This Be The Verse

In the dark of a deathly silent house, Azula counts her breaths, sat at the bottom of the stairs, with the sickening taste of fear stuck in her hard palate and her heart toeing the fine line between the proper amount of anxiety due to these situations and an outright heart attack. She picks her phone with shaking hands, hates them for shaking or merely for being hands, and texts the first contact in her messages for reassurance while she waits for another number’s reply.

Did I lose my mind?, she asks and What am I doing?

The best thing for you, Ty Lee replies barely a second later.

She wishes she could hate her for being right, but she can’t, even though Azula desperately wishes she was the one in the right and Ty Lee was merely speaking well-meaning nonsense, as she was so prone to do; not meaning to do any harm but bringing down a pink-tinted hammer to beliefs she thought were as good as stone only to gawk as they shattered like glass either way.

Azula thinks of her friend, in pastel pajamas, sat awake at her bed, squeezing Mai’s hand worriedly, refusing to sleep because her friend needs her and she has to block her phone so the darkness engulfs her again, safe and unsafe, like a blanket that doesn’t do much but reassure that she’s alone but also reminds her that she is alone.

The clock on the wall to the left reads 3:23AM and he said he would be here by 3AM. So he must have lied and she must be a fool, because she knows lies are all this family has, but she grips the ridiculous notion he cares enough to follow through his word as tightly as she grips the documents taken from the locked drawer of Father’s desk.

Under the clock there’s a family picture without much of a family in the picture. She remembers when there were four people in that picture (Mom and her kind smile, Azula and her innocence, Father’s face almost warm while his hands rested on Zuko’s shoulder) and then it was taken down and another one was put up and then there were three (Father in the middle, Zuko to his left, Azula to her right, a distinct uneasiness to the whole thing) and then that one was taken down and another one was put up, one who is still up and under the clock and in this one there are two (her and Father, smiling and eyes cold and sharp). There is a brief moment where she wonders if, after this is all finished and done, this picture too won’t go down and the next that comes up will have the family down to one.

It’s a stupid decision and she knows it.

Still she made up her mind and now she remembers what her brother’s voice sounds like.

Her room is trashed, the office’s drawers are throughly disorganized and her bag is packed with everything she needs (essentials and things you’ll miss, he had said and it had been out of experience, because they both know he won’t let her come back to get anything after tonight) and she hugs it to her chest as she looks at the empty street for the headlights of a car, listens for the sound of a car or for anything similar to a car, and is rewarded eventually when a Honda Civic drives as slow as a slothturtle to a silent stop ahead of their house. She holds her breath.

There are things she needs to master: fear, anger, hope. She holds them down before either of those claws it’s way up to her throat, tells herself to be sensible and remembers little things that are more likely than her brother having parked across this nightmare of a house after a cry into the void from his bitch of a sister who never raised a finger to help. The wooden floor waxed into perfection, the picture perfectly hung, the four rooms in the top level very scarcely lived on, breakfast not much later from now when night bleeds into morning and her father sits across from her at the table and doesn’t glance up from his newspaper, her brother back in bed in the arms of whoever told him to come back to bed, the blanket of comfort made of darkness and lack of eyes around her shoulders.

He doesn’t owe her anything.

Zuko doesn’t owe her saving.

Her phone pings, she widens her eyes and fixes her gaze at the notification illuminating her phone’s screen.

I’m here.

There’s a knot to her throat and relief in the bottom of her stomach and she remembers what her brother’s voice sounds like.

Azula moves forwards. She clings to her bag, opens the door, gives herself a moment to be inside this house one last time and runs across the street to her brother’s car. Zuko stands by the car: his hair is longer and he’s more meat in his bones, he can almost be considered healthy. Under the flickering lamplights, his half-illuminated face looks confused and sports the imprint of a pillow still. He didn’t change his clothes, he’s wearing what are clearly old ones settled for use on bed, with an unzipped hoodie over them and shoes, unlaced on his feet. He moves to extend his arm, either to take her bag or to wave at her, but it loops around her shoulder after a moment’s hesitance when she crashes into his chest and digs her sharp nails past his shirt to leave red half-moons against his skin.

