Archive of Our Own

Zuko being here is weird.

There’s no other words for it — he sits around at the furthest edge of the campfire in the evenings, looking all gloomy and Fire Nation-y, and he wakes Aang up early in the morning for fire-bending training, all determined and Fire Nation-y, and when Katara snaps and scoffs at him, he quietly backs away all remorsefully and un-Fire Nation-y. It’s weird.

Don’t get him wrong — Sokka’s very, very glad that Zuko’s response to being snubbed by a “Water Tribe peasant,” as Zuko carefully does not call her anymore, is to back off and leave her alone instead of getting all shouty and mean the way the Fire Nation usually does when faced with… well, anything, far as Sokka knows, but it’s still odd.

He’s half expecting there to be a catch — for the Fire prince to leap up and trap them all in a fiery spiral of death while cackling “Gotcha!”, or for him to teach Aang all the wrong things about firebending so that Aang doesn’t actually stand a chance facing the Fire Lord — but he doesn’t seem to be doing… any of that, which seems concerningly concerning.

Zuko just seems tired. He slinks off shortly after dinner to a room somewhere further in the temple that he’s claimed as his own, never staying long, and he doesn’t eat much during dinner, either. Sokka hasn’t minded — the ex-jerk (possibly a secretly-still-a-jerk jerk) lets Sokka finish his portion, and hadn’t even rolled his eyes at Sokka’s hilarious question last night of whether firebenders actually draw energy from the sun, the way plants do.

He hadn’t laughed at it, either, but that’s got less to do with Sokka’s brilliance and more to do with the fact that Zuko doesn’t have a sense of humour. The fact that neither Aang, nor Katara, nor Toph had laughed isn’t relevant to this train of thought, either.

The point is — the prince has been with them for all of three days, ever since he saved them from the assassin he hired (which seems kind of unfair, in the same sense that Sokka wouldn’t be called a hero for returning something he stole from a shop, or wouldn’t be thanked for bandaging up a wound he himself inflicted, but somehow it doesn’t seem like pointing that out will help with their current Katara-trying-to-murder-Aang’s-new-firebending-teacher-with-her-eyes problem, so Sokka wisely keeps his mouth shut) and he’s been weirdly quiet, and weirdly withdrawn, and weirdly weird the whole time.

He doesn’t speak to them unless they talk to him first, not counting the times when he shows up to torture Aang into waking up at a truly wrong hour in the morning for what looks like a bit of sitting down and sighing, and he steers clear of Katara with a fervency that would be funny if Sokka wasn’t also painfully aware of just how scary his little sister is.

Toph chats to him, though, and despite the fact that Sokka doesn’t like leaving anyone alone with Zuko for any amount of time just in case the guy decides to revert to his favourite hobby of trying to kidnap young children, it’s just — it’s Toph. She can handle anything thrown her way, and the way that Zuko looks increasingly uncomfortable and awkward the more she drags him into conversation with her, the more he’s starting to think Toph isn’t actually the one at risk, here.

Seriously, has Zuko even breathed in the past minute?

“Zuko,” he calls out on a whim, biting back a smirk at the way Zuko’s shoulders twitch at the sound of his own name, “wanna spar?”

“Ooh, yeah,” Toph cheers, leaning over to solidly stomp Zuko in the side of the arm. Going off the way he jolts at the contact, he hasn’t quite gotten acclimated yet to how Toph shows her affection. They’ll just have to give it time. “I can’t wait to see you wipe the ground with Snoozles.”

“Rude,” Sokka corrects her primly, pointing one finger at her to emphasise his displeasure, “you haven’t even seen me— wait.”

Realisation kicks in too late, and Toph cackles loudly as she waves her hand in front of her wide, unblinking eyes. “I haven’t seen you do what, Sokka?”

Zuko’s head swivels between the two of them hesitantly, unease etched into every line of him. “Uh,” he says slowly, and then shrugs. “I don’t think that’s a good idea. I shouldn’t firebend at you.”

“No, Katara’ll probably kill you if you do that,” Sokka agrees easily, even if something inside him rankles at the reminder that he’s not a bender, that he can’t deflect a bender’s element with an element of his own, that he’s not like Katara or Toph or Aang or— “We can still practise with swords, though.”

He’s seen the sword that Zuko drags everywhere with him, even if he rarely unsheathes it. He’s got to have some amount of skill to make it worth the hassle of bringing it along, which means Sokka will finally have a sparring partner in swordbending.

Zuko stares at him for a moment, breath seemingly catching in his lungs, before he sighs far more exhaustedly than any teenager really has a right to do and heaves himself to his feet. “Sure,” he says, but there’s a careful nonchalance in his voice that doesn’t match the way he eyes Sokka almost warily. “We can spar.”

“I’m gonna kick your ass,” Sokka grins cheerfully, and then, when Zuko’s good eye narrows even more warily, “y’know, in a cool, friendly way. Not in, like, a you-threatened-my-village-and-tried-to-kidnap-my-friend way but in a ‘You’re a sword guy, I’m a sword guy, let’s go’ type of way.”

Zuko nods along, seeming rather unconvinced for someone who has just been presented with very logical facts, but dutifully trudges after Sokka as he heads over to a clearing nearby. Toph’s cackle is the only warning he gets before the earth reshapes itself underneath his feet, just in time to make the ground a little bit flatter and steadier — and for a tiny, irritatingly-trippable rock to appear in front of Sokka’s boots.

He definitely does not trip, even if there’s an awkward stumble and scuffle as he tries to regain his balance, and if Zuko’s steadying hand wraps itself around his shoulder as they both startle, he doesn’t have to mention it.

He doesn’t have to, but as he regains his footing and rights himself again, drawing his shoulders up and back to seem like the mighty, unshakeable warrior he is regardless of whether he uses the floor for what it’s supposed to be used for (walking, preferably, and not tripping-and-falling) he can’t stop himself from bringing it up, anyway. “Dude, are you, like, on fire?”

Zuko stares at him, blinking twice, before he pulls his hand back as though burned. Unfair, really, given that Sokka is the one who’s at risk of being burned, with how unnaturally warm Zuko’s skin feels. Where Zuko’s hand touched his arm, his skin feels blazing, and Sokka raises his eyebrows in mild disbelief.

“I’m not on fire,” Zuko objects, and his features twist into a scowl. “I’m a firebender. We run hot.”

“Yeah, you can say that,” Sokka mutters, and then pastes another smirk onto his face. “Well, that explains why you’re so deeply uncool. Get it? Uncool, because you’re— yeah, nevermind.”

Zuko’s flat expression does not waver, not even when Sokka futilely attempts to explain the joke briefly, and then Sokka sighs, dropping into a crouch and letting Space Sword swing around experimentally in the air as he does a few hopefully-cool-looking whooshes.

“Let’s go,” he challenges, and cocks his head to the side with a grin. Zuko drops into a fighting stance as well, reaching up swiftly to pull his sword free and woah — his sword just cleanly split into two.

