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Fortune-telling. Sokka had never heard anything so ridiculous in his life, and he was travelling the world with the avatar and his little sister so they could defeat the Firelord before the end of summer—his entire life was ridiculous!
Aang—said avatar he was travelling the world with—is sitting rigidly straight, looking so casual it’s obviously a ruse. “So,” he says, “what do you think they’re talking about back there?”
And really, when does life give him chances like this?
“Love,” Sokka says purely to delight in Aang’s caught-in-a-trap expression. “Marriage. How many babies she’s gonna have. Boring stuff.”
At this point, his crush on Sokka’s sister is a secret only to her—and sure, it’s stupid that Aang is looking towards some old kook for guidance (as if some lines on a hand could tell someone about their future), but maybe it’s also cute if it wasn’t disgusting, of course. (It’s his sister’s love life, he’s allowed to be a little revolted about it).
Aang nods and goes back to fidgeting. Sokka’s in the middle of devouring an entire tray of bean curd puffs (since no one else is paying them attention) when Aang abruptly gets up and leaves, declaring his intent to find a bathroom.
He squints after the avatar’s decidedly suspicious exit.
Maybe he should look into it, but Sokka doesn’t care enough to scrutinise it right now. He waves off Aang and thoughts about the ridiculous nature of fortune-telling to focus on the bean curd puffs.
Aang returns a little while after with a definite pep in his step that Sokka doesn’t want to even think about. All he does is stuff more food into his food until Aunt Wu’s “Who’s next?” draws his attention.
She drifts back into the room with his sister in tow—his sister, who is lit up and glowing, all but giggling and jumping for joy at whatever Aunt Wu predicted for her. Gross. He does not want to see his sister like this, all lovely dovely and thinking about babies and husbands and fortunes.
Quickly, before Aang can jump in, Sokka gets up.
“Me,” he says, just a half second before his brain catches up and he realises what, exactly, he was agreeing to.
Aunt Wu looks at him. Her surprise must rival his own, but she opens the door for him regardless. He glances at Katara, sees the way she’s clearly swept up in her imagination, already engaging Aang in some kind of discussion about future loves and decides that, yes, he would prefer lunacy to discussing his sister’s love life (especially if that love life involves his best friend—he’ll get around to accepting them, of course, but for now it’s just weird and he’s allowed to sit with that).
Aunt Wu’s room is dark and cozy. An open fire kindles in the middle, surrounded by plush pillows and mood-setting candles. He sits on her pillow with all the wariness he can muster for something this soft. (He needs to ask—and then promptly find and buy everything—from where she got this).
For a moment, they just regard each other with equal wariness. Aunt Wu’s eyes are narrowed in suspicion, but the rest of her is calm and collected. She watches him and calmingly drinks her tea as if she’d be content to do nothing else for the rest of their session.
Sokka’s suspicious and willing to bet that it’s written all across his face. But, despite himself, he’s also a little curious.
Finally, he throws away some of his pride and offers her his hand.
She grips it with surprising gentleness and pulls it towards her. Her focus shifts to the valleys of his palm. She traces the lines absently, muttering under her breath the whole time, and despite his better judgement, he’s nervous.
“What?” He asks, trying to look at his palm the way Aunt Wu is. Does she see something terrible in his future? Something great?
“You are…” She traces a line from under his thumb to the corner of his palm. “You are going to fall in love.”
He snorts. Really? That’s all she’s got? A llama-bear could make that prediction.
“With someone powerful.” She continues, and Sokka remembers his skepticism again. If he wanted vague, easy-to-predict nonsense, he would’ve just done it himself. It’s not like predicting he’ll fall in love with someone powerful is impressive. He’s the avatar’s travelling companion. He’s the son of Hakoda, chief of the Southern Water Tribe. One day, he’s going to help end the war. Meeting someone important is like a Tuesday to him (they can’t seem to stop meeting them).
She grips his palm tighter before he can voice his thoughts and pulls it towards her, ignoring Sokka’s wince. “A world leader.” She says, voice rising, and okay, that’s not broadly applicable (but it’s early in their journey).
