Sokka ought to be frightened out of his mind. Here he was, captured by the evil Prince Zuko after stupidly wandering out in the middle of the night. Good thing he'd peed before he'd been caught, otherwise …

Sokka turned to regard his captor. Nah, actually, he was in absolutely zero danger of pissing his pants from fright, terror, or anything more harmful than laughter.

"You're not very good at this, are you?" he asked.

"Shut up!" snapped the prince, and Sokka felt an evil grin start to grow on his own face.

"Bet I could do this better than you could," he said, because it was only appropriate that his words should match his expression.

"I said, shut up, peasant!" hissed Zuko again, this time kicking the ground in frustration as well.

Sokka rolled his eyes because seriously. He didn't want to put ideas into Zuko's perfectly egg-shaped head, but why would he kick the ground when he had a perfectly good prisoner to kick instead?

"You used the good rope," Sokka accused instead, wiggling his fingers from where his hands were bound behind his back.

"That's what good rope is for," said Zuko, stopping his badgerfrog-march of Sokka to stare at the other boy as if he was the one who was crazy.

"For tying up prisoners," Sokka sought clarification, and got a grunt in response. "Now, I'm not saying I know a ton about rope" - except that he did, because he made sure to know a lot about a lot of things - "but I do know that the coarse static ropes that you use for rigging are just as -"

"Are you crazy?" Zuko interrupted. Sokka found himself suddenly spun around to face a pair of burning golden eyes. Not literally, of course, although it was clear that in the past that had been more than just an adjective for one of the eyes at least. "The last thing you want is for your halyard to catch in a block because you were an idiot who used rough rope."

Sokka contemplated the prince for a moment, wondering in what world one would have the luxury to make rope out of anything but tough hemp fibers wrestled from the earth during a month-long growing season. Probably the kind of world that your people were actively colonizing.

"You don't even sail," he accused, because he had the feeling that check your privilege would fly right past Zuko.

"I live," hissed Zuko, resuming the badgerfrog-march with a shove to Sokka's back. "On a ship."

"A steam ship," argued Sokka.

"We're firebenders."

Sokka felt free to roll his eyes as much as he wanted, knowing that Zuko couldn't see them. Scratch that, he kind of would feel like rolling his eyes more if Zuko could see them. He attempted to turn his face into Zuko's line of vision for that purpose. "One stray spark and there goes your rigging, eh?"

"I can control my fire," sniffed Zuko, haughtily.

"Really? Cuz I swear it feels like you're starting to burn my shirt off. If you wanted that, you could've just asked."

Zuko immediately jerked his palm off of where it was pushing at Sokka's back. This time, Sokka did make sure to hide his grin, although he regretted he couldn't see what degree of redness he'd induced in the Fire Prince's face. "Hot out here tonight," he purred, and was rewarded with a frustrated growl and the sound of another dirt chunk getting kicked to oblivion. Seriously, how bad was this guy at taking prisoners.

"This is your first time, isn't it?" Sokka asked, having a revelation.

Zuko made a noise that sounded like a tea kettle about to explode. Sokka was tempted to run now that he was only restrained by the good rope around his wrists, but one, it was the middle of the night and he hadn't had enough of an athletic warm-up to immediately start dodging fireballs, two, forest which he did not want set on fire because Aang would cry and maybe another Hei Bai situation might arise, and three… well, this was just funny, all right? Could you really blame a guy?

"Zuko," he crooned.

"Prince Zuko, you peasant!"

"My good prince," sang Sokka, with as much sarcasm as he could fit into the words. "You've never had a prisoner before, have you?"

Silence and a face that looked like it was steaming out of its ears and about to blow its ponytail-covered bald top was answer enough.

"Now that you've got me, you've got no idea what to do with me." Sokka was smug. He deserved to be smug.

"I'll figure something out," spat Zuko. "Interrogation. Use you as bait. It's not like you're useful otherwise."

"Oooh, burn," said Sokka lazily, although belatedly he hoped that hadn't given the Fire Prince any ideas. "And how, exactly, are you going to do that? By kidnapping me, you've taken away the permanent holder of our group's one brain cell. Well, besides the one Appa has, but he's got trouble verbalizing and secretly he's a huge pushover. So how are the others going to figure out how to blindly stumble their way into your oh-so-clever trap? We've spent so long running away from you that it's become a bit of a habit. It's gonna be hard to reverse that."

