Chapter Twenty-Seven

Light seeped into a dark world. A single drop of water runs down from the sky, landing on the outstretched leaves crowning a tree. It runs downward, dropping from leaf to leaf, eventually landing on a stem of grass, which bends under the droplet's weight. For just a second, the droplet is suspended upon the end of the blade of grass, mirroring the synchronized harmony that is our universe. Then, drop! The water falls, and breaks upon a stone. For all of nature's harmony, it cannot overcome the reality that is death.

For this is the reality of the fragile thing that is life, a single fall results in the ending of one's harmonious existence, succumbing to the drive of the universe, to push into maximum disorder.

An explosion of light!

Shen's eyes opened, and focused, scanning the room he was in. Where was he? His eyes caught sight of a bowl, and his eyes narrowed. He had seen this bowl before...

suddenly, with a rush of of memories that was almost painful, he remembered. He was in that hut, at the old panda village. That soothsayer...she had made another prediction...

He winced. She had made that very same thrice-accursed prediction! Even now, it was still determined that he would be stopped in his attempt to rule China. Why was that? He would make China great, the greatest empire in the world! Why was it that everyone saw him as evil?

He tried to move, but was greeted by a shock of pain. He cursed inwardly.

"Don't curse, it pollutes the mind." Shen looked up, and saw the soothsayer standing there.

She could read minds too? That surely wasn't fair...

"Why do you even care?" He asked, "You think I will be defeated. You would rejoice if I was killed...you never even cared about me."

"That's not true, and you know it!" She replied, somewhat hurt, but doing a very good job of hiding it. "I have always cared about you...always."

Shen stayed quiet, so she continued. "Caring is doing what is best for you! I did everyt-..."

"NO YOU DID NOT!" Shen shouted, looking up at her with fire in his eyes, "I begged you...I pleaded with you! And you did NOTHING!"

"You murdered innocent people! What could you have done that was worse?" She asked him.

"They were not innocent!" Shen exclaimed, "They were going to kill me! You were the one who said so!"

"You were not meant to hear that..." She answered. How she regretted that prediction! "You did not have to take it into your wings!"

Shen closed his eyes. "My parents...my parents killed each and every person who attempted to assassinate or kidnap me..." He frowned, "Why would the pandas have been any different? It was hammered into my head, over and over again, that murderers deserved no compassion...what was I to think?"

The soothsayer sighed. Shen, being royalty, would have had to judge several cases, and as a result, was taught to have no sympathy for criminals.

How ironic. If he was to try himself in his own courtroom, he would have been convicted for murder and sent off for death.

"We tried to what was best...for you..." She tried.

"Really... just recovering from the most heart-wrenching day possible, their SON, with an unstable mind and a weak, albino body...sending me off, into the cold snow, with no one and nothing...that was what was best for me?" He opened his eyes and looked at her. "Sending me off...into exile, that was the best for me?" Shen said angrily, "Sending me off, heartbroken, rejected, that was BEST for me?"

"It-it was all we could do..." The soothsayer was weakening. Conversing with Shen while he shouted irately and threw knives around, that she could handle, but talking with him as he calmly and rationally talked over a deep hurt in his life, that was far worse.

"Look at what it made me into!" Shen continued, "It made me into...into a monster. My sympathy for life, gone. The only thing left I could do... Was my ambitions...even that was taken from me."

"Shen." The soothsayer spoke, pulling Shen up to face him, "Everything you did was by your own decision! What happened to you was by your own choice!"

She looked down at Shen, looking for some response, some denial, which she had come so accustomed to seeing, but nothing. Nothing in his eyes at all. He looked up at her.

"I know." He nodded slightly. "No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, everything I did...only made certain my demise." He gasped.

"I-I only wanted to...All I was trying to say was...they...they just didn't understand...they couldn't...I wanted to.."

He stopped, and the soothsayer thought she heard a sniffle. A tear ran down his beak, and fell to the floor. The soothsayer stared in shock. Shen almost never cried...although...last time she had touched him, before the exile, he had been crying...and the time before that, when he had come in, bloody and weeping, and she had tried to comfort him...he had cried then...

She thought. Shen was almost like a child, strutting around in an attempt to be bigger than he was, and once his facade was penetrated, he needed someone to turn to, to cry into, to pour out his troubles to, and have them listened to with understanding...and compassion.

Oh, why couldn't his parents have been braver? Once Shen's siblings were killed, his parents had been too afraid to grow close to him, afraid lest he should fall sick and die...they had not even seen each (Other than at the table, to eat) other till his fifteenth birthday, when his sickness bouts had stopped.

Once they had seen each other, however, his parents and him had grown very close. It had warmed the soothsayer's heart, to see them playing together, like the time had not passed, as if there had been no rift. Shen would have done anything to please them...

It had been both their downfalls.

