Title: Five Things That Never Happened To Tigress
Characters: Tigress
Summary: Phantom tears for a phantom life, like a remnant of phantom things she once knew.

i.

She learns not to care so much some time after his last visit, or she tries not to, at least.

From her room, Tigress can hear the other children talking excitedly in the hallway. Someone else is celebrating their last hour at the orphanage today; she thinks that it's Guo Rong, the small hare who was always sneaking into the kitchen for an illegal helping of carrot cake. She won't miss him too badly – she doesn't like the way he slides comfortably into discussions which don't necessarily concern him. Come to think of it, she never did completely forgive him for that one time he knocked over her dominoes when she was halfway through and didn't have the common courtesy to offer an apology. To some degree, she did, but only because of what she thinks Shifu might have said about her temper.

She still keeps the carved tiles even though it's been years since he last came, but it gets harder every day. For a while, it was nice to feel that someone besides the matronly goat caretaker possessed some shred of concern for her. It was nice that they could sit in this stone chamber and play this trivial game and pretend that it actually mattered. It was nice, but she found out quickly that it couldn't make her a part of anyone's ideal family, couldn't make her wanted. In the months following his lessons she had thought that this illusion of discipline and control would be enough to make her belong, somehow.

Tigress lies on her bed, flipping a single domino dextrously, rolling it this way and that. Outside, Guo Rong departs with his new parents, waving goodbye. He cries jubilantly, a beautiful chord. Palming the wooden piece, she crushes it into dust and lets the fine powder sift through her fingers.

ii.

As far as logic goes, it would stand to reason that if the Dragon Warrior were to meet with an unfortunate event which culminated in him losing his life, then Grand Master Oogway would have to pick another one, the real one. In the dark of night and the confusion, it would appear to be an accident. Everyone would think that he just tried to escape and went a little too fast leaving the Jade Palace. It isn't about the glory and honour anymore; Tigress knows that this is the only way to set things right again.

However, living things are never completely rational, as she will discover, and even well-devised plans fall apart every now and then.

His shoulders hit the steps hard, and the audible crunch of bone against solid stone is much louder than she expected. Something shifts behind her; she turns around in time for Shifu to dash brusquely past her. He examines the panda lying supine on the ground and when he is unable to find a pulse, he slumps backwards, quivering.

"What did you do?" The syllables are ground through gritted teeth, coloured with anger. He stays kneeled next to what used to be the Dragon Warrior, unyielding and rigid, refusing to look at his disgraced student.

Tigress hopes that he will understand one day, and knows that he will thank her for this, eventually. "What needed to be done," she answers softly, and she lets herself believe it.

iii.

This recklessness defies all sanity and lucidity. Self-preservation screams at her at every step to turn around and flee, and she bites down on it to quash it. She knows that there isn't any chance – she learned this twice: Once from the battle on the bridge and once from the hopeless resignation on Shifu's face as he bid them farewell. Tigress supposes that this is the sole thing that she managed to gleam from Po; it appears that some of his foolhardiness has rubbed off onto her.

She hates and thanks him for it.

She strides through the doors, which have already been flung open. Shifu mouths at her to run. Tigress stares down the snow leopard and assumes a fighting stance, her second – and final – transgression.

Later, in the split second before she leaves, she acknowledges that this is how a warrior dies with honour: A sole pressing against her ribs, eyelids growing heavy, and claws raking the air, all far, far away.

iv.

One day when she's cleaning the china plates, she stops for a moment and considers that maybe they aren't ready for this.

Granted, it had been his idea to run and his silly charts and annotated maps, but she was the one who went along with it. It seemed like such an adventure at the time – if only she had known exactly how the idea would dissolve so easily when exposed to the reality of living a life that wasn't meant for her. Sure, they weren't allowed to marry in the Valley of Peace, but was there really anything wrong with just being the Dragon Warrior and one of the Furious Five?

However, she can't deny that they're relatively satisfied in their new life. They have what they always envisioned – a home in a municipal wing, the menial normalities of civilians, their unbridled love for each other…

And yet, Tigress can't convince herself that she's fully content, wondering if maybe Po is the one who has satisfaction large enough for the both of them. It's difficult not to look back at what she left behind, at who she left behind. She thinks that Po knows, but he never said anything after he found the chunk of wood she broke in her first demonstration to him under their bed. The topic hangs over dinner every other night like a presence and they just eat, neither of them willing to broach it, to present it.

In the end, she chalks it all down to love. She loves him and he loves her, and that is all that's crucial. What she wants is immaterial, because this is what he wants and when you really look at it closely there really is no difference, is there?

Is there?

v.

The last time Tigress remembers crying is when Shifu summoned the six of them to his bedside that winter evening. It was snowing, and the darkness of night had just touched the mountain top.

He didn't have much time left, just barely enough for uttered goodbyes. For the first time, Tigress wasn't afraid to wear her heart on her sleeve, so she wept openly when he spoke to her.

"Oh, Tigress," he had murmured. "Let's have none of that now, child."

Since that day, she never cries much anymore. She didn't cry at the funeral when they lowered his casket into the earth and covered it up with soil, thinking that would have been what he wanted. She didn't shed a single tear the day a mysterious fire razed the Jade Palace to its foundations, circumscribing the umbra of a fiery eclipse into the hillside. Her eyes even remained dry when she woke to an existence that couldn't possibly be hers – the last remaining member of the Furious Five. Po would have been enamoured by her monolithic display of fortitude; he had called her hardcore, after all, and this would only serve to solidify that perception.

She doesn't remember crying, but she knows that she does, for every morning when she opens her eyes there's the immediate sensation of brine stinging her ears. In the breadth of night tears have flowed in lateral – and opposite – directions. The dried salt marks out this unchosen path of hers; this solitude of days; the quietude of loneliness. Phantom tears for a phantom life, like a remnant of phantom things she once knew.

If not where she is unable to, then where the impossible isn't.

(Sometimes she awakens as it is happening, disturbed from sleep by the sheer volume of cold suspended in so much night.)

A/N: Feedback is always welcome.

Many thanks to reader RasetsuRyu for leaving a review advising a few corrections in my fic. The errors have been rectified.