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Chapter Text

Sokka Aputi was not a fan of the uniform for Szeto Private High School. The tie felt like it was strangling him and either he was too tall and the bottoms were pants, or he was too short and the bottoms were shorts because they went halfway below his knees. He took a deep breath and put his hair up. 

“Sokka, we’re gonna be late, hurry up,” his sister Katara called. Sokka checked his iPhone rip-off telling him that yes, unless he ran right now, he would in fact be late.

He ran into the kitchen and saw his little sister looking disapprovingly at him. She seemed to fit into her red, white, and black clothes better than Sokka, her skirt coming right to her knees. Sokka never did seem to fit. Neither of the children had been to a private school before. They had gone to public school all their lives, hardly ever being able to afford the field trips they held. But Sokka had got a partial math scholarship for the school, and Katara had gotten a full ride for English. Katara refused to go without Sokka (despite him telling her that she should), so their grandmother and father had managed to accumulate enough savings to cover Sokka’s expense.

 He was grateful for the opportunity, he told his father as much over the phone, but he was nervous. He worked so hard to be liked in public school, and this was a whole new environment. 

Their Gran-Gran gave them each a paper bag holding their lunch.

“Thanks Gran-Gran,” Katara said, giving their grandmother a kiss on the cheek, Sokka followed suit.

Katara dashed through their front door, running remarkably fast considering she was wearing dress shoes. Sokka ran after, quickly catching up to her (he didn’t do all those years of public school track for nothing) and slowing to a jog to stay on pace. They arrived at the school, feeling extremely out of place.

It was a huge brick building, with a lovely path leading to the double doors. There was a huge fence around the front yard, which had a fountain in the middle, with a marble statue of the school's namesake producing the water. There were some benches and tables, which, granted, looked pretty standard, that kids were sitting on and around. Looking at the other kids was weird, they didn’t look all that different from Katara and Sokka, except for the fact that rather than homemade string friendship bracelets, they had intricate silver and gold ones. Instead of necklaces like the one Katara had, simple and representative of their culture and family,they had fancy, intricate designs. No one had paper bag lunches, no one seemed absolutely terrified to be there.

Sokka observed the courtyard. There was a large crowd around one table, with four people sitting on the table itself, and the rest around the benches. There were three girls and one boy. One of the girls had jet black hair, part of it tied into a ponytail. She had piercing eyes and wore a golden necklace with the letter A on it. Next to her was a slightly shorter girl, swinging her legs back and forth and giggling at something the first girl had said. Her hair was a bit lighter and much longer and all pulled into a braid.. The next girl had her head on the boy’s shoulder, though her face was completely neutral. She had black hair tied into two high pigtails, with short bangs covering her forehead. The boy she was leaning her head on was by far the most interesting to Sokka. He had shaggy black hair, with slight bangs that were doing their best (but ultimately failing) to cover a horrible burn scar on his (left? Right? Sokka really should learn his lefts and rights) eye. 

Sokka pulled his attention from the boy, and went to look at his sister, but she had already started talking to a bald boy with some sort of arrow marking on his head. 

Sokka was filled with relief when the bell rang. He sighed and pulled his backpack straps down. He could do this.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Zuko Caldera did not think his junior year would be this easy. He didn’t think people would forget his outcast year so quickly. But any whispers or comments were shut down from one pointed look from Azula. He sat with his girlfriend, Mai, leaning her head on his shoulder, a bunch of kids sat on the benches around them. 

Zuko spotted the newbies pretty instantly. The girl seemed to fit alright, the string necklace and paper bag carrying her lunch all that let Zuko know she wasn’t high class.

But the boy… he was so clearly out of place. His capri pants pulled up to be like shorts, his jacket wrists not cuffed and his collar not down. His bag was old and ripped. And he just looked so uncomfortable. They usually didn’t have such paupers in Szeto High.

When the bell rang, Zuko hurried to his homeroom. He sat in the back with Mai, as the teacher called attendance. The door opened and slammed shut again. Everyone’s eyes turned to the unfamiliar boy in the doorway. He stuck out like a thorn. 

“Ahhh, Sokka Aputi everyone. It’s his first year here. I hope you all welcome him.” The teacher gestured for the boy -Sokka- to sit. As he walked through the desks that probably cost more than his house, Sokka was definitely getting stared at.

“How long do you think it’s been since he showered,” Mai half-whispered.

“He probably never has, not with clean or hot water at least,” Zuko said back. What was the harm? It's not like this broke kid actually mattered. Plus, he was just starting to get on well with Mai and her friends, he wouldn’t give that up. 

The couple giggled and Sokka sat alone.

Zuko hoped this was the last time he would have to see the boy, but luck was not on his side. He found himself sitting next to the boy in his math class. Somehow the peasant was in the advanced calculus class. What’s worse is he was eager. When the teacher was reviewing the basics from previous years he raised his hand to answer questions waving his hand wildly, arm stretched far above his head, unlike the rest of the class, whose elbows stayed bent when they raised their hands. 

He saw Sokka again in this engineering class he had, which he was only taking because engineering was a required credit. And Sokka could not sit still. He was always moving or drumming his fingers or something and it was so weird because sitting still really isn’t that hard, but this kid just couldn’t, and the other kids in the class noticed, because the poor boy wasn’t subtle. 

“That kid is spazzing out so hard. What’s wrong with him?” Zuko whispered to the boy sitting next to him.

“Guess that’s what they teach you in public school,” the boy next to him whispered back. 

Thankfully, Zuko didn’t see the boy again until lunch. Sokka sat with who Zuko assumed to be his sister, a short blind freshman girl, named something like Top or Tough or something. Sat with them was Aang Daizin, godson to the school counselor and child of Zuko’s family’s political rivals. 

“Ew!” Azula’s best friend, Ty Lee, suddenly shrieked, “Worm in my apple!” she cried, holding it as far away from her as possible. Zuko picked up the apple by its stem, and threw it in the  general direction of the poor crew. He hit Sokka’s head with it, and his gang burst into laughter. He felt a small pang of hurt in his chest, but his friends were laughing, so he pushed it down. He could do this.

~~~~~~~~

Aang Daizin did NOT stand for animal cruelty. He had lived with his godfather, Gyatso for as long as he could remember. Gyatso followed Buddhism, and Aang did too. Gyatso had been both a great caretaker and teacher. He taught him compassion and wisdom, so Aang had been a vegetarian his whole life, and seeing a worm get chucked didn’t make him happy.

“How could they,” He gasped, “Are you okay?” He began to head to the victim of this crime.

“Yeah I’m fi-” Sokka started, but then he saw Aang lean down next to the apple, “Oh, of course, you’re talking to the apple. Katara, do all your friends chat with fruit?”

Toph raised her hand, “Uh, I don’t.”

“You don’t know, I could be a talking banana,” Sokka countered.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Toph said, “A banana would be much funnier than you”

“What, you don’t think my jokes are… ap peal ing enough?” Sokka asked, met with groans from Toph and Katara.

“Yes!” Aang said, seeing the worm move.

“At least someone appreciates my jokes. Even if it’s a bald child who talks to fruit,” Sokka shrugged, taking a bite of his sandwich.

“No, the worm is alive!” Aang said, carrying the little creature in his hand. 

“They threw a worm at me?”

“Sokka this isn’t about you,” Aang rolled his eyes.

“Yeah Sokka,” Katara said, elbowing him in the stomach.

“How? They threw the worm at ME,” Sokka complained incredulously. 

“It’s about the worm. Think about it from the worm’s perspective, you just got chucked inside a giant apple by Zuko!” Aang argued.

“Okay, I forfeit, the worm is the real victim,” Sokka’s tone turned a bit more serious, “What do you know about Apple-throw-man?”

“Zuko?” Aang scrunched his nose. He didn’t like Zuko. Zuko’s dad was the CEO of Caldera coal company. When Aang's parents were alive they ran protests against the company for the constant ways they avoided paying their carbon credits and mistreated their employees. Zuko never liked Aang, so Aang never liked Zuko. “I don’t know that much since he’s two years older than me, but from what I know and have heard, he’s the son of the CEO of Caldera coal company. Azula is his sister, and he’s dating Mai. He got the scar in the summer between his freshman and sophomore years. His sophomore year he was a total outcast and I don’t even think he was living with his dad. But now he’s just back in with that crew. They’re pretty mean.”

“What’s the scar look like?” Toph asked.

“What? Just look at-” Katara stopped herself, “My bad. It’s a giant burn scar around his left eye.”

“Cool.” 

Katara giggled at that. Her laugh was so nice. It made Aang's stomach swoop. He was determined to be the reason he heard that amazing sound next. 

“How do you guys think he got it,” Toph asked. Aang silently thanked her for the opening.

“I bet he fell on a hot sidewalk,” Aang quipped. Katara laughed again and Aang felt a sense of accomplishment envelop his body. 

“Maybe he really failed really badly at making a s’more.” Katara suggested.

“No,” Sokka put on a fancy voice, “He’d never make his OWN s’more, that’s preposterous.”

They exchanged theories for the rest of lunch. Aang knew he could handle high school. He could totally do this!

Chapter Text

Sokka was not enjoying Szeto Private High School. It was his second week in, and things just kept changing, for the worse. Normally he ate with his friends but they had begun to gather quite a group, so today he was in the library so he could study. Every little noise in the cafeteria would kill any focus he had and he did not want to fail his History exam.

Sokka did like his friends, but he really only liked the small inner-group they had, not all the other people who would often sit at their table. Sokka fit in fine in the small group, but the rest of the group fit in fine with other people, Sokka did not. The group wasn’t insanely popular or anything, but they weren’t unliked. They managed, and all got along well with each other. So when Sokka was with his little group he was fine, but they were all Sophomores and Freshmen, he had no classes with them. Sokka had pretty much failed at making any friends outside of the group. He was someone who just sort of had friends, he didn’t know how to make them. This, however, was the least of his concerns when he had to worry about the homework he had in his English and History classes. He already expended all his energy not combusting from stress. 

While Sokka definitely wasn’t fond of his history or English, they were not the worst part of school, not by a longshot. No, the worst part of Szeto High was Zuko Caldera, by far. It was like he lived from getting on Sokka’s nerves. Zuko was just so damn annoying. He thought he was so much better than everyone, especially Sokka, just because he was the son of someone powerful. 

Of course there were parts of school Sokka liked. He liked his engineering class. Zuko was in it, but he was too busy completely failing to do assignments and breaking things when he got upset to bother Sokka. That kid truly had the worst temper Sokka had ever seen, and that’s saying something. He lived with Katara for crying out loud! But the class was fun, Sokka loved figuring out the issues and building things to work around it. He was good at it too, at least that’s what their teacher said. 

He also liked his calculus class, but that one was a bit soured by Zuko’s presence, since he had to sit next to the prick. Sokka didn’t lack self confidence, but Zuko scoffing and rolling his eyes every time he raised his hand didn’t help build it. He definitely raised his hand about 60% less than he had in the beginning of the year, and when he did it was not nearly as enthusiastic as it used to be. But it was fine, Sokka liked math no matter what. 

“Sokka?” his engineering teacher said, pulling Sokka out of his thoughts, which is good, since he was supposed to be studying anyway.

“Sir?” Sokka responded, turning his attention away from the textbook that his attention wasn’t really ever on. 

“So,” the teacher said, pulling out the chair across from Sokka and sitting down, “it’s no secret you’re an exceptional student. You really have a knack for engineering. Would you be open to maybe tutoring other students for extra credit?”

“Sure,” Sokka said. He liked engineering a lot and his teacher was great, and it’s not like he had all that busy of a life. 

The rest of the boy’s day passed with little issue. He spent the whole day waiting to go home and eat snacks, but alas, sometimes having friends means sacrificing doing nothing and eating food.

“Wanna hang out at my house with Toph and Katara after school?” Aang asked Sokka.

~~~~~~~

Katara loved Szeto Private High School. It was like heaven compared to their old school. Katara had friends, and people in her classes liked her. Hell, she was thinking about signing up for dance! And she finally felt like she was learning, not just hearing the same tired lessons over and over again. 

Katara knew that her brother wasn’t having a pleasant time. She knew him. She knew that he wasn’t saying anything or complaining because he wanted Katara to be happy, and not worry about him. Was it selfish for Katara to not bring it up, and let Sokka keep pretending everything was good? Maybe. Was it selfish for Katara to want things to stay how they’ve been, even though she knows they haven’t been good for her brother, just because it’s been good for her? 

It probably was, but Katara had made so many sacrifices for Sokka. She suffered through years of public school. When a field trip came up and they only had enough money for one of them to go, who gave up their field trip? Katara. Who made sure Sokka never forgot his things for school? Katara. Who made dinner almost every night? Katara. (Granted, Sokka had tried once and their chair still smelled of charcoal.) Ever since their mom died, Katara had made countless sacrifices for Sokka. She figured it was only fair for him to sacrifice something for her. He was the older brother after all.

It’s not like Katara didn’t try to help her brother make friends. She introduced him to Aang and Toph, and Aang was eager to be Sokka’s friend. If Sokka was gonna be bitter, that wasn’t her fault. 

It had been so long since Katara had gone to a friend's house. So when Aang asked if she and Sokka wanted to go to his house after school, she was tempted to tell him that Sokka was busy. She didn’t, she told him that she would love to, and that he should ask Sokka. 

Katara and Sokka usually met at the fountain at the end of school before they walked home, so Aang and Toph met them there. 

“Wanna hang out at my house with Toph and Katara after school?” Aang asked the older boy. 

After an anxious pause, Sokka said, “Sure.” Part of Katara was very happy, she enjoyed being near her brother, and if she could hang out with her friends and make him happy, she’d take it. But, as little as she wanted to admit it, Katara was a little upset. It felt like he was stealing her friends.  She realized that was ridiculous. She was glad to be hanging out with her friends. 

They began walking to Aang’s house, but it was just around the corner, so it wasn’t too long. 

Aang’s house wasn’t giant, but it had an upstairs and a garage and a big backyard, not to mention the beauty of the house. It was atop a small hill, with lovely cobble steps guiding the way to the big wooden door. The walls were made from saffron colored bricks, and the roof was green, and hung over the house like leaves. 

When they walked through the door, the group didn’t have time to take in their surroundings, as a small wiry terrier scurried over to them followed by a lumbering white Tibetan Mastiff. The little terrier ran right up to Sokka, jumping up on his legs.

“Aww Momo likes you,” Aang said.

“Then why is he pushing his little knife nails into my legs?” Sokka pushed the dog -Momo- off of him, just for him to jump on him again. The big dog then came up behind Sokka, nuzzling his head into the boy's legs, nearly making him fall over.

“Appa thinks he’s a lot smaller than he is,” Aang justified. 

“Aang, I didn’t know you had dogs, ” Katara said, petting the big one - Appa - on the head.

“Yeah, I’ve had Appa for quite a bit, but we found Momo about a year ago. He was a stray.” 

This didn’t surprise Katara. Momo was like a little rat-dog. His eyes were uneven and his tongue didn’t even fit in his mouth. Aang was such a sweetheart, of course he would rescue a stray.

Appa seemed to get over Sokka, trotting over to Toph, who, being smaller and also not seeing Appa coming, actually fell over. The dog then started to lick her face, it’s tongue about the size of  Momo. 

“Bleh,” Toph exclaimed over the rest of the group's giggles, “Is this a dog or a mammoth?” 

“Sometimes even we don’t know,” a new voice said. Katara looked to the staircase where the voice was coming from. There was an older man standing at the top of the staircase. He was bald, but had a long, white, horseshoe mustache. He had a necklace of prayer beads that had a symbol on it that Katara vaguely recognized but couldn't quite name

“Forgive me, I must introduce myself,” The man said, “My name is Gyatso. I’m Aang's godfather.”

“I’m Katara,” Katara stuck out her hand, and Gyatso shook it. “And that,” Katara sighed, gesturing to Sokka who was trying to get Momo to stop nibbling on his hair, “is my brother. You can ignore him.” 

