Archive of Our Own ^beta

The second that Sokka gets over himself and realizes that it’s actually pretty cool that Suki can kick his ass so easily, he wishes that she could have been his soul-sharer. It makes sense! They’re both warriors, she’s cute, he’s handsome… What else is there to consider?

There’s definitely more to consider; he just doesn’t want to think about it. He doesn’t want to think about a lot of things nowadays, particularly the fact that Aang is a major target and that traveling with him puts not just Sokka, but Katara in the crossfires as well. He definitely doesn’t want to think about who, exactly, is chasing them.

If only he could stay on this island forever, where everyone seems happy and content. The war doesn’t seem to have touched them. The men are here. The women and children laugh loudly, like there’s no chance that their joy might bring despair down upon their heads like an avalanche. Their beloved Kyoshi Warriors know how to fight, sure, but it’s obvious from their attitudes–Sokka’s hesitant to call it arrogance when they really are very good–that they’ve never actually had to fight people who posed a real threat to them.

At the moment, Sokka is taking a deep breath to soak up that exact atmosphere. The air itself feels looser here, less burdened by grief. Sometimes he inhales too deeply and is struck by the desire to lay down, curl up like a burrowing animal, and simply go to sleep until he can wake up in a world totally at peace. It’s a ridiculous thought, but he thinks that he’s entitled to a passing fantasy; he knows, deep down, that by traveling with the Avatar he has ensured that it will be a long time before he gets to properly rest again.

Sokka looks down at the leather bracers, which keep the fabric of the uniform pressed tightly against his skin and out of the way during combat. They’re a familiar sort of sensation, not unlike his own armbands. On the top of them, gleaming in the light when he rotates his arm, is a small circular insignia. Gold, Suki had said it was. Representative of the honor of the warrior’s heart.

So Zuko’s eyes are gold. Sokka had been right with that assumption.

They’ve been training for a few hours already. It’s nearing dinnertime, and Sokka’s exhausted. Suki’s really put him through the wringer. He embraces the sweat, though, and the soreness that will doubtlessly follow; anything he can do to better himself so that he can keep Katara and Aang safe, he’ll do gladly. Even if it means getting his butt kicked while wearing a dress.

“You look lost in your own head,” Suki remarks. “Don’t tell me that you’re going to quit now; we’ve barely started.”

“Quit?” Sokka scoffs, but he still can’t peel his eyes from the insignia. “No, I’m not going to quit. I’m just…” He looks over at her, heart pounding in his chest. She looks trustworthy. She hasn’t really interacted with Katara at all aside from when she captured them; Sokka hardly thinks she’d go blabbing about this, and especially not to her. “I’m curious.”

Suki closes her fans and shoves them into her sash. “What about?”

Sokka moves a hand, points to the fabric above the dark leather bracer. “This is… green?”

“Yes.” Suki stares at him for a while like she’s not sure what to make of him. Her piercing stare causes Sokka’s stomach to flip. “Yes, that’s green.”

“Right. And the insignia is gold. And the paint on my eyes is red.”

“Yes,” she says again. She licks her lips, eyes dark as if she’s internally debating something, and then speaks again. “You… have a soul-sharer? You’ve found them? Here?”

“No,” Sokka says. “Yes. Well–” He exhales sharply and tries again, using actual sentences this time. “I do have a soul-sharer. I have found them. They’re not on the island. Katara doesn’t know, and neither does Aang. I want to keep it that way. But I… I want to know the colors. I want to know what I’m seeing now that I can see it.”

“Why…” Suki shakes her head. “Sorry. That’s probably pretty personal.”

“No, I understand. People are usually ecstatic to find their soul-sharers. That’s part of why I’m asking you; you seem trustworthy, and I don’t think we’ll be crossing paths again for a while after I leave, if ever again.”

“That’s true,” she agrees. “My place is with my people.”

Sokka doesn’t really know what to say to that, so he says nothing at all.

“Come on.” She sits down on the floor and waves him closer. He follows suit, lowering himself to his knees within arm’s reach of her. “I’ll teach you about the colors.”

“Thank you.” He isn’t sure why he’s shocked; she didn’t have a reason not to do it.

“Of course. If you don’t mind me asking…” She hesitates, and looks up at him from beneath red-painted lids. “Who is your soul-sharer?”

He shakes his head. “I’d rather not talk about it.”

“Alright. I’m sorry for asking.”

“No, it’s alright.”

“So,” Suki says, and stops. She pinches her tongue between her lips, eyes focused on the floor, before looking up at him a little sheepishly. “Sorry, I’ve never… Well, soul-sharers usually learn the colors together, don’t they? I’ve never taught someone one on one like this.”

“If you don’t want to–”

“No,” Suki rushes to assure him. “Just don’t expect me to be good at this, is all. I mean, I know I can kick your butt–” The effort to lighten the mood does get him to smile, admittedly. “–but that doesn’t mean that I’m good at everything.”

“I’ll take anything,” Sokka says, and means it.

She starts pretty small. Her hair is brown. The floor is brown. The walls are, too, and the roof–the building is made out of wood, so it’s brown. She does admit that wood can be all different kinds of brown, and that it can be painted, so not everything wooden is inherently brown. Like its innards, the outside of trees are mostly brown, except for when they’re white or red.

