"I'm gonna kill that bastard!" Shao punched his hand and scowled at the other soldiers. San, Ping and Shao had taken a break from their morning exercises after San had proven too distracted. Against her better judgment, she told them about her nighttime attacker and how Lu Ba had fit the profile. "After I kill Liu Chan, of course. Gods, we go on one raid and the whole frigging kingdom turns upside down!"

Ping shook his head. "I'm still not convinced."

"What? Did you listen to what San said? His shirt was torn in the same place where she grabbed that man. He had bruises and scratches in the same place. He looked like him, moved like him, and talked like him. If it walks like a duck and quacks like a duck…"

"Then it could be a different kind of duck," Ping interrupted. "He was also under armed guard all night."

"Except when San went back to his room."

"He also had a knife and cut San's arm. Lu Ba's not allowed to have weapons in his room or on his person. Even when he's possessed a staff, he's been supervised. There is no way he could have acquired a weapon so soon. And before you interrupt me in turn, San said he also had bruises. To my knowledge, she only scratched him."

Shao snorted. "She could've bruised him during the fight."

"I doubt it. Grabbing his upper arm wouldn't have done any good. She always uses the lower arm to subdue her enemies."

The debate raged on, but San was only half listening. Her dreams had been even more fitful that night. She had seen her attacker, only to find Lu Ba's face under the mask. Then it had slowly changed to Liu Chan's and he would slash at her with a knife. The pattern had repeated over and over until the sun had risen.

Lu Ba had requested to see her but she had denied him. She was still too emotional right now. Despite everything, she wanted to believe that he was innocent of this. But the evidence was overwhelming. She still needed some time.

"Hey San, isn't that you mother?" Ping's voice jolted her back to reality as her mother walked towards the trio. Her face was grim. She must have already heard the tale.

"Good morning, Lady Mei Li," Ping and Shao said in unison.

She bowed her head to them. "Good morning boys." Her sharp eyes turned to San. "Zhao San, we need to talk. Your practice can wait." Without waiting for an answer, her mother grabbed her arm and led her away from the field. The silence was heavy as they made their way towards the gardens. It took San a moment to realize that they were headed for Li's favorite peach tree. She forced her daughter onto the bench before sitting down herself.

"Uh, what's the problem?" San asked.

Mei Li let out a heavy sigh, one that she had probably been holding the entire walk. "What happened last night, San? Young Lu Ba has been out of sorts all morning, and you look like you're ready to snap at someone."

"What did he tell you?"

"That you showed up in his room last night and accused him of attacking you. Then you wouldn't listen to any explanation. I am disappointed in you, San. I had thought you would be able to trust him by now. He has done nothing but be kind to us since you saved his life. I believe he understands it would be poor repayment if he tried to kill you."

San faltered. "But you haven't heard my side of the story."

"So tell me," Li said, her tone chilly.

She listened as her daughter relayed the events of that night, from the moment she was attacked to her discovery of Lu Ba's injuries. San also added what Ping and Shao had said. Me Li absorbed all of the information with a cool nod. San slumped when she finished, exhausted. "I don't know what to believe anymore," she said.

"What does your heart say, San?" her mother asked. "And please do no lie to me. I will know."

San thought for a moment. "It says I should talk to him. I don't want to believe that he would attack me, but…"

"Then you have found what to do next. I happen to know that Lu Ba is in his room, trying to come up with words that will make you believe him. The guards are expecting you to come again. Listen to what he says, San." She stood to leave, but paused to take her daughter's hands in her own. "By the way, I talked to the guards this morning about their absence. Your attacker chose his time well. They were in the middle of changing their stations."

"But I thought they did that at random," San said.

"They do. Usually, they decided before nightfall what time they will change. My guess is that your attacker is, or works for, someone with access to such knowledge." Mei Li smiled, squeezed her hands and walked back towards the castle.

San had to muster all of her courage to knock on Lu Ba's door. The guards had, indeed, been expecting her. They offered her rather sympathetic smiles and moved out of the way so she could enter. Lu Ba was sitting by the window, his shoulders slumped in a posture of defeat. He turned to look at her as she entered. His eyes were so sad it made her heart break. "Lady Zhao," he croaked.

