrists all jutting and strutting out from his skin, his shoulders pointy under his unwashed tunic.

“Heonwoo,” Seokjin whispers to Yoongi. “That’s the other cousin. He’s - the province we went through before, remember?”

“Heonwoo,” Jihyung flicks his thumb and forefinger against his cousin’s head, “Wake up. Hoseok is here.”

“Hoseok?!”

Yoongi wants to keep holding onto Hoseok, but he reluctantly realises how ridiculous that would look to everyone in the room - and the veil is still covering his face, his ears, and he just looks… stupid. So he steps back beside Seokjin and lets the three men share gruff embraces and backslaps, and looks around him, cateyes flickering eagerly back and forth.

This room, more than any other he’s seen, is lived-in.

This room reminds him of Hoseok’s chambers, back in Huinbyeong, in the White Walls.

The table in the centre is huge, pockmarked and scarred, and covered in maps, crumby plates, bottles of ink, and games of crosses-and-ladders drawn on the corners of letters. The fire in the grate is more ash than stick, and burning merrily, a scuttle full of wood ready to load on again. Cups and plates are piled high on chairs, food half-moulded to the wooden surfaces; armour has been discarded in corners, rusted and oiled and all states in between. Maps and lioness tapestries hang on the walls. Drawings of great conquests. Pockmarks in the walls, where arrows, or perhaps knives, have been fired and thrown.

And, in the centre of the table, there is a hip-dagger.

(So familiar to the one belted to Yoongi’s waist that he has to fumble there, just to check it’s still with him.)

“This is what complicates things,” Jihyung says. Heonwoo balances on the edge of the table, nibbling on his thumbnail; Jihyung slides into one of the empty chairs; Hoseok leans against the wall. Seokjin settles by the door, relaxed but on guard, and Yoongi slowly melts into obscurity inside one of the shadows cast by the merry fire.

Hoseok twitches an eyebrow. “It’s - Huinden? I don’t see the problem. A standard-issue hip-dagger, that… most of the guards have one.”

“We found it buried in one of my men,” Jihyung says. “That’s the problem.”

“An argument in the ranks,” Seokjin suggests doubtfully.

Heonwoo shakes his head and leaps off the table, beginning to pace around the room, still with his thumb in his mouth. “We thought that, but - c’mon, Jin, there’s no way good garrison men would kill each other. And anyway, it doesn’t belong to any of Jihyung’s men, ‘cause all their daggers are present and correct. And that’s what we don’t get.”

“There’s two options,” Jihyung says. He tips the chair back, balancing on the two back legs, looking up at Hoseok. “Right?”

“Either it’s genuine insurrection, or it’s a Southern assassin trying to make us think there’s a traitor,” Hoseok says, and then swears. “This is an unholy mess, Jihyung.”

“You don’t have to tell me.”

Heonwoo pauses by the fire, tapping his foot frantically. “I think it’s weird, though. Is it a bluff or a double-bluff or a triple-bluff? And what if it’s nothing at all? No matter who started it, it doesn’t hide that sooner or later, Gaigi-bada is going to fall. And if Gaigi-bada falls then we’re fucked, Hoseok, we’re cut off from the world entirely.”

“I know.” Hoseok is less frantic than Heonwoo, but not as measured as Jihyung - he’s pulled his bottom lip between his teeth, chewing it bloody. “And - are we expecting another attack? I brought twenty of Huinbyeong’s finest.”

“Soon,” Jihyung sits back down. “They weakened us. You know Meiwuko’s style.”

“Hm. Attack while they’re recovering.”

Yoongi is drowning again. All he wanted to do was stop his people from being meaninglessly slaughtered - and what if he dies before he gets back to the camp? It’s been almost four months, now, and Jeongguk will be beside himself.

Jeongguk. (Is Jihyung Hoseok’s Jeongguk? Is Heonwoo? Or is it Seokjin, or Taehyung or Namjoon or Jimin?)

“We need a way to find out the truth,” Hoseok says at last. He shoves himself away from the wall and towards the table, slamming his palm down on the blue lake drawn on the map. “Gaigi-bada is too important to lose. I can’t - the King can’t lose it.”

“We know,” Heonwoo says, smiling a little. “Hah. The King. How is the old bastard?”

Jihyung cracks a smile, too. “I assume he’s right ripe and royal and hopping to go.”

“He doesn’t even know there’s a war on,” Hoseok says, matching his cousins’ expression, “and if I get my way, he won’t. He’ll die and that’ll be the end of it.”

“Bastard.”

“Me, or him?”

Yoongi fumbles with the flick-knife, schich- ing the blade out of the sheath and back in again, just for something to do with his hands. And then, then, then, Heonwoo notices him, and cackles. “You brought your whore? Hoseok!”

Oh yes. The clothes. The uniform of the Royal Concubine - the royal -

(whore whore twelve dead at the hands of the min clan jungyoo hands lips eyes)

“His name is Yoongi,” Hoseok says, voice chilly, although he walks over to stand beside Yoongi instead of beckoning him closer. “Think before you speak, Heonwoo, for the lioness-”

“Sorry, sorry,” Heonwoo holds up his hands. There’s a long, fractured scar down the inside of his palm, but he folds it away before Yoongi can get a good look at it - and anyway, everything is filmy and black under the veil. “Hey, Hoseok, why’ve you got someone kitted out in concubine clothes, then, if they aren’t a se-”

Yoongi can’t help himself. He’s seen Seokjin do it, to the soldiers during a particularly rough playfight, and now he does - he places his hand on the pommel of the hip-dagger, and forces it against the sheath to make a slithering, sinister shiiiiiiiiik noise as he pulls it a little way out.

Jihyung looks a little awkward. “Pleased to meet you, Yoongi.”

“Is he a super-assassin? Huinbyeong’s finest?”

Hoseok scowls. “No. Shut up and stay away.”

Yoongi flips the veil off his face, ignoring Seokjin’s popping eyes. “Don’t call me that,” he says, and he kind of enjoys how Heonwoo’s mouth drops, how Jihyung’s eyes widen, how their eyes fly to his ears and to the tail he lets flicker out underneath his robes, “I’m Yoongi of the Min clan, thank-you-very-much, and I’m nobody’s whore. Nobody’s assassin, either, so don’t get your hopes up.”

Heonwoo slaps the table so hard that the Huinden hip-dagger goes flying, and begins to laugh.

“It’s bad news,” Seokjin says. Jihyung’s castle is small, and most of the surrounding villages have poured into it for protection, and so the Huinbyeong soldiers are all sleeping kipped on the floor of a large bedroom, the bed stripped of clothes and mattress, the fire popping sadly in the grate. Most of the soldiers are playing cards in the corner; Seokjin, Yoongi, Heejung and Eunjin have staked their claim next to the fire, to have a conversation.

(Hoseok is the Crown Prince. Whether he likes it or not, that means privileges, and his own chambers. He isn’t present.)

Eunjin hums. She’s braiding the short strands in her sister’s hair, then tying them into knots. “Bad news for us and the South. Surely Meiwuko doesn’t want a war, not really?”

“No, she doesn’t. But… but if she thinks we’ve been attacking unprompted, she’ll attack right back, and it’ll be self-defence. Both sides defending themselves preemptively against the other,” Seokjin sighs.

Yoongi says nothing. He’s comfortable beside the fire - and warm, ever-so-warm, and he wants to think. Think properly.

Jihyung and Heonwoo.

Despite himself, he finds himself liking them. Jihyung is sensible. Jihyung reminds him of the mothers in the clan, all worried for her children, and anxious to get them home safe, and not inclined to lighthearted humour in the meantime. And Heonwoo reminds Yoongi of Minhyuk - all bluff and bluster and words where they shouldn’t be, but with his heart very firmly in the right place.

And Hoseok.

(Hoseok is another story.)

But this hip-dagger -

“Hoseok is smart,” Heejung says, wincing when her twin pulls at a strand of hair too hard, “He’s smart. He’ll work out the bluff or the double-bluff or whatever it is.”

“He may not have time to,” Eunjin says.

“What do you mean?”

She gestures with a free hand in a vague southerly direction. “If the word going ‘round is true, the South is planning another attack, right? If they attack again, we’ll have to fight no matter what, and it doesn’t matter who stabbed who - not whenever we’re fighting, it doesn’t. People will still die. Gaigi-bada might fall.”

Seokjin swears.

And Yoongi closes his eyes, and falls asleep, his chin resting on his hands, curled up underneath his brownish muddyish cloak, and tries to forget where he is and how he’s got here. He thinks about sitting next to Hoseok in the gardens at Huinbyeong, making little jokes, palms almost touching - and he goes to sleep with a suspiciously warm heart, and a smile.

He sneaks out the window early in the morning and lands in the muddy Earth hands-and-knees. She burns. Worried for him, worried for the people he’s travelling with, and he tells her they’re fine. As fine as they can be. She doesn’t feel convinced.

“I miss Jeonggukkie,” he sighs, staring off across Gaigi-bada. Fog lies on the surface of the lake, so thick and heavy that he can’t see anything past it, just the ripple of water and the grey of the morning sky. “Tell him I’m alive, if you can.”

The Earth hums. He wonders if her stickshrine still burns, in the gardens of Huinbyeong. He wonders if he could make one here. “I miss the Min, too.”

The Earth glimmers sparkly in the mud. There are pockholes from the horses hooves last night, and she settles in there, all wet and dampish and algaed. “And I miss - everyone, and Minhyuk and Daesoo and Eunhyun and Chaeyoung… and Mina.” He shifts a little bit. At least there’s a chance of meeting everyone else again, but for Mina and her son -

Stickshrines burn. Somewhere in the mountains, he knows Mina’s stickshrines will be burning, burning merrily through the years, a silent memory to her until everybody that knew who she was has died and burned away like the twigs that began it.

And other comforting thoughts.

(tell him i’m alive, if you can.)

(i mean, i’m sure he knows. but - if he wonders. we’re all still alive. we fought some more. some of us are injured. but tell him i’m alive.)

(thank you.)

“Thank you,” Yoongi murmurs, and digs his blunt claws into the Earth and the mud, and he feels - or does he imagine? - Jeongguk doing the same, a million miles away.

Breakfast in Jihyung’s castle is held in his own version of a Long Hall. Dankish, but still warm and toasted, the windows hung with black curtains to hide the castle from the sight of the Southerners - or so Yoongi guesses. Along the table there seems to be a strict sort of hierarchy, too, with the refugee villagers at the bottom end, the middle full of Jihyung’s garrison, and the upper end dedicated to Heonwoo and Hoseok’s forces.

And there’s the dias.

collars and chairs and eating chicken out of jungyoo’s hand

And there’s the dias.

“Sit with me,” Hoseok says. He catches Yoongi’s look of distaste, or perhaps he guesses that it’s there, and he sighs. “Please?”

Yoongi shrugs. Follows him anyway, and on the dias sits Jihyung, a woman - probably his captain of the guard - Heonwoo, alone, and Hoseok, Seokjin, and Yoongi. There are just enough seats. Eunjin, gold barrette glimmering, winks up at Yoongi from her place with the contingency, laughter in her eyes -

“Hello, Yoongi,” Heonwoo leans around Hoseok to say. “Sleep well?”

Yoongi shrugs again. “Well enough. Why?”

“Just being polite.”

“Heonwoo, shut up,” Hoseok pulls his cousin’s ear, and Heonwoo’s complaining screech is loud enough that the villagers at the other end of the hall startle at the noise and look up. “Look, see what you did.”

“That was your fault! Assault! Assault!”

Seokjin leans down to Yoongi’s ear. “They’re always like this,” he whispers, smiling a little. “Once, when they were hunting for dreamdeer, Heonwoo climbed a tree and fell down. And Hoseok came along, and said ‘have you broken your back? You idiot’, and thwacked him with his sword.”

Yoongi laughs behind the back of his hand. “I can imagine.”

(And Hoseok looks down at him and Seokjin looks at Hoseok looking and there’s a whole wealth of information in those looks, but Yoongi doesn’t notice.)

Breakfast is - meagre, to say the least. Bread and fish, with scrapings of butter, scrapings of tea. Hoseok swaps his fish for Yoongi’s. “Mine’s bigger,” he says, when questioning eyes are turned his way. “But I ate already.”

“Liar,” Yoongi says. He eats the fish anyway - trout, big and fat and eyeful, and licks it off his fingers, and mops up the rest of it with the hardcrusted bread.

And Hoseok smiles.

Heonwoo and Jihyung are talking, in hushed voices, about who’s garrison is bigger. All Yoongi can think of is the envoy, and how bloodied-out he’d been, and that Huinden hip-dagger on the table last night…

“After this, come with me,” Hoseok tells him.

Seokjin sighs.

From the roof, it’s possible to see the shore of Gaigi-bada and beyond - the forest to the East, with the tantalising hint of dreamdeer, and a scrubby marsh wasteland to the West, continuing forever until it’s obscured by fog. South, there’s nothing - nothing, just more grass and dust and trees and such. And there, close to the shore, the remnants of the battle from three days ago, far more horrific in the daylight than they were yesterday - all those bodies in the mud and the dirt and the grass.

“Jihyung won’t let them lie,” Hoseok murmurs - Yoongi almost jumps out of his skin in surprise, and it makes Hoseok laugh softly. “He’ll send people out today, now that the Huinbyeong reinforcements have arrived.”

“What can he do?” Yoongi’s glad they’re too high up to see the faces properly. He’s only ever seen dead people naturally, old-agers, and then Mina and her son… and that village up in the mountains with Eunhyun… but each time, it’s been horrific. He doesn’t want to see anymore.

“He’ll take in our soldiers, and he’ll burn the Southerners.”

“Is that not… bad?”

Hoseok shakes his head. They’re both leaning on the battlements, the empty rooftop, wearing thick furs and leathers to combat the leech of the fog. “Meiwuko wrote to me, secretly, a few years ago. We - keep a friendship, of sorts, despite the King, despite her governors… well, a friendship, as much as we’re able. She told me that if I could, I had to order the provincial leaders to burn her soldiers. That’s the South’s version of a holy burial, see? But here, the lioness shames those who don’t get sent to her across the sea, so it’s a punishment. But not really.”

“Oh.” Yoongi stares down. There are glimmers of metal among the Earth, swords and armour. “We’re buried. We get to return to the Earth, and become a part of her.”

“Sounds kind of… dark,” Hoseok frowns. “All that mud on top of you.”

“It’s the Earth.”

“I believe you.”

“Huh. Well, you ought.”

Hoseok laughs lightly again, a little giggle, and leaps to sit on the parapet. “Is the Earth really the only thing you love? I’ve never heard you happy unless you’re talking about her. Or -”

“The clan, obviously,” Yoongi begrudgingly accepts Hoseok’s hand and hops onto the wall to sit beside him - their backs to the South, their backs to the battlefield, their faces turned towards the clouds. Somewhere beyond them, the mountains grow from the dirt like trees made of Earth, and it makes him happy.

“Oh, obviously.”

“Don’t make fun.”

“I wasn’t!”

Yoongi scowls. “You people don’t have clans. You wouldn’t understand.”

“You people…” Hoseok echoes. “I don’t have a clan, but I have friends. Jin and Taehyung and Joon and Jimin, and Heonwoo and Jihyung and Youngjin, don’t they count?”

“You don’t-” Yoongi makes a frustrated noise. How can he explain what the clan is? “Maybe, sure, but… but the clan is clan. You live with them and you hunt with them and you care for them and you’ll marry one of them. That’s clan.”

“Will you marry one of them?” Hoseok says quietly.

Yoongi shrugs. “Probably. Who else would I marry?”

“Hm.”

Across Gaigi-bada, the ferryman is paddling, his flat boat covered in muck and straw and empty sacks. Three or four men are helping, dressed for the weather, with gloves so huge there’s no room for finger grips. “Are they gonna help with the bodies?”

“Probably,” Hoseok says, an echo of a moment ago. “I - yeah, probably. And… Yoongiyah…”

“Huh?”

“Your clan sounds like… fun.” Hoseok sighs and stretches his hands out, framing them against the grey sky, all long fingers and tan skin and miniature scars. “I’d like to meet them someday, maybe.”

“They are fun,” Yoongi says. “And - and I’d like that too.”

They sit awhile longer until the day gets a little older, until the ferry docks on the shore, and then Hoseok wriggles down from his perch. “Actually, I wanted you so I could - so you could do more with that dagger. If the South… really, if they come, they’ll probably get the castle, or we’ll have to go to them, and… it’d be murder, sending you out there unprepared.”

it’d be murder. Clawless, what can Yoongi do?

Namjoon, pressing the knife into his hands, earnest and kind.

He can’t do much, but he can try his best with what he can.

And so: “Then teach me,” he says, and the hip-dagger rattles when he leaps off his perch, onto his feet, “Teach me, and I’ll learn.”

“Okay. Okay,” Hoseok looks him up and down, a critical eye in a fair face. “Do you remember anything of what Jin and I said? On the journey?”

“Balance is better than nothing, and nothing is better than balance,” Yoongi recites, and then smiles all gummy and soft. “Like a maxim. I’m gonna tell Jeonggukkie that.”

“Jeonggukkie?” Hoseok asks, shrugging his fur overcoat off, standing in tunic and linen trousers, boots laced to the knee. He pulls out a hip-dagger almost identical to Yoongi’s save for the lioness moulded into the knob of the pommel, and tosses it up, catches it by the hilt. “He’s - you told me about him.”

“He’s Jeonggukkie. I - told the Earth, I told her to tell him I’m alive. He’s big but he’s small, and he’s got enough fire in him to set the whole woods ablaze.” Yoongi smiles to himself, and follows suit - standing in tunic and trousers, the swordbelt clanking brassily.

He loosens his tail. It flickers behind him, curls and whips, and balance returns to the world - balance unthinking.

“He sounds - good.”

“He’s the best.”

Hoseok smiles, although Yoongi can see goosebumps raising on his neck, his exposed collar, from the chill of the fog. “Okay. Hold - balance.” He points the hip-dagger out in front of him, and Yoongi copies, balancing the steel against the air. Heavy in his palm. “Good. You feel it?”

“I think so,” Yoongi says, though he’s not sure what he’s meant to be feeling.

“Okay. Keep yours held out, right?” Hoseok drops his own, unheeded to the stone ground, and pulls a round wooden bead out of his pocket, rolling it between finger and thumb. “So, what you’re gonna do-” and he plops the bead in the centre of Yoongi’s blade, in the miniscule depression, “You’re gonna walk over to me without dropping it.”

“Right,” Yoongi mumbles uncertainly. Jolting his tail out perpendicular to the rest of him, he takes one tentative step -

The bead bounces down.

And again,

The bead bounces down.

And again,

The bead bounces down -

“This is impossible,” Yoongi says in frustration when Hoseok plucks it up from the floor and places it back on the blade. “What’s the point? I can’t - kill anyone with my bead-balancing skills.”

“But you’ll be able to stab the fool that doesn’t know his sword inside and out,” Hoseok says, and he’s grinning snarkily. “You’ll be stabbing while he’ll still be working out which way to poke it.”

“You exaggerate.”

“Not by as much as you might think.”

The sun is high in the sky by the time Yoongi manages to waddle over to Hoseok, sweat pouring down his forehead, the stupid wooden bead tottering on the end of the blade. His ears are on end - his tail is flexed so hard it’ll be stiff tomorrow unless he works out the kinks tonight, and Hoseok is beaming, so proud, when he plucks the bead away. “Well done!”

“That was ridiculous,” Yoongi gasps, swiping the perspiration off his forehead with the back of his palm. “I don’t - you’re ridiculous.”

“When I was ten, and Tae was… oh, he’d have been eight… we got given our first hip-daggers,” Hoseok says, shoving the bead back into an inside pocket. “We had to do balancing, and walking, and running with swords, for a whole year before they let us bite at proper steel. Trust me, I’m doing you a favour, only making you do it for an hour or two.”

“Ugh. Claws are far easier, y’know.”

“I can imagine.”

Yoongi leans against the parapet, resting his grip on the hip-dagger. “You could just slash, and boom. There’d be a dead bear, and everyone would cheer at suppertime.”

“Sounds fun.” Hoseok matches his easy pose. “Do you want to do proper swordfighting now, or are you tired?”

“I’m never tired,” Yoongi says, with such a blank expression that Hoseok bursts out laughing, and Yoongi finds his lips twitching almost of their own volition at the sight of him.

Hoseok stoops and scoops his dagger. “You’re impossible,” he says, eyes all a-glimmer, “Impossible. Try to attack me.”

Warily, Yoongi steps away from the wall, backs away from Hoseok into the centre of the roof. “This is - a trick, right? What?”

“No tricks,” Hoseok brandishes his sword, grins toothily, “Just attack me, okay?”

Yoongi huffs, runs at Hoseok dagger-bared, and gets tossed to the floor.

“It was a trick!”

“No - you attacked me, and I defended,” Hoseok brandishes his dagger, beaming. “C’mon, get up, I’ll show you it slowly. If you can defend, then you can attack, and that’s the best way to come out of something with all your limbs. And alive. So, c’mon…”

Yoongi sighs but does as he’s bid, raising his dagger, approaching in exaggerated slow-motion. Hoseok copies the swing - “Okay, so, never hit edge against edge if you can help it. The sword’ll get nicked really easily,” he says, turning his dagger so the flat thwacks against Yoongi’s edge, “And never aim for the blade, although keep it in your eye. Aim for the flesh. You’re trying to defend, but you’re also trying to hurt the other guy if you can.”

“Right.”

“And keep your feet wide. Like - rooted. Like a tree,” Hoseok shuffles his heels in demonstration, “See? If they knock you over, you’re dead. If you fall, you’re dead. Right?”

“Right.”

“Okay. So, I’m gonna attack.”

The sun beams down on the rooftop, and Hoseok whirls around, all brandishing and glowing steel hip-dagger, and the edge of his blade descends - aimed for Yoongi’s head -

flat of the blade. He swivels it in his palm, sees Hoseok’s eyes glint, looks down at his feet -

There’s a boot swiping for his ankle. Yoongi snarls and kicks it away and lashes his tail in Hoseok’s face for good measure, and Hoseok ends up flat on his back, facing the sky, cackling with laughter. “You saw it!”

“You were cheating,” Yoongi accuses, waving his hip-dagger in the air.

“All’s fair in love and war.”

Yoongi sighs. “Another maxim? Jeonggukkie was collecting them. Said he was gonna petition the Min to get more included.”

“You could call it a maxim,” Hoseok shrugs, getting to his feet. “Taehyung said it all the time, when he was stealing my chocolate puddings. Means that anything is justifiable to achieve what you want, and what I wanted was to beat you, so it wasn’t cheating. You just saw it, and called me out. And so you won.”

Yoongi smiles. It’s a good feeling, to win. “So, what’s next?”

“Next, we do it again,” Hoseok grins a little wickedly, “And again, and again, and again, and again, until you could do it in your sleep.”

And Yoongi shoves his bottom lip out, like a child. “Hoseok.”

Hoseok smiles and smiles and smiles like the very sun in the sky, all beambright and happy, and there's something warm in his eyes that Yoongi might be able to decipher, if he had the luxury. And certainly everything about this rooftop seems luxurious - the midmorning sun sparkling on Gaigi-bada, the lake; the glimmer of metal as the ferryman and the soldiers cart armour over; the happiness in Hoseok's laugh, the clink clatter of their hip-daggers against other; the clip of Hoseok’s hobnail boots against the flagstones.

Luxurious indeed.

“Again!”

“I can do it, though,” Yoongi pants. His tail burns from the flicker of straining it to hold his balance, in a way so different to hunting in the woods. “I can.”

“Can you do it as well as a soldier? That's the only time you'll be able to do it well enough,” Hoseok says, a tease when he sees how tired Yoongi looks. “No, no, we'll break.”

Yoongi slumps gratefully down, wiping perspiration from his forehead and the base of his ears, giving his tail time to relax. He lies on the stone ground and looks up at the blueblue sky: “Don't they need you down there?”

“Down where?” Hoseok copies Yoongi’s position, folding his arms behind his head. “Jihyung? He can carry on just well without me, and they know where I am if they really need me. We all had the same education in tactics - Heonwoo is rash, but Jihyung is sensible. He knows the only thing to do is lie in wait and let the Southerners come to us, and in any case, we've just ridden a week from Huinbyeong, and the soldiers need to rest before they're any good. No, they don't need me - and I'm sure we'll have plenty of time to talk war later on.”

“Fine, then. I'll hardly complain.” Yoongi stares at the clouds and lets his arms relax. “I could fight in the woods just easy, you know. It's this open air stuff, that's-”

“I'm sure I'd be just as bad as you if you took me to the clan, don't worry,” Hoseok laughs softly. “Different areas of expertise.”

