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She should have known that throwing a party was a terrible idea the moment that Sokka had suggested it. She argued against it first, only for him to blackmail her into doing it. At first, she believed it would be a small gathering of some close friends enjoying dinner over a movie; just maybe getting a little drunk. She was not looking forwards cleaning the house afterwards, especially if one of them got drunk enough to throw up, but given the circumstances, it was not the worst of outcomes for a Saturday night.
Whatever was happening at the moment was not something she had planned for.
Her closed fists shake as she is walking towards her brother, who was sitting on the couch, retelling a story to some members of the pro-bending team with one arm thrown over his girlfriend’ shoulder. She seethes at the sight of him being so relaxed, unconcerned with what she was going to have to deal with the next morning.
She punches him on the shoulder and he flinches as he rubs the incoming bruise.
“What was that for?” he cries out, clearly in pain. Good.
She grabs him by his upper arm and drags him to a secluded part of the house, near the hall closet.
She jabs a finger into his chest. “I thought this was supposed to be a small gathering; that’s what I agreed to”.
Sokka raises his hands in surrender. “I was going to do that, but then I told Wu why I couldn’t hang out with him this weekend, and he told his friends, and his friends told their friends, and…well,” he shrugs and signalizes with his hand to the growing multitude in the room.
Katara closes her eyes and takes deep breaths through her nose, willing herself to calm down before she could cause a scene. This isn’t fair, I live here! I should be allowed to act how I like in my home.
“You planned this, didn’t you?” she tries to ask calmly but it comes out almost as a growl.
“Look; you have the biggest house”, he points out, “it’s only fair that we have the parties here”.
“I’m going to kill you”.
“I’ll help you clean in the morning”.
She feels a pressure on both of her shoulders and she opens her eyes. Sokka looks offensively calm and the desire to punch him comes back tenfold.
“Relax; everything will be fine”.
Everything was not fine. In the hour after her conversation with Sokka, more people had come, filling the small house to the brims, to the point it was nearly impossible to walk from the kitchen to the living room. She had already chastised a couple of people for trying to throw her furniture out of the window to make space for more guests. She had kicked them out of the house, but she cannot be sure if they obeyed, and due to the sheer magnitude of the multitude, she cannot check.
She tries to control her breathing—of course Sokka is nowhere to be found, probably locking lips with his girlfriend somewhere else. She pushes through the crowd trying to detect anyone that she recognizes, a hard task considering the colossal number of students that are blocking her way. I don’t even know these people!
She stumbles on someone’s foot and falls head first on to the hall that connects her living room with the entrance.
“Hi, Katara!” Aang chirps from his sitting spot in front of the coffee table, petting a sleeping Momo. Most of the time she does not mind his cheerful disposition; she even enjoys it early in the morning when he meets her with her order of coffee. Right now, she could kill him for it.
“Hi, Aang” she salutes back. She raises her eyes to his only to notice that Zuko is spread over her low table, drooling over the Pai Sho board gifted by her father. She points at him, wishing for answers but too tired to even ask.
“Oh, um,” Aang ponders on his answer, “he’s more of a lightweight than he would like to admit”.
His answer only leaves her with more questions than answers, so she decides on one.
“Why did you bring Momo?” she questions. Aang would never bring his pets at a place with drunk people.
“He followed me all the way here,” he frowns, “I rescued him from some guys that were drawing on him”.
She is going to ask who did it when she hears a snort from behind her. She turns around and notices Mai sitting on the floor with a ball of yarn on her lap and holding two needles.
“What are you doing?” she asks.
“Knitting?” she replies like it is the most normal thing to do at a party.
“Yes, but why?” she asks again, still not understanding why she is doing it.
“I don’t like parties and someone was already on your bed, so I’m knitting”.
“Why did you come to a party if you don’t like parties?” she asks yet again, her exasperation growing by the second.
Mai averts her sight. “Ty Lee insisted”.
“And where is she?” she asks.
