Chapter Text
Zuko’s halfway through the most boring council meeting of his life (although he says that monthly) when he hears the commotion in the hallway. His ears perk up and turn towards the door: a clatter of footsteps, clipped shouts, and then the heavy door to the council chambers rattles as it opens.
“Fire Lord Zuko,” says Tengo, Zuko’s personal assistant. At the same time, Ki-ha, the council’s administrator, says, “I’m sorry, My Lord, I told him the council wasn’t to be interrupted for anything less than a state emergency—”
Zuko raises his hand to stop them from snipping at each other. Tengo wouldn’t have come without a good reason (even if at this point he’d welcome any distraction). “Tengo, please speak.”
Tengo frowns—his eyes flicker toward the rest of the council members, who stare on. “There was an accident on the training grounds,” Tengo says, his words slow and careful. “Ambassador Sokka took a fowl hit by a student and, well, he collapsed. The swordmaster said he had a fit.”
Zuko sucks in a breath; his heart jumps several beats. It’s all he can do to stay calm and seated when he wants only to sprint down the corridor and find Sokka. “Is he alright?” he asks, his vote tight and pained. The rest of the council might not know the truth (even if they suspected that Zuko and Sokka were more than close friends) but there were things that Zuko couldn’t hide from his personal assistant.
“The ambassador is with the healers,” Tengo says. “He’s still unconscious.”
“I see.” Zuko swallows, his throat dry. Around the edge of his vision, darkness speckles his world. “The council is dismissed.”
Minister Sato says something in protest, but his exact words are lost on Zuko’s ringing ears. Instead, he pushes back from the table and follows Tengo through the palace corridors. Tengo, Zuko thinks, is a must’ve been sent by Agni—he always manages to know when to be discreet and when to not be. An ambassador being injured wouldn’t normally have been enough to disrupt a council meeting. There would be gossip, without a doubt. Zuko thinks it’s probably already spreading as the ministers go back to their studies and wives and staff.
When the reach the healer’s chambers, Tengo stops outside and gestures to Zuko to go ahead. Zuko nods tersely and pushes through the door.
Inside, Sokka lays prone on a bed. His face is slack; his mouth parts slightly. He looks like he could simply be sleeping in—a scene familiar enough to Zuko—if it wasn’t for the lump on his temple. When Zuko looks closer, he can see that under Sokka’s eyes, deep and dark bags swell. His right eye will probably swell shut from the lump, given time.
“Fire Lord Zuko!” the healer, a slight woman named Joon with eyes wide like an owl and dark hair pulled into a tight braid, jumps into a bow. She holds a strip of bandages in her hands and behind her, on a table, is a bowl of water. However, Zuko pauses when his eyes fall on what’s next to the bowl: a red-stained towel.
Zuko pales. “What happened?” He holds his head steady and tries to hide the panic swelling his gut and climbing up his throat.
“He was training a student, from what I understand,” says Joon. “And a misaimed swipe of a club caught the ambassador’s temple.” Joon pauses and looks at Sokka. “But the swordmaster said when he fell, he hit his head on the flagstone of the courtyard.”
Zuko presses his lips into a line. “Please, do what you must.”
Joon moves forward and lift’s Sokka’s head. It’s strange to see Sokka so pliant—last spring, when Sokka pulled his shoulder muscle while training, Zuko nearly had to drag him to see the healer. The only reason Sokka even agreed to use the ointment was if Zuko helped him rub it on. Sokka always insisted he was fine. And, most of the time, he was.
Joon winds the bandages around Sokka’s head. Dully, Zuko realizes there must be a wound on the back of his skull. “Can I help?”
If Joon’s surprised by Zuko’s offer, she doesn’t show it. “The most we can do at the moment is let him rest,” she says as she lowers his head onto the pillow. “I’m afraid we won’t know the true extent of the damage until he wakes.”
Zuko nods. He can’t find the words to say how he feels. A vice has tightened around his heart, threatening to squeeze it until there’s no room left for it to beat. “Can I stay with him?”
Joon’s face flickers for a moment. “You can do as you wish, My Lord.”
