Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“ - and anyway, looks like we’re going to counties,” said Sokka cheerfully, shoveling a spoonful of potatoes into his mouth.

“Can you go to shutting your mouth while you eat?” snapped Katara.

“Katara,” said Hakoda mildly.

“It’s disgusting,” she said, glaring at her plate. “And I’ve only heard about counties a thousand times.”

“That’s a lot of times, considering we just found out yesterday,” said Sokka. “Or are you confusing me telling you with your boyfriend telling you?”

It was as if he had held a match to dry wood; she slammed down her fork, feeling anger that she knew dimly was outsized to the situation reverberate through her. “”Shut UP!” she almost yelled.

“ Katara, ” said Hakoda. “That is not how we speak at the dinner table.” He paused, and Katara could tell he was actually more preoccupied with the possibility that she had a boyfriend, and she loved her dad and she loved Sokka but in that moment she sort of hated all men.

“I don’t,” she said, gathering all her feelings and sticking them in a hole, horrified to realize her voice was on the verge of shaking, and - as she always did - wanting her mother, “ have a boyfriend. ”

“Could’ve fooled me,” muttered Sokka, who didn’t know when to quit that night.

Katara got up from the table, pushed her chair in with exaggerated politeness, and stormed out of the room.

--

Hakoda looked at Sokka, irate. “That was uncalled for,” he said.

“She’s being ridiculous,” said Sokka, continuing to eat.

“No, she isn’t.”

“I’m not saying I’m also not being ridiculous,” Sokka allowed. “But she’s in a mood.”

Hakoda sighed heavily, wondering if he was a bad father if he just let this one go. He was exhausted, and he felt confident they would work it out. “Does Katara actually have a boyfriend?”

To this, Sokka looked a spot worried - or was he imagining it? “Probably not,” he allowed.

Hakoda put his head in his hands. Sometimes he thought by the time he got the hang of raising teenagers, it would be too late and they would be out of the house. Other days, he wasn’t as hopeful that figuring it out would come so soon.

--

Katara and Sokka didn’t usually make up; they just ignored each other for a few hours and then fell, without fanfare, back into their usual routine. The same happened that night; Katara stayed, for the most part, in her room, Sokka went to the basement, and the tension ebbed slowly. 

Sokka was eating tortilla chips in the kitchen, clicking through Suki’s Instagram story (he wasn’t an evil, controlling boyfriend who needed to know all her whereabouts, but there was no harm in looking at a story that she had put up for the public to see, but things were weird between them these days, and he didn’t want to hurt her, and he didn’t know how to tell her sometimes she hurt him without making it weird, and it wasn’t about not telling her where she’d been all weekend, but he was still mad at her in a way that made him feel guilty, and, yes, this was why he had been needling Katara at dinner; it had, if nothing else, given him something else to feel guilty about.) It was well past midnight. and he was vaguely aware of how much he would regret staying up this late when he had school tomorrow morning, when he was hauling himself out of bed in less than four hours, but he was out of sorts and irate and tired and he hadn’t talked to Suki all day, and where was she anyway? He didn’t need to know but it would be nice, wouldn’t it? Maybe he just missed her.

There were footsteps on the stairs, measured, and he pictured Katara’s soft pink slippers brushing against the carpeted steps and he missed his mother for the usual heartbeat of remembrance. Katara looked more and more like her every day, and even her footsteps had started to sound like hers.

“Hey,” he said when she appeared in the kitchen, looking like she had just woken up.

“Hey.” She yawned, the dramas from dinner forgotten, and pushed her hair out of her face, stuck her head into the fridge. “You go to bed yet?”

“No,” said Sokka. He replayed Suki’s story.

Katara’s yawn shook her entire body as she pulled out a small bowl of cucumbers. “I was asleep, and then I got hungry,” she explained, setting them on the island and popping one into her mouth.

“Who eats cucumbers when they’re hungry in the middle of the night?” said Sokka absently. He set his phone down and re-sealed the half empty bag of chips.

“Healthy people,” mumbled Katara, also looking at her phone. “Stupid. Boys are stupid. ”

“What happened?”

“Nothing. He’s just so so stupid.”

“Who is?”’

“ Zuko, ” snapped Katara.

“What happened?”

“Nothing,” said Katara. She sighed. “What’s wrong?”

“What?”

“You only eat tortilla chips when something’s wrong.”

“That’s not true,” said Sokka, miffed. “I love tortilla chips.”

“They’re your comfort food,” said Katara matter of factly. “Just like cucumbers are mine.”

“So is something wrong with you?” said Sokka after a pause. He wondered if he could take Zuko in a fight. The guy had survived whatever the hell had given him that scar (bear attack was Sokka’s current hypothesis, though it didn’t explain his ear - unless the bear had torn the thing off and the reconstruction surgery hadn’t gone well?) so maybe not, but maybe Sokka could just whack him on the head with a lacrosse stick and be done with it. Zuo was always so mired in thought, a sneak attack would probably be possible. It wasn’t particularly honorable, but it was possible. 

“I asked you first,” said Katara eventually.

“All right,” said Sokka after a minute. He sighed, flipping his phone upside down. “Suki’s been texting me all the long weekend - I mean, the normal amount that Suki texts me - but she hasn’t been home, and she’s clearly not home from what she’s been texting, and she’s also clearly not home from what’s on her Instagram story. Right? Not a big deal.”

“Not a big deal,” said Katara.

“But when I asked her where she was,” Sokka paused for effect, “she said, don’t worry about it.”

“That’s so weird,” said Katara.

“Right!?” Sokka threw his arms up in the air, feeling deeply vindicated at once. “But I don’t mean to be creepy and foreboding.”

“You’re not either of those things,” said Katara reassuringly. “You just miss her.”

“Right,” said Sokka, triumphant. “I just miss her.”

“So why don’t you just tell her you miss her?” said Katara. “I mean, it’s been a couple of days, you can tell her. And see what she says. Maybe tomorrow? Tomorrow you can just say, hey, let’s hang, I miss you. And she’ll probably tell you what she was doing. And if she doesn’t, you can ask one more time. But if she doesn’t tell you at that point, then she’s the weird one. But she probably will.”

Sokka mulled over this oddly official sounding ruling. “Because what if she says I’m being creepy, and foreboding?”

“Has Suki ever said that?”

“No,” said Sokka after a moment.

“So is there the slightest chance,” said Katara, her voice indicating that the chance she was suggesting was not slight in the least, “that you’re in your own head about this?”

“I don’t know. What if it’s something sinister? Like, what if..”

“Suki wouldn’t cheat on you,” said Katara. “And if she did, she would be less obvious about it, she’s smarter than that. She’s probably doing something weird, but not sinister. You’re definitely in your head, and you can just ask her about it, and it’ll be fine.”

Sokka sighed, putting his head in his hands, the entire day slowly coming into a new light. “How d’you do that?” he inquired. Make my life make sense?

“I’m just smarter than you,” said Katara. She put the empty, cucumberless bowl in the sink and yawned, stretching out. “I’m going to bed.”

“Come on,” said Sokka. “I asked you second.”

She blew out through her lips. “I’ve gotten really used to texting Zuko,” she said after a moment. “Throughout the day. A..” she paused, then modified. “Kind of like a lot.”

Sokka was careful to keep his face neutral. Ever since that day in the car she had said barely a word to him about Zuko. He wanted, very much, to tease her, but he wanted more to know what was going on. “All right,” he said.

“Shut up,” she said irately.

“I didn’t say anything!”

“We had a weird conversation,” she said after a moment. “On the stairs, on the Wednesday before break, he was walking me halfway after Creative Writing and I don’t know it was just… weird. Like he was going to tell me something important, something big, something real - he said something, I don’t know - and then he just dropped it, and he walked away, and he hasn’t said a single word to me since then. ” The last words came out in a rush, as if she was trying to speak quicker than the emotion already pushing up through her voice.

Sokka drummed his fingers against the kitchen island, their roles shifting effortlessly. “I wonder,” he said, “what he was going to tell you.”

“I am also wondering that,” snapped Katara.

“I think,” said Sokka, measuring his voice, “he was going to tell you something big, like maybe he’d decided to. Or maybe he didn’t mean to, but then it was coming. And then he didn’t, because he was scared, and now he can’t say anything else, because he has to - he wants to, or he doesn’t want to, but he started to, so feels stuck - so now he doesn’t know, you know. What else to say.”

Katara considered this, staring up at the ceiling. Somewhere along the line she had drifted across the kitchen, and was sitting on the counter by the fridge.

“Or,” said Sokka, “he’s just busy. People forget to text sometimes. I once forgot to text Suki for a whole week because I was so wrapped up in that bird we were rehabilitating.”

“We were not rehabilitating the bird,” said Katara. “You caught a hawk - ”

“He had a broken wing, Katara! I was paying him a kindness!”

“Somehow, I can’t see Zuko putting a bird in a shoebox and whatever the hell else you were doing.”

“Me neither,” said Sokka contentedly. “He’s a good guy though, huh?”

“Shut up. ”

Sokka laughed, feeling a deep wave of care rise for her. “It’ll be okay, Katara,” he said after a moment, feeling a rare moment of semi-seriousness. “You’ll see him in the morning, and it’ll be fine.”

“It won’t be fine,” said Katara.

“It will be. Of course - what won’t be fine? Katara?”

Katara was shaking her head,  and Sokka was suddenly suspecting there was more to the story than Zuko not texting her all weekend. His biggest clue was that she had buried her face in her hands and was, if not crying, certainly moments away.

He abandoned his tortilla chips and crossed the kitchen, hoisting himself up on the counter next to her. A few moments later, she leaned onto his shoulder and he wrapped an arm around her. Moments later her crying had dissolved into all out sobbing, and he hugged her close.

Slowly, painfully, she told him the story of the weekend in broken pieces: how she had sort of but not really asked him out on Wednesday afternoon after their conversation that had ended so strangely; how she had been thinking about it all day, wondering why she didn’t just say how she felt; how she had gathered all the courage she had and (sort of) asked him out (in a way largely open to interpretation.) How he had said no, nicely, and then gone silent, and how it would have been fine, and then that phone call from Toph this morning..

Sokka wondered how many members of his lacrosse team he would have to beat up.

“I really like him. I didn’t want to, because it’s stupid, but he came to my soccer game, and he punched Jet, and I really, really like him - “

“I know.”

“And he’s not, he’s never going to - and he still loves Mai - ”

“Katara - ”

“And I didn’t even think I cared, not this much, and of course they’re together, they were together for years, and I just - I’m just - ” she took a deep long breath. “And I miss Mom - ”

“I know.” 

“It’s so stupid. I don’t even know why I’m crying.” She swallowed hard. “I knew they were going to get back together.”

“He’s so bad at lacrosse,” Sokka said after a moment. “Like, really, terrible. I don’t even know why he’s on the lacrosse team.”

“He’s not that bad.” She wiped at her eyes with the back of her hand. “He just has poor depth perception, he told me. It’s not his fault.” Katara’s tears came in like summer thunderstorms; in and out in a flash, and then she pretended it had never happened. 

He supposed that the last part wasn’t necessarily anything to do with a summer thunderstorm. It was more that thunderstorms terrified him, and so did Katara crying.

“You don’t know anything about lacrosse,” Sokka told her. She was still leaning against him, which was somewhat unexpected, but he took the opportunity to squeeze her shoulder tight. “Look. You deserve better than some rich weirdo who is inexplicably into Mai.”

“Mai is pretty,” said Katara. “And she’s rich.”

“ Inexplicable, ” said Sokka firmly, who had actually never seen the appeal. Ty Lee was much prettier, not that that was something he could necessarily share with anyone on this earth. “Look. It’s.. do you still want to be friends with him?”

“We are friends.”

“I know. It’s just, if you don’t want to be friends with him anymore, I can beat him up.”

This earned something that might have been a laugh. “Right.’

“Or I can make his life miserable on the lacrosse field. I’ve been doing it to Jet. I never pass to him.”

“ Sokka. ”

“What? He doesn’t deserve it!”

Katara shook her head. “Look,” she said after a moment. “It’s… I don’t know. I think I’m just going to get over it.”

“You don’t have to.”

“I don’t want to be - ” she shrugged, cutting herself off. “I don’t know. I just want..I don’t know what I want.”

“You don’t have to,” he said after a minute. “You can figure it out tomorrow. It’ll be easier in the morning.”

She dropped her face into her hands again, sighing so heavily it shook her entire body, and Sokka wondered if he couldn’t kill Zuko. “I just want to sleep,” she said.

He hopped off from the counter, pulling her arm. “Come on,” he said. “Let’s just go to sleep. You’ll feel better in the morning.”

They made their way upstairs. She paused on the landing and took a deep, long breath in.

“It’ll be okay,” she said.

“It will be,” he said.

Quickly, she hugged him, and hurried off to her room, and Sokka was left feeling grateful that if nothing else, they would always have each other.

Zuko couldn’t sleep.

He had never been particularly fond of Sunday nights, but ones after a break were especially difficult. Sunday nights after a break where he had, for some reason, not texted Katara all weekend were worse. Sunday nights that meant he now had exactly two days to decide whether or not he was going to testify in court that his father had burned his entire face off were unbearable.

It was early November. The initial court date - because this matter would drag on forever, probably, engulfing the rest of his life, and barring that it wouldn’t be resolved at least until the spring - was set for March. That wasn’t necessarily the day he would be testifying but they had to know in two days because they had to build their case around that decision and they had been, so far, but it was crunch time, or something stupid like that. He hated lawyers. There was a period of time where there were always lawyers in the house but Azula kept blasting bits of fire at them and setting their files alight so they stopped coming. Uncle explained to the irate and singed lawyers that Azula hadn’t been doing so well since the incident, which was actually a misinterpretation. In fact, Azula doing so had been the only way she’d resembled her former self in months. It had made him laugh, a little.

He exhaled enormously, pulling his blanket tighter across him, flipping over. Everything always came back to Azula.

He wanted to text Katara. He really, really liked Katara. It was becoming more obviously evident every day, and he had a dull ache within him because he knew that he was going to have to withdraw further and further because he couldn’t do this to her anymore. He came with too much. Anyone who came within six feet of him got burned to ash and dust. He felt awful, he knew his silence this weekend felt aggressive, felt purposeful but he didn’t know what to do. And he knew Mai was up to something, because she was Mai; knew she was probably conspiring with Jet. 

They didn’t need to worry. Whatever those two cooked up couldn’t come close to the sheer efficacy of his own self sabotage.

He snorted at his own 3 am, half-addled nonsense and swung his legs out of bed, heaving himself up. He would go down to the shop and have a pastry. He wasn’t remotely tired; school was in less than five hours; but there was simply nothing else to be done at this stage in the game. 

As he descended down the dark steps, he told himself he was being ridiculous. He could stay friends with Katara. He didn’t have to ignore her the way he had this weekend. It was what Azula would have called bad form. It was just he didn’t want to talk to her about all this, and it had occupied his entire brain every day. And so therefore..

bad form all the same.

Whatever. It didn’t mean he had to withdraw from her. They could stay friends. He just wouldn’t tell her about this part. It was still a miracle, heavensent, that all this had stayed out of the media and the school gossip mill. (It was actually entirely due to Uncle, but regardless.) The dam wouldn’t hold, though. The trial - no matter what he did - would be a media circus. The thought of his made his chest grip, and also made him want to break things.

The duality of man. 

So was there a point? To the Katara thing but also to any of it?

He flicked on the light as he reached the pastry shop and almost yelled in surprise when he saw Azula, sitting motionless on one of the stools near the counter, staring off into the distance.

This, too, was something that might have happened in the before times, but not having the light on was new. “Evening, Azula,” he said.

