Is it sort of disgusting that every time I say "oh I'll be done in x words" the number goes up? Currently, as of the end of chapter six, we were at 100,000+ words, and I claimed I'd be able to finish it off in 120,000. I... guess not! We're looking at three more chapters after this.
(This is the longest chapter to date, get snacks.)
Mind the M-rating.
And onto what you're here for:
CHAPTER SEVEN: MUTUAL EXCLUSION
"I think I'm ready to talk about it," Suki said, quietly. Sokka lifted his head, and his eyebrows, and he shifted to sit closer to her. Her mouth was drawn into a shaky line, and her eyes were glassy again, though she didn't seem to be ready to cry.
She hadn't cried since that time she vowed not to.
"Alright," Sokka said. He paused, and she took a long breath.
"After our encounter with Azula, myself, Jia-Li and Qiao were taken to the Fire nation camp you found us in. The other girls didn't make it, or maybe they did at one point, I don't know. I was knocked unconscious at that point, but apparently, en route, we came across a unit of the Fire nation's army, and Azula took them off their route to escort us. I still don't know what else happened between then, but I came to in a holding cell when they started dousing me with ice water…"
Suki had never felt more exposed in her life.
Someone had stripped her of her armour at some point, so all she wore was her white under-robe and the close-fitting trousers she usually wore under her hakama. But even with those layers, she felt ridiculously naked, with the fabric plastered to her like a second skin. Her head ached. Her shoulders were sore. She felt as though she had been knocked around for hours, and that didn't really seem so far fetched.
The way she was stretched across the floor was more than a bit degrading. The initial shock of being woken with a bucket or two of ice water was wearing off, though the cold wasn't, and she gave a horrid shudder.
"She's awake," someone above her growled, "Fetch the Princess."
Suki moved to sit up, and she found the long reach of a halberd slipped under her chin in a matter of seconds. She froze, uncomfortable and weak on her own hands, and she demanded, "Where am I?"
He ignored her question, and he said, "Shut up, scum."
"How dare you," Suki shot back. Her mouth felt sore, too, and she ran her tongue over her teeth. One of the ones on the side of her mouth was loose, and she felt the warm flow of blood trickling. She leaned back, just slightly, and lifted her chin fiercely.
But her head was pounding and she couldn't exactly think straight. She was close to shivering, despite her furious tone. The Fire nation soldier ignored her, pointedly, and he only turned to one of his cohorts to say, bluntly, "To think we could be heading towards the drill now – instead, we'll be babysitting Princess Azula and entertaining her petty demands."
He heaved a sigh, and the guards replied, "Now, now. We should speak more respectfully of her. Back home, I hear they're prone to honouring her for just about everything she does. Wild cheers and bowing every time she takes a bite of her dinner, or something."
"They wouldn't be so fond of her if she interrupted their units," the soldier grumbled, and Suki turned her eyes to the other men, to make sure they were more focused on the conversation than her. When it was clear they were, she tried to push all the fog from her mind and she struck.
The soldier with his halberd to her throat wasn't even looking at her, so with one movement, it was easy to take the halberd by the pole and move it away from her throat, ripping it from his hands. He turned immediately when she did, but Suki aimed the handle for his gut, and she stabbed. It merely bounced off his armour, but it did give him an unexpected jab that sent him reeling backwards a few steps.
The soldiers were a bit lost in the sudden kerfuffle, and that was all fine for Suki. Even such a simple gesture like that had stained her shoulders and her pounding head, and only with fearlessness and determination did she find her feet.
It was, simply, the most uncoordinated battle she had ever fought. The element of surprise had only granted her a half-minute's advantage, and soon she was fighting them off by hand. The soldier who had held his halberd at her throat was dispatched to the floor with a shove of the heel of her palm, right up his nose. Suki felt it break.
The second came behind her and she dispatched him, too, though it took a few tries, something that cost her valuable seconds. Every time she failed to take someone out on the first hit was another time she was allowing the soldiers more time to get around the tables and chairs in the room, and into her space.
That space she had was her greatest ally, and with that in mind, Suki did whatever small movements she could use. She ran purely off of adrenaline at that point, as the fearlessness was ebbing with every time she was blocked or parried. The determination remained intact.
The third and final soldier went down when she sidestepped his lunge, and she reached up and placed a hand on the back of his neck, and shoved. She sent him hurtling into the wall, where he bounced off with a sickening crack. Suki let out a hard breath, and was disturbingly aware of how close she was to fighting without any grace at all. She was getting alarmingly close to brawling, rather than the highly structured routines she was used to.
That, if anything, was the biggest sign of desperation.
Suki didn't bother with clothes, and when she crossed the room to the door, she found she couldn't run without pain shooting up and down her legs. She hadn't noticed that, in the heat of moment, but now she found it excruciating. She grabbed the discarded halberd, and used it as a walking stick.
So, clad only in her dripping clothes, Suki reached for the door handle.
But the door came open of its own provocation – had Suki not stepped backwards at the last second, she would have been struck across the face with it. For an instant, she stared at the girl in the doorframe. Azula's lips twitched into a smirk and her eyes ghosted around the room before settling back on Suki. Suki didn't waste time on this, and she brought the halberd in front of her, swinging it in a defensive movement. It didn't matter, because Azula was far better off than she was at that moment, and Azula merely reached over and grabbed it, her hand closing over Suki's fingers.
In that silence, in that moment of fear, Suki could have said a number of things. She could have called Azula a monster, but they both knew the answer to that. She could have demanded what Azula wanted from her – that, too, had an answer they both knew. She could have taunted the princess, she could have made demands about the rest of the Kyoshi warriors, but those, too, were useless things to say.
Azula's fingers were stroking the back of Suki's hand, and this would have seemed to be a fond gesture, if it were not for the fact that she was gently raking her nails down, just enough to be cruel. Suki still didn't move, frozen in anger and fear, and Azula said, "My, my. What have you been up to?"
This barely registered in Suki's mind when Azula took the definitive step forward, closing their gap, and Suki moved backwards a fraction of second too late. Azula struck, and the halberd was wrest from her hands, and tossed to the side like it was nothing. Suki let go when Azula did, and brought her other hand up to fend Azula off.
It went by fast and relatively painfully, with no fire involved. Suki felt hyper-aware of her surroundings, of the throbbing pain in her legs, of the way her shoulders felt like giant elastics were tugging them as she lifted them. Her neck hurt. Her head pounded. Her eyesight seemed to waiver.
And then Azula had her backed up against the wall, with her hands held to the opposite sides of her body. She couldn't move. She couldn't make her legs work. It just ached too much; they just didn't want to support her weight anymore. Suki cursed her body then, for the first time in her life, for giving up before the rest of her was ready.
Azula let go and Suki dropped to the floor with a few ragged breaths. Her eyes fluttered, and she felt herself struggling to keep herself conscious. Azula seemed to find this amusing, and she knelt down to Suki's level.
Azula still wore that horrible smile, and Suki's own lips curled into an angry sneer, and only then did Suki manage to spit out a hateful, "You're foul."
"Fair," Azula corrected her, and Suki braced her hands against the floor, willing herself to climb to her feet. Azula made no effort to stop her, and Suki found her body uncooperative. She just couldn't get up. Azula said, conversationally, "But I suppose they're more or the less the same thing, aren't they?"
Suki shook her head, and she said, "About as similar as flowers and snakes."
"That's fine," Azula said, and Suki could only weakly resist when Azula took her by the collar of her shirt and lifted. The soldier accompanying her tried to help, but Azula swatted him away, and on her own she dragged Suki away from the wall and onto a chair. Suki sank against it, and found she could barely support her own weight anymore. Her breath came hard and laboured.
"Now," Azula said, "I very well could have left you in that clearing to die, Miss Leader, but I didn't. I decided, instead, that we would have a bit of a conversation. This can go either way – you can either tell me what I want to know, or you can tell me what I want to know after you've felt a bit more of the flame. What do you think?"
"I'd be glad to tell you all about the history of the Earth kingdom, if that's what you want to know," Suki replied. Her voice felt dry and cracked. She continued, "Or maybe about the art of combat, or how non-benders see the world. Maybe we could even talk about the weather. But other than that, I'm afraid I'd much rather warm up a bit."
She was almost shivering in her soaked clothes. Azula's eyebrows lifted, scorned, and she seemed to be angry at the remark, but not terribly surprised. She masked it well. She said, darkly, "Actually, I had a more important subject in mind. I know all about scum, how the ungifted fight and live, and I do believe it's still rather hot outside. I was thinking we could talk about your friend, the Avatar."
There wasn't a way to win this game that Suki could see. Azula took a seat in another chair, opposite Suki, and she folded one leg over the other, quite clearly relaxed. She said, with a devious smile, "Well?"
"Just because I've met him twice doesn't make us friends," Suki replied. Azula let out a scoff.
"Really, now."
"Really," Suki confirmed. There was a long pause, and Azula waited patiently. Suki could only feel how sore she was, at that point, and the way her clothes clung to her only heightened this discomfort. Azula waited, and waited, and then Suki said, conversationally, "Have you ever met him?"
"I've had the pleasure of it quite a few times now," Azula said, "but I think you're missing the point, here. We're talking about the Avatar and you, not me. In fact, I barely factor into this. So why don't you loosen those lying lips and tell me the truth? Where is the Avatar?"
"I don't know," Suki replied.
"Surprising, considering you had his bison," Azula said, "and seeing as it's his pet and the last of its kind, trying to convince me that it was someone else's just isn't worth either of our time. Where is the Avatar?"
She stated it simply, but there was a not-so-hidden tone of demand laced through everything she said. Suki swallowed the dryness in her mouth, and resolved to see this through alive. She kept her eyes trained on Azula, but she figured she had to buy time, too. If Azula's guard dropped enough, perhaps it was possible to take her out in one hit.
After all, nothing but pain was binding her to that chair. Suki had no broken limbs, and no bonds.
"This is purely speculative, but he could be any number of places," Suki said. "For example, he could be camping out in the countryside, trying to avoid you. Or he could be setting sail for the Fire nation, to destroy the Fire lord. Maybe he's too young to do all this and has given up and headed for his old home."
"Perhaps," Azula said, "but I doubt it. The Avatar's duty is to help people, and he's hardly capable of lasting for more than a moment, against my father. Somehow, Miss Leader, I think you're holding back."
"My name is Suki," Suki replied, "but you can call me the shihan of the Kyoshi Warriors, if it's easier. Either way, not a simple term like leader. I'm many things, but I've earned my rank above all of them."
"As long as you're the one in such a pathetic position, I'll call you whatever I wish," Azula replied, calmly, though she didn't seem impressed at all by this defiance. Suki saw it in the way her fingers curled, in the way her eyes narrowed and her eyebrows sloped.
"And what would you have me address you?" Suki asked.
"Oh please," Azula scoffed, "I don't feel like playing games with mere bugs in the dirt when I could be eliminating the Avatar from this world. Enough of these games, or I really will give you something to cry about."
Suki was blank and defiant, but if she were smiling, her smile would have faded right then. Azula's cold stare disturbed her greatly, and she could only stare back, as steeled as she could be. Azula didn't blink, so neither did she, though she felt her eyelids drooping in weakness.
Suki contemplated her answer, deliberately slow, but she seemed to mull it over in her panicked mind. She could decline. She could agree. She could simply give in and tell Azula everything, and she could be finished.
Suki tested her wrists by shifting to sit taller in her seat, and she found she could move her weight a bit. Azula noticed, but took no reply to it, because Suki said, "And if I tell you, what do I stand to gain?"
"Well, you'll live to see daylight again, perhaps," Azula said.
"A perhaps isn't a guarantee."
"A perhaps, or an inevitable death," Azula said. "Clearly, your priorities need to be straightened out, if you can't make that choice."
"At least I'd die with honour," Suki replied. In her heart, there was no other way, and while she didn't want to die, she couldn't have betrayed Aang for the world. That would be putting the entire world in danger, and the world had people she cared about. Suki's mind was made, but her own selfishness needed to be released.
"Don't worry, there are three more friends of yours I can return to, though, to be honest, I don't seem to be getting much of a response. Apparently, none of them have ever met the Avatar... but you have."
Suki let out a single breath, the fury slipping between her lips. Azula stood up.
"I'd rather cry than let you win," Suki said, and she made her move.
The die was cast, just like that, and simultaneously, Azula lifted her chin and her hand, and Suki slid forward off her seat, shoving herself brusquely to her feet for the last time. It happened so fast and so awkwardly that Suki managed to land a direct punch to the stomach.
Azula let out a seized gasp, and she stepped back to clutch her gut. Suki could barely keep herself upright, but she didn't wait – she aimed to break Azula's nose.
Had Suki hit Azula's gut harder, perhaps she would have been almost free; the movement would have winded Azula so badly she would have fallen unconscious. But, unfortunately, being mistreated had done nothing for her fighting skills, and Suki was left feeling drained and incapable of pulling it off, and Azula recovered fast enough to grab Suki's wrist before it smashed her face.
Azula twisted, sending Suki careening against the table, pretty much splayed across it, her hips against the edge hard. Azula kept her grip there, bent over Suki like an iron blanket, and she held Suki's wrists against the table hard. Suki let out a whine of pain, against her will – it just slipped out, dangerously, and Azula seemed to take it and hold it against her.
Suki could feel Azula's nails digging little crescents into her flesh, and the bite of the table's edge into her hips. Azula seemed to be disgusted to even have to be so close to hold her down.
"If that's how you want to play, stupid, I don't have any qualms," Azula growled, and Suki bit back a pained breath. She struggled, internally, to stay calm.
"I would rather die in pain than tell you anything about the Avatar," Suki said, vehemently, "I don't see what you stand to gain by torturing anyone for that information, anyway."
Azula didn't reply for the moment, and Suki felt Azula twist one arm behind her back, so high she felt her shoulder start to dislocate. Suki let out a sharp breath then, and when Azula held it there, Suki struggled to adjust to the pain. It stabbed, like she could feel the very sinews of her arms tugging apart, and Azula only relented, slightly, when Suki let out a whine and closed her eyes tightly, face against the table.
She couldn't kick, she couldn't flail, not with her arm twisted like that, and Azula's other hand so firmly on her other wrist. There wasn't really any single technique Suki could recall to escape something like that, and when Azula said, "Cold?" she decided to improvise.
"Yes," Suki growled, struggling to keep her calm, "but hot tea and a warm blanket isn't any more inspiring than this."
"Oh, there are other ways I can turn up the heat," Azula said, and at once Suki felt the charge in the air. But Suki knew Azula wouldn't do it – it was too dangerous, too likely to kill her instead of inspire her to talk. Suki let out a long breath, the bite of the table against her hips digging deep.
She said, "Your tongue isn't sharp enough for interrogating."
Azula seemed offended by this, judging by how she let out an irritated "tch" and relented. Immediately, Suki felt herself being dragged backwards, and her wrists were released for only an instant. Perhaps Azula intended to push her to the floor, or maybe she just had a lapse in judgment, too high on the power of her control over the situation. Whatever it was, Suki fought back again. She twisted, and through Azula caught one wrist reaching to chop her in the throat, the other connected with her temple, fingertips just grazing.
Azula was smacked backwards anyway, and Suki went with the movement, both because it was safest, and because Azula was holding onto her. With one hand still free, she curled her hand into a fist and struck Azula's wrist, prompting Azula to release Suki's other hand.
