Work Text:
They went to similar schools, vacationed in similar places. Sun had even once overheard Joong-Ki laughing about her with his friends, teenage boys talking about pretty girls. Sun, in the next room, had buried her face in the soft fur of her dog and rolled her eyes. Even then, he had been disgusting.
The circle of Seoul’s elite was not very big. They weren’t friends, had never actually spoken, acknowledging each other merely with polite nods and polite smiles. But Sun—this other Sun—had always been there, on the edge of her life, the worst kind of mirror—the kind that reflected everything she wasn’t.
The other Sun’s clothes were always right, her mannerisms were always right—everything about her was just so.
Sun had always had the better hair of the two, though. Not that she cared.
Pampered and pretty and perfect, with not only a mother, but also a father who adored her. A father who threw her grand parties at their country estate, parties to which even Sun was invited, because everyone was, and because their fathers were in business together.
Sun didn’t know anyone here—no, she didn’t like anyone here—and slowly made her way farther and farther from the center of the party, until she was all alone, on the other side of the bridge that spanned a little creek at the back of the house. The noise of the music and guests had faded to a dull hum, drowned by the sound of crickets. The rising of the moon was beautiful, and Sun had it to herself.
“Would you like more champagne?” a waiter asked, startling her.
Sun took the flute without looking up, without straightening out from where she leaned against the balustrade, smoking a cigarette.
“Thank you,” she said absently.
“Something tells me you might want two.”
At this, she looked up. The waiter had a hint of a smile on his handsome face.
“Maybe I would,” she said, snuffing out her cigarette to free up a hand for another glass. Looking around her she said, “You had to come a long way to reach me, out here by myself.”
“You looked like you needed it more than the rest of them.”
A great cheer went up inside for the birthday girl, for Sun in her pretty pink dress with the tastefully bare back. Sun hoped her father had completed his business so they could go soon.
“I think I did need it,” she said, sipping from the first one.
The waiter was still watching her, not heading back as he ought to have done. A strange caterer, this man, with his too-handsome face and his weather-beaten hands and scandalously knowing smirk.
“It’s a good party,” he said, nodding behind him, to the building. “Why don’t you join it?”
“I wouldn’t know what to say,” she lied. She’d been properly brought up, by teams of nannies and headmistresses. She knew exactly what to say; she just didn’t care to say it.
At that, all of his brazen cheer fell away. “What do you say when you can’t run away? When you’re forced to stay in the room?” he asked, somewhat desperately, out of place.
“Why do you want to know?”
He got a faraway look in his eye, the kind that meant he was thinking of someone else.
“I might have to talk to them one day,” he said. “To the ones who aren’t like you.”
“And what am I like?” she asked.
“Above it all.”
He wasn’t flirting with her, and she wasn’t interested, but she sidled up beside him anyway.
“I’ll tell you my secret,” she whispered. “I keep my mouth shut as much as possible. They think I’m quiet and polite. They don’t realize it’s because I’m trying not to scream.”
From the stunned look on his face, this was not the answer he had expected.
She expected him to jolt away, to hem and haw and make his way back to the main building, as he ought to have done, for so many reasons.
He stayed.
Ah, she thought a few months later when his face gazed out at her from the photos that came with the invitation. That’s why he wanted to know.
The heiress and the waiter were getting married.
Perhaps pretty, pampered, perfect Sun was more interesting than she seemed.
Sun went to the wedding, because their fathers were still doing business together, and because it was her duty to show her support.
The bride was radiant, as usual, and played the part beautifully, doing everything just so, fulfilling every duty. She drifted happily between guests the entire evening, barely pausing to breathe.
Her husband seemed less at ease, his handsome face slipping into the shadows that Sun usually inhabited, no matter how bright the room was.
After Joong-Ki had stumbled off into the night, drunk and with a girl under his weak little arm, Sun quietly wove her way through and past the crowd to where the bridegroom was standing alone. He leaned against a balustrade and gulped his wine too fast.
She silently offered him two of the three glasses of champagne she had brought with her. Seeing the flutes appear under his nose made him look up. It took him a second to place her, but then he smiled—the same knowing little smirk he’d given her before. The mischievous smile that didn’t fit, and was the entire reason Sun liked him.
“Both for me?” he asked.
“You looked like you needed it,” she said, as he had to her before.
“I do.”
“How do you like it?” she asked, already knowing the answer. “Being on the inside?”
“Am I on the inside?”
“About as much as I am, and I’ve been here all my life.” Sun moved to stand beside him, also leaning and sipping. “How do you like it? Being married?”
This, at least, seemed to cheer him. His brow cleared for a moment and he looked rather sweet, and a bit daft like all people in love. “It is like finding a missing part of you. Another person with whom you are one.”
“I’m not sure I would like that.”
“You might if you found the right person.”
“I doubt I will.”
He stared at what everyone had been too prim and polite to remark upon before. “Your eye is black,” he noted.
“I’ll fix my make-up in a moment.”
He took her in, took in the boredom of her response. “Did you win?”
She smiled, even though it hurt (there was a bruise on her jaw, too).
“I always win.”
“I had a feeling. I’m Jin.”
