A/N: Well, this is my first ever A:TLA fic and of course it revolves around my two favorite boys. This is a culmination of watching the series waaaaay too many times and noticing a few small things that you'll see mentioned below. This is also part of my own post-series head-cannon, because for this being my first story, I already have a timeline and sequence of events that happens in my head. I am a geek.

I realize not everyone may like certain things. In the summary I put that there were so many pairings and could be pairings. I understand your opinion, but please try and keep in mind that this is my head-cannon and I do enjoy it.

For anyone who wants a brief rundown, after the war, Mai and Zuko (obviously) stay in the Fire Nation. Aang and Katara go around the world helping to bring as much peace as possible and help the four nations find balance again. For a while Toph, Sokka, and Suki do what they can, travelling. Eventually Suki has to go back to her warriors (as she's the leader and all) and Toph and Sokka stay with her and travel on occasion when the three are needed. After Suki and Sokka break things off (amicably in my head) it kinda throws Toph and Sokka into a whirlwind of trouble-making.

And that's it!

Disclaimer: Obviously, I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender or any of their cool characters.

x….x

"Sokka?"

"Mmph?" is the response around a mouthful of roasted koala-lamb. It's clear to see that Zuko doesn't have Sokka's full attention, but neither of them minds.

It's a small dinner affair, even smaller than would have been. It was supposed to be Sokka, Suki, and Toph joining the Fire Lord and Lady for a small get together while the three were in the Nation's capital. However, it seems that Sokka and Suki had their last hoorah the week before their arrival and the young Kyoshi Warrior had turned heel to go home, letting Sokka and Toph continue on their journey alone. Many speculations on what had ended their relationship and if this was actually a forever situation are en circuits. Toph, who is also supposed to join them at the table, has simply failed to show up. She has never quite done well with traditional settings, and Zuko is sure that he will be hearing from the patrol any second about a brawl she has started.

Mai, his lovely Fire Lady, had started the evening meal with them, but she is just starting her first pregnancy and the very sight of the lamb had her sighing irately and slamming her napkin down. Apparently, what the midwife had called 'morning sickness' isn't restricted to the rising sun. She has yet to return and though Zuko wants to follow her, he knows he would likely only be impaled by a shuriken for his efforts.

He reasons with himself that if she doesn't return before the full sunset, he will risk his skin to make sure she is fine.

Because of these three missing people, their party of five consists only of a duet. Zuko sits at the end of the table, legs folded under him, and Sokka sits to his right in a more lax position with his legs crossed in a mutated version of the lotus style. It is a moment he has been waiting for nearly two years to have. He has had a question for the water tribesman since everyone had escaped off to Kyoshi island and he had seen something peculiar of the younger man.

"I have a question for you," Zuko says quietly, so that the milling staff in the palace doesn't easily overhear where this will go.

Sokka drops his chopsticks heatedly. "No, Toph and I are not an item!" he all but hollers, and the young woman standing nearby, ready to fill their wine glasses if needed, makes an aborted attempt to stifle her giggles.

Zuko flounders for a moment, something he is not unaccustomed to when in the presence of his close friends. They've always been able to get the better of him. He clears his throat. That had not been his question, but he supposes its good information to have. Calmly, he carries on. "My question actually had to do more with waterbending."

Sokka gives him a skeptical look before he leans in close, which usually would have his guards springing into action, but they have learned that there are people who are allowed to break his personal zone, one of them being the young man beside him. Sokka catches his eyes, and says in a low tone filled with sarcasm, "I know being Fire Lord is a strain on your brain, but I'm not Katara." He picks a piece of Zuko's koala-lamb off his plate and pops it into his mouth. "You may want to see your physician about this."

The Fire Lord is momentarily frustrated with Sokka, but he breathes out the feeling, something he's getting better at. "In the Fire Nation, it's extremely rare for one sibling to be a firebender while the other is not. There are not many families in the Earth Kingdom that have more than one child, however, those I did run across, all siblings either had the ability to Bend or they didn't."

Sokka shrugs. "Maybe the Water Tribes are different," he says nonchalantly, like it's nothing. Perhaps it isn't, but Zuko still can't help but feel that perhaps there is something missing. He knows what he saw that night, two summers ago. He may be partially blind in one eye, but his seeing is still good in the other. Sokka continues, uncaring of Zuko's narrowing gaze. "It could be like that in all the smaller denominations. Y'know, Aang hinted in one of his letters that he found what he suspected to be remnants of the Nomads, but only like two or three of the little ones were airbenders. After so long of not having steady Benders in the lineage, maybe the ability only has a one in three chance or something like that."