“You have two swords?” he crows out before he can stop himself, feeling his eyes widen despite himself. Zuko stares at him unmovingly, and Sokka clears his throat quickly, shaking his head dismissively. “I mean, yeah, of course you would. If you need two swords just to try to win from me—”

He just barely manages to block the first blow Zuko throws his way — a sharp, quick swing with an extensive arc, easy enough to parry. The next one Zuko aims, also goes wide — and it’d almost be insulting, if Sokka hadn’t seen the way Zuko’s breathing is a tad too quickly for someone as used to fighting as he is, and how he seems determined to tear his bottom lip to shreds with how hard he’s biting it. Zuko’s nervous — and in an annoying way, Sokka gets it. If Zuko gets a hit in, Katara will rain ice down on him in an inescapable torrent, and that’s helpful in no way — so it makes sense that he’s trying to pull his punches with Sokka.

Unfortunately for him, though, Sokka’s not about to let that stand. The third swing glances off Space Sword with a sharp noise, and then Sokka steps forward, taking the offensive. Zuko effortlessly blocks the arc of his sword and offers a quick riposte, that Sokka gleefully dodges.

Their swings start coming faster and faster, the speed picking up, and there’s something rhythmic about the shuffle of his boots on the smooth rocks beneath him, the periodical clang! of steel on metal, the way that the world seems to shrink in on itself until there’s nothing left but the blood roaring in his ears and the predicting of where Zuko’s going to strike.

He manages to parry every blow Zuko aims his way, and dishes out in equal measure — and he’s lost track of how long they’ve been sparring when Zuko’s eyes glance at Sokka’s left arm, his back foot shuffling right, and he knows, instinctively, that Zuko’s going to feint right. He does, and Sokka lifts Space Sword up to block his movement and swings his sword out in a quick, sharp slash coming up on Zuko’s left.

It’s not a strong swing. It should be easy enough to dodge, considering that they’ve been going back and forth long enough that sweat has his shirt clinging to his back, a few strands of hair that have escaped his wolf’s tail plastered to his forehead. He strikes out, and it should have been easy enough for Zuko to deflect with one of his swords — his dual dao, as he’d huffed at him in between quick, strong blows — but instead, the metallic clanging of swords clattering on the ground leaves his ears ringing as Zuko jerks his head back and throws his arms up in front of him, instead.

Too late, Sokka tries to abort the movement and angles his sword slightly to try and mitigate the impact — but the edge slashes across the underside of Zuko’s forearms, and Zuko grunts as red immediately starts welling up in two continuous lines. “Tui’s gills, Zuko—!” Sokka lets his sword fall from his grasp as Zuko startles, eyes blowing wide open from where he’d squeezed them shut in surprise. “You didn’t even try to dodge!”

“Sorry,” Zuko stutters out, seemingly breathless, and he blinks, arms lowering haltingly from their protective gesture before his face as he regards Sokka, stunned. “I— I didn’t see it coming.”

He compliantly lets Sokka tug at his wrists so he can inspect the wounds, and there’s no resistance as he turns them towards the light. The wounds are not as deep as they could have been, given that he’d managed to angle his sword just enough not to reach bone, but it’s still a solid gash in both his arms. “You didn’t see it coming? We’ve been sparring for a while, I thought you’d block.”

It’s only now that their fighting has stopped, that he realises how silent the temple around them is, and how loudly they’re both breathing. His own breathing is just heavy, on account of their jumping around and fighting, but Zuko’s breathing sounds ragged, almost shaky.

“You got my bad side,” Zuko mumbles, and seems to shake himself out of whatever stupor he’d found himself in. “You’re right, I should have blocked. I just got— startled.”

“I didn’t know you had a bad side,” Sokka says thoughtlessly, and then winces when Zuko stares incredulously up at him, one hand half-heartedly pointing up at his scar. “I mean, I know about the— you know. It’s kind of hard to miss — not that it’s bad! It’s just— I didn’t know it affected you.”

Wow. Sokka’s always had a way with words, he supposes — it’s just also that no one’s ever said his way with words was good. Foot, meet mouth.

“Yeah,” Zuko admits slowly, apparently letting Sokka’s stumbling slide, “it’s— it’s fine. I’ve learned to adjust. Either way, I saw your hand coming up too late and just sort of— reacted. It was poor swordmanship, and I apologise.”

He looks nervous somehow, and his hands shape that stupid flame-symbol that the Fire Nation insists on greeting each other with. Sokka laughs as he bows down slightly.

“You’re apologising to me? You’re not the one who just carved a chunk out of his sparring partner’s skin. No, man, I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to hurt you.”

He’s deliberately blasé, making sure that his own shoulders are relaxed and comfortable, and something in Zuko seems to loosen. “It’s fine,” he says, and then he shrugs. “I’ve had worse.”

He looks down to inspect the thin slices across the backside of his forearms, where red is already steadily trickling down, and Sokka grimaces in sympathy. “Either way, I’m sorry. I’ll get Katara to heal you, fix you up—”

“No—!” Zuko’s good eye widens, and he recoils. It’s a little bit of an overreaction, Sokka supposes — Katara is scary, yes, and given her propensity for trying to turn Zuko into a smudge of princely dirt with her eyes, he gets that Zuko’s not particularly excited to seek her out, but Toph has long since disappeared and Katara’s also their healer. The worst she can do is glare at him while healing his arms, but Zuko’s furiously shaking his head. “No, don’t — we don’t have to tell her.”

“Don’t have to tell me what?”

Sokka and Zuko both freeze as Katara’s voice rings out, icy and unforgiving, and — well, at least it’s confirmation that as much as she pretends to mind her own business, she really has taken her job of keeping an extra eye on Zuko seriously. A little too seriously, now that Sokka slowly whirls around to face her and just barely manages not to shrink back in the face of her fury. Where did she even come from?

Zuko, bless his heart, does not manage to suppress the urge to shrink back, and instead hunkers down a little, disappearing a half-step behind Sokka. Sokka, bravely, does not call him a coward, and instead meets his sister with a bright smile. “Katara, hey! My dear sister, my most beloved—”

“Sokka,” Katara repeats, her eyes flickering back and forth between Sokka and Zuko in a predatory manner, clearly taking in the smooth earth-bent arena floor and discarded swords, scrutinising their every moves, “what does Zuko not want to tell me?”

“Nothing,” Zuko says, right as Sokka sighs and caves at Katara’s glare. “There, uh— might have been a little training accident,” he trails off hesitantly, and yelps when Katara closes the distance between them in only a few huge strides, reaching out to snatch his shoulder to tug him closer.

“You’re hurt? I knew we couldn’t trust him, Sokka—” she quickly checks him up and down, and when she doesn’t see any visible wounds, turns to level a withering glare at Zuko over her shoulder, “what did you do?”

“Nothing,” Zuko repeats, denying quickly, and then carefully lifts his elbows up from where he’d half-hidden them behind his back. “It’s just a scratch, training accident, like Sokka said. I can deal. We don’t need to bother you over it.”

Katara narrows her eyes at him, clearly debating her choices, and then drops Sokka’s wrist, instead stalking closer to Zuko, who seemingly remembers not to be too obvious in his backing away from her this time. “Well, too late,” Katara snipes, leaning in a little to inspect the wounds. “I’m already bothered. You don’t get to make my decisions for me — I can do that perfectly well on my own. Hold still.”

