Katara had a panic attack while preparing the kids first lunch boxes the night before school started and ended up sitting with her back against the fridge with her brother and sister-in-law talking her down.

"I promise, it's much scarier for you than it is for them," Suki reassured her.

"Yeah," Sokka agreed. "Even if they cry, five minutes after you leave it'll be like you never existed." There was a muffled thump from over the phone line, and Sokka yelped "Ow! What was that for?"

"You're not helping, babe."

"I'm just saying, our kids didn't want to leave when I went to pick them up the first year." Katara wasn't sure the idea of her kids forgetting her was helpful, but listening to Sokka and Suki's bickering turn into a scuffle calmed her down.

It sounded just like home always had when she was a kid. Their family wasn't very large, but everyone used to be arguing all the time - Dad and Gran-Gran about if he'd been sassing her, Katara and Sokka over rules of made-up games, Gran-Gran and Grand-Pakku over decades-old squabbles, Dad and Sokka over leftovers, and sometimes all of them fighting over whose turn it was to wash dishes. That was one of the many things she loved about their friend group in college. The dorms had felt so quiet until she'd started hanging out with Sokka and his roommate, Zuko. Sokka used to start dumb debates with him all the time, and Katara had wasted hours and hours of her freshman year stealing Zuko's Fire Flakes and egging on heated arguments about if vegetable soup is also a salad. The addition of Toph and Aang the following year had only poured more fuel on the fire, and their apartments always seemed to be filled with the sound of overlapping voices negotiating takeout and movie choices.

The noise had been the biggest thing she missed when they all fell out of touch and she and Aang moved to the rural Air Temple Island. It was a lack she had been hoping would dissipate when the little house started to fill up with kids, but to no avail. Aang had always enjoyed laughing at the silly little arguments, but never really had the temperament for engaging in it himself. Whenever Katara felt the need to get into it with someone, he just looked hurt and confused, so she had started just biting back the small frustrations to spare him the sting of her quick temper. Bumi and Kya had fought like her and Sokka - loudly and constantly - but as an only child, it made Aang nervous to hear them go at it and they had started to intervene instead of letting the conflict run its course. And so, Katara's home had become relatively quiet and orderly once more, the silence of her empty bedroom compounded by the silence that surrounded it.

"Sokka, just stop!" Suki's voice returned. "Give me the phone." Her commanding tone jolted Katara out of the spiral of memories, and she was breathing easier and sitting straight when Suki said, "They'll be okay, Katara. Even if it doesn't take the first day, once they make friends, they'll get there. You said they're excited, right?" Katara breathed in and out deeply one more time.

"Yeah."

"That's half the battle won then. They're good kids, and they're smart -"

"But they're new and…" Katara lowered her voice just in case one of the kids was awake and eavesdropping, "a little weird, Suki. I mean, they've hardly even met anyone that's not related to them. What if the other kids are mean?"

"Hey, if the little freaks Sokka and I raised can hack it, yours will be fine," Suki joked, and Katara cracked a bit of a smile. "It's everybody's first day back. Between all the classes getting shuffled and people moving over the summer, they definitely won't be the only kids that are new." Katara nodded, and then because she realized Suki couldn't see her, said,

"You're right."

"I know I am. Now finish making those lunches and get your ass to bed." There was a shuffling as the phone got put back on speaker, and then Sokka was back, teasing her that "Yeah, if you have to take them to school all cranky nobody's gonna have a good day." That made her laugh, and finally gave her the courage to thank them, hang up, and finish filling containers of carrot sticks.

Drop-off the next morning was nowhere near the nightmare she'd worked herself up to expect. Tenzin cried for a few minutes when he had to accept that his siblings really weren't going to be coming to daycare with him anymore, but the teacher running the preschool program was the same woman who had supervised the under five summer session, so his distress was short-lived. She prepared herself for having to peel the others two off her legs as she parked in front of the low tan-bricked building of the elementary school, but when she walked Bumi to his class first, he strode in with barely a backwards glance, leaving her to greet his teacher alone while he ran off towards the cluster of boys by the windows. Kya was a little clingier, but only because she wanted to drag her mother around on a tour of the class and make her tell the teacher all about what a good reader she was already. In the end, Katara had to be saved from being late to work by the teacher, who cut off Kya's rant with practiced ease and informed her that "it looks like that girl over on the rug likes to read too!" pointing out a tiny girl with giant glasses and her face buried in a chapter book. "Maybe you should go introduce yourself," she suggested, and Kya had abandoned her sentence entirely and said, "Bye Mom!" plopping down right across from the girl.

After that, it was hard to focus at work, especially since the urgent care clinic was slow with all of the kids back in school. Patients had slowed to a trickle, and even the slight excitement afforded by occasionally having to remove fish hooks from fingers or explain how to treat sun sickness was fading away with summer. Soon, it would be all flu shots and strep tests, but for now, it was just boring. Between visitors, she obsessively checked her phone for calls from the school, just waiting for someone to say one of the kids was losing it and needed her to come back. It was always silent though, and she would end up playing some of the waiting room board games at the reception desk with Haru.

