Chapter Text
"Say I’m good.
Say it like you want me to believe it.
Say I do.
Say I’m perfect and I’ll
Say it too.
Say we’re fine.
Say we’re okay.
Say you love me and I’ll
Say I’ll stay."
-it's still me, you guys
Sokka drops his boomerang. It makes a great clattering noise and Zuko flinches, to which Sokka flinches in return. Zuko raises a hand to the back of his neck in embarrassment, and then flinches
again
at the pressure against his brand, which, Sokka realises, must still be fresh.
He can focus on that, though, nor can he focus on Zuko’s great, rambling speech, not when the prince is right there in front of him. He’s right there, and Sokka has been worrying about him for months, but he can’t do anything, can’t even move, and his feet feel like they’re stuck to the ground.
Katara looks angry, which Sokka doesn’t understand. Zuko saved us in the catacombs, he wants to say, you owe him your life. You owe him Aang’s life, the life of your soulmate. Isn’t that something? Words refuse to come out of his mouth, though, no matter how much he wants to say them. Apparently, Katara is still stuck up on the few months that Zuko spent chasing them, and she keeps interrupting his poorly put together speech with reminders of bad past decisions.
Everything feels muffled. Sokka knows that he should be paying attention to what Zuko is saying, or maybe what Katara is saying, or maybe Aang, but all he can see is when Zuko raises a hand to the back of his neck out of embarrassment, and then flinches as he makes contact with the prison brand that Sokka knows is there.
And that, Sokka decides, is enough.
“Katara, lay off,” he snaps, smoothly picking boomerang up off the ground and sliding it back into it’s holster. “Zuko turned against the Fire Nation in Ba Sing Se, and he saved our asses. If he hadn’t intercepted Azula, her lightning would’ve hit Aang in the chest, not the leg, and your soulmate would be dead.” Now, Sokka starts pacing in circles through the courtyard, gesturing wildly with his hands. “It’s obvious that Zuko just came from prison, because he’s not wearing any princey clothes, and I’ll bet that if you looked at the back of his neck, you’d see a big fat prison brand.”
“Sokka,” Katara spits, “he spent months trying to kill Aang. Just because he saved him once doesn’t mean that he’s good all of a sudden!”
“Prison, Katara!” Sokka yells. “He went to prison because he saved Aang! And now, he’s here because he wants to train Aang,” -or at least that’s what Sokka thinks, because he wasn’t really listening when Zuko was talking- “and Aang needs a firebending teacher. You’re being irrational and irresponsible because you’re still butthurt about shit that happened months ago, that has since been made up for thousands of times over.”
Katara looks hurt, but Sokka doesn’t care. He’s right, he knows he’s right, and she knows it just as well as he does. Toph and Aang have both been stunned into silence, and rightfully so; Sokka doesn’t do this. He’s not a big, angry proclamation kinda guy. He only gets angry about things that he’s passionate about, and, well, a soulmate is something that’s passionate by nature.
“He’s staying,” Sokka says, and everybody knows that it’s final.
~~~
The walk to Zuko’s room feels like it takes a lifetime.
Every step echoes loudly off the stone floors, and Sokka feels like he can hear Zuko’s inhales and exhales. Every stupid, instinctual bone in Sokka’s body tells him to run, to comfort, when he notices the way that Zuko is shaking, but they’re ten minutes into being officially not-enemies, and he doesn’t want to push it.
Finally, they arrive. “This is it,” Sokka says, pointing towards the doorway. “You can, uh, make yourself at home, I guess.”
He turns to go, to leave, to get away from the one person who he’s been wanting to see for months, but a hand reaches out and catches onto his wrist, refusing to let him go further.
“Sokka,” Zuko says, his voice breaking. It’s the first time Sokka’s ever heard Zuko say his name, at least in the present, and it makes his heart shatter in his chest.