“Having fun because she enjoys parties”.
She is going to leave her alone with her hobby when she realizes something said in their exchange. “Wait, what do you mean there were people on my bed? Who?”.
“Your brother and Suki” she replies absentmindedly, too engrossed with her knitting to even look at her.
I’m definitely going to kill him now.
She tries to push her murderous desires for a second and turns to Aang. “How drunk are you right now? And be honest because I already ran out of patience tonight”.
He shrugs and thinks about it. “Just a little bit. I’m staying sober to protect Momo”.
Katara reflects on what he said, weighting on her other possibilities. “Good enough for me”.
She grasps him by his bicep and pulls him off his place on the floor, Momo firmly perched on his other shoulder. She knows that it is going to be a challenge to push through the agglomerate of people, so she holds Momo and places Aang in front of her to use him as a mean to go through. Momo notices one of the people that had previously tried to draw on him and jumps from the security of her arms.
“Momo!” Aang calls. He grips her hand and pushes through the room, never taking the attention away from the lemur.
At last, they manage to reach the bottom of the stairs where there almost no people, except for Momo and a white-haired girl sobbing in front of a potted plant.
Katara sighs. She does not want to deal with drunk people right now but she cannot leave her roommate alone and crying. She crouches so she can look at her in the eyes. “Yue, what’s wrong?”.
She thinks Yue said something, but between the hiccups and the tiny gasps, it is practically impossible to understand what she is saying.
“I’m sorry, can you repeat that?” she asks again.
Yue looks at her directly at her with red-rimmed and heart-wrenching eyes. “I hurt the plant”.
Katara feels like someone just had slapped her on the face. “What?”.
She hiccups. “I accidentally spilled my wine on her. I killed her!” she bawls and throws herself onto her lap. Katara just lets her cry on her shoulder, wetting her new blouse.
“Can someone get that drunk over wine?” Aang asks in a whisper, careful about not wanting Yue to hear. Katara thinks it really does not matter; she can barely hear Aang or herself over her wailing.
“I don’t—” she starts, reasoning she must have gotten drunk beforehand, but then, a familiar name pops out in her mind when she remembers a very similar previous situation. She groans, “Toph must’ve spiked the drinks again”.
Two people on the to-kill list, then.
“Yue,” the crying worsens and her hold tightens, “Yue, I really need to go”.
Katara sighs and raises her head upwards, trying to find a way out of the situation. She looks at Aang, who he seems to be spaced out, staring at the nothingness while petting an anxious Momo. Maybe he is drunker that he was letting on.
“Hey, guys!” Ty Lee shows up out of nowhere and skips over next to Aang. “Why’re you all hugging?”.
She is infuriately cheerful and Katara wants to strangle for it, but then she comes up for an idea.
“Hey, Ty Lee,” she smiles at her hoping she does not notice how forced it is, “do you want to hug Yue?”.
“I would love to!” she squeals and takes her position, releasing her.
She wastes no time to make small talk, and practically carries Aang upstairs to her room. She ignores the people hanging out on the hallway and the suspicious small brownish liquid puddle that looks suspiciously like vomit. Sokka it’s going to clean this place in the morning whether he wants to or not!
She bursts open the door of her bedroom. All four people in the room get frozen on their spot: Suki has her hands closed on the ends of her tank top with the intention of taking it off, Sokka has his lips on her collarbone and his hands wrapped around her waist, and Aang and Momo share the same wide-eyed look on their faces. The only thing that has some sort of resemblance to life it is the throbbing vein in her forehead that it is threatening to pop out.
“What do you think you’re doing!?” she rages.
“You need to calm down. We—” he begins to explain but his voice is muted as the blood pumps in her ears. However, something that he says does remains with her.
“Don’t you dare tell me to calm down!” she jabs one finger onto his chest with force. “Get out, right now!”.
He raises his hands and tries to shush her with no avail.
It makes her snap. “You are not allowed to have sex on my bed! As a matter of fact, you’re not allowed to have sex inside my house at all!”.
