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Second semester junior year brings a return to silat. Suki walks through the door to the dance studio and scans around for familiar faces. There are a number of silat regulars there, as well as Zuko from her major track and--“SUKI!”
“Hi, Sokka!” she says, walking over. “Hey, Zuko.”
“Hey.” Zuko nods.
“Wait, how do you two know each other?” Sokka demands, looking scandalized.
“She was in my project group in Humanizing War,” Zuko explains.
“That’s why I skipped last semester,” agrees Suki. “It sucked, but that was a special topics class. I wasn’t going to get another shot.”
“Why is everyone I know a nerd?” complains Sokka, flinging his hands in the air.
“I don’t think you can talk,” Zuko points out.
Sokka pretends not to hear him and gestures to the girl and boy sitting near him. “Suki, this is my sister Katara and our friend Aang. Guys, this is Suki.”
“Oh, I’ve heard all about you,” says Katara, eyes dancing. “I feel like I know you already.”
“Oh, really?” She can’t keep the amusement off her face.
“Junior, political science major, so good at silat like you wouldn’t believe, Katara, and on the fencing team?”
…Well, she certainly wasn’t imagining last year that Sokka has a crush on her. There’s nothing for it but to laugh and say, “That’s me!”
“Kill me now,” moans Sokka.
Randal calls the class to order, and Suki skips over to the experienced students’ half of the room.
“Pentjak silat tanjung sari is an Indonesian combat martial art,” Randal explains. Suki has heard this entire speech three times already, but it’s still interesting. “Its secrets are closely guarded, so only a practitioner who’s reached the master level is allowed to train other students. Most masters come from eastern Asia, and most stay there. I am the only master of pentjak silat in North America. Who’s taken martial arts before?”
Several people, including Zuko, raise their hands.
“And who’s taken dance?”
Several others.
“Dance will probably help you more. Silat is soft. You have to keep the tension out of your muscles.” He demonstrates a few steps and hand motions. “Doesn’t look like much, right?” Randal grins at them. “Suki, if you would?”
Suki bounces up to the front of the class and sets herself up so she’s exactly one punch’s distance from Randal’s face. She takes the punch, and Randal is moving, slipping to the side and oh-so-gently maneuvering her out of balance and into a familiar dip. They reset, and Suki throws another punch. This time, Randal brushes against her arm, works it up and around, and puts her into an armlock that isn’t quite painful, but promises to be if she wiggles.
“You’ll learn how to do both of these,” Randal tells them. “But we’re going to start with the footwork. This is called a langkah, and you’re going to practice it until you can do it in your sleep. Your first priority in a fight is never to hit someone. It is to escape. The langkah will let you escape. The arms are just extra.”
He has them practice it as a group. As simple as the langkah is--two diagonal steps, pivot and push, two more steps—Suki and everyone who’s taken the class before knows they can never practice it too much, and they follow along the same as if they were hearing it for the first time.
Then, Suki’s side pairs up with the newbies to throw punches and use the langkah to avoid them. There’s an odd number of students, so she works with Aang and Katara. Aang is a natural, timing his footwork perfectly. Katara doesn’t seem as sold, but then Randal teaches them the first set of hand movements.
“The body is full of a network of connective tissue called fascia,” he tells them. “If you can tap into another person’s fascia, you can control their body. But fascia binding only works if your muscles are soft. If you’re putting a lot of force behind your movements, it won’t work. You need to learn to use only as much force as it takes to sustain the shape.” He calls up Sokka, this time, and throws him on the ground in a few improbable ways to make his point. Sokka looks delighted.
Suki ends up with Zuko this time.
“Attack first or defend?” she asks.
“Attack,” says Zuko. He sets up and throws the punch. Suki slips by him, arm pressing into his tricep, pushes him away, and completes the langkah.
They swap. Suki attacks, and Zuko does the langkah. It moves him out of the way as designed, but he’s using brute force with his arms, and she tells him so.
