Isala found herself sitting at the table inside the Supreme Kai of Time's house, her legs under her and a tea set in front. She hadn't expected it to be almost exactly the same as her personal dome home, but here it was, just with a slightly different scale and actually having been lived in.

"This is a nice place." Isala commented, as she watched SKoT pour her a cup of tea. "How long have you been living in here?"

"Oh, you know, not long?" SKoT answered with a flash of a smile at the Saiyan. "I saw that everyone else was getting one and thought that I deserved one, too. I've still got my original house, a real one for Kais, but don't you think this is much more relaxing if I have guests?"

"Yeah, I guess." Isala said, going silent as she reached out for the offered cup of tea and sipped it. It was as bitter as wormwood and as sharp as a two-edged sword. She'd rather not have drunk it, but she didn't have the energy to complain as she downed the rest of the cup. "Is that it?" She asked, raising her eyebrow at SKoT.

She giggled and shook her head. "Oh, no. I came ready for Saiyans." She said, as she lifted up the teapot, poured Isala another cup, and then gave it a shake. It sounded like waves crashing against an ocean. "Being a Kai has its benefits, you know." She winked. "The sweets were a little tougher, but I've got a team of droids working on it. You can eat all you like!" She promised, then leaned forward to rest her chin on her hands as she gazed at Isala.

"Right, thanks. I didn't really know that other races ate less." Isala said, as she tossed a couple of cupcakes into her mouth and started chewing them down. They were gone within seconds.

"I didn't think you would." SKoT said. "It's said that the reason Saiyans haven't colonized is that not a lot of planets can sustain a planet of Saiyans without running out of food. Sadala and Vegeta were the only ones with enough natural nutrition and fertile soil to sustain them."

Isala drank another cup of tea to give herself a moment to think, then shrugged. "I don't know about that. I was a warrior, not a foodologist, and we didn't really eat anything on the planets we went to. I guess it makes sense?"

SKoT nodded. "Did you ever do things on the planets you went to? Aside from destroying them, I already know all about that."

"Not...really." Isala said. "We'd stop to plan, if we had to, but that was all there was to it."

"So you never found anything you liked while you were there. That's...kind of sad." SKoT noted, her gaze traveling down to where Isala's hands were wrapped around the handle of her mug. Her grip wasn't quite as sure as she seemed to be. "Don't you think?"

"I don't know." Isala forced herself to down another cup of tea, so the Supreme Kai would have to pour her another one, but the pink woman didn't seem to want to drop it so easily. "I tried not to focus on it, much. There wasn't anything interesting to do on those planets, nobody to fight. It was just like putting on your clothes."

"Do you think you would have seen some cool things, if you were paying attention?" SKoT frowned. "It must have been sad to have so much to explore, but the only place you ever went was inside your own head. There must have been some part of you that wanted to know what was there."

"I don't think there was." Isala glanced off to the side. "There were only things to kill."

"I see..." The Kai took a sip of her own tea and mulled over the flavor. "What do you think Frieza was thinking, when he destroyed Vegeta?"

Isala froze where she sat. She'd had a bad feeling about this conversation from the start, and now it was veering all too close to the things that kept her up at nights, that plagued her mind whenever she didn't occupy it with something else. Her instinct was to punch the Supreme Kai in the face, but she knew she didn't really want to do that. It wouldn't even help her escape, just make sure that everyone else knew how much this was affecting her.

"I don't know." Isala admitted, a beast lurking in her voice.

"Do you think that he was thinking the kind of things that you thought, when you were destroying planets?" The Supreme Kai met Isala's eyes, earnest empathy meeting uncomfortable anger. "That it was just some planet...filled with things to kill, nothing to see or do, nothing worth thinking about?"

"I don't know."

"Huh." The Supreme Kai took a bite out of one of the cakes, then nudged the tray towards Isala. She didn't take anything from it, just kept her hands on her lap, clenched into fists. "Would you have liked to know?"

"No!" Isala snapped. "He's a tyrant and an evil bastard who deserves whatever death he got! The only thing I want to know is what it would have felt like to kill him myself!" She said, slamming her fist on the table. The objects jumped off, then floated easily back to where they sat.

The Supreme Kai nodded kindly and reached out, placing her hand over Isala's fist. Her knuckles were pure white against her already pale skin, but the grip faded slightly under the smaller woman's touch. Her blood boiled just a little less at the first touch that felt familiar somehow. Like it was meant just for her

"Do you think that any of the people on the planets you destroyed might have felt the same way about you, Isala?" The Supreme Kai asked softly.

