[Toska - that causeless ache...]
"You will never win."
Seo doesn't look at her as he speaks. His eyes remain on the streets, observing day vendors packing off their stalls or the night vendors setting up theirs with a detached interest.
Seol turns to look at him, the nearest lantern traces angular lines of his face in muted gold. Seo squares his jaw.
"And I will always ride to war."
The way he pronounces that fate upon them makes her throat tighten. Seol swallows and fights back the trembling lower lip that attempts to eclipse her smile.
"And you will always return in victory and I will always be waiting."
She hears his sigh, deep as it is, over the din of the tavern. Seo turns to her, leaning his back against the rickety banisters and elbows looped through them.
"No." He says simply.
The effect of his denial is palpable on her expression. Her smile sinks and her shoulders droop, until nothing of her former cheer remains.
"Kang Seo," her voice takes an aggrieved note. "Must you always be so cruel?"
"Mama," he imitates her tone with a flat expression. "Must you always dream of the impossible?"
Seol turns away, kicking an upturned pot nearby. It topples and cracks into two. Seo looks away, swallowing as he spies a few drops of tears glistening gold in the lantern light before she swiftly wipes them off.
"All of you can't wait to pack me off to the ends of earth!" She sniffles, wiping her nose with her ragged sleeve. "These people - these streets - I'll never be more than a stranger to them. The princess who visits once a year - when North is fed up with her!"
"That's not true."
When she looks at him, her bloodshot eyes are burning pools of ochre fire.
"I roamed for an entire day - no one but you noticed." She recounted. "But you! You weren't even here and everybody knows you. Your reputation precedes you."
Breath leaves her in a huff.
"I envy you," she says with a childlike honesty, looking him in the eye.
"Mama -"
Seol shakes her head, stepping back.
"Go away, Kang Seo."
It is she who runs instead, ducking her head before the tears fall in front of him. Seo is but a step behind, calling out rather cautiously. He didn't want to alert ignorant bystanders to her identity. Seo begrudgingly acknowledges the disguise had been smartly done. He would have to keep a better eye on what the crown prince gets up to, if he has means to provide his sister with such methods of escaping imperial boundaries.
Hastily taking the outer ladder steps down Seol descends right into a bar brawl where a beefy man was waving his fists shouting about lost silver and demanding the other - rather bony party to give up an arm over some wager. Seol stops short just as the beefy man's thick fist comes swinging down, raising a hand in vain to protect her nose from breaking if anything.
Seo grabs her shoulders from behind, steering her aside as the beefy man's punch lands on one of the bony man's aids.
"What are you doing?" His voice carries over to the brawl, which pauses noticing the military blacks and silver amidst them. "Keep marching boy." His grip still secure on her shoulders, Seo barely glances at the comically paused men. "My squire is dim," he offers as explanation, continuing to physically haul her off their vicinity.
Moonlight is dimmed by the torch baskets hanging by stalls, or lanterns strung up along the high rising pavilions. The capital has no intention of sleeping just yet. Seo doesn't stop until they have departed the well trodden path down the marketplace and turned into a less conspicuous ally. Seol dabs at her eyes surreptitiously, watching him in her peripheral vision. He has not stopped steering her yet.
"Where are you taking me?" She demands in the end. "I don't want to go back just yet. Stop! Stop - I said! Uh - ouch - owh owh!" Seol makes an elaborate drama of having bumped her foot on an obstacle in the path, skipping around one legged. "See what you did!"
Seo lets her go, releasing a breath and frowning as he watches her antics.
"Are you quite done?" He asks after a moment, hands folded against his chest and chin tilted. "Come on then, there is something I wish to show you."
Intrigued enough to abandon theoritics, Seol legs after him. The path expands into a clearing edged with forested imperial lands. Up ahead runs the parameters of an imperial estate, distinctly marked with short stone hedges though Seol couldn't think of any distant imperial relative living there.
The emperor had many brothers. Most had died over the time, some to illnesses and some to greed and debauchery. Those who remained had made it a point to avoid dwelling in the same sphere as their imperial older brother. The grand princes lived scattered along the empire, the Yoos in Cheongju headed by grand prince Munwon being the closest among them. But it would take a day on a good horse to reach them.
Then who lived so close by - or rather - Seol corrects her thought, who had lived so near?
