Work Text:
The moon bursts back to life.
That’s how it ends, or how it starts. Maybe some of both. Does it matter? The moon bursts back to life and Sokka can't bring himself to look up, staring listlessly at the rippling water. In the reflection, Katara’s face is tight, pinched in a way that makes her cheeks look hollow. Her hands clamp stiff on his shoulders, Zuko’s uncle has vanished from the scene, and Yue is-
She’s-
“Sokka,” Katara says, and not for the first time. Tremors itch up her vocal cords and he is reminded, suddenly, of the weeks after mom had died. Katara had spent a lot of time crying, then, and pulling things together while Sokka had fallen apart in every way he knew how except for crying.
No tears now, either, even though Yue-
It’s warm, here in the Spirit Oasis. He can’t see his breath and for a moment, a bitterness grows inside of him. It should be cold. There should be frostbite growing on his skin, ice in his lungs, anything to signify to the world that a tragedy had happened. That he had failed. The tranquillity of the cavern feels like a spit in the face.
But the universe doesn’t care about anyone’s given grief. Sokka knows that. He’s got experience. The bitterness gives way to something numb and hollow.
“Sokka?”
He swallows, tight, and looks at his sister. She’s got tears in her eyes. He remembers the pleased way she had curled up in the corner of their small lodgings with Yue, chatting and laughing and trading stories. “Girl time,” Katara had called it, eyes scrunching in that pleased, smug way they do sometimes. Sokka had been a bit annoyed at the time, because Yue was supposed to have been hanging out with him, but he had gotten over it. Even though Katara could be pain, it was nice, in a way, that they got along.
There’s none of that spark in his sister’s eyes, now. Just grief and stress and the beginnings of bruises. Just her hands, shaking.
“We gotta find Aang, Sokka,” Katara says, and pulls him to his feet. Aang. That’s right. They need to get Aang. The screaming and the sounds of fireballs have faded to almost nothing, the moon has burst back to life. Whatever Aang had done with the Ocean spirit must be over, and post Avatar State wipeout leaves Aang vulnerable like nothing else.
There’s no room for vulnerability in an active war zone. They’re not losing anyone else. Not tonight. Not if he can help it.
So Sokka nods, sharply, and squeezes Katara's hand. Cold bites at them the moment they leave the Spirit Oasis, and it tastes sharply of salt.
He’s still just as hollow.
They find Aang on a crumbling turret of ice, unconscious, breathing shallowly. It’s like the first time with Prince Jerkface all over again, except maybe worse, because the kid’s eyes barely flutter open even after Katara sits him upright. His head lolls.
Beyond them, out at sea, there’s an armada of Fire Navy ships laid out in devastation for as far as the eye can see. Collapsing, being swallowed by the waves. Aang did that. This tiny pipsqueak was the source of all that destruction.The only reason it came to an end was probably because Yue-
Because she-
No wonder he’s wiped out.
(Sokka looks at all that devastation and thinks, Good. It’s what they deserve. He’s so hollow, but the anger is alive in him, formless and broad.)
Katara’s eyes are big and brown when they meet his own. Pleading. It’s been a while since she’s looked at him like that, like he could make things better just because he was there, bigger and older and stronger. It’s been longer since he’s felt like he was capable of living up to those silent pleas.
Still, he has to try, so Sokka taps Aang’s cheek. He tries not to think about how Katara cradles him in a near perfect mimic of the way he had curled around Yue’s body a mere hour ago. He tries not to think about her solid presence vanishing into thin air, there and then gone, gone, gone. Lost.
Dead.
“C’mon, buddy,” he murmurs, and taps at that pale cheek until Aang’s eyelids slide back open into slits. “Let’s go, okay? It’s bedtime.”
Bedtime. It’s laughable, really, in an absurd, cracked way. Yue is dead and Sokka is heaving a near-limp twelve year old to his feet, getting ready to drag him back to a bed that may or may not have been burned down. Yue is dead and Sokka is still here, breathing.
After a few stumbled steps too many nearly sends all three of them careening off the turret, Katara helps situate Aang onto his back, and then she crafts stairs out of rough hewn ice to get them back down to the ground. All around them, soldiers and medics and benders are scrambling about, tending to the wounded, restabilizing the shattered buildings. A few of them take to stopping and staring as they pass, eyes glued to the orange tattered figure slumped over his own aching frame, something fearful and awed in their expressions. More than a few of them bow.
