A/N:Hello all of my beautiful night owls. I am sorry about the late post. This week has been CRAY CRAY. Love you all bunches! Enjoy!
Viper awoke with a splitting headache. She reached up with her hands and rubbed her eyes, trying to relieve some of the throbbing behind them. She sat slowly, pushing herself up on her hands on the cold stone floor.
"Where am I?" She asked the empty room. She noticed thick bars to her right. A cell? How did she get here? That last thing that she remembered was going to sleep.
She sat cross-legged. It was then she noticed for the first time that she had been changed from her green vest and slacks into a grey jumpsuit.
"Ah, you are awake." Said a calm voice. She squinted at the bars and made out a shadow sitting in front of her...what was this? A cell?
"Where am I?" She asked, trying to keep her voice level.
"You are in prison." Said the voice calmly. It was a female.
"Thank you for that." She replied, her voice dripping in sarcasm. "What kind of prison? Where on a map are we?"
"The Tonshu Province."
"Mongolia?" Her eyebrows furrowed. "Why did you bring me here? What do you want?" She fought to keep her voice calm, despite being terrified. She had heard nasty rumors about the treatment of the Chinese in Mongolia. That, and her friends would be terribly worried. She rubbed the back of her head with a wince.
"Why did you come to Xiongxang is the better question?"
She thought for a moment, unsure if she should tell this woman. A part of her felt like she needed to keep a secret, but the other part argued that not much could get worse from here. The other side one. "I came looking for the Emperor's son Ni Chang. He went missing in Xiongxang. I only came to try and find him."
The woman who had been speaking from the shadows finally came up to the bars, her face curious. She was quite beautiful. Her hair was dark, like Viper's, and her light blue eyes reminded Viper of the ocean. She wore a simple, long green robe with black pants underneath. Her midnight hair hung down to her waist. "You came looking for Ni Chang?" She said it more to herself than the master. The young woman turned to look over her shoulder, then looked back at Viper, and then suddenly turned and left.
Viper stood slowly, her headache subsiding. She gripped the wall for support.
The girl returned after a moment, keys in hand. She unlocked the cell door and entered the tiny stone room. Her eyes were curious and bright.
"I am Xue." She said quietly, dipping her head.
"Mai, but my friends call me Viper." Viper dipped her head in return. "I am from the Jade palace in China."
"I have heard stories, mostly from travelers, about the Jade palace. Please, come with me. I'll get you something else to wear." She chuckled lightly and the two left the room.
"Who are you, if I may ask?" Viper asked as they ascended the stairs.
"I am the Empress."
Tigress hadn't seen the Emperor in almost ten years, so he saw her visit as a time for them to catch up. However, through the entire course of their convversation, Tigress wanted nothing more than to yell at him until he came to his senses. Instead, they spoke of training, of the Imperial city, and the weather.
He surprised her, however, by saying as she was leaving "Thank you."
"For what?"
"For coming along. Liang doesn't trust anyone anymore. It will be nice for you to be someone he can confide in." The Emperor said it so genuinely that her heart jumped a little in her chest. She suddenly felt a pang of guilt, because she was keeping things from him. She just hoped she could make up for it by being a good friend to Liang.
That little jump in her chest turned to dread when she left and saw Li Tong and Shifu staring each other down in the corridor.
"What happened?" She asked, looking between the two and notice for the first time that Po was nowhere to be found. "Did he-" but she didn't need to finish. Shifu shot her a look that told her everything. "Where did he go?" She needed to find him, to explain things. If he was feeling anything close to what she was feeling, he was heartbroken.
"He looked like he went to his room." Shifu sighed. She took off down the hallway and made her way to the south wing at a sprint, almost knocking a few maids as she ran.
He didn't answer the knock at his door, so she broke the handle angrily.
"Hey!" He cried, turning towards her. Despite trying to hide it, she did see the tear escape down his cheek. "What the hell?" She shut the door behind her.
"Out with it." She told him, hands on her hips. "What did he tell you?"
He looked at her for a moment, eyes watery. He flopped on his bed and twiddled his thumbs on his lap. "He just said that you were engaged." *sniffle* "And I ran away after that."
She breathed an inaudible sigh of relief that that's all he knew. Her secret would remain a secret for a little while longer.
"Why didn't you tell me?" His question made her heart hurt.
"I told you we had a thing, didn't I?" She replied, forcing herself to be nonchalant.
"Having a 'thing'" he said using exaggerated air quotes "is not the same thing as being ENGAGED." His voice choked and cracked at the end of his statement. For the first time in years, she felt tears well up behind her eyes.
"Po, it lasted all of three weeks." She said softly. He looked up at her in confusion.
"Three weeks?"
"Yes." She sniffled. A single tear escaped when her brown eyes met his emerald ones. "The engagement, relationship, whatever you want to call it. It lasted three weeks before we realized that we couldn't keep up a romance."
She sat next to him on the bed and folded her arms across her chest.
"Why did you break up?" he asked.
"Personal reasons." She shrugged. He stood up from the bed suddenly.
"Again with the lying." He muttered.
"Po, what the hell do you mean by that?"
"What? You don't even trust me enough to tell me why you broke up, much less that you were engaged." His sad tears were replaced with bitter, angry ones.
"Po, this happened ten years ago. I was eighteen and barely a master when it happened. I wasn't ready to be with a man forever that I didn't even love." She shrugged, voice rising defensively.
"But that's not it, is it?"
She hesitated at his observation. "Ha! You are keeping things from me!"
"You keep things from me too, Po." She reminded him, standing up. How could he get so angry at something that doesn't matter anymore? Why was he so defensive?
"Like what?"
"Like what happened in Gongmen? You haven't even told what happened. And suddenly, your father appears out of nowhere?" She retorted. "And the second we ask you to explain, you get defensive and start talking about radishes."
"No I don't!"
"Yes you do!" Her voice climbed higher. "Everybody in the Five has secrets, Po. Maybe you need to learn to accept that."
"Like how you accepted me when I first got here?" The room went cold and quiet very suddenly. Tigress' arms dropped. Her eyes were wide in disbelief. Of course, what he said was defensive, but it still cut deeply. Even after apologizing, their little "talk" in the hallway when he first got there still kept her up at night.
Of the three years she had known him, she never knew he could be so harsh.
She backed away from him as it dawned on him what he had just said. "Tigress. I-"
"I didn't tell you because of a very personal reason," Her voice was very soft, and it scared him, "and if you can't deal with that, then maybe you should stay away from me."
With that, she turned and left the room.
A/N: THAT. JUST. HAPPENED.