:) I'm getting these finished rather quickly. No, I don't write 19k in one day, but as of today, Dichotomy has been in progress for 75 days. This is roughly 1600 words a day, and you'd be surprised to learn that that's actually a very manageable number.
I opted not to do NaNoWriMo this year because of both a lack of time, and because, well... in the first two months, I really did do 100k words. I proved my own ability to write at length, then, and ever since, I've kept up a pace just slightly under NaNo standards. And I'm okay with that!
You'd be surprised at how much you can do if you're really, really chock full of ideas to write about.
Enough rambling! Time for chapter six: Mind-Body
CHAPTER SIX: MIND-BODY
When he awoke, every limb in his body felt stiff and sore. He opened his eyes, groggily, to find himself still propped up against the side of the cabin, only Toph was gone and there was a blanket thrown haphazardly over him. His bare feet were cold – they were poking out from under the edge.
He'd slept for a long time, judging by how the sun was up and bright in the sky, but he obviously hadn't slept comfortably or restfully at all. He still felt tired, and it hurt to bend his neck, but there wasn't anyone he could blame for that but himself.
Or he could blame Suki, for her tantrum, but that felt very unfair, to be putting the blame on her.
Ah, his mind focused. Suki. They'd saved her yesterday and she had kicked him out of the cabin. Well, Katara had, but that was beside the point. Suki hated him in some weird, creative way, and he could understand how "hate" had ever gotten into her vocabulary for him.
And he probably couldn't do much about it, he had failed her so miserably.
He sat up straight and stretched, his muscles complaining as he worked them back into co-operating. His shoulders ached. His back hurt. There was absolutely nothing he could do about that, either, except complain to Katara.
"Good morning," Toph said, as she came around the side of the place. She had two giant handfuls of red berries with her, and her hair was messily falling out of its usual hairdo. The look on her face was blank.
He took one look at her berries and wondered how she had picked them, but more importantly, he told her, "Those are poisonous."
Toph made an annoyed face and dropped the entire load to the ground with considerable spite. Sokka smiled, oddly, and she snapped, "Yeah, well, how was I supposed to tell? Just 'cause I can pick them doesn't mean I know what they are. Sugar Queen really needs to learn where to draw the line with these stupid chores!"
"Yeah, I guess," Sokka said, and the smile slid from his face suddenly. He asked, oddly, "Am I allowed in the house yet?"
"Suki's sleeping and so's Katara," Toph shrugged, "So as long as you're quiet, I guess? Fat chance you can pull that off, Obnoxious."
He wasn't sure where this new nickname had come from, and he wasn't about to ask. He shrugged it off and stood up, kicking the blanket off of him. He was still wearing his battle gear, and he pulled off the tunic and the shoulder pauldrons. It was considerably colder without them, but he waited before going inside: the wolf-head hood of his tunic had been squashed between him and the wall all night, and one ear was miserably crushed. He smoothed it out between his fingers, and then climbed to his feet, setting his things down on the blanket.
Sokka pushed open the door. The curtains were drawn, so it was dark. Over by the usual spot he could see his sister's sleeping form, bundled in his sleeping bag, back to the door. Nearby was Suki, or whom he could assume was Suki, in Katara's sleeping back, flat on her back and seemingly asleep.
Figuring it was safe, he crossed the room on the balls of his feet, heading towards his stuff. He opened the closet as slowly as he could, to avoid making excessive noise, but as he was rummaging and pulling out a fresh shirt, he accidentally pulled his club down with it.
It landed on his foot. Luckily, as an object made for driving against skulls and not aimlessly dropping, it didn't hurt too much, so he managed to avoid shouting like he had been intentionally smashed with it, but he couldn't resist a strangled yelp.
He looked at Suki as soon as he did it, and sure enough, her eyes flickered open. As they focused a funny look spread on her face, and she flushed red and eased herself into facing the other way. His mouth stayed open, torn between talking to her or just quietly sneaking out.
But when she chose to look away, he didn't really have much of a choice. He swallowed the lump in his throat and left with his things, and pretended he didn't hear her start to cry.
He hated that he was mad at her, too.
The cicadas sang their repetitive buzzes, loud and obnoxious, and Sokka could do nothing to stop them. On, they went, humming and buzzing, until his ears were ready to ring with them. Sometimes, he sat on the porch and listened to them, trying to block out his other thoughts with their droning songs, but it never seemed to work. His mind would shift with noise after noise: Yue and the moon, the Fire nation, and Suki. Sometimes he got tired of listening to them, and he would tramp out into the long grasses around the back of the house, and he'd stomp around until they shut up, if only for a moment or two. It didn't matter, to him, if he was breaking the stalks, or if he was ruining what once could have been someone's private garden, once upon a time.
He had to kill the sound before it killed him, and it just grated on his nerves. If only it were as easy to kill thoughts, as it was to kill bugs.
But these little tirades against the cicada world were short lived. He would huff, he would stomp, and he would plop black down on the porch, with his head in his hands. Sokka would fork his hands through his hair miserably, itching where it was stubbly, pulling the rest out of its tie and then retying it. He would stalk over to Appa and comb the great beast's fur with his fingers, and then recover him with leafy blankets. Anything to keep him occupied.
Part of him wanted to go stir up trouble in the village and get into a fight with someone –– any Firebender –– but Toph and Katara were out getting food, and he was to look out for Suki and Aang, and guard the place, like any man of the house would. Only Sokka felt nothing like the man of the house... Sokka felt like the guard dog tethered to the porch, as fictional as his leash was. He should have been inside, watching her, talking to her, as he full well knew she was awake, but he kept himself on the porch.
He didn't really want to see Suki, not after how she'd been towards him last night. He was sure she didn't want to see him, either.
When he heard the screen door move open a crack, he turned to look at it. He knew who was there, obviously, but he pretended he didn't, like he was all surprised. In some way, he really was, because he hadn't figured she'd climb out of bed so soon, especially because of all she'd been through, but he still felt stung.
Stung, and kicked, and disliked, like the Omega wolf.
Nevertheless, he got up and helped her with the door, and realized she was sitting on the floor, too weak to stand. In the afternoon light, he could see that her wounds were mostly cleared up, true, other than the odd fading bruise, and the burn on her forehead. (Katara had said that could clear up, too, in a few months – it seemed to only be a first degree burn.) The only thing different from the Suki he had grown to admire and be fond of was her unwashed hair and these temporary marks, and the look on her face. Under her robes, he couldn't say.
He never could have imagined Suki looking so weak and helpless. Her eyes were red and swollen. Sokka thought about her words and how he had been so angry, and felt a surge of shame. He looked down at her for a moment more and then looked away, ashamed of himself for acting like such an idiot.
There was a long moment of silence between them, with only the thrum of the cicadas, and then she said, "You did come."
She trailed off and Sokka sighed, quietly, and he lowered himself down to one knee, so he could be, more or less, on her level. He didn't say anything for a moment, and then tried to bite back the lump in his throat. She avoided his eyes, but he could still see them welling with tears.
"I would have gone after you, to find you, the second I found out they were fakes, I just... didn't have a choice, and..." he tried, and trailed off, too. His own eyes dipped to follow the line of her shoulders, and then stare off somewhere behind her, his face burning red.
Her hands were knotted into fists.
"Sokka," she said, softly, and she didn't seem to have anything to continue with, so he put out a hand for her. She hesitated, and what part of him wasn't crushed was confused and even the slightest bit frustrated.
Why was she so afraid of him? Hadn't they always been equals? He didn't like how she recoiled, the look on her face when she did so, or the way her voice failed her. His Suki was a strong woman who spoke her mind and bossed him around, and he liked it. She moving away from him like she was terrified. Had he really failed her that badly?
He knew the answer to that, already.
"I'm sorry," she said, suddenly, and she took his hand. She held it with both hands, held his hand in such a funny way, like it was a thing of support. Suki clung to his hands, and he slowly shifted forward to bring his arm around her, his chin over the top of her head.
There was another odd moment of tenseness as he hugged her, and she never relaxed into it. She let go of his hand and wrapped her arms around his neck, as tightly as she could bear in her state, and he felt the ridge of her brow dig against his shoulder. She made a muffled sobbing noise, and he brought his other arm around her, to hold her closer.
"I honestly thought you'd come," Suki said, "I really did, and then you didn't, but you did. Oh, I hate you, I can't help it." She gave an odd sniffle. "I honestly thought I'd die there."
And the pieces that had already been there and in place were glued down firmly, because Sokka understood without being told, what could make a strong girl so weak. He knew what would make a rebel so obedient. It only made sense to make those sorts of connections. It gave Sokka feelings and intensified the old ones. Sokka hated the Fire nation more than he had hated anything before, and with a passion more intense than any meteor they could throw his way.
"It's all going to be okay," he said, firmly, for himself as much as her. Her grip slackened a bit, and he reluctantly pulled away. Her heart was beating so fast, he thought it would burst. "Come on. I'll drag your bed out, and we'll... sit in the sunshine, and just relax." He realized, and added on as an afterthought, "We've never done that together."
She didn't say anything, and she made a point to break physical contact with him swiftly.
He moved. Within minutes he had pulled her whole futon over, mattress and all, and she edged out of the doorway to give him space to do so. Sokka plopped it right in front of the door and helped her up, easing her over to the futon, and she sank into it with a long, tired sigh.
There was something in the way the heat was, sleepy and dry, that made his eyes droop. He hadn't slept well the night before, and she simply hadn't slept well in who-knew how long. Her very voice was sleepy when she spoke, and she seemed comfortable enough, to lie on her pile of blankets, her kimono loose around her. She drifted in and out of sleep while he struggled to stay awake, to think, to plan.
He fell into thoughts of how to invade the Fire nation, but it was planning short lived. His mind kept wandering back to her, to the feeling of being near her again, to his frustration with himself and with Katara and Toph, and his unyielding, bubbling hatred for Azula. When her face strayed into his mind, his blood boiled, and at one point, he felt his vision going red. To say she was infuriating, or aggravating, or merely frustrating was a dangerous understatement.
But the thoughts just wouldn't stick, and his mind sailed back to Suki. Apparently, hers weren't too far off, either.
"We've always been equals..." she hesitated, and he looked over with a sober expression. She confessed, "I must look so weak."
"Oh," Sokka said quickly, "I never thought you were weak."
Suki seemed reluctant to take this as the truth, and after a quiet moment, she said, "I know I made it seem like this was your fault, last night. Like if you had been there, it all would have been avoided. I don't want you thinking it was your fault, that any of this was your fault."
Sokka struggled with the "right" answer for a moment, toying between telling her the truth or lying to make it all easier. After that long moment, he blurted out, "I've been thinking about that non-stop for the past weeks and weeks! She almost killed you, Suki, and I wasn't there, and I didn't know where you were! But I never thought you were weak, just... well, Aang is the Avatar, and he couldn't take on Azula, and look at him, he's been out like a light for two months now."