“No,” Sokka rushed to stand, the small dog still grabbing on his hair, “I am Sokka,” he said, shaking Gyatso’s hand as well. An uncomfortable silence filled the air. 

“Toph,” Katara whispered, “Introduce yourself.”

“Oh right,” the younger girl got up off of the floor. “Names toph,” she said, extending her hand a bit to the left of where Gyatso was, but he just chuckled and shook it.  

“Well I won’t bother you all. I just wanted to introduce myself, and let you know that we’ve got snacks and soda in the basement if you’d like,” He said. 

And with that, the teenagers dashed down the stairs (well, as close as you can get to dashing when you’re traveling with a blind person down a flight of stairs). They grabbed food and drinks and pulled out a game of monopoly. For once in her life, Katara felt like she belonged. 

~~~~~~~~

Toph Beifong liked Szeto Private High school. She was extremely glad her parents finally let her go to school. For the first 13 years of her life, they had homeschooled her. Toph knew they just cared. She knew they were worried about her. She understood, she was blind, so life would be more difficult for her. But goodness, she wasn’t made of glass. The thing is- She wasn’t made of glass- Toph had been teaching herself to fight. When she was around the age to be entering third grade, her personal teacher, Yu, taught Toph basic self defense skills. Toph really enjoyed learning those. She had taken to putting on WWE matches and learning techniques. She could hear when they were about to move, she could tell when they were right up against each other. Her parents wouldn’t allow any more intense lessons of fighting to be taught, but Toph would sneak into her dad’s work out room and do what she could. But it was no match for actual wrestling. She had always wanted to join a wrestling team. That was what excited her most about Stzeto; it had a wrestling team. As it was, people there treated her fragilly, but Toph knew once she got real wrestling practice, people would see that she was perfectly capable. 

For the time being, it would have to be enough that her friends knew she was capable, and they did. 

“I want to buy Pennsylvania Avenue,” Toph announced.

“You don’t have enough,” Sokka lied. It was obvious he was lying, not just because Toph knew for a fact he was incorrect, but also because she heard the change of pitch and hesitation. 

“Uh, yeah I do. I have $676. Pennsylvania is only $320,” Toph countered.

“How did you know that? You can’t see the bills! It doesn’t make-” Sokka began, but Toph cut him off.

“Just give me my property, Money Boy.”

“Sokka, stop trying to trick Toph out of her property, you’ve been trying all game and it hasn’t worked once,” Katara rolled her eyes.

“You have like three monopolies! How are you so good at this game Toph?” Aang asked.

“I’m not, you guys just suck. ” Toph shrugged. She felt a heavy, fluffy head rest on her legs. Through master deduction skills of realizing none of her friends were sasquatches, Toph figured it was Appa.

“See, Appa agrees with me,” Toph sipped her Coca Cola.

“Why are we even playing if we know you’re gonna win?” Aang whined.

“But we don’t know how much I’m going to win by.”

Katara giggled at Toph’s comment. Toph had trained her ears to pick up the slack from being blind. She could hear almost everything around her. As much as she loved hearing wrestling matches on the TV, Toph’s favorite thing to hear was still laughs. Each laugh was like a fingerprint, no two were the same. Katara’s laugh was flowy and relaxing. Sokka’s laughs were either curt scoffs or uncontrollable belly laughs, depending on the situations. Aang's giggle was light yet vibrant. It made Toph feel like she was floating. 

It felt personal, being able to identify these things about others' laughs, and Toph liked it. She knew them from their pure joy alone, and Toph believed that was the purest form of connection. So, they spent the rest of the afternoon laughing and talking and playing games. Toph liked her friends. What more could someone ask for from their second week of real schooling?

Chapter Text

Zuko Caldera was scared. His father was not a delicate man. He never was. When Zuko came home to find him standing in the doorway, he knew this would not be easy. Zuko was not short, maybe even a bit above average, but his father towered over him, as if Zuko was a bug in his fathers path. 

Zuko straightened up as soon as he saw his father, “Hello father,” he said carefully.

“Zuko,” his father sneered, eyeing him like a vulture with its prey, except Zuko hadn’t died. Not yet at least. “I received a call today from your school. They told me you were failing your engineering class.” 

Zuko’s blood ran cold. It was almost three weeks into the school year, and Zuko was falling behind in his engineering class. He wouldn’t even be taking the class if it wasn’t a graduation requirement. Zuko had had one big big project and one test in this class, he had passed neither. He just didn’t understand the stupid online programing, it was so confusing, there were constraints he didn’t even-

Zuko realized his father likely wanted him to respond, so he did, “Yes, I am. The class is very difficult. Apologies father.” Zuko hung his head low.

His father harshly grabbed Zuko’s chin, forcing him to look up at the older man. “Seek no sympathy,” his father snarled, “It is an excuse to be weak.” The father let go of his son's face just to strike it soon after.

Zuko was now in full panic mode. It definitely wasn’t unheard of for his father to be aggressive. He was a very angry person, and he always expressed that. Ever since The Incident the summer after Freshman year, Zuko had gotten more afraid of his father’s outbursts. They may have scared him before, but they terrified him now. 

“You will get your grades up,” his father warned, “Unless you enjoyed your year as a homeless bum.” Zuko heard the challenge in his voice. Begging him to talk back and correct him. To say he had been living with his Uncle Iroh. 

Before that year with Iroh, he definitely would have taken up the challenge. It still took all of his willpower not to. Every part of him itched to respond, to take the bait. But in his mind he heard his uncle’s voice. Telling him vague quotes about anger and peace and letting go. Iroh had changed him. No matter how much he pretended he was the same as he was in Freshman year, he wasn’t. He was perpetually angry, but he didn’t want to be. He knew he could choose his path, and he couldn’t help but feel like he had chosen the wrong one when he went back to live with his father. 

Alas, he had made it. He wasn’t going to give up all he had, even if something inside him dropped when he thought about how he obtained it. 

“I will get my grades up,” Zuko confirmed, trying his hardest to keep his voice steady.

“I signed you up for a tutoring program your teacher is running to aid you,” His father said.

Zuko stopped breathing for a second upon learning this new information. He was not going to get tutored. Absolutely not, he wasn’t dumb. Plus, just imagining the look on Azula’s face when she found out almost made Zuko sick. He had finally cultivated this image for himself, Zuko Caldera: intimidating, unwavering, and untouchable. Being tutored for some dumb class that even the public school transfers could probably pass would not be good for his image.

“Wait no, I don’t need tutoring, I can get my grades up on my own,” Zuko objected. 

His father furrowed his eyebrows. His eyes were filled with fire. He clenched his jaw tight. “You ungrateful sorry excuse for a son.” The older man lifted his son by his shirt collar, then threw him to the ground. Zuko’s head hit the ground hard, his head felt like it might crack, and his vision blurred slightly. Zuko only had a moment to collect himself before he felt a pressure on his stomach that he assumed was his father’s foot. 

“You will get tutored,” His father pushed his foot farther into the teenager’s stomach, “And you will appreciate it. Why can’t you be more like your sister? She is at the top of her classes. She doesn’t disobey me.” His father left Zuko there on the floor.

Later that night, when they were eating the dinner prepared by their chef, Zuko was far off in his mind. He could hardly feel the spice burn his throat. Zuko wasn’t even mad, and he was always mad. But that night he just felt detached. He watched the proper son with his back straight, his face still, and a napkin in his lap. He wished he was that boy. Of course, Zuko knew he was, but it all felt wrong. It was him, his body, his brain, his consciousness, but it was all wrong.

At dinner, their family did not talk, it was an unspoken rule. It was probably one of the things Zuko missed most about living with Iroh. Their meals or tea times were always accompanied by either a game of Pai Sho or a nice conversation. The Zuko that held back laughs at his uncle's dad jokes? That was him. The Zuko who threw Pai Sho tiles when he lost a game? That was him. The Zuko that rolled his eyes at his uncle’s vague advice? That was him. Zuko sat on the floor, drank tea, and made snarky comments. Zuko didn’t sit with his back straight, sipping sparkling water, and opening his mouth only to eat food he could barely even bring himself to eat. 

Zuko’s father put his knife and fork down. He swallowed. When his father began to speak, Zuko was surprised. “Zuko. I am very glad you have moved back in. It is just difficult when you are,” he searched for a word, “uncooperative.” 

Zuko wasn’t dumb, he knew that this was messed up. He knew his dad was not a good father. But the benefits of living with him, and being on his and Azula’s good side outweighed the demerits. Didn’t they? 

Zuko just nodded with a small smile. The family went back to their silent dinner. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Sokka wasn’t nervous. He knew he would make track. He had always been good at track, the best at his old school. He was ready. The possible candidates all sat on the benches near the track, heat baking them. 

Then a girl jogged out of the building toward the group of possible candidates. If she was also trying out for the team, she was screwed. But when, rather than sitting on the bench with the other candidates, she stood in front of the bench, Sokka realized she was the captain. 

Granted, he probably should have figured that out by the fact that her track jersey stated it, and that she had a whistle around her neck. Sokka quickly noticed that not only was their captain a girl, she was a very pretty girl. She was tall-ish but not taller than Sokka. She had dark hair, half of it tied up. Her track jersey tied just below her ribs, so it showed off not only her arms, but also her stomach. She had muscley arms, which Sokka normally wasn’t huge on, but oh lord, this girl looked amazing. Sokka realized he had been very… preoccupied and had missed the first half of whatever she was saying. 

“-quick get-to-know you, then we’ll stretch, do a warm-up jogging lap around the track, do some hurdles, and end with a timed mile, sound good?” She asked, which was followed by a chorus of yeses. “So for get-to-know-yous, say your name, grade, how long you’ve been doing track, then ask the person to your right an icebreaker question. I’ll start, my name is Suki, I’m a junior, I’ve been in track since I was in 6th grade. And you, what is an ice cream flavor you would invent if you could?” The captain- Suki - asked the person to her right. 

Sokka sort of zoned out until the person to the left of him went, “My name’s Jin, I’m a Sophomore, I’ve been doing track since 8th grade. As for your question, as of recently, I read a lot of self help books- ”

“Inspirational, are you just bursting with wisdom?” Sokka mumbled. Suki had definitely heard, because now she was trying to hide a smile. Sokka wanted to make her smile to a point where she couldn’t hide it. 

“- My question is, do you have any hobbies,” The girl to the left of him - Jin - said. Sokka had to actively stop himself from groaning at the boring question.

“Yea, my favorite pastime is actually going around answering icebreakers. It’s the only reason I signed up for track,” Sokka deadpanned, the corner of Suki’s mouth twitched upward. Sokka would take what he could get. “Name’s Sokka,” he continued. “I’m a junior, I’ve been running since 5th grade. My question is if you were a potato, what kind of potato would you be? Like fries, sweet potato, mashed potato… ” he prompted.

Sokka didn’t know what the person next to him was saying, he wasn’t paying attention. Suki looked at Sokka as if he were a tricky math problem she was close to solving. Like there was just one thing she didn’t know, which was absurd, because she knew, like, exactly three basic facts about him. 

They did all their boring warm ups and stretching and such and Sokka really just wanted to get to the mile. After what felt like hours, but was probably more like 30 minutes, Suki blew her whistle, “Alright now it’s time,” she announced, “for the mile. Our track length is about a fourth of a mile, so we'll run around it four times. Go line up on the chalk start line.”

As everyone lined up, Sokka took a deep breath. He was confident, but it was always best to calm yourself before a race. He looked at his competition. No way he didn’t finish the mile first. 

When the start whistle blew, Sokka felt himself push from the starting line. He ran, but didn’t sprint as fast as he could, knowing he needed to keep a steady pace. When he ran, Sokka felt light, like at any moment, gravity would stop and he would float off the earth. The rhythm of his breath matched the cadence of his feet, the harmony synced him with the world around him. The light wind offered little release from the heat, but Sokka pushed through.  Sokka’s legs burned, but he didn’t stop. Halfway there. His heart pounded like a kick drum. He wiped sweat from his brow. One more lap. He looked at the racers almost a full lap behind him. Pride swelled in his chest. He made it, Sokka slowed his feet to a stop. 

“Damn, a 5:34 mile. Impressive,” Suki said, jotting something down on a clipboard.

“So Suki,” Sokka began, “how did you become track captain?”

“Um, I’ve been on the Szeto Track team for the longest of anyone going to this school.”

Sokka inhaled deeply, “I think I would make a better captain”

Suki scoffed, “Look, Sokka, was it? I am the first junior to become a track captain in Szeto. I have been on this team for three years. Please enlighten me as to what would make you, someone who just joined the school, and hasn’t even made it on the team yet, a better captain.”

“Well first off, we both know I’m gonna make it on the team,” Sokka chuckled, but Suki appeared unimpressed, so he continued, as the pride beamed in his chest, taking complete control of his actions, “And I think you could learn more from me than I could from you.”

“Why is that?”

“Well I’ve been doing track longer, I’m a great leader, I’m faster than you-”

“Oh you think you’re faster than me?” Suki smirked. 

“Well, yeah”

“Alright Turbo. Let’s race. This friday, after school, you and me,” Suki proposed. Sokka was shocked. Suki had just seen him run. He was faster than everyone, that was his thing. 

“I should let you know that mile was essentially a stroll for me.”

“I’d hope so. Let’s talk terms. If you win, you can be captain-”

“Sounds fair, I mean-”

“But,” Suki continued, “If I win, you don’t get to be on the track team. You are horrible at teamwork anyway.”

“Okay,” Sokka’s gears were turning, this would be perfect, he was so sure he would win, “but then I get to up my stakes too. If I win, not only will I take your position as track captain, I will also get to take you out on a date.”

Suki looked him up and down, nodded and stuck out her hand, “Deal.”

~~~~~~~~

Toph was a bit nervous. Not because she didn’t think she could wrestle, she was sure she could. But Toph expected that the wrestling coach would not agree with this sentiment. Every activity needed an adult sponsor, but most rarely showed up,so the activities were mostly student run. This was not the case with the wrestling team, their coach was almost too enthusiastic.  

There weren’t exactly tryouts, but they were sorting people into weight classes, and Toph was nervous they wouldn’t let her join, either because she was small or because she was blind. 

“Toph Beifong,” the coach said, and Toph stepped forward. There was a pause and Toph couldn’t help but feel like she was doing something wrong. 

“Could you step on the scale?” the coach asked incredulously. Oh. Duh. She could do that. If only she knew where to step. 

“Which way is that?” She replied. 

“Are- are you blind?” 

“Yes”

“Wait, like actually,” the coach asked. He was definitely a tall man, his voice came from what sounded like directly above her. Toph nodded.

“I don’t know if you can join then,” the man said.

“Why?” 

“It could be really dangerous for you.”

“Wrestling is dangerous anyway, if you don’t let me join just because I’m blind, that’s ableism,” Toph argued. Toph had learned through her 14 years of being blind that people were quick to concede when she played the ableism card. Was it a bit unfair? Sure, but it was also unfair that other people could see, so it all evens out in the end. 

“Okay,” the coach sighed, “this way to the scale.” He delicately guided Toph about two feet to the left, but was so careful people would think he was helping her climb a mountain. 

She stepped onto the scale. Toph was small. Despite not seeing herself or others, she knew this. Almost every voice came from above, she couldn’t reach a lot of things, even if she knew where they were, and she had to reach up to give people a condescending shoulder pat. 

Toph tried to push down on the scale as hard as she could but it wasn’t enough.

“Sorry kid, you’re too light,” the coach said, but he didn’t sound sorry, he sounded relieved. Likely glad he didn’t need to put a blind kid in wrestling and didn’t have to be called ableist either.

“I can wrestle a weight class higher,” Toph protested. She was starting to get scared now. This was all she ever wanted. Days and nights of nagging her parents to let her go to school, listening to the same wrestling matches over and over, that had to amount to something.

“You’d have to fight two weight classes higher.”

“I can do that.”

“Sorry kid, it’s a no.”

