Chapter Text
Min Yoongi
Park Jimin
Kim Seokjin
Kim Namjoon
Jung Hoseok
Jeon Jungkook
Kim Taehyung
The greatest city in the world shimmered in the light of the sun.
The thousand and one towers, curved from solid gold and built to honor a long since dead god.
The famed neighborhood of temples, were meandering alleyways were filled with thousands of priests promising miracles and suffering, were the needy and the desperate disappeared, giving away too much to receive nothing at all.
The port of the Sun Sea, were ships appeared years after leaving, with hulls filled with stones glistening like rainbows and scents so sweet they made one sob.
The blacksmith quarter, famed for its frequent and violent conflicts with the alchemists quarter; all that was separating science from magic being a thin bridge that trailed over the river that cut through the city.
The soaring dome of the artistic troops of the empire, who would play every night or not at all for domineering senses.
Even in the quarter of pleasures, columned homes promising privacy stood next to teetering wooden homes open to the air. And the quality of the whores were about as good in both. Every wish could be assuaged.
All in all, the empire of a thousand blazing suns, whose reach curled from shore to shore, whose rule promised peace upheld by the whip of war, had a capital that lived up to every hushed story ever told.
And Park Jimin, younger son of a northern king who no one cared to remember, he would rule it all.
Well, rule as a consort, the omega consort to the great crown prince Yoongi, and he would bear him a dozen healthy alpha sons that would only add to the glory of the empire.
And as Park Jimin approached the palace of the empire, he prayed he would not fail.
As Park Jimin descended from his carriage, splattered with mud, he aimed to have the look of a true consort, of an emperor.
As his ladies were presented to him, three chattering noble girls from northern lands, who wore casual silks a thousand threads fine than anything Jimin had packed, he realized that no one expected him to be an emperor.
Besides his ladies and a balding bureaucrat, no one had come to celebrate him.
“Where is my betrothed?” Jimin questioned in the direction of the bureaucrat, who had started directing Jimin’s bags inside with the flustered air of a man who had better to do.
The ladies of his retinue stopped short at that, hands covering their faces and only highlighting the mirth of Jimin’s humiliation. Jimin’s heart sunk. He would have no friends there.
The bureaucrat bowed; he seemed to bow whenever Jimin even looked at him.
“His imperial highness is otherwise occupied. Important imperial business.” He smiled at Jimin with the look of a man born and raised in the city, who disregarded Jimin’s provincial notions.
Jimin nodded once, attempting to keep his composure, even as he felt his hands shake with furious anger. He smoothed his hands repeatedly over the pink fabric of his imperial robe, decorated with dozens of lily’s to represent purity. The dressmakers had spent almost a year making his robe, and it’s colors reminded Jimin of the glistening pinks of the sunset outside his window.
Where he deserved to be. At home with it’s achingly freezing winters and hills of roses in the spring. Not here, with these cruel people in this unkind place.
Jimin nodded once, and raised one contemptuous eyebrow at his ladies. “May we go?”
A dozen turns through hallways, decorated with tapestries depicting gory conquests so hideous you could feel the pain of the conquered as their backs were pushed into the dirt. Archways leading to hidden gardens were secrets begged to be shared; while marble fountains overrun with crystal water scented with thousands of rose petals, all this wealth and more surrounded him as he arrived at his room. The palace was short and stocky, built for war, but a thousand years had softened its architecture so that the inside glistened like a jewel box.
His room was large, overlooking a garden dotted with huge cheery trees and a curved fountain mounted with two interlacing lovers. Two naked lovers. Jimin turned away from the windows with reddened cheeks. Obviously, the morals in the imperial court were a little loser than in the north.
His ladies had already put away his paltry trunks, and were now bowing, waiting to be excused. They had obviously found him wanting, little of interest or power to keep them around, and a task diverting them from the aimless diversions of court.