Suki didn't say anything for a moment, and Sokka said, "I wasn't worried about you at first. When I found out they were impostors... I didn't worry, because you said you could protect yourself, but I wanted to be there to protect you anyway. And then when no one could find out what happened... well... I started to worry, too, 'cause you disappeared.
"But you're alive, right?" he finished, and he glanced at her again. Her eyes were closed, and she gave a single, curt nod.
"You always tell me the truth," Suki said, "but I still lost. I didn't protect myself. That's why this happened, not because you didn't protect me. And you're going to blame yourself for this, because you want to protect me."
In Sokka's mind, she was not making sense, and she did not specify what "this" was, but he figured he knew. He more than knew. Sokka understood this better than he understood the finer details of politics and warfare. And when Suki said, "Well?" he had to suck it up and answer.
"Well, yes," he admitted. "But even if I do, I mean... you protected me on the Serpent's Pass, right? I want to protect you, too. We're a team."
She let out a long, tired breath, not sarcastic or frustrated, but simply exhausted. They both fell into an acceptable silence, in the heat, the wood support beam digging into Sokka's spine and the bedsheets growing hot under the beating sun. Suki relaxed, and drifted in and out of sleep.
Sokka noticed the cicadas again, just as soon as he noticed she was humming. Short notes, ones that stretched out, soft and awkwardly so. What she hummed was nothing he recognized. In his travels, he had heard many songs, many strange forms of music, things that he never would have imagined existing before, but he'd never heard something so raw. Few people sang without music, and Suki was just strange like that.
It was melancholy, and he'd never heard anything but the stupid strums of shamisens, the war songs of his tribe, and the lousy things the diverse Earth kingdom could cook up. There wasn't really any music that appealed to Sokka. It was something he just put up with.
"What is it?" he asked, after a moment, and she didn't open her eyes.
"A lullaby," she mumbled, sleepily. "It's called Red Lines. Avatar Kyoshi used to sing it for her people... for her daughters..."
"It's... nice to listen to," he said, quietly, and the cicadas droned on in the heat. Sokka leant his head back against the support beam for the roof, and Suki lifted a hand over her head, towards him. Her fingers brushed against his knee, and he looked down at them.
The pads of her fingers, which he had remembered as calloused, were soft and delicate. He took her hand gently, and squeezed it, just as a friendly comfort thing.
"Katara healed them," Suki said.
"Huh?"
She shifted in her bed, and then let go of his hand so that she could turn over onto her stomach. Suki folded one arm under her pillow and rested her chin on top of it, looking up at him, and she took his hand again.
"My hands," she explained. Sokka inspected them closer.
"Yeah, I thought so," he said, "they look perfect, she did a really good job. Katara's good at healing."
"Even if I wore gloves all the time, I'd wear out the undersides of the fingers, and never get around to replacing them until my hands were all calloused and raw," she said. "Before I became leader, I used to complain about it all the time, but the leader at the time, my aunt, told me that girls all around the world have hands like this, flawless hands like porcelain dolls. She taught me that Kyoshi was different, and that girls with hands like this are unique and rare, because most Earth kingdom girls and Water tribe girls don't fight."
She paused, Sokka closed his hands over hers. She closed her eyes and smiled sadly, and continued, "So I started to look at them as proof of being a warrior... and without them, it's really strange. Like I was never a Kyoshi warrior at all."
Sokka hesitated, almost as if he didn't want to present the topic again, but he ploughed ahead, honestly.
"Suki... you don't have to be one," he said.
Her eyes opened and she pulled her hands from his, and Suki pulled herself to sit up, so that she could face him better. Her seat was shaky and she had to put her arms down at her sides to hold herself up straight, and even then, she seemed too tired, too physically weak.
"I want to be one," she said, slowly, "It's not a path I'm turning from."
"Look, I know you think I'm saying this to protect you, or because I'm afraid of losing you, or... well, maybe that's true, but it's more than that." He paused, as if trying to find his excuse. It didn't come. Suki sighed, and Sokka gave up. "Well, at any rate, I don't want you to get killed. It's dangerous out here. Since Ba Sing Se fell, the Earth Kingdom is at least ten times more dangerous. We're going into the Fire nation, and you could get killed!"
Suki's temper seemed to shorten, and she said edgily, "And you're immortal? Last I checked, anyone could die."
"Hey," he said, raising his hands in protest. He was afraid of another shouting session. "I don't want to argue with you! It has nothing to do with you being a girl, and I don't think you're weak, you proved that to me a long time ago! I... uh..."
He stopped, she waited, and he finally said, "Oh, Suki, forget it, I couldn't protect Princess Yue, and I didn't protect you, and I'm not fighting you. If you want to be a warrior, I'm not stopping you, I wouldn't dare. I just want you safe. The Fire nation is dangerous, you know that, "
"Of course I know that!" she said, a sting to her voice. "You ran in there and saved me, big deal, Sokka, you think I don't know what they do there?! You have no idea, compared to what I went through!"
"Well, if you told me, I would have an idea," Sokka replied, his own frustration growing. He couldn't help it. He and Suki were too alike in that respect: sardonicism led to sardonicism, and he could only be calm with her for so long before his patience failed him. His anger from the night before flooded back, and hers seemed to be creeping in too, but when he took that tone with her, she made a face, horrified and furious.
At the look on her face, he immediately tried to ease it with a startled, "I'm sorry. You don't have to talk about it. When you want to."
They had never argued like this before, and each word was coming out worse and worse. Sokka was older and smarter now, smarter than the boy that had pushed a warrior girl further and further when he should have just shut up, and he knew to stop now. But Suki wasn't going to.
"I don't have to tell you," she shot back, loud enough that Sokka flinched. She was suddenly on the verge of tears again. He leant back, and Suki continued, barreling word after word out rapidly without hesitation, "Not that you haven't seen where I was, right? But you can just look, right? Think I don't know anything about danger? I want... I want revenge on them myself, so... it justifies..."
She wasn't making sense. Her fingers were fumbling with the tie on her robe, rapidly, and the tears were suddenly rolling freely down her cheeks. He could only sit there and let his brain flop around like a fish out of water, preventing him from doing anything to stop her. After a moment of struggling, she gave up on the tie and forced her shoulders out of the wide top and yanked it off her torso, while Sokka was just stunned.
"Suki," he croaked, flushing intensely as she sat there, half-naked, breathing hard and staring him down with tear-soaked eyes.
He forced his eyes to linger on where they should be roaming –– the raw, self-healed cuts and scratches, forming vivid red scars. Those were things Katara couldn't remove, things that had already healed naturally and left their natural marks. Suki's scars dotted up her rib cage and along the tops of her breasts, long lacerations and short dotted scabs. He recognized some like scrapings from stone.
Her body looked a million times better than it had initially, without the dirt and the sweat, with all the recent injuries healed and all the grime removed, but the scars were frequent and heavy. If there had been more burns, he barely noticed them. Even healed, she looked like a wreck.
But it was only the burn on her face that showed outside of her clothes, Azula's trademark.
"And there's more," Suki choked out, going back to the tie to try to get it open, to part the bottom. Sokka reacted this time, and he closed the distance between them, grabbing her by the forearms as gently as he could. She stopped immediately to stare at him, stunned.
"Hey," Sokka said, "it's okay. You don't have to. Just calm down."
Suki sort of slumped into his grip, blinking back tears with an obviously pained look on her face. She let out a sob, and buried her face against her hands, and he let go of her so he could embrace her close, but she pushed him off. He gritted his teeth, utterly filled with conflict and turmoil, and she just cried, the top of her kimono still bunched around her waist.
They stayed like that for a good ten minutes, Suki crying, and Sokka just sitting there speechless, struggling with anger and the urge to hold her again. Perhaps Suki just needed this; perhaps, to move on, she just needed a moment to pull herself together. Perhaps she really did hate him for "forgetting" her.
And then Katara and Toph came along, out of the long grasses and trees.
Sokka saw his sister first, naturally, and he gave her a look and then looked back down at Suki. Katara wasn't naive to details, and she raised an eyebrow questioningly, and tilted her head so her chin was down, like she was suspicious. She had a good reason to be, but Sokka gave her a helpless look. Katara didn't seem to care about siding with him, still, and she stepped over Suki's bedding. She put a hand on Suki's shoulder, and she said, "Suki, are you okay?"
Suki stopped moving and she just nodded against her hands, lowering them slowly and avoiding Sokka's eyes. Katara put down the deerabbit that was slung over her shoulder and turned towards the door.
"Suki," she said, kindly, and then waited patiently. Suki fumbled to draw her sleeves up, and when she couldn't get them turned right way out, Sokka boldly moved forward to help her out, but when Suki gave him a look, he backed off. Katara watched the whole time, her eyebrows furrowed, halfway between perplexed and disapproving. When she finished righting her clothes, Suki turned to look at Katara again, and Katara asked, "Are you alright? If he's being a moron, just say the word."
"Yes, thank you, I'll be fine," Suki said, and she turned her eyes back to Sokka briefly, before wiping them off with her sleeve. "Sokka and I were just talking. Did the hunt go well?"
"Katara's terrible at it," Toph announced, and both Sokka and Suki glanced to Katara, expecting to see her reaction. It happened, as they predicted: Katara frowned and bristled, and she gave a silent huff and turned back to the deer.
"Oh yeah?" Sokka said, almost humourlessly, but he tried. "Doesn't surprise me, she probably just ran after it and tried to waterbend it to death, huh? That's bending for you, huh, Suki? These suckers can bend, sure, but they can't even nab a decent catch!"
Suki didn't smile.
"Yeah, right," Toph said, sharply, "I cornered it, trapped it, and killed it myself, thanks, and I used Earth-bending to do it!"
Katara looked up from the deerabbit carcass, which she was cleaning off in the sink. Sokka's stomach was grumbling for a meat dinner already, his true carnivore nature begging to be sated. He'd be all too pleased to indulge, when it came to that, but for now, he had to listen to Katara protest Toph's brags and accusations.
With the two younger girls distracted, Suki's eyes flicked to Sokka just briefly. There was still anger and frustration there, through the red, and then she looked off into the distance.
"Sokka," she said, wiping her eyes again. "I just can't control myself. I must sound crazy, I'm sorry."
In Sokka's mind, things started making sense.
"Hey," Sokka said, under his breath, forcing a smile, "we're still equals, right? It just means you're not allowed to laugh next time you kick my butt, and you can't ever tease me for crying, no matter how much of a doofus I look like."
She smiled, sort of, a single sort of "a-ha" that cracked at the end, coupled with an awkward smile and a few calm tears. She even put her head against his shoulder, though she resisted all other contact, and she said, "Right."
Suki ate ravenously, as if she hadn't seen a decent meal in eons, which was more or less true. It was probably the least polite eating any of them had ever seen in their lives, but Katara didn't say a word about it, only occasionally urging Suki to slow down and take her time, warning it'd all come back up if she didn't. Suki would take heed, of course, but her impulses would get the better of her, and she'd swallow down the rice rapidly, sometimes without even chewing. She practically inhaled it, and seemed to be short of breath when she finished, and she stopped once or twice to cough.
