As I trudged through the sewers by myself, I barely noticed the nauseating smell of the waste water, too heated up in my own mind. My head throbbing with pain.
I didn't get angry in the way some people got angry. The norm being, shouting, aggression, raised tone of voice, things like that. My type of anger... it was... Resentment. Spiteful. Scalding.
I got angry, and then I would fixate on that feeling, on the thing that person did. I would find any reason to get more angry at something. In fact, I would actively hope, search, or make reasons for me to become more angry.
So then, just like that, it would fester, and fester, and fester, and fester, until, eventually, I either went to sleep or distracted myself from it. This sometimes happened for entire days back in my previous life. But just because I ignored those festering wounds, doesn't mean they weren't there. They were always jumping to remind me, after all.
I have anger issues. I know. But I never went to therapy for that. Why? Because nobody knew I had trouble with my temper.
Sure, I would become more rude and brusque, but I would never outburst. I would never start screaming, being aggressive, or anything like that. Instead, I always tried my best to keep myself calm.
Despite thinking so many things, like how I fucking hated that person, how I wanted to do something to make them feel worse and myself better. It began to become second nature for me to restrain myself and speak respectfully to people even when absolutely livid.
I hated being angry. It made me feel terrible, it made me want to do terrible things. But even if I do one of those terrible things I think of, it still made me feel terrible even after the anger was relieved. Then I would get angry at feeling terrible.
It feels like no matter what I do, or think, or try, that once I was angry, that was just it. That would be how my entire day would go, spent in anger.
"I swear to God, if anyone of them mention how I smell, I'll make them drink sewage," I swore to myself. I wasn't actually going to do that, but thinking about it relieved a bit of the pain in my head. I sort of hoped for them to mention it actually.
...
I barely managed to get through the conversation with the rest about how it went. Relaying them with the information about King Bumi. Currently, I was meditating, trying to calm myself.
It wasn't working that well.
"Come on!" I groaned quietly as I sat. It's been a while since I last became so angry. I know I had no reason to be angry at Azula, and that made me feel terrible, which also made me even more angry. Why? Because I hated feeling terrible and my anger didn't care whether it was justified or not. After all, since I had no reason to be mad at her, it made me feel terrible, making me get even angrier at her because she's the reason I feel terrible. A stupid cycle.
I took in a deep breath, and exhaled slowly. My breath out was shaky, but became smoother the more I did it. I think I was actually starting to-
"Hey, Elliot?"
"Yeah Aang?" I "calmly" responded.
'Go the fuck away! Jesus Christ, can't you get a goddamn hint?! I'm not in the mood to deal with you!' I never wanted to punch a child harder than at this moment.
"So, I just wanted to make sure, but you returned the baby safely, right?" he asked me.
"Yup, Tom-Tom is fine," I assuaged him.
'You shouldn't care about him. His sister doesn't even care about him. I bet it'd be better if he died, honestly.'
"Tom-Tom?"
"It's what his parents called him," I answered.
"Oh, what a cute name!" He smiled brightly. After a few more words, he left to do... something. I wasn't paying attention, trying once more to even my breathing.
Letting out air from my nose reminiscent of a bull's, I opened my mouth and sucked in a deep breath.
"Hustler!" The breath caught in my throat.
'Oh my fucking- Toph?' I blinked. 'I mean, why the hell is she even here? Couldn't she fucking see I'm trying to meditate?!' I closed my eyes and took in a few breaths before I spoke.
"What do you need, Toph?"
"I was just wondering what's going on with you," she shrugged.
"What's going on...?"
"Yeah! You're breathing is irregular, your heart's beating very fast, and you're sweating," she replied nonchalantly. I let out a big sigh.
But, then, I got an idea to potentially work through my anger. I had never done it before, talk to someone about why I was mad. My family weren't big on expressing or talking about their feelings. I especially so wasn't big on talking about them. Most of the time, I was too afraid to. Having never really done it before made it foreign, awkward, unknown. Adding onto the fact I didn't know how they'd react to my feelings and opinions, I opted to never share.
The few times I did share my emotions and thoughts... they weren't the most pleasant nor reassuring experience. So I refrained.
But I wanted to get better, though. I had no idea how to do that, but maybe she could give me a few hints. She was pretty good at expressing herself.
"I... uhm..." Suddenly, my fury became the farthest thing on my mind. Anxiety and hesitation replacing it. I didn't know where to start, I didn't know how to start.
I was it so hard? It shouldn't be that hard, right? My eyebrows furrowed.
"Okay, guess you don't wanna talk about it," she said and was about to leave.
"Wait!" I nearly yelled, making her flinch. "Uh, s-sorry. But, I... I just need to think, for a moment. How about you... sit." I patted the ground.
"Sure."
My mind was all jumbled. It was hard to keep one train of thought before jumping to another.
I took in a deep breath. I needed to tell her. I wanted to tell her. There's really no reason not to.
"Fuck," I grumbled under my breath.
"What's that?"
"Nothing, just..." I didn't finish. Right, there's that. An easy way to clear my head. Something that made sense.
Math. Maybe that's why I was drawn to numbers, equations, solutions, answers. It just made sense to me, where there were many things that didn't.
I did one of my favorite equations, the answer was -55.
I remember it so vividly. Back in middle school it took me an entire hour, to figure out that one answer. I was trying to do rocket science when it was just simple numbers. Meaning I overcomplicated the problem a shit tone. Just like now, actually, I was overcomplicating it.
