They ate in silence. It annoyed her.
"You wanted to talk," Tigress said. "So start talking."
He glared at her. "So polite. Did her highness have a subject in mind?"
"Anything. The landscape. The weather. Current events."
"Sadly I'm not up to date on my current events. I've been in prison for twenty years, or did you forget?"
"You keep mentioning it, so let's talk about that," Tigress snapped. "Prison. How was it?"
He blinked. "Why would you want to know?"
"I've never been to prison. I don't know what it's like."
"Are you suggesting I should lay out my life for your entertainment?"
She rolled her eyes, exasperated. "No. If you prefer we can sing. Or exchange recipes. But you can't pick a fight with me about talking then just sit in silence."
He went quiet for a while, deep in thought. Just as she got used to the silence he spoke.
"Prison was long and it was dark. No sunlight." He glanced upwards. "No stars for twenty years."
When she looked at him his eyes were far away. She hadn't expected a genuine answer.
"It was said …" she began, unsure if she should actually pursue this thread of inquiry. "It was said that you were restrained with your arms tied to hanging boulders, wearing a pressure-point shell."
He nodded.
She looked him up and down. "If that's true, how did you come out looking like that?"
He smirked. "Looking like what?"
"You're …" her voice drifted as she thought of a way to phrase her question that would only inspire minimal gloating in him. "You're in excellent physical condition for someone who was immobilized for so long."
He smiled smugly. "So glad you noticed."
How the hell could I not notice? she thought.
"I don't understand how that's possible."
"Tortoise magic," he grumbled. "I very much doubt you're familiar with the shell Oogway used to keep me immobile. How it works."
Tigress looked off to the side. "I …I saw a scroll, once. Oogway's schematics. Shifu showed me."
He looked surprised. "He did?"
"Yes, as a warning. When I was ten I lost my patience with a school bully. She was a goose and I punched her in the neck. Purposely. I put her in the hospital. Shifu was enraged. He brought me the scroll and told me this was the punishment for those who misuse kung-fu, and that this person was his own son. That was the first I learnt of you." She shivered at the memory. "It terrified me."
"It should. It is a terrifying device," he said. "The pins in the shell work by blocking chi, causing complete immobility, total numbness. But Oogway, in his genius, found a way to not only block chi, but pause it. It left me perfectly preserved. Like a jar of pickles." He smirked. "I was a lot like a jar of pickles if you think about it. Put in a cold dark place and stored for future use."
"Stored for future use?"
"Oh yes. Why do you suppose Oogway and Shifu did not simply put me to death? They had more than enough reason to execute me publicly had they wished. I'm sure plenty of people in the Valley of Peace would have enjoyed that. Did you ever ask yourself why? Why go to all the trouble of making the jade shell, of building Chorch-Gom? The prison employed one thousand guards, year round. They hollowed out a mountain just to keep me. Why go to all the expense? And who do you suppose paid for all that?"
Tigress furrowed her brow. "I … I never thought about it."
"Of course not. And if Shifu told you, you'd be just as frightened of him as you were of me."
Tigress straightened and looked down her nose at Tai Lung. "I highly doubt that."
"Hear my tale," Tai Lung replied warningly. "I was trained, specifically, from a very young age, to be a -"
"A war machine, yes. You told me. Annihilate armies, take down strongholds."
"Yes. But what goes into annihilating an army? Think about that. You're sent in to single handedly destroy an army. What sort of state are you in? What has been perpetuated in you for years to make you good at this? And what are you good at, exactly?" He looked into the fire. "What I am good at is destruction. My talent is death. My art is the massacre." He met Tigress's eyes. "I was trained to leave nothing alive."
Tigress was skeptical. "I find it hard to believe Shifu would train anyone that way."
"No? Not even if Shifu believed the cause was just? The Emperor himself made a special request of him. How could he refuse the Emperor, especially when he already had all the raw material he needed in me? And it was a such great honor to be asked to head a secret defense project! They needed the tip of the blade - a single warrior who could strike fear into the hearts of entire nations, and they came to Shifu to produce it. He could not resist that kind of challenge."
He wasn't lying, Tigress realized to her horror. Tai Lung truly believed what he was saying.
But that didn't make it true.