“It’s nothing, really,” Zuko tries, one more time, and he casts a desperate look at Sokka. Sokka shrugs, because once Katara’s set her sights on something, it’s over — and he’s learned not to argue. Zuko deflates. “Fine.”

He grits the word out painfully, and the cork on Katara’s water skin makes a hollow sound when she pops it open. She coaxes a thin layer of water out to coat her hands as she lays them over the slashes, pursing her lips tightly, and she pointedly avoids meeting Zuko’s eyes. “I’m not doing this for you. Aang needs to learn firebending, and he can’t do that if you’re hurt — I’m just making sure you aren’t totally useless.”

Zuko winces slightly, and Sokka’s not sure whether it’s because of her clipped, harsh words or the fact that the water, he knows, feels weirdly cold when she does her healing water-magic. There’s a few seconds in which none of them speak, Katara’s brow furrowed while Zuko watches her cautiously, and then the water stops glowing, Katara drawing her hands away from Zuko with a scowl. “There’s something wrong with your chi.”

“What?” Zuko glares up at her, and then scowls back twice as much. “My chi’s fine.”

“It’s wrong, it’s all fritzy and weird and fiery. It’s not normal.” Katara’s brows pull in impossibly further, and she’s apparently determined to out-scowl Zuko.

Unfortunately for her, Zuko is the scowliest person Sokka’s ever met, and Zuko crosses his arms, seemingly realising too late that the wounds haven’t closed yet, and unsticks his arms again with a poorly-hidden distaste for the red smears that now adorn the upper side of his forearms, too. He scowls back even harder — should Sokka start scowling, too, just to toss his hat in the ring with them? “There’s nothing wrong with my chi,” Zuko insists, and inhales sharply. “Of course it’s fiery, I’m a firebender.”

“Even for a firebender, it’s not right,” Katara argues, reaching out again with one water-gloved hand to snatch Zuko’s wrist back. “Your chi is agitated, uncooperative. It’s a lot harder to heal you when you’re resisting.”

“I’m not resisting!” It’s the first time Zuko’s properly raised his voice at any of them since he’s joined, and it’s frankly a little alarming how reassuringly familiar it is to see Zuko yelling. Sokka’d half worried that he’d been replaced completely by someone nicer, but it turns out Zuko’s still shouty and annoying — he’s just apparently learned to keep his mouth shut a little more often. Until now, that is. “—And my chi is not uncooperative. You’re just a bad healer.”

The air around them suddenly gets a lot cooler, and it’s even before Katara speaks up that Sokka realises that Zuko’s made a mistake. “I’m a bad healer?” she snarls, and then her knuckles go white around Zuko’s wrist. “You’re just a bad patient. It’s not my fault that you’re a bad fighter, and that your chi is stupid, and that you—”

She cuts herself off, suddenly, brows furrowing before she wraps her other hand around the wrist she’s already holding, the look of fury crossing into a look of annoyed concentration. “— have a fever,” she finishes, a pensive tone in her voice, and then she looks up at Zuko. “Why do you have a fever?”

Zuko freezes minutely, just long enough that Sokka catches the hint of guilt flickering across his face, and then he shrugs. “I don’t have a fever,” he says decisively, “I’m a firebender. We just run hot.”

“Yeah, that’s what you said earlier,” Sokka speaks up slowly, ignoring the way that two pairs of eyes fall on him almost immediately, “but I gotta say, man, a fever almost makes more sense than an entire nation of people walking around like little furnaces all day. Don’t you guys literally live on a volcano? That’s just too much!”

“It would explain your chi,” Katara says, and then scoffs irritably. “It’s not working right because it’s trying to heal — because your temperature is far higher than it should be. It feels like your chi paths are burnt out.”

She lets go of his wrist and steps back, sighing sharply to herself. Sokka watches as she crosses her arms, expression turning darker, and she regards Zuko with narrowed eyes. “I don’t know what in Tui’s name you’ve been doing, but whatever it is — it ends now. I’m not letting you teach Aang firebending if he’s gonna end up like you.”

This time it’s Sokka who winces, even though Zuko only clenches his jaw and schools his expression into something neutral. Katara’s eyes didn’t meet Zuko’s when she said it, but Sokka gets a sudden, unpleasant feeling she’s not just talking about the guy’s ‘burnt out chi paths’, or whatever in La’s name that means.

“That’s not my fault,” Zuko retorts hotly, and his eyes shimmer furiously as he raises his chin, meeting Katara’s icy gaze head-on. “You try getting shot with lightning without frying your insides. My chi will be fine — it just needs to settle.”

“We’re talking, like, metaphorical lightning here, right?” Sokka quickly interjects, “Just to clarify. We’re not talking actual, flashy boom-blue-fire lightning? ‘Cause the last time someone got shot with lightning your Uncle nearly died, and then Aang nearly died, and why would anyone even shoot at you with lightning? Does your entire nation just throw it around for funsies?”

“Maybe the spirits themselves did it during the last thunder storm,” Katara says testily, “you know, as a good deed for the world.”

“Of course not,” Zuko frowns at Sokka, ignoring Katara with the air of someone who has had a lot of practice in ignoring mean-spirited little sisters — with only the slightest, terrified look, and squared shoulders — “mastering lightning is only for the greatest firebending masters. There’s only three people who can do it, I think — Uncle Iroh, Azula, and my f— Ozai— the Fire Lord. He’s the one that taught Azula how to do it. I only redirected it.”

“Well, that’s great,” Sokka says, “are you sure it’s a master firebender thing and not just a royal fire family thing? Not that you can actually bend the lighting, of course, but you’re not really like your family either, right? ‘Cause of the whole banishment thing. Hey, do you think lightning can sense whether someone is banished or not—”

Zuko growls under his breath, and yup, there is the familiar glower that chased all of them halfway around the world. Sokka belatedly raises his hands innocently and flashes a weak smile. “Sorry, man, just saying. We don’t know for sure that it doesn’t have anything to do with that.”

“I’m not banished,” Zuko grits out, and then shuffles backwards a little, putting more space between himself and Sokka’s extremely-pissed-off little sister, ah crap, he should probably put in a nice word so that she doesn’t murder their new firebending teacher right here— “Father rescinded my banishment when Azula told him I was the one who killed Aang, and then he didn’t have time to properly banish me again after I told him I was leaving to find the Avatar to help defeat him, so I’m technically no longer banished even if it probably won’t take long for word to reach the commanders of the outposts—”

Zuko continues rambling on something unimportant about setting foot on Fire Nation soil and pain of death, and Sokka probably should be paying a little more attention to that because Fire Nation intel except— “You told Ozai you were joining the Avatar?”

A quick glance to the side shows the same bafflement he feels on Katara’s face, and she returns his wide-eyed look with one of pure incredulity. “Not even you would be stupid enough to tell the extremely evil Fire Lord that you’re planning to overthrow him.”

“...No, of course I didn’t do that,” Zuko says slowly, “because I’m not. Planning to overthrow him, that is. I just told him I was setting off to find the Avatar and teach him firebending so that he could end the war and defeat the Fire Lord.”

“Right,” Sokka drawls, making sure to pour every inch of disbelief he can scrape together into his voice, “and what, uh, did your father think about that?”

