Fic: Bittersweet
By: Sugeatarc

Disclaimer: I still don't own Avatar. I'll let you know if that changes.
Genre: Despite the title, this is the fluffiest of the fluff
Charaters/Pairing: No pairings. Sokka, Toph, Zuko; cameos by Katara and Pipsqueak.
Rating: G
Notes: Takes place long enough after the end of Sozin's Comet that people have relaxed a bit. This is a short fic I got inspired to do, because while there are many great things in the Ava-World, there is something very important missing from it...

Summary: Sokka eyed the box warily. "Well, I still say it's food. My food-sense is tingling, and it's never wrong about these things."

The guard at the door thumped his spear smartly against the parquet floor, and announced in ringing tones, "Ambassador Katara and Researcher Sokka from the Southern Water Tribe to visit you, my lord!"

A huge ornate desk in the corner sported a large and precarious stack of scrolls. From behind the pile, a tousled dark head poked out. "I know who Katara and Sokka are, Pipsqueak," Zuko said grumpily. "Show them in."

"Sorry, Zuko. Just, you know, trying to do the job right and everything." The big man turned and undid the catch on the wooden doors with their inlaid jade dragons, and Katara marched in, head high, with Sokka trailing diffidently behind her, stifling a yawn.

"Hey," the young Fire Lord greeted them, standing up. He noticed Sokka's gaping mouth and immediately had to smother an incipient yawn of his own. "Don't do that," he pleaded. "I'm going to be stuck here the rest of the night as it is. The last thing I need is to fall asleep on a stack of Very Important Highly Official Scrolls."

"That's why we're going to drag you out of here for some fun," Katara announced. It was the same no- nonsense tone she might have used to say "I don't care how nice it is outside, you put on your shoes and jacket right this minute, young man."

"Look, I appreciate the thought, but you have no idea –" He waved wearily at the scroll pile. "—just how much garbage I have to get through before tomorrow's finance meeting." Zuko made a sour face as he said "finance"; messing around with sums and figures was one of his least favorite duties, and for which he had almost no talent. He usually left that kind of thing to Mai, who juggled numbers like she juggled knives. But some gatherings required his official presence, unfortunately.

"If you don't get out and get some air you're going to fall asleep on your face in your meeting," Katara said, undeterred. She clamped onto an arm and started to drag – no doubt avoiding the use of a water whip only in order to spare the scrolls.

Sokka looked up briefly as the tug-of-war commenced, with grumbling and complaints on both sides, then looked away. This struggle, in its many variations, had gotten boring months ago. He started to poke around in the pile on Zuko's desk, looking for something of interest. A lot of odd things got sent to the Fire Lord. Sometimes they were explosive – the Mechanist had let him take a couple of the more interesting ones apart. This bunch of junk had been cleared for lethality, but not for general weirdness. Sokka noticed some odd oily-looking bird feathers, a couple of bizarre stone carvings, and various other mysterious items.

He stopped, sniffing. Something in the pile smelled like food, although all of that sort of stuff was supposed to go directly to the kitchens to be sampled by one of Ozai's more brutal generals, now reassigned as the royal food-taster. Sokka rummaged in the pile, sending a small cascade of scrolls tumbling to the floor and eliciting a squawk of protest from Zuko, who was still busily trying, and failing, to fend off Katara's good intentions. He would lose, of course – he always did – but he never gave up without a fight.

A small box wrapped in brightly colored paper in hues of orange, red, and gold came to light, and it was from this that the interesting food-smell was coming. Sokka snitched it from its hiding place, sending more scrolls over the side of the desk and earning yet another growl from Zuko. Sokka ignored him and pried the lid off the paper box.Inside was a cubical block of what looked like brown wax. There were entwined double dragons imprinted on the top of the cube. He sniffed it again. Definitely smelled like food, though there was something bitter there too. He licked a finger, swiped at the stuff, then thoughtfully put the finger in his mouth.

"Sokka, what are you doing? Hey, leave that alone!" Zuko dug in his heels – Katara had gotten him about halfway to the door, where Pipsqueak watched the whole scene with a boredom akin to Sokka's. He knew better than to interfere. "That's a gift from the Sun Warrior chieftain, you idiot! Don't poke at it!"

