goneawayworld | your canvas needs no mural to stand

Entry tags:

your canvas needs no mural to stand

Who: Setsuna, Catra, Tenten, idk?
What: Memshare fallout, probably
Where: Setsuna and Catra's dorm, Training Area, Mess Hall
When: A few days after the memshare event?
Warnings/Notes: May feature teenage girls in various stages of emotional duress, probably sparring (potentially of dubious validity), discussion of psychological harm suffered by abusively narcissistic mentor figures and self-hatred.

They've been dancing around it for days now, Setsuna knows. Caught silences in each other's throats, murmured assents to avoid any potential pitfalls a longer conversation might leave them both vulnerable to from the other, a wary, circling distance like they used to share back before ... well, before Planker's brilliant idea, and the events that followed. Before all that. Setsuna doesn't like being sure how to broach this, but she wants to give Catra time to make it her own choice.

But. It's been days. So one night she sits down in front of the disabled camera in their bedroom, hunching over herself, and flicks her eyes to meet Catra's own. She looks away quickly, too quick to say whether she's the one who looks away first.

"So," she ventures, exhausted but sleepless, "do you want to talk about it?"

---

Setsuna could have met up with her probably anywhere, but she seeks out the other girl in the Training Area instead, like she's looking for her there deliberately. (Because she is.)

"Tenten," she says, trying not to sound awkward about clearly interrupting a practice session and landing on stiff instead. "... hello. Do you have a moment? I wanted to ask you something."

---

Homesickness eats at her; she goes for a jog around the accessible parts of the Rig and the pit in her stomach only grows. She enters the Mess Hall with her hair still plastered to her forehead and dark blotches of sweat sticking her shirt to her back and a mission in her heart.

Setsuna is certain this godforsaken hunk of metal has the ingredients for it, somehow, so she is going to make some omurice and she is going to eat it.

Yes. That's exactly what she's going to do. She may, however, discover she is going to have to make more of it, for more people, than she initially planned. Are you hungry for omurice? Would you like to find out?

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Given the amount of time Tenten spends working out, the Training Area is probably the most reliable spot to find her, anyway. The sound of a punching bag being pummeled at that speed generally means that Armstrong's on a tear again or Tenten's having at it, so it's probably no surprise to find her knocking the hefty sandbag about with blurred motions and a look of concentration on her face.

Setsuna's approach doesn't break that concentration, but she gives it a second or two to think about it, then winds down and holds her hand out to catch the bag and let it slow for a moment, turning to face the younger girl. It was about time for a quick break, anyway. And no one ever really needs her for anything major, so this shouldn't take too much time out of her schedule. "Sure, Setsuna. Is something up with Catra?"

Adora would probably be the better person to ask there, but... Well, why else would someone need her help?

Setsuna blinks, then goes through a series of facial expressions starting with mild chagrin and flowing through equally mild embarrassment before settling on confused cheerfulness instead. "If something were wrong with Catra, I'd be asking you for help with Catra. I just had an idea and ... I thought you'd be the best person to ask for help with it?"

She fidgets with her fingers in a loose triangle in front of her chest, looking pensively towards the gym mirrors for lack of certainty in eye contact. "I could use a regular sparring partner to keep myself in shape, I suppose ..." She trails off, then takes a deep breath. "But I want to be in better shape. And I've watched you training in here too, and ... I want you ... to teach me ... how to be a ninja?"

Please don't laugh please don't laugh please don't laugh -

She just quietly waits for Setsuna to spit it out. For almost anyone else here, her impatience would be breaking through, but Setsuna's just so much younger that she can't bring herself to snap at her. And when she finally manages, there's only a slightly raised eyebrow.

Which, in a way, could be worse than laughter.

After a moment, she folds her arms over her chest. "Before I get into this, don't think I don't like you. But it takes a long time to get to be around the right age, I was at the Academy for five years. I might be able to speed some things up and skip over others, but are you sure you're ready to put in that much work?" The unasked question is Are you going to waste my time?

Setsuna pauses, takes in a breath, lets it go, nice and slow. Regulates her breathing like it's just another mechanism inside the precise interlocking tool that is her body. She sets one palm against the punching bag, sighing.

"Tenten ... I -" She shuts her eyes for a moment, screws them tight enough she sees stars pop behind her eyelids. Her throat bobs with a swallowing hesitation. "I guess I've never really talked much about my past with anyone here besides Catra and Adora, have I," she says, half to herself.

