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Sukka Week 2012

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Suki had grown up hearing various folktales on Kyoshi Island, the most prominent of which involved stories of the mighty Kyoshi herself.

Not all of them did, though. Some of the stories…were downright romantic.

“It’s called the red string of fate,” Suki explained to her companions round the fire, curling her legs up to her chest. “The idea is, people are born with an invisible red string tied around their littlest fingers—” She held up her pinkie “—connecting them to someone else.”

“If it’s invisible,” Toph put in, “how do they know it’s red?”

“Um.” Suki blinked once, nonplussed. The adults who’d told her and the other children those stories had never elaborated on the details of the story. “I, uh, I don’t know.”

Toph leaned back, picked food out of her teeth. “This story doesn’t make any sense.”

“Let her finish, Toph,” Katara chastised. Zuko coughed loudly.

Suki shrugged, went on, “Anyway, the idea is that the person the string connects you to—that you’re destined to find them, no matter who they are, or how far away they are. Even if you lose each other, you’ll find one another again—over and over.”

Sokka’s vivid eyes traced over her face, a smile quirked his lips. She knew what he was thinking—no matter how often they’d parted, no matter the circumstances—they, too, had been reunited over and over again.

Maybe a string tied them together. Suki linked her fingers with his, squeezed his hand.

“So can we hear a story that involves fighting and stuff that’s actually interesting?” Toph barked.

Suki laughed once. “Sure, Toph. Sure.”

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Suki hooked her arms around her boyfriend’s neck, pressed their lips together, traced her tongue over the chapped corners of his lips. “Did she disappear again?”

“It’s not really disappearing,” Sokka mumbled in return, keeping his arms clasped tight around her waist. He savored these moments, between working his menial job in the diner downstairs from their apartment, and making sure that his sister didn’t run into any more trouble than even she could handle.”I mean, I know where she’s going.”

“I don’t know if I approve of her running around with that guy,” Suki said, tucking her face into Sokka’s neck. The closer she’d become to Sokka, the more she’d come to think of Katara as her own younger sister.

“He—isn’t that bad,” Sokka forced himself to say, trailing pieces of Suki’s light brown hair through his fingers. “Really, I don’t want to think about what they might—”

“She’s sixteen,” Suki reminded him. “As much as I don’t like Jet, I think she’s old enough to make her own decisions regarding—”

“Yeah, yeah.” Sokka winced, tilted Suki’s face back, kissed her lips again. What better way to distract himself from…his sister’s hypothetical sexcapades…than with his own?

“She’ll be fine, Papa Wolf,” Suki sighed, both for his reassurance and her own. “And one day, the three of us will get out of here, okay? And we’ll be safe. And happy.”

“Yeah.” Sokka pressed his girlfriend close, nudged her towards his room. “Yeah, you’re right.”

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The dream came to him by moonlight.

Gran Gran had told Sokka and Katara many stories growing up—fantastic tales of adventure in lands they would never see, eerie legends of spirits both malignant and benign.

She’d also told them, in her dry, matter-of-fact voice, about the power of dreams.

Moonlight was filtering in through the crack in the tent he shared with Gran Gran and Katara. It traced over the packed earth floor, across the thick fur blankets that were piled about, hit his eyelids and startled him awake.

In any case, he thought he was awake.

In an odd, detached sort of way, he watched the moonlight shift, siphon up into a cylinder—and that cylinder swirled, all moonbeams and dust, into the vague outline of a beautiful, dark skinned woman with bone white hair that fell down her back in a cloud.

He mumbled something—a name? A name that he didn’t know—and watched, with widening eyes, as the moonlit woman faded away to be replaced by a—he wasn’t sure, in the dark, whether it was a boy or a young woman—their face was painted, and they were dressed in armor—

A warrior.

And it was a girl. A beautiful young girl with striking eyes and a determined frown. Her outline was clearer, more defined, than the other woman’s had been—she was made up of bolder colors, greens and golds and rich brown hair and—

Her hand lifted—lifted in the gesture of blowing him a kiss—before fading away.

He woke the next morning with little to no recollection of the night before.

Whatever he’d dreamed of—he had the distinct feeling that he would dream it again.

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Suki’s answer was immediate and clipped. “No.”

“But Suki.” Sokka’s voice was a drawn-out whine. “I think it would be a good idea so—”

“No,” she repeated, lining her huge, lovely eyes with paint. “No means no. That’s it. That’s all.”

“But it’s a great idea—”

“It’s a nice idea,” she conceded gently, “but it’s not going to go over well with Zuko.”

