And All I Wanted For You
Characters: South Korea, North Korea, China, mentions of Japan and Vietnam.
Rating: R.
Summary: North is South's child, not his sibling, so it's his fault that he couldn't bring her up safe.
Warnings: Mentions of rape.
When North was first born, China wanted to take her away.
He saw the grey-wrapped bundle in Korea’s arms, still red and wrinkly, and his eyes widened and his mouth hung open for a split-second, while Korea watched him with eyes still blurry from pain and endorphins, and then his mouth closed and his jaw firmed up and he said Give her to me, aru.
He said other things, too, like You are too young for this, Chaoxian, and I will take good care of her, you know that, and You cannot raise her, you don’t know how, and You cannot do this, Chaoxian, it will destroy you. He said so many gentle, concerned things while his hands pried carefully at Korea’s death-grasp on his daughter, with his voice and the frown on his face all full of worry. China never meant any malice, Korea knows this. He knew, even at the time, that China only wanted to take care of him, to take away his burden, to keep him and his daughter, not safe and well, but as unbroken and happy as he could. He knew that China’s fingers worked at his bruised arms from concern and not cruelty, but all that mattered was that China wanted to take North away.
Korea said no. He was too weak and exhausted to struggle, but he wrapped his arms around his daughter tight, and wouldn’t let her go. China kept talking to him, trying to coax him to hand her over, until the fumbling and hugging woke North up and she started to cry.
Korea’s never learned how to resist that cry, even now. In that shabby, dirty room, still reeling from the end of the war, he didn’t stand a chance. It speared into him, and protectiveness surged up, and he didn’t know what to do.
It might almost have made him hand her over to China then and there, to someone who could make her calm, but that cry said that she was his, even if he didn’t know how to help her.
He cradled her close and kissed her hair. He squeezed his eyes shut to keep the tears in, so that they wouldn’t both cry, and not to show what a child he still was in front of aniki, even if his big brother already knew. He pressed his face against the top of her little head. After a moment, he felt China’s hands loosen and fall away.
When he dared open his eyes again, he saw China staring at him with strange, shadowed eyes. His hands hung limp at his sides, and there was something in his gaze that Korea had never seen before and couldn’t understand, something old and worn and sad.
China said, quietly, If that is how it is to be.
The wind outside rustled through the trees and the broken slats of the house.
And China was right, of course. Korea was too weak, and too broken, and too young.
He was too broken to rein North in, to keep her wild fear from overwhelming her, to keep her in his arms and in his house. He would wake to her wide eyes and screaming in the night, and stumble out of the bed they shared to cradle her and sing the songs he remembered from when he was little, and born out of Silla, but he was too young to know how to soothe her.
He fed her from his portion of rice and noodles until his ribs pressed against his skin, he coaxed her out from her little fortresses underneath the table and the sink, he did all he could think of to do, and her boss took her out of his arms and placed a gun in her hands.
And now he sits across a table and watches China and North snap at one another. China’s face is stressed and harried, worn out by environmental disasters and nuclear haggling. North’s hair is chopped short above her jawline and heavy with grease; her face is thin and pinched from hunger and creased with political instability. She’s grown faster than he has; people are more likely to think her China’s child than his, but she’s still small. Not that she acts it. For all that her leaders don’t take her seriously, with her child-sized body and her summer-storm moods, North takes herself and her position very seriously indeed.
“You must relent with this foolishness, Chaoxian!” China snaps.
North’s eyes are dark and hot. “It is not foolishness, Junghwa. It is the sovereign right of states to -” She starts repeating the words her leaders have drilled into her brain, and Korea sticks his fingers into his ears because he knows it all by heart, and every time he hears her say it drives the knife a little deeper. He knows what a failure he is as a parent, and it hurts a little more every time he has to see her like this. So. He sticks his fingers in his ears and hums to himself.