“A man you consider an enemy.” Man? Enemy?
“Oh, here!” She traces a line that goes through the middle of his palm. A moment passes, and her curiosity morphs into something more mischievous.
“You will marry the Firelord.” She says finally.
“What?” Sokka’s yelling. He hadn’t consciously chosen to wretch his hand away, but here it is, cradled to his chest as if it were a baby. He glares at her, dumbfounded. “I’m not marrying some loserlord !”
But all she does is stare at him, face carefully impassive.
“You will have one child.”
“What!” Ew. Ew!
This time, Sokka gets off the cushion and is almost out of the door before turning around. “There’s no way that’s happening!” He yells at her and valiantly ignores the beating of his erratic heart. “You just don’t like me because I haven’t fallen for your magic tricks!”
Aunt Wu is still serene. “She’ll be a girl.”
Sokka storms out.
“Come on, Sokka! You can tell us!” Aang is saying, bouncing up and down as he walks.
“It can’t be that bad,” Katara adds.
It is that bad. Probably even worse than whatever his sister is imagining, but Aunt Wu is a fake, and so are her predictions. It doesn’t matter if she thinks he’s going to marry the Firelord because the Firelord is old and stinky, and Sokka has taste. And self-respect and also the man is way too old for him, and really, what would Sokka have to fall in love with there anyway? His cruel personality and imperialious ways? Riveting.
The point is Aunt Wu is wrong. So it doesn’t matter what Sokka was told because she was wrong. He doesn’t need to think about this anymore, and he definitively doesn’t need to say it out loud so his best friend and sister can giggle at him.
“It doesn’t matter,” he grumbles, arms crossed as they walk, “because fortune telling is just a big stupid hoax.”
“You’re just saying that because she predicted you’d make yourself miserable your entire life,” Katara says.
“She did not predict that.”
“Then what did she say?” Aang asks, ever curious.
Sokka huffs and turns away.
“Well, I liked my predictions,” Katara is saying, and Aang is very unsubtly leaning towards her, hearts in his eyes (gross, he thinks, gross but cute). They talk and flirt, and Sokka is not paying as much attention as he wants to be because you will marry the Firelord is bouncing around in his brain as if it’s some particularly poignant piece of poetry and not some bogus prediction from an old superstitious woman with too much time on her hands.
Dimly, the words, “The fluffy bunny cloud forecasts doom and destruction,” breaks through his musings.
Sokka stops in his tracks to double back and glare at the man who said them. “Do you even hear yourself?” He hisses. Fluffy bunnies as signs of doom and destruction! As if the clouds had any say on what happened on earth!
Beside the foolish man, a woman speaks up. “The cloud reading will tell us if Mt. Makapu will remain dormant for another year or if it will erupt.” She gestures at the mountain behind them, which Sokka is only just clocking is an active volcano (man, he really got thrown for a loop with this Firelord business).
“We used to have a tradition once a year of going up the mountain to check the volcano ourselves.” The man says. He smiles at all of them, looking serene. “But ever since Aunt Wu moved to the village twenty years ago, we have a tradition of not doing that.”
Insane. All these people are insane.
“I can’t believe you would trust your lives to that crazy, old woman’s superstition!” Sokka yells, but the man just smiles and turns to watch Aunt Wu’s entrance into the foyer (for her cloud predictions, apparently).
His own sister—Katara’s really taken a nose dive into crazy town. She’s eating out of Aunt Wu’s palm—shushes him so she can listen to the crazy old woman pretend like cloud shape predicts things like luck (which isn’t real anyway) and crop harvests (which is just insane). Oh, and also, if a volcano that they live right next to that they haven’t checked up on in twenty years is going to erupt or not.
Apparently, a “cumulus cloud with a twisted nob coming off the end of it” means everything was going to be fine (but then again, she said the same to that old man in the forest, and he almost got eaten).