They try it a couple more times, but Zuko isn’t getting it. “How am I supposed to move you if I don’t use force?” he asks, clearly frustrated.
Luckily, Randal comes over just then and swaps out. Suki’s good, but Randal is better, and he’s also enormous.
“I’m not shoving you out of the way,” Randal explains, demonstrating on Zuko. “I’m binding to your fascia.” He begins the same way Suki did. But when he gets to the part where his arm is pressed into Zuko’s tricep, instead of completing the movement, he moves his shoulder around to demonstrate. Zuko’s entire body follows.
Suki absolutely never gets tired of watching this. Not least because of the expression on Zuko’s face.
Randal laughs gently. “Feels weird, doesn’t it?” He breaks away and they reset. This time, Randal throws the punch, and stops Zuko when he gets to the same point. “Softer,” he says, poking at Zuko’s muscles with the other hand. “Relax.”
Zuko visibly relaxes, bit by bit, and then his brow, which had been furrowed, shoots up, and Suki knows he’s felt it. He moves, and Randal moves with him. “There you go!” says Randal, grinning. “You’ve got it!”
He leaves again, and Zuko throws himself into it tenfold. It doesn’t come naturally, but Suki’s a patient person, and they work at it until class ends. His face falls when Randal calls them to order. She grins.
“Hooked, right?” He nods. “We’ll do more of this on Thursday.”
“Or you could come practice with us outside of class,” says Sokka, appearing at her elbow.
“You’re plenty good enough to help him, if he wants,” she points out, deliberately missing the point.
Sokka makes a face. Katara is laughing. Zuko just looks mildly confused.
Suki has actually been in a couple of Zuko’s classes, but polisci is a big enough major that they hadn’t really interacted outside of Humanizing War. Still, when their next Power and Politics in China class comes around, instead of heading to the seat she’s taken for the last week and a half’s worth of classes, she sits down next to him.
“Hey, Zuko. Mind if I sit with you?”
“Go ahead.” He moves his bag out of the way. She plops down and takes out her notebook.
“What do you think of this class so far?”
“Professor Fong gives me the creeps,” he says.
She laughs. “I’m so glad I’m not the only one! I almost dropped it, but the syllabus looks really good.”
They chat until class starts. Zuko’s more talkative than she remembers from being in a group with him, but maybe he just has a lot of opinions about this class.
Suki pairs up with him again during their next silat class. He’s still having trouble with staying soft, but he’s trying really hard, which makes it easy to be patient with him.
“You’re really good at this,” he observes as she moves him out of the way effortlessly.
“Thanks,” she says, then pauses. To add to that sentence or not? Suki has a general policy of being out, and she has a feeling about Zuko. Still, there’s always that moment of hesitation. “My ex-girlfriend got me into it.”
She turns to look at him as she says it, and projects this is who I am and if you don’t like it you can fuck off as loudly as she can.
“I, uh. Me too,” he says, eyes darting away, and she feels the tension seep out of her shoulders.
“I thought maybe,” she says. “I’m bi.”
“Gay,” he says. She gives her gaydar points for accuracy.
“Cool.” She offers him a fist bump, which he returns awkwardly.
They’re fast friends after that, sitting together for class and talking before and after silat. She asks his opinion on guys, and he slowly gets comfortable giving it, until they can sit together in class and admire the male scenery while they wait for it to start. She gives him a rainbow pin someone is selling in the campus center, and he picks her up a bandanna with the bi pride flag he finds in the campus store. Suki already had one, but it’s the thought that counts.
Sokka can’t help but notice how close Suki and Zuko have gotten, and he’s trying really hard not to be jealous. Suki doesn’t owe him anything. And Zuko is a great guy.
“They might not be dating,” Aang points out. “Men and women can be friends, too.”
“Maybe,” says Sokka. “I’m not sure that’s any better, though.”
“Why not?”