Her eyes flicked towards him with mild interest. Sometimes on her worse days Azula looked right through him. “It’s 3 in the morning.”

“It is.” He sidled up behind the counter, reaching into the fridge and pulling out a cold lemon tart. “And yet, here you are.”

“I couldn’t sleep.”

“Me neither.”

For just a moment, she met his eyes. He took a bite of his lemon tart and sighed heavily. “What’m I supposed to do, Azula?”

“Probably just go to sleep,” she said.

“Yeah. Right.” He wasn’t sure why he was talking to her about this. He hadn’t talked to her about anything in a long time, and this was probably the worst place to get started.

(Out of everything he had lost this year, there was none of it he missed so much as he missed Azula.)

“The falcon cannot hear the falconer,” quoted Azula. “Things fall apart; the center cannot hold.”

“The center sure as hell has not been holding up too well lately.”

She chuckled, oddly lucid tonight. “You’re telling me.”

He finished his lemon tart, closed the fridge and leaned against it, looked over at her over the glass case. She had her hair pulled back behind her head. She looked so young, so tired. For all his father had done to him, his betrayal of him hadn’t been close to what it was to Azula. It was different, with his father and Azula. He’d loved her like a parent should.

“Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,” said Zuko instead of all this. 

“Isn’t it just.” She let fire drops, perfectly shaped, drip slowly from her fingertips, turning to ash when they hit the counter. Zuko couldn’t let flames come to his fingertips anymore without feeling it in the back of his throat, without feeling uncontrolled burning on his skin, but Azula - who’s PTSD rivaled his, who’s PTSD had spent most of the summer dipping in and out of psychosis - was still able to. They had both been, perhaps, forged in flame, but Azula had become one with it a very long time ago. “You’ll do what you have to do, Zuko. And you’ll know what that is when it’s the right time for it.”

“Have I ever?”

“Occasionally,” she said. “Not very often. You have an odd definition of what having to means, and a terrible sense of timing.”

He sighed, turning back towards the stairs. “You should go to bed, Azula.”

“I’m not crazy, you know.”

“I know you’re not crazy.” The doctors had said the overlap between psychosis and post traumatic stress disorder symptoms, and a DMS that still had trouble recognizing them without conflation, made a strict diagnosis difficult but they called it post traumatic stress disorder with secondary psychosis symptoms. For a while, both of them had been in shock; he had been in the hospital for almost a month, recovering, and when he had come back Azula still wasn’t speaking to anyone. But when she had started speaking to people it was about things that weren’t there and places they’d never been to and always demanding when their father was coming, when he would come back to get her, and then it had been nightmares and hallucinations and screaming, so much screaming. It was as if the sister he knew was vanishing before his eyes; it was August, and he couldn’t take a breath without pain, he could barely see, he could barely hear, and Azula, too, was disappearing.

Therapy helped and medication helped and something approaching a diagnosis helped but nothing really helped. Sometimes he wondered if Azula would be back or she would join the entirety of his previous life in simply vanishing, in slipping out from between his fingers (all his fault, all his stupid, stupid fault - )

He shook himself free of thoughts, to the extent that he ever could, which wasn’t particularly far.

“I know what’s happening,” said Azula, her voice brittle but fierce. “I do. I just lose track of everything sometimes, and I just..I’m not crazy.”

“I know you aren’t.”

She sighed. “I mean at this point, realistically,” she said, somewhat thoughtfully, “who wouldn’t be crazy?”

He snorted, almost with laughter. “That,” he said, “is a good question.

Azula ran her fingers through her hair, looking past him, looking at something only she could see. Her words, when they came, were soft. “When is he coming, Zuko? How could he just leave us here?”

A surge of overwhelming hatred went through Zuo as he thought of his father, what his father had done to Azula. Perhaps Zuko had deserved what he’d gotten; but Azula had loved their father like a child should. And this was how he had shown his love in return - leaving her to die, setting the house on fire and leaving them both to die inside?

He had slammed the door behind him. They said he was down on the beach by the water when the police had arrived. Zuko was almost halfway towards the door, dragging himself across the floor on his stomach, choking on ash, his face beyond any sort of pain, when he remembered Azula upstairs, when he heard her screaming.

His father had sent a blast of fire at him first and foremost, and let it spread. All to say that his face would have probably been burned off even if he hadn’t gone back for her. 

Probably. The smoke inhalation, they said, would have been less severe. He wasn’t sure why they had told him that. He coughed.

“Let’s go to bed, Azula,” was all he said. “We'll figure it out in the morning.”

To his utmost surprise, she hopped off the stool and rounded the counter so she was by his side. She slipped her hand into his and he squeezed it tight. “He’ll come for us soon,” she said. “We’ll go home, soon.”

She hadn’t come this near him in months. He led her upstairs and to her room, and she didn’t resist when he hugged her by her door. And when he got back into bed, heavy with tiredness all at once, he knew, as he faded slowly at last into sleep, what he had to do.

--

He drove slowly to school the next day, not wanting to face the world again, not wanting to do anything but bury his face in his pillows and reconcile to the decision he had made. He had told Iroh over breakfast that he would testify; after all the weeks of discussion and back and forth and logical reasoning, the conversation had been rather anticlimactic.

Zuko had woken up early enough for them to share a cup of tea and a bowl of blueberries before he had to leave for school and Iroh had to go down to the store. They kept their conversation light as they sipped their tea, about college applications and the new blueberry pastries Iroh was experimenting with (the blueberries they were eating were the remainders of an overripe batch.) Zuko wondered the whole time if he should say it; wondered if he was even going to say it, but he knew in his heart what he had decided - knew he had decided it a very long time ago.

He picked up his bag and his peacoat and turned when he got to the door, and when his hands shook he folded them into fists. “You can tell them - ” his voice faltered, he hated himself, he coughed, the ashes rising again in his throat, “you can tell them I’ll do it, Uncle. Tell them I’ll testify. I’ll say what they need me to say.”

Uncle sipped his tea. Zuko knew the neutrality on his face was a facade, but he was grateful for it all the same. “All right, Zuko,” he said, gentle, and Zuko wanted to take it all back and was relieved that he had said it, all at the same time. “We will talk more tonight. Go on to school now.”

He took an unsteady breath. “Uncle, I - ”

Uncle was shaking his head, holding a hand up. “I am so proud of you, Prince Zuko.”

He jammed a hand to his eyes, breathing hard, nodding. “I’ll see you after school, Uncle.”

Uncle nodded, one hand to his chest. A sign of respect, of recognizing honor, nothing like what he deserved. “After school.”

And now he was pulling into the parking lot and feeling so tired it was as if he hadn’t gotten a moment of sleep, a slight exaggeration over the four or so hours he had in fact gotten. He put the car in park but didn’t turn the ignition off. He didn’t want to go inside. There was something gnawing at him that he couldn’t put his finger on, something he had forgotten here that was waiting for him with a vengeance.

And on top of it, he hadn’t said a word to Katara since he had told her they couldn’t hang out. And had she been asking him out? And earlier that day, in Creative Writing when she had touched his hand, had she been flirting with him?

He caught sight of himself in his rearview mirror and shook his head. Of course she hadn’t been flirting with him. And now he had ignored her for three days straight, so she had probably forgotten they had had a brief, weird, almost month long friendship based off of texting late into the night and free pastries from his uncle’s shop.

Logically, part of his brain knew that he was being stupid, but the sheer terror of what he had agreed to do was kicking in with a vengeance and it was funneling any logic out through his ears. Azula with her tired eyes, Azula with her shaking hands, and that being Azula on a good night; it had pushed him towards what perhaps was the inevitable, but he wasn’t ready. He hadn’t been ready. He had no idea when he would have to testify, but whenever it was, it was too soon; it wasn’t possible, it couldn’t be possible. He hadn’t opened his mouth and told anyone in the world what had happened, and now he was going to say it in front of the world, a judge, a court? 

He was going to say it in front of his father?

The thought made his stomach clench, his throat close, his hands shake. He wanted so badly to back out of the student parking lot and drive home. He wanted to drive back through time, wanted to go home to before the world had fallen apart, before he had made his father so angry he’d had no choice but to set him on fire, set the house on fire.

Across the parking lot, he saw the familiar silver Toyota pull in, backing into a space. He could just about make out Katara and Sokka, arguing in the front seats. Zuko thought, bizarrely, of his Instagram as it had once been; ice cream cones piled high and him and Azula in the front seats of their old car. There had been a whole life, he had a whole life, and now he had nothing, and all autumn he had been thinking of how his father had taken everything from him but had he? Or had Zuko, ungrateful, unwanted, done what he had done his whole life and broken everything?

Would he do the same thing to her? Of course she wouldn’t love him, of course it could never be what he was still trying not to look at, still trying not to acknowledge; but would his mere proximity be enough? What was Mai plotting? How in the ever living hell did anyone expect him to handle any of this, even one single bit of it?

That was a thought that came to him occasionally, even though he tried to guard against it, because rationally he understood that it served nobody. But sometimes he thought of his life - the whole thing, not the pictures he used to take - and he thought of the summer, and he thought of what he had to do, what the only way out of all this was, and he felt bewildered like a child. Surely wasn’t someone going to step in, tell him there had been a mistake? Or was that him being just as confused as Azula - was he, like her, waiting to go home? He had never had a home to go to, the way she did.

He felt like he was folding more and more tightly in on himself, a piece of paper folded too many times. He had gotten too bold in this last month, almost telling her everything. It was safer to withdraw. Safer to be by yourself, within yourself. No one could hurt if you were on your own.

You couldn’t hurt anyone if you were on your own.

--

“Wonder what the heck he’s doing, ” said Sokka mildly.

Katara slammed the car door. “Who?”

Sokka pointed to Zuko, who was sitting in his car across the parking lot. He had his hands still wrapped tight around the steering wheel and had the school in a death glare.

“Don’t point,” said Katara irately. “It’s not polite.” Even to herself she sounded like her mother, but she was too tired to have any emotional response to this. She hated the first day back from a break from school, and Zuko still hadn’t said anything and he was still with Mai.  Still. It wasn’t impossible to send a text. He was very much in his car no less than fifty feet away from them, so she guessed he was alive.

Alive and stupid.

“Anyway, who cares,” she said, slinging her backpack onto both shoulders. “He’s an idiot.”

“Is he? Is that where we left off?”

“It’s where we’re starting today,” she said grimly. She didn’t really believe it, of course, but she had been so incredibly stupid with Sokka last night the only course of action was a complete one eighty. Also, Zuko was an idiot.“Come on. Stop staring at him, let’s go inside.”

“Aw, do we have to?”

“We could always go home.”

“Yeah, I like that idea better.”

Long-suffering, the siblings went into school.

--

Life proceeded thusly; the center did not hold; and things fell apart. Or that was what the day felt like to Zuko, who felt like he was walking through it, dream-like. He had misinterpreted his resistance to going into the school building; it hadn’t been anything in the building that was waiting for him, it was the way the relentless monotony of high school - class to class, bell to bell, 40 minutes listening to information delivered rotely and letting it fall neatly out of his head and then onto another 40 minutes - pushed to the forefront of his mind whatever it was he was trying to avoid. There was nothing to do but dwell, nothing to dut illustrate increasingly treacherous worst case scenarios in his head. Home was easier, even though it too was impossible; there was always something else to do, the shop to tend to or Iroh to talk with about things that weren’t this. Lacrosse practice was better, the reason he still played even though he had barely any depth perception and was objectively the worst player on the team. And best of all -

he swerved his thoughts away from there. It wasn’t a place, it was a person, and it wasn’t fair to her anymore. It wasn’t fair to use people like that. His father had used people like that.

There was nothing to hang onto in school. Nothing to grasp, nothing to do but fall through his thoughts headfirst. He had agreed to testify against his father. He was going to have to tell the whole goddamn world that he and his father had gotten into a stupid argument, that his father had set him on fire, that his father had kept going and going until the entire house was aflame. He was going to have to recount falling to the ground, his chest closing, going back in for Azula.

He could barely look at it - barely think about it - barely meet his own eyes in the mirror, the memory was so strong, and now he thought he was going to stand up in front of God, strangers, the world itself and tell them?

His heart was racing. His hands were shaking relentlessly, knocking against the desk, and he was losing, losing control, wasn’t able to hang onto the semblance of reality in front of him -

“You okay?”

He looked up. He was, as it turned out, in Creative Writing. He wasn’t sure how he’d gotten here, where the day had gone. It was lunch next, three more classes and then home, as if that would be any better today.

He also wasn’t sure what was going on seating wise, because he knew he sat behind Katara - or had for the past month or so - but the voice asking if he was okay had come, certainly, from the person in front of him, and it wasn’t Katara.

It was Mai.

“Yeah,” he said, returning to himself at once, or so he hoped it looked like. “Fine.” He and Mai didn’t talk in school. He thought it was only polite, as he represented most of he understood was the desolation of much of her life as well as his own.

The thing was, his father wasn’t just abusive (he couldn’t think that word, how did he think he was going to say it in court, what had he gotten himself into?) He was actually, as it had transpired, involved in a significant amount of fraud, and upon investigation of what his father had done to his children, much of the paperwork of Ozai Enterprises had been reexamined as well. His father was facing quite a host of charges. It was too much for Zuko to get his head around - and frankly, it didn’t matter very much to him in the grand scheme of things. The trial and situation surrounding it was separate, somehow, from that of his attempted murder charges, and it was hard to get his head around it. And moreover, no matter how the attempted murder trial went it was almost certain that his father would get off the extortion charges. There were enough loopholes in the law even if his father hadn’t been the type not to get his hands dirty.

But it mattered to Mai. Her father had been a partner, her uncle almost as high up in the ranks as Ozai himself had been. Unfortunately, Mai’s family were the type to get their hands dirty. People like her were in the slow, relentless process of losing everything, whereas Ozai probably would lose very little.

Well, not everything, he thought. It was hard to think of anyone else as losing everything.

But she had lost a lot of money or her family had and they might have to move out or something and maybe her uncle would have to go to jail. He had to get out of the habit of dismissing everyone else’s grief as child’s play, the way Azula always had. A lot had happened to Mai. He was pretty much directly responsible for the majority of it. (When it came right down to it, he could have kept his mouth shut that night and none of this would ever have happened.)

It was only polite to let her pretend he didn’t exist. But now she was turning towards him, sitting in front of him, and he could feel Katara’s eyes on them across the room. He was in Creative Writing, which meant he had come into the room without even looking at her, or must have. The day had passed in such a fog such elements of it such as that seemed impossible. Katara. He wanted so badly to text her. He wanted to rewind, go back to that afternoon before their November break when she had her hand on his. He wanted to change it all, wrap his fingers around hers, squeeze her hand tight and never let go. 

“You don’t look okay,” said Mai. “Hey. Zuko.” She reached forward and touched his hand, just for a moment, and he was shot through with the wrongness of it all, and at the same time, the familiarity. He and Mai had been together for a very long time - since they were twelve, even if it hadn’t been anything at that age but sharing fruit platters and ordering around the housekeepers at either of their houses (across the street from each other, in the world they used to share.) He had never really liked her the way he was supposed to, but he had put in a good effort, because it made his father happy, because she was Azula’s best friend, because she had liked him the way she was supposed to.

And she’d made him happy, in her own way. She had always been a good friend.

He looked up, met her eyes. She was looking at him intently, and he thought of all he had lost, all his father had taken from him. Mai forgiving him wouldn’t bring it back, not one jot of it. Mai had held his hand when he was unconscious in the hospital, at least, he was pretty sure. Don’t you dare die on me, Zuko -

“It’s the court case,” he said, because she knew, because she had been there. “I said - ” his throat closed. “I said I would - ”

“Hey. Zuko, breathe. ” She reached across again, her hand inching towards his. “It’s okay. Whatever it is.. you’ll get through it.” She hesitated. “We’ll get through it.”