“I could use those tactics in a fight.”

“Could you?”

Yoongi holds out his hand, backdropping it against the blue sky. “Probably not. No claws.”

“Oh.”

A bird, lonely, chirrups, and the clouds wisp themselves to look like faces, like trees, like cat-ears, like eyes, like boats. Yoongi imagines Jeongguk beside him, pointing out the funniest clouds, that one looks like you! and he smiles.

“I’m sorry, you know,” Hoseok says. “About what he did to you. I didn’t - I didn’t know.”

“I know you didn’t,” Yoongi sighs. Phantoms. He doesn’t want to talk about this; he barely wants to think about this, nevermind discuss it with Hoseok.

“Jungyoo has always been-”

“I know.”

Hoseok twitches, then thinks better of whatever he was going to do, and settles back against the flagstones. “But I am sorry.”

“Okay.”

“You don’t sound convinced.” There’s a clink and a groan, and Hoseok rolls over onto his side to face Yoongi. “Are you convinced?”

Yoongi copies him, so they’re face-to-face and lying on the roof, hands tucked in front of them. Hoseok’s eyes are wide and earnest and trustworthy, and his cheeks are still pink with the exercise. “I don’t know what you’re trying to convince me of,” he says.

“That I wish you hadn’t been - dragged into this the way you were,” Hoseok mumbles. His gaze wanders lazily around Yoongi’s face, up to the points of his furred ears, down to his lips, across his nose. “That I’m sorry Jungyoo hurt you. That I wish it hadn’t happened.”

Yoongi unclasps his hands, feeling all kinds of strange. “I - you - everything has a reason,” he says hoarsely, and his gaze is wandering too, down Hoseok’s neck and across his cheeks and down to his lips and up again. “That’s what Guk used to say, and I believe him.”

“But I can be sorry about it,” Hoseok persists.

“Sorry I’m here?”

“Yes.”

“Sorry you met me?”

“No.”

The answer is quick. Hoseok turns red; Yoongi wishes he wasn’t so close, so he could look away. “I - uh.”

“I wish it had been under better circumstances,” Hoseok corrects hastily, and he’s still bright pink, “But I don’t regret meeting you. You’ve definitely - shown me some - things.”

Yoongi smiles hesitantly. Hoseok unclasps his hands too, and they fall; there’s barely a hair’s breadth separating his fingertips from Yoongi’s, and for some reason, that makes him want to smile even more - makes him want to shout it from the castle roof.

“And…” Hoseok’s whole face is in danger of catching fire, “What about you? Do you regret meeting - meeting me?”

“I wish it had been under better circumstances,” Yoongi repeats softly, the blush catching on his face too, “But… no.”

They look at each other.

“I’m glad,” Hoseok murmurs. “I’m - glad.”

And Yoongi finds that he’s glad, too.

Chapter 10: For Going Slowly

“Is it clear, then, how it ended. We can see the evidence for ourselves, right here in front of us, in the current events and the ripples of the past. But how did it begin? Only a chosen few know, and we wouldn’t say. Would you, if you had been there to witness it?”

- extract from a letter written by Jung Heonwoo to his wife, years after the Southern War

“Hyung!”

“Jeonggukkie!”

The forest clearing is cold and snowy, and their feet make little pawprints in the whiteness as they run towards each other. Jeongguk has grown, unbelievably, and his ears are shinier and his tail is longer and his eyes are infinitely sadder and older. He clings to Yoongi the same way he always has, though, gripping as though he’ll never let go, as though Yoongi is the only thing keeping him grounded to humanity. “I’ve missed you,” he pants, cries - whines, “I’ve missed you so much.”

“I’ve missed you too,” Yoongi strokes through Jeongguk’s hair, and he knows he’s clutching him with the same sort of force. “Oh, lord, Jeonggukkie-”

“Nothing’s the same with you gone,” Jeongguk gasps, trying to sit down while also keeping his hold on Yoongi - they both topple into the snow, one on top of the other, tails curling around forearms and ears twitching and hands grasping, always grasping. “Nothing’s the same, hyung, hyung, hyung-”

“I missed you so much-”

“But this is a dream,” Jeongguk says suddenly, so severely that Yoongi shocks. Jeongguk never used to sound so matter-of-fact, so -

“We can enjoy it even if it isn’t a dream,” Yoongi says, softly and quietly. “We can enjoy it, right? Jeonggukkie - Jeonggukkie-”

“I know, hyung,” Jeongguk mumbles. The air is stiff and heavy, and then he bundles up snow in the curl of his tail and flings it in Yoongi’s face. “Hah!”

“Hey!”

“Hey, yourself!”

They bundle snowballs in their palm and throw them at each other, and collapse again, rolling in snow, and Yoongi feels a million years younger. Lighter. Happier. Like the last four months, and all their phantoms and fortunes and tortures and trials, are all just dreams to be shed off in the light of day - but this is the dream, and that is what he’s got to go back to.

“I asked her, you know,” Jeongguk says breathlessly, falling back into a mossy hillock all frosted over. “I went up to - remember that cave? With the bats? - I went there, and I built the biggest stickshrine I ever have, and I asked her to let me talk to you, even if it was only for a second.”

“Oh.”

“And she did! And you’re here! And I can finally tell you how much - how much-”

“How much I missed you,” Yoongi says again, because it’s the only thing he can say. Like a broken toy. i missed you i missed you i missed you.

“How much I missed you,” Jeongguk repeats, soothing and sweet and homely as a brook babbling its way through the world. “I - but, no, I have things to tell you. There’s things you need to know.”

Yoongi sits back on his mossy seat - and the Earth has the foresight to make the snow powdery for them, but not damp, so they can settle into it like a blanket of weather. “I’m listening.”

“The Min is losing hope, and with him are the rest of the clan. The Earth doesn’t talk to the lowlands as much as she used to - she’s strong high in the mountains, but the humans - those people, they keep coming back, hyung, it’s awful - Daesoo-”

Yoongi hisses. “Not-”

“Not quite,” Jeongguk sighs. “His hand, hyung, his - they cut it off. And the Min doesn’t talk hardly anymore, and he just sits there… he just sits and shakes his head and says, ‘cause you’re dead and gone, the whole clan will vanish. Eunhyun… she ran into the mountains a few days ago, and I haven’t heard from her since. They’re chasing us further and further into the mountains, but it’s winter… gaining on cold, and you know what the babies are like… and they keep - there’s this curse, they keep spitting, this - it sounds like this, right? Listen.” He screws up his face, spits: “Jungooseok.”

“Jungyoo!”

“You know it?” Jeongguk’s troubled face clears a little. “What does it mean?”

“Jungyoo,” Yoongi repeats. He’s so angry, so unbearably angry, that he sees red - his blood boils - everything feels dark and humid and all he can sense are the hands on him, the lips on him, the collar on him. “Jungyoo, he’s the man that’s doing all this. Jeonggukkie, Jeonggukkie, there’s so much more than you think down here - down here, it’s massive, and they have big castles made of stone with no Earth in them at all, and the ocean, Jeonggukkie, the ocean is so big and it’s real, and Jungyoo is the bastard that - that - that-”

“He killed her,” Jeongguk says, suddenly, sharply. “He killed Chaeyoung.”

“What?”

“A man on a horse. He came up and he said Jungyoo - something, something, his accent was strange, he said something about Seok and taking thrones, and then he killed Chaeyoung.”

“No, he didn’t,” Yoongi says slowly. “No he didn’t. No he didn’t no he didn’t no he didn’t no he didn’t-”

“Hyung-”

“No he didn’t!”

“He did,” Jeongguk says. “He killed her, and we couldn’t do anything. We ran away. The Min - without him we don’t know what to do. Everyone thinks you’re dead except me. Minhyuk doesn’t talk anymore. Eunhyun’s gone missing. Daesoo’s got only one hand. I - we need you.”

“Oh,” Yoongi lies back in the snow, and the Earth warms him and heals him and helps him. “Oh, oh-”

“We need you,” Jeongguk repeats. He sounds so old, matured before his time, forced to take the leadership from an old dying man without a grandson, forced to take the leadership of a clan being hunted out of existence. He sounds on the brink of tears. “Hyung, I - I - I don’t know what to do.”

“Jeonggukkie-”

“We need you back, hyung.”

Yoongi sees Hoseok, laughing and telling him to balance. He sees the bodies upon bodies, piled up in the muddy marshes beside the lake. He sees Heonwoo, leaning back on his chair; he sees Jihyung. He sees Namjoon and Taehyung and Jimin.

He sees Jeongguk.

“I need to be back,” he says, honestly. Honest. What other purpose has he? Yoongi Min. “I need to be back, but - oh, Jeonggukkie, I don’t know if I can.”

The Earth hugs them tightly to her, and there are tears brimming over in Jeongguk’s eyes, and the tips of his ears and the top of his tail is beginning to fade ever-so-slowly, like the eyes of the world closing over for the night. “The shrine must be burning out,” Jeongguk says. His voice comes over all crackly and dying. “Burning… burning… hyung, please-”

And Yoongi is left in the dark, completely in the dark, stretching out his hand to hold a boy that was never there in the first place.

“This is ridiculous!”

“Calm down,” Hoseok snaps, as Jihyung flings another dagger into the map pinned to the wall. “This is getting you nowhere.”

“They’re refusing to send aid! Refusing!”

“‘Cos they’re all dirty old bastards,” Heonwoo says casually. “Dirty old fucks. They won’t send aid if it kills them, of course they won’t. If Hoseok gets his head sliced off, doesn’t that mean they get to sidle into Huinbyeong and claim it for their own?”

“Shut up, Heonwoo,” Hoseok sighs, as Jihyung throws another knife. “You’re not helping.”

“Telling the truth though.”

“Shut the hell up.”

The letter on the wooden table just keeps staring at them, angry and accusing. sorry to tell you… ashamed to say… signed chaena, signed minwoo, signed shihyuk…

signed jungyoo.

“They won’t send aid,” Jihyung says again, through gritted teeth. “Hoseok, this is a declaration of civil war-”

“No it’s not. Relax,” Hoseok says. “The letters say orders from the King. They’re within their rights to refuse aid, and you damn well know it. It’s a mere fucking technicality, but they’re within the law and you bloody know it, so sit down so we can decide what to do.”

Jihyung wrenches one of his knives out of the wall. “Bastards.”

“The King hasn’t told them do to anything, and I don’t have any real damn power,” Hoseok snarls. “Sit down.”

Heonwoo cackles.

Yoongi’s perched on the top of the table, hugging his knees, only half-listening to the conversation. Most of his mind is dwelling on the dream - how much of it was real? How much of it was fake? He suspects, though, that it was all as real as it could be - the Earth rarely invents things for her own gain, and she would get nothing useful out of pretending Jeongguk was struggling. And yet, she showed him Jeongguk, and she let them talk, so it’s clear what the Earth wants him to do. She wants him to go back and take over from the Min, who’s surely fading now… she wants him to rescue the clans.

And he wants to rescue the clans too, of course he does. Nothing would bring him greater pleasure than rallying them, than seeing Jeongguk again, and Daesoo and Eunhyun and -

he killed chaeyoung -

And Minhyuk, don’t think about that - but he has -

“We have to be rational,” Hoseok says.

he has duties.

Despite himself, he’s got obligations here. What does he do? Where do his loyalties lie? And would Hoseok ever forgive him for going north?

and why do you care if hoseok forgives you or not?

“We’re fucked,” Heonwoo mumbles. “Listen, listen, listen. We have… maybe four-hundred fighting men here, at a goddamn stretch, and for all we know Meiwuko’s got thousands of them heading our way right now. I left myself defended, and we can’t take any more from Huinbyeong or it’s vulnerable-”

“We may have to,” Hoseok says. “I might… send Nahan back and call for the strength of the garrison. If we can cut the South off here, then Huinbyeong won’t need to be defended.”

“That’s risky,” Yoongi says under his breath - Hoseok, closest to him, sighs and massages his forehead, but nods. “Risky-” Yoongi raises his voice a little - “According to yourselves, the South has way more men, right? So this really can only be a war of defence.”

“Definitely,” Jihyung says. “We can’t afford to attack.”

“It’s better to defend with all you have than to prepare to attack on the underside of your hand,” Yoongi recites, and reddens when he sees Hoseok’s knowing grin. “I - I mean, that’s something I was told, once. If this is a truly defensive battle, you should have all the reinforcements you can, and if Jungy- the other leaders won’t send you aid, you’ll have to take out of your own supply. That’s what makes sense. You won’t win a battle you don’t put all of your effort in.”

“Isn’t that putting all our eggs in one basket?” Heonwoo asks, staring fascinated at Yoongi.

Yoongi shrugs. “Maybe. But I know that if they pour all their strength into attacking us, then we should pour all our strength into defending.”

“It’s a cocky strategy,” Jihyung says. He’s started gouging a hole in the table.

“Or a brave one.”

“It doesn’t matter what adjective you attach to it,” Hoseok rolls his eyes, “Fact is, if we call for aid from our own garrisons - and Junghyun and Youngjin too, you forget, they’d send men - if we did that, we’d easily fill this castle with a thousand - two thousand fighting men. And that is a force that anyone would be scared to face, no matter how many Southerners Meiwuko sends.”

“So, what do we do? Send word, or stay?”

“We send word,” Hoseok says. His eyes seem to shimmer. “Of course we send word. We stand our guard.”

Yoongi finds himself still sitting on the table when Hoseok and Jihyung walk out, talking seriously about numbers and strength of men and armour and horses and Princess Meiwuko. He still can’t stop thinking about Jeongguk, and how awful it must be for the poor kid to have to run the clan, and Chaeyoung being dead and everything being awful and terrible and scary.

But he can’t seem to bring himself to tell Hoseok, which would be the sensible thing to do. Hoseok would give him a horse, give him an escort, and he’d be shipped up north, never to be seen again.

Never to be seen again -

That’s the part that bothers him.

“I’ve never seen our Hoseok so worked up before,” says Heonwoo, still sitting at the table - Yoongi startles and almost falls off, tail wobbling to keep his balance. “Is it your fault, or has he finally got some sorry old woman to marry him?”

“I - what?”

“Hoseok,” Heonwoo says again, and stands, and starts to pace around the room. He’s smiling, but that doesn’t do anything to ease the tension in Yoongi’s body. “Y’know, before this, he would never have dreamt of sending aid. He’d have defended Huinbyeong with every bone in his body, and to hell with the rest of us sorry bastards. God. Did you do this to him, or did someone else? Did Taehyung finally get some sense in that head of his?”

“I don’t know what you mean,” Yoongi says frostily. “Hoseok and I don’t talk about that.”

“Oh - so you talk?” Heonwoo’s narrow little elven features sweep into Yoongi’s, and he’s an inch away from his face and blinking curiously. “So you talk about things other than tactics? Interesting.”

“I didn’t say that!”

“Ah, but you’re gone all pink, so I’m right in any case,” Heonwoo smacks his own cheeks, and grins. “You’d want to watch what you say, kittycat.”

“I say nothing.”

“Not to me… but to Hoseok…”

“We don’t talk!”

“You were on the roof for five hours yesterday,” Heonwoo says. He leans against the wall near the fireplace, holding his hands down to the flames. “And Seokjin tells me you came from someplace near Jungyoo’s, which basically means that thieving old bastard took you from somewhere, except usually Hoseok doesn’t meddle in Jungyoo’s affairs at all - which means, kittycat, that you and Hoseok have a re-lat-ion-ship, whether you want one or not. Do you advise him? Do you please him? Do you annoy him?”

phantoms -

“I do none of it,” Yoongi hisses, face burning. “Shut up.”

“He listened to your advice over Jihyung’s. He smiled. Do you have little inside jokes?”

Yoongi remembers Namjoon telling him Jihyung seems dangerous, but Heonwoo is the one you have to look out for. Harmless exterior, but the interior… far too observant. “We don’t. Quit talking, already.”

Heonwoo just smiles. Smiles curiously. “You’re a very interesting visitor, in any case. I think I like you.”

“I don’t know if I like you,” Yoongi says, because at this point he’s given up caring.

Heonwoo shrugs. “Ah - me neither. But - Yoongi, of the Min clan?”

“Yes?”

“Hoseok is a good man.”

i know, Yoongi thinks, watching Heonwoo swing out the door. i know.

The lake is big and still and silent, and the fog lies so thick over the lowlands that Yoongi can’t see the shore. “It’s pretty, right,” Hoseok says softly, rippling his fingers in the water - the splash, the disturbance, seems louder than any noise Yoongi’s ever heard. “When we were young, me ‘n Taehyung would come up here a lot. It’s near the Boundary - the neutral patch between the South and us, right? We’d come up here a lot, and we’d all fish on the lake. We had to learn to swim here before we could swim in the sea, y’know.”

Yoongi nods. His tail winds out from behind him and paddles into the water; splash, splash. “You have a good family here.”

Hoseok looks at him, a little surprised. “Why do you say that?”

and i have a good family there. Yoongi dunks his tail even further in the water, his cheeks turning pink. “You - I don’t know. Can’t you just take the compliment?”

“Fine,” Hoseok laughs, and his fingertips touch Yoongi’s tail under the water. “You’re strange.”

So’re you, but you don’t hear me going on about it.”

They both laugh quietly.

And Yoongi wants to tell him - he wants to tell him so bad, because it feels like something’s been growing in his heart for months now, ever since the Min and Mina and her son and leaping through trees and saying goodbye to Jeongguk - something’s been growing and swelling and exploding inside him, and he aches to relieve himself of some of the weight. Hoseok could take it. Hoseok would take it.

Hoseok is a good man.

“Hoseok…”

“I noticed something about you, earlier,” Hoseok murmurs across the still lake, and Yoongi lets the whisper die in the back of his throat.

“What did you notice?”

“You said our. You said we. You didn’t say you lot, or they - ah, I know it’s a small enough thing, but small things are what make everything a little worth it - I’m glad, is what I’m trying to say.” Hoseok submerges his hand up to the wrist, and this time when he touches Yoongi’s tail he strokes it with the length of his index finger, slow and cautious and gentle. “Thank you.”

“I - oh,” Yoongi manages. Guilty, he curls his tail around Hoseok’s wrist, and gives him a smile. “I hadn’t realised.”

“But do you still think so? Now I’ve said it?”

“Does it matter?”

“I think it does,” Hoseok says. “I think it does.”

Yoongi sits back in the murky shallows, paddling his hands in the cool water, and thinks about we and us and them. we need you, hyung. we need you - i need you. “I think… I think I still think so,” he says slowly, and the swelling in his chest grows greater and he wants to dive through the Earth and scream and hug Jeongguk and cry and tell Hoseok he’s sorry he’s managed to get so damn attached. “I still think so,” he says, and he wishes it wasn’t the truth.

“That makes me happy.”

“It does?”

“Mmhm.”

“Why?”

Hoseok lets go of Yoongi’s tail. Yoongi misses the touch for the barest fraction of a second, before Hoseok’s hand swoops through the water and his fingers glide through the spaces between Yoongi’s and then they’re both sitting in the shallows of the lake, soaking in the cool water, barely-but-just holding hands. “Because,” Hoseok says.

“Just because?” Yoongi smiles despite himself.

“Just because.”

just because.

“Everything hurts, Jeongguk-ah,” he murmurs. Hoseok is swimming with Seokjin and Heejung, and Eunjin is laughing at them from a window high up. Yoongi can’t swim - never had to swim, never thought swimming was real - so he’s watching too, sitting on the shore like he was with Hoseok earlier, holding hands with the water and with himself and with his tail and with the soft mud, the Earth, instead of Hoseok.

just because. “Everything hurts, and I don’t know what to do.” In the water, Hoseok - and to swim they’ve stripped down to undershorts and nothing else, and there’s a thing - “You probably wouldn’t know what to do either, but… just because.”

“Hey-you!” Eunjin shrieks down at Yoongi. “Aren’t you going to join?”

He shakes his head. “Can’t swim!”

just because.

“I should tell him.”

Hoseok and Seokjin are laughing, splashing lake water at each other. “I should tell him,” Yoongi says to the Jeongguk he isn’t with, “I should tell him, I should, I should - I should, but I don’t want to. Isn’t that ridiculous?”

it’s ridiculous ridiculous ridiculous ridiculous.

So he unslots the little flick-knife from his belt, and thumbs the delicate button, and slots it between his fingers and pretends he’s got his claws back. What, what, what is he doing here?

“Why am I still here,” he grunts into the water in frustration. “Jeongguk-ah - why am I still here-”

And Hoseok splashes through the water towards him.

Yoongi -

When he was younger, much younger, seeing Eunhyun without her furs and wraps made him blush and mumble and mutter. The clan isn’t exactly big on the, say, the skin and things, but once a brittlebear bit Eunhyun so hard her arm hung by a thread and she went white and pink and blue and green, and as the Min was stitching her back together again, there came a period of three or four weeks when she couldn’t wear the same amount of upperclothes as everyone else.

Yoongi felt terrible about it, of course, as they helped Eunhyun regain use of her arm, but he couldn’t help it - the stretch of pale skin down torso to belly, the curve of her breasts barely hidden by the flimsy slings, the tattoos and scars across her back.

And Hoseok splashes through the water towards him.

Yoongi -

“I thought you were swimming,” he manages, his face red. How can he feel so fucking frivolous -

Water rushes down Hoseok’s shoulders, drips down the planes of his chest, past his dark nipples and through the faint faint shadow of his abdominal muscles. His undershorts are black with the water and they cling to his thighs and bag around his knees, and there’s a long pink scar down his torso and a few bug bites on his shoulders and a gentle smile on his face and,

“I was swimming,” he says, like he isn’t currently making Yoongi feel like a guilty child looking at something he shouldn’t, “But you aren’t.”

“I can’t swim,” Yoongi reminds him.

“Well, it’s not hard to learn.”

And in the lake, Seokjin and Heejung are laughing and shrieking at each other, deep in the centre, as far as the ferryman was. Yoongi knows there’s no way their feet are touching the bottom, and it’s like being suspended over a long drop, or a cliff, or -

“You can’t get me out there.”

Hoseok’s grin is far too light for the times, but it fits him perfectly. “I haven’t tried yet, have I?”

“Oh, no-”

“Aha!”

Wisely enough, Hoseok doesn’t tell him to take the robes off, the belt, although Yoongi does manage to fling the flick-knife and the hip-dagger to the shore before the water can threaten to rust it. Hoseok catches him around the waist, and - yes, that’s something that’s happened, but he’s gentle about it even though he’s laughing and his fingers splay out on Yoongi’s hips to balance the weight and he’s tossing Yoongi over his shoulder like -

“Hoseok!”

With the appearance of a sack of potatoes. And Yoongi is given the sight of Hoseok’s bare back, all tan and sword scars and marks, and he drums his fists against it. “Hoseok!”

“I’m going to teach you to swim,” Hoseok says. His hand keeps Yoongi safe, there, balances him, and when he’s waded knee-high into the water he swings Yoongi back around and catches him around the waist again.

(Seokjin and Heejung are ya-hooing and splashing.)

“I don’t want to learn to swim, though,” Yoongi pants, “Put me - put me down-”

“If you insist-”

“No!”

“You’re such a cat, sometimes,” Hoseok mumbles. Yoongi’s clinging to his torso like he would to the bark of a tree he’s about to fall out of, but he doesn’t miss the care in Hoseok’s actions -

hoseok is a good man -

who wouldn’t let him fall.

“What if the South comes, and we’re all splashing in the lake like children?”

Seokjin cuts through the water, more fish than man. “They’ll have to come splashing to us, then, if they want a fight,” he calls, and Heejung is after him again. Distantly, Yoongi wonders where the two Jung cousins are - are Heonwoo and Jihyung coming out to join them? Will Hoseok lose some of this, like it was in Huinbyeong? Will he become formal and stiff and cold as a winter's’ night?

“I’m going to teach you to swim,” Hoseok says again, hoisting Yoongi up in his arms. “You’re like a big baby with ears.”

Yoongi scowls and flicks Hoseok’s leg with his tail. “I am not.”

“You know how we teach babies to swim?”

“I don’t want to find out-”

Hoseok laughs (so free and merry and how can Yoongi tell him when he’s so happy) and lets Yoongi drop a little; just enough so that his feet meet the water. “We dabble their toes-”

“It’s cold!”

Seokjin laughs so hard he actually goes under for a moment or two, and Heejung has to pull him to shallower waters to recover his footing while he snorts and giggles and cries.

“Water is like that,” Hoseok says fondly. “Cold.”

