the crown is far heavier than the weight of its gold.

"He died."

The mortar in your hands plummets to the floor. Fine, sand-colored powder spills uselessly over the wood but you barely flinch, limbs numb with shock. Before you, Yoongi's expression is unfathomably blank, the hands by his side unmoving.

"He died," he repeats, his tone as dull as the blunt end of a used-up blade and you have to remind yourself to breathe.

It takes a few moments before you can peel your stuck tongue from the bottom of your dry mouth. "J-Jeonha?" You ask, even though you are afraid of the confirmation.

"Yes."

You inhale. Try to steady yourself even as shock gives way to sorrow.

It's true. You seldom saw each other, save for the past few weeks as you tried to ease the pains he felt in his chest as best you could while he insisted on attending court briefings anyway, but you owe the king everything you have today. He extended kindness towards your mother, and gave her a home. Sheltered her for so many years. And he even bestowed upon you her precious title, the prefix that you cling to because it lets you feel as if she's still with you in yet another, precious way.

"I'm so sorry," you murmur, but Yoongi doesn't respond. Just pads further into the otherwise-empty apothecary as you stoop to the floor to pick up what you dropped.

He falls into a nearby chair with a hard thump, robes fluttering all around him. The silence between you draws longer and longer, barely interrupted by the quiet plinks of your placing things back on the table. He sucks in slow, unhurried breaths.

"It's strange," he mumbles, eventually. "So fucking strange."

"What is?"

He rakes through his unraveling hair, nails scratching harshly at his scalp. "I don't... I don't know." Wrinkles between his brow, he glares down at himself with an unprecedented disgust. "Everything. All of it. This. Strange. I... I don't feel anything. Why the fuck don't I feel anything?"

"It just happened. It was sudden." The king's heart had been overtaxed for a long time, his age only contributing to the stress brought by the recent invasion. It must have finally given out. "It's natural to not be able to process it right away."

"No. No, I've known this was coming. I could see it in his face. His growing weaker every day, even as he commanded me to attend my lessons. Still I felt no pain, no sadness as I talked to him. And none now, even when it's over. When it's all over." He shuts his eyes, crushing his hands into fists atop his knees.

You don't know what you should say to him. How to comfort him like he did you.

He slowly shakes his head. "Hah. Well... I suppose it is a fitting end for an empty relationship like ours."

Your instinctual reaction is incredulity. "But how could it be empty? Surely jeonha loved you. You are his son, his—"

"His only child!" Yoongi spits back. "And not for lack of trying. What choice did he have? Who else would he have to take his spot?" He smacks his fist against his leg. "No. I'm little more than a tool. A means to carry on his name and legacy. That is what he has spent so long training me for. Love? Love has nothing to do with it. In fact, I'm doubtful that he's even capable of such a thing."

Now that, that you cannot agree with. "He loved your mother. I know he did." He always had eyes for her whenever you saw them together, particularly at the royal banquets. He made sure she was swathed in luxury and given whatever treats she desired. You were endlessly fond of watching them together, admiring the ease of their tandem lives while you hoped in vain for a similar blessing.

"Right, and is that why she's back there with the rest of his sobbing consorts, crowded around his corpse?" Yoongi huffs a short, humorless laugh. "But it doesn't matter anymore. It's over. Neither he nor I have to keep up the exhausting pretenses of affection any longer."

The words themselves brim with toxins, but you can feel it: the simmer, the running current of hurt that rushes in beneath even as he insists he feels nothing. But how do you reconcile the man you thought you knew with the stranger in Yoongi's memories? Had Yoongi hidden this truth all along, taken that burden himself to let you and everyone else live in blissful ignorance? Or was the king all of these facets? Was he forced to encompass this murky greyness to sit on the throne?

Was it simply a matter of being human?

Yoongi shakes himself. Shoves harshly back in the wooden chair. He stares at the bareness of his hands as if they are not his. He turns them over, the veins raised against pale skin.

"I'm going to be king," he whispers, like he can't believe it.

An anxiety for the weeks to come works itself quietly through your veins. "You are."

"I can't be like this, if I'm to be king."

You wish you could tell him otherwise, that he is more than enough, but the thoughts in your mind are no less tangled then his. So instead, you heed the beckon of his solemn eyes. With the shut door protecting you from society's restrictions, you are brave, and slide your arms around his shoulders to let him lean into the softness of your stomach.

You hold him. You hold him until the tremors beneath your palms melt into tired breaths, the reluctant rise and fall of one who does not wish to leave this warmth just yet.