serpents and sons | taekook

Interlude: Namjoon (The Scholar)

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Yoongi is quick to yank the poor man to the side just as the blade slides through his flimsy armor, but by the blood Taehyung thinks it's too late. They pull him from the battle, Yoongi blocking the blades that come their way with an ease that only comes from centuries of practice. Blood pools at their feet, dripping over their boots and soaking through their clothes.

However, as they prop the man against an abandoned shack, the sounds of death behind them, they rip his armor open only to find scrolls stained in blood. The deep gouge through his chest has not broken past bone, but the blood pours freely regardless.

Taehyung asks his name as they rip apart their spare clothes, reaching for medicine soaked bandages aided by the tinge of emerald green magic that seeps from Taehyung's fingers - unseen by the soldier's eyes.

'My name is Namjoon,' he says, 'and I was not meant for the battlefields.' He says he was destined for the emperor's court as they patch the scrape over his heart.

'You must be incredibly intelligent to be granted such an honor,' Taehyung remarks, disregarding his minimal knowledge on the politics of the country they currently roam, and Namjoon's sickly pale face blooms with pride.

'I am one of the lucky few to be granted an education,' he says. 'I trained for years to assist the emperor... but it is an honor to serve in any capacity,' he adds quietly.

Taehyung cannot help his ingrained bitterness as he says he was simply a pawn, that he doubted Namjoon's beloved emperor even knew his name. Namjoon doesn't deny it, only shrugs from where he is propped up. His chest is bare, save the red tinged bandages around his chest, his legs too weak to push himself to his feet.

The battle still rages behind them, out of sight but never out of mind, and Taehyung's fire rages with the cries of dying men.

'I just wanted to learn,' he whispers, barely aware of what he is saying - the treason that tinges his words - and the two share a look.

Somehow, they end up staying by Namjoon's side. They sleep on either side of him, watching over him as the cries of war finally peter off. Forces retreating, recalculating, preparing for their next offensive.

They wake with the sun and then they help Namjoon to his feet, arms tight around his waist. Their own merry band of misfits, their roaming band of thieves, perk up when they finally emerge. They seem pleased that the man, the soldier they had deemed worth saving, lived through the night and Namjoon is subject to a round of cheers from the men- many of whom are already three sheets to the wind, swaying around their campfire.

Namjoon stays with them for several more nights, healing, and Taehyung can feel something crack open in the cage of his heart. The fire that lives in his veins flickering, building. Yearning.

It almost seems inevitable that they would offer a place at their side to him as well, but Namjoon is hesitant.

He can't abandon his country, he says, and they cannot find it in themselves to persuade him otherwise, to leave everything he's ever known and wanted.

So they let him go. Taehyung doesn't blame him, and neither does Yoongi. A man destined for the emperor's court has no place amongst thieves, Taehyung tries to tell himself.

However, he does not stay away for long.

In a small town at the base of the hill, not far from the palace gates - he spots them. He has his work under his arm and a wide brimmed hat blocking the sun from his fair skin, and they have their hands laden with baskets of food as they slog through the drying mud; Taehyung refuses to let his people starve, regardless of weather.

'Long time no see,' Namjoon waves with a brilliant smile, and that crack in Taehyung's cage widens ever further.

Namjoon beckons them closer and they wander past bustling food stalls, searching for a quiet place to settle. They eventually stumble across a small alcove of trees just beyond the village border, just a mile or so from Taehyung and Yoongi's camp, and they drop their things at the base of a large tree.

It's silent for a moment as they take in the scenery, breathing in the air, watching the coming and goings of the villagers. The shouts of the vendors and the idle chatter of the common folk melting into a soft distant lull. Yoongi pulls his blade from his hip as they sit in silence, idly rubbing a soft cloth along the hilt.

Eventually, though, Namjoon speaks.

'What can I learn with you?' he asks - and Taehyung, bearing a heart that is unused to the implications, can only silently hand the scholar dried meat from their pack and Namjoon takes it gratefully, legs stretched out before him.

'Anything you want,' Taeyung eventually says as the sun continues to set and Yoongi's typical solemn expression softens in the fading light.

Namjoon nods, and that is that.

And Taehyung holds true to his promise.

They travel across lands Namjoon has never seen before, crossing waters he's only heard of. Taehyung takes him to every library known to him and then some, the three of them discovering more together than Taehyung had thought possible in his millenia alone with the gladiator. And even Yoongi shares what little knowledge he has of the great library that burned, a true travesty to history. Little snippets he had heard from 'people on the road', he says, hiding their true age and immortality.

Little does the imperial scholar know that 'people on the road' truly translates to 'the hearsay from my former masters, the patrons of the library itself'.

Of course, it is not just the books that amaze Namjoon - a man with a mind that never stops -  it is also Taehyung himself.

Namjoon speaks on it not long before Taehyung offers him the apple. When the god and his companion trade quiet words around their campfire as the last of their trio sleeps, speaking on how easily he fits with them- how much they have grown together, how much they care for him.

It is the way he acts, Namjoon says, it is the way he treats people, and the way he sees the world. How he helps others in need, how he saved a soldier he had never met from a battle that never involved him - but how he also does not turn away the chance of revenge if the venture is worth it. How he will protect that which he cares for with everything he has.

A true icon for the helpless, he says quietly, and Taehyung doesn't know how to respond.

As 'Loki' he had been branded as a god of misfortune, of mischief. Of trickery. A man to not be trusted, a man who the Midgardians falsely believed to have orchestrated the murder of one of his own. A jotunn who gallivanted around with various others, warming their beds and bringing shame to his line.

For so long he was treated as petty, unreliable, untrustworthy, when all along the true lies were the words that fell from the lips of the powerful. The lies his so-called family spilled whenever they pleased, uncaring of its rebound on the god himself.

However, a man of great integrity himself, a man of fact and honesty, a man capable of seeing through the fallacy of history and conversation... sees him as an icon.

The decision is quite easy to make then and he takes the knowledge of their immortality, and the apple itself, easily- as Yoongi did. He asks question upon question, eager to learn more and more, but Taehyung can only laugh with shining eyes, trying so desperately to not let his tears fall.

'I want to see the world change,' Namjoon says, and Taehyung watches as he takes bite after bite, juice dripping from his mouth. There is no hesitation in his eyes, his actions, as the core drops to the ground. 'I want to learn, and grow.'

Yoongi tells him to be prepared to see wars, plagues, and countless other atrocities - things he has seen all too much of in his now endless time on this earth - but the scholar shrugs. He does not look resigned, but simply expectant. The knowledge of mans' past mistakes already buried in the recesses of his mind, revealing to him the path they are all bound to take yet again.

'I expect nothing less,' he says, and Yoongi can't help but bark out a laugh across the empty road they ride along. 'Besides, my friends,' Namjoon adds with a small smile, 'What is immortality, what is living, but an atrocity?'

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