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Zuko has two big swords.
It’s not fair. Sokka is pretty sure of that. Somewhere out there there must be a book of Things That Are Fair and “Zuko having two big swords” definitely shouldn’t figure anywhere in it. Especially not if the swords are cool and absolutely, definitely not if Zuko can actually use them.
Which he can. Pretty well, or more than well, if Aang is to be believed, and Sokka still has it in for the kid for not telling them about that whole “that one time Zuko saved me from Zhao’s jail” thing. Given the circumstances, Sokka feels his resentment is pretty damn justified because that’s not the sort of thing one doesn’t tell one’s friends. Like, as far as things go? This thing is kind of PRETTY BIG.
Anyway. Firebending? Sure, Sokka can live with that. He can hold his own against stupid Firebending. But the swords he now sees strapped to Zuko’s altogether too-broad back are staring right back at him like an insult, as if the greedy Jerkbender is passive-aggressively saying “Yeah, I can fight like you, what are you going to do about it?”
It sets Sokka’s teeth on edge, even more than the mere presence of Zuko in their camp already does. Because if anyone is supposed to be a sword-wielder in this group, it’s Sokka.
He glances at Haru marching stoically to his right and it makes him feel marginally better. Haru doesn’t seem bothered by the swords – or by anything else, really, and if he is he’s doing a damn fine job of hiding it. Not to mention that the very sight of him boosts Sokka’s male ego by about 5% because yeah, Haru is a big boy but that moustache has got to place him on the bottom of their unofficial maleness hierarchy by default. Or at least slightly above Aang and the Duke.
Teo is debatable because Sokka has accidentally seen him shave.
Besides, Sokka may only have one sword, but his is made of space rock. So there.
And there is his machete. And his boomerang. And his club. Thinking about all of this helps him feel better about himself for a while, as long as eleven minutes of silent trekking through the woods to be exact – because eleven minutes later they reach a pretty wide bog and Jerkbender chooses to deal with that obstacle by jumping right over it.
Stupid show-off.
“Hey, how about you actually talk to us before doing anything idiotic, huh, Jerkbender?” Sokka calls to him from across the bog, but Zuko isn’t listening; he’s too busy unsheathing his stupid cool broadswords and hacking away at an old, half-fallen tree trunk. “Because you’re part of the team now, like it or not, and that’s what teams do,” Sokka continues, pointedly ignoring Jerkbender’s antics. He’s not going to give Zuko the satisfaction of being impressed, even if the speed of the two swords is such that they’re becoming a bit blurry from where he’s standing. “They talk. That’s the rules, pal. Anyway, it’s a hunting trip and since I’m the hunter, I should be in the lea – “
There is a swish of Firebending, a single blast hot enough that Sokka can feel it on his face, and then the trunk lands with a dull thud almost right at his feet.
Zuko’s smirk from across the bog melts Sokka’s remaining self-confidence by a negative 200%.
“Come on, you two, I thought we were going to hunt something before the sun sets,” Jerkbender calls, sheathing his swords again in a practiced move that’s entirely too fluid. Sokka hates him.
“Just leave it,” Haru whispers, gingerly stepping onto the trunk. “He’s only trying to help. Katara is giving him enough heat as it is.”
“She gives him exactly as much heat as he needs to get” is out before Sokka can stop it, and Haru’s raised eyebrow gives him a moment’s pause. Yeah, that kinda came out wrong. But it’s not like Katara doesn’t have valid reasons for glaring holes into Zuko at every opportunity. Or for spying on him. Or for snapping at him whenever he so much as breathes within a foot of her. Or for heaping chore upon chore on him. Or for…
… So maybe his sister is overdoing it just a little bit, Sokka can admit that much. But hey, it’s his baby sister. And if she feels the need to assert her authority over their ex-enemy over and over until Zuko needs to stalk away and go kick some rocks, who is Sokka to take Zuko’s side over hers? Besides, he feels like glaring holes into Zuko himself, most of the time.
Though a bit less often now that he and Aang went and saw the dragons and learned their little dance routine and not only wasn’t Aang kidnapped or maimed or otherwise negatively affected – oh no, after the trip he was all but ready to set up a brand new “Zuko is Kinda Cool” club.
Which, it seems, Toph has decided to join. Zuko is spending more time with these two than with anyone else in the camp and Sokka starts wondering if they’ll wear little hats and badges and compose a theme song.
“You coming or what?” Haru asks from almost the other end of the trunk, and Sokka is forced to abandon his train of thought in order to concentrate on keeping his balance on the old, creaky trunk that looks like it’s going to crash in two if Sokka takes a deeper breath. It also rocks to the sides and decidedly does not qualify as anything even approaching stable, not that Sokka is afraid. Haru got across just fine and so will he, any rocking and creaking be damned.