“We have some white ones on the island,” she says.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’ve seen them. I thought they were sick. They’re supposed to look like that?”

Suki laughs. “Yes, they are.”

She tells him again that the fabric that makes up the majority of the Kyoshi Warriors’ uniforms is green. She tells him that the leather that makes up the bracer is black. The majority of her facepaint is white, but her lips and eyelids are red. The sky outside is blue, currently, but last night it was mostly orange. The grass is green. The needles on the trees are green, too.

They get back to training. Sokka needs a little while to get everything straight in his head, to remember what’s what. Nobody had warned him about the violence of shades, how terribly many there are. It sounds absurd to him that the sea and the sky could technically be the same color, or the trees and Suki’s hair. They’re not the same at all.

Sokka is, he will admit, a little bit insufferable when he finally beats Suki. It’s just that she’s so talented and cool, and the thought that he could be her equal is exhilarating.

“I got you! Admit I got you!”

Suki doesn’t take it gracefully. Sokka is too excited to care.

Eventually they come to a stop, and Sokka has the feeling that this is the end of their day. He can’t be too disappointed; they’ve been at it for hours, and he’s admittedly pretty winded. He’d never admit that to Suki, of course, who looks as fresh as ever even if her hair is no longer perfect, but he can quietly admit relief to himself. It’s just that he doesn’t have much training, is all. He was left all alone at the South Pole, doing his best with children and sharp sticks.

“Not bad,” Suki says, and the pride in her voice makes Sokka’s whole chest warm.

The mayor appears in the doorframe with such fervor that he almost falls over into the training room. His eyes are wide, his face pale. The warmth trickles from Sokka’s chest like it was never there at all, sliding down into his stomach where it condenses into a cold, hard ball.

“Firebenders have landed on our shores! Girls, come quickly!”

He starts to protest, but really, what does it matter? The mayor’s out of earshot already anyway, and there’s nothing wrong with being a girl.

Zuko himself leads the charge, sitting atop some horrible gray creature with fearsome-looking horns. There are other soldiers too, all of them on those same horrible beasts, but Sokka can’t take his eyes off of Zuko as Suki races fearlessly towards him. She evades two fire blasts, only to be thrown aside by the creature’s tail.

Sokka watches with a pit in his stomach as Zuko turns to stare down his angry, ugly nose at where Suki is trying to pick herself up off of the ground. She’s struggling, just a little–that hit was hard, and Sokka wouldn’t be surprised if she had a broken rib or two. Zuko doesn’t care. He raises his hand to hit her while she’s down–to throw fire at her before she can even get back on her feet–and Sokka just isn’t having that. Not today. Not on his watch.

He throws himself forward, using the fan just like Suki taught him to throw the fire away from them both. He’s so, so horribly angry. He wants to fight Zuko. He wants to knock Zuko off of that ugly creature and take him on hand to hand, but he doesn't get the chance before another Kyoshi Warrior is knocking Zuko from his saddle and onto the dusty ground. Sokka’s only a little disappointed by this.

“I guess training’s over,” he mutters, rushing forward to where Zuko lays. Sokka’s not going to let him get away.

Zuko turns out to be infuriatingly competent. There are three of them around Zuko when he pries his eyes open, Sokka and Suki and a warrior whose name Sokka doesn’t know, and he takes care of two of them almost immediately. The warrior that Sokka doesn't know gets thrown through a door and into a house; Suki gets thrown against a nearby pole and sinks to the ground at the base of it, groaning. She looks furious, and ashamed, and Sokka understands more than he’d like.

Sokka has to jump over a wave of fire that’s cast at his feet, but no sooner has he landed than Zuko is sweeping his feet out from under him. Sokka hits the ground hard enough that the breath is knocked from him, and he can’t do anything but watch as Zuko stalks to the center of the street.

He doesn’t even look down at Sokka as he passes him, and it’s then that Sokka realizes that Zuko doesn’t know who he is. The Kyoshi Warrior makeup and uniform have made him entirely invisible to his evil soul-sharer. He doesn’t know how to feel about that. Shouldn’t Zuko know that it’s him just by the force of his hatred? Shouldn’t Zuko know, innately, that Sokka’s nearby? Apparently not.

“Nice try, Avatar!” Zuko shouts. “But these little girls can’t save you.”

Rude.

What happens next is really quite a lot of chaos. There are people screaming, and running, and buildings on fire. Sokka grits his teeth around the familiarity of things to grind it to dust; he has no time for sharp-edged memories, for the grief he’s buried. Now is the time for fighting. Now is the time to remember the living, and keep them that way. Still, the way that blazing fire licks hungrily over rooftops–Suki never taught him that color, but the sky was orange last night and so he thinks he’s justified in naming fire the same–causes his skin to ripple, his chest to quake, his saliva to turn bitter in his mouth.

They do their best, but they also come to the inevitable conclusion that Aang has to leave in order to keep the island safe. That is to say that Sokka also needs to leave. He gives himself a moment, crouched out of sight behind a house on the main drag, his chest heaving. Fighting is exhausting . He hates it.

“There’s no time to say goodbye,” Suki says.

