[Fic] Ballad of the Moon : 10
Title: Ballad of the Moon
Pairing: Jaemin, Yoomin
Length: Chapter 10/?
Genre: fantasy, adventure, angst,drama
Disclaimer: idea based on goose-girl fairy tale ~
Summary: Changmin has no control over his life as he's forced to leave his home to become the escort of the Crown Prince in a faraway land. Before he can even reach his destination, he's betrayed by his own guard and barely escapes death, finding himself alone and forgotten in a dark forsaken land where magic is real and even the moon has deserted the sky.
A/N: hope u like this lameo angst :) posting before i change my mind and edit the crap out of it :S kkk
Previous Chapters: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine |
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“Trying to run away, were you?”
That cold whispering voice was circling around and around in his head, filling his ears in increasing echoes. Yoochun’s body swayed dangerously as it rocked through him, dancing along his shoulders before stinging his ears yet again.
“Fool.” Sharp. Terrifying. Amused. “Why would you come here?”
Almost as if the words themselves were alive, closing in on him and digging into his mind mercilessly, they rippled and ran along his very nerves. It hurt to hear them. It hurt to feel them, and even after the man stopped talking the feeling just wouldn’t stop.
Yoochun was unable to move from where he’d fallen. The world spun around him, and he was laying dizzily in its center. The Sorcerer was still there looking down at him, looming over him like a huge black nothing that was the only thing that stayed still. Too large and insurmountable for even the earth to dare move, too horrifyingly real to look away from.
Stricken, Yoochun stared blankly up at him, unable to shake the feel of minute stinging pricks still running up and down his whole body.
“It’s unfortunate the dear Crown Prince was nowhere to be found when his father the King collapsed earlier today.” His head tilted, white face chiseled stone. No emotion, no humanity. Eyes hard and unforgiving. “He was calling for his heir...everyone was searching for him. Who would have thought he’d be here of all places?”
He leaned closer, bending over him, and Yoochun couldn’t breathe. His presence alone was a heavy invisible pressure that bent the very air out of shape. “...And what could he possibly be doing here?” Came the question. Though Yoochun knew, just knew, that somehow the man already knew the answers to everything even when Yoochun himself didn’t know how or why.
Yoochun gasped for air, vision tunneling as the Sorcerer drew closer. Much too close. He could see nothing but darkness reflected in those eyes. He shook his head, the movement jerky and wrought with fear.
He couldn’t remember why. He didn’t know what he was doing there, didn’t know why he was currently immobilized and laying helpless in the dirt. Alone with the very man whose influence he’d been shamelessly trying to escape, trying to run and save himself even if that meant he left everyone and everything else behind.
But who was he fooling? Why would anyone in their right mind run away to the very home of such a man? Even the reason that had seemed so important, so big and meaningful, the one that had demanded him to crawl from his bed that afternoon now seemed so humiliatingly stupid.
Was it really all because this was where he could find the man who filled his dreams? Was it really all for the sake of finding a single person he hadn’t been sure even existed? Wasn’t it all just to save himself the torture that the Sorcerer’s presence in the castle brought him? Wasn’t it all just to put an end to the man that haunted his dreams? He hadn’t been driven by anything more than selfishness. And because of him, Changmin...Changmin had been the one dragged horribly away...
Suddenly the Sorcerer was drawing backwards sharply. His gaze was even colder, more unforgiving than ever, and his next words were hissed like an uncoiling serpent from white dead lips.
“You want my slave.”
Yoochun cowered under the intense penetrating ferocity of his gaze, shrinking back as the words exposed the pathetic demeaning truth. He couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, just shaking his head weakly ‘no’.
The Sorcerer’s lips curled slightly to one side, twisted unnaturally as he leered down at him. “No?” He obviously didn’t believe him. “Then what could have brought you here...my Prince?”
He couldn’t grasp at what the man wanted, just frozen under the power of his words alone. So small and insignificant, unable to think of anything but blank fear. Unable to even formulate a semblance of an answer, words spilling from his mouth in a pathetic string of half formed pleas and begging.
“I didn’t- didn’t mean to. I d-don’t know - I would never- please don’t... don’t hurt m-me!”
He’d long lost sight of everything around him, vision clouding as that unbearable pressure pressed him into the ground, crushing his ribs and sending pain lancing through his skull. Compressing him forcefully and blood pounded feverishly through his temple, filling the air with the thundering thud of each heart beat. Frantic, panicked and trapped.
It was so dark. He could only remember that unbearable pain in his heart, groping helplessly with hands that dissolved everything they touched and falling into infinite darkness. He didn’t want to lose himself within it once again, the very thing he’d tried to run from already seizing him up like a lifeless doll and clenching his body in a painful vise.
Moaning and struggling futilely against the formidable nothing, he could still somehow hear the crooning voice of the Sorcerer winding around him, binding him body and soul, filling his head with poison that trickled down his veins disgustingly. Invasive. Taking him over until there was none of him left.
Panic. More panic and fear so potent he could do nothing but curl into himself, hands clamping around his ears in a vain attempt to block it out. He knew the crying pleading cries were his own, but he couldn’t even control them as he felt his veins slowly bloating, swelling with the feel of the Sorcerer moving through him, squeezing his organs and nearly stopping his heart.
He didn’t know anything but the single-minded need for it to stop, or he was going to lose himself, screaming until his body exploded and let him break free, to escape at last. He was slowly losing his mind with each slip and twist of that something within his body.
And then suddenly it stopped. It trickled out of him like blood leaving a wound, hot and sick, slowly drawing the insufferable pressure with it, until he could finally breathe again. And he found he was curled into the dirt, face pressed deep into the soil, filling his mouth and nose, stinging his eyes.
He coughed weakly, the sound of his own voice sounding scratched and torn. It was quiet above him, and his fingers clutched at the solidness of the earth, too scared to turn and see what had happened or what was still watching and waiting above him.
He couldn’t deal with it so soon, before the bruises of the curse had even faded. The nightmares were again becoming real, welcoming back the darkness that was alive, leaving his body and mind to fall victim to the whims of black magic. Pain and losing himself in grotesque visions and realities he wanted nothing more than to forget but that plagued him, haunted him, stayed with him.
His body shuddered and shook as he couldn’t quite believe it was over. Just waiting for the next onslaught, unable to even prepare himself but just wishing it would happen quickly, even as he hoped it wouldn’t come at all.
It came the next moment, a murmured command he couldn’t even understand but that his body reacted to of its own accord. He pushed himself up on shaky arms, coughing and spitting the dirt from his mouth. He resisted as much as he could, hunched over himself and not daring to raise his eyes, bowed low on his knees as if he could disappear into himself.
He didn’t care about anything but that. Disappearing...Disappearing...Becoming nothing. Just fading away until he didn’t have to feel or be anymore. Nothing for them to attack, nothing for them to hurt.
It took him a few moments to realize someone was coming towards them. Soft footsteps crushing the grass and soft huffs of air as if he’d been running and was still trying to catch his breath.
It was then he found suddenly that he was no longer bound, his body finally no longer under the Sorcerer’s control as he lifted his head slowly with his own power to see who was coming. His eyes trailed up the dark robes of Jaejoong who was striding towards them. He was nearly to where they were, and he was coming alone.
But before Yoochun could even begin to wonder where he’d taken Changmin and if he could have suffered through the same torture he’d just experienced, his eyes widened in shock.
Because as the man came to stand before the Sorcerer and Yoochun chanced a glance up at him, he saw that the hood that had always shrouded the man’s identity, hidden his face mysteriously, was no longer there. His face was exposed at last, and he couldn’t help but stare.