Toph headed out the door. She wanted to scream, or punch someone. It just wasn’t fair! 

She sat down on the bench outside of the gym. Toph just couldn’t believe that that was it. No chance to wrestle. 

Someone sat next to her on the bench. That person had to be big, because the bench tilted when they sat.

“You are upset,” The person said. Toph assumed it was a man from the gruff voice. 

“Yeah, they won’t let me join wrestling because I’m blind and two weight classes too light,” Toph grumbled.

“Ahh. They wouldn’t let The Boulder join his freshman year either. He was too heavy,” The man sympathized.

“Who’s The Boulder?”

“Me’s The Boulder,” The Boulder declared proudly.

“Right,” Toph scoffed, she was talking to a crazy person. “Your parents named you ‘The Boulder’?”

“It is a wrestling name”

“But I thought you were too heavy.”

“For the school wrestling team,” The Boulder lowered his voice, “The Boulder fights where there are no rules. The Boulder fights with the underground league ” 

Toph felt a spark of hope ignite in her chest. “Please,” she urged The Boulder, “tell me more.”

Chapter Text

Sokka Aputi found this ridiculous. As if Szeto High School wasn’t bad enough, he now needed to tutor Zuko Caldera. Sokka did not like Zuko, and, while Sokka wasn’t always the best at social cues, he was pretty sure the feeling was mutual. 

Sokka had signed up to tutor someone in his engineering class. He figured it probably wouldn’t be Zuko. Then it was. Like his life was some Disney Channel original movie, His teacher came up to him. “Sokka, thank you again for signing up for this. You will be tutoring Zuko Caldera, ” he said, and Sokka’s eyes widened. 

“Um, is there anyone else I could tutor? Zuko and I don’t exactly have the best… rapport,” Sokka tried not to sound too desperate. 

“Sorry, but right now you two are the only ones in the program. It hasn’t been as successful as I hoped. Once someone else joins, you are welcome to switch.”

Sokka sighed, accepting his fate. He supposed it wasn’t the worst thing in the world to tutor Zuko for an hour a week. Someone could have done open heart surgery on him while he was awake, or he could have to go vegetarian. But, there were plenty of things he’d rather be doing too. Like eating a sandwich, or getting run over by a semi-truck.

Zuko sat in the chair on the other side of the desk. They were meeting in the library. Silence filled the air between the boys. Sokka hated silence. 

“So, you need a tutor,” Sokka began. He thought that was a safe start, because Zuko did sign up to be tutored. But it seemed nothing around Zuko was safe. 

“I do not need a tutor!” Zuko snapped.

“So we’re done here?” Sokka raised an eyebrow. 

“I-” Zuko cut himself off. “I’m not dumb,” He said.

“You are making insane jumps here,” Sokka laughed, “Just- what do you need help with?”

They sat there, Zuko narrowed his eyes as if they were in some sort of silent standoff Sokka didn’t know about. But Zuko sighed, so, Sokka seemingly won.

“Pretty much everything,” Zuko confessed.

Did a little bit of Sokka get a kick out of the fact that he knew more than Zuko? Yes. A sizable part of him was thrilled, because Zuko didn’t expect him to be all that good at things. Most people in the school didn’t. To be fair, he was rarely exceptional at things. Good at things? Sure, but other than track (and now engineering), good was where it stopped for him. Now that he went to this private school, people expected even less of him. So did it feel good to be great at something, when Zuko wasn’t? Yeah, it did.

A very small part of Sokka was tempted to rub this in. To say something about how easy this was. That was what Zuko would do if the roles were reversed, there wasn’t a doubt about that in Sokka’s mind. But Sokka was less of a jerk than Zuko. Granted, the bar wasn’t super high, but still.

“Alright,” Sokka said. “Why don’t we start with static friction? So static friction occurs between to still objects, which is easy to remember because ‘static’ and ‘still’ both start with ‘st’-”

“Why are you explaining this to me like I’m a kindergartener?” Zuko snarled. Sokka was lost. What did this kid want from him?

“I’m not, I’m explaining it to you the way that it works for me,” Sokka explained, as calmly as the rumbling volcano inside him would let him. 

“Well I don’t need public elementary school techniques,” Zuko said. 

“What is your problem man? You want me to explain it to you like a private school kid? Alright,” Sokka put on his best fancy rich person voice, “The pressure between the microscopic asperities is extreme, so it allows adhesion to occur which must be broken before the objects can move relative to each other. Static friction is the intensity of the adhesion preliminary to the movement.” 

Zuko looked at him, and for the first time in all of Sokka’s interactions with the boy, he looked something other than angry. He looked surprised, a bit confused, and maybe even embarrassed. This was quickly covered again with anger.

“You’re not better than me just because you know some science stuff,” Zuko growled. 

“I think you might be the single most defensive person ever,” Sokka said. “What can I do to make you let me tutor you?” Sokka understood that getting tutored felt diminishing, but good grief, this guy had a crap ton of pride. 

“You tell me something embarrassing about you.” Zuko replied, smirking. But it wasn’t cruel like Zuko’s expressions almost always were, it was almost playful.

“That's it?” Sokka asked, his pride was not more important than ending this torture. “Sure, uh, when I was 13, so like, three years ago, I got a ring pop stuck around my big toe, my sister had to cut it off. Good enough?” Zuko shook his head, so Sokka continued. “Okay, until like a month ago, I pronounced ‘macabre’ like mack-uh-bree. I still need to sing the alphabet in my head to figure out which letter is after which. I only found out last week that the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles are named after renaissance artists!”

“You didn’t know Michealangelo was a renaissance artist?” Zuko asked.

“I did, I just didn’t connect the dots,” Sokka said. “We good? Can I teach you now?”

Zuko nodded. 

“Okay. So friction is like when the uneven parts of objects stop them from moving. Static friction is the friction that occurs up until the objects are moving, kinetic friction is the friction that is happening while the objects are moving. Kinetic friction is always less intense than static friction because of momentum. Make sense so far?” Zuko nodded again. Sokka wrote the equation for static friction and kinetic friction. 

“So that is saying that the force of static friction is equal to the coefficient of the static friction multiplied by the normal force of the object. Did I lose you?” Sokka asked. Zuko stared at him with a blank expression. 

That was okay. Sokka could figure out a better way to explain this. He thought back to how he learned things. Katara had tried to teach him how to make lasagna once. She had told him what to do, but they didn’t make sense to him. He only got it when she showed him what she was talking about.

“Ok so,” Sokka dropped his binder onto the table, making Zuko jump, “So,” he pulled on the binder, until just before it moved. “So the table and binder’s roughness multiplied by essentially the weight of the binder, is the resistance that is stopping the binder from moving. Does that help?” Zuko looked up and nodded, first small movements, then more confident.

“It actually does,” Zuko said quietly.

Great, okay Sokka could work with this. He needed to teach Zuko visually. He could do that. Sokka explained kinetic energy and it’s equation in a similar manner. Zuko seemed to understand. Sokka had to admit, he expected Zuko to be much harder to teach, but all the resistance he harbored at the beginning seemed to be released. It seemed like maybe they could have a perfectly courteous tutoring session. 

“Do you want me to explain the paper bridge thing?” Sokka asked.

“Yeah, we can go over it or whatever.” Zuko shrugged, which Sokka assumed meant, ‘Please help me, I am utterly lost.’

“I don’t get how you just defy gravity with it,” Zuko grumbled.

“It’s not gravity defying Elphaba,” Sokka scoffed. Zuko did not seem to get his joke. “It’s just, like, complex origami”

“You can’t do origami,” Zuko laughed.

Sokka raised his eyebrow. He took a piece of paper out of one of his notebooks. “What should I make?”

“A dragon”

Sokka nodded and started folding the paper. Zuko appeared intrigued, watching Sokka’s hands. Sokka held up what he had made. It looked like paper folded randomly, which was precisely what it was. Sokka had no clue how to do origami, but figured it would be pretty intuitive. It was not.

“That is nothing,” Zuko said.

“Or is it everything,” Sokka suggested with faux crypticity, widening his eyes, and wiggling his fingers in front of his face.

“No. It’s nothing.” Zuko assured.

“Or is it?”

Sokka’s ridiculous persistence made Zuko laugh, just slightly, and Sokka considered it a win. Maybe these sessions wouldn’t be all that bad. Any hope Sokka had of that vanished as a girl seemingly just appeared behind Zuko. She had sharp features and an unpleasant expression on her face. 

“Zuko. What, are you hanging out with him?” The girl asked. She was very monotone, but she sort of stretched out that last word. Despite it being subtle, it was odd, as if someone started using a golf ball in the middle of a pingpong game. 

Any semblance of relaxation Zuko had disappeared. But he hardly even paused, immediately responding, “Please. I would literally rather die. He just came up to me and started trying to talk to me. He’s actually obsessed.” He got up and, with all the confidence of a newborn giraffe, put his arm around the girl.

Did his comment hurt? Yeah, a bit. But Sokka was going to pick his battles. He repeated that in his mind. But looking at Zuko’s dumb smug face filled him with anger. He told Zuko his Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles confession, and now this guy was acting like an asshole?  It looked like Sokka was gonna have to pick this one.

“That’s not true, I was tutoring him,” Sokka corrected, standing as well. “Your boyfriend can’t seem to grasp very simple engineering concepts. His brain is like a bridge made of toothpicks- bound to collapse under any real load.” Maybe that was a little harsh, the boy was clearly embarrassed at being tutored, but he kind of had it coming. 

Zuko looked unaffected. “Yeah,” he scoffed. “I’m getting tutored by public school over here.” He said it as if he was suggesting something truly unbelievable. Something that Zuko would never do. Like buying store-brand food, or apologize to someone. 

The girl just laughed a bit, “‘C’mon, let’s go,” she said, and the couple left, despite the fact that there was a good 15 minutes left in Zuko’s tutoring session. 

Whatever, Sokka never should have let his expectations leave the floor. He knew he wasn’t gonna be Zuko’s friend, but for a moment, Sokka thought he hadn’t made the worst decision signing up for this tutoring program. He should have known not to reconsider that idea. When would he learn that he was always right? 

~~~~~~~~

Katara Aputi was trying something new. She was nervous and a little embarrassed. She had absolutely no experience with ballet, and it seemed that she was the only one. She stood in the extra pair of ballet shoes that the teacher had. No one else seemed too freaked out. 

“Why aren’t you stretching?” The girl next to Katara asked. She looked familiar, but Katara couldn't place exactly where she’d seen her. Probably just around school. She had slightly lighter hair than Katara, and it was tied in a high bubble braid that went almost to her waist. Her voice was light and cheery, she wore a pleasant smile. What caught Katara’s attention the most about the girl was the fact that she was holding onto the bar with one hand, and with the other, was stretching her leg over her head.

“I’m Ty Lee,” The girl said when Katara didn’t say anything. 

“Oh, I’m Katara,” Katara responded, “Sorry, I’m just nervous, I’ve never done ballet before.”

“Well, do you want me to help you with some stretches?” Ty Lee asked. Katara nodded. “Okay, follow my lead.” Ty Lee went to child’s pose, and Katara followed. “So, are you new to Szeto? I’ve never seen you before,” she asked, moving her legs in front of her, straight out, and touching her toes. 

Katara followed suit. “Yeah,” She paused before she could tell Ty Lee that she used to go to public school. Katara remembered why Ty Lee looked familiar, it wasn’t just that they go to the same school. Ty Lee hung out with the boy that was giving Sokka trouble. 

Before Katara could decide how to elaborate, Ty Lee moved into the splits. “Get as close to splits as you can. Wait, what grade are you?”

“I’m a Sophomore,” Katara said, remarkably close to the splits.

“But you’re new?” Ty Lee questioned, moving to the cobra pose. “Wha- Oh my gosh are you a scholarship kid?”

“Um, yeah,” Katara giggled nervously, mimicking Ty Lee’s pose. 

Ty Lee arched her torso, and bent her legs, so that they could touch the back of her head. “Girl, I literally never would’ve guessed!” She exclaimed. 

Katara copied her movements. “Oh, thanks I guess,” she said, for lack of anything else. What could she say?

Ty Lee stood up. “You’re welcome.” She seemed pretty oblivious to the lack of gratitude in Katara’s voice. 

“Can I give you my phone number- or wait, do you have a phone,” Ty Lee asked. Katara could tell that she didn’t mean anything rude about it, and shoved the anger pushing at the edges of her brain away.

Katara handed Ty Lee her phone, and the girl put her number in it. Ty Lee chatted with Katara for a while as they waited for the dance teacher. Other girls started to join, until it was practically the whole dance team laughing together. No one seemed to know that Katara was a public school kid. She blended seamlessly. 

By the time the dance teacher arrived, Katara had about 11 new friends, roughly seven of whom she didn’t know the names of. She was even in a group chat with them.

The class was pretty unremarkable. The dancing was fun. It made the stresses of life melt away. The moves weren’t too difficult and Katara seemed to catch on relatively quickly. But while the pliés and pirouettes were fun, the best parts were when the teacher would pause between instructions and the class would look at each other and try to hold in their giggles. 

When her phone already started vibrating in her pocket as soon as she walked out of the school, Katara couldn’t help a smile from crossing her face. It was nice to be a part of something for once. 

~~~~~~

Aang Daizin was more than a bit scared of responsibility. The only responsibility he had was caring for Appa and Momo, and his love for the creatures outweighed his fear. That, and cleaning his room. He didn’t even know how he let it get this messy! It just did! He picked up a pair of jeans off the floor. They were probably clean, right? He hung them up.

When Aang went to pick whatever else there was off the floor, he saw something peeking through a hole in his carpet. It looked like something wooden, and Aang didn’t recognize it. He started taking things off of the carpet. He realized this strange wooden corner was likely the corner of a box. A mysterious box, that was under his carpet! He had to pinch himself, this literally felt like a strange dream, but nope!

Aang tried to stop himself from getting overhyped about what could be a totally normal box (but why would it be under the carpet if it was totally normal! It had to be cool), and failed spectacularly. He ripped the carpet off of the floor with speed that a cheetah would find impressive. The box was sizable, and pretty heavy when Aang pulled it out of the ground. The box was a dark, sturdy wood, and it was locked by a combination lock. The top of the box had a symbol that made Aang's heart stop. 

Aang’s parents passed away in a car crash when he was six. They were lovely people, and some of the kindest parents a kid could ask for. Aang was a pretty quick learner. He learned to read by the age of four, and never stopped. His parents worked a lot in some sorts of politics, so they would often leave early in the morning and leave Aang with a sitter. They would leave him a note when they did so. Before he could read, the note would just have a symbol, and Aang knew they had gone for work. Once he could read, the symbol stuck, as a way of ending their notes. The symbol was three equal spirals, almost forming a rounded triangle if you traced the outside of it. That symbol was on this box.

The combination lock had five number slots. Aang put in what he had known his parents to put as every password. 11147. It was the numerical values of his name. He pushed down  on the handle and let out a sigh of relief when it worked. 

The box was filled with a bunch of stuff. One small note sat on the top of the rest of it. It had the symbol and the words what we need to see is often found under another light. Aang had no clue what that meant. Under the note was a janky old computer. It practically looked like a stone block. Its screen was cracked and it had little green writing all over it, except for a box to put a passcode. 

The box was also filled with many binders. They had a fair share of paper in them, but all the pages were blank. His parents never wasted paper, so this was very odd. Why would they keep binders of blank papers in a locked box under a carpet? The final thing in the box was a flashlight. It somehow still had batteries in it. It glowed a purplish light when he turned it on. Aang tried not to squeal. He loved a good mystery, and this was exactly that. It was like a real life escape room. 

The only issue was in an escape room you could ask for hints. Aang had no clue what to do now. He flipped through the binders again, in case he had missed something, but no, all blank.

“Aang, please come down for dinner,” his godfather’s voice called from the floor below. The nice thing about this not being an actual escape room is that there was no time limit. The mystery could wait until after dinner, even if it seemed impossible to stop thinking about it.