“What about “I’m sorry?”” he admits, forcing the words from his throat. Although he hates apologizing, hates indirectly admitting that he was wrong enough for an apology to be required, it’s what Suki deserves. She’s been so, so kind to him. Kinder than she needed to be. “And thank you.”

She leans a little away from him, eyes widening. “For what?”

“I treated you like a girl, when I should have treated you like a warrior. And you helped me anyway. With–With more than one thing.”

“Oh, please,” she says, turning her face away. “You don’t have to thank me for that. But I’ll have you know that I can be a girl and a warrior.”

Before Sokka can think of a response to that, Suki has turned back towards him and leaned forward to press a quick, fleeting kiss to his cheek. He’s achingly aware of the way that his breath catches in his throat, of the fire-like heat that licks across his cheeks. He’s never… He’s been kissed before, of course. He knows the feel of his grandmother’s lips on his forehead, Katara’s on his cheek, his mother’s phantom love on that pale thumb scar. But he’s never been kissed like this, and it’s more pleasant than he’d expected.

Before she stands and turns away, before she throws herself back into the thick of things so that Aang can make his way safely off of her burning island, she reaches out towards his cheek with a gloved hand. One gentle thumb brushes over the hottest part; Sokka can’t do anything more than blink uselessly at her.

“Pink,” she whispers, smiling.

He knows that time is of the essence; he’s not stupid. But still, he takes a moment after she’s left to bring a shaky hand up to the cheek she’d touched. He can feel the warmth, still, both natural and imagined. Pink. He knows the name of that color, and although he still doesn’t know the hue of it, he knows how it feels on his cheeks. How toasty and wonderful.

Pink, he reflects, might just be his favorite color.

Sokka settles down comfortably and then lets out a long, weary sigh before he can bring himself to speak.

“So, tell me, what’s my future got in store?”

The weird psychic lady smiles at him and holds out her hand. “Let me see, dear one.”

Sokka extends his hand. He blinks at the top of her head, a little concerned, when she grabs his wrist with startling force and yanks him closer to her. One finger traces delicately over the lines of his palm, and then she peers curiously up at his face. He’s sure that his skepticism is painted clearly across it, but he can’t bring himself to force passive curiosity. Honestly, he doesn't even know why he’s doing this.

“Oh,” she says. “You’ve already met your soul-sharer.”

A tremor ripples up Sokka’s back, a pit forming in his stomach. How did she know? Did the way that he peered around her waiting room give him away? He has to figure it out so that he can avoid doing it again; he can’t have Katara or Aang figuring out that he can see colors.

“Yes, you two have met,” she reaffirms, and Sokka narrows his eyes at her. No doubt she’d been bluffing, and his reaction gave it away. Damned “psychics” and their tricks. “But your union has not been easy, and it will not be easy in the near future. Much effort and many trials will be needed before you two can fully realize your potential and understand the meaning of your connection.”

“And what tells you that?” Sokka asks flatly, entirely unimpressed. There’s no way that any amount of time or trials will convince him that Zuko is anything other than a mistake.

“Just look at the way that these two lines intersect!” she enthuses, drawing her finger over a specific intersection in the center of his palm.

“Uh huh,” he says, unimpressed. “And what else do the creases in my palm tell you?”

She bends further over his hand until she’s all but sniffing his palm. Surely, at this distance, her eyes must be crossed in order for her to see anything at all. The mental image is almost enough to make him laugh, but he manages to hold it in through an immense display of willpower.

“You will die young, in the grand scheme of things,” the fortuneteller says, which is not what anyone wants to hear. He scowls down at the top of her head, at her fancy hair and the floral scent drifting up from it. “But you will only do so after having lived a long and rich life. The legacy that you leave behind will be indubitable.” 

There’s a war on. Sokka has been fighting his whole life, even before he knew what the word war meant. It’s not hard to infer that the war will eventually kill him, and he supposes that she thinks she’s doing him a favor by implying that his fight will be a memorable one. Sokka knows better. War is war, and death is death, and no final act is truly more glorious than any other. He’s not foolish enough to believe that.

“My soul-sharer,” he asks, just for fun. “Do you know which nation she’s from?”

She glances up at him, eyes twinkling. “Dear boy, shouldn’t you know better than anyone else where he’s from?”

The blooming warmth of a joke gutters and dies as quickly and effectively as a candle dropped into the entire ocean. He feels his face fall, crimp into something suspicious and accusing. How could she possibly know that Sokka’s soul-sharer is a boy? He hasn’t–It’s not as if he’s said anything. He hasn’t even implied anything. The most he’s implied is that he has a soul-sharer, but it’s an enormous leap from that to his soul-sharer being of the same sex.

“I think we’re done here,” he says as he pushes himself to his feet.

The fortunteller does not protest when his hand is ripped from her, as if she’d expected this. Of course she has, with an implication like that. And if there had been any doubts before, he’s certainly confirmed them now. Oh, he hates this. Hates her. Hates this entire town and their phony, uncertain belief system.

“So what’d she say?” Katara asks him as he storms from her room of predictions and towards the door.

“Nothing,” he spits. “Just a bunch of nonsense.”

