Archive of Our Own

It’s kind of a long story, but the short version of it is this:

Zuko owes Sokka a favor, and Sokka owes Katara a job. Sokka cashes in on his favor, and that’s what leads to Zuko working the Monday afternoon shift with the girl he’s had a crush on since he was thirteen. 

It’s cool. It’s fun. It’s calm.

(It is definitely not any of those things.)

-

The Monday afternoon shift at The Jasmine Dragon Supermart and Boba Tea Express is usually the busiest shift of the whole week. But the universe must really, really hate Zuko, because on this particular Monday afternoon, there is not a customer in sight. This means that Zuko actually has to look at Katara while he’s talking to her, something he could’ve gotten away with not doing if he was running around filling boba orders instead. 

Katara is standing at the cash register, mindlessly clicking a pen and watching the K-drama that’s being played on one of the overhead TVs in the shop. Zuko keeps sneaking glances at her from where he’s stirring a pot of boba. Katara’s always been cute, even when they were thirteen and she had braces and wore those loopies in her hair.

Four years later, though, and now she’s stupidly, strikingly pretty, and all the competitive water polo she plays has made her arms very nice and defined. It’s probably pathetic to be hopelessly in love with a girl he’s not spoken more than three sentences to in four years, but whatever. Sokka would probably kill him, but Sokka is also technically the reason she’s here in the first place, so he can deal with it. 

“I can feel you watching me,” Katara says, putting the pen down and turning towards him. “Do you need something?” Her voice is flat and unamused, probably because Zuko is being just a tiny bit weird. Shit. 

“Oh, ah, no,” he stammers, and turns back towards the pot of boba. If he burns another batch, Uncle will make fun of him like there’s no tomorrow. 

Katara is squinting at him. “Are you sure?” she says. “Because you’re acting like, really weird. And I’m sorry that Sokka strongarmed you into letting me work here, but I promise I’m not going to mess up, and Iroh trained me himself and he said I got the hang of it really–”

“No, no!” Zuko replies, probably a bit too quickly. “No, I don’t mind. Usually the only people who work here are me and Azula and Piandao, so, uh, it’s nice to have somebody new. Around. Y’know?” 

He must sound so incredibly dumb right now. 

“Oh,” says Katara, and Zuko can see the suspicion leave her eyes. Her blue, blue eyes, which are vibrant against the brown of her skin. Spirits. You’d think he’d know how to deal with pretty eyes. Like, he’s friends with Sokka, who also has blue eyes, and Zuko doesn’t feel like his stomach is seizing when Sokka looks at him. This is a new personal low.

Katara is smiling hesitantly. “Yeah, that makes sense.” 

Awkward silence falls between the two of them again. Zuko fiddles with the dial on the stove and tries to ignore the butterflies in his stomach. Katara’s still clicking her pen, and the repetitive noises are soothing in a weird way. 

“So–”

“Why–” 

They both stop, and Katara lets out a little giggle. Zuko suddenly feels the overwhelming need to throw up. “Sorry,” she says, tossing her thick brown braid over one shoulder. “Go ahead.”

“Oh, I was just going to ask what happened with your old job,” Zuko shrugs. “The one at Chong’s Music Store? Sokka told me you got fired.”

Katara snorts. “I sure did,” she says. “But I bet Sokka didn’t tell you why I got fired.”

“Oh. No, he didn’t.”

“Ha! Of course he didn’t. I got fired because Sokka came to visit me during one of my shifts, even though I told him not to, and he broke a whole entire drum set. It was awful. I thought Chong was going to blow a gasket, but he took the cost out of my severance money instead, which was significantly worse.”

Zuko laughs a little at that. “Sounds like Sokka. He did say he owed you a job. I wasn’t too sure what he meant by that, though.”

Katara’s responding smirk is doing stupid things to Zuko’s chest. “Yeah, well. I told him he could fork over $500 to pay for the cost of the drumset or he could find me a new job, and I guess he came through with the job. I like this place. It’s cute, with the grocery store cafe vibe you guys have got going on.”

Zuko looks around. He won’t admit it on a typical day, but the Jasmine Dragon is probably the place Zuko loves most in the world. The aisles are always overflowing with Korean and Japanese snacks, and the boba cafe in the corner is always packed with customers and smells of fruit and sugar. The poke bar where Azula works with Uncle Piandao makes the best bowls this side of town, and there’s a colorful seating area outside where tourists like to congregate and take silly selfies for Instagram. And now Katara, on whom he has a hopeless and eternally stupid crush, works here too. So maybe the universe doesn’t hate him after all. 

Zuko can’t help the smile that inches across his face. “It is nice, isn’t it?”

He burns the boba shortly afterwards, but Katara’s sunny grin in reply makes it worth it.

-

Zuko’s not really expecting anything to change the next day at school. So what if he worked one only slightly less awkward shift with Katara? They’re not going to suddenly be friends like they were all those years ago. It’s fine. 

School is one of the things Zuko really, really tries at– not necessarily for himself, but for his uncle. He’s not like Azula, who’s freakishly smart and for whom everything comes easily. Back when he and Azula still lived with his father, school had been a competition: who could take the hardest classes, who could get the highest grades. But while Azula had surpassed every expectation with unsettlingly cold precision, Zuko had struggled and only gotten worse. And worse. And worse.

The whole experience had kind of soured learning for Zuko in general. But when Uncle Iroh took him and Azula in, they’d had a very uncomfortable conversation in which Iroh had said emphatically that no matter what happened at school, he would always be proud of you, nephew, because the end result is not nearly as important as the effort.

 Zuko, who’d been thirteen at the time, was unused to such gratuitous affection, and had responded by rolling his eyes all the way to the back of his head. However, deep down, he’d also secretly vowed to do better until Iroh actually had a reason to be proud of him. 

