Chapter Text
Just as Po predicted, after helping them repair the damages on The Jade Palace - and of course taking part in the celebrations and chi demonstration once those repairs were completed - not all of the pandas leave right away.
Some of them do. Others linger a few extra days before deciding to keep traveling south, and see what else there is to see of China. Others stay a few weeks, and as more of them start to leave, Lei Lei begins to pout more and more over the farewells she’s had to say.
So, perhaps days later than she should have, Tigress finally stops avoiding a very necessary conversation.
She sits herself down in a lotus position on the foot of the sleep mat in the spare room where Lei Lei has been staying.
“I heard Hao and Tao left today.” She says, trying her best to broach the subject carefully.
Lei Lei, who has been sitting up and tucking in her prized doll into its sleeping place next to her, slows her little game, her face falling in a frown.
“Yeah.” She says softly, nothing more.
Tigress sighs, “Lei Lei,” she says, and the little girl looks up at her, her violet eyes shining with the threat of tears already.
It’s enough to break Tigress’s heart. It’s enough that she reaches out, gently taking Lei Lei into her arms and pulling her over into her lap. Lei Lei comes willingly, snatching her doll on her way and cuddling the toy close to her chest.
“Lei Lei, more of the pandas are going to go home to the panda village; your village. Most of them very soon.”
Lei Lei whimpers, her lips snagged between her teeth as she nods and she sniffles. Its enough Tigress wants to cry herself, and she is thankful that when she blinks she feels no tears, yet.
“I need you to understand that I’m not going to go back there for a very long time.” She presses on, “And when I do go back, someday, it won’t be to stay. The Jade Palace is my home.”
Lei Lei nods again, sniffling, and this time wiping a tear away.
“I know.” She whispers, and with a deep frown Tigress gently brushes away another one of her tears.
She runs her thumb along the damp black and white of the fur encircling Lei Lei’s eyes, and she can’t help but to see the stark orange of her own fur. She thinks back to her conversation with Po. He’s right, things will be different for Lei Lei compared to how they were for either him or herself. But different – hoping it means easier - doesn’t mean easy.
“Li Shan is leaving tomorrow.” She informs the young cub, “You can stay here with me. But, if you would like to go back with him-”
“No!” Lei Lei shrieks, standing so suddenly Tigress tumbles back and has to catch her balance on her arms. “No! Stay wit Big Stripey Baby! Stripy Baby! Stripy… Stay… Sta…”
She throws herself at Tigress, clamoring up her, and Tigress barely has her balance recovered but that has to be enough. She needs her arms to catch Lei Lei now, to hold her. She buries her fingers in the cub’s fur, and her face in her neck, thumbing gentle strokes on her side as the little girl sobs and chokes, all around pleas to stay and declarations that she doesn’t want to go back to the village she’s come from.
“Ok, ok.” Tigress whispers, rocking the little girl. “Ok, it’s ok. You’ll stay, Lei Lei.” She promises, and as the words leave her lips, she feels as though the order of the universe has just shifted around her.
“You’ll stay.”
So, Lei Lei stays, and the universe continues to feel like it’s shifting.
That seems to be the way of The Jade Palace for weeks following their return. For one thing, Po has taken over the majority of teaching, but Shifu hasn’t gone off to a cave yet as he keeps insisting he will; and he pops into training sessions from time to time. Aside from the shift in command, training sessions are a bit different now in terms of skills as well. They are implementing more focus on the spiritual and on chi.
It's exciting, in many respects. It has been a long time since any of them began a new discipline from scratch, and chi isn’t the only new discipline they are learning.
It turns out Po had a point in saying that having a child in the palace would be a new undertaking for them all.
