A Lot to Learn
Sokka wasn't squeamish by nature. Not in the least. A hunter couldn't afford to be. He just had the bad fortune to enter the rock tent at exactly the wrong moment, and got a huge eyeful of—yikes!
Katara heard him hit the ground behind her, but there wasn't much she could do about it with Ying in the most demanding part of her labor. "Suki, drag him outside, would you?" she muttered. "Don't worry, Ying, nothing's wrong. My brother just…didn't know what to expect, I guess. It's almost time for another push; are you ready?"
Suki wasn't all that surprised by Sokka's faint. He had always struck her as a guy who didn't know the first thing about women, and the way he had instantly transmuted into a ball of nerves at the sudden onset of Ying's contractions only confirmed it. Up until this point, he had actually handled himself pretty well, considering. She smiled to herself with affectionate mirth as she caught him under the arms and hauled him out into the fresh air. There was something almost endearing about his flustered reaction to the female mysteries.
"What happened to him?" asked Toph. Suki still found it a little uncanny how the blind girl could tell what was going on as well as any sighted person, but then she'd had her whole life to practice her unique way of sensing things.
"Passed out," Suki replied simply. "It happens. He'll be fine in a minute or two."
She leaned him against the outside of the tent in a sitting position and considered whether to just leave him and get back to work, then decided that it would be nice for him to wake up to a friendlier sight than the one that had felled him. So she crouched beside him and rubbed his wrists until he came to. He blinked profusely, as though confused, and gradually focused on her face.
"Much better," he mumbled. Then he went "Gaahh," and started scrubbing his face with the heels of his hands.
"You gonna be okay, big guy?" Suki asked playfully.
"I think so," he replied, the color returning to his perspiring face, slowly at first, but then all at once in an embarrassed rush. "I'm not normally like this, you know. I just wasn't—"
"Say no more," Suki cut him off. "I understand perfectly."
"You do?"
"I sure do. Obviously, there's a lot you have yet to learn about women. There's no shame in it. Most men are the same way, at least at first. You'll grow out of it…with any luck."
And on that cryptic note, she stood and returned to her post as assistant midwife.
Sokka decided that she was right, he did have a lot to learn about women. Like why they said weird things like that.
END