A/N: I haven't written one of these in years. This is also my first A:TLA fic, so any and all criticism is welcome.
Update: New chapter will be up this weekend, I haven't abandoned this story, April was just a heavy month for Uni deadlines.
They had warned her, stay away from him, he's bad news. That if she got to close he'd end up destroying her, everybody in town knew he was trouble- he could never stay out of it- constant fights, acts of aggression and a complete lack of authority. They had warned her. Told her that if she couldn't keep a clear distance between them that he'd hurt her as he had done to all those other girls. That he'd use her for what he wanted and then rid himself of her. All the girls in town knew he wasn't boyfriend material, he was good for sex. A hot night with a bad boy would make a great story when they got to college.
They had warned her. Reminded her that her friendship with him was dangerous. That he was dangerous, she was the new girl in town and he just wanted to add her to his ever-growing list of conquests. That someone as kind and as beautiful as she did not need to befriend him. He would only betray her in the end. They had warned her. Her growing feelings for him would only ever end in heartbreak. That she should find herself a nice boy who had a future that didn't involve bars and orange jumpsuits. One who wouldn't end up on the news in ten years for committing some horrible crime.
They had warned her. Told her she was making a mistake, that he could never be the boyfriend she wanted him to be. That their mutual feelings for the other was bad news and she should end their new relationship now before she got in any deeper. They had warned her. Told her she meant nothing to him and never would.
She had enough of their warnings. Every warning given out of consideration had been wrong. Rumours about his aggressive behaviour had started when he spent a summer away from their small town. Jealous boys had spread rumours that he'd been sent to juvenile Hall for ruthlessly attacking someone's 'out of town' cousin. They were lies. He'd spent the summer with his sick grandfather who had died not long after his return, those same boys had taunted him and the result had put two of them in the hospital and him behind bars. His first offence. Given his circumstances, the judge only sentenced him to community service.
His supposed 'conquer list' was also a lie. He'd been with two girls, both of which had spread the story of his prowess and seemingly endless experience. Soon, the idea of being on that list became a badge of honour for the girls of the town. They'd begun to add themselves to the non-existent list in some attempt to live their bad boy fantasy, he never fought the rumours. Not even when those girls boyfriends began knocking.
Once she'd accidentally uncovered the first two lies, she had no problem figuring the rest out and once the haze around him cleared, she offered him friendship. He took it. Being closer to him allowed her to see the real boy, the angry, hurt boy who had a hard life. The boy just wanted to belong somewhere in a place that didn't want him. The closer they got the harder she fell. She saw the sides of him no one else did. The kindness, the humour, the intelligence, the sarcasm and wit… once she started falling she couldn't stop.
Then he kissed her, it was soft and gentle, not at all like she'd imagined it would be. His lips hardly brushed against hers before he was pulling away from her, a ghost of a kiss that set her on fire. Before he could retreat from her she pulled him into a deeper more passionate kiss and he returned her passion with his own. He became hers. And she became his.
Even after he became her boyfriend the warnings never stopped but she'd long stopped listening to the hateful words against him. She was good at that. She was nothing if not stubborn. He wasn't what they said he was, not even close, and he was a good boyfriend. Really good. He never forced her to be intimate with him, he waited patiently for her to be ready and when the time came assured her she didn't have to do anything she didn't want too. He was always considerate of her feelings and was there for her whenever she needed him. He treated her well. Far better than any of her friends' boyfriends treated them. And he was loving, so unashamed of his affection for her and at the same time unafraid to meet her bad temper with his own.
She loved him. Deeply. And they had all been so wrong about him.
Because it was she who hurt him. She made a promise she couldn't keep. And her who left him. Less than two months into their fledgeling romance it was time for her to move again. something she had always done from a young age, her father's job required it.
That night she had gone to him, tears pooling in her deep blue eyes and chest heavy as she broke her relationship off. Far too early for either of them. She had poured her heart out to him and repeated her apologies over and over until her voice was hoarse. And he held her. His heartbreaking inside his chest as he agreed to end their relationship. A clean break. He kissed her repeatedly and whispered his love for her, they made love, and two days later she was gone.
She'd always been good at protecting herself, fourteen schools before she was sixteen, countless faces of 'friends' she'd made but whose names she could no longer remember. Some would stay in touch, for the first few months at least, most wouldn't bother. Occasionally a boy would approach her and she'd have a small fling with him, never anything serious and most times wouldn't go further than holding hands and a few stolen kisses, nothing that would etch itself on her heart. Nothing that had ever come close to what she'd felt for him, the broken boy with the beautiful lopsided smile and golden eyes.
Despite her constant moving and never truly settling she managed to keep her grades relatively high, what else was there for a girl who didn't belong other than homework and study? Sometimes she'd take a peek at how some of her more memorable friends were doing, she stopped that hobby fairly quickly when she realised how painful it was to see all these kids her age living a normal life. She never checked in on him, her heart still ached for him. Her first love. They'd promised they'd have a clean break, it would have hurt them both too much otherwise… but she wondered often how he was doing and if he'd managed to meet someone new. Maybe a girl from town who could keep the promise she couldn't. She never dwelled too long on the thought, as much as she wanted him to be happy, she still loved him.
On her seventeenth birthday, she got the news that truly broke her heart. Finally, after all the moving around, they would be staying in this town, at least until she graduated high-school. Her father had expected her to be happy, overjoyed, she had begged him repeatedly to finally settle so she could have some semblance of a normal life. Instead, she screamed at him, tears free pouring from her eyes as she left the dining table for the familiar comfort of her bedroom. Throwing herself to her pillow she let her pain-free.