He sounds broken. He’s not allowed to be broken, he’s Zuko, he’s the prince, and the warrior, and the guy that saved their asses when nobody expected it. Or, maybe he was those things. Now, he’s broken, and Sokka hates it.
He spins around and hauls Zuko into the most intense hug he’s ever been a part of, and Zuko doesn’t so much as breathe. Then, he hauls in a crackly breath, and everything that has ever been wrong in Sokka’s life is right again. Zuko is in his arms, he’s here, and he’s breathing, and they’re both going to be fine.
“It’s fine,” Sokka whispers, and he doesn’t believe it. “It’s all gonna be fine.”
~~~
Spin, kick, duck, flourish. Spin, kick, duck, flourish.
Sokka watches as rainbow fire swirls in the air, pigmented and coming straight from Zuko’s fists. The Firelord is sweating, his skin gleaming slightly in the late autumn sun, and the meteorite charm on his betrothal necklace catches a bit of sunlight and reflects it straight into Sokka’s eye. He squints at the light and turns away from it, then looks back up to see Zuko stopping his movements and bowing.
Zuko jogs over to where Sokka is sitting on the sidelines, accepting the waterskin that he offers and gulping down most of it. He wipes his mouth with the back of his hand and then grins brightly, ducking down to kiss Sokka’s already-puckered lips.
“How long were you watching me?” Zuko asks once they’ve broken apart. Sokka grins up at him, not remorseful in the slightest.
“I got here right when the rainbow fire started coming out,” Sokka tells him. “You know how much I love you and your gay flames.”
“It’s not gay, Sokka,” Zuko insists, even though he’s tried to make this point many, many times before. “It’s a gift from the dragons. It’s symbolic. It’s important.”
“It’s gaaaaaaaaaaay,” Sokka sing-songs, looking up at Zuko through squinted lashes.
“No, Sokka, I’m gay,” Zuko deadpans. Sokka chokes on his own spit and starts laughing as hard as he ever has, clutching at his chest. Zuko waits until his chuckles have died out, and then he says, “I thought you knew that?”
“Sweetheart,” Sokka wheezes, “baby. Of course I knew that. Agni, I hope you’re gay. Otherwise, there might be some things we need to talk about.”
“Why don’t you talk to teenage Zuko about that, huh?” Zuko offers, reaching down to hoist Sokka upright. “For now, we have a meeting at three, and you’ve got grass stains on your ass. C’mon, we can shower together.”
“Oooh,” Sokka teases, “can we now?”
Zuko’s cheeks darken with blush, but his eyes darken as well, and then Sokka’s being hauled through the palace as fast as he can go, giggling all the while.
~~~
Sokka wakes up with two things on his mind.
Number one: Zuko may think that it’s not okay to have a man as a soulmate.
Number two: the cool, new, rainbow fire that Zuko and Aang have comes from dragons.
Sokka has a headache and he’s not even awake yet. Instead of facing a day full of these new revelations, he simply snuggles deeper into his bed roll and pulls his pillow over his head, promptly going the fuck back to sleep.
~~~
“I know that you met dragons.”
Zuko whips his head around so fast that he nearly falls over, and Sokka rushes to catch him, steadying him with a hand on his shoulder. Zuko blushes at the contact, then flinches away from it, and the first point from Sokka’s dream is solidified in his mind.
“What makes you think that?” Zuko asks, trying and failing to seem nonchalant.
“Dude,” Sokka says. “You went to the ruins of where dragons used to live, and you came back bending rainbow fucking fire. That kinda points toward you meeting dragons.”
“I only bend rainbow fire when Aang and I do the forms together!” Zuko protests.
“I don’t even need Toph to know that you’re lying,” Sokka says, sitting down heavily on the ground. He leans against the low wall that surrounds the training courtyard, and waits until Zuko follows his lead to speak again. “Dude, it’s fine,” he says. “I’m not, like, gonna go and slay the rest of the dragons or something like that. You can tell me.”