Sokka watched her in a mix of apprehension and completely relief, commenting to a very concerned Katara that, well, she hadn't been fed well, wasn't it okay if she ate now? He hardly touched his own food, regardless, even as Katara explained at length that the body wasn't about to keep that down after feeding like that. Toph only commented, "Sheesh."
Suki didn't talk much, and sure enough, barely hours later, Suki was kneeling over the edge of the porch, and bringing it all back up. Sokka was holding her hair out of her face and trying not to be too revolted at the smell.
"I just... had to eat," Suki said, wiping off her mouth with a cloth and grimacing. Sokka let go of her hair and reached over to the glass of water Katara had set down by them. He handed the glass off to Suki, who took it eagerly, and Katara stood over the two, arms folded.
"Hey, I don't blame you, but if Katara says something about shrivelly stomachs exploding, you miiight want to listen," Sokka said, as playfully as he could. His hopes were running high, he was feeling remarkably optimistic, but Suki didn't seem to be in the mood for that sort of thing. Suki didn't smile, possibly because she didn't find it funny, or possibly because she was midway washing her mouth out.
"Maybe," Suki replied.
"Throwing up isn't any better for you than not eating, though," Katara said, seriously, "You just have to pace yourself more. And this time Sokka won't be sharing his portion, no matter how much good he thinks he's doing."
Sokka had the decency to look sheepish. Katara sat down with them, and she gave Suki a friendly, one-armed hug that Suki didn't really lean into, so it was brief. Toph joined them, too, her nose scrunched up at the scent and her mouth dipped into a scowl.
"No offense, Suki, but that really reeks," she announced. Sokka gave her a nasty look but it wasn't returned, for obvious reasons, though he didn't realize it until two minutes later. Suki offered an apology, quietly, and Toph settled down on Sokka's other side, leaning against her palms.
The four sat quietly for a minute, and then Katara said, "Sokka, you do dishes tonight."
He looked at her as if he was going to protest, for a moment, and in the end, he decided on it. Belatedly, he said, frustrated, "I wanna spend some time with Suki, though."
Katara gave him a pointed look, and she smiled, nicely. She said, all chipper and far too brightly for the very forced smile, "So do I! We hunted tonight, you get to do clean up! It's only fair."
Sokka stood up and narrowed his eyes at hers, with a very distinct sense of suspicion. Katara didn't seem to care, and Sokka heaved a sigh and shuffled off, and Suki moved to stand up.
"Should I help, then?" she asked, but Katara put a hand on her shoulder and moved her eyes from Sokka to Suki with an apologetic look. Suki hesitated, and shifted her weight back from her hands to her behind.
"You don't have to, don't worry, he's man enough to wear an apron tonight," Katara said, and Sokka nearly walked into the door-frame, his head turned around so fast. Almost blithely, Katara asked Suki, "Can I talk to you? About Sokka?"
(Luckily, Sokka did not crack his head on the door-frame and die from blood loss. He did, however, stumble over the track, and that hurt a lot, too, but at least it was his toes and not his brain. No one but Toph seemed to notice, and Momo gave a funny little dance, mocking him. Sokka was not so amused.)
"I'd like to talk," Suki said, and Sokka was almost surprised to hear her sounding like she was making a confession, or something. Katara smiled, a bit more genuinely, and nodded, but then she glanced at Sokka with something akin to threat. He took that as his cue to get scrubbing, and, also, that it would possibly take a while to get it done. Sokka just got the general idea that he was not welcome in their girl-talk, for obvious reasons.
Regardless, for a moment he felt like pushing Katara off the porch, mocking her hair-loopies and possibly her sissy bending, but then he recalled that he was sixteen, not six, and that her bending was less sissy and more ass-kicking. Sokka wasn't going to mess with that, and besides: if Suki wanted it, her wish was his command. Sokka took it like a man, stripped off his arm-wraps, and willed himself to plunge his hands into the freezing water and scrub down the wretched pots and bowls.
He did not wear the apron, though.
Katara shut the door, and they spoke quietly enough that he had to strain his ears to hear what the hell they were on about. He caught mumbles, and he heard Suki make a noise something like sobs and Toph didn't say anything at all, which was surprising, given she was generally such an obnoxious loud-mouth.
He really just wanted to know, but he figured that if Katara wouldn't fess up to what she was talking about to Suki in their magical little no-balls-allowed girl-pow-wow, or if Suki was feeling lethargic, at least Toph would. He could generally count on Toph, even if he knew he'd be either mocked forever for what she called his "general wimpiness when it comes to gossip" or put up to a number of creatively difficult (and often painful) chores. Good little Toph, always to be counted on.
For now, though, he had to get rice off the accursed pot's bottom, as they were quite literally cooked together. That, and he was regretting not putting on the apron, as he had water up his front, and he wasn't really aware of how he'd managed to do it.
The days quickly became interesting: usually, Katara would go the village, leaving Sokka with Suki at their request, but she watched them like hawks until she couldn't see them, as she headed to get groceries and whatnot. Usually, Toph would go with her, and not by choice. Sokka was as pleased as Suki was about it, even if it meant long hours with awkward silences, stupid conversations about the weather, and a lot of napping. While Suki was rebuilding her strength, they just didn't do much, though she got noticeably more energetic as the days went by.
And the more energetic she got, the more Suki seemed compelled to talk about training again. There was only so long Sokka could distract her by dumping Momo on her with comments like "Hey, you should play with Momo!" or with cards or Pai Sho.
Eventually, Suki just wanted to be a warrior again.
"Can you help me with the back?"
Sokka glanced up at her to see her holding out a short knife in his direction, the hilt hovering in mid-air near his face. She was holding her hair back out of her face, but she had trimmed the front, so instead of hanging choppily down to her shoulders, it was short and jaw-length in front of her ears, just like it had been before.
Sokka blinked, a bit surprised, and he pointed at himself to emphasize this mild confusion. Sokka still clung to a sexist thought or two: he could shave his head, or trim the bottom of his wolftail, but he knew jack about cutting hair for girls, mostly because they typically wanted it all pretty-like. Why would he? It wasn't like Katara ever needed help with hers, it was so long.
"It's not hard," Suki said, almost teasing. The choppy bits in the front looked vaguely like some haircut called a "princess cut" that Katara had shown to him once. Katara had asked if she should maybe get her hair cut like that, and he had laughed in her face. But that was all irrelevant. Suki continued, "You just need to cut straight across."
Though the look on his face said otherwise, he said, seriously, "I will screw this up."
"Oh, don't be such a boy," Suki said. "You just need to cut straight across the back, so it's even with the front."
"But I like being such a boy," Sokka replied, but he made his way over and took the knife from her. She smiled, so vaguely, and rolled her eyes to the ceiling, and he settled down cross-legged behind her. He said, "You don't look bad with long hair."
"But I don't look good, either," she said, tilting her head in the mirror, examining the way it fell against her face at that length. "And besides, I can't keep it. It'd be in my way in battle. Warriors need short hair."
They both knew that practically no one in the Kyoshi warriors had short hair except for her, and that she wore a headband anyway, but they both knew the actual reason for her excuse. That was why Sokka didn't point it out. He'd found a single instance of being able to shut up and keep it to himself. They both understood, naturally, that Suki's hair had grown long while she was there and because of that and that there was no need for discussion.
"If I screw up, what then?" he asked, dragging his fingers through her hair gently. She had already worked out all the knots, and it hung straight. Hopefully he wouldn't suck at this.
"I'll beat you up," she said. "And then make you fix it."
"I'd fix it by shaving your head to be like mine," he said. "We can match!"
She honestly smiled, and she replied, "I'd look silly with a ponytail, Sokka."
"Warrior's wolftail," he corrected. "Katara wears a ponytail, long hair is a ponytail. Wolftails are..." He trailed off, trying to think of the right word. He loathed the idea of describing it as perky or fun, so he said, confidently, "are fierce."
Suki smiled, folding her hands in his lap. She said, "Stop being such a goof and cut my hair." She sounded amused, regardless of how calm she was.
So he started on it, bringing the knife through the hair piece by piece. He did not leave a straight line; in fact, the work-in-progress was already jagged and awkward, some pieces longer than others, and Sokka couldn't quite trim them again, they were too short. It looked stupid, but he didn't want to mention it.
"What are you going to do about the front?" Sokka asked, unable to word it better. Suki frowned at her reflection, and her eyes flitted up to look at her scar, rather awkward and badly placed. She spent a moment trying to rearrange her hair so that it swung in front of her face and covered it, but it didn't quite work.
Eventually, she just said, "I'll cut bangs."
Sokka's mouth screwed up into a rather displeased look, and he said, "As long as they're not like Toph's."
She replied, "Definitely not, just ones that go straight across." She made a gesture, drawing a line across her forehead, slightly below her eyebrows. "What do you think?"
"It'll take getting used to," Sokka admitted, and Suki shrugged.
"As soon as I can get a new headband, it won't matter," she replied, and Sokka bit back criticism. He didn't want to ask how serious she really was about being a Kyoshi warrior again so soon, and he didn't have to. She said, "I don't want to waste time on sitting around resting and reflecting. I need to train. I can't let time steal my strength any more than it already has."
"You've been resting for a week," Sokka said, "no offense or anything, Suki, but I think you're pushing yourself way too hard here. If I was where you were and survived, hey, if anyone went through that, they'd go fetal for a month."
"I don't have a month," she said, curtly, and held her hand out for the knife. He reluctantly placed it in her open palm, and she set to work on her bangs. "Besides… it's made me realize how much the Fire nation needs to be stopped."
"I know," Sokka said, "I agree. I don't think I've ever wished death on an individual before, but now I do, and… I want to help you, really, it's just a bit soon."
"I thought I could count on you to push yourself and me," Suki said. She lowered the knife and gave him a look through the mirror.
"You can!" he said quickly, "I'm just kind of on a short leash, here. Unless I leave Katara and the others, or if they come to us, we're sort of stuck. Trust me, I really want to kick Azula's face in."
Suki paused, and she closed her eyes as she cut one last stroke. The shortened bangs fell across her forehead, effectively obscuring the scar, and she gave herself a funny smile in the mirror, and then turned to look at Sokka. She put down the knife, carefully, and looked at him in the eyes.
"I'm going after her, whether you can come or not, Sokka, as soon as I'm ready."
His concerns rose in his mind, a tangled jumble of loyalties and duties. On one hand, he was supposed to be leading the invasions against the Fire nation; he was supposed to be Aang's right-hand man, the guy with the ideas, the guy with the boomerang. But with all those empty weeks behind him, did that mean anything anymore? Aang wasn't here, the Fire Lord was the picture of health, and the entire world considered Aang dead.
If he went with Suki to take on Azula, he could avenge Suki. But it was not only that: taking out the Crown Princess of the Fire nation would help, in the long run, avenge his mother, avenge Yue, and avenge everything he'd lost, not to mention the Fire Lord was nearby.