As the hours ticked down until it was time to pick the kids up from school, she started to feel her stomach creep up her throat. Even though she'd taken a few hours of personal time to get them right at the bell, the silence of the phone did nothing to convince her that things were going smoothly. Visions of lunchtimes spent missing each other and their mother, or all of them climbing into the car in frustrated tears kept invading her head. It nagged at her so bad that she almost texted Aang just to make sure the school hadn't messed up and called him instead. Luckily, she'd also stream-of-conciousness texted Suki about it, and her lovely, life-saving sister-in-law had replied, "friends don't let friends text their ex. THE KIDS ARE FINE." She'd still run out of the building like it was on fire when it was time to go get them.

The littler kids got walked out a few minutes before the bigger ones, and Katara waited on the blacktop right up close to the doors so that she would see Kya the second she got outside. As it would turn out, there was no chance of missing her. She started sprinting as soon as she hit the pavement, seeing her mother right up close, hollering,

"Mom!" Katara waved, only just stopping herself from running towards her daughter as well. "Mom Mom Mom Mom Mom!" Kya pulled up short right in front of her, and Katara noticed for the first time that she was dragging the girl from that morning right behind her. The girl had straight, black hair and light brown eyes that looked almost comically large in the purple frames of her glasses. She was dwarfed by Kya - both because she was a pretty tiny kid and because Kya had what Gran-Gran called "an extra foot of personality". The other girl smiled up at her shyly. Katara waved, and crouched down to be the same height as the kids.

"Hi, I'm Kya's mother, Katara," she introduced herself.

"This is Izumi!" Kya told her, and somewhere in the back of her mind, the words rang familiar. But Katara was more concerned in the moment with scolding her daughter for not allowing her friend to speak for herself.

"It's very nice to meet you," Katara said and then told her daughter a little wryly, "I guess it's safe to say the first day of school was a success." Kya nodded exaggeratedly.

Just then, Bumi wandered over, accompanied by a couple of other boys. He lifted his chin to Katara and said, "Hey Mom, what's up?" Katara raised her eyebrow at her son.

"What's up?"

"Just chillin'," he said, knocking fists with the boys as they peeled off to find their own parents. She nearly rolled her eyes as she thought He's basically Sokka's clone.

"Well, it looks like I had absolutely nothing to be worried about," Katara said, getting to her feet again. She brushed off the knees of her scrubs and was immediately accosted by Kya grabbing her hand and hanging on her.

"Can Izumi come over and play?" Both girls looked to her with pleading expressions. Yeah, Suki and Sokka were definitely right. Katara smiled at them in amusement.

"Well, I'd have to meet her parents -"

"My dad's here!" Izumi blurted out, pointing towards the fence, but before Katara could follow her finger, Kya had grabbed her friend and the girls were sprinting across the playground, Bumi hot on their heels with a whoop of glee.

Katara had to run after them full tilt just to keep from losing them in the crowd and making sure they didn't run into anyone. Her sneakers pelted the pavement. It was all she could do to keep track of their little heads in the sea of children, so it wasn't until the people thinned out enough to see them clearly that she looked up at who they were running towards, and saw

"Zuko!" The joyful shout ripped free of her without permission. It was impossible to believe, but just as impossible to deny, the red flash of his scar unmistakable even at a sprint and with a decade between them. There was no time to parse her feelings about it, her feet already carrying her inexorably closer to him. His head snapped up at the sound of his name, face the picture of shock for only a split second before a smile emerged, mirroring the one she could feel on her own lips. The naked happiness in his face was all she needed to not even consider stopping a sane distance away. Instead, she kept running until he saw that she wasn't slowing down and opened his arms to her inevitable embrace.

It was a scene straight out of every first day of the semester they had together: Katara a blur of hair streaking towards him, Zuko trying to absorb the force of her affection and getting bowled over onto the nearest patch of grass. Their kids jumped out of the way as they crashed into each other, spilling onto the wood chips in a tangle of limbs. The wind got knocked out of her, and she felt it get knocked out of him, not helped by the hysterical laughter that bubbled up. They lay gasping on the ground, unable to answer their children's clamoring to know why Katara had full-body tackled Izumi's dad and what was so funny about it.

When they were able to breathe again, Katara sat up off of Zuko's chest and helped pull him upright. Three pairs of bugged-out eyes greeted them, demanding answers. Katara reached to brush wood chips off of Zuko's back, holding him steady by the arm.

"I'm fine, I'm fine!" he insisted, but didn't swat her away, letting her fuss until she was satisfied with his appearance. Only then did Katara smooth her hair and turn to her children.

"Zuko here used to live with your Uncle Sokka way back in college," she explained. Bumi, who thought his uncle was the coolest person ever, said,

"No way," in an awed whisper.

Zuko laughed. The sound warmed Katara down to her toes just as it always had, and all at once, she felt a stab of longing held back for so many years without him at her side. "He was also my best friend in the whole wide world," she told the kids, and while Bumi looked unmoved by the revelation, Kya screeched and grabbed Izumi by the shoulders.

"That's it! We're totally meant to best friends forever," she enthused, and Zuko's happiness took on a wary tinge as he looked to see how his daughter was handling the excitement. He needn't have worried though, because Izumi grabbed Kya right back and joined in the squealing and jumping. Some things, Katara thought, were just impossible to understand if one had never been an eight year old girl before, and she squeezed Zuko's arm reassuringly before untangling from him completely and getting to her feet. When she offered a hand to him, he accepted and let her haul him to his feet, his smile once again uncomplicated and innocent.