There’s a lot that goes unsaid there. You can tell me about the dragons. You can tell me that you’re gay. You can tell me that maybe you think you’re not gay, or it’s not okay to be gay, or you don’t like having me as a soulmate. You can tell me whatever.
“It’s illegal in the Fire Nation,” Zuko says suddenly and without any prompting. “It didn’t used to be, but when Sozin came into power he changed the laws. Two men can’t get married, and two women can’t get married, for no good fucking reason.”
“Zuko…” Sokka whispers, but Zuko’s on a roll now, and Sokka’s not going to stop him.
“My father, he would always call them disgusting,” Zuko goes on, “unnatural. And I- I used to believe him. I just wanted to agree with him on something, and that- it was so easy. And then I met you.” Zuko huffs out a breath, and all of the tension drains out of his frame. His voice goes soft and quiet, and his shoulders roll forward like he’s trying to shield his body from the rest of the world, like he’s trying to protect his soft parts.
“I met you,” Zuko says, “and everything started to make sense. The dreams would make everything in the future look so good, and every time I saw you it was the only thing I could think about, and then Uncle and I went to the Earth Kingdom, and it was just so normal there. This girl I met, Jin, she tried to take me out on a date, and I really didn’t want to go, but I did anyway because Uncle wanted me to. And, and then at the end of it, she tried to kiss me, so I just blurted out that I like boys, and she was just fine with it. It makes no sense! Is it just the Fire Nation? Is it just us?”
Sokka finds that he doesn’t have an answer to that. So much just got laid out there, put up like a piece of expensive art for Sokka to stare at for a moment and then remember forever. He doesn’t have anything to say, and he doesn’t think there’s anything that he can say, so instead he just reaches over and pulls Zuko into his side, holds him there until he stops shaking, until he uncurls.
~~~
As adamant as he was about going with Sokka to a prison, Zuko looks quite shaky at the idea of being in a prison. As the balloon drifts closer to the Boiling Rock, his hands get shakier, and Sokka wants to reach out and grab onto them, wants to hold him until he’s human again.
Shit. Holy shit. They’ve been on actually good terms for two fucking weeks, and Sokka wants to hold him? Tui and La, he needs to get out of his head.
And then, because Sokka doesn’t know when to fucking stop, he opens his mouth and says, “What did they do to you in that prison?”
Zuko tenses up, and the fire that was pouring from his hands into the furnace stops flaring. “I- what?”
“Zuko,” Sokka says, grabbing onto the other boy’s wrist and tugging him down to sit on the dirty metal floor of the balloon. “I saw it in a dream. The brand on your neck. Azula told me that she and your father were the ones that did it. But I know that’s not all that happened, and I want you to tell me.”
Zuko breathes, in and the out, and his lungs are just as shaky as his hands. Sokka finally gives into the urge to hold them, reaches out and threads their fingers together. He squeezes, and Zuko squeezes back.
“Nothing,” Zuko says after a moment. “Nothing else happened. That’s the thing. Azula took me on a ship from Ba Sing Se to Caldera City, and then she and my father branded me. My father gave a speech of disappointment, as you would expect, and then they just put me into the prison that’s underneath the palace. I didn’t see either of them again. Just the guards that would sometimes give me food and water.”
“Sometimes?” Sokka’s nearly afraid to ask.
“Every couple of days,” Zuko tells him. “It- there was one guard, Ming, she told me that my Uncle was there too, a few floors up. That’s another thing, they- they would put the best firebenders further underground, so that their connection with Agni was severed. You- firebenders can feel the sun, most of the time, but if we’re away from it for too long you lose your connection. I think that’s why I lost my firebending for a bit.”
Zuko stops, taking a breath. “Other than the guards,” he says, “I didn’t see anyone. I guess I kinda thought that maybe Father or Azula would come down every once in a while to taunt me, but they didn’t. I didn’t see them after they branded me. I found out when the eclipse was from Ming, and I tried to get my strength back up so that I would be able to escape when all of the guards were at their weakest. My- my plan was to get out and escape with Uncle, but when I got to his cell he was already gone.”
