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While there wasn't much question in his mind as to what to do with most of the conspirators that he captured, there was one that he honestly wasn't sure what to do with.

Katara. The fourteen year old girl who by all accounts, fell backwards into the situation, attempted to kill the Yeerk along side of Sam and his group, then... gave up.

It put him in a tough position. She was just a kid who made a rash and remarkably stupid decision. Now he had to decide whether she should.

He had wanted to deal with her immediately, but he wasn't in the frame of mind to. He needed to think, but that at least came with one advantage. It would also give her time to think, which is about all she'd be able to do while being held in the brig.

Now that he finally had a chance to rest and clear his head, he decided to have a talk with the girl. He needed to see where her head was at, and what she learned, if anything. Or if she was as lost as Sam was.

He had her moved from her cell into one of the interrogation rooms. He had her wait there for a few minutes, then finally walked in.

"Miss Katara."

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She was actually not as nervous as she thought she was going to be. The prospect of meeting with the head of security was not one most would have liked, and Leon was certainly no friend to the kids on board the ship save for Sherry. But Katara had long since stopped feeling fear about what she was going to do. In her eyes, what had mattered that day was making sure something like the Yerrk was no longer a threat. Despite the deception and everything that came along with it, Katara wasn't incensed or even angry she was tricked. She felt she was still doing things for the people on the ship more than herself. Murder, after all, had not been in her heart, and despite the times she had been rutheless before, there had to be an inbetween.

"Leon," Katara said softly. "Thank you for letting me finish what I started in healing the injured on the ship. I guess now you want to know why I did what I did."

"We'll get to that momentarily." There were a couple of other things he wanted to know first.

For starters, "How old are you?"

That question caught her off guard, but it also raised her ire a little. What difference did that make?

"I'm fourteen. What about it?"

She was barely two years older than Sherry, an observation he kept to himself.

"Tell me about the world you're from."

What was he playing at? She was sure that Leon wasn't going to go asking Sam questions about his life! Why did hers matter so much? was it so important to these people that they understand how someone so young could do this?

"The world I'm from is recovering from a hundred years of war at the hands of the Fire Nation. Families have been split apart, people have lost the ones they love, and the air nomads have all been murdered. The southern Water tribe, where I'm from, have lost almost all of their water benders. The men have all left to assist the earth Kingdom soldiers in the war. Me and Sokka, my brother, had to depend on each other and gran gran."

Leon simply studied her for a moment. There was a lot in that simple answer that explained a few things he had noticed about her. He still wasn't entirely sure of what to make of her, but the context was important. Understanding was always important.

"By all accounts, you're a good kid. You seemed to have made a number of friends in the crew. You're obviously far from being cruel or uncaring...

"So how does a girl like that, knowing very few details of a situation, end up making a snap judgment to kill something she'd never laid eyes on before, that posed no immediate threat to her or anyone else?"

Katara gave him a glare. "You already answered your own question. The safety of the crew and everyone in it is my concern. And you're wrong, I didn't go into this not knowing a little bit about the Yeerks. I did talk to Ax and I did a lot of thinking regarding what had happened. You had a trial and decided the Yeerk needed to go to prison, even though there were people that didn't agree with risking that Yeerk might go free. What I did? That was a reaction when the idea came to me that Stacy might not know who she's bringing onto the ship, and then you have the Yeerk on your hands all over again. I've had my body possessed before Leon, and I've had someone puppetmaster my friends so they attacked me. I wasn't about to let it happen to someone new."

And that was what she thought, despite a lingering doubt in her head, despite knowing there was something she wasn't saying.

He was unfazed by the glare. He had seen plenty worse in his lifetime. He listened to her quietly and calmly, her bit about having once been possessed causing a number of things to click into place.

He understood now. Far better than she could realize.

"That wasn't your place to decide," he told her simply. "And you knew that, you knew you were wrong, or you wouldn't have stopped."

He paused for a moment, thinking for a bit. "How do you feel now?"

Katara's eyes grew focused. "Of course not. It was your place then. You were the one that threw around the fake Yeerk, and now everyone blames Sam. What makes what you did any better, risking people's lives, pushing Sam and his group to have to hurt others? You're telling me its not all right to kill a thing that can harm us, but it is all right if we're pushed to fight, so you can give some kind of lesson? Do you have that right, just because you're head of the security team?"

Katara clenched her fist. "It was WRONG for all those people to be hurt! Do you really think I'm going to value killing that thing over people who could potentially lose their lives? What I wanted was the only thing to get injured is the thing that threatens the safety of the ship! Is that wrong? Even at a time where someone decides something for others, don't they have the right to oppose it, if only for the interest of people here? Don't think I'm sorry for a minute that I disobeyed 'the rules!' I've had to work against government officials before who claimed they were helping too, and they turned out to be doing nothing but putting blinders over their eyes!"

