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“I just… I keep having these nightmares, y’know? Real stupid stuff.” Po scoffed and tried to pass it off as a laugh, as if that alone could convince Tigress — maybe himself, too — that those dreams were as meaningless as he wished they were. “It’s always the same. Like… it’s snowing, but there’s fire everywhere, and I hear screaming all over the place, but I feel fine. I’m not cold if I touch the snow and I don’t burn if I touch the fire.”
The smile he gave Tigress was empty, and his eyes, though glancing between the cabinets, the table, and her, were somewhere on the other side of China.
A part of him truly did die there, she found herself thinking, though she forced the thought from her head at once.
“That’s, uh, that’s usually all there is to it.” Po propped an elbow on the table in the unlit kitchen and rested his cheek on his fist, looking over Tigress’ shoulder at an ever-darkening nothing. “Sometimes it ends pretty quickly. Sometimes I see bodies and, uh, blood ‘n’ stuff. And sometimes I just hear the screaming, and then eventually I don’t hear anything anymore.” He shrugged. “But tonight’s the first time I actually…”
He swallowed heavily and tried half-heartedly to hide it behind his cup of tea. It was still full, but it had long since gone cold.
Tigress glanced down at his paw as he set it back on the table. His claws had grown out. Nothing drastic, and nowhere near as sharp as hers, but the usually blunted tips were reaching a point. He used the tip of his index claw to trace meaningless patterns into the birch.
“She, uh… she recognized me. Called me her little lotus flower. Said I’d gotten so big. But it was like, right in the middle of the, uh… the attack. So that was weird.”
Po looked down at his teacup, maybe observing his reflection in the cooled liquid. He looked so tired. Not the kind of tired brought about by a single sleepless night; no, this was just one of many in the past three weeks.
“Tried telling her to run. Tried getting her to run with me, y’know, but… she said that, uh, well, my story didn’t have a happy beginning, but she was… uh, she was happy with the way hers ended. Told me she was proud of me. Then I woke up.” He blinked a few times, then his shoulders lifted, like his departed soul was returning to his body. “Just a real stupid dream, y’know? Borderline wish fulfillment. I mean, who would say something like that, right? I know she wouldn’t say that.”
“Do you?”
“I don’t know, but like… how do you die and then say you’re okay with it? I wouldn’t be okay with dying like that, especially if it was because…"
And his eyes grew glossy again, going someplace that Tigress, try though she might, couldn’t reach.
“Y’know, I-I don’t know how many… I mean, dozens? Hundreds, thousands? However many, it’s too many. And they’re all, uh, they’re all dead.” Po smacked his lips and shrugged again. “Because of me.”
“Po. You were a child. Nothing you could have done would have stopped it.”
Tigress kept her voice low, in part to ensure she didn’t wake their teammates sleeping just a few rooms over, and in part so that he didn’t startle and back down. Any semblance of judgment or any suggestion that he had upset her with his words, and Po would apologize and thank her for listening and go back to his room to feign sleep until the morning gong rung.
For someone so hell-bent on being open and friendly with everyone he met, he was fiercely self-reliant. That much they at least had in common.
“Well,” and Po smiled ruefully as he spoke, “maybe if I was never born…”
Tigress bit her tongue so sharply she tasted blood, because that was all she could do to keep from shutting him down. No, scolding him for such harmful thoughts would get them nowhere, not yet, not right now. “You think things might be different then?” she ventured instead.
“Can’t wipe out all the pandas if you never get told a panda’s gonna kick your butt one day. And that can’t happen if the panda who’s supposed to kick your butt doesn’t exist.”
Tigress averted her gaze to the tabletop as well, breathing as deeply and steadily as her cracked ribs would allow. Though Po had always, to some extent, carried feelings of resentment towards himself, they had never run this deep.
Or if they had, he’d simply never told her. Tigress preferred to think the former was the truth.
“Fate works in odd ways,” she said at last, slowly, thinking and then re-thinking each word before they left her mouth. “We can’t stop it, and we can’t control it. I’m inclined to believe that your absence wouldn’t have changed anything.”
For a moment, Po didn’t respond, just kept staring blankly at the table. Were it not for the minute shifting of his eyes, Tigress would have thought he hadn’t heard her.
“...you think?” Something in the way he asked it, maybe the way his voice fluttered or his brows lifted and scrunched, suggested that he was really considering her words. That was a good sign, at least.
“If it wasn’t you, it would have been someone else.”
“But it wouldn’t have been me.”
“People would still be dead, but the Valley wouldn’t have its Dragon Warrior. That would just ensure even more deaths.”
“Maybe the other panda woulda been the Dragon Warrior. Beat Tai Lung, brought peace, kept everyone safe.”
“But we’ll never know, will we? Because you were born, and this life is yours alone.”
At that, Po nodded, though his face betrayed his despondency.
I wouldn’t be okay with dying like that, he’d said only minutes earlier. But Tigress knew better. If given no other option, he’d happily die to protect others, especially the ones he held dear.
A tickle in the back of her throat made her cough, lightly, but enough to send a sharp pain through her chest.
A death wish in exchange for the safety and happiness of their loved ones. That was something else they had in common, for sure.
“For what it’s worth…” Tigress mulled over her thoughts for a brief moment. Would someone just like him have come along had he never entered the world? Perhaps. Perhaps the days at the Jade Palace would still be made lighter, and perhaps the meals they shared would still be just as flavorful, and perhaps she would still have found comfort and joy when she had long since given up on such things being part of her life.
But it would still be a world without Po. And such a world was a world Tigress didn’t want to think about, much less be a part of.
“I’m glad that you were born,” was what she finally decided on. “And I know for a fact I’m only one of many who feels that way.”
Po smiled down at his paws. It was small, barely enough to be called a smile, really. But it was warm, genuine, almost alien yet achingly familiar.
“I’m… I’m glad you were born too.”
At that, Tigress smiled in turn.
They didn’t really say much after that. They sat in shared silence until the darkness lightened with the impending dawn, at which point Tigress suggested they at least try to rest, if only for an hour or so. And though these all-nighters had become routine over the past weeks, when Po bid Tigress a good night (“Er, uh— good morning, early morning, I guess”) and ducked his head in thanks, she noticed he looked less tired than he had since they’d returned to the Valley.
It wasn’t some miraculous recovery. But little by little, her best friend was returning.
The thought dulled the pain of her broken bones and quieted her racing thoughts, and it made an hour of sleep feel like a slow and blissful eternity.