For the first few days, Tigress thinks maybe she should have made Lei Lei return to the village with Li Shan, regardless of the cub’s requests. While the days are filled with Lei Lei running around the village and the palace grounds excitedly exploring her new surroundings, the nights are consumed by tears and proclamations that she misses her friends. Tigress does her best to sooth these outbursts. She offers twice more to return Lei Lei to the panda village, but Lei Lei won’t hear of it. It only makes things worse. So, Tigress gives up on the course of action, and it's back to holding the child until she cries herself to sleep.
Po offers to try and help, on the second night, and Tigress tries to take him up on that offer and hand Lei Lei over.
Tries being the operative word.
She never thought a practical baby’s claws could cut so deep – literally. Lei Lei clings to her shoulders so tight when she tries to hand her to Po that afterwards, when she is finally asleep and Tigress can slip from the room, she needs to apply some anti-septic oil and a wrapping to the marks left behind in her flesh.
From then on, she endures Lei Lei’s nighttime anxieties mostly alone. Fortunately, after the first week, they become less and less frequent, until Tigress can’t remember the last time Lei Lei went to bed with anything but a smile on her face.
That smile is nearly always present throughout the day, as well. It’s there even when she is growing frustrated in their beginner’s level training sessions. While far from a natural, Lei Lei takes to the grace of Kung Fu much more easily than Po did at first, although Po claims that is because Tigress isn’t, and she quotes, “actively trying to kill her”.
Speaking of Po, he and the five all adore having Lei Lei around. She has tea parties with Viper, and Crane has taken it upon himself to teach her calligraphy. As predicted, the combination of Lei Lei and Monkey together spells trouble more often than it doesn’t, with Mantis or Po usually being the targets of their antics. Neither of those two can stay mad at Lei Lei for long, though, but Tigress does find it amusing that neither of them ever seems successful in coercing her into joining them in a retaliating prank against Monkey.
“Did you buy her loyalty with cookies or something?” Tigress asks late one afternoon, while she is putting away the last of today’s supplies in the training hall. Monkey is hung by from one of the talon rings by his tail, Lei Lei giggling and swinging from his arms.
“I just have a way with kids.” He excuses, and Tigress hums, certain now that he has, in fact, been slipping Lei Lei extra cookies whenever he wants to mess with either Po or Mantis.
At least he hasn’t tried corrupting her against Shifu yet.
“Hey Monkey!” Po’s voice comes calling from the open doorway. “Come on, we’re gonna be late for the noodle eating contest!”
“Coming!” Monkey calls back, beginning to swing himself with more purpose, and so Tigress pauses to watch, just in case Lei Lei misses the landing. “Alright kiddo, back to Mommy.”
Lei Lei squeals in delight as he flings her through the air, landing a bit wobbly on the floor and falling into a roll until she bumps against Tigress’s leg, while Monkey trapses off as if he hasn’t just said… that.
Tigress just stands there, staring at the door long after Monkey and Po are gone, Lei Lei giggling at her feet as she rights herself.
“Stripey? Can I go wit tem?” Her question finally brings Tigress out of her trance, and she blinks herself back to reality; to the bright purple eyes belonging to the sweet little panda bouncing on her toes and holding her favorite doll close to her chest as she eagerly awaits an answer.
Tigress swallows, but she smiles and reaches down and runs her paw along the back of Lei Lei’s head.
“Behave yourself.” She instructs her with a smile, “And hurry up before they leave without you.”
“Eep!” Lei Lei giggles, quickly hugging Tigress’s leg before bumbling off after Monkey, shouting for him and Po to wait for her.
Once Lei Lei is gone, Tigress’s smile falls from her face. That word of Monkey’s is a subject which she hasn’t broached yet; not really. Yes, when talking with Po while they were traveling, she passingly referred to Lei Lei as her child, but it was more in the abstract. A potential.
Something not quite real.
“I was hoping Lei Lei would be the first to say that.” Shifu’s sudden comment as he enters from the corner of the doorway pulls Tigress out of her thoughts. “Still, she didn’t seem adverse to it.”
