[Actually, Yoojin's pretty sure he's right about Leona. There's still a hand on his shoulder, after all, fingers all caught up in his own. What the weak know is that there's no making the strong accept anything they wouldn't choose themselves. Leona could easily draw away if he wanted. He's letting Yoojin have this, when there's nothing in it for him; without his particular skills, Yoojin has little to offer a princely genius mage.
Unless, of course, he is a good guy, one who cares and needs comfort of his own. Someone who feels the need to atone when he's hurt someone else and does his best not to hurt them further. A young man who needs to assure himself he's not a monster even as he denies his decency out loud.
He curls his fingers a little further in.]
...True enough, [concedes Yoojin. Leona is definitely not Yoohyun, and nothing he does here will undo what happened to any of them.] But it'll make me feel better about the whole thing. What about you?
[If he didn't feel similarly, didn't want to rip their lives back out of the house's teeth, Leona wouldn't be trying so hard to save them all himself, would he?]
[Leona looks down at his hands, his ears flicking left and right.]
I am dangerous, Yoojin.
You wouldn't be the first person I've almost killed. And that time...
[He can't remember, clearly, harming Ruggie while he was overblotted. But he does remember the jagged lines through his skin, the dust, the physical reminder that he had almost turned the little hyena into nothing more than a handful of sand.]
I don't know why I bit you. I'm a better mage than that.
As if... the house wanted me to be its mouth, or something.
[He's just throwing out ideas, not particularly confident in that one. But he further elaborates;]
Yes, I did overblot. And I couldn't remember much of it, either.
But the power I used during that first overblot...
[Leona takes a breath, looks at Yoojin, reorients himself to explain;]
Unlike in your world, magic has existed alongside anything you could consider 'scientific' or 'natural' since the dawn of recorded time. Before that, likely.
And for a long time still, trained mages have excelled at tailoring what is called a signature spell, a unique magical skill. Sometimes it's completely unique, other times it's a refinement of a skill passed down in a family line. And most mages don't master their unique magic until young adulthood, at the earliest.
[Yoojin's just that delectable a snacc. Truly, a princely treat.
Anyway.]
...Master of sand...
[Mastery isn't a concept that's come up often for Yoojin since the dungeons opened. Awakening was sudden for everyone. Even eight years later, before he turned back the clock, he can't think of anyone he'd consider a master of their skills.
But there is one skill he knows now that fits the bill. Master of Water. A mythic-grade skill belonging to a transcendent being. Even an S-ranker borrowing it with permission had been completely unable to use it without his help.
He remembers how it felt. That deep, bottomless power.]
[Leona nods, quiet, hesitant to continue. But he'd told Yoojin the same things— it could be the end, they're in another universe... both of them were right about having no reason not to share with the other.
His hesitation comes from confronting himself.]
...They should have been happy.
"Crown Prince Falena is so bright, so cheerful. Why can't his brother be more like him? What a terrifying power he has."
Day in and day out, all it ever was.
If it had been me— Look how judicious Crown Prince Leona is. Look how he controls such strong magic! If only Falena would take things more seriously.
But no.
I've only ever existed as a pretext to praise my brother, and in the end all I'll be good for is compensating for his mistakes.
[he looks down at his hands, free of the leather gloves he usually wears.
He remembers what he felt when he attacked Ruggie. He remembers that hatred surging within him again when he tries to recall harming Yoojin.
A hatred for himself that had become so strong, he'd lash out and harm anyone else to escape it.]
[...Yoojin would like to fight a magic beastman kingdom. The whole thing, mano a mano. He'll have his brother's top smart dude work out the logistics for him.
He doesn't care if the throne only seats one, or how heavy weighs the crown, or whatever royal excuse they come up with. The ins and outs of monarchy are well beyond Han Yoojin's pay grade.
You're not supposed to play favorites with kids. Sibling rivalry shouldn't make someone, especially not one as proud as Leona, sound like that. Even when things were worst for Yoojin, when the world spat at him while he limped around on shattered legs, cursing his brother's name, he'd had an adult's sense of self. He wasn't a child. No one who was supposed to take care of him made him feel like a pretext.
