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Under the storm

Sometime after the encounter on the Thread of Hope...

The thunderous water relentless tossed and turned her listless body as if she was a rag doll. The giant waves crashed against rock walls, the rushing waters current had no specific direction. Tigress struggled to keep her head up gasping and choking, and couldn't properly breathe because of the waters entering her mouth and clogging her throat.

There. Right there. Something flashed before her very eyes. An event almost as similar. Turmoiled waters, slamming waves and someone struggling for breath...and it was not her.

Perhaps it was a dream, or perhaps...a memory?

Tigress is dragged down into the breath-stealing place of infinite greyness as if by invisible hands and his eyes close against the stinging weight that probes them. There comes a darkness to Tigress consciousness as the roars of thunderous water grows even louder. Then slowly its sound faded as she was completely consumed by blackness...

...

Tigress fluttered her eyes open. Her vision a little cloudy, but when it cleared she found herself staring at a rocky ceiling washed over by an orange light. As soon as she regained full consciousness she felt like she was smashed against a huge boulder. Every part of her hurt!

She forced herself to sit up despite of the agonizing sensation every time she moved a muscle. It was then that she realized she was inside a cave and as she looked down upon her body, her eyes furrowed in confusion towards the bandages covering her wounds. Who could have done this?

The tiger's ears twitched, detecting a sound. She turned her head to the side to see a person crouching in front of the cracking fire. His back was facing her. The light off the fire bathed his pelt, seemingly making the black stripes of his white fur dance with the flames. Tigress' eyes widened upon recognizing who the person was.

"Rao?" she said in an astonished tone. How was he here? How did he manage to cross the bridge when some of it was destroyed? And was he the one who saved her? How did he accomplish that?

Rao Shu's tail lashed behind him leisurely and his ears flicked. He added another log to the fire before answering the younger tiger. "Glad to see you're awake." He took the pot he had placed above the fire that he hung on a make-shift tripod, and poured the contents into a cup. He stood up and knelt in front of Tigress; offering her the cup.

Tigress accepted and drank slowly. Once again, her tongue was introduced to the bitter taste of san qi. She looked up from her cup and into the white tiger's closed eyelids. "How are you here?"

"I basically tracked you and Jia after capturing all those thugs," he replied as he went back to the fire. "By the way, where is Jia?"

Tigress cast her gaze towards the ground and she suddenly felt a tight constriction in her chest. She suddenly found it to answer, because she also was having a hard time accepting the horrendous fate Jia was led to. "She's...gone." Uttering the word gave her a strange feeling. Tigress felt heavy, and it had nothing to do with the condition of her body.

"I'm sorry to hear that," Rao replied after a little pause.

Tigress jammed her eyes, feeling the tears welling up. No, she didn't want to talk about this...it was too painful. She decided to change topic. "Some of the bridges on the Thread of Hope were destroyed? How did you get across?"

Rao paused for a moment. "I went through the underground tunnels. Only a few people knew about it; I'm one of them. That's how I managed to come from very start of the bridge network, to here, and get these." He gestured for the pot atop the fire. He faced her gain. "What about you? How you managed to survive the nasty fall?"

Tigress grunted as she sought a more comfortable sitting position. She rubbed her bandaged arm and looked towards the ground as she answered, "I grabbed a tree sticking out of the cliff face to break my fall." She groaned. "...but I didn't know that it would also break and fall. Ugh. I feel terrible."

Rao chuckled and came back to where the younger tiger lay, carrying the pot with him. He sat in lotus position across her, and offered her a newly filled cup of hot sanqi. "You should be. That's good news, actually. It means you're still alive."

Tigress sighed. After finishing her medicinal drink, she eyed him. "You know it's weird. How you manage to always come out of the blue to come to my rescue. Do you have any idea how many times you've saved my life? Seriously, how do you do that?"

Rao laughed softly, "Call it man's intuition."

"Right... Or maybe you have these supernatural powers that you hid from me all this time."

Rao chuckled as he moved to inspect her wounds. They hadn't healed completely, but they certainly looked better than before. He might need to replace the blood-stained bandages with new ones to keep the wounds clean and free from infection. But he will have to go where he had gotten them in the first place, which he intended to keep its site unknown from the south china tiger should she ask about it particularly.

"Hm, you certainly won't be walking anywhere in this condition," he said. "You should wait at least one more day to fully recover your strength."

Tigress was silent. She draws her knees closer to her chest, groaning at having to strain the wounds she received from the vicious snow leopard. She wrapped her arms around her legs feeling a chill enter the mouth of the cave.

"What's wrong?" Rao asked when she fell quiet.

She didn't answer right away and instead she averted her gaze so that she was staring at the flames a ways away. Silence dragged on for a while with the cracking of burning wood in the fire the only thing invading that silence. Tigress can't believe that she was about to tell this to someone. She had never admitted it before, though she had experienced it plenty of times. But strangely, there was something about the blind white tiger that made her feel comfortable with telling him everything. "I...I'm scared." She confessed, and she sounded a bit ashamed of doing so.

"Of what?" Rao sounded surprised.

"Rao," she began burying her head on her knees, "I ran away from home. And in doing so I fell into a trap I didn't even know of and placed my master and friends in danger. Do you think I can march back into the Jade Palace and expect for them to take me back right after what I've done? What I've put them through?"

"You can try." He simply replied.

She lifted her head to stare at his closed eyelids. "But what if they never forgive me? What if they slam the door at my face? Then I will be going home for nothing!" she panicked. "Why don't you just take me with you? You would accept me, won't you?" Her eyes pleaded to him, hoping for him to say yes.

