Work Text:
The beach waves washed over the sand, overlapping Sokka’s toes as he dug them underneath the foam that the tides had left behind. In the dark of the night, the ocean water looked black and eerie, only threatened by the moonlight spilling onto Sokka’s face.
The moonlight that Sokka was steadfastly ignoring, because normally it felt magnetic and comforting, but tonight it was just pale and mute. Sokka felt very, very far away from anything other than the warm sand grounding his bare feet to the beach.
The moon had followed him everywhere, Sokka thought bitterly. When he was a kid, Sokka thought that the moon only appeared to the Southern Water Tribe. He barely had any concept of a world beyond their mountains of ice and snow. Even though he knew that was an unreasonable idea once he grew up, Sokka was still a little surprised to see the moon rise in anywhere other than his childhood home once he left the Water Tribe with Aang and Katara.
In the Water Tribe, the moon does more than strengthen the abilities of waterbenders. When you’re out on the ocean at night, the moon is always there as a guide for sailors to follow in their journeys. In the unpredictability of the sea, the moon is the only constant.
The moon looks different after the war.
The summer heat, sticky against the back of his neck while he builds sand castles with Toph feels different, and nights by the campfire feel different, and even things that he’s done a million times, like riding Appa, feels different.
Sokka scooped up a handful of dry sand and watched it run between his fingers. When he went to pick up more, his fingers brushed a rock. Sokka picked it up, twisting it in his palm idly.
It’s not like he wants to go back to the war, Sokka thought. He hated the war for what it took from his family and from his tribe, and he would never forgive it for what it demanded of his friends.
And yet, he can’t help but miss it. He took up an invisible weight, in the midst of it all, and just because the fighting and the running has stopped doesn’t mean that he quite knows how to put it down yet. It’s made a home in his chest, and Sokka can’t seem to push it off.
Everything is better, but nothing is the same, and that hurts a little too.
The crashing of the waves hides the sound of footsteps behind him until a familiar voice pulls him out of his thoughts.
“Can I join you?”
Suki. Maybe some things were the same.
He looked over his shoulder and smiled without really feeling it reach his eyes. Suki took that as an invitation and sat cross-legged on his left, following his gaze out to the expanse of the ocean.
They were quiet for a few moments, and Sokka was grateful. Speaking was hard when he was too busy breathing and remembering.
Eventually, though, Sokka knew they had to talk.
Suki shifted her gaze upwards. “You know, you used to be the one who couldn’t keep his eyes off the moon,” she teased. Sokka hummed noncommittally and gripped the rock tighter in his hand, feeling the edges dig into his palms.
“I never met Yue, but if she was half as beautiful as the moon is tonight, then she must have been something.”
Sokka kept his eyes trained hard on the horizon line. When he spoke, his sharp tone cut through the night air. “You’re right. You didn’t know her.”
Suki’s eyebrows climbed upwards, and in any other situation Sokka would have been intimidated, but right now he didn’t have the energy to care. “Well someone’s being very brooding tonight,” Suki remarked.
Sokka sighed heavily, annoyed. “If you don’t want to be here, just go back inside.”
“I’m only trying to talk to you, Sokka.”
“Yeah, well maybe you shouldn’t,” Sokka snapped.
“Fine,” Suki said, her voice hard. She started to stand up, but Sokka’s hand reflexively shot out to lightly catch her wrist.
“Wait. I didn’t mean that. Will you stay? Please?” Sokka pleaded.
Suki looked at him a moment and then nodded, sitting back down and pulling her knees up to her chest. She crossed her arms over her legs and leaned forward.
Sokka took a shuddering breath and looked down at his feet, still half buried in the sand. Another wave crashed on the beach. “I’m sorry. I guess I’m not very good at talking right now.”
Next to Aang, Suki is probably the most forgiving person he knows. She is fierce and protective and won’t take any disrespect, but she knows when someone is being genuine.
Suki did not comment on how Sokka always had something to say, nor did she voice how unnerving it was to see him so quiet.
“It’s okay,” she said, and Sokka visibly deflated.
She paused for a moment, carefully considering her next words. “Is this about Yue? Because it’s fine if it is. You’re allowed to feel sad about Yue, Sokka.”
Sokka finally looked up at her.
“I am?” His voice came out in a whisper, and Suki could have ignored the gravity of it if she didn’t know how heavily it was weighing on him.
“Of course you are. You’re allowed to miss things even if it’s been a long time,” Suki said.
Sokka thinks it’s unfair, sometimes, how the moon has become a permanent reminder of what he’s lost. How he can’t just be a normal person who admires the night sky for a few seconds before continuing on with their lives.
