Accidental post: The river aflame

[fightingvirtue]

[As the feed clicks on, Ryuubi is at the riverfront, crouching by the water. The river is mostly frozen, but some distance from the shore, a large pile of wood and flammable material has been set ablaze and burns steadily despite the snow. There's a jagged gap in the ice, and the deep dark water shows through

Comments

[the5thdragon]

... Who are you? Playing at Chinese history... Cao Cao loses the fight, and yet in his way wins the war.... But it is in the history of China that no one should reign forever.

[the5thdragon]

I don't know if One man can be possessed of limitless virtue, but perhaps better to say prudence in his rule.

You don't need to always agree with something to see the advantage in it.

[fightingvirtue]

And have I not been prudent in my rule? For all that it didn't come to anything. Doing right by the people brought nothing but pain to me and pain to them when I was gone. I'd take a much smaller goal over the great one, if I could.

[the5thdragon]

I don't think there is anything stopping you from stepping down from the world stage if you wanted to, but is it really something you would want to do?

You may not realize that you miss the importance, until it's gone.

[fightingvirtue]

Nothing stopping me?

[He pauses, then laughs; a dry, humorless, painful laughter.]

Do you realize who I am, boy?

[the5thdragon]

I don't think I do... but from where I come from, people aren't immortal.

Enlighten me, please.

[fightingvirtue]

The name you would know is Liu Bei.

[the5thdragon]

If you truly are the great Liu Bei, how can you look down on your own accomplishments? You came from less, and created so much more. The people you benefited with your rule, weren't they worth the pain?

I suffered, I bled to make my lands free... And I'm not even sure what I did was right.

[fightingvirtue]

And what have I accomplished? A kingdom that barely lasted my lifetime, a war stretched out for half a century?

If I could, I would have laid down my swords long ago. I'd have submitted to Cao Cao and spared a million lives at Red Cliff. I cannot tell you if war is ever right, or price freedom for you.

[the5thdragon]

so in you're hindsight, you'd have submitted to Cao Cao so easily? Perhaps freedom, justice, and truth, cannot be earned without struggle to define them, without pain to give them dignity.

Why not simply lay down your swords now then, and accept what may come if you are so content to see the world as defined by others?

[fightingvirtue]

Dignity means very little when you're hungry, cold or dying. You'll learn this when you've grown.

That's the catch, isn't it? I tried, oh, how I tried, but fate has its way of happening. We cannot change who we are. The story's told - history happened - and now all of us are just retracing our own steps.

[the5thdragon]

I'm grown enough! Enough to know suffering and what it means! At least you tried damn it!

[fightingvirtue]

But not enough to know the value of peace, I think - or what it means to be tired.

It will come. I didn't imagine it would come to me - heady days, grand victories, oaths of brotherhood... but time makes fools of us all.

[the5thdragon]

... I know the value of peace, I'm just wondering if it was worth the price we paid.

[fightingvirtue]

And without paying it, won't you have had peace? Not freedom, not honor. Peace, a quiet life.

[the5thdragon]

Peace perhaps, but without justice, with oppression and mistreatment.

But perhaps it would have been better than the mountain of dead that came about as a result of our war.... at these hands.