Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“So you’re the ace this time?”

“Baby brother, I’m always the ace. You’re the one who flies in my wake.” 

Hoseok leaned around the edge of the wing, and smiled at his sister. “Yeah uh huh, okay.” 

They had done this routine a thousand times. Checking the ships for final inspections before taking them out on the job. The anxious energy was best spent carefully checking for loose wires, missing fittings, or dodgy programming errors that hadn’t been there before. 

But there was more pressure this time. 

The last mission had been the start of all the trouble. They had slipped out of an asteroid belt and started heading towards Blueside, the pet name for Azul, home planet of the royal family of the Jung Empire. 

The mission had been simple: a surveillance run on the edge of neutral space. They’d spotted a few cargo ships but nothing of note. So when they stumbled upon the Kim Dynasty’s omega-class gunship, parked behind a pair of asteroids, both siblings immediately flagged each other. 

They diverted to a space station and talked it out over a hot dinner. 

Hoseok was sure they could take it. 

Jiwoo had remained… unconvinced. 

She walked around the ship to her brother. “So you’re sure. A few quick shots and it’s disabled?” 

Hoseok nodded. “If we can nail this on a stealth run, we can finally retake the outer ring and send the infantry home to recover for a few months. Our armada could use the break.” 

Jiwoo nodded. “I agree. So… who’s on the run with us? Are we hailing someone else in?” 

Hoseok shook his head, and hopped up onto the wing to fiddle with a hinge gone askew. 

“Out of all the dumb ideas you’ve had--”

“Now, before you start. This is another stealth job. We can’t do stealth with our usual crew. We go in, we blow it up, and get out before we ping on the radar. We just need to use the ghost drives.” 

“Do they actually work yet?” 

“I’ve seen them in action. Trust me, they work,” he said. 

“I’ll back the play. You’ve started dumber missions that worked.” Jiwoo said. “Give me the license for the ghost drives and let’s get out of here before my common sense catches up.” 

~*~

“Callsign: Hope, you are cleared for takeoff.” 

“Callsign: Light, you are cleared for takeoff.” 

“Roger, command,” Hoseok said, typing a few commands across the panel. “Hope taking off in tandem.” 

Jiwoo also signaled to depart, and she waited until they got out of the station’s airspace to hail her brother through the comms.

“Let’s get this over so we can get home, I’m starving,” she said with a laugh. “Turn on the music, and it better be something good.”

“The fact that you think I have a bad song in my ‘Let’s kill this big gun and go home’ playlist is so distressing to me,” Hoseok said, tapping through and finding the best song imaginable, a low-synth bumper that broke goosebumps out under Hoseok’s skin. 

Jiwoo gave a small grunt of approval. “Now that’s what I’m talking about,” she said with a nod, and started to let them lift up and off the ground. 

The ships they piloted these days were slight, and lean, but not fragile. When they moved, they moved . The siblings had left lots of ships with top-tier agility suites in the dust. The fact they could also smoothly switch from one ship to two was a skill they’d used quite a few times. 

Naming the ship Dum Spiro Spero was all too fitting, given that they could be giving a beacon of hope to the Jung empire.

“Warp gate incoming,” Jiwoo said. “Change the tunes.” 

Hoseok nodded. He already had a song in mind and queued up. 

Jiwoo gave a whoop of joy as they dropped out of regular space travel and into the warp. 

The feeling of traveling in the warp was like nothing else. Hoseok felt his spine tingle and he leaned backwards, watching time slow, stars bur, and space etch away into a background of pure white nothingness that was almost blinding. There were a few occasional moments of black, where they were really in-between worlds and finding the nothingness that lay in-between. 

Jiwoo was quieter now. She continued to monitor their path, making sure to angle the ship this and that way. It wouldn’t do to crash into an asteroid at this speed; they’d be obliterated in moments. So they were going to have to duck out near a known warp ramp and fly in the slow way towards the gunship. 

“So… ah… have you, er, done anything else with that girl since you left home?”

“I.. what? I--I don’t see how that is any of your business.” Hoseok stammered. 

Jiwoo laughed out loud. “So no, then.” 

“...no.” Hoseok said, leaning back on his seat. He sighed. “There was just nothing there. She was so nice but I didn’t feel anything from her.” 

“That was your problem with the guy before, too. Have you maybe considered the problem is you and not them?” 

“Gee. could that be it?” he deadpanned. “Do you think perhaps the problem is that i don’t have time for a relationship? Stars above, thank you for helping me, Jiwoo. I’ll fall hopelessly in love with the next person I see.” 

“Whoever taught you sarcasm committed a war crime,” Jiwoo said. “Just, when we finish this, and we can stay home for a while, maybe you should try and consider being open with your next relationship.” 

Through the window of the ship, Hoseok could see her mime opening up her heart, and gave him a little finger heart, holding it up to the window. 

“You’re the worst.” 

“I gave you the heart.” 

“Yes, I see the heart,” he muttered, and looked back to the navigation panel. “Maybe crashing into an asteroid is better.” 

“Don’t be like that. You’ll find someone soon,” Jiwoo said with a laugh. 

“I don’t think I want it if it’s going to be like how you are with Jimin. It’s disgusting.” 

“Disgusting??” Jiwoo said. “You better be glad you’re over in your cockpit.” 

“I just mean… I don’t understand it. I don’t think I could be so touchy feely all the time.” 

“Jimin loves with his whole body. He’s a hugger, that’s just what he’s like. A little fluff ball.” 

“I’m so glad you finally got to have your cotton candy and eat it too,” Hoseok said. At another set of daggers, he held up a hand. “Really, I’m happy for you. But when are you going to introduce him to the rest of the family?” 

“Well, I…” 

“Oh… is it your turn for humiliation? This is a much better conversation now.” 

Jiwoo sighed, and turned away to look at her own consoles. “I’m sure he’ll love Jimin, it’s just… he’s just…” 

“Not a noble.”

“It doesn’t mean he never will be . We’ve done merit-based advancements and I’ve known of half a dozen who have been up for the honor even if none of them have been granted it recently.” 

“You should tell him. He might be amenable after we win this campaign for him,” Hoseok said. “Or he’ll kill us both for hiding it from him. But either way it’s probably your best shot.” 

Jiwoo looked back at Hoseok, and then out to the void of space. “You know what. I think you’re right. Maybe the asteroid is better.” 

~*~

The shift from warp into real-time was harsher, but they still made it successfully. Hoseok flipped their thrusters on and dropped down out of warp-space and into regular speed, just in time to miss an asteroid that had moved too far out of orbit. 

A few ships in the area were immediately on alert when they rocketed out of nowhere -- and it didn’t take long before a pair of scout ships pinged on their radar.

“Feisty already,” Jiwoo said. “Turn the ghost drives on.” 

Hoseok nodded, getting ready to separate their ships. The vacuum of space muted all sounds--but sometimes they could feel the turbulence happen.

The ghost drives meant little if they were visually spotted. 

“Split and rendezvous at the gunship?” 

“Sounds good, I’ll take starboard,” he said as the ships fully separated. He rolled away as a blast of energy streaked past what would have been the center of their ship.  The hidden wings extended as he danced through the first asteroids, losing line of sight and reactivating the ghost drives. 

“Did you lose them?” 

“Yeah, I think so -- nothing on radar. No hostiles in sight.” she said. 

“Good, head to the target,” Hoseok replied. 

He looked over to see Jiwoo flitter down into a tight passageway between a few asteroids that were far too close.  Hoseok came in from the starboard side, seeing the rows of energy weapons along the top of the ship. 

Jiwoo came flying from port, and he watched her move methodically, sending targeted missiles every few hundred feet, with little popcorn bursts of flame erupting a few seconds afterwards. 

Hoseok joined in on his side, dodging an errant blast or two as he emptied his missile rack into the side of the ship, satisfied at seeing the metal rend and rip beneath it. 

“Defense systems down,” Jiwoo said. “You’re welcome.” 

“You mean you’re welcome for the assist!”

“You were on the blind side -- I did the hard part.” 

“Yeah, well--”

They both gasped as a few ships emerged out of the back of the ship, some fleeing and disappearing into the warp. Another started heading straight for where their ships had been, firing blindly into the space between the siblings. Jiwoo pulled up to avoid some of the fire and nearly crashed into another ship. 

“Did you get hit?” Hoseok asked, waiting as his backup cannons primed.

“No, it’s just some stupid convey caravan--it clipped one of my wings but I think I’m oaky--no major damage.” 

He turned back to see a speedy little lack Stinger-class arching towards them, firing pulses of hot orange light with much more accuracy. 

“What is that?” 

“Trouble. A beam cannon -- it’ll fuck up your whole wing if you get caught. So try not to get caught,” Hoseok said, quickly putting in some evasive maneuvers. 

“You don’t have to tell me twice,” she said. Her ship did a full 180 degree spin around the nose of the ship, daring the gunships to fire their front cannons. 

At that close range the firing could be catastrophic, giving Jiwoo the opportunity to blast off two more large cannons before she traveled across the top of the ship.

They both noted the big gun cannons wheeling this way and that, desperate to lock onto the two targets causing all this trouble. 

“Ready to end this,” he said, flipping down a few switches and re-aligning with the top of the ship. 

If he didn’t hit the gun tanks then they wouldn’t have the ammunition for firepower to try again.

He moved in pace, and heard a tiny bit of … static… passed through the speakers. 

“Did you hear that?” 

“Not a thing -- a little busy,” she said. 

Hoseok shook his head. He had to focus. “Dropping now.” 

With a quick prayer to whoever was watching him, the god of fighter pilots, maybe, he deployed the bomb, measuring the trajectory to make sure it landed as intended. 

There was a silent moment as he turned away and started to move out of range,  hailing for his sister to do the same, a brief moment when he worried whether some hot shot fight would come and blow it up and out of the sky before it even made the mark.  But Jiwoo had done her job as intended, and so had he. 

The resulting explosion ripped through the space, causing a giant hole to explode in the ship.  The sides of it imploded simultaneously, with fire rushing through the fuel lines that cris-crossed the entire vessel. 

“Nice work Hope,” Jiwoo said with a smile present in his voice that he could hear through the comms. “You just removed their biggest threat from the board,” she said softly. “This is going to really help. This was a good thing,” 

Hoseok listened to her voice, and was surprised about the cadence of it, about how.. Reassuring she sounded. “Light I’m fine… it’s fine.” 

He knew what this was now, and as he felt the anxiety creep into his stomach he pulled away, taking a few moments to catch his breath.  She was doing that because the last time they had pulled off a maneuver with such a high cost of life he’d nearly been sick all over his cockpit in worry, trying as hard as he could not to think about it now was the best strategy.  

He pushed himself towards the skyline, giving a small smile to his sister. 

“I really am fine.. Let’s hook back up and clear off any stragglers before we make the jump. I don’t want anyone trying to follow us back into warp space.  Clear through them here and then we can make it home.”

“First dinner back is on you.” 

“Deal,” despite the fact that food was the furthest thing from his mind right now. 

He locked into place with her and they did a final sweep around the ship, taking down two other escape pods that looked like they were trying to stage a small reaction against them. “When are they going to learn?” Jiwoo said softly. 

“No idea--ready to hit warp?” 

“Yeah let’s head out before they send more fighters after us,” Jiwoo said.

Then she turned their ship around and slammed right into the side of a little black stinger-class ship. 

The scream that erupted over the comms would stay with Hoseok for the rest of his life.

Chapter Text

Hoseok had trained for this situation. It required a centrifuge style center but he’d learned how to stay away from the walls and fly through the center of the ship to avoid getting knocked around. 

He pulled himself through the door between their ships, and saw the chaos that awaited on the other side. 

The ship had spiraled into warp just in time, but their path was erratic. He knew that if he couldn’t get her side of the ship stabilized it’d be better to get rid of it entirely.  If he didn’t separate, the damaged fuel lines would turn her ship into a death trap. 

He quickly cut her out of her restraints, pulling her over his shoulder and then launching off the pilot’s seat. 

He used all of his strength to pull her back through the doors and closed it shut behind them. Relief, however short lived, flooded through him. 

“Eject Sequence P-E-L-2!” he said, moving through the other set of doors and flipping the pressurized doors closed. 

“Ejection sequence commencing,” their on board VI interface said back. The pleasant robotic voice sounded way too calm for what was happening. 

“Jiwoo… say something, please,” he murmured. 

“Did… did we make the jump?” she said. 

“We’re in the warp. But you’re better at navigating it than I am. Are you able to steer us through this?” 

“I don’t have much of a choice do I?” she said, and slowly took his seat. 

Hoseok sat near the communications module, and watched her heave a deep breath, and then start to gradually correct their course. She had a gift for knowing how to align them to avoid obstacles. Although her hands shook, she managed to shift the ship. Hoseok felt it when they shifted onto a normal path, the drag and spin of the ship seemed to smooth back into ease as they flew through empty space. 

“What happened?” 

“We missed the little stealth stinger. They clipped your ship just as we jumped into warp. I didn’t even realize they were there -- I was too caught up and barely had time to breathe… we could’ve died right there if they’d hit us a second sooner.” Hoseok said. 

Jiwoo nodded. “But we didn’t. We’re here. We’re down half a ship, but we made it. And we did it,” she said, looking up to him as her eyes finally focused. 

Hoseok nodded. “But we’re not in a long-hauler. We need to find a place to stop, get some repairs and refuel.” 

Jiwoo nodded, leaning over the console, and pulled up the map. “Well, where we are, our best bet is Station Omega-52.” 

“The sad whale?” Hoseok asked. “That place is miserable.” 

Jiwoo shrugged. “It’ll be quiet at least. And no one will ask questions,” 

“That thing is an eyesore.” 

“A neutral eyesore. With a skeleton crew. We just committed an act of war. I’d rather go somewhere without the press, wouldn’t you?” 

Hoseok groaned. “I really hate it when you’re right.” 

“Even if I wasn’t, we’d need to stop there anyway. I need to rest -- I’m still dizzy.” 

“You did get your bell rung pretty good. Once you have us out of warp, I’ll get us the rest of the way.” 

~*~

“This is Pilot Hope-2050 of Dum Spiro Spero. Requesting permission to dock.” 

“Granted--our docking protocol is a little long, so you may be in the waiting pattern for a while, please be forewarned.” 

“That’s just fine Omega-comms. As long as we can get inside the hangar at some point to make repairs we’re just fine waiting out here.” 

Hoseok had unzipped his flight suit and wrapped it around his waist at this point, and had his feet tucked underneath him as he waited. Jiwoo, who had been resting for the past hour, had started back into consciousness once they’d been hailed through the comms. 

“Do you think that we were followed into warp?” 

“It’s possible… but we still had the ghost drives up -- it would have been hard for them to trail us out once we started moving out of sight. Especially in the warp. I’d be scared to meet the pilot that could trail us through that. Regardless, it took us an hour to get here once we dropped out of warp. They may have beaten us here if they took a closer warp exit.” 

The long protocol to get on the board gave the siblings plenty of time to look upon their temporary shelter. 

The satellite, W-52 certainly had character.  At some point, the satellite had been built to impress.  At least that’s what everyone remembered.  But this late on it seems like a fever dream that was too unreal to be believed. 

The satellite was constructed with hyper-dark metal that barely reflected any light. But over the decades that it had stood as a waypoint out in deep space, the debris of space had scarred its surface, leaving white and silvered grooves in its panels. It told a language that no one would ever be able to reproduce, scratched and scuffed into every panel.  

Despite it falling into some sort of disrepair, it met several of the Jungs’ needs. 

For one, it was huge.  Hoseok had seen a bunch of ships in the ancient history of humanity, when they used to lift off the ground by the pure power of thrust and gumption. When space ships used to be held together with duct tape and prayer.  Later on they were actually built to violently break apart.  He wasn’t sure how those earliest scientists ever expected their planes to get off the ground and go any further than the Moon without some sort of real fuel source.  But he applauded them for trying.

It was large enough that it was sound for it to have two separate hangars on opposite sides of the station, for being able to accept deliveries and travelers from both sides of the gate.  Connecting the two hangars was a large station that was mostly meant for observing a spatial anomaly, a white dwarf that was set to become something much worse in a few million years.  They reported back to the Intergalactic Science Conglomerate, or ISC, when there were any anomalies that could affect the warp gates in the area. 

But this was meant to also be a place for weary travelers from any territory to be able to stop and rest, and refuel and repair in between space jumps.  If not for the rather quirky W-52, there were quite a few territories that would have risen or fallen.  It was in neutral space, and there was no combat to be had within the vicinity of the satellite or the anomaly. 

So it was a good place to hide out for crews, pirates, and other ne'er do wells.  For Jiwoo and Hoseok, it was a place to get a breather and see if they could contact some mechanics. 

~*~

They were surprised, when they finally gained access, that the ship was so empty.  It was obvious they were going to be left to their own devices for now. 

Jiwoo walked over to a console, typing in her information to hop onto the local X-net. It flickered for a moment, and then it showed up, giving her the basic schematics of the satellite’s systems, and some other utility programs that they could use. 

“So who do we know in this sector of space?” Hoseok asked, pulling himself up onto the top of the ship where her ship had been forcibly ejected and illuminated it, whistling as he took in the damage. 

“Well, we know a few. I don’t know if any would be willing to come this far out. We may have to go with… less reliable people. But before that, I need to make sure we weren’t tailed. I hope the stinger who jumped us crashed into a rock,” she muttered. 

Hoseok let her work in peace, and started to work out all the systems that had been damaged. Comms were bad, and their navigation systems really wouldn’t survive another jump. It was going to be a while before they were space bound again. 

“Okay… so good news and bad news. The good news is, it looks like we got away clear -- there’s no Kim ships we can see in this sector. So no one is on our trail.

“And the bad news?” 

“There’s another ship aboard W-52,” she said. “It’s on the other side of the hangar.” 

Hoseok nearly fell off the ship. “Start with that next time!” he said, hopping to the ground and squishing next to her to look at the information. 

She swiped through to the other screen looking at the current registry on the ship. 

“Unlicensed?” 

