Work Text:
There are certain things that Ehwa does not say to herself:
I am weak.
I am ugly.
I am evil.
They were things she saw around her clearly—the evilness of FUG, cruel gangsters and terrorists; the ugliness of leering regulars who watched with sticky gazes that lingered on her skin long after she had left their sight; the weakness of the regulars in front of her who became the regulars around her, who became the regulars behind her.
Here is what she does know:
Her flame is powerful and she is mighty. She has noble blood running through her veins, and noble thoughts that her upbringing gave her running through her head. She is beautiful, her hair is sleek, her skin is clear, and her figure is eye catching, patterned dresses hanging over it in ways she doesn’t realize is appealing.
“What the fuck?!” The teammate who’s name she had already forgotten screamed as the flames roared out of control around them.
“I—!” She tried to connect with the fire around her. Smoke was gritty in her nose and she couldn’t concentrate with all of the screaming around her.
“Stop the fires!” The last surviving teammate demanded, before howling himself as flames crept over him.
“I’m trying!” She screamed back, flames licking at the tall ceiling of the testing center. Her eyes were stinging against the smoke, watering, and frustration choked in her. Her chest heaved and she clutched at the flames that crackled out of her control, giddy and howling.
Screaming continued around her. “Stop!” She cried out, “Stop!”
Fire towered and heaved on all sides and she was not weak, she was not ugly, and she was not evil.
“Stop!” She screamed again, her throat hoarse from the smoke. “Stop!”
The heat never hurt her, but it was still a wall, pressing in on her, insistent and demanding, greedy and gleeful. The screaming stopped its chorus, disappearing one by one until it was just her and her endless fire.
The ceiling lights flipped from white-blue to red and blaring. Shinsoo smacked onto her, dumping down like a bucket of water. She fell to her knees, pain vibrating up her legs. She gasped against its weight, tears leaking from her eyes. It pressed and pressed, insistent, until she crumpled to the floor.
The weight released.
She took one heaving breath and another until her lungs were finally filled with sweet, clear air. Her entire body ached—from the hungry flames, from the crushing shinsoo, from yesterday’s workout.
Slowly, she pushed herself up. The wall in front of her flashed one, two, three times.
“The regular Ehwa Yeon has failed the 20th floor test!” The loudspeakers announced.
She stared blankly at the flashing wall.
“Fuck.”
She is, if nothing else, a woman. Of course, that’s bullshit. She’s many things. Powerful, fierce, gorgeous, a force to be reckoned with. She never used the word reckon, but others used it about her.
She was unstoppable, she knew. She was the fire, hungry and savage and—
Wangnan would not stop laughing at her.
“Shut up!” She demanded, her face hot.
“It’s—“ He wheezed, pointing at the lump of charcoal that was supposed to be a chicken, his eyes watering.
“Stop!” She scowled righteously, holding up a flame in her left hand.
He yelped in his laughter, scampering to the other side of the kitchen. “It’s so ugly!” He cackled.
Ugly! She gasped, lunging at him. “I’ll kill you!”
There were fingers in her mouth. There was cotton in her head. It was a painful cotton, dipped in acetone, squeezing around her brain, chemical and dulling. She blinked, and the fingers were leaving, pulling out the cotton and then she was coughing.
The hall came into focus. Around her, regulars, staring, bloody, blood on the floor, a boy in front of her, pretty, his fingers damp. He blinked behind his bangs and she felt something in her stomach. It was a twisting, and she realized she had never been attracted to someone before.
There were fingers in her mouth. They were long, elegant. Her eyes slid shut and the fingers slid out, lingering on her lips.
Shame was always a sickening thing. It sat in the stomach, twiddling its thumbs, kicking up nausea. It reclined on the base of the spine, sunbathing in tension that radiated through the back.
She tipped her chin up and slid into the chair opposite her aunt and made sure to smile.
The ground exploded to her left, concrete and half the flower bed kicking up in a spray of debris. The floor they were on was all steel and glass, modern and urban and sharp edges. She kept running, her legs aching as she darted to and fro, trying to shake off the attackers, their bombs that dropped left and right.
Her thighs stung and her heart pounded and the ground exploded and she dodged and her lungs burned and she ran and her feet ached and she couldn’t look back and she ran and her chest burned and she ran and debris sprayed behind her and the back of her neck itched with blood and her chest burned.
She stopped. She turned.
She burned.
She looked. She looked and there was something there, something she didn’t understand. It sat in her chest, and it felt warm, tightening, thrilling.
She was watching: red hair that fell over a shoulder, a face in profile, the curve of a back and then the image doubled—reality and fantasy overlaying. It was red hair, long, soft, tumbling over a shoulder, a vest, and beneath the vest, a white blouse, and then there was the imagination, painting over it in soft, flushed tones, hair unpinned and a smile that was—
The night air is cool. The skies in the floors change. Some are speckled starscapes, gleaming pricks of light in a rolling, dark velvet. Some are watercolor washes of purple, blue, red, pink, and the stars gleam lazily, their light sighing as they shine.
This floor is a simple one. A dark sky, a half moon, and a few stars stuck here and there. They aren’t well organized, a little too neat in small ways that caught the eye. Too many straight lines, a pattern that’s almost a grid in some places.
Ehwa had never bothered to watch the stars, but awareness tickled at her side, so she tucked her arms beneath her on the railing and looked up.
The door to the roof finally clicked shut after an agonizingly long wait. Sensation rushed through her. She inhaled and wondered if it was quiet enough to not be noticed.