“Get me out of it,” Yoongi whines and tries to curl his toes away; Hoseok hums, glances at his face, and then submerges him just a little more.

he is a good man - (he checked to see whether or not you were serious) (he cares about your wellbeing) he is a good man, a good man, do not deceive those of good intent, a maxim for the ages

“You’re getting your robe soaked,” Heejung remarks, swimming close enough to tread the mud at the bottom, water glistening down her plait and running through the barest hint, the shadow of her breasts beneath the undertunic. “Aren’t you going to take it off?”

“He’s too small to take it off. He’d freeze,” Hoseok says before Yoongi can say a word.

Heejung makes a face. “Doesn’t lots of fabric when soaked make you colder?”

“I had a tutor in science,” Hoseok says loftily, holding Yoongi tight to him. “Trust me, he doesn’t need to take the robe off.”

somewhere, someplace, a good man fights phantoms.

Yoongi’s ears twitch. “Thank you,” he mumbles; Hoseok lowers him into the water inch by inch until his bare feet are curling into the silty mud, the still lake hovering around his waist, clutching Hoseok still, all hands curled into hands and standing a little too close.

“Thanks for what?” Hoseok smiles, and there’s nothing wrong with the morning, and Seokjin and the twins are laughing in the water. “For going slowly?”

He means into the water, Yoongi supposes.

“For going slowly.”

He means for everything else.

“But I’m holding you to one thing very clearly,” Hoseok says, and his hands settle on Yoongi’s shoulders. “I’m going to teach you to swim, South be damned, robe be damned, and you’re going to learn.”

Yoongi pouts, but allows himself to be walked further into the lake, until the coldish water is lapping around his chest - and Heejung was right, the robe is a weight, and it does make him feel that little bit colder - in a body smaller than everyone else’s, where he doesn’t have much heat to spare.

(And at some point, Eunjin and Heonwoo have joined. Heonwoo flings his tunic off with abandon, whooping, while Jihyung sits on the shore with a long scroll and watches, humming softly.)

“The water feels good, right?”

“Feels cold.”

“Nothing we can do about that.” Hoseok doesn’t suggest taking off a layer, and Yoongi doesn’t want to, and it’s all fine.

“So if I do this-” Hoseok puts his hands on Yoongi’s waist under the water, and lifts him for a second, pushing his body through the ripples, “You see? You can float.”

“I’m not a boat,” Yoongi replies grumpily - his breath had stopped when he flew without warning, and he’s not exactly inclined to repeat the sensation. “Boats float. People don’t.”

“Eunjin’s floating.”

“Maybe Eunjin’s a boat.”

“I was floating.”

Yoongi grins - it feels odd on his face. “Maybe you’re a boat.”

Hoseok laughs.

And Yoongi doesn’t learn how to swim, but Hoseok takes him by the hand and helps him awkwardly float into the depths of Gaigi-bada, and Jihyung is writing letters to send to Huinbyeong and their allies further north (traitorous bastards jungyoo chaena what have we ever done to them be born) and it’s a peaceful day, and Yoongi almost manages to forget about -

we need you -

and the joy, and the rarity, of finding a good man.

“Eunjin, if you go to Huinbyeong and request the garrison there be emptied and marched here -” Hoseok hands her a wax-sealed scroll and a tight smile, before continuing; “And Heejung, go to Junghyun, request as many men as he can spare. Nahan - do the same to Youngjin.” Their scrolls are handed to them, and they’re given pats on backs, smiles, handshakes. nods and promises to do as they’re asked.

Yoongi stands quietly to one side.

So this is preparation for war.

“Jaewoo, ride home and request half our men be marched here,” Heonwoo says quietly to a boy - a soldier - with speckles all over his cheeks. “Quickly.”

“Sir!”

Eunjin has her golden barrette in her hair again as she turns, shoulder to shoulder with her twin, and salutes Hoseok - she glimmers in the candlelit war room, all buckled and belted and ready to ride. “We can do it within three days, going without company. And I’m sure - certain members of the Huinbyeong court will want-”

“Tell Taehyung and Jimin they can ride ahead if they wish,” Hoseok says, sighs, shakes his head.

(Yoongi feels a thrill. Taehyung and Jimin - he’s grown fond of them, despite himself.)

no you have to tell him not be happy be concerned tell him tell him hoseok is a good man

“How soon would they get here, if they rode ahead?” Yoongi says quietly to Hoseok, as Eunjin turns.

“Six days,” Hoseok mumbles.

“How soon will the South get here?”

“Within the month, but not soon.”

“How do you know?”

Hoseok sighs as the newly-declared envoys leave the room; Jihyung looks wrung-out and exhausted, slumped over the mantel, and Heonwoo looks faintly nauseous. “I know Meiwuko - we all do. She attacks, and she waits until long enough that we’ve let down our guard - long enough that we think she won’t attack again. That means a month, a month and a half before she comes for us, and then she’ll come with all the force she can muster. I’m sure she’s heard, or spied, that Heonwoo and I are here - but hopefully we can surprise her.”

“Meiwuko knows Hoseok,” Jihyung laughs hoarsely. “She’ll be expecting him to have thrown his weight into defending Huinbyeong. Such a force here… it’ll shock her.”

Heonwoo chuckles.

hoseok is a good man.

Jeongguk, stretching out -

A month and a half -

What do I do -

what do i do what do i do what do i do what do i do

the Earth will tell me,

“I need to go out,” Yoongi manages, standing, scraping his chairlegs against the flagstones, backing towards the door. He feels dizzy. Faint - sick. “I need - I’ll be back in a second-”

“Yoongi-” Hoseok -

“I-” he scrabbles at the doorhandle, and papers flutter behind him, caught in his windy wake as he bolts, suddenly full of the panic of good men and Jeongguk and a whole month, a month and a half sitting here

swimming, having fun - planning, but talking, but holding hands and fighting, but open but warm but hoseok is a good man

doing nothing while his clan - his people - are chased into the mountains. Chased out of existence.

He gets odd looks as he tears through the candleflickered halls, his veil fluttering at odd angles, his robes batlike behind him, but he needs to get out. Get to the Earth. She, if nobody else, will tell him what to do and who to choose and why he should do so, and she’ll help him talk to Jeongguk and she’ll tell him everything he needs to know, and she’ll, she’ll, she’ll -

He bursts out of a side door just in time to see the ferryman paddling his slow, sorry way across the lake, four horses whinnying uncomfortably in the boat, four leathered and armoured guards helping to get across the water.

Eunjin - Heejung - Nahan - Haewoo’s man, Jaewon - and Jihyung’s ferryman, back and forth and back and forth.

Huinbyeong calls for aid -

yah!

Yoongi runs around the side of the castle where he’s sure none of them will see him - a weedy, mossy, forgotten side of the castle, half-soaked in the lake. Mud, the Earth, covers the hem of his robes and his bare feet and splatters up his legs, and she greets him with worry - bronze and brass worry, and he asks her,

what do do.

His knees are soaked in mud and moss, and he plunges his hands into it and asks her again. “I’d build you a stickshrine, if ever I could.” Too damp on this island in the lake, too damp for a proper stickshrine, but he would.

The Earth knows, and tells him so.

“I want to know what to do,” he says again, sitting fully in the mud, digging his blunt claws and fingernails into the silt. “I don’t know what to do. You have to help me.”

And the Earth says nothing.

“You have to tell me-”

The Earth says nothing, but louder this time.

“Please,” Yoongi whispers, all mud and desperation, “Please, I -”

The Earth says nothing so loudly that he winces.

And then she shows him something important.

It is a scene Yoongi is very familiar with - the main clearing, the tents the Min inhabits, the trees the children learn to climb in, the fire at the heart of the clan and the stickshrines that have been burning for centuries now without stopping. And there Jeongguk is, sitting with his ears folded down beside Minhyuk and Eunhyun.

Yoongi’s friends.

Yoongi’s family.

“I dreamt of him last night,” Jeongguk says quietly. His head is on Eunhyun’s shoulder, and her fingers are stroking gently behind his flattened ears. “He said he didn’t know if he could come back… noona, what if that means he’s dead?”

“The Earth wouldn’t do that,” Daesoo mumbles; he’s appeared out of nowhere, it seems, but he’s got brittlebear meat on sticks, and he passes them around. One wrist is a stump. Jeongguk was right. “She wouldn’t - she wouldn’t, Jeonggukkie.”

“How is he?” Minhyuk asks.

“Much the same.”

Their four heads turn towards the Min’s tent, and Jeongguk sighs heavily. “I saw him.”

“I know.”

“It was like he was there.”

“I know.”

Yoongi’s sitting in the centre of one of the nearer stickshrines, the Earth taking care of him and holding him and letting him see but not touch and his heart aches to reach out to Jeongguk, to stroke his ears like he likes it, to kiss his cheek and tell him it’ll all be fine now he’s here. But he’s not here.

“He’s somewhere south, I think,” Jeongguk says, and he sounds defeated.

Minhyuk huffs, brittlebear flesh hanging from his teeth. “What’s to stop us going to rescue him, then?”

“Everything,” Eunhyun snaps. “Don’t be an idiot, Hyuk.”

“No, really. What’s to stop us?”

“The Min,” Jeongguk says dully.

“Old fool.”

“Don’t be an idiot, Hyuk,” Eunhyun says again.

Minhyuk tears the bear meat with far more force than it needs, his face angry, his eyes scheming. “What’s to stop an elite and dedicated force from going to rescue him?”

And the Earth crackles and spits around Yoongi’s eyes -

“No! Let me - let me see them-”

And the scene changes and melts into a more familiar setting; Jihyung’s castle, the war room, Jihyung and Heonwoo and Hoseok, Seokjin sitting in the corner running a whetstone over the curve of a dagger.

“Will he be - is he sick?” Jihyung asks, all concern and furrowed brow. “Should you go after him?”

Hoseok is twitching back and forth by the door restlessly. “No - no, I know what he’s gone, where he’s gone, but I don’t know why. He’s - things have happened. I shouldn’t have brought him here.”

“Where did he come from?” Jihyung asks.

(Heonwoo, sitting on the back legs of a chair with his feet on the table, raises an eyebrow.)

“Jungyoo-”

“Bastard,” Seokjin remarks, mild on the surface.

“Bastard,” Hoseok corrects. His fists are tight and his knuckles are colourless. “Everything… I should be letting him go.”

“So he’s a prisoner, then?” Heonwoo has flicked open a knife, and is using the point of it to dig dirt out from underneath his fingernails.

Hoseok sighs. “Of course not. Who do you take me for?”

“So you have let him go, and he’s here anyway. Who is he?”

“He’s from the North,” Hoseok says. “And that’s all I’ll tell you. If you’re that curious, go and ask him yourself, when he comes back, and shut up. Is that enough, anyway, Jihyung? We can have a thousand, thousand-five hundred here by next week at the earliest, and Meiwuko won’t expect that, and that’s more important than Yoongi.”

Yoongi can see Seokjin, eyes glimmering with a - humor, or a - something -

And the Earth brings him back to the cold, dark mud.

(“the earth spoke to me last night.”

“and what did she say?”

“she showed me where yoongi is.”

“really?”

“jeongguk-ah-”

“noona, we could-”

“but the min-”

“we are not the only able bodies in the clan.”)

(“you damn fool, hoseok.”

“jin-”

“more important than yoongi?”

“shut up.”

“you’re remarkably angry, when you’re trying to protect something.”)

Chapter 11: Conflict in Choice

“What would the outcome of the second battle have been, if the first had not gone as it did? Certainly, I didn’t expect anything from the fight, lest I be proved wrong. And it was a shock, and a surprise. I dread to think what would have happened to the South, if the outcome had not been what it was.”

- Princess Meiwuko of the Suhkali Throne, writing in her personal memoirs

The room Yoongi sleeps in, the common room that all the Huinbyeong soldiers huddle together in, is slowly emptying out.

Part of it is the three - Eunjin, Heejung, and Nahan - that left on messages to various parts of the country, and part of it is that, of the sixteen remaining, they keep finding better places to sleep around the castle. Jihyung’s is far more of a warren than the White Walls had been (and that’s saying something) and so there’s always the flash of the lioness and the red plumes of Huinbyeong down deserted corridors, as soldiers break into old rooms or deserted stores and make themselves a home among the warm (wormeaten) blankets.

Yoongi stays where he is. A pit of guilt and anxiety has started nibbling into his stomach - and he knows how he could solve it

(tell him)

but something stops him.

Because Hoseok would encourage him to go home. Hoseok would encourage him to go back north, and that’s what Yoongi wants, of course, but there’s - something -

He curls up alone in front of the embers of the fire, staring gloomily into them with a blanket around his shoulders. The scene the Earth showed him - Jeongguk, Minhyuk, Eunhyun, Daesoo - and the decimated camp, the clan with none of its vigour, none of its life. Where has the Min gone? What does the Earth want him to do?

She hasn’t been clear. Yoongi is stranded.

“Yoongi?”

A knock, on the door.

Seokjin heaves the coalscuttle in, the black rocks rattling shiftily against the iron, sending up puffed clouds of dust with every step. “You better appreciate how warm we sleep tonight,” he huffs, dumping it next to the grate and kneeling in front of the flames, “My arms broke trying to carry that thing up the stairs.”

“You could have stolen some from Seulgi three doors down,” Yoongi points out. Grateful for the interruption, he intends to plunge into the conversation with great gusto, helping Seokjin ferry logs and lumps of coal around the dying fire to fan it back to life. “That’s what I was going to do.”

“I am a chivalrous gentleman,” Seokjin says, all stern and smiling. “I would never steal coal from a woman.”

They laugh. “Would you steal coal from… oh, from the King?”

“I am a chivalrous gentleman,” Seokjin repeats. His eyes glimmer with the promise of a joke. “Nowhere in the chivalry handbook does it tell you not to steal coal from slugs.”

Yoongi laughs so hard that tears drip down his nose, and Seokjin’s laughing like a bugle being honked in reverse, and the fire is beginning to spit back into life again, all warmth and chatter and entertainment. It’s easy to forget his worries, in company - but then, company isn’t always here.

Four or five of the Huinbyeong guards still sleep in the room, along with Seokjin and Yoongi, and as the night closes in on them, so they file back in - people Yoongi knows on sight, but not close enough that he could comfortably talk to them.

Seokjin wraps himself up in his blankets to write a letter; some of the men lie by the fire, playing cards.

Yoongi huddles up in the corner and waits for them all to fall asleep, and then -

Getting up and padding out on soundless steps, he sweeps through the corridors, blanket still wrapped around his cold shoulders, looking at all the candles guttering in their hooks on the walls, at the loose villagers sleeping in piles and heaping out of rooms, at the tapestries of the lioness and of Jihyung and his family legacy, at scratchings on the wall.

He misses Jeongguk, and his heart burns because of it, but he knows he’ll miss Hoseok, and his heart burns because of that, too -

“Yoongi?”

“Hoseok?”

In the entrance hall, the huge, drafty entrance hall, Hoseok is sitting on a heavy oaken table, a stitched rag blanket wrapped around him like a caterpillar in its cocoon. His eyes are bleary and burned-red with sleeplessness, but they still crinkle into a smile when he sees Yoongi. “What are you doing awake?”

“Well, what are you doing awake?” Yoongi counters, a little more sleepy than he’d like to show.

“I asked you first.”

“I asked you-”

“I definitely asked you first,” Hoseok smiles, and shuffles along the table. “Want to sit?”

It’s a little too high for Yoongi to reach - he doesn’t ask for assistance, and he probably could get up on his own, but Hoseok still leans out a hand for Yoongi to take. He doesn’t lift Yoongi without asking, or haul him up; he offers.

(There’s something there.)

And Yoongi takes it. “Thank you,” he huffs, shuffling around in his blanket until his legs hang down beside Hoseok, and their shoulders brush. “Now will you answer my question?”

“You answer first.”

And this is the moment to tell him - to tell Hoseok what he dreamed about, and the conflict in his mind. “I - had a, a - a, a difficult dream.” Which is not the whole truth, but not a total lie.

Hoseok looks sad, maybe, and beside Yoongi’s hand his fingers twitch. “I’m sorry - are you, are you alright?”

“I think so,” Yoongi answers honestly. “But you said you’d tell me why you’re awake.”

“Thinking about Taehyung.”

The answer, somehow, fails to shock him. Still, Hoseok has the tense sort of energy of someone waiting to be asked why - or when or where or how, and so Yoongi nudges his shoulder and pokes his back with his tail. “What about Taehyung?”

“He’s - not ready to be where he is,” Hoseok mumbles. “When the King found out about him and Jimin, about them being in love, he ordered Jimin be executed and Taehyung - Taehyung cried, and stormed about the Walls and huffed and did nothing useful at all, and Namjoon and I were the ones that saved Jimin’s neck from the rope. I know he… he feels strongly about… but he isn’t ready to, isn’t ready for this. War and decisions and leadership - he isn’t ready.”

“But he - oh. He’ll be at Huinbyeong. And Namjoon is coming here?” Yoongi guesses - and correctly, by the look on Hoseok’s face. “So he’ll be the only one…”

“The King angers him.” The King. Always the King, and never our father.

“He angers you too.”

“But I can be angry about him and he doesn’t have to know,” Hoseok sighs heavily, and his shoulder brushes against Yoongi’s. “Taehyung wants him to know how angry he is, so he storms off in fits or he comes in and swears or he speaks in a stupid accent or he comes in with mud in his hair, and then he sits down and smiles. They wind each other up - they enrage each other.”

“You could have told Namjoon to stay, when you sent the letter,” Yoongi says.

“I could have. But - but he’s smart, he’s smart, and if things work out the way I hope they do, we need Namjoon before Heonwoo accidentally starts another war.”

Yoongi stays silent - waits for Hoseok to explain, and watches the candle across the room gutter in its saucer.

“Meiwuko will come, and we’ll have a fight,” says Hoseok eventually, “And neither of us will win - or maybe we will, by a narrow margin, or maybe she will, or maybe she’ll march over us and walk into the country… but hopefully not. And then we’ll go to the Boundary, the neutral place, to talk through a truce, and we need Namjoon there. Jihyung will demand too much, and Heonwoo will insult her and wind her up, and I-”

i want that one, hoseok says, cold eyes, cold voice, pointing at yoongi, give me that. “You don’t trust yourself to be rational,” Yoongi suggests, and Hoseok nods, teeth dug into his bottom lip. “So Namjoon is coming, because he’s the only sensible one in this whole country?”

“Seokjin can’t be trusted to be rational either - he trained all of the Huinbyeong guards, or most of them, and he knows them all, and… and people will die. He’ll want Meiwuko and the South served on a silver platter,” Hoseok jokes a little weakly.

“So Namjoon is coming…” Yoongi shifts about, his flick-knife heavy on his belt.

“But that’s not why you’re awake.”

“You’re right, there,” Yoongi says vaguely. He feels tired, achingly tired, but he doesn’t want to sleep in case he ends back in that clearing, staring at how his clan has fallen to pieces.

“You don’t have to tell me,” Hoseok shifts his hand and it covers Yoongi’s on the table, warm and comforting. “But I told you.”

“Are you trying to blackmail me?”

Hoseok’s laugh gets spluttered in his throat, and the exhaled breath is enough to make the dying candle sputter around its wick, and Yoongi snuffles softly with mirth. “Blackmail is - one word for it.”

tell him tell him tell him tell him tell him tell him YOONGI TELL HIM TELL HIM TELL HIM

“It’s about the clan,” Yoongi says, haltingly, like someone is dragging the words up his throat and digging their claws into the skin, ripping through the secrets he’s trying to keep safe. “About - about my clan.”

“Jeongguk,” Hoseok’s hand is warm and Yoongi wants nothing more than to hold it, to turn his palm around and intertwine his fingers with Hoseok’s and -

“Jeongguk,” Yoongi repeats. “Yes.”

When he tells Hoseok, he’ll go home. And that’s good.

That’s good. So he shouldn’t hesitate -

“I had a dream about him,” he says, with difficulty - “An, an Earth-dream, about Jeongguk and… the clan.”

“What’s the difference between a normal dream and an Earth-dream?”

Yoongi doesn’t think Hoseok is poking fun, either.

“An Earth-dream is one she gives you for a reason, or because you asked. And I asked - well, I didn’t, I was just talking to her about Jeongguk, and she showed me him. Him, and then the clan itself, and he told me-”

“-Wait a moment,” Hoseok interrupts, looking confused, “You were able to talk to Jeongguk? But I thought the - the Earth, she just showed you-”

“I suppose he must have asked her to talk to me,” Yoongi shrugs, his fingers twitching underneath Hoseok’s hand, his thumb curled gently around Hoseok’s. “That’s how she does things - she connects us. And he told me the clan was in trouble, and that Ju- that…”

“Jungyoo,” Hoseok fills in. Suddenly, his eyes are angry. “That bastard.”

(he believes you he doesn’t think you’re lying he believes you)

“He’s hunting the clans further into the mountains, and one of my - my close friends is dead, and the Min, our leader, he thinks I’m dead, and so he’s not leading them the way they should, and Jeongguk is too young and he isn’t meant to be the Min, and - and only a descendant of the Min can ever properly lead the clan, and - and that’s me,” Yoongi says, all in a panicked rush.

“Oh.”

The candle flame pinches itself around the wick, and extinguishes.

“They’re being killed,” Yoongi says dully - now it’s out and there and there’s nothing he can do about it. “J- he’s killing them.”

“I told him not to.”

“You think he cares a single jot what you told him to do?”

“I’m the Prince,” Hoseok says, and he reminds Yoongi of a child almost but not quite ready to hunt on his own. “I told him not to.”

“People don’t always do what they’re told,” Yoongi says, remembering do not return until you have killed the one responsible and remembering hip-daggers in the dark and remembering refusals. Hands and lips and legs. “He’s killing the clan, and - and I -”

“You want to go home,” Hoseok says. His hand leaves Yoongi’s, and he shuffles over to the dying candle, swiping the wax out of the saucer and shoving a fresh one into the remains of the last. A new candle stolen from a nearby candelabra. “Back north.”

Yoongi is cold without Hoseok beside him. He shivers inside his blanket. “I don’t know.”

“What do you mean, you don’t know?”

The anger - is it anger? - surprises him, and Yoongi does his best not to flinch away, imagining backhands and Jungyoo and twelve dead at the hands of the Min clan. “I mean I don’t know what I want,” he manages, tucking his feet underneath him and settling further onto the table, a few inches farther from Hoseok. “I - mean I don’t know.”

“This isn’t exactly an easy time to decide to abandon us,” Hoseok says, wax dripping down his hand, the blanket pooled on the floor between them.

And that stings. “I’m not - abandoning you-”

“Well, then, what do you call it?”

“Going where I’m needed,” Yoongi says tightly, clutching the blanket.

“Where you’re - where you’re needed?” Hoseok scoffs. His face is twisted and unfamiliar. “Where you’re needed? That’s rich.”

“What else do you suggest I do, then, if you’re so clever? Your highness?”

Hoseok snarls. “I suggest you do anything but leave us when we need you most.”

“Oh? Oh?” That hurts, too, and it makes Yoongi angry. “Last I checked - last I checked, you were teaching me how to fight the way you fight because you lot took away the way I fought-”

“That isn’t my fucking fault-”

“And you were trying to make sure I wasn’t entirely useless-”

“You’re going to abandon us-”

“I haven’t said I’m fucking going yet-”

“Meiwuko is coming, Yoongi, she’s coming with all the forces the South can muster and she will attack us and she has no mercy and she will come for me! And she’ll see you, and she’ll know what you - who you - she’ll know who taught you and she’ll know you and she’ll see me and she will hurt me - and she will kill you!”

kill you!

kill you!

kill you!

Hoseok’s chest heaves, and his face crumples, and he turns on his heel. “I’m going to bed,” he says, in an uglycrush sort of a voice, and he’s gone before Yoongi can say anything more.

What has he done?

What have I done?

“What have I done,” he says to the lakewater. “What have I done.”

kill you!

kill you!

kill you!

The water, he is coming to learn, is different to the Earth. Back in Huinbyeong, with his windows flung open to the world, he saw the passion in the sea, the pull in the sea, so different to the passive glow, the quiet movement of the Earth. And the water of Gaigi-bada swirms and sworls and swarms with life, so different to the Earth. Yoongi wonders if the Earth is all there is - if the water -

“What did he mean,” he asks the lake, his voice breaking with nobody to hear it. In the dark, the heavyheaded dark, all he can see is the glimmer of his own reflection and the shine of abandoned armour on the shore, his eyes sharper than a man’s, but not as bright as a cat’s. “Tell me what he meant-”

The Earth is warming his toes, his feet. She is sorry.

Yoongi is sorry, too.

