Sokkarem Week 2017

An Avatar the Last Airbender fic

By

EvilFuzzy9

Rating: T

Genre: Romance/Humor

Characters/Pairings: Sokka, Toph, Yue, Suki, Ty Lee; [Sokka x Harem]

Summary: With tongue firmly in cheek, let us celebrate the glory of harems. Sokkarem Week is here again.

Azula sat in her cell, arms bound behind her back and hair falling in a mess about her head. She smiled with a sort of vicious serenity, staring into the distance and holding her head slightly crookedly. There was an overall slant in the way she held herself, a contemptuous indolence expressed by how she leaned back and crossed her legs. Despite her condition and her situation, despite her bedraggled appearance and the circumstances of her confinement in this remote sanatorium, she still held herself with all the pride of a Fire Lord.

Her eyes flickered to the thin slat in the door. She had heard the footsteps approaching, and now she saw the eyes which peered through into her cell. It was a viewport that blocked off the visitor's face, preventing her from easily identifying them. Azula found this amusing, and a welcome distraction from the tedium of hysteria. It was a pleasant way of passing the time, to try and deduce the identities of her visitors by tuning out their voices and focusing solely on their eyes. Dear Zuzu was easy to recognize, with his scar and the stress marks. Mai and Ty Lee were similarly familiar.

But most of her visitors were sanatorium staff, and these were more challenging to try and place. Most of them had brown or gray eyes, and were not so familiar to her as to be known on sight. These eyes which now looked in on her, though, were blue.

Azula was bemused by this. She wondered if her visitor was a mongrel, or an actual Water Tribe savage. She didn't know which would be worse.

"Who are you?" she asked, her voice hoarse and cracking from disuse.

She didn't expect an answer, of course. The staff never gave their names. Not their real names, at least. They usually just told her that they were 'doctor' this or 'nurse' that. They always said they were here to help her, but they never offered to smuggle her out or assist in raising an army or assassinating her brother. They were entirely disinterested in helping her reclaim the throne, and this was the only help she wanted.

Useless.

There were no loyal subjects, anymore. Nobody willing to obey her orders. Nobody worthy of her trust. They were all out to get her, really. It was so obvious that even a total fool had to see it.

The so-called doctors pretended not to know about the plot. They were liars. They said that nobody was out to get her, that nobody was interested in marginalizing or repressing her. There was no malfeasance behind her incarceration, they said. She was here for her own good.

Sexists. Obviously they only did this because she was a woman. It wasn't her fault. She had done nothing wrong.

She was innocent.

None of it was her fault.

"I'm Sokka."

The words broke into Azula's dark ruminations, startling her back into a semblance of mental clarity. She blinked and stared at the eyes, confused.

Sokka...

Why did that name sound vaguely familiar?

"Who are you?" she asked again, frowning. Her expression was now dour, her prior haughty confidence cast aside in a sudden mistrust.

"I... I'm Sokka," he said. He seemed uncertain how else to answer her question. He spoke a little louder, repeating himself, apparently thinking she must be deaf.

"I don't believe I know any Sokka," Azula said. "And you sound too young to be one of the doctors. Who are you?"

Her stubbornly repeated question appeared to give the speaker pause.

"One of Aang's friends," he said. "I traveled with—with the avatar. You know? I was the guy with the boomerang."

Azula remembered, now. She recalled the face of the young water tribesman, a reasonably attractive specimen. She could see him in her mind's eye.

She looked at the pair of eyes peering in through the door. She inquiringly cocked her head.

A thought struck. She considered what she would be doing if their situations were reversed.

"What are you doing here?" she asked him. "Do you think that because I'm locked up like a wild animal, you can come and take me for yourself?"

"Huh?" said Sokka. He sounded surprised by her statement.

"I am royalty," said Azula simply. "I am the rightful Fire Lord. Do you think that just because my brother deposed me, you can come here to take me as a concubine?"

Sokka blinked.

"My... my what?"

"Don't play dumb," Azula said. "What other purpose could a crude barbarian like yourself think to make of me?"

Sokka seemed to frown. There was a hint of a furrowed brow.

"I don't—I'm not here to do anything like that. I just, I thought it would be useful to visit."

"Why?" she asked. "In what regard?"

"I'm not so sure, now," he admitted. "I guess I thought you might be able to give me some advice."

Now it was Azula's turn to be taken aback. She cocked an eyebrow, and she wondered what kind of face Sokka was making. It was so bothersomely difficult to guess people's thoughts and motives when you couldn't see their face or know their body language.

"What advice could I give that would possibly be of interest to you?" she asked dryly. "Certainly, I'm knowledgeable in many subjects, but I can't imagine most of those would be terribly useful for you."

