Title: Realization
Movie: Mulan
Character: Shang
Thoughts: What we know the most of is often our greatest deficiency.
Disclaimer: Sole ownership of Mulan belongs to Walt Disney Pictures
He never knew it before. Staring into her dark eyes, seeing an image of a man standing erect, proud, extending an arm in companionship, the thought never crossed his mind.
That time, his pride was wounded. He gave his debt of honor as a soldier, and his trust as a friend. It was the least he could do. After all, he was weak, a pathetic excuse of a captain. His army was a pitiful bunch, a group of men gathered in standard formation. What was left of them, that is. He had never expected them to come that far. He had never thought that his father could fall.
That year he learned more than he wanted.
There wasn't supposed to have been a war. Their armies were strong, a formidable force, more than enough to fend off any attacks from the north. Their men were strong, capable men from wars past, wise soldiers who knew the forgotten arts of battling.
Perhaps they were too old, too wise. Their former strength and past glory was far behind them. Though their blades remained as sharp as their minds, their bodies failed them. Time is rarely kind, age even less. Their successors were a soft bunch, unaccustomed to strict discipline, unused to living with the fear that familiar faces would slowly disappear in each skirmish from each battle they were sent out to the perimeter.
He knew this by growing up in the camps. The men his father joked with, congratulated on their successes, their assigned posts, those memories stayed with him. The faces would disappear slowly, sometimes to assume a new station in a different region, sometimes arming themselves as guards on a stretch of the Wall. Still, others vanished from sight and talk completely. It was if they were never there to begin with.
However, the peaceful times continued. There was still time for fishing and idling, trading comments over the cost of rice. He grew older and began listening to the men reminiscing over battles won and honors given to their families. He memorized the points of leadership, listened to the strategists' intricacies of weaponry and position. Those days were the ones he remembered wistfully.
As time wore on, he noticed grey streaks in his father's black hair. Tensions mounted as armies' numbers dwindled and rose again. Movement between borderlines was noted meticulously for signs of suspicion. It was questioned later at that sort of readiness that they would see so much before them and so little in front of them. The Huns slipped easily through the cracks in their defense lines. They outmaneuvered them in their foiling of carefully planned designs. Their defiance was expected, but not anticipated, manifesting itself in unorthodox techniques for vast amounts of armed persons.
When the arrows came down, blazing with fire, he felt a surge of adrenaline. He would prove himself and forget the foolish actions that brought them to that situation. He would be a soldier; a soldier's duty is to die for his Emperor.
Measuring up his men, he felt a paternal pride for the strength he instilled. They would die, but they would fight on their way down.
Then he ran out, an idiot carrying arms directly into the enemy's path. He felt concern for his sanity, but brushed it away remembering their purpose. They would stand and fight, but he never imagined one of them running to the enemy.
All thoughts fled his mind when the explosion went off. He was speechless, staring at the mountain face it struck. He thought he adequately trained him, but this brought him to a new level of understanding first impressions.
Then it fell and he lost all coherency. Thrown across the horse's flank like a limp rag doll, he acknowledged him as his equal, as someone he could respect.
When he heard he wasn't a man, he couldn't believe it. He was a soldier, a man whom he gave his trust as a friend, as an equal. Marching in, brushing away the tent's flaps, he saw her as she was.
Standing over her in the snow, he held his—her sword above her head. Even as he did so, her dark hair falling away, revealing a pale neck, he hesitated. For a moment he didn't see a woman, but a man. He saw the soldier he trained, his wide grin, sheepishly hiding a bow behind his back. He saw a man sitting on top of a tree, legs dangling, his grin blinding. He saw the man who extended an arm of help, sinking in the deep snow as was he.
He knew it was wrong, but he couldn't do it. She may have been a woman, but she had earned his respect, man or not.
That didn't he could look her in the eye. He let her go, sent her back to her family. When she appeared again he slipped, he wanted to recognize her, acknowledge as a warrior, as a comrade. But he couldn't and once again he was saved by her.
Meeting her in the garden, he finally realized. Seeing her, the fact of mistaken gender hit him, destroyed his preconceptions of the female's role. He was brought up to respect women as inferior to men. They were a weaker breed, fragile, a liability in war. He was a warrior, a soldier of the Emperor, a captain, but it meant nothing to him.
He grew up learning the art of discipline, training his mind and body to become still and calm. A warrior who cannot keep priority over his thoughts cannot hold a semblance of serenity. One who cannot control his thoughts is easily read, his weakness apparent to the most novice of fighters.
He stuttered looking at her, looking at her eyes, the same ones he saw so many times as her commander. He felt rather than saw her father's amused gaze, the knowledge making him even more nervous, subtly shifting his weight from one foot to the other.
He was trained in the art of war and he thought he would know a soldier whom he commanded. That day, he realized he knew nothing.