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The first time he saw him, Sokka was watching the replays of the reapings in his room, tears still fresh on his cheeks and his bed one side too cold.
It shouldn’t have made him as angry as it did, seeing that pale arm shoot into the sky to take the place of the twelve-year-old being dragged out of the crowd. It shouldn’t have made him as angry as it did, listening to the commentators commend the wiry fourteen-year-old for his brazenness to take another Tribute’s place, during a Quarter Quell no less—when the number of Tributes that year was double what it normally was. It shouldn’t have made him as angry as it did to see Zuko of District 1 stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a girl with a braided ponytail, between the two other much bigger, much older Tributes on that stage, yet still stick out as a favourite because of the family standing behind them.
Perhaps it was the raw emotion of seeing Katara, only reaching the age threshold by a day, standing on the stage of District 10, surrounded by Tributes double her size who wouldn’t sacrifice themselves for her even on a good day in those Games. Perhaps it was the deep frustration he had within himself, the forced resentment over the fact that he had the gall to volunteer for someone he later claimed as a complete stranger when Sokka, thirteen and frozen, couldn’t even volunteer to partner up with his own sister.
Perhaps he even hated himself, just enough, because of what he said to her during their goodbyes. How he told her she could win, even when everyone in that room, including her, knew that he was lying through his teeth; she was too small, too untrained.
The Capitol and the games were going to eat her alive.
(And they did.)
Whatever it was, something about that year made him hate Zuko more than he ever hated any Tribute he’d ever had to watch.
(He thinks now that he was just too young, too upset and unprepared to truly understand what Zuko had done, what he was going to do and how none of it, really, was ever his fault. But Sokka wouldn’t realise that for far too long, and by that point, the world had already started watching them implode.)
It was the second year in a row that Sokka and his parents had been invested in the outcome of a Games; the year prior, his cousin Rono had been reaped and it almost seemed like they had a winner on their hands. Though, as with every year, their hope is crushed or, more accurately, caught in a windstorm and thrown to the ground at terminal velocity.
Out of everyone in that arena, Song of District 7 was the unexpected winner with the lowest kill count a Victor had ever had. Sokka, despite everything, had hoped that maybe Katara could be like Song, and come out of that arena as the youngest Victor to date, but even then he knew that he was being too optimistic.
Their only saving grace was that Bato was with her, mentoring her and getting her sponsors, having won the 59th Games the year after Zuko’s own mother won the 58th. If anyone was going to try and get her to the endgame, it was going to be Bato.
(But as everyone was continuously reminded, Zuko had both his mother and his Uncle—the winner of the last Quarter Quell—wanting him to come home too.)
The opening ceremony was a bigger affair than usual, with two chariots per District to fit all four Tributes, more fireworks and glitter and colour than anyone could shake a stick at. It was as magnificent as it was horrific.
Sokka had to watch District 1 be carted out in glowing bodices with wings like phoenixes, waiting until the end just to see his baby sister in fur as the head of his District’s quartet of wolves.
It wasn’t hard to see who the Capitol’s favourite was, even if Zuko barely stood a better chance of winning than Katara did.
Training was always kept hidden until final scores were given, so Sokka and his family weren’t able to tell how well Katara was doing—or how many enemies she was making—until the end of the training week when she was given a four. It was better than what they expected, but out of ten it was still barely anything; they could only hope that it meant others left her alone until the end.
Or that they’d at least kill her quickly.
Then came the interviews.
The girl with the braided ponytail, the first to be interviewed, was bright and bubbly; Sokka couldn’t tell if she was trying too hard to be likeable or if that was actually her personality. Her name was Ty Lee and her favourite colour was pink—which explained the dress—she wouldn’t divulge what it was that she specialised in, but unlike over half of her opponents, she was a nonbender. Sokka didn’t think she stood a chance.
Zuko was the last of his District’s Tributes to be interviewed. He was clean and sharp, he charmed the host with pretty words and overconfidence, and Sokka’s heart would twist with every laugh and every comment about his capacity to kill, about why he volunteered. He spun stories of being the child of a legacy, and how he wasn’t planning on being the family disappointment.
(Oh, how painful those words become. How painful they’d always been.)
Everyone else passed in a blur and by the time they got to Katara, Sokka was almost asleep. They’d dressed her much nicer than during the opening parade, all blue tones and silk with glittering mesh and a headpiece of their District’s native flowers; it was the prettiest Sokka had ever seen her, and it still pulls at his heart to remember that he’d never get to see her like that again. It was obvious what angle Bato had her go for: the cute little girl who had family waiting for her back home, a brother she wanted to impress and a life she wanted to live. She played her part as well as anyone could have asked her to.
(And she’d continue to play her part long after she was gone too, because these people can’t let lost souls lie.)
All too soon, the countdown to the 75th Annual Hunger Games began. Their arena was a system of caves, tunnels and caverns, their cornucopia in the middle of a lake. Almost immediately, the earthbenders had the advantage, and from the looks on their faces, they knew it.
Sokka was confronted with an all too real fear then too.
Katara couldn’t swim.
But the second the starting cannon went off, the most unexpected thing happened: Katara jumped into the water and, coming from across the lake, Zuko pulled her back to the surface. The cameras shifted away from them when it was realised that he wasn’t there to kill her, instead following his voice to the girl on the cornucopia.
“Hold your breath, kick your legs, don’t let go,” he’d said to Katara, waving their clasped hands between them as she nodded and he turned, “Ty Lee!”
The camera panned and, as if she hadn’t completely cancelled out a boy’s bending and pushed his deadweight into the water, the girl grabbed two backpacks and grinned.
“Coming!”
Thirteen of forty people died in the initial bloodbath and Katara wasn’t one of them, all because of the other two youngest Tributes deciding to be her allies. Sokka would have felt better about it if he hadn’t seen the amount of betrayals played out in these Games before. But for a fleeting moment, he hated Zuko a little bit less.
Sokka barely slept while the Games were being broadcasted. His mother tried to get him to but, even when locked away in his room, he’d turn to the television and watch the trio of young Tributes make their way through the darkness.
Zuko was a firebender, because of course he was, and that was about as useful as it could be in the tunnels. When they slept, they would find shelves of rock high on the walls of the tunnels to keep themselves hidden, and then Ty Lee and Katara would crowd around him to keep themselves warm. Out of the three of them, Katara was the only one who ever got a full night’s sleep.
Zuko and Ty Lee were a terrifying duo, the first kill they’d made after Ty Lee’s in the bloodbath involved a hidey-hole, two boys from District 8, and a boulder; when Zuko got his hands on a pair of swords, that really should have told everyone who the winner was going to be. As soon as he had them, it made defence a lot easier, and with Ty Lee’s ability to block people’s bending, even the biggest Tributes didn’t stand a chance.
(At the time, Sokka had wondered why Zuko rarely used his firebending offensively, but that was among the details of Zuko’s life that he learned later.)
Katara didn’t manage to keep her hands clean, as much as it seemed everyone wanted her to. It could have been classed as an accident, the ice that she shot through a girl from District 2, but the commentators had too much fun talking about how it meant she must have learned from her allies, the same allies that she killed the girl to protect. They didn’t spend too long on the three of them after the sponsor parachutes landed and they started patching each other up, but he would never forget that it was Zuko who talked Katara down from a panic attack, not when it should have been him.
Of course, not even the sponsors that seemed to adore the three of them so much could keep them all alive forever.
First, it was the tunnels closing and access points narrowing, the gamemakers’ best attempts at splitting them up; Zuko got lost in a cavern by himself for four hours before he followed an oddly moving stream down to where Katara was trying to practise her waterbending. Then it was pushing other Tributes towards them, trying to pin multiple on them at once to overwhelm them; Ty Lee and Zuko remained a steadfast pairing, the only thing Sokka hated was that Katara was always used as bait, it was a good thing she was fast.
But then the number of Tributes was growing small and everyone was getting antsy, the gamemakers always had one last shock up their sleeve.
This time it was water.
It really did come out of nowhere, pouring in from the ceiling of the caverns and tunnels that all of the remaining Tributes were in and driving them towards the cornucopia. And, of course, tricks by gamemakers had a tendency to be unfair.
It was obvious that their main priority was splitting up the young alliance, once again closing tunnels and pigeon-holing them onto a path of certain doom. Only those outside of the arena were given the luxury of seeing the sheer drop before the three Tributes met it head-on, the rush of water tossing them over the edge with little ceremony.
The spikes of ice had appeared in the sudden waterfall haphazardly, a visual display of Katara’s unbridled panic as they fell. It caught them, somewhat, but even as the camera focused solely on the way Zuko burned grips into the spike with his fingers, something snapped, and someone else gasped; Sokka remembers the horror that overtook Zuko’s face so plainly, almost as plainly as he remembers the sound of distress his mother made and the iron grip his father had had on his shoulder.
“No!”
The ice was melted in an instant, the water falling faster than Zuko did and the camera pulling back as he landed in an awkward, shoulder-cracking roll at the bottom of the cavern; Sokka’s mother had gotten up then, stifling sobs between her hands as they finally caught a glimpse of Katara lying prone and broken near a boulder.
Though he’d hated him for it then, Sokka understands now why Zuko ran to the bleeding Ty Lee first, her breaths ridged and gasping as her hands clasped around the gaping wound of her stomach. Katara had done that.
