Adult-FanFiction.org : Cartoons

Ill-Gotten Goods	By : Whesandra Category: Avatar - The Last Airbender > Slash - Male/Male Views: 12781 -:- Recommendations : 0 -:- Currently Reading : 0
Disclaimer: This is an original fanfiction based on the series "Avatar: The Last Airbender" by Michael Dante DiMartino and Bryan Konietzko. The author reserves no rights to the Avatar property and makes no profit by this fiction.

Chapter List
- 4
- 5
- 6
Warning: This chapter contains graphic self-injury.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Chapter Five: Letting Go
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Lying face down in a mess of sheets, Sokka grimaced as he woke to light shining on his face. He parted his eyelids and immediately felt the pang of a headache. Closing his eyes again, he turned his face into the pillow to escape it.
Sunlight. He didn't understand how there could be sunlight in his room. He couldn't even remember the last time he'd seen day.
His body ached. More carefully this time, he lifted his face, left cheek twinging as if bruised, and opened his eyes. With a jolt he found Ozai lying beside him sleeping.
Sokka flinched back. Waves of pressure slapped against the inside of his skull, and he shrank under the pain and pushed himself away. All the muscles of his torso and arms complained. He groaned softly, body coming alive with soreness, an especially pronounced pain stabbing between his legs.
He wasn't prepared for this. He lay back down on his stomach, hissing as he settled, and put a hand under the sheets to cup his tender penis. Dimly he realized he was naked, and he looked out at Ozai's bedroom, trying to remember how he'd gotten here.
Moments passed. When no memory came to him, he decided he needed to get up.
Sokka pulled himself to the edge of the bed, and a soft jingle on the floor made him stop cold. His heart dropped.
Slowly he pushed himself out of bed, hesitating from dread as much as pain, and took a weak step back. A dark metal shackle encased one of his ankles, its chain snaking across the floor and tethering his leg to the bed's.
He felt dizzy.
Fumbling back, he reached for the floor and sank down until he was seated.
He tugged his foot half-heartedly against the chain, throat tightening at the incredible injustice of being in this situation again—locked in chains, unable to move. A deathly ripple of memory from Azula's dungeon made him break into a sweat, and his heart kicked in his stomach.
Trying to avoid the thought, he looked around.
Burned-out candles lined the floor like misshapen bowls of wax, and a table crookedly pulled to the center of the room was scattered with an assortment of restraints.
On the floor under the table was the thick metal ring of a dropped hair ornament; farther away lay the long pin meant to be pushed through it. Off to the side, an overturned chair was draped with a length of string, a half-locked pair of handcuffs dangling from its leg.
Sokka hugged himself. This scene was an alien landscape. Something was wrong. Something had happened to him. He didn't remember any of this.
Out of the corner of his eye, through the bedroom doorway, he spotted a heap of clothes at the foot of a chair. In the pile was his black prisoner's uniform partly buried under one of Ozai's robes.
The moment he recognized it, a shiver ran through his stomach, and he sucked in a breath, a wave of sickness crashing over him. He moaned, turning aside.
For a moment, the sensation was overwhelming. He didn't understand what had caused it, and he shifted onto his hands and knees, a rushing, cascading feeling in his head.
It was an enormous effort just to endure it, sweat prickling across his arms and back. He swayed a little, and tears came into his eyes. Moment after moment dragged on, and the sensation didn't dissipate. He felt extraordinarily sick.
Bent with his head resting on his arms, he found himself praying just to survive. Finally, after another minute or so, the sickness passed, and Sokka shivered in exhausted gratitude, though his body ached now even more than before.
Ozai shifted in his sleep.
Sokka jumped and looked to the bed. The sheets rustled as Ozai lengthened his body, taking a breath. The sound made Sokka's skin crawl.
Ozai rolled onto his back and put a hand to the emptiness where Sokka had been. Finding nothing, he turned his face and found Sokka bowed on the floor looking up at him.
Ozai smiled. He pushed his hair away from his face and got out of bed, loudly stretching in the morning light, also naked. He inhaled deep through his nose and rolled his shoulders as if experiencing a chemical thrill in his body.
"The comet is here," he said.
Sokka blinked. He looked to the window as if Ozai had actually seen it passing by—but the sky was clear and empty. Sozin's Comet? Ozai must have felt its effect on his bending.
That was unsettling. Sokka had lost track of days, but it seemed incredible that Sozin's Comet could have arrived without his knowing. Ozai, at least, would have said something about it.
Ozai crossed the room and began to dress, donning a robe with a large golden bird emblazoned on the back. At the mirror, he combed his hair and tied it back plainly, forgoing his usual hair ornament.
Sokka crawled back to the bed and leaned with his arms and head on the mattress, simply craving relief from the pressure on his sore body. He watched Ozai nervously.
It could be no coincidence that Sokka had woken in this much pain, this out of sorts, with no memory of the night before, on the same day of Sozin's Comet. Ozai seemed to be preparing for something.
But Aang and the others were staying in hiding—something Sokka knew Ozai knew—and so there should have been nothing to prepare for.
Which was why he was worried.
Dressed, Ozai returned to Sokka.
"Get up," he said.
Reluctantly Sokka did as he was told, dragging himself to his feet as if climbing out of a mud pit.
Ozai had him sit on the bed then lifted Sokka's shackled foot up onto the mattress. He unlocked the shackle then dropped both it and the key to the floor. Taking hold of Sokka's ankle, he yanked Sokka from the bed.
Sokka shouted and hit the floor hard. As Ozai dragged him across the floor, Sokka cried, skin squeaking against the polished stone.
In the corner of the room, at the foot of a large wardrobe, Ozai let go of Sokka's ankle, and Sokka writhed in pain at Ozai's feet, eyes pinched shut and hands over his groin.
Ozai opened the wardrobe doors. Before Sokka had even opened his eyes again, Ozai took a fistful of Sokka's hair and heaved him into the cabinet.
Sokka tumbled shrieking into a curtain of hanging robes. As Ozai moved to close the doors, Sokka gathered himself within the closet's narrow footprint, just avoiding getting crushed.
With a slam, darkness engulfed him, and robes fell from their hangers. Ozai locked the cabinet from outside.
"Ozai!" Sokka screamed, his voice hoarse. "Don't leave me in here." He hit his one good hand against the door.
But Ozai had already walked away.
Sokka tried pushing on the doors, but he had no strength to force them.
"Ozai!" he called again, cracking. There was no answer. It quickly became apparent he'd been left alone in the room.
Sokka leaned back into the robes, holding his head and whining to soothe the throbbing in his skull. The cabinet was hardly big enough to hold him; his hips touched either side.
The claustrophobia wouldn't have bothered him so much if he hadn't been in such pain. And being abandoned here in the perfect darkness had an unnerving effect, like being left alone in Azula's dungeon.
An ember of panic began to glow in his chest again, and he put his hands over his face and screamed, just to distract himself.
How long would he have to stay in here? Why hadn't Ozai just sent him back to his cell? He kicked at the walls angrily, and his scream turned into a bout of weeping.
Everything hurt. It didn't matter that he couldn't see; he could feel the places where his body was sore or raw or welted. He was a canvas of unfamiliar injuries, and his privates absolutely ached. Why couldn't he remember any of this?
The blankness in his mind sat large and silent like a spectre in a corner. Feeling it there, as if watching him, set him on edge. But he tried to be calm and sat with it a long time, willing it to take some kind of shape.
Eventually a shard of memory came up for air:
Ozai was standing at the window. Sokka couldn't even remember how he'd gotten to Ozai's room, but he could see himself standing there now, watching Ozai talk. Both of them were dressed.
He knew Ozai had been speaking, but he couldn't recall the words. Sokka only had a sense that it had to do with the war. Something unusual, grandiose. Ozai smiled and looked directly at him.
Sokka studied this over and over—Ozai's turn, the shift of his eyes, the glint of his teeth. He couldn't bring back what Ozai was saying, but he began to see an image that had come to mind at the time: fire that was somehow like rain?
A giant bird in flight, a shadow passing over the ground, fire falling from its wings...
A lock snapped open. The Earth Kingdom. The comet. Sokka's blood turned to crystal. Ozai was going to use the comet to burn down the Earth Kingdom!
Sokka bolted upright, cold with adrenaline. "Ozai!" he yelled, beating his hand against the doors again, but even as he did, he knew he was already too late.
A hollow pit began to grow in his stomach. Ozai was on his way to murder everything he loved—Suki, Katara, his friends, allies...
This time when he screamed, it was out of sheer panic.
He pounded both hands against the doors so violently he soon cracked the plaster of his cast, jarring the broken bone inside.
Sokka barked in pain and lurched back, hand shooting needles up his arm and into his head. The pain doubled him up in ringing silence for some minutes.
He hung in the darkness, tears leaking out of him as if pulled only by gravity, moaning faintly in disbelief and despair.
He should have stopped him.
He should have stopped him!
...He should have killed him.
It occurred to Sokka that he had woken up beside Ozai that morning and simply let him be. He should have thought to find a weapon in the room and murdered him in his sleep. He'd wasted the opportunity!
Sokka remembered the hair pin lying on the floor. He could have reached it, used it as a dagger, stabbed Ozai in the throat—
At the thought, an unexpected shudder ripped through Sokka's body, and he gasped and put a hand to the wall.
Something about that image slammed into him like an avalanche. A thin spire of steel pushed into a hole in the flesh—the thought made him feel like he was going to pass out.
He whimpered in confusion, an unbearable, gruesome sensation washing over him, but he didn't know why.
He groped for a handhold, breaking into a sweat. Where was he? Were his eyes open? He'd become so disoriented he couldn't even tell whether he was upright or lying down.
