(A/N: Hey guys how was your holiday? I hope it was good. Anyway here is another one, sorry it took so long to finish it was supposed to be out last week, I hope you like it)
Warning: Bad grammar and spelling
"These are for you." Po said with a smile.
He held the flowers out to her and waited for her reaction. Tigress looked at the flowers with a surprised expression and could feel her face heating up by the second. She wasn't expecting this from him but was definitely flattered by the gesture.
"Um...thank you Po...that's very sweet of you." She didn't know what to say.
Po handed her the flowers, she accepted them and noticed they were tied together by a pink ribbon. Tigress wasn't sure if he was aware but she for one knew what that color symbolized and that made her all the more flustered.
"You're totally welcome I uh just felt like doing something nice for you." He said.
She could see he was extremely nervous and acting a bit shy, she didn't know why but overall found it cute.
Po started walking towards the doors of the training hall "Anyway I'll just leave you to you're training, so I'll uh see you later..." he left before she could respond.
Tigress watched him walk out the door before moving her gaze to the large bouquet. She saw there were 3 types of flowers mixed in the bunch, they weren't rare by any means but they were arranged in a way that made them absolutely beautiful. The flowers themselves were yellow roses, heather lavender, and gloxinia.
Not many knew this but she has a knack for recognizing plants, she can easily identify them due to her study's as a teen. There was once a time where shifu made her read scrolls based on plants such as herbs, flowers and the occasional poisonous berry. She thought it was pointless at the time considering she wasn't a healer or an herbalist but the red panda said otherwise and told her he was 'preparing her for the future.' And that it 'would pay off later.' Whatever that meant.
A moment went by before she snapped out of her thoughts, tigress made her way to the double doors of the training hall and decided to go back to her room where she would put the flowers in water, it would be a shame if they withered on the first day.
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It was only after dinner did tigress find herself in her room. She currently sat on the ground and was looking through a box that contained her old things, she'd been meaning to do this for a while but never got around to doing it. The sun was just about to set and everyone had the evening off, Po and the rest of the 5 went down to the valley and she knew they wouldn't be back till later.
She continued searching through the box and so far she's found some old clothes as well as a pair of weights she used as a child. The box itself was large and reached up to her chin, tigress got up and sat on her knees, she reached into the box and felt something hard. Looking in she saw a scroll, a green colored scroll to be exact. Wrapping her paw around the spine she pulled it out and examined it before opening it slightly, turns out It was a scroll on flower language.
'How convenient.' She thought.
Tigress looked up and glanced at the flowers noticing how they shimmered in the sunset rays, she put them in a vase early this afternoon and set them down in the corner near her bed. Looking back down at the scroll she opened it fully and started skimming through it, the content and information were organized in alphabetical order so she didn't stop until she came upon the G's.
"Gardenia...gaura...gillyflower...gerbera...geranium...gloriosa...gloxinia found it"
She started reading the description and meaning of the flower.
"Gloxinia's are bell shaped flowers, they come in a variety of colors like red, violet, maroon..."
She started skimming again, until something caught her eye.
"These flowers are given to the person you adore the most and signify...love at first sight?"
She squinted and made a face, that can't be right. Why would Po give her flowers with a meaning like that? unless...no! Its just a coincidence, he must have chosen these blindly and picked them because he liked the color or something.
'that's probably it' she thought.
Moving on, she read further down the list until she stopped on the mid H's
"Hellebore...hepatica...heather lavender." This one wasn't hard to find.
She skipped the description and focused on the meaning.
"The heather lavender comes in many shades both light and dark. These flowers have 2 meanings, a darker shade signify's beauty and a lighter shade signify's admiration."
She stared at the scroll for a second before looking up and giving her flowers another glance. She focus on the shade and saw that her heather was indeed a light purple.
'Ok so one signify's love at first sight and the other admiration, I already came to terms that the first one could be an accident but the second one...maybe its friendly admiration not romantic...yeah that must be it.' She brushed it off with a nod.
Next she checked the R's and rolled up the scroll, this left the last 10 letters. She found roses fairly easy since they were a pretty common flower and one of the most popular. She once again skipped the description and moved onto the meaning.
"Roses signify many different things based on the color, red roses signify love and romance while white roses signify purity, innocence and spirituality. Yellow roses on the other hand signify friendship, joy and new beginnings." She read aloud.
Now that one made sense considering she and the panda were best friends. She closed the scroll and put it back in the box before getting up and walking over to her bed. She sat down and stared at nothing in particular, why did Po give her flowers with such intimate meanings? Why did Po give her flowers at all? She was way past coincidence by this point, Po knew exactly what those flowers meant and she felt like a fool for not noticing it before. There were clues everywhere, from his nervous behavior to the pink ribbon to the colors of the actual flowers, everything was connected and she suddenly felt the need to confront him about it.
