Scorpia is a (hugbug) wrote in valloic, @ 2021-12-02 10:12:00 |
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Entry tags: | !: action/thread/log, ₴ inactive: scorpia, ₴ inactive: zuko (2) |
Who: Scorpia and Zuko
What: Zuko comes bearing pizza and ice cream
When: Shortly after Scorpia arrived, early-ish October
Where: Scorpia's apartment
Warnings: Not here
It was Adora's fault. And Catra's. He was sure of it. They must have some kind of Etherian Friendly Aura or something. There was no other way he could understand why he was actually going out of his way to introduce new foods to someone he'd never even met. Something about her reminded him of Aang and Sokka, though. Combined, maybe. And despite all his intentions otherwise, he actually liked Adora and Catra. So being nice to someone they seemed to care about felt like the right thing to do.
Which was to say, Zuko had a lot of thoughts swirling through his head as he balanced three kinds of pizza and two tubs of ice cream on his way to see Scorpia. Okay, two pizzas and a dessert pizza, and ice cream. That was largely how he was introduced to them, anyway. Though honestly, while he could somewhat picture her face, he couldn't remember anymore the name of the girl who introduced him to ice cream. Pizza was all Richie and Cleo, though. That was the nature of Vallo, people come and go so often that maybe sometimes the memories fade.
Or Vallo fades them for you to keep you content. With that sobering thought, he used his foot to knock on the door since his hands were full.
Scorpia was both excited and nervous about having Zuko come over. All of Adora and Catra’s friends had been exceptionally nice to her, but Scorpia was still nervous to meet them. What if they decided they didn’t like her after all? Or if she said something wrong?
Or if they found out that she and Catra weren’t actually friends.
She hadn’t meant to lie to anyone, not really. She definitely hadn’t told anyone that Catra was her friend. Adora had said that she considered Scorpia a friend, and that meant a lot to Scorpia because even back in Etheria, she wasn’t sure if Adora had considered her an actual friend once she’d joined the Rebellion. And Catra had definitely tried to act friendly toward her. But that didn’t mean they were friends. Things were strained, and awkward, and neither one of them really knew what to say to each other and Scorpia was pretty sure that any time Catra had to be near her, she hated it.
She’d made sure her apartment was as neat as it could be before Zuko showed up. She’d bought some nice houseplants that were sitting by the windows, which helped make the place feel more like a home, she thought. A little friendlier.
She rushed to the door when she heard the knock, and swung it open, and it was only the fact that Zuko was holding so much stuff that saved him from a Scorpia Hug™. “Oh hi! You must be Zuko. Wow! You brought so much stuff. You really didn’t have to. Let me get that for you,” Scorpia said, and without waiting for permission she leaned down to scoop the pizza boxes and ice cream from Zuko’s hands. “Come in! You know, you’re my first proper guest to the apartment!”
"Uh," was the only immediate response to suddenly having everything cleared out of his hands. Zuko was generally very proud of his reflexes and that still caught him by surprise. Especially considering he noticed immediately that she didn't actually have hands. She'd mentioned it on the network, sure, but he just thought it was a bit of exaggeration. The fact that she could deftly pull all of that out of his grip and maneuver without hurting him (or the boxes, to be honest) was… surprising.
He put his hand behind his neck and looked around. It certainly looked like an apartment that someone just moved into. "Yeah, hi, Zuko here. I don't know how proper I am, but-- oh, the smaller ones need to go in the freezer or they'll melt."
“Oh, you don’t have to be proper or anything like that,” Scorpia said, with a bit of a laugh. “I just mean I haven’t really had anyone inside yet.” She put the boxes on the table, and at Zuko’s prompting, she put the smaller containers in her freezer. “Like, socially, I mean.” She moved from the freezer to the cupboards to pull out a couple of plates - it really was nice how the apartments came equipped with the essentials. “Did you want anything to drink? You said you didn’t like tea, right? But I have some juice or… or water.”
"I don't hate tea," admitted Zuko. What he wasn't going to explain was why. "I just have an attitude problem." He looked around the apartment again and shrugged. He lived in a house made of stone, who was he to judge? He was a little confused, at first, about the plates before it clicked. He'd been used to just eating it right out of the box with his friends. Maybe this was what she meant by proper. Like eating it off a plate with utensils or something? But then how would she use utensils? And then she'd need to wash the plates. He wasn't going to put her out that much, so instead he just sat down, pulled out a slice, and took a bite.
“Oh, that’s fine,” Scorpia said cheerfully. “I’ve got a lot of experience with people with attitude problems.” Though, her experience hadn’t always been the best. She’d really mucked things up with Catra. But she wasn’t one to let something silly like a little attitude problem bother her.
She hesitated, plates in claw when Zuko took the slice of pizza, and then she let out a whoosh of air, her shoulders relaxing as she put down the plates. “Oh, I’m so glad we can just eat these with our hands. Let me tell you, I have not mastered washing dishes yet.” She was getting better, but she’d broken nearly half of the ones that had come stocked in the apartment already, and the longer she could put off breaking the rest, the better.
She approached the box and examined the pizza, only taking a moment to figure out the best way to tackle them with her pincers: pizza, as it turned out, didn’t take any effort at all to pick up with her pincers. It smelled good, and she took a bite.