Her fingers buckle against the punching bag, as she pushes off it slightly, and forces herself to meet Tenten square in the eyes. "All right. I'm ... I didn't really want to talk about it much. But I guess I need to, so you know ... so you know why." Her voice is flat, impersonal, and slightly bitter, as she begins to speak. It starts off sounding like nothing so much as an after-action report, dry and shallow to mask the pain it euphemizes. "... when I was born, Moebius determined I would perform above the statistical 70th percentile for children produced by the genetic contributions extracted from my birth donors in all fields related to infiltration, psychology, and close-quarters combat proficiency. In the interests of ensuring that my biological predisposition was put to its most efficient use, I was placed under an exacting and precise regimen that would either create an exemplary forward scout for Labyrinth's ... acquisition efforts, or it would determine my inadequacy, instead, at which point I would be disposed of as Moebius saw fit, my existence having failed to contribute sufficiently to the needs of Labyrinth to justify wasting resources on supporting it further."

Setsuna pauses, just for a moment, long enough for a brittle smile to crack her features. "I did not want to be thrown away, so I did not fail." She laughs, as the rigidity drops, and she leans against the punching bag, her eyes crinkling in delight. "I only learned how to enjoy failure a few years ago, haha! It's been great! I love being a failure, I truly do. It's ... it's so much easier, just being nice to everyone, and believing in them, and being friends with everyone. I have a home, and not even ... not even being somewhere else can take that away from me. But."

She sucks in a breath. "But as long as I'm still here, I will still need to be better. There are things I'm certain I could do, that I'm not ... that I can't do yet. And ... I don't want to risk getting this kind of help from ... from someone who isn't a good friend."

Setsuna looks away, because this is the part it is hard for her to admit aloud. "Because I need someone who will worry enough about me they'll tell me when I've done enough."

Well, that's a lot to take in all at once. She blinks, wide-eyed for a moment, then gives a little shrug. Maybe Setsuna wouldn't be so far behind after all? Then again, that'd require her to be holding back during physical training, but she's hardly the worst person there.

"Well." A good friend, huh? That's... Kind of flattering, really. "Sorry. I hadn't realized." Then again, Setsuna hadn't talked about it, so... "Yeah, I can do that. We do things pretty hard and heavy back where I'm from, you might've noticed, but I'm not going to let a student of mine break themselves. Besides, there's more to being a ninja than sneaking around and being in good shape."

Chemistry. Mathematics. Psychology. Medicine. Flower arrangement. Tracking. All of these were important in one way or another. Maybe not perfect mastery, but a passing acquaintance was necessary. Several ninjas were masters of a specific topic, but they were jacks of all trades by necessity.

"I've noticed. I'm fairly skilled, but I'm not as impressive as you. Not normally, anyway." The brittleness fades, replaced with the usual genial and genuine warmth that Setsuna typically exudes. She smiles softly. "I have a few more options, sometimes, but ... I can't always rely on those, here, so ..." She trails off, shrugging.

"I've sparred with Guts a few times, and Adora. But there's more to getting better at what I want to get better at than being strong all by itself, or swinging a sword really well. And I want to get better, not just stronger. I need to be more flexible ... more capable. I can't rely on having superhuman strength, or unnatural speed, or having claws like Catra's to get me out of scary situations - I have to believe ... I have to believe I can believe in me."

That's right. There was that whole... pink-haired transformation thing she did on that mission. Tenten hadn't paid much attention, but now that she thinks about it-well. It was odd, but she'd seen too many ways of people buffing themselves to discount the possibilities a lighter hair color could bring to a fighter.

And, well. She doesn't just want to fight. "Well, that's a good start. Do you know what a ninja is or are you just approaching me because I know what I'm doing?" There's a lot of people who'd argue that she doesn't, but those people have never been on the wrong side of her. Or the right side. And while she's had her moments of depression and self-doubt, Tenten has well-earned pride in her skills. "Don't take that as an insult. I've just run into a lot of people who don't know."

"... sort of. I admit I'm unclear on the specifics, but between observing how you train and comparing it to some of the movies and comic books I've enjoyed ..." Setsuna puts one fist up against her mouth in thought. "In theory ninja belong to a tradition of stealth and efficiency, able to skillfully use their surroundings to create openings for sneak attacks. In practice many ninja tend to be loud, aggressively visible fighters who wear extremely flashy and impressive clothing and shout the names of their attacks, instead."

The latter may as well be other Pretty Cures, from where Setsuna's standing, if not for how they're mostly male, and she's only ever heard of one boy turning into a Cure before. And also, she may be biased, but being a Cure feels more ... rewarding, in her opinion, than the fictional ninja make their jobs look. As much as she knows she needs the help, here, she hopes she can hold onto that feeling, too.

She looks at Tenten, appraisingly, and nods to the older girl. "You fall somewhere between both approaches, I think?"

It takes everything for Tenten not to wheeze in agony as Setsuna reaches into her chest and just rips her soul out of her body and wipes her mouth with it.

