Chapter Text
Zuko
Saturday. Optician. Visit uncle’s tea shop. Right.
It was a bad night. Again. Dreams of a house on fire and father’s glaring gaze. He could swear his skin was boiling when he woke up this time but it was his sick mind playing him a trick. Like why? Stupid mind, this isn’t your job. Maybe that’s just how the mind works. It does things like this when something bad has happened to you. But everything was over.
He wasn’t father’s son anymore.
Father.
He should start calling him something else, even in his head.
Ozai didn’t feel right. Maybe he should just stop thinking about him.
Uncle had made him breakfast. He ate the rice porridge as the local radio reported on the weather and announced today’s quiz question. They were usually stupidly easy, not that he ever called in.
‘Today we seek the name of a greek poet from the island of Lesbos, if you know the answer call 063-xxxxxx’
Then some stupid mainstream song started to play.
“Do you know this one?” Uncle asked him.
“The song or the question?”
“The question. You always liked literature as a kid, maybe you can help me figure it out because I have no idea”
“Yeah I know the answer, it’s Sappho” he resisted rolling his eyes.
How didn’t people know of Sappho? He had read line after line of her pining after some woman and complaining to Aphrodite, he had a hyper fixation with Sappho some years ago.
“Ah, I’ve learned something new today then. What about the weather today, it looks fine outside? Maybe you should take the rest of your things to the dorm”
“I’ll do it tomorrow”
“I just want you to get to know some people your own age. Gymnasium is an important time of a person’s life, I just don’t want you to miss anything”
Zuko just glared back moodily. The expression of sadness and disappointment on uncle’s face made him regret it instantly. He knew he was trying to be nice, but dealing with people his own age was so… difficult. No one liked him, at least no one in Caldera. When he met new people he always put on a mask in order to hide his true self. He knew no one liked him the way he was himself, not even himself. He was too loud, too sarcastic, too nerdy, too much. It was just easier pretending being someone else. Ozai’s son. His mediocre son, who became the disappointing son who didn’t do well in school, who became the failure, who became no one’s son.
“I’ll just do it tomorrow, I have the optician and stuff to do today either way”
He put on his eyepatch when he was in town. It was enormous to cover his whole scar, but sometime in the future when he had glasses or lenses (and confidence) he could maybe skip it. In the future. Definitely not today. He had kind of got used to ignoring the blurry vision since he got it. He wondered if this even was possible to fix. The doctors’ uncle took him to in the beginning treated him for eye inflammation and told him to wait some months and maybe it would go back to normal, if not he was to visit an eye doctor or optician. Of course they didn’t know anything about the origin of the scar. He just said he tripped into the fire, bad luck. It probably would never heal. At least he was different from before on the outside.
He went into the optician and had to wait some time before his doctor came. Maybe it was time he got some social media or something. Not that he had friends but he could be a bit more normal if he did normal teenager things. Like stalk people and be jealous over their perfect lives or something. He was always afraid father or Azula would find him over the internet, but that didn’t have any consequences now. He could do whatever he wanted. Except the fact that his life was a mess and full of people he wanted to avoid.
“Are you Zuko Tang?”
Get back to reality.
Weird hearing his new last name.
”Yeah”
”Great, come with me so we can check on your eye” The optician smiled and gestured for him to follow. They went down the hall into a small room with a big soft chair with a lot of eye-scanning devises hanging from the ceiling. He just hoped they wouldn’t touch him too much around the scar. He sat down in the chair and the optician turned to him and started taking notes on the computer.
“So my file says you got this scar from an accident and you have some sight problems, let’s check into that”
They went over some physical examination, thankfully without touching him too much, to check the eye’s movements. Then the big goggles went on in order to check if his sight actually could be fixed.
“So this is an interesting case. When I look at the statistics from earlier appointments you seemed to have an eye inflammation after your accident, but most of it is healed by itself by now. But you do have a visual impairment, like every other person wearing glasses. Many kids develop these things over time but it is odd that we discovered it this late, I don’t know how your parents didn’t notice it by now”
Wait. So he had had this blurry vision all along? He always thought it was hard to see things far away but who wouldn’t? It’s just human eyes? Come to think of it the sight in his left eye felt a bit blurry before the accident as well, but it got much worse after the accident. So it was just an eye inflammation and stuff was back to normal by now. That meant this is his normal sight.