“So they can blind dock?” Jiwoo said. “I guess as long as they have the paperwork it doesn’t matter whether anyone else can see it.” 

Hoseok tapped through the schematics. “A small transport vessel capable of warp. It could be nothing.”

“We are never that lucky,” Jiwoo said. “The only way to know for sure is to go across the ship and physically look at it.” 

“Can nothing be simple?” Hoseok sighed. 

“Nothing is ever that simple. If it was, then this wouldn’t be any fun,” Jiwoo deadpanned. It was clear by her expression, that Jung Jiwoo was, in fact, not having any fun at all. 

“Can we at least get something to eat first? We’re not in any position to do anything about whatever it is.” Hoseok asked. 

“We really should check it out. We don’t have to do anything yet, but… if it is Kim. Wouldn’t you rather find out before they do?” 

Hoseok debated, bouncing both ideas back and forth in his head. “Yeah…” he said, running a hand through his messy hair. “Yeah, but you hang back behind me.” 

Jiwoo’s eyes narrowed. “I’m fine.” 

Hoseok nodded. “I know. But let me worry anyway.”

With that, the siblings started trekking across the ship. 

The hallways they moved into were a little dark, but they were still pretty well kept. Clean, if a little moody with flickering lights.  The deep black of the walls made it feel like they were walking through some great beast sometimes, especially in places that were closer to electrical paneling. After a while, Jiwoo picked up her pocket knife and began to gently score the hallway in inconspicuous places to avoid them getting lost. 

They turned down one of the hallways and heard someone else coming the other way.  Hoseok hopped up the wall, grabbing onto a pipe, and holding his hand down for his sister.  She took it and he pulled both of them up against the roof, each of them taking in a silent gulp of air. 

They were both surprised when it was instead a small robot turning down the hallway, cleaning it and bumping gently into the hallway. 

Hoseok sighed, dropping back down to the floor. 

“I mean we don’t know who sent that robot,” Jiwoo said, unable to keep the smile off her face. 

“Shut up. Just… leave me alone,” Hoseok said. “Come on.” 

The rest of the trip was relatively uneventful. But soon enough, they emptied out back into a much larger hangar.

It was clear that this was the hangar that the crew of the vessel used more often -- it was stuffed to nearly the brim with scientific instruments and equipment that they used to measure the anomaly. Along with a few stockpiles and crates of food, toiletries and other resources that the crew would need to survive out here long term.  

Hoseok climbed up a large stack of laundry detergent to look out over the bay. 

There were a few skeletonized and cannibalized ships scattered throughout the port.  They weren’t the first ones to limp into the hangar with barely a ship left to hang on.  Others had simply had to coordinate rides out of the sector or find passage on another less broken ship. 

There was one ship that was able to be observed as whole-- but it too had suffered some structural damage, with black soot covering the port side of the ship. 

It was large, and shaped like a pillbox, easily able to transport about a dozen people over longer space missions. 

It was almost perfectly white, with its only distinguishing feature being the stylized crescent moon in blue that was painted to dominate the side of the ship, with a white reflective outline that would glow when sun-sided. 

Kim Dynasty. 

Hoseok hopped down and relayed it to his sister. 

Do you think they know already?” she whispered. 

Hoseok shook his head. “They were there. They took damage in the battle, I could see it. Maybe they were on an escape pod.  We know it’s not soldiers though -- they don’t use transport vessels like that. It’s for dignitaries or politicians, not for combat.  It’s like a fridge with warp drives. They barely made it out.  Maybe we don’t have anything to worry about.” 

“If their ship is damaged, then won’t they call the Kim Dynasty here?” she hissed. 

Hoseok paled. If they were really important enough to be on the gun ship then they had to be pretty high up in the ruling class. “We really need to get the fuck out of here, huh?” 

She nodded. “Let’s go see what condition their ship is in. Maybe we can see if they’re able to leave on their own power. It’ll help us determine it.” 

Hoseok nodded. “You stay here,” he whispered. Jiwoo nodded, pulling out a laser pistol from her belt and lining up a shot from between two of the crates. “Try not to die and make me have to shoot someone.” 

“Please,” he said after a moment and started to crouch, creeping around the boxes.

His muscles screamed as he forced himself up and over the box. But the anxiety was louder still. 

He was surprised how empty the hangar was. There were no scientists wandering around.  Perhaps they had seen the Kim colors and told them to take care of their business quickly and isolated them? 

But where were the passengers of this ship? Where were the crew? 

He paused in the bones of another ship as he heard rushed talking coming from the other side of the hangar. 

He took in a huge gulp of air and held his breath for a moment as he tried to sharpen his hearing. 

The gait was brisk, and the talking was brisker. They were speaking in rushed, angry tones, but he was still too far away to make out the words.

He waited for a moment for the walking to still, and then peeled himself off the wall to inspect the two people standing tucked into each other.  They were both tall and broad-shouldered. The taller of the two was leaning against the wall, his once perfect sapphire blue hair mucked up by smoke and soot. 

The other man was a bit shorter but just about as broad through the shoulders. He stood with clear annoyance and irritation rippling off of him in waves, but still carried himself like nobility. His messy dark hair was brushed back and away from his forehead as he viciously tore into someone on the phone as his attendant looked on impassively. 

Hoseok could now say that, could definitely say attendant. 

He would recognize Prince Seokjin from a mile away, with one eye closed. 

Hoseok looked up at the ceiling for a minute, praying to whoever was up there and listening to figure out exactly what he had done to deserve this at this moment. 

Kim Seokjin was crown prince of the Kim Dynasty. With him was Kim Namjoon, a distant cousin and one of his strategists.  Which meant… 

Which meant he’d shot down one of the Kim Dynasty’s greatest ships with the crown prince within it.  He wouldn’t be talking to anyone from his house in that tone, which meant that whoever he was yelling at on the phone was not, in fact, from the Kim Dynasty. 

Which meant that they probably thought rogue terrorists had blown up their crown ship with their crown prince aboard. 

Hoseok let out a silent, long-suffering sigh. 

Okay. 

Pros and cons. 

Pro: If he was stuck on this rock and talking to a non-Kim, it meant they had time to escape. If his ship was busted enough to need to call someone in, it might be a little while if they could escape first. 

Con: He had probably just brought all of hell down on his head when they finally realized that their ship had been exploded. It was probably going to escalate the war on almost every front until they could ensure that their crown prince was unharmed. 

He looked up and saw Jiwoo checking around the corner, ducking her head this way and that while trying to remain as inconspicuous as possible. 

When she moved slightly, Hoseok ducked out of his place and waved for her to hide again. She did, and frowned, asking him what the hold up was. 

He held up a frantic finger of exasperation, and then turned back around to the other side. 

So now he had two options.  He could disappear back to his side of the ship, and wait for them to do the same thing when they checked the radar, or he could confront them, here and now. 

He weighed both options carefully, and sighed.  There really was no time for this anymore. He pulled his own gun out, and leaned down, creeping softly and deftly, like a dancer out of the rubble.  If he had to kill Kim Seokjin then so be it.

Chapter Text

“Now announcing, his royal highness Seokjin of the Kim Dynasty, third of his name.” 

The hall went suspiciously silent at that, and Hoseok turned to glance at the doorway. It’s not that Hoseok didn’t know that Seokjin was coming. Quite the contrary, in fact. He just hadn’t been expecting him to come with a whole retinue, or… with all the pomp and circumstance. 

Looking at the differences between the two princes was a study in contrasts. Hoseok was relatively slimly built and at a moderate height for his stature.  People often critiqued him, calling him too delicate for the role he was made for, despite the combat training he’d been given since he was a young boy.  His sparring partners always called him out for being fragile, but when it was time to fight, they soon found themselves mistaken. 

But Kim Seokjin was the opposite. He was athletic, with broad shoulders, a trim waist, and lean legs, stalking down the aisle with a dangerous air.  Hoseok knew most of it was an act; at times, Hoseok had seen him look mousy or the like when caught in candid moments. No one could look like that all the time.  But at this point, he had on the resting noble face, where his face was practically unreadable to even the most discerning eye.  

He was also, Hoseok noted, almost impossibly handsome. It really wasn’t fair. 

Hoseok couldn’t help but scoff.

Focus Hobi… focus.  You have a mission. Peace, in all things. 

Hoseok then took a look at his clothes.  He was in the stark white and imperial purples and blues of the Kim line, with gold accents.  It was all a bit … dreamlike. It made sense, given the moon’s history. But it still felt a little too opulent for a country on the brink of war.  But the cut was militaristic in style, and was tailored to accentuate his form. His hair was slicked back slightly off his forehead, framing his fine features well. 

Focus. Hobi.

Hoseok looked down at his own clothes.  He’d chosen the black and green of his house. It was a traditional soldier's uniform, with a few green corded aiguillettes attached to the epaulettes denoting his rank.  He didn’t feel it was too overly flashy, but he’d worked in small pieces of accessories that had been gifted to him by his sister to make the piece feel a little less austere. 

Hoseok gave him a brief bow, and then extended a hand. 

Seokjin took it. “It’s a pleasure to see you again, Prince Hoseok,” 

“I’m sure,” he said with a warm smile. “Do you need anything to drink while we get started?” he asked. 

The man shook his head, walking towards the back where the small conference room was set up. “No… I’m fine, but thank you.  Are you as ready to get this farce over as I am?” he asked gently, looking at Hoseok.  They were nearly the same height, but Jin had the slight edge. Hoseok shrugged. “Let us see how much of it is farce and how much of it isn’t,” Hoseok said and gave a much thinner smile. 

The room was in neutral space, given to them by the Altissia clan -- one of the merchant classes that had no issues playing both sides.  Hoseok sat down at the table. He’d specifically asked for one they could both work off of, small enough to have a conversation without it looking awkward for press conferences.  

The room was surprisingly warm, with nice lush carpet and dark molded wood paneling along the tops of the ceiling. There were several large paintings depicting the expansion of humanity from Earth out into the galaxy. 

Hoseok then landed back on Seokjin, who closed the door behind him, and locked it. 

“So… what are we doing here, Hoseok?” he said, sitting down at the other side of the table and retrieving a slim glass slate, tapping it gently to nudge it to life. Hoseok spent a little too much time watching how Seokjin’s fingers danced across the surface. 

“You know what we’re doing here.” 

“No, no I know all that, but I mean, what are we doing here? What’s the next step? Peace doesn’t really seem like an option.” 

Hoseok sighed. This is why it didn’t matter how beautiful Seokjin was.  The Prince was insufferable.

“This is a mediation, Seokjin.  As in all things, we are both coming to discuss our claim to Azul. You don’t really have one, and I have a strong one. But the Jung Empire is known for its civility.  Maybe there is still something to be worked out.” 

He tapped a button, and slowly a bright blue sphere popped into life, with a number of islands dotting its surface and forming small pools of verdant green amidst the water. 

“So… let’s see where you start, and where I start, and see what we can do about Blueside,” 

“As you wish,” he said, and shrugged, tapping his own device.  After a moment, the whole planet went a hazy purple color. “We would like total control of Azul. It borders our airspace and your empire did not really have a claim to it before it was terraformed.  You swooped in far before the surveying period was over, you bribed them to give you first stake, and went out there to drop your flag on it before it had even been fully transformed into a viable space. It is as much ours as it is yours and I suppose we will fight over it.” 

Hoseok sighed. This was not going to go well. “Let’s establish a few ground rules first.  Neither of us are walking out of here with total control of Blueside, you know this, I know this. This is a non-issue. Even though Azul is currently in our hands in totality, we understand you have some grievances with us, which has spilled out over the whole sector. This has led to a loss of life that neither of us can tolerate.  You have to understand how many lives are potentially at risk if this actually turns into all out war.” 

Seokjin looked at the planet. He seemed to want to vocalize something but nothing came out. Hoseok watched him carefully, not wanting to appear that he was cutting the lunar prince off. 

But instead, he just sighed, and leaned back. “So what’s your great plan?” 

“It’s pretty simple, honestly there’s roughly 8 million square miles of habitable land on this planet. I think that can easily sustain four billion people. Your whole armada could move into half of it if you so choose. We would just get to pick which half,” he said with a shrug. “It would probably take fifteen years to re-settle the population one half, and then your dynasty can move onto the other side.  We can do it in tiered stages with another percentage every five years,” he said, the animation flipping to all green.  As he spoke, one half of it flipped to purple. 

“It seems like a relatively solid plan to me,” 

Seokjin looked at it. “A good start. But still not what we want. We’d need at least eighty percent to be sustainable,” he said, although he didn’t seem to give reasoning behind it.  “That’s what we’ll take.” 

Hoseok sighed, slipping off his jacket.  Gods above, why was this room so warm? 

Seokjin laughed, and ran a hand through his hair. “We’re in for a long day. I hope we can get lunch.” 

~*~

The long day turned into one worse than Hoseok could have imagined.  Every few hours he  felt like he was running in circles with Seokjin.  They both recessed for a few times during the talks to try and get some more information from the heads of the committees in charge of logistics to see if they had any wiggle room. 

At some point, the façade broke. At some point, Hoseok saw that Seokjin was just as frustrated and passionate as he was.  He knew Jin wanted the best for his people, but still couldn’t give Hoseok any answers on why they needed Blueside.  

Hoseok sighed after a final moment, putting his hand down on the table with enough force to rattle all of the hastily scratched out maps on it. “Why can’t you just take another planet? Why does it have to be Blueside?” he finally said, shaking his head. “I… I respect you Seokjin, I do. But I don’t understand why we have to go through all this nonsense.  Space is so big.  Why must we work this hard over this one planet?  It’s annexed by us, I understand your side’s anger about our methods, but it’s done. We’ve colonized it. We funded the terraformation. We settled it. This is over.  It was honestly over a century ago. You don’t have a claim, and threw it away when your armada moved on from this sector.  So now I’m supposed to just let you have damn near all of it because… of reasons? Because you want it and it’s yours?” Hoseok stood up. His dark brown hair was a slightly damp mess. He crossed his arms and leaned against one of the large pillars in the wall, needing air. “That’s not a good enough answer.” 

Seokjin looked at his slate a final time and shrugged. “I don’t have to explain my reasoning behind it--”

“It would certainly help,” Hoseok said gently, spreading his arms out at the holographic planet around them. “It would help me be able to rationalize it. It might help me be able to talk my father into agreeing with any of this nonsense.” 

Jin looked up at the planet. “... I’m looking out for the best interests of our armada.”  He looked like he was choosing his words carefully now. “I need to look out to the best interests of our fleet in the future.  And we need somewhere to lay down roots. We need… a future.  This means territory and land. The time has come. I’m not my father.  People need a tether. They need connection. So we need Blueside.” 

Jin stood up, still holding the stylus in his hand. He twirled it idly as he tried to gather his thoughts. “There are six major houses within our armada.  I don’t know if you knew that.  I could spend a long time going into the histories of each line and all of their complicated bullshit, but really we don’t have time for all of that.” 

Hoseok nodded. “I know the houses. Believe it or not, it’s one of my jobs to know how all of our biggest threats work. Your houses are named after the birthstones of the original six captains of your fleet. Each one has their own issues and idiosyncrasies.  I’ve studied a lot about you. I’ve studied your ship design, I’ve studied your history, and I’ve studied the downfall of house Emerald and the rise of House Sapphire.  It’s remarkable, really, how well your house has done for itself in the midst of the decline of your fleet,” Hoseok said. 

Jin’s tiny mouth shrank in on itself as Hoseok continued. “So I understand why you think you might need all of that square mileage.  Because you think that settling down without enough territory would spell internal wars and power struggles among your people. That is a tough price to pay, but one that you’re going to have to come to terms with. Your people are expecting you to lead, so lead,” he said after a moment and gave a shrug. “The troubles of your house are not actually my concern,” he said simply. “I am coming here to give you space. More than enough space for the amount of people on your fleet.” 

“Then why do you need all of Blueside so badly?” Jin said. “Let’s turn this back over to you, shall we? There’s no way your kingdom, small as it is, is taking up more than twenty percent of that planet.” 

“...fair enough,” he said simply, leaning back. “We are not the same. We don’t have a whole armada that can transport us wherever we need to go whenever we need to go. We have to sit and deal with our problems as they come. Before Blueside, we had been on a tiny planet. Its resources were quickly tapped by warring, squabbling corporation states, who were too dumb to realize that they needed to govern the limited resources accordingly.  In the few hundred years of authoritarian dictators rationing food, water, oxygen, the will of our people nearly shattered. Finally my family took over.

“Colonizing another planet was a big risk. War is costly,” he said, gesturing to the room “So we dealt with it by moving aggressively on a newly terraformed world with no current leadership. We want our people to understand they don’t have to live like they did for centuries… that there is a way forward. Now we’ll be asking them to throw all of our years of work away and go back to their dark, empty little lives. Without hope. I can’t be the one to do that to them. And not for reasons I don’t understand.” 

Seokjin sighed, and he set himself down in the chair next to Hoseok. “Okay…. Can we be real for a bit?” he asked for a moment, undoing his own jacket, and revealing that the shirt below was caked in sweat. “Can we just talk to each other like normal humans for a moment?” he asked. 

Hoseok nodded, as if throwing up his hands in exasperation. “Please,” he said. 

Jin gave a high, almost squeaky laugh before he composed himself.  “I don’t want this to be some orderly formal debate between two princes.  I need you to see me as a person. I’m fighting for the home that I love, and this is the only way that I know how to do it. It is really the best way for us to live into the future.  We could be political allies, couldn’t we? We could join up and take on this side of the sector for everyone.  We just need Blueside. Preferably all of it.  But I don’t want to fight anymore.  I will take it if I have to, but I don’t want to be the bad guy.  I don’t want to incite an interstellar war. We can come to something mutually beneficial, right?” 

At this, Hoseok just laughed. He laughed for a long time, leaning back in his char and then shook his head, finally, he was able to breathe again

“Can we take a walk? Get some air? I feel like I’m about ten, twenty seconds from punching you in the face, and that’s not what I want to do with my life this particular moment. I bet you would agree, wouldn’t you, Jin?” 

