pairing: Jihyo x Dahyun

summary: Fear is for those who have something to lose.

Dahyun hasn't been home for a week.

Her mother always kept saying that it was her father's fault - all the restless blood running through her veins like mercury, making it impossible for her to stay still. She had never met her father but she felt him in her shadow, in her rear-view. Maybe it was his voice murmuring in her ears that made her want to move when others begged for her to stay a little longer.

Her mother also kept on trying to change her even as they both knew it was useless. Lately, they only existed in the space where their differences collided and it didn't leave any room for warmth. Her mother loved her, just like she loved her back, but it had turned into a twisted emotion. They were so afraid of losing each other that they could only scream and shout in their desperation.

Every time she left the house she held her head high and told herself that she didn't need her mother anymore. Only herself and a pair of legs to keep on moving.

Things hadn't always been as desperate between them. Before the war she had kept her restlessness in check and had done what she had to, but when the world went to hell - well, there was no reason to pretend anymore.

That was the only great thing about war, if you asked her: it revealed everything that had been kept hidden in the shadows.

After walking for two hours in dark alleys she came to a door in a corner of a street that had seen happier days. She knocked on it rhythmically for four times, paused and knocked another five times. The code kept changing at least once a week, but the information always reached her ears before it had time to change. It was her only ammunition in the senseless war - information.

If there was something that needed knowing, she would know.

For that reason, she was always welcome in different places, always had a roof on top of her head. That was another thing her mother couldn't understand - if she didn't keep moving out in the open she would never know anything. The days of instant news and internet were long gone, replaced by far more primitive methods.

The door she had knocked on opened but the room behind it was so dark that she couldn't see anything inside. If the person on the doorway had had a gun she would have died on the spot.

"It's been awhile," a young woman said and opened the door wide enough to let her in. It was Tzuyu on the guard, looking like an ancient statue of an angel and not another lost soul in the middle of a mess. She looked too good to be there.

"Yeah," she replied simply. It was another thing that she had learned - there would be no point to talk more than necessary. It would only give her an untrustworthy appearance and that could be fatal in her line of "work.”

"I have something for Jihyo."

Tzuyu nodded - not one to talk either (or to mention how she didn't like the fact that Dahyun never used the correct honorifics) - and turned her head, lifted two fingers to her lips and let out a high-pitched whistle.

It didn't take long before another tall figure emerged from the darkness, walking with a purpose.

"She has something for the Lady," Tzuyu said quietly when Jeongyeon was close enough to hear.

"Follow me," the short-haired woman said and turned around to go back to where she had come from. Dahyun followed in silence, wondering if she could wash herself after she had talked to Jihyo and maybe rest a little. The last two days had been particularly draining with air raids more often that she could count. She had lost the sense of time a couple of days ago when her old watch had stopped running. She still wore it, out of habit. It was comforting around her wrist.

If she could get lucky, someone in the safe house could change the battery for her.

They came to another door. It was meant to draw attention unlike the front door that was meant to be kept hidden. Jeongyeon knocked on it sharply and waited until she heard a response which was so quiet that Dahyun wasn't sure whether she heard it or not.

"Lady Jihyo, Dahyun is here," Jeongyeon announced as she walked inside but didn't let the guest come in yet. The door was politely half-open so that she could see and hear a little.

"Let her in," a voice said, making Dahyun feel something akin to fear and excitement at the same time. Here, in the middle of death and destruction, it was the voice that made her feel the most nervous.

Jeongyeon held the door open for her to come inside. The room was just like it had been the last time she had been there. It was large and simple, but the way it had been decorated made it look like a maze. Curtains dangled from the ceiling, creating smaller spaces for the needs of the Lady. The part where they were standing was the one where Jihyo would take care of business and the room behind a velvet curtain was a space for her private life.

Dahyun had never been to the private quarters and she almost itched to see them.

Jihyo herself was on the other side of the room, crouched over a map that was displayed on a table that was missing a leg, but still managed to keep on standing. Even here everything was more or less broken, just like everything outside.

