So people have recently been prodding me to finish this damn thing, so finally, I plopped down on my chair and wrote like hell.
To be honest, you can thank the dude who left the review of "Update man what the hell" because it made me laugh for a long time and then I finally said "All right, all right, I'll just do it." I didn't realize I was causing such great indignation with my idleness hehe.
Chapter 17.
Min.
Her scream was instinctive. That's what she told herself. Yet somehow, when a burst of flame spat from the shattering rifle up into Shen's face, when Lang lurched backward as a fragment of the misfired shot slammed into his shoulder, Min could not help but feel like something fragile had disintegrated and slipped like dust through her fingers.
Shen collapsed to the ground like a wilting plant, seared feathers fluttering in the air as his face burned. Min felt a chill rattle through her at his complete silence—he hadn't cried out, even after the initial shock from the explosion. Without thinking, she rushed forward, not knowing who to help or what to do for either of them.
"Shen!" Lang said in a rasping voice, struggling to sit back up. He was clutching his left shoulder as he tottered onto his knees. Min put her wings around his torso and hoisted him up and forward, and together they made their way toward Shen lying unnervingly still, his white feathers stained by soot and burns. Lang scooped the limp figure in his arms and put his ear to Shen's chest. Min stood over them, vaguely aware of how still the world had gone around them.
"He's alive," Lang said quietly, and Min found herself able to breathe again.
"We need to get them to a healer," Po said, coming up from behind. Min felt her face scrunch at the sight of the blood running down his leg from the knife wound.
"We need to get you to a healer," Tigress said. She stood close to Po's side, ready to shoulder his weight in case his leg gave out.
"This whole street got cleared out in the fight," one of the healthier wolves said. "The best place we can go is our barracks. There'll be an infirmary there. The trouble is, it's not the closest place…"
Po straightened up and hobbled over to Lang. "We better get moving then," he said, a determined look crossing his face.
"Po, you can't seriously be trying to help," Tigress said sharply.
"I'm not going to let anyone die. I don't care who they are," Po said. Lang turned to look at him in shock. "I'm going to help everyone get to the barracks," Po said to the other Kung Fu warriors. "And I mean everyone, whether you like it or not, and if I have to carry people and hop all the way over there while doing it, I will." His face seemed to dare them to interfere with his compassion. And with that, the warriors relented all at once.
The stronger wolves put together makeshift stretchers and hurried off with Shen, Lang and everyone else in critical condition. Tigress helped Po down the street, the Kung Fu masters helped the other injured, and so the surreal procession moved down the street, enemies leaning on the shoulders of enemies. Min followed in a daze, only looking up at the sound of her name being screamed from the balcony of one of the houses.
"Min! Min! You're alright!" The tiny grass snake was barely visible from her place on the second story.
"Lien?" Min said, squinting up. Lien seemed as though she were about to launch herself off the railing and into the crowd. Min pushed her way to the edge, reaching up so that she could catch her friend.
Lien wrapped herself around Min's shoulders, nuzzling into her feathers. "I'm so glad you're alright." Then she looked up, confused. "But why do you look so worried about the peacock? He lied about you. I know he did. You would never betray us."
Min had never felt gladder to be able to say, "Yes, he lied," and be telling the absolute truth. Lien smiled with relief that her faith had been affirmed, but the confusion was still knit into her features.
"A lot has happened while I was a prisoner," Min said at last as she started to follow the crowd again. She sighed, staring with glazed eyes at the limp white figure on the stretcher far ahead of them, slowly being carried down the street. "It's very complicated. Please believe me when I say that I wouldn't be saying so unless I had good reasons for it."
Lien stared at her for a while, before she said, "I do believe you." The tears that Min had been holding back for a long time sprang from her eyes. She kept her eyes resolutely ahead and inwardly thanked Lien for her patience. Even if she tried, there were no words that could fully wrap themselves around everything she grieved for. I am crying for everyone, she supposed at last. The people of the city, Po and his village, Lang, Shen, myself. I am crying for years and years of things gone wrong.
Even when they reached the infirmary, Min had not stopped crying.