Somewhere past the hollowness in his lungs, Sokka is able to recognize that Aang will hate that, once he wakes up properly. It’s going to break his weird little heart, people treating him with formality and distance where there had once been companionship, or at least fond exasperation.
Not that that is the largest of his concerns. Already, there’s some small part of him trying to figure out how to keep the Aang away from the shoreline for a while, where the worst of the spirit damage was done. It’s the least he can do, because if Sokka had just done his job none of this would have happened.
He failed. Yue is dead because of it.
Katara leads the way through the wrecked city, uncharacteristically quiet, and he does nothing to fill the silence. Behind them, Appa and Momo follow along, their tiny entourage picking their way through the aftermath of the battle. Past the groans of the dead and dying. All around them, the glaciers creak.
Shifting, along his back. “S’kka,” Aang murmurs in his ear, hardly more than a puff of air. “Yue?”
Something about the grief in his tone tells Sokka that Aang already knows, so he just shakes his head, throat tight. He doesn’t say anything when the kid’s head comes back down against his neck and silent tears start to freeze against the collar of his parka. The words won’t come.
Their hut, miraculously, is intact. It’s closer to the centre of the city, where less destruction had been wrought, so maybe it's not as miraculous as it seems, but that’s how it feels. Everything is supposed to have fallen apart and here stands their temporary home, ready to welcome them back.
It’s infuriating, in a way. At the same time Sokka feels so drained he probably would have collapsed and gone to sleep even if all that was left was rubble. He makes to go into the tent-
And stops when Katara doesn’t follow him.
“Katara?” he asks, exhausted, and she bites the inside of her cheek.
“People are injured. I should- I need to-”
“You’re injured. You have a concussion.”
They stand there for one moment. Two. The wind hisses between the ice and makes an odd, sombre song of it. Aang’s breathing has evened out on his back. Katara’s braids are mussed and Yue is dead and he wants to collapse into his sleeping pallet and never get up.
“Two hours, okay?” he finally settles on. “Let’s rest for two hours, and then we can go. I don’t- we need to stick together.”
It’s a little desperate. A little choked, by the end, words spilling out too close together. The idea of Katara leaving his line of sight makes thrums of panic dance through his veins, and the idea of leaving Aang behind in his practically catatonic state doesn’t invoke anything better. Pleading without saying please.
For a second, he thinks Katara’s stubbornness will win out. That he’ll end up following her for hours on end with recovery efforts, Aang slumped across his back. But then she reaches up to tentatively poke at the massive lump on the back of her head, hissing at the pain. She looks down at her hands, still shaking.
She sighs.
They go to bed.
Momo parks himself dead centre on Aang’s chest, and Aang barely wakes up enough to curl up on Sokka’s chest in turn before passing out once more, gone from the world. Katara cries, quietly, pressed up against his other side, and Sokka rests his cheek on her hair and stares up at the ceiling, dry-eyed.
“I keep crying. I’m getting your tunic snotty.”
“It’s okay.”
Appa’s standing guard outside, blocking the entrance. They should be safe.
“I’m sorry, Sokka, I’m so sorry-”
“Not your fault, Katara.”
“I could have, I should’ve-”
“Just sleep okay? Let’s just- let’s just sleep.”
She does drop off, eventually, but he doesn’t. Just stares up and up and up at their domed ceiling. He regrets lying down, now. It gives him too much time to feel. He wants to get up and pace. He wants to go out and smash some Fire Nation Army soldiers in the head. He wants to dig his hands into the guts of an invention and forget, for a while, that the world is cruel and terrible.
Forget that Yue is dead.
His breath hitches, once, twice, and he squeezes his eyes shut.
Breathes, because he still can. Lets his shoulders shake and lets one dry, heaving sob escape from his chest. Swallows down the next one and ignores the silent way tears track down his temple.
Aang and Katara sleep on, exhausted. Oblivious. Sokka lays there and thinks about how all three of them have learned to cry quietly. He doesn't feel any better for it.
Outside, the moon sets.