“He didn’t like it,” Zuko admits drily, “which is why he shot lightning at me. And that is why my chi paths are— they’re not burned, they’re just… frayed. Lightning does that if it’s not channeled correctly, and I’m not— good. Not like Uncle. It’ll fix itself with time — so, see? It’s not my fault.” He directs the latter part at Katara, raising his good eyebrow in emphasis, and crosses his arms to mirror her. “Uncle said redirecting lightning is just absorbing someone’s energy and guiding it somewhere else, but you have to channel it properly and be grounded, otherwise it’s going to burn up inside or overload your chi paths, and you’ll die. I didn’t die, obviously, but— there was a lot of lightning.”

“And your— Ozai, he knew you could redirect lightning, right?” Katara’s scowl, which had deepened when Zuko mentioned Aang’s near-death with lightning and was replaced by a baffled grimace the longer Zuko talked, finds its way back on her face. “If you didn’t, he’d have killed you.”

“Yeah,” Zuko offers quietly, and he doesn’t meet her eyes. “Uh, no. I think he just sort of expected me to… dodge.”

It sounds unconvincing, even to himself, apparently — and for a moment Sokka imagines what it’d be like to stand across from his own father, that familiar pair of eyes staring back at him, waiting for his dad to dole out a killing blow without being sure if he could dodge it — and feels suddenly, violently ill. “That’s— wrong,” he chokes out, and when he looks up, Zuko’s eyes are fixed firmly on the ground. He doesn’t respond, and Sokka takes it upon himself to reach out and shove his shoulder, just to wipe that look off his face. “Hey, Zuko — you get how that’s, like, super messed up, right?”

That earns him a half-hearted shrug, and when Zuko responds, Sokka half-wishes he hadn’t. “I had it coming,” Zuko says, horrifyingly, and as though he senses Sokka’s outrage, adds, “I guess I should have realised he wouldn’t care. He didn’t before, and he doesn’t now.”

There’s a silence between the three of them for a beat, and then Katara’s water glows again, water-gloves wrapped around her hands as she closes the distance between Zuko and herself. “It’s a good thing that Aang’s taking him down,” she says tightly, “I can’t imagine a world in which my father would ever try to hurt me. And your nation calls us the savages.”

Healing, Sokka’s been told several times in his life, is a wonderful art. It is the reaching out and joining of chi, the comforting of a patient, the soothing of pains and aches. It is caring in its very essence — and a bunch of other drivel that he’s mostly tuned out in favour of ogling the actual best thing the Northern Water Tribe ever had (Yue). For all that healing is supposed to be wonderful, and comforting, and soothing — Sokka’s never seen anyone heal someone else so absolutely furiously.

It’s almost impressive, really, how Katara manages to look more inconvenienced than the guy whose arms are being held hostage by a scowling, powerful waterbender — and look at that, she’s actually managed to out-scowl the scowly prince for once, go Water Tribe! — but she makes it work.

“My father isn’t a good person,” Zuko agrees, “but it’s not— we’re not all like that. There’s good people in the Fire Nation, too.”

“Yeah,” Katara scoffs, but when she draws her hands back to herself, Zuko’s skin is smooth again, nothing but old silvery scars glinting in the light, “good like you?”

Zuko doesn’t answer, and she bends the water back into the waterskin at her hip, the cork popping back on with a quiet sound. “Don’t get hurt again, and stop firebending until the fever goes away. Your chi paths can’t channel the excess energy flow when you bend, so all that just leaks out and raises your temperature further instead. Until your chi recovers, stick to making yourself useful the regular way. Like Sokka.”

“Hey—!” Sokka protests, more out of principle than anything else, but it’s enough to diffuse the weird, sombre mood that had settled between them. Katara casts one more annoyed glare at Zuko and turns on her heel, stalking off before either one of them can say something — or before Zuko could do something so stupid as try to thank her. Sokka shrugs. “Well, that’s cool — that just means we’ll get more time for swordbending.”

Zuko stares at him, expression going flat. “That’s… not a thing.”

“Yes it is,” Sokka corrects smoothly, “what else do you think we’ve been doing for the past hour? You’re a swordbender, I’m a swordbender — we’re just two guys… bending… swords.”

That sure didn’t come out as intended. It’s too late to take it back, though, and Sokka fights to keep from wincing as Zuko seems to process his words. There’s a silence between them for a beat, and then Zuko’s face contorts. “What does that even mean—?!”

Aaaaand— back to yelling. Contrary to common sense and most survival instincts, a yelling firebender seems somewhat preferable to a quiet-downcast-and-upset firebender, even if the former type does seem to spit significantly more sparks. Absently, Sokka wonders if Zuko’s even aware of it or if it’s just a side effect from being a raging jackass for so long — it might have simply become second nature at this point, after so many years of shouting at people. It’s just—

Zuko’s always been this unstoppable, unshakeable force of nature (and, on several occasions, incredible violence) that never stayed down no matter how many times they knocked him over, and never stayed quiet no matter what they said to him. Seeing him stick to the shadows, barely speaking unless prompted by one of the others for the past few days… it feels wrong. It makes sense, Sokka grudgingly admits — if the guy’s been running a fever (which likely explains why he doesn’t eat as much, either, which infuriatingly means that he’ll have to coax Zuko into finishing his own dinner to keep his strength up instead of simply accepting the the prince’s generous offer of leftover overheated stew as a beginning of the Fire Nation’s owed reparations to the Water Tribe, darn it—) staying in the background and making himself a lesser target is the smart, rational thing to do.

Zuko’s track record with doing smart, rational things is horrendously short, evidently, which already means that realising that there’s an actual, proper reason behind his actions is weird enough — but the quiet exhaustion and lack of fire (pun intended, proudly) he’s shown the past few days feels disconcerting. As much as he’s still mildly terrified of the Fire Prince (having been on the receiving end of some of those magic jumps and kicks, no thank you, he’s so glad they’re on the same side now) seeing him annoyed, inconvenienced or plain shouty feels a lot… healthier.

Zuko frowns indignantly at him, subtly shifting his weight back into a fighting stance, and Sokka doesn’t do anything to keep his face neutral this time when he faces his opponent. Instead, he smirks widely and quickly bends down to pick Space Sword back up. “C’mon,” he goads, “you think there’s only four types of bending? Toph does metalbending, I do boomerang-bending, and right now, we’re swordbending. What part of that doesn’t make sense?”

“All of it!” Zuko is hilariously easy to bait into responding, and within a blink his dual dao are back in his hands. “There’s only four elements to bend, and Toph bends the specks of earth in the metal, not just the metal itself, and— and I don’t even know what boomerang-bending is!”

“Well, buddy,” Sokka teases, and flicks his wrist to let Space Sword swirl through the air in what hopefully looks a lot cooler than it feels, “now’s your chance to find out.”

He doesn’t reach for Boomerang immediately — contrary to popular belief, Sokka was raised well, and everyone knows you don’t bring a boomerang to a swordfight. Not unless you’re aiming to actually knock your opponent over, at least, and right now it feels a lot more prominent to keep jump-hop-stepping out of range of Zuko’s blades, holy cow, how is he still so fast—

“This is stupid,” Zuko grunts in between swings, but he moves a little lighter, and within a few beats they fall back into the steady rhythm of swing-sidestep-jump-slash-dodging they’d found themselves in before.

