To say that Sokka was sick of Ba Sing Se would be a gross understatement.
It was hot.
Sokka sat in their little Upper Ring apartment, whacking his boomerang against the tile floor just for the hell of it. It was summer. It was sweltering. Sokka paused the whacking motion just long enough to wipe the sweat from his forehead. The coldest thing in the entire building was the wall he was leaning against.
"Oh, would you stop that?" Katara turned, eyebrows twitching in annoyance. As she turned to face Sokka her long, sweaty hair whipped around like a soaked mat. Her dress was wet. It was wet just from the sweat alone.
Sokka would have normally bitten back. A clever retort, a witty comeback, something, anything. It was too hot though. Sokka was too tired to argue. He set the boomerang down.
Ten minutes? Thirty? An hour? What was everyone else even doing? It was too hot for Sokka to care. He heard Toph and Katara argue. It was just background noise against the overwhelming heat. Heat like fog, heat like rock, heat like heat.
Sokka tried in vain to loosen the collar of his shirt. One more tug. He just needed a little extra breathing room. Tug, tug, tug. Sokka felt a button pop.
That was when he decided that he needed to go out.
Sokka stood, left. No one noticed, not really. Aang had been asleep the last time Sokka remembered. The Upper Ring felt suffocating, almost as much so as the heat.
Train station.
Against all the other hot, sweaty people, against the sweltering background of sun, against sunburns and straw hats and overcrowding, the inside of the train car wasn't much better, arguably worse. Sokka fanned himself with a piece of paper he didn't know he had.
He normally would have watched the earth-benders as they glided the train down the track, like a dragon. The train's caboose felt like a pit inside the belly of a fire-breathing dragon. Sokka normally would have watched the dragon of the train in utter fascination. He was the dragon now, though. On fire. He felt like dragon's fire.
They'd been trying for the Earth King's attention for weeks. Nothing. The Upper Ring faded into the Lower. Houses upon houses violently crashing together, on top of each other, row after row after row of bricks and tiles and people. The nice apartments and shopping districts and banks had been consumed by the densely-populated blocks, the lattice-like alleyways, the unquestionably crowded markets.
He didn't know what compelled him to even go to the Lower Ring. Maybe it was Joo Dee's unnerving smile constantly breathing down his neck, maybe it was to distract himself from the loss of Appa, maybe he was just bored. He could go, right? He was bored and he wanted to go. That was good enough. He didn't need another, better reason.
A jolt, and the cars had stopped. In a haze Sokka stepped off, walked on the platform, walked out the station, walked through crowded streets and puzzling alleyways. He almost wanted to get lost. An afternoon, he needed only that. That was the plan for today.
Walk around. Spend a day to himself. Tea. Sokka wanted tea.
Sokka bought himself lunch. They were little balls of fried dough with a toothpick for a spoon. Heavy, greasy, not great for a hot day, but some comfort food after the train-wreck which had been the past several weeks was exactly what he needed. The fried food settled in his stomach, laying dormant until it'd make his intestines do somersaults about four hours later.
Tea, too, Sokka remembered. He stabbed the little dough ball, plopped each of them one after the other as he ambled in search for tea to wash it all down. Tea with chipped ice. That sounded good right now. A turn there, a right here. There, right there. Sokka sat at a tea shop now.
At the front, was it arguing? No, it wasn't arguing. Just some groaning. Sokka looked up, but just as he was about to look back down he paused. Double take; do a double take.
Sokka froze.
Sokka lifted his hand. It felt like seal's blubber. Every hair, every eyelash, all ten of his fingers, it was as if someone had attached string to them. It was as if someone had attached string to them and was jerking it all around, everything from an individual hair all the way up to entire limbs. Sokka felt so out of control then.
Slow motion. Every seemed to be moving in slow motion.
The girls in mud-green dresses who'd come in, the waiter taking an old man's order, someone at another table pouring tea. It was all happening in slow motion. Sokka's brain was a cloud; floating, floating, floating aimlessly. Sky high now. Sokka's skull wanted to explode, then implode on itself.
A crick in Sokka's neck. He'd never had a crick in his neck so bad before. He gave his neck's vertebra a good crack, almost as if that little pop would send him back to reality.
Sokka was dreaming. He had to be dreaming. Things were like a haze now. Vision blurry, mind in a flurry; hands teeming, head screaming.
He no longer felt hot.
He was cold now, ice-cold.
As cold as home.
