Pillow Talk:
Chapter 3: Sokka and Suki
Darkness had descended upon the young man with all the subtly of a freefalling Sky Bison. In truth, everything in his life of late felt much the same way, as he stood in the slumbering campground, his eyes fixed on the fire that dwindled soullessly until it had become little more than glowing cinders in an ashen pit.
His mind, however, was fixed elsewhere, unconcerned with the faltering fire that dwindled slowly from this world despite its best efforts to live…to prove it's own worth. The subtle parallels to his own circumstances were hardly lost on his affluent mind.
So absorbed was he in his own contemplations that he failed to acknowledge the lightly treading approach of the young woman that came to stand beside him. Her attention turned from his unwavering line of sight to his face and she felt a deep disturbance in the young man's unspoken thoughts as she sought to unburden whatever troubles plagued him. Lacing her fingers with his, more in a show of support for whatever worries he wrestled with than to make her presence known, her own mind struggled to find the means to the peace she wanted to the young man.
"Hey," she whispered at last, her words echoing loudly in the deafening silence. "You let the fire go out."
"Left on it's own, it couldn't survive by itself," Sokka shrugged in dismissal as he turned to face the beautiful warrior who so thoroughly captivated him every time his eyes touched hers. "Sorry if I woke you."
Shrugging lightly, Suki snuggled closer to him as she sighed delicately at the warmth she felt from his body. "So…what were you thinking about?"
"Nothing really," Sokka lied, his hand moving from her entrapping fingers so that he could wrap her fully in an embrace that served to remind him how perfectly they fit together.
Suki knew better than to press the issue. If Sokka wanted to talk about whatever troubled him, which she was quite certain he did, then he would do so when he was ready, and not before. Offering herself as a source of comfort would often loosen his lips until he was ready to open up. Sure enough, she did not have too long to wait.
"What are we doing here Suki?" Sokka asked after several moments of extended silence, a heavy sigh filtering from his lips as though he had unburdened himself with just that simple question.
"Do you mean, what are we doing now, or what we were doing half an hour ago?" Suki asked, her eyes twinkling with playful mischief as she pulled back to look at the still stoic expression dawning the warrior's face, indicating she had missed the intention of his underlining question while he ignored her suggestive remark in an attempt to lighten his mood.
"I mean, what are we doing here…with them?" He asked again, waving his hand over the campsite to encompass the makeshift family of benders that rested peacefully.
Arching an eyebrow, Suki pulled away from Sokka and took his hands in hers, her eyes seeking out his beneath the warrior's reluctance to find comfort in her beautiful face, as though he wished to lament his discontentment without distraction. "You're being rather vague," she said simply, moving her hands once more to cradle his face and direct his attention to her. "Could you elaborate a bit more on what you're asking?"
Sighing again, Sokka raised his eyes to hers and perched his lips in thought as to how best to express his lingering doubts. "Well, it's just, look around us, look at who we're traveling with. My sister is probably the most amazing waterbender I've ever seen,. Toph, is quite possibly the strongest earthbender ever."
The scoffing snort coming from the diminutive earthbender's sleeping roll convinced the warrior to lower his voice lest he wake his friends. "Zuko is the crown prince and has been trained by the best masters in the Fire Nation and knows techniques no one else knows. And of course, Aang is the Avatar, doesn't get much tougher than that.
"Then there's us," Sokka said, his head slumping against his chest as he stared at his feet. "No offense to your fighting ability Suki, in a straight fight, you could clean my candle, but against a master bender, and there are four of them here, the two of us just feel…out of place."
Furrowing her brow in an effort to discern the real issue, Suki tilted her head and again forced Sokka to look at her. "So, are you concerned that we're not pulling our own weight?"
"I'm concerned that we're holding them back," Sokka said as he flopped down on the ground, pulling his legs up to his chest and wrapping his arms around his knees. "I mean, Kyoshi Island would have burned down had Aang not put the fire out. The serpent in Serpent's Pass would have swallowed us all if not for Aang and Katara. We never would have gotten out of Boiling Rock without Zuko, and I can't even count the number of times Toph has saved our lives. Hell, I can't even count the number of times any of them have saved all our lives."
"And again," Suki continued as she joined Sokka on the ground, "You're worried we're not contributing?"
"No, not really that, but…" trailing off his thoughts as he tried to put his concerns to words, he shrugged dismissively, "What if they worry so much about protecting us that they find themselves distracted in the middle of a fight. What if we're more of a liability than a help? Neither of us bend, and in a fight against benders, that kind of makes us easy targets."
After several moments of silence fell between the two, Suki leaned against Sokka's shoulder, her eyelids drifting heavily as she considered his doubts and how best to alleviate them. "I think what you're really asking is, how can you protect them, when you feel inferior to them?"