“Hey, hey,” Zuko murmured softly, pulling his good arm underneath her head to help her sit up against his leg. His golden eyes glittered with tears as he listened to her whine, but Sokka had been too focused on not knowing what was happening to his sister to really appreciate the pain either of them had been experiencing at that moment.
The sun appeared above them slowly, revealed by clouds through a large opening at the roof of the cavern, it haloed them in light and Zuko had pulled back just enough for Ty Lee to see it.
He took one of her bloodied hands in his, his face twisting as he pulled his poor shoulder, “look,” he’d whispered, so gently that even the microphones had nearly missed it, “the sun is just like home… if you follow it, you can meet up with Lu Ten.”
Something about the words made Ty Lee’s paling face light up, even for the briefest of moments, and Sokka remembers being surprised by how young she looked, forgetting throughout that whole affair that she had been his age; thirteen and scared just like everyone else.
Her canon went off.
Only then did the screen flicker back to Katara, whose canon had not gone off and whose still prone figure breathed wheezing breaths.
“I’m sorry,” she’d said, the first thing she’d done when Zuko stepped into view, “I didn’t mean to—”
“You were scared.” Zuko settled next to her, tears still streaming from the corners of his eyes, and he set his hand gently on the space between her shoulder blades.
“I can’t move, Zuko, it hurts.”
Katara was crying and her words made Zuko squeeze his eyes shut painfully, pressing his forehead into his knees and choking on a sob. It lasted all of a second, Zuko immediately pulling back to pull both of his hands up and rest them on Katara’s broken back.
“You’re gonna be okay.”
Sokka remembers yelling at the tv—he’s lying!—and his father trying to pull him away, to make him stop watching his dying baby sister, but Sokka hadn’t budged, he’d watched and watched as the camera stayed firmly facing Zuko’s back, Katara’s legs the only visible thing in her final moments.
When he pulled away, her lips had turned blue and her cannon went off and Sokka knew exactly what Zuko had done.
(They were down to the final six after all, something had to give.)
Then the whole scene was ripped away from them in favour of watching one of the bulky eighteen-year-olds from District 3 and Sokka had nothing left but the tears he hadn’t realised were streaming down his face and his mother’s sobs from behind the bedroom door. His father had gotten up to comfort her when it became obvious that Sokka wasn’t going to move, and, even now, he wishes he’d sought comfort in his parents’ arms while he still could.
The screen didn’t cut back to Zuko until his face was scrubbed raw, he’d turned his jacket into a sling, and he was reaching up to catch more than one silver parachute out of the sky. The girls’ bodies were gone and Zuko had a pink ribbon wrapped around his wrist with a bead digging into his skin, each plucked from the hair of two dead little girls.
Trophies.
(Memories.)
After that, the District 1 boy made quick work of the last remaining Tributes, using the shadows to his advantage and emerging from the Quarter Quell as the youngest Victor ever, his kill count finalised at eleven.
Katara included.
In his victory interview, they replayed the moment that she’d died, the seconds of time that Zuko sat there promising her she’d be okay, all while he sapped her very essence out of her. They had the audacity to ask him how he felt, as if he was supposed to have cared about her at all.
“I wanted her to go home, y’know, so—“ he inhaled, eyes glistening beneath stage lights while Sokka, miles away, seethed, “—I was pretty torn up about what happened.”
Sokka was so sure that he was lying.
Aside from the constant recaps of the Games, he didn’t see Zuko again until the Victory Tour.
Sokka had been made to stand on a pedestal with his parents, the end of the row of families for the fallen. Katara’s sweet face was projected onto a screen behind them, her timid smile a mocking thing that made the gaping space in their family feel even bigger.
Zuko seemed so much smaller in person, his frame slighter than Sokka had been expecting, but the surprise didn’t stop the anger. It didn’t stop the small pill of satisfaction he felt seeing half of his face bandaged for some unknown reason; for so long, especially after the scar beneath was revealed later, everyone just assumed that it was caused by an angry firebender related to one of the ones he’d killed.
He’d never said otherwise.
(Sokka would learn, everyone would learn, what had actually happened later, and by that point, Zuko’s coward of a father was lucky he was six feet deep in the rubble of his own District, or Sokka would have found his way down there and done to him what he did to his daughter, and this time, he wouldn’t regret it.)
On the stage, his words had been half rehearsed and half genuine, his hands wrapped plainly around cue cards as his mother and his uncle lingered on either side of him with the rest of his slew of Mentors.
“And I know this doesn’t mean much now,” he said finally, the words suddenly less stilted and his hands pulling at the end of his shirt, “ but I really did want Katara to come home, and I’m so sorry that I couldn’t send her back to you .”
From the way that his Mentors pulled him back inside the Justice Building, Sokka really should have registered that he wasn’t supposed to say that.
Perhaps it was fate, bad luck, or maybe an elaborate scheme to fuck with both of their families again just for ratings, but two years later Sokka’s name was pulled from that glass ball and, Districts away, Zuko’s fourteen-year-old sister was reaped too.
He didn’t know about that part, of course, until he was on the train with Bato, Kuraya—their only other Victor—and his District partner, Min.
A plan had come to him horrifically quickly—it’s almost incredible how the Games had changed him before he’d even been in them—and he’d been so eerily calm about the whole affair that Bato had outright asked him if he was going to be okay.
(He’d been an unlucky bastard that year. Fifteen, malnourished, and the only non-bender in the entire twenty-person line-up.)
The whole time he was going through the motions of pre-Games prep, he was always plagued with the question of what Katara did, what she thought and what she liked. Bato did his best, toeing the line between giving him enough to get that warmth in his heart he always got when he thought of Katara, and pushing him so far over the edge that all that anger bubbled back over and he broke something.
It was a difficult line.
(He knows that he’s better about it now, but remembering what he was like, the things he’d said and done to people he loved and hated alike… he almost doesn’t recognise that as him.
Zuko still apologises sometimes, as if the way Sokka reacted to the whole thing was, in any way, his fault.)
He got his first sight of Azula before the opening ceremony, his stylist pulling strings on his far-from-accurate depiction of ancient District 10 armour. She was lithe and tall for her age, hair piled on her head in a topknot as she and her partner donned prismatic dragon scales that looked like fire under the spotlights. They’d made eye contact and her eyes had narrowed until she seemed to remember who he was; her grin was as malicious as it was conniving, and Sokka had known then that they both knew what they were going into those games for.
He’d seen Zuko again that day too but the boy refused to meet his eyes as his sister had. If Bato hadn’t pulled him and Min into the hallway to discuss what happened next, Sokka can’t be sure he wouldn’t have stormed right over and done something to get himself in trouble.
He got an eight by the end of training and the non-bender tag to his name started looking less like a disadvantage. Azula had him beat though, getting a ten and outranking absolutely everyone but, given her background, no one was exactly surprised.
Still, he’d observed her as closely as she’d observed him and everyone else gave them a wide enough berth when it became obvious what the Capitolites were interested in.
The interviews made that even clearer.
Azula had sparkling dragon scales sewn into her pantsuit and her charm was almost as smooth as her brother’s. She was sharper than him though, in a million different ways, and when she was asked about what she thought of Sokka being in these games with her, she’d offered a harsh laugh and said she was interested to see if he was as flighty as his sister; he’d already proved far from useless.
Min did her best to subdue his fury while they were still in the line, but he’d snapped at her and all but made her cry which, at the time, he’d only scoffed at and considered weak when she was one of the oldest Tributes that year.
His interview could have gone better. He thinks the combination of Azula’s words, all of the other Tributes discussing their families back home, and his stylist deciding to all but replicate Katara’s dress in his suit—complete with the headpiece of native flowers—had made his anger boil to the surface before he could even be asked a question. He’d tried to be polite but to say he lost it when the interviewer asked if he was going to win to make up for Katara’s mistakes would be an understatement.
He’d had a shouting match with Bato in the penthouse afterwards as well.
Bato wanted to help him, to give him his best chance at winning, but he couldn’t do that if all Sokka was going to do was scare away all of his sponsors. Sokka hadn’t cared about that, they were all Capitol pigs and they could keep their money if they couldn’t deal with his honesty.
Bato hit him.
They don’t talk about that part.
Within a few hours, Sokka was standing on his podium looking out at a forest, nineteen benders around him but only one he really cared about.
He killed the boy from 7 to get a sword he wasn’t supposed to know how to use and watched with morbid fascination as Azula sent lighting through the fingers of the girl from 5, roasting her from the inside out; he’d never forget the smell.
(He remembers it better than what it felt like to enact his first kill and maybe that says something about where he was going.)
Their alliance was formed with no false pretences, just an acknowledgement of skill and where it would end; they shook hands after the five-person bloodbath and started moving.
Even with all he thought at the time, he still knew that his alliance with Azula was entirely different from what Katara had with Zuko. Sokka had to figure out his own avenues of staying warm, they kept their distance no matter where they slept and hardly said a word to each other beyond the odd strategy or pointing out another Tribute.
“Father and Lu Ten are the only ones who were never Tributes,” Azula had said one night, completely unprompted, as Sokka leaned back against a log. He’d glanced at her, raising an eyebrow at the sudden admission, but she’d kept going without even acknowledging him, “cousin is dead now though, so he doesn’t really count.”
