Work Text:
To Live
The steady humming of the metal structure surrounding Sokka didn’t help the slightest to slow down his still racing heart. If anything, the weirdly rhythmical sound only reminded him all the more of the gondola’s whirring noises as it had carried them over the boiling water. Until it suddenly hadn’t.
Sokka slightly shook his head to throw his mind off this dark road of thoughts. At his side, Suki gave a low sigh. Sokka froze, eyes wide open and at the same time holding his breath. Accidentally waking her up was the last thing he wanted to do now. She’d been through so much over the past months. And, unlike him or anybody else from their group, she had been through it all alone. She deserved her rest.
Suki didn’t wake up. Instead, she just turned around, wrapping herself into the blanket and tucking it off Sokka’s body in the process. Immediately, cold air seemed to swirl around his entire body. For a second, Sokka froze, torn between the urge to steal back some of the blanket for warmth and get up and moving to let his body fight the cold.
Then, the cold suddenly reminded him of the freezing cold gush of air that had greeted him when he’d paid Zuko a visit in the cooler. The memory of yet another seemingly destroyed hope while they’d tried to plan an escape gave Sokka the last push he needed to swing his legs out of bed and stuck his feet into the boots waiting beside it. He didn’t need long to get dressed, with the rough outer coat being the only piece of clothing he’d discarded in the first place. Being attacked or crashing and first having to worry about getting dressed before he was able to fight? Nope, thanks!
The nerve-wracking humming of the metal machinery didn’t Decrease when Sokka stepped out into the hallway that cut through the airship’s belly in a straight line from front to back. But at least, it was now interrupted by his steps as he walked down the hallway, solely focusing on the sounds he couldn’t control and the ones he could by now and again missing a step purposefully or jumping a little.
Suddenly, a shadow materialized in the dark hallway in front of him.
Reflexively, Sokka punched.
A warm -- too warm -- hand clasped around his wrist, and the shadow sidestepped Sokka’s fist with a startled yelp.
“What the fuck, Sokka?!”
Zuko was staring at him wide-eyed, Yue’s light shining on his pale skin through the window he had been leaning against.
Oops.
“Man, I’m sorry, Zuko. I just didn’t expect anybody to be up. Other than whoever is running this air balloon, obviously, and I wouldn’t want to meet them out here, because that would mean that nobody was flying this thing right now and that’s, well…” Sokka trailed off as Zuko released his wrist with an annoyed huff.
Zuko stepped back up to the small window he had been standing at earlier and focused his gaze out into the dark night. Sokka doubted there was anything to see outside.
“What are you doing up? Suki didn’t kick you out, did she?”
Zuko glanced at him from the corner of his eyes, and Sokka wished for a sliver of more light so that he could read Zuko’s face. Usually, you could read the guy’s feelings off his face like the menu in a noble restaurant. But telling whether he was joking, sarcastic, or serious from his voice alone was different. So assuming him being serious seemed like the safest road.
“Nah, I just couldn’t fall asleep yet. You know how it is, being all wired after a battle. Didn’t want to wake her up with all this energy.” Sokka tried for a confident thump on his chest, but he knew he probably wasn’t fooling anybody. Zuko’s slightly raised eyebrow confirmed this, but the (newly?) banished prince didn’t comment. Instead, he just gave an agreeing nod.
Sokka was suddenly struck by how deep the shadows under Zuko’s eyes seemed, and he hoped it had more to do with the guy’s crazily pale skin rather than his actual exhaustion. Anyway, he deserved his rest just as much as Suki did. Best to just bid a good night and find a quiet spot to hide and…not think.
“Is she really the moon?”
Zuko’s question caught Sokka so much off guard that it took him a few heartbeats to understand what he was talking about. Mercifully, it didn’t feel like a hunting knife was slicing open his chest anymore. These moments had, thankfully, gotten rarer lately.
Sokka cleared his throat and joined Zuko at the window to look out into the night. There, just behind a grey band of clouds that were barely distinguishable from the black void, Yue was showing a delicate shimmer of her light.
“Yes, she is.”
Zuko only gave a slight nod, keeping his eyes turned towards the night sky.
Why were they talking about Sokka’s dead-turned-goddess ex-girlfriend, after they’d just mentioned his new and current girlfriend and after Zuko’s (ex?) girlfriend had saved them from Azula…oh, oh no!
“Zuko, Mai’s going to--”
“Don’t!”
There was no real heat in Zuko’s voice, and maybe it was the absence of his usual bite or the way his voice sounded pressed, but Sokka heard the clear warning and shut up immediately.
Zuko shook his head, his loose hair swishing like curtains in front of his face for a moment before he straightened and turned around towards a door behind them.
“Do you want to…I don’t know. Come in? It’s more….” Zuko made some helpless gestures towards the door, and Sokka held back a snort. It was fascinating and strangely sad at the same time. But Sokka knew what Zuko tried to say anyway and pointed at the door himself with a mock bow.
“After you.”
Zuko muttered something Sokka couldn’t understand and then stepped inside the room, holding the door open for Sokka to follow.
Like Suki and Sokka, Zuko seemed to have opted for one of the numerous small workers’ cabins rather than the more noble ones, which were located in the top floors and had been, without a doubt, habituated by Azula, Mai and Ty Lee. So now, instead of having luxurious pillows and soft duvets to sit on, the two boys awkwardly cramped themselves onto the narrow single bed, the cold metal frame digging into the back of Sokka’s knees.