Yue is undoubtedly the prettiest girl on the whole planet. There’s no question. How can there be? It’s obvious to anyone with eyes: the high plane of her cheekbones, the soft glitter of her dazzlingly blue eyes, the luster of her long, white hair. Her laugh is enough to stop him in his tracks, rooting his feet to the ground. Her smile makes his heart skip a beat in his chest, and when it’s directed at him the effect is ten times more potent.

He can’t even be annoyed that Katara teases him relentlessly about his crush on her, although he’d protest the word crush. Surely this is something bigger, wilder, deeper than a crush. Surely this is love.

The spirits screwed up massively by pairing him with Zuko, he’s completely certain.

Under weak northern sun, strange to feel again after weeks in more temperate parts of the world, Sokka gathers the nerves to ask her if her betrothed–and spirits, doesn’t Sokka feel foolish to be so enamored with someone who’s betrothed –is her soul-sharer, if she has one at all. He doesn’t know what he expects the answer to be; he doesn’t know what he wants from her.

“No,” Yue says. “He’s not my soul-sharer.” She glances at him out of the corner of her eyes, and he pretends not to notice. They’re standing side-by-side on a bridge. It’s a perfectly normal, cordial interaction. She pulls in a long, slow, cautious breath and releases it in a pale white cloud. “When I was born, I was very weak. I did not cry, and my eyes remained closed, as if I were asleep. To save my life, my parents brought me to the most sacred space in the city and asked the spirits to bless me so that my life might be saved.”

He turns to face her more directly, deeply interested. Screw soul-sharers; this is much more fascinating. “And they did?”

Yue reaches up to brush a gloved hand against her striking white hair. “They did. If I ever had a soul-sharer, I believe that our connection was… altered.”

Sokka’s heart trips painfully in his chest. “Altered? How?”

“I can see blue,” Yue says, “but it’s the only color that I can see.”

“Oh, wow,” Sokka says. “I’ve never heard of anything like that.”

“Me neither.”

“Do you ever wonder?” Sokka can’t help but ask, each word stinging his tongue. “If you have a soul-sharer? Or had one, anyway.”

“Oftentimes, yes. I wonder what would happen if I were to meet them, should that ever come to pass; I meet so few new people.” With these last words, she tilts her face just far enough to the side so that she can stare directly at him. He feels a blush crawling over his cheeks, vivid pink heat. Her eyes are such a beautiful blue. “Do you have one? A soul-sharer?”

The heat flickers and dies. He twists away from her to stare at the way that the wall rises to obscure the horizon–to create a false new one, unnatural. “Yes,” he admits softly. “We’ve met, too. But we both feel like the spirits made a mistake in pairing us together.”

“Why’s that?”

Sokka opens his mouth, but the words are slow to come. He doesn’t want to voice them; if he does that, then it’s real. If he does that, then he has no choice but to accept that he’s bound to a boy born with bloody hands. There’ll be no more hiding from it.

Just as Yue starts to retract her question, Sokka manages to speak. “It’s–He’s… He came to my home with an entire naval ship. He attacked us–attacked me.”

He may not be able to say the name, but he can talk around it.

“Prince Zuko?” Yue questions gently. The bridge is empty, completely abandoned, but Sokka still casts paranoid glances at the nearby streets. His hands are trembling where they’re resting on the bridge’s parapet.

“Yeah,” he rasps. “Him.”

“Oh,” Yue says.

She turns her eyes to the distant wall, clearly deep in thought. Sokka watches her, stomach in his throat. Surely she’ll want nothing to do with him, now that she knows. Surely she’ll understand what Zuko means for him. Surely she’ll make every necessary connection, because she’s smart like that, and she’ll–

“I think…” she begins, slow and deliberate with her choice of words. Sokka can’t look at her anymore; he drags his eyes to the churning water below them and wonders if he’d be better off simply pitching himself forward into their depths. Yue’s criticism will be just as effective. “I think that if the spirits have seen fit to join you with Prince Zuko, then he cannot be as bad as he seems.”

Sokka whips his head around to stare uncomprehendingly at her. His neck twangs with the movement; he ignores it. “What?”

She meets his confusion head-on, her eyes steady. “You’re a good person, Sokka. I haven’t known you for very long, but I know that much. The spirits would never tie you to someone truly evil, or beyond redemption. That would be cruel.”

“Sometimes spirits are,” he says.

The words tumble thick from his throat, nearly incomprehensible. His eyes are burning; his chest feels cleaved in two. He’d been braced for criticism, for the words he’s smothered in his own mind to come pouring from Yue’s soft lips. Her positivity has come for his ankles; he’s on the ground, gasping for air, the sky whirling above him. You can’t prepare for something inconceivable. He’d know.

She shakes her head, gentle. Her eyes don’t stray from his. “Not when it comes to these matters.”

He takes a long, deep breath and tries to get himself under control. His hands are still shaking; he feels flayed raw beneath her piercing blue gaze. “You have a remarkable amount of faith in someone you’ve never met.”

She shakes her head again, smiling this time. “No, Sokka. I have faith in you.”

“Let it go, now!”

The old firebender who follows Zuko around like an isopuppy is quite possibly the last person Sokka would have expected to come to their defense in the Spirit Oasis. And yet, here he is; he’s glaring very determinedly at Zhao, hands raised as if he’s about to fight the guy. Is that even legal? There has to be some sort of code against military infighting, Sokka’s sure, especially among two people of such high rank.

