AN: Um.. wow... I have absolutely no excuse for how late this chapter is! Sorry!

Chapter 20: What Message Comes from a Child's Song

The small child continued to hum a tune that Tai Lung's mind insisted that it recalled well. A song from another, more innocent life. One where he had not yet known the claws of greed and the teeth of disappointment in his heart. This other world was one where he had felt he knew exactly what the road ahead of him would bring, and one where he could hear his destiny whispered reassuringly to him on the breath of the wind.

That world was before, and he lived in the now. And the him in the now knew the stinging, tearing talons of greed for the Dragon Scroll. The him in the now had felt the searing pain of the fangs of disappointment when it had been denied him. The Tai Lung that he was now knew not what the world intended for him, nor his place in it, and no matter how his subconscious tried to echo the sounds that the apparition of his younger self was making, he could not.

It scared him a little that he found he wanted to.

He paused, fists and claws anchoring him to the sheer cliffside, and cast a look about for the source of the humming. The child-like version of himself tended to appear and disappear at will as he climbed. One moment he was idly resting on an outcropping of rock far above, the next he was clinging to a precarious perch far across the circular crevasse. The youngster was always at least at shoulder level, though. Sometimes Tai Lung could not indentify where his younger self was, no matter how hard he strained his hearing or craned his neck.

Of course, he did realise that the young him was not really there. It was, of course, all in his mind. But still, it was unsettling to hear a presence but not see it. It was almost like behind pursued by ghosts.

"Come on, you can do it!"

The massive snow leopard looked upwards, to the ledge just a few feet overhead. The familiar face grinned down at him.

"You weren't there a moment ago," the elder commented. This remark seemed to amuse the younger excessively. "Maybe I was and you just weren't seeing things clearly yet." Laughter danced in the young leopard's eyes, and Tai Lung found himself wondering if he'd been this much of a know it all to his master for just a moment. Though the thought and the flash of pain that accompanied it was only registered in his mind for the barest few seconds, the cub was smiling more gently and knowingly at him now.

"Come on," the child encouraged, reaching down and pulling Tai Lung up onto the ledge, exhibiting surprising strength for one so small.

"I'm in your head, you know," the cub commented, in response to the query the leopard couldn't quite make himself articulate. "I know what you know, I feel what you feel, I remember what you remember. And yeah.. we were a brat sometimes to Master Shifu." The child smiled apologetically, and shrugged. "We didn't entirely outgrow it, I guess."

The long silence between them was awkward. The elder leopard stared down at his large hands, which were covered in scrapes, blisters, and worn practically raw in places from the pace of his ascention. "What am I supposed to do when I get out of here," he pondered aloud. The grieving edge that his voice took on wasn't intentional. To his ears, it sounded weak and pathetic, not at all like the fearsome warrior who had taken down the Furious Five alone, and had fought- The flickering candle of worry that had been sputtering feebly in the back of his mind suddenly flared to life.

"Master Shifu!"

His voice echoed loudly as it bounced off of the cliffsides, and he was on his feet again, pacing and staring at his hands with horror. "I fought... And Master Oogway wasn't there... and... the panda.." He grabbed the child-like Tai Lung up in his anxiety, shaking him. "Is he alive? Did I kill him? Tell me, did I kill him?!"

They stayed like that, eye to eye. The cub staring blankly into the adult's wide-eyed gaze with matter-of-fact bluntness. "I don't know," the child finally responded. "I'm not some all-knowing spirit like Master Oogway. I only know what you know. And you don't know, either." The adult leopard sank to his knees, stunned.

"I killed him, didn't I?"

"We don't know that."

"I fully intended to.. I left him for dead.."

"Tai Lung, this isn't helping."

"I didn't.. I don't want it to be true!"

"Tai Lung! Calm down!"

"I really am a murderer!"

The fist that collided with his nose brought Tai Lung's bout of hysteria to a sudden end. "Tai Lung, as part of yourself, I am telling you to pull yourself together!" The large leopard gaped up at what looked to be himself, still younger, but not as young as the cub who'd been shadowing him previously. The younger leopard seemed to have aged, bringing him from an eight year old still chubby with baby fat to a thinner, awkward-looking pre-teen.

"What happened to you?" Tai Lung gaped. The younger him smiled knowingly. "You just grew up a little bit mentally, that's all. It looks like things aren't so black and white anymore, are they?"