He didn’t mind.
After hanging in the air over a literal boiling lake for minutes, Sokka was more than welcoming towards anything cold.
“Your plan worked. We made it out of there, I mean.”
Sokka stretched his arms and pondered whether he wanted to share his down dragging thoughts or not. Zuko, however, interpreted his silence in his own, overdramatic way.
“I don’t want to say that I doubted your plan would work! It was just--”
“Crazily close to a boiling death? Super close to being grilled by your sister? More than a miracle that we’re still alive?”
Sokka let out a heavy breath. He hadn’t meant to sound quite as dark, but those were the thought that had kept him up the past hours and the reason why he had wandered into the sir ship’s hallways in the first place.
“Yes, exactly that. I thank you for saving my life, Sokka.”
Usually, the strange formality and seriousness in Zuko’s tone would have made Sokka tease him, but now it didn’t amuse him in the slightest. On the contrary, the reminder was enough to make Sokka’s heart leap out of his chest all over again.
It had been an absurd moment when Zuko had taken that running leap from the platform towards the quickly moving gondola, somehow absolutely confident that Sokka would catch him. And Sokka had. But only because he’d reacted without thinking, had responded before he had even had the chance to process what was happening. Sokka couldn’t think about the alternative.
“Seriously, that was so much more pure luck than me doing anything, jerkbender! You could have just as easily been boiled to a royal soup! What were you thinking anyway?!”
Zuko looked at him, seemingly unsure what exactly Sokka was trying to say.”
“That wasn’t so bad. I have come way closer to death many times before. It really wasn’t that big of a deal. For me, I mean. Not that you haven’t been… uhm… I understand that it might be scary to others, but--”
Sokka couldn’t listen to this anymore.
“It really shouldn’t matter how many times you almost die; you should always be scared of it the same!”
But he hadn’t been that scared many times before, had he? Ironically, Zuko’s own attempts to catch Aang came to his mind first. Those surely never had felt as terrifying as their prison break just had. Maybe Sokka had always realized that Zuko wasn’t pure evil and cunning in the back of his mind. Unlike his sister.
“Anyway, thank you for blocking all of your sister’s crazy blue fire. My space sword is amazing and all, but, well, I don’t think that it would have exactly worked against her.”
It was only now that Sokka realized how naturally he had laid his life in Zuko’s hands that moment and hadn’t even acknowledged this dependency until now.
Because no matter how great a swordsman he’d become, Azula was a better firebender, and the gondola’s rooftop had offered so little room to dodge. Sokka could remember at least three heart-stopping moments where he just knew that if Zuko’s fire wouldn’t stop Azula’s in time, then Sokka would fall into the cooking lake underneath them, which was waiting to devour his flesh in a matter of seconds.
“Of course, we’re on the same team now. I mean, of course, I would help you.” Zuko’s sentence was stilted, though, as if he was looking for words and disregarding those he actually wanted to say.
“On team Avatar, we’re friends first and foremost, jerkbender.”
A few weeks ago, it would have only occurred to Sokka as a suicide plan, but now he laid an arm around Zuko’s shoulders and pulled him into a quick side hug without even thinking about it. It was as much a thank you as Sokka seeking comfort.
His shoulder smarted slightly at the movement, and Sokka pressed his feet against the floor, forcing his brain to remember that there was solid ground under him and not the boiling water because that had probably been the closest call for him ever. The moment when those Fire Nation idiots had wrenched a pole into the gears and brought the gondola to such a sudden halt that Sokka had found himself sliding over the roof like on a piece of floating ice back at home. At that moment, he had known that would be the end; no icy water though but boiling.
“Sure, and, in the end, it had been Mai,” and, damn him, he had wanted to distract Zuko from her, not bring her up again, “and pure luck.”
And that had been the real heart-wrenching thing. The moment they’d started to saw at the cords holding up the gondola. They’d suddenly gone from fighting with their weapons, bending and own strength to being so absolutely defenceless and incapable of changing and stopping what was going on. It almost felt like when they’d burst into the supposed bunker on the Day of Black Sun to find not the Fire Lord but Azula waiting for them.
The knowledge of everything suddenly depending on pure luck was one of the worst feelings Sokka had ever experienced.
Zuko had gone rigid under Sokka’s half-hug, posture straight and body tout. And yet, he didn’t lean away or make any attempt to fry him, so Sokka booked it as another win for the day. Zuko, he’d realized over the past weeks, was much like a young polar bear-dog. They would bark and grumble and occasionally snap at your fingers when you petted them, but, at the end of the day, they craved any attention and affection they’d get. They simply struggled to take it.
So, Sokka drew Zuko in just a little closer.
“She’s going to be okay. Mai is so strong. She’s going to be okay.”
Zuko’s words were clearly meant to reassure himself. Yet he spoke them with such conviction, the same way he’d proclaim that he was going to take the Avatar that Sokka believed him without a doubt.
As Zuko gradually relaxed, sinking further against Sokka’s side, Sokka found himself slipping into a dreamless, restful sleep.
Fear was a terrible feeling. Yet, it was a small price to pay if it meant they all were to live.
And they lived.