It felt good to fight.
To punch and kick and tear. Her body with all it's longings finally had an outlet in the form of her foot through yak snout, her claws swiping stallion ribs, her fist in Ox throat. She sank herself into the pleasure of watching it dawn on the Mongol's faces that their entire unit of thirty was being utterly demolished by a strike force of two.
Tigress and Tai Lung went through them fast. They fought in perfect synch, as though they'd been training together for years. Tigress sent a trio of boar flying as the lead stallion lunged at Tai Lung, who used that opportunity to leap snarling upon his back. The stallion gave a high, keening cry and began to buck, his maces swinging wildly. Tai Lung roared as another Mongol tried to pull him off the stallion by his tail. As she narrowly dodged one swinging mace she caught Tai Lung's eyes, wide and full of urging. He swept at the Mongol on his tail and yanked the stallion's head back by his mane, holding his neck vulnerable for Tigress like a target. She leapt for it instantly, instinctively, claws out, her blood singing.
Tai lung turned, eager to catch it. The look of satisfaction and lust in his eyes as he watched her take the stallion down sparked a wildfire in her chest.
There was a long, low sound. They turned. A rhino lifted a huge bone instrument to his mouth and took off running as he blew into it. He was calling someone – or warning someone – either way he had to go. She flew at at him, aiming her heel into the back of his neck. But Tai Lung beat her to it in the form of another rhino, who he swung into the first by his horn. She flipped and landed before him. His face fell, and with two great leaps he had his arms around her, forearms swinging as he deflected arrows that had been aimed directly at her head, sending them back to their owner's throat.
"Thank you," she whispered.
He grinned. "Of course."
He was so close to her, panting, smelling of sweat and blood and soot. She had an urge, an urge that came up from the very bottoms of her feet, to take him by his great shoulders and pull his mouth down to hers so she could taste him. Her knees threatened to buckle. Her first kiss, on the battlefield, heated and savage and -
-and wrong.
There was another long, low hooting. Another horn-blower. Tai Lung snapped back into the fight and leapt roaring after him. Tigress hung back for a moment, reclaiming herself from the deep hard ache that was rapidly becoming familiar. Tai Lung effortlessly leapt back into the fray. The best distraction was to join him, so she did. Side by side they cut a snarling swath through the remaining Mongols until no more stood to challenge them. They landed panting in the snow.
"That's all of them, I think," Tai Lung said, proudly surveying their devastation.
"They didn't see that coming," Tigress remarked, catching her breath.
Tai Lung laughed, jerking his head towards the dead stallion. "Thought he was gonna get a new coat. Instead he got a slit throat," he said. "It's good, fighting alongside you."
She gave a firm nod. "Thank you. Likewise."
"We're a good team."
"I - " Tigress stammered. "I suppose."
"You suppose?" he asked. "You know."
She grimaced and averted her eyes.
"Tigress," Tai Lung said urgently. He reached out and took her hand. She took an unconscious step back but he did not let go.
"What are you - ?"
"Tigress, you should know I intend to woo you," he said.
Her eyes went wide. She burned. Her heart flip-flopped in her chest.
"Stop," she whispered.
Suddenly all the fur on the back of Tigress's neck stood on end. She looked at Tai Lung and saw he felt it too. Their ears pricked up, trying to hear, but there was nothing but wind, and now snow. She glanced up and saw it before she was aware of seeing it – something giant and feathered and descending rapidlly.
An eagle the size of a mammoth, bearing down upon them with razor sharp talons.
o
They ran.
It was difficult running through the rapidly deepening snow and the increasingly harsh wind, but panic lightened the load. Tigress and Tai Lung glanced at one another in a mutual terrified bafflement. She'd never even heard of a bird this size, much less had one's talons a whisper from the back of her neck.
It seized her around the waist and shoulders, pinning her arms to her sides. She cried out and struggled. Tai Lung shouted in rage and sped up his pace, roared, jumped at the bird's foot with his claws out, almost latching on but not quite. With a sickening crack the bird kicked Tai Lung hard in the ribs, hard enough to send him flying end over end, landing chin-first in the snow. With a mighty flap they lifted into the air and he was gone.