Laughing weakly, she scratches her cheek and looks away, unable to meet Setsuna's eyes. "W-well, I definitely know some on either side of that axis..." Tenten coughs then straightens. "Shinobi are, in the words of the Second Hokage, ones who persevere. Depending on the job, we act as spies, bodyguards, and scouts, but the primary purpose of a ninja is assassination. We do everything we can to complete whatever mission is assigned to us, no matter the obstacles, even at the cost of our own lives."

So, yes, there was a lot of stuff that fits within what Setsuna wants to learn. But, put in this light, would a girl as innocent as her want to start learning? It's one thing to watch a ninja drama and think it's cool, it's another thing to learn things that've been used to kill people. Tenten knows Setsuna isn't entirely innocent, the nightmare world she's described wouldn't allow for that. But she doesn't want to be the one to further taint that innocence unless Setsuna is positive that's what she wants.

"I can teach you what you want to know, but I'm not going to paint anything in gentler terms. If you want to be my student, we're going to have to be honest about things like that."

"I don't want to kill people," Setsuna says, firmly, with conviction, though her mouth twists in a contemplative frown. "I want to try and save them, first, if possible." She folds her arms across her chest, looking down. "But -" she interjects, before Tenten can start to say something else, "I know ... I know better than most, that you can't always reach someone, no matter how much you want to. And I know, if I truly don't want to have to make that choice unless - unless I have to, it's better to know the ways I could, to be prepared for what I might have to do to prevent it."

She meets Tenten's eyes, nodding, curling her hands into fists at her sides. "If someone dies because of me, I want to live knowing I did what I could to avoid it ... and that I did what I had to, if I couldn't avoid it."

"Well, I'm not really good with non-lethal techniques," she sighs, rubbing the back of her head. "But there's enough for you to learn that we don't necessarily have to teach you anything like that, assuming you've even got time." After all, they might be sent home any moment now. "After all, we could get started with you learning about stealth or forgery or codes or things like that. Think that sounds more like what you're interested in at the moment?"

"You don't have to teach me the non-lethal versions," Setsuna says, firmly and swiftly. "If I can't extrapolate, I'll work around it as best as I can. I never liked leaving gaps in my preparations because I was squeamish before, and I don't want to start now. If I know how to employ them, I'll know how to avoid needing to. And if I know how to employ them, I won't ... fumble, when I do."

Neither of them were ever truly going to be prepared to be attacked by the incarnate Spirit of Murder, of course, but perhaps Setsuna's not the only one who thinks back on this conversation, months later, and thinks, If only I'd worked harder in those lessons, if only we'd started training together sooner, maybe it would have gone differently, somehow.

"But ... stealth, certainly. I wouldn't mind learning how to do better at that."

Anyone with a sane upbringing would nod and go 'Of course, but we'll save the murder lessons for how about never' or 'When you'd a little older,' but Tenten's been at this since she was younger even than Setsuna. So, instead, she says "Well, we'll see how fast you grasp some things. But, by the time you're able to get into a spar, you'll be picking some things up anyway, so you might as well learn them right when you do."

She pauses, glancing at Setsuna. It's a little hard to tell with the baggy exercise uniforms, but she moves like a dancer. Tenten would guess she's had at least a little training in that area. "I'm not ready for anything yet, but..." She swings one leg out, then halts it when her feet are roughly half again as wide as her shoulders. She crouches down until her thighs are parallel with the floor, maintaining an upright posture with her upper body. With how rigidly she manages, she may as well be sitting on an invisible stool.

"This is your horse stance. I can tell you're probably not going to have a problem with the form." She gestures at herself, demonstrating still. "It's gonna be basic for a lot of things, so to strengthen your muscles and build some discipline, I'm going to say that we can pick up combat more when you can maintain this for ten minutes." With a child, she'd go for a much shorter time. But Setsuna was, what, fourteen? She could handle more, right? "Until you can manage that, we'll focus largely on mental stuff, and things like stealth, but I'd have to sit down to figure out where to begin there. Sound fair?"

She's sixteen. She's not that much younger than Tenten, jeez.

Setsuna carefully attempts to mirror Tenten's posture; it's not flawless, but it's fairly solid for a first attempt at horse stance from someone who's almost certainly not seen it before. "Hmmm ... like this? For ten minutes?"

Internally she judges how it feels to hold herself steady in this position and makes a rough estimate that she can manage four minutes without too much difficulty. She reminds herself there's no penalty for not managing the full ten on her first try, and that if she tries too hard she'll be in worse shape than otherwise, but there's a mule-stubborn part of her that looks at her estimated personal best and thinks you ought to be able to do better anyway.

Inhale, exhale. Settle. Be sure. Setsuna martials her breathing, steady and slow, before remembering to nod and respond aloud instead of thinking the assent in her head. "... mm! Yes, yes ... that sounds fair to me too."