He manages to keep his voice reasonable, or at least neutral.]
Even if it isn't.. I'll never be king. I'll never be able to do anything, with what I've learned. All of my so-called 'wise advice' is turned over as bullshit.
And the thing I can do best is the thing people in the Savanna hate most. Dry it out into the desert, make them want for rain.
[He sighs, heavily, his shoulders falling. Yoojin may have cried in front of Leona— so it would be perfectly acceptable to cry in front of him. But Leona's are the eyes of a child who learned not to cry a long time ago.]
Here I am, proving twice they're right.
That I am something to be feared.
[If he really was king, would he just run the Sunset Savanna into the ground the way he's sure Falena will?]
...And that's what I wanted. For people to just realize that, and stay away from me.
But look at you, bein' a nosy bastard all the time...
[His hand lands right on top of Leona's head, heavier than usual, scruffling into his hair just a little. Insistent. It brings them shoulder to shoulder, and Yoojin doesn't back off.]
Sorry, I'm gonna keep being nosy, 'cause this really bothers me. Get used to it.
[He takes a long, deep breath and lets it out in a huff.]
They should have been happy. A little kid mastering power like that? That's awesome. I already knew you're smart as heck, but that's genius-level stuff. And it can't be easy to control! You only lost it twice in your whole life?
[Yoojin leans forward, determined to look Leona in the eye.]
Once was because of me! I used two skills on you, both of them S-rank or higher. All the other S-rankers I've tried those on, guys with just as much destructive potential as you and who work just as hard to tamp it down, also blew their tops the first time. Yoohyun turned a 5-star Hong Kong hotel into a melted beachfront crater!
If you've been reining in power like that all this time, and people still talked that kind of trash about you, then I'm sorry, but they're the stupid jerks who need to change.
[Yoojin is allowed to catch Leona's eyes— but only because he is staring so wide eyed, so still, when Yoojin speaks, like a deer in the headlights. Like a little boy who's just heard something he never expected anyone to say.
All his life, it has been Change, Leona. All his life, if he would just smile more, if he would just sing and dance and be carefree, if he would just be softer and less rigid, if he would just get off his ass and contribute, if he would just dedicate himself, if he would just, if he would just, if he would just.
But he's always known that he is under an unmoveable weight. That nothing he could change— because at some point, he had bothered trying— could move that weight, could change the fate he had resigned himself to. Changing himself, having hope that circumstances would change when he did, had just become a repeated exercise in futility.
No one had ever bothered to say anyone else should change toward him. No one had ever bothered to agree that it was unfair, or to apologize that it was unfair even if it couldn't be changed. No one had ever bothered to affirm the worries of a scared child who was being treated like a monster. It's a validation unlike Leona has ever heard in his life, and now that it's right in his lap, Leona doesn't know what to do with it.
So he doesn't immediately respond to Yoojin, his mouth stretching into a taut line, and instead, looks away from him, trying to duck out from under his hand.]
His dislodged hand drops to Leona's shoulder, giving it one firm squeeze, before Yoojin chooses to respect the unspoken request to leggo.]
One last thing and I'll have said my piece.
People call things "dangerous" when they want to say "harmful" or "bad," but that's not what the word means.
Sure you're dangerous. So's Yoohyun. So are the monsters I raise and most of the people I work with. Heck, even I'm dangerous, in the right conditions.
[He says that neither boastfully nor as if reinterpreting "danger" to implicate himself, but as a fact. Yoojin's hurt people. Yoojin's done worse than hurt people, and not always by accident.]
That means people should listen and try to be more considerate when we say something's wrong, not less. Everybody's safer that way, them and us. It shouldn't just be on you to predict every possible way you could hurt someone. Everyone else can take a little responsibility for themselves, too.
[It's not like Leona disagrees with Yoojin. It is, however, that the influx of kindness is a little too much for him. Like when someone is starving and tries to eat too much in response, and only ends up overfilled.
And so, unable to take any more, Leona turns to Yoojin in a quick motion. His hand presses against Yoojin's chest, presses him back down against the ground they were just laying on.
