Title: It was not an epic love story
Author: Carmarthen (lacorneille@earthlink.net)
Fandom/Pairing: James Bond movies, Die Another Day; Zao/Graves (not focus)
Disclaimer: Sadly, not mine. Bond is Ian Fleming's and the movies are property of MGM and probably a few other companies.
Rating: PG-13 for language and references to homosexuality and sex.
Spoilers: For Die Another Day.
Warnings: Contains contempt, communism, teenage angst, a bizarre quasisexual relationship between a homosexual man and an almost-homosexual woman, reference to sex, dishonesty, manipulative behavior, extreme pragmatism, and general meanness.
Summary: Young Tan-Sun Moon is a surly, sullen brat with no social skills. Young Miranda Frost is a neurotic overachiever with no social skills. Moon and Miranda at Harvard and after, miserable, codependent, and amazingly fucked-up. With side doses of Moon/Zao goodness and clubbing!Miranda.
Archive: I am a Fandom of One here, I think: my personal site (http://thewritegirls.populli.net/carmarthen). If you actually want to archive it for some reason, feel free to ask.
Notes: I have no excuse, really. I was curious about the relationship between Moon and Miranda Frost in college, why he rigged Sydney for her, why she went along with his rather crazy plan for world domination. It got away from me, because mmm, fucked-up quasisexual relationships and misery and denial. Also, gah, Bond movies are apparently set in an alternate universe where there are military installations in the De-Militarized Zone and no one notices or cares. Seriously, just simple, minimal fact-checking could fix so many of the problems with the Bond movies. Maybe they're just lazy...so that's my excuse for pretty much making up everything about Harvard, although I did at least check that the organizations are real.

with many thanks to Amara, my ever-fabulous beta

It was not an epic love story

01. Boston, Massachusetts, September 1998

It was one of those epic loves, Tan-Sun Moon had decided when he went away to university, like in the old stories. Young lovers, separated by their parents, pining for each other across a great distance -- in this case, with oceans between them.

Except, of course, Zao was also male, and so General Moon knew nothing, nothing at all, and it was pure coincidence that he had sent Tan-Sun to study in the West.

Tan-Sun was almost certain of this.

Besides, it was just university. He returned to Korea in the summers, and it was only four years, maybe five if his father decided he should get a Master's.

And he really wasn't enough of a romantic to believe in epic loves. Zao was a good fuck, and...comfortable. Tan-Sun didn't trust anyone else well enough to fuck. It was no more than that. Love barely even entered into the equation.

So even without Zao, Oxford hadn't been too bad. There had been a few other North Koreans there, sons of government officials and generals. He'd known some of them vaguely, before. He had liked his courses well enough: mathematics, mostly, and chemistry, some physics.

Then his father had said, I want you to study in America, and so he had packed his bags, applied to Harvard and Yale and a few other universities, waited, gotten accepted, and moved across another ocean.

Tan-Sun hated Harvard. The few South Korean students were beneath his notice; the other non-Americans ignored him; the Americans fell into either the conservative camp, who called him a goddamn red communist when they thought he couldn't hear, or the liberal, most of whom ignored him, and some of whom tried to engage him in discussions of communism which merely demonstrated their pathetic lack of either intelligence or knowledge.

He still liked mathematics; it was clear and simple and free of the miserable capitalistic Western opinion which colored the humanities and even many of the sciences here. He took economics, which he despised, and political science, where he pretended to have a poor grasp of English so he wouldn't have to participate in class discussions. He didn't trust his temper.

His father wanted him to "learn about the West" so he could be a "bridge between the worlds," which Tan-Sun frankly thought was a load of horseshit, and so he had to live in the dorms, but he had been able to convince Housing to give him a single. No one wanted to live with him anyway.

Bridge between the worlds, indeed. He observed his classmates carefully from behind his books, and nothing he saw there made him think such a bridge was worth building.