He’s here.

She doesn’t understand why he’s clinging to her that tightly all of the sudden, or trying to manhandle her with worried hisses of ‘are you alright’ until she realizes that: a) she’s laughing like she’s losing her mind, b) she’s crying because she’s losing her mind and c) he’s holding her because her knees gave out on her somewhere along the laughing and the crying, but all is very much because she’s losing her mind.

Her face is pressed against his shoulder and his shirt grows damper and damper with her tears, his arms hold tighter and tighter as the laughing turns to sobbing and it’s probably the closest to a hug they have shared in eight years.

“Azula, are you okay?” He asks, like he cares.

She remembers his voice now, because he picked up the phone, because after four years of having his number saved in her phone she had finally called him and he had picked up the phone and greeted with ‘Azula?’ instead of ‘hello?’ as if he had her contact saved in his phone for the same four years as well.

Why didn’t he text her, if that was the case?

Why didn’t he call?

“Why did you come?”

“You called me.” He says, as if that’s self explanatory. As if a cry for help demanded an answer.

Maybe it should be, but that’s not how their family works.

The thing is: when she was 9, their mother disappeared in the dark of the night - a kiss on the forehead and loving words to Zuko and one peak through the crack of the door to Azula - and in the morning, grandfather was dead and mother was not there and life was lived under the scared uncertainty of not knowing where she was and whether she would  come back. Zuko was the one to ask, over dinner, and Father raised an unimpressed brow before fixing him the words: ‘she’s gone”.

Was ‘gone’ the same as ‘dead’? For the longest she thought it must be, if she had left Zuko behind. Ursa would have left her in a heartbeat (would she?), but she would have never have left her son behind, her too-soft kindhearted son that never learned how to please father or hold his own tongue, Mother would have never left him to suffer under Father’s abuse - the first time he hit him was merely two months later, backhanded him so hard he bust his lip open and blood rained upon the carpet with turtleducks embroidery; three years later, there were cops in front of their house and Zuzu was being carrying in an ambulance, unconscious, and the smell of burned flesh stuck to the house for all the weeks in which he didn’t return — Mother wouldn’t have left him to that.

Still, the sobs convulse her body and hurt her chest, as Azula backs off just enough so she can reach for the file crumpled in-between them blindly, through tears and the strange ache in the hollow under her ribs, and offers him the office brown paper bag.

He lets out a small question that she doesn’t bother to listen, shoving the file against his chest instead through a guttural sob that hurts her throat and rocks back to the balls of her feet, a hand on the street’s concrete to steady herself without his arms around her. Finally, there’s the rustling of paper, hesitant and unsure, before Zuko gasps in such a manner that it reminds her of when father punched him in the stomach five years ago when he confronted him on the living room as she taunted the boy with brown hair and blue eyes on the steps of their house.

She looks up, blinks furiously the tears away until she can make him out past the haze of them: Zuko is four steps ahead of her, eyes so wide that it’s pulling at the edges of his burn, a hand covering his mouth and the other gripping at the curb behind him.

In the space between them, the documents spread over the small patch of concrete along with photos from four months ago with their Mother’s face aged through years they did not share, smiling down at a young girl that’s not Azula, arm’s looped with arms that are not Ozai’s.

“She’s not dead.” He says, half in wonder and half horrified, like she has pulled another sadistic trick with the ducks he likes so much again and he feels the urge to shield her eyes from such a picture even though he knows she was the one to paint it.

“She’s not dead.” She repeats, and it’s only the second time the words leave her lips, instead of ricocheting inside her head like a pinball machine, and it’s something that makes her light-headed in the bad kind of way, the kind of way that means she’s burning through her adrenaline and that comes before a crash. “She’s out there, she’s not dead.”

“She’s not dead.” He repeats again, but she’s too busy picking the papers from the ground to tend to the way he wants to repeat the words like a fool (he’s the fool, he has always been the fool and Azula always knew better, always had to know better with the precedents he left behind) tucks each photo and each printed report safely back into the paper bag, small scraps of clues and pieces of puzzles that she wants desperately to piece together, to understand, and maybe she would manage if only she wasn’t so tired, if her eyes weren’t so heavy and her shoulders weren’t sagging.

