#*asks for muses

"What a day to fall in love all over again."

Guo Jia took those words to heart, he did. They were his own, yes, but they had no deeper meaning than when the familiar figure of his beloved appeared before him.

Those words jumped to the forefront of his mind when she opened her mouth to speak after she, with assistance from Jia Xu, dispatched of the Wuhuan tribe and subsequently crushed any more momentum the remaining Yuan clan had.

"Fool..." Ang spoke through clenched teeth, but Guo Jia paid it no mind because he felt the way her hands held onto him as he tried to stand upright but couldn't because of the pain in his chest was overwhelming. Ang was worried about him, and it meant so much to him. Pain mattered little to him in this moment, for it had been such a long time since he had seen her again. Though he brushed aside his worries back at Wancheng, it didn't mean those worries left him. He had never been so thankful for Dian Wei saving not just his lord Cao Cao, but his wife Ang as well.

"Putting yourself in such danger," Ang continued, "A-almost losing your life...in such a droll place as this when you know there is work to be done, Strategist."

Guo Jia chuckled weakly, breathing still short, even as he raised one hand to thread it through her sapphire-colored hair, mindful of her headpiece. If he were to die after this fight, at least he'd go with the memory of her soft hair, her wonderful azure eyes and her flawless skin. His time was to be short it seemed, but he was no less blessed. Out of all of the women in the world, the most beautiful one seemed to be in his possession. "Forgive me, Zixiu. It won't happen again..." he mumbled, his forehead coming to rest upon hers. Her fingers dug into his jacket, and because he knew her well, her cheeks were pink because of the heat flooding to them.

"These were the favorite fruits of kings and emperors you know," Cao Rui remarks as he tosses peach up and down in his hand, keen blue eyes looking at Taohua, who's interest is in the fruit itself and not its backstory, or the young man trying to inform her of aforementioned story, "and they're said to be magical."

"That's great Rui, but I'm hungry and I would like to eat the peach you're holding. So if you would be so kind as to hand it over or buy another one for me, we can eat and continue our excursion!" Taohua says, and she holds out her palm to him.Rui looks between the peach in his hand, the young lady, and the basket of peaches at the fruit stand. So much effort went into the cultivation of these otherwise legendary fruits that have existed for centuries, and all they're good for now is sustenance.

Rui spies another ripened peach in the basket; and after putting down the money for it, he collects it and tosses it to Taohua, who catches it with ease, "I figured you'd want to know what's in a name." he says.

"Mrrm?" Taohua replies, mouth already full of the fruit, light brown hair neatly pulled back by an ornament she says her father--the one with a magic brush--gave her and Rui merely rolls his eyes at the lack of etiquette.

"Nevermind." the young man huffs before he continues on his way to find some shade underneath a tree. Taohua follows, and by the team he's sitting under the shade and cutting at his own peach, she's finished hers and she sits down next to him ungracefully. Instinctively his hand juts out and latches on the hem of her skirt and pulls to keep it from flaring upward before he returns to his task at hand.

"The time then was like this," Taohua begins, "Chaotic and unstable, and a fisherman carelessly sailed into a river of a forest filled with nothing but peach blossom petals, and blooming peach blossom trees. After some effort he makes his way through and finds a grotto belonging to the ancestors of the first imperial dynasty. They wanted to escape the unrest, and when they did they had no information on the outside."

Rui watches her lean against the base of the tree after she brushes a stray petal out of her lap and continues speaking to him, "They treated the fisherman with great care and he stayed for a week. When he left, he marked the pathways and told everyone back home of such a beautiful place. They tried for a long time in vain to find it, but they never did. It was beautiful though, a utopia free from war, with no knowledge of fighting."

"...So you are aware." Rui comments.

"Of what, the fighting? Or the significance of peaches, and my name?" Taohua asks. She doesn't wait for him to answer, she merely yawns and leans against his shoulder this time, "My father named me after the peach blossom flower literally. I didn't cherish it until he told me the tale of the Peach Blossom Spring. I'm...glad knowing I mean something to somebody, Rui. It's not a king or emperor, and I'm okay with that."

She closes her eyes and raises a finger to point to the peach, "You should eat that now. Peaches are the best when you eat them at the ripest, but you already knew that, yeah?"

"Brother."

Ce remained rooted to the floor, brown eyes staring at the large and currently closed doors. He chalked it up to delirium making it sound like Quan was there, at least until his fingers snapped in front of Ce’s face a couple of times and prompted the Little Conqueror out of his impromptu stare down with the inanimate object, who was undoubtedly going to be the victor.

"Ah, hell. Sorry, Quan. What is it?" Ce finally asked as he rubbed the back of his head. He didn’t like the frown on Quan’s face, and those clearly tired green eyes. Ce, like his mother, always believed Quan was the better looking one out of the two of them, and he wore his emotions on his face—a Sun family trait, no doubt.

"Why are you standing out here? Your child is going to be born any minute now, I thought you would be there…" Quan said before he motioned to the stone doors. All they needed was one good push, and Ce could be on his way to see his family.