Katara didn't like the way he kept giving some of these questions. She was still fighting something she didn't want to say. "Annoyed, right about now! And about the Yeerk, I feel..."

She wasn't sure on that. Right now, she really, really wasn't.

Leon, again, retained his cool. He looked at her patiently, waiting for her to finish, but when she didn't, he understood it was because she likely didn't have an answer. He mentally went over everything she had just said, and decided to take a moment to clarify something for her.

"Sam wasn't the only member of this crew who had been infested by a Yeerk. And all those who were, Sam included, were given a chance to decide what would happen to the one Yeerk left. Something which was Sam's idea, in fact. All of them got together and in the end decided that there would be a hearing, and that members of this crew who hadn't been infested, people who could see things clearly would decide the Yeerks ultimate fate. Because they, the victims, knew they couldn't see past their own emotions and past their own pain to make a fair decision.

"Sam gave his word that he would honor whatever decision that group came to. The moment he didn't get the result he wanted, he went back on his promise. No one forced his hand in it. He made the decision that this would be his way or no way, that everyone should bow to his will and his fears, that no other thoughts or opinions mattered at all but his own.

"He threatened violence from the outset, before the trial had even started. He decided he was going to kill the Yeerk if it was given anything other than a death sentence, and started making plans to break into the Medbay in order to kill it. When those plans were discovered, and Sam was moved into confinement, he switched to emotional manipulation. He starved himself during the trial, wanting to force the crew to choose between either killing the Yeerk or 'making' Sam kill himself. When those antics didn't deter the trial, he had others break him out of jail. When he finally thought he had a shot at the Yeerk, he took it, not giving the slightest bit of a damn of who he might hurt in the process.

"His was the group that launched the attack, with no warning and no provocation. His was the group that decided that they were going to hurt anyone who stood between them and the creature they wanted to slaughter.

"Now, me? My job was to uphold the decision that came out of that hearing. That's the job I was entrusted with. That was the promise I made and the promise I kept. Despite what you want to believe, had Sam never showed up, the decoy Yeerk would've been brought down to the medbay, and the real one would've followed soon after. Teaching you all a lesson was never the point. Seeing if a group would take the bait, and taking them down when they finally showed themselves so an obstacle to completing my job can be removed? That was the point.

"As for where I put the target? Yes, I had the right to make that decision, and the Commanding Officers will decide my fate for what resulted in that decision. But regardless of where I put it, Sam still was the one who chose to open fire on it the way he did.

"Sam had a choice the entire time, Katara. He never had to do any of that. He had his say both before and during the trial. His thoughts and his opinions were listened to and carefully weighed along side the thoughts and opinions of everyone else who suffered as he did. He and his group were never some innocent victims who were backed into a corner because they were ignored or threatened into silence. They weren't pushed into a fight, they brought it.

"That's the group you joined," he told her. His voice had remained steady and even the whole time, like he was simply explaining how something worked. He wasn't trying to preach to her, but he did want to make sure she had all the facts of the situation. She wasn't here for the entire thing.

"And until I'm told otherwise, I'm the Chief of Security, so it's also my job, in part anyway, to decide what happens next. To do that, I need to understand who you are, why you made the decisions you made, whether you understand the full scope of what you tried to do, whether or not you think you were right or wrong in everything that you did, and whether or not you'd do it again.

"So far, I've gotten a good understanding of who you are and what you think, but... how do you feel about the Yeerk now? Are you still afraid of it?"

Edited 2009-09-19 09:58 (UTC)

Katara's mouth went dry, and she had to turn away from Leon for a moment, because it was as if everything had went hazy. She hadn't known any of this about Sam, and chances are, the people that had joined Sam might not know it either. Would she, if knowing all that, had helped him? Would it had been worth killing that Yeerk if it meant sacrificing principals she would have understood? Picard's voice echoes in her head now, the voice of what he'd said to Sam. That he understood why, saw what had been at stake for Sam. At the same time, the people that had been hurt, the ones that hadn't chosen a side, were in med bay now, recovering. Chaucer, for one, Obi Wan, Luke's mentor for another, and Jaime. When she thought of him, of how he would have decided, and what eventually he had been forced to do, Katara understood who's face she saw easily, saw what argument he'd been giving.

Katara's hand went to her mouth, and a small whimper escaped. She wouldn't cry here, couldn't, not now when she needed to be strong. Her breathing wasn't coming out even, and now, in face of that question, Katara made everything stop, and she held the Yeerk ball, staring at the thing that held the life form, the creature of a nightmare she'd only recently learned to fear and hate. With that knowledge, could she do it? With no escape for that slug, could she kill it?