Well a pretty shitty normal sight that is.
“Guess I never had time to check it out until the accident”
“Well you do have significantly worse sight on the left eye, a refractive error, and the right eye is just slightly near-sighted. We can fix that with glasses. I wouldn’t recommend lenses for now because of the resent eye inflammation, maybe in a year”
“Okay…”
He was getting glasses?
He was getting glasses. Wonder how that would look at him.
He was directed back into the boutique and another person helped him test out all kinds of spectacle frames. He settled on an ordinary rectangle shape with rounded corners.
“So with the cheapest surface protection the county council contribution will cover the expenses, we’ll message you when you can pick them up”
What is this.
“Uh.. great!”
Back in Caldera nothing was this easy. Seemed like Takutown county had better health care than Caldera. Huh. A… nice city to live in then.
He went down town to uncle’s shop next. There wasn’t as much people out today, thank the gods. It was still late summer and he wore a cap and his eyepatch again. He didn’t like people looking him in the eye, partly because of his yellow-ish eyes, and the scar of course.
He liked it behind glasses, or even better: glasses and face mask (the levels of air pollution in Caldera sometimes required face mask use, too bad Takutown’s air is so damn clean). The only drawback is mist on the glasses. Oh well, he could live with that. The main point is that, in Caldera his father was almost everywhere with his company that everyone recognized him. Here, he was just some fire nation guy who got into an accident and got a burn scar.
People stared, yes, but no one recognized.
The shop was located on a street leading from the town square, the area was mainly eastern earth kingdom architecture. The shops next door was a well sorted second hand shop and a bookshop. Uncle’s shop wasn’t big, it had three employees for the moment and about six tables.
Zuko stepped inside and was met with a warm puff of air and all the different scents of tea. There were only a few other customers for the moment, an old lady sitting in a corner with her grandkids who showed her how to navigate social media. Behind the counter stood a guy, maybe five years older than Zuko and looked at him with a warm smile.
“Hello, welcome to the Jasmine Dragon, what can I do for you?”
“I’m… um.. searching for my uncle Iroh”
“Yes of course, you must be Zuko, I’ve heard you’ll start working here next week, why don’t you come back here and make yourself at home. I’m Shun by the way”. Shun reached to shake hands.
“Oh, I’m Zuko” Should he say his pronoun? Take action. Collect courage.
“I go by he/him” he added quietly and shook Shun’s hand.
Shun looked a bit surprised, then added.
“Me too! I go by he/him as well is what I mean”
Shun then politely shoved him behind the counter as new customers arrived through the door. He went behind a curtain into the kitchen. There were three different electronic kettles, all showing different temperatures. Back in his mind he remembered uncle mentioning that different tea needs different temperature for the flavour to come fourth.
There was also a dishwasher full of cups, and an oven and working table for baking. He saw some cinnamon buns when he went inside. Uncle never liked baking things, maybe one of the other employees started contributing to the menu?
He checked one door, it was the cleaning cupboard. The other on went outside the back way. The third was uncle’s office/the break room.
As he knocked and went inside uncle turned from the stationary computer and looked surprisingly at him.
“Hello Zuko, I didn’t know you would be visiting us today”
He clenched his throat and sat down beside the lunch table as uncle gestured.
“I finished earlier than I thought at the optician so I thought I would go down here to visit”
“Yes of course, how did the appointment go? Are you getting your sight back?”
“Well, it turns out I have ordinary visual impairment on both eyes, but it is worse on the left eye” He took of his eyepatch when he came to think about it.
“Apparently the eye inflammation I got after the… accident… downgraded the sight a couple of months but now it is back to the way it was before, which is pretty bad. So I’ll be getting glasses in a month or so”
“Well that was luck, I worried it was something worse than that after everything. Come think of it visual impairment goes in the family on your mother’s side so it isn’t that strange you got it too”
“Lucky me”
“I’m sure you’ll be very handsome in glasses as well”
Time to change topic.
