Kubo ♫ Kubo and the Two Strings (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
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legionworld2016-10-22 12:09 am
bachido) wrote in legionworld2016-10-22 12:09 am
Entry tags:
Closed to Wash
Who| Kubo, Agent Washington
What| Azula is shockingly good at pushing Kubo's buttons, and so Our Hero's second day Legioning is significantly worse than his first.
Where| the Hab
When| Before Murderworld.
Warnings/Notes| Crying about dead parents contained herein
The Hab was vast enough to get lost in, and Kubo was doing his best to get lost in it.
Shaken after his encounter with Azula, Kubo simply moved from one environment to another, putting distance between himself and the fiery soldier. The cruelty in her smile lingered as if she'd burned him with more than words.
He knew about cruelty, for certain. He'd known people who'd stick a knife in someone's wounds and laugh about it - he was related to those people.
But his aunts had not been mortal. Even his grandfather had grown kind when he became mortal, as if humanity itself were an inherent hallmark of compassion. As if laughing cruelty belonged to cold immortals alone. But a girl his own age had listened to him speak his deepest, most heartfelt sorrow, his wound that never fully healed, and she had laughed and called his mother and father weak for dying. Called him weak for being their son.
Kubo could not stop feeling shaken. How could one person say that to another? How could one mortal be so like his aunts after all? And yet she was here by the same means, for the same purpose he was. The same Time Trapper had selected him and selected her. The same Legion had taken from him the same oath they'd taken from her.
He'd thought such people would be similar as members of one village. Not one a compassionate storyteller, the other as smilingly cruel as the masks his aunts had worn.
Worse yet, it dawned on Kubo even as he thought it that it didn't matter if she reminded him more of the villain of his own story than of his heroes - she still was better suited to this task than he was.
His eye filled with tears as he walked, out of a deserted seaside city and into a path that meandered through tall aspens. Azula had made too many good points. He'd agreed to be a warrior for the Legion, but he'd be fighting alongside a girl with fire so hot it warmed the Sword Unbreakable, and his power was over paper. Paper that was flammable, and ran out. And his control over it was even weakened from what it had become back home. He was the son of an impossibly great swordswoman, and the mightiest samurai in immortal memory, but his skills with his sword and bow were basic. With his mother and father gone, they would never be better.
He dwelled, for a second, in the memory of his father calling him a hero for doing no more than taking care of his mother. The memory could never stop warming his heart. But a real hero would not be stumbling down forest paths with an eye full of tears, wondering how he was even going to do the task he'd sworn to do.
The only thing there seemed to be TO do was practice. He stopped in a clearing by a small brook and drew the Sword Unbreakable. Wiping the tears from his eye, he went into his first form, face already red from sniffling.
His mother hadn't just taught him the basics, she'd insisted upon drilling him in them, over and over - at least, for the time in his childhood she'd been lucid enough to expend much of her lucidity on training. Kubo ran through all of them once, twice, and by the time he was on his third repetition, the tears were flowing without any chance that he could stop them.
It was so futile to do what he'd already learned, over and over, when he would never learn anything more. His mother would never teach him to master the sword. His father would never teach him what the son of a samurai ought to know. They would never smile at him, share with him their wisdom, or do anything but give him a sense of their presence when he prayed at the Obon festival.
And there was no Obon festival to pray at, here.
Kubo sank to his knees. He let the sword fall aside and covered his eye with his hands, his tears winning out.
He was no hero. He was just an orphan who, with a lot of help, had been one once. He didn't belong here - and he barely even belonged back home, where nothing waited for him day to day but to play to a quiet village for never quite enough supper, with the grandfather who could no longer be blamed for destroying every person and every place he'd ever felt he belonged to.
What| Azula is shockingly good at pushing Kubo's buttons, and so Our Hero's second day Legioning is significantly worse than his first.
Where| the Hab
When| Before Murderworld.