A black frenzy of sensation seemed to be rushing up toward him from the depths. But before it could reach the surface, like a fishing line breaking, Sokka's mind snapped, and he slumped into a corner, dazed and staring.
He became quiet and still; for an eternity he didn't move. His sweat dried; his weight settled; the day aged. Time accumulated on him like dust.
In another world, far away, the peaceful and oblivious sun climbed in the sky, reached its peak, and began its slow descent back toward earth.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Sokka's mind was soundly hibernating at the bottom of some crevice, all the world having become nothing but a thick, silent fog. Then, barely discernible, there was something like the echo of a rock falling in a canyon.
Sokka's mind mind lifted its ears. His body blinked.
It took a while for his consciousness to climb its way back to awareness. Slowly he recalled another existence outside this darkness, this closet. He listened, bewildered. Had the sound been his name? Maybe he'd only imagined it.
But after a moment, there was another sound, this time a chain clinking. Sokka turned his face toward it.
Then a voice called: "Sokka?"
Sokka's heart stopped. He jolted up.
The voice reacted, and footsteps rushed toward him. Bells started clanging in Sokka's synapses.
Sokka backed away from the sound, half afraid of it. Familiarity raced through his veins, but he wasn't willing yet to believe what he was hearing.
Then the wardrobe doors rattled, the person testing the lock, and stone-cold confirmation shot through him like a lightning bolt. He made a high-pitched squeal, the thrill almost painful.
"Sokka!" the person shrieked again.
Sokka's voice was torn halfway between a wail and human speech, but he put his face close to the wardrobe doors and answered with tremendous effort:
"Suki!"
"Oh my god!" Suki cried, sinking down to his level. "Are you OK?"
Sokka tried to say more but only ended up sobbing instead. He covered his mouth, trying not to hyperventilate.
"I'll get you out!" Suki promised. "Hold on! Hold on." She darted away.
Sokka fumbled to his knees, shaking. For a horrible moment, he thought he was only hallucinating, that she wasn't really there.
But then Suki returned, every bit as solid as before, and she put something into the lock.
"This isn't the right key," she complained. "Do you know where the key is?"
Sokka was too dizzy to answer right away.
"Sokka?" Suki pressed him.
"No," he finally said.
"OK. It's OK." She paused. "Hold on." And she darted off again.
When she returned, she warned him: "I'm going to hit it."
Sokka nodded and ducked away, struggling to breathe and covering his head with his hands. After a few short blows, the wardrobe latch fell loose and clattered to the floor, followed by whatever Suki had used to hit it.
Next moment, the doors opened, and a blinding rush of evening light poured over him, overwhelming his vision. Sokka squinted up into the ether, and a towering, pale, red-clad body descended to meet him.
Suki. Face to face with him. Inches away. As her red hair and green eyes emerged from the glare, all of Sokka's defenses crumbled. He made a thin plaintive noise, dissolving into tears, and reached for her like a child.
Suki swept him from the cabinet and into her arms.
Being moved hurt, but Sokka didn't object. He just wrapped his arms around her neck and cried like an animal over her shoulder.
He was reeling from the shock of her—her skin, her scent, her size, her strength. Suki was holding him partly off the floor, and he clung to her like a drowning man, sobbing until it simply hurt too much to continue.
Sokka winced free of her grip, and Suki eased him to his hands and knees.
"You're hurt," she said, crying too.
With shaking hands, she took a fallen robe from the floor and spread it across his back. Sokka was keeping weight off his broken cast like a dog with an injured paw.
Suki pulled the robe closed around his shoulders and bent low with her face near his, a hand on the back of his neck. "I'm so glad you're alive," she cried.
Sokka rasped, "How are you here?"
"I came with Zuko. We came to fight Azula."
She tried to comb his hair from his face, to look at him, but Sokka raised his hand to stop her. "Suki," he choked. "Ozai is going to kill the Earth Kingdom."
"No," Suki cooed. "No. Zuko knew his plan. Aang and Katara and Toph went to cut him off. It'll be OK."
It was hard to keep up. Sokka let Suki smooth his hair as he struggled to process the information. Then Suki snapped to attention.
There were footsteps in the other room. Sokka had missed them.
Sokka took hold of Suki's wrist and for a moment thought he might faint, so certain he was that they were about to be discovered by a palace guard.
But it was Zuko who appeared in the doorway, looking ashen and out of breath.
Zuko stopped abruptly when he saw them, putting a hand on the door frame.
"You found him," he said.
Then his gaze was pulled to the tipped-over chair, the table of shackles, the chain on the floor by the bed.
He made a plaintive noise of pain, and Sokka followed suit, putting his hands over his face and turning red.
Suki pointed sharply to the floor behind Zuko, saying, "Get his clothes."
Sokka didn't want to be touched anymore. He pulled away from Suki, sitting back and curling into a ball of limbs, sobbing with his head sheltered under his hands. The robe slipped from his shoulders and encircled his waist, leaving his bruised arms and knees exposed.
Zuko knelt with them and grabbed Sokka's shoulder. Sokka flinched and tried to pull away, but Zuko wouldn't let him, holding him and repeating, "Sokka, it's OK, it's OK," his voice husky.
Sokka resisted a long time, but Zuko never let him go. Eventually Sokka reduced into hiccups. Zuko coaxed him into slinging an arm over Zuko's shoulders and letting him heft him to his feet.
Sokka pitifully held the useless robe over his front as Suki prepared his clothes. With Zuko holding him up, she fed Sokka's feet into his pants.
Sokka felt lurid and pathetic, but Suki and Zuko were nothing but honorable.
Once Sokka was dressed, Zuko pulled him into a powerful hug. Sokka took a gasping breath and hugged him back.
Zuko said quietly, "I'm so sorry."
Sokka crumpled, and he hid his face in Zuko's shoulder, gripping him like a vise.
He couldn't—wouldn't—talk about this now. What must they think of him? He was afraid to even breathe for fear of falling apart again.
When Sokka finally pulled away, Zuko kept him with a hand on the back of Sokka's neck, his own eyes wet and wearing a scowl.
"It's good to see you," Zuko said.
Sokka swallowed and nodded.
Getting out of the palace was surreal. The halls were deserted. There was no one there to stop them.
Suki and Zuko had ridden an eelhound to the palace, but for their escape, Zuko hijacked a covered servants wagon and hitched the eelhound to it.
Sokka and Suki rode in the back while Zuko drove. The three of them could hide on Ember Island until they heard from Aang and the others.
Sokka spent the journey lying in the wagon bed, hands over his face and whimpering faintly.
Having been found in Ozai's bedroom, the reality of everything that had happened to him was crashing against his insides like tidal waves, demanding to be acknowledged and let out.
But Sokka wouldn't let it.
He was too scared to make it real by saying it, scared of being trapped in the wagon with it for miles and miles.
But the strain of keeping everything to himself was making him hopelessly sick. Before they'd even made it halfway there, Sokka could do nothing but roll on his back side to side and moaning, Suki distressed because she couldn't help him.
They were on an empty country road flanked by golden hills of waist-high grass when Sokka finally called for a stop. He nearly fell from the cart in his desperation to get out.
He staggered to the edge of the dirt road and stooped with his hands on his knees, sweating and nauseous. He begged himself not to throw up. But in another moment, his body retched, and he vomited into the dust.
He half moaned, half sobbed, eyes and mouth both dripping. Suki tried to go to him, but Sokka waved her back and wobbled away, falling to his knees in the grass some distance off and holding his groin in pain, crying.
"He needs a doctor," Suki said. "Zuko, find someone."
Zuko was already unhitching the eelhound.
"I won't be long," he said.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Sokka was hardly in better shape by the time the doctor arrived. He'd vomited a second time and was almost too weak to stand before he'd finally relented and let Suki come near him again.
When the doctor's cart rolled up alongside theirs, pulled by a pair of dragonmoose, Sokka was lying in the dirt of the roadside with his head in Suki's lap.
The doctor jumped down from the driver's seat beside Zuko and went directly to Sokka. She was a middle-aged woman with dark skin and long brown hair in a loose braid down her back. She knelt in front of him.
"Sokka, my name is Maha," she said. "I'm a doctor from the village nearby. I'm here to help."
But it was quickly decided to bring Sokka to her healing school in the village because there was little Maha could do from the road.
The school was actually a sort of hostel in a sprawling wooden building in the middle of town where Maha housed some of her students. She allowed Suki and Zuko to carry Sokka into an exam room, but then she made the two of them wait outside so that she and Sokka could be in private.
Sokka lay whimpering on an exam table. The walls and floors of the room were paneled with dark wood and lined with shelves and counters holding innumerable herbs and medical supplies.
Maha first made Sokka rehydrate by drinking chamomile tea. She also put a lavender cloth over his head to help him relax and gave him a dose of an herbal tincture to help calm his upset stomach.
Maha never asked exactly how he had gotten hurt, and Sokka didn't offer, but it was clear from a glance that he'd been misused by another person.
Maha produced a hand mirror for him:
His left eye was ringed with brilliant purple, the white of it so hemorrhaged that the eye itself was filled with blood across the bottom. His cheekbone on the opposite side had been skinned. And worst of all, his neck was mottled with deep red suction and bite marks.
Sokka looked away as if singed.
"Sokka," Maha said compassionately, setting the mirror aside, "I'll need to examine you in order to help you. Do you think you can let me do that?"
He nodded.
She had him undress.
Apart from the pink swaths of healing burns Azula had left on his chest and side, his torso was dotted with purple and brown bruises, vivid new ones overlapping faded old ones. There were other bite marks on his chest and shoulders and black flecks of blood in the skin of his nipples.