He sighs and tries to find words. “If she liked me at all, she’d do something about it. Zuko’s not the most social guy, you know? Whether she’s dating him or just friends, she had to have gone after it. She doesn’t talk to me all that much. Maybe I should stop flirting.”
“I mean, it doesn’t seem like flirting is getting you anywhere,” says Aang, which, ouch. But Sokka can’t deny his point.
He doesn’t think he was being obnoxious about it, but he quits dropping hints about wanting her to spend time with him and making the occasional joke about being strong or handsome, and instead makes an effort to treat her the same as any of his friends. After all, if she and Zuko are going to be attached, in whatever way, that’s exactly what she’ll be.
Suki seems to warm up to him a little after that, and Sokka refuses to get his hopes up about it. If anything, this is evidence that she would prefer him not to flirt with her, and he keeps spotting her and Zuko talking secreted away in corners.
He doesn’t bring any of it up with Zuko, because a) he doesn’t want to put him in a weird position, b), if they are dating, he wants Zuko to tell them on his own terms, and c) if they aren’t dating, the obvious question is do you think she could like me and he can hear Zuko in his head going “You want me to make a guess about social subtext?”
It might have made his life easier if he had.
“What do you think of Sokka?” Suki asks Zuko one day. Sokka’s let up on the flirty affectation lately, and Suki’s starting to think she likes the person she sees underneath. He clearly adores his friends, and he’s also hilarious, at least when he sticks to deadpan sarcasm and impressions, rather than terrible puns. (Seriously. Terrible. Not even worth a groan, more of a ‘Really? That’s the best you’ve got?’)
“What about him?” asks Zuko.
“Is he secretly a softie, or a jerk, or what?”
“He’s a good man,” says Zuko, who doesn’t even seem to need to think about it. “Smart. Kind. He can be a jerk, but mostly to Katara, and it doesn’t seem to hurt their relationship at all.” Suki thinks about their first meeting and can’t be that hard if a girl can do it and how a thorough ass-kicking had gotten her both an apology and an attentive, if slightly awestruck, student.
After silat one day, Sokka and the rest of Team Avatar (“stop calling us that, Sokka”) are discussing dinner plans as they put their shoes back on when Suki asks him to hang back so she can show him something she noticed about his form. Sokka sends the others ahead to dinner, promising to catch up. He leans against the wall and waits for the rest of the class to disperse, while Suki talks to Randal.
When they finish their conversation, Randal heads out as well, and Suki strides over to Sokka. He grins at her. She’s such a good teacher. He’s really lucky she wants to help him at all, considering how they got started.
“What do you have for me, Master Suki?”
“Nothing. Well, one thing. This.” She leans over and presses a kiss to his cheek. Sokka gapes at her for a full two seconds.
“…I guess you’re not dating Zuko, then?” is what comes out of his mouth.
She giggles. “Zuko? No. Very much not. We’re just good friends.”
“It’s just…” He waves a hand about, trying to indicate the general state of everything. “You got so close, so fast.”
“That’s not really mine to explain.”
It’s like having a trapdoor open under his feet. Because that’s what Sokka said to Aang about Zuko’s self harm, and it’s all he can think about. Does that mean they bonded over that? Does Suki hurt herself, too? Why is it that so many people he cares about want to hurt themselves? A feeling of powerlessness trickles down his limbs and freezes him in place.
“Jesus! Calm your tits, it’s nothing bad!” says Suki, making an alarmed face.
The wave of relief is so strong Sokka has to sit down. She follows, still watching him.
“You’re okay, then?” he has to ask, and somehow he has her hands in his.
“Yeah, I’m okay.” She scrutinizes his face. “I take it Zuko isn’t?”
“That’s not really mine to explain either,” he mutters. “He’s okay enough, I guess.” Stable, is what he means, but that isn’t the sort of thing you can tell other people.
“You went, like, grey,” Suki tells him, and pulls one hand away to reach for his water bottle sticking out of his bag and hand it to him. He takes a long drink. It helps, a little, but his hands are starting to shake from the adrenaline crash.