Jimin waved them off with one hand, and they backed away gracefully, eager to spread the news of the rural, poor fiancée of the imperial prince. He stopped them with one hand before they left the room. Jimin felt the sudden thrum of power run through his veins, the euphoria of ruling. Of having people bow before one’s will. It was a paltry showing of power, but it was still in his blood.
Jimin laid down on his bed, crossing one leg over the other, and he knew how must look, sun shining in his hair, purity clashing with the pink of his skin.
He spoke with a voice of authority: “Tell me where I can find the ambassador.”
The ambassador was a short, violent man by the name of Jung-Jin. Jimin had originally known him as the father of his childhood friend Jung Hoseok, who left purple bruises on Hoseok's hips when they were just children. Not particularly influential until he became a favorite of Jimin’s stepmother, bowing and scraping his way to the position as ambassador to the empire once his stepmother had ingratiated herself to Jimin’s father with the help of the babe in her belly.
One of father’s mistresses had died the week of his appointment. Jimin could still remember the blue shade of death that stained her lips.
Jimin found the ambassador near the foreign officer’s wings. A garden with tall trees of chestnut that whistled in the wind, lending shade and little else. A symbol of the hundred of thousands of bureaucrats who kept the empire running, who thought themselves each more invaluable than the last.
“Ambassador,” Jimin said, and Jimin could see the visceral pleasure in his eyes as Jung-Jin turned. Jimin in a northern court, with his loyal friends and trusted advisors was a force to be reckoned with.
In a southern court, he was little more than a bitch for breeding. Jimin could taste powerlessness on his tongue, and it numbed him for one long inhale.
“Ambassador,” Jimin repeated.
Jung-Jin bowed, barely more than an incline of the head. “Your royal highness. Soon to be an imperial highness.”
He laughed nasally, “how was your travels?”
“Fine,” Jimin said, temper shortening his words. “I had hoped to have the ambassadorial correspondence between my father’s glorious kingdom and the empire waiting for me on my arrival. I had asked for it to be delivered before I made my journey.”
The ambassador’s false grin dropped, showing the sharp edge of his teeth. “I know you once concerned yourself with the politics of the empire. A true showing of your skill considering your omega status. But now our glorious northern kingdom has an alpha crown prince-“
“A babe” Jimin interjected. Last time Jimin had seen his little half-brother, he’d been nothing but crying and spittle.
The ambassador nodded once: “with the tenor of his father. And now you achieved your destiny, by becoming what all omegas are destined to be. Husbands and bearers of seed.”
The ambassador bowed again, as if the conversation was over. As if all had been said. Jimin could feel a growl rise in the back of his throat.
“Am-“
“Your imperial highness!” the ambassador cut off, deepening his bow substantially, as he looked behind Jimin, eyes widening.
Jimin turned, and in the sinking light of the sun met his betrothed for the first time. He had seen the painting sent after the betrothal announcement of course, a painting of pale skin and thin bones.
The alpha in front of Jimin was as delicate as the oils that had painted his skin on canvas. What the painting had failed to mention was the fire in his eyes, filled with the presumption of a destiny, of greatness. The same light had once shown in Jimin’s, before the truth of his betrothal had hollowed him from the inside out.
Jimin bowed as gracefully as he could.
“My prince.”
Jimin could hear the ambassador behind him, chattering, words overlaying each other. Jimin could hear the tone Jung-Jin would use when he bragged to the delegates from the northern courts about how he had arranged the meeting between both princes.
“My prince?” Yoongi arched one eyebrow, eyes trailing disdainfully over his form.
Jimin stiffened, realizing; Yoongi wore all black, no jewels or crowns graced his brow. Only one man stood next to him. Resentment curdled like milk on Jimin’s tongue.
Kim Namjoon, alpha, Duke of the Western Reaches, the harshest, cruelest bit of empire before reaching the Crimson Sea. The Western Reaches were known for two exports: stupid sheep and mercenaries. His father’s kingdom had been entertained more than once on tales of Kim Namjoon’s viciousness.
