I finally got this up! FINAL CHAPTER! (Epilouge comming!)
In this chapter, Zhuge Liang and Yue Ying face the FINAL throe; and it is harder than all they have faced. It wasn't anything physical, like the moment when they had tried to turn the trigram - it's emotional.
It's emotional.
Enjoy!
Birth Throes – Chapter 8 – Child's Play
Yue Ying and Zhuge Liang were seated in the dining room, having all formalities from the servants to them said. Zhuge Liang was quite quiet after what Yue Ying had realized from before. The child was too young to understand this, and he wished that he had not mentioned anything before; yet it was already too late and there was noting the Prime Minister could do about it.
Yue Ying had been playing with her food. It was a simple bowl of rice soup, which had been surely mashed so the child would not choke. In the soup was random vegetables and meats. She had begun playing with this.
Taking a piece of meat and two carrots she found, she made a smiley face on the table, looking at Zhuge Liang. She smiled at him, laughing and pointing.
Eventually, the meal ended with Zhuge Liang, as emotionless as he always was, and Yue Ying, rather the child with a bowl of soup on her head and the contents on her face and shirt.
"Getsuei, you have to take a bath," he remarked.
The child threw her arms in the air, giggling. "Why must I?"
"Do you want to walk around Lord Liu Bei and his two brothers looking like ... this?" he answered, fanning himself, perhaps from the smell or the heat of just staying inside.
"I don't mind," replied the child, exaggerating her steps again. "I'll even do it on my hands!"
She jumped in the air and flipped, so when she landed she was doing a handstand. Yue Ying kept her balance and then cried out in joy. Though she could defy gravity, her clothes could not, and neither could the bowl that was on her head.
Once she noticed the bowl fell, the child looked at it, directly below her, whining. The contents of the soup spilled on the floor as well, and then finally, losing her balance due to the soup, fell down, her face directly on the bowl.
"MMMM!"
Zhuge Liang could not tell this cry was from her licking the bottom of the bowl or a desperate cry of help. On her face, Yue Ying fell down to the side, hitting the left side of her body hard. Unfortunately, when she fell, she had also begun to roll – all the way down the marble steps of Chengdu Castle.
Frightened, Zhuge Liang rushed down took the child and then hastened to his room, where she was set down on the bed where he could examine her injury.
"Are you alright?" he asked, pulling up the child's clothes.
With the bowl still stuck on her head – perhaps because there was no air between the two items – the child giggled. "That was fun! Can I do it again? Can you push me down this time?"
He pulled the bowl off her head, revealing a rather pretty child, who was too overjoyed about these things. Radiance must come from these years, he thought to himself while cleaning her face with a strip of cloth, which first met his eye – which Yue Ying had used to bind certain things when she was older; and it wasn't feet, for that idea had not come during the ancient Han.
Zhuge Liang had noticed a bruise on Yue Ying's side, which was already a dark red.
"This will stay for weeks on end if it's not let out," he whispered, looking in a dresser for a knife. Once he found one, he drew it and held it out to the child. "Forgive me."
Looking at the sunbeam from the window glistening off the knife, the child's eyes widened and said, "Oo, pretty!"
The image of a man ready to kill an innocent child came into play, but it was very clear that this was not Zhuge Liang's intention. Nonetheless, the child suffered an 'injury'.
The third scream escaped, similar to the one that the child had let out when Lady Mi and Gan explained what marriage meant, and when the elder, one-month-pregnant Yue Ying had shot down the dragon so long ago.
---
The child, still wearing clothes saturated in soup, whined as often as she could. Rubbing her side, Yue Ying complained to Lady Gan, "This hurts."
"And my head doesn't?" she snapped, being as careful and slow with her movements as she could. "Look, just lie down and rest. You'll be fine."
She sniffed the air. "PHEW! That's that smell?"
"Is it the incense you use to perfume your clothes?" thought the child, kicking her feet back and fourth on the chair. She grabbed her side in pain, then whined again.
"It's you, walking B.O," replied the Lady. "Go take a bath already."
"NO!" the child quickly countered, turning her head. "You can't make me!"
"Attendant!" called Lady Gan. With the sudden movement, she was forced to hold her head and hold in the pain slowly.
"Yes, my Lady?" asked the female attendant, looking surprised at the sight of Yue Ying as a child.
"Please, do away with the little one here and get the Prime Minister to bathe with her."
"Yes, my Lady," replied the attendant. Both of the two adults paused at the pun given in Lady Gan's order, but then the child Yue Ying was taken out.
---
"You have to take a bath now, Getsuei," Zhuge Liang ordered the child, running after her. "Come now, don't be afraid!"
"NO! I don't want to!" Yue Ying replied, running as fast as her little legs could.
She had manly strength and abnormally fast speed. Red Hare would have trouble catching her. Zhuge Liang, surprised by this, chased her into a small corner where she was trapped. Yue Ying looked desperately on all sides, then satisfied that a column was in front of her, began scaling it. Zhuge Liang caught his breath and then grabbed the child's feet; she was already half-way up.