Sokka grabs his shirt and leaves the room with Suki behind him. Katara thinks she hears him mutter ‘killjoy’ but she does not have the energy or patience to deal with anything related to him for the rest of the night.
“Suki?” Aang asks her timidly on her way out.
“Yes, Aang?” she says, careful to ignore the furious gaze plastered on Katara’s face.
“Do you know where Toph is?”.
“I think she is outside with the rest of the wrestling team”.
Katara decides not to stay any longer and marches down the stairs, Aang close behind her. This time, she does not bother to try to push through the crowd of people.
“Out of the way!” she growls.
Despite the loud music booming through the house, the crowd hears her easily, and are smart enough to give her space.
The sudden chill air is a sharp contrast against her damp skin, and an involuntary shiver runs down her spine. The cold breeze of the night enters through her throat and pierces and stings her lungs. Her head swims and she closes her eyes for a moment before she loses her balance.
“I don’t see the wrestling team” Aang says.
She feels the dizziness dissipating and she opens her eyes. As Aang had just said, there is no one lingering in the front of the house. However, she notices some strange disturbance going in the river opposite the street. She approaches carefully, mindful that it could an injured and scared animal (or another inebriated person, which, in her opinion, would be much worse to endure). However, as she comes nearer the river, she recognizes a voice— a very distinguishable and familiar voice.
“Toph” she yells and runs to the place, Aang tailgating behind, “get out of the water right now!”.
“But I’m swimming home!” she shouts back.
“You don’t know how to swim!”.
Judging by how Toph keep swimming, her complain seems to have fallen on deaf ears. For the love of… She extends her arms towards the river with palms looking forwards and plants her feet firmly to the ground, and bends the water towards the shore, throwing Toph onto the muddy ground.
She is about to run to Toph so she could check on her, when she stands up off the ground with no obvious harm done to her. She cracks the joints of her hands and heads inside without saying anything else.
“Are you kidding me?” Katara mutters to herself, but the fury it is noticeable in every aspect of her body.
Aang pets Momo, who had thankfully calmed down after getting away from the boys that had tried to draw on him. He cannot see her face, but her anger is easily detectable even from a safe distance.
“Katara?” he asks warily.
She takes a deep breath, willing herself to not explode. “Let’s just head back inside”.
Momo jumps in the safety of her arms and she accepts the comfort of the small animal. They walk side by side in blissful silence; Aang seems to understand she does not want to deal with small conversation at the moment and she is grateful for it. She decides to go around the house to the backyard, away from the people for her sake as well as Momo’s.
She freezes on her way when she hears noise; the recognizable sound of the timeworn coils of her second-hand couch— then, some soft moaning. She finishes turning around the corner and burning white fury explodes in her head. She pass Momo onto Aang’s hold without giving it much of thought, her mind consumed by the desire to kill her brother.
“Are you kidding me?!” she screams at the sight of Sokka and Suki, sporting varying degrees of undress, making out on her furniture.
“You said: not inside in the house nor on your bed”, he points out, “technically, we’re doing exactly what you told us”.
The throbbing of the vein on her forehead comes back tenfold, and this point, she hopes it pops out and splatters all over his face. “If you don’t get out of my property in the next five seconds, I will light the couch with you on it”.
Sokka has been the target of her anger several times, to the point he can discern the different levels the anger presents itself, level one being ‘irritable, fun to provoke or stay away’ all the way to level ten ‘danger; don’t approach’. The look in her eyes tells him he might have just broke the scale.
“Suki, we need to go,” he says, dragging away his girlfriend and him away from those enraged eyes.
Katara considers sitting on the couch, but ends choosing the ground instead. She pulls her knees close to her chest and rests her chin on them. She closes her eyes and waits for heartbeat to slow down a bit.
Aang crouches down. “Maybe you need to— “.
A loud roaring coming from the other side of the house.