Whenever he was younger, he and Minhyuk would get into raging arguments that would often deteriorate into claw-slashing, growling antagonism, and they’d be bleeding and snarling by the end of it. Yoongi said a lot of things he didn’t mean. He and Minhyuk are close, have always been close, and that means they each know the places that will hurt the most when they’re stabbed at - so Minhyuk would tell him he was an orphaned fool, and Yoongi would tell him he’d still have the end of his tail if he were better at being a clansman, and -

And the point is that -

kill you!

kill you!

kill you!

“I need more than the Earth,” Yoongi says, choking tears into his sobby soaking laugh. “I need the Water, too. Gods.” He wipes his eyes with his sleeve, clumsily, one hand submerged in the lake for the comfort of it.

kill you!

you lot took away the way i fought

you lot took away the way i fought

you lot

And then it’s later. Not late enough that the sun has started to rise again, but later enough that Yoongi is dozing off, one hand in the lake, the rest of his body curled up on the muddy shore. So late at night that it’s the next day. The stars are glimmering over Yoongi twitching fitfully -

kill you!

The water, it seems, is encouraging. The Earth calms and relaxes, and at heart, she’s a peaceful being. The water -

and he is being entertained by this

and yoongi min

And then it’s later. Yoongi stares at the sky, dulleyed, dipping his hands in and out of the water, digging his feet into the mud. “But I hadn’t told him I was going to leave, yet,” he says, to the stars and the sky and the vast empty space around him. “I hadn’t - I don’t know what to do.”

He wants to -

Wants to -

The sun is rising, and a merry stickshrine is burning by the edge of the lake, the twigs and sticks inside it arranged as perfectly as any Yoongi’s ever made before. The stars are gone, and he feels at peace.

He doesn’t know what to do, but the Earth doesn’t know what he should do either, so he feels better about it. He wonders, sometimes, how many stickshrines he’s created over the years - where they are, how far they stretch, how many wild and wintry places have his firelit touch.

Huinbyeong. That’s one.

Here. That’s two.

“Yoongi.”

That’s Heonwoo, calling him, picking his way across the mud and the puddles in the soft dawnlight. “Yoongi,” he calls again, as though Yoongi isn’t already waiting on him to arrive. “Ah - I’ve been scouring the castle for you. Hoseok thought you’d already run off.”

Yoongi frowns. Already? “I was paying homage,” he says, as vaguely as he can, waving a hand at the stickshrine burning beside him. The Earth listens to them always, her presence lurking in the flames, but if Heonwoo notices her he says nothing.

“That’s a strange kind of god you got there.”

“She isn’t a god.”

Heonwoo beams. “What is she, then?”

Yoongi glares. “She doesn’t have to be anything. She’s the Earth.”

“Oh, my mistake.” But it sounds like Heonwoo is mocking him, and Yoongi is too tired and hurt and exhausted to be mocked at the moment. “My mistake, Min Yoongi. Mind if I sit?” He points at the spot of mud that has a Yoongi-shaped imprint on it, smiling a little too wide to be normal.

“Sit,” Yoongi says anyway. “It’s not like I can stop you.”

“Very true. You can’t.” Heonwoo sits, the mud squelching, and shoves his boots into the lake.

“Is there any reason for your being here, or are you just here to annoy me?”

“A little of both, I suppose,” Heonwoo says. He plucks a stick out of the stickshrine; growling, Yoongi snatches it off him and replaces it, and feels the Earth thrumming with curiosity below him.

“Spit it out.”

“A little bird tells me you’re going north.”

“The little bird lied, then. I haven’t decided yet.”

“Oh, well, by all means take your time,” Heonwoo drawls; his voice slurs down the sky and slathers the landscape with sarcasm. “After all, you have years at your disposal. It isn’t as though we’re on the verge of a war, or anything.”

Yoongi grits his teeth. “And what would you know about anything? Neither of you - neither of you know anything. You both jumped to conclusions.”

“Then correct them. I have a distraught cousin in my bedroom.”

“He’s your cousin.”

“And he’s your - whatever he is to you,” Heonwoo counters, sharp as a tack and twice as deadly. “I’d consider speaking to him. I’m not saying you owe him an apology, because I know how stupid he can get. But before you decide which of the compass points to follow, go and talk to him.”

Yoongi shrugs, and Heonwoo stands, brushing phantom dust from his muddy trousers. “Oh - but when you talk, don’t do it in my bedroom. I have better things to do in there.”

“Fuck you,” Yoongi says gloomily, and is rewarded with Heonwoo’s cackles of delight.

“I shouldn’t have shouted.”

“There’s lots of things you’re bad at, Hoseok, and interpersonal relationships aren’t even at the top of the list.”

“Shut up, Heonwoo.” That last voice is Jihyung.

Maybe Yoongi shouldn’t be sitting outside the war-room, and maybe he shouldn’t be listening in, but Heonwoo has disturbed him and it’s not as though he’s so prideless he can just force Hoseok into having a rational conversation with him. His stickshrine burned golden when he left it, and the Earth seemed warmer than ever, and he knows she’s worried for him - and she cares.

He misses Eunjin and Heejung. They left almost a week ago, and without them, Jihyung’s castle is more of a hollow husk. There’s less swimming in the lake, and there’s more Hoseok panicking, and Seokjin’s the one teaching him how to swing the hip-dagger instead.

“Listen, just tell the stupid cat you’re concerned about him and we can go back to living our lives,” Jihyung says dryly.

“Ruining our lives,” Heonwoo quips, and there’s the sound of a log being thrown on the fire.

“Shut up.”

“Hoseok-”

“I just said I shouldn’t have shouted. Not that what I said wasn’t true.”

“Hoseok.”

Yoongi presses his ear to the door a little closer, itching to be in there without being seen. He’s angry, of course, but more than that - he’s curious. Why did Hoseok shout so much, and why did he seem so angry when there’s absolutely no reason why Yoongi would be more useful to him than another one of his soldiers?

There’s the sound of Seokjin laughing gently, and someone prodding the ashy fire with a stick.

“You’re being ridiculous,” Jihyung says again, “Either let him go, or don’t, but stop complaining to us when we have a campaign to organise.”

“Campaign!” Heonwoo cackles. “That’s rich!”

“Shut up, Heonwoo.” Jihyung again.

“All of you shut up.” Hoseok, sounding disgruntled.

Yoongi is reminded, painfully, that all of these people grew up together, hunting dreamdeer and riding through the woods, swordfighting in Huinbyeong and laughing and playing together. And that - for all their pretenses, for all their disguises - they’re barely more than children. i am the crown prince, Hoseok had said, such a young man in an old man’s game. They can’t trust themselves to negotiate without Namjoon.

“Hoseok, this is stupid and childish and not something you should be wasting time on.”

“I’m not wasting my time!”

There’s the sound of another stick being dropped on the fire. “Hoseok. Hoseok. The troops from Huinbyeong and Heonwoo are due back any day now, and you can’t be wasting your time on things like this.”

“I am not wasting my time.”

“Maybe you don’t think it’s wasting your time, but everyone else does.”

“What, you don’t think we need him?”

“We don’t need him.”

“Aha - we don’t need him.”

“Shut up, Heonwoo.”

“By the lioness - Hoseok, go and find him. He’s building a bonfire around the side of the castle, or something-”

“A stickshrine. I just - I’m worried, for him, but I shouldn’t have shouted-”

“Whatever. Go find him. He’s probably left already.”

Yoongi glares at the wall. Heonwoo is a - a terrible person, or something like it, and stickshrines are far more important than bonfires. And Jihyung is right. Why does Hoseok care about this so much, when they don’t need Yoongi, when they are wasting their time with a petty disagreement?

i‘m worried for him

The answer elbows its way to the front of Yoongi’s mind.

So Yoongi leaves before the door opens, and goes back to his stickshrine, and throws a pebble into it in annoyance.

The Earth doesn’t like it, and tells him so.

“It’s not my fault he’s barely more than a kit,” Yoongi growls at her, and she burns the stickshrine almost blue with rage until he sighs and apologises.

What should he do?

What should he do.

Where should he go?

Who needs him most?

The answer to that is, undoubtedly, the clans.

Where does he want to go?

The answer to that should be, undoubtedly, the clans.

And yet…

“Yoongi!”

“Yoongi!”

Yoongi tries his best to put on some semblance of indifference, turning his head towards Hoseok, but staying firmly seated beside the lake, warming his slight frame beside the stickshrine. “What? Checking to see I haven’t stolen your horse and made off with it?” (And he -)

(He shouldn’t antagonise, but he wants to - something, something masochistic inside him wants to push Hoseok to see how far he can bend before he breaks.)

Hoseok scowls. “You told me you can’t ride. So quick to think badly of me.”

“I’m not the one that stormed off like a child.”

Between them burns the fire of the Earth. Hoseok sits down heavily, angrily, mud squelching underneath him, his side profile almost hidden by the flames that frame it, his eyes so sore and cold and iced. The stickshrine burns between them, orange, warm, and the atmosphere freezes over like the snows on the highest of high peaks.

“I know what you’re doing,” Hoseok says eventually, although it seems to take him an enormous effort to calm himself down before he opens his mouth. “You’re making me angry on - on purpose.”

Yoongi stays silent, hugging his knees, staring at the still, rippling, moving waters of Gaigi-bada. He has nothing left to say, and he wonders if Hoseok knows that, if that’s the reason Hoseok came out. Just to tell him that Yoongi should leave; that it would be the best choice, but -

“You’re making me angry on purpose,” Hoseok says again. He sounds helpless.

Yoongi stays driftingly silent, his mind a million miles away in another man’s bed.

He wanted to leave then.

“Making me… angry, so you can see what I’ll do. You’re just trying to… to wind me up.”

Maybe Yoongi is like this by nature, wanting to do the thing he can’t right at the very moment he finds it impossible. Maybe, following that logic, he might have stayed with Jungyoo if the opportunity had been open to him all along.

The thought makes him so empty that the

stickshrine,

burns out.

“Yoongi?” Hoseok says, from a long way away and ten miles from freedom, “Yoongi, you - are you - oh-”

A hand on his forehead and one on his back, catching him right before he falls over, headfirst into the lake. “Answer me,” Hoseok says, and he sounds scared. “Yoongi? Yoongi?”

Jungyoo hadn’t shouted at him, the first day Yoongi met him.

Yoongi struggled and kicked, much as a pretense as anything, because back in these early days - four, five months ago - he’d thought that it would be easy to kill the one responsible and come back, with hardly an interruption to the world in the slightest. He met Jungyoo that way, wild and rabid and feral, straining against the ropes holding him to the stone pillar in the dungeons.

“Who is this?” Jungyoo had said. He’d dripped, even when Yoongi didn’t know what he was, dripping dropping slime and disgust across the flagstones towards Yoongi, all sweaty jowls and pinprick eyes and long robes that slithered like snakes on the dusty stones.

Yoongi snarled at him. He didn’t want to talk, but the Earth was vanishing from him back then, and he felt more animal than human -

Jungyoo wore rings. He always wore rings. Heavy, jewel-encrusted things, bronze and gold and silver, and they chilled Yoongi to the bone when they first drifted across his cheek, when his jaw was gripped between meaty thumb and forefinger. “Where on earth did you pull it?”

On Earth. On Earth, you stupid man.

Yoongi bites his hand.

And Jungyoo leans back, and smiles and it’s terrifying and Yoongi realises properly, properly, just how much he has to lose. “I know what you’re doing,” he says. “You’re making me angry on purpose.”

making me angry on purpose.

making him angry on purpose -

“Yoongi?”

“Oh,” Yoongi says indistinctly, and leans over Hoseok’s lap to throw up into the lake. Bile and vomit and breakfast ripple across the water, drifting, a disgusting reminder of what he’s done and who he is and how he came to be here. “Oh. Oh, I-”

“You scared the life out of me,” Hoseok says. His hand is still splayed out against Yoongi’s back, all long fingers and warm palms, his fingertips rubbing little circles into the divide between Yoongi’s shoulder blades. He sounds serious. “I didn’t know what to do.”

“Oh,” says Yoongi again. Jungyoo was real. Jungyoo was real, and he was there, and the whiplash as he flickers from Jungyoo to Hoseok -

you’re making me angry on purpose -

makes his eyes water and his brain hurt.

“Yoongi?”

“I -” Yoongi blinks. The stickshrine beside him is crumbling, smouldering, almost-but-not-quite gone out. “What the -”

“You stopped talking,” Hoseok says carefully. “And your - her fire went out.”

“It’s not out now.”

“I said your name.”

“And?”

“And it started smoking again.”

Yoongi sits in Hoseok’s lap, and he knows there’s something he was angry with Hoseok about, but it all feels distant and strange. “I - Jungyoo wasn’t here?”

“Jungyoo is far away,” and something seems to be dawning slowly in Hoseok’s voice, “He’s - not here. He’s never going to be here.”

“Oh.”

“Yoongi?”

“Uh.”

“Are you going home?”

That thought is so far from Yoongi’s mind that he starts to laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh and laugh until tears are dripping down his cheeks and down his nose and collecting on his lip and on his chin and snot is bubbling out of his nose and he’s bawling into Hoseok’s shoulder, clinging to him and hugging him and he doesn’t care that Hoseok wants him to stay or leave or whatever it is he wants him to do, and he doesn’t care that Hoseok shouted at him and that Hoseok is angry and that Hoseok is a long way from perfect.

He doesn’t care.

“Yoongi-”

Yoongi wants Hoseok to hug him.

Slowly, awkwardly, and then heartbreakingly tight, Hoseok does.

“I got - on your jacket,” Yoongi tries to laugh, staring at the bubbly damp patch on Hoseok’s rich lioness-red coat.

“You think I care about that?”

Yoongi, tight-lipped, shakes his head, and the stickshrine beside them crackles into life as Hoseok pulls him into the softest, the most careful of embraces. The Earth is all around them. She feels angry, but not at Yoongi, and for the first time he really understands how the brittlebear cubs must feel when their mother stands up in front of them, roaring and tearing at the clansmen to leave her alone.

“Jungyoo isn’t here,” Yoongi says. He feels foggy and murky. “No?”

“He’s far away from here.”

“And he’s not coming?”

“Never.”

It had felt real. “You’re sure?”

“Definitely.”

Yoongi wriggles off Hoseok’s lap, much as he doesn’t want to. Hoseok is angry with him about - something, something he’ll remember soon, and he wants to be away from physical contact when that happens. “So what just happened, there now?”

“We were - talking,” Hoseok says, with care as though Yoongi doesn’t know there was a fight, “And then you stopped talking, and the fire burnt out.”

“I never saw a stickshrine burn out,” Yoongi mumbles, his foot toying with one of the branches jutting out from the flames. He wonders - has the same fate befallen his stickshrine in Huinbyeong, and all across the mountains? Have the shrines gone out?

“What happened - you tell me,” Hoseok says. His hand twitches by his side, like he isn’t sure of where to put it, and he eventually settles it in his lap, his two hands clasped around each other like the mockery of a prayer.

Yoongi shrugs. Jungyoo’s fingers on his chin. The first thing he ever said to him.

“Yoongi. This is - important.”

Yoongi arches an eyebrow, the way Seokjin always manages to do in the war-room. “Why?”

“Ugh-” with a frustrated huff, Hoseok falls back against the mud. “Why? Because you’re obviously upset by it, and I car-”

A horn sounds from the battlements, the lined walkways between the roof and the rest of the castle, and whatever Hoseok had been about to say is drowned out. There’s a mighty yelling and roaring above; Yoongi leaps to his feet, swaying a little with the dizziness, caught at the elbow by Hoseok, who looks pained. Like what he’d been about to say was -

important.

“What was it?” Yoongi shouts, as the horn calls again, as someone - a refugee villager, probably, starts yelling and hooting from inside the castle walls. “What was it that you wanted to say?!”

Hoseok’s eyes dance with frustration. “That I care abou-”

“Hoseok!”

It’s Jihyung, leaning over the roof, shouting down at him. “Hoseok! Get up here - you need to see this-”

“Please, come,” Hoseok reaches down and wraps Yoongi’s hand within his own, fingers interlocking, eyes wide and pleading and he’s trying to tell Yoongi something that Yoongi feels too dazed to understand. “Come up with me, please come, and I’ll - I’ll tell you later, what it is that I wanted to say-”

The horn makes Yoongi want to fall in the lake and resurface somewhere where noise is a thing of myth. “Tell me now-”

“I can’t!”

“Hoseok!”

They bolt into the castle, Hoseok clinging to Yoongi as much as Yoongi is clinging to him, running through crowds of the refugees that don’t know what’s happening, through the crowds of guards and soldiers that only have the slightest clue. “Come on, come on-”

Heonwoo is taking the stairs three at a time, a bare half-second ahead of Hoseok and Yoongi as they pelt up the tower staircase. The two men make metallic noises as their swords and belts clatter against the stony wall; Yoongi, for his part, feels the weight of his knife and his dagger and of the hand holding his, and feels like that might be enough.

“Come on, come on-”

“Hoseok!”

Jihyung and Seokjin are leaning over the parapet, and Seokjin is beaming. Tears glisten in his eyes.

“Hoseok - look,” Jihyung breathes, sounding for once as though he isn’t in total control of the situation.

Yoongi turns his head, too.

There, on the horizon, marching twistywind along the green green grass and the foggy marsh, there is a winding campaign trail. There are a hundred riders, maybe, leading the procession, and men and the sound of armour clanking as a thousand bodies march to the one rhythm, led by drummer boys at hundred-men intervals. One of the riders towards the front of the procession has a glowing golden barrette in her hair, one that shines in the sunlight cast on it, and if Yoongi really strains his ears he can hear the floating sounds; one of the drummer boys leading a thousand men in a marching song, a heart-thumping marching song about returning to a sweet wife and a shipyard far away.

“Lioness,” Hoseok breathes.

The rider to the front of the lines raises a flag, a fluttering banner on a bronze flagpole, and the red-and-gold lioness growls herself into the wind.

And the shout, ever the shout from inside the castle walls:

“Huinbyeong is here!”

Chapter 12: Lost To The Throne

“It was a hard loss to stomach.”

- Jung Heonwoo, speaking about the battle of Gaigi-bada

Namjoon falls off his horse to meet them, the flag-bearer behind him and hanging up the red lioness by the pitch of grass, right next to where the procession is making camp.

“Long journey?”

He embraces Hoseok first, then Jihyung, then Heonwoo, the three of them all together, old friends made quickly new again - Seokjin claps him on the back and he’s smiling, and the two of them share some strange look that Yoongi can’t decipher. Standing outside the castle, having been quickly ferried over the lake, he’s still shaking from whatever happened to him outside the castle, next to the stickshrine.

(jungyoo)

“Long like you wouldn’t believe,” Namjoon sighs, and then he sees Yoongi and his smile grows even brighter when his eyes catch the glimmer of metal on his belt. He winks.

Yoongi feels in on the joke, for once, but - “Where’s Eunjin and Heejung?” He misses them, more than he feels like he should - but he still misses them.

“Off looking for yo-” Namjoon doesn’t even get the chance to say very much before he’s being dragged off; Heonwoo talking at him, Hoseok talking to him, and of course he’ll be informed about the Huinden hip-dagger found buried in that guard, and everything will descend into terrifying secrecy once more.

Yoongi darts through the settling camp, a goal clear in his mind, two women he particularly wants to see again -

And a settling war-camp is a marvellous thing to watch happen around you.

First, the procession has to stop, and this can take any amount of time from five minutes to half a day. There are a thousand men here, after all, a thousand plus change, and as the core leaders stop - that’s Namjoon, here, and the bannermen and the two envoys and the rest of the cavalry - as they stop, the rest of the procession clots around them. That way, in the event of a surprise attack, the leaders are kept safe from harm for as long as possible, and the disposable men are -

Disposed.

After the procession has stopped, there is the kerfuffle, and this can continue for up to a day, depending on the weather, the size of the procession, and the length of time they intend to stay for.

This is a long one.

Tents have to be unpacked and erected; pack-horses and mules have to be unharnessed and scrubbed down; tin plates and metal cookpots have to be screwed out; whetstones are produced; bedrolls are aired out; with cries of joy, some of the soldiers, male and female alike, fling themselves at the cold waters of Gaigi-bada, washing out the grime of the march.

“Yoongi!”

That isn’t Eunjin’s voice, nor is it Heejung’s. In the two weeks he had to know them, he came to tell the difference, and that call is a man - lower, and yet still familiar, which makes him wonder. Who could -

“Wait for me!” A second voice, and -

“Taehyung?” Yoongi barely has time to breathe before the young prince, the young prince himself is here, hugging Yoongi around the waist as though they’re lifelong friends and not little more than strangers brought together by circumstance.

“What on Earth are you doing here?” Yoongi hugs him back, hesitant, and hears, rather than sees, Jimin running up behind him. “What the - why -”

“It was something you said,” Taehyung says happily, “Oh - Namjoonie, he wasn’t happy, but I don’t care. And Jimin came, too.”

“Something I said..?”

(“So you heard all that, then.”

“I was there.”

“I didn’t see you.”

Yoongi shrugs, and his tail dances out behind him. “I’m good at hiding.”

Taehyung’s face crumples up again, and he looks far younger than he is. “Did he send you to tell me what an idiot I am?”

“Nobody sends me anywhere,” Yoongi says. Tries not to snap. “I go where I want to go.”

“So you want to tell me what an idiot I am of your own accord?”

“I want to tell you why he isn’t letting you go. And he didn’t tell me,” is all he says, “I worked it out myself.”

“And?”

“And-”

“Will he let me go?”

“He won’t let you go,” Yoongi says, measured. Watching. “He won’t let you go.”)

Yoongi blinks once, twice, tucking the memory into his mind for later. “Hoseok doesn’t know you’re coming.”

“He doesn’t have to,” Taehyung says, and he looks suddenly so regal in his lioness-embroidered tunic, Jimin’s hand in his, his long hair tucked behind his ears, the silver circlet nestled firmly on top of his head. “He doesn’t have to. I’m the prince, too.”

Jimin smiles at him like he’s hung the stars, like he’s painted the moon, like he’s -

he’s proud. Proud of him for doing this. Proud of him for coming.

“That you are,” says Yoongi faintly, and he wishes, oh-how-he-wishes that he could keep Taehyung’s smile in a box; this moment of stiff, strong royalty. “That you are.”

And dazed, he goes to try and find Eunjin and Heejung again, while Taehyung and Jimin burrow their way through the kerfuffle, seeking out Hoseok and the rest of them. Huinbyeong, it seems, will never fail to fling up surprises.

The war-room is a cacophony of fury and confusion.

“You’ve left Huinbyeong with the King, and no other commander,” Hoseok seethes. “How could you be so - so fucking irresponsible?”

“There’s nobody left in the Walls for him to command,” and Taehyung counters with gentle grace, ire burning in his eyes, Jimin sitting silently in the corner and watching him. “We brought everyone. All the guards, all the armed soldiers, all the trained fighting men - who have we left for the King to deal with?  A handful of scullery maids and kitchen wives? Hardly a fucking fighting force-”

“That isn’t the point. The point is that there’s nobody to stop the bloody bastard-”

“Oh, so cousin Youngjin doesn’t count?”

“You called Youngjin?”

“Who was I meant to call-”

“You were meant to stay, do your fucking duty-”

“My duty? My duty?”

Yoongi is nestled between Eunjin and Heejung, hidden by the shadows and by their shoulders. The two women had been catching him up in whispers, talking about the row Taehyung and Namjoon had, talking about the village they stopped in, talking about how close the war seemed, but all chatter has stopped as the two princes shout; eyes are set and jaws are dropped, and Hoseok and Taehyung seem oblivious to their audience.

“Your duty! As a royal - or have you forgotten that?”

“My duty should be to protect my country!”

“By stopping it from falling into the hands of a buck-mad old man!”

Jihyung is watching with a set jaw and hard eyes, the Huinden hip-dagger held in his hands - the thing shown to Hoseok on their first night of arrival, something hidden and secreted away over two weeks in such a way that Yoongi almost forgot about its existence. The whole reason for the damn war in the first place, and Hoseok and Taehyung are being ridiculous and ignoring something so much more important -

“By stopping it from being invaded by an insane bloody woman!”

Heonwoo, by contrast, is watching with a broad smile, as though it’s some mildly entertaining show he’s stopped to look at. He’s slung himself over the mantelpiece to warm his body by the fire, and his hair is falling into his sparkling eyes and his lips are spread, and Yoongi yet again remembers Namjoon telling him Heonwoo is dangerous. Heonwoo sees more than it seems, and this is -

“You should have stayed!” Hoseok shouts.

“Why? What good would I have done?”

“What good can you do here? You can hardly fight-”

“Your Yoongi can hardly fight, but you didn’t see yourself trying to lock him away in Huinbyeong, did you?”