Warnings/Notes| Crying about dead parents contained herein
The Hab was vast enough to get lost in, and Kubo was doing his best to get lost in it.
Shaken after his encounter with Azula, Kubo simply moved from one environment to another, putting distance between himself and the fiery soldier. The cruelty in her smile lingered as if she'd burned him with more than words.
He knew about cruelty, for certain. He'd known people who'd stick a knife in someone's wounds and laugh about it - he was related to those people.
But his aunts had not been mortal. Even his grandfather had grown kind when he became mortal, as if humanity itself were an inherent hallmark of compassion. As if laughing cruelty belonged to cold immortals alone. But a girl his own age had listened to him speak his deepest, most heartfelt sorrow, his wound that never fully healed, and she had laughed and called his mother and father weak for dying. Called him weak for being their son.
Kubo could not stop feeling shaken. How could one person say that to another? How could one mortal be so like his aunts after all? And yet she was here by the same means, for the same purpose he was. The same Time Trapper had selected him and selected her. The same Legion had taken from him the same oath they'd taken from her.
He'd thought such people would be similar as members of one village. Not one a compassionate storyteller, the other as smilingly cruel as the masks his aunts had worn.
Worse yet, it dawned on Kubo even as he thought it that it didn't matter if she reminded him more of the villain of his own story than of his heroes - she still was better suited to this task than he was.
His eye filled with tears as he walked, out of a deserted seaside city and into a path that meandered through tall aspens. Azula had made too many good points. He'd agreed to be a warrior for the Legion, but he'd be fighting alongside a girl with fire so hot it warmed the Sword Unbreakable, and his power was over paper. Paper that was flammable, and ran out. And his control over it was even weakened from what it had become back home. He was the son of an impossibly great swordswoman, and the mightiest samurai in immortal memory, but his skills with his sword and bow were basic. With his mother and father gone, they would never be better.
He dwelled, for a second, in the memory of his father calling him a hero for doing no more than taking care of his mother. The memory could never stop warming his heart. But a real hero would not be stumbling down forest paths with an eye full of tears, wondering how he was even going to do the task he'd sworn to do.
The only thing there seemed to be TO do was practice. He stopped in a clearing by a small brook and drew the Sword Unbreakable. Wiping the tears from his eye, he went into his first form, face already red from sniffling.
His mother hadn't just taught him the basics, she'd insisted upon drilling him in them, over and over - at least, for the time in his childhood she'd been lucid enough to expend much of her lucidity on training. Kubo ran through all of them once, twice, and by the time he was on his third repetition, the tears were flowing without any chance that he could stop them.
It was so futile to do what he'd already learned, over and over, when he would never learn anything more. His mother would never teach him to master the sword. His father would never teach him what the son of a samurai ought to know. They would never smile at him, share with him their wisdom, or do anything but give him a sense of their presence when he prayed at the Obon festival.
And there was no Obon festival to pray at, here.
Kubo sank to his knees. He let the sword fall aside and covered his eye with his hands, his tears winning out.
He was no hero. He was just an orphan who, with a lot of help, had been one once. He didn't belong here - and he barely even belonged back home, where nothing waited for him day to day but to play to a quiet village for never quite enough supper, with the grandfather who could no longer be blamed for destroying every person and every place he'd ever felt he belonged to.
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Reaper. Wash has taken to walking the deck, passively memorizing it. He's a bit turned around - either this spot belongs to one of the newer arrivals or someone decided to switch theirs up - and is following a trail along a creek when he hears the sounds of effort. Huh. He follows them, continuing in that same direction even after they stop, and soon finds-Kubo on his knees, holding his head in his hands.
He's next to Kubo in an instant, taking a knee next to him and placing a hand on Kubo's shoulder. "Kubo? Are you okay?" The kid had been on Legion World for all of a day - what the hell had happened?
