Knowledge
New fandom! A bit strange, I guess, but I thought I'd try. This is something new-one of a bunch that I'm doing that are quote-based.
Title: Knowledge
Fandom: Real Fake Princess
Quote:"We're all equal in the face of what we're most afraid of"
Disclaimer: I own nothing recognizable from Real Fake Princess. And I'm probably slaughtering Chinese culture and history too-my apologies in advance.
Summary: When her uncle leaves her baffled with an offhand comment, a girl wonders about the origin of her parents. But there's more to the story than she can ever know.
Ai Cheng lived in a quaint town in the outskirts of the Tang empire. She was your average country bumpkin-or would have been, at least, if her father didn't insist on teaching her history and literature with such vigor, and her uncle weren't so adamant that she learn the basics of medicine. These attentions, to be perfectly frank, annoyed her. What need had she for such things? Her father said it was the principle of the thing; her uncle told her that the knowledge could prove useful someday. But quite frankly, she didn't see how.
None of her friends had to learn to read and interpret literature. None of them knew the slightest bit about the ancient history her father spoke of. In fact, the vast majority of them could scarcely read!
Sometimes-like the times when her father simply forgot to stop and lessons went on and on and on and had no end in sight-it seemed to Ai Cheng that her mother agreed with her. These were the times when her mother-generally armed with a sharp or otherwise dangerous object-declared that Ai Cheng was to be let outside or else, because while it didn't hurt to learn, there was such a thing as spending too much time learning information that none of her friends even knew to exist. At such times, Ai Cheng tended to sneak out as soon as possible, because it always seemed to start the same pattern: her parents would argue, growning louder by the minute, until one would say something that would sober the other, after which they would proceed to apologize and cuddle for a while in a manner that should be prohibited for individuals who had already procreated, because it triggered nausea in the product of said procreation.
At other times, however-like the times when Ai Cheng started to complain-her mother would listen patiently, chuckling for some reason unknown to Ai Cheng, and then tell her that there actually were some assets to knowledge.
The one thing her mother didn't sympathize with in the least was her medicine lessons, and with her mother, father, and uncle all determined to have her learn, she simultaneously grew determined to defy them and lost all the drive to fight.
Obviously, the fight to defy knowledge was lost before it even began. But if nothing else, Ai Cheng reserved the right to complain.
While determined to teach her medicine (almost) against her will, Ai Cheng's Uncle Tang Hui was quite sympathetic, and would listen to her complain just so long as she kept her hands moving as she did so. Ai Cheng, annoyed, free-time-deprived teenager that she was, took full advantage of the opportunity.
"...And then he wanted me to go on and read the next chapter too. As if it's perfectly normal! Can you believe him? And the twins told me I could go to the market with them if I finished up early, but Dad doesn't even care. I mean, none of my friends know how to read! You hardly read at all, Mom doesn't even know how to read, and the only ones who can read at all are Dad and the twins! The twins only read because you and Aunt Xiao Liu make them learn with me, and I don't even know why Dad reads!"
Pausing to take a breath, Ai Cheng looked up at her uncle.
She furrowed her brow. Why was her uncle not moving?
But when she paused her hands to turn to get a better look at her uncle, he jolted out of his stupor, smiled at her, and went back to slicing the herbs just so.
"Ai Cheng,"-a glance from her uncle told her to go back to grinding the seeds-"what makes you think that your mother can't read?"
Ai Cheng blinked, and stopped grinding the seeds again. A long look at her uncle told her that he was perfectly serious. "Well..." She blinked again. "Because she never really reads, I suppose."
Uncle Tang Hui chuckled and looked at her out the corner of his eyes as he turned the board to get a better angle on the herbs.
"I can tell you, on good authority, that your mother loves reading a few pages of a good book before bed." Ai Cheng blinked yet again, and her uncle laughed. "I taught your mother to read a little when she was a girl. But it was when she met your father that she really started learning those things. She was an average bumpkin just like you till she met your father," her uncle added with a wink.
"Why would she want to learn all that? Why from Dad?" Ai Cheng exclaimed.
Uncle Tang Hui laughed.
"You think you've got it bad? Your mother tried to learn more than just literature and history, you know. Music, posture, manners-she had to learn everything from how to walk to how to address and interact with every member of the court! It was really something, you know. Your mother was just about the least graceful girl you could come across-a tomboy with no idea how to do her hair, who harmed patients she tried to help more often than not. And to watch Zhong Lu try to turn her into a lady..."
"A lady? The court? Why?"