Maha handled him so carefully that Sokka wanted to cry. He'd been so starved of kindness for so long that even a simple word of request before touching him seemed like the most extreme consideration.
She dutifully documented the placement and severity of every injury.
Maha had promised Sokka when they began that she wouldn't disclose anything she learned without his permission. Nonetheless, Sokka eventually realized, she was creating a record of evidence in case of a criminal report.
Sokka didn't tell her how pointless that seemed.
To help Sokka feel safe and to keep himself partly covered during the exam, Maha had given him a large woolen blanket to hold onto. Now he lay back under this cover, and Maha propped his feet up in a pair of cushioned stirrups so that his knees were above his hips and his legs held apart.
Out of sight from him, Maha sat at the foot of the table where Sokka's seat was now positioned at her eye level. Sokka hugged the blanket to his chest and stared at the ceiling, inhaling long and deep.
Maha lifted the blanket to his thighs and took an audible breath.
"Oh, honey."
She described extensive bruising along with broken skin and blood.
"Sokka, I'm going to touch you just gently, all right?"
She lifted his testicles with the flat of her fingers.
"Your skin is red and warm to the touch. I want to feel for injury, all right? Please tell me if it hurts."
The rolling pressure she put on his testicles was uncomfortable at most, but when she palpated the shaft of his penis, it shot with pain, stinging and aching at once. Sokka hummed. She let him go.
"I'm sorry," she said apologetically, "everything is bruised. And it looks like you have a urethral fissure—a split at the opening. I suspect there's internal trauma there. I'm so sorry, Sokka, I can only imagine how painful it must be."
She treated his genitals with a soothing salve then replaced the blanket over him and helped him lower his feet. Sokka sat up and wrapped himself in the blanket, red-faced with something more he wanted to say.
"What is it?" Maha asked.
He hesitated, afraid to admit it. In the end, he could only say it quietly and without looking at her.
"I peed blood," he confessed.
It had been after Zuko had left him and Suki on the road.
After Sokka had fallen to his knees, he'd refused to let Suki come near him for a long time. He'd felt too vulnerable and ashamed to tolerate even being seen.
During that time, kneeling alone in the tall grass, he'd necessarily freed himself from his pants. The moment his stream had begun, pain had ripped through his penis.
He'd flinched violently and clamped a hand over his mouth so Suki wouldn't hear while blood and urine spattered the stalks.
"That must have been scary," Maha said. "But I suspect it's only from the injury. Were you hit in the groin?"
Sokka rubbed his tears away and shrugged.
"You don't know?"
He retreated further into the blanket. No, he didn't know; but it felt too dangerous to tell her that.
Maha didn't push him. She let him dress and afterward looked inside his mouth. Abrasions in his throat explained why his voice was so sore.
Maha wet a rag and did what she could to clean a crust of mucous from a lock of his hair.
"Sokka," she asked, "is there anything you can tell me about what happened?"
Sokka locked his jaw and shook his head.
"Do you know the person who did this to you?"
He shook his head again.
Maha nodded sadly. She put a hand on his shoulder.
"Do you think you could to stay here tonight?"
Even the short walk to a separate bedroom made Sokka dizzy. He limped on Maha's arm all the way.
Once there, Maha insisted he lie down, helping him into bed. By now, the sky through the window was dark and sprayed with stars.
Maha lit some incense of rosemary and cedarwood, and one of her students brought in a tray of food with tea and water.
"Please eat what you can," Maha said, knowing Sokka had had nothing since the previous day. "Drink all of the water. I have to go talk to your friends now. I'll send them back to you when I'm through."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Sokka was asleep before Suki and Zuko returned. The next thing he knew, he was waking up to the faintest signs of dawn showing through the window. The building was quiet and dark, and Suki was sitting in an armchair pulled up near his head, awake.
Sokka tried to muster his voice, but it was still crackly. "Have you been there all night?"
Suki left the chair to kneel at his bedside, taking his hand and laying her chin on his pillow.
"I got up for a while when Zuko left, but yes," she said.
"Zuko left?"
She explained that he'd gone to the palace to meet with Aang, Katara, and Toph. A couple hours ago, a hawk had come to the hostel carrying a letter saying they'd won the battle. The war was over.
"How did they know where to find us?" Sokka asked.
"We sent a hawk back to the palace once we knew we'd be staying the night here. The Fire Sages told them."
The Fire Sages had been the ones to take custody of Azula after Zuko had out-dueled her. She was in prison now.
"Do you want to go to the palace?" Suki asked.
"No," Sokka breathed quickly. "No."
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Sokka and Suki spent the entire day recuperating—Sokka from injuries, Suki from sleep deprivation.
Sokka didn't talk much. He felt now wasn't the time. What he was waiting for he didn't know, but he knew it hadn't happened yet. Maybe after he'd reunited with everyone things would clarify and become easier. But not now.
Over the course of the day, he bathed and was given new clothes, and Maha repaired the crack in his cast he'd put there by beating it against the wardrobe doors.
He didn't have much appetite, but he was able to eat enough to satisfy Maha. In addition, she prescribed for him a regular regimen of healing herbs and tinctures, and Sokka was glad to find that, despite the lingering pain, there was no more blood in his urine.
He had no wounds that could benefit from dressing, but Maha did offer to wrap his neck in gauze to hide the bite marks there.
Sokka appreciated this ingenuity. Wearing the bandage as a kind of disguise gave him some small measure of control; he could decide for himself whether to disclose exactly what had happened to him.
It was nearly sundown when the others arrived. Sokka and Suki were waiting in a common room of the hostel when Katara entered.
She was walking with crutches, and her leg was in a splint. From the doorway, she locked eyes with Sokka, and she was in tears before she even reached him.
Katara hugged him so hard he gasped with a jolt of pain. But he gladly hugged her back.
"I thought you were dead," Katara cried.
Sokka fought his own tears but lost.
"I'm not dead," he said.
Aang, Toph, and Zuko followed, and the reunion was comprised mostly of catching everyone up.
Zuko had told Katara and the others that he and Suki had found Sokka in the palace and that Sokka was in the hospital, but he'd given little detail beyond that. For this, Sokka was grateful.
It was intolerable enough that Suki and Zuko had witnessed some small glimpse of his experience; he wasn't ready to elaborate for anyone.
More importantly, the Fire Nation was now under new leadership. It turned out that Azula the day of the comet had banished nearly everyone from the palace in paranoia. That explained why it had been so easy for Suki, Zuko, and Sokka to escape.
But now, Zuko had been coronated, and Azula remained in custody.
As for Ozai, Aang had miraculously defeated him—by taking away his bending. The former Fire Lord was now an inmate of the capital prison.
Hearing this, the blood drained from Sokka's face.
The group had settled around a tea table in the common room, sitting on sofas in a rough circle. Sokka took hold of an arm rest for support, breathing unnaturally hard for a moment.
Ozai was alive?
Beside him, Suki reached to take his hand, but he pulled it away.
Katara noticed his distress. "What's the matter?" she asked.
Sokka simply looked at Aang. "You didn't kill him?"
Aang looked surprised. "No," he said. "I didn't have to."
Maybe Sokka shouldn't have been surprised. It had been Aang's stance from the beginning that he didn't want to kill anyone. Sokka just couldn't have imagined the war ending any other way.
He'd spent the day feeling some level relief, thinking that he'd never have to deal with Ozai again. Now that feeling shattered. Ozai was still out there.
"Are you OK?" Katara asked.
Sokka nodded, not because it was true but because he didn't want to draw attention.
"I just didn't expect that."
"I couldn't kill him, Sokka," Aang said. "It would have violated—"
"I know," Sokka cut him off. "It's fine. I mean...it's good you managed to find another way, Aang."
Katara kissed Aang's cheek, and all at once Sokka felt a divide opening up between him and his sister. Aang he could forgive, but with Katara, he had wanted at least his own family's support.
Sokka barely said a word the rest of the night, feeling isolated and powerless.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Being rescued had turned Sokka's life inside out, and somehow that was even more disruptive than being captured in the first place.
Weeks of torture had left his psyche in shambles. He was guarded, defensive, emotionally volatile. Even the smallest threat of conflict kicked up a cloud of anxiety for him, and all he could do was fight silently through it, emerging winded as a lone survivor on a battlefield.
He tried to be normal. That seemed to be the only option available to him.
The group was committed to keeping on working even now that the war was over. The fight for harmony hadn't ended just because they'd defeated the enemy. As such, there was no time for stopping or recuperating.
But Sokka couldn't carry out diplomatic tasks. Frayed as he was, he was pretty much useless. As such, the others simply gave him space.
Maybe it seemed like that was what he wanted. After all, his emotions had left him withdrawn and touchy. No one seemed to know whether he was safe to talk to, and all interactions with him quickly became more like polite exchanges between strangers.
In this awkward state, the group left for Ba Sing Se.
While Sokka had been in captivity, the group had tracked down Zuko's uncle Iroh, and Zuko had reconciled with him.
In so doing, the group learned that there was an all-nation peacekeeping force called the Order of the White Lotus, of which Iroh was a leader. The order had liberated Ba Sing Se the day of Sozin's Comet.
Now, as the monorail carrying Team Avatar arrived at the Upper Ring station of Ba Sing Se, the Order of the White Lotus was waiting to greet them on the platform.
Even from the window, Sokka could see he wouldn't need to be introduced; he already new every member: Aang's original firebending teacher Jeong Jeong, Master Pakku from the Northern Water Tribe, King Bumi of Omashu...and Sokka's beloved swordsmaster Piandao.
Sokka went breathless at the sight of him.
As Team Avatar disembarked from the monorail and collected their luggage, everyone from both groups greeted each other with enthusiasm. But Piandao spotted Sokka immediately and singled him out from the rest.
