Rating:

Teen

Category:

F/M

Fandom:

Lost

Relationship:

Jin/Sun

Tags:

soul marks, soulmates

Stats:

Posted on:

2015-12-04

Words:

2,381

Jin buttons up his shirt as Tai Soo says from his book, “You’re destined to find love soon!” He’s half-laughing and Jin doesn’t really believe him, rolls his eyes and lifts his head back up.

“Really,” he says, because the marks inside his right palm with the hangul, with I love you, saranghae. It had never been fully clear for the first ten years of his life, when he was so excited to hope, to know. But it’s vague and it means nothing and at twenty-four, he’s decided to stop hoping or thinking about it because either it happens or it doesn’t. Saranghae isn’t something you go looking for.

“What does true love look like, then?” he asks sarcastically, shooting Tai Soo a cursory glance.

Tai Soo pauses for a moment, frowning at his book.

“… orange.”

Jin snorts and throws a cufflink at him, before grabbing it back. He’s going to get employed, get a promotion, make a name of himself, all on his own. Love can wait.

*

Sun’s parents never cared about the markings, but when she first saw them she was excited. Someone who loves me for me, she thinks to herself, because her father never said it and her mother only did during goodbyes, as if to cure all of her guilts like if Sun had a plane accident and she couldn’t say it again.

Her parents’ setups bore her, but she assures herself that it might be the gateway to finding the man she loves, the man who loves her. One time she asks her parents how they met, if their soulmarks match, but her father had scoffed condescendingly, and her mother had said, “Of course.”

Sun doesn’t quite believe them, but never says.

When she meets Jae Lee, she thinks almost, that this is it. Jae Lee is charming and funny, and she’s dated men before but she can actually see a future with him.

When Jae Lee tells her he’s already in love with an American woman, she figures, well, we never said I love you to each other, anyway. And she’s seen the words on Jae Lee’s wrist—words that are already burned out, taken.

*

Jin falls in love with Sun, soulmarks be damned. It’s almost more exciting that they have to see each other in secret, according to Sun at least—but Jin wants to hold her hand on the streets, tell everyone that this is the beautiful woman he’s fallen in love with. Not the daughter of a wealthy businessman, or a body and face fit for a model. No—this woman who has fallen in love with him back.

She asks him about his mark because he doesn’t show his right hand to her for the first month of their dating. He laughs it off and reaches across the table so she can see it; but she squeals when she reads and thrusts out her left hand.

Jin almost can’t believe it, but he blurts out the words immediately. She laughs and says, “Convinced you’re my soulmate already?” but she’s smiling and glances at her palm, like she’s hoping for it, too.

It doesn’t burn. She tries, “I love you,” too, but Jin’s palm, rough from the earlier years of his life, stays cool and untouched.

They shrug it off and say, “Oh well,” but Jin can’t help the disappointment that weighs in his stomach.

*

After months and months of dating Jin, Sun decides that she doesn’t care if Jin isn’t her soulmate. Because she still wants to be with him. He’s beautiful in the mornings, sleepy-eyed until lunch, at home in the cities and free in the countrysides. She’s more in love with him than she can bear to handle, that she constantly talks about eloping.

He doesn’t want to. Sun thinks it’s kind of cute, how he wants to impress her father, “Really, you don’t have to, he’s a tough guy,” she says with an eye roll. But Jin insists and, “I’m great with tough guys,” and, “He’ll love me.”

He doesn’t, but he hires Jin, who’s relieved out of his mind. Sun kisses his forehead and says, “Congratulations, darling,” though a weight drops in her stomach when her mother comes to her later with Jin’s background information, with what Jin already knows. He has ‘I love you’ on his hand, she wants to tell her, because she doesn’t care. But they haven’t burned yet and they’ve agreed that it doesn’t matter, so she doesn’t.

They get married, and it’s a beautiful spring day near a pond when they do. The flowers are full in blossom, swimming happily under the red buildings. They are blessed by everyone, and even her father’s insisting that Jin undergo training before their wedding can’t make Sun love him any less.

*

It doesn’t matter if Sun isn’t his soulmate. Jin doesn’t believe in it, never has. Even if he did, he wouldn’t find a woman who loved him as much as Sun does, anyway—

So it doesn’t matter, too, that he has to work for her father. It doesn’t matter that her father is using him to communicate with mob leaders, kill people, threaten them. This is all for Sun, this is all for them being together, even if they aren’t meant to be, even if the world wants them with other people.

It doesn’t matter, it doesn’t matter if she finds out, if they can’t go on their honeymoon, if they can’t have a goddamn child. Jin grits his teeth and clutches at Sun during nights sometimes, feeling out of breath, water filling his throat, wanting to remind himself she’s there. He loves her, he hasn’t stopped loving her.

He says it.

She doesn’t awaken.

*

They’ve said I love you so many times but Sun refuses to give up. She knows in a way where she doesn’t need her skin to burn to tell her. She says it over breakfast, before he leaves for weeks, when he comes back bruised and bloody and she’s stopped screaming and instead washing the blood off his back. She says, I love you, to remind herself. And maybe his words will burn.

They don’t, but she keeps it in the back of her mind anyway. She doesn’t stop saying it. And sometimes, when they’re pressed under the covers, or hot against each other on top of the futon, he whispers it too, over and over again, and she waits for her palm to burn. But it doesn’t either.

*

When the airplane crashes, Jin is only grateful that he isn’t dead. But everyone here speaks English and he doesn’t care, doesn’t want—he doesn’t know what he wants, because Sun is here too, and once upon a time she was all he wanted and they were going to get it but now they’re stuck on this goddamn island and no one can understand him.

