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Of all the inane and stupid items to come across in her wanderings...

It stood about chest high on her with little grips on either side and buttons at it's base with familiar faces on it. Tentatively she pushed one of the buttons and sure enough a little doll popped out with her face.

It was far more beautiful a face then she remembered, but then again the game had been designed by people who were loyal to the Fire Nation. And there was no greater hero to the Fire Nation then their princess...except of course the Fire Lord.

Another button press brought her a doll of her brother and she placed them in the pegs on top of the small tower. Their feet clicked into place perfectly. It was like not a day had passed.

With a sullen and half hearted smile she tapped the button once, twice, three times watching the little doll punch her brother in the face. It was oddly soothing.

But how to get it back to the air temple from the city?

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A shudder passed through her, had she really only been living for him?

"Not anymore. We're all just living for that stupid voice in our heads who called us to war."

"You don't get to use that as an excuse. You've got more guts that to just roll over and let everything that had happen crush you." That much he was sure of. There was still fire inside her, it just needed to be stoked again.

...And properly tamed, so it didn't grow to a consumptive blaze.

"It's not an excuse it's the truth." Azula muttered darkly, for the moment subdued though not yet tamed. "And with every passing day I find it harder to care."

"You enjoyed sparring me, I could tell. I don't think you'd be happy if you didn't get a chance to fight now and then. Right now, when and why aren't up to you, but how you choose to fight is. And that makes a difference."

'Why' made more of a difference, in Morgan's estimation, but... not gonna point that out right now.

"You don't want to hate yourself, I assume. I KNOW you don't want to feel the way you do any more. So you stand up, and fight. For yourself."

"Fighting with myself, for myself, against myself." A bitter dark smirk followed, "How poetic." She wasn't sure if she hated how right he was, or that she had known it all along but couldn't grasp it.

"But," he said, raising a finger. "Not alone."

Her eyes were glassy again with the occasional bursts of energy as her internal struggle between apathy and depression came to a head once more.

"Where do I go from here then? How do I wash away all of this...filth that drags me down with each step?"

"You can't change the past," he said quietly. "Everything that happened, happened. But it is the past. All it is is memories. The past can't change the present. It can't change the future. It's over, done. Start with just yourself, here, now. This moment."

An antiquated line of thought but whatever arguments she could sum up seemed pointless. She even had to struggle stop resenting him for being right about so much.

"Then do what? Train? Meditate? I won't apologize."

"Who was asking you to apologize?" Hell, Morgan didn't even know the story involved here. Somehow no one had told him up till now. "No, I don't have something generic to offer you. You get a specific and incredibly difficult task."

He lifted one hand, and closed it into a loose fist. "Acknowledge your strengths." Then the other hand, which he closed in turn. "Acknowledge your weaknesses. And really acknowledge them, not just write them off or go to extremes with them."

"Anyone who actually knows me." She answered dryly. "either that or they just want me gone."

Could it really be as easy as he made it sound? She stared hard at her own hands trying to puzzle out how simply admitting the things she already knew would help.

Maybe it sounded easy, but... man, Morgan knew from personal experience they were not, and it had cost him a hell of a lot to get that far. Then again, she clearly had suffered too. Why shouldn't she be able to learn, now?

He let her think, though, in silence. He'd prompt her if necessary, but if she could start on her own, he felt that would be better.

Finally she spoke after what felt like an hour.

"I was focused. And so smart...so very clever. Plans inside of plans inside of plans. Now I can't even maintain myself long enough to travel back to the place I sleep."

"I am still strong and fast...though my fire bending is no longer as pure and powerful as it was." Her voice was positively drenched in self loathing.

"I see death around every corner. Every shadow, every drop of water..." And that was the biggest distraction even on her good days.

"You're still smart. That doesn't just stop. Other things may be interfering with your ability to think, but that's all they are. Interference. What you've got upstairs is still good, under all that."

Then he nudged her, almost playfully. "Stop that. I heard that. You honestly think that if your skills slip a little, you've failed somehow? It happens. It's okay. You have lost nothing you can't regain."

And the last one... he lifted an eyebrow, curious if she would elaborate.

She wouldn't, not yet. Instead she flicked a tiny flame at his knee for how familiar he was getting with her.

"Just how many broken girls do you go around trying to fix on this ship?" her voice steady, trying to escape her own pity party with distraction.

"As many as I can, though they aren't exactly ten for a dozen," he said, brushing at his knee. He wore the plantsuit for pants, so that could have been worse. "You're changing the subject."

"It seemed like the thing to do." she acknowledged. "It's not as if we're on some kind of a time limit...save more patience and energy." Both of which were thin these days.

"Heh. I suppose I've pushed you a lot for today, haven't I," he said, chuckling. "Well, you haven't burned me that much yet, so I assume it wasn't THAT horrible."

She rose an eyebrow as if daring him to test her "I imagine your hair would burn very quickly." A thinly vailed and barely interested threat.

He reached behind him, sliding an arm under his hair so that when he pulled it forward, the long mass of hair hung over his forearm, down to the ground they sat on. He DID have shamelessly nice hair.

"Now if that were true, you would've managed it while we were sparring."

"That was only because I wasn't aiming for it. You're no use to me dead or irreversibly maimed."

Because yes, she was totally using him. Not getting help. That's what it was. For sure.

"Hey, hey, hey. I've been dead twice, thank you, and I'm still pretty useful," he said, winking. "Though I like the idea that you consider damage to my amazing bishy hair as 'irreversibly maimed'."

There was a questioning raise of her eyebrow, "And they tell me that I'm the crazy one." She sighed.

"Everyone on this ship is at least a little crazy in one way or another. But 'sane' life is boring and unfulfilling, so who can blame any of us?

"But if you want to know about the dead thing? I honestly don't understand it myself, so I can't really explain it." He lost just a little of his smile at that; the fact that he had been literally dead, twice, and yet brought back out of it through no particularly special means honestly disturbed him.

"So what can you tell me?" After all if she were to die and come back that would be useful to say the least. She tried not to seem too interested though.