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They set a course for the Western Air Temple.
Sokka spends more time than necessary in the navigation room, bothering Zuko with questions about every button and gadget, hypothesizing about them with his dad when Zuko explains for the dozenth time that he doesn’t know, Sokka, he’s not an engineer.
He exhausts himself with the navigation room and then fails to convince Zuko to come to the engine room with him and repeat the process. And then his father, taking the first shift keeping the ship on track, reassured him that everything is under control and why doesn’t he take a break, get some sleep, enjoy the night.
And it’s only then that he realizes he has no idea where Suki is and he’s not even sure when he last saw her.
Not that he has anything to worry about. She’s probably fine. They’re in an airship miles above any danger.
Then again she could have fallen off the ship. And oh no, what if she fell off the ship. At least they’re over water but it’s still a long drop and also he’s not sure how long it’s been since he’s last seen her and what if she fell a while ago and they kept flying and they’d have to turn around and try to spot her and the sun’s going down and he doesn’t know how long she can swim for but even with all her strength there’s only so long-
And then he takes a breath and reminds himself that Suki is definitely smart enough to not fall off an airship and he needs to calm down.
And then he realizes he wants to go find her anyway because he wants to be near her. And so he sets off.
He makes a mental list of other things that catch his eye that he should ask Zuko about in the morning. He finds a few empty cabins, including one that makes his arm hairs stand on end like he’s been rubbing his hand on Appa’s fur too long.
He finds Suki on one of the decks, actually leaning heavily against the railing like she’s trying to fall off the ship and prove him wrong. She stares out at a setting sun, the wind whipping her hair around her face, her loose shirt sleeves billowing.
His heart thumps painfully just watching her and he walks over carefully. Up closer, he can see her tight grin and the bright look in her eyes, some indescribable fire in her expression, in her stance, in her right now, standing on the edge of a Fire Nation airship and watching the sun and the water disappear behind them.
He leans his back against the railing because he’s seen a lot of beautiful sunsets and right now he wants to be looking at her.
She turns just a little and smiles at him, still with some edge that he can’t quite make sense of but wants to desperately.
“Hi,” he says because that’s as good a place to start as any.
“Hey,” she says back. She looks the same and she sounds the same as she’s always looked. He barely knows this girl but can’t forget a single detail about her, could recreate her voice in his head, her face in his mind without prompting and did frequently these past few months.
“Uh, how… are you?” he asks, crossing his arms over his chest, trying to lean his weight in a way that says cool and confident. He maybe should have asked Zuko some different questions back in the navigation room.
“How am I?” she echoes raising her eyebrows. She schools her face into another small smile. “I’m doing pretty good.”
Sokka nods. “Good,” he says. “Cool.”
Her eyes crease as she struggles against a bigger grin. She looks so effortless and wonderful and incomprehensible that it makes his mouth dry and his knees shake.
“How are you?” she asks, teasing, her voice a song that coasts along the whipping winds.
He shrugs with one shoulder. “Good, I guess.”
“So what have you been up to?” She blinks hair out of her eyes and he wants to brush it all behind her ears, feel her hair soft between his fingers, the thin skin at the shell of her ear against his fingertips.
“Just checking out the ship,” he says. “Helping my dad figure things out.”
She laughs like he’s just told a joke, which he’s pretty sure he didn’t. He usually notices.
“I meant since I last saw you,” she says.
“Uh, yeah?”
She tilts her head. “I meant before you broke me out of the most dangerous prison in the fire nation.”
“Oh!” Right, of course. It’s been months since the Serpent's Pass. Months that have felt like years, but standing next to her it feels like no time has passed at all, like he starts and stops right here at her side. “Uh, we went to Ba Sing Se, met the Earth King, lost Ba Sing Se to Azula and these crazy scary brainwash-y Dai Li agents. Aang almost died, he taught a group of fire nation students how to dance, I planned an invasion of the Fire Nation and then it failed and everyone got captured and now we're staying at the Western Air Temple trying to figure out what to do next.”
“Wow,” Suki says, eyes wide. “Well, I'll admit my past few months have been a lot less exciting than that.”
Sokka swallows hard. “Right,” he says. “Of course.” Because he’s rubbing in all his exciting adventures while she’s been locked away for months while he did nothing, nothing to find her, and honestly what does he even think he’s doing, standing so close to her when all he’s done is fail again and again, when he didn’t take a second look when his correspondences to the Kyoshi Warriors before the invasion went unread, when he let Azula use her against him and ruin the day, when he didn’t find her and when he hadn’t even—
He leans away from her a little, gripping the railing behind him hard.
Breathe , he reminds himself. It’s fine. It’s all fine. He did it. He saved Suki, he saved his dad, he’s redeeming himself step by step.
Suki still has this untethered look in her eyes and she shifts her gaze between him and the darkening sky around them.
“You left out that the prince of the Fire Nation is a good guy now,” she offers wryly.