Jaejoong was a beautiful young man, unexpectedly beautiful, yet just as pale and cold looking as his father. But what shocked him was not the man’s precisely sculpted features nor the way his skin was so white it was almost glowing translucence, but the large ugly black bruise running along the side of his jaw. The bright red blood lining his lips and smeared down along one side of his chin.
And then he was remembering himself and quickly averting his eyes, staring at the man’s feet as the Sorcerer directed all of his burning attention on his son. His voice was low and menacing, cutting through the air as if it were a physical thing.
“You let him touch you?”
Jaejoong, who had been staring up at his father with big empty looking eyes, blinked slowly. Only the faintest hint of an expression crossed his face like a mockery of emotion, a flickering shadow, before he suddenly lowered his eyes to the ground. He stared fixedly at the dirt with a piercing black glare as the Sorcerer took a step closer.
Long fingers came to grip Jaejoong’s chin tightly, forcing his face back up and exposing the ugly mark in its entirety, and Yoochun watched fascinated, heart beating quietly in his chest as he saw the way the Sorcerer’s eyes raked sharply over his son’s face.
“Pathetic...can’t even subdue a disgusting slave.”
Cold displeasure, degrading and tearing into the upturned face as he spit out the words. No emotion crossed Jaejoong’s face, he didn’t move or hardly react. Stiff and rigid beneath the grasp and judgement of his father.
Yoochun, too, was frozen in place. Not quite believing his eyes or knowing what he was seeing. Changmin had done it? Changmin had hurt him...had fought. And his heart clenched painfully. Something like regretful shame, because he hadn’t even tried to stop it or help. Something like fear because he knew that Jaejoong must have given back triple what he’d received. And his body trembled as he tried not to think about it, tried not to imagine what he could have possibly done to Changmin in retribution.
Jaejoong finally spoke. The softest shortest apology. Just one single ‘Forgive me’, and the Sorcerer’s hand released his chin with a small flick.
Jaejoong bowed his head, but Yoochun could see his eyes were opened wide, unfathomably dark and blank. Unseeing.
“It wont happen again. I’ll make sure he never leaves-”
“No.” The Sorcerer cut him off. “You failed yet again. You are not to interfere. You are to do nothing.”
The Sorcerer watched him disapprovingly, eyes sharp and calculating while he rubbed the tips of the fingers that had touched Jaejoong’s face together slightly, a crease slowly drawing itself between his brows as he glanced down at his own hand.
“You’re cold.”
Yoochun didn’t understand what it meant, why Jaejoong was suddenly going still, eyes wide, fists clenching by his sides. His body was shaking yet he was obviously struggling to suppress and hide it.
A long moment passed. A silence so tense and full of unspoken words, full of energy he couldn’t see but could only feel rippling off of both of them to spark and devour each other in the air around him. Charged and dangerous.
Jaejoong took a slow hesitant breath. “Please....Unbind...me.” He whispered to the grass trampled beneath his feet, the muscles in his jaw tightening as he seemed to have trouble forcing the words out.
Yoochun breathed shallowly, eyes flickering up from the ground as discreetly as he could, knowing this was something he shouldn’t be witnessing, but unable to avoid it, unable to run away, and almost fascinated by the scene unfolding before him.
The Sorcerer was silent. An eerily cold silence that emanated from his very being slunk around them, turning the air into a heavy grey fog that misted across Yoochun’s face. Clammy and damp on his skin, clouding his eyes and curling around his body. He was too scared to try to fight it off, to draw attention to himself, even as it hid the two magicians from view, even as it blocked out the sky and turned the world into nothing but nondescript grayness.
The moment he realized that he couldn’t even see his own hands before his face, the charging fear within him snapped free. Yoochun was already moving before the thought finished, slipped slightly as he shifting ever so carefully backwards, hands scrabbling in the dirt, clawing through long blades of grass before he turned quickly and began to blindly crawl in the direction he thought was away.
No sound, no light, nothing but endless stalks weaving through the cold fog. He pushed them out of the way, forcing limbs to move that felt as if they’d gone lifeless and full of nothing but air, floating within himself as he inhaled more and more of the mist. It made his mind spin, breathing gone ragged as he couldn’t feel his hands. But he could still hear the voice of the Sorcerer rising from the midst of it behind him. Yet now so blessedly far away behind him.
“Why?”
It was as if the single word broke the strange drug like effect the billowing mist had on his body. As if he were finally and completely released. He was suddenly all too aware of everything, could feel in every last pore of his body the need to run and run and never stop. His head was light, not enough air to keep him sane, soft scared whimpers reflecting dimly back into his own ears and he scrambled through the grass.
Jaejoong was talking now. He was too far to hear clearly, words blotted out by distance and magic and he almost didn’t care to hear. Muted against the white fuzzy noise of the fog, compressed and unintelligible under the pressure plugging his ears and constricting his throat.
“I need-” His eyes searched frantically for the way out, for the line of the forest that would somehow keep him safe. “Can’t control-” There, the slight darker bulge of grey, of thick mist clogged among long hanging tree branches. He tried to push himself up on legs that instantly gave out, sending him back to the ground in a heap. Too urgent, too scared. It was too far. “-mine.”
All sound faded as he finally managed to get to his feet. Stumbling and tripping as if his legs had forgotten how to move, catching himself before forcing his body forward again. Running towards the trees that now materialized more clearly before him. Running towards the bright whiteness that was his horse just waiting to take him away.
He could see nothing, hear nothing but glimmers of whispering tones following him, chasing after him and forcing their way through the mist to clutch at his skin, crawling and searching then falling away as he rode his horse as fast as he could, unable to quite take hold of him.
He knew nothing until suddenly a tree branch came out of nowhere to whip him across the face. He reeled in the saddle but managed to hold on, hands already twisted so painfully tight in the reigns that they dug ugly red lines across his skin. His legs clenched tightly around the sides of his horse until they trembled and ached with the effort. He didn’t know where he was, didn’t know where he was going, just galloping blindly through white and grey and the dark green of drooping heavily silent trees.
Again he lost hold on reality, knowing nothing. Pure fear and the mindlessness of flight the only things within him. Endless minutes of enveloping panic, of the sound of his breath loud in his ears. Until suddenly there were people around him. Cries and shouts and hands reaching for him. He flinched away, curling over the neck of his mount, the only thing he could trust, the only thing that protected him from all the faceless torments that plagued him.
But the hands that slipped around his ankle were warm. Gentle. A familiar husky voice finding its way through the noise, beginning to coax him out of the blank numbness he’d somehow found shelter within. He was falling out of the saddle. And it was all too horribly similar to that day a week before, as if it were happening all over again...and his eyes snapped open at last to search almost frantically for the owner of the voice. The arms connected to those hands.
Then he was throwing his arms around Junsu’s neck, crushing him bodily to his chest and burying himself in the sweet warmth, the hard strength of his solid body against his own. He was murmuring Junsu’s name, unable to say anything else, unable to think anything else, terrified that if he stopped, if he let go, that it would all fade away and slip from his grip. That he was really still trapped in the field with his life strung up before his eyes.
But Junsu was real. Was holding him just as tightly, hands cradling his body, voice rushed and concerned in his ear. And that was all he needed to know he was truly safe. It didn’t matter what he was saying. It only mattered that he’d once again caught him. Keeping him safe within a single embrace that was the entirety of his world in that moment.
