I'll Save You

The knock at the door startles them both, and Katara glances over to find Zuko’s eyes nearly as wide as her own. They’re in her dorm room, a tiny outpost in a land of chocolate, perfume, and hormones.

In other words, a world no man had the right to enter. If her roommates or dorm mother find him, there will be hell to pay.

“Katara? Guess who! Surprise! We’re here for Parent’s Day! Thought I’d take you out to dinner.”

The expression on Zuko’s face is priceless as he correctly identifies the voice, and Katara can’t help but laugh as she pushes him hurriedly into her closet.

“Don’t worry,” she whispers jokingly through the sliver of the door before it closes, “I’ll save you from my brother.”

Mask

His ear is pressed to the wood for the next several moments, and Zuko can faintly make out Sokka’s voice with Katara’s, as well as two other women he does not know. Letting curiosity take control, he cracks the door slightly and peers out of the gloom.

“-and Suki never let me come in hers!” Sokka was complaining, gesturing to one of the girls with him. “Come on, Katara, you’ve got to give me a tour! Even your ‘mother hen’ is giving me permission!” A thumb is jerked back to who Zuko recognizes belatedly as the dorm mother.

It takes only a second for him to process the rest of the request, and his heart is pounding furiously by the time Katara inserts herself between the closet and her brother. “Sokka, come on! You were in and out of my room all the time when we were little!” She barely catches her brother’s tan arm as it shoots out to reach past her.

“But girls are different when they live with other girls! They seem to have all these... ‘secrets,’” he replies, staring at her closet as if it holds that unspeakable reason why she is able to make it through the strangeness of a new school with an impenetrable wall of girls around her.

Zuko feels his blood run cold.

“Sokka,” Suki reproves, sounding irritated.

“Then how about we start with the bathroom?” Katara sighs in defeat, leading the rest out of her room and down the hall. Zuko takes this as his cue. Carefully, he sidles out the door and begins creeping for the exit. He’s good as sneaking, he reassures himself several times. His sister never caught him those two times he’d snuck a spider into her bed while wearing his blue spirit costume. He’s good.

“Eww, that’s gross, Katara. Forgetting your - what the hell?!”

Two pairs of surprised eyes meet in the hallway, and all thoughts of sneaking away are gone. Now it’s only him, Sokka, and all his memories of being threatened by a boy nearly a head taller than him. And Zuko’s brain tells his body to do the one thing he’s always meant to do but has never been able to pull off before.

He runs.

Quickly, his ego steps in to try and comfort his whimpering pride, reminding him firmly that, oh, he’s good. Zuko ignores the slap of a wet towel and a yelp as Sokka goes down hard in the hallway.

He’d just be a whole lot better with a mask.

Evidence

“Sokka.” Suki stands at the doorway to Katara’s dorm room with a hand rubbing her temples.

The young man is tearing through the room, tossing his sister’s books and belongings to and fro as he scourers for clues.

Katara pulls ineffectually at her brother’s arm. “What are you doing?! That’s my favorite CD!” She breathlessly snatches the tossed record.

“What is he doing?!!” Sokka shoots back, irrate.

The blue eyed girl winces. “It’s not what you think. We just met up in Spanish and wanted to catch up...” She trails off as her brother once again begins reducing her room to rubble.

“Katara, I swear, I’m gonna prove it to you that he’s a creepy, no-good jerk!” The mattress is rapidly flipped. “Come on! He has to have left something behind!” Sokka curses at finding the bedsprings amazingly lacking evidence to support his case.

When the room goes silent and his mortified gaze swings to her, though, Katara can only shiver in apprehension. “What?” she asks nervously.

“No,” her brother chokes out, stumbling forward to grab her waist. The moan is strangled as he stares at her stomach. “No, it can’t be! The only place is here!” A fire lights in his eyes as he stands up, turning for the door. “I’ll kill-!”

The end of the sentence cuts off with a thump as Sokka slides bonelessly to the floor. Suki stares at the fan she snatched from Sokka’s growing pile before turning cool eyes to the surprised and faintly impressed Katara. “I’m getting hungry,” is her only explanation.