joudama (stopthatgirl7) wrote in no_true_pair, @ 2009-03-29 21:26:00 |
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Current music: | Avril Lavigne - I'm With You |
Entry tags: | ! 2009 eight characters challenge, author: joudama, crossover: ff7/the king and the clown, pairing: angeal/gong-gil |
A Hope in Hell (pt 3) [Final Fantasy 7/The King and the Clown: Angeal & Gong-gil]
Title: A Hope in Hell
Author: joudama
Fandom: FF7/The King and the Clown
Status: 3/6
Rating: R (themes, hints of canon m/m from The King and the Clown)
Word count: 6000ish
Prompt: Angeal and Gong-gil with the title "A Hope in Hell"
A\N: Sorry for the delay in getting this part out; my fic brain went on vacation and then life (or rather, work) kind of happened. x_x And once again split because it was getting waaaaay too long--I originally was trying to keep each part under 20 pages, that got blown to smithereens with this and part four; now I'm shooting for under 30. *death* ~This is the fic that never ends, 'Cause it goes on and on my friends...~
Also, if any of you have read one of my other fic, "The Things You Never Knew About People," then you know the Wutai characters are called 'wuzi' (吳字, 'Wu letters', similar to how hanzi/kanji/hanja are 'Han letters'). Since Park is Chochungese, he uses the native Chochungese word for wuzi, which is "ouja." ....I'll, um, stop being a nerd now. Also, on the "other fic" note, Chímaira references "The Griffin and the Chimera." You don't have to read it; I'm just all for internal canon consistency.
This part contains massive spoilers for "The King and the Clown." ...And, kinda ironically, "The King and the Clown" contains massive spoilers for this fic (skillz, yes, I know). So it all kinda depends on which way you want to be spoiled. Here's your last chance to choose one spoiler over the other. ^^;;
Part One
Part Two
--
One problem with Gong-gil being awake--one of many--was pretty immediate.
Just where to put the poor guy.
Angeal put his elbows on his desk, buried his face in his hands, and resisted the urge to pull at his hair.
Barely.
"He can't stay in the hospital, not when he's not half-dead--the medics would have my hide because they need the beds. And we can't put him in the cells again," Angeal said, making a face. "Those cells are not nearly secure enough to keep assassins out. They just weren't made for it and Hel's realm, they might actually have been built to encourage the bastards sneaking in and taking care of problems that way. And we still have no idea who tried to kill him or how they got to his food, and just his food, to poison it. I swear, I almost wish everyone in that block had been poisoned, because at least then it wouldn't be so glaring obvious how big the security hole we've got is. Since it's a big question mark other than 'someone who hated him a whole fucking lot,' he needs to be under protective custody more than in custody."
It was a lot worse than he'd said, honestly--the cells in the back, where Gong-gil and Nok-su had been held, were top secret. No Chochungese allowed...which was part of why the security breach was so worrying; no one who wanted Gong-gil dead should have known where he was. It had just been him and Jang Nok-su, people found in the courtyard, with the king, and only people who had seemed important--clothing told rank, and Gong-gil's outfit had been so different from everyone else's that he had been stuck back there.
Gong-gil was lucky he'd been in red and white, not blue: nearly everyone in blue--the royalty and noble advisers--had been killed...and not all of them in "the Fall of Daerimmun," as they were calling it in the press.
"House arrest, sir?" Park suggested. "Confine him to a room in the palace and leave an armed guard with him at all times. After all of the ninja attacks in the early years of the war, we are prepared for assassins, especially the younger recruits because it's become part of standard training. And we should put him on ShinRa rations, which are only prepared and handled by ShinRa personnel now, would make it harder for someone to poison him again."
"...This is why you should be in charge and not me," Angeal said, looking up at Park with a self-depreciating smile. He wondered just how it was Park managed to stay on his feet all the time and never looked tired, when he himself wanted to just curl up in bed and sleep for a long, long time.
He also occasionally wondered if Park was actually a robot. Given ShinRa, one never really knew.
"That would require going through the SOLDIER training, sir," Park said flatly.
Angeal frowned slightly. "Why didn't you? I can't see any reason they wouldn't've let you in."
"Maybe, but I'm still Chochungese, sir," Park said flatly, and Angeal remembered about how the Chochungese, for all they knew a thousand bloody ways around materia and how to thwart its effects, never actually used it. The Wutai in general didn't use materia quite as much or in the same ways as they did on the other continents, but in Chochung, they honestly never used it at all, not even healing materia, even though they had huge stockpiles of it. That aversion, he realized, probably ran to mako as well, and that would make becoming a SOLDIER pretty much impossible.