Free, Suki dispatched Azula by putting one foot on hers, to hold her still, and connecting her knee with Azula's ribs. It was hard for a moment, and then she felt Azula's ribs give way, a bit. Azula went down like a sack of dirt, right to the floor, and Suki fled. She took off through the door and down the hall, every inch of her body screaming in pain as she did so.
There were no guards for the first twenty feet. Then, one surfaced, and Suki hardly stood a chance. She quite literally fell into his arms, and he locked them around her in some sort of bear-hug, and as he had many inches of height on her and a considerable lot more weight and armour, it was all too easy for him to lift her right off her feet and trap her.
Suki thrashed, and her foot connected with his shin. It hurt more than it hurt him, because of his metal greaves, and her fingers grappled uselessly for a place to hit him, to prompt him to let go.
"I told her she ought to take in at least one guard," the soldier growled, and then, hauling Suki against the wall and restraining her there, he hollered for help. Help came at the same time as Azula appeared at the doorway, livid and red in the face, one hand over her chest and the other clutching the door so hard her nails were scraping the surface of the metal.
Suki didn't dare make a noise, and Azula said, violently, "Restrain her."
In Azula's voice lingered a hiss of pain with every noise.
She looked moderately okay, Sokka figured, as she wasn't a crying wreck. In fact, Suki seemed relatively calm about it, though she was far from apathetic. He could feel the rigidity of her posture against his arm, and her voice wavered occasionally.
A bit stunned at the story, Sokka said, "Wow." He didn't know what to say.
This was apparently the wrong thing to say, and though Suki didn't lash out, she seemed unable to decide what he was saying "wow" to. She said, testily, "Not really."
He corrected himself with a swift, "I didn't mean it like that. I mean… wow, you held up well, and wow, Azula and her stupid Fire nation should die in a fire."
"Mm," she said, noncommittally. Suki's eyes flicked off to settle somewhere on the tree line. Sokka watched her, still unsure of how to respond to it all. It was a bit much to take in so suddenly, and in so much detail. And, Sokka realized, painfully, it was just the first day.
Sokka shifted, rather uncomfortable himself, and then he wrapped his hand around hers. She pulled it away, after a moment, and then retook it, with her hand on top. He thought it funny, but didn't question it.
"Sorry I have to dump all this on you," she said, quietly.
"Oh, no!" Sokka said, "Don't feel bad. I'm glad you told me. Now I know, and we can all move on, and we all know what we're up against. We can fight her, I know we can, if we met Azula right now, we'd completely beat her down."
Suki nodded, reluctantly, and then she said, a bit firmer, "We'd beat her down so bad that Sozin would feel it."
He laughed, though it was more for the thought than a genuine one, and then he said, "Agreed."
There was another moment, this one more comfortable, where no one said anything, and they just listened to the world around them. Then, Suki remarked, "I wonder what she's doing right now." She said it in an extremely serious tone.
Sokka glanced at Suki, sidelong, and then he said, a bit teasing, "She's probably just getting out of a bath, and she's looking down at her stomach, and going, 'Wow, what a hideous mark, I sure got beat back there.'"
Suki laughed, and buried her nose against his shoulder, and they both pretended that there was nothing wrong with dreaming about what Azula was up to.
"I need your help carrying something," Katara asked, in one of those tones that was trying to be casual but just sounded suspicious. She took him by the arm and marched him off to the side. Sokka blinked, as Katara walked him out of earshot of the cabin. He waved at Suki, who waved back and then went back to chatting with Toph, who looked none too pleased.
"Alright. What am I carrying?" he asked, and Katara just stopped him in the trees.
"Nothing," Katara said.
Sokka heaved a scowl and he said, "Well, then why did you drag me out here?" He used his Big Brother voice. The exasperated one who was wasting his time on his little sister, no matter how much he loved her.
"Sokka," Katara said, using the Little Sister voice, just as exasperated but a little bit whiny, just because he was being dumb. "How did things with Suki go?"
Sokka brought himself up to the present, and he said, quickly, "Everything's fine. I think. I hope."
Katara looked at him, awkwardly, and she pulled him into a hug. She said, "It's a lot to take in, isn't it? I wanted to talk with you about it, but I promised Suki I wouldn't tell you what she told me. Are you okay?"
"Yeah," Sokka said, mildly surprised she would ask that. He felt the anger twist in his stomach, not at Katara, but for her. Azula'd tried to kill Katara, too, hadn't she? Sokka just couldn't get over anything. Azula had to die. "Yeah, I'm just livid. I'm just thinking things I probably shouldn't."
"Mm," Katara said, and she continued, "Don't do anything stupid. Azula's... Azula's far away. She's all the way in the Fire nation by now. There's an ocean, not to mention a lot of land, between her and Suki, now."
"If Azula so much as comes one step closer to Suki again," Sokka swore, "I'll make her wish she was never born."
Katara put a hand on his shoulder, and she just held it there. There was no replying to something like that. Sokka said, "Wouldn't you?"
There was a slight hesitation, and Katara looked away. Her blue eyes were grey in the dark, her skin seemed pallid in the moonlight, and her expression was unmistakably angry. She said, darkly, "Azula's horrible through and through, and I hate her, but I still couldn't wish that on her, or any human. Traitors, though, I don't know..."
Sokka caught her look there, and he wanted to ask her about it, but Katara sighed, and she picked up a log and shoved it in his arms. She said, "Let's go back."
"Did something happen other than the face off?" he asked, but Katara was heading up the hill. "Katara? Did something happen with Azula that you're not telling me?"
Katara just replied, "No." She was being honest.
Sokka couldn't say anything more, because they were very quickly back in earshot of Toph and Suki.
Sokka let out a long breath, and he paced. He paced the room like an idiot, and he just couldn't think, nor could he escape from Suki. He couldn't talk about it to Katara because Suki was there. He couldn't talk about it with Toph because Suki was there. He couldn't talk about it with Momo because then he'd look very crazy, and, to top it off, Suki was there.
He felt so, so guilty, and it clawed in his chest like all the nails and vicious hooks in the world, it ripped at his lungs, it curled around his heart and tried to kill him. Sokka felt like he had swallowed a branch of thorns, and that they were lodged in his throat.
The more he thought about it, the more he didn't like it, and he had never liked it in the first place. The more he thought about it, the more he wished he had been left in the dark, though he wouldn't have given that information up for the world.
What to do, what to do? Sokka didn't know at all, so he paced, paced, and paced through the night, until Toph snarled at him for rattling the floor too much, and he left the house. Once outside, he climbed up onto the roof from the window frame, and so he settled on sitting on the roof, twiddling his thumbs and drumming his fingers on his knees. The girls slept, but Momo joined him, chirping.
"Hey, Momo," Sokka said, and before he could reach out, Momo had already jammed his head against Sokka's palm for a headrub. Sokka smiled, bitterly, and grabbed Momo around the middle and hauled him onto his lap. Momo struggled, grappling at Sokka's pants with his paws, but Sokka won, and Momo settled on rolling over onto his back and purring.
"I thought Katara was going to kill you, the other day, when she caught you," Sokka said, aloud, though he kept his voice hushed. "I mean, this whole 'wrapping around Aang's head like a strangle pillow' idea is crazy. Eh? Eh?"
He bowled Momo over across his knees, and he scratched behind the lemur's ears. Momo chirped and purred away at this, and then Sokka picked him up under the arms. Momo sagged, his weight draped from Sokka's hands lazily.
"I don't think Suki likes you much either, and I know Toph isn't a fan, but hey, scout, we've always got each other, huh?" Sokka said. "You're my pal for sure, you don't hate me."
Momo chattered at him and Sokka put him down. The lemur wound himself around Sokka's knees and bumped his head against Sokka's knuckles, obviously still keen on the affection, but Sokka stopped there and flopped back on the roof. Momo crawled across his stomach.
"Everything's just messed up, isn't it, Momo?" Sokka asked.
Momo just chattered back, but Sokka knew Momo got the sentiment. The lemur had, after all, taken to sleeping on Appa's nose, as if he were waiting for his huge friend to wake up and chatter.
"Sokka, we can put a pretty braid in your hair," Suki said, cheerfully, almost singsong. Sokka looked up at her from the other side of the room, where he was sharpening his boomerang, and he gave her an incredibly disturbed look.
"When the Fire nation freezes over," he replied. His eyes drifted to Katara, and he said, "You look weird."
Katara ignored his remark and replied, "we'll do this again by the end of the summer, then."
Sokka didn't seem too impressed, but Suki gave Katara a winning smile anyway. Katara smiled back, her generally soft features distorted by all the war paint she was wearing, in traditional Kyoshi style. The Kabuki theater make-up was so vividly white and red and black against her dark skin that her eyes shone like sapphires. Her hair was looped up in elegant coils and folds, like an Earth kingdom noblewoman, and she wore the novice's headband Sokka had found.
Suki thought that Katara looked fine in such proud make-up. Sokka didn't seem to agree with anything they were doing. He voiced his opinion with a haughty, "Nope."
"What's so weird about it?" Suki asked, lifting the paintbrush from the tin of white paint and painting the lines around Toph's face, marking around where the red would go. She hadn't painted someone else's face for years and years, and following the contours of someone else's face was strange. The sharp angles made Toph's brow seem huge.
Toph complained, "What's the point of dressing me up? I won't see it." The reminder was a bit useless.
"To indoctrinate you into their Way of the Slumber Party," Sokka said, with a faux-malicious cackle of a voice, like a witch would. He made creepy clawing gestures as he did so, and Suki laughed.
"I want to see you all made up," she said. Toph wasn't all that pleased. Suki ran the brush along the ridge of Toph's eyebrows, drawing the line sharp and angular. Toph's eyes, too, glowed under such striking white, like luminescent pale green moons, and when Suki added the red along the top of Toph's eyelids, they grew even more striking.
Katara was braiding Toph's shoulder-blade-length hair into a short coil, and braiding her bangs back out of her face. Sokka watched, bored, and he remarked, "She looks like a girl, for once."
"That's it," Toph snapped, and she moved to get up to stomp Sokka, but Suki and Katara had a hold on her.
"Toph," Katara protested, "just leave the uninspired one alone, he's just being an idiot. Ignore him." She rounded on Sokka with a loud, "If you're not going to have fun with us, go do something useful. Collect more firewood, something, whatever."
"Yeah, sounds great," Sokka replied, and he put down his boomerang and got to his feet. He headed out the door, with a yawn, and Katara clipped one last piece of Toph's hair up. Suki painted Toph's lips blood red.
Then Katara said, with a grin at Suki, "Your turn?"
"Um," Suki trailed, "sure."
She had been okay with dressing the two younger girls up in Kyoshi warrior make-up, despite how technically, under Kyoshi code, they hadn't earned it. She was fine with doing hair and all that playful stuff, but she wasn't sure if she wanted them messing with her hair and skin. She'd had plenty of girly nights back home with her friends, but no one wore make-up and did each other's hair those nights.
Those nights were about drinks and dancing and singing around campfires. Suki missed those nights. As she sat down on the floor in front of Katara, she said, "Do you think we could make a bonfire afterwards?"
"Sure," Katara said.
Katara dipped the paint right into the white paint, and she began painting it on. Suki held still, eyes closed, as if in meditation. Katara just seemed to paint her face completely white, though Suki could tell it wasn't exactly a smooth layer, and then she began removing streaks with her finger.
Suki had no idea what Katara was doing, but she was answered in a moment, when Katara started humming. It was the same war songs Sokka had hummed in front of her before. Suki, more or less, figured it out by herself.
But the longer Katara kept her still, not talking, the more Suki got to thinking. It struck her, suddenly, with Katara's red-and-white face in front of hers, that people who weren't Kyoshi warriors looked just like real Kyoshi warriors, under make-up. This brought only thoughts of one person, effectively spoiling Suki's good mood: Azula, Azula, and more Azula.
Had Azula and her friends painted each other's faces just like this? Had they laughed over how angular it was, how unfeminine? Had they grumbled over its removal, as all novices did when they earned the right to wear the paint in the first place?
Suki's mood was soured, and her heart sank, and she closed her eyes to avoid looking at Katara's face. Katara was no more Kyoshi warrior than the Fire nation girls were, but they all managed to look the part.
"Hey," she said, suddenly, surprised by how calm her own voice was, "Katara?"
"Yeah?" Katara replied, curiously, drawing her bare finger along Suki's forehead in a swoop-shape, with a single dot underneath it.
"When Azula and her friends showed up in Ba Sing Se, did you know they were fakes?"
There was an uncomfortable silence, and Toph said, "I knew. I didn't recognize any of their voices, and one of them attacked Sokka. It just gave them away."
"Right," Katara said, "They knocked me out the first time I met them. From one end of the room they looked alright, and I thought it was funny that you had changed your hair when I got closer, but then she smirked at me and I caught a glimpse of her eyes, and I knew."
Suki was troubled. She said, quietly, "Did Sokka know?"
"Sokka never met Azula when she was dressed as you," Katara said, reassuringly.
"If it makes you feel better," Toph said, and Suki couldn't help but notice the twinge of unhappiness on Toph's voice. Toph continued, "The girl who attacked Sokka, she was flirting with him and he shut her down 'cause he said he was involved with you."
Suki didn't know whether to be happy about that or upset. Sokka hadn't known?
"Suki," Katara said, softly, "are you alright?"
Suki felt so far from tears. In fact, she felt remarkably calm about it, apathetic, even, though she didn't like what she was hearing. She said, casually, "I'm fine, Katara."
"He was really, really excited to see you," Katara said, "when he was about to leave to see Dad, that's when we got the message you were here, and he was really, really excited."
She thought about it for a moment, and then Suki said, "Oh."
Her mind was clicking. It came to mind again. Azula's voice rang in her ears, so calmly telling her "we wouldn't have been able to topple Ba Sing Se without you, Miss Leader. Thanks for your support."
Katara was pinning Suki's hair up in loops, by then, in what Suki could assume was traditional for the Water tribe. Her hair was pulled back into a ponytail, but her short hair could only make loops that clipped above her ears. Katara reached behind her own neck and unfastened the clasp on her choker. She held it out for Suki.
"Here, here, try this on, it'll complete the look," she said, brightly.
"What?" Suki said, honestly surprised, "Are you sure?"
"Of course," Katara said, and before Suki could protest further, she reached around Suki's neck and did up the clasp at the back, smiling all the while. The subject was firmly changed there, and Suki couldn't have cared less.
Katara grabbed the mirror from the cupboard and she offered it to Suki. Suki turned it over, and she honestly was surprised.
"A bit pale," she said, "but it certainly does look Water tribe. It's pretty. What do the symbols in the paint mean?"
Katara was going red in the cheeks, a bit, and she said, "I don't really know any war paints well, so this is bridal paint. It's all for life and hope. I think it's really pretty."
"Bridal?" Suki said, a bit stunned. Katara nodded. "It's pretty," Suki agreed, again, and then she said, reaching up with a cloth to her face, "Well, that was fun." She moved to remove it, but Katara reached over and took her hand. Suki stopped before she touched the make-up.
"Wait," Katara said, with a bright smile, "Wait until Sokka gets back! You should show him!"
Suki laughed, awkwardly, and she said, "If I didn't know better, Katara, I'd take that as you trying to set us up."
Katara said, with a funny laugh, "Ha-ha-ha, no, no, of course not, I don't need to do that. We all know he likes you a lot, I'm sure he'd like to see you all dressed up."
"As a bride?" Suki said, skeptically, raising an eyebrow, and Katara laughed again.
"Just go with it," Katara said. Then, with a glance at Toph, she said, "Stop scowling, Toph, we're just having fun."
