Chapter Text
Republic City University didn’t accept everyone.
That was the first thing listed on the homepage, not the rankings, not the distinguished alumni list that spanned three scrollable pages, not even the acceptance rate. It was stated boldly, RCU does not accept everyone. As if the university itself wanted you to know that it was doing you a favor by letting you even try.
Katara had screenshot that page in ninth grade and set it as her phone wallpaper for a week before deciding that was embarrassing and changing it back. But she'd kept the screenshot. Buried in a folder, behind photos she never deleted and notes she never read, but there.
She'd gotten her acceptance letter on a Thursday in April, standing at the mailbox in her coat, and she'd read it twice in the cold before going back inside and crying quietly over the kitchen sink for approximately four minutes. Then she pulled herself together and called Gran-Gran.
Now it was September, and she was standing in the parking lot of Yue Hall, the upperclassmen residential complex, the one with the apartment-style suite, the one she'd applied for because after eighteen years of sharing everything with everyone in her house, she had earned a door she could close.
"We should've brought a cart," Sokka said from behind her.
"I literally said bring a cart."
She picked up two boxes, stacked them, balanced them against her chin, and started walking.
Suite 5A, Yue Hall.
The floor plan was simple: a front door that opened into a small living room, a kitchenette along one wall, a bathroom off the hallway, and two bedrooms branching off the main space, each with its own door, each with its own lock. She'd read the housing description so many times she could recite it back. Semi-private suite accommodations, shared common areas, individual bedroom units.
Her bedroom door had her name on it. Katara S., printed on a small card in the RA's neat handwriting, slid into a plastic holder on the door.
She turned the handle and pushed it open, and the room was empty and smelled like clean linen, and she stood in the doorway for a moment longer than was probably normal.
Then Sokka walked into the back of her because he'd been looking at his phone.
"Sokka."
"Sorry, sorry." He peered over her shoulder. "Nice. Good size. Ooh, you've got a big window"
They were on their third trip from the parking lot when she collided with someone coming the other way through the building entrance.
Katara fell to the floor, she stopped and looked up.
He was around her age, he was lean and tall, carrying a box that looked heavier than he was making it seem. The most immediately striking thing about him was that he was completely bald, not shaved, not buzzed, but genuinely, smoothly bald in a way that somehow just looked like him, like it would be strange to picture it any other way. There was a tattoo on his forehead, a blue arrow pointing downward, the same design repeated around his arms. His eyes were gray and currently very wide.
"Sorry–" he started.
"It's fine, don’t worry," Katara laughed.
She didn't think about him again for twenty minutes.
She was halfway through unpacking her desk when she heard the suite's front door open.
She'd left her bedroom door ajar, she liked the ambient sound of a new space, liked learning its acoustics, and so she heard clearly the sound of boxes being set down in the living room. She walked out.
The boy from the parking lot was standing in the middle of the common area, setting a box down by the couch, and he looked up and his eyes went wide again in the way that was apparently just his default.
"Oh," he said. "Hi. Again."
Katara looked from him to the open door of the other bedroom. Aang T. on the nameplate.
"Hi, you're my suitemate," she said.
"Yeah." He smiled. "Sorry about the parking lot. I didn’t look where I was going."
"It’s alright, it happens to the best of us." She leaned against her doorframe. "Katara."
"Aang." He nodded at his nameplate. "Nice to meet you."
He had good manners. He asked before putting things in the shared cabinets, kept his boxes to his side of the common room. He found out she was pre-med and replied with that’s sick, what a funny pun. She found out he was in Cultural Anthropology and International Studies and said that's interesting and he said he got that a lot, laughed at himself a little.
Sokka came back from a solo parking lot trip and introduced himself by walking in, pointing at Aang, and saying: "Did you use the cart by the elevator?"
Aang nodded. "Is that okay?"
Sokka turned to Katara with an expression of profound betrayal.
"Don't," she said.
He helped carry Aang's remaining boxes up instead, and by the third trip he and Aang had discovered a shared opinion about a pro-bending team and were deep in a conversation Katara had zero interest in but half-listened to anyway while she arranged her room exactly how she wanted it. Books by subject, then alphabetical within subject. The desk was cleared except for her laptop and planner.
By seven, Sokka had made pasta in the kitchen, overstaying his welcome, and the three of them ate at the kitchen table as they talked naturally, and with the city humming outside and the warm kitchen light and the comfort of it, she'd thought: okay, this might actually be fine.
She found her folder missing on Wednesday.
She'd packed it specifically. She remembered the exact anxiety of doing it, sliding it carefully between two binders, thinking don't forget this is in here with the particular intensity you reserve for things you cannot afford to forget. Her Clinical Practicum documentation. Placement forms, observation logs, signed agreements, forty pages, rubber-banded into a blue manila folder with a red label. Due to Professor Yugoda in the original hard copy by Friday.
