Red Camellias

Summary: Nabi. He knew she would come here. Everything started here, and here, it ends. OneShot- Ryu-Sang, Myo-Un.

Warning: -

Set: Scanlations only take us to vol 9 or so. This is what might happen at the end of everything.

Disclaimer: Standards apply.

A/N: Sept 2013. Part of a massive upload session. All the fics posted this month were started sometime this year and only finished recently. Don't expect me to do this often. :)

Ryu-Sang saw her long before she even realized he was there.

Though perhaps she was aware of his presence. It was impossible to tell, since the girl he had once known had died such a long time ago. But if she knew, she did not give any sign of recognition.

She walked up the small pathway, cobble-stones of a once well-lined path strewn and broken all around her, and yet she barely made a sound. The soft rustling of the wind that caressed branches and leaves almost covered her approach entirely. The last snow had melted the day before, had left wet puddles and grey and barren landscapes. Only a small, evergreen camellia bush provided color in a washed-out world. From where he sat he could just so hear her, listened to her quiet footsteps and the stillness that suddenly seemed to envelop him and his surroundings. It was the silence more than anything else that told him she had finally come home.

The high wall that had once surrounded the courtyard was broken down and burnt. Their attackers had, all those years ago, not cared about what happened to the temple once they had set fire to it. Much to his surprise Ryu-Sang had found that, although the main walls indeed had burned down entirely, parts of the temple building had remained mostly intact: the bathing house, set apart from the main building, and the array of side buildings Lady Sabu had seen fit to be used as dormitories for the elder children. The fire hadn't left them untouched. The roofs were gone and so were the paper screens and paper walls and most of the wooden balconies. But the stone walls still loomed over the last, adamantine patches of snow, black and charred, and so did the walls of the inner courtyard. Houses could be burnt, he thought derisively, but memories could not. If he closed his eyes he could still see children in the courtyard, hear Dana chatting happily, see Lady Sabu carefully pluck away dead leaves from her beloved flowers. As always, the girl was there, too. Since So-Ryu had revealed the truth to him the anger that had flooded him like liquid ice whenever he thought of Myo-Un had disappeared. It was gone, replaced by an alien, mixed feeling he yet had to identify and that made him distinctly ill. There was emptiness in there, a feeling he knew rather well, and the bitterness of loss and longing that had accompanied him for his whole life. But not hate. No anger. It was as if he had been cleansed from it entirely the moment the seer had smiled at him – the first and only true smile he had ever seen from her – for the last time before she had turned away from him forever.

The courtyard still looked the same, he supposed, if one disregarded the destruction. The fire had damaged the neat sandstone walls and iron gates. The cobblestones of the path were broken and strewn hither and tither and the steps on which he had sat so often were completely gone, reduced to rubble. Yet a certain splendor remained – perhaps the ghost of a memory. Sowol Hong had once resided here and in his heart she always would.

The slender woman appeared in the northernmost gate noiselessly, accompanied by a sudden silence. It was as if a large, thick blanket had covered the forest, coming from nowhere. Her dark hair was open, fell over her shoulders in soft waves. A traditional, plain dress made her appear like a black-and-white photograph. Over it, she wore a white cloak that billowed once in a swift breeze and then settler onto her shoulders again. As it lifted, he saw her sword: the crimson hilt was the only color in the grey-and-white, washed-out world.

Myo-Un stood very still in what once had been a gate as her eyes roamed the ruins of their former home. The world seemed to hold its breath and Ryu-Sang found himself doing it along with it. Her face was pale but then she had always had such an ill-looking, porcelain-like complexion. Her dark eyes seemed unfocussed. He guessed she, the same as him, saw not the ruins but the courtyard as it had been, torn through time and reality by memories too precious to be forgotten and too bitter to remember. Her lips were strikingly red, blood drops of color in an otherwise colorless world. From his position he was pretty sure he could see her but she could not see him, not unless she knew he was there. He did not move. A gust of wind decided to play with her hair, entirely unafraid of her fragility, and a few petals of the small camellia bush whirled around her. She could have been a statue, unmoving and cold. Myo-Un looked older than the last time he had seen her, colder and somehow empty. There always had been a certain softness to her, something that now was gone entirely. Fragility had turned into brittleness, tenderness to ice. She looked like she would break any minute and yet he could see the strength in her hands, her arms and shoulders. An antithesis in herself.

