Thanks to Goikuchan and m00npr1nc3 for your review. I'm flattered, really flattered.

There's a whole lot of talking in this one.


Friday, September 14, 1900, 1:19 PM

"Suki!" Sokka was in hot pursuit, his crutch making quick, rhythmic taps on the woodblock, "Suki, wait!"

She didn't slow down, actually it seemed that she sped up "SUKI, WAIT!" He screamed, the words reverberating off of the dark wood. She still didn't comply, "I SAID WAIT, DAMMIT!"

She turned a second corner and he followed. She stopped as she found herself in a dead end, walls on three sides and doors that she would not even try to enter, lest she totally be lost. They were truly in the shadows here and she stood her back to the wall, as he limped into this corner.

"What the hell was that?! What's the matter with you?!" He sort of shouted in a hushed voice.

"WHAT'S WRONG WITH ME?! WH-"

He interrupted her belligerence, "Shh, you want this whole country to hear our business."

She complied and started again more quietly, "What are these commitments you're making for us. What's this about staying?"

"He offered me a job, okay, he wants me to be his Personal Advisor."

"And you didn't ask me?!" She asked with gritted teeth, "Don't tell me you accepted."

"I did."

"Sokka, how dare you?" She asked with incredulity, "How dare you?"

"What?"

"Who says I want to stay here?"

He didn't have an answer.

"So how can you say to him, promise him that we're staying?" She asked.

"Well, I am," He said plainly.

"You're being really, really selfish." She felt slighted.

"What? Helping a friend is selfish now?" He was the incredulous one now.

"Well you're not thinking about me," she said crossing her arms and pouting even more, something that Sokka didn't think possible, "You didn't even ask about me when we got back. I was on a mission, Sokka, and when I got back you didn't even see that I was there. You didn't even look at me."

"OH, that's rich," he started with the bitter, sardonic tone that always punctuated his frustration, and the speed that announced his anger, "Zuko had been so close to death in that room that the Sages were trying to find a successor. He was so close to death that they give him those damn last rites, so that his Spirit may find peace. They said, and I remember all the words, 'Ashes to ashes dust to dust, our cloak of flesh shall pass away, may your Spirit find Peace in the Next Life'. Zuko, my friend, our friend, was teetering so close I had to put my ear up to his chest to hear if he was still breathing, to check that his heart was still beating. I haven't slept properly, I haven't slept at all in a week, Suki, worrying, that I was going to watch my friend, our friend was going to die."

Suki shrunk down in size as she watched Sokka's passion, and knew that he had gone too far. She had never seen this kind of emotion from him. She'd never seen him shout like this (though, they were whispering). She had never seen any tears well up, let alone fall, but now there was. It was one tear, one drop, it was small but it was there. He wasn't done yet.

"I was so scared, I didn't know what was going to happen, and just before you got here, we remembered Mai."

"Oh, my g-" Suki remembered herself now, her eyes growing wide "I forg-"

"Yes. You did and I did too. We forgot the girl who had the guts to stand up to the craziest bitch on the planet. So, no Suki, I am not going to leave him now. He had to speak those people in almost glowing terms about the bitch who did Hell knows what to his girlfriend. I won't be ditching him, so you can put that thought clean out of your head, Suki."

"I-" She wanted to speak but he was in full hysterics.

"And furthermore to that, when you got back you didn't ask about him, you didn't look at him, you know the one who was shot with lightning by his own sister, yeah, the one whose father killed his mother and then himself. Or me, the one who hasn't slept since Sunday, and is really, really close to losing his damn sanity. SO don't you dare, don't you fucking dare to call me selfish."

"Sokka, I'm sor-"

"I don't even want to hear it!" And in that second, Suki looked into his eyes. She didn't like what she saw. It was the sort of anger and passion that defined a soldier, the sort of look that showed no love or any capacity to even understand love's fundamentals. She looked at his arms held at his side, shaking with wrath, the contracted muscles glistening with a thin gloss of sweat. She squeezed her eyes shut. He wasn't that much bigger than her, and not that much stronger, but in a stupid, fleeting thought, she feared for her life.

