A/N: This is a collaboration between my friend "Larissa" and me that started out as a poem on a rather dull spring morning last year. I hope you guys enjoy! Also, a [] indicates a pov change.
The backstory/Summary: Azula makes an escape from the Boiling Rock Mental Hospital, and Sokka, who has become something of a drifter by this point, has volunteered to chase her down, confront her, and bring her back to prison-or die trying. What they find is that this duel between them, this dance, reveals a lot more than they expected.
Disclaimer: I don't own any characters from Avatar: The Last Airbender.
This Dance, a Sokkla oneshot
[Sokka]
As I wandered through freshly garnished fields of red, burnt by the blue liquid flames, I saw her, her body flickering in a dangerous dance. As the fire flared from her fingertips, like sharp tongues of ruby jewels, it formed an apparition quite unsettling, reminding me of how long I'd spent in this chase. The crackling gemstones, made by the stuff of dark red nights spent alone in a tent, sparkled and flashed, and allured by the garnet-beauty, the field leaned forward with a silent hush, while her feet trampled the ruined grass in her dance, her movements always fierce, always deadly.
Yet I felt no fear for her.
She turned, and her blood-red lips curved into a wicked smile, when she noticed me watching her, and part of me wondered if she had ever been truly insane. With the gathering clouds, the sky, dark orange as a burnt fruit, became as deep as her ebony hair, which swung and waved in time with the scalded branches of the shadowed trees as the eerie, whispering wind shifted slightly. The scents of ash and sorrow wafted to me on the breeze.
With a grin, she allowed her arms to curl into a series of movements that I knew too well. I met her molten gold eyes as the energy molded itself into a streak of flashing doom. Her mocking eyes, ripe topazes, flashed dangerously. Her hands, tapering and lily-white, unclenched in finish, deadly and precise. Her sharp talon-nails were painted, so that they glistened like the gems that had just rained from her hand, but now, they rained no more.
Time froze like the ice that surrounded my village. It was as though a dream had arrived, but the frigid break in time felt as tiring as a sleepless night.
The arching energy flung itself from her deadly fingers, but it never reached my waiting form. Instead, it took to the sky, and her music began to play, the echo of warring drums in the distance, the sensation that the very Earth was rumbling, a beat as irregular as a flame in the wind.
As if beckoned by her song, diamonds began to rain from the zenith, soaking my clothes and sticking them to my skin. She didn't seem to mind as her scarlet attire was quickly drenched.
And she smiled to me, beckoning me forward, to dance with her.
I followed.
My apprehension was reflected in the iridescent sky as the volume of her song increased once more. Puddles were beginning to form on the charred field. I could see my own face, looking back at me in a nearby puddle, tired blue eyes, a mess of worried lines, scrapes, and bruises, reminding me how long I had been waiting for this moment-
This dance.
My lengthened arms flashed with obsidian danger and grace. Her sapphire-tipped fingers were shorter but equally as destructive.
As we danced.
My feet moved in ways usually foreign, stumbling and unsure, while she seemed accustomed to this dance, its strange, alien ways, its deadly, passionate nature.
Panting, we both peered at the diamond-studded sky. Her hands once again extended into vivid points, arching, hissing, flashing. And I raised my arms in defense. Once more, her music began as the energy arched from her fingertips and into the smoldering sky above.
She circled me in her deadly, graceful steps, and I was reminded, in a brief bout of sarcasm, of how she looked like a bird of prey, circling its weakened victim. I looked into her eyes, expecting that gleam of golden fury to be the last thing I ever see, but I didn't see the anger. Was it truly anger that fueled these movements?
Perhaps hate?
Perhaps pain?
Was I the angry one?
Was I really in pain?
Was she?
But the smirk on her face told me that this dance had scarcely begun.
I smirked, too, and I joined in, and we circled each other for a tense yet beautiful moment, before she made the first strike. It seemed that this dance, this whirl of motion and music, was far more than it appeared to be. But most things prove to be so, when the emotion spurring the action is indefinable, as it certainly was at that moment.