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He had to choke through another sob or two before he was able to find his voice, and in that space of time he debated drawing away from Wash. In truth, though, he really just didn't want to. Wash had already been very kind to him, and that kindness made Kubo not want to burden Wash with his troubles at the same time.
He also didn't want to admit to a real soldier that he didn't actually belong in this fight with him. Wash could only agree with him, once he realized how lacking Kubo's education in being a warrior really was.
How did he even answer that question, though? His entire heart was in turmoil. He was not all right.
"I - I will be," Kubo said, when he had his voice again, though his tone still sounded so miserable that it didn't seem true. "I just -"
I miss my mother, I miss my father, I don't belong here but I want to belong here, I met a girl and she was as cruel as an immortal -
Each one alone sounded like a foolish, childish reason to fall apart like this.
He willed his tears to stop falling, sniffing and wiping his eye again.
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And right now, Kubo is definitely not okay.
"Hey." He shifts a little and gently pulls Kubo into a tentative hug, ready to let go if Kubo pulls away or seems uncomfortable. "It's okay to not be okay."
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He was picking his words carefully, trying to get to the heart of what was bothering him now.
"I think," he said, slowly, giving himself time in order to speak evenly - "that it's a mistake that I'm here."
He sniffled deeply.
"I think I understand why . . . why the Time Trapper made that mistake, because if things had been different, if my mother and father hadn't -"
There were too many things that had gone wrong in his life, and in his mother and father's lives, to pick just any one thing that would have made him suitable to be a hero as the Legion needed. He gave himself a moment before going on.
"I did something heroic, once, years ago, but . . . I had a lot of help." His mother and father had protected him in pursuit of the legendary armor, and then the villagers had stood with him in the battle against the Moon King. Even if every villain he fought here could be undone by the power of love and memory, which he doubted, experience told him he could not do it alone. "I don't think . . . I don't think anything that happens here will happen the same way."
He looked at the Sword Unbreakable, remembering how well his mother had wielded it, even in a body not the one she'd mastered the sword in. He could imagine how great a swordsman he'd be if only she'd been well enough to teach him everything she could in 12 years - but that simply was not his life.
"I just . . . I could have belonged here, but I don't. And I don't want to go back, but . . . I shouldn't waste the Legion's time."
It was far from the only thing that hurt him, but it was the only thing he had any amount of control over. Even if his control was only to admit that it was the case.
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There's a lot to unpack here, and probably even more that's still hidden, given that Kubo's being vague and trailing off, but first things first. It's the way Wash tackles problems he hasn't had time to plan for: take care of what's in front of him and work on the rest as it develops.
He lets Kubo go and takes a seat on the grass, gesturing for Kubo to join him. "The Time Trapper didn't bring you here because of what you might do, or because you did one big thing one time. He brought you here because of what you do consistently.
"Not everyone here is a great fighter - some people have defensive skills, and some people are support, and that's what you need for a team to succeed." He's still learning the ins and outs of real, balanced, healthy teamwork himself (or rather unlearning the bullshit Project Freelancer instilled in him), but so far everything he's done with a team has underlined that fact. "We've all been brought here to do something heroic, and none of us are going to be able to do it without a lot of help.
"You're not wasting anyone's time, and...well, none of us really belong here." Wash shrugs - it's not pretty, but it's the truth. "That doesn't mean we can't belong with each other." It's a lot gentler than anything he'd ever say to the Reds or Blues, but Wash has long since realized that they require a different approach than literally everybody else and that taking a completely different tack tends to work better for people on the saner end of the spectrum.
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"Consistently, I tell stories," Kubo pointed out, glum. It was fun, and he was good at it, but it had only saved lives once . . . and so many had been lost before that. "The help I had - when I was on my quest back home -"
This wasn't how the story should be told, this wasn't doing it justice at all, but Kubo had never figured out how to theatrically tell the portion of that tale he needed Wash to understand.
