trans_9 | It was either this or Cake, and frankly he wanted Cake. [open]

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It was either this or Cake, and frankly he wanted Cake. [open]

He’d been asleep for far too long.

There wasn’t much he could do, after Aang woke up and started breaking everything—structure-wise and organism-wise actually—he was only one alien against an angry human god badly harmed by yet another, not to mention a seriously injured alien already recovering from a nightmare of his own. It was no surprise that he’d collapsed on the way to the med bay. It was more of a surprise that he’d made it so far with several more injured humans in tow.

In any case, he was here, right back where he’d started several days ago, or however long it’d been, the poor fellow had lost track during all of this. Would someone tell him? His nap ran a touch long and his anesthetics were beginning to wear off, and seriously, how did he get here again? Where was ‘here’ exactly? And what of Katara’s partner, the one who went crazy and he was unable to—

With a sudden sucking of air through the slits atop his muzzle, Aeneas’s eyes flashed open and he bolted upright in his cot, torso stiff, webbed hands clenched against the sides. He sat there, every muscle tensed, fur matted with nervous perspiration, for several horrifying moments.

"KATARA I FOUND HIM BUT HE HAS SUFFERED SOME SORT OF MENTAL TRAUMA AND ATTACKED THE OTHERS I WILL LEAD YOU TO HIM ONCE I BRING THE INJURED FEW TO—"

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In response, warm hands settled against Aeneas, steadying him and patting the fur gently. Katara was quick: she had risen and was at his side the moments he saw him bolt upright. It was no secret that Katara's primary concern was with Aang, but she had also been worrying about Aeneas the last few days too. He had gotten himself injured far too many times than she was comfortable, and then he attempted to help find Aang. She wasn't sure what had happened, but Sokka had told her that he'd been helped by Aeneas down in Escherville. For that reason, and because she was genuinely worried about Aeneas, she had watched over him when she got the chance.

"Calm down," she said. "You're in the med bay. It's over. You can rest now."

He wasn’t immediately calmed, not until he caught sight of whom exactly was next to him with their hairless, split fingers on his torso. Seeing Katara was enough to keep him sane, at least, though having her there brought up quite a few questions; and believe me, this alien had a lot of questions.

“How long have I been asleep?” was the first one, more curious than pressing. However, the realization of where and when he’d passed out in the first place brought that urgency right back to the top of his mind. “—The others—Sokka, Zuko, Isaac—Aang—are they—?”

"You've been here a few days," Katara answered. "Everyone is okay: thanks to you, Sokka got out a bit more safely than he could have, and right now Zuko is still nursing his hands, but they'll clear up soon. Aang...well, Aang is recovering. He was a little blinded by rage when he came out, nearly leveled the whole city. I talked him out of it, and then someone thought he was the Nightmare King and shot him by accident."

Katara's heart beat fast when she told him that. It still scared the heck out of her: she thought Aang was gone then,(AGAIN) because she failed to protect him. "But I healed him before the wound got pretty bad. He's resting now, though because of all the destruction, they're keeping him here longer and having him sedated for awhile."

That was…good to know. Aeneas relaxed, his breathing becoming noticeably calmer, his characteristic purr returning to deepen his voice’s tenor. At least he knew now what became of them; at least they were all still alive and, for the most part, in fine health. This, however, still left out one important person that he needed to look after.

The creature’s lavender eyes found Katara’s. “Are you well?”

Katara hesitated, then nodded. "Yeah. It felt like the longest few days of my life, and got a few cuts and bruises, but the worst part was thinking that Aang might be dead. He's okay now, so as far as I'm concerned, I have no right to feel bad about anything. I've been wanting to free him for months, Aeneas. To tell you the truth...I actually feel really happy."

She smiled, and stroked the fur. "And I have you to think for that, you and all of the others brave enough to try to rescue him. Thank you so much!"

A wide grin creased his brow, and he eased back onto his pillow, purring complacently.

“I cannot see why you would be unhappy,” Aeneas trilled, blinking slowly, “You two were separated for so long—I know I would be overjoyed to see—“

He had to stop, because that phrase was no longer true. Not at all.

Aeneas made an effort to retain his smile, though it was difficult. “…Did I ever tell you about my nightmare?”

"I am happy," Katara said. "I'm one of the luckiest people on the ship. I could have been hurt a lot worse and I wasn't, and Aang could be dead, but he isn't. I can't begin to tell you how fortunate I feel right now."

But now she could see that there was something on her friend's mind right now, she'd though that when she saw him last but he hadn't really been in the speaking mood then. Maybe he might tell her now.