"Sokka!" he said, beaming with relief. He took hold of Sokka's shoulders.
Sokka lowered his head in respect and said, "Master."
"I'm so glad to see you safe," Piandao said. "Your friends told us you'd been captured."
Sokka nodded, heart thumping. He could hardly process the serendipity of this meeting. All day he'd felt cut off from the others, lost in an encapsulating dark haze, but Piandao now seemed like a beam of hope cutting through the clouds.
The longing Sokka felt to speak with him was so intense it sent goosebumps across his skin.
Piandao squeezed his shoulders and released him.
"That was difficult news to hear," he continued. "I was worried about you."
But somehow Sokka had lost the ability to converse. "Thank you," he said.
Piandao looked him over, eyes moving across his battered face, his bandaged neck. Sokka felt a pang of shame to be in such sorry condition.
"You're quiet," Piandao observed.
Sokka reddened. "I'm sorry."
"You were kept prisoner, then?" Piandao asked, softening his tone.
Sokka nodded.
His swordsmaster watched him closely. "That's not an easy experience," he said.
For a moment Sokka teetered on the edge of saying something important. But fear of scaring Piandao away widened the silence into a chasm. He tried to recover by saying something else, but no words came.
"How long will you be in Ba Sing Se?" Piandao prodded gently.
"I don't know," Sokka said, feeling stupid.
"Will you be going back home?"
"I don't think so."
Another silence. Piandao peered at him through narrowed eyes.
"Sokka, is there something I can help you put into words?"
Sokka looked up at him, heartened by Piandao's persistence. Yes, he would have said, but it seemed too needy. As he fought to find a more delicate phrasing, the monorail operators called for new passengers.
A whistle rang out, and around them, the other members of the Order of the White Lotus began collecting their things and heading for the train. Sokka opened his mouth, thwarted by time.
"You're leaving?" he asked.
Piandao took a breath and apologetically admitted he was.
"The order was just heading back to our respective homes. It was only sheer luck we were able to catch you as you arrived."
Sokka didn't have any tools to cope with this. He stared dumbly as he and Piandao gradually became some of the only few remaining on the platform.
Suki, Katara, and the rest of the group had moved farther toward the station building, apparently to give Sokka and Piandao room for a personal moment.
"Do you need to talk about something?" Piandao asked.
Sokka hesitated, wondering desperately what he could say in such a short time. Could he follow Piandao onto the train? Could he ask him to stay?
But the monorail workers were closing the luggage compartments, and the order was standing at the doors of the train, looking for Piandao to join them.
Sokka felt he had no right to interfere. So he steeled himself for his answer, throttling the desperation in his chest.
"No, don't let me keep you," he said.
Piandao shifted uncertainly.
"Sokka. If something's bothering you, I hope you'll be able to tell me."
Piandao searched his face. "I imagine it's possible that finding yourself in the custody of Ozai's soldiers could have left some...enduring trauma in you." He gestured to Sokka's bandages. "Obviously it was a difficult experience."
Sokka felt embarrassed and covered his neck with his hands, suddenly self-conscious that one was in a cast.
Piandao put a hand on Sokka's shoulder. "Never have I had a student I am so fond of as you," he said.
Sokka took a sharp inhale through his nose, quelling an upswell of tears before they could surface.
"I'm glad to see you safe," Piandao continued. "If I can help in any way, please let me know. It would be an honor to have you over. My home is your home."
Sokka nodded and cleared this throat. "Thank you, Master."
Piandao relented and took up his traveling bag.
"I hope to see you soon," he said, bowing to Sokka.
Sokka bowed back. "Travel safe."
As Piandao stepped away to board, Sokka turned back toward the group. They looked up at him expectantly, but he knew at once he couldn't face them yet.
So he made a hasty signal for them to give him a minute then ducked into the station instead, finding a washroom and locking the door behind him.
His heart was pounding, his face was burning, and now in private, he began to hyperventilate.
He put his hands over his mouth and sank back against the door to the floor, trembling from head to toe. Tears spilled from his eyes, and he wouldn't even allow himself to breathe anymore. His chest and abdomen ached with the force of keeping himself quiet.
He gasped once for air, a shrill whistle, then collapsed into muffled choking sounds, trying not to cry.
He was a coward. He'd been too afraid to ask Piandao for help and too gutless to stand on the platform and watch him leave.
So he hid, imploding, holding his face and trying not to make a sound while the rest of the world carried on outside.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Just as when they'd previously visited Ba Sing Se, the Earth King gave Team Avatar an estate to stay in while they were in the city.
But the group didn't stay together long.
After some initial meetings with the Earth King, Zuko felt it was important for him to visit all the nations personally as Fire Lord, to begin a process of sincere reconciliation. So within a few days, he and his girlfriend Mai departed on a worldwide speech-giving tour.
Toph, meanwhile, was overcome with a desire to start a metalbending academy. She left soon after to set up in another city.
While the rest of Team Avatar remained in Ba Sing Se, Aang and Katara spent most of their time in seemingly endless meetings with the Earth King. That left Sokka and Suki mostly alone.
Suki was sensitive to Sokka's vulnerability and made an effort to communicate with him carefully so as not to presume what he wanted. Much to her credit, she alone managed to stay connected with him during this time.
There was a lot about Sokka that was unpredictable right now—even whether he would find Suki's attention relieving or aggravating moment to moment—but Suki did her best to stay steady and available to him even when he seemed determined to renounce everyone for the rest of all time.
He was a ship tossed in a storm, and she would be his lighthouse if she couldn't be his rescuer.
Communicating had become next to impossible for Sokka. Pulling words out of himself was like pulling anchors out of the sea. Suki deserved more thanks than he was capable most days of giving.
What he could do was take her hand or sit beside her, thigh to thigh, hoping to convey not only that he appreciated that she stayed with him but that he wanted to stay with her too.
At night, they shared a bed. It was a delicate dance, finding how to be comfortable together when, for the time being, Sokka physically recoiled from unexpected or intimate touch.
But even from that first night in Maha's school, Sokka didn't want to sleep alone. So he and Suki negotiated a way to lie together, face to face, hands clasped between them, so that falling asleep felt as innocent as fading from conversation, not as overwhelming as nestling into the same cocoon.
Still, within a few nights, Sokka woke from a nightmare.
Sokka wrenched awake, voice mid-cry, struggling against something that had entangled him.
Ozai's weight on top of him vanished into empty air; the heat and smell of Ozai's skin became the disheveled heap of blankets on top of him.
A body moved beside him, gravity pulling them together into the mattress, and Sokka reflexively jolted away, kicking as if to ward off an animal.
Suki sat up, gasping in defense, and Sokka gaped at the darkness in confusion.
"Sokka," Suki whispered, taking his wrist. He flinched, but he was beginning to recognize it was only Suki, not Ozai.
He wiped a hand over his face and lay back on his pillow, heart hammering.
"What's wrong?" Suki asked, looking down at him.
"Nightmare," he said. "Sorry."
"It's OK." She sounded sleep-disoriented herself.
Sweating, Sokka rolled out of bed and stood up.
"Are you getting up?" Suki whispered.
"It's hot," he answered, fanning himself with his sleep shirt. Suki got out of bed too.
"I didn't mean to wake you up," Sokka apologized.
"It's OK," Suki said. She arranged the bed back into a state of order.
Sokka went to the window. It was already opened a crack, so he leaned on the windowsill and took a deep breath, letting the fresh air clear his psyche of the remnants of a dream he already couldn't remember.
Behind him, Suki put her hands on his waist. Sokka stiffened in surprise, and Suki let go, apologizing. She linked her elbow with his instead.
"Are you OK?" she asked, leaning her cheek against his shoulder.
He nodded, closing his eyes, heart slowing now that he understood he was safe.
He and Suki leaned against each other a while, dozing on their feet.
"You want me to sleep on the floor?" Suki eventually whispered.
Sokka rested his temple against the crown of her head.
"No. I'm fine."
He stood upright again and nudged Suki back to bed.
After Suki got under the sheet on her side, Sokka laid on top of the sheet on his side and pulled the top blanket over them both. It was a small gesture, but he felt more secure having this thin barrier between them for now.
Sokka found her hand to hold again.
"Besides, that's stupid," he whispered. "If someone's going to sleep on the floor, it should be me."
"I don't mind," Suki insisted.
"No," Sokka said, closing his eyes and linking his fingers with hers. "Stay here."
In a while, they fell back to sleep.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
After the war, many former Fire Nation prisoners were being released all over the world. One day, a particularly notable exoneree appeared on the estate's doorstep.
Sokka heard Katara shout "Dad!" from the front room.
Hakoda was on his way home to the South Pole after years away fighting, and having heard his children were in Ba Sing Se, he made sure to stop by as he went.
Aang and Suki let the three Water Tribe members have the front room alone to catch up.
Standing in the middle of the room, Hakoda eagerly hugged his kids.
There was no denying Sokka was glad to see him. But as they hugged, he felt a sharp anxiety flare up in his chest. He didn't understand why—and he made sure not to show it in his demeanor—but somehow this thing that should have been so normal left his heart racing.
"You're so skinny," Hakoda remarked as he pulled away from Sokka, feeling the size of Sokka's narrow forearm.
Sokka pulled his arm away shyly, cradling his cast against his chest and shrugging. "Prison food," he muttered.
Hakoda looked them both over, expression bittersweet.
"How did you both manage to break a bone?" he asked.
Katara laughed. "Falling from an airship in the last battle," she answered. "But I was able to do some healing on it right away, so it's not so bad."
Hakoda looked to Sokka. Sokka swallowed.
"I slipped a cuff," he answered honestly.
Katara looked at him in mild shock. She hadn't known that detail yet.
