Chapter Thirty-Seven: Resolute Sorrow
Content Warning: This chapter contains depictions of suicide/suicidal themes.
The fading light of day was embraced softly by the populating glow of numerous paper lanterns as the remnants of the imperial army retreated south. The reedy grasslands became pocketed with groves of trees here and there, and groups of defeated and demoralized Chinese soldiers could be seen congregating about these as night drew ever nearer.
The darkness came gradually at first, and then its full weight immersed the land with a suffocating flood. Those who had boldly chosen to press on through the night formed a river of light with their torches and lanterns, guiding the way. There was no common agreed-upon destination, only south; as far away as they could possibly get from the desolation they'd left behind.
Having walked for several miles amidst the endless throngs of refugees without exchanging a word, Crane glanced up at the golden cat just ahead of him. She remained disconsolate - barely there at all, even. For what seemed like over an hour, Crane had contemplated breaking their continued silence; he hadn't been able to find words worthy of the moment. The bird master could only imagine how she must be feeling, and the last thing he wanted to do was risk making things worse somehow.
So they continued on.
As the twilight sunk ever deeper, those who still had strength remaining ignited larger fires and made camp. All the while, others would periodically be heard falling limply into the grasses from exhaustion - the lights they carried extinguished swiftly. Crane looked up into the sky, finding an endless sea of stars that he wished he could fly among. In a happier time, he would've liked to paint something like this.
A nighttime breeze came over the grass, and the bird stopped to enjoy the gentle embrace of it over his feathers. He saw Mei Ling also come to a stop ahead; she had been closely sensing his movements all along, and Crane was even more disappointed in himself. She had evidently been sorely waiting for him to say something. But now, he assumed it was probably too late. The avian gradually realized the true reason he had halted his stride - his hearing had been met by a most familiar sound.
Long, hollow notes from a dizi flute fell over the grasses with a mournful tremble. He knew this tune intimately well; innumerable times, it had coaxed him forth into an attack during his years of martial training. There was only one person alive who played such a melody. Looking out to the nearest grove in the distance, he could see the source of the sound must have been the small camp that had been made there.
Crane moved out towards it, and Mei followed, still saying nothing. It was hard to resist the urge to surge forth, he had done it so many times…
After several more moments of weary trudging through the thick undergrowth, the two masters came upon the source of the music, the red panda teacher was seated upon a small rock that protruded up from the verdant grasses. Crane just stood there, watching him play until the Grandmaster of the Jade Palace had finished the tune.
Shifu looked up, lowering the dizi to rest over his folded legs.
"The Lord of Xiangyang is dead." Crane delivered, tone empty.
"Along with nearly all the people of his city, I'm sure." Shifu nodded. "Do you find yourself satisfied, Crane?"
The avian had neither the will nor the patience to contend with such a query, and passed right by Shifu; the other masters that had gathered around the campfire greeted him with a warm sense of relief. Mei Ling remained behind, standing before the perched red panda as the two found themselves alone.
"I see it in your face…" Shifu started, looking up to the golden cat, "You feel as I do - you feel loss."
Mei Ling nodded, "I do."
"Someone close to you, then?"
"My so-called father."
Shifu looked to the side briefly, nodding in a solemn understanding, "For me, it was my daughter, who would surely refer to me in the same manner."
"I did not know her as well as you did," Mei countered, "but she thought of you more highly than that - much more."
The old red panda's face contorted in true agony, suffering through the deepest feelings of sorrow for his departed adopted daughter. The golden cat saw his pain, but tried to console him.
"She clearly sought your approval above all else, and I am eternally thankful for her sacrifice. You taught her well."
"Clearly, I did not. She should have lived. I once thought I would never feel this… this emptiness in myself again…"
The golden cat could see he was on the verge of tears. Mei knelt down and looked right at him. His grief, his overwhelming sense of failure consumed him. Gazing up into her eyes, Shifu found his voice again.
"I remember you. From all those years ago - I never forget a face." he said.
Mei nodded remorsefully, knowing what he was thinking of, "I don't blame you for what you did back then. You were just doing your duty."
Shifu grasped at the flute, "You and Crane…"
"I love him - it is the truth." she declared with confidence. "He is angry - confused - now, and I do not blame him for that, either."
The red panda lowered his head. Such stringent formalities were so far beyond mattering now.
"Will you stay with us?" he asked. "The road ahead will be perilous, and we could certainly use a warrior like yourself."
She paused in contemplation, "I have little choice right now, but after all of this… I don't know."
Shifu turned back to see Crane with the others. The mood was still somewhat upbeat, his fellow masters happy that he had managed to survive the recent hostilities. Masters Bear and Chicken, who had also escaped the carnage somehow, sat amongst the other remaining four of the Five.