She lets out a sigh and decides to confront him once the others go to bed, she'll ask him to meet her at the peach tree and they'll settle it their. For the next hour and a half she thought through what she was going to say and seemed fairly confident but in the back of her head she knew nothing could prepare her for something as unpredictable as romance.
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Tigress quietly enters his room and sits on her knees, she see's he's sleeping on his back, his breathing was deep and his expression was peaceful.
"Po..." she whispers and shakes him lightly.
"Hmm? Tigress...? What is it?" He asks as he looks up at her through sleepy eyes.
"Meet me at the peach tree in 5 minutes." Is all she said before getting up and leaving the room.
Po watched her walk out the door, trying to process what just happened.
'Wait...5 minutes? I better get going.' He thought as he got up.
Tigress stood by the tree, looking out at the valley. She had the flowers in one paw, water ran down and dripped off the stems since she removed them from the vase not to long ago. She could hear po's heavy footsteps as he made his way up to the peach tree. This was it, the moment of truth, by the end of tonight she would either have a new relationship with him or make a complete fool of herself and she really wasn't looking foreword to the latter.
"I'm...here..just let...me...catch my...breath." He panted and doubled over.
Tigress did so and turned around to face him, she waited patiently as he got his breathing under control.
"Ok I'm good now." He said and walked over to her.
He faced her and noticed she had the flowers with her.
"Shouldn't those be in water?" He asked.
"They were but their also part of the reason I need to speak to you." She said.
"Ok."
"This evening I was going through some of my old things." She started.
"Yeah."
"And I found a scroll." She continued.
"Right."
"On flower language."
"Uh huh." He didn't know what she was getting at.
"So I looked up the flowers you gave me."
"Oh." Was all he could say.
"And I found out what they meant."
He stayed silent, tigress moved her arm that carried the flowers and wrapped both paws around the stems as if she were a bride walking down the isle, she let out a deep breath and looked down at them.
"Gloxinia, love at first sight. Heather lavender, adoration as well as admiration. Yellow rose, friendship and new beginnings. At first I thought this was a mix up, I thought that you chose these flowers simply because they were pretty and that you didn't know any better but the more I looked into it the more I realized that you knew exactly what you were doing and that this wasn't an accident at all so my question to you is this...do you like me?" She felt her heart beat quicken and waited for his response.
Po stared at her for a moment before a smile made its way to his face, took her long enough. Yes he liked her-no that's a lie, he loved her and yes he set this up from the very beginning. Everything he did had a certain meaning, those flowers represented his feelings towards her and expressed how much she meant to him. He was glad he could finally come clean to her no matter her reaction, even if she rejected him he at least told her how he felt.
"So you finally figured it out huh? To answer you're question yes I do like you, I've liked you for sometime now and those feelings have only gotten stronger to the point where I can say I love you." He saw her eyes widen but kept on talking "I don't know if you love me back but I just want you to know that my feelings for you are real and that they will never change." He finished.
Tigress looked at him, they currently had eye contact and she didn't know what to do. Her expression was blank and her mouth was slightly agape. She quietly exhaled before breaking eye contact and looking down at the flowers. Po saw the corners of her mouth move upwards as she smiled, it may have been small but it was a smile nonetheless. Tigress looked back up at him, her smile still present. She moved a paw from the flowers, placed it on his cheek and gently held his face as she contemplated what to say.
"I wouldn't go as far as to say I love you but I do think I feel something for you, it's small...but it's there and if you feel you have the patience for it maybe someday this feeling can grow and turn into love. In the meantime we can work on it but let's start off slow alright?"
Po moved his paw and place it over the one on his cheek, he held it tenderly and could tell she was nervous by the look in her eyes although he understood where she was coming from, this was something new to her after all.
"I'd like that." He said
Tigress didn't know a thing about relationships, at least on a personal level but she knew how they worked. They were built on trust and care as well as love and friendship but being that she didn't grow up with those sentiments she knew this was going to be a challenge, then again she's faced countless trials and tribulations throughout her life both mentally and physically, she's never ran away and always faced them head on so what difference would this challenge make? Granted this was a much different endeavor, this wasn't a wooden dummy she could destroy or an enemy she could beat into submission...
No.
This was something completely different, this was personal, intimate and unlike her other trials, emotional which was something vastly uncharted in her world. And so, with this in mind tigress felt taking it slow was the right path, she would get to know Po on a whole new level and hopefully develop the little seedling of feelings she had for him. Overall she felt they could do it and get through anything the world threw at them together, she may not love him at the moment but the answer was apparent and that was all she needed to know.
(A/N: so how was it? I actually did research for this one so I think that's why it took so long. I'm currently writing a holiday story and it should be posted soon so look out for that. Also I'm a aware the gloxinia is a flower completely different from the heather lavender and the Rose, but I liked the meaning of it so I used it anyway. Oh! And before I forget, I am going to make a chapter 2 to the sequel of loyalty. So yeah I hope you liked it and until next time...)