After a solid week of being overloaded with school starting up again, I’ve finally managed to finish another chapter. Once again, the dialogue proved the troublesome part, and since this part of the story’s pretty much all dialogue… yeah it took a while. Still, enjoy!
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Chapter 17
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Lunch finished, Gali headed back downstairs to rest up before trying to tackle Kopaka’s leg, which would require Jaller’s abilities to fix up properly. I went upstairs to see how Hahli and the Toa of Ice were doing and retrieve their plates. I found Hahli still cleaning out cuts on the air exchangers, but it seemed the largest ones had been taken care of. Kopaka, customarily confident in his own abilities and apparently with his mental barriers to pain restored, was actually working at it as well; the sight of him reaching with a small, wet brush into his own chest and rubbing clean scratches and on his air exchangers as he was breathing was a bit bizarre, yet he behaved as though it was entirely normal. Two empty plates were sitting on the side table by the door.
“I came to collect the dishes,” I explained, then nodded to Hahli: “Looks like you’ve got some help.”
“So it appears,” Hahli said with a slight edge to her voice. Apparently she wasn’t much pleased with Kopaka’s self-operating habits.
“Well, on the plus side, you’ll be done quicker,” I noted as I collected the silverware.
“I suppose,” Hahli agreed. “And after we close it up we can start work on his leg.” I noted she was talking about Kopaka in the third person in front of his face, not that he minded. “Then he finally can go back to… whatever he did.”
“Astronomy,” Kopaka said without looking up.
“Right, astronomy…” Hahli rolled her eyes.
“Do you not have some news story to cover?” Kopaka asked. “I have things covered here.”
“Uhm, no you don’t,” Hahli asserted. “You’ve been watching, and now you’re bungling about. That’s all. And for your information, this ‘doll’ took a day off.” Doll? What was that all about?
“A waste of a day off,” Kopaka said. “I would have been fine until the evening.”
“You know what?” Hahli put her sowing tools aside and got up. “Fine, you manage if you’re so eager to,” she said curtly, then turned and made her way out of the room. I looked back at Kopaka, who didn’t seem fazed in the slightest, then followed Hahli. I caught up with her at the bottom of the stairs. “■■■■■■ fool,” Hahli muttered as she made her way to the kitchen, where Macku was cleaning up.
“How’s it going?” the Matoran asked, but Hahli didn’t reply. Instead, she grabbed a cup from the counter and proceeded to root through the coolbox for a drink.
“I got the plates,” I informed Macku, setting them next to the other dishes on the counter. Macku nodded towards Hahli with a questioning look on her face. “Kopaka’s being Kopaka,” I explained.
“He’s being an idiot,” Hahli remarked as she pulled a bottle filled with some kind of wine out of the coolbox.
“Hahli, wine? At this hour, really?” Macku said, somewhat concerned.
“I’m tired, so to me it’s evening.” Hahli poured some wine into the cup, then placed the bottle back into the coolbox.
“You’re worried about Kopaka,” Macku asserted.
“Everyone’s worried about Kopaka except Kopaka.” Hahli said, frustrated. “Once he’s halfway patched up, he’ll just walk out of here thinking he can take care of the rest of it.”
“You’d like him to thank you first,” Macku smiled, though I could tell this was more a nervous attempt to use humor to diffuse tension rather than to actually cheer anyone up.
“No, I wouldn’t expect that from him,” Hahli took a sip, “but at the very least he could care, you know? I mean, we’re doing him a massive favor here, and he acts like it’s nothing.”
“He thinks it’s your duty,” I interjected. “Or Gali’s, at least. He sees it as duty.”
“Wonderful,” Hahli said sarcastically. “So he thinks we all exist to help him.”
“Not exactly…”
“Right…” Hahli walked out, heading for the living room. Macku sighed and returned to the dishes while I followed the Toa, who’d taken up a reclining armchair.
“Look, I know he can be a bit exhausting, but I can keep an eye on him for a while if you need a break,” I offered.
“Nah, he’s probably right,” Hahli sighed. “I mean, he looks bad, but he’s not critical or anything anymore…” she took another sip.
“That’s Kopaka.” I sat down on one of the benches. “Annoyingly right…”
“Yeah, I don’t mind him being right, even if he is being a fool regardless,” Hahli said, “but really, why does he have to be so… rude about everything, you know? He doesn’t care, he never considers how it makes me feel. Or Gali. Or you, I’m guessing.”