He looms over Yoojin, eyes still and expression unchanging, framed by his hair and his braids, staring him down, like there's something there in him Leona can see deeper into.]
Yoojin looks up at Leona, face shadowed with nightmares that have nothing to do with him; eyes round with curiosity, not nerves; head empty of even the lick of sense to tell him he should be afraid.
It isn't that Yoojin is perfectly nice or perfectly smart. Or even that he's perfectly honest.
But he does come across as a terrible liar. And right now, nothing about him is giving any tells, anyway. This is just how Yoojin feels.
Leona's elbow bends, and he drops so that the front of him is still weighing down on Yoojin's torso, crossing his arms over Yoojin's chest and perching his chin on his arms.]
Take responsibility for yourself and get some sleep, then.
I'm tired of this conversation.
[THAT HE STARTED BECAUSE YOOJIN WAS DEFINITELY TRYING TO EXIT]
It's the strange show of tenderness, the unexpected weight of Leona getting comfortable on his chest that makes a sudden flush of awareness wash across his skin. Not Leona looming over him with that intense look on his stupidly beautiful face, not the easy, unstoppable way he pinned him back to the ground. No, anyone would feel like this if a warm, wild thing deemed them a safe place to lay their head. He's been granted a gift beyond valuation. Even if Leona weren't a heavy-ass jock made of muscle, Yoojin could never move again.
More than that, he feels seen in a way he doesn't usually allow. That, in turn, makes him feel a way he hasn't felt in a long time.
Swallowing, Yoojin blinks up at the too-blank sky a few times, then turns to cover a weak laugh with the back of his wrist.]
You're such a cat, man.
[Face still half-hidden, he sneaks in one last ruffle of Leona's hair. He figures he's allowed that in exchange for his services as a cat bed.]
Fine. Good night, sourpuss. See you in the morning.
![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
monsterdaddy) wrote2025-04-29 12:06 pm
no subject
[Actually, Yoojin's pretty sure he's right about Leona. There's still a hand on his shoulder, after all, fingers all caught up in his own. What the weak know is that there's no making the strong accept anything they wouldn't choose themselves. Leona could easily draw away if he wanted. He's letting Yoojin have this, when there's nothing in it for him; without his particular skills, Yoojin has little to offer a princely genius mage.
Unless, of course, he is a good guy, one who cares and needs comfort of his own. Someone who feels the need to atone when he's hurt someone else and does his best not to hurt them further. A young man who needs to assure himself he's not a monster even as he denies his decency out loud.
He curls his fingers a little further in.]
...True enough, [concedes Yoojin. Leona is definitely not Yoohyun, and nothing he does here will undo what happened to any of them.] But it'll make me feel better about the whole thing. What about you?
[If he didn't feel similarly, didn't want to rip their lives back out of the house's teeth, Leona wouldn't be trying so hard to save them all himself, would he?]
no subject
[But would, he, though?]
...Besides. Surviving this... it won't change anything. Saving you wouldn't change what I am, what I'm not...
[No, that's too much.]
I just can't stand losing the game.
That's all.
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...Why would that need to change?
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[Which... isn't a direct answer, but he's still a bit trapped in a thought process, considering things he has been avoiding considering.]
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[He gently nudges Leona's side with his elbow.]
My ears might not be as good as yours, but I can still listen.
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I am dangerous, Yoojin.
You wouldn't be the first person I've almost killed. And that time...
[He can't remember, clearly, harming Ruggie while he was overblotted. But he does remember the jagged lines through his skin, the dust, the physical reminder that he had almost turned the little hyena into nothing more than a handful of sand.]
...It was someone I knew. Someone loyal to me.
And it should have been something I expected.
Something I could have stopped.
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[Dangerous is a funny word. In Yoojin's experience, it doesn't actually mean what people think it does.
He shifts to sit cross-legged, holding his ankles, quiet and unflinching.]
Was it like what happened with me?
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I don't know why I bit you. I'm a better mage than that.
As if... the house wanted me to be its mouth, or something.
