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A Three Kingdoms spur-of-the-moment story. Right? Guest starring: LJ's altered HTML editor, now with a fancy font!

Title: For This One Time
Characters: Cao Cao/Guan Yu, background Cao Cao/Xiahou Dun
Rating: Slightly NSFW
Word Count: ~900
Summary: Guan Yu only has thoughts of home, whereas his host craves the unattainable.
Notes: Last night, I saw this picture (original source here) and it made me want to write out the situation. Though I love the AU clothes in the artwork, I didn't want to make it an AU and just gave him something that would be time era-appropriate. Also based the whole thing on Ro3K canon, namely chapters 25 (quoted below) and 26. You barely need to add anything in there, unless you're like me and straight-up make it a new scene. The fic would be taking place in the latter chapter, probably during the last period of banquet-throwing (when Dun is conveniently posted outside the capital; interesting). I wanted it to read like just one added episode to what's already in the book, so I hope the style works to that effect. Gee, it's been a while since I did omniscient.
/TL;DR

     One day Cao Cao noticed that the robe Guan Yu was wearing was old and frayed. Taking his measurements, Cao Cao had a new one made of fine brocade and presented it to him. Guan Yu took it and put it on under the old robe, so that the latter covered it.
     "Why so very thrifty?" laughed Cao Cao.
     "It is not thrift," was his reply. "The old robe was a gift from my brother, and I wear it because it reminds me of him. I could not allow the new gift to eclipse his old one."
     "How very high principled!" said Cao Cao, sighing.

( 'I see your humility has not waned.' )

It's been a while since I wrote a fic that isn't MGS-related, eh? (Let's ignore the fact that this is exactly how I started myself on BB and Zero last year, and I still haven't written everything I want about them, so doing the same bloody thing in another fandom is probably not advisable. Well, here I am, doing it anyway!)

Trying my hand at Xiahou Dun and Cao Cao for the first time; you be the judge of how well that's worked out or not. This is primarily based on the games, namely Dynasty Warriors 7, for two reasons: 1) I safely know the whole thing by now so I can write about it, and 2) these two have more screentime in the game series than in novel-canon anyway, so like hell I'm going to pass up on that. For some context, DW7 is the game that tries to keep closer to the history in principle, though its really big divergence is that it makes everyone die so young. (And good-looking.) Anyway, I've watched through all the cutscenes and couldn't resist framing some of them in a story. The Wei storyline is half what's made explicit on-screen and half everything that they're explicitly not saying.

The fic is split into three sections, the first and last of which are based directly on two cutscenes from the latter part of the game (here from 16:15 and 18:58; contains spoilers) because I'm that much of a canon-referencing junkie. The direct speech in those two scenes is quoted verbatim.

I've used a different (more pretentious less subdued) writing style for this than I mostly do, given every adaptation of this history seems to be almost over-the-top dramatic, so I'd love to hear whether that works at all. And that's pretty much it.

Title: Lives beyond Words
Pairing: Cao Cao/Xiahou Dun
Rating: PG-13 (Or a very tame R; I'm hesitant to use it since the sex isn't that explicit.) Slightly NSFW
Word Count: ~940
Summary: Intimate knowledge comes at the highest price.
Warning(s): Canon character death, unfortunately.
Notes: Style names are awesome.
Disclaimer: The Dynasty Warriors series belongs to Koei. I make no profit and intend no copyright infringement.

( Single-minded to a fault, as ever. )