Fic (AtLA)
Six Feet Over
Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sokka, PG-ish
Sometimes, it goes like this:
There are battles, and there are battles, and Sokka slams an elbow back, reaches up with his other hand to catch his boomerang, twists in the grip of a Fire Nation monster clad in blood-red silks. Braces his knees, heaves and pivots, and the man is flat on his back, boomerang at his throat and Sokka’s knee pressing into his ribs.
There are battles, and then there is this, which is a thousand times more intimate. He wants for a second only, to carve blood out of the man’s craggy jaw, to cut and curve metal all along his chest. He wants, and the man coughs and gives Sokka a look that could have been his a few years ago, and the moment is gone.
Sokka’s fist slams into the man’s gut and he stands up, leaving him wheezing in the dust and gagging around his own blood.
Sometimes, it goes like this:
She is small and bright in the shadows and the sand forms to her will as easily as parting water. She’s looking at him in the same way she never does, and Sokka yanks on his line and drags a silver fish to flop on the shore. She grins with silver-white teeth and clambers out of her shadows to kneel beside him and sift the sandy shore for the scales he gouges out of the fish’s side.
Her hands are too small to do what he knows they can, and there he has it. Toph is tiny and silvery at the best of times, and with her tangible happiness and her rampant pride, this tiny silvery thing is going to be the death of him. Sokka scrapes the side of the fish with his knife and forces himself to think about how Suki feels under his palms. Toph secretly marvels at the softness of the scales and doesn’t say anything she thinks.
Sometimes, it goes like this:
His sister is growing faster than he’d like to admit, and he’s unready for that in the worst ways possible. It catches him by surprise when he sees the curve of a hip under her blanket or lips fuller than he’s used to pulled back over teeth whiter than he remembered.
Katara is on her knees, hands on the small of his back and cold. He remembers when they were little having to huddle together for warmth. Her hands were cold then, too, and small and clammy. Their father always said Katara had hands like a seal-horse’s flank, and it was true that they were soft and cold, but Katara’s at least looked warm, brown and slender wrapped around his wrist.
Yue was brown, too, but Suki and Toph are pale as snow and it’s good to keep a safe distance away.
Sometimes, it goes like this:
On her knees in front of him, this is the third princess Sokka has known and by far the most benign. Azula is less a puzzle and more an obstacle, and when she sneers at him and sweeps his legs out, she makes perfect sense. When she pins him on his back, rubs dark lines into his throat with her fingernails, smirks and claws his chest down, there is absolutely nothing in her that Sokka can’t understand. When she fights (dances, really) and when she bends.
His mother once told him that lightning never struck the same place twice, and that is the only thing about Azula that’s foreign, beyond skin and hair and (bear-dog skin jackets and silks that feel like blood)
His mother used to say things she didn’t mean, just to please her children. Sokka wishes she would lie for them again.
And sometimes, it goes like that.
Avatar: The Last Airbender, Sokka, PG-ish
Sometimes, it goes like this:
There are battles, and there are battles, and Sokka slams an elbow back, reaches up with his other hand to catch his boomerang, twists in the grip of a Fire Nation monster clad in blood-red silks. Braces his knees, heaves and pivots, and the man is flat on his back, boomerang at his throat and Sokka’s knee pressing into his ribs.
There are battles, and then there is this, which is a thousand times more intimate. He wants for a second only, to carve blood out of the man’s craggy jaw, to cut and curve metal all along his chest. He wants, and the man coughs and gives Sokka a look that could have been his a few years ago, and the moment is gone.
Sokka’s fist slams into the man’s gut and he stands up, leaving him wheezing in the dust and gagging around his own blood.
Sometimes, it goes like this:
She is small and bright in the shadows and the sand forms to her will as easily as parting water. She’s looking at him in the same way she never does, and Sokka yanks on his line and drags a silver fish to flop on the shore. She grins with silver-white teeth and clambers out of her shadows to kneel beside him and sift the sandy shore for the scales he gouges out of the fish’s side.
Her hands are too small to do what he knows they can, and there he has it. Toph is tiny and silvery at the best of times, and with her tangible happiness and her rampant pride, this tiny silvery thing is going to be the death of him. Sokka scrapes the side of the fish with his knife and forces himself to think about how Suki feels under his palms. Toph secretly marvels at the softness of the scales and doesn’t say anything she thinks.
Sometimes, it goes like this:
His sister is growing faster than he’d like to admit, and he’s unready for that in the worst ways possible. It catches him by surprise when he sees the curve of a hip under her blanket or lips fuller than he’s used to pulled back over teeth whiter than he remembered.
Katara is on her knees, hands on the small of his back and cold. He remembers when they were little having to huddle together for warmth. Her hands were cold then, too, and small and clammy. Their father always said Katara had hands like a seal-horse’s flank, and it was true that they were soft and cold, but Katara’s at least looked warm, brown and slender wrapped around his wrist.
Yue was brown, too, but Suki and Toph are pale as snow and it’s good to keep a safe distance away.
Sometimes, it goes like this:
On her knees in front of him, this is the third princess Sokka has known and by far the most benign. Azula is less a puzzle and more an obstacle, and when she sneers at him and sweeps his legs out, she makes perfect sense. When she pins him on his back, rubs dark lines into his throat with her fingernails, smirks and claws his chest down, there is absolutely nothing in her that Sokka can’t understand. When she fights (dances, really) and when she bends.
His mother once told him that lightning never struck the same place twice, and that is the only thing about Azula that’s foreign, beyond skin and hair and (bear-dog skin jackets and silks that feel like blood)
His mother used to say things she didn’t mean, just to please her children. Sokka wishes she would lie for them again.
And sometimes, it goes like that.