[He's just throwing out ideas, not particularly confident in that one. But he further elaborates;]
Yes, I did overblot. And I couldn't remember much of it, either.
But the power I used during that first overblot...
[Leona takes a breath, looks at Yoojin, reorients himself to explain;]
Unlike in your world, magic has existed alongside anything you could consider 'scientific' or 'natural' since the dawn of recorded time. Before that, likely.
And for a long time still, trained mages have excelled at tailoring what is called a signature spell, a unique magical skill. Sometimes it's completely unique, other times it's a refinement of a skill passed down in a family line. And most mages don't master their unique magic until young adulthood, at the earliest.
I mastered my unique magic as a child.
The ability to turn everything around me to sand.
no subject
Anyway.]
...Master of sand...
[Mastery isn't a concept that's come up often for Yoojin since the dungeons opened. Awakening was sudden for everyone. Even eight years later, before he turned back the clock, he can't think of anyone he'd consider a master of their skills.
But there is one skill he knows now that fits the bill. Master of Water. A mythic-grade skill belonging to a transcendent being. Even an S-ranker borrowing it with permission had been completely unable to use it without his help.
He remembers how it felt. That deep, bottomless power.]
You could control it that young?
no subject
His hesitation comes from confronting himself.]
...They should have been happy.
"Crown Prince Falena is so bright, so cheerful. Why can't his brother be more like him? What a terrifying power he has."
Day in and day out, all it ever was.
If it had been me— Look how judicious Crown Prince Leona is. Look how he controls such strong magic! If only Falena would take things more seriously.
But no.
I've only ever existed as a pretext to praise my brother, and in the end all I'll be good for is compensating for his mistakes.
[he looks down at his hands, free of the leather gloves he usually wears.
He remembers what he felt when he attacked Ruggie. He remembers that hatred surging within him again when he tries to recall harming Yoojin.
A hatred for himself that had become so strong, he'd lash out and harm anyone else to escape it.]
no subject
He doesn't care if the throne only seats one, or how heavy weighs the crown, or whatever royal excuse they come up with. The ins and outs of monarchy are well beyond Han Yoojin's pay grade.
You're not supposed to play favorites with kids. Sibling rivalry shouldn't make someone, especially not one as proud as Leona, sound like that. Even when things were worst for Yoojin, when the world spat at him while he limped around on shattered legs, cursing his brother's name, he'd had an adult's sense of self. He wasn't a child. No one who was supposed to take care of him made him feel like a pretext.
He manages to keep his voice reasonable, or at least neutral.]
I don't think that's true.
no subject
And the thing I can do best is the thing people in the Savanna hate most. Dry it out into the desert, make them want for rain.
[He sighs, heavily, his shoulders falling. Yoojin may have cried in front of Leona— so it would be perfectly acceptable to cry in front of him. But Leona's are the eyes of a child who learned not to cry a long time ago.]
Here I am, proving twice they're right.
That I am something to be feared.
[If he really was king, would he just run the Sunset Savanna into the ground the way he's sure Falena will?]
...And that's what I wanted. For people to just realize that, and stay away from me.
But look at you, bein' a nosy bastard all the time...
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Sorry, I'm gonna keep being nosy, 'cause this really bothers me. Get used to it.
[He takes a long, deep breath and lets it out in a huff.]
They should have been happy. A little kid mastering power like that? That's awesome. I already knew you're smart as heck, but that's genius-level stuff. And it can't be easy to control! You only lost it twice in your whole life?
[Yoojin leans forward, determined to look Leona in the eye.]
Once was because of me! I used two skills on you, both of them S-rank or higher. All the other S-rankers I've tried those on, guys with just as much destructive potential as you and who work just as hard to tamp it down, also blew their tops the first time. Yoohyun turned a 5-star Hong Kong hotel into a melted beachfront crater!
If you've been reining in power like that all this time, and people still talked that kind of trash about you, then I'm sorry, but they're the stupid jerks who need to change.
no subject
All his life, it has been Change, Leona. All his life, if he would just smile more, if he would just sing and dance and be carefree, if he would just be softer and less rigid, if he would just get off his ass and contribute, if he would just dedicate himself, if he would just, if he would just, if he would just.
