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alliecat8Title: The Broken and the Holy (Sun for ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
isis2015)
Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Sun and family
Words: 1484
Summary: Sun has gone through many changes since the island, but can she make the right choice?
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
A/N: I'm teasing and tantalizing you, Lost-style, and taking this 2nd chapter off-island and into Sun's life of intrigue back in the world. We have to see what the O6 is up to, right? So I'm gonna go back-and-forth, side-to-side, here-and-there, just like in canon. This chapter is about Sun, and I hope Queenisis2015 will accept my humble and oh-so-late offering. (Please??? ♥) As soon as we've checked up on the O6, it's back to the island, where chaos has ensued. Hey, at least I won't go on hiatus for 9 months!
link to Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Sun sat across from the three businessmen, representatives of three of the worlds’ largest corporate conglomerates, and she did not smile. She didn’t need to – everything about her spoke of competence and intelligence, but the thing that underlay it all, the thing that none of the men before her would have been able to define even though it was the “certain something” that drew them to her – was serenity. It had taken her years to master this air, when inside she felt anything but serene. But her face was a mask of unsmiling, self-assured calm as she waited for the answer she knew she’d hear: soon her empire would include three more far-reaching and powerful corporations. Her cold and silent plan to decimate Widmore Industries with a hostile takeover was almost ready to implement, and though Sun wasn’t smiling on the outside, she was smiling with cold satisfaction on the inside.
Warmth was something that Sun never displayed except in small, private moments. It was something she never felt when she was at work, except when she remembered those moments. Sun’s work depended on her being cold, calculating. She would never admit, even to herself, that she was looking for revenge. She told herself she was looking for justice. And she did not smile.
Just as one of the three men before her inclined his head and started to speak, the double doors of her office burst open and her personal assistant stumbled into the room, running in her four-inch heels. “Wong Jung Nim, I must see you in the outer office immediately.” Belatedly, she bowed to the three executives. “Excuse me, please.”
Sun gave her her best steely-eyed stare. “I told you that I can’t be interrupted. This is a private meeting.”
The woman, usually impeccably professional, burst into tears. “Oh, Sun Kwon-Paik,” she cried, committing an appalling breach of etiquette by calling her boss by her given name, “You must come now.” She lurched forward as if she was going to pull Sun bodily from behind the desk, and out of concern for her professional dignity, Sun rose, bowed to her visitors, and took her assistant’s arm as she escorted her firmly out of the room.
When the doors were closed behind her, Sun’s composure fled. There were few things that could undo her normally unflappable assistant like this, and only one that now filled Sun’s mind. “Ji Yeon?” She wasn’t even aware that her voice and posture were both crumbling. “Has something happened?”
“They called from the children’s center,” the girl said. “She was there one minute, and then she was gone. They can’t find her anywhere.”
Sun made a split-second decision, something she’d grown good at in her years as head of Paik Heavy Industries. “Wipe your eyes,” she ordered, reaching for a tissue on the desk. “Tell no one about this. Call the children’s center and tell them that I gave the order for them to do business as usual and to keep this information to themselves. If this leaks out, I will fire anyone I suspect of talking.”
She strode for the elevator, and once safely inside she allowed herself a few frightened tears, which she soaked up neatly with tissues. No one would see her cry. No one.
She arrived at the children’s center, located 16 floors below her office, looking calm and composed. She used her key-card to open the door. She was the only one who possessed such a card; anyone else who wanted to enter the center must be admitted by a key-code punched in by the center’s receptionist, who Sun met every morning to admit her to the heavily-secured facility.
Now the woman was in an odd state somewhere between hysterical and unruffled, having just received the order from above that she was to behave as if nothing was wrong. She greeted Sun in her usual respectful tone, though her voice quavered.
Sun did the same, and was proud that her voice carried its usual authority. “What has happened here, and where is my daughter?”
Instead of answering, the woman motioned Sun behind the desk and gestured to the bank of monitoring screens that recorded every square inch of the children’s center. She reached for one and pushed the rewind button.
For a moment Sun almost smiled, for there was Ji Yeon, wearing a princess crown and cowboy boots, waving a glittering wand rather aggressively at a small boy. The receptionist turned up the audio and Ji Yeon could be heard threatening, “Put on the tutu or I’ll turn you into a…a…POLAR BEAR!” The boy blinked at her once, and then he blinked again as, suddenly, Ji Yeon was gone. The receptionist manipulated the controls so the viewfinder showed a panoramic view of the room, but still, no Ji Yeon.
