snarky_panda (snarky_panda) wrote in mulanficspace, @ 2007-06-06 23:39:00 |
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Fandom: Mulan
Title: Secrets and Lies
Author: snarky panda
Theme: #28, Secret
Pairing/Characters: Fa Mulan/Li Shang
Rating/Warning: NC-17/sex
Disclaimer: Anything from the Disney movie belongs to Disney. Anything from Raise the Red Lantern belongs to Su Tong.
Summary: 4th part of a crossover fic (sort of) inspired by Raise the Red Lantern and alternate storyline based on another outcome that could have occurred because Mulan failed the matchmaker’s test. (Link to beginning of story)
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Chapter 10
By the time morning came the snow was so high it blocked half of the entrance of the inn. A couple of the soldiers had climbed out one of the higher windows and were already attempting to clear a path from the inn to the stable, although the snow was still falling heavily, slowly covering over the newly-forged walkway. Fortunately the inn was well-stocked with food and supplies, but at some point the proprietor would need to venture out to replenish everything.
Still feeling restless and nettled inside, Mulan dressed and tied up her hair, continuing her masquerade as Ping. Many of the men were having breakfast in the dining area, which had been converted into a mess hall for the troop. She didn’t feel like eating; though the medicine that Doctor Yang was giving her eased the pain, it left her feeling nauseous.
The men had succeeded in removing the snow from in front of the door and she stepped outside to get some air. Though the snow fell heavily it wasn’t that cold. The soldiers that were working to clear the walk peered at her with odd expressions on their faces, wondering why she was venturing out to walk in this, but she just nodded greetings to them and continued on her way.
There was very little in the immediate vicinity of the inn, only a large stable for the guests and a few small houses in the distance. Walking became more of an effort as she drew away from the cleared path. Her boots sank into the soft snow and each step required her to pull her legs out of a knee-deep hole.
The exercise was pointless, but she hated being cooped up and longed to get the fresh air, even if just for a short spell. Remaining inside with nothing to do she would be too tempted to worry and wallow in self-pity over her latest predicament. There would be plenty of time for that once the captain moved off with the troop and left her.
“What are you doing out here?”
Li Shang’s bark nearly made her jump out of her skin. He’d followed her out of the inn, allowing her to walk the distance that she had before making his presence known to her. He must have had a bone to pick, and wanted to do it away from the place where the other soldiers were gathered. She waited as he came hurrying up to her as fast as he could through the high drifts, his lips curled, face contorted into an angry snarl.
“Are you trying to make yourself sick, Fifth Mistress?”
The words and his tone cut her like a knife. Mulan blinked at him in shock, unable to speak for several minutes.
“The doctor wants you resting and I suggest you follow his direction. After the trouble I went through, antagonizing Chi Fu, in order to spare your miserable life, you might as well make it worthwhile.”
He turned on his heel and began to leave her there. She was shaking with humiliation, fury and hurt. Was that all he came out here for? To say that?
“How terrible it must be for you to owe your life to such a low creature,” she retorted, stopping him in his tracks.
Anger smoldered in his eyes as he whirled around to face her again. But when he spoke his voice was even, barely concealing the rage that he clearly felt. Only his hoarse, shaky exhale gave away just how furious he was at her.
“Why did you leave my father’s house? What were you thinking?”
“That I didn’t want to die like Third Wife,” she blurted out.
“What?”
She turned away from him, mentally kicking herself for letting those words slip. That was something she should have kept to herself.
“Third Wife killed herself.”
“Whatever you say.”
Shang stared at her, stunned. “You weren’t even there at the time. What else do you think happened to her?”
He wouldn’t believe what Honglian said, she was sure of that. So she didn’t bother to repeat it to him, merely shrugging a response.
“Why would you end up like her? Were you thinking of killing yourself?” He emitted a cruel chortle suddenly and his tone was sardonic as he spoke the next words. “Is that why you joined the army? Slow suicide?”
