Chapter Text
Sokka Aputi was not ashamed of his apartment. He liked where he lived. Sure, it was small, and the furniture was old, but it was nice.
But that didn’t mean he wanted to show it to Zuko Caldera.
If it were up to him he wouldn’t. But the library was closed and Zuko said he wanted to review the stuff they learned last week, and Sokka felt like he owed it to him after Halloween. Plus Katara was at dance and Gran Gran had her weekly bingo game, so the apartment would be empty, and Zuko didn’t seem to want to do the session at his house. When Sokka suggested it, Zuko got all stiff and awkwardly mentioned his dad didn’t like guests coming over if he hadn’t already met them.
Sokka wasn’t dumb. He could read between the lines.
The pair set their things down on the small dining table.
“Do you want something to drink?” Sokka asked, because if Gran Gran weren’t at bingo she would lecture him on proper hosting. He opened the fridge. “We have water.” It was pretty barren. There wasn’t any liquid - unless… He picked up a bottle that was shoved to the back of the fridge. “We have,” he read the label, “...ranch. Okay we have water, do you want water?”
Zuko smiled, “I’ll take a glass of water.”
Sokka obliged and sat down next to him. “So, centripetal force is giving you trouble?”
Zuko groaned, “It's horrible.” He reached into his bag and pulled out his textbook
“Oh hey! How’d you do on the last test? The one on moments?” Sokka asked.
Zuko blushed a little and handed Sokka his test.
“A 93? Zuko, that’s great!” Sokka exclaimed, letting the pride - of himself for his great tutoring skills, no doubt - slip into his voice.
“Yeah well,” Zuko rubbed the back of his neck with his hand. “I had a pretty good tutor.”
Their eyes met. Sokka realized he hadn’t really looked in Zuko’s eyes, not without looking at his scar. Not in a judgy way, it was just a very prominent feature. But now, it didn’t draw Sokka’s attention. He just looked into the boy's hazel eyes that showed a smile better than his mouth ever would. Once he realized he’d probably been staring too long he looked away.
“Well if you get moments, you’ll get centripetal force,” Sokka said, a bit too loudly, “It’s just like, whatever force keeps something moving in a circle. It’s any force that repeatedly directs an object to the center of a circular rotation.”
Zuko looked at him, dumbfounded.
“Did I lose y-”
“That’s it?!?” Zuko slammed his hands on the table and stood up.
“Well like, basically,” Sokka said. “There’s some other stuff, but that’s the gist.”
“Then why did it take this textbook twelve damn pages to explain that?” Sokka could practically see the steam coming out of Zuko’s ears.
Sokka smirked, “I guess you could say the writer… goes in circles. ”
“I’m too angry at this textbook to be angry at that awful joke.”
“Sit down, there’s a bit more.”
Zuko reluctantly sat down with a humph. Sokka held back a smile.
“Centripetal force is not a type of force,” Sokka explained, “It’s the effect a force has on an object that keeps it rotating. Any force can be a centripetal force. Gravity is the classic example.”
“What’s all the stuff about centrifugal force?” Zuko asked.
“Oh that’s different.” Sokka paused. “Also not real.”
Zuko stared at him blankly.
“It’s how it appears as though an object being acted on by centripetal force is moving outward from its point of rotation,” Sokka said. “Like when you're in the car, and you take a sharp turn, and you feel like you’re being pushed outward.”
“What do you mean that’s not real?”
Sokka shrugged, “It’s just inertia. Think about it, if I were swinging a yoyo around by it’s string, the tension in the string is the centrifugal force, right? But if the string breaks, the yoyo-y part-”
“The disks.”
“Sure, the disks, aren’t gonna fly outward from my hand, they’ll keep going in a straight line equivalent to whatever part of the rotation they’re in,” Sokka explained.
“Why do we learn about it if it’s not real?” Zuko asked.
“We learn tons about fake stuff in English.”
Zuko scowled, “Don’t diss English.”
“Of course you like English,” Sokka laughed.
“You don’t?”
“Nah. Nothing against the subject in particular,” Sokka admitted, “it’s just that the writing and the reading are more Katara’s thing.”
“You can’t have the same ‘thing’?”
“You know how competitive siblings are.”
Zuko scoffed, “Trust me, I know. I hate my sister.”
Sokka smiled. He couldn’t say he felt the same about Katara. Yeah, she was annoying, but Sokka knew he couldn’t live without her. “Yeah, I love my sister but she’s just so… impressive”
“Is that bad?” Zuko asked.