"Yeah, yeah," Toph said, and Suki gave the door a glance, as if she expected Sokka to show up again so soon. Sokka didn't show, and for some reason, that disappointed her a lot more than it should have, not seeing him there when she wanted him.
Months ago, had someone asked her if she wanted to dress up like a bride for fun and show the guy she was so fixated on, she would have flat-out refused, simply because she didn't care for that sort of thing, or because it was just too goofy. Maybe she would have refused because it was culturally awkward to wear Water tribe clothing. Maybe she would have refused because Sokka didn't seem the type to care about it, then.
And then Suki remembered, just as Sokka really did appear in the doorway, that maybe Princess Yue was supposed to appear to him that way.
Katara looked over her shoulder and said, brightly, "What do you think, Sokka?"
Sokka was holding a bundle of logs and he had an expression on his face that was completely mixed. Suki just didn't know whether to interpret it as surprise, apprehension, or just Sokka being so incredibly Sokka. He didn't seem to know how to react to her. When neither said anything, Katara seemed to draw in a breath of worry, as if she had done something to bait the waters.
"Okay, is it weird because it's Water tribe or because it's a bridal thing?" Suki asked, outright. Sokka just went on staring at her, eyes wide, his mouth hanging open just slightly.
"Neither, it's weird because I wasn't expecting that," Sokka replied. He laughed, for no particular reason, and it came out funny. A smile tugged at Suki's lips, and he grinned. One of the pieces of wood tumbled from his arms and he looked at it and moved to pick it up, but he dropped two others in the process. Suki felt the heat creep up her ears, and Sokka flushed a bit in the cheeks, apparently flustered.
"Good," she said, triumphantly, even though she was blushing pink under all that white make-up, "I'll have you know Katara sprung it on me."
Sokka flashed Katara that grin and he said, "Well, great work, then. Suki looks gorgeous – not that she's ever anything but gorgeous, but you know what I mean."
"No problem," Katara said, and the initial flinch she'd had at Sokka and Suki's confrontation had gone. Sokka managed to take his eyes off of Suki to put the bits of dried wood down by the potbellied stove, kicking the dropped ones over as he went.
"Really?" Suki said. She didn't mean in general, she meant when she was sitting there on the floor in another peoples' style of dress. She said, "I'm far too pale."
"That's because you always wear that make-up and you never get tanned," Sokka replied, diplomatically. Suki wondered if he was going to start explaining how tans happened, scientifically, if he got any more gawkish.
It was sort of cute.
Then he went back to smiling at her, and she smiled back, and then he said, noticing Toph, "Nice make-up, Toph. You look more intimidating than usual."
She said, hotly, "Wow, I didn't expect a pinhead like you to admit to being intimidated."
Sokka said, "Hey, hey, heeeey, I'm not a pinhead."
"Sure you aren't," Toph said, doubtfully, and she wiped at the make-up with her sleeve, leaving white and red streaks across the green fabric and the back of her hand. Katara, obviously concerned about the amount of washing she'd be doing, protested and reached over to grab Toph. The two launched into a dumb argument over removing said make-up.
With the two girls distracted, Sokka glanced back to Suki, who was watching Katara and Toph with a bemused expression. She just didn't get why they had to make such a big deal over every little thing, noting that the two were like sisters.
"You really do look great," Sokka said, seriously, capturing Suki's attention quite easily, and she bowed her head.
"Thank you," she smiled. Sokka moved closer, and with one last glance towards Katara, and he knelt down to one knee and moved in to kiss her. Suki saw it coming, and she turned her head just slightly, so he kissed her cheek instead. He started to inch back, and Suki was unsurprised to see him a bit hurt, so she hugged him tightly, though it was really hard to feel comfortable when he put his arms around her and hugged her tightly, too.
"Sorry," he said, his chin on her shoulder. She leant her cheek against the side of his head, the slight prickle of his shortest hair rough against her skin. She forgot entirely that she was probably getting make-up smeared on him. She laughed.
"It's okay," she said, reassuring, "just caught me off guard, there."
He kept his hold on her, and she resisted the urge to squirm uncomfortably, or pry him off rudely. Thankfully, Toph interrupted them with a loud, "Is it Sokka's turn yet?"
"Fire nation's not frozen over yet," Sokka said, quickly, letting go of Suki and sitting back on his heels, frowning at Toph. "No way."
"Aww, come on, Sokka," Katara said, laughing already. "We could put braids in your hair. It's long enough. Or, ooh, ooh, we could paint you up like a –"
"No, Katara," Sokka protested, but Toph stepped up behind him and grabbed his arm with a grin.
"Your turn," Toph said, and Suki watched with sudden fear as Toph and Sokka startled to wrestle, playful as it was. Sokka fell off his heels and to his butt on the floor, and Toph had his arm by the wrist with her hand on his shoulder, and with difficulty she pulled it behind his back. Suki watched, unblinking, unsure if Sokka had chosen to be lenient just so Toph wouldn't break his arm, or whether he was really being overpowered so easily.
"Quick!" Toph said, to Katara, "I've got him, start braiding and sticking flowers in his hair."
"Mercy, mercy, that's my throwing arm," Sokka said, loudly, and as playful as it was, Suki just had to get up and reach over, grabbing Toph's arm and slipping her thumb along the inside of Toph's elbow, prompting the younger girl to let go of Sokka as a reflex. Sokka dropped his arm, glancing up at Suki awkwardly.
"What's your problem?" Toph said, "We're just goofing around."
"Sorry," Suki replied, defensively. "You were hurting him."
Toph started to snap back, but Sokka gave her a nudge in the arm, and he climbed to his feet and slipped an arm around Suki's waist. She wasn't sure whether to lean into him defensively or whether to just outright move away, but regardless, Sokka said, "It's okay. Toph, Suki was just looking out for me, Suki, we were playing, but okay. Okay. Stop fighting? Yeah."
Suki almost glared at Toph, but there was no real point. Toph just said, stormily, "Yeah, Princess Suki always gets her way, right."
Suki said, right back, "What's that supposed to mean?!"
"Suki," Sokka said, testily, "please don't turn into another Katara, Momo really won't survive all that noise and screaming matches, and I'm sure you don't want to be on Toph's bad side." He added, very loudly, "Not that you have a bad side, Toph!"
Suki was mature. Suki felt she could deal with this maturely.
She let out a long breath and glanced at him. He was looking at her with his mouth turned down at the corners, though it looked more bemused and pouty than it did upset. Suki shook it off, and she let go of his arm.
"You alright?" Sokka said, concerned.
She didn't answer; she just reached up to his wolf-tail. He just stood still, curiously, watching her arms, and she pulled the tie out, so that his hair fell down. She ruffled it. It looked silly, he looked like the longhaired boys back home, and it did a lot for his face.
Suki couldn't help a smile and give a comment of, "I'm fine, but you look good with your hair down."
He perked right up with a cheery, "You think?" and Katara launched into a call of, "Oh, don't inspire him to wear his hair like that, it looks hilarious from any other angle, ahaha."
That inspired another argument between the real siblings, teasing and playful and with lots of comments about goofy looks, chosen aesthetics, and the size of the other's brain. Toph joined in, though she ignored Suki, which Suki couldn't really complain about.
As far as the battle of the siblings went, Suki chipped in the odd comment, but otherwise, she was content to just sit with them and laugh at all the silly things they said.
"Where would I be without you, Momo?" Sokka said, with a ridiculously exaggerated sigh. The lemur, perched precariously on Sokka's head, chirped, and the three girls at the table looked up. Sokka continued, dolefully, "Honestly. If you weren't around, it'd just be the Estrogen Triplets and me. Us guys need to stick together, or we'll get eaten by their fierce, fierce girliness."
Suki was looking at him with one eyebrow raised, and Katara looked confused. Toph kept thumbing the Pai Sho tile in her hand.
(Sokka had taken a knife and carved out all the paintings on the tiles, so that Toph could tell them apart, and taught her to play. Unfortunately, it made the game a lot slower, as she had to memorize where each piece was and touch them to tell, but she picked things up remarkably fast.)
"What is THAT supposed to mean?" Toph replied.
Sokka looked away from Momo and he said, "Estrogen? I read about it in a book! Estrogen is a hormone that girls—"
"I don't care about that sort of stuff," Toph interrupted, "I want to know what you mean by that!"
Suki stopped looking at him and she turned back to the game. She moved her tile, and she said, seriously, "He means he misses Aang, because he needs manly companions to talk to. Women are clearly impossible to live with, we're threatening his masculinity."
"Well, if you word it like that, you make me sound like a sexist," Sokka said, diplomatically, before Suki could beat him to it. "But what I really mean is that one more slumber party where you giggle over hair and make-up and I think I'm going to start getting urges to paint my nails or something."
"Well, sorry, Macho Man," Katara replied.
Suki just smiled at Sokka and rolled her eyes away. Oh, he knew what she was thinking, and he didn't mind it all too much. She could wear make-up that wasn't warpaint and like it. That was cool with him.
Toph, however, wasn't looking so pleased, and she snapped, "Do you think I like doing that stupid nonsense?"
"Well, you sure do take part," Sokka replied, casually. He folded his hands behind his head and flopped back on the floor, prompting Momo to skitter over his face to get away.
"Because they force me to, and I can't break them in half to stop them!" Toph complained.
"And you secretly like it," Sokka said, teasing, "That's why you don't put up a bigger fight."
Suki looked at him funny, and he backtracked. He realized what he had said, immediately, and he said, "Also, peer pressure is the work of the Fire nation, thank you very much, let's eliminate it from the world."
Toph said, completely confused, "What?" and Katara raised an eyebrow. Suki had never looked up from her Pai Sho tiles, though her smile flickered. But Sokka, no, Sokka's good mood for the evening was ruined, and once again he was lost to the hands of guilt.
"Hey," the guard snapped. "Hey."
Suki opened her eyes, snapped from her reveries about freedom. She glanced at the guard, and he said, brusquely, "Princess Azula is here. You better look alive."
Suki didn't nod, she didn't even really acknowledge this request, but she did swallow her breath. Her dry mouth felt as if it would crack with the simple movement. She pushed herself to sit up straighter, and at that same moment, Azula came into view. She was smirking, the wicked devil.
"Privacy, please." Azula waved off the guard, who walked away.
Suki stood up, on her shaky feet, and she stood in her cell with her head held high, no matter how much her knees wobbled. Azula didn't say anything, for the moment, she just waited, and then, when the staring match finished, Suki said, "What did you do, Azula?"
"I went and I found the Avatar," Azula said, "and I killed him."
Everything seemed crushed, right that instant, and Suki couldn't stifle a gasp. She clasped a hand to her chest and a hand to her mouth, and her eyes welled in tears. She let out a horrified, "I didn't tell you anything. How did you find him?"
"Stupid girl," Azula smiled, and Suki wanted to kill her, so disgusted to imagine someone as twisted and wretched as Azula wearing a Kyoshi uniform and striking down Aang. It all seemed tainted by her, anyway. Azula said, calmly, "I found him because I already knew where he was. I just needed a ticket into Ba Sing Se, that's all."
Suki stared. She just stared, and her mouth twisted uncontrollably, and she felt sick to her empty stomach. She breathed slowly, trying to keep herself calm, but it didn't work. She fell against the bars, furiously, and she seized them between her hands to shriek, "You monster, you horrible witch, you have no humanity in you—"
Azula said, loudly and pointedly, "—nasty, wicked scum, I don't deserve to be called human, etceteras, etceteras. I've heard it all before, at least a thousand times, I don't need to hear it again."
Suki just clung to the bars, face between the cracks, and she reached through to grab the front of the Kyoshi uniform. Azula moved, but not quite fast enough. Suki hauled her forward, so she bashed against the bars uncomfortably, and Azula let out a pained gasp when her ribs smashed against them.
"Don't mock me," Suki said, "I hate you. I hate you. Why would you even do this to people if you didn't need anything? For fun? You disgust me."
Suki thought: I could strangle her right here.
Azula didn't seem to agree. Once relaxed, she brought a hand up and neatly grabbed Suki by the collar of her own shirt, and she said, so calmly, "Do you honestly think I, Princess Azula of the Fire nation, would allow you to walk free with knowledge like that? Do you think I'd let the real Kyoshi warriors run around unchecked while my team and I toppled Ba Sing Se? No, I didn't think so."
Suki could feel her breath catch in her throat, uncomfortable, and she couldn't say anything. Azula took this second to say, "Now release me, Miss Stupid, before I burn you up, just like the Avatar."
"I'd rather die," Suki said, and she spat in Azula's face.
That, too, didn't end well for Suki. But, dizzy-headed as she was by the end of it, she did get to see Azula sulk off, nursing her lip and looking remarkably angry.
"Bad news," Katara said, as she came up the hill. Sokka looked over from his game of Pai Sho, and Suki stopped stretching. Toph didn't move or lift her head, but Katara seemed to know she was listening regardless.
She didn't wait to be asked what. She stated, bluntly, "The village is burned down."
Sokka accidentally did an illegal move and placed a tile wrong, and then swept the pieces off the table in his succeeding spastic flail. He rounded on her, shocked, "What?"
Suki let out a long breath and Toph lifted her head.
"I don't get it," Suki said, "Why would they torch everything? It just doesn't make logical sense to destroy all their spoils, and it isn't like the Fire nation can build settlements faster than the Earth kingdom. Razing Ba Sing Se was stupid enough."
"That's besides the point, Suki," Sokka said, dejected, "Now where will we get our rice and noodles from? There isn't enough fish around here, and now the market's gone!"
"That isn't the point, either, Sokka," Katara frowned, and Sokka didn't stop hanging his head. She continued, "The real point is, Fire nation is nearby. It might not be safe to be here anymore."
"There's been an occupation in the village for weeks," Suki argued, "I'm not exactly keen on staying where they are, but if they torched it, they'll probably be moving on. There's a colony down south… they'll probably move there."
"Perhaps," Katara replied, "but apparently, Azula was there."
There was an moment of silence, and before he could look at Suki, Sokka noticed the rigidity to his sister's posture at her own statement. Her eyes flicked to the corner, where Aang was lain, his chest rising slowly and surely, and then falling again. His eyes darted back to Katara, and he said, "Are you sure?!"
Suki's fingers had curled around the edge of the table.
"Says who?" Toph asked, skeptically. "Last we heard, she was back in the Fire nation."
"I met one of the refugees on the road, on my way through. She's caring for her son, and he has the burn mark, Azula's marking. It's like Zuko's, but less severe, but it's worse than Suki's for sure."
Suki seemed incapable of listening from that moment on. She was on her feet in an instant, and she crossed the room to the door. She said, sharply, "Sokka, let's go." Before Katara could say a word, Sokka had already gotten up on his feet, even as Suki was calling him.
"Wait," Katara said, as both breezed by her. Suki was slower, and Katara reached for her arm, but Suki deftly lifted it out of the way and kept going. Sokka did, too, but he spun around, and pushed by Katara again to grab his boomerang and clubs. On his second time through, Katara blocked him from getting out.
"Move," Sokka said, and when Katara didn't, he added a "Please?" Suki hovered around the edge of the hill, ready to go down, waiting for Sokka impatiently. Katara shook her head.
"What do you expect to do?" she said, "Suki couldn't take her alone, before, and even if you're an incredible fighter, Sokka, you have nothing to use against her."
Sokka looked at her long and hard, considering, and then he said, bluntly, "You couldn't take her, either, but that didn't stop you from trying."
"I had no choice," Katara replied, sharply, "you're walking into trouble again."