“So can I start work now instead of Monday? I really have nothing better to do”
“Yes, why not. I’m going to place some orders, then I’ll show you around. I’m sure you have already met Shun, there is also Ikiaq who will start at Monday as well”
Uncle showed him around and introduced all the different tea blends, he also got his own apron. It turned out Ikiaq was a full fletched baker and made the cinnamon buns and other pastries every morning shift. Shun was a bit more experienced at service and stuff and took the job at the counter for the most time. That left Zuko as the dishwasher for the moment. Or dish-collector. The dishwasher-machine made the rest of the job.
He fell into a rhythm working peacefully. He collected mugs in the hall and placed new ones beside the counter for Shun to distribute. The hours went by and he used the spare time to explore the kitchen and occasionally chat with Shun when uncle ran the counter. He was nice to talk to, mostly asked shallow questions about education and music taste. Shun apparently studied society at the university and now had this as an extra job beside the studies. Just like Zuko in a way.
It was about 16.00 in the afternoon when he went into the hall to collect cups, saw a glimpse of white hair enter through the door and immediately retreated into the kitchen again. Shun shot him a confused glance as he swiftly walked past him into the safety behind the curtain.
He could hear the white haired watertriber- Yue, Yue was her name order a green tea and two other people order as well. He had to peak.
Through the gap between the doorframe and the curtain he saw Yue, another Watertribe person and a third person with a beard. The both unknown persons looked like university students and apparently the bearded one knew Shun from before.
“Yo Umi my man nice to see you here, nice to meet you too, I’m Shun from Umi’s society class”
“Nice to see you too, I had to check out this extra job you keep talking about and these two decided to tag along, so what do you recommend?”
Shun continued to recommend his favourite teas and Yue very discreetly bowed down to drool over the cinnamon buns. For a second she lifted her gaze and Zuko almost jumped out of his skin. She probably didn’t see him as next time he peaked they had all ordered and settled down at a table.
So now he wasn’t leaving the kitchen until they had left. Perfect. Just… sorting dished cups then.
Shun then walked into the kitchen.
“So are you going to explain what that was about?” he had a curious look on his face. Shit.
“Nothing”
“Okay nothing then, you just ran out of the hall and have been ignoring the dirty cups out there since Umi and his girlfriend and her niece walked in”
Trapped.
“I just… want to avoid her?” that was the truth but it sounded even more stupid said out loud.
“Aha. Just avoiding her” Shun gave him a look and lifted his eyebrow.
This was so hard to explain.
“I just.. don’t have the energy running into people from my dorm right now”
Shun sighed and nodded.
“Okay that is a good reason, can’t say I haven’t been there. I’ll hand you any cups that need dishing. Relax, I’m not going to snitch, I’ll tell you when they have left”
Wow. Shun is such a nice guy.
After working in the kitchen for some time Shun walked in with the last dishes and announced that they had left. He let out a breath he didn’t know he had held.
He didn’t know why he was afraid of Yue. No, actually he did know exactly why. He had told her, unintentionally, that he was gay the first conversation they had. She was the only person he had ever told. Why did he tell a stranger on the bus that? And even worse, she answered: ‘What a coincidence, me too’. She was everything he was not, she was herself, proud of her heritage, her identity. She covered nothing. He couldn’t wrap his head around it. He was terrified of her because she was what he could never be. Because he would never be good enough to accept himself. He was a self-hating monster, a barley functioning ball of anxiety and denial.
He felt someone touch his shoulder and couldn’t supress the flinch. The massive flinch. When he could use his sight again he saw Shun, who had rapidly let go of his shoulder and had a concerned expression.
“Are you okay man? You looked really gone there for a moment”
He looked away and just nodded. Shun reluctantly went to collect more cups. He didn’t see his expression but he could imagine it. The expression impersonating the question: What the fuck is wrong with him?
Sokka
“Who did you say was your new roommate?” Katara asked and stared at him in disbelief. He looked away and said:
“Zuko” As rushed as possible.