China comes up to him after the meeting is over, his eyes tired and lined at the corners. “Hanguo,” he begins - because he gave Korea’s old name to his daughter, and now Korea wears a new one - “I do not think that she is well.”
And he’s right, of course. Everything China says to him about North -- You had her too young, you raised her wrong, you could not bring her up safely - all of it is right. China is always right about these things.
But North walks up to him when China has left, short and neat in her too-loose military uniform.
“You are a running dog of the capitalist scum,” she informs him.
Korea laughs to hide the hurt, because there is nothing else he can do. “This capitalist dog makes pretty good ice cream, da ze! Would you like some?” He offers her his hand. There’s a parlour down the street; he’d buy her any flavour she wanted if it would put a sparkle in her eye for just a second, to see her happy --
“Ice cream cannot secure the future of the people,” North snaps. She yanks her hand away from his. “Ice cream cannot put food on the table. Ice cream cannot hold the borders.” She glares up at him with white-hot eyes. “And I will not sit and eat ice cream with you!”
Korea smiles as harmlessly as he can and shows her his palms, even though that only sometimes worked when she was a toddler hiding under the sink in one of her black moods, and has worked less and less since then. “Okay, Bukhan. I just thought you might like it, okay? No harm meant. It was just a mistake. It doesn’t matter -” North’s eyes flash darkly, and Korea knows that he has said the wrong thing. Again.
“No harm?” she says, with rage building up under her words. “No harm?” She takes a step towards him and Korea backs away. She is small and sickly, with delicate bones, and fired terrible by her anger, and he cannot - will not - defend himself against her.
“You gave me away!” she snarls. “You tried to take my land! You let me starve, you threw me at Junghwa! He could have killed me and you did nothing! You never helped me! You let him back in after everything he did to us, but you never helped me! You fought me! And you think you can fix all of that with ice cream?” Her voice has risen to a shriek, and Korea can feel people staring at them.
“I hate you!” North screams, and whirls around and sprints toward the gates before he can say anything, before he can even hold out his hand. He watches her go, worthless to stop her.
This is how he knows that China was right.
**
North doesn’t look like Japan. She wouldn’t. Japan himself was always very honourable about that.
His people … not so much.
Six of Japan’s soldiers cornered him in Seoul. He was still all of the Korean peninsula then, not just the south, and he fought with all the resistance in him, from border to sea. He killed one of them before they pinned him down, but there were five of them left and he was battered and weak.
And once they had him down and sliced the clothing from his body … well. He’s always been a boy for as long as he can remember, but the body under the clothes was a girl’s, and that was all they cared about.
He was lucky to get away without being made into one of their comfort women. He doesn’t really remember much of it, but he knows that he had a sword in his hands for a moment. Mostly he remembers running. Running down the alleys of Seoul, running through dark corridors, running over scorched dirt, until finally he collapsed into a heap of rags and hid.
And got out, and dressed like a man again the next morning, because that’s what he was.
And he was lucky, because from when the baby started to show enough that he couldn’t hide it, to the messy, scary birth, he didn’t have to meet any other nations. He saw Japan, once, before the bump got really big. That was it.
Except for near the end, when the extra weight kept throwing him off balance because he was so thin, and he was more and more frightened of what was going to happen with every passing day, and he stumbled into Vietnam’s house in the middle of the night, and she was barely sitting up, staring with wide, surprised eyes, when he fell to his knees and begged her to help him.
She did, too. He doesn’t remember much of the birth - Vietnam forced half the drink in her house down his throat when the labour pangs got bad - but he remembers that he was terrified. His body was doing something weird, and it was even more painful than what had happened to make it that way; he screamed and sobbed and clutched at Vietnam’s hand while she bent over his knees and tried to get the baby’s head out. There were spiders on the walls and something was trying to get out of his body. She had to pat his knee and calm him down, and then at the end of it, when he was wondering if he’d died - the pain had gone - she handed his daughter to him.
Korea had half-hoped that the child would be human - her father had been, after all. But she wasn’t. It was obvious just from looking at her that she wasn’t human. That she was like him.