"Oh, the Sun Warriors? What is this, then? Some kind of sealing wax? It doesn't smell like wax. Doesn't taste like it either. Tasted kind of oily and bitter. I think it's some kind of food."

Katara snorted. "Yes, Sokka, because when I think of food, I think of something that's bitter and oily. Sounds yummy."

"Actually, I don't know exactly what it is," Zuko admitted. "The note just said it was something sacred to them and they wanted me to have it. They didn't say what I was supposed to do with it. I was thinking it might be…er…dragon guano or something, you know?"

"Ew!!" Sokka almost dropped the box. "I licked dragon droppings?!"

"Serves you right!" his sister said.

"No, no, I'm pretty sure that's not actually what it is," Zuko tried to sound reassuring, although it didn't help that he was laughing at the same time. "But I haven't wanted to mess with it too much in case I ruin it or something. And anyway I just don't have the time. The note said it was 'bitter water', but there's nothing watery about it, so I just decided to try and figure it out when I have some free time. Like, in ten years or so."

Sokka eyed the box warily. "Well, I still say it's food. My food-sense is tingling, and it's never wrong about these things."

"Well, you're one of my Researchers – if you promise to be very careful with it, I'll let you take it away and check it out. And don't eat it until you've figured out what it is, for the love of Aang!"

"Not to worry, Lord Jerk. I'll be careful. Meanwhile, you have fun with my sister, okay?"

That was the key for the tugging and shouting to resume. Sokka used the cover of the noise to slip out the door, the bright box clutched tightly in one hand.

After shaving off a few tiny pieces of the block and nibbling on it, Sokka almost regretted making the offer to examine the strange stuff. It was fiercely bitter, and, if not actually wax, certainly wax-like in consistency, but grainier and more brittle than real wax. He was staring at it while trying to get the taste out of his mouth when Toph stuck her head into the workshop. "Hey Snoozles! Katara and Aang have got Zuko out in the back garden by the big fountain and they're about to – hey, what's that smell?"

"I dunno. I volunteered to figure out what this stuff was for Zuko, but I'm not getting any results except a really bad taste in my mouth."

"Yeah? Let me try some."

"Toph, I'm not kidding when I say the stuff is nasty. It's not poisonous – probably – but it's not nice at all."

"That's okay. I ate your camp cooking while we were out in the wild, so I think I can handle this."

"Hey!" He shot her an outraged look, which of course she didn't notice, though from her grin she hadn't missed his fit of umbrage.

"Okay, FINE, then. It's your funeral."

She stuck a hand out and he dropped a few shavings into her palm. The dark scraps vanished. Sokka waited for her to spit them back out, but instead she just stood there with a thoughtful look on her face. After a moment she said, "Yeah, that's not too good. Did you try adding something to it?"

"Well, supposedly it's called 'bitter water'", he told her, "So I tried melting some in water and drinking it, but it was pretty much what you'd expect – I got bitter, nasty water with bits of dark stuff in it."

"Then maybe you should add something sweet. Try fruit juice instead."

Sokka realized that Toph's advanced senses of smell and taste could be a big help in his quest to find a way to make the brown stuff edible, and within a few minutes they had collected six different types of juice and were busy adding bits of mysterious brown stuff to them. The results weren't good; the brown stuff floated instead of dissolving and all they got for their troubles was a lot of ruined fruit juice.

"Ugh," Toph commented. "I didn't believe there was any way to spoil sunberry juice. I know better now. Are you sure you want to eat this junk?"

"It's definitely food, I'm telling you! I just know these things!"

"Maybe it's one of those items some tribes force their members to eat as a kind of test of courage. Like live bugs and stuff. Maybe that's why they sent it to Zuko, and he's supposed to eat it."

Sokka contemplated the picture of Zuko trying to get the block of brown stuff down his throat without losing his royal lunch, and grinned. "I could tell him that's what I think it is. He might believe me. I don't think that's actually the answer, but it might be worth it just to see him try. On the other hand, it could make him sick, and Aang says we need to keep him around for some reason, so we probably shouldn't do that."

