Lionheart [FIC]

[notturnito]

Title: Lionheart
Fandom: Akatsuki no Yona
Rating: G
Pairing(s): Mutually pining Yona/Hak. It’s from Yona’s perspective.
Warnings: Very fluffy. Hurt/comfort with a pinch of angst somewhere. It’s a healing fic, though.
Notes: Set around Chapter 134. Has my usual brand of “talking a problem out of it while pining with each other.” Xing Arc brought that quality of theirs especially great.

---

Yona once felt cold.

It’s been very long, she is very surprised that she can still recall it. How everything within her seemed to seep out into the colorless world out there, leaving her brimless and colorless as well. How that emptiness slithered, knocking around within the space of her chest as if searching for a hint of weakness.

How it strangled her heart with heaviness so tight, Yona felt like it could’ve drowned her were she to be left afloat by the sea.

The day after Soo-won’s betrayal. The night her father was murdered. The entire journey both Hak and her had spent before they reached Fuuga. Yona felt it seep into the core of her bones until she was so sure it wouldn’t leave her. She was so sure if all the rest were to disappear, even Hak, that loneliness would have been her companion until the end of time.

But then, they reached Fuuga.

And after Fuuga, they met Yoon and Ik-soo.

And then, the dragon warriors.

Yona is going through a journey that changes her—is still changing her. She’s met good people and bad people alike. She’s found home and courage in all sorts of people- people she’d never thought would offer her kindness and love in the middle of this broken, broken world. She’s fought her way out of that rose-tinted glass of her palace walls, in trade of seeing the truth within the nature of mankind.

It’s beautiful, the sight.

She has found family, a new one, one she has sworn to protect with everything of her; within her companions.

Now, they’re taken away.

This time, the numbness comes back to swelter in her lungs with the weight of a mountain, ready to crush her heart into smithereens. Along with it, is the sheer panic of having everything taken away from her again. It is a territory with too raw of a wound. It makes her mind fraught with anxiety.

It doesn’t come as a surprise at all for her when she has an attack during the beginning of their journey back to Kuuto.

Not even a year ago, Kuuto had been home to her before it became the source of her terror, the city whence they—Hak and her—fled from. Back then, she had lost everything as well. The stark similarity of this situation is too cruel of a memory. Being robbed of everything, losing the familiarity of her home in lieu to face the looming nightmare Kuuto brings; it is too cruel, Yona thinks.

She only has Hak now, as she had had back then. However, that is not a source of comfort at all.

It only reminds her of everything she has taken from Hak. It only reminds her of everything Hak has sacrificed for her sake.

One day, Yona promises herself, despite how it wrenches her heart from the sheer hurt of thinking about it, she will give back Hak his freedom.

She will let him go.

(She doesn’t think of how the numbness petrify her from the thought.)

But now, Yona can’t stop thinking of the Hak’s face from the night before. He had tried his best in comforting her, and Yona cannot stop thinking of how Hak’s mere presence and his simple words can calm down all uneasiness. He makes every worry Yona has ebb away, unravel. He creates new problems for Yona’s heart instead, but that is a matter on another plate.

She wants to talk to Hak. A talk that is not about having lives on the line, the burden of a whole country over them. She wants to meet him, eyes to eyes, heart to heart, as a girl who wants to have something to remember for herself, before everything else, at the realization that she has to meet Soo-won eventually.

She gets up from the makeshift bed, and goes out from the tent.

---

Yona finds Hak on a clearing by the stream.

He is washing his face, so Yona waits for him, idly watching the forest as it slowly stirs alive. The stream’s rumble is passing by in the back of her mind.

Kuuto is now only a day away, and even here she can see the glimmer of red that marks the rooftops of Hiryuu castle on the distance. It feels strange to her—she cannot believe that each step they take is now leading them closer to the capital. She thinks she is even forgetting how it looks like; her hometown.

“Princess.”

Yona looks up.

Hak is drying his face on his outer robe, his face a mixture of befuddlement and tight concern. Yona helplessly watches, as he is getting nearer, the blue of his eyes, and how—from this angle, with the sun litting up from the back of his head—he is blinding.