It was wrong. There wasn’t a we anymore. There had been, once, and it hadn’t served either of them. The person he was when he’d been able to pretend otherwise was long dead, burned to ashes, and without meaning to he jerked his hand away.

She drew back, a flicker of hurt passing over his face before returning to impassivity

“I’m sorry,” he said. He swallowed. “I’m sorry. I - ” I can’t, I can’t, I can’t, I can’t do this, 

I can’t even breathe -

He stood up, unsteady on his feet, he really couldn’t breathe. “I can’t,” he said, “I just can’t - ”

Without looking back, he stumbled out of the classroom.

--

Mr. Pelican, who had assigned them work some fifteen minutes ago, looked curiously towards the door. “You know,” he said, quite conversationally, “I’m not entirely sure I gave him permission to do that.”

Sinking back in her seat, Mai tipped her head towards the ceiling, trying to ignore how fast her heart was beating, trying to ignore that below the layers of promises she had made to Azula, below all her talk about protecting Zuko, below their schemes and plots, Instagram pictures of the back of her head next to someone who looked an awful lot like Zuko, at least from behind; below it all, she was just a stupid teenage girl who’s boyfriend had dumped her and who couldn’t get over it.

She didn’t look up to meet anyone’s eyes when Katara - seeking permission first, of course, because of course she did - left the room, probably following Zuko. She could feel Ty Lee looking at her, waiting for step 2, waiting for what they were going to do next. She didn’t have the heart for it anymore. She didn’t give a damn about Katara. She was almost sorry about her targeted scheme over the weekend, deliberately to destroy her confidence. She just missed Zuko, she missed her friend, and some stupid, longing part of her had thought he maybe missed her too.

--

Zuko wasn’t far - she found him where they had parted last week, by the stairs that took her up to English class. The difference was he was sitting by them, cross-legged, hands in his lap and eyes shut.

She wasn’t sure why she had come, wasn’t sure if he had talked to her. She had seen Mai touch his hand with the gentle familiarity of the years, the same gesture she had made clumsily last week. She knew, the way she had always known, that Zuko’s heart belonged in full to the same girl it always had, to the same girl it always would. She hadn’t needed to see the screenshot of the Instagram story, didn’t need to see the proof. Their heads together was nothing on the years she knew there were between them.

So why had she gone out to see if she could find him? Why had she followed him, without even looking back at Mai? He had given her endless free cups of tea. They had been texting for a month and it had made her happier than she had been in a long time.

They were friends, now. She had been so lonely, and he had dropped quietly into her life and made it better. There there was something enormously tragic enveloping his entire life and there was nothing she could do about it, but maybe she could sit with him, with her own enormous tragedy. Maybe she could bring him some peace, the way he had for her. 

“Hey,” she said, approaching him.

His eyes snapped open and he looked up. “Hey,” he said, sounding something like his throat was closing up.

Without thinking about it much, she slid down next to him. “Sort of a class going on in there,” she said lightly.

He leaned his head back so it was touching the wall. “What does a panic attack feel like?” he said, his voice slightly hoarse.

She ticked off on her fingers. “Heart’s beating really fast out of control. Feeling sort of dizzy or faint. Chest pain, breathing difficulties.. and a sense of foreboding and terror.”
He coughed, a wounded sound, bringing a hand to his chest, as if in memory. “I think I’ve been having a panic attack all day.”

She wanted to touch his hand, but hadn’t Mai just been holding it? Surely she wasn’t allowed. 

His shoulder seemed safe, though. Less personal, somehow. She laid a hand carefully across it, the muscles taut and unyielding beneath her knuckles. “I’m sorry,” she said quietly. “I’ve been there.”

He looked resolutely ahead, every muscle in his jaw tense. “I just - ” he shook his head. “I can’t, Katara. I can’t.” His voice was plaintive in a way she had never heard it before, split clear down the middle.

She let her hand rest on his shoulder, gathering her thoughts. “I don’t..” she swallowed.

Zuko took a deep, shuddering breath, and it occurred to her the panic attack he was having might actually still be going on. He shook his head. “I can’t,” he whispered, his voice barely there. The hoarseness was more pronounced than ever, as if it had perhaps been the natural state of things all along. “I really, really can’t.”

“Deep breath,” she said instead. “Deep breath in. Even if you can’t do it - you can do that, right?” She squeezed his shoulder. “Come on.”

Incredibly, he listened, taking a deep, surreptitious breath in and letting it out in one, shuddering go. He shook his head again, mute.

“And another,” she said softly. “I promise you’re okay. Just take a deep breath. You’re all right, I promise.”

And he did. She kept her hand tight on his shoulder, anchoring him down. You are safe, she thought, hoping he could feel it, even if she didn’t say it aloud. You are safe, and you are here, and I’m not going anywhere.

He nodded, after a moment. He exhaled. She squeezed his shoulder again. He looked still resolutely ahead, but his shoulder dropped down slowly, beneath her hand.

“What happened, Zuko?” she said softly.

He closed his eyes, as if in memory. “My father..always thought I was weak,” he said, so soft his voice might not have been there. His eyes still shut, his hands still trembling. “And in the moment that mattered most, I was.” He swallowed hard, opening his eyes, meeting hers at last.

Her heart was beating quickly again, but she didn’t say a word, didn’t even nod. She had a feeling she wasn’t ready to hear what was coming next, but she was desperate to finally listen, to maybe know him, know what was lurking behind his dark, tired eyes.

“It was last summer,” he said, looking away from her again, off in the distance. Part of her was extremely aware they were sitting on the floor of the hallway at school, leaning against the wall that supported the staircase; surely any minute someone would come and yell at them, or possibly suspend them. But most of her didn’t care about anything except this conversation. “We were at our beach house.” He swallowed, and she didn’t say anything. She waited, she wondered if she could ever give him what he needed. “My dad and I - we never got along. We never.. it was a lot, especially as I got older, but it was worse, that night.”

She swallowed. She thought of the scar across his eyes, his withered ear, the apartment above the tea shop.

He looked up, then across the hall, then at her again, cautiously holding her gaze. “He was a very powerful Firebender, my dad,” he said, voice level. “I suppose he still is. We had an argument. I found out.. some things.” He paused, as if he was wondering how much he could trust her with.

You can trust me, she willed to him. You can, you can, you can. She didn’t know if she could handle it.

Still, she said nothing.

“I found out some things about how he ran his business,” he said eventually. “It was wrong. People were getting hurt, or cheated, or both. So I told him so. Stupid of me, really.” He snorted with what might have, in some world, been laughter. “I should’ve just kept my damn mouth shut. Would have saved everyone a lot of time.” His hand drifted, almost unconsciously, to his left eye, to the scar that started near his temple and etched across to his cheek. “I never could keep my mouth shut. Something else my dad used to think about me.” He took in an unsteady breath, his hand still at his eye, and his voice hitched ever so slightly. “I guess he was right about that.”

Something awful clicked and Katara felt sick. “Zuko, he didn’t - ”

“He did,” said Zuko, voice quiet and matter of fact again, though still hoarser than usual. “He did. And he kept going, Katara.” He let his hand drop into his lap. “I think he wanted to kill me.”

“I - ”

“I know.” He shook his head. “I know. And he left. He sent the fire towards me, and he watched it..” he gestured vaguely, “and he left and he closed the door. And it spread. Fire does that.”

“You don’t have to - ”

“I could’ve gotten out.” He wasn’t looking at her anymore, speaking as if to himself. “I could’ve gotten out, you know. I would still have a scar, but..” he coughed deeply, a sound emerging from between his ribs, and she thought of him clearing his throat. “But I went back. Because she was still upstairs.”

Azula.

“They weren’t sure if I was going to wake up for a while,” he said, pressing his fingertips together. “I did. Obviously. And when I did she was..” he shook his head. “Different. And she still is. I don’t think she can accept it, you know? She loved my dad a lot.”

Who could accept it? Zuko had got up and come to school every day of the year, school and lacrosse practice and everything else that life entailed, and all along this had happened, barely a few months ago? Katara thought of Azula, who had bullied her to tears more than once, then thought of how limp and useless she herself had gone in the wake of her mother’s death. She would have reacted the same way as Azula had to what had happened to them, shutting herself away from the world. It was too much for one brain to handle. How did Zuko do it?

“Zuko, I’m so sorry,” she said, fighting back tears. “I’m so - ”

“I told them I would testify.” He dropped his head into his hands, the laugh bouncing out from between his ribs. “What the hell am I going to tell them, Katara? How the hell can I tell them all this?”

She wanted to hold him. She wanted to take him home with her. She wanted to tell him she loved him. God, she wanted so badly to tell him that she loved him. 

He wasn’t hers. He would never be hers. And all the same, she wrapped one arm, then the other, around him, and for just a second she pretended otherwise. She hoped he could feel everything she couldn’t say.

I am so sorry. I think I love you. I’ll be there for you. Tell me what you need. I’m here, I’m here, you’re safe and I’m here.

She was terrified for a moment, that he would jerk away or stiffen, but for the same second she was pretending he was hers, he leaned back against her, yielding at last. For a few moments, there was only quiet. 

She pulled away first, because she had to, and made her way carefully to her feet. She offered a hand down, thinking he isn’t going to take it, but not feeling particularly surprised when he did. She helped him up, and they stood next to each other in silence again for a second.

“Come on,” she said. “Let’s just - go.”

He looked up at her, slightly baffled. “We can’t just - ”

“Let’s just go,” she said. “You have lunch next. Pelican won’t get on our case at least until tomorrow. And I’ll get a note from the nurse later, for English. Let’s just walk down the lacrosse fields.” You wouldn’t be able to tell from looking at her, but Katara had skipped a class or two, in her time. High school was exceedingly boring, and you had to get good at living with it.

Plus, people didn’t tend to look twice at varsity soccer players, which she knew was representative of a terrible corruption at the highest level of the school administration, but there was only so much real estate in her brain in terms of how many injustices she could care about. The nurse always gave her notes when she needed them.

And it was what he needed - she hoped she was right. He nodded, and he followed her down the hall.

--

It had grown cold in the November afternoon, and wind buffeted their cheeks as they clambered down towards the lacrosse field. Katara felt a strange thrill, despite the annihilating trauma she had become privy too and the fact that Zuko was dating Mai. She had ditched class before - to read in the back of the library, or occasionally to cry in her car - but she had never taken anyone else with her. 

And now, here was Zuko, hands jammed in his pockets, looking straight ahead, his face a silent mask as they walked around the edge of it, down the green until Katara was confident they were out of sight (though still on school property.) Enconched by a small arc of shrubbery, they sat down in the grass. The November sky was grey and there were thick clouds rolling in, though it was hard to tell if it would storm or not.

The way the day was going, it probably would. 

Quiet settled over them. Something had shifted. In the moment, he looked as brooding as he had the day she had first laid eyes on him; but she knew better now. She knew him now.

He is not yours, she reminded herself. God, Mai really was going to kill her.

“I’m sorry,” he said eventually. He shook his head, as if trying to free his thoughts. “It’s hard to be in school when you’re trying not to think of something.”

“Yeah,” she said. “There’s nothing else to do but think of it.”

He caught her eye. He didn’t smile, but something in his brooding expression softened. “Katara..” he swallowed. “I’m really, really sorry.”

This, she hadn’t been expecting. “Don’t be ridiculous,” she said, gathering her hair into the hair tie she kept on her wrist and packing her arms tightly around herself, jamming her fists into her elbows. They should have chosen the library, rather than the lacrosse field. “Sorry for what?”

He was shaking his head. “I’m really sorry,” he said, his voice not so much breaking as already broken. “I’m just - ” he swallowed hard. “I was trying so hard not to - not to, and that’s why I didn’t even talk to you all weekend, and I’m sorry about that too - ”

She couldn’t say that was okay, because it wasn’t, and she wished he would get off this topic. She didn’t want him to apologize for being with Mai, didn’t want him to apologize for not telling her. There was only room for one panic attack at a time, after all.

“ - I didn’t want to tell you all this,” he finally managed, and Katara thought, vaguely, of his stoicness and his carefully constructed words, and the utter contrast of his cobbled together thoughts now. Trauma really was one hell of a drug, and some curious part of her wanted to find and murder his father. “Because it’s not - it’s not anyone’s problem. I don’t want you to have to - it’s too much. It’s too much to even know, and now I told you, and I just - I’m really sorry. I’m really, really sorry.”

“Can you shut up?” She wasn’t angry at him, and she tried not to make it sound like she was. “I don’t mean it like - I’m not mad, okay, but please don’t apologize. It’s not..” she shut her eyes tight for a moment. You idiot, can’t you see I love you? “I wanted to know,” she said instead. “There’s a lot I’ve been wondering. I’m glad you told me.”

His face flickered. She felt like she could see, in real time, as he slowly found all the parts of his stoic mask and put them back together. “Wondering?”

“Yeah,” she said. 

“You don’t need to - ” he paused. 

She had the frustrating feeling that even despite what had passed between them minutes before, they were right on the verge of a fight, but both of them were too aware of what had just passed to actually get into it. Maybe she was a little angry with him. Not because he had told her, but because he had waited this long. Or maybe because he was dating Mai. 

He was dating Mai. What the hell did she think she was doing?

All at once extremely conscious of the situation she stood up. “We should get back,” she said abruptly. This wasn’t her role. He wasn’t hers. She shouldn’t be skipping class anyway. “We’ll be missed.”

He didn’t argue, merely rose and followed her mutely back into the building.

Zuko should have realized a long time ago, but he never learned: it could always get worse. 

By the end of the brutal school day, the dense November clouds had given away to a freezing grey drizzle, and it was awful. Had it been about ten degrees cooler, it would have been snowing, which would have been worse, as he would have had to drive; but it also would have been better, because lacrosse practice would have been canceled. As it was, they trooped out in the rain and cold and ran around the field with sticks for the obligatory school. It was better than school, because it meant that there was too much going on at once to actually think much; but it was worse, too, because it was still all going on, even if it wasn’t at the forefront of his mind. There was actually more going on now that had been going on when school had begun, more to dwell on, he had told Katara, he had ignored her studiously for one full weekend in order not to do that, only to tell her literally as soon as she said one single word to her.

So he had been right, over the weekend. The only right move had been to stay silent, take a step back. Except that possibility was over now, because he had told her everything. Once you knew, you couldn’t unknow. He had given her this terrible knowledge, and it had already been bad enough to contemplate ghosting her before he had given it to her. Now it was not only terrible, but impossible. He couldn’t give someone that terrible knowledge and at the same time drop out of their lives. It wasn’t kind or true. It was cowardly. Was he cowardly?

Yes, because he had told her. He should have wrestled down the demons, and instead he had let them charge straight at her. Surely, Katara had been through enough, had enough of her own demons. She didn’t need his, too.

She didn’t need him.

I need to disappear. He thought it a lot, had ever since he was a child. The world would be a better place if I disappeared.

The coach’s whistle cut cleanly through the noise on the field, a blessing, though according to Zuko’s approximations, perhaps a bit earlier than it should have come. “That’s practice, gentlemen!” barked the coach. “Get yourselves out of this rain and be ready to go twice as hard tomorrow!”

Deliverance. 

Wiping the rain out of his face (pointless, as it was still beating down) he strode over to the bench where had left his dark hoodie, pulling it over his head and bringing the hood down sharply. He didn’t want anyone looking at him - he felt poisoned by the mere fact that he was visible today. I need to disappear. He had ruined everything. He had no one to blame but himself.

“Hey, Zuko!”

He looked up. The rain was still pelting down, more unforgiving now than it had been all day. The field had emptied, even the coach was gone. How long had it taken to pull the hoodie over his head?

