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Her breath grazes through her teeth, inhaled quickly as he lays the warm cloth against her broken skin. Sokka remains silent, expression grim as he continues with his work, unaffected by the brief protest at his ministrations upon the throbbing split on her cheekbone.
Azula looks at him with one yellow eye, glaring as much as Sokka does. He’s been silent since he helped her stumble from the brawl. She notes that his knuckles have developed scabs already, bruised where they aren’t bloody. She doesn’t know why he never drew the sword that dangles at his side.
Maybe he saves it for skilled opponents only.
Sokka tosses aside the cloth, turning his back to her as he rummages in his pack.
“This is what you get for picking fights,” he finally says as he turns back to her, looking a little less grim than before.
Azula lifts an eyebrow, unamused. “I was minding my own business.”
“Yeah, yeah. Maybe you didn’t pick this fight, but you sure as hell picked the last one. It’s kind of obvious.”
“Oh really?”
“Yeah. Really.”
She rolls her eyes, turning her face away from him in her annoyance, but Sokka catches her chin between his calloused fingers and holds her in place. His expression mirrors her own. Azula winces again as he presses the bandage to her cheek and then finally releases her. She feels the warmth of his fingers pressing into her skin even after they’re gone.
“Enlighten me,” she invites, jutting her jaw forward in challenge while Sokka reaches into the bag once again, fishing for longer bandages to wrap his hands with. “Since you know so well what happened when you weren’t around.”
“You did what you always do,” he answers simply, “you found whatever it is that makes him tick, and you dug your teeth into it. It’s how you get a rise out of Zuko.” He sets the bandages aside, submerging his hands in the water basin to soak them, “It’s how you stopped me in my tracks on the day of black sun, and it’s how you get a lot of information from others that you wouldn’t otherwise ever know.”
Azula scoffs, leaning back against the outer wall of the room, her arms sliding tight over her chest as she continues to watch Sokka’s methodical treatment of his own wounds. Silence stretches between them again, save for the thump of the patrons in the room next door, none too quiet about their personal passions.
“You’re doing it right now,” he says then, glancing up at her, irises almost clear as ice in the light of the room.
She narrows her gaze.
“Doing what?”
“Picking me apart, deciding my weaknesses, how best to strike and where.”
“Doesn’t everyone?”
“…” Sokka laughs. The sound sends shocks through her after the pregnant silence of the room around them. “No, not really.”
“Well…I’ve never really been like everyone else, I suppose.” She lifts her chin, feeling a tightness in her chest at his mirth. Her mouth presses into a thin line.
“No,” he agrees, “I suppose not.”
Sokka turns back to his wounds, finishing with the bandages and leaning back as well. His heavy, booted, feet come to rest in front of him, his hands bracing his weight against the floor.
“…Why are you staring at me?”
Sokka’s eyelids fall half way, a smirk quirking his mouth upward.
“I’m waiting to find out what you’re going to do to try and get away this time.”
Azula glares, pursing her lips.
“As it so happens, I’ve had enough excitement for one night,” she answers finally.
“Mmhmm.”
Another silence and then Azula growls her annoyance, shuffling down on the grass mats and pulling her threadbare blanket from her own pack, wrapping it around herself like a cocoon. From over her shoulder she hears Sokka yawn, and then the popping of his joints as he stretches.
She closes her eyes, breathing out through her nose sharply.