Wing found them later in the night, after the wolf army had been gathered up and the injured soldiers and civilians alike had been taken in for care. The three of them huddled together on a stack of scratchy blankets in a corner of the barracks that the remaining wolves converted into a full infirmary. The Soothsayer, too, had materialized out of nowhere, and set herself in charge of tending to Shen. Min wondered how much of this she had known would come to pass.
"What happens now?" Min murmured, resting her head on top of Wing's. Lien was sleeping, curled around Min's neck like a scarf. She felt Wing shrug.
"We go home. Things go back to normal," he said.
Min squeezed her eyes shut and opened them again. "Can they? Can they really go back to normal?"
Wing was quiet for a while. "Sounds like that's up to you, Min." He shifted his head to look up at her. "What did Shen do to you?" he asked finally.
Min sighed. She owed it to her friends to sift through her thoughts and explain exactly why she was suddenly so involved in the life of her enemy.
"He kept me prisoner in his mansion because I managed to trick him into believing I was someone influential who could potentially do damage to his power while his army was weakened by war. In the end, though, it turned out that the only reason I wasn't tossed in prison with the Furious Five was because he was trying to manipulate me the whole time. He threatened me often, sometimes hurt me," she said, thinking about how he had thrown the knife at her face that might have nearly killed her if she hadn't tried to dodge at all, how he had thrown her around in rage when he realized she had tricked him.
"He's messed up, and I now know better than a lot of people just how messed up he is." Min sighed. There were so many more words that needed saying.
"He's a complete psycho, Min. You don't have to beat around the bush about it," Wing said.
"See the thing is, it's complicated. It's not simple insanity at all. What he needs is help," Min said.
"Sure, okay, whatever. Maybe you're right, and someone can save him or something. But you owe him nothing. You do not have to give up anything, and you do not need to be the one to save him. Leave that to someone else."
"Yeah…"
"I'm serious. When this is over, you come home, we go back to the Valley of Peace and do what we were doing before everything got turned on its head. Forget about this place. Got it?" Wing said sternly. He slipped his head out from underneath her and grabbed her face between his paws and stared her in the eye. "Ya hear, Min? This is my serious face. Look at it. Look at how serious it is, and tell me you'll put this behind you."
Min laughed shakily, sniffling. "I'll try my best."
Wing pursed his lips and raised his eyebrows at her. "'You'll try.' Sheesh, I guess that's the best I can get out of you today."
Lien was already snoozing peacefully, and Wing and Min both fell into an even silence, vaguely aware of the bustling of nurses around them until the noises faded altogether into dark, dreamless sleep.
The sun had risen fully and bright morning light shone through the high windows. The hall was beginning to stir as both patients and caretakers alike began to awaken. Min sat up for a while, watching her friends fondly before reaching out to rouse them.
"What? Is it morning?" Wing mumbled, his voice raspy. Lien dangled on his shoulders, still resolutely asleep. "Cold-bloods," Wing muttered.
"There are boats leaving soon," Min said. "We should get ready to go home."
"Oh," Wing replied drowsily. "Good. Okay. Five more minutes, please." He drooped back down into the stack of blankets, burying his face in them to hide from the sun.
Min laughed. "I'll come back with some breakfast."
When Lien was finally warmed up, and they had fed themselves on some steamed rice, Min sought out Shifu while her friends prepared themselves to take the first ferry out of Gongmen.
"I wanted to assure you that Shen did not find out anything about the resistance from me. He must have had spies somewhere, because for a while I thought I had him distracted enough to buy you all time, so I promise that I was just as surprised when he revealed that he knew—"
Shifu raised his hands to stop the flurry of words that spilled from Min's beak.
"Do not worry Min. I believe you. It seems to me that there is more to you than you choose to let on, but I do not doubt your integrity or your loyalty," Shifu said.
"Oh." Min let out a shaky laugh. " Well, good."
Shifu looked up at her expectantly, as she made no move to leave. Min fiddled with the tips of her wing feathers.
"What's going to become of Shen?" she asked after an uncomfortably long pause.
Shifu frowned, the fur on his brow scrunching together. At once, he seemed distracted, folding his arms and staring fiercely at the ground. "I don't know yet."
Min nodded tacitly, and slowly began to head back to her friends, when Shifu spoke again, and she jolted back to attention.