If the prince seemed a bit put off by Hoseok calling him Jin instead of his full name, he didn’t seem to mind. He just turned. “There are gardens out front, aren’t there? Let’s go take a walk.” 

Despite the surprise of Hoseok just leaving without a word, Seokjin followed, walking after him .

They passed back out of the lobby and headed to the back. 

Both of them had to wave off their retinue who were trying to determine whether they were alright or not. Both of them rebuffed them, and Hoseok held the door open for the prince, and closed it behind him. 

“First of all… do you have any weapons on you?” 

“They searched us at the door,” Seokjin sighed. 

Hoseok smiled sweetly at him. “That was not my question, Prince Seokjin.” 

Seokjin sighed, and pulled out a small, thin length of wire and tossed it into the garden.

Similarly, Hoseok pulled a slim stiletto blade from somewhere and tossed it in a nearby flower pot. 

“Are we both good then?” 

The Altissia family who sponsored this station as a meeting place, had long been known for their interests in interstellar horticulture. As such, there were such a wide array of flora all around them that it was dizzying to think of just how many plants had to be harvested and pulled to this random pocket of space.  The consultancy had been encased in glass at this point, and all along the inky blackness that pooled down from space, there were small light bays that hovered and crawled around the surface, providing just enough light for each plant that needed it.  The room was also more humid than the rest of the ship, and gave them a chance to feel like they were walking around in a real atmosphere, instead of the canned dry air-conditioning that they both had been breathing for the last several hours. 

Hoseok took a look at a small bench situated between two giant purple blossoms that emitted  the faintest scent of cotton candy, and took a seat, gesturing for Seokjin to sit next to him. 

Seokjin did not comply. 

Hoseok shrugged. More space for him then. “So… what stupid plan did your father designate if this wasn’t going to work?” 

Seokjin let out a bark for frustrated laughter. “I don’t know.  Blow up the building, take you hostage, stage a coup. Something like that. I said no.” 

“Mmm, more creative than mine.  My father just said ‘kill him’. Not gonna happen. Did you bring explosives?” 

Seokjin looked offended. “I’m not a moron! Of course I didn’t. This isn’t the time for violence. That’s later, after we’ve failed.” 

Hoseok chuckled. “So, what are your people like? Really,” Hoseok said, leaning back. “I’m curious.” 

“Stubborn. Brash, eager for new things. Desperate for…” Jin trailed off for a moment and then sighed. “Desperate for hope. We need something new, something that will sustain us.” 

“Our people are much the same.  We want change but we flee from it at every possible opportunity.  My fight isn’t with you. My fight is with the pace, with the rashness.  What are you all hiding from us?” he asked after a moment and took a deep breath.  “These are the things that concern me and my father, and my sister.” 

“I was surprised that your sister isn’t here--she always seemed like the smarter of the two of you,” Seokjin teased. 

“Oh I’ll let her know you said that, I’m sure it’d make her mood so much better after I told her we couldn’t make a deal here.” 

“The terms are too much?” 

“You know that as well as I do.  Could you get your advisors to agree to nothing more … sedate?” 

He shook his head. Hoseok just sighed at that, and looked over to the building adjacent to them. “I really hope we don’t meet in person again.  I don’t think I want to be the one to have to kill you. And I would hope that is the same on your end.” 

Seokjin nodded. “The gardens are nice.  We should have done our work out here.  Perhaps the resolution would have been more amicable,” he murmured, fastidiously removing an errant invisible annoyance from his outfit. 

“Why did you name it Blueside?” 

“Because it’s blue.” Hoseok said. “We were very little when Blueside was first terraformed. Jiwoo couldn’t pronounce Azul. She kept saying A’Tool. Which is adorable but not right. So we called it Blueside instead.  And then, among us and the people who watched us, and then their friends and then their friends, and eventually the media, it just kind of stuck.  You know how it is.  So now there’s a bunch of blue side places and streets and avenues, which I’m sure made the original marketing company sigh in disappointment at the thought of it.” 

Seokjin smiled. “Years of market research just wasted.” 

Hoseok laughed and nodded. “So many surveys just in the trash because of two dumb kids. They should write a book.” 

“Hoseok… what would you do if you were me?” Seokjin murmured, crossing his arms and looking over at the other prince. “If you were the one piloting this armada that has been adrift for centuries. What would you do?” 

“Acquire a machine that can terraform a planet, send it wherever you all sit longer than fifteen minutes. Put down roots. A lot of people do not do well when held in captivity for too long.  I feel like that may be the case with your people. If you can buy the rights to a garden planet, do so. I’m sure that with a name like Kim that there will be plenty of people waiting to beat down the door to get to you,” Hoseok said with a shrug. “At least, that’s what I’d be telling my advisors to do.” 

Seokjin stared off into the middle distance. “I feel like that’s what’s going to happen. But I’m not ready for what comes next. Not ready for another war to break out.  But we need Blueside.  We… we sent people down there. And what we need is what’s deep beneath there.” 

Hoseok turned back to look at Jin so quickly he nearly wrenched his neck. “You did what?” 

“We sent people down to Blueside, to figure out what its composition was.” At Hoseok’s continued horrified expression, Seokjin waved his hand idly. “Don’t worry, this was a long time ago. We weren’t at war yet. We just wanted to see if the rumors were true, and we were right.  That’s why I can’t just pick a terraforming machine up at my local hardware store.  That’s why I can’t just go to another random area and hope for the best.  I can’t afford to wait like that, not for very much longer. Now it’s time to fight for it. I’m sorry that this couldn’t be a more productive and fruitful setting.  Hopefully at some point in the future, your side will be able to give up. We cannot. So I will not,” 

Hoseok nodded. “I think this is probably the end of this meeting, Prince Seokjin.  But regardless of what happens, I’m glad we met.”

Jin watched him for a moment, as if studying his silhouette. His eyes turned intense, reviewing Hoseok’s lines and angles, and then he turned. “Have a good evening, Jung Hoseok.” 

“The same to you, Kim Seokjin,” he said, offering him a low bow. Jin bowed lower, and then left the gardens. 

Hoseok sighed and lay himself down on the bench. 

He had really hoped not to start his first foray into governance like this. It just didn’t seem fair. But this was the game.  And his side needed to win. He needed to come to terms with doing what it took to move forward. 

After what felt like hours, Hoseok got up to his feet, and wandered the gardens, taking in the last peace he would have for the considerable future. 

Then, he walked back to the conference room, and quickly tossed all of the different papers in the trash. 

Neutrality was no longer an option.

Chapter Text

Jin looked back to Namjoon as he finished his last call. “Taehyung made it -- he’s in airspace somewhere but he’s having some trouble getting the ship to clear his paperwork. Something about too many Kims.” 

Namjoon sighed in relief. “I’ll go see whether a little money goes a long way?” 

Jin nodded. Namjoon had always been his partner in crime, even if Seokjin technically outranked him.  The man had a head for numbers and strategy, and it was painfully obvious to see that, despite coming from a smaller house, he had an easy path into the highest courts based on his skill alone. It’s why he had taken Namjoon with him to the far reaches of the fleet, where House Amethyst still retained some power, before returning to the large dreadnought class ship that he thought would keep him safe all the way back to the armada. But no. Of course not. 

Namjoon quickly left, leaving Seokjin alone to try and get signal out to the outside.  It would be difficult in this area of space with the satellite intentionally muting all of the official channels from their houses, as well as CorpCommCon, a conglomerate that essentially ruled the rest of another piece of the galaxy. Everyone knew that Station W-52 was essentially off limits. But they hadn’t earned that right for no reason. 

Jin moved back towards the ship and sat down, picking up the phone and dialing again. It was still getting jammed. He sighed and closed his eyes. What a nightmare.  

He already knew that the fallout from this was going to be astronomical. How did two fighters take out their whole dreadnought class ship?

He’d been running through the story in his head for what felt like years. 

~ Before ~

They had all been meeting on one side of the deck, enjoying the sight of a comet streaking in an arc over a planet, and Namjoon had just left to grab another bottle of wine when the first impact came, rocking the ship. The lights flickered and went down, and then the shields came up, sending everyone around them into a panic. He had heard boots rushing down the hallways after a few moments, and then? It had been strangely eerily quiet. 

Namjoon walked back in, with his service weapon already drawn. “We need to get off of this ship. Quickly.” 

“This is a dreadnought class battleship -- it can withstand a skirmish.” 

Namjoon just gave him a look. That look. He sighed and set down his wine bottle, heading out of the door and following Namjoon down the hallway. He knew Namjoon had… hunches. It had run in his branch of the family for as long as he could remember, and he was certain that if Namjoon said it was time to go? Then it was one hundred percent time to go. 

“Alright. I’m coming,” he said, grabbing the fruit bowl off the console table and carrying it with him down the hallway. 

The ship was hit again, and they saw two plain white ships fly alongside the hull. Jin watched, hearing panicked screams erupting in a ripple towards them. With fire and noise followed close behind as the shields began to fail. 

Namjoon ducked into the next hallway, not paying any attention to the carnage falling around them, instead barreling into the guts of the ship. He opened up a hatch, and looked at Seokjin.
“Jump in.” 

“Where does this lead?” 

“To our ship. Where else?” 

“How do you know that?” Seokjin asked. 

“Because I checked first,” Namjoon said, and then did an impatient spin of his fingers at the crown prince.  

Jin sighed, realizing at just that moment they’d left his jacket. As another explosion ripped off in the distance, Seokjin decided that no, he probably didn’t have time to go back and get it.

He quickly hopped down into the chute. It was just narrow enough that if he planted his feet against one side of the tube, he could push his back flat against the other side and ‘walk’ down quickly until he reached the bottom of the chute. 

.“It’s not giving.” 

“Hmm… okay. You’ll have to shimmy up a bit and then kick down.” 

“I really hope we don’t get blown up in here,” Jin said, and kicked down hard.  The first one he felt in his teeth, as if it were definitely stuck tighter than Namjoon had warned him for. He kicked again, and heard the whole pipe around him yawn. 

Then he dropped like a rock into the bay of the hangar.  

The hangar was in disarray, with soldiers rushing this way and that to get into small black stealth ships. Namjoon paid them no attention, instead heading towards the back of the hangar where their transport ship was headed. 

“You want to try and take the fridge out of here?” Seokjin hissed, keeping up with him. 

“Best way-- whoever this attack was coordinated by is going to be trying to take out defenses. If we go out there in one of the stingers, then we’re going to be treated like a stinger, and shot down. Neither of us have ever piloted one.  Leave that shit to Taehyung. Come on .” 

“This is the Avian, crowned, requesting an immediate emergency launch,” Namjoon said, waving for Jin to strap in. 

The dispatcher rattled off numbers which Namjoon quickly entered into the console as Jin strapped himself in. 

“We can’t just leave this ship now-- we need to tell them to retreat back into warp!” Seokjin said, his voice cracking midway through. 

Namjoon shook his head. “Too late for that,” he murmured, gesturing towards the right hand side, where a glowing hot fissure was already starting to yawn and stretch apart. 

Seokjin’s eyes widened as he sat back in his seat. 

He barely recognized when Namjoon took him into warp, and barely recognized when he moved to sit next to him.  Their ship was designed to auto navigate warp, as long as you set in both gates in advance.  It was an expensive piece of tech, but it did offer some comforts. A smaller crew, less worrying about exiting or entering at the wrong time. But it meant their path was predetermined. No matter what happened, the ship would only exit at the set warp gate.   

Seokjin just hoped there wasn't anything waiting for them on the other side.  They remained in relative silence as the world seemed to slow down around them. 

“Namjoon, we just lost the whole front.” His voice fell out flat and stale in front of him. 

“It does seem that way,” Namjoon agreed, fidgeting with his hands as he looked down between his knees at the floor. 

“This will set us back months… maybe years.” 

“Seems like it.” 

“With two fighters.” 

Namjoon shrugged, leaning back. “It’s a smart play.  The weakness of the dreadnought class ships is that they’re hard to get moving and keep moving.  As soon as they caught us broadsides it was over.”

“So who just declared war on us? Which faction do we obliterate?” Jin said. The rage slowly superseded the horror. 

Namjoon sighed. “That’s more complicated.  There were several groups who knew our ship was here. We’ve been receiving more issues against the Lee clans lately, so they may have an axe to grind. There’s the Jung line, as always, and there’s the Chois… it really could be anyone.” 

“Well, we’ll see who confesses to it. I bet they’ll be happy to crow knowing we won’t be able to do anything for at least eight months.  The amount of effort it’s going to take us to formulate a new one of those ships, is immeasurable.” 

“Relax. We’ll figure this out.” 

Seokjin sighed, closing his eyes. “Namjoon. I’m tired.” 

“I know Prince Seokjin.” 

A few moments passed in silence. Nothing made a sound except for the steady beep of the navigation system every half minute double checking the steering. 

Finally, Seokjin broke it, his voice barely above a whisper. “Is all this really worth it?” 

“We want to keep the Kim Dynasty. We want to protect our people. We have to do it this way. There aren’t any other options,” Namjoon said. “Try and get some rest. We have maybe twenty minutes until we exit the gate,” he said

“Where are we going?” 

“Only one place we can really go in this area.  This is not … exactly neutral space.  If they see a state ship flying out over here, then they’ll blow us up and out of the water.” 

“So the great whale?” 

“Yeah. Best chance. And I want to beat the news getting to your father.  Or else he might really doom us all with some overblown war declaration, if he thinks he’s got nothing left to lose.” 

Seokjin nodded, taking a slow steady breath as he gathered his thoughts. “And what if the attackers follow us here?” 

“Great! We should make as big of a noise as possible and hope that’s exactly what they do.  I’d rather know who they are than not know who they are, wouldn’t you?” 

Seokjin nodded. He wanted to kill whoever was responsible for this.  This wasted so much time.

“So, you lure them in, we take them down, and then we report back to your father. Not beforehand.” 

Seokjin nodded. “Sounds right to me.” 

~*~

The alarm bells sounded before he even started into his dead sprint across the hangar bay. .  

Seokjin looked up at the last minute and turned, his body instantly on the attack. 

Hoseok crashed into him with all the momentum that he had, but it really only bought him, at the most a couple seconds before Seokjin reacted in kind. 

The pair fell to the ground. Seokjin struggled to make sure he landed on his back and not on his stomach. Hoseok was surprised that he could wriggle in midair into a more favorable position.  Seokjin looked up into his eyes, a flash of anger crossing before he pulled his arms up against Hoseok’s sword. At the last minute, the blade glanced off the hard light shields that were projecting from his bracers. 

Hoseok lost his balance as the swing went wide, and Seokjin used that to his advantage, pushing up against Hoseok with his quickly formed shield. Hoseok fell backwards, and Seokjin reached for the blade. Hoseok struggled to keep it, but Seokjin was stronger, wrestling it from his grip. Hoseok let him in order to avoid having his fingers broken, but leaned in and punched Seokjin in the face, hard. 

Seokjin grunted and pulled his bracers up again, moving them every time Hoseok tried to land a punch. 

This wasn’t working. He darted around, and connected a punch to Seokjin’s side, up near one of the ribs. It was enough to give him a bit of breathing room, and Hoseok took it, getting a good hit to the side of Seokjin’s face. 

That’s when everything went horribly wrong. 

Seokjin leaned up, breaking through his own barriers, and headbutt Hoseok in the face. 

Hoseok gasped and fell backwards as lights erupted like popcorn behind his eyes. 

Seokjin wasted no time taking advantage of the opportunity. He swept up, and grabbed Hoseok’s arm, turning and pinning it with his knee in between Hoseok’s shoulder blades. 

He leaned down, and shook his head. “You have quite some nerve coming here by yourself,” he said, gulping in deep breaths of air as he recovered from the brief scuffle. 

“Who… said I was alone?” Hoseok said, his heart-shaped smile growing wide. 

As he said that, a blast went over his head, and he looked up to see Hoseok’s sister Jiwoo with him. 

Hoseok could hear the gears turning in Seokjin’s head as he worked through the implications of that. 

“You… you were the pair that blew up my ship.” 

Jiwoo held her gun aimed at his head. “The first shot was a warning shot. I don’t want to kill you but I will if I have to. Get off my brother.” 

Seokjin smiled, tilting his head to the side as he pulled Hoseok’s head up just a bit, and pulled his own pocket knife from his boot. “You’re not faster than me.  I need some assurances you’re not just going to shoot me in the head as soon as I move.” 

She rolled her eyes. “You’re a head of state. I can’t kill you without the fallout being massive. Unless you hurt him, I’m not going to hurt you.” 

“Tell that to the ship you just blew up with me on it,” he said, and pushed his knee down further into Hoseok’s spine. “Did you two do no research before you started on this mission? No prep work? That’s shameful!” 

She shot closer this time, a black mark now way too close to Seokjin’s left thigh. “Get off of him. Right now. I can shoot plenty of parts of you off and not kill you.” 

Seokjin’s smile faded at that, and he gave a quick nod. He readjusted slightly, moving from pinning Hoseok down to a crouch, and pulled Hoseok up to his feet, still holding the knife to his throat. “Toss the weapon over and I’ll give you back your brother.” 

Jiwoo hesitated, looking between her brother and the prince. Finally she sighed, and tossed her weapon off to the side. 

Seokjin nodded, and then pulled Hoseok onto the ship, turning around. 

“Hey!!” Jiwoo said. She reached for her gun, but another man kicked it away. Hoseok saw Kim Namjoon walk into sight, holding a gun on Jiwoo long enough to pick her weapon up and set it in his holster. 

“Thank you for the assist, Namjoon, you always come in handy,” Seokjin said, and finally released Hoseok. Seokjin calmly sat down on a nearby cargo bin. 

Hoseok felt the fight, however brief, catch up with him. He felt the blows that Seokjin had landed, and felt the beginnings of a headache bloom behind his eyes where the bony crest of Seokjin’s head had struck him. 

“What were you trying to do? Kidnap me?” 

“Take you hostage, perhaps.”

“And what? Ransom me off? We can’t connect to anyone out here,” Seokjin said, leaning back and wincing as he touched his cheek, already starting to redden into what would probably be an epic bruise. “You hit like a truck for someone so small.”

