It had become a matter of simply making up things to do. Without the war or specific goals to form a strategy around, Sokka had seemed to wilt. He didn't mind spending days on end planning some rescue or new technology as long as he got to be a part of its execution. But now, whenever the questions got remotely exciting and Sokka could spend some of his pent up energy finding the answer, someone else ran off to execute the plan and Sokka was called back to the table. It wasn't at all how he liked to do things; a fair amount of Sokka's genius only showed itself when the unexpected happened, and he was forced to improvise. He was fairly lost just sitting at a table, letting other people face the unexpected, while he drew up another solution to a problem he couldn't care about. And his art skills weren't getting any better.

So Suki had come up with the first mission: she wanted to visit her home again. It was a suitable challenge to start with, she was feeling a tad homesick, and to make it more interesting, Suki added that she'd like it to be a secret, and just the two of them.

And Sokka went to work. It took a week, but Sokka was in fantastic spirits for every day of it. Suki was positive everyone else knew something was going on; they all looked to her for some kind of answer. She gave them nothing. She said later that if she had known what she was starting, she would have rethought the whole thing, but that wasn't strictly true. Sokka knew she wanted adventure every bit as much as he did, and that was all that mattered.

They left in the middle of the day. They had a lot of Fire Nation to get through on their way to the ocean, and figured this would give them the most time. They'd appeared in the morning, then went to get lunch together. They'd done this before, often staying out until after dark, though rarely for the reasons everyone assumed. (Usually, they would do something like race each other up the side of a cliff, and then spend the rest of the day figuring out how to get back down.) It was tolerated well enough, so it would be quite a while before their absence became suspicious. By then, they should be out on the ocean.

The schooner Sokka had procured was small enough that two could easily operate it, but Suki was having some doubts on whether it was truly seaworthy. She noticed that Sokka's course seemed to be keeping them as close to land as was possible, which was, strangely enough, not helping her confidence. Equally strangely, they made it to Kyoshi Island relatively unscathed. Their patience had been tested a bit, with both of them desperately wanting to just go along for the ride while at the same time thinking over everything that could go wrong, trying not to say anything about it. They had failed. Each of them furiously assigned the clearly larger part of the blame to the other, trying to obscure their own share. When Sokka had insisted that, as the entire trip was her idea, none of the blame could possibly lie with him, Suki had started purposefully criticizing his sailing skills. The low point had undoubtedly been the last night before their arrival, when they were very South and very cold. Sokka, in an almost touchingly optimistic gesture, had brought just the one heavy sleeping bag. Suki had refused to share it, but neither could be quite selfish enough to take it, and in their stubbornness they had spent a very chilly night freezing at opposite ends of the boat, the sleeping bag in the no-man's-land between them.

Shortly before dawn, Sokka made a peace offering of a remark on his temper having cooled off. They had both laughed, admitted that the night before was probably stupider than anything else they'd done, and spent the morning making up for lost warmth.

When they'd landed, tied up the schooner, and were on solid ground again, Sokka began desperately trying to explain himself. Suki caught something about sailing, Katara, Aang, maps... it was virtually nonsense. She had just stopped him before he could confuse them both any further, and asked what he was really trying to say.

"I'm sorry." He clearly wanted to continue and list everything he was sorry for.

"It's okay. I'm sorry, too." Suki had learned to cut him off before he could start. And no more was said of it. They had an understanding of sorts that allowed them to mutually recognize those rare subjects that deserved awkward talks about their feelings. This would not be one of those subjects. Instead:

"I bet I can beat you up that tree!" Sokka said, racing to get the head start he felt he deserved.

Suki did have an unfair advantage, after all.

"Yeah, well, I didn't have trees where I grew up." Sokka was ever the gracious loser.

The visit was more brief than either of them intended. Suki was a bit surprised to find how quickly she got bored here, now that she knew the world was so much larger than this island. Sokka was making the most of it, continuing his training, but the itch to move and see something new was too difficult to ignore, so they agreed to head back to the Fire Nation capitol, tell everyone where they had been, and then go somewhere else.

It was a pleasant enough night as they got going, until Suki looked at the stars.

"That can't be right...We're going dead South."

"No, we're not."

Suki stared at him a moment. "Yes, we are. You know we are."

"I just... I thought we might..."

"Sokka... are we going to the South Pole?"

"A little bit."

Suki just had to laugh. "I like that you wanted to surprise me, I really do, but did you think I wouldn't notice?"

"I hoped. It would have been a nice surprise, you know?"

Suki chose to be more happy than insulted. After all, it was only going to get colder, so now was not a time to pick a fight.