He left her to gaze into the yard emptily for another few minutes that seemed like eternity to him but, in reality, merely were a thousand heart beats. Then he leaned back, crossed his arms behind his head and closed his eyes. In the silence of the burnt ruins, the rustling of his body on charred stone was loud. Ryu-Sang did not hear her move but suddenly there was the crystalline sound of a sword being drawn. Cold steel touched his exposed throat mere seconds later. He made no move to defend himself, just opened his eyes again and looked at her. Up close, she was even more beautiful. Her eyes widened – just a fraction, enough to see only because he knew her. Because he had known the girl she had been before she had grown into this alien woman in front of him, the girl that had been unable to hold a sword without flinching – but now her hand was still. Steel kissed his skin and made him shiver. He closed his eyes again.

"You."

What else should she have said? He had not expected anything, so he nodded.

"What do you want?"

"I was here first," he reminded her, opening his eyes yet another time and looking at her close up for the first time in two years. "What do you want?"

Her face never had been like this. Small, yes, sad, there had been bitterness and loneliness and happiness and fear. There never had been coldness in her features before but now there was. She seemed so brittle, extremely lethal and far, far away. Since she did not answer, he humored her. It did not feel like defeat. It would have, years ago.

"I knew you would come." It was there. A tiny, almost invisible flicker of surprise in her eyes. He decided to build on it. "I am not here to hurt you."

Which was pretty ironic since he had done nothing else for a long time. She had never seen it that way, but that had been before the poison, and the old Hong mansion, before the air ship and her vow and the sun-kissed sword in her hand on the plains of Hamatt. Now she took it away nevertheless, sheathed her blade and stepped back. Wordless, he waited for her to make up her mind. After another hundred heart-beats she crouched down, as well, somehow curving her body into a position that screamed watchfulness and danger at the same time. Her movements were graceful. It hurt to watch.

Ryu-Sang left her to look at the courtyard for some time. Just sitting next to her made him uneasy, it was as if he itched to say something but there were no words. Like he knew something had to be done but there was nothing one could do. It was impossible because everything had happened years ago already, there was no way to go back to what they once had been: children. Damaged, lonely, broken children, yes, but loved, protected and cherished nevertheless. The memory returned suddenly, like so often: They say a man's worth is measured by how many of his children will remember him fondly when he has died. How lucky am I, with all the children I have? He had snorted at that time, making fun of things he did not want to happen, as if they would not as long as he mocked them often enough. The only one who hadn't said anything then had been her. Perhaps it was because despite everything, Myo-Un had known best of them what it meant to be alive. Living meant pain. It was simple as that.

(Loving meant loosing.)

Where to start a conversation? Usually just waiting did the trick. But Myo-Un did not say anything and Ryu-Sang was reminded of the fact that they had had the same teacher, one way or another. He bit on the inside of his cheek.

"You did it."

She did not move. "Yes." Her voice was without any feeling. Trice I will extract my revenge on you. He hesitated, feared to ask. In the end he just gave up.

"How?"

Her eyes focused on him for the first time since she had lowered her sword. They still were dark and strangely intense. "Does it matter?"

I did not expect you to do it, he wanted to tell her. I never thought you would be the one to avenge our teacher. In fact, he had expected himself to keep their vow. She had not been trained in sword fighting; she had not been trained in any combative skill. Or so he had thought.

"No," he heard himself saying, "not really. If he's dead, that's enough."

Strange. He always had wanted to let him suffer. In the end, he had found, it did not matter how ones' nemesis died if it only had. Myo-Un had not asked what had happened to So-Ryu.

"Who," Ryu-Sang inquired, "taught you swordsmanship?"

"Lady Sabu," she said. "No, that is not right. My father." Her shoulders twitched, like in a shrug. "But I guess I've learned even more by watching you."

"Where were you, after the airship crashed?"

"In many places." Distracted, her hand wrapped around her sword-hilt. "An old woman took me in, healed my wounds and talked to me. When I could move on again, I left her and travelled across the Hamatt Plains. I met Star and his tribe."

He had almost expected that much. "You helped them."

She shrugged. "They helped me – I helped them. I heard Star had talked to you – before the crash. After the Emperor was dead, he saw no need to approach you again."

"You didn't let him." An image was slowly crystallizing in his mind. He wasn't sure whether he liked it or not.

"I had nothing to do with their decisions. Star wanted to bring back a girl from their tribe that had been sent to the Emperor's son as one of his many wives."

"Did they teach you?"

"It took them some time. I was…" She seemed to search for words. Her hand stilled on the hilt of her sword. "Out of practice."

