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“Did you have another nightmare?” asked Sokka, wrapping his arms around Zuko from behind as the latter looked over the quiet palace grounds.
It was past midnight, and the palace was dead silent and pitch dark when Sokka woke up to find Zuko’s side of the bed empty. He knew immediately that it was another nightmare. For weeks now, Zuko had been sleeping less and less, and burying himself in more and more work. Sometimes the Fire Lord would bolt up wide awake in the middle of the night, sweat on his brow, but whenever Sokka asked what was wrong, Zuko insisted it was nothing. As if Sokka couldn’t tell this was definitely something. Once again, Sokka could tell that he was about to be brushed off.
“It’s nothing,” Zuko whispered, kissing his husband’s hand. “Go back to sleep.”
“I’m not going back to sleep until you tell me what’s wrong,” Sokka insisted, holding Zuko tighter. “You can’t pretend that nothing’s wrong. You’ve been a mess for weeks. Is something happening that you can’t tell me?”
“It’s nothing that’s happening,” Zuko sighed, his shoulders dropping. “It’s something that already happened. A long time ago.”
“Oh,” Sokka said softly, his heart dropping.
He and Zuko never talked much about Zuko’s life before joining Team Avatar. It was too painful, and Sokka knew that not all scars were visible, even though some of Zuko’s were. He had wondered, of course, but he didn’t have to know the whole story to know that he loved Zuko with all of his being, even if he wasn’t ready to tell him everything that happened that led to him being scarred and alone at the South Pole when Aang was freed.
“It’s been ten years now,” Zuko said. “Ten years ago, I spoke out of turn at a war meeting. Did you know that’s all I did? I told a general it was wrong to offer up young soldiers as a bluff, raw meat for the Earth Kingdom to kill.”
Zuko’s shoulders dropped even lower, as if he wanted to sink through the balcony railing. Sokka kissed the back of his scarred ear, holding Zuko extra close. He was trying to listen, but he felt so angry. All he could think about was how angry he was for what had been done to the man he loved when he was just a child.
“By speaking against one of my father’s generals, I had committed an act of dishonor against him,” Zuko said bitterly. “According to my father, this dishonor could only be dealt with one way: an Agni Kai. I was confident I could beat the old man. More than anything, I thought everything I said was right. I felt justified.”
“You were,” Sokka reassured Zuko, craning his neck downwards to look at the strange and beautiful scarred side of his husband’s face, made even more beautiful by the one selfless act that Sokka now knew helped to create it. “You were brave to speak up.”
“It didn’t take courage until I found out who my real opponent was,” Zuko continued, shivering a little in the cold night air. “By speaking out against a general in my father’s war room, the person I had truly dishonored was my father himself.”
“No,” Sokka whispered. He loosened his hold around Zuko, which he realized had been progressively tightening as the story progressed. He looked at Zuko, who seemed completely unfazed by Sokka’s tight grasp. He was far away now, Sokka could tell, fully immersed in the nightmare of that Agni Kai.
“I begged for his forgiveness,” Zuko said, his voice now almost no louder than a whisper, his eyes glistening with the memory. “I got on my knees, and I pleaded. I told him over and over that I meant no disrespect, that I wouldn’t fight him. He was my father, Sokka, I thought…”
His voice broke.
“It’s okay,” Sokka whispered, moving to wipe a tear away from Zuko’s unscarred eye, but before he could, Zuko pulled out of his arms and turned to face him.
“But it’s not,” Zuko said, his voice brimming with a quiet anguish. “It’s been ten years. I helped Aang save the world, I’m the Fire Lord now, I’m bringing my nation back to what it always should have been. I married you, for Agni’s sake! But over and over in my mind, I keep seeing him reaching out towards me. For a moment, I thought he was going to wipe a tear away, can you believe it? Instead, he burned off almost half my face and sent me on a wild moose-goose chase that nobody had any reason to think would ever bear fruit.”
“Zuko,” Sokka whispered, reaching a hand out to cup the scarred side of his husband’s face, “It doesn’t matter how much time passes. Nothing that happened to you will ever be any less difficult or painful or unfair. And sometimes, the inside can get scarred, just like the outside. It doesn’t make you weak, or mean that you’re holding onto the past. You’re human, and people hurt you.”
“I don’t understand why it bothers me so much, the date,” Zuko said quietly, collapsing back into Sokka’s arms. “It wasn’t this bad last year, or the year before. It always bothered me, but not like this.”
“Ten years is a big number,” Sokka murmured, burying his face in the crook of Zuko’s neck. “And if it were up to your father, you would still be out there on that ship, hunting for Aang. Don’t look for ways to make your feelings seem less important or real. Last year doesn’t need to hurt as much as this year. If it hurts, it hurts. That matters.”
“Nobody ever told me things like that before,” Zuko murmured. “Growing up, we were always taught that emotions were weakness. I remember time and time again my father calling me soft and useless because I expressed a feeling he didn’t agree with. He praised Azula because she could push everything down. I think I’ve carried that with me a long time.”
“Maybe you never quite came to terms with everything that happened,” Sokka offered gently. “Maybe it hurts more now because you never really had a chance to understand the extent of what happened until you realized how much you still feel even after ten years.”
“I’ve never had time,” Zuko said, his eyes peering straight into Sokka’s now. “I didn’t know how to acknowledge how I felt as anything other than something weak and shameful. I thought I just needed to get over it. I waited ten years to get over it, but I’m still…not.”
“Tell me, my love,” Sokka said, looking at Zuko with a soft eye, “would you call a scar a weakness?”
“I guess not?” Zuko answered, a perplexed look on his face. “It’s just a mark. It’s just there. They become part of you.”
“Our feelings are the same way,” Sokka said. “They’re not good or bad inherently—they’re just different aspects of who we are, the experiences we’ve had. Look—I don’t like to talk about this much, but at the North Pole, when I lost Yue, I felt like I lost a part of myself too. It took me years to be able to so much as look at you when the moon was out. I don’t regret being with you, I know this is right, but sometimes I still feel sad when I look up at the moon. I think I always will, no matter how deep in my heart I know I was always meant to find you. Those feelings will always be a part of me. But that doesn’t make me weak. It’s made me who I am, in the good and the bad.”
“Always good,” Zuko said softly, kissing Sokka’s cheek. “Do you need to talk about Yue?”
“Not tonight,” Sokka replied, his heart tightening. He wasn’t afraid to tell Zuko anything. Sokka knew that his grief was respected even with Zuko. But that night, under a moonless sky, Sokka wanted to let the past be the past, even if it only lasted for a little while.
“I understand,” Zuko said quietly, squeezing Sokka’s hand. “Thank you for helping me. I should have just told you. I don’t know why it took me so long to let it all out in the open. I’m sorry for worrying you.”
“Don’t be sorry,” Sokka whispered. “Sometimes, these things just need time. Thank you for trusting me enough to tell me tonight.”
“Always,” Zuko said, a smile creeping back onto his face.
“Let’s go back to bed,” Sokka whispered.
Zuko kissed Sokka tenderly, wrapping his arms around his waist.
“Okay,” he said, smiling gently as Sokka took his hand and guided them back to their bedroom.
Sokka climbed under the covers after Zuko, crawling in close to the warmth of his husband’s firebending body. He finally felt content, knowing that the denial, the odd silences, the nightmares, were all explained. Maybe the nightmares wouldn’t stop. Maybe Zuko would wake up again, night after night, reliving old memories that refused to die. But at least this time, he wouldn’t feel too ashamed to ask for help. And maybe, just maybe, Zuko accepting help that one time would help hold the nightmares at bay.
At least for a little while.