Hoseok gave a thin little smile, but said nothing. 

Seokjin sighed. “Look… there is no point in belaboring it.  I can’t kill you here, and you can’t kill me.  It’d doom both of our countries to another, inevitable battle. And with our dreadnought destroyed we wouldn’t even be able to launch an attack, so kudos there.” 

Hoseok pointed to Namjoon. “Fine… you want to talk, we can talk.  Tell Joon to take the gun off my sister.” 

Seokjin waved a tired hand at his attendant. “Namjoon, we’re done with that now,” he said after a moment. 

Namjoon looked at Jiwoo, and then sighed, handing her back her gun and holstering his own. 

She took it and put it back in her holster. “Fine,” she murmured, and walked towards the other side of the assistant and towards her brother. Namjoon sighed. “No signal out here.  I tried to talk to the far research team but they didn’t respond.  We’re not going to be able to call anyone from our networks. Neutral lines are fine.” 

Seokjin leaned down and sighed. “Okay… there’s a few things we can do here that don’t involve fighting to the death.” 

Hoseok nodded. “Yeah, We take your ship, dump you off with the nearest Kim ship we find, and then we make it home.” 

“This ship can’t fly right now.” Seokjin shook his head.  “One of the two of you took apart our engine. It held up just long enough to get here out of warp but we’ll all be spaced if we try to go out in that.  And wouldn’t that be a fitting end to both of our great houses? No. I don’t think that that is the best option either.  Listen.  The best thing we can both agree to is that we need a temporary ceasefire. We’re not going to solve anything by killing each other in this whale of a satellite.” . 

Hoseok looked to Jiwoo who nodded. “I agree,” she said. “I’m not going to take down the blue giant over there with my beam pistol.” 

“Hey,” Namjoon said. “The blue giant has ears.” 

“We agree to a cease fire,” Hoseok said with a shrug. “So now what?” 

“Well… once we get out of here, we both get into warp. Whatever happens after that is back up in the air.  But there’s no point in us fighting while we’re here. We may both get dropped out of an airlock if the research team doesn’t want us here anymore.” 

Hoseok looked at Jiwoo, who nodded back over to the access door they’d come from. 

Hoseok got up. “Give us a few minutes.” 

“By all means, take your time. Just an interstellar war out there,” Seokjin said, the sarcasm rising in his voice. 

Hoseok chose to ignore that, and walked over with his sister out of earshot of the others. 

“So?” 

“I hate that he’s right and I also hate him,” Hoseok said. “I think he gave me a concussion.” 

“Yeah, well.. You probably deserve it a bit,” Jiwoo said. “I told you not to slack off on those martial arts classes.” 

“This is how you treat your brother? Who you love? Who raised you?” 

“You’re younger than me and you are driving me up the walls. Crazy,” she said. “Take his deal. We’ll figure out what to do with him after the fact. Our ships fly faster than his. If we need to I’m sure we can run him down and take him out.” 

“He’s right though. We cannot murder him. It’d be political suicide.” 

“Better political suicide than homicide,” Jiwoo said. “He could have bashed your head in. Namjoon could have killed me. They’re dangerous.” 

“Give me a little time. I will fix this.” 

“Why are you pushing this hard?” Jiwoo said, staring into his soul. “The last time you and him talked you said it went terribly and you almost killed each other.  You were cool with killing him before? What is different now.” 

Hoseok hesitated. “Just… give them what they want now. We’ll figure everything else out once our ships are fixed.” 

Jiwoo sighed. “Fine. Fine. Okay.” 

Hoseok nodded. He jogged back over to the Kims and felt his head swim somewhat. “Truce for now.” 

He nodded. “I’m sure you’ll be keeping an eye on us. We’ll be doing the same.” Seokjin said, and then turned back into the ship. “Next time, keep your position a bit higher… you’ll be able to block headbuts but still keep your organs protected.” he said. 

“The next time I’m close enough to use martial arts, I’ll just make sure to be holding a weapon,” Hoseok said, and then turned. “See you soon, Prince Seokjin.” 

“And you, Prince Hoseok. Hope you are able to find a decent mechanic,” he said.

Chapter Text

“What about that other girl, Mae?” 

“On the other side of the galaxy.” 

“And Steven?” 

“He’s as green-blooded as we are, no way we’ll be able to reach him from here,” Jiwoo sighed. “Who else do you have?” 

Hoseok continued to flip through his contacts. 

While Hoseok moved through his index, Jiwoo had managed to scrape up some food, and a bedroom where they could put their head down for a bit. With the basic needs seen too, it was now time for the next level up: repairing their ship and getting home. 

But as the minutes turned into an hour, they were both trying to keep the inevitable discussion at bay. They may not have anyone in their collective knowledge that had the mechanical know-how to fix their ship and also be able to get into neutral space. 

They had settled for putting their ship in the same hangar as the Kim convoy, just a floor or two above. They were close enough to be within sight but out of earshot.  It made it good enough for both parties. 

Hoseok finally flipped to the far edge of his contacts. 

“Umm… The only one I can think of on this side of the world is Min Yoongi.” 

“I haven’t heard from him in years.  Is he still living?” 

“I think he’s immortal. I’ve never seen him sleep,” Hoseok said. “It could be worth a shot.” 

It’s better than nothing,” she said. “I’ll take care of what I can in the meantime and you take care of the whole Yoongi situation,” she said. With that, she pulled a diagnostic scanner out of the nearby toolkit and got to work on the wings. 

Hoseok moved away from the ship and towards the access panel.  He tapped through the link code to Min’s line, and was able to get a signal. Well, that was promising. 

He kept tapping and sighed when he hit the busy signal, and then the dead signal. 

“And we were doing so well,” Hoseok said with a sigh, dropping the slate to the floor. 

As soon as he did, the tablet began to vibrate away from him, and nearly off the ledge overlooking the bottom floors. He grabbed it at just the last minute and swooped it away from the edge. 

“Hello?” 

“It’s Min. What do you need?” A sleepy baritone came over the phone. 

Hoseok raised an eyebrow. “I didn’t have you at this number… are you jamming the signal to come from my location?” 

“What? No--I don’t have the patience for that.  You’re on the satellite W-52?” 

“You’re here?” Hoseok said, hopping to his feet. “What the hell are you doing here?” 

“Mmm, I was working on getting some parts from a disabled shipping barge when I got wrecked in warp so I camped out here. They gave me a good rate to stay and be their mechanic so I figured I’d try it out for a while.  Honestly it’s too quiet for my taste.  People spend too much time thinking about what they want to do instead of what they should do. Boring. I don’t know how much longer I’ll stay. Anyway… what do you need?” 

“Um… I don’t know if you remember me, but--” 

“Oh, I know you -- Prince Hoseok of the Jung Empire.  Yeah, I remember you. You had a really nice land vehicle I pried swamp muck out of. Did you ever get an outbound filter for that or did you get some other idiot to scoop mud out of the panel intake every other cycle?” 

“I got a filtration system… I’m not that mean more than once in a row,” Hoseok said. There was a beat of silence then. Hoseok waited for the conversation to fill itself in. When it didn’t Hoseok sighed. “Hey, I’m not in the mood to ah, to talk much.  Over the phone.  The situation out here is definitely a little dicey. But if you want to talk a bit more we totally can. Here, in Hangar B. Our ship is on the third level.” 

“Oh, yeah for real? That’ll make this easy.” 

“Make what easier?” 

There was another pause over the phone. This time though, it seemed intentional. Hoseok could almost hear Yoongi’s gears turning. “I think that’s a conversation best left to be had in person. You never know who is listening,” he said, knowing exactly who could be listening. “I’ll be near Elevator 6-30 soon.” 

“Great, see you there,” he said. 

“Well, he seemed thrilled to be working with us again,” Jiwoo said, hopping up and out of the cockpit to look at Hoseok. “Why do you seem so glum?” 

He shook his head. “It’s nothing -- just a dark cloud hanging around.  I wouldn’t think too much about it,” he said. 

Jiwoo watched him for a moment, her eyes scanning his face. She seemed to not find anything of concern, and moved past it. “Looks like the damage is a little more extensive than we thought,” she said. 

He walked closer and she leaned over the cockpit to be in roughly the same orientation as he was. “See here… engine damage, cooling damage, fuel damage, electronics, and comms.  It’s a miracle that the warp engines were the only thing on the ship that were spared, otherwise we probably would’ve been obliterated on the way here.” 

“I guess our ancestors are looking out for us,” Hoseok said. “How much can you fix?” 

“Less than I’d like.  I don’t do hardware ---I’ve done software curing, but never hardware.  It’s definitely going to take a bit of time. But if Min is coming he can take care of what I can’t,” she said, and then pat his shoulder. “No dark clouds, no worries today.  We’ll be out of here in no time,” she said. 

~*~

“So how long did he say he would be?” Namjoon said, looking at the reads from the diagnostic scan. Unsurprisingly, there wasn’t a lot of good news there. Their ship had been hit hard as they were escaping. He had hoped against his better judgment that they had managed to be untouched considering they made it to warp in one piece, but it would take more than patch work to get her back out there in a safe manner. 

“He didn’t.  You know Min.” 

Namjoon did know Min. Very well. The two had gotten into a sort of back and forth every time they met each other. Namjoon considered himself to be a quick study; he’d taken a few courses on ship schematics, and had managed to pick up the basics. That had given him the ability to repair a lot of ships on the fly; a handy talent to have when you were the royal guard of the crown prince. 

So the last time he’d run into Min, he had sheepishly moved to the side to let him fix his mess. The mechanic had an easy nature to him, but at the same time, his confidence could be a little daunting. He was self-deprecating, and often said that he wasn’t that great a mechanic. 

But how he put it, everyone else was worse. 

“He’ll be here in five minutes or five millennia,” Namjoon finally replied. 

“Sounds about right,” Jin said, and then he heard a soft whirring sound.

Namjoon spun around the corner to find Jin casually whisking a bowl of eggs. 

“What are you doing?” 

“Trying to keep us alive. You haven’t eaten in two days, and you’re going to start getting… short if you don’t eat.” Jin said, and then ducked back inside the ship. 

The younger Kim darted back in, his work forgotten at the mention of food. 

Jin had ripped out some other wires from the wall, and had used them to reconnect the cooking surface into the core reactor of the ship. It probably wasn’t the best thing long term but… stars and moon, was Joon not going to complain. 

Jin had already chopped up a few questionable looking bell peppers and proceeded to fold the eggs on top of them, idly nursing it with something that could be mistaken for a spatula. 

“So what happens after breakfast?” 

“I guess we keep waiting,” Jin said, pursing his lips gently. 

Namjoon leaned against the door and pushed against the growing block between them. “Hey.” 

“I just keep… thinking about what I could have done differently,” Jin said softly with a shake of his head. “If I could have sent more scouts out. If I could’ve asked for control of the helm. I was trying to pay deference and I got a whole battalion killed.” 

“You didn’t kill anyone,” Namjon said firmly

“I didn’t not kill anyone either,” Jin snapped. Joon waited for the tension to drop off his shoulders. When it didn’t come, Joon took another step forward. 

“This is what happens in war, Prince Seokjin. You couldn’t have seen that coming. We thought we were hidden away. We got careless. We won’t make that mistake again. We can get another dreadnought.” 

“But we can’t get those people back,” Jin said, his aggressive prodding of the omelet turning it into scrambled eggs. “I can’t even imagine. Their families don’t even know yet.” 

“They will soon, and then those people will have a place of honor--”

“Place of honor where? We can’t even take Blueside!” Jin said. 

Namjoon darted around him and took the pan off of the heat surface and then looked at Jin. 

“You saw the explosions the same as I did. There were easily thirty-five hundred people aboard that ship. We know that we got out, and that Taehyung got out. But I think it’s fairly obvious that at least a couple people have died because of this. I can’t just… sit back and let it go unnoticed. People died. We need to be careful.” 

Namjoon sat and watched for a moment, his eyes running through a thousand different scenarios in his head, like always. “It’ll have to wait… we’re in the wrong season for it. And half the armada is trying to scope out territories in  the outer rim to see if we can try another planet instead of Blueside.” 

“If we say nothing, we’ll anger the houses that had the biggest fleet aboard that ship. Emerald specifically. We cannot afford splintering. Not right now, not like this.” 

“We will make a statement as soon as we can. But we need to figure out what our next step is before we can get finished burying the last,” he said. 

The prince sat up, gesturing for Namjoon’s slate. Namjoon drew it back into his body. “Listen to me, Jin please. We can talk about this, but I’m not gonna watch you burn that omelet when I haven’t eaten in three days.” 

There was a beat of silence, and then Jin exploded into laughter, his squeaky laugh wracking his whole body. 

Joon relaxed and laughed with him, sinking down against the wall as he let out a barking, braying laugh untoward for a man on the rise. 

The pair of Kims laughed for a good five minutes. When one stopped, the other would just start and another bubbling wave would flow out of them. 

Finally, Jin cleared his eyes, and tossed the omelet unceremoniously onto something that could be considered, in another life, to be a plate. 

“Here, eat, you ungrateful savage,” Jin said. “The audacity of you to think I’d ruin your food when you can barely use a knife is rich !” 

“I can use a knife just fine, see, watch.” Namjoon then cut the omelet in half and neatly stuffed it into his mouth. 

Jin started laughing again and Namjoon nearly choked on his omelet. 

The air was clear for another half-hour or so after that as Jin continued to admonish his terrible table manners, his cooking ability, and whatever else Jin managed to toss into the literal ten-minute long rant that had Namjoon gasping for breath in between peals of laughter. 

Finally, Jin finished cleaning the dishes, and turned to Namjoon. “Just… promise me once we get out of here we can go to war with the Jungs. Please.” 

“If we make it off this rock before they do, we might get a shot. Otherwise? We better hope they don’t kill us on the way out. The way Prince Hoseok was looking at you, I thought he was going to murder you for real.” 

Seokjin looked up at the roof of the ship. His ears tinged red slightly as he fiddled with his hair. “We have a complicated working relationship.” 

Namjoon couldn’t help but smile. “Complicated, hmm?” he murmured. “Well, hopefully it’s complicated that he won’t try and kill you without fair warning first.

“You shouldn’t use sarcasm so soon after eating, it will give you indigestion.” He said, and then rubbed awkwardly at his arm, where a hit had landed. “I can’t believe he just jumped me. Like a common criminal in the streets. Like a--like a degenerate.” 

“I mean it was a pretty stupid plan,” Namjoon said. “You’ve got like 20 pounds on him. But he did land a good punch on you. It’s definitely going to bruise. And here we are, a few thousand light years away from your favorite beauty products.” 

Jin looked at him, full offense, as the taller Kim broke into a bright smile, and had to duck his head to keep from laughing too hard. 

“I could have you beheaded.” 

“Yeah? Do you have a waiting executioner standing by? It’s going to be pretty hard for me to execute myself,” he said. “Besides, you don’t know how to fly this refrigerator.”

“Wash your own dishes then, and we’ll call that punishment for now,” Seokjin said. “I’m going to go nap… wake me up if Min ever shows up.”

~*~

“You told me things were dire but I didn’t know it was going to be this bad,” Yoongi said, idly picking at his fingers as he walked around the ship. “What happened to you?” 

“We picked a fight with a bigger ship and lost,” Hoseok murmured, dancing around the edges of the lie carefully. 

“That may be the understatement of the century,” he said. “The warp drive is shot. This is meant to be two ships, you know that right? What happened to the rest of it?” he asked. 

“I told you, we picked a fight--”

“Yeah yeah, keep your secrets,” Yoongi muttered, and then scurried up the side of the ship to the top of the cockpit. “ Dum Spiro Spero will tell me whatever she wants. Isn’t that right?” he murmured, running his hands over the glass.

“What are you, the ship whisperer?” Jiwoo asked. 

“Do you want your ship fixed or not?” Yoongi said, not even looking up. 

Jiwoo scoffed. “I’m skeptical, not stupid. If you want a title I’ll give you one if you can get us space bound.” 

“Titles are a tool to keep people locked in a hierarchy. I’d rather not even have a last name, but here we are,” Yoongi said. With that, he depressed the cockpit’s shielding and hopped inside. 

Jiwoo looked at Hoseok, who could only shrug. He walked over to the crates where she was perched and tried to make peace. 

“Look, he’s the best one in the sector.”

“The only one who’ll pick up our calls, you mean. His talent is a non-factor,” Jiwoo said. “I just think it’s convenient that he’s here.” 

“Why? Do you think he’s a plant?” 

“I don’t think he’s a plant. I just don’t like that he’s… it’s just suspicious,” Jiwoo finally said, throwing up her hands. “I just have a weird feeling. Are you sure he won’t report us?” 

“To who? Yoongi answers to no man or faction-- why you think that would change with us is a mystery,” Hoseok said. “It’s weird that we’re just hiding behind this stack of crates. I’m going to go talk to him. If I get any weird vibes from this, then I’m going to just deal with them as much as I can. But one way or the other, we need to get our ship fixed,” he said, and then started to walk back up.

That’s when he saw Yoongi pull out the arc-welder from a nearby workstation. 

“Hey hey, wait a second--” 

Yoongi looked up, pulling out a mask from the toolkit that hovered gently behind him in mid-air. “Yeah?” 

“What are you going to do with that?” 

Yoongi looked at him, and then the ship, and then back to him. “Is this a trick question?” he asked, and then nodded his head, the mask flipping forwards to cover his face. “I need to cut away the rest of the second ship that you had if I want to get you another safe ship to man. That means taking off the other half of the ship you left behind in some godforsaken quadrant of space.” 

“Can’t you just leave it attached? If we get another ship of the same make then couldn’t we repair it?” Hoseok asked, hopping up on top with Yoongi. 

Yoongi nodded. “Yeah, you could. But by the looks of this ship, it looks like you came in hot. Meaning you’ll probably be leaving hot.” he murmured. “Do you want to be able to get away? Or do you want to swim in circles and get shot down?” 

Hoseok felt a headache forming right behind his eyes, and he looked down at the ground. “I get it.” 