The eleven year-old Tai Lung leaned carefully over the edge of their perch, inspecting something far below. The older cat eased over next to him cautiously, unsure of what was going on.

"What do you see down there," he finally asked, shakily.

The pre-teen shot him a sarcastic grin. "What do YOU see down there?" he echoed.

The adult resisted the urge to return the punch in the nose he'd received to its original owner and looked down. A scattering of rocks at the bottom of the shaft was all he could see.

"It's just a bunch of rocks."

The pre-teen grinned. "It's more than that. But it looks like you're still too close to your problems to make much sense out of them yet. We'll have to work on that." The young leopard looked skyward, and pointed out their goal. "I should warn you, it's going to get harder before it gets easier. You're going to have a tougher time from here on out. The handholds are smaller. The rock is smoother. Plus you're heavier."

Tai Lung's ears flicked with impatience as he turned to regard his younger self once more. "Heavier?" he echoed, "You're talking about guilt again?"

The younger leopard smiled broadly. "You can be taught after all! Well yes, guilt is part of it, but it's also responsibility. You know, you've always thought of your training, your kung-fu, as a means to an end. Nothing else mattered to you as long as you had it. There was right, and there was wrong. Right was Tai Lung's way, and wrong was anything- absolutely anything that stood in the way of that."

The pre-teen held up a large paw that he clearly wouldn't grow into for some time yet. "You didn't matter to yourself, you pushed yourself beyond even what our master expected of us," he folded down one finger into his palm. "The village didn't matter to you, as long as you could be the dragon warrior." Another finger folded down. "The principles of kung-fu, even though you studied the thousand scrolls, were all just words to you. You read only to learn how to fight, not better yourself." He sighed heavily.

"I could go on, but I think you understand where I'm going with this, don't you? Now do you understand why you feel like you have nothing? You've never nurtured anything, not even your own spirit." The younger Tai Lung's voice gave a pre-adolescent crack on the last word, prompting him to cough softly as the older cat smirked. "Go ahead and laugh, but this is your soul we're talking about here. Responsibility is a lot harder to bear than just guilt, because responsibility means actually doing something about it instead of just letting yourself feel bad."

Tai Lung turned back to the rubble-strewn ground far below him, considering. "I have to take responsibility and do something about myself? Then, I have to make it up to the village..?"

"Your village. Our village," the other corrected softly.

"My.. village..? I have never thought of it as mine."

"And that's why it's been so easy not to care about it."

"I suppose that is what Shi- Master.. Shifu would want."

"This has nothing to do with what Master Shifu would want. This is about you needing some inner peace. Now that you feel guilt, it will continue to haunt you until you do something to atone for it."

"If they'll even let me into the village to try."

"You'll never know until you make the attempt, Tai Lung."

The massive snow leopard closed his eyes and nodded. If the villagers drove him away, he would be no worse off than he was now, after all. At least if he did go back, he could find out what had happened to his former master. And if Shifu was still alive, then perhaps it was not too late to apologize. As his eyelids eased back open, he found himself looking down once more to the battered ground far below.

Wait.

That pattern...! The rubble below suddenly coalesced into a meaningful image for him, and he felt his jaw go slack with shock as he stared.

"You see it now, huh?" His younger self's voice had a distinct note of victory in it, but Tai Lung didn't look up. He was too involved taking in the image made by the scattered stones below. The crater he'd formed by hitting the ground stood in opposition to the upraised boulder he'd thought the mysterious voice he'd awakened to had been hidden behind. The loose stones on the ground scattered mostly to one side..

..it was an exact double of the image most would call the yin-yang, and a precise mirror image of the water and rock he recalled seeing far above the village, as a child on Wu Dan mountain.

"Perhaps there is hope for you after all, Tai Lung," the younger leopard smiled.

"Perhaps... there is.." he acknowledged. "Just... perhaps.."

-----

"You look uh... pretty cool, Tigress."

The cat is question looked up at the compliment, and narrowed her eyes. "Thank you, Master Panda."

Po flinched as if dealt a physical blow. "Oh come on, you're still mad? That thing with the dumpling was a total accident! I mean, I'd never do something to try and make you look dumb. Not that you looked, you know... dumb or anything. Distracted maybe, but not dumb. Never dumb."

"Panda.."

"I don't even really think it's possible for you to look dumb. I mean, you're like the super kung-fu artist, you know?"

"Po.."