Sokka liked that idea, and at the time, it seemed a lot more reasonable than waiting around for Aang to wake up and solve everything. Sokka just didn't keep that sort of optimism handy, like Katara did. He had lost all hope of Aang saving them the second Suki had proposed that the two of them do it alone.
"You are suggesting that you and I go and take on Azula alone, right?" he asked, "Just making sure."
She nodded, and Sokka hesitated again for an instant.
Why not?
"I'm in," he said, firmly, and he lifted his hand for an oath. An honest smile bloomed on her face, and she sat up on her knees and pulled him into a tight hug. He was only a bit startled, and he lifted his elbows awkwardly for a second, but then he relaxed and hugged her back.
"Thank you," she said, in his ear, her chin rested on his shoulder. Sokka smiled, looking at himself in the mirror, and the back of her head. The hair looked even more uneven from this angle.
"No problem. Though – and don't kill me – your hair is kind of uneven in the back, sorry about that."
Suki pulled away from him and looked at herself over her shoulder, and then she turned and looked at the other side. She raised an eyebrow, and asked, "How'd you manage that?"
He shrugged and grinned, and said, "What can I say? I'm just talented like that."
Suki laughed, and picked up the knife again to see if she could fix it. She couldn't, but that was okay: they had a game plan, and Suki's cheer seemed to have returned. Sokka decided he could go to bed happy.
"We're going to the river to bathe, alright?" Katara said, and Sokka merely groaned and rolled over in his bed. Just in case he hadn't heard, she went over and nudged him in the back with her toes. Sokka turned onto his stomach and buried his face against the pillow, and Suki sat up.
"Five more minutes," he said, muffled, and Katara nudged him again, this time in the side. Her eyes shifted to Suki and then back to Sokka, and she seemed to pretend the two were in different beds.
"You don't have to get up, although it would be nice if you collected firewood. Us girls are going to the river to bathe, alright?"
"Alright, alright," Sokka mumbled, and he shifted away from her nudges. He pulled the top of his sleeping bag over his head and grumbled away, and Katara glanced over at Suki, who was now wide awake.
"Coming?" she asked.
Suki had been waiting for that, and she was ridiculously pleased that Katara didn't question why she was nestled up next to Sokka. Suki supposed that, well, her saving grace and integrity and self-respect was preserved simply because they were both clothed where it counted most, and Suki wasn't exactly nestled in Sokka's arms.
"Sure," Suki nodded, and she pushed the covers off her legs and stood up. She adjusted the front of her robe and climbed to her feet, a process that took her sleepy head a few seconds to get right. But once she was on her feet, she was okay. She folded up her abandoned futon and picked it up to put it in the cupboards.
Katara smiled at her and then said, "It's nice to have someone who cares about tidying up around. Sokka's terrible at getting his stuff away in the mornings, and Toph's no better."
There was something awkward about that smile, simply because. Suki felt stupid, but she brushed it off.
"Well, there's no point in leaving it lying there, taking up space. Besides, animals might crawl in," Suki said, dismissively, and Katara's smile became almost triumphant.
Sokka gave a grumble that was rather indistinctive, so neither girl bothered paying attention. Suki shoved the futon into the cabinets, and then followed Katara to the door. Toph was already waiting for them on the porch. Her arms were folded, and she kept staring straight ahead of her, as always.
"Morning, Toph," Suki, said, and Toph's response was hardly friendly. It was even a bit hostile.
"Morning."
Suki wasn't sure how to respond to that.
"How come when I'm ready, you take forever?" Toph asked Katara. Katara's smile faded, and Suki stayed out of this conversation, rather out of the loop. The two girls seemed to operate on some sort of odd friendship, like they were simultaneously rivals and close friends, and while they had many moments of cooperation, every other moment seemed to be childish bickering.
Suki, as a leader of a unit based off of cooperation and teamwork, just didn't have the patience to listen to bickering, which was precisely what launched off when Katara said, "I do not take forever."
They argued the whole way down the hill and through the trees, and Suki ignored them. Part of her wished she had just declined, but then she'd have to either bathe alone, which Sokka probably wouldn't go for, or go with Sokka, and that wasn't really an option.
She was pretty sure that if she went alone, Sokka would linger just in earshot and prowl the area for incoming enemies, to keep her safe while she bathed. And while being kept safe was one thing, having to be protected like that was embarrassing.
In some way, she was grateful that he cared so much, but the way he had acted on the Serpent's Pass had been clingy, fearful. Losing Princess Yue had struck him hard, she knew that well enough, and while the Pass had found a sort of truce between her and Sokka, the past two month's events were probably enough to send him spinning into that same old clinginess.
And she felt bad for not wanting it, but she had spent her entire life depending on herself and other women, and as much as she loved Sokka, being his princess in distress wasn't her idea of comfort.
But one couldn't get her wrong: she was more grateful to Sokka than she could ever explain, in words or otherwise. He had come, after all, when she hadn't a hope in the world, and her initial anger at him was ebbing. It occurred to her, rather quickly, that time was better spent being grateful and getting over her disappointment and troubles, than placing the blame on him.
Suki was so lost in her thoughts about protection and Sokka that she barely noticed Toph and Katara's argument had ended, and Katara was asking, "Are you alright, Suki?"
"Just a bit concerned," Suki replied, keeping her eyes ahead of her. She focused on the trees and how they passed her, rather than Katara's tone. When she knew Katara was going to prod further, she said, "Tell me about Princess Azula."
Katara had caught up with her, and she slipped past Suki to be able to see her face. She said, with her eyebrows pinched, "Why?"
"For the same reason I'd want to know about anyone," Suki frowned, "I don't know much about her, and I'd like to."
The worried look on Katara's face was briefly replaced by surprise, though it wasn't a very believing surprise. It was full of doubt, and Suki didn't like that.
She hated those looks, and she regretted ever using Katara as her shoulder. The fact that they were both female had given Suki ample reason to be able to tell her story, to explain what happened, and her feelings for Sokka were too intense to be able to confess to having been pushed to such a low. She didn't want Sokka to know the details.
That, Suki thought, was more embarrassing than anything else. The torture had been brutal, at the time, but the aftereffects were far more painful, more touching, and most of all, more scarring, than any physical wound.
And she had depended on a girl, on a fourteen year old, to shoulder those stories with her. It wasn't that Suki didn't like that Katara cared; she just didn't like that Katara had made herself Suki's permanent shoulder. Suki didn't want to burden Katara.
She wasn't ready to tell Sokka, but she preferred his shoulders to Katara's. They were broader, stronger. Suki didn't want to trouble anyone, but she knew Sokka well, and Sokka was the one, of the two siblings, that she could depend on more.
"Other than what she did in Ba Sing Se, I don't know much about her," Katara said, "You know we met them in Omashu and that they chased our trail for days. She tried to penetrate the outer wall of Ba Sing Se with a drill... she got through, but we broke the drill before she could do anything about it."
"What do you know about her, personally?"
Katara hesitated, and then she said, "As in, my encounters with her, or what I've found out about her?"
"Her history," Suki asked, trying to keep her tone light-hearted, but she was angry anyway. "I know what she's like, trust me. I want to know why she is how she is."
"She's ruthless. Manipulative. She's obsessed with getting her own way," Katara said, fairly scarce on examples or details, but Suki didn't need them. She already knew. "I'm guessing being the Fire Lord's daughter has something to do with it."
"Alright."
"And right now she's back in the Fire nation," Toph said, dismissing the issue with considerable ease, "Hundreds of days away. But the bath's pretty close. So can we save the relaxation for now and the political talk when it's not the crack of dawn?"
"It is not the crack of dawn," Katara replied.
"Sure it is," Toph said.
"It's practically noon!" Katara said, and Suki knew the frustration levels were rising again. She bit back an exasperated sigh and walked on ahead of the two, seeing the river up ahead.
"Same thing," Toph scowled.
Suki knelt down by the waterside. Even without touching it, she knew it was freezing cold, and that was why she didn't test the water. Instead, she straightened up, as Katara threw off her loose robe and went right in, naked, hurrying to dunk herself under the water. Toph jumped in after her, without a single bit of inhibition.
For a second, Suki moved to do the same thing, loosening the sash on her robe, but then she hesitated.
"Coming in?" Katara asked, after a moment of splashing about.
"I don't know," Suki said, "I'd like to, but it's cold. I think I'll just do it later, I'm cold enough as it is."
"Don't be so shy," Toph said, boldly, "We're all girls here, and it's not like I'm going to be looking."
That wasn't quite it, though Toph had certainly found the nail, even if she didn't strike it on the head. Suki gave a non-committal "eh" and Katara pursed her lips. Suki shook her head.
She had grown up confident in her body. She had grown up knowing her own limits, understanding how her body worked, and she had never once stood for physical comparisons to other women. That just wasn't how Kyoshi Island worked –– it was a society that cherished the Kyoshi warriors, and no one thought little of them. They were renowned for the way they fought, and the elegance of it all. They were no brawlers. Kyoshi warriors fought beautifully, and they were beautiful.
And now, while she knew she could probably go through the old kata with ease, she was holding herself back because she was disgusted by the burns and bruises and scars, ones that told of intense failure.
She didn't want to see herself naked, let alone allow others to.
"I'm not shy," Suki said, "I just don't want to show off all the marks."
"I don't care," Toph said, "and it isn't like Katara doesn't know what injuries look like. Stay, come on in, the water's cold, but it's not bad. Don't let the sighted people bother you."
Suki hesitated, and then she said, "Thank you, Toph."
So Suki unfastened her sash completely, and put it down on the rocks. She took a long breath and then dropped the robe, too, sliding it quickly off her shoulders and dropping it down. Suki hit the water faster than she ever had in her life, and she sank into it so it came up to her neck before her body could even register how freezing it was.
"Agh, it's cold," she said, and Katara turned around to face her. Toph snickered.
"Told you," she said.
Barely elbow deep (unless one was going to crouch) and rather slow, the river was absolutely freezing, to the point that Suki just wanted to bathe and be done with it, even though she had never planned on lingering in the first place. She hadn't washed her hair in months, and it was rather matted still, despite the hours of brushing.
Suki ducked under, closed her eyes, and then surfaced with a splutter. It was so cold she thought she might actually freeze. She set on scrubbing herself with her palms, keeping herself under the water as much as possible -- as cold as it was, the air was now colder by default.
"I'm really sorry for how Sokka's been acting," Katara said, "All we seem to do is argue lately, and it's like he's purposely trying to knock heads with me. But if he ever starts to get on your nerves or pressure you, Suki, let me know, okay?"
Suki wasn't in the mood to argue with Katara over the fact that she was putting on more pressure than Sokka was. Sokka had been the one to save her, despite the fact that she felt she couldn't look him in the eyes without feelings of hurt and betrayal bubbling up. She just couldn't stand it.
Maybe that's what love-hate was supposed to feel like.
"Alright," Suki replied, running her hands through her hair and scrubbing. She drifted around in the water, careful with her feet so that she didn't trip on the slippery rocks at the bottom. A bit further down the river, Toph was turning the water cloudy with all the dirt she was rinsing from her hair.