Sokka had taken a long minute to register what she was saying and, to this day, he still doesn’t know why she did. The two of them could have gone the entire Games knowing the least about each other that they could, but something made her speak and he’ll never find out why.
“Lucky him,” he’d replied eventually; he can’t remember if he meant her cousin or her father but she’d taken it as the latter and scoffed.
“Tell him that.” Not for the first time, he’d watched her breathe sparks. “You should have seen his face when Zuzu won. He was looking forward to being one son short.”
(Perhaps she was only so honest because she knew she wouldn’t live long enough to deal with the fallout her words brought later, when Zuko finally admits who gave him his scar and people are forced to ask more questions about their prolific family than they had before.)
It was a few hours later that they were plunged into the endgame, the final five, and the incident with Min happened.
If what Sokka did to Azula hadn’t solidified his title, what he did to Min would have anyway.
She wasn’t where she was supposed to be, she was sneaking around the outskirts of their camp and looking to steal their stuff and Sokka is sure that it had taken a lot for Azula to listen to him when he told her not to just zap Min on the spot.
He was going to give her a chance, toss her some bread and tell her to go to the other side of the arena to fend for herself until the end, but she’d had a better idea of what he was doing than he thought she did and an argument became inevitable. Maybe it was because she used to be his babysitter, but something about how he’d been all summer had finally come to a head in her brain and she’d started yelling at him.
He’d been willing to sit through it, to let her get her feelings off her chest and then reiterate that she had to go before Azula got impatient, but she kept talking and eventually damned herself.
“Katara wouldn’t want this!”
He hadn’t even realised he’d taken off her head until her cannon went off and he was still holding it.
Killing a District partner wasn’t done, the only time it had ever happened was in the unlikely event that both made it to the final two, but Sokka, in all his broken, burning rage, had taken her down without even thinking about it.
He hit a breaking point then, he’s sure, because everything between then and the end of the games felt incredibly numb and almost unreal.
When it came down to him and Azula, he struck first because if he didn’t it would have been as unfair as he made it and, in the moment, he just wanted Zuko to hurt, to feel exactly what Sokka felt when he sapped the life out of his baby sister.
A slash to the throat was enough to get her down, he didn’t hit deep enough to kill because that wasn’t what he wanted yet, he’d wanted her as prone and helpless as Katara had been. He remembers the whole thing in a mix of fog and excruciating detail; the way she’d tried so hard to act like he wasn’t hurting her when he’d popped her shoulders out of their sockets; how, by the end of it, she finally looked like the scared fourteen-year-old she was.
Her cannon.
“May I present: the winner of the 76th Annual Hunger Games!”
(It wasn’t until after, when Bato had kept his distance on the airship and the blood was spiralling down the drain of the shower, that what he’d done really hit him and he started to hate himself too.)
He found out at his victory interview that he killed five people in total.
It isn’t lost on him that he still can’t remember two of them.
It was also then that he learned what they’d been calling him since he killed the 7 boy without a second thought.
Sokka the Ruthless.
A name that would haunt him to his grave.
He’d spent most of the train ride home locked away in his quarters, his time split between hiding amongst his bed sheets and working himself into such a state of panic that he’d camped out in the bathroom to avoid throwing up on the carpet.
He never let himself be loud enough for Bato or Kuraya to hear, he didn’t deserve their comfort, not when he’d been sure they were scared of him too.
At the station, more people showed up than he’d expected, though he still thinks the only reason most of them did was because the Capitol told them to, they’d be on camera after all.
His mother hugged him as tightly as she dared, his father was pulled aside by Bato for who knows what kind of conversation, and as quickly as the reunions started, they’d ended and the people of the Capitol left.
(He hadn’t seen Min’s family and he was more than fine with that.)
In the months between his return and the start of the Victory Tour, Sokka picked a house in Victor’s Village and hid away like a monster.
Bato helped his parents move in downstairs but Sokka didn’t want to see them, afraid of what he might see reflected in their eyes. His mother would leave meals outside of his door and, every so often, his father would sit on the other side and try to talk to him but neither was successful in coaxing him out of his hiding place and, eventually, he’d overheard Bato telling them to stop before they made him worse.
When the Victory Tour started, Sokka had to finally face Min’s family and say empty, practised words written out on cards that he’d once hated Zuko for using. He found that the disgust and disappointment he faced in most of the Districts was easier to stomach than the outright idolisation of him he encountered in a few.
District 4 was one of them surprisingly enough, Victor Pakku commended him for the way he handled Azula in a way that made him rush back to the train just to throw up again.
He met Mai in District 2, the girl who won in the year between him and Zuko and held the record for most kills seen in any year of the Games. She knew what it was like to have a reputation capitalised on by the public, her silence far less fearsome in person than she’d made it in the arena and more reassurance in the few words she’d spoken to him than he’d heard from anyone in half a year.
She was also far kinder than the District’s oldest Victor, Zhao, but Sokka found out very quickly that that wasn’t a very hard thing to do.
It was in District 1 that he’d unravelled completely.
Somehow, after all that he’d done to one of their own, the people of the crowd commended him for besting Azula because she was one of their best fighters since Iroh had won. He saw her family standing in front of the projection of her young face and he didn’t see the hate he needed to see; her father stood apart from her mother and uncle, arms behind his back and expression completely stoic, but Ursa offered him a sympathetic smile through her tears and Iroh nodded once.
Zuko wasn’t there. Somehow that made everything worse. If he was capable of making the boy he’d hated for two years not want to look him in the eye, what did that mean?
He’d choked on his words not even halfway through his speech and flinched when Bato made to grab him and ask if he was alright. The doors to their Justice Building had been open and he’d turned and fled before anyone could stop him, the panic and nauseating guilt already starting to overflow.
Someone had caught him off-guard and yanked him into a room as he was passing it, kicking the door closed as Sokka sank to the floor and tried desperately to catch his breath. They’d crouched in front of him, placing a warm hand on the back of his neck and angling his head down to sit squarely between his knees; Sokka caught a glimpse of their other hand, their pale wrist wrapped in fresh bandages.
“You’re okay.”
It was a voice he’d recognise anywhere and instead of yanking away as he once might have, Sokka sat and breathed quivering breaths as Zuko ran a thumb along his neck and eased him through his breakdown.
“You should hate me,” he whispered, broken and cracking.
Zuko squeezed, “I know.”
He was gone by the time Bato found Sokka again, nothing left of their encounter besides the warmth still etched into his neck and an odd feeling settling into his gut.
Bato got him back on the train, saying that Kuraya had finished his speech for him, and then they set a course for the Capitol, for the final party of his tour before he’d be sent home to rot.
It was there that he met Song for the first time, her dress made of shimmering white silk that made her look like a dove and the innocence the Capitol based her entire identity around. It felt wrong to dance with her, as if there was still blood on his hands and he was ruining her very image just by touching her, but she’d smiled softly, knowingly.
“They’ll whisper no matter what you do,” she’d murmured, twirling to the violins and leading him more than he led her, “it’ll die down after a while, I promise.”
His throat was dry when he nodded and she’d pressed a gentle, reassuring kiss to his cheek and politely excused herself to find Jin of District 8—the girl who won the year before her—amidst the dancing crowd.
Everyone around him had gone quiet after that and he hadn’t been sure as to why until he glanced around and found Zuko across the floor. For a moment he hadn’t remembered that they were supposed to hate each other—it hadn’t been that long since the incident in his District—but he’d been starkly reminded when Bato made a beeline to get him to another part of the room when he’d made a move to go and actually speak to him.
He hadn’t seen Zuko again that night.
It was sometime after his sixteenth birthday in the late winter that the first proposition came through, the first hidden order by the Capitol that he’d said no to before Bato could tell him why he shouldn’t.
It took them less than a day, but then he’d had to wake up with a missing mother and a heartbroken father and it was just another thing to add to the list of all he’d done wrong.
A lot more things made sense after that as well.
(“I didn’t know they would choose her, Hakoda, I’m so sorry.”)
When Bato found out what happened he’d found Sokka in the snow-covered garden and told him exactly what was going to happen when he accepted the next time he was asked; as much as they pretended it was, the Capitol was never going to give him a choice.
When the day came for him to make his way to the Capitol, Bato had stopped him briefly and said, “Zuko will be there.” Sokka hadn’t understood why he was being told as if it was a warning until he remembered that everyone still thought he wanted Zuko dead.
He never did say anything to the contrary and, if he was honest, he still wasn’t sure that he didn’t want him dead. He found it hard to hate him after everything, but it wasn’t as if his anger had anywhere else to go.
The train ride was nothing if not isolating, he ate his fair share of food and had crappy Capitol shows on to chase away the maddening thoughts before they could eat at his resolve and drive him into a fresh panic.
The escort to the Victor's Manor was equally as anxiety-inducing because that was when it truly set in that this was happening and Sokka had no way to back out without someone else getting hurt.
Zuko was sitting on the main stairs when he’d dragged himself and his backpack inside, swallowing thickly and inhaling shakily until they’d caught sight of each other. It was the first time they’d crossed paths since that first time and Sokka found that it wasn’t as daunting as he thought it’d be.
He felt better knowing he wasn’t in this terrifying city alone.
