Disclaimer: No copyright infringement intended.
Warnings: Minor violence, minor adult content, slash.
Description: A story about Sun Ce and Zhou Yu's past – will eventually be Zhou Yu x Sun Ce, with other pairings mentioned on the side (LM/XQ, DQ/LX, and GN/SSX)
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Secession – Part 2
Zhou Yu's expression had gone sad again. "He never gave it up. He chased it until the very end. Which is why… afterward… I vowed not to give it up either. He believed in his cause with so much passion and so much integrity; nothing could deter him, nothing could slow him down. And I think it was that passion that first changed my mind… that first made me soften toward him. And, eventually, that made me love him."
Chen Hao's eyes went wide as wagon wheels. Wait – what???
He choked a little on his surprise. Surely Zhou Yu meant… love like brothers, love like best friends… the look on the general's face was not reassuring. It was almost gentle, which scared Chen Hao simply because it was not an expression he was accustomed to seeing on Zhou Yu's stony countenance.
Zhou Yu was quiet for a long time after this pronouncement, and Chen Hao wondered idly whether he'd died. He wasn't sure what to do with himself – he was positive that the general had all but forgotten he had a listener at all. Zhou Yu was simply not the kind of person who would go around announcing his affection for people, particularly not to strangers.
Which meant, as Chen Hao had presumed some time ago, that the officer was primarily talking to himself. Or, rather, not to himself – but to someone far beyond them… someone in the sky Zhou Yu kept his eyes fixed on perpetually. Most likely, the soldier realized with a start, he was talking to Sun Ce. And he, Chen Hao, was just the unfortunate soldier in the grasp of a dying man with a long but oddly captivating story to tell.
So Chen Hao sat stone still, and Zhou Yu stared up at the canopy of the wagon with unblinking eyes. After what seemed like eternity, he gave a deep sigh. Then he gingerly raised a hand and rubbed at his forehead, as though soothing a headache. Chen Hao didn't dare breathe, lest he remind the man of his presence. Despite where the story seemed to be going, he needed to hear it – he needed to get to the end. He needed to know.
Finally, Zhou Yu's lips cracked open and he started speaking again. "It went on like that for a long time. We squabbled back and forth, we fought, we bruised each other's flesh and egos. We drove the entire household up the wall. We couldn't help it. We were naturally repellant. I was dark, he was light - I was serious, he was playful. I hated noise and he couldn't stand silence. I found peace in solitude, he loved being around people. And so we clashed. Until finally, one day, we went our separate ways and didn't even speak to each other for three years.
"During that point, his father came back regularly from the campaigns against minor outlying tribes and rebel factions – they couldn't go home for good yet, but Sun Jian was enough of a diversion to keep Sun Ce busy and give us good reason to be apart. I kept to my studies and my training, and he played with his siblings and his father – Sun Quan was his favorite target, being only four. It was a good system. But I'll admit that even in those years, he was never far from my mind – I couldn't seem to make him stop tormenting me. Every time I turned around I would catch a glimpse of him, and he stayed on my mind for hours, making me just as angry as he had when we'd actively argued together. It bothered me.
"From when I was twelve to my fifteenth birthday, I went back to being a recluse. I stayed up in my room or in the quiet quarters of the house, and read for hours or practiced my strategy. I was getting better – I could even outwit Sun Jian now, when we very rarely played strategy games like xiangqi together. He was impressed with my skill – which made Sun Ce a little jealous, I think. But he had more love than he could ever want from his father, so I don't think it really grated him.
"My own father I saw only during lessons, which was fine by me – he kept bringing up the infernal business of finding me a wife. My argument was that there was no sense in taking a wife in my late childhood with no way to support her, and my mother agreed with me, thankfully. But I knew he would not be deterred for long. I set about figuring out how to get away from home as soon as possible. My best option was to become an officer in someone's army – Sun Jian had offered me a position, but I had quickly declined. I did not want to spend years of my life near his abomination of a son."
Zhou Yu laughed breathlessly. Chen Hao thought that might have been funny if it weren't for the gray pallor stealing over general's features.