“Oh, Zuko,” Sokka says, mindlessly rubbing his thumb over the side of Zuko’s hand.
“No!” Zuko exclaims, “Not like that! He’s not dead, he just escaped on his own. I- I don’t know where he is, but I assume he’s okay.”
“You know you don’t have to come with me if you don’t want to, right?” Sokka asks. “You could just drop me off and then get the hell out of there, if being in a prison is gonna fuck with your mind.”
“Sokka, I’ll be fine,” Zuko reassures him, and Sokka hates that he’s the one getting reassured, not giving the reassurance.
“Okay,” Sokka says finally.
They stay like that, sitting on the floor of the balloon with their hands intertwined, for Tui knows how long, but it’s long enough that Zuko starts to doze off a bit, slumping forward where he’s sitting.
“C’mere,” Sokka murmurs, smiling a bit at the soft little inquisitive noise that Zuko makes towards him. “C’mon, you’re practically falling asleep. Just use my lap as a pillow, I’ll wake you up when we need more fuel.”
“‘M fine,” Zuko tries to protest, even though he’s already slumping over. He ends up curled into himself with his head on Sokka’s thighs, and Sokka finally gives into the urge to stroke through his hair, toying with the silky strands. They sit like that until the sun starts to set, and they don’t once let go of their hands.
~~~
Everything goes to shit.
Hakoda isn’t here, but Suki is, and then Zuko gets caught, and Sokka practically has his own panic attack over how much Zuko must be panicking about being in prison again. They get caught again by Chit Sang, and then he’s in on the plan, and then Sokka has to watch while Zuko gets thrown around by a burly firebender and tossed into a cooler.
Hours later, when Sokka is finally allowed to let Zuko out of the cooler, he ends up getting pulled into it as another set of guards passes. They listen to the details of what prisoners will be coming in the next day, and Sokka’s heart starts beating violently against his ribs at the mention of war prisoners.
“War prisoners,” Zuko says once the guards have passed, “Sokka, it could be your father.”
“I know,” Sokka whispers. “But is it right for me to risk Suki’s freedom, your freedom, just on the off chance that my dad could be one of those prisoners coming in tomorrow?”
“It’s your call, Sokka,” Zuko says, and Sokka hates how true he makes it sound.
~~~
They stay.
They stay, and Chit Sang gets caught, but then he doesn’t sell them out. Later that night, Sokka’s on patrol and he finds himself standing outside Zuko’s cell, pacing through the hallway. He doesn’t know what he’s debating- does he go in? Will Zuko even want to see him?- but then a noise from the cell distracts him from his pacing, and he’s pressing his ear up against the door, trying to discern what’s going on inside. There’s a familiarity to the sounds coming from the other room, and it doesn’t click in Sokka’s head for a few moments, but when it does, it burns.
(Nightmares. Zuko’s having a nightmare.)
He fumbles with the keyring on his belt until he finds the right one, then unlocks Zuko’s door and throws it shut behind him, tossing his helmet onto the floor for good measure. He doesn’t want to wake Zuko up and not be recognized. Sokka tries to think back to how he woke Zuko up from nightmares in dreams, and he drops to his knees on the floor next to Zuko’s bed, watching helplessly as his soulmate writhes and grimaces in his sleep.
“Zuko,” he whispers, “wake up. It’s okay. I’m here, you’re okay.”
“N-no,” Zuko whimpers, “please, it burns. ‘Zula, please, stop.”
He’s dreaming about being branded, Sokka realises, his heart clenching in his chest. “Zuko,” he says again, reaching out to grab onto the other’s shoulder, “you need to wake up. It’s just a dream.”
Zuko shoots up with a gasp, sitting up so quickly that he nearly breaks Sokka’s nose, just like he does in the dreams. He looks around for a moment, floundering, and then bursts into silent tears.
