trans_9 | I can take it and I will.

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I can take it and I will.

After coming back from interrogation, Katara was more than subdued, and hardly said a word. The fact that she'd not only made the wrong decision and had almost committed a crime of passion was bad enough, but she'd gotten closer to losing who she was again. Aang hadn't been here to make her see how wrong it was, and knowing the only thing that had stopped her was her need to help people was of little comfort. The worse part was she wasn't even sure she'd been able to kill the Yeerk if they had caught up to it: what would she do if Aang needed her? What if it got bad enough that she hesitated and this time she lost him for good?

Exactly how long could she go without having to make that decision?

"I wish I knew," she said softly to herself, hands tucked behind her head, staring at the ceiling. "I really wish I could talk to him about this."

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"Nice to meet you Will!" Katara said, smiling to the newcomer. Her hair was...well, really pretty, she'd never seen anything like it before. Also, there seemed to be something strangely upbeat about her that Katara liked.

"Hmm," Katara's brow was furrowed. "Well, I could pick Housekeeping except you'll probably think I'm a girly girl for reading it, and I've pretty much BEEN Good Housekeeping for a few years. On the other hand, I don't even know what golf is, so...I think I'll try golf!"

"Here you go." Will slid the golf mag into the cell, and sat down. "Um - how are you doing?" she smiled. "Other than bored, I guess."

The housekeeping comments confused her, but maybe she just had lots of siblings to clean up after back home.

"Thanks," Katara said, leafing through the magazine. Uhh...that might have been a mistake. What was with all the funny clothes and the weird tool things they were using. And there was a lot of grass...was this some kind of game?

"Thinking a lot, I guess," Katara said, leafing halfheartedly through the weird magazine. "Knowing that I have a lot to do about myself once I actually get out of here."

"Hmm."

Will wasn't really sure what to say about it, since all she knew was that Katara was down here for being on the wrong side of the Yeerk fight - the wrong side being the ones who were against imprisoning it, but did that mean killing it, or freeing it so it could take over again, or freeing it because they didn't believe in jail?

"Do you . . . want to talk about it? I still don't know exactly what happened."

Katara almost said no, since it had been talked about and gone through her head and everyone preferred to think of her group as "the bad guys," but she thought better of it. She owed people like Will, who knew next to nothing about it, an explanation as to what was going on in her head.

"The long and short about it was the Yeerk are aliens with the ability to go into people's brains and pose as them. They've done it on the ship before, and while most of them are gone, there was this last one left. It had a trial to decide its fate, and it was decided it should be allowed to live. At this point, there were three kinds if people: those that didn't really care/agreed/disagreed and wouldn't do anything about it, those that wanted it to die and would go out of their way to make sure it was killed, and those who supported the trail's decision and would defend the Yeerk to the death. I was in the second category. I've been close to manipulated like that before."

There was WAY more to the story, but that was the bare bones for now.

"I know about the yeerk," Will says, bringing her knees up to her chest as she sits. "I was there when everyone . . . when the whole thing was going down. It was . . . it was pretty scary. Not being able to tell who was themselves."

She runs a hand through her short hair. "I didn't know there was a trial. Just that it was in prison."

She pauses, thinking about killing the yeerk versus leaving it imprisoned forever. "I've never told anybody this, because I wasn't one of the ones who was really hurt by the yeerks . . . nobody I knew really well got infested, and I wasn't one of them, but I . . . I sort of felt bad for them. Once I learned what they were." She glances at Katara, trying to see if she should turn away from spouting her opinion sooner rather than later. "Living in that form, with no body, and no way to do . . . anything, I guess . . . I don't agree with what they did, but I can sort of understand why they did it."

She fiddles with the zipper on her plantsuit. "I really don't agree with it, but when all the fighting happened, I didn't know which side to choose . . . and I still don't know which would be, I guess more merciful . . . to kill it, or keep it locked up alone in a box forever. I don't even know if the people who decided to lock it up were doing it to be merciful, or not to be."

Katara looked down, and couldn't have felt worse about what she had done. She wasn't even sure she could tell Will why she'd done it, what was in her heart when she'd heard about its existence.