"So, I… I didn't know what my other choices were, at the time. But I had a few years to make a decision. I concerned myself with it more than I should have, I suppose, but not much all the same. I was content going about my daily business and ignoring the world at large. Sun Ce had essentially disappeared from my life, and everything was going along with a proper semblance of order. I couldn't get him out of my head, but as long as I didn't have to interact with him it hardly mattered."
Zhou Yu glared at the canopy, as though reliving an unhappy memory. Chen Hao blinked. "As I said, we ignored each other for three years, until my fifteenth birthday. That was the year 190, and Sun Jian had left a few weeks prior on another campaign – this one against Dong Zhuo, who had risen up as a dictator to the north and taken the young emperor captive – we didn't know at the time that the child ruler was already dead.
"Sun Ce had been pouting a good deal of the time and staying out of my way – he and his father were very close, and he always missed Sun Jian terribly when he was away on tours of duty – and after three years off, I was handling our infrequent meetings much better. We still argued, but it was more in the spirit of always having argued than for any real malice. My pessimism and realism still drove him up the walls, and his erratic and unpredictable behavior could annoy me faster than anything else, but we'd lost our iron edge of childhood rivalry.
"Those first few weeks of winter were difficult for my family. First Xan, who was only nine, and then the seven-year-old Sun Quan fell ill with colds. My mother and Lady Wu were kept busy taking care of them, which put the rest of the household on edge. To make matters worse, a strong wind had ripped roofing tiles off of part of the sleeping quarter section of the main house. Thankfully, those rooms were mainly unused, although Sun Quan did have to move into Qi and Xan's shared bedroom. We moved all of the furniture out of the damaged rooms and put layers of reeds down to protect the floors during the winter, but they were completely unusable. At the time, it didn't matter a bit, although… although Sun Ce and I did form a small bond during that escapade. I'd forgotten…"
His eyes went blank as he tried to remember the details. Chen Hao waited in silence, shifting his hand ever so slightly to put more pressure on the wound. After a moment, Zhou Yu smiled tightly and nodded.
"I remember. We were moving one of the sleeping couches out of the room – my father was a great supporter of those, although I preferred the full beds myself. My father had gone off with a particular vase he wanted to ask my mother about, and we were stuck moving the thing… it was surprisingly heavy," he murmured, hands unconsciously twitching at the memory of carrying the heavy load.
"We got one of the legs caught on the doorframe. Ce pulled – I tried to tell him not to, but I wasn't quick enough. He lost his balance and lurched, causing me to do the same. We tipped and fell over, with the couch on top of us." His mouth turned up in a tiny smile. "I remember lying there under that damn thing… I didn't want to get up. It seemed like too much effort to move. I had decided to just lie there and die when I heard a groan from the other side.
"I'd forgotten about Sun Ce. And at his groan… I don't know what happened to me. I was up in an instant, pushing the couch off with a strength I certainly didn't have. I got it up in a minute… looking at Ce lying there on the floor was like a shot of panic directly to the heart. He was surprised, I remember, when I helped him up and asked if he was all right. His eyes were so wide…"
Chen Hao was surprised at Zhou Yu's chuckle. "And he said yes. So we hauled the couch the rest of the way to the storage room. But after that – at least for a little while – we weren't quite so sharp with each other. I think Ce was more confused then anything else, and I couldn't get that feeling out of my mind – that feeling I got from seeing him lying there on the ground, unmoving…" The general shook his head again. His face went dark, and Chen Hao could almost see the terrible memories flitting across his pale skin – paler in the failing, wet light.
Chen Hao took advantage of the break to glance outside. The rain was still coming down steadily. He couldn't tell where they were – everything was gray and indistinct in the drizzle and fog – but they were still moving along at a fair pace, which was the best he could hope for, he supposed. He could see the two soldiers who'd been assigned as drivers chatting up front, but between the noise of the rain and Zhou Yu's heavy breathing he couldn't hear what they were saying. It took him a moment to realize that this meant they couldn't hear the general either – a fact of which he was glad. Beyond the matter of rumors and gossip, there was simply the fact that it made Chen Hao feel special to know he was the only one who had ever, and would ever, hear this story.