Zuko’s seventeen now, and school’s not really any easier, but he tries harder than he did when he was thirteen and newly scarred and angry at the whole world, so that has to count for something. It doesn’t matter that his only friends are Sokka and a tiny blind sophomore named Toph, and it doesn’t matter that the end of junior year is coming and the beginning of senior year and college applications are hovering distantly in the horizon. He does his best, and it took him a while to get to a point where that was enough, but he’s here now, and that’s good. Really. 

Tuesday’s lunch period starts like any other. Zuko walks into the cafeteria with Toph, who’s swinging her cane around like a baseball bat and letting out her heinous, witch-cackle of a laugh when she makes contact with someone’s shins. Zuko should probably tell her to stop, but the thing about Toph is that you don’t tell her what to do. Ever. 

“Are you gonna get a hot lunch today?” he asks her instead. The lunch line is longer than usual, with hordes of students jostling for a decent position. 

Toph scoffs. “Why, so I can get food poisoning? Yeah, right.” She adjusts the strap of her bag and whacks another unsuspecting student with her cane. “Where are we sitting today, Sparky?” 

Zuko glances around the room. The rotation of students in the cafeteria is different every day, and usually they’ll just pick the nearest empty table and sit there. Zuko will eat whatever he’s pilfered from the Jasmine Dragon’s microwaveable food aisle, and Toph will put her feet on the table and flick bits of trail mix at the people she hears walk by. Her aim is always impeccable.

“Let’s go over there,” Zuko says, and he’s guiding Toph gently towards the direction of a table he’s spotted when he hears a voice. 

“Zuko! Buddy! Over here!” someone calls. Zuko turns around and sees Sokka, who’s sitting at a table in the corner with Katara, Suki, and some other kid Zuko doesn’t know, waving his lunch tray around in circles like a maniac. 

Toph’s head whips around. Sometimes Zuko forgets how acute her sense of hearing is, and then she goes and does stuff like this to remind him. “Is that Snoozles?” she says. 

“Uh, yeah,” Zuko replies. He’s distracted by Sokka, who’s now waving so enthusiastically that he’s about three seconds away from hitting Katara in the face. This is not a normal occurrence. While Zuko and Sokka and Toph are all friends, Sokka’s usually the one who comes and sits with them at lunch, not the other way around. Not every day– the boy is a social butterfly and knows a ridiculous amount of people– but often enough. Sometimes he brings his girlfriend, Suki, who plays soccer and is very much out of Sokka’s league.

Sokka never brings Katara, though. When she’s not sitting with her brother and Suki, Katara’s usually with the other water polo girls. Not that Zuko pays attention to where Katara sits in the cafeteria or anything. Right. 

“What’s he doing?” Toph snorts. Toph’s favorite thing is when Sokka makes a fool of himself in public places. 

“I think he wants us to sit with him,” Zuko says uncertainly. 

“Really,” says Toph. She sounds surprised. “What are you waiting for then? Let’s go.”

Zuko doesn’t really want to do that, but Toph’s not one to take no for an answer, so he guides her over to where Sokka and the others are sitting. She continues to let her cane whack shins left and right until they reach the table. 

“Hey guys,” Sokka greets them enthusiastically as they approach. “Come sit! You know Suki and Katara already, but this is Aang,” he says, gesturing to the other boy at the table. He can’t be any older than a sophomore, with his buzzed hair and big gray eyes. “Aang, this is Zuko and the she-devil there is Toph,”

“Nice to meet you, Zuko,” Aang chirps, as Toph wacks Sokka on the shin with her cane for the she-devil comment. He lets out an affronted yelp. “I know Toph already. She’s in my chem class.” 

“Twinkletoes!” Toph says cheerily, pointedly ignoring Sokka’s complaints. “Is that you?” She plops down next to Aang, and then the two of them are doing a weird handshake that Zuko loses track of in about two seconds.

Zuko hovers awkwardly for a moment, because the only available seat left is next to Katara, and that will be a disaster for everyone, but then she’s waving him over with a small smile and there’s really nothing left for him to do but sit next to her and pray he doesn’t smell horrible or have something stuck between his teeth.

“Zuko, man, you gotta tell us about Katara’s first day,” Sokka says jokingly. Apparently he’s gotten over Toph wacking him with her cane. “She’s a horrible employee, you know. She got fired from her last job and everything.”

Katara makes an indignant noise, and reaches across the table to flick Sokka on the forehead. “Oh, shut up, Sokka,” she says. “Everybody knows the reason I got fired from Chong’s is because of you.” She elbows Zuko conspiratorially, and he suddenly has no idea what to do with his hands or his elbows. How is he supposed to eat his lunch in these conditions? “Besides, Zuko can vouch for me now. Aren’t I a good employee, Zuko?” 

Well, what kind of question is that? Of course he’s going to say yes. Katara probably could burn the tea shop down and Zuko would still sing her praises. “Yeah, definitely,” is all he says instead. “She didn’t even burn any boba.”

Katara cackles at that. “I sure didn’t! But guess who did?”

“Oh, Sparky burns at least three batches of boba a week,” interjects Toph, who’d previously been chatting with Aang about a textbook that caught on fire during their last chemistry lab. “It’s kind of like his specialty.”

Zuko can feel his ears grow red. “Shut up, Toph.” 

Everyone cackles, and even Zuko has to crack a smile. He’s not one to prefer being the butt of a joke, but something about the easy camaraderie at this table full of friends and partial strangers feels nice. The rest of the lunch period passes easily, and when the bell rings, Zuko is almost sorry to go. 

“Are you working after school today?” Katara asks him before he leaves the table.

Zuko can’t stop the grin from twitching at his cheeks. “Yeah, I am. Are you?”

