Peace offerings...

Natalia was indeed ready to burst. That Taylor got in her face like that and called her coward infuriated her almost as much as the claims that she talked about Taylor as if she cared, but not as much as the claim that she didn't trained; few girls trained as hard as she did.

The Dream's cute face was now taking a bright red color, her hands closed into tight little fists and she grit her pearly white teeth. And then Taylor turned her back on Natalia before she could even answer, which was not only even more insulting, but also made attacking very tempting.

Natalia was after all trained to be a sort of predator, and watching someone turn her back like that was like and invitation to strike; yet the blue-eyed cutie immediately contained her 'killer instinct', Taylor posture was not that of an unsuspecting victim, like she had been when Natalia ambushed her in the lockers for Adrian; Natalia could tell the punky-girl was ready to fight. Eager to fight even.

The Dream immediately understood that if she attacked Taylor, the blue-haired girl would have won, probably not the fight but the battle, as she would have proved her right. Natalia then opened her mouth, she was going to challenge Taylor to a match; no ambushes, no non-sense. She was going to prove Taylor who was the real fighter, but that thought sent a cold shiver through Natalia's spine and she froze right there with her lovely mouth still open.


'She is a fighter?' Natalia thought begining to question herself. What did this Taylor girl knew about being a fighter? Had she been raised to fight too? Had she been forced to fight too? Had she been fought another girl knowing that the loser may likely be killed? Probably not. It didn't really mattered. Despite Taylor's claim, Natalia didn't cared about her.

'Am I a fighter?' the idea began to echo in her head as Natalia's lovely blue eyes filled with tears and her cute face turned from bright red to a disjointed pale hue. She had been a fighter, that was pretty much undeniable; fighting for others people's entertainment, having her whole life centered around the next battle, the next opponent. Her existance defined by that, being a fighter. But not any more. She didn't had to. She didn't needed to. She was free now. She was a person now, not a fighting animal.

"You...you are right Taylor-san..." Natalia said trying to hide in her voice the fact she had almost started crying.
" I'm not a fighter..." The Dream admitted, half happy, half sad as she could still feel her warrior pride hurting at the words.

"I don't need this..." she added, feeling so much tension in her body that she sat back down on the bench behind her, and then she noticed the box of chocolates and decided to open it as she still struggled not to cry. "...and I got chocolates..." she finished with a wry smile, taking one of said chocolates and putting them on her mouth.

Taylor stopped, again, and clenched her fists. She heard it plain as day in Natalia's voice, the tell-tale signs of impending bawling. How infuriating. At least Taylor managed to confront someone and not end up crying for once, and Natalia's near-tearfulness took the possibility of tears out of the equation entirely.

She turned around and looked at Natalia, and seeing her like that made her uncomfortable. It wasn't the image she had of her.

"That's my bench." Was all she could think of to say.

She took a step back toward her, just because it felt wrong to walk away from her like that. Not that she cared, she totally didn't. She just... didn't know why, really. "Man, I never would've figured you for a pussy." She said, in a muted, gentle tone, her attempt at sounding reassuring. "Look at you, all ready to cry and stuff. Maybe you do need this. To get you off your high horse and stuff. Um..." Maybe that wasn't the right thing to say, but reassuring crying people who have previously given Taylor concussions for no reason was not her strong suit.

"Look, I'm pretty sure you started talking trash to me first..." She honestly didn't remember. "But I know... how I am. But... I'm not going to tell you that you're good and that you can fight and junk, because really, I think you're pretty overrated. Everyone's all riding your nutsack and shit, and it makes me sick. But I don't... I mean, I could totally kick your ass all day, every day, but I don't need to like... make you... You know what I'm saying. Feel bad."

Nice work, Taylor. Well done. Maybe for an encore she could give her an eating disorder or something.

Natalia felt incredibly tired. Feeling like this, remembering these things exhausted her. So she leaned back and laid on the bench again, with the open box of chocolates resting on her tummy. She took another chocolate and ate it. There was no way to contain the tears so she didn't bothered anymore.

For once, Taylor's words didn bothered her...much. She found them amusing, so she giggled and sobbed at the same time. "Taylor-san...you are not making me...you know...feel bad..." Natalia said between sobs and chocolates. "I really don't care if you think I'm a coward...or overrated...or that you can kick my ass..."
Natalia sighed lazily and tried to move her head to look up at Taylor, but she saw nothing but a blurr with her eyes so tearful. "I'm not feeling bad for anything you said or anything you did. It takes a real cruel mean bitch to make me cry... And you..." Natalia couldn't help but giggle sadly again. " you just don't qualify for the job, Taylor-san."