"You have to bathe now!" he grunted, pulling the child.
"NO! I don't want to!" the child yelped.
"It's not like I want to do it anyway with the rumors Lady Gan will surely spread! Now come on, child, you know you smell and I think I'm the only one who is wiling to tolerate it for another minute!"
"NO! I don't want to!" she repeated, getting the better of Zhuge Liang.
Zhuge Liang pulled harder, trying to pry the child off, but he had only succeeded in prying off her top robe. The child, feeling victorious, began scaling the column.
Zhuge Liang gnashed his teeth and rubbed his face. "Child, you have three seconds to come down."
"NO! I don't want to!"
"One!" Zhuge Liang called, raising a finger.
"NO! I don't want to!"
"Two!"
""NO! I don't want to!"
"Three!" Zhuge Liang exclaimed.
The child made no movement.
"That's it!"
Brutally, he punched the base of the column, leaving his hand bloody and a hard imprint on the column. The castle shook, and the column nearly fell.
"Do whatever you want, Getsuei," he said to Yue Ying, who was looking down at him, a hint of fright in her eyes.
"I give up!"
He flipped around, his hands across his back, and marched out, leaving a bloody trail behind him.
---
Later on that day, Yue Ying bathed, and was found with Guan Yu, Zhang Fei, the recovering Lady Gan and Lady Mi, all in the parlor, laughing and enjoying themselves.
Zhuge Liang appeared at the door. "Time to sleep."
"O wow," Lady Gan said, looking outside. "It's no later than eight! I would hate to be a child now."
"This doesn't concern you," Zhuge Liang snapped, still angry at Lady Gan. "Come, child."
Yue Ying, looking depressed, found her way out of Lady Mi's arms and then followed the Prime Minister. They walked up the marble steps. Yue Ying glanced at Zhuge Liang, who made no effort to check if the child was behind him or not.
It was a very short moment. Once they reached their room, Yue Ying went down on hers. Zhuge Liang still made no effort to check on her, for as she entered the room, he closed the door.
Four hours later, it was time for Zhuge Liang too to retire. He opened the door slowly, exhausted from the day. Another surprise had hit him: instead of the child sleeping soundly, she was sitting on the side, crying.
"What's the matter?"
There was no sense of concern in his tone.
Still a child, Yue Ying answered, "You said you give up on me!"
A child weeping was harder to control than an adult woman.
What could Zhuge Liang say at this moment? He was an honest man, perhaps too honest – which explains his inability to say things now that he had not meant previously. Sitting next to the child and rubbing her arm, he answered, "I was just angry before, that's all."
The child continued, "But that implies that you don't like me anymore!"
Zhuge Liang looked up, surprised at the realization the child came to. Then, relating to a statement he said before, he whispered, "I'm surprised Heaven hasn't killed me."
"Huh?" she asked, looking up at him, beginning to master through her tears.
"I said before, when you were older," he answered, "I promise you, I will never stop loving you. And if I do, or if you feel like I haven't, Heaven may strike me dead that very moment. So be it."
She looked at him. "Maybe they gave you an extra chance."
Once again surprised by the deep thought the child produced, he answered, with a smile well on his face, "It's worth it."
The child's eyes widened and glistened, reminding Zhuge Liang of the same woman he had married.
"Stay here," he said, going to a part of his room. He took out a large jug.
"What is that?" the child asked.
"It's wine." He took two small plate-cups and filled them. Handing one to his wife, he said, "Yue Ying, please."
"Why not Getsuei?"
He remained silent for a moment, and then answered, "It's rather insulting calling you in a name other than which you recognize. Don't you think so?"
"I don't know," she replied.
"Sometimes the plainest, simplest of things are the things we cherish most. To one maybe a plain object is nothing, yet to another," he took a glance over, "It's more than you can imagine."
"What does that mean?"
Liang laughed loudly. "You'll get it when you're older. Take a drink now, celebrate this moment!"
Ironic that he would not let his middle-age wife drink, and let a child!
When Zhuge Liang drank after Yue Ying, he had tasted blood – and recognized the jar of wine to be wine mixed with the dragon's blood!
He looked up at Yue Ying, recalling what she had said: "I heard dragon's blood can reverse the Heavens' wishes!"
The three-year-old suddenly changed to the adult.
Yue Ying was back! The mature one, the pregnant one, the one willing to shower at her wish – but something did not come back.
Zhuge Liang's eyes fixed on her for a long moment.
"Why are you staring at me like that?"
A breeze came by the window, which was left open form before.
Feeling air in places it shouldn't go by, the adult screamed – like the scream which the child had made before when she was cut in the side by Zhuge Liang; like the one the child had made when she realized what 'marriage' meant; and the one the adult had made when she had shot down the dragon so long ago.
This time, when she screamed, it was accompanied by the laughter of Zhuge Liang, which soon came to Yue Ying herself.
They weren't laughing from any pleasure, nor the slow response Yue Ying had made once she had realized her child-sized clothes were no longer appropriate for her – rather the fact that everything had been finally restored.