Katara smiles back at him, vibrant and wide and beautiful. “I sure am. Guess I’ll see you then.” And then she’s walking away, hoisting her backpack over one shoulder and tossing her hair over the other. Zuko watches her go with his heart in his throat. Suddenly, the school day can’t end fast enough. 

-

Soon enough, a new routine has settled into Zuko’s life. Katara picks up more shifts at the Jasmine Dragon in between her water polo practices, and soon Zuko gets used to seeing her behind the counter, wearing an apron and a customer service smile.

They find a familiar rhythm in the shop, filling out boba orders and helping customers, and they talk, too, really and truly, for the first time in four years. When there are lulls in the shop, they play Would You Rather or the Question Game– silly games that they used to play as kids, games that Zuko hasn’t thought about in years. But it’s fun, and it’s nice, to get to know Katara again like this, and it makes Zuko laugh in a way that he hasn’t in years.

Sometimes they fight– big blowups or tiny tiffs, always about something ridiculous– and it takes him right back to when they were younger and she was prissy and he was stubborn and they pushed each other’s buttons for no other reason than just because they could.

“Would you rather…be forced to dance to every single song you heard, or sing along with every single song you ever heard?” 

“Katara. What the hell kind of a question is that?”

“It was the first thing I thought of! Just answer it.”

“Okay. Well– I guess I’d rather sing?”

Katara had let out a full body cackle at that one. “Zuko, I’ve heard you sing! You sound like a dying cat.” 

“How could you say that?!”

“I can say whatever I want. And you’re going to burn the boba again.”

“Well, maybe if you weren’t distracting me –”

“You were the one who said you wanted to play! I said no, pay attention to the boba, Zuko, it’s not my fault you don’t listen –”

“I listen when you’re not being shrill!”

“I am not being shrill!”

She is so being shrill. Zuko finds that he doesn’t really mind.

-

Katara’s employment at the Jasmine Dragon brings other changes, as well. With her picking up more regular shifts, Sokka, Aang, and Suki have also become more regular presences at the shop, and suddenly, it’s not just Katara that he’s talking to more often– slowly but surely, Zuko finds himself and Toph being adopted into their little group.

The six of them spend easy hours laughing and talking at the boba counter while Zuko and Katara work. Toph cracks her terrible jokes, and Aang charms everything and everyone within a fifteen foot radius, and Suki and Sokka are nauseatingly in love. Katara flashes her sunny smiles and nags constantly but means well, and Zuko watches them all with a small grin and marvels at how seamlessly they’ve slotted into his life. 

-

One afternoon, on a day she doesn’t have work, Katara barrels into the store. Her hair is pulled into a damp knot on top of her head and she’s wearing a tank top that says Caldera City High Water Polo in block letters. She startles Zuko so badly that he jumps about a foot in the air and spills the iced matcha latte he was pouring.

Katara notices, unfortunately, but her little laugh is so lovely that Zuko doesn’t mind. Katara could run him over with a truck and Zuko probably wouldn’t mind. Also, her shoulders look criminally good in that tank top. Seriously. It should be illegal. 

“Hey,” he says, trying to regain some semblance of dignity. “What are you doing here? I thought you had practice on Thursdays?”

“Yeah,” Katara replies. Her smile is tired.  “We got done early today. Can I get a taro milk tea, please? I’ll pay for it.”

“You don’t have to,” Zuko says automatically, turning towards the blender. “On the house.” 

Katara blinks. “Oh. Thanks.”

They sit in silence as Zuko makes the tea, pouring it into a plastic cup full of boba and then adding a lid and a straw. It’s unusual for the boba bar to be this quiet, now that him and Toph have officially been adopted into the little gang. But Sokka and Suki went on a date this afternoon, and Aang and Toph were– albeit allegedly– busy with chemistry homework at the library. He sneaks a few glances at Katara out of the corner of his good eye. Her eyes are glazed over with exhaustion, her head propped up on one hand, and it’s odd. Katara doesn’t usually have such a bone weary expression on her face. 

“Here’s your tea,” Zuko says, and he’s not one for grandiose forms of physical expression, but he tries plastering a cheesy grin on his face, because he wants to make her smile. A real smile, not like the tired one she’d flashed at him before. Although knowing his track record, and taking into account the scar, it probably looks like he’s grimacing right now. Okay, yes. He should stop. He clears his throat a little awkwardly. “Uh…is everything okay?”

Katara takes a long, slow sip of her drink. “Yeah,” she says after a minute. “Yeah, it’s just...been a long day.”

“Do you...do you wanna talk about it?”

Katara looks surprised that he’s offering. “Oh. I mean, it’s not that big of a deal. I’m just stressed about school and stuff.”

Zuko looks at her. Her shoulders are slumped; there are bags under her eyes. Whatever’s bothering her, it can’t be more than just school shit. “Are you sure?” he asks pointedly, reaching out to fidget with a napkin dispenser on the counter. She’s not looking him in the eye, but rather staring down at the hole of her straw like it holds all the answers to her problems. 

Katara’s lips quirk up a little bit, like she knows he’s calling her out on her bluff. “I can’t imagine that you want to hear me complain about my life problems,” she intones dryly. 

That’s where you’re wrong, Zuko thinks. “Of course I do,” he tells her. How could he not? He wants to hear her talk about anything and everything all the time. He’s gone so long without talking to her— four years, to be exact— that he trips over his own two feet at every opportunity to make up for lost time. And even if he wasn’t, stupidly, drastically in love with her (which is implausible, because how can he not be), he’d still want to talk to her, because they’re friends. “We’re friends, Katara,” he says. “Seriously. I want to hear what you have to say.”

Katara’s eyes light up, and Zuko’s heart does a funny little dance in his chest. 

