trans_9 | Precision

Retreating back to the hotel, Katara could feel those overwhelming feeling of despair and whys me's echoing in the back of her head, but they didn't play to the surface. So Will was back. So she knew Matt would be conflicted, would have to decide what he wanted to do. Well she had a decision too. She could let him go, or she could tell Matt something different. In any case, part of her tried to insist their world was theirs, and she had no say. But Katara had too much training to allow herself to give up like this: she was a fighter, and she cared for everything that made an impact to her: and that was why she decided what she would do before she started her exercises.

Here it was simply the pool water in the hotel, but real water was a bit more of a comfort than artificial water from the Sensoriums. She wanted to bend it, move it as it should: for her, water had always been her calming space and her anchor. No matter where she went, it would be the link to her people, distinguish her on the ship.

Katara of the Southern water Tribe.

She was so caught up in her quiet streaming she wouldn't even notice someone approaching.

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She opened her mouth, then closed it again. She had an idea Sokka would react this way, and he was right, there was no way she could explain it, not in a way he would understand. All that time sitting, waiting for a time she'd be able to get close to Aang, only to have it taken away, over and over again. It was as if Stacy wanted her to be unhappy as long as she was on this ship. Sokka had been lucky: he'd been put to pod or he'd done his things on his own, coping. She was HERE, living every day wanting Aang to be here, but having him come for just a little while to take him away, barely getting to see him, remembering every single day they had in a world that wasn't around anymore killed her.

"I just want to be happy Sokka," she said, and she turned from him. She wouldn't let him see her crying, dying that he said this, feeling like she was doing nothing but being a traitor. "I just want to not have to live another day hoping for something I don't have. The ship takes him, takes you, takes Zuko, then I make new friends and they take them too. And all I can do after all of that is just cope, just say to myself that it will be ok, that it'll bring Aang back? I'm trying to keep people together, I barely have time to do it for myself. And you want me to ignore someone who wants to do that for me, even though he and I know any one of us can be taken, or brought our lovers back? No, I can't explain it all to you Sokka, its too hard. I just...want something for myself, no matter how small awhile it'll give it to me. If the only thing I can hang onto is faint hopes, I'm going to lose it."

She closed her eyes. "But I'm sorry. For everything, for making you feel like what you say doesn't matter. Sokka, when you were podded I felt like I did lose everything, that you left on us only fighting. You're my brother, and I respect what you say. But I know something else too: if I keep going on like this, with no one, I won't be ME anymore, and Aang wouldn't want that either. I know it seems like I have it together, or it did, but I've been sad for a very long time."

"I'm not asking you to ignore him Katara. In fact, I'm not asking you to do anything. I'm just telling you the truth. It's up to you to decide what to do. No matter what it is, it's your decision and you have to deal with what that decision means in the future," he paused face grim and weary. The ship took its own toll on Sokka in its own way, and he would have to deal with it himself.

"I'm sorry you think it's too hard to try and explain. But ever since we got here it's been to hard or too complicated or too something for me to understand and you'll do what you think is best. I'm done with it, Katara. It's pretty clear that you'll do whatever you please, whether I say anything or not. I love you, you're my sister and I can't do anything but love you. But I can't keep watching you do these things that are only gonna make you unhappy in the long run. So yeah. My advice isn't important to you anymore, I guess, so I think I'd better stop giving it."

He took a step back, flicking his sunglasses off his collar.

"I'll be around if you need me for anything."

Well that...that hurt. It hurt more than anything had for the alst weeks, and there had been a lot of things that had gone down. Katara just look wounded for a nmoment, not sure where she was going to go now. This was her brother, and despite what he said, a part of him had to know that his approval or disapproval mattered deeply to him. So before he could leave, she grabbed his arm.

"No," She said, and her voice was set. "It can't be this way between us, not anymore. We've gone through too much for me to just let you walk away. It may have been bad for you to be asleep in the pods, but it was torture for me! All I could do was cry myself to sleep and take refuge in what my friends could tell me. So don't you ever, EVER say that your opinion doesn't matter to me."

She took a breath. "I made mistakes. I joined and was a part of the Bene Gesserit, and did things you didn't approve of. I was wrong, and I had to deal with that on my own. When I say you wouldn't understand about this, it isn't because I want to keep you out. It's because you and I understood Aang, traveled with him together, and in time you saw how he and I were."

She took a breath. "Matt and I aren't as close as that: he and I know it, and we're comfortable with that. But what I get from him isn't cheap or flyby either: I have someone that I can lean on, someone that will take care of me. I try to help people however I can on this ship: through the Outsiders, through training, talking them through their pain. But I'm a person, and the more I see bad things happen, the lonlier I get. I don't know how you dealt with Suki not being here...but without Aang, there were honestly times I thought I would feel nothing but pain forever. That's...the best way I can explian it, and I'm telling it to you because I'm hoping you might try to understand."

Precision

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