Rating: M [slash]

Pairings: Sun CexZhou Yu, others implied

Disclaimer: The settings, recognizable characters, and familiar past events are the property of Koei, The Romance of the Three Kingdoms, and, well, ancient history. The author is not making any money from this story.

Author's Note: This story was inspired by Red River's "After," in which Zhou Yu and Sun Ce are roommates, and Zhou Yu is vaguely remembering/sensing their past lives. It's a lovely story, so please go check it out.

Naming Note: Thanks to our familiarity with DW naming conventions, I will not be using style names much in this story. Also, since this story is set in America, the characters will be interacting like Americans.

Chapter One: Memories

In his dorm room, Zhou Yu stared at his world history textbook. Unit one had been on Egypt and the middle east, while unit two was on ancient China. He'd been looking forward to that unit because he was Chinese American, his grandparents having come to Seattle from China during the communist revolution. All his life, they had told him stories of China – not just about the revolution but also Chinese history and folklore. Therefore, he felt that studying China's history in his class would be somehow special.

A little too special, as it turned out.

Zhou Yu stood and retreated to the window, staring at the lawn below. Masonville University was a small, private college in the equally small town of Masonville, California, not too far from San Francisco. This meant a few things for the students: one, it was sixty degrees outside despite its being February; two, there was little to do unless one drove the hour into San Francisco; and three, Zhou Yu knew all the people taking advantage of the warmth to play Frisbee. Ultimate, to be more exact. The group in question boasted the typical players: Zhao Yun, Zhuge Liang, Guan Yinping, Guo Jia, Cai Wenji, Bu Lianshi, and Sun Ce.

Or, rather, those were their Chinese names, which they only used with each other. Each of them had picked one out after arriving at MU and becoming friends.

In Zhou Yu's case, his birth name was Asher Zhou. Asher meant "happy one," so he had chosen Yu as his Chinese name because one possible meaning of "Yu" also meant "happy." However, the one who was truly happy was Jude Sun, who had chosen the name Sun Ce.

And it was to Sun Ce that Zhou Yu's gaze wandered. Sun Ce had become his roommate at the beginning of spring semester, both their original roommates having washed out. Masonville was a top tier university, despite its small size, and classes had been tough. Sun Ce, in fact, had secured Zhou Yu as his algebra tutor the previous semester; it was how they'd become friends.

But it wasn't until they became roommates that the dreams returned.

Zhou Yu watched Sun Ce dive to catch the Frisbee, and he could hear his shout of joy even from the second story. Vaguely, he smiled, but his mind wandered elsewhere: his grandmother's apartment in Chinatown, Seattle. They had just returned from Wing Luke Museum, where they'd seen folk art reminiscent of ancient Chinese paintings.

"I've been there," Zhou Yu had announced to his grandmother. He'd only been eight years old at the time.

"Where?" his grandmother had asked.

"China," Zhou Yu had said. He had memories, clear memories. They often arrived in dreams. "I was in Yang Province. And Jing Province. In battle. I was making up battle plans! And fighting beside my best friend."

His grandmother's brow furrowed. "Is that right?"

"I had a sword." Zhou Yu was very proud of this. "Sometimes a staff. And my best friend had two tonfas. There were castles and battleships and thousands of soldiers!"

His grandmother had decided he just had a good imagination.

Ten years later, though, Zhou Yu wasn't so sure. Ever since he could remember, he'd had painfully detailed dreams: dreams of battles, dreams of death and dying, dreams of arguments and rivalries. Nightmares, mostly. Sometimes he'd had pleasant dreams, such as banquets shared with friends and family, a beautiful woman with an affinity for fans, and games of Go or Xiangqi with his best friend.

A best friend who looked similar to Jude Sun. A best friend who'd been named Sun Ce, the eldest son of Sun Jian during the Three Kingdoms period of China.

And in October, when they had both been welcomed into Zhao Yun's clique, Jude had picked the name Ce, unprompted.

Things had only gotten more intense since Sun Ce had moved into Zhou Yu's room. The dreams came nightly now, sometimes two or three a night. Some dreams were fantastic – battles and sieges – while others were mundane – tea or Xiangqi.