Skeptical and scientific to the end. That's Sokka.

"So you have no ability to Bend at all?" Zuko asks, gently setting his own chopsticks down as the young woman comes over to fill their glasses. He murmurs a small 'thanks' to her, as does Sokka and she smiles with a gentle blush. Zuko remembers that she had been on staff when his father was ruling, and Ozai's opinion had been that staff—slaves—were meant to be invisible.

Sokka takes a sip of the spiced wine, letting the flavors linger on his tongue like Uncle had taught all of the children before swallowing. Then, setting his glass on the table with far more grace than normally displayed from the water tribesman, he answers curtly, "No." Half a beat, maybe less, and Zuko sees some resentment in the statement, but it's covered quickly with a blinding Sokka smile. "I'm just the plan guy."

Zuko studies him, tapping his fingers lazily against the table in a mirror of what he had seen Sokka do two summers ago and once or twice over the few times they saw each other since then. "You don't feel the pull of the moon then?"

The younger's smile fades just a little, his eyes widening. "What does that have anything to do with… anything?"

"Non-firebenders don't feel the call of the sun. Mai has never felt the urge to rise with the sun," –actually she was more murderous if even taunted to get out of bed with the sun- "I guess that all non-Benders have that freedom, to ignore the makers of the Benders. I would think that all of them would be unbound by sun, moon, stones, or breeze. I suppose you would be." Zuko watches with some satisfaction as Sokka takes a tiny, anxious swallow. "But you aren't, are you? You do feel the moon's sway."

"My first girlfriend became the moon,"-I loved her very much, goes unspoken- "Of course I would feel her sway."

They have a staring contest then, one willing the other to break first, to admit defeat in this silly argument. Unfortunately, they're both too stubborn, always have been. The stare-off lasts what feels like an eternity and then Sokka breaks it, but not by ignoring the situation. If anything he's almost more resolute that Zuko is, but his mistake is when he folds his arms on the table top and his left hand begins tapping against his right arm. Zuko keeps eye-contact with the tribesman a second, maybe two, and then his attention is drawn to something else.

Their wine ripples in tandem with Sokka's tapping finger. The younger seems to notice his folly and a soft curse leaves his mouth as he tucks his hands into his lap. He gives the Fire Lord a smoldering glare turned bitingly cold by the blue of his eyes. Tightly, he says, "It's nothing."

Zuko is still staring at Sokka, refusing to be even slightly affected by Sokka's glare, when Mai returns, her entrance hailed by the sound of her telling one of her hand maidens, "Back off! I'm pregnant, not spun glass!"

Zuko turns his gaze to his wife, pale as ever but looking just as strong as she always has. She doesn't show yet, a bump hardly even noticeable when she isn't swathed in layers upon layers of robes, but her gait seems softer as she settles next to him, her hand reaching unerringly for his.

Zuko puts Sokka apparent ability out of his mind for the moment.

x….x

Later that night, Zuko sits by the turtle-duck pond, tossing out bits of bread in remembrance of his mother. Mai scoffs and says she understands his need to be close to his mother even though she doesn't, thanks to her mother always telling her she was best seen and not heard, but she would rather stay inside. It doesn't bother Zuko, really. He would rather she not understand inside the palace walls, rather than pretend to understand while failing to hide her boredom next to him.

Toph had returned earlier in the night, escorted by the patrols and laughing as she collapsed into one of the sofas by the fire. She wasn't drunk, but apparently the patrols had a good time trying to get her to cooperate. Firebending is rarely a close contact form, while earthbending is an all distance style. Apparently, she kept tripping them as they escorted her from a pub brawl she had started.

Sokka, usually her partner in crime had smiled at her proudly, but otherwise not said anything, while Mai looked amused and Zuko thanked the patrol with a thunderous expression on his face. It had been times like those he wished Toph could see, because he hadn't felt it right that he yell at the youngest member of their group.

Toph had gone to bed shortly after explaining the shot by shot detail of the bar fight. In all likelihood she will sneak out and start more mischief somewhere else and this time likely take Sokka with her. Those two are destruction and mayhem, and now without Sokka's now ex-girlfriend to keep some semblance of an eye on them, Zuko can only imagine the havoc they would wreak on the world.