He tries. He sees Sun try, but he’s starting to feel like she doesn’t care anymore, about him or them or anything. He tries and tries and tries. He has been trying his whole life. But he’s back here, with fish in the sea and a net in his hands and the words on his palm are wet and cool underneath him.

*

Sun yells in English and remembers, remembers how Jin had given her that flower, and shit, she’s screwed everything up. She’s screwed everything up and she runs and yells him sorry, sorry, sorry like she wants it to be the words on his hands, in Korean, in English.

He storms away without looking at her.

He didn’t have to give her that flower but he did; Jin has always been everything and she is here for him. With him.

She helps the others, cultivates her garden, and even though Michael is nice she can see that one of his marks are long-faded, on the inside of his calf. He has another he doesn’t tell her about, when she asks, but she decides not to press.

Most of the other islanders’ marks are in English, but having theirs in a different language makes Sun feel special, doesn’t let herself lose hope in her and Jin. Kate has two: a band around her upper arm (Are you okay?) and another in small words tracing down her ankle (I can count to five) She laughs them off and doesn’t take them too seriously, mostly because she thinks the question is redundant and she’s not really impressed by people who can count to five. She doesn’t think the words matter.

Sun thinks they do, but she doesn’t tell Kate. She’s lucky to have two soulmates, Sun thinks. That if she messes up once, she still has another chance.

Sun never had a chance to begin with.

*

The raft works until it doesn’t. Jin figures he should be more upset, but he has Sun again, and she hugs and kisses him and it’s the same, almost. It’s the same as the way they were before, but different, because Sun has a garden and teaches him English and he fishes and it’s okay. They’re okay.

And then Sun is pregnant and they have a new woman with them (Juliet, Sun enunciates to him, as clear as possible) who can show them that their baby is healthy and happy. Jin is elated, kisses Sun’s cheek, her mouth, because they’ve made it. The words on their hands are still dull but it’s alright, it’s fine; Jin’s seen the marks on the woman named Rose and the man named Bernard, who hold hands and gaze out into the ocean all the time. Their marks are on their knees and collarbones, patched and faded over time, almost back with their skin. A part of Jin thinks that it’s because they’ve already met, already known—but another part of Jin hopes they are like he and Sun. That it doesn’t matter, as long as they’re happy together.

He names their baby Ji Yeon and they are happy. He will not screw this up again.

*

Sun’s slap resounds across the beach. But Juliet is only trying to help, Sun reasons to herself later, and Jin blames himself, and Sun blames herself, and they press their foreheads together and promise to be better people.

And so they try, and try, and live, and work, as everyone else, as everything else happens. There are rafts and gunshots and freights and she just wants, wants to be with Jin. Wants to be happy.

(Sometimes she tries to scrub the words off her palm with the sand, because they don’t matter anymore and she doesn’t need the reminder. Sometimes she whispers, I love you, I love you, against his palm when he is asleep, in Korean and English until words don’t make sense anymore.)

And then—

And then Jin is gone, in a flash of explosion and deafening smoke and Sun’s ears are ringing as she screams out his name. But all she can see is nitrogen, and darkness, and not him, not ever—

*

Again and again and Jin is lost without Sun and again, and again and again and again until,

Until it’s 1977 and he has a terrible frame of time, and who he is, and what things used to be. It’s numbing and doesn’t feel like him as his English gets steadier, and the Korean in his mind is replaced with English words and Dharma and tracks and rounds.

Until he’s taking care of polar bears and driving around the island even though he’s never driven much before, until he’s reporting with LaFleur and people who live here, belong here. He’s always been good at falling into routine: handiwork and toil are his talents.

So this is who Jin has been, has become. But the words on his palm have a new meaning: that he had Sun once. So even as time passes, or retreats, he does not let himself forget.

*

Ben comes to her with Jin’s ring and all of Sun’s urge to punch him dissipates. She clutches his ring between her hands until it burns more than she ever imagined the words on her palm would. She sends Ji Yeon to her mother and does not say goodbye to her father. She boards the plane.

Everyone else’s adventures are useless but she goes along anyway, because they are her resources to find her husband again. She twists her fingers in her necklace every day, wanting, hoping. She stares at the words on her hands and is glad that they’ve never burned before—they read more like a message from Jin now, than anything. They are a reminder that he’s still out here, somewhere. Funnily, she imagines that these words won’t fade, won’t be said, until she has Jin with her again. It’s a silly notion because she’s had him before, has said it so many times before, has heard it back.

But she still thinks it.

*

Jin sees her—

*

And then she’s running, running, even though words won’t come out properly and everything is tripping over her tongue, but Jin, Jin is here, alive and it’s been six years and he’s never looked more beautiful to her than before. Words flow from her brain to her mouth but only, only one,

only three,

want to spill out of her mouth

in perfect English—

I love you.

And he laughs and she doesn’t get it but she doesn’t care as she clutches his face, kisses him, doesn’t want to break apart. But he does, and he says, in the clearest English she’s ever heard him speak,

I love you too,

she’s laughing too,

oh my god,

she’s laughing, because the stupid saranghae that has been scrawled on the inside of her palm for so long, that is pressed against Jin’s cheek, is burning, each character tracing as he says the words. He can feel it, she knows, because his eyes widen and he picks her up and kisses her again.

*

I love you, he thinks, saranghae, I love you, I love you, I love you, and it doesn’t matter how many times he says it, or how, or when, because he, she, they will always know, like a pulse in their heads after a firework, a detonation, surrounding them so bright and loud that they can drown in it.