Ai Cheng could not comprehend what happened next: the smile froze on her uncle's face, and then he was chopping the herbs with unnecessary vigor as though he had never even heard her question.
"Uncle Hui?"
But he just scraped the chopped herbs into the prepared bowl, took her mortar and pestle to scrape the contents out of the mortar and off the pestle into the bowl with the herbs. "It's time to get back home, Ai Cheng. Your mother will be waiting with dinner."
Ai Cheng toyed with the idea of pressing the question, but something about her uncle's demeanor warned her against it. She said her goodbyes to her uncle, aunt and twins cousins, but all through the short walk home, she did nothing but rack her brain for what she knew of her parents.
Nothing, was the conclusion she had come to by the time she reached home. She knew that her mother was named Zi Li, and her father Zhong Lu. She knew that her mother had long wavy shining locks of hair, and her father had long straight ebony hair. Her mother's eyes were large, inquisitive, and gentle, and her father's seemed hard and piercing unless you knew him well enough to see the gentle light that shone through them. She knew that they all lived on the outskirts of the Tang empire because her parents did not like anything remotely related to the Tang court. Which made sense, seeing as how her Aunt Xiao Liu's brother had apparently once despised them.
But really, all she knew of her parents apart from the obvious was that her mother had come here with Uncle Tang Hui, after which her father had arrived to wed her mother.
It was strange that it had never occurred to her that that story had serious plot holes-like why her parents apparently knew each other to begin with, for instance. Or where anybody came from to begin with.
She was silent all through dinner pondering this, and noticed none of the worried glances that her parents shared over her head.
It was as Zi Li removed the plates from the table that she finally addressed her daughter about her uncharacteristic silence.
"Ai Cheng?"
Ai Cheng looked up like a deer caught in headlights; Zi Li looked at her daughter in concern.
"Is something wrong?"
For a moment, Ai Cheng wondered if it would be wiser to ask her father about this. But either way, "Mom, how did you meet Dad?"
When her mother dropped the plate she was holding, Ai Cheng jumped, but was not particularly surprised. "What brought this on?" Zi Li asked in a tone that attempted lightness, but could not hide her shakiness.
"Well," Ai Cheng began carefully as she watched her mother lean down to clean up the shards of broken ceramic, "I was complaining to Uncle about my studies as usual"-Zi Li sighed-"when I mentioned that you couldn't read, and he told me that you could, and that you'd had to learn a lot more than I do, and you learned it all from dad. But then he let slip something about ladies and the court..."
Zi Li carefully placed the pieces of broken ceramic in another plate.
"Dear," Zi Li said slowly, "You're asking for a very long story, you know. Why don't we clean this up together? I'll tell you a story while we do."
----------
On longer working days, when Zhong Lu returned from the fields with the men in the village, he would find his wife curled up in bed, wasting another candle to read a book. So when he returned to find his wife still sitting by the fire in the kitchen area of their hut, doing nothing but pensively sipping a cup of tea, he knew something was wrong.
"Zi Li?"
"Ai Cheng was complaining to Brother Hui today."
"Oh?"
"Something about me not being able to read, so she shouldn't have to either..." Zhong Lu chuckled, but Zi Li just went on. "I suppose that Brother was trying to cheer her up, because he told her that I had to learn more than just history and literature, and happened to let slip a little more than he should have-"
"And now Ai Cheng's questioning things?"
There was a pause. "I told her that you were an imperial official and I was a simple village girl. We fell in love, and I was going to join you in your world, so you taught me all I needed to know. But then we were involved in a few court intrigues, which made us decide that the court was no place for us. I left, and you stayed for a while longer until you retired, after which you came to find me so we could wed."
Another pause. "That's a rather misleading set of truths, isn't it?" It was probably Zhong Lu's teasing tone that brought tears to Zi Li's eyes just then. Zhong Lu sobered and pulled Zi Li into his embrace. "Zi Li. You told her all that remains of the truth. That's all there is to it. The princess Yi Fu is dead. All the rest is gone."
"But it seems so...pointless," whispered Zi Li. "Everything we've been through, all the obstacles we overcame just to live-they never meant anything at all. It's like they never were. And that makes us seem so...not us. I mean, you, simply falling for a tomboy village girl?"
For a moment, they sat in silence. They were both thinking back to the days when they had first met: Zhong Lu, an official dedicated to seeking lost relatives of the emperor, and Zi Li, a village girl placed in his care by Tang Hui, who claimed that she was the lost Princess Yi Fu. They thought of every argument they could remember-that the ones they couldn't-and how they had fought over anything and everything. They recalled how they had only reached a reluctant truce when Zhong Lu promised to allow Zi Li to meet Tang Hui if she dedicated herself to her studies for a month. They thought of the people they had known, the affections they had felt, the tragedies they had borne, and the love that had slowly but surely grown between them until it had bound one to the other so tightly that death itself couldn't have separated them.