"Well, it's better we face it than wait for it to find us, then," Sokka said. "Now move." He stepped around her, but she moved, palms braced against the door frame, so that her body was in front of his. He tried to get around her, but she shifted in his way like a crab every time. After the fourth successive failure, he reached and grabbed her but the shoulders to forcibly move her, but she proved stronger than he figured. He just couldn't get by without excessive force.
He caught Suki's eye over Katara's head. She was hesitating, that was for sure, but she had one foot down the ledge already and he was hyper-aware that every moment they wasted on Katara was a moment Azula had to get away from them.
And they couldn't have that.
Suki glanced away, and then put a hand over her stomach. Sokka, having completely let go of Katara in favour of communicating with Suki, raised his eyebrows, confused, and Suki made a thumping gesture against her abdomen.
And suddenly, he got it.
Katara looked over her shoulder to see what he was doing, as he had gone decidedly blank and still, stopping the good fight entirely. She looked back at him, and he stared at her, worriedly.
"Sokka?" Katara said, suspicious and worried at the same time.
Sokka glanced up at Suki again, who was waiting impatiently, and then he looked down at Katara once more. His hand curled into a fist, awkwardly, and then uncurled, and then stopped half-way, ready to choose.
He really, seriously, and honestly did not want to do this, but his loyalty was instantly torn between Suki and Katara. Granted, his loyalty lied with both of them, but his action depending on choosing one or the other.
Suki needed him to help her fight Azula, who was so close, so that they could get revenge for everything she had done. For burning people, for hurting their friends, for hurting them, for everything she had done with the slightest bit of malice. This was the Fire nation they were ready to one-up.
And Katara was his sister and only looking out for him.
The turmoil could have killed him, his heart was beating so fast. Sokka could run into hundreds of dangerous situations showing no fear, but this was startling. He backed off a few steps.
"Whatever you're thinking, Sokka, don't do it!" Toph said, suddenly, and Sokka held his eye contact with Suki for a second longer. He turned to look at Toph, and she was on her feet, with her hand on the floor. He realized, belatedly, that she was reading him through the floor.
"What?" Katara said, confused, and she glanced at Toph, and then at Sokka. "What are you doing?"
Sokka lifted his hand and then dropped it, and then lifted it again, this time with his fist curled. All he needed was one direct smack to the solar plexus, Katara would be unable to stop them, as she would be unconscious, and then... well, she could forgive him later. He didn't want to do this, she was his sister, but she was stopping him from protecting everyone.
Getting rid of Azula would protect them.
A number of things happened when he started forward. Firstly, Suki's eyes widened, as if she didn't expect him to actually do it, despite how she had originally taught him to do it without any long-lasting damage, and she burst back towards the cabin at a run. Secondly, Katara's eyes widened and she let go of the door-frame, realizing how he was moving towards her again with obvious ill-intent. And thirdly, Sokka's eyes widened as he reached for his sister's shoulder to push her aside, because there were rocks climbing up his skin and holding him still, a great stalagmite rising from the floor and holding his arm still.
Sokka stopped there at a dead halt. Sokka let out a wince of pain at the harsh stone, and Katara looked up at him, stunned. She seemed unable to say anything, she was so taken aback. Sokka, too, was stunned at himself, stunned at her, stunned at everything. The two siblings held each others' gaze for a long moment, both almost in horror, and he regretted even considering it, even if he wasn't going to do it at all.
How could he have ever considered this was the right way to go about things? His face burned with shame.
"Toph," Sokka said, after a moment of embarrassment, "Let me go."
Katara's eyes were glassy, and her mouth hung open in shock, and Sokka knew perfectly well she understood what he had almost done. She just clasped her hands together and backed away, and she said, "Just what were you going to do?"
She had never given him a look so terrifyingly horror-stricken, at him, at what he had almost done, and Sokka let out a long, hitched breath.
"I, uh," he paused, and Katara found her voice.
"Were you going to hit me?" she said, in disbelief.
"Um," he trailed.
"FINE," she snapped, "Fine! If you want to go off and play Soldier again, want to get yourself and Suki killed, don't let me stop you! It's not like I'm trying to save your lives, or help you, or anything! Paint me as the bad guy all you want, Sokka, I want Azula to be brought to justice just as much as you, but knocking me out just to stop me from stopping you?"
Katara's eyes were brimming with tears and she let out an anguished sob, and he wanted desperately to hug her and apologize, too, but Toph's earthbending had locked him in one position, from one foot to his knee, and from shoulder to hand. He used his free hand to tug against the rocks.
"Katara, I'm sorry, I'm being more than stupid," he said. And it was true: attacking his sister was more than stupid, it was downright unacceptable and unreasonable. But what could he possibly do? Azula had to die. Azula had to die. It rung in his head like a mantra, like a slogan, like an impossible rule he had to follow.
Katara looked up at him, hurt, and she said, "You can say that again!"
Toph said, frustrated, "What's wrong with you, Sokka?" He struggled to get his head far enough around to see her, and Toph continued, "You've been nothing but a pain in the butt lately. Sheesh."
Sokka ignored her, instead focusing on Katara more, and she said, loudly, "You can't protect people all the time, Sokka!"
And that was the last straw, where embarrassment and desperation and downright anger kicked in most.
"Don't tell me I can't take care of people!" he replied, his voice cracking at the end, and he stared up at her with his eyes narrowed, and his mouth hanging open. There was something desperate about that look, something frustratingly distraught. "Don't tell me that Katara!"
"Sokka," she started, but he cut her off.
"Why would you even think that?!" he demanded, "I know I've failed before, I know things have been bad, I know that compared to you benders no one cares about what I can do. But who fed our tribe? Who protected the tribe?"
"Sokka, I don't think you––"
"No, Katara!" he continued, with a wave of his arm, "No! Let me finish! There were twenty-two mouths to feed when Dad and the rest of the men left! Twenty-two mouths that I fed mostly on my own. 'Playing warrior', Katara? Yeah?!"
"Sokka," Katara said, loudly, and when he started to continue, she shouted, right in his face, "If you go off and get killed by Azula, I'll never forgive you!"
"Fine," Sokka said, "Fine. Let me go, Toph, I'll make my own choice, then."
Toph bent the rocks off of him, and he shoved himself past Katara, who glowered after him. Suki was staring at him, and he took her by the hand with anger shaking him to the core. He started down the hill, and he didn't have to drag her with him.
"Let's go kill Azula," Suki said.
"We're going to kill Azula," he said, and he started to go down the hill. She pulled ahead of him immediately after, she started to break into a run, but at the last minute, Sokka stopped and grabbed her by the wrist again, pulling her to a halt. He said, "Wait."
"What for?" Suki demanded, defensively. Her chest was heaving. Sokka could feel her heart pounding so hard it was making her shake, as much as he was being shaken.
He couldn't have a change of heart then. He ploughed on again, and said, "Never mind."
And that was went the security defense went up. Toph's rock walls were lifted from the ground around them like great towers, so tall that even the trees were dwarfed under their looming shadow. Sokka pulled Suki back from running into them, and they both stared up at it in anger, and then Suki wheeled around to look up the hill. The walls extended around the entire perimeter of the hut, but Toph wasn't in sight.
She screamed, "Toph, take it down!"
There was no reply. Suki turned, again, furiously, and she pounded her fist against the rock, and she shouted it again, and again. No reply.
Sokka watched her, and he could only put an arm around Suki and pull her away from the stone before she did something stupid. She fought him. She was furious, and Toph didn't even appear on the ridge. Sokka held her back until she wrenched his hands off, and she sat down on the ground with her back against the wall, and she pressed her palms against her eyelids and grit her teeth. Sokka stood over her.
"Suki," he tried, and she flat out ignored him.
There was nothing he could do but go back to Katara, and try to do some damage control. Luckily, it was doable.
"You're changing," Katara said, soberly. Sokka fidgeted in his seat, and he stretched his legs off the porch, even if it meant his pants would get wet. It was raining, and not in the dramatic way. The sky was just spitting pathetically. She glanced at him sidelong when he didn't reply. "Would you have hit me if Toph hadn't stepped in?"
"No," he admitted, "I considered it, but I didn't. I was just going to grab your shoulder and force you aside, but, well, Toph didn't know better. I… just wanted to kill Azula. It was like, well… remember when I beat up those guys in the prison? It was like that."
"I'll never forget that," Katara said, "That was terrifying. Sokka, you killed—"
"I know," Sokka replied, cutting her off, but there was no anger. Regret, but no anger. "I know. I didn't need to go so far. But tonight, for a minute, I felt the same. I just had to run. I had to find Azula and end her."
"And Suki?" Katara asked.
"She's upset. Not crying or yelling or anything, but she's upset. Giving me the silent treatment," Sokka said, with a frown. Katara nodded, curtly.
"I'm sorry," Katara said, "Everything's harder without Aang…"
Sokka folded his arms and raised his eyebrows, and he gave her a skeptical, "Look, I want him back too, but… something tells me Aang wouldn't have changed much here today. Er, well, maybe he'd go into the Avatar state out of anger and we'd all have killed Azula, but that's beside the point. We can't just live like we're waiting for him to come back and solve all our problems."
There was a hefty pause where Katara frowned and looked at him, and Sokka forced himself to laugh. It even sounded fake. But he reached over and pulled her into a hug, and he said, "Look at us, we fight all the time now. We can't just keep fighting each other until Aang wakes up to play the pacifist."
"You're right," Katara said, cheek smushed against his shoulder. She hugged him so tight he thought his ribs might break, and he laughed.
He said, "I mean, Aang couldn't have saved Suki better than we could—"
Sokka realized, quite soberly, that Aang's comfort and safety was what had prevented them from going after Suki to find she was safe in the first place. Had they gone immediately, perhaps it would have been weeks, instead of months, alone in that cell. Sokka felt his stomach twist in his gut.
They had hesitated too long and wasted too much time.
But overall, it was still his fault, and that's why Suki was mad, and that's why Suki had issues, and that's why Suki would spar with him and come onto him but she wouldn't be herself while doing it.
It was his entire fault. His face burned with shame.
"Sokka?" Katara asked, and he didn't look her way. She sat back, taking her arms off him, and he lifted his hand to shield his eyes. He said nothing, and she said, "Sokka, are you alright?"
"I'm fine," he said, seriously, but Katara leant over and pulled his hand down. He looked away, but she saw anyway. She said, "Oh, Sokka, don't cry."
"I'm not crying," Sokka said, stubbornly. He put on a very forced smile, and he reasoned, "Men don't cry. Real men are strong."
"If they aren't human," Katara said, delicately.
"Hey, don't call me Fire nation," Sokka replied, oddly teasing, and Katara let out a sharp laugh and she hugged him again. He let her, for a moment, and then brushed her off with a polite, "But I'm okay, seriously." He wiped at his eyes with the back of his hand.
He stayed composed. Katara smiled, kindly, and he was so pleased to have a sister so understanding and reasonable. He wrestled with guilt. He said, "Thanks, Katara."
"Don't worry, I won't tell Toph," Katara said, playfully, giving him a nudge. Sokka glanced at her sideways, and he nudged her back.
"Phew, she'd never let me live it down," he agreed, and as an afterthought, he said, "Don't tell Suki, either."
"If you say so," Katara said. On the subject of Toph, she added with a smile, "You sure you don't want Toph to know? She needs a laugh, too."
Sokka laughed, wiping his eyes for the last time, and he said, "She does, I don't know what's gotten into her lately, she's just the grumpiest midget on the lot. I keep thinking I'm going to wake up missing limbs, every time she looks at me."
"I think she's just bored and feeling a bit ignored," Katara said, "You spend so much time with Suki and I spend so much time working on Aang's wounds that she's a bit, well… left-out."
Guilt, it seemed, came in more than just the 'She Almost Died Because of Me' flavour and the 'She DID Die Because of Me' flavours. Sokka felt it go down his throat like acid. Oh. He hadn't really thought of it, though he certainly had tried to remember everyone. He grit his teeth.
"Oh," he said, eventually. "Yeah, I guess I've been so busy that I've sort of pushed her aside…"
"Yeah," Katara admitted.
"In the morning," Sokka announced, "I'm going to invite her out hunting with me and Suki. Well, if Suki doesn't hate me. Then it'd just be the two of us, I guess."
Katara raised an eyebrow skeptically, but she smiled and laughed. Sokka did too, trying his hardest to push all his guilt into the darker recesses of his mind.
"Good morrrrrrrrning, Sunshine!" Sokka said, enthused. Hopeful. Optimistic. He was leaning over Suki with his hands on his knees, and she opened her eyes. They were big and round, she was so stunned.
She didn't reply or move, or even blink, for a moment. Then she said, slowly, "Good morning, Sokka." She shifted under her blankets, uncomfortable, and then she said, "Did you want something or did you wake me up for the sheer joy of scaring me this early in the morning?"
"Says the one normally up at the crack of dawn," Sokka replied.
"Yes," Suki said testily, "but I'm not sure if I'm really in the mood to be doing anything right now, training or otherwise."
Suki had crawled into bed without a word last night, long after the sun went down. She was looking up at him with some sort of dislike, her eyebrows drawn down. She was grumpy, even bitter. Sore from the day before, sore from Azula being able to slip from her reach without a single word. Sokka understood.
"Okay," he said, trying his best to remain bright, "Toph and I are going out fishing. If you want to go back to sleep, that's cool too."
It was Toph's turn to give him a disgusted reply. She said, almost in disbelief, "Excuse me? We're doing what?"
"Going fishing," Sokka said.
"No way," Toph replied. She, too, was grumpy. Sokka turned to look at her, and he glanced at Katara, who was covering her smile with her hand. Sokka frowned at her, and then turned back to Toph.
"Why not?" he asked.
"Don't feel as if you have to spend time with me," Toph said, "I mean, jeez, if Suki's unavailable, don't force yourself."
"Hey," Sokka said, "I'm not just inviting you because Suki doesn't want to go."
"Sure you aren't," Toph replied.
Suki propped herself up on one elbow, and Toph lifted her chin a bit more. Sokka was between the two of them, and while at first that didn't seem to be too much of a problem, it quickly became one, when Suki said, "What makes you think I'm not going? I never said I wasn't."
Sokka watched Toph climb to her feet and Suki sit up taller. The spirit of competition was suddenly thick on the air, so strong it was almost palpable, and Sokka let out a long breath.
Who knew they could be so hostile this early in the morning?
"Pfft," Toph scoffed, "You know, I'd be shocked if you weren't going, never mind that."
"Excuse me?" Suki said, "What are you so angry about? If you wanted to spend time with us, you were perfectly welcome to join us."
Sokka said, quickly, "Girls, girls, knock it off, really, don't fight—"
"Fine, Toph," Suki said, then. "Go with him, I'll stay here and sleep. I'd hate to be in your way." The way she said it was sarcastic, mildly, the same tone she used whenever she told Sokka, months and months ago, to knock it off with the sexism, but this time, her words dripped with rivalry that Sokka didn't understand.
"Sweet dreams," Toph said, angrily, and she lifted one foot as if to stomp the ground, but Sokka grabbed her arm and she put her foot down gently to balance herself. As if satisfied, Suki buried herself in her bedding again.
"Okay, okay, cut it out, let's go," Sokka said.
So Sokka and Toph went out fishing. It wasn't like Toph was much use for fishing at all, but Sokka didn't care, he liked the company, even if Toph was testy and grumpy and overly critical of him. He could deal, even if she complained almost the whole walk to the river about how bored she was, about how she was tired of hanging around in this dumb place for weeks and weeks.