“Look man, it was a good ship. I would have loved to see you two of you in action. But unfortunately, that’s not the ship you’re paying me to work on,” he said, and then turned the arc-welder back on. Hoseok looked at him for a moment and then moved towards the cockpit. 

“So what are you going to be able to save?” he asked. 

Yoongi shrugged. “What I can--leave me some room to work, and I’ll let you know when it’s done.” 

“Thanks, you’re a lifesaver,” 

“And a mechanical genius, but we’ll keep that between us, and the amount of creds you pass my way,” he said. 

With that, Yoongi started to get to work on the ship, melting away and separating the parts of Jiwoo’s ship that were left and peeling them away from the ship. The parts were dumped unceremoniously behind them, in a small pile that was also being transported from place to place by the hovering metal trays. Once they were full, they carried them off to another room. Perhaps storage or scavenging.

Yoongi worked in relative silence, burying his nose into each tiny weld that he made. 

It was here that Yoongi showed off his impressive skills. 

Yoongi’s nature could leave much to be desired, but on the other hand, his work seemed masterful. He would move from space to space, searing away the parts that were no longer helpful and repairing other places, including using some of the metal from the rest of their ship to feed new metal into the areas that had been blasted or seared away from their hasty entrance into warp.  

Hoseok fell into an easy rhythm as Yoongi’s assistant, using the tool cart that floated around him, and offering to hand Yoongi any tool he may have desired. 

“So what’s the real reason that you came out here?” Hoseok asked after a few moments. 

Yoongi hesitated slightly, walking to the other side of the ship. “That’s not the kind of relationship that we have, Jung,” Yoongi said amicably, and turned to him. “Do you really want to know or are you just testing me?” 

“I’m a noble who just got shot out of the sky by another faction. And I want to make sure that… that you’re not--”

“What, that I’m some double agent working for the other side? What is even the other side when so many of your royals are squabbling over land. Space is so goddamn big. I would not give up what I love doing to be a spy for anyone, Jung, Kim, or whoever--” 

“So you have been in contact with the Kims. Here on this ship?” 

Yoongi sighed, pulling his welding torch off. “Yes. Believe it or not, you’re not the only people whose ship got destroyed a few days ago. They needed my help too. And for my personal reasons, working with you two is exactly the same. You’re both just people too stuck up to see the world around you.” 

Jiwoo started to balk. Hoseok shook his head, and turned back to face him. “Look--”

“No, okay, listen. None of us little guys get to tell you stuff, so let me put you in your place for a minute, while I have you hostage.” He turned to walk towards Hoseok. He was an inch or so shorter than the prince but made up for it with his presence. “Are you going to all those people’s families you just blew up and telling them that it had to be done for the good of the Jung dynasty? Is Prince Seokjin gonna do that? Or is that some lowly desk jockey’s job a thousand light years away who had no dog in that fight?” 

Hoseok felt the floor open, the guilt spiraling around his legs and trapping him to the spot. His stomach rolled. “I...”

“That was the cost. Just like it was the cost for the fleet of ships they downed the week before,” Jiwoo snapped, breaking the staring match between the two men. “No one ever asks what the cost is until it’s paid. We gave them a chance for peace and they spat at us. We did what we had to do to keep our people safe. And if Prince Seokjin was in our spot he would have done the same.” 

Yoongi sighed, looking at the two of them. “Ahh, I’m glad you have it all resolved then. Glad your consciences are clean and pure. It must be so easy to have the moral high ground,” he said, then turned and walked back into the ship. “My price doubled. Your ship will be ready in a few hours, don’t bother me.” 

“Yoongi wait--” 

“Adding another zero,” he sang before he pulled his welding helmet back on. 

Hoseok just sighed, turning around and heading for the edge of the ship bay, his hands steadied by the fence. 

His sister set a hand on his shoulder. “Hey, don’t let that asshole rattle you,” Jiwoo said. 

“He’s right, you know.” Hoseok said, setting his jaw as he re-played the conversation in his head from start to finish. 

“And? It’s easy to throw rocks at us from the ground. He has no one to answer to, no master but his wallet. If something goes south for him, then he can cut and run. We don’t get that luxury. We know what our consequences are, but we make the hard decisions so other people don’t have to.” 

Hoseok’s head spun. He’d been awake for too long. “What do they really want from us? It can’t just be land for land’s sake. All this blood can’t be for something as stupid as that.” 

“Well, they certainly didn’t feel like sharing.” 

“Well, we’ll see if that’s still the play,” he said, and gestured to the bay two floors down, where the Kim ship was posted. 

“You’re gonna try and talk with him again? It went so well last time,” Jiwoo sighed. 

“What better place to ask, then at the corner of nothing and nowhere,” he said. “I’ll be back. Make sure he doesn’t put a bomb in our ship.” 

“I think that’ll cost another zero,” Jiwoo said, turning to walk back to the ship.

Chapter Text

Hoseok was bored.

The only thing that was giving him peace in this trying time was the fact that his sister was somewhere being just as hopelessly bored as he was. 

The evening had started simply enough. It was one of the thousands of events on his schedule in his 26 years on this planet. Being a prince meant going to the galas, the museum openings, the charity drives. Anything on behalf of the empire that required an ambassador or a spokesman. 

In short, something that his father could not be bothered to attend. 

So here he was, dressed in the formal greens and grays of his line, watching as his sister had to fight to move between one suitor and another. 

“It’ll be your turn, soon,” she’d admonished him on the way to the event. This one was a christening for a new fleet of ships; a private corporation was developing a line of scouter ships that could, for a truly exorbitant fee given the technology, seek out transports in warp as long as they could obtain their designations before they jumped. It would make predicting movements much more straightforward, giving them a decisive edge that could really turn around the conflict between the Jung Empire and smaller governments who had decided to start taking pot shots at their protectorates. 

Prince Hoseok was interested in the technology from a strategic sense, sure. But the last thing he wanted to do was sit in a room for a few hours talking to people who were more nerdy than he was about concepts he barely understood. The only thing he wanted to do less than that was… schmooze. 

And yet and still. Here he was. Schmoozing . 

“And so that’s how I rose to the top of my class at Swann Institute--”

“That’s fascinating,” Hoseok lied. 

“Yes, yes! First of my class from a family that didn’t come from a Celestial House, and my thesis went on to be used by some of the top experts in my field…”

Hoseok looked at the young man who was talking, ad nauseum, about accomplishments he had every right to be proud of and Hoseok had every right to not care about. He didn’t want to be rude though, so he continued to half-listen and feign interest as he watched how the crowd milled about. 

He was interrupted from the catch-and-release conversation by someone in house colors beckoning him towards a nearby room. 

Hoseok turned and smiled warmly at the young scientist. “I’m so sorry to be rude, but someone is calling for me,” Hoseok said. “Please leave your name with my man here -- I’d love to talk to you more about your thesis.” 

“Oh, okay!” the man said to his receding back. Hoseok had never been happier to take a phone call. 

The uniformed man saluted Hoseok, and then offered him a slate. “Sir, a call has come in for you on a royal line.” 

Hoseok nodded, picking it up, and pulling into the small hallway. 

“Prince Hoseok. I’m trying to save you. Good god you look bored.” 

Hoseok scanned his memories for the voice, and was surprised he recognized it. “Prince Seokjin? How did you get this number?” 

“Oh, that’s the worst question. Give me something a little better to work with. You look great by the way.” 

Hoseok turned as if shot, scanning the hallway for cameras and finding none. 

“Where are you? Are you here? What is the meaning of this?” 

“Relax, please, you’re going to draw attention to both of us and then you won’t be able to use me as an excuse to stop having boring conversations with people you don’t care about for the purposes of the empire,” Jin said, taking on a stuffy, affected accent like the ones in the Celestial Houses.

Hoseok couldn’t help but laugh, leaning against the wall to remain out of sight of the one who had handed him the phone. “Are you planning something stupid, again, Prince Seokjin?” 

“Oh, almost always, I suspect,” Seokjin said. Hoseok could almost here the smile on his face but wouldn’t give him the satisfaction of asking what it was. 

“So how many people do you have here, watching me?” 

“Oh, one or two. Trust me, you’ll never pick them out of a crowd,” he said. “They’re very good. Some of my best.” 

“So now you’re stalking me?” 

“Just gathering research. You’d be lying if you said you’d never done the same.” 

“It’s not my style. I don’t have the head for that. If I have interest in someone I just go out and tell them. I don’t sneak around,” Hoseok said.  He then winced. He probably could have phrased that better. 

Or at the very least, make it not sound like a pickup line. 

“So you have interest in me?” 

“I have interests in keeping my family and my country safe, that’s all.” Hoseok stammered. 

“Well, we’ve already beaten that horse to death. But, our fathers have figured out some way to get past this, for now.” 

“For now,” Hoseok agreed, looking out at the floor again. 

His sister was talking with the same scientist who had been talking to him, and he could tell from her expression that she was barely hanging on herself. 

“She looks bored, doesn’t she? I feel for her. There isn’t a man in this room that can keep up with her. Or on the planet.” 

“I know,” Hoseok said, relaxing despite himself. “But she’ll have to marry someone, whether she wants to or not. That’s the way it all works. You know.” 

“Ah, well… it’s a little different here. They think it’s archaic.  This whole arranged marriage thing. They think it’s a little barbaric. If I need to get married, I can do it with the person that I choose. As long as there is an heir, whether my line or appointed, the rest doesn’t matter.” 

“How does that work?” Hoseok asked. 

“With difficulty, but it’s worth it,” he said. “My father had a very happy relationship with the queen. But she was not interested in royalty or this life anymore, so she left after having me. You can’t force things like love for no reason.”

Hoseok looked at the phone. He’d been talking with Seokjin for 20 minutes already. “I… I’d honestly love to see that some day.” 

“Stop shooting my ships out of the sky and maybe one day I can show it to you.” Seokjin said. 

“For now,” Hoseok said, and looked out to the floor. He was surprised to see a crowd parting at the entrance, and then stood straight up when he saw his father casually striding into the room. 

“Oh shit,” both princes murmured at once. 

“I gotta go,” Hoseok said.

“You sure do,” Seokjin replied, and instantly the call was disconnected. 

Hoseok quickly returned the phone and stalked back out into the main floor where his retinue practically careened into his father’s.

“My son, it seems that people have been asking after you,” the King said. 

Hoseok gave a low bow. “My apologies father, there was some business with the trade alliance that had to be seen to and--”

“I know, son, that you have a lot on your plate right now. No need to apologize. I’m just here to make it known to all of Azul that the advancement of our empire is something we take very seriously.” 

Hoseok made another look around the room. At this point the only thing everyone in Azul was sure of was that the king desperately wanted to get his two children squared away before they got deeper in conflict with the Kim Dynasty. 

Hoseok attempted to reply but couldn’t find the words. “Jiwoo is doing well. I’ve made some inroads but I’m still sort of… rusty.” 

“Don’t worry, my boy. You have plenty of time,” he said with a nod. “Just… try not to skulk in corners. You are a bright ray of sun. Let other people enjoy its warmth.” 

Hoseok’s eyes rolled once he was sure his father and his retinue were out of sight. 

He didn’t want to let others bask in his warmth. He wanted to find someone who could reflect his light. 

~*~

“I think I’ve almost got it,” Seokjin said to no one in particular. 

The hangar was almost empty. Namjoon had gone to speak with Yoongi somewhere else on the ship, leaving Seokjin alone for the time being. He had resigned himself to just marking time until he found a beat up old communicator stuffed among one of the piles of junk around the large, abandoned hangar. 

The place had given him the creeps, so it made him as happy as a clam to wander into the ship and find a little corner to slowly pull apart clean, and put back together every tiny part of the communicator.

When he was a child, Jin had always had a fondness for little contraptions like this. He had even worked on one of these models before. It was, admittedly, a little underpowered, but he’d at least be able to get a message out to Taehyung if nothing else. 

He heard the static slowly start to hiss and whine as he plugged the communicator up to the power drives of the ship. 

He started it scanning for broadcast frequencies, and then turned to see a form approaching from the hallway. 

He stood up, his hand moving to the sidearm on his hip, before he realized that it was Prince Hoseok. 

Seokjin sat back down, propping his legs up on the adjacent chair, and pulled the communicator onto his lap. 

“I guess your repairs are going well?” 

“Swimmingly, clearly,” Hoseok said, leaning against the doorframe. “Are you going to offer me a seat or are you going to be an asshole?” 

“Depends on the nature of our next conversation,” Seokjin said sweetly. 

Hoseok heaved a theatrical sigh. “Look. We’re out here in the middle of nowhere. There’s no ears around to hear us. Can we finally just have this out? Finish what we started in the gardens?” 

Seokjin studied Hoseok for a moment, his eyes grazing over the delicate bridge of his nose and then down to his lips. Then he looked away. “I don’t think that’s the best idea.” 

“I don’t really care what you think,” Hoseok said, and entered the ship. 

“Oh, I understand that very well,” Seokjin said with a snort. He did relent, though, pulling his booted feet back to the floor and offering the seat to Hoseok. He sat down, and both of the princes were made aware of how close the quarters were. 

Hoseok was the first to break the pregnant pause of silence between them. 

“You lied to me in the gardens. In that stuffy conference room. Are you going to come clean now?” 

“The means do not change the ends, I’m afraid,” Jin said, watching the progress bar tick up, one painful percentage point at a time. “I still need Blueside.” 

“But for what purpose?” Hoseok said. “There are a thousand worlds just like Blueside… what makes ours so special?” 

Jin bit his lip, and then leaned over and set the small communicator on the table, turning it off. “Close the door.” 

Hoseok’s brow furrowed, but he did as Jin requested, closing the door and sealing them inside the ship. 

Jin extended a hand. “Your slate,” he asked. 

Hoseok rolled his eyes. “Seriously? We can’t contact anyone even if we wanted to.” 

“Yes, but it can record, same as mine,” Jin said, pointing into the meat of his palm. “Slate. Now.” 

Hoseok patted his front pocket and offered up his slate. Jin nodded, taking his and putting both into the refrigerator. 

Then, he turned to the obviously flustered Hoseok. “Are we done with the cloak and dagger game now?” he asked. 

Jin sighed, sitting down hard in his seat and leaning back. “So. you know what the defining feature of Blueside is. The fact that during terraformation, there was an issue with the salination units and that, as a result, most of the water in Blueside is actually sweetwater, not salt.” 

“So you just need water? There are hundreds of planets that are like 95% water. Surely that can’t be the only thing that you’re looking for.” Hoseok snapped. 

Jin shook his head. “There is a… there’s an algae that grows on your planet, actually. It’s not the water. It’s the fact that the absence of salt has allowed a specific ecosystem to be cultivated there that’s unlike any other planet that our science staff have found. We… we need that algae among our fleet.” 

“Then let us just send you the algae, I’m sure we could work out a trade deal--”

“It can’t be taken off the planet, it’s too fragile. What we need it for would not withstand the freeze drying, or any sort of transport, and moving water is one of the most difficult and logistically nightmarish scenarios.” 

“So what do you need it for?” 

“...to save our fleet. To stop the die-offs of our food supplies. To continue being an armada of our size, and without a permanent home planet… we need it to live, basically. The longer we go without it, the closer our people will be pushed to the brink of starvation, conflict, and.. .eventually war,” Seokjin said. 

“Why keep this a secret?” Hoseok said, leaning forward, his knees bumping into the meat of Jin’s thighs. “Why didn’t you just tell me that from the get go?” 

“Because it wouldn’t have mattered what I said. To cultivate enough of this algae to sustain our fleet would require us to essentially become co-owners of the planet. But my father believes that, if we don’t take complete control of Azul, that we will end up shackled to the amount of access your people are able to give. And our ship captains have already been constantly in deadlock regarding the whole affair. Each line under us has a different opinion, but the general consensus is. Either we can take all of Blueside, or our armada will be dissolved within the century. I will be the last Kim to rule over the armada, and we will have been in this pointless war for nothing. I… I cannot allow that. Please understand.” 

Hoseok sat back for a moment. It was the first time he’d seen the young prince stay completely still for any period of time. His eyes closed, and he worried at his lip. 

“It’s a difficult problem, to be sure. I’ve puzzled over it for quite some time. There’s only one option.” 

Hoseok opened and closed his mouth a few times, running his hands along his thighs. “It’s… a shame really,” he finally said. 

Seokjin watched the conflict crash and spar across his face. He wondered if it looked like that when he blew up the dreadnought. 

“It was… interesting having you as a rival. But I suppose now I have my real answer. Wait you out and watch you die.” 

Seokjin’s eyes widened as Hoseok turned on him. “I--” 

“You’re in a difficult position, Prince Seokjin. But I cannot help you. I can’t give up our planet to you, knowing that it would be a temporary solution to your problems.” 

Seokjin laughed aloud, a cruel, bitter, empty thing. “I never expected this from you. Everyone calls you hope and light. And here you are, crushing mine.” 

“You would evict me from my own planet. You would cause thousands of years of turmoil. And then you would celebrate by taking off in your ships again and going on your way. Find a place to park your fleet. Your generals and captains should understand that survival is better then losing your culture,” Hoseok said. 

“That is rich coming from someone who has never needed to compromise,” Seokjin said. He couldn’t stop the waver in his voice. He couldn’t stop sweating. “I thought you… you were so against standing up against the idiocy of tradition and yet, and still. Here you are.” 

“And yet, and still, here I am. And here the Jung line remains.” Hoseok said. He got to his feet, unable to look at Seokjin. “I uh… I hope you make it out of here in a timely manner, Prince Seokjin.” 

“Get. Out.” Seokjin said, his voice high and tight and threatening to snap. “Get out of my ship!” 

“I’ll need my comms back from your icebox,” Hoseok said, gesturing past Seokjin. 

Seokjin sprung up, pushing Hoseok hard enough into the metal to leave a dent. “I will save my line. By any means necessary, or die trying. While you clutch to austerity, remember my face, hm? You’ll be seeing it again.” 

Hoseok looked at him, and broke into a wide smile, looking every inch the handsome, unbothered prince that Seokjin had studied for years. “Don’t worry, Seokjin. It’s a great face. It will be hard to forget.” 

