Chapter Nineteen
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Reasons for Loving and Reasons for Fighting
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She rushed out into the night air, ignoring the sour-face attendant's startled shriek; and not quite knowing where to go, she simply kept running.
"Katara!" she heard him shout behind her.
"No, no, no!" she pled silently. It hurt too much right now to think why she said 'no,' and the only thing she could process was that she did not want to face him.
Aang's legs had grown quite long over the years, however, and he quickly caught up to her.
"Katara, stop!" He reached out for her, but missed as she darted to the side to evade him. "Damn it, just stop!"
The Bei Fong yard sported beautiful, luscious grass, but as Aang Earthbended it, the ground beneath tore the green apart and shot up into three walls, enclosing Katara with no way out but through him.
"Let me go, Aang!" she screamed.
"Why won't you face me!" he shouted back.
"Because I don't want to hear it!"
"Hear what?"
"Any of it! That it's over between us, that you've found someone else, that you love her—" She sobbed and swung around, so he couldn't see her completely breaking down.
"Look, it's not—" he began, taking a step toward her.
"I'm telling you to leave me alone!" she barked savagely as he continued to approach her.
"Katara, I—" he tried again, just behind her, reaching out to her.
"Damn it, Aang!" she shouted, whipping around, fists clenched to give him all the reasons in the book why guys needed to shut up and listen when a girl said 'no'…but she accidentally slugged him upside the head.
"Ow!" he cried, falling backward. "Holy Aa—! I mean, me—! I mean…God damn it, Katara!"
"I'm sorry!" she cried, dropping to her knees beside him. "That wasn't—! I didn't—! It was an accident!"
"Well, try not to have any more accidents that have to do with my face!" he shouted, stretching his jaw around to make sure it wasn't broken. It wasn't, thankfully, though it popped audibly.
"Aang, I'm sorry," Katara repeated.
"What were you thinking? Why the hell did you do that?" he asked harshly.
"I wasn't trying to hurt you, Aang! I never have, and I never will, but you never understand that! You play the victim, like I'm trying to hurt you on purpose, and you make it all my fault, but you know what Aang? I'm not the one who brought a date to the party tonight!" She was breathing hard, too mad for tears now.
Aang stared at her, stunned.
"All I ever did was love you, Katara, and you broke up with me," he said. "What did you want me to do?"
"Not fall in love with someone else less than two months later!" she shouted.
"That's not fair. How many guys have you dated since we broke up? Five? Ten? The entire male population of the Northern Water Tribe?!"
She slapped him. Hard.
"Ow!" he yelled.
"Congratulations, Aang," she snapped, standing to her feet. "That time I did mean to hurt you."
And she stalked away into the night.
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Meng didn't know what to do or where to go. She leaned her back against the wall and slid to the floor with the vague notion that she should stay there in case Aang came back for her.
But she knew he wasn't going to.
She knew as soon as his fingers parted from hers.
No, she knew as soon he saw her. It was all over from there.
But she still held out hope.
Zuko spotted her there, and excusing himself from the gaggle of arrogant young men attempting to brownnose its way into his good graces, he made his way over to her.
"Where's Aang?" he asked.
"He left," she replied dully.
"Then why are you still here?"
"Because," she murmured. "He didn't want me…"
"He didn't want you to what?" Zuko asked, seeking clarification.
"No. He just…didn't want me," she repeated, and saying it out loud drove the point home for her, and tears welled up in her eyes.
"Katara showed up," she continued, unable to stop now that she had started. "She just showed up, and then he's gone, like I never even existed, he just leaves me here so he can run off after her! Why? I thought he really liked me this time!" She buried her face in her arms.
Zuko sat down beside her, his back to the wall as well, and he said, "He does really like you. He wouldn't make you think he did if he didn't. And he certainly wouldn't make out with you in the other room in the middle of his friend's party if he didn't either."
Meng's head shot up, a blush buzzing at her cheeks.
"Yeah," Zuko said. "It wasn't that subtle."
"But what I'm trying to tell you is not to doubt Aang's feelings for you. He takes them seriously, and he takes yours seriously as well. But what you both need to accept is that he should never have started dating you. He cares more about Katara than he does anyone else in the world, and she feels the same way about him, and no matter what happens on this little 'break' thing they're on, nothing's going to change that." He paused. "You knew it was going to end up this way."
Meng affirmatively choked on a sob and covered her face again.
"Katara's a lovely girl; she's a strong woman and a powerful Waterbender. But you have your own charms, Meng," he reassured her.
Meng nodded, encouraging him to go on. The skin around her eyes had turned red, and she wiped her nose with her sleeve.
Zuko pretended not to see this.
"You have your own charms," he repeated. "And you should remind yourself of those."
Whatever they are, he thought to himself.
"Thank you, Zuko," Meng murmured with a smile. "You don't look like the kind of person who could make others feel better, but I do feel a little bit less like going after Katara and pulling all her pretty hair out."
"You're welcome…" Zuko said slowly, the corner of his lip twitching as he attempted to return her smile.
Whatever they are indeed.
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Sokka woke from a bad dream.
And into another one.
"Where am I?" he asked angrily of the person looming over him.
"You're in one of the hundreds of rooms on the Bei Fong property."