Sokka liked settling down. He liked being in one place for a long time. But that didn't mean he liked being at that depressing little hut.
But that morning had worried him a bit. It was hard to be laid back when someone was antagonizing Suki, and she'd been through enough. Sure, he was happy to spend time with Toph -- Katara was right, he really had been neglecting her -- but he didn't want Toph and Suki knocking heads anymore.
Toph was settled a couple yards away from him, stretched out on a rock, and Sokka was casting out his line. He said, "Hey, why did you get so upset over Suki this morning? Over the thing with the wall last night?"
"I dunno," Toph said, skeptically, "I don't really like her."
"Why not?" Sokka demanded, probably far more dramatic than he intended. Toph folded her arms.
"She's just an idiot," Toph said, "And don't get all mad! I know she's been through a lot, but there are more ways of dealing with problems than obsessing over them. And I'm not required to like your flimsy girlfriends, okay?"
"Hey," Sokka said defensively, "Suki isn't flimsy!"
"Yes, she is," Toph said, and she scoffed and folded her arms. Sokka tugged at his fishing rod, thinking he had a bite, but instead found his lure had been caught on a rock somewhere. He fiddled with the rod.
"HOW is she flimsy?" he demanded.
"I just don't like her," Toph insisted.
"Yeah, but until you can tell me why, I'm going to chalk it up to the fact that she kicks butt and isn't a bender, and that gets you all bitter or something," Sokka said.
"That has NOTHING to do with it," Toph complained. "Get it through your thick skull! Not everyone is going to consider her the greatest thing since the discovery of bending just because you do."
Sokka was miffed. He jerked his rod and it snapped back to him without its lure, the line broken. He grumbled, bitterly, and set on fixing it as he said, "You're jealous of how pretty she is."
Toph snapped, "I can't even see her, why would I care?" But she seemed stung anyway.
"Jealous because she's not a midget," Sokka said.
"Again, don't care!" Toph shot back.
"Well, then what?" Sokka demanded.
He managed to fix the line with a new hook and he cast it back, and Toph rose to her feet. He didn't look her way, as he was trying to maneuver the line into a comfortable position, but Toph came right his way. She reached out for him. She grabbed his shoulder, and felt her way to his cheek, and then she turned his face to hers and planted a kiss on the side of his mouth.
And then she snapped, loudly and angrily, "Because I like YOU, you dunderhead!"
Sokka dropped his fishing rod, and it clattered to the rocks, and he just leant back and stared in shock. Toph let go of his face and flushed scarlet in the face, and he could do nothing but splutter and try to find a reply.
"Er," he said. There was a weird tense moment, where he stared at her and she did nothing at all, but her hands curled into fists and he struggled with words.
"Forget it," Toph said, and she stepped back. "I know I'll never win. Forget I ever did anything, you hear? Forget it ever happened."
Sokka was stunned, but he could react immediately, then. He said, explosively, "Never win? What?! What are you talking about?"
Toph was already walking away. She said, without even turning her head back towards him even the slightest bit, "I like you, you moron!" She stomped as she went, making the ground tremble, and Sokka scrambled to follow.
"What?!" he said, stunned. He had not seen this coming, it had been a sneak attack. Toph kept on storming away, furious and wiping her mouth with the back of her hand. She acted like she regretted it.
Sokka caught up with her with ease, and he said, "Since when?"
"Doesn't matter," Toph said, angrily, "you have Suki, don't let me get in your way, whatever. She can show up once, and you can be totally in love with her. I don't care."
She kept going, and when Sokka reached to grab her shoulder and stop her, she shook it off. She kept on her path, up the hill and through the trees, and Sokka said, "What? No! You're joking, right? Haha, Toph? Riiight? I mean, why would you like me like that?"
Toph stopped, then, and he bumped right into her, and she snapped, "Does it sound like I'm joking?" She scowled and then kept going, faster, and Sokka fell behind, stopping in his tracks completely.
He let Toph go, stunned, and he realized something: why were girls so interested in guys who failed to protect his girlfriends? And then, he realized, too, quite soberly, that no one had ever told Toph about what had happened with Princess Yue.
Suki was, maybe, a bit calmed, when the walls went down. She made no effort to leave. Perhaps it was logic that kept her on the porch, with her hands folded together and her fingers laced, and her eyes closed. She was meditating. Perhaps she just didn't want to leave without Sokka, out of some innate and inexplicable fear of losing him simply by not keeping him with her. Perhaps she just wanted to know he could dig her out of any trouble she got in.
Toph had returned alone, in a sour mood, and no apology about the argument earlier and over the previous evenings seemed to put things in the right direction. Toph just didn't want to hear it. In fact, when Suki said, "Look, I'm honestly sorry, I'm not just saying that to suck up to you. I do not suck up to people."
Toph just replied, "I like Sokka."
That was not the reply Suki was looking for. She said, with raised eyebrows, "I know." Toph didn't be able to reply to that, so Suki continued, diplomatically, "I knew you had a crush on him from the moment I saved you from drowning, when you kissed me. You didn't seem like the type to go about kissing people unless you were serious. And I'm sorry, but... that's too bad for you."
"I'll crush on whoever I want, I don't care if he likes you," Toph shot back, and she disappeared into the house, where Katara pulled her into conversation. Suki didn't get involved. She returned to her meditation, to her stretches, to her endless planning.
Suki had decided, in her long hours of thought, and conversation with Sokka, that she wasn't going to feel guilty for being free to make her own choices. Suki decided, really, that she would like who she wanted, she would eat and sleep on her own schedule, and she would do what she liked.
And she'd be a good person while she did it, but she wouldn't hurt others in the process.
Sokka returned back to the camp separate from Toph, and when he surfaced, Suki stood up and ran to him. He had his hands full, with a fish on a hook in one hand, and the other clutched his rod and the tackle box, but that didn't stop Suki from putting her arms around his neck and hugging them, and then letting go just as quickly. She said, as she stepped back, "I'm sorry about last night, Sokka."
He seemed funny. He said, "no problem, Suki."
"Really," Suki said, "I already apologized to Katara for everything last night. And Toph, too, but she doesn't care."
Sokka was staring at her oddly, and he said, "That's great Suki. Really great."
"I still want to go after Azula but I think Katara's right... maybe we can't just yet," Suki said, and she was well aware that she was starting to ramble. "But she might not be completely healed yet, every day we let her go unchecked is another day closer to her full recovery, and I'd rather fight her when her bending wasn't at its top notch, if you know what I mean. And I really think she has to die, she's more of a threat than the Fire Lord himself is."
"Suki," Sokka tried, but Suki didn't hear him. She was lost in her own little world.
"I think I'm ready to kill her," Suki said, "I mean, I may not be at my best, and I may not be perfect, but she can't be, either? Surely there's a way that I can work around her weaknesses and learn to turn her bending against her... it is possible, it has to be. I just have to be able to reflect it back at her."
"Suki," Sokka said, completely out of the blue, and when she didn't let him talk, he put down his fishing rod and took her by the cheek. He pressed a quick kiss to her lips and she shut up rather quickly. She leant back and stared, silenced once more. He said, "Stop rambling. On the Day of Black Sun, which is exactly two weeks from now, she won't know what hit her. She'll be completely powerless."
Suki started to protest, and then she changed her direction. Suki figured, outright, that there was no point in arguing over it, she just didn't want to argue anymore. She was sick of conflict. She said, with a breathless sort of smile, "We'll take her out then."
"Yeah," Sokka agreed, and she realized he was still holding that poor fish out, and though it was very much air-drowned by now, it was also getting its lip torn out.
"Don't you want to put that away?" Suki asked, and Sokka glanced at it, too.
"Huh," he said, "I guess I should."
Suki picked up his tackle box and rod for him, and she led him back to the house, arm-in-arm. There, as they crossed the threshold, Suki skirting ahead so they'd both fit right in, she glanced at him and said, "Are you always going to do that just to get me to be quiet?"
"What? Kiss you?" Sokka said, glancing at her. His blue eyes locked on hers, for a moment, and she looked away with a smile, and he laughed. "Sure, why not."
Toph made some irritated noise, and Katara said, pointedly, "You're a doofus, Sokka."
Suki spent the rest of the day with Sokka, drawing out battle plans and reviewing fighting theory, helping him patch up the house, and aiding in the construction of a new saddle for Appa, all under Toph's watchful "eyes".
Suki didn't give a damn.
She could spend hours playing games with questions she couldn't answer, her favourite of which was:
"Is Sokka going to come save me?"
Sokka was the one person on the outside who wasn't dead and would know that they were being held captive. If Azula even came close to him, he'd see her headband on that horrible girl and he'd know. He'd know the instant he came in contact with Kyoshi warriors that weren't led by her, and seeing as Azula was after Aang, Sokka'd know.
Sokka had to know.
What was taking him so long, then? Could he not find them? Could he not find her?
Sokka was an incredible tracker, he knew how to follow something based off of insignificant clues and educated guesses.
Suki took inventory, for the thousandth time, of what she had dropped or left behind before she had fallen unconscious in that clearing. Sword. Fans. Headband. Comrades. Something would tip him off. Azula couldn't erase burns to trees or grass.
Maybe he was dead? No. Suki couldn't think that, it'd spell doom for her.
Maybe he wasn't coming? No. Suki couldn't think that, it'd spell doom for her.
Maybe he'd met a pretty girl in Ba Sing Se and was dancing her around and kissing her under lamplight and laughing at the not-funny things she said? No. Suki couldn't think that, it'd spell doom for her.
Suki wondered if, perhaps, she was Yue, helpless and unable to fight, Sokka would have picked up his feet faster. Maybe he thought Suki capable, and that he didn't need to rush?
Maybe she shouldn't have reassured him she'd be fine, but then again, how did she know this would happen? No. Suki couldn't think that, it'd spell doom for her.
When she played these mental games, she always tried to stop, she'd tell herself aloud, "Sokka's going to come." She'd say it in a tone that tried to dispel doubt and fear, but she was wearing the message thin on herself. She didn't know. She lost hope a little bit every time.
She said it so often that Azula didn't even smirk anymore when she said it, as if it had grown typical. Suki didn't care. Suki didn't care what Azula thought at all.
Doom was an easily spelled word. Just three characters, less than two dozen strokes.
Suki's eyes flicked up, and her throat seemed to constrict on her, in sheer nervousness. The guard standing against the wall had edged remarkably close to the bars of her cell, and his eyes were on her. When her eyes moved up, they caught his, and she didn't like the way his mouth twitched. Suki didn't have much sense of time down here, really, other than the once-a-day meal and bathroom break. Both of those had happened too recently.
She broke the contact immediately, and he moved towards the bars. An involuntary shiver went down her spine, and Suki refused to let herself be concerned about it.
But as he fished the keys out of his pocket and slid one into the lock on her cell, Suki could only square her shoulders, climb to her feet, and think one thing:
This is the part where he saves me.
He didn't.
They were heading back to the house when Sokka noticed Suki was walking slowly, as if she were tired. She definitely was: she had been talking for two hours, about things that had happened with Azula and within the prison, and if Sokka's brain was blown just from listening, hers must have been liquified with the telling.
She wasn't in a good mood. Her pessimism was kicking in. And Sokka's own pessimism was out and about, too -- she had cut off her story as expected, but he wasn't an idiot. He was far from an idiot. He knew what had happened and it infuriated him.
That, and, well, she had pretty much told him that he was supposed to save her before it happened. And even if she told him not to feel guilty, it was really hard not to.
"You're tired. Want a piggyback?" he asked, lightheartedly.
"I can walk, Sokka," Suki said, sharply. Sokka backed off, concerned, and Suki's voice softened to say, "I wasn't imprisoned for my entire life, I haven't forgotten, okay?"
"Sorry," Sokka said, "I just figured you were tired or wanted someone to lean on. I didn't think you were incapable or something."
"It's alright," she said. "I know. I just… oh, stop looking so whipped."
He forcibly put on a grin, getting rather into the swing of all her demands, and he replied, "I'm not sorry, then."
"Okay," Suki said, and then remarked, "You know, Sokka, it's a sad thing that no matter how hard you work, no matter how hard you strive to be strong and a warrior, you can be brought down. You can be reduced to nothing, like how Aang is just a kid, and not the Avatar, right now."
"Suki..."
"Who I am as a warrior doesn't matter," Suki said, "because no matter what, I can be reduced to a thing to be abused."
"Don't say things like that," Sokka replied, firmly, "Don't, you know it's not true. Some people are naturally great, and you're one of them."
"Then why was I there?" Suki replied, and before he could reply, she answered her own question with a firm, "Right. Because I'm weak. Because I can't bend. Because I had to work to get where I was and that wasn't enough."
Sokka had almost had enough, and he said, "Suki, stop it. Please." He reached over and took her hand, and she pulled it from his grip, rapidly, as if he had scalded her. He stopped in his tracks and so did she, just on the edge of the hill, where the house was in view.
Katara and Toph weren't around still. Sokka couldn't recall, they were out somewhere, at any rate.
"Stop what?" she demanded, look at him dead on. It was one of the few times she met him eye-to-eye in the past weeks. Sokka felt the heat.
"Stop accusing yourself of being weak," he said, for the umpteenth time. "Really, I just want you to be happy and okay, and cutting yourself down is pointless."
Her reaction was explosive.
"Then stop treating me so delicately! It doesn't matter how rough you are with me when you train with me, it doesn't matter if you're just trying to make me happy, Sokka... this has changed you, it's like Yue all over again, isn't it? I'd finally met a guy who wasn't afraid of how smart I was, or how strong I was, a guy who wasn't going to go against his own principles just for me. Someone who'd challenge me, not give me everything I wanted, I didn't want someone I could walk over in the end!"
She looked at him, hard, her teeth gritted. He wasn't sure who she seemed to hate more, right that second, him, Azula, or herself.
And then she said, again, harder, "I've changed you. Me being down changed you."
"No," he denied, again, "this isn't like Princess Yue. If it were like Princess Yue..."
In fact, he didn't know how the two scenarios would be different, because they were largely the same. Boy meets girl, girl protects boy, boy tries to protect girl and fails, and people get hurt on all sides. Problem was, Princess Yue's idea of protection was to deprive him of information, and while Suki had almost always been clear with him from the get-go, details were getting remarkably scarce.
Then again, perhaps Sokka didn't want to know. He wasn't sure he could keep himself on his leash if she told him every little conversation between her and Azula, or every little detail. No bit of earth or water could keep him from going straight for the ringleader herself with that sort of mental weaponry.
"Don't deny it," Suki said, "it's just like Yue, and it's hurting you."
"Princess Yue gave herself up to save the entire world," Sokka said, almost defensively, "I just don't want you to die facing Azula, and I don't want you to beat yourself up over this."
"It isn't a problem," Suki snapped, "you're being the problem. I'm okay, just treat me how you used to and we can all really move on from this."
Sokka was not faring too well, here, and he snapped back at her in frustration. "What? So this is MY fault, because I wanted you to stay happy? Because you were hurt and it's so wrong for me to try to take care of you? It's not even about protecting anymore, Suki! You weren't even listening to me, you haven't listened to me in forever. Do you have any idea how scary you are now? Don't you even consider that I want to act the exact same as we used to, too, but maybe that you're so obsessed with revenge it's a bit eerie, but you won't even open up?"
"What do you mean?" Suki demanded, "Are you saying I'm so obsessed? I hate the Fire nation. I hate them with every bit of my being, and I thought you did too. Revenge? Sokka, I thought you wanted it too, but I guess not."
