For Zuko, love looks like a fist coming fast.

His parents argue in the kitchen while he sits on the living room couch, watching Rugrats. His sister is somewhere outside, screaming at a rabbit she can't catch.

A plate breaks and Zuko winces, his heart hammering in his chest. He lowers the volume, trying to make out what they're saying.

"You disgust me," his mother says. Her voice is hoarse from yelling and crying. "You think I like living with you?"

Ozai isn't yelling anymore. He's growling something low, and Zuko knows his father is awful close to Mom. He gets up, hands shaking, and approaches the hall leading to the kitchen. He peaks around the corner and sees Ozai has his mom's work blouse bunched up in his fist. She's only got two blouses for the diner. She asks Zuko to do the laundry every few days because they smell like kitchen grease and have coffee stains.

Zuko steps into the kitchen and mutters, "Stop that." His father turns to look at him. He's wearing a wifebeater and his arm muscles are bugling. He growls.

For Zuko, love looks like a fist coming fast.

Zuko doesn't say a single word throughout his homeroom and first period class. He stares at his sneakers and nothing the teachers are saying registers. He thinks about how he found the rabbit dead outside that morning, cut open with organs hanging out.

"Azula, what did you do?" he yelled as his sister out in the front yard. She adjusted the straps of her backpack right before stepping onto her bus. She turned her head and smirked at him. "Just a little experiment."

Zuko sits alone at lunch. He pushes his rice and beans around but doesn't eat much. He drinks juice from the juice box because that's all he can stomach, the image of the dead rabbit flashing through his mind.

"Hey, man, want my oatmeal cookie?"

When Zuko looks up, a guy with a mostly-shaved head and a ponytail is standing behind him, offering him a misshapen cookie in a plastic bag. Zuko thinks he recognizes him from somewhere. He hangs out with a girl that looks a lot like him – the same tan skin and dark hair.

Zuko takes the cookie. "Thanks."

"Phew, finally. I'm glad someone likes those nasty things. See, Katara?" The boy is yelling at someone at a lunch table at the far end of the cafeteria. "I'm not wasting food!"

Zuko turns his head. He spots her: a girl sitting at the end of a long table with a group. Her friends are laughing, but she's scowling at the cookie boy – her brother, Zuko realizes. She's wearing a cheerleader's uniform. That's how Zuko knows her. He's seen her walking around in the pack they usually travel in around school. Usually her hair is up in a high ponytail, but it's down today, long and wavy.

The boy nods at Zuko. "Later, man."

Later, at the end of the day, when he gets his appetite back, Zuko retrieves the cookie from his backpack and munches on it while sitting in the back of Mr. Bumi's chemistry class. It's not bad. A little too sweet for his taste, but it's something to hold him over. He watches Mr. Bumi flailing his arms and arching his eyebrow at the students, as if trying to intimidate them into understanding the periodic table. He leaves Zuko alone, though. Everyone does.

He's pulling textbooks out of his backpack to put in his locker when he senses someone beside him. When he closes it shut, a girl is smiling at him.

The smile instantly falters. Zuko is wearing a hoodie, but the purple bruise blooming on his left eye is hard to miss when someone is looking at him directly. She is. Katara.

She clears her throat and attempts a smile again. "Come support the homecoming game?" She offers him a neon green flyer with black letters and a WordArt cartoon of a football player throwing a football. Zuko doesn't move to take it.

"No thanks," he says, shutting his locker closed and pulling his backpack over his shoulders. Katara's eyes are big and blue, and a frown forms in between them. He wonders if she's wearing contacts. The way they contrast with her skin, they don't seem real.

"Why not?" she asks.

He wishes she would move on to soliciting someone else. "Because," he grates. "I don't like games."

"Don't you want to support your classmates? The bigger the crowd, the more chance of us winning."

Support his classmates? Zuko scoffs. What have they ever done to deserve that? They don't cheer him on when he's trying not fail his geometry test. "I don't care if we win." She opens her mouth, like she's about to protest again, but he cuts her off. "And I don't like cheerleaders."

He walks away before she could try and convince him again, but he caught sight of the way her shoulders tensed and her hands balled into fists, crumpling the remaining papers in her hands. She was angry. Good. Cheerleaders were too preppy for their own good, anyway.

"I can't believe it!" Katara exclaims. She's pushing down the skin under her eye so she has a smoother surface on which to paint her eyeliner. "I've never met anyone so rude. That boy has no school spirit."

"What did you say his name was again?" Toph's voice echoes against the linoleum bathroom walls. She's sitting on the sink counter, back against the wall, feet kicked up.

"I don't know his name," Katara says. "But if I did, I would add an expletive in front of it."

Toph laughs. "You wouldn't swear if your life depended on it."

Katara sighs and studies her reflection in the mirror. "Yeah, well, I'd make an exception for him."

"If you say he had a bruise over his eye, that might be Zuko. He's in my chemistry class," Toph says. She pulls up her knees and picks at the hole that is ripped in her jeans above one knee, making it bigger. "I'm surprised he talked to you. That kid never talks. I don't think I know what his voice sounds like."

