trans_9 | Denial? Just a little bit.

Entry tags:

Denial? Just a little bit.

Who: Kaya, open to all.
Where: Sensoriums
Summary: Ed not remembering her is sort of the last straw, so she's getting her aggressions out.
Warnings: Um. Are there any? TBA, I guess?

But so much for that now. Right now Kaya, who had had a pretty bad last few months, found the last straw was bringing Ed back and having him not even recognizer her had been the last straw. Now she was just standing here, around a background of water and streams, and she was moving in a combination.

First there was her own bending. Smooth, flowing each movement into the other, legs supporting the base as arms and shoulders tensed and drew forward, calling the water up and around her, making waves into developed whips, turning that into solid substances and back again.

And then, when the Bene Gesserit came into play, that slowed but accurate action became quick, deliberate fast. Her body become a putty oin increments as she geared for offensive kicks and movement, pushing her body to the limits here. There was no turning back, no moment of reflection.

At this moment, Kaya wondered what would become of her training, if they would form a base of strength and bending even she didn't fully understand yet. She would put aside those feelings of helplessness, of pain she could not do more.

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"I figured that," Kaya said. "It hasn't escaped my notice you wish you were who you were back then. But you were also cruel, hurt people, and overall created chaos for other people in our world. Now look at how you are, and think: is the reason you don't have that because you lost, or because there was something you were missing when you lost?"

Azula tried not to let it show just how sharply she felt the question sink into her chest like a well placed spear, but Kaya had nailed down the question that Azula had been wrestling with for months.

Why had she broken down?

It was one thing to become depressed after losing a match, another to become discouraged. But what had caused the insomnia? The Paranoia? The hallucinations?

The harder she tried to focus the more the noise in her head began to roar in her ears like a raging river in a thunderstorm.

"I don't regret anything I did back in our world. Let's be entirely clear." her words were deliberate and slow, as she focused most of her energy on staying calm rather then flying off the handle like she so desperately longed to do right at this moment.

"And that's your own damage, or at least where it starts," Kaya said, arranging herself quietly. "You may have earned your position as Princess of the Fire nation, but cruelty and malice and pain was a common thing to you. It doesn't surprise me in the least you wouldn't regret it now. That's sad, but you're hardly the first person on the ship to revel in other people's pain."

She shrugged. "But you also didn't answer my question, and there's something very telling about that."

"Sad? Or practical? Or is it just another one of those arguments where neither of us will ever back down?" Azula questioned in return. After all who was SHE to pass judgment on the actions Azula had taken growing up?

Even if she did have a point about not answering the question. "Just what does that tell you then oh wise and edified one?" The title was said as sarcastically as the Fire Princess could muster.

"I don't expect you to see things from my point if view: how could you? you were born to rule and you worked your way into your father's eyes. I was born knowing the terror of the fire nation coming and what that meant for your people and where you lived. You'll forgive me if I will never see things from your unique position."

Because really, there was no way she would feel bad about what Azula used to be, remembering what the Fire Nation did.

"It tells me you don't want to answer that question, because you believe so much that your upbringing and your position was perfect. But it couldn't have been, not with how you fell to mind sickness. Do you even know why it happened?"

Azula did, and she had thought about it every which way but in the end it all came back to one specific day and one particular event that was burned into her mind.

"Clearly it's because I worked so hard for so long to get something I deserved only to have it stolen from me."

That was a lie. But she wasn't about to go confessing that she was well aware her grip was slipping before that day. Not to this girl anyway. Not yet. Maybe not ever.

"You lost a fight. Anyone can lose one of those, it doesn't mean everything they 'deserved' is gone. Besides, I had Katara's memories in my mind: you weren't in top form, even with Sozen's comet in effect. Something happened that day to you and you know it."

She shouldn't push, but she simply KNEW something happened with Azula: that evidence wasn't even hard to concoct. No one went crazy that easy, and believing she did because she lost was an insult to her prowess.

Azula growled gently turning away from Kaya "It's not as if I simply lost a match. I lost my entire Kingdom! My Father's respect, A life's work stolen from me by a underhanded watertribe trick."

Her voice lowered, "If she had just died the way she was supposed to...I won that Agni Kai, but I ended up locked away all the same." Her muscles were winding up again, nails digging into her palms.

Kaya narrowed her eyes. "Well for all your talk, you certainly can't take a loss. Bunch on nonsense, 'waterbending trick.' She beat you, fair and square, because she knows here element as good as you know yours. You lost your faith in yourself when you lost, and you just blame it on other people."

Sorry Azula, she was not going to go easy on you here, especially not when it came to Katara. You wouldn't to her.

"You know darn well why you were locked away. You lost it, before and at the end. And if you're content to continue lying about that, there's no reason for us to continue this conversation. I'm too tired to put up with lies today."

"You're the one who wouldn't let me leave!" The former princess protested rising to her feet again. "Don't get frustrated with me just because you keep hoping there's more to me then what I am. You can keep digging all you like but you're not going to find any sort of magic switch to make me break down into tears and beg for forgiveness."

When she turned her glare on Kaya again it was quivering with madness. her eyes were unfocused as she teetered on the edge of another breakdown. Her life spent in such a constant perilous balance, no wonder she was so often cranky or miserable. All it took was a little conflict, some uncomfortable subjects and she would become upset beyond her own control.