Catra is curled up on her bed, trying hard to ignore the awful, awkward rift that seems to have opened between her and Setsuna. It's galling, knowing that someone else knows about her history. She wants to try and keep acting like this is something she doesn't need to worry about it. Or that it never happened. But then of course, there's Setsuna, prodding at her. She grits her teeth and rolls over onto her side so she can look more directly at Setsuna.

"Why would I want to talk about it?"

Setsuna hunches up around herself further before exhaling with her whole body and leaning back, letting one hand flop to the side limply, hands curling up into the air around nothing.

"Because ..." Her fingers clench, unclench. "I know you're going to say we're nothing alike, if I put it this way. And maybe you're right, but maybe ... I know, it's the times when I didn't want to talk about it, those were the times I needed to the most." She shrugs, thudding her head back against the wall. "But ... I know I didn't want to talk then, either, because ... I knew nobody cared enough about me to ask me the right questions."

Catra doesn't know how to feel about what Setsuna says. She feels disgustingly vulnerable and weak and open. The kind that means a knife is about to get driven into her and twisted. She curls up a bit tighter, though her mismatched eyes stay locked onto her roommate.

"...No one ever cared about me," she says finally after a long moment of consideration. Or just hating herself for being so weak. For feeling so weak.

"It's a strange feeling, to realize someone could," Setsuna says, meeting Catra's eyes briefly as she tilts her head back to stare at the ceiling.

"I never believed anyone would, for most of my life. Not the way ... anyone from what I guess someone would call a 'normal' life would, anyway. Someone who had parents, who loved them. I thought love was ... a pointlessly inefficient emotion, I suppose. Even though I wanted it. More than anything, I think I just wanted to be loved. But the people I thought I wanted to love me ... never could."

She swallows, unsure how to word the next thought. "Or, well ... I guess, in retrospect, they had to leave everything we knew as 'home' behind, too, to learn it, the same way I was - forced to." Her head thunks against the wall. "I ... hated leaving them. All I wanted was for them to come with me. For them stay with me even still, because if I stayed with them I'd be dead, or worse, and I wanted to live for their sake. If I'd known what 'home' was then I'd have known they were my home. If I'd known what 'love' was then I'd have known I loved them."

She shuts her eyes, the tears slipping down her cheeks. It's an old pain, and normally a pleasant ache like a wound long healed, but it's close to the surface today, and she's far from home, indeed. "I'd never have figured it out myself, if it wasn't for that stubborn, stupid girl who I'd spent most of my time up to that point furiously trying to kill, because part of me was sure, if I just could destroy her, I'd have enough respect for my skills that it would be enough like being loved ... and, after all, I wouldn't have known the difference anyway."

Setsuna huffs, a wry laugh. "But she loved me anyway. Loves me still." She opens her eyes, full of tears.

"Yes, indeed. What a strange feeling it was, to realize someone could."

Catra tenses as she listens to Setsuna speaks. It all sounds familiar. Disgustingly, awfully, horrifyingly familiar. The desire to be acknowledged, recognized, loved despite knowing that it would never happen. The pain of being the one left behind is still a dull ache in her chest. She clenches a fist tautly against her chest and tries to fight back the sting of tears in her eyes. She rolls over and presses her face into her pillow to try and hide the tears. Weakness isn't something she can afford to show and yet Setsuna is opening up to her. Wouldn't it be right to do the same? Or at least to try? She swallows, then speaks with a muffled voice.

"I know what you mean about just wanting them to... Care. I wanted Shadow Weaver to acknowledge me. I hated her but... But I really wanted it."

It's not difficult to sense Catra's own grief from Setsuna's position on the floor, despite the distance between them. But Catra, in Setsuna's opinion, needs this. (She is almost certainly thinking so from personal experience.) She needs space to grieve herself for her own sake, without fearing what anyone else sees. But Setsuna doesn't want Catra to feel like she has to live through her weakness alone, either; so she closes her eyes and wills herself to keep talking.

"The terror of the consequences of Lord Moebius's disappointment in me, and ... the simple need for him to look at me with affection and pride, just once ... for so long, I never knew they weren't the same emotion, as much as I would pretend I felt no such thing, regardless. If I could have killed her to make him satisfied in me - if I could've killed myself to know I'd proven my worth to him -" She grits her teeth in the remembrance of that screaming fury, raising up one hand, fingers splayed, to look through her fingers as if she could bisect each memory between them. "But even as I tried, I already knew I'd never be able to do either of those things, in the end. And I hated them both for it. I hated Lord Moebius for demanding it of me. I hated Love for not understanding why I had to fight her."

She takes a long, shuddering breath, weeping openly herself now. Her words bite at the air, as the old bitterness resurfaces in her memory. "But in fact, I hated myself in those moments more than I ever could have hated either of them, because deep down I already knew what it was I really wanted, and I knew that neither of them would ever really see me enough to understand why I couldn't do what they wanted."