Katara stared at him again. She then said in a dangerously low voice:
“You got to be kidding me”
“I’m just saying maybe he has changed. He really didn’t say much”
“I can’t believe you are defending him after everything he did to us!”
“I’m not! I’m just indifferent instead of loading”
“MAYBE HE DESERVES YOUR LOATHING”
“MAYBE HE DON’T”
They locked eyes and stared angrily at each other. Their screaming matches was not anything he missed the last year of living in the dorm without her. He broke the eye contact, sighed and tried on a new page.
“I’m just saying, he has probably changed over these years, at least on the outside. You should have seen his scar. It was all screwed up skin over his left eye, I have never seen anything like it”
Now Katara just looked confused.
“Wait what do you mean screwed up skin?”
“I mean it looked like a real nasty burn scar or something, he didn’t have that when he left last time. Whatever he went through in Caldera, it couldn’t have been easy.”
Katara just sighed ant massaged her temples.
“Just promise me you won’t overestimate him. He is probably not that changed and we both know how easy you befriend people who don’t deserve it.”
“That isn’t true”
“Well explain the heartbreak you felt every summer after camp when your ‘friends’ didn’t write you back nor recognized you the next year.”
“That’s not the same, and it was years ago. You’re just paranoid. Like it or not he will be living in this dorm for at least three years, could at least make it liveable in here”
Katara looked extremely tired and just said:
“Do as you want” And went out of his room.
That evening Zuko didn’t show up for collective games. Some of the new dormmates did however, one of them yet another acquaintance from his pleasant primary school years. Mai. Well she wasn’t that bad actually when you got to know her. She had moved along with Zuko to Caldera, but apparently only stayed two years until she graduated and her mom took her and her little brother for a pause from school for a year which they spent abroad with her family down on one of the independent south islands. From what he remembered of her from primary school she hanged around Azula mostly with another girl named Ty Lee. Zuko was with them as well, but he always got the impression that he just wanted to be on good terms with Azula.
Mai was however much nicer now. She was still dark and broody, but like in a funny way. She had a wide range of dark jokes, not entirely Sokka’s taste, but he had never laughed so much about death before. She mostly hanged around her roommate Ying, who also seemed nice.
They were now all here, except for Zuko. He had no idea when he would show up. For Monday probably. It felt strange somehow. Like person from his earlier life showed up, caused him am inner mental breakdown and then left to never show up again. He hated the feeling inside his gut about this. It was like he really wanted to know what Zuko did now, just to get a grip on who the fuck he was.
Yue
She had talked with her parents for the first time since she got to Takutown that morning. It was nice to know everything was the same back home. No big changes. He heard mother and her siblings was out fishing yesterday. She would miss the cuisine a little, the food down south was… too spicy somehow. Toph had gotten her dog this morning as well, Boulder was very glad to see her. He was very cure, nothing like the fur balls of huskies she had back home. But inside all good boys or girls were the same.
She then took the bus over at Yoni’s place for lunch. They then went out in the city for an afternoon snack. More exactly Umi, Yoni’s boyfriend knew a tea place with amazing cinnamon buns. It was a great place run by some old dude, very cosy. She could swear she had seen a familiar face behind the curtain behind the counter. Probably imagination.
Then there were community games. Time to try to learn all the names, with emphasis on try. Of all the people, there seemed to be many LGBTQIA+ people. Like insanely many. What was the odds that they all got put in the same dorm? Or maybe it wasn’t odds. It was just that their generations had more such people. That wasn’t true either. The truth was: the reason they were so many is because this is the first time in history they were allowed to exist. The generations before either died in the aids pandemic, committed suicide or got murdered. That was the truth. If Marsha P Johnson lived today she would be younger than Yue’s grandmother. But she never got the chance to get that old did she.
It was true the Watertribe was a bit more gender fluid and accepting considering their mythology and religious practices. But with the colonization came the fire nation’s believes and rules. Which… wasn’t the same to say the least.
Weird how she was happy a second ago, thought about queer history and then felt like curling up into a ball and crying. They were almost done anyway with their Uno game, and she was out a long time ago so she excused herself and said she was tired.