Damn shame, though, Angeal thought. Park probably would have made 1st class so fast everyone's head would have spun, as disciplined as he was. Regular troopers didn't climb the ranks as quickly as SOLDIERs, and Angeal wasn't so naïve as to think that Park being Wutai hadn't worked against him, either. The fact that he was where he was spoke volumes--he may have started out as a translator for the Chochung campaign, but he'd gone well past that role in the year he'd been working under Angeal, especially now.
And Angeal didn't quite know the best way to respond to what Park had just said, so he sighed again and went back to pondering the problem of what to do with Gong-gil. Park's solution seemed like the best one, the more he thought about it. "All right. Find me a room in the castle that's easily secured, then, and see about getting it fitted up with whatever it needs. How long should that take?"
"A day or two, maybe up to a week depending on supplies on hand."
"I want it in three days on the outside. You have my permission to yank a few people from Sgt. Glaston if need be. Until it's done, he stays in the medical wing and I do my able best to avoid Constantin."
"Yes, sir."
"I also want shifts guarding him. One guard at a time should be enough, six hour shifts. I want a limit of how many people come into contact with him, and you know why," Angeal said, tightening his lips. He couldn't let himself forget, at any time, that it was very possible Gong-gil would have to be killed. It was messy enough with him having to have to go into the medical ward, and Angeal was trying to contain this as much as he could, especially since they had no idea where the security breach was.
"Yes, sir."
"...Anything I left out?"
"I don't believe so, no, sir."
"OK, then. Delegate as you see fit, and if anything pops up, let me know instantly."
"Yes, sir."
"And if you can think of any way to question him that will get me some useful information, I'm all ears."
Park blinked and Angeal put his face back in his hands at the thought of the impossibility of it all. Right now trying to get information was like beating his head against a brick wall--Gong-gil had to have at least some idea who would have tried to kill him and why, but unlike everyone else who just wouldn't talk, he couldn't talk. And if he'd been a street performer, he was bound to be illiterate and there was no possible way he could write, so they couldn't even question him that way. It was insane.
"This is why I hate being in charge," Angeal groaned. "And you're dismissed. Report back to me when you've got arrangements made or if you find out anything useful from any one or those records."
Park nodded sharply, and with a crisp salute, said "Sir, yes, sir," then turned like he was on parade duty and walked out.
...Robot, Angeal thought. Had to be.
--
Park put the scroll down and rubbed his eyes tiredly. He'd been reading through the rather dry and boring records of court for the last three hours, and his head was starting to hurt from it. The court documents weren't written in the vernacular Chochungese eonmon letters, but in classical Wutai. He'd studied classical Wutai, his mother had insisted because some part of her had always wanted to go home, but until this investigation it had been a long time since he'd had to read classical. His mother would probably be furious, that this was so difficult for him.
Orders were orders, and so he pushed thoughts of his parents away quickly and slogged his way through it, wishing they had just written everything in eonmon. At least that was actually Chochungese, not bloody Northern.
And adding to the headache, Park didn't even know what he was looking for. Knowing would have helped, greatly. He felt like he was trying to find a needle in a haystack, digging through records of court to find anything that would help them understand why someone had tried to kill Gong-gil. He didn't know what he was looking for, or even the full reasons why this was so important--or rather, not why this was so important to General Hewley, other than that the general was a better man than most.
He knew why he was up late, squinting at brush strokes of ouja characters--orders, and because he suspected the five former advisers to the king had something to do with what was happening. Or, at the very least, they were willing to turn a blind eye to attempted murder. Seong had been too quick to jump to Gong-gil when he had asked for information about the play and the death of the dowager. And Yu had been too quick to blame Gong-gil for the king's madness. Too quick and too angry.
But they had betrayed the king; how could they be that angry at a clown when they had been the ones to defy what they would have seen as the mandate of the Heavens and--
Unless they blamed Gong-gil for having to do so, he realized suddenly, the realization making his eyes go round. Unless they felt like the king's madness was pushing the country to the breaking point, and they blamed Gong-gil for driving the king mad and forcing their hand. It would be easier to blame a street performer they would have considered trash anyway than to blame the king and themselves.
It made a twisted kind of sense, but he had no proof.
Not yet, anyway.
He frowned, and rolled up the scroll he had been working through, and reached instead for the ones dated around when the Dowager had died. He would trace back later. For now, the key seemed to be the time around the play.