Seokjin handed him the device, and took a few steps back, allowing Hoseok to compose himself, and step down.

“There are other strategies, my prince. I don’t think you’ll ever stumble upon them. But I’m rooting for you and your success. As long as it doesn’t come at the expense of my own.” 

Seokjin looked down at him, and couldn’t help himself. “Enjoy marrying whatever royal inbred your father shackles you to. Enjoy the austerity of your empire. Enjoy your stagnancy. I wish you… an uninteresting life.” 

Hoseok’s smile dimmed slightly, its intensity fading. Other people may not have noticed. But Seokjin did. Hoseok did not respond. Instead, he turned, stalking out of the hangar. 

“...I take it that didn’t go well.” 

Seokjin jumped and nearly decked the shorter figure in black coveralls that had appeared under the wing of his ship. 

“I’m making friends all over today, huh?” Yoongi said. 

“Where is Namjoon?” Seokjin said. “God I nearly shot you.” 

“He had something to follow up on, something about reaching out to a pilot,” Yoongi said with a shrug. “So, this ship looks miserable. It’s going to take quite some money to fix it.” 

“Take whatever you need, Yoongi. I’m sure you still have a line of credit with my family,” Jin said, rubbing his forehead lightly. He felt the edges of a headache beginning to seep in at the temples.

“Of course, your highness,” Yoongi murmured. 

Seokjin turned and walked back into the ship, and slumped back down at the table. He turned the communicator off, and looked as its progress bar had fully completed. 

With a few quick taps, he had managed to figure out a secure line off the ship and out into the nearby airfield. 

“Tae… Taehyung, are you there, do you copy?” 

“My prince! Is that you?” He heard the weary, but happy voice of Kim Taehyung over the line. 

“Hyung--I… I thought I’d never hear your voice again.” 

“How are you on fuel?” 

“I’m okay. I grabbed a few extra cylinders during the attack. Hyung, they won’t let me land--”

“Sorry, Tae, but I don’t have time. I need to ask you something.” 

“Anything, your grace, of course,” Taehyung said, his tone shifting immediately. 

“There will be a ship coming out of here. It will be heading to warp.” 

“Is that the one you’re on? Do you need me to escort you?” 

“No… Taehyung, listen to me. That ship. It has the people who attacked our dreadnought on it.” 

“Oh, yes, Namjoon told me -- I can’t believe the audacity of the Jungs… they have the nerve to call us barbaric and they commit this act of treason in our shared space,” Taehyung said, his voice going flat with anger. “I’m sure the war council is going to be furious at them. Who knows what sort of sanctions they’re going to have for them once they make it back--”

“No. Taehyung. It cannot make it back to warp.” 

“Wait… what? You want me to… you want me to--” 

“I need you to do whatever it is you have to do. But they can’t make it home.” Seokjin said. 

“That’s… They’re the royal line -- it’s bad enough they started this crap but--”

“Are you for us or against us, Taehyung?” Seokjin finally said. 

There were a few seconds of hesitation that seemed to stretch forever. Finally, the signal picked up again. 

“Of course, your grace. Anything for the Kim Dynasty.”

Chapter Text

“How long do we have to be here?” 

“At least four hours,” Jiwoo said. 

Hoseok sighed pacing around the ship. Despite the spat he’d gotten in with Yoongi, the mechanic had done remarkably well with the tools he’d been given. The man was gifted with a torch, that was for sure. The ship, Now just Spero , had been repurposed as a sleek single fighter, but with enough space for one person to monitor the nav-panel, the warp drives, and weapons systems, and the other person to steer the ship. It would be a tight fit, but their hope wasn’t to make this a long flight. 

“Why?” 

“Dramatic irony,” Jiwoo said, flipping through her slate.  When Hoseok turned a withering glance at her, Jiwoo sighed. “To run final diagnostics, to make sure we don’t blow up in mid-air. Unless you’d like to turn into the latest piece of space debris orbiting this place, then we can afford to wait. Besides, Yoongi said he was heading to their ship next, so we’ll have a head start on them no matter what.” 

“Well, I’d prefer to keep more than an hour's head start if we can help it!” Hoseok snapped. 

Jiwoo finally looked back at Hoseok. “Alright. What is going on? Talk to me,” 

Hoseok felt the tension release from his shoulders as he told her what Seokjin had just relayed to him. He spent most of his time just letting his mouth run away from him. It gave him a chance to really watch her face. Jiwoo had a famously hard face to read, normally stuck in a placid half-smile when doing diplomatic affairs. When she was doing pilot work, she was normally a little more expressive, and had spent most of the last day and a half or so in exasperated amusement. Hoseok took pride in the fact that he could read her like a coloring book.

But the longer he spoke, the more her face transitioned. Her face was a look of horror as he got to the climax of their conversation. 

“Don’t tell me you believe his story!” Hoseok said, trying not to laugh. 

“Why on earth would he tell you something like that if he wasn’t telling the truth?” 

“It’s a perfectly designed lie to elicit the most sympathy possible. I don’t buy it for a second.” 

Jiwoo shook her head. “If it was such a well crafted and sympathetic lie, then why did he wait until now to tell it to you?” 

Hoseok frowned. “What are you talking about?” 

“Why didn’t he tell you that when you guys were at that garden conference center or whatever? When you had your diplomatic talks fall apart.” 

Hoseok felt his brain get the rug pulled out from under him. “Maybe they devised it after that, for the next time--”

“There was no next time,” Jiwoo said, as if talking to a small child. 

Hoseok shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. The point is, even if he’s right, all we have to do is get back with the truth. The outcome will be the same.” 

“So genocide. We’re committing genocide.” 

“How is that so different from what we just did?” 

“Because we just took out a battleship. Emphasis on battle. This action involves a percentage of their fleet. Civilians, children. There is so much on Blueside… we’re just going to let them die out there? You know they won’t park. They can’t!” 

Hoseok shook his head. “It’s not my decision to make. It’s our father’s.” 

“That has got to be the most cowardly thing you have ever said,” Jiwoo said. She stood up and picked up her slate. “I’m gonna go take a walk. If I look at you for too long I’m just gonna want to punch you in the face.” 

“For trying to end this war? For protecting our people?” 

“For letting attrition make the wrong decision instead of making the right one on your own terms,” Jiwoo said, looking at him. “Hoseok, I love you. You’re going to make a great leader one day. But this decision is a bad one. You know it’s bad, and you’re going to leave it up to our father anyway. He’s going to make the wrong decision. You know that. That means those deaths are on your hands.” 

Hoseok didn’t know how to respond to that. He just looked down at the floor.

“Nothing to say now? Yeah, that’s what I thought. I’ll be back in time for launch. Hopefully you’ll come up with the right decision when you have a bit more time to stew.” With that she left him sitting and watching the diagnostic panel tick down to zero. 

~*~

“3/16ths spanner.” 

Seokjin checked over Yoongi’s exhaustive toolkit and slipped out the right size. 

The pair had worked in relative peace for the past few hours.  While most of the repairs were relatively easy fixes, he’d been working on the door seals for about an hour. 

“So… if you were to settle down with a territory--”

“I’m too old for this, Seokjin.” 

“I’m older than you and you’re not even thirty, please.” 

“I mean metaphysically too old for this. I did the battle mechanic thing when I was younger. It’s terrifying. No thank you. Broken ships have more character once they’ve had some time to rest.” 

Seokjin hummed for a moment. “I suppose that’s true. It takes a certain sort. I wouldn’t envy it.” Jin said. “So… how long?” 

“About an hour, give or take,” he said. “Enough to let everything set. Luckily your internal systems weren’t damaged. At least not as badly as the Jungs,” Yoongi offered. “You guys really hate each other, huh?” 

Seokjin did not rise to the bait. “What would you do if you were me?” 

“Run,” Yoongi said, too quickly. “I barely want to be responsible for myself, let alone other people.” 

“And if running isn’t an option?” Seokjin asked. 

Yoongi chuckled. “Running is always an option. It’s learning how to live with running afterwards that you’re finding hard to fathom.” 

Seokjin opened his mouth and then closed it. Yoongi made a pleased little noise and went back to work. 

They were both nearly interrupted when Namjoon yelped from the other side of the room. He had went off in search of food and returned to nearly trip over a scrapped piece of the hull. 

“Aish, this is why I sent you away in the first place. You are a walking disaster.” 

“Yoongi, this place is a mess. I thought you were neater when you worked.”

“Beggars and Choosers, Kim.” 

Namjoon sighed. “Fair point well made.” 

The three of them ate in silence. Yoongi would often dart around to adjust a stabilizer as they triggered during the scans he was running, food left abandoned for minutes at a time. 

“Well, at least we have the allyship of the untethered,” Seokjin said. 

“You’re moody.” 

“I thought that we had an understanding,” Seokjin finally said. 

“I mean, Yoongi is who he is--”

“Not Yoongi, Joon.” 

“Oh. The prince.” Namjoon laid down, closing his eyes. “I’m listening, passively.” 

“You’re an abominable servant,” 

“Thank you, my liege,” Namjoon said from the floor. 

Seokjin sighed. “He’s fully content with murdering us all. I misjudged him. I thought… I thought that even if we were on opposite sides that we could each see the other for who we were. That there was some conciliatory nature there.” 

“He’s just like you.” 

“I beg your pardon?”

“He wants the best for his people. He’s just ruthless. You are too,” Namjoon added. “I don’t know what you expected.” 

Seokjin had a full head of steam for an argument, but it evaporated as Namjoon spoke. “I don’t know. I just thought. I thought he and I...” 

“Go on.” 

“That there was a connection there.” 

Namjoon sighed. “Oh, well that just makes everything more complicated, doesn’t it?” 

Seokjin shrugged and got to his feet as Yoongi finally moved away from the ship, pulling everything back into his bag. “Wouldn’t be me if it wasn’t complicated, eh?” 

Yoongi neatly finished the rest of his sandwich, wiped his hands off on a cloth, and then walked to Seokjin and Namjoon and quoted them a price that made Namjoon’s eyes start to water. 

“Paid,” Seokjin said without a thought. “When you put in the req order, give them code 0120432. That is my direct line.” 

“Yes, your grace,” Yoongi said, and quickly made his way towards the door. “You’re free to get in the air after about 30 minutes to let the batteries finish charging.” 

Seokjin nodded. “Thank you Yoongi.” 

“Seokjin.” 

Namjoon and Seokjin turned to face Yoongi.

“Don’t be afraid to make the hard choice. Even if the hard choice means running away from something instead of towards it.” 

With that, the sleepy young mechanic turned and slipped out of the room, back the way he came down the hallway. 

“What a strange man,” Seokjin said, even though there was no conviction in it. 

“Sure. C’mon, let’s get everything else ready so we can get out of here,” Namjoon said, packing the ship back up the way they had found it originally.

Seokjin had a tendency to set aside feelings and thoughts for later. As they busied themselves with last minute preparations, Seokjin thought over his conversation with Hoseok. He’d really thought that maybe this was going to be the time that he confronted something head on. But no, he just continued to sit and compartmentalize it until they were literally in last minute protocols. Namjoon had given him a crash course on operating the feeble weapons array that they had on this ship (honestly, it was more of a shielding and throwback system than anything else, but it was still better than nothing). 

After that, he waited. His mind ran in circles trying to figure out his next steps. 

Should he just kill the prince? Did he try to intercept them? He knew what he’d given Taehyung for instructions. If they killed him it would be war, wouldn’t it? Endgame for any type of civility. 

“Namjoon, call Taehyung off.” 

“What?” 

“Tell him not to take down Jung’s ship.” 

“Now??” 

“When else?” Seokjin snapped. 

“Aish,” Namjoon sighed, stopping in mid-action to try and get back to his slate.

“Home-vessel A561, you are cleared to launch. Please launch within 5 minutes -- another vessel is also requesting launch.” 

“We gotta go, Seokjin. I’ll try and hail Tae once we get out. It’ll be less complicated anyway.” 

Seokjin felt a pit growing in his stomach even as they sealed themselves in and prepared for launch. 

He knew there was no time… but he still could fix this, couldn’t he?

~*~

The race to the warp gate was going to be a tense one. Hoseok could already feel it in his bones as they prepared to move into the launch pattern. It wouldn’t take long for them to reach their flight speed, but for some reason Hoseok was still nervous. He’d never been nervous like this before. Not even when he was about to put down the Dreadnought ship. Not even before on other, more dangerous runs. Maybe it was because the two of them were used to flying their own ships. They hadn’t flown in the same ship for years, not since they had worked as envoys on their father’s ship. But now, they were uncomfortably close. 

Jiwoo still hadn’t spoken more than five words to him unless it was specifically for the mission. She took the front, claiming to be better on tight navigation than Hoseok. Hoseok knew better than to get into a fight with her over that. She took a deep breath and leaned forwards into position, her eyes focusing on the large display.

Yoongi had really done some incredible work to get the ship back into working order. It wasn’t perfect, not by a long shot, and Hoseok wouldn’t continuously try and fly this thing once they got home, but he thought it would at least get him through the gate. 

“Starting launch protocols,” Hoseok said. “Count us down.” 

“Starting at 10,” she said, going through the countdown and flipping up the locks on the wing controls. “So, we get through to the warp, we head to Alon, and we immediately send flares up on the other side, correct?” 

“Absolutely,” Hoseok said.

“3… 2… 1…” Jiwoo breathed. “Undocking now,” 

The hangar closed behind them, and the large airlock opened. They floated out at zero speed for a few kliks before finding open space again. 

Despite everything, despite the fear and the worry, the two of them both heaved a sigh of relief when the thrusters started and they were able to maneuver out of the old, decrepit satellite and back out to open space. 

The relief didn’t last long; They saw another big, bulky ship launching out of the other side. Hoseok didn’t even need to hail them to know that it was Seokjin. 

“We can outrun them, right?” Hoseok asked.

Jiwoo nodded. “Pretty sure,” she said after a moment. “As long as you don’t hold me back.” 

Hoseok laughed as she sprinted forwards, doing a neat roll across the floating control tower and towards the warp gate.

It should have been a remarkably short trip; the warp gate near Satellite W-52 wasn a pretty straight shot, but in the past few days apparently other survivors of the Dreadnought had tried to get here with little luck. Debris that had yet to be collected littered the whole path between the gate and the satellite. 

Hoseok felt a little sick, but tried to keep it together, using the target weaponry only as necessary to clear their way. Jiwoo was humming underneath her breath as she darted from one place to the other, running in small circles around cluttered debris. 

Nothing still resembled an actual ship anymore. Hoseok just hoped they didn’t run into anything more complete as they moved. 

“Try not to think about it,” Jiwoo said, feeling the tension rise in his voice. “Just keep it moving,” she said with a nod. 

“Right,” he said and shook his head. “I don’t know why I get like this.” 

“You’re a sensitive soul.” 

They both looked up when they saw that the bulky refrigerator of a ship was faster than it looked. She looked up at it, and then looked towards Hoseok. “Can you do it?” 

“Yeah.” 

With a quick movement the ship dove down, pulling under the edge of a wing and obscuring itself within the garbage. 

They dove out at the last moment to try and line up a shot, and then a flash of angry red nearly took their nose off.

Jiwoo cried out, and pulled up at the last moment, pivoting the whole ship as a black stinger appeared from nowhere, firing off three pot shots and zipping between the Jung’s fighter pilot and the caravan vessel. 

“I thought we killed all of those guys,” she said after a moment. “Where did he come from? Has he just been parked out here?” 

“Who knows, maybe this was Kim's plan all along. To just blow us apart as soon as we left the satellite,” Hoseok grumbled, no longer conflicted about shooting down Soekjin’s ship. 

“Well, he’s got us dead to rights, whoever he is. Just pull out that targeting system and lay down some suppression fire, get him off our tail. We don’t have time to play around with shooting down the fridge.” 

She continued to re-maneuver them, now in a fight for survival. 

The stinger was moving quickly; he wondered idly how much it still had in the tanks, considering that they’d been orbiting the satellite for the past two days. But the stinger did not seem to be playing safely or cautiously. He was fast enough to duck and dodge out of Hoseok’s fire.

“I’m wasting ammo,” he sighed impatiently. He finally just tried to take a pot shot at the ship itself, clipping its wing as it passed near a large thruster. The stinger took the blast personally it seemed, and started to make a beeline to the back of the ship. 

Hoseok swore under his breath, and Jiwoo pulled them down again as the Stinger came in closer, locking on and trying to shoot at the newly welded joint at the separation of their wing. 

“You’re bad at making friends,” Jiwoo did another barrel roll to knock the lock-on system off their tail.

As she did it, the caravan vessel did something Hoseok wasn’t expecting. It launched itself between the stinger-class and their vessel.

“What?” 

“What?” Hoseok echoed, turning to look at them. The stinger also seemed mildly surprised at this. But, after an awkward moment, the stinger… backed off, floating into a guarding position in front of the caravan, its cannons quiet. 

Hoseok looked at Jiwoo, who only shook her head. “You misjudged him. Looks like we’re the bad guys now,” she said with a sigh.

She turned the ship back around to the warp gate. 

Hoseok kept looking at the two ships that they were rapidly putting distance between, their ship wasn’t faster than the stinger class but the ship was determined to stay by the larger vessel like a guard dog. 

“You’re gonna need to talk to him when we get back home,” Jiwoo said. 

“If we get back home. Maybe they’re just a distraction and something worse is waiting for us on the other side,” Hoseok said, shooting down one last piece of debris as they turned back to the gate. 

As that piece cleared and burned away, they were greeted with the entrance to the warp gate. 

But it was not cause for celebration. 

Sitting in the middle of the gate was a large, muscular looking ship, the blue and white lights flashing in tandem.

“Oh no,” Jiwoo said, sitting back on her butt as the ship lobbed a tether towards their ship. 

“Is that…”

“The GP,” Jiwoo sighed. “I’ve never seen them so far out.” 

“Well, it must be a special day for both of us then.”