“It’s just— college applications and stuff, y’know?” she sighs suddenly, slumping forward onto the counter like a marionette who’s strings have been cut. “I want to get a scholarship for water polo, because that’s the only way I’ll be able to pay for college. I’m not a genius like Sokka. He’s bound to get so many merit scholarships. And I can’t ask my dad to pay for my education, ‘cause he doesn’t have the money. If I don’t get recruited, I won’t be able to go to school full time. I’m so worried.” She looks up at him, her eyes tired and worry written into the lines of her face.

Zuko’s heart aches, all of a sudden, because he does know, and he does understand, and he wishes he had something more to say than stupid platitudes. Because he’s in the same boat, really. He’s no genius, not like Azula. His dad would definitely never pay for his schooling, and he could never ask something like that from Uncle Iroh. He’s stuck. But if there’s one thing he knows about Katara, it’s that she could never be stuck, not like him– she’s too big for the world to contain. She couldn’t be held back if she tried.

Zuko reaches across the counter to place a comforting hand on her arm before he can stop himself. “You’re gonna be fine,” he says, and he hopes his voice is steady. He hopes she’ll understand what he’s trying to say. “Seriously, Katara. I’ve seen you play, and you’re brilliant. Any college would be stupid not to recruit you– but not just because you carry the team on your shoulders.” Your very nice, very well defined shoulders. “It’s also because you’re a hard worker, and a quick learner, and you’re so much more capable than you give yourself credit for.” 

Katara’s worried expression has disappeared, and suddenly she’s looking at him like she’s never quite seen him before. “You– you’ve seen me play?” she stammers in disbelief. “ Really?”  

Zuko freezes, and he can feel his entire face turn bright red. That’s what she took away from his statement? Seriously? Okay, so maybe he’s gone to a couple of home games with a reluctant Toph in tow, and maybe he’s watched all of her highlight reels on the school’s YouTube channel. And maybe, just maybe, he’s read the official Four Nations Water Polo Association Rulebook so he could have a comprehensive understanding of what was going on. You know. Maybe.

“Oh—I mean, I just—Sokka—”

Katara bursts into laughter then. The shocked expression has disappeared from her face, and has been replaced with something soft and hopelessly fond. It’s an expression Zuko suddenly wants to see on her face all the time, every day. “Thank you, Zuko,” she says. “It means a lot to me that you said that. It really does.” she reaches out, places her hand on top of his, where it’s still fiddling with the napkin dispenser. “Plus, I didn’t know that you were so into high school water polo!” 

“Yeah, well,” Zuko replies, ignoring the fact that his voice has just gone up at least two octaves. “Yeah, you know me. I’m really, really into water polo. That’s all.”

Katara laughs so hard she spits out her tea. 

-

interlude: four years ago

Zuko’s known Sokka and Katara since forever, but it’s not until he’s thirteen that Zuko realizes that Katara’s eyes are really, really blue. Almost too blue to be real. 

Before everything, Zuko used to spend weekends and holiday breaks at his Uncle Iroh’s house across town. While he was there, he’d stay in Uncle’s guest room and play with the kids who lived in the house across the street. Their names were Sokka and Katara, and they were his age– Katara was a few months younger, though– and they were fun. They’d spend hours playing outside, riding bikes and scooters, climbing trees and making up games and drawing with chalk. Before everything, Zuko had considered Sokka and Katara to be his best friends. 

But then his mother dies, and six months later his father burns half his face off with a pot of boiling water, and the ensuing stay in the hospital and terrible, awful court battle means that Zuko doesn’t see Sokka and Katara for almost a full year. 

After everything, Zuko and Azula move in with their uncle. It goes about as well as can be expected. Azula is a holy terror. She screams at Uncle for taking them away from their father and she screams at Zuko for being a fuck up. She refuses to go to their new school and she refuses to see the therapist Uncle wants her to talk to.

Zuko’s face hurts all the time, and he doesn’t want to go to the new school either. He doesn’t want to have the other kids look at his scar, because it’s ugly and awful and he hates it so much. Sometimes he lies awake at night and he misses his mom so much it hurts. Sometimes (and this is the worst part) he lies awake at night and misses his father. It’s fucked up– he’s pretty fucked up, he thinks– because who in their right mind misses the man who burned them?

Katara and Sokka come from across the street and knock on the door sometimes. Every time, Zuko asks Uncle Iroh to turn them away, because he doesn’t want to look into their twin blue eyes and see the revulsion that he just knows will be there. He doesn’t want to think about how Sokka’s face will wrinkle in disgust, and he definitely doesn’t want to think about the horrified expression he’s sure to see in Katara’s bright blue eyes. So he avoids them, and prays to all the spirits that he can keep on avoiding them, even though he knows something’s bound to give eventually. After all, they’re only a street’s width away.

They’ve been living with Uncle Iroh for a month and a half when Zuko sees Sokka and Katara face to face again. He’s taking out the trash one evening when he hears a voice yell his name.

“Zuko?” someone is calling him. He turns around wildly, trying to figure out who it is. It’s getting dark out and he still hasn’t regained all the vision in his bad eye, so the edges of the world are still kind of blurry. They don’t know if he’ll ever get his full peripheral vision back. 

“Zuko!” the voice calls out again, and then there’s the sound of bare feet hitting the pavement, and oh, shit. Katara is running towards him, bright eyed and beaming. She looks– different, somehow. Her hair is longer, but she still has the loopies in the front with the butterfly clips, and she has braces now. She’s pretty, Zuko realizes with a start, and it makes his stomach twist in a way he doesn’t understand. She gets closer to him, and he immediately angles his body so that she can’t see the ruined half of his face. He doesn’t want to see himself reflected in her eyes.

“Hi!” she says cheerily. She’s practically vibrating with energy, as happy and bright as the sun. “Sokka and I saw that you moved in! We’ve been knocking on your door, I don’t know if you’ve heard us—”

“No, I’ve heard you guys,” Zuko says shortly. He doesn’t want to talk to her. He wants her to go away. 