"Maybe it's a joke. Aang said the Sun Warriors had a weird sense of humor and liked strange puzzles."

"Strange and dangerous puzzles, remember." He studied the block again carefully. "I don't see any possible way this could explode though. So it's probably not another assassination device. Not that the Sun Warriors have any reason to go after Zuko, that I know of."

"Hm, okay, let's try this." Toph rummaged in one of her pockets and pulled out a sticky wad. It was a scrap of honeycomb wrapped in paper. She handed it off to Sokka, and he tried to ignore the bits of lint and other junk clinging to it.

"You want to dip it in honey? Might as well try, I guess."

This experiment was marginally more successful than the fruit juice one, but the end result – sticky sweet goo over a solid bitter chunk – wasn't exactly appetizing. After another consultation with Toph, Sokka decided that if it came from the Sun Warriors and they called it "water", it should probably be melted. They placed a few bits in a small earthenware bowl and heated it over a candle, then dripped in some honey, gave it a mix with a stick, and waited for it to cool. This process had improved the smell substantially, and Sokka sniffed happily. "That's more promising!" He dipped a finger in the still-gooey warm brown stuff (never mind that it looked like something repulsive) and tried a tiny lick.

A startled expression lit up his face, one that he was glad Toph couldn't see.

"So how is it?" she inquired.

"Uh…well…pretty much…the same. Yeah. Guess we should quit trying now and pick it up later, maybe."

Toph glared at him. "LIAR!" She snatched at the bowl. He tried to keep hold of it, but Toph was too fast and captured the prize. She held onto it tightly, practically growling. "So what exactly are you hiding, you ratmonkey?" Sokka sat back, resigned. Toph dipped a finger in the bowl, sniffed it, then dabbed at it with her tongue. She blinked. Took a larger swipe with her tongue. Blinked again. "Oh. Wow. That's – that's good."

Sokka sighed. "Yeah. Really good. I told you it was food!"

"Well not by itself it's not. Maybe…maybe we should add more stuff to it, see what happens?"

"I don't want to ruin it! Zuko will notice if too much is gone."

"Oh, just tell him it exploded or something!"

Sokka considered that. "Hm. Might work."

Zuko, back at his desk, sighed as he tried to wring the water out of the sleeve of his robe. Neither Aang nor Katara had bothered to waterbend him dry again after the fountain incident. He had to admit it had been a welcome break, though. And refreshing. And anyway, he could dry his own clothes. He raised his internal body temperature and his damp robes began to steam lightly.

There was a thumping at the door. The young Fire Lord looked up, half dreading and half hoping for another interruption. Pipsqueak pulled back the eye panel, and made a startled noise.

"Er….a man who says he's Farmer Mu Niu wants to talk to you. Something about…um…I don't really understand."

Zuko wondered how the man had gotten past the screeners downstairs. He got up from behind the desk, and motioned to Pipsqueak to open the door. A middle-aged, very ordinary looking farmer stood there, hat in hand, but with an aggrieved expression on his face. He spotted Zuko, then, looking alarmed, dropped to the floor in a deep bow. Zuko, nonplussed, looked over his shoulder to see what had spooked the man, then realized he was still steaming. Muttering imprecations against waterbenders under his breath, he turned off the internal heat. "It's okay, Farmer Niu, I'll talk to you. Come in. What's the problem?"

The farmer looked up, saw that the steaming had stopped, and looked relieved. He stood back up. "Sorry to bother ya with this, Fire Lord, but it's about one-a yer special guests."

He wondered which one. Could be any of them, really. "Male? Female? Short? Loud? Bald?"

"It was that Water Tribe boy, sir."

Sokka then. He hoped it wasn't something racist in nature; a lot of the Fire Nation still held damaging notions about the worth of the other tribes. "What happened?"

"Well. He. Er…..That is…Dunno quite how to say it…"

"Go ahead and just spit it out, Farmer. Nothing Sokka does surprises me any more."

"He…how to put it…" The farmer seemed likely to fall over out of sheer mortification. "Well, he assaulted one of my hippocows! Sexually, like!"

