The Bay Harbor Cripple

Sokka curled up in one of Zuko's hoddies when they were younger and Sokka hadn't had his growth spurt yet, but Zuko had, thinking about how nice it smelled to be wrapped up in Zuko. He closes his eyes in the dark, pressing the collar to his mouth gently. Zuko had forgotten it at Sokka's place in his hurry to get home when his dad had called all angry and yelling and Zuko had looked so scared. Sokka didn't have a way to get to Zuko or a way to follow him back and help him through whatever was happening, so he just pressed Zuko's hoodie to his face and breathed him in. He'd see Zuko tomorrow at school and his hands would twitch, wanting to touch Zuko's, to interlock their fingers and see what it felt like with someone who wasn't his sister. He'd bet it'd feel different.

A pit had formed in his stomach since he'd slipped the hoodie on, almost guilty to be using his friend's clothes for something as impure as dreaming of holding Zuko close and imagining what it might feel like to have Zuko look at him the way his dad had looked at his mom.

Sokka fell asleep in the hoodie that night, swallowed in Zuko's scent, knowing that tomorrow he'd try to make sure Zuko knew he cared for him so deeply it hurt. Of course he'd see Zuko again tomorrow. Of course.

Sokka woke up ten years later slowly, blinking as he rubbed his face against the pillowcase he'd made of a hoodie long since too small for him to wear anymore, but still just as comforting. The scent had washed away from the hundreds of times he'd cleaned it, but the embroidered logo was still intact, if some of the strings had been cut or damaged. Sokka ran his fingers over the thread and remembered the boy who hadn't come to school the next day. Or the next. Or the next.

Everyone had moved on like nothing had happened, like there was no hole in their class, no missing person from a desk. He'd asked his teacher and she'd said the boy had been in an accident and would be out of class for the rest of the year, but not to worry. His father was taking good care of him. Sokka had sat back down with a pit in his stomach, leg shaking. He'd wrote a letter and asked the teacher to give it to the boy and she'd promised she would. There'd never been a return letter, and Sokka had always wondered.

When he was older he had searched, needing to know what was wrong. As time passed he'd given up on knowing, on thinking about it, on the boy. He'd loved a girl and she'd died in his arms at 18, their first kiss still on his lips. He'd blamed himself for years for it, as if he could have stopped the raging sickness that consumed Yue so fast her hair turned snow white from the stress. She'd been happy when she passed. She'd said he made her life worth living. She'd slipped away just like the boy had.

Sokka closed his eyes in the dark, willing the grief in his bones to fall a little less heavy today and let him stand again, go to class, think. There was another girl now that Sokka couldn't stop thinking about. Suki was the captain of the Kyoshi Warriors and she'd put him in his place the first day he'd gotten on campus and watched the warriors train. He'd thought she could be it, but a tight fear curled behind his ribs.

His love was lethal.

It was a private thought, one he didn't speak aloud even when his sister needled so close to the statement that he could barely breathe. He guessed that's what sisters were for.

Now it was time to get up, to start his day with the weight of his world on his shoulders where the boy and the girl he'd loved so dearly could no longer hold it in their graves.

Sokka stood.

Sokka dressed.

Sokka found himself in a classroom, sitting in the back row thirty minutes before he needed to be there, staring out the window and wondering for the thousandth time if Yue would have liked the new bakery down the road. She'd loved sweets. The boy had too, but they'd only eaten them in secret. He wasn't allowed flaky warmth or sticky jam. Sokka had smuggled them to him anyway.

The door to the classroom opened and Sokka didn't look up, sure it was just his professor settling down like he usually did around thst time, but then the footsteps trailed to the back of the classroom and stopped. Sokka was too lost in his thoughts of white hair and black, imagining the two people he had loved so wholly laughing together somewhere happy. They would have loved one another.

A throat cleared and Sokka ignored it again. Then there was a kick to his foot. Sokka looked up with a glare and his heart stopped. A boy, older, taller, broader, stood in front of him with ink black hair, scowling at being ignored. He was similar in every way, pale skin, golden eyes, nose crinkled when he frowned, but there was one difference so glaring Sokka couldn't help but stare.

On the left side of his face was a scar, red and twisted and angry. It was a burn, bright red over a golden eye that was paler than the other, then faded to a softer pink as it wrapped around his face and over an ear shriveled from heat. Sokka stared, lips parting as his breath caught and the boy wasn't a boy. He was a man.

"Is this Professor Bumi's class starting in twenty minutes?"

The man glared at Sokka, agitated by being ignored and probably by Sokka's gaping, but there was nothing Sokka could do to stop himself.

"Y-Yeah. It is."

The man nodded, but he didn't move away. His face contorted into something angrier.

"What, never seen someone with a scar before? Close your mouth, you oaf."

Sokka snapped his mouth shut and then opened it again with words ready but they didn't come out. The man scoffed and turned away and all at once Sokka was looking at his boy's back, racing away to a black car with tinted windows. Sokka stood so fast he toppled the desk and grabbed the man's shoulder. He turned in anger, hands already clenched into fists, but Sokka was pushing words out.

"You're stunning."

They both blinked, the man in confusion and then renewed rage, and Sokka in sheer panic at having blurted out maybe the worst thing he could have thought of.

"That's not a funny joke."

"I'm so serious. I was staring because I just met my husband, not because I thought you were ugly or something."

The words had tumbled out before Sokka could think, but now the man's unscarred cheek was bright enough to match his scarred one. He stared now and Sokka kept pushing on.

"That was coming on way too strong. I meant- I mean- I'm Sokka. By the way."

For a moment they were both so still, the man's face going blank before his eyes widened and Sokka's chest ached that his left eye could only open so much. He mouthed the name slowly before putting breath behind it.

"Sokka…Sokka, Hakoda's son?"

Sokka breathed out something like amazement and he nodded, a smile coming to his face.

"Yeah. Yeah, that's me. Katara's my sister."

"We went to the same school when we were kids."

Sokka's mouth went dry and for a second, an emotion so overwhelming his knees almost buckled took over him and he bit back a caught breath.

"W-We did?"

"Yeah. I had to leave. It's me. I'm-"