"If he recovers, I will have to meet with the Masters' Council to decide his punishment. I may ask you to give testimony, if that is alright."
Min nodded again, wishing she had left without saying anything else.
"Thank you, Master Shifu," she said, with a hasty bow as she moved away, Shifu's last statement hanging like lead in the air.
The first thing Min noticed upon returning to the Valley was the smell—fresh green in the air, the brisk sea breeze, the soft musk of impending rain. It was clean and open.
"It smells like freedom," Min whispered, and Lien curled herself a little tighter around Min's shoulders, and Wing put a gentle paw on her arm.
"Welcome home, Min," Wing said. "Let's never go back to that city ever again."
The three made their way off the ferry, and Min immediately relished how empty the docks were compared to Gongmen. No bumping shoulders with anyone; no getting seafood shoved into her face by shouting salespeople…
"Yeah," Min replied to Wing. "Time to forget about that place." Wing nodded approvingly.
The three retreated to their corner of the Valley, pleased to find it had been repaired somewhat since the wolves ransacked it the first time. Min's peace, however, lasted no more than a few weeks, when Crane landed at her door and notified her that Shen and the Wolf Boss had been transported to the Jade Palace where Shifu and the other Masters would hold trial.
"Master Shifu strongly encourages you to be there. Your testimony will play an important role in the decision," Crane said, looking contrite. "If it's too traumatic for you, however…"
"I will be there," Min replied with a glazed expression. But her resolve was firm.
The trial was something of a nightmare for Min. She stood among a large pool of witnesses, amidst many unfamiliar faces who had come to give testimony from afar. And she could not forget the look of Shen, sitting hunched over in the center of the courtyard. Running up his entire right side was a grossly discolored burn scar, angry red in some places and pus yellow in others. His crest was in threads, and she was not sure he could even see out of his right eye. He had sat in silence, even through the time allotted for his own defense testimony, huddled in plain brown robes, stripped of any regalness he once had.
What impressed itself in Min's memory was the following discussion, when Shen was taken from the courtyard and Min discovered that she was to remain part of the decision-making process, with Shifu presiding as the judge. Execution was out of the question, most agreed, and most also agreed that life in prison was the most agreeable option.
It was then that Po had stood up.
"I don't think that would be a good idea. Prison won't do anything to help Shen. He would probably shrivel up and die in a day there. We need to come up with something different." Po stared firmly at Shifu. "Prison didn't do anything for Tai Lung except make him twenty years angrier. Exile made Shen thirty years crazier. Don't you think we should be doing better than that?"
Protests rose up almost immediately, when Min abruptly stood, silencing everyone by virtue of their surprise.
"I agree with Po." The others shared glances of confusion and shock.
Min cleared her throat and spoke in a shaky voice. "From my time spent as Shen's prisoner, I learned much about him. And he does need help. He has lived his life raging against the world, and that's something I can understand. His mind is in a terrible, terrible place, and it's going to stay there, stewing until it destroys him, unless someone intercedes. We all agreed execution is no good, but is letting him curl up inside himself and rot from the inside until he dies any more moral of an option?"
"How can you be so sure that he would reform?" someone shouted.
"Because I've seen it." Min's eyes burned when she remembered all their conversations. "He feels like he's gone too far to have a choice anymore. He's told me so. He believed for so long that the ends would justify any means he took to get there, but there are no ends. He believed that he was so far down the road that he had no choice but to keep going."
There were no protests this time, but Min could see the skepticism written on everyone's features. Why am I fighting this fight? I don't owe Shen anything. She glanced at Po. But neither does he, and yet…
Someone else stood up, and Min's eyes widened as she recognized Tigress.
"I have plenty of reasons to want Shen put away for the rest of his life," Tigress began. "Po has far more reasons to hate him, yet he finds it in himself to forgive. But I think understand where he speaks from, and where Min speaks from. The teachings of Kung Fu tell us not to bear grudges, for that becomes baggage for our own souls. That which was made wrong must be made right, not put away in the dark, or such things will return to haunt us." She, too, gave a meaningful look to Shifu, then continued with a deep sigh. "As angry as I am, and as much as I despise Shen for what he has done, his reign of terror is over. He can no longer do harm to those who I swore to protect, and therefore, I must learn to master my anger, hatred, and resentment and do what Po has been strong enough to do: offer a second chance."