“No, of course not,” Sokka sighed, “It just makes being her brother harder. When one sibling is a kind, caring, talented, smart, and intimidating young woman who got a full scholarship to an incredible private school, and the other’s biggest accomplishment is getting first place on Mario Kart live ONCE, it’s pretty clear which one is the password child.” Sokka laughed tensely. He hadn’t realized what he was saying until he said it. That was probably a little much. This was a tutoring session, not a therapy session. Sokka had to keep things relatively light, but his chest had a feeling that wasn’t where this was going to go.
“I think you're impressive,” Zuko shrugged. As if it were simple. As if it were a fact. There was a sincerity surrounding them that had never been there before. It wasn’t bad, per se, but it wasn’t comfortable. This wasn’t Sokka’s playing field.
“I didn’t know that you thought at all,” Sokka joked. That was enough discussion about himself.
“Ha ha,” Zuko rolled his eyes, then met Sokka’s, “but really, you are. You’re majorly underselling yourself.”
Sokka was glad his dark skin hid his flush. “Well, it’s the lack of attention the universe gives me,” he sighed dramatically. “I mean, you’re practically the embodiment of main character energy, what, with the constant scowl, the hair in your face, and that angsty scar-”
Zuko completely froze. Sokka snapped his mouth shut. Crap. What did he do? He was about to say something, apologize maybe, but Zuko beat him to the punch.
“I wanna tell you something,” he rushed out. He exhaled sharply, “And I’m not really sure why, because we don’t know each other very well, and the only people who know outside my family are Mai and Ty Lee, but something a-about this, about you, well, I want to tell you.”
Sokka nodded, he had no clue where this was going, but it was serious, he knew that much.
“But you can’t tell anyone, I mean ANYONE,” he ran his hand through his hair anxiously, “Not even your sister or parents or-”
“Zuko,” Sokka put his hand on Zuko’s in an attempt to comfort him, “I won’t. I swear. You can trust me.”
Zuko exhaled. “During the summer between Freshman and sophomore year, there was an incident. My father was really hoping I would take over the company-”
“Caldera Coal,” Sokka supplied.
“Right,” Zuko gulped, “So that summer he had me interning there. We would talk about funding and business suppliers and stuff, and things were going well. I mean, really well. Me and my father never really got along, but suddenly, things weren’t so bad. Then, he had me come to a meeting with some other higher-ups. They were talking about how to save money, and my father brought up lowering the lower level employees' pay. It was already at minimum wage, but a lot of the worker’s aren’t here legally so they don’t always look for a legal pay. I spoke up. Said I didn’t think it was fair.”
Zuko shook his head, almost regretfully.
“You did the right thing,” Sokka assured.
“Yeah, well my father didn’t think so,” Zuko scoffed. “He said I disrespected him. He took me down to the factory floor, and he- well, there are these boilers that they use to burn the coal and he pushed my face, like, against the walls of it.” Zuko gestured to his face.
Sokka was about to say something- anything but Zuko quickly continued. “I was okay, other than the scar. But then my dad kicked me out, plus there was a whole legal mess with the footage, so I stayed with my Uncle Iroh for Sophomore year. I completely didn’t hang out with Azula, Mai, or Ty Lee that whole year, but something must have happened because that summer Azula told me our father wanted me back and everything had been cleared up legally, so I went back. ”
“Ah,” Sokka said quietly. He was going to be sick. He imagined Zuko as a Freshman. Jesus, he was Aang’s age. He was younger than Katara. And his dad, the person who was supposed to teach him to ride a bike, tie his shoes, play catch, his dad burned his face. Sokka remembered the first day at Szeto, when he and his friends had joked about how Zuko got his scar, laughing, and, yup Sokka was going to be sick.
“I’m sorry,” Sokka said. What else could he say? What do you say when someone tells you that their parent did the most awful thing imaginable to them? “You didn’t deserve that,” he settled on. It didn’t feel like enough, but Sokka was in unfamiliar territory with all this emotional baggage. If he went to far, there is no way he wouldn’t fuck it up.
“I know,” Zuko shrugged. Sokka hoped he was telling the truth, the boy was usually pretty easy to read, but he was doing a pretty good job hiding his emotions now.
“Wait, are you living with your dad now?” Sokka asked. When Zuko nodded, he felt anger rise in his chest. “What? Why? What if-”
“Sokka,” Zuko interrupted, “stop. This is my life, it’s my choice. It’s not your business.”
“Okay. I’m sorry,” Sokka said. A tense silence filled the room. “You turned out pretty great,” after a moment the words slipped out of Sokka’s mouth before he could think. Most of the time his brain would move at speeds his mouth couldn’t even begin to follow, but occasionally his mouth would move at incredible speeds leaving his brain in the dust.
