Joon was outside of Shae and Ava's suite, pacing back and forth in front of the doorway. He was dressed in a slimming midnight blue collared shirt, black dress pants, and his white crew cut of hair was more casually coasting to one side around his tan face.
He kept muttering to himself to take deep breaths as he paced, his hands fidgeting.
The door opened.
Out stepped Shae in a knee-length white dress with her blonde hair in slight waves around her cheeks, and her round blue eyes properly pronounced beneath artful eye shadow and mascara.
"You think this is good?" she asked uncertainly. "It was what Jin and Chimin picked out for me."
He nodded and swallowed. "Yeah. Good." His eyes took their sweet time studying the whole of her.
"Joon?"
"Hmm?" He looked back up at her face and saw slight amusement there.
He's into it. Shae couldn't help but feel a little bit pleased.
"Are you ready to go, then?" she asked innocently.
"Right. Yeah. Time to go."
Really into it. Shae smirked, but Joon seemed too distracted to notice.
Without a second thought, Kim Namjoon reached for Shae's hand and started to lead her along the hallway from the ladies' suite and towards the shuttle bay.
Shae liked that he hadn't just cupped his palm around hers, but that he'd slid his long fingers between hers instead. She gave his knuckles a light squeeze of reassurance.
He turned towards her flickering a kind smile. But it didn't last long. A shadow fell over his face in its place.
It was time to go have that talk with Petra.
____
The flight was quieter than Shae expected. Joon was clearly tense. He kept double checking and triple checking information on his dashboard as he piloted their tiny transport shuttle between Noon Mool and the direction of Petra's fortress.
"It's going to be alright, Joon," she said in a soothing voice, reaching out a hand and placing it gently on his shoulder. "It's just one meeting."
Joon tilted his head, leaned in and kissed the top of Shae's hand where it rested on his shoulder. Shae's pale hand against the midnight blue fabric made her seem as if she were made of porcelain. Be careful with her.
He said in an even tone, "You're right. It's just one meeting." His eyes were warm as they flickered in her direction, then his gaze and attention turned forward again.
Shae couldn't help but ask, "What have you decided? About making an alliance or not?"
"Well, to be perfectly honest, I wish that this meeting were happening AFTER the others were back at the base with a healthy dose of our Mysterium along with them."
"But you already know what you're going to say right?"
"Yes." And it's the right thing to do, for once in my god damned life.
Shae didn't understand the range of emotion in the look that Joon was giving her just then, but it made it difficult for her to breathe. Those sharp eyes gone soft. That serious brow turned in sorrow, joy, delight.
Those lips.
Shae cleared her throat and looked away from Joon's gaze, back towards the front of the ship. She sat strapped into the copilot's seat next to Joon, with the X-shaped seatbelt crinkling the folds of her white dress around her.
Joon's own seatbelt dangled loosely behind his elbows as he leaned into the steering wheel.
He shifted something on the dash. The spacecraft seemed to wander into quiet, lonely cloud cover and fall into a gentle coast. Joon flipped an autopilot switch on, then let his hands slide away from the steering wheel as he fell back into his seat with a melancholy sigh.
"Joon? What is it?"
His body shifted towards hers in his seat.
"I need to tell you something before we go any further."
Shae wasn't sure what he meant. Further towards Petra's? Or further...?
"I've been lying to you, Shae."
Shae braced herself for whatever was about to come next out of Kim Namjoon's devastatingly savory lips. Is this the part where he tells me that he was in love with that Kiara girl? I don't think I'm ready .
"I've been lying to everyone, actually. But I don't want to lie to you anymore."
Shae took a deep breath.
"There's a reason that Hoseok and Yoongi want to destroy me so badly."
"Because of what happened to Dai Yu and Kiara...."
Joon lay back again in his seat staring up at the ceiling slightly. "Hoseok does hate me for that. For killing the woman he loved. But no. That's not it."
Shae didn't know what to say so instead she waiting with bated breath.
"I'm scared to tell you. But I can't let you keep looking at me with that look in your eyes without you knowing the truth."Please don't break.
Silence held. The kind where all they heard was the mechanical hum of engines, of their pressurized cabin heaving it's way through sky.
"It'll be alright, Joon." She considered reaching a hand out to comfort him but thought better of it.
He began.
"Kiara and Dai Yu had found me out. It's why they were on their way to Okie Port in secret with a host of delicate information, including blue prints, weapons technology, and coding that could have made us dangerously vulnerable... when I executed them."
Shae asked in a soft whisper, "How long ago...did Dai Yu and Kiara...did they...?"
