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Dear Diary...

Steph sighs and puts her diary back down on her lap. She's watching Hana and Loo play out in front of the farmhouse. They're happily occupied with seeing who can cough the biggest fireball, and Steph is, therefore, lightly scorched. Luckily, the girls are more excited by explosions these days than by burning people, and they're now contentedly playing with each other.

Steph's smiling at them, because they're adorable. But that's all she has to smile about. The journal on her lap is still blank, and she's chewing her pen thoughtfully. (She has not yet noticed that she's chewed through the end and therefore now has a blue ink-stained lip. It's the newest fashion, bb.)

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"What do you want me to say, Steph? That you did the right thing?"

Because whatever the situation, she hadn't.

Steph puts her head in her hands, face scrunched up tight.

"I don't know. I did the only thing."

"There are always options," Barbara says softly, more to herself than to Steph. "Even if we pick the wrong one. And even when we can only see the wrong one."

"I guess I had two options," Steph says, bitterly. "Let them go on eating people, or let them be killed.

"I'm having enough trouble living with myself for the one I picked - but I'd have more trouble if I picked the other one."

"There were other options." She could have called Babs, for one...

"Like what?" Steph asks quietly.

"You could have called me."

Which apparently hadn't even occurred to her.

"What would you have done?" Steph asks, meeting Barbara's eyes. "If I had?"

"We would have figured something out."

There was always Montana.

Not that Babs has mentioned that to anyone who doesn't absolutely have to know about it...

Steph takes a moment to reply.

"So ... you wanted me to make it your problem, instead of mine? Pass the responsibility on?"

"No," Barbara shakes her head. "But we could have talked about it. Come up with something."

"Something," Steph repeats. "Sure."

"Steph, you didn't even try!" That's the part that's worrying.

Steph shrugs, withdrawing into herself.

"I didn't exactly have a lot of time to think it through."

"True."

Then.

"You didn't talk to me afterward. Not until now." Not until she'd made her.

"I'm a big girl, Babs," Steph says quietly. "I'm not just the tag-along wannabe any more. I don't need to ask permission or forgiveness."

Besides, she talked to Sokka. A little bit. Eventually.

"We were friends once." Babs says quietly.

"I guess I was wrong to think we still were."

"We weren't friends, Babs," Steph says quietly. "You were my boss. You didn't really care about me until we got here - until after you saw the other me die."

Steph's bitter. Just a bit.

Barbara looks horrified.

"Is that what you thought?"

"I didn't have much reason to think anything else," Steph says, still quiet and distant.

"I guess sometimes you do too good a job keeping things professional, huh?" It's not really a question... And it hurts to say.

Steph glances at her.

"Maybe you do."

"I never did tell you who you reminded me of, did I?" Babs didn't. She remembers.

Steph glances up. "I remind you of someone?"

"Oh yeah. A lot." Barbara actually smiles just a bit at the memory.