But even as he lost himself, body going limp as the relief drained him of all energy, falling into the swooping feel of letting go, he could hear that other voice still echoing in his head, riding on invisible wings to find him no matter how he hid himself in Junsu’s arms. It found its way into his mind, and bled like ink to stain and contaminate his very self. A voice he couldn’t escape.
I see no reason to keep him from you. Just know, if you displease me...it will be your fault he dies.
**
For the second time in not too many days, Junsu rushed out into the noisy crowded courtyard. First there had been a subdued uproar as the King had suddenly collapsed in the throne room, not responding to any of their efforts. And then it had been discovered that the Crown Prince had gone missing from his room. The search for Prince Yoochun had been going on fruitlessly for hours, the only clue they had being the fact that his favorite horse was missing from the stable.
For the second time in not too may days, Junsu heard the shout go up. Heard people yelling, relief and then panic as Yoochun once again rode into view. Once again slumped in the saddle, hair tangled and thrown in his face, large terrified eyes dominating a stricken pale face. An angry looking red welt was raised across one cheek, and that was all he could see before he was reaching up to touch him.
Again he practically fell into Junsu’s arms, a trembling mess of terrified whimpers and gasping breaths. There was nothing he could do but let Yoochun curl around him how he wished, offering himself up as whatever Yoochun needed him to be.
Hours of looking and finding nothing. Hours of worrying and wondering what could have happened to his Prince. Hours of people trying not to make a big deal lest the Sorcerer get wind of the disappearance even while most had assumed he was the one responsible for it. Endless hours all crushed into a single afternoon, and to finally see him returned in this state was almost too much for Junsu to take.
He was terrified. Terrified there would be more horrific bruises blooming before his eyes, curses that made Yoochun scream like a wounded dying man in the night. More days of watching him suffer in agony without being able to do a single thing. More days of the Sorcerer gliding down castle corridors like a wraith, always there watching, always present in his mind no matter where he hid in the castle.
Yoochun was clinging to him like a child, his whole body shaking violently. And he was so cold, incredibly icy cold to the touch. Far from Junsu’s body heat transferring to warm him up, the cold was pressing into Junsu, seeping through his clothes to sting his skin. He wrapped his arms more tightly around him, not able to think of anything else but bringing heat back to the chilled body.
What had happened to him? His clothes and hair were wet and cold, as if he’d been doused with icy water. Someone had brought a blanket, was trying to wrap it around the Prince, everyone talking all at once. And in his ear alone was the sound of Yoochun’s pleading voice. Saying his name. Over and over like a mantra. Over and over as if he didn’t even know he was saying it, didn’t know who was holding him, didn’t know he was safe.
“Someone, please h-help him!” Junsu begged anyone and everyone, wanting someone who knew what to do to take control. To take the half-crazed Yoochun away from him and help him as he was so useless to be able to do.
Because he didn’t think he couldn’t bear it. The cold had already seized him as if it were alive, clutching at his skin, sinking through to freeze his very insides, and he couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t water, no, it was something horrible. Something like the mysterious bruises, something like the glowing light that had erupted from Changmin that day when they abandoned him.
Something like the crooning whisper that visited him like a phantom every night. The one that touched him, stroked his skin with invisible fingers, curled around his throat and squeezed. The one that blamed him, the one that laughed cruelly at him, the one that condemned him. The one that knew what he’d done and pierced him again and again, teasingly, with the terrifying truth. The one he couldn’t hide from.
And he couldn’t hold onto Yoochun for another moment. He almost wasn’t aware of the way it was his own hands that were scrabbling and shoving at the heavy form, trying to get it away and off of himself. Trying to get rid of the invading cold. Scratching and tearing at his clothes and skin as the cold evaded his fingers, sinking deeper and deeper into his body.
It’s not real. It’s not real. He can’t touch me. The familiar words raced through his mind only too quickly, the words he’d come to cling to like a life line, words repeated into too many long sleepless nights, words that consisted of too many weeks trying again and again to convince himself. Words that were nothing but just that. Empty words. They wouldn’t protect him.
“G-get it off-” His voice trembled, started to rise to an unnatural high pitch, feeling the cold start to dig into his heart, frost along his lungs.
Then someone was pulling Yoochun away from him, bundling him up in thick blankets, carrying him on multiple hands up through the main gate. And then he was gone.
Junsu blinked his eyes open wide as a pair of hands suddenly seized his shoulders and shook him roughly.
“Snap out of it!” The familiar voice of Captain Lee. The familiar face swimming into view as he found himself standing alone with the man in the middle of a quickly emptying courtyard.
He stared at the Captain with wide shocked eyes for a heartbeat before looking quickly down at himself. But where he’d felt icy fingers cutting through his skin, where he’d clawed and torn them away there was nothing. Nothing but the smell of damp misty trees and scent of cinnamon that was Yoochun lingering on his clothes.
He was fine, untouched. None of it had been real. Just as he’d told himself time and time again. Even though it had felt so real, even though he had been so sure the magic was reaching out to ensnare him. It was all just nothing.
And he breathed a long slow sigh, calming his racing heart as his hands smoothed down his tunic in relief. But the Captains hands clamped more tightly on his shoulders, shaking him roughly again as the man hissed at him in a low voice.
“Are you out of your mind? What were you thinking!? Throwing the Prince to the ground like that!” Junsu’s head snapped up to stare at him in shock.
“W-what?” His voice barely broke a whisper, sounding small and scared even in his own ears.
“You’re lucky not everyone is as observant as me. That they were watching the Prince and not you. But I saw what you did.” He held Junsu’s eyes. Angry and terrifying since they held such blatant accusation. “I saw you...even if it looked like the Prince was just too heavy and fell of his own accord.”
He glared down at Junsu with unfriendly eyes, a harsh frown turning his face. Those were eyes that Junsu knew had seen all the same signs as him. Eyes that also stared open late into dark candle lit nights and past sleepless dawns. But Junsu doubted the man also heard the voice, the one that haunted him, hunted him, even his dreams-
“Get yourself together.” The Captain growled in his ear, leaning close to his face and shaking him back to the present yet again. Junsu blinked blearily at him, unease and barely suppressed fear struggling to break free from where he’d forced them down under.
He tried to focus on what the man was saying, though it was so hard with the feel of cold still lingering deep within him. “Don’t forget for a moment that it’s not just your life on the line. If you can’t keep up pretenses don’t think I wont find an excuse to get rid of you.”
That got Junsu’s attention, and he stared back at his Captain in shock. The man met his gaze unblinkingly, strong and so incredibly serious. “Don’t forget who gave you everything. Who can take it away just as easily. Don’t think for a minute that I wont kill you.”
Junsu tried to swallow around the sudden lump that formed in his throat, clogging his chest and making the world narrow and tunnel around the single form of the Captain before him. The man shook him again, roughly, and Junsu’s head snapped back and forth pathetically on his shoulders. Too scared to resist. Too scared because the man was right. He was real, not the phantom voice, he had made this life real for them, and that was all he needed to remember it was just in his head, to finally be able to focus back on reality. And the reality of what he’d just done.
He gulped for air as it hit him with almost physical force. “P-prince Yoochun. I need to go to him.”
The Captain stared at him in slight surprise. Obviously not expecting that answer. Then his lip curled as he sneered at him, releasing his shoulders with a shove that sent Junsu stumbling back a few steps.
“Go. Go to your Prince.” He jeered. “But take this as your last warning.”
Junsu didn’t stay to listen, didn’t want to be near the man for another moment. He had to get away. Had to find Yoochun. To apologize. To spend the next few days doing nothing but repenting, making up for it, taking care of him better than anyone else so that when Yoochun woke from another nightmare, it would be his name he would call first.
