Tigress was exhausted.
She knew it would probably be best to follow Tai Lung but she was spent. When she caught up with him all she would be able to do was burst into tears. She'd decide what to do when he reached the end of his two and a half mile tether.
She turned to see the goat next to the determined fire, looking at her with raised eyebrows and big gold eyes. He'd surely seen and heard the whole fight. She didn't care. She approached the fire to get warm.
"Sorry for the scene," she said, rubbing her arms.
He smiled. Shook his head. Chuckled.
"Love," he replied in heavily accented Mandarin. "Love."
She laughed grimly and shook her head.
He reached in his coat and offered her a flask.
She stared at it. She'd never had anything stronger than half a cup of wine at the yearly Winter Feast. But she was so raw with sorrow and anger that she took it from him, unscrewed the cap, and threw whatever was in it back. She very quickly choked and started to hack - it tasted awful, like something you'd use to polish metal. She handed the flask back to the laughing goat and swallowed as hard as she could.
"Thank you," she choked. Her eyes watered but she grew warm on the inside.
All she could do now was wait.
She couldn't recall being this exhausted in ages. She missed her home, she missed her bed. It was a flat hard cot but it was her flat hard cot. She was hungry too. What she wouldn't give for some broth and tofu from the bunkhouse kitchen, surrounded by her friends and master on a night like this. But all she had was harsh liquor from a stranger's flask and her heart flopping around outside her body like a dying fish.
She shut her eyes.
"Shifu," she whispered. "How could you do it?"
She knew Shifu was ambitious. No amount of past hurt or present grumpiness could begin to touch that. It simmered away in him, in everything he did, in how hard he pushed her, in how readily he took to the challenge of designing five new fighting styles. Perhaps when it was spread evenly between the five of them that was enough to keep his ambition sated. But all that desire focused solely on young, powerful, prodigious Tai Lung, into whom Shifu pushed his hopes and dreams … she could almost see how a younger Shifu's aspirations might turn greedy and begin to twist him from the inside out - and twist his son in turn.
His son.
It was uncomfortable to think of that huge man as anyone's son, as anyone who was once young and innocent and suffering. As someone who still suffered. The victim of a bad fate. She didn't want to feel pity for him but there it lay.
No. Tai Lung still chose to destroy the Valley of Peace.
That was that. There was no remedy for it, and there was certainly no excusing it, but …
Could she really deny that it was within Shifu's power to drive someone insane?
She took a deep breath and exhaled quickly, as though to banish the notion from her mind. There was betrayal inherent in this line of thinking. To pity Tai Lung was to forsake her Master. And how did she know he was not lying? Shifu had never mentioned Tai Lung being manipulative or false, but why would he? He never spoke about his son and all but forbade her to. She knew nothing about him at all.
Suddenly she felt Tai Lung. He'd charged on all fours two and a half miles directly south, stopping dead at the boundary. In an instant her heart filled with feelings that weren't hers - simmering anger floating on confusion and sorrow. There was a sharp sense of having been sliced. He moved out of range and just as quickly as the feelings faded. All except the sharp feeling. It remained with her a moment longer than the rest, gnawing at her. She'd caused that, she understood. He'd been cut raw and she'd done it to him and he was angry that she'd done it to him and confused about how she even could.
Tigress winced and put her head in her hands. She growled. She looked up and made eye contact with the goat. He'd been watching her. His eyes widened.
"Go!" he urged, gesturing south.
Tigress made a sound of pure aggravation, put her hands in fists, and marched out into the snow.
"Come back!" the goat shouted after her.
She turned. "What?"
"You get him, you come back! Out there you die!" he said. He pointed east. "You stay on road."
She took this in for a moment then nodded, and the goat seemed satisfied with that. She turned to continue on her way and hit something small and dense with her foot. She looked down.
The peach.
She growled, bent to pick it up, and went after Tai Lung.
o
It was so inky dark she could barely see his trail two feet ahead of her, but at this point she could have picked his scent up over a banquet table heavy with freshly cooked food. It was impossible to forget. But she knew she was getting close when she heard him singing. It was not a pretty song, just a tired and distracted rendition of a pub shanty used for the receptive task of slogging through rapidly deepening snow. But it surprised her all the same.
