Author's Note: Hello everyone! I know this chapter is kind of short, but I'm pretty proud of it. If you haven't yet noticed, Mulan is suffering from PTSD, and this chapter dives a little deeper into how hard life after the war is for her. I hope you enjoy! Please leave a review!

WARNING: This chapter mentions/alludes to self harm/suicide. I understand this is a serious subject which may make some people uncomfortable, so I am putting a warning up just so that you know what to expect.

Chapter Fifty Five: Trying

"NO!" I scream. I am thrashing around, but some sort of cloth keeps catching on my limbs.

"NO!" I scream again, thrashing blindly to get whatever is wrapped around me off. Suddenly, I feel arms wrapping around me. I scream even louder, thrash even harder.

"Mulan, it's alright. Open your eyes."

That voice is familiar, but I can't place it, not right now. It does suddenly occur to me, however, that my eyes are indeed closed. Opening them slowly, I see Father staring back at me. It takes me a moment to realize it is his arms wrapped around me, holding my trembling body. The cloth that was trapping me is my blanket. Still, my breath doesn't slow. The shaking doesn't stop. The tears continue to flow.

"It's okay, Mulan. You're safe."

His words barely register in my head. They do nothing to calm me. My nightclothes stick to me, wet with sweat. My sheets are the same way. It's dark, the dead of night. A candle sits on my nightstand, lit. The dancing flame brings me back to my nightmare. Meixiu, burning.

I pull my knees up to my chest, burying my face in them, sobbing. I feel a hand on my back.

"Mulan, it's okay. It's over," Father reassures me gently.

"No," I sob. "It's not. It never will be. She's dead." My sobs continue, racking my body.

"Please, Mulan," Father whispers gently. "Who is she?"

"I can't," I cry. I repeat the phrase again and again, rocking a little. Father wraps his arms around me again, and this time I don't fight him, instead collapse into him, crying.

"Breathe," he instructs me quietly, rubbing my back.

I try. I fail. Story of my life. She's dead because I couldn't save her. I should have saved her. She needed me, and I was nowhere to be found.

Breakfast is quiet, as most have been since I returned. I know I look awful; I saw the dark circles under my eyes in the mirror this morning. They grow more apparent each day.

I can't get Meixiu out of my head. I've dreamt about her every night for a month straight, and it seems that each time she appears in my nightmares, the harder it is to forget her. For a moment, I flashback, and I am standing in the snow, her charred body on the ground, the burnt village around us smoking, her doll laying nearby.

A hand on my shoulder brings me back to the present. I flinch involuntarily away from the touch, a startled sound escaping my lips. Father lowers his hand, and I notice everyone else looking at me.

"Did I miss something?" I ask quietly.

"You looked like you were somewhere else," Grandma answers.

I look away, down at my untouched breakfast.

"Are you okay, Mulan?" Father asks, looking concerned.

"I'm fine," I whisper. I don't even have to think about the words. Saying them is like an instinct now.

"You're not eating," Mother points out.

"I'm not hungry," I state halfheartedly. I can tell by the looks on their faces that they don't believe me. It's almost true though. Really, I'm thinking of Meixiu so much, so much so that I can almost smell the burnt flesh, that I'm afraid one bite of food will be enough to make me vomit.

Father says something about me needing to eat. I don't really hear it. I just give the same response.

"I'm not hungry." I'm too tired to say much more. Too tired to sit here and pretend to keep things together. "May I be excused please?"

Father finishes his last bite of breakfast, wipes his mouth, and sets his chopsticks down. He nods before standing up himself. "Come with me," he tells me, grabbing his cane and heading for the door. This can't be good, but I'm just too tired to bring myself to care.

As expected, Father leads me to the bench underneath the magnolia tree. I slump down beside him. I stare at the ground.

"Mulan, you need to tell me what's wrong," Father tells me gently.

The act is over. He knows something is wrong. I haven't exactly done a great job at pretending everything is fine the last few days, though. Despite this, denial is the first thing that comes to my lips.

"I'm fine."

Damn those words. So small, yet such a big lie. So easy to say, so natural to say, so wrong.

"Please don't lie," Father begs of me quietly.

I don't respond.

"It's the nightmares, isn't it?"

More silence on my part.

Father reaches out, taking my chin gently between his fingers, turning my head so that I face him. Our eyes lock for a moment before I quickly look away.

"I want to help you, Mulan."

"You can't," I state bitterly.

"You don't know that," he tells me. "Please, Mulan. I know it's hard, but please tell me what you see in your nightmares. Talking about them will help."

