(Avatar TLA) Stories
Title: Stories
Prompt/Theme: Jan 13 // even if your broken heart’s a hundred miles wide
Fandom: Avatar the Last Airbender
Characters/Pairing: Sokka, Sukki, Yue, unknown child
A/N: It’s been in my mind for a while, but I was trying to find a way to write it without sound like the other stories with these three. I don't think I succeeded.
Summary: She should be jealous, Sukki knows.
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The house is quiet when she returns, the candles blown out, and it only takes a quick glance at the night sky for her to know where they are. She drops the food on the kitchen floor-it can wait-and soundlessly she creeps to the back of the house.
It’s warm where they are now-the ice and snow of Sokka’s youth is hard to remember when he’s spent years abroad in the bright world. Harder to adapt to and Sukki knows that even if he could adjust to his frozen wasteland, she couldn’t.
Tiptoeing to the backyard, she finds him sitting on the porch, decked in the blues and whites of his tribe. If she follows his eyes, she knows what she’ll see-a bright moon, hanging pregnant in the sky. There is longing in those eyes, she knows, the way only a first love can linger in the breath and heartbeat of another. It fades over time, this wanting, but it never fully disappears.
It’s only on nights like these does he allow himself to remember. She thinks she should be jealous of this moon, of this Yue and her grip on him. She should, but it’s hard to be jealous of a dead girl, who died before she could become a woman. There is only pity and a twinge of sorrow at the thought of her.
She chooses to look down instead, at their daughter sitting beside him, sleepy but not wanting to turn in yet. A stubborn one and already she is showing the grace of a fighter. Swaying as she sits beside her father, she starts to lean on him before jolting herself awake.
“It’s bedtime,” Sukki announces, coming to a stop behind the pair. She casually swings her feet over the edge of their wooden deck, curling an arm around her daughter. Sokka looks across at her and smiles, taking her hand in his.
“A little longer,” their girl begs, a yawn forming in her mouth as she does so. “Please?”
“You can’t even form a sentence without yawning,” she replies, bemused. Sokka chuckles before adding his plea to the mix. Their expressions are the same and she knows that if she leaves the two together any longer, their daughter will develop her father’s sense of humour.
She has yet to decide if that’s a good thing.
“I’m not sleepy!”
She gives in, basking in the bright moonlight. “Just a little, then. Shall I tell you a story?”
Those are generally enough to make her sleep, her eyes closing as the tale unfolds. She has yet to stay awake through a single one and each night is a retelling.
Sokka turns down now, ruffling their daughter’s short hair. “It’s my turn. What should I tell you? Maybe the cactus marauders? Or the man-eating slugs?” He’s tickling her now, her high-pitched shrieks filling the air as he says suggestion after suggestion.
Gasping for air, she remains lying down, pointing up to the sky. “That.”
He looks up now and gives a wane smile. “Of the moon, then.” He pauses and she knows he’s about to start another adventure. Perhaps one of a rabbit living alone on the moon.
But no, he surprises her as he starts with, “Once upon a time, there was an ice-maiden.”
He’s gripping her hand tighter now and she listens as the words flow out of his mouth.
She should be jealous of Yue, she knows, but it is hard to when his hand is sitting warm in hers. The memory of a girl is shared that night and she thinks she might miss the princess a little herself.