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The Indivisible Whole

"Mulan, you're slouching. A man likes a proud woman, shoulders back," her mother murmured from where she knelt behind her, gently running a comb through what little remained of her hair. This daily ritual used to be a struggle. Mulan could hardly sit still as her mother patiently picked out the straw and grass and tangles.

Hair was simply another thing for an enemy to latch onto, giving it a hard yank as a distraction before running her through with their weapon. Hacking it off with a sword and tying up the remnants had seemed like a small sacrifice to avoid suffering such a fate. Until now, at least. She hadn't really ever thought this far ahead, to the phase after the war where she'd be expected to settle back into the role of a woman. She had ridden off to war with little foresight. The only thoughts on her mind had been to save her father and avoiding exposing herself in the process.

Mulan watched her mother's ministrations in the mirror, making a momentary effort to readjust her posture as requested. Shoulders back, chest out, chin up. It seemed months ago that she had had this lesson the first time in preparation for meeting the matchmaker. What had followed had been months spent learning the exact opposite, abandoning the etiquette lessons in favor of mimicking the habits of men. Though she'd never admit it, learning to spit and slap backs and compete with the men had been much more terrifying than the matchmaker. Slouching had been crucial in camouflaging the curvature of her chest. Here and now she was meant to show off what little endowment she had in that that department. She sighed. "Is there anything you can do with it?" she asked.

She saw the quiet smile that graced her mother's face in their shared reflection. She reached forward with a hand to tuck a stray lock of Mulan's hair behind her ear as she leaned in close to whisper. "There's always something to be done my dear, we just need to figure out what. You had such beautiful hair."

"I haven't given you much to work with, huh?" Mulan inquired, craning her head around to meet her mother's gaze.

"Head straight or you're going to have your different lengths on both sides," her mother said with a hint of laughter on her lips.

"Guess a sword wasn't the best implement for this."

"We'll make it work," her mother reassured her, the scissors gleaming in the firelight as she put them to use. "I'm just going to even it out a bit. We'll style the rest."

"You look beautiful Mulan," Grandmother Fa muttered as she wandered into the room, her cane thumping softly against the wooden floor. "I've been telling your mom to chop it off for years. We want to see that lovely neck that you inherited from my side of the family," she said, raising her chin as if to show off her own.

"Now those muscles, those are something else. I think you came back more built than the boys who work unloading carts at the market," her grandmother said, stepping forward and running a light finger along her bicep. She whistled low as she did so.

Mulan flinched slightly. "We trained a lot."

"I bet. That man you brought back was evidence enough of that. I need me one of those. He have any friends you could introduce me to?" she joked.

Mulan thought back to the King of the Rock game, shuttering slightly at the memory. "They can be a bit…uncivilized at times, grandmother."

"Oh, pah," she responded with a dismissive wave of her hand. "You should've seen your grandfather. He was a bit of a ruffian too. The man literally liked to sleep in the barn on stuffy nights when I first met him. Said the draft helped keep him cool. I had him toeing the line by the end of things, even sleeping under a real roof and everything. You just have to know how to work your feminine guile."

Mulan chuckled, trying her best to avoid jostling her head lest she end up with even shorter hair from a wayward cut of the scissors. "We'll have to see."

"That we will. That we will."

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It took all of Shang's self-discipline to suppress his reaction to seeing Mulan. Even so, his mouth opened ever so slightly in awe as she walked in with her mother and grandmother and they began laying out the food on the table. Her hair had been left down, a freshly bloomed blossom tucked behind one ear. She wore a formal dress in blue and gold that hung to the ground. It flowed over her body, accenting each curvature in a way that made a lump form in his throat. He could feel a blush rising in his face as she met his eyes, walking over to stand just beside him as she poured his tea.

He had courted before at the behest of his parents. There had been a string of women from what had seemed like every providence in China. What family wouldn't want to marry their daughter to a captain in the Imperial Army? They had been beautiful and well-educated in the feminine arts. He was what every man could desire in a woman. Yet, he had never found one that had captured his attention like Mulan had.

