FALLING SLOWLY ||Complete||

Veil

The life of that place had been sucked out so many years ago, the king thinks when the horses stop. There is a pungent smell of dust and disuse that fumes from the very building itself. He remembers the tree once a flowering giant and now hanging by the last threads of life. The lawns are swept, of dirt as well as any signs of life - and he clamps the rush of memories they evoke.

Oh the gone years and their blissful ignorance, when he had carved a glided cage instead of breathing the last few gulps of free air. The last few moments with her…
His hands are curled and jaw rigid when the king goes to visit his eighth brother for one last time. He does not discard death - bed requests.

The servants fill out, the fear in their faces is tell - tale. The dim light, the medicine infused air, it is a chamber of a dying master.

He sees his brother and thinks of the tree he had passed on his way. With its naked boughs scraping the skies lit with a drought sun, hallow barked and leaf - less. Wook has his eyes closed, his face sunken, his cheekbones and jaw pronounced like a skeleton, and his chest under all the quilts, rising and falling abruptly.

The scene reminds him uncomfortably of his father - his last words that had haunted him all his reign. “Life is fleeting…”

He thinks of the brothers he couldn’t save, relives each of their painful partings. The open eyes, the seeping rivulets of blood, the unshed tears.
Does death look like this?

“Brother-” A violent fit of cough wakes Wook up. He corrects himself almost immediately. “Your majesty…”

“I remembered the good times I’ve spent here - you’ve shown me kindness once, eighth prince.”

Brother he would not call him. For it will remind him that he was a part of the cause that made him chain himself to a seat that in turn stole from his heart and soul. Brother - he would not call him.

They talk of mundane topics, the king notes that Wook’s sharp mind is failing him, there is no longer meanings between his lines, or light behind his eyes. He declares the visit done once the elusive conversation bores him and stands up with hands clasped behind his back.

The king knows the purpose behind this visit. Smooth Demok is, but the queen is yet to learn the art of subtlety that would fool him. This is staged to show him Wook’s miserable condition. Sympathy, they wish to make him feel. Lift his sentence, the hwangbos would plead then, let him take his last breath as a free man. The thought is laughable, that they call him a beast and expect sympathy from him. The king does pity Wook, for the man he was and the man he became. It runs no further, for the choices had been his own.

“Do you remember her face?”

He is at the door when Wook’s faint voice trails after him. The king says nothing but he knows - his wrenching heart knows - of whom Wook speaks.

“These days, when I am hanging from a thread to this life - I keep seeing her face, her happy smiling face.”

Still he does not speak.

“It was then I realized, this was the place she smiled the most - here with me…”

Begrudgingly, the king remembers a snowy night, her face brightened by her smile like a moon framed by darkest of hair. Untouched, unblemished happiness. He curls and uncurls his fingers, thinking of many times since when she had smiled at him - wanting to snap at Wook and correct him. But the residual sadness in her eyes stop his words. The bitter truth of a dying man’s words settling heavily upon him.

“I could have made her happy…”

“But you didn’t.” He does not mean to, but something inside him refuses to consider the possibility of her being alive had Wook taken different decisions, had he taken different decisions.

“You never let me - your majesty.” When he coughs the room vibrates with an echo of death. The king waits patiently. “So long ago - I hoped to ask for her hand once the drought ends with rain.”

Oh - he remembers what he had done. But does he regret? The king puts the thought to the back of his mind to examine later.

“I remember how happy the suggestion made her - how her eyes glowed with love!”

The king grits his teeth to keep himself from contradicting. She loved me too! He wants to protest. You lost her because of your own greed. But he does not speak the words. His doubts are being fed by the shadows of the palace - she feared him, whispers a wicked little voice. She pitied him.

“You are confused between love and friendship” he remembers her own words. The king shakes his head and tries to focus, Wook is still speaking.

“If I was given a chance again - I would take her far - where nothing could touch her again. Each time my breath fails, death takes me a little further. I see her in a different world. She is walking in sunlight, healthy and whole. Surrounded by children - hers and mine. She stops and smiles at me and she glows in warmth of the sun. It’s -”

He doesn’t listen anymore. Even his court hardened heart cannot take it. As he joins his entourage outside, with downcasted eyes and empty expressions he could hear the eighth prince wheeze inside the room.

He dies the week following and the king can’t help but think Wook had followed her to a place where he cannot. His world and hers parted by the veil of death, he thinks his brother had finally found a victory in the depths of defeat.

Then he sees a girl with his eyes and her smile, and he feels as if she is reaching through the veil to steady him just as he is falling into the darkness of doubts. Them had never been a choice - just a fate that would repeat again and again.

**
He wakes up a week later, feeling battered and battle - worn. But he knows, watching the sunlight that filters through blinders and the beeping machines tugged to him that battles are thousand years in the past. Hurt caused here runs deeper and bleeds slow - then Wook walks in.

“Ha Jin?”

“Hello, little brother!” Wook’s tone is clipped and his eyes dart away from him as he busies himself with the readings and reports. So waits patiently, taking in his brother’s new form. It is hard not to see the dying man in that face, the memories still fresh in his subconscious. Wook had tried to make him doubt her, he tries to grasp that thought. Not once but twice, the last time for no real gain on his part.

He had always been a man of subtle battles, wielding emotions instead of blades and making cuts against souls - poisoning with guilt, doubt and secrets. The only secret she kept from him - Wook used it to tear them apart. He hasn’t forgotten. Not anymore.

The fragments - they had deluded him. So knew of the beast he was but not the man she had made of him. He knew of all that he had desired, all that he had snatched, forced, compelled, but not of all she had given unconditionally.

Doomed or not, love it was.

“Where is Ha Jin?” He asks more clearly, willing Wook to look at him. The force of his voice is undeniable and Wook’s eyes snap to hold his gaze.

“We need to talk about your leg,” Wook diverts lightly. “With your medical history the senior thinks -”

“Where is she?” His voice rises and drowns Wook’s last words. So watches as his jaw tightens and a vein throb at his throat.

“What are you doing brother?” His voice is ice.

“I’m trying to find out what you are keeping from me.”

“No.” Wook shakes his head and puts his clip board down. “You are confusing my fiancee with pointless talk. I told you this before So - Hae Soo is my responsibility.”

“Only she is not Hae Soo, is she?”

“We’ve been through this before So,” Wook’s tone rises with a hint of malice. “You know what you have in store. What you can and cannot give her.” His words fall on So with the weight of bricks and he swallows. Realities of this new world aren’t as bright as she had promised so long ago. “Will you stake her entire life for two years of elusive happiness?”

“You can’t be certain…”

“I’m not,” Wook agrees. “But you know the longest someone who had sirenomelia survived was twenty seven years.”

|| Glossary ||
Sirenomelia - mermaid syndrome.