chapter ii.
No, I'm not running;
I'm just stealing time.
Grace Potter & the Nocturnals
Tuesday came and went with the fleeting embrace of a spring breeze. Wednesday was rather slow, a numbness finally settling over her limbs as she accepted her fate as a student once more. Thursday might as well have lasted an eternity.
Once Friday rolled around, Katara could feel the self-compressed jitters beginning to leak out of their previous containment, spilling into her veins as she awakened with a start. Breakfast was eaten with Aang, his light chatter a nice change to Sokka's mumbled bickering. She could count on a single hand the number of times her brother had been willing to jump out of bed with a smile on his face and talk to her amicably - or even, after eliminating the second stipulation, simply wake with a smile. What wasn't in her own demeanor fell into her brother's, but that didn't mean she didn't miss his early morning snark. (Kind of.)
"So then I told On Ji that if she wanted to sit with us, she could come over whenever. I haven't seen her, though." Aang craned his neck behind him, fork poised in midair with a piece of pancake dangling from it. Biting down on her bottom lip, Katara found that she could hardly keep from mothering Aang, the instinct to draw his attention back to the falling food sitting on the tip of her tongue. "Oh well, I'm sure she'll find us."
Nodding in return, she took a sip of her orange juice and scanned the cafeteria for a familiar face. She could pick out a tall boy from her Literature class and a silent girl who'd broken a beaker yesterday in Chemistry. Eyes alighting on the blind girl, Katara nudged Aang and tilted her spoon in her direction, trying not to draw attention to herself even though she knew the other couldn't see her.
"Who's that?"
Perhaps she'd been less inconspicuous than she'd realized for Aang hardly had to glance in the female's direction to know who she was asking about. Or, more likely, it was common to question the identity of one who wasn't like everyone else.
"Toph?" Sucking on the end of his fork for a moment, Aang's brows pulled together as she watched her. Then he continued, waving his utensil in Toph's direction as his eyes found Katara's. "Most people underestimate her, y'know. Everyone knows she's one for sarcasm, but once this guy tried to pull something on her - I can't really remember what, though. Anyway, she ended up punching him right in the face." Katara didn't have to ask what was shocking about the situation; her intuition told her that it hadn't been a lucky shot.
The two continued on in hushed tones, their conversation ranging anywhere from how tall the grass on the quad must be to the colors of their least favorite professor's socks on any given Tuesday. Both laughed a great deal through the duration of breakfast, spoons pushing food idly as if it might delay their impending classes.
At the trash cans, as the duo scraped off the remains of that morning's meal, a surprise visitor squeezed up between them. "If I didn't know better, I'd think you had a crush on me with all the staring," Toph grinned as she knocked her tray against the inside of the bin. Katara flinched visibly, an apology (or maybe it was an excuse) already forming before Aang chimed in.
"I bet you have sonar like a bat or a dolphin," he jumped straight in, as though continuing a conversation that had already been started. As far as Katara was concerned, this was the first she'd ever seen the two socialize.
The grin faded, her expression adopting a sinister edge. "Keep guessing, Twinkle Toes."
This time when Katara strode to the university across the street during her lunch break, she paid attention to her surroundings in terms of the architecture and layout of the quad instead of the people occupying it. Every building showcased at least one brick face, though most sported it on all four (or more) faces. When the opportunity presented itself, she pressed tanned fingers against the rough exterior of the library, her light eyes jumping across the center of the campus. Sidewalk forming a sort of hexagonal shape as it branched off into secondary paths that disappeared between the school buildings, Katara was glad for the amount of green caught in the midst of a concrete arena.
The outdoor seating area, also known as Sokka and his friends usual meeting place, was her intended destination as she pushed off the brick wall and trudged through the sea of college students either stalling for lunch or running for class.
Tugging at the collar of her shirt, she was entirely too aware of how ungodly hot it was out today and the way her blouse was beginning to stick to the small of her back. Behind her, a group of girls (whom she realized had been trailing behind her for a while) began giggling a little too loudly for her liking, and she craned her neck as though she could physically spot the source of their sudden noisiness. As it was, the brunette found she could see it, or rather, them, as they crossed the grass a couple feet ahead.
The baseball team and freshman hopefuls.
Not bad on the eyes, Katara understood the nervous laughter bubbling from the throats of nearby girls and boys alike. She had to stifle a wave of her own giggles as she spotted Jet among their ranks, a plain white t-shirt stretched comfortably over his chest. As if sensing her sudden bashfulness, his deep brown eyes caught hers and a confident smirk stretched his lips.
Don't come over here. Don't come over here.. Though she did her best to hide her face (and really, that just meant she'd halfheartedly raised a hand to feign shielding her eyes from the sun), she could hear Jet call out to her all the same. "Wish me luck," he whispered in her ear, having caught up to her when she'd been determined not to look at him. Blinking, she glanced up, but Jet was already clawing his way back to his fellow hopefuls, a single grin tossed over his shoulder in her direction. One of the boys clapped him on the back in an irritatingly cocky manner. Katara scoffed.