Katara frowns. She no longer looks beatific and bright, instead, she shifts awkwardly from foot to foot and he knows his harsh demeanor is throwing her off. It’s not her fault, but he needs her to leave him alone. “Oh. Well,” she tries to recover, “I mean, I guess you’ve been busy—”

“No,” he interrupts her again, trying to keep his voice as gruff as possible. “I haven’t been busy.”

Katara looks taken aback at his rudeness. Guilt crawls up Zuko’s throat, and he pushes it back down. He doesn’t want to talk to her. He really doesn’t. 

She flounders for a moment before trying again. “Do you want to come over and watch a movie? Or hang out? Because we’ve missed having you around, it’s been awhile—”

And that’s the final straw. Why won’t she stop trying? “No,” Zuko snarls, whirling around with ferocity to show off his face in all of its ruined glory. Katara can’t quite keep the shocked expression off her face, and something inside of him wants to burst into tears at the sight. Instead, he keeps going. “No, Katara, I don’t want to hang out. I don’t want to watch a movie. I want to finish taking out the trash and I want you to leave me alone. We’re not little kids anymore.”

Katara’s mouth opens and closes, but no words come out. She looks like she’s about to start crying, Zuko realizes with a start, and he’s immediately overcome with regret. She’s one of his best friends. He shouldn’t have snapped at her like that. 

“Katara,” he tries, but he’s unsure of what to say. He doesn’t know how to take back all the venom that just poured out of his mouth. 

It’s too late. She’s backing away. “Fine,” Katara snaps. Her voice is shaking. She looks furious, but her eyes are shining like she’s about to cry. He can tell that she’s holding herself back, and he almost wants her to yell and rage at him like a little kid– because then he can have a reason to be mad at her, then he can have a reason to push her away. But all she does is sniff, and straighten her back like she’s trying to look down her nose at him. “Be like that,” she says, and then she’s running back across the street, long hair flying like a flag behind her. 

Zuko watches her go, his stomach twisting and turning with guilt, and then in a fit of rage turns around and punches the trash bin with his free hand. What the fuck is he doing? Why is he here? What’s the point of all this? He keeps punching and punching until he splits a knuckle, and then he stares at it uncomprehendingly as blood seeps between his fingers and drips down the back of his hand.

Uncle Iroh finds him like that, later, and says nothing– only takes him inside and sits him down at the kitchen counter, wipes the blood away with a wet rag and wraps his hand in gauze. Azula laughs when she sees it, and Zuko goes to bed feeling miserable. 

He can’t stop his mind from drifting back to those sad blue eyes.

Sokka knocks on the door the next day, practically vibrating with rage. He’d always been too overprotective of his sister– as if Katara wasn’t fully capable of fighting her own battles, even at thirteen. Iroh opens the door, takes one look at his face, and calls for Zuko, who’s sitting in the other room, watching some mindless cartoon on TV and picking at the gauze on his hand. Zuko walks into the foyer and immediately scowls when he sees Sokka’s thunderous expression. Sokka, to his credit, does not react to Zuko’s scar except for a minuscule twitch in his left eyebrow. 

“You made Katara cry,” Sokka says. He sounds furious, his voice clipped. Few things could make Sokka madder than someone who made Katara cry. “She was just trying to be nice to you, dude. Not cool.”

Zuko ignores the feeling of shame that’s dragging in his stomach like a stone, ignores the bright blue eyes that flash in his head. “Yeah, well. I don’t need her to be nice to me,” he grumbles instead. “In fact, I need both of you to back the fuck off.”

“There’s no need for you to be a dick!” Sokka snaps– and then they’re yelling at each other, and Zuko doesn’t really know what sets it off, but suddenly they’re tussling on the floor of the foyer. Sokka’s yelling about little sisters and disappearing acts and honor and Zuko is trying to shut him up, and they’re rolling around and almost break one of Iroh’s porcelain vases. 

Iroh, who is watching from the doorway, only says oh dear in a very mild tone of voice, and makes no further moves to break it up. 

Their fight ends after they’ve each gotten some solid hits in. Zuko’s knuckle is bleeding again and Sokka has a small scratch on his cheek. He stands up, brushes himself off, and extends a hand to Zuko. A truce, he supposes. “You owe Katara an apology,” Sokka says. “For being a mega-uber-jerkwad.”

“Yeah, I know,” Zuko sighs. Because he does. 

“Okay, well,” Sokka says, hovering awkwardly at the door. “Come over anytime.” And then he disappears as quickly as he came, and that’s when Zuko knows he’s not mad anymore. Sokka had forgiven him, just like that. And when he shows up on their doorstep three days later, shifty and uncomfortable and unable to make eye contact, Katara forgives him too. Eventually. It takes a few days of begging and a bit of bribery. 

Things are somewhat better, after that. Zuko and Sokka start hanging out, almost like he never left. But there’s a bridge between Zuko and Katara now, one that he’s not sure he knows how to cross. The apology couldn’t quite do it, and neither could the boba and the jian dui that he brought her as a peace offering. It’s just that now, when he thinks about her blue eyes and her long hair and her sunny smile and her sly wit and caring personality, he gets a weird feeling in his chest, like someone is stepping on it.

She tries to talk to him sometimes, tries to take hold of the olive branch he’s so clumsily extended, but he always finds himself tripping over his words incoherently when he responds, and she always smiles at him weirdly before turning around and fleeing the room. She can never seem to get away from him fast enough. He doesn’t know why it bothers him so much.

He has his realization, out of all the places, during a therapy session, because of course he does. Uncle Iroh has been making him and Azula go, and after much resistance, his quest was finally successful– Zuko now sees a specialist once a week, and is learning about things like emotions and the importance of opening up and clear and direct communication. They’re talking about his friends, and Zuko is trying to find the right words to describe Katara, but he can’t quite put his finger on the way she makes him feel and it’s just so–

Oh.