"It was my parents who helped me," he said. Nobody would ever care about him as much as they had - no one would ever throw themselves into protecting him as they had. And despite all that care - "and they died at the end," he admitted, his voice breaking again. "They died because I lead them into a trap, and if I hadn't - If I hadn't listened to the Moon King, if I'd thought just a bit I might have figured out it was him and I wouldn't have lead them there, and if I'd been paying better attention, I could have - my father didn't have to die, I could have warned him, but I didn't - and when I got back to the village, my aunts had killed so many of them too -"
The villagers never blamed him, and they still did everything they could to influence the Moon King in his new life as a kind elder, but still, Kubo saw the extra shrines every time he went to visit his parents'. He missed the faces that he no longer saw in his audience.
"None of it had to happen," he said, the guilt bubbling up. The loss that, yes, was the Moon King's doing . . . but which he could have, if he'd thought differently, acted differently, prevented. "But that's my story, that's the only story I was even a little bit of a hero in. That's what happened to people who helped me."
Why had he ever thought he could be a hero here? He thought of all the people he'd met, all the real heroes and other kids who were kind and happy to meet him, as if he belonged with them. If this story were anything like his old one, they'd die around him too.
The thought hit him so suddenly that he couldn't hold back another sob, covering his eye to hold back more tears. Of all the things he'd known were wrong just then, guilt was the only one he hadn't named.
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Wash puts an arm around Kubo's shoulders and stays silent for a few moments, thinking. He's never going to find the perfect words - there are no perfect words for someone who's lost so much so young, and there never will be - but he can at least try to reassure Kubo, if only a little.
"Where I come from," he starts, "we have a saying: hindsight is 20/20. What it means is, it's easy to look back, with all of the information you have now, and say what you could have or should have done. The thing is, you didn't know then what you know now, and you probably couldn't have done anything differently." It's what he tells himself every time he thinks of CT, because that guilt is a rabbit hole that goes deeper than he could probably survive. "Blaming yourself doesn't change that.
"None of it had to happen, but that doesn't mean it's your fault. Being a survivor doesn't make you guilty of anything - it just...hurts." It's a little too raw for his liking, and he takes a moment, takes a breath, tries to regain control, or something close to it.
"I'm sorry about your parents."
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He leaned in slightly to the contact.
"It was two years ago," he said. "I keep thinking it's been long enough that I won't . . . that I'm done hurting this much, that it will still hurt, but not as bad as this, but then, things happen, and it's as if . . ."
Like the strings on his shamisen are broken and his aunt's mask is shattered, but his mother's body has left only a broken wooden charm, and that is terrible in its own particular way, and in the other terrible way, his father's body has not gone anywhere at all.
"It's like that night all over again," he said, closing his eye tightly, letting go of a few remaining tears. "No matter how many times I think I'm done -"
The grief never seemed entirely to have passed. It was always there, waiting to be woken up.
And Wash seemed to know something about that, judging by his talk of hindsight, by the hitch in his own voice having this conversation.
It was very kind of Wash to comfort him like this, when it seemed he had his own sadnesses that this sort of comforting brought up.
He looked up from his own sadness at Wash, concern in his eye.
"Did you survive something like that, too?"
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Wash knows, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that life is Not Fair and that his life in particular is pretty heavy on the soul-crushing bullshit. What Kubo's been through - or what Wash knows about it, at least - is a completely other flavor of Not Fair. Two years isn't nearly long enough to recover from it.
"Kind of," he answers, voice far more level than it had been a few moments before. This isn't about him right now. "I can tell you that two years isn't nearly enough time to get over losing someone you really cared about. The pain gets better eventually, but that doesn't mean you stop missing them completely."
That's...probably not a good direction to go, for either of them. "Look, the bad memories are always going to be bad. That's just what they are, and dwelling on them isn't going to help you." Spending too much time in the past - his own and someone else's - had hammered that lesson into his head. "The best thing you can work for is being able to remember the good memories without immediately thinking about how much you miss them. It takes a while, but it's doable." He still has to work on it himself some days, but...doable.