Hakoda frowned and pulled Sokka into a one-armed paternal embrace.
"Warrior's heart," he said fondly. "They roughed you up pretty bad, huh?"
Sokka was uneasy, overheating with nerves. No one had confronted him directly about what had happened to him in captivity. He didn't know how to answer. Katara was watching him, too.
"Interrogation," he lied. "It's just..." He didn't have an explanation planned. He wriggled awkwardly out of Hakoda's grip. "You know."
Hakoda looked at him seriously. "Did they torture you?"
Sokka flashed red. "No," he said, folding his arms. "You know, just...roughed up."
In a former life, he might have laughed or made some arrogant quip to defuse the situation. But as it was, he could only grimace rather than smile and barely mustered a lackluster huff.
"Nothing I can't handle," he said.
Katara and Hakoda both looked at him self-consciously. Sokka could feel his cheeks burning and immediately wanted this encounter to end.
Hakoda changed the subject.
He turned to Katara. "Is it true you and the Avatar are an item?" he asked.
Now it was Katara's turn to blush. She smiled. "Yeah," she said.
"It's amazing he could single-handedly defeat the Fire Lord," Hakoda marveled. "And to take away his bending? That's remarkable."
"It is," Katara agreed. "I've never been so proud of him."
Hearing her say that was almost physically painful to Sokka.
"Why would you say that?" he blurted before he could stop himself.
Katara and Hakoda both looked at him in surprise.
"What do you mean?" Katara asked.
Sokka fumbled for words, feeling pinned.
"Just because Aang had some high and noble code doesn't mean Ozai didn't deserve to die," he said.
Katara pursed her lips and looked at their dad for backup, apparently disagreeing but sensitive enough not to say it.
"Well, what's done is done," Hakoda said carefully. "I don't suppose it's up to you kids anymore, is it?" he asked Katara.
She shook her head. "Ozai will have to go to trial. The Earth King is arguing he's committed war crimes. At this point, it's up to the judges to decide what happens to him."
"That's stupid," Sokka said. He was testy and felt irrationally on the defensive. "It's a war—you don't try people for going to war. Why can't you just leave him in prison and throw away the key?"
"Sokka, that's not how it works, and you know it," Katara said. "Besides, it's not just Ozai. There's Azula, army officers, city officials, the Dai Li—"
"That has nothing to do with it," Sokka said.
Katara took a breath. Clearly she felt passionate. But she cooled down and looked at Sokka in sympathy.
"I know you wanted Aang to kill him," she said gently, "but in the end, I think it's better this way. Without his bending, Ozai is powerless. He can't hurt anyone anymore."
Sokka felt as if she'd just stabbed him in the stomach. He couldn't respond.
"Guys," Hakoda interrupted. "Let's not fight tonight. There will be plenty of time to talk politics in the future. For now, let's just enjoy our time together. I'll be leaving in the morning."
Katara willingly agreed to this truce. Sokka nodded silently.
But for the rest of the night, the argument kept churning in his head.
That's Aang's philosophy, he reasoned pointlessly with her. It doesn't have to be yours.
The chasm he felt between them seemed to have widened impassably. It was obvious Katara's love for Aang superseded any desire Sokka had for support.
The feeling was lacerating. It was too dangerous to even put it into words. To try would only dredge up trauma and horrors he couldn't tolerate, just to be suffocated in the end by the impossibility of reaching her.
He spent the rest of the night enduring his time with his family rather than enjoying it. Hakoda's simple obliviousness was nothing to bother over. But Katara's cool distance ground away at him like a betrayal.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
When Hakoda left in the morning, he hugged Katara and Sokka goodbye. And what had escaped Sokka before now became bitingly clear: Hakoda had a body like Ozai's.
Large, calloused hands; a firm chest; strong arms pressing their bodies together. Sokka went dizzy in Hakoda's grip, stomach turning. It was all he could do just to keep his revulsion from showing.
After farewell, Sokka escaped to spend some time with Suki. Together they idly walked the streets of Ba Sing Se.
Sokka felt molten. Misaligned. Ghostly. Being with his dad and Katara had dragged up so many thoughts he was trying to keep down.
Katara had said Ozai couldn't hurt anyone anymore. Sokka was beginning to understand why that statement hurt him so much: It wasn't bending that made Ozai dangerous.
To Sokka, the worst things Ozai had ever done had nothing to do with bending.
Thoughts like this kept repeating themselves in Sokka's head every step he took. He couldn't silence them or think of anything else. It was like they were autonomous beings, invaders taking control of what used to be Sokka's territory.
His mood was bleak and bitter.
As he walked with Suki, somewhere in the streets around them, something clanged, a sharp ring of metal against metal.
Sokka stopped, a shard of ice ripping through his stomach. He felt suddenly weak and sick.
Wondering why he'd stopped, Suki turned back to him. Sokka didn't know what to tell her. He was distracted now, alarmed by this sensation and reeling a little.
He put a hand over his mouth. Soon he began to recognize this feeling, being transported back to a time he was on his knees on the floor of an interrogation room, crying as guards pounded stakes into the floor.
Suki reached a hand toward him.
"Don't touch me!" he said quickly, batting her hand away and retreating a few steps back.
He had only just enough sense of reality left to know that he didn't want a single bit of contact from anyone—and that this arresting feeling was only about to get worse.
Sokka found an alley to escape into and backed against a wall. The room was darkening—the room?
He looked at the sky, senses flickering in confusion. Was he indoors? He felt disoriented.
He had an impression of Suki following him to the corner, but then everything around him disappeared and became a silent black chamber.
He was alone, chained to the ceiling.
No. Not alone.
He cried out, wrists and ankles jarring against restraints. He was cold and bathed in horrible pain. Azula was near him like a demon in the darkness.
"Please don't touch me," he begged her, sobbing.
But her hands were already on him. He couldn't speak. He was just trembling and choking, crying continually. He felt like he was absorbing some paralytic toxin from her fingertips.
"Sokka, listen to me," Azula said, her voice unnaturally distant.
Sokka ignored her. Tears in his eyes refracted the yellow torchlight of the walls, and he turned his head away, squinting.
It was too bright, even blinding. The violent flare seemed to have distracted Azula too, because her hands left his skin.
He blinked, trying to focus.
A shadow passed in front of his face, and he snapped his attention toward it, afraid of Azula touching him again. But somehow the face he saw looking back at him wasn't hers. Was that Suki?
He was confused. Was he hallucinating? The room was getting brighter again.
"Sokka!" he heard, the same voice he'd heard before, but now it was Suki's mouth saying it. He looked around. Where had Azula gone?
"Listen to me," Suki said.
Sokka looked up at her—up?
He put his hands on the ground beside him and found himself sitting in the dirt of an alley against the brick wall of a building. The sun, which he had mistaken for torch light, was in his eyes.
He wasn't naked. He wasn't shackled. He was just sitting there crying and bewildered.
Suki knelt in front of him and reached for him again.
"No, don't touch me!" he snapped in fear, lifting a hand to stop her.
He recognized her now, but his nerves were still so fragile he was afraid he might slip away again.
He looked around, taking in the street, the shops, the milling people. He looked back down the alley, just in case Azula was somehow lurking there.
But every second now he understood more and more that he was being insane. Azula had never been there at all. He was just breaking down in the middle of Ba Sing Se over nothing that was actually happening.
He hummed, tears drying on his face. There was no assault. The world returned imperceptibly to its unthreatening self.
Suki was kneeling there looking like she'd just watched him die. Sokka stared at her, blinking. After a moment she seemed to recognize that he recognized her again.
"What happened?" she said.
"I don't know," Sokka said, wiping his eyes.
Suki's hand was hovering in the air like she was resisting reaching for him.
"Can I touch you?" she asked. This time Sokka nodded.
Suki enfolded him there on the dirt and held him as if she'd almost lost him.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
In the middle of the night, Sokka jolted awake from another nightmare. His pillow was drenched with blood from a nosebleed, and his crotch was stiff.
He'd been crying in his dream, but now he was crying from having woken like this. He couldn't trust going to sleep anymore.
Suki sat up next to him, and Sokka hid his lap with the blanket so she wouldn't find out. He didn't know why he was like this and was revolted that it had happened.
Suki got up and got a rag to stop his bloody nose. Sokka sat on the edge of the bed while Suki stripped his pillow and put the pillowcase in a sink of cold water to keep the blood from staining.
Sokka's erection was gone. Suki sat down with him.
"Are you OK?" she asked.
He apologized for doing this to her again.
"You don't have to be sorry," she insisted. "It's not an inconvenience. I'm just worried about you."
Sokka was tired, tired of fighting so hard to stay together, tired of his body acting out and tormenting him.
He put his elbows on his knees and cried quietly, head in his hands and holding the rag to his nose. Suki rubbed his back.
"You need to sleep," Suki said.
"I can't sleep," he said.
They sat a while, Sokka trying to get calm, Suki drawing long slow strokes across his back.
"What were you dreaming about?" she asked.
Sokka relented and sat up. He took the rag from his nose to see if the bleeding had stopped, and a trickle of blood crawled down his upper lip. He put the rag back.
"I don't remember," he muttered.
Suki took his arm gently. "Do you have nightmares about Ozai?"
The directness of the question made Sokka involuntarily shudder.
"Talk to me," Suki whispered, as if trying to hide the anxiety in her voice.
Sokka leaned against her, tired and depressed. Privately he tested the feeling of words on his tongue without actually saying them, weighing his courage, deciding whether there was anything he could tell.
Eventually he brought the rag down from his face again and touched his nostrils with his fingers. No blood this time.