He also figured he needed more of the damnable scrolls. Seong had given him enough to keep him busy for more than long enough, but he needed back to when Gong-gil had come to the castle. Gong-gil being there didn't even make any sense; he knew enough from his parents and their old-fashioned ideas to know that players of any sort shouldn't even have been in the castle in the first place.
He was going to have to talk to the advisers again, and he couldn't help a tiny smile growing on his face. He knew how to play this game. He would give them all the rope they needed and wait, and then watch as they hung themselves.
--
"Sir!"
Angeal turned around, slightly surprised at a voice coming from behind him. "Yeah?"
Park saluted sharply. "You said to report to you when arrangements for Gong-gil were finished. They're done, sir."
Angeal nodded, glad at least one thing was done. "Just a sec," he said, nodding once to Park, then turned back and cupped his hands at his mouth. "All right, decent job, you lazy assholes! Keep that up and maybe I won't have to send you all home to your mamas!" he yelled at the troopers at work in front of him. "Sergeant, don't cut them any slack! I want to see the outer walls completely rebuilt and insurgent-proof in two days! I went and took half of 'em out yesterday, so don't let my hard work be for nothing!"
"Yes sir!" the sergeant yelled sharply with a faint grin. "Guess that gives you two days to get the other half you missed so they don't wreck our hard work, sir!"
Angeal laughed. "You bastards are never satisfied. I bust a ball taking out half the insurgents in Daerimmun in one mission and you stay-at-home slackers bust the other one for not taking out the other half!"
"Of course, sir! Man's gotta have a matched set!" the sergeant said with full-on grin and Angeal laughed harder.
"Yeah, yeah, yeah, I'd hate to be unbalanced," he said, laughing and rolling his eyes good-naturedly before turning to Park. Who was standing there without expression; same expression as he had when he'd come over and that he always had, although there was something about the absolutely blandness in Park's expression that made him wonder what was going through his head. He tried to imagine Park joking with him--or anyone--the way Sergeant Glaston did, and that made something in his brain twitch and his hand almost reflexively reach for a Remedy to throw. He caught himself before he really did reach for it, and had to fight a chuckle.
"Sir?"
"...Nothing, nothing," he said, giving up on keeping the grin off his face. "So you were saying the holding cell for Gong-gil is done?"
Park nodded. "Guard duty for him has also been added to the duty roster, sir."
"Good. Let me take a look at the room, then we'll put him there. Constantin will be glad to get the bed; he's been bitching for days now. Especially after the day before yesterday," he said, growing serious. The insurgents were getting bolder in their desperation and not just in Chochung, going by what Sephiroth and Genesis were telling him--he honestly was beginning to wonder how long before they started attacking Midgar itself.
He had his hands full here and it was getting worse and worse. The day before yesterday insurgents had bombed the outer wall; yesterday he, another SOLDIER and small group of troopers had taken out almost all of their hideout. The Chochungese had thought they'd won a coup in that attack, only losing a few men besides the suiciders; they hadn't realized three of their men had been tagged with tracking devices. Angeal considered it a strategic loss; the outer walls could be rebuilt and the chances of the inner walls being breached were slim to none, not with as many troopers and SOLDIERS he had, and with as much Chochungese healing materia as they had now--the Chochungese Esunas could cure a lot of the nastier poisons, and the Remedies they were getting now from Junon and Midgar had incorporated a lot of antidotes to the Wutai bugs and toxins as well--they were getting to a point where they could Cure pretty much everything the Chochungese threw at them. The more materia they shipped back to Midgar the better the materia and Remedies they got back from the scientists were, so Angeal was doing his able best to make sure the healing materia got shipped out first. ShinRa could destroy things well enough on their own, but Angeal was determined to do what he could to make sure as many men came back from missions as they could.
"Follow me, sir," Park said with a sharp nod of his head, and only turned to lead Angeal when Angeal answered it with a nod of his own.
--
The room looked completely secure--Glaston's corp were good, and Angeal couldn't find a single kink even with his enhanced senses. "Perfect," he said, nodding. The room had been wired for electricity, and there was a key pad, meaning access would be limited only to those with a code. It still had a traditional paper door, but you'd be hard pressed to get to that door with the security in front of it. Windows, likewise, had glowing panels around them indicating a security force field; no one was getting in or out through them. There was a pad on the inside of the door as well, but that had an optical scanner on it, meaning the only way to get out if the security shields were up was a retinal scan.