Caught up in his thoughts, the soldier was mildly surprised when Zhou Yu resumed his story. "But that's… not really important. As I said, everything was going all right until the night of my fifteenth birthday. The celebration was not particularly eventful at first. We were hosting a few revered guests – unexpected, as usual – so I had been seated beside Sun Ce, something uncommon given our disagreements. When we were younger and seated together, he would poke me with his chopsticks or flick vegetables at me."
The general shook his head a little, a slight smile touching his lips before it ghosted away beneath the ream of the story. "But that night – perhaps because of our uncertain position with each other – he sat quietly and spoke primarily to Shang Xiang, who was by that point a cheerful, vivacious girl of eleven…"
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"Are you even listening to me, Ce?" Shang Xiang gave him a stern look she had copied from Lady Cai, her auburn hair bouncing around her shoulders. Sun Ce ignored the question and picked up a shrimp-like creature by its red tail.
"What do you suppose this is, anyway?" he wondered aloud. Zhou Yu deigned not to answer, and Shang Xiang merely frowned.
"Brother! I'm telling you a story!" she protested. Sun Ce merely blinked at her through the fringe of bangs that were in serious need of trimming.
"No, but seriously. What is this thing? Do you eat it? And how?"
"Don't try it," Zhou Yu said quietly, eliciting the full attention of the two Sun children despite his low tone. "You won't like it." He himself had carefully segregated the dreaded, spicy creatures to one side of his plate and was eating around them. Qi and Xan, a few seats down, had done the same. Anyone who'd lived in the Zhou household for a long time knew not to touch them.
But Sun Ce was intrinsically curious. "What do they taste like?" he wanted to know.
"Bad," was Xan's efficient answer. The timid boy was carefully slipping them into his napkin for disposal at a later time. Qi had dropped most of his to the dog, and Zhou Yu's were cleverly disguised amid the roughage of the vegetables. Shang Xiang and Ce examined the boys' plates with interest. Then Shang Xiang began putting hers into the pocket of her robe, following their example in waiting for a moment when no one was watching to dispose of them.
Sun Ce was not as bright as his sister, and considerably more adventurous. He stared hard at the creature he still held in his merciless chopsticks. "It can't be that bad," he ventured, raising the morsel to his lips.
"Don't!" Xan warned, voice pitching higher in panic, but Ce refused to heed. In moments, he had the thing in his mouth and was chewing thoughtfully. Then his eyes went very wide, and he started to cough and choke, body heaving in convulsions. The children all stared at him, terrified, until Zhou Yu reached out and smacked him hard on the back. He succeeded in dislodging the shrimp, but Sun Ce gave one last cough and the detestable organism went sailing through the air, only to land with a bright splash in the water glass of the highest-seated visitor.
Shang Xiang's hands flew to her mouth. Xan and Qi exchanged worried glances. Sun Quan started to cry. Zhou Yu put his head in his hands. And Sun Ce started to laugh – a nervous, halting laugh that came out too loud and drew the attention of everyone in the room. At their looks, he froze motionless, mouth hanging open in an outrageous grin.
No one had noticed the shrimp yet, but it was only a matter of time. Zhou Yu was sure he had never been more embarrassed in his life. He gave Sun Ce a strong glare through his fingers. Moron, his eyes shouted, but Sun Ce wasn't looking at him. He was staring uneasily at the creature in the water glass. Lady Cai's eyes narrowed as she followed his gaze – then they shot wide open, and she snatched the water glass from the table just as the emissary finished a conversation with his neighbor and reached for a drink.
Their eyes met for a moment, but Lady Cai whisked the glass upward before her guest could protest. Her gaze screamed murder as she glanced over and caught Sun Ce's terrified expression, but her sweet smile stayed firmly in place. To prevent any awkward questions, she turned and bowed to the emissary and his friends, careful to keep the glass concealed in her long sleeves. "A toast!" she proposed, raising the stolen glass again. "To good friends and company, and to my dear son's birthday."