Namjoon, sitting on the table with all the maps and flagons of wine and knives and bottles of ink, shoots Yoongi a look, and Yoongi shies away from all the spectators that flicker their attention around to him instead. Namjoon’s looking anxious, though, where the two Jung cousins merely looked bored - as though he thinks there’s something more here. There isn’t. It’s just - right?

“Don’t fucking bring Yoongi into this, it’s you we’re discussing!”

“I can fight, and I want to be here for the fucking talks with fucking Meiwuko-”

Seokjin is sitting on the floor, dragging a whetstone along the curve of a dagger with silent shiiiiik noises, his eyes flickering from Taehyung to Hoseok as though he’s watching a game being played in front of him. Yoongi wonders if the noise is as audible and grating to everyone else as it is to him, or if it’s just his ears playing up - his tail flickers uneasily every time the firelight catches the glimmer of the blade. He’s scared.

“You left recklessly!”

“You’re the one talking to me about growing up all the damn time!”

Jimin is perched on the edge of one of the chairs around the table, his elbow leaning on the woodgrain, his fingers drumming nervously on his knee, but his eyes full of nothing but pride as he watches his - his Taehyung, his Taehyung - coming into his own.

And Yoongi, despite himself, finds some dogged part of his mind cheering Taehyung on too.

“Growing up-”

“How can I grow up,” Taehyung says, “How can I grow up when I’m stuck in the White Walls? You keep telling me to grow up - so I am. So I’m here. So there.”

Hoseok looks as though he’s been slapped. Hoseok looks like how he looked by the lake - like how he looked last night, when he’d shouted at Yoongi, wax dripping down his fingers.

And Jihyung clears his throat. “How about I tell Namjoon-ah and the - and Taehyung about the hip-dagger?”

Eunjin whistles under her breath. “That was… impressive.”

“Scary,” Heejung says over Yoongi’s head.

“Scary,” Yoongi repeats. He’s still muddy from his - whatever it was by the lake, when the stickshrine extinguished, and shaken, too.

“... we found this hip-dagger buried in one of our guards... “

“... we think it means the South want to frame us as the killers, but of course we won’t fall for it…”

“... still, they’re clever bastards…”

Taehyung nods along seriously - gets it, or pretends to, and Jihyung looks pleasantly surprised, and Hoseok says nothing. Heonwoo is whispering something in his ear, but Hoseok gives no sign that he’s heard him; he’s just staring at the table, at the incriminating hip-dagger, blank as a clean page.

Eunjin sighs. “It had to happen some day.”

“It didn’t have to be today,” Heejung mutters, and Yoongi is inclined to agree with her.

“I have to talk to you,” Taehyung says, when the meeting breaks up by a common consensus. Yoongi looks over his shoulder to see Hoseok’s disappearing back, and he wants to follow, but Taehyung looks so excited - so eager - that Yoongi can’t refuse him. “Please?”

“Okay,” he says reluctantly. Jimin is walking off with Namjoon, presumably under dismissal from Taehyung - although he could stay, if he really wanted to.

Yoongi wants to follow Hoseok, and he isn’t sure why.

“I need to - tell you, Yoongi-” Taehyung starts pacing down the corridor, past a long, exquisitely-embroidered tapestry of a bunch of boatmen rowing around Gaigi-bada. “I need to tell you. What you said. Do you remember?”

“Vaguely,” Yoongi says, guilty. If it meant that much to Taehyung then he should remember, and it’s somewhere in his head, but -

“You said something,” Taehyung wanders around the corner and then slides down the wall, sitting all childish with his legs tucked underneath him, his smile big and guileless. “It’s probably the best thing anyone ever said to me, except Jimin.”

Yoongi copies his pose. “The thing about letting you go?”

“You all rode off, and I was on my own,” Taehyung says. He’s smiling, still, but it looks like it takes more of an effort. “Jimin had to go into the garden to rebuild the wall properly - y’know, all the bricks? And so I went up to see the King, and moped around. Really, just… useless things.”

Yoongi sits still and says nothing - Taehyung wants an audience, and Yoongi is happy to provide, he realises.

“I thought about what you said.”

“The thing about-”

“Letting me go, yes,” Taehyung leans his head against the wall. “Hoseok… he is a good brother. I think. He is definitely a good prince, and he’ll make a good King someday, I know it. And he - he is a good brother, sometimes, but it’s hard to be a good brother and a prince, and… I know that, too. But it doesn’t… mean I have to be happy about losing a brother to the throne.”

It sounds difficult to say. Yoongi nods.

“He acted as though I was - like Seokjin, like… somebody that would follow his orders, and I suppose I should have. But I didn’t want to. We argued a lot, when we were younger, you know,” Taehyung smiles a little.

“I can believe that,” Yoongi says, as gently as he dares, and Taehyung laughs.

“You said he wasn’t letting me go. And you’re… you’re right. He’s the Crown Prince, but I’m a prince too, am I not?”

Yoongi inclines his head.

“So I went to see the King. And he’s… worse than he was when even you saw him. He’s dying,” Taehyung laughs grimly, “And he’s been dying a long - a long time, and now he’s going to die. So me and Jimin went to Namjoon, and I told him I was coming. I didn’t ask. And you know what?”

what? Yoongi asks, with a quirk of his eyebrow.

“He told me he was proud.”

“So am I,” Yoongi says, only slightly surprised to find that he means it. “So am I, and - and I’m sure, if you spoke to him, Hoseok would be too.”

Taehyung smiles at him, a lot wiser, a lot older, than he was just two, three weeks ago, and Yoongi can’t help but think that it’s a bittersweet curve, lips and eyes and dimpling cheeks.

“He’s right about one thing,” Eunjin says thoughtfully, a chicken bone shoved between her teeth as she admires a few new cuts and bruises on her round cheeks. “Prince Taehyung, I mean. He’s right when he says there’s nothing the King can do - I was there-”

“We were there,” Heejung corrects, her long fingers dug into her sister’s hair, combing it out.

“We were there,” Eunjin continues. “And the Walls are cleaned out. A thousand men are here - that’s all the Huinbyeong garrison, plus all the armed reservists in the city. Hoseok’s wrong, if he thinks the King can do anything from his bedsit - we robbed him, and he can’t do anything.”

“I don’t think Hoseok believed anything he was saying,” Yoongi says cautiously. The three of them are sitting in the room originally assigned to the Huinbyeong guards; sitting in a little circle by the fire.

“Me neither. He was just mad at Taehyung.”

“Did he have the right to?”

“He did, I think,” Yoongi says. “Hoseok - just wanted to keep Taehyung safe.”

Eunjin smiles at him, chicken bone shoved in her cheek. “Awful protective, all of a sudden?”

“Am not.”

“Are too.”

“Am not.”

Heejung laughs. “You are too.”

“You’re ganging up on me,” Yoongi pretends to sulk, reaching out to take the other chicken leg from the plate Eunjin carried up with her. “You’re both unfair, and - cheaters.”

“You wound me,” Eunjin presses her hand to her chest. “Steal my food, insult my character-”

“Shut up,” Yoongi nudges her with his foot. The chicken is good, surprisingly good, in some sticklysickly sweet marinade despite the food shortages - he guesses that the returning soldiers must get some sort of priority within the kitchens. That, or the twins stole it from someplace intended for the Jung family - either possibility is likely.

Companionable silence reigns supreme for a few minutes.

Although, Yoongi knows -

“There’s someone I have to talk to,” he says eventually, plucking the chicken bone out of his mouth and tossing it into the fire, his tail swishing around his legs as he stretches and preens stiff muscles. “Stay here?”

And Eunjin and Heejung exchange a look. “You aren’t the most subtle of creatures,” Eunjin says teasingly, and Yoongi sticks his tongue out at her as he slinks out the door.

As he knew he would, Yoongi finds Hoseok sitting by the stickshrine, as forlorn and defeated as the little fire itself. Yoongi wonders if Hoseok can feel the Earth, as he can; the comfort she’s trying to give him, if only he’d listen - the comfort, the help, the warmth.

(A quiet part of him asks what has your lioness ever done for you-)

And Yoongi doesn’t herald his arrival, not yet, and that is because Hoseok is crying.

Not obviously. Not in any way that would draw attention to himself, and Yoongi can barely taste the salt in the air, feel the sadness in the Earth, hear with ears a-twitch the barest sniffs and snivels and hurts and aches and pains. The sound of crying - tears bottled and compressed until they’re turned into silent, dribbly streaks down cheeks.

Yoongi knows he isn’t the best person to interrupt at such a time; but then, neither is he the worst.

And surely that must stand for something.

He trips a few times trying to be silent in the mud, tail flickering behind him, looking for balance -

A bead.

Hoseok sees him only when Yoongi looks through the flames of the stickshrine at him, face cast all in orange and red and yellow, tears sparkling on his cheeks like the rarest of diamonds. And there, there they look at each other, all still and silent while the fire blazes between them.

And a fire blazing between them.

And Hoseok sighs - smiles, as much as he seems able. “What are you doing down here?”

“On an afternoon stroll,” Yoongi says, before he can stop himself.

It seems to make Hoseok laugh, anyway, and his cheeks crinkle like leaves. “Found anything exciting?”

“You could say I found what I was looking for.”

Hoseok’s blotched face crumbles into itself, like a fire right about to die, skeleton sticks suddenly ash. “I suppose Taehyung wants to see me.”

“He didn’t send me,” Yoongi frames carefully - not a no, but not a yes. “I came on my own, believe it or not.”

Hoseok pats the ground next to him, smiling wobbly, and Yoongi takes the invitation for what it is, all but dancing around the stickshrine to settle beside Hoseok - quiet, reserved Hoseok. A Hoseok at contemplation. A new kind of Hoseok, and one to be settled with accordingly.

“He didn’t send you, but I suppose he’s looking for me.”

Yoongi winces. “You… he is. He - he is.”

“He’s angry?”

Hoseok’s hand is sitting on the grass, as though he’s braced himself against the ground when he came here. On an impulse, a spark of total irrationality, Yoongi places his hand on top of Hoseok’s, pale little fingers against long tan hands, and threads them through other, knuckles brushing. “Why would he be angry?”

“Why wouldn’t he be?” Hoseok, although he sounds sad and desperate, doesn’t move away from the touch. He swivels his wrist to hold Yoongi’s hand just a little more, clutching tight. “Why aren’t you?”

“Why aren’t I what?”

“Angry.”

“I’m angry at lots of things.”

“Angry at me.”

Yoongi sighs, and shuffles in the dirt a little closer to Hoseok. “Why would I be angry at you?”

“Because of all the things I said.”

Yoongi shrugs. “Heonwoo called me a whore. Jihyung called me a cat. Seokjin wouldn’t look at me for three days after we met. Hell - Hoseok, we met because I tried to kill you, and then you almost killed me. Why would I be angry?”

“I didn’t even think you could cry, until this morning,” Hoseok says evenly.

“Neither did I.”

Because how is Yoongi meant to tell him? To say it? That in that moment, in that one, terrible, horrible moment, Hoseok reminded him of Jungyoo? Or - no, no, he didn’t remind him - he just brought buried memories back to light again, and forced Yoongi to confront them, and that’s what happened. And Yoongi hadn’t been ready.

Isn’t ready.

Will never be ready.

“And I am sorry.”

“So am I.”

Hoseok squeezes his hand, and Yoongi feels something damp dripping onto their linked fingers, but he has the good grace not to look up. “I - you must all think I’m awful,” he says hoarsely.

“Not awful,” Yoongi murmurs, tucking himself into Hoseok’s shoulder the way he’s seen people comfort each other, Eunhyun and Daesoo, “Not awful. You’ve got the weight of a hundred men’s worth of worries on your back, and - not awful.”

“I shouted.”

“I tried to kill you, twice.”

“But you-” Hoseok is shaking. “You stopped answering. You stopped - the shrine went out, and you said they never go out, and I thought-”

“That had nothing to do with you,” Yoongi says, as sincerely as he possibly can.

“Who, then?”

“Ju - Ju - uh.” Yoongi’s face is burning, only partially from the heat of the stickshrine; the rest is from pure humiliation. “Where you found me - him.”

“Oh.”

“And I told you-”

Hoseok turns around and he’s crying still, still crying, and he’s holding Yoongi’s hand and he scoops him into his arms and hugs him tighter, and warmer, and softer than Yoongi’s ever been hugged before. And he’s crying. Still crying. “I’m s-”

“Don’t you dare say that,” Yoongi snaps, although the effect is worn off slightly in the way he mumbles it into Hoseok’s neck. “Don’t apologi-”

“I’m sorry for shouting. And for getting angry. And for almost killing you. And for thinking you were a bandit. And for shouting - and for making you - this morning. And for trying to stop you from leaving. I - Yoongi,” Hoseok leans back against the castle wall, but he doesn’t stop holding Yoongi on his lap, and Yoongi doesn’t want to move. “I just didn’t want you to - I just, I just didn’t want you to leave.”

And oh.

That’s important.

“I never told you I was going to leave,” Yoongi says softly, and just like that, his mind is made for him.

(The Earth? She’s - happy, he guesses. Happy.)

“You-”

“Jeonggukkie told me he needed me,” Yoongi murmurs, seeing pawprints in the snow and chaeyoung is dead, “But - but I can’t get there in time to make a difference. And I - and - and I think that maybe, Jeonggukkie isn’t the only one-”

“Only one that needs you,” Hoseok says. Breathes. Stickshrines - fire.

Blazing between them.

Suddenly, Yoongi can’t look directly at him; the fire burns his eyes, hurts his mind to think about.

“I didn’t mean to shout.”

“I know.”

“But it doesn’t mean I didn’t, Yoongi, I-”

Yoongi swats his chest. “Shut up and listen to me for a moment.”

Hoseok does. He shuts up, anyway, and Yoongi springs on his opportunity.

“Back in Huinbyeong, any stupid fool could tell you and Taehyung didn’t get along. And it’s because he wasn’t being prince enough, and you were being prince too much, and nothing else. You need to be able to get on like brothers, like Jeonggukkie, but you’re not useless or stupid or ridiculous just because you can’t rule a country to the perfection you want to rule it to. In case you hadn’t noticed, some buck-mental despot was the ruler before you were, and compared to him you’re a breath of fresh air. And I - because of me - I don’t come from here, Hoseok, and I didn’t want to be here. I left my clan thinking I’d be back in a few days and it’s been almost five months now since I saw any of them, but - but the Earth gave me that dream for a reason. Jeonggukkie said he couldn’t rule, but,” Yoongi shrugs and Hoseok is holding him tight, “But no good ruler ever thinks they’re good at being in charge.”

“... So you won’t go,” Hoseok says, looking like it takes him effort. His eyes are shiny and wet and stuck to Yoongi’s face in base astonishment.

“No,” Yoongi says, and when the Earth surges around him he knows he’s made the right choice. “No, I - I won’t.”

And to his shock, and maybe to the shock of the fireburn, too, Hoseok clings to him tight. Hugs him. Face in Yoongi’s neck, arms around his waist, and Yoongi hugs back. “I never thought I’d be so glad about anything,” Hoseok mumbles. “But I am.”

Yoongi doesn’t agree.

But neither does he disagree.

And the Earth burns brightly around them, surges into the sky, and he knows he’s made the right choice.

“This is stupid.”

“You’re stupid.”

“You’re stupider.”

“You’re all stupid.”

The four of them are walking, trooping along in a dedicated line, almost out of the forest. A boy with only one hand comes in the rear; in the middle marches an angry tabby girl and a short, alert boy. Bringing up the lead is the youngest of them all, with a worried little smile on his face, and a snowy-white tail.

“Y’know who’s stupidest?”

“The Min.”

“Yoongi.”

“You.”

They all laugh, even the worried boy in the front, and keep walking.

Heonwoo is the one that pins the dartboard to the wall, but Taehyung is the one that draws a rough caricature of the King around it, in charcoal scooped from the coalscuttle. Hoseok barks a laugh to see it, a laugh that makes Taehyung look pleasantly surprised, and Jihyung looks like he’s badly suppressing a laugh.

“Yeah, that’ll show him,” Heonwoo snorts.

Seokjin slides a knife out of his boot, tosses it in the air and catches it by the grip, and then flings it at the dartboard - it pins itself to the wall, shaking in the paper, just a little off-centre.

Jimin cackles. “Captain’s gone rusty!”

Namjoon snorts.

“Oi-” Seokjin tugs the knife out of the wall, waggles it mock-threateningly at Jimin, “I’d like to see you do better!”

Which leads Jimin to snatch it out of his hands and balance it on the tips of his small fingers, grinning, before he throws it as though at random at the dartboard, at the kingly figure sketched there. It hits the King on the crown, and Jimin crows and Heonwoo claps as though he’s in a crowded inn, and not in a war-room.

“Beat that,” Jimin grins to the room in general.

Hoseok snorts and paces over to the wall, wrenching the knife out, the paper already beginning to look a little shredded. “Bet you I can beat all you fuckers.”

“Impossible,” Heonwoo shouts. Yoongi, perched on a little stool beside Taehyung and Namjoon, smiles; Hoseok is newly relaxed, calm, the apology having rolled the immense weight off his shoulders, even just a little. And Hoseok deserves a redemption -

A second chance.

The knife hits the King on the nose, and Taehyung and Heonwoo cheer, and Jimin boos theatrically, and Seokjin bellows a laugh. “Let me try,” Jihyung leaps to his feet to a chorus of oohs.

“Jihyung is really bad at this,” Taehyung mumbles to Yoongi, giggling, “Once, when we were on a hunt, he tried to shoot at the dreamdeer and he ended up firing an arrow through Heonwoo’s hat and pinned it to the tree. Heonwoo was so angry, and Youngjin - he’s our other cousin, remember - he laughed so hard that he fell off his horse right into a pond and got duckweed in his ears.”

Yoongi finds himself laughing too as Jihyung tosses up the knife and throws it, hefts it through the air. It glances off the wall and strikes the floor, shivering, blade caught between two flagstones - Hoseok laughs and jeers and Seokjin claps him on the back.

“Yoongi! Have a toss!”

Namjoon lets out a little whoop when Yoongi stands, and laughs when Yoongi pulls the flick-knife from his belt, instead of the weapon Jihyung offers him from the floor.

“Where’dya get that?” Heonwoo asks curiously. “Way too fancy, I’d have thought.”

“Never you mind,” Yoongi points the blade at him, grinning to hear the slick shick of metal extending.

He imagines balancing the bead.

He imagines Hoseok saying all’s fair in love and war!

And he levels the flick-knife at the dartboard on the wall, and imagines Jungyoo’s grinning face is there, dripping sweat and smiling at him, and he throws it, and -

“Holy lioness,” Jimin screeches. “Yoongi!”

“You know what they say about cats’ eyes,” Heonwoo says.

Yoongi pulls his flick-knife out of the king’s sketched eye, and when his gaze meets Hoseok’s, Hoseok beams. He looks proud, maybe, and happy, and light, and Yoongi skips back to his seat and Namjoon smiles at him and Hoseok stands up to take another turn and it’s not all so bad, being here. Here and now.

Knowing Hoseok.

It’s not all so bad.

Three days after the Huinbyeong forces arrive, Heonwoo’s support marches into camp, and his captain of the guard is rowed over to the castle while the soldiers erect tents and start cooking fires. She’s a severe sort of woman, with thin eyebrows and lips, and she spends most of her time slapping Heonwoo in the back of the head whenever he says something stupid. Her name is Somin, and she becomes sort of an inside joke between Yoongi and Hoseok and Jihyung; one memorable evening, Taehyung paints streaks of black over his eyebrows, affects a heavy provincial accent, and chases Jimin around the castle, threatening to throw him in the lake.

Eunjin and Heejung teach Yoongi to swordfight a little, although they seem impressed by what he knows already.

(Hoseok teaches him, too, to balance and to fight dirty and to bite and scratch and kick.)

One day, one evening, Yoongi is pattering around the castle on his own when he comes across Hoseok and Taehyung, sitting shoulder to shoulder underneath an elaborate tapestry of Huinbyeong. They don’t see him, and he doesn’t want to be seen - he backs away slowly, carefully, and goes to talk to Eunjin instead.

He learns that Eunjin and Heejung are part of a triplet, not a twin-set, but that their third sister died in a border skirmish with the South, when they were living on the border in Heonwoo’s province, barely old enough to know what war was.

He learns that Namjoon can’t swim, and instead spends his days standing waist-deep in the lake, staring at the freshwater shrimp and the lake fish with fascination.

He learns that Taehyung is smart where Hoseok is stupid - and that Taehyung can make anybody like him, proved one morning when he gets Somin, angry eyebrows Somin, to smile at him.

(Heonwoo begins to scream and shout and make faces about how it’s the end of the world she’s never smiled at me! until Jihyung slaps him on the back of the head, and Heonwoo starts shouting about abuse of power instead.)

Yoongi dreams more, too, and they aren’t all good.

Often it’s Jungyoo. In the month, month and a half - two months? - since he’s left Jungyoo’s, most of his dreams have been black, or they’ve been about Jeongguk and times gone by down in the forest, up in the mountains.

He wishes they’d return to what they once were - god, he wishes.

The dreams follow the same theme, the same story beats, every night - almost without fail.

Yoongi is sitting beside Hoseok, in the gardens of Huinbyeong, and they’re talking about something unimportant; Hoseok’s feet are planted in the ground, and Yoongi is swinging his legs on the stone bench, the stickshrine burning in front of them happily. Sometimes Hoseok holds his hand. Sometimes, sometimes, Hoseok even wraps his arm around Yoongi’s shoulders, and Yoongi shuffles into his lap, and they sit that way and talk about nothing and it’s really nice. Yoongi wishes it could stay that way forever.

It doesn’t.

Eventually, after a long time, when he’s about to fall asleep on Hoseok’s shoulder, when everything is lovely and soft and he can smell Hoseok and happiness, the gardens start to melt. The stickshrine turns into a bubbling fountain of sticky orange stuff, and everything gets too hot, and Hoseok disappears.

Yoongi is alone. Cold, and alone, and scared. He wants Hoseok back, and reaches for him, and Hoseok is never there.

“Hello,” Jungyoo whispers into the night, “Hello, hello, hello. Hello, hello, hello.”

Yoongi could recognise his voice anywhere, and it’s around this time that the dream turns nightmarish, because the bench he’s sitting on has gone and there’s nowhere to run to, and there’s a golden collar around his neck.

It’s too tight. He chokes. The chain is pulled taut, dragging him towards Jungyoo’s disembodied voice, and Yoongi begins to panic, and to cry out.

“You didn’t think Hoseok would really take you away?” Jungyoo says, and without any warning there are fingers down his throat and squeezing his thighs, and he’s lying on Jungyoo’s bed, the chain of his collar hooked to the little metal loop on the bedhead.

Jungyoo’s wife is sitting to the side. She makes eye contact, and then looks away - sometimes, she just melts away, instead, and Yoongi screams.

“Be quiet,” Jungyoo says, his skin all moist and wet; he’s naked, but Yoongi’s still got his slip on, because Jungyoo doesn’t much care for what Yoongi looks like beyond the slightness of him, and the tail, and the ears.

Yoongi tries to be quiet, and there’s blood trickling down his cheek, the phantom of a backhand.

Jungyoo wears rings so cold that they sting the flesh of Yoongi’s leg as Jungyoo pushes and prods at him, but he doesn’t make a noise, and there’s nobody to hear him make the noises he doesn’t, anyone.

Sometimes Hoseok is there and those are the worst times of them all.

“Hoseok!”

By this time, Jungyoo is doing -

And Hoseok sits where Jungyoo’s wife sat, or sits beside her if she’s still there, and he watches. He looks at his nails, as though the show Yoongi’s been forced into performing hasn’t the slightest bit of interest for him, and sometimes he scowls. Sometimes he and Jungyoo discuss matters of state while the tears slide silently down Yoongi’s cheeks, while the gold collar eats into his throat.

Jungyoo finishes early. Slimy and sticky, he pulls out, and Yoongi is left on the bed then - alone, totally alone, not even Hoseok there beside him.

Blood drips down his cheek. Sweat and slick and all manner of substances drip down his legs, and puddle underneath him, and his tail gets clotted in the stuff and his ears hurt and he wants to wake up.

He never can.

This is the worst part of his dreams about Jungyoo, although nothing about them is pleasant, and he doubts he’ll ever recover.

This is the worst part.

Jungyoo comes, and goes, and Yoongi is left alone, all alone, for days and weeks and years, sobbing into his hands turning into staring at the wall turning to choking on the golden collar, and he’s only ever permitted to wake up when he -

Crack -

Chapter 13: A Good Man Fights Phantoms

“They called them sandbears, and they were terrifying, but it wasn’t as terrifying as the look in the King’s eyes when we told him what was happening in the South - which way the battle was turning. I think he hoped it would sort itself out. Hah!”