It was easier said than done; like the three times before, Ce would stand there and then he would begin to pace back and forth in an attempt to keep himself active. Next, he would clench and unclench his fists and proceed to coach himself into believing that everything would be alright. Then came the self-berating—this was the fourth time he was putting someone he loved at risk for him, and it wasn’t a battle for land—and finally, when Ce was done hating himself, he’d believe that things were okay. The only other constant—one of the most important ones—was Quan.

Quan had always been there to be the voice of reason, Ce’s own personal devil’s advocate. This time it was no different; it was always Quan who snapped him out of things, got him to take a breath and open those doors and go see his family.

"I just…figured there was, you know, a fight going on that I could break up!" Ce finally said before he laughed, even as Quan gave him a look that implied he was crazy.

"Brother, there’s no one here but you and I," Quan moved to stand in front of his brother and pat his shoulders, "and we’ve got nothing to fight about. Everything is going to be fine. Your son will be healthy, but also very happy. He’ll have three sisters, his mother, and most importantly, his father, one of the greatest people I’ve known and someone I am blessed to have as a brother."

Unable to express anything vocal, Ce merely pulled his brother into a tight hug before he took a deep breath, and then exhaled, “You are irreplaceable, Quan. I dunno what I’d do without you, Brother.”

Quan laughed, and returned the hug, “You’d be fine, Brother. It’s me who wouldn’t know what to do without you.” He pulled away, and headed toward the doors and pushed them open, “Come on. Don’t you hear the cries of your new son?”

The first time she wants to go hunting with Ce, he's already leading his white horse away from the stables with his bow and quiver secure, and he's prepared to mount when she comes running out as fast as her little feet will take her.

"Papa!" she cries, and he gives pause, not at all used to her sounding so distressed. The second her arms come out, he drops to catch her and he sweeps her up into his arms with minimal effort. He waits until she puts her arms around his neck before quickly burying one of his hands into her dark brown hair before his hand is firmly against the back of her head.

"Take me with you!" she says after she buries her face into his shoulder and sniffles.

Ce remembers her mother warning him that she was going to follow him wherever he went as soon as she could walk, and as soon as she could run to keep up with him. He remembers looking at her with such adoration, and he remembers being fascinated with the way she looked at him like she knew he was and she had only been present for just a couple of hours. He remembers, as he pulls away just a little to look at her sad face now, that she was in part the reason he wanted every single one of his hunts to go well.

"Ah, c'mon, don't make that face!" he tells her, "You gotta stay here and keep your mother company!"

"I wanna go with you!" she protests, and even as he laughs and messes up the hair he's sure her mother spent time brushing, he's thinking about how dangerous it is for her, even now. He's hunting animals, but she's too much like him and he can't guarantee that they'll come back and she'll be without any cuts or scratches. He can see her running toward the target, excited to catch it, but only ending up startling it and getting herself hurt.

And yet...Ce finds himself unable to tell her no again as he sighs and carefully puts her up onto the horse before he follows suit. Her mother is going to kill him upon his return, but the elation she expresses as they begin to gallop away and into the forest makes him believe it was worth it, because he can't stand seeing her cry. The elation never wanes, even as he tells her to be quiet so they don't startle the deer; even when he's poised to fire his arrow he can hear her feet against the dirt behind him as she presses her hands against the tree. She never skips away from where he tells her to stay, and she waits until he's either hit or missed his target to run up to him or encircle him.

"Again! Again!" she chirps and finds himself laughing because he's sure when he was young he might've done the same when he went hunting with his father when he was present. They return home before dusk and he's realized that this is one of the best hunts he's ever been on.

It's dusk again years later, and she's much older now; Hunting's been traded in for etiquette, dancing, and courting. Because Ce is trying to come to terms with the fact that his daughter isn't the naive and innocent little one he could sweep up into his arms and carry, he leaves her behind to hunt on his own. He misses hearing her happiness at him hitting his targets, and he misses her sloppy but still meaningful hugs when he fails to hit what he wants to catch.

"You left me behind, Father!" she tells him, and he can see the way her jaw is clenched, the white knuckled grip on the bow that threatens to break it, the way she digs her shoes into the hard ground and kicks up dust once, and the way her face is scrunched up. Even though he's scratching the back of his head and letting out some nervous laughter, he's remembering each day he was home and went hunting.

Ce's taken her with him on those trips, and now, as he tries to think of something reasonable to say to his angry daughter, he still remembers her, even if she couldn't fire an arrow with any kind of precision, as a mirror image of himself. He remembers her very clearly, imitating his posture and his focus.

Ce allows his shoulders to slump into defeat, "Hey, look, I'm sorry. I thought you wouldn't wanna go kill animals with your father anymore! You've got many more important things to manage now that you're older--"

She pokes him in the chest with her finger, "I don't care about those! I'll always pick hunting with my Father! So take me with you next time!" she tells him.

[holy shit wow what even I just-