Rao fell silent an unreadable expression crossed his stripped face. He turned away from her pondering over the question. Tigress waited patiently for an answer, but she didn't get it until two minutes had passed and Rao finally twisted his head to face her once more. "Tigress, as much as I would love you to come with me, I can't take you away from your family. Why give up now when you're so close?"

"But what if Shifu rejects me?"

"He won't," Rao assured her as he placed his large paw atop hers and offered her a smile. He then lifted his other paw and used his forefinger finger and thumb to tilt her head so she was directly looking into his closed eyes. "You're his daughter. What kind of father will he be then if he refused to take you back after just one mistake?"

They fell into silence once again. The fire dance about its flames slowly dying.

"So?" Rao asked when a minute had passed.

Tigress simply bowed her head, and nodded.

Present day...

Merciful heaven, it's her... It's really, really her!

Shifu thought that his depression was causing him to see things that aren't real, aren't even there. He thought this was a mere illusion, a product of his imagination.

No.

It's her, it's Tigress. She truly is alive.

The storm continued to rage, but he paid no thought to it. His focus was entirely upon the young woman right in front of his eyes. He didn't breathe, he didn't look away and neither did he blink for he thought that if he did then she will disappear.

Shifu found no words to say. His throat was clogged. He simply stared at her with an expression beyond thunderstruck, jaw-slackened. She was staring back at him, but her face was filled with so many emotions: shame, sorrow, longing and love. He didn't know which among them the dominant one was, but he didn't care. She was here. She was really here!

And yet he couldn't will himself to move.

He was just staring. Simply staring and nothing else. Tigress felt fear grip at her chest. What should she do? What should she say? She hadn't thought about it when she walked all the way from the cave where Rao Shu had tended to her injuries, to here - to her home.

The rain pounded harshly against her back like thousands of daggers. It was painful against her still recovering body, but not as painful as the thought that her father might not accept her back.

She lowered her eyes so that she was staring at the ground where there was a constant flow of water. She sighed her voice was barely audible against the rain, but she knew Shifu can still hear her. "Master," she began, giving her voice a forceful tone. "I...I know that I had no right to return right after what I've put through. I have brought shame upon you, the Jade Palace and Kung Fu itself because of how I behaved. I am -!" She paused, feeling a lump in her throat. Tigress jerked her head up so that she was staring at Shifu again. She couldn't read his expression. How she wished she knew what he was thinking that moment. She straightened her back and hardened her face, but she couldn't keep her lips from trembling.

Tigress took one step forward. "I...Master I—!"

And slipped.

Tigress yelped as she fell face-first into the floor. Lightning zigzagged across the steamy sky as thunder rumbled like the sound of roaring laughter in a crowded place, mocking her for her clumsiness. Tears flooded her eyes. She used her paws to push herself off the wet ground and a sob tore from her lips without her noticing.

"I-I'm so sorry, Master." Tigress wept. She shut her eyes tight, but that didn't keep the tears from coming out, combining with the flow of rain on her face. "I didn't know what came over me for running away like that. I just feared that—" she sobbed "—if I didn't do anything all of you will be in grave danger. I didn't want any of you placed in harm's way because of me so I decided to take matters into my own paws."

She glared at the ground. "But I was wrong, Master. Instead of helping I only made things far worse. I am sorry." She choked and lowered her face in the ground, feeling the water flow by. Tigress simply stayed there, crying like she had never cried before, and she mentally scolded herself for showing weakness right in front of her master. But she couldn't hold her emotions; they were raging inside her like a furious beast demanding to be set lose.

The tiger buried her face on her paws as she laid there, shoulders jerking and voice quaking. "I am sorry."

Her weeping seemed to overpower the storm. What should he do? Something inside his head kept telling he should scold her for putting her through so much, for scaring him, for making him worry and most of all for thinking that she was dead! He wanted to shout at her, to reprimand her. To let her know how at fault she was.

But somehow he couldn't find it in himself to do any of that. Above all he was relieved. He thought he had lost her, and he was beyond overjoyed that God had generously let his daughter stay a little longer, for he still needed her. This was a second chance, and he will not waste it with berating her for the small mistake she'd made; instead he will spend with amending his own and give her what he should have given her the first moment she had brought her from the orphanage. His love.

Tigress waited for him to do something—anything—scold her, hit her, punish her! She just wanted him to do something. But nothing came, instead he did something else.

Shifu simply marched forward, his feet splashing against the watery floor that left wide ripples in his wake. Then he unfastened the green wrap around his body, removed it and draped it over Tigress' head as though to protect her from the storm.

Her head snapped up, her face completely shocked.

He smiled at her, placing his tiny paws at either side of her face. He spoke softly but loud enough to be heard against the raging storm. "It's been a long journey and you must be tired. Why don't you come inside?"

She couldn't believe him... That's all? That was it? He'd expected him to scream at her for what she had done. Give her the worst punishment he could ever impose. But no. None of it. After everything that's how easily he'll accept her?!

Tigress choked as more tears spilled out of her eyes. She wrapped her arms around Shifu's small body, holding it close. He did the same to her and comfortingly rubbed her back as she cried some more. Shifu chuckled as he found himself crying as well.

Only one chapter to go! And then I can focus on my other KFP story, "Life in Bao Gu".

There was supposed to be two chapters left, but I decided to combine the Epilogue with the other chp cause it's so short. But if you want me to separate them, then say so in a review.

Remember to review guys :D Thanks!