Love is Stronger than Blood (Snowdrop Oneshots)

17- deafening silence part 2

A continuation of the last oneshot because it was getting too long and I wanted to include these last few moments.

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"I'm starting to think one day I'll tell the story of us: how I was losing my mind when I saw you here
But you held your pride like you should've held me"
Taylor Swift, The Story of Us
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Needless to say, the crash-into-his-car plan hadn't worked. Taedong River 1 had escaped, and all the ANSP team had managed to do is capture one of his accomplices, who is now locked down in one of the interrogation rooms.

Hanna leans against the doorframe to Kangmu's office with a few newspapers in her hands that she scans over, looking for anything about the chase that had occurred the previous night. Kangmu storms past her and into the office. She walks in after him, holding up the papers.

"There's not a single article about it," she says as he paces around in the corner. He grabs the papers from her hand and flips through them almost angrily.

"Multiple car crashes and gunshots while we chased him, but there are only articles about the election," she says, leaning on one of the tables in the small room. "It's obvious that the higher-ups are pressuring us. Are we backing off?"

He glances up at her momentarily. "Of course not."

Hanna tilts her head at him. Of course not? Is Kangmu disobeying the commands of Chief Ahn and dedicating himself to catching this one spy?

Ha... dedication, Hanna thinks. It sends a spike of pain through her chest. That's something Lee Kangmu doesn't know anything about.

"We're not?" She asks.

Kangmu slams the papers down onto the desk. He clenches his jaw, but he doesn't know what he's angry at. It could be Chief Ahn, or the clearly biased and censored newspapers, or just frustration at failing to capture Taedong River 1. Hanna watches as he looks around the office, his hair falling wildly into his face and his eyes like a cornered animal's.

"That bastard... is Taedong River 1," he insists.

Somehow, Hanna gets the feeling he was thinking about someone else with those first two words. She holds his gaze, standing up and walking towards his desk. She's had it with his tunnel vision. Why, now, is he so focused on capturing this spy when he didn't even have enough dedication to stay with his own fiancée? Is Taedong River 1 the reason he left Korea so quickly? Is he so obsessed with catching him that it clouds his mind to everything else? What happened to make him like this?

She takes one last step towards him. Kangmu drops his eyes down to a random pen laying on his desk. The weight of her gaze is too much for him to handle. The guilt he's been holding back suddenly bursts out of his emotional dam, crushing his heart like a tin can as it rushes through his body.

"You won't even give up on a mere communist..." Hanna says, rage building up in her throat, ready to fly out at him. She needs to know why he abandoned her. Why, after six years, he acts like he doesn't know her. Where is the Kangmu who treated her like she was his entire world? Who is this man, and what had he done with the old Kangmu? Her Kangmu, the one she fell in love with so many years ago.

This isn't fair, for him to just show up like this and toy with her heart. It's not fair that when they finally see each other again after six years, she doesn't get so much as a single loving word or glance from him. Hanna has been starved of love— first from her father, now from the man she is convinced is the love of her life, or at least was convinced. She needs this closure.