"Lu Ba," she answered. Taking the chair from his writing desk, she pulled it over to the window and sat down near him. "I wanted to apologize for my actions. I should have listened to you when you tried to explain."

He nodded but didn't look at her. "I assumed that whoever attacked you must have looked like me. Otherwise you would not have woken me. For that, I am sorry."

She jerked her head up towards him, her anger dissipating rapidly. "What? You're apologizing to me? What for?"

"For making you believe that I would willingly attack you, that I would break all the rules around me to try and take your life. I haven't been doing a good enough job if that's the case."

"But…but…" San was lost for words.

Lu Ba finally turned his head to look at her. She noticed bags under his eyes. Clearly, he had gotten as much sleep as she had. "I suppose I should explain myself." He pulled up his sleeve so that she could see the marks on his arm. In the better light, she realized that the scratches were days old. The bruises were more prominent. "The scratches were an accident. I was practicing the jump as you taught me and lost my balance. My arm raked across a low tree branch." He curled his fingers around his arm, and San realized that the bruising pattern matched that of his own hand. "I gave these to myself."

"When? They look recent."

"The day we were in the garden, when we were watching Liu Chan and Xing Cai."

"Why were you grabbing you arm?" San asked, confused.

He grimaced. "I'm not sure. Part of it was to stop myself from charging him right then and there. If I could keep my hands busy, I wouldn't think about punching him." San chuckled, entertaining that image in her head. "The other part…well, it was to stop me from touching you."

San blinked back her surprise. "Me? Why me?"

"When you told me about Chan breaking off the engagement for you…something inside of me became defensive. I wanted to protect you from him. I don't trust him at all, as you know. But I knew you probably wouldn't appreciate the effort, and I had no desire to be hauled away by any guards who happened to walk by."

She was speechless for a moment. Unable to look into his piercing brown eyes any more, she looked down at her own hands. "I'm flattered, Ba. And…I'm sorry. I should have listened. I wanted to badly to believe that it wasn't you, but I couldn't stop myself and…" She squeezed her eyes shut as her emotions began to take over, but she couldn't prevent a single tear from falling. Something warm brushed her cheek. She opened her eyes to see Lu Ba's hand gently wiping the tear away. He quickly jerked his hand back but his eyes never left her face.

"San," he said hoarsely, "you aren't the only one who's trying to stop yourself." He turned back to the window. San was thankful he couldn't see her blush now. "Thank you for listening to me. I've come to rely on your friendship to keep me afloat here. To lose it…I would go crazy."

She stood to go. His gaze never left the window. "Same here. I'll see you later." San backed away towards the door, opened it and made her escape.

The guards bowed to her as she shut the door behind her. "Feeling better, Lady Zhao?" one of them asked.

San grinned and nodded to him. "Yes, I think I am."

The moon had risen, but San still couldn't fall asleep. Her nightmares had been plaguing her for several nights now, and she couldn't make them go away. Always it was some kind of battle between Liu Chan and Lu Ba. Both Ping and Shao had suggested that she was struggling with her feelings towards the two of them. She may not have liked Chan, but a marriage between the two of them would be hard to refute in front of Liu Bei. Lu Ba was more of a man than he would ever be, but there was the matter of his station in Shu. Both of her friends had noticed, too quickly, that San blushed in the presence of her family servant. They teased her about it mercilessly. Obviously they had gotten over the fact that he was from Wu.

Mei Li had warned her daughter to tread carefully with both boys. She felt that it foreshadowed something, something that she didn't like. As always, she had said to follow her heart. San had even mentioned the bare bones of it to Ma Chao and Lady Yang one day in the stables. The general told her to talk to Zhuge Liang. He would be better able to interpret dreams. San would have rather talked to Jiang Wei, but he had been away on some mission for a while now. Lady Yang seemed more concerned about it. She had told San, privately, the same thing that her mother had said. San wondered if it had something to do with Lady Yang's own past. Her story was a strange one indeed, and San knew that she had always been a woman to pay attention to her dreams. They had saved her life once.

She wished that her father was home. Zhao Yun would probably echo her mother's sentiments. At the same time, he would also encourage her to trust in her abilities to overcome this problem. That was his advice most of the time - believe in yourself. Even though she knew his answer, she still wanted to hear it from him personally. There was something about her father's presence that calmed her and gave her strength.