"Did you bring it?" Jihyo said, lifting her gaze from the map and looking at the younger girl carefully. Dahyun nodded, taking a small pouch from her jacket pocket.

"Jeongyeon, take it and make sure the lab starts working on it the first thing in the morning," Jihyo said, not even looking at the thing that Dahyun had brought more closely. It made Dahyun swell with pride, because it meant that the Lady trusted her if she didn't even bother to check.

The trust was a gift that made her heart warm.

When Jeongyeon took the pouch from Dahyun, she looked at her quizzically which prompted Jihyo to continue.

"She'll sleep here tonight. It's too late to start bothering the Guest House Captain."

"Very well, Lady Jihyo." Jeongyeon tried to keep her confusion in check, bowed and left the room, closing the door behind her, the sound of it clanking shut making Dahyun's throat dry. As long as there was a third party present or a business to take care of she was comfortable. But when she was left alone with the Lady she couldn't tell which one was her right foot and which one was her left. Jihyo seemed to sense her growing discomfort as she smiled reassuringly.

"You should wash up and I'll make us some dinner," she said and moved to the velvet curtain, lifting it enough to let the younger woman inside. Dahyun nearly gasped at the fact that she was being let into the private quarters that most people even in the safe house had never seen.

"Thank you," Dahyun mumbled just as she passed the other woman, her jacket brushing against the arm that kept the curtain open.

-

The water in the Lady's bathroom was luxuriously warm as Dahyun filled a bowl with it, the water nearly rolling over the rim. She stared at the evaporating water and lifted her hands to try and catch it between her dirty fingertips. The mud under her fingernails reminded her why she was there in the first place and she dipped her arms in, watching the water turn brown from the dirt.

She had always been the palest among her school mates, but it was something she had forgotten in recent years. Her skin was more dirty than clean lately and washing up in a place with an unbroken mirror felt like a ritual in a holy palace.

Maybe Lady Jihyo had managed to capture time and create pockets where time had stopped, and where the war was still in the distant future.

The more she thought about where she was and who she was with, the more her hands trembled.

-

"How are you?" Jihyo asked, after they had sat down around a small wooden table. Dahyun tried not to wolf down her first warm meal since she had left home. She could hardly taste the food from the massive amount of saliva forming in her hungry mouth.

She felt more like a starving bear, rather than a human being.

"I'm fine," she answered between mouthfuls, without even considering the question properly. It didn't do her any good to wonder about such things, it would only keep her awake at night.

The Lady smiled like she had expected the answer, but unlike her mother would have, she didn't press on. However, she kept on watching her silently, as if trying to figure out a difficult equation or to find right words for a poem about lost love.

"How is everything here?" Dahyun asked, hoping that it would make the Lady talk instead. She liked to hear people talk. It was much easier to listen and ask questions, than to answer questions and wait for the inevitable moment when she would become tongue-tied. Besides, she knew so much that it was never wise to share excessively. She would only ever be as valuable as her secrets.

The people who know things are always more quiet than the people who don’t, the Lady herself had said during their first meeting.

"Well - considering. Hopefully better soon, now that you brought the ingredient."

Dahyun nodded and wondered how much Jihyo herself left unsaid. It wasn’t anything new, as they always said far more between the lines and during pauses than they ever did with words.

Dahyun swallowed a mouthful the wrong way and coughed awkwardly, praying the other woman would stop looking so intense. Or maybe it was her feelings that were becoming too intense, it was hard to tell.

If someone had told her two years ago that she would be eating a late night dinner with Jihyo, the resistance leader, she would have laughed. But then again, there were countless of things that she would have laughed at before, but didn't anymore. In fact, she rarely laughed at all anymore.

Once she had been so famous for her laugh and cheerfulness.

From the way a small frown decorated Jihyo’s face, it seemed like she hadn't laughed in a while, either. Dahyun’s old self would have done anything to make her laugh again.

It was a dangerous urge. Like the urge to run her hand over the Lady's arm when she reached out to collect the empty plates.

"There's plenty to talk about," Jihyo said as she turned around and walked further into the kitchen, Dahyun's gaze glued to her, tiredness making her far less wary. "But there's plenty more reasons to get some rest now."