He just wished there was another among them.
Yuelen stumbled through the streets of the devastation of Xiangyang. Hazy. Everything was so hazy. The funeral procession of the much-honored chosen warrior of the Khan, the famed Ganbataar himself, passed by her and she hardly took notice. She stumbled about weakly, suffering mightily from her injuries.
My father.
She still couldn't believe any of it. Yue raised her paws to her head, claws tearing into her own flesh. An endless torture. The mentally-stricken princess made her way back up the steps of the Xiangyang palace. Looking around left and right as she walked the halls, she could see that hardly anyone took notice of her. They never had. Everything seemed to make sense now, like it had always been a sick joke from the start. She was nothing.
I am nothing.
She reached the doors of the main hall again, still in a deluded stupor. The large room full of generals and noble elites extended before her, light only coming in from a large hole in the ceiling. Sitting proudly upon the raised throne platform were her so-called father Khasar and his queen Nadya; wrapped about behind them was the imposing embrace of the coiled panda-dragon. Limping all the while, she approached them with a crazed madness fully overtaking her with every step. Some of the Kheshig guards in the room started to move to impede her, but Khasar raised a paw to halt them, entertained by what was sure to come.
"Xiangyang is yours now, father." she greeted forcefully, saying the final word with sickening aggression.
"That it is." he returned through a wicked smile. "But sadly, some are no longer with us to celebrate the victory."
Yue grasped at her side again in pain, "Indeed. My real father is among them."
It was unsettling how Khasar's smile only grew in its intensity. Yue's eyes widened in disgust, but then hatred as she realized what this meant.
"You… you always knew!" she lashed out at his indifference. "You never told me - why?!"
Khasar just laughed, "Yuelen, Yuelen… you were such a useful weapon when you had that ambition of yours. Telling you would've taken it all away!"
Yuelen's eyes filled with vengeful tears as she moved forward, but Nadya rose from her throne in response, giving her a cold look. There would be violence that the leopardess could not handle if she took another step forward. As if to assert the Khan's dominance, the dragon raised itself towards the outcast princess. Yue just turned inwards with her rage, tearing herself apart over her inability to do anything.
"You always knew!" Yue repeated, now directing her ire at Nadya.
The elder tiger nodded, matching the princess' lilac glare with her identical shade of condemnation.
"Yes, I did. You know better than most, Yue, that we live with our mistakes - and the regrets that come with them."
"Mistakes! Is that how you see me?! Is that all I am?!"
The air hung heavy for several moments. The Siberian tiger stared directly into her daughter's very soul, finality in her judgment.
"Yes."
In response, Yue roared with defiant vehemence; her mother did not seem to be affected in the slightest.
"I tried to warn you." Nadya said. "As you said yourself, you preferred to betray the world; and you have, my child… you have."
Yue growled once more, "You've fed me nothing but lies my entire life - all of you! How dare you!?"
Khasar also rose now, gesturing towards her.
"It is your own sins, Yuelen, that loom largest as of late."
Yue paused for a moment, desperately trying to figure out what was implied by this.
"What is that supposed to mean?!" she screamed at the one she'd seen as her father for so long.
A loud creak announced the opening of the doors to the side of the great hall. A procession of Kheshig royal guards came forth, escorting one amidst them at the center of their ranks. As they flooded the room with their presence, Yue was wide-eyed as the one they had protected revealed himself at last.
"Hey, Yue." Zhenjin greeted.
The large tiger remained wounded, but still undaunted after surviving her ruthless ambush attack. Yue shuddered in a mix of shock and complete terror, never having foreseen this.
"Zhen?" she questioned in a broken half-whisper. "But… but how?"
The prince did not answer her at first, taking his place next to the Khan and Khatun at the head of the room. The dragon seemed unaffected by his presence, but remained angrily glaring at Yuelen. Zhenjin was in fact severely weakened from his life-saving medical attention, but did everything he could to show strength to the leopardess. He knew she simply could not comprehend that in her haste, she had struck him with inadequate ferocity. Now it was the two half-siblings who were staring each other down in wrathful silence; much could be said between them without ever speaking. The princess stumbled slightly once more in a momentary loss of balance, and Zhenjin broke the stalemate out of pity.
"There is something I think you should have, Yue." the tiger said, still glaring as he waved someone forth from the crowd.
The leopardess saw that it was none other than the jackal Tsagaan who was approaching her with a thin wooden disc that had a bloodied cloth draped over it. The servant seemed to be looking right through Yuelen as she cautiously removed the reddened covering, revealing the fragmentary severed shaft of an arrow. She knew without asking that this was the exact same projectile she'd tried to kill Zhenjin with.