Katara said, "How are you holding out, though?"
She just didn't seem to get the point that Suki didn't want to talk about it anymore. When Suki dismissed the question with a shrug and a lighthearted "I'm fine", Katara only pushed more.
"Because if there's anything wrong at all, you know you can talk to me, right? I'm always here to listen," Katara said.
Suki said, testily, "Alright."
"I just wouldn't want you to think that no one wants to listen," Katara said, "Any time, Suki, any time."
"I understood the first time," Suki reminded Katara. "I'm recovering from malnourishment, not hearing loss."
Katara looked sheepish for a moment, and then she said, "Right, right." There was a long, careful pause, and then she said, "Suki, it's really not the malnourishment part that's the most important, I mean, we can right that pretty fast, it's more that you were a victim."
Suki was hoping Katara would take her disgusted look as a cue to shut up, but no, Katara finished with a gem: "You went through a lot, and being starved was the least of your problems. It was... well, it was Azula. She had you at her mercy. "
Suki turned her head to face Katara, slowly, a look of indignation sliding onto her face. She stared. She said nothing, just stunned into anger, and she said, "Excuse me? Azula having beaten me was my biggest problem?"
Katara seemed to realize her mistake, and she quickly said, "I didn't mean it like that, Suki, I'm sorry."
"Forget it," Suki said, louder than she intended. She looked away and said, "Just forget it. I'm sick of being a victim, or watching other people become victims. I don't want this."
She stood up, freezing in the air, and Katara's eyes widened momentarily, over the scars. It was a bit awkward, but Suki didn't care. She just stood there, hands balled into fists and held just above the water, and she said, "I'm sick of sorrow, I don't want it anymore."
"Suki," Katara said, "I didn't mean it like that--"
"Of course you didn't," Suki shot back, "You hardly know me -- it's not your place to say. So I'll be going, now, if you don't mind."
She turned and headed for the riverbank, and she climbed out and threw on her robe. Katara gave chase and followed, worried, and she said, rightly concerned, "Suki, wait! I'm sorry, please, don't run--"
"Leave me alone," Suki said, without looking back. She fumbled her feet into her sandals and she headed up the slope, furiously, leaving a trail of drips behind her, and Katara couldn't follow because Toph had grabbed her arm.
"Hey, Katara," Sokka said, when Katara came up the hill not half an hour later. Suki was inside getting dressed, and Sokka stood in front of the door like the guard, just because it struck his fancy. He folded his arms, defensively, but he addressed her with a bit of concern.
"Is Suki alright?" Katara asked, with a frown. She stepped up onto the porch and Sokka opened his arms for a hug, which she accepted. She lingered in his arms for a second, and then stepped back and said, "I upset her, I didn't mean to."
"Yeah, Suki mentioned that you said she was weak?" Sokka said.
Katara sighed, and hung her head, and Sokka hugged her again. In fact, he hugged her so tight he lifted her clear off her feet, and she yelped, and he set her down again. He said, "Look, I'm not going to be a jerk about it, but just don't talk about that kind of stuff with her."
"Sokka, you can't just pretend—"
"Trust me," Sokka cut her off, "We most definitely can. Just back off, okay, Katara?"
Katara looked extremely worried, and she started to reply, a bit louder, but that was when Suki opened the door and slipped between Sokka and the doorframe, so Katara shut up. Suki and Katara made eye contact for a split second and then Suki took Sokka's hand firmly, and she marched him off with her head held high and her shoulders straightened.
There was no messing with Suki from now on, it seemed.
Sokka did his part, which mostly involved standing there and holding things for her. There wasn't much he could do, really, as he never really got to know the Kyoshi warriors well: he'd met a lot back home, sure, but only one or two of them were the same ones he had met on the island. Suki had a large number of warriors, and only five had left the island with her.
Suki was holding up well, though. Stiff upper lip, no tears, just a pose that suggested she had a heavy weight on her shoulders. It didn't strike him as unnatural at all, really. Their death customs may have differed dramatically, but death was still the same to both him and Suki; mourning didn't have to be everything. The dead were still with them, after all, in some form. No one had to break any bonds.
"I didn't think I'd have to do this again so soon," she said, solemnly, as she set up the wands of incense in their cradles. "Not since my mother died have I performed a funeral."
"How old were you?" Sokka asked, and he handed her the fruit he was carrying. She arranged them at the base of the tree carefully, each lined up perfectly. Suki didn't take her eyes off that tree for even a second.
"Thirteen," she replied. "Four years ago."
"I'm sorry," he said.
"Don't be," Suki said. "She died doing her duty as a Kyoshi warrior, just like my friends did. They died with honour."
She bowed her head, and Sokka did, too.
"Never surrender," he said, more to himself than anything, as he knelt by her. She unfolded a fan with a flick of her wrist and she placed it behind everything, propped up between the tree and the fruit.
"Does the Water tribe fight to the last man?" Suki asked, quietly.
He looked at her, but she didn't look at him. He couldn't see her face, behind her hair, because she was looking down. After a moment of being unable to see what expression she was carrying, he said, "Yeah. We do."
"We're supposed to, too," Suki said, voice so quiet he could barely hear. Sokka understood. Suki was the last woman, too, wasn't she? But Sokka couldn't agree with her, no matter how true it was. The last man didn't necessarily need to die. Not when he survived the enemy and would overcome them later.
"Yeah," he repeated, and then he said, "Are you okay?"
"I'm okay," she replied. She glanced at Sokka, then, and he was rather surprised she wasn't crying. Her face was passive, it said absolutely nothing, and that concerned him, but in a way, he was proud of her, too. She remained a warrior through and through, and no warrior stopped to cry for fallen comrades.
It just wasn't the way of the Earth kingdom, or the Water tribe, or the Fire nation. Those three nations thrived on the principle of continued life after death, and how could one shed tears for that?
It was shameful to express weakness to fallen comrades, and both Sokka and Suki knew it. The five dead Kyoshi girls were respected warriors, and few tears could be shed over them.
There was a moment of awkward silence, and then Suki said, "Back home, Kyoshi warriors attend every funeral, to see the dead off, to honour them. All of us, all fifty-four of us. Every single time someone died, we all showed up in uniform, in a legion, to pay our respects. Warrior or not, we were there for them."
"Yeah," Sokka nodded.
Suki smiled, sadly, and she said, "I'm not all that's left of the Kyoshi warriors." With a pause, she glanced at him and said, seriously, "And you're not all that's left of the Southern water tribe."
Sokka smiled back, and nodded. Suki turned her eyes back to their makeshift grave marker, and she said, "Rest in peace, Tama, Jia-Li, Lin, Ayumi and Yin."
"Rest in peace," Sokka said.
There was a long silence between them, where Suki folded her hands together in silent prayer. Sokka watched her, admiring her strength of character, and then Suki looked up.
"Things in Kyoshi are so structured," Suki said. She lit the incense and waved it through the air like a wand, leaving a trail of wispy smoke behind it. Placing it back in its cradle, she brought her hands together in front of her and she bowed so low over her knees that her nose touched down. She stayed there for a moment, and then she sat up again. "I wish I could have shown you my world when you were there."
"I saw what was inside your dojo," Sokka replied, "Well. I learnt about the warriors, didn't I?"
Suki even smiled a bit there, and she glanced at him. Her glassy eyes were calm, and she said, almost curiously, "But you didn't see everything, did you? A few training sessions over a few days doesn't make you an expert."
"Of course not," Sokka admitted, and he struck up a brave grin and dipped into a bow to her. "I could never know as much as the master of it all."
Suki laughed, and she turned back to the tribute. The shadows on her face didn't seem as dark or grave now, especially as she said, "But you can try." She paused and said, mischievously, "Unless you've forgotten it all. It has been seven months, hasn't it?"
"Eight. Quiz me, though, see what I remember," Sokka challenged, and she moved to climb to her feet. He offered her a hand and she took it, and he pulled her to her feet. Once they were on eye-level (or as close as they were, now, Sokka had gone through a bit of a growth spurt in the past months, or maybe it was just the food in Ba Sing Se) she put her hands on her hips and took that challenge to heart.
"Alright, Wise Guy," she said, "What's the first weapon Kyoshi girls learn to wield?"
Sokka didn't skip a beat. "Knives." He only remembered because he had royally screwed up that answer the first time. If he recalled correctly, he flipped open the fan, meaning to use it as his answer, but had accidently flicked Suki in the face with it. She, luckily, had the common sense of not stabbing his face with the correct answer.
"Right. And what's the first weapon that Kyoshi warriors learn to wield?" Suki said.
"Poles," he replied, after a thoughtful moment. When she let out an amused little huff, but no correction, he said, "Right?"
"Almost," she said. "It has a proper name, because it's not just a pole. And you have to tell me why we use them, too."
"Nigi... nigitana?" he said, and then grinned. "However they're called, you use them because they keep the enemy at a distance, and opponents with more weight or height lose their advantage, which is good because girls tend to be shorter, and they weigh less."
"Naginata," she said, and she gave the grave one last look before turning and heading up the hill again, slipping through the trees. Sokka followed, repeating the term in his head over and over again, so he wouldn't forget next time she drilled him. "I'm not very good with them, though, which is why I'm going to practice as soon as I can get my hands on one.
"If the fan's an extension of your body, then isn't the naginata roughly the same concept? Sure, it's more awkward to swing about, but you don't have to keep them so close," Sokka mused, "but I guess if they could throw rocks or knives at you or something, it's a lot harder to deflect."
"The fans are a lot more intimate," Suki confessed, "I like close-quarters far more than long distance. We're all trained in archery and all sorts of terrain fighting, like from a mounted position, and whatnot, but I'd much prefer being able to keep a closer eye on what they're doing, rather than focusing on cutting range."
"Can't say I feel the same, in battle, anyway," Sokka said, "but I understand. Me, I like my boomerang best. From a hundred metres, yeah, I can take any guy out. Up close, I can hold my own now, I think."
"Really?" Suki said. As she tramped through the grass ahead of him, she turned to look at him over her shoulder. That look on her face caught him immediately, the one eyebrow lifted and her lips curved into a playful smile, and Sokka almost stopped in his tracks, he was so caught by that look. When he just stared, she let out a sheepish breath and let her look dwindle to concern, and she said, "I don't mean to tease, I'm sorry."
She seemed to have misinterpreted his look. It wasn't that he was offended, or anything. Sure, he had a brief moment of worry that she felt he needed to be protected, but that sank to the pit of his stomach quickly. What got him most, really, was just that she was in such spirits, like her old self, for that instant.
He liked it.
He said, with a quick grin, "No, no, I didn't think that. But what, you want me to prove it to you, Suki?"
She paused, and then she answered him with that cryptic sort of reference that made the skin of his knuckles tingle and the memories of his hand-to-hand fight surface, bold and reddened.
"No, you don't need to. I know you're a brilliant warrior, Sokka. You proved that to me already, and I'm proud of you."
