but trust is a fickle, fragile thing.

warning: character death

In the long decade since the night you swore utter allegiance to the crown prince, you have done everything within your grasp to uphold the heart of the commitment you've made. Even as the prince becomes a king, even as beloved companions submit to the passage of time, and even as the adolescent declaration of obedience itself matures into instead a steady, affectionate support, you keep your word on all but one occasion. But it is this exact decision, this single withheld secret, that shifts both your worlds irrevocably.

"You must tell my son that it is a common illness. A simple recovery, and nothing more," the queen had commanded you on a somber day in winter the year before as you knelt beside her bed, wiping blood from the corner of her pale lips.

"Daebi-mama." Your voice broke on the last beat. "How long have you been hiding this?"

"Please." Though her elegant fingers were weak, she covered your hands with a warm, pleading palm. "He doesn't need any more distractions. Not now. Especially not ones that don't have... simple solutions." She squeezed then, with what strength she could muster, silencing all your protests. "If you want him to succeed - don't tell him."

And so, you hadn't.

But while you agreed with the queen's intentions, you continued to fight against the inevitability in a way that only you could. The last six months have been a frenzied haze. You blistered your feet scouring the markets, begging foreign traders for rare or sometimes strange ingredients that you could incorporate into draughts. You sought documents written in symbols you did not recognize, paying translators to parse out a phrase or even a glimmer that could help. You can't even remember all the nights that you spent brewing, steaming, straining until the sun came over the horizon. But with each subsequent draft you secretly delivered to her bed, the queen only grew weaker.

All of this, you kept hidden from man you cared for most, justifying the guilt to yourself whenever he inquired after his mother.

But now. Now, when the king is staring with unblinking eyes at the pure white cloth draped over his mother's body, you find that you don't know a damn thing about what's right anymore.

There are splinters in your chest as he takes one unsteady step towards the bed that you stand beside, hands folded in an act of repentance. His mouth opens, then closes, not a single noise passing between them for a century-long minute. All of your instincts urge you to turn away and allow him private space to grieve, but that's your own cowardice at being faced with his sorrow, manifested in the quiver of his lip. You must put him first. You must be his witness, his pillar, even when your own heart tightens with grief.

"Mama."

He stumbles forward, feet clamoring over each other until he's close enough to draw back the cloth, just enough to expose her face. His short, forcibly-suppressed exhale hits the wall. Yoongi jerks his hand away as if scorched, lets it hang numbly at his side. It's with an indescribable expression that he takes in the familiar, softly wrinkled eyes. The pink lips that were so often curved in a warm smile. The arms that were generous enough to encompass an entire nation, but never neglected the ones closest. "Mama," he says, voice still so tight as he takes another unsteady step, as if he needs to be closer. He'd seen her just last night. He had left her alone, and now—

It's when his knee knocks against the hard wood, when he can truly go no further, that he plummets to the stark floor and a lonely sob rips straight from his throat. Goosebumps shoot up your arms at the noise, the visceral howl and all you can do is watch as Yoongi breaks with a shuddering gasp, "Mom."

In this moment, it's not a king that kneels before you, but a son. Someone's precious child, with no one to stay strong for any longer and so he throws the entire mask away. Lets the tears finally spill over, staining the bedsheets with salt and heartache before he crumples them in a weak fist. Yoongi cries like he has never done, not since he was old enough to learn how much the word responsibility weighed on his head and how many millions of lives his body, not him, is worth. A stray tear falls on the queen's cheek and his red-rimmed eyes follow how it rolls down her face as if she weeps at the thought of leaving him too, and he cries. He just cries, with the delicate perfume of plum blossoms fast fading around him.

Uselessly, you wish you could do something.

You wish you could have found a cure, a miracle or anything that could have bought him more time, even if it was only for a season more, or a single day. Really, it's your own failure. You remain so fucking inexperienced, even after all these years. You should have told him. You should have tried harder. And it's this shame that makes you reach out for him before you can think better of it, wanting nothing more than to hold him to offer a whisper of comfort and to say he's not alone.

But when you touch him, he startles. Shifts back. Shifts away from you and you think he gathers the pieces of his crown and stitches them back together before you even have time to blink.

"Jeonha—"

"Su-uinyeo-nim." He cuts you off with the deliberate use of your full, formal title. He's never called you such before, preferring your name during the weekly reports you made to him. The words feel sluggish on his tongue as if he thinks, as if he knows, you don't deserve the role too. You find the strength to meet his watery, but no less intense stare, in time to hear him carefully ask— "Did you know?"

He doesn't need to elaborate. Your fingers, lingering just an inch away from him, freeze and falter. Crumple into themselves, because you can't give him the answer his darkening eyes say he hopes for. Or maybe that's just you thinking too highly of yourself in his heart.

"Did you know?" He presses again, tone a little higher, voice a little more desperate.

But language is your next failure, and he is left to take your silence for the admission of guilt it is.

"Get out." He stands, hovers protectively over the bed as if you are the danger, the outsider. "Your services—and you—are no longer required for her. You've done more than enough."

Your legs shiver as you sink into a bow, quick. "Y-Yes, jeonha."

Then your slippers are slapping against the hard floor, feet aching from the pace with which you flee from the suffocating room. Your chest burns with the want to scream that you loved her too. That you wanted to tell him so many times, almost did with a slip of a tongue, but wanted to spare his already overtaxed mind. That you tried your damned best but you just couldn't save her, and so you lost her. And from that last glimpse of him through the closing door, hunched over alone and silently breaking, you know that you've lost him too.