A/N: Written for sartorias at LJ for her birthday. Don't think she minds me posting it here. :) Full of sappy sibling love, because sibling love PWNS.
Disclaimer: I have so much hero-worshipfullness and fangirling and admiration for Bryan and Mike. I wouldn't try to steal from them. What do you think I am?
Halcyon Days
Sokka usually wakes earlier than everyone else. It has become a habit - most of the time he ends up going back to sleep, but he always makes sure everyone is accounted for and that there are no enemies in the immediate vicinity.
This morning, he wakes up to Momo sleeping on his face, breathing hot, animal breath right into his nostrils, and a heavy arm wrapped tightly around his waist. He groans and carefully detaches the lemur and deposits him on the owner of the arm. The owner of the arm, incidentally, is Aang, who has somehow managed to worm his entire sleeping bag over to Sokka and is nestled against Sokka's side like a baby penguin seal. Sokka wriggles out of Aang's embrace and out of his own sleeping bag, making a big effort not to wake either of them. (Not that he could, considering the pair of them would have been able to sleep through every natural disaster and a rampaging herd of bull horses - all going at the same time.)
He glances around at the clearing where they've made camp. Toph is asleep - he can see her dirt-encrusted feet sticking out of the makeshift stone tent she made for herself the night before. Katara isn't in her bed. Sokka sighs. She's probably gone off to wash clothes or something. She has a habit of doing that, and for some reason, she prefers to do it before the sun has even properly risen.
(She's told him on many occasions her reasons: "I have to have them done early so that I can have them washed and dried and folded in the bags before we leave! You never know when we'll have to pick up and go!"
He still thinks it's stupid. There's no reason why she can't do them the night before, and with the way everyone rips the clothes out of the bags, there's no reason to fold them either. He just shrugs it off as a girl thing.)
However, Sokka's biggest qualm with her early morning bouts of washing is that he has to drag himself out of bed and the comfortable daze of sleep to go find her. She doesn't appreciate his brotherly protection nearly enough, but he overlooks that this morning and grabs his boomerang and club and slogs off to find her without bothering to wait and pull his hair back. (It's getting annoyingly long, but he doesn't trust himself with a knife so close to his head - shaving his infinitesimal mustache is terrifying enough - and he doesn't trust anyone else to shave it properly.)
He finds her by some nearby river that she managed to find. (She always manages to find one.) She's wearing her underclothes-become-swimming-clothes and is washing her hair.
(Well, hair, clothes, she's washing something. What is it with girls and washing things?)
She looks up as he comes near and smiles through the water streaming down her face.
"Hey, Sokka!" she says brightly, and he smiles back as his irritation slips away.
"Morning," he says, sitting down beside her. She's gone back to washing her hair, her head in the river to her eyebrows, hands rubbing so vigorously at her scalp that it makes Sokka's scalp ache.
When she resurfaces, she wrings her hair out and splashes him with droplets as she flings it back over her shoulders.
She notices he's still there and gives him a curious look.
"Did you need something?" she asks.
"No, nothing," Sokka says, wiping the water from his face. "Just wanted to know where you went."
"You know, you don't have to stalk me wherever I go," she tells him as she begins dragging a comb through her hair, which is wildly curly even when it's wet. "I can take care of myself."
"I'm not stalking you. I'm your brother. I have to protect you."
"I can protect myself," she says, annoyed, and pulls some of her hair over her shoulder to comb it more easily.
"I know you can," he tells her quietly.
For the first time in a long time, though, she looks vulnerable. In her plain white clothes with her hair undone and free, she doesn't look the way she's looked since…well, since their mother died. He realizes he hasn't seen Katara in years. He's seen her as many things: Water Tribe, warrior, waterbender, tyrant, even a substitute mother now and then, but he hasn't seen Katara in a very long time, and suddenly, here, she's just Katara. She just his sister, and nothing else, and he wants to cry because he can't believe how much time he's lost, how many of the little things he's missed.
"You've really grown up," he tells her.
"I'm fifteen," she says matter-of-factly. "Most girls my age are getting married, you know."
"I know," he says, and forces back an urge to shout brotherly warnings about how whoever wants her has to go through him first.
She seems disturbed by his lack of ranting, because she stops mid-stroke of her comb and stares at him. The shorter clumps of hair around her face are beginning to dry and are already curling into corkscrews against her cheeks. "What's gotten into you today?"
Sokka shakes his head and tilts it upward, avoiding her gaze. "Nothing."
He can feel Katara watch him a moment longer, but then she goes back to combing.
"I should probably cut my hair soon," she muses absently. "It's getting too long for me to brush the ends. Do you think you could help me with it?"
"Oh, Katara…I'm a guy! Guys don't do their sisters' hair!"
Katara glares at him. "I do all sorts of things for you."
"Like what?"
"Like washing your clothes, and cooking your food, and mending your pants, and packing your things, and have you forgotten the time you swallowed that seal blubber whole - "
"All right, all right, I get it!" Sokka snatches the comb from her. "Just don't tell anyone. Wouldn't want to ruin my image."
Katara makes a noise; Sokka can't decide whether it's a laugh or a scoff. He moves to sit behind her and begins running the comb through her hair, gently, gently, coaxing out the tangles so carefully that he wonders just how he ever learned to do it that way. He realizes its instinct; he can't bear to hurt her, even if it's just pulling her hair.
"Remember when we were little, and your arms were too short to comb it?"
"Gran-Gran used to do it for me after Mom died."
"I did, too, sometimes."
"When you weren't trying to be a warrior."
Sokka sighs.
She's talking about something, but he can't focus on what it is. (Still too sleepy, darn it. Of course he can't focus.) She never moves, and he sees how disciplined she's become. When she was little she couldn't sit still long enough for either him or Gran-Gran to comb out her mane.
She's not a little girl anymore. And he's not a little boy.
The difference is, despite the fact that he had known the moments that made him a man, he never saw her becoming a woman.
Suddenly, a small noise bursts out of him, and he bites his lip to keep it from happening again. His hands fall into his lap.
"Sokka?" Katara asks.
His arms lift of their own accord and circle her shoulders and he pulls her tight against his chest, and he doesn't even notice that her hair is still wet as he buries his face in it.
"Sokka!" Katara cries. "Are you okay?"
"I love you, Katara," Sokka says. "I love you. You're the best sister I could have ever asked for."
"I love you, too," Katara tells him. "What brought this on?"
"I don't know. I just don't think I've ever really told you, that's all."
Katara laughs and turns in his arms so she can hug him back. "You never had to. I already knew."