Lost Arrow [A:TLA au]

twelve

CHAPTER TWELVE
( WISDOM, BRAVERY & TRUST )

"–OH! I DON'T REMEMBER this but Dad tells it to anyone who will listen. Anyway, waterbending is really close to my emotions, right? So there was this one time when Sokka and I were kids, Dad says I was around age three, and he was annoying me – y'know, as brothers usually do – and also taking a bath at the time – don't make that face, it's important to the story – and, yeah, he was just being really annoying. So, of course, I was really annoyed. Mom came over to take him out but she couldn't! I froze him in a block of ice!" Katara finished the story while laughing with tears in her eyes, and Flo couldn't help but chuckle as well. Meanwhile, Sokka sulked ahead of them – Aang was already somewhere down the hill.

"I'm still mad at you for that," Sokka said. "I couldn't feel my toes for hours!"

"And who's fault is that?"

"Yours!"

Katara hummed and pulled an all too innocent face. "But I was just a toddler, Sokka, I didn't know what I was doing," she said.

The teenage boy groaned dramatically. "Flo, help me out here!"

The aforementioned girl glanced between them. She then crossed her arms. "I'm with Katara. Sorry." Though she wasn't sorry at all. Sokka groaned once again and grumbled about 'stupid baby sister' and 'girls pitting against him' and hurried his pace to catch up with Aang. When he was out of earshot, Flo looked at Katara again. "You knew what you were doing, didn't you?" she asked.

Katara smirked. "Oh, yeah. I remember it clear as day. Dad and Sokka don't need to know that, though. It's funnier that way." The girls hi-fived, and Katara laughed some more. "You have any stories like that?" she asked after a moment of silence.

Flo shrugged, but then nodded. "Me and my older sisters locked our brothers out of the house – boarded the windows and everything so they couldn't get in. When our dad got home Kuron and Hachi got in trouble for being outside past curfew, and they didn't get any of the cake he bought from the market but we did. I was six at the time."

"Evil," Katara stated, but she was grinning. "Did he ever find out?"

"Happened two more times before he finally did. He hired a babysitter after that." She wasn't going to mention how the babysitter made money extra tight, though.

Katara laughed and Flo let herself smile freely. The archer honestly thought that, at first, talking about her family would hurt. And it did, a little, but she also felt a little bit of relief. It was nice being able to talk about her family, to tell funny stories, without the conversation ending up with Flo too upset to function. Besides, as they talked and shared stories, Flo and Katara got closer; the waterbender wasn't as nearly as annoying as Flo first believed her to be all those weeks ago.