“Okay, wow. I think this is the best thing I’ve ever tasted,” Scorpia said, staring at the remaining slice in shock. The list was pretty short: ration bars, the grey and the brown kind (the grey being the best, obviously), salad (which was, somehow, worse than the ration bars), and a few other items that had been quick and easy to eat while they were constantly moving around, fighting Horde Prime’s clones, which was definitely better than the other things but not this good.
"Wait until you hear about paper plates. You just throw them away when you're done, no washing needed," answered Zuko, looking like he was imparting ancient wisdom over his slice of pizza. He was also feeling a little smug that he'd told her that pizza was amazing and now she knew he was right. For someone who feels like he got things wrong a lot, it was a nice experience. He watched her eating the pizza with her pincers and realized immediately that they were going to have an interesting time figuring out how to eat ice cream. That was a problem for fifteen minutes from now, though.
Pizza required conversation, though. Or movies. "So how do you know Catra and Adora?"
She probably should have expected the conversation to turn to her relationship with Catra and Adora at some point or another, but she was still taken aback by it. “Oh, uh…” she started, looking up. “Well, we were all in the Horde together for a while, but we didn’t really meet for a while. You know, outside of the mess hall. I was a couple of years older than them and I got promoted to Force Captain pretty early on account of me being a princess and the Horde basing themselves in my kingdom and all,” Scorpia said. She’d never been given any of the actual leadership duties of Force Captain, but she had run a few of the Force Captain Orientation seminars and had taken care of the kids who were too young to start cadet training sometimes.
“I didn’t actually meet them until after Adora left, and then I was Catra’s second in command and I fought against Adora and her friends for a couple of years until I left the Horde and joined the Princess Alliance.”
"Sounds complicated. I tried to hunt down Aang and his friends to try and win back my honor. All in some kind of misguided attempt to prove something to my father. Then I joined them to take him down. So, you know, same." Zuko took another bite of his pizza and chewed it thoughtfully for a second. He wondered briefly for a second if this was one of those alternate world timeline things. If Adora was Aang from another universe. That'd make Catra… probably an angry Katara, though she was more similar to Toph. Which meant he hadn't met their Sokka or Suki yet. Then he remembered something else she said.
"You're a princess?"
“That sounds much more complicated,” Scorpia said. She’d only been fighting for the Horde and for Catra out of some sense of loyalty. She’d known her family were loyal to the Horde - at least, that’s what the Horde had always told her - but she didn’t actually remember any of them, though she’d had a photo of her moms from when she was a baby, and she liked to imagine what they would have been like. So when she’d finally broken free, she hadn’t had to make the choice between pleasing her parents and doing the right thing. “I’m sorry you had to make that choice. It must have been hard.”
She took a bite of her pizza, and then smiled when he asked about her being a princess. “Everyone’s always surprised when I tell them that,” she said. “But yep! I’m the princess of the Fright Zone.”
"No, my dad sucked. Sucks. And it sucks he's smart, but that's a story for another time." Zuko paused to shove the rest of his current slice in his mouth while he raised an eyebrow at Scorpio before nodding. Swallowing, he continued. "Okay, Princess of the Fright Zone does make some sense, but it's cool that you're a walking contradiction. As in, you look tough and prickly, but you're really just nice and uh." He hesitated because he suddenly wasn't sure if he was insulting or not. What would Aang say?
"You're pretty great?"
Scorpia wasn’t insulted in the least. She’d had more than one person tell her that she looked scary or intimidating, but not a lot of people who said that she was really nice, and even less who called her great. She swallowed the impulse to contradict Zuko. Perfuma would probably scold her if she did.
Instead, she leaned into her second impulse, which was to say, “You’re pretty great too, Zuko,” and to scoop him into a tight bear hug.
"Oof!" was all Zuko could respond with and he wasn't exactly sitting in a position to defend himself, which meant he wasn't able to escape the scooping fast enough. But... it was a surprisingly comfortable hug, no crushing at all, despite what he would have suspected. "I'm not, but thank you," he said, awkwardly patting whatever he could reach since he wasn't really able to return the hug (not that he'd want to, of course).
"So, uh, how about that tea?"
“Oh right, tea!” Scorpia had completely forgotten about tea, and she released Zuko from her grip so she could go and busy herself with boiling some water. “You are too though. Look at all this great food you brought me, and you don’t even know me, really.” She beamed at him as she put on the kettle. “You’re one of the kindest people I’ve met here so far. I’d say that’s pretty great.”
Zuko was at a loss for words for a moment, so he just kind of stared in her direction for a moment and then reached for more pizza. "I know Catra and Adora. If you're friends with them, I figured you couldn't be too bad." It sounded like a lame excuse and he knew it. "I mean, they'd probably give me a stinkeye if I didn't try and be nice. Somewhat."
And he knew at that moment that they'd probably still give him a hard time over even this, actually.
Scorpia shot him a knowing smile. “Oh, you can pretend all you want, but I know you’re just a big softie inside,” Scorpia teased. According to Scorpia, almost everyone was just a big softie inside, but this seemed especially true for Zuko.
Maybe she missed her friends back home, and maybe things weren’t great with her and Catra, but maybe things would get better with Catra, and it was hard to be sad in a place that had great people like Zuko in it. Maybe things in Vallo would work out just fine.