It wasn't fair. It was Sun Ce's fault – why did he have to be punished? Now everyone in the room was looking at him and applauding, and here he was seated next to the crying Sun Quan and Sun Ce with his idiotic grin still in place. It was all he could do to bow his head respectfully at his mother's toast, but he felt that, seated amongst the peanut gallery as he was, there was no way he was giving these people a good impression of himself. By the time the toast was over, his mother had stolen the glass away permanently and replaced it before the emissary had time to miss it. Everyone continued talking jovially, although each of the children gave Sun Ce a stern glare when he next looked their way. Zhou Yu sighed and rubbed his forehead, willing his headache away. At least things couldn't get any worse…
With time and maturity, Zhou Yu would learn to never use absolutes. Only about ten minutes later, it did get worse – significantly worse. Zhou Fan had caught sight of the children drooping over their plates, and had suggested with a smile that perhaps it was time for them all to retire. He turned to his guests and apologized for having to put them up in the main sitting room for the night, but what with the damaged roof there were simply no guest rooms available. The three men exchanged glances.
"Actually, Zhou Fan… we have a favor to ask of you. We are currently being hunted by the forces of that despicable Dong Zhuo, and we were hoping to seek sanctuary in your house for a few weeks…" The speaker bowed low, understanding that he was putting his host under a good deal of pressure. Zhou Fan frowned in thought, and Zhou Yu did the same. There was no way they could put such dignified guests in the sitting room for weeks – even one night was a stretch. But there were no other rooms open…
Then Zhou Fan brightened and snapped his fingers. "You know, my dear friend, I do have a room to put you in, where you are welcome to stay for as long as you like – provided you don't mind sharing with each other?" The men all consented eagerly. Zhou Yu's eyes narrowed. There weren't any open rooms. What was his father planning?
Zhou Fan rose from the table, gathering his long robe about him. "Allow me to go and prepare the room for you – perhaps Sun Shang Xiang would be kind enough to dance for you?" He eyed the girl with a smile, which she returned forcibly as she rose and bowed deeply to the guests. Then he made for the exit, pausing just at the door. "Yu, Sun Ce – why don't you help me with this."
Zhou Yu exchanged a suspicious look with Sun Ce, and they both followed Zhou Fan into the corridor. He walked a few paces, then stopped and turned to face them. The sound of the lute filtered through the door and floated in the darkness hiding his expression. "Sun Ce… I'm going to have to ask a favor of you. I'm afraid I need to put our guests in your room for the next few weeks."
Sun Ce scowled, but there was nothing he could do - so after complaining mildly under his breath for a moment, he nodded. Zhou Yu frowned at his father. He'd figured it would be something like that. It wasn't a brilliant solution, but it was probably the best they had. But that left the question of where Sun Ce would sleep. Somehow, Zhou Yu doubted his father would give Sun Jian's son the sitting room either.
"You'll be staying in Yu's room until they leave." Both boys felt their jaws drop, and identical expressions of shock and horror came over their faces.
"No!" Zhou Yu argued, eyes dark. Sun Ce shook his head furiously.
"I'd rather sleep on the roof!" he shouted. Zhou Fan clapped a hand over his furious mouth to keep him from disturbing the performance in the other room.
"Quiet," he hissed, giving them both a stern look. "No one is sleeping on the roof. You are going to get along just fine." His eyes left no room for arguing, although Sun Ce surely would have tried if his mouth had not been clamped. "Now help me move another bed in there," he commanded, straightening up and releasing Sun Ce, whose face was contorted in such a vigorous scowl that it looked like he'd never smile again.
"There isn't room," Zhou Yu announced icily. It wasn't a very big room – there certainly wouldn't be room for another bed with his own bed and desk already taking up most of the space.