Time moved more slowly for him sometimes, it seemed.

Sokka was crossing the field towards him. Did it move more slowly for him as well? “Are you okay?” he asked as he reached him, and Zuko wondered if Katara had had time to tell him all his secrets in the hours that had elapsed between now and then. Sometimes he suspected the siblings had some level of telepathy.

But Sokka’s eyes were unguarded, and Zuko thought it unlikely that Katara had told him, even telepathically. (She could have, he supposed, texted him.) “Yeah,” said Zuko, his voice rougher than he meant it to be. “Fine.”

“Seemed a little out of it today.” They began to walk back together towards the locker room, but Zuko’s hackles were rising. The old anger that he had tried so hard to bury under his skin had never gone away, and he didn’t want to be that person, didn’t want to be his father, but he felt helpless and awash in a sea of emotion he no longer understood or felt access to control over. He wished Sokka would leave him alone. He wished he was invisible. He wished he could disappear. “And Katara mentioned you weren’t very chatty over the weekend.”

A surge of some level of emotion that he had entirely lost the ability to identify powered through him, resolving into the familiar pulse of anger that had defined so much of his life. “Yeah?” he said, hating the way the words sounded, bitter and scathing. It was as if he was watching himself from very far away. “I’m fine. You guys don’t need to talk about me like I’m your latest - project, or whatever - ”

“Whoa,” said Sokka sharply, holding up a hand. “What?”

There was an anger burning in him now, not necessarily at Sokka but at himself, at his own stupid, useless life, and Sokka was standing in front of him. “You guys don’t need to talk about me,” he said again, slowly, “like I’m your latest project. If Katara’s concerned, she can talk to me.”

“Yeah, she sure as hell tried,” said Sokka, any trace of warmth and camaraderie sliding from his voice like butter off toast, “but you couldn’t take five minutes to text her that you were alive. Really cool of you.”

“I talked to Katara,” said Zuko through gritted teeth. “She’s fine.”

“Whatever.” Sokka paused.

“If you have something to say,” said Zuko, “then say it.”

“What the hell is your problem today?”

“I don’t have a problem. I just don’t need you interrogating me - ”

“I’m not interrogating you, why are you being crazy?”

I mean at this point, realistically, Azula had said, thoughtful, sounding almost but not quite like herself, who wouldn’t be crazy? “This isn’t crazy,” said Zuko. “You haven’t seen crazy.”

“Okay, I don’t know what that means.” They had reached the locker room. Sokka was looking at him as if he was genuinely concerned, and it made Zuko, somehow, angrier. “Look, man, if you want to come over - ”

“I don’t want to come over,” said Zuko, making his voice cold, making himself the person he used to be, making himself the person he never should have stopped being. Who wouldn’t be crazy? “I don’t want to talk. I just want you to leave me the hell alone.”

Sokka didn’t say anything, but he looked at Zuko long enough. He shrugged and went into the locker room ahead of him, letting the door slam shut behind him.

The rain poured still down.

—

Yelling at Sokka, miraculously, hadn’t made Zuko feel any better, it hadn’t undone the fact that he had told Katara his entire life story, and it certainly hadn’t changed the fact that he had promised his uncle that he would testify said life story under oath in court in front of his father. He wasn’t sure why he was surprised. 

He drove home slowly, the rain battering down against the windshield. The most frustrating part was that being cold to Sokka hadn’t remotely sated his anger. If anything, it had fanned the flames; the anxiety that had left him grappling blindly through the day had given way to anger, anger, anger, the way he hadn’t felt in a while. He needed to calm down before someone got hurt.

His mood was not improved when, upon pulling into the parking lot of the Jasmine Dragon, he saw the dark blue, square car that he had come to associate with general exhaustion at best and terror at worst. It was the lawyers’ car.

Zuko was unclear on the details of the litigation against his father. He just knew there were two main lawyers who tended to communicate with him, Iroh, and Azula; a dark haired woman with a rose pin on her lapel, who was overly brisk, and a silver haired man who was overly genial considering the gravity of the situation they were in. That was a direct quote from the rose pin woman. Zuko had overheard it one day. Aren’t you being a bit overly genial, considering the gravity of the situation we’re in? Her voice was short and clipped, and Zuko had wished Azula was still the way she had once been. Azula would have conquered those lawyers in one fell swoop.

The woman lawyer’s name was Hama, and no one could accuse her of being overly genial; she spoke so fiercely and angrily against his father Zuko wondered if she wasn’t a bit close to the situation, sometimes. Zuko didn’t ever remember the silver haired man’s name, but he talked so much about loving cabbage that he and Iroh secretly called him Cabbage Man. Their main jobs seemed to be very exasperated and tell them that court dates had been pushed up. There used to be a lot more lawyers coming around but after the incident with Azula and their singed files, these were the only two who they were still in frequent contact with.

There was more going on - there always was - he knew this was much bigger than him, that this charge of arson and attempted murder in the first degree, even, was only part of the tangled web the state was trying to ensnare his father in. It was useless. Zuko knew it was useless. His father always won. His father had cronies and collaborators and proxies, and Zuko had nothing. Zuko wasn’t entirely sure who it was suing his father - the state meant nothing to him, and he was pretty sure it wasn’t Iroh - but he did know, in every way it counted, this would boil down to his word over his father’s, his burned, charred body propped up against the fire pouring unrelenting from his father’s open palms. His father would win every time. 

If you testify, it will be harder for him to gain custody of Azula. 

He took a deep breath in and out, trying not to hear Katara’s voice in his head, pushing up against all the useless sorrow heaped within him. Katara had listened. She had sat there by him in the hallway and taken it all in. He didn’t know how he could do that to her, but that aside - even for a moment, please, please, let me put that aside - she had sat there, with him, and listened. She had taken him outside to clear his head, and they had some scattered conversation he could barely remember now. She hadn’t left him sitting on his own. She had gone after him.

Could it be, even after the ruination, the annunciation, could it be -

Never. He pushed the thought, the hope, the foolishness down deep, stamping on it, and got out of the car. It was still raining, and now there were lawyers to talk to. The day wasn’t getting any better.

—

“What it’s really going to come down to, Zuko,” said Hama, what felt like hours later, “is how the jury perceives you. The facts are clear. There’s no way in hell anyone with a clear mind would think that you were in any way to blame for this situation - that’s not what we’re worried about. The only concern we have for not winning this case is that your father’s team will be able to make it look like an unfortunate accident.”

“And that’s where I come in,” said Zuko dully.

“That’s where you come in,” said Cabbage Man, overly cheerful as usual. “We’re so glad you’ve agreed to this, Zuko, we really are.”

Zuko couldn’t find it in him to respond to this. He was talking to them alone; Iroh was downstairs, minding the shop. When June had called in sick Iroh had wanted to close early for the day so he could accompany Zuko to this impromptu, seemingly endless meeting, but Zuko had insisted he do no such thing, and go down to the shop. Iroh loved minding the shop.

He was secretly wishing he had agreed, though. Or just gone down and minded the shop himself. Or not come home at all today, and instead be halfway to Arizona.

His head hurt. He couldn’t do this.

“Are we done now?” he said, instead of responding to the Cabbage Man’s gladness or Hama’s fierce surety. “I have a lot of homework today.”

“We just want to make sure you’re clear on our timeline,” said Hama. “And, of course, our basic expectations.. we’ll be in touch, though, we’ll be having plenty of meetings between now and then. But yes, I think for now we should be done.” She glanced at Cabbage Man.

“And we just wanted to make sure you set up an appointment with the court-recommended therapist,” said Cabbage Man. “It’ll be a difficult few months, and we wanted to make sure..”

This, surely, they could not ask of him. Zuko rose. “Thanks,” he said, “but I’m good. Really. Seriously,” he said, when they opened their mouths to protest. “I don’t.. it’s fine.”

“Well, if you’re sure,” said Hama, who looked like she didn’t care very much, even though Cabbage Man looked quite concerned. “It’s an option for you.”

“Have you been doing all right?” asked Cabbage Man.

Zuko cleared his throat, involuntarily this time. He had spent almost the entire day in some gradation of a panic attack and quite possibly destroyed the only two meaningful friendships in his entire life. “Fine,” he said. “You two can stop in the shop on the way out if you want to talk to Uncle.”

“We’ll be seeing you, Zuko,” said Hama, snapping her briefcase closed. “And again..” she paused. “It’s a great thing, what you’re doing.”

Zuko nodded, looking just past at her. Extremely alarmingly, he realized he was suddenly near tears. “I’ll see you both soon,” he said, and finally, mercifully, they left the kitchen.

He slumped down in the chair, letting his head fall forward into his folded arms on the table. The exhaustion of the day was catching up with him, and he wanted to do nothing but lie in bed and sleep. To die, to sleep, perchance to dream.

“Are they gone?”

Azula’s voice, high and reedy, came from behind him. He didn’t have the energy to so much as lift his head. “Yeah,” he said, his voice muffled. 

He could hear her padding, barefoot, across the kitchen floor. Sometimes it seemed like Azula had different personalities every day, and he was never entirely sure which one she would be trying on that day.

This, at least, was the same as it had always been.

“She hates us, you know,” said Azula, taking a seat across from him.

Zuko looked up from his arms. “Who hates us?” he said, thinking of the many, many people who hated them.

“The lawyer.” Azula folded her legs underneath her, her face pale and drawn. Zuko had an image of her as she had once been; cruel, laughing, his sister, always sort of possibly trying to murder him but also always letting him tag along with her and his friends. She was kind to him only when it suited her, but still. She was Azula, everything that meant, good and bad, and this was his worst betrayal of her yet. “She hates us. Like, you and me and every single ever Firebender.” She let a tiny, perfectly round flame, almost a bubble, waft from her palm as if to demonstrate, letting it smolder almost instantly into ash. Zuko wondered if Azula practiced firebending all day, if she would wake up one day and be herself again, but with powers even further exceeding than what she had once been able to perform. Zuko wondered if Azula would wake up one day and finish what her father had started.

“How do you know?”

“I heard her,” said Azula. “Before you came home, before Uncle came up from the shop. She was on the phone. She said you were probably just as evil as your father because all firebenders were but at least you were willing to provide some use to the cause.”

Zuko couldn’t help but laugh. It was so absurd, and so seemingly fitting, that it circled all the way around from offensive to comical. “You should always listen in to the lawyers,” he told her. “Who the hell knows what they say about us when we’re not around?”

Azula laughed too, and for a microcosm of a moment they might’ve been as they once were.

“What was she talking about?” she said, after a moment. “How are you helping?”

Zuko sighed, tipping his head back. The microcosm of a moment had indeed been a microcosm. The table always became a confessional. “I’m testifying, Azula,” he said to the ceiling. “I’m testifying against him.”

He caught only a glimpse of her face before he registered what she was going to do, and he ducked just in time, just as the flames left her hands, just as they flew towards him, and he couldn’t stop the scream, couldn’t stop his heart jolting into his mouth, couldn’t stop himself from crumpling underneath the table. 

They didn’t hit him, didn’t even come close. She had never meant them to. She had only meant to scare him. As far gone as she was, she still knew how to hurt him.

He pulled himself back onto the seat. Her face was frozen in a malevolent smile. “Going to be terribly hard to testify without a voice, Zuko,” she said, her voice low, the mood in the kitchen had changed so quickly he could barely keep up and the smell of ash in the kitchen was going to propel him into yet another panic attack, and how much, how much, how much could one person be expected to take? “And Dad took half of yours, but he left me here in case we needed to take the rest.”

She got up and left the table then, stalking towards her room, and he took a deep, deep long breath in and a long breath out, the way Katara had told him to earlier that day, a thousand years ago. He was shaking, he noted vaguely. He felt deeply and utterly detached from his body. He felt a thousand years old.

It wasn’t fair to go to Katara with this. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t fair and it wasn’t fair. He took a deep, long breath in and and exhaled, the breath coming out juddery and broken, his hands shaking so hard they were knocking against the table.

He took his phone out of his pocket and called her.

—

“That’s the most insane thing I have ever heard,” said Sokka, reclining in his chair at the kitchen table. “And.. this is all true?”

“Well, Sokka,” said Katara dryly, taking a bite of a strawberry, “I don’t see any reason he would make this up. ”

“Maybe he was just messing with you,” said Sokka. “He was really mean to me today, you know.”

“I know he was. I just explained to you why.”

“Right.” Katara knew Sokka was acting overly punchy to cover up the fact that he had just borne auditory witness to potentially the most terrifying thing he had ever heard in his entire life, and she let him get away with it. “That is freaking insane. How the hell..” he lapsed off, punchiness fading. “How is he alive?”

“ I don’t know,” Katara was saying when she realized her phone - set to vibrate - was ringing in her bag. She yanked it out. “Oh my God. It’s him. It’s Zuko!”

“Well, pick it up,” said Sokka.

“But - he’s dating Mai!” she said frantically.

Sokka rolled his eyes and reached over across the table, picking up the phone.

“SOKKA!” she shouted.

“Hello, Katara’s social secretary,” said Sokka cheerfully into the phone, as Katara tried in vain to bat it out of his hand. “Hello, my good friend! No, don’t worry about it… um, no, she didn’t.”

Katara rolled her eyes.

“Okay, yeah she did but whatever. Hey, are you okay - ? Oh. Yeah, of course you can talk to her. Just give a minute, I have to get her from the…” he considered. “Lake,” he said. He hit Mute for a moment and leveled her with a startlingly serious look, and for a passing second he looked exactly like their dad. “Even if he is dating Mai, he’s your friend, and you should talk to him.”

“Okay, Dad, ” snapped Katara, snatching the phone from him. “ LAKE?”

“Dad would never tell you to talk to a boy!” Sokka called after her as she left the table, striding up to her room. She locked the door and sat cross legged on the bed, and took three deep breaths in and out before pressing unmute.

She knew Sokka was right. It just hurt. Also, she was slightly terrified of accidentally having an emotional affair. The Great Gatsby made it seem upsettingly easy.  So there was a lot going on today, and that was all on top of the fact that she had just become privy to quite possibly the most traumatic story she had ever heard.

But God, how she loved Zuko. Truly, madly, deeply, and somehow in the little over a month they had known each other - really just a handful of Creative Writing classes, and a handful of rides home, and that time he had come to her game, and all the times in her yard, yes, and all the times at the teashop - he had become her best friend, the only person outside of her immediate family she had ever considered worthy of such a title. This was what best friends did, she thought. They were there, even if it was impossible.

He would’ve done it for her.

She lifted the phone to her ear. “Zuko,” she said. 

“Katara.” Was she imagining it, hoping for it, or was there something like relief in his voice, the same relief she felt when she talked to him after a long day of talking to other people? “Can I - I’m really sorry, Katara. I’m really, really sorry.”

She had been brusque on the soccer field, but it was melting away, her anger and her hurt, as justified as it was. She couldn’t remember what she had been mad about anyway. “It’s okay,” she said, her voice gentle even to her own ears. She sat, cross legged, on her bed and thought inexplicably of the first night they had met, how the house was too noisy and he had been sitting at the kitchen table. How he had told her, that very first night, about his nightmares. “You know it’s okay.”

“I’m sorry I didn’t message you all weekend,” the words seemed to spill out, “and I’m sorry I told you all this, you never should’ve had to know all this, and God, I’m so sorry about Sokka, I know he must have told you, and I’m - ”

“Zuko,” she said. “It’s okay.”

“Can I,” he took a deep breath in, “can I come over?”

“Of course.”

—

Some measure of time later - this impossible day didn’t seem beholden to things like the laws of time - Zuko and Katara found themselves in the yard again, where perhaps it had all began.