Oh.

So he has a tiny crush. 

It’s fine. It’s just that now he can never, ever talk to her again unless he wants to look like a complete and utter fool every time she so much as looks at him. 

Time goes on. 

Zuko grows older. He starts high school and hangs out with Sokka– with less and less frequency, the other boy has become surprisingly popular now that the cliques and drama of middle school have been left behind– and he meets a girl named Toph and works at the Jasmine Dragon. He goes to therapy and tries to patch up his relationship with Azula, he thinks about college and the future and tries to build himself up after everything his father did to tear him down.

And throughout it all, he notices Katara. He sees her from across the street when they’re both taking out the garbage at night, and he always waves and tries not to feel too giddy when she waves back. He notices her in the hallways and in the cafeteria and secretly prays that one quarter they’ll have a class together, even though they never do. When he goes over to Sokka’s house they either make meaningless small talk or argue about the stupidest things– almost like when they were younger, but somehow less and somehow more, and never enough, because she’s always rushing off to do something– water polo or student council or all the other millions of things she’s involved in.

All he wants to do is sit with her for hours, to talk with her about everything and nothing, about all her interests and the ways she’s changed since they were kids and all the things she makes him think and dream and hope about. And maybe it’s just a stupid crush, and maybe he’s got it all built up in his head. But he’s known her for years, and she was his best friend for some of them, and he can’t help himself. He’s never been able to, when it comes to her. And maybe he never will.

-

“I think that I have a spirits-given responsibility to let you know that you’re being pathetic,” Azula says to Zuko one day. They’re at the Jasmine Dragon for their Saturday shift, and Zuko is once again making boba pearls while Azula lounges at the counter, sipping a strawberry milk tea. She doesn’t work in the cafe area of the store— she’d tried to, at the beginning, but lacked the requisite patience and customer service skills. Not that Zuko was any better when it came to customer service, but at least he could talk to people without being unnecessarily judgemental about their boba order. Azula usually works at the poke bar, cutting fish with Piandao, but on slow days, she likes to meander over to Zuko’s section and make him miserable.

“I am not being pathetic,” Zuko grumbles. It’s been a very long week. His schoolwork is piling up, and all anyone can seem to talk about is the upcoming college application season. On top of that, Katara hasn’t been in to work at all, so his interactions with her have been limited to waving at each other in the hallways. Not that it matters or anything, right? If he tells that to himself enough times, maybe he’ll start to believe it. 

“You are too being pathetic,” Azula says, and then to accentuate her point, she sucks up a boba pearl with her straw and fires it like it’s a blowdart. It lands smack dab on Zuko’s forehead and sticks there for a second before sliding down his nose.

Zuko makes a very undignified sound. The boba pearl lands on the counter, narrowly avoiding the fresh pot that’s cooking on the stove. Talk about a health code violation. “I have no idea what you’re talking about,” he sniffs. “I am not pathetic. I am introverted. I am also busy. Neither of those things connote being pathetic—” 

“Okay, I’m gonna stop you right there,” Azula drawls. “Before you start doing that thing where you talk in Times New Roman font—”

“ I do not talk in Times New Roman font — ”

“Yes, you do,” Azula interrupts him with a role of her eyes. “You totally do, but that’s not the point. The point is that all you do is go to school and work and pine over that girl and it’s getting pathetic. Go find a hobby or something! Hang out with your friends at a place that isn’t right here! I know you have some now so you can’t say that you don’t—”

Zuko sputters. “These are all baseless accusations,” he says. “I have a social life.” The audacity. He has friends. And he doesn’t pine. It’s just that extended human interaction exhausts him and he can never tell Katara how he feels about her anyways, because then she’ll know and that will be mortifying . Also, there’s not a universe in which she deigns to like him back. There’s simply not.

Azula squints at him. “You are in denial,” she announces, and then she fires another boba pearl at him like it’s nothing. “As your sister, I would know.”

Zuko makes a face, because yeah, unfortunately, Azula would know. She’s always been uncannily perceptive, and therapy has only made her even more so. But the years away from their father’s terrible influence have done her some good– because where she’d use what she saw to come up with scathing insults that struck in the most sensitive spots, she’s become more empathetic and insightful. She still calls bullshit when she sees it, but in a way that her therapist refers to as constructive criticism and in a way that actually comes very much in handy when Zuko has his head up his ass.

Zuko feels a sudden wave of affection for his little sister wash over him. He never imagined they’d get to this point, where she’d offer him sage advice over boba and he’d actually be inclined to listen instead of get angry and yell. “Fine,” he sighs, like it’s the worst thing in the world. It could be, for all he knows, but he figures he owes her this. “Next time somebody invites me somewhere, I’ll go.” 

She smiles at him, and it’s a little crooked, but there’s warmth in it all the same. They’re still learning how to do this sibling thing, and there are some days that are harder than others, but Zuko doesn’t think that he’d trade it for anything. “Good,” Azula says. “I just want you to be happy.”

Zuko flicks some tapioca starch at her. “Yeah,” he replies. “Yeah, I know.”

-

Zuko’s first opportunity to make good on his promise comes on a Tuesday afternoon during his lunch period. Him and Toph are sitting with Sokka, Suki, and Aang, which is something that still seems like an exciting novelty to Zuko, even though it’s been well over a month and a half since their gang became officially official. Katara’s with the water polo girls today— and he’s not sneaking glances at her every two seconds, he’s really not— and Sokka’s talking about some lookout that him and Suki went to this past weekend while on a date. 

“It was so cool,” Sokka brags. “You could see the whole east side of the island. I’m a master at event planning.” Suki just smiles at him fondly and rests her chin on his shoulder.

