Disclaimer: Hetalia belongs to...um...some person who's audacious enough to use a lot of stereotypes and manages to make it all hilarious xD
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沉鱼落雁, 闭月羞花。
Yao was still young and struggling when he met Xi Shi.
He did not truly meet her, in the technical sense—he watched her from afar, caught only glimpses of her when she was outside—usually accompanied Emperor Fuchai; she was gentle, and beautiful.
Her beauty was such that Yao could not look away—his eyes were completely drawn to the lovely face that made him wither and flourish at the same time—he felt himself unworthy to look, and yet he did, and loved it as much as he regretted it. He would later wonder if he was a masochist to torture himself so, but he looked and looked. He looked whenever he could.
His land was torn by war—and he did not care for her involvement in her alluring ways that captured Fuchai completely. Yao envied the ruler, and almost wished that he could slay him and have Xi Shi to himself.
Thus the young man fell in love with a woman.
He watched her—sometimes she would look at a pool of shy and curious fish, their scales pale gold—and to his astonishment they shied away, dying, drowning in their own air.
Other times he noticed, from the corner of his eye, the flowers closing as if shamed by their lack of beauty next the woman, the moon, the most stunning flower among them. It was an almost enchanting thing, to watch the scene—if not eerie.
Another time he swore he saw a flock of geese drop—drop, just there, midair, not far from where Xi Shi was standing, drop as if blinded by a light too powerful. When the maiden had moved on and Yao despaired of her absence, he had gripped one of the birds—still graceful, yet limp—and found...that it was dead and still.
Xi Shi was a deer, a flower, a moon, a sun.
He anticipated her chest pains, when her face looked even lovelier when she winced. Enraptured, he would watch with little guilt, taken in by the beauty of pain.
Yao watched her when he could, and hardly noticed the kingdom crumbling around him. Even the moon receded from the view of the sky, and hid in a smoky cloak. Yao did not mind, nor did he care.
Only when Xi Shi retired with a man named Fan Li, and the kingdom fell, Yao hurt—
He hurt. So much. He was being torn apart, inside out, and Fuchai died in agony, as the kingdom was flattened to the ground, when Xi Shi turned her two black moons lovingly at Fan Li—it was the feeling of first failed love; betrayal.
His heart mended, but still he ached for the living goddess.
Only much later did he realize, in the paused act of recalling her shaming grace—
That beauty could kill.
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狐狸精。
She was disgusting.
Yao was glad when she died—the sense of wicked triumph flickered in his chest when Jiang Ziya suggested her execution. His eyes danced, coldly, when her body was bloody and slumped on the ground.
He could have felt sympathy for her, even at the slightest—but no.
He remembered the farmer with the bloody stumps of where his feet should have been, stumbling and dying; the sweet and white face of the dying concubine who had dared speak out, and her screaming father; the pregnant woman who would soon join her unborn child as her belly leaked blood and guts; the many people who did a deathly jig atop Da Ji's own oily cylinder, before falling and dying on the coal below; the forest of meat and the pond of wine, the nude men and women darting, chasing through the forest, like ghosts—
And he remembered the looks.
The sounds.
Pleasure.
Hysteria.
Daji, laughing in the back because she loved it, every moment of it; and King Zhou laughing with her, because he was the victim of the fox, and he was already a fowl. They laughed and laughed and laughed. They laughed because they loved it. They laughed because they enjoyed the suffering that heightened when Daji had arrived.
And China had been wrapped around her finger, as the land despaired.
Blood, laughs, screams.
Daji, who was a true vixen, laughed, and Yao screamed.
Yao, who was the triumphant one, laughed, and she screamed.
--
不求同年同月同日生，但願同年同月同日死。
Yao learned, quickly and slowly.
It was wrong for a nation to love.
It was wrong to fall for a girl when you were divided.
There were many wrongs he could commit to—but this was strong. To think the Han Dynasty had fixed everything; how could he have not seen this coming? How had he not seen the hungry, dry faces of his brown and skeletal people?—their weary hands, clawed and thin?—those young and pathetic boys that were supposed to be emperors? Had he not glimpsed the faces of his eununchs warped into wicked deviations that committed to corruption?
He had.
He had.
He certainly had.
That was the only answer he could give.
He had, and he had done nothing. He had let the corrupted eununchs stuff their faces and laugh as wine sloshed among them. He had let them coax the naïve rulers with their fox-like words. He had let them control him, and make the people suffer. The guilt never really did ebb away; those were shameful times...
Until that man picked up his brush.
Luo Guanzhong.
