Chapter Ten
Tigress had no idea how long she'd been out, as before she knew it, she was being shaken awake. "Tigress, wake up – we've landed... for now," David told her, gently shaking her awake.
"Where are we?" Tigress asked groggily.
"We're in an automated refueling station in Memphis, Tennessee," David answered, "just an irradiated river away from the state I spent the latter half of my childhood in – Arkansas."
"How long are we going to be on the ground?" Tigress asked.
"Couple hours, give or take," David replied. "You won't believe this-"
"Try me," Tigress said with a smile.
David smiled back before he continued, "Dusty and Darcy are on their way here – turns out, they're headed for Vegas, too."
Tigress frowned. "Them, too? What business do they have in Vegas?"
"Something about selling off weapons and equipment to the Gun Runners and delivering medical supplies and such to the Followers of the Apocalypse," David replied. "But, hey – it'll be good we're getting backup for the trip to Vegas."
Tigress shrugged, and exited the Vertibird with David, where she saw the automated machines tending it. She shrugged it off, having seen it before in David's files during their stint in Megaton at the beginning of all this.
"Tigress, can I ask you something personal?" David queried.
"I don't see why not," Tigress responded.
"You were... you were adopted by Shifu when you first went to the Jade Palace, right?" David asked.
Tigress nodded. "Best day in my childhood, why?" she answered.
"And Tai Lung was Shifu's first-adopted son, right?" David inquired.
"Yes, he was," Tigress replied with a frown, "Where are you going with this?"
"Because you and Tai Lung shared Shifu as your adopted father... you realize what this means?" David asked.
Tigress pondered this, and then, her face turned to shock as comprehension dawned. "You mean...?" she gasped.
David nodded. "Because you and Tai Lung share an adoptive father, that makes him your adopted brother," he said.
Tigress was shocked. She knew that Shifu had adopted Tai Lung and raised him as his son. She remembered when Shifu adopted her from the Bao Gu Orphanage. But never did she realize, never did she think, or even consider, that when Shifu adopted Tigress, it made Tai Lung her brother.
And so, oblivious to the rapid thumping in the air, she looked to David, who brought this revelation to her. The man who was – quite literally – taking her home. To her family, the family she thought she was alone in. Overcome with joy, she excitedly threw her arms around David and squealed in delight. The wind picked up fiercely, but Tigress held David tightly.
"Uh, Tigress... please... not in front of Dusty," David chuckled.
Tigress's eyes went wide upon David's amused plea, and finally realized she could feel Dusty's presence behind her – and he wasn't alone. She quickly released David and turned around to see Dusty and Darcy standing there, both looking amused, and Tigress's cheeks flushed red.
"Received good news, did we?" Darcy asked.
"You told her, didn't you?" Dusty inquired.
"Yeah," David sighed, "And she apparently had no idea."
"Dammit," Dusty amusingly cursed, digging into his pack and handing five bottle caps to a pleased-looking Darcy.
"Wait – you two had a bet going?" Tigress asked.
"Don't look at me!" Dusty answered defensively as he pointed to Darcy, "It was her idea!"
"I bet Dusty five caps that you wouldn't have a clue that Tai Lung is your adopted brother," Darcy admitted. Tigress simply laughed as the machines began to tend to Dusty's MI24. Indicating it, Tigress asked,
"Hey, Dusty – that thing fully loaded?"
"If you mean the weapons, then yes – UV32 Rockets, air-to-ground missiles, and fully-stocked 12mm Nose Cannon. This bird had it all when David and I found it at a military depot in Denver," Dusty affirmed. "David and I dragged it home to get it refitted with materialization emitters for the weapons... it was like having infinite ammo, so to speak."
Tigress looked to David. "You seem to find everything in military depots, don't you, David?"
David chuckled. "Back in the day, the American Military had some pretty badass stuff. That MI24 was going to end up in a museum, but the bombs fell before the engineers could even demilitarize it."