"Tai Lung!" she called.
The singing stopped for a moment. Started again.
He was ignoring her.
"Tai Lung!" she shouted again.
He kept moving.
"Stop! Would you please just stop for a second?"
The singing got louder.
Tigress growled and pressed on. She was finally close enough to see him galumphing through the snow. She wound up. She pitched. The peach hit him in the shoulder hard enough to make him stumble forward. She felt it smash against him.
"HEY!" he shouted
"STOP! Please - just - " she stopped to rest her hands on her knees and breathe deeply. The last mile of deep snow had taken it out of her. "Just - just stop and - listen."
He bent down to pick up the peach and stalked towards her.
"Why did you throw this? It's ruined now!" he snarled.
He held the peach out to her. It was smashed and full of fur, leaking juice onto his palm.
"This was for you," he said "Eat it."
She looked at the crushed peach and wrinkled her nose.
"No."
He snarled at her. "I want to watch you eat this peach."
"This isn't a hostage situation!" she snapped.
"Isn't it?" he exclaimed. "Isn't it!?"
"Well in a hostage situation if someone tells you they want to watch you eat a peach things are about to get really bad."
The corner of Tai Lung's mouth ticked upwards. He chuckled, sounding almost impressed. "Dark, Tigress."
"...thanks?" She replied, unsure if he was mocking her. "Thanks for stopping, anyway."
"What choice do I have? Tell me this isn't a hostage situation with that whatever-it-is barrier in place. I'd completely forgotten. Ran headlong into it," he said, glancing at her. "There's something you want to say?"
Her blood ran cold. She'd forgotten that when she could see into him, he could also see into her. She had no idea what he'd gathered.
"I - " Tigress began, trying to hold down the feeling of violation. "You have to understand, the master you grew up with is not the master I know. The master I know could never be so cruel. But … but I know you are not lying." She took a deep breath. Closed her eyes. "And if it's worth anything to you, it's tearing me apart."
Tai Lung quickly looked away.
"I know," he replied. "I … when I hit the barrier, I …." he made a gesture with his hand. Tapped his chest twice. "I saw. You … you're very loyal to Shifu."
"He's everything to me."
"Don't!" Tai Lung barked. "Don't do that, Tigress. Don't ever do that."
"Don't do what?"
"Don't make Shifu everything to you. That's how you end up in Chorch-Gom. Thats how you end up in Mongolia."
"I don't think I - "
"Why? Why should Shifu be everything to you, when he did whatever it is he did to you?"
"What? What exactly are you implying?"
"I don't know. You tell me."
She balked. "What he did to me was take me in, give me a home and a purpose and a life"
"Then why are you miserable?"
"I'm - " she stammered. "I'm miserable because we're stuck out here."
"Bullshit! You were miserable the second I set eyes on you! A warrior doesn't get a chip on her shoulder that big without some sort of brainwashing. That's what Shifu does you know, brainwashing. You wanted to tear my throat out coming across that bridge."
"Because you leapt at me claws first!"
"After you cut the bridge! What was I supposed to do, placidly fall to my death? Then you tried for a sucker punch when I was just talking."
"Don't you mean gloating?" she huffed.
"Peacefully! Why would you attack a man peacefully gloating on a bridge? Is it illegal to peacefully gloat on a bridge?"
"It's illegal to destroy the Valley of Peace!"
"And who says I'm going to destroy the Valley of Peace?"
"Shifu!"
"EXACTLY!" He pointed at the black oval in the center of Tigress's forehead. "Brainwashing!"
She knocked his hand away. "That's not a very convincing argument considering you actually did destroy the Valley of Peace! How was I supposed to know you wouldn't do it again?"
"I don't know!" he said. "But - just - give a guy a chance!"
"A chance to what? Not destroy the Valley of Peace?"
He made an exasperated sound. "I don't have evil designs on the Valley of Peace! All I want is to go home. All I wanted for twenty years was to go home."
"You want the scroll."
"It's my scroll!" he snarled.
"It's not your scroll and it never will be."
"Let's not do this again!" he barked. "You still deny it's owed me even after I shared everything with you? All that? My entire life?"