All I needed to do was start. Talking was the start.
I saw Momo, the flying lemur out of the corner of my eyes. I wouldn't of had to deal with Tom-Tom if it didn't accidentally snatch the child. Looking at Toph, I blurted out the very first thing that came to my mind.
"I dislike animals," I suddenly told her.
"Okay...?" She had no idea how that correlated with what I wanted to tell her, I could see that, but it did, honestly.
"Well, no... that's wrong. I don't dislike animals, but, rather, I dislike how they make me feel," I explained, looking Toph dead in her cloudy eyes.
"And? What do they make you feel, Hustler?" She was genuinely curious. That felt... rather great.
"I..." I was going to tell her something I had never told anyone before. Not my family, not my friends.
"I had this dog, back when I was around ten. His name was Alby, short for Albert."
"That's a weird name, just like yours," she commented.
"Weird for you, maybe," I retorted with a small smile.
"Anyways, I would... get angry, at Alby when he didn't listen to me. Mad when he was disobedient. Or did stuff that caused trouble for me," I continued, my smile becoming a grimace.
"When I got particularly mad, I would... hit him. I did it, I guess, because subconsciously I knew he was weaker than me, and that he couldn't say things that would make me feel bad. I was too scared of ever speaking against my family when I got angry, so I took it out on him. But, after I hit him, he would always look at me in... in... such a way that I just knew. That I did something terrible. Each time I did that, I would always cry and pet him, and just repeatedly say sorry..."
"..." She stayed silent, but I could tell she was a bit uncomfortable. I was too.
Letting out a deep sigh, I started once more.
"I'm not fit to take care of another thing, I can barely take care of myself, Toph. I'm not responsible nor patient enough. I... as I said with Alby, I get angry. I'm angry right now, actually."
"Yeah, I can feel that," she dryly remarked.
"Once I get angry at something, I just focus on that. Then I get angrier the more I think about it, and it just... keeps on like that until I get distracted by something else, simmering. While I may forget about it for a short while, once I remember it, it comes back with full force. I think about hitting people, telling them to shut up, saying terrible things, doing terrible things... people and animals in short, I guess, both make me feel like crap. And no matter what, it feels like I can't win once I get angry." It was suffocating.
"... I don't really know what to say, Hustler. I'm not the best person when it comes to this kind of stuff," she admitted with a shrug.
"Just... Just listening is nice, really nice," I said truthfully. I felt relieved. Not as mad either, it was still there, but more... manageable.
We sat there in silence. Toph probaby didn't seem to expect me this to become a more heart to heart esque talk. I didn't either, though looking back on it, it shouldn't be surprising. Because she was the only one I could talk to, my only friend.
I'm lonely. I'm scared. Why was I here? Is my family okay? Do they even miss me? Do my friends miss me?
I had so many questions, so many fears. And yet, I knew I would probably never get an answer to them. Maybe there wasn't even an answer. Despite all the indignation I felt, that was my reality, and I had to accept it.
"Do I make you feel bad Hustler?" She suddenly asked, snapping me out of my depressing thoughts. I grinned.
"Nah, you're tough Blindspot. If I didn't feel comfortable around you, I wouldn't have told you this."
"Sweet," she grinned too. Maybe she felt that it was nice to be trusted. We talked a bit more about random shit.
Dusting her clothes off, Toph paused just as she began to walk away. "Oh, right, I nearly forgot," she said.
"What?"
"What were you angry about, Hustler?" She saw his grin turn into a smirk.
"And here I thought you had some tact," I exclaimed playfully.
"Only when it's appropriate," she rebutted.
"And, well, to answer your question... I was angry at nothing, Toph. Nothing at all. The anger I have is completely undeserved. I guess I was just mad for the sake of being mad, and that person was the best release for it," I clarified, making her nod.
"I got it."
"..." I watched her as she walked, only to stop once more. She liked stopping as she walked, huh?
"And... Elliot, I don't think you're a bad guy, a jerk certainly wouldn't feel bad," she told me. I was taken aback, by her words and that she actually used my name.
"Thanks," I murmured. I didn't think she heard me, but I also don't think she was looking for a thanks when she said that.
...
After Toph left, I felt like maybe, I could think finally about my little problem. Namely, Azula.
'If I could somehow turn her good, then with her intelligence and power... she could do a lot of good,' I mused.
'The question is, should I risk it?' I was still leaning towards no. But I wanted to come to an actual decision. Not one made in the heat of the moment. If I was going to kill her, I wanted to do it with a clear head.
'That sounds pretty bad,' I noted. Didn't mean it wasn't true, though. I mulled it over for what seemed like hours.
I finally came to a decision, I was going to play it safe. Just like before. Even if I felt guilty, just like with my anger, I wouldn't let it influence my decision making. I'm not going to lie, one of the reasons that I was feeling so guilty about preparing to kill Azula, is that I felt like I was more of a loose canon than she was at some points. It was hypocritical for me to kill someone who had mental problems, when I had my own fair share of them.
But I wasn't killing her because of that. She was going to hurt people. I don't think I was a shining example of an upstanding contributer to society, but I tried my best not to hurt others. So I needed to stop her before she did that. Prevention is the best cure, as they say.
I let out a deep sigh for the umpteenth time. 'I'm tired.'
I could only hope that I made one of the first steps towards helping myself. If not, well, maybe I should just prevent myself too.
A happy ending for everyone.
"Yeah, no." I chuckled mirthlessly. "Preventing" myself would be one of the last things I'd do.