"Mastery of blue fire: it is only a bender with supreme control of their emotions, the cold heart bending, that can use it. In that time, you were one of the few. I remember hearing that from your Uncle. If you think I'm frustrated with you, I am: you keep choosing to run away from what might actually help you. I'm not talking about being good: I mean what made you break down to begin with."

Hearing Kaya remind her of the power she had lost made her grind her teeth and grip her fists till her knuckles turned white.

"I'm running away, because I don't want to do something that will get me locked up again. But you're making it very hard not to change my mind on that."

"Look, you've been here a really long time. You've made some progress in some ways, and that's good. But they never bothered to find out why you went crazy in the first place, and that was their job. For all the better technology and these new ways of thinking are supposed to be, they glossed over you. I think you know that too."

She ignored the threat: if she attacked her, she would simply have to defend herself, and since when was that new?

That much even Azula couldn't deny. The few that had bothered to try and analyze her...

"And what makes you think you're so much more qualified to succeed where they failed? It's not as though I'm particularly comfortable talking with you."

"Are you really comfortable talking with anyone? You might say a stranger is better than me, but a stranger knows nothing about our world and cares more about documenting you as a case rather than a person. If there's anything you should have figured out with me is that I do care what happens to you."

Azula couldn't help the paranoia that was pulsing in her head with every word. "You care because I'm a threat. And then when you figured out I wasn't as much of a threat as I used to be it was about pity. Now it's because we're both outcasts from our own world."

"Please. Do you think you're the only threat on the ship I ever had to deal with? If you don't want pity don't be so eager to throw yourself to the wolves. I care because I think no one has bothered to even get to know you and want you to get better besides me and Nima. You've been an arguing point, a danger, a person someone with a degree was saddled with. And now, with someone who actually wants you to at least be something you were before, you react with the same paranoia you have about everyone. Stop and think about why that might be."

And there was a little of her BG teacher there, no doubt, with Katara's reproach mixed in.

Azula opened her mouth to speak again but snapped it shut sharply and sat, every muscle as tight as it could be as she struggled against herself. She chased the logic around in circles but couldn't grasp hold of it. The words she wanted were just out of reach and just out of sight. All she felt was the pulsing of pressure in her head, the sweat running down the back of her neck. Suddenly the heat that had been such a comfort to her felt like it was cooking her from the inside.

Silently she sat staring into space, the occasional shiver raced through her as the same question repeated itself over and over and over again.

why?

She was silent, watching Azula a moment and then settling down, breathing deep. The sun baked on and Kaya sweated, but she showed no signs of discomfort. She remembered a memory Katara had once about being lost on the desert with the crew, and how tempers had flared and Aang had gone into Avatar state. It had been her fear that she would react similarly when she trained in the climate Sheeana favored.

Kaya sniffed appreciatively. "I still remember the first time I wanted to learn something new on this ship. I stumbled upon my first teacher, Sheeana, dancing and moving in ways I thought impossible for a human. But the area of the exotic, the new, the pervasive was there, and so was the fight. It reminded me of how much bigger the world was, and how I wanted to be a part of that."

While at first it might appear Azula had gone catatonic with anger and frustration at Kaya or herself, she nodded gently listening to her story. it brought a memory of her own out through the chaos of her constantly noisy mind.

It had been at a Fire Festival, she and Zuko had been set free to wander the stalls with only a few guards lurking protectively in the shadows.

There had been a fire dancer, beautiful, graceful. Her moves were like a flickering flame all on their own. Azula had still been a young girl at the time and tried to copy them, doing extremely well for having only watched the act once. But on a more complicated move she fell on her bottom and the people who had been watching laughed.

Red faced, Azula had stormed off, and later the dancer suffered a bad broken leg when her dancing stage mysteriously collapsed under her. No one had ever even suspected...

But all of that remained locked in her head as she felt the false sun struggling to break through her fair royal skin and tan her.

Kaya, naturally, tanned well, even if she was used to the colder climates: her dark skinned simple darkened a shade, and even stills he was disciplined enough to take it.

"Life on the ship is like that: you come across so many bad things, so much ill will you wonder if there was any point in Stacy saving you. But then you see something that truly astound you, that makes you remember you live because you have the strength to endure, and because you have the power to beat anything. So you do. You temper yourself, you take a breath, and you live on."

Because when it got down to it? She wanted more of the world outside of what she knew, wanted to see things through other eyes. She wanted, in short, to live.

The time seemed to stretch on, the silence positively deafening until finally.

"They betrayed me."

Those three words. She didn't move, didn't blink, if anything she was staring harder with the focus of a laser into the distance.

Kaya opened her eyes slowly, meeting the firebenders with quiet consideration.

She didn't need to ask who.

"Mai and Ty Lee."

She didn't move except for the slighted twitch of her wrists tightening the grip of her fists again in acknowledgment. She wouldn't say the words because she knew what Kaya would tell her.

They had betrayed her when she needed them most because she had made a mistake. The relationship between Zuko and Mai, the one that SHE was responsible for creating had been too strong to break.

She had destroyed herself, but it was so much easier to blame them.

"The more I listen to the stories, the more I start to piece things together. Ty Lee was someone I think you can manipulate: I've seen her after the war, she was pretty happy as a Kyoshi warrior. So I think the biggest betrayal didn't come from her, thought you did feel it. It was from Mai."

Trust, she had often crashed against that particular brick wall.

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