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“Hey, Zuko,” Sokka says, lying upside down on the steps of the beach house, “can I ask you something?”
Zuko glances at Sokka. He’s been tapping his foot waiting for Aang to get back from his allotted ten minute break for fifteen minutes, scowling all the while. From this angle, upside down and half chin, his face is even harder to read than normal.
“Uh, sure.”
Sokka swallows.
“It’s just, I’ve always wondered but I’ve never asked,” he babbles, stalling for the precious few seconds before the question pops out and he can’t take it back, “what…”
Zuko raises an eyebrow. His single eyebrow, since he only has one because of the answer to the question Sokka wants to ask.
As it turns out, Zuko can still be pretty intimidating.
“…is your favorite tea?” Sokka asks, chickening out. “Since, you know, you make tea for us so much and you’re pretty good at it, I figured you must have… a favorite.”
“Jasmine,” Zuko says with a soft smile that flips Sokka’s stomach upside-down—or rightside-up? Since his whole body is upside down to start with. “My uncle used to make it when he thought I needed to calm down.”
“Was he right?” Sokka teases.
“I usually needed to calm down,” he admits sheepishly.
Sokka laughs. With the tension broken, his question dangles on the tip of his tongue. But then he thinks about the half-smile lingering on Zuko’s face and how unlikely it is to stay if he has to think about things he’d probably rather forget but never can, and—
“I’m ready, Sifu Hotman!” Aang bounds clear over the fountain to land in a deep bow right in front of Zuko, who looks utterly unimpressed as his tunic and hair ripple in the breeze.
“You’re late.”
“I was just—”
“Ten extra sets of fire fists. Well? What are you waiting for? Go.”
Aang nearly burns Sokka’s eyebrows off in his eagerness to please his jerkbending teacher. That seems like as good a reason as any to find a new place to lounge around, and Ember Island is optimized for lounging.
Even lying on the beach with Katara, holding a crisp cup of mango juice waterbent to icy perfection, Sokka can’t get the question out of his head. Curiosity killed the pygmy puma, but satisfaction… did something. He can’t quite remember the phrase. He’s going to find out, anyway, one way or another. The answer to his question, that is, not the idiom.
But maybe he’ll wait until after Zuko is done shooting fire out of his hands for today. Just in case.
He tries again after dinner, thinking maybe it will feel less confrontational in the group than one-on-one.
“Zuko,” Sokka says.
Zuko looks up from where he’s bent over the pai sho board Toph earthbent into the ground a few days ago. While he’s not looking, Toph swaps two of the stone tiles with a twitch of her fingers. Aang sees, laughs, and crouches next to Toph to make sure he doesn’t miss the look on Zuko’s face when he turns around.
All three of them have smiles on their faces—two of them wide and mischievous, one barely visible if you don’t know how to look for it.
“Yeah?”
“Um,” Sokka stammers, “can you pass me one of those buns?”
He points to the tray behind Zuko, which holds the dessert buns Katara made in a frenzy, drunk on the power of having an actual kitchen.
“You already ate four!” Katara butts in. “We were going to save some for breakfast.”
“I won’t finish them!” he objects. “I’ll just eat my breakfast one now!”
“No way. Then you’ll complain about how hungry you are all morning.”
“She’s got you there,” Suki adds as she comes back from the bathroom. She spies the pai sho trick immediately and stifles a giggle behind her hand. Zuko glances between Suki, Katara, and Sokka, clearly unsure how much trouble he’ll be in if he so much as thinks about touching the buns.
“See?” Katara says triumphantly. “Suki agrees with me.”
It turns into a whole argument about how Sokka can control his own stomach now, thank you, and what do they care if he goes hungry in the morning? which means Sokka misses both the growl of rage Zuko lets out when Toph and Aang boldly deny cheating and his window of opportunity.
He thinks about trying again in the morning.
Nothing even happens this time. Zuko just looks sleep-mussed and peaceful in the early light, as still as a pond undisturbed by the wind. Sokka can’t bear to break that image.
He and Aang are about to start training for the day, anyway. It wouldn’t be fair to Sokka’s friend to get his teacher ticked off right before a lesson.