Glaston definitely knew what he was doing, for his engineers to have done all this within his three day limit.
"Let's go pick up her new inhabitant, shall we?" Angeal said, and Park saluted.
--
"Here to take a perfectly healthy prisoner off your hands," Angeal said as soon as he saw Constantin.
"It's about time," Constantin said, putting his hands on his hips in mock-irritation. "And I trust we won't be seeing him in here again?"
"Not unless he catches a cold," Angeal said with a nod.
"Good," Constantin said, smiling faintly. "I've finally got him completely in one piece and healthy; keep him that way."
"Sir, yes sir!" Angeal said and gave Constantin a salute.
Park just stared at them, but his lips twitched, and Angeal couldn't help smile at that--so Park was human after all.
"This way," Constantin said, and lead them towards the back, to the high security parts of the medical facilities, chatting as he did. "I'm sure he'll be glad to be getting out of here, even if he is going back to cells. A medical ward is a pretty boring place when you're healthy. Did try to keep him busy, though--we gave him some spoken VSSL lesson files, and he's been listening to that. He can't speak, but at least he's getting better at understanding Visgradian when he hears it. And you should have seen him when we were showing him how to work the DM player," he said, shaking his head, and Angeal could just imagine.
Gong-gil was sitting cross-legged on his bed, his eyes closed and earbuds in, mouthing something. Angeal figured that to be the lessons files of Visgradian Standard Constantin had mentioned. It was almost strange, to see Gong-gil healthy. He didn't have that close-to-death pallor he'd had before, and it looked like he'd started to put on some of the weight he had to have lost being sick.
He was still too pretty by half, and still had that young, fragile look to him. And he still looked like he'd break if you touched him, like the healthy look was just temporary.
Gong-gil frowned then fumbled with the digital media player then opened his eyes to hit a button on it, and noticed Angeal and Park. His eyes went wide and he quickly pulled the earbuds out and shifted how he was sitting and bowed.
Angeal nodded his head and motioned for Park. "Just in case," he said, and then turned to Gong-gil, who was watching the both of them with large, round eyes. Gong-gil licked his lip nervously, and Angeal's eyes followed the movement before he sighed. "We're moving you," he said, and Park translated it immediately. "We've got a new, secure--"
For some reason "cell" twisted in his mouth and wouldn't come out, and he faltered slightly. "We've got a new, secure place to put you. That's why we left you here, because we needed to get everything ready."
Gong-gil managed to look more nervous, and somehow overwhelmed. He gestured randomly at the DM player then looked at Angeal hopefully, picking it up and clutching it tightly.
Angeal smiled faintly. "Yeah, you can take it with you. So follow me," he said, and Gong-gil nodded, and Angeal wondered where under the Heavens the urge to reassure the man had come from, but it was there, and it was strong. "Everything will be all right, I promise."
Park hesitated for a fraction of a moment before he translated that, and Angeal decided not to pay it any mind. He was more caught up in the tiny flare of something--he didn't know what, but it seemed like a good thing--he saw in Gong-gil's tired, terrified eyes, the way it seemed like Gong-gil wanted to trust him. Gong-gil had understood that much of everything Angeal had said, even before Park had translated it, he was sure, and he was glad for that much, that his reassurances got through.
Angeal wanted Gong-gil to trust him, but damned, like everything about Gong-gil, if he knew why.
Instead of thinking about any of this, he gestured with his hand, and with a nod of thanks to Constantin, headed out of the medical area.
--
That fragile trust got a quick test, when Gong-gil realized they were leading him into the castle proper. It was obvious he had not expected to be brought back here, and equally obvious that he didn't like this at all, not with the way he was shrinking in on himself and his eyes were darting around.
Angeal finally stopped and faced down Gong-gil, and fuck, if it didn't hurt to see someone looking that scared.
What in Hel's name had happened to him?
"Look," he said, not knowing exactly what he wanted to say. "Whatever happened here, it's done with. And right now, I'm--we're--going to do everything we can to keep you safe."
Gong-gil's eyes narrowed, but he still said nothing.
"You have to know," Angeal said, crossing his arms, "that you aren't safe in the cells. So I'm putting you in the castle, which is now a ShinRa base, and having you guarded here. I don't think you want to get poisoned again, do you? Or whatever other nasty someone with a grudge might be planning."
Gong-gil blinked, then slowly shook his head after Park translated it.
"Right. So you're back in the palace until this all gets sorted out," he said, and dropped his arms, then gave Gong-gil a faint smile. "Though you will have to deal with ShinRa rations. You might prefer the prison after you try those," he said, and he was pretty damned sure it was a smile that Gong-gil had just covered with his sleeve.