"I tried really hard for a while," Catra says in a quiet voice, her voice low and unhappy. She's curled in tightly, tense and trying to shut out the world as if it might help dissuade her from believing that something awful is going to happen just from saying these things. She digs her claws against herself and the prickle of pain reminds her of the times she'd hurt physically. Those had been almost better, she thinks, then all the anguish.

"I realized after a while though that no matter how hard I worked at being 'good' or measuring up to her stupid expectations she'd never actually acknowledge me as long as Adora was there. So I settled for being the bad one. The lazy one. Why would I try when I get punished for it no matter what, right?" She can feel the tears starting to flow more freely and hates that she's crying. She's not weak. She's not weak.

"It wasn't even that she wanted something impossible from me. She just never had any expectation for me except failure. So I lived down to it, I guess."

[Setsuna's quiet for a moment, as she lets it all sink in. It's almost audible in her breath, when the realization fully connects, Setsuna's mouth forming a silent oh as she presses her head back against the wall, eyes, closed. She lifts one arm to lay it across her knees, fingers dangling loose. She only manages to utter a single thought in response, but there's enough emotional undertow beneath it to drown in.]

... and then Adora left you.

[Setsuna breathes out, eyes closed, and thinks of Westar screaming at her as the city screamed in fire around him, as all the echoes of what that meant for Catra keep ringing in her ears.]

[And then Adora left you. And then Adora left you. And then Adora left you.]

[And then, Adora, left you.]

[ Catra flinches when Setsuna says those words. They're what she's said to herself over and over and over through the last three years. They're familiar and painful and yet sound so different spoken aloud by someone who isn't herself. She clenches her hands into fists and tries not to let more tears slip free of her eyes.

She doesn't succeed. ]

She left. She said she was always going to be there for me and she left and I was alone. All I wanted was to be next to her and she left me! For strangers!

[ She turns and presses her face harder into her pillow. She wants to scream. To shred the bedclothes into tiny pieces. ]

I had to stay strong and prove myself all over again! I had to show I wasn't weak!

[Setsuna waits, sympathetically, while Catra rages, letting the companionable silence soak up the pain, make it bearable. At least, she hopes it will.]

... can I ask you something?

[Setsuna plays with her fingers against each other, wishing she had something to hold in them, like a four-leaf clover charm, perhaps. There's a searching melancholy to her words, as she pulls them together carefully. There isn't room in her voice for accusation, or dismissal, only a piercing and sincere compassion; the way she says it, it's like the question doesn't occur to her because she thinks Catra's broken or wrong in what she chose, but rather because she feels certain it was the opposite, in truth.]

You could've still ... been at her side if you'd left with her, right? If being next to her was all you ever wanted to have from her ... why didn't you leave, too?

[ Catra curls up into a ball. She wants to disappear but finds it impossible. She is here and exposed and can do nothing about it. ]

You're gonna ask anyway.

[ She lapses into silence. The compassion hurts worse than accusation. At least accusation she could deflect. This is straight-forward caring and she cannot avoid it. She is bared. The question is one she's asked herself before. One that Adora has asked, too. She's never really been sure of the answer in exact terms. ]

Because she left me.

[ Her voice cracks and breaks, pure anguish and loneliness spilling out of her. It is still a raw pain, even years afterwards. ]

For strangers. To follow the stupid destiny or whatever that Shadow Weaver always put in her head. I wasn't as important to her as being the hero who saved the world or ruled the Horde or whatever it was she was supposed to do.

Mm.

[It's a noncommittal sort of affirmation, neither disapproving or really encouraging that line of thought on her end. Setsuna's thinking, though ... her mouth purses, o-shaped, as she takes in a breath.]

I think I understand what you mean. She's all you had for so long, and you're saying, you thought it was the same way for her ... and then something shiny and new came along and ... she's running after it without even hesitating to bring you in on it first?

Why couldn't she have just come back with you, instead? Why couldn't she have been less eager to change into someone you couldn't even recognize?

[Setsuna lapses into silence, letting the agonies she's given voice to linger in the air.]

If you took away all her excuses about having a destiny, or being a hero ... and then you asked her why she wanted to save the world, or who she was trying to save it for. We've talked, a couple times, and ... I don't know for sure, but I've been starting to wonder if the better world she was fighting for was, maybe ... a world she wanted to save for you. So I ... think you might be really important to her, too.

But I don't know if she knows how much she really matters, as a person, the way you want her to. I think she's like me, a little. We're both afraid everyone will abandon us the minute we're no longer helpful. I wish ...

I wish I knew a way to help you show her that the better world she left you for would never be worth anything to you if it was always going to be a world she left you in.