In the back of her mind, she is aware, there are memories of a childhood she doesn’t want to poke with a ten foot pole, at least not in the street in front of home where father can walk out at any minute - but she knows, half from the memories and half through basic biology classes, that the tiredness only comes because the adrenaline is not necessary. Azula doesn’t need her guard up or to watch her back or her mouth or her step with Zuko, and the absence of fear makes all that she has built under it fall to earth so frighteningly quick, like she’s not in control, but she needs to be.

This is what safety feels like, she thinks, and it’s terrifying.

She sits there with the knowledge of too many things she cannot grasp and listens to Zuko’s controlled breaths (the same patterns for morning meditations, the same one she had used in the stairs) and lets herself mimic his pattern until they’re both a little less likely to have a breakdown at the side of the road.

Eventually, after he gets a hold of himself again and tumbles to his feet, after he takes her bags and maneuvers her into the passenger’s seat (even puts her seatbelt on her like she’s 9 instead of 19) and when he’s driving home, fingers holding onto the wheel tight enough his knuckles are white, she remembers to text Ty Lee.

He’s here, and, I’m sorry I kept you up which is the closest to ‘thank you for caring’ she’ll stoop to.

It’s exhausting, this whole night has been. Azula lets out a breath. The the tears, the fear and the tension finally catches up to her, sagging against the window and doesn’t try to be in control enough to straighten She hears him call someone, voice soft and vulnerable, and says he has her.

“Make me some tea?” He asks, a small smile to his lips  like it’s a joke, even though he looks just as wrecked as she is and struggling not to cry. If doesn’t groan as she realizes it’s probably Uncle, it’s only because she can’t muster the strength but she sure wants to. “Anything but jasmine.”

Azula closes her eyes and tries not to sigh at the thought of having to face yet another family member today.

Sleep comes frighteningly easy with Zuko’s voice in the background, like everything else.

Mai’s thin fingers squeeze her shoulder gently and Ty Lee lifts her face to her girlfriend, neutral expression worn at the edges by worry and concern and a well-manicured hand offering her a mug of hot cocoa. She smiles, bright and as excited as she can feel given the circumstances, and Mai offers her that small smile of hers that softens dark eyes into something less glass-like and more human-like.

She likes when Mai’s eyes look like this: less like coal and more like the darkest spots of the night sky; there’s more depth and mysteries to it when she’s not playing the perfectly behaved child role her parents expected of her.

Mai walks around the couch to sit by her, elegant black silk nightgown following her movements before it too rests by Ty Lee’s pink cotton one. Still graceful in her movements when she’s not even trying, she outstretches a pale arm in silent invitation for her to come closer and rest against her girlfriend’s side for support. Ty Lee takes it without having to think twice, mug of chocolate on the hand furthest from Mai’s fine clothes and her phone hanging limply on her other hand.

“Azula stopped answering.” She mutters against the smooth skin of Mai’s bare shoulder.

“Zuko too. He said he was arriving at the house any moment now.” Her girlfriend answers, showing her the text messages between Mai and her childhood-crush-sort-of-childhood-boyfriend-possibly-best-friend. “They’re probably putting her bags on the car and driving off before Ozai can be any more of a dick.”

That statement elicits one dramatic, long-suffering groan for two different but sorta connected reasons: the first being that she hates Ozai (even though she shouldn’t hate people because it poisons the aura and is bad for her skin and, all around, is not a nicefeelingto have and all her practices go very against a hate so severe) and second being—

“How is Zuko going to handle this?” She says, and feels Mai struggle not to stiffen with the weight of the same question.

He’s been away from the Igarashi family house for four long years, in a slow recovery both of the damages inflicted to his body and to his, and still Ozai’s abuse gets to him from time to time, hinders his self worth and fills him with anxieties, ad he and Azula did not part on the best of terms to begin with, so how would her reintroduction to her life even affect this tentative balance he managed to achieve with his new live?