If she really had extracted her – their – revenge, she had to be good. Somehow it was hard to believe, even if he didn't doubt it one moment. A person who was able to cut of someone's hand with just a small knife like she had been even before she had started training again probably was quite terrifying when it came to trained fighting skills. But she'd always been so calm, so innocent… Ryu-Sang hated the sight of her sword at her side and yet knew it had now become a part of her. There was nothing he could do to change it.

"It's hard to believe you became so well-versed in such a short time."

She smiled, mirthlessly, a shadow falling on her face. "Necessity makes people learn things pretty fast. And I was trained by the best."

And Myo-Un still hadn't asked any question until now. She hadn't asked for Yeok-Jeong and Aru. She hadn't asked how he had done, how he had escaped from Su. Why he was here, of all places, and at that time of the year. Well, the question to this last answer both of them knew very well.

"So what?" He challenged her, his voice dispassionate. "You infiltrated the palace and got out that guy's girl, and then?" He could see her in his mind's eye: a veiled, elaborately dressed girl on her way to the Emperor's harem, a fragile, lithe beauty until the moment she drew her sword and slew all the guards.

"The Emperor's heir was weak." There was a note of condescension in her voice, a hint so small he barely noticed it. A sharp glance showed her she still wasn't looking at him. The empty look in her eyes made him shiver. "I killed him, along with most of his guards. He wasn't found until the next day."

It had been, he supposed, enough time for her and the girl Star had been searching for so desperately to flee the palace. It must have been hard to get out of Su then, but obviously, they had managed. It had been all over the gossip: An assassin had murdered the Emperor: in the heart of Su, in the best-protected rooms of the palace. A red camellia had been placed on his corpse. From that moment Ryu-Sang had known it had been Myo-Un, even if he had not wanted to believe it. The whole country had buzzed from the news until Isana had been elected as the next emperor. Turned out the man had a backbone, after all. At that time Ryu-Sang, Yeok-Jeong and Aru had been on the run, hiding from the Emperor's soldiers, from his henchmen and from Seok-Myeong Son himself. It wasn't what he had expected when he had vowed to take revenge for Lady Sabu's death. But they had made it out of Su, somehow. So-Ryu had helped, and Ha-Rim. The irony still tasted like ashes in his mouth.

"And then?"

Myo-Un sat still, like a marble statue. Only the wind that played in her hair was an indication that she actually was a living and breathing being.

"Then," she said tonelessly, "I went back and avenged Lady Sabu."

So she had done it. Of course, she had known a path into the Son premises, she had known the insides and the guards' routines. Had he doubted her abilities, or her determination? She had looked so bitter and sure that day. An avenging angel while the air ship came apart behind her. He had thought she hadn't had the means to fulfill her vow but once again he had underestimated her. She had gone and hammered herself into steel so hard he knew it would break one day. Hadn't he been the one to hold grudges until it crushed him?

Trice I will extract my revenge on you.

He did not want to listen to her say it. The way Myo-Un recounted the events – so bare of any emotion – made him freeze on the inside. Isana was the new emperor. He could imagine the young man had taken the means now available to him to clear up any differences he'd had with the Son family. So-Ryu's father probably had lost both influence and money when he had been cast aside as the royal advisor, perhaps he had been labeled as a traitor, it would have chased away the last ones of his friends and partners. If this, the loss of his position and his power, was the first revenge Myo-Un had promised, and his death was his last – because Ryu-Sang did not doubt for one single second that the woman at his side had actually killed Seok-Myeong Son – what was the second punishment she had inflicted on him? Had she made him watch his beloved daughter die? His heart stopped short and then continued its beat painfully. No. It couldn't be – Myo-Un wouldn't kill the woman that had shown kindness towards her when they had been children. She simply wouldn't. So-Ryu had been her father's daughter but she had helped them wherever she could, had even taken Myo-Un in as a servant girl…

"She watched when I killed him," Myo-Un said, her voice nothing more than a whisper. "And she did not spill a single tear. It was punishment enough."

She had read his thoughts. Or something must have shown on Ryu-Sang's face, because he had no idea how Myo-Un would know what he had suspected her of for a fleeting second. A wave of shame rushed over him. She had not changed so much that he could not still recognize the girl he had known in her face. For a long, long while, they sat in silence until she broke it again.

"Don't you want to know what happened to So-Ryu?"

Now he shrugged, the question burning into him. He refused to let her see it but he probably couldn't hide it, anyway. Myo-Un had always been able to see right through him, the one way or the other.

"She's alive, I suspect."

"Yes."

"Then, that's all I need to know."