Well on her room she did just as she felt. Curled up into a ball and lay down on the bed crying. It was all just so much. Probably a mix of period hormones and change in environment, but she felt like shit either way. This kind of anxiety was always hard to tackle. The things she was sad about was everywhere and nowhere and completely out of her reach. She hated her body and all these feelings coming from nowhere. She felt like this was a really stupid thing to be sad about. But here she lay, on her bed, crying her eyes out because this world is so stupid and cruel and the trauma of the generations before her all got handed down and it was too much sometimes. Just too much. She heard the door open and six feet walk inside.
“Are you ok Yue?” It was Toph.
“Yeah” The word came out choked and quiet. Toph immediately picked up on her tone and walked over with Badger showing the way to her bed. She sat down beside her and turned her head to stare in her general direction.
“Do you want to talk?”
“It’s nothing, probably just period hormones making me sad and the whole thing about living in a dorm”
“Sounds rough, I get it though, there is much to take in”
Toph then motioned to Badger that he was allowed in the bed and he immediately jumped up and licked Yue in the face happily. That was hard to say no to. Dogs. Fantastic creatures. When she stopped crying Toph asked her:
“Can you help me with a theory, I heard Sokka say like 45% of the people here are LGBTQIA+ I think it is higher than that, can you help me conspire?”
She dried the last tears in wonder at how Toph could pin down her source of emotions, this time it was probably just dumb luck.
“Sure, we’ve got me, ace queen (you that is), Pema and Chey non-binary people, Gay Diasater Oma, Aang is pan or wathever”
“Wait Aang is pan?”
“Yeah have you ever met a straight air nomad?”
“Tashi?”
“Yeah maybe him, but I honestly think he is the exception that confirms the rule. Okay what else, Sokka is bisexual, then I don’t know any more”
“Suki is bi as well”
“She is??” That changed the game.
“Yeah, your response is kinda sus, I know you like her, and like 50% of the female football team is gay anyways.”
“Good to know”
“We’ve got the straightries, what I know:
Katara, Tashi, Jin (but maybe not, thinks she and Oma has a thing or something), Haru definitely, Hui? Ying?, and also Zuko and Mai… “
She was not about to out Zuko, because she didn’t know him all that well and she had the feeling that that one conversation on the bus was... very private and not meant to leave the small space of the two of them. She hoped to get to know Zuko better so best to not say something stupid.
“Yeah we’ll see how long they remain straight”
“You bet, this shit is contagious”
They laughed at that. She still felt sad, anxiety just don’t go away like that. But it somehow felt ok to be sad. Toph knew, and was ok with living in the same space as an emotional wreck. She often felt like a burden when she was like this with friends. There was nothing she could do but she still felt like shit about others dealing with her when she had a bad day. Or week. At home it often wasn’t as bad. Somehow the environment and no-stress mentality of living in the middle of nowhere helped. Just the fact that she could hear the noises of cars all 24 hours was a trigger.
But maybe things would settle down when she had lived here long enough.
The next morning, she went with Aang to check out the temple area. It was the place where most people practiced martial arts as it was strongly connected to the religious practices. The temple area was in a large park in the central of the city. It had temples from all former nations and some monks living in nearby collectives. She got to meet some of Aang’s teachers and friends from the southern air temple. They were all very polite, wearing yellow robes of classical air nation type.
Gyatso, one of the monks, showed them to the practice area where most of the traditional air nation martial arts was practiced. There was a similar area for the water tribes, she knew Yoni had been there several times. Aang had told her to bring clothes for workout and there was nothing she would rather do. All this anxiety and staying in bed made her limbs feel like jelly. She just wanted to get tired in her body so she would be too tired of thinking self-destructive thoughts.
Gyatso showed her the basics of air nation martial arts, also known as baguazhang. It was different from her own taijiquan, but not too hard to learn on a basic level.
After an hour of practicing, of both air nation martial arts and some water tribe martial arts, she and Aang sat at the large stairs of the temple facing the park, catching their breaths.
“Well that was something, you are quite the master”
Aang blushed “Well I have been practicing my whole life. Katara just started a couple of years ago with the southern water tribe style, but I have never trained with someone from the north, it is quite different from the southern style I think.”