“For some unexplainable reason, he never stopped loving her.” Mai says, voice as bitter and resentful as it only ever gets when the subject is Azula and her own family. Ty Lee knows there’s a reason why she was the only one Azula reached out to in the dead of the night, no mention or question about Mai, whose motivation to maintain their friendship was always much more due to family ties than anything else. “I’m sure he’ll help her.”

“I know he will help her, but how will he handle what she’s going to do to him?” She says, fingers flexing and unflexing around her phone nervously. “If what she told me is real… Those photos of aunt Ursa…”

“If any of that is real, then he will have someone there having his back.” Her monotone voice cuts in once again, finger prodding gently at his sides. “As I have yours.”

The thought of the loudmouthed, snarky man probably waiting just as wide awake as the both of them for Zuko’s return makes her laugh slightly, though there’ still the very real possibility of he and Azula killing each other if forced to be in a room for more than two hours. She smiles then, up at the dark haired girl, leaning back so the amusement crinkling the side of her eyes can be shown, bringing the pink ceramic to her lips, the smell of hot chocolate sweet and warm to her nose as she whisper her (only mild) faux concern hushedly over the rim.

“Are we sure she’s not going to stab him?”

It’s Mai’s turn to laugh, or at least to chuckle, eyes narrowing playfully at her.

“Are we sure he’s not going to stab her?”

Mai’s phone screen lit up first, with a text from Zuko, and then Ty Lee’s phone vibrated in her hand with a text from Azula. They check them both at the same time and heave sighs of different intensities.

“At least we know they’re both alright.” Mai offers with a shrug. “Or as alright as the both of them can be.”

Ty Lee tosses her phone to the table and slips her now-free hand on Mai’s colder one, interlocking their fingers and downs the whole mug of hot chocolate, hoping the sugar rush will lift her spirits.

It didn’t but it was still worth trying, she supposes, collapsing against her girlfriend’s body dramtaically.

“Come on.” She says, pressing a kiss to her forehead. “We should go to sleep.”

“I don’t think I’ll manage.” Ty Lee whines.

Mai huffs, amused.

“Then we should watch one of those ridiculous romantic comedy movies you like so much until you sob yourself to sleep.”

That sounds exactly like something she might need, really. A dumb movie that’s cute and uplifting and has a good ending that she can smile over when she falls asleep.

“Can we watch The Holiday again?”

Mai’s head tilts back and she visibly closes her eyes and does her best to hold back a sigh, but she does groan out a ‘Yes’ and that is Mai for ‘I love you’. So Ty Lee squeezes her hand back and kisses her, two for each cheek and one for the lips, which is Ty Lee for ‘I’m lucky to have you’.

They walk off to bed, linked by the arms and leaned one against the other, smiling a little bit and locking the world and it’s messes out of their bedroom to be dealt with on a more appropriate hour.

There are things Sokka wishes for: Mom’s hugs, a dinner table set for four, for Katara to be innocent and carefree again, for Father’s eyes to be less weary with loss even years and Bato’s ring to his finger after, for a way to remember childhood without hurting, for a more peaceful world, for a couple of no-good bastards to drop dead, for an everlasting supply of meat.

There are other things, small things Sokka wishes for — small, manageable-things he doesn’t quite get, but damn it all to hell, he wants them still: expensive and tacky green bags, good weather at least two weeks of every summer, six fishing trips with dad per year, less spicy foods when is Zuko's turn to cook for the sake of his poor tongue, small demonstrations of love from Toph that won't leave bruises in his ribs afterwards, to win in Pai Sho against Piandao or Iroh just once, for Miss Ginger Snaps to not sit on freshly dried laundry every single time because she's a tiny asshole.

Though, if he's being honest, mostly he just wishes his boyfriend would come back home with a little less weight to his shoulders than when he left.

Tonight, he doesn’t get that either. 