- a Huinbyeong guard and survivor of the Second Southern War

“I’m beat,” Hoseok sighs, slumping theatrically to the ground, his sword clattering down beside him. “Why are you so fast?”

“Natural talent.” It’s the middle of the day and the sun is beating down, and the ground around Jihyung’s castle, once so desolate and full of bodies and blood, is now full of the military camps, Heonwoo’s men and the Huinbyeong army; a contingency from Youngjin up north. In total, there’s two thousand fighting men, or just over - and that’s an army worth talking about.

“I want some of your natural talent, in that case.”

“You can have it.”

Hoseok laughs, rolling on his side to tug on Yoongi’s tail. “Is it here?”

Yoongi swats him in the face. “How rude.”

“I don’t know your customs!”

“It’s not rude to pull the tail, just a bit strange,” Yoongi informs him, flopping down beside Hoseok and staring into the blue sky. “Like you.”

Hoseok grins, but he lets go of Yoongi’s tail anyway. “How rude.”

“Hmpfh.”

The noise of the camp floats towards them on the air. Only a few people are living on the island on Gaigi-bada now; everyone else has relocated to the central camp, pitched around the opposite shore, and the island is populated by the remaining refugees, the Huinbyeong high-ups, the provincial leaders, and Yoongi.

(And Eunjin and Heejung, oddly enough, but Yoongi isn’t complaining. He likes them.)

“You are getting better, though,” Hoseok says into the sky. “Your bead-balancing days are behind you - hey, d’you think that cloud looks kinda like Heonwoo?”

Yoongi snorts. It does, sort of, but the wind is already gusting it into another shape - “Now it looks like Namjoon. But like… Namjoon when he’s thinking hard about something.”

“Oh, mean.”

“That one looks like you.”

“Cruelty!”

The clouds scuttle idly across the sky, flowers and faces and birds and trees, although Yoongi finds his attention falling from them back down to Hoseok. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Hoseok says in return. They’ve turned to lie on their shoulders, facing one another, and everything is nice and peaceful, quiet in the midst of the camp, and Yoongi can focus on the soft skin around Hoseok’s eyes, the brown warmth inside them, the half-part of his lips in a gentle smile. He wonders if Hoseok’s seeing what Yoongi is, too - the slits of his eyes, the scar on his cheek, the twitch of his velveteen ears.

“A week or two ago… you mentioned the clan,” Yoongi begins softly, wondering how he could phrase this. “”Who I would… who I would marry. Who -”

“Who would I marry?” Hoseok guesses. He smiles, and the smile is bittersweet. “You don’t know about how the Huindon royalty carry their bloodline, I suppose.”

“How would I?”

“True, true.” Hoseok’s in leathers again, straps around his wrists and his calves, but the rest of him is forest-green tunic and leatherworked belt. “Do you want me to tell you?”

Yoongi looks at Hoseok’s hand on the flagstones, fingers curled up - and what he wants is to hold his hand, really. “I wouldn’t mind if you told me.”

“Then I will.”

Hoseok’s first memory of his mother is soft warmth, and of being spoken to in a language he never really had the chance to learn. His second memory of his mother is his first memory of Taehyung, of sitting in this woman’s lap and playing with his young brother as she laughed at them - speaking in Huinden, the other tongue thoroughly beaten out of her at that time.

His last memory of his mother is of the fires burning. For the people of Huindon, it’s a fair burial to be sent off at sea, but burning is the only way the people of the -- can ever be able to find rest.

The rest he learns from careful observation.

The royal bloodline of the Huindon kings is passed down carefully, distilled like fine whisky. It needs only one carrier, and the children will always be fullblood so long as their parent sat on the throne, and so the carrier - as she may be - could be Southern, or a peasant, for all the King cares.

So Hoseok is a fullblood prince, and Taehyung is a fullblood prince, and their mother is nothing.

“We burned your mother,” the King told Hoseok, one day when he was more lucid and less acid. “That’s all she asked me for, and I could not refuse.”

Hoseok was, at this point, old enough to know what that meant.

Traditions And Trials of the Sukahli Kingdom: Births, Deaths, Marriages. A book in the library of the White Walls, much leafed-through by Hoseok, hidden from Taehyung and the rest of the world. Taehyung sees the world in black and white (saw the world in black and white, but now he sees the shades of grey) and back then he’d have been too young to realise the truth, and too scared to know how meaningless it really is, the truth about their mother.

Hoseok is young when he realises who his friend Meiwuko is.

His father and her father are in the Boundary, that precious patch of neutral ground, and he and Meiwuko are under the table. They’re ten… he’s ten, and she’s twelve, or a little older.

“My father said something last night,” Hoseok confesses. Meiwuko is the only friend he feels he can tell these things to - he hasn’t yet met Seokjin, and Namjoon is still the son of a Huinbyeong courtier.

Meiwuko’s darker hand wraps around Hoseok’s, and squeezes. Her nails are red and the black veil hooked around her ears hides her face, but he can see the nose, the hesitations of lips. “Will you tell me?”

“He said… if I couldn’t kill the Sukahli bi-bi-bi - woman, then I ought to marry her,” Hoseok says uncertainly. His face is bare, and he’s often wondered how Meiwuko looks under her veil, but they’re too close to her father and to the Sukahli guards for her to lift it, although she once promised him she would.

Meiwuko exhales. “My father said something last night, too.”

“Will you tell me?”

“He said, if I couldn’t kill the Huindon bastard, then I ought to marry him.” She’s far more confident than Hoseok is; he flinches at the swear.

Above them, their fathers argue peace while the war rages heavy.

“Hey, Mei. Mei, let’s make a promise.”

“What is it?”

Hoseok smiles, all of ten years old and sunny. “If we don’t manage to kill each other, let’s get married instead!”

Yoongi lets his gaze fall from Hoseok’s distant eyes to his stilled lips. “So you’re - going to marry Princess Meiwuko? The - woman that’s marching an army towards you right now?”

Hoseok shrugs, looking more than a little uncomfortable. “Don’t you think that’s the best way to bring peace? Unite the countries under a common throne, and there’s no more fighting.”

“It may be,” Yoongi says, and admitting it makes him uncomfortable. “But - can’t you just talk? There’s got to be a, a medium between marriage and war, right?”

Hoseok sighs, turning around, looking into the sky. “I mean, I’d like it to be, sure, but… my marriage was never going to be my own. If I don’t marry Meiwuko then I’ll marry someone else for political gain, probably, or else Taehyung will… it’s hard. Difficult to do. But it won’t be for a while.”

“You said she’d come within the month.”

“I know.”

“That’s not a while.”

“I know.”

“That’s soon.”

“I know, Yoongi,” Hoseok says, rough and dry. “I - I know.”

Yoongi knows he’s pressing his luck, keeping the point, but it irritates him. More than it probably should. “So, what? Meiwuko marches in here, kills some of your soldiers, and then you sort it out over tea and cakes? Shouldn’t you - cut the battle out altogether, then, if that’s your only solution?”

“We hope there won’t be a battle,” Hoseok says, and it’s such a non-answer that Yoongi scowls up at the clouds. “I mean-”

“There’ll be a battle, because you prepared for one,” Yoongi snaps. “What - you’re ridiculous. If Meiwuko marches here with her army, and sees an army waiting for her, do you really think they’ll sit idle while you two get married?”

“You were suggesting they sit idle, not me,” Hoseok says. “Yoongi, why are you so-”

“If you get rid of your army, then-”

“Then who’s left? The peasants?” Hoseok waves a hand helplessly in the air, and when it falls it settles on top of Yoongi’s fingers, and he doesn’t move it. “Yoongi, I don’t want to fight, but it’s the… it’s the only way we can protect the country. Or at least, this little part of it. There are women and children and old people and they can’t fight, and Meiwuko may not be as inclined to pacifism as you are… what would you have me do? Withdraw the armies and have her slaughter us - Jihyung, Heonwoo, the population of the province - and take the castle? An invasion? This is defence.”

“Defence at a high cost,” Yoongi murmurs.

“Everything is a high cost. At least this way, the people that are going to die are people that signed up for it.”

Yoongi knows that, but it’s hard to look at people like Eunjin, Heejung, Seokjin, and see them as soldiers instead of friends. Eunjin with blood on her face, swinging a sword; it seems impossible, and terrifying. He doesn’t want that to be the world they have to live in.

No other way.

(No other way.)

“Do you want to keep practicing?”

Yoongi sighs, and shuffles closer to Hoseok, until his body is pressed against Hoseok and he’s basking in the twin warmth of the sun and the prince. “Can we just look at clouds instead?”

Hoseok laughs. “Sure.”

And then it’s the middle of the night, and Yoongi’s dreaming about Jungyoo again until he isn’t - until he’s awake in the dark and his tunic is plastered to his back with sweat and he’s dimly aware that there are tears streaking down his cheeks and that his ears are alight with terror.

He won’t sleep. He knows he won’t sleep, here, in the common room they’ve created, Seokjin snoozing in the corner and Eunjin and Heejung curled up by the fire. Too many people; too many bodies.

bodies.

phantoms in the night.

Barefoot and sweatsoaked, he slips out from under his covers, padding soundlessly towards the door. The fire is almost dead, so it must be the middle of the night, but that’s no comfort.

Jungyoo always used to call for him in the night.

And Jungyoo isn’t here.

Yoongi knows that, so why can’t he -

Stop -

Stop?

Stop what?

Stop thinking about him.

The castle is cold and dark, and Yoongi feels very very small as he wanders through the corridors, his feet freezing as the stone floors leech all the warmth away from him. Anything is better than a dream of Jungyoo, but that doesn’t necessarily mean good, and he’s frozen - freezing - he wonders whether it’s too cold to go outside and huddle next to the comforting warmth of his stickshrine. Probably.

But oh, god, at least then he’d be with the Earth - and not alone.

And he doesn’t want to be alone.

The main problem, as Yoongi sees it, is trying to convince himself that Jungyoo isn’t here. Which he knows. He knows he’s not here, and he knows he’s far away, and he knows that people like Hoseok and Seokjin would never ever allow him near Yoongi ever again, but that’s all head-knowledge. Heart-knowledge is harder to understand, harder to convince, and with every day that goes by, Yoongi’s heart gets more fearful and Jungyoo gets bigger in his head, in his dreams, in what he’s done and what he’s doing.

“Yoongi?”

He freezes. That’s his first instinct, and his second is to melt into the shadows, tail flickering around his leg, ears pressed to his head.

“Yoongi?” It’s Hoseok, of course it’s Hoseok, and Yoongi sighs with relief, and at stupidity at himself. “Yoongi, did you - are you there?”

“Hello,” Yoongi mumbles, emerging once more from the shadows. “Sorry, I - I thought you were someone else. Why are you up so late?”

“I could ask you the same thing,” Hoseok says. “You… no offence, Yoongi, but you look like death warmed up. What’s happened? Another Earth dream?”

“Not exactly,” Yoongi says in the same sort of mumbly tone, his blanket wrapped around his shoulders like a shawl, his sweat still plastering his clothes to his skin. Hoseok is the best person he could have found, because Hoseok is Hoseok. Hoseok would understand, if Yoongi were to tell him, he’s sure of that now.

And maybe Hoseok picks up on the unspoken nuance in Yoongi’s voice. “Not exactly; not a no.”

Yoongi shrugs.

“Well, I was going back to my room, and you look tired, I - come on, would you like to try a bed? I’ll take the chair by the fire, and we’ll see who has a better night’s sleep at the end of it.”

Yoongi is too tired to protest. Hoseok offers his hand and he takes it, the blanket slipping off his shoulders, the sigh caught in his throat. At least like this, Hoseok’s skin is warm and dry, and his thumb rubs soothing circles around the back of Yoongi’s hand where he holds him, as they walk step in step along the cold stone floors.

“You’re tired.”

“I guess I am.”

“Since the - day you told me about that dream-” Hoseok is red with the shame of it, the memory of his shouting, of doors being slammed and opportunities skipped over. “I know you haven’t been sleeping well. Anyone could see it.”

“And yet, nobody has,” Yoongi whispers.

“I have.”

“You don’t count.”

“Why not?”

What’s Yoongi meant to say? You notice everything, all the time, anyway.

somewhere, the good man fights phantoms.

Hoseok’s chamber is along the same floor as the room the Huinbyeong guards were sleeping in. “Jihyung sleeps there,” Hoseok indicates, “And Heonwoo sleeps opposite. I’m just here. You - you coming?”

“Of course,” Yoongi says, to shake off the uncomfortable feeling. Dreams of Jungyoo are different to dreams of Hoseok, and one is far preferable to the other. “I - yeah.”

Hoseok’s rooms are big and unlived in. The room of someone who’s done nothing in here but sleep for the past three weeks, and Yoongi wonders if that’s what it’s like for Heonwoo and Jihyung too, if they spend their days living in the war-room and only return to their privacy when the need forces them to. He suspects they might.

The bed is unmade, a little depression in the mattress where Hoseok must have been sleeping before he got up. “Take  it,” Hoseok indicates, before he slumps into the chair in front of the dying fire. “Go on, you need the rest.”

Yoongi doesn’t bother arguing. He won’t look a gift horse in the mouth - isn’t that how the maxim goes?

The bed is tall. It takes him a moment or two to work out how to clamber onto it, which is - right, embarrassing, but this is Hoseok, and Hoseok doesn’t care. When Yoongi’s nestled in cotton sheets, smelling freshness and Hoseok in the same breath, the man on the chair huffs a laugh. “You sure you’re okay?”

“I’d tell you if I wasn’t,” Yoongi says. The pillow is soft. The whole bed is soft.

“I’ll hold you to that, you know.”

“I know.”

Laughed, in a huffing whisper, “You better.”

Then there’s silence. Perhaps Hoseok thinks Yoongi will sleep just like that, out like a snuffed candle, but Yoongi isn’t - although this is a hundred times better than sleeping on his own in a bedroll next to Seokjin, who snores, it’s still not good. He keeps wondering when Jungyoo will show up.

He won’t.

Will he?

“Hoseok?”

“Yoongi?” Hoseok sounds just as alert as Yoongi does, and Yoongi wonders why someone so obviously tired would bother staying up even later. Maybe he’s plagued with the same problems as Yoongi, or something like that.

“Yoongi? What’s wrong?”

“Can’t sleep,” Yoongi mutters into the dark. “Can you?”

“Not really.”

“Oh.”

He hears shuffling, and Hoseok sitting up. “Yoongi, do you want me to-”

“You might sleep better in the bed,” Yoongi risks, and exhales long and slow when he hears Hoseok get up. “I mean, if you’re comfortable-”

“I’ll be comfortable, but… Yoongi, will you?”

Yoongi stares up at the ceiling, imagining clouds instead of darkness. “Why wouldn’t I be?”

“You know why,” Hoseok says softly. Much closer, now; balanced on the edge of the bed. “Yoongi, Jungy-” and then he stops, like he’s realised how Yoongi might react. “There are definite reasons for you not wanting me to be here-”

“There are definite reasons for me to want you to be here, too,” Yoongi says. He hopes his voice isn’t breaking. “Hoseok, can you just-”

“But the last thing I want you to be is uncomfortable.”

“Then trust me when I say that I’m not.”

Gingerly, the sheets are lifted, and the mattress shifts as Hoseok’s weight joins it, sagging it down on the left side. Warmer now, and softer and in company, Yoongi rests his head on the pillow, sightlessly facing Hoseok in the dark. “And are you okay?”

“Why wouldn’t I be?”

“Just checking.”

Hoseok’s arm reaches out and his hand settles on Yoongi’s waist, high and innocent. “Go to sleep, then.”

And Yoongi does. He wonders if he’ll dream.

He does dream. It’s an Earth-dream, he can tell, although she hasn’t brought him to see Jeongguk at all - he looks around with more than a little confusion at the black surroundings, before his eyes adjust and he has to shove his hand in his mouth to muffle his scream.

It’s the stables.

To be precise, Jungyoo’s stables.

There’s the pile of Earth he used to talk to her, and there’s the - the, the marks on the wall where Hoseok -

and there’s the horses snorting in their stalls. A black charger. A white charger.

Wait -

So Hoseok is still -

So Yoongi -

“Why are you doing this,” he hisses into the air. He’s with Hoseok. He’s with Hoseok. He’s meant to be safe. He’s - meant to be - sa -

“Yoongi?”

“Hoseok!”

Hoseok’s standing in the doorway, looking confused, dressed as he was when they went to sleep - like, like, green tunic and bare feet, hair messy, eyes tired. “Where -?”

“We’re in Jungyoo’s castle,” Yoongi says. Woodenly. Tired. “We’re in Jungyoo’s castle, and you’re here. The Earth brought us here-”

“The Earth needs to fuck off and give you a good night’s sleep before you fall over,” Hoseok snaps, stomping over beside Yoongi to slam the door of the stables shut. “I don’t care if she’s trying to give us a moral lesson. I’m tired, you’re tired, and-”

“Shut up, Hoseokie,” Yoongi sighs. He leans against the wall, resisting the urge to kick the pile of Earth in the stall closest to him. “Can we - you know your way ‘round this castle, can’t we just… find a room? And sleep in it?”

“We could try,” Hoseok says doubtfully. He reaches down, and links his fingers though Yoongi’s. “If we meet-”

“We aren’t gonna,” Yoongi says. “And if we do-”

“I’ll kick his teeth in.”

Yoongi snorts some tired laughter, and Hoseok leads the way through the stable door up into the castle, and really. This is too fucking much, even for the Earth, because there’s Seohyung carrying piles of clothes, and there’s a gaggle of girls with their faces all warpainted, and there’s the corridor leading off to his room. “Hoseok. Hoseok. Hoseok.”

“What’s wrong?”

Yoongi stomps when he walks, although the Earth isn’t letting any of the people see them - it just makes him feel better. “I don’t want to be here. Can we just - can’t we just wake up?”

“You’re the one that gets Earth dreams.” Hoseok glares around him - no Hoseok, no Seokjin, no Yoongi to be seen. “You tell me.”

“She tries to - help, usually.”

“This isn’t helping.”

Yoongi feels the shudder all down his spine. “You don’t have to tell me that.”

And then Jungyoo is in front of them.

Okay.

And they’re in Jungyoo’s bedroom.

Okay.

And Yoongi can’t breathe, because there’s a collar.

Oh-

“The Earth can go fuck herself,” Hoseok says calmly, pushing Yoongi back behind him, standing between his leering cousin and the boy currently scrabbling at the golden chain around his neck. “This isn’t helpful, this is ridiculous.”

“H-hoseok-”

And because this is an Earth-dream of Yoongi’s invention, Jungyoo is comically exaggerated. He towers a foot over Hoseok, and he bulges out of his clothes, and he has more chin than neck, and his weak little eyes are watery and bloodshot, and his leer is inhuman. The rings on his fingers glimmer and shine as he advances, the tiny steps of a fat man, and he speaks. “Move aside, cousin.”

“No,” Hoseok says. Just like that.

Yoongi has his thumb around the clasp of the collar - if only he could pull it so, he’d get out -

“I’m not moving,” Hoseok continues, and his fists are squeezed shut. “Get out of his head. Leave him alone.”

Jungyoo grins and his teeth slide underneath his wet lips and Yoongi is so afraid he could die, and Hoseok is between them, and why is the Earth showing him this?

“Yoongi, can I ask for things in Earth dreams?”

“Y-hgguk-” the collar tightens and Yoongi looks to one side to see Seohyung, the servant that used to tend to him, the end of the chain in her fist as she pulls at it. “St-op-”

Hoseok’s eyes harden. “If the Earth doesn’t give me my sword right now-”

The scabbard appears slung on a belt around his waist, and Hoseok gives out a sort of howl of triumph before he wrenches the blade out of the sheath. It’s one Yoongi’s seen before - the lioness on the pommel, the scratches along the edge, the Huinden script along the centre. “Hah!”

Yoongi gets the collar loose enough to slip his whole hand through it, and he starts to wriggle away from Seohyung.

“Fuck you,” Hoseok says, advancing, his footsteps heavy and loud and deliberate, “Fuck you so much, you bastard.”

Jungyoo starts to shrink. A little smaller, a little thinner, and the smile begins to drop from his face.

“You ruin every-fucking-thing,” Hoseok continues, the sword glimmering and flashing, and the collar is so loose now that Yoongi is able to slip his head through it and kick Seohyung away from him. “You ruin - look at Yoongi, you’re a country away from him and you’re ruining him-”

“He deserves-” Jungyoo burbles but Hoseok swings the sword, and the phantom of a terror cringes away.

Yoongi sits. Stares.

a good man fights

“You’re a liar and a bastard and a cheat and you disgust me,” Hoseok slashes through the air and Jungyoo’s - the phantom, the Earth-shadow in Yoongi’s head that Jungyoo has become - shrieks in terror. “You’re horrible and I hate you I hate you I hate you I hate you-”

Just as Jungyoo launches for Yoongi, Hoseok shoves the sword up to the hilt in his chest.

Yoongi screams. Hoseok says nothing.

Jungyoo wails, and melts, and the dream vanishes.

And Yoongi wakes up -

But Hoseok doesn’t.

He looks for a while, at the face in front of him, just visible in the rising dawn. The arm around him is a comfort, not a curse, and he cuddles into it willingly - his head feels light and his eyes feel heavy and all he can see is Hoseok, swinging the sword deep into the heart of Yoongi’s phantoms.

He goes to sleep.

(And Hoseok wakes, and spends an hour just looking at the peaceful face before him until he gets tired and rests his head again on the pillow, the two bodies slightly - and infinitely - closer to each other than they were when they first lay down.)

Neither of them dream, this time.

This becomes a nightly ritual.

Yoongi wonders if Hoseok really remembers the dreams, or if it’s all a figment of Yoongi’s imagination. By some unspoken agreement, they don’t ever discuss them, but they’ve grown closer - any fool could see that, and Heonwoo is not any fool.

“You’re sleeping with him, then?”

Yoongi scowls over the rim of his glass of milk. “No. I am not.”

“I didn’t imply anything but that you shared a bed,” Heonwoo raises his hands, grinning. Eyes twinkling, long hair cast over his cheeks. “It’s all you, drawing conclusions. A habit you took from Hoseok? Or one you have in common?”

“Go away,” Yoongi says. He’s sitting by the edge of Gaigi-bada, watching Hoseok and Namjoon flicker through the military camp on the other shore, flashes of shining metal and leather. “Bother Jimin.”

“I bothered him, and now I’m bored,” Heonwoo plonks himself down beside Yoongi, crossing his legs childishly, and waves his hand at the cup of milk. “Can I have a sip?”

“Get your own milk.”

“Isn’t it funny that nothing tastes quite as good as things stolen from other people?”

Yoongi downs the cup and wipes the milk from his top lip. “Go get your own milk.”

“No fun,” Heonwoo sighs. “But tell me - has my cousin-dear told you about his little thing with the Princess?”

Yoongi stays quiet. Heonwoo antagonises, that’s what he does, and he’s annoying but harmless - he just wants a rise out of Yoongi, a rise Yoongi is determined not to give him. Heonwoo can go and annoy Jimin, or Jihyung, or Somin, if he’s that desperate for someone to irritate.

“I see he must have,” Heonwoo continues. Oblivious to the frustration boiling inside Yoongi’s bones. “You know, the promise? By the lioness, but he was annoying. I, personally, couldn’t stick Meiwuko if I met her, but Hoseok used to be full of the praise of her. oh heonwoo, you ought to see her hair! her neck! her arms! The silly bugger’s never looked at anyone else.”

“She’s coming to fight him,” Yoongi says tightly. He doesn’t know why Heonwoo annoys him so much, now.

“Well, you know what they say about pulling pigtails…”

“Not a maxim I’m familiar with,” Yoongi says. “Perhaps a friend made out of a foe is a friend to bring you woe would be a better one to use?”

“A friend made out of a foe?” Heonwoo echoes - and he looks oddly victorious, like this is the reaction he’s been looking for. “Ah, no, you misunderstand. Meiwuko is more of a foe made out of a friend, if you ask me - her and Hoseok used to be together all the time, at the Boundary, back when the old King and the old Southern King were at it hammer and nail. Her and him go way back.”

“I believe in the maxim, all the same,” Yoongi says coldly.

“Pulling pigtails,” Heonwoo repeats.

They sit in frosty silence for a moment, before Yoongi’s curiosity gets the better of him.

“What do they say about pulling pigtails?”

“That the children do it to get the attention of the one they want to marry,” Heonwoo says, and stands up, brushing dirt theatrically off his knees. “In this case, the pigtails is the army, and… well, I guess Meiwuko’s strength is the pull.”

