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“How did you manage to lose your boomerang again?”
“Wouldn’t you like to know.”
Sokka had completely meant for boomerang to do that curve around that tree.
He had done the calculations and had full confidence that boomerang would have returned to his hand—as always—had it not been for that branch to sway an unreasonable amount to the right and knock it off it’s course.
He hadn’t planned for boomerang to be thrown from its course.
He especially hadn’t planned for boomerang to be knocked into a cluster of trees near a cliff or the need to traverse through the wild vegetation in order to search for it.
He also hadn’t planned that a prickly firebender would be his searching companion, as the only one who knew this island well enough to navigate through the underexplored, unmanaged forest that made up the cliff’s surroundings.
Zuko pushed back a springy branch from his path as he made his way up the cliffside. The cliff they were on was a fair bit away from the beach house and was topped with rocks and boulders and undisturbed flowers and plants that were native to the island. At the base of the cliff was the ocean, connected by a short stretch of beach that’s visible during low tide.
“Where did you say boomerang went?” Zuko asked grumpily. He was annoyed that Sokka pulled away from whatever he did outside of training, but Sokka wasn’t worried; ‘grumpy annoyance’ was Zuko’s default.
Besides, Sokka reasoned, Zuko would have let the branches fling back at him, from where Sokka was walking behind him, if he was actually upset.
“Just around the top of this cliff.” Sokka answered, gesturing vaguely to the area around them.
Zuko looked around them, at the wide expanse of crowded tropical trees and bushes, then back at him with a judgmental brow.
“J-just,” Sokka flapped an arm in his direction, “Just somewhere near the top! Near the big tree and the rocks!”
It was an accurate, if general, description.
Zuko gave him another look but turned back to trudge to the top. He still didn’t let the branches fling back.
They didn’t have more luck at the top than they did during the climb up. Sokka had spotted the tree he thought was the culprit, but after looking around the trunk, and in the bushes at the base, he still couldn’t find his beloved boomerang.
“It’s got to be here!” He exclaimed, low to the ground, looking under a fallen trunk. “I saw it come this way.”
Zuko nudged some leaves aside. “I don’t think it’s here, Sokka.”
“It has to be, boomerang always comes back!”
As Sokka returned to frantic searching, Zuko took another futile look around but still wasn’t able to spot the weapon.
They had been searching for almost an hour and a half now and had covered all the areas they could reach at the top of this escarpment. Zuko even climbed to the top of the tree in question to see if boomerang got stuck in one of the many branches. It wasn’t there.
If Zuko didn’t know how much boomerang meant to Sokka, he would have headed back ages ago. Maybe even have taken a break before recruiting their friends to look on a later date, but looking at where Sokka was running around, genuinely distressed at the thought of his weapon being missing, Zuko endeavored to try once more, and look even closer at where it could have landed.
He just couldn’t think of where boomerang could have landed, however. They’ve looked everywhere on the cliff.
Unless.
Zuko looked over to the edge of the cliff and down the steep slope. He had to climb over the odd boulder to get a good look down but there he saw it. The carefully sharpened weapon was glinting in the late-afternoon sun, wedged between rocks and dirt, where it had been laying directly below them this entire time.
Of course.
“I found it!” Zuko called to Sokka who immediately scurried over to where he was leaning. The speed at which he arrived almost knocked Zuko over.
“Boomerang! There you are!” Sokka cried with joy.
“It probably got caught on a branch, then knocked out by a breeze before we got here.” Zuko surmised looking at the overhangs above them, “I’ll go get it.”
He jumped over the ledge and slid his way down the slope, dodging the odd tree and jagged ground in his path. Boomerang had been lodged about halfway down the cliff, in a particularly rough area, with a jutted out shelf of the rock face that was large enough for Zuko to land on.
“Thanks man!” He heard Sokka call out behind him.
He had just about reached the shelf when he felt violent rumbling starting under his feet and the sounds of shifting gravel and snapping of tree branches above him.
He looked up, and barely heard Sokka’s cry of “Look out!” over the noise, as he saw the various boulders that were previously, precariously perched at the top of the cliff, tumble and fall towards him in a localized rockslide.
Hurrying to the shelf, as the closest available stable land he could find, he steadied himself on it just in time to face the first boulder.
Sokka was panicking. Full blown panicking.