"What happened?"
"You fell. Hit your head a little. Cut your neck. Lost some blood. Passed out."
Sokka grimaced in humiliation.
"One more question," he said. "What the hell are you doing here?"
"Keeping an eye on your wuss of an ass while Sweetfeet waves away all her guests at her parents' command," Stonehenge shrugged. "Just trying to help out my little lady."
"She's not your little lady!" Sokka snarled, trying to sit up but falling back as his neck smarted fiercely from the strain.
"Sudden movements are not your friend right now," Stonehenge stated.
"You don't even know her," Sokka spat, ignoring his temporary caretaker's words.
"I've known her since she won the Earth Rumble Six Championship," Stonehenge said. "I was ten-years-old and could barely Earthbend when she beat up the biggest and the baddest of them like they weren't anything. Just this little blind girl no one took seriously, and she made everyone take her seriously because fighting is her life and what she's better at doing than anyone else. Even though she's blind. Or because she's blind, whichever. But she made me want to take on the world, despite my own handicap."
"Why, what's wrong with you? Muscles crowding out your brain?" Sokka wisecracked.
"No," Stonehenge said coolly, not losing his temper over Sokka's angry remarks.
"Then what? What's got you so handicapped and sad and pitiable?"
"Nothing now," the Earthbender said. "But it used to be a problem. You see, I'm blind in one eye." He pulled down the bottom lid of the eye in question, as if this would show the blindness of it.
"I might not have actually met Toph for a long time, but I've known her my whole life, or at least the part of it I care to remember. By watching her I saw it was possible to 'see' through vibrations in the earth, and I've been working on it ever since. She's why I'm a prodigy. She's the woman who made me into the man I am today."
"Why are you telling me this?" Sokka asked warily.
"Because I am in love with Toph and will stop at nothing to be with her," Stonehenge avowed. "And the sooner you accept that, the easier your life will be."
"Like hell I'm ever going to accept something like that!" Sokka shouted, pushing forward again only to collapse back onto the pillow panting.
"I'll take over now, Stonehenge," Toph said from the doorway. "You're welcome to stay in one of the guestrooms tonight, so go get some rest."
Stonehenge glanced down at a glaring Sokka, shrugged, and left without another word.
Toph approached the foot of the bed, and Sokka had to crane his neck rather painfully to see her, but it was so worth it.
"You're gorgeous, Toph," he said.
He thought she was going to blush and say something along the lines of 'thank you', but she did neither of these things.
"This isn't me, Sokka. This is money. This is my parents' money and servants trying to make me into something I'm not," she said seriously. "I don't know what I look like, but I know when I feel like I'm not in my own skin."
"It was just a complement, Toph," Sokka said gently.
"But it isn't to me! Don't you get that? You say I'm beautiful or whatever, but you're not saying it to me, you're saying it to the clothes and the makeup and the jewelry. Not all girls want to try so hard to be liked—I want to be liked for being me," she owned, her eyebrows knotting with the pain of her honesty.
"Toph," Sokka murmured. "I do think you're beautiful. You're the most beautiful girl I know."
"Because I'm the richest girl you know! You don't get it! You—"
"Toph!" he practically yelled.
She fell silent.
"I get it."
Toph's eyes wandered away from his general direction.
"Is this about Suki?"
"No," she lied.
Sokka waited for her to come clean and would wait as long as necessary, and she knew it.
"Fine," she grumbled. "Yeah, it kind of is. You kind of dropped everything and everyone else whenever she and her pretty face came along. You forgot I existed. You stopped talking to me and being my best friend, all because she would make out with you and make you feel like you never had to worry about anything. And then when you guys broke up, you were still hung up on her, and you didn't even notice when I practically threw myself at you."
She found it difficult to continue.
"I tried so hard, Sokka."
"I'm sorry," he said. "I just…I don't know. I guess I was just blind to it. But I'm not now, so if your feelings are still the same—"
"My feelings concerning you don't matter," she interrupted. "That's because all you care about right now is competing with Stonehenge and showing him you're better by waving me around like a prize."
"What?" Sokka shouted. "What the hell, Toph?"
"Sokka, I'm in the ring five nights a week. I know what testosterone and adrenaline smell like," she said firmly. Then quietly, "And I know you, and I know when you're completely serious and when you're not."
"I am serious," he insisted as she walked to the door. "Toph, wait! I lo—"
"No," she interjected. "You're jealous and pissed off at a fifteen-year-old boy who will never have a shot with me anyway."
"He's fifteen?!" Sokka cried in horrified disbelief.
This was, however, the wrong thing to say, and Toph slammed the door behind her as she promptly stalked out of the room.
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Fin
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Just kidding.
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To be continued…
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A/N:
Woah! Emotional answers revealed! I quite like how this chapter came out. It's dramatic, but it still has some funny in there because, well, with all the broken hearts running wild now, it would just be too depressing for everything to be all tears. Besides, humor pervades all aspects of life, even the parts that don't feel at all funny to us in our times of emotional nadir.
This story might not end happily for all, but I will do my best to provide some happy side for all.
As always, thank you for reading, and please leave a review.
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P.S.
I do not own Avatar, but I do own Stonehenge and his fifteen-year-old self of character twists and turns. heee