He bunched up the rag in his lap, on the precipice of speaking. Long moments passed where he thought he had words, but all he accomplished was getting moisture in his eyes and a knot in his throat.
The rag gradually turned into a dense ball of packed fabric in his hands. He couldn't keep waiting. He had to be brave, even just a little.
He opened his mouth, closed it again, blinked through the water, then finally spoke, voice cracking:
"I can't remember what happened."
Suki tilted her head.
"What do you mean?"
He didn't want to share the whole picture with her, only this single element, because it scared him—this gaping hole in his memory.
"When you found me," he said, "I don't know why I was..." He faltered.
Choosing words and actually saying them were dramatically different things. "...Why I was like that," he finished.
It was hard to tell the truth, because two things were true at once: he didn't know what had happened to him, because that night was a blank...but he did know what had happened, because he'd spent too many nights with Ozai before.
He only wanted to tell her the first thing, not the other.
"I woke up that morning, and I didn't remember how I got there," he said, voice pinched. "I didn't know what was going on or how I got hurt or—"
His breath hitched suddenly, and he covered his eyes to cry again. A flicker in his head like a stuttering candle made him wobbly.
Suki grabbed his shoulder as if afraid he was going to fall. Sokka crumpled in on himself in emotional pain.
"I don't want to be like this," he said.
"Sokka," Suki said earnestly. She lifted him up to lean against her as he sobbed, holding his head to her chest and gently rocking him.
Sokka felt blood on his lip again, and he lifted the crumpled rag to his nose and bawled. Suki held him tighter.
He felt regressed, like a child, voice small and toddler-like. He hunched in Suki's lap whimpered, "Do you think it's gonna be OK?"
Suki was shaking now too, gripping his shoulders like she might fall if she let go.
"Sokka," she said, her voice strained and high. "I promise you—I promise you—everything is going to be OK. It's OK."
With time, they melted into a messy sprawl on the bed, heads close together and feet on opposite ends. Sokka lay curled and crying into the rag, Suki whispering to him and combing his hair.
He couldn't stop crying until long into the night, and Suki stayed with him the whole time.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Sokka wanted to run.
Physically tearing through the streets of Ba Sing Se, coping through exercise, he ran alone until his lungs screamed and the taste of blood was in his throat.
The farther he ran, the less part of himself he felt. He was hypnotized, outrunning a waking nightmare. Scenes passed by like paintings. He was zoning out to the exquisite numbness of burning muscles and wind in his hair.
Then, out of nowhere, he splashed into a fountain, slipped, and crashed into the water, knocking his elbows and knees against the rock, inhaling water and coughing loudly.
People were calling out in alarm. Someone grabbed his arm to lift him up.
The person pulled him from the fountain and back onto the street.
"What are you doing?" he heard the person say. Others gathered around. He shook them off like the shadows they were.
Something was wrong with him. Was he going insane? Almost oblivious to being wet or making a spectacle, he wandered back toward the estate.
No one was around when he returned, and he ended up pacing agitated laps around the massive courtyard alone, feeling off kilter and distracted.
His head felt unstable. Whatever he'd been outrunning was bearing down on him now. And that was when his lost memories came crashing back.
It was like a dam breaking.
Sokka stopped, knees bent as if in an earthquake. The memories took place back at the palace, and for a while, he felt physically transplanted:
He was in Ozai's bedroom. It was very late into the night. The thought most prominent in his battered mind was that he'd lost track of how many times he'd already been raped that night. He was soupy with fluid running down his thighs.
Beside Ozai's bed, Sokka was bent forward over an overturned chair, his legs held apart by being bound to the chair's. His hands were tied to his knees, a rope across his back keeping him from getting up. Ozai, like a rod, was churning inside him, making him queasy.
Bondage. Sokka was tied into position, a sort of living sculpture, an art piece.
Another memory flashed into place. In it, Ozai grabbed Sokka by the hair and punched him in the face, twice, three times, four times.
Letting him go, Sokka dropped like a sack, caught by a rope around his elbows behind him. He was suspended partly off the floor and hung dazed and bleeding, watching blood droplets hit the floor.
Another memory. Ozai was physically in his throat, suffocating him, tearing at his larynx. He knocked Sokka's face so hard his nose bled.
Separate from all this, back in the courtyard in Ba Sing Se, these recollections were more than Sokka could handle. He struggled not to fall into the memories, like a swimmer gulping water on a choppy sea, buffeted between flashback and reality.
He was terrified, not just from the displaced sensation of reliving past events but out of a present fear that he was experiencing a psychotic break he'd never recover from.
When he actually did bring himself back to the real world briefly, it was a hard-won moment. But then he could barely do more than gape at it like a passing shadow.
Even in this courtyard in the midday sun, Sokka's mind was continually called back to some dark world, as if pulled by tendrils.
The mental struggle was like wrestling forward with all his weight—only for his feet to inevitably slip, the tendrils dragging him back as he fell.
Every new memory was like plunging his head back underwater:
In Ozai's bedroom, this time at an earlier point in the night, Sokka's hands were tied overhead.
He was stretched on his back on Ozai's bed, and Ozai's hands were on Sokka's genitals. Out of Sokka's line of sight, Ozai was working some implement, and then a stabbing pain was entering Sokka's penis.
Sokka shouted—or thought he did. The world was hazy and white and hard to understand.
When Ozai released him, Sokka's penis was painful and heavy and cold. It flopped onto his stomach and dragged sharp metallic points across his skin.
A foreign object, he realized, was lodged in his urethra—the long steel spire of a hair pin, the metal flame emblem at the end protruding from him and scraping against his stomach.
Sokka cried in relentless pain, the hair pin like a knife ever twisting. It was a mind-bending, grotesque experience.
While he wailed, Ozai had sex with him, long black hair brushing over Sokka's chest, Sokka's body rocked back and forth, head to toe.
Lanterns burned on the red walls in the corners of Sokka's vision. He was delirious with pain.
Then, as if that weren't enough, Ozai tightened a string around Sokka's testicles and over the tip of the hair pin, driving it down and more securely in place.
Sokka screamed, vision crackling with electric pain. The intensity was immeasurable, making his very sense of reality snap and flicker.
The hair pin stabbed him almost to the point of puncture. Sokka was shrill, begging for mercy, the pain more than he could bear.
He was being impaled, tortured endlessly. Ozai's amused growl served as background to Sokka's thrashing.
In the courtyard of the real world, with tears on his face, Sokka fell to his knees and groped at the grass, looking for any handhold to pull him back to the present. This assault of visions was never letting up.
Maybe if he could get inside, someone would find him and be able to help him.
But he hadn't even gotten back to his feet before he fell again, sight fading in and out.
He landed on his stomach, wondering if he was going to die, and in a moment, mercifully, he fainted.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
When he woke up, surreally still, the world around him felt immaterial. Everything was made of reflections and shadows.
Sokka was on his back on the ground. He sat up, watched his hands push his body to its feet, felt the vessel that was his head elevate.
His legs stood; his feet were planted. But he wasn't connected to them. The body he saw wasn't his. He was an observer in a machine, watching from behind a pane of glass.
He was walking in an alternate world alongside invisible horrors. He stared at the empty air and sunlight, not understanding why he wasn't able to experience the real world.
Pieces, horrible pieces of impressions floated with him. Mangled chunks of memory. Screaming. Blood and fluid. Jostling pain.
Inside, Suki found him.
Sokka reached for her like a spectre. She knew something was wrong.
"What's happening?" she asked him.
"I don't know," his voice answered. He grasped her arms like he might fall, but he was steady on his feet.
"Do you need a doctor?" Suki asked.
"I don't know. I feel strange."
"Strange how?"
"Light-headed, maybe. I don't know. I think I'm OK."
He drifted through the rest of the day, competent enough that were it not for the vague expression of concern on his face, no one would have thought he was out of sorts.
Days passed, this feeling slowly, slowly fading but never quite letting go. It was as if he existed just inside the boundary of his body, not quite filling it out, not quite able to perceive things for himself but only through the filter of some stranger's perceptions.
He didn't tell Suki of the fact he'd recalled the night he had lost. He felt like even breathing a hint of intention its direction would summon a gnashing army of demons out of the ether.
But shards of nightmarish memories kept coming dislodged from the abyss and floating to the surface of his awareness again, sometimes transporting him back for a moment in the middle of the day. Every time was a staccato assault of disorientation, an auditory hallucination of a scream.
At other times, a gnawing memory would chew on the base of his consciousness all day, manifesting in body sensations or crawling skin, interfering with his activities, sometimes his sentences.
He began to think he must seem deranged to others.
At some point, there was no tolerating this anymore. He had to get out of this state.
Alone one day, in a fit of desperation, Sokka took a sharpened knife from the kitchen and locked himself in a bathroom with it.
He stood a while in the bathroom, hesitating at first, afraid to cross some sacred boundary.
He had hurt himself before, in his cell in the palace, bloodying his shin against the bars. A depraved turn of sheer luck—of having never seen that cell again—had been the only thing that had saved him from doing it a second time.
How would he feel if he tried something like that again now? Was there an addictive quality to it he would be inviting upon himself by breaking the barrier?
He put the blade on the meaty mound of his forearm, just behind the back of his hand.
There was another concern. A knife was potentially lethal. Would he be able to cut out only the poison and leave his life intact?
Tentatively, he pulled the metal across his skin.
The blade caught only delicately, pulling against skin more than cutting. Sokka was being far too timid.
So he restarted, repositioned, pressed the blade more firmly, pulled a bit more smoothly. The beveled edge sliced neatly into his flesh.
Sparkling pain rippled through his arm, and the high that reached his brain was almost instantaneous.
Sokka shuddered with a weak euphoria. Ohhhhh, the high was instant.
There was no stopping now.