[Azula]
I felt the flame within me, and the scent of burning grass sent my maddened mind into a frenzy. The whole afternoon, I had scanned the verdant landscape for the right spot, the perfect spot, for everything must be perfect.
Finally, when I came across the meadow of ruby flowers, sparkling with early morning dew, I knew this was the place, the place for us to dance.
He'd caught up to me. Of that, I was certain, but I was neither afraid nor apprehensive.
It was all part of the game.
It was all part of the dance.
I surveyed the area, a scowl on my face. It was all too pristine, too innocent, too unaware, like an old friend from my childhood, times forgotten once passed.
The glistening grass bristled slightly under my scrutiny, moving with the wind, too untouched, too wild. The flowers began to shut their eyes, their gazes refusing to meet mine, closing their delicate gossamer petals for the dusk and the evening, too beautiful to be alive. The trees stood proudly on the edge of the field, watching me with their branches held high, as if they were my equals, too unyielding-and one must always submit to royalty. The mountains ripple from the Earth in the distance, looming and casting imposing shadows, too majestic. They were sentries to the meadow, even though I sent them away-I sent them all away.
The way this field seemed almost alive to me, apparently proud of its own innocence and pureness, made me inexplicably angry. Just by being there, shifting gently with the rhythm of the wind, the meadow was defying me. For, although clad in rags, hair matted, face coated in mud and blood, I was a leader. And one must obey, yield, and submit to one's leader.
In my anger at the field's temerity, I willed a flame to spurt from my fingertips, from my feet. The grass went first, and I heard each blade's screech in my head (wounded animals, trapped and dying) and it was music to me, their pain echoing through my maddened mind like the most beautiful melody.
More fire came, approaching each flower and engulfing it in my azure rage. I imagined my old friends' voices, their screams, their pleading me to stop. But I would never stop, and the delicate petals fell to the barren ground in ashes, the flowers' bodies shaking with the throes of their violent, burning deaths.
Then, I attacked the trees, burning them until they turned as black as a starless midnight sky, imagining they were the bars of my prison cell. Straight lines of steel, cylinders of metal, infuriatingly unwavering against my racking sobs, disgustingly impenetrable against my maddened grasp, those unyielding trees had to end.
Just as the final tree was being burned to ash, the sentries fleeing my sight once more, I heard him coming. His footsteps rang out, crunching the corpses of the wild grass, a feast of big game fit for any tribesman.
I turned to him.
His clear, calm blue eyes widened at the sight of me, making him look more primal, more animalistic. I tried to envision myself, where I was standing amidst the decimated field, surrounded by the bodies of my past. Oh, how mad I must have looked, just staring at him the way I was, making myself appear stunned as I peered back at him! I imagined the dirt, the grime, the blood, the scars that littered my body from my escape and subsequent "adventures" across the Earth Kingdom. It seemed that this was the Water Tribe peasant whom my brother had employed to chase me down. Of course, I had let him chase me down.
My lips quirked into a small smile, my first smile in years, though it most likely didn't resemble one to this boy (no, man, I corrected myself) who stood before me. He'd grown taller, I realized upon looking at him. His shoulders had broadened over our two years of separation. His hair, though still styled in that goofy ponytail he'd always worn, somehow suited him more than before, making me wonder: when had all of them grown up?
For awhile, we just stared at each other. No words passed between us. The only sounds were the crackling flames of the fires that dotted the meadow. I knew why he was here. He knew why I had stopped.
It was all part of the game.
It was all part of the dance.
My mind took in his positioning. His exhausted posture, slumped shoulders and hollow eyes, led me to speak, the typical air of superiority and mock-pity in my voice.
"It seems, peasant-" I spat the word harshly, feeling the acrid tang of an old grudge bite at my tongue. "-that even you know who will be the victor."