"There's room," Zhou Fan assured him, already moving toward the room where they kept the extra furniture. The two boys followed in stony, furious silence. It took some time to maneuver two extra beds into Sun Ce's old room and carry his belongings out, and when they finally got the second bed into Zhou Yu's room Zhou Fan was forced to admit that it didn't fit very well after all. Both boys hoped this would prompt another solution, but Zhou Fan just shoved the second bed against Zhou Yu's – so close that they were touching at the side – and muscled it up against the wall. Zhou Yu scowled. His thin mattress had become one enormous bed – a bed he had to share.
Zhou Fan clapped his hands tiredly. "Good. Perfect. Now, Sun Ce, move your things in and get settled. You two should go to bed soon, even though I'm sure you'll want to stay up and talk." He smiled as though the children beside him were grinning up at him instead of giving him two distinct varieties of death glare. "Goodnight."
With that, Zhou Fan was gone, turning on heel and disappearing out the bedroom door with a speed that suggested either an unusual haste to return to his guests or some inkling how displeased he had actually made the two youths with his unyielding solution. As the paper door slid closed behind his heel, Zhou Yu ground his teeth together and felt his eyes narrowing in a useless glower, gaze burning into the wall beside the exit in place of his father's features.
Finally there was nothing to do but turn to his new roommate, and the young Zhou heir did so reluctantly, watching Sun Ce with an open glare. Sun Ce glared back. Anger flashed like lightning between them. Then Zhou Yu scowled and looked away, walking to stand at the window and stare into the chilly night. He could hear Sun Ce rummaging in his things, presumably polluting the already limited space with his junk.
Zhou Yu was sure he'd never been so unhappy. How dare his father! This room was his sanctuary – his private hide-away from everyone else. And if he had to share, why did it have to be with Sun Ce, of all the people in the world… he wanted to throw something.
But mature fifteen-year-olds did not throw temper tantrums. No. Which explained why Sun Ce was chucking what sounded like bricks against the wall. Zhou Yu turned to see the boy hurling a wide variety of knick-knacks and useless items into the closet. The room, which had always been immaculately clean, had been covered in mere minutes by all manner of clothing, paper, and garbage.
"Stop making a mess," he spat. Sun Ce turned to look at him, frown still firmly in place.
"It's not a mess," he retorted, folding his arms across his chest. "It's creatively cluttered." Zhou Yu's scowl deepened, but Sun Ce ignored him and continued unpacking.
Zhou Yu sat down heavily on his bed. These were going to be the most awful months of his life, surely – there was nowhere he could go to get away from Sun Ce now. The garden was far too cold, and the damaged roof tiles had ruined all the undiscovered corners of the house. He had been planning to spend most of the winter in his room, but now where could he go? It seemed as though the entire world had become a noisy, messy rubbish heap with hordes of people at every turn. How were they ever going to get through this?
Sun Ce had finished unpacking and seated himself on the end of his own cot. When Zhou Yu turned to look at him, he was watching his new roommate with a curious expression.
"What?" the dark youth asked, his voice like venom. Sun Ce shrugged, the tangled strands of his hair falling thoughtlessly over his shoulders.
"I don't know. You wanna play a game or something?"
Zhou Yu's face contorted. Circumstances or not, the last thing he wanted was to be friends with this hellion, regardless of the new opportunity for reconciliation that Sun Ce was apparently pursuing. The Zhou prodigy's frown deepened, and he glowered at his unwanted roommate beneath the fringe of his bangs, shoulders tense with disapproval.
"Play a game?" His glare intensified, meeting the open, unguarded amber across from him with the force of a lightning strike. "The last thing I want to do is willfully spend a minute in your company, and I'm sorry there's nothing I can do to prevent the hours of hell I'm going to have to put up with this winter."
The words came out harsher than he'd intended, but he meant them all the same, frustration and annoyance that were mostly directed at his father finding release in the familiar conflict of his eternal rival. Sun Ce's expression, which had been amenable with his attempt at offering the olive branch, snapped into shadow as anger fell across his countenance again.
"Well fine, you jerk! Not like I want to be here either! I hope you choke on your bad attitude and die!" With that, he leapt up and ran out of the room, slamming the door behind him.