The silence from the young man spoke true to Suki's words, that her assessment of his discontent was accurate and struck true to the proverbial nail. That silence was finally broken as he exhaled a shuddering breath. "How can I keep my promise to my dad to protect Katara, when she doesn't need me to protect her any more? I just feel like…like they've all outgrown me."
Suki was at a loss as to what words could be spoken to ease his troubled mind, and at last decided on a different course. Cradling his face in her hands once more and turning his face towards hers, she moved her face as well, not to capture his, but to look skyward, her eyes fixing on the crescent moon that hung luminously in the evening canvas. "Will you tell me about her?"
Thrown off by the direct shifting of subject, Sokka furrowed his brow in curiosity before following Suki's unwavering line of sight, his own attention settling on the moon, and confusion and clarity declaring war within his mind. "What?"
"The moon spirit, Yue," Suki remarked; the name spoken with deep reverence towards the departed young woman who became the moon spirit. It seemed as though the question had taxed Suki's own reserves of courage however, and Sokka felt her body quiver nervously, as though afraid of what answers might be revealed. When the silence stretched between them, Suki at last pulled her eyes away from the moon and stared into the confused and curious orbs of Sokka's overwhelmingly blue eyes before she lowered her eyes once more, as though the ground was the most interesting thing in existence. "I asked Katara a while ago, why you kept staring at the moon. I-I don't mean to imply or intrude on something that you'd rather not talk about its just…well, I'm not really sure what I mean…"
"You want to know about Yue?" Sokka asked, his voice a bare whisper as though thinking of the woman drained him of all strength.
"Y-yes. I really want to know Sokka, and I want you to be completely honest. What was she like?"
"Why?"
The simple question left Suki speechless for a moment before finding an answer that suited her, "Because, she was important to you and I-I just want to know, that's all."
The blatant lie was not lost on Sokka, but he would let it pass for the time being. Rather, his mind was torn between speaking the truth, and withholding information that would undoubtedly hurt the woman he held in his arms. In the end, he knew it would be a disservice to both women if he withheld anything.
"We met in the Northern Water Tribe," he began simply, his words possessing only the slightest hint of tremor as he recalled the memory that was both sweet and painful. "She was the daughter of the king, and she, well…she was breathtaking." He paused a moment to swallow down the lump that swelled in the center of his throat before continuing onward. "She was engaged though, and even though she was marrying to fulfill her purpose as princess rather than out of love, it was apparent she was spoken for.
"Still, we spent a lot of time together, and we became close. I think she was more torn about the whole thing than I was. See, she had a duty to her people, but it's not really what she wanted. For me, I knew what I had wanted and well; I selfishly tried to convince her that her own happiness was more important than her duty. In the end, it really didn't matter."
Sokka hung his head, and a few, fat teardrops had traitorously burned their way down his cheek as he drew in several shuddering breaths to calm himself before continuing. "The Fire Nation had come to attack the Northern Water Tribe. In the process, the Moon Spirit had been killed. Years ago, the spirit had given Yue her life, and during the darkest moment in Water Tribe history, Yue elected to give it back. She had sacrificed herself for everyone on the planet, and all I could think about was how much I missed her. It didn't seem right."
"She sounded like an amazing woman," Suki said after several moments of silence that lengthened into a merciless veil of stillness. "D-did you love her?"
A simple question, the importance of which was not lost by anyone within the camp as the silence stretched once more before Sokka shrugged his shoulders. "I never got the chance to find out. Did I care about her? Yes. Did I think it could have been love? Eventually, but well…" Sokka said, again his shoulders rose and fell like the tide as he turned his eyes from the moon to the woman at his side, the subject of his unrequited emotions left abandoned. "So, why did you want to know? I mean really?"
"Because," Suki choked, the words strangling in her throat as they fought beyond the emotional mosaic that churned within her and found subsistence beyond her lips. "I wanted you to know, that I understand what it's like to live in the shadow of someone greater than you are."
For a moment, Sokka's earlier musings and Suki's present declaration collided in a wedge of absolute clarity that, if anything, made the young warrior feel infinity worse. Realizing what his lingering emotions for the departed Yue had done to this beautiful, strong and amazing woman left Sokka's earlier fears about his own worth within the group dynamic bitterly unimportant.
Grabbing Suki by the shoulders and pulling her into a crushing embrace, Sokka shook his head in regret, mouthing repeated apologies to the Kyoshi warrior. Suki however, clung tightly to Sokka's tunic, her own insecurities leaking out from beneath her closed lids before desperately fighting back the painful sting of her own emotional need. She had prided herself to approach any situation with resolute clarity; to not let emotions cloud her mission, her judgment or her duties. An ironic, broken laugh had escaped her lips at the thought of her current quelling emotions, and, in hindsight, how vastly changed she was from her days on Kyoshi Island. Did this man know what effect he had on her?