"I still hate them," Sokka shot back, "I still want to get revenge. I still want to kill every last one of them for doing this to you, don't you think of that? I want to kill them for you, I want to kill them for Yue, I want to kill them for my mom, I want to kill them for Katara, I want to kill them for hundreds of people and thousands of reasons and I always have. But I know we can't do it alone and you're freaking me out, seriously."
Suki opened her mouth to retort, but Sokka was too fast.
"I've been trying my hardest to help you, Suki," Sokka said, and he snapped at her like he snapped at Katara, angrily, seriously. "But you keep pushing me away and trying to distract me with this revenge plot, with wanting to kill Azula, and I want to do that too, I swear, but at the same time, you're stewing in problems you won't admit to! Why won't you talk about it?! You tell me what happened, you get me all angry with it, but then you don't want to talk about it!"
"Because I don't have to," Suki shot back, "because I don't want to. Because it's in the past, it happened, big deal, I've moved on, I don't have to talk about it because it isn't a problem. You know what happened, fine, but I don't want to recall every conversation I had with that witch!"
She turned to walk away, again, to end the conversation, but he seized her by the forearms and held her there. She braced herself against his hands, and gave him an angry, warning look, and she said, "Let go of me."
"Suki, you were held for a month in a dingy little cell, tortured, raped, and abused," Sokka snarled, "Katara was right: no one gets over those things just like that, just because they say there's over it. You aren't over it."
"I am," Suki insisted. Her voice, once completely firm, became higher with stress, more strained, and her face was going red with shame. Sokka held onto her forearms gently, keeping her still, and she tried to wrench away, but he held her there.
"Suki, you change the subject constantly, I can barely get two words in before you shut me up, and you still lock up when we touch," Sokka said, "even if you're the one coming onto me, you lock up. You get as stiff as a rock. You aren't comfortable. If you were really over this, you'd be completely comfortable around me, in battle, when we're hanging out, whatever."
Suki stared at him, wide eyed, and she said nothing. She froze stock-still, her hands gripping his elbows where she had tried to wrench him off of her, but she didn't resist him anymore. Her eyes were welling with tears, for the first time since she had vowed not to, the most tears since he had brought her back to the real world.
He stared back at her, and he let go, simultaneously pleased with himself for finding the reason, and also terrified he had scared her away at the same time. She just continued to stare at him, and a tear or two slipped down her cheeks.
"You're afraid," Sokka said, much quieter. She continued to stare for a moment, and he didn't say anything. Her shoulders came up defensively, and she folded her arms and held them close to her body. She broke eye contact and closed her eyes, seemingly willing herself to calm down.
"I'm not," she said, and Sokka wouldn't have it.
"Suki, you're afraid of me," he repeated, and Suki shook her head rapidly. The tears kept rolling.
"I'm not afraid of you or anything," Suki replied, a definite shake to her voice. Her body shuddered, and her voice hitched.
"Suki," Sokka said, but he couldn't really bring himself to repeat it again. Suki waited for it, ready, and she lifted her head, her eyes growing red and puffy. She waited, and Sokka hesitated, and then asked, "Are you afraid of me?"
Suki crumpled. She slumped to her knees on the ground and let out a pained cry, covering her face with her hands and sobbing outright. Sokka watched her for a second and then knelt down beside her, putting a hand on her shoulder and just holding her that way, unsure of what to do. It wasn't that fantastical sort of attractive crying, Suki wasn't a weeping girl. She just sobbed, like a total mess.
She just cried for a few minutes, and when her body stopped shaking and her head calmed, she lifted her head a bit. Sokka took his hand from her shoulder and opened his arms, and she fell into them, hands curling into fists around the collar of his shirt, holding him tightly. Suki pressed her face against his shoulder, with another harsh sob, and he held her.
"It's okay to be afraid," Sokka said, "You're a warrior, yeah, but you're a girl, too, right? And while you're a warrior sometimes, you're a girl all the time, and it's not like you'd want to be a warrior all the time. No one thinks you're a loser for crying, okay, especially with what happened."
Suki nodded, rubbing her forehead against his chest, and let out a loud sniffle. Sokka cradled her closer and he added, "Besides. Aang is a weak person for getting zapped, if you're a weakling for getting caught by Azula. Between you, me, Katara, and Aang, heck, even Prince Bonehead, she's got more enemies than the Fire Lord."
"True, but I still look pathetic," she mumbled after a moment, when she had calmed enough to speak clearly. Sokka just laughed, politely, though it was really hard to muster up the humour at the time.
"Like I said before, right? When it's my turn to cry, you can't point and laugh and call me a sissy," he said, and Suki elbowed him in the ribs, but she mustered up an awkward laugh, too, despite the tears. "Got it?"
"Got it," she agreed, and she nodded. Sokka smiled, for real.
"How about we get out of these grubby clothes, sit back, and play a game or something?" Sokka grinned, and Suki hesitated, and then smiled, wiping her face with the sleeves of her shirt. The war paint smeared off, wet with tears and streaked.
"Alright. What game?" she said. "And don't say Pai Sho."
"Oh, I know a few that are really fun," Sokka said, offhand. He linked his arm with hers and gestured in the direction of the house with his head. Suki took his arm and started off with him, still wiping at her puffy, red eyes.
"Such as?"
"Ever done haiku?" Sokka replied.
Suki stared at him, almost stunned, and she asked, confused, "Did you just suggest we do poetry? You? Poetry?"
"Hey," Sokka said, defensively. "It's not like I sit there talking about the flowers or the trees or bliss. It's like… you challenge people. I did it in Ba Sing Se with the Five-Seven-Five Society, it was a lot of fun until I lost, but Katara and Toph are really bad at it, they just don't think fast enough."
"So," Suki trailed, and she gave a little laugh and a sniffle, wiping at her eyes again, "you have poetry contests."
"No!" Sokka said, brightly, "You just have conversations or whatever in haiku form, and the first to mess up the sequence loses. It's real fun. But have you ever done haiku?"
"Once or twice, as a child," Suki said, though she still sounded bewildered and faintly skeptical. Sokka pushed the door open for them and let go of her arm to pull off his shirt and kick off his boots, and Suki went to rummage for her a change of clothes. Sokka didn't bother putting on fresh clothes, instead opting to remain shirtless, but Suki slipped into a new kimono, once she was sure he wasn't looking.
There was nothing that he hadn't seen already, really, but he was a gentleman like that.
"Either way, I don't think I've ever heard of people using it for a game. It's a parlor thing older ladies do, in Kyoshi, writing haiku. No one ever used them for competition."
Sokka grinned at her, plopping himself down on the floor, and he replied, cheekily,
I think Kyoshi's dull.
Compared to seeing the world,
Parlor games are lame.
"Hey," Suki said, though she smiled, "I don't know how anyone from a tiny Water tribe village could possibly think Kyoshi is dull."
But Sokka pointedly ignored her words and lifted his fingers. He flashed five fingers at her, then seven, and then five once more. Suki raised an eyebrow, a wry smile tugging at her lips, and as she wiped her eyes again, she sat down.
"Five syllables, then seven, and then five?" she asked, and Sokka merely gave a rolling hand gesture for her to go on. "Alright."
She tried again, counting each syllable on her fingers.
Kyoshi is busy.
She paused, and then continued.
Kyoshi is busy,
But I don't know if you'd like
All the hot summers.
Sokka snickered, and then replied back offhand.
I think Suki's fun,
But the island, not so much,
As she's not there now.
"Cute," Suki laughed, and Sokka waited for her to reply. She thought about it for a moment.
She counted on her fingers as she went, sometimes going slow and taking a moment to even think of the next word. The smile on her face was big and challenging, although she knew she didn't exactly have the upper hand in a rhyme-off like this.
Oh, you're so... dorky,
Maybe it's the goofy looks.
Like your perky hair.
He laughed, and he countered back with one just as friendly,
Your rhythm is off,
I say you should work on it,
Then try it again.
She raised an eyebrow, and tried to stop using her fingers to count them, but it wasn't so easy. She ended up using them anyway.
Maybe you should teach.
Then we could do this often,
And I'd kick your butt.
To which he rebuffed her with:
Unlikely, Suki,
But you can try all you want.
I don't mind at all.
She said:
Unlikely? Oh, please.
Know that I'm a fast learner,
I'll take you on, Sokka.
"Wrong," he said, with a triumphant grin, "Sok-ka is still two syllables."
"Replace it with fool, then," Suki replied, and Sokka lifted his eyebrows, not letting that stomp on his victory. He laughed and replied back in verse once more.
Take me on, yeah right,
You can't even roll them off fast,
Gotta be quicker.
She shot back a confident:
I will show you quick,
If that's what you want from me,
I'll give it to you.
She was watching him with some sort of wondrous look, and he said, playful still:
Never mind that, now,
There are other things I want,
And they are more fun.
She seemed to be feeling better, Sokka noted with a smile, and not only at this game. Her eyes weren't so red, or so glassy, and her smile was real enough. She took a pause to laugh with him after each triplet.
She replied:
Oh? What do you want?
Glory, fame, power, strength, what?
Tell me so I know.
Definitely better. There was that challenge to her voice, her eyebrows lifted, her eyes smiling just as much as her lips. Maybe there were still traces of sadness lingering in her mind, but he was sure he could fix that.
So he said, confidently:
I want to tell you
That I appreciate you
Way more than you know.
There was a moment of awkward silence between them, heavy and weighty, and Suki was staring at him with wide eyes, almost apprehensive. The ghosts of a tiny smile flitted around her lips, the remainder of what challenging smile she had worn only instants ago. He waited on tenterhooks, jaw held tight. She started counting on her fingers, mouthing things out silently, and then she repeated aloud.
Only once have I
Been so in love with anyone,
and it was myself.
Sokka paused, long and hard, his mind suddenly blank, and she flushed red in the cheeks. He opened his mouth to reply, to start off with something that sounded reasonable, but he didn't know if a strangled, surprised noise counted for one syllable or two.
And then it hit him, and he replied back, grinning and flushed red,
I really want you
to know that I feel the same.
Kiss me now, baby.
Suki burst out laughing, and she rose up on her knees, comfortably, and took his face between her palms and pressed a deep kiss onto his mouth.
"We're out of money, and no one can afford to give us work," Katara said, and she sighed. "I had a whole bunch stashed away at the house, but that's of no help to us."
"We're not going back to Ba Sing Se for a couple pieces of copper," Toph said, immediately. "I don't care how much we need that money, I'd rather have my hands get cut off for stealing than go back there."
"Alright," Katara said, hesitantly. "But I'm not stealing anything from the Earth kingdom people. If we have to steal to survive, we're going to steal from the Fire nation."
There was a pause, and Sokka said, skeptically, "The Fire nation, while in the Earth kingdom, takes all its resources from the Earth kingdom. Unless you're suggesting we steal their imported tanks or their mounts, or their clothes, there's precious little we could steal from them specifically that would actually help us survive here. Now, if we were going to the Fire nation, I'd say let's steal a ride or two, but as we are now there's no point."
"I don't want to steal from the Earth kingdom people," Suki said. "They have it hard enough now that Ba Sing Se's gone. People are going to start starving, if they haven't already."
"What are we going to do, then?" Katara said, "We have to help them, too."
"Okay," Sokka said, "let's focus on us first, okay, Katara? There's not enough fish and game in this area anymore for us to survive off hunting alone. We don't have money. The village is swarming with Fire nation, and right now, it's four against all of them. That's a bit crazy."
Katara said, rapidly, "Five."
Sokka looked at her funny, and he started to correct her, but then he said, "Allllright, Katara, we'll count Momo if you really want."
"Aang," Katara said, with a huff. Sokka paused, and then shrugged.
"If he can sleep-raid the village, five it is, but until then, Momo's the man." Katara started to argue, or at least point out the stupidity in this logic, but Sokka had already moved on. He continued, seriously, "Is stealing a bad idea or what?"
"The Fire nation locks up thieves and takes off their hands, Sokka," Suki said, "I don't think that's a flame we want to play with too casually, but... if we have no choice, we might as well. If we take it week by week, and only risk what we need and can safely get away with, we should get by."
Sokka paused, and Katara folded her arms. Toph said, "Alright. So are we all going?"
"No," Katara said, "If we don't come back, Aang's left here alone. And even if we came back, I wouldn't want him to wake up when no one's here. Knowing him, he'll probably be upset. I'll stay."
"I'm going!" Toph said, "I'm bored out of my mind, here."
"I'll stick with Sokka, we work better as a team," Suki said, and she glanced at him sidelong. She smiled, and he smiled back. Suki asked, "Where are we going?"
Sokka contemplated this for a moment, and then he looked at Katara seriously. He held his sister's eyes for a moment, not really keen on letting her hold the fort on her own, but still confident she was able to do it, if things came to that. He paused, still, and then he asked, "If I hunt enough food to last you two a few days, Suki and I can head to the next village over and see what we can do about getting food or money."
"Hey!" Toph protested, "Are you deaf or am I just invisible?! I said I was going, too!"
Sokka glanced at her, his eyebrows knitted, and he said, "Katara's not going to keep this place safe on her own. She can't play lookout all the time, and you can feel people coming through the earth. Isn't that a job to be proud of?"
"Yeah, if you like being a dopey old guard dog," Toph said, roughly, "No, I'm going with you, and if you try to stop me, I'll clobber you."
He didn't want to keep Suki and Toph together, for his own sanity, and theirs. That was a game he wasn't too interested in continuing.
Sokka replied, immediately, "Teams of two makes more sense. You got the short end of the stick, Toph, next time. Until then, just keep this place under wraps and keep it safe."
Toph didn't argue this back verbally. Instead, she jostled the floor under his feet, and he wobbled wildly before hitting the ground. He groaned, and gave her a nasty look and said, "Agh! What's your problem?!" but she had already turned away with folded arms. She ignored him.
He watched her suspiciously for a moment, as he climbed to his feet, waiting to see if she'd do it again. When it didn't seem like it was going to happen, he said, slowly, "Alright, now that that's settled…"
She did it again, anyway, right then. Suki covered her mouth with her hand to hide a smile, and she offered him a hand. He took it with a scowl, and Katara giggled. Toph didn't smile or laugh.
"Fine," she said, clearly annoyed. "But next time, I'm going."
"Alright," Sokka said, on his feet again, and he glanced at the floor. It didn't move, and he looked back up at Toph.
"And I mean it," she said, and the floor next to him shot up into a spike. Sokka jumped out of the way, belatedly, despite the fact that it wouldn't have hit him in the first place. He jumped right into Suki, who sidestepped to avoid being knocked.
"I'll remember," Sokka said, seriously, "Until then, Suki and I have a date."
"It should take… I don't know, sixteen hours to walk to the next town," Sokka said. "We can be there by nightfall if we leave early, and that way we don't have to lose much sleep."
"Sounds good," Suki said, and she sat down to pull on her boots.
Sokka shouldered his pack, with their camping gear and some trinkets they could trade. He pulled Katara in a one-armed hug, and Toph in the other.
"I hope it's not a bad day for travel," Katara said, gesturing towards the sky. It was dreary, with only scarce bits of sun poking through the thick clouds, spread like wool over the sky. She said, "You're going to get wet if you don't wait it out."
"A little water never hurt anyone," Sokka replied, teasingly, and Katara had a rare show of immaturity when she stuck out her tongue at him. He ruffled her hair, once, in one long swoop from the back of her head to the front, so that it pretty much guaranteed she had to rebraid her hair.
"Oh, just get out of here," Katara said, with a smile, and Sokka laughed.
"See you in a few days, guys," Sokka said, and Suki smiled and nodded.