“Do you know what you’re doing?” Zuko had asked after a long moment of watching him heave in the entrance hall; the wrist that had been wrapped in bandages all those months ago had a new scar, hand-shaped and pink from fire.
“Do I look that scared?” Sokka had meant to say it as a joke, but the catch to his voice gave away everything better than his face ever could.
Zuko shrugged once lopsidedly and moved to stand, descending the stairs slowly as if Sokka would strike him at any moment. He just watched him though, taking in his aged features and the stretched skin of the scar around his eye, following the way his hair swooshed over his forehead in a surprisingly boyish way.
(It was easy to forget that he’d only been seventeen, that he’d won when he was fourteen and had been doing this for longer than Sokka.)
“I can help,” he’d offered quietly when they were finally standing face-to-face, “only if you want me to.”
Sokka flinched, reality slamming back into him all too suddenly and his wide eyes finding the gold of Zuko’s, “did someone help you?”
“No.”
He’d nodded before he could consider an alternative.
There hadn’t been a whole lot of time before night fell and somehow the idea of having sex for the first time with Zuko felt a lot more comforting than having it with someone he didn’t know at all. So, he’d let Zuko take his hand and lead him upstairs quietly, not a word between them until they were in one of the manor’s ornate rooms and Zuko turned to ask him once more if he was sure.
He was.
Zuko made the whole thing softer than Sokka thought he deserved. He cried then because he couldn’t cry later and Zuko remained as warm with his comforts as he had when they’d met in his District, wiping and kissing away his tears until there were no more left to shed.
“They like the idea of breaking the unbreakable,” he said in the quiet of the aftermath, sitting up and gazing at the stars beginning to appear in the sky outside. The fire in his eyes when he turned to Sokka was enough to etch the words into his memory forever, “don’t ever give them the satisfaction.”
Sokka nodded, feeling the satin of a pillowcase against his cheek as he allowed his eyes to roam Zuko’s exposed skin. He had a lot of scars, white lines and pink dots, all scattered along his arms and his back and Sokka felt the strange urge to trace them with his fingers.
Instead, he’d asked, “what do they want you for?“
Zuko smiled, as lopsided as his shrug, and reached out to brush hair away from Sokka’s eyes, “don’t worry about it.”
(He didn’t, not for another year or so, if only because he didn’t know how much more room he had in himself to worry.)
Sokka remembers feeling disgusting when he returned to the manor several hours later, clutching his arms over the thick sleeves of an old hoodie he only brought because he knew he’d need the reminder of home.
As if he’d developed a sixth sense for Sokka’s presence already, Zuko appeared on one side of the stairs running a towel through his hair and sporting fresh bruises on his arms. He hadn’t needed to say anything for Sokka to follow him upstairs to the showers and he’d remained reassuringly quiet as he showed him how to work all the dials and switches.
It had only taken one squeeze of his non-scarred wrist for him to sit beside the wide stall and remain a grounding presence for Sokka’s painfully wandering mind. He sang some sort of lullaby in the acoustics of the bathroom, his voice haunting yet calming all the same, and Sokka only made it halfway through the first verse before he’d burst into tears again.
(He doesn’t know when his rage became that broken, sobbing wreck of emotion that he had no idea how to handle, but somewhere along the way it had and Zuko is still one of the only people to see it in its entirety.)
“They took my mom,” he’d admitted while the running water still disguised his tears.
Zuko’s voice caught for the briefest moment and that was all the acknowledgement Sokka needed.
He doesn’t think he was the only one who needed the other for comfort that night, and Sokka had never slept in such a warm bed before.
His first Reaping Day as a Mentor was odd.
He remembers sitting next to Bato on the stage, nails digging into his thighs as he forced his legs not to bounce, and the way it felt so strange to be up there instead of in the crowd of kids roasting under the heat of the summer sun. He remembers mouthing along with the announcer’s usual speech, if only to pretend that it was like any other reaping and he wasn’t hours away from having to prepare two teenagers to fight for their lives.
Their escort picked the girl first, as usual, and Sokka swallowed sudden bile when a twelve-year-old with eyes like Katara was pulled from her row and forced onto the stage; Kue was her name, Sokka would never forget her.
(He’d never forget any of them, but he knows that Kue was picked because of him, because of what the Capitol wanted to tell him.)
The boy, Hanak, was eighteen; older than Sokka and bigger than him too, Hanak had a chance, the look Bato and Kuraya had exchanged next to him was evidence enough. But Sokka will never forget the clench of Hanak’s jaw and the wailing of his mother because it had been his last reaping. He’d almost made it.
Bato and Kuraya worked in their usual rhythm throughout the initial talks on the train, letting Sokka hang back and watch the other District reapings over everyone’s shoulders. Zuko got two thirteen-year-olds, both volunteers.
The first time Sokka’s title came back to bite him was that year too, because Kue would cling to Kuraya every time he was around and Hanak avoided him like the plague. It stung, he’d tried not to think too hard about it at the time but Hanak reminded him too much of his dad’s own quiet, worrying disapproval, and having Kue’s Katara-like eyes tear up every time he sat with them for breakfast made him want to throw up.
(Kue had always been the closest he’d get to having his burning queries answered, the ones Min had made him consider, the ones he’d killed her over.)
When they got to Tribute Tower, Bato hovered over Sokka more than their own tributes, directing him around like a volatile animal at any flash of red in the shared lobby. Sokka hadn’t argued with him, willing to keep up the facade of wanting to rip Zuko’s throat out if only to avoid having to explain anything to a man who would be convinced of Sokka’s anger no matter what he did.
Still, they had actual Tributes to look after and he couldn’t be babysat the entire time.
Zuko had found him in the hallway with the missing wall, an enclosed spring hidden within the folds of the old tower. At first, Sokka had thought he was just planning to pass by, ignoring him so as not to break whatever it was they had, but his golden eyes had surveyed the hallway and then he moved.
Grabbing Sokka as he shifted to rest his back against a pillar watching over the garden, he pulled him close and slid lower against it. To anyone passing by, it would either look like they were kissing or that Sokka was strangling him, which, given their reputation, Sokka knew would end up the latter.
“The arena’s a desert.”
Sokka blinked owlishly, “what?”
Zuko tutted, reiterating, “the arena’s a desert. Make sure your kids explore the water stations during training.”
“How do you know that?”
Zuko looked out across the indoor garden, his tunic moving and revealing the edge of a bandage wrapping around his shoulder. Sokka had frowned, reached up to brush his fingers against it, maybe ask outright where it had come from even though he knew before Zuko had ever admitted what it was he did for the Capitol, but a voice rang out down the hallway.
“Sokka!”
Bato. He’d come looking when Sokka had disappeared.
Zuko let go of Sokka’s tunic, planting his hands on Sokka’s stomach and pushing. They’d stumbled apart, Zuko sliding the rest of the way down the pillar with a stellar cough, his golden eyes like molten lava as they glared up at him. Sokka took the material and glared back, baring his teeth with a snarl even as Bato took his thundering steps forward and yanked him away.
Apologies left Bato in a rush, a babble of words as he all but shoved Sokka halfway down the hallway and aided Zuko to his faux-unstable feet. He was good at that, feigning the wounded teenager as if he didn’t still hold the title of the youngest victor, as if no one in this hallway had seen how dangerous he could be.
Zuko took the apologies gracefully, patting Bato’s arm and sending Sokka one last heated glare before he disappeared back to wherever he came from in the first place.
Bato hit him again.
They don’t talk about that either.
“You can’t do that, kid,” he’d said icily, his posture and his tone leaving no room to argue, “I don’t care how much you hate him, you can’t jump him like that.”
“Whatever.” Sokka’s eye roll had been real, mostly because he was tired of everyone assuming he involved himself with Zuko first.
(Really, it would have been so easy for them to tell everyone that they were fine, that they weren’t out for each other’s throats or looking to hurt each other more than the Games already had, but the selfish part of Sokka—perhaps a selfish part of Zuko too—made them keep their mouths shut.
He’d wanted what he had with Zuko to be something only they knew about. Keeping it that way made it real, made it mean something; if everyone around them expected them to kill each other, then no one could affect the ways they acted when they were alone.
No one who thought that little of them deserved to know any differently.)
Sokka had been grounded to the penthouse after that particular incident, killing time by rewatching the reapings and finding a tape of the last few times the arena had been somewhat like a desert.
Ursa’s games came up, Zuko’s mother, and Sokka had felt an odd sense of guilt watching her, as if he was breaching some level of privacy. Still, he’d sat and made notes, watched the sixteen-year-old travel under the cover of darkness, catch lizards with her bare hands and find water collected under rocks; the commentary had talked about what a miracle it was that she made it, given she wasn’t even a firebender like her District partner; half of her win came from just outliving everyone, but much like her son, much like her daughter, when Ursa got into a fight, she knew what she was doing.
Hanak had come out of his room as Sokka was watching her victory interview and neither of them said anything when he’d tentatively perched on the sofa a few feet away from where Sokka rested against it, sitting on the floor between it and the coffee table. Neither of them said anything when Ursa’s tape had ended and Hanak leaned over to pick a new one, setting them off on a new, horrific adventure to watch the girl who won two years after Bato by taming the shirshu set loose in her earthy arena.
