Black Dragon

Options

I wanted to know what happened next. What the next chapter in the story was. It had been a week since Kiyohime had last appeared to me. Certainly the last dream wasn't the end.

I was currently sitting with Soo-won as he attended to his kingly duties. I wasn't helping with anything in particular, Soo-won just made me come with him for whatever reason. Lately he had been making me go everywhere with him.

"Soo-won, I'm bored."

"Well this isn't particularly entertaining either." He laughs lightly, not taking his eyes off the paperwork he was working on.

"Why do I even need to be here?"

"Because I like having you around." He says simply, still not looking up from the stack of papers.

I stand up despite how uncomfortable it was for me to do so. I was more than ready for these stitches to come out. I walked over to him and moved his papers aside. I sat down on the spot I had cleared away and pushed his hair out of his face, forcing him to look at me.

"Entertain me then."

He raises an eyebrow at me. "Did you cut your bangs?"

"Yeah, when I was in hiding with Hak and Yona. He made me take on a new identity to protect us and the people from his village." I explain.

He looked at me closely. "I like your bangs like that. I had forgotten what color your eyes were."

"They don't bother you?"

"Have they ever?"

I smile. "When are you going to be done?"

"Well I would be done quicker, if you hadn't interrupted me."

"But it's so boringgggg." I say with a pout. "I want to do something."

"What do you want to do?" He asks.

"Take a nap."

He bursts into a fit of laughter. "That's what you want to do?" He asks when he settled down some.

I nod my head sternly.

"You can go lay down over there on the couch."

I cross my arms "Not without you."

This catches him off guard and a slight blush rises on his cheeks. "Meissa, don't say things like that."

I raise an eyebrow. "Why not? You always sleep with me."

He sighs. "I really should stop that I suppose. It's not very appropriate."

"Soo-won!" I say sternly. "I like sleeping with you."

He opens his mouth to protest but I interrupt. "I feel safer considering I can't do much given my situation and not only that I feel better knowing you're beside me. It's reassuring because you're all that I have left. I've lost everyone I've ever known. My birth parents and Father. Yona and King Il, not that I cared for them anyway. I don't want you to disappear too."

"You forgot someone." He says.

I sigh. "It still hurts."

"What does?"

I clutch my chest. "My heart. It hurts for him."

"You love him don't you?"

"I did. That's why it was hard for me to choose between you two, I just chose him because I wanted to make sure he could get away safe." I explain. "He'd still be here if I had been stronger. I was trying to protect him since he had been poisoned, and I was doing fine until I started getting shot at, and then Yona had to run out and it distracted both of us, and I never even got to tell him how I felt or even say goodbye. Want to know what the last thing I said to him was?"

Tears were streaming down my face. I felt so weak and Soo-won just sat there. I thought about what my last words to him would have been, but I couldn't think of what they were.

"I actually can't remember. But it wasn't what I wanted my last words to him to be."

We sit in silence and I wipe at the tears that had managed to free themselves. "Soo-won," I say. He looks up. "I won't let that happen with us. If something where to happen to one of us, I'll make sure you know everything."

"We can never know when our or someone else's time is up, that is why one must always say what needs to be said before it's too late." He looked as if he was contemplating what he would say next.

"Meissa, I've been wanting to tell you this for awhile. I love you. And I tell you it all the time, but it's not in the 'we're siblings' way that you think it is. I love you. I don't want us to be separated. I want to be with you for the rest of my life."

"Soo-won-" He holds a hand up to stop me.

"And I know I'm not anyone special compared to Hak, but he's gone and you don't have to choose any more. I'm sorry I made you choose in the first place, I didn't know how much it was hurting you." He was looking into his lap at this point.

"You know, Hak wasn't even an option until that day we arrived here. That day I kissed him and then he asked me to marry him. That was only really when I let him become an option, but only because he didn't seem like a bad person to marry. Before that you were the only one, and you never stopped being one because I love you too." I say in between sobs. "You're all I've got Soo-won, I won't let anyone else become an option, I won't let my heart love another."