Chapter Text

Sokka Aputi was not going to lose. He had had a shitty week, between having to tutor Zuko, some dumb English essay he didn’t want to write, and having to babysit the kids across the street that weekend, so the universe owed it to him to let him win this race. Also, Sokka always won races. He was fast, that was his thing. 

Sokka’s dad was in the military, so, at least for a while, that's what Sokka wanted to do. When his dad was home he would set up mock army training at the park near their house. Sokka figured out how to get through them easily enough. So then he did them quicker, and quicker, and quicker. When his dad would come home, Sokka would be running through them faster than his dad could. As he got older, though Sokka lost most of his military desire, he still loved running. He was really good at it too, by far the best at his old school. This would be a piece of cake.

“Hey speedster,” Suki said, walking down to the bench near the track which Sokka was sitting on. “You ready?” She stretched an arm across her body. She was wearing what Sokka assumed to be the track jersey from a previous year. It was a dark red which she looked absurdly good in which really wasn’t fair because how was Sokka supposed to focus.

“Yeah, does Sunday work for the date?” he asked, remembering the stakes of their competition.

Suki smirked, “I’m free Sundays. It’s Saturdays and Mondays that we have track meetings, which you won’t be a part of.” She scrunched up her face and tilted her head to the side in mock remorse which really wasn’t fair because she was so cute, with the way her eyebrows knitted together and her eyes looked when the sun shined on them, and her lips-

He needed to focus.

“Oh really? I was under the impression that the captain still needed to attend the meets,” Sokka shot back.  

“Oh no worries, I’ll be there,” she smirked.  

Sokka searched his brain for snarky remarks, of which it was usually full, but all that came up was Suki. Her eyes, her lips, her arms. She was so beautiful, how was he supposed to think about anything else? Oh right, the way he distracted himself from everything. Running. “Enough chit-chat, let's run.”

Suki raised an eyebrow at his surrender, but didn’t press. “Okay,” she said, “four laps around the track. Ready?” Sokka nodded.

“On your mark.”

Sokka checked his position. 

“Get set”

He took a big breath in.

“Go!”

Sokka set off flying, one foot after the other. His whole body felt free. All the tension in his body, all the jitters that came from sitting down all day that had been building, finally released. With each step Sokka felt a little more of life melt away. It was just him, the wind on his face, and the track. He could feel each quickening beat of his heart. It felt like sugar filled his veins and fireworks went off in his brain. It wasn’t just his head in the clouds, it was his entire body. Just as he passed his second lap, physical world and problems left far behind, his heart dropped. 

Sokka knew Suki would be fast, but he didn’t expect to be racing Usain Bolt, alright? She was over half a lap ahead of him, and showed no sign of slowing. How was she that fast? He could hardly see her feet hitting the ground.

He picked up his pace. Legs burning, his heart’s beating wasn’t euphoric anymore, it was exhausting. His breath was far quicker than it usually was, but it was worth it because he was almost caught up to her. He was right behind her and there was only one lap left. All the joy of running had been replaced with the need to win. He needed to win.

Sokka ran. That was who he was, he was quick and he hardly needed to try. That was what he was good at. That was his thing. He was always the fastest. It was what he was better at than anyone. Better at than his sister, and surely better at than Suki. It was what his dad asked him about, what he wanted to see. Sokka’s dad thought his running was impressive. Whenever he came home, it was the thing his dad seemed proud of him for. If some random girl could beat him, then what?

But as he  finished his fourth lap, Suki was already there. 

“Well,” she said, breathing heavily, “You’re pretty fast. Pity you aren’t on the team.” She was laughing and Sokka was too frustrated to think about the fact that her laugh was one of his new favorite sounds. 

He needed to be on the track team. Why would he make this bet? What was wrong with him? He couldn’t be off the team, he opened his mouth to say something, but he was too out of breath, so he just sort of gaped at Suki.

“What? Shocked I could beat you? Is it ‘cause I’m a girl?” Suki smirked.

Sokka finally caught his breath. “You know it’s not about that,” he rolled his eyes.

“Oh?” Suki raised an eyebrow, “So if Szeto had a male track captain you would have assumed you were faster than him? ”

To be honest, if it was a male captain, Sokka probably still would have assumed himself to be faster, just might not have challenged him to a race that placed his spot on the track team on the line. He was fast. That was what he did. That was what people thought of when they thought of Sokka. It was the thing he was the best at. The only thing.

But he still wasn't good enough. He would prove his speed by quickly running away from the track field. He had to walk home with Katara anyway, her dance practice was probably almost done. It had nothing to do with the fact that he really didn’t want Suki seeing him cry. Nothing at all.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toph Beifong was not easily impressed. That being said, this was really freaking cool! Toph didn’t actually know where they were. The Boulder walked her to the place, but it wasn’t far from Szeto. It was indoors, and big. The volume of the screams sounded like they were in a smaller football stadium. And the screams, oh wow, was that exhilarating. They sent a tingle of excitement down Toph’s spine. She might actually get to fight!

The boulder pushed her toward what she assumed to be the front desk. Her head was hardly taller than the counter. 

“Hi, I’d like to join your wrestling league,” Toph said. Straight to the point, not taking no for an answer. That’s what The Boulder told her to do. Why was she taking advice from a man who referred to himself by his wrestling name? She couldn’t exactly ask her parents. They thought she was at some sort of glee club which - ew - also, no. Their advice would probably be to not even try anything because what if their little baby gets hurt, god forbid their helpless little girl stub a toe while trying to do the only thing she’s ever really wanted!

Toph had to work very hard over the course of the week getting her parents to agree to let her join ‘glee club.’ That, yes she would ask the teacher for help, and no she wouldn’t try to walk anywhere without an aide, and yes she would call them if she needed anything. It was a lot of begging required to convince them to let her go to what they believed to be a school approved singing club. If they knew what she was really doing, they’d flip their lids.

Toph knew most parents would go crazy if they found out their kid was joining an underground wrestling league. But it wasn’t just about that. It was the way they insisted on talking with all her teachers before she went to school. How they got her a personal tutor that she didn’t even need who read her assignments aloud to her and talked to her like she was six. It was the way they padded all the corners in her room. How she wasn’t allowed to leave the backyard without someone walking with her. How they texted her every thirty minutes and freaked out when it took her more than ninety seconds to respond. How they didn’t get a pet or another kid, because they just wanted to be there for her. How it took them 14 years to send her to an actual school with other kids. 

She was suffocating. She needed to get out. They treated her like she was some fragile glass statue, they couldn’t let her out of their grips. They didn’t think she could handle anything. The thing with glass is that when you hold it too tightly, it also breaks.

“Okay,” the girl at the counter said, chewing some gum, “How old are you?”

Toph thought about lying, but she definitely didn’t look older than 18, so there really wasn’t a point.

“14,” she said.

“Oh damn,” the lady popped a bubble. “Your parents know you’re here?”

“Yep,” Toph lied.

“Alright,” she didn’t really sound like she cared enough to be suspicious. “Sign this consent form. Basically you can’t sue us if you’re injured.”

Toph picked up the clipboard and pen and scribbled a ‘signature’ somewhere on the paper. It was really just a scribble, but, basically the same, right?

“Mkay.” The lady took back the paper, “And what is the wrestling name of this fall’s new Earth Rumble 6 contestant?”

Toph thought for a minute before grinning, “The Blind Bandit.” 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Katara Aputi had a good day. She had a good time in her classes, chatted with Ty Lee, and had a blast at dance. She was beginning to really love school. That was, until her brother came and started to walk home with her, complaining. 

“It’s just so stupi-”

“Hey guys, ” Aang interrupted him, thank goodness. “You left this in math,” he said, handing Katara her math book. “What’s up?”

“I got banned from track because I lost a stupid race, so everything is horrible.” Sokka said, kicking a rock in the street.

“That’s so pessimistic, try looking at it in a different light!” Aang said, and Katara was grateful for his boundless positivity.

“No, it looks the same under every light,” Sokka grumbled, “Sunlight, moonlight, black light, fluorescent white light. It sucks no matter what.”

Aang’s eyes widened. He wrapped his arms around Sokka. “You’re a genius!” the bald boy cried, then sprinted off.

Katara and Sokka looked at each other for a few seconds, before both succumbing to giggles. 

“What was that?” Sokka laughed.

“I have no clue. He’s a weirdo,” She said fondly. He was, everyone thought so, but everyone seemed to like him anyways. His kindness was so infectious, and he was really cute. 

“I’m sorry you got kicked off track,” Katara said, hoping her brother would shrug it off so she could stop feeling bad. Katara wanted her brother to have a good time, and she was bummed school was hard for him, but was it so bad that she was also glad that she was enjoying herself?

“I just never thought i would lose,” Sokka said, “and I basically have to tutor Zuko right when next week starts. He is the worst. Everyone at that school sucks.”

Katara knew her brother was just being overly dramatic and annoying, and she shouldn’t challenge this, but she couldn’t help it. Aang was lovely, and he always made an effort to include Sokka. Toph was… well she was a lot, but she was definitely the type of friend Sokka would have. The girls in dance were so nice. Maybe they weren’t like all the stupid troublemakers at their public school, but they were nice, funny and Katara fit in.

“Not everyone,” she said. “You’re generalizing. Aang and Toph are nice. The girls in dance are nice.”

Sokka rolled his eyes, “This school is pretentious. People at our old school were just better.”

“You only think that because you were popular there!” Katara noticed the raise in her voice and lowered it, “Look, I’m sorry people don’t kneel at your feet here, but can you try not to complain? This school is good for me!”

“Oh what, so I'm never allowed to be upset because you like it here?”

Why was he like this? Obviously that wasn’t what she was trying to say! Her brother could be the worst sometimes!

“Just don’t be so negative!” She shot back.

“Oh I’m sorry,” her brother's voice was, as per usual, laced with sarcasm. “I just got banned from track. From the one thing I could actually do well. The one thing that d-” he cut himself off, “t-that was such a big part of my identity. But I’m sorry I want to go back to a place where things make sense!”
“Oh please,” Katara scoffed, “Our old school was not all sunshine and rainbows. I never fit in there! I was bored in all my classes and got made fun of all the time. ”

“Oh boo-hoo, you were smart.”

“I didn’t fit in!” Katara could feel the tears building up in her eyes. 

“Because you never tried!” Sokka was yelling back.

“But now I don’t need to try!”

“I always need to try,” Sokka said, voice almost breaking. He had that stupid sad puppy dog look on his face, which was basically manipulation. “Wherever I am. I had just figured out how to do things there. How I should be! Then we came here, and everything changed, and now it’s so much harder! I don’t know how much I should raise my hand, or what questions sound stupid, or when to say what. No matter what I’m not going to fit in, because they’ll spend the weekend swimming in pools of gold or whatever, and I’ll be spending it babysitting to make sure we have money for everything because Gran-Gran and Dad can barely afford my tuition and the bills. And they know, because of course they do, because we’re not like them!”
Katara was fuming. Did Sokka know the amount of convincing she had to do to get their dad to agree to send them to Szeto? And he has the gall to not appreciate it! “Look,” she began, “ever since mom died, everything has been hard for me, especially school and friends. I know you managed just fine when mom died, like it was all no big deal-”

“Katara-” Sokka tried, but Katara didn’t care. She didn’t care if she was being unreasonable. She was pissed off.

“-but I didn’t,” she continued, her voice sharp. “And now, I finally have a place where those work for me. Where things are good for me! Why are you trying to ruin that for me? You will not make me feel guilty about the one place I finally feel happy, just because you don’t fit in, and were too stupid to get a full scholarship!”

Once she said it a small pool of guilt began to form in Katara’s stomach. Silence filled the air. It was cold, and it was suffocating. Her brother’s eyes were wide and his mouth was in a thin line, he was almost expressionless, if not for the tears slightly filling his eyes, which he quickly blinked away. She wiped her own tears from her face. It was fine, she only said what was true.

“Okay.” Sokka said quietly.

Katara sniffled and tried to ignore the guilt tearing her apart for the rest of their silent walk home. 

Chapter Text

Sokka Aputi was fragilely fine. He was okay, but the smallest thing could ruin that. He and Katara weren’t fighting, but neither of them had apologized either. He had looked through Suki’s instagram posts from track and got very sad, but he didn’t keep himself up too late. Fragile, but fine.

Unfortunately, Sokka was not stupid. He knew that this was about to break. He was about to tutor Zuko. His mental state would not survive that. Obviously. He was trying to focus on this stupid book for english class, he was almost glad when he was interrupted. Almost. 

“You changed seats.” Sokka knew it was Zuko from his voice. 

“Sorry,” Sokka looked up from his book, “didn’t want you to think I was obsessed with you.”

Maybe Sokka was just a tad bit bitter, but like, he was doing Zuko a favor, and he had been a jerk about it, so like, die in the bed you make, or whatever the phrase was. Sokka’s brain was too hazy to think. 

“You mad about that?” Zuko asked, taking a seat.

“Nope,” Sokka said, and that wasn’t completely a lie. Sokka would consider himself slightly irritated, or minorly vexed, a tad indignant. Not mad. He barely even let it cross his mind.

“Cool, let’s get going then,” Zuko opened the engineering notebook, “so I was-”

“Just, why did you say I was obsessed with you?” Okay, so maybe it had crossed Sokka’s mind once or twice.  

“I don’t wanna tell Mai I need tutoring,” Zuko mumbled. “That’s embarrassing”

“No I get that,” Sokka put the book he was reading back in his bag, Dostoevsky was boring as shit anyway. “But like, you could have said anything. You could have said we were just hanging out.”

“No offense, but that’s worse.”

“How am I supposed to not take offense from that?” Sokka threw his hands up.

“Look, you’re not like, that bad-”

“Gee thanks, I’m honored”

“-but we definitely don’t run in the same circle.” Zuko said. Sokka scoffed. “I know I sound like I’m in a 90’s movie, but I’m also not wrong” 

“Just next time don’t say I’m like, obsessed with you.” 

“Okay,” Zuko said. “Now can you explain this, it’s straight up nonsense”

Sokka looked at the page Zuko had opened the textbook to. “Oh yeah, they explain this unnecessarily confusingly. So you know a force?” Zuko nodded. “So while forces push or pull things, a moment spins them around. So it’s sort of like a moment with a twist of personality”

Zuko groaned at the pun and Sokka smiled. 

“Both forces and moments use vectors- do you know what those are?” Sokka asked.

Zuko, to Sokka’s surprise, didn’t get all defensive, he just said, “Yeah, but the only way I can remember what they are is from Vector from Despicable Me. Direction and Magnitude.”

Sokka hummed, “Great movie, however it doesn’t hold a candle to Megamind.”

“What’s Megamind?” Zuko asked casually as if that wasn’t practically blasphemy.

“You’re joking right?” Zuko shook his head. “It’s only the greatest animated movie ever! It’s about this blue alien genius who’s a supervillain and then he kills his nemesis and then he gets all sad. It’s so funny. We- you should totally watch it.” Why did Sokka say we? What was he thinking? He and Zuko weren’t even friends, they were only talking now because Zuko needed tutoring. But Sokka couldn’t help wanting to see Zuko’s reaction to the silly little not-code-codes Minion and Megamind come up with, or how Minion says that the sun is still warming up. He wasn’t exactly sure what to do with that.

“I don’t watch children's movies,” Zuko mumbled.

“What about Despicable Me?” Sokka asked.

“I was like seven when I last watched that,” Zuko said, but a blush crossed his face that made Sokka think that maybe Zuko had watched it just a bit more recently. “What, you watch baby movies?” Zuko asked, trying to turn the attention off of him.

Sokka felt his face get warm, and avoided eye contact. “No,” he scoffed, like he hadn’t rewatched Megamind that weekend. 

Sokka cleared his throat, “Anyway, so both forces and moments use vectors, but forces have a point of application, while moments have an axis of rotation, which is where everything spins around. ” Zuko nodded.