02. Boston, Massachusetts, October 1998

Tan-Sun Moon was not a joiner, so he merely stared sullenly from beneath half-lowered lids at the perky senior with the purple hair who was extolling the excitement and glamor of the improv club. He glanced at the students around him, who were rapt, occasionally laughing at her moronic jokes, and curled his lip contemptuously. Idiots, the lot of them.

The pitches continued. The campus queer organization, as if he had some sort of special bond with a bunch of poofs and dykes by virtue of whom he chose to fuck, a parade of theatre groups, the Harvard-Radcliffe College Democrats, who made him shudder for more reasons than one, various Christian Fellowships, the SCA, the chess club, and -- he sat up straighter, watching the boy at the front of the room pick up a foil. Fencing.

He'd been on the Oxford fencing team, and he'd actually liked that. None of the other students on the team had been raised military, and they didn't approach it with quite the same life-and-death fervor that he had, so they hadn't been much of a challenge, but it had been good all the same.

The girl next to him, an elegant blonde with her hair in a braid, leaned over and asked quietly, "You think you'll join?" Her accent was refined, upper-class English.

He shrugged diffidently. "Maybe. Not much competition, I imagine."

She grinned, looking suddenly feral and not at all cool. "You compete?"

"No. I only fight for money."

"Smart man. Me, I'm addicted to competition." She held out her hand. "Miranda Frost. I train with Lady Verity Holmes during the summers."

"I've heard of her."

"Do I pass your test?" Any other girl's voice would have been teasing, coquettish, with the way she was leaning towards him, but hers was cool and almost diffident.

He smiled faintly and clasped her hand. "Sure. Tan-Sun Moon."

Her delicately arched eyebrows rose. "You're the North Korean general's son." It was not a question.

He felt the corner of his mouth twist harshly, and he couldn't keep the bitterness out of his voice as he said, "Yes. I suppose rumor travels fast."

She shrugged. "I hear gossip, yes. I don't listen to it." She glanced back at the front of the room. "Oh, look, Photography Club. Be still, my heart."

Against his will, Tan-Sun laughed.

03. Boston, Massachusetts, November 1998

Miranda showed up in his room armed with political science textbooks one Thursday in November. It was their one class together; she was pulling an average of 102, and he was a hair away from failing.

"I thought we could study together," she said, "since there's a test tomorrow." She looked almost shy, standing in his doorway like that, and he shrugged and let her in.

At one point he looked up and said, "Miranda?"

"Hmmm?" She didn't look up from Russian labor reforms.

"What do you think about politics?"

She looked up then, sharply. "You mean my political affiliation? Why do you ask?"

He shrugged. "Curious. I hadn't asked before, and we are in the same political science class."

"I haven't thought about it much," she said. "I'll probably end up working for MI-6 after I graduate."

"MI-6?"

"They expressed interest in me a while back. It's probably just a desk job, but who knows? I'm not very patriotic, but it pays well." She kept her eyes on her books, and her voice was soft, unassuming, revealing nothing.

Moon snorted. "You capitalists. It all comes down to money in the end, doesn't it?"

"Well, yes, but so does communism at base." She looked thoughtful for a moment. "But seriously, my politics...I suppose they're whatever the winning side's are."

"Very pragmatic of you," he said dryly, and the beginning of an idea stirred in the back of his mind.

"Yes," she said, her voice precise, cool, and utterly flat. "When you grow up poor, you can't afford to be an idealist."

It was the only reference Tan-Sun ever heard her make to her childhood.

Miranda fell asleep on his bed that night, and she looked so calm and small lying there that Tan-Sun couldn't think of moving her. So he gently dislodged her notebook from under her and set it on the floor and tucked the pillow under her head. She stirred slightly, and he pulled the blanket over her. He turned off the light and lay down beside her. It wasn't very comfortable, trying not to touch her, but he managed, and he finally feel asleep to the soft whisper of her breathing.

He woke to find her curled back against him, surprisingly soft and warm for someone who looked so cool and remote when awake. Her hair smelled like jasmine.

If he had ever doubted that he wasn't interested in women, this would have proved it.

