building up the fallen empire
sokka/yue/suki
by once upon a keyboard.
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Before he meets melting blue eyes and snow hair, he finds Suki's brown hair and green dresses the most beautiful thing in the world. Because after meeting her, he thinks, how could anything else compare? That's why after seeing her on the icy cold rivers of the North Pole he can't believe how beautiful she is. So he doesn't think twice about falling in love with those sapphire eyes and soft soft smiles.
Swiftly, he's falling, without thinking of consequences and of the fact he was already in love (right?).
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She is heartbroken when she meets him, because even though his stumbling words and skin darker than hers enchant her in a way she knows she shouldn't be enchanted, even though her heart leaps (just) a little when she sees him, it can't help from cracking because the (stupid!) necklace round her neck is like a leash, tugging her back and whispering no, you can't love him, you can't love anyone. So she sits by him, hiding her breaking heart with a little laugh at his tonguetied efforts to impress her.
Slowly, she's dying, kept in her little cage built by tribal customs. And she hates herself for being the princess.
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When she tells him she's engaged, it takes only a nanosecond for his heart to break (unevenly, because nothing breaking cracks down the middle) by the hand of her crying words. And (the smaller) half of his bleeding heart wants to find the man who carved her that necklace binding her to someone other than him—the (stupid!) Sokka from the (pathetic) Southern Water Tribe, the one who didn't get to the princess first—and make the damsel in distress his. But the other half stabs itself raw, saying she didn't love you, anyway. She's probably glad to get you off her back, the baby who calls himself warrior, who calls himself man! And he believes it, but still he loves her and he knows he always will.
Always, the overwhelmed half of his splintering heart (whisper)screams.
Always.
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While red moons bleed water and dying fish(spirits) bleed blood, she kisses him for the second time and he has to let her go, has to let her die for millions of lives. And even though he wants to be selfish and keep her to himself and never ever ever let anyone else touch her, his precious porcelain princess Yue, (s)he knows that she is the perfect princess and would do anything for her people and that he has to be the Avatar's companion, the warhero, and give up his (her? He can't even tell anymore) heart for everyone else's, and so he watches as she becomes what he could never be - the moon - and he feels the familiar dying feeling inside as she stops to breathe.
She's more of a warhero than I could ever be, he thinks, and he has an involuntary pang of guilt that he didn't die for her.
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He sees her in his dreams from then on, and every time he wakes up choking on unshed tears that he's been saving up since the day the North Pole was painted red and then back to blue and white again, and every time he gags from the memory of all the blood that was spilled for the rest of the world, and he calms himself by staring at Aang and promising the moon(goddess Yue, his Yue) that he would help the Avatar end the useless war.
Except when he goes back to sleep, he sees her again, crying, screaming, dying, smiling, laughing, loving, living, existing in every way.
But the second time he doesn't wake up, he only endures the torture of seeing her through dreaming, because how else can he see her?
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In the Swamp, he sees her and feels like desperately running towards her, he feels like stumbling and tripping and being with her again, but he knows well enough that she couldn't be back, and when she says, 'you didn't protect me,' he knows the illusion can't be her, because his loving, caring, beautiful Yue would never say something like that to the boy (man? Warrior? Hero?) she loved (or so he deludes himself). And he's glad because he's started realizing that she really was gone, and that (however much he wanted to) he couldn't get her back.
So he stumbles back and he dreams of nothingness for a while, until green and brown starts to invade again, taking the place of blue and white and purple.
Earth for water.
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When they arrive in the Earth Kingdom, he is overwhelmed with green. So he falls asleep with all of his senses enveloped with the color, and he finds it a refreshing change from the beautiful color blue, because green brings him back to Kyoshi, to Suki and fans and fire and sea monsters and seconds of pure, untainted innocence. Moments of blushes and learning to fight and running and the two of them, before he met hypnotizing eyes and long hair.
He loves being surrounded by a color that helps him forget his lost princess Yue.
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Suki reappears in his (hopeless) life after they're trying to get to Ba Sing Se and she and the Kyoshi Warriors are out of the war and helping refugees and everyone else he couldn't think of. And she's like a breath of clean—unpolluted by war—air to see someone from what seems like forever ago. Except it's like a cracked memory to see her without the makeup, without the green dress and the fans and with the warrior aspect of her washed away and sent down the drain.
And even when she's back in the outfit of his memories, kissing her again is like a broken record, and he wonders if she can taste the bittersour taste of held back sobs and cracked laughs on his lips.
For a second, he thinks he's kissing Yue, tasting snow instead of blood.
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In Ba Sing Se, he spends his days roaming the streets and his nights sticking his head out the window and staring at the person(spirit-goddess-something) he loved (loves, honestly, but he can't bring himself to hurt Suki). And he spends the time he's not moon gazing dreaming of skies painted blue with the silhouette of Appa and eyes the same color as the sea and the sky and eventually it all just fades into a whirlpool of sapphire and pearl and amethyst, and he loses himself in it all.