(Sokka had found it interesting how many non-benders had actually won their games, but over time he learned that most of their world leaders are non-benders, and Sokka figures they don’t want to deal with the threat that comes with angry, traumatised teenagers who can set a fire just by yelling.
Enough benders won that the favouritism wasn’t evident unless someone mentioned it.)
After their quiet night, Hanak had actually asked Sokka to give him advice, tethering him down in the living room and asking what seemed like every question he’d had bottled inside himself since the Reaping. Sokka had answered what he could and Hanak seemed to absorb all of it; it felt wrong for Sokka to be the one giving advice, him still being two years younger than Hanak and noticeably smaller at the time, but this was his life now.
In a few years, he wouldn’t be younger than any of his Tributes anymore.
At the interviews, Kue got dressed up like a snow angel, delicate wings made of lace connected to her wrists and the back portion of her dress, moving and making patterned shadows under the stage lights whenever she moved her arms.
Kuraya evidently had her go for cute, but cute never saved anybody.
Hanak, in comparison, went for quiet and stoic, his black suit coated with a layer that shimmered like ice; he was big enough to pull it off. A few of the Capitolites swooned when he smirked and Sokka patted him on the back when they were hidden away in the elevator again, letting him shed his nervous tears in peace.
The Games started the next day.
Kue was still too scared of him to do little more than nod. Hanak actually shook his hand and took his don’t die with a wry smile.
They both survived the bloodbath which was better than any of them could have hoped for.
Then Bato had to ruin it by pulling him aside during the evening of the first day to sit with him and Kuraya and discuss which of the two they were favouring. Favouring. Sokka had felt sick, he’d shouted, he can’t remember what, but he couldn’t believe they would be so cruel as to support only one of their Tributes; he hadn’t cared that their District only had so much budget.
They picked Hanak.
(As much as Kue had reminded them all of Katara, she’d had about as much hope of winning as his sister did. Even less, really, because she didn’t have a Zuko or a Ty Lee in that arena to protect her.)
He’d stormed out after the decision was made, going back down to the garden near the lobby and almost startling at the woman already sitting there, her hand outstretched to a turtle-duck he hadn’t noticed before and a screen propped up on a stone bench beside her, cameras watching over District 1’s thirteen-year-olds as they explored the sandy wasteland that was the arena.
Meeting Ursa hadn’t been his plan that year, but she’d heard his thunderous footsteps and glanced up at him with gentle eyes; she looked a lot like Azula, it made him feel sick again.
She’d lost one of her children because of him.
“How are you finding it?”
It caught him off-guard, her sincerity.
He swallowed, shrugging, “just had the ‘pick a Tribute’ conversation.”
She nodded, humming in understanding as she leaned over to her screen and switched the views of her Tributes for his. “I remember fighting with Iroh about the exact same thing.” Iroh, her brother-in-law, though Sokka wonders if he’d become that before her first year as a Mentor or after.
(He’d been tempted to ask what Zuko had thought of it his first year but he bit his tongue and kept the question to himself.)
As big a deal as he made it, by the third day his hysterics didn’t matter. Kue was killed by the boy from District 3, he knew how to bend sand, apparently, and with no weapons well… Sokka could only hope it wasn’t as scary as it looked.
He met Foshi that evening when he came to check on Kuraya, the two of them having had a friendship since they won, their Games only a year apart. Foshi’s appearance hadn’t initially drawn any recognition out of Sokka, but then he’d reintroduced himself as the Capitol proclaimed Boulder and that was who Sokka knew.
He’d felt bad about it, knowing all too well the effect a Capitol-given title had on a person, but Foshi didn’t seem in the mood to offer Sokka the same courtesy so he left the penthouse.
Planning to let off some steam, to distract himself from feeling too shaken by Kue’s demise, he’d wandered the public floors of Tribute Tower. He’d found himself in the food court, screens larger than some of the buildings at home mounted on the walls and showing the events of the night in excruciating detail.
He’d walked in at the perfect time to see the girl from 5 kill her District partner, twisting a spear, modified with cactus needles, into his abdomen as he and his bright blue tattoos tried so desperately to suffocate her before she won.
Kagami, the only living female Victor from District 5, had been standing at a vending machine near the doors and dropped what she’d bought at the sight of her Tributes turning on each other. Sokka had watched her silently, watched her hands quiver as she covered her open mouth and watched her dart past him out of the cafeteria.
It hit him hard, the realisation that her kids had turned on each other because of him.
The inability to breathe had hit him again and he doesn’t remember how, but he’d ended up crammed in a dark closet with Zuko and his glowing golden eyes. He’d clung to him, sobbing and heaving and breaking all over again because—
“They did that because I made them think it was okay.”
Zuko never said anything to the contrary, not because he believed it, but because he knew Sokka would never believe any differently.
(“I get kids volunteering because of what I did.”)
The girl from District 5 ended up killing Hanak.
The boy from District 6 killed the girl from District 5. He killed six people.
The winner of the 79th Annual Hunger Games was Jet from District 6.
Between the end of Jet’s Games and his Victory Tour, Sokka and Zuko crossed paths in the Capitol four or five times.
It wasn’t always because their bodies had been sold to the highest bidder, not for Sokka at least; Zuko always seemed to appear with fresh bruises.
They couldn’t always be with each other either. Sometimes Mai was there or god-forbid Zhao, sometimes Bato or Kuraya were with Sokka; he met June by accident, had another passing conversation with Foshi, and Kagami never appeared without Gyatso.
Other than Mai and Jin who both modelled, and Song who was an actress, he never really learned what the others did, but he thinks that’s rather indicative of how their particular Victor group happened.
It helped that all three of them were ridiculously intuitive. According to Zuko, Mai had known about his and Sokka’s… whatever it was at the time by the opening ceremony of the new Games. Song and Jin seemed to figure it out when the four of them had been in the house together.
“He’s your person,” Song had said quietly, sitting beside Sokka on the grand staircase Zuko had first greeted him on over a year before, “there’s nothing wrong with needing him.”
He’d shrugged, “everyone thinks I want to kill him.”
“And everyone still thinks I’ve never had sex.”
He’d snorted so hard it hurt and Jin had appeared from one of the hallways with her arms wrapped around one of Zuko’s, his face beet red but a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
Even though Song and Jin didn’t pretend with the other Victors, they understood why Sokka and Zuko did.
They understood wanting something only for themselves.
Sokka hated every visit to the Capitol, but he didn’t hate every visit to Victor’s Manor.
The balcony attached to the room Zuko favoured was a good place to talk. The wind was loud enough that any bugs were rendered useless, and Zuko knew enough about pain to pick the best plush chairs.
“Does your mom—”
“She knows,” he nodded, chewing on an empty lolly stick with his legs kicked up onto the railing, “she did what you do, for a year or two, then my dad paid good money and had her marry him.”
Sokka frowned, pulling his legs up onto his seat and toying with a fraying thread peeking out of his sock. He wasn’t born when Ursa and Ozai got married, he wasn’t even really old enough to remember if the Capitol did anything when Azula was born, so hearing even a snippet of backstory was surprising to him.
Ursa always seemed so kind the few times Sokka had seen her.
“Why does she let it happen?”
He shrugged, nose scrunching ruefully, “not much of a choice for any of us anymore.”
Sokka still hadn’t really understood. Most of Zuko’s living family were Victors, it didn’t seem like any of them had any reason to roll over for the Capitol; the only person who could get hit was Ozai and with everything Sokka knew, that didn’t seem like it’d be much of a loss.
“My mom has another kid,” Zuko said eventually, voice quiet and resigned as he gnawed at his lolly stick anxiously, “not many people know about her, she’s not of Reaping age yet, but the Capitol gets free reign of me in exchange for her safety.”
Sokka didn’t ask if he got a say in the arrangement before it started because the answer was obvious, the only thing he’d wondered was if he knew about his half-sister before or after all of it started.
“And your Uncle?”
“Lu Ten died the same year I volunteered. He’s… I guess he figured he’d done enough damage already.”
He swallowed thickly, his voice barely loud enough to be heard over the Capitol traffic below them, “do you get lonely?”
“All the time,” Zuko replied, equally as quiet, “but I have Mai and the others.” He props his chin on his hand and angles his head to look across at Sokka, “I have you.”
Sokka had never been more thankful for his impulses than he did that day. He’d kissed Zuko before—plenty of times, in fact—but where those kisses had been born from stress or heartbreak—a dead tribute here, a shitty night there—this one was new.
It felt good to kiss him then, warm and bubbling in his stomach in a way it never had before.
Whatever they’d had had been real before, but it meant something then, something Sokka needed to keep safe.
The next summer, Reaping Day was clouded by a sweltering level of deja vu.
They got two sixteen-year-olds, Ronuk and Sakari, and the train ride hadn’t been much different than the year before; both of them were nervous enough about him that they all but avoided him entirely.
Zuko got a twelve-year-old girl and an eighteen-year-old boy.
The build-up was the same as the year before, the only difference was helping get Jet settled which, outside of Hao—a Victor barely younger than Gyatso—ended up left in the hands of Sokka and the others. Mai was actually the one to get him to consider them in the first place.
He was a cocky bastard, but as with everyone, half of it had been something to keep him alive in the wasteland that had been his arena. It worked for him nonetheless. He never acted like Sokka was one poor comment away from losing it either.