--
Once they got to the reinforced room, Angeal laid down the rules. "You are not," he said sternly, crossing his arms and frowning, "allowed to go where you want. You stay in this room and only in this room. We'll let you out for an hour, same as they did when you were in the cell, just a different hour from everyone else until I figure out who it was that was trying to kill you. If you want anything...aw, Hel's realm," Angeal said, groaning. The way he had planned to finish that sentence was not going to work, because Gong-gil couldn't exactly ask for something. "I really wish you could talk. Or at least write."
Park hadn't translated that last part, but to Angeal's immediate surprise, Gong-gil straightened up and did a gesture with his hand, as if he was writing, and nodded.
It took a minute to register, but when it did... "Can you write?"
Gong-gil nodded, shyly, and for the first time, Angeal felt like something in the whole cluster fuck was actually working out his way--if Gong-gil could write, then they could get statements from him and question him.
Gong-gil opened his mouth like he was going to say something, but shut it and his shoulders slumped. Angeal frowned, not having a clue why Gong-gil suddenly looked dejected.
He was surprised again when Park said something in Chochungese. Gong-gil shook his head no. Park asked a few more questions, getting a nod or a head shake, and Angeal just stood there wishing he'd had some kind of ear for the language.
Finally, Park looked over at Angeal. "He can't write Standard," he said. "He only knows the Chochungese eonmon letters."
Angeal groaned. "Fabulous."
The easiest thing to do, he thought, would be to make Park Gong-gil's babysitter, but that was a definite no-go--Angeal needed Park too much right then. "Is there anyone besides you who can read Chochungese enough to read simple requests?"
"Probably, sir. Some of the troops have been in Chochung two or three years now, and more than a few, I'm sure, have learned enough Chochungese to manage. I've given lessons to three or four people," Park said slowly, as if thinking, "and two of them definitely have enough for this."
...Lessons? If Park was giving people Chochungese lessons, he was finding a way to pencil his commanding officer in, because Angeal had had it. Later, though. "OK. Find me some that can read. He," he said, indicating Gong-gil, "can at least understand Standard if it's not that complex, seems like, and I can get them an electronic dictionary or something."
"Yes, sir," Park said with a sharp nod.
Gong-gil was looking at his feet, his shoulders hunched in and Angeal fought the urge to pat the guy on the head. "Don't look like that, this isn't your fault," Angeal said, one corner of his mouth quirking up. "Even though you are kind of a pain in the ass right now. But you'd be a bigger pain in the ass for me if someone managed to kill you. So no getting killed, got it?" he said, mock-seriously.
To his surprise, Gong-gil looked up at him, and a tiny, breathtaking smile touched his lips for a moment, so quickly Angeal almost wondered if he'd imagined it, and Gong-gil nodded.
"Is there anything you want to keep you busy, besides the DM player and Standard lessons? Ask now, while there's someone who can read what you want in the room, because it might be a while before we get guards who can lined up."
Gong-gil frowned slightly, thinking out what Angeal had just said. Angeal was about ten seconds away from telling Park to translate when there was a flash of understanding behind Gong-gil's eyes, and after a few moments of thought, he nodded.
"Park, I know you have paper and a pencil because you're you," Angeal said, raising an eyebrow, and true enough, Park pulled out a small notebook and pen.
Gong-gil stared at the pen as if he'd never seen one before. Park said something to him, and Gong-gil got a disbelieving look on his face, but gamely took the pen and paper. He stared at the pen in confusion again, and Park reached over, took off the top, and said something to him in Chochungese. That was when Angeal realized Gong-gil had never used a pen before, and by the gods, was this place ever fucking backwards.
Gong-gil sat himself down primly right on the floor, kneeling, and held the pen like a brush as he wrote out whatever it was he wanted. When he was done, he read over it again, frowned and added one more thing, then stood up and gave it back to Park with a bow. Park looked over it, frowning, as if he had no idea what under the heavens Gong-gil wanted.
"What's he want?" Angeal said, curious as to what could make Park blink at something twice.
"I'm not exactly sure, sir," he said, and then rattled off something quickly at Gong-gil. Gong-gil raised his hand and mimicked putting something over it, then moved his hand around in a way that Angeal couldn't even begin to fathom.
Park seemed to get it, though. He said a word in Chochungese, and Gong-gil nodded.
"He...wants materials to make a puppet, sir."