Her brother had tried and failed to comfort her, they hadn't had much in the way of friends but they had always had each other, but he'd been heading off to college come September and she'd be left in this town alone. As much as she wanted the comfort her big brother was offering her, the stubborn side of her wanted to be left to wallow in what she could have had… in another town.
A year and half the country away from the only place she'd even felt like she belonged, her family had now decided to settle down. It had hurt. She had demanded to know why now? Why this town? Why did it have to be this town? Why none of the others? Why not his town?... her father had no answer.
And so, she spent her senior year in a town she despised for no reason other than it was the wrong town, making no friends and enjoying none of the 'normal life' she'd begged her father to have. With her father buried in work and her brother off enjoying college, she finally felt well and truly alone. And when she was alone she was self-destructive.
So when a handsome boy with a charming smile and devilish look in his eyes approached her, she ignored all the warning signs. She didn't wait for the soft chaste kisses or gentle lovemaking with this boy - she just threw herself headlong into a relationship she knew was bad for her. He was bad for her. She'd be out all night with him and his friends, schooling had slipped as had any ideas of making a life here in this hateful little town and the only time she spoke to her father was to scream at him about how he ruined her life and he had no right to tell her who she could and couldn't date. She knew she should have listened though.
He wasn't like the last one, he didn't take his time to understand her, to be understood, he didn't wear his heart on his sleeve or try to make her comfortable in any way, he just took what he wanted. Betrayed her. Broke whatever pieces of her heart she had left to give and thoroughly destroyed whatever chance she had at happiness in this town.
One night while laying next to him in bed, her naked body half covered by the single duvet he had mostly cocooned around himself, she let herself feel the pain she'd been holding inside herself for months now. Feel the guilt from all those needless arguments with her dad, the shame from all the nights she'd spent tangled in limbs and sheets trying to recover some of the feelings she'd lost when she'd been forced to move again, hatred for herself and what she'd let herself become and finally grief for the girl she'd lost along the way.
Wordlessly, as the crystalline tears fell from her eyes, she pulled herself up off the bed and slipped into her clothes as silently as she could. She didn't so much as bother to throw a glance over her shoulder to her 'boyfriend' sleeping soundly, instead she collected her things and left his house. She made the short walk back to her own house, the moon still high in the sky as she went, before slipping into her father's bed and letting the rest of her tears flow.
For the first time in years, her father wrapped her in his strong protective arms and held her to him, like he had done after they'd lost her mother all those years ago. She buried her face into his chest as he ran his hands down her soft chestnut tresses, whispering comforting words and promises of it getting better, she allowed herself to believe him. She wanted so badly to believe that she didn't have to be this sad, miserable girl anymore, so she chose not to. She believed his words.
And when morning came she broke up with the boy with the dangerously charming smile and removed herself from his 'gang' of misfits and threw herself back into her neglected studies, hard. She may not have been able to salvage her senior year, but she could salvage her place at a good school. Maybe even the school her brother attends.
And when spring came she got the acceptance letter she was hoping for, with shaking hands and a still breath she read the letter aloud. Accepted. She let out a loud shriek of joy as she jumped up and down in her father's kitchen, her cries pulling her startled father from the living room. She flung her arms around him and for the first time in almost two years cried tears of joy, he cried too. That night her father took her out to dinner to celebrate, a daddy-daughter date they hadn't shared in years. She almost died of shame when her father had the entire restaurant toast to her college acceptance.
Graduation was a family affair, she hadn't made any friends before her ex-boyfriend and he'd certainly made sure she didn't make any afterwards either. But she'd have been lying if she said she had cared, her brother had come home and her father had taken half a day off work to watch her graduate. They had taken a picture of just the three of them, her brother being his usually goofy self had placed the cap over his heart and placed his chin to his chest as if in mourning. She could only laugh as one of her teachers took a picture of the three of them, her in the middle, her father to her left and her big brother to her right. She smiled that day. A genuine smile.
Summer slipped by and soon enough it was moving day into her new dorm, her father and brother on hand to help her, she'd managed to get into the same college as her brother so he was serving as a guided tour, over gesticulating as he went but buttoning up the amateur dramatics when he laid eyes on her roommate. A soft-spoken beauty with white hair, whose eyes were only a shade or two of blue lighter than her own, she'd never seen him so flustered.
As the day wore on both the siblings gave a tearful goodbye to their father who held them both closely, words of pride and love exchanged between them before he climbed into his sedan and left. The siblings comforted each other before separating to rearrange their rooms.
The first few weeks at college were a lot more fun than she thought they would be, as well as her pretty roommate, she made friends with others. A tall girl with cropped brown hair, large grey eyes and a no-shit attitude she admired, a cheerful boy, also with grey eyes and a pension for wearing orange as well as a short blind girl, her eyes a milky jade green, with a tough exterior and even tougher mouth. She was happy.
One day, while waiting for her new cohort in the library, she decided to browse the shelves looking for what she'd need for her first paper, running her mocha fingers down the spines of the chunky textbooks as she absentmindedly read out the titles to herself. Reaching for one particular book she spied two shelves above her, she stood on tiptoes to try and reach, her first attempt being unsuccessful. She cursed her short height as she stretched her arms again.
She cursed inwardly to herself when she saw someone else had reached for the book she needed. With an annoyed huff, she whirled on the person ready to give them a piece of her mind when she froze…
Golden eyes, one larger than the other by way of a scar that covered a quarter of his face and stretched up to his ear, stared straight back at her, arm suspended in mid-air over the book they'd both completely forgotten.
"Z-Zuko?" She spoke in a voice barely audible to the human ear.
"Ka-Katara?" He questioned, his voice only a hair louder than hers.
Suddenly the room melted away as they stared at each other for the first time in two years.
A/N: Please R&R.