Sometimes he looked at her, and all he saw was a frightened young woman, with pale, careworn hands and a mouth pressed into a line like an overly-earnest, serious teenager, vying for the validation of her opinion from a crowd of disapproving adults. Sometimes he looked into her dark brown eyes and saw them dancing vividly with the centuries of conflict, the rebellions, the invasions, the blood-lust, the heart-break, all of it, until she'd blink, turn her eyes away from him, make some flippant, unimportant comment, and the illusion would be gone.
Sometimes he saw the mother, caring for her people, their son, for her brothers and sisters, cleaning them and feeding them and loving them.
Sometimes he saw the brothel-mistress, the immoral opium-den owner, inviting him, seducing him, addictive as the drug he sold her.
Sometimes he saw the little girl, the expression he saw when she was painting, when she was writing, God knows when she'd seen some stuffed toy at one of her markets that she deemed to be cute.
Sometimes he saw the warrior, taking those children, those siblings and everyone else that she held dear and near destroying them in the blink of an eye.
Sometimes England thought he knew China, in all the centuries they'd known each other, fought each other, imprisoned each other, loved each other, despised each other.
And sometimes he realised that, realistically, he never would.