The arena that year had been industrial. A steam-powered, rusted metal-infested cityscape with the equivalent of a ticking time bomb in the form of a factory north of the Cornucopia.
Sakari killed Zuko’s girl and Zuko’s boy killed Ronuk. Sokka managed to snag Zuko in a hallway to offer resigned apologies on both sides.
Sokka’s Tributes didn’t last long enough for him to kick up a fuss about having to pick one.
On day six he did get drunk with the others though, most of their Tributes were gone or half-gone. Jin offered her floor since June and Michi would be handling the whole night shift of Mentor duties outside of Tribute Tower.
“You never struck me as a guy with a sweet tooth,” Jet had said, his legs thrown over the back of the sofa and pointing at Zuko who, for over an hour, had been chewing on a lolly stick.
“I’m not,” Zuko snorted, his arms hugging one of Sokka’s as he leaned back into his side. Whatever the hell Mai had gotten her hands on had made them all giddy enough not to give a shit.
“No shit,” Jet argued, sliding awkwardly down from his position and prompting Song to stuff a pillow behind his neck before he broke it, “how come you’re always fuckin’ seen with one of those then?”
Surprisingly enough, it had been Jin who answered, her hands wrapped around her bottle and her tone soft, “Ty Lee really liked sweets, I remember Sae telling me about all the cakes they tried during the training lunches.” Sae, one of her Tributes from that year, it would have been her second year as Mentor.
“Bihu said the same thing,” Song added, a reminiscent smile taking over her face, “he and Chen said they didn’t know how anyone expected them to go after the ‘Baby Tributes’ no matter what District they came from.”
‘Baby Tributes’... Ty Lee, Zuko and Katara.
(Sokka always forgot that the second Quarter Quell had been Song’s first year as a Mentor. Losing his first two had been bad enough, he could never imagine what it was like for her to have to handle losing four, especially with how quickly some of them dropped.
Her low kill count was never quite as appealing during Games season as it was off.)
“Yeah,” Zuko tacked on eventually, nestled further in Sokka’s hold as he spoke, “she—uh—she always talked about the candy she never got to try, I figure maybe one day I’ll be able to tell her what it all tastes like.”
(Mai had tossed him some sort of marshmallow from across the room and hummed like she understood the sentiment of it all.)
That year’s Games ended after two dragging weeks.
Seventeen-year-old Suki won with a kill count nearly rivalling Mai’s; she was the first girl to win from District 9 in almost forty years.
Suki took to their group like a house on fire.
During the pre-games she’d been charismatic and bold, working the crowds just as well as Zuko and Song combined. Away from the Capitol’s lens was where she really shined though, being kind and funny and all the things she’d shoved aside just to make it out alive; she was pretty too, and that was what worried Sokka the most.
Zuko promised to be on standby if anything happened but, as it turned out, Suki didn’t have any family to speak of and off to acting classes she went.
Sokka would never forget the time they had publicly dated for the sake of movie publicity. It had been Sokka’s first real thing in the Capitol that didn’t involve sleeping with people three times his age, and it was the first sign that people were letting the Ruthless thing go. The movie was kind of a mess but the Capitolites liked it, lapping up any morning walk, ice skating lesson, or double date with the presumed-dating Jet and Mai they could get; the whole thing helped Sokka break part of his stigma as much as it did settle Suki into public favour.
The whole ‘Youth Victor Alliance’ took the Capitol by storm, any combination of their group that could be photographed was, dating rumours popped up every other week and the most common question at the time had been why the group were so close if Sokka and Zuko—two evidently main players in the group affairs—despised each other so much.
“Why don’t you just… I dunno, hang out in public?” Suki had asked after one lunch on Zuko’s balcony, her make-up setting before she had to dash off for a new audition.
They hadn’t really known how to explain why they didn’t want to. At that point, it was almost like the aftermath of dispelling the rumours would end up worse than the rumours themselves, not to mention all of the other reasons they’d had leading up to that point.
They’d lived in a world of public hatred for so long that it felt like a second skin.
The next year, eighteen-year-old Yue of District 4 had an unprecedented victory.
District 4 was well known for the fact that they had never had a female Victor. Ever.
Sokka hadn’t really known why that was the case until he’d seen Pakku’s Mentoring in person; it was like the guy was allergic to supporting his female Tributes. Every year, without fail, Pakku would send his kids into that arena and all but turn off his girl’s monitor, giving up on them before they’d even had a chance.
Everything about the 80th Games practically forced his hand.
From the arena being the perfect snow-capped fields and bordering mountains, to the fact that Yue had outlived her partner Hahn from the get-go, her training score so low that nobody paid her any mind when she’d snagged a decent-sized backpack and ran away into a spruce forest while Hahn got himself into a fight with Mai’s boy that he evidently couldn’t win.
With his boy dead on day one, Pakku had to support Yue whether he liked it or not.
She wasn’t a bender, but she had an affinity for the moon as strong as any waterbender Sokka had ever met, plus, she was deceptively intuitive. The commentators often said that her instincts seemed to rival Sokka’s, her ability to avoid danger in the arena was absurd and watching her catch food with traps that she wasn’t even supposed to know how to make that well was immensely entertaining.
Watching Pakku sputter was the best part.
Yue nearly took Song’s lowest kill count title, but a stunt with poisoned rabbit meat had her knocking out three of the Career pack in one fell swoop and weakening a fourth enough for Jet’s boy to finish him off.
(Without even talking about it, everyone seemed to decide that they liked her. Integrating her into the group hadn’t been difficult in the slightest.)
Aside from another two dead kids on his conscience, Sokka’s relatively amused mood had been ruined when he learned about the rebellion that had been bubbling under everyone’s noses for years. He’d been… unfairly angry about being left in the dark for so long.
He did appreciate that Zuko had told him when they were alone though, letting Sokka pretend that he’d been in on it for a while when they got the others involved.
“Bato’s been reluctant to bring you in,” he’d said tentatively, golden eyes scanning Sokka’s face after the arena-load of information he’d just dumped into the open.
Sokka bristled, “Bato knows about this?”
Zuko bit the inside of his cheek, frowning apologetically, “Aside from my mom, he was one of the first people my Uncle brought in.” His expression grew even more remorseful when he’d added, “he’s been under the impression that you’ll pick a fight with me if we’re left in the same room for too long.”
That… that was something that Sokka was aware of but it didn’t make it hurt any less.
While the alliance of young Victors had eased Bato’s worry for Sokka somewhat—glad he finally had friends or something—he still rarely liked to let him wander off alone when Zuko was known to be in the same building. It was infuriating, really, that Bato thought so little of him, but he’d acknowledged that they hadn’t exactly made anyone except their friends aware of the shift in their relationship.
“We could tell him,” Zuko said softly, so quiet they could hear a pin drop yet infinitely louder than anything else in the room, “ we could tell all of them .”
“Not the Capitol,” he’d replied in a rush, fingers digging into Zuko’s elbows desperately.
Zuko shook his head, “ of course not, I don’t think the President would like that sort of public camaraderie between us .”
Of course he wouldn’t, it would stain the image of the Games as something made to watch the Districts tear each other apart. They already knew that their group’s very public friendships were treading the thinnest line known to man and never allowed to spill outside of the Capitol.
Sokka and Zuko would suffer severe ‘accidents’ if their relationship—even just their friendship—went public.
“We don’t have to, not if you don’t want to.”
But he did. He wanted his family and Zuko’s to know. He wanted to be able to bring him up as he did with Song or Mai, to hang out with him during Games season without someone hovering nearby. He wasn’t afraid of losing him anymore, they’d been together long enough, and he was tired of his family looking at him like he was one wrong word away from decapitating someone else.
“I want to.”
“Okay.”
Their plan was to just tell Bato—and Ursa, and Iroh—outright and let everyone else figure it out on their own, but both Suki and Jet told them that was boring.
(They were right, but they were very blunt about it.)
Thus, the pond incident was born.
It was completely impromptu and entirely Zuko’s fault.
(He always argues otherwise but it was.)
They’d been at the turtle-duck pond in Tribute Tower with a screen on the bench behind them, watching their remaining tributes who hadn’t yet succumbed to either poisoned meat or the cold. Talking was all they’d been doing, honouring the memories of their fallen Tributes by feeding the turtle-ducks and sharing short-lived memories, but footsteps had echoed down the hallway and instead of scrambling apart for one of them to hide, Zuko had grabbed Sokka’s tunic and kissed him.
He’d also completely unbalanced him, given Sokka was all but propped up on his toes compared to Zuko’s steady kneel. Sokka was always heavier than Zuko so, with one startle, into the pond they went.
The splash of them tumbling in and the commotion elicited by the turtle-ducks brought whoever was down the corridor sprinting in their direction. All things considered, Sokka was far more distracted with not completely pinning Zuko beneath him and sputtering in elbow-high water to really care that it was Bato who’d come running.
“Sokka! What did we talk about?! You can’t… drown him.” He’d trailed off when he really looked at them, eyeing their position and the way Zuko pressed his head against Sokka’s shoulder to hide his breathy laughter.
Sokka couldn’t help but snort, “hi Bato.”
“Are you two… okay ?” He still spoke slowly, unsure if he’d stumbled upon something completely fabricated or maybe he just thought they were drunk.