She glanced in his direction, fixing him with a steady, emotionless gaze.
“It’s getting cold out here,” she said icily. “I should get inside. Doctor Yang’s orders and all.”
Without a second glance at him Mulan turned on her heel now and left him standing in the snow, feeling somewhat self-satisfied. Of course, the effect would have been much better if she hadn’t been stumbling over the large snowdrifts.
oooOooo
For yet another dark night Mulan’s sleep was pervaded by nightmares. Chimeras flickered in and out of her vision, ghosts of the slain soldiers that they’d found. Spirits that would never rest, they hovered around her with somber faces of stone. A couple of them seemed to admonish her, with words that were just out of her earshot; she was sure that General Li was one of them. The other wasn’t a soldier; it was Honglian.
Her eyes fluttered open and her heart was racing as she awoke, pounding in her chest so loud she could barely hear over it. Her mind cleared from the fog of sleep and she brought a hand up from underneath the covers to wipe at the sweat on her face. She closed her eyes again and released a sigh, wondering if she would ever be able to sleep peacefully again.
Mulan kicked off the bedclothes and sat up, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed and groping for a flint so she could light the lantern beside her. As the room became dimly illuminated, she sat on the bed for several minutes, posture tense and alert, hair damp with perspiration and sticking to her face, her eyes darting around the room as she unconsciously made sure the spirits from her dreams hadn’t lingered in the room with her.
Shaking off her foolish fears, she waited for the pounding in her chest to subside. She pushed her hair off of her face and drew a sleeve across her brow, attempting to make herself feel ‘normal’ again. Then she stood up as her thumping heart calmed to a slower, steadier rhythm and moved over to the window. The snow hadn’t stopped yet, which meant that the troop likely wouldn’t move out the next day. She wouldn’t be left on her own just yet; but the prospect of it dampened her mood even more.
Where would she go next? She had no family, no means; even continuing to live life as a soldier wasn’t an option now. And she’d failed to make anything up to her father’s memory.
Depression and despair fell on her like a lead weight and she hurriedly moved away from the window and her dismal thoughts. Slipping on her boots and coat she grabbed the lantern and ventured out of the room, silently shutting the door behind her. She walked quietly to the main entrance of the inn and stepped outside, shutting the front door behind her.
Large white flakes fell softly in the night. The walkway that the soldiers had cleared from the entrance toward the stable was less navigable now; it had been buried quickly by the steadily falling snow, the imprint of the path left behind, a dent that was half the depth of the drifts around it.
It looked like the troop wouldn’t be leaving quite so soon.
“Do you need something to help you sleep?”
Mulan started and whirled around. She hadn’t heard anyone come down nor had she heard the door open behind her.
“Doctor Yang…”
“I heard you get up. Please come inside. You shouldn’t be out in this and the captain will have my head if he finds out that you’re out here.”
She studied his aged face and features. He had kind eyes and he seemed to regard her with an almost fatherly protectiveness. Now he stood in front of the door, boots on his feet and a coat over his sleeping gown, looking quite chilled. Why the captain would get on his case because she was outside was beyond her, but she wouldn’t want to see him blamed for anything that wasn’t his fault.
With a nod she conceded and indicated with a gesture that she was coming in. Upon returning to the room, she removed her boots and coat and shuffled back to bed, pulling her blanket around her but remaining sitting up. She declined when Doctor Yang once again asked if she wanted a tonic to help her sleep.
He sat down on his bed with a sigh and eyed her with concern, the screen that had originally separated her bed from the rest of the room gone now. She shifted uncomfortably, sensing that the aged patriarch understood more about her than she would have liked. After all he was sleeping in the same room with her. Though he’d never said a word about it, he must have heard her cry out when she woke from the throes of her nightmares, no matter how she tried to suppress the sounds.
“Are you sure?” he pressed. “It wouldn’t be anything strong. Something gentle to relax you so you can get the rest you need.”