“So telling the direction in two-dimensional space is easy, if it’s spinning counter clockwise it’s positive, which is easy to remember because it’s like time travel, which is epic, so, positive. But if it’s clockwise it’s negative because it’s like change which is spooky, so, negative. ”

“And if it’s not in two dimensional space? Because there are so many ways it could spin in three-dimensional space,” Zuko said. “Whatever that teacher was saying was, like, total nonsense, I swear.”

“Okay, it's super simple. Stick your right hand out,” Sokka demonstrated, surprised when Zuko followed suit without complaint, “Then you curl your fingers whatever direction it’s spinning, and whatever way your thumb is pointing is the direction of the vector.”

“Ohhh” Zuko realized.

Sokka felt a smile come to his face, “What? Having a moment of realization?”

“I hate you,” Zuko said, but the corners of his mouth were slightly upturned.

Sokka was about to make another pun, when he saw a familiar face through the window of the library. Sokka wasn’t very good with memory, but he couldn’t forget her dark hair half tied up, couldn’t forget the nose that scrunched up when she teased him. And though Sokka would know her from just those features, the Jersey that proudly stated “Szeto Track Captain” helped. Sokka promptly hid his face.

“What? What happened,” Zuko asked. He looked behind him out the window, “Oh yeah, track team gets out around now.” He looked back at Sokka quizzically, “Why are you being weird? Weirder than usual.”

Sokka sighed, “You know the captain?”

“Uh, sure.” 

“Well yeah, so I kinda bet her my spot on the team that I could beat her in a race. I did not win.”

Zuko scoffed, then looked at Sokka apologetically, motioning for him to go on.

“And she is very pretty, and very smart, and cool and fast, but I can’t just say any of that naturally,” Sokka said. He didn’t know why he told Zuko any of that. They weren’t even friends, far from it, but something about Zuko made Sokka want to talk. 

Zuko seemed to be contemplating something, then groaned and spoke, “Just wait for the right moment, ” He said through gritted teeth, pointing to the textbook, “don’t force it.”

Sokk felt his brain light up. “Did you just do a pun?”

“I believe I did.”

“I’m impressed,” Sokka said, and he could be imagining it, but he could swear there was a smile on Zuko’s face.

Their little sweet moment was interrupted by the girl that had stopped them last time, “Zuko are you ready?” She asked, her eyes falling on Sokka. “You’re here again,” she said, looking at Sokka, no hint of kindness or even disdain whatsoever in her voice. It was complete neutrality.

Zuko took a deep breath, “He’s actually tutoring me. I understand fuck-all about engineering.” 

Sokka mentally stepped back. 

He had painted a very clear picture of Zuko in his mind. Rich, angry asshole, who, with that haircut, probably went home and listened to MCR alone in his room that was twice the size of Sokka and Katara’s entire apartment. But this was a shift. He had listened to Sokka, had obliged his request, even though it really didn’t benefit him whatsoever. It was like when Sokka finally saw the old woman in that one optical illusion with the old and young lady.

“Oh,” Mai said, she turned back to Zuko, “have you got your costume yet?”

“Costume?” Sokka asked.

“Mai’s throwing a halloween party the weekend after Halloween. You should come,” Zuko said, and wow that was different.

“Depends,” Sokka replied, “What are you dressing up as”

“You’ll have to come to find out,” Zuko said.

Sokka wasn’t dumb. He knew Mai probably didn’t want him there (not from her expressionless face, just from the absolute zero kindness he had gotten from that crew as a whole). So he just said, “We’ll see.” 

And see they would, but for now, he had a girl to win over.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Suki Dao was rather difficult to surprise. She took pride in this. As she walked out of the locker room, not bothering to change or shower (for such a fancy school, those showers sucked ass), she thought of Sokka. He had just left that Friday, no explanation. Suki was aware she had a tendency to be harsher than she intended, but she had honestly thought they were just joking. 

And then he didn’t come to track practice, did he actually think she was being serious when she said he wouldn’t be on the team? He was way too good to lose. Not only was he exceptional at track, he was funny. She needed that kind of levity. Him being crazy hot was also a bonus. Honestly, she most definitely wanted him to take her on that date that was betted. But she wasn’t going to lose a race to get it. Not only because Suki was not a loser, but because who comes into their junior year of a new school, and, before they’re even on the track team, insinuates that they’re faster than someone who earned the captain's spot? That was a whole new level of arrogance Suki just could not tolerate.

She put her airpods in, shuffling her playlist. Then, all of a sudden, she saw Sokka skirt out of the library, right in front of her path. She raised an eyebrow, and took out her headphones. 

“Hey,” he said, “can we talk?”

“Sure,” Suki said, trying not to think of how the ends of his sleeves coming undone was strangely endearing to her. She hoped she didn’t stink too much from practice.

“Um, so I was kind of an idiot. So, that was dumb of me, obviously you’re faster, you’re the captain for a reason. I never should have questioned you on that. It was rude, disrespectful, and frankly a bit misogynistic. But, track was always just something that was really important to me.” He rambled, “and that’s not an excuse and I, um, really should of written this down-”

“You’re doing great.”

“- I’m sorry. So, yeah.” He looked at her, and she didn’t have the heart to tease him.

“Yeah, it’s cool,” She shrugged, starting to walk toward the school exit.

He rushed to catch up, “wait, so that’s that, you forgive me?”

“On one condition. You join track-”

“You’re not very good at using your leverage”

“- and let me teach you, you’re really good, but I can help you get better, if you let me.” She said, hoping that he would say yes.

“Of course, please.” He nodded, bobbing his head quickly, his ponytail unfairly adorably bouncing.

“Just put in your info, I’ll add you to the group chat,” Suki said, handing him her phone, open to a new contact. 

He took the phone, typing into it. He looked to be considering something, weighing options, then smiled to himself with an unfairly pretty smile. He typed in something else, which was taking him far too long to type, because it’s literally just his number and name. She was glad he was, because he bit his lip as he typed, and she couldn’t help but wish she could replace his lip with hers.

He handed her back the phone, and, well that was why it had taken so long. This boy had seriously typed in the entire contact page. She now had his birthday, address, and even sisters name. Not only that, the name he had put in was “Very Cute Track Boy ;)”. No one in Suki’s phone had any silly nicknames, everyone was just their first name. But she honestly had no desire to change it. 

Okay, now it was her turn to make a move. “Let's do another race, to the parking lot. This time, if you win, you just get to take me on a date.”

He raised an eyebrow, “Okay. Ready, set, go!” 

He shot off, as fast as he had in their last race, and Suki just watched. It was very entertaining. Then, Sokka tripped over his untied shoelaces, just as a teacher stepped out of his classroom. 

“See, Sokka this is why you shouldn’t run in the hallways,” The bearded man helped Sokka up.

“Sorry Mr. Piandao. I’m a busy man, so many meetings to get to,” Sokka shrugged.

“Yes, I’m sure. Don’t forget to fit your calculus homework into your busy schedule, again ” He said, walking away, shaking his head fondly.

Suki jogged to get to Sokka, who was tying his shoes. 

“You didn’t even try,” he said when he popped up.

“ Excellent observation skills,” she teased.

“But, why?” He asked, still not getting the hint. She may literally need to spell this out for him, huh?

“I want you to take me on a date,” She said slowly.

“You do?” He nearly squealed, eyes lit up and voice high.  

“Don’t sound so surprised,” She laughed.

He cleared his throat, “I mean, of course you do.”

“Somewhere in between” Suki patted his shoulder, “we’ll get there.”

As the far-too-warm-for-october air met their faces, Suki couldn’t help but feel a little giddy. 

“This is my car,” she said, gesturing to her SUV, “See ya.”

“Wait,” Sokka said as she opened her driver’s seat door. She turned around and his lips met hers.

For a moment, the world around them stopped. There was no school, no track meetings, just them, and the joy sprinting through Suki’s body. It seemed as if it was trying to get out of her skin based on the goosebumps. It wasn’t like the books or the movies, or the few kisses she had shared with fleeting exes, no, it was so much better. She felt cotton candy on her finger tips and her usual composure crumpled right before her eyes.  

Sokka pulled away, looking nervous, but before he could say anything, she kissed him again, on her toes so she could reach. Suki couldn’t help but revel in how right it felt. Their lips fit together perfectly, and joy slowed. It was just as intense, maybe more, but it was calm. Not trying to escape her. It was like the ocean. The choppy waves had been subdued, but it was just as beautifully blue. 

It felt like they stayed like that for hours, and somehow not nearly long enough. When Suki finally pulled away, she was breathless.

“I gotta go,” she said regretfully.

“Right, yeah, sure,” Sokka was shaken, “Text me.”

“I will.” She promised

“Goodbye Suki”

“Bye Sokka.” Suki smiled to herself the whole drive home. That was a pleasant surprise.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Zuko Caldera wanted to go home. It wasn’t that he didn’t like Mai, or didn’t want to hang out with her, nothing like that. He just wasn't very good at this whole boyfriend business. He and Mai had only been on like, one date before. They’d started dating in eighth grade, but they were fourteen, so they didn’t really do much. Then there was the incident. They had picked it back up over the summer when Zuko moved back in with his dad. 

And Mai was pretty. Zuko knew that. He liked her, really he did, he had just had a long day. By all accounts the date was lovely. They went to the theater and watched a butchering of Love Amongst The Dragons, - seriously Zuko could have directed it better - then they took a walk on the beach and got ice cream, because even though it was October, climate change didn’t seem to agree. 

Something just felt wrong. Maybe it was his uncle’s voice in his head berating him for eating Thai Tea ice cream. Tea is Tea Zuko, it is meant to be hot. To deny that is to deny the sky of its blue . He was very dramatic about his tea.

Maybe it was that he couldn’t stop thinking of the tutoring session earlier that day. Obviously he shouldn’t be thinking about some random dude on his date with his girlfriend, especially not him, but Zuko couldn’t help it. That session was just odd. He hadn’t found Sokkas knowledge as grating this time, and Zuko even made a pun. What possessed him to do that? Maybe it was the fact that Sokka didn’t let his feelings over Zuko’s comment in the first session affect his tutoring. Maybe it was just that they seemed to be getting along, somewhat, at least.

What was funny was that thinking about Sokka didn’t make him as irritated as it did before. Not like he had thought about him frequently or anything. And it’s not like he, y’know, liked to think about him. He just felt completely neutrally about it. Maybe a little guilty, but that was probably more directed at Mai for lying to her.

As if she could read Zuko's mind, she broke the comfortable silence between them, “Why did you lie to me about getting tutored?” She didn’t even move her view from straight ahead, or let go of Zuko's hand. She took a lick of her lemon ice cream, then faced him head on.

“I guess I was embarrassed,” Zuko shrugged with faux casualty, anxiety crawling up his chest, “didn’t want you to think I was dumb”

“Don’t worry, I really don’t care, ” she licked her ice cream again.

Zuko smiled. Some people might find Mai’s endless apathy frustrating, but not Zuko. Everything in Zuko’s life felt like too much, everyone had such big opinions, such big feelings. It was relieving to have someone seem so unaffected by the mess that was his life. 

Zuko went to wrap his right arm around Mai. As he did so, the ice cream in his left hand fell out of its cone. “Shit,” he said.

The corner of Mai’s mouth turned up, “Here,” she handed him her ice cream, “You can have mine.”

He pulled the cone to his mouth. As the icecream touched Zuko’s tongue, a sharp tang hit him, making him scrunch his face involuntarily. The sourness took over his entire mouth. “Jesus,” he blurted, “How the hell do you eat that?”

Mai looked slightly amused, and just shrugged. 

The sour taste finally seemed to dissipate on the ride home. The most Mai ever emoted was on the road. And even then, she was still pretty reserved, at least, compared to Zuko, who practically steamed out of his ears when driving. That’s probably why he failed his drivers test, despite practicing with Uncle so much. Mai just groaned, clutching the wheel of her Mercedes Benz tighter, as the driver in front of her waited seemingly as long as possible to change lanes. 

Eventually, though, they made it to Zuko’s house. The moon's light was hardly visible from the strangely strong smog of the suburbs, and Zuko could maybe spot two stars. The car came to a stop in the large driveway, and the car door unlocked.

Zuko knew what he was supposed to do now. He was supposed to lean over the car’s center console and kiss Mai, because they were boyfriend and girlfriend, and they liked each other, and they had just been on a date, and that’s when you’re supposed to kiss your girlfriend. Whom you like.

It’s not like Zuko hadn’t kissed Mai before. They had first kissed at Azula’s 13th birthday. She had “not” rigged the game of spin the bottle. It was an incredibly chaste kiss, and they kissed a few more times throughout their freshman year, but neither of them were particularly physically affectionate people, especially not publicly, and they were usually around Azula and Ty Lee when they hung out. Zuko liked kissing Mai, he supposed. It was nice. 

So why was he hesitating? What was wrong with him?

He leaned to kiss her. She kissed him back. A million thoughts rushed to his brain. This was the first time they had kissed since they got back together. Was he doing this well? Was he doing too much? Too little? Everything around him got bigger, anxiety filling his skin.

The kiss wasn’t bad. It was good. It just didn’t feel right. It wasn’t like the books or the movies, or even how Zuko remembered. It was just… weird.

Zuko pulled away, “I have to go.”

“Bye Zuko,” Mai said.

“Bye Mai.” He sighed walking into his house, so glad to finally be done with that date.

Chapter Text

Sokka Aputi usually looked forward to track, dreading its end, but today, he just wanted it to be over. Now, it wasn’t anything about the track meeting, it was perfectly fine. Afterwards, Suki and he were going on a date. 

He had taken initiative, thank you very much, and texted Suki. They were headed to a pumpkin patch, and Sokka had done some work around the neighborhood, because having your debit card declined didn’t seem very gentlemanly. 

When Suki wrapped up her end-of-meet pep talk and sent them to the locker rooms, Sokka took the fastest shower of his life, and put on his clean clothes. He wore a white shirt and a blue flannel with some jeans. It was a nice enough outfit, and Katara said it was “aesthetic” for the type of date they were going on. He waited outside the locker rooms, pretending to be checking his texts. Suki walked out of the girls locker room with an orange sweater and some black jeans. Her hair down, but pushed back with a headband. “Fancy seeing you here,” she said.

“Very unexpected,” Sokka deadpanned. 

She kissed him softly. It’s not that Sokka had never kissed anyone before, it was that he had never kissed anyone like Suki before. She was smart, funny, and just generally far too good for him. Every time they kissed Sokka felt incredibly lucky.

“So… pumpkin patch?” Suki asked.

“Indeed,” Sokka said as they made their way to the parking lot. “Do you want me to drive? I know the way by heart.”

“No. No one drives my car.” Suki said, voice devoid of any anger. 

“Okay,” he said as they reached her SUV, climbing in the passenger side. The car was messy, the back covered in trash and clothes and other miscellaneous items. Hanging from the rearview mirror was a Ghostface air freshener. On her dashboard, she had two bobbleheads, one of Ruth Bater Ginsburg, and one of Kyoshi. Kyoshi was a famous women’s rights activist who had pretty much done it all in her lengthy lifetime. She was a governor at one point, modeled for a bit, wrote three best-selling novels, was a black belt in three different martial arts, and lived until 110. 

“Sorry.” Suki said, putting her key in the ignition. It had so many keychains that Sokka couldn’t pick out any individual one. “I really don’t like other people driving my car. I bought it myself, and I just feel weird about other people touching it. Besides, I didn’t know you could drive.”

“Yeah. I got my driver’s license in February,” he said. 

“Oh, ” she looked in the rearview and started backing out of the parking space, “I’ve just never seen you drive.”

“Yeah. We used to have a car. Had to sell it to pay tuition for Szeto though,” Sokka explained. He missed driving. Miles of road calling to be traversed, the wind silencing the world, and having complete control over a heavy feat of mechanical engineering. It was all Sokka could ask for. He loved that car too. She was thirteen years old, the radio was broken, and the fuel gauge was always off. He named her Regina. She didn’t sell for much, but it was enough. 

“That sucks,” Suki said.