So-Ryu had always stood between them, from the moment they had met and he had been forced into service by her father. Myo-Un never had said anything but he had seen it in her eyes: she was obliged to the girl, perhaps even liked her. But there was something that would forever prevent them from becoming friends again, and that thing was him. How laughable, the crappy romance in their lethal tangle of intrigues, revenge and lies. It was not even romance, really, nothing had happened and he'd never thought about it. No, that wasn't right, either. He had never thought about it until the day he had found Myo-Un unconscious on the doorsteps of her old home, her heart-beat so weak that he first had thought she was dead. He hadn't been able to explain his feelings then, but something had shifted. A new complication, new entanglements in their web of lies and revenge. Maybe it had just been the fact that he had finally accepted her as his equal? Had anyone told Ryu-Sang that he would once stand between two women, he would have laughed him right in the face. Or kicked him, more likely. So-Ryu had been beautiful, even more so than Myo-Un. She had the air of power and strength while Myo-Un was withdrawn and silent, while both of them had grown up in families with strong patriarchs, only So-Ryu had lived under her father for her entire life. It had made a difference, somehow, Lady Sabu had made a difference. So-Ryu had always seemed strong, even when she was fragile. Myo-Un seemed fragile even when she was strong. She had always been with him, even when he had been trying so hard to ignore her. She had travelled by his side even when he showed his disdain, she had tended to his wounds even when he had refused to as much as look at her. She had refused to leave the prison without him. Myo-Un had been kind and loving; So-Ryu had loved only few people. It hadn't been her fault; and it hadn't been Myo-Un's fault, either. People were made what they were by the forces that aggregated around them, after all. But it had made a difference. It had made a difference to him because he was here now, had waited for Myo-Un when he could have been searching for So-Ryu instead. It had made a difference; the different ways those two different women had influenced his heart. (The one thing they had in common: they had changed him.)

But the greatest change had been made by Lady Sabu.

"She will rest in peace now," he said and gazed over the court yard beneath him. He didn't need to clarify whom he meant. The wind picked up the fallen leaves of the small, defiant bush. Suddenly, Ryu-Sang was freezing despite his warm coat and padded boots. Myo-Un did not answer, but he watched her gaze at the ruins with the same conflicting emotions in her face.

So he was learning to read her again. Somehow, the knowledge made him feel better.

"Did it become easier?"

At his question, Myo-Un did not react at first. Then, slowly, she closed her eyes. She did not weep but he thought he could hear her heart cry. "Should it have?"

"I do not think so."

"Neither do I."

Lady Sabu was avenged. Aru and Yeok-Jeong were safe, and they were still alive, and yet there were so many others that had died that night. Their friends, sisters and brothers, their family. Their mother. The clouds that had covered the sun dispersed slowly, allowed soft, not-yet-warm rays to touch the yard. The light lit up the last patches of snow, lit up the broken pebbled path, lit up the crimson blossoms on the small bush. Myo-Un lifted her hand to her face to shield her eyes and Ryo-Un looked at her: she had always been pretty. Now she was breath-taking. Something inside him twisted violently. You promised to protect her, he heard Lady Sabu's voice. I am depending on you. He had disappointed her once, he had disappointed her twice. The third time, he had given up on her in favor of caring for the little ones. He wouldn't do it again. Or he would do it again, again and again just for the sake of watching her: her dark hair, her shadowed eyes. Her features, white as porcelain and so fragile she seemed to be made of night wind and dreams. Her hands still were small but so strong and scarred. He wondered how she had received them, and if she still remembered. And her lips…

With an effort so great a few years ago he would have hated himself for it and made her suffer but that he couldn't care for anymore now he tore his gaze away from her.

"What now?" He asked instead.

Myo-Un was silent, did not move at all. Ryu-Sang waited until her eyes closed, slowly, and opened again, the only indication that she had acknowledged his question.

"Where will you be going?" She asked him in return without looking at him.

Ryu-Sang shrugged. "The children are waiting in a hostel in the next town. We'll head for the air-ship station, I guess."

Myo-Un stiffened, almost visibly. "Aru? Yeok-Jeong?" She asked, and her voice trembled. It was the first visible emotion she had displayed since he had met her today, and somehow it made elation rise in his stomach. "They… They are alive?"

He turned to watch her intently. "Yes. We escaped before Seok-Myeong Son found us. Did he tell you they were dead?"

She did not answer but her tense shoulders were answer enough. The weak girl would have looked for them. This woman in front of him now had gone to extract her revenge instead.

"Do you want to see them?"

"What did you tell them?"