Taylor shifted uncomfortably from foot to foot. She grabbed her elbow and looked at her feet. "Okay..." She had no idea what to do or what to say, and she wished there was a way she could just leave without feeling like a major tool.

"So... Did you just think of something else... that made you feel bad? I don't follow ya, here, champ. One second you're in my face and the next your a mess. You're crying all over my bench." It was weird. There was nothing even to argue about.

Taylor screwed up her brow and looked down at Natalia, confused. She took a few steps toward her. "Can I, uh, ask you something? If you're not too busy, ya know, with the crying." She paused. She had a question, an honest question, but she didn't know how to phrase it in a way that would get an answer. "Why'd you do it?" She asked finally. "The thing with Adrian, I mean."

"Your 'you are not a fighter' speech..." Natalia said with a sob and a sad laught. "... It reminded me of things that happened long ago. Don't ask... It. Isn't something I share, not even with my closest friends...and you are not my friend..." Natalia explained with a distant tone.

"Why I did what?" Natalia asked not sure what Taylor was talking about at first. Her mind was kind of foggy at the moment, but she understood the question after a couple of seconds. "Why did I attacked you?" Natalia took a few more seconds and two chocolates to think her answer. "I though you were a jerk... At least by Adrian's account of the events you were... I still think you are...although not half as bad as I thought you were...but...no... That's not really why I attacked you...to be honest" the blue-eyed cutie confessed mostly to herself while closing her eyes with a momentary grimace of disgust.

"I was taught that if someone screws you, you got to screw them ten times worse...or they'll do it again... That the only way to make sure you aren't hurt...is by hurting them..." Natalia said slowly opening her eyes to look at Taylor. "It seemed just natural to me when Adrian began plotting revenge..." she added turning her gaze into a distant invisible point.

"I've....been struggling for a while with all those I was taught...and I have learnt they are not so..." Natalia said sadly."That's why I wanted to apologize to you. To clean myself from this guilt...To prove myself I am better than what I was taught to be... But... guess I am not..." The blue-eyed cutie let out a deep sigh of disappointment and used the back of her left hand to clean her tears.

"You were right. Not accepting my apology. I really don't care about you. I was doing it only for myself. I just wanted to prove myself I am a good person. I...I know I should feel bad for having dropped you on your head on the concrete..." The Dream said, immediately remembering all the girls she had hurt and for whom she could feel nothing, and a new wave of tears filled her eyes. "But... I just...can't"

"Yeah." Taylor said. It seemed like she'd found some common ground with Natalia. If you didn't make people regret messing with you it would only get worse. That felt like Taylor's life story. But there was a difference between the two of them, and she wasn't sure what it was.

"You're pretty fucked up." She said, finding herself a little angry, rather unexpectedly. "So you're not a fighter, you're just a sociopath. There's an awful lot of people like you around, and that's why everyone here is so goddamn miserable. I suggest you get your shit together and work on becoming a decent human being before you start torturing animals and killing little kids.

"I've spent my whole goddamn life being kicked around by assholes like you, okay? I learned that I had to be ready to fight all the time because of people like you who'd just jump me from behind and not even feel bad about it. And you DON'T feel bad about it, you just wish that you could trick yourself into thinking that you're something you're not, something better.

"There's one big difference between us. I spend most of my life feeling awful for all the shit that I do and say, and you don't. I want to be a better person, just like you, but I really try. You just try to fake it and trick people into thinking that you're something you're not. Fuck that. You need a shrink. Maybe you could talk to Akashi instead of fucking her brains out. That's what you did, right?"

Taylor was heated. She was doing so well keeping herself together, and just like that her face reddened a little, her hands quivered, and if she wasn't really careful, she'd end up sobbing on the bench with Natalia. Jesus. What did she ever do to deserve this? She just wanted one day where she could NOT look like a raving lunatic.

"I've been with shrinks, thank you..." Natalia said clearly pissed off by the comment. That wasn't something she would usually confess, but she felt no fear of telling those secrets to Taylor. After all, if Taylor told anyone, she would deny it and nobody will believe the punk-girl. Well, maybe Akashi would believe her, but Akashi wouldn't be spreading that around, so it was a deadend. Beyond Akashi, Natalia was pretty sure Taylor had zero credibility.