“I can’t believe all these saps!” Sokka shouts after Aunt Wu is gone, and the crowd has started to disperse. He walks forward with Aang following behind and tries to think. There’s no basis of science or truth to her predictions. She’s clearly just making things up to get these people twisted up into knots, and so far, it’s working. “Someone really needs to scream some sense into them.” He says the words mostly to himself, but Aang frowns at them just the same.
“They seem happy, Sokka.”
“Not for long!” And that’s a promise he can deliver on ( Aunt Wu ).
Aha! There. Sokka rushes over to a man wearing a bright red set of shoes, looking as serene and calm as every dofus in this village. “Hey, you!” The man turns to him, smiling. “I bet Aunt Wu told you to wear those red shoes, didn’t she?”
“Yeah. She said I’d be wearing red shoes when I met my true love.”
“Uh huh…” Self-fulfilling prophecies. Not magic but psychology. Sokka’s got her now, and he will make this man see sense. “And how many times have you worn those shoes since you got that fortune?”
The man smiles, and he feels his stomach drop. Please, for the love of the spirits, please don’t say what he thinks! Please—
“Every day.”
He sees red—blinding, furious, angry red.
“Then, of course, it’s gonna come true!” Sokka yells, and the man’s face lights up.
“Really? You think so?” He starts to walk away before Sokka can yell at him some more. “I’m so excited!”
It’s pigheadedness, plain and simple. They want to believe her so badly that they’re willing to bend over backwards to prove her correct, even in the face of all logic and reason.
Sure, yes, that man in the forest didn’t get eaten, and Aunt Wu had predicted a lovely day for him. But she could have easily predicted that then the man could have gone out and gotten eaten by a platypus bear because it wasn’t Aunt Wu’s fortune-telling magic that saved him! If Sokka and his crew hadn’t stepped in or not heard anything, that man would have been malled to death and decidedly not having a pleasant day. Just because everything worked out in the end, doesn’t mean the victory was Aunt Wu’s.
And yes, maybe this was fuelled in some small part by Sokka’s very burning, all-consuming desire to not marry loserlord Ozai (their current nemesis), but so what! That doesn’t mean his argument isn’t based on logic and sound reasoning.
This, essentially, is what he’s trying to articulate to the current crazed middle-aged man he’s talking to. The man hasn’t bathed! Because Aunt Wu told him that not bathing brings luck. “I don’t care what Aunt Wu told you!” Sokka says again, “You have to take a bath sometime! And luck isn’t real!”
The man shrugs.
He’s covered head to toe with dirt and grime, and he smells truly awful, and somehow Sokka is considered the crazy one.
He hates this village, and he hates fortune-telling.
He can’t wait until they leave here.
“I can’t believe you’re dragging me all the way up here for a stupid flower.”
He can’t believe he’s going along with this. He’s really helping his best friend find a flower so he can impress his sister. While the worst sentence he’s ever heard uttered before in his life (and he’s heard quite a few devastating ones) repeats in his head as if it’s taunting him.
You will marry the Firelord.
Sokka would rather fling himself into this volcano.
“It’s a panda lily, Sokka!” Aang spins his staff and propels himself higher onto the mountain. “I’ve seen it in action, and boy, does it work!”
Sokka looks at the distance between him and Aang, at the large jaded rocks that he has to climb with his burning muscles before he can get to his friend and has never wished he was a bender more. Stupid Aang and his stupid airbending and stupid flying. Some of them had to use their arms and legs to climb a mountain, with all the gruesome consequences of that.
“Flowers are for proposing marriage, Aang. Not showing a girl you like her.”
Aang goes beet red.
Sokka reluctantly starts his climb up again.
“I’m not—It’s not—Aunt Wu said… if I trusted in my heart, I will be with the one I love, and my heart is telling me to get this flower!”
Sokka groans. He’s just reached Aang, and his body is sore. He’s also sick of hearing about people’s love lives and what Aunt Wu thinks about them. “Please. I can’t believe how much faith you all put in her!”
Aang starts to spin his staff again, but Sokka stops him with a hand on his shoulder. “Rest.” He huffs out, collapsing on the hard rock as soon as Aang puts down his hand. Aang sits down next to him, casually balancing his staff in his lap.