"I -"
"You know I've never told anyone that story before? No one. Just you. No one knows my story but you. The least you could have done is - " he stopped short suddenly. Made a dismissive gesture with his hand and looked away from her.
She stepped towards him. "The least I could have done is what?"
"…listen," he muttered after a moment.
"I listened."
"Care," he said to the ground.
"I ... I care."
"Do you?"
Tigress made fists with her hands. Opened and closed them the way she did when she was frustrated. "I … do. But this is a lot. It's all…it's all a lot, Tai Lung. Everything I thought I knew about my Master just changed. Just now. Forever. You've had twenty years with your story. Give me time to … to catch up. You have to give me a chance too. Give me a chance and I'll give you one. All right?"
After a long moment he met her eyes. Glanced away.
"All right," he said.
"All - all right?"
"I said all right!" he almost snapped.
"Okay!" She glanced at the mashed peach in his hand. "Do I still have to eat that?"
"For how much I paid for it you should. But no. It's … all gross, now." He dropped in in the snow, where it landed with a wet splat. "Fresh fruit does not come cheap here."
She watched as he smoothed a layer of snow over the peach with his tail.
"Why did you buy it for me?" she asked. "You're the one who hasn't had one in twenty years."
"When I was in prison I dreamt of peaches from the Tree of Heavenly Wisdom. I know it's not from home, but I thought it might make you less homesick."
Tigress was taken aback. "You were trying to cheer me up?"
"Trying, yes. I'd had enough of watching you glum up the steppes. So, have a peach. Always cheered me up, anyway." He cleared his throat as though uncomfortable with the topic. "Obviously didn't work."
"Oh." Tigress felt her heart spin in place. "It - I mean it - if I had known- "
He looked at her as though she were the queerest thing he'd ever seen. "If you had known? What did you think I was doing?"
"Bribing … me?"
His eyes windened. "Do you assume everyone has horrible intentions or is that just me?"
"I .. I don't know."
"Well, think about it. Come on," he said.
He began to lead her further south.
"Wait," she said. "I'm not comfortable with this plan of going directly south. There is a road for a reason. We should stay on it."
He shook his head. "The road goes that way - " he pointed east - " and China is that way." He pointed south. "If we stay on the road we'll waste time."
"How much time do you think we could possibly save by heading out into nothing? It's a trade road, it will turn south eventually."
"Yes, but at the pace of commerce, not at the pace of warriors. That's why we're going to cut across on a diagonal and meet it going south. It'll save us months."
Tigress looked skeptical. "We'll need a lot of supplies. There won't be any traders out there."
He reached behind him and gave the pack a pat. "What do you think I was doing while you were having a little nap by the fire? Why wake you? We're all set." He grinned. "You didn't even have to worry about it."
"Tai Lung, you can't - " she started, but suddenly realized that in doing this he genuinely thought he'd been doing her a favor. "Thank you - " she said, the words feeling strange in her mouth. "Thank you for doing that. But I wish you'd asked me first."
He looked surprised. "I figured you'd be up for it. Shifu doesn't raise wimps."
"It's not being a wimp to to think things through. I spoke with someone back at the trading post. He warned me that the both of us should stay on the road. He said we'd die out here."
He rolled his eyes. "Tigress, please. We're two warriors trained in survival. He's talking about some other pair of dopes, not us. We'll be fine. It's a couple weeks travel that will save us months."
She considered this. "We shouldn't be out in the tundra when hard winter hits."
"We won't be! Two weeks! Tigress. Come on," he teased. "Don't let some goat scare you."
She took a deep, pensive breath.
"We'll be fine," he said, with an edge of impatience. "What did we say about giving chances?"
She shook her head. "Fine. But if we die I'll kill you."
"Yes yes, we'll have it out in the Spirit Realm. Our battle will be legendary. Come on along."
They walked in silence for a while. The moon came out from behind the clouds just as they reached the peak of the ridge, where the snow did indeed thin out as Tai Lung claimed. This reassured her.
"Tai Lung," she said.
He turned to her with lifted eyebrows. "Hm?"
"That was sweet of you," she said. "With the peach."
"Well I certainly thought so," he replied.
o