“You talk a load of shit,” Yoongi says eventually, and watches Heonwoo walking off.

He doesn’t like something about this.

He doesn’t like it at all.

“What are your marriage rituals?”

Hoseok exhales, Yoongi’s hip-dagger quivering a bare inch away from his throat. “What do you mean?”

And they slash and parry, and Yoongi dances around with elegant movement, more than he might have had a month ago, and the flash of his tail distracts Hoseok for a brief second during which he switches the flick-knife through his knuckles and aims a stab at Hoseok’s heart.

Hoseok parries.

“I mean - your marriage rituals,” Yoongi presses, “You know, the - things you do to prove your worth to one another. How does the lioness work these things?”

Hoseok knocks the knife out of his hand, and waits, breathing heavily, as Yoongi retrieves it. “It’s different for every area of the - of the country-”

Their blades clash, hip-dagger against ornate sword, a sword Yoongi’s become familiar with due to their nightly excursions into the Earth. “Something Heonwoo said,” Yoongi explains, leaping onto the parapet and then down again to try and get some momentum against him, “Something he said made me curious.”

“If I were to marry, I’d stand a vigil,” Hoseok explains; flash-flash, smack-smash, and Yoongi is disarmed.

“A vigil?” Flash-smash.

“A night alone in the White Walls - the White Cathedral, or the caves near the harbour, to express my devotion to the lioness and to my future spouse,” this time, Hoseok is the one disarmed, Yoongi using both the blades in his possession to feint at Hoseok’s fingers and force him to drop them.  

“Future spouse?”

“Of course,” Hoseok scoops his sword up and makes a vague thrust. “Again?”

“Yes, but-” slash, thwack, Yoongi jumps around, “Wife?”

“Oh,” Hoseok nods, “Ah - I don’t really-” he swishes away from Yoongi’s slashing knife, “I don’t really care-”

“But I thought it would be Meiwuko-?”

“It might be-”

“But-”

“I-”

Hoseok swipes the blade out of Yoongi’s hand just as Yoongi twists the flick-knife into pulling the sword from Hoseok, and they both stop, sweating and exhausted and smiling and panting and laughing a little, despite themselves. “A break, I think,” Hoseok says, and Yoongi slumps to the ground without another word.

“Meiwuko aside, I would stand a vigil in the presence of the lioness,” Hoseok says eventually, having slung himself over the castle parapet. “It’s one of the only times in my life I’ll meet her.”

“What’s the others?”

“When I’m crowned King. And when I die, of course.”

“Of course,” Yoongi echoes. He thinks of the omnipresence of the Earth. What is it like, to have an absent god?

A question for another day, perhaps.

“Will you marry Meiwuko?” He asks instead, running his slippery fingers along the edge of his flick-knife until the tip draws blood. “Everyone says you will.”

“Everyone?”

“Heonwoo,” Yoongi corrects with reluctance. His finger is stinging; he shoves it into his mouth to try and stopper the blood.

“I don’t think I want to marry Meiwuko,” Hoseok says. As though from far away, he pulls at Yoongi’s wrist, and sighs when he sees the cut. “I… don’t think I do.” A strip is sawn loose from the edge of his shirt, and he winds it around Yoongi’s finger. “Don’t put it in your mouth.”

Yoongi shrugs. “And why shouldn’t I?”

“It’s unhealthy, I think… and anyway, holding something against it that isn’t wet helps it clot better,” Hoseok says. He’s still holding Yoongi’s wrist. “Why are you - why’d you want to know about Meiwuko?”

“Everybody’s talking about her,” Yoongi says, more irritable than he feels. “And I - want to know why.”

“Because she’s Meiwuko.”

“But why?”

“Because she just is.”

“But why all this stuff about marriage?”

Hoseok drops Yoongi’s hand like he’s been stung. “Because it might be the only way to unite Huindon and the South without even more bloodshed-”

“That’s stupid, then,” Yoongi says flatly, and he’s standing before he even knows it, and walking away from the pile of Hoseok on the ground. “You’re all stupid. This whole thing is ridiculous.”

“Yoongi-”

“I’m going to talk to the only person ‘round here with any sense,” he says huffily, and storms down the length of the castle to plop beside the stickshrine, watching Jimin and Taehyung laughing together with an unfair amount of anger.

(“You mean to say you haven’t noticed?”

“Go away, Heonwoo,” Hoseok sighs. Yoongi’s rebuttal stings, and he wonders if this brings an end to their nightly visits, to the dreams - although getting shorter and shorter now - where all Hoseok has to do is stab Jungyoo a million times over, just to allow Yoongi to sleep easy.

He hopes Yoongi will come to him, still.

“No, Hoseok, he’s right,” Jihyung says, sounding amused, arms folded on the table. “We all noticed.”

“Even Namjoon noticed.”

“Hey.”

“Seokjin noticed.”

“Seokjin’s keeping shut,” the captain himself says, leaning against the fireplace with a look of mirth. “Until Hoseok notices-”

That’s almost the end of Hoseok’s tether. “Notice what, damn you all-”

Heonwoo cackles in delight. “And now!” He announces, hand swept wide, a showman to their audience of friends, “And now look at the Prince bereft of his lady-love! An animal, a beast, full of anger and anticipation! Who does he want! Where does he look to?”

Hoseok shoots a raised eyebrow at Seokjin, who shrugs.

“You’re all mad,” he decides, when Heonwoo bursts into a fit of giggles. “Y’know, the only sane one around here is-”

“Wait for it,” he doesn’t hear Jimin murmur to Taehyung,

“Yoongi, you know that?”

Heonwoo slams his hands down on the table, beginning to laugh like a man demented. Jihyung’s muffling shoulder-shakes into his palms, and Namjoon is grinning, and Taehyung is laughing so hard he could cry. Jimin’s smiling. Even Seokjin’s eyebrow-twitch looks amused.

“I’m going to find him,” Hoseok says, aware he’s done something predictable. He shoves his hands in his pockets and storms out.)

“I thought you wouldn’t come.”

Yoongi wonders if he looks fragile, padding across Hoseok’s room in bare feet and sleepclothes, his eyes heavy, his ears and tail drooping. “I - wasn’t going to.”

“You don’t have to stay away,” Hoseok tells him, lifting up the bedcovers to let him clamber in. “You’re always welcome here, you hear?”

“I hear,” Yoongi whispers, accustomed to the warmth in Hoseok’s arms, already halfway to being asleep.

And -

This is the first night that there is no dream. No phantoms to be fought.

Just a good man beside him, asleep.

“This is stupid. We’re lost.”

One of them, the one with only one hand, hushes the one that just spoke. With a huff, the first voice flops into the grass, folding his ears over his head. “We are lost, though,” he says. “And there aren’t any brittlebear down here, and hardly any wingflesh. What sort of country is this?”

“Shut up!” Hisses a third one, a girl with dark ears and a feverishly-flickering tail. “He’s concentrating.”

The three of them turn to stare at their youngest, who has his eyes shut and his hands buried up to the elbow in a small, brightly burning pile of dirt and sticks. His eyes are closed but his ears are pert, and his tail curls up and down with frantic displaced energy.

“The Earth won’t let us get lost,” the one with only one hand says. Then he smiles. “And if she fails, there’s no way Jeonggukkie will.”

They laugh in the dark, in the marshy lowlands of a country unfamiliar to them.

The lake is closer than they think.

Chapter 14: The Trap Laid For The Waking Man

“I don’t know when he did it. The new King was nothing like the old King, and yet he was terrifyingly similar, and we wondered what had happened. We wondered whether this was hell. Most of us thought it was.”

- a citizen of Huinbyeong talking about the Siege of the White Walls

On the second week of the establishment of the camp, a charger arrives from Huinbyeong, much mud-spattered and panting for breath, a letter for the crown prince and his advisor clutched in the messenger’s sweaty palm.

The King is sick, it says, but he hopes in his stead his son is acting as he would. It’s signed in shaky handwriting, so blotted they struggle to see where the stains begin and the signature stops.

They hold a meeting.

The war room is much more crowded than it once was - here’s Yoongi, and Hoseok of course, and Jihyung and Heonwoo and Seokjin, and Namjoon and Jimin and Taehyung, and Eunjin and Heejung, squeezed in odd corners and perched on piles of books, all staring at the Huinden hip-dagger.

The one found in Jihyung’s guard.

“This fucking thing could be the difference between a just war, and a mockery,” Jihyung says with disgust. “I can’t believe-”

“Any day now,” Eunjin says from the corner. Her barrette glimmers in the firelight. “Any day now, she’s coming. It’s a bit too late to start pointing fingers, isn’t it?”

“If we knew who to line up first on the chopping-block, that might help matters some,” says Hoseok, with a grimgallows smile.

Yoongi shudders; wants to hold Hoseok’s hand, then decides he doesn’t care about what anyone in this room things, and grabs Hoseok’s fingers, holding them tight to his chest.

“We have a larger force than she’s expecting.”

“Will it be large enough? Jihyung, Chaena… none of those sorry bastards sent aid, you know that, and Meiwuko has the entire South at her disposal.”

“They’re within their rights - technically, unless the King decrees it, we’re not at war, and he’s at death’s door…”

“Hah! The King…”

“But what happens if Meiwuko destroys us, and walks right on into Huinbyeong?”

“We’ll be too dead to care…”

“Oh -” Hoseok swears, and Yoongi looks up - his face is white, like someone’s just walked over his grave. “Oh - I just had a thought-”

“A bad thought?” Yoongi asks, a little unnecessarily. “Hoseok…”

“A bad thought,” Hoseok says. Stares at the hip-dagger on the table. “We were meant to think this was planted by Meiwuko and the South, during the last attack, right? The one on Gai - the one that made you fall back to here.”

Heonwoo’s eyes sharpen suddenly, and his lips become little more than a line. “Hoseok…”

“And we assumed that it was a bluff, or a double-bluff, because who else could have done it? Who else could have-”

“Hoseok-”

“We all said it was ridiculous, to think there’s a traitor here-”

Heonwoo lays his head down to rest on the tabletop, his forehead near the point of the blade, letting out one long, continuous groan into the wood. “Hoseok. Hoseok. Shut the fuck up. Shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up, shut the fuck up.”

Yoongi holds his hand tighter; he can feel Hoseok shaking, although he isn’t sure it’s obvious to the rest of the room.

“I just - fuck! This is ridiculous! Meiwuko’s coming, and we’re-”

“Not going to get anywhere pointing fingers,” Eunjin repeats. “Sir, with all due respect, sit down and - and let’s talk about the bloody battle, not about who started it.”

“But this is important,” Hoseok breathes, clinging to Yoongi so tight there’s hardly room for air. “I - I had a thought, and I lost it, but it was important, I swear…”

“The battle,” Heonwoo prompts, still with his face in the table.

“Hoseok,” Namjoon says. “Hoseok. Hoseok.”

So Hoseok stands, although his fingers are still hooked into Yoongi’s, their arms reaching for each other across the gap. “Of course. Sorry. The battle. What we know of the - of the troops we stopped from attacking, what we know is that they’re the standard Southern foot-soldier, so Meiwuko hasn’t changed much of anything. Weapons a little better, armour a little more protected, but overall, no change. Yes?”

“Yes,” Jihyung says. Quietly, he slips the hip-dagger off the table and onto the floor, but Yoongi can feel it still here, as keenly as though it still sat at the centre of the table.

“Southern tactics are usually predictable - as are our own,” Hoseok continues. His breath is evening out, but he’s still holding onto Yoongi’s hand for dear life. “They attack with a feint wave, drawing our initial defenders away from the line of defence, and then two wings parry right and left. Pincer.”

“But we have a camp,” Taehyung speaks up, slower and more thoughtful than usual. “And Meiwuko won’t expect that of you. She thinks you’ll hold forces in Huinbyeong and with Heonwoo, and leave a skeleton army here.”

Hoseok flashes his brother a look of surprised pride. “Exactly. We’ll hide the camp on the far shore of Gaigi-bada, and the fog should hide them well enough. Put up a sham of a small force, just enough to let Meiwuko get careless. She’ll attack with her full might and the left and right arms will fall ‘round to take the castle…”

“They’ll meet the rest of the force waiting for them,” Yoongi finishes, a flash of realisation occurring. “And then they’ll be the ones surrounded.”

“Exactly.” Hoseok beams down at him, a little shaky, the hip-dagger present in his eyes and his mind. “It’s plots within counter-plots - all we have to hope is that Meiwuko doesn’t expect us to go against the grain.”

“He that walks the path most-tread shall find himself caught in the morning,” Yoongi quotes, some long-lost maxim used for brittlebear hunts.

“What does that one mean?” Hoseok asks, his eyes glimmering with a grin.

Yoongi shrugs. “It means what it says. Y’know… that the path most-tread is predictable. Choose a new way each time, and you’ll never go wrong.”

“Do you have a saying for a man that changes his ways in the nick of time?” Heonwoo asks, head perked up in interest.

“Uh…” Yoongi casts his mind back to the clan, to Daesoo and Eunhyun and Minhyuk and Chaehyung (shesdeaddontthinkofher), “Hm. I guess… lay the trap you wish to lie in, or get snapped into its jaws. My gr- the Min was always saying that kind of stuff.”

“If we had ten Yoongi-copies, we’d win the battle,” Seokjin pipes up, eyes twinkling devilishly. “Have you seen him fight?”

“Shut up,” Yoongi grumbles.

“He disarmed me almost as much as I did to him, yesterday,” Hoseok says.

“I think that’s more a sign of your bad swordsmanship.”

“Hey!”

But the lighthearted jokes are faded and crumbling in the pervasive darkness of the Huinden hip-dagger, and of the sound of singing, as though from far, far away, so quiet that Yoongi wonders if it’s only his ears that can hear it.

nah-ya, nah-ya, o wei habulei nah-ya

“The damn fog won’t lift,” Eunjin sighs. “If it’d clear, we could see someone approaching from miles away, but -”

“No use wishing on clouds to do what we want,” says her sister, a hand over her eyes as though the shade will help her peer through the clouds. “I think we should send a runner ahead of us, down South… see what we can see, right?”

Yoongi says nothing. Sitting between the pair of them, the shudder of unease doesn’t seem to be able to leave his spine alone - it shivers across his skin, as though he’s being watched by a thousand unseen eyes. “Have either of you seen Hoseok?”

They both shake their heads. Eunjin rubs her hand across his shoulder - she looks almost, but not quite, as though she’s amused. “Realised anything yet?”

He glares up at her.

They say that feelings are a black shadow in the dark behind a tree - able to contain anything or nothing, and hidden until the hunter explores them. Yoongi was there when Jeongguk decided he was in love with Jiwoo. Yoongi was there when he himself decided he was in love with Eunhyun.

And that can’t be this, because Hoseok is different - Yoongi is at the edge of the shadow, and all he’s aware of is that there’s something behind the tree.

The fog rolls heavier as he turns to leave the twins to their watching.

And his ears itch.

He would swear he hears a song drifting through the stillwinded air.

“Have you two seen Yoongi?”

“He went looking for you.”

“Did he say what for?”

Eunjin shrugs. “Have you realised yet?”

Jimin is sitting on Taehyung’s lap, their lips pressed together, their fingers interlocked. They aren’t hiding, but they aren’t announcing their presence - they’re simply existing together, as natural as night and day, as normal as could be.

“Have you seen Hoseok?” Yoongi interrupts them reluctantly, but the thousand-eyes on his spine seem to press at him, and he has a need to make sure Hoseok is still in the castle. Around. Not-dead.

mina and her son

phantoms, returning.

“I haven’t,” Taehyung shakes his head, his lips kissed berry-red and parted. “What do you want to say to him?”

“I just want to see him,” Yoongi murmurs, turning to go. “I just need to - know.”

And the song.

And the fog rolling over the waves.

The mood infests the camp on the shore, too. Yoongi leaps onto the ferry with Namjoon and Heonwoo, desperate for something to do that takes him away from the skin-itch search to have Hoseok close to him - Namjoon is going ‘round divisionary captains, highlighting the orders as they stand, and Heonwoo is coming with him because he doesn’t seem to be able to stay still for more than ten minutes or so.

“There’s an itch in the sky,” Heonwoo says slowly, as the ferryman paddles them across. Backdropped, Jihyung’s castle is stone and candlelight against the setting sun. “Do you feel it?”

“Keenly,” Namjoon mumbles.

“There’s the song again,” Yoongi’s head whips up, and his ears twitch against his skull. “Is it the soldiers? Why’d they be singing?”

Namjoon laughs uncomfortably. “A song? You’re hearing things. Nothing but the water and the night.”

Yoongi’s fur-shelled ears beg to disagree, but he’s too uncomfortable to argue, so he just settles back into his seat with a frown. “I swear there’s something wrong about today.”

“Like I said. An itch in the sky.”

The ferry docks, grounding itself on the mud, and the ferryman loops rope around a post to stop the raft floating into the lake. “I’ll wait,” he says, although nobody asked.

Namjoon steps off first, robes muddy, the dagger (normal dagger, knife-sized) flashing at his belt. Heonwoo holds out his hand for Yoongi to jump off, and Yoongi ignores it, balancing along the edge of the dock until he can spring off barefoot into the mud and the Earth.

She, too, is alight with unease.

“You kept my knife,” Namjoon comments, as they stride into the depths of the tents and poles and cookfires. He sounds surprised.

“I’d be an idiot to throw it away.” Yoongi clips it from his belt and thumbs at the little mechanism; a silken shiiick slides the knife out of its handle, and the silver shines and spools and pools like frozen moonlight in a blade. “It’s lovely.”

“It’s deadly,” Heonwoo looks down at it. “Is that from Huinbyeong? Well-made.”

“I bought it off a trading ship before Meiwuko set up the blockade. Some man told me it was from far North, beyond the mountains and the desert… a country where they live in woodhuts and cut ice in the winter to fish out of. He said it was a knife originally used to claw out organs from wild animals, though I think he was fantasising a little…” Namjoon’s voice fades into a mumble.

Where is Hoseok?

“Fascinating,” Heonwoo says drily.

The captains of the various divisions - a captain for every fifty men, and a troop-command each for Huinbyeong, Heonwoo, and Jihyung, are all easy to convince of the plan. “Stay put, then,” says the oldest of them, a moustached man from Heonwoo’s province. “Not hard to do. Not intellectual.”

“Not hardly, but important to do,” Namjoon says. He’s good at persuasion, at speaking to people, at convincing; even if Yoongi wasn’t convinced already, he’d believe in any plan explained to him by Namjoon.

“Important. Well, y’aren’t wrong.”

The captains and troop-commands take easy to the idea, and the message spreads like wildfire through the troops themselves, foot soldiers and the scatterings of the cavalry as they are. Yoongi catches the snatches of song, and it disturbs him, but he doesn’t bring it up to Heonwoo after the first time - Heonwoo looks restless, like the slightest push would send him into a nervous frenzy.

And all the while that song.

The ferryman seems eager to cast off from the camp again and bring them to shore, paddling quickly though the night and docking to scamper into the castle. “Funny day, altogether,” Namjoon says.

“For sure.”

na-yah, na-yah.

o wei habulei na-yah.

“Do you hear the song?” Yoongi asks of Jimin, sitting in the sombre hall to try and stomach a few bites of bread and roasted mutton. “I think I’m going insane.”

“I don’t,” Jimin says carefully, grease beading on his lips before he wipes it away.

“What does it sound like?” Taehyung leans across Jimin - he looks more intrigued than skeptical, so Yoongi tries to hum it. The odd, harmonic sound washes across the pair of them, but they both shake their heads. “You must be imagining things.”

“That’s why I think I’m going insane,” says Yoongi.

They laugh.

He doesn’t.

“Yoongi?”

Hoseok reappears just in time to go to bed; when Yoongi asks where he’s been, he holds up his arm and says sparring with Jin with a shamefaced expression, bruises littering his arms, his back, his shoulders, his chest. Yoongi’s just happy to have him back for the night, so they sit together by the fire, facing each other, legs crossed and knees touching.

“Yeah?”

Hoseok looks nice when he’s undressed. He wears a cotton shirt to bed, and nothing much else, so his bare skin glows against the firelight, and his hair is flattened against his forehead where he’s washed his neck, his face, before turning in. His eyes are warm as melted butter and he looks more boyish, with Yoongi, like a pretense falling down.

“I-” And he catches himself. Often, of late, Yoongi’s found himself looking Hoseok’s way.

The way he used to look at Eunhyun, when he was in l-

“I’ve been thinking,” Hoseok continues, with difficulty. And then he falls silent - as though Yoongi can read his mind.

“About?”

“You, mostly.”

“Oh.”

Yoongi is curled out, tail and ears, wearing one of Hoseok’s tunics to sleep in, the same as Hoseok. He wonders if Hoseok likes how he looks.

He wonders why he cares.

“What have you been thinking about me?”

“Lots of things,” Hoseok murmurs, and he reaches over and takes Yoongi’s hand and rubs his thumb over his knuckles, the scars there, the soft skin. “Meiwuko is coming, and I - and I don’t know if we’ve done enough to fortify the place, and… and if we don’t, there’s nothing standing between her and Huinbyeong…”

Yoongi has nothing to say. He shuffles closer and places his hand on Hoseok’s knee, and the fire crackles a little warmer.

“... If we die-”

“We aren’t going to die,” Yoongi says.

Hoseok just hums.

“Hoseok-ah, why do you care if Meiwuko kills you and marches into Huindon?” Yoongi wants to lean back against the man, but he doesn’t know if he can - then he decides he doesn’t care and plops himself in Hoseok’s lap. (And there’s two motives to his asking. He genuinely wants to know, but also - maybe it’ll distract Hoseok from their impending mortality, marching towards them out of the South.

“Why do I… care?”

“Yeah. You’re bound to have thought of it.”

“Oh.”

Yoongi wriggles further into Hoseok’s hug. “I mean, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.”

“No, I - I…” Hoseok stills, and then he wraps his arms around Yoongi’s body, gentle and soft. “Do you ever look out at the world and you love it so much you don’t know what you’d do without it?”

there is snow on the mountain peaks, and yoongi is alone with the woods and the earth and

“Yes,” he mumbles. “I - yes.”

“I’m the Crown Prince of this country, I’m - Crown Prince Hoseok, I’m on all the banners and tapestries and the boats going to foreign lands carry my name on their lips when they talk to the strangers around us. And - and Huindon isn’t a perfect country, and there are people in it I hate, and there are places in it I could live without, but… but one day, one day I climbed to the - top of the White Walls, and I looked over the sea… over the harbour, and I thought that this is mine. And that means I have to do right by it. And then I thought of the lioness and how - she’s not a good god, maybe, not like the Earth, she’s not there and she doesn’t help, but she’s mine anyway. And I think. I think that’s why I want to see right by the country.”

Yoongi waits.

“Because it’s not the best country,” Hoseok says at last, into the flames, “But it’s mine.”

And there’s nothing Yoongi can say to that.

“But that’s not what I wanted to say.”

“Well?” Yoongi stares into the fire, once more thinking of the lioness, and of an absent god. What is she like? Will he ever meet her?

i will meet her during my coronation and i will meet her during my marriage vigil and i will meet her on my deathbed

Yoongi could die, soon. Killed by a Southern sword.

That’s the only option there that he sees himself meeting the lioness, but he supposes a marriage vigil is -

Stupid thoughts. Idle thoughts. Ridiculous thoughts, when he hasn’t - done anything about them.

“I wanted to tell you something I realised about you - and about me,” says Hoseok. “I - think it’s important.”

“Oh.”

“It can’t wait.”

Yoongi doesn’t like the sound of this. “Hoseok…”

“No, I-”

“There’s a maxim in my clan,” Yoongi interrupts. Desperation is ill-suited to find a home in Hoseok’s voice, and he wants to get rid of it as soon as he can. “It goes that anything worth saying is something worth the wait of it. And I - want to have the wait of it.”

“But why? Where’s the pressure?”

“In your voice, for one,” Yoongi looks up, crooks his head against Hoseok’s shoulder and looks into his eyes, “And - and there’s something in the air, today. Makes people panic. I want to wait.”

“But you don’t know what I’m going to say,” Hoseok mumbles; his eyes keep Yoongi caught in them, a web of something like sorrow and something like sadness and something like grief. “It could be just… something about the weather, or-”

“I know, I think,” Yoongi says. (In truth, he’s being selfish. He can’t listen to what Hoseok’s saying when he can’t even listen to what his mind is telling him, after all.)

“Then hearing me say it shouldn’t change anything.”