Sokka’s heart, which has been slowly falling apart since Zuko joined their group, disintegrates into dust. He sits on the edge of the mattress and pulls Zuko into a hug, feels Zuko’s ribs jump under his hands as he sobs.
“Shh, shh, it’s okay,” Sokka soothes, “I’m here now. They won’t hurt you again. You got out, you’re safe. You’re safe.”
“I’m sorry,” Zuko gasps into Sokka’s chest, “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”
“There’s nothing to be sorry about, Zuko,” Sokka whispers, “you did nothing wrong. I’m not mad. No one’s mad at you. It’s okay.”
Eventually, Zuko’s silent sobs turn into painful-sounding wails that are muffled into the leather of Sokka’s guard uniform, and then those turn into the last few tremors and sniffles. Sokka holds him through it all, rubbing his back and nuzzling his nose into Zuko’s hair, whispering reassurances that he hopes against hope might help.
Finally, Zuko pulls away. He wipes his nose and refuses to look at Sokka, instead staring at the metal wall of the cell as he whispers out a croaky, “Thank you.”
“Hey, look at me,” Sokka says, grabbing onto his chin but not forcing his eyes forward. Begrudgingly, Zuko turns forward, but he stares resolutely at Sokka’s neck, not into his eyes. Sokka still counts it as a win. “You don’t need to thank me,” Sokka whispers, “and you definitely don’t need to apologize. I was walking past your cell and you happened to be having a nightmare. Waking you up and comforting you was just the right thing to do. We- we’re- we’re us, Zuko. I will always comfort you, okay?”
(Neither of them mention how Sokka skipped over the word ‘soumates’, which the both of them have been doing this entire time, and which they’ll definitely have to talk about at some point.)
Zuko clears his throat, then awkwardly looks up and into Sokka’s eyes (finally). “Okay,” he says, his voice soft but resolute. “But thank you anyways. I- no one else has ever done that for me.”
Sokka knew that already, but he doesn’t say it. “I’m gonna stay here till you fall asleep,” he says instead, “and don’t argue with me, we both know you won’t go back to sleep otherwise.” Zuko swallows down whatever response he had at the ready and nods.
They shuffle around for a bit, until they find a position that works for the both of them. Zuko curls up underneath the scratchy prison blanket, facing the wall, and Sokka lays atop the sheet, his body making an arc around Zuko’s. Sokka reaches over the other boy to grasp his hand, and even though he said he’d leave when Zuko fell asleep, he finds himself staying there until the sun starts to rise, sleepless and yet the most well-rested he’s ever been.
~~~
They’re escaping, and everything is going well, until Zuko stops running.
“Zuko!” Sokka yells, “What the hell are you doing?”
“Making it so that they can’t stop us!” Zuko calls back. He kicks furiously at the leaver until it snaps, then starts running again, but the gondola is too far. Sokka’s heart is in his throat, and he thinks, this is it then, the future ends here, but then Zuko’s reaching out, so Sokka is too. He catches Zuko with a hand around his wrist and then hauls him up into the gondola, resists the urge to pull him into a hug, tuck him into the space between his heart and his ribs and protect him there for the rest of their lives.
“You’re crazy,” Sokka says, instead of everything else that he wants to. Zuko smirks at him, the bastard, and then they watch the prison shrink away into the distance.
Then, Azula and Ty Lee approach, and Sokka’s stomach drops to his feet.
~~~
The day has the most unexpected heroes, and the spot that Zuko left empty in prison is refilled two times over.
~~~
They return to the Temple and Katara nearly beats Sokka’s ass, but she doesn’t in the end because she refuses to let go of their father. Sokka watches as Suki pulls Toph into a tight hug, and knows that now isn’t the time, but soon, it will be. They laugh around the fire and share stories of their time apart, and there are a few times that Sokka catches a flicker of color in the firepit. He thinks he’s imagining it, until he realises that the fire is moving with Zuko’s shallow breaths.
