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Shan-Yu's Victory	By : lightbird Category: +M through R > Mulan (Disney) > Mulan (Disney) Views: 16642 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 1
Disclaimer: I do not own the cartoons of Disney Studios, nor any of the characters from them. I do not make any money from the writing of this story.

Chapter List
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“I’m sure the commander has left the city, Batu,” Shan-Yu told his master archer and council as they stood on the balcony overlooking the square. “But I expect that he will return for her. Suren will remain in the room to warn me if he shows up there.”

“And you still want the same men to keep an eye on Mulan?”

“Yes.”

They watched the crowd in the square and along the adjoining streets. It was a sunny, mild day and the market was bustling. Some of Boke’s soldiers remained posted around the square to keep order, but the throng of people in the market presented no threat of a battle. They were merchants and buyers, interested in carrying on business as usual not starting a rebellion; and the soldiers had been specifically ordered to merely keep the peace and not to use force against the civilians.

“She is not a palace concubine. I don’t know who she is.”

“But you’re sure that you’ve seen her before this?”

“Definitely. I don’t know where, but I’ve seen her. And the questions she asks…she’s no ordinary girl.”

“Do you think she was working as an Imperial spy?” Batu suggested.

“It’s possible, but I doubt it. She’s innocent, and it’s not an act. And she’s a little too clumsy about the way she comes out with her questions to be a professional spy. But she’s very smart and…she has interesting things to say. She asked me what I will do now that I am the leader of the country. I don’t know why she would care.”

“Maybe the old Emperor was her father? Or a relative?”

Shan-Yu rubbed his chin. “That hadn’t occurred to me. But it would make as much sense as anything else.”

“If that is the case, you should be careful of her motives.”

“Agreed. But I don’t want her harmed.”

“If she tries to harm you…”

“She won’t. What else?”

“We’ve sent men out to contact the leaders of the provinces, as we discussed, and to give those leaders the new orders. They’re prepared to fight in the event that the people in the provinces are disagreeable to the new regime.”

“Good. Hopefully there will not be any fighting. If the local leaders are willing to serve one Emperor as easily as another, we’ll have a much smoother transition.”

Batu studied his friend and leader, who seemed to have gone a little mad. For as long as he had known him Shan-Yu had never been one to resolve anything peacefully and without force, often seeking a reason to fight, and he wondered if this girl Mulan was having some sort of odd, magical effect on him.

He knew very little of Shan-Yu’s personal life and would never ask. He did know now, had found out quite recently in fact, that his friend had been married at one time and that he had lost his wife. Though he knew nothing about the details of her death, he had a sense that she had been killed in one of the conflicts that had occurred so often among their communities at the hands of Imperial guards sent to keep order in the areas along the border.

Shan-Yu’s fierceness in battle came as much from his anger and bitterness at what had happened as it did from his natural gift as a master of the art of war. Still, Batu had always felt that when it was possible, avoiding conflict was imminently preferable. There had already been too much bloodshed and if this is what his leader wanted now, it was fine with him.

“Peace is always preferable,” Batu agreed.

~~~

Mulan strolled through the palace garden trying to appear nonchalant and glancing around casually. There were guards posted everywhere. None of them were specifically watching her, but she was sure that she was being observed carefully by someone.

“Mulan.”

She took a seat on a bench under an orange blossom tree as her guardian reappeared.

“Be careful, Mulan. Shan-Yu sees right through the questions you ask him. And Batu thinks that you might be the former Emperor’s daughter. Or some other relative.”

Her eyes widened at that.

“I wonder where he came up with that idea?” she mused.

Mulan listened carefully as Mushu reported to her the entire conversation between Shan-Yu and Batu.

“Interesting,” she said finally. “It sounds like he at least wants to attempt to rule wisely.”

“Maybe. But I don’t care about that. My concern is you, Mulan. I don’t know what is happening to you. You’re…different somehow…and I’m really worried about you. And what if you’re pregnant?”

She gasped. She hadn’t thought about that at all. What was wrong with her?

“I know things have turned out really badly. But you don’t seem to have any control anymore…not even of yourself.”

He climbed up to her shoulder and hugged her. She closed her eyes and hugged her friend back.

“This is my fate, I guess. I just have to accept it with dignity and grace, and do what I can to make things right. Besides, chances are good that I may not be pregnant,” she added, hopeful at the sudden realization. “Ever since I joined the army and started working out so much, I haven’t been getting…”

“Alright, alright, I don’t need to hear about the details,” he interrupted, putting his hands over his ears.

“Still, just in case, Mushu, would you be willing to go back to Bi at the tavern and talk to her for me?”

“Why Bi?”

“Because…she would know what to do…her girls would be getting pregnant all of the time otherwise, so there must be some way that…well, I just think that she would be able to tell me what to do.”

He stared at her for a minute, then nodded. “Yes, she would know. But I would have to leave you to go back to her.”

“That’s okay. I may need you to leave to get a message to Shang and the others anyway.”

“No…it’s not okay,” Mushu insisted. “I want to stay with you, at least for a little while. I’m very concerned about you right now and I need to keep an eye on you.”

