He ducks and weaves, she spins and flips; they dance together daily and Sokka's more comfortable dodging her kicks and throwing punches at her stomach than he is sitting in the bar with quiet conversation.
Steph gets flustered and hot, sweaty from sport and red with exertion; Sokka's skin always seems always smooth and cool to her touch, even in spar -- like water, she thinks, and spends more time thinking about it than she should.
They can't be more than a few months apart, he might even be younger than Steph, but sometimes when she laughs, when she grins, when she looks at everything so optimistically, so filled with hope, Sokka feels ages older.
Eden was dying, and this world is dead; it makes Steph think Maybe nothing was meant to last, and it makes her determined to smile all the more, laugh all the louder, while they're here.
The look on his younger self's face as he leaves is unnerving - Sokka's seen it before, but never focused on himself, and there's no time to tell the boy in red his admiration is misplaced before they're gone.
He can look after himself, better than Steph can; but nevertheless, on watch while he sleeps, Steph tucks their only blanket a little more closely around his shoulders.
Sokka has never understood some people's need to have multiple girlfriends, boyfriends, fuck buddies, whatever - he'd gladly trade one million of each for a single woman that would stay with him.
Thousandi_spoiled_itNovember 15 2007, 05:10:40 UTC
Steph's dreams are full of people: running, crying, screaming people, making noise and making danger, turning the inside of her head to chaos -- there are so many of them, terrifyingly many, and not a single familiar (dark, scarred, laughing) face to be found.
He is a boy who never led more than a small group of baby warriors, unsuccessfully, in a tiny tribe of ice and snow; it's shocking, and terrifying sometimes, when something goes wrong and she looks to him for help.
The way Mel smiles at her daughters makes Steph ache a little inside; but it isn't safe to drive at night, and the sun will be up in just a few more hours.
It's easy to adapt; not fun, but easy, after all this time - it's trying to settle down again, Sokka finds, walking the streets restlessly, that's so much harder.
Steph's better at following orders than giving them, but she knows this world and she knows what they need to do to be safe -- and if that knowledge doesn't give her the confidence she needs, at least it lets her fake it.
He isn't one to initiate physical contact with anyone outside of his sister or his nieces; but when Steph falls, he's the first to offer a hand, and when the dog they found had to be put down, he hugs her without waiting for permission and doesn't think about what that means.
She'd never killed anything in her life, she'd never seen the bleak horror that had been Apocalyptica, she was just a stupid girl playing at apocalypse in a stupid world she didn't understand, and the dog had never done anything wrong -- but he understood, and he held her, and it wasn't okay but maybe she'd sleep without screaming after all.
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Steph's dreams are full of people: running, crying, screaming people, making noise and making danger, turning the inside of her head to chaos -- there are so many of them, terrifyingly many, and not a single familiar (dark, scarred, laughing) face to be found.
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Steph's better at following orders than giving them, but she knows this world and she knows what they need to do to be safe -- and if that knowledge doesn't give her the confidence she needs, at least it lets her fake it.
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