Katara needs to go to the market. She asks Suki to come with her because the two of them have gotten close, which Sokka is simultaneously delighted and terrified by; Suki invites Sokka, who can’t pass up an opportunity to go shopping—to gather intel on the Fire Nation, he means; Toph says she’s sick of sand and tags along.
“Yes!” Aang says, launching two feet off the ground. “I want to see— Why are you all…? Oh.”
He visibly deflates when he remembers the conversations they’ve already had about how dangerous it is for him to go out in the daytime.
“Hey,” Zuko pipes up from behind Aang before any of the rest of them can offer to stay behind. He lays a hand on his shoulder. “I have an idea. The rest of you go ahead.”
If anything, Aang looks even grumpier at the prospect of whatever new firebending lesson Zuko has in store for him, but he nods.
“Bye, Aang! Bye, Zuko!” Katara calls as they leave.
The four of them walk in companionable silence. Suki shades her eyes against the sun. Katara hums a mismatched tune. They reach a stretch of road that passes under the tall foliage bordering a nearby beach house estate, far enough from any buildings to be isolated and far enough from town to be alone.
Sokka tries a different approach.
“Does anybody know what happened to Zuko’s face?” he asks aloud.
“Sokka!” Katara scolds reflexively, stopping in the middle of the road to swat him on the shoulder.
“What? Don’t tell me you’ve never wondered.”
“If he wanted to tell us,” she sniffs, “I’m sure he would have.”
“So that’s a no. Suki? You guys run off and do your scary midnight sparring all the time. Has he ever mentioned it?”
“He doesn’t usually talk much,” Suki shrugs.
“Wait, wait, wait,” Toph interrupts. “What about Zuko’s face?”
Nobody says a word. Somewhere in the trees, a foot behind Sokka’s ear, a badgerfrog croaks loudly enough to make him jump.
“He, um,” Katara breaks the awkward silence with even more awkwardness, “has this— It’s— His left side—”
“I’m messing with you,” Toph snorts. “He wouldn’t shut up about the scar being on the wrong side in that stupid play. What’s the big deal? He’s trained with dual swords since he was in diapers, right? Considering the number of times Mister Master Swordsman here,” she jerks a thumb at Sokka, “has almost sliced his own foot off in the last month, it doesn’t seem like much of a mystery to me.”
Once again, the badgerfrog is the only one with anything to contribute to the conversation.
“What?” Toph says.
“It’s not from a sword, Toph,” Katara explains. “It’s a burn. A really, really big one.”
“Deep, too,” Suki says. “I’m honestly surprised he can still see out of that eye.”
“Are you sure he can?” Toph asks quietly.
None of them have anything to say to that, either. They start walking toward town again.
Sokka doesn’t have any more information than he did this morning, but he does have an idea.
“Zuko,” Sokka says. This time, he knows how the sentence will end.
“What’s up?”
“Spar with me.” Sokka draws his sword and strikes his most dramatic pose.
Zuko rolls his eyes.
“Not a chance. Not after last time.”
“I won’t cheat again, I promise! Absolutely no boomerang. It’s all the way over there, see?” He points to the other side of the courtyard, where his boomerang sits glinting conspicuously in the sunlight.
Zuko scowls. His gaze flicks suspiciously between Sokka and boomerang.
“C’moooon,” Sokka whines. “Don’t pretend you’re not even a little bored. Even you can’t spend every second of every day making Aang shoot fire out of his nose.”
“No,” Zuko reluctantly agrees, “Toph has him today.”
“So…” Sokka waggles his eyebrows. “Are you gonna go get your swords? Or are you afraid you’ll lose?”
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Zuko huffs, and Sokka knows he’s got him.
“Okay,” Sokka says, “we’re agreed on the rules—”
“No weapons other than swords, using terrain is okay, no leaving the courtyard, stop if either of us draws blood.” Zuko nods once. His face is hard and serious, like it always was when Sokka first met him—but calmer, more focused, discipline in the place of rage.
“Alright.” Sokka takes a deep breath. “Go!”
“You can’t just,” Zuko snaps as their blades clang together, “shout go.” But he doesn’t seem angry. Sokka knows him by now—he knows this is what it looks like when Zuko has fun.