If this situation wasn't so depressing, if I wasn't so tired, I might have laughed bitterly at that. I talked to Shang before I came home, not about the nightmares I have of him, but the actual event that caused them. Even so, his face invades my dreams now and again, a sword held high over my head, swooping down to end me.

"It's nothing," I state, looking at the ground again.

Usually, Father would back off now, give me some space. When Mother asks how his talk with me went, he would tell her I need more time. However, this time, he continues.

"You wake up screaming about a girl, a girl who you state has died. Who is she?"

My lips are set to deny any such girl, say that it is all a figment of my twisted imagination. I'm so tired, though. Too tired to keep stating lies no one will ever believe.

"A little girl," I whisper so quietly it is barely audible. "I met her during the war. She died."

"How?" Father whispers, pain evident on his face.

With a sigh, I tell him the whole story. I tell him how I met Meixiu, revealed my identity to her. How I found her body months later, in the remnants of the burnt village. I go through the sights and smells of that village in gruesome detail, tears streaming my face the whole time. Then, I tell of my nightmare, once again with maybe too much detail for a sane person to include. When I am done, I fold into myself with a sob.

"I should have been there," is all I can manage.

"It's not your fault, Mulan," Father tells me, putting a hand on my shoulder.

"It feels like it is."

"I know," he states, pulling me close. "Sometimes, something upsets us so much, our minds have a way of twisting fact into fiction, making it seem like we did something incorrectly, that we could have changed things." He sighs. "The truth is, Mulan, there was nothing you could have done that would have changed Meixiu's fate."

The name sounds wrong spoken aloud. For so long, Meixiu lived only in my mind. The logical part of me knows that Father is right, but the other part insists differently. It is my own failings that cost her her life.

"You don't understand," I whisper, feeling defeated. Tears roll down my cheeks, but I make no move to wipe them away. "No matter how much you try to reason with me, you aren't going to be able to convince me otherwise. I can't even convince myself, even though you're right."

I stop to let a long pent-up sob escape, wrapping my arms around my chest so tightly it hurts, resting my elbows on my legs.

"I can't reason with myself in real life, let alone in the nightmare. I just keep running. The nightmare keeps coming." I am crying in earnest now, my voice breaking every other word. "I'm so tired." I sob the simple fact. "I can't take it, Father. Something has got to give, and I'm afraid it's going to be me. I'm afraid I'm going to do something I'm going to regret."

The words are frightening to say aloud as if doing so makes them more solid, more real.

"What do you mean by that, Mulan?" Father whispers fearfully.

I look down at my arms resting on my lap. The sleeve of my tunic is pulled up just the tiniest bit, and on my exposed left wrist, small white scars can be seen, so faded you wouldn't know they were there unless you were looking for them. When I had put them there, at thirteen years old, I was careful to bring just the pain I deserved for being such a failure. But now, with all that is going on, if I started this habit again, would it be just the pain I would be looking for, or would I press harder and hope for a final reprieve from my problems? Honestly, stopping the first time, by myself nonetheless, was hard enough. I doubt in the desperate state I am in now I would be able to control myself.

"Mulan?" Father whispers again when I don't answer him.

"I don't know," I tell him, sighing.

More lies.

Father wraps his arms around me, pulling me into a strong embrace. I rest my head on his chest.

"Mulan, please never forget how much I love you. I want to help you feel better. If you ever want to talk I promise to listen. If you can't talk to me about it, talk to one of your friends. Someone, Mulan. Please."

"I'll try," I whisper.

I lay in bed, looking up at the ceiling. I'm exhausted, but I'm not quite ready to go back to the nightmares. My conversation with Father from this morning plays itself over and over in my mind. I try to make his kind, wise words soothe me, the way they would have before. My whole body feels numb though. Turning onto my side, I slip my hand under my pillow. I feel the cold metal of the pocket knife Heng gave me what feels like forever ago. It calls to me, begging to be used for its original purpose: a way out. It disgusts me that I consider it for a moment.

I can't do it though. I know I can't. I lived through a war, damn it! I've never thrown a fight in my life, and I don't plan on starting now. I need to stay, I need to try, for Father. He wants me here, even though I walk through most days like a ghost. Even though I wake up screaming, disrupting his sleep nightly. Even though I can't listen to reason about Meixiu's death. Even though I lie constantly, fake and pretend my way through each day in an effort to keep things as together as I can.

He wants me, despite everything that clearly isn't quite right about me. I need to try for him.

I have already fought one war for him, why not one more?