"All is forgiven, sister." he said right as the leopardess picked it up.
She just tilted her head ever so slightly, shifting focus between the three royals before her that were so watchfully protected by the panda-dragon. An unsettling, disturbed sort of laugh began to escape the contortions of disbelief upon her fanged maw. What little stability that had remained within Yuelen was irrevocably shattered.
Her mind was now gone.
Having seen the futility of speaking any more, Khasar stepped forward and delivered his official decree.
"You are hereby and henceforth banished from the Mongol realm; your authority and titles are now empty and meaningless, respectively."
The Khan's order seemed to have no register at all upon the leopardess, who just continued her unhinged laughing.
"You are no daughter of mine." Khasar concluded, motioning to the Kheshig to remove her. "And you never were."
Without delay, two large tiger guards grabbed Yuelen by the arms and dragged her away towards the exit. Khasar had little interest in this matter anymore, and returned to sit upon his throne. Nadya and Zhenjin remained standing in place as the former princess was taken away, meeting her deranged look until it was separated from them by the closing of the heavy doors.
Outside, the two guards escorting Yue reached the palace steps, and threw her down roughly. Reaching the bottom with even more injuries than before, she began limping away once again. The haze had returned. It was stronger this time. Her consciousness of reality faltered here and there, and before long the scene of raucous celebration and looting of the destroyed streets of Xiangyang was exchanged for the isolation of the empty wilderness. Hours and hours passed by without her full awareness, as Yue's maddened rambling and stuttering was heard by no one at all. Deep into the night she pressed on, having no particular reason or destination in mind.
Stiffening darkness showed that it must have been nearly midnight by the time she came upon an isolated glade in the hills above the city. She could hear nothing but the flowing night wind and the rush of nearby water. The sounds quieted her violent mind, but only for a brief time. Again, the enraged thoughts overcame her.
Lies, lies, lies! It was all nothing, me! I am nothing - I am a lie!
There were few people that she'd actually cared for in life, and Ganbataar had been one of them. It was his betrayal that crushed her most of all, and she could no longer speak to him; worse still, to avenge his death went against his final wishes. She had never had any friends, from the time she was just a child - she was never allowed to even speak to anyone, let alone make friends. Now, she had no family either… only enemies.
So many enemies…
Enemies that were right to seek vengeance upon her for what she had done. She was a murderer, a backstabber, a cold-blooded remorseless killer. Yue knew she deserved neither forgiveness nor mercy from anyone - especially herself. She stumbled once again, collapsing against an embankment of sharp rocks that introduced new cuts into her stained and matted fur. Peering over the edge as she remained pressed against them by her own weight, she discovered the source of the aqueous sounds.
Surging downwards into the darkness for hundreds of feet - far further than could be seen - was a great mist-enveloped waterfall. It would be picturesque if she had not been amidst such suffering, inside and out. For several minutes she just remained, watching the whitewater folding over and over upon itself as it cascaded downwards into the blackness. The internal discord overcame her again, and she was once more made aware of the severity of her injuries. Groaning in pain, she was being mentally drowned again.
You.. You are the problem. You have done this to yourself.
She roared with deafening ferocity, and again, no one was there to hear it. Yue truly felt as though she had none to blame but herself, and this was simply an unsurvivable conclusion.
She couldn't take it anymore.
Striking her claws against the rocks as she feebly climbed over them, she stood with all her remaining power. Looking straight down along the water-path that guided itself into the emptiness below, she found its chasmic embrace to be undeniably alluring. Reaching into the torn remnants of her once-extravagant robes, she produced the splintered arrow shaft. Yue looked down into the depths, and then back to the projectile still coated in her half-kin's blood.
Some parts of her psyche seemed to prefer hesitating, but what the deepest semblances of Yuelen hated most of all, was disappointing the moment itself.
Born… to die. You were right, Gan.
With a last devilish grin, she drove Zhenjin's parting gift into her lower abdomen, drawing blood at once. The white hot flash of agony quickly faded into a much colder sensation.
Ah - so that's what it feels like…
The self-inflicted wound coaxed the leopardess' form over the edge, and she began to fall along with the water, steadily approaching terminal velocity.
Yuelen surrendered herself to the abyss.
Author's Notes:
- Again, I should acknowledge that this chapter contains depictions of suicide; this is not something I seek to glorify, I just wanted to make that very clear
- In the first scene, where Shifu is playing the dizi flute, this is actually the same tune that he's playing when he first appears onscreen in KFP (it's actually a variation on Tai Lung's theme)
- Appreciate you taking the time to read, until next time…