~~~

Shang stopped when he reached the snow-covered pass. He made a fire and sat down to eat some dry food and drink some water. This was the place where Mulan had been treated for her wound, where the truth of her deception had been revealed, where he’d almost killed her. He shivered, more from the memories of this spot than from the cold.

The sound of voices and the crunching of snow under footsteps interrupted his somber reminisce and he stood up quickly, recognizing Yao’s gruff voice.

“Hey, it’s Khan.”

“Mulan?”

There was the sound of hurrying footsteps struggling through the snow and the three of them appeared, approaching the plateau, looking excited to see their friend and comrade. Yao and Ling’s expressions fell when they saw it was him, and without Mulan. They were followed by a motley group of men that looked nothing like soldiers.

“Captain?” Chien-Po exclaimed. “It’s good to see that you’re alright. Where are the others?”

Shang shook his head. “They were killed.”

“Did you see Mulan?” Ling asked.

“She’s still at the palace,” Shang answered.

“You left her there?” he exclaimed, shocked. “With Shan-Yu? An innocent girl like that…do you know what he will do to her? What he’s probably already done?”

“She insisted that she should stay and I should go.”

“And you went along with it and left her there?” Yao repeated, his anger rising visibly. “She went to help you and now you left her trapped there, with that monster?”

“How could you leave her in the palace and escape yourself?” Ling repeated, a look of disgust on his face.

“I tried to take her with me. She insisted on staying. Her guardian…oh, maybe you don’t know…”

“We know about Mushu,” Chien-Po answered.

“She told Mushu to help me escape and take me to you. I knew where to go to meet you, so he went right back to her. He told me that he tried to convince her to leave, but she wouldn’t come with me.”

“Well, can you blame her for that?” Yao scoffed. “Look at how you treated her. She saved your life and you almost killed her! Maybe she’s better off with Shan-Yu than with you.”

Shang froze completely, feeling his face begin to flame with guilt, humiliation and indignation as both Yao and Ling suddenly laced into him with an onslaught of accusations and blame.

“You held a sword over her head.”

“You let Chi Fu throw her around in the snow and the cold like that and expose her in such a despicable manner.”

“But I couldn’t…I didn’t kill her,” he sputtered indignantly in an attempt to protest. He felt the heat of humiliation and anger burning through him, emanating down his back and radiating into his entire body. “I spared her life.”

Ling snorted. “Yeah, you left her here in the cold and the snow to freeze to death on her own instead.”

“Do you know how sick she had been when we found her? Do you have any idea, Pretty Boy?”

Shang closed his eyes for a moment, groaning involuntarily at the image of her lying in the snow, ill. He knew what he had done; he was painfully aware of everything that he had done. Why did they have to rub it in? He already felt terrible enough about it. And at least he hadn’t killed her, even with Chi Fu pressuring him. He had dropped the sword and had spared her life in return for her saving his. And she’d survived. Wasn’t that what was important?

He turned on both of them, consumed with raw anguish and rage.

“The law said I had to execute her!” he retorted furiously. “I didn’t…but I couldn’t do more for her! This was the only way…”

“She saved our troop in the Tung Shao Pass and you kicked her out of the army!” Yao growled, hoarsely. “She told you her reason for doing it. It was a good reason. Any filial daughter would have done that. And you condemned her! You condemned and abandoned her!”

“Do you realize that if she had come to the Imperial City with us, she might have actually come up with a plan to stop Shan-Yu from killing the Emperor? No one else thought of firing that cannon at the mountain peak,” Ling continued to press hotly. “We would have all died here! And when we returned to the city, she found a way to get into the palace without anyone seeing her even. Do you realize how smart she is? She might have come up with a strategy to get in and save the Emperor!”

Shang wanted to punch them both out. It was no different than if they rubbed salt on an open wound in his skin, but it was inside instead, a heavy, aching weight in his chest that they kept twisting a sharp knife into with every accusation they made. He wanted to answer but Yao was assailing him again before he had a chance to even open his mouth.

“She was a good soldier and you know it, Pretty Boy! She saved all of our lives here and deserved so much better, and that’s how you went and treated her!”

Shang felt himself breaking under the pressure of the guilt, guilt that had already been gnawing at him relentlessly even when he wasn’t aware of it and the added guilt that they were laying on him as they ganged up on him now; and he’d had it with being called ‘Pretty Boy’ too. Yao must have noticed his expression because he pounced once more.

“What’s the matter? Is it too difficult for you to hear this now, Pretty Boy?”

“Stop calling me that!” he roared. “I didn’t have a choice…it was out of my control. Chi Fu was there, insisting that I kill her…he was the Emperor’s council…the only solution was to…I don’t need you to pound it into me, I know what I did! I’m sorry!”