Zhou Yu collapsed backward onto his bed, hair falling around him like water. It wasn't fair. Everything had been going so well… and now here he was, locked in a small room with Sun Ce, for a completely unspecified length of time. Things could not get any worse.
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Chen Hao wanted to laugh, but he couldn't. Their constant bickering wasn't actually funny unless you knew they ended up as best friends. And even if he had thought Zhou Yu would appreciate being laughed at – which seemed extremely unlikely given the serious nature of the general's character – the situation was far too serious, underneath the ironic humor of the story, to warrant laughter. So he kept quiet and watched the wind playing with tendrils of hair around his commander's face, silent as the afternoon creeping away above them.
Zhou Yu shifted in his place against the floorboards and frowned a little, his expression contorting with the memory of earlier times. "I don't need to tell you it was one of my father's stupider ideas. Any friendship Sun Ce and I had been cultivating was instantly dismantled. Childish though it was, we did everything possible to irritate each other. I would woke up early and open the shutters so that he couldn't sleep late – he would be as loud as humanly possible whenever the opportunity presented itself."
The general shook his head, a tiny smile flitting across his lips before it vanished again in the darkness of his expression. "We couldn't fight outright, because my mother disapproved, and Sun Ce was already on her bad side for the shrimp incident – but we took stabs at each other whenever we could manage it. We each slept on the far side of our beds – he against the wall, and I mere inches from the floor – lest we roll at night and touch each other on accident. I don't think either of us got much sleep those first two weeks."
Zhou Yu became quiet once more, the darkness of the wagon playing through his obsidian eyes, and at last Chen Hao couldn't help prompting him, the silence growing too loud in his ears. "And then?" he asked softly, shifting to let the leg he'd been sitting on and which had subsequently fallen asleep resume blood flow. Zhou Yu gave a barely perceptible grimace.
"And then the impossible happened. Sun Ce got sick."
Chen Hao blinked, surprised by the simplicity of his general's answer. That wasn't really something he considered impossible, especially not after hearing how recklessly the King of Wu had apparently behaved in his younger days. As though guessing his train of thought, Zhou Yu shook his head in a smooth arc, his gaze trailing across the canvas of the roof as though he could see the distant past reflected above him.
"In all six years I'd known him, he'd never even had a cough – he was the healthiest of all of us, despite doing plenty of foolish things and constantly staying up too late or playing too long in the snow. All I can think is that he had some kind of natural immunity to disease – or perhaps he just hated to be forced into relaxation and hours of doing nothing, and stayed well by sheer force of will. This time, though, there was no denying it – he was ill."
Chen Hao repositioned himself against the side of the wagon, and Zhou Yu smiled a little, the vacant expression seeming so unnatural on his stern features that his subordinate almost couldn't help favoring his frown instead.
"It was his own fault. We'd had a bit of a warm spell, and Sun Quan, who had just gotten over his cold, was playing with Ce outside. I was reading nearby – not by choice, mind you. My mother instructed that I keep an eye on them both while they played… in the beginning, I can't even describe how annoyed it made me to be considered responsible for Sun Ce. But I reluctantly did as I was told, and so I watched them between the leaves of my study materials."
Chen Hao wondered how long it had taken before being responsible for Sun Ce became a privilege rather than a chore in Zhou Yu's mind – how long it had taken before he wanted to keep that responsibility. But he didn't ask, and the general was caught up in his train of thought now, pushing on without a glance to his silent audience.
"They were having a mock battle down by the frozen pond – Sun Ce on his knees to make the game fairer for Sun Quan, though he could have let the boy win once in a while – and I have to admit I was watching them out of the corner of my eye, distracted by their open affection. I still looked after Xan somewhat, as he was only nine, but Qi had lost his respect for me somewhere between ten and thirteen, and we did not get along."
The commander's exhalation was halfway between a laugh and a sigh, and it teased the corners of his lips into a smile that contained only a hint of cynical amusement. "I haven't seen him in years, but we did not part on good terms – if we ever meet again, in the next stage, it will be with our swords at each other's throats."