The ship lobbed two more tethers out to the Kim ships as they got into range, and with no additional words, the three ships were tugged into the warp gate.

Chapter Text

Namjoon paced from one side of the room to the other. Seokjin had counted the steps. 25. There were 25 of Namjoon’s steps between one wall and the other. His pace was measured, his shoulders bunched under his rumpled black shirt.

While Seokjin wasn’t going to be pacing, he felt the same tension as he tapped idly against the metal table. He could have gotten upset; could have said something about diplomatic immunity and why he was still being detained by some glorified pencil pushers. But he figured that if they’d gotten the clearance to haul them in in the first place that something had gone wrong. 

“They didn’t even hail us,” Namjoon said, clearly annoyed. He took a look at the door again and then shook his head in disgust. “They could have at least been like ‘hey, state your business here.’ Then I could have told them we’re of the Kim line and demand to be let go, instead of being… being dragged through--”

“Hours of bureaucracy dressed up as protocol?” Seokjin said, looking down at his nails. 

“Yes,” he said after a moment. 

Namjoon had honestly gotten much more of it than Prince Seokjin. After all, he was the crown prince of an empire. Bureaucracy was typically built to make his life easier and everyone else’s more difficult. This was a new experience for him. 

Namjoon, on the other hand, had shown up another two hours after Seokjin did, and was disheveled. His irritation never really boiled over, it always simmered as a low, inpatient annoyance, like a tag rubbing against skin. 

Namjoon was about to start up again, and then Seokjin heard footsteps from outside. “Hold on a minute, Joon,” Jin said after a moment.

There was a soft knock on the door which still sounded like a cop from the other side of the door. 

Seokjin steadied himself, and stood to his feet, making sure his posture was perfect. “Come in,” 

The door opened, standing in the threshold was a young man, with black hair falling in soft swooshes to either side of his forehead. His features were delicate, and his nose was gently rounded at the tip, making him look almost like a bunny rabbit. Despite his baby face, it was clear that he was athletically built for his frame, and wearing the typical blacks and grays of his squad.

“Good afternoon, gentlemen. I apologize for the hasty accommodations. We’ve had our hands full lately, so our cushier brigs are occupied,” he said, and then offered a curt bow at the hips. “My name is Detective Jeon Jungkook.” 

“Charmed. Can we leave?” Seokjin asked calmly. 

Jungkook laughed. “Oh, if it were that easy then my desk would be cleaner,” he said, and then gestured for those in the hallway to come up.

Taehyung was led in a moment later. He gave Jungkook an arch look, raising one eyebrow as he sat down on the proffered chair. Jungkook was the first one to blink and turn away. Taehyung couldn’t help but give a little smile before turning around to look at Seokjin and Namjoon. 

Namjoon pulled Taehyung into a fierce hug and Taehyung accepted it, patting Namjoon’s back gently. Seokjin watched as they quickly whispered something across each other in harsh whispers.

By the time they parted it seemed that Namjoon and Taehyung were back on common ground.

Seokjin came closer and pulled Taehyung into a hug. “God I’m so glad you made it out.” 

“Not a lot of us did. Maybe a platoon or two, but that’s it. It was a killing blow to our far field armada,” Taehyung said gently. “The fleet is pissed,” he murmured. 

“We will need you all to give a statement. We’re building the terrorism case and having the crown prince give his statement will certainly help us open up a lot of channels to get more information.” 

Seokjin blanched. “You don’t know who did it? We know who did it,” 

Jungkook raised an eyebrow, taking a seat at a table. “Well, that will certainly make my job a lot easier. “Who?” 

“The Choi Corporation,” Seokjin lied effortlessly. 

Namjoon looked at him as if he’d been struck. 

Jungkook raised an eyebrow. “Really? That’s… a new lead entirely. We haven’t had anything from that camp claiming this.” 

“I’m sure.”

Jungkook looked at Namjoon, who had, arguably, the worst poker face Seokjin had ever seen. “I’m gonna go talk to my supervisor about this. Taehyung, if you could come with me. You all talk amongst yourselves,” he said, and quickly left the room with Taehyung in tow, his heavy combat boots making a surprisingly little amount of noise on the metal floor. 

Namjoon turned to look at Seokjin. “What the fresh hell?” 

“Hm? Is there something on my face?” Seokjin said, the picture of wide-eyed innocence. 

“Why are you throwing Choi Corp under the bus? Anyone with half a brain is going to know who did it!” 

“Well, we just have to hope that the adorable young officer only has a quarter of a brain or that someone else is using it,” Seokjin said. 

“ Excuse me?” 

“Have you noticed that neither of us have been detained as a prisoner of war yet? That we haven’t seen any armadas or frigates outside? There is a reason for that. They are scrambling for information. I don’t want news to get out through the police corp. It’ll be on every screen between here and Blueside. It will give us a thousand targets on our backs. We need time to come up with a better strategy of what to do next. Bogging down their investigation chasing loose ends will help us have a little more time.”

Namjoon seemed to stop and start five different retorts and came up short every time. There was a small amount of pride in getting Namjoon to just be quiet for a few seconds. Finally he submitted. “It’s a good play. But give me some warning next time.” 

“You are the worst liar I’ve ever seen one-on-one. That would have just made it worse. Okay then, what’s your plan?”

“You’re the pragmatist. I just came up with the lie. You have to help me come up with everything else,” Seokjin said, pulling out his slate. “Man, they still have us deadlocked here. I’m even more disconnected than we were at W-52,” he muttered. 

“Good, no distractions right now is just what we need. I’m sure there are people hailing that we’ve been caught, so at least our father will now know you’re alive.” 

Seokjin sighed. “Hopefully he hasn’t done anything stupid in the meantime.” 

“We can only hope,” Namjoon said, and then pulled up a map of the next few quadrants. “Okay, so let’s find a way to get out of here without getting shot at. Again.” 

“You’re always handsome when you’re working this hard.,” Seokjin said sweetly and leaned down to start sketching out the barebones skin of a plan. 

~*~

Hoseok idly wondered how long Jiwoo could keep up her murder glance.

He remembered back to their childhood. The last time he’d been the subject of one of her bad moods had been when they were both still in their teenage years. He had embarrassed her in front of her classmates. He immediately regretted it, knowing that it was one of the worst decisions he could have made.  

During that period, he feared for his life. Around every corner, hallway, under the base of every window. There was just something slightly mal-adjusted. Something out of shape. For the week or two while she calmed down he could barely even trust going to the bathroom. She would walk past, and give him a sickeningly, cloyingly sweet smile while her eyes raged on in fury. 

He finally relented. Apologizing and promising to do anything to make it up for her. 

Hoseok wasn’t really that good at mean. He could be petty, sure, but often he ended up just being overly helpful. While he was typically on the other side of a power imbalance, when he was in the position to be beholden to other people he went out of his way to be polite. He only hoped that when he was crowned in the future people wouldn’t think of him as such an asshole. Maybe that was why Jiwoo was so mad at him. 

So now, as she sat in the corner on the other side of the room from them, viciously biting into an apple, he felt the tension slowly knotting in his gut. “What am I going to have to do to get over this? I don’t want to fight with you about this. We can’t afford to be a disjointed pair this far away from home.” 

“You know what you would have to do in order to get back in my good graces,” Jiwoo said, shaking her head. “This is all the direct result of your stupid decision making. We should have tried to hash out some sort of truce on the way back instead of acting like… like…”

“Like our father?” Hoseok offered. 

Jiwoo just sighed and kept looking down at her boots. “I’m just tired, Hoseok. . We’re supposed to have allies. Why can’t it be the Kims?” 

“It doesn’t… It’s not that simple,” Hoseok finally said. Then he turned when he heard someone coming down the hallway. 

It was the officer who had met them on the bridge. Jungkook had introduced himself and had taken a basic statement about twenty minutes ago. But now, he seemed visibly flustered and plopped down on the chair with an almost comical look of confusion on his face. 

“Something on your mind, Officer Jeon?” he asked, looking at the younger man. 

He sighed, and pulled out his battered notebook. “I have to admit, your highness. I am a bit confused,” he offered, looking at his notes. “I think I need to just start from the beginning,” 

“Why are you confused?” 

“What does the Choi corporation have to do with the assault on the Kim Armada’s dreadnought ship? And why did it involve you two?” 

Hoseok felt his ears getting red. “I have no connection with Choi Corporation. How did they even come up?” 

“We’re hearing reports that they may have some culpability in this attack.” Jungkook said, rubbing the bridge of his nose. “Could you confirm that?” 

“I… what?” 

“If they have, it must be with their new stealth lines. It wouldn’t be detectable by your current standards,” Jiwood said with a shake of her head. “They have the undetectable technology that they’ve been shopping around to the highest bidder. But I doubt that they would… just blow up a dreadnought class to… advertise for their new line of stealth fighter ships. We were just traveling through the area on a delivery mission and we got caught up in the crossfire. I couldn’t tell you any designation that the ship had other than those tiny little black ships that were darting in and around the ship as the stealthier ship took it down.” 

Jungkook nodded, holding up a hand as he took more notes. “All of this sounds very implausible. I hope that I’ve earned some level of trust with you both by being honest with you,” he said, flipping his notebook closed. “Now… what we are talking about won’t stay within this room; it’s a matter of intergalactic security. But, being able to at least get a working idea of the events will help me get all of you out of here and to the proper places quicker.” 

That set off every red flag in Hoseok’s head. As he turned slightly to look at Jiwoo, she gently gave the smallest of shakes of her head. Jiwoo looked at Hoseok. Hoseok looked back at Jungkook. “I’d like to speak with counsel from the Jung dynasty before I make any additional statements,” Hoseok said with a warm, wide smile. 

Jungkook’s jaw clenched as he looked at him. “Seriously?” 

Hoseok shrugged. “I know when I’m beat, detective,” he murmured, and then mimicked locking his lips and throwing away the key.

Jungkook groaned and got back to his feet, his mouth now in a petulant pout. “Fine. Fine.”  He said as he stalked out of the room. 

As the door closed both Jiwoo and Hoseok sighed in relief. “They were at least one more step removed from this nightmare. Being able to discuss this with their counsel meant their father would know they were alive and that they could be rescued from this. It would probably only come out looking worse and implicating them even more directly. But... by that point they would be back behind enemy lines with a new ship. 

Now all they could do was wait. 

~*~

“How did it go?” 

“Did you know that Jungkook was one of the youngest officers to get top marks on the force?” 

“Do you want to ask him out for coffee?”

If Taehyung was a little less obedient, he probably would have told Seokjin to piss off. However he only gave a soft shake of his head, blushing just a bit. 

Taehyung was young to be part of the crown prince’s personal guard, but Seokjin had fought tooth and nail to get him. Even now, at a relaxed position, it was clear that Taehyung was thinking of the next step, thinking of how to outmaneuver the Jung’s speedier ship when he had to escort their bus back through warp. 

“So, what information did you learn?” Namjoon asked, leaning against the window that led out into the hallway. 

Taehyung gave a grin that was unsettling at best. “The officer needs to get better at playing poker. He really does wear everything on his face,” Taehyung said. “A wibble of my lip and he was more than ready to say just about anything to get me to stop crying. Anyway, I don’t think your gambit with the Choi corporation is going to work -- they have been uncovering pieces from the dreadnought--the black box is still missing, but there were a few other refugees that know that the ship that attacked you wasn’t Choi. 

“But, they also don’t really know immediately who did it. The Jungs being in the same place have given them enough to go on, but they’re hesitant to just give that out to the press because it would, basically, be intergalactic war if that got out. An actual act of treason is not something a rookie officer is ready for.” 

“Can anyone really be ‘ready’ for an act of treason?” Namjoon asked, leaning forward  a bit in his chair to put his head into his hands. “God. I can’t believe this is happening,” he sighed. 

“So, what’s our next step, your highness?” Taehyung asked.

Namjoon piped up here. 

“They can’t legally hold us. We haven’t done anything but be persons of interest. It’s not like we blew up our own ship. We were on it. Once the 16-hour period is up they’re going to have to either charge us or let us go. After that, we make it back to the Amber Outer Arm -- it’s probably the closest part of the armada that’s near us. We can limp along and hopefully pick up passage on a ship capable of getting us into the heart of the armada. And, once we’re ready, we have to steam roll the Jungs and take Blueside. The mission has not changed,” Seokjin said. 

“I thought you and him had worked something out? I saw him--”

“No.” Seokjin was surprised at how flat it sounded. He gave a soft shake of his head. “We need… other options.” 

Taehyung nodded. “I can probably get Jungkook to talk more if he interrogates me again, I can--” 

“No, it’s alright. I think we got all that we needed from him,” Namjoon said. “We just need to get out. Being stalled here is… annoying.” 

“Then they heard a sharp knock on the door. All three of them turned to see the same officer, but now he looked out of breath and pale. 

Seokjin was surprised to see Taehyung of all people seemingly rushing to his aid. He pulled out the chair for Jungkook to take a seat. He cleared his throat once, twice, and then grabbed a small remote out of his pocket. “I think you all should sit down,” he murmured, gesturing to the other chairs scattered around the room. 

“I’ll stand if that’s fine.” Seokjin said, crossing his arms behind his back, shifting into his more royal posture. To take up space, to be present, to be the largest personality in the room. 

If that did anything to Jungkook, he certainly didn’t show it. He simply shrugged and pulled out his slate. “Fair enough. We received a transmission when we were walking to the other party that you came out here with.” he said with a shrug. “So now we have received some form of confirmation, although, unfortunately, it does not seem to support the Choi Corporation theory,” he said, and turned on the television. 

After a few moments, the static cleared into a single transmission. Seokjin recognized the figure immediately, even though he wasn’t used to seeing him tied up, and not even looking at the screen. He let his shoulders heave and shake in the video. Seokjin could already tell he was furious, and as he looked up his left eye was swollen, as if it had met with the butt of a gun. His eyes lined up with the camera and all Seokjin could see was rage. 

Come get me, and let’s burn this all down. 

“Say the line,” another person said sharply from out of the camera’s view. 

He groaned. “My name is Kim Dong-Jin. I am the leader of the Kim Armada. I have been taken against my will by the Jung dynasty. I am requesting my son, Kim Seokjin, make himself present as soon as possible so we can begin to broker and negotiate for peace. There will be no one else that we will answer to at this time but my son, Kim Seokjin.”  

Kim Seokjin took a step back and looked at Namjoon before stumbling to the floor. 

“They… they took my dad?” he said, feeling his breathing starting to cycle up faster and faster.

Taehyung knelt in front of him, grabbing his hands as the room spun around him. 

“Seokjin, please breathe,” he said. It sounded like he was screaming from underwater. 

“They… they…” 

He heard the young police officer calling for a medic, and that was the last thing that he remembered for quite some time.

Chapter Text

He heard the sounds of the ship come into focus before he opened his eyes. He felt bone tired in a way he couldn’t explain. As he began to stir, he felt steadying hands on one shoulder. He cracked an eye open to see the concerned expression of his principal guard. 

He murmured. “I’m glad you’re awake, your Grace.” 

“I don’t feel very graceful. I feel like I got hit by a cruiser,” Seokjin said. 

“That was probably the bio-scrubbers,” Namjoon said. “They wanted to make sure you weren’t poisoned or anything so they performed first aid on you. Apparently you just needed to sleep the shock off.” 

“So I wasn’t having a horrible nightmare? I was hoping that I’d fallen asleep after a raucous party.” 

“I’m afraid not. The horrible nightmare is what you woke up into,” Namjoon murmured, offering Jin a cup of tea. Jin took it as he slowly got used to being awake again. 

“So, can you take me through what happened during my blissful unconsciousness?” 

“Well, Taehyung made puppy eyes at Jungkook for long enough that the officer caved and let us stay on our own ship so that you’d ‘be more comfortable.’ It’s really just an excuse for us to figure out what to do next without being interrogated. We’ve had to promise to stay in orbit of the police station until they’ve come to a conclusion and have been officially discharged.”

Taehyung sat up, his brows knitting. “I did not make puppy eyes at--” 

“So we can go? We don’t know how long that video was made. I need to find my father,” Jin said. The words sounded flat even to his ears. He knew it was a dumb idea when he said it. 

Namjoon shook his head slowly. “Not yet. We looked into the video. It looks like a group of terrorists for now, but it’s probably the Jung dynasty that was funding them. We’ve got very little to go on. Your father is probably hidden deep in Jung territory. It’s been kept out of the news by, again, some unknown force. Not great, but it buys us enough time to work out a plan.” 

Jin laughed, leaning back against the cool wall. His head already felt like it was being squeezed, and each new sentence Namjoon said made it feel like the pressure was growing more and more intense.

“Also, Hoseok has been hailing us roughly every two hours.” 

Jin frowned, turning to Namjoon instead of looking at the wall. “That makes the least sense. I didn’t take him for a petty so-and-so who likes rubbing salt in my open wounds. Dismiss it,” he waved Namjoon off. 

Namjoon handed Jin a slate. “You’re going to want to hear this one.” 

Jin felt a little sick. “I think the last thing I ever want to hear is Hoseok talking to me ever again.” 

Namjoon remained as still as a statue, handing the slate to Jin. Finally Jin just rolled his eyes, snatching it from Namjoon’s hands and tapping through the hail list.

It had been quite a bit more than two hours. He saw what seemed like dozens of hails from an unknown number in the past few hours.  Namjoon leaned over and tapped the dial button, forcing Jin to scramble to get in a better position before the call could connect. 

Eventually Hoseok picked up. 

It was a stark contrast to his normal pitch-perfect look. Currently, he was only wearing his flight jumpsuit open around his waist as he sat down, his black t-shirt looking worse for wear.

“Forgive me for taking some sick pleasure out of seeing you in this state,” Jin murmured. 

“I’ll forgive you for it. I’ve probably earned that,” Hoseok said. “I need to talk to you about the kidnapping, and what our next step is--” 

“Oh, I was wondering if you had orchestrated this whole thing or was it just literally the worst coincidence in the world. I should have known you’d be behind it,” 

“I’m as in control of that as I am of anything in my life: none at all. I learned about it about fifteen minutes after we heard the guys coming with a medical gurney to travel around in. And I’m telling you this to give some weight to my next actions. Because they’re not what I’d consider to be the most attractive play.” 