That thought passed away quickly, when a notion she thought more 'plausible' came into her head. She thought he was going to hit her. She winced preemptively and flinched back when she heard a small whooshing sound, like someone moving. She braced for the impact and it never came.

It must have been about fifteen seconds before she opened her eyes again. They opened slowly, cautiously, as if they too were consciously afraid of being blackened and bruised.

And there was no one there.


"Are you sure Zuko?" Aang asked, "Are you really sure you want to do this so soon?"

"Yes, Aang I have to." Zuko said with the utmost seriousness.

"And you're sure you can fly there and back in a night."

"It's only 200 miles." Zuko said.

"You'll be cutting it very close," Aang added.

"The days are getting shorter. Sunset's at about 7:00 now. I can appear on the balcony and wave when the fireworks at 8:00 watch for a few minutes and be in the air by 8:30.

"And you'd get to the Boiling Rock by midnight, 12:30" Toph added.

"What do you mean 'you'? You mean we. I need someone to act as a sort of lie detector."

"Me?" she stood up, and pointed a finger at herself, "Me?"

"You're the only one who can tell." Zuko said.

"Finally, I get my trip with Zuko." And in an instant, she was clung to him, and being much shorter than him, she climbed up him slightly and had her arms wrapped around his torso, and her legs wrapped around his legs.

"Yeah," he scratched the back of his neck nervously, "Actually I was going to ask Sokka to come with me."

"Wh-"

"We've both been there before,"

She detached herself. "Oh, yeah that might be better."

"But," he tried to pivot as to not hurt her feelings, "with that... whatever it- that was between them just now, Sokka might not be able to go."

"Open the doors!" the whole group heard from outside. The guards listened and the doors opened and Suki walked in, more like staggered in with tears streaming down her face, totally ruining the makeup that she was advised to wear by some of the servants. (They just wanted to see if Fire Nation makeup could work on Earth Kingdom girls; it did.)

"Suki, what's the matter?" Katara got up and started embracing her.

Suki spoke haltingly through sobs, "I...I was so... mean to him. I yelled at him. I… I was-"She started blubbering in a way the made Zuko's skin crawl. He didn't know why exactly, it was just that seeing a girl cry, it just, irritated him. He did not let it show. And Toph, in her signature, crude, way had put her feet on the table, and was 'blind' to his emotions. He was glad he would have to explain that later. He came back to reality as the guards closed the doors again with a thud.

"You were what?" Katara asked.

"I don't know. I was just angry at him for not saying hi when we got back."

"Where is he?" Zuko asked. "Maybe I can calm him down, we've all been operating on a lot less sleep than we should, we're all a little cranky.

"I don't know where he went."

Zuko rose from his chair, "I'll go talk to him. I have an idea of where he is."

He walked swiftly to the door and banged on it twice with his right hand balled in a fist, forcefully, his knuckle getting white. "Open the doors, please," he commanded. They opened quickly and upon sight of His Majesty, they genuflected as the pulled the handles, showing reverence, genuinely for the first time. It was an open secret that the servants abhorred Ozai and Azula for the way they treated them. Zuko, from young, had said 'please' and 'thank you', the way his mother did and had earned their most tender affection.

"Thank you," he said, walking away quickly his flowing dark robes clashing with the harsh midday sunlight pouring through the windows. The doors shut behind his figure, shrinking as he quickly increased the distance.

"See?" Suki asked.

"What do you mean?" Katara, still attached to her, asked. She let her go and led her, the way a mother leads a young child, to the chair that she had occupied before; well let's be honest, before her tantrum. Suki took one of those Fire Nation treats, what did they call them, 'cookies' with the little bits of chocolate, and started to nibble on it. Again she was like a little child who'd been crying: small, meek, innocent.

"It's like I left him for a couple of days and he's totally different now. He's all spacey and I don't know what happened. What'd I do?"

"Suki, you didn't do anything wrong. That comet came in on Tuesday, and it's only Friday. You've spent more than three days away from him before, and he came back to you just as lovingly, Right?"

Suki nodded affirmatively.