“Oh yeah.” He rubs the back of his neck. “Yeah, Zuko is pretty cool. He’s teaching Aang to firebend.”
“And helping you break people out of prison.”
“Yeah.”
She leans forward, a little more over the edge, her arms crossed up against railing and dropping her chin to rest on them. Her eyes scan the horizon like she’s looking for something, but her shoulders are loose, her body at ease.
“Did you…” She takes a breath. “Did you guys find Appa?”
There’s some weight to the question that he doesn’t understand. It even takes him a second to remember that yeah, the last time he saw her Appa was still missing.
“Yeah,” Sokka says. “Yeah, he was in Ba Sing Sae.”
She smiles and closes her eyes. “Good.” He wants to ask but he doesn’t what question to start with.
She slides down the railing a little until her elbow brushed his side. He feels his blood rush in his ears, his face heat up, and he stays very still, right there, lets the tension in his bones slowly slip out into the air and the night they leave behind as the ship cuts through the sky.
They stand there as the color and light fade out. It’s just them and the wind and the night, their breathing the only sound they make.
Sokka just keeps watching her, can’t look away from all the small little ways her body moves, the way the dying sunlight hits her hair and her eyes until the sunlight is gone and the stars wake up behind her and she pales in the moonlight.
He swallows hard and his stomach twists. Danger , his brain warns. This is dangerous. She is dangerous. Yes, in the way she’s a warrior through and through, but also in the way she makes his heartbeat trip and his spirit soar.
He can’t look away from her to look at the moon. He knows he can’t, but it’s getting harder to just watch her in silent awe without the panic clawing at his throat.
He sees a shiver run across her shoulders and jolts so he’s standing straight.
“Are you cold?” he asks, reaching for the place on his wrists where sleeves would be, patting at his torso. “Uh, I’m not wearing a jacket. Do you want my shirt?”
He grabs the hem before her hand reaches his, closing around his wrist. His eyes dart back to her and she’s facing him full on with a smile that takes his breath away.
“Sokka,” she says slowly. “I don’t want your shirt.”
He nods, releasing the hem. Her hand stays on his.
“I’m doing it again, aren’t I?”
“A little bit,” she says, nose wrinkling.
Happy. She looks happy and wonderful and free. The Boiling Rock washed out all the colors on her, the literal Kyoshi ones, but others as well, the way everything in that prison was dull and colorless. But here in the sky with the stars and the moon, she’s colorful and bright.
Her hand is still closed around his wrist, holding gently even though he’s seen her grab and twist and yank.
“Come on,” she says, stepping away from the railing. “Let’s go inside.”
She leads the way, still holding, her fingers against his pulse, her nails barely brushing the vulnerable skin over his veins. He wonders if she can feel the way his heart is racing and his insides are fluttering. He wonders if she’s feeling the same way.
She moves through the halls with a surety, turning and considering each room that they pass until they find what she’s looking for. An empty bedroom. She lets herself in and shuts the door behind them.
And then they’re in a bedroom, mostly alone for the foreseeable future.
He swallows hard. “Uh.”
She drops down onto the bed in the corner of the room, her body bouncing once before she settles.
“Wow, much comfier than that rock of a cot I had in my cell,” she says, smiling, digging her fingers into the sheets.
He’s still frozen by the door unsure of why he’s here and where he should go and above all else what she wants from him right now and forever on after that.
She seems to realize too that they’re in a bedroom alone and she’s sprawled comfortably across the bed and he’s standing still by the door, because her eyes go wide and her mouth drops from a smile into an uncertain part.
“Oh,” she breathes, blinking and blushing. “I… I wasn’t… This, um—“ she forces a laugh and starts to prop herself up on her elbows but seems to second guess halfway through before freezing again in an awkward, uncomfortably looking position, a grimace on her face.
And then they’re both frozen again; just staring at each other across the room and he’s sixteen with clammy hands and a racing heart and a fear of falling again, after trying it once and hitting the ground hard.
And despite being a force of nature, beauty and ferocity personified, Suki blushes easily and shifts clumsily in this moment along with him. He thinks of all the ways he's changed and things he’s done since they were two kids on a porch in the middle of a battle when she kissed his cheek and said, “I’m a girl too.”
He feels the tension in him fade, knowing that they’re here together, both fumbling and unsure. He steps forward with a sense of calm.
“Can I?” he asks, gesturing to the open space on the bed.
She exhales in relief and nods, scooting back towards the wall to give him room.
He toes his shoes off and settles down on the mattress next to her. For a second they lay there together, side by side, staring at each other. And then she smiles and he smiles back and they meet in the middle, negotiating limbs until they find their own places, the way their dips and angles and curves fit together.
He’s never been in bed with a girl before. He’s never held a girl in a bed before.
Okay, Katara, but that doesn’t count, obviously. And it was when they were little and usually involved comforting her or her comforting him.