Tigress frowns deeper, debating asking her master how long he was standing just outside. She supposes it doesn’t matter, ultimately; he was clearly there long enough.
“I’ll talk to him.” She decides, walking out of the dojo, half tempted to go down into town right now and have this promised conversation. “Remind him Lei Lei already has a mother.”
Shifu lets her walk past him, by two paces. Then three, and four.
“You did too, once.”
She freezes mid-stride. She spins back around on her heel, her lips parted in surprise, and Shifu is looking at her with such a suddenly sorrow in his eyes that it’s overwhelming.
“Master?”
He sighs, “Come with me.”
She blinks, unsure of where exactly he is going with this; both in his words as well as his steps. She isn’t naïve enough, nor is she hopeful enough, to believe he might… know something.
No, she remembers enough of her time in the orphanage to remember when and why he was summoned to help her. He was a kung fu master and a servant of the valley. He was called upon to teach discipline to a problem child. He had no connection to her prior to that. He had -has – no knowledge as to where she came from. Whatever he has in store for her now, it isn’t that.
The most she can do is what she’s always done; follow his lead, and so she does. He brings her to the path which leads up the side of the mountain, and weaves through the woods. The setting sun casts a glow over the path, the oncoming dusk bringing a cool breeze with it.
“You know,” He finally says as they begin their hike up the path. “The day that Master Oogway first chose Po as The Dragon Warrior, I had many questions.”
“Hm, we all did.” Tigress replies, and Shifu chuckles.
“Yes, well, even after Po earned the scroll, and brought peace to the valley. Even after he defeated Tai Lung, mastered kung fu and inner peace, even after he went into the spirit world and mastered chi; I’ve continued to wonder why it was not you.”
Tigress stops in her tracks, and Shifu smirks up at her.
“I accepted, or rather I forced myself to accept, after Oogway left us, that there must be a reason.” He continues onward, leaving Tigress no choice but to follow him once again. “It was Po’s destiny to be The Dragon Warrior, and I have long since seen that and understood it. But your destiny is something which has continued to puzzle me; until now.”
They’re nearly at the peach tree of heavenly wisdom now. Shifu turns onto the small hill which leads to it, though Tigress lingers below for a moment.
“Master, I’m afraid I don’t understand.”
Shifu sighs, “I owe you an apology, Tigress.” He says, just when she thought this couldn’t get any stranger. “You were a child when I brought you here, and I hardened you into a warrior before you were ready.”
Tigress opens her mouth to protest that, to tell him he’s wrong, she was ready. She was so much more broken at a young age than Lei Lei is. Becoming a warrior was her only path forward.
Except… Now seeing Lei Lei here in the palace, seeing how full of light and love she is and gets to be, Tigress can’t deny that she never got that, nor that she longed for it.
Shifu seems to take her lack of a response as acceptance, and he reaches his staff up, gently coaxing a flower off a low hanging branch.
Tigress makes her way up the small hill to stand at his side, watching as he balances the delicate flower perfectly in the crook of his staff, and holds it out to her.
“I never encouraged you to remember your parents.” He says, “And I forbade you from filling the hole they left in your heart with someone else.”
Tigress swallows as she takes the flower. Its delicate petals are weightless on the tips of her fingers, it’s pink pigment not even smudged after being removed from its home.
“Master-”
“For that I am sorry.” Shifu interrupts her poor attempt at… dismissal, that’s the only word for it. “And I see now that your destiny is something which I never could have imagined before; something which extends beyond kung fu.”
To her surprise, the sound of those words feel like a warm spring breeze. They feel like freedom. The idea of doing anything more than kung fu, of their being a beyond, is something Tigress has never once in her life considered. For her, such a thing doesn’t exist.
Except, now, it does.
Mindful of the flower in her grasp, Tigress bows, with a smile on her face.
“Thank you, Father.”
Shifu smiles at her, and a warmth spreads through her, the sight more welcome than she ever could have imagined.