He’s barely thankful for the help; there’s still fierce, burning anger smoldering in his chest at the fact that Zuko is here at the North Pole. How did he get into the city before anyone else? How did he get to Katara and Aang? And how dare he hurt Katara, of all people. How dare he bring his firebending with him and use it against Sokka’s little sister. It makes Sokka want to grab him by the neck and shake and shake and shake and shake until color bleeds from the world, until he knows for sure that Zuko can never again endanger anyone that Sokka cares about.

Zhao relents in the face of General Iroh’s threat and stoops, practically fuming with rage, to place Tui back in the water. Silver light sweeps over the Oasis with the gentle, soothing sensation of a mother pressing her hand to a child’s burning forehead. Sokka swears he can almost feel his mother’s knuckles, and releases a trembling breath at the same that Yue, behind him, sighs in relief. Her grip on him–one hand on his shoulder, the other on his bicep–loosens as they watch Zhao back down in the face of General Iroh’s threat.

Their relief doesn’t last. Almost before Sokka can process it, Zhao is lashing out at the oasis with a bellow of rage. Brilliant hatred spills from his palms to wash over the water and the fish within it, so bright and powerful that General Iroh recoils from it. Sokka’s skin prickles, his stomach clenching painfully as all the air vanishes from his lungs. Yue gasps jaggedly in his ear, clutching at him with such horror that he almost falls over.

It’s the last bit of color Sokka sees, that fire. In the next moment the world goes dark, all the color pulled from it in less time than it takes to blink. It’s like an inverse explosion, the echo of something that Sokka has experienced before. Nothing is left but a bleak canvas of black, white, and gray, and Sokka feels his stomach lurch and drop like the ground itself has been ripped out from beneath his feet to send him into freefall.

Zuko.

Where’s–Where is he? Oh, Tui and La, where is he?

Sokka has never really considered what it would mean for Zuko to die. Mistake or no, Sokka knows the sharp, cold thing that pricks at his stomach and his lungs. Panic. He’s worried about Zuko, despite everything, because they’re linked. They are a part of each other’s eyes and soul, too tightly wound to be reasonably separated. And yet suddenly, that separation has occurred. A yank, a quick severing, and Sokka’s left blinking rapidly in an effort to readjust to what was once his entire life.

He feels so cold, in a world without color. Did he always?

A blink, and he’s back in the moment. On his feet, grass under his boots. Yue is tucked behind him, and before him chaos unravels; the water is not responding, not to Katara or Aang. Fire, however, comes easily to the fingers of the soldiers attacking them.

The fire looks just the same as before, bright splashes against a lifeless background. Sokka can’t make any sense of it. Is the color gone, or isn’t it? Where’s Zuko? What the fuck is going on?

“The moon,” Yue gasps, sounding grieved.

Sokka risks a glance upwards, only to find that the moon is… gone. It’s not red, like it was before, or white. It’s simply not there at all.

“What the…”

General Iroh, like a one-man army, has thrown himself at the invading firebenders with a fury unlike anything Sokka has ever seen. Has he been capable of this the entire time? Has he been holding back in his interactions with them? They’ve never seen much of the man, and Sokka truthfully doesn’t think that the general has ever actually bended at any of them. For a brief moment, Sokka is blindingly grateful that he doesn’t seem invested in Zuko’s relentless pursuit of them.

And then Zhao and his soldiers are gone, and Iroh remains, and the moon is still gone from the sky. All of them carefully, reluctantly creep towards the oasis. They don’t want to look; they know what they’re going to find.

Sokka will be the first to admit that he’s never been a very spiritual person, which he’s fully aware is ironic. What he means is not that he doesn’t believe that the spirits exist, because that would be completely delusional of him. He spent the first fifteen years of his life half-blind, his sister is the last southern waterbender, he’s literally been to the spirit world. No, he believes that they exist. But he’s never put much faith in them. He’s never thought that they were all-powerful, or all-knowing, or even all that kind. After all, if they were so powerful then why would they allow a century of war, and loss, and grief?

He’s never been reverent or worshipful, but looking down on the singed corpse of the moon spirit makes him want to throw up. His entire body is wracked by a horrible, bone-deep chill that screams wrong, wrong, wrong. Sokka has spent a thousand childhood nights staring upwards at the pale face of the moon, admiring its curvature and the uneven surface of its face. Now he’s staring down at its glimmering corpse.

“There’s no hope now,” Yue says. Her voice is tight with imminent tears, the grief pouring off of her in waves so strong that Sokka’s own throat closes up in sympathy. “It’s over.”

“No, it’s not over,” Aang says, his voice multi-layered in that big, terrifying way that still sends shivers down his spine. There are a hundred previous lifetimes in his voice, a hundred different griefs.

Sokka can barely look at him as he steps into the water and simply… vanishes into the glowing oasis. It’s not nearly deep enough to swallow him whole, and yet it does. But the glowing doesn't stop. It spreads, bright blue, outwards from the oasis in an enormous wave. They watch it draw itself up, lend itself form so that instead of a wave it’s an entire fish-like creature that stands as tall as the palace. And at its center hovers Aang, lost to La. Sokka wonders if he even knows what he’s doing.