She shook her head. "Shifu loved you. He would not use his own son like that."
"He would, and he did," Tai Lung growled.
She went silent for a moment, holding down her instinct to argue Shifu's honor. "And he still said you were the Dragon Warrior?"
"Who else but the Dragon Warrior would lead the Imperial army? I would prevent far more deaths than I caused. I would be a force for justice! When I had the scroll I would become a righteous avenger borne on wings of light, my deeds smiled upon from the heavens." He shook his head. "Oogway did not agree."
"He saw darkness in you."
"The darkness Shifu put there!" Tai Lung shouted.
Tigress frowned at his outburst. "And Shifu lives with that regret every day."
"Good! Let him! If he is a house may I be the ghost that haunts it!" Tai Lung pounded his fist into the ground and fumed.
"Oogway agreed with this training?"
"No," Tai Lung said. "He did not agree with it, and as best I could tell he did not particularly care for me personally. Even when I was a child."
"Then why did he allow Shifu to continue?"
"Oogway rarely interferes with anything unless he decides it directly concerns him. Interesting, what he decides is simply one's 'path' and what he decides is his to meddle in. Interesting in that I can't make sense of it and neither can anyone else. Oogway could have prevented me. Instead he stood by and watched Shifu create something China would need to cage at great expense decades later." He sighed. "These are the Masters you worship. A lunatic and a war profiteer."
Tigress bristled but did not rise to the bait.
"Back to your question," Tai Lung continued. "I told you how I remained preserved. Would you like to know why?"
"Why?" she said drily.
"I was kept in that stasis, at such great expense, in case of the Emperor's need. In case China went to war. In case they needed whole armies destroyed. The Emperor paid for Chorch-Gom in its entirety just to house me for his future disposal. Should the need ever outweigh the risk, that is. Otherwise I could just rot there forever. Perhaps actually forever. I don't know if the shell would have allowed me to die." He sighed. "I'm fortunate it was only twenty years."
"How did you…" Tigress shook her head. "How did you stand it? How did you avoid losing your mind?"
"The shell."
"The paused chi preserved your mind as well?"
He went silent, seemed to consider his answer carefully. "In a manner of speaking. You see, Oogway put something extra inside the shell. A gift to me, I suppose. A kindness. Or the ultimate cruelty, I'm not sure which."
"What was it?"
"A needle that pressed upon a very specific point. Between the shoulders on the spine there is a very deep pressure point that, if pressed firmly enough, causes instant death. I knew that. What I did not know was that If pressed half as hard it causes a near-death. A numb oblivion. A living dream. Would you like to know how I discovered this?"
She silently waited for him to continue.
"I felt the needle the first time I awoke wearing the shell. From the moment I entered prison, all I had to do was push myself up into it hard enough and everything would be over. At first I was enraged at this. Insulted! Oogway, you demented old prick!" He snarled and swiped a burning log out of the fire. It hissed as it hit the snow. "But prison saps your will to live very quickly. As the months wore on the thought of the needle became too much to bear. One particularly bad day, after the guards had …."
He winced and trailed off.
"One day I decided I would accept Oogway's gift. I doubted what awaited me in the spirit realm would be good, but it had to be better than that misery. And do you know what happened? Do you want to know how sick Oogway is?"
Tigress's stomach churned. She didn't. She didn't want to know any of this. She regretted asking him to go on.
"Oogway placed the needle at the perfect depth, so I could launch myself into a thousand numb, nonsensical dreams, but I could never die. No matter how hard I tried I could not push that needle all the way in. And I did try." He took a deep breath. "But now I've escaped that hell, and I'll have my scroll. When I have the scroll all this will be set right. The power within it will finally turn me into that warrior on wings of light, my deeds smiled upon from the heavens."
"You could have been that warrior anyway."
He did not respond to this. It was as if he didn't hear it. She felt a bright burst of frustration.
"Do you understand?"
"No, because you're talking nonsense. If I am denied the scroll than I cannot 'be the Dragon Warrior anyway.' That's not how it works."
"Tai Lung, you're …. you fight like nothing I've ever seen. The Furious Five have never been defeated by a single warrior before. Are you brutish? Yes. Are you arrogant? Yes. Are you shortsighted and impatient? Yes. Are you -"
"Are you going somewhere with this?"