The city was humming below, lights buzzing, hovertaxis whining. The apartment was near a bar, and a few drunken shouts drifted up to the roof where she wasn’t hiding. Even with peripheral vision, even with hearing the footsteps, there was no way she would have missed it when Hwaryun stood next to her.
They both knew that she knew she was there, but they stood in silence. It was probably supposed to be a courtesy, but it rankled Ehwa. She didn’t need to be coddled.
She turned with a huff. Hwaryun faced the city. Her lips quirked up.
Ehwa huffed again and turned back to the stars, the city, the hovertaxis.
There was a low laugh next to her.
She could hear her breath catching in her ear. Not her own. Hers.
There was something to this—something that felt right, and all the more terrifying for that rightness. Rightness and righteousness and red hair spilling and tickling over Ehwa.
It was heady, the smell, the weight on top of her, the taste that lingered on her tongue. It felt like a burning, like a heat, and Ehwa clung tighter.
She hadn’t eaten in three days. She didn’t know which it was—cruelty or forgetfulness. Her captor had a drawl and a slumping laugh that petered off into distracted silence that made her think it could be either.
Her wrist were raw from the shinsoo shackles but at least the stone of her cell had warmed beneath her body.
Her eyes fluttered shut. It was a skill to fall asleep anywhere, one that she had never possessed. She had always required at the very least a pillow, but easily also a blanket and a mattress, and then preferably a cracked window—fresh air was good for the complexion—and a set of satin pajamas.
This cell had made her a quick student in the art of falling into a deep, dreamless sleep.
Her stomach panged. The stone was unyielding beneath her hips, where her arm was tucked beneath her, her shoulder, and the angle of her head.
A breath escaped her, slow, winding, and deliberate. It was something Viole had taught her, calming through breathing.
A vibration trembled through her hip, the tuck of her elbow, her shoulder, the angle of her head.
She picked her head up, blinking.
An explosion, an actual proper explosion, rocked the building and she laughed, rolling flat on to her back.
Her escape reverberated through her spine and skin, the destruction of a rescue soothing knotted muscles.
“Hwaryun,” Ehwa called out.
The red witch paused at the door, her hand resting on the door frame. Her fingers were long, elegant, and Ehwa’s words bundled up in her mouth for some reason.
At her hesitation, Hwaryun looked at her over her shoulder, her red eye gleaming. “Yes?”
“Do you ever want something for yourself?” The question should have seemed rude, should have seemed over-intimate, intrusive, but the fire in Ehwa’s chest demanded it be asked.
Hwaryun’s lips curled up. “It’s not wanting if you know you’re going to get it.” And then she disappeared, the door sliding shut behind her.
The ship hummed around her. The smell of metal hung in the air, and Ehwa wasn’t sure if it was the grind of the engine or the blood that lingered on Hwaryun’s clothes.
Pressure sat in her ears, the sounds of the ship muffled, the discussions that happened in passing sounding like they were underwater.
Someone had asked her if she was alright and she had said yes—an automatic, polite response. A blanket had been tucked around her shoulder and bandages wrapped around her wrists.
And now—
Now she sat next to the cargo, not alone, a red eye burning into her. The pressure of the ship seemed to build, and Ehwa wondered if the climate controls were off in their calculations because there was no way there was enough oxygen, not when she was breathing this hard. Hwaryun’s fingers curled around the metal shelf she was leaning against and Ehwa’s limited breath caught.
Hwaryun noticed her noticing her, and her chin jerked up in the tiniest motion.
There was something unsettled in her gaze, red, blood beneath it, smeared on her cheek, her hair stuck to it. Her single eye burned with something that Ehwa had never seen in her before.
Hwaryun hadn’t looked away from her once.
She also hadn’t said a single thing.
“Are you okay?” It felt odd to be the one asking that.
Hwaryun’s fingers tightened on the shelf and the intensity of her gaze fractured—except, no, the intensity didn’t ebb one bit. The only thing that had fractured was the composure.
Across from her, Hwaryun’s chest heaved and Ehwa’s realized many things—
Hwaryun knew exactly what was about to happen.
She had known it.
She had waited for Ehwa.
And most importantly, Ehwa realized she wasn’t scared anymore.
“Oh,” Ehwa said out loud, despite herself.
“Oh?” The word sounded like it was dredged out of Hwaryun, strained through the cracks of her fracturing composure.
Ehwa smiled, understanding now how Hwaryun must feel all the time, knowing and a little drunk on it. “You’ve never been uncertain before, have you?”
Hwaryun stilled and Ehwa’s breath caught.
They stared at each other, the ship humming, something wild in the red witch’s eye, and Ehwa waited for her to shatter.
“Are soulmates real?”
“No,” Hwaryun smiled.
Ehwa asked, knowing that Hwaryun was waiting for it: “Is destiny?”
Hwaryun’s eyes went hooded, pleased, her fingers tracing under Ehwa’s chin. “Of course—“ the words leaning and leading into a—
It feels almost like satisfaction might, to look at her.
Her eyes are red. Not candied red, but a candy dissolved in water. Diluted, but not pink. Her gaze is caught off guard, but quickly teetering into offended. A smile creeps onto my mouth.
She is—beautiful, easily. Powerful for what she is, and for what she will be, some type of incandescence, a primordial grace and delicate fury. It makes my breath catch, the glimpses of her rage, the burning and billowing.
I wonder how I’ll lose myself. I know I will. I always have, but there’s something tremulous to being confronted by it and knowing that this moment is the beginning.
I smile at her, and I can’t help it if it’s a little knowing.
“Hello.”
Her eyes widen, and I allow myself to anticipate.