And then Monday, Zhou Yu's history professor had begun the sub-unit on the end of the Han Dynasty. Zhou Yu had promptly dreamt of Sun Ce's assassination as well his own death from illness.

Now Zhou Yu couldn't concentrate on his homework: not the psychology homework on operant conditioning, not the fifteen-page research paper on foreign policy reform, not the calculus problems, and certainly not the history chapter on the Three Kingdoms.

Being far too engrossed in his own thoughts, Zhou Yu didn't register the scene below him until he heard the click of the door unlocking. Sun Ce bounded into the room, which meant their game was over. "Hey, did you see our game? Yinping had her team use the horizontal stack, and Yun wanted to use a wedge, but – " He stopped mid-sentence, watching Zhou Yu's face. "Hey, man. You okay?"

Zhou Yu returned to his chair. His laptop had gone to sleep while he'd been thinking, and he shut the lid. "Yeah, fine."

"You sure?" Sun Ce grabbed a towel and wiped the sweat from his face. "You've been acting weird since Monday."

In the five months they'd known each other, Zhou Yu had never brought up this topic, and he wasn't sure it was a good idea to now. Despite the way they'd instantly meshed, Zhou Yu wasn't sure how Sun Ce would react if he told him what had been happening. Still, he seemed fairly open-minded. "I keep having weird dreams."

"Really? Me, too." Sun Ce tossed the towel on his bed and yanked off his sweaty shirt. "I had a crazy one last night. I was riding a horse into battle against, like, ten thousand guys, and I was eating a pizza at the same time. With sardines."

Zhou Yu's gaze lingered too long upon Sun Ce's tanned chest, and he forced his attention onto his words instead. "I dream about battles a lot, too. It's always set in ancient China, and I'm in different cities, commanding troops."

Although Sun Ce had grabbed a clean t-shirt, he jerked around, facing Zhou Yu without putting it on. He held the shirt in one hand as though he'd forgotten it, his eyes wide. "Really? Seriously?"

"Really."

"No way! I dream shit like that, too!" He perched on his bed, flinging the shirt over one knee. "I have these tonfas, and I'm smacking my way through all these enemy guys, and I have a younger brother who drinks a lot and a sister who's a total tomboy and fights with chakrum."

That revelation halted Zhou Yu's entire world. "What?"

"Huh?"

"Chakrum? Tonfas? Really?" Zhou Yu hopped to his feet, took a step toward Sun Ce, then stopped. "I dream that, too. I'm playing Go with you, or I'm in battle with you. You, specifically you. And you have younger siblings, like you just said, and this father who gets murdered in a surprise attack, and – "

Sun Ce shot to his feet as well, the shirt falling to the floor. "He took an arrow to the back!"

They stared at each other, both tense and silent.

"I was dreaming stuff like this before I met you," Zhou Yu finally whispered. "Since I was a little kid."

"I've been dreaming it since I was twelve," Sun Ce said. "It was all vague and shit at first, and I thought I'd been playing too many video games or watching too many movies, you know? I've watched Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, like, fifty thousand times now. But it got more and more specific, and then sometimes it would happen while I was awake, too."

Zhou Yu dropped into his chair. He didn't want to admit it, but his legs were wobbly. "Am I there?"

Sun Ce nodded, eyes still too wide.

"Do we . . .?" Zhou Yu didn't even know which part to ask about.

Sun Ce laughed. "You kick my ass at Xiangqi all the time. And there's these two sisters that we marry. Like we're brothers. Except we're not. Well, not by blood, anyway."

Zhou Yu relaxed at this confirmation, his gaze falling to the floor. Tiny bits of notebook paper, coming from the fringes, littered the gray carpet by the trashcan, and his gaze caught on them instead. "We were best friends."

Flopping back on the bed, Sun Ce grabbed his abandoned shirt and pulled it on. "You say that like . . . like we lived before. Like all this stuff really happened."