"I wanted to kill it on my own," she said softly to Leon. "I never joined their group, I never was a part of their plans. I did it on my own. Part of me knows if any one of them had killed the Yeerk, they would have done it without regretting it, without feeling bad. I knew that the person who killed it couldn't think like that. They had to do it knowing it would weigh on them, that the life was sacred, and that they could never do anything like that again. I chose because..."

But no, even she knew there was another reason she'd chosen. It had been one, partly, but there ewas another reason shed chosen, one she hadn't let anyone see. She couldn't afford to have it take Aang, she couldn't fail in making sure it wouldn't hurt him. And she couldn't tell that to anyone, because it was too personal. It was like failing in Ba Sing Se all over again but worse, because he was here, somewhere on this ship, and she knew wherever he was, he was suffering, and there was nothing she could do about it. Nothing.

The despair flooded her, and her eyes filled with tears. Her reason...it was passion, it was vengence after all, just like before. She'd wanted to take control and not let her fears take her over, but it had, just in a different way. And now she stared at the Yeerk ball, and had it, and she would kill it. Would she?

"Yes, I'm afraid of it," she said, her voice choked with emotion. "I'm afraid it'll hurt the people I care about. I'm afraid I'll turn my back, that I'll let security handle it, and it will get out and attach itself to someone I love. I'm afraid that..."

You're not strong enough.

Katara closed her eyes, sniffling. "I'm afraid I wouldn't have killed it."

Leon may be distant while he was in Agent Kennedy Mode, but he was far from unfeeling. He stood up, taking his chair with him, and pulled it around so he could sit next to her. He briefly held up his hand towards her, a silent motion to tell her to relax. He wasn't about to hurt her.

"Don't be afraid," he told her, his voice a little softer as he spoke this time.

"You're only fourteen, but you've probably had to be the adult most of your short life, because no one else was around to do it. Taking on that much responsibility and not buckling under the weight of it? That takes a lot of strength. And while you may not want to believe it, sparing a life takes a lot of strength too, especially when there's a very big part of yourself pushing to take it.

"It's easy to kill, far too easy. But even if you do it for a lot of the right reasons, if you're also doing it for some of the wrong reasons too, you lose a part of yourself in the process. Not because your enemy took it from you when they died, but because you gave it to them when you killed them. The people who depend on you... they need you whole, they need you to still have that piece of you. That's more important than whether or not someone lives or dies.

"No matter what happens, you didn't let them down by backing off. Okay?"

Katara wiped her face, and took a breath. She was doing her best at this point, and really didn't want to think about exactly why she was starting to crack. She knew well enough that what she was motivated by a feelinng she didn't know how to communicate to soemone who didn't know the particulars, and she may as well have sounded like a crazy person, but a part of her was bursting at the seams now. She knew now why she had wanted to kill the Yeerk, why she'd been able to decide it.

"Its...this place...it took Aang the one that mattered more to me than anyone, and its keeping him here. He's somewhere on this ship, fighting for them, doing what they ask for a reason I don't know. I just wanted to make sure it never hurt him! He's...he's been through so much ,and he almost died and I couldn't do anything to help him then! I had to do something now! Because...if something happens to him, I can't go on!"

She clenched her fists, tears in her eyes. She hated this! Knowing that she let him down somehow, because she chose to help in the killing, even if it meant protecting him. She knew she was wrong, and she knew why now, thanks to, of all people, Roxie.

Because now that dream was clear, and the fire nation clothes made sense. The replica Katara wasn't just a figment, it was a message. The desire to kill without it being the last resort wasn't an attribute of bravery.

It was wanting to kill to prevent a situation that may or may not happen. Something someone Katara didn't want to think about would have done, a person whose name still haunted her because she saw it in her nightmares.

"Azula," Katara said, barely audible.

Leon didn't tell her to calm down, or to hold it all together. She was a kid and obviously holding in a lot. He decided to give her a chance to let it all out. Particularly since she seemed to be holding in something rather important.

"You can tell me about this 'Azula' in a moment, but I need you to back up a little for me. I need you to tell me about Aang. If he's being held somewhere on this ship, you have to tell me everything you can. That's the best way you can help him right now."

Katara took a breath now. She was glad that she finally said it to someone, even though she shouldn't have said it according to Zuko. She was too emotional for that: she definitely knew that now.

"Aang in my world is the Avatar, which means he is the balance of my woirkd because he controls the four elements: water, air, fire and earth. If I knew where Aang was, I'd go there myeslf. I don't know where he is, but I know he's here. You may say I don't have concrete proof, but I know. And if you actually mean that..."

