Sorry about the slow update on this one; I got an idea that would leave me alone ("Downward Spiral") after rewatching the movie, and I just had to get it out before I lost the idea. I haven't forgotten about this one, don't worry! I have an 'endgame,' so to speak, for this fiction, it's just a matter of figuring out how I'm going to get there... :)

In Your Hands

It took a week of lying dormant in her hospital room— a week of boredom, uncertainty, nausea and fear— but the doctors eventually declared her surgery a complete success. The graft had taken.

Already the cuts on her skin were healing, becoming nothing more than itchy pink lines of new skin; scars that would haunt her for a long time before they faded to the silver of old scars that were so easy to ignore. But when Trudy first saw the lines, she grinned. Battle scars, she decided, were a thing of pride, not sorrow. The two down her sides, the longest ones, hurt every time she moved, as it pulled on her stitches, but even they were slowly healing, new pink skin filling in between the sutures.

On the eighth day after her surgery, when Trudy was just about to declare herself stir crazy (after being active for so much of her life, being put on bed rest was quite the new experience for her), Dr. Cornelson came bearing good news.

"You'll have to take it slow," he reminded her, eying her grin of excitement warily. "But a little walk around the hospital now and then shouldn't hurt."

Trudy was already sitting up and swinging her legs out of bed. It strained her stitches, but she held back the ensuing wince— just in case the doctor noticed and deemed her unready to walk around. Just being able to move again was a great treat; a special privilege she hadn't ever been without before. She had found new understanding to Jake's bitterness over his disability, and his love of his Avatar body. She hadn't been able to walk for a couple weeks and she was ready to kill someone; Jake would never walk in his human body again.

"Careful, baby," Norm warned, reaching out to grab her elbows as if she needed help to stand and balance. She rolled her eyes, but let him help her to her feet cautiously. Her knees only buckled slightly before she regained the balance she had always possessed, standing to her full height and pulling her arms free of Norm's grasp.

She turned and grinned at Dr. Cornelson, who had an enthusiastic smile on his own face. "How are you feeling? Any dizziness or nausea?" he asked, a pen poised over her chart and ready to take notes.

Trudy shook her head, experimentally shifting her weight and taking a step forward. "Not really."

"Good, good," he said, jotting down a note. "Take it slow; if you want, we can lend you a wheelchair to use to get around for awhile—"

Trudy held up a hand to shut him up, the painful image of Jake's struggles to move about the Base in his own chair coming to mind. "No, I go it," she said determinedly. "I feel okay."

"Are you sure?" Norm asked quickly, looking like he wanted to push her back down into the bed and not let her move until the stitches were out. He was overprotective that way, and had been antsy ever since the doctor announced that she should be able to get up on her own.

"Yes," Trudy said confidently, crossing the step it took to get closer to him and gently grabbing the front of his shirt. She pulled downward so that he bent to her height and she kissed him, giving him a feather-light peck on the lips. "I'm good."

She let go of his shirt and turned around, taking a few steps away from him and stretching her arms above her head. "I feel like I haven't stood up for years, when it's been less than two weeks!"

"Trudy, be careful," Dr. Cornelson warned, watching her fearfully as she walked across the room and back again, getting her legs back, so to speak. "You don't want to overdo it."

"I'm fine," she stressed, glaring at the doctor. "Give me a minute, would you?"

Dr. Cornelson promptly shut his mouth, intimidated by the tone of her voice. He would never admit it, but he had a fear of authority; when Dr. Stevens, the doctor in charge of the medical wing, yelled at him, he would flinch. And Trudy Chacon practically dripped authority, though she actually had none at the moment. While she was grounded, Trudy had no authority whatsoever, but she acted like she did, and that was enough to terrify the poor doctor.

Trudy walked around a bit, gently testing her fragile body and seeing how far she could push it. It was a marine habit, she supposed, always trying to push the limits of herself. And though she was cautious as she tested the strength of her stitches by twisting her body back and forth, she didn't stop immediately when she felt pain. She kept going, fuelled on by the belief that endurance was everything. A belief that she had gotten from her time in the marines, but one that she would keep forever.