“We’ve looked everywhere,” she told Sun. “There’s not one inch of this place we haven’t looked. And how could she have gotten out? There’s no way she could have without me entering the code, and you can look at the video of what I was doing at that time and you’ll see that I didn’t. I didn’t; I wouldn’t!”
“I know you wouldn’t,” Sun murmured, distracted. She was already walking down the hall toward the room where Ji Yeon spent her days. The teachers there were confused, frightened, and bordering on defensive as they feared not only for Ji Yeon, but for their own jobs. Sun stood in the middle of the room where her daughter had run to her and kissed her so many afternoons (and evenings, and, Sun thought with a twinge, nights) when Sun came to take her home. Finally she took a deep breath and said, “I know what happened. There’s no need to panic, and there’s no need to mention this to anyone else. Do you understand me?”
The teachers nodded, understanding perfectly that their jobs depended on their silence. It was a well-known fact at Paik Heavy Industries that strange things sometimes happened there, but this was not their concern. Their business was to carry on with their duties as if all was normal. Even now, when a child had disappeared, they turned and went back to their everyday routine.
********
Sun let herself into her penthouse apartment, feeling empty without a soft little hand clasped in hers. She went around turning on lights as usual, laying the mail on her desk, registering the flashing light on the answering machine, before she went into Ji Yeon’s room. It was, as she knew it would be, empty.
Sun was not calm, as she appeared on the outside. Sun was resigned. She’d feared this from the moment her special daughter had been born. Her greatest fear was that Ji Yeon would become a hostage, a pawn in the international game she was playing with Charles Widmore. What she’d seen on the video today convinced her that it wasn’t this fear, but her other one that had come to pass.
“What have you done with her?” she asked the empty air. And then she allowed herself to cry.
********
Later that night Sun fell into an exhausted sleep. Sometime later she arose and made her way into Ji Yeon’s room, where lamplight shone. Jin was sitting on his daughter’s bed holding her favorite toy, a stuffed polar bear. “Did you have a question for me?” he asked as Sun paused in the doorway, staring.
It had been so long since she’d seen Jin that she wanted to gaze at him, to re-visit every familiar feature with her eyes, and then with her lips, and then with her fingers. But he was right, she had a question for him first. “What have you done with her?”
Jin smiled. “She’s a child of the island, Sun. You knew she’d have to go back.”
Something cold inside of Sun tightened painfully. “But I can’t go back, Jin. If I left the entire empire I’ve built would crumble, and he would win. And that means that the island will lose. So how can I go back? But if I don’t…how will I ever see her again? How will I ever see you again?”
“You always have a choice, Sun-Hwa,” Jin said, and when she started to move toward him he shook his head. “Sleep now, my love. And when morning comes, make your choice.”
********
The sunshine pouring through her window woke Sun the next morning. As she always did, before consciousness fully returned, before she opened her eyes, she reached for the pillow beside her, her fingers searching for Jin’s face. Until now, they’d always encountered emptiness. Today she returned to wakefulness with something velvety and moist wrapped around her finger; something that felt like a child’s hand. She opened her eyes and saw the petals of a flower, cradling her fingers as gently as a lover.
She smiled.
TBC
Link to Chapter 3
isis2015)Rating: PG
Characters/Pairings: Sun and family
Words: 1484
Summary: Sun has gone through many changes since the island, but can she make the right choice?
Disclaimer: Only mine in my dreams
A/N: I'm teasing and tantalizing you, Lost-style, and taking this 2nd chapter off-island and into Sun's life of intrigue back in the world. We have to see what the O6 is up to, right? So I'm gonna go back-and-forth, side-to-side, here-and-there, just like in canon. This chapter is about Sun, and I hope Queen
isis2015 will accept my humble and oh-so-late offering. (Please??? ♥) As soon as we've checked up on the O6, it's back to the island, where chaos has ensued. Hey, at least I won't go on hiatus for 9 months!link to Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Sun sat across from the three businessmen, representatives of three of the worlds’ largest corporate conglomerates, and she did not smile. She didn’t need to – everything about her spoke of competence and intelligence, but the thing that underlay it all, the thing that none of the men before her would have been able to define even though it was the “certain something” that drew them to her – was serenity. It had taken her years to master this air, when inside she felt anything but serene. But her face was a mask of unsmiling, self-assured calm as she waited for the answer she knew she’d hear: soon her empire would include three more far-reaching and powerful corporations. Her cold and silent plan to decimate Widmore Industries with a hostile takeover was almost ready to implement, and though Sun wasn’t smiling on the outside, she was smiling with cold satisfaction on the inside.
