ZUTARA WEEK 2012, Day 2: MOMENTOUS

A Comedic Collaborator

DISCLAIMER: Avatar: the Last Airbender belongs to Bryke, but Zutara Week belongs to all Zutarians. And I always write in a context where neither Kataang nor Maiko ever happened.

It's my fifth year of Zutara week and though I was late during the actual dates, I did not want a year to go by without my contributing to it. So I decided to post all my entries on the last "special" date for the century – 12-12-12. Better late than never, I hope.

NOTE: Set some time after The Southern Raiders. Just something short and silly, hopefully still doing a bit of justice to the prompt. Told mostly from others' points of view because that's a habit of mine and hopefully makes things more interesting.

"I cannot believe it, I never thought I'd see the day!"

"What are you going on about, Sokka?" Toph asked the incredulous Water Tribe Warrior.

"Toph, Toph, Toph, history is being made right before….right now," Sokka replied, quickly correcting himself from saying "right before your eyes".

"What's the big deal?" the earthbender asked, unimpressed, "it's just Zuko and Katara laughing together. That isn't so unusual now, not after they made up."

"I know that Toph, but don't you….realize?" Sokka asked (again correcting himself from asking "don't you see?" and thinking that it could be so tricky to talk to Toph sometimes and avoid getting enclosed in rock), "they're laughing at a joke, and not just any joke, mind you, a joke Katara just told."

"OOhhhh, now I see what you mean," Toph replied, and sensing Sokka's surprise at her wording, she quickly added, "not literally, of course, but I get it."

They were both only too well aware of Katara's abilities (or lack thereof) in comedy. Everyone in the group agreed on this. Even Katara had conceded that she lacked talent in that area. Every attempt of hers to make a joke was a disaster and it reached a point where she just stopped trying.

But since she had only recently begun to talk to Zuko on more civil terms, she had decided that she would give one last go at a small career in comedy. He hadn't heard her tell jokes before and maybe a change of audience was all she had really needed.

She had been apprehensive at first since everyone else had always reacted negatively to her attempts at humor. They had all given her pity laughs at the start. But after a while, they told her to stick to advice and inspirational speeches. She was definitely good at those. It had fallen to her brother to tell her the harsh truth.

"Keep the comedy to me," Sokka had told her, "I love you and you're my sister, but you are really terrible at jokes."

And she had accepted it, grudgingly at first, and then with some degree of resignation. It wasn't as if she was bereft of other talents, anyway. She was a master waterbender, after all. And they did say that she was good at advice. So she would stick to what she was good at.

But then came Zuko, and the friendship she had decided to extend to him. The more she got to know him, the more she wanted to see him smile and eventually, to make him laugh. She had heard him laugh occasionally at something Aang or Sokka had said and he had smiled at her more often after she had given him that hug of forgiveness. And his smile had quite an effect on her, a warm feeling inside that she wanted to have more often. And his laugh, since it was heard so rarely, made it more precious and wonderful and made her all the more determined to be the cause of it at least once.

So she plucked up enough courage to approach him one day, in between training sessions, and to tell a joke.

"What was the joke even about?" Toph asked Sokka as they continued to watch in fascination at the two laughing benders.

"I have no idea," Sokka replied, "and with Katara, it doesn't even matter. I'm sure it didn't even make any comedic sense. But apparently, by some strange power, it worked on Zuko."

"She finally found someone who shares the same, weird sense of humor," Toph said with a grin.

"And if I remember correctly," Sokka said pensively, "Zuko isn't that good at telling jokes, either."

"Come to think of it, you're right," Toph agreed, "and most of the jokes he knows he heard from his uncle who is certainly better at this kind of thing than the nephew is. I remember Zuko trying to tell a joke once and going straight to the punch line because he couldn't remember the rest of it."

"I remember that," Sokka agreed, "that was a little sad, actually."

He winced at the memory.

"But listen to them now, just having a fit of laughter together," Sokka continued, "I bet even if I asked them what was funny, I wouldn't be able to react the same way."

"Nor I," Toph agreed, "but I'm happy for them, at least. They finally found the one person who finds the other completely hilarious."

"Yep, this is truly a momentous occasion," Sokka said with a sagely a nod as he could muster.

He continued to watch his sister and his friend as they exchanged their un-funny jokes and laughed at them genuinely and he smiled. It had been a long time since he had seen Katara look so happy and he now knew that he had someone to thank for it. There was definitely something about Zuko that made the group so much better and Sokka was grateful that the firebender had decided to join them. In such a short time, Zuko had made such an impact on them all, and had effectively changed their lives. And Sokka was sure, that all this had changed Zuko's life as well.

"Well, here's another historic event," Toph commented, interrupting the Water Tribe warrior's reverie, "you've gone all quiet and pensive, what's going on?"

"Oh, nothing bad, don't worry about it," Sokka reassured her with a small laugh, "I was just thinking."

"Amazing!" Toph cried in mock surprise.

"Ha-ha," Sokka replied, "but anyway, I was just thinking that this is the first time I've seen Katara this happy in a very long time. And more than the weird sense of humor and the jokes that aren't funny, I think that this is the most momentous thing about all this."

"He makes her happy," Toph said, "and vice versa. Good for them."

"Yeah," Sokka agreed thoughtfully, "I didn't expect this but now I like how it all turned out and hopefully, after all this is over, something more can come out of it."

"That would really be something, now wouldn't it?" Toph said.

"Wait, I think they're coming this way to share some of their jokes," Sokka said in a panic, "what do we do?"

"I'm on it," Toph replied, and with her earthbending, she quickly whisked them away from the approaching pair of comedic catastrophes.