The next minute he found his way into Yoochun’s bedchamber, slipping through the door unnoticed by the small group clustered around his bed. It was a scene he was starting to find himself walk into much too often. One he was beginning to dread. One he wished he’d never had to see again.
Yoochun was looking so frail and small in the middle of the pile of covers that swamped him. He was so still. The mark on his face swelling, big and ugly and just wrong. Who had hurt him? Why did these things keep happening to him?
Junsu crept to the side of the room, slipping into his usual place by the wall to wait for the others to leave. To be there to watch over Yoochun when everyone else had gone and there was no one else left who actually cared about him, who wanted to stay in the room of black magic and curses to take care of a man who couldn’t be healed. Something that was dangerous to be around, someone so sick and broken one couldn’t fear that they would be infected, too.
But Junsu would be there. Would be the only one there when Yoochun would need someone. And he could only secretly wish that soon it would be that Yoochun didn’t need someone, but him.
He held onto the hope as if believing in it would help make it real. This was his job alone, and he wouldn’t trade it for the world. It was the most meaningful time of his life here with Yoochun, the man who gave him a purpose, a dream. The man who had said he was waiting for him the first day they met, smiled at him, and reached out to him time and time again.
Yoochun had long ago already become his everything, and there was nothing that could change that nor tell him not to. Because this was why he’d come here. It was his role in this kingdom, it was his new life. Yoochun was his life.
His heart felt peaceful and calm once again as the feelings of pure adoration spilled like warm honey through his body. Content to fulfill his duty at the moment of merely watching Yoochun from afar until the physician decided he’d done all he could. Watching, and just ignoring all the things that were wrong with the situation, too scary to try and explain, as someone more capable and certified took care of it.
They said nothing was wrong, that the Prince was just completely exhausted, and that he was understandably weak after having been bedridden for so many days. They left it at that, not having found any new unexplained marks or conditions.
The bruises were still there, although fading, but it bothered Junsu that the men didn’t say anything about the strange coldness that still seemed to shroud Yoochun like another skin. He could see even from across the room the way he shivered beneath the covers as if plagued by a cold from within.
And it still scared him since he knew the only reason he could notice it for what it was, was because he’d felt it so intensely himself. It had been alive. It had tried to transfer itself to Junsu. He was sure of it. The physicians said nothing about how he must have been cursed a second time, but it wasn’t Junsu’s place to point it out to them. Scared that if he voiced it, it too would become reality. He could only hope and trust them to be right.
The servants quietly followed the physicians, who left saying nothing but how the King’s condition was more urgent and needed their attention more, and that Junsu was to call should anything more happen. Junsu nodded, but already knew that he would do no such thing, that he would lock the door behind them as soon as they’d left the room. Even as he wished they would stay, wished they wouldn’t leave him alone with the mysterious threat.
But what had happened? Where had Yoochun gone to? Why had he returned from an unexplained absence to once again lay as if dead in his own bed? Junsu huddled miserably by the wall, still wrapped up in the fear of the unknown, the fear of that new cold touch that had nearly seized him. He was too scared to even cross the room to build up the fire that slowly died into weakly burning red embers as the sun fell past the horizon.
The fire faded and waned. Smaller and smaller as it consumed itself into coals. Red glowing oranges flickering between dead ashy black. Blinking coals like eyes that watched him, daring him to come close. Daring him to try and touch them, close enough so that they could leap out and burn him. He pressed himself more firmly against the wall, tearing his eyes away and turning instead to look at Yoochun.
Even from across the room he could see the sweat that broke out on his forehead, the way his brow creased. The pained curve to his lips and the weak nearly nonexistent struggle of his arms to break free from the heavy prison of suffocating blankets.
The vulnerability of that expression, the way he suffered even in his sleep, made Junsu suddenly scramble to his feet. He was filled with nothing but the need to serve him in any was possible, to protect him and ease the pain. He didn’t want anything but to listen to and follow the urgent desire to be the person to comfort Yoochun and bring him back to where it was safe. Show him that he was safe, was there when no one else was. More than anything, he couldn’t bear to see the way even sleep seemed to hurt him.
He was across the room in a few steps, climbing carefully up onto the high mattress. Sitting on the edge, as close as he dared even with no one there to see, and his hand reached out without hesitation, a confident motion that had become so natural and right to him after so many days, curling his fingers around Yoochun’s hand.
Yoochun’s palm was wet with a cold sweat, and his fingers twitched weakly against his own. He brought his other hand to cup around the back of Yoochun’s hand, stroking the skin gently as the only way he knew how to soothe him.
It didn’t take long at all for Yoochun’s breathing to even out and for the creases marring his face to smooth. Soon he was curing his body closer to Junsu, unconsciously seeking the giver of the warmth and comfort. Junsu gave the sleeping face a small smile, letting him tug his hand closer to himself.
But it took many long hours of sitting still, merely holding onto Yoochun and watching his peacefully sleeping face, for Junsu to finally relax. To finally let the tense twisted ball of fear heavy in his stomach slip away. To finally believe it, himself, that it was really alright, and that for this moment at least there was nothing but the two of them.
And he unabashedly needed Yoochun infinitely more than the other unknowingly needed him right then. If Yoochun consciously needed him at all he didn’t know...even though he was the first one Yoochun asked for each morning, the first one he turned to each time they were alone, Junsu still couldn’t really dare to believe that he could be important. Because Yoochun was too secretly important to him, precious, and he couldn’t dare jeopardize losing his spot beside him by letting his own feelings get out of control. He knew his place.
So he sat silently watching until the room had fallen into pitch blackness, the fire gone out and the castle dead with sleep around them. Nothing mattered but the rise and fall of Yoochun’s chest, the soft sound of his breathing, the way his fingers tangled gently with his own.
Junsu’s head slowly began to droop, eventually growing much too heavy to keep up. His eyelids fluttered, trying to continue their vigilant watch over the Prince even as they begged him to succumb to sleep. His body swayed dangerously as he struggled to stay awake but found that he was just too incredibly tired.
And he knew it was time for him to leave Yoochun’s side like he should have done hours ago, that he shouldn’t have ever come this close to him from the beginning. He knew it was time to slink away and pretend, like the servant he really was, that he’d never been there and trespassed on the Prince’s private moments.
Just as he roused himself enough to slip off the bed and stand swaying beside the bed for a moment, he lingered as Yoochun’s hand tightened around his slightly. Pausing, he smiled down at Yoochun sleepily, secretly, enjoying the way it felt and trying to memorize the feeling so that he could keep it with him once he crossed the room to lay in his own place for sleep. So that he could pretend, yet again, that Yoochun actually wanted him there and needed him, even if it was just in his sleep like this.
Having savored it long enough, he gently began to pull his hand free, his other hand moving to tug the blankets more closely around the slumbering form. Just before he could pull away completely, however, Yoochun’s fingers suddenly clamped around his hand, grabbing at him desperately, refusing to let him go. And then he was speaking, words mumbled and broken between the thick hazy layers of sleep, but clear enough in the quiet still of the room to hear every word.
“Don’t...don’t go...”
And Junsu’s whole body froze, unable to believe his ears, but unable to deny it as Yoochun repeated the words louder, repeated them before speaking a single name that made Junsu forget how to breathe. A single name that left him shaking against the wall, wide eyes haunted and sleepless until the sun had finally raised itself above the far off mountains.
“Don’t go...Changmin-ah...”