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Azula's casual cruelty had startled him into an avalanche of regret, but with Wash's kind company, the avalanche was quieting down. He could speak calmly again without having to will himself into it.
"I tell their stories all the time," he went on, zeroing in on the good that was still, in spite of everything, very good. "Mother told me stories about Father all my life, so I told them to the villagers in town, and I thought I'd never meet him. I thought I'd never get to spend a day with my mother without her being sick, and . . . and fading away like she did all the time, but I got that, too. I got the two impossible things I wished for."
He knew too much about stories not to know how wonderful that was, and even this near to weeping, it was wonderful to remember. The way none of them had known who they all were to each other, but they'd liked each other, cared for each other, been acting like the family they didn't know they were anyway.
"I'll never forget that," he said, with real gratitude. "I hope you have some memories like that, too."
He was able to give Wash a small smile before going on.
"I met a girl who said they were weak because they died," he said. He had to acknowledge that cruelty, get it off his chest. "And that I was weak because I was like them, but she didn't know what she was talking about. If I were more like them, I'd be a great swordsman, I'd know how to use my magic for more than just telling stories, and I'd know everything the son of the greatest samurai should know. I'd be the sort of hero the Legion needs," he finished, glumly returning to his original conclusion. "But I'm not. It's kind of you to comfort me, but I'm just . . . I'm not the sort of hero they want, here."
Too many people had died around him.
And he'd killed, too. Legionnaires didn't kill. But he didn't know any way to use his magic to fight that hadn't killed someone.
"I'm really not."
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And then Kubo starts talking about another conversation he's had, and for a moment Wash goes utterly still. Kubo says he talked to a girl, but Wash hears the words in Felix's voice, complete with the vicious sneer and the twirl of a knife-
It's not a good association.
He yanks himself out of that headspace - Felix got what was coming to him, he's not a problem anymore - and back into the present. They're talking about Kubo right now, not him. And evidently they're back to fitting in, or feeling like you don't.
"I wasn't kidding when I said it takes all types," Wash starts, trying to figure out how to approach this from a different tack. "Like I said, you need balance on a team. Not everyone can be on the front lines all the time." He's casting about in his memory, trying to figure out if he's ever heard of anyone fighting with music before, and against all odds he finds something.
"You know, one of my teammates told me about a game once. It's a storytelling game, where a group of very different characters band together and go on quests."
Simmons talked his ear off about Dungeons and Dragons one night when Wash couldn't sleep, and of course he remembers it now. It is unbelievably nerdy and he will never tell Simmons he's using it. Ever. He will never live it down. Worse yet, he'll get recruited to play, and that's about the last thing he wants.
"Of course, there are warriors and archers and fighters, but there's also a type of character called a bard. He told me that bards use songs and stories to confuse and distract their enemies and inspire their team to do better in combat. They don't necessarily have to be swinging a sword on the front lines to be helpful, and they're still a very important part of the team." Wash shrugs and leans back a little. He's pretty sure he's not being subtle, but he might as well make is point clear: "Maybe the Time Trapper thought the Legion needed a bard."
He still wants to know who told Kubo all that bullshit about equating death to weakness, but one problem at a time. Convincing Kubo that he's a valuable member of the team comes first.
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This was the one he hadn't figured out how to turn into a good show yet, though. But thinking about it didn't distract him enough not to notice Wash's hesitation - it struck Kubo again that this conversation was hard for him too.
He put his hand on Wash's arm, concerned, before considering Wash's words.
"A bard," Kubo repeated, trying out the term. A storyteller who distracted and confused, who inspired the team. Well. If that was an actual job description, then, obviously there was a reason he'd been chosen. A reason that, he realized hopefully, was based on his skills, not on his father's deeds or his mother's legends.
"Oh."
For a second he let that thought roll around in his head.