“Well,” he says, carrying on the conversation. “Aunt Wu hasn’t been wrong yet. Why should she be wrong about love?”
You will marry the Firelord.
He huffs at the stupidity of it all.
Aunt Wu doesn’t know anything. Sokka would kiss the angry firebender chasing them around the world—Zuko—before he marries Jerklord.
“Because she is.” He says, gruff.
Aang frowns. “What did she tell you about love?”
The question catches him off guard. It shouldn’t, of course, because Aang is deceptively perspective. All that time with the monks and his meditations have given the kid superpowers or something because he always knows, even if there’s no way he realistically could have. He just does.
Sokka sighs. “She told me something so ridiculous it’s never gonna happen, okay? There’s no way she’s right about it.”
“Well, maybe, there’s a different meaning that you haven’t considered yet.” Aang leans over and knocks his shoulder. His boyish grin is soft and earnest. “You could tell me.”
Sokka scowls at him. “No. There’s no different meaning because it doesn’t mean anything. Aunt Wu just made it up to taunt me because she doesn’t like that I’m onto her!”
“But Sokka—”
“And Aunt Wu isn’t always right, okay! She just says stuff, and people bend over backwards to prove her correct. Like that man in the forest! Or red-shoes! I can’t even believe the amount of bias there and him not even seeing —”
“Aunt Wu told Katara she’d marry a powerful bender.”
What? “What ?”
Aang does look sheepish in his defence, but he also looks ridiculously hopeful.
Sokka looks at the way he’s clutching his staff and remembers the way Aang had scurried off when it was Katara’s fortune time. How he came back on cloud nine. “You were listening in on her?”
“Only… uh…” He scratches at the non-existent scruff on the back of his neck. “Yes.” He hunches further in on himself. “I… I really like Katara, and I want the prediction to be true.” Ew, Aang and his sister married? (But it might also be cute, maybe). “She told me to follow my heart to be with the person I love. It has to mean something.” He turns to Sokka. “Please? I bet there’s something there you haven’t considered.”
Well, it’s not like Sokka is good at saying no to his polar bear puppy-dog eyes.
“Fine.” He says. “But you can’t tell Katara!”
“Promise!” Aang smiles wide and innocently.
Sokka is going to regret this—maybe for the rest of his life (and idly, he notes that this is an extra long break that’s doing wonders for his sore muscles so that, at least, is something nice)—but he takes a deep breath in and spills the secret. “She said I’m gonna marry the Firelord—”
“The Firelord?” Aang is yelling. “You’re getting married to Ozai?”
At this rate, they won’t even need to tell Katara; she’ll just hear Aang yelling from the top of this mountain.
“Quieter, Aang!” Sokka hisses, and the boy’s mouth snaps shut. The expression of shock stays. “Yeah, see, I told you it was never happening. I hate that dude.”
They sit in silence for a moment. Sokka wonders what’s going on in that kid’s mind, if he’s changed his stance on Aunt Wu’s predictions, or if he’s trying to find a plausible scenario in which Sokka marries the Firelord. He hopes, for the love of Tui and La, that it’s the first one. (He won’t survive Aang’s attempt to explain the fortune, he just knows it).
“That’s—”
“We better get going.” Sokka stands up, ignoring Aang’s crestfallen expression. (He’s pleasantly surprised to note that his feet have stopped aching). “We have to get back before dark.”
Aang nods and properly grasps his staff again (Sokka groans) but doesn’t say anything. They continue up the mountain in silence, and when they see the lava rising and confirm Sokka’s theory that Aunt Wu is just a fraud, it brings him much less joy than it should.
(Dammit, but he was rooting for the kid and his sister.)
It’s when he stares at Aang after he had decimated an erupting volcano with nothing but his airbending, that he gets the idea. He looks at his sister and his best friend and smirks slightly to himself.
“Man,” he begins. “Sometimes I forget what a powerful bender that kid is.”
His voice is shockingly casual. So much so that Katara instantly turns to him, frowning at his words. “Wait, what did you say?”