The way she said it was just different from the ways he had ever heard it said before. She was proud of him. Not proud of him in the tone that his mother had taken when he had caught his first fish, not proud of him in the tone that Gran Gran had taken when he had taken his father's departure without later tears, not proud of him in the tone that his father had taken when he had been deemed a man. Not even proud of him in the way that Katara was, in that sisterly, fond way.
Suki was proud of him as any woman would be proud of her best friend, the way they were proud about someone close and important. Suki was proud of him that way, and he just figured it out from the way her voice lifted.
He'd proved himself, she was proud of him, and while it was just another thing he had accomplished, it seemed so monumental coming from a girl he admired and cherished so much.
He just said, fully aware of how emotional and stupid he sounded, "Thanks, Suki." He paused for a second, and then said, "I'm proud of you, too. You're so strong and beautiful and... you're just so unstoppable. Nothing holds you down. I like that about you. I like you, all of you. I'm so sorry about everything. I really am. I couldn't be more sorry."
Sokka knew he sounded ridiculous, but if there was any moment of his life where he couldn't feel like he was being all smooth and romantic and affectionate, this was it. Figured.
Suki smiled at him, and she took in a breath, and then let it out, long and slow. She watched him for a moment, quiet, and then she backtracked towards him. He took a step forward, pretty sure she was going to hug him or kiss him or something, but she didn't. Instead, she took his hand and held it, and said, seriously, "I'm really sorry, too, and thank you, Sokka. I've missed you so much."
She kept her eyes locked on his with every word, standing so close that the rise of her chest was almost brushing his, their hands between them. With her face so close, he leaned in for that kiss, but she didn't linger long. She parted the space between them, and started walking up the hill again, still holding his hand, and he flushed red for having tried. But he walked with her, boldly.
"It means so, so much to be told I'm still strong," Suki said, after a few awkward seconds with nothing but the forest sounds to fill the silence. Sokka tightened his grip around her fingers, with a reassuring squeeze, and he sped up to walk side-by-side with her, where ever he could without running into a tree. Suki led him on.
"I'm not just telling you," Sokka said, "I'm an honest guy. It's the whole truth."
When they walked up the hill, the sun overhead casted a golden halo around Suki's head, lighting up her hair, and they had to squint to see ahead of them, it was so bright. Her skin was pale in the sunlight, and she was absolutely beautiful. Sokka hardly noticed the burns, because he had Suki to look at.
Suki was on her feet, and the stances still seemed to come to her like second nature. When she adopted the fighting stance, Sokka felt the warm familiarity to it, and he grinned. She smiled back, over her hand, and he said, "I'm going to be as easy on you as I can."
"No," Suki shook her head, "I need to get up on my feet again. Challenge me."
He hesitated, and then said, "Aren't you supposed to be taking it easy?"
"My body's fine," Suki replied, impatiently, "I just need to get my head into this again. Come at me, or I'll go at you."
Sokka still hesitated, and she went his way. He didn't want to turn any of her force against her, but he couldn't exactly bring himself to get smacked around. Sokka, as warrior, knew that was no way to feed a woman's ego, as just as it was no way to feed a man's. She couldn't win on a technicality or because he didn't fight back.
While his initial reaction to her charge was to step out of the way, at the last moment, he braced himself, and grabbed the hand coming his way. Quickly as he could, he stepped to the side and twisted, bringing her palm up behind her back, to her shoulder blades.
Suki froze for a second, and he felt her let out a long breath and move forward, to shrink away from him. But as quickly as the moment of fear came, she snapped back into the fighting spirit, and she brought her foot down on his.
It wasn't enough to seriously stop him, because it hadn't been a serious stomp, so he held on. She twisted her arm, and turned to face him, and twisted his grip right off her.
Suki took two steps backwards, to give him a bit of berth, and then she went towards him again. Sokka, with Suki's look of fear fresh in his face, instinctively moved back, dodging her prod to the shoulder, stepping away from her aim at his gut. Frustration appeared on her face, and she stopped in her tracks when he didn't diffuse the third attack, instead opting to step out.
"You're not helping," she said, bluntly. "You're acting like you're afraid of protecting yourself."
"Suki, I don't want to kill you," Sokka said, just a blunt, and she looked at him as if she had been slapped.
"You won't kill me!" she protested, "When you hold back, you're holding me back… that isn't what I taught you! How can I ever fight again if you're not going to help me? I'm not asking you to hurt me; I'm asking you to work with me. I need to train, and I can't do it alone, and if it means knocking me over a few times, so be it!"
Sokka was still hesitant, and Suki said, "This is exactly why I didn't want you to see me!"
"What?" he said, stunned. He raised his eyebrows, staring at her. "Suki, please, not this again."
"I resolved to get back up on my feet and stop the Fire nation," she said, again. "I thought that if… if you thought I'd be weak, or helpless, or should be 'taking it easy', then you wouldn't help me train. And I'm right."
"Suki," Sokka protested, "no, no! You're still strong, you're not helpless, and, well, you should be taking it easy, I won't deny that, but… I can't hurt you. And I don't care if what you taught me was to turn the strength of others against them, I can't turn you against yourself either."
In some ways, she relented, but Suki was a stubborn girl. She pursed her lips and stared him down, and although she didn't say anything, he knew what she was thinking. He was right, after all, but that didn't make it any nicer to hear.
"Look," she said finally, "Sokka. I'm sorry if it's hard, but…" she trailed off, and let out sigh, steeling herself for it. "But you have to do this for me. I don't want you to hurt me, I just… I need your help." As if it would make it easier for him, she added, "I had to help you, once, come on."
Sokka hesitated. Her guilt tripping skills were strong, even if she didn't really intend it: he had failed her recently and he sort of owed it to her. He then nodded and said, "Okay, I'll try."
"You have to do," she said, bossily. He nodded more firmly, and when he took a moment to get moving, she said, "Put 'em high, Sokka."
"I'll do it," he replied, seriously, lifting his arms and adopting the fighting stance.
And Suki came after him again, with the intent to actually hurt, and Sokka felt himself being forced into counteracting. Her attack was intended to hit a pressure point, much like those one of the impostors in Ba Sing Se had used, and he swept his arm in front of him and grabbed her forearm, sticking out his foot to pull her across it, so that she tripped. He caught her before she landed, though, and she gave him a look. He let go, dropping her onto her bottom on the floor, and then stepped away so she could get up.
She did so, and with a very forced war cry, she went at him again. The first hit he caught and it only glanced off him, and the second he blocked, twisting out of her path and bringing her with him. He felt himself doing cheap, high-energy things that no experienced fighter would dare use, like a beginner, simply because he couldn't switch his mind into fight mode to save his life. His emotions were driving him too much.
Suki knew it, and Suki was the one pushing him, when he ought to have been helping her. But it was hard to use force against someone who had been bedridden only a week before. If Katara knew what was going on, she would have stopped this immediately, and Sokka felt Suki's desire to get it done under his sister's nose.
Selfishly, he still didn't want Suki to go off into battle ever again, because next time she could come back dead. Maybe, if she went again, he'd lose her, and it'd be all his fault. It'd only confirm Yue, and this whole madness.
"Come at me," Suki said, breathily, her chest heaving with even the light sparring. "Sokka, come at me."
He knew better than to hesitate, and he stepped forward, moving out of the fighting stance and into an attack one, aiming to knock her off balance. He tried in vain to get his mind into the battle mindset, but he failed, and by the look that dawned on her face as he approached, he knew she was having trouble, as well.
Suki moved back so quickly he barely even came close to touching her. He moved forward again, and she backed right into the wall, and he nearly stubbed his toe against the floor trying to come to a stop before crashing into her.
The look on her face was a look of fear and panic, and he, nor Suki, seemed to understand why. He shifted closer, not intending to try attacking her again, and she pressed herself flat against the wall, reaching out her arms to push him away.
"Don't," she said, suddenly, her voice rising so it was almost a whine of fear, and her chest heaved again with the struggle to get a decent breath. Sokka backed off, raising his hands in a sign of surrender.
"Sorry?" he said, confused, and she looked away. She sank down against the wall, drawing her knees up to her chest and forking her fingers through her hair. He knelt down beside her.
"You scared me," she said, strangely, resting her forehead against her palms and staring straight down. "It's… it's my fault, I'm sorry, but…" Suki seemed frustrated, with her own actions, but she continued, with an angry edge to her voice, "Why did you come so fast? I didn't have time to get ready or anything!"
His patience and his worries were wearing thin. Sokka bristled.
"You said you wanted me to come at you for real!" he said, loudly. "I don't get it! One minute you're demanding I spar with you and then you're upset at me for doing it! What do you want, Suki?!"
"I want to fight again without thinking about losing!" she said, just as loud, looking up at him and dropping her hands. He regretted yelling when he realized her eyes were brimming with tears again, and she continued, angrily, "I want to fight without thinking about dying, or my friends dying, or getting taken prisoner and…"
She trailed off, and closed her eyes tightly, burying her face in her hands again. She continued, muffled, "I'm supposed to be a warrior, look at me."
Sokka wasn't sure what to say, but he shifted to sit next to her, up against the wall. He tried to find something supportive to say, but there was nothing, so he just put a hand on her shoulder and said, "Hey…"
She closed her eyes and tried to steel herself. She said, finally, "I just want to kill Azula myself."
He gave an odd sort of laugh and said, "I don't get to help?"
"Well..." she replied, hesitantly, and then she reached out to place her hand over his, over her shoulder. "Of course you can. We're a team."
And that was more of a confidence booster than anything else she had said to him, and while it didn't wipe away the feelings of failure, it certainly did do a good job at covering them up. Just that one little word. They were a team.
Team.
"Let's call it quits for the day," Sokka said, cheerfully, "No more tears."
"You're right," she said. "No more tears, from now on."
Her head lifted with his chest with every breath, long and relaxed. Sokka played with her hair between his fingers, mussing it up so it got all tangled. She didn't seem to notice, because she was mostly asleep, after a hard three hours of practice.
Her war-paint was leaving a big white and red smudge on his skin. His shirt was on the floor across the room, by the door. Katara picked it up with her foot when she came in, and she flung it so it landed on his face. He cringed, despite the fact that it was mere cloth.
"Katara!" he grumbled, quietly, pulling it off with his free hand.
She was looking at Suki, intently, and she said, "You've been training." Obviously, she'd noted the make-up. Her tone seemed sad, almost disappointed, and she glanced at Sokka with her eyebrows knitted, her mouth curving down. She said, softly, "Why? She's still so weak."
"Suki isn't weak," he replied, and he glanced at her, checking to make sure she was still asleep. He lowered his voice anyway, and continued, "Look, Katara, it was her choice. By the way, where's Toph?"
"Toph's coming," Katara said, dismissively, "But her choice or not... it's barely been a week since she left. She still doesn't get the right sleep, she still eats badly... she's hardly fit enough to train."
Sokka made a face, and he said, defensively, "She's sleeping now."