Regardless, Suki pulled back from Sokka's comforting arms and struggled to rein in her own fleeing emotions. The purpose of her acclimation was not to gush pitifully into his arms, to tell him how much she hated competing with a ghost for his absolute love, but to explain that she fully understood what it meant to feel inferior to those around you, to try to be important, only to be left wondering if you make a difference at all. For her part, she had not yet fulfilled that part of her mission.
"Sokka," Suki stated, kneeling before the warrior and sitting back on her legs as she studied his face. She understood that her own confession had further hurt him, but it was necessary for him to bridge the gap between what was perceived as his place, and what he ultimately knew and simply overlooked. "You're looking at this all wrong."
Arching an eyebrow in confusion, Sokka remained silent as he waited for her to continue. "You're so focused on their powers, how strong they are in a fight, that you're forgetting that it's not about how strong they are, but who they are."
Titling his head to the side, Sokka arched an eyebrow at the young woman. "You lost me."
"Look at it this way," Suki pointed out as she pointed one by one to the supposedly sleeping form of their friends, "We all work so well together because we each bring something to the group to help compliment us. Katara is the compassion, she cares about each of us and when we hurt, she hurts too, so she tries extra hard to help fix us when things are at their worst. Zuko is the will. You've said it plenty of times, Zuko doesn't know how to give up, it's just not in him.
"Toph, she's the courage. When things get their most difficult, she bears down and faces it head on without ever flinching. She's quite unflappable that way. And Aang, well, he's the soul of our group. It'd be kind of ridiculous to say we'd all be together without him. To the world, he may be hope, but to us, he's why we're here, why we're willing to risk our lives to ensure a better future. Because he didn't bring us along because he needed us, but because he wanted us to be with him, and we wanted to come."
After a few minutes that stretched between them, Sokka finally broached the question that would at last settle his mind. "So then, what are we?"
"We're the face," Suki smiled as though the statement was simple and reasonable, despite Sokka's confusion that it generated. "Look, everything we do is to protect the world, to save it right? But it's hard to put a face to the people who will benefit from everything that we do. You and me, we're important to them because we're not special. We're just normal people, like everyone else in the world we're trying to help. And because we're right here with them, they can see us in all the faceless people who will benefit from what we do."
"So, we're important to them because we're common?"
"No, that's not what I'm saying," Suki finished, pulling herself close to Sokka again. "We're important because we give them focus, we are the reason we fight to end this war. And because we're not benders fighting right along beside them, you and I have to represent all the people in the world who are just normal, but want to be the best they can be. The Kyoshi Warriors, the Water Tribe Warriors, even the Yu Yan Archers, are all just normal people with extraordinary skill. They represent the best potential of humanity, and we represent them."
The thought left Sokka rather stunned for a moment at the implication of her statement before a smile finally began to tug at the corner of his lips. It was indeed a heavy burden to represent the people of the world while fighting to reshape it into something better that everyone would benefit from. "I was being stupid, wasn't I?"
"No, not at all," Suki finished as she pulled back long enough to press her lips against Sokka's in a slow, breathless embrace that reminded them specifically why they chose to fight. "I've had much the same doubt myself," she said, at last pulling away from the kiss before continuing. "It's just I have a better objective focus than you have. At the Southern Water Tribe, you fought to protect your tribe, but on Kyoshi Island, I trained to fight so that others didn't have to. So it was easier to extend my desire to protect others from fighting to beyond just my island, but to the whole world. It's the perfect analogy for us Sokka; you protect, I defend.
"But there's more to it than just that," Suki continued as she rose to her feet, offering her hand to Sokka, not to help him up so much as an invitation to rise. "We're a family. It's important to realize that, with our little band here, it's not just words it's fact. And like every family, we're made better by the people around us. Just think about how we've all changed, each of us, just by being together. It really doesn't matter if we're the strongest fighters or not, we're here because we're needed, just as much as they are."
A solemn look painted Sokka's face as he tilted his head sideways, as though weighing Suki's words. "That was an awful lot to say to finally tell me we were needed."
Shrugging her shoulders as though unconcerned by his statement, Suki answered back, "Well, sometimes you are pretty thick. It might take some extra motivation to get you to see the point."
"Motivation huh?" Sokka remarked. In much better spirits than before, a lecherous grin danced across his features. "What kind of motivation are you talking about?"
-End
A/N: Well, this story sort of came from an idea that I didn't really think Sokka's feelings of inferiority were properly handled when he trained with Master Piando. It was just, he trained, that's it, no more lamenting over not being able to stop natural disasters or such. I think he should have explored a little more as to why he was important to the group, and actually what his contribution did as a whole. But that's just my thoughts.
Anyway, hoped everyone liked this. As always, if you're kind enough to read, please be kind enough to review. Thank you.