“Nothing.” The corner of his mouth (not facing Katara) ticks up—the only sigh of his amusement. “Just that Aang is one powerful bender.”
Sure, he doesn’t believe in this crap, and his destiny will never be to marry the Firelord. But his sister and Aang would be cute (they’re already a married couple anyway, what’s something more official?), and Katara still puts faith in this fortune-telling crap. The least he can do after crushing some of Aang’s hope is show his sister what she’s missing out on.
Covertly, he looks at her out of the corner of his eye. Her eyes are wide, and she’s looking over Aang’s back as if she had never seen him before. “I suppose he is.” She says, and he considers it a successful mission.
Now, he just has to come up with a ship name.
“You just told me what I wanted to hear, didn’t you?” Aang says, much later, to a very alive (no thanks to her or her fortune-telling) Aunt Wu.
Sokka stands behind him, still plotting the murder of that one man who said Aunt Wu’s prediction of the village being fine was right because the volcano didn’t destroy them. (He’s thinking of dropping him and his stupid smile into the volcano just to see how much protection Aunt Wu’s prophecies can offer him or maybe setting an ostrich-horse loose on him).
His insistence that Aunt Wu is right ignores, of course, that it was the avatar and friends who found the activeness of the volcano and that it was them who made sure the village isn’t a pile of ash right now. The most important thing that the man ignores in his insistence is that if they had just gone along with Aunt Wu’s prediction, he would have been buried under molten lava. Sokka wouldn’t ever have to see his cheerful little face ever again.
“Just as you reshaped those clouds,” she’s saying to Aang’s mystified expression. “You have the power to shape your own destiny.”
“That’s as good as a confession!” Sokka snaps, angling the words to reach the ears of his nemesis.
The man waves back, still smiling. (Maybe lava is too good for him).
Aunt Wu turns her steady gaze to him. “For you, however, the future is irrefutable.” She adds, not flinching at his glare. “You will marry—”
“Hey! That’s enough!”
He grabs Aang and drags him away, making sure Katara’s prying ears are still busy getting Appa ready for travel. Aunt Wu’s laughter trails after their retreat, and Sokka hates her.
When they’re far enough away from everyone, Aang dances out of his grip. His best friend turns to him with wide eyes, with that little smile of his that means he has an idea he wants to share.
Sokka sighs and waves Aang on.
“Okay, so,” he glances back at Katara, who’s still not listening (and, ugh, they’re having this conversation), “I have an idea.” He sits himself down on the ground, gesturing for Sokka to do the same. “So you know how Zuko is the prince of the Fire Nation?”
Sokka wrinkles his nose at the reminder. “Gross. He’d be my stepson.” Zuko is his age.
“No, that’s not—” Aang’s face also screws up at his words. They share a moment of quiet disgust at the idea before Aang shakes his head and gets back on topic. “I was… Zuko is next in line, right?”
“Yeah?”
“So when we defeat the Firelord. Zuko would take the throne.” Great, the angry, yelling teenager who’s chasing them around the world. That’s who he wants taking the throne—their second worst enemy.
“He’s almost as worse as the current one.”
“That’s not! Sokka!” Aang sighs and rubs a hand over his face. “Maybe you aren’t marrying Ozai but someone else!”
Oh. But—
“Zuko ?”
Aang waves away his concern with ease. “It doesn’t have to be him. There have to be other heirs. Maybe that sweet-looking old man—”
“Ew, Aang!” Somehow he made it worse, even when Sokka thought it couldn’t get any worse. At least Zuko is his age.
“Sorry,” he offers belatedly. “But there has to be someone else. Maybe Aunt Wu is right!”
Sokka crunches up his face at the idea. If his count is right, there’s only Zuko and his Uncle. The Firelord might also have a daughter, but it feels bad to bet on, considering they don’t even know if she exists. Maybe there’s some really nice, non-imperialist firebender hiding somewhere with a claim to the throne—considering everything else they’ve run into, it isn’t too much of a stretch.
He looks at Aang’s hopeful, naive face and sighs. “Maybe, buddy.”
Maybe.