The feeling hit her again. This time, she wasn't sleep deprived or shrugging off an absurd notion. She was completely awake and aware of her surroundings. Yet she couldn't shake that instinct that something was amiss. Slipping on her robe again, she snuck out into the hallway and wandered towards Lu Ba's room.

The guards were absent again, a full hour before they had disappeared the last time. She paused outside of his door and listened. There was nothing. Maybe she should check her mother's room to make sure the intruder wasn't after her. San turned silently and began the trek towards Mei Li's door. Then she heard the thump from behind her.

Without knocking, she threw open Lu Ba's door to find his room in shambles. The desk had been turned over and she nearly tripped over a broken leg from the chair. The contents of the chest were spilled out over the floor. The cot had been pushed to the side. Even in the dim light, she could see two men wrestling on the floor. San immediately recognized the sharp features of Lu Ba's face. The other was covered by a mask.

"What's going on?" she shouted to the pair. Both men looked up in shock. San hoped her voice would either bring the guards running or would wake her mother, who was in the next room. The masked man threw something at her, which whizzed by her face and found a home in the wall behind her.

"Don't you touch her!" Ba growled as he continued to wrestle with the stranger. The other man proved to be stronger and in a better position, however. He managed to hook his leg under Ba's back and flip him into the air, landing a punch in the gut. Ba sputtered and fell to the ground.

San took the opportunity to attack the masked man. She immediately landed a kick against his arm, right where she had grabbed him before. He made a noise in pain but didn't slow down. They fought like that for a while until San found herself pinned against the wall. She tried to roll away but found herself stuck. The man wrenched his knife out of the wall and held it to the side of her face. "You're still in my way, Lady Zhao."

"And you're in mine." The man's eyes were suddenly covered by Ba's large hands as he pulled him back. The masked man tried to stab Ba in the side but only met air. San kicked his hand and forced him to drop the knife. As the fight escalated, with San and Ba now both wrestling with the unknown attacker, San found herself underneath the man and tried to kick herself free. His right hand found her neck.

"A pity and a waste," he hissed, his hot breath against her face. "Time to…gah!" Something warm dripped on to San's stomach. She looked up and noticed the man's small knife sticking out of his side. His grip loosened and he rolled to the side. Without another word, he threw open the window and made his escape.

Lu Ba was kneeling on the floor opposite San, holding his stomach. "Are…you alright?" he panted.

She nodded and managed to get into a sitting position. Blood was smeared across her robe and her neck was throbbing, but she was free of cuts. "Let me look at you," she said, reaching over and removing his hand from his skin. There was a cut along his abdomen, but it wasn't serious. He would live. Under the torn remnants of his night shirt, she could see more purple bruises forming on his pale skin. "Gods," she whispered.

"I'll make it," he said with a wince. "Why did you come in here?"

"I heard a crash when I passed by your room. I thought the worst."

He chuckled. "What if I had simply fallen out of bed?"

"Then I would have been embarrassed and we would've moved on," she answered, glad it was too dark for him to see her face.

"I knew it. You do care about my safety."

"Lu Ba, you are far too arrogant for someone who nearly got killed again." Despite herself, she smiled. "And of course I care about your safety, dummy." Without thinking, she wrapped her arms around his neck and embraced him. Until he awkwardly put his free arm around her shoulders, she hadn't realized how badly she wanted that. It felt good, she decided. Feeling brave, she rested her forehead in the crook of his neck. "Don't scare me like that again," she whispered. She could feel his heart beating faster.

"I'll try not to. And San…thank you." He squeezed her shoulders tighter.

It took her a moment to realize that she could hear footsteps. Before she could lift her head and look around, she heard a commotion at the door. "What in the name of the gods is going on?"

The blood drained from her face as she looked up, seeing the one person she had been waiting for and the one person who never should have seen the scene before him. She gulped back her fear as Zhao Yun, the Little Dragon, stared at the heap that was his daughter and his prisoner on the floor.

A/N: AWKWARD MOMENT! I love those. Especially because my whole life is one big awkward moment. You'd think that would clear up by the time one reaches the age of 22. Hmm...

Thanks to my readers and reviewers, especially AngelEtty. I hope to have the next few chapters up at a more rapid pace. Keyword: hope.