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nextt chapter ~
Pairing: Jaemin, Yoomin
Length: Chapter 10/?
Genre: fantasy, adventure, angst,drama
Disclaimer: idea based on goose-girl fairy tale ~
Summary: Changmin has no control over his life as he's forced to leave his home to become the escort of the Crown Prince in a faraway land. Before he can even reach his destination, he's betrayed by his own guard and barely escapes death, finding himself alone and forgotten in a dark forsaken land where magic is real and even the moon has deserted the sky.
A/N: hope u like this lameo angst :) posting before i change my mind and edit the crap out of it :S kkk
Previous Chapters: one | two | three | four | five | six | seven | eight | nine |
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“Trying to run away, were you?”
That cold whispering voice was circling around and around in his head, filling his ears in increasing echoes. Yoochun’s body swayed dangerously as it rocked through him, dancing along his shoulders before stinging his ears yet again.
“Fool.” Sharp. Terrifying. Amused. “Why would you come here?”
Almost as if the words themselves were alive, closing in on him and digging into his mind mercilessly, they rippled and ran along his very nerves. It hurt to hear them. It hurt to feel them, and even after the man stopped talking the feeling just wouldn’t stop.
Yoochun was unable to move from where he’d fallen. The world spun around him, and he was laying dizzily in its center. The Sorcerer was still there looking down at him, looming over him like a huge black nothing that was the only thing that stayed still. Too large and insurmountable for even the earth to dare move, too horrifyingly real to look away from.
Stricken, Yoochun stared blankly up at him, unable to shake the feel of minute stinging pricks still running up and down his whole body.
“It’s unfortunate the dear Crown Prince was nowhere to be found when his father the King collapsed earlier today.” His head tilted, white face chiseled stone. No emotion, no humanity. Eyes hard and unforgiving. “He was calling for his heir...everyone was searching for him. Who would have thought he’d be here of all places?”
He leaned closer, bending over him, and Yoochun couldn’t breathe. His presence alone was a heavy invisible pressure that bent the very air out of shape. “...And what could he possibly be doing here?” Came the question. Though Yoochun knew, just knew, that somehow the man already knew the answers to everything even when Yoochun himself didn’t know how or why.
Yoochun gasped for air, vision tunneling as the Sorcerer drew closer. Much too close. He could see nothing but darkness reflected in those eyes. He shook his head, the movement jerky and wrought with fear.
He couldn’t remember why. He didn’t know what he was doing there, didn’t know why he was currently immobilized and laying helpless in the dirt. Alone with the very man whose influence he’d been shamelessly trying to escape, trying to run and save himself even if that meant he left everyone and everything else behind.
But who was he fooling? Why would anyone in their right mind run away to the very home of such a man? Even the reason that had seemed so important, so big and meaningful, the one that had demanded him to crawl from his bed that afternoon now seemed so humiliatingly stupid.
Was it really all because this was where he could find the man who filled his dreams? Was it really all for the sake of finding a single person he hadn’t been sure even existed? Wasn’t it all just to save himself the torture that the Sorcerer’s presence in the castle brought him? Wasn’t it all just to put an end to the man that haunted his dreams? He hadn’t been driven by anything more than selfishness. And because of him, Changmin...Changmin had been the one dragged horribly away...
Suddenly the Sorcerer was drawing backwards sharply. His gaze was even colder, more unforgiving than ever, and his next words were hissed like an uncoiling serpent from white dead lips.
“You want my slave.”
Yoochun cowered under the intense penetrating ferocity of his gaze, shrinking back as the words exposed the pathetic demeaning truth. He couldn’t think, couldn’t speak, just shaking his head weakly ‘no’.
The Sorcerer’s lips curled slightly to one side, twisted unnaturally as he leered down at him. “No?” He obviously didn’t believe him. “Then what could have brought you here...my Prince?”
He couldn’t grasp at what the man wanted, just frozen under the power of his words alone. So small and insignificant, unable to think of anything but blank fear. Unable to even formulate a semblance of an answer, words spilling from his mouth in a pathetic string of half formed pleas and begging.
“I didn’t- didn’t mean to. I d-don’t know - I would never- please don’t... don’t hurt m-me!”
He’d long lost sight of everything around him, vision clouding as that unbearable pressure pressed him into the ground, crushing his ribs and sending pain lancing through his skull. Compressing him forcefully and blood pounded feverishly through his temple, filling the air with the thundering thud of each heart beat. Frantic, panicked and trapped.
It was so dark. He could only remember that unbearable pain in his heart, groping helplessly with hands that dissolved everything they touched and falling into infinite darkness. He didn’t want to lose himself within it once again, the very thing he’d tried to run from already seizing him up like a lifeless doll and clenching his body in a painful vise.
Moaning and struggling futilely against the formidable nothing, he could still somehow hear the crooning voice of the Sorcerer winding around him, binding him body and soul, filling his head with poison that trickled down his veins disgustingly. Invasive. Taking him over until there was none of him left.
Panic. More panic and fear so potent he could do nothing but curl into himself, hands clamping around his ears in a vain attempt to block it out. He knew the crying pleading cries were his own, but he couldn’t even control them as he felt his veins slowly bloating, swelling with the feel of the Sorcerer moving through him, squeezing his organs and nearly stopping his heart.
He didn’t know anything but the single-minded need for it to stop, or he was going to lose himself, screaming until his body exploded and let him break free, to escape at last. He was slowly losing his mind with each slip and twist of that something within his body.
And then suddenly it stopped. It trickled out of him like blood leaving a wound, hot and sick, slowly drawing the insufferable pressure with it, until he could finally breathe again. And he found he was curled into the dirt, face pressed deep into the soil, filling his mouth and nose, stinging his eyes.
He coughed weakly, the sound of his own voice sounding scratched and torn. It was quiet above him, and his fingers clutched at the solidness of the earth, too scared to turn and see what had happened or what was still watching and waiting above him.
He couldn’t deal with it so soon, before the bruises of the curse had even faded. The nightmares were again becoming real, welcoming back the darkness that was alive, leaving his body and mind to fall victim to the whims of black magic. Pain and losing himself in grotesque visions and realities he wanted nothing more than to forget but that plagued him, haunted him, stayed with him.
His body shuddered and shook as he couldn’t quite believe it was over. Just waiting for the next onslaught, unable to even prepare himself but just wishing it would happen quickly, even as he hoped it wouldn’t come at all.
It came the next moment, a murmured command he couldn’t even understand but that his body reacted to of its own accord. He pushed himself up on shaky arms, coughing and spitting the dirt from his mouth. He resisted as much as he could, hunched over himself and not daring to raise his eyes, bowed low on his knees as if he could disappear into himself.
He didn’t care about anything but that. Disappearing...Disappearing...Becoming nothing. Just fading away until he didn’t have to feel or be anymore. Nothing for them to attack, nothing for them to hurt.
It took him a few moments to realize someone was coming towards them. Soft footsteps crushing the grass and soft huffs of air as if he’d been running and was still trying to catch his breath.
It was then he found suddenly that he was no longer bound, his body finally no longer under the Sorcerer’s control as he lifted his head slowly with his own power to see who was coming. His eyes trailed up the dark robes of Jaejoong who was striding towards them. He was nearly to where they were, and he was coming alone.
But before Yoochun could even begin to wonder where he’d taken Changmin and if he could have suffered through the same torture he’d just experienced, his eyes widened in shock.
Because as the man came to stand before the Sorcerer and Yoochun chanced a glance up at him, he saw that the hood that had always shrouded the man’s identity, hidden his face mysteriously, was no longer there. His face was exposed at last, and he couldn’t help but stare.