Their eyes meet across the fire, and, for once in his life, Zuko is the one who smiles first. It’s small and crooked, just barely there, a grimace to those who don’t know what they’re looking for. But Sokka grins back at him, full force, and the rest goes unsaid.
~~~
Sokka’s left hand is holding his pen and his right is gripping lightly onto Zuko’s, thumb brushing gently against the back of his husband’s hand. They’ve been working like this for hours, practically all afternoon, and it’s a shame to be holed up in the office like this when Aang and Katara’s kids are visiting, but it’s just what has to be done.
Someone knocks on the door and clears their throat, and Sokka and Zuko both look up at the same time to see Azula standing there, one little girl dressed in Water Tribe blues perched on her hip, and another girl that Sokka recognizes as his own daughter clutching tightly to her opposite hand.
“Boys,” Azula says primly, “your presence has been requested at the turtleduck pond for- erm, what is their presence necessary for?” she asks, looking towards Izumi.
“For the picnic, Auntie ‘Zula!” Izumi exclaims, with all of the agonized squalor that a six year old princess can possess.
“Oh, yes, of course,” Azula says, “your presence has been requested at the turtleduck pond for a picnic of the utmost importance.”
“Oh?” Sokka asks, raising his eyebrow. “And who has asked for us to be at this picnic?”
Azula grins. “Only the most beautiful ladies in all the land, Crown Princess Izumi and Lady Kya of Air Temple Island.”
“Well, darling,” Zuko says, “I think we have to go, don’t we? No one can say no to such beautiful maidens.”
Kya and Izumi giggle in the doorway, the sound chiming through the room. “Of course we’ll go,” Sokka says. The two of them stand from the desk and make their way towards the girls, and when Kya reaches out for Sokka he takes her from Azula’s arms, smirking in response to his sister-in-law’s smile. They make their way to the gardens and Sokka sets his niece back on the grass as Izumi starts running towards the base of what has become everyone’s favorite tree, where Bumi and a one year old Tenzin are playing with Mai and Ty Lee.
Sokka, Zuko, and Azula hang back, watching the kids play. Kya shakily waterbenders a glob of pond water onto Bumi’s head, and when Tenzin claps and giggles it gets blown right off.
“I guess Aang finally got his little airbender,” Azula notes. “I’d been wondering when that would happen.”
“We all were,” Zuko says.
“I’m glad it ended up being Tenzin,” Azula adds, “I think Katara would kill Aang in cold blood if he asked her for another kid.”
“What about you, ‘Zula?” Sokka asks. “You changed your mind about having a few little firebenders of your own?”
“I’m happy being an Auntie, thank you very much,” Azula sniffs, although there’s no malice behind it. “I get to deal with the kids when they’re happy, and when they start to cry I can just give them to you.”
All three of them know that’s a lie. Even when Izumi was just a baby, Azula insisted on taking her for one night every two weeks, lest Sokka and Zuko pass out in their meetings. For a while, Azula was one of the only people who could calm Izumi down when she was crying, along with her two dads.
Sometimes, Sokka thinks about the Day of Black Sun, when Azula had taunted him with Zuko’s whereabouts. Now, as he watches the next generation of his family running around the gardens and letting out shrill shrieks of joy, his sister-in-law standing just beside him, Sokka marvels at just how much as changed.
~~~
As Sokka wakes from a surprisingly pleasant dream, the Temple starts exploding around him.
He curses under his breath and shoots up from his bedroll, already moving to gather supplies. It’s going to be a long day.
~~~
“I’m sorry.”
Sokka looks up from his maps to see Zuko standing at the flap of his tent, his hands grasped tightly together. He looks nervous, like he’s waiting for a scolding, even though he hasn’t done anything.
“What for?” Sokka asks. “You didn’t do anything.”
“Yeah,” Zuko agrees, “but I’m about to. The apology is preemptive.”
Sokka nods slowly, setting his maps to the side. “Come sit down,” he says, patting the ground. Zuko does so slowly, cautiously, and he sits ramrod straight, in the way that Sokka expects he might sit in a royal court. “What is it?” Sokka asks, then adds, “I promise I won’t be mad.”