“Yeah, we are having problems learning from the old styles, much has been lost to history since the colonization. I’m lucky growing up in one of the few communities that weren’t robbed of all our cultural heritage.” This got sad. Aang looked at her with understanding eyes. The fire nation had colonized the air nomads as well, but it was much earlier in history and they had miraculously regained most of their ancient culture.
“You should take Katara training here more often, I’m sure she would like to train with someone using water tribe style as well”
“Yeah I should. I don’t know. I don’t think I’m that close to her, I’ve spoken more with Sokka over the years. Can’t you tell me something about her?”
Aang smiled at her. “Sure! We have been friends since I moved here all those years ago, we spent most of primary school together. She is really determined and strong. She knows what she wants in life you know, starting gymnasium in the economic program and all. She wants to become a lawyer so she can defend the environment and the indigenous people from the big companies. I think that is really cool. She is just so confident. After all she has been through.” He looked down at his hands. “You know about her mom do you?”
“Yeah. She was my aunt, didn’t meet her that many times”
Aang looked up at her again. She had this deep feeling in her gut of sorrow and acceptance. People died back home too often. That’s just the way it was. People died.
“I wish I could be there for her more. We’ve been friends for like, forever, but she still… locks herself up? I don’t know. It just feels like she is a ticking bomb of piled up grief that just will explode someday. And don’t get me started on Sokka”
She could not stop herself from laughing.
“Jup. That pretty much summarises this generation of traumatised watertribers. A ticking bomb of piled up grief”
Aang just smiled, but had this concerned look in his eyes.
“Yeah… are you ok?”
She met his eyes.
“Really? No. But I’ve been worse. I’ll start seeing the therapist from the school soon, maybe that will help. Also I’m in a really bad slump right now. Will probably get better in a couple of days. Period hormones you know, doesn’t make shit any easier.”
“Yeah, I mean I don’t know much of period hormones but I hope you feel better soon.”
“Thanks.”
“Soo, shall we head back for lunch at the dorm? I heard there is leftovers from yesterday”
“Great, I hate cooking so anything in the microwave oven will be great”
Zuko
He had been worrying all day about going to the dorms to leave the rest of his stuff. He could get away with sleeping at uncle’s place until school started. Uncle had not very subtly suggested that he should start living at the dorm because of getting friends and bonding with his roommate and blab la bla. He had joked about uncle not wanting him there which had turned into a 15 minutes long apology and he regretted the joke instantly. He knew uncle loved him. He knew he wanted the best for him. But people was, once again, utterly terrifying.
The fact that he was once again standing outside his dorm was a miracle. It was about four in the afternoon and he had all his thinks in two large bags. He could do this.
One he stepped inside he heard commotion from the common room. People were laughing, talking and playing games. Maybe if he was really quiet he could sneak into his room without anyone noticing.
As soon he could see them Yue locked her eyes on him, smiled, and informed EVERYONE that he was here and apparently ready for some introduction rites. Before anything got started a familiar pair of eyes locked on him. Familiar as in. Mai. He just stood there and stared, so did she. She then excused herself and said she would help him with his bags. It felt like slow motion as she walked toward him and gave him a tight hug.
“We got some catching up to do”
“Wha. What are you doing here Mai?”
She pulled out of the hug and looked him in the eyes. She had those cute buns in her hair again, but everything about her felt so much less… cold since last time he met her.
“Come on, let’s talk in your room”
They went into his undecorated room and he dumped his things on the bed. Mai looked around, Sokka had put up the middle wall so his room was utterly plain and tasteless with only his bed, desk and wardrobe.
“I don’t know what is happening. What are you doing here? I thought you were abroad with your family?”
“Yeah... I’m really sorry I haven’t called since we left. I was… emotionally unstable to say the least and I thought healing isolated was the best strategy, turns out it wasn’t. You know all the pressure Azula put on us back in Caldera, I know it isn’t an excuse for me being a shitty friend the last years but I really wanted to get away from her. You know we didn’t end things well. So that was why I didn’t call you. I hope you will forgive me someday. I’m really sorry”
“Ahem. Wow. This is very much. I… um… I don’t blame you. My family is shit. I also left, or got dishonoured. Wathever. I’m not a Suwan anymore. Jayyy.”