He stops just right before her, only a breath away.

“Hak,” Yona finally finds her voice. “I wish to speak with you.”

It’s hard not to ache as well when Hak’s eyes flash in worry. She wonders how much of it is out of his obligation as her bodyguard, and how much of it comes from his own feelings. She wants it very much for the latter to overwhelm the first.

“Right,” he says, rolling his shoulder from what seems to be an ache. “What’s the matter?”

Us, Yona desperately wants to say. She shoves back the thought and sits down, hand patting on the ground before her for Hak. He follows by sitting down, eyes never leaving her.

She gathers her breath before she says, “I’m sorry.”

Hak raises an eyebrow. “For what?” His eyes are searching in Yona’s, looking for answers.

“For making you worry, yesterday.”

Hak gives a very silent exhale through his mouth. He rakes through his hair with a hand, eyes troubled. “Are you fine now?”

Yona can’t say that she is fine—not in that sense. Not when she feels jittery from the silence, without Yoon’s voice when he bickers with the four dragons, their presence a balm of relief within the backseat of her mind. But she is no longer so overwhelmed by the prospect of having so many lives on the back of her shoulders.

“Better,” she says.

Hak’s eyes are searching into hers again—he always seems to do that, searching. “Good,” he announces. “That’s all that matters, Princess.”

“It’s not,” Yona protests. She bites down on her lower lip. “You had to worry about me on top of everything else.”

At that, a small rare smile suddenly quirks up on Hak’s lips, enough to start Yona’s heart like a jolt of lightning. “That’s kinda a part of my job, you know.”

“Hak.” Yona tries not to think about how Hak’s words and smile slowly fill the coldness, thawing the ice.

“Besides, it’s not that much different from what you usually do, anyway.”

“Hak,” Yona stresses, and sees how Hak’s lips twitch threateningly at that, almost giving in to a wide smile.

The numbness within her veins slowly pours out into open air, as Hak continues to say. “You think I’m kidding? Have you counted how many times you’ve run along headfirst into danger? Too many, that I tell you. I’ll get Droopy Eyes and the White Snake to vouch for that. Hell, Yoon will definitely vouch for that.”

It’s hard to fight the urge to smile, to give in to Hak. Yona knows her lips twitch from how Hak’s gaze immediately focused on it; his gaze always hungry - devouring everything she gives to him.

“You’re mean, Hak,” she says, trying not to grin outright. She sees how Hak’s own lips thin out into something resembling a smile.

“Someone’s gotta knock that into your head, Princess.” He cocks his head with that weird, Not-Smile, leaning back on both palms. “Lest you think it’s fine to run along towards danger all time.”

It says a lot about her, when all the numbness and worry are dissipating due to Hak, his words and his presence, himself. “And you’d rather it be you?”

“Yeah. Like I said to you last night, that you don’t have to worry about those guys. They’re tougher than they look.”

“Mm. And you’d know because….”

Hak taps briefly on his chest. “Darkness Dragon. Remember, Princess?”

She giggles, finally; all the giddiness building up in her chest only to slowly stream out into her veins, spreading warmth languidly, its color liquid gold.

Hak seems content in watching her, the tense lines of his body unraveling beneath her gaze. “Yeah,” he says, just as the breeze passes through to sweep his hair. His bangs fall unruly around his eyes, already too long for him. Yona presses down the thought of asking to cut it, as she notices how it makes his eyes stand out, electric.

It makes what he says next more intent with meaning.

“So,” he heaves a breath, as if bracing himself for something unknown, “I’m going to say as well, that you’re allowed to stop and catch your breath.”

Yona presses her fingers down.

She is grateful that Hak doesn’t say that it’s fine to break down—it implies that she is brittle, and Hak is not so disrespectful towards her to say that.

But she is still feeling the lingering weight of Kouren’s gaze boring upon her, the lead in her stomach dropping when Kouren announced that she will take hostages upon Yona’s companions—that she will besiege Yona’s home.

“I can’t,” she hears herself say. “You know very well that I have to move forward-”

“You’ve been moving forward for the entire time ever since, Princess.” Hak cuts in. “You also need the time to stop.”