They’re pretty evenly matched, even if Sokka’s fairly sure Zuko’s holding back on him, but it’s nice to clear his mind and feel useful, for once. Judging by the way Zuko’s scowl has all but made way for a smirk, he feels the same. Zuko dodges, darting backwards, and Sokka follows quickly with a swift stab forwards to trip him up, and it leaves the perfect gap over Zuko’s left side to strike—

Sokka hesitates, and Zuko swipes his legs out from underneath him.

Why Toph loves laying on the ground so much, Sokka will never understand. It’s hard, and unforgiving, and it feels like the earth’s come up to meet him with the force of a dozen tiger-seals, even though he knows the other way around is far, far more likely, and the air is driven out of his lungs with the impact.

After what feels like an eternity, but is probably more like three seconds, his body starts to cooperate again and he sucks in a large breath with a groan. When he blinks his eyes open, Zuko is hovering above him with an arm extended, staring down at him with a frown. “You held back.”

“Give me a minute, man,” Sokka wheezes, but dutifully reaches up to the hand Zuko’s offering and lets himself be pulled upright. “Whoo, that was rough. Remind me next time to keep rolling when I fall.”

He grins brightly at Zuko, ready to change the subject, but Zuko ignores the joke stoically and glares. “You don’t need to hold back on me just because I got hurt. I’m fine. I can fight.”

“Yeah, I know you can fight,” Sokka echoes bewildered, “that’s not in the question. I didn’t— I just got distracted.” It falls flat, and he knows he’s said the wrong thing even before Zuko’s expression shutters and goes carefully neutral.

“Don’t let me distract you, then,” Zuko bites out, and he soundlessly slips his swords back into their sheath at his back. He stalks off, disappearing in the direction that Katara did not go in, and Sokka stands there, catching his breath, until it’s the only sound left in the room.

What just happened? They were sparring, sure, and Sokka could have easily taken that final swing, caught Zuko off-guard, maybe even won the match—

He hadn’t, though, because he’d hesitated. Zuko had left an opening on his bad side, and Sokka hadn’t taken it — hadn’t wanted a repeat of what had happened earlier… aside from not wanting to hurt Zuko again, he’s also fairly sure Katara would genuinely end the guy if he asked her to come over and heal him again — but Zuko somehow hadn’t appreciated Sokka looking out for him.

“Well, then,” he mutters to himself, letting Space Sword jump back and forth between his hands before sheathing it as well and turning on his heel, the soles of his boots grating against the stone beneath him. “That went well.”

Zuko doesn’t show up for dinner.

That’s not unusual, in the sense that he hasn’t consistently showed up in any of the three days that he’s been here— and they’re going on four, now, which is crazy to think about, where has the time gone— but it does leave Sokka with a sour taste in his mouth.

Toph usually tells them which direction he’s skulked off in, if he’s not grudgingly letting himself held captive by her (and how Toph had convinced Prince Scowly to give her bull-piggyback rides, Sokka will never know) but it takes her longer than usual to locate their resident fiery pest.

“He’s at the southern side of the temple,” she offers, pointing somewhere over Sokka’s shoulder with one grubby toe, “near the edge of the cliffs. Probably practising another dramatic monologue or something.”

“Oh, great,” Sokka rolls his eyes exaggeratedly, making sure that Toph can tell even if she can’t actually see him do it, “I’ll go get him. Hope he doesn’t fall off a cliff again.”

“Oh, yeah, that’d be terrible,” Katara pipes up, but continues ladling stew into one of the earth-bent bowls that Toph had provided. Aang, sitting next to her, briefly deflates before perking up again in Sokka’s direction.

“How did sparring go, Sokka? Katara said you and Zuko have been spending more time together, that’s great! I knew he’d fit in here, we just need to give him a chance—”

The ladle clinks loudly against the bowl Katara’s holding, and Sokka winces at the thunderous expression on her face. Aang, oblivious, keeps smiling. “— but it’s so nice that you’re going out of your way to include him. Really cool, too, now you have someone who knows more about swords to fight with!”

“Yeah,” Toph drawls, and even though Sokka’s turned his back to her in order to face Aang, he doesn’t need to see her to know she’s wearing a dirt-eating grin. “It’s great to have him here. Sounds like you really like him, Aang.”

Pot-stirrer. Sokka bites back his instinctual response and instead sighs as Katara slams the bowl down with more force than needed, bending back some of the stew before it can spill over the rim. “Yeah, that’s so great,” she repeats, a bitter edge in her tone, “glad you’re friends with the guy who chased us all over the world, Aang.”

“He’s changed, though,” Aang offers almost petulantly, and tilts his head up at her. “I know he was pretty scary, and I’m not saying we should forget all the bad things that he did — but he’s here now, and he’s helping. I just think we should give him a chance.”

“Aang’s right, Katara,” Sokka adds, “just because he tried to capture Aang doesn’t mean we shouldn’t take advantage of his help now. We don’t have to like him — we just need him to teach Aang.”

“Of course we don’t have to like him!” Katara snaps back, and then she breathes in deeply, in the same way she does whenever Sokka startles her out of a waterbending taolu or when one of the men in the Northern Water Tribe made a comment about her being inferior because of being a woman. “I know you’re all, Zuko this, Zuko that but when he inevitably betrays us and hurts Aang, don’t tell me that we didn’t see it coming.”

The next bowl is filled with the same amount of grace as the previous — how someone can make the simplest of tasks look excruciatingly enraging really needs to be studied — and then she shoves the two dishes towards Sokka without meeting his eyes, breathing hard. “Take this to your new friend,” she bites out, “hope he doesn’t double-cross you, too.”

Sokka wordlessly takes the bowls, taking care to balance them properly to avoid any spillage, and hesitates, waiting until Katara looks up to meet his eyes. Blue meets blue, and something in her gaze thaws. “I wasn’t there,” Sokka says quietly, “but just— trust us, okay? We won’t let anything happen.”

“Yeah,” Katara sighs, and she withdraws her hands, turning back to the cooking pot. “That’s what Dad said, too.”

Old grief haunts her voice, and Sokka swallows thickly against the torrent of old hurt that surges up. He had. Dad had said he wouldn’t let anything happen to them, that day, right before the ships had arrived — he’d said that it’d all be fine… and nothing had ever been the same again.

There’s a lump in his throat that stops him from getting any words out, though, and so he simply shifts the bowls in his hands to make them easier to carry and inclines his head towards Aang in greeting, mumbling a quiet goodbye to Toph. He’ll just take dinner up to Zuko, instead of dragging Zuko down here with them — Katara’s already upset, and Sokka no longer feels like lightening the mood with a few jokes.

Besides — it’ll be easier to pester their apparent fever-on-legs into finishing his bowl if there’s no one glaring daggers into his back, and he might be able to figure out what went wrong during sparring earlier. He’s been racking his brain over it ever since, trying to figure out why Zuko walked away — was he upset that Sokka wouldn’t try to hurt him? Did he think Sokka was holding back the entire time?