Yeah, well. Maybe that's what she would say. But maybe it's not. Who knows?

[ Catra feels a bitter swell of unhappy self-loathing deep in her chest. She's not worth it to Adora, in the end. She's never been worth it and Shadow Weaver was right. No one has a reason to want her around and Adora... Adora only ever pitied her. Or maybe she thought she really did like Catra, but then more important things came along to replace her. ]

If she cared, she wouldn't have left me in the first place. I don't know what she wants. She never says what she actually wants. She just does whatever Shadow Weaver tells her to do. Or her new friends. Or whoever gives her some sense of purpose.

[ She sits up at that, her tail giving an unhappy lash. ]

She's going to throw herself away for everyone else because she doesn't see how important she is to other people and I don't know how to show her.

Catra ...

[Setsuna makes an unhappy shrug, and huddles in on herself, thoughtful and quiet. She turns her head aside, looking down at the floor.]

Have you ever told her that's how you feel? Have you ever, do you think ... could you ever let her know how weak you feel, like this?

... I don't think she's ... capable. Of understanding people enough, to ... to realize how much she stole away from you, when she left. I remember how you used to say you didn't need friends, or anything else, when we first met ... and maybe that's true. I would ... never want you to think I'm here, with you, out of some sort of ... pity.

But you need something more than you need friends like me. I'm starting to see that clearly. You need her.

And I think she believes you want her. But I don't think she knows ... I think she believes it, when you say you don't need anyone anymore, that you mean her, too, instead of ... instead of how much you need her, that you wish you could kill her so she'd stop mattering so much to you, so - [Setsuna lifts her hands, scrunching her eyes, curling her fingers like claws.] - so much, you wish she'd stop talking about all her friends, like they're more important, instead of giving you what you want from her.

[Setsuna sinks into silence, breathing heavily, as the emotion slips away from her. She wipes at her face with one hand, swiping sweat and tears away in a single gesture.]

But the only way she'll understand that is if you actually ... confront her with it. With the truth, until she has to look you in the eyes and admit that she sees it ... that she sees it in you. That she sees you.

And I, [she smiles, wry, a little laughter seeping into her voice,] obviously can't tell you what to do, but I think you should try, someday. Because I think you deserve to be understood.

She's such an idiot.

[ Catra laughs a little. It's not really a happy laugh. It's just a sound of exasperation, of regret, of grief. She doesn't know what to do anymore, doesn't get how Setsuna can just see right through all of this to the heart of the matter when Adora doesn't get it. ]

You just. Get it. You see what I'm talking about. You just see right through me and tear me open like some stupid book. But she doesn't get it. I feel like she's never going to get it. Even if I grab her and yell it all into her face.

[ She scrubs at her eyes with her hands. She's still crying. She hates that she's crying but there's relief in it, relief in knowing that someone else gets it. ]

I don't know if I can tell her all this. I don't know if I can handle it if I lose her again.

Maybe not yet. But I think you should try it, if you can find the strength to.

[Setsuna shifts, leaning forward, resting her chin against her legs. Her arms slip down till her hands curl around her ankles.]

I know it's easier to fight her, because making her angry feels right ... I know it's easier to look at her when you know she thinks of you as a threat she has to deal with, again, just like everyone else does. It's comfortable, in a way. You know how that story ends, and you know how to make it sound like victory.

But it'll never be anything else. And ... I know you know that's not what you want, from this. And it's a risk, but ... sometimes ...

[Setsuna heaves another sigh, fiddling with her shoelaces.]

Maybe if I put it this way: when I was growing up, there was a lesson everyone who proved of sufficient ambition to qualify to learn it was taught, in Labyrinth, and expected to apply in our interactions with each other thereafter. It was supposed to remind us that the only plan we could rely on besides our own was the will of Lord Moebius and that our peers would always be our rivals, but I've found it to still be very applicable even in much less paranoid situations. I'm sure you've heard something like it before, in the Horde, too, so ... maybe we both need a reminder of what we're capable of.

[She raises one hand, palm up and open, as she lifts her head to look across the room to Catra, tilting her head slightly ... and then clenches that hand tight, into an emphatic fist.]

If a game is rigged to keep someone from getting what they want, the kind of person who knows how to get what they want anyway will just break the gameboard.

[Then she shuts her eyes, and shrugs, sinking back against the wall.]

Something like that, anyway. It sounded less audibly evil in my head, while I was remembering it. I guess I just ... I want you to know I believe in you, Catra, either way.

Thanks.

[ THat's all Catra can think to say to the emphatic speech. It sounds hollow to her, but she doesn't have the energy to say so or argue about it. She leans back against the wall of her bunk and looks across the room at Setsuna. Tears still sting her eyes. Catra just feels tired, drained of emotion. Like she's a hollow thing that's been scooped and scraped out. ]

I...