Suki pulls out her phone with her free hand to send a text while Sokka collects himself.
So Sokka thought we’d bonded over something OTHER than what we did, and he didn’t say what, but he went a really alarming color and had to sit down?? How worried do I need to be??
After a second, she sends a follow-up. I didn’t out you, just FYI
Zuko sends only Brt.
The whole group tumbles in through the door, which Suki was not expecting.
“Hey,” says Zuko to Sokka, squatting beside him. “Do you, uh, want a hug?”
Sokka huffs a laugh and nods. “Yeah,” he manages, and he sounds like he’s about to cry. Zuko kneels to fold him in. “This isn’t your problem,” Sokka tells him, but he leans into the hug.
“So what?” says Aang. “You’re our friend.”
When Sokka untangles from Zuko, Katara sits down and elbows her brother. “I’m okay,” she tells him, bewildering Suki, and then, in a small voice, “I’m sorry.”
That gets Sokka to face her and put both hands on her shoulders. “Never apologize for that,” he says firmly. “You did what you had to, to keep going.” Now Katara’s face screws up like she’s going to cry.
“But I messed you up,” she says, and she sounds like a lost child.
“That’s not your fault.”
“Why does any of this have to be anybody’s fault?” Aang breaks in. “Can’t we just be a group of people who love each other and hate that the others are hurting?”
“You think so too? I thought it was just me,” Zuko tells him.
“Not to be like, ‘hey, don’t forget about me,’” Suki says, “but I don’t know how much you want me to know? And I don’t want you to accidentally tell me more than you meant to because you forgot I didn’t already know.”
“You can tell her about me, if you want,” Katara says. “If Zuko’s okay with it?”
“Yeah,” says Zuko. Then, to Suki, “Will it cause a problem if I explain, uh, the other thing?”
She shakes her head. It’s not like she wasn’t going to tell them about herself, anyway, if they started dating. This is Zuko’s call.
“So, uh. Sokka thought you were telling him that you self-harm,” says Zuko, annnnnd…Suki isn’t all that surprised, given the context clues.
“I don’t,” she says, just so Sokka can hear it out loud.
“Yeah, what she was actually telling you was that, uh. She’s bi.” Zuko takes a deep breath. “And I’m gay.”
Sokka looks from Zuko to Suki. “…So, really not dating, then,” he says, and Suki has to laugh.
“Really not dating.”
“That’s what you thought?” Zuko makes a hilarious face. “You could have asked.”
“It wasn’t supposed to matter!” says Sokka, making no sense whatsoever. At least she doesn’t seem to be the only confused one, this time. Everyone but Aang looks baffled.
“And it doesn’t, see? They’re close because they’re kindred spirits,” he tells Sokka, and then makes a face of his own. “That has to be the most on brand thing I’ve ever said.”
That gets Sokka to laugh, finally, and it’s like a heavy blanket sliding off.
“Thanks for telling me, buddy,” Sokka says to Zuko, who shrugs one shoulder and gives him a half smile. “And you, I guess?” he adds to Suki. “I mean, you didn’t tell me, but you told Zuko to, so you kind of did?” She totally kind of did, so she tilts her head in acknowledgement and smiles.
“I’m okay, guys,” Sokka tells the others. “Go get your dinner.”
“Are you coming?” asks Aang.
“Nah, I’ll catch up later. Don’t wait for me.”
The group filters out, with lots of looks back, but eventually they’re left alone and Sokka stands. In silent agreement, they gather their things and head out the door.
Suki’s phone buzzes.
This is Aang borrowing Zuko’s phone. Me and Katara are pretty sure he’s lying about being okay, so could you stay with him a little longer? He really hates talking about this with Katara or Zuko.
“You know,” she says, while sending back K, “It’s totally fine if you don’t want to tell me, but if you do…I’m happy to listen.”