Zuko's mouth fell open. "He…what? No, wait…did I hear you right? He…did what, exactly?" Sokka and a hippocow? The absurd thought that popped into his head was "Does that mean he broke up with Suki?" He banished it for tastelessness and tried to pay more attention to the farmer than to his own overwhelmed imagination.

"Please start from the beginning, Farmer Nui."

"Well, not much to tell – I went out to feed my hippocows, and that boy was there, and he was, well, you know – fondling one of 'em."

"Er…fondling?"

"Yeah! Molesting!"

Zuko put his head in his hands. He was sorry he'd ever hoped for another interruption. Although this promised to be very diverting. He wondered exactly what Sokka had been doing to the hippocow. He was certain the farmer didn't have the right of it.

…Almost certain.

"Thank you for bringing this to me, Farmer Nui. I'll look into the matter, I promise. Were any of your hippocows harmed?"

"No, no, no harm done that I could tell. They were just…you know, startled." After a moment, he added, "Me too."

Me three, thought Zuko. "All right then. I'll find out what's going on, and inform you of any action that will be taken. Will that be satisfactory?"

"Oh yes, just fine, sir. Thank ya, thank ya." He bowed low again, then backed up and out of the doorway. Zuko had told people it was fine to turn around when they left the room, but the old habits were failing to die off. Too many people still disliked the idea of turning their back on the Fire Lord. Well, one step at a time, as Uncle would say. The door closed behind the farmer.

He looked at Pipsqueak, who was trying to smother some mammoth-sized chortles. "Okay, who decided to let that guy up here?"

"I don't know, sir. You want me to go beat up the screeners?"

Pipsqueak sometimes got a bit overzealous in his new duties. "That's not necessary. And I suppose given that it involves Sokka, I'd better take care of it myself. Any idea where he is?"

"Well….assuming he's not off wooing any more hippocows – " Zuko glared at him, and Pipsqueak broke off. "Er. Probably his workshop, sir, that'd be my guess at this time of the evening."

"Right." Zuko contemplated running the gauntlet of the various guards and screeners between him and the main door of the palace, then shrugged out of his heavy robes and went out the window instead.

Sokka inhaled deeply. "Mmmmmmm. That smells so good to me, I can't imagine how it smells to you."

Toph grinned. "Smells like something I want to put into my stomach. NOW, Snoozles!"

"Just wait, it's not quite done yet! Greedy."

"Hey, it was my honey that got this whole thing started!"

"And I certainly appreciate your contributions to the advancement of food science," Sokka said, carefully stirring his little pot of honey, hippocow milk, and mysterious wonderful brown stuff.

Toph suddenly stiffened and looked up. Sokka caught the signal instantly and looked at the doorway. No one there. "What is it, Toph?"

"Uh. We have a visitor." She seemed slightly subdued.

"There's no one there."

"Yeah there is. Hi Sparky."

Zuko stepped out of the shadows. He was wearing his ninja garb and looked somewhere between smug and irritated. "Hi Thumper."

"Oh! Hi! Zuko!" Sokka tried to hide his little cooking bowl behind his back. It slipped out of his grasp and all three of them lunged for it. Zuko made the catch, and held the bowl up over his head, away from Sokka's frantically grasping hands.

"Is this the stuff you've been drinking? Some kind of cactus juice that makes you run around making marriage proposals to hippocows?" He sniffed at the brown goo in the bowl. "Huh. Smells pretty good."

"No, not cactus – wait, marriage? Hippocows? What?"

"Yeah, that was kind of my reaction when Farmer Nui showed up on my doorstep to complain that you were making unwelcome advances toward his livestock. Did you at least bring the hippocow flowers before you took advantage of it?"

"Before I – wha – no! – I—" Sokka sputtered incoherently and flailed while Toph burst out into peals of uncontrollable laughter. Zuko allowed himself a small smile at the two of them while he waited for the hysteria to settle. He took another whiff of the bowl of brown stuff. It really did smell amazingly good. Looked kind of familiar, too, though he couldn't place just where he'd seen it before.