"Did David tell you he grew up near here?" Dusty asked.
"No, I didn't say I grew up near here, I told her-" David started.
"-That he spent the latter years of his childhood near here," Tigress finished, much to David's irritation. She looked at him with a grin.
Contrary to any sort of irritated remark, David smiled. "Starting to play with my head, now, are we?"
"I learn from the best," Tigress said.
David chuckled, "Be careful what you pick up from me, Tigress – I have a few bad habits."
"Oh, take it from me – he does," Dusty affirmed, earning him a quick elbow in the ribs by Darcy.
"Everyone has bad habits," Tigress said. "One of mine is I tend to strike first in a fight sometimes."
David's smile broadened. "Well, ain't that a coincidence – so do I."
Tigress's smile, too, broadened. "See?" She commented. "The more time we spend together, the more we realize we have in common."
"It's... almost as if you two were... meant for each other," Dusty said. This comment earned him a swift swat upside the head. Tigress turned her back, pretending to look at the city before them while trying to hide the fact her face was flushing red. Truth was, Dusty was right – it did seem as though David and Tigress were meant for each other. There was no other way to explain how she felt for him. How she was willing to stay with him in the American wasteland, even though she knew she didn't belong in it.
It was the only explanation that fit how she was willing to even consider what she wanted to do. Perhaps it was David that was meant to be Tigress's bound mate in eternity – two eternal warriors, hailing from two different, foreign lands and two completely different timelines, yet feeling for each other despite these differences and realizing they had more in common than either one of them originally knew.
While Dusty went about being systematically – though playfully – slapped by his wife for his comments, David walked over beside Tigress. "I don't blame you for feeling a might embarrassed," he said to her. "Were I in your position, I'd be doing as you are. But... Dusty does have a point; we do have a lot in common, so much so that it... has reawakened feelings in me I originally thought were dead."
"Feelings you last felt when you still had a wife and child," Tigress surmised. "Now you're wondering if I'll suffer the same fate they did."
"Now you see why I am so... hesitant, regarding how I feel about you," David affirmed. "I don't want you to end up like they did."
There was a long pause, during which Tigress considered what she thought David was telling her in the back of her mind, before Tigress asked, "David... did you ever give some thought to my offer?"
"Your offer?" David queried.
"To come with me," Tigress clarified. "Come with me when I go back to my own time."
David sighed, "First, you wanted to stay with me in this hellhole – now, you're asking me to go with you to your time. While I appreciate your intentions, Tigress... I don't think I'd belong there, any more than you belong here. Besides, my mission-"
"You'd still be able to accomplish you mission," Tigress interrupted. "You'd still be able to stop Eden in the past to save the future. The only thing that'd be different is you'll be traveling to a different place to do so than what you had planned. And even better, you'd be able to see my homeland as well as see the world before the apocalypse. Maybe you wouldn't belong at first, but with me at your side..." Tigress let the thought hang in the air for a moment before adding, "Think on that – and consider the lives you'd be saving from an eternity of pain and misery... including your own."
Roughly ten minutes before the end of the stay at the refueling station in Memphis, Tigress got the distinct feeling that something was wrong. She alerted David, who felt the same sensation. Tigress and David talked with Dusty and Darcy, and agreed that they go separate routes to Vegas; Dusty and Darcy would take a route through Arkansas, Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and southern California before moving into Nevada, wherein lay New Vegas.
Tigress and David, however, would take a route through Arkansas, Oklahoma, Kansas, Colorado, and stop in Salt Lake City, Utah, make for Zion Valley, and take a specific passage from Zion Valley to Nevada. Neither Tigress nor David knew what the source of their bad feeling was, but they were certain moving for Vegas on the same route as David and Darcy would attract attention and could prove fatal.
The next couple of days were a blur to Tigress, as she soon found herself looking at the ruins of Salt Lake City. Two centuries of scavenging and prospecting, not to mention conflicts between local factions, had left the site barren and lifeless. Regardless, Tigress and David moved through the city remains, neutralizing what little resistance there was. Tigress barely had to use her TDR.