"Yeah," Katara said, sharply, "how long did you train with her before that? Since we left?"
Katara crossed the room and sat down in front of the counter. She approached the block of ice in the corner and placed her fingers near the edge, and it drifted into the air as water, revealing another segment of the deerabbit Toph had caught a week ago. There still was enough to feed them for another day or so, safe from spoiling within the casing of ice. Katara sawed off the frozen meat with Sokka's knife and set it down in the pan, and she melted the ice with a push of her palm.
"Look," Sokka said, almost at a loss for words, "she wanted to do this. I'll have you know, I don't want to do it and she gets mad because I won't kick her butt. I hold back, for once, and she hates it! But I want what's best for her, and if she wants to be able to fight, I'll help her."
Katara was rummaging for her fire drill, but she stopped, and looked at him pointedly.
"Maybe what she wants isn't best for her."
Sokka scoffed, and scowled, and Suki shifted. Her arm was laid across his chest, too, and her elbow dug against his ribcage just slightly. He winced, and stifled his anger at Katara by grinding his teeth together in frustration.
"Of course it is!" he said, finally, without something of more substance to say. "What Suki wants is best for Suki."
"No, it isn't," Katara replied. She arranged the tinder and kindling in the bottom of the stove and began twirling the harder, pointed wood into the softer wood, and it barely smouldered. She let out a frustrated sigh, and Sokka wasn't sure if she was just failing at the whole fire thing, or annoyed with him. "I don't think she understands that she can't just pretend it never happened, Sokka. She's acting as though life paused on the day that Azula nearly killed her, and started up again last week. That can't be good for her."
"She's moved on, Katara," Sokka argued, "what's wrong with that?"
"She hasn't," Katara asserted, firmly. "No one can just push things out of their mind like that, Sokka. It's not like it's a splinter, or a little patch of frostbite, or a bug bite... you don't just itch at it the second day and then forget it ever happened."
It was proving extremely difficult to be vehement and firm with his sister when he couldn't wake the girl sleeping against his chest. Katara knew this, and she knew he didn't want to hear what she had to say, either.
"If Suki says she's over it, she's over it," Sokka ordered, adopting his leader-tone. "No if, ands, or buts, Katara."
"But her mental health and sanity is just as important if you want her to be okay," Katara said, challenge stressed in her voice. Sokka was irritated by this. Katara said, "Look, maybe you don't understand. No one could ever go through that sort of thing without some sort of issue."
"She's a warrior," Sokka stated, "and a girl. And she's tougher than that. It doesn't matter what happened there, she said. She's over it! Why can't you get that? Jeez!"
"You aren't helping her by satisfying her every whim," Katara snapped. "Even if you just want her to be happy, protecting her from herself won't work forever! Sooner or later, you won't be able to anymore!"
"Shut up, Katara." He lifted his voice, accidently, and in his haste to snap, he shifted to crane his neck towards her, and his fingers raked through Suki's hair far rougher than he intended. Guilt spread in him as Suki shifted, and Katara barreled on.
"You told me that a long time ago!" she said, voice lifting, too, "You told me I couldn't protect Aang forever, and that was proved many times, wasn't it?! I couldn't protect Aang, you can't protect Suki! So you shut up, Sokka! YOU shut up and stop babying her!"
Suki was fully awake to hear, by then, and she lifted her head from Sokka's chest, accidently putting her weight down on his ribs. When he grimaced she sat up on her own, and he sat bolt upright, wheeling around to glower at Katara.
"I'm not babying her!" Sokka snarled.
"Babying who?" Suki said, hesitantly, looking between them.
Katara dropped the wood hard, and it clanged off the potbellied stove softly. She threw the drilling stick down quite intentionally. She rounded on Sokka.
"You aren't–– argh, never mind." She seemed to think better of it, and she retrieved the things and set them down against the stove angrily, and began to drill it again. Nothing happened. Sokka was torn between helping her and putting up with her nonsense, or just letting her fail and going without dinner.
"What?" Suki asked, and Sokka climbed to his feet. He took her by the arm, gently, and she followed him to her feet.
He said, "Let's go outside where it's warmer, huh?"
"It's not cold in here," Suki replied, mildly confused, but she caught on. Katara let out a noise Sokka couldn't quite place, like she was choking on her own breath, or like she had forcibly pushed her face into a sleeping bag to stop herself from making a sound. He turned around just in time to see her burst into tears, and his anger twisted in him.
Suki glanced back at Katara, awkwardly, and Sokka glanced at Suki. Alternately, Suki then turned to Sokka, and Sokka turned to Katara. Katara just sobbed, hard. Sokka turned back to Suki, and was torn between walking out and comforting her, but he, too was pretty hurt. His pride held him back, and with that, he turned his back on her.
Sokka led Suki out, holding her hand, using his other hand to slam the door shut behind him. He grabbed his sleeping bag on the way out, and he tossed it down in the grass and spread it out. He plopped down on one side and she joined him, settling down and crossing her legs. When he didn't offer an explanation, she asked, "What was that about? Aren't you going to comfort her?"
"Katara thinks you're more hurt than you let on," Sokka said, defensive mindset coming up needlessly. Suki pulled a face, one corner of her mouth drawing up in a somewhat embarrassed look.
"Look," Suki said, awkwardly. "I know it's difficult, but... this is the Earth kingdom. You're from a small village where this sort of thing would be practically unheard of. In Kyoshi, this would have been unheard of. But the Earth kingdom is big, and has been occupied by the Fire nation for over a hundred years now. Maybe a hundred of years ago, this type thing might have been shocking, but it really isn't now. Leaving Kyoshi taught me a lot about the Earth kingdom, things I didn't know before. The Fire nation is ruthless and I'm not their only victim. A lot of people have been treated just as badly as I have been, or worse."
"It doesn't change the fact that it's wrong!" Sokka said, firmly. "People shouldn't be treated like THAT, no matter what nation they're from. And I'm not saying we should put up posters and tell the world, I'm not, but come on, Suki."
"I don't know what you expect me to do," Suki replied, her voice growing a bit strained. Sokka wasn't sure, either, and in the background, he could hear Katara crying, and he didn't know what to do about anyone -- himself, Suki, or his sister. Suki said, "Do you want me to just be a crying wreck?"
"No," Sokka said, "I don't know."
Suki looked away, shifting in her seat to tuck her knees up to her chin, and she wrapped her arms around her legs. She said, calmly, "Nor do I, really."
He wasn't sure where they were going with that. He looked at her, waiting for her to look at him, but she didn't. She just avoided his eyes and stared straight ahead. He moved to put an arm around her but she leant away just slightly.
"Maybe you should go to Katara," Suki said, and Sokka felt guilty.
But he did, reluctantly, leaving Suki alone on his sleeping bag in the yard, and he wondered what she wanted and what she really thought was best for everyone.
"Ow," Sokka stated, clearly. Suki didn't seem to have heard him, or perhaps she was just ignoring him, so he said louder, "OW." This seemed to snap her into it.
"Sorry," she apologized, immediately, "wasn't paying attention."
Suki had zoned out while she had him on the floor, face-down with his arm twisted behind his back. She was holding it higher than his shoulder-blades, meaning it involved quite a bit of uncomfortable twisting and limb-stressing. She let go, and Sokka let out a long breath, cringing as he brought his arm around to a reasonable position.
"You sure you don't want to take a break?" he asked, concerned. "You've been out of it a lot today."
She frowned, and she sat back on the floor to give him room to turn over and sit up. He did so, ignoring the burn in his limbs. For someone still so frail, Suki hadn't forgotten a single bit of technique, and rusty as she was, she could still give him a decent run for his money. It was just the force she needed to work on. The energy, too.
He got to his feet again before she could ask him to, and he brushed himself off, eventually just doing away with his shirt. He had to admit, while the novelty of being able to run around half-naked was not as new and thrilling as it once had been, he still liked being able to bask in the Earth kingdom heat, especially if he was working up a sweat. A small sweat, but a sweat nonetheless.
Suki eyed him, up and down, but didn't say a word. She just climbed to her feet and stretched out, sluggishly, and then lifted her arms. When he flopped on the floor and said "Suuuki!" lazily, she gave him a curt "get up" gesture and he did.
"Come on," he said, "you've been at this for a while, let's take a break. You're so tired you're not even standing straight."
She could always count on him being pretty blunt, but it frustrated her when he was right about something she didn't like, he knew. Suki frowned and looked away, and she said, "I'm fine. Get up."
"Alright," he said, standing straight. He lifted his hands, and Suki moved forward. The first blow he stepped around so she put all her momentum into a hit without impact, and the second, weaker one he turned against her, grabbing her wrist. He twisted her around so her arm was drawn across her own chest and her wrist pinned under her arm. He held it there, kindly, and he put his other arm around her waist.
Suki let out a long breath, and he shimmied his feet backwards to avoid getting his toes stomped on. Suki struggled for a moment, but gave up quickly, panting hard.
"Break time?" he prodded. She sighed.
"Only a short one," she relented. Sokka knew that, by the way she was breathing, she was going to take more than a short break, but he didn't mention it, and neither did she. He let her go, and they both settled down on the floor.
She let out a long breath and said, carefully, "You really need to work on your footwork, that dodge there was so sloppy."
He laughed, awkwardly, and replied, "Hey, who's teaching who, here?"
The corners of her mouth twisted up and she replied, "We're equals here, none of that sifu nonsense. I'm just saying your footwork is lousy."
"Yeah? Well, you hit like a girl," Sokka retorted, not being terribly serious, just because he knew it would get a reaction. Like a little boy would taunt a little girl he liked.
He got the reaction he wanted. Suki quite seriously hit him, although not hard, but it left a red handprint on his bicep. It tingled, but didn't quite hurt, and she said, "A very strong girl."
"A very strong girl," he agreed.
"Don't you know it," she smiled.
"I do know it!" he agreed, again, and Suki actually drew closer to him. Her palm covered where she had smacked him, skin soft and tender against his, and she leant her forehead in the crook of his shoulder. He almost moved back in surprised, but instead he laughed, and her nose jabbed him in the neck. His hand drifted to her back, holding her there.
Suki had never snuggled up to him like this, even if there was an awkward gap between them, where their bodies didn't quite touch. He was hyper aware of that space between them, where he felt there should be the curve of breasts and the poke of her ribs and her hips. Instead it was just her hand, and her forehead, and she was quiet.
He put his arms around her tightly and pulled her right up close, and she braced herself, but she calmed at the same time as he let her go, wary of what he was doing. When he pulled his arms away, she kept close.
He laughed and said, "Am I being pushy?"
"It's pushy in an acceptable way," Suki said, seriously.
Suki couldn't hold back a laugh, however, when Sokka commented, "Alright, because you're fun to hold."
"Am I?" she replied, and she ran a hand down her own front, stopping over the ribs and smiling. "I feel a bit bonier than I used to be, but you're fixing that, huh?"
"Hey, well, Katara and Toph are. I'm hanging with you, instead of hunting," he said, and he had to do the inevitable and admit, "You're a bit weird when you're all bony, but you'll be back to usual in no time."