Joon was staring straight ahead instead of looking at Shae. His voice was stiff. "About a month before you came to Noon Mool. So, not very long ago."
Shae swallowed.
"This secret they had discovered...it actually happened a few years ago. I thought that if no one had figured it out by now, no one ever wold. But I guess I was wrong. Then Hoseok and Yoongi somehow pieced it together, too."
Shae let that sink in.
Joon went on.
"I only did it once. But I still did it. Noon Mool was having shortages: bad crops, a power failure in one of our sectors, people out of their homes. It was a winter for us all, you could say, and from where I stood there was no way were all going to make it through to the other side of it alive. So I hatched a plan to change all that."
Joon buried his face in his hands a moment and let out an exasperated sigh. Then his fingers slipped from his face and he continued, "I singled out another fortress, similar to the size of Noon Mool but with more food resources and less advanced weaponry. They were good people. Their leader was a good man and a good friend of mine."
Joon's voice broke over the word 'friend,' but he swallowed and kept on, "But I created a lie for our team to believe in, made up fake reports, made it seem like this fortress was secretly out to destroy Noon Mool when we were vulnerable. Through fabricated evidence, I convinced my team that we needed to strike this particular fortress hard and fast and first in order not to be destroyed ourselves. So we did. And we won."
Shae was mute.
"I led the infiltration unit, under the guise of a simple peace meeting with their fortress leader. Hoseok led the assault on their agricultural sector. Jungkook led the airstrikes. Chim the mineral resources extraction. Tae and Yoongi...they coordinated explosive strikes on all the other levels. Jin held down the fort back at base, and helped us adjust our strikes and coordinate our defenses from the control room."
"...What happened to this other fortress?"
"I'd rather spare you the details. To put it simply: they're all dead and we're not, and it's because I lied to everyone to make it so. I did it to save lives, and you know what? It worked." The tone in Joon's voice wasn't all bitter grief. Shae thought she heard a touch of pride, too.
But there was no pride in his next words: "But the look in his eyes when I knew Jung Hoseok finally knew the truth, after all that time, is a look that will haunt me until the day I die. For a while I really thought I'd done the right thing as a leader. I had protected my people, after all. I'd saved thousands of them from starving to death, kept the power outages at bay. Kept us from going Dark. I had justified it in my mind as the right thing to do, and then I swore to bring Hoseok and Yoongi down myself for their betrayal of Noon Mool, but... then things changed."
Shae's question was barely audible. "Oh?"
Joon tilted his head towards Shae, his eyes full of longing. "Because you came. And I'v thanked Chim every damn day for it since."
Shae blinked back the tears that were trying to form. No. Don't cry right now.
"I think your undeserved kindness made me realize my shame, Shae. And my remorse."
Shae was mute as these words, letting them scatter around inside of her until then fell into full recognition. She gazed quietly out the glass, trying to lull herself with the sight of pink-rimmed cotton clouds and wisps that were fluttering last their ship on its way.
Her heart hurt. So, so much.
Joon was now staring straight ahead through glass as well. His voice was blank and empty as he said, "I can't help but be glad that I saved our people from pain and death. And I hate myself even more for that. I've vowed never to compromise like that again, but the truth is that I did, that sometimes I still think it was the right thing to do... and that I can never take it back no matter how much I wish I could. The only person at Noon Mool who knows all of this now is Taehyung."
"I see."
Shae sat in tumultuous silence. Genocide. He's talking about genocide. And...one he is solely responsible for. That's.... She looked across the aisle at that anguished expression on Joon's face as he stared forward through the cockpit window. That's unforgivable. Innocent people and...mass murder. But then how do I still feel...? Have I lost my mind?
Shae carefully unfastened her seatbelt and shrugged the straps from her arms.
Maybe I have. But I can feel so much grief in his words. His awful words.
She stood and stepped across the divider between the pilot's and co-pilot's seats. Shae braced her hands on the arm rests of Joon's chair, leaning over him. It was remarkable, how small and childlike he suddenly seemed as he looked up at her with that wounded remorse and fear in his eyes.
"That's not what I thought you were going to say," Shae said softly, almost inaudibly, as she leaned down over Joon. She was scared. Of him. Of herself. She didn't know what the right thing was to say or do. It didn't seem to be this--but she had to do something.
Joon leaned slightly forwards. His words felt tinged with a desperate hope. "What was it you thought that I was going to say?"
She shook her head. "It doesn't matter."
"Yes. It does."
"I--"
"Shae, please tell me."
Shae crawled into Joon's lap with her hands still braced against the arm rests of his chair. His hands were fists at his sides and he seemed to be holding his breath.