So they set off.
They took a break sometime around noon, lounging out on a bunch of rocks by the road and splitting one apple between them. Suki sat cross-legged, her yukata bunched in her lap, and Sokka sprawled back on his elbows, pretty comfortable. They passed the apple back and forth between them, made casual conversation about how much they missed snow, why the sky was blue, and how many shellfish one could eat in an hour without getting sick.
And then, just as she was talking about how some girl back home had had a horrible allergic reaction to shellfish, Suki stopped mid-sentence, and turned her eyes to the sky. Sokka looked up, as he said "What?"
Then, he realized there was a great ruckus in the sky. It wasn't Fire nation, as he initially thought as Suki's eyes narrowed, but hundreds of black birds soaring overhead, circling, and landing in the trees around them. It was cold out, with the impending rainstorms, and the sight was none too friendly. Hundreds of the creatures, with their horrible talons curled around branches, and their vertical pupils and four wings, had gathered to make the mood positively eerie.
Sokka felt the chill go down his spine. Suki remarked, her voice calm, "Black birds. It's a bad omen."
"Probably a coincidence," Sokka said, though he grew uneasy. He laughed it off with a casual, "There aren't any black birds down South, yet we get bad stuff. I'm sure it's nothing."
Suki seemed troubled, and she took another bite of the apple and swallowed it. She said, not really relaxed at all, "It's said that these birds gathered when Kyoshi died, and it's said that they flew over Omashu when her walls fell to Azula. I wonder if they took flight for Ba Sing Se, as well."
Sokka shook his head, and he said, "They didn't. See? Cycle broken. It's a coincidence, because birds don't control bad events. Besides… there isn't much left to fall."
They exchanged a look – Sokka's suddenly guilty expression at his own bitter remarks, and Suki one of fleeting despair. Then, she swallowed this despair, and she said, "I'm glad you're with me, Sokka. Thank you."
The comment seemed out of place, as sudden as her appearances and disappearances from his life. He reached over, and held her hand, and he replied, "Hey. Any time, any time."
She reached over, took his hand, and squeezed it. She said, "We'll be okay."
He smiled, and wholeheartedly agreed.
Suki certainly wasn't the type of girl guys fell for. She just didn't turn heads like Princess Yue did, Suki wasn't the beauty that ripped the breath from your lungs figuratively. That wasn't to say Suki wasn't beautiful, or anything: just that she didn't use her features like other girls he knew would. Suki wore make-up, pale and red and angular, and her surprisingly soft features would grow sharp and foreboding. She would fight, like men fight, a trait that likely scared off men looking for the traditional sort of girl: the kind that would keep your bed warm for you, the kind that would prepare meals and be a mother, the kind that tearily waved you goodbye as you went off to war.
And it wasn't to say that Suki wasn't capable of all those things, either.
Suki was just different.
"Want to know something neat?" Suki asked.
"Sure," Sokka replied.
Suki grinned, suddenly, and she leant in close to say, right in his ear, "I'm descended from Kyoshi, sort of."
Sokka nearly choked on his breath, and he said, "What? No way."
"It's true," Suki said, brightly, "How many people can claim to that, hm? Her mother is my great-great-great grandmother, really far down the line. So I'm not exactly her great-great-granddaughter or something, her sister's line is mine, but it's close. Kyoshi herself, her line died with her own daughter."
"You inherited her looks," Sokka said, with a laugh, "You should tell Aang that when he's up again. He'd probably get a laugh out of it, too."
Suki laughed, she actually laughed, and she linked her arm with his for a moment, and then she pushed herself off, and she grinned. "Want to know something else funny?"
"Sure," Sokka said again.
"You look at my eyes when you talk to me," Suki said, with a smile. "Most boys—" she stopped and made a gesture, bringing her finger up to her eye, drawing an invisible line down to her chest. Then she laughed.
Sokka laughed too. He pushed her, playfully, and kneed her in the butt. He said, with a goofy grin, "Well, I grew up where all the girls were either related to me or old, and they all wore parkas."
Suki laughed, again, and again, and again.
There was no sign of Azula anywhere in the village. There was a slight Fire nation occupation, but it seemed to consist of about two-dozen men. Considering the village was about two hundred people strong, it wasn't terribly frightening, but the Fire nation was feared and respect anyway. From talking to a villager or two, Sokka and Suki discovered that children and benders had been mostly stripped from the village, or at least those that posed a threat.
"Why?" Suki asked.
"Because they pose a threat," a female bender told them, as she shaped pottery on a wheel. Her old hands manipulated the clay with precision, bending it just slightly as it went, so that it was shaped with her bending and smoothed by her fingers. She barely looked up as she spoke. She continued, "I dunno what they've done with the children – probably camps. My husband took my children to the North pole before the Fire nation could get to us."
"Why didn't you go with them?" Sokka asked.
"I broke my hip a few years back. I can't travel, much less live in the snow," the woman said, "So I bid them farewell and now the entire village is my child. I take care of them. What business are you here on, missy, mister?"
"We're here to get food," Sokka said.
"Mm," the woman said, "not much of that, here, poor things. There's plenty of drink, plenty of money here, but no food. The Fire nation sees to that, the efficient bastards." Her old eyes, so dark that her pupils were barely different from her irises, flicked up Suki and down, and then she said, "You've already had run-ins with them, missy."
"Yes, ma'am," Suki said, and she nodded. The woman had seen the burn under her scarce bangs.
"You are a Kyoshi warrior?" the woman asked, and Suki blinked, in surprise.
Suki glanced at Sokka, who just stared blankly back at her. Suki wasn't wearing anything recognizable as Kyoshi warrior, none of the regalia or make-up, not even a fan or crest.
"Yes, ma'am," Suki said, "How do you know who I am?"
"The witch blew through here the other day looking for you," the woman said. She didn't need to use Azula's name for all to understand whom she was talking about. "In a right fury, too. What did you do, to invite such wrath, to prompt her to hunt you?"
"I didn't know she was hunting me," Suki said, and she paused, and then asked, "What direction is she headed?"
"North," the woman said. "I should hope you aren't intending to chase her. You'll get burned, missy. She's been razing villages looking for you, ours was just spared because her brother demanded she leave it be. To think, we were saved by the likes of him."
Suki glanced at Sokka again, whole-heartedly troubled, and Sokka put a protective arm around Suki's waist. He said, with a stern look, "You aren't going to turn Suki in to the Fire nation, are you?"
"Boy," the woman said, "perhaps some Earth kingdom men and women, in the light of the Fire nation's rule, will crumble and betray their own people, but most of us have pride. I would not tell for all the riches in the world."
Sokka smiled, and Suki breathed a sigh of relief. Suki bowed and said, "Thank you. If there's any way I can repay you…"
"No, child," the woman said, stopping her wheel and loosely draping a piece of cloth over the finished piece. She pulled the board off the wheel and placed it on her windowsill to dry. As she washed her hands of staining red clay, she said, "To repay me, stay out of trouble. Go to the inn and get yourself a drink, and then, disappear back to wherever you've been hiding. For your own sake, dear."
This old woman was sweet, sincere. She reached into her pocket and pulled out a few coins, and she pressed them into Suki's hand.
"That will get you a small dinner. I'm sorry I can't offer more," the woman said.
"So kind to strangers," Suki said, with a sad smile, and she bowed again, with sincerest thanks. She said, "Thank you very much for your kindness."
"It's what I would do for my own daughter, why would I ever deny it to someone else's daughter?" the woman said, and she seemed pleased with herself. "Stay safe, child."
They did as the woman told them. They went to the inn.
It was crowded, though few of the rooms were taken – no travelers were that close to Ba Sing Se, to need inns – as the bar below was packed with villagers. Sokka and Suki blended in amongst them easily, as there were so many people it was impossible to decipher individuals from the crowd.
And Sokka understood why. There was a storyteller, a wandering bard, in the place. The man was big, heavy-set, with a fuzzy mustache like a caterpillar coming out of his nose. He had tiny, dark eyes, and he wore an outlandish bright green robe with an orange sash. He was literally standing on the bar, where all could see him, and the innkeeper and workers in the place would look up at him with grins.
They were listening to his news reports from around the Earth kingdom. Some seemed so outrageous they seemed to be more hype than fact – like how the army was shipping people back to the Fire nation to employ them as slaves. Others seemed remarkably and frighteningly real – blockades being set up to prevent refugees from pouring North, towards the icy lands, so that even the ones that could find boats and passage across the water were being stopped.
And, interestingly enough, rumour that the Fire Lord was dead from the flu. This was dismissed rather quickly, though, when the storyteller explained that rumours such as those frequently came up out of desperate hope and wishful thinking, and that no one from the Fire nation would ever die of sickness: just as waterbending could heal the body's wounds, broken bones, and injured flesh, firebending used the body's heat to purge it of viruses and diseases, something that waterbending could never hope to do.
"We have precious little to be happy about," the man said, to all the people at the bar, with a big grin, "But I'd like to tell you a little tale, starring an Earth kingdom girl and the Princess of the Fire nation!"
Ooh, Sokka thought.
"We have precious little to be happy about," the man said, to all the people at the bar, with a big grin, "But I'd like to tell you a little tale I heard from my drunkard friend this morning."
He had his arm around a Fire nation soldier, one that did look particularly drunk. As soon as he finished one tankard, he had another pushed into his hand, and the villagers seemed to be pretty amused by the way he slurred and let little things slip.
"And this fellow here, from the much-loved and much-respected and much-welcomed Fire nation, will confirm everything I've said." The sarcasm was more than apparent, but in an occupied village, there was little to be done about it.
The men and women around the bar all put down their glasses to listen, and a few let out cheers for him to go on. Sokka pulled Suki by the hand to a nearby table, and he pulled a chair out for her. She took it, with a smile, and he sat down at his own chair, still holding onto her hand. Her eyes drifted to the Fire nation soldier, and Sokka realized, belatedly, that she probably hadn't seen one since she had left her prison. His hand closed over hers tightly, and he could feel her hand growing tense and clammy under his.
They needed a good story.
"Now, see," the man said, "with Ba Sing Se fallen, the great city gone, the last Earth kingdom bastion lost and burned to rubble, we folk have little to look forward to. In fact, at any moment, our occupiers could choose to burn this humble village down, eh?"
There was a general mixed response to this by all those in the place, mingled bits of sarcasm and bad humour and bitterness. Suki looked away.
"That's why it's good to hear of a bit of resistance now that then, huh? Am I right?" the man said, louder. The crowd was getting more excited, rowdier, at this mere suggestion, and Suki and Sokka both perked up in interest. Sokka even grinned.
"So I'm going to tell you today about the misfortune Princess Azula met some weeks ago," the storyteller said, and there was a ridiculously loud burst of excited chatter from the crowd. People seemed to hang on his words immediately, the moment it was announced. Suki turned right in her chair to stare at the storyteller, and Sokka edged his chair over closer to hers.
"Do you think…?" Suki mumbled under her breath, and Sokka didn't know how to reply.
"Now, we're all heard this Fire nation talk about how incredible Princess Azula is," the storyteller said, "'Bout how beautiful she is, how the sun wouldn't rise if she wasn't there to shine on, how skilled she is. Azula is a prodigy! Is she perfect?"
(Here the storyteller nudged the drunk soldier, whose head lolled for him to stutter out a "oh yes indeed" to an amused crowd, who forced another tankard on him and giggled at the way he slurped it.)
"Well, not anymore, she isn't! And I'll tell you, if I ever have the grace to meet the one who pulled a fast one on Azula, I'll buy this whole village a round at this very bar," the storyteller said. He was obviously impassioned by his own story, at this point, and the crowd begged for him to tell them what happened. He did, detailing issues of the fight, and even Sokka felt himself fascinated and excited. Suki seemed to listen out of some vicious need to hear about Azula getting slighted, and so did Sokka, but the nature of combat just appealed to him anyway.
He liked hearing about combat.
"And this girl, pride of the Earth kingdom, pride of the entire free world, now, she did crack Azula's ribs like twigs. One swift movement, and wham. It's the talk of the army, isn't it, buddy?" The storyteller nudged the soldier again, nearly bumping him off his stool, and the soldier sloshed his drink all down his front. He looked up at the storyteller wearily, with a blubbery slur.
"Yes, yes they is," he slurred. "'Zula's not well. Went home, poor thing, s'all good fer us 'cuz we dun have to listen to her scream at us now, eh…"
The crowd laughed, and a female earthbender said, loudly, "She had it coming, with all the strife she's caused, at least one cracked rib should hinder her. She shan't be able to bend very well, now, not if her breathing's off!"
Sokka and Suki exchanged a look, and Suki said, "Azula is nothing without her bending." She then smiled, her eyebrows lifting, and she leant close to Sokka. At that moment, he just smiled back at her, until she brought her lips to his ear, and she said, so cheerfully, "I'm glad I made people happy."
Sokka paused and then said, a bit louder than he expected to, "Wait, YOU cracked her ribs!" He said it as if it hadn't occurred to him, and she laughed. A few people on the edge of the gathered crowd turned to look around at them, surprised, but before they could bring this to everyone else's attention, the storyteller was talking again.
"And this man saw it all!" the storyteller said, loudly, clapping the soldier so hard on the back that he really did go flying off his stool, only to be caught and forced back by the crowd. He choked on his mouthful of drink.
Once he was finished with his coughing fit, he said, "Yeh, that girl was purty bold ter take on 'Zula, I'mma say that much. But 'Zula got her back hard. Saw that too, yup."
Suki's look darkened, suddenly, and she almost flinched, the laughter dying on her lips and her eyes narrowing. Sokka turned away from Suki, and he let Suki's hand slip from his, carefully. He stood up, cupped his hands around his mouth, and hollered, "Can I have your word on that round for the village?"
"Sokka," Suki said, perhaps a bit upset suddenly, and a chunk of the crowd twisted to glance back at Sokka. The storyteller's attention was gained, at least, and he looked down at Sokka from his spot on top of the bar, over his great black mustache.
"On my honour as an Earth kingdom man," the storyteller said, "I will buy the whole village two rounds." It was evident he wasn't expecting the girl to show up.
Sokka grinned, triumphantly, and he said, "Hope you've got your wallet ready, buddy, and that you've got enough gold for everyone."
"You know the girl, boy?" the storyteller said, confused, and Sokka nodded. There was an excited murmuring, and plenty of heads turned his way. They all seemed to put it together rather quickly – the burn on Suki's forehead, mostly, and the fact that she was sitting with him.
"Yeah," Sokka said, and Suki gave him an alarmed look. He brushed it off, with difficulty, and he grabbed her by the arm and pulled her to her feet. She followed the movement loosely, limply, and he said to her, "Let's tell them all about how you survived Azula and we're getting ready to kick her ass, right?"
Suki hesitated, almost resisting his pull, and the entire crowd was watching them. Her eyes drifted to the side, to look at them, and the nearer ones started cheering her on. Her eyes moved back to Sokka, and after a heartbeat, she said, "That would be fantastic."
He laughed, and pulled her towards the bar, and he climbed up to stand next to the storyteller, and then reached down to help Suki up. She held onto his hand so tightly he thought his fingers might drop off, and once she was up, he said, loudly, "This girl is Suki, leader of the Kyoshi warriors from Kyoshi Island, and an excellent cracker of various body parts."
Everyone was cheering, and Sokka glanced at Suki, to find her smiling and flushing in the face. She looked at him, too, and he leaned over and pressed a kiss to her cheek, careful to avoid touching Azula's telltale mark.