He sighs. “…Come back to my place?” Off her side-eye, he adds, “I swear I didn’t mean that the way it sounded.”
She laughs. “Your place it is.”
They curl up on his bed, and he tells her a heartbreaking story, a story beginning with a mother’s death, and a sister’s subsequent spiral into depression, and finding out by accident. A story of keeping silent, unwilling to break her reluctant trust, but paying for it with years of worrying that he would lose her, too, at varying levels of severity.
“I think I react worse every time someone new is doing it,” he admits. “Or I think they are.”
“Sokka,” she says quietly, “That sounds like PTS.”
He whips around to look at her, brow furrowed. “I do not get to have PTSD over somebody else’s pain! It isn’t even me going through it!”
She pulls out her phone and does some quick googling. “First, the literal DSM says it doesn’t have to occur directly to you. Witnessing counts, and so does just learning about it happening to someone you love.” She passes him the phone and watches as he reads, eyes skimming over the screen. She sees his lips form the words intense or prolonged psychological distress at exposure.
“Okay,” he says finally, after scrolling to the bottom. “You got me on A and B. But C through G, no. This doesn’t cause ‘clinically significant distress in important areas of function.’ Ninety-nine point nine percent of the time I’m fine. It’s just when it does come up…it’s bad.”
“I could probably make an argument for at least one or two of those criteria, but I won’t bother." C is persistent avoidance of stimuli, and how is Sokka supposed to escape a trigger his little sister literally carries around on her skin? "Second, I didn’t say PTSD. I said PTS.”
Sokka’s quick on the uptake, she has to give him that. “That’s post-traumatic stress, but without being a disorder?”
“Exactly.”
“That’s a thing?”
“I guess people needed a way to talk about exactly what you’re describing. Experiencing triggers, but without significant enough negative affect to qualify for the disorder.”
“Don’t tell me, you’re a psych minor.”
“No, but both of my parents are veterans.”
“Yeah? My dad, too.” He’s told her that already, but she doesn’t remind him.
They’re quiet as he scrolls through the diagnostic criteria again.
“Sorry for unloading all that on you. I really hate making Katara or Zuko feel guilty about it. Aang is a little better, but he’s still Katara’s friend first, and younger than me, so…?”
He trails off, and she mentally finishes I still feel responsible for him.
“That’s valid, but it’s not a thing you need to be feeling,” she tells him. “You’re not actually responsible for the mental health of your sister or any of your friends, you know that, right?”
He opens his mouth, then shuts it again. Collapses back onto the bed. “…I’m starting to think I need therapy.”
She stifles a laugh, because she knows he’s serious. “If you’re thinking it, then it’s probably a good idea.”
He sighs. “Yeah, okay. It’s free here, anyway.” He pulls out his phone and sets a reminder.
Suki’s just the tiniest bit worried she’s accidentally signed herself up to be a man’s emotional crutch, but to her relief, it isn’t that at all. Sokka wasn’t lying when he said he’s fine most of the time, and he does start going to therapy, and he wants to hear about her life and her problems just as much as he talks about his own. Dating Sokka, in fact, turns out to be just as good an idea as Zuko had made it sound.
She and Zuko circle back to the elephant in the room only briefly.
“So, about the self-harm thing,” she says, and watches Zuko begin spinning the pencil he’s holding very fast. “What do you want me to do with that information?”
The pencil slows as he ponders it.
“Honestly? It would be nice to be able to complain about it without triggering somebody. Even Aang’s got more empathy than I know what to do with. So, like, I could say ‘the urges are really bad today’ and you’d just say ‘that’s rough buddy’ or something.”
“Like it’s just an inconvenience?”
“Yeah. Like the same as ‘I was halfway through baking a cake and I realized we didn’t have eggs.’ I already have people to ask if I need to be fussed at.”
“Be an escape.”
He meets her eyes briefly and smiles. "Yeah, exactly."
"I can do that."