But he's always known that he is under an unmoveable weight. That nothing he could change— because at some point, he had bothered trying— could move that weight, could change the fate he had resigned himself to. Changing himself, having hope that circumstances would change when he did, had just become a repeated exercise in futility.
No one had ever bothered to say anyone else should change toward him. No one had ever bothered to agree that it was unfair, or to apologize that it was unfair even if it couldn't be changed. No one had ever bothered to affirm the worries of a scared child who was being treated like a monster. It's a validation unlike Leona has ever heard in his life, and now that it's right in his lap, Leona doesn't know what to do with it.
So he doesn't immediately respond to Yoojin, his mouth stretching into a taut line, and instead, looks away from him, trying to duck out from under his hand.]
no subject
His dislodged hand drops to Leona's shoulder, giving it one firm squeeze, before Yoojin chooses to respect the unspoken request to leggo.]
One last thing and I'll have said my piece.
People call things "dangerous" when they want to say "harmful" or "bad," but that's not what the word means.
Sure you're dangerous. So's Yoohyun. So are the monsters I raise and most of the people I work with. Heck, even I'm dangerous, in the right conditions.
[He says that neither boastfully nor as if reinterpreting "danger" to implicate himself, but as a fact. Yoojin's hurt people. Yoojin's done worse than hurt people, and not always by accident.]
That means people should listen and try to be more considerate when we say something's wrong, not less. Everybody's safer that way, them and us. It shouldn't just be on you to predict every possible way you could hurt someone. Everyone else can take a little responsibility for themselves, too.
just. just trust me just trust me
And so, unable to take any more, Leona turns to Yoojin in a quick motion. His hand presses against Yoojin's chest, presses him back down against the ground they were just laying on.
He looms over Yoojin, eyes still and expression unchanging, framed by his hair and his braids, staring him down, like there's something there in him Leona can see deeper into.]
no subject
[Honestly. He gets this a lot.
Yoojin looks up at Leona, face shadowed with nightmares that have nothing to do with him;
eyes round with curiosity, not nerves; head empty of even the lick of sense to tell him he should be afraid.
He just asks,]
Leona?
no subject
It isn't that Yoojin is perfectly nice or perfectly smart. Or even that he's perfectly honest.
But he does come across as a terrible liar. And right now, nothing about him is giving any tells, anyway. This is just how Yoojin feels.
Leona's elbow bends, and he drops so that the front of him is still weighing down on Yoojin's torso, crossing his arms over Yoojin's chest and perching his chin on his arms.]
Take responsibility for yourself and get some sleep, then.
I'm tired of this conversation.
[THAT HE STARTED BECAUSE YOOJIN WAS DEFINITELY TRYING TO EXIT]
no subject
[Oh.
It's the strange show of tenderness, the unexpected weight of Leona getting comfortable on his chest that makes a sudden flush of awareness wash across his skin. Not Leona looming over him with that intense look on his stupidly beautiful face, not the easy, unstoppable way he pinned him back to the ground. No, anyone would feel like this if a warm, wild thing deemed them a safe place to lay their head. He's been granted a gift beyond valuation. Even if Leona weren't a heavy-ass jock made of muscle, Yoojin could never move again.
More than that, he feels seen in a way he doesn't usually allow. That, in turn, makes him feel a way he hasn't felt in a long time.
Swallowing, Yoojin blinks up at the too-blank sky a few times, then turns to cover a weak laugh with the back of his wrist.]
You're such a cat, man.
[Face still half-hidden, he sneaks in one last ruffle of Leona's hair. He figures he's allowed that in exchange for his services as a cat bed.]
Fine. Good night, sourpuss. See you in the morning.
no subject
What can I say?
I'm beholden to my feline nature.
[If Yoojin feels Leona lean his head into that ruffle, no he doesn't. He's just getting comfortable.]
G'night.
[So what if Yoojin can't use his fear resistance spell? What can get to him through Leona?]