“I miss Kyoshi Island,” Suki continued. ”Ember Island is beautiful, and I’m glad everybody is getting a chance to relax before we go home. But it’s a little too… smooth. I miss the rocks and mountains that we had on Kyoshi Island. My girls and I used to rock climb for practice.”
Sokka smiled a bit at that. “Is that where you learned how to jump, like, three stories high and capture the warden when we were escaping from the Boiling Rock?”
Suki laughed softly and bumped her shoulder against Sokka’s. “Nah, I just got tired of all you men waiting around,” she smirked.
“If I had boomerang they wouldn’t have stood a chance ,” Sokka replied, keeping the tone light. Suki’s laugh was like wind chimes that had been rattled by the salty ocean breeze. They lapsed into silence again, but before Suki could come up with something new to talk about, Sokka spoke.
“It’s like everybody forgot about her. Yue, I mean. Everything is so different now, and everybody just seems so okay with that.” He found a crevice in the side of the rock in his palm, and busied his fingers with scraping the sand off from the inside.
“That’s not true. Well, I guess you’re right that everything is really different now. But that time we spent during the war isn’t just gone,” Suki replied.
Sokka was unconvinced. “How is everybody moving on so
fast
, then?”
“It just seems like that,” Suki assured. “It seems like that because we all have people to
be
now. Spirits, Zuko is the
Firelord
and he’s only sixteen. People everywhere are looking to us to keep the peace. We can’t just be ourselves all the time anymore.”
Sokka looked away and swallowed thickly. This vacation together on Ember Island was one of the rare moments they had been able to spend out of the public eye in the last few months since the war ended.
“I got up this morning and I didn’t know where I was. Just for a second, but it felt like everyone was sleeping next to me again, in some cave or in the woods next to some random town,” Sokka whispered.
Suki huddled a little closer to Sokka, pressing their shoulders directly up to one another. “That’s ok. It happens to all of us. Toph woke up from her third nightmare in a row last night- don’t look at me like that, yes Toph has nightmares because she’s twelve years old . And Katara is still so used to being on the road that yesterday I caught her packing up our stuff on Appa and we weren’t even going anywhere. Even Momo keeps flying around in circles because he doesn’t know what to do with himself. You’re not the only one, Sokka.”
Sokka stayed silent, but he did finally shift his gaze up to the moon, drinking in the soft glow. Eventually, he leaned over and rested his head against Suki’s shoulder, who tipped her own head to rest on top of his.
“When we were on the airships during the comet,” Sokka said, feeling Suki tense next to him. “When we were on the airships, I thought it was the end. I thought I was going to die, but then you came. Thank you for coming.”
Suki sucked in a breath and pressed her cheek hard against Sokka’s head. “You don’t have to thank me, Sokka. You can trust me. You can trust that I’ll be there.”
“Thank you,” Sokka murmured. When he came away, Suki could see the light illuminating the tear tracks on his cheeks.
“Do you want to go in now?” Suki asked. Sokka nodded and pulled his feet out from underneath the wet sand. He stood and both of them made their way down the stone path that led up to Zuko’s new firelord beach house (but if you ask Sokka, it was more of a village than a house). The stones soaked up the salt water on his feet as they walked.
The complex looked completely dark inside save for the two lanterns hanging on either side of the front door. The wood creaked under his feet as Sokka eased the door open, fully prepared to tiptoe back to his room and lay in bed staring at the ceiling for the rest of the night. Suki trailed closely behind, her stealth training rendering her much quieter than Sokka.
Suddenly, from a pitch black shadow in the back of the room, a flame sparked to life.
“Agh!” Sokka cried, flinging up his arms to shield his eyes from the harsh light.
“Sorry,” a voice rasped. The bright orange flame died down into a light flicker, cupped in Zuko’s hands where he sat on the floor, his back propped up against the wall.
Sokka squinted through tired eyes and put a hand on his pounding heart. “Spirits, Zuko, you scared me!” Sokka whispered harshly.
“You scared me! Where were you, down at the beach?” Zuko asked, matching Sokka’s low tone.
Suki stuck a hand out to lean against the wall and used her other hand to brush more sand off of the soles of her feet. “Yeah, we were at the beach. Shouldn’t you be in bed?”
“Shouldn’t you be in bed?” Zuko countered. Suki raised her eyebrows. “Fine. I couldn’t sleep,” he sighed, biting his lip and looking down at the dim firelight still aglow in his palms. “It’s kind of weird having a whole wing to myself and not hearing anyone else sleeping nearby.”