He is startled out of a semi-trance when the water sways somewhat livelier. He watches for a moment before turning around. Sokka is coming towards him, settles down beside him with his own hunk of stale bread. He sighs, and begins breaking the bread up, tossing it out for the turtle-ducks, ignoring the Fire Lord. Zuko notices offhandedly that somewhere under dense overhead clouds the moon is full and that every wave of Sokka's arm as he sends out breadcrumbs sends and equal if very weak wave across the little pond.

He doesn't mention it again though. He has a feeling, and he'll go with it this time as he always has. They sit in silence until all the bread is gone and Zuko has spent what little of his time he can with his mother's memory. Casting a glance to his companion, he wonders if in a way Sokka hadn't been doing the same, honoring his mother and his first love, the moon.

Sokka has settled both of his hands to rest on his knees, but after a few moments he picks up his hands and gives a lazy flick. Zuko watches in fascination as the water follows with a ripple of its own. "It's the most I can do," Sokka says at last, bringing his hand back and gazing at the otherwise calm liquid. "Normally, anyway, this is all I can do. Now," he picks his hand up and tenses it, long fingers frozen as if gripping an invisible orb tightly. He lifts his hand slowly fingers relaxing marginally as a small globe of water, perhaps the diameter of a gold piece, lifts away from the water for a moment, maybe two, before Sokka releases it with a whoosh of air. "When the moon is full, I can pull off that. But that's it."

He turns to Zuko, as serious as Zuko thinks he's ever seen him outside of the time the ventured to the Boiling Rock. Even when sparring, Sokka seems to maintain some whimsicality about him, but now…

"I don't waterbend. I can't do the swishy, water-ropey things that Katara and Aang can, and I can't turn water into ice any faster than it normally would and I can't turn ice into water any quicker than the sun. I don't have all that magic mumbo-jumbo." He looks at the pond again, and for a moment Zuko thinks he'll move the water again, but he doesn't.

Zuko stares for a moment, taking in the young man's profile highlighted and shadowed by the cloud-covered moonlight. "Have you ever practiced?" he asks haltingly, feeling as if he could be asking for too much. Sokka's just shared what is obviously more than anyone else knows. He wonders if Katara is even privy to this information, and somehow doubts it.

For being siblings and close ones at that, they still keep an ocean of secrets between them.

Sokka shrugs, half-hearted attempt to look like he doesn't care. "Kinda, but not really. I don't need to Bend. I told you. I'm the plan guy. I don't need this hogwash to get me through the day, just what's up here." He taps at his skull, still shaved except for the wolf-tail, would be until he married.

Zuko snorts, letting go of this for now, probably for a few good years, and teases, "That's not much to rely on."

Sokka punches him for that while letting out an indignant, "Hey!"

It strikes Zuko, as he rubs at his arm, that he has never met a potential Bender who simply didn't wish to Bend. Mai, and the Kyoshi Warriors, his mother, they never had the ability and it suits them just fine. However, every bender he had ever known was and is proud to have that skill, that asset. Sokka just doesn't care, doesn't care to learn or hone his talent.

It would never work in the Fire Nation, not for firebenders. An untrained firebender is dangerous to themselves and others. With water, Zuko would think there would be little consequences.

Still he thinks that perhaps Sokka should try. Maybe not become a master, but to learn just a little about his gift. He would understand if he didn't tell anyone else about it, a bit, especially if nothing comes of it and it turns out his greatest ability is lifting a small orb of water from a pond in the full moonlight. But surely letting…letting Uncle know and help him. Uncle studied the waterbenders' technique with Master Pakku. Uncle would be a great teacher for this!

His intentions must have shown on his face, because the next morning Sokka and Toph load up on the eel-hound. They give goodbyes and Mai even lets Sokka rub her belly without punching him, which Zuko thinks he deserves after all the revelations and especially after the idiot says, "Lemme rub the baby belly for good luck!"

Toph merely punches Zuko goodbye and tells Mai that the baby already has a strong heartbeat, which makes them both smile unexpectedly.

And then the two of them are off and out of touch for seven months, at which point Zuko wants nothing to do with anyone really and has put Sokka's minute Bending skills out of his mind.

x….x

A/N: Well, how'd I do? I hope you liked it!

InnocentGuilt