"Trudy..." Norm practically whined, his antsy behaviour getting worse with every stretch and twist. "You're going to hurt yourself." He reached out and grabbed her arm, making her momentarily pause.

"No, I'm not," she said matter-of-factly, her voice steely and cold. "I know my limits, Norm. If I need to stop, I will." She pulled her arm out of his grasp and continued to walk about the room, systematically checking herself for injury, assessing the pain and keeping her facial expression neutral.

"I want to go for a walk," she declared, turning to her doctor and giving him an eager smile. "Can I?"

Dr. Cornelson nodded submissively, and Trudy grinned. "Can I have some more appropriate clothes to do it in? Because I don't want to have to hold this gown closed the whole time," she explained, gesturing to her attire. Norm quickly moved to the over-night bag he had packed for her after he had fixed himself up and pulled out a pair of pyjama bottoms, tossing them to her.

"Thanks," she acknowledged, catching the pants and sitting back down on her hospital bed. She carefully pulled one leg and then the other through the leg holes, and then stood again to pull them over her bottom. Both men had turned and averted their gaze while she did so— even though she was wearing underwear under that gown, thank you very much.

"Geez, Norm, it's nothing you've never seen before," she joked, smiling at the way his ears and neck turned red as she blushed sheepishly. The guy was so old-fashioned it was rather humorous, still embarrassed over the fact that they'd had sex even after she'd announced her pregnancy. How did he think everyone thought she got pregnant? They hadn't mixed their baby together in a test tube, after all.

Dr. Cornelson cleared his throat and gestured to the door. "Only one lap around the wing should be sufficient, I think," he suggested, "You can try again tomorrow, but we don't want to overdo it today."

"Yeah, yeah," Trudy half-agreed, taking Norm's offered arm as he led her cautiously to the door. "Not overdoing it. Got it."

Norm was sincerely worried. She had that same look in her eyes that Jake had the first time he had linked with his Avatar. That look freaked him out, because he remembered what Jake had done— he had run off and endangered himself without considering the fact that he may not be ready. And while it had worked out for Jake, his Avatar body had been strong and healthy and was able to take the sudden strain. He was afraid because he knew that Trudy's body wasn't as strong or as healthy, and might not be able to.

"Slowly," he encouraged as he led her almost painfully slowly out of the room. She tried to pull him to go faster, but he kept his grip on her arm and refused to move at the pace she wanted. "Trudy, you can't just go from being injured to running in circles. You're not strong enough. Don't push it."

Trudy sighed and let herself be led by him around the corner and down the hall. It felt good to be walking again, to be moving, but she couldn't help but feel trapped again. Trapped by her inability to go faster, to run, to really move. She stopped, and Norm stopped with her, giving her a concerned look.

"Are you alright?" he asked, the fear coming through in his voice. Trudy stared forward, unmoving.

Come on, she thought, let go.

"Trudy?"

He planned to let go of her arm and move around to face her. He planned to look into her eyes and perhaps see pain there and have to call the doctor to put her back in her room. He planned to have her stay standing still when he let go, because he thought she had stopped because she didn't want to move anymore, that she was in pain or feeling sick or something. Plans never really work out do they?

The moment his fingers released her arm from the tight grip he had been holding, she bolted. He was literally too stunned to react, or he might have grabbed for her. Instead, he stood dumbfounded for a moment as she danced out of his range and ran down the hall, laughing like a crazy woman.

"Trudy!" he bellowed, his brain catching up with his body as he chased after her. "Trudy, stop!"

But Trudy was a marine. A marine who had been trained to push her body to its limits. A marine who had been trained to have a high tolerance for pain, so much so that she didn't realise the signals her body was sending her as she ran down the hall, her body screaming in protest, though she didn't hear it.

But when you push things to their limits, and they can't take any more, something's got to give.

Norm was barely fast enough to catch her as she fell, her laughter turned to sudden silence. He managed to grab her before she hit the ground, quickly pulling her to his chest and yelling for help. The soft trickle of blood was all he saw as it spread over one side of her hospital gown. She had passed out.