Zuko scoffed, “Are you kidding? I’ve been, like, a total asshole to you until very recently”
“Well, yeah. But you turned into an asshole,” Sokka argued, “I would have turned into, like, a supervillain if my dad had-“ he cut himself off. How could he even finish that sentence in a way that would be acceptable? If my dad had burned half my face off? If my dad had been an abusive asshat? If my dad had left a physical scar on my eye to match the billions of emotional scars left by years of trauma and psychological abuse that accumulated into being kicked out of my house at the age of fourteen?
“That’s not true,” Zuko rolled his eyes.
“You don’t think I would make a great supervillain?”
“I think you would be good no matter how you were raised. You would still be the smart, sarcastic, arrogant-“
“That started nice but now you’re just insulting me.”
“-weird, foolish-“
“Is this fun for you,” Sokka teased.
“-charming, hilarious, kind, good person that you are. Because that is you. Not what other people make, want, or expect of you. ” Zuko said this very confidently, before his eyes widened and his face flushed.
“Oh my! Why you little poet. You are more than an asshole.”
“Shut up.”
“No I’m sure the people would love to see such a caring Caldera, a zealous Zuko-“
“End this now!” Zuko groaned.
“But really,” Sokka redirected, “you’re very honorable. I’m so sorry that happened to you, it’s truly awful.” He thought about putting his hand on Zuko’s leg, but decided on a friendly shoulder pat.
“Wasn’t great,” Zuko admitted, ”but honestly, the fallout was worse. Sophomore year I didn’t have a single friend. Like, not one. I would go to school and I was just so alone. And I would come home and sometimes I would still just feel alone. It made me realize how conditional Mai, Ty Lee, and Azula’s friendship is. It took something that wasn’t even my fault for them to drop me. It just feels very non-concrete. Sorry, I’m rambling.”
Sokka was glad to hear Zuko confidently say it wasn’t his fault, because, of course it wasn’t. But Sokka had read stuff about abuse victims blaming themselves. He was not glad to hear about how difficult Zuko’s sophomore year was. “Well,” he said, “now you have at least one friendship that’s concrete.”
“Who?” Zuko asked.
“Me, dummy,” Sokka rolled his eyes.
“We’re friends?” Zuko questioned skeptically.
Sokka shrugged, “I could use some friends my sister didn’t make for me.”
Zuko scoffed, “Me too.”
Zuko smiled, and Sokka was sure he had never seen Zuko smile for real until then. No, how could he miss the way this completely lit up the room, put everything into technicolor.
Sokka was starting to enjoy these tutoring sessions a bit more.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Katara Aputi would be happy with any part. At least, that’s what she kept telling herself. It was just that her mom was in her highschool’s productions of The Nutcracker playing the Sugar Plum Fairy, and Katara really, really liked the costume ideas their ballet teacher was suggesting for it. No one else in the class seemed as anxious as her. Apparently Szeto’s ballet group did the Nutcracker every year the week before Christmas break, so to everyone else, this was just another production.
But Katara wasn’t quite sure she had the DNA to be chill about this (or anything for that matter). She paced the rehearsal room anxiously.
“Katara,” Ty Lee said, sitting on the floor, “You’ll be fine. Last week you said your audition went great.”
“I know,” Katara sighed and sat down next to her. “But what if it didn’t. I mean, what if I think it went well but it didn’t go well, and Mrs. Chen doesn’t think it went well because it didn’t go well”
Ty Lee laughed affectionately, “It went well. You’ll get a good part.”
“And if I don’t?” Katara asked.
Ty Lee shrugged, “Then you don’t. The world’s not gonna end because you didn’t get the part you wanted in your sophomore year production of The Nutcracker. I promise.”
“Yeah, I know,” Katara said. She looked at the other girls in the class. Gathered around someone's phone and laughing. Katara felt no envy, she knew she had surrounded someone to watch a stupid TikTok just last week. She was scared. Scared that she would lose them if she didn’t get cast. It wasn’t like she was fully friends with everyone, it was just via ballet. What would happen if they were all at rehearsals and she wasn’t. She didn’t want to lose them.
Ty Lee looked at her. “Look, no matter how this turns out, we’re all still gonna be your friends.” She had an uncanny ability to read people when she wanted to. “In fact, if you don’t get in or get a bad part, I will take you out to get boba. That way, no matter what happens, you get something good.”
Katara smiled, “Thank you, Ty Lee. You’re a good friend. ”
“Well, you say that now, you didn’t see me when I got ensemble last year,” Ty Lee laughed.
Katara’s anxiety came back with a vengeance. If Ty Lee, who could become a human pretzel, got ensemble her first year of dance, there was no way Katara could even get in.
Before she could slip further into her nervousness spiral, the clicks of Mrs. Chen ‘s heels rang throughout the room. She sighed as soon as she came to a halt, clicking her pen and flipping some papers over the top of her clipboard. She took off her square glasses, and rested them on the top of her head.
