"My father's not a… a kind man."
Azula nervously bounced her leg up and down. They were outside, near a local convenience store where drunks and wine-o's of all kinds stumbled around the door. One man had even keeled over to vomit. Azula grimaced as she watched the chunks of half-eaten food filter out of the unknown man's esophagus. She could tell that his throat probably burned from the force of his shaking body.
The streets were lively tonight. Cars honked from every which way, street lights shone brighter than she had ever seen before, and there were even young 20 somethings skipping along outside in large groups singing at the top of their lungs. Everything felt so…alive. Azula couldn't draw her eyes from outside the car window.
She was stalling - she knew it - and she just wanted more time to be able to tell Ruon Jian about herself. He had finally cornered her after a week of being completely avoidant. The bruises on her neck had yellowed and she didn't have to wear as many layers, but she was still covered up for the most part. Kyoshi had lightened up on restricting her from practices, but still limited how much she could do. That near fainting spell had scarred the woman.
"Azula?" Ruon Jian called out.
She tensed when she felt his cold fingers brush over and lay flat on her thigh. She didn't want to turn around. She hated that she'd even been worn down so much that she'd been cornered.
Ozai was being an ass again and no one had been sent to pick her up from practice. When Ruon Jian rolled up with his passenger window down, eyes pleading, and mouth pouting, her resolve weakened on the spot.
She figured he'd taken her to this mildly sketchy part of town to allow them both more privacy. It didn't matter either way. She still wasn't feeling up to releasing the dam of emotions welled up inside of her over the years.
"I don't know what you want me to say, Ruon Jian," she sighed, already depressed just thinking about it. "There really isn't much to say anyway. It's not unheard of for a father to be angry with their child."
"Showing anger and nearly choking you to death are two very different things, Azula," he parried, a little annoyed at how nonchalant she was about her own experience.
Azula shrugged and turned further towards the car door. "It wasn't nearly to death," she mumbled, the futile words slipping uneasily past her lips.
In the window's reflection, she could see Ruon Jian's serious, unconvinced face. She closed her eyes and shrunk further into herself. This had to be the most humiliating thing she'd ever done. Why was she even volunteering this information to a boy that meant nothing in the grand scheme of things? They probably wouldn't even be friends by next year.
"Right," Ruon Jian drawled sarcastically. "People just go up to each other all the time, choking each other without the intent to kill."
"Fuck you," she said through clenched teeth. She pushed the door open and jumped out of the passenger seat. She didn't bother to slam it shut before stalking off. The alarm rang ominously as she ventured into the dark night. "You don't know anything about me. I've been just fine by myself all these years. Why are you even so interested in what happens to me?"
Azula kicked up rocks as she stomped down the sidewalks full of litter. She didn't know where the hell she was, but she needed to be away from this boy. It wasn't right nor fair how he could unravel her at the slightest look. She had been slipping and almost let him in, but she was going to nip this in the bud right now.
She fastened her book bag tighter to her back and ran like hell down the street. Behind her, she could hear car horns blaring, tires coming to screeching halts, and drivers with their heads poked out of their windows yelling obscenities. She didn't care what was going on. She just kept pressing forward, her legs burning with the force of her strides.
But all those extra layers did more harm than good. Her chest felt like it would burst if she kept going. She came to an abrupt halt, hands resting on her knees to give her time to catch her breath. A familiar car rolled up next to her. She couldn't bring herself to look up. She was too ashamed of herself.
A car door unlocked and she heard footsteps racing towards her. Ruon Jian held tight to her forearms and lifted her to face him. His eyes were large pools of worry. She could see herself reflected in the tears that welled in his eyes.
"Azula! I want to help you. Just tell me what's wrong."
As he held her there, cars honking furiously behind him, she couldn't fight the sobs that came surging through her body. It started in little hiccups before becoming a full on snotty faced cry.
"I don't know what to do," she admitted, voice warbling with all this dredged up melancholy.
Azula wiped furiously at her face - embarrassed and confused - doing her best not to look up at the boy before her. Ruon Jian gulped harshly before leaning down, gauging her reaction along the way, and connecting their lips in a warm embrace.
….
The start to Ty Lee's high school career hadn't been the greatest. She had already come in with the promise of a quickly deteriorating friendship and now she was left without her two closest confidantes after years of it just being them together.
Finding her foot in the world of friendship after years out of practice was much harder than it looked. Any new clique she tried to integrate into found her much too clingy and annoying to truly accept her. She had learned over the past couple months that she'd have to be okay with being a guest in a large group of friends rather than an actual friend.
But even though she knew this, it was still so hard to cope with. Ty Lee's loneliness had led her to lots of downtime where she did a lot of reflecting on her very short life. Azula and Mai had been such integral forces in her life that she'd never thought of a reality in which they didn't exist at her side. But now, after the fight that had ultimately fractured the fragile pieces holding together whatever relationship that they had together had snapped, she realized that she had never expanded beyond her former friends' worlds.
She knew that they had unsavory thoughts of her. Hell, most people she met did. A floozy, a ditz, an attention seeker, and a whore. Those were just a few descriptions that came to mind when people thought of her. But it cut deep to know that the people she had confided in thought the same of her.