Now pure rage overtook Tigress, and an absolute terror for her life. She squirmed with all her might, willing air out of her lungs, willing her very muscles to flatten against her bones so she could slide her arms out of the bird's iron grip. She kicked and sank her teeth into the scales of its foot. It did no damage but was enough to make it twitch. That gave her the space she needed to free her limbs and start a campaign of terror against the bird's ankle with her claws, shredding the flesh there over and over in the same place. It took a few swipes but finally blood spilled over her hands and the bird screamed – an unholy shriek that hurt her ears even against the wind. It shook her hard once, twice, but she kept at it, intending to slice till bone if she had to. It shook her again, hard enough to make her insides quiver. She roared in frustration and kept cutting until she felt something snap and the foot went limp.
She fell.
And as she fell she saw a dark form leap roaring onto the bird's back. The bird screamed and struggled against what had to be Tai Lung, who had somehow learned to fly in order to apprehend her abductor.
There was an impact that drove all the air out of her body. A cacophany of cracks and snapping and pain before she finally came to a stop. Everywhere around her twigs and sticks, and far below her the sounds of the giant bird shrieking and struggling, the cries gradually strangling as Tai Lung somehow shut it's massive windpipe and forced it down into death.
She took comfort from that. She was being swayed gently. She could not feel her body. She shut her eyes.
She slept.
o
"Tigress!" a voice whispered urgently.
She opened her eyes and looked up at Tai Lung.
"You can fly," she croaked.
"What?" he said, wincing against the wind. "No, I – we're in a tree. He took you over a cliff, I jumped after you - "
"What?" she asked, trying to shift around so she could could see.
"Tigress, don't m-"
She screamed as fire seared her from the inside.
"Don't move!" Tai Lung commanded.
She gasped. "Oh god," she said. "Oh no. How bad –? "
She looked at his eyes and her blood ran cold.
"It's bad," she whispered.
"It's not -it's not that bad."
"Don't – don't lie -" She lifted her left hand and feebly felt along her chest to the source of the pain, her right shoulder.
"Tigress - "
Her fingers hit a branch. But her fingers were still on her body.
"Tigress," he said again and gently tried to stay her hand, but it was too late. Her finger pads slid around the branch, trying to make sense of what they felt, how they could encircle the branch entirely yet still sit on her body. She tilted her head to try to see but her head was blocked by that very same branch, as though it was sprouting from her shoulder, because -
-because it was sprouting from her shoulder. It had gone clear through her when she landed, impaling her in the treetop.
"Tai Lung," she said, her voice rising with fear. "Tai Lung - "
"I'm here," he said. "Don't move."
She stared at it, horrified. "Tai Lung, I'm going to die."
He began doing something next to her, ducking under her and looking around at the branches.
"No," he said. "You're not."
"This- this is not survivable," she said, queerly numb to the fact. "This is death. This- this is death."
"This is not death," he said, his voice sounding very calm and reasonable, but she could tell it was an affectation. "I am going to get you out of this tree, and I am going to get you to help."
"There's no one out here to help."
"We'll find someone."
"There's no one," she croaked.
"We'll find them."
He moved the branches under her somehow, which sent reverberations through the branch in her body. She yelped in pain. "Tai Lung! Tai Lung, there's no one, please - "
"Be quiet," he said.
"Tai Lung!"
"Be QUIET!" he shouted.
Tigress gasped. "Don't – don't yell at me -"
"Tigress," he said, a hint of agony in his voice. "I'm sorry. But I am not going not going to let you die in a tree in Mongolia. This is not how you die."
"How do I die?"
He leaned close to her. "You die in bed, of old age, surrounded by your great grand children and mementos of your victories. That is how Master Tigress meets her end. Not here, and not now. You are going back home, back to the Valley of Peace. Back to Shifu. Understand?"
No, she wanted to say. I don't understand you. You are delusional. I am going to die. Even if you do get me out of the tree, we are in a wasteland, and any minute now we'll be in a blizzard. There is no hope here.
She grimaced.
I am going to die.
She looked up into the sky and saw nothing.
I am going to die without seeing the night sky again.
"Tigress, do you understand me?" Tai Lung insisted again.
"I wish," she breathed, "I wish I could at least see the stars."
"What?" Tai Lung asked, his voice full of anguish. "What are you talking about?"
"The stars," she said weakly. "I want to see the stars. Just one – one last time."