He never told Japan.
For one thing because he’s never really needed to tell Japan. Japan has eyes and a brain; he’d be perfectly capable of working it out for himself, if he thought about it. If Korea told him the other, secret part, that Vietnam has held sworn safe all these years.
But Japan’s government denies, denies, denies, and Japan himself denies, denies, denies, even some of the parts that his government lets him hear - which aren’t much. And Korea himself -
Back when he was off the world stage, when it was just him and North in his house, there was nothing he wanted more than to forget.
He did his best. Her black moods scared him, so he tried to soothe them out of her. He nursed her. When she was old enough to walk, and she’d burst into tears suddenly and run to him, he knelt down and pulled her onto his lap, sang his songs into her hair.
And then she’d do things that all the love he could give her couldn’t fix. He loved her so much he thought his heart could burst with it, but everything he did was wrong, and he couldn’t figure out the right thing to do, and for all his loving he screwed North up. And her leaders took her away from him, and dressed her as a soldier, and put a gun into her little hand and told her he was the enemy.
And when Korea stepped back onto the world stage, all that everyone knew was that he’d had a child too young, and that he’d tried to raise her and brought her up mad.
It was his fault. He knows it was his fault; that if he’d done something right, North could be happy, not starving-sick on the other side of the DMZ. Telling Japan the whole of it would be like trying to make it not-his-fault, and what would be the point anyway? They’re all dead now, and it won’t fix North.
After the next World Meeting, five days in the sweltering heat of Naples, he steps outside and there’s North, all serious and correct. Korea stops dead, not sure what to say or if he should say anything at all - so he doesn’t, just stares at North.
It’s North who breaks the silence. “You offered me ice cream,” she suggests, as tentatively as her military voice ever gets.
South Korea wants to whoop and grin and scoop her up and dance around the plaza with her - but he just smiles brightly and says, “I still am!”
North bites her lip and nods quickly. “Just this once.”
She puts her hand in his, and Korea wants to sing.
Rating: R.
Summary: North is South's child, not his sibling, so it's his fault that he couldn't bring her up safe.
Warnings: Mentions of rape.
When North was first born, China wanted to take her away.
He saw the grey-wrapped bundle in Korea’s arms, still red and wrinkly, and his eyes widened and his mouth hung open for a split-second, while Korea watched him with eyes still blurry from pain and endorphins, and then his mouth closed and his jaw firmed up and he said Give her to me, aru.
He said other things, too, like You are too young for this, Chaoxian, and I will take good care of her, you know that, and You cannot raise her, you don’t know how, and You cannot do this, Chaoxian, it will destroy you. He said so many gentle, concerned things while his hands pried carefully at Korea’s death-grasp on his daughter, with his voice and the frown on his face all full of worry. China never meant any malice, Korea knows this. He knew, even at the time, that China only wanted to take care of him, to take away his burden, to keep him and his daughter, not safe and well, but as unbroken and happy as he could. He knew that China’s fingers worked at his bruised arms from concern and not cruelty, but all that mattered was that China wanted to take North away.
Korea said no. He was too weak and exhausted to struggle, but he wrapped his arms around his daughter tight, and wouldn’t let her go. China kept talking to him, trying to coax him to hand her over, until the fumbling and hugging woke North up and she started to cry.
Korea’s never learned how to resist that cry, even now. In that shabby, dirty room, still reeling from the end of the war, he didn’t stand a chance. It speared into him, and protectiveness surged up, and he didn’t know what to do.
It might almost have made him hand her over to China then and there, to someone who could make her calm, but that cry said that she was his, even if he didn’t know how to help her.
He cradled her close and kissed her hair. He squeezed his eyes shut to keep the tears in, so that they wouldn’t both cry, and not to show what a child he still was in front of aniki, even if his big brother already knew. He pressed his face against the top of her little head. After a moment, he felt China’s hands loosen and fall away.