The rain had stopped, mercifully, sometime earlier, and the grass below the tree was dry and hard. It was cold, but the sun was shining weakly through the clouds, through the now almost entirely barren branches of the apple tree, splashing gently onto the tops of their heads.

Zuko had come over as soon as he had called, his jaw set, and for some time it had been like the morning in the hallway had barely happened. He had apologized gruffly to Sokka, who had pushed him into the refrigerator, and then the three of them had just hung out the way they often did: played two games of Mario Kart, ate most of the contents in Hakoda’s fridge, made a stab at some of their homework. It was easy in a way Katara had been slightly terrified things never would be again.

And then Suki had called, and Sokka had taken it upstairs, and Katara and Zuko had drifted outside, sitting underneath the tree.

Something is about to happen, Katara thought. The cold November air was interrupted by the uncharacteristically gentle glow of the early winter sun, and something was going to happen. 

He is with Mai. Toph’s details had been clear; their arms around each other, their heads leaned against each other. back at it. She forgot occasionally that she hadn’t actually seen the picture for herself; she could see it so clearly in her head. It felt so utterly, deeply obvious in hindsight; who knew how long it had been going - if it had ever even ended up between them? He is with Mai. 

But all the same, something was about to happen.

Zuko took a deep, long breath in  and a deep, long breath out and the scene at the stairwell came back to Katara in pieces; his face crumpled in memory, one hand to his eye. My father always thought I was weak.

“You’re not weak,” she heard herself say.

He looked at her. 

“What you said in the stairwell today.” She shifted slightly, folding her legs underneath her. “You’re not..” she shook her head. “I couldn’t have survived. No one would have survived that.”

He went tense for a moment and she wondered if she was supposed to pretend she hadn’t heard it, wondered if this was the wrong thing to say, realized quickly that she didn’t care. He relaxed after a moment, as if realizing the same thing. “Some days I’m not sure if I did.”

She inclined her head slightly. 

He swallowed hard. “I haven’t talked about this with anyone,” he said, as if confessing. “There isn’t anyone who I can tell. It’s too much. Too much to tell, too much to hear, and I just - ” he shook his head. “I didn’t want to burden you,” he said, his voice so soft it wasn’t there.

She wanted, wanted, wanted. “It’s not a burden,” she said carefully, marshaling her thoughts. “It’s not..” she pushed her own hair out of her eyes, her chest constricting slightly. “But I know how you feel. It’s not a burden,” she said fiercely. “And I’m glad you told me. Friends should tell each other things,” and if it hurt a little to say that, to say friends when she wanted (and wanted, and wanted, and wanted) but she ignored it. “But I do get it. I was kind of the same way.” She paused. “Kind of am.”

He inclined his head.

She was quiet for a moment. A gust of wind blew by, unfazed by the gentle sun, and almost unconsciously she scooted closer to him. “When my mom died.” She swallowed, and he stayed quiet. “I felt the same way. I didn’t want to talk to anyone about how I felt, didn’t want to - to let anyone in on that grief. Because how can you do that? And it’s not like..”

“It’s not like anyone would understand anyway,” he finished.

“Right.” She took a deep breath. “And I didn’t talk to anyone about it either. For a long time, I didn’t even talk to Sokka or Dad about how I felt because it was just - it was so much. And where do you even begin?”

“And what’s the point?” He tore up a fistful of dry, faded grass. Everything died in the winter. If they were lucky, it grew back in the spring. “What is the point of subjecting someone to that if - if it’s not going to change anything? It’s not going to stop what’s happening from happening. It’s just going to hurt more people.”

“Because it does change things,” said Katara after a second. “I think. I think it makes it lighter.” Impossibly, she touched his shoulder. “And that’s something, right? For it to be just a little bit lighter. Even if just for a moment.”

He was looking at her, and she was looking at him, and this couldn’t happen. It was impossible, and it was inevitable.

“It’s something,” he echoed, and then he was kissing her, underneath the apple tree, his lips soft and his hands on her back and all of it was all she had wanted; she was kissing him, her own hands on his shoulders, something opening up in her chest, a home for all her wanting, finally, finally -

  Mai, Mai, Mai -

  Toph’s words and the memory of Mai’s hand on Zuko’s in Creative Writing sent her reeling backwards and she scrambled to her feet, her heart thudding in her chest faster than it ever had at the end of a soccer match, and Zuko was getting up too, his cheeks flushed, looking - apologetic? Upset? Happy? What the hell?

“What,” she said. “THE HELL!”

“I’m sorry,” he said, almost automatically. “I’m - ”

“You cannot DO THAT!” she shouted, even though she had done it right back. 

“I can’t - I’m so sorry.” He backed up so he was against the apple tree, his hands up, looking genuinely terrified. “I’m so, so sorry Katara, I don’t know what - you obviously don’t - ”

“ I don’t?” She was still yelling, and she didn’t want to be, but all the pent up emotions from the weekend into today were churning, mixed with what may have been some level of exhilaration because God. “It’s not about what I want, you idiot!”

“What - ” his hands still raised, his eyes darting around as if waiting for Hakoda and Sokka to jump out from a window and kill him - “what?”

“You’re WITH MAI!” she yelled.

He dropped his hands.

And he laughed.

This filled Katara with so much incandescent rage that she acted purely on instinct: she raised both hands palms up in front of her and, with more force than her water powers had had since her mother had died, let a blast of water sharply into the air over her head.

It rained in soft slow drops down onto her and Zuko, pattering over their shoulders. It had taken some of her anger with it, or perhaps she was just amazed at what had happened, and also something suspicious was definitely going on here, she was thinking, her brain working rapidly, because Zuko -

  Zuko was the most honorable person she knew, Zuko would never - 

“You’re with Mai,” she said again, definitely, “I saw you - on Instagram - ”

“You saw me and Mai on Instagram?”

“I - well - ”

“And what, exactly,” he said, his voice dry, “did you see?
“I didn’t see anything,” she said defensively. “BUT!” she yelled again, as he raised his eyebrows. “TOPH did!”

“Toph is blind. ”

“Have you never heard of text descriptors?”

“I have,” said Zuko. “Mai hasn’t.”

“Okay, well,” she said. “Aang saw you.”

“Saw what?” said Zuko, in frustration.

This couldn’t be real. He had to be with Mai.

Because if he wasn’t with Mai - and they had just - 

That would mean, for months now - 

“No,” she said aloud. “No, he saw you. He saw Toph, and told her, and she told me. You were on her Instagram story, on a beach, and your heads were together, and your arms were around each other, and it said. BACK AT IT. ” She was breathing hard. It had hurt so, so much hearing it from Toph. It had hurt so much to have all her suspicions confirmed. It had hurt so much that he hadn’t told her. “And you lied. You told me you were working in the shop so we couldn’t hang out and you lied, and you were on the beach with MAI! Because you’re BACK TOGETHER!”

“I’m NOT back together with Mai!” he yelled. 

“THEN WHY DID YOU LIE?”

“I didn’t lie!” He paused. “Well, I did lie,” he said. “I wasn’t working in the shop all weekend. But Katara, I swear, when I wasn’t I was just - lying around. Sitting with Azula. I wasn’t with Mai, I don’t know what she put on Insta - maybe it was an old picture or - but I wasn’t with Mai. I wasn’t. ”

“So why - ” 

“The reason I didn’t text you was because I didn’t want…” he took a deep breath. “Everything we were talking about just now. It was all I could think about. I know, I knew if I talked to you..” he flapped his hands irately. “Well. I knew exactly what would happen in the staircase would happen. And it did.”

“That doesn’t make it okay. ”

“Why did you - ” he paused. “If you thought I had lied,” he said, his voice a modicum gentler, “if you thought I had lied and I was with Mai and I hadn’t even told you I was with Mai, why were you…why the hell have you been.. so nice to me all day?”

“Because I love you, you idiot!”

He jumped back as if having been struck as she clapped both two hands to her mouth. “You what?”

What every girl wants to hear, Katara thought, a little bewildered at the sheer level of insanity she was presenting today. Yet strangely, she didn’t regret it - not for a moment. It was true, as true as it could be at sixteen, and she had done little but think it for months. And now it was out there, on the table, and he was looking at her, her head was spinning and her heart was racing and part of her wanted to die but she had told him, she had told him, she had told him. Here and now, there had simply been no other option, and Katara - Katara who second guessed everything, who’s anxiety barely let her hold conversations some days, who had been beating herself up about telling Jet she liked him for near on three months now - felt no remorse, no panic, not even embarrassment.

All she had done was tell the truth. Her resolve, at least for a moment, was unshakeable.

“You don’t love me,” he said, his voice almost cracking. “You don’t have to be cruel - ”

“I’m not being cruel, ” she said exasperatedly. “Okay, fine, I’m sixteen, I probably don’t love you. Sixteen year olds can’t really lay a claim to such an emotion, I get that, but I still - ” Where had this boldness come from, this surety? She had never been nervous around Zuko. It felt right to say what was true. “But I - ” she shook her head. “Come on, Zuko. I was asking you out. When I asked you to kick the soccer ball around. You really didn’t pick up on that?”

“I didn’t not pick up on it,” he said, so defensive that she couldn’t help but laugh. It was all going to hell in a handbasket but she loved him, and she had told him, and she couldn’t be sure but evidence really seemed to indicate that he wasn’t with Mai, and he had kissed her, so - ?

So - ?

“I just - ” he paused. “Are you joking? Seriously.”

“No, I’m not joking!”

“Okay, but I - ” he was speaking haltingly, carefully, scanning her eyes, looking for the truth. He took a breath and raised his hand, carefully, to his face, indicating in turn his scarred eye, his shriveled ear, his charred cheekbones; everything he had convinced himself made him eternally and unequivocally undesirable. “I am not exactly - ”’

“Do you think I care about that?” She was almost insulted. “Zuko, you’re..” she took a step closer to him. Not with Mai, not with Mai, not with Mai. Careful, so careful, don’t break this, don’t break this, don’t break this, is there anything to break? “You’re - ” she almost whispered, her anger dying in her throat. She didn’t think you were supposed to call a boy beautiful, but Zuko was so beautiful. Didn’t he know? Careful, so careful, don’t break this. Almost holding her breath, she lifted up her hand towards his face.

He stilled, but he didn’t move, looked her in the eye, daring her. 

She pressed her hand to his scar and he almost shuddered, but not with fear, so it seemed. “Zuko, there is no one like you,” she said softly. “I could never - that never even crossed my mind.” She considered, letting her hand drop slowly, wondering how much she could get away with on this altogether shocking day. “There is nothing I would change about you.”

He looked at her and she became aware of their height difference, of his dark eyes, of his long fingers as his hands once more came to rest on her back. “You are so beautiful,” he said softly.

She bit down on her lip slowly. “So are you,” she whispered. A home for all her longing -

And then she was kissing him again, and - 

“ No!” She quickly moved away, leaving him looking slightly dazed and altogether shocked and what the hell was she doing, anyway, kissing boys in her backyard? Hakoda probably would spring out of the window and kill him any second. “Mai!”

“Mai,” he repeated, looking slightly shell shocked still. “Right. I - ” he shook his head. “No. I haven’t hung out with Mai since last summer. We definitely have not been to the beach. I don’t know who was on her story, but..” he paused, lapsing into thought for a moment. “The back of her head, you said?”

She took a step back. “Oh, my God. They’re not that insane.”

“They are that insane.”

“You think,” said Katara, incredulity rising in her, “that Mai posed with Jet on the beach to make it look like you were together?”

Zuko tipped his head back to the sky. “I’m saying I wouldn’t be surprised,” he said.

And then they were both laughing, falling against each other at the absurdness of it all, at the absurdness of the day, of their lives. She wanted to scream, to cry, to wake up from what was surely a mad dream. She wanted to kiss him again. 

“So do you - ” she had to make absolutely sure she didn’t have any wires crossed. “So. It wasn’t you on the beach with Mai.”

“I promise,” he said. “I don’t, like, have a picture of myself doing anything else that day, but..”

“No, I believe you,” she said. “Aang is an idiot and Jet is insane. I think it adds up.”

“It does,” he said solemnly. “Mai is also insane. Also, she wants to avenge Azula.”

“We’ll address that at a later time,” said Katara decisively. “And you..” she paused. “Do you…?”

“I also love you,” said Zuko.

“No, you don’t!” she said automatically, and then started laughing.

“As much as a seventeen year old can lay claim to such an emotion, then,” he said solemnly.

For the third time that day, that impossible day, he kissed her.

The sun was setting by the time Katara talked Zuko into walking back through the house to get his coat instead of walking around the yard back to his car and making a run for it, though she couldn’t assure him that no one would kill him. Hakoda was at work, and Sokka was upstairs, and both of them in theory respected her choices as a young woman, but realistically, either of them could spring out of the woodwork at any time and kill him.

He figured it was worth the toss up. A lot of things had been, that day.

He expected to feel the same rush of jumbled panic that had been the order of the day since the weekend when they came inside, but he felt strangely calm. Despite everything - despite Azula’s bewildering cruelty, which he couldn’t even be sure if she could help or not anymore; despite the lawyers; despite the impossible promise he had made; despite the fact that Mai had apparently lost her mind; despite the fact that the majority of the day seemed to have been absorbed by a singular extensive panic attack - it all felt distant, a million miles away. The only thing that felt real - at least for now - was Katara, her lips on his and her and decisive sureness and the fact that he loved her -

the fact that she said she had loved him -

It was all too much, and yet somehow it did not overwhelm him the way every other thing overwhelmed him. Because - and he could barely believe it was true, barely wrap his head around it - this was a good thing, unequivocally so. Something good had happened - something incredible - something that would surely only lead to more and more good, unfolding on and on with no clear ending.

Just this morning, he was sure no such blessing would ever take place again in his damned life. His father had taken everything from him.

They slammed the kitchen door behind them and Katara crossed towards the sink to pour herself a cup of water, her cheeks flushed, a nervous grin like he had never seen splashed across her face. The first golden rays of the weak winter sunset were seeping in through the kitchen window, making her brown skin glow like honey; her dark hair, entirely loose over her shoulders for once, was tumbling down her back. 

Maybe, he thought, and it felt holy, felt like revelation, felt like epiphany, maybe not everything. Maybe not what comes next.

The thought was too big for him; all of this was too big for him; but it didn’t feel crushing or unyielding the way everything else that was too big felt. It felt real and right and true. He had told her he loved her, because he did.

Not everything, not love -

She glanced over her shoulder. “Do you want some water?”

“I’m good.” He felt almost shy, in the darkening kitchen. The shift between them was so subtle, and yet so strong it was almost tangible. It was as if they had brought forth everything they hadn’t said in the past few months and put it on the table. Zuko had barely dared to allow himself to picture such a moment coming to fruition, but when he had - subconsciously, sometimes, or in that place between sleep and waking - it had never been this easy. Nothing was ever supposed to be this easy.

She sipped her water. “You know,” she said conversationally, looking at her hands, “I haven’t done that in a long time.”

He smirked despite himself. “Done what?”

She reddened. “Shut up,” she said, but grinned. “ No. I meant..” she let water spurt from her fingertips. “It’s been a long time.”

“Where did it come from?” Zuko asked. Firebenders, he knew, didn’t necessarily need a source of fire to manifest flame - though it certainly made it more powerful - but waterbenders did. “I mean, you just pulled it out of the air, it looked like.”

“You can pull it out of the air,” said Katara, “if it’s humid enough. It’s not something I’ve tried, but I’ve read about it.. but no. My dad is really into gardening, even in the winter. There’s always a semi-frozen watering can lying around. And I mean - I’m good at figuring out where to draw water from. Like when I’m on the field, sometimes I waterbend after a game or something, and that’s from the lake about twenty feet behind the field. Stuff like that.”