Sokka's been pacing the living room from one side to the other for the better part of the two hours Zuko has been gone from home (poorly put together clothes thrown in his haste, car key in hand and that worried-sick crazy look to his eyes, ‘my sister called’, as if that explained anything) but he rushes to the window, pulling back the curtains when he hears the motor of his car; the familiar Honda Civic drives into their parking spot and stops.

Zuko hops off the car, looking to all the world as if he’s been through an emotional beating so thorough that a punch to the jaw would be seen as an welcomed distraction, and looks up to the living room’s window. He frowns slightly when he catches sight of him, lips twitching into a guilty line that weighs the corner of his mouth down, probably because he had told him to go back to bed (you have work in the morning and I’m okay and you don’t have to worry about me which all amounts to the unspoken I’m a liar and stressed and I’m scared I’ll overwhelm you) which Sokka pointedly ignored because that’s the compromise their relationship was built on: to care for each other even when they didn’t ask to be cared for.

Sokka smiles, raises a hand in greeting and after a moment he does the same, though his smile is more drained and anxious than Sokka’s calm and soft one. It doesn’t quite matter because either way the smile elicits the same old rush of reassuring relief that came in the heels of dad coming home safe from the front lines and Katara mostly unbruised after one of her ecological protests and picking up a Toph not slumped in silent hurt after visiting her parents and Suki crashing in his couch in the few weeks gap between one bout of volunteer work overseas and the other and hugging Aang tight when the shadows under his eyes faded into lighter tones and better nights of sleep, the sort of relief that came with the words he’s safe and he’s home.

That is, until he remembers why he hadn’t been home to begin with.

They’re home and they’re safe and then his sister hops off the car and the memories hit him: Aang and him and Toph in one side and Azula and her cruel smile on the other, Zuko doing something incredibly stupid like facing his father alone in the panic room down in the basement, a solar eclipse on the skies because nothing could ever not be dramatic where they were concerned, ‘he already is disappointment enough, do you really need to help him dig his grave?’ — and Sokka has half a mind to lock the door and not let her in.

He tries very (painfully, disturbingly) hard to not think of the reasons he has for that door to stay locked, of how she had wreaked hell in whatever situation she was in, of Suki’s broken wrist and bleeding nose after being backed into a corner, how she had threatened to ruin Katara’s life, how Toph had shaken with anger under his fingers when he had pulled her back from punching the golden-eyed girl by the shoulder, how she had thrown Aang’s trauma right at his face with sadistic satisfaction, of how Sokka’s teeth had nearly cracked at the strength it had taken to lock his jaw against the poison she distilled especially for him, how she had stood bodily between people trying to save her brother and the man who had tried to kill him no less than three times, of the scar that spans from Zuko’s sternum to his stomach and that is her doing or of the nights he had held him tightly as he woke crying from nightmares, her name on his tongue, or with the fact he still loved her when she had done nothing to deserve it, or how the sad hopefulness looked on him when he spent months staring at his screen wishfully and waiting for her to call even when he knew she wouldn’t, how no one fourteen-year old girl should had the right to cause the damage she had, how no nineteen-year old girl should have be given the chance to outdo herself.

Azula Igarahsi is the kind of trouble he doesn’t feel like inviting inside his living room, much less into his guest room for however long she needs to get back on her psychopath-perfectly-manicured feet, the kind of trouble that sits as Fuckface Worst Father Ever does unspeakable things for a decade for a reason.

‘Baby, come inside’, he could say, ‘You already rescued her and that was more than she ever deserved from you, it’s okay to let her call one of her crazy friends for a place to stay. You don’t have to save her’, maybe he wouldn’t resent him too much if only he let his despair bleed through, ‘Please, just keep this girl out of my house’.

He doesn’t say any of it, though, he doesn’t know what he would do. Would he falter? Would he leave with her? Would he close the door on her face and stay? Would Sokka make him choose any of that? No.

Love sometimes was like stabbing oneself willingly at the leg so your lover wouldn’t bleed, but they were so used to holding their hands over ripped skin and torn flesh to stanch bleedings that it wouldn’t surprise him if neither could tell whose blood it was, dried in the creases of their palms.