Jaejoong was a beautiful young man, unexpectedly beautiful, yet just as pale and cold looking as his father. But what shocked him was not the man’s precisely sculpted features nor the way his skin was so white it was almost glowing translucence, but the large ugly black bruise running along the side of his jaw. The bright red blood lining his lips and smeared down along one side of his chin.
And then he was remembering himself and quickly averting his eyes, staring at the man’s feet as the Sorcerer directed all of his burning attention on his son. His voice was low and menacing, cutting through the air as if it were a physical thing.
“You let him touch you?”
Jaejoong, who had been staring up at his father with big empty looking eyes, blinked slowly. Only the faintest hint of an expression crossed his face like a mockery of emotion, a flickering shadow, before he suddenly lowered his eyes to the ground. He stared fixedly at the dirt with a piercing black glare as the Sorcerer took a step closer.
Long fingers came to grip Jaejoong’s chin tightly, forcing his face back up and exposing the ugly mark in its entirety, and Yoochun watched fascinated, heart beating quietly in his chest as he saw the way the Sorcerer’s eyes raked sharply over his son’s face.
“Pathetic...can’t even subdue a disgusting slave.”
Cold displeasure, degrading and tearing into the upturned face as he spit out the words. No emotion crossed Jaejoong’s face, he didn’t move or hardly react. Stiff and rigid beneath the grasp and judgement of his father.
Yoochun, too, was frozen in place. Not quite believing his eyes or knowing what he was seeing. Changmin had done it? Changmin had hurt him...had fought. And his heart clenched painfully. Something like regretful shame, because he hadn’t even tried to stop it or help. Something like fear because he knew that Jaejoong must have given back triple what he’d received. And his body trembled as he tried not to think about it, tried not to imagine what he could have possibly done to Changmin in retribution.
Jaejoong finally spoke. The softest shortest apology. Just one single ‘Forgive me’, and the Sorcerer’s hand released his chin with a small flick.
Jaejoong bowed his head, but Yoochun could see his eyes were opened wide, unfathomably dark and blank. Unseeing.
“It wont happen again. I’ll make sure he never leaves-”
“No.” The Sorcerer cut him off. “You failed yet again. You are not to interfere. You are to do nothing.”
The Sorcerer watched him disapprovingly, eyes sharp and calculating while he rubbed the tips of the fingers that had touched Jaejoong’s face together slightly, a crease slowly drawing itself between his brows as he glanced down at his own hand.
“You’re cold.”
Yoochun didn’t understand what it meant, why Jaejoong was suddenly going still, eyes wide, fists clenching by his sides. His body was shaking yet he was obviously struggling to suppress and hide it.
A long moment passed. A silence so tense and full of unspoken words, full of energy he couldn’t see but could only feel rippling off of both of them to spark and devour each other in the air around him. Charged and dangerous.
Jaejoong took a slow hesitant breath. “Please....Unbind...me.” He whispered to the grass trampled beneath his feet, the muscles in his jaw tightening as he seemed to have trouble forcing the words out.
Yoochun breathed shallowly, eyes flickering up from the ground as discreetly as he could, knowing this was something he shouldn’t be witnessing, but unable to avoid it, unable to run away, and almost fascinated by the scene unfolding before him.
The Sorcerer was silent. An eerily cold silence that emanated from his very being slunk around them, turning the air into a heavy grey fog that misted across Yoochun’s face. Clammy and damp on his skin, clouding his eyes and curling around his body. He was too scared to try to fight it off, to draw attention to himself, even as it hid the two magicians from view, even as it blocked out the sky and turned the world into nothing but nondescript grayness.
The moment he realized that he couldn’t even see his own hands before his face, the charging fear within him snapped free. Yoochun was already moving before the thought finished, slipped slightly as he shifting ever so carefully backwards, hands scrabbling in the dirt, clawing through long blades of grass before he turned quickly and began to blindly crawl in the direction he thought was away.
No sound, no light, nothing but endless stalks weaving through the cold fog. He pushed them out of the way, forcing limbs to move that felt as if they’d gone lifeless and full of nothing but air, floating within himself as he inhaled more and more of the mist. It made his mind spin, breathing gone ragged as he couldn’t feel his hands. But he could still hear the voice of the Sorcerer rising from the midst of it behind him. Yet now so blessedly far away behind him.
“Why?”
It was as if the single word broke the strange drug like effect the billowing mist had on his body. As if he were finally and completely released. He was suddenly all too aware of everything, could feel in every last pore of his body the need to run and run and never stop. His head was light, not enough air to keep him sane, soft scared whimpers reflecting dimly back into his own ears and he scrambled through the grass.
Jaejoong was talking now. He was too far to hear clearly, words blotted out by distance and magic and he almost didn’t care to hear. Muted against the white fuzzy noise of the fog, compressed and unintelligible under the pressure plugging his ears and constricting his throat.
“I need-” His eyes searched frantically for the way out, for the line of the forest that would somehow keep him safe. “Can’t control-” There, the slight darker bulge of grey, of thick mist clogged among long hanging tree branches. He tried to push himself up on legs that instantly gave out, sending him back to the ground in a heap. Too urgent, too scared. It was too far. “-mine.”
All sound faded as he finally managed to get to his feet. Stumbling and tripping as if his legs had forgotten how to move, catching himself before forcing his body forward again. Running towards the trees that now materialized more clearly before him. Running towards the bright whiteness that was his horse just waiting to take him away.
He could see nothing, hear nothing but glimmers of whispering tones following him, chasing after him and forcing their way through the mist to clutch at his skin, crawling and searching then falling away as he rode his horse as fast as he could, unable to quite take hold of him.
He knew nothing until suddenly a tree branch came out of nowhere to whip him across the face. He reeled in the saddle but managed to hold on, hands already twisted so painfully tight in the reigns that they dug ugly red lines across his skin. His legs clenched tightly around the sides of his horse until they trembled and ached with the effort. He didn’t know where he was, didn’t know where he was going, just galloping blindly through white and grey and the dark green of drooping heavily silent trees.
Again he lost hold on reality, knowing nothing. Pure fear and the mindlessness of flight the only things within him. Endless minutes of enveloping panic, of the sound of his breath loud in his ears. Until suddenly there were people around him. Cries and shouts and hands reaching for him. He flinched away, curling over the neck of his mount, the only thing he could trust, the only thing that protected him from all the faceless torments that plagued him.
But the hands that slipped around his ankle were warm. Gentle. A familiar husky voice finding its way through the noise, beginning to coax him out of the blank numbness he’d somehow found shelter within. He was falling out of the saddle. And it was all too horribly similar to that day a week before, as if it were happening all over again...and his eyes snapped open at last to search almost frantically for the owner of the voice. The arms connected to those hands.
Then he was throwing his arms around Junsu’s neck, crushing him bodily to his chest and burying himself in the sweet warmth, the hard strength of his solid body against his own. He was murmuring Junsu’s name, unable to say anything else, unable to think anything else, terrified that if he stopped, if he let go, that it would all fade away and slip from his grip. That he was really still trapped in the field with his life strung up before his eyes.
But Junsu was real. Was holding him just as tightly, hands cradling his body, voice rushed and concerned in his ear. And that was all he needed to know he was truly safe. It didn’t matter what he was saying. It only mattered that he’d once again caught him. Keeping him safe within a single embrace that was the entirety of his world in that moment.