Yes...that was his name.
Perhaps?—Yao worried for his memory. It could have been someone else—but he had credited to that man, and he was not going to change that.
Luo Guanzhong.
It was amusing how his name sounded almost like China's province and its capital, Guangzhou, Guangdong.
Yao remembered—how that man with no face—none that he could see in his mind—had painted over a time in history with his own version, full of admitted lies and yet truth. The fall of the Han. The corruption. The noble warriors and the three kingdoms. The cunning men and fox-like women. He turned the hellish years into something...so sad, but glorious.
Yao had to take some pride in it.
But he would never forget it. The common people forming the Yellow Turbans—and their fierce and raven-like eyes glowing darkly when they gathered, declaring their rebellion to the world.
And then he killed them.
He was the one who beat them back, killed them, battled his desperate people; cried as he rode towards him with the loyal people around him, swinging his weapon; he never did remember how many he had killed; never did know the amount of time it took.
He remembered it all, generally and painfully, remembering his many moments of despair and triumph, but at a constant division of his heart to the three warring kingdoms.
Guan Yu.
Liu Bei.
Zhang Fei.
Cao Cao.
Guo Jia.
Huang Gai.
Lu Bu.
Zhuge Liang.
Zhou Yu.
Dong Zhuo.
Zhao Yun.
Huang Zhong.
Guo Si.
Xiao Qiao.
The Yellow Turbans.
The three brothers.
The Tiger Generals.
The Wu elders.
Eununchs.
Strategists.
Emperors.
Warlords.
Tyrants.
Soldiers.
He collected their names and filled them in the library that his head had become. There were many books that resembled The Art of War.
There was much to remember.
He was there when San Guo Yan Yi had been published.
He was there when it was introduced to the other countries, but hardly there when it met America. He regretted it.
And he forgot the woman.
Diao Chan, she was called, but China remembered none named "Diao" from the period. But he remembered a whoring concubine who had an affair with her lord's adopted son, Lu Bu. Whoring—Yao was not sure if that was the correct term. The story said that she was in fact plotting to split Lu Bu and Dong Zhuo—Yao bristled at the name of the man—to restore the kingdom to order. If only her efforts had proved more fruitful—instead, it had fallen at the very end.
Diao Chan. He remembered a beautiful young girl, playing in the water; he remembered a sweet and alluring woman, who gazed with dreamy eyes; he remembered shame as his belly bled, along with his heart. And he made her one of his four beauties.
The other three—Xi Shi, and those other women...Yao should have learned not to love.
He read the romance, the epic tale of a noble and corrupted world. He read, read of the charm, the beauty, the deception—
And then the loss of mention.
Diao Chan. She was there, printed onto the pages of the paper, with her slow and airy dances; her tears of clear blood.
Then the tyrant fell, and Diao Chan fell with him. She was no more.
Yao would often wonder about her.
It was only when he was done reading that he realized...he had fallen again.
For a paper heart, an inky figure; he could touch neither. So he fell, and only lifted himself out because it was not too far. But he fell, and he hurt again. She was not real, that beauty who had unbalanced a kingdom, collapsed it without a sword.
China wept.
He never loved again.
--
"I originally planned to bring you along with us. But you are young and pretty, and are likely to be raped by the foreign soldiers on the way. I trust you know what you should do."
He didn't love Consort Zhen.
He didn't love her.
He didn't.
He could not love a woman that way.
All he could love was his people as a whole, love them a nation would, love them as a mother would her child. Love them as the father loves his own.
He didn't love her.
Consort Zhen.
He didn't.
She was a charming and talented young woman, and rather pretty. She urged the Emperor to negotiate with the Western powers, she encouraged him to think for himself.
This annoyed Yao, for he resented the West bitterly—the opium, Hong Kong, his people...they were interfering with a life he had worked so hard for. He would still protect them, his people; he was not about to submit to some pompous pale men who wanted his land, his wealth. How dare they, Yao would rage. How dare they hurt the people, how dare they try to destroy our culture because they think they know what's best. How dare they!
The soldiers came.
Yao fled.
And Zhen stayed. She was ordered to commit suicide.
She stayed. She was supposed to. She was supposed to die. She wanted to. She begged for negotiation.
Yao glared.
"Qiu qiu ni," she said, pleaded. "Rang Bi Xia gen ta men"—"ta men"...those allies....
Yao did not hear the rest. The others with him did, but he did not. He knew what she was about to say. She wanted the emperor to negotiate with the invaders; of course, it was clear.
