Author's note:
So this is a quite personal story and it was a prompt that I saw on tumblr about growing wings depending on the love you have on yourself and the love others have for you. Anyway hope you enjoy it:)
Po grew up with normal wings, or as normal as he could get. They were a bit smaller than others, and they were mostly all white. Usually people would have large wings with idfferent colors spreading all through the, after all, it represented te love people ad for te. And of course different people had different colors representing them. It was somehow a weird system, since sometimes a person didn't know their own color until they grew their wings. For example, as children, one could predict their color by the new feathers appearing on the parent. Po knew that the wings came from the love his dad had towards him, that was it.
However wings were mostly made up by oneself, and even he knew he should have some other color, after all, everyone had to. Everyone loved themselves right?
He didn't.
Is not like he was constantly hating himself (or maybe he was?), but he just... saw too many flaws.
So he didn't have another color. Only white. Because gosh, even if he always found new flaws, his dad would always be there. And hence, his small, white wings.
Tigress gave up on having wings when she was young. Way too young to realize that no one would love her, not even herself.
Once she grew, she was adopted. And yet, only a couple feathers came. They came from Shifu, because the guy had to at least love her a little right? She never figured out what colors her wings would be in she had some... she never saw them in Shifu, and Oogway was way too modest to always tuck them in.
She had a couple more feathers, they were a soft, warm brown. They were from Oogway, who would always silently comfort her. He tried to teach her to love oneself, but how could you? It wasn't always easy.
Her wings never grew, and after a while, she came to accept the fact. Her back would always be bare and brown, and empty.
Po.
As he grew up, he discovered kung fu. And with that, the masters at it. Yeah, there were 5 people around his age. They were all amazing, so different, so talented, and their wings... they were beautiful. He began to admire them and gettting lost in his daydreams that he forgot what hating himself was like.
One of the girl's name was Viper, she was tall and had a long braid, and her muscles were well-defined on her shoulders and abs. She loved to wear green. And she had wonderful wings. They seemed soft, and a mint color. They had other colors along the edges, of course they would. But mint, that was her love for herself. That was nice. That Viper could find her own worth.
Mantis was the next one. Now his wings were smaller but so powerful and thick. They had dark brown feathers with some green near his shoudler blades. Mantis always seemed proud to extend them and show them off. Po smiled, in the posters he had, Mantis would always be wearing a grin.
Crane was polite enough to tuck them in when he was around people. He was tall and thin and he looked almost fragile... except that when he took out his wings they were so graceful. They were a shinning, pure, white. On the curled tips of his wings there were hints of silver feathers. Little do people know that it took a long time for him to like himself, but he did it. he got there. And the silver feathers were so rewarding when he first saw them.
Monkey always had his feathers all ruffled, probably because he always liked to play with them and he cared little about their maintanance. They were mostly a brown and yellow color. Monkey appreciated his wings every single day, he had difficulty gaining them and feeling like he was actually deservant of them. But now... ha! He made sure to enjoy them everyday as much as he could!
However what got Po's attention was the last member... Tigress.
The girl has thick arms and legs, and a height that seemed so perfectly proportional. She had scars all through her arms that always stood out in a pastel pink against her dark skin. Her face was always serious, and her eyes always seemed so warm. Warm but reserved. Most of the time, her hair was up in the posters, which made the fact that you couldn't see her wings even more obvious.
Po wondered about that.
Where were her wings? Because surely someone as amazing and perfect as her had to have them.
But she didn't.
And sometimes he wished he could actually talk to her, because if only she liked herself a fragment of how much he liked her, it would be enough.
It wasn't until a weird turn of events, that Po got to know them. Personally. And to live with them. He will never forget that lucky shot of destiny. He was forever grateful for it.
He live din the Jade Palace. He turned out to be great at kung fu. He was friends with his idols!
As time passed on, he got to know their stories, saw how his wings gained some more colors. The mint of Viper's love, the brown and green, the silver, the yellow... and some orange. He never found out who the orange was from. After all, who had orange wings around here?
He also came to found out that the most amazing and perfect person, Tigress, was actually flawed. And maybe it was because of her flaws that he slowly fell in love with her. It always drove him crazy though, because she didn't found that awesomeness in herself. She didn't feel deservant of it.
Well dammit, he fell in love with her.
Tigress could have never guess that Po would suddenly enter her life and just... make a whole new thing out of it. Who was he? She didn't know. Where did he came from? She had no idea. How did he got here? Fate, apparently. Besides that she had no clue what was going on. Except...
He was extremely kind. And caring. And sweet. Not that she would admit to herself the first month she met him.
But after a period of time, he made his way into her life. He began by just talking her, ranting ot her baout small things, his attempt at making conversation. She usually would keep chats to the minimum, but oh well. She talked to him, and she found it rather pleasant. And before long, she was closer to him than anyone else. She was... what was it called? Friend. Yeah, she was his friend.