He chuckled slightly at the image. “You’re really good,” he said. “And you know so much about bending.”

She shrugged. “I read a lot.”

“Why don’t you..” he broke off, remembering their first text conversation. “Right.”

“No, I don’t really know.” She lay her palms flat on the kitchen island, looking somewhere above his head. “I mean, yeah it’s hard because it reminds me of.. of my mother, but that’s not what she would want, would it? For me to stop using my gifts because she was gone?”

“Definitely not,” said Zuko firmly.

She shrugged. “Maybe I’ll get back into it.” She turned the glass of water on the counter and slowly pushed the water within from one side to the other, letting it escape, just hovering above the glass and grinning with undisguised self-satisfaction.

Zuko applauded lightly.

Katara laughed, letting the water splash back into the cup and crossing back across the kitchen, stopping just inches away from him. “I cannot believe,” she said, lacing her fingers through his, causing his heart rate to immediately skyrocket, “anything about this day.”

“Neither can I,” he mumbled, leaning in towards her -

“ What is going on in here?”

Zuko sprang back as if badly burned, banging into the kitchen table, inexplicably throwing his hands up in the air as if he had been caught at the scene of the crime. Katara, meanwhile, laughed, staying exactly where she was and wheeling around towards Sokka, who was standing in the doorway, looking more foul-tempered than Zuko had ever seen him.

“Hello, Sokka,” said Katara calmly.

“ What, ” repeated Sokka forcefully, “is going on here?”

“We were just - ” began Zuko.

“I don’t see how that’s any of your business,” said Katara.

“It’s my kitchen!” said Sokka heatedly.

“It’s OUR kitchen,” said Katara irately. “Anyway, that’s a really weird hang up to have - ”

“Just answer the question, Katara.”

“What’s your problem?” Katara snapped, instead of answering his question. “What’s gotten into you?”

“Nothing has gotten into me,” said Sokka, “except this guy,” he gestured to Zuko, “you’ve been doing nothing but yelling at me all day - ”

“I said I was sorry - ”

“Well, still!” said Sokka. “You can’t just be cozying up to my sister in my kitchen right after - ”

“ Your sister can do whatever she wants,” said Katara calmly.

“That’s not the point.”

“It absolutely is,” said Katara, voice cold. “What did she say?”

“What did who say?”

“Suki.”

“What the hell do you - ”

“You’re being weird,” she snapped, “and possessive for no goddamn reason because you know I can do whatever the hell I want, and you also know that Zuko’s been nothing but good to both of us, and you’re just angry because Suki said something to you. So. What did she say?”

“You know what, Katara?”

“I should go,” said Zuko quickly.

“Yeah, you should, punk, ” said Sokka venomously.

“I am sorry,” said Zuko, looking him in the eye. “For how I spoke to you earlier today.” But I would never hurt Katara, he thought, but somehow, he wasn’t concerned that Sokka would actually care about this, once he calmed down. Katara clearly had this under control.

“Don’t talk to him like that,” Katara said to Sokka.

“Whatever,” said Sokka, stalking across the kitchen and yanking a bag of tortilla chips out from the cabinet. Katara watched him, her eyes softening slightly, then turned back towards Zuko, looking utterly self possessed.

God, she was beautiful.

“I’ll walk you out,” she said. “And then we’ll talk,” she said to Sokka. 

He mumbled irately.

“Bye, Sokka,” said Zuko.

“See you at practice,” grunted Sokka.

He followed Katara downstairs and pulled his coat off the rack by the door, slipping it on. They walked out together, back into the cold, and down towards the car.

“Well,” she said. She took a breath, running her hands through her hair. “To, um. Reorient slightly. Will you be okay? At home?”

He sighed, remembering. “It’s been a bad day,” he admitted. “The lawyers were there when I got back, and now Azula knows I’m testifying, and she’s just..”

Katara bit her lip

Zuko sighed, looking up at the sky. “She couldn’t take it, after,” he said. “After my dad. She always loved my dad and he always loved her, for real, not like it was with me.” He took a deep breath, the cold air slicing through his lungs. There was always pain, he didn’t even think about it most of the time, it was as natural now as breathing. “She was physically injured too, in the fire, but not as badly as me - not scarred - just smoke inhalation. They don’t think it’s necessarily connected, but really who knows?”

“What’s happened to her?” she said, and he knew she wasn’t asking to be vindictive.

“The closest thing we have to a diagnosis is post traumatic stress disorder with secondary psychosis symptoms,” said Zuko, the words pouring out of him as if he had been waiting all this time for someone to give them to, someone to share this unending grief with. “Sometimes she’s still there, in that moment, she can’t get out of it. Sometimes she’s completely delusional, doesn’t believe any of it’s ever happened, thinks we’re holding her here against her will.. sometimes she says she sees our mother.” His voice broke slightly. “And sometimes she seems like she’s fine, seems like she’s all here, she talks like she knows exactly what’s going on, sometimes she’s just as cruel as she ever was..” He shook his head. “Isn’t that ridiculous? That that’s how I know she’s having a good day?”

Katara bit down on her lip. “I can’t imagine,” she said softly.

“I know.” He shook his head. “It’s one day at a time.”  

“Zuko.” She squeezed his hand. “You’re doing the right thing by testifying.”

He took a breath. It was, bizarrely, exactly what he needed to hear, at the end of this very long rollercoaster of a day. The stars were starting to come out, slowly dotting the horizon. “I hope so. Hey, I should get home, Katara.”

“Yeah,” she said. She stood on her tiptoes and he kissed her, and kissed her, and kissed her.

“And I should go inside,” she said a moment later, “and face the firing squad.”

“Is he - ”

“He’ll be fine,” said Katara with so much certainty that he believed it. “And you two will be, too. He just needs to get over Suki.”

Zuko laughed despite himself, despite the world. “I’ll be fine,” he said. “At home.”

“Good.” She squeezed his hand. “Text me.”

“Of course.”

As he drove away, he glanced up and saw her in his rearview mirror: Katara, at the edge of the driveway, watching til he was out of sight. 

He smiled.

—

Katara came in just before a rumble of thunder crashed across the sky, hinting a reprise of the early afternoon. The wind slammed the door shut before her. Moments ago, it didn’t seem like the sky had ever seen rain; it told a story of a dry, quiet November. In a moment, everything could change.

She hoped Zuko got home okay. At the thought of his name a burst of golden sunshine split open her chest. She remembered kissing Jet, the cold in his eyes after, that bored grin, and marveled at how entirely and fully today had canceled out all the pain that had brought.

When she came into the kitchen, Sokka was still perched at the kitchen island, eating tortilla chips. Without any salsa. Something terrible had happened.

It seemed they could never be romantically successful at the same time.

“Dad called,” said Sokka tonelessly. “He has to work late tonight. Told us to order in.”

“Listen, Sokka,” said Katara firmly. “She doesn’t deserve you! She never has.”

Sokka looked up at Katara wearily. “She didn’t break up with me, Katara,” he said, the forceful anger from earlier drained from his voice. “But she’s leaving. She’s going to college, early admission, on Kyoshi Island, starting in January.”

“Kyoshi Island,” repeated Katara, feeling the fight she had planned out in her head tumble away. “Oh, Sokka. That’s - ”

“800 miles away,” said Sokka dully. “Pretty much only accessible by plane tickets I can’t afford with time I don’t have and I just - ” he swiped irately at his face. “That’s where she was over the weekend. She was visiting the island. And she said she didn’t tell me because she knew what it would mean and she couldn’t face it.” His voice broke.

“Sokka, I’m so sorry,” said Katara, feeling somewhat hollow at the news. Suki. She wasn’t her favorite person in the world, but she had been a peripheral part of her life for so long - Sokka’s life, so her life too - that she couldn’t imagine her not being there; couldn’t imagine Sokka without the anchor of her phone calls and texts. “Do you think - ”

“I don’t know, Katara. I just don’t know.”

She came across the kitchen to him then, climbing up on the chair at the island next to him. “I’m sorry,” she said again, quietly.

He let out a breath. “Yeah, whatever,” he said, but his hands were shaking. “Anyway,” he cleared his throat. “What’s going on between you and the prince of darkness?”

“Have you been hanging out with Toph Beifong?”

“Who?”

Katara shook her head. “Whatever. Anyway, don’t worry about it. You can beat him up tomorrow, or whatever. Just..” she squeezed his hand. “I’m just sorry.”

“I know you are.”

The kitchen darkened slowly around them, and Sokka slowly dropped his head onto Katara’s shoulder, bringing a weary hand to his face.

--

Zuko expected the weight of the first half of the day to be waiting for him back in the house, but when he let himself into the apartment it smelled of lemon tarts, which meant Iroh had baked a fresh batch while joyfully covering for June and probably giving away half his stock, and Azula was sleeping peacefully in her room. For a second, the day fell away and he felt as he had when he used to come to Iroh’s house as a child: as if, by some peculiar miracle, he had come home.

“She fell asleep just after you left,” said Iroh when he met Zuko in the hall, as he hovered outside her door.

“Was she all right?”

“Quiet,” said Iroh. He, like Zuko, looked at the slit of darkness in the gap she had left her door open at. “Did you tell her?”

“Yeah,” said Zuko. He walked past Iroh, down the hall, back towards the kitchen, and put the water on for tea. Iroh pulled out the cups, the milk and sugar, and wordlessly they made themselves tea.

When they were sitting across the table from each other with their cups of tea, steam slowly drifting into the air, Zuko cleared his throat.

“Is it Kya’s girl?” said Iroh immediately, an enormous grin breaking over his face. “Have you asked her for her hand?”

Zuko choked on his tea. “Have I what?” he sputtered.

“Asked for her hand,” said Iroh irately. “In marriage!”

“No, Uncle,” said Zuko, wiping his face. “I did not ask Katara to marry me.”

“But something happened, yes?” said Iroh wisely. “You clear your throat.”

“I clear my throat a lot. I only have like fifty percent lung capacity.”

“Yes, but this was a specific throat clearing,” said Iroh.

Zuko looked firmly above his uncle’s head. “Katara is my friend,” he said, but he couldn’t stop the grin that broke over his face.

Iroh’s loud, booming laughter filled the kitchen as he clapped his hands joyfully. “Thank goodness,” he said, sipping his tea and sagging back in his chair with exaggerated relief. “I was beginning to think you would never get over Ukano’s girl. Never! Don’t get me wrong, she’s a lovely girl, but she isn’t suited for you, Prince Zuko. She never was.”

“You’ve mentioned,” said Zuko dryly. Iroh had many thoughts on his love life, or lack thereof.

“And you aren’t suited for her,” said Iroh thoughtfully. “She needs a man with a sense of humor. If I can be so bold.”

A thought Zuko couldn’t quite catch went across his mind, something he almost recognized. He let it go, figuring he would circle back to it at some point. Reluctantly, he refocused his eye on Iroh, trying valiantly to stop grinning. “Whatever, Uncle.”

“That’s my nephew.” Iroh took a satisfied sip of tea. “Kya’s girl. Such good news.”

“There isn’t any news!”

“There will be,” said Iroh cheerfully.

“Uncle..” Zuko rolled his eyes. “How did you know Kya, anyway? I mean, their family?” It was something he had been wondering for some time, but hadn’t quite been able to summon the courage to ask.

Nothing ever good came from their family knowing anyone else’s family.

“We didn’t - ”

“No,” said Iroh, looking pensive. “No, we didn’t..your father didn’t hurt their family.” The mood, all the same, shifted very quickly in the kitchen.

Zuko let out a breath he hadn’t quite known he had been holding. Ozai had taken a lot of money from a lot of people, and part of him had been slightly terrified all along that Katara and Sokka’s family had been one of them.

Iroh stirred his tea, staring out the window onto the parking lot dimly lit by the single streetlight, towards the secondhand bookshop across the street, windows still glowing. “A very long time ago,” he said, “your father and their father were to be business partners.”

Zuko raised his eyes. “Really,” he said.

“Yes,” said Iroh. “Before.” His eyes met Zuko’s. “Before.. there was much of a business.” He shrugged. “But Hakoda pulled out. Had a sense, it seemed, that there was something not right with the way your father planned on conducting business.” He took another sip of tea. “An honorable man.”

“Yes,” said Zuko. “Honorable.”

Iroh shook his head. “They knew the family, in those days,” he said, his voice taking on the hollow tone it often did when he thought of the past, when he thought of before, when he thought of his brother. “Your father went to university with Hakoda. He used to bring them to the house, from time to time, after Hakoda’s engagement. Kya was a transfer student during their final year..oh, but she made me laugh. Wonderful girl.” He shook his head. “Strange to remember that there were good times.”

“I know.” Zuko, too, looked out the window, across the street at the bookstore. “Katara told me her mother used to go to that bookstore all the time. With Sokka. Before we lived here.”

Iroh was still shaking his head, his hands shaking ever so slightly over his cup of tea. “Time, Zuko,” he said, his voice rawer than usual. “Time gets away from us all. It’s important to..” he took a breath. “Important to take the time with the people we love while they are still here.”

“And while they’re still themselves,” said Zuko.

A single tear dropped down Iroh’s cheek into his tea cup and he wiped it away, chortling roughly to himself. “I am sorry, Prince Zuko,” he said. “I know you’re trying to tell me.. to tell me about Katara.”

Zuko thought of his uncle, the own myriad tragedies of his life: his wife who had died in childbirth; his son fighting a war he had nothing to do with, sent home to him in a box; his endless grief that gave way, somehow, to this endless and infinite love and care, to taking in two shattered teenagers without blinking an eye when for all the world he should have been enjoying his old age in peace and silence. All Zuko had ever wanted growing up was a real home, the kind of home Iroh offered him, for bits and pieces at a time. It seemed inconceivable still, the enormity of Iroh’s kindness and care, for him to have made it real. “Please Uncle,” he said, and he knew his own voice was shaking a little. It had been a long, long day. “Please, never apologize.”

“I don’t know if I’m always doing right by you,” said Iroh, fretting, seeming suddenly just a bit older than he usually did. “I don’t know if it’s right for you to testify.”

“I don’t know either,” said Zuko. “But I have to, Uncle.” he took a breath. “I know I have to.” He left the rest unsaid; they both knew well enough.

“Honor, Prince Zuko,” said Iroh. “That you have in spades.”

“One day,” said Zuko. “One day, if I’m lucky, I’ll have as much as you do.”

Part of Katara was sure the entire day had been some strange fever dream, and when she woke up on Tuesday morning it was a text from Zuko, which she often woke up from.

None of it happened, she thought wildly, it was a dream, I dreamed I told him I loved him - I dreamed he told me he loved me -

She grappled for her phone, half-panicked, mixed images from the last 24 hours coursing through her mind; Sokka sitting, face taut at the kitchen table, Suki moving, that awful story Zuko had told her as the huddled by the staircase in the hall, and then about Azula by the car later - and in the backyard -

because I love you, you idiot -

and Zuko kissing her, and kissing her, and kissing her, his hands on her back, in her hair -

It couldn’t have been real. It wouldn’t have been the first dream she had had along those lines.

She picked up her phone from her side table, her hands shaking slightly. It all felt like too much drama for 6 in the morning. She glanced at her phone and took a long, slow breath in.

good morning, Zuko had said. And, entirely unlike him, a tiny heart emoji.

Her heart leapt a million miles. It hadn’t been a dream. It had been real, every impossible moment of it. Which wasn’t great for Sokka, she acknowledged, since it really did mean that Suki was moving to Kyoshi Island. 

It was kind of unfortunate that they never seemed to have romantic luck at the same time.