But even as he lost himself, body going limp as the relief drained him of all energy, falling into the swooping feel of letting go, he could hear that other voice still echoing in his head, riding on invisible wings to find him no matter how he hid himself in Junsu’s arms. It found its way into his mind, and bled like ink to stain and contaminate his very self. A voice he couldn’t escape.
I see no reason to keep him from you. Just know, if you displease me...it will be your fault he dies.
**
For the second time in not too many days, Junsu rushed out into the noisy crowded courtyard. First there had been a subdued uproar as the King had suddenly collapsed in the throne room, not responding to any of their efforts. And then it had been discovered that the Crown Prince had gone missing from his room. The search for Prince Yoochun had been going on fruitlessly for hours, the only clue they had being the fact that his favorite horse was missing from the stable.
For the second time in not too may days, Junsu heard the shout go up. Heard people yelling, relief and then panic as Yoochun once again rode into view. Once again slumped in the saddle, hair tangled and thrown in his face, large terrified eyes dominating a stricken pale face. An angry looking red welt was raised across one cheek, and that was all he could see before he was reaching up to touch him.
Again he practically fell into Junsu’s arms, a trembling mess of terrified whimpers and gasping breaths. There was nothing he could do but let Yoochun curl around him how he wished, offering himself up as whatever Yoochun needed him to be.
Hours of looking and finding nothing. Hours of worrying and wondering what could have happened to his Prince. Hours of people trying not to make a big deal lest the Sorcerer get wind of the disappearance even while most had assumed he was the one responsible for it. Endless hours all crushed into a single afternoon, and to finally see him returned in this state was almost too much for Junsu to take.
He was terrified. Terrified there would be more horrific bruises blooming before his eyes, curses that made Yoochun scream like a wounded dying man in the night. More days of watching him suffer in agony without being able to do a single thing. More days of the Sorcerer gliding down castle corridors like a wraith, always there watching, always present in his mind no matter where he hid in the castle.
Yoochun was clinging to him like a child, his whole body shaking violently. And he was so cold, incredibly icy cold to the touch. Far from Junsu’s body heat transferring to warm him up, the cold was pressing into Junsu, seeping through his clothes to sting his skin. He wrapped his arms more tightly around him, not able to think of anything else but bringing heat back to the chilled body.
What had happened to him? His clothes and hair were wet and cold, as if he’d been doused with icy water. Someone had brought a blanket, was trying to wrap it around the Prince, everyone talking all at once. And in his ear alone was the sound of Yoochun’s pleading voice. Saying his name. Over and over like a mantra. Over and over as if he didn’t even know he was saying it, didn’t know who was holding him, didn’t know he was safe.
“Someone, please h-help him!” Junsu begged anyone and everyone, wanting someone who knew what to do to take control. To take the half-crazed Yoochun away from him and help him as he was so useless to be able to do.
Because he didn’t think he couldn’t bear it. The cold had already seized him as if it were alive, clutching at his skin, sinking through to freeze his very insides, and he couldn’t breathe. It wasn’t water, no, it was something horrible. Something like the mysterious bruises, something like the glowing light that had erupted from Changmin that day when they abandoned him.
Something like the crooning whisper that visited him like a phantom every night. The one that touched him, stroked his skin with invisible fingers, curled around his throat and squeezed. The one that blamed him, the one that laughed cruelly at him, the one that condemned him. The one that knew what he’d done and pierced him again and again, teasingly, with the terrifying truth. The one he couldn’t hide from.
And he couldn’t hold onto Yoochun for another moment. He almost wasn’t aware of the way it was his own hands that were scrabbling and shoving at the heavy form, trying to get it away and off of himself. Trying to get rid of the invading cold. Scratching and tearing at his clothes and skin as the cold evaded his fingers, sinking deeper and deeper into his body.
It’s not real. It’s not real. He can’t touch me. The familiar words raced through his mind only too quickly, the words he’d come to cling to like a life line, words repeated into too many long sleepless nights, words that consisted of too many weeks trying again and again to convince himself. Words that were nothing but just that. Empty words. They wouldn’t protect him.
“G-get it off-” His voice trembled, started to rise to an unnatural high pitch, feeling the cold start to dig into his heart, frost along his lungs.
Then someone was pulling Yoochun away from him, bundling him up in thick blankets, carrying him on multiple hands up through the main gate. And then he was gone.
Junsu blinked his eyes open wide as a pair of hands suddenly seized his shoulders and shook him roughly.
“Snap out of it!” The familiar voice of Captain Lee. The familiar face swimming into view as he found himself standing alone with the man in the middle of a quickly emptying courtyard.
He stared at the Captain with wide shocked eyes for a heartbeat before looking quickly down at himself. But where he’d felt icy fingers cutting through his skin, where he’d clawed and torn them away there was nothing. Nothing but the smell of damp misty trees and scent of cinnamon that was Yoochun lingering on his clothes.
He was fine, untouched. None of it had been real. Just as he’d told himself time and time again. Even though it had felt so real, even though he had been so sure the magic was reaching out to ensnare him. It was all just nothing.
And he breathed a long slow sigh, calming his racing heart as his hands smoothed down his tunic in relief. But the Captains hands clamped more tightly on his shoulders, shaking him roughly again as the man hissed at him in a low voice.
“Are you out of your mind? What were you thinking!? Throwing the Prince to the ground like that!” Junsu’s head snapped up to stare at him in shock.
“W-what?” His voice barely broke a whisper, sounding small and scared even in his own ears.
“You’re lucky not everyone is as observant as me. That they were watching the Prince and not you. But I saw what you did.” He held Junsu’s eyes. Angry and terrifying since they held such blatant accusation. “I saw you...even if it looked like the Prince was just too heavy and fell of his own accord.”
He glared down at Junsu with unfriendly eyes, a harsh frown turning his face. Those were eyes that Junsu knew had seen all the same signs as him. Eyes that also stared open late into dark candle lit nights and past sleepless dawns. But Junsu doubted the man also heard the voice, the one that haunted him, hunted him, even his dreams-
“Get yourself together.” The Captain growled in his ear, leaning close to his face and shaking him back to the present yet again. Junsu blinked blearily at him, unease and barely suppressed fear struggling to break free from where he’d forced them down under.
He tried to focus on what the man was saying, though it was so hard with the feel of cold still lingering deep within him. “Don’t forget for a moment that it’s not just your life on the line. If you can’t keep up pretenses don’t think I wont find an excuse to get rid of you.”
That got Junsu’s attention, and he stared back at his Captain in shock. The man met his gaze unblinkingly, strong and so incredibly serious. “Don’t forget who gave you everything. Who can take it away just as easily. Don’t think for a minute that I wont kill you.”
Junsu tried to swallow around the sudden lump that formed in his throat, clogging his chest and making the world narrow and tunnel around the single form of the Captain before him. The man shook him again, roughly, and Junsu’s head snapped back and forth pathetically on his shoulders. Too scared to resist. Too scared because the man was right. He was real, not the phantom voice, he had made this life real for them, and that was all he needed to remember it was just in his head, to finally be able to focus back on reality. And the reality of what he’d just done.
He gulped for air as it hit him with almost physical force. “P-prince Yoochun. I need to go to him.”
The Captain stared at him in slight surprise. Obviously not expecting that answer. Then his lip curled as he sneered at him, releasing his shoulders with a shove that sent Junsu stumbling back a few steps.
“Go. Go to your Prince.” He jeered. “But take this as your last warning.”
Junsu didn’t stay to listen, didn’t want to be near the man for another moment. He had to get away. Had to find Yoochun. To apologize. To spend the next few days doing nothing but repenting, making up for it, taking care of him better than anyone else so that when Yoochun woke from another nightmare, it would be his name he would call first.