Sokka stood mesmerized, repeating this simple stroke over and over again, climbing his forearm like a ladder. He watched fascinated by the blade edge disappearing into his skin, pulling out again where the arm curved down and away.
The cuts were shallow and almost razor thin, not even bleeding as he'd expected them to. In fact, they were almost invisible at first, only filling red with blood in the moments after the knife pulled away.
He wanted more.
He thought a moment.
If he cut deeper, more blood would appear. And his arm was a very visible place. It was odd it hadn't occurred to him beforehand to choose a place he could more easily cover with clothing.
He took his shirt off. It was an effort to keeping even the small amount of blood on his arm from smearing it.
He took his pants off as well. Naked, there was no danger of getting blood on his clothes.
He folded the clothes neatly and set them in the corner.
Now his task was like a dark, religious, sacrificial ritual.
The cold floor was under his bare feet. The cool air was on his bare skin. The warmed knife was resting delicately against his side.
Hands almost shaking, Sokka pressed the knife bravely against his skin and pulled it across his abdomen, across the base of his rib cage. The blade cut no deeper than his skin, but it was still deeper than he'd cut his arm.
The slice was glorious, filling quickly with blood, dark red droplets forming along the thin line. Sokka's mouth hung open, his eyelids slack.
He didn't even feel it like pain. There was stinging, radiating...well, pain, yes. But he felt it more like power.
The hurt was a delicious kind, exhilarating, making him feel invincible. The more he wounded himself, the safer he was from danger. If he could survive this, he could survive anything.
He sliced over and over again, long and slow across his stomach, drawing horizontal lines up and down his waist from ribs to hip. He'd done this thirty times before he even looked in the mirror.
He marvelled at the majesty, knife slack in his fist, blood beading in large drops, some trickling down several inches, streaking down to his hips.
Sokka was light-headed with the high.
He sat, almost fell to the floor, leaning back against a wall and studying himself in the full-length mirror.
Heat rose all around him, radiating from his sliced-up skin, turning him pink and warm—like a burning blanket he could lay over himself.
Because it was presented before him and empty, he cut his thigh next.
He cut himself even deeper still, bolder, hungry. The inflamed, raised edges of the cuts formed a washboard up from his knee.
The knife was crusted now because he'd dragged the blade through so much blood, retracing the shallower cuts, not satisfied with the first pass. Blood gleamed on his limbs like rain.
Sitting there, all at once, he felt quite weak.
Sokka dropped the knife, letting it clatter to the floor, spraying a miniscule red mist across the stone. He sank back against the wall, letting himself go limp, arms splayed palm-up at his sides.
He was distinctly light headed now. The room felt cold.
Then a hot, blanching wave of sweat rippled over him.
He groaned softly, suddenly nauseous. He lay back, flat on the floor, but the sickness didn't pass. Breathing hard now, he reached for the sink above his head to pull himself up, but he was too weak to grip it and too sick to stand.
He dropped his head back on the floor, heart thrumming fast, limbs tingling with something bordering on panic. He breathed heavily, closing his eyes. He regretted this experiment all of a sudden.
He was afraid he was going to pass out.
He groaned again, rolling the back of his head against the floor, holding up his empty hand to look at it, his skin seeming almost white.
Sokka put his uncut arm over his eyes, breathing deep and slow to regain strength. He did not pass out.
After a long, torturous quiet, he was shivering with cold. But his sickness was gone, and he felt real again.
Gingerly he picked himself up, his sliced-up skin tight and burning.
The blood had hardened into a crusty sheen of beads. When he moved, the skin pulled and cracked the scabs, causing fresh pain, this time not under his control. It was no longer pleasant.
He wetted a towel and cleaned the few smears and drops of blood he'd left on the floor. He washed himself in the bath, bleeding all over again but this time blotting it away with a towel.
Finally he pulled his clothes on again and donned a bath robe over them to conceal the bloodied arm left exposed by his short sleeve.
He bundled the dirty towels together and put them directly into the wash so not even the Earth King's servants would find them. Then he found a long-sleeved shirt to wear and rejoined the others as if nothing had happened.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
But by that night, his stress hit a breaking point.
He and Suki had retired to their room, but Sokka was unable to relax, let alone sleep.
He paced, writhed, in a state of hyper anxiety, making himself nauseous. He sat while Suki massaged his shoulders, but he was up and on the edge of vomiting several times before finally accomplishing it—for once into the toilet instead of right where he stood.
He was sweating, trembling, and in stinging pain from every place he'd cut. The strain of not having slept or eaten much the past few days seemed to finally have taxed the last of his reserves.
He returned to Suki, holding the door frame, dizzy.
He didn't say anything but simply stopped, eyes having trouble focusing, paused as if some thought had arrested him.
Very logically, he realized he was going to pass out, and he heard Suki say "Sokka!" as his knees buckled. But he was out before he hit the floor.
He awoke again very disoriented to Suki wiping his face with a wet cloth. He was lying on his back on the bed. Suki's eyes were red.
"Are you OK?" she asked him.
He had a headache. He reached up and felt a throbbing spot on his forehead where he must have hit it falling to the floor. In doing so, he noticed his sleeve was pulled back, displaying the hatchwork of red lines he'd put on his arm.
He paused, realizing Suki had found him out.
Suki watched as he mentally caught up. "Sokka," she said, and it was obvious now why her eyes were red, "have you been cutting yourself?"
A shadow descended on his soul, a bleakness like he'd never felt before. He moaned softly, racked with shame and remorse, reaching for Suki's hand.
"I'm sorry," he moaned, not even strong enough for tears anymore. Suki took his hand and bent over him in anguish, cheek on his chest.
"You don't have to be sorry," she said firmly, almost angrily. A tear rolled across her nose and dripped onto his shirt. "I'm sorry," Suki said. "Sokka, I'm so sorry."
Sokka put his hand on her head, feeling at last like the villain of his story. What had he done? What was he doing?
Suki tearfully convinced him to show her the full extent of his cuts, and then she sat up with him, massaging lavender oil into his skin and applying bandages to heal the damage.
She made him tea and made him talk to her, not through pressure or even guilt but through a superhuman calm and persistence, setting aside everything but Sokka for the night.
And he told her. He told her everything she wanted to know.
Azula, Ozai, the flashbacks, the cutting. Since he had become a demon, he had nothing left to lose, and he owed her so much and cared about her so much that he would have done anything in that moment if she'd asked.
He was in a fog of exhaustion and despair and simply didn't want to fight it anymore.
By the end of the night, he and Suki lay together in bed face to face, both depleted of tears and stamina.
Sokka was undressed except for his underclothes now, neck still wrapped plus new bandages wrapped around his stomach, arm, and thigh. Suki was in her night clothes, a sleeveless camisole and shorts.
Newly emptied of secrets, Sokka reached out and pulled Suki close to him, full-body embracing her for the first time since he'd been rescued.
Suki entwined her arms behind his head, laying her cheek against his neck, just breathing, sighing, skin to skin with him. She was warm and soft and light in his grip.
He'd told her everything, and he'd survived. He was no longer a demon, but she was an angel.
He let her fall asleep like that without moving her.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The next day, Suki made him write to Piandao. The swordsmaster responded that same evening:
Absolutely. Please come immediately.
When they arrived at Piandao's gate the next afternoon, Piandao was luminous. He bowed, welcomed them, gave them a room. Suki insisted that Sokka talk to Piandao alone, because Sokka's relationship with his master was important in its own right.
Piandao hosted Sokka in the living room. They knelt facing each other on cushions with tea on a tray between them.
Sokka had written in his letter that he needed help, but he hadn't specified more. Piandao opened with that topic.
"When I saw you in Ba Sing Se," he said, "I had a sense you were struggling, but I couldn't perceive exactly why. Obviously it has something to do with your experience as a prisoner. Please tell me."
Shy but committed, Sokka told Piandao he'd suffered terrifying and hurtful things in captivity, and the reason he wrote was that he wasn't coping well.
He lifted a sleeve to show his bandaged arm. "I cut myself."
Piandao took this revelation in stride, expressing alarm but not repulsion. His non-judgment alone was such a relief to Sokka that he was obliged to wipe water from his eyes.
"But tell me why," Piandao said.
"I..." Sokka's throat closed. He bowed his head, trying to regain his courage.
"Sokka," Piandao amended, "I had no idea your feelings were so extreme. I'm sorry. In Ba Sing Se, I shouldn't have left you alone. I wish I'd asked you here sooner."
Sokka blushed, embarrassed to receive an apology from someone he regarded as such a superior.
"I don't want to impose—" Sokka said, but Piandao cut him off.
"You're not imposing. Having you here is a gift to me."
Sokka sat with his hands buried in the basket of his crossed legs. A silence began to collect.
"I want to tell you," he said, but still he hesitated a long time. In a while, he confessed, "I'm embarrassed."
"There's nothing to be embarrassed of," Piandao assured him.
Intellectually, Sokka believed him, but the discomfort he felt suggested to him otherwise. Still, he wouldn't leave here until he'd fulfilled the purpose of his coming. He had to proceed.
"Suki found me in a closet," he began.
The story he told was halting and difficult, out of order and brittle with pain and confusion. Piandao did nothing but sit and listen as closely as an animal in the forest.
"I couldn't stop him" Sokka said, throat hollow. "I tried. I begged. But he would never stop. So—"
His voice caught. He meant to keep speaking, but a swell of tears got in the way.
He covered his face with his hands, still unable to tolerate this one unique despair: "So I stopped fighting."
He took a moment to recover his composure.
"I can't kiss Suki," he said. "I can't even stand to be touched sometimes. Every time it comes up, all I can think is—I didn't try to stop him."