Shen's parents had been right in the end. Their son, who they had finally given their love, went and turned into a monster. Soon after Shen had been exiled, just three years later, Lord Ti'phan had died. A year later, Lady Mei lin followed him into the afterlife.

Shen had been unable to attend the funerals, although she knew he had tried. He had sat outside the city, and just watched. How she had wanted to go out to him, to comfort him! But she could not, it was forbidden. What on earth has possessed him to go and do that? Why had he even been there to hear the prophecy in the first place? She would most likely never know...unless she asked...

"Shen..." She asked. Shen looked up, all the answer she needed. "Why...why were you there? Why were you there, listening in on us?"

Shen looked up, surprised. "Didn't you know? Didn't SHE tell you?"

She? The soothsayer thought. His mother? No, how on earth would she have known...Shen never had many females in his life, mostly because he was so derogatory towards them. The only one was...Laeia! Of course! She was there that night...it was only three days before the wedding, after all. She had completely forgotten that Shen had been engaged, the thought seemed so strange...

"No... No one told me anything." She informed him, "Laeia left before your exile, if that's what your wondering..." she noticed the wince at the mention of the name, and realized she was close. She leaned up near his face. "What happened between you two?"

Shen sighed. He didn't want to tell anyone this...he couldn't help but laugh at the irony, however. Thirty years ago, he had heard that fateful prediction while looking for his nanny, to have this very same conversation with her.

"She left." He said simply.

"Why did she leave?" The soothsayer asked. "What happened?"

"She just left." Shen said, staring off into space.

"Shen!" The soothsayer said, using 'the mom tone' "What happened? Tell me...all of it."

Shen looked up. "So, you really want to know, do you?" The soothsayer nodded. "Well I'll tell you. She left me. She left me over a joke that one of the wolves made." Shen started to gasp. "She left because the wolf made jokes about all the girls I had 'done'. That stupid wretch..."

He looked up, and saw the soothsayer's disapproving expression.

"That foolish girl didn't think! She just left me, never gave me a chance..." He closed his eyes. "I thought she was special...I really thought... but I was wrong. She rejected me without a second thought, just...just like everyone else..."

The soothsayer listened. This story...it was forcing out her mothering instincts. It almost felt like it was her who was being rejected, as silly as that sounds...

"So..." She asked, "What brought you over to your parents door?"

Shen laughed, a creepy eerie laugh. "I was looking for you." He said, "I was looking for you, to tell you this whole story...how foolish I was."

The soothsayer's heart wrenched. Poor, poor dear!

"I'm..I'm sorry..." She said.

"Don't be." Shen replied, "It opened my eyes, opened them to the fact that there is no one in the world that can really be trusted. They will all betray you eventually. There is no such thing as...as a friend."

The soothsayer said nothing.

What was there to say? She, who had raised him, been the being who was the closest to him in all the world for many years, she had betrayed him as well.

"How bad are they?" Shen's voice brought her out of her reverie.

"What?" She asked.

"My injuries." Shen responded, "How bad are they?"

Oh...she had hoped he hadn't meant that. "Well...they are...pretty bad" She said, "You had a cannon fall on you, after all..."

"When will they heal?" Shen asked, "When can I get out of this bed?"

"Um...well..." She sighed. "Ok, I'll stop stalling. Your injuries are extremely severe, in fact, this conversation is a miracle. They are so severe that...you will likely...be an invalid for the rest of your life."

Shen looked at her in horror. "What! No!" He searched around frantically.

"You can't be serious! I would rather DIE!"

"Now Shen...I'm very sorry...there really is almost no chance that you will heal from this..."

Shen smirked darkly. "How many times have I heard that before?"

The soothsayer groaned. This was the most painful thing she had ever done in her long, long life.

"You must make the best of it." she said, eyeing him sorrowfully. "It could be worse...you could have lost your mind...you could have lost the ability to talk...it could be worse."

Shen didnt respond. To him, this was the most terrible and horrible thing he had ever experienced. Not be able to move! Ever? To be denied such a simple thing as mobility! He prided himself on his physicality, he prided himself on the fact that he had proved all those doubters wrong, who said

he would never amount to anything. And now, they would be right after all...

"No..." he said. "They were right all along...I really would end up like this. That doctor was right, all those years ago..."

The soothsayer watched the madness and ambition die in his eyes, and breathed a sigh of relief. At least now, Shen could see his plans were useless...if only he had seen it through some other way...it had taken nothing short of a lifelong sentence of invalidity to convince him.

Why was he so stubborn?

Author's note: I am really, really sorry guys. This chapter was supposed to go BEFORE the last one, not after it. This is not the long chapter I promised, don't worry, that one really will be next.

In case you haven't noticed, this is a scene with the other Shen, who did not get rebirthed, so suffered greater injuries.

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