“I’m okay,” she answered, unable to suppress a shudder that ran up her spine as images from her dreams came to mind again. “Besides, pretty soon I’ll have a lot of time to rest.”
“Hmm. Yes,” he answered, clearing his throat uncomfortably. “You are in quite a predicament.”
She bit back a snide retort and merely nodded again. “I don’t know if the troop will move out tomorrow, but eventually…”
“Yes. I believe that the captain would keep your secret and let you continue on to the Imperial City with the troop if not for that councilman.”
“Somehow I doubt that. It seems to me that he hates me.”
“He’s angry because you’ve pulled the wool over his eyes, passing yourself off as a man in his camp for so long. If this hadn’t been his first command I don’t think you would have. You lucked out in that he had too much on his mind to notice that you weren’t what you were supposed to be.”
“I was lucky. Besides, he’s been a very good captain.”
“Captain Li is not like his father, as much as he strives to be. General Li was a ruthless man. An excellent general, yes, but if he were in his son’s place right now he would have executed you without a second thought, no matter if you had saved his life. He saw things in black and white. His son, on the other hand, is a sensitive young man who has the potential to see shades of grey. That makes things much more complicated for him.”
“But…maybe General Li would have been right to execute me. I dishonored the Chinese army. And myself.”
“Yet you brought them and yourself honor by aiding them to defeat an enemy and keep our Emperor safe. And you saved Captain Li’s life personally. No, therein lies the captain’s dilemma. He is a man that values honor above all things. To kill you after you saved him would not be honorable. And though he would never admit it, I think he even feels conflicted about leaving you here when the troop departs. Or anywhere else for that matter.”
“Well, he owes me nothing now. He did spare my life. Besides, wherever I’m left, I’ll find something to do. I guess that’ll be here, when the snow clears.”
“Maybe. He still has you masquerading as your male alter ego and has sworn the councilman and me to secrecy.”
“But that’s only because he doesn’t want the other men to know that ‘the wool was pulled over his eyes’, as you say. He doesn’t want them to think that he’s a fool.”
“Perhaps,” he answered quietly. He glanced toward the window then sighed. “Dawn will be here soon. We should both get some sleep. I’ll be here if you need anything.”
“Thank you.”
He eased his legs onto the bed and stretched out, pulling the blankets around him. Mulan stretched out on her own bed, bundling herself up in her blankets. Reluctant to sleep and sink back into the nightmares, she lay still and waited for the sun to come up.
oooOooo
“Fa!”
Li Shang’s curt bark followed her as she trudged through the snow, heading away from the inn.
“Yes, sir?”
“Get back inside!” he shouted.
If she wasn’t so annoyed she might have burst into giggles at his audacity to order her around as if she was a child and he was her parent. They’d been stranded in this inn for a few days now and everyone was stir crazy. Why did it matter that she went out to get some air?
“Doctor Yang wants to check your wound anyway.”
Without a word she turned and followed him back inside. Passing by the men of the troop, who were gathered in the dining hall playing weiqi and mahjongg, she headed upstairs to her room where Doctor Yang was waiting.
“I’ll be right outside,” Shang told him. “Let me know the status when you’re finished.”
“Yes, Captain.”
Left alone, Mulan lay on her bed and Doctor Yang removed the dressing and took a look at her abdomen. “This has healed very nicely. I’m going to remove the stitches.”
“Okay.”
She watched as he sterilized his surgical tool in the flame of the candle.
“Why do you instigate fights with him?” he asked as he began to work on removing her stitches.
“I? Instigate?”
“It’s terribly cold out there, even though the snow has stopped, and the captain is still concerned for your health in spite of himself. I think that you venture out there everyday just to provoke him into worrying and arguing with you.”
“What?” she exclaimed. “You think I want to fight with him?”
“Don’t you?”
“No! I’m sick of fighting with him. We’ve been stuck in this inn for days and I’m going nuts. I just want to get a little bit of air.”
“You could just open the shutters over the windows and let the air in.”
