Meeting the Moon

I found it.

Your small and cute heart.

Which one should I choose?

I want to see more…more…

Let me see…let me see…

"Stop it! Stay away you monster!" One of the humans gasped as he groveled and crawled in front of him, and he reached out with his teeth, plucked his leg from his body like a tender root from fertile soil, watching as red spilled out and painted the ground and the human's desperate screams hummed in the air alive and full. Battle led him by the hand, warm and rough through the lands stained red with bloodshed and sunset, it egged him forward despite that terrible delicious pain in his side. Monster? What did this human know about monsters? This human knew nothing and it was so wonderfully quaint. But the human wouldn't be ignorant for long. He would a good teacher just like the one would had taught him. He would be patient when he ground his lessons into the human's bones, he would be kind and strict as he continued to teach this human with his eyes and teeth.

Where are you going? He asked the silly human, his heart brimming—overflowing with malicious compassion because what a precious base creature it was. His king loved humans like this, he was sure. His King loved humans that could not be saved and would not love his King. His King loved those humans anyways. It was his duty to save the King from having to suffer. Because no matter how unworthy humans were of love, no matter how many times they rejected his King, his King would still suffer as they were killed. That is why he would take on that burden happily, he would do his duty well. He would kill all of the intruders, and then his King would smile.

You can't escape from my eyes! He told the humans that tried to wriggle about the ground like worms brought up by spring rain, with their limp limbs and muffled cries. Beyond the sharpness of a hawk's eyes, even seeing the twinkling stars in a bright sky, my eyes can see through everything in this world! If I look at you, your body will lose function, and your heart will stop. Come on. Let me see more.

Let me see it, you feeble humans! He commanded them, reaching out to take from them all that was entitled to him. It's been fourteen years since I have been released from the dragon's eye! More! Show me more of this interesting world—!

Me? Who are you?

"Who am I? I am you, we are one as two."

"But…who am I? I don't remember, I don't remember anything anymore. I-It's wrong. Everything is wrong," He struggled against the current that was trying to pull him under. He clung to that sense of wrongness, that sacred foreboding that helped to give his thoughts form and shape that he could think.

"If you don't remember, then it was not necessary," The other said, with a laugh that reverberated in his ears merrily and made him flinch. "Come now, let's continue. We were having fun, weren't we?"

"This isn't fun," He said, feeling helplessly sick to his stomach, drenched by rain, mud filling up his boots and completely numbing his skin. That place was empty and tinged with grey and cold that seeped into everything, into his skin, into his blood, into his deepest and most desperate parts of him. Those memories lingered there with him, trying to tug him back to that stream that he could not escape.

"Oh but it is. We love this," it purred, its insidious affection pricking into his skin like ice cold rain droplets driven by wind.

"This…this is bad. I'm—I'm…my powers are a…" His words spun out and unraveled like thread. His head was pounding in tandem with the throbbing in his side, there was pins and needles in fingertips and toes. He couldn't remember. How had he gotten there? Someone had hurt him but he could not remember why. He was hurting, but a part of him knew that if he tried to hold back the power which flooded through him that he might die. He didn't want to die. He didn't want to die or be hurt by humans any longer, but more than that he didn't want to hurt humans anymore. Why had he thought that he had wanted to hurt humans? He had never wanted to hurt them, he didn't like painting the ground red with blood or listening to their screams. The person who wanted that wasn't him. It wasn't him! "They're a double edged—"

His words died in his throat as a rush of wind flowed over him. He was standing in a space so wide he could not imagine an end. Swaths of pearly light painted the horizon as stars shown nestled in the sky so warm and dark and deep, grass as soft as silk brushing his ankles in gentle sweeps as the scent of the dew and fresh morning breeze swept through him. No, he thought with a single-minded revulsion that shook him to his core. No! No, not there. Anywhere but there.