"It sounds annoying," Katara says, her anger refusing to wane. The Kyoshi High cheerleaders had been practicing for this game for weeks. How dare this Zuko kid act like he was so above them? Though musing about Toph's comment, Katara is remembering how unusual the sound of his voice was. Kind of grating and low, but not entirely unpleasant. It was his words that were unpleasant.

"I think he has some trouble at home," Toph says.

Katara shrugs. "Well, it doesn't excuse being a jerk." But she remembers the bruise again. How huge it was, covering his whole eye. One big purple blotch. Whatever. It wasn't really her business.

Zuko doesn't mean to end up at the homecoming game.

He snuck under the bleachers after school just to have a smoke. He didn't want to take the bus, and his house was close enough to walk to. He didn't want to go home straight away so the smell didn't cling to his clothes as much. His mom would get sad if she found out he picked up his father's habit.

That and it's Friday, which means his dad would be home all weekend. Ozai goes heavier on the beer cans on Friday, sitting motionless in front of the TV. Zuko used to worry about leaving Azula alone. But she sheds no tears whether he's there or not, and Ozai never touches her. He just chuckles when she shows him a Barbie doll she had 'choked' with a metal tie she got from a bag of Wonder Bread. "That's my girl," he would gruff. "You've got more balls than your brother."

Zuko is just finishing one cigarette and pulling out another when he hears voices approaching the bleachers.

"What do you mean it's too short? All the girls are wearing these skirts! They have spankies underneath."

The voice is familiar. Zuko is well-hidden, but it makes him tense up. He stands, putting his hand against the metallic bottom of the seats so he doesn't bump his head. Through the slats between rows, he sees two pairs of feet stomping across an aisle. One pair is wearing dark skinny jeans. The other is a pair of tan legs with high socks.

"I don't like it, Katara. Think the other boys won't be ogling at you? Are you trying to tempt them to do something to you?"

"Do something to me?" Katara sounds incredulous. Zuko can picture her balling her fists again. "What is that supposed to mean? Is that what you really think of your buddies? Would you let something happen?"

"I wouldn't. You know that. I'm just saying, with you looking like that, it's a possibility."

It takes Zuko a moment, but he realizes he knows the boy's voice. It's Jet. Him and Zuko went to the same middle school. They used to be friends, but that was before Jet got in with the football team. He only ever acknowledged Zuko with a terse nod in the hallways. He was always picking his teeth with a toothpick in class. Zuko didn't feel like he was missing out, especially not now.

"I can't believe you're even entertaining that possibility." Katara's voice is shaking in that way Mom's sometimes shakes when she's crying, Zuko thinks.

"I'm only trying to protect you."

"Whatever. I'll see you after the game." Zuko watches Katara's feet swivel and begin to walk away, but she abruptly stops, one of her legs hovering in the air.

"Let go of me!"

"Don't be upset. I don't want you upset."

Zuko hears Katara grunt, trying to pull away her arm from Jet's grip. Zuko's heart begins to race. He hates that he's there, listening to this. He's worried they'll smell the cigarette smoke.

"It's too late for that!"

"Come and kiss me, at least. A good luck kiss before the game."

There's a pause in the struggle. No words pass between them, but Jet and Katara's knees come close and face each other. Katara stands up on her tiptoes, then leaves without another word.

Zuko waits another hour before he gets up to go. Students start climbing up on the bleachers. At first he is annoyed, wondering why everyone else decided this was a good hangout spot all of a sudden. That's when he remembers about the game and decides to get out of there as quickly as possible.

"I thought you said you didn't like games."

He knows the voice before he sees her. When he turns his head, sure enough, Katara and a few other cheerleaders are standing by the gate to the football field, preparing to run out and hype up the crowd. A few of them are leaning on the fence, others are stretching. Katara is the only one facing him, arms folded. Her eyes are bloodshot.

He looks down at the dirt. "I don't."

"And yet you're here. Did you come here to boo your team?"

"I was just leaving."

"Great!"

He can't quite meet her eyes, but he looks at her feet, clad in white shoes. He can't stop the words before they leave his mouth. "You should break up with him."

Katara blinks at him. He can see some of the other cheerleaders craning their heads. One of them, a girl with a brown bob and winged eyeliner, quirks up an eyebrow, looking between him and Katara. She blows her gum and it pops.

"What?" Katara says. She's still angry, not processing what he had just said.

"Your boyfriend, Jet. He's not a good guy. You should break up with him."

Katara's arms drop to her sides. "How did you – How is that any of your business? Are you following me?"

Zuko lets out a dry laugh. "Trust me, I'm not running into you by choice. You should be more careful about where you have your lovers' quarrels."

He walks away again, but this time she shouts after him. She says his name at some point, and he's surprised she even knows it.

When Zuko gets back home, there are two cop cars on the front lawn. One of them had knocked down a birdfeeder, one of the only nice aspects of their house.

His mother spills out onto the porch, long black hair disheveled and tear tracks on her face. She's still beautiful, even with the hint of laugh lines forming and her mascara clumping.

"Zuko, where the hell have you been?"

"I was at school. What's going on, Mom?"

Dad's car isn't in the driveway.

She pulls him into a hug and lets out a strangled sob. "We're leaving, baby. You and Azula have to pack your bags. We're leaving."