And then they thought of their daughter, the one treasure that they together held dearer than anything and everything else-and they thought of how she could never know the full truth.
"It's for the best," Zhong Lu whispered.
"So were the many attempts to take my life. Do you agree with them as well?"
Zhong Lu's arms tightened around her. "Your life-and Ai Cheng's-I value above all else. That's why I defied the attempts on your life; and that's why I now insist that Yi Fu remain dead, even to our daughter. Knowledge is a powerful thing, as you should well know. But if our daughter learns that she inherits royal blood from both mother and father... No. She might get ideas-no, dear, I didn't say that she would, I said 'might.' She might get ideas that she's somehow above the others in the village. Or she might let something slip like Tang Hui did, as trustworthy as he is. And it could be the piece of information that leads someone to try and take her life."
"We're all the same," sighed Zi Li tiredly, and Zhong Lu smiled against her hair.
"But didn't it take us a few near-death experiences to truly understand that?"
"We're all the same in the face of danger." Zi Li's voice was growing fainter. Zhong Lu was very much aware of the spot on his shirt dampened by her tears. He stroked her back soothingly.
But if Ai Cheng never has to learn that in any more than words, then we'll be more than happy.
Zhong Lu took the mug from his sleeping wife's hand and placed it aside. He put out the fire, lifted his wife, and carried her into the living area. Tonight, they would sleep, and tomorrow, they would wake feeling refreshed.
Knowledge was power. There were some pieces of knowledge that he simply wanted his daughter to have because it could make her life easier. But certain pieces of power could start wars-and as long as he had anything to say about it, the secret of Zi Li's bloodline would remain a secret from the world, and those who knew of it would take it to their graves.
Certain pieces of knowledge would never be possessed by Ai Cheng. She would remain an average country girl, if a slightly better educated one than was the norm. She would grow up a tomboy, fall in love, marry, have a few children, grow old with her husband, and die of old age.
Equality only really comes in the face of danger-there was no doubt about that. But what a happy life his daughter would live in the absence of that knowledge!
Title: Knowledge
Fandom: Real Fake Princess
Quote:"We're all equal in the face of what we're most afraid of"
Disclaimer: I own nothing recognizable from Real Fake Princess. And I'm probably slaughtering Chinese culture and history too-my apologies in advance.
Summary: When her uncle leaves her baffled with an offhand comment, a girl wonders about the origin of her parents. But there's more to the story than she can ever know.
Ai Cheng lived in a quaint town in the outskirts of the Tang empire. She was your average country bumpkin-or would have been, at least, if her father didn't insist on teaching her history and literature with such vigor, and her uncle weren't so adamant that she learn the basics of medicine. These attentions, to be perfectly frank, annoyed her. What need had she for such things? Her father said it was the principle of the thing; her uncle told her that the knowledge could prove useful someday. But quite frankly, she didn't see how.
None of her friends had to learn to read and interpret literature. None of them knew the slightest bit about the ancient history her father spoke of. In fact, the vast majority of them could scarcely read!
Sometimes-like the times when her father simply forgot to stop and lessons went on and on and on and had no end in sight-it seemed to Ai Cheng that her mother agreed with her. These were the times when her mother-generally armed with a sharp or otherwise dangerous object-declared that Ai Cheng was to be let outside or else, because while it didn't hurt to learn, there was such a thing as spending too much time learning information that none of her friends even knew to exist. At such times, Ai Cheng tended to sneak out as soon as possible, because it always seemed to start the same pattern: her parents would argue, growning louder by the minute, until one would say something that would sober the other, after which they would proceed to apologize and cuddle for a while in a manner that should be prohibited for individuals who had already procreated, because it triggered nausea in the product of said procreation.
At other times, however-like the times when Ai Cheng started to complain-her mother would listen patiently, chuckling for some reason unknown to Ai Cheng, and then tell her that there actually were some assets to knowledge.
The one thing her mother didn't sympathize with in the least was her medicine lessons, and with her mother, father, and uncle all determined to have her learn, she simultaneously grew determined to defy them and lost all the drive to fight.
Obviously, the fight to defy knowledge was lost before it even began. But if nothing else, Ai Cheng reserved the right to complain.