“Spit it out, man,” Jin said. 

“We’re going to have to do what our father’s can’t,” Hoseok said. “We cannot be at each other’s throats like this. Since I told you that I just had to wait you out, I’ve had time to see both the ways that can play out. It’s more likely that we’ll both wind up killing others and racking up hundreds of thousands of bodies than making any meaningful peace. So I’ve been researching. And I think we need to do this… together.” 

“Explain it like I’m just coming out of a moderate panic attack, because I did.” 

“We need to get together in a peaceful, amicable way. You and I. To prevent anymore of this constant griping and backstabbing. To show that I’m really committed to this, I’m going to do something that I absolutely should not do.” 

“Is it not to be an asshole for once? I’m beginning to think that’s in your code.”

Hoseok didn’t bother to grant Jin the courtesy of a response. “No, it's to attack my own people to grab your father and bust him out.” 

Jin gave a small nod. “Finally, we’re getting somewhere.”

“Thanks for finally picking that up.” 

“So what changed?” Seokjin asked, looking over the screen, looking at the absolutely wrecked state of the other prince. “You were completely capable of letting me die just the other day. Why is it so different now?”

Hoseok stared at something off screen. “You’ll have to ask my sister about that one.” 

~*~ A few hours earlier ~*~

Jiwoo strode up and down the hallway, careful to not look at her brother unless absolutely necessary. 

Hoseok already knew what she would say before she did. Finally she turned, now having put together the best argument to make him feel terrible. “You’re a real piece of work, you know that?” 

“Please tell me you’re not going to go and place the blame on me for this? I’ve been with you the whole time. Clearly I would not have had the ability to go out and, what, orchestrate a hit on Prince Seokjin’s father while we were slumming it looking for food and dumpster diving back on W-52? It’s not gonna happen.” 

Jiwoo shook her head. “Just because you weren’t the one who went out and ordered this doesn’t mean you had anything to do with it. And there’s no point in getting mad at me now, is there?” Jiwoo said. “I told you that it was a bad idea to not take him on his word back on W-52. You insisted that you had it all figured out, so figured out that the world has gone and declared open war with the Kim dynasty with seemingly our blessing. How do you think the rest of the armada will feel about this?” 

Hoseok sighed, leaning down to feel the cool wall nearly buckle against his weight. “I don’t know what you want from me, Jiwoo. I can’t tell the Kims anything from here. Besides--treating with enemies is--”

“They’re not our enemies, Hoseok! They’re people. Just like us. They need help, just like us. We denied it. We dressed it up under fake niceties and then tried to kill each other.”

“Did you forget that we blew up their ship in an effort to stall the conflict? To stall the fighting?” Hoseok spat, feeling the heat of anger flushing into his face. 

Jiwoo sighed. “Yeah, their lines are a little rough around the edges where we blew up the dreadnaught. But the fact that we attacked a warship and not a merchant caravan means something. We want to fight this the right way. Not against civilians. “ 

“He’s not a civilian, he’s the king,” Hoseok said firmly. 

“But he still doesn’t deserve to be fucking kidnapped, brother,” 

Hoseok sighed. “So what would you have me do here, Jiwoo? I can’t go back in time and uncapture him. And I can’t be like ‘hey, Prince Hoseok here. I order you all to let this dude go. That would be recognizing that our state departments were responsible in the first place. We can’t do that.” 

“Well, we can’t let him die either. “ 

“I mean yeah, you’re right, but there are other options,” 

“Listening with open ears,” Hoseok said. 

Jiwoo pointed to the small ship that was orbiting them. The lights throbbed and pulse like a night sky. 

“There.” 

“What, the Kim ship?” 

“Yeah, the Kim ship.” Jiwoo grinned. “We’re going to commandeer it, with them aboard, and take them to go help us save their father.” 

“So you really expect the Kim Dynasty to trust me with their leader and overseer? You think they’re going to listen to me after what I said about letting them die out there?” 

“They have about as much of a choice as we do,” Jiwoo said. “It is possible to escape with one ship, or half of one, in our respect. But it’ll be much easier to do with three ships. OR hell, even two. I think that the best strategy we have is to join up with them. Which means--”

“Which means I gotta make my peace with Seokjin.” 

“And you can’t try and make it sound inauthentic. Remember, they’re the victims here, we just gotta make sure that we’re doing the right thing by offering. Which means… we gotta wait for the time to be right to get out of here. In the meantime, you need to apologize to Kim Seokjin. It might take you until the time when I figure out the trajectory for the ships to get out, so be thorough in how sorry you are.”

Hoseok snorted, crossing his arms. “What are we supposed to do, call him?” 

Jiwoo spared Hoseok a withering glance. “Yes, I want you to do that.. I want you to put it in a note and send it to their ship. I want you to hail them until they’re unable to resist picking up the phone. I want you to put it in as plain a language as they need to understand it. We did wrong by them. And now it’s time to prove that it’s not always about the institutions of our houses. Sometimes it’s about people.” 

~*~

Two hours later, both of their ships were lazily orbiting the police station. It was a surprising vessel, Jiwoo remembered, because it was one she always loved studying when she was younger. The galactic police station was a thing of beauty -- a bunch of concentric circles that occasionally interlocked with each other and occasionally floated freely on their own.

And now they were going to exploit that to get out of here.

Namjoon leaned over the coms to look at the screen, giving a soft, shy smile to Jiwoo. “Princess.” 

“Advisor Kim,” she said, giving a small nod back. “Have you figured out our heading?” 

“I think so -- it’ll be a little risky but I’m sure you can manage it. We don’t need to be sneaky--we just need to be able to go in a straight line in a hurry,” he said back. 

“Good--we’ll make sure you remain off the terrorist list,” Jiwoo said. 

“We’re just waiting on the heading now,” Hoseok said.

“I’ve got it,” Taehyung murmured from a corner. The Jungs watched as Namjoon and Seokjin looked over to stare at him. He was able to give a small half wave and look down at the small slate that he had. 

“I talked to Jungkook one more time before he had to go back to his superiors. They had a sketchy idea of where in the Jung dynasty they could have enough security to keep a high-ranking political official without causing a stir in the press. It’s very close to the mouth of one of the newest warp tunnels. Cross-reference that with places where the least Jung patrolling forces were, and I was able to come up with about two places that are relatively close together. If we can get to warp and fly over there, it shouldn’t be hard to take them by surprise. 

“Well then. It seems like we have a heading,” Jiwoo said and chuckled. “Taehyung, your mind.” 

He smiled widely, leaning back and stretching out with his hands behind his head. “I know, I surprise myself too,” Taehyung said. 

“There’s only one problem,” Hoseok said. “There’s a very earnest young officer who absolutely is not going to let us just waltz out of here.” 

“If we can get back to our space, it won’t matter,” Namjoon said. “Diplomatic immunity and a legal team will take care of any issues.” 

Taehyung’s smile dimmed a bit. “I can probably distract him long enough to let you guys out. But it will mean I won’t be able to join you on the actual mission.” 

“I have someone who can help us when we get to the other side. I trust him with my life,” Jiwoo said. 

Hoseok looked at her for a moment, and then back to the Kims. “So, are we good?”

“We’ll follow your lead. Our ship is dependable, but not fast.” Seokjin said. 

Hoseok nodded. “Okay. Let’s break out of prison.” 

~*~

The two ships reached one of the small refueling stations they had on the base. 

They only started to draw suspicion once they left the station and were able to start to drift towards the outer bubble of containment.

The office flipped up on Hoseok’s comms after a few moments. 

“We need you to return to the station, immediately.”

Hoseok honestly couldn’t take the kid seriously when he looked mad like this. His face was scrunched up and his eyes were narrowed. But it looked more like he’d dropped an ice cream cone or something.

“Afraid I can’t, Officer.”

Jungkook only sighed. “Stay there, I’m getting my cruiser. Don’t make this harder on yourself than you already have made it,” he said, clearly getting ready to sprint to the garage where his ship was stored. 

As the hail disconnected, Jiwoo immediately propelled them out and into open space. Hoseok was a better straight racer for speed, but for maneuverability, he would always let it go to his sister. He hopped in the back, activating the weapons system and began to train fire on the entrance to the police compound, directly past the outer edge of Kim’s ship. 

There was a brief moment, where Hoseok felt the darkness of his soul reach up and into his hands. Could he make all this go away by simply aiming a little wide?

He felt eyes on him and looked up to see Jiwoo staring at him. “I was just--”

“Yeah, I know what you were just,” Jiwoo said. She then shook her head, and started to push them forwards. She tilted them towards the first gate, and started making it for warp, 

The Kim’s toaster of a ship moved in behind them as they started to pick up speed.

From the lower hangar, a black, muscular looking ship rose to their plane. The comms crackled to life. “This is your last warning. Return to the base, or be advised I cannot guarantee loss of life and limb.” 

“In your dreams,” Jiwoo said, and muted the comms.

They moved full bore ahead and it was clear Jungkook had spotted their trajectory. He immediately began to pilot his ship towards the warp tunnel, planning to cut them off. Before he could get too far, Taehyung’s black stinger darted over, sending lines of fire across Jungkook’s hull.

“That’s our entry,” he said quickly, and pushed the craft forward. He put down suppressing fire as Taehyung continued to fire on the muscular cruiser ship, pulling them just enough out of the way so that hoseok’s ship could circle the Kim’s convoy as it moved towards warp.

They got a few more frantic hails from Jungkook, but it was clear that Taehyung was good at his work. Jungkook got close enough to fire three shots at the convoy, which had minimal defensive shielding. Hoseok slammed forwards at the last moment though, repelling the fire and allowing the Kim’s ship to dart into the warp tunnel before his own.

“Get us out of here.” Hoseok said softly, his eyes flicking out to the shielding console. “Only can take maybe 3 more direct hits and we don’t know what’s waiting for us on the other side.” 

“You think I want to stick around?” Jiwoo said, returning to alignment with the warp tunnel. Hoseok dropped two more homing missiles, a bit of a going away present for Jungkook as he flipped into the other side. 

~*~

They touched down at a private space port close to their target destination. Jiwoo stared at the ship. It hadn’t taken many hits but it was clear this vessel was on its last legs regardless. Jiwoo slipped her slate out of her pocket and started to tap through a few things as she walked towards the Kim dynasty ship. 

“We can’t afford to run diagnostics yet,” Hoseok said, moving towards the other ship. 

“Not running diagnostics. Sending a message.” 

“Who are you messaging? No one can find out we’re here,” Hoseok said, moving close to examine her device. 

“I told you, I knew someone who could help,” she pulled it away at the last minute. Hoseok pulled back to realize his sister was blushing. “We’ll need the support. We don’t want to fly in there blind with just the four of us.” 

Before he could respond, the door to the other ship opened. Seokjin walked out looking as if he’d never seen a moment of trial. Hoseok didn’t know whether to punch him or kiss him. 

Then he stopped and waited for his mind to deconstruct that thought.

No time, he decided, and pulled out his own slate. Taehyung would take some time to get out of the bad graces of the Galactic PD--Seokjin would probably have to go and take him out personally--but he had still left behind the map that had identified for three to four places they could have been hiding his father on the planet, along with the most likely option. 

They wouldn’t have a lot of time on this before they were spotted; they would have to move quickly if they wanted to get in and out of here before anyone else noticed. 

“So are we using deadly force here?” Namjoon asked, looking at the two princes for direction. 

“Shoot to incapacitate, not to kill.” Jiwoo said, before turning around. “If you can’t avoid it, then, you know, do what you have to. But the more bodies we leave in our wake, the faster people will show up. I’m sure most of these kidnappers are bio-tagged to whoever is actually pulling the strings. If heartbeats start going offline, then who knows how quickly more problems will come our way.” 

Before anyone could respond, they all heard the roar of a ship much larger than their ships emerge from the south. Jiwoo started to walk towards it as it drifted overhead and touched down. Once the hangar door descended, a young pilot stepped out, still in his flight suit. He pulled his helmet off and revealed a fringe of dark hair that he tossed out of his face. 

Jiwoo met him on the walkway, pulling him into a hug. He broke into a warm smile, his teeth just slightly crooked, before she pulled away and walked hand in hand with him to the others assembled. 

“This is Jimin, he works for us,” she said after a moment. “He’ll be able to help us get intel on who could have been behind these base barbarians who have taken our father and dropped him to the ground.”

“Clandestine ops?” Hoseok said and started to look towards the new operative. 

He nodded, offering a hand to Hoseok. “Among other things. I’m glad that you both managed to get out of the debris field near W-52 -- it must have been quite the fight getting out of there. That you’re all still intact is nothing short of a miracle.” 

“How did you know about us?” Namjoon said, eyes narrowed.  

Jimin just smiled. “It’s my job to know,” he said after a moment. “I also know where your dreadnought class ship was going before it got shot out of the sky.  I admire your lineage, Prince Seokjin, but I am glad you did not succeed in destroying our country on its own turf.” 

Seokjin rankled at that, and took a moment to stand closer to Jimin. “All I care about right now is getting my father back, I’m sure there will be a time for small talk later. Or never, preferably.” Seokjin knew he was doing a poor job of keeping his emotions close to his chest. But he couldn’t help it. “So, Mr. Black Hat, where is he?” 

Jimin gestured to a nearby pier. “The northern pier is held by a delivery courier that has close connections to the right people. If my insight is right, we should be able to find him.” 

“Well, we should probably get going then,” Seokjin said after a moment 

Jimin chuckled, looking at the two ships. “Uh, no offense, but none of you should be flying in either of these ships. They’re ready to fall apart. I’ll give you guys a ride.” 

Seokjin looked warily at his battered little refrigerator. He had felt the way the walls had groaned against the last warp they’d taken. He honestly wasn’t sure how much longer it’d stay together, even with Yoongi’s genius repairs. 

Jimin spoke up again as he moved towards his own ship. “I promise you safe passage. And that I’ll be able to drop you off at a safe location of your choosing.”

“That will have to do for now,” Seokjin sighed. 

“So what’s the play?” Hoseok asked. 

Namjoon gave a small grin as he walked around Jimin. “I actually have an idea for this.” 

Jimin nodded. “Go on,” 

“How good are you at close range combat?” 

“I get by,” Jimin said, hiding a slight, smug smile. “Why?” 

“We’re going to have you do something big enough to pull away the guards, so the rest of us are able to overpower whoever is left… and take the king right out the front door.” 

Jimin nodded. “I’m down.” 

~*~

The warehouse was quiet. Two men stood outside smoking cigarettes as they stared out into the bay overlooking the port.

They’d heard a bit of commotion had been occurring around the warp gate, but their boss would tell them if they needed to leave.

Jimin watched to see them arguing with each other about something, and turned their backs towards the warehouse to be heard better over the wind. 

Jimin took his opportunity. Thirty seconds later, He stepped past both of the guards and opened up the door to the back of the warehouse. The schematics had not been hard to find. He quickly set a small charge on what he’d discovered was the first load-bearing pillar containing electrical panels.  

The fizzing hiss of a drone cutting through drywall filled the room. Kim dynasty tech was certainly ingenious. He wished he had a dozen of these for his own use. Jimin waited patiently for the drone to get online. He pulled out his slate and watched the progress, and kept another eye on the doorway. He wouldn’t have a lot of time after the lights had gone out. 

He pulled on his goggles just as the power flickered, whined, and turned off. And then, he started to sprint. 

~*~

“So how long have you two been… doing things together?” Hoseok said. 

Jiwoo did not bother to respond to that request. 

“You can’t just leave me out in the cold like this, Jiwoo,” 

“Then I’ll leave you somewhere else. Lay off it.” 

“You think you’re just going to get out of talking about it because we’re in a crisis situation?” 

“That was the plan, yes,” Jiwoo said.

“Is this really the time for this?” Seokjin asked, looking back and forth between the two siblings. “Or did you forget we’re here to save my father?” 

“No one forgot, relax,” Jiwoo said. She turned and pointed towards the upper windows of the warehouse. “Look. Power in the upper level just went out. That’s our sign,” 

Seokjin and Namjoon had come a few steps after them, closing the door lightly and pulling on their own goggles. 

Somewhere towards the back he heard the screaming and the sounds of fists hitting anything else they could find. More guards were rushing past them, stumbling around in the dark as they were drawn back to the edge of the back of the warehouse. 

Seokjin moved forwards, his pistol raised. A few of the guards had stayed despite everything. The first guard barrelled forward at the sound of their approach, the light on his rifle blinding Seokjin momentarily. Namjoon slid in behind the guard and pulled him back into the darkness before he could attack Seokjin. 

Hoseok took the next one, landing a kick into the solar plexus of the guard directly in front of the door. 

This catapulted him into the next guard. Jiwoo slipped behind and pulled Hoseok down as bullets rang down scattershot.

Before either of the Jung siblings could get perforated, Namjoon stepped through and threw up a shield, the electric bracelets humming with a dull orange glow in their goggles. It also brought in just enough light for them to see that they were moving towards one of the doors.

Seokjin darted through now that the other three had distracted enough people. 

His father sat with a bag over his head, he was clearly looking worse for wear but he was alive. Seokjin almost sobbed with relief. He quickly knelt down. 

“Dad, it’s me. I’m here. I’m sorry I took so long.” 

“My son, thank you for coming at all,” he murmured, and Seokjin almost wept at the tremble in his voice. 

Seokjin made quick work of the ropes and pulled his father up and grabbed a hoodie, tossing it over his father’s head, and pulling at the strings. The illusion tech of the hoodie activated. The shape of his body shifted in a moment, and looked more like the proportions Seokjin had. He nodded and grabbed his own, shifting the strings to take on the shape of his father. With that he muscled his way out the door.

People came towards him with guns drawn, trying to stop him.

He didn’t care, as long as his father made it out okay. 

“We need to move now,” Namjoon said, as the disoriented guards started to wake up. 

Jiwoo and Hoseok looked up from the other side of the room. “Is it done then?” 

He nodded. “Let’s get the hell out of here.”