General Iroh kneels and gently places Tui, who he had previously picked up, back into the oasis. There’s a shameful kind of grief in his face; he knows quite clearly that the blame for Zhao’s mistakes will fall on his shoulders as well. Fire stems from both of their palms equally, and General Iroh may not have dealt the deadly blow but he has helped to perpetuate this war. He has helped to bring them all to this point.

Sokka can’t bring himself to be angry anymore. He feels too empty for that, too scared and unmoored. He’s simply knelt by Yue’s side, all of them crowded around the edge of the oasis, with a hand on her shoulder a heart so heavy that it hurts.

“It’s too late,” Katara says. The shock rings clearly through her voice, as clear as if there were a full sun above them. “It’s dead.”

General Iroh looks over at Yue. His shoulders straighten, his eyes widen. “You have been touched by the Moon Spirit. Some of its life is in you.”

Sokka turns to Yue, noticing like a punch to the gut that while the world has bled into what was once familiar to him, her eyes are still blue. They’re almost glowing, like something within her is trying to fight its way out. He can only stare, enraptured, and remember a conversation on a bridge. Is this how Yue sees the rest of the world? Sees him? Despite the tragedy that’s just happened, he feels so lucky to see from her eyes for however brief a time.

“Yes, you’re right,” Yue says. “It gave me life.” She speaks like something has just occurred to her, and Sokka doesn’t like it one bit. Her eyes slide closed, and when they open they’re fixed on a far horizon that only she can see. There’s a determined set to her jaw. “Maybe I can give it back.”

“No! You don’t have to do that.” The words are out before Sokka can stop it, a blatant show of desperation. He moves to his feet as she does; her hand, in his, feels like a lifeline.

“It’s my duty, Sokka.” There’s a flat, dead inflection to her voice.

He can’t stop her. He knows this. And yet… “I won’t let you! Your father told me to protect you.”

“I have to do this.”

Her hands don’t waver as she holds them out over Tui’s seared body, which Iroh has at some point scooped from the pool. Sokka doesn’t remember him doing it. Tui’s tiny figure begins to glow with a milky, ethereal light, and if he weren’t sure that it would further endanger them all he’d reach forward and pull Yue away. Doesn’t she know what’s going to happen? How can she be okay with this?

The moment that the glow fades, Yue slumps sideways.

Sokka’s barely able to catch her in time, a startled, “No!” bursting forth from his throat as he lowers them both to the ground. Her body is completely limp against his, her head lolling on her neck. His fingers find no pulse in her neck, no life. “She’s gone.” Her face is drawn up into something too sorrowful to be peaceful, and it’s that little detail that has him hunching, grieved, over her body as if there’s anything left to protect her from. As if he hasn’t already failed. “She’s gone.”

He holds her like that, clutched tightly to his chest, until her body quite literally disappears. One moment she’s there, and in the next he’s hugging air. The shock of it startles his eyes open, and he watches Tui’s form begin to glow once more. In the light, General Iroh’s robes are a distinguishable–if faded–red. He leans forward to let the living Tui slip back into the oasis, where it rushes immediately to the center.

The oasis begins to glow yet again, and although it hurts Sokka can’t pull his eyes away. He watches the glow gather itself, drawing upwards from the center of the pond until it materializes, startlingly, into Yue. Sokka chokes on a pained gasp, acutely aware of everywhere her body had been pressed against his. His forearms, his thighs, his stomach. They all ache, like she’d left a bruise behind.

She’s dressed in some long, pale, shimmery dress that she could never actually wear here in the Agna Qel’a. It’s beautiful on her, though. It’s the same brilliant color as her hair, which floats around her almost as if she were underwater. Her sweet eyes fix directly on him, and he feels his heart skip a beat in his chest.

For a moment, he wants her to take him with her. He wants her to take him to the place where the spirits are, so maybe he won’t have to hurt anymore. He wants her to bring him to whichever spirits are responsible for soulmates, and to explain to them why and how they’ve made a mistake. Can’t they see that Sokka’s meant to be with Yue, not Zuko? They can’t just switch out one royal for another and expect it to work.

“Goodbye, Sokka,” she says, and he knows then that she won’t be bringing him with her. “I’ll always be with you.”

“Yue,” he breathes.

She swoops down towards him and places her hands on either side of his face. They’re light things, already phantom touches; he realizes that he can vaguely see the outline of the palace through her face. He fights to maintain eye contact with her, to pretend that she’s alive for just one more moment. One more moment, please.

“What I said to you on the bridge,” she tells him in a much quieter voice. “I still mean it.” And then her eyes drift up past his, to his hair, and she smiles as she lifts one hand to skim ghostly fingertips over it. “Brown is such a lovely color.”

He doesn’t get a chance to process that before she’s gone, faded into the air just like she did the first time. Sokka reaches for her, but is too slow. Always too slow, too late, too weak. He’s never been able to save anyone. For fuck’s sake, her father trusted him. How is Sokka supposed to return to him and tell him that his daughter, his only child, is dead? How is he supposed to survive the shame and the grief?

Above the palace, the moon hangs full and bright.

“Sokka,” Katara says.

He closes his eyes as if that will do any good against his little sister and her awful, horrible, no-good persistence. He says nothing. The sound of fabric dragging tells him that she’s scooted closer, and Sokka briefly contemplates diving off of Appa’s saddle just to get away from her.