He shook her shoulder gently. "Miranda," he said softly. "Time to get up."

She let out a groggy whimper and rolled over. If he hadn't caught her, she would have fallen out of the bed. "Wha--?" Her eyes opened and the shock in her face was almost ludicrous. "Tan-Sun? What happened?"

He shrugged as best he could without sitting up. "You fell asleep. I didn't want to wake you."

"Oh." She glanced around and found her shoes under his desk. "What time is it?"

"Class isn't for another hour," he said. "There's plenty of time."

"An hour?" she yelped, bending to gather up her textbooks. "That's not plenty of time!"

Taken aback, he said, "It is for me." He sat on the edge of the bed and watched her frantically gather her things, trying not to laugh. She lost her composure so rarely.

She stared at him for a moment, her mouth twisted in exasperation. "You're a man."

"Last time I checked, yes."

Her eyebrows went up. "You just made a joke. Now I know I'm dreaming." She ran her fingers through her hair briefly. "How do I look? Oh hell, never mind. I need a shower. See you in class."

And with that, she was gone.

Tan-Sun didn't think he would ever understand women, but he supposed it didn't matter.

04. Boston, Massachusetts, 1999

Their senior year, Tan-Sun and Miranda rented a two-bedroom apartment together. Tan-Sun tried not to think about how strange it was, sharing an apartment with a woman he had no intention of fucking, who had once expressed some interest, however fleeting, in him. He told himself that at least this way his father would be suspicious for the wrong reasons, and General Moon was wisely not particularly set upon his son marrying some nice Korean girl.

Sometimes on Saturday nights, Miranda would dig out a miniskirt and tanktop from the back of her closet, put on scarlet lipstick and strappy four-inch heels, and go out. She stumbled in again in the small hours of the morning, smelling like cigarette smoke and other people's perfume. Sometimes she was alone. Sometimes there would be a pretty young woman on her arm, or occasionally a man, and they would disappear into Miranda's bedroom until morning.

Tan-Sun would turn up the volume on his headphones, and try to concentrate on his textbooks, and invariably end up thinking about Zao anyway. He missed Zao more than he wanted to admit, even to himself.

Once he tried writing a letter to Zao, but it felt strange. Words had never had much of a place in their relationship.

He never sent the letter. It stayed buried in the bottom of a suitcase, under the copy of Sun-Tzu's The Art of War that his father had given him before he left for university. Before he returned to Korea at last, he took the letter out and burned it over the kitchen sink.

05. Sydney, Australia, September 2000

Sydney was a reward for surviving university without disgracing his father's name. Sometimes Tan-Sun thought that his father had started to suspect that he and Zao were...more than friends, and had decided that Miranda, at least, was female, if not even close to being a Nice Korean Girl.

He didn't care, really, as long as his father didn't confront him outright. He'd be back in Korea soon enough, with Zao, and matters could be dealt with as they arose. There were more important things to think about than whether his father suspected.

Tan-Sun felt better in Sydney than he had the entire last semester at Harvard. It was warm and sunny, the food was good, and the people were friendly enough, if still decadent Westerners. And Miranda's fierce excitement at having come this far, her determination to enjoy everything to the hilt, was contagious.

It wasn't until three days before her match that he realized something was wrong. She showed up in his room at three a.m., wild-eyed, her hair in tangles.

"Miranda, what--"

"Tan-Sun," she gasped, and threw herself at him.

He found himself in the awkward position of having Miranda -- Miranda, of all people! -- crying into his altogether too-bare shoulder, and he patted her hair awkwardly and waited for her to stop crying. It was all terribly uncomfortable. Human contact was all very well, and he and Miranda had touched often enough in college, but crying was messy, and comforting did not come easily to him.

Finally she stopped sniffling and looked up at him with tear-stained eyes. "I couldn't bear it if I lost," she said. "I'd do anything not to lose. Anything."

"Oh," he said. "Anything?"

She sat up and attempted, ineffectually, to pat her hair into some semblance of order. "Yes," she whispered. "I don't care anymore if it's by my own merits, as long as I win. To come this far -- if I don't, I'm not sure I can live with myself."