“I think I just did,” Sokka taunts, and they’re off.
He can tell immediately that Zuko is going easy on him this time. There isn’t anybody else around, nobody to impress, and they know where they stand with one another by now. Sokka gains the high ground by hopping onto the ledge of the fountain; Zuko dodges the blade by dropping to the ground and spinning until his foot catches around the back of Sokka’s ankle, lightly enough it’s almost a tease, leaving Sokka standing but on one foot like a flaminguin.
Sokka yelps, grins, finds his footing, and lunges.
Both of Zuko’s eyes follow him keenly, but that doesn’t mean much on its own. Sokka leans into his plan slowly. He drives blows to Zuko’s left, then his right, counting and comparing the split seconds of his reaction times.
He’s keenly focused on the precise movements of Zuko’s head when he comes at him, again and again, from the left. That’s probably why he doesn’t see it coming when Zuko sweeps Sokka’s feet right out from under him.
“Oof,” Sokka says eloquently as his back makes contact with the stone of the courtyard. Zuko’s blades are at his throat and Zuko’s teeth are bared in a smug smile.
He sheathes the dao in a smooth motion and offers Sokka a hand up. Sokka takes it.
“I noticed what you were doing,” Zuko says a few minutes later. Sokka chokes on the water he’d been chugging from one of Katara’s waterskins. Zuko has to pound his back a few times to get him to stop coughing.
“Wh—what do you mean?”
“Not a bad idea, coming at an opponent from their non-dominant side, but you got one thing wrong.” He raises a hand and waves sarcastically. “I’m left-handed.”
“Oh.” Sokka feels at once relieved and like a complete moron.
“Also, I have two swords,” he adds.
“Yeah, okay, laugh it up.” Sokka rolls his eyes. “Wait, I’ve seen you write with your right hand!”
Zuko gives him a weird look.
“That’s what you’re supposed to do,” he says slowly, like Sokka is a once-in-a-lifetime idiot, “write with the right hand.”
“Even if you’re left-handed?”
Zuko’s brow furrows in a familiar mix of irritation and confusion.
“It’s— It’s the correct way to write,” he says defensively. “That’s what my tutors always said.”
“They made you write with your off hand?” Sokka shakes his head and laughs. “I can’t imagine. My handwriting’s bad enough as it is.”
“I…” Zuko goes far away behind the eyes for a second. He flexes his left hand, then reaches with his right to rub gently at a spot below his left elbow.
“You okay?”
Zuko looks at Sokka, full on, eyes strange and intense.
“My writing tutor used to tie my left hand behind my back until I stopped trying to write with it. He burned me once when he caught me doing it again.” Zuko says all of this flatly, like he’s discussing unpleasant weather. “Is that normal?”
“No.” Sokka shakes his head again, dumbfounded. He doesn’t look away from Zuko. “I don’t think it is.”
“Good to know.”
With that, Zuko picks up his swords and walks into the house. Sokka gets the feeling he doesn’t want to be followed. He feels like he should do it anyway.
“Sokka!” Suki’s voice calls down from somewhere overhead. He looks up and sees her in one of the second floor windows. “Come up here! I have to show you something!”
“Can it wait?”
“It’s a painting! I don’t think the artist has ever seen a human being. You’re going to love it!”
Sokka glances down to where Zuko had just been, but he’s gone. No telling where the jerk has vanished to by now. He sighs.
“Be there in a minute.”
He wanders into the house and thinks that he may not have the answer he was looking for, but he’s learned something. A few things, actually.
He doesn’t know how much more he wants to find out.
“The evidence,” Sokka says, rolling out a sheet of paper on the floor below a large painting of several people with the most disproportionate arms he’s ever seen, “is thus.”
“Are you sure this is a good idea?” Suki asks.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, it’s like Katara said. If he wanted you to know what happened—”
“Zuko doesn’t talk about stuff.” Sokka rubs a hand against the back of his head. His shaved sides have nearly grown in enough to run his fingers through the hair there. “The only way to get him to open up is to pry it out of him.”
“And you’re great at prying,” Suki says dryly.
“I am, actually! You should have seen me when I was solving the mystery of Kyoshi. That was some quality detective work.” Sokka starts writing Point the First in his best calligraphy.