“You should be apologizing to her, not to us!”

Chien-Po interrupted, his soft voice now quietly firm.

“Enough of this. Yao, Ling, be calm. The captain obviously feels bad about Mulan, and this brawling and arguing is getting us nowhere. We need to work together and the captain is the one who can organize and lead us.”

“Ha!” Yao retorted with disdain. “The hell with the captain!”

There was an icy silence for several minutes and Shang realized that the group of men that had come with the soldiers was still waiting there, staring stunned at the scene and at a complete loss as to what to do.

“Mulan asked me to come to you,” Shang began softly. “That’s why I’m here.”

“And we need him, Yao,” Chien-Po added.

Yao sneered at him.

“I want to make this right,” he added, falteringly.

The three soldiers stared at him, Yao and Ling with expressions of anger and dislike, Chien-Po with a concerned expression. He started, taken aback by his look of worry for him.

“How?” Yao demanded.

“I don’t know how yet, but I’ll think of some way,” Shang answered firmly, shifting his gaze back to him.

“Well, she’s our friend,” Ling replied pointedly. “So you’re not going to do it alone. We want to help her, too.”

~~~

Shang sat in the snow, looking down into the ravine below where they had believed the entire Hun army had perished. It was the middle of the night and the small camp that they had set up was quiet. He was unable to sleep, still cringing under the weight of Mulan’s friends’ accusations. And he was worried about her. He now felt responsible for anything and everything that happened to her or that would happen, whether it was directly or indirectly.

Yao and Ling wouldn’t speak to him except when they had to. It would be a long time before they would forgive him for what he did to their friend, if they ever did. Chien-Po was the equalizing force in the group, keeping the uneasy peace and explaining to Shang everything he needed to know about what they knew of the situation.

It was Chien-Po that had told him about the village and the tavern that they had met Mulan in. She had stopped there to get help from a medic; she needed something for the pain of her wound. But she became extremely sick while she was there and a woman named Bi that owned the tavern took care of her. The tavern was a brothel. The last place a girl like her belonged.

He told him about how she had climbed up the column of the palace the same way she had climbed up the pole at camp with the weights, using a sash from her dress in place of the bronze disks. That must have been so difficult. How much support could a silk sash have given her?

Shang shut his eyes, thinking about the comments he had made to her about being Shan-Yu’s concubine. He knew she wasn’t like that. Anything that happened now was because she was forced.

He inhaled deeply, trying to let the breath ease the ache in his chest. But it just became worse and the sadness and regret that he felt cut him deeply. She’d saved her father’s life by what she did; he had arrived too late to do anything for his father. His throat began to constrict as it hit him that this was what it was that tortured him so. He had not been able to save his father, something he remained deeply bitter and grieved about; and she had. He felt ashamed and selfish that he was even comparing them in this way, allowing it to wound his pride as a man just because she was a woman who had succeeded where he had failed.

“Captain?”

Shang turned to Chien-Po who had come out of his tent and now stood just behind him. He swallowed, forcing back the lump in his throat, and gestured for him to sit beside him, relieved to have the distraction.

“You can call me Shang, Chien-Po. I’m not an Imperial captain anymore. There’s no longer an Imperial army.”

“You are still our captain, sir,” he answered, sitting down cross-legged beside him, “and I will continue to call you by your proper title.”

Shang looked at him, at a loss as to how to answer him. The man was giving him more respect than he felt he deserved.

“Captain, you were a good leader all along. I don’t know why you just gave up in the Imperial City.”

Shang’s eyebrow went up.

“Gave up?”

“Yes, sir. You became reckless, like you didn’t care what happened to you. You wanted to die, sir.”

It wasn’t a question. Chien-Po stated it as a fact.

Shang sighed and slowly shook his head, pausing to think about that day in the Imperial City for a moment.

“The rest of the troop died because they followed me without question. You three were the only ones smart enough to realize that you shouldn’t.”

He sighed again.

“All I knew is that I had to somehow try to help the Emperor. It was my duty. I wasn’t thinking about anything else. Or anyone else.”

“You were feeling bad because of your father and because of Mulan,” the gentle giant finished quietly.

Shang turned to face back out toward the ravine, not answering. His thoughts and his feelings then and now seemed too complex, much too tangled up and painful to be explained away in such a simple little phrase.

“I’m sorry to be prying, sir. It is your personal business after all. But you will not be able to fight well if you have all of this sorrow and negative feeling stuck inside of you. It will interfere with everything. You need to have a clear head so that you can remain centered and focused. You’re the one that taught us that, sir.”

Chien-Po patted his shoulder and stood up.

“Goodnight, Captain. Try to get some sleep.”

Shang remained silent, attempting to blink back the tears that were beginning to form as Chien-Po went off to his tent, leaving him alone again.
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Shan-Yu's Victory