He let his eye wander over her frame once more, taking in the muscles in her shoulders that stretched the fabric taut. Muscles earned running through the mountains together, sparring in the ring, practicing archery. She wasn't the traditional definition of beauty. She was stocky when society expected daintiness. There was a strength in her gaze when most others would expect a timid flirtatiousness. It took his breath away.

Fa Zhou rose to his feet as the women finished their ministrations. Mulan approached the seat directly across from Shang and next to her father. Fa Zhou pulled out the chair for her and motioned for her to sit. She rolled her eyes at the gesture, but accepted begrudgingly without comment. Shang found himself smiling that. It was the protective impulse of a father reveling in the presence of a daughter he'd thought to never see again.

"Guess lover boy over here was a little too busy picking his jaw up off the floor to help a lady, eh?" Mulan's grandmother muttered as she dropped into a seat next to him.

He finally reacted to that. She was talking to him. "Wait, I was just-"

"You were gawking," she chuckled. "Please, continue. I fully approve."

He took a bite of food to avoid coming up with what would have been an unavoidably awkward response. He liked her spunk, he really did. It gave him an idea of where Mulan got her brashness. All the same, he was still working on reconciling the fact that his soldier buddy Ping was actually a woman. A courtable woman. There had been a moment of raw betrayal at the revelation, but then the thought of the possibility it represented crept into his mind. A woman that would stand beside him as an equal rather than one step behind or below him. The possibility had brought him a good distance across China under the pretense of returning a lost helmet. It was apparently as transparent a cover as it had sounded in his head, but he needed time to sort it all out.

Ping the soldier and Mulan the woman. There was a large distance to bridge between the two and he wasn't quite sure what to make of it all quite yet.

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Mulan couldn't sleep. The absence of a cricket trill and a wind against the side of a flimsy tent she had called home had made it a hollow night indeed. The air in her room had been too still, the smooth floor instead of the textured earth beneath her body had left her tossing and turning. Giving up on the possibility of sleep, she'd headed out into the night.

She'd found a decent length of bamboo that mimicked a quarterstaff closely enough to work through the exercises she'd learned in the army. It had been a flurry of swings and pivots and knocks against a sturdy tree that served as her opponent for a warm up. It had left her breathing hard, her breath misting into the cool night, but she'd wanted more.

She took a moment to kick off her shoes then, smiling as she curled her toes into the soft soil. It was a connection to the earth she'd come to appreciate during her training. The thin soled shoes they'd been outfitted with had allowed her to feel even the most subtle shifts of terrain, permitting even the distinguishing between sunned patches and shadow. She leaned the bamboo against the tree and crossed the meadow, stopping at the bench where she had abandoned her robe.

She reached for the other item she'd brought out, untying the string and pulling away the fabric it had been wrapped in. She raised the blade upward, admiring the way it reflected the moonlight. On this serene evening it was hard to imagine that it had killed countless individuals, had been wielded in the hand of the greatest villain to terrorize China in generations. Won by the sweat and deaths and blood of the Imperial Chinese Army. Won partially by her efforts and gifted to her by the emperor himself.

It was heavier than the blade she'd wielded for the past few months. The weight was awkward and it took her two hands to raise the blade. It wasn't a pretty thing either; the blade wove back and forth in curves instead of having a straight edge. This was her blade though, and that was the crux of things. That other blade, it had been borrowed from her father and taken to war and now returned to its rightful place in his wardrobe. Women in China didn't wield blades, there was no need to. That was a man's profession, or so she'd been taught. A woman belonged in the household and little elsewhere.

She executed Crane Stands in Water, balancing carefully on one leg. That was followed by Hawk Strikes Snake, a series of alternating jabs and parries against an invisible enemy. The effort left sweat beading on her brow. She was a week out of practice and these were the sorts of skills you executed every day or lost.