“He’s been getting more than a little friendly with my sister lately.” Sokka folded his arms, ice blue eyes narrowing. “The least he could do is hear my proposal out.”

“Proposal.” Suki didn’t bother to mask a snort. “Crazy scheme, you mean.”

“But you have to admit it would be a great idea, I mean the Kyoshi Warriors are here anyway and if Zuko really wants to prove that he holds respect for the Earth Kingdom, he should—”

“Zuko is not going to have a feast to honor the Kyoshi Warriors,” Suki informed her boyfriend. “You can give up now, sweetheart.”

“You guys deserve respect,” Sokka said tightly, leaning over to wrap his arm around Suki. “Zuko of all people should give that to you—you’ve done nothing but guard his sorry ass lately.”

Suki’s eyes lightened. “Maybe that’s true. Maybe he’ll agree.”

“We’ll just have to find out, won’t we.” With that, he kissed her mouth.

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“It’s an ancient festival,” Zuko was saying, “that honors the souls of the dead.”

“That’s nice and everything,” Sokka put in, “but I still don’t get what paper lanterns have to do with anything.”

Zuko knelt on the bank of the river, nudging one of the brilliantly colored paper lanterns farther onto the water’s surface, amber eyes tracking it as it moved with the current.

“The lanterns, from what I know, represent the souls of the dead.” Suki’s hand was wrapped around Sokka’s. Unlike the other girls, wrapped in thin, embroidered cotton kimonos, Suki had opted to wear her warrior’s regalia. She stood out—and she was terrifyingly, achingly beautiful.

“So, what, the souls are trapped in the lanterns or something?” Sokka scratched the back of his head.

“Not precisely,” Zuko said dryly. He rested his chin on his curled hand. “The lanterns’ journey down the river, to the sea, represent the souls of the deceased traveling to the Spirit World.”

“Morbid.”

“Beautiful,” Suki contradicted her boyfriend, “in a sad way.”

Sokka’s lips turned down. His blue eyes darkened, became serious. “Hey, Hotpants,” he said, using his sister’s nickname for the Fire Lord. “Got any lanterns left, by any chance?”

Zuko’s lips twitched at the use of the nickname, but he said, “Of course.”

A short while later, Sokka was kneeling beside the river, nudging a pale blue paper lantern over the wavelets.

“For my mother,” he explained quietly. Suki was kneeling beside him, hand resting warmly on his shoulder. Zuko was standing back a couple feet, eyes tracing the patterns of the stars.

“I know, sweetheart.” Suki watched the lantern float off into the distance, joining its thousands of comrades. “I know.”

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“It’s like dancing,” she explained, stepping back and bringing her arm down in a graceful swoop. One of her amber fans was grasped in her hand, her long fingers curled around the base. “That’s the best analogy I can come up with, in any case.”

“Don’t listen to your mother,” Sokka warned his daughter in a half-teasing, half-serious tone. “Fighting isn’t like dancing. Warriors don’t dance.”

Yue frowned up at her father, her own small fans held somewhat tentatively in her chubby hands. “But you’re a warrior, Daddy. And you dance with Momma.”

“That’s—” Sokka scratched at the side of his nose, refused to meet his family members’ eyes. “That’s different.”

“How come?” Yue blinked her huge violet eyes—so much like her mother’s—up at him, openly perplexed. Children didn’t grasp the nuances of romantic relationships, or the exceptions that one partner made for the sake of another.

“It just—” Sokka’s shoulders moved in a jerky shrug. “It just is. Um. Stop asking questions and listen to your mother.”

Yue plopped down, curled her legs in on herself. “You just told me not to, Daddy.”

Suki didn’t bother to hide a snort. “She’s got you there, sweetheart. The women in this family know better than to take things quietly.”

“Oh, I know.” Sokka’s mouth twitched, his eyes warmed as they met Suki’s.

“Now, as I was saying, it’s like dancing—an objections, sweetheart?” Suki paused to throw her husband an amused glance.

Sokka bit back a laugh. “None at all, Suki.”

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They sparred with words, with fans and sword.

It was what he loved most about her—beyond her strength, her beauty, her sweet smile. Beyond how amazing she was to his little sister—in all honesty, it was as if Katara was her younger sister as well.

He loved the way she spiked his blood—the grin she would throw his way lighting up his veins as if they were filled with tiny sparks of lightning instead of blood.

He loved her ability to best him—and her respect for his own warrior’s honor.

The hard kisses, the way her hands would grasp his shoulders—the violence of their love gradually melting into something softer and sweeter.

He loved the way neither of them would truly win—and where would the fun in that be?

She was his girl—but she was his warrior, too.