“Kyoshi? What kind of mystery?”
“Oh, we were trying to prove she was innocent in a murder because this town wanted to boil Aang in oil for his past life killing their leader.” He sticks his tongue out between his teeth and tries not to mess up the third stroke of this character, which he always does.
“Who was Kyoshi supposed to have murdered?” Suki sounds scandalized and angry on behalf of her home and order’s founder.
“Some conqueror,” Sokka says absentmindedly. He’s trying to remember what the first piece of evidence actually is. “Chan, or something.”
“Oh, Chin? Yeah, she totally killed him.”
“Yep. And then she manifested through Aang and told the whole town. Aw, man!” Sokka whines as the brush slips and cuts a line of ink straight through the character for scar.
“Do you want me to do that?” Suki offers kindly. “I’ll take dictation.”
“Sure.” Sokka hands the paper and brush over meekly. Suki smiles—until she looks at it.
“Why did you just write ‘wide’?”
“I messed up! Don’t make fun of my handwriting.” Sokka crosses his arms and clears his throat. “Point the first: Zuko has a scar.”
“Got it.” Suki jots this vital evidence down. “What next?”
“Point the second: he’s had that scar for at least a year.”
Suki writes.
“Probably longer,” she adds. “It looks old.”
“Let’s stick to the hard facts, dear assistant.”
Suki raises an eyebrow.
“I mean,” Sokka says quickly, “great deduction, uh, fellow detective! Point the third: Zuko was on a ship for…I don’t know, a while? Long enough to get to the South Pole, and I don’t think it was his first stop.”
“So he must have gotten the scar before that, right?”
“Maybe not. It was a warship. I’m sure he ran into somebody who wanted to fight him before he tried to burn down our villages.” Sokka shrugs. “He wasn’t in the Fire Nation, anyway, so that cuts down the number of firebenders he ran into on the daily.”
Suki nods as she jots this down.
“Point the fourth,” Sokka begins, then stops.
The results of his recent investigation would be pertinent here, if he were doing his due diligence as a pursuer of the cold, hard truth. But it feels too cold and too hard by a longshot to put brush to paper and write Cruelty was an accepted part of his childhood, like it’s just another piece of a puzzle Sokka only wants to solve for the sake of his own curiosity.
“He’s a really good firebender,” Suki suggests helpfully, probably assuming Sokka just got ahead of himself or forgot what he was going to say. “So whoever gave him the scar had to be—”
“Powerful.” Sokka has a thought. It isn’t a nice one to have. “To do it in the first place, and to—”
“To get away with it,” Suki finishes the thought for him.
They look at each other. Somewhere in the distance, there is an almighty crash and the sound of Toph’s ringing laughter. A warm breeze comes in off the ocean.
“Hey,” Sokka says quietly, “Zuko.”
“Hey,” Zuko replies without turning around.
Zuko is doing his whole brooding schtick again. Either that, or he’s just enjoying the view from the beach on a clear night—and doesn’t that just say it all, that Sokka is immediately suspicious of his motives for the simplest of actions. He shakes his head to clear it away: the suspicions, the questions, the presumption that he deserves to know everything that goes through someone else’s head.
“Mind if I sit?”
“No,” Zuko says. He inclines his head gently to the sand beside him.
Sokka sits. The stars are thick and bright. A group on the other side of the bay has a bonfire going. The reflected orange flames leap and dance across the water, bathing the ocean in a small second sunset.
“I owe you an apology.”
That gets his attention. Zuko looks at him out of the corner of his eye, and his shoulders don’t move but his hands tighten in the sand where he’s leaning back on them. He’s confused, but not afraid. There’s trust there—and a month ago, Sokka wouldn’t have seen any of it.
He’s glad he knows Zuko better now.
“For what?”
Sokka blows a long breath out through his pursed lips.
“Okay, here’s the thing. We’ve known each other a while—not, like, known each other the way we do now, being friends and everything. But you know, we met a long time ago. When you beat me up and almost burned down my village? You remember.”
“Yep,” Zuko agrees. “Where are you going with this?”