Dahyun nodded gravely, forgetting that the other woman couldn't see her from the kitchen.

-

She couldn't remember the last time it had been so quiet. For years the air raids had broken out at least once a night and the silence that followed the bombings was filled with a sound. It was the sound of death and holding your breath - hoping that everyone was still alive, hoping that you hadn’t hurt yourself.

This silence felt different, but she still couldn't shake the feeling of it being ominous.

As soon as they had lied down and said their goodnights, Dahyun had turned to face the wall and face away from the other woman. She could hardly bare the closeness, so she backed to the furthers corner of the bed, holding herself close. She wasn't used to sleeping in the same room with other people, she wasn't even used to sleeping in a proper bed anymore. She slept like a stray dog, always on someone's kitchen floor, close to a door so that she could run if things went badly, or in some old building, listening to rats run around in shadows, playing hide-and-seek with life and death.

She couldn't hear Jihyo breathe and it made her nervous. She liked how her younger siblings snored, breathed heavily and dreamed restlessly when she was home. Even from another room she could hear them being alive. But the Lady slept like an owl - if she slept at all.

Who knew she could work herself up by trying to hear someone breathe?

"What's wrong?" Jihyo asked, her sure voice startling the younger woman. Dahyun had been glad for the darkness covering how shaken she was, but clearly it hadn't been enough. The Lady could probably smell her fear and hear her thoughts.

"Nothing," she croaked, sounding like a frightened bird and it made her want to run out of the room. She hated being so vulnerable next to someone so strong. What was she but a kid who had had to grow up too soon?

The Lady said nothing, but Dahyun could feel her thinking. It wasn't an uncommon situation, she always forced people around her to approach her carefully. If they would get too bold, she would flee and never return.

The silence stretched and just as she was convinced that the Lady had fallen asleep again, she moved instead.

Dahyun gasped, feeling her own body straining from an effort to stay still and not jump up and out of the bed. Unknowingly she clenched her teeth as Jihyo's front pressed against her back and a careful hand covered her small fist.

"There's nothing wrong in being afraid," Jihyo whispered into her hair and something inside of her clicked, releasing all of her muscles from a painful hold of stress and fear. When the Lady's thumb caressed the back of her hand, a lump shot up into , making her whimper.

It was an alien feeling for her to cry. She hadn't done it in years, not after her best friend had died in the beginning of the war. She had cried so much then, that she had thought she had run dry for the rest of her life, but it was another lie she kept telling herself. There were still tears in her, an ocean of elusive liquid where her heart was, under all the walls that kept her together.

And now all the tears flooded out.

Afterwards she could never tell how long she cried, but she could clearly remember the soothing warmth radiating from the other woman, and the steady arms that held her. From then on, it would be the only dream she would want to bring back. The only thing that would help her sleep during another night in a cold place, on a hostile ground.

When the tears finally ceased to fall, she felt boneless and empty. Turning around to face Jihyo felt like carrying the moon on her back, but somehow she managed. It was so dark in the windowless room that she couldn't make out the outlines of the other woman, so she lifted her own hands and drew the lines of Jihyo’s face with her fingertips.

Even as sleep pulled her down, she could still muster the only thank you she could come up with and planted a chaste kiss on Jihyo's lips.

As she fell asleep, she knew that she could never teach herself to regret the kiss. 

-

"You should come more often. The Lady worries when she hasn't seen you in a while," Tzuyu said, giving her a faint smile before closing the door, not waiting for a reply.

Dahyun hadn't seen Jihyo during the morning as she had already been gone by the time she had woken up. She had received a bag full of food and a new battery to her watch, but the most important gift had been a note on the pillowcase by her head:

Take care of yourself - you're my only reason to be afraid.

J

Dahyun felt at loss when she looked at the view around her, grey ruins in the pale morning light. If she could have gone back, she would have. It wasn't a feeling she was used to -wanting to go back before you leave- or one that she liked, so she brushed it off quickly and started walking by the side of a building, feet as quick as her eyes were wary.

A/N: Did I write this? Or did this story write me? Hm..