“True,” I couldn’t argue that, “he does do that.”
“You know what he told me?” Hahli asked. I nodded no. “He wakes up while I’m sowing on his insides, doesn’t say anything, not even a peep. Just sits and watches, for like an hour, just staring at me working. I’m finally done with the biggest cut that he had in there, so I ask him how he’s feeling. He says fine.”
“Right…” Seemed like his usual answer.
“Then he asks me, and I’m quoting here, ‘Why do you look like a meato fantasy doll?’” “Meato” was derogative slang sometimes used by Matoran to describe Agori and Glatorian, a turn of language I certainly wouldn’t have expected from Kopaka.
“Okay, that is bad,” I agreed. “He really said that?”
“That’s not all,” Hahli continued. “He goes into this whole spiel about Gali, and how I shouldn’t have let her blow up like she has. Says she’s an embarrassment to Toa, and I’m somehow responsible.”
“He didn’t say how?”
“Nope. Just convinced I was,” Hahli said, taking a larger swig from the cup. “I spent hours working on him, and then he proceeds to insult me like that. It’s like he’s got it in for me for some reason. What did I ever do to him?”
“Hm…” I thought about it for a bit, but that really did seem very unlike Kopaka. “You’re right. That doesn’t make any sense, and even if it did, he’s got no right to talk to you like that.”
“So he’s just a jerk, then.” Hahli concluded.
“Maybe, but… it’s not like him.” I continued. Hahli looked at me curiously. “I mean, he comes off as rude,” I explained, “but from what I’ve seen everything he does is… considered, you know? He thinks things through, he looks at them objectively. Insulting and blaming people… it’s not what he does.”
“Well, you might want to check his brain then,” Hahli said. “If you’re right, something in him’s gotta be messed up.”
“Maybe I should go talk to him.” I got up.
“Good luck.” Hahli turned her attention back to her drink.
I considered what I was going to tell Kopaka as I headed back upstairs. The last twenty-four hours had been rather crazy, and now I had a chance to finally ask some questions. What gave him the right to mouth off to Hahli like that? Also, why’d he abandoned the park when he’d promised me he’d be there when I got back? Never mind the fact that he’d promised to show me the final battle; he owed me some answers, especially since I helped out with the surgery.
I found him still sitting in bed, trying with some difficulty to thread a needle. “No success?” I asked.
Kopaka looked up. “So you made it here.”
“I did. Before you, as it happens,” I informed him. “I was here when they did the surgery on your pump. I helped.” Focused on the needle, he didn’t reply. “So where’d you go?” I asked.
“Go? When?” He’d at last gotten the tread through the tiny hole in the needle.
I took a seat next to the bed. “At the park. You said you’d be there, I got back, and you were nowhere to be seen.”
“I got lunch,” Kopaka said calmly, but I could tell that wasn’t the whole story.
“Just lunch?”
“Yes.” Apparently, that was all he was willing to give. I knew there was more, and I was already convinced that, in fact, his disappearance had been a deliberate attempt by him to be rid of me before meeting Gali. Though I wondered why, I didn’t feel like I was going to get anywhere pursuing that line of inquiry.
“You really should let Hahli do that,” I pointed as Kopaka started to try and sow shut one of the cuts on the air exchangers.
“No need,” he replied.
“You know, she’s not happy with your accusations,” I continued. “About her looks, and what happened with Gali.”
“I told her the truth,” Kopaka said without a hint of regret.
“Yeah, I know you do that, but have you ever considered that sometimes the truth hurts?” I asked. I actually was interested in what he’d have to say to that.
“Not as much as the fallout of a truth gone untold,” he said flatly.
“You know, I think that depends,” I argued. “It’s usually not so clear-cut, especially when other people get involved.”
“To you, perhaps, but you do not know the other Toa as I do.”
“Really?” That rather surprised me. If anything, as a Toa of Psionics, I figured I had the edge in reading others. What kind of reaction did he expect from these people who he apparently knew so well?
Kopaka looked me straight in the eyes. “We fought alongside each other. We saved each other’s lives. We faced the Makuta, the Bohrok, and the Rahkshi. I assure you, I know my brothers and sisters well.”