He had been so happy that his boomerang was found that he barely felt the jolt of worry from watching his friend launch himself over a cliff. But seeing that that was one of Zuko’s lesser dangerous stunts of a similar fashion, and that he had come out the other side of those in no worse conditions than he had started, Sokka hadn't been very worried.
Now he was worried.
Sokka had seen the boulders at the top of the cliff during his search; he had felt them when looking over the edge just minutes earlier. They were large and heavy but stable enough that they should not have been knocked loose from their position.
But nothing in Team Avatar’s life was what it should be, and at every literal turn was danger lurking. That was why when the rocks started falling, a shout was just a second behind it, warning about the incoming danger.
Sokka stood almost paralyzed, mind racing, as he watched the threatening, crushing weight bare down on his friend. Caught between wanting to run down to save Zuko and knowing that no matter how fast he was, there was no way that he could make it.
Oh, how he wished that he could earthbend right now.
With nowhere to go, trapped on the slope, Sokka was afraid that he would be forced to watch Zuko get crushed under a rock; or knocked from his perch and plummet into the waters below—and then proceed to be crushed by falling rocks.
Because as resilient as the firebender might be, and no matter how many times Zuko’s been able to skirt danger by his skills and wit; he wasn’t tougher than stone and he certainly didn’t have any tricks that could stop a literal avalanche. He couldn’t avoid this.
Or so Sokka thought.
Sokka watched on with astonishment, from the little he was able to see clearly behind the dust and distance, as Zuko dodged the first of the debris to reach him. Nimbly jumping over and ducking rocks and branches before coming to face off against the last and biggest boulder Sokka has seen (that hasn’t been chucked at Avatar’s, he corrects).
His jaw drops when, faced against the impossible odds, Zuko just roots himself into place, takes a deep breath, thrusts his hands out palms together, and splits the rock in half right down the middle.
WHAT.
As he watched the last of the rockslide slide past around him, Zuko shook out the throbbing feeling in his fingers. He hadn’t properly prepared for that, he thought as he examined the digits carefully, he’s going to feel it later.
Looking down, he spotted Sokka’s boomerang where it had been securely crammed into the ground. From what he can tell, it was undamaged by what just happened.
“WHAT WAS THAT!”
Zuko looked up at where Sokka was carefully leaning over to look at him. His eyes were wide and his mouth was gaping.
Instead of answering him right away, Zuko tucked boomerang into his sash and started to climb up the cliff face. Once he pulled himself back over the edge, with Sokka’s assistance, he responded, passing over the weapon.
“What was what?”
Sokka used his returned boomerang to gesture over the cliff.
If he drops it, Zuko eyed it cautiously, then he can get it back himself.
“That! What was that?!”
“You mean the rockslide?”
“I know what a rockslide is!” Sokka replied, frustrated, “I meant the rock-slice thing that you did! How did you do that? Are you an earthbender now?!”
“Not an earthbender, last I checked.” Zuko turned to head back to the beach house, Sokka falling into step next to him, "Just some firebending.”
“There was no way that that was firebending,” Sokka argued, “There wasn’t any fire at all!”
“There doesn’t need to be visible flames for it to be firebending,” He explained, “Firebending is just manipulating one’s inner fire and chi.”
They argued about the validity of what constitutes as firebending for the entire walk back—Sokka not accepting his explanation, and Zuko not willing to believe that he can spontaneously bend two elements now.
They were still arguing as they walked into the entrance of the beach house and joined the rest for lunch. In the presence of food, and in the face of his suddenly very hungry stomach, Sokka let the argument come to a standstill until they could settle it later.
“I know what I saw.” Sokka said, walking backwards to his seat next to Suki.
“I know what I did.” Zuko countered.
It was ridiculous. He was not an earthbender!
Just because they weren’t actively arguing aloud, didn’t mean they couldn’t argue , apparently.
Throughout lunch, and in between conversations with the rest of their friends, Sokka kept making faces at him, and like the more mature person he was, he glared right back. By the end of the meal, the others knew that something was going on, but Katara was the first one to say something about it.
“Okay, what is up with you two?” Katara asked, looking between the two of them, “You have been acting up since you came back. What happened when you guys went looking for Sokka’s boomerang?”
Zuko went to talk but Sokka spoke over him.
“Zuko’s an earthbender now!”
“No, I’m not!”
