Only one more after this. This Epilogue is one that is so context and AU specific it was hard to write. Not my favorite output, but I do enjoy the contrast.
As a matter of curiosity, why have more people put this on their Alert lists than have actually reviewed the entire story? You'd think if you liked it enough to be emailed daily, you'd review at least once.
Epilogue
When Sokka is closest to Azula, the entire world has shifted on its axis at some point.
Sometimes he is the exile from his world. Sometimes she is. Sometimes time itself has changed: a different war, different alliances, such radically different contexts that they can at last meet and interact in any context but flame-to-blade.
But when they can, there seems to be something that provides a mark of hope: Sokka isn't afraid of her. He might fear being hurt, he might fear her flames, but that's in the same sense a man fears the sword pointed at his throat, without fearing the person holding it. Just as importantly, though, he doesn't hate her personally. Most importantly, however, is that she can believe him, even where she couldn't trust her friends, her teachers, or even her mother.
The reason it might work, the only reason it could work, is because Sokka doesn't take anything personally, and isn't invested in agreeing or opposing her. When he thinks she's wrong, even if she isn't, he'll disagree. The fact that he won't submit, and that he won't be intellectually browbeat into something he feels is wrong, that he is too stupid to be afraid, is breathtaking. Fresh. A novel, yet desperately needed, experience.
And it's that same honest that allows her to believe him when he says yes. Yes, Azula, that was a good plan. Yes, Azula, you were right and I was wrong. Yes, Azula, that was very good.
For a girl who heard lies in her own mother's praise, it is priceless. It's probably why she went out of her way to keep him around.
It's the necessary combination for trust on her part. He can't be intimidating into claiming to be her friend, or into fearing her. His approval isn't guaranteed, as her mother's was, but nor is it never possible, as with her father. It is genuine. Sokka could, but with no guarantees, offer what her friends, her brother, her own parents, never could.
It isn't easy. It isn't simple. It isn't even likely: context has to change, a lot, to even give it a chance. But it could, if it could and other factors weren't in the way, and maybe just once it will.
Or so she hopes. Deep down, where she doesn't have to admit it, and she can continue to lie about it.
After the War, Sokka and Azula's tempestuous relationship, if it can be called that, continues. Nothing is agreed upon until the last moment: what they are, where they might go, even if they will go there together. Lighting, flames, and yells regularly fly between them, and Sokka's friends repeatedly attempt to intervene on his behalf of his safety. But so far Sokka has always waved them off, pointing out that if she wanted to hurt him he'd be hurt already, and suggesting this as a sign that she's improving. All things considered, few are reassured.