His dignity intact, he makes it to the other side without his feet slipping once – okay, maybe once but thanks to his quick thinking he masqueraded it as intentional and Zuko can just stuff his smug little face when the sun don’t shine, not that that’s a physically achievable fit and ugh, brain, what is even wrong with you.
He blames Zuko.
Or maybe the fact that he’s hungry. And pissed off because it was his turn to wake up early in the morning and make breakfast, and Sokka hates getting up early. Even if it does offer him the possibility to eavesdrop on Aang’s early practice with Jerkbender and then make a report to Katara to placate her a little, and this morning they seemed to be talking about girls.
Sokka couldn’t hear any details, though, and he’s vaguely glad. He considers himself a practical, down-to-earth kind of guy (who just happens to wield a space sword) and though his limits of weird have recently been expanded – travelling with the Avatar does that to a person – they still exist. Sokka suspects that listening in on the Avatar asking the ex-prince of the Fire Nation for dating advice is definitely crossing them.
Besides, Sokka is pretty sure he knows which girl Aang wants to talk about. He’s not stupid. Aang’s polarbear-puppy crush on his sister has been obvious since pretty much day one, and Sokka definitely doesn’t want to hear about anyone wanting to make the moves on Katara. Even if it is their best friend and probably the only guy on the planet Sokka would consider worthy of the honor…
… Which, in hindsight, is a perfectly logical explanation for why Aang hasn’t chosen to confide in him and went to Jerkbender instead. Sokka still chooses to feel cross over it, mostly on principle. After all, out of their entire group, he is the one with the most experience. He’s had two girlfriends already! How Zuko can possibly top that, with his ridiculous ponytail – now mysteriously vanished, presumably because someone introduced Zuko to the wonders of mirrors – and his moping and shouting and general Jerkbending is beyond him.
There’s no way Zuko’s got more action and experience than him.
No way in the Spirit World.
Impossible.
… Right?
Shit.
“Hey, do we actually know where we’re going?” Zuko asks suddenly, his grating voice cutting right through the cold flash of panic in Sokka’s gut.
He forces himself to calm down, squash those ridiculous nagging questions – does Zuko have more experience than him? – and focus on the task at hand. Which is getting dinner. This is why they’re here, up in the woods, in the first place. Doing manly stuff, like hunting and providing for their mini-tribe. Like grown-up warrior men, which they are. And this – this, Sokka can do better than anyone here, he is sure of it.
“Shows what you know,” he says, pushing himself to the lead. Then, he looks around and – AHA! Gotcha. “See that?” he points to the trampled spot in the undergrowth, not at all pushing his chest out, whoever gave anyone that idea? “That’s the trail. A big animal’s been through here. You need to keep an eye for that sort of thing if you want to be a hunter. Now follow me and stay very, very quiet, if you can be quiet, what with your tendency to yell all the time…”
About twenty minutes later Sokka deeply regrets saying that.
Because somehow, by some cruel trick of the universe which really must hate Sokka’s guts more than the Fire Nation hates anything that isn’t hideously red, Zuko is the quietest out of any of them. The damned bastard. That’s another thing on the list of Things That Are NOT Fair, right along with the swords and the muscles and the Jerkbending and the general – well, Zukoness, because who in their right mind can jump right over a wide bog and do it successfully? This? This is just excessive, and Sokka really starts suspecting that Zuko is being even more quiet than necessary just to piss him off.
Sokka feels like hitting something.
So it’s a good thing that he’s still in the lead, and keeping a sharper eye for clues than is perhaps warranted because he’ll be damned if he lets himself be shown up in his own sandpit. Zuko’s only been with the group for a few days and Sokka has a nagging feeling that his leader status has not been properly impressed on him yet, and this is the perfect opportunity to show him who’s boss.
Well, him and Haru, but Haru still has that moustache and generally keeps out of their way and is, on the whole, not a threat.
Which is why, when Zuko suddenly stops dead in his tracks and there is a muffled oomph! when Haru walks right into him, Sokka just barely stops himself from snapping.
“What?” he asks sharply, and that definitely isn’t snapping, that’s being legitimately irritated. No one’s told anyone to stop. Zuko has no business stopping when no one’s told him to do so.
“I think I heard something,” the ex-prince mutters, not looking at either of them but at the bushes to his right.
Yeah right, and Sokka will eat his own ponytail.