“It sounds really cool,” Aang says around a mouthful of carrot. Aang’s a vegetarian, but he also can’t cook for shit, so his lunches usually consist of raw fruits and vegetables. Zuko once saw him eat an entire tomato as if it were an apple, taking bites out of it like it was nothing. “I can’t believe I haven’t been there yet! We should all go and check it out. Make it a group thing.”

“Oh, that sounds like fun,” Suki says excitedly. “We can go this Saturday and have, like, a picnic. What do you guys think?”

“I would love to,” Toph drawls, a shit eating grin plastered on her face. “I can’t wait to see the view!” 

“Oh, shut up, Toph,” Suki laughs, giving the other girl a light shove. “You want to come or not?”

“’Course I do. What about you, Sparky?” 

“Oh,” Zuko says, startled at the sudden attention. A thousand excuses run through his mind, ready made— he has a shift at work, he has school stuff to catch up on, he has chores to do. But then he thinks about Azula, who’d told him to get out more, and he thinks about how spending time with Suki and Aang and Sokka and Toph doesn’t drain his social battery as much as it should, and he thinks about seeing Katara in a context that isn’t school or the tea shop. And suddenly, it’s an easy choice– maybe he really should stop self-sabotaging so much. Of course, he’d never admit that to Azula. 

“Okay,” he says, after a minute of thinking. “Yeah, okay, that’s fine with me. I can, uh, bring stuff from the store.”

“Well, would you look at that,” Sokka crows, and Toph is punching his arm and Suki and Aang are grinning widely at him. “Sparky’s coming out of his shell.”

Zuko just smiles sheepishly, and then goes back to his lunch. The other four start bickering back and forth about who’s going to drive, and what food to bring, and what time to go, and Zuko feels warm and fuzzy all over. This sense of contentment is new, and he’s finding that he likes it a lot. It’s not that he was unhappy, before, exactly— he’d had Toph, and Uncle, and even Azula, occasionally, but there’s a sort of peace that comes from this feeling of belonging, from knowing that there’s a place where you fit and people who will call you their own.

Zuko’s not stupid. He knows that he can be awkward and stubborn and generally a pain to get to know, and that he’s hard to look at and that he takes things too personally. He knows that being open is hard for him– but Agni, if it isn’t nice to be around people who seem to recognize that, and are okay with it. For the first time in a long time, he feels good. 

-

Saturday rolls around quicker than Zuko expected, and he finds that he’s actually looking forward to it. Suki’s driving because she’s borrowing her parents’ minivan, and she’s supposed to swing by the store to pick up him and Toph around five thirty. They’re going to watch the sunset and sit on the roof of Suki’s car and generally have a good time. Zuko’s stomach is doing somersaults at the prospect of participating in a “group hang.” He’s also nervous because Katara is going to be there, but he gets nervous around her no matter what, so that’s not really anything new. 

Toph arrives at five twenty five. Her parents drop her off in their stupidly fancy BMW, and she slams the door angrily after she gets out and stomps over to where Zuko is waiting in front of the store. 

“Rough day?” he asks her, not unkindly. Toph’s parents are freakishly controlling and overprotective, and whenever Toph wants to do something she has to ask several days in advance. It’s ridiculous, and it doesn’t sit well with Toph, who can be incredibly headstrong when she wants to be.

“You have no idea,” Toph grumbles, and then plops down onto one of the cafe chairs dramatically. “They’re miserable.”

Suki pulls up exactly three minutes later in a beat up blue minivan with a plethora of ugly stickers on the back windshield. Sokka is riding shotgun, and Katara is sitting behind him, waving with a smile. 

“Welcome to Appa,” she says as they clamber into the van. Zuko is about to go to the backseat, but Toph shoves him into the seat across from Katara and moves to the back herself. This is slightly suspicious behavior, but Zuko decides to ignore it. “He’s a little beat up, but we love him anyways.”

Zuko smiles wryly. “The car has a name?” he asks, settling back and putting his bag filled with snacks at his feet.

“It sure does,” Sokka chimes in from the front. “He’s named after Appa, Aang’s dog, who Suki tragically ran over when she first got her license. May he rest in peace."

Zuko’s mouth drops open, and Toph positively howls with mirth. “Sokka!” Katara protests, but she’s so obviously also trying to keep herself from laughing. “You know Aang doesn’t like that joke.” 

Suki is shrieking in mock outrage from the drivers’ seat. “I did not run Appa over,” she says. “Appa died of natural causes the day I got my license! They’re not correlated events!” She turns around to give Zuko a reassuring smile. “I’m a good driver! I swear!”

“Uh, you might want to keep your eyes on the road before you say that,” Katara snorts. Suki responds by flipping her off, but she turns back around and then they’re off, speeding towards Aang’s house. Once they’ve picked him up, and he’s gotten into the car with all of his usual joie de vivre, they head towards Sokka’s lookout. 

Sokka is put in charge of aux, and they take turns passing his phone around and adding songs to the queue. Their respective music tastes are so different– Toph likes heavy metal and EDM, Suki likes indie rock and pop punk, Aang queues ten songs from the same early 2000s pop artist, Sokka and Katara argue over which R&B standards to add– and it strikes Zuko then how unlike each other they all are.

They have virtually nothing in common, and that’s why it’s so remarkable that they’re all here together, laughing and singing, on their way to do stupid teenage shit together, happy and carefree. Suki is definitely speeding, and Sokka and Katara are still fighting over the music queue– Zuko hasn’t even gotten to add his songs yet, and at this rate he never will– but it’s fun, so much fun, and the nerves in his stomach have all but vanished into nothing. He can’t even remember why he was nervous in the first place. 

