Title: under the endless sky
Characters: Tigress, Po
Summary: It is a warm, fleeting moment, seemingly with no start or end, but it finds a way to be over anyway as they pull away at the same time, the last bits of the kiss finding itself in her fingers trailing slowly down his chest.
A/N: Written because I'm having a pretty productive weekend. Title's from Pablo Neruda's Tonight I Can Write The Saddest Lines.
Where there's a moon, there's light, and she's not the type to waste a bright night.
Tigress knows the training hall well; she spent the better half of her life walking its floors, marking its walls, transforming it into the sanctum it needed to be. In her youth the building gave her days of respite, offering pain and fatigue as a means of catharsis, substituting confusion and meaningless fear. She broke a leg, once, falling from the rafters. When she was young, she'd taken to the Gauntlet and given names to every wooden warrior. Asinine little epithets, now that she thinks about it, but she finds comfort in the fact that she can't remember most of them now.
(no one should be without a name, she'd reasoned)
Balancing on the jade shell takes concentration and a steady mind, both of which she hasn't had since returning from Gongmen. She's done this effortlessly many times over, but she is distantly aware of the way things have changed. They'd come back battered and bruised to within an inch of their lives, some of them more so than the others. As for herself, she's still uncertain. With a sigh, Tigress steps off the rim and floats over to the Gauntlet, pausing to rub at one of them.
I named this one Redface, she recalls tiredly. He was my favourite.
When Po ambushes her from behind, she doesn't have it in her to fake a counterattack. She lets herself be taken into his embrace, feeling his hands slip over her blouse, his nose pressing in her fur. "Po," she murmurs, letting her eyes flutter shut.
"You weren't in your room," he explains.
"How did you know I was here?"
He shrugs. "You're either in your room or, well, here. Wasn't too much of a mindbender." Po disengages his arms from around her slowly, allowing her to turn around to face him. In the dim moonglow playing through the front doors, Po is wide and bountiful as the moon itself, the subtle grin on his face an endearment to her. "Trouble sleeping?" he asks.
"I —" Tigress looks down, trying not to look lost, or worse, unsure. "Bad dreams," she confesses softly, simultaneously absolving herself with a shake of her bronzy head.
"What dreams?"
Of you. Dead. Burning. I don't know. "Gongmen," she says, not a complete lie after all. It pains her to keep from telling him the truth, as she's come to discover. She wants nothing better to be completely open and honest with Po, to trust him the same way he places trust in her, but she's still learning slower than she likes.
The answer seems to satisfy Po. His eyelids droop and an expression of sympathy comes over his face. "Oh. Um. I…I suppose that has to be normal. I mean," he adds hastily, "we did almost die there."
"Yes." I almost lost you. Twice. She shakes her head again, lifting a paw to bat at her tears. "I'm just being silly."
"No," he says firmly. "You're not. It's not wrong to be scared, Tigress."
"You can sleep," she points out with a sniff. "It's not the same thing. I can't be afraid of this, Po. I just can't."
He doesn't reply, simply steps up to her and looks her straight in the eye, taking her hands. When she sees his face, even half-concealed in shadow, she understands and nods ever so slightly, granting permission for him to lean forward to kiss her. It is a warm, fleeting moment, seemingly with no start or end, but it finds a way to be over anyway as they pull away at the same time, the last bits of the kiss finding itself in her fingers trailing slowly down his chest.
"If that were true," he says hoarsely, smiling, "then I'd think I could be loads scared enough for the two of us." The hug is longer and slightly more professionally done. Their proximity allows Tigress to gather up more of him into herself than she ever dared before, taking in his warmth, his scents, his love for her. It gives her a peculiar sort of strength, somehow, one that she feels no need to question. Po slides his hand into hers and grips it tightly, his face angled towards her such that she can see the sincere quirk of his lip at her. "Back to bed, then," he suggests.
And for the first time in her life, Tigress allows herself to be led.
.
She wakes in the morning haze to find that she's alone in her room. Po is no longer beside her, but in his place he has left a note.
Off to make breakfast. Will see you in the mess later. Hope you slept well.
P.S. I'm already terrified.
Smiling, she gets up to wash up and change and get her room in order before starting the day. She folds the note neatly into quarters and tucks it in the lining of her mattress, where she knows it will be safe until she finds the need to read it again.