"I don't...think so..." Isala couldn't keep looking at the Supreme Kai's eyes, so she just let her gaze fall. "I was just doing my job."

"Would the loss of your people hurt any less, if it hadn't been Frieza, but somebody working for him?" The Supreme Kai asked.

Isala grunted, feeling tears start to come to her eyes, then shook her head. "It would still feel like this."

The Supreme Kai nodded and ran her thumb across Isala's palm, a soothing touch and a reminder of her presence. "I think they would have felt the same way as you do now. Wouldn't they?" Isala stared at nothing, then slowly nodded.

"They were weak anyway..." Isala muttered. "Somebody would have done it…"

"Do you really believe that?"

"I don't know..."

The Supreme Kai shifted around the edge of the table, so that she was sat beside Isala, and looked up at her to try to catch her gaze. She eventually found it and offered her a smile.

"Why don't you tell me some of the things you love about Vegeta?" The Supreme Kai asked. "I can tell that you miss it. When you're lonely, talking about what you like, about what you're missing, can help. Just a little."

"I'm not lonely..." Isala scowled stubbornly.

"Still."

"I liked the sky the most." Isala recalled. "It was this beautiful shade of red, and I saw it all the time. I remember it being there when I was a kid, when I was training, and it kind of made it like it didn't matter if I won or lost. If I won, then I'd won. And if I'd lost, I'd be on my back, looking at the sky, and it was always there, kind of, comforting me, y'know?" The memories came to her like water down a river. "It didn't matter if I lost, because the sky would still be there." She winced. "I sound stupid..."

"No, tell me more about it." The Supreme Kai said. "It sounds like a wonderful place."

Isala sniffled, the comforting rhythm of the Supreme Kai's thumb on her palm serving as a bastion against the feelings that threatened to overwhelm her. "You should have seen the sandy plains...they shimmered like they were on fire, and we'd always train on it. Everything you did had an impact, an effect. If you threw someone down, they'd skid and send up a cloud of sand. It'd rise whenever you'd charge your ki, and flow around your blasts. It...it felt like you were part of it. Part of the planet. Part of the Saiyan race."

"So it helped you feel like one of your own people, huh?" The Supreme Kai said.

"Yeah, everyone used it." A sad smile flickered across Isala's lips. "You could just fly up and see everyone training. From little kids to trained warriors to people who'd gotten old, giving the young an earful about all the things they didn't know. Even the bakers, the scientists, people like that? They'd get in on it, too. You'd see them after they left their boring jobs, heading out to the sand to spar and feel like they were living like Saiyans." She felt a hot tear roll down her cheek.

"I miss it so much." She finally admitted, a sob coming to her voice. "I wish I was there. That, that none of this had happened." Another few tears fell. "I wake up and I want to pretend that I can just, walk up to a window and open it and I'd see that sky waiting for me. Or walk into another room and see one of my...my friends and talk about whatever. B-But I can't, I won't, I just want to curl up in a ball and..."

Isala started crying and the Supreme Kai gently shifted, allowing the Saiyan's head to rest on her lap and sob for as long as she had to. She placed her other hand on Isala's head, gently stroking her messy black hair. The poured tea got colder and colder until Isala fell silent, her tears having faded and nothing filling the room but the sound of them breathing.

"It's okay to be sad." The Supreme Kai told Isala, smiling as she looked down at her. "And miss all of those things. You don't have to keep it to yourself, okay? You can come visit me whenever you feel like that and I'll even cook you something myself, and we can talk about it, or not, whatever you want! Would you like that?"

Isala nodded slowly, a significant part of her wanting to get up to preserve her dignity, to make it seem like she hadn't just broken down In front of her boss. But another part of her didn't care. "...yeah, that sounds nice."

"I think so, too." The Supreme Kai giggled, as she shot a little beam of energy at each of their cups of tea so that they were steaming again. "Let's enjoy the rest of our teatime. I bet the kitchen staff have made way too many cakes for even you to eat by now!" She laughed.

"Yeah. Okay." Isala said, not getting up even as the Supreme Kai sipped her tea.

SKoT put down her cup and met the eyes of the woman whose head was still in her lap. "Well, if you're not getting up, you might as well stay here for the night. You should be able to fit in my bed, and if you want to sleep naked, I don't mind."

Isala nodded. "Okay. Yeah, I think I'll do that." She said. "I'll make breakfast or something."

"Oh, no! I'm the host, so I'll make breakfast." SKoT promised. "Not everyone can say they've had breakfast specially made by the Supreme Kai of Time, so consider yourself lucky!"