Toph spat out her drink whilst Aang’s jaw dropped. Suki very carefully lowered her chopsticks and looked at him intensely, like she could spot the truth of Sokka’s statement if she tried hard enough.
Katara, being gifted with the power of a little sister to call out their older brother’s idiocy, narrowed her eyes and turned to Zuko. “What happened?”
“It was just some bending—” Zuko went to explain but was interrupted.
“He split a boulder in half,” Sokka exclaimed, looking around at the baffled faces around him with enough conviction to make them doubt themselves, “Right down the middle! Do you deny it?”
“No, but—”
“See! He admits it!” Sokka pointed at him, rising from his seat. “How else could you explain that!”
“That...almost...sounds plausible.” It looked like it was slowly suffocating Katara to say that.
“It’s not earthbending!” Zuko insisted. Are they all out of their minds? “It’s firebending!”
“I don’t know, Zuko.” Aang—the little traitor— sheepishly replied, “Splitting rocks in half is a very earthbender thing to do.”
Zuko couldn’t believe this. “Have you all gone insane? I’m a firebender!”
Sokka’s “That would be something a dual bender would say!” overlapped with Suki’s, “Who can, apparently, tear boulder’s apart by force of will.”
“I wasn’t bending the boulder, I was bending my muscles!”
It was a confusing statement, Zuko admits that, but at least it got them quiet long enough for him to rush an explanation without any interruptions.
“It’s a firebending technique that allows a bender to strengthen themselves,” Zuko said rapidly, “A firebender draws energy from their inner fire and instead of directing it outwards from to create fire, they direct it inward, into their muscles, to give them a boost of strength.”
They all stared at him for a bit after the explanation before speaking all at once.
“That still sounds fake—”
“Can you teach me—?”
“Why did you need to—?”
“Do you think a non-bender could—?”
But that all got drowned out when Toph pushed out her seat and dragged him out by the arm and loudly proclaimed, “I’ve got to see this!”
They all crowd outside, at a rocky section of the shore, where Toph and Aang have been practicing their earthbending. It was farther than where the other inhabitants of the island could even get a hint of earthbending happening, and thus, was the perfect place for Zuko to do his demonstration.
Sokka still had trouble believing Zuko when he said what he did was firebending but his explanation made at least a bit of sense to Sokka’s science-oriented mind.
He watched as Katara ran diagnostic hands over a protesting Zuko’s, warning him against the demonstration.
“I’ve done this before, I'll be fine! I’m not even hurt!”
Katara conceded, begrudgingly, but Sokka could tell that she was curious about this unfamiliar use of firebending as the rest of them.
Zuko went into teaching mode, explaining what he was about to do in greater detail.
“Firebending is unique to the other bending styles in that a firebender can create their element themselves,” Zuko started, “A firebender doesn’t need anything more than their connection to their inner flame and breath in order to firebend.”
Zuko held out an arm and traced invisible paths across his arm and palm.
“A firebender will draw energy from their inner fire, fueled by their breath, and can direct that energy through their chi paths and outwards to create a sustained flame.”
Zuko cupped a small flame in his palm and held it in front of him.
“But a firebender can also direct that energy inwards, to affect their core temperature by sending continuous bursts of energy through their chi paths like with the ‘Breath of Fire’,” Zuko emphasized this by breathing out a puff of fire, like the one Sokka saw him make in the coolers of the Boiling Rock, “Or they could direct that energy through their chi paths to specific areas of their body to enhance and strengthen the muscle there, temporarily.”
“Energy,” Zuko looks around at all of them, “is the basis of what a firebender manipulates and controls. Whether it’s self-made or from outside sources. A skilled firebender with sufficient mastery over their inner fire, breath control, and will, is capable of many things outside of producing a flame.”
Like lightning , Sokka realizes with a jolt, negative and positive energy.
Zuko walked over to a boulder that Toph had prepared with manic glee. It was an egg shaped thing, and almost as tall as Zuko was.
Zuko stood in front of it, took a breath (for his audience’s sake, no doubt), and like he had in front of Sokka earlier, split the boulder in half.
But unlike last time, Zuko didn’t use his hands.
Instead, he rooted a foot into the ground and swung his foot into an arc, hitting the boulder on the side with his heel. This caused a crack to split, roughly horizontally through the rock, and with a swing the other way, with the other leg, the top half of the rock came crashing down.
Toph burst into enthusiastic cheers and Aang clapped appreciatively at the display. Even Suki and Katara were impressed but Sokka couldn’t hear any of that.