"I've never been hunting," Suki said, and Sokka's mouth fell open in some inexpressible form of joy and surprise.
"I'll take you!" he said, brightly, "You and me! We'll go and we'll find something really great. And we'll have Katara or Toph go down to the village and sneak us some other foods, and we'll have a feast."
"Even vegetables?" Suki said, raising an eyebrow.
"Even vegetables," Sokka replied, although he hesitated for a second. "It's a feast! We'll fatten you up again –– well, not fat, but you know, warrior-type, and we'll all have drinks and dance and play. It'll be a party, just for you."
"I like that idea," Suki said, and Sokka nodded enthusiastically.
"I like that you like that idea," Sokka replied.
Suki didn't continue the trend, but she did move up against him again, and this time she was closer. He could feel her breath on his neck, and then, after a brief stint of closed-eyes and relaxation, she said, "Alright, break's over."
"Alright," he said, and he didn't wait for her to get up before going in for the attack. He grabbed her by the shoulders and laughed. He grabbed her by the shoulders and made to roll her to the ground, his intentions meant to be playful.
This was potentially a stupid thing to do, and in the end, it turned out to be not only stupid, but damaging. Suki did not take kindly to him startling her by moving so close, and when he pressed close she brought her knee up. By some feat of luck, she managed to miss the more precious parts of his anatomy and knee him right in the gut instead, but it was winding anyway. He knew how much effort it took to hurt someone that way, and Suki certainly did have that impact.
He groaned and rolled to the side, and Suki slammed him down against the floor by the shoulders.
"Why would you do that?" he asked, between complains and hisses of pain, and her reaction was extremely late. She backed off, let go, and covered her mouth with her fingers.
"Sorry," she said, "you just caught me completely off-guard, I just..."
Between his teeth, he said, "Uh yeah, that's okay, I understand." Even if it felt like she had stabbed him in the gut, rather than knee him. No matter what.
"Sorry, Sokka," she said again, and he stretched out on the floor, hands over his gut. He grimaced. He nodded at her, eyes closed.
"I just went somewhere else for a second, there," she trailed, sounding just as hurt as he felt.
He thought it appropriate that he didn't dig the wound deeper, so he just said, "That's okay."
"What does 'Suki' mean?" Sokka asked. He was holding her from behind, his arms around her arms and torso so that she couldn't move. She struggled for a moment, and then pulled him right over her shoulder. He struggled to stay upright, but he ended up letting go and flipping anyway, landing hard on his tailbone.
He winced, and she said, holding his arms behind his back, "Beloved, but it has a lot of other meanings with different characters. I just write it with the character for 'beloved', though, it's easier."
"Yeah?" he said, and he took a moment to break out of her hold with ease. He came at her again, quicker this time, and while she managed to dodge the first knock, on the second he had her under him on the floor. He asked, "What are the other ones?"
"Well," Suki paused, looking up at him from the floor. He looked down at her, standing over her with one foot on either side of her waist, reaching down to keep his hands on her shoulders and hold her there. She seemed extremely uncomfortable, but not for long: she reached up and grabbed him by the back of the knees, digging her fingers in to activate his bending reflex. Down Sokka went, dead-legged. She pushed him over.
Then, she explained, "It also means a chip in armour, or an opportunity, but in Aikido, which is the fighting style Kyoshi warriors use, if you'd forgotten, it can mean 'flawed technique'."
"I didn't forget," Sokka said, as he rolled to his feet and parried off a few more strikes. In reality, he had, but it didn't matter. He said, "At least 'beloved' balances out the 'flawed' bit. Your form is pretty perfect."
"Hey," Suki said, and she actually smiled a bit, the corners of her mouth lifting, amused. "It means I exploit other's weaknesses, not that it's MY technique that's flawed."
As she said it, she grabbed him by the shoulders and brought her knee forward at an alarming speed towards his groin, and he only barely managed to get the hell of her way, but she stopped before she actually hit him, anyway. When he cringed at the close call, she laughed.
"I wouldn't do that, you know," she said, "that's going a bit far."
"That's going a lot far," he said, delicately, and he made a face. Suki giggled, and before he could react, she gave him a gentle bop in the stomach. Sokka, quite off guard, doubled over and folded his arms over his gut with a groan. It was extremely exaggerated.
She said, teasingly, "Don't be such a goof."
He stopped his groaning fit and then looked up with a wicked grin, and he grabbed her around the middle. She gave a startled yelp, and despite how she tried to move away, he slung her over his shoulder, locking an arm around her thighs and just above her knees and holding them to his chest. Once the shock of this sudden movement wore off, she braced her hands against his back and laughed, and then gave him a thump.
"Don't be a goof?" he asked, brightly. "Try and stop me."
"Sokka," she said, "put me down, goof!"
"Nope, nope," he shook his head, and she kicked her feet around. He struggled to stay upright and not overbalance with her weight over him, and used one hand to hold her foot so she couldn't kick him in the face by accident.
"Sokka," she warned, but she couldn't keep the laughter from her voice. She gave him another thump on the back, and then said, "Sokka, put me down."
"Not until you guess what my name means," he replied.
"Put me down or I will disable you from the waist down," Suki replied, and though she didn't sound like she meant business, she prodded him gently in the back, on a specific place, right over his spine. Sokka arched his back immediately.
"That's not fair," he replied, smiling anyway. He bounced himself on his feet, so that she lost her brace and fell against his back again with a gasp. She braced herself again. He grinned. "Besides, you like me too much to paralyze me."
"I really don't know. What characters is it written with?" Suki replied.
"I see what you're doing," Sokka replied, "I put you down, write it out, and you get in a few hits while I'm distracted. Nope. Sorry, Suki, not falling for that one."
He couldn't rightly see what she was doing, back there, but he found out seconds later. She dug her fingers into his sides, in a tickling motion, and he let out a surprisingly high squeak of surprise and a fit of laughter. He struggled to hold onto her, and she did it again. This time, he went towards the floor, unable to hold onto her and stay upright at the same time. Suki landed on top of him, naturally, and she stopped tickling him.
And once they were down there, it was all too easy for Suki to push him down against the floor, lock her grip on him, and pin him there. Sokka let out one last gasp of laughter and struggled against her.
"What, not going to pick me up and sling me over your shoulder?"
"I, unlike you, am not a caveman, and you must weigh twice as much as me now," Suki said.
"Ha ha," Sokka smiled, "yeah, I do." And then, fondly, he added, "Can't really pick me up, but you can still push me down!"
"That's right, I certainly can." She laughed, and then asked, "So what does 'Sokka' mean, then?"
"Er, that I know of, it has no meaning, it's just written with the characters for 'inquire' and 'card', so… yeah," Sokka grinned. "You couldn't get it."
"Inquire Card," Suki replied, "Asks a lot of questions, and…something useful in attaining an objective, as a course of action or position of strength. That sounds like it fits, to me. Or a flimsy bit of paper."
Sokka figured, for the first time, that his name meant something. It struck him, as she said it, that that's what he had been doing all along. It brought the grin on his face more strength, and it widened, and Suki smiled back at him, her eyes locked on his.
If she weren't holding his hands by the wrists, he would have kissed her right there. So he just stared up at her adoringly, and she stared right back. He was so pleased –– Suki was at ease and she was up against him and she didn't seem to have a care in the world, other than sparring with him.
At the same time, Katara, on the other side of the room, fumbled her cup and spilled it. She bent the water out of the tatami mat immediately, but that was also when Katara remarked to Toph, rather loudly, "You're lucky to be blind."
"Not really," Toph replied, "I still have to hear it, and it's pretty gag-worthy."
Sokka, in the playful banter and goofing around, had entirely forgotten about Katara and Toph.
Sokka felt the heat creep up his face, and he was unable to look at them because Suki was sitting where she obscured his vision. He said, loudly and defensively, "Hey, HEY. Don't be such prudes. We're just sparring. Nothing wrong with that, okay?"
Suki looked up at the girls and then back to Sokka, briefly. She was red in the face, herself. She said, glancing back at Katara and Toph, "Sorry. We would spar outside, if we could, but we can't."
It was raining outside, and rather hard.
Suki let go of Sokka, and he sat up. Looking at Katara, he realized she was wearing a look that wasn't disgusted or shocked, but rather one of those smirks. One of those sly, amused looks that practically dripped with smugness.
"Sparring? Oh, there's nothing wrong with sparring, no," Katara said, loftily. The smug smile didn't change, and Sokka felt the challenge.
"Wipe that look off your face," Sokka said, "Suki… Suki's a great friend, and we're close, so when we spar, we're not afraid to get, er… close. But that's all it is. An innocent sparring match."
He was trying to play this cool, but Suki complicated it with a diplomatic, "It's not like we'd degrade ourselves in front of you, Katara." Sokka was actually surprised that she was being so bold about it.
Count on Suki, he figured, to be more fun than other girls.
Toph gave a snort, and Katara collapsed into giggles. Sokka gave Suki a look, one that said the story be best left to him, because there was no way he was going to accept that Suki was outright telling his sister that they were, ah, getting close like that.
No matter how ridiculously obvious it was to every party present.
Sokka knew he was bright red, and Suki was only slightly pink. He admired her for her audacity, but he still had to say, "Someday, you'll, er, understand the human nature of, er, getting close with other people. And Suki and I are so, er, close, we forgot you were here, and we were being, uh... close."
Katara was still laughing so hard there were tears coming from her eyes. She wiped them away, helplessly, and even Toph had to stifle a snicker at that one. Katara said, between giggles, "I am so revolted right now. Sokka, ew. Ew. Seriously."
Sokka and Suki looked at each other and Suki covered her eyes with one hand, embarrassed and smiling anyway, and Sokka looked away sheepishly, though he couldn't help putting on a smile to match hers.
It wasn't terribly mortifying.
The two week mark had come and passed when Suki took Sokka's hand and said, "Let go for a walk."
Just the way she said it spoke volumes. It was just as much Suki as Sokka had originally known her -- determined, ready to grab him and do whatever she wanted with him, no matter what -- but it was also a lot of the new Suki, the Suki who planned out everything she did with him, in advance.
That, really, was how he knew it was coming, but he said, anyway, with a comic smile, "You know, Suki, once you've seen the path to the road, the river, and the frog-rock once, you've seen them a billion times!"
"We're going anyway," Suki said, and she gripped his hand firmly. Her arm was against his, she walked so close, and she and Sokka both gave Katara and Toph a casual "we're going/bye" before they took off.
(Toph was in a sour mood, it seemed, so she just grumbled, "Yeah, have fun alone in the woods." Katara didn't even reply, she was working on Aang's wounds again.)
They walked for about fifteen minutes, and then Suki took Sokka by the shoulders and pushed him down to sit on a log with her. Sokka felt it coming from a mile away, just by how her mouth was drawn into a hard line, and how her eyes were steeled.
And then it was confirmed.
"I think I'm ready to talk about it," Suki said, quietly.