Either way — this is the first time in a long while that he’s been able to hang out with a guy his own age (because, well, hanging out with boys who are half your age because everyone else left to go to war just isn’t the same) and just because Zuko was apparently poorly raised (despite growing up in a palace — seriously, you’d expect someone to have at least some social skills) doesn’t mean Sokka’s going to give up on him this quickly. Besides, even if Toph seems to like him for whatever reason and Aang seems to want to believe that he’s had a change of heart — Zuko needs everyone he can get in his corner if he doesn’t want to end up wringing water out of his clothes for the rest of the month or get stuck frozen to a wall somewhere.

Zuko might be weird, and difficult to read — but he’s not too bad company, even if there’s a higher-than-preferred risk of flames whenever he’s around, and Sokka’s determined to befriend him even if it kills him. Please, Yue, do not let this kill him. That would be a terrible way to go — and Katara would follow him into the spirit world just to tell him “I told you so!” for the rest of eternity. It’s a fate worse than death — and he shudders at the thought.

It takes him a while to find Zuko — the open space before the edge of the cliffs is empty, and so are the rooms around there, and it takes an embarrassingly long time before Sokka remembers to look up and spots a hint of red between the rock formations.

“Zuko!” Sokka calls out, wincing as his own voice seems to echo faintly against the cliffsides opposite him, but the smudge of red shifts. “I have dinner!”

There’s an indiscernible murmur from above, and Sokka waits for a beat until it becomes apparent that Zuko’s not planning to come down. “C’mon, man,” he grumbles, carefully setting down the now-cold bowls (and, well, if there’s ever a reason to have a firebender on hand…) before planting his hands firmly in his sides and channeling his best Katara-voice. “Young man,” he announces, “you best get down right now, or you’re going to be in so much trouble!”

It’s less Katara and more annoyed Omashu merchant who wants him to stop sampling all the free foods, but it works nonetheless. Zuko scrambles down faster than expected, and lands in front of Sokka with a soft thud. Didn’t expect that to work.

“I said, I’m not hungry,” Zuko repeats, a trace of irritation in his voice, but it’s missing the usual force he puts behind his shouting. “You can have mine, if you want.”

It’s a tempting offer. He’d have probably taken him up on it if it’d been two days ago and Zuko mostly still looked like a terrifying soldier-slash-Fire-Nation-prince set on dragging them before the Fire Lord… but looking at him now, Sokka struggles to conjure up the same terrible image.

He just looks— nervous, somehow. As though offering Sokka his food would somehow appease him, for whatever reason — as though Sokka’s the one who stomped off after sparring over being mysteriously insulted over nothing. Seriously, if anything Sokka’s the one who’s in trouble for upsetting Zuko, whatever the reason—

Oh. “You’re not actually in trouble, you know,” Sokka adds lamely, realising that Zuko came scurrying down almost too quickly after he’d joked about that. “That was just a joke.”

“I know that!” Zuko scowls, crossing his arms defensively — but there’s a breath of relief, too, and he looks a little less like he’s bracing himself. What for, Sokka’s got no idea — but it feels ridiculously like trying to lure a stray cat-mink close enough to pet. Quietly, no sudden movements — and nothing that can be interpreted as a threat. Weird. And this guy’s supposed to be the next leader of the evilest nation?

“Great,” Sokka claps his hands, ignoring Zuko’s startled look at the sound, “let’s have dinner, then. I brought our food here, though you might need to reheat it a little bit — it’s gotten cold, on account of me having to scour half the temple just to find out where you were hiding.”

Zuko follows cautiously as Sokka marches back to where he’d left their food bowls, though the scowl doesn’t leave his face. Classic. “I wasn’t hiding,” Zuko says sullenly, “I was meditating. And thinking.”

“Yup,” Sokka pops the ‘p’, “on your own, on the top of a very rocky cliff, as far away from the rest of us as you could get. Definitely not hiding. Here, warm this up for me, will you?”

He holds out the first of the bowls, and Zuko dutifully wraps his hands around the stone, breathing measuredly until steam coils up lazily from the stew. “Thanks.”

He shoves the second bowl Zuko’s way and grins triumphantly when he automatically accepts the bowl, glaring down at it only after he’s already taken it. “I don’t need to eat.”

Sokka shrugs as un-sympathetically as he can. “Sorry, man,” he tsks, “Our healer says differently. Why do you think I’m here, chasing you with dinner? I’m not taking no for an answer.”

Okay, so — maybe Katara hadn’t explicitly said Zuko needed to eat, but it’s pretty self-explanatory, the way Sokka sees it — people who are unwell, need to get well-er, and the only way to do that is by increasing their energy, which is famously done by eating. Eating’s pretty much a cure-all for everything, far as he’s concerned. It’s great!

Zuko seems to consider this, and, as though he, too, has come to the same conclusion that Sokka has, sighs more resignedly than he really has any right to (seriously, it’s a bowl of stew) and shovels a spoonful in his mouth. “Hmm.”

“See? Great choice,” Sokka gloats, and doesn’t hesitate to do the same. The stew’s a little under-seasoned, given that they haven’t exactly had the time to stock up on supplies again after coming to the Air Temple, but it’s good nonetheless. He crosses his legs to sit down on the floor, and after a moment, Zuko joins him.

He doesn’t say anything, even as they slowly make their way through dinner, and it’s only when Sokka’s finished his bowl and casts a quick glance to the side, realising that Zuko’s just staring off into the distance, that he speaks up again. “I wanted to say sorry.”

“What?” That catches Zuko’s attention pretty quickly, and Sokka rubs his own neck in sympathy at the second-hand whiplash he feels at the way Zuko’s head swivels. His eyes narrow, and Sokka has to suppress the urge to roll his eyes at the suspicion. “Why?”

“You know what? I’m not sure,” Sokka says airily, and that seems to stump Zuko even further. “I mean, I don’t really know what happened, but whatever it was apparently pissed you off, so— yeah. I really did like sparring with you, so I’d like to give it another try tomorrow, and I can’t do that if you’re still mad at me.”

Zuko opens and closes his mouth, seemingly at a loss for words, and then he sets his bowl down with a clink to cross his arms. “You can’t do that.”

“What, say sorry? Or spar with you? Because really, there’s only so many times you can train on your own before it gets boring, because it’s pretty hard not to be able to predict what I’m gonna do before I do it, and it’s a lot better with someone else, so please just—”

“Apologise. You can’t just— do that, that’s not how these things work—” Zuko’s arm waves animatedly through the air, and Sokka has to lean slightly away from him to avoid catching a hand. “You’re not actually sorry, you just said you don’t even know what for!”

“Yeah, well,” Sokka says simply, deliberately lowering his voice so that he and Zuko don’t end up shouting at each other, “If you tell me what I did, I’ll know whether I’m actually sorry about it— but I’m also just… saying sorry about upsetting you. I didn’t mean to do that.”

“Why? You don’t care about that.”