Warmth was something that Sun never displayed except in small, private moments. It was something she never felt when she was at work, except when she remembered those moments. Sun’s work depended on her being cold, calculating. She would never admit, even to herself, that she was looking for revenge. She told herself she was looking for justice. And she did not smile.
Just as one of the three men before her inclined his head and started to speak, the double doors of her office burst open and her personal assistant stumbled into the room, running in her four-inch heels. “Wong Jung Nim, I must see you in the outer office immediately.” Belatedly, she bowed to the three executives. “Excuse me, please.”
Sun gave her her best steely-eyed stare. “I told you that I can’t be interrupted. This is a private meeting.”
The woman, usually impeccably professional, burst into tears. “Oh, Sun Kwon-Paik,” she cried, committing an appalling breach of etiquette by calling her boss by her given name, “You must come now.” She lurched forward as if she was going to pull Sun bodily from behind the desk, and out of concern for her professional dignity, Sun rose, bowed to her visitors, and took her assistant’s arm as she escorted her firmly out of the room.
When the doors were closed behind her, Sun’s composure fled. There were few things that could undo her normally unflappable assistant like this, and only one that now filled Sun’s mind. “Ji Yeon?” She wasn’t even aware that her voice and posture were both crumbling. “Has something happened?”
“They called from the children’s center,” the girl said. “She was there one minute, and then she was gone. They can’t find her anywhere.”
Sun made a split-second decision, something she’d grown good at in her years as head of Paik Heavy Industries. “Wipe your eyes,” she ordered, reaching for a tissue on the desk. “Tell no one about this. Call the children’s center and tell them that I gave the order for them to do business as usual and to keep this information to themselves. If this leaks out, I will fire anyone I suspect of talking.”
She strode for the elevator, and once safely inside she allowed herself a few frightened tears, which she soaked up neatly with tissues. No one would see her cry. No one.
She arrived at the children’s center, located 16 floors below her office, looking calm and composed. She used her key-card to open the door. She was the only one who possessed such a card; anyone else who wanted to enter the center must be admitted by a key-code punched in by the center’s receptionist, who Sun met every morning to admit her to the heavily-secured facility.
Now the woman was in an odd state somewhere between hysterical and unruffled, having just received the order from above that she was to behave as if nothing was wrong. She greeted Sun in her usual respectful tone, though her voice quavered.
Sun did the same, and was proud that her voice carried its usual authority. “What has happened here, and where is my daughter?”
Instead of answering, the woman motioned Sun behind the desk and gestured to the bank of monitoring screens that recorded every square inch of the children’s center. She reached for one and pushed the rewind button.
For a moment Sun almost smiled, for there was Ji Yeon, wearing a princess crown and cowboy boots, waving a glittering wand rather aggressively at a small boy. The receptionist turned up the audio and Ji Yeon could be heard threatening, “Put on the tutu or I’ll turn you into a…a…POLAR BEAR!” The boy blinked at her once, and then he blinked again as, suddenly, Ji Yeon was gone. The receptionist manipulated the controls so the viewfinder showed a panoramic view of the room, but still, no Ji Yeon.
“We’ve looked everywhere,” she told Sun. “There’s not one inch of this place we haven’t looked. And how could she have gotten out? There’s no way she could have without me entering the code, and you can look at the video of what I was doing at that time and you’ll see that I didn’t. I didn’t; I wouldn’t!”
“I know you wouldn’t,” Sun murmured, distracted. She was already walking down the hall toward the room where Ji Yeon spent her days. The teachers there were confused, frightened, and bordering on defensive as they feared not only for Ji Yeon, but for their own jobs. Sun stood in the middle of the room where her daughter had run to her and kissed her so many afternoons (and evenings, and, Sun thought with a twinge, nights) when Sun came to take her home. Finally she took a deep breath and said, “I know what happened. There’s no need to panic, and there’s no need to mention this to anyone else. Do you understand me?”
