"So, Sokka's your name, right? My favorite prisoner used to mention you all the time- she was convinced you were going to come rescue her."
-The Eclipse
She opened her eyes later, sedated and stirring. Dark were the surroundings behind her eyes, and lifting them, she saw the scurry of rats and the metallic glint of nothingness off of bars. She was in her ragged underclothes. Her arm was felt like fire and her cheek was bleeding. She didn't know where the rest were, and a storm raged within her, stopping her from being able to move.
But she did. She lifted her head. Cruel laughs, flashes of blinding pain.
And she closed her eyes.
In all of her fever-derived dreams, the air was thick and smelled of smoke and nothingness.
During her days, she smelled this nothingness full-blown, starved and tormented.
"I hear you muttering in your sleep," a voice would say cruelly, a gold glint in the dark, and the prisoner would clench her fists with less strength each time. "He'll never come for you. You'll never see your friends. You are alone."
Pain. Fire. All pointless.
The nothingness didn't matter in her dreams, because dreams were nothingness. Beautiful nothingness, but with every day, every conscious moment where she squeezed her eyes shut tighter, she came more to terms with reality. Dreams were nothing…
A tear. No, she fought, because that was what she did best. She fought. Fought with closed eyes and clenched fists, fought in the slums of a prison, fought with no daylight and no food.
Fought not against her enemies, not against the voice that mocked her, not with her weapons (gone) or with her physical strength (dissolving) or with her companions (absent) but with her mind.
And against her mind.
With all she had left, with all her light, she fought the death of hope inside of her.
Dreams (the word was a painful white within her) were not nothing.
"Not nothing."
Was this day? Night? She opened her eyes to the darkness and saw the days-old blood on her shoulder and felt her fingers crack as they unclenched.
Her voice felt old. It hurt to speak. Like there were razors in her vocal chords.
"Dreams." Painful white. "Are not nothing."
Eyes open, her words, soft and loud in her own shell of isolation, hurt, and in that pain was victory. A smile- a faint upward tilt of the lips- made her face feel like shattered glass, and her eyes fell close again for the day, her mind back in a world of beautiful nothingness. In a world she fell into the arms of every night.
Fabric and paint. The air is thick, inescapable, but the grass is soft green.
He's in front of her, his arms golden brown in the sun. Reaching.
"You've come," she says, slipping into a person she rarely is, someone in need of someone else coming. She slips into his embrace, and his strength makes her feel strong, strong like she used to feel.
"You've come."
A/N: I hope he does, and soon. Poor girl. (And I'm assuming Azula was being a lying, manipulative psycho when she said she gave up on him. )
I wrote this the other day randomly while I was watching some Suki-Sokka moments- I felt so bad for Sokka when Azula brought her up, but I'm glad she was finally mentioned.
I tried to show that even though being in prison must be weakening her, she's still a fighter (even though she thinks about Sokka quite a bit). I may edit it later though.
...Review!