"I'm sorry—"

"No!" He gasped, pressing his hands over his ears, tears threatening to spill over his cheeks as he bent over, refusing to look up and face this again. "…no more…don't say anymore…please. Please…"

"I'm sorry that I'll be leaving you alone."

"Why…why here…?" He begged. "Why do I always…?"

"Where else did you think you would be?" The question was destructive in its innocence, it flayed him open to reveal everything he had most wanted to forget.

"I just…I didn't want to lose them," he whispered, his legs unable to hold up his weight as he nearly crumpled in the grass.

"They had been lost to you since the beginning. If you had been more competent then it wouldn't have come to this. You were told to never use your powers, and you obeyed regardless if such a thing was right or wrong. As such, for being obedient to a foolish wish, this is your punishment. There is no malice or ill-will in your treatment. There is always a price to pay for using your curse. That had always been made very clear, but in the end you really were too soft hearted."

"You aren't him," He nearly sobbed, clawing his fingers into the earth, and keeping his head and eyes bowed down. "You aren't him. Stop using his voice! Stop having his face! Stop it!"

"Hush," The other said softly. "You are not a human, so stop acting as weak as one. You summoned me, because we need to save our King. You are nothing, and I am strong. Now let us return—"

"Leave me alone," He said looking up only to see the beast staring back at him with glowing eyes, digging his fingers into the earth. "Who are you? You aren't me. Why…why are you inside of me? I should be the only one inside of me, so who are you—?"

Suddenly something gushed out between his fingertips, clicking his hand in the thick, vicious substance. He looked down to find them covered with dark liquid, and stood up in a panic only to find himself sinking as if on unsteady ground. He yelped as suddenly he was knee deep in a sludge that made him gag.

The caves, the dense darkness that he could not see through. The sound of water dripping, but not water, no, the smell made him choke on his own bile. The scent of flesh rotting in the dank mud, of coppery blood. He backed up desperately against the wall but to no avail, the liquid had already filled up to his ankles, cold slimy and slicking his skin as it rose and continued to fill his caverns. Almost as soon as the liquid, the blood, touched him he understood. This creature only knew of one thing, desire. Desire came in many forms, but the other knew it most clearly as hunger, like water turned to ash on the lips or fruit forever dancing from its grasp. A deep ache, an endless longing, a void that was forever unfilled. Desire was its dear friend and constant companion, and he had kept it from its sole purpose, voided it of its meaning.

It could not be, as long as he kept from it what it was meant to do. And he, nameless and denier of his birthright could not be whole without giving in.

Ah, that's what it had meant by one as two, he couldn't help but think.

Claws, sharp slick with the sludge, rose from that soup of decay and anguish, and he cried as they dug into his skin. He no longer struggled as the wetness reached his belly, the claws grappled onto his shoulder as he finally reached, unable to breathe as the thick darkness filled his chest and lungs. But there was a glimmer of red there, a golden light that would forever save him. All of the punishment was worth it, he thought in those last moments. He had known love. In the end, Blue Dragon had been so merciful. He had been spun so fine that he had been easily unraveled, and he no longer hurt. At least it would escape here, he thought. If it could never escape from the caves, and if the darkness was to be his final resting place, it was better for him to disappear without a trace.

But he had known something else hadn't he? He thought suddenly as the blood overtook his nose. That love had been different, a love given to him in spite of the Blue Dragon. So…what if he hadn't been merely its cursed vessel? What if he hadn't always been this way? What if he had left the caves before?

So if this was the Blue Dragon, he thought as he disappeared into darkness, than who am I?

"Shin-ah!"

Who…?

In the darkness there was pinprick light. There was a gentle brush of his face which stirred him from the nothingness. But where there had been the endless darkness, like drifting in a sky without stars, there was a single little star. It was so far away, but it was beautiful, he thought as he looked in adoration. In the caves he had thought the stars had all left him behind, but one had come back for him. He had to reach it, he thought desperately.