While determined to teach her medicine (almost) against her will, Ai Cheng's Uncle Tang Hui was quite sympathetic, and would listen to her complain just so long as she kept her hands moving as she did so. Ai Cheng, annoyed, free-time-deprived teenager that she was, took full advantage of the opportunity.
"...And then he wanted me to go on and read the next chapter too. As if it's perfectly normal! Can you believe him? And the twins told me I could go to the market with them if I finished up early, but Dad doesn't even care. I mean, none of my friends know how to read! You hardly read at all, Mom doesn't even know how to read, and the only ones who can read at all are Dad and the twins! The twins only read because you and Aunt Xiao Liu make them learn with me, and I don't even know why Dad reads!"
Pausing to take a breath, Ai Cheng looked up at her uncle.
She furrowed her brow. Why was her uncle not moving?
But when she paused her hands to turn to get a better look at her uncle, he jolted out of his stupor, smiled at her, and went back to slicing the herbs just so.
"Ai Cheng,"-a glance from her uncle told her to go back to grinding the seeds-"what makes you think that your mother can't read?"
Ai Cheng blinked, and stopped grinding the seeds again. A long look at her uncle told her that he was perfectly serious. "Well..." She blinked again. "Because she never really reads, I suppose."
Uncle Tang Hui chuckled and looked at her out the corner of his eyes as he turned the board to get a better angle on the herbs.
"I can tell you, on good authority, that your mother loves reading a few pages of a good book before bed." Ai Cheng blinked yet again, and her uncle laughed. "I taught your mother to read a little when she was a girl. But it was when she met your father that she really started learning those things. She was an average bumpkin just like you till she met your father," her uncle added with a wink.
"Why would she want to learn all that? Why from Dad?" Ai Cheng exclaimed.
Uncle Tang Hui laughed.
"You think you've got it bad? Your mother tried to learn more than just literature and history, you know. Music, posture, manners-she had to learn everything from how to walk to how to address and interact with every member of the court! It was really something, you know. Your mother was just about the least graceful girl you could come across-a tomboy with no idea how to do her hair, who harmed patients she tried to help more often than not. And to watch Zhong Lu try to turn her into a lady..."
"A lady? The court? Why?"
Ai Cheng could not comprehend what happened next: the smile froze on her uncle's face, and then he was chopping the herbs with unnecessary vigor as though he had never even heard her question.
"Uncle Hui?"
But he just scraped the chopped herbs into the prepared bowl, took her mortar and pestle to scrape the contents out of the mortar and off the pestle into the bowl with the herbs. "It's time to get back home, Ai Cheng. Your mother will be waiting with dinner."
Ai Cheng toyed with the idea of pressing the question, but something about her uncle's demeanor warned her against it. She said her goodbyes to her uncle, aunt and twins cousins, but all through the short walk home, she did nothing but rack her brain for what she knew of her parents.
Nothing, was the conclusion she had come to by the time she reached home. She knew that her mother was named Zi Li, and her father Zhong Lu. She knew that her mother had long wavy shining locks of hair, and her father had long straight ebony hair. Her mother's eyes were large, inquisitive, and gentle, and her father's seemed hard and piercing unless you knew him well enough to see the gentle light that shone through them. She knew that they all lived on the outskirts of the Tang empire because her parents did not like anything remotely related to the Tang court. Which made sense, seeing as how her Aunt Xiao Liu's brother had apparently once despised them.
But really, all she knew of her parents apart from the obvious was that her mother had come here with Uncle Tang Hui, after which her father had arrived to wed her mother.
It was strange that it had never occurred to her that that story had serious plot holes-like why her parents apparently knew each other to begin with, for instance. Or where anybody came from to begin with.
She was silent all through dinner pondering this, and noticed none of the worried glances that her parents shared over her head.
It was as Zi Li removed the plates from the table that she finally addressed her daughter about her uncharacteristic silence.
"Ai Cheng?"
Ai Cheng looked up like a deer caught in headlights; Zi Li looked at her daughter in concern.
"Is something wrong?"
For a moment, Ai Cheng wondered if it would be wiser to ask her father about this. But either way, "Mom, how did you meet Dad?"
When her mother dropped the plate she was holding, Ai Cheng jumped, but was not particularly surprised. "What brought this on?" Zi Li asked in a tone that attempted lightness, but could not hide her shakiness.
"Well," Ai Cheng began carefully as she watched her mother lean down to clean up the shards of broken ceramic, "I was complaining to Uncle about my studies as usual"-Zi Li sighed-"when I mentioned that you couldn't read, and he told me that you could, and that you'd had to learn a lot more than I do, and you learned it all from dad. But then he let slip something about ladies and the court..."