“Call me selfish, but - Seok, can’t we just go to bed instead?” Yoongi wants to fold himself up even smaller; he wants Hoseok to hold him, hold him properly, legs and arms and bodies tangled together in front of the fire without stupid things like royal thrones and wars getting in the way. “And… not dream, tonight. Just. Just sleep.”

Hoseok opens his mouth, but then he softens. “I - of course. Of course we can. I’m sorry.”

“Tell me after Meiwuko comes,” Yoongi says. “I’ll be ready to hear it then.”

“You promise?”

“Of course.”

Hoseok picks him up how Yoongi wanted him to, scooping him by the knees and his back, laughing with a little strain when Yoongi hums contentedly. “Do you purr?”

“No,” Yoongi cracks an eye open, glares lazily. “And if you tell Heonwoo I do, I’ll kill you with my bare hands.”

“Purring little cat.”

“No.”

Hoseok sets him gently on the bed, then pulls the covers back and climbs in himself, immediately tucking Yoongi back against him. “Admit that you purr, and I won’t tell anyone.”

“You won’t tell anyone anyway,” Yoongi pokes him in the side, and then just leaves his hand there, in the crook of Hoseok’s waist. He’s warm. And safe and happy, despite the lingering worries over what Hoseok needs to tell him.

“How do you know I won’t?”

“I’ll kill you,” Yoongi says. They both laugh.

And then silence. The song has stopped, now Yoongi listens for it - s topped for the night, his treacherous brain supplies, before he smacks it into quietness.

“Sleep well,” Hoseok whispers. “I’ll be here.”

“I know you will.”

Yoongi is almost to sleep when Hoseok kisses the top of his head, and it doesn’t feel invasive; doesn’t feel like Jungyoo, like something unwanted, unneeded, unasked for. It feels like comfort. And safety. And home. And it’s the last little push Yoongi needs to fall right into sleep against Hoseok’s chest, in the dark of the room, the song gone, the fire dying warmly in the grate.

The fog just keeps rolling in.

“It’s coming down from the sea,” Jihyung says, standing arms crossed on the island shore. “We should be barricaded in here.”

“It’s a double edged sword,” Hoseok tells Yoongi later, sitting in the war-room, bouncing his knee anxiously. “When Meiwuko arrives, she won’t see the camp, so she’ll think there’s only a small force of us. But we won’t-”

“Be able to see her until she’s almost on top of us,” Seokjin says unhelpfully.

“Yeah. Thanks for that.”

And still the song. na-yah. na-yah. o wei habulei na-yah. na-yah. o la zukilei na-yh. na-yah. na-yah. o meiwuko dei na-yah.

Louder, today, so irritating that Yoongi wants to stuff his hands over his ears - both sets - and wail clansongs into himself until it goes away. Something about it scares him. Nobody else can hear it, just him, and that -

He knows what that means.

He wishes he didn’t.

He needs to tell Hoseok.

“Teach me how to swim,” he demands, snatching Hoseok’s hand away from the maps on the table. “I need to know how to swim.”

“Get Eunjin to do it.”

“Eunjin’s drilling on the shore.”

Hoseok looks down at him, and something in Yoongi’s face maybe makes him melt a bit. “Why the sudden hurry? Of - yeah, of course I’ll teach you to swim. Now?”

Heonwoo is prodding the fire in the war-room, and his shoulders are shaking suspiciously over the grate. Long-haired stickthin Heonwoo, wrists and elbows. Yoongi wonders how good he is in a fight. He wonders whether he’ll see Heonwoo on the grass, like those people from back when they arrived at Gaigi-bada - will Heonwoo be brown with bloodcrust and white with fear, lying in the grass?

Hoseok taps him light on the shoulder. “If you think so hard, you’ll worry yourself into an early grave.”

Yoongi smiles faintly.

Will it be Hoseok?

Yoongi sees Hoseok face-down in the grass, his fingers on his sword as they’ve been for countless mornings now, his smile frozen into the grimace of rigor mortis, death dancing around his locked limbs.

we meet the lioness when we die.

“Teach me to swim,” Yoongi repeats, tripping after Hoseok into the hall of the castle. “And - tell me more about the lioness.”

“The lioness? What do you want to know about her?”

Yoongi chews on his bottom lip so hard he tastes coppermetal. He cares about Hoseok. More than he can say, he cares about Hoseok. “How come she’s not like the Earth?”

“I thought you didn’t believe in her,” Hoseok says. When Yoongi tugs at his wrist, he offers his hand. “Y’know, what with the Earth and all.”

“The Earth isn’t a god.”

“Yeah, yeah-”

“I just don’t understand,” Yoongi persists, even as they tumble into the cold air, the shore of the lake a brief walk away from the door. “How do you know she’s around if you never meet her?”

They wade waist-deep into the lake, although Yoongi finds himself stranded a little shorter than Hoseok, his bare feet sinking in mud and pebbles. As before, Hoseok doesn’t prompt him to take off the robe or the tunic, and he doesn’t either - and so fully clothed they stand and shiver in the water, their limbs slowly getting used to the cold.

“I don’t understand the question,” Hoseok says eventually.

“How do you know the lioness is real?”

“I just do.”

“But-” Yoongi lets Hoseok move his arms, push his shoulders until he’s almost fully submerged, “How-?”

“Take a deep breath.” Hoseok himself kneels down in the water, letting the lakewaves lap against his neck, and inhales. “See? You fill all full of air and you float easier. Try floating.”

Hesitant, Yoongi steps off the lake floor, and immediately his mouth fills with water and he squeezes his eyes shut and he can’t see and he’s sinking sinking sinking

Hoseok catches him. Lifts him up, sets him on his feet again, smiling even as he lets Yoongi cough, as he brushes the water away from his eyes. “Okay. Not like that. But that’s how everybody starts to swim, y’know - they sink, and that’s the way to do it.”

“Right.” Yoongi is cold and wet and uncomfortable, but something makes him need to be able to swim. “Do I do it again?”

“Deep breath - yes, right - and-”

He sinks. Sputters. Lake in his eyes and his ears and his tail is soaking wet and he feels like a sponge getting soaked and soaked again, and never getting wrung dry. “This is impossible.”

“You only think it’s impossible ‘cause you haven’t done it before,” Hoseok says, but he’s laughing. “Have faith, or try to.”

“You still need to tell me about the lioness,” Yoongi tells him as he breathes in and kicks into the water once more.

And fails.

Sinks.

Submerges.

“The lioness is like learning to swim,” Hoseok mumbles when Yoongi resurfaces, water pouring down his face, breathing heavily and frozen to the depths of his bones.

“That makes no sense.”

“I believe the water will work with me if I let it,” Hoseok wades further into the lake until he must be standing on tiptoe to keep his chin above water, and then takes a deep breath and twists onto his back and floats languidly on the surface, swishing his arms through the waves every so often to steer, kicking his feet to stay up. “I trust the water and I float - and you don’t trust the water, so you sink. I trust the lioness and she exists. I know she exists. If I don’t know she exists… then she doesn’t.”

Yoongi stares. “Oh.”

“Taehyung has refused to pray to the lioness ever since he was small, and he only did that to annoy the King until recently. Now he doesn’t pray because he doesn’t think she’s real,” Hoseok says to the sky, still lying on his back in the lake.

“But how do you get the choice?”

“Because the lioness isn’t like the Earth,” Hoseok shrugs and cuts towards Yoongi until he’s walking in the water again, wetness dripping down his nose from his flattened hair. “She’s only real if we know she is. And if we don’t know - then she isn’t.”

“I understand,” Yoongi says, and is surprised to find that he does.

(Even if he is soaking wet.)

“Goodnight.”

“Night.”

Yoongi knows why he feels warm, embraced by Hoseok. He’s no fool. He’s an adult of the clan, and he’s seen his fair share of marriages, of lovers united in the Earth.

He wonders why he isn’t more frightened by it, by the implications of it, by the love.

(It is love.)

Maybe because it’s come upon him so slowly - not like an earthquake, or an army, but like the sun rising. As slow and as natural as the coming of a new day is the coming of the two of them together.

And he wishes they were anywhere but here, so he could tell Hoseok so.

“I care about you,” Hoseok says into the dark. “Meiwuko -”

“I care about you too,” Yoongi cuts him off. “And she can’t do anything to us, when we sleep.”

“When we sleep, our dreams are harmless, and we are the trap laid for the waking man,” Hoseok mumbles, and sounds like he’s quoting something half-forgotten. “Good night.”

“Good night.”

Heonwoo is crocheting, and Eunjin is mocking him mercilessly for doing so, while the rest of their little core circle either watches for the show, or engages in some other menial task. There’s an itch over the whole castle - over the whole camp, or so it seems - an itch of fear that wasn’t there just a few days before, and the song again, beginning at dawn and pausing at sundown.

Louder, too.

“It’s not even a very good scarf,” Eunjin says. “You’re holding the hook wrong.”

“I’d like to see you do better!”

“While you were learning to crochet, I was learning to-”

“Kill,” Heejung says, comically vicious, twisting her face up into a caricature of evil. “We are the elite guard of Huinbyeong!”

“Yah!” Seokjin calls from the corner - and Yoongi remembers the chant, the words full of energy and verve and vitality, the chant they roared as they left the city. He figures this must be another one.

(“We ride!” “Yah!”)

“We are the guard of the King’s rock!”

“Yah,” Seokjin drawls again.

“We are the - fuck, I forgot the next bit.”

“We are the sun in their eyes and the sea in their boats,” Hoseok mumbles.

“Yah,” Seokjin says, when nobody else will - all the noise in the room is suddenly the fire and Heonwoo’s crochet hook tearing through wool.

“We are the thunder in their ears and the sword in their heart.”

“Yah.”

“We are the guard of Huinbyeong,” Eunjin picks back up, sounding far more distant, far more - odd - than she did before. “We are the guard of Huinbyeong.”

“Yah.”

“We ride into the ocean and we die on our feet.”

yah. Nobody says it, but it comes into the room anyway, and everyone is staring at Eunjin as she stands, fists clenched and eyes half-closed in earnest memory. Her golden barrette glimmers from the firelight.

“We are the guard of Huinbyeong.”

yah.

“Tonight we die.”

yah.

“Yah,” Seokjin whispers softly. The chant, completed, sweeps itself away into the corners of the room and the memories of the people there; Jihyung looks as though someone just walked over his grave, and Jimin and Taehyung have never looked so concerned.

Heonwoo forces a laugh. “You Huinbyeong fuckers are never happy unless you got some death or other hanging over your heads, huh?”

“‘Spose we aren’t.”

What if it’s Eunjin, the bloody corpse on the ground? Sword-belt and daggers spent, weaponless, screaming a Huinbyeong war chant down a hoarse and bloody throat as she tackles the one who’ll kill her - she’ll do some damage, even weaponless, but fists are no strength against daggers and Southern swords.

She could die. Or Heejung. The twin sisters, back-to-back, yah screams and swords flash, killed at the same time as each tries to defend the other.

Yoongi catches Hoseok’s eye, and wishes he hadn’t. There’s death in them, and sadness, and he wishes Eunjin had just kept her mouth shut and needled Heonwoo about his bad scarf, instead of casting this horrendous hush over them all.

Namjoon sighs. “Any day now, or so they tell me.”

“Shut up.”

“Jimin can’t fight,” Taehyung says quietly. “We should think about the refugees in the castle-”

“Taehyung-”

Hoseok drops his head into his hands as the bickering begins.

“I’m thinking of your safety!”

“If you think for a moment that I’m going to hide in a castle while you’re out playing boy-hero, you’re wrong,” Jimin snarls fiercely. Heonwoo stabs into his mess of a crocheted scarf, and strips of woollen fibre cascade into his lap.

“Safety.”

And then Namjoon clears his throat once more. “Annoying as it is to say it, Taehyung has a point.”

“No he doesn’t!” Jimin wheels on Namjoon, hand slapping his shoulder hard. “Shut up!”

Jihyung hums, ignoring Jimin for the moment. “About the refugees?”

“No - I mean, about the people that can’t fight,” Namjoon’s eyes focus on Yoongi for some reason, and Yoongi begins to glower. No. Not in a million years. “It might be more reasonable to move Yoon-”

“You gave me this knife so I could use it, not so I could look pretty in a basement with a bunch of scared villagers,” Yoongi slides the flick-knife off his belt and presses the contraption to slide the blade into the open. “Did you forget I first killed a brittlebear when you were still waddling around and trying not to soil your clothes?”

“I’m being reasonable.”

“I don’t care about reason. Reason is what got me into this mess in the first place, so I’m relying on something else to get me out, and it isn’t hiding.” Yoongi shoves his hand towards Jimin. “And that’s what he thinks, too. Give him a dagger and an hour of balancing a fucking bead on it, and he’ll be as trained as any of the sorry bastards you have camped behind us. Hide? Why would we do that?”

Hoseok’s looking at him, and the gaze feels proud.

Heonwoo tears the entire scruffy mess off his crochet hook and flings it into the fire.

“I gave you that knife as a precaution,” Namjoon says, but he looks defeated. Apologetic, in the hunch of his shoulders.

“A knife has only one use.”

“To protect.”

“To attack,” Yoongi parts the sash of his robe to let the flicker of the hip-dagger at his waist clank into sight. “And I’m as armed as any of you are.”

“Listen to him, Namjoon,” Hoseok says, still with his head resting on his folded arms, his warm brown eyes on Yoongi. “He’s more sensible than most of you put together.”

“You would say that.”

“Oh, be quiet.”

Yoongi beams victoriously and slides the knife back into its sheath; and Jimin winks at him, looking as pale as death.

And the song gets louder.

“I hear something on the wind,” Yoongi tells Hoseok, both of them sitting on the roof with their legs dangling down the wall, their eyes staring sightlessly into the foggy fogness ahead and behind them. “When I tell you what it is… you have to tell me it’s not what I think it is.”

“A bird call?” Hoseok is holding his hand, too. Yoongi likes the physical affection, and without Jeongguk to hug and to care for, he’s grown starved of it before Hoseok noticed and tried to fix it.

“I wish.”

“Well, tell me, and I’ll be able to see what’s what.”

Yoongi sighs. “My - ears, they’re stronger than yours. You know that, right?”

Hoseok looks suddenly wary. “Yes…”

“I hear a song.”

“A song?”

“A - song,” Yoongi struggles with himself, and then sings as low and rumbly as he can. The song that’s been haunting him these past few days. “Like, like this: na-yah, na-yah, o wei habulei na-yah…” His tongue struggles with the unfamiliar sounds.

“Hoseok?”

Still.

“Hoseok?”

“That means they’re coming,” says Hoseok abruptly, and he sounds almost hysteric; there’s a giggle in his voice and his legs swing manic against the castle wall. “That’s the marching song of the Suhkali. Oh, Yoongi-”

“We have to tell them.”

“How close is it? How close is it?”

Yoongi closes his eyes and focuses. Across the air, the call drifts to him, and he thinks back to the hunting noises of the mountains and the clan. “A - day. Maybe two. It’s very loud. There’s… a lot of voices, I think. More… more than the voices in our camp.”

“Oh, god,” Hoseok sounds broken. “Oh. God.”

Yoongi squeezes his hand.

“Meiwuko must have guessed I’d do something odd - or else she’s just coming prepared. Either way…”

He doesn’t have to finish the sentence.

Chapter 15: A Scream Of Men And Horses

“This is impossible.”

“Do you see the ears?”

Jihyung is stoic. “This is ridiculous.”

“We knew they’d be attacking,” Heonwoo is as calm as ever, his crochet hook dangling from between his lips. “What matters now is that none of us panic, or there’ll be no command over the army and we’ll be drumskins for the Southern barbarians before we know it.” And there’s irony bitter on the tip of his tongue -

Nobody in the room is really panicking, and for the first time Yoongi properly appreciates their attitude. The training of men. No panic in the face of other men - as clansmen might panic when one of their own attacks. Hoseok is horrified but grim, level-headed. Jihyung is angry. Heonwoo is the same as he always is. Seokjin hasn’t even looked up from his knife. Taehyung is pale but resolute; Namjoon’s lip is bitten deep, but that’s it. Jimin’s knee bounces intermittently. Eunjin and Heejung stand either side of the fire, but they look at-ease, as though this is an everyday occurrence.

Yoongi tries to force himself to relax, too. Think of this like a hunt.

(Too barbaric.)

(The only way to do it.)

But instead of brittlebear in the mountains, it’s men -men only different from Hoseok, from Eunjin and Heejung, by the unfortunate situation of birth.

Yoongi has killed men, before. He and Eunhyun, that day in the forest clearing, her standing over the bodies of the babies and the old men and the people too weak to run away, and their unspoken conversation and the chase between the trees after the smell of horse and the stink of man and then the killing. Bloodlust and anger and pain ripping through him, and tears pouring down their cheeks as they slashed and bit, as throats cut sprayed over skin, as men gurgled their last, with clan blood on their blades and clan bodies dead because of them.

He can kill men, he thinks, if it’s either their death or Hoseok’s.

“Do we put out an alert to the troops, then?” Jimin asks after a long while. “Because - I could do that. On the ferry. While you’re talking.”

“Alert to the troops, and extend the cavalry-bridge,” Jihyung says. Thoughtfully, one finger pressed to his lips, he considers Jimin - then he nods. “Take Taehyung with you, just so the troop command know it’s coming from the war room.”

“All the Huinbyeong men know my face,” Jimin says, his hand curling around Taehyung’s wrist.

“And all the Huinbyeong men know Taehyung’s,” Hoseok points out. “The both of you go. In any case, if we start to splinter off, we won’t be able to get back in time for-”

Jimin nods, tight-lipped, and stands with his fingers locked together with Taehyung’s. “Be right back, then.”

The door swings heavily shut behind them.

“I’ll go sort out the cavalry-bridge if you two get the stables and the riders in some sort of readiness,” Jihyung stands and waves his hand at Eunjin and Heejung. “Most of them are still in the castle, aren’t they?”

“All of them should be,” Heejung answers. She’s a cavalry rider. So is Eunjin.

Will the others be cavalry, too? Hoseok, Heonwoo, Jihyung… Taehyung, Jimin, Namjoon?

What will Yoongi do?

“The refugees need told,” Namjoon stands and makes eye contact with Yoongi - then he winks, abruptly and out of the blue. “Me and Yoongi can do that.”

Oh, Yoongi realises. That leaves Heonwoo, Jihyung, and Hoseok. Jung and Jung and Jung, the little trio of cousins on their own to sort through whatever it is lying latent in their minds. Heonwoo and Jihyung and Hoseok. Stories of hunting dreamdeer in the forests, and of climbing castle walls and swordfighting with woodcarvings until they were black and blue, and battles.

“I can do that,” he says.

“Yoongi-”

“I’ll be back in a moment,” he touches the back of Hoseok’s hand, and he knows Heonwoo’s staring at the tender brush with some sort of entertainment.

(He doesn’t care.)

He and Namjoon walk in step with one another along the corridor, away from the central rooms and towards the castle outreaches, where the majority of the refugees are huddling in their blankets and cloaks, passing around bread and water and dishes full of bacon and pork - that’s right, that’s right, it’s just after noon, and there’s still a castle to feed despite the way the world’s just crashed around them.

“I’m sorry for what I said about the knife,” Namjoon says eventually.

Yoongi shrugs. “All in the past.”

“I still am.”

“That’s fine.”

“Yoongi.”

Yoongi keeps pace, the knife and the hip-dagger bouncing against his thigh with every step. “What do you want me to say? I’m grateful for the knife and for the advice back in Huinbyeong. And I think Hoseok might have said that, if you hadn’t.”

“He wouldn’t have,” Namjoon mumbles.

“Hmm?”

“Hoseok. He’d have said go for it. Or do what you want. He - after Taehyung arrived, and you… argued, he told me…”

Yoongi stops; crooks an eyebrow. He sees the refugees, the village spokesmen they need to talk to, but he’s curious.

“He told me he thought it was better that you did what you wanted - that he valued that more than he thought he would,” Namjoon says stumblingly cheeks all red, eyes on the floor. “And that he. He - values you.”

“I know that,” Yoongi says blankly. “I value him too.” Why does Namjoon look so flustered, when he isn’t telling Yoongi anything he doesn’t already know? “An army is approaching. Let’s - just, inform them.”

“Right-” Namjoon splits down one hall, Yoongi down another, calling for leaders and mayors and and strong-minded people to tell the news to.

Huddled mothers over children. And little ones, five, six, seven, playing with dolls made of cotton and straw. The bread and bacon strips go a long way, it seems, the smell wafting pungent in Yoongi’s nose as he explains - as brief as he can, without rousing a panic - that Meiwuko’s army is coming, but that the Crown Prince will protect them.

That’s what does it. The Crown Prince will protect you - the most reassurance they can get, and the most reassurance Yoongi can take, too.

Good.

“If we die, who takes over the provinces?”

“Don’t be stupid, Jihyung,” Heonwoo says.

Hoseok stares at his hands.

“It’s not being stupid. It’s planning ahead.” Jihyung sets his hands palm-down on the table. “If Yoongi is right, and there are far more voices coming than we anticipated, we might die. What if Jungyoo and Chaena and the like end up in control?”

“If we die, it’s likely the Huindon future dies with us,” Hoseok murmurs.

He feels the other two stare at him.

“Cheery,” Heonwoo says, voice dry.

“I mean-” Hoseok clenches his fist. It’s all spinning, all these things to consider; Jungyoo and his faction, the old relics in the provinces to the northwest, and the southeast, the people Hoseok has managed to wriggle into power; the King and his death, which is so close now as to be considered already having happened; Meiwuko coming here at just the wrong bloody time, waving her banners and insisting on a brawl in the mud as though they don’t have anything better to do. And Yoongi. Always Yoongi.

Hoseok loves him.

“You mean?” Heonwoo prompts.

“I mean our plan,” Hoseok says. “Remember - in the woods?”

Jihyung looks pained. “That - we were young-”

“We’re still young, you twat.”

“Younger, then.”

They’d been on a hunt in Jihyung’s province, just the three of them, Seokjin and Namjoon having ridden back to the castle. But Heonwoo and Hoseok had wanted to catch a dreamdeer, wanted the venison, and Jihyung had wanted that too even if he hadn’t said.

They never found one. So they lay on their backs in a moonsoaked glade, mushrooms sprouting from the base of the ancient trees, wondering if they were lost, and Hoseok told the other two about his plan.

No war. The King as a good man, not a tyrant; the provincial leaders chosen from the people, to be representatives for the farmers and the peasants. Trade to begin again and be started with the South.

Peace.

That was his plan.

“It won’t happen if the three of us die here,” Hoseok says.

“Well then, we just don’t die.” Heonwoo plucks his thumb through his teeth. “Easy.”

“So long as you don’t do some tomfool thing like throw yourself in front of that cat.”

“Yoongi can take care of himself.”

“He can, can’t he,” Heonwoo murmurs. “There’s a fighting force I’d pay dear to have, eh?”

“They don’t fight wars.” Hoseok remembers clear as day the way Yoongi told him how he’d left the clan, how confused everyone had been by the humans flooding in - how they used to hunt brittlebear, in the times of peace, and wingflesh and cook them over stickshrines in part of an offering to the Earth. He heard about Mina and her son, while Yoongi spoke muffled into his shoulder.

He’s heard everything. All he wants is to see it for himself, now.

“What do they fight, then?”

“They don’t.”

Heonwoo snorts. “Everyone fights something.”

“They fight us,” Hoseok thinks of Jungyoo and golden collars and chainlinks on chairs, and of dreams where he’s killed his cousin over and over and over just to stop him from reaching Yoongi on the bed.

“Jungyoo?”

“Who else?”

Jihyung sighs heavily. “He won’t like this.”

“What else would he have me do?” Hoseok is glad for the weight of the sword at his belt, for the heavy pull at his hands, the knowledge he’s as safe as he can be. “We asked him for aid, and he refused.”

“He’ll say the King should have sanctioned a war. He’ll try and claim you aren’t fit to rule,” Heonwoo says.

Worst thing is, Hoseok knows it’s true.

What wouldn’t Jungyoo give to be King?

To people like Heonwoo and Jihyung, and Youngjin in the northeast, Hoseok’s cousins, friends since birth, ruling their province is enough. Accident of birth gives Hoseok Huinbyeong instead of them, but they don’t mind.

(He remembers standing in a boat off the sea of Huinbyeong, the four of them slicing their fingertips with a little kitchen knife and mingling the blood like the sacred pact-makers used to do.)

(“You can’t just make an oath,” Jihyung had said importantly. “It has to be about something.”

“Family,” Youngjin suggested.

“Being the best,” Heonwoo’s eyes sparkled.

Hoseok shook his head. Even back then, barely older than seven, he knew something marked him out more than the others. “Let’s make a pact for Huindon and the lioness, right?”