Although Zhou Yu nodded, he didn't know what to say. The historical Sun Ce and Zhou Yu had not been Buddhists, and while his grandmother was Buddhist, Zhou Yu wasn't. Despite that, he'd always been fascinated by the thought of reincarnation, and in middle school, he'd watched every movie, documentary, and TV special he could about it. Still, he'd always believed that it wasn't real. Just a fantasy thing he wished were real. "Last night I dreamt about your death," he finally said. "You were shot by arrows. It seemed real. Too real. Like I was really there. I could feel the heat from the sun, I could feel the heat from your body. I had blood on my clothes. Your blood. Your sister was crying. Your brother could barely speak." He had felt as though life was over, as though he weren't real. If Sun Quan hadn't needed him, he would have folded. "The sun was so bright it hurt my eyes, and the roar of cicadas was almost deafening." So many details, too many for a normal dream.

He glanced up at Sun Ce abruptly. "Did you know that in Chinese folklore, cicadas are associated with rebirth and immortality?"

Sun Ce shook his head.

"They are."

"Weird." Sun Ce toppled back onto his mattress, cushioning his head with folded arms. "So now what?"

Zhou Yu glanced at his textbook, at an ancient drawing of the last Han emperor. "I have no idea. Who would we ask about something like this?"

"Lu Xun maybe? He studies as hard as you do, and his family practices Buddhism." Sun Ce frowned at the ceiling. "Maybe he'd know something. Or know someone who knows something."

"Good idea." No one had ever believed Zhou Yu about this – not his grandmother, not his parents, not his older sister. They'd all explained it away, so he'd stopped mentioning it when he entered high school. Such flights of fancy were not tolerated in his family. The adult world was a scientific and technological wonder, not a place for fairytales.

Except Zhou Yu didn't think this was a fairytale, and he needed help.

After supper, Zhou Yu and Sun Ce made their way to Lu Xun's dorm, having texted him first to make sure he was in. Lu Xun was the Chinese name for Ryker Lu, an English boy with a soccer scholarship. Like Zhou Yu, he'd picked his Chinese name based on its meaning. Ryker meant "fast strider," and one possible meaning of "Xun" was "fast." Zhou Yu was no longer sure, however, that his own name choice had really been based on meaning. Maybe that had just been what he'd told himself rather than face what was happening. In this sense, his dreams hadn't helped because in his dreams, Sun Ce had called him Gōngjǐn. Likewise, he'd called Sun Ce Bófú. It wasn't until recently that Zhou Yu had come to understand the connection.

Now, though, he knew that Gōngjǐn and Bófú were the style names of two Wu generals, Zhou Yu and Sun Ce, and that they'd been childhood friends.

When they reached Lu Xun's room, he answered the door almost immediately. Having never been to visit him, Zhou Yu glanced around the room as he entered. Unlike most rooms, there was no TV or gaming system, only a miniature refrigerator and a microwave. One side of the room was utterly bare, with only a comforter and textbooks as a sign of occupancy, and Lu Xun's roommate was absent. The other side, which Zhou Yu immediately realized was Lu Xun's, was covered in movie posters, including Enter the Dragon, Fist of Fury, Battle of Red Cliff, and Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. Zhou Yu realized he was not the only one obsessed with China.

"Dude, that movie rocks," Sun Ce said, noticing the poster as well.

Lu Xun smiled. "Yeah." He settled on one of the floor pillows that occupied the center of the room and gestured for them to join him. "So what's up?"

As they sat on the other pillows, Sun Ce and Zhou Yu traded glances.

"We want to ask you about reincarnation," Zhou Yu said. "Sun Ce says that you're Buddhist."

Lu Xun lit up, smiling. "Sure!" He paused, seeming to collect his thoughts. "Think of physics: no energy is ever lost; it only changes forms. Our spiritual and mental energy are the same. Our actions are part of our karma. Some Buddhists believe that karma continues to exist after your death and sticks to you until you work out all the consequences."

Zhou Yu wondered what that would mean for Sun Ce and himself if that were true. Would their past lives be considered positive or negative?

"But, the word you want here is not 'reincarnation,'" Lu Xun continued. "It's punarbhava, which means 'becoming again.' That's because unlike Hinduism, Buddhism doesn't teach that the soul is a fixed self that is born over and over again. There's no permanent consciousness that gets reborn. It's not that there isn't a connection, because there is. It's more like an evolving consciousness. So you're a similar consciousness but not the same consciousness."