His harsh tone surprised Chen Hao, who started a little in his seat and blinked at his stern general through the waning light. Zhou Yu, whose face had stolen into shadow, shook his head again.
"But that isn't important now. Where was I… oh… yes. I was watching them play. And then, in the dead of winter, a frog hopped out of the rushes. It was the oddest thing, and none of us could keep from staring. Sun Quan started screeching, in delight I assume – he had quite a pair of lungs as a child." The general's face cracked into a smile, the expression lighting his face like a lonely sunbeam through the gray drizzle. "He was always screaming about something."
Chen Hao had never met Sun Quan personally, but he had seen him on several occasions during his training around Han Ni Castle, and the Lord of Wu had always struck him as an intensely powerful man, fully confident and hard as stone despite his sea-gray eyes. It was hard to imagine that dignified man screaming about a frog.
"He wanted to play with it," Zhou Yu continued, one hand rising to brush at his disheveled bangs. "It hopped out onto the ice of the pond and looked back at us, as though daring us to follow it. Sun Quan tried, but it was too dangerous, and I wouldn't let him go. He looked ready to cry until Sun Ce promised to get it. I decided that if Sun Ce fell through the ice, it would be his own fault, as he was old enough to know better, so I kept hold of Sun Quan's hand and we watched Sun Ce approach the wary creature."
Chen Hao couldn't help smiling at the mental picture that was shining so clearly through the fabric of time. There was young Sun Quan, dressed in too-long robes and eyes full of tears, holding onto the hand of fifteen-year-old Zhou Yu, whose hair bobbed in a ponytail hanging just to his shoulders. Beside them, Sun Ce, shaggy hair tied briskly back at his neck, was stepping cautiously onto the ice after a frog, his tongue protruding from one corner of his mouth in serious concentration. They seemed like the ideal childhood snapshot, whatever the results of the misadventure.
"He did catch it," Zhou Yu remarked softly, amusement underwriting the neutrality of his tone. "But he had to dive for it, and the ice broke underneath him. Sun Quan screamed, and I couldn't help the way my heart leapt into my throat. He came out covered in pond scum and dripping wet, with the brightest smile I'd ever seen and the frog wriggling in his triumphant hands. Sun Quan was delighted and frightened of the frog all at the same time, and he and Sun Ce played with it for the rest of the afternoon until the sun went down and we had to go inside.
"I remember watching him in wonder. He was always catching me off guard with the things he did… I couldn't predict his actions from one moment to the next. But it was in moments like that when I had to admit that his laughter and his willingness to make people happy were infectious. Whether you liked him or not, Sun Ce got into your heart – he became a part of you that there was no discarding. He became important to everyone who met him. He was so alive that the people he touched became alive, too, sharing that spark, reflecting it like a mirror…"
His voice trailed off, losing coherency as he cleared his throat and the soft wind whisked through the open back of the wagon once again. Chen Hao could almost see Sun Ce's spark shining in Zhou Yu's face and along his shivering skin, lighting the obsidian eyes that were narrowed in concentration as words tumbled from his lips again.
"And then he became ill. It was likely the cold water combined with a weak immune system from spending too much time with Quan... he lay in his bed and moaned all morning the day after, so I went to inform my parents of the situation. I was hoping they would remove him to Lady Wu and Shang Xiang's room in order that his own family could care for him and I could get my room back. Instead, my mother looked me straight in the eye and told me the cruelest thing I'd heard to that point of my young life."
"What was that?" Chen Hao's voice was unintentionally hushed, snagging as it emerged from his throat in honest curiosity.
Zhou Yu coughed into a vague chuckle. "She said I'd be taking care of him myself."
End Chapter 3
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A note for Winds of Eternity: Congrats on being able to find any fanfics for this pairing – I can't. But as for why they don't get along in childhood… as the saying goes, opposites attract, and mostly I believe this is true. But when you're a kid, your opposite just annoys the hell out of you. I felt it was more realistic for them to be rivals as children then to get along well.