Esen never could grasp why Ouyang might choose to keep himself apart, and why he lived with an austerity that bordered on monasticism. Most men who had risen so dramatically in station delighted in luxury, and Ouyang knew Esen would have gladly given him anything he wanted. But what did a eunuch soldier need other than weapons and armor? Ouyang thought of the abbot's scorn, Altan's curses. Creature. Thing. A tool that needed nothing, had no desires of its own.
-- She Who Became the Sun, chapter 5
Zhu saw Ma examining her from under her eyelashes as she drank the milk. It was a vexed look, as if she were convinced there was something else happening under Zhu's monkly naïveté, but she couldn't tell what it was. Still, she was the first person in the Red Turbans who had seen that much.
Contrary to his father's assertions, Esen did remember. It was only that in his memory it had happened to someone else. Ouyang was so much a fixture in his life that he seemed devoid of any past other than the one he shared with Esen. It was only now that he was forced to see that memory truly, and acknowledge that Ouyang and that child were one and the same.
[Ma] remembered the strange jolt she'd felt when she'd seen him [Zhu] kneeling before Little Guo on his first day in Anfeng. How, just for an instant, he'd seemed like someone who knew exactly what he was gambling, and why.
Esen never meant to hurt, and Ouyang had always taken care to pretend matter-of-fact acceptance about his exclusion from family life. Why should he blame Esen for not reading his mind to see the anger and pain there? But the truth was: he did blame Esen. Blamed him even more than he would a stranger, because it hurt more that someone so beloved should not see the truth of him.
And riding on his bad-tempered Mongol horse at the head of the procession was Monk Zhu himself. An unprepossessing little figure in robes instead of armor. From Ma's elevated perspective his circular straw hat made him look like a lopped stump. It was hard to believe someone like that had done the impossible. But even as she thought it, Ma remembered him saying I. It hadn't been the speech of a monk detached from earthly concerns, but that of someone keenly aware of his own interests. Someone with ambition.
"Let me make an offering on your behalf."
"You're confusing your own opinion of me for your father's. I don't think his spirit particularly wants to hear from me."
"He thought highly of you," Esen said stubbornly. "My father didn't suffer fools. Would he have allowed you as my choice of general if he didn't believe in your capabilities? The reputation of the armies of Henan would be nothing if not for you. Of course he wants your respect."
...
The corner of Ouyang's mouth moved, more brittle than a smile. The shadow across his face was too transparent to mask pain. Esen thought: He mourns too.
"You recognized it because you want something too. No one else knows, do they?"
"Knows what?" His [Zhu's] face flickered, and for one irrational moment she [Ma] felt afraid.
She said, less certain, "You didn't accidentally stumble into Anfeng. You came here on purpose."
...
Out loud, it sounded preposterous. Monks weren't supposed to want things. They weren't supposed to have ambition. And yet--
After a moment, Zhu said, "You know what else no one knows?"
"What?"
He smiled at her. Ordinary eyes in an unhandsome face; it was strange how they captured her. "That you're smarter than all of them put together. You're right. I did come."
Esen groaned. "Ah, how much easier life must be without family. Clean. None of these worries, concerns, encumbrances." Intoxicated, Esen was over-enunciating. Ouyang, staring at him in pain, saw anew the reminder of what he had always known: that Esen had forgotten that Ouyang had come from a family; that he had once been a son, a brother, too. "Better I should be like you, loving only my sword, none of this--this--"
"It is," he [Zhu] said. "But you know what's worse than suffering? Not suffering, because you're not even alive to feel it." An incoming draft stirred the air, blurring the thin lines of incense smoke. His eyes flicked to her [Ma], and she startled. He sees me, she thought, and the peculiar intensity of it made her feel like she was being seen for the very first time.
But Ouyang hadn't done his best. He hadn't even tried...Esen's sympathy cut Ouyang's pride to the quick. He knew Ouyang better than anyone. How could he really believe that had been his best effort? All it showed was that Esen had forgotten the most important thing about him: that he was a Nanren.
All at once the performance slipped off his [Zhu's] face. He was a short man, so that they were looking eye-to-eye; it gave the moment a shocking intimacy, as though something of his inner self was touching something of hers. He said gravely, "You're working so hard to help Little Guo. Does he even know?"
How was it he saw her as someone who acted of her own volition, when to everyone else she was just an object performing its function?
Esen's voice took on a note Ouyang had never heard before, low and roughened with potential, as he said, "You really are as beautiful as a woman."
...
He had betrayed Esen, but now Esen betrayed him. It was incomprehensible how despite everything they had been through together, Esen could still think Ouyang might be flattered by that comparison. How could he be so completely ignorant of the shame that was the core of Ouyang's being? Burning with an emotion that seemed to contain the agonies of both love and hate, Ouyang thought furiously: He chooses not to know.
[Zhu] set aside his book and rose, and started to untie his shirt. It was so bizarre that Ma found herself watching...She heard his clothes fall.
Then his cool fingers were on her face, turning it back. He said, "Look."
...
Zhu watched her look. Her face had a flayed vulnerability, something so raw and terrible that Ma flinched to see it. It made her think of someone baring a mortal wound they dared not look at themselves, for fear of reality undoing them in an instant.
Zhu spoke calmly, but beneath the surface Ma sensed a shivering horror. "Ma Xiuying. Do you see something you want?"
Ouyang, watching Esen with an ache in his heart, realized afresh that Esen had never been able to understand the values that made other people's worlds different from his own. He looked but he couldn't see.
Zhu smiled at her. "I don't even know who I am. General Ouyang killed Zhu Chongba, but I'm not the person I was born as either. How can you know who you're cherishing?"
...
"I might not know your name," Ma said, taking Zhu's hand. "But I know who you are."
Esen stopped dead. Cold terror crushed his chest. "What have you done."
...
Baoxiang coughed, his face reddening, but he maintained his composure. "Oh, you think--? No, brother. This isn't my plot against you."
...
"No," said Ouyang. "It's mine."
The depth of Ma's grief and anger surprised her...The witnesses gone, Ma's tears overflowed. "You killed him."
Zhu was silent. Ma, reading her face, exclaimed, "You don't even deny it!...The only thing you needed him for was to hand you power...But you don't need him for that [the Mandate], do you?" She said bitterly. "Because you have the Mandate too."
There was a long silence. Eventually Esen said, his voice cracking, "Why are you doing this?"
...
"Why? Do you want me to tell you why? I was nearly twenty years by your side, Esen, and for all that time did you think I'd forgotten how your father slaughtered my family, and his men cut me like an animal and made me your slave? Do you think for a moment I forgot?"
Zhu heard the unflinching demand in Ma's voice: for Zhu's own loyalty, and honesty, and difference. As Zhu stood looking down at her, she saw suddenly how their journey would go...for Ma, every moment of that ascent would be compromise and heartache and the gradual erosion of her belief that there was always a kinder way. That was the price Ma would pay--not just for Zhu's desire, but for her own. Because she loved Zhu, and wanted to see her rule the world.
Zhu's heart ached. I'll make it worth it. For both of us.
...
"My future Empress," she called, and the words left her throbbing with the sweet potential of what was to come.
I found it very interesting how Ma and Zhu's relationship is premised so heavily on their really seeing each other in a way no one else ever does (which is part of how it survives the murder of the Prince of Radiance), while the true fatality in Esen and Ouyang's relationship is Esen's inability or unwillingness to truly see or understand Ouyang.
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