And Thus We Enter the Third Arc
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Chapter Thirteen
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Changing of the Tide
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"Katara, what are you doing here?" Sokka asked, dumbfounded to see her suddenly appear in Toph's apartment.
"I came to see Toph. I didn't know you were here." She looked suspiciously at her brother. "Is it just the two of you?"
"Yeah," Sokka said, and when Katara raised a threatening eyebrow, he quickly amended, "At the moment. Aang's out doing something or other. Avatar stuff, I guess."
Katara paled. "Aang's here?"
"Well, who else would you think it would be?"
"I-I don't know. One of Toph's friends or something. I mean, she has others, right?" Katara muttered distractedly.
"I guess…" Sokka watched her carefully. "Katara, is something wrong?"
"Wrong? No. Nothing. I just thought Toph and I would have a girls' weekend, but you guys are here, so I guess some other time," she explained rapidly, heading for the door.
"Wait, you're leaving?" Sokka asked as he stumped after her. "Katara, we're all friends here, whether you and Aang are together or not. It'll be weird if you go."
"It'll be weird if I stay, too."
In an attempt to cheer his sister up with a laugh, he stroked his imaginary beard and philosophized, "You know what they say when you're stuck between a rock and a weird place…make lemonade!" He broke character. "Come on, Katara, stay and make some lemonade with us. We all want you here because we all love y—oops…"
"Oh, Sokka, you were so close to being the perfect brother, and then you blew it," she said clapping him on the shoulder affectionately, but she laughed and followed him into the kitchen.
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"Does it count as a bad decision if I didn't even really decide anything?" Aang contemplated as he glided back to Toph's. "But it's not fair to Meng for me to say that. If I said it at all, then part of me must have meant it. I'm not a liar. And this is what I've wanted for the past month. I'm just feeling uncertain now because I'm scared of the thing I finally got that I've been working so hard for!" His thoughts finished in a rush, and he felt himself soaking up the meaning of the words and their impact. It helped him to have realized these things, but it caused a twinge of sadness as well.
"I can think this way because Katara taught me how…"
He shook his head quickly, as if it were an Etch-a-Sketch he needed to clear.
"I'm moving on. For better or for worse, that's what I need to do."
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Meanwhile, Appa visited his very dear ox friend Bathilda at her human's ranch located on the outskirts of the city. Little more need be said.
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Someone knocked on Toph's door.
"Screw you, Sokka!" she shouted, not turning away from the rock she tossed from one hand to the other out of sheer boredom.
"It's not Sokka," came a familiar voice.
"Katara!" Toph jumped excitedly to her feet from her reclined position on her bad and ran to the door. "What are you doing here?"
"I came to see you," Katara explained simply as she and her friend shared a hug. "How are you, Toph? What's going on with you and Sokka."
"Nothing's going on," Toph said shortly. "And I'm doing great."
"Right…" Katara said doubtfully. "You, uh, seem really great."
"How are you, Katara," Toph quickly changed the subject. "You and Aang are officially over. How's that going?"
Katara said nothing, hurt by her friend's sudden harshness.
"I'm sorry, Katara. That came out wrong," she apologized. "I just…how are you doing?"
"I'm great, too," Katara forced herself to say.
"You know I can tell you're lying, right? Heartbeat?"
Katara flinched, caught in the lie. "It's just…I'm so frustrated with everything, Toph! I just needed your company for a while because you're, well, you, Toph."
"Uh…thanks, I guess?"
"What I mean is, you're not, like, so concerned with everything I do, and you actually care about me and not who I'm dating," she explained. "I've gone out on dates and stuff this past month. There are plenty of interested guys because, well, I dated the Avatar, but we go out on these dates, and they're really nice guys, but then they get all intimidated because I was with Aang. They're going out with me and leaving me because I was the Avatar's girlfriend, and it's just so stupid. I have no one to talk to about it because all the other girls are either angry that I'm suddenly available and I guess competition for them, and then other girls are just always bugging me about who I'm going out with and who I like and all of this, but then there are other girls who pretend to be nice and interested, but they're really just angry, and I really hate it!"
As her friend panted angrily after her cathartic rush, Toph remained silent, allowing her a chance to calm down before she spoke.
"You might be a girly girl and a total mom, Katara, but you're no cat," she finally comforted.
"And the worst part is that I don't even care," Katara continued. "I don't care that the guys break up with me before we even go on a second date. The truth is that I haven't liked any of them enough to care. And there have been several! I've probably dated over half of the guys in the Northern Water Tribe who aren't married and aren't as old as the glaciers."
"Why don't you like any of them?" Toph asked calmly.
"I don't know," Katara said, gripping her hair tightly in her frustration.
"Are you sure?" The question sounded insistent, but Toph was not.
"I don't know!" Katara repeated. "They're just not right for me, I guess. They're…"
Silence.
"They're not Aang."
Toph held her friend comfortingly in her arms as Katara proceeded to break down into tears.
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"Did you take those flowers over to Toph's, Meng?"
"Yeah, first thing this morning," Meng replied, sweeping off the balcony outside her and the other groupies' communal apartment.
"Awesome, I owe you one," Stonehenge said, grinning. "She'll probably hate them, but I still wanted to give her some."