"Well, you're a princess," Sokka said. "So... you know... princess stuff, right? I thought you could help me figure something out. My, er... my girlfriend, you see... Yue, princess of the Northern Water Tribe, she's come to me with this crazy idea, and I don't know if it's normal for royalty, but I figured I could ask another princess for her opinion."

"I'm insulted you would think to compare me with someone like that," Azula drawled. "They might call both of us princesses, but my intellect and sophistication far surpass hers. As far as I know, this crazy idea is something completely unique to your backwards culture."

Sokka did not perceptibly react to this. Was he so simple that he didn't get the insult, or did he hold her in such contempt that her opinion had no value in his eyes? Either way, it mildly vexed her.

"I figured I'd ask you," he said. "I've already gotten other female opinions—they seem fine with it, most of them. Enthusiastic, even. But I figured I'd ask a princess to give me a princess's perspective. I don't know if this is something that's normal for Yue, or if she's making a sacrifice for the rest of us. She's the kind of person who would do that."

Azula was both amused and bemused by this. There was something entertainingly preposterous about the extremity of this action. It seemed quite ridiculous for him to go to such lengths for something as meaningless as an opinion. It was a concept entirely foreign to her. Even in matters where prudence counseled leaving things in the hands of specialists, she could not help meddling and asserting herself. Humility was not something she saw as a virtue, and as a consequence it was difficult for her to consider the idea that somebody else might know better, let alone going to such a probable length of trouble simply to ask someone for advice.

She almost wanted to laugh at his absurdity.

"And what is it?" Azula asked. "What is she suggesting?"

"A... well, a harem," said Sokka lamely.

"So you are here to spirit me away and make me one of your concubines," Azula said with an almost victorious tone of voice. Despite her earlier defiance, it was a modest amelioration for her ego to think he had come to take and have her.

"N-No!" Sokka spluttered. "I just mean... I wanted to know if that was normal for a princess. Something that she might want for her own sake, not just to... uh, make me happy."

Azula cocked her head.

"Why do you care?" she asked. "Do you not want a harem?"

Sokka said nothing. Even with her very limited view, Azula could tell that he was blushing. She smirked.

"I don't... NOT want one," he finally conceded. "It's just, I don't think it's fair. Not to Yue. Not to the rest."

"Again," said Azula dryly. "Why do you care? If she wants to give it to you, then take it. If it's something you want, take it. I don't understand all this equivocating. You're a man. Isn't your entire life's desire simply to have as many women for yourself as you can?"

"It's not like that!" he protested. "I'm not that kind of guy. I, you know, I care about women. I don't just use them, or I don't want to do that. Yue and the others... they've made the offer, but I'm not sure it would really make them happy. The whole reason I'm so hesitant is because it's something that feels like such a perfect solution for me. It would work out really nice—for me. For them? I'm not so sure."

"You are incomprehensible," said Azula. "I think they must have gotten our places switched. You ought to be the one in here."

"Well, not all of us are sociopaths," said Sokka. "Some of us actually care about other people."

"So you say," said Azula. "I'm still not sure I believe you."

There were a few moments of silence that followed. Sokka and Azula stared into each other's eyes.

Finally, the latter gave a wry smile.

"You know, if I wasn't locked up," she remarked, "I think I might join those girls in offering to join your harem. Just because it makes you so uncomfortable. It really is funny."

"I'm not uncomfortable," Sokka retorted. "I just want to know—is that kind of life something a woman can be happy with?"

Azula thought for a moment. She didn't seem to be taking this very seriously, but her expression wasn't entirely one of amusement. Nor was her tone particularly sly or mocking when she finally nodded to herself and replied.

"I think so. If they're offering, they must think it will work out in their favor. Nobody is really selfless."

Sokka doubted the premise of her conclusion, but he couldn't deny that it fit nicely with what he guiltily wanted to have.

"And you say you would like it, too?" he asked. "So it isn't just Yue?"

"Like it?" said Azula. "If it got me out of here, I would offer to be your sex slave. Of course, I might later decide to kill you in your sleep, but you would have at least had the honor of sleeping with the once and future Fire Lord. I might dedicate a monument to you afterwards." Her eyes gleamed. "How would an obelisk sound?"

Sokka coughed, once more uncomfortable.

"Yeah," he said. "Uh, sure. We'll see about that."

Azula laughed, and it was more than a little maniacal. Sokka no remembered that she was legitimately insane.

Well, her advice might still have a grain of merit.

He totally wasn't just making excuses to indulge himself.

A/N: Well, there's the final chapter for this year's Sokkarem Week. Hope you all enjoyed it, haha.

Updated: 10-4-17

TTFN and R&R!

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