When he dared open his eyes again, he saw China staring at him with strange, shadowed eyes. His hands hung limp at his sides, and there was something in his gaze that Korea had never seen before and couldn’t understand, something old and worn and sad.
China said, quietly, If that is how it is to be.
The wind outside rustled through the trees and the broken slats of the house.
And China was right, of course. Korea was too weak, and too broken, and too young.
He was too broken to rein North in, to keep her wild fear from overwhelming her, to keep her in his arms and in his house. He would wake to her wide eyes and screaming in the night, and stumble out of the bed they shared to cradle her and sing the songs he remembered from when he was little, and born out of Silla, but he was too young to know how to soothe her.
He fed her from his portion of rice and noodles until his ribs pressed against his skin, he coaxed her out from her little fortresses underneath the table and the sink, he did all he could think of to do, and her boss took her out of his arms and placed a gun in her hands.
And now he sits across a table and watches China and North snap at one another. China’s face is stressed and harried, worn out by environmental disasters and nuclear haggling. North’s hair is chopped short above her jawline and heavy with grease; her face is thin and pinched from hunger and creased with political instability. She’s grown faster than he has; people are more likely to think her China’s child than his, but she’s still small. Not that she acts it. For all that her leaders don’t take her seriously, with her child-sized body and her summer-storm moods, North takes herself and her position very seriously indeed.
“You must relent with this foolishness, Chaoxian!” China snaps.
North’s eyes are dark and hot. “It is not foolishness, Junghwa. It is the sovereign right of states to -” She starts repeating the words her leaders have drilled into her brain, and Korea sticks his fingers into his ears because he knows it all by heart, and every time he hears her say it drives the knife a little deeper. He knows what a failure he is as a parent, and it hurts a little more every time he has to see her like this. So. He sticks his fingers in his ears and hums to himself.
China comes up to him after the meeting is over, his eyes tired and lined at the corners. “Hanguo,” he begins - because he gave Korea’s old name to his daughter, and now Korea wears a new one - “I do not think that she is well.”
And he’s right, of course. Everything China says to him about North -- You had her too young, you raised her wrong, you could not bring her up safely - all of it is right. China is always right about these things.
But North walks up to him when China has left, short and neat in her too-loose military uniform.
“You are a running dog of the capitalist scum,” she informs him.
Korea laughs to hide the hurt, because there is nothing else he can do. “This capitalist dog makes pretty good ice cream, da ze! Would you like some?” He offers her his hand. There’s a parlour down the street; he’d buy her any flavour she wanted if it would put a sparkle in her eye for just a second, to see her happy --
“Ice cream cannot secure the future of the people,” North snaps. She yanks her hand away from his. “Ice cream cannot put food on the table. Ice cream cannot hold the borders.” She glares up at him with white-hot eyes. “And I will not sit and eat ice cream with you!”
Korea smiles as harmlessly as he can and shows her his palms, even though that only sometimes worked when she was a toddler hiding under the sink in one of her black moods, and has worked less and less since then. “Okay, Bukhan. I just thought you might like it, okay? No harm meant. It was just a mistake. It doesn’t matter -” North’s eyes flash darkly, and Korea knows that he has said the wrong thing. Again.
“No harm?” she says, with rage building up under her words. “No harm?” She takes a step towards him and Korea backs away. She is small and sickly, with delicate bones, and fired terrible by her anger, and he cannot - will not - defend himself against her.
“You gave me away!” she snarls. “You tried to take my land! You let me starve, you threw me at Junghwa! He could have killed me and you did nothing! You never helped me! You let him back in after everything he did to us, but you never helped me! You fought me! And you think you can fix all of that with ice cream?” Her voice has risen to a shriek, and Korea can feel people staring at them.
“I hate you!” North screams, and whirls around and sprints toward the gates before he can say anything, before he can even hold out his hand. He watches her go, worthless to stop her.
This is how he knows that China was right.