“What now?” she groans, throwing her head back and using the momentum to stand up and walk to the origin of the noise. She does not bother looking back to check if he is behind her.
“What are you two doing?!” she screeches at the sight of Zuko and Azula attempting to step on the bonfire.
Zuko shrugs. “Just seeing what happens”.
"We are firebenders, so probably nothing" Azula adds to the conversation, extending her arm towards the fire.
"Besides, there is a twenty wubians bet on it" Zuko chimes in.
Aang and Katara are quick to pull the siblings away from the fire and drag them inside the house, hopefully away from any imminent danger.
She does not see where Aang is taking Zuko to. She is pondering whether she should follow them when she realizes that Azula's face has suddenly gone pale.
"I think I'm going to be sick" she whimpers, covering her mouth with one hand.
Fantastic. Just what I needed.
"Let's take you to the bathroom" she suggests.
Thankfully, they make it to the room with no vomit spilled on the floor. She lowers Azula to the ground and lifts the seat cover of the toilet. She leans her head on to the bowl and Katara tries not to recoil in disgust.
"My head hurts" Azula says.
She grabs a hair tie from her wrist and pulls the other girl's in a low pony tail.
"I'll look for something" she assures her and leaves the room.
She goes to the kitchen, and looks for a bottle of water and a packet of dried seal jerky from the pantry, hoping that some food and liquid might help her in her inebriated state.
She also remembers the flimsy top she was wearing, so she heads to the hall closet to get one her heavier coats.
When she opens the closet, a screech comes out of it.
She stares dumbfounded at the sight of a blushing Haru trying to make excuses for why his torso is bared and littered with tiny bruises, and to assuage the awkwardness of the situation. Jet just grins and squeezes his hip.
Somewhere in the depth of her mind, a voice tells her that she needs to react, so she decides that the best course of action is to close the door and leave them at it.
She walks straight forward in direction to the bathroom, still shocked from what she just had saw. Azula is right where she left her, with her eyes closed and a couple of soft snores coming out of her barely opened mouth.
She shakes her gently, aware that in her drunk state she could react badly to any sudden movement.
"Come on, let's take you upstairs" Katara prods her.
Azula is easy to move, following all of her wordless commands. The trip upstairs is a bit difficult, but eventually they make it in one piece.
Katara lays her gently on the bed, and places a large pillow behind her back to make sure she will sleep on her side for the rest of the night. She pulls the covers on top of her and tucks in the corners of the mattress. She puts the bottle of water and the dried seal jerky on the side table and leaves her bedroom.
She leaves the house, the sound of the deafening music becoming a persistent buzz in her hearing, and she sits on the steps of the entrance. She is exhausted, and she cannot see an end to the party any time soon. She sighs, hoping that at least some people will have the decency to start leaving and that the others will follow suit. Judging by how loud and boisterous the crowd still is, she considers her wishes futile.
"I was looking for you" Aang says from behind her and sits by her side, but she is too tired to even meet his gaze. "Are you okay?".
She takes a deep a breath and starts. "My house is destroyed, Azula is sleeping on my bed and my two ex-boyfriends are making out in the closet. All I want to do is to catch some sleep and relax, but that's not possible. I'm physically and mentally exhausted".
Aang snorts. "That's it?".
In spite of herself, Katara can't help laughing. "I will throw you into the river. Don't provoke me".
"So scared" he teases back.
"I'm terrifying" she proclaims, and Momo jumps on her lap. She hugs the lemur and kisses his hairy forehead, content with his presence.
"You know," he states, "the party's not giving up any time soon.
Despite Momo rubbing his face against her collarbone, Katara visibly deflates. "I know".
"And Iroh's tea shop opens in an hour" he continues, making his idea clear.
She smiles. A hot tea and some mochi is exactly what she needs right now. "We should get going".
They stand up, patting the dust off their clothes, and head in direction to the Upper Ring where the tea house was located. She thinks about how Sokka was in charge of dealing with the cleaning after the party, and her smile turns into a satisfied smirk.