She stretched her arms to the ceiling, her ancient blue nightshirt sleeves slipping to her elbow, thinking of Sokka - despite her own sudden good fortune, she did genuinely feel something like despondency when she thought about how hard it was going to be for him to lose her. As much as she wished from him that he didn’t have to, that they could hold on, part of her agreed with his mournful assessment of the hopelessness of the situation. Long distance was exhausting in any situation, Sokka had already applied to a number of prestigious colleges within a three hour radius of home, and the time apart would be hard enough for them without adding the pressure of trying to make the time for each other they would desperately need.

They had talked for a while, her and Sokka. He hadn’t asked about Zuko, though, which part of her was grateful for her. Not only because she didn’t necessarily want to share how happy she was when he was so close to broken, but also because..

well, what the hell had happened? She still wasn’t entirely sure. One second she had been listening to the saddest story she had ever heard, then they had been mad at each other, and then he wasn’t with Mai, and then.. well.

So maybe she did know exactly what happened. She just couldn’t believe it. Couldn’t believe that it was possible, that all her wanting had come to fruition - 

that maybe he had loved her all along.

Love. As much claim they had over the word, at least. 

It was good enough for her.

Oh, there was so much still broken about the world, she knew, she knew - Sokka was heartbroken, and the days were getting colder, and she couldn’t tell her mother about her first kiss with a boy she loved. And Zuko’s life was still a pell mell mishmash of tragedy. And he would have to testify, share his worst trauma in the world with a thousand eyes and ears.

And yet, and yet, and yet. And yet perhaps it would all turn out okay. She would be there for him. And he would be there for her. And they would both be there for Sokka. And Sokka would find love again, or maybe another miracle would happen for the siblings and he and Suki would make it work.

There was an irrepressible golden glow in her chest, and for 6 a.m., that was really saying something.

She picked up her phone. good morning, she texted back, and added a heart of her own.

“So, are you guys dating now, or what?”

Toph and Katara were in Ceramics again, and Katara was once more pretending to accompany her as a helper while really sitting on a stool by the pottery wheel and admiring Toph’s handiwork. And gossiping. Which was more fun, now that there really was something tangible to gossip about.

“I don’t know,” said Katara deflectively. “This is a nice bowl.”

“It’s not a bowl, it’s a vase.” Toph paused the wheel and ran her fingers over the edge of her creation. “Does it look like a bowl? It doesn’t feel like a bowl.”

“No,” said Katara. “It looks like a vase.”

“So you guys are dating,” said Toph, resuming her spinning.

“What does that have to do with this?”

“Well, you’re so in love you can’t even tell a bowl from a vase.”

“A, I am not in love,” lied Katara. “And B, I can never tell those things apart. I’m practically failing this class.”

“Oh. yeah, Sugar Queen?” said Katara. “What do you have, a B?”

“A B+,” said Katara with great dignity.

To her great surprise, Toph began to giggle. Katara had almost never heard the gruff girl 

laugh,  and to her own, even greater surprise, she started laughing too.

“I can’t believe you’re going out with Zuko, ” said Toph. “A boyfriend. Would you look at that?”

“I don’t know if he’s my boyfriend, ” said Katara. “It’s not like we’ve discussed it.”

“Really?” said Toph. “You seem like the kind of person who would want to have the details ironed out before you embarked on certain endeavors.”

Katara felt her face go red and was briefly grateful that Toph wouldn’t be able to see her, but the illusion was shattered when, again, Toph snorted with laughter. “Oh my god, you’ve already embarked on endeavors. ”

“I don’t even know what that means, Toph,” said Katara haughtily.

“I feel like you probably do.” 

“Shut up.”

“Okay, so you’re telling me you said you loved each other,” said Toph, “and implying that you’ve kissed a bunch of times, at the very least - ”

“Shut up.”

“But you haven’t clarified whether or not you’re dating?”

“I don’t know. It’s only been a week.”

“That’s long enough,” said Toph. “Tell him I want to know.”

“Tell him I want to know?”

“No, tell him I want to know. Me! Toph!”

“You want me to tell Zuko that Toph Beifong wants to know if he’s my boyfriend?”

“Yes,” said Toph. “In fact, I want you to use those exact words.” She stopped the wheel and lifted her piece off of it, lips curving into a satisfied smile. “When is he gonna take us out to dinner, then?”

“ Us?”

“Yes,” said Toph. “I’m your best friend, aren’t I? Guys are supposed to take girlfriends and their best friends out to dinner.”

“I didn’t know we were best friends,” said Katara.

“Well, I just told you we were,” said Toph with satisfaction. “See how easy it was? That’s how you tell Zuko you’re his girlfriend now.”

“Sorry, I thought that I was telling him that Toph Beifong wanted to know if he was my boyfriend.”

“I’m being excessively kind and giving you options,” said Toph, leaning over and unplugging the pottery wheel, despite the fact that that was exactly the kind of thing Katara was supposedly seated by her for. “Which is exactly what best friends do.”

“Fair enough,” said Katara. She had never had a best friend, except for Sokka, but she thought maybe Toph would be a good place to start - the kind of best friend who decided you were best friends, and then, all at once, you were. “Okay. I’ll talk to him.”

“I just don’t understand how it hasn’t come up yet,” said Toph. “I mean, sounds like you sound every waking minute talking to him or being with him.”

“I don’t, ” said Katara reproachfully. “We just hang out a lot. And sometimes Sokka’s there!”

“Sometimes..” said Toph meaningfully.

“And sometimes Sokka isn’t there.”

“Uh- huh. ”

“Shut up, Toph.”

They were interrupted briefly at that point by their Ceramics teacher calling five minutes till the end of the period, and both of them immersing themselves quickly in cleaning up and gathering their things. But they reunited by the door at the end of class, and walked together in the direction of their next classes, which they didn’t often do.

It made Katara smile.

“I wanted to say I was sorry,” said Toph suddenly.

“About what?” said Katara, surprised. 

Toph wiped her hands, still sprinkled with dry clay dust, on her cut offs. “For the whole Instagram thing,” she said. “I shouldn’t have passed it on without checking. It obviously wasn’t Zuko.”

“It wasn’t obvious,” said Katara firmly. She had finally seen the picture herself, having intercepted it from Aang, who had inexplicably taken a screenshot, and it actually did look a lot like Zuko - it was only because she knew it was Jet that she realized the distinction. “And it obviously wasn’t your fault. If it was anyone’s fault, it was Aang’s.”

“I should have verified,” said Toph. “I mean, the information did come from Aang. ”

Katara laughed. “Well, whatever. All’s well that ends well.”

“I guess so,” said Toph, sounding gratified. “And I guess this did kind of end well, right?”

Katara caught sight of Zuko by the corner of A-Hall, scanning the horde of students crowding the hallway. They had Creative Writing next, and she waited until he caught her eye to lift her hand in a wave. When he lifted his hand back, giving her the tiniest smile, she felt her heart begin to race as he pressed himself against the wall, letting the crowds of people flow by, waiting for her.

“It did,” said Katara. “It most definitely did.”

—

“So, Katara,” said Hakoda in an overly-hearty voice, two nights later at the dinner table.
Katara looked at Sokka immediately. She was wondering how long it would take him to tell their father what was going on - not that it was a secret, exactly, just that it wasn’t entirely something she was sure she knew how to broach with her father. She was pretty sure she and Zuko were dating, and she realized this was an acceptable thing to tell one’s father. She just didn’t know how. 

They had gone on a real, live date the previous night, to see the Leonids meteor shower, spread on a checkered red-and-white blanket on a hill only slightly crowded with other onlookers. He had brought her lemon pastries from Iroh’s shop and that same teabag he had pulled out of his pocket that first night, and she had pinned it to her corkboard when she’d gotten home. He had picked her up and driven her home and they had sat in the car for a long while, and they had talked and not talked. It had been one of the most surreal nights in her living memory, and she didn’t even have to feel worried for Sokka, because he and Suki went out too, apparently determined to make the most of their remaining time together.

So they had gone on a date. That meant, presumably, they were dating, even without the various conversations Toph had suggested she had.

The thing was, Hakoda was working another overnight shift and had been gone since 5 pm. So she hadn’t exactly gotten around to telling him about it. Or Zuko. Still, she had figured it was only a matter of time before Sokka told him, not because Sokka was a snitch but because he was an incurable gossip. He wasn’t only Katara’s best friend - he had always been Hakoda’s, too.

She took a slightly prolonged drink of water. “Yes,” she said pleasantly.

“Sokka tells me..” he cleared his throat. “He tells me you and the Ozai boy are, ah. Involved.”

The Ozai boy. “Involved,” she repeated, “is sort of a weird word.”

“Don’t change the subject,” said Sokka, who had been in suspiciously good spirits since last night. 

“I’m not,” said Katara. “I’m just commenting.”

“Well,” said Hakoda, a touch anxiously. “Is it true?”

Katara looked down at her dinner, then up at Hakoda. “It is true,” she said.

Hakoda thought about it for the moment, then sighed. “I knew I shouldn’t have let Sokka have a lacrosse sleepover,” he said ruefully.

“I often think the same thing,” said Katara gravely.

“Hey,” said Sokka indignantly. “Do not blame things on the lacrosse sleepover, people. The lacrosse sleepover brought forth nothing but joy and requisite violence.”

“Requisite what?”

“Nothing,” said Katara hastily. She still wasn’t entirely sure how much Hakoda had overheard that night Zuko came over to apologize, but she was sure they didn’t need to dip into I have a new boyfriend and That same boyfriend once punched a boy in our backyard all in the same night. “Well?” she said instead. “What do you think, Dad?”

Hakoda had a thoughtful expression on his face. He was not a shotgun on the porch type father, for which Katara was grateful. But then, she had never had a boyfriend, so perhaps he would become one. “I like Zuko,” he said. Zuko had spent a lot of time at the house the past few months. He had even made Hakoda tea once, which would have been more remarkable if Zuko didn’t make tea for everyone. “He seems to be kind. Is he?”

“Yes,” said Katara.

Sokka muttered something under his breath, laughing to himself. Hakoda smiled slightly, but his eyes were still on Katara. “And he lives with Iroh now,” he said.

“Above a teashop,” said Katara.

“Your mother and I used to know Iroh,” said Hakoda. “Ozai as well.”

“He mentioned it,” said Sokka. “When we met him. It was suspicious.”

“Iroh is a good man,” said Hakoda, his eyes far away for a moment. “He cared very much for your mother. His brother..” he shook his head. “But we don’t choose our blood, I suppose.”

Katara hadn’t told her father what Zuko had told her, about Ozai. But she thought she might, one day. “Well, he doesn’t live with him anymore,” she said. “And I don’t think Zuko would have it any other way.”

“I could never imagine that man as a father,” said Hakoda absently. “All the same.” He came out of reverie, looking at Katara with all the kindness she had taken for granted her whole life. She thought of Zuko, his father curled in a prison cell somewhere like a dragon in a dungeon, and suddenly she felt very, very lucky. “Make sure you are happy, Katara, always. And treated well.”

“I know,” she said. “And I am.”

“And if you aren’t,” said Sokka, “we’ll murder him with a tire iron.”

“We will,” agreed Hakoda.

Katara rolled her eyes, and conversation segued onto other matters, but there was a soft glow in her chest. Her father knowing about it somehow made it all feel more real, more tangible, less like something that could slip through her fingers any moment, and all of it made her so happy it almost scared her. She had forgotten this kind of happiness was possible. She had forgotten good times could last.

Later that night, as had become habit now, she slid into bed and clicked her Messages icon, remembering briefly that first exchange, the enormous anticipation of the small tiny white 1 bubble forming. It was almost persistent now, because their conversations were nigh-on constant; there was one more thing to rely on in life now - the quiet pulse, background noise, of their conversations whenever they were apart. They were charged with a different kind of energy since they had kissed (and kissed, and kissed, and - ) but at the core they were still the comfort they had been since they had first become friends. Zuko was comfort, and care, and (maybe?) love.

I told my dad about us, she wrote now, after sliding under her heavy red blanket. November was creeping slowly to an end and the temperature was dropping every day. She had gotten her heavy red blanket out from the linens cupboard, brought all three of their winter coats down from the attic. Winter was the whole family’s favorite season. It hadn’t been the same since her mother had died, because nothing had been; but there was still joy in the first snowfall, icicles from the roof, the pond frozen over half a mile from the house, the scrape of their ice skates on top of it. 

And now maybe, all of it with Zuko. She thought of using her water bending to coax the snowflakes closer towards them, speckling his dark hair; she thought of him, in turn, using his firebending to raise the steam from their hot chocolates towards their cheeks. She thought of how potentially realistic this scenario was and her heart was thudding with overwhelming, unbelievable joy. All of it was within their grasp now.

What did you tell him? he wrote.

He asked me if we were “involved,” she replied, adding the quotes. I’m pretty sure he

and Sokka have been gossiping.  

Nothing new there.

She pressed the quilts towards her lips, giggling quietly to herself. So I told him we were, she wrote.

Involved is a good word, he wrote. I am deeply involved in your life.

Yes, to an extent unnecessary, in fact.

Oh, really?

Yep.

She could feel his grin through the phone. All right. We better come up with a better word, then. Since my over-involvement in your life is so inconvenient.

Inconvenient is a great word for it, she wrote.

Glad you approve.

I could tell him you were my boyfriend, she wrote before she got too scared to press send. You know. If that works for you.

You’re the one who things aren’t working for, apparently, he replied.

Oh, I think things are working out just fine.

A pause, and then, a smiley face. Zuko’s smiley faces were so rare they felt like tiny victories every time.

Well then, she wrote, I guess I’ll go with that, then.

And I guess, Zuko wrote, when calling you the love of my life is a bit wordy, I’ll go with girlfriend.

She pressed her face into her pillow, trying to compose herself and failing miserably. I guess, she wrote, that works for me.

There were still loose threads, of course; there was still the fact that Mai and Jet had apparently doctored a photo in order to trick Katara into thinking Zuko wasn’t single; there was still the fact that Suki was moving and Sokka was brokenhearted about it all; there was still the fact of the looming court date; there was always, always Azula. But life faded into a pattern of normalcy after the dramas of mid-November, and Zuko and Katara found themselves creating new routines and finding new joy within each other as the windows frosted over and the clocks went back. Winter was Zuko’s least favorite season, but Katara’s irrepressible joy for it made it a little better.

Katara made a lot of things a little better.

He wasn’t a stranger to romance, or even dating; he had, after all, been ostensibly with Mai since he was roughly twelve. But this was so far removed from that situation they could barely be compared. 

Which brought him back, if unwillingly, to that particular loose thread: to Mai, and, by extension, to Azula. Azula wasn’t a loose thread so much as she was a ribbon woven irrevocably into the fabric of his life, and he knew there was a time where Mai had been as much, too. He knew that just because people weren’t relevant in your life anymore - or because you didn’t want them to be - that didn’t mean they weren’t relevant in yours.

He didn’t think he had done badly by Mai. They had fallen apart, because everything had. But he knew she must think or, seeing as she had taken such measures to keep him and Katara apart. And as much as he wanted to ignore it - as much as he wanted to tie all the loose threads into a rough knot and look forward - he knew now that part of moving on would be reconciling with all that happened.

His father hadn’t taken everything from him, was what he was coming to realize. His father had taken everything he had had, but not everything that still could be.

It was all these thoughts, as well as a long talk with a Katara and a more muted one with Iroh, that brought Zuko to Mai’s front door the first week of December, wrapped in his Burberry coat and a dark navy scarf looped around his neck twice.

He took a deep breath, trying not to think of the thousands of times he had stood on this very doorstep, sometimes with Azua, sometimes alone, sometimes with Mai herself, coming back home after another evening together. They had had a lot of fun together, and she had been a good friend to him in times when he’d needed it; a bright spot, sometimes, in his impossible childhood. But he had never cared for her the way he had for Katara. He had never felt for her the way he did now - never had someone who felt so impossibly like home.