The world’s worst sister looks significantly less confident and less prone to commit the sort of murder that won’t leave evidences behind as she gets out of the car and more like she just woke up from an exhaustion nap, her stance rigid and her eyes craving-for-thrust-but-knowing-better-weary and so similar to Zuko's years earlier, the version of him that stuck to the shadows in the halls of their high school’s halls and hid the left side of his face under his hair, that Sokka feels the fear be drowned by rage and the certainty that she’s manipulating them, manipulating Zuko.

Azula looks up at her brother, eyes clouded with the haze of sleep, frowns a little at his raised hand and vulnerable expression and follows his gaze to the window where Sokka stands. Her golden eyes are red and puffy, her cheek is creased by the seat belt, confused for one more moment as if she expected to see someone else, her mouth opens to ask Zuko something while she squints to make him out through the light of the living room only one moment before recognition dawns in her face and she freezes (by which he means she stiffens and pulls herself back like a badgerviper preparing to strike).

So she does remember him. 

He can’t decide either that’s good or not (it’s probably not very good, terrible, a big no-no in all aspects and locking the door should be his go to), but it is good that she’s the one to avert her horrified eyes. Gives him the time to walk to the door, freeze in front of it too instead of freezing in front of the window. They can’t see him through wood, so he can lose his mind and question his life choices with a little more privacy.

Gingery senses his uneasiness or at least finds his tense stillness as unnerving as it rightfully is, brushes her small body against his leg on a whim and purrs - another sign that people who think cats don’t care about their owners are shit bags and that adopting this tiny asshole might have been his third best life choice yet - which is as comforting as it sounds and earns her a scratch behind her ear and the soft whisper of ‘thanks, girl’.

It doesn’t exempt her from sitting on the clean laundry tho.

He takes one of those meditative breaths he learned from Zuko when he tried to force him into those daily yoga routines of his (could you please not call it that, which turned out that no, he couldn’t), clear his mind and all the good vibes talk Iroh was so prone on droning on and on unprompted and deliberately unlocks the door and opens it to extend his hand to take one of Azula ‘tried to ruin his life and relationship’ Igarashi’s bags from his boyfriend’s hands, offering him a gentle ‘hey’ that sounds vaguely like ‘this is crazy, but I trust-love you, so I'll let you rope me into this but not without mild complaining'.

Or maybe it just sounds like a ‘hey’.

“I thought I told you not to worry.” Zuko greets him in his Zuko-y ways, tense and awkward and just waiting for a moment without pitying eyes to be as soft as the apologetic gaze he fixes him, refusing to let go of their maybe soon-to-be-murderer’s bag with a tug back and a stubborn set of his lips.

“I thought you knew I don’t listen to a word you say.” Sokka replies cheekily and, despite the very much fight response his sister elicits (she was still some steps away from the door, away from them, he could just—) leans forward to steal a kiss, basking on this one moment of ease affection before it all went to shit, like a limited number of other moments before, when they had thought the sky was falling above their heads.

Sokka, however, is not above taking advantage of the haze of want and the bright-red-cheeked embarrassment to tug the bag from his hands, securing it on his own hold easily and safely away from warmer hands, with a smug smile. Zuko glared, Sokka smirked smugly.Which was a common greeting, between the two of them. What wasn’t common was the tactical coward’s retreat he had executed when his little sister's face appeared in the doorframe behind them along with the rest of her.

Gingery hisses at the girl, hair raised along her back, and Azula takes a couple startled steps back, glaring at the animal in that cutting edge way that means that precedes violence. Sokka almost dives to pick the poor cat up and away from whatever torture she had planned to inflict for the disrespect, but Zuko cuts him to it, standing right in front of their cat and letting out a 'tsk'.

“Missy.” He says, in that scolding tone of his which Gingery answers with a soft 'meow' and kitty eyes turning towards him to get back in his good graces (which she always manage much faster than Sokka can) and doesn't complain when Zuko picks her up and cradles her in his arms, like a big baby. He also pointedly ignored the glare Sokka shoots his way, but if the cat doesn't like her she's clearly evil and he should trust their child over the probably-killed-a-man woman. “Sorry.” He offers to Azula, ignores even further the small choking noise Sokka let's out. “She's protective of us when we're tense. She'll warm up to you eventually.”