Sure she could be a little airheaded and much more optimistic than a situation called for, but she had to be when her only other options were Mai's never ending gloominess and Azula's cut throat frankness. A balancing, relaxing energy was needed from the trio and she provided it.
And sure she was a bit boy crazy, but what fourteen year old girl wasn't? So she spoke incessantly of cute boys, aspirations to dating, and pondered on the myriad possibilities of what sex would be like. Was that a crime? She was a budding, curious girl. She was sure if Azula or Ty Lee dug down deep enough within themselves, they'd find out that they were just as curious about it as her.
Ty Lee sighed. Friendship breakups were the worst. It didn't matter how shallow or superficial they were, it still cut like a knife to lose people you once considered your other half so tragically. For now, Ty Lee would have to be content with being a loner. Maybe she'd actually discover herself and what she truly wanted. She just wished she could do it alongside other people.
Turns out trying out for the cheer squad doesn't automatically guarantee that you make friends. The girls were pretty catty with their gossip and scandalous rumors. She'd heard everything from pregnancy scares to possible drug overdoses while in the locker rooms after school, but only as an eavesdropping extra. She couldn't wait until she got to the part of the year where people actually started to like her.
Ty Lee groaned as she lugged her gym bag over her shoulder and exited the locker room. Now all she had to do was stand around and pray that one of her sisters remembered to pick her up from practice today.
She pulled her phone out of her pocket as she exited the padded gym. She bit her lip as her phone flashed a low battery sign before shutting down.
God! She was so fucked if her sisters decided not to come today.
When she finally looked up as she opened the exit door, a vaguely familiar boy's face popped up from the other side. He looked a little shocked, but quickly recovered his features into a sly smile. Ty Lee had half a mind to just walk the other way, but trudged on praying that he wouldn't try anything.
She dashed past him, but he caught her wrist as she stomped past him. "Hold on a sec," he called out. "You're Azula's friend, right?"
….
Zuko sat in his bedroom throwing a ping pong ball against the wall. The steady, rhythmic thump it made against the hollow wall soothed him as he sat in silence.
It was another weekend spent at his mother's home and it was just as relaxing as every other time he'd spent there. It was shell shocking to see the difference a healthy household made on the psyche.
He had just woken up from a long nap that he hadn't realized he'd needed. One minute he was typing up his essay at 1:28 PM on his laptop, the next thing he saw his face reflected in the same laptop at 4:54 PM covered in drool. It was like he blacked out.
But Zuko found himself curious of the silence that accompanied him when he awoke from his nap. He distinctly remembered the television blaring at full volume as his little sister adorably screeched along to the theme song of one her favorite shows.
He would've joined her, but he just had to get some work done this week or else his teachers would really be on his ass. Professor Piandao was being a real hardass and even Zuko knew that there was only so much time he had to rebel before getting his father involved. Ozai merely tolerated his escapes to Ursa's home. He wouldn't spare any mercy had he received a call from a teacher though.
He sighed as he bounced his ball against the wall one last time. The time on his laptop now read 8:00 PM. Where the hell were they?
He wouldn't have to wait long for his answer. The front door creaked open coupled with the sound of the security alarm alerting of a safe entry. The trio's merry voices quickly filled the empty house as Kiyi went on and on about something he couldn't quite hear correctly.
He smiled before rising from his computer chair and heading down the hall. His face fell when he was met with the sight of three people that had obviously been out on an extensive trip.
His mother's husband held tightly to Kiyi's hand along with a few shopping bags from high end retailers. Kiyi - face painted like a monarch butterfly and a lollipop in her mouth - held tight to the couple balloons in her hand. A dress he'd never seen her wear before was covered in glitter and some kind of sauce from whatever she'd eaten earlier.
Zuko shrugged it off. He didn't want to let their little excursion bother him. He couldn't even comprehend why he felt bothered by it in the first place, so he wouldn't make a big deal of it.
But it was Ursa, with an expression like a deer caught in headlights, that made his stomach drop twenty floors. She shoved the bags she held in her hand into her husband's chest and shooed him away.
"Why don't you get Kiyi settled in while I talk to Zuko?" she said, panic lacing her every vocal intonation.
Her husband gave her a quick peck on the lips before shuffling a babbling Kiyi down the hall to her room. Zuko felt a shiver go down his spine. What the hell was going on?
"Hey honey," Ursa spoke unsurely as if she didn't know who he was. "How was your nap?"
"It was fine," Zuko replied nonchalantly, uneased by the way her hands reached out to caress his face. He backed away from her, eyes holding a deep worry. "Where'd you guys go anyway?"
"Oh…we just took Kiyi to go see a movie. She's been begging us to see it for months and it finally came out today."
"You could've woken me up. I would've loved to go with her."
"Ah, no. You would've thought it was a drag. It was a kids' movie anyway. Not your tastes."
"Well…you went shopping, too," Zuko countered. "Did you bring me anything?"
"Sorry honey," Ursa sputtered. "Kiyi needed some new clothes for her upcoming dance competitions. We're already breaking the budget just getting her the basics. We would've gone into debt trying to get you some stuff, too."
"Oh," he said breathlessly. His chest felt heavy all of a sudden. Like how he felt before he went into one of his coughing fits. He swallowed down the uneasy feeling that trapped itself in his throat. He was making a big deal out of nothing. "That's ok. I didn't really need anything anyway."