The estate has fallen into disuse. There were no torches lit along the hedges, no guard at the gates. Circumventing the main entrance, Seo takes a stone paved path downwards leading them to yet another clearing edged with zhuyu trees. Flower petals scatter in the breeze like fine particles of gold dust and Seol inhales the thickly scented air gratefully.
"Careful."
She walks with her eyes on the golden canopy that Seo has to caution her about the ground, Seol stops short and finds the ground covered in stacked up towers of stone. The silence prevailing is broken only by the rustle of trees and sizzle of melting wax. Each stack of stones had a candle burning atop them, gradually dying against the impenetrable backdrop of nightfall.
Seol is reminded of the emperor's personal courtyard in Chondeokjeon. The polished stones her imperial father sometimes painstakingly stacked, during the winter months. Her throat tightens with a feeling she doesn't pause to examine. It feels as if the place was a graveyard, instead of lives - prayers of old buried with each stone. Seo pauses and waits for her to join him, at the edge of their vision a shrine of forgotten times rises over the zhuyu trees. Moon hangs behind its layered roof - slightly misshapen at the edge that keeps it from being a full circle and obscured by the golden canopy of blooming zhuyu.
"This used to be the residence of his imperial majesty's eighth brother."
"The traitor of Hwangju?" Seol says automatically. Everything of the war that had ensued due to scheming of Hwangju maternal clan is not entirely lost to her, though she had been merely a toddler at the time. "But.." she allows her voice to trail off trying to articulate her thoughts. "It looks -"
"Familiar?" Seo's mouth twitches sideways into a ghost of a smile. "His majesty had been particular about it during the construction."
Seol kneels slowly, happy that she did not have to care about her skirts in this guise and lifts a stone that had fallen from the nearest stack. A prayer gone unanswered - overlooked. Seo kneels beside her gathering other fallen stones. Seol watches his hands at work, shadows of the night and candlelight smoothe off bowcut ridges archery had left on his fingers.
"He built a grave for memories he cannot return to." Her voice is small.
"For a woman he cannot return to," he adds. "Despite Hwangju falling, despite the taint by association - this place stands because of the woman it represents." In the dancing shadows of the candlelight, Seo's silver gaze finds hers. "That woman who was not written in his majesty's stars."
The stone he had laid on the stack slips and Seol involuntarily reaches to steady it at the same time as Seo. Their hands brush together. Seo stands up, fingers she had brushed with her fingertips curling into a fist.
"But she changed her star -" Seol calls after him. Her heart aches, as if sensing where this conversation was leading to. "She returned for him!"
Unease bubbles within her. Seol refused to think of the queen as anything but her mother - her mother, who the fates had returned to her. Her mother returned because she couldn't part with the child she left behind. Those words of her imperial father Seol held close to her heart in the early years of her childhood. Back then when people still talked of witch - blooded Kangs who used necromancy to give their young lady the face of the emperor's dead lover.
Seo nods absentmindedly.
"And they both paid the price," he says cynically. "In blood and tears - in war and peace. In pieces of their heart. People don't return the same once they circle the abyss. It takes a lot to change someone's star."
Seo bends down to help her stand up, Seol refuses to meet his eye to see the words before he utters them. It delays the inevitable only for a mere moment. He takes her hands in his and holds them as if she is made of the most delicate jade.
"It's a price I cannot afford to pay, mama." His words are tender, undeserving of the painful gasp Seol rewards them with. "I cannot write your name in my stars." He continues, as if not seeing the tears pricking her obsidian eyes. "Neither can I allow you to write mine in yours."
Seo steps back, allowing her hands to drop, his own arms folded.
"Don't you dare!" Seol says sharply. "Don't you dare bow to me."
He smiles at her wistfully and performs the bow nevertheless. Seol jumps back as if he had stricken her instead. She makes no motion to wipe away the tears that fell freely now.
"Let go of this dream now mama. Be free of it. I am not a man who deserves your worry, I wouldn't dare to accept anything more than your command. I don't wish to begin something that will ultimately leave you searching for pieces of your heart in ruines like these. You mean too much to too many people to lead a life like that."
"And to you Kang Seo? Do I mean nothing to you?"
He shakes his head, allows himself one last liberty of brushing his knuckles against her tear stained cheek, draws back and turns away, resolute.
"It's me. I should not mean anything to you, mama."
*