My stance did not waver. His expression did not change, his icy blue eyes simply shining with an emotion I had seen before at the mental institution but had only by that point had begun to recognize: pity. Yet, beneath it, there was a sort of feral determination, something I could understand a lot more easily. He was poised. He was ready. He was prepared to dance until he collapsed from exhaustion-or worse.
And that excited me.
Clearly, I had not danced in months, arms and legs held into unnatural positions by clanking chains of unwelcoming iron, force fed water and hunks of bread, when I wanted to die, to starve to death, burning of anguish and loss.
Looking at him once more, trying to erase the memories, the darkness and ominous shadows that seemed to ooze into my mind whenever I was unprepared to deal with the onslaught, I noted that he was excited, too.
Yet, there was a certain apprehension that I felt. As I smirked at him, going through the motions, I prepared myself emotionally.
I prepared myself to dance.
According to my taunts, he complied. His eyes were narrowed for my tricks, my deception, and I was completely flattered by it, so I told him, for I hadn't deceived someone in far too long. And after some banter, I was ready.
I was ready to dance.
At first, my movements came choppily, my legs wobbling slightly as I grew accustomed to having such a range of motion in them again.
But the fear in his sapphire eyes, blazing forth in time with my flames, told me that he hadn't even noticed my warming up.
His movements were even worse than mine, his tired body attempting to keep up with my more conditioned one. His sword made a strange whooshing noise as it flew through the air with his slashes, its blade as dark as the night sky. Vaguely, I remembered a time when he had threatened me with that very sword...but that was a long time ago.
But there was something almost conversational about how we danced. Aside from my comment earlier, I hadn't uttered a word, and neither had he, yet we still communicated. Every move he made, I reciprocated, my flames lapping at him and forcing him to move back to avoid the blow.
Both of us were leading.
Yet neither of us was leading.
This dance was an expression, a form of conversation in its own right. Our movements flowed together perfectly, like inky paints flowing across a canvas, stars dotting the night sky, or trees blurring in a rainy forest so that one cannot tell where one ends and another begins.
I had danced many a time in my younger years, but I had never danced like this. The drum beat was steady, creating the ideal rhythm, and beautiful diamonds fell from the sky toward us, cleansing my skin of the years of oppression, of sadness, of shame. As time went on, it went more slowly, and my head began to clear itself of the dark clouds while the matching ones above released their load on us.
By this time, the storm was natural. I started it, but Nature put it into motion.
[Sokka]
The two of us paused in our dance, our breathing rough and yet steady, still matching each other's time.
Still dancing.
My gaze somehow moved to her, to her face. Her eyes were softer somehow. They were still as cold as frozen steel, but there was something else in the. The molten gold actually appeared to be warm enough to be considered such. They gleamed with a light I had never seen in them, and I knew she was thinking the same thing as me.
She had never danced like this before
Before, there had been something missing, something inexplicable.
[Azula]
Now, I realized what it was. I'd danced in my time, but this was the first time I realized it. This dance was more than just a dance, more than just a confrontation of two burning souls, two empty spirits, doomed to perpetually move in sync with each other, never touching, never meeting, but it was a consummation in a sense.
Both of us were one now.
There was no telling how much time had passed, but the movements flowed so naturally now. My feet no longer scrambled for a tread on the rain-soaked grass, and my flames burn just as strongly as if this was the hottest day of the year.
I anticipated his every move and he mine.
And it seemed that no one will ever successfully lead this dance.
Both of us know that this dance could last forever,
Yet it seems of no consequence to him,
So the two of us may dance perpetually,
Beneath a blazing sky with raining gemstones,
And always feel as fulfilled
As we do at this very moment.
A/N: First off, the order of POVs for the final part is: Sokka (first line), Azula (second line), both (the rest). Well, I sincerely hope you all enjoyed this. The last bit at the end was actually the end of the poem, so I thought that would be a good way to finish the story... Please, tell me what you think with a review or PM. And try to be gentle and think of the fact that I am an actual person behind this computer!