All he could focus on was the memory of where he had seen that move being performed before.
The snowy ground. The frigid air. His tribe behind him. The looming of the dreaded metal ship coming closer. The soldiers coming down the lowered plank. Angry eyes watching him as he charged towards them and being kicked in the head with a metal boot.
Sokka stared at the remnants of the top half of the boulder, having broken into smaller pieces due to both the crash and the second kick, and all he could imagine was his head in its place.
He could have killed me, Sokka realized, Zuko could have killed me that day we met.
At the time, his pride was bruised by being so effortlessly taken down and his fears of not being able to protect his family were prominent. Over the course of the weeks they encountered and escaped Zuko, after leaving home, both were soothed as none of them ever took any significant damage from Zuko’s relentless pursuit, and usually trounced him and his men when they met.
Sokka had felt vindictive glee in how they were able to thoroughly beat the Prince of the Fire Nation. Any fear he felt when things got heated was kept at bay by the confidence that they were so easily able to escape without harm; that they must have been better than the hot-headed Prince.
When they encountered Azula, in the desert, that was when things got serious. When the stakes got higher. For one thing, they got to see what the war was like outside of home; in the North Pole; General Fong’s base; just what was at stake for the world.
The other part was Azula.
Unlike Zuko, Azula was never easy to beat; to escape from. Heck, that one time in the desert, they had both Zuko and Iroh on their side and she still outwitted them.
At the time, Sokka thought that it was simply because Azula was better. Prodigious little sisters and all.
But now, Sokka wonders, looking blankly at where Zuko was talking to Aang and Toph, completely oblivious to the heart-racing conundrum he was giving Sokka, if the reason they had such a hard time with Azula, was because she didn’t hold anything back.
“Hey.” Sokka called out weakly when he found the strength too, “How long have you been able to do that?”
Zuko looked over at him, followed by everyone else. Sokka could tell that Katara had noticed something wrong with him by the furrow of her brow.
“I mastered this forever ago.” Zuko replied, looking at his work like he didn’t just shatter Sokka’s world view, “I actually had to use it to save Uncle when he got caught by the Earth Army.”
“Really?” Aang asked wide-eyed, “What happened?”
“Uncle was relaxing in a hot spring of his own making,” Zuko had an unpleasant expression, “Five men from the Earth Army caught him and were going to crush his hands when I showed up.”
“That’s to stop firebenders from bending, right?” Suki asked, also looking grim. Zuko gave a sharp nod.
“What did you do?” prodded Toph, impatiently. She was fond of Uncle Iroh.
“I had to kick the rock out of the way before snapping the chain,” Zuko gestured to the wreckage behind him, “Then we fought them off.”
“Only you two—?”
“When was this?” Sokka interrupted. He didn’t care that he was being rude, he needed to know.
Zuko looked confused by his insistence but answered.
“Just before the Winter Solstice.”
Before the Winter Solstice. A matter of weeks after they left home.
Zuko got dragged into another conversation with Aang and Toph, Suki joining in about fighting applications of the technique, and this allowed Sokka to stew in his thoughts.
Sokka, as he is today, is very different from who he was at the beginning of their journey.
He was a better fighter, a better planner, a more self-assured person and he’d like to think; a better brother and person. Sometimes when he thinks back to how he was in the past, he wants to shake himself a little, and warn him about the future. Right now Sokka wants to warn himself about how close they could have been when they had Zuko as they’re pursuer.
Zuko, who is a hothead. Zuko, who is an oblivious, awkward mess with no self-preservation instincts whatsoever. Zuko, who fundamentally is, and continues to try to be, a good person.
A person with honour.
If Zuko had truly been without honour—as he used to go off about finding all the time—if he had just been a little more cruel, a little less Zuko , where would they be?
Katara had stepped up to his side and was watching him with a look. It seems that she was catching onto his train of thought.
“What are you thinking about?”
“Just how close we really were.”
Later that night, when everyone else had gone to bed, Sokka was doing maintenance on boomerang from all the action it had seen today. Zuko had come back from doing a perimeter check and Sokka stopped him before he could head to sleep.
“Hey.”
Zuko looked at him.
“I’m really glad that you’re you.” Sokka said seriously, “And that you’re here with us.”
Sokka wouldn’t elaborate more, even when Zuko pestered him.