It’s… a fair sentiment, honestly — Zuko’s been here for a few days, enemy-turned-ally–slash-teacher, but they’re not exactly friends. Not yet, anyway, even if Sokka would like to be. Does he trust Zuko fully? Spirits, no. There’s still a tiny part of him that whispers that it’s a ruse, that it’s a trick to capture the Avatar and leave them all in the dust — but he’s seen the way Zuko tries, that he takes whatever chores Katara assigns him without complaining, and the way he lugs Toph around even when she cackles gleefully in his ear, and the fact that he hasn’t mentioned literally being shot with lightning and apparently running a fever despite the fact that they have a handy-dandy water-healer on board (even if said healer has been waiting for an opportunity to freeze him in a block of ice)—

He doesn’t get Zuko. Still doesn’t quite get this change of heart, and the fact that he tries so hard — but he does, and treating someone like an outsider has never once helped them acclimatise faster. That, if nothing else, is the core of what the Tribe has always taught him. If Zuko’s serious about joining Team Avatar and restoring balance, he’s a good guy — and treating someone like an enemy when they’re not trying to be one, only ever ostracises them further.

Sokka’s willing to give him a chance — and that means Operation Aggressively-Befriend-Bewildered-Firebender is a go. Zuko’s terrible with words, and almost worse with any social interaction he unfortunately ends up in, so Sokka’s just going to have to spell it out really clearly for him. “You’re my friend. I don’t want to upset my friends, even if I don’t know why or if your reason was stupid. Just— I don’t get what happened, man. I wasn’t holding back — I just didn’t want the same thing to happen again when you left your side open.”

Zuko blinks, head tilting to the side slightly in surprise as Sokka says the word friend, and then the corners of his mouth tilt up briefly. Was that a smile? Sokka just won ten coppers from Toph, suck it, he’s the first one to make Zuko laugh—

“You treated me like I was weak,” Zuko retorts, and the accusatory tone cuts through any sort of celebratory sentiment Sokka was feeling. “I don’t need you to account for my weaknesses. If I get hurt, it’s because I wasn’t good enough to defend myself. Yes, I have a bad side — that doesn’t mean you need to baby me. My enemies won’t, either.”

And that’s just— wow. “Zuko, buddy,” Sokka sputters, “not wanting to hurt my friends isn’t babying them. No one learns from getting hurt. We’re sparring because we’re practising, and because it’s fun. We’re not fighting to actually get hits in. You see how that’s different, right?”

“It’s—” Zuko cuts himself off, and Sokka bites his lip to keep quiet and not interrupt. Be patient. Be patient, be patient— Zuko’s searching for the words, and it takes him three stuttering breaths to start again. “If you’re training, and someone finds a gap in your defense, they’re supposed to let you know. Is that not how you were taught? If you always pull your blows because you don’t want to hurt me, I never learn how to account for it. To hold back is to let your sparring partner know you don’t think they’re worth fighting, or deserving of using your full strength.”

“Woah,” Sokka breathes out, and then huffs out a disbelieving laugh. “That’s— crazy, wow. You think I didn’t hit you because you weren’t worth fighting? Zuko, that’s onion-bananas!”

Zuko raises his good eyebrow and sends him a flat look. “You got one hit in and I told you it was because you got my bad side, and instead of taking advantage of it to win you just refuse to strike immediately after. How was I not meant to interpret that as you dismissing me because I’m— impaired?”

It— makes sense, is the thing, in a ridiculous, convoluted backwards way. “I don’t want to hurt you,” Sokka stresses, staring down into startled golden eyes, “you’re one of the better fighters I’ve ever had to go up against — Zuko, you terrified the tiger-sealskin out of me the first few times we met. I’m not dismissing you because I got one lucky hit in — I’m trying not to hurt you again, because I don’t want to do that. Not even if it would give me an advantage in a fight.”

“But—” Zuko shakes his head, dark hair swaying with the movement, and then he frowns. “Then you’re a bad fighter. If you don’t use the advantages you’re given, you’ll never win.”

“Has it never occurred to you that maybe I don’t want to win?” Sokka frowns back just as intently, deliberately ignoring the you’re a bad fighter comment and instead focusing on the latter part of the sentence. “I mean, I do, but not if I have to rely on advantages that get you hurt to do it. We’re training as friends, not as enemies.”

Zuko’s look turns incredulous, and he seems a little helpless when he asks, “What’s the difference?”

Zuko, Sokka decides, might just be stupid. Either that, or he’s somehow managed to live in a world completely removed from the rest of reality — which, given what he knows of the guy, might not actually be too far off from reality (what, with living in a palace and on a ship and all that). Still, Sokka can’t stop the disbelief from showing on his face.

“What’s the difference?” he repeats, and he shakes his head so that he doesn’t have to look at Zuko’s rapidly-turning-aggravated expression, “the difference is that you don’t care about hurting enemies, and you do care about hurting friends. In a real fight, you use every advantage and you have to win, always — but when you’re training with allies, you don’t take an advantage when you know it’s going to get your partner hurt. Man, it’s so messed up that I even need to explain this — what do they even teach people in the Fire Nation?”

It’s a rhetorical question, really, but given Zuko’s lack of social aptitude, he’s not surprised when it gets an answer anyway.

“It’s not— the whole nation,” Zuko offers haltingly, his voice carefully low as though he’s trying not to provoke Sokka, “I think. Maybe it’s just the royal tutors. There’s different standards for us, obviously.”

“Obviously,” Sokka agrees exasperatedly, “so, what— everyone who fights in your country gets beat up in training fights, except for you and your family? That seems super messed up.”

Zuko’s face does something funny, and there’s the distinct feeling that Sokka’s missed the mark somehow. “No,” Zuko disagrees fervently, “it’s not like that. You’re not supposed to hurt your allies, or fight to hurt, but— but as Prince, I’m supposed to be better than— I’m supposed to be good. If I can’t hold my own in a duel, I’m not worth the title I bear, so— so if people hold back, how am I supposed to prove my worth in a fight?”

“So, what,” Sokka summarises, a growing sense of dread creeping up the back of his throat, “your teachers just— used all the advantages they got? Even if they knew you couldn’t dodge?”

There’s a misunderstanding in there somewhere, Sokka figures — there has to be. There’s rules in sparring, in training — and aren’t there laws against hurting people? Zuko’s royalty, no less — and Yue, being a princess, got special treatment. Doesn’t that mean Zuko should have had something similar, too?

Zuko, however, only shrugs. “Yeah. Swordfighting usually wasn’t too bad — Piandao was one of the nicest tutors I’ve ever had, but once I was moved to firebending lessons, it’s— you know. Fire’s really easy to fight with, and hard to dodge. You just need to learn quickly.”

Zuko trained with Piandao. Filing the information away for later — and also making a note that Tui, if Piandao was one of the nicest tutors Zuko’s ever had, Sokka’d hate to meet the rest of them. Sokka grimaces, unable to keep the abhorrence off his face. “That’s— Spirits, that’s just wrong. The Water Tribe trains too— well, trained, but still. At least we never intentionally hurt anyone! Why did no one ever say anything?”

At that, Zuko sighs, suddenly seeming more world-weary than anything. “That’s just how it works. Father thinks that anyone who can’t defend themselves, deserves it, and the Fire Lord is never wrong. If you can’t work through pain or keep fighting even when you didn’t block a fire-whip, you’re weak.”