Angeal just blinked. A puppet? He wanted to make a puppet?! "Anything dangerous on that list?"
"Just scissors."
He frowned slightly. "As long as they aren't kept in the room and he's supervised, it should be alright," Angeal said, nodding.
Gong-gil's face lit up at Angeal's nod, and it was beautiful in a way completely different from the beauty of when he had been half-dead and sick, but oddly it made him seem just as fragile, like a bubble.
...Yeah. No more using metaphors for him, Angeal thought wryly. They just never worked out for him, after all.
--
Park sighed and put the scroll he was looking at down, his eyes tired. He'd been at this all day--the general was out on a mission, and Park wanted to have something for him when he came back. And it had started out a welcome distraction--everyone was on edge, when the SOLDIERs--when General Hewley--left on a mission. While death was always possible at any time, missions were nerve-wracking because there was a lot more danger, especially the ones requiring SOLDIERs, and even more so for the ones involving the general. The general was amazing, far beyond their level, and sure to be all right, but there was always the chance of something happening, of the unexpected, and on some level, everyone on base was nervous, even if they covered it with certain bravado about how many 'dead wonks' the general would 'score.'
Talk like that tended to go dead if people noticed Park around--a lot of talk did, but that even more so--and there would occasionally be an awkward, "but you're not a wonk, you're not like these wutes, you're all right," and a necessary acknowledgement and reassurance to the one who had spoken, and it was uncomfortable all around--only he wasn't allowed to show it, not for the sake of solidarity, even if in his mind he imagined how it would feel to simply haul off and punch out whoever said it. The facade of being all right with things and tapping down tightly on his anger was tiring and stressful, and so it was easier for him to be elsewhere and spend his time being productive instead of glancing up every time the main gates squeaked or someone came looking like they had news, like half the men seemed to be. The general was doing his job as only he could; Park would do the same.
...It was a good distraction, if nothing else. Which was why Park had been closed up in a room full of scrolls, a notebook, a pen, and a few ration bars for the last five hours.
The little bits and pieces he was getting were beginning to make a picture. Park had a pretty good idea that things were being left out--a lot of things--but there was enough in the records that things were beginning to pull together.
Gong-gil had come with a troupe of five. Or rather, had been arrested for impinging the honor of the king and found themselves before the king, they had performed and apparently done well, because by royal decree, spaces were made for the troupe at the palace, something that was absolutely mind-boggling, given how Chochung was. Park had heard, of course, like everyone, that Yeonsan-gun was not exactly sane and how he lived as if there were no war dragging on outside his castle walls, but the records, as abridged and dry as they were, did show a pattern of the man's erraticism...erraticism that seemed to grow as time went on.
And saying "erraticism," he thought, was being kind. There had been one mention of a royal decree punishing an advisor by having him stripped of his title and lands and his hands cut off, for accepting bribes for positions. He didn't know enough about Chochung to know if something as barbaric as that was customary, but something sat badly with him over it--likely because of the situation with his own parents, how they had been exiled for his father's fascination with the world outside of Chochung...or rather, his desire to bring Chochung into the modern era somehow. He didn't know the details; it had all happened before he was born, but just from what his father had said, the few times he spoke about it, that exile had been a set punishment, not the vagaries of mere whim. There did seem to be opposition; other records indicated dissension with decrees and attempts--failed attempts--to sway the king.
Add to that that Park had no idea why he had been given some of these records. These were supposed to be ones relating to Gong-gil, and yet the one he had just read had no mention of him...other than an oblique reference to a performance. Which told him nothing at all.
He sighed heavily, certainty settling like a leaden weight in his stomach. He didn't know enough about the laws of Chochung to understand what was going on, and that meant he was going to have to talk to someone who did.
--
"Ahh, young lieutenant Park," Seong said, smiling a smile so fake a part of Park imagined shooting it off the man...along with half his face. He didn't show it on his face. Let the man have his false smiles; all Park wanted was information. "Is there something I can help you with?"
"Yes, and I thank you for your trouble. I'm curious," he said, making sure to for once use a more polite way of speaking, even though it grated. "About why I was given some of these scrolls. They don't seem to relate to Gong-gil."
"All of those," Seong said, "happened directly because of Gong-gil."
"The performance troupe coming to live in the palace?"
"The head of the troupe made a boast they could make the king laugh. If they did, they would be allowed to live. If not, they would die. It was Gong-gil who made the king laugh, in a vulgar display beneath what his royal majesty should ever have been exposed to. "
"The man having his hands chopped off?"