"Yes. I'm going to tell you what you're not."
"And what's that?"
"Stupid. You're not stupid, Tai Lung. You are capable and you are smart and though I may doubt many things about you, I do not doubt that you could do anything you set your mind to, and probably do it better than anyone else. Every possibility in the world is open to you except one."
"That remains to be seen."
Tigress made a sound of frustration and stabbed a dumpling with a chopstick. She wanted to shake him. But instead, she merely said, "You don't need the scroll to become whatever you want to be. Not when you are already so much."
He growled and gave her a dark, warning look.
She raised her eyebrows. "It isn't - "
"Can I tell you how endearing that is? How very, very sweet?" he snapped. "Such a lovely heart you have. It's incredibly appealing."
"You don't need the scroll, Tai Lung."
"It's not given on need, it's given on merit and I did everything asked of me. Everything and more! I bled from every pore. I trained until my bones cracked. I slept out in the rain. No fun, no simple pleasures of life. I spent every evening mastering every single damn scroll in that library." He looked at his hands. Flexed his fingers. "I punched the ironwood trees until I felt nothing."
She looked down at her own hand.
"So did I," she said softly.
"Then you understand. I earned that scroll. But when the time came…." he grimaced and made his hand into a fist.
"I do understand, Tai Lung," she said softly. "I understand more than you know. I dreamt about it my whole life. I dreamt about it the way most girls dream of their wedding day."
He paused, taken aback by her tone. His eyes widened.
"I was wondering about that," he said quietly. "Did Shifu-"
"Lead me to believe it would be me? He hinted at it. He knew it was his destiny to train the Dragon Warrior, so he said it could be any of us. But never none of us," she said. "It went unsaid that he thought it would be me. After Oogway announced he would be naming the Dragon Warrior Zeng even stopped by the bunkhouse to measure me for a new formal outfit. Silk. Green and gold." She sighed. "I was so ready."
"Yes," Tai Lung said softly.
"Limitless power," she said.
"Yes," he said, with a rumble of lust, eyes gleaming.
"Perhaps then … perhaps with limitless power Shifu would be as proud of me as … as he was of you."
Tai Lung blinked, the lusty gleam in his eyes softening. He seemed at a loss for what to say. After a long moment, he stammered, "He is - Shifu is - proud of you. He must be. You're a fine warrior, there's no possible way he isn't."
"Thank you," she said, glancing up at him. "He is. To a degree. But you're a hard act to follow. He's always compared me to you, I know he has. But I can't ever live up to your legacy. Who could?" She gave a rueful laugh. "Only a panda, apparently."
"Wait, you - you were serious about that?"
"About the panda? Yes."
"Good god, I thought you were joking. And he really doesn't know kung fu?"
"Not a bit. He can barely get up the stairs to the Jade Palace. That's who Oogway picked."
"But - but - but - " Tai Lung sputtered. "But the ball of fire!"
"He fell out of the sky on a chair he tied fireworks to."
"What? Why would he - why - who did - what?"
"I don't understand it either, Tai Lung! Believe me, I wish I did. I wish - honestly, I wish - " Tigress said, beginning to laugh. "I wish I understood. Po neither earned nor asked for the scroll. It seems whoever wants the Dragon Scroll is not who is destined to have it, seeing as I don't have the scroll but I am in Mongolia."
Tai Lung shook his head in disbelief. "I got prison and Mongolia."
Tigress smiled. "True. You win."
"No," he said, laughing grimly. "We both really, really lose."
"Only if you choose to look at it that way."
He huffed but didn't respond. Tai Lung went silent after that, tending to the fire, deep in thought. Tigress relaxed a bit. She made up her sleeping roll. She lay back and looked up at the stars for a long time.
She grew sleepy. When she turned to look at Tai Lung he was already looking at her. It wasn't a lascivious stare. His expression was soft.
"That goose," he said. "The one you punched in the neck."
"What about her?"
"She really must have had it coming."
Tigress tried not to smile. She did not succeed.
Tai Lung grinned. "She did, didn't she?"
She laughed softly and rolled on her side. "Good night, Tai Lung."
o