The rest of the jury finally relented, much to Min's relief, and the rest of the debate was devoted to finding a more effective alternative.
Min excused herself soon after, leaving the reading of the verdict and the bureaucracy of the sentence to the masters. It was a long way to her end of the valley, but the walk helped her to burn the stress away. She returned to find that Wing and Lien had cooked her dinner and made seed cakes.
"So where did they end up putting him?" Wing asked with a mouthful of cake. They were sitting around a table playing cards, though not adhering very tightly to the rules.
"I think they're sending him to a remote monastery far off in the Dabie Mountains," Min said.
"Oh good. Far off, I like the sound of that," Wing said.
"Probably not far enough." Lien flicked her tail and one of the cards she was carefully holding fluttered out on top of the pile.
"Well, as long as we don't have to hear about it ever again. Right, Min? It's finally behind you." Wing waited for her answer.
Min shook off her daze. "Oh, yeah. Right." She pulled a card out of her hand and put it on top of Lien's.
"How are you doing? You've barely said a word all night," Lien said. She frowned in concern.
Min shook her head, but Lien leaned toward her and looked up into her face. "Min…" Lien prodded her shoulder persistently, and Min sighed.
"Not well, actually. I'm tired. I'm stressed. I feel restless, like there's something I need to do, but I'm forgetting what it is." Min slouched into her chair, staring at her cards.
"The trial probably brought back bad memories. These things will take time," Wing assured her.
"I don't feel like I have any time. I can't sit around and wait for things to get better. I don't want to!" She slapped the cards down on the table and rubbed her beak, eyes squeezed shut. "I don't want to wait and do nothing like I'm helpless. For months, nothing was all I did!"
"But what can you do that you haven't already?" Lien asked. "You need to readjust to routine. It's like Wing said; it'll take time."
Min stood up, knocking her chair over. She wrung her ruffled feathers. "That's just not enough," she said, walking out of the room.
Her friends found her leaning against the wall in her room, with a bag of old souvenirs from long ago. Between Min's hands, she tossed a miniature puppet from the first performing troupe she had befriended.
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to shout at you," she said quietly. "But I still can't settle."
"It's okay, Min. We're here to help," Lien said, curling up in Min's lap.
"You know, when we traveled, I never really saw anything." Min adjusted the sleeves on the puppet and put it back in the bag. She pulled out more memorabilia, cradling them in her hands.
"What are you talking about? You went everywhere. You must have seen a lot," Wing said, plopping down next to her.
"That's not what I mean. I already had expectations. I saw things the way I assumed I would see them. It was because of how I grew up. There was upper class and lower class. Vain people and honest people. Black and white. I was used to categorizing everyone as one thing or the other. It never occurred to me that people could be so…complicated."
Wing narrowed his eyes. "Min, what are you getting at?"
She sighed. "What I mean is that as bad as my imprisonment was, and as confused as I am right now, I learned important things about myself. I've been trying to avoid my past so much. You guys know. I hardly ever spoke about it. And all I've been doing is running away, but I can't do that anymore. That's what I mean. I never wanted to see people just as they were, so when I ran away from home and went traveling, I thought I was learning so much, but I was still categorizing. I was still seeing what I wanted to see, because I refused to confront the truth that life is way more complex than that. So just waiting and going back to what I had before? It still feels like running away, and I don't want to go back to that."
"Then, what do you want to do?" Lien asked.
Min pulled out one last souvenir from her bag. It was a missing person notice that was describing her. At first, she thought it was spite that made her hold on to it—that her family's desire to find her was too little, too late. Now, that interpretation seemed frail.
"I want to see the world as it was meant to be seen, and I need to face everything I had been running from. Otherwise, things will never go back to normal."
Her friends glanced over the paper she was holding, the edges crumpling in her grip.
Min carefully placed everything back in her bag. I have to create my own future.
"It's time to start over," she said, eyes alight with determination. "From the very beginning." Min turned to her friends. "Are you with me?"
Lien and Wing gave her their cheesiest smirks. "To the very end," they said.