Zuko doesn’t miss the tightness in her words. It’s been a long while since he spoke carelessly—he doesn’t need to ask Joon, a healer, for permission to remain in a room in his own palace. “But would it be wise to stay?”
Joon’s expression relaxes. “For a while, yes. It may do him some good to have someone talk to him. But not for too long, My Lord. He needs rest above all else.”
“Thank you,” he says, his voice cracking.
Joon takes her bowl of water and the bloodied clothes and exits the room.
For a moment, Zuko stands, rooted in place, staring at Sokka. Just this morning, he’d woken next to Sokka, both of them tangled in the sheets together. The warmth of his boyfriend pressed against his side was familiar and welcome. They’d gotten used to it, over the last two years; waking up together, training together, whispering to each other into the small morning hours.
But this morning had played out like many others—Zuko rose at dawn, much to Sokka’s chagrin.
“It’s too early,” he grumbled at Zuko and pulled the bedsheet over his head.
Zuko had only chuckled and pressed a kiss to Sokka’s forehead before leaving to meditate.
By the time Zuko had returned from his mediation, Sokka had already left to meet with a representative from the Northern Water Tribe before his afternoon training.
And now they were here. Zuko moves forward and pulls the chair in the corner next to Sokka. He sits and reaches for Sokka’s hand; he traces his finger along the bones of Sokka’s fingers. His palm is rough and calloused with work—it hits perfectly into Zuko’s, as it always does.
“Hey, Sokka,” Zuko says. It feels strange to talk to him when he’s like this, but if there’s a slight chance it could help, then Zuko will speak more than he ever had before in his life. “Um, I’m not too sure what to say to you. I was in a council meeting, you know when Tengo came bursting in.”
The walls of the room are white as the sheets on the bed. Most of the wall opposite the door is a window—warm afternoon sun filters in and, when Zuko looks out, he can see the tops of the Cherry and Apricot trees from the garden.
“I don’t know what you managed to do to yourself, but I need you to get better, okay? Official orders from the Fire Lord.” He tries to say it as a joke, but it falls flat, even on his ears.
The soft smell of soap over sweat hits Zuko’s nose. Sokka’s blue tunic is still slightly damp under his neck (he’d been training in the sun, after all) but Joon must’ve scrubbed his skin clean before attending to his bandages.
Zuko sinks forward. He should’ve been there. If it wasn’t for the council, he would have been out there training too. Not just today—there are so many times when he should’ve been with Sokka, and he wasn’t.
Zuko lets his head hand and brings Sokka’s hand to his lips and swears, swears on all that Agni’s light touches, that he’ll do better in the future. That he’ll be there in the future.
Sokka drowned. He’s sure of it.
He would say he was dreaming, but everything hurts too much for it to be a dream. His body is heavy; it doesn’t respond when he tries to move it. His throat aches and his gut stirs. More than anything, though, the pain is in his head. Not ‘in his head’, in his head, but actually in his head. His whole brain feels like it’s been rattled. Shooting pain radiates down from the back of his skull and his right temple pulses with a sickly warmth. He tries to reach and touch it, but his arm refuses to respond.
He’s also sure he’s drowned because he hears everything as if he’s underwater. Distant, murky voices float towards. One is the soft tone of a woman. Another voice (the more persistent one) is raspy. He hears the tones, but Sokka can’t make sense of the words. When he reaches for meaning, his head screams in protest.
In this murky, sunken place, images and sounds flash through his head. A glowing ice burg. The high-pitched laughter of a child. Fire and flames. A red night sky and then the moon, glowing brighter than he’d ever seen before. A young, blind girl cloaked in a pale green dress. Clashing swords. Fire and flames, again. A sky full of airships. A man in red.
The flashes soften, then. A party. A beach with black sand. Warm lantern light casting shadows over a pale body. Someone, warm and strong and smoky, pressing against his lips. A man in red, a man in red, a man in red.
Sokka stirs. Or, at least, he tries too.
His head has never hurt like this. The closest thing he can remember is when he was young and threw Dad’s boomerang before he’d been trained. Of course, it rounded back and thudded against his skull and Sokka spent the night in hunched over a bucket, throwing up.
But this is different. It’s deeper and more confusing.
“I need you to wake up,” a voice says. Whoever it is, he sounds stern. Even angry, maybe.