But in the morning, Katara or Toph or Aang or Momo wakes him up, and he spends his day waiting until night.
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The day they go to Lake Laogai is the day when he's surrounded by water on all sides, and he feels like he's choking because waves of memories crash down on him, bringing him back (again) to full moons and vast seas and red armies and black ships and Yue, the long lost princess of his dreams, lighting the night with soft rays of silver light just as she lit up hearts with her soft laughs.
But he rides it out, yelling at himself that he can't dwell on the past like he is.
Except, he still wonders (deep down) what it would be like if Zhao hadn't bloodied the North Pole and if Yue hadn't left him for the vast midnight skies.
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He endures the hidden party because it's at night and the moons lull is too strong for him to give up on, so he stays there awake, secretly catching glimpses of her silver glory, and once or twice, he thinks he sees her in the sea of black hair and golden eyes, but really, he knows he doesn't, and that brings him to asking himself whether Yue saw him the way she used to, especially now, with his fake beard and mustache and Fire Nation clothes, and he wonders whether he looks like a traitor to her, if he looks like he abandoned the Water Tribes and turned to Ozai.
He spits the word out loud, hisses it in disgust, because he knows that if things had been different, if the war was over before it started, and he had gone to the Northern Water Tribe for something other than the Avatar, Yue wouldn't be dead, and he might have her for himself. And he knows if Ozai hadn't continued his father's stupid legacy, he wouldn't have to have nightmares colored in with white and blue.
And red. Always red.
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The hours (days, whatever, he thinks, not really caring about time anymore) they spend on the polluted river are horrible for him, because he always pictures the Painted Lady as Yue, when he knows it's Katara and it kills him to watch his baby sister transform into a spirit into the love of his life because has he really sunk that far, to seeing her everywhere? But still, sticking out like a sore thumb is Suki, yet he knows she's only an illusion too, he knows she isn't on the polluted river, she's somewhere out there fighting or captured but wherever she is she isn't with him, so he just silently screams himself to sleep and feels his mind run away from the rest of the group determined to save the world.
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Hama frightens him—even though Katara is the happiest girl in the world to have a Sifu from her home, the South Pole—because of her wicked smiles that she masks and her evil warm eyes. But he lets his little sister stick around, because silently, Yue is telling him to see where it goes, and he knows that he should let Katara have her way and learn.
So when he and Aang run into the clearing and find their blood (body, same thing) belong to another, he isn't shockingly surprised, and he isn't amazingly scared. But when he sees Katara crying, her face flashes into Yue's, because the full moon is right above him, he starts feeling terrified for his sister-slash-mother.
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He would never admit it to anyone, but the days before the Day of the Black Sun, he has just as many nightmares as Aang, filled with Suki's screams and Yue's smiles and face shifting into face until Sokka and Suki and Yue don't exist as three anymore, they're just one mask on one body.
But he doesn't wake up screaming or crying or anything like Aang does, he silently takes the pain, piling it up onto the trash dump of broken tears and all his other worries and wounds are screams, and he dreamily acknowledges the fact that soon it's going to overflow and he's going to go (more) insane (than he already is).
He hates it.
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While Azula laughs at his screams about Suki, he's finding that he's slowly letting go of Yue, and he finds it surprisingly wonderful that he won't always dream in shades of blue anymore, even though he feels himself dying with the loss of half his heart.
Then the eight minutes of no fire bending is over, and he realizes that she had diverted him and he had ruined it all and he abhors himself for falling for her quickly woven web, because she's nothing more than a spider and he's nothing more than a fly.
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He plans on sneaking out and finding Suki on his own, to make up for everything he's done, but Zuko (who joined shortly after the eclipse) comes with him. Because, he says to himself, he'll be helpful. It's not that I want company.
But he knows he does. He doesn't want to be alone when he's surrounded by prisoners and broken records and bitter memories and red and gold and all of those warm colors.
He doesn't want to be alone in the Fire Nation's elaborate web that he easily falls for.
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When he sees her, he's more than relieved that she's still alive, because he couldn't live without her too, without his warrior and his princess. And when she punches him, he's exuberated that she still has her nasty fighting skills, too.
And he finds himself falling in love with her all over again.
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While they stay on Ember Island, he adores (hates) being with Suki again, because she takes his mind off of kisses above canals and next to spirit ponds. So he does everything he can to convince the two of them that he loves her, except she believes him more than he believes himself, and that's like a sharp stab to his heart.
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He gets over his beautiful Yue the full moon after they've defeated Ozai. Because Suki is his warrior and he couldn't live without her just as she couldn't live without him, and they had protected each other and fought each other and loved each other, and he's finally realized that now Yue's only companion is the sea and he deals with it, because at least she isn't lonely.
It still hurts, though.