“Promise?” Zuko asks quietly, reaching a hand out, palm-up.
“Promise,” Sokka says, offering his own hand and waiting until Zuko links them together. In the week that’s passed since their trip to the Boiling Rock, touch has become easier between them, more casual, but they still haven’t talked about it, and Sokka doesn’t know when they will.
Zuko takes a deep breath. “I need you to tell me about your mother.”
Sokka’s heart stutters in his chest, and for a moment, it almost feels like it’s stopped. Reflexes tell him to pull away, to yank his hand out of Zuko’s and recede into himself, maybe to curl up in the corner of the tent and pretend that nothing bad has ever happened to him. Instead of doing any of these things, though, Sokka takes a deep breath in through his nose, letting it out through his mouth. He curls up into Zuko’s side (because what is a firebender for if not for cuddles) and grips Zuko’s hand tightly in his own.
“Katara and I were having a snowball fight,” Sokka starts. “Then, the black snow started falling.”
Throughout the story, Zuko is a solid presence at Sokka’s side. Sokka understands, vaguely, that Zuko’s mother isn’t in the picture either, and it’s nice to know that the hand raking through his hair and the hot breath on his neck come from a place of empathy, not pity. There gets to be a point, when Sokka is trying to describe the moment that he stumbled into the igloo and saw Kya’s body, that his emotions bring him past words, to the brink of tears, and Zuko just holds him closer, extracts his hand from Sokka’s and starts using it to rub up and down his back.
“I’m sorry,” Zuko whispers into Sokka’s hair, “I’m so sorry.”
Sokka just shakes his head. He can’t say anything, not through the tears that he’s trying so hard to keep silent, but he wants to find every way he can to insist that it’s not Zuko’s fault. He must have a reason for asking such a personal question, Sokka reasons, which makes it not-his-fault.
After Sokka’s done telling the story, they curl up together atop his bedroll. Mirroring that night at the prison, Zuko curls around Sokka, and they fall asleep like that, fitted together like pieces of a puzzle.
~~~
Sokka knows when he hears the footsteps that his attempt at hiding has been in vain. He tries to make it seem like he’s not been crying, at least, wiping his tears away and sniffing slightly, but the look on Zuko’s face when he turns tells him that he failed at that too.
Just like you failed to save your mother , a voice in his head taunts him. That’s all it takes for the tears to come back full-force, and Sokka falls forward into Zuko, who’s arms are already outstretched.
Zuko makes soothing little noises and rubs the back of Sokka’s head, not saying anything about the way that Sokka’s fists in his tunic are definitely going to leave wrinkles. Sokka’s sure that he knows what this is about, mostly because Sokka tries to be at the South pole for this date every year, but this year politics got in the way, and the new country forming out of the former colonies, and so Sokka is hiding in a small laundry room so that no Ministers or Advisors find him, but Zuko found him anyways.
“You know,” Sokka sniffs out, “it’s been half my life now, without her. And every year that I’m alive after this, that fraction will get bigger and bigger, until I’m old and grey and ten years at the beginning of my life don’t matter much anymore.”
“That’s not true,” Zuko says softly, “Sokka, you know that’s not true. She’s your mother. She was your mother then, she’s your mother now, and she’ll still be your mother when you’re old and grey. The early years of your life will always matter, not just because of your mother, but also because you lived them.”
Sokka tucks his face into the crook of Zuko’s neck and sobs so hard it hurts. In a horrifically funny, sort of twisted way, he wonders if this is what a child feels like when they cry to their mother.
Sue him. He’s twenty years old, and his mother has been dead since he was ten, and his soulmate is the leader of an entire third of the world, and his father is the Chief of a sixth, and his best friend is the Avatar, and his sister is the best waterbender in a century, and his other best friend is the leader of an elite squad of warriors, and his other-other best friend invented a whole new subtype of bending. Sokka is responsible for un-fucking-up a whole century’s worth of fuck-ups, and he’s decided that he’s allowed to cry about his dead mother every once in a while.