He’s about to say as much when Haru puts his hand up, shushing them both, and starts listening, looking in the same direction as Zuko. Which, of course, causes Sokka to look over there too and stay quiet and – huh, what do you know, there really is a strange kind of noise coming from that direction.
Like… water? And wading things? And…
Was that a quack?
“I’m guessing that’s not you trying to lure us into a clever Fire Nation trap, is it?” Sokka asks slowly, turning back to Zuko.
He’s pretty sure it’s not. A Fire Nation trap wouldn’t involve quacking.
Zuko’s expression confirms it – it’s twisting into an ugly glare, like he’s offended at the mere idea. It’s not a bluff. They haven’t known each other for long and Sokka still doesn’t entirely trust the guy, but if he’s learned one thing, it’s that Zuko’s facial expressions – angry ones especially – are usually painfully honest.
For someone who’s supposed to be a prince, the guy can’t bluff for shit.
“Okay, okay, can’t blame a guy for checking, don’t get your hotpants in a twist,” Sokka says in a placating tone, putting his hands in the air. It’s not like he’s trying to actively antagonize their newest addition. Well, most of the time he isn’t because getting a rise out of Zuko is definitely too easy and entirely too much fun and, well. Zuko deserves it for being obnoxious.
“Let’s check it out. Maybe it’s something we can eat,” Haru suggests.
Sokka gives him the side-eye. Shouldn’t they be wary of strange noises in a strange wood in a strange country where everything’s strange? As soon as he thinks that, though, there is another quack, and this time there’s no doubt about it – it’s a honest-to-goodness quack. And it sounds about just as intimidating as Aang wearing a flower crown.
Sokka reaches a manly decision. “Right, follow me.”
It’s a pond. Right there in the middle of a forest, surrounded by bushes, at the end of a feeble stream trickling steadily into a hole in the ground just big enough for maybe four people to bathe in simultaneously. Barely big enough to deserve the name of a pond, in fact, and there’s duckweed and reed and even the intensified buzzing of a swarm of insects which immediately become interested in the three of them when they push the bushes aside and look at what they’ve found.
A tiny pond, and it’s filled with turtleducks.
Most of them are swimming around and chilling, unperturbed, but a few turn their fluffy yellowish heads and quack at the intruders. Up until that moment Sokka didn’t know a turtleduck could sound offended, but these here sort of do.
Some of those buggers are pretty damn small, too. A family, then. But the grown-up ones seem big enough to make up for the size of the ducklings, and if they manage to catch all of them…
Yeah, it should definitely be enough for the meat-eating folk. Aang will be perfectly happy with their habitual rice stew anyway. Pigbull’s eye.
“Okay,” Sokka whispers, going into a crouch. “This is good. This is really good. Between the three of us we should be able to get most of them. Too bad we don’t have a net, but Haru, if you Earthbend the ground to close them in fast enough and Zuko roasts them, we should – what?”
Zuko is staring at him. There is no better word for it. His good eye is open impossibly wide, the scarred one is trying to match it and suddenly his face looks so pale it’s sicklish, like he’s about to keel over.
It’s pretty damn scary.
“No,” the guy says. And it’s pretty amazing how determined a dude can sound in one single no.
Sokka blinks.
“What do you mean, no?”
“No, we’re not gonna do this.” Zuko crouches next to him, then moves a bit closer to the bank. This stirs a bit of an alarm in the turtleduck family and they draw away from the humans cautiously, but Zuko keeps perfectly still in his awkward position, looking at them intently, and soon, the animals clearly decide he’s not going to pounce on them. They start swimming nearer and nearer again, their beady eyes big and glassy.
Sokka looks at Haru. His friend seems to be just as dumbfounded as he is and shrugs, raising his eyebrows. It’s clear from his expression that he thinks Zuko might have gotten a boulder to the head.
Sokka agrees.
“You have a better plan, Hotman?” Sokka asks, turning back to Zuko. Just in time to see the guy slowly extending his arm in the direction of the ducks, who watch him, making quiet duck noises.
“Yeah,” Zuko whispers in response. “We’ll go away and find something else to kill.”
“Excuse me?” Sokka has to ask, because surely one of the blasted insects buzzing around his head must have crawled into his ear. “Are you for real? Did you honestly suggest we leave this pond of tastiness just waiting to be eaten and go out and risk running into something that’s actually dangerous?”
“You know how to set up snares, right? Wasn’t that the original plan?” Zuko says flatly, refusing to look at him. His arm is still extended over the water. One of the turtleducklings is trying to sniff his fingers, or whatever it is they do with strangers.
“It’ll take a long time for anything to get caught in them,” Haru points out logically. “If we catch the ducks, we could go right back to the camp without wasting any more time.”