Mai looked surprised at him, she then got a sad look in her eyes. “Is that why you have that scar?”
“Yeah. You know. Dad is a man of… traditions”
Mai then threw her arms around him again. This time they stayed like that a long time.
“I really missed you”
“I missed you as well. You… you said you were a shitty friend before, are we still… friends?”
He could feel rather than hear her chuckle. “Yeah, if you still want to be my friend that is”
“Of course I want.”
They then talked on about Mai’s time abroad, of all the things she had learned and how she wanted to start over back home in Takutown rather than Caldera, for obvious reasons. Her dad apparently still lived in Caldera, but they didn’t have any contact with him. Her mom and little brother was still at home down on one of the southern independent islands. She would visit them during breaks. She told him about the island and the people she met there. There was apparently this one girl who she had gotten very close with and couldn’t stop talking about.
Zuko told her the short version of his last year in Caldera and how everything spiralled to his rehabilitating summer in Black Cliffs with his mother.
“Wow. You don’t get any chill in your life. Maybe you should go see some psychologist after everything. I met with a support group for the trauma stuff for half a year and it honestly did much”
He just stared at her. “I don’t know. It feels like too much at the moment”
He would deal with it later. Mai just glared at him until someone knocked at the door and announced that the competitions were starting. He felt like he had to participate, especially since Mai dragged him into the common room. He didn’t have much choice.
Sokka
“May the competition begin!”
All hell broke out as the new people: Katara, Yue, Mai, Zuko, Aang, Toph and Pema started spinning around a pole very fast and then tried to run straight. Ah yes. Irish Christmas Eve. It was ridiculously funny watching them stumble over each other into the finish line. Yue and Mai was in the top and Katara and Zuko was in the bottom fight. The result determined the start-up for the next competition… Glassmila. Also known as Ice Cream Miles. It was all about eating half a litre of ice cream with different… tools based on the result from the last competition.
The winners, Yue and Mai, got spoons. Followed by Aang and Pema who hot to eat blindfolded with spoons. Toph got to eat (technically blindfolded as well) with a fork. And the people who placed last in the previous competition, Katara and Zuko, got to eat with… knifes. It all got very ice-creamy everywhere, but the results were shocking. Kataras’s winner instincts kicked in and she started eating with her hands instead for the knife. Toph seemed to have more experience eating ice cream and shot to the top in no time. In the end she won, followed by Katara, Yue, Mai, Aang, Pema and Zuko in last place.
The jury (everyone else that is) determined them worthy of access to the group chat. The whole thing was amazing to look at. Sokka remembered himself in that situation a year ago, he had placed dead last as well. He spent much time watching Zuko in the competitions. First he looked very uncomfortable and stiff, as if unsure about being there. Then he seemed to focus more at the task and dropped the nervousness. As soon as it was over he seemed to go back though, having his shoulders tense and high as if he wanted to disappear.
They then ordered pizza and spent the rest of the evening eating and playing Uno. It seemed like Zuko and Mai was back to being friends like in primary school. But everything was different now. Zuko seemed relaxed being around someone he knew, even though he only talked to her. Sokka couldn’t help but stare. He looked much more… pretty being himself. Not all harsh and unsecure, always hiding away and avoiding people. Now he was actually smiling. He wished everything would not be so tense between them.
Later that evening they had all gotten to bed he heard Zuko talk on the other side of the thin wall. He carefully put his ear against the wall, his curiosity taking over.
“Yes I’ll be staying here tonight. No, everything is fine. It’s just closer to school tomorrow and all.”
“Yes, yes I know. Thanks. I’ll see you tomorrow at the tea shop. Good night uncle”
Right. He lived with his uncle now. Not his father. He could hear Zuko walk around and move things for another half hour. He hadn’t decorated anything when he was here before. He wondered what his room would look like. Too bad he had insisted on putting up the wall, maybe, just maybe, they could remove it someday.