"Don't try to force it," Katara cautioned, "Once we all get settled, I'm quite sure that he'll be back to being the puppy dog chasing you around that you're used to."


They kept bowing and curtsying as Zuko walked past. They could tell that he was gripped by a strong emotion, as he didn't even seem to notice their presence. The vigor of hi stride was prompt enough for them to get out of the way. After he was out of earshot they whispered the gossip that kept the servants sane. Not even in their wildest dreams were they close, to the reasons for his anger this time.

He continued to the end of the corridor and down the stairs. On the lower level he found himself only a few door from his first port of call. The doors to this place were unlike the all the other doors in the palace. They were made so that they swung freely from the hinges when one opened them. There was no handle, no knob. Zuko pushed his way in and saw the chefs hard at work. They did not notice him at first, and when the head chef realized.

"Oh my goodness, Fire Lord Zuko, I-"

Zuko cut him off, "Sorry, I really don't have time to talk right now. Have you seen Sokka?"

"Yes, milord, he asked for some strawberry ice cream out of the icebox and left. He was in rather a bad mood, Sir."

"Did you see where he went?"

"No, Sir, we gave him some ice cream and he left just a quickly as he came."

"Thank you."

"It's my ple-" The chef started, but Zuko was already gone by then.

"Sokka," he murmured to himself, "where are you?" Zuko stopped for a moment, and looked out of the window that gave a view over the same garden where he, they had been last night. There, Sokka was, sitting under the tree, with a dish of ice cream in his left hand and a spoon in his right. Sokka had his head down, and let his hair down, so Zuko could not see his face.

Zuko walked to the far corner where there was a door to the garden. The door was perpendicular to Sokka. That is to say that from Zuko's vantage he could only see Sokka's observed silently for a moment and he could swear that he saw a couple of drops fall from Sokka's face. Zuko didn't know what the drops were, but part of him thought they were tears. "Maybe, it's just sweat" he whispered.

"Sokka, there you are." He called out, Sokka reacted, sitting up straight as Zuko approached. Sokka also wiped his face with his sleeve. From the distance Zuko still could not tell if he wiped the sweat from his brow or tears from his eyes.

Once Zuko had closed the distance, he looked down at Sokka, his clothes, water tribe blue, that matched the eyes obscured by long brown strands.

He sat next to the Water Tribesman, in front of him really, so that he could look him in the face.

Still not looking up, "You'll ruin that fancy robe, sitting on the grass like this," Sokka said, with an emotion that Zuko could not quite make out.

"I don't care about this robe. I don't like seeing you like this. Please, just tell me what's wrong?"

"That's just it," Sokka said, looking up to the Fire Lord, his eyes were a little puffy, but they were clear,"I don't know what it is. She just started screaming at me, about me ignoring her."

"And were you?"

"No, Zuko, I wasn't. She wants me to turn your job offer down.

"What?!" Zuko reacted, with a mix of shock, dismay, and outrage.

"So I told her," Sokka looked down, "that I already accepted. She called me…" Sokka sniffled a little bit, needing to surcease the flow of any new emotion. "She called me selfish. You don't think I'm selfish do you?"

Zuko struggled to contain himself, but spoke calmly. This attempt to forfend his his fury was part intellectual exercise, to see if he could remain calm when the inevitable shitstorms would come. The bigger part of his measured reaction was that he had learned that anger only multiplies hurt feelings. He thought that if he reacted with calmness it would not reoffend his friend.

"No, Sokka, you're not selfish. If you stay here, you're helping me put this shambles back together, but I can't make you do anything. If you want to leave, I can't stop you. But before you go I need to go to the Boiling Rock, tonight. I can't wait."

"Yes, I was hoping you'd ask."

"Thank you."

Sokka sighed, "I don't want to leave. But I don't want to make her unhappy either. It's like we're flying away from each other, moving away from what held us together. I don't know anymore, this peace stuff… it's strange. A few weeks ago we knew we needed to win the war and now I don't know what I even want."