"I'll send a ransom note. Isn't that's what usually happens?"

Sokka snickered. "How sweet! A ransom note for some worthless peasant? Also, bold of you to assume Aang and Katara can read."

"I don't know about your peasant sister, but I do know the Air Temples had rigorous education programs."

Okay, so maybe that had been too much of a bluff, but it had its own reward. "Awfully knowledgably about officially dead, banned cultures, aren't you," Sokka said dryly. "Thought study of the Air Nomads was illegal for Fire Nation citizens."

"I… you… shut up!"

Sokka grinned. He was officially under the Fire Prince's skin, and loving every second of it.

"Your sister stole a scroll!" Zuko tried next. "Why would she do that if she can't read?"

"It's a scroll of pictures," Sokka replied, voice dripping condescension. And she stole it because she was a pirate at heart and had been since she was three. "Even you could understand it."

"I can read, you ignorant peasant."

"The room would disagree," remarked Sokka, and his meaning whistled as it flew past Zuko and bounced right off that shiny skull. "Otherwise you might actually be getting somewhere with this."

"We're… what… shut up… what the hell do you want from me?"

Sokka tried not to laugh. He really did. A combination snort-laugh made its way out of his face despite his best efforts as he considered how to play this next. He clearly had the upper hand in this situation, so the only real question was to what degree he wanted to break Zuko.

…that had sounded a lot cleaner in his subconscious, which would now need bleaching, and Sokka admitted to himself that he may have taken this a little bit too far.

"Let me go and I'll show you just how much fun I can be," Sokka's traitorous mouth said without his permission. Or proper consideration.

Thankfully, this was Zuko he was talking to.

"I don't do fun," Zuko growled.

"Clearly."

"But, like." The Fire Prince's voice was strangely hesitant underneath the gruff tone. "Sparring?"

Sparring was fun, but Sokka didn't exactly favor fire vs. boomerang right now. Although that one time he'd nailed Zuko on his tin can helmet had been hilarious. "Sure, or… y'know, normal people fun things. Board games. Poetry slams. Uh, fishing! Shopping! Hand clapping games, string tricks… that kind of thing."

Zuko looked at Sokka like he was speaking a different language.

"Oh come on, you've got to at least know what shopping and fishing are!"

"Necessary activities for survival at sea?"

Sokka couldn't facepalm because his hands were inconveniently still tied behind his back. He ought to do something about that; this was becoming painful.

Not physically, just… painful.

And speaking of string tricks. Huh. Was the knot binding his hands a double figure eight, the classic climber's knot? Sokka traced it with his fingers and yup, he could envision it perfectly. Make a loop: here's Zuko. Take the tail around the base of the loop: choke Zuko. Tail through top loop: poke Zuko in the eye… okay, Sokka felt a little bad about that one, especially since he was mentally about to double the rope back along its original path. He may be a jerk but he wasn't insensitive.

"I guess," Sokka allowed, picking up the thread of the conversation while picking through the ends of the knot. "What do you do for fun, though? Besides sparring."

Zuko mumbled something that sounded suspiciously like music night.

"Pardon? I didn't quite catch that…"

"I said rock climbing, idiot, not tsungi horn, obviously!"

It was hardly obvious what Zuko had said, but Sokka would let that slide. Like the loop he'd managed to push further up the knot. "That explains the knots," he said to himself. "Although personally I would've gone with a classic bowline."

Zuko did that haughty prince pose that made him look like even more of a bratty teenager than normal. "Do you even climb?"

Sokka let a lazy grin stretch his lips, despite the ridiculousness of the person in front of him. "Yes, I do," he answered. "And I know that good rope like this… stretches."

With a harsh tug, a twist, and a wiggle, Sokka slipped his hands free and flung the rope into Zuko's face. He took off running through the trees, and only paused when he heard Zuko's howl of teenaged angst echoing through the forest. "Why am I so bad at being bad?!"

A/N: Sokka: That's rough, buddy

Also Sokka: Damn, wish I could've said that to his stupid face. Maybe one day.

Much, much, later…

Sokka: Damn it Zuko, that was my line! I demand a rewrite!

So for those of you wanting to remember how to tie a figure eight knot… the mnemonic I was taught was: Here's Bob. Choke Bob. Poke Bob in the eye. Also, just my opinion but this would be a terrible choice for a knot to tie someone up with.