"It helped me a lot. And that's probably why I haven't killed someone..." she added frowning more and more angry, but then she made a pause, feeling a cold shiver run up her spine and a sudden nausea that made her almost throw up the chocolate in her mouth and those she had already ate. She gulped the chocolate and decided to close her sentence there and omit the word 'again'.

"Yes yes... Thank you for your wise counsel and heartfelt advice.... Thank you...Really..." she said sarcastically. She didn't liked having Taylor comparing their lives. If there was something The Dream hated was to have people pity her, and to have someone like Taylor pity her was just unbearable.

"... and what I do with Akashi is not your damn business..." she added harshly. Perhaps a little too harshly, with made her feel kind of guilty. So trying to be more kind of friendly she extended the box of chocolates to Taylor. "You sure you don't want one?"

"You're right about that, it reaaaally isn't my business. And no, still don't, I seem to have lost my appetite." Taylor's stomach was too knotted up to even be able to think about food.

The thought occurred to her, and it seemed totally ridiculous, that maybe Natalia wasn't all bad. Maybe she wasn't like everyone else, just looking for a reason to take out her frustrations on someone like Taylor. That was crazy, though, she'd just practically told Taylor flat out that she was out of her damn mind. She clearly was, too, dressing like she was on her way to the beach in the middle of summer when it was clearly no longer summer. And shouldn't her giant boobs have some kind of support?

So what was the right thing to do, here? She fell silent thinking about it, and wondered if she even cared enough to bother. She was really uncomfortable, and wasn't even sure why. Maybe because Natalia was turning out to not be who she thought she was, or maybe because it felt like Natalia was being really open with her, really unexpectedly, and she had no idea what to do. It wasn't like they were friends. She couldn't expect her to like, sit down next to her and put her arm around her and stroke her hair and tell her everything will be alright.

"So..." She began. She wasn't really sure where she was going with it. "You're like... Adrian's friend and stuff? How's that, uh... How's that working out for ya?"

Natalia moved the box of chocolates back to her tummy and took one last chocolate before closing it for good. Although she was still pissed with Taylor she was beginning to calm down, feeling real silly for having gone so overly emotional in front of Taylor, but as she kept telling herself, she didn't really cared about Taylor or what she may think, so it was no biggie.

And yet, as annoying as she found Taylor to be, she was starting to feel like she could symphatize with her, which only annoyed Natalia even more. The blue eyed cutie looked up at Taylor like sizing her up. She couldn't figure her out but there was something Natalia was certain, Taylor wasn't a schemer, so she felt like she could answer Taylor's question withou fear. Natalia kind of sensed that Taylor was asking just as an attempt to say something.

"Not sure, really... I'm not used to relate to people like that... You know... Like beyond fighting them or fucking them..."
Natalia said giggling at her own statement. "I care about her...which is more than I can say about nearly anyone else. But I don't think I am a very good friend... I'm worried...she's been getting more and more crazy...and not in her usual cute way... Natalia added, suddenly opening her eyes big to stare into Taylor's own eyes to see more clearly the punkgirl reaction to her next sentence. "I blame Lukretia, Sarah Gatt...and you, for that."

Taylor lit up, became animated, and backed up a step. "FUCK THAT!" She spat angrily. "If she wants to lose her freaking mind in front of everyone, that's her business, I didn't do that. All I did was my job, okay? My job was to beat the snot out of her and make her quit, and I didn't. So it sucks to be me, but her going crazy has NOTHING to do with me."

She scowled, and looked down at Natalia like she was suddenly disgusted by the sight of her. "What about you? You're her friend, where the fuck were you! Sure, you showed up afterward to be a total dick to everyone, but Adrian probably knows that you don't give a shit about her! What the hell do you know about being ANYone's friend, you crazy bitch!"

She stopped for a second and consciously calmed herself back down. She wasn't immune to the embarrassment of having passersby see her flip out. She stopped yelling and continued in a quieter, barely controlled voice. "If you want to fight Lukretia and Sarah, and then screw them both and slut it up, more power to you. If you put one hand on me, I will give you brain damage. You'll need to wear a scarf to catch all the drool. Okay?"