"I think it was sweet," Meng approved. "All girls like flowers, even if they don't admit it. It's just so romantic when a guy shows he cares!"
Forgetting her task, she heaved a dreamy sigh as images of chivalrous knights and beautiful ladies danced behind her eyes. Stonehenge watched her in amusement.
"I see you doing that a lot," he said, nodding to the broom clutched passionately in her hands.
"Yeah, I know," Meng said, returning to the present. "I just like to. I had all kinds of chores when I helped out at Aunt Wu's, so I just feel lazy if I don't help out here, too. Sometimes I even clean up after you fighters; and by the way, I've never met a more complete pack of slobs."
"Hey, I am not a slob. My mom would beat the crap out of me if I were even half as messy as some of these guys," Stonehenge defended.
"Oh, please, I've found your dirty underwear lying on the floor just as much as the next guy's," Meng snickered.
"Hey, nobody's perfect," he shrugged. "Not us, not the gods, not even the Avatar."
Meng looked sharply at him. "Do you have something against Aang?" she asked touchily. "With him being one of Toph's best friends?"
"With him? No, he seems nice enough. It's his friend who's going to try to be a problem. But what's got you so rattled over the Avatar? Do you like hi-…ooh…" he realized with a burgeoning grin.
Meng glared daggers at him, then heatedly resumed her sweeping.
"So that's why you were so eager to take the flowers over! Jeez, you girls are so crafty when you like a guy." Stonehenge shook his head bemusedly. "Okay, that's nice and all, but you do know he probably has a girlfriend already, right?" he pointed out matter-of-factly.
"Actually, I happen to know he doesn't have one because they broke up a month ago," Meng retorted snippily.
"Really?" he asked, mildly curious. "She's a fool for it. Aang's a good kid."
She whipped around to face him. "He doesn't need your approval!"
Stonehenge met her eyes quietly, unperturbed.
"You're a good kid, too," he said. "I hope things work out for you."
Conversation over as far as it concerned him, he left, and Meng glowered after him.
"Jerk," she muttered.
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Aang glided down from the sky and landed in front of Toph's door. "Guys, I'm back!" he called cheerily, entering through the front hall and into the living room where he found Toph sipping tea from a seat on the floor.
"Welcome back, Twinkletoes. Where did you disappear to?" Toph asked.
"Oh, I just went to see Meng and talk with her about, uh, stuff," he blushed with a sheepish smile.
"Hi, Aang."
His heart skipped a beat, and his chest seized up as he turned to see Katara come into the room with a plate of cookies.
"Katara…" he breathed.
"Hi, Aang," she repeated, hesitated to meet his eyes, but when she did, he saw they were full of emotion, and his heart welled up to see them so.
"Oh, come on," Toph said loudly from the floor. "You guys knew you'd have to see each other again at some point, so can we just skip all the awkwardness and go one with it, please?"
"Toph!" Aang and Katara snapped angrily in unison.
"Just sayin'," Toph shrugged, picking at her teeth.
"She's right, though, Aang—as crude as she is!"—she snarled around Aang's shoulder to Toph, who merely continued to pick her teeth—"Things don't have to be weird, do they? I mean, we were friends first, so we can be friends again, right?"
She acutely remembered what he had said over a month ago.
Maybe someday we can be friends again, but not yet.
She waited for his response and prayed that he felt differently now.
Aang hated to see her so shy and vulnerable around him, and it almost made him want to yell at her anyway. However, his new manta "gotta move on" repeated over and over in his head, so he said with a friendly smile, "We'll always be friends, Katara. You know that."
"And what I said before…—he remembered it, too—back then…it was because I was angry. I'm sorry I hurt you," he apologized.
"I'm sorry I hurt you, too, Aang!" Tears gathered at the corners of her eyes, but she felt her spirits lift at his words.
"And I'm sorry I don't have any cookies in my mouth!" Toph interjected.
"Cookies?" Sokka stuck his head in through the backdoor from his sulky seat on Toph's porch.
"Fine," Katara sighed, setting the plate of cookies down next to the afternoon pot of tea on the low table, just as Toph and Sokka made a mutual dive for them. She sat down beside Toph and grumbled, "You guys can never wait, even when something important's going on."
"Just drink your tea, Sugar Queen. Moment's over," Toph said brusquely, but she gave her friend's hand an encouraging squeeze.
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Later than evening when the others had gone to sleep, Aang snuck out of the apartment and took off on his glider. He soared on the nighttime breeze until he came to the intended balcony. He knocked softly but insistently on the glass door and waited as he heard someone come shuffling to answer it. The door slid open.
"Aang, what are you—?"
She stopped talking when she saw the intensity in his eyes.
"Meng, I have a favor to ask you."
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To be continued…
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A/N:
And here is chapter thirteen, and nothing terribly unlucky happened! Or has happened…eek!
I am severely tired right now, but I managed to pull this chapter together, so thank goodness for that! I am looking forward to writing the coming chapters because things are going to be getting a bit tricky, trying to juggle all these characters and their dramas and such, so I plan to rest up quite a bit in order to be mentally equipped! That's my little rhyme for you guys. Hope you liked it! And I hope you liked the chapter as well! Peace out!
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P.S.
Avatar does not belong to me, but thank you everyone for all your kind reviews! I can't wait to read some more, please! /wink/ lol