Note: I AM CLEARLY INCAPABLE OF WRITING HETALIA DRABBLES. Whenever I try, I end up with a history lesson. Oops? This is an older fic, but hopefully someone finds it enjoyable.
As a sidenote, I did my research and tried my best to stay historically accurate, but there are a few little things you could probably nitpick about. Most notably, I'm pretty sure Rome's second and third envoys were before the empire actually started to decline, but hey, whatever works for the story.
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A thousand years before Rome was even a seed in the Mediterranean, China had lived. He had teased silk from the silkworm's cocoon, created bronze out of copper and tin, read his future in oracle bones. He had planted wheat and millet, floated rice paddies on the loess-choked Huang He, aligned his cities to the north star, collected jade and ivory and cowrie shells like trinkets. From the mystic Xia (a period so hazy in his memory he was never quite sure how much of it really happened, and how much was simply myth) through the aristocratic Shang, the Zhou and tumultuous Qin and all the way into the Han, this was the way he existed.
He first heard of Rome through whispered rumors carried down the Silk Road, amplified like wind in a tunnel until to China, the empire seemed almost fantastic, a land of gold and rhinoceroses. Parthia brought him finely crafted glass, tapestry woven with gold thread, tortoise shells, and told him stories about the man.
"His rulers are elected, not born," she said. "Of only the worthiest men. He grants citizenship to everyone he conquers. He built great aqueducts to carry water from the mountains into his cities, and public baths for all his citizens."
"But, he is too far away," she continued sadly, perhaps catching sight of the longing in his eyes, "much too far. I will carry your goods to him, do not worry."
She was a violently jealous of her role in trade, and always insisted that he and Rome could never speak, or so much as touch. On clear days, though, he swore he could see the empire far off, standing broad-shouldered and strong. There was something about his posture, his refined and cultured pride, that resonated deeply with China. They were different yet the same, the east and west, sun and moon, two sides of a coin. Privately, he was already calling the other man Da Qin: Great China.
A burning had started with China, a curiosity that could not be sated by secondhand traded goods. He was lonely, after years of solitude, but Parthia and Kush guarded the route into Europe by land. His first expedition into the Persian Gulf was a failure, and he returned home more frustrated than ever. There was simply too much distance between them, he thought.
Then one day Rome sent an envoy across the sea, and before China could quite realize it, the faraway empire he had longed so bitterly to meet was at his doorstep. He could only stare in awe at the taller man, who seemed so carelessly confident, body hardened from battle. "Salve," he said in his thick Latin tongue, and China felt something electric.
"I want to know more about you," Rome said, the first time they made love, hands roaming his body curiously, longingly. They were rough and callused, China thought, not the hands of a noble but hands meant to hold a sword. He had never been touched like that before, and the sensation of chafed hands on his lilysoft skin made him sigh. Rome was young but experienced, with a strength and endurance more pleasurable than he could have imagined.
China had been a land of agriculture and artisanship, but the role of lover was entirely new to him. He showed Rome his gardens and canals shyly, led him through his bamboo groves and great rivers and frontier walls. "You," declared Rome, "are a strange and beautiful place."
He had expected them to be lovers for thousands of years, but as China was to find out, not everyone was blessed with a longevity like his. The next time Rome visited, he seemed tired and drawn, his face lacking the flush of good color it had borne before. "Are you worried, my friend?" Rome asked with a laugh. "Don't be!" – but China thought he seemed a little less than sincere, and he couldn't help but notice, when they made love, that the scars on Rome's back were deeper than before, an angry sort of red that surely was not healthy.
On Rome's third visit, he walked with a limp, his shoulders bent beneath some great burden he refused to share. "Things are complicated, my little lily," he murmured when pressed, but that was all. As China watched him seat himself heavily, more like an old man than a great empire, he realized with a shock that the vast empire was horribly, horribly mortal.
"I'm tougher than you think," Rome said when he left; he had brought gifts of amber and mother-of-pearl, but insisted he had to return home soon – things to attend to. "It'll take more than a few barbarians to bring old Rome down!"
China watched him sail away with mingled hope and sorrow: hope that he would return again, bearing his usual gifts and easy smile, and sorrow because deep in his heart, he knew he would not.
He didn't.