The next minute he found his way into Yoochun’s bedchamber, slipping through the door unnoticed by the small group clustered around his bed. It was a scene he was starting to find himself walk into much too often. One he was beginning to dread. One he wished he’d never had to see again.
Yoochun was looking so frail and small in the middle of the pile of covers that swamped him. He was so still. The mark on his face swelling, big and ugly and just wrong. Who had hurt him? Why did these things keep happening to him?
Junsu crept to the side of the room, slipping into his usual place by the wall to wait for the others to leave. To be there to watch over Yoochun when everyone else had gone and there was no one else left who actually cared about him, who wanted to stay in the room of black magic and curses to take care of a man who couldn’t be healed. Something that was dangerous to be around, someone so sick and broken one couldn’t fear that they would be infected, too.
But Junsu would be there. Would be the only one there when Yoochun would need someone. And he could only secretly wish that soon it would be that Yoochun didn’t need someone, but him.
He held onto the hope as if believing in it would help make it real. This was his job alone, and he wouldn’t trade it for the world. It was the most meaningful time of his life here with Yoochun, the man who gave him a purpose, a dream. The man who had said he was waiting for him the first day they met, smiled at him, and reached out to him time and time again.
Yoochun had long ago already become his everything, and there was nothing that could change that nor tell him not to. Because this was why he’d come here. It was his role in this kingdom, it was his new life. Yoochun was his life.
His heart felt peaceful and calm once again as the feelings of pure adoration spilled like warm honey through his body. Content to fulfill his duty at the moment of merely watching Yoochun from afar until the physician decided he’d done all he could. Watching, and just ignoring all the things that were wrong with the situation, too scary to try and explain, as someone more capable and certified took care of it.
They said nothing was wrong, that the Prince was just completely exhausted, and that he was understandably weak after having been bedridden for so many days. They left it at that, not having found any new unexplained marks or conditions.
The bruises were still there, although fading, but it bothered Junsu that the men didn’t say anything about the strange coldness that still seemed to shroud Yoochun like another skin. He could see even from across the room the way he shivered beneath the covers as if plagued by a cold from within.
And it still scared him since he knew the only reason he could notice it for what it was, was because he’d felt it so intensely himself. It had been alive. It had tried to transfer itself to Junsu. He was sure of it. The physicians said nothing about how he must have been cursed a second time, but it wasn’t Junsu’s place to point it out to them. Scared that if he voiced it, it too would become reality. He could only hope and trust them to be right.
The servants quietly followed the physicians, who left saying nothing but how the King’s condition was more urgent and needed their attention more, and that Junsu was to call should anything more happen. Junsu nodded, but already knew that he would do no such thing, that he would lock the door behind them as soon as they’d left the room. Even as he wished they would stay, wished they wouldn’t leave him alone with the mysterious threat.
But what had happened? Where had Yoochun gone to? Why had he returned from an unexplained absence to once again lay as if dead in his own bed? Junsu huddled miserably by the wall, still wrapped up in the fear of the unknown, the fear of that new cold touch that had nearly seized him. He was too scared to even cross the room to build up the fire that slowly died into weakly burning red embers as the sun fell past the horizon.
The fire faded and waned. Smaller and smaller as it consumed itself into coals. Red glowing oranges flickering between dead ashy black. Blinking coals like eyes that watched him, daring him to come close. Daring him to try and touch them, close enough so that they could leap out and burn him. He pressed himself more firmly against the wall, tearing his eyes away and turning instead to look at Yoochun.
Even from across the room he could see the sweat that broke out on his forehead, the way his brow creased. The pained curve to his lips and the weak nearly nonexistent struggle of his arms to break free from the heavy prison of suffocating blankets.
The vulnerability of that expression, the way he suffered even in his sleep, made Junsu suddenly scramble to his feet. He was filled with nothing but the need to serve him in any was possible, to protect him and ease the pain. He didn’t want anything but to listen to and follow the urgent desire to be the person to comfort Yoochun and bring him back to where it was safe. Show him that he was safe, was there when no one else was. More than anything, he couldn’t bear to see the way even sleep seemed to hurt him.
He was across the room in a few steps, climbing carefully up onto the high mattress. Sitting on the edge, as close as he dared even with no one there to see, and his hand reached out without hesitation, a confident motion that had become so natural and right to him after so many days, curling his fingers around Yoochun’s hand.
Yoochun’s palm was wet with a cold sweat, and his fingers twitched weakly against his own. He brought his other hand to cup around the back of Yoochun’s hand, stroking the skin gently as the only way he knew how to soothe him.
It didn’t take long at all for Yoochun’s breathing to even out and for the creases marring his face to smooth. Soon he was curing his body closer to Junsu, unconsciously seeking the giver of the warmth and comfort. Junsu gave the sleeping face a small smile, letting him tug his hand closer to himself.
But it took many long hours of sitting still, merely holding onto Yoochun and watching his peacefully sleeping face, for Junsu to finally relax. To finally let the tense twisted ball of fear heavy in his stomach slip away. To finally believe it, himself, that it was really alright, and that for this moment at least there was nothing but the two of them.
And he unabashedly needed Yoochun infinitely more than the other unknowingly needed him right then. If Yoochun consciously needed him at all he didn’t know...even though he was the first one Yoochun asked for each morning, the first one he turned to each time they were alone, Junsu still couldn’t really dare to believe that he could be important. Because Yoochun was too secretly important to him, precious, and he couldn’t dare jeopardize losing his spot beside him by letting his own feelings get out of control. He knew his place.
So he sat silently watching until the room had fallen into pitch blackness, the fire gone out and the castle dead with sleep around them. Nothing mattered but the rise and fall of Yoochun’s chest, the soft sound of his breathing, the way his fingers tangled gently with his own.
Junsu’s head slowly began to droop, eventually growing much too heavy to keep up. His eyelids fluttered, trying to continue their vigilant watch over the Prince even as they begged him to succumb to sleep. His body swayed dangerously as he struggled to stay awake but found that he was just too incredibly tired.
And he knew it was time for him to leave Yoochun’s side like he should have done hours ago, that he shouldn’t have ever come this close to him from the beginning. He knew it was time to slink away and pretend, like the servant he really was, that he’d never been there and trespassed on the Prince’s private moments.
Just as he roused himself enough to slip off the bed and stand swaying beside the bed for a moment, he lingered as Yoochun’s hand tightened around his slightly. Pausing, he smiled down at Yoochun sleepily, secretly, enjoying the way it felt and trying to memorize the feeling so that he could keep it with him once he crossed the room to lay in his own place for sleep. So that he could pretend, yet again, that Yoochun actually wanted him there and needed him, even if it was just in his sleep like this.
Having savored it long enough, he gently began to pull his hand free, his other hand moving to tug the blankets more closely around the slumbering form. Just before he could pull away completely, however, Yoochun’s fingers suddenly clamped around his hand, grabbing at him desperately, refusing to let him go. And then he was speaking, words mumbled and broken between the thick hazy layers of sleep, but clear enough in the quiet still of the room to hear every word.
“Don’t...don’t go...”
And Junsu’s whole body froze, unable to believe his ears, but unable to deny it as Yoochun repeated the words louder, repeated them before speaking a single name that made Junsu forget how to breathe. A single name that left him shaking against the wall, wide eyes haunted and sleepless until the sun had finally raised itself above the far off mountains.
“Don’t go...Changmin-ah...”
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nextt chapter ~