Yet she would always notice that lingering gaze in her back, how he would sometimes not so subtlely try to ask her about her wings. Or more acurately, about her non-existing wings.
She had wings... well not really. She had the potential of having wings. She just... didn't like them. Didn't like herself. Didn't like how she could never be good enough to have wings that she felt deservant of.
She did have a couple of feathers, Shifu, Viper, Crane, etc. they all loved her at some extent.
She would sometimes pluck them out, only some of them. Only the feathers that would poke through her clothes. They weren't big enough to actually poke through her shirt, but not small enough to not cause scratches on her back. It was annoying sometimes. And mostly because there kept on growing some black feathers... from who? no one had black feathers around here... And all of this just caused small scratches and scars on her back.
Tigress knew that she wasn't the only guilty one here.
She noticed. After all those months he spent with them, she noticed. She noticed how didn't have his own feathers. She saw all the other colors, and she saw his dad one time to know that most of the white were from him. But Po's. Where were they? That guy was so precious and... he didn't saw that?
She almost laughed, almost. Because it hit her.
He doesn't love himself. And that piece of information pained her...
She knew how that felt. But this time it was him, Po. Po, the guy who cared, the guy who would smile, the guy who loved everyone.
She would make him understand, gosh he had no reason to feel that of himself. He had helped her forget about all of her not-enough's, and for that she thanked him. (And loved him... not that she was gonna admit that though.)
One night she was plucking those annoying small feathers out, her shirt rolled up to her stomach, exposing her back.
And it turned out to be that one night that he confronted her about her wings.
That one night that he came into her room, forgetting to knock, his voice already rambling about something.. and then his eyes looked up.
She didn't meant for him to see that. The fear in his face scared her too. It wasn't scary, though. Right? His face seemed to differ. He immediatly rushed to her and took her hands and shook his head. The shirt rolled back down; her hands were trembling, or were those his? There were some tears in his eyes beginning to form.
And wow, Tigress felt her heart break. Tears. There were tears in his eyes and she caused them. But it wasn't her fault.. not really. And yet, he was here, in her room, crying because he didn't wanted her harming herself. She felt her own eyes beginning to blur too. Why? Oh, were those tears too?
He hugged her, tightly.
"Don't ever do that again," he whispered. She nodded.
"It wasn't like that- sometimes... it gets annoying, and-" she didn't know how to explain. How to explain that she hated herself and she was okay with not having wings and that those little scratch marks in her back were just remainders of not being good enough for wings.
Po let go of her; she pushed her curls behind her ear.
"You should let them grow." She laughed, some tears sneaking out and traicing paths on her cheeks. Laughed at the idea of it, she laughed and Po could notice there was pain hidden there.
"You can't see it, can you?" He asked her. And she wondered what he was talking about.
He grabbed her shoudlers and smiled.
"You are smart," he began, "and kind," he pointed to her heart, "and beautiful," he said, tracing her cheek, " and strong, and brave."
He stopped when he saw tears spilling out from her he say the wrong thing? Or was he- She smiled.
"You know," she said, wiping her tears away with her knucles, "is not fair."
Po raised his eyebrows, this time nervous and insecure and he hadn't felt vulnerable in front of someone in ages.
"Is not fair that you see that in me, and not in yourself." Po widened his eyes. He... never thought about it that way.
"You really kind, and you take care of us, and yet, you don't take care of yourself." She smiled and met his eyes that were getting teary. Never mind, he was crying now. She wiped his tears away. How did she ended up in this situation? And how did she never saw this coming... well no matter, she was going to tell him what has been going through her head. (She would be lying if she said she'd never rehearsed it, just in case).
"And guess what? I care about you. A lot. So I won't let that happen."
She hugged him, and Po could feel how warm she was, and he wrapped his arms around her. He felt safe, and secure and... loved. She felt welcomed, and relaxed, as if this has been all a big secret, which it was... but now it wasn't and she was going to stop... she would try.
A week later Po noticed someting different in his wings... there were still a mix of colors, mint, brown, the mysterious orange ones but now... black. There were black feathers too. And he jumped and whooped and smiled because they were his. He was proud of them. Proud of himself. Guess he only needed some help to find something good in himself.
He looked at his beautiful black feathers once again, Yes he only needed some help and now here they are. He loved them.
Tigress didn't notice it at first. Not until a month later when her back began to ache on her sleep and she couldn't feel comfortable wasn't the first time either, but this time it was bothering her much more. She hadn't looked at her back since that night, she didn't even touched it besides taking showers... This time she rolled up her bed and widened her eyes. There was a new weight on her back. She fell on the floor, startled. yes, there was something throwing her off balance.
She took out a small mirror from underneath her bed and smiled in victory.
There they were, feathers. Orange feathers. Her own bright, orange feathers.
She smiled and bit her lip... yes, this was good. She liked them... she loved them!
Tigress chuckled silently, she loved them... as much as she was beginning to love herself.