"Tigress, listen to me," he said, taking her hand. "You will see the stars again. I will tear each one down from the sky and show it to you. I will knit them into a chain and put it around your neck but first I am going to get you down from this tree, and I need your help to do that. I need you to focus. You are not dying tonight. Do you understand me? Focus. Mind tactical."
She shut her eyes against his pleading. She was tired. She was so, so tired.
Tai Lung gently placed his forehead to hers.
"Does a warrior ever give up, Tigress?" he whispered. The warmth of his breath was comforting.
She made a tiny strangled sound.
"Does a warrior ever give up?" he insisted.
"A warrior - " she said. "A warrior - "
"What does a warrior do?" he asked again, softly, the exact way Shifu would when she was small and weeping with frustration during training. And she suddenly remembered her training. Her life and her home and her Master, and that she was a Master.
She was a warrior. And a warrior...
"A warrior...never gives up," she said.
"Yes!" Tai Lung crowed victoriously. "Good! Say it again, a warrior never gives up."
"A warrior never gives up."
"Good! Good girl! That's my good girl, that's my little savage. Never gives up, never giving up." He squeezed her hand. "Good. Good."
She shut her eyes tight and squeezed back. "What's the plan?"
"I need to cut the branch."
"Tell me this isn't an ironwood."
"It's – I – I don't know, Tigress, I'm not up to date on my botany. I think I can do it in one go. One swipe."
"Get ready," she said. "You'll feel it."
"What?"
"It'll hurt. Every time the branch moves it hurts. It hurts a lot. And you'll feel it."
His face fell. He swallowed.
"Then – then so be it. We'll feel it together. All right? On three."
She winced. "On – on three."
"One," he said. "Two. Three."
Instantly her world was reduced to searing, and screaming. All she could feel was bark and splinters twisting inside her, against raw flesh. It was pain on a level that instantly erased any hope of decorum. She howled in high-pitched and undignified agony until the branch finally broke and Tai Lung caught her in his arms. She collapsed into open-mouthed, silent sobbing as he clutched her to him and began wrapping something around her.
"I have you, I have you, I have you," he chanted.
A hot sword plunged into her heel and up through her calf. She shrieked.
"What's wrong?"
"My - my leg." She tried to turn to see the damage and in the process upset the branch that was still in her shoulder – they could not remove because, as Shifu always said, that's how you bleed to death. She cried out.
"Hold still!" Tai Lung shouted.
"Is it broken?"
"Probably. I said hold still!"
Tigress did as he asked, panting and heaving as every nerve in her body slowly settled from agony. She tried not to writhe against him as he fashioned a makeshift sling out of his cloak, hanging her about his shoulders and neck like an infant.
"Okay," he confirmed. "Now we're getting out of the tree."
"How did you feel all that and keep going?" she gasped.
"I didn't feel it," he said as he slowly moved from branch to branch with her.
"You didn't?"
"No. I think it's because I wasn't trying to harm you. Perhaps it only works if we're trying to hurt each other. The god did tell us to stop hurting each other, if you recall."
"Not at the moment," she said through grit teeth.
"Well. He did," Tai Lung said. He coughed, wincing. "But that's okay, you don't have to recall. All you have to do is live."
"Why are we climbing up?"
"Up," he said. "Out of the ravine. Find the pack. Get back to the road. Road's the best bet for help."
"The road is days away."
Tai Lung didn't have a response to that. He coughed again. Wiped his mouth. Looked at his fingers in alarm.
"Tai Lung - ?"
He didn't reply. Kept climbing.
"Tai Lung!" she insisted.
"A warrior never gives up," he said.
At that moment they came up over the lip of the ravine. The wind howled hard off the flat plain. Snow blew in savagely, directly against them. Tai Lung tried feebly to block the wind from her face with her hand. He looked down at her. His eyes were full of fear but he smiled.
"You'll be all right," he said, and lifted the fabric of his cloak over her face to deflect the worst of the wind. He began to walk, wincing, each step an effort against the roaring cold – and, apparently, injury. How many of these labored steps would it take before they reached the road? And how many more before they reached help?
Too many. By any calculation she could possibly make, too many.
I'm not going to be all right, Tai Lung, she thought. I am definitely, definitely going to die.
o