"A performance of Gong-gil and his troupe. They mocked the ministers that day, with a bawdy play about a minister taking money for posts. The king rather enjoyed it...especially Gong-gil dressed as a young noble woman, plying the minister with sexual favors," he said, looking disgusted.
"Is that a normal punishment?"
Seong's jaw tensed. "The departed king cared little for rule of law or procedures. And as he grew more enamored with Gong-gil, the more erratic he became. And the more arbitrary and deadly his punishments became."
"The dowager, two courtesans and the ministers," Park said flatly. The dowager's heart attack and the courtesans stabbed to death during a play he'd learned about already. The ministers had been killed after, shot with arrows during a mounted 'hunt'...a 'hunt' to celebrate Gong-gil's being given a title.
There was a lot of death around Gong-gil, and that only what was in the records.
"Gong-gil is dangerous," Seong snarled. "There is nothing but death around him, the death of those who would have somehow been in his way. As he gained the king's favor, the more brutal the methods of removing objectors of any stripe became." Seong smiled suddenly, and it wasn't a nice smile. "Even his former troupe."
That didn't sound very good at all, Park thought, and he smiled his own fake smile and bowed deeply enough to throw Seong a bone, thanked him for his trouble, and left.
It seemed he had a lot more reading to do.
--
So there was reading, and a lot more of it. He was about ready to give up for the day, see if there was any news about the general, when what he was looking at registered.
Park stared at the scroll, almost not believing what he was reading. There was no way that... He read through the scroll carefully, then read it again to verify that it said what he thought it did. There was no doubt, no mistake, and this opened a whole new set of problems.
His PHS rang. "Park here," he said once he got it up to his ear, his brain still spinning as what the information on that scroll meant began to sink in.
"Yo," a laughing voice said back.
"I'm working," Park said sharply. "And on things you don't have the clearance to know about, so don't ask."
"Yeah, yeah, rub it in some more that you shot past all of us," Banks, a trooper he had been friends with since boot camp and well into the Chochung offensive and who always seemed determined to drag him out somewhere, said laughing. "And I'll let you go, O Busy One. Guess you didn't want to know the general got back about an hour ago."
"He what?" Park said in surprise, because usually he was on the ball enough to know something like that faster.
"You're slacking, man," Banks said, and laughed, and kept on laughing as Park hung up on him after a hurried, "Later."
He couldn't bother the general with this now, not with the general only just back and Park himself unprepared, but he'd go let the general know he needed to talk to him tomorrow, and would spend tonight prepping everything and trying to do something about the Blizzard currently forming in his stomach as he looked down at the records, at the king's order for a player, Jang-saeng, to be put to death.
"There is nothing but death around him," Seong had said. "Even his former troupe."
Put to death for committing to a crime Gong-gil had been originally accused of.
Park was not a superstitious man and even as a child had had little use for the tales his mother used to tell him, but he couldn't help not liking the way things seemed to happen around Gong-gil--or the way people seemed to go to extreme lengths for him, either in love or hatred, because even through the dry lines of simple facts in the scrolls, there had been both involved with this defamation affair--at all.
He knew what his mother would say about it, what name she would have. And while he'd never believed in juin before, in those whose very existence was said to be a curse, he couldn't deny that the patterns here were making him cold. He was beginning to wish that the general had simply eliminated Gong-gil instead of being the good man that he was and trying to help him.
And it was times like this that Park realized that he himself was not much of a good man at all.
--
"...You're shitting me," Angeal said flatly the next day. It took him a while to manage to say even that; what had happened first was the pen he was using to fill out paperwork fell out of his hand and hit the floor, then rolled away somewhere. Now all he could manage was to stare at Park and blink, because that, what Park had just told him, that made no fucking sense at all.
"I am not, sir," Park said, serious as always. "Gong-gil was accused of defaming the king. And his troupe was brought in originally," he said, opening the file of printed out translations and pulling out the page, "for impersonating the king in an inappropriate manner in performances."
Angeal had a very, very hard time reconciling the man he'd met in the cells with someone with the--well, the balls, to be blunt, to do something like that. But what it did do was complicate things--a lot. Because if it were true, on the one hand it meant Gong-gil was probably off the hook for getting killed by ShinRa--Angeal would somehow finagle something to make it clear Gong-gil was on their side, even if it took a bit of creativity, but on the other, it meant that if that was why someone had tried to kill Gong-gil, it definitely related somehow to the king, and they very well might have a fledgeling movement inside the castle. And if it wasn't true, then it meant someone had had it out for Gong-gil for a long, long time, and was willing to do whatever it took to kill him, and being thwarted this many times meant they would get desperate. And they probably nursed that big of a grudge because of Gong-gil's relation to the king, and that left Angeal with an entirely different set of problems. Or rather, an answer to a 'problem' he didn't much like at all. "What happened with the accusations of defamation? What was the 'defamation'?"