[ She lowers her head to her knees. What is she trying to say? She doesn't know anymore. ]

Someone getting it helps, I guess. You... understand. You're not judging me. You just know what this feels like, I guess. In some way.

[Setsuna really wants to cross the room and sit down beside Catra and hug her, but she gave the other girl her word that she'd wait till Catra asked. She intends to keep it. So instead she offers a lopsided smile, wiping at her own face. It's been a pretty emotionally draining conversation for the both of them, really.]

Yeah. In some way.

You left. I mean the Labyrinth or whatever? And... you couldn't get your friends to go with you?

[ Catra isn't sure she picked up on that, but it sounds so achingly familiar. ]

...How did that make you feel?

[Setsuna intakes a breath. She'd both dreaded and yearned to talk about this with Catra, but ... she lets the breath out, still smiling, though it's gone all wobbly with still-tender grief again.]

Terrible. It felt ... terrible. All they wanted was to have me go back with them, because ... because then I'd have been where I belonged, where they understood who I was for them, and they wouldn't have to ... wouldn't have to keep living with a hole in their hearts that everything we'd believed in before then had assured us even the most incompetent of us was above needing to feel.

And ... I wanted ... a part of me wished I could. [Her fingers grip at her knees, tightly.] I wanted to! They were - are, still - my dearest and oldest friends. We'd grown up together; that ... didn't used to mean the same thing to us as it does to non-Labyrinthians, but we knew each other's weak spots without being able to wound each other with them anymore, which was realistically as close as any Labyrinthian could be said to get to ... the idea of being "friends" with someone else, back then. But I couldn't. I'd ... I didn't know, then, how to tell them what had changed, not in a way that they'd be able to hear.

How I'd changed. [She ducks her head. She doesn't want to talk about this part, not really, not even with Catra, and even so, she almost has to start somewhere else, in the explanation, to psych herself up to it.] And I don't mean that ... metaphorically. Or just emotionally.

[She nudges at her cheek with the back of her hand, like she's trying to wipe away a smudge, or a tear.]

Lord Moebius, he - I don't know how it is in your world, but we Labyrinthians existed by his will, and that alone. He knew our metaphysical makeup, was, by virtue of his ... [Her mouth twists in bitter, ironic anger.] "Miraculous creation", capable of observing us down to the very fabric of our being. Nothing we did was outside the borders of his awareness; our birth, our life, our deaths were as he decreed them to be, for he could determine our most useful future under his guidance from the moment of our birth, the very picosecond our life data were observed and absorbed into the flow of information he oversaw every moment of every day. Our failures, too, were predictable and predictably disappointing, for those of us who were judged capable of producing more useful service than our peers.

And none of us, old or young, ever outlived our usefulness. That would be wasteful. And Labyrinth was the world of perfection, where all served the will of Moebius, who alone could see all and determine the best uses for all. In such a world there was no such thing as waste.

[Setsuna's voice has never sounded so bitter. Or so cold. She sounds far older than her age, far older than anyone her age should be made to sound.]

I tried, you know. I tried everything I could to resist being ... influenced by ... her feelings. I almost killed them all - [she chokes, the hot regret ripping at her breath, nearly strangling her next words] - I nearly killed them. I was killing myself by that point anyway, feeding the Nakewameke with my own lifeforce like I had to, to overcome them. They kept talking about how they couldn't fail, they had friendship on their side. [Her voice sinks into a lower, slightly guttural register, for a moment.] It made me sick. What would they know, when Labyrinth was perfect and all-powerful, anyway? They'd be crushed and rehabilitated under Moebius' watchful graces like all the rest of their kind, and then they'd see what the "friendship" that they valued highly enough to find the strength to go on was worth, in the end. They could keep winning battles all they wanted. Lord Moebius would never lose the war.

I ... [She shudders on a breath, and lets herself relax, just enough to let the feelings go. But she can't quite, and her voice shakes in the recollection.] I couldn't let myself be tripped up by ... the sense of disquiet I felt, in their company. Like I was the one that was doing everything wrong.

[The tears break through again, without restraint now.] And in the end I failed. I fought and fought and I failed Lord Moebius and I failed even myself, because I couldn't resist wanting more than he promised. I couldn't resist wishing ... that I could have friends, too.

[She smiles, awfully.] And I told you what Labyrinth does to useless things, right? I wasn't special, in this. A sharp pain in my chest. That's all I felt, after Moebius took back his abiding hand from me. I had known the appointed time of my death, of course, but I'd somehow ... lost track of time. I died so easily that day.

[She's quiet, long enough she almost seems to be done, before she takes a long breath and tries to finish her story.]