There had been nothing like that, no sense of coming home the way he had now, in the life he had before. And now sometimes when he would pull into the lot in his Honda Civic behind the Jasmine Dragon after a night out with Katara at a local diner or stargazing, when he would walk up the dusty steps to their tiny apartment he would think of nights at Ember Island parties with Mai (and Azula and Ty Lee), of his father’s Porsche, of the enormous mansion. He would think about all he had lost, and he would think about all that he now had - think about Iroh, think about Sokka, think about Katara, think about being a child and wanting a home more than anything.

His father had taken everything from him, but how much of it had been worth having?

He was startled out of his reverie when the door opened, revealing Mai’s mother, a dark eyed, severe woman. “Hello, Michi Auntie,” he said, bowing his head automatically. “How have you been?”

“Zuko Sozin,” said Michi Auntie. She looked as though she had aged a hundred years in the past few months, but her expression was remote, uninterpretable. “What brings you to our door?”

He swallowed. “I’d like to speak to Mai, Auntie,” he said. “If she’s in.”

“She is in.” Michi Auntie looked at him for a long time. Mai’s family had always been kind to him, but removed; he thought now he understood why. His father had slowly, deliberately, destroyed the lives of so many people using people like Mai’s family to do it, and now they were the ones paying the price. And he knew that Mai’s family had made their choices as well - but he also knew his father wasn’t in the habit of giving people as much choice as it might appear from the outside. “Zuko Sozin,” she said again.

He stayed quiet, still, waiting.

“We’ve missed you coming here, Zuko,” she said. “Mai has missed you.” It had hints of accusation.

Zuko took a breath, his throat, as it always did, catching onto it for a moment. “I know, Auntie,” he said. He wanted to apologize, but he didn’t let himself, remembering something Katara had said. Remember you haven’t done anything wrong, either, she had told him. Try and remember that.

It was hard, but she hadn’t asked him to believe it fully. Just to remember it. That much he could do, if only because Katara had asked him to. “I know,” he said. “Things have changed a lot.”

Mai’s mother exhaled. “That much they have,” she said. The conversation felt like a riddle, but he knew he would never get the answer to it. That, like many other things, was something he would have to live with. “Mai is upstairs. You can go.” She stepped aside, allowing him into the house.

Having apparently passed the test - but knowing that a much more significant one was waiting for him - he dipped his head again, walking into the house, hit with another, more powerful wave of nostalgia. He did notice, without really wanting to, that the house had changed; the table of antiques he remembered was gone, the family room emptied of the massive Oriental rug. All the same, he walked up the stairs, towards her room, and knocked on the door.

“Come in,” came Mai’s voice, as if she had been expecting him, and Zuko remembered how she would perch in her window seat with the curtains drawn, peering through the edges, waiting for her parents to come home, or watching for him, or pretending she was somewhere else.

He came in.

Mai was sitting cross legged on her bed, her back iron straight, her silver MacBook open in front of her. “Zuko,” she said.

“Mai.” He looked around the room. If the rest of the house and Mai’s mother had changed, her bedroom looked exactly the same, down to the corkboard of Polaroids above her desk, many of which prominently featured him and Azula. Her room was a moment frozen in time; coming here was stepping back into the past.

And yet he felt not a moment of longing, except that to get in his car, go home, back to  Iroh, back to Katara. He steadied himself all the same. He had come here to do what was right and he couldn’t leave until it was done.

Honor, his father had said that horrible day, fire pouring from his palms. You must learn the ways of honor.

“Does she know you’re here?” Mai inquired, rising and snapping her MacBook shut. She stood by her bed, her face betraying nothing. 

Zuko stayed by the door. He was waiting for anger, but none came. He only felt sorry - 

not apologetic, necessarily, but sorry; for all they had done to each other. “Azula,” he said, “or Katara?”

At the sound of Katara’s name Mai flinched. “Either,” she said. “Both.”

“Azula doesn’t know I came to see you,” said Zuko, unwinding his scarf from his neck. 

“But yes, I talked to Katara about it.”
“Talk about everything with Katara, don’t you?”

“A fair amount,” said Zuko bluntly. “She is my girlfriend.”

This time, Mai didn’t flinch. She held his gaze. “You’re dating Katara, ” she said. “Do you know what Azula would say? If she knew?”

“Yes,” said Zuko. “Mai, look.”

“Don’t.”

“I’m - ”

“ Don’t, Zuko. I don’t want to hear it, I don’t want to hear how you love her now and you’ve moved on - ”

“That’s not what I’m here to say,” said Zuko. Even though I do, and I have, he thought. “I’m here to apologize.”

“Well, that’s even worse, somehow,” said Mai, regaining her crisp tone. “I don’t need your closure, Zuko.”

“I’m sorry that we haven’t talked since it all happened,” said Zuko all the same. “I’m sorry that I just let my relationship - and my friendship - with you fade out. I always just assumed you wouldn’t want to talk to me, but maybe that wasn’t the right way to handle it.”

Mai snorted. “You think so?”

Zuko took a deep breath, which was always a bit of an exaggeration now. He could only ever breathe in halfway. “I didn’t think you would want to talk to me,” he said. “I didn’t think you would be able to forgive me.” He paused. “Azula will never forgive me, Mai. No matter who I do or don’t date.”

It was so much to reckon with; the end of a life, the beginning of a new one. All the people he had to leave behind, all the people he would have to move forward without. And yet, the least he could do was make amends. 

The sun was starting to set, and Mai’s bedroom was tinged with reddish gold. She sighed, falling back down onto her bed and then sliding to the ground so she was sitting on her carpet with her legs crossed. She looked up at Zuko. “I know she won’t,” she said, not trying to change it, not trying to make it any easier.  

She never did. It was one of things that might have made it love, once upon a time. But it wasn’t to be, and he was tired of feeling guilty about that.

“And I’m not here to ask for your forgiveness, either,” he said, “because you don’t have to give me that.” He took a breath, a bit of a breath. “But listen. We were together for a really long time, and I’m always gonna care about you. But I’m with Katara now. And you..”

“Have to stop posting fake pictures on Instagram to trick people into thinking we’re together?” said Mai dryly.

“Well,” said Zuko. “I wasn’t going to put it so bluntly. But, you know. What the hell.”

Impossibly, she almost smirked at this. She sighed heavily, tipping her head back. “You know why,” she said. “It was insane, and pathetic, and it probably made the rounds in the school about how goddamn desperate I am to get you back.” She almost spat the words out. “But that wasn’t really why. You know why.”

He thought if he went back and sat next to her on the floor by her bed now, he could pretend it would be taking a step back into his old life. For one blinding moment he pictured it: dropping the court case, realigning himself with society, reaccepting the world that was once promised to him. He knew there was no chance in hell it could ever really happen. Knew that no matter what happened now, he could never go home.

But he thought even if he could, he wouldn’t want to. 

“Azula,” he said. In the end, didn’t it always come back to Azula? Hadn’t he gone back in for her, knowing he was damning himself to hell either way? Wasn’t she the reason he had never told anyone what his father used to do, used to say? Wasn’t she why he was going to stand in front of the world and tell them all everything that had happened?

“Azula,” said Mai. “She would be so angry. And I know she doesn’t know, and I know.. I don’t even know if she would really clock it, at this point, like, I don’t know if she would retain the information if we did tell her. I don’t even know if she would be in the headspace to care, but,” her voice cracked, “but I felt like I had to stop it. Do something. Because I know she would’ve wanted it.”

“I know,” said Zuko. It was insane, but he still sort of got it. For a second, they were just two people who loved the same person. “I know.”

“Whatever,” said Mai. Her face was blank once more; she stood up. “You can date whoever you want.”

“She won’t always be like this.”

“But what if she is?” said Mai. “What if she never comes back?”

Zuko thought of all that would never come back, all that he could never return to. He thought of him and Azula, their whole lives together. There was a kernel of surety in his chest, beneath all the burnt out rubble, the debris, the loss. 

“Azula’s gonna be okay,” he said. He wrapped his scarf back around his chest; already he was thinking of Katara and Sokka’s kitchen, of hot chocolate. This wasn’t his life anymore. And it made him a little bit sad, but mostly it filled him with relief. “I promise. We’re going to take care of her, and she’s going to be okay.”

Mai took a breath. “Well, I’m sorry,” she said. “And I hope..” she trailed off, unable to finish, but Zuko knew her.

“I know,” he said. He bit down on his lip and offered her a tiny smile, a peace offering, thought maybe someday, in a million years, they’d be friends again, and talking about the old days. “I hope you’re happy, too.”

He left without looking back, calling goodbye to her mother, and his heart felt lighter for it.

—

“Aren’t you kind of nervous she’s going to try and steal him back?”

“No,” said Katara. She was, a little bit, but she was confident that Zuko wouldn’t be stolen.

Sokka was leaning in her doorframe. It was a Saturday afternoon again, two months after the lacrosse sleepover. “And why is that?”

Because I love him, Katara thought, and because he loves me. “I’m not,” she said, “now shut up. What are you looking so cheerful about?” She scrawled somewhat languidly at her Calculus homework. The closer it got to winter break, the harder it was to care very much about anything related to school. 

“Nothing,” said Sokka, cheerfully.

Katara lay her pencil down. “You’ve been looking more cheerful generally, ” she said. “It's a little suspicious.”

Sokka shrugged, but still in a rather cheerful way. “Me and Suki have decided we’re going to try and make it work.”

Katara raised her eyebrows, a smile starting on her face. “Really?”

“Yes,” said Sokka. “I mean, it’s miles and miles, but we love each other, you know?”

Katara thought of Zuko, driving back from Mai’s house towards hers. It was at that moment her phone lit up with a text, the way it so often did now: outside now

“I do know,” she said, jumping off her bed, thinking about Sokka and Suki and flooded at once with utmost confidence that they would make it, that maybe they would all be happy for the rest of their lives. “I know exactly what you mean.”

Four Months Later

His father looked nothing like he had remembered him.

In the glaring lights of the courtroom, everyone looked washed out and tired. It was the third day of the trial, the last day of the trial, the day it would all be over. Ever since they had received the official date Zuko had had today marked with a tiny red star on his calendar. He was drawing a line in the sand and saying here, it ends. However it ended, it would be over. 

The odds aren’t in our favor. Even Huma, with her set jaw, the lines in her face, had told him as much the day before everything had begun. His father had money, his father had power, his father had influence. He knew it all already. His father had the world. His father had the future he had taken from Zuko.

In the glaring lights of the courtroom, Zuko turned from his father - greying and ancient now, a million years old, a sorry, sad old man who had ruined the only good things in his own life, a sorry, sad old man who only ever hurt people, who took and took and took and was now here alone, washed out under the harsh glare of the courtroom, not even looking at his son - and looked back into the galley, found Katara, her deep set blue eyes, her braids neatly falling past her ears. She was looking not at his father, not at the shattered, lonely man sitting at the front of the room, but at Zuko.

There had been a time when Zuko had thought his father had taken everything from him, and now here he was, standing feet from him. 

Maybe I was wrong, he thought, looking at his father. Maybe I took everything from you.

His father might still win this trial. But he would have nothing to come home to, not even a daughter, because after all these months, after medication and therapy and fierce, fierce love Azula was beginning to heal. Beginning to see it all as it had been. She was nowhere near acceptance but Zuko thought perhaps she was inching towards grief. And grief was better than where she was now. Grief was healing, if you let it be. He knew well enough. 

There was still so much to go. It had been a long winter, illuminated with the soft gentle glow that was his relationship with Katara but still dark sometimes. There were days he thought she might never get better, days he thought he would die before he’d ever be able to stand up in front of the world and tell them what happened that night, days he thought any second now Katara would see through all that he pretended to be and leave him. But she hadn’t left and he hadn’t died and slowly, impossibly, it seemed that Azula was returning in fragile ways. 

There were nights where Katara lay her head on his chest and he told her, whispering so soft it was almost like he might never have said any of it, all that comprised his childhood, all the days leading up to the fire at the beach house. How perhaps it was inevitable, always inevitable. How perhaps he would never heal from it, not all the way.

She would kiss him, and tell him he was safe, safe, safe. Tell him she loved him. Tell him he would never go back to that time and that he was here, not there, and that he was safe.

There were nights he would wake up with his heart thudding through his chest and the fire certainly moments from licking his face once more, nights where he would scrabble helplessly for his phone and still be unable to speak by the time Katara picked up, breathing hard. 

You’re safe, she would murmur, sleepily, a few miles away but right in his ear. You’re safe, and I’m here, and I love you, and shhh, I’m here.

And so too there were days and nights where she would tell him of how it had felt, even before losing her mother. How everything Azula had done to her had broken her in so many different ways over the years. How alone she had been, and for how long, and how after her mother had died it was like the world had gone grey, any chance of finding joy snuffed out like a candle at dawn. How there were days, still, where she couldn’t quite believe it, where she came downstairs waiting to see her in the kitchen with her father. How she didn’t understand sometimes why everyone took it for granted that she was always going to function like normal, that she would just go on being a person after losing what felt like everything.

And he would hold her close. He always told her he was sorry, about Azula, about her mother, about everything. He would tell her she did more than function, did more than survive, that he was staggered by her sheer strength, her determination, her bravery. And he said I will take care of you on the days you can’t do it, I will be brave on the days you don’t want to be, I love you and you are so strong and you don’t have to be all the time.

They didn’t always say the right things to each other. There were missteps and misunderstandings and there was this trial dangling over Zuko’s head like the wrath of God. In some ways it had been a very dark winter. But in many, many others, it had been a very good one. 

And now here they were, on the day Zuko had thought he would never get to. He sat closer to his father than he had in months and he thought of something else Katara had said, bracingly one day, that he had held close for months. No matter what happens, she had said, he can never hurt you again.

There were days he felt like it was impossible, that his father would never stop hurting him. Days where he thought of how he would have to live forever without unencumbered sight and hearing, without full lung capacity, without an unmarred face. It was all true, all impossible, all, at the end of the day, things he could accept. Things he could live with. Things he would live with. 

There were days where the air was cold and lively against his cheeks and he felt like he could take deeper breaths than usual, where he caught Katara’s fingers in his, where the sky looked like it would go on forever, where he thought my father can never hurt me again.

“Your honor,” the lawyer was saying from a million miles away, “I call my first witness.”

Zuko rose, heads swinging to see him, and he barely registered them. There was only one set of eyes in the room that mattered, and before he walked to the stand, before he sealed his fate, before he did what he had to do, he met them.

She nodded at him, eyes holding steady, beautiful as they had been the night of the lacrosse sleepover. He knew no matter how today ended, his father could never hurt him again. One way or another, he would stumble onward, muddle through. They would. And they would do it hand in hand and that made it all the better.

He was ready.

—

At the end of it all, Ozai Sozin was found guilty on charges of attempted murder, arson, and child abuse. Katara thought despite the fact that she was ultimately for a reimagining of the justice system altogether, in the meanwhile, there were worse places for people like Ozai than not getting to see the sun for fifteen years without chance of parole.

Zuko came back to their house after and slept for hours. She knew it would be a long road uphill to recover from this; that there was still Azula to consider all the time; that her mother was still gone and she would never get to tell him about him, her first boyfriend, possibly the love of her life. She knew there was no guarantee Sokka and Suki would stay together. She knew the road ahead was dark and unknown and so much bad might happen.

But mostly, she thought to herself that evening, she knew Zuko would wake up soon, and they would go down to the kitchen and have some tea. And she knew for however long that was a guarantee, everything else would find a way. Life seemed to have a way of doing so.

After all the grief and misery and loneliness, it seemed she certainly had.

the end