She went through every box. Both duffel bags. Under the bed, behind the desk, inside the pillowcases for reasons she couldn't justify. Nothing.
She went to the common room.
Aang was on his designated area of the couch, ankles crossed, reading something dense. He looked up.
"Did you see a blue folder anywhere? Manila, thick, red label. It would've been with my stuff during the move-in."
He sat up straighter. "No, I don't think so, do you want me to check my room?"
"It wouldn't be in your room." She scanned the common area. The coffee table, the counter. Nothing. "It might've fallen out of a box somewhere. It has all my practicum paperwork and I need the hard copies by Friday."
He was already standing. "I'll help you look–"
"I've looked everywhere." She went back to her room. She texted Sokka. He replied twenty minutes later: no?? maybe you left it at home lol. She left him on read.
She called her dad. She retraced her packing in her memory until her head ached. She looked everywhere a second time.
Nothing.
She went to Professor Yugoda's office on Friday morning with no folder and a very controlled expression.
The professor was a patient woman. She let Katara explain everything, the move, the boxes, the searching, and then she was quiet for a moment.
"Without the original documentation, I can't formally confirm your placement," she said carefully. "The duplicate request process takes six to eight weeks, and by then the current cohort will already be well into the semester."
Katara kept her face very still. "I understand."
"It's not the end of the world–"
"I know." She stood. "Thank you, Professor."
She made it to the stairwell before she sat down on a step and put her face in her hands, stressed.
One semester behind. In a medical program, that wasn't just time, it was money as well. This would follow her forward through everything.
She sat there for exactly three minutes. Then she stood up, fixed her face, and went to class.
She found the folder nine days later.
She hadn't been looking for it. She'd done her grieving and moved it to the shelf in her mind she kept for things that were finished and unfixable, and she'd been focused forward ever since.
She found it because she dropped a pen.
She was at her usual spot on the far end of the couch reviewing notes, and the pen rolled off the cushion and under the sofa, and when she crouched down to reach for it her hand closed around something else, thick, papery, unmistakable.
She pulled it out and sat back on her heels.
Katara S. – Clinical Practicum, RCU School of Medicine, Prof. Yugoda. Red label. Forty pages. Rubber band intact.
She stayed on the floor for a long moment, just holding it.
It had been here the whole time. Nine days, right here in the living room they both shared. Aang's end of the couch, she registered this automatically. She almost always worked at her desk or sat on the right side. The left side, nearest the armrest, was where Aang's textbooks collected, where his water glass was on, where he spent most of his evenings reading.
She heard his key in the front door.
She stood up.
He came in from volleyball practice, still in training clothes, slightly flushed, pulling his bag off his shoulder. He looked up and whatever was on her face made him stop in the doorway.
"Hey–" he started.
She held up the folder.
He looked at it. Then at her face. "Is that– oh thank god, where was it–"
"Under the couch." Her voice came out quiet and level. She'd learned this register from her father. He only ever got quiet when he was most serious. "Your side of the couch."
Aang stilled.
"I don't know how it got there," he said.
"Neither do I." She held his gaze. "That's the problem."
"Katara." He set his bag down slowly. "I swear I did not touch your folder. I didn't even know what it looked like–"
"I described it to you. Three weeks ago. The day I was looking for it."
"I know, but I mean–" He exhaled. "I'm telling you I didn't put it there. I don't know why it's there, but it wasn't me."
"There are two people in this suite." Her hand tightened around the folder. "And I know it wasn't me."
Something shifted in his expression. Not guilt, she was watching for guilt. Something else. Something that looked almost like hurt, which she hadn't anticipated.
"What do you want me to say?" he asked. Quietly, there was a firmness under it that she hadn't heard from him before. "I can't explain something I didn't do."
"You're right," she said. "You can't."
She went to her room. She sat at her desk. She opened her laptop and wrote an email to Professor Yugoda, precise, professional, explaining that the documentation had been found and asking whether reinstatement to the current cohort was possible.
She sent it and told herself not to expect anything.
Professor Yugoda replied in thirty-eight minutes.
Hello Katara,
Given your placement scores and your standing in this program, I'm willing to make an exception. Bring the originals to my office by Thursday morning. Welcome to the cohort.
Katara read it three times. She put her forehead down on her desk and let the relief move through her fully, gave it the thirty seconds it needed, and then she sat up and got back to work.
She was in. She was still in. Thank the spirits.
It didn't unknot the thing that had settled between her and her suitemate. It didn't change what she'd found or where she'd found it or what that meant. But she was in her practicum cohort, and she had three chapters to read before tomorrow, and Katara had always been better at forward than back.
She turned the page. She kept going.