"Well…" Zuko felt a wave of embarrassment, and blushed a little, "I need you, you're my best friend-" Zuko was saying with sincerity as he was

"I'm your best friend?! I'm the Fire Lord's best friend." Sokka was flabbergasted and his face showed it too. It was the first time he heard Zuko really express an emotion that wasn't guilt or inadequacy, it was… refreshing.

"Yes. I look at Aang more as a student than a friend, Toph and I view each other as allies, and speak to each other as such. Your sister, only six weeks ago, wouldn't have batted an eyelash if I died. When you grow up with no other boys your age around you, a father who was too busy fighting the war to pay attention to you, a younger sister who's bending ability overshadows yours, you don't find many friends." Zuko was talking more to himself than he was to Sokka, even looking at some indistinct object in the distance.

"A little kid growing up in a prison. I can relate. I was imprisoned in ice, you in the fire of politics and we were both trapped in a war." Sokka focused on his ice cream, now only a little left. He had another spoonful, and for some reason thought it tasted particularly sweet.

"The both of us, fighting alone." Zuko said still focusing on some obscure thing.

"I considered you my best friend too." Sokka admitted.

"Me? How?" Zuko asked, reasonably, "All winter I stalked you all around the earth, trying to kill you and Katara and Aang. All spring, I went back and forth as my conscious became a battlefield. In the first half of the summer, I had an assassin stalk you and try at every chance to kill you and I'm the best friend?"

"Yes, Zuko," Sokka said, "Aang is like a little brother, Toph's like a little sister, Katara is my little sister. Yue turned into the moon after I knew her for a week. And I don't even know Suki. We stayed in Kyoshi for five days in the winter, she helped us across the Serpent's Pass for a couple of days in the spring. And in all those weeks we've had together in the summer I don't feel like I know her any better than I did when I first met her. I think I know you better than I know her." Sokka was shocked at how true that was.

"I didn't kn-" Zuko sounded apologetic.

"It's not your fault Zuko. I think it's mine. All summer I leaned on her, had an affinity for her, but I didn't like her the way I always thought I did. Not the way I thought I should. I used her like a symbol. If I had her, life was alright. There may have been a war on, but life was alright. Now," Sokka chuckled uncomfortably as he continued to expose what used to be an internal dialogue, "Now that it's all over, most of the fires extinguished, the fire I had for her- If it's not snuffed out, it's dying embers as the sun rises."


4:40 PM

Sokka was putting a few thing together that he would need. Sword, some comfortable clothing, his crutch, et cetera. He sat on the bed in his room, right near the grand chamber that the Fire Lord was entitled too.

Suki walked in and sat on the bed next to his bag, meekly she said, "Hey."

"Hey."

"So you're going on that mission with Zuko?"

"Yes."

"Weren't you going to tell me?" She pressed, now knowing she was venturing into rough territory, against Katara's advice to not 'force it'.

"No."

She ventured further, "Why not?"

"Didn't want to get screamed at again," Sokka's answers were going to be uncharacteristically short.

"Look, I'm sorry for yelling at you."

"Let's just forget it." He said, packing away another item, an army knife.

"Forgive and forget."

"Suki, I really don't want to talk about it." Sokka told her

"Are you mad at me?"

"No."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Really sure?" She was starting to get under his skin.

"Positive."

"Sokka, what happened to us? What happened to the good times? A week ago we were inseparable and no we're drifting apart.

"What were the good times Suki?" He inquired flatly, as he continued to pack.

"What?!" She was dumbfounded and a little hurt by the comment.

"I asked 'What were the good times,' Suki"

"On Kyoshi, the way we were six months ago/"

"You mean the initial attraction, the most intense feeling we had in our lives, the flirting for a week before i had to leave." He remarked bitterly. "Don't sound like good times to me."

Her voice was getting shrill, "Sokka are you going to sulk all day?"

"I'm not sulking, Suki, I'm not even mad." He sat down on the bed next to her, and for the first time appreciated how large it was. He clasped his left hand in her right. He looked over to the left, to look her in the eye. "What are we Suki?"

"Boyfriend and girlfriend. Maybe one day something more."

"But we don't know anything about each other," he said.