He began to claw his way up, talons digging into rock wall, gritting rows of teeth, the taste of blood upon his tongue as he desperately reached higher and higher. As he reached the star grew brighter and brighter, until no longer was it a star, but instead the sun herself. The sun with hair as red as dawn, skin as pale as hot flame, eyes the color of soft twilight, and stardrop tears tracing shimmering rivulets down her cheeks. He wanted to speak, to touch, to do anything but it was no longer possible, there was only darkness and talons and hunger, he only wished, he had only wanted—

"—I am with you," His king said, reaching out to touch his forehead without fear, the warmth of her touch radiating through the cold armor forged by blood and pain. "No matter what kind of creature you are, or who you hurt, ever since that day when I took you out from that cave, I've felt from my heart that we should live together. I wanted you to live freely, from the bottom of my heart."

I…I…

"That's why I won't reject your powers. Your powers are a part of you," His king said fiercely, her eyes bearing right into the deepest depth of darkness with no fear. "They're evidence you exist. Kija and Jaeha are both living with their dragon powers, but you are different, right? What you are doing right now is absolutely what you didn't want to do."

But we did want this. He thought distantly. We wanted this, deep in our heart we wanted this. We wanted to protect you, always to protect you. That is worth every sacrifice that is worth staying in the dark. Just say so and I'll stay here forever. Just say so and I'll kill all of them for you. And I'll stay here among the curses and the darkness, in the caves where only you can find me. If it's for you I'll do anything.

"Don't drown in your powers."

My king…?

"Just like you've protected me before, I will protect you—"

Light was suddenly burning everything away, in that moment he could feel the claws and teeth that had sunk into his flesh beginning to loosen their grip. He struggled against them, desperately reaching for the light—!

"If my voice is reaching you say something, Shin-ah, my person of moonlight!"

Shin-ah. That was his name. How could he have forgotten something so important…?

Finally he grasped his name within him, feeling it burn through him like holding the sun itself. His blood heated and boiled over, the claws suddenly dissipated from his skin as if they had never existed at all.

Shin-ah was suddenly dazzled by the light, the blue of the sky twinkling and glittering. He looking at Yona, her hands guiding his sight to her and she was so clear, and so close to him.

"Yo…na?" He asked softly, as Yona touched his shoulders. Suddenly Shin-ah realized was standing. He was standing as the sun warming the skin of the back of his neck, Yona's fingers reaching to cup his face. It was all dazzlingly bright, the sun's rays, the captured beams dancing in Yona's eyes. "Yona…"

"My voice…it finally reached," Yona said as her expression softened and her smile widened in complete relief.

"I…I…"

Suddenly numbness crashed into him, his arms and legs useless as if crushed by falling rock. He tumbled to the ground, his body suddenly revolting against his control as nearly unbearable pain radiated up his side.

"Shin-ah! Shin-ah, stay with me!" Yona begged, her panic wrenching his gut.

He was laying in a village where time and drought had worn itself on the bones of the people and structures. However not all was idyllic. Bodies were strewn upon the ground haphazardly, as if branches torn from their trees by a great wind. It had happened again, Shin-ah suddenly realized. He had used his powers again. The events that had occurred while he had been using them were oddly distant, as if seen through eyes not his own. But he had felt the rush, the pleasure, but for a moment he felt devoid of everything. He was simply exhausted. It had been inevitable, Shin-ah thought tiredly. He had been having so much fun that he had forgotten, and now it was all over but that was for the best.

"Yo…na…get away from me…I don't know what I'll do…" Shin-ah called to her desperately. "While my body is paralyzed…hurry! If you…look at my eyes, you become paralyzed…your arms, legs, heart…But if I use it…my paralyzing abilities back-fire…this is a curse backfiring…this is a one-sided power…you destroy your opponent…Because of this power…everyone in the village never once came near me."