They arrive at the lookout a little bit before sunset, and Suki parks the van in a less crowded area, but where they can still get a good view of the island. It stretches on and on forever in front of them, millions of buildings all spread out below. The waves of the ocean are nothing but little specks of white, and the sky is a mess of pink and orange and blue. It’s breathtaking. 

Zuko hands his bag of snacks to Toph, who immediately starts digging through it with Aang, and gets out of the car, wandering over to the stone ledge and taking a seat. He just sits for a minute, and lets the wind blow through his hair. It’s weird to think that there are people down there– millions of tiny people, each going about their own everyday lives. The skyline stretches on and on forever until it’s inseparable from the ocean below it, and Zuko can only watch in awe.

After a few minutes, someone comes to sit next to him. Zuko is surprised to see that it’s Katara, and just like that, the butterflies are back. Her hair is out of its usual braid, and it flows down her back, catching the faint breeze. She’s wearing a flowy blue tank top and denim shorts, and her feet are bare. She smells faintly of chlorine and coconut, and Zuko’s pulse is hammering so loudly in his ears it’s a miracle no one else can hear it. It’s ridiculous, actually, how much he likes her. He can’t even talk to her without tripping over his own two feet, and they’re not anywhere near as close as they were four years ago when he fucked it all up. Sometimes he lies awake at night and wonders if this is all in his head. Has he built up an imaginary version of her in his head, and that’s who he’s continually pining away for? 

“Hey,” she says after a minute or two.

Zuko blinks, startled. “Hi.”

“Sorry I didn’t come in to work this week,” she says. “I got busy.”

“Oh, it’s okay,” Zuko says. “We didn’t need you around anyways.” He realizes how that must sound, and blanches. “Not that we don’t need you around! We like having you around! You’re so helpful! I just meant that we weren’t super busy this week and–”

Katara just laughs. “Relax, Zuko,” she says. “I know what you meant.”

“Oh. Good.” 

There’s another pause, and Zuko sneaks a glance at her out of the corner of his eye. Her face is turned up towards the setting sun, eyes closed, lashes dark and inky against her cheeks. His chest feels like it’s being put through the wringer. There’ll be nothing left of him by the time it’s done. Is this what it feels like to be seventeen and delusional? 

“So, um, I was thinking about what you said a while ago,” Katara starts. She looks uncharacteristically unsure of herself, and the expression is so alien on her face that he doesn’t know what to do. “About college and stuff. And I actually– well, I actually contacted the water polo coach at my top school. I sent her a highlight reel, some of my stats and stuff. And I didn’t expect to hear back from her but– she said she’d come out to see me play this season.”

Zuko’s mouth drops open. “Shut up,” he says, nudging her side with his elbow. This is huge news. “Are you serious? Katara, that’s amazing. That’s such a big deal.”

She’s beaming at him. “Yeah,” she says. “I still can’t believe it. And I was so worried– I just wanted to say thank you, I guess. You gave me the idea. So, uh, this is really thanks to you.”

“No way,” Zuko says emphatically, and he means it, from the bottom of his heart. “Seriously. You’re the one who plays like you can bend the water to your will. That’s all you, Katara. You’re so talented. I just say things without thinking about them.”

Katara nudges him back. “Well, that I knew already,” she teases, and there’s a sparkle in her eye. “But, uh. Don’t sell yourself short, okay? You’re a person of many talents.” 

Zuko just huffs, shakes his head. “Right,” he says. “Yeah, and chief among them is the ability to burn boba.”

Katara shrugs. “I’m being serious,” she protests. “Don’t be so hard on yourself, okay?” She hesitates, for a moment, and then her next words all come out in a rush. “Look– I’m just– I’m really glad we’re talking again, Zuko. I know we haven’t been super close since we were kids, and you were always more of Sokka’s friend anyways, but, uh. I missed you.”

Everything in Zuko’s brain comes screeching to a complete halt. Four years he’d been missing her, but he’d never thought that she might have been missing him just as much. He turns to look at her with wide eyes, wanting to make sure he heard her properly, and she’s watching him carefully, a guarded expression on her face. And he doesn’t even have to think about it when he says “I missed you too,” and it’s like a balm to his soul, the way her face lights up, the way her eyes change. And then she’s smiling widely and throwing her arms around him, and he absolutely cannot breathe, because the sun is setting over the island, and Katara is giving him a hug.

He knows, then, that these feelings he’s experiencing aren’t built up, aren’t imaginary. There is no projection, no falsehood. He likes her, so, so, so much.

He thinks about all of the games they played together when they were kids. He thinks about how they had such easy camaraderie, even when he was being a little shit and she was being a stubborn terror. He thinks about the time they were eleven, and she punched some random neighbor in the face for cheating at four square. He thinks about her infamous temper, and her wry wit, and how when he’s around her, he can’t speak two proper sentences.

He thinks about how, over the course of four years he’d see her around school and the neighborhood and she’d always be laughing and smiling and unfailingly kind. He thinks about how she grins at him when they’re at the Jasmine Dragon and a customer orders something completely ridiculous, and he thinks about how passionate she is about water polo, how driven she is to succeed, how she tries so hard at everything because she can’t imagine giving anything less than her best. He thinks about how he’d read a million water polo rulebooks for her, and how he’s known her for almost ten years and she just keeps getting better. He thinks about her, as she is right now in this moment, the colors of a cotton candy sky reflected in her eyes, and he thinks yes. Yes, this is real. He doesn’t think it could have survived any other way.

And maybe one day he’ll do something about it– he’ll tell her about the feelings that want to burst out of his chest, the way he seeks her out every time he walks into a room, the way he wants to get to know her better than anyone else in the world.

Maybe one day. But for now, he’s content to sit with her here on a stone ledge, with the sunset sprawling in front of them and his new friends at his side. They’re laughing and talking and watching the sky, and Zuko lets it all wash over him, perfectly content. 

For now, this is everything that he needs.