"That's not true."

"Fine, describe me, then." He said.

"What?"

"Describe me. If we know so much about each other describe me."

"Well, your name is Sokka, you have blue eyes, dark brown hair, and you're from the Southern Water Tribe. You're brave, strong, a little goofy, rough and 're…" She was starting to struggle, "You're kind and notwithstanding your sometimes irreverent way, you have a great sense of chivalry. You…"

"You see Suki? Only three sentences. And I don't think I could do much better. I don't know your favorite color, your favorite season, I don't even think I know your parents names."

"We can work on it together, get to know each other," she felt some tears starting to well up, afraid that this relationship was imploding.

"I don't know Suki, you called the good times, the days when you didn't even know the facts in those sentences."

"I'm want to stay, Sokka." She lied, she could not even convince herself that those words sounded genuine

"Suki, you don't have to lie to me, that's why we're in the mess right now."

"I never lied to you."

"No, but we were lying to ourselves."

"What?"

"Months passed every time we saw each other, and we had both changed in time we spent apart."

"But we can always be together now; don't just throw in the towel." She said, "I won't."

"Right there, you don't want to stay, I want and need to stay. It would be selfish if you stayed here to try and fix something that never really existed. I'm going to the Boiling Rock tonight with Zuko to see about Mai. "

"Are you breaking up with me?"

"There was nothing there in the first place." Sokka said, shuddering at how true it was.

"You bastard, I leave you for two days, three days and you change on me. We're both seventeen-"

He interrupted her, "My birthday was Tuesday."

"Right. Sokka, I totally forgot-"

"I'm not mad about that, Suki. There was a war on."

"And now that it's over you want to tear up what we had."

"And again, Suki, what did we have?! A relationship? A friendship? Attraction?"

"Attraction and a friendship, at least, Sokka!"

"Exactly, but no relationship."

Her face flashed with horror and anger, "IS THIS ABOUT SEX, SOKKA?"

"Who said anything about sex?" Sokka was utterly disgusted now

"You never did." She pivoted her argument, crossing her arms.

"Yeah, Suki," Sarcastic Sokka made his second appearance, "I always wanted to get some girl pregnant, and drag her around the world, so she could have a baby while we rode on Appa after having a battle with Combustion Man or Azula. That's my idea of how to treat a girl."

"Ah, and here's the real Sokka, just as bitter and cynical as ever." Any low feelings were gone replaced by a bitter, angry nastiness, that Sokka has never seen

"Oh so you were lying describing me too, a real class act, Suki."

"You know what? We're done. Whatever it is we had or didn't have it's over, mister. Happy birthday."

She walked out in a hurry for the second time today.

This time he did not pursue.


Suki went down the corridor toward the great big double doors at the end. There was a guard on either side of the doors she walked past them and banged on the doors herself.

Both the guards looked at each than at her. All their training told them that she was supposed to truss her up, but they knew that they couldn't.

Zuko opened up from the inside and she marched in. He shut the door behind him. They walked deeper into the chamber, and she forgot her anger for a brief second when she saw the sheer size of it. Then, she remembered how pissed she was.

Accusatorily, she started barking, "What did you do to Sokka?"

"I don't know what you're talking about." He said, trying again to apply a calm demeanor.

"It's like you've poisoned him against me." She was still loud, but nowhere near as boisterous as she with with her ex-boyfriend.

"I was in a coma for most of the time you were gone."

"And when you woke up?"

"He helped me write, no let me be honest, he wrote that speech. I had the ideas and he made them flow."

"Is that it?" She asked.

"And we had some cake for his birthday. And he invented the idea that ice cream and cake go together."

"And then what?"

"And then we finished the speech. He got some more ice cream. We went out and you got back."

"I don't believe you."

"You could just ask him." He said, concealing his umbrage at that statement.

"No, I can't, we're through. And it's your fault." She went running, opened one of the doors and bolted towards Katara's room. The guards closed the door behind her.

"She's crazy," Zuko sighed aloud, before continuing to pack.


People are getting feisty.

Hope you enjoyed. Feel free to review or PM me.