"I told them you were dead." He stated it bluntly. It had been the only way to save the children, he knew, but he also knew it had been cruel. He could still remember Aru's tears, Yeok-Jeong's frozen disbelief. The way both children had refused to eat for days on end. But then, they hadn't had much to eat anyway. Along with the strenuous flight there had been more to worry about than their mental state of mind. Ryu-Sang prided himself in doing what was necessary, not necessarily what was right. But still it had broken his heart a little bit more to tell the lie, even if it had been what had to be done.

"Oh." She said nothing more, just gazed over the ruins before them. Her hand again settled on the hilt of her sword. She was a born warrior, he had always known it. Now he found it unsettling. She should never have awoken from her dreams like that. The life Lady Sabu had offered her – peace, love, a place to live and work in – had been perfect for her. But they did not get to choose what fate had in store for them, did they? Nobody got to.

"Well." Ryu-Sang stood up and dusted off his knees. The weight of his father's sword fell back into place, settled against his side comfortably. No matter what they wished to be, they only could be who they were. "I will be heading back now. Aru will worry." He did not look at her. Instead, he watched the red flowers that bloomed in the courtyard, testimony to the fact that homes could be burned down and people could be killed, but that the world would go on. "What about you?"

She shrugged, following his gaze. Her dark hair fluttered in the cold wind and he felt the impulse to reach out and catch the shifting strands. We are still the same, he thought, but it was not true. Some things did not change. But he had, and Myo-Un had, too. So why did he still feel a yearning so deep he wanted to weep?

"I do not know. I could still go back."

Work as an assassin, he wanted to throw at her. Go back and let yourself be used again? You avenged your family, you avenged Lady Sabu, what else is there left to do? But perhaps that was the dilemma. What else did she have? She had become what she had always feared and now she could not go back. She was stuck, just like he had been for such a long time. Red Camellia. It was an appropriate nick-name, the one the people had dubbed her with after she had killed the Emperor's heir. Her red lips in her pale face drew his eyes to them almost as much as the strikingly red petals had intrigued him, dying slowly in the cold, hard whiteness of winter. But the snow had melted. And he was a mercenary, too, was he not?

"Accompany me," he found himself offering. "Just to the next village, if you do not want to meet them. Or to the air-ship station. Who knows, perhaps you will make up your mind on the way."

She did not say anything but her hand on the hilt of her sword stilled. "Yes," she said after seventy-four heart-beats. "I will do that."

"Let's go, then."

He hung back to let her walk in front of him. Through the courtyard she glided, silent and graceful, and he watched her movements until she disappeared through the gate. She did not look back once. Almost unwillingly, Ryu-Sang lingered in the middle of the yard, suddenly overwhelmed by another bout of memories. Two girls in the middle of the same yard; whispering and smiling; blossoming buds of camellia in their hands. Lady Sabu did not like it when they tore off the flowers from the bushes but sometimes she would allow the little girls to pick one or two of them. They would tuck them into their hair, or behind one ear. That particular day, he remembered, he had only been watching because on the other side of the yard a dark-haired, white-skinned girl had watched the other girls, too, and her face had been a mixture of longing and fear. Ryu-Sang bent down towards the small, tough camellia bush and picked the prettiest blossom. Its color seemed striking even against the worn, darkened skin of his hands.

He held it carefully, as if it was made from glass, as he followed Myo-Un from the place that had been their home. He, too, did not look back. It felt like he had something to prove, even if he was not entirely sure what it was.

A ghost whispered behind him. This time he would not fail.

(She watches from the distance as he leaves the hostel with Yeok-Jeong and Aru. And Ryu-Sang knows she does not want to be seen but he nudges the children into her direction and there they are: hanging around her neck, Aru bawling out her eyes, Yeok-Jeong clinging to her desperately. And slowly, slowly – he can see her strain in the way her hand clamps around her sword and only releases it fractionally – her hand lets go of her weapon and both her arms come up to embrace the children. Ryu-Sang does not think she ever had a choice and yet – when she follows them unbidden, he feels relieved. The sun touches her face, her dark hair. She always was like this: red blood on white snow, red fire against white walls, red lips in her porcelain face. Perhaps, he thinks, perhaps he has fallen in love with her long ago. Then he dismisses the ludicrous thought.)

Years later somebody asked Aru how she had survived it, living and travelling with two mercenaries who barely spoke to each other. Her reply was delivered with an enigmatic smile: They had never told Aru they loved her, and yet she had felt she was the most-beloved girl in the universe.

Yeok-Jeong simply said that there were more ways to communicate than through words, and the glances Ryu-Sang had given Myo-Un had been indication enough. As had been the way she had looked at him.

But that was only one small part of their story.