“Tui’s gills, I really hate your father,” Sokka spits, ignoring Zuko’s wince next to him. He tiredly rubs a hand over his face, ignoring the stray strands of hair that spring loose from his wolf’s tail, and huffs. “I mean, I know he’s your dad and all, but that’s just— evil. At least you’re lucky that you’re a good fighter, I guess.”

Zuko cringes, a flush creeping up his neck. “Yeah, no, uh— I was actually pretty terrible. I didn’t start bending until later, and even then I’ve never been a prodigy like Azula. I cried through my first two weeks of lessons until Father— uh, nevermind. It’s a little funny in hindsight — I smelled like agave-aloe salve for a year, ‘cause I kept singeing my arms when I tried to block. Azula used to be so mad that she didn’t get to have her own perfume, right up until she realised it was just burn cream.”

There’s a small smile on his face as Zuko recounts the memory, and with every word that falls from his mouth, Sokka gets just a little angrier. He sucks a sharp breath in, ready to tear into the Fire Lord and the Fire Nation and the Fire Princess, to point out just how awful that really was — but Zuko looks up at the sound and withers, smile fading quickly when he clocks Sokka’s expression, and Sokka loses steam.

“Yeah, that’s funny,” he says instead, letting his breath expel from his lungs in a short burst, the lie tasting sour on his tongue, “can’t believe Azula was jealous of you.”

Zuko’s smile makes its way back, and he nods with a soft huff of laughter. “Yeah,” he offers, “didn’t last long, especially when she realised it was just because I wasn’t strong enough and she never needed it ‘cause she never got burned, but it was nice at the time.”

“You don’t, uh,” Sokka starts, and then abruptly cuts himself off when he realises how insensitive it’d sound. You don’t have a lot of burn scars, aside from the big one, is not exactly the non-judgemental, neutral thing he wants to say. Zuko, though, tilts his head again in question and motions for Sokka to continue, and Sokka steels himself to ask, anyway. “You don’t have a lot of burn scars?”

Zuko flattens his lips, something odd crossing his face, and then he holds out one arm. “Yeah,” he says, “firebenders don’t burn easily. Most fire doesn’t leave scars, and all the old ones I had here faded, see? It’s mostly just the ones from swordfighting lessons.”

Sokka leans in and hums as he inspects the thin, silvery lines dotting Zuko’s arm at random. They’re faded, evidently old, and he recognises the shapes from defensive manoeuvres. Something else catches his eye, though, and when he looks down at Zuko’s hand he realises there’s a faint pattern trailing up his fingers, almost like little red lightning strikes hidden under the skin. They look a little like Aang’s lightning scar, except way smaller, and concentrated in the tips of his finger. Remnants of his redirecting, Sokka realises.

He very cautiously reaches up to touch Zuko’s wrist, waiting for the initial startling reaction to pass, and then wraps his fingers around to tilt his arm. The line from earlier today on the underside of his forearm, their sparring accident, is nearly gone, nothing but a faint scar, and there’s a few others like it scattered across the bottom of his arm. It’s true what Zuko said, though — the only scars he sees are from slashes and cuts, and nothing that indicates the skin was ever burnt. It’s odd.

Zuko’s skin sears underneath his fingertips, still overly warm to the touch, and Sokka lets go again with a quick intake of air. “You shouldn’t have these,” he mutters, thinking back to years ago on a frozen tundra, strong and big hands wrapped around his own to experimentally swing a sword, warm blue eyes laughing down at him as he fumbled his way through his first boomerang throw. “Learning shouldn’t leave scars.”

Zuko swallows thickly, and when he speaks up again, his voice is rough. “My father thought it was deserved.”

The gold of his eyes is a stark contrast against his pale skin, and the dark, marred skin of his scar seems more jarring than ever. Sokka lets his eyes flicker to the ridged edges of it, taking in the shape that curls lazily around Zuko’s left eye, swallowing up his eyebrow and curving around the side of his head. Sokka swallows, too, and his voice is nothing more than a whisper when he asks, “That fire left a scar, though.”

Zuko doesn’t blink, doesn’t breathe, and doesn’t dare look away from Sokka when he answers, voice catching against the back of his throat. “Father thought I deserved that, too.”

There’s something far away in his tone, something wistful and grieving, and Sokka breaks the moment to look away. The change of active voice instead of the passive voice, the fact that Zuko’s been deliberately calling Ozai by his name, his title or “my father” and has only seemed to refer to him as “Father” when lost in a direct memory, speaking of something his father had said or done… it paints a horrific picture that Sokka’d prefer not to think about, actually.

Spirits. No wonder the guy’s so cagey about proving himself — if that’s what happens when he fails…

“Well, your father’s wrong,” Sokka says simply, and the overly bright cheer in his voice draws Zuko from his reverie, too. “I don’t think there’s anything you could have done to deserve that, and I’m glad you're away from your freaky tutors and terrible dads. Well, dad, singular, I guess. Hey, do you think we can convince Toph to build a statue of the Fire Lord here in the temple?”

Zuko jolts, good eye widening in shock, and then his lip curls. “Why on earth would we want that?”

“So we can throw fire at it, obviously,” Sokka hums breezily, “and rocks, and weapons. Maybe some rotten fruit, if we can find it.”

That earns him a short bark of laughter, complete with a startled look as Zuko seems to surprise himself, too. Something warm and prideful buzzes underneath Sokka’s skin at it, and he snorts as Zuko shakes his head exasperatedly. “I’d rather not see his face here, actually,” he says, “but that does sound pretty funny.”

“Your call,” Sokka offers, wiggling his fingers up and down enticingly. “I’m sure Toph would love to help in some good ol’ cathartic dad-beating.”

“I’ll keep it in mind,” Zuko hums, and then settles further onto the ground, shifting to get comfortable. The sun is nothing more than a tiny strip of orange in the distance, and the first stars are beginning to appear in the sliver of sky that Sokka can see from where he’s sitting a distance away from the cliffs. “Thanks, Sokka.”

There’s something heavy in his eyes, and— oh. He’s not just talking about the statue idea. There’s something more serene about him here, away from the distrustful glares Katara sends his way and the jitteriness that seems to haunt him whenever Aang comes bounding over, as though he doesn’t have to be as alert—

As though he doesn’t have to keep up his guard.

Zuko trusts him, Sokka realises with a sudden clarity, trusts him enough that he’s comfortable sitting here, easing up enough to laugh at his jokes and stop glancing over his shoulders, and Zuko’s looking at him like he’s grateful for that — as though Sokka’s doing anything more than just being a decent person. A friend, even.

He flashes a smile back, trying to get it as reassuring as it can be, and shrugs, pouring all of his confidence into it. “The others will get there, you know,” he says, instead of deigning Zuko’s gratitude with a response. “Katara’s been through a lot. We all have. It just takes some time, but— I’m glad you’re here.”

Zuko swallows thickly, at that, and Sokka hums in acknowledgement as he shuffles to get comfortable, too. Despite the chill in the air of the oncoming night and the cool stone beneath him, Zuko radiates enough heat that it doesn’t get cold. Closing his eyes, Sokka lets the silence stretch on between them, basking in the tentative peace between the two of them.

It’s only because he’s paying attention to it, the complete lack of noises other than the faint sound of his own breathing surrounding them, that he hears it when Zuko mutters, “Yeah. Me too.”