“Yeah, she was a junker though.” He shrugged, “And hey, for education, am I right? Harry Potter didn’t hesitate before shooting the owl that wouldn’t fly him to Hogwarts.”

Suki raised an eyebrow, “Pretty sure JK Rowling didn’t have a plot point in her fantasy books for middle schoolers where a twelve year old hunts a messenger owl for refusing to do manual labor.”

“I wouldn’t know, I watched the movie’s.” 

“I’m fairly confident that doesn’t happen in those either.”

“No it definitely did.”

Suki laughed and it felt like the best sound in the world to Sokka.

They pulled into the farm, and the smell of the petting zoo, popcorn, and sweet, sweet nostalgia filled Sokka’s nostrils. The crisp autumn air made Sokka smile and wrap his flannel a little tighter around himself. His shoes sunk into the slightly muddy grass. 

He took Suki’s hand and they walked through the white fence with chipping paint. Sokka remembered his mom taking him here almost every year, the entrance fee was super cheap, four bucks per person, and it included the hay ride to the pumpkin patch and entrance to the petting zoo. Their mom would let them have one treat and, depending on their finances, they would get one or two pumpkins. 

When he bought their itchy wristbands, Sokka really felt an overwhelming surplus of memories wash over him. This was his childhood, and he was excited, if a little nervous, to let Suki in.

“Might I put your wristband on for you, m’lady,” Sokka did an over exaggerated bow.

“Oh but of course m’lord,” Suki played along.

Sokka laughed, and strapped the paper band on her, she then did the same for him. Wow, they really were as itchy as he remembered.

“Come on,” she said, dragging him into the farm. She immediately beelined to the petting zoo, stopping by the thing that you put quarters in to get food for the animals. It was actually four quarters for one cup, so a dollar. Sokka started mentally doing calculations to see if he’d saved enough to spare, but before he could come to a conclusion, Suki was handing him a cup of food and holding one of her own. 

“Feeding them is the best part,” she explained, and Sokka couldn’t help but smile at her. They looked at the donkeys, which sadly had a sign to not feed them, and Sokka didn’t want his finger chomped off today. They spent most of their time at the goats, where Sokka kept trying to give all of them food, but one fat one kept shoving in front of the others to try and get food. Sokka would gasp and scold him each time, which got a small laugh out of Suki, so it was worth it.

Suki then spotted the giant corn maze, and ran toward it. She seemed to basically have unlimited endurance. 

“I’m not good at mazes,” Sokka said, “I’m good at directions, I’m good at maps, I’m bad at mazes. I have trouble with the mazes on the back of the Uncle Chin’s kids menu.”

“Oh I know that place, they give out raw dough at the front right?” Suki asked.

“Yeah. It’s bad.” Sokka agreed.

“Well this will be fun, we’ll race through it.”

“You will win.”

“Good,” Suki smiled, “Ready, set, go!”

They both rushed through, the stalks of corn itching at their necks as they passed. At first Sokka tried to follow her, because he was sure he would get lost otherwise, but eventually, at some fork in the path he lost her. He kept running through, met with turns and dead ends. After five minutes of getting seemingly nowhere, Sokka decided to logic this out. He was good at logic. Well, usually. 

He remembers seeing somewhere on Tiktok or Instagram reels or something that if you just clung to the right wall you can get out of any maze, so he did that, picking up his pace, he made progress for about two minutes then found himself stuck in another loop. Shit. At least if he was stranded there forever he would have enough corn to last him his whole life.  

After another 10 minutes of wandering aimlessly, Sokka heard his phone ring. 

“Hi,” he answered.

“Sokka? You good?” Suki’s voice asked from the speaker

“No,” he confessed, “I’m lost.”

She laughed. Even though it was at his expense, it was still truly a beautiful laugh.

“Don’t laugh!” He said, nonetheless. He still had some dignity, “I told you I’m dog shit at mazes.”

“ Okay ,” she laughed, “ I’m gonna come get you. Don’t move. ” She hung up.

So Sokka stood there, picking at corn husks. Finally he heard a rustle from the corn. 

“How did you even get here?” Suki asked, appearing through the corn like it were a magic portal.

He shrugged, and she laughed again. 

“Wait, you have a burr,” he said, reaching to her hair, grabbing the annoyance and gently removing it, touching his hand to her cheek. Suki smiled and glanced up at him, their eyes met, and the corn maze seemed to blur. Her eyes were almost a gray color, but then, when he looked from closer to the right, they were sort of blue, but from the left he was certain they were brown. They were an ever changing kaleidoscope that mesmerized Sokka to no end. They were dazzling, and they seemed to carry so many things. Love and pain and stories Sokka never knew he wanted to know.

In an instant they were on the hay ride to the pumpkin patch, and their eyes hardly left each other.

Their romance was, however, kinda cut short, due to the hay rides crowdedness and discomfort. It was jostling them all around, the hay was really itchy, and there were small children climbing around their legs.

“This is exactly how I imagined this going,” Sokka joked.

“Yeah, us surrounded by itchy hay and snotty gremlins; romantic,” Suki smiled.

“I’m nailing this date, huh? Stranded in a corn maze,  itchy transportation, it must be the afternoon of your dreams,” he snarked.

“Eh, it’s pretty fun. There were some goats, I won a race by a landslide, and I got to hang out with this really great guy.”

“Oh? Is he devilishly handsome?”

“He’s pretty cute. And he makes me laugh. He’s pretty smart, and being around him makes me happy,” Suki looked right into his eyes again. Ugh, who gave her the right to be that pretty and look at him like that?

Sokka leaned in to kiss her, but she stopped him, “Don’t get too cocky, I was talking about Frank, the goat.” 