"I told you to let me milk the hippocow, Sokka, but nooooo!" Toph was rolling around on the floor now, while Sokka had stopped flailing and just stood there panting, his face bright red and a defeated slump to his shoulders.

"Neither of us had ever milked a hippocow," he muttered. "You wouldn't have done any better."

"Oh yes I would. And I wouldn't have let the farmer see me either."

Zuko looked into the bowl. His stomach rumbled – he'd skipped formal dinner that evening, planning to catch a late snack in his office, which should be being delivered right about now back at the Fire Palace. He stuck a finger into the bowl. The goo was slightly warm and sticky, a bit waxy looking, but it was definitely the source of the enticing smell. He licked a little bit off his finger.

"Ooh."

Sokka looked up from his dejection and Toph stopped laughing. They both looked at the Fire Lord as he swiped up a good sized fingerfull of the brown stuff and planted it in his mouth.

"Rats," Toph muttered.

"You said it," Sokka mourned.

"What is this stuff? It's amazing!" Zuko helped himself to another bite, while Toph and Sokka watched in despair.

"We don't have a name for it yet," Sokka admitted. "We've been calling it 'yummy brown stuff with honey and hippocow milk.'"

"You need to work on that name." Zuko looked around, found a dusty spoon behind a stack of mechanics scrolls, and helped himself to another big bite. Toph and Sokka looked like they were about to start crying at the loss of their precious treat. "I bet this would make a great flavoring for ice cream. Where did you find it?"

"Actually, we made it. From that stuff the Sun Warriors sent you."

Zuko stopped digging his way through the delicious whatever-it-was. "What, that awful tasting block of wax?"

"That's the stuff," Toph agreed. "Though there isn't too much left of it by now. We, er, had to do a lot of experimenting. Then we had to…perfect the recipe. And test it. A lot."

"You mean you ate most of it already."

"We sure did," Sokka said, smiling in happy recollection. "I suppose you're going to take it back now, aren't you."

"Sokka, I had to have an interview with a shocked farmer who thought you were trying to do something perverted with his hippocows. Taking away the brown stuff is the least I should do to you." He ate another bite. "On the other hand….this really is good. So maybe I could show leniency."

Sokka sighed. "Okay, fine. What do we need to do to make it right?"

"Hm. Well, the punishment should fit the crime…so I want you to finish cooking up the rest of that first of all."

Sokka looked at him and started to grin.

"And after that, you and Toph are going on a little trading mission for me to the Sun Warriors. And you'd better not eat all of the shipment before it gets back to me – got it?!"

"Got it!" Toph said cheerfully. "I'll just tie Sokka's mouth shut, no problem!"

"HEY! You've eaten as much as I have!"

"Liar!" Toph dove across the workshop and tackled Sokka to the floor, sending random bits of metal and strange parts scattering all over the floor.

"Knock it off, you two!" Zuko was learning to do a pretty good bellow. The flickers of fire coming from his nostrils added highly to the effect. Toph backed off and let Sokka get to his feet.

"There's one more condition. Under no circumstances are you to tell Katara or Aang about this."

Sokka groaned. "Now that's just cruel."

Toph added, "We can go along with it though. Right, Snoozles?" She let him have an elbow in the ribs and he grunted as the wind was knocked out of him.

"What…what…am..I gonna… tell Katara when it's time…to go see the Sun Warriors?" he gasped.

"By then it won't matter," Zuko assured him. "You two get to work. I want the rest of that stuff cooked up and in my office before the night's out." Toph and Sokka nodded vigorously. "Oh. And come up with a better name for it too while you're at it."

With that, he took his leave. Neither of the others noticed that he hadn't returned the cooking bowl. Zuko took another bite of the brown stuff as he slipped through the shadows back to the palace. He hoped it wasn't poisonous in large amounts, but at the moment, he really couldn't bring himself to care.

He was too busy imagining the looks on Katara and Aang's faces when he introduced this stuff to them. Zuko grinned into the dark as he leaped up to a nearby roof. He still had finance reports to take care of, but they didn't seem like such a dire problem any more for some reason.

I could really get used to this stuff, he thought.