Mulan fell silent, unable to respond. That hadn’t occurred to her. It wasn’t just the air she needed; she needed to go outside. She had to escape the confines of these walls and of her morbid thoughts. But that wasn’t something she could explain.
“It’s not the same,” she answered weakly. “I’m tired of being in one place.”
If nothing else, his own provocative conversation starter made the time pass. He’d finished removing her stitches before she knew it.
“You’re done.”
“Thanks.”
“I’ll let the captain know. Maybe you’d feel better if you came downstairs and played mahjongg or something with your comrades.”
“Maybe.”
“Well, I’m going to see if I can join in. See you later.”
He left the room, shutting the door behind him, and their muffled voices carried through to her as they spoke, sounds without words. A few minutes later she heard footsteps growing distant as they walked away. Or so she thought. A moment later there was a knock on the door.
“Yes?” she called out, sitting up. She stood and began to cross toward the door to admit whoever it was, probably Li Shang. The door opened before she reached it and sure enough he stepped in, shutting it behind him.
“So, you’re all healed now. Does that mean that when we’re ready to move out we don’t have to worry about you holding us up?” he sneered bitterly.
“Why would I hold you up? Aren’t you leaving me here?”
“What makes you say that?”
“Well, I heard…”
“I told you not to worry about what you heard,” he snapped.
They stood there staring each other down, neither of them speaking. And Doctor Yang thought she was the one instigating the fights?
“Really,” he scoffed. “Married to my father for…how long? And you’re still a child. You’d die of pneumonia out there in the icy cold if you were left to your own devices. You did this back home, too.”
Why did he even care?
“You heard that from good old Yun, I suppose.”
“What?” he snapped.
“Second Wife,” she corrected herself. Yun was much older and Shang very likely wouldn’t have known her by her first name. “I don’t even know why you care anymore. If I die of pneumonia you certainly won’t have to take me anywhere. Oh, I see, maybe you’re worried that you might have to give me a soldier’s burial to keep the men from knowing…”
He took a step toward her, his face contorted with fury and she cut off the sentence and took an involuntary step back, knowing that she’d crossed an invisible line with that remark.
“She had a lot of power in the house, I know,” she said softly, steering the subject back to Yun. “I know she watched me and reported back to the general. And to you, too, apparently.”
“Even though I was at the Academy for most of the year I did come home sometimes,” he spoke calmly, though he still glowered at her, his anger seething just beneath the surface. “The garden is visible from the upper floors of the Li compound, Mulan. I saw you out there, practicing your martial arts, even in the snow. You were pretty good at it, even before you came to camp.”
“I didn’t realize you watched me.”
He snorted. “I wanted to see for myself what Second Wife was talking about.”
Mulan had no answer for that. She supposed she knew that he would come home at times, but she’d never seen him other than that first day. It never occurred to her that he’d seen her.
“My father was annoyed at it but he didn’t do a thing. I thought he was foolish, not putting you in your place. But I suppose I understand, in a way. He really doted on you, his beautiful little young wife. Almost young enough to be his granddaughter,” he snorted again, throwing her a look of absolute disgust.
As if she had a choice in that matter, taken away to be a concubine to his old father when her own father was dying.
“I suppose you think I should have been matched to you,” she blurted out in defense, her tone nasty.
She didn’t know why she’d said it, but as the words passed from her lips the truth of them resonated in the center of her being. That was why he hated her so much. She was younger than any of the wives that came before, even Honglian was nineteen when she arrived there. Younger even than General Li’s own son, she was more suited for him than his father. He must have thought his father foolish for many reasons, including that one. And, she realized suddenly, he’d just called her beautiful. Had she passed the matchmaker’s test, maybe…
The hair on the back of her neck prickled on its ends as they stood face to face, eyes locked, neither of them moving. Shang was frozen, gaping at her, his expression a mixture of shock and anger, his body taut and his fists clenched. The thought crossed her mind that he might kill her with his bare hands in that moment.