**
North doesn’t look like Japan. She wouldn’t. Japan himself was always very honourable about that.
His people … not so much.
Six of Japan’s soldiers cornered him in Seoul. He was still all of the Korean peninsula then, not just the south, and he fought with all the resistance in him, from border to sea. He killed one of them before they pinned him down, but there were five of them left and he was battered and weak.
And once they had him down and sliced the clothing from his body … well. He’s always been a boy for as long as he can remember, but the body under the clothes was a girl’s, and that was all they cared about.
He was lucky to get away without being made into one of their comfort women. He doesn’t really remember much of it, but he knows that he had a sword in his hands for a moment. Mostly he remembers running. Running down the alleys of Seoul, running through dark corridors, running over scorched dirt, until finally he collapsed into a heap of rags and hid.
And got out, and dressed like a man again the next morning, because that’s what he was.
And he was lucky, because from when the baby started to show enough that he couldn’t hide it, to the messy, scary birth, he didn’t have to meet any other nations. He saw Japan, once, before the bump got really big. That was it.
Except for near the end, when the extra weight kept throwing him off balance because he was so thin, and he was more and more frightened of what was going to happen with every passing day, and he stumbled into Vietnam’s house in the middle of the night, and she was barely sitting up, staring with wide, surprised eyes, when he fell to his knees and begged her to help him.
She did, too. He doesn’t remember much of the birth - Vietnam forced half the drink in her house down his throat when the labour pangs got bad - but he remembers that he was terrified. His body was doing something weird, and it was even more painful than what had happened to make it that way; he screamed and sobbed and clutched at Vietnam’s hand while she bent over his knees and tried to get the baby’s head out. There were spiders on the walls and something was trying to get out of his body. She had to pat his knee and calm him down, and then at the end of it, when he was wondering if he’d died - the pain had gone - she handed his daughter to him.
Korea had half-hoped that the child would be human - her father had been, after all. But she wasn’t. It was obvious just from looking at her that she wasn’t human. That she was like him.
He never told Japan.
For one thing because he’s never really needed to tell Japan. Japan has eyes and a brain; he’d be perfectly capable of working it out for himself, if he thought about it. If Korea told him the other, secret part, that Vietnam has held sworn safe all these years.
But Japan’s government denies, denies, denies, and Japan himself denies, denies, denies, even some of the parts that his government lets him hear - which aren’t much. And Korea himself -
Back when he was off the world stage, when it was just him and North in his house, there was nothing he wanted more than to forget.
He did his best. Her black moods scared him, so he tried to soothe them out of her. He nursed her. When she was old enough to walk, and she’d burst into tears suddenly and run to him, he knelt down and pulled her onto his lap, sang his songs into her hair.
And then she’d do things that all the love he could give her couldn’t fix. He loved her so much he thought his heart could burst with it, but everything he did was wrong, and he couldn’t figure out the right thing to do, and for all his loving he screwed North up. And her leaders took her away from him, and dressed her as a soldier, and put a gun into her little hand and told her he was the enemy.
And when Korea stepped back onto the world stage, all that everyone knew was that he’d had a child too young, and that he’d tried to raise her and brought her up mad.
It was his fault. He knows it was his fault; that if he’d done something right, North could be happy, not starving-sick on the other side of the DMZ. Telling Japan the whole of it would be like trying to make it not-his-fault, and what would be the point anyway? They’re all dead now, and it won’t fix North.
After the next World Meeting, five days in the sweltering heat of Naples, he steps outside and there’s North, all serious and correct. Korea stops dead, not sure what to say or if he should say anything at all - so he doesn’t, just stares at North.
It’s North who breaks the silence. “You offered me ice cream,” she suggests, as tentatively as her military voice ever gets.
South Korea wants to whoop and grin and scoop her up and dance around the plaza with her - but he just smiles brightly and says, “I still am!”
North bites her lip and nods quickly. “Just this once.”
She puts her hand in his, and Korea wants to sing.