Chapter Text
It goes like this.
When Sokka is sixteen his sister wakes up one morning and can do something she really shouldn’t be able to do. His mom is gone, his dad isn’t here, but there’s no way in hell he’s losing his sister. He doesn’t sleep for three nights, instead he formulates a plan to keep her safe, what he’ll do to save her, and after he finally finishes it he sleeps for twenty hours straight.
Four months later he and Katara take a boat for the day and come back with one more skinny boy and one more sky bison than they left with. That’s where it starts, really.
Next they save the world, which is pretty cool sometimes and really scary other times and Sokka tries his best to protect everyone. Sometimes he fails, sometimes he doesn’t, and when they’re done a huge weight lifts off his shoulders, a weight that’s been steadily getting heavier since the first time his people were attacked with smoke and shrapnel. The whole experience is “super formative” or whatever, and shapes the actual rest of his life, but as the dust settles all he can think is I’m so glad we’re all still here.
Afterward he’s kind of a heartthrob, or that’s what Suki tells him, in her teasing voice that reminds him of the first time they met. Suki agreeing to be his girlfriend is kind of the coolest thing to ever happen to him, even cooler than his boomerang actually being useful, and he wears his new relationship with pride, peppering have you met my girlfriend into so many conversations that Katara starts to flick water against his ears and even Aang rolls his eyes, but Sokka thinks that they deserve to brag a little. After all, they survived what could have been the end of the world.
(A secret: he loves his friends more than anything. With Ozai gone everything feels different, but the one thing he knows is that they’ll never getting rid of each other. He calculates the time by Aang’s bright grin, could build a shelter for them all out of Katara’s bubbling laugh, and counts on Toph’s sarcastic comments as their bedrock. He loves them. He can’t believe he got this lucky.)
(A fun fact: This is not a secret. Everyone knows. Sokka would travel the world three times over for his friends, but he never perfects his poker face, anyone who knows him can slide behind the curtain with ease.)
So that’s how it starts. And then the start is over, and then they all go from there. Home and back again and new homes and new responsibilities and Toph laughing so hard she spits noodles across the table, while Katara beams at the reaction and Aang dives to protect the rest of the food.
The things he remembers most from those in-between years.
1. Suki’s smile, her warm hands, the way he never beats her in combat practice
2. Traveling even more than before, kingdom to kingdom to home
3. Seeing his name next to the title Ambassador for the first time
4. Never traveling alone
5. Zuko falling asleep at his throne at least seven times a month for the first few years, and his good natured grin at being woken up
6. Katara flexing her fingers after healing a bruise, the joy flickering in her eyes
7. His dad’s hugs, more than he’s had for the past five years, tight and safe every time
8. Aang getting really tall all of a sudden, and the way something like pride tightened in Sokka’s chest at the sight
9. Aang getting good at this avatar thing, really good
10. Katara laughing as much as she used to when they were kids
11. Feeling like a kid again, for the first time in a while
12. Suki going back to Kioshi Island, training all the new girls with her friends, jumping into his arms every time he visits
13. Suki letting him push her hair out of her face
14. Toph weirdly getting good at being nice when she wants to
15. Toph mostly still wanting to be a little mean at all times
16. Toph and Aang falling over themselves laughing on his birthday
17. Katara’s excitement each time she found a new waterbending trick
18. The lightness in his chest never really going away
19. The morning he realizes his friends are all doing things they like, that he's doing what he likes, that he still loves them so much
And then, before he really realizes it, they’re adults, actual adults, with Adult Things To Do. Everything is different and nothing has changed and they’re still rebuilding and Aang still gets distracted by Katara when she walks into the room and Toph still makes Sokka laugh harder than anyone else can, and Zuko asks for their opinions weekly. All in all, it’s really nice.
Katara decides they need a home base, and so Airbender Island becomes a house they all stay in whenever they’re close by, decorated in the haphazard way one would expect of a bunch of 20-somethings bringing random stuff in from wherever they just came from. For a while, it’s Sokka’s favorite place in the world. (At the same time he starts spending most of his time near Republic City, or back at the South Pole, Suki stops having time to visit. The last time he goes to visit she hugs him long and hard before pulling back and he recognizing the look on her face – it’s been staring back at him every time he looks in the mirror for the past month. They laugh a lot that night, and cry a little. When he leaves he can’t shake the feeling that she might be the best thing that’s ever been his. Then he gets back to the city, is met by Katara’s sympathetic face, his favorite food, a night of stories from Aang, and an awkward hug from Toph that’s actually really nice, how did you guess?
Because I know you, stupid. He has his friends, his favorite people, everything is going to be just fine.
Aang and Katara get married the next year, a move that feels both way too early and years late, but is good either way. He doesn’t-not cry when Katara walks down the aisle, Aang audibly sniffles when she takes his hands at the front of the room, the whole world celebrates, and he spends the night with Toph. Somewhere between her goading someone at their table to take a seventh shot and the way she grasped his hands when he asks her to dance he realizes this still short, still acerbic, startlingly beautiful girl might be his best friend in the entire world. Katara is his favorite sister, Aang is officially his younger brother, and Toph just makes his whole life better.
At the end of the night, after Katara and Aang make their escape, once Mai and Zuko wave goodbye, totally drunk Toph pulls his arm around her shoulders and as he takes her home he realizes she smells like flowers. He sleeps on her couch and she doesn’t get out of bed the next day so they spend their post-wedding hangover in compatible silence just like they’ve always been able to do, and somehow, in her tiny apartment with a pounding headache and her head tucked under his chin, he’s content.
So yeah. That’s how it starts.