Well. She had no words. How would someone who barely knew her want to help?

He did make sure to take notes on that. This ship had a thousand mysteries, this 'Aang' person seemed to be yet another one of them.

"This is an incredibly huge ship, about the size of a small country. If he's stuck in another part of the ship, he could be miles away, and no one can help him if they don't even know he's there." And speaking of knowing about him...

"How do you know he's on board? Just a gut feeling, or did he try to contact you somehow?"

Katara shook her head. "He's here. There was a way he let me know that he knew it was me. He let off a sign that he was around, a sigh that it was only him. Leon, I know it sounds weird but I won't lie. He's the one I care about...more than anyone."

Katara didn't absolve herself. "I just wanted them to be OK. I know he means this, and I know that I wasn't right. But I need you to know that I wanted nothing but the best for them."

He leaned forward a little, resting his elbows on his knees. "I know. I still think you're a good kid, you just made a bad decision based on incomplete information. Which, honestly? That's typical of teenagers." Granted, those usually didn't involve attempted murder, but these were crazy circumstances. "The good news is you're young, and as long as you're willing to learn, the rest of us are willing to help you. That's far more important than punishing you." Despite the screw up.

"Now, about Aang; tell me where, when, and how he contacted you. If we're lucky, we might find a way to answer back."

Teenagers. Leon was fairly predictable about his opinion of non-adults, which still irritated Katara. In this case, annoyingly, he was right and she knew it. She had made this decision based on her emotions, and not only that, it had been a decision she wouldn't have made a week ago. She knew that because she had decided something different at that time, in that dreamscape with Roxie. What she hadn't realized at that time was how relevant it was going to be for her here. She swallowed, trying to calm the panic so she could answer Leon's inquiries.

"Several weeks ago, I was in the statuary: there we found a place similar to an air temple we visited when we were first discovered Aang. When I found out from Zuko that Aang was still here, I got angry...and at that time, the statues glowed. The only time that ever happened was when Aang was in the Avatar state, where his eyes glow and he channels a great amnount of energy from his previous ancestors. There was no way that could have happened unless he was here...and I still have to find out where he is. He knows I'm here."

The statuary. Interesting that.

"Alright, that gives me someplace to start." Something he could work with, at least.

"You had also mentioned something or someone called 'Azula'?" He liked to be thorough when he worked, and hadn't forgotten about that detail.

Katara nodded. It wasn't much evidence, she knew that. But there was no doubt in her mind that Aang was here: she knew that for sure.

But she really wasn't ready to think about Azula right now.

"Someone I don't want to think about. She was vicious and cruel, the worse person I know. I fought her near the end of the war, and I chained her up before she could do more damage. It was good I did that though: she was only seconds away from electrocuting me with that lightning like she did to Zuko."

And to anyone, it was apparent it was a time Katara didn't like thinking about.

That was something he was willing to let go of, so he didn't push it.

"Ok, I think we're about done here." Not that he was any closer to figuring out what to do with her. But he found out what he needed to know about her.

"Just one more thing; did you sign up for any classes?"

"Thank you," Katara said softly, wondering what all of this would mean to Leon. For her, she just wanted to curl up and go unconscious. The doubt she was having in her heart, the idea of knowing she might be like that woman, was too much to think about now.

"Of course: mathematics, physics, other religions and any art class. I have to keep up with this ship's technology after all. Why do you ask?"

"I'll talk to Allen, and to the Commanding Officers. I don't know how much longer you'll be here--" hopefully not much longer, "--but I wouldn't want you to fall behind while you're here."

Katara nodded. She understood now why this happened, what Leon had wanted. She didn't think she deserved any better treatment than any of the other conspirators, considering why she'd done it, but she was glad he heard her out.

"I'll do my best to keep my studies up," Katara said, then had a genuinely appreciative expression. "Thank you for hearing me out. I know you think I'm a killer, but...I wanted to help the people here. I DO care about them. This was just the wrong way. I know that now."

"A wise man once said, 'Warriors are people who let their hearts feel the pain of the battles they fight. Killers are people who feel no pain and have no regrets over what they've done.'" Five bucks says he got that off of a fortune cookie.

He stood up and put his hand on her shoulder and gave it a soft squeeze. As far as he was concerned, she wasn't a killer. He then headed towards the door. "C'mon, let's get you back to your cell."

Katara smiled, and walked with him. She didn't mind that she'd go back, not now: the fact was, she understood now what the inner conflict meant, and what she could do to stop it. What she'd done hadn't been good because it pushed her closer to being a person she didn't want to be.

She did know that she would have to face what she'd done, and Aang might be disappointed with her when he'd find out.

That would be the true punishment.

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