FALLING SLOWLY ||Complete||

Defeat

I wish we had met in a different world - I would have loved you with all my heart. Her words hang over them like ominous clouds, between remembering and forgetting, between then and now, between reality and dreams - he had lost her too many times. Though he knows it is but a dream there is something very real about the sinking feeling that curls around him like a frost bite, nipping at the ends of his nerves.

For a moment he is again a king, separated from the very people he wanted to protect, obeyed but not understood, revered but not loved - he still wears a mask, though of a different kind - invisible - to hide his wounds from poking eyes that seek for weakness. He remembers the loneliness of that life - a self imposed penance for not being there when she longed for him. A wolf longing after a moon - untouchable, unattainable. Even if we are from different worlds… Even if we are from different worlds.

Then he is a teenager and she smiles like the autumn sun - warm and bright but mild enough that he could gaze at her. There is a skip in her step, a rainbow in her eyes. Her hands are soft when they smooth over his raw knuckles.

“Do you always fight?” Her tone is half disapproving and half curious, she fawns over him as if he is a kicked puppy.

“No -” his voice is snappy, and he pulls his hand out of her reach and into his pocket. He wonders why she would even bother to clarify that, instead of putting him in the don’t cross list like half of the school.

“Of cause the rest of time you swim.” She nods as if she had understood the complexities of his life.

They sit side by side on a boulder, feet swinging and jackets flapping in the wind. Above them a vast sky is dotted with stars they are supposed to gaze at with the people in the camp below and between them is a silence too comfortable to be broken with words.

“Why did you follow me?” He asks her, trying to sound nonchalant as she pulls her jacket tighter around herself, shivering slightly.

“You know that over there is Pegasus -” she points at a random set of stars and he snatches her hand making her eyes snap back to him. Her fingers are cold and her eyes wide, instead of letting go he stuffs her hand in his pocket, fingers laced through his.

“Yeon Hwa might be watching,” he tells her with a shrug, and his lips tug into a smile when she shakes her head, and settles closer, so that their shoulders brush and leans her head on his shoulder. She looks up at him, her eyes alight with amusement and her grin cheeky at how he had suddenly sat up straighter. From that angle he could count the freckles on her nose, or the hairs on her lashes - his eyes flicker down to her lips and back up into her eyes.

“Yeon Hwa might be watching -” she repeats, a silent laughter in her voice. “But then - didn’t you bring that fate upon yourself by declaring I’m your girlfriend?”

He thinks for a moment, knowing what she meant, and then thinks back to that bullying cousin of hers, who had been dumbstruck for good five minutes until he had dragged her away.

“Do you mind?”

“No,” she still sounds cheeky, but her tone is sleepy. “It’s warmer this way.”

“You didn’t have to follow me all the way up - I’m not going to jump.”

“You didn’t have to scare her - I was not going to cry.”

So takes a deep breath of chilly air and looks down at her.

“Still -” he says. “I’d watch over you. You don’t necessarily have to cry.”

“So would I -” she points out. “You don’t necessarily have to jump.”

“Go Ha Jin, stop turning around my own words.”