He suddenly lunged toward her savagely; she was too stunned to move though he appeared to be about to hurt her. His hands seized her shoulders brutally and he pulled her toward him so violently that her feet were half lifted off of the floor. Her breath caught in her throat as he stared into her face momentarily, just inches away from her. Then his lips covered hers, the kiss rough, demanding, searing; she could feel him frenziedly taking small bites of her lip.
His arms wound around her so tightly and possessively she thought he might crush her. Recovering from the initial shock of the liberty he’d taken, she responded to the kiss, wrapping her arms around his massive frame and pressing her body against his, whimpering with pleasure at the feel of his long, hard, muscular body against hers and the passionate violence of the kiss.
She pulled her lips away from his, gasping for breath as she suddenly became lifted up and turned around, and he slammed her up against the wall, almost completely knocking the wind out of her and pinning her with his large frame.
Mulan was terrified and aroused all at once. Sensing that she’d caught her breath again somewhat, his lips pressed up against hers once more. One hand was already groping at her clothing while the other continued to pin her against the wall. He was so violent, so angry, his kisses urgent, frenzied, desperate.
A small cry escaped from her parted lips when he raised his head and he leaned down once more, cutting the sound off with another kiss.
Thoughts raced through her mind. What if Doctor Yang walked in? What if the men downstairs heard them? Did she want this? With the death of her husband, she’d worried that she would never have sex again. She certainly never expected it with his son.
As Shang pulled away she looked up into his face, fevered with desire, his eyes almost glazed, blazing with passion. The perfectly sculpted angular shape, the strong, prominent jaw line, beautiful dark eyes. Had she always thought him this handsome? She vaguely remembered comparing his physique to his father’s one day, back when she was at the Li compound. Would she have allowed herself to notice him sooner had she not considered him off-limits?
And what would he do with her after he’d had her in this way? What if she asked him to stop now? Would he? Did she want him to?
He’d become still suddenly, ceasing his attempts to yank her clothing off, his arms vibrating with the tension of controlling himself, the raw desperation bubbling just under the surface. He brought his hand up to cover her cheek, caressing it gently, a smile slowly turning up the corners of his mouth. She couldn’t remember him ever smiling at her.
She managed a tentative smile back. He drew the hand that was stroking her face away, down to tug at the sash of the tunic she was wearing. Hesitating for a moment, he eyed her questioningly, wordlessly asking her permission.
Mulan barely managed the tiniest nod.
It was nothing like being with General Li. The general’s movements had been much slower and more methodical; he was gentle and patient. Of course, he’d been nearly fifty years old and not in such great shape anymore; there were times even when he had difficulty, when the sex drive of a girl who wasn’t even eighteen yet was more than he could handle.
Shang was young and virile. The savage passion with which he seized her left bruises on her skin and stirred up her own primal desires; as his teeth bit at her nipples she found herself clawing at his hair and shoulders and arms, gasping and heaving in rhythm with his heavy panting, her body writhing and quivering against his. She could feel the blood pounding in her ears as he pushed inside of her with such aggressive force that she almost cried out. But then the troop, downstairs in the dining hall, oblivious to what was going on upstairs, would know. Blood flowed from her lower lip from the force with which she bit down on it to keep from screaming and her nails dug into the flesh of his back as she gyrated her hips in rhythm with his deep thrusts until they both climaxed.
Both of them collapsed, he on top of her, his head falling onto her shoulder, and they lay there on the floor near the wall, both of them panting, sweaty, spent.
They would need to open the shutters over the window and let the air in, she thought absently. The scent of sweat and sex and of their bodies still filled her nostrils.
He raised himself up on an elbow and leaned over her, reaching out with his free hand to smooth away a damp lock of hair that stuck to her face.
“Are you alright?” he asked, his voice sounding almost tender.
She nodded, smiling slightly, not wanting the confusion she was feeling to show in her face. “Yes,” she answered hoarsely.
But she wasn’t sure.
(Link to Chapter 11)