“Uh-huh…” I wasn’t convinced. He certainly had more experience with the other Toa, true, but from what I’d seen his ability to really understand them in anything other than a purely analytical way was very limited. “So, are you going to tell Gali the same things once she makes it up here, right?”
“What things?”
“What you told Hahli,” I explained. “That how she’s an embarrassment to the Toa, that Hahli looks like a fantasy doll, that stuff. I mean, clearly you don’t approve, so are you going to tell Gali about it like you did with Hahli?”
Kopaka thought for a moment. “No.”
“Why not?” I continued. “Does Gali not deserve to be… informed of your thoughts like Hahli was?”
“She does,” Kopaka looked a bit confused as to what exactly I was calling into question.
“…but you’re not going to tell her. Seems to me that you’re blaming Hahli for everything that’s changed; she certainly thinks so.” I had him; he’d betrayed a bias. Not a surprising one, really, but I wanted to see him explain his way out of it: in his ‘objective’ view, what made Gali and Hahli different? Why did Hahli get the harsh truth, with insults thrown in, while Gali would be spared?
Kopaka didn’t quite seem to get it yet, so I posed the question: “why is Hahli the only one who you are willing to tell the truth to?”
“She is not the only one,” Kopaka said. “I would tell Jaller and Macku the same things.”
“You’re dodging,” I said. “Why them and not Gali? What makes Gali different?”
Kopaka thought deeply, even stopping his sowing as he concentrated; he was genuinely having difficulty coming up with an explanation. Watching his mind, I could see that considering the question was bringing up a number of emotional responses… Just as I expected, Kopaka wasn’t the fully rational machine that he pretended to be. To me it was obvious: having fought alongside Gali as much as he had, he emphasized with her more. Perhaps he even felt a need somewhere to protect her, or at least not to treat her has harshly as he did everyone else, a feeling clearly absent in his dealings with Hahli. In fact, as I looked deeper, it seemed that the emotion associated with Hahli was disappointment, mixed even with anger… anger about what? Meanwhile thoughts of Gali elicited concern, worry. Contrary to what he showed on the surface, and even deluded himself into thinking, Kopaka really did care for his sister… something that to him just didn’t compute.
“Difficult to explain, huh?” I couldn’t help but smile in spite of the fact that I could detect a growing frustration within his mind.
“Like I said,” Kopaka spoke up, “you do not know the Toa as I do. You cannot understand.” Interesting that he was projecting a lack of understanding onto me… unless there really was something in their history that he could use to rationalize his feelings.
“Well, perhaps you could help me with that,” I argued. “I seem to recall you promising that you’d show me the final battle at some point. The other Toa were there, right? Show me what it was like, and maybe I’ll get it.”
Kopaka sighed. “I am busy, but I will show you, soon.” He went back to his stitching. “Patience is the fourth virtue, Lis. Even the Makuta understood that.”
“I’d be patient if I wasn’t afraid you’d just run off again as soon as you could.”
“You have my assurance that I will not.” He considered that case closed.
“Fine.” I agreed, but I’d be keeping a close eye on him. I also noticed his stitches were slow and rather shoddy. “You’ve never done that before, have you?”
“No.”
“Here,” I reached out, trying to get him to hand over the needle and thread.
“I will be fine.”
“You won’t. C’mon, let me try.” He hesitantly released the tools to me, after which I proceeded to stitch up the cut in a far cleaner manner; having worked under a tailor for years before becoming a Toa, I was pretty darn good at it. Just like he apparently had with Hahli, Kopaka kept a close eye on what I was doing, but didn’t say another word. Nevertheless, I could sense that there was a lot more going on inside him than the outside betrayed. It seemed that I really had gotten him to ask himself some questions, a victory in itself as far as I was concerned.
I thought back to what Hahli’d said… did Kopaka really see her like that? For that matter, what did the think of me? I had half the mind to ask him, but given that he’d tried to get rid of me just the day before, I was worried that I wouldn’t much like his answer.
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#####author’s note: once again, Lis ends up delving deeper into Kopaka’s views and attitudes towards others, prompted by his argument with Hahli. Kopaka’s un-Kopaka-like behavior and language has a lot more reason behind it than just what he’s seen today, and I spent a lot of time thinking about how much exactly he was willing to share or was even aware of… we’ll see more of it sooner or later.
I’ll post more chapters as I finish them. Enjoy!