Another Avatar University Story

Chapter Nineteen

"Who invited this guy here?"

Sokka was the first to break the silence, looking wicked pissed, understandably so. The only other time he had encountered Zuko was on that first day of university for his little sister. He had a crease between his brows, which continued to crease more and more. His arms were tight to his sides and, after quickly ducking underneath the table to 'fix my shoelaces', I could see him clenching his fists, getting ready to sock him straight in his jaw.

"Why are you here, Zuko?"

Yue was next in line, looking just as mad as Sokka was. Though she was reserved in outwardly showing her discontent with Zuko's presence, she still showed off to the rest of us, but more importantly to Zuko, that she did not like him being around. She crossed her arms, crossed her legs, and tapped her foot on the floor loudly and pronounced, just enough for Zuko to hear.

"Ozai's kid? That piece of shit?"

While Sokka and Yue were at least respectful to the guy, Toph was straight up open and unfiltered and rightfully so. It was Zuko's father that held her family by the skin of their teeth through the volume of business the two families did with each other.

While the three people opposite of us were visibly seething and gearing up to serve some sort of vigilante justice to Zuko, Katara and I were much more cool and reserved. In the time it took for me to walk here, I thought over Zuko's case. Katara was never one to lie and when she did try to it wouldn't take long for me to figure it out. So, I concluded to this end that Zuko might not be what he appears to be. Save for the scar, he doesn't look like the ruthless type. How did he even get that scar?

"The scar's because of my father. I see you staring at it."

Lost in thought, I forgot the fact that I might've been staring at Zuko's scar on the right- no, left side of his face. I began to rub the back of my neck in embarrassment; doing this was muscle memory at this point.

"There's no need to be embarrassed about it. You don't mind if I pull up a chair here?" Zuko asked, panning his head around the table.

Sokka straightened himself and raised a finger. "Actually I mind-"

"Of course not; Go ahead." Katara interjected, cutting Sokka off. Both Zuko and Katara smiled at each other which was followed by Zuko pulling over a chair from a nearby table. Setting the chair in front of our booth backwards with the backrest facing away from the table, he sat down in the chair and hunched over the backrest.

"I figured none of you would want me to sit down in the same booth as you all." Zuko spoke up as he ran his fingers through his hair. He drew deep breaths and exhaled, signalling to me he was about to do something big. The rest of our table sat in silence.

Drawing in one last breath and exhaling it all out, his shoulders rising and falling, he looked up to face us all. "Listen first off, I just want to apologize for everything I've done to ya'll," he started, steering his head to face Sokka. "Sokka, I shouldn't have done what I did with Katara that first day for Uni. I've been struggling with it ever since then and it didn't sit right with me after that. I promise you it won't happen again."

Sokka, still clutching his fists, began to loosen up from his tense state. I switched my view from Sokka to Zuko and back to Sokka and saw that it wasn't because of Zuko's words that made him loosen up. Confused as to Sokka's change of face, I looked over to Katara and saw no resentment towards Zuko. She sat there, looking at Zuko and Sokka with a small smile on her face. Then, Sokka spoke up. "I'm only going to forgive you because it looks like my sister has already forgiven you for what you did. But if I see you do that shit again," Sokka finally raised his fist from under the table, "This is coming to sock you straight in the gut exactly how you did it to Aang."