Yona stares at him, helplessly.

Hak sighs. “I’m not very good with words, so I’m just going to explain in what I know. So, you got hurt. You got a wound from it. When you get hurt, what you do is stop, let it rest for a while. You don’t,” he stresses, “do anything to make the wound worse.”

Now that all the ice has thawed from her veins, she can feel everything else that wasn’t present before. Now that she returns to live, and so does all the pain gouging her chest inside out. It does feel like a wound, raw and bleeding, being not beside any of them; Yoon nor the dragon warriors.

When Yona smiles, she feels like her heart is going to break into two. “You don’t do that, though, Hak.”

It startles a laugh out of him. Yona traces every line of the smile on his face, every hint of happiness. She feels like she devouring something back all of the sudden, in exchange of every hungry, hot gaze Hak sent after her. Like her moments with Hak are suddenly all too overwhelming, yet all not enough.

“Ah,” he says. “Well, you’re not me. Don’t follow my example. But even then, I try to get some rest for my wounds.”

Yona slides shut her eyes.

“Is it very bad now, that I would like it very much to be you?”

Hak doesn’t answer, and when Yona opens her eyes, it’s to the sight of Hak, frozen all over.

She smiles again. “As strong as you, at least. So that I can be strong enough to protect what’s dear to me.”

At least this is the one thing that doesn’t change from the beginning until now. Her desire to live, to be strong enough not to have her family taken away from her again.

When Hak answers, his voice is too hoarse for Yona not to take note of. “You’re plenty strong already, Princess.”

Yona stares at him, searching. “Sometimes it feels like I’m not.”

“No,” Hak cuts in, voice harsh. “No, you don’t need- you’re strong as you are now, Princess. You’re the strongest person I’ve ever known.”

Hearing that sears something tight in Yona’s chest. “You hold me too much in high regard, Hak. What if we can’t get them back?”

“We will get them back.”

The utter conviction in Hak’s tone startles Yona, making her search harder for the reason in Hak’s body language and face. When Hak looks back to her, he is so prominent with grief.

“You’re not the only one who thinks of them as family.”

Yona inhales sharply, and Hak’s eyes turn to the sound, suddenly alight with alarm.

“Oh, Hak,” Yona says, within her mind the superimposed images of Wind Tribe flashing through. It reminds her again of everything she has taken away from Hak. “I didn’t mean to imply…”

“No-” Hak hurriedly says. “No, that’s not what I-” he presses a palm to an eye, muttering a cuss too soft for Yona’s to hear. When he glances back, his gaze is filled with guilt.

“What I’m tryna say here,” Hak finally says, releasing the palm from his eye. “I don’t want to see them locked up just as much as you do, Princess. They,” his voice catches on something too big for him to hide, something Yona too able to recognize.

They’re my family, too.

Quietly, Yona reaches out.

She grasps Hak’s hand, feeling it jerk slightly under the first touch before relaxing, accepting her touch. It is rough, calloused; just as much as a warrior’s hand in Yona’s mind. It is also very Hak, inexplicably warm and alive. Yona carefully slides her other hand to cradle Hak’s, and lets this one speak for itself.

After a while, there is not a single response.

And then Yona sees it, Hak reaching out to her, before softly, softly resting his palm on top of her hands. She takes that one too with her other hand, and holds. It warms her, contents her. And suddenly she knows with certain clarity, that they will make it.

“We’ll get through this,” Yona promises, Hak’s grip turning tight on her own. And when she looks up, she knows that Hak feels the same.

“Yeah. We will.” Hak says, gruff, and he is finally grinning. It makes the severeness of his face disappear, it makes him look more like the boy who used to play with her in the castle. Feral and unruly. Wild in itself.

Yona’s focus on that grin is used by Hak to observe her. What he says next is a statement. “Now you do look better.”

Yona gives Hak a sheepish smile. She is truly an open book for him.

“I am,” Yona agrees, warm and alive and free from the rattling cold. They meet each other—eyes to eyes, heart to heart; and Yona allows herself a grin.

Thanks to you, she thinks.