“Sokka,” she repeats.

With a sinking stomach, he acknowledges that he has no way out of this except, maybe, through. “Hmm?”

“You noticed,” she says.

Her voice is so quiet that the wind nearly rips it away before it can reach Sokka’s ears, but he won’t do her the disrespect of pretending that he can’t hear her. Aang, sitting on Appa’s furry head with his hands on the reins, is either genuinely oblivious to what’s going on behind him or just pretending to be. Sokka isn’t sure which one he’d prefer.

“Noticed what?”

“When… the world turned red, you noticed. You reacted.”

“Did I?” Sokka says. He can hear how pitched and unsure his voice is, and curses himself for it. He can’t bring himself to look at her, squinting instead at the horizon.

“You gasped.”

He can’t be having this conversation right now. Not with Yue’s last words to him still swimming in his ears, not with the implications wreaking havoc inside his head. It’s only been a couple days, and it still makes him sick and dizzy to think too much upon what she said.

Statement one: her reference to the bridge, and that she still stood by it.

How could she possibly believe that Zuko is anything other than totally, completely awful? He attacked Katara. He kidnapped Aang. In fact, it was his kidnapping of Aang that allowed Zhao to get into the oasis in the first place, which allowed him to kill Tui, which forced Yue to–

Zuko’s evil, is all he’s trying to say. And despite her intimate knowledge of that evilness, she still seems to think that the spirits didn’t make a mistake by pairing him with Sokka. She still thinks that there’s goodness within him, like they live in a fairy tale, but they don’t. The world is cold, and war is bloody, and the spirits are cruel. These are just facts of life, as immutable as the human need to breathe. Add one more thing to the list, now: that Zuko is a massive piece of shit, and Sokka is going to strangle the life out of him the next time they meet. He’ll take destiny into his own hands, quite literally, and then no one will ever have to worry about Zuko again.

Statement two: that brown is a beautiful color.

The implication that he, then, is beautiful to her, still brings a little bit of a blush to his cheeks now. A touch of pink. A phantom kiss. The other implication, that Yue’s soulmate is La , is much less comfortable to think about. If that’s so, was she always destined to give her life for the moon spirit? Sokka hates to think of anything as predetermined, but doesn’t know what else it could mean.

And on top of all of this, the pain and the grief, and the confusion, Katara wants to talk.

“It’s–You know, there was a lot going on–”

“You’ve met your soul-sharer.”

It’s not a question; she doesn’t frame it as one. More than anything, the words sound like an accusation. Sokka ducks his head to look down at his lap, rubbing his thumb over the edge of his boomerang. If he nicks his skin, red blood will well up in a dainty bead. Red, because Zuko’s alive. Red, because Yue isn’t.

He can’t lie to her, he realizes painfully. Not so blatantly. Not like this. Omitting and hiding information is one thing, but to tell his sister to her face that she’s making things up is something that he just can’t bring himself to do. There’s a fine line between protection and hurt; Sokka has found the razor-like edge and refuses to step over it.

“And if I have?" he asks. The word comes out sharper than he'd like, but he can't find it in himself to apologize. In any case, Katara only frowns at him. He's not looking at her, but her face scrunches up in his periphery.

"Why… Why wouldn't you tell me?" She reaches out to rest a hand over his wrist, comforting and searching. Sokka winces at the bare hurt in her voice. "It's wonderful that you've found her."

He doesn't know what to say to that. Is it right of him to let her think that his soul-sharer is a girl? It's the usual, of course, and there's never been much of a stigma in the south, but he's heard enough comments. He knows enough about the world to know that in this aspect, the Southern Water Tribe's lax views are not the norm. Besides, they've never… There's never been any sort of conversation about it. Just dropping that fact on her feels wrong.

“We have to train Aang,” he reminds her. “We have to defeat the Fire Lord. What does one person matter?”

Slowly, like a blooming flower, a plan unravels in Sokka’s mind. So Katara knows now that he has a soul-sharer. Whatever. War is war, and death is death, and he’s certain that by the end of this, only one of them will be left standing. Zuko will live, or Sokka will live; he can’t imagine a world in which they both emerge from all this horror. The problem will solve itself, given time. Katara will never have to know that Prince Zuko is the one who Sokka’s vision is tied to.

“When it’s over,” Sokka says. “When this is all over, I’ll go find them again. But until then… I have bigger priorities. I can’t let myself be distracted by soul-sharer nonsense.”

Katara frowns, still clearly displeased. “If you’re sure,” she says.

“I am.”

Instead of shifting away from him, Katara curls closer. She presses her arm against his, tilts her head sideways until it’s laid on his shoulder. They used to sit around fires like this, when they were small and the world seemed so big. Katara always crawled to him for protection. Their mother for comfort, their father for guidance, but him for safety. For so long, he’s been quietly proud of that.

He can’t help but feel like he’s failing her now; she had been alone when she fought Zuko in the oasis, and he knocked her unconscious. It would have been so simple, so easy for Zuko to kill her. She was totally defenseless. She was alone, and hurt, and Sokka wasn’t there to protect her. What right does he have to her cheek on his shoulder, her easy, steady trust? Shouldn’t she know by now that the world is just too big for him to shield her from?