“See?” Sokka smiles triumphantly. “You’re outnumbered here, pal. Team Hunters vote: we get the turtleducks.”
“No.”
That guy used to lead a ship full of soldiers, Sokka suddenly remembers. He used to be a prince. Was that how he gave orders? Is that his royalty voice? If it is, Sokka is somewhat, reluctantly, impressed. It sounds pretty damn authoritative and leaves no room for argument.
Too bad Sokka is not used to taking orders.
“Look, be logical. We have the perfect source of food here. Why are you so against the idea in the first place?” he asks, prodding Zuko with his foot.
The ex-prince ignores him. Mostly because the friendly little turtleduckling is now trying to climb onto his open palm and Zuko lets it.
Which, all things considered, is just about the weirdest thing Sokka’s seen in months.
And then it gets even weirder because the little duck is getting comfortable and snuggly in Zuko’s hand, quacking softly. One of the bigger ones, which can only be its mum, is swimming up to the pair curiously, probably trying to suss out if her baby is in danger and making faintly threatening hissing noises. Zuko keeps still, hardly even breathes, and the duckling looks perfectly happy in its new, Firebender-warm perch, so the older one leaves them be after a few moments of ruffled feathers and a warning.
Then, before Sokka can come up with a brilliantly hilarious and scathing commentary, Zuko carefully reaches out and pets the baby turtleduckling’s fluffy head.
What the actual Koh.
“Hey, Zuko, are you – “ Sokka can barely find words when it hits him, that ridiculous, completely wacky thought, but then he sees the duckling closing its eyes in a highly satisfied manner when Zuko’s fingers stroke it gently, and then Zuko – holy Spirits, he smiles.
And not only that, but it’s the widest, dopiest kind of smile Sokka has ever seen on another boy, made even more striking by the fact that’s fucking Zuko, and he’s smiling like that at a duck.
Oh, this is too good. Sokka’s day has suddenly turned much, much better. And just like that, his manly ego skyrockets again faster than Zuko can say “honor.”
“Awwwwwww,” he coos, nearly jumping in delight. Too good, definitely too good, man, the guys back at the camp are not gonna believe this! “Is widdle princey so sensitive that he cannot stand the thought of hurting the fluffy little duckies?”
“Shut up!” Zuko’s good side turns a furious shade of red and he glares at Sokka, but it carries precious little weight with the turtleduckling still happily ensconced in his hand.
Haru rolls his eyes at both of them, classic hand-on-hips pose completing his So Done WithYour Shit attitude, but the corners of his lips are twitching which is more than enough fuel for Sokka to go on.
“That is sooooo cute.” The face he is making is probably ridiculous, but Sokka doesn’t care. He’s going to squeeze everything he possibly can out of this situation because it’s his birthday come early and the least Zuko deserves after chasing them around the world is a solid dose of teasing. “Are you going to adopt your new friend now? Are you going to love it and hug it and call it Fluffykins?”
“I’m going to do something else entirely if you don’t shut up right now!”
Sokka smirks triumphantly. And fleetingly, he decides he’s glad that Aang, Katara and Toph aren’t here to point out his adventure with Foo Foo Cuddlypoops. “It’s okay, Zuko, nothing to be ashamed of! But the real world is a brutal place and sometimes, real men have to kill the fluffy things to survive and – “
“We might end up having to adopt more than just that one fellow if we don’t go away soon,” Haru points out.
Sokka looks down. Sure enough, the ducks are out of the pond and wading curiously around them, most of them crowding towards Zuko. Their new ally is looking at them in mild alarm but also with something that’s a pretty hilarious mixture of rage and gooeyness which Sokka’s never expected to see on a human face, ever.
And yeah, okay, he admits it. The ducks are cute. But he’ll be damned if he says it out loud now.
“They’re so trusting,” Haru remarks, moving to crouch next to Zuko. “You’d think they’d be more… I don’t know, wary.”
“Probably because we’re the only humans they’ve ever seen. They don’t know we’re dangerous,” Zuko says quietly. He is still petting the duck in his hand. Sokka wonders if he’s even aware of it.
“All the more reason to go for the easy kill!” He insists because cuteness be damned, he has to be the voice of reason here. Besides, he’s still hungry. “I mean, Zuko’s already got one. In his hand. It looks like collecting them will be the easiest thing in the world. So why aren’t we doing it? Because you have a soft spot for things that go quack?”
As if on cue, the duckling in Zuko’s hand goes quack. Sokka glares at it. He’s pretty sure it did that on purpose.
“We’re not killing the ducks, Sokka.” Zuko’s voice is steely and strained; he is cradling the little fluffy thing protectively to his chest and reaching out to pet another one which is clumsily wading near his knee.