"I wasn't right to do it, Will. That's why I'm in here. People have been trying to get me to understand why I shouldn't have done it, and I kept trying to say I did it to help others. I was wrong: it was a crime of passion. I got really scared that it would hurt a friend of mine, and I couldn't bear to have something like that happen again. If I had actually killed that Yeerk, I would have become someone I've been doing my best to not become. A killer. I'm a coward."

Azula.

Katara turned, and pushed the magazine away. Suddenly, she was feeling very unworthy. "Your answer is the one I should have been thinking."

Will wanted to reach into the cell and hold Katara's hand.

"I don't think you're a coward," she says, her brown eyes wide with sympathy. "I don't know what it's like to be controlled like that, but I know what it's like to be afraid. When you're scared, you want to do anything you can to make that fear go away . . . to stop whatever's causing it from ever taking hold of you again."

She didn't know whether it was possible to kill Phobos, but there had been times when she wondered . . . if she did, she wouldn't have had to worry about him anymore, would she?

Katara sniffed. "But that isn't me! I'm not supposed to do things like that! I've always said it was important to have compassion, and I know self control! I had to learn it from doing something like this before! I even had clues! If I'd only stopped to think about it..."

She took the girl's hand because as much as she hated it, she was getting that pained frenzy in her voice that lead to crying. How could she be doing this to some stranger who'd have no idea what she was talking about? She swallowed, but her eyes were brimming with tears, and she felt so stupid, that it had come to this at all.

"I...if I come close to losing him again, I can't take it. I just can't!"

"It's okay," Will said, squeezing Katara's hand. "You don't have to be something you don't want to be. People make mistakes, but they learn from them - you can do that."

Her unhappiness was affecting Will. How awful would it be if she lost someone SHE was close to? Taranee, or Matt, or Mom - just thinking about it made tears well up in her eyes too.

"Please don't cry. I'll - I'll help you. I don't want anyone else to get hurt either."

Katara closed her eyes. She needed to stop this, she need a little control, but all that would run through her mind were the things that had happened that led to this: Roxie's dream, the statuary, the Yeerk fight, those injured people, and the interrogation by Leon: it was all too much. She put her head in her hands a moment and sobbed as quietly as she could. She needed to at least try and get some of this out: she was hurting so much.

She swallowed, and tried to straighten herself up a little. "I don't mean for you to see me like this. When I first meet people, I'm usually not curled up in a ball in a cell. I've just been through a lot lately, and I'm still trying to recover from a lot of feelings."

She sniffed, and laughed sadly to herself. "If being an adult means I have to feel this deeply, maybe being a kid isn't such a bad thing."

"It's okay. Sometimes you have to get it all out." Will knows these things.

She "hmmph'd" at the adult comment. "I WISH I had time to be a kid. Between this and everything back home -"

She sighed.

"It would be nice to go back to before all this . . . back to being a kid with no worries except school."

The other girl nodded, wiping her face on her sleeve. This was really not the way she would have liked to be remembered, espe3cially by a girl she'd just met.

She couldn't help but let out a laugh, despite her feeling of being particularly miserable at the moment. "I need to go TO school. Before going to travel with my group of friends, I was basically acting like my older brother's mother. That's what I meant by the whole Good Housekeeping thing. School was something only fairly rich nations could actuakllky get to send their kids to."

Katara took another look at Will. "Before I go back to talking about myself, I should say that I think your hair is really, really pretty and I'm glad you're keeping me company. So what's your world like?"

If it helped, Will didn't think any less of her for crying in prison. Most of the kids on this ship were like her - used to fighting, used to hard decisions, more grown up than they particularly wanted to be. Katara struck her as just that.

"Are you going to go to school here?" she asks. "I'm going to Dr. Grey's biology class, but Mr. Gentry recommended I take Meluly's math classes too -" she shrugs. "I . . . guess you could say I come from a rich nation. There are places in my world where it's a big deal if you can send your kids to school, but in my country, you have to go. Rich or poor, whatever."

She frowns slightly. Oh how truancy laws are the bane of her existence.

She brightens at the compliment to her hair, though. "Thanks . . . but yours is a lot prettier. Mine gets kind of thin and breaky if I try to grow it out . . ."