"You're Tigress! You're the..." he stopped babbling, and blinked. "Uh... yeah?"

"Apology accepted."

The panda relaxed with a huge grin. "Awesome. Seriously though, I'm totally sorry for accidentally putting a dumpling on your head. You must have amazing posture, though.. it barely moved at all!" The panda paced around her, evaluating. "Yeah.. yeah... shoulders back, neck straight.. yeah you have better posture than most statues I've seen."

"Po.."

"Uh.. sorry.. I'm doing it again, aren't I?" The panda rubbed the back of his neck sheepishly, green eyes squinting in embarrassment.

"Just a bit," Tigress agreed, a small grin touching her face.

Po rocked back on his heels a bit, obviously fighting the urge to fidget as he nervously hummed a tune that the tiger's sensitive ears recalled as a childhood song. After a few minutes of awkward humming, the panda glanced nervously in her direction. "So.. um.. you want to talk about it? I mean.. you were really out of it last night."

Tigress sighed inwardly. She really didn't want to talk about it, truth be told. But meditating on the matter herself was clearly not getting her anywhere. From the corner of her eye she could see Po working himself up to a long rambling statement, doubtless about how he had overstepped and how she shouldn't feel like she had to tell him anything..

"Alright," she agreed, surprising both of them. She straightened the collar of the voluminous green robe that she'd chosen for the day, trying to clear her mind. "It all began eleven years ago, when Master Shifu brought me here from the orphanage. Master Oogway said nothing about it, but he clearly thought there was something intriguing about the fact that Shifu had chosen to bring me home. Crane and Viper were here, and they were nice enough.. but we weren't a family. I guess.. that's what I've always wanted, to have a family."

She risked a glance at Po and rolled her eyes at his expression. "No crying. If I'm going to tell you this, you can't stand there blubbering the whole time!"

Po sniffled. "Sorry.. I mean, it's just so sad and all that.."

"I don't need you to feel sorry for me, Panda. If you start feeling sorry for me, I swear I'll give you something to feel sorry about tomorrow in the training house." Tigress crossed her arms, annoyed and a little embarrassed by the panda's emotional near-outburst.

"Yeah.. I just.. you know.." Po sputtered for a moment, dabbing at his eyes with a handkerchief before he could get tear-stains on his green formal robe. "I wish I'd known you back then, in the orphanage. I didn't have many friends, either. Everybody just laughed at the big fat stupid panda. But at least I had my dad."

"I didn't have any friends back in the orphanage," Tigress stated flatly, letting her tail lash in impatience.

Po looked up and she felt her eyes widen at the honesty in his voice and face when he replied "If I'd known you, you'd have had one, at least." She turned away from him, and he fumbled for a moment, trying to figure out what he'd said wrong. "I mean, if you'd wanted me as a friend. Most kids didn't, so you know.."

Tigress didn't turn back to him, but she held out her hand towards Po, signalling him to stop talking once again. "I recently came across some of Master Oogway's poetry. He wrote about all of us, did you know that?" Without waiting for him to reply, she pressed onward. "He said something about me that made me start thinking about that time in my life again. He said that I lacked "the gentleness to use strength". I'm just... I can't figure out what it means."

Po gently clapped a hand on her shoulder. "I think you'll figure it out. I couldn't figure out the Dragon Scroll either, until dad said something to me about.." he trailed off uncertainly, and shrugged apologetically as if he couldn't say exactly what he wanted to. "Well, about believing in yourself, mostly. I think that if you believe in yourself, you'll figure out what Master Oogway meant."

Tigress glanced back over her shoulder at Po, uncertainty evident in her face. "I can't help but remember, controlling my strength is what Master Shifu has tried to teach me, from the first time I met him. Sometimes I think I'll never have full control over myself. I lose my temper, I get mad.. and I just lose it sometimes." She closed her eyes, and took a deep breath before slowly letting it out. "No matter how much I center myself, I think that deep down I'm always going to be that sad, lonely little girl who just wants a family."

"You've got a family, you've got all of us!" the panda protested, using his grip on her shoulder to turn her back towards the Jade Palace as the doors were pushed open by the palace geese. "We all care about you. We all believe in you. You're the most kick-butt girl anyone's ever heard of, and everybody's proud of you."

Tigress' eyes fell on Master Shifu as he ushered Lady Tao-hua through the palace doors. "I wish I could believe that," she muttered.