Title: Official Public History
Fandom: Guardian
Rating: G-rated
Length: 201 words
Notes: Also for 3SF 2024 (threesentenceficathon). Much thanks to trobadora for beta. ♥ No warnings.
Tags: Dixing history, Dixing politics, Post-Dirt Nap, Yearning, Punctuation Abuse
Summary: Shen Wei, newly awoken, learns how the ancient war has been remembered.


The Dixing scholars who congregate like crows in the palace archives send a message to the newly returned Envoy, begging for an interview regarding historical events—and of course, Shen Wei says yes, is curious to see how the ancient war has been remembered in his absence.

Talking to them and reviewing the scrolls, he finds the details vague and skewed, apparently gleaned more from the defeated Rebels, whose views are portrayed as fact, than from the few surviving men who’d fought at his side; dismayed, he sets the record straight as politely as he can, describes the Allied Forces, Fu You and Ma Gui, the terrible price of peace, the intentions behind the treaty’s terms.

But when it comes to Kunlun—barely mentioned in the Rebels’ accounts, and when he is, in such abstract terms he’s unrecognisable—Shen Wei hesitates, his hand going to the belt-pouch where the crinkly spiral scrap is safely tucked away, a memento, a tangible promise to meet again, and he falls silent; if—no, when they’re reunited, they can decide together which memories are fit for official public history and which they’ll treasure in private, their own story, interrupted but soon, soon to be resumed.