(no subject)
Title: I'll Take The Truth At Any Cost
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Sun, Ji Yeon, Aaron
Word Count: 1,103
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Spoilers for 4.07. AU from there, set in the future. He's always known something was off. There are only so many times you can pull the wool over someone's eyes.
He’s always known something was off. There are only so many times you can pull the wool over someone’s eyes.
Yes, it’s odd that he looks nothing like his mom. That his mom won’t even give him the name of his father. That his mother’s best friend, Sun, has a daughter, a year younger than him, who also doesn’t know her father. At least she has a name. At least there’s a grave, some proof that he existed.
He’s only seven when his mom brings him to Sun’s, two years after she’s moved to the states from Korea, tells him that she has some business to take care of but she loves him and she’ll be back soon.
By the time he’s sixteen he has a hard time remembering her face.
To her credit, Sun never does pass him off to anyone else. She could’ve, she had every right to. But she didn’t. She treated him like he was her own son.
Kids are curious by nature. Two of them together are an accident waiting to happen. He’d grown up with Ji Yeon, even before his mother was gone. They shared a room like siblings do, and it was the late night conversations that made them start to put pieces together.
“Mom never told me how my dad died.” She says, one night, rolls over in her bed to look at him. The lights are off and he can only vaguely see her but he knows from her voice that she’s just as awake as he is.
“My mom never told me where I was born.” Aaron replies. It’s something that’s always bothered him. “Or where she went.”
Ji gets up out of bed, goes to the door and pulls it open carefully and quietly, looking for some sign of movement. The hallway is dark, no light left on. Sun’s in bed for the night already. Confident that they won’t be heard, Ji runs back into bed, and flips on the light sitting on her nightstand, rummaging through the top drawer and producing a newspaper clipping which she passes to him.
The ink is smeared slightly and the paper is yellowed, but he can clearly see what he’s supposed to be looking at. It’s part of an article on a plane crash and he can plainly see both the names Sun Kwon and Kate Austen, along with a picture of the latter. He looks at it closer and sees it’s a mug shot. He’s not surprised; he knows about that. This plane crash...that he doesn’t know about. “Where did you get this?”
“A girl at school found a bunch of old newspapers in the closet at home. She was moving them and saw that. I guess it was front page news.” Ji gets up again; this time takes a seat next to him, tired of talking across the room. “It says they found the bodies of all the people on the plane.”
“Well we know that’s not possible.” He reads over it again, tries to process it but it’s all gibberish to him. Nothing is making sense to him. “Why would they lie?”
“Which one? The press or our parents?”
She has a point. He’s never felt more deceived than he does now.
---
He uses the laptop in his Physics class to Google ‘Oceanic Flight 815’ while his teacher thinks he’s working on a lab.
He sees phrases like ‘government conspiracy’ and can’t fight the feeling that no matter how much he reads he’s not going to answer a straight answer about what happened.
He has to ask someone who knows.
---
“No way.” Ji says, the minute he brings it up. “My mother would just as soon kick you out than answer that. Why would they work so hard to hide something and then just give it up at the drop of a hat?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
He goes unchallenged.
---
“Why didn’t you ever tell us about the plane crash?”
They’d decided it was best if Ji asked it. She had less of a chance of getting yelled at than he did. Not that he’d ever really heard Sun yell, but he was sure he didn’t want to.
There’s the sound of metal clattering with her plate as Sun’s fork kind of slips out of her hand, and she doesn’t quite seem to know what to do. Ji shoots him a look across the table, and he nods, sure of himself. This was going to happen sometime.
Sun doesn’t ask about how they found out, or when they found out. She folds her hands in her lap and tells them both, “You were too young to understand.”
“My mother went back didn’t she?” It all starts to click in Aaron’s head; it all starts to truly connect. “She went back to that island.”
Clearly she doesn’t want to answer but she nods. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Mom,” Ji pipes up, the first thing she’s said since she started the conversation. “Of all people why keep us in the dark and risk us finding it out from someone else?” Ji’s got a way with words, a soft, friendly tone that’s like her mother’s is generally. He can see it’s having some affect on Sun. “I mean up until I read what I did I didn’t have a clue about any of this. You were in a plane crash? And that’s how dad died? And he didn’t even know where he was born. Isn’t that a little ridiculous?”
“There are many things you don’t know. In some cases, it isn’t my place to tell you.” She’s looking directly at Aaron now, and he knows she means it’s a conversation best saved for him and his mother.
“I haven’t seen my mother in nine years,” he says, quietly, finally really accepting this, “what makes you think she’s coming back?”
Sun nods, hesitantly, and lets words, the truths that she hasn’t spoken in over a decade, tumble from her lips.
---
That night there’s no late night chatter after Sun goes to bed. The light is turned off and it stays off. Ji turns her back to him and there’s nothing but devastating silence.
No more speculating. And now that he knows everything, now that he knows that a lot of his life, and their lives, is essentially built out of lies, he kind of wishes that she’d never shown him that newspaper clipping. Kind of like how she wishes he’d never pushed the subject.
It was always a lose-lose situation. Secrets don’t stay buried that long without reason.