“Very.” Zuko lifted his head from Sokka’s shoulder and leaned on his arms, glancing back and grinning. He’d shifted beneath Sokka, calling his name, still beaming when he finally broke away from Bato’s gaze, and leaned up to kiss him, “get off.”
“Wh— sorry.” Sokka flushed, realising he’d still had Zuko pinned and also somehow embarrassed about being kissed in front of Bato.
When they both shuffled out of the pond, Zuko clambering out first and pulling Sokka with him, Bato watched them as Zuko set about heating the water out of their clothes. He rarely firebended offensively, that was one thing Sokka knew intimately, but for menial tasks, he wasn’t so afraid of running hot.
Bato gestured between them as the area filled with steam, “how long has this…”
Sokka tried not to grimace, “that first visit to the Capitol?”
(It hit him then that it’d nearly been three years.)
For the first time in a long time, Bato actually got Sokka to have a full conversation that night.
And Sokka joined the Rebellion.
Going through the motions of the Games and the Reapings gets a little easier when the only people he’s lying to are the people that put his Tributes through hell. Bato and his dad get better around him, slowly learning not to walk on eggshells and to actually treat him like the man he’d become instead of the volatile teenager he had been.
(His anger is still there, ever festering in his nightmares, but it’s been directed at something more worthy of it now.)
Mentoring is that constant war between allowing himself to like his Tributes enough to help them, and keeping them distant enough that it doesn’t hurt when they die. No one has that down to an art yet, he isn’t sure anyone will; he remembers each and every one of their names, their ages, he remembers how they die.
Sedi, sixteen, drowned. Lian, fourteen, starved. Jin’s boy Haru won.
Taran, twelve, impaled by Mai’s boy. Eyuda, seventeen, blood infection. Jet’s best friend Smellerbee won.
Bavron, eighteen, snake bite. Umeyo, thirteen, blunt force from Zuko’s girl. Song’s boy Tio won.
Three years, all passed in a flash, the rebellion bubbling beneath the surface of the world yet nowhere near ready to come out of the shadows yet.
Then something changes.
Sokka figures that someone must have severely pissed the wrong person off because the 84th Games have a darker twist than anyone was ever prepared for.
At first he thinks that it’s just an unlucky pull for his District, that the two youngest kids are pulled up onto the stage; Darian and Tinnok. But on the train, on their way to pick everyone else up, they sit and watch the replays of the reapings as they normally would and Sokka’s heart sinks.
Every single Tribute is twelve years old.
What’s worse is the fact that he recognises some of their names.
Toph Beifong of District 3 is someone Foshi has always spoken fondly about. She’s an earthbender, rumoured to be a good one, but she’s also blind—a fact the hosts readily pipe up about. Sokka isn’t sure what to make of her, she seems demure when she gets guided onto the stage, but if what Foshi says is true or she’s anything like him at all, then his kids are in for it.
Duke of District 6 is Jet’s little cousin, adopted, as most of his family is. All things considered, Duke doesn’t appear as much of a fighter, he’s small, even smaller than his District partner, Noyo, probably the smallest of all of the kids this year. Sokka even asks Bato if he’s old enough to have his name in the bowl at all; he gets the sneaking suspicion that Jet won’t be able to answer either, no matter how much he might want to.
Then there’s Aang of District 5, the youngest known airbending master to date. At first glance, he seems like the average airbender, agile and flighty, but Sokka is friends with Kagami and knows how truly dangerous they can be, pacifism or age be damned. The kid’s a son to Gyatso in all ways except legal and, if Sokka had to guess, his Reaping wasn’t accidental.
(But none of them are, are they?)
The opening ceremony is probably the worst it’s been in a while.
So many of the costumes feel too old or too big. Even District 2, which normally goes for sleek and smouldering, barely manages to make their Tributes look older than ten; Jet clings to Song the whole ceremony because Duke ends up looking more like a shrub than the tree District 6’s stylists usually go for.
Half of them aren’t even tall enough to see over the edge of the chariots.
During the days of training, the Mentors in the Rebellion all gather on Iroh’s floor to quiz each other about what the fuck is going on but no one seems to have any answers. There’s been no indication of any of them being found out, nothing, it’s as if someone in the President’s circle decided this was the year to be exceptionally cruel on a whim.
Twenty of the country’s youngest children are days away from slaughtering each other.
“I can’t watch these kids kill each other Zuko, I can’t,” Sokka says desperately, standing in the District 1 kitchen with Zuko as everyone else remains scattered around the room venting their own fears.
Every year is hard, that’s the point, but there is something so distinctly different about what is happening now in comparison to all the times before that he can’t help but feel fearful anxiety buzzing under his skin.
“I know,” Zuko murmurs, pulling him forward into a hug that seems as much for his benefit as it is for Sokka’s. “I don’t even— even my kids are scared.”
Careers aren’t supposed to be scared.
There’s nothing any of them can do though, that’s the worst part, and Sokka tries to not look so scared when the training scores come out and it’s just his team on his floor.
The only kid to get higher than a five is Toph Beifong.
It’s already decided then.
Interviews are… just as bad if not worse. Only a few of the Tributes are able to hold proper conversations, like Aang and Toph, some just burst into tears right there on stage while others, like Duke, are so anxious they hardly do anything at all.
The Capitolites are hardly entertained and that will only lead to worse things lying in wait in the arena.
Saying goodbye to Darian and Tinnok is harder than he cares to admit but he digs into the anger buried in his gut to chase the tears away before either of them can see.
For the first time, all of the Mentors gather in the food court to watch the bloodbath, and more than a few of them outright hold hands to keep from falling apart then and there. They can only do this for the first few hours, soon enough at least some of them will have to leave to try to get sponsors for these children.
The arena turns out to be a series of floating islands, each interconnected either by tunnels underneath, vines overhead, or other, smaller floating rocks that can be used as stepping stones. District 5 has the advantage from the get-go, and District 3 too, but none of the Tributes look ready when they’re lifted onto their pedestals on Cornucopia island.
Kyeyi from District 8 sets the tone when the camera focuses on her, her mouth moving in silent prayer before she leaps from her pedestal and explodes.
The sound ricochets off of the walls of the cafeteria, the camera panning backwards to show the wide-eyed terror on the other kids’ faces. Across the room, Jin bursts into tears, slumping back into Michi’s steadfast frame and just wailing.
“She asked me what happened when—” She cut herself off with another broken sob and June actually got up to comfort her as well, “I didn’t—”
(Even though it wasn’t her fault, even though they all know that Kyeyi made that decision on her own, they all know Jin won’t be able to do anything other than blame herself for the rest of her life.)
When the gong goes off at the end of the countdown, none of the kids move right away, their heads whipping back and forth between each other to see who might take the risk first. Jiru, the boy from District 2, bounces on the balls of his feet and takes off, sprinting forward into the cornucopia and grabbing a backpack before any of the others have even realised he moved.
It’s a rush then, a mass of small bodies hurtling off of their pedestals.
Aya of District 1 is the first to actually kill someone, finding a knife among a pile of tarps and lashing out at the first person who came near her. Morren of District 4 goes down to a slash to his throat and Sokka sees Zuko reach across the huddle to clasp Yue’s hand.
The bloodbath is always a difficult thing to keep track of. Tributes like Heeshi from District 5 and Duke grab from the outskirts of the Cornucopia and disappear, others, like Aya or Fei from District 9 actively grab weapons before anything else.
Suki goes to sit with Song and Tio when Fei kills their boy.
(District 7’s Victors have to hold the record for worst first Games ever mentored. A Quarter Quell and then this. Sokka has to wonder if they’re cursed or something.)
At the corner of it all, one of the screens is focusing on a confrontation between Aang and Toph Beifong. He seems to have gotten his hands on a stick—a glider, Kagami murmurs across the room—and stands on one of the stepping stone islands while Toph remains on the Cornucopia, her milky eyes scanning around her, her posture unsure, and her shoes missing.
“If I jump, will you be able to see it?” Aang asks from his position, their confrontation suddenly becoming more of an alliance meeting, “or should I just carry you up to the next one?”
Toph visibly swallows, “I don’t like not seeing.”
“I’ll be quick.”
Aang pops out the wings, red fabric vibrant against the limestone backdrop of the islands, and glides down to land gently beside Toph. She hesitates for a split second before cursing and wrapping her arms around his neck and holding on; as promised, Aang is as fast as he can be with the additional weight and Toph is back onto solid ground before she knows it, her bare feet sinking into soft earth.
She then, inexplicably, takes the lead.
The bloodbath ends with three cannons: Kyeyi, Morren and Luhen, the boy from 7. It’s the smallest bloodbath they’ve had in a while, but that’s the best outcome they could have hoped for.
After it’s over, most of Sokka and the others’ time is spent either sleeping, roaming the Games’ centre looking for sponsors, or sitting with some combination of their group in the food court. Foshi and Kagami take to sponsor hunting together, seeing as their Tributes are in an alliance and, by the end of the first day, Jet and Smellerbee are joining their efforts.
Duke finds Aang and Toph that night, slinking around in the shadows around their camp—a fire encased in stone like an oven to keep the smoke to a minimum—until Toph’s head whips in his direction and she calls out.