Snow replaced his blood as it rippled through his veins, vibrating his arteries as his eyes grew wide.
Sokka turned his head back and forth, back and forth. He was imagining things, right? There were plenty of people in the world with facial scars, right?
Scar on his left eye. Golden eyes; they were amber. Black hair. He'd grown his hair out? It wasn't in that dumb-looking ponytail anymore? Focus, dum-dum!
Sokka felt himself grow pale, almost as pale as the person at the counter. The person standing at the counter had his eyebrows scrunched, lips in a signature frown.
Sokka turned his head away one more time, then turned it back one more time.
When Sokka looked back he saw Zuko.
His legs didn't even let his brain think about it. Sokka shot out of his seat. He rushed out, hands shaking, fingers already beginning to wrap around the boomerang inside his bag. Run. Sokka was about to run, about to book it out of there.
"Is something wrong? Why'd you rush out like that?"
The voice.
The tone.
The grumpiness.
Definitely Zuko.
Run, run, run! Forget this ever happened! He just needed to run and ignore the problem and then everything and everyone would turn out okay.
Sokka didn't run. He turned around. Both he and Zuko stopped dead in their tracks.
"Sokka."
.
"Zuko."
.
Hollow silence. That was it.
The wind carried that day a silence so hollow, so profound, so dead, that the way it rattled Sokka's ears would be something he'd never forget.
"What are you doing here?" Sokka wasn't sure who'd asked that, wasn't sure if it was he or Zuko who was more confused. More shocked. More mortified.
Something about this felt like a trap.
Sokka didn't know what it was about tension that made men crack. But crack he did. Crack both of them went, like a pair of eggs in the blistering heat. Sokka felt hot again. The heat returned. Zuko was a fire-bender. Zuko felt hot, burning.
"I work here now." Sokka heard no hint of lies in Zuko's voice. He wished Toph was here to tell him to, tell him to not. Without the others Sokka felt like a sitting duck. A non-bender. Mediocre fighting skills. A boomerang to defend himself.
Even without Zuko's fire-bending he had two swords, right? That was the icing on top of Sokka's panic cake. Yes, a panic cake. Sokka felt the panic creep in, like a pie being slammed into his face. Both were surprises, though both unpleasant but one far outclassing the other.
Yes, indeed, Sokka would take having a pie slammed into his face by surprise - would have taken it a million times - if that meant he never had to see Zuko and his scary-scarred face and his dumb ponytail ever again.
"What do you want?" Sokka tried to sound scary, tried to sound like Aang and Katara and Toph and Appa and Momo were right behind him, ready to tackle Zuko to the ground any minute now. He tried to sound like he actually felt safe.
.
"I don't want anything from you."
.
Sokka just had to. He just had to be funny. "What do you mean I have nothing to offer you?" Sokka sounded offended. Or at least tried to. He tried to sound like he was cracking a joke, that it was just like the good old times when they weren't worrying about the Earth King or the solar eclipse or Appa, that Zuko was just chasing them around the world and running himself dry because of it. The good old days, when they weren't in this mess and web of politics and lies, when Sokka felt more at ease with cracking one-liners and puns, when Sokka could laugh at Zuko's constant scowl.
A part of Sokka wondered what would happen if he had just stayed home, at the South Pole.
Sokka shook those thoughts away. No time to feel homesick now, not after all they'd done. Not after everything that'd happened.
Zuko had nothing to say to Sokka's witty reply. Typical.
"Just go," Zuko told him.
That sounded like a challenge. Sokka knew he was being stupid, knew that something like this could get him hurt or worse. He just had to, though.
It was so stupid, but Sokka marched right on back to the tea shop, to Zuko's apparent surprise. Sokka nervously told Iroh his order, then took the iced tea from Zuko's tray with shaking hands.
Spirits was he being idiotic right now.
Gulp, glub, glub, down the hatch went the tea. Sokka downed it in a good three gulps. Cold on his tongue; it was a relief as much as it was an unpleasant surprise. The cold drink chattered his teeth, made them feel like they'd frozen over and were about to shatter. The tea pooled in his stomach. A chill ran through Sokka's gut.
Up and gone now. The little bell at the top of the door clattered on his way out. Back on the train he went, his journey back an absolute blur. Shades of green and black, smears of color dotting the very edges of his vision; when Sokka arrived back at the Upper Ring he was absolutely out of it.
It was so hot. Sokka was sick of Ba Sing Se. He was sick of the heat. He was sick of all these conflicting feelings.