"The defamation was of the king's alleged 'debauchery'," Park said, flipping through the papers to find another translation, and Angeal could read enough through those lines. "As for the accusations, the handwriting was a perfect match, according to the records. But it was also a match for the head of the troupe, a Jang-saeng. He confessed, saying that he taught Gong-gil to write, and that was why their letters were the same."
"But...?" Angeal said, knowing a 'but' had to be coming. It was open and shut, an accusation, a confession, case closed, so open and shut that Park wouldn't have brought this to him this urgently unless there was something else.
"But no one knows where the evidence came from. Or rather, where Jang Nok-su got it," Park said flatly, and that right there was the biggest 'but' Angeal had ever heard in his life.
--
Angeal had not liked Jang Nok-su the first time he met her, nor had he liked her the second time, and the third time was cementing his dislike of her completely.
Jang gave him a smile more smirk than anything else.
"That pathetic little fool didn't write them. I had them done. I wanted the king to put Gong-gil to death. How was I to know that fool of a player he was with, Jang-saeng, could also write, and that their letters were identical? It was so much more believable for it to be him, and not that spineless whore Gong-gil. But ah, Gong-gil is quite good at getting his defenders," she said, and there was something sickeningly sweet and poisonous in her words. And the smile she gave was a weapon; Angeal knew that much.
"You framed an innocent man?" Angeal said, frowning. "You were trying to get an innocent man killed?"
Her laugh was sharp. "Innocent? Gong-gil, innocent? There is nothing innocent about that power-hungry little bastard! He drove the king mad!"
"The Mad King of Chochung was plenty mad before he ever met Gong-gil!" Angeal yelled back. "We've been hearing rumors about him for quite a while now. He just finally sailed off the deep end enough for your own people to let us in."
"Traitors," she snarled. "Like your little pet translator."
"I think you want to leave my lieutenant out of this," Angeal said coldly, and Nok-su smirked.
"So you like the pretty Chochung boys, naa?" she said, raising her eyebrow knowingly. "Maybe I should warn your little translator, eh? 'Be careful, before Gong-gil worms his way in'."
"You will shut up now and answer my questions," Angeal said, narrowing his eyes. It had been a long time since he had been this angry, but by the gods, he was getting there. "So you framed Gong-gil."
That smirk was back. "Yes," she said, nose in the air.
It was almost a shock at how quickly her affirmative had come, but then, Angeal figured, she probably knew she had nothing left to lose. Something else nagged at him--she had been willing a send an innocent man to his death; what had happened when the wrong innocent man took the blame?
He'd always been good with names, and a few years in Chochung meant the names are a little easier to tug out. "What happened to...Jang-saeng?" Angeal asked, his voice low and filled with a barely kept in check anger.
Jang Nok-su sniffed. "He brought it on himself."
"What happened to Jang-saeng?" Angeal said again, and the only one in the room who didn't flinch was the one person who should have.
Nok-su looked away haughtily. "He was sentenced to death. But somehow he escaped his cell and instead of fleeing, as anyone with the sense to protect their own skins did, he came back to the castle and taunted the king with vile slander, of the king 'playing' with boys now." She sniffed again. "Jealousy is a terrible thing. And only goes to show how powerful Gong-gil's hold is over those who go mad for him."
She gave Angeal a patronizing smile, one that made him long to an almost disturbing degree to slap it off of her. "Be careful, dear general. Don't let him get his hooks into you as well. It's caused the death of everyone who has."
"Jang-saeng was killed?" he said slowly. He'd read the translation of the order to kill him that Park had given him, but... He didn't want it to be true. He didn't want to know an innocent man had died in a jealous woman's power plays.
"Oh, eventually," she said with a sick, pleased little smile. "When your troops came, he died. It was your people who killed him. But before that, the king showed him great mercy."
Angeal didn't like her smile.
"The king only had Jang-saeng's eyes put out. So that he could never see his beloved Gong-gil again. He'd said he had nothing to lose when the king first ordered him killed, you see, and his majesty simply showed him that he had been wrong," she said sweetly, and Angeal felt sick.
--
Part Four