Sokka’s expression softened and he spared a glance at Suki, who looked equally as empathetic.
“Wait here,” Sokka said before disappearing into the hallway. Thankfully he managed to find his way to his bedroom in the maze of the village-house, making sure to be especially quiet as he passed Toph’s room, and then Aang and Katara’s. Sliding open the shoji, Sokka stepped lightly into his room and crept towards his bed. Instead of laying down, though, he grabbed as many pillows and blankets as his arms could carry, opening the chest at the foot of the bed to grab a couple extra sheets on the way out.
Arms full of silk pillows and blankets fit for a firelord, Sokka navigated back to where he had left Zuko and Suki. He found them sitting across from each other, speaking in hushed whispers. The flame in Zuko’s hands was gone, and instead a small lantern sat by their feet.
They both looked up when Sokka entered the room and dumped his haul onto the floor. “What’s all this for?” Zuko said, raising his eyebrow quizzically.
“For sleeping, obviously,” Sokka replied. “Now help me set up our beds.”
Suki and Zuko only paused for a moment longer before getting up to help Sokka spread out the blankets and arrange the pillows- three, lined up in a row at their heads, with the rest scattered around them like a fort. When they were done, they wordlessly settled down side by side with Suki in the middle. Zuko set the lit lantern on the floor at their feet, and Sokka was grateful for the warm glow it emanated.
“If you wanted to have a sleepover you could have just asked, Sokka,” Suki laughed. Sokka grabbed a pillow from his left and smacked it over her face, producing a surprised exclamation from Suki and a quiet snicker from Zuko.
“It’s not a sleepover, we’re camping ,” Sokka replied indignantly.
“Right, camping… inside,” Zuko mocked.
“Surrounded by silk pillows,” Suki added. This time, when Sokka went to whack her again, her arms were already in front of her face, ready to catch it.
“Nobody appreciates my kind gestures,” Sokka grumbled at the ceiling.
“Aw, that’s not true. We’ll miss these little sleepovers when you go back to the Water Tribe next week, won’t we Zuko,” Suki joked, poking Sokka in the side.
Sokka gave in and smiled a little, but his heart still wasn’t in it. They had all been hanging around the royal palace for the past two months, working out initial efforts to end the war for good and arrange immediate reparations while they were all still together, but Hakoda and Katara were anxious to return home. This trip to Ember Island was meant to be a way for them to spend some time together before going their separate ways for the foreseeable future.
“Maybe I won’t go back,” Sokka whispered. “I mean, you still need me to do stuff here, right?”
Zuko propped himself up on his elbows and looked over at Sokka in concern. “What do you mean? I thought you couldn’t wait to go home. Yesterday you couldn’t stop talking about how excited you were to go glacier canoeing again.”
“What, so you don’t want me here all of a sudden?”
Zuko rolled his eyes, unfazed. “That’s not what I said, Sokka. Of course I want you here. I just thought you wanted to go back.”
Sokka sighed, rolling over to lay on his side. “I know. But what if it’s changed? I’ve been gone for so long I don’t even know if I fit there anymore.”
“Believe me, I know the feeling,” Zuko said. “But you don’t have to worry about that, Sokka. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve been gone or how much you’ve changed. The Water Tribe is still your home.”
“And if you want to come back after a while, that’s fine. We’ll still be here,” Suki stressed, her hair falling against her chin as she made eye contact with Sokka.
Sokka swallowed past a lump in his throat. His eyes burned, but little by little he could feel the pressure lessening on his chest. “Thanks, guys. Best sleepover ever.”
“Oh, so now he admits it’s a sleepover,” Suki teased. Zuko laughed and fell back onto the pillows, tucking his arm beneath his head for support.
“Yeah, yeah, just go to sleep,” Sokka huffed. They fell into an easy silence, each one comforted by the familiar presence of the others by their side. There wasn’t a campfire, or Appa snoring a few feet away, or the open night air cool on their faces, but it was still good. Different, but still good.
Sokka’s life has changed a lot, but he can always rely on a few constants.
Some, even those as beautiful as the moon, can be painful, like mom’s favorite Water Tribe recipes that Katara can make from memory or the feeling of falling in every one of his nightmares.
But when he woke up in the middle of the night and looked over to see his friends sleeping peacefully nearby, encased in their pillow fort, Sokka knew he could rely on them too. It didn’t matter if he was leaving next week and wouldn’t be back for a month, a year, a decade. His friends were always going to be there for him, and of that he was certain.
Sokka shifted his position on top of the blankets, and shut his eyes again. The moon remained aglow in the sky, and the waves rhythmically crashed on the beach. But this time, sleep came easy.