The invasion is in two days, and Sokka can’t sleep because he’s busy consulting his internal list of Firelords that can replace Ozai, ranked by how willing to marry them he’d be (and also Aang is being insane and not sleeping, so it’s a lose-lose situation).
Currently, the bottom of that list is Iroh, who he’s sure would make a decent Firelord, but Sokka would rather lose the war than marry him. Azula isn’t bad, he supposes. She’s at least similar in age to him, but he doesn’t believe in her Firelord capabilities. Besides, Aunt Wu had said the Firelord would be a man, and Sokka had realised very quickly after that he was into men. (She does not get credit for predicting that. Sokka’s attraction was obvious to anyone with eyes, or, in Toph’s case, crazy feet-seeing earth magic). There was no way it could be Azula.
So that leaves Zuko—who is actually at the top of his list, but only because every option before him sucks.
He tries to imagine it, tries to think of what would warrant him falling in love with Zuko (and having a child with him! He has not forgotten that detail!). Zuko would have to become an actual decent dude, of course, and also, y’know, be into guys, which Sokka has no way of finding out about. What would he even see in Zuko anyway? He’s a grumpy little asshole who’s been crazily chasing them around the world and also sucks.
It’s a good thing, then, that he still doesn’t believe in Aunt Wu or her crazy fortunes. (Imagine, finally taking Aunt Wu’s words to heart after he spent so long fighting that village’s admiration of her).
The more he thinks about it, the more ridiculous he feels.
Sokka and Zuko!
He really does make himself laugh sometimes.
It’s later, during their honeymoon, that Sokka remembers Aunt Wu’s prophecy and promptly wants the earth to swallow him whole.
Of all the fucking moments, did it really have to come back now? Because his husband is spread out on the bed, with open robes and soft hair and sultry eyes, looking so handsome. The last thing he wants to be thinking about is Aunt Wu, and yet, here he is, obsessing over fortune-telling of all things.
Zuko must notice his distraction because he turns his questioning gaze on him. And really, Sokka’s so weak in the face of that look. “Do you believe in fortune-telling?” He asks.
Zuko’s mouth twists with some form of amusement and surprise. “Really?” He rasps. Sokka valiantly tries to ignore the thrill that just shivered down his spine. “This is what you want to talk about?” Zuko shifts slightly—exposing more skin as if Sokka isn’t already regretting this decision, already wanting to backtrack, wanting to use some of their precious free time between responsibilities giving his husband everything he’s clearly shooting for—and looks at him through his lashes ( fuck ). “On our honeymoon?”
“Just… I’m curious?”
Zuko stares at him for a moment, and Sokka tries his best to project innocence.
It must be at least partially successful because Zuko frowns and indulges the conversation. “Yeah. I suppose so.” He says.
Sokka groans, and surprise flickers through Zuko’s face again. He continues with his sentence, a little more hesitant about it now. “Spirituality is very important in the Fire Nation—” Sokka knows that, but fortune-telling? “—and we’re constantly surrounded by it. I would be a pretty big fool to not believe in it.”
“Tui and fucking La, I can’t believe this!”
Zuko turns to him, concern flickering over his expression. “What is this about?” He asks, eyes searching Sokka’s own. Sokka reaches over, soothing his worries and tries to think.
There’s no way he can get out of this conversation now. Zuko is like a polar-puppy dog with a bone when he gets curious, and then Sokka’s plan for the night will be thoroughly diverted.
Fuck. Fucking Aunt Wu and fucking prophecies and fucking unfortunate timings. (His brain really couldn’t be bothered to remember during the entire time they were dating? It just had to be now, on the day they got married?).
“Did we tell you about that time Aang fought a volcano?” Sokka says finally.
“No ?” Zuko’s voice is tinted with amusement, nervousness, and confusion. “This is how this story starts?”