Zi Li carefully placed the pieces of broken ceramic in another plate.
"Dear," Zi Li said slowly, "You're asking for a very long story, you know. Why don't we clean this up together? I'll tell you a story while we do."
----------
On longer working days, when Zhong Lu returned from the fields with the men in the village, he would find his wife curled up in bed, wasting another candle to read a book. So when he returned to find his wife still sitting by the fire in the kitchen area of their hut, doing nothing but pensively sipping a cup of tea, he knew something was wrong.
"Zi Li?"
"Ai Cheng was complaining to Brother Hui today."
"Oh?"
"Something about me not being able to read, so she shouldn't have to either..." Zhong Lu chuckled, but Zi Li just went on. "I suppose that Brother was trying to cheer her up, because he told her that I had to learn more than just history and literature, and happened to let slip a little more than he should have-"
"And now Ai Cheng's questioning things?"
There was a pause. "I told her that you were an imperial official and I was a simple village girl. We fell in love, and I was going to join you in your world, so you taught me all I needed to know. But then we were involved in a few court intrigues, which made us decide that the court was no place for us. I left, and you stayed for a while longer until you retired, after which you came to find me so we could wed."
Another pause. "That's a rather misleading set of truths, isn't it?" It was probably Zhong Lu's teasing tone that brought tears to Zi Li's eyes just then. Zhong Lu sobered and pulled Zi Li into his embrace. "Zi Li. You told her all that remains of the truth. That's all there is to it. The princess Yi Fu is dead. All the rest is gone."
"But it seems so...pointless," whispered Zi Li. "Everything we've been through, all the obstacles we overcame just to live-they never meant anything at all. It's like they never were. And that makes us seem so...not us. I mean, you, simply falling for a tomboy village girl?"
For a moment, they sat in silence. They were both thinking back to the days when they had first met: Zhong Lu, an official dedicated to seeking lost relatives of the emperor, and Zi Li, a village girl placed in his care by Tang Hui, who claimed that she was the lost Princess Yi Fu. They thought of every argument they could remember-that the ones they couldn't-and how they had fought over anything and everything. They recalled how they had only reached a reluctant truce when Zhong Lu promised to allow Zi Li to meet Tang Hui if she dedicated herself to her studies for a month. They thought of the people they had known, the affections they had felt, the tragedies they had borne, and the love that had slowly but surely grown between them until it had bound one to the other so tightly that death itself couldn't have separated them.
And then they thought of their daughter, the one treasure that they together held dearer than anything and everything else-and they thought of how she could never know the full truth.
"It's for the best," Zhong Lu whispered.
"So were the many attempts to take my life. Do you agree with them as well?"
Zhong Lu's arms tightened around her. "Your life-and Ai Cheng's-I value above all else. That's why I defied the attempts on your life; and that's why I now insist that Yi Fu remain dead, even to our daughter. Knowledge is a powerful thing, as you should well know. But if our daughter learns that she inherits royal blood from both mother and father... No. She might get ideas-no, dear, I didn't say that she would, I said 'might.' She might get ideas that she's somehow above the others in the village. Or she might let something slip like Tang Hui did, as trustworthy as he is. And it could be the piece of information that leads someone to try and take her life."
"We're all the same," sighed Zi Li tiredly, and Zhong Lu smiled against her hair.
"But didn't it take us a few near-death experiences to truly understand that?"
"We're all the same in the face of danger." Zi Li's voice was growing fainter. Zhong Lu was very much aware of the spot on his shirt dampened by her tears. He stroked her back soothingly.
But if Ai Cheng never has to learn that in any more than words, then we'll be more than happy.
Zhong Lu took the mug from his sleeping wife's hand and placed it aside. He put out the fire, lifted his wife, and carried her into the living area. Tonight, they would sleep, and tomorrow, they would wake feeling refreshed.
Knowledge was power. There were some pieces of knowledge that he simply wanted his daughter to have because it could make her life easier. But certain pieces of power could start wars-and as long as he had anything to say about it, the secret of Zi Li's bloodline would remain a secret from the world, and those who knew of it would take it to their graves.
Certain pieces of knowledge would never be possessed by Ai Cheng. She would remain an average country girl, if a slightly better educated one than was the norm. She would grow up a tomboy, fall in love, marry, have a few children, grow old with her husband, and die of old age.
Equality only really comes in the face of danger-there was no doubt about that. But what a happy life his daughter would live in the absence of that knowledge!