"You don't have to smile if it hurts," Katara said, clearly not talking about his injuries. "And you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to. I just hope I can try to help you like you've helped me. "What happened in your nightmare?"

Aeneas’s eyes naturally traveled up to the ceiling, a heavy sigh escaped his nostrils as his once frantic breathing returned to its usual levels. Yes…he was rather wondering why he never told Katara in the first place. Didn’t have the time, the energy, the courage…

Frankly, she was one of the only ones he felt deserved to know. Other than Matt, of course. He would understand. But where was Matt exactly? Recovering? Helping the others rebuild? Spode knows what he was up to.

Aeneas jerkily knocked his head against the side of the bed in personal retribution. How dare he think so negatively of him? Matt was one of his best friends on this vessel, and already he was jealous of his happiness! What was wrong with him?...

“—No, it…”

The creature blinked slowly. He was worried.

“…I had a mate, once. In the dream, I…I met her—rather, I remembered her, and all the times we spent. I loved—I love—her. So much…”

Katara listened intently. She was still trying to find out all that she could about her friends on the ship. Aeneas and recovering his memories was definitely something she'd wanted to help him with after she had found Aang. She hadn't thought that the Nightmare King would use the missing memories Aeneas forgot to make him see things that would affect him. It caused a but of quiet rage to pass through her, thinking that anyone would hurt someone like Aeneas, but she stilled herself.

"I see. So she was someone you cared a lot about. That's nothing to be unhappy about, right?"

But he WAS, and that was the problem.

“Y-yes, but—“

Oh, this was confusing. Aeneas anxiously grabbed his auricle.

“—It is…complicated.” And somewhat clichéd, but he wasn’t going to mention that. “My species mates for life. We have to—it is simply part of our biology. Only females have the ability to do otherwise, and—well—males only have one chance.”

A pause. Aeneas let go of his ear and closed his eyes.

“…I was tricked. Wasted my only chance to find a suitable partner. But I could not leave her…”

"Okay, I hear you," Katara said, using her intuition to figure out what was getting Aeneas so down. So. Mating for life meant that if it was only to males, it was a lot like an arranged marriage in a way, but with no way of getting out of it. The thought of it honestly made her skin crawl in either gender, but it was the first she heard of it being inflicted on the male. Her hand reached out and petted him gently.

"What..." and this would be the question she feared the answer to, but knew just as well that it was part of the reason Aeneas was so shaken. There was no avoiding it, "...was she like?"

Natural biases came first. Aeneas’s gaze became glassy, a quaint grin crossing his tired brow.

“…Beautiful,” he purred meekly, “Twelve feet of ebony fur and navy mackerel stripes that glittered when she walked—like dappled moonlight, or—or polished stones at the bottom of a mineral tide, or—“

…No, none of those were adequate. Aeneas continued, somehow flustered by his inability to describe her faultlessness: “—And her feathers were pitch black, like solid plates of granite, imposing yet somehow delicate and brittle—And her ears, they were tapered perfectly, as if she massaged them every satellite cycle until she wore the tips down to fine points…”

Analogies, analogies…Where was he going with this? Ah, right—“She was the most graceful noblewoman I ever set eyes on. I was…honored to pair with her. As I should have been.”

Katara indulged in his description. How could she not? He was talking about the person he cared about, and by all appearances she was most likely very beautiful. Katara had an idea that, if prompted, Aang might say something similar about her, which made Katara flush a little. Aeneas, she could see, was probably just as passionate about the person he loved as Aang was. It was possible that was why he helped look for Aang to begin with: on some level, they were both looking for the person they cared most about.

However, Katara was also not swayed: Aeneas had said what she LOOKED like, not what she was like. As it was, there was something he was holding back, and even as he spoke of his partner's beauty, he did so mentioning that he should have been happy, should have been pleased. Why wasn't he?

"But you weren't," Katara said. "At least, not like you wanted. Why?"

Yes, that evasion was deliberate. Aeneas instantly felt bad for avoiding the real subject—one that Katara was obviously trying to return to, and the one that he desperately needed to relate to someone. The creature tensed slightly.

“But I was,” he trilled insistently, “I even knew that she had other suitors, but she convinced me that she would shake off the others, get rid of her lawful mate and stay with me. I was—different, somehow—“

His tone became decidedly bitter.

“—Like some sort of prize. But I cannot remember why…Why was I so important? What made me so much more significant that the others?...”