Sun Ce's brow furrowed, and Zhou Yu could tell he was struggling to follow. "So I'd be me but not me."

"Yeah. And how many times you have left to go through the cycle of existence depends on how many fetters you've severed. Fetters are chains that keep you in the cycle, like ill will, conceit, doubt, and restlessness." Xu Lun drew a circle in the air with his hand, his level of animation revealing how much he loved to discuss the topic. "Anyway, some Buddhists believe rebirth is immediate, and others think it can take up to 49 days. I believe it's immediate."

Zhou Yu had learned more about Buddhism in the last few minutes than in his entire life. "Okay. So what if you remember a past life?"

Lu Xun held up a finger. "If you remember something that's awesome, don't get conceited. If you get proud of how great you were, then you're just falling right back into conceit again. You'll have to be reborn into another life. The practice of jivamala, which is a spiritual journey to remember past lives, is used to help us fix our past mistakes. If we hadn't made those mistakes – if we'd achieved enlightenment – then we wouldn't be here now."

"I don't remember anything really bad," Zhou Yu said. He wasn't sure he could buy all this, but then again, he wasn't here to convert to Buddhism. Just to get insight into what Buddhists believed. "I remember a life, good and bad. But it's just one life, and it was a long time ago, in ancient China. I've been dreaming about it since I was a little kid: battles, armies, strategy meetings, deaths, you name it. I was a general."

Sun Ce nodded. "Yeah, me, too. Except it's been just since I was 12. But I'm having the same kinds of dreams, and he's in them." He jerked his thumb at Zhou Yu.

"We were friends," Zhou Yu said.

Lu Xun grew so still he seemed to stop breathing. "You, too? What does this mean?" He hopped to his feet and walked to his desk, where he shuffled through notebooks and papers. "What is with this place? Why this university? Why all of us? And why now?"

"What?" Zhou Yu asked, startled by Lu Xun's reaction.

"I have those dreams," he replied, pulling a notebook from the bottom of the stack. "And not just dreams, either. Visions or memories. So do Zhao Yun, Zhuge Liang, and Guan Yinping. They chose their names based on their memories." He sat again, flipping to a page and showing it to them. American names were followed by Chinese names, both in pinyin and kanji, and Lu Xun's was at the top of the list. "Even Huang picked a name." Lu Xun's roommate, Huang Tsao – or in Chinese, Tsao Huang – was an international student from Taiwan. "He chose Cao Pi, and he believes he was the legendary heir of Cao Cao."

Zhou Yu couldn't comprehend the situation; it seemed too enormous. "Wait. Are you saying that the major players of the Three Kingdoms are here at MU? Or a large number of them?"

Sighing, Lu Xun tossed his notebook to the floor. "I know. It's too incredible. How could so many of us arrive at one place at one time? The concept that two people in love would find each other in every life and marry over and over is just romantic movie material. So for a dozen friends and enemies to all find each other? Sounds more like an omen to me."

Goosebumps swept down Zhou Yu's arms.

"Have you talked to your family about this?" Sun Ce asked. "Could they help us look into it?"

Lu Xun shook his head. "Hell, no. When I was 14, I told my parents I thought I was a general and strategist of Wu in a past life. They took me to a psychologist. When I insisted I was truly remembering a past life, they discussed having me committed. Even though we're Buddhist, they argued that I couldn't recall so many details without a spiritual guide and proper training, and they said that claiming I was someone famous was a delusion of grandeur."

Irritated by the injustice, Zhou Yu grew angry on Lu Xun's behalf, although he didn't show it.

Sun Ce was not so restrained. "That sucks, man! Your parents should be the first person to believe you. People. Whatever."

"Yeah." Lu Xun stared at the floor for a moment, then glanced back at Sun Ce. "Would your parents believe you?"

"My mom. And no. She's Jehovah's Witness."

Lu Xun turned to Zhou Yu. "Yours?"

He shook his head. "My parents are atheist."