When she'd first come home, her mother's face had dipped into a frown when Mulan had asked where she could practice her sword work. She hadn't asked again. She understood it, she did. At the end of a day, even riding back from war, she was a woman. There were expectations with which she was expected to comply. She'd begrudgingly given up her armor. Her father's armor, she corrected herself. She missed the weight of the leather plate settling over her shoulders. She could forgo it, though, for her parents' piece of mind. They had seemed to age years in her absence. Maybe it was her imagination, but her father's hair appeared a bit grayer and both parents had a few more wrinkles creasing their brow. Their only child, a woman no less, had ridden to war and risked death not only by an enemy blade, but a Chinese one too had she been discovered at the wrong time in the wrong way. She had caused them uneasy dreams long enough.

Mulan had taken to doing her blade work at night instead. It worked well enough. She had enough gawkers when she went into town. She was the woman who had defied stereotypes and saved China in the process. It was natural curiosity and she couldn't abhor it. It was the way she had climbed the trees on their property as a child to sneak a glimpse over the wall of the army riding through their town on high stepping horses and finely polished armor. Nowadays as she passed through town she smiled the ones who pointed and stared openly. Let them stare. Let her stand for a new era for women in Chinese society.

Out here at night she was alone. It was room to breathe, to think about everything and her place in it all now that the war was over. She'd been barely on the cusp of female society before this all had started. She had learned to cook and do calligraphy and submitted to the matchmaker just like any loyal daughter. As the only child and with no familial male heir, she'd also learned how to ride a horse and run the farm. She'd gone to war and learned to fight and shoot archery and drill as part of a large military force and kick up her feet at the end of the day with the guys by a warm fire. It was more free than she'd felt in her life. Here and now, it was like the chains were again coiling around her body and turning her back into that other person.

Then there was Shang. A man who had been a comrade in arms. Her superior, first, then he had become a friend. Now potentially more. He had trailed her back to her dusty little village and stayed for days now. They both needed it, time away from the military and space to process everything that had happened. She just wasn't sure what to do there. There was a desire to reciprocate, to explore the potential. It gave her pause, though, to consider what he wanted. Her mother insisted on dressing her in jade necklaces and burying her tanned complexion, so painstakingly earned from time in field, beneath layers of pale makeup. It felt foreign, but was it what he expected?

She was Mulan, she was Ping. Not wholly enveloped in the world of men or women, she was left floating somewhere in between. A snap of a branch tore her from her thoughts, she spun, raising her sword and preparing to attack the intruder into her nightly domain.

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Shang watched Mulan from across the stream, not wanting to disrupt her practice. He made no effort to conceal himself; there was no harm done if she noticed him. The crescent moon gave little enough light, though, that he would not be surprised if she missed his presence altogether.

She danced with the blade, it was the only way he could think to describe it and he wasn't all too convinced it did the sight adequate justice. There had been a clumsiness when she had started training. He had judged it a mere inability to use a sword. Some people were destined to fight; others had skills that lay elsewhere. For a woman who had never worked a blade until her training with the army had begun, she'd made remarkable process in leaps and bounds. Enough so that by the end he was wearing armor to defend against the strikes she snuck past his defenses.

So he sat there, watching her progress through the series of drills they had completed every morning before any of the soldiers were permitted so much as a grain of rice for breakfast. There was a bit of pride welling up in him. The type of pride a sculptor would have as the figure they had imagined emerged from the rock.

He had seen her draped in dresses and makeup, and accessorized with flowers and jewelry. There was a beauty there, no doubt. It was a balance and a contrast all wrapped up in one. The second part of a beautiful person made whole. He would be lying, though, to say that he hadn't missed seeing this part too. The banter back and forth, the sparring and the way they challenged one another. She was a woman now. Was he expected to step daintily around her, holding doors, pulling out chairs and otherwise fawning over the poetry she read him by firelight? He prayed not. He could do those things, he was glad to. He prayed not to lose the other half of her, though. It was the part he'd known first. The lanky awkward soldier who had stepped into camp and caused such a ruckus in the first days. The one who had matured into a soldier worthy of his trust and respect.

He found himself wandering across the stone bridge the crossed over to the other bank of the stream. She practiced in the meadow that abutted the road. With an early rain that afternoon the landscape was silent, animals and insects alike burrowed away to escape the dampness of the night. With his eyes focused on her, he didn't notice the brittle twig underfoot until it was cracking beneath his weight, the sound reverberating through the night.