Katara's soft grip tightened a little on Aeneas's fur a little here. She could see now that Aeneas was getting to the heart if what was bothering him: she could see that he could love this mate of his, she was pretty to him and he would care for her, but she could also sense a deception. There were, after all, women that were like that, that wanted to take the things that made you special and use it for their own gains. Aeneas must have understood this somehow in the back of his mind, that he had something that this mate wanted.

"Aeneas, this is dangerous territory," Katara said, "and I only say it because its what you're forgetting that might cause you more pain. I wouldn't want that for you, but you've already talked to me about this before. You want to know about the parts of you that you haven;t seen yet. I...I believe I can help you to find those parts."

She couldn't believe she was offering this, but she had helped Aang remember some of his memories of Ba Sing Se before, she was sure she could help Aeneas regain some of his memories. He had needed to find the key to his past, and she knew it was killing him not to know.

She released her grip and petted him lightly again. "Just...make sure you;re careful with what you find, Aeneas. Understand that you're actually YOU, the person we know now, and not whatever might have been in the past."

His eyes widened.

“—No!—“ he hissed urgently, “I promised—when I faced her again, before the battle—I promised myself that I would never look back. I refuse to look back! I wasted two years of my life trying to recover them; when they did resurface, it was by the hands of an evil spirit, and they caused me more pain than when I first experienced them. I will not remember!”

An emotion between rage and fear flashed over his visage, making his feathers flare and mandibles click. Perhaps if he had one of those ‘heart monitor’ things hooked up to him (and had a heart to monitor in the first place), then his pulse would begin to increase; as it stood, Stacy instead had some sort of device measuring the ambient pressure within his second pair of lungs, which had remained stable for most of their discussion, but was now fluctuating with the rapid flow of nitrogen and its sweet-smelling byproducts. Said byproducts were actually helping to calm him again—think of them as organically-created sedatives—but their effects would take a minute or two to kick in. Regardless, the outburst was temporary and spontaneous. Aeneas already felt horrible for snapping at her.

Okay, now Katara was worried and confused. If he didn't want to look back, that would mean that he wanted to know, didn't it? And what battle was he talking about? There were just a lot of things going on that she didn't get. It didn't help that this was similar to the last time that she'd been with Aeneas either. It was like he was fighting something that wouldn't let him look at things without being taxing on his emotions.

Like now, the reaction Aeneas had bothered her: she could see how his anger and fear caused him to do this, and now she stayed with her hands on his fur, hoping to calm him down. In fact, she brought out some of her healing water and had it settle on Aeneas a moment. She didn't try to restrain him she didn't think he would hurt her anyway.

"I'm sorry," she said softly. "I know that you must have been through a lot with the Nightmare King. I just...well, you seemed to want to know about your past so much and now you don't want to. If that's your decision, I can't stop you, but...wouldn't it be better to face the things that make you this way?"

It was an understatement to say that Aeneas was ashamed of himself. He let out a soft noise from the back of his throat, like a whimper or…or…

…Oh, that healing water was nice. It made the most pleasant concoction of vapors and nitrous oxide, one that wafted in a thick sheet over his muzzle and into his extensive respiratory system, quickly taking hold. The creature abruptly went slack.

Katara’s words slurred through his blurry subconscious. “I don’t,” he insisted, the translators taking a bit longer than usual to detect his slurred trilling, “I don’t and I won’t face them again, never again…twice…three times was plenty…”

More explanation would’ve been nice, probably, but the sedatives were doing their job quite effectively. Aeneas’s head fell limp into his pillow; once again he was asleep.

Katara was glad that Aeneas was starting to feel better, even though she was still worried about his state. So she simply petted him gently, listening to the last words he said. Who were these "them" he was talking about? She wasn't sure, nor was she sure that ignoring his history might be a good thing: what if someone tried to use that against him later? She had to look out for him somehow.

He had even decided to help her out when he didn't really know her, and he was suffering like this.

Katara couldn't help herself here: she did cry, and curled up next to Aeneas now. She knew that her training had made it so she didn't cry with everyone watching, she refused to let anyone see that if she could help it. But now everything was just getting so overwhelming: the fight with Sokka, Aang getting shot, the nightmares and the fear she had that something bad would happen to her friends on the ship. It hurt, and she wanted to be alone now with that pain, stay for it in the moment and let it go.

So she lay next to Aeneas, hugging knees to her chest, crying quietly, her hand still pressed against his fur. She would find a way to help him, a way to put him as ease. She had to.

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It was either this or Cake, and frankly he wanted Cake. [open]

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