Then Suki laughed, and dipped into a confident bow. Caught up in the moment, she was happy, and happier still when they were pulled down from the bar for drinks and celebration.
Sokka laughed. She looked up and asked, "What's so funny?"
"Nothing," he said, when he stopped laughing, and he just stared at her with a smile. She smiled back, looking puzzled. He corrected himself. "Well, not nothing. But this is kind of funny, for a first date, huh?"
Suki had a second to reflect on this, and then she smiled and covered her mouth, looking away. Her cheeks flushed a bit red, and she said, "Touché."
"Katara's gonna freak if we're not back by sundown, though, so we technically have a curfew," Sokka smiled. He took the mug that had been forced into her hands and took a long swig, and then passed it back to her. Between the two of them, they could probably demolish the thing without getting too out of their wits. Suki took a swig, too, and then smiled back.
"Think she'll ground us if we're late?" Suki asked, and Sokka shrugged.
"She might try," Sokka said, and Suki laughed again, putting down the mug on the bar, and he reached for it. She moved closer to him, nestled next to him, and she pulled his face towards hers and pressed her lips to his. He was quick to react, fully aware it was coming, and he kissed back, bringing one hand up to hold her cheek still. Her mouth was soft, and her palm against his cheek was warm.
He didn't care that the Earth kingdom men and women around them cheered and laughed at this sort of behaviour, and neither did she.
He pulled her closer to him, one arm slipping around her back to hold her close, and she let him. One of her hands settled on his chest. And that was when someone behind him tapped him on the shoulder to get his attention. He reluctantly pulled away but held onto Suki, and he glanced over his shoulder. Suki looked up, too.
"Get a room, kids," the girl there said, very much teasing, and Sokka flushed involuntarily. The girl seemed to be having trouble resisting the urge to laugh the whole time.
"Advice taken," Suki said, confidently, and Sokka almost choked on his breath in surprise. He glanced at her, stunned and excited all at once. Suki made a gesture pointing up, and the girl laughed and nodded.
Suki took the mug and took a big swig, and then offered it to Sokka, who polished it off in two sips. Then, as the people watched and laughed and cheered and thanked Suki for cracking Azula's ribs, Suki seized him by the sleeve and pulled him through the crowd.
When Suki walked past the Fire nation soldier while arm-in-arm with Sokka, she couldn't take the smile from her face. In fact, she couldn't help but glance at the soldier sideways, and offer them a knowing, triumphant smirk of victory. It was for her freedom, and for her own strength.
She pulled him towards the stairs, and they went up. When the two got around the corner, the first thing Sokka did was pull her close and bring his lips to hers, but Suki ducked out of it slyly, instead taking his hand and turning her face away. He was confused and disappointed, for a second, as she had been perfectly eager only seconds before, but he was comforted when she said, "C'mon, let's find a quiet place."
And she dragged him forward, and he eagerly fell into step beside her. She took a quick scope around, and when she spotted an empty inn room, she led him in that direction. The fanfare seemed to have made her bolder, because as soon as they were out of sight from the hall, she closed the door and pushed him up against the wall and kissed him once more.
He felt kind of cool.
Sometime, when they had made out for a minute or two, experimenting with different speeds and different amounts of enthusiasm, Suki dropped to the floor and pulled him with her, so that they sat together. There, she said, with her cheeks red and her hands in his, "Do you want to?"
Sokka stared at her, and the fireworks went off in his head, and he said, "If you want to."
"I want to," Suki said. She sounded dead serious, her eyes locked on his and her cheeks flushed pink. He didn't hold her gaze for long, because he had to let his eyes rove over her body, over her pale shoulders, eyes lingering on the v-dip of her yukata, her cleavage, and the shape of her legs. Under that thin robe, she was still not quite the athletic and fit Suki he had first met, but he'd never seen her mostly undressed, then, anyway.
She was gorgeous, and she was still Suki, no matter what marks the Fire nation had left on her, in their encounter. Suki, his Suki, with her strong eyes, beautiful features, and her fierce mouth. And Suki wanted to.
"I want to, too," he said, trying to keep himself from squeaking in excitement. He got ahead of himself, and he said, "Sure. Shall we? Er, if you want. Which you want to. Err."
She laughed, and didn't really make a move forward. He waited, feeling great and stupid at the same time, and he leant towards her, even closer, and he said, "But this is your call entirely. Only if you're ready. Which you said you are. But you know. Pressure, and all."
Suki's smile stayed on her face, determined, though she was blushing more than he had ever seen in his life. She waited, and then she said, "Close your eyes."
He had never closed his eyes on command faster in his life. Not for any surprise had he ever been this psyched for. Sokka had it going through his head immediately, the anticipation set in, and he waited, leaning back on his hands and letting out a long breath. He could hear her shifting forward, he felt her draw herself up close to him and place herself to sit by his side, facing him. Sokka felt one hand on his shoulder and the other on the curve of his jaw, fingers brushing his neck, her palm faintly warm to the touch.
"Keep your eyes closed until I say so," she said, and Sokka gave a tiny nod, unwilling to dislodge her touch. Suki let out a breath, and he could feel her come within inches of his face. The tips of their noses brushed for an instant, and then she tilted her head just slightly to move closer.
She pressed her lips to his. She held them there, gently, and then, when it seemed comfortable enough, her lips parted a bit, and so did his. It wasn't the sudden, unexpected kiss, like three quarters of the kisses they shared. It was entirely intentional, entirely necessary, and both were set on it.
He'd kissed Suki like this before, only once. They hadn't had the place to themselves, or the time, then, and now they did. And right now, it wasn't for the sake of saying good-bye. It started tentative, but quickly grew more adventurous.
And when she paused for a second, he opened his eyes, to see hers were closed. He shifted his weight to one hand and brought the other up to rest against her waist, holding her there, and he slid it up along the length of her side, the fabric rumpling under his touch.
His heart was beating hard and her hip pressed against him, and Sokka wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his lap. Suki paused, lips still against his, and her grip changed. The hand on his shoulder slid down his arm. She opened her eyes, and when she saw his were open, she drew back a bit and said, "Keep your eyes closed."
"Why?" he breathed, as she shifted to be more comfortable sitting across his lap. He split his legs a bit more, so that the lowest part of her back was against the inside of his thigh, her legs drawn up beside her. She kept herself close, so she was almost talking against his lips.
"Because," she said. There didn't seem to be a reason she wanted to offer, but he could venture a guess, judging by her expression. Perhaps she was hesitant to give away that perhaps not everything was pushed from her mind, but he wasn't going to bring it up and ruin her mood. She said, "It's just... looking."
"I like looking at you," he replied. "You're the most beautiful girl in the world."
She paused, too, as if she were examining him, and then she closed her eyes and kissed him again without a word. It felt nothing but good, her lips sweet and velvety against his, and Sokka relished those moments up until she pressed herself up against him, closer, and then he groaned against her mouth. His hands roved, one along her side, still, and the other settling on caressing circles on the top of her thigh.
It was like it had been on the Serpent's Pass, but somehow much better: they had traded awkwardness over one woman for awkwardness over another, and Sokka felt he could shoulder both with equal strength now. Love and hate, loss and gain, it all paled in importance.
Suki was strong, and so was he, so with that in mind, he gently lowered her backwards onto the bed, onto her back. At first, she resisted, if only because he was blindly lowering her backwards, but she let out a long, relaxed breath when he settled overtop of her.
"Thank you," she said, breathily, cheeks still pink.
"Any time, Suki, any time," he said, almost laughing, and he meant it. He supported himself on one hand, over her, and his eyes flicked down. Her chest was heaving, and he used one hand to pull her sash from its loose knot. Her robe fell open at the hips, and Suki held her breath when he put his bare hand against her bare skin, just across her abdomen.
The touch was electrifying, the sensation intensified. Sokka swallowed, out of an uncontrollable nervousness, and Suki leaned her head up to kiss him again. Her own hands rested on his forearms, altogether ready to push him away and hold him closer at the same time.
They made out, in that experimentally soft way, without the crazy, impassioned groping. Any other time, Sokka might have called this sort of gentleness lame and boring, but at the time, it was just fine for him. It was the kata of lovemaking, compared to the sparring session of lust. Both made things strong.
His hand slid down, slipping between the surface of her skin and her underwear. He trailed kisses across her cheek and to her neck, until Suki brought him back to her lips again. He didn't mind at all, because her kiss was consuming and her tongue slowly dancing about his.
Her own hands were busy, too. She moved them from his arms, boldly, and she undid the button on his pants. She dragged them down his hips, and Sokka let out a pleased "mmph" against her lips. He shifted, and stopped kissing her for a moment to take one of her knees and move them so he was between her legs.
Suki was breathing hard, and she watched him re-orientate her legs with a delirious look. They wanted each other, they knew it well enough, Sokka felt it in the way her hands trailed up his chest and pushed his shirt open, in the way she pushed the fabric away so she could touch his bare skin.
But when Sokka moved to bring her onto him, she braced herself, and then stopped him with a soft, almost startled, "Wait."
He froze, and she hesitated still. The skin on the insides of her thighs was soft to the touch, and he wanted to go forward more than anything. His eyes met hers, wondering, and he said, "Everything okay?"
"Can I be on top?" she said. "It doesn't seem as awkward."
He had a moment of selfishness, and he let a "What?" slip out without meaning to. Suki edged back, pulling her legs towards her and closing them together, and she put one hand on his chest and gave him a demonstrative push backwards. Sokka resisted, for a second, and she said, "Lie back."
They kept their eyes on each others' for a few moments.
He really hadn't imagined it this way, to have Suki above him. In his mind, he had always pictured it happening with her writhing under him, or in front of him, or something, but never above him. He and Suki had always been equals –– well, most of the time –– despite the occasional moment of strength or defeat, but somehow, he never imagined anyone on top of him.
Whenever he imagined any girl, she was there and he was being the gentleman and doing the most of the work. She could lay there and enjoy. As far as he knew, that was girls liked when it came to sex, wasn't it?
But he had to remind himself that this was Suki, and she liked to get her way just as much as he did, and he knew she was good at evening the score out. And more importantly, right now, he cared a lot more about her comfort than his ego.
Then Sokka laid back, letting her push him back until he was propped up on his elbows. Suki moved with him, moving to straddle his waist. She let out another comfortable breath, keeping herself raised above him, and he braced his hands against her hips gently.
She kept her eyes on his, and he couldn't help but smile awkwardly up at her, and she smiled back.
"Okay," he said, carefully, and let out a breath of his own. He held her where she was, and she bent over to ghost her lips against his for a brief second. He felt her take in a breath, ready.
And then she eased herself down, keeping that breath in, her eyes closed and eyebrows tensed. Sokka held his breath, too, and he slid into her. He watched Suki's face, enraptured, and her lips parted into an 'O', and he couldn't help himself.
Sokka indulged.
They departed to a small bit of fanfare, a couple people pressing coins into their hands, and in one case, Suki was given a large bag bursting with fruits and vegetables, from a teary-eyed old couple. The man was nursing horrible burns, but he managed to cry when he bowed to her and thanked her.
Suki remarked, to Sokka, "I'm stunned people care. I only cracked her ribs."
Sokka replied, with a grin, "Hey, like he said, Suki. Not much else to be happy about, you get what you can."
And with that, they headed for home, laughing and chattering and arguing the whole way home, in that cheerful sort of way. Sokka felt like they'd overcome the worst of the bumps. And once Azula was dead, and the war was over, he felt he could possibly have a great ending to everything after all.
He was in a great mood, and so was she, even when they reminded each other that they were a day late getting home. And sure enough, when they got home, Katara was waiting for them. Her hands were on her hips, disapprovingly, and as they came up the walk, she said, "About time!"
"Ssh, I know," Sokka replied, with a big smile. Suki was on his back, awake but laughing, her arms hugged around his shoulders and her feet bare. Katara lifted an eyebrow, and he explained, "Suki carried me part of the way, and I carried her the rest of the way."
He glanced up at Suki and laughed, and she slid from his back with a grin.
Katara didn't want to know, but she asked, "I take it you two stopped for a while, while you were there?"
"Drinks," Suki replied, casually, "Are you hungry? We managed to get enough for a week."
"Yeah," Katara said, and her eyes darted to Sokka and back. Suki smiled, and Katara asked, "How much did he have?"
"Three quarters of a tankard," Suki replied, and Sokka laughed, draping an arm around Suki's shoulders. He leant his head against hers.
"No, no, no," Sokka said, "It was definitely less than that. Either way, that was yesterday."
"I don't think so," Suki said, wryly. "You were marvelously eager."
"I know," Sokka said. He laughed, and Katara just raised an eyebrow.
She said, "Are you still drunk?"
Sokka said, with a bright grin, "Never was. But life is good, Katara, life is good." He handed her the bag of food by the handles, and when she took it, it was so heavy it dragged her down to the floor.
She looked up at Sokka, then at Suki, and she said, "How did you get this much? I was expecting nothing."
Suki smiled, and she handed Katara a handful of coins, and they all jingled together in her palms. She said, cheerily, "You'll never believe what I did."
She hugged Sokka tighter, playful as she had been in the past, and he nearly yelped when one of her hands settled over his butt and pinched. It was mean, and he grabbed her right back, with a muffled laugh and a snicker. She pushed him off and then pulled his face closer, and planted a big kiss on his lips.
Sokka was getting into it around the same time as Katara cleared her voice and piped up with a shrill, "Forget I'm here, why don't you?"
Suki withdrew and Sokka tried not to, and he held onto her, but Suki put her hand between their faces and glanced at Katara with an apologetic smile. Sokka said to his sister, pointedly, "Hey, look, I'm trying to have a touching, romantic moment with my rib-cracking girlfriend, no one said you had to stay here."
"Well, it's kind of rude?" Katara replied, obviously finding this entire thing bizarre. She seemed to be trying to find the appropriate place to keep her eyes, and she settled on staring Sokka down. "One minute we're all talking and the next you're randomly all over each other! What was I supposed to do?"
Sokka just laughed, and laughed, and laughed.
Sokka couldn't have asked for a nicer scene.
The sun was shining, the breeze was gentle, and he and Suki had trekked down into the fields at the bottom of the hills behind the hut, a place they had rarely gone over the past month or so. The farmland there was razed, not by the Fire nation, but because all the stalks were emptied of their uses. Sokka lazed in the sunlight, and Suki meandered amongst the scrappy patches of long grass, wearing a yukata rolled up to her knees and the sleeves tied back.
The cicadas were humming nicely, the wind was making a nice noise through the fields and trees, and Suki was humming.
And, noisiest of all, and crazy enough to prompt Sokka into standing up in confusion, there was the sound of Katara shrieking with laughter.
Katara was running towards them at a breakneck speed, shrieking in some sort of joy as she went, laughing at the top of her voice. She was leaping over ledges and working her way down the hill with the most enthusiasm he had ever seen in her. He was half-tempted to ask who she was, and where his wet-blanket sister had gone, and he watched her descend with a stunned look on his face.
Suki wisely stepped out of the way when Katara reached the bottom. Katara flung herself at Sokka, throwing her arms around his neck and tossing all her weight onto him. He let out a groan and a loud complaint of "What the heck, Katara?!" as she shrieked in his ear and laughed loudly. He barely managed to keep on his feet, and he set her down almost immediately.
"Sokka!" she enthused, holding him at arm's length by the forearms and then crushing him in another hug. He yelped, and Suki laughed.
"What?!" he demanded, and then he got to thinking. The smile spread on his face, and he replied, "Aang?!"
Katara's smile was huge, and she was breathless.
"Yes, yes, yes!"