"Then I'll google Buddhist temples in California and see what I can get," Lu Xun said. "Maybe I can find someone there who would help us."

"Instead of thinking we're a bunch of stupid college kids playing a prank?" Sun Ce asked, smirking.

Lu Xun frowned. "We can only try."

Zhou Yu had to agree.

By midnight, Zhou Yu was behind on his homework and still had no concentration. He'd eked out two measly paragraphs on his research paper, solved three calculus problems, and read the chapter on the Three Kingdoms. At this rate, he would need to pull an all-nighter. He didn't have to finish the paper, granted, but the calculus homework was due in the morning. He sighed, his eyes blurry with fatigue.

"Just go to sleep," Sun Ce said from his bed, flipping through a gaming magazine. Other than a few manga, the gaming magazine was all Sun Ce seemed to read. "You're bad enough when you have to get up early. When you haven't slept, you're impossible."

Zhou Yu snorted. "Well, not all of us can be a freak like you." Unlike Zhou Yu, Sun Ce loved to wake up early. He was usually out for a morning jog by 6:00 AM, and he freely chose to take 8:00 classes.

"Shuddup." Sun Ce chucked the magazine at Zhou Yu's head.

Zhou Yu blocked with one arm. "I just can't concentrate." He gazed at Sun Ce's reclining form, taking in the sight of the muscled arms and legs revealed by a white t-shirt and red shorts. Upon reflection, Zhou Yu realized Sun Ce wore a lot of red.

Sun Ce caught him staring, but he didn't say anything about it. "'Cause of the reincarnation stuff?"

Horrified to be caught, Zhou Yu hid behind his best stoic mask. "Yeah. I keep wondering what it will mean if it's all true and we really are the generals of Wu."

"Me, too." Sun Ce sat up and propped his elbows on his knees. "I never thought I was anyone important, you know? Even with the dreams. Sure, sometimes I was in fancy places wearing fancy clothes, but whatever. I'm a nobody now. Just a kid with a dead dad and a hardworking mom."

Zhou Yu nodded slowly. Sun Ce had mentioned before that his father had been killed in a car wreck when he was twelve. It seemed strange that he would lose his father at a young age in both lives. "My family's not anyone, either. Or Lu Xun's, I don't think. Zhao Yun's isn't, I know. The only one I've heard anything about is Huang – I mean, Cao Pi. Apparently his dad is a major businessman of some kind, and they're loaded."

"Figures." Sun Ce stood and walked over to Zhou Yu's desk, clapping a hand on his shoulder. "Hey, let it go for now. Lu Xun's working on it."

"I should be working on it," Zhou Yu said without thinking. Even as he said the words, though, they felt right. He had always been studious, but he had also always been the kind of guy to take action. It wasn't enough to poke the internet for hours. He needed to do something. The problem was there was nothing to do for the moment.

Sun Ce, who had not let go of his shoulder, grew solemn. "I know, I know. Trust me, I want to charge in and take no prisoners. Give me a direction to charge in, and I will."

Zhou Yu was somehow not surprised to hear that.

"But for right now, we got nothing." Sun Ce squeezed his shoulder again. "So call it a night."

Zhou Yu gazed up at Sun Ce, wondering at the way his hand lingered. He knew he'd been caught staring, but since Sun Ce said nothing, he thought the action had been dismissed. Now, though, he wondered. Was Sun Ce flirting?

No, that was impossible. Sun Ce flirted with girls all the time, especially Bu Lianshi.

Still, Zhou Yu smiled. "Yeah, I guess."

Several minutes later, Zhou Yu lay in bed, staring at the ceiling. His thoughts would not quiet down, but not all of them centered on past lives. Some focused on a charming smile, a friendly touch, and the general glow of the guy across the room.

Although Sun Ce was not the first boy he'd ever noticed, Zhou Yu wondered how he'd managed to start falling in love with his best friend.

Note on Translation of Names: I tried to give the characters American (or British) names that aligned in meaning with their Chinese names. This was not always possible, which meant I chose alternate name meanings or a name based on their character traits. Rest assured I didn't choose randomly.