Katara would have been glad to know that. For all she knew, she was falling to pieces far too easily. If she was going to be stronger, she was going to have to admit to herself that she was still a kid about a lot of things. It would be good for Will to remind her of that.

"Well, I planned to," Katara said. "I want to take the biology class and physics class too, but I also want to do some of the morning physical education classes with Master Chief if I can. Of course, its pretty hard to take any classes when you're dumb enough to land in prison. Totally puts a crimp in those plans. but you're lucky you get to learn no matter what your social status is. Wars totally ruin that."

Katara blushed a little, but smiled. "Thanks, no one's ever really said that. They just like to talk about the hair loopies all the time."

"They're pretty cute. Unusual."

As for school - "I could bring you some class notes . . . homework or something. Mr. Gentry gave us all reading assignments to bring us up to speed. I could ask him for yours."

She looks a little hesitant about the idea. Being able to talk to machines, then talking to somebody whose brain is half-machine . . . it's awkward.

"Anyway . . . you shouldn't feel bad about feeling bad." She looks around the prison. "This is all a lot to take in."

Katara giggled. "Thanks. I don't usually get complicated on them."

At this though, Katara gave her first appreciative smile since...well, yesterday. "Oh, I would be so grateful! I don't really want to be left behind with all of the work that needs to be done! It'll be a little harder without the lecture, but I'm sure I can keep up!"

She took a look at the prison. "It's a lesson, I guess. I can't let my emotions blind me from doing what's right. With everything that's happened, I can't afford to compromise my ethics again."

Will brightened at the prospect of being able to help. "Sure. I'll get it for you."

She reached through the bars to take Katara's hand again. "You don't feel like a bad person to me." She smiled. "I'm pretty good about telling these things."

"Thank you!" Katara said, happy this was at least not so horrible.

Katara took the girl's hands, and sighed. "I won't go to that place ever again. Even if it means turning my back on everything my emotions tell me. Because if i just let myself react to bad people instead of doing what's right, I'll be as infected as any Yeerk, you know?"

Katara tried to steer the conversation into friendlier places. "So how has your stay in this place been?"

"I guess it's been okay." All things considered. "I dunno - I hang out in the Sensoriums a lot. It's pretty fun - I get to swim all day and eat ice cream whenever I want to, but . . ." she shrugs. "I don't like seeing fake people around, so usually I just run around an empty version of my city. The media lab is fun, too."

"I can see that. The idea of the Sensoriums was pretty hard for me at first too. The idea of them just seemed really strange, since the world I'm from has nothing quite like that, you know? But you're right, it can be pretty difficult to not go there, if only to get some decent practice in."

Katara nodded. "Yeah! I totally know what more people are talking about because of the media lab! It's pretty interesting!"

"What do you practice? We should go and watch some things from my world some time. My boyfriend Matt has a band - he's the lead guitarist, and he's really good, and they have his music there . . ."

"Waterbending," Katara replied. "It's a little like what you guys call martial arts, except when I do it I can bend water: I can make it ice, I can ride waves, surf on water, use it as a shield, you name it."

Katara looked pouty. "Which is why they took my container away. Jerks."

She could be a little immature about that. She missed her element.

Katara brightened at the idea of hearing music though. "That's really neat! Is your boyfriend on the ship?"

"No," she says, with a trace of sadness. "He's not. It's probably best . . . he doesn't have any magical powers and he's not a warrior or a super genius or anything. He doesn't do stuff like this all the time." She brightens. "He's great with animals, though. And he's so good at playing the guitar . . ."

She blushes and tucks a strand of hair behind her ear.

"I have a friend who can do something like that," she says. "Waterbending. Only she doesn't call it that."

"I see," Katara said. "He sounds like a really sweet guy, actually. I don't think it matters that he doesn't have any powers. All that matters is that you care about him, and that he'll do anything for you. I mean, that feeling you get when he's around when he walks into a room, or when he holds you...its priceless."

Katara herself blushed. "Um, but that's just me anyway."

Katara sighed. "Yeah, I find there's a few people on the ship who knows people with that power and more. Some of these worlds really have a lot of power. I find, though, that even if the description sounds similar, they way they work is totally different."

I can take it and I will.

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