The teachers nodded, understanding perfectly that their jobs depended on their silence. It was a well-known fact at Paik Heavy Industries that strange things sometimes happened there, but this was not their concern. Their business was to carry on with their duties as if all was normal. Even now, when a child had disappeared, they turned and went back to their everyday routine.
********
Sun let herself into her penthouse apartment, feeling empty without a soft little hand clasped in hers. She went around turning on lights as usual, laying the mail on her desk, registering the flashing light on the answering machine, before she went into Ji Yeon’s room. It was, as she knew it would be, empty.
Sun was not calm, as she appeared on the outside. Sun was resigned. She’d feared this from the moment her special daughter had been born. Her greatest fear was that Ji Yeon would become a hostage, a pawn in the international game she was playing with Charles Widmore. What she’d seen on the video today convinced her that it wasn’t this fear, but her other one that had come to pass.
“What have you done with her?” she asked the empty air. And then she allowed herself to cry.
********
Later that night Sun fell into an exhausted sleep. Sometime later she arose and made her way into Ji Yeon’s room, where lamplight shone. Jin was sitting on his daughter’s bed holding her favorite toy, a stuffed polar bear. “Did you have a question for me?” he asked as Sun paused in the doorway, staring.
It had been so long since she’d seen Jin that she wanted to gaze at him, to re-visit every familiar feature with her eyes, and then with her lips, and then with her fingers. But he was right, she had a question for him first. “What have you done with her?”
Jin smiled. “She’s a child of the island, Sun. You knew she’d have to go back.”
Something cold inside of Sun tightened painfully. “But I can’t go back, Jin. If I left the entire empire I’ve built would crumble, and he would win. And that means that the island will lose. So how can I go back? But if I don’t…how will I ever see her again? How will I ever see you again?”
“You always have a choice, Sun-Hwa,” Jin said, and when she started to move toward him he shook his head. “Sleep now, my love. And when morning comes, make your choice.”
********
The sunshine pouring through her window woke Sun the next morning. As she always did, before consciousness fully returned, before she opened her eyes, she reached for the pillow beside her, her fingers searching for Jin’s face. Until now, they’d always encountered emptiness. Today she returned to wakefulness with something velvety and moist wrapped around her finger; something that felt like a child’s hand. She opened her eyes and saw the petals of a flower, cradling her fingers as gently as a lover.
She smiled.
TBC
Link to Chapter 3
![[identity profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/openid.png){kind=small}
no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 12:18 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 03:10 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 03:12 am (UTC)Sun’s work depended on her being cold, calculating.
What a startling contrast to her name and the gentleness she so often displayed on the island. I love how you expanded upon what we were given in her flash forwards.
Fantastic work! I eagerly await the next chapter :)
no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 03:40 am (UTC)You're really inspiring me to keep going with this crazy idea. I'm having so much fun writing it, and I'm glad it's making other people happy! :D
And you're gonna LOVE your chapter. *giggles and runs back to Word*
no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 09:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 02:42 am (UTC)Thank you again for the kind words and especially for the encouragement! ♥
no subject
Date: 2008-07-19 04:23 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 02:45 am (UTC)Thank you so much for saying that! It kind of makes my day. I think I write different ways for different situations, and I was looking for a crisp tone for this installment. I'm so glad you think I accomplished that. Thank you so much! ♥
no subject
Date: 2008-07-20 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-07-22 07:51 pm (UTC)I love strong!Sun, too, so it makes me incredibly happy to know that you think I did a good job with her. I'dhoped she'd get there eventually, and the glimpse we saw of present-day Sun showed, I think, that she's definitely there now. I couldn't decide whether to interpret her meeting with Charles Widmore as a genuine attempt to make an alliance with him, or someting else both more sinister and more protective of the island. I tend to think of Widmore as a bad guy, though (totally at odds with his daughter Penny), so I wanted to have Sun plan to double-cross him. We already saw her take English lessons in her aborted attempt to (in a way) double-cross Jin, so we know she's capable of it.
And OH, THANK YOU for mentioning the flower. I hoped SO MUCH that people would "get it" that every time she's found the courage to put her faith in Jin -- even against all odds -- it's been after he gave her a flower. I wanted it to foreshadow the choice she has to make, and you got it! *hugs you tight tight tight!*
♥