Title: Flesh of my Father, Blood of my Mother
Fandom: Dynasty Warriors
Rating: Teen +
Length: 450 words
Content notes: Xiahou Dun, Warning for graphic imagery and gore
Author notes: I can't think of any at the moment.
Summary: Xiahou Dun's perspective of his partial blinding


      Does the memory trick him, or does he truly remember that less-than-an-eye-blink of a moment, a frozen flicker of time, of seeing the arrow before it strikes?

     The pain, that it is not a trick. He can't even articulate a scream as his head snaps back from the arrow's force, white-hot fire in his skull, blood and gore running down his cheek, wetting his fingers as he gropes his way up his face, to the shaft caught there.

     His head feels strangely off-balance. There is no thought left, burned to ash by the fire that blazes where his eye should be. He grabs the arrow, wrenches it free, the scrape of iron against orbital bone nauseating in hindsight, but in the moment it is drowned out by the shrieking pain.

     His men will later report that in a moment of true filial piety, he refused to cast aside the mangled orb, invoking his parents and the life they gave him before he tore it free of the arrow with his teeth and swallowed it whole. He will never be truly sure if that happened or not. The memories are hazy, lost in the heat of pain.

     He will remember racing to the archer's position, determined to cut down the thief who robbed him of half of the light of the world. The archer's screams, the screams of Lu Bu's men, those echo endlessly. His own men, terrified by their commander's disregard to his own injury, fight with new-found determination.

     It is when the battle is done, when adrenaline and fury abate, that he collapses. He is carried away to safety, to one of the suites reserved for Cao Cao's use, inhuman valor outweighing all fear of impropriety. Shaking, chilled, sick from the pain and rage, he lays shivering beneath blankets and robes, oblivious to the flurry of the activity around him as a physician is summoned.

     The voices are hushed as his wound is treated and dressed, the sure hands of the physician comforting as they gently hold his head steady so that the physician's assistant may better bandage him. Medicine, bitter and hot, is fed to him as though he is a child. Even pain-hazed and drifting, he makes sense of the physician's words to those gathered in the room. The next few days will be the most critical, he must be kept quiet and resting, so that his body may heal.

     It is proving to be most difficult to rest, to sleep through the pain.

     He is always jerked back awake.

     Does the memory trick him, or does he truly remember that less-than-an-eye-blink of a moment, a frozen flicker of time, of seeing the arrow before it strikes?