Not staying dead was ... harder. I had to choose to, and I'd never had to really choose without knowing the outcome of my choices either way was already expected of me. It was terrifying. But I remembered what I'd wanted, right before I died, and I still wanted it.

I remember ... it had been raining when I died. It must have been a torrent that blew away before I woke up again, because the sky was so bright and blue when I opened my eyes ...

I couldn't have returned to Labyrinth after that, even if I'd wanted to. Not as the life I'd lost, anyway. Labyrinth is no place for needless things. Maybe I could've gone back, and reintegrated into Lord Moebius' grand design, if I'd wanted to. But I couldn't. I'd - seen things beyond his plans for me, and I'd ... I'd felt how little my life mattered to him. I'd be going back to ashes, and loneliness, and it wouldn't mean anything. My dying already hadn't.

The next time I saw my old friends, they were tearing the city I'd started to think of staying in apart, looking for me. And by that point I'd ... I couldn't look at the people around us the same way anymore. It wasn't that they were any less helpless against Labyrinth than before, any more capable of truly defending themselves if we chose to truly come in force, instead of merely taking what we wanted. But ... for the first time, I wasn't facing them as part of Labyrinth, united. I was ... on the other side of the violence I'd accepted as a matter of course all my life. And in every scream I heard my own, as if it came from my own lungs. And when I looked at my ... at my friends, I didn't see people I wanted to fight. I saw people Lord Moebius had hurt, just like me. When I looked into their eyes ... they couldn't even name what it was I'd ripped from its place inside their heart when I left, only that if I refused to come back then I was refusing to fix it, and I was the one that always knew how to turn a bad loss into a chance to win next time.

I didn't want to fight them. I wanted to fight Lord Moebius, so I'd never have to. But I was afraid ... I was so afraid of going home. I knew I wasn't ready for that. And I couldn't risk leaving them to ... I knew what it would mean. If we succeeded in what we were really doing on Earth. I knew what we'd lose, if we never learned the things I'd come to learn from the people of Earth about ... what it could mean, to call Labyrinth our home. I couldn't let them win. For their sake, for everyone's, I had to stop them.

So I fought them.

[And then she's quiet.]

[ Catra listens, partially because she hopes it will give her some insight into what Adora is thinking and feeling. She listens because despite herself, she has come to appreciate and care for Setsuna. She listens because Setsuna has spent so much time listening to her how can she do anything else? She stays quiet the whole time that Setsuna is speaking, processing everything as it comes. Labyrinth sounds even worse than the Fright Zone in a way that makes her blood run cold. No matter what happened in the Fright Zone, no one ever made her something she wasn't. She always had a choice to fight, to resist, to be something other then what they tried to make her.

She listens. When Setsuna speaks of the hole ripped in others hearts by her leaving, her own heart aches in sympathy. She knows that feeling so well it makes her want to vomit. The sensation of hurting, of hurting so deeply because you had no idea that you could be hurt in that way by that person. When Setsuna finishes, she takes a long, slow breath. And then: ]

Wait, you died? Like died for real?

[Setsuna pauses. Puts one hand over her face and wipes away the tension sweat, the tears, and lets out a long, slow breath, bracing herself some even as she forces the breath into a nice, calming exhale.]

[Saying all that was a lot. Finding the strength to say anything else takes a little bit.]

Yeah. Yes. I died, for real. If not for Akarun, I'd probably still be dead.

[ Catra sits in that for a long moment. She thinks she might have died, too, though she doesn't know for sure. In the portal, when she had let herself go, she had expected to die, anyway. ]

...I'm glad you're not dead.

[ She says it in a quiet voice, admitting that vulnerability. She has to open up her heart to say that and she fears what will happen when she does. But Catra does it anyway. ]

[Setsuna smiles tightly back at her, genuine and grateful.]

... me too.

[It feels like enough. She doesn't want to make a scene about how happy she is to hear that from the other girl; she doesn't want Catra to feel ashamed of her kindness, after all, and she knows such an expression of gratitude would do exactly that. She's too tired to be as overjoyed as she could be, anyway. But perhaps the quiet happiness and relief in her face says more than any outward performance of it otherwise ever could.]

Let's both do our best to keep it that way from now on, okay?

Yeah. I'll do my best.

[ Catra is quiet again for a long moment, as if perhaps that's all she's going to say. She wonders, a little, if she has already exposed too much of herself to others. To Setsuna.

She says more anyway. ]

You'd better stick around.

[ She's not asking for a promise, really. It's just her way of saying 'I want that too.' ]

[Setsuna laughs, thin but light, and gives her roommate an impish grin.]

I'm afraid you're stuck with me through thick and thin, Catra. You'll just have to live with it.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

your canvas needs no mural to stand

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backtag, backtag, backtag, ahoy

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sorry it took so long for me to get to this

haha that makes two of us now

♥

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