(It’s okay to cry, he reasons, still sobbing into Zuko’s shoulder, because he knows that Zuko will always be there to hold him through it. They’re soulmates, that’s just how it works.)
~~~
Sokka wakes up the next morning to the feeling of Zuko sitting up out of bed. They’ve cuddled up to each other overnight, so much so that Sokka’s nose is pressed into Zuko’s Adam's apple, so Sokka tightens his arms around Zuko’s waist and tries to keep him from getting up.
“Don’ go…” he says tiredly, “you’re warm.”
Sokka slowly blinks his eyes open to see Zuko staring down at him, eyes glazed over with something that could maybe be called fondness. When he notices Sokka looking, Zuko shakes the look off his face and pries Sokka’s arms from his waist, smirking a bit at Sokka’s sarcastic cry of distress.
Despite his complaints, Sokka lets Zuko tuck him back into the bedroll, and he watches as the other boy hesitates for a moment before bending down and pressing the lightest of kisses to Sokka’s temple. Sokka smiles, and it’s not a grin, but it’s maybe the softest and sweetest expression he’s had on his face in months.
“Yeah?” Zuko whispers, looking at Sokka like he’s about to explode.
“Yeah,” Sokka says, because it’s all he needs to say.
~~~
(Little does Sokka know, Zuko had the same dream that he had the night before, just from a different perspective. It’s because of this coincidence that he’s wary of Sokka trying to change Katara’s mind about going to find the Southern Raiders.
“I think Aang’s right,” Sokka says. “Are you sure that it’s such a good idea to kill someone, when it was Mom’s death that started this whole mess? I don’t think it’s worth it, Katara.”
“Then you didn’t love her like I did!” Katara exclaims. Her hair is whipping about in the wind and her eyes are red, the perfect picture of righteous anger, but Zuko doesn’t see any of that. All he sees is Sokka, and maybe in a different world the way that Sokka’s heartbreak is visible in his eyes wouldn’t be apparent to Zuko, but it is in this world, and it makes his own heart break in turn.)
~~~
“She couldn’t do it.”
“I know,” Sokka says. He sits next to Zuko, who settled at the edge of the dock after Katara finally accepted his apology, and the two of them exist there for the time being.
“I’m sorry I put your family through that,” Zuko rasps. He refuses to look at Sokka, gazing instead out at the rocky shoreline in the distance.
“Zuko,” Sokka whispers, “you have nothing to be sorry for.”
“Of course I do!” Zuko exclaims, whipping around to look Sokka in the eye. “It’s my fault that you and Katara got into a fight, and it’s my fault that Katara bloodbent again, and I made you tell me the story of your mother’s death, which was a really shitty thing to do, and I-”
Sokka’s sure that Zuko would’ve kept going, had Sokka not yanked him into the most fierce hug he could manage. Zuko, as if by reflex, tucks his face into the crook of Sokka’s neck and sniffles quietly. Sokka’s learned that when Zuko hugs, it’s all or nothing; either he’s stiff and quick about it, or he absolutely melts into it, and stays there for as long as humanly possible.
This hug seems to fall into the latter category.
“You know I’m a little bit in love with you, right?” Sokka says after a while, muffled into Zuko’s hair. The other boy makes a little noise of surprise and stiffens up for a moment, but then he melts back into Sokka, as if he’s trying to eliminate every bit of space between them.
“Really?” Zuko whispers.
“Really,” Sokka says, raking a hand through his hair.
“Oh,” Zuko says. “Well, that’s good, because I’m a little bit in love with you too.”
There’s still much to talk about. There’s a battle on the horizon and a Firelord to take down, and they don’t even have a place to stay for the night. But Sokka knows that everything will turn out, if not because he’s seen the future, than because he’s holding the future in his arms.
~~~