“Back then, everything about you made sense to me,” Sokka explains. “The ship and the anger and the going around burning down people’s villages, it was all just firebender stuff. That was what the Fire Nation had always looked like. In my head, you were nothing but violence.”
Zuko pulls his knees up and leans forward, curling in on himself. His eyes go back to the sky.
“I know,” he says quietly. “I’m sorry.”
“No, wait—” Sokka smacks his own forehead. Why do words have to be so important and so hard? “I don’t need another apology out of you, alright? Just listen.”
Zuko glances over at him skeptically, but nods.
“I’m listening.”
“Then, things got more complicated,” Sokka continues. “Or I guess I just understood them better. I saw more of the world, and I changed a lot, and then you came back and you’d changed. You helped me rescue my dad and Suki. You played pai sho with Aang. You got Katara to forgive you—which, by the way, thanks for going with her. She needed somebody to do that and I know it couldn’t have been me. You gave up so much to be with us. I know you don’t want to take credit for it, but you did.”
“Sokka, what are you trying to say?” Zuko asks again.
“I couldn’t reconcile all that with the version of you who used to live in my head. I knew you were the same person. I still see parts of the old you in you now—not in a bad way,” he hastens to add, putting his hands up reassuringly. “Your determination, your skills, all that stuff. It’s way easier to appreciate now that you’re on our side. But there were things I still didn’t understand that I used to take for granted. And one of those,” Sokka takes a deep breath, “was your scar.”
“I see.” Zuko’s fingers brush the thickened skin under his left eye.
“I’ve been sort of… investigating?” At the words, Zuko’s eyes widen. He looks stricken, he looks hurt. Sokka’s chest goes tight with guilt. “That’s what I came to apologize for. It wasn’t my place to do that. If you want your friends to know what happened to you, you should be able to tell us on your own terms. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” Zuko croaks. Warm wind comes off the bay, carrying the smell of seawater. “It’s— It isn’t that I don’t want the rest of you to know. A lot of people know what happened. People I’ve never met know all about the worst day of my life. It shouldn’t matter how you find out.”
“But it does matter,” Sokka says hesitantly, “doesn’t it?”
Jerkily, Zuko nods.
The worst day of my life, Sokka hears ringing in his head. Considering everything he knows about Zuko, that has to be a high bar. Then again, what else would he expect? He mentally slaps away the urge to connect dots and jump to wild conclusions.
Katara would be so much better at this, he thinks. But Sokka is all he’s got.
“It’s something I never had any control over,” Zuko says at last. “I don’t like to talk about it. I’m not sure I can.”
“What do you mean?”
“I’ve never actually said it. People either know or they don’t.” He breathes in and then out. It comes from so deep in his chest, Sokka almost expects a puff of flame on the exhale. “I think… if I told anyone, I’d want it to be you guys. But not yet.”
“That’s okay.” Sokka lays a hand on Zuko’s shoulder. He’s tense and solid, still curved forward over his arms, but he relaxes minutely at Sokka’s touch. He stretches his legs out in front of himself, leaning back again. His hand lies a finger-length from Sokka’s hip.
The tide laps against the sand, higher than it did when Sokka first came down to the beach. The moon bends it closer; soon, she’ll bend it away. He wonders what Yue thinks of all this—what she sees in them now, shining down from above and pulling the water gently around their ankles.
Sokka hasn’t told Suki about her, not in so many words. He only realized when she said something at the play. He thinks he understands Zuko a little better now, hearing the same pain reflected back. Words are important, and words are hard.
“Can you promise me something?” Zuko asks when the water has nearly reached his knees.
“Sure.”
“I’d rather you hear it from me, and I’ll tell you someday, I swear.” Zuko’s voice is low and steady. “But it’s not exactly a secret. So if you find out before I get the chance, tell me. Please.”
“I will,” Sokka says, agreeing silently to a second vow: I’ll let you be the one to tell me. I’ll make sure of it. “I promise.”
There are more stars in the sky than there are words to put to them. Reflected in the ocean, they are twice as many again. The stars are made of fire, but the moon moves them with the tide.
Sokka stands, smiles down at Zuko, and offers him a hand up. Zuko takes it. Dripping seawater and silent as the moon, they walk back to the house.