“The cast of Szeto High School’s 2024 production of the Nutcracker is as follows. The role of Clara will be played by Ty Lee Hirano, The role of Drosselmeyer will..”
Ty Lee squealed and drummed her hands on Katara’s shoulders in excitement. Katara smiled at her, despite the knot of anxiety in her stomach, which grew as their instructor continued to list the roles of Clara’s family, the nutcracker, and mouse king.
“The role of the Sugar Plum Fairy will be played by Katara Aputi, The role of Cavalier will…”
She felt the whole world freeze in that moment. It was real. She felt like she was in a TV show. Katara really got to do this? She turned to face Ty Lee’s, and she was smiling even bigger than when she heard about her own role.
Katara waited as patiently as she could manage as their instructor listed off more names. As soon as the list was done, Ty Lee let out another high pitched squeal.
“Katara!” She jumped up from her spot on the floor. “We did it!”
Katara stood up as well, her cheeks sore from how big she was smiling. When had she last smiled like this? She couldn’t remember. “Guess we’re not getting boba.”
Ty Lee laughed, “Actually, I think some celebratory boba is in order.”
“I like your style.”
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Toph Beifong wasn’t usually one to pre-plan, but she figured this was a special circumstance. She pulled her fist back and punched the bag again. And again. She thought about what her parents would think.
She hit harder.
They’d probably tell her this was a bad idea. That she could get hurt. But Toph wasn’t going to back down. Not when she was just a few matches away from a championship. She could do this, she could make it work, and her parents would be none the wiser.
Toph knew she was cutting it close. She barely spent any time at home - when she wasn’t wrestling, she was at the gym with The Boulder. On the occasions when she wasn’t, she was hanging out at Aang’s house or Katara and Sokka’s apartment.
The only things she did at home anymore were sleep and occasionally eat dinner. She was starting to feel kind of bad, actually. Her parents sounded sad whenever she would tell them she had something after school, but if they weren’t so overprotective, maybe she’d spend more time at home.
Her house was a cage, and Toph was not interested in being domesticated. She wanted to make mistakes, get hurt, and live life like other normal teenagers.
It was so blatantly clear when she was home that she wasn’t normal. When she was wrestling, she felt normal. When she was working out, she felt normal. When she was with her friends, she felt normal. But when she was home, she was bubble wrapped.
She punched the bag again, feeling her breathing get heavier. She plopped herself onto the bench near her and grabbed her water bottle.
“What time is it,” she called out to The Boulder.
“Uh… seven,” He said, breath hardly labored despite the fact that he hadn’t sat down in the whole 4 hours they were at the gym.
Wait… four hours?!?
“Shit,” Toph cried.
“What is wrong?” The Boulder asked, setting a barbell back down.
“I promised my parents I’d be home thirty minutes ago,” She said.
Toph opened up her phone as it read to her.
“You have 8 missed calls from ‘Mother’” The automated voice recited.
Toph had The Boulder rush her home, but for a generally reckless guy, he was an oddly safe driver, and would hardly go over the speed limit. Toph sent a quick text to her parents that she got caught up with a friend from GLEE club and would be home soon.
When she stepped into the house, her mother immediately hounded her.
“We agreed on a time sweetie, I was worried,” She said, popping the dinner that had gotten cold back into the microwave.
“I know,” Toph said, “sorry. I was hanging out with my friends from the GLEE club.”
“You always hang out at their houses.” Her mom pointed out, “You should invite them over sometime, we’d love to meet them.”
Alarm bells went off in Toph’s head. She was already doing so much to cover it up. Fake phone numbers of fake parents with fake addresses. Fake friends from a real club that she faked emails from. And it was working. She couldn’t mess this up now. Her mom took the food out of the microwave and gave it to her.
“Well,” Toph said, chewing, “one of the girls in the club has a trampoline, so we usually hang out at her house.”
Toph could feel herself getting more and more sucked into the vortex that was her fake life. She knew it wasn’t going to last forever. But that was just the thing. It didn’t need to last forever. Just until Earth Rumble 6 was done. Then she could go back to being a good daughter and not lying, she just needed one lick of freedom.
“Sweetie, trampolines are incredibly dangerous. Do you know how many kids break their legs on those every year?” Her mom fretted.
“Mom, it’s fine. It has a net, and I’m really careful, I swear,” Toph argued.
“Well… okay. As long as you’re careful.”
Toph ate in silence for a minute.
“So, when are your dad and I going to get to see you perform in GLEE club?”
Toph choked on her meal.
“Um, I think it’s sometime in December.”
What was she thinking?
“Well, we’ll be there sweetie,” Her mom kissed her on the head.
“Thanks mom,” Toph said, but she couldn’t ignore the guilt that settled into her stomach. She was almost used to it.