Sokka shakes his head. It hurts too much to open his eyes. Wherever he is, it’s bright. And, spirits , it’s warm. So warm.
The last thing he remembers clearly is loading a canoe with Katara. Then, he’d been bundled in his parka. Had something gone wrong? Wherever he is, it’s too warm from him to be at home.
Sokka’s eyes don’t snap open; he doesn’t bolt upright. His eyes do flutter, though, and he sees the room before him cast in the bright light of mid-day sun.
The room is like none he’s ever seen. It’s not snow, for one thing. The walls are wooden and paper and the wall to his side is made of some sort of glass. Outside, he can see the tops of green trees.
“Ambassador Sokka,” someone says.
Sokka turns to see a woman, maybe twenty or so years old, with dark hair cut around her shoulders. She’s dressed in white robes, much to light for home, even in the summer. He’s not home, then. This confirms it. He tries to ask where he is, but his mouth is too dry, his muscles too stiff.
“Don’t try to talk,” she says. She moves to his side and lifts a glass of water to his lips. Sokka drinks it gratefully—there must be dust in his throat. “Small sips,” the woman instructs.
“You gave us all quite a scare, you know,” she continues. “You were in an accident.”
She’s not lying—Sokka’s too sore for her to be lying. But he doesn’t remember what happened or even how he got here. He doesn’t even know who this woman is—her skin is light, her eyes are a strange but beautiful shade of brown (so light they’re almost gold), and she’d called him an ambassador.
“Do you remember what happened?”
He shakes his head.
“That can be expected, with a head injury. You’ve been out for almost a whole day.” She starts to talk about something else, about the complexities of head injuries, but Sokka’s mind drifts away. It’s too difficult to concentrate. The warm darkness is trying to pull him under again.
“There’s someone waiting to talk to you,” the woman says. “He’s very eager.”
Look around, something in his head urges. Make sense of it all .
Warriors, Sokka knows, can’t afford to be complacent. Even if they are warm and tired.
He takes in his surroundings, the way his dad taught him to while hunting. He might not be out in the tundra, but the skills still apply. He’s not home, he knows this. It’s hot, even inside, so he must be far from home. The woman said someone wanted to talk to him—why would that be? And who was she anyway, in this strange, white room with a red symbol over the door—
Sokka’s heart skips. Heat. The woman. The style of the room. The red flame symbol over the door. Spirits, he’d been so dull. Sokka tries to stand, tries to fight the heaviness in his limbs.
“Please,” the woman says, “relax before you hurt yourself.”
Sokka sits and tries to stand. He needs to get out of here, before anything else. His aching mind races as he tries to plot his escape. What’s waiting for him on the other side of the door?
“Sit down,” the woman says sternly. She reaches for his shoulder to guide him back to the bed. Sokka tries to throw her off, but his movements are slow, sluggish.
The woman, small as she is, grips Sokka’s shoulders and pins him down to the mattress. “Joon! He’s going to hurt himself.”
Sokka thrashes. He knows he must look like an injured animal, but he doesn’t care. He needs to get out of here, everything else can come later.
Another woman bursts through the door. She stares at Sokka, her golden, most definitely Fire Nation eyes wide. “I’ll get the medicine,” she says, moving swiftly to the table.
Before Sokka can even protest, she’s forcing a bitter-tasting liquid into his mouth. It stings his throat as she plugs his nose and he's forced to gulp it back. Again, he feels the pull of darkness and confusion rise in his head. His limbs grow even heavier; he stops thrashing.
The first woman guides his head to the pillow. He tries to tell her off, to yell at her, but only a low groan of confusion leaves his mouth. Sokka closes his eyes; the room is too bright.
“Stay with him,” Joon says. Her voice sounds far away even though he knows she’s by his bedside. “I’ll get the Fire Lord.”
Whatever sedative they gave him isn’t enough to stop the terror that spikes in Sokka’s chest. In the last clear moments of his fading lucidity, Sokka can’t help but think that whatever he did, he’s gotten himself into deep shit.
Spirits help him—Sokka’s not only gotten himself captured by the Fire Nation, but he’s also managed to catch the attention of Fire Lord Ozai.