“She didn't warm up to Jet.” Sokka mutters.

This, it turns out, Zuko can't ignore, turning around to glare at him.

“Jet tried to stab me.”

Sokka arches a brow at him.

“My point exactly.”

Zuko turns away from him but his eyes are downcast instead of looking up at his sister's face, fingers running through copper furr to chase away memories.

Sokka softens with guilt though the hope he understands why he's being careful is still there. Maybe he will be careful too.

At least Azula looks as uncomfortable as he is, but considerably less collected, unsure of her standing.

Almost vulnerable.

It doesn't fool him. He knows what she's capable of.

“I will have the guest room set up for her.” He says, and though he’s terrified he looks at Zuko, he’s cold and sharp and guarded but he also is checking up on him, ‘are you okay?’ written in the cracks of ice. His boyfriend nods, short and curt and understanding. There’s ‘I do not trust you’ in the same cracks when he shifts his gaze to Azula. “Welcome to my home.”

The ‘not yours’ was left unspoken.

Zuko looked hurt then, disappointed, but he had looked worse when they had dragged him out of Ozai’s house. After Azula had tried to keep him in there. After she had missed his heart by mere inches.

Sokka makes his way through the hall, throws her bag on the maroon covers with more anger than an inanimate object warrants. The bed was already made, that has just been an excuse. One Zuko had let him get away with. What he does do is check for cutting objects in the guest room, takes down mirrors and glass framed pictures, twitches to go through her bags but ultimately doesn't and hopes he won't regret that, looks through the bathroom and keeps that meditative breathing going on as he throws anything remotely sharp in a plastic bag to be hidden away. Are the knives in the locked drawers? He doesn't remember. He won't go back to check now, but he will later.

They can't trust her, but Zuko has wanted to have his sister back for so long. He will take that leap, he will trust her and he will let his guard down and Sokka almost lost him once.

His bleeding chest, his hand staining the walls red as he stumbles away, his sister thrown on her back behind him, tears running down his cheek, the wheezing breaths, the way his fingers gripped at Sokka's arm as if he was going to die at any moment, how Aang wouldn't drive fast enough, the knowledge that the only thing scarier than his bruising tight grip is when it begins to loosen in time with the shutting of his eyes.

Once was enough.

Zuko will trust her and let his guard down, so Sokka will not trust her.

He takes the plastic bag and moves to his own bedroom, tucks it under their bed like a crazy man and lays down, waiting for Zuko to come back so he will stop feeling guilty about leaving him alone in the first place.

What had she even said that was so important? She must have said something, by the way his eyes had widened even more and his breath got stuck on his throat and his voice broke. What did she say?

The living room light turns off and two pairs of feet make their way into the guest room.

They are loud, in Sokka's mind. Almost as loud as the questions, but he can wait for the answers. He listens to them, muffled conversation and undistinguishable words from this far away, but no sign of struggle. Zuko is still alright.

His lungs burn by the time one pair of footsteps leave the guest room and drift closer to him. Sokka hadn't been aware he was holding his breath.

The door creaks open, but Zuko doesn't bother turning on the lights. He lowers to the floor, lets go of Gingery and takes off his shoes. Sokka feels their cat climb the bed near his feet, walk past him and curl behind their pillows, above his head.

He feels his boyfriend climb up the bed to his left, hidden from his eyes by the darkness of the room and lay there in the edge, not daring to get closer.

The idiot, wanting to hide things he is more than willing to shoulder.

Sokka reaches for him — fingertips brushing over his chest and torso fleetingly, but not finding the dampness of blood or any injuries — and tugs him closer. Zuko follows without resistance, molds himself against Sokka's body and lets tension drain out of him and the exhaustion take over.

He waits patiently, chin resting at the top of his head, Zuko tucked in his arms and against his chest, and waits for his breath to even out until he feels like he’s calm enough to speak.

“My mother is alive.” He whispers against his chest, eventually.

Well, fuck.