“You’re the worst,” Sokka complained. Then she pulled him in, and kissed him. 

~~~~~~~~

Toph Beifong was not a coward. No, she was anything but. She heard the symphony of cheers throughout the audience. She did her best to tune them out. She had to focus.

She let her surroundings disappear in her mind. It was just her, and the ring, and this dude called The Rat, which was a super lame wrestling name in Toph’s opinion. But this guy was big. Sure Toph couldn’t see it, but she felt how his footsteps seemed to make the arena shake, how his voice was so deep and loud that it had to come from a large diaphragm. Everything about this guy just screamed “big”. In fact, everyone in Earth Rumble 6 was big. She had yet to fight anyone under about 300 pounds, though, to be fair, she had only fought three people, but still. She heard a whoosh of air from the left and right of her, so she knew he was coming at her. She moved to the right just as he would have collided with her, and she tried to sweep him, using the fact that his back was turned to cleanly hit the backs of his knees. 

She heard him wobble, but regained his balance, and then went for an overhead chop. Toph avoided the maneuver again and the momentum he had gained pushed his body forward. Toph could hear him nearly fall, and could feel his feet desperately hitting the ground so he wouldn’t fall through the vibrations of the floor. 

Toph assumed he was kneeling or bending or something, because that’s what his breathing sounded like, so she climbed the ropes around him,  and jumped down, using her full force and body weight to deliver a Bionic Elbow to his neck, a move she learned from watching (well, listening) to a bunch of Dusty Rhodes matches. He would bend his opponent over, and hit their back vertically with his elbow. Sure it was illegal in the unified rules of MMA, but when did Toph ever listen to the rules?

She hit him hard with her elbow, and she heard his body bounce against the ropes. He wasn’t down yet, Toph didn’t think. She heard The Rat almost fall walking over to her. Good grief, how much did this guy fall? And that’s when it hit her. Both him and a realization.

He threw Toph against the rope, but she grabbed onto it. She knew what she needed to do. Honestly, she was embarrassed it took her this long to think of it. Bigger opponents have more mass, it’s easier to make them lose balance.

She jumped from her position on the rope toward where she heard The Rat’s labored breathing. Toph did not like being in the air. She felt safer on the ground, much more stable, much more sure. But she knew that she could win like this. She flew through the air and attached herself onto his shoulders, pushing her knees so they would hit him in the chest. He fell over, her on top of him. The judge hit the floor. She panted, smiling. She had won.

Wow, so far she was doing great in Earth Rumble 6. 

After the match The Rat came up to her. “Nice job today,” he said. “You beat me fair and square.”

Toph smiled, “Hey, you did great too. Definitely the hardest fight I’ve done so far.” She chugged her water.

“Just beware, if you’re this good, you’re gonna have to fight,” he paused, seemingly for dramatic effect, “Xin Fu”.

“Who’s that?” Toph asked. “Does he have a wrestling name?”

“No, he’s that well known. They don’t even have him fight in the bracket, he just goes against the champion. He always wins. He’s KILLED people in these matches. That’s the only reason he doesn’t go pro.”

Toph expertly tuned out what she didn’t want to hear. “You think I’ll be the champion?” she asked.

“You should throw a game,” he said, “or you could get seriously hurt.”

Obviously, Toph would not be doing that.

When she got home, her mother asked her, “How was GLEE club?”

“It was good,” Toph said, before running to her room. She felt a little bad about lying, but nothing compared to the rush of wrestling 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Aang Daizin was kind of an idiot. When Sokka said that thing about black light the week before, Aang wanted to slap his forehead. He had run home that day and shined the flashlight on the clue paper. Of course- of course - it had the password to the old computer on it. When Aang typed it in, he was immediately entered into a large chatroom, he saw it had over 400 members. He read through some of the messages. They dated back into the 90’s.

He learned that his parents lead some sort of… rebellion? No, that wasn’t the right word, it was really just an… organisation. There were thousands of messages about protests and evidence and stuff, and Aang realized that this was to bring down Caldera Coal. 

Without thinking, Aang had sent a message to the chat to meet him at the abandoned warehouse, because he had questions to ask. 

So here he was, waiting in this warehouse to meet up with a bunch of strange adults because they used to work with his dead parents. This was gonna go great - it had to. He sat on the dirty floor and tried to count how many of the lights on the ceiling were out, but he got bored pretty quickly. He decided to meditate - he was pretty stressed out after all. 

Look, Aang was in almost all cases an optimist, but they agreed to meet here half an hour ago. He decided to focus on his breathing. Feeling his chest rise as his lungs expanded, and flatten as they deflated. 

Then, he heard the creaking of the big double doors. He quickly hopped onto his feet. There was an older, sort of skinny man in the doorway. He had long hair and a long beard and had an elegant headpiece in his hair. He wore a set of red robes. “You’re not Hua,” he said, pulling a knife from his pocket.

Another man walked in, he had brown skin with a small black almost goatee. He had what looked like the head of a polar bear on his head, which Aang was not fond of. “You’re not Shoi-Ming either,” he pulled out some sort of club.

Aang put his hands up. At once he was scared, two large men holding weapons just wasn’t the ideal situation, but these people said his parents names with a hint of appreciation, and Aang was nothing if not trusting.

 “No,” he put his hands up in surrender, “I’m not. I am Aang Daizin, their son.” 

‘ Nice going ,’ a voice in his head that sounded suspiciously like his friend Sokka said, ‘ tell the strangers with weapons your full name in an abandoned warehouse where no one can come help you. ’

‘ Shut up ,’ Aang told the voice.

“Oh?” The man in red asked, “And how do we trust that you are who you say you are?”

“Uh, I might have my student ID on me,” Aang searched his pockets.

“Roku, come on, look at him,” The other man jerked his chin toward Aang, “Those are Hua’s eyes. And that’s Shoi-Ming’s nose”

The first man - Roku -  sighed, and put his knife away, “You’re right, Kuruk.”

“Aren’t I always?” Kuruk said. “Now,” his voice was harsh, “talk. ”

“Okay,” Aang said. “So, um, my parents, they died a while ago, in a car crash, but-”

“Woah, woah,” Roku cut him off, “your parents didn’t die in a car crash. They were shot at a protest.”

“What?!”

That… wasn’t possible. Aang’s parents died in a car crash, that’s what Gyatso said, that’s what the internet said when you searched for their names, that was how they died. It was a horrible accident and the other driver was seriously injured, so there was no one to fault or be angry at. That had to be what happened. If it wasn’t, had Gyatso lied to him?

“Yeah, kid” Kuruk grimaced. “They were shot at what was meant to be a peaceful protest, but things got messy. The cover story that Caldera used was a car crash. Your parents were politicians, they needed an excuse.”

“No,” Aang cried, “who shot them? Who did it?”

Roku and Kuruk looked at each other. “We don’t know,” Roku confessed, “Someone from Caldera Coal. Our organization -  Avatar - fell apart when your parents died. Most people left.”

“You just left?” Aang shouted, waving his arms wildly, “You just gave up?” He pushed Roku as hard as he could, which was fairly hard despite his small frame. 

“Woah, kid,” Kuruk put a hand on Aang’s chest to stop him, “ We didn’t. That’s why we’re here. You’ve got every right to be mad, we’re mad too. Don’t be angry with us, we’re on your side.”

Aang’s face was wet with tears. “Why did you come here? If you knew my parents were dead?”

Roku shrugged, “We’ve got some hope left in us.”

Kuruk’s eyes lit up, “And we were right to. Hey, kid, Aang was it?”

Aang nodded.

“Aang, you could lead us,” Kuruk said.

“Me?” Aang asked, “But, I’m just a fourteen-year-old.” Aang gestured to his small frame and tear and snot covered face, “I couldn’t lead a whole organization. Why don’t you?”

Kuruk smiled softly, “You’re a Daizin, a natural leader,” he slung his arm around Aang, “You can help us put a stop to Caldera coal, and bring justice to the person that killed your parents. But we’re gonna need the organization, like, everyone in it. I think you can convince them, I think you can bring them hope.”

“And if you need us,” Roku added, “we’ll be right beside you.”

Aang was scared of responsibility. He was scared of this world he clearly knew nothing of. But more than that, he was angry. Angry at all the horrible things Aang had read that Caldera Coal did. Angry at the people from Avatar for giving up. And so, so enraged at his parents death. Aang nodded. If he might be able to bring justice and hope, he had to try.

Chapter Text

Sokka Aputi was not a delicious hard shell beef taco. Well, for the moment, he was. He stood in his stupid taco costume in front of the house, well he hesitated to call it a house, it was more like a mansion. 

“Usually it’s custom to knock,” Suki remarked, looking flawless in her yellow dress.

Sokka just rolled his eyes and rapped his fist against the door. It swung open and he was met with an abundance of noise. 

Azula and her posse were standing at the front door. Azula was dressed in a tight red dress that reached her ankles, but had a slit going up her leg, and she wore red devil horns. Ty Lee had a significantly shorter, flowy white dress, and angel wings. Mai was wearing a long, frilly white dress, and her hair was curled. Zuko wore a black suit and half a white mask over his scarred eye, which Sokka recognized as The Phantom of the Opera. None of them, except Zuko, seemed entirely thrilled to have them there. They were actually all smiling (except for Mai, but Sokka wasn’t sure if he’d ever even seen her emote) but it didn’t take a genius like Sokka to know it was forced.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Mai said, and Sokka could not tell how sarcastic she was actually being. She had to speak somewhat loudly, as the sounds of music and intoxicated teenagers rang through the house.

“Thanks,” Sokka stepped inside the house.

“So we have to ask for like, 15 bucks for the drinks from everyone.” Ty Lee said.

Sokka blinked slowly. 15 dollars? For drinks? When they were living in this house? Was that a joke?

Ty Lee seemed to realize who she was talking to, and amended with a slightly apologetic air, “Unless you can’t afford it, we could cover yo-“

Sokka cut her off, “It's fine.” He didn’t need her stupid pity. He pulled a crumpled ten out of his wallet, and fished for a five, trying to ignore the heat climbing his face, and the slight amusement from Azula’s face. He couldn’t help but notice Zuko didn’t match her’s. Sokka shoved the money toward Ty Lee. Maybe he shouldn’t have come here.

Zuko cleared his throat, “So, what are you dressed as?”

“Well he’s a taco,” Suki explained, “and I’m Belle from Beauty and the Beast, so we’re Taco Bell.”

They were met with blank stares.

“Like the restaurant,” Sokka provided.

“Oh, yes of course. They make Tacos there, right?” Azula confirmed, tilting her head to the side, as if she wasn’t sure that they make tacos at Taco Bell. That feigned ignorance made Sokka want to rip his eyelashes out. Or maybe just get a drink.

“…Right,” he confirmed, trying to keep the bitterness from his voice.

“Sorry, but usually when Zuzu or I want tacos we have our cook make them for us,” Azula explained, as if that were obviously where most people got their tacos.

“… Right,” Sokka didn’t even try to conceal his annoyance.

“$15 dollars is quite a bit for drinks,” Suki remarked.

Ty Lee smiled, “Yeah, well there's also other things.”

Sokka had been purposefully ignoring the smell of marajuana, but it was getting stronger, and Sokka was getting tenser.

Azula adjusted her horns, “Do you smoke weed, Sokka?”

Sokka was caught off guard, both by her bluntness and the question itself. He blinked, “Um, no. I mean, I haven’t.”

“Huh,” Azula remarked. Sokka suddenly felt pin pricks up his spine. His heartbeat sped up, and he wasn’t sure what for. He suddenly felt isolated, even though he was practically surrounded.

“What?” 

Bu-bum, bu-bum, bu-bum.  

“No, I just figured…” Azula trailed off with a smirk. Zuko’s eyes, well, his right one, widened.

Sokka suddenly found it harder to breathe, as though Azula was stepping on his lungs with those pointy red heels. He couldn’t find it in him to speak.

Suki did not have that problem, however. “You figured…” she prompted, her voice acidic.

Bu-bum, bu-bum, bu-bum.  

The music from the house was suddenly much too loud, and Sokka couldn’t see straight. Was he drunk? No, that made no sense, he literally wasn’t even fully inside the house. Huh, his thought process was all over the place.

“Well I figured he had, considering…” Azula gestured at Sokka, almost looking embarrassed, “Well considering he’s-”

“Azula!” Zuko said harshly, shooting an apologetic glance at Sokka.

Bu-bum, bu-bum, bu-bum.

He still couldn’t speak. He had no voice.

“Never mind,” Azula smiled.

Suki furrowed her eyebrows, “No, what were you gonna say?”

Azula glanced at Zuko. “Forget it,” she smiled again, lips tightly. 

Bu-bum, bu-bum, bu-bum.

Sokka had to get out of here.

“No, cause if you’re saying what I think you’re saying you better have the balls to finish it,” Suki said. Her fists were clenched and her jaw was locked and Sokka really had to get out of here.

He grabbed her sleeve and pulled her past the welcomers.

“Suki, let’s leave it,” Sokka said. He just… really didn’t feel like doing this right now. He came to have fun. So he was going to have fun.

Suki was going to say something, but one glance at Sokka’s decisive expression, and she reluctantly allowed herself to be removed from the situation.

“Yeah Suki, let’s leave it,” Azula said in a voice just loud enough for them to hear. 

Sokka dragged Suki through the mob of Szeto students until he could find a place where he wasn’t at risk of accidentally groping someone. He grabbed a beer bottle from the counter near him.

“Are you alright?” Suki asked.

Sokka popped open the beer, “What?”

“Sokka, what Azula said, that wasn’t okay.”

Sokka scoffed and took a swig from the beer. “Whatever,” he brushed it off, “let’s just have a good time.”

“You’re really just gonna let that happen to you?” She asked, voice barely loud enough for Sokka to hear over the blaring music.

Sokka chugged the rest of the beer. “Just forget it, okay?” He snapped. He felt guilty, she hadn’t really done anything, but he was in a bad mood, and he did not want to think anymore. Sokka set off to find a trash can, and another, stronger drink. Sokka turned and realized he had no clue where his girlfriend was. He really was alone. He shut off his mind and let the screaming lyrics of Mr. Brightside push away any lingering thoughts. 

Katara Aputi used to love Halloween. Her mom would dress her and Sokka up in little homemade matching outfits, and they would go trick or treating until Katara’s little legs got tired. Sokka would complain about wanting to stay out later, but then they would go into their room and whisper too late into the night, buzzing from the energy of candy their parents told them not to eat too much of.

But then Katara’s mom died, and she and Sokka grew apart, and it just wasn’t as fun anymore.

That wasn’t to say she hated it or anything. She liked seeing little kids come to her door in different costumes, and giving out candy and making kids' faces light up. And of course, when given the chance, Katara loved to make her costumes.

But, for the past few years, Katara had spent Halloween alone, or with people she didn’t actually like. But now Katara had friends, like, a lot of friends. She had dance friends, and friends in all her classes, and friends that sort of flocked to her inner group and sat with them at lunch, and most importantly, she had Toph and Aang. 

For the first time in a while, Katara was really excited for Halloween. Well, technically Halloween had already happened. The big group had all gathered at Teo’s house and watched Coraline and ate enough candy to ruin all the good will Katara had with her dentist. But now, it was the weekend, and Sokka would be out late at his stupid upperclassmen party, so she wanted to have friends over. But Katara didn’t like parties, not big ones, so it was really just her, Aang, and Toph, in their Wizard of Oz costumes, hanging out on her ratty old couch. Toph and Aang didn’t seem to mind, though. 

Their costumes varied wildly in quality. Katara’s was, of course, homemade, and pretty impressive, if she did say so herself. She sewed a blue and white checkered dress, braided her hair into pigtails, and fished some old red heels from Gran Gran’s closet (not a place she often visited). Toph wore what was clearly a quite good quality scarecrow costume, and had makeup that had to have been applied by a very delicate hand. Aang had… tried. He was probably getting silver paint all over the couch, and the oil-can hat was clearly homemade. 

Honestly, it was evident that more thought had gone into Appa and Momo’s costumes. When Katara told him he could bring his dogs, Aang lit up and said he would dress them up. Appa was in a lion costume, it had a hood with lion ears which kept falling off his head. Momo’s made him look like he was in a Toto basket, but it was far too big for him so he kept tripping over it. 

The three - well, five - of them sat on the springy sofa, watching some horror movie with audio description that Toph was enjoying thoroughly, with Appa draped across her lap. Aang jumped at every scare, despite the audio description saying that something was showing up or jumping out. Momo was jumping at Aang’s reactions, but not at the movie itself, and Katara couldn’t help but smile at the scene. She was here, with her friends. 

The background music of the movie was building to a crescendo, and Aang was biting at his nails while Toph cackled. The bad guy was about to pop out, then-

Bzzrchzz

The TV went staticky and started buzzing and popping. Katara groaned. The TV in their apartment was pretty old, and she and Sokka were used to this. “One sec,” she said, walking toward it.

She hit it hard on the side, once, then twice. Katara fiddled with the remote. What was it again? Oh right, guide, then zero, input, 2, then off and on again. There! She sat back down. Aang was looking at her funny. 

“What?” she asked.

“Nothing. Thanks Katara” he was smiling, then he looked away, rubbing the back of his neck.

What the hell?

Toph scoffed.

“What?” Katara asked.

“Nothing. Thanks Katara,” She mocked, shoveling popcorn into her mouth.

Aang threw a pillow at her. 

“Wait, what?” Katara asked again.

Toph clicked her tongue, “Don’t worry ‘bout it.”

Huh. weird. 

The trio turned their attention back to the movie. 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Zuko Caldera was not usually a big partier. That many people was… a lot for him, and he wasn’t a big drinker. But Mai always threw Halloween parties, and Azula told him he should let loose and have a couple drinks.

So he had a few drinks.

And then there was the Sokka debacle. 

So, not very loose.

He had been looking around for Sokka the whole night, trying to figure out what to say. He still wasn’t exactly sure what to say, but he knew he had to say something. But pushing through crowds of rowdy, drunk teens was as easy as it sounds. 

Eventually he gave up and tried to have fun. He ‘danced’ and mingled and was thoroughly bored. 

Then Ty Lee dropped a bottle. 

She was talking to some guy, and went to hand him a beer. Her lack of sobriety was evident, and with a particularly large gesture, the beer bottle slipped from her hand. It crashed on the floor, and glass shattered across the zebra wood. Zuko flinched at the noise, and a crowd began to gather around the mess. Mai was assuring people that it was fine and their maids would clean it up, and Azula looked thoroughly unperturbed. 

That’s when Sokka walked toward the situation, and naturally, nothing could go right, because this is Zuko’s life we’re talking about. Azula smirked and whispered something to Ty Lee who nodded and giggled. Azula put her leg out in front of Sokka. As he tumbled forward onto the broken glass the people around them laughed. Before Zuko would have done nothing, just laughed along. Honestly, that’s probably what he should have done. But after that last tutoring session, he couldn’t bear any more cruelty to the boy who somehow understood the nonsense of engineering, and explained it to Zuko without making him feel dumb. Plus, the liquid courage was probably helping

He walked over to Sokka to help him up, “Not cool guys,” he said to his friends, “that can actually hurt people.” They just kinda ignored him, and went back to gossiping about one thing or another. 

He helped Sokka, and went to go help him to the couch in the living room, where he was squished very tightly between two very drunk teens.

“Did you get any glass in your arms?” Sokka didn’t seem to be listening, his eyes were squeezed tight and his teeth grinding together. He looked as if he were about to squirm out of his own skin.

“Sokka,” His head snapped to turn to Zuko when the boy called his name, “Are you okay?”

Sokka nodded with wide, far away eyes. “It’s just,” he seemed like he was struggling to even get words out, “loud.”

“C’mon,” Zuko took his hand and led him up the spiral staircases, all the way up to the 4th floor - the second highest one - into the large bathroom attached to Mai’s bedroom. He sat Sokka on the edge of the bathtub.

Zuko grabbed the box of first aid supplies from the shelves. He looked at Sokka’s arms, and they did indeed have a bit of glass in them. He pulled the tweezers from the box and prayed to the spirits that he was sober enough for this.

The bathroom lights hit the shards of glass embedded in brown skin. The only sound was the muffled party music. A song that Zuko definitely knew, yet couldn't quite recall the title of. Zuko pulled shimmering shards from Sokka’s arm, throwing them into the trash can. He held the boy’s wrist to stabilize his arm. He could feel Sokka’s heartbeat slowing to a normal pace, and the rhythmic beating was like a lullaby. Something his mother used to sing to him to get him to sleep, or maybe a melody Uncle would play in The Jasmine Dragon. 

Zuko looked at the green veins running up and down Sokka’s arm. His arm looked like a map, the shards of glass were mountains, the veins were the path, and Zuko was the traveler.

“Did’ya know that glass was first made four thousand years’go? Yeah, in Mesopotamia,” Sokka said, seemingly out of nowhere.

“I did not not know that” Zuko said, because, well he didn’t.