"Even though…someone told me to never use it…" His bitterness caught in his throat on the unbreakable broken thing within him that was painful to swallow, his side still pulsed with a wrenching soreness which twisted his guts. A large back framed by the wide horizon flitted behind his eyelids. Ao, he thought as tears flooded down his cheeks, hot and painful and flooding from deep within him where that broken thing could no longer stop them up, blurring his vision. I'm sorry Ao. "Don't come near me. I'm a weak and ugly monster. I'm…"

I'm scared of my own power, of Yona hating me.

I'm scared no one will call my name anymore.

Suddenly he felt a warmth and pressure upon his numbed cheeks, as Yona's pale and long fingers covered his eyes.

"The fact that you are upset that you can't control your own powers is because you're human Shin-ah. Everyone is like that," Yona said confidently. "That's why what you have to do is not close your eyes and repress everything, but to open your eyes and take control of your powers. I think someone who can do that is a strong person. I like people who can do that."

She removed her fingers from his eyes, threading them in his hair and stroking it comfortingly.

"Let's get stronger together, right Shin-ah?"

"Together?" Shin-ah couldn't help but whisper.

"Mmhmm!"

"From now on…?"

"Of course!"

"I can stay…?"

He had no more words left to spill over his cheeks, that well had run dry while the wealth of his unshed tears finally spilled over. He could have sobbed in relief, if his side hadn't been hurting him so. But he was so content in that moment, as if a blanket of pure comfort had been draped over him.

Even though I'm supposed to have no feeling in my hands, I can feel the warmth from Yona's response. When I open my eyes I can see the claw mark of my powers is right there. Don't look away from the unsavory feeling of pleasure is what Yona is saying.

I'm still scared.

But if…Yona keeps calling my name I will go anywhere until I can be proud of the moonlight name Yona gave me.

The sounds of the crackling fireplace and his companions' soft conversation drew him from his sleep. His side ached and pulled against Yun's expertly sewn stitches as he moved, and he winced and decided to stay laying down. Shin-ah had sewn his own stitches before, once when he slipped while traversing an icy crag and has impaled his hand with a sharp stone, the second time during a fight when a bandit had nicked his thigh deeply with a dagger. Perhaps it was the senjusou that Yun had applied, but unlike those times (with his hands shaking, blood painting his fingertips, unuttered screams tearing at his chest) it hadn't been so bad. Yun really was amazing when Shin-ah thought about it with his calm and still fingers.

He could have called out to them, but he didn't find it necessary. It was listening to them that warmed him through. He heard a familiar squeak and saw Ao blink sleepily before trotting over and nestling next to his neck. Shin-ah reached to pet Ao's who nearly chirped content. He was exhausted, and felt like he could sleep again for years without end, however he just wanted to absorb that moment, the flickering of warm oranges and red smoothing across the tent, the bright night sky, Kija's voice intertwining with Hak's and Yun's, Jaeha's humming washing over him…he could almost see Zeno's smile…Yona's laugh…

He slipped back, back into sleep.

(He was nestled against a larger body, his cheek pressed against a warm chest. A heartbeat lulled him with its strong beat, easing him deeper and deeper into the warmth of those arms. Shin-ah couldn't help but feel himself smile at the hitching snores as he nuzzled in closer and soaked in the comfort of the afternoon nap. Thank you, Shin-ah wanted to tell him. Thank you. You've protected me for all of this time…thank you…thank you Ao…)

And Shin-ah awoke feeling fingers brushing tears from his eyes. Zeno smiled at him, softly and deeply.

"Did Seiryuu have a good sleep?" Zeno asked, his voice warm and melting like spring sun showers drizzling over his lips.

"Ah! Shin-ah's awake!" Kija called excitedly, his pale cheeks flushed.

"Don't have an aneurism, White Snake," Hak called from the side, Shin-ah looked to see him tending the fire and the breakfast that was simmering under it.

"There, there Kija. Don't smother him," Jaeha said goodnaturedly, as he pinned up the tent opening.

"Move, move, let me in I need to check on his stitches!" Yun chided them, but allowing Yona to squeeze in beside him.

"Good morning, Shin-ah," Yona told him with a smile.

And Shin-ah was happy. He really was.