He hissed quietly, the moment broken. Mulan spun, her sword raised overhead. He flinched backwards, raising an arm in defense and denying the urge to close his eyes.

"Mulan, wait!"

The blade stopped inches above his outstretched arm. It was a nasty thing, curves where there should be straight lines, his impression of it further marred by the fact that he had almost been impaled on its length multiple times in the fight to rescue the emperor.

She paused, her faces just inches from his own, close enough so that he could feel the heat radiating off her body from her exertions.

"Shang! What are you doing out here?"

"Uh, taking a walk?" He gulped, still almost going cross-eyed from fixing his gaze on the blade. "Think we could lower the weapon and then have this conversation?"

"Oh, sorry!" she muttered, pulling the blade back and actually dropping it to the ground. "You surprised me."

He swallowed. "I'll be sure not to do that again in the near future." Shang slowly lowered his hand, smoothing out his tunic as if that had been his plan all along. No need for her to see him flustered.

Her hair was tied up, a few strands having snuck loose during her work out. She smoothed a few of them back along her scalp as they eyed one another. "So you couldn't sleep?"

"Not really," he replied.

Mulan smirked. "My grandmother keeping you up? You wouldn't think a woman that small could snore so loud."

"I didn't want to be rude, but it does rather defy logic, doesn't it?" he asked.

She chuckled. "I'll admit there's a reason my room is on the other side of the house." As she spoke, she bent down to pick up the sword. She walked back over the bench and went to work rewrapping the blade as he stood at her shoulder.

"That blade's a big too long for you," Shang observed. It was really almost half again as long as it should be.

"It's all I have to work with right now," she said, swinging the wrapped blade over her shoulder as they moved off toward the estate courtyard. "I'm hoping to have a shorter one commissioned when I get a chance."

Shang nodded. "My blade was forged in the royal armory. I'm sure getting you one made there shouldn't be too difficult."

"I don't need anything that fancy-"

He raised a hand. "You may not need it, but you've more than earned it."

She shook her head at the gesture but didn't protest. Having reached the center of the courtyard, they paused once again. "You going to bed?" she asked

"Oh. You're probably tired. I should apologize for keeping you out-"

She rolled her eyes at him. "I was already out."

They stood there in silence for a few moments, the conversation having hit a hitch. Finally, Mulan shook her head. "How did things get so awkward between us all of a sudden?"

He sighed, rubbing the back of his head. "It was easier when we were both men. Sorry, when I thought you were a man. It's so messy now. I don't know how to do this…"

"Well, that makes two of us. I know one thing we can both do pretty well, though, and that's ride. The sunrise over the ridge is something everyone should see at least once if you want."

He nodded. "That would be nice."

A grin graced her lips. It wasn't a proper one where the lips would curve upward ever so slightly. It showed a fleck of white teeth, the trademark smile he was used to seeing when something had genuinely pleased her, an unrestrained brilliance blossoming across her face.

They opened the barn doors and roused their horses. As Shang bridled them Mulan slipped his knife out of its sheath on his belt. Before he could protest she had sliced a slit up halfway up the front of her skirt, the fabric making a loud shredding noise beneath the blade. He raised a questioning eyebrow.

"You ever try to ride in a skirt? It isn't easy," she rebutted as she swung up into the saddle.

He smirked at that.

She wheeled Khan in a circle, channeling his nervous energy to get moving as she waited for Shang to mount. As soon as he was up she dug her heel and charged toward the open gate. Refusing to be beat that easily, he urged his own horse on, chasing right on her heels.

There were a lot of issues between them. There were gender roles and courting and the manner in which their relationship had been tilted ninety degrees off kilter. There was an emperor awaiting his word on whether the two of them would be returning to command the Imperial Army. Beyond all of that, there was a nation holding its breath to see how a woman's role in Chinese society would be defined in this new post-war era. In this moment, they ran away from all of that, each stride putting it a little bit further behind them. Together they galloped off toward the hills in the distance and the approaching sunrise until they were but two pinpricks on the horizon, two parts of an indivisible whole.

-THE END-

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