Last Night

This is dedicated to Ben-sen-chan and my Inu-chan and Jenni and Jen and Kwan and all my reviewers and everyone who will review me in future and LOOK BEN NO YAOI!

It's just short and sweet, leading up to a bit of a tender moment between Snow and Broken Sword. I got the idea for this while watching the film. There are no way enough Hero fics out there.

Disclaimer: They all belong to their owners. I am not one of them. Sniff.

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"As long as you live, you'll prevent him from killing the king of Qin!" spat Snow mockingly. "Spare me! I can't see why you think so much of him. He's just a ruthless killer who deserves to die like all the rest."

Broken Sword didn't move. "I've already explained myself to you, so please let it go," he said patiently.

She glared at him, every bit as cold as her name. He couldn't help but admire the proud lines of her face, the exquisite eyelashes that served to make her face as alluring or ice-deadly as she wished. Even now, he desired her. "I don't believe it," she flashed. "I refuse to believe it! You're just jealous because the nameless warrior will succeed where you failed. If that is the case," she added, with a curl of her lip, "you should have tried harder when you had the chance. Did you really believe that you were the only one who could carry it out?"

He flinched inadvertently as she launched arrow after arrow at him, each one hitting the mark. "I'm sorry you don't believe me," he said finally, his voice quiet and almost sad. "I can't convince you, can I? I must go; I have business to attend to." With a flourish of his simple white robe, he exited, swiftly and steadily.

For anything else, any other cause, he would have given in to her, his proud, beautiful falcon of a lover who, even though she lashed out to hurt him again and again, seemingly unaware of her own strength, he loved with all of his soul. But not this time. And it was tearing him apart. "He is the only one who can unite our nation," he had tried to explain to her, but she couldn't see that far. All she could see was a wasted opportunity, an act of cowardice, as he let the man go amid fluttering jade-green banners. She didn't understand his gentle reasoning.

Broken Sword strode through corridors and rooms, all simple clean wood and minimualist furniture, a long desk here or there, maybe a wall hanging in red or black, but little else. To an outsider they would have looked merely spartan, but to Broken Sword and Snow and all the other students at the calligraphy school, they were full of warmth and character, and the light that filtered through the thin wood panels shone a tan glow on everything, and at night the lamplight and candlelight cast their world into autumn. He sighed to release his inner worries and tension.

He couldn't worry. There was work to be done, a wall hanging he had been commissioned to do by Nameless, as a favour. Broken Sword suspected it was just a detail in whatever cover story he would come up with, but he would do this favour anyway; he thought he liked the man, and he loved calligraphy. He smiled to himself. Any excuse.

-

Snow sat on her own, still where her lover had left her. She glowered, her rage simmering slowly. Why would he not just accept that she was right? The king of Qin had committed many atrocities with his armies across the seven states. Not even Broken Sword could deny that. He told her that if he died many would die in the continuing wars between the states. She had asked him how many would die if he united the country. He admitted that the death toll would be high. "Death is death," she'd snapped at him. "Many will die if we kill him, many will die if we don't. What's one more or less man to the world? Nothing!" He'd just shook his head. She was furious with him still. "Fool," she muttered, and there was no one to hear her but the empty air.

-

He wrote. The long brush an extension of his arm, an extension of his soul. The red ink tracing the path of his thoughts in the rigid constraints of the Chinese character. 'Sword' was the character Nameless had asked him to write, an eight-foot scroll. The twentieth of nineteen ways of forming the character. A brilliant challenge, one that he hadn't seen the like of in years. He was told to pour his technique and himself into the wall hanging. So be it.

The brush travelled across the rough paper with a whispering hiss, the ink leaving an imperfectly lovely trail. The sound emptied his mind, and his whole body swayed and moved with each stroke as he unleashed his mind into the challenge.

Life would unfold as it would unfold. Why couldn't she realise that? She was always so tense, so angry. Broken Sword didn't know what she was trying to prove. But all thoughts melted into his liquid, easy movements as the character took shape beneath his artist's brush.

The world was at peace.

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So that's the beginning. More will follow soon, please review because I went to all the bother of writing it. puppydog eyes