“Ap’rently it was an accident. Some sailors were cookin’ on a beach and…” Sokka continued to ramble. Despite how little Zuko cared, and if he was honest, how little he was listening, Zuko found the sound of Sokka’s voice strangely soothing. Before he knew it, Sokka’s arms were void of glass, and he was still rambling.

“…in 9BCE, see, that's when we got colorless glass…”

Zuko nodded, letting Sokka’s voice be his background music. He grabbed the hydrogen peroxide from the bin and applied it to the boy's wounds. 

“But then George Ravenscroft came in and totally changed the game- oww,” Sokka complained.

Zuko rolled his eyes, “You’ll live.”

“You have horrible bedside manor,” Sokka grumbled. 

“Yep,” Zuko said, continuing his work. 

“See this is why it’s good that you’re rich,” Sokka laughed, and a thought dwelled in the back of Zuko’s slightly intoxicated mind of I want to hear it again. 

Zuko raised an eyebrow, “What do you mean?”

“You don’t have to do a people-y job. You’d suck at it,” He shrugged.

Zuko wanted to be offended at that, but to be fair, he didn’t exactly seem like the minimum-wage-worker type.

“I’ll have you know I worked customer service last year,” Zuko said. He wasn’t exactly sure why. He had nothing to prove to this dude, why should he tell him that? He kept his sophomore year relatively under wraps. Why was he suddenly blabbing about his stupid server job? 

Solla gasped, “No you didn’t.”

“Yup, at my uncle's tea shop. The Jasmine Dragon,” Zuko still had no clue why he was saying all this, but he didn’t really want to stop.

“Oh Toph says she loves that place. You worked customer service? How didn’t you explode?” Sokka scoffed.

“It was a trial every day.” 

Sokka laughed. “You’re funny.” Zuko felt his face flush at the compliment, curse his pale skin. He was weirdly pleased at earning this compliment from Sokka. What the fuck was happening?

 “Y’know, you don’t suck as much as I thought you did.” Sokka said. Zuko felt a strange feeling of accomplishment in his chest. That’s when it hit him. He wanted Sokka to like him. Which, what?!? Only a couple months ago he hadn’t wanted the kid at his school. So what, a lesson on forces, some dumb puns, and now Zuko wanted to be all buddy-buddy with this kid?

“I- thanks I guess,” Zuko said, because he should probably respond in some way or another. He looked at Sokka, whose face had a small smile. Zuko knew he was smiling too. 

Suddenly, it felt like a string that was pulled and taught snipped. The music from outside the bathroom (right, there were things outside this room) suddenly seemed louder, and Zuko he was done.

He cleared his throat and stood up, gathering the first aid supplies and piling them back into the shelves. “Right, so do you want me to help you find Suki?”

“No, I got it.” Sokka smiled at him, “Thanks for your help.”

Zuko smiled back. “No problem.” 

It really was, honestly, no problem.

Chapter Text

Sokka Aputi was not ashamed of his apartment. He liked where he lived. Sure, it was small, and the furniture was old, but it was nice.  

But that didn’t mean he wanted to show it to Zuko Caldera. 

If it were up to him he wouldn’t. But the library was closed and Zuko said he wanted to review the stuff they learned last week, and Sokka felt like he owed it to him after Halloween. Plus Katara was at dance and Gran Gran had her weekly bingo game, so the apartment would be empty, and Zuko didn’t seem to want to do the session at his house. When Sokka suggested it, Zuko got all stiff and awkwardly mentioned his dad didn’t like guests coming over if he hadn’t already met them.

Sokka wasn’t dumb. He could read between the lines. 

The pair set their things down on the small dining table. 

“Do you want something to drink?” Sokka asked, because if Gran Gran weren’t at bingo she would lecture him on proper hosting. He opened the fridge. “We have water.” It was pretty barren. There wasn’t any liquid - unless… He picked up a bottle that was shoved to the back of the fridge. “We have,” he read the label, “...ranch. Okay we have water, do you want water?”

Zuko smiled, “I’ll take a glass of water.” 

Sokka obliged and sat down next to him. “So, centripetal force is giving you trouble?”

Zuko groaned, “It's horrible.” He reached into his bag and pulled out his textbook

“Oh hey! How’d you do on the last test? The one on moments?” Sokka asked.

Zuko blushed a little and handed Sokka his test. 

“A 93? Zuko, that’s great!” Sokka exclaimed, letting the pride - of himself for his great tutoring skills, no doubt - slip into his voice.

“Yeah well,” Zuko rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “I had a pretty good tutor.”

Their eyes met. Sokka realized he hadn’t really looked in Zuko’s eyes, not without looking at his scar. Not in a judgy way, it was just a very prominent feature. But now, it didn’t draw Sokka’s attention. He just looked into the boy's hazel eyes that showed a smile better than his mouth ever would. Once he realized he’d probably been staring too long he looked away.

“Well if you get moments, you’ll get centripetal force,” Sokka said, a bit too loudly, “It’s just like, whatever force keeps something moving in a circle. It’s any force that repeatedly directs an object to the center of a circular rotation.”

Zuko looked at him, dumbfounded.

“Did I lose y-”

“That’s it?!?” Zuko slammed his hands on the table and stood up.

“Well like, basically,” Sokka said. “There’s some other stuff, but that’s the gist.”

“Then why did it take this textbook twelve damn pages to explain that?” Sokka could practically see the steam coming out of Zuko’s ears.

Sokka smirked, “I guess you could say the writer… goes in circles. ”

“I’m too angry at this textbook to be angry at that awful joke.”

“Sit down, there’s a bit more.”

Zuko reluctantly sat down with a humph. Sokka held back a smile. 

“Centripetal force is not a type of force,” Sokka explained, “It’s the effect a force has on an object that keeps it rotating. Any force can be a centripetal force. Gravity is the classic example.”

“What’s all the stuff about centrifugal force?” Zuko asked.

“Oh that’s different.” Sokka paused. “Also not real.”

Zuko stared at him blankly. 

“It’s how it appears as though an object being acted on by centripetal force is moving outward from its point of rotation,” Sokka said. “Like when you're in the car, and you take a sharp turn, and you feel like you’re being pushed outward.”

“What do you mean that’s not real?” 

Sokka shrugged, “It’s just inertia. Think about it, if I were swinging a yoyo around by it’s string, the tension in the string is the centrifugal force, right? But if the string breaks, the yoyo-y part-”

“The disks.”

“Sure, the disks, aren’t gonna fly outward from my hand, they’ll keep going in a straight line equivalent to whatever part of the rotation they’re in,” Sokka explained.

“Why do we learn about it if it’s not real?” Zuko asked.

“We learn tons about fake stuff in English.” 

Zuko scowled, “Don’t diss English.”

“Of course you like English,” Sokka laughed.

“You don’t?”

“Nah. Nothing against the subject in particular,” Sokka admitted, “it’s just that the writing and the reading are more Katara’s thing.”

“You can’t have the same ‘thing’?” 

“You know how competitive siblings are.”

Zuko scoffed, “Trust me, I know. I hate my sister.”

Sokka smiled. He couldn’t say he felt the same about Katara. Yeah, she was annoying, but Sokka knew he couldn’t live without her. “Yeah, I love my sister but she’s just so… impressive”

“Is that bad?” Zuko asked.

“No, of course not,” Sokka sighed, “It just makes being her brother harder. When one sibling is a kind, caring, talented, smart, and intimidating young woman who got a full scholarship to an incredible private school, and the other’s biggest accomplishment is getting first place on Mario Kart live ONCE, it’s pretty clear which one is the password child.” Sokka laughed tensely. He hadn’t realized what he was saying until he said it. That was probably a little much. This was a tutoring session, not a therapy session.  Sokka had to keep things relatively light, but his chest had a feeling that wasn’t where this was going to go. 

“I think you're impressive,” Zuko shrugged. As if it were simple. As if it were a fact. There was a sincerity surrounding them that had never been there before. It wasn’t bad, per se, but it wasn’t comfortable. This wasn’t Sokka’s playing field.   

“I didn’t know that you thought at all,” Sokka joked. That was enough discussion about himself. 

“Ha ha,” Zuko rolled his eyes, then met Sokka’s, “but really, you are. You’re majorly underselling yourself.”

Sokka was glad his dark skin hid his flush. “Well, it’s the lack of attention the universe gives me,” he sighed dramatically. “I mean, you’re practically the embodiment of main character energy, what, with the constant scowl, the hair in your face, and that angsty scar-”

Zuko completely froze. Sokka snapped his mouth shut. Crap. What did he do? He was about to say something, apologize maybe, but Zuko beat him to the punch.

“I wanna tell you something,” he rushed out. He exhaled sharply, “And I’m not really sure why, because we don’t know each other very well, and the only people who know outside my family are Mai and Ty Lee, but something a-about this, about you, well, I want to tell you.”

Sokka nodded, he had no clue where this was going, but it was serious, he knew that much.

“But you can’t tell anyone, I mean ANYONE,” he ran his hand through his hair anxiously, “Not even your sister or parents or-”

“Zuko,” Sokka put his hand on Zuko’s in an attempt to comfort him, “I won’t. I swear. You can trust me.”

Zuko exhaled. “During the summer between Freshman and sophomore year, there was an incident. My father was really hoping I would take over the company-”

“Caldera Coal,” Sokka supplied.

“Right,” Zuko gulped, “So that summer he had me interning there. We would talk about funding and business suppliers and stuff, and things were going well. I mean, really well. Me and my father never really got along, but suddenly, things weren’t so bad. Then, he had me come to a meeting with some other higher-ups. They were talking about how to save money, and my father brought up lowering the lower level employees' pay. It was already at minimum wage, but a lot of the worker’s aren’t here legally so they don’t always look for a legal pay. I spoke up. Said I didn’t think it was fair.”

Zuko shook his head, almost regretfully. 

“You did the right thing,” Sokka assured.

“Yeah, well my father didn’t think so,” Zuko scoffed. “He said I disrespected him. He took me down to the factory floor, and he-  well, there are these boilers that they use to burn the coal and he pushed my face, like, against the walls of it.” Zuko gestured to his face.

Sokka was about to say something- anything but Zuko quickly continued. “I was okay, other than the scar. But then my dad kicked me out, plus there was a whole legal mess with the footage,  so I stayed with my Uncle Iroh for Sophomore year.  I completely didn’t hang out with Azula, Mai, or Ty Lee that whole year, but something must have happened because that summer Azula told me our father wanted me back and everything had been cleared up legally, so I went back. ”

“Ah,” Sokka said quietly. He was going to be sick. He imagined Zuko as a Freshman. Jesus, he was Aang’s age. He was younger than Katara. And his dad, the person who was supposed to teach him to ride a bike, tie his shoes, play catch, his dad burned his face. Sokka remembered the first day at Szeto, when he and his friends had joked about how Zuko got his scar, laughing, and, yup Sokka was going to be sick.

“I’m sorry,” Sokka said. What else could he say? What do you say when someone tells you that their parent did the most awful thing imaginable to them? “You didn’t deserve that,” he settled on. It didn’t feel like enough, but Sokka was in unfamiliar territory with all this emotional baggage. If he went to far, there is no way he wouldn’t fuck it up.

“I know,” Zuko shrugged. Sokka hoped he was telling the truth, the boy was usually pretty easy to read, but he was doing a pretty good job hiding his emotions now.

“Wait, are you living with your dad now?” Sokka asked. When Zuko nodded, he felt anger rise in his chest. “What? Why? What if-”

“Sokka,” Zuko interrupted, “stop. This is my life, it’s my choice. It’s not your business.” 

“Okay. I’m sorry,” Sokka said. A tense silence filled the room. “You turned out pretty great,” after a moment the words slipped out of Sokka’s mouth before he could think. Most of the time his brain would move at speeds his mouth couldn’t even begin to follow, but occasionally his mouth would move at incredible speeds leaving his brain in the dust.

Zuko scoffed, “Are you kidding? I’ve been, like, a total asshole to you until very recently”

“Well, yeah. But you turned into an asshole,” Sokka argued, “I would have turned into, like, a supervillain if my dad had-“ he cut himself off. How could he even finish that sentence in a way that would be acceptable? If my dad had burned half my face off? If my dad had been an abusive asshat? If my dad had left a physical scar on my eye to match the billions of emotional scars left by years of trauma and psychological abuse that accumulated into being kicked out of my house at the age of fourteen?

“That’s not true,” Zuko rolled his eyes.

“You don’t think I would make a great supervillain?”

“I think you would be good no matter how you were raised. You would still be the smart, sarcastic, arrogant-“

“That started nice but now you’re just insulting me.”

“-weird, foolish-“

“Is this fun for you,” Sokka teased.

“-charming, hilarious, kind, good person that you are. Because that is you. Not what other people make, want, or expect of you. ” Zuko said this very confidently, before his eyes widened and his face flushed.

“Oh my! Why you little poet. You are more than an asshole.”

“Shut up.”

“No I’m sure the people would love to see such a caring Caldera, a zealous Zuko-“

“End this now!” Zuko groaned.

“But really,” Sokka redirected, “you’re very honorable. I’m so sorry that happened to you, it’s truly awful.” He thought about putting his hand on Zuko’s leg, but decided on a friendly shoulder pat.

“Wasn’t great,” Zuko admitted, ”but honestly, the fallout was worse. Sophomore year I didn’t have a single friend. Like, not one. I would go to school and I was just so alone. And I would come home and sometimes I would still just feel alone. It made me realize how conditional Mai, Ty Lee, and Azula’s friendship is. It took something that wasn’t even my fault for them to drop me. It just feels very non-concrete. Sorry, I’m rambling.”

Sokka was glad to hear Zuko confidently say it wasn’t his fault, because, of course it wasn’t. But Sokka had read stuff about abuse victims blaming themselves. He was not glad to hear about how difficult Zuko’s sophomore year was. “Well,” he said, “now you have at least one friendship that’s concrete.”

“Who?” Zuko asked.

“Me, dummy,” Sokka rolled his eyes.

“We’re friends?” Zuko questioned skeptically.

Sokka shrugged, “I could use some friends my sister didn’t make for me.”

Zuko scoffed, “Me too.” 

Zuko smiled, and Sokka was sure he had never seen Zuko smile for real until then. No, how could he miss the way this completely lit up the room, put everything into technicolor. 

Sokka was starting to enjoy these tutoring sessions a bit more.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Katara Aputi would be happy with any part. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself. It was just that her mom was in her highschool’s productions of The Nutcracker playing the Sugar Plum Fairy, and Katara really, really liked the costume ideas their ballet teacher was suggesting for it. No one else in the class seemed as anxious as her. Apparently Szeto’s ballet group did the Nutcracker every year the week before Christmas break, so to everyone else, this was just another production.

But Katara wasn’t quite sure she had the DNA to be chill about this (or anything for that matter). She paced the rehearsal room anxiously.

“Katara,” Ty Lee said, sitting on the floor, “You’ll be fine. Last week you said your audition went great.”

“I know,” Katara sighed and sat down next to her. “But what if it didn’t. I mean, what if I think it went well but it didn’t go well, and Mrs. Chen doesn’t think it went well because it didn’t go well”

Ty Lee laughed affectionately, “It went well. You’ll get a good part.”

“And if I don’t?” Katara asked.

Ty Lee shrugged, “Then you don’t. The world’s not gonna end because you didn’t get the part you wanted in your sophomore year production of The Nutcracker. I promise.”

“Yeah, I know,”  Katara said. She looked at the other girls in the class. Gathered around someone's phone and laughing. Katara felt no envy, she knew she had surrounded someone to watch a stupid TikTok just last week. She was scared. Scared that she would lose them if she didn’t get cast. It wasn’t like she was fully friends with everyone, it was just via ballet. What would happen if they were all at rehearsals and she wasn’t. She didn’t want to lose them. 

Ty Lee looked at her. “Look, no matter how this turns out, we’re all still gonna be your friends.” She had an uncanny ability to read people when she wanted to. “In fact, if you don’t get in or get a bad part, I will take you out to get boba. That way, no matter what happens, you get something good.”  

Katara smiled, “Thank you, Ty Lee. You’re a good friend. ”

“Well, you say that now, you didn’t see me when I got ensemble last year,” Ty Lee laughed.

Katara’s anxiety came back with a vengeance. If Ty Lee, who could become a human pretzel, got ensemble her first year of dance, there was no way Katara could even get in.

Before she could slip further into her nervousness spiral, the clicks of Mrs. Chen ‘s heels rang throughout the room. She sighed as soon as she came to a halt, clicking her pen and flipping some papers over the top of her clipboard. She took off her square glasses, and rested them on the top of her head. 

“The cast of Szeto High School’s 2024 production of the Nutcracker is as follows. The role of Clara will be played by Ty Lee Hirano, The role of Drosselmeyer will..”

Ty Lee squealed and drummed her hands on Katara’s shoulders in excitement. Katara smiled at her, despite the knot of anxiety in her stomach, which grew as their instructor continued to list the roles of Clara’s family, the nutcracker, and mouse king.

“The role of the Sugar Plum Fairy will be played by Katara Aputi, The role of Cavalier will…”

She felt the whole world freeze in that moment. It was real. She felt like she was in a TV show. Katara really got to do this? She turned to face Ty Lee’s, and she was smiling even bigger than when she heard about her own role.

Katara waited as patiently as she could manage as their instructor listed off more names. As soon as the list was done, Ty Lee let out another high pitched squeal. 

“Katara!” She jumped up from her spot on the floor. “We did it!”

Katara stood up as well, her cheeks sore from how big she was smiling. When had she last smiled like this? She couldn’t remember. “Guess we’re not getting boba.”

Ty Lee laughed, “Actually, I think some celebratory boba is in order.”

“I like your style.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Toph Beifong wasn’t usually one to pre-plan, but she figured this was a special circumstance. She pulled her fist back and punched the bag again. And again. She thought about what her parents would think. 

She hit harder. 

They’d probably tell her this was a bad idea. That she could get hurt. But Toph wasn’t going to back down. Not when she was just a few matches away from a championship. She could do this, she could make it work, and her parents would be none the wiser. 

Toph knew she was cutting it close. She barely spent any time at home - when she wasn’t wrestling, she was at the gym with The Boulder. On the occasions when she wasn’t, she was hanging out at Aang’s house or Katara and Sokka’s apartment. 

The only things she did at home anymore were sleep and occasionally eat dinner. She was starting to feel kind of bad, actually. Her parents sounded sad whenever she would tell them she had something after school, but if they weren’t so overprotective, maybe she’d spend more time at home.

Her house was a cage, and Toph was not interested in being domesticated. She wanted to make mistakes, get hurt, and live life like other normal teenagers. 

It was so blatantly clear when she was home that she wasn’t normal. When she was wrestling, she felt normal. When she was working out, she felt normal. When she was with her friends, she felt normal. But when she was home, she was bubble wrapped. 

She punched the bag again, feeling her breathing get heavier. She plopped herself onto the bench near her and grabbed her water bottle. 

“What time is it,” she called out to The Boulder.

“Uh… seven,” He said, breath hardly labored despite the fact that he hadn’t sat down in the whole 4 hours they were  at the gym.

Wait… four hours?!?

“Shit,” Toph cried.

“What is wrong?” The Boulder asked, setting a barbell back down.

“I promised my parents I’d be home thirty minutes ago,” She said. 

Toph opened up her phone as it read to her.

“You have 8 missed calls from ‘Mother’” The automated voice recited.

Toph had The Boulder rush her home, but for a generally reckless guy, he was an oddly safe driver, and would hardly go over the speed limit. Toph sent a quick text to her parents that she got caught up with a friend from GLEE club and would be home soon.

When she stepped into the house, her mother immediately hounded her. 

“We agreed on a time sweetie, I was worried,” She said, popping the dinner that had gotten cold back into the microwave.

“I know,” Toph said, “sorry. I was hanging out with my friends from the GLEE club.”

“You always hang out at their houses.” Her mom pointed out, “You should invite them over sometime, we’d love to meet them.”

Alarm bells went off in Toph’s head. She was already doing so much to cover it up. Fake phone numbers of fake parents with fake addresses. Fake friends from a real club that she faked emails from. And it was working. She couldn’t mess this up now. Her mom took the food out of the microwave and gave it to her.

“Well,” Toph said, chewing, “one of the girls in the club has a trampoline, so we usually hang out at her house.”

Toph could feel herself getting more and more sucked into the vortex that was her fake life. She knew it wasn’t going to last forever. But that was just the thing. It didn’t need to last forever. Just until Earth Rumble 6 was done. Then she could go back to being a good daughter and not lying, she just needed one lick of freedom.

“Sweetie, trampolines are incredibly dangerous. Do you know how many kids break their legs on those every year?” Her mom fretted.

“Mom, it’s fine. It has a net, and I’m really careful, I swear,” Toph argued.

“Well… okay. As long as you’re careful.”

 Toph ate in silence for a minute.

“So, when are your dad and I going to get to see you perform in GLEE club?”

Toph choked on her meal. 

“Um, I think it’s sometime in December.”

What was she thinking?

“Well, we’ll be there sweetie,” Her mom kissed her on the head.

“Thanks mom,” Toph said, but she couldn’t ignore the guilt that settled into her stomach. She was almost used to it.