“Can you tell me a little bit about her?”

“I don’t…” Sokka swallows and resists the urge to crawl out of his skin, to shift away from her. He wants to be far away; back in the Northern Water Tribe, back home, at the bottom of the ocean. Anywhere else. “We don’t know each other very well. It was a brief meeting.”

“But you know what she looks like.”

“I… yeah, I do.”

Katara’s head moves. He twists his own to the side and finds her neck craned so that she can peer up at him with dreamy blue eyes, like she’s expecting something sweet or romantic. Sokka has none of that. All he has is ash on his hands, blood on his tongue. All he has is violence and hurt. It makes him throb with shame to know that the only thing he can offer her is something bitter, and burnt, and stained by a million different offenses.

“Dark hair,” he says at last, after thinking hard about what innocuous facts he can give to her without raising suspicion. “Black, or maybe just a very dark brown. And, uh, eyes that–”

Zuko, dangling from the edge of his own boat above familiar polar waters. Zuko, the blazing village on Kyoshi Island reflected in his gaze. Zuko, glaring. Zuko, smirking with satisfaction on a riverbend. Zuko, fierce and determined under a big winter moon. Zuko, whose eyes Sokka has seen in every setting sun since the very first.

“Eyes that almost glow,” he says, ultimately.

Katara twists away, stares out at the distant, watery horizon. The sky is pale today, as if mourning. “She sounds beautiful.”

Gold makes his stomach twist. Red makes his heart race. Beautiful is not a word that he would ever use to describe Zuko.

He hums noncommittally and hopes that Katara takes it for confirmation.

“Do you… I could teach you the colors, if you’d like. I know it’s something that you’re supposed to do with your soulmate, but if you’re going to be away from her–” She’s speeding up now, tripping over her words in a slightly awkward rush. This isn’t how it usually goes, with her helping him. It’s unfamiliar territory. But she’s trying, and it means so much to him that he has to blink away sudden, stinging tears.

“Katara.”

“Hm?”

“I’d…” He closes his eyes, breathes in. The air is salty and cold. “I’d like that,” he whispers. “Thank you.”

“Of course,” she says. “So–Oh, where do I even start?”

“The ocean, maybe,” Sokka says. “There’s not much else to look at right now.”

“Oh, shut it. But yes, the ocean. It’s blue. There’s lots of different kinds of every color, different shades, and the ocean is a darker blue. The sky is blue too, but it’s a lighter blue. It can be all sorts of different colors at sunrise and sunset, pink and orange and red and purple…” She hauls their hands up and waves them through the air. “Our skin is brown. The wraps around your arms, those are white. That’s probably not much different than before.”

This goes on for a while. Sokka doesn’t learn anything new, but he drinks in every word as if he genuinely is learning the colors for the first time. Appa’s saddle, brown. Aang’s robes, yellow and orange. The vial of spirit water around Katara’s neck, several different shades of blue. He nods, and listens, and intermittently presses his mouth to the top of Katara’s head when it all gets to be too much.

He wishes, more than anything, that this were real. That he could have learned the colors for the first time so openly, without fear. That he could have done it with his sister at his side, instead of hiding in the Koyshi Warriors’ studio and exchanging color names like a secret. But when has he ever gotten what he wants, in this life? So he’ll settle for what he’s got. He’ll settle for being taught by Suki, by Katara. It could be worse.

“What’s pink?” he asks. “Is there anything pink around?”

Katara hums consideringly, looking around their very brown saddle, before her eyes alight on her bag. She snags the strap with her foot and drags it towards her, then pulls out the slightly shoddy necklace that Aang had made her to temporarily replace their mother’s. It’s mostly white, but the flower design in the center is a very pretty color that Sokka had liked the first time he saw it.

“This,” she says. “The flower, that’s pink.”

“Oh.” He lifts a hand to his cheek, remembering the warm touch of that color on his skin. “It’s… It’s really pretty.”

“Yeah, it is.”

A shadow washes over Appa’s back, and for a moment Sokka sees something else in the flower charm’s petals. His stomach tightens. In the shade, darkened, the flower had almost looked like Zuko’s scar. Suki had explained the concept of a gradient to him, a little, and how sometimes there are shades that exist between two colors. Turquoise. Salmon. The twisted skin on the left side of Zuko’s face.

They fall quiet for a while. Katara will explain green when they land, once their vision is not just Appa and ocean, but for now there’s not much left to be said. Sokka closes his eyes and rests his cheek on the top of Katara’s head, but as he starts to drift off he keeps seeing the flower charm superimposed over Zuko’s left eye. Even here, he can find no escape.

“I’m sorry,” Katara says after a long time. Her voice is hushed, like she’s also on her way to sleep. “About Yue. About you having to leave your soul-sharer.”

You wouldn’t be, he thinks. Not if you knew.

Instead, he twists his neck so he can press a kiss to the top of Katara’s head. He’s done it a million times before; it feels like a lie this time. “It’s not your fault, Katara. It’s nobody’s fault. It’s just…”

“It’s just?” Katara prompts gently, sliding her hand into his lap so she can link their fingers together.

Sokka squeezes her hand and keeps his eyes on the horizon until his vision blurs. “It’s just war.”