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The first time Sokka ran into the Blue Spirit was in Ba Sing Se. He had already known about the masked vigilante, Aang had told him all about how he had saved him from Zhao and broke him out of the Pouhai Stronghold, but he had never met him before. So he didn’t exactly recognize him when they first met.
He had been in the Lower Ring, getting a snack and putting up posters about Appa, when the muggers grabbed him.
“Hey!” he yelled, but in the noise, no one heard.
The two men pinned him to the wall of the alley, so his face was smashed into the wall and his hands pinned to his back. Sokka silently cursed that he had gotten so relaxed that he could get caught off guard like this. Tui and La, he traveled with the Avatar. He had fought off firebenders. Muggers should have nothing on him.
“Gimme your money,” one of them growled.
“What money?” he asked on instinct, his voice muffled.
“We know you have money, Water Tribe,” the other one said. “Give it here.”
Sokka should have been able to fight them off, but he couldn’t get a hand on his boomerang. For the millionth time in his life, he wished he was a waterbender like his sister.
“Okay, okay,” he mumbled. “Just let me grab it.”
But before he could grab his money pouch, the hands pressing him against the wall disappeared, like they were never there in the first place. Sokka twirled around, snatching his boomerang from it’s sheath, ready for a fight.
The muggers were already on the ground, groaning. Oh. He was almost a little disappointed, being in Ba Sing Se was so peaceful it put him on edge. A fight almost sounded nice.
Instead, he focused on the stranger standing in front of him.
He (Sokka was pretty sure they were a he) was lean bordering on skinny, wearing all black besides the mask on his face. It was blue, with white stripes standing out on it that made a face. He held two blades, shiny in the darkness.
He was ridiculously familiar, even though Sokka was sure that he had never met him on their travels. He was good with faces, especially masked vigilantes.
Said masked vigilante turned around and vaulted onto the rooftop, with a grace that made his mouth dry.
“Wait!” he yelled, jumping up to try and get onto the rooftop. It didn’t work, obviously. “Who are you?”
He didn’t get an answer. Obviously.
Sokka walked back to the Upper Ring, thinking about the strange encounter all the way. A familiar masked vigilante in Ba Sing Se. His life just got stranger and stranger.
“Took you awhile,” Katara commented as he walked into their house. She was fixing her hair, focused on her reflection in the mirror.
Normally, he would tell his sister about what had happened. He would tell her and Aang and Toph over dinner, embellishing details and elongating the story. They would laugh and ask questions. He was their big brother, after all. He tried to make sure they all got some semblance of a childhood.
But this time . . . he didn’t know. This felt different. The thought of telling them felt wrong, all the way to his bones.
“There was a line,” he lied, and it felt wrong and right at the same time. “The food was great. Do you know how great it is to be able to get food from a stand and not the woods?”
“Yeah, we’ve lived the same life Sokka.”
He tried to put the vigilante out of his mind for the next week, really tried. But it didn’t work, and after another night spent thinking about everything that had happened in the alley, Sokka gave up. If he was going to think about him all the time, he might as well do some research. And not traditional research.
“Hey, have you heard of a masked vigilante in the Lower Ring?” Sokka asked someone who approached him while he put up more Appa posters. Joo Dee and her minions were probably taking them down as they put them up, but he didn’t care. They weren’t going to stop looking. “Rumors spread to the Upper Ring.”
This had been like, the fifth time he was asking someone, but he didn’t care. He was curious. Sue him.
The man bit his lip, then his eyes lit up. “Oh! You mean the Blue Spirit.”
“The who?”
“The Blue Spirit. He’s a vigilante from the Lower Ring, he helps the poor. Used to fight the Fire Nation too. Wears all black except for his mask, apparently. I think my cousin got saved by him once, said he was like a legend down there. He seems like a cool guy.”
And Sokka was such an idiot .
A vigilante in a blue mask. How could he not see it before?
This was the guy that broke out Aang from Pouhai Stronghold.
This was the guy that saved Aang.
Sokka wondered if he would ever meet him again. To thank him for helping out his friend, yeah, but also to just talk to him. He was interesting, and he was a good fighter and a good person. And he was a non-bender, and he knew non-benders were good fighters too, but seeing one in action was always a little validating for him.
So he hung around the Lower Ring when he could, giving girl-related excuses to Katara when he stayed out a little too late. He was pretty sure she could tell he was lying, but she didn’t mention it, so neither did he.
He finally found him on a warm night, the moon high in the sky. Sokka was leaning against a wall eating some Earth Kingdom food, his eyes on the rooftops. That was when he saw him, a black blur against the deep blue sky. A regular citizan from the city wouldn’t have noticed him, but Sokka did.
“Hey! Wait!” he yelled, clumsily climbing onto the rooftop and running after him.
The Blue Spirit glanced back and sped up, somehow. Tui and La, this wasn’t how this was supposed to go.
“I just want to talk to you! That’s it!” Sokka tried to keep his voice down, but that had never been his strong suit. “To thank you, and to talk to you!”
Finally, after he had almost fallen off the rooftops for the millionth time, the vigilante stopped and turned to face him.
“What?” he asked. It was obvious that he was deepening his voice, but the rasp of it was something he couldn’t fake.
“Thanks,” Sokka said, still panting a little. “For saving me. Well, probably not my life, but my money. That’s important too. Anyways, I’m getting off track, but thanks for also saving my friend. Aang. The Avatar.”
“Yeah, I remember,” he said a touch sarcastically, and Sokka laughed. “He’s the Avatar. Hard to forget.”
“True. But yeah. Thanks.”