Fandom: Lost
Characters/Pairings: Sun, Ji Yeon, Aaron
Word Count: 1,103
Rating: PG-13
Summary: Spoilers for 4.07. AU from there, set in the future. He's always known something was off. There are only so many times you can pull the wool over someone's eyes.
He’s always known something was off. There are only so many times you can pull the wool over someone’s eyes.
Yes, it’s odd that he looks nothing like his mom. That his mom won’t even give him the name of his father. That his mother’s best friend, Sun, has a daughter, a year younger than him, who also doesn’t know her father. At least she has a name. At least there’s a grave, some proof that he existed.
He’s only seven when his mom brings him to Sun’s, two years after she’s moved to the states from Korea, tells him that she has some business to take care of but she loves him and she’ll be back soon.
By the time he’s sixteen he has a hard time remembering her face.
To her credit, Sun never does pass him off to anyone else. She could’ve, she had every right to. But she didn’t. She treated him like he was her own son.
Kids are curious by nature. Two of them together are an accident waiting to happen. He’d grown up with Ji Yeon, even before his mother was gone. They shared a room like siblings do, and it was the late night conversations that made them start to put pieces together.
“Mom never told me how my dad died.” She says, one night, rolls over in her bed to look at him. The lights are off and he can only vaguely see her but he knows from her voice that she’s just as awake as he is.
“My mom never told me where I was born.” Aaron replies. It’s something that’s always bothered him. “Or where she went.”
Ji gets up out of bed, goes to the door and pulls it open carefully and quietly, looking for some sign of movement. The hallway is dark, no light left on. Sun’s in bed for the night already. Confident that they won’t be heard, Ji runs back into bed, and flips on the light sitting on her nightstand, rummaging through the top drawer and producing a newspaper clipping which she passes to him.
The ink is smeared slightly and the paper is yellowed, but he can clearly see what he’s supposed to be looking at. It’s part of an article on a plane crash and he can plainly see both the names Sun Kwon and Kate Austen, along with a picture of the latter. He looks at it closer and sees it’s a mug shot. He’s not surprised; he knows about that. This plane crash...that he doesn’t know about. “Where did you get this?”
“A girl at school found a bunch of old newspapers in the closet at home. She was moving them and saw that. I guess it was front page news.” Ji gets up again; this time takes a seat next to him, tired of talking across the room. “It says they found the bodies of all the people on the plane.”
“Well we know that’s not possible.” He reads over it again, tries to process it but it’s all gibberish to him. Nothing is making sense to him. “Why would they lie?”
“Which one? The press or our parents?”
She has a point. He’s never felt more deceived than he does now.
---
He uses the laptop in his Physics class to Google ‘Oceanic Flight 815’ while his teacher thinks he’s working on a lab.
He sees phrases like ‘government conspiracy’ and can’t fight the feeling that no matter how much he reads he’s not going to answer a straight answer about what happened.
He has to ask someone who knows.
---
“No way.” Ji says, the minute he brings it up. “My mother would just as soon kick you out than answer that. Why would they work so hard to hide something and then just give it up at the drop of a hat?”
“Do you have a better idea?”
He goes unchallenged.
---
“Why didn’t you ever tell us about the plane crash?”
They’d decided it was best if Ji asked it. She had less of a chance of getting yelled at than he did. Not that he’d ever really heard Sun yell, but he was sure he didn’t want to.
There’s the sound of metal clattering with her plate as Sun’s fork kind of slips out of her hand, and she doesn’t quite seem to know what to do. Ji shoots him a look across the table, and he nods, sure of himself. This was going to happen sometime.
Sun doesn’t ask about how they found out, or when they found out. She folds her hands in her lap and tells them both, “You were too young to understand.”
“My mother went back didn’t she?” It all starts to click in Aaron’s head; it all starts to truly connect. “She went back to that island.”
Clearly she doesn’t want to answer but she nods. “Yes.”
“Why?”
“It’s a long story.”
“Mom,” Ji pipes up, the first thing she’s said since she started the conversation. “Of all people why keep us in the dark and risk us finding it out from someone else?” Ji’s got a way with words, a soft, friendly tone that’s like her mother’s is generally. He can see it’s having some affect on Sun. “I mean up until I read what I did I didn’t have a clue about any of this. You were in a plane crash? And that’s how dad died? And he didn’t even know where he was born. Isn’t that a little ridiculous?”
“There are many things you don’t know. In some cases, it isn’t my place to tell you.” She’s looking directly at Aaron now, and he knows she means it’s a conversation best saved for him and his mother.
“I haven’t seen my mother in nine years,” he says, quietly, finally really accepting this, “what makes you think she’s coming back?”
Sun nods, hesitantly, and lets words, the truths that she hasn’t spoken in over a decade, tumble from her lips.
---
That night there’s no late night chatter after Sun goes to bed. The light is turned off and it stays off. Ji turns her back to him and there’s nothing but devastating silence.
No more speculating. And now that he knows everything, now that he knows that a lot of his life, and their lives, is essentially built out of lies, he kind of wishes that she’d never shown him that newspaper clipping. Kind of like how she wishes he’d never pushed the subject.
It was always a lose-lose situation. Secrets don’t stay buried that long without reason.