They moved through the city and into the surrounding countryside, a wasteland of sand and rock, and Tigress was thankful she had plenty of supplies stored in her armor's emitters. It wasn't until they came upon two metallic hulks – the remains of a pickup truck in one lane and a jeep in the other, both missing multiple parts – that something happened.
David stopped upon seeing the remains of the vehicles. He slowly approached them, as though he was seeing a ghost of his past. "David," Tigress asked, "Are you alright?" David didn't answer, but dematerialized his armor and ran his hand over the hull of the jeep.
"Two centuries," David whispered, "And you still remain here."
Tigress got the implication immediately. "Was your wife in that jeep?" she inquired.
David shook his head, looking to Tigress with tears streaming down his face. "No, she wasn't – I was," he answered. "This is where I was when the bombs first fell."
As much as Tigress wanted to press on, and avoid David taking a trip down memory lane, she decided to play the caring woman, a shoulder to cry on as it seemed needed. "What happened?" she asked.
David sighed, his breath trembling. "It was dark, I'd say... oh, nine? Ten o'clock? I no longer remember. I was heading for Salt Lake City when my jeep just... died," he explained. "I was headed home. Jeep died, and so did the truck over there," he indicated the truck. "I knew right away what was happening. I was looking south when the bomb struck Salt Lake City, but the old couple in the truck weren't so lucky – they were looking right into the blast and went blind. The flash behind me was so bright, the world looked on fire. I counted twelve more flashes over the next seven minutes, and each time, the ground shook eighteen seconds later. When nothing hit for half an hour, I took a look – saw the globe of fire where the nuke struck. The old couple had a heart attack, one after the other. I grabbed my pack and hiked to Zion. Took five days..."
Tigress dematerialized her own armor and took one of David's hands. "Your wife... your first wife... was in Salt Lake City, wasn't she?" she asked.
David's tears flowed like rivers as he answered, "Her and my son." He sat down with his back against the jeep. "It's not knowing how they died that hurts the most. Not knowing which side of town got hit. Northeast side, and they both died in a blink. Further away from there, they screamed as they burned alive, or as the blast fragments glass, wood, and brick to shred them like hamburgers."
Tigress knelt down in front of David, taking his hand again. "I'm sorry," she apologized.
"Unless you dropped the bomb on my home, you have nothing to apologize for," David said, half-sobbing. "I should have been there with my family. Char kept telling me to stop running off to the wild. Man belongs with his family. She... she was right."
"It's not your fault, either, David," Tigress assured him. "You did nothing wrong in surviving the apocalypse."
"How is it not-" David began. Tigress silenced him with a finger to his lips.
"You didn't know what would happen," she told him. "You couldn't have known. No one knew. Yes, your family died without you. But they wouldn't want you dwelling on their deaths. They would want you to move on. And I'm right here, for you, as I have been since this whole thing started. If you need a shoulder to cry on, I'm right here."
"I'm a soldier," David half-sobbed, "I know I'm better than this."
"But soldier or not, ageless or not, you are still a living, feeling person," Tigress said softly. She uncovered one of her hands long enough to place it on David's cheek, her thumb wiping away a stream of tears. "Stop running from your feelings. Stop pretending you don't have them." She paused, then added, "And stop pretending you have no feelings for me, because you and I both know you do."
With Tigress's soft words and her caring touch, David finally let go, and cried softly on her shoulder. Tigress didn't know how long she had held David, but it was completely unexpected when suddenly, she felt a tremor in her senses. She slipped her gauntlet back on, materialized her armor, and grabbed hold of David, shielding him as an explosion rocked both of them. She blacked out from the blast, and the last thing she heard was shouts and gunfire...
(I apologize for the long delay - life has been hectic. And, as it happens, downright depressing and - in more than one case - enraging. Rest assured, I am still working on this story; it is not dead, and nowhere near done. -CDA)