“I know who you are. I am at your wedding. Sun.” When he looked confused, she clarified, “My name is Sun, too.”
“It’s nice to meet you, again.”
“Likewise.”
“Does it get better?” he asked, gesturing at the party around him, no longer as the waiter.
“No.”
Sun’s father eventually stopped doing business with Jin’s father-in-law. Bak Industries was entirely above board, and something about the other Sun’s father was… not. But their world remained small, and as long as nothing could be proven enough to raise more than whispers, the Suns continued orbiting one another, and Jin continued to float between them. Over the couple of years and numerous cocktail parties, Sun watched the laughter slowly fade from his eyes.
She was sad to see it.
However, he never stopped bringing her champagne, and she never stopped seeking him out and they never stopped leaning on the balustrade together.
Sun read of the crash, and followed the story like everyone else. She felt the pang of loss, but soon, she had other problems to face. By the time the authorities had given up the search, she was in jail.
When Sun returned from her island, tanned and terse, there was something different about her. No longer laughing and pampered. Harder. Haunted. Hunted. Holding in a secret so large it threatened to consume her.
Sun could see it all in her eyes, even in the newspaper photographs she stared at in her cell.
They’d finally become alike.
Looking around her in the prison yard—at the friends she had made while trapped here, stranded here just as surely as the Oceanic Six had been on their little island—she wondered how much else they now had in common.
It was unlikely she would ever know.
“You have a visitor.”
Sun got up slowly from her spot on the floor. She had no idea who it could be. Joong-Ki knew better than to come. The lawyers had nothing to offer after her father’s death. She was too far disgraced for any of the old set to visit her.
The guards ushered her into the small room. Sun Kwon, immaculately dressed, but brittle and hard, sat in one of the chairs.
“You never said you knew the Oceanic Six!” Capheus exclaimed from beside her.
Sun had been practicing, trying to master the art of speaking to these more private, unannounced visitors, without looking like a lunatic.
I don’t know her. I don’t know what she’s doing here, she thought as hard as she could as she took the opposite seat.
“I guess we’ll find out,” Nomi said. “Amanita’s freaking out right now. She wants you to ask if Kate Austen really is taken, if she’s dating the doctor. She’s got a crush.”
It was a good thing the other Sun didn’t speak until the door clicked shut and they were alone, because Sun needed to wait for the others to calm down.
“I don’t trust anyone,” she began. “But my husband trusted you. Of all the people of influence in this city, you were the only one he liked. He told me, sometimes, after parties, about you. That you alone of our set had accepted the son of a fisherman into our world.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Sun said, giving the automatic response, the expected one—but also the true one—and masking her confusion about why this conversation was happening at all. “He was a good man.”
“And he was killed.”
“In a plane crash,” she said questioningly, though something told her this wasn’t the right answer.
“No, not in a plane crash.”
“I knew it! They are lying!” Nomi said, and then she must have been talking to Amanita, because she continued, “You like to say I’m a sucker for conspiracies, but I was right. Plane crashes just don’t work like that.”
“Why are you here, Mrs. Kwon?” Sun asked slowly.
“You were his friend. His only one from… before. From here. I hoped you might aid me in avenging his death. In return, I offer you your freedom.”
“The evidence against me is incontrovertible,” Sun replied. “There is nothing anyone can do.”
If not even Nomi had been able to prove the truth, she thought, no one could.
“Sorry,” Nomi said.
(Sun must have thought it too hard; she had not meant it as blame.)
“The day you were arrested was the day we boarded the plane. He saw it in the paper. He told me… He told me there was no way you had done such a thing. He told me that your brother had been in league with my father’s associates. He knew the truth.” Sun Kwon leaned forward. “I know what you did for your family. I can guess what your brother did to protect himself. I know where to look to prove the truth. I cannot prove the embezzlement, but I found eyewitnesses to the murder. He is not a careful man, your brother.”
“No, he is not,” Sun agreed. It hadn’t occurred to her, to any of them, to look for flesh and blood evidence; the digital—the hackable—had always seemed the only route. But questions still remained. “But why do you want to free me? What do you want from me in return?”
“Jin said you liked to fight. He said you always won. Will you fight for him? For me? Once you are reinstated as the sole heir to the Bak fortune, of which most remains, there will be nothing the two of us cannot do. I have enemies. Something tells me you do, too, and not only your brother. I can see it in your eyes. We can defeat them together.”
“Do it,” Capheus said. “Perhaps she can help. Perhaps she can help us help Will.”
Sun considered, listening to the excited voices around her and to the silence in the room. She had come to like prison. She was never lonely here, and not just because of what was in her head. But she could do more to help those she cared for outside.
And also satisfy Nomi’s (and Amanita’s) curiosity.
And also to avenge Jin for whatever had happened to him.
“How soon can you have my brother arrested?” she asked.
“This afternoon.”
They smiled at one another, terrifying in their rage.
Sun looked forward to finding out the truth of Oceanic 815. Something told her that neither of them would have trouble believing one another’s tales.
“I’ll buy you some champagne once I’m out,” she said, as Jin would have done. “You look like you need it.”