Chapter Text
Prompt 1: Pet
***
Sokka theorizes that in another life, Zuko might have been a cat.
He begins to form this theory after the first time he almost trips over Zuko’s curled-up form, basking in a patch of sunlight at Ember Island.
“Watch it dude! I almost tripped over you!”
A little hum is the only reply Sokka receives, nothing like the prickliness characteristic of the GAang’s resident firebender. “Uh… Zuko?” Sokka asks in slight concern, because he’s watched Zuko brush off a broken arm as a mere inconvenience before and it really wouldn’t be far-fetched for the firebender to be sprawled out in the walking path of other normal humans because he was actively dying while refusing to tell a soul.
Worry dissipates when Zuko lifts his head slightly, and Sokka finds golden eyes framed by a mess of dark curls drowsily blinking up at him. Like ice warming to the first days of summer, Sokka’s insides immediately melt. “Aww, someone’s still sleepy,” he teases.
“Mm,” is Zuko’s very eloquent reply, and Sokka has to bite back a laugh when all Zuko does is stretch the entire length of his body and shift to curl onto his opposite side, still very much in direct path of the warm rays of sun.
It’s hard to reconcile this quiet, admittedly much more of a fire-hazardy imitation of a cat with the wrathful soldier that had chased them all the way from the South to the North Pole, leaving a trail of fire in his wake. The dissonance is almost enough to give Sokka a whiplash.
“Sokka,” Katara’s voice comes from behind him, “what’s taking so long, you said- oh.” She comes to a dead stop at the sight before them.
“Oh,” Sokka agrees, because Spirits, this is just too precious not to use for future blackmail.
“Oh, that’s too cute,” Katara sighs, apparently thinking both similar to and completely opposite of what Sokka is, proving their siblinghood once and for all.
Sokka’s already deviously plotting and thinking up nicknames for their resident FireCat.
***
Experimentation is the heart of all science, and Sokka experiments by trying to feed their FireCat some fish.
He comes to find the still-recovering Zuko in the Fire Nation infirmary, bearing gifts of food and shared boredom due to their ‘grounded until Katara deems them fully healed’ situation.
Sokka had begged the kitchen for this plate of smoked fish, more than he thought necessary. It wasn’t like Fire Nation is land-locked, given how much land they’d stolen from other Nations-
Okay, Sokka, let’s not go there. Their post-war world had to begin healing, and it wasn’t going to do so from a place of resentment and anger.
Sokka being the cynic he is would have called moosecrap on the whole idea, but as the one to lead this restoration movement is the bedraggled future Fire Lord in front of him, he figures they at least stand a chance of making it come true. Zuko’s done crazier shit, after all.
Said Fire Lord-possibly FireCat- stares when Sokka drops off a plateful of painstakingly smoked fish in his lap.
“Um.”
Sokka gestures. “Fish.”
Zuko squints. “What.”
It’s not really a question. Sokka knows how to read all of Zuko’s inflections by now (and really, considering Zuko didn’t have much of a variation between ‘extremely angry’ to ‘extremely angsty,’ it’s not saying anything about his developing fondness for the firebender at all, shut up Katara. )
Golden eyes look even more cat-like when it’s slitted like that, Sokka decides. Theory further substantiated. “Fish! I brought you some. To eat.”
“And there I was thinking you wanted me to throw it at your head,” Zuko deadpanned.
Sokka preened. “Oh this is great!” Clearly his heroic effort in smothering Zuko with friendship and teaching the other teen how-to-be-more-human is paying off really well. “You’re starting to have a sense of humor!”
Zuko immediately contradicts Sokka’s statement (because he exists just to spite Sokka, really), by scrunching his nose like the irate FireCat he seems to be. “You’re ridiculous.”
“You love it,” Sokka sing-songs. Grumpy Firecat expression intensifies.
Though to be fair, the grumpiness might have something more to do with the network of scars on Zuko’s chest underneath all those bandages. Spirits, that’s got to hurt. Sokka’s trying hard to stare at because if he does he’s going to start to think about lightning wounds and how close they came to losing one of their own after Sokka almost lost Toph and then he’s going to start thinking about how he lost Yue and Mom and and he’s going to panic -
“Sokka,” Zuko’s eyes are suddenly much closer, gold meeting ocean blue, and his tone more urgent. “Sokka, are you okay?”
Sokka’s breathing is harsh, clanging like useless metal against the hull of a burning warship. “I… need a moment,” Sokka chokes out. The smokey scent in the air reminds him of the collapsing pillars, the feel of Toph’s small fingers slipping through his, Suki disappearing into the rising red-
Sokka’s vision is hazy, and he’s finding it harder and harder to draw air into his lungs, but he can hear Zuko continuing to talk calmly through it all. “Sokka, you’re okay,” Zuko is saying. “You’re in the Fire Nation infirmary. For some Agni-forsaken reason you brought me fish and they’re not even fireflaked, but you’re here, and I’m here, and the rest of our GAang is somewhere here, and we’re all safe .”
His raspy voice is soothing, almost like a purr especially in the last emphasised word, and the comparison is enough to bring Sokka back to the present moment.
“Oh,” Sokka breathes out shakily. “Oh.” He’s aware now that Zuko’s taken one of his hands and is stroking his knuckles in a steady, circular pattern. The repetition is calming and Sokka can feel his heart slowing down.
Zuko is looking at him with eyes that can be called nothing but compassionate, and when did Zuko learn to comfort others instead of further flaming and spreading the embers of rage he carried?
Sokka doesn’t know, but he rather thinks the Fire Nation may have some hope in their new Firelord.
Sokka ducks his head, slightly embarrassed now. “Sorry dude,” he mutters. “Didn’t mean to freak out on you like that.”
“It’s okay,” Zuko murmurs, then his lips tilt upward wryly. “It’s not like you haven’t done the same for me before.”
And the thing is, Sokka knows he’s right. It isn’t the first time one of them has had to bring the other back from the brink of a flashback, and it probably wouldn’t be the last.
It’s just harder to forgive himself for his own vulnerabilities. This secret self-deprecation is something Sokka and Zuko share in common.
Hm. Katara would be having a field day with all the thoughts jumbling around in his head. Sokka takes the decidedly immature way and locks her out.
“Tell me again why you brought me fish,” Zuko says, like Sokka didn’t just hyperventilate when he’s the one who is healing, like this is the average day for them. And maybe it is, because this is what they do to keep eachother going: they push and pull and dance around each other to joke, and on the days they shake apart with memory they keep each other close.
“I was testing a theory,” Sokka answers with a grin, trying to shake off the vestiges of his panic.
Zuko frowns. “What theory?”
***
Growling, snarling Zuko definitely lends evidence to the FireCat theory, Sokka decides.