"I see." He leaned over the edge of the bed and flipped the bedside lamp on, thinking furiously. Here was the opportunity he'd been half-looking for, since the night Miranda had told him about MI-6. He could help her and provide insurance for himself in the future; his own MI-6 agent. He supposed he should feel guilty for thinking of Miranda, as much of a friend as he'd ever had, as a commodity, but that was the way the world, or, more importantly, his world worked. He had never claimed to be nice.

"Tan-Sun, I don't know what to do," she said, twisting her hands together in her lap. "I can't fence like this; I'm a mess. I don't know--"

"Miranda," he said firmly, taking her hands in his. "I can help." Her mouth opened, and he added, "Don't ask how. Just promise me you don't care how you win and I will guarantee it."

She closed her eyes for a moment and swallowed hard, and there was steel in her voice when she spoke again. "I don't care. Anything."

"I'll see what I can do," he said. He could make the call tomorrow, and with any luck, Miranda would win, cleanly and on her own skill, and there would be no need for anyone to die. If not -- well, it would not be too hard to take care of. He knew people. He always made sure to know people.

Miranda smiled weakly and squeezed his hands. "Thank you. I'm sorry I woke you." She rose.

He shrugged. "It doesn't matter."

"Still." She paused at the door. "Did I ever tell you that I think your Zao must be a very lucky man?"

Tan-Sun smiled, bemused. "No," he said, but she had closed the door behind her already.

He had no illusions about himself, for all his arrogance. He was always certain to be deservedly arrogant, and he'd always thought it was the other way around. He'd been far more lucky than he deserved, all things considered, despite Harvard.

06. Pyongyang, North Korea, 2000-2001

It was almost a year before Tan-Sun could say, casually, "I studied at Oxford and Harvard," and follow it up with the quip about majoring in Western hypocrisy.

Before that, the words always caught in his throat when he remembering the misery of it, exile, away from Zao and Korea, with only Miranda to remind him that the whole world wasn't against him, only most of it. He allowed himself this small bit of melodrama because really, it was true. The whole world was against him, or rather, he was against it.

The world hadn't been particularly good to him, but he was a better man than that -- he wouldn't be any crueler to the world than he had to be.

When they weren't busy with their duties, they fucked in empty supply rooms, in Tan-Sun's office, and occasionally in his quarters. Tan-Sun wasn't sure if General Moon knew, but he had given up on his father's approval some time ago. It just wasn't worth the effort.

Tan-Sun was promoted to Colonel, and General Moon put him in command of a small installation in the DMZ.

It wasn't the good life, but it was as close as it got on an army base in North Korea. He thought of Miranda less and less as the years passed, although he always reserved a place for her in his ever-changing plan. She would want to be on the winning team, and his own MI-6 agent would prove very useful. Everything was going smoothly.

Then Bond arrived.

07. London, England, November 2002

Moon expected Miranda to show up when he -- Gustav Graves -- advertised for a publicist. Her reply to his earlier encoded message had been clear enough in that regard.

What he had not expected was how different she would be. Gone was the studious girl with the always-slightly-messy ponytail, the nice but not fashionable clothing, the faint vulnerability around the mouth. Her hair was pulled smoothly back in a perfect chignon, her clothes were the epitome of tasteful fashion, and her mouth -- it was, perhaps, the hardest mouth Moon had ever seen. She spoke as if choosing every word with care, as if they were fragile as glass and might break and cut her mouth.

"Frost" didn't even begin to describe her.

It was impossible to imagine this ice-woman going clubbing in scarlet lipstick. It was hard enough to see even the wild-eyed girl from Sydney, so desperate to win that she'd do it any way she could. This woman was almost uncannily cool and collected. She looked as though she breathed efficiency.

But then, he had changed, too. Rather a lot. Why should he have expected *her* to stay the same? Two years was a long time.

She would fit into his plan better this way. He had absolutely no reason to feel regretful.

No reason at all.

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