She answered softly, her eyes averted, "I thought that you were going to tell me something about Kiara."
"Like what?"
Shae was feeling foolish for more reasons than one, afraid to move her hands from the arm rests of Joon's seat, eyes still averted from his face. "That you loved her." The words felt so ridiculous up next to what had actually come out of his mouth.
There was a weighty silence.
Careful, timid, Kim Namjoon reached out with one of his hands.
How can I?
His fingertips just barely brushed along her jaw.
How can I not?
Shae closed her eyes and leaned her cheek into the smoothness of him, as his fingers spread and his palm swallowed her cheek. She let the slender fingers of her left hand caress gently around Joon's outstretched forearm.
Joon gave a soft groan of relief.
Forgive me, Shae--but I cannot say no to the beautiful relief of you.
Shae sighed into his fingertips.
Even if his remorse is true, who am I to offer ablution for a crime so truly awful? And yet....
Joon's voice, like his hand on her cheek, was both strong and soft: "I'm not sure where that ridiculous idea came from, but let me make this as clear as I possibly can."
Slowly, gently, Joon reached both hands around Shae's cheeks, a pang in his chest at that gorgeous, heartbroken, caring look on her face as she looked down into his dark, hooded eyes.
Even after the awful confessions he'd just said, Shae wasn't looking at him like he was a monster. Nor with blind pity. The truth in that made him ache in a way he didn't know was possible.
"I did not love Kiara." Joon tilted her chin carefully in is hands and snuck a fluttering kiss into the nape of her neck.
"I do not." His nose trailed down the line of her neck until his lips found the butterfly dip of her clavicle, nuzzling a wet kiss against hard bone. Shae leaned forward and breathed in a dizzyingly masculine cologne wafting up from Joon and against her cheeks.
He reached his fingers up and gently pushed her blonde hair from her face as Shae braced her hands forward against his strong chest. Their movements were careful and slow, but Shae wondered if Joon's heart was pounding as fast as hers.
"Do you believe me, Shae?"
Joon tilted his face towards Shae, his nose gently nuzzling her lower cheek as she looked down on him with her warm blue eyes.
She whispered back, "Yes."
He lightly kissed her jaw. "Good."
Then Shae leaned forward and placed her forehead against Joon's, their noses lightly brushing each other. They both seemed to be holding their breath.
Joon wanted one, just one kiss at least, or he thought the ache in his chest would suffocate him.
He leaned in, their lips met, and Shae gave a sharp intake of breath as if inhaling Kim Namjoon himself.
One long, pained, longing kiss. As they parted, Shae kept her forehead leaning into Joon's.
That genuine smile on her face was like living gold, Joon thought. He started to tuck his lips into hers once more but Shae leaned back.
"Joon, we have an appointment."
"Those bastards can wait."
His lips kept searching. She leaned in once more--just a quick kiss--but he had other plans.
"Joon," she said between one breathless dive and the next.
"Joonie...."
He stopped. Joon pulled back carefully to meet her gaze and take in the sight of her empathetic blue eyes, like warm ocean waves cascading over him. Like the sky of a perfect day shinning their light into his soul.
"Say my name like that one more time...."
"And what?"
"And we aren't going the hell anywhere ever again."
Shae laughed, but timidly, like she was unsure of the sound. "You gonna hold me prisoner?"
"Not a prisoner." He kissed her cheek softly one more time. "But still mine."
Words became lost to Shae, and a new kind of pain and warmth swelled inside of her.
Joon's arms wrapped tenderly around Shae's whole form. She slid herself sideways into his lap, letting herself be held in his arms as she leaned her head into the nook of his neck. Inhaling deeply the smell of his cologne made her feel like everything was somehow perfectly right, even when she knew that it wasn't.
Shae liked the way his strong chest felt as he let out a satisfied sigh. She settled into the warmth of that vulnerability. Focused on it, as her inner gaze shielded out the full depth of any surrounding darkness.
"So if I call you that, does that mean we can skip this meeting?"
"I wish with everything in me that I could say 'yes.'"
"...Ok, Joonie."
He nuzzled his nose into the top of her head with a meaningful smile on his lips.
Then he muttered in earnest, "I do not deserve your kindness after what I have done, Shae. But I am thankful for it."
Her fingers traced small patterns into the front of his midnight blue shirt. "I cannot imagine the full weight of...of these things. This world and its tensions and needs. But I believe that you are sincere in your grief... and capable of being so much more than this. I believe in you, Kim Namjoon."
Joon's chest swelled at her words. In that moment he wanted more than anything to prove himself worthy of them.