"It's not your fault," Piandao said.
"I didn't want it," Sokka cried.
"Of course you didn't."
Sokka sat with his eyes in his hand. He didn't want to cry.
"It feels so disgusting," he growled. "Like grime in your soul. I cou—" But he had to cry. "I couldn't even hug my dad."
Piandao made a sound of deep sympathy as Sokka sobbed then restrained himself again. Piandao leaned forward and took Sokka's hand.
"I'm proud of you," he said.
Sokka looked wide-eyed at his swordsmaster, tears falling openly.
"Thank you for telling me this," Piandao said.
It took Sokka some minutes to calm down and return to stillness now that the story was concluded.
"How much of this have you told Suki?" Piandao asked.
"All of it," he said. "At least...what happened. I think there's a lot more to it than just what happened. But right now, all I know is plain facts. Whatever else there is, I don't understand yet."
Piandao nodded.
"You know," the swordsmaster said, "when I first met Suki—outside Ba Sing Se, a few days before Sozin's Comet—we didn't speak much. But once I knew who she was, one thing seemed very clear to me: she loves you."
Sokka let out a breath and closed his eyes, feeling warm. He nodded. He loved her too.
"I'm glad she came along," Piandao said.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
Piandao encouraged art and swordplay in place of Sokka's cutting. And now that Piandao and Suki had both been apprised of Sokka's story, helping him to physically recover was so much more straightforward.
For the few days it took for Sokka's cuts to close, changing his bandages was something like a meeting between an athlete and his trainers.
Suki and Piandao worked together, making the whole affair into a communally bonding endeavor. Suki herself performed the salving and wrapping while Piandao stood by as her assistant, handing and retrieving supplies as needed.
Sokka stopped wearing bandages to hide his neck. The bite marks there had faded so much that they were hardly perceptible now, anyway, and with no one around from whom to keep secrets, there was no point maintaining them.
The gesture was also symbolic: bottling himself up before had only caused him to spiral into destruction. Hiding, he decided, was no longer an acceptable habit.
Combat training and sparring became the daily routine—Sokka and Suki under the instruction of Piandao—punctuated by meals, walks, writing, and art.
In the fading summer heat, as a true sign of his dramatic shift in attitude, Sokka even trained outdoors shirtless and bandaged—or, as it was later on, scarred.
Over time, he dealt better with his intrusive memories. More and more often, he could process them as thoughts rather than as experiences—the difference between remembering and re-experiencing.
One thing he remembered was the very last thing Ozai had done to him.
It had been the last instance of rape. Ozai had Sokka bound bent in half, facedown on the mattress, knees pulled to his chest, arms stretched back and wrists tied to his ankles, his backside in the air.
As Ozai raped him, he noticed Sokka was panting.
Ozai reached down between Sokka's legs and found his penis erect.
"Ah, yes," the Fire Lord said. "Your body knows what it wants. You might as well enjoy it." He leaned over Sokka, pressing inside him. "Giving in is better than being in pain, no?"
Sokka couldn't move and cried to be so degraded. And he cried because Ozai was right: Everything hurt and had hurt for so long that he was out of his mind. Sokka's body was doing anything it could to find relief.
And relief lay in that small tingle of sensation Ozai caused with friction.
As Ozai moved inside him, Sokka sank into the drug of that miniscule pleasure, getting it to rise just a hair's breadth higher than his level of pain.
But then Ozai pulled out, leaving Sokka unresolved, and the pain, like water, seeped back in. Sokka moaned low and long. He would be willing to die just to escape it.
Ozai, toying with him by pretending compassion, put his fingers in Sokka instead. He gently imitated his previous activity, only now more deftly searching for the spot that made Sokka most respond.
Sokka arched when Ozai found it, and Ozai, evidently encouraged, began to move his hand rapidly.
The sensation immediately shifted to tearing and bruising pain. Sokka jolted against the ropes but was unable to pull away.
"Stop," he begged, voice just a hiss. "Don't use your fingers."
Ozai stopped his hand.
"Ohhh," he said slowly, "I see. Only one thing will do for you." His grin was audible.
Ozai reared up on his knees again, playing with himself, knuckles drumming against Sokka's backside.
"Hungry," he teased, then he pushed back inside him.
It was simple physics that Ozai couldn't be as violent in this method as he could with his hand. As such, the sensation that was Sokka's refuge was much easier to access.
"Say how good it feels," Ozai groaned from overhead. Sokka ignored him except to weep weakly in surrender.
There was nothing left worth fighting for. It was more painful to fight than to simply let the stimulation exist. Sokka had no purpose now but to escape any way he could.
With Ozai moving in him and without Sokka's defenses active to stop it, the slight pleasure in Sokka's own sexual regions rose gently to the cusp. He lay there folded uselessly beneath Ozai and allowed himself to pulse and drip with expectation.
It was relief, a painkiller, a cresting wave. Sokka's breath came harder and quicker, and in the end, he whimpered when he came.
His body convulsed and twitched, elevated to bliss for a miraculous moment. For three solid seconds, nothing hurt. And while Ozai continued to be inside of him, Sokka chased that fading spark, grateful for the chance to tolerate the pain so much better for a moment.
When Ozai finished and removed himself, Sokka felt not mere relief but satisfaction. He was melting, drowsy, heavy.
Ozai flopped aside, and Sokka began to fade. Not even the cutting of his restraints was enough to bring him back to life.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
It was autumn now. The wind blowing in from the sea was colder, but the leaves of Piandao's estate remained in the trees. Rarely did it get cold enough until winter, he said, to accomplish the real fall.
The Fire Nation existed mostly in a temperate climate. Frost on the grass in the chilly winter mornings was often as much ice as the region saw.
This made Sokka reflect: it had been a long time since he'd seen snow. He wondered when he'd ever be ready to return home. Life with Suki and Piandao at the estate was all he could envision for the time being. Still, the change of season made him nostalgic.
Apparently the time of year had a similar effect on Katara, because they soon received a letter from her arranging a visit.
When Katara arrived, she and Sokka sat together alone on the veranda overlooking Piandao's rock garden.
She'd come because she'd wanted to share with him news about Ozai and Azula. The process of arranging their trials was taking longer than she'd ever expected. Evidence collection and investigation were a huge task. Ozai's trial itself might not come for months yet.
Ozai remained in prison, Azula in an institution. Meanwhile, hearings were taking place to assess what charges should be filed against them.
Katara said she felt too close to everything now to be able to hear the testimony at these hearings.
She'd sat in on similar ones already for cases involving lower ranking officials. But now it had come time to hear from the soldiers and guards who'd worked most closely with the former Fire Lord. And she suddenly knew she didn't want to be present to hear it.
According to Katara, she thought that before Sokka had left to come stay with Piandao, he must have suffered a long time in Ba Sing Se while she engaged in diplomatic tasks alongside Aang.
When Sokka had left, she'd known it must have been for a serious reason. But he hadn't told her why.
And now, at these hearings, all of a sudden, she knew powerfully one thing: if she hadn't earned the privilege of hearing from Sokka himself what had happened to him then, she didn't have the right to hear it at all now.
She became tearful.
"I was so hurt once that I thought I had to kill someone to recover," she said. "I really wanted to murder the man who killed Mom.
"I don't feel that way anymore, but I did once. And it finally occurred to me that I've been such a hypocrite to act like you feeling that way about Ozai wasn't valid.
"You're my brother," she said, looking at him. "I shouldn't have abandoned you. You deserved so much better."
Sokka didn't know how to react. He stared at her, astounded by how much thought and feeling she'd put into this.
"I was scared," Katara went on. "You were missing so long. And when you came back, everything was so different, I didn't know what to do."
She sniffed and wiped her eyes almost angrily. "That's not an excuse," she said. "I don't want you to forgive me. I just want to let you know that I see now how cruel and stupid it was of me to think that leaving you alone to deal with it on your own was a harmless thing to do."
Sokka felt real tenderness for her effort. It brought tears to his eyes, too. When she stopped speaking, he hugged her.
Katara was right that he'd felt abandoned, though even he hadn't realized the truth of that until just now. It hurt to have it acknowledged—Katara saying it out loud made it real to him for the first time.
But it wasn't until something was real that it could even begin to be processed. So no matter how much it hurt, he was glad she had come.
Katara returned his hug, soaking him in like a sponge. They seemed to both have a sense now that this was the cleansing they'd needed to be able to start again.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
In spite of her renewed connection with Sokka, Katara didn't stay long. The fact remained that she had a duty to perform elsewhere in the world now with Aang.
Sokka didn't begrudge her, though. Her visit had removed a boulder from a buried path. The way forward wasn't clear yet, but space for one more step had been opened.
Time carried on, the wind blowing colder every day. There was occasionally frost on the ground in the mornings now, and the air felt new and fresh. Sokka enjoyed spending time out in the brisk open.
One day he came in from a walk with rosy cheeks and nose from the cold. He was smiling—maybe not for the first time since coming to Piandao's, but certainly for the first time so easily and persistently.
In this moment, he felt invigorated and optimistic. He wanted to find Suki.
She was in the library, browsing titles. Sokka went up to her and hugged her from behind.
Suki smiled and turned toward him, and without fear and with the innocence of a little boy, he kissed her on the lips.
"Ha! What is this?" Suki asked, amazed.
Sokka smiled and held his hand out to her, beckoning her to come outside. There was something miraculous he wanted to show her:
"It's snowing," he said.
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
The end.
Thank you, everyone, for reading.
Replies to reviews can be found here: www2.adult-fanfiction.org/forum/topic/33756-review-replies-ill-gotten-goods
- 4
- 5
- 6
You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.You need to be logged in to leave a review for this story.
Report Story

Ill-Gotten Goods