This is Suki. Her arm around his waist, her hand flat against the clothing at the small of his back, her nose brushing the hollow of his throat, breaths gusting over his skin until he shivers, her soft hair against his chin and lips.
He’s electric, some unspeakable energy zinging through him. He feels alive and nervous and happy and young. Younger than he’s ever felt in his whole life.
If he closes his eyes he feels like he’s at home, in his childhood bedroom that he hasn’t slept in for almost a year, in his bed, no war, no worries, no fear or stress, just sixteen and holding a girl for the first time, feeling the heat from her back against his hands, the scratch of her shirt, her feet brushing up against his, their knees knocking.
Suki is warm and corded muscle and soft skin and soft breathes. It’s strange to hold her and to think about holding her, like she’s something that can be contained to just his arms when she feels like she should take up an entire room with how much she is.
“I think I’m falling in love with you,” he says because the thought hits him like a train and overwhelms him and scares him and he needs to talk it out with someone and Suki is smart and here and he trusts her judgement.
“Oh,” she says, a little breathless. And then he realizes he probably shouldn’t talk through his feelings about his girlfriend with his girlfriend.
“I don’t know, maybe,” he says quickly, shrugging. “It’s been a long day.”
He feels the rise and fall of her chest as she laughs.
“Fair enough,” she says. “Uh, I did have a lot of time to think these past few months, though, about a lot of things. And you.”
He hears in his head clear as day, My favorite prisoner used to talk about you . It sends a shiver down his spine and he pulls her closer.
“I don’t know why,” she says. “And I don’t know what to call it. But I knew you’d come and it made me feel… safe.”
He swallows hard. “I didn’t,” he confesses.
“Uh, Sokka,” she says, tiling her head back to look at him. She raises her eyebrows and smiles, as if to say, I’m right here.
“I didn’t know you were at Boiling Rock,” he says. “I was looking for my dad. And I didn’t even know that you’d been captured until the invasion even though I should have noticed and I should have looked for you but I just, I thought it’d be easier to find my dad and—“
“Sokka,” she says, her hand trailing up to touch his cheek. “Calm down. It’s okay.” She’s still smiling.
“You believed in me,” he says. “And I can't help but think you shouldn’t have. I only found you because I got lucky.”
“I don’t need you to save me,” she says, thumb brushing along his cheekbone with a gentle reverence. There are calluses on her hands but her touch is so soft.
“I know,” he says quickly. “I know you can save yourself just fine.”
“And I didn’t need some huge rescue mission,” she says. “I just knew everything would be alright because you’d either find me or you guys would succeed in ending the war. And don’t get me wrong I’m glad that now I get to help, but knowing that you were out there, saving the world, that’s what I believed in.”
He thinks about how he failed at that too, but no, it’s fine. He saved his dad. Aang is learning to firebend. They have Zuko on their side. Things are looking up. They are not defeated yet and today was a victory. They won today and now he has Suki and his father.
He exhales, settles into her arms, lets her hold him too.
“And,” she continues. “I don’t know if you found me because of luck or maybe something more than luck, if there is such a thing. But maybe that means something too. That we keep ending up in the same place.”
They do keep ending up at the same place. It’s a big world and a big war and yet here they are again. He doesn’t subscribe to a lot of spirit-y nonsense, but this might be something he can get behind.
“I really like you,” he says, meaning it with his whole heart. He thinks he’s setting a dangerous precedent for falling fast and falling hard. It feels wrong to think about Yue when he’s holding Suki because they are incomparable, but he can’t help it.
Suki kissed him on the cheek on Kyoshi island and it was a revelation of warmth and the fragile possibility of love that he held with him even when his heart was reaching out to Yue. It takes seconds for him to be overwhelmed and swept away with how much he can feel and want. It also took seconds for Yue to be swept away too, leaving him tangled and alone in his own feelings and failures.
He barely knows Suki but he wants to know everything, wants to memorize the way their bodies fit together, wants to painlessly study the cadence of her voice and every twist to her expression, wants to hear every brilliant thought that flits through her head.
“Really like?” she echoes. “So I’ve been downgraded?”
“Uh…” he stammers. He meets her eyes and thinks she can see the fear and uncertainty, the pieces of him that broke at the North Pole that he’s trying to fit back into himself. He finds something in her eyes too, a calm and a certainty and a joy. Her eyes say she knows the risks too, knows what he’s suffered and what she’s suffered, knows the danger of feeling this much right at the very start of them. But in the face of it, she’s calm and brave and willing to take the risk.
“I really like you, too,” she says, rolling her eyes. And she leans up, pressing their lips together.
Oh right. And there’s this. Kissing Suki.
And kissing Suki, and kissing Suki.
It’s soft and sweet, and he finds he doesn’t have to think at all, doesn’t have to worry or panic. It feels like falling but she tilts her head and parts her lips and frames his ear with her fingers and he’s not falling anymore, he’s flying.
They both are.