Finally catching up to Sokka, Suki, and Haru, she made a point not to inquire about Jet's whereabouts. Her brother and Suki were arguing about whether female soccer players were more talented than male ones, to which Sokka easily argued boys are better than girls; everyone knows that! Katara could already see the end of their argument, and the finale included a dramatic proclamation from Sokka - one in which he agreed to tryout for the soccer team just to prove Suki wrong. Pointedly ignoring his blatant sexism, she tried to strike up a conversation with Haru instead.
"So what are you majoring in?" she inquired casually, pushing her salad around with her fork. Katara barely registered Sokka's sudden yelp as Suki kicked his shin under the table.
Green gaze sliding to appraise her with mild surprise, Haru shrugged his shoulders, an easy smile curling on his lips. "Engineering. I like math and all that so it seemed harmless enough, just in case you were going to ask why."
Frowning a little since he'd beaten her to the chase on that one, she pursed her lips and thought of a better question. "Alright, then. What about sports? Are you going to play any?"
Haru seemed to consider this more, his spoon making lazy circles and sending ripples through his soup. She wondered if he was trying to formulate a polite way to slip away from holding a conversation with her. "I'm thinking about trying out for the lacrosse team," he began, stopping after a moment as though he wanted to say more but couldn't. "Yeah, I'm thinking of doing that."
Dropping it there - not that she had much choice; someone had approached Haru to chat - Katara found her attention wandering again. There was a group of contradictions not too far away, one girl dressed in colors so bright she thought she might go blind though her companions wore much darker garments. Combat boots adorned the feet of the tallest, a leather jacket was fitted to the upper half of the girl with the sharpest features, and the one in a bright, neon shirt was demonstrating a backbend to her apparent friends. She watched as a lean male with dark hair, a shade of near-black that seemed to emphasize the lack of color to his skin, approached them with a crinkled bag in his hands.
"Who's th-" Katara glanced around, noticing for the first time that she'd been completely abandoned. Even the empty chairs looked a little sad at her loneliness, and she packed up her food as fast as possible, heading back to the high school where she belonged.
Don't worry, we're in this together. Uh huh, Sokka. Abandoning her for Suki; she could play that game.
The rest of the day's classes passed without much excitement: she powered through a few workbook pages for Anatomy and played volleyball with Aang during Gym. Though not as coordinated as she wished she could be, she wouldn't lie that she'd been content to see she was better than most of the other girls. Perhaps it'd be to her benefit to try out for the team.
Sitting with her back against the cool stone of a concrete bench, Katara let her head loll to the side as she waited for a text from Sokka. Jet was supposed to tell him the exact time and location of the party tonight which he would then pass on to her. When the words had dripped from his lips like honey, lashes brushing his cheekbones in such an alluring manner that she'd hardly been able to look away, it'd been difficult to disagree. Now that she had properly considered the possibility of underage drinking and other illicit activities, Katara wasn't sure that she could form a solid argument to attend anymore. She wasn't even a freshman at the university, so it wasn't like she'd be missed by anyone, except maybe Jet. Sokka couldn't want her to go, right? He'd want his baby sister to be safe, though maybe he thought it'd be better that she'd be within his sight instead of at another high school party.
Sighing, she lifted herself up onto the bench and curled up across the rough expanse of the seat, clutching her phone to her chest. The sun had already dipped behind the too-close skyline of the outlying dormitories. Red, purple, and gold glinted in the windows to her back, shadows stretching, growing and restless, across the quad as night approached.
FORWARD: My friend Hiro is going to meet you at the crosswalk at 10. He'll bring you to the party.
Katara held the phone screen up as she read the message multiple times, internally suppressing a bit of surprise at the correct grammar and capitalization of what she assumed to be a text from Jet. Sokka had obviously been too lazy to reword and explain the situation to Katara, so he'd resorted to simply forwarding it. Now that she was considering it, she wouldn't be all that surprised if Jet had managed to get her number from Sokka's phone, but he hadn't tried to text her if he had (which came as a sort of relief).
"Great, just pass me off from person to person. No problem," she muttered under her breath, remaining still a moment longer. Despite how hard the bench was, it had ended up being comfortable and now she wasn't sure she wanted to leave it.
Closing her eyes tight against the dying sun, her father's face formed within the hazy depths of her mind's eye, his warm stare and crooked smile offering little comfort to her. If anything, it made her all the more homesick. Perhaps, in some way, she could pretend that attending the party was her keeping up her promise to watch out for Sokka. He might be older, but that didn't mean he was always smarter or a better decision maker than her.
Sitting up, Katara sucked in a deep breath and tapped back a quick reply. C u in a bit ~ dont do anything stupid until i get there!
Author's Note: Just want to throw in quickly that, as with all fanfics, there's a disclaimer that I don't own the characters created for the show and whatnot. Aside from that, since this is an AU, there will probably be a few OCs making an appearance for a special task here or there. I hope this story is somewhat interesting to some of you ~ Comments, critiques, it's all welcome. c: And thank you for reading!