Jimin saw how he must look to the giggling aristocrats grouped on the balconies overlooking the garden. Beautiful, handsome crown prince Yoongi, with the equally as toned and sharp Kim Namjoon, wearing the black of officers.
And then Jimin, with his pink robes and lilies of purity.
There was nothing but the promise of depravity in Yoongi’s eyes.
Jimin bowed again, and Yoongi moved past him, sighing. Jimin could hear the stories already. Of the peacockish Jimin, prince of nothing, who had so bored the beautiful Yoongi.
No sentence was worse than boredom in a court, nothing as limiting, as punishing. Jimin could feel the years of loneliness pressing onto his skin, of a cold marriage, until perhaps Jimin died, of pregnancy or poison, and Yoongi found someone younger and prettier.
Jimin’s hand landed on Yoongi’s arm. All Jimin’s senses, all of Jimin’s touch narrowed down to the harshness of Yoongi’s coat. Jimin wondered what it meant when a prince with everything at his fingertips choose to wear rough blacks.
Yoongi laced his long fingers through Jimin, pale locking sun kissed skin.
“Yes?”
“I had hoped to ask of you a favor,” Jimin murmured.
A smirk danced at the corner of Yoongi’s lips, “a favor?”
Jimin attempted to ignore the beautiful vice of that smile. “My…My mother”.
“The Queen Mother is fine. Just bore a healthy alpha son,” the ambassador cut in, lips pulled tight into a mimicry of a smile.
“His royal highness was speaking,” Yoongi snarled.
Namjoon stiffened next to him. Jimin smiled a little more charmingly; it was a weak victory, to have your betrothed defend you in front of his lover, but Jimin would take what he could.
Jimin smiled a little more adroitly. “My birth mother. She was born in the eastern stretch of the empire, near the old capital. Her dowry lands were given to the empire several years ago as repayment of a debt by my father.”
Jimin still remembered the hateful words that lodged in his throat as his father gave away the last pieces of his mother, every piece of jewelry melted down and reformed for the new queen. All that had been left was that crumbling old tower, and he had given it gladly, to pay off a debt his stepmother owed. All he had then was the memories of his mother's singing, her cool hands in his hair.
Yoongi smiled slowly, patronizingly, a man confident in his power and his position. “It will gladly be given to you, consider it a betrothal gift.”
Jimin bowed again, a little lower, showing off more of his torso and the sweep of his thigh.
Yoongi’s eyes landed on an upper balcony, where the sound of drunken revelery and the mirth of youth stirred the air. A flash of raven hair rounded the corner.
He gestured with one hand to Namjoon.
“My prince,” he murmured to Jimin, and then Yoongi was gone, disappearing between two pillars at the other end of the gallery.
“A kind alpha,” Jimin commented in the direction of the ambassador. Before the man could do more than turn his eyes in Jimin’s direction, Jimin sauntered in the opposite direction, allowing himself a small twirl as he did so.
That night, in the twilight of the imperial court, a lost prince wrote a note to two dear friends, smuggled out on a fishing boat and arriving on northern land before the week was out.
To Jung Hoseok, secondborn alpha son of Jung-Jin (ambassador from the northern kingdom to the imperial court) and his servant Jeon Jungkook, Hero of the Desert War.
From: Park Jimin, firstborn omega prince of the King of the North, betrothed of the Imperial Crown Prince Yoongi, may the emperor’s reign last a thousand years.
My friends,
Court is worse than I feared. I am alone. My betrothed favors another, the fame Duke of the Western Reaches Kim Namjoon.
Your father, Hoseok, plots against me, and I am certain the Queen Mother of the Northern Kingdom aims to supplant my betrothal in anyway she can. Perhaps she is already pregnant once more?
I know my actions have already made you both suffer. That my anger and hatred has failed us three.
I ask you now, if you still have any love for me, that you come to the imperial court.
If I am to die in exile, whether through assassination or a forsaken marriage, I wish it to be with you two by side.
The games of power are never over, as long as we draw breath.
Brothers in friendship, and brothers through blood spilled.
Park Jimin