“Is that it?”
“Kind of? I guess? I don’t know.” Maybe this was a mistake. “I just think you’re interesting. And cute. And you’re impressive with a sword!!” He really hoped he hadn’t heard the second part. Sokka didn’t even know what he looked like under that mask (and he kind of wanted to).
“. . . thanks?” He really didn’t know how to take praise, or he was just weirded out by his previous comment. “I was trained by a master.”
“That’s cool.”
After his comment, the night was silent. He could feel the awkwardness in the air.
“I’m just gonna go,” he said, taking a step back without looking. That was a mistake. There was nothing beneath his foot but air, and he started to fall.
Before he could hit the ground, or even started to properly fall through open air, the Blue Spirit grabbed his hand and pulled him back onto the roof. Even through the thick fabric of his outfit, his hand was warm, and their chests were inches apart.
“Thanks. Again,” he repeated, feeling like the stupidest person to ever live.
“It’s fine,” the vigilante replied. He let go of his hand, and turned to start saving lives and beating up muggers or whatever he did in the middle of the night. But then he stopped.
“Thanks,” he said. “For thanking me. Not many people do. And I don’t do this for gratefulness, but you know. It’s nice.”
Sokka grinned, hoping the other man could see it in the darkness. “It was no problem. And maybe they would thank you more if they didn’t have to chase you across rooftops to do it.”
And then the Blue Spirit laughed , loud and brash and joyful, and he wondered if it was possible to love a sound so much. “Yeah, that’s true. I’ll see you around, Sokka.”
He didn’t get the chance to ask how he knew his name before he disappeared again.
It would be a long time before Sokka saw the Blue Spirit again, time spent saving Aang’s life and going on adventures in the Fire Nation and then invading the Fire Nation. And then failing the invasion plan, and hiding out in the Western Air Temple.
And then Prince Zuko showed up. Prince Zuko . But it wasn’t to try and capture Aang again, it was to train him. So he could defeat Firelord Ozai, Zuko’s father. And he was actually trying to make amends. And he had freed Appa.
This was just so weird .
Sokka knew he shouldn’t have trusted Zuko. He was nothing but trouble, all the times he had attacked them was proof of that. But sometimes he just looked so sad, and he looked a little bit less scary without the ugly ponytail, and he was trying. He knew how that felt like.
So they went to Boiling Rock together. And it worked. They had broken out his dad and Suki and that Chit Sang guy, and none of them died or got captured in the process. Not even when Azula showed up.
Zuko was trustworthy, he had realized. And he was funny, and smart, and they were friends. Kind of.
And he was cute. Really really cute, especially when he did that smirk thing in the cooler. That had done something to Sokka. Something he really didn’t want to think about.
So he wasn’t really sure why he had waltzed into Zuko’s room like he owned the place on Ember Island. It wasn’t really his room, they all slept together outside anyway, but that didn’t help.
“So I heard you’re scared of my sister now,” he said, sitting down on his bed. Zuko was sitting on the floor, and he had a flame in his hand that he was concentrating on. He sighed, and it went out.
“You would be too, if you saw the things she did,” Zuko said. “She stopped the rain! She did something to this guy that controlled his body! Agni, I could’ve died so many times!”
Sokka almost flinched at the bloodbending mention, but smiled for the rest. “Yeah, she’s powerful. And scary. Be glad she isn’t mad at you anymore.”
“Trust me, I am.”
Zuko went back to doing his thing with the fire, while Sokka stayed on his bed. He flopped over, sighing. Aang and Toph were training together, and Suki and Katara were doing some girl thing, so he had nothing to do.
That was before he spotted something under the bed. Black, and sharply curved, like the sheath of a sword. Huh. He didn’t know that Zuko could fight with a sword.
He slipped it out from under his bed, sliding the sword out of it’s hilt as quietly as he could.
Not sword. Swords.
Dual blades. Ones that he knew.
Oh. Oh.
“Wait,” he said, eyes widening. “YOU’RE the Blue Spirit???”
Zuko sputtered, his burning golden eyes flying open and focusing on the dual blades on Sokka’s lap. The flame in his hands grew so fast it almost hit the ceiling before it abruptly died.
“Uh, I, um, yeah?” he stuttered. “I didn’t mean for you to find those.”
“Why not?” Sokka asked. “Dude, you’re so good with these! You broke Aang out of that stronghold! Why didn’t you tell us?”
“Well, Aang already knew,” Zuko said. “And I just. Didn’t?”
He mumbled something after that, too quiet for Sokka to hear.
“What?”
Zuko went red, which he didn’t know was possible for a firebender, and said it again. “Do you still think I’m cute?”
Oh. That.
“I mean. Yeah?”
Sokka hoped that wasn’t the wrong thing to say. The Water Tribe didn’t care about relationships where the two people were the same gender. Aang said that the Air Nomads didn’t care either, and neither did the Earth Kingdom, but he knew the Fire Nation had different opinions on the topic. Disgusting opinions, but they were still there.
“I think you’re cute too,” Zuko blurted out, getting redder by the second. He was suddenly reminded of the “Hello, Zuko here” fiasco.
Hopefully this would end better.
Sokka smiled, abandoning the swords on the bed and going down to sit down next to Zuko. He took his hand, which was still warm, and pressed his shoulder to his.
“So what are you doing right now?” he asked, laying his head on his shoulder.
“Oh. I, uh, I’m meditating. Kind of. You see . . .”
Zuko went on talking about meditating and breath control and what that meant for firebenders, and Sokka listened.
He knew he would be seeing the Blue Spirit a lot more.