"Si dao ling tou la...," was his own answer, a mutter under his breath, and the rest was in his mind. And yet you want to negotiate. You will die, but you will die for a cause.
He helped to throw her in the well. The limbs protested as he lifted her and stuffed her past the black mouth of the structure. He saw her snowy face as she stared, saw her evolve into a black smudge before his eyes—she fell down the well in the Forbidden City—she fell...and there was a great splash!
She had drowned. Yao knew.
Years later, he would build a shrine by the well. The well would be small and pathetic, hardly a deadly thing. He would build the shrine, put the photo of her on the table, light the candles, and leave the incense.
He would bow.
He would silently murmur, I did not love you; and he would kneel before the Western-lover. He would kneel and put his hands together as the incense filled the dim air with its smoky aroma; and he would bow to the martyr.
This was one woman who could have helped her country in one way or another, and she died instead. To the very end she worked for what she believed in. She only had it in death.
Yao would not weep for her.
He would bow to her. He would kneel.
He did not love her.
He would not love anyone, and he proved it.
He would kneel, with dry and solemn eyes.
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PT: crimson-obsidian-rose wrote a MulanYao fic—and then I was reading this book called Young Joan (yeah, about Jeanne d'Arc), and then this brainchild was formed. Diao Chan and Xi Shi are both historical figures ranking as China's Four Beauties, along with two others. Xi Shi lived during the Spring and Autumn Period of China; Diao Chan was supposedly from the Three Kingdoms Period—actually, she was technically from the fall of the Han Dynasty. She is the only Beauty concluded to be fictional, though she may have been based off a concubine of Dong Zhuo—a tyrant who was attempting to usurp the throne—who had an affair with Lu Bu—Dong Zhuo's adopted son, an amazing warrior who was the only reason assassination attempts on the former failed. Diao Chan was, in a way, the adopted daughter of an official named Wang Yun. In the story, San Guo Yan Yi—Romance of Three Kingdoms—he got her to create a split between Dong Zhuo and Lu Bu by seducing both, so Lu Bu would kill Dong Zhuo. It worked, Wang Yun attempted to stabilize the kingdom; however, that was ruined by further problems, and Dong Zhuo's followers. The period itself was started because of corrupted eununchs who held power over the rulers, and the people suffered; then the Yellow Turban Rebellion began and yeah. I like to write about that time period. Da Ji was from the legendary Shang Dynasty, and she was the concubine of King Zhou of Shang, a total douche of a ruler. He fell for her so hard that all he did was frolic about with her in the palace. She was sadistic, and I've stated her atrocities in the story. Eventually the Shang Dynasty fell, and she was executed upon the advice of a wise man called Jiang Ziya. Investiture of The Gods—Fengshen Yanyi—was about this, pretty much; and in popular culture Da Ji is cast as a fox spirit—Huli Jing—a vixen of sorts who charmed men really well. I've watched a TV show from CCTV—I still have it—based off Fengshen Yanyi—and I absolutely HATED Da Ji. Consort Zhen is known as Concubine Pearl, and I saw the well she was flung into on my third visit to China. I was visiting the Forbidden City for the second time, and I saw the well, and the shrine to her, which is in a small, locked, building—but I could see it through the window. You can't go near the well, as there's that rope stuff around it, but you can certainly see it. That's how I learned about her. I was fascinated, and sort of admired her. The well today is small, round-ish, and white, but my mom told me that it certainly wasn't like that when Consort Zhen died. The well thing is a sort of myth, though. The Forbidden City itself is a very interesting place—I couldn't stop looking, and the two days I spent there didn't cover up all of it. It's all worth a visit. The Art of War is a famous strategy book by Sun Tzi. I'm still trying to get it. Oh, and no Koei either D:
As for the Chinese—"qiu qiu ni" is "[I'm] begging you." "Rang Bi Xia gen ta men..." is "Let Bi Xia and them..." Bi Xia is a way of addressing the ruler, along with Huang Shang. Mostly only the children of a ruler may address them as something else—"Fu Wang." "Si dao ling tou la..." is a way to say that death is near, that someone's going to die anyway. I decided to use the Chinese, since they're only a couple of lines of dialogue, so yeah. It's all Mandarin, by the way.
Another thing—I just read the introduction about the rising sun and the setting sun made when Japan met China in Hetalia—it was in fact a line spoken by a Japanese ambassador to a Chinese emperor, and the latter was rather pissed. –Shot for randomdomness-
Originally this was intended to have Hua Mulan and the other two Beauties as well...but yeah. Hope you enjoyed ;D