"That sounds like a job for me," he agreed, feeling a little hope.
If he wasn't expected to be His Mother and Father's Son, if he was expected to be Himself, that was entirely different. Those expectations were far from each other.
He'd still killed his aunt, though. And Legionnaires didn't kill. Yet there he sat, thinking only still, with the memories of that night so fresh, that he wished he'd reached his shamisen sooner. So that his mother's last words could have been something other than "Kubo, run." So that his father hadn't had to have last words yet.
The Legionnaires were too good for those thoughts, but here Kubo was, replacing their vanished compatriots, and having those thoughts.
He glanced at Wash, though, wondering how much of his suggestion was correct.
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But that's a problem for the future.
"And that's why you're here," Wash says calmly. "We needed a bard, and from what I can tell, you're a good one."
The statement is met with silence, and Wash is starting to realize that for Kubo, silence means he has something else to say and is having trouble with it. He meets Kubo's gaze. "What else is on your mind?"
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Kubo wiped his eye again, silently this time.
"It's . . ."
It might be what made Wash agree that he wasn't a fit for the Legion, that their standards were just beyond him.
If he was going to say it, he had to at least say it clearly. He had done this thing. Hiding it was impractical. Hiding it might just end up with him in another position where he was expected to defend his, or someone else's, life. And then what would he do?
Really? What else could he have done? What DID Legionnaires do?
"I already broke one of the Legion's rules," he said. To state flatly that he'd killed his aunt was theatrical, but it wasn't the whole story. "It was my aunt who killed my father. Then my mother. She was going to take my other eye."
What could I have done? He wanted to ask it, but not in defense of himself. Really. What else could he have done? Should he have tried to talk her out of it? Should he have been ABLE to, when his mother was about to die and his father was already dead -
Should he have been able to save her, like he'd spared his grandfather?
"I used too much of my magic," he admitted. If he'd had more practice, if he'd had more control, maybe he could have subdued her. Then found the reserves in his heart to give her a life, like he'd given his grandfather. Maybe that was what the Legion wanted from him. That sort of control, and those wells of forgiveness.
"I killed her."
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She killed the people I love and was trying to kill me, so I killed her is a perfectly logical progression of events for Wash, and he has to take a step back and divorce it from his experiences. He's a soldier, a trained killer, and Kubo is definitely not; obviously this is going to bother Kubo a hell of a lot more than it does him.
"I don't think you need to worry about getting kicked out of the Legion," he starts. "You weren't exactly a Legionnaire at the time, so the rules didn't apply. If they applied retroactively, I'm pretty sure most of the people here wouldn't be eligible to be Legionnaires to begin with." They had soldiers and mercenaries and superheroes and people who had survived apocalypses here; there was no way that most of the new arrivals didn't have some form of body count. "They certainly wouldn't have let me join.
"Plus, the rule isn't 'don't kill ever;' it's 'use lethal force only as a last resort.' Under Legion rules, you do everything you can to stop someone without killing them, but sometimes that doesn't work. Sometimes the only way to defend yourself or to keep someone from killing someone else is to take them out first. It's not always an easy choice, but sometimes it's your only choice." He's long since gotten used to making that choice - defend the life you value more - but Kubo hasn't. The first time is always difficult. "Your aunt killed your parents and was trying to hurt you. That is absolutely self-defense, and nobody here is going to fault you for it." And if they did, Wash would talk with them. 'Talk.'
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Not with that much fear and sorrow and anger in such a small space of time. But maybe it was still possible, and he didn't do it.
Once the words were off his chest, though, he had to consider Wash's words - the very legitimate point that if the Legion was full of people who were more warriors than him, like Wash, like Azula, he couldn't be the only person with a body count. It was a very logical conclusion - he'd just been too upset to think with that much logic.
"I should have thought of that," he said, after a long pause. "That . . . people in wars would have . . ."