“Well. No, it’s how it ends, but the reason Aang had to fight a volcano was because…” Slowly, the story comes out in between Sokka’s still-raged-fuelled interruptions about the ridiculousness of taking fortune-telling to that kind of extent and also, what kind of fools don’t check up on the very active volcano they live right next? “And then the man still insisted that Aunt Wu was right because the village wasn’t destroyed even though it would have been if they had taken Aunt Wu’s word that everything would be fine —”
“Okay?” At some point, the amused quirk of Zuko’s lip had turned into a real smile. His shoulders were shaking with silent laughter. “So this is what you’re thinking about right now?” Again, his robe falls strategically open, exposing long, pale and muscular legs that had—
“She predicted something!” Sokka says, desperately trying to wretch his focus back on the conversation. “About my love life.” He adds at Zuko’s questioning look.
“What, did she say you’d make yourself miserable your entire life or something?”
What?
“Why does everyone predict that?” Zuko’s lip quirks again, and Sokka briefly reminds himself to limit the amount of time his sister and husband spend together. She already can never, ever hear about tonight, and clearly, they’ve been spending too much time together if Zuko is echoing her thoughts.
“Sokka, I’m not going to be mad or something. If that’s what you’re worried about.”
“I’m not worried about that.” At Zuko’s curiosity, he continues. “I’m worried you’re gonna laugh at me.”
Zuko, again, offers no retort, just raises his eyebrow (and fuck, that’s hot).
“Okay. Fine.” Sokka takes a breath. “She predicted I’d marry the Firelord.”
Zuko doesn’t laugh at him. He doesn’t do much of anything other than slowly blink at him. Sokka waits, and Zuko squints at him. “Yeah…?” He says, still slow like he’s trying to catch up with Sokka’s rushing mind, except this time Sokka had just plain told him and not rushed off into tangents like he always does. There should be no puzzle here. “You married me?” Zuko says, and it’s a question.
“Yeah! Exactly!”
“And that’s… bad?”
“No, of course not. I love you.” Something relaxes in Zuko’s face, and it makes something loosen in Sokka as well. “It’s just… I didn’t—don’t,” Zuko smirks at the slip-up, “believe in this crap and also, this was in the middle of the war, and also, it wasn’t you.”
Slowly, understanding dawns on him. Oh, and now he laughs! Great.
“You thought you were gonna marry my father?”
“No!” The thought still sends a bolt of revulsion through him. “Aang said someone would replace him after the war. I just wasn’t who it was going to be.”
Zuko is cackling. “Did you keep a list?”
Sokka splutters. “No! Yes! Fuck you.”
“So—” Zuko has to take a moment to breathe between his laughter and words, “—who was at the top?”
He gets all the answer he needs when Sokka doesn’t say anything and doesn’t look him in the eye. Zuko doubles down again, and he briefly considers that the start of this marriage has been largely unpleasant.
“Oh my god, how long were you thinking of this?”
“Well… I mean…” He tries to think. Before the invasion, thoughts of the Firelord were fresh and heavy in his mind, but something just snapped afterwards. It was like the memory was inaccessible, and Sokka had blissfully forgotten until just now. “Not long,” he offers finally.
A beat passes before Zuko’s expression turns mischievous again. “Aang knew?” Sokka scowls at Zuko’s amusement and refuses to answer. “Wait, so was Uncle second or third on your list?” He also refuses to answer that. “We should have invited your fortune-telling to the wedding.” He giggles at Sokka’s glare. “Maybe we should send her a thank you basket.”
“I’m gonna see if Ty Lee is still up,” Sokka grumbles with no real threat.
Zuko grabs his hand anyway and pulls him closer, slotting him between his legs. “You’re gonna leave me all alone on our honeymoon?”
“Well, yeah, if all you’re gonna do is laugh at me.”
Zuko’s eyes spark. Between one moment and another, Sokka finds himself lying back on their bed, the wind somewhat knocked out of him as Zuko hovers above, looking like a spirit himself. “It wasn’t all I had planned.”
Sokka tries to retort with something sharp, but the words are lost as Zuko presses their lips together.
And then there’s no thought but that of his husband.
The next day, Sokka is getting dressed after a truly spectacular honeymoon night when he remembers the rest of Aunt Wu’s prophecy.
“Hey, we should adopt!”
“What?!”