It’s too fucking surreal and Sokka is going to have nightmares.
“Give me one good reason not to,” he insists even though clearly the battle is already lost – this only gives him more space to prove his manliness. “I mean, I never expected you out of all people to be such a child about animals! Aren’t you people supposed to be, like, heartless, child-eating monsters or something? Because you’re kinda ruining that mojo.”
“We’re not, okay!” Zuko looks pretty pissed off now, more than is his default state, and Sokka laughs because now he’s holding two ducks and the sight is hilarious.
Clearly Zuko doesn’t like being laughed at, because the pissed-offedness reaches new levels. Also his face is getting even redder. Sokka wonders if the ducks can feel the heat spiking.
“Not all of us,” Zuko adds through gritted teeth, turning away from Sokka and looking back to the ducks. “We are not. Eating. The ducks.”
Sokka shrugs, the merriment suddenly draining from him. The sight is still hilarious, but something about Zuko’s expression and voice saps the fun out of it a little. “Why do you even care so much?” he asks sullenly.
It’s not that he wants to kill the little buggers. But still. He has to keep insisting, now that he knows it’ll come to naught. It’s a matter of principle.
“That’s none of your business.”
And that seems to be it. Well then. It’s not as if Sokka cares or anything.
Not when Zuko’s just given them such precious blackmail material.
“Fine,” he concedes graciously. “We’ll leave your fluffy little friends alone. Wouldn’t want to make widdle princey cry.”
It’s a good thing Firebenders can’t bend with their eyes or Sokka would be roast.
He keeps teasing Zuko about it for the rest of the day, mostly because he enjoys the tantrums but also because it keeps him in a good mood after the ex-prince almost single-handedly brings down an angry pigmy-puma later in the afternoon, as if he’s trying to prove a point. Well, let him try. That ship has sailed, bye-bye, wind in its sails, and later in the evening they all have a good laugh about the day’s events and Sokka is sure he’s back in the leader seat, manliness intact.
It’s not until the next day, when he spots Zuko sneaking out of the camp after Firebending lessons and follows him up into the woods and back to the turtleduck pond, that he sort of starts feeling like a jerk about the whole thing. Because clearly he’s not as sneaky as he would have liked.
“You can come out now,” Zuko says with a long-suffering sigh, not even turning around as he tosses a bit of crumbled old bread into the water.
Sokka does, trying not to look sheepish. And doesn’t justify the spying on trying to make sure Zuko wasn’t plotting something, because there is something in Jerkbender’s expression that signals it wouldn’t go over well.
There is a moment of silence, punctuated by quacking, when Sokka makes his way over to Zuko. But before he can think of anything teasing to say, Zuko opens his mouth.
“It was my mother,” he says unexpectedly before Sokka can fully crouch by the pond beside him. He’s not looking at Sokka, too busy tossing bread, but there’s something tight there that feels as if it might snap. “We had a turtleduck pond at the palace. I used to feed them with her. So… there.”
Oh.
Well now.
… Yeah, now Sokka does kind of feel like a jerk.
“Look, I know you guys don’t like me,” Zuko starts again after a pause that’s as awkward and charged as can only be expected. “It’s okay. I only want to do my job and help you, if I can. We don’t need to be friendly for that. I – “
“You should totally bring Aang here,” Sokka says suddenly, surprised at where it’s coming from. One of the ducklings is staring at him curiously with its big, beady eyes, and. Well. Maybe there is more than one way to be a man, and somehow, he has a nagging hunch that this matters more. “He’d love it. He’d have names for all of them in no time.”
For a while, Zuko doesn’t say anything. And then: “… Yeah.”
Right.
Sokka glances at him, frantically trying to think of something to say. It’s only by accident that his gaze lands on the dao swords strapped to Zuko’s back… But it’s enough to give him an idea.
Haru is right. Katara’s giving Zuko enough heat for all of them. Besides, Zuko has returned Aang from their little adventure in one piece. Maybe it’s time to extend a – not a hand, exactly. But maybe a little finger.
And there really are many ways in which to be a man.
Decision reached, Sokka stands up. “Hey, d’you wanna spar?”
“Huh?” Zuko blinks up at him.
Sokka points to the swords. “Those. I kinda want to see them in action. And we could both use the practice. Unless you’re too much of a pig-chicken?”
He knows he’s won when he sees the glint in Zuko’s eyes.
Zuko has two big swords. And maybe, Sokka thinks when, much later, they’re making their way back to camp, both of them sweaty and exhausted and undeniably content, that’s not such a bad thing.