He'd liked the ideals inherent in a group of heroes who fought, but did not kill ever. He'd been happy to think of stories peopled by heroes with that kind of skill, that kind of restraint and control, but heroes like that -
Maybe they existed, but they had to be so rare. He couldn't be the first new person brought to the Legion who wasn't up to those standards.
His mother and father wouldn't have even been up to those standards - and in that context, Kubo wanted to reconsider the word.
"I don't know much about being a soldier. Or other peoples' stories here, yet. I didn't mean to -"
To what? Assume Wash hadn't killed? That was . . . not something to apologize for.
"- it's kind of you to listen to me like this," Kubo settled on. "I didn't mean to drop all of my problems on you. I must look pretty foolish."
But it really helped him, to have perspective.
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Still. "Just because you could do it later doesn't mean you could have done it at that exact moment," Wash reasons. "You did what you could with what you had. Doing something different later doesn't make what you did before wrong. It's still self-defense." Wash will stand by that as long as he needs to, or as long as it takes Kubo to believe it - whichever comes first.
And then Kubo picks an interesting sentence to come back in on. "Would have killed each other?" Wash finishes it for him, shrugging. "It's war. It's not pretty, but that's what happens." Killing someone on the battlefield is a hell of a lot different than killing someone out of revenge, and Wash is happy to leave Kubo thinking that Wash's kills have been battlefield only. Kubo has enough problems - there's no reason to add his own to the pile. Not when he's (mostly) dealt with them.
(That's what he tells himself, at least.)
"It's almost like you're in a completely different world with people you've never met before and technology beyond anything you've ever seen in your world," Wash deadpans, and remembers to follow it up with a small smile to make it clear he's joking - not everyone is fluent in sarcasm, and Kubo's had too many terrible things said to him today for Wash to add to the pile, even accidentally. "For what it's worth, this place is new and strange to everybody. You're not the only one with problems, you're not foolish for having them, and it's definitely okay to talk with someone about it." This is, of course, coming from the person who bottles up everything and knows it. Do as he says, not as he does. He moves his hand from Kubo's shoulder, ruffling Kubo's hair instead. "Plus, I asked."
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Or maybe it did the opposite, too, and made people as cold as Azula.
Kubo let out a long breath. "Thank you," he said, "for asking."
He tucked his knees up to his chest, arms around himself loosely, contained but no longer so tense. He tried to return Wash's smile, and it was small, but he did mean it.
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Speaking of asking - there's one thing he still wants to know, and maybe now Kubo is in a better frame of mind to answer it. (Or Wash might wreck Kubo's mood by asking. That's a possibility too, not that it's enough to stop him at this point. Damn.) "As long as I'm asking things...the person who insulted your parents - who was it?"
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Kubo shrugged a little, his expression wry and distasteful more than sad sad. "Her name was Azula. She didn't know what she was talking about."
He'd read his audience carefully, and what he'd read had shocked and scared him, but now that he was climbing back up from breaking down, one cruel girl, even if she was shocking, still wasn't the horror she'd reminded him of. So she was easier to deal with.
"I think she's a lot like my aunts. That's what she reminded me of. Powerful and cold and blind to the worth of anything that wasn't the same. I told her the story of when Mother, Father, and I fought a giant skeleton demon and found the Sword Unbreakable -"
He realized he was getting off-topic, but also that he was smiling again, really smiling. Those few memories he had would never cease to be joyful, no matter how cruel another mortal became.
"I don't know why it surprised me so much. I've just never heard anyone mortal say something so cruel. She just . . . reminded me of them."
A shudder crept back into his frame.
"I just didn't expect it. Now that I know, I won't fall apart like this again."
It was as much a reassurance to Wash as it was a promise to himself. Azula had alerted him to cruelty that could still be committed by mortals. The cruelty was easier to face when it wasn't related to you, when the cruel people couldn't hurt you any worse than you'd already been hurt. Nobody could kill his mother and father again.
It wasn't comforting, but it was true.