“You can come out.” A rustling of leaves and Duke’s small frame clambers out of the bushes, a wild, scared look on his face. Toph holds up the bowl of things Aang had foraged a couple of hours ago, “you hungry?”
He nods and Aang absolutely beams when he comes to sit with them.
The main screen pulls away from them when it becomes obvious that no killing is happening, instead instantly switching over to Aya as she drives her knife into the base of Tinnok’s skull and pushes her off the sheer drop of the island they’d been on.
Sokka leans very heavily into Zuko’s side as her cannon goes off, part of him is glad that he didn’t have to watch her go through more than a few hours of fear but he still feels worse than he usually does when he watches her drop.
“I guess she wasn’t as scared as she said she was,” Zuko says to his Uncle; Iroh hums, frowning as they watch Aya wipe her knife on her trouser leg and continue on.
Mercifully, not much happens for a couple of days. The gamemakers allow the Tributes to explore, familiarising themselves with whatever island they found themselves on after the bloodbath, and more small alliances forming on the different islands.
Yang of District 7 and Chiaki of District 2 are a surprising duo, but the girls get along about as well as anyone could have asked them to. Yang braids Chiaki’s hair and Chiaki picks flowers, it’s painfully child-like and soft, something that can’t last.
Aang, Toph and Duke do well. Toph finds them water the morning of the second day and Duke proves to be a good hunter, adding meat to his and Toph’s diets while Aang remains with what he forages, unwilling to break his vegetarianism just for the sake of the Games. He also shows them a marble trick that immensely entertains Duke but does little for Toph and her unseeing eyes.
The dangerous alliance is Fei and Aya who run into each other by accident and shake hands in a way that reminds Sokka, uncomfortably, of his alliance with Azula. One of those girls is going to tear the other apart and it won’t be pretty.
On the fourth day, Bini of District 9 steps onto an unstable piece of land and falls to his death, Fenhua of District 3 is killed with an icicle through his chest from Rueki of District 4, and Jiru joins Yang and Chiaki’s alliance after the two parties almost kill each other.
On the fifth day, Fei and Aya find the alliance and only Yang escapes, not without a significant leg wound though.
On the sixth, Heeshi gets bitten by a beetle and chokes on her own blood three hours later.
Each day, the nights start with a look in on the 3-6-5 Alliance, their antics, jokes and stories a balm against the harsh graze of the day’s events. Every day, Sokka watches Zuko get wound up, no doubt remembering all too well how his own alliance ended when they got too close.
Toph is the first of the three to kill and, all things considered, Sokka isn’t entirely surprised. Rueki comes out of nowhere, icicles thrown through the air and halted from piercing Duke’s head by a blast of air; Toph kicks a rock forward, her form perfect and powerful, and, possibly without meaning to, the impact of the boulder to Rueki’s head kills her in an instant.
The night of day seven is sombre and quiet.
Yang dies on day nine to a combination of starvation and a blood infection in her leg; the commentators remark that it’s a miracle she even lasted that long after Fei and Aya’s attack but that doesn’t make watching her go any less painful. Song disappears to the turtle-duck pond for a while after, joined fleetingly by both Mai and Yue in memory of their fallen children.
Darian makes a surprise reappearance on day ten after having little screen time since his escape from the bloodbath. It isn’t obvious why right away, but a glimpse of Aya’s razor-sharp knife from the bushes is answer enough, he is the next to fall to this brutal partnership.
Or he would have been, had Imari—the equally as missing boy from District 1—not leapt out of the shadows and shoved a sharpened branch right through Fei’s throat, twisting the knife out of Aya’s grip when she lunges for him.
She screams at him, Darian watching wide-eyed and imperceivably inching away until he finally decides to outright bolt and disappear back into the bushes.
“I ain’t killin’ you, Aya,” Imari says, “I ain’t like that.”
She spits at his feet, rips her arm out of his grip, and walks away.
Noyo, too, reappears that night, dropping a poisoned beehive atop the boy from District 8, Shen, and flying across the treetops before his canon has even started.
Toph gets her second kill the same day Duke dies.
They’ve been trailing the edge of one of the islands, deciding where best to make their way across when Duke turns to make some sort of joke and a knife pierces through his eye. He doesn’t even drop right away, standing there, murmuring incoherently until he finally slumps into Aang’s arms and tears spill over.
Jet punches the glass out of one of the vending machines and leaves the food court with Song hot on his heels.
Toph had turned almost the same second the knife made contact with Duke, shifting her feet and dropping Aya into the earth below. While Aang cries over Duke’s body, she approaches the buried girl, milky eyes devoid of compassion or sarcasm as she shifts her arms, squeezing the earth inwards until she’s gasping, desperate for breath. The tears pour out of Toph’s eyes then, but she doesn’t stop, her face still fierce as she buries Aya the rest of the way underground.
Her cannon doesn’t go off for at least another minute.
It’s a terrifying way for anyone to go, a cruel thing for anyone to do, but Sokka recognises that anger. That had been him once upon a time; he hopes Toph, should she win, doesn’t break quite as violently as he did.
The final five.
Imari, Toph, Aang, Noyo and Darian.
The gamemakers use fire to bring them all together, burning up the edges of the arena and driving them all towards the Cornucopia for a destructive final showdown. By the final stepping stones to the central island, all of them know what’s happening, Toph registers it fast enough that she has a chance to turn to Aang.
“Twinkle Toes, up you go,” she says, nodding towards the sky as she shakes out her wrists.
Aang frowns, “are you sure?”
“Just stay out of the way and don’t do anything stupid, okay?”
He goes.
This fight is more focused on Toph and Imari than anyone else. Noyo and Darian have survived, primarily, by avoiding conflict and Aang remains circling the sky above, looking down on them all like a poor man’s guardian angel.
Even after everything, the kids still give each other the decency of warming up. No one gets jumped, and no one attacks, not until all four of them are equal distances away from each other and nodding, then it’s fair game.
To no one’s surprise, Noyo dies first. Before the fire, Imari had found the crushed beehive that had killed Shen and taken the stingers to make poisoned darts; his aim isn’t perfect, but he sticks Noyo with more than one. Her leg stops cooperating with her at the edge of the island and that gives Toph the opening to split the ground beneath her and send her careening off the edge.
Imari, no longer as generous as before, is the one to kill Darian. Somehow it seems fitting, given Imari is the only reason Darian even made it this far, but the kid’s like a spider-monkey, dodging Toph’s thrown rocks with the ease of an airbender and swinging around onto Darian’s back. He snaps his neck with enough effort, and Imari uses the momentum of Darian’s dropping body to roll towards the Cornucopia.
The District 1 boy is quick, faster than the very grounded earthbending girl and, potentially, outmatching her in closer combat skills. Zuko’s kids held out on their Mentors, it seems, because Sokka knows that he wouldn’t have said they were scared if he hadn’t believed it. Maybe they were, in the beginning, but when the killing started the Career in them really kicked in.
Imari’s death happens in such a flash that more than one person in their congregation in the food court pulls out their screens just to rewind.
He’d shifted his stance, another dart gripped in his hands and clearly intent on just stabbing Toph with it rather than throwing it, but he’d only leapt one step forward when a rush of wind knocked him into the side of the Cornucopia and Toph, either in surprise or on instinct, sent a sheet of rock into him.
Toph is lucky she’s blind. Aang very pointedly turned around the second the blast of air had left his glider. It would be a half-kill on his part but… all things considered, Aang managed to make it through the Games without killing anyone.
But now two-thirds of the 3-6-5 Alliance remain, the two of them standing and heaving exhausted breaths for longer than they should.
“I’m not leaving without you,” Aang says the instant Toph looks his way, his face contorted as if the very thought of losing her was painful.
Across the room, Kagami inhales sharply, Gyatso squeezing her shoulder as Foshi reaches out and takes her hand. Something is happening here, all of them can feel it; Sokka squeezes Zuko’s hand, his leg bouncing anxiously.
“You sure?” Toph asks, scoffing and trying very hard to look angrier than they all know she is, “I don’t exactly align with all your morals anymore.”
“I don’t care!” It bursts out of him like the air he used to knock Imari off-course, his frustration plain as day in his eyes. “You’re my friend, Toph, you were protecting us; I protected you.”
Nobody seems to know what to do, the arena doesn’t do anything so it’s clear that even the gamemakers are at a loss for what is happening.
“You’re an idiot,” Toph huffs, marching over to Aang and yanking him into a hug. Their feet sink into the earth and the tension in the food court doubles. “You sure?”
Aang smiles, “never been more.”
She snorts, sniffles, and they sink further, “you scared?”
“A little. You?”
“Enough.”
The earth hits their waists and what they’re doing becomes all too real, all too dangerous, but all too stupidly, selflessly brave.
“Will they let both of us go?” Aang asks uncertainly, his arms getting locked in their hug as the earth traps his elbows.
“They’ll have to.” The earth is up to their chins, they both take deep breaths, and Toph’s next words are shakier than he’s sure she wants them to be, “Aang, will you be my best friend? I’ve never had one before.”
“Of course I will.”
It hits him again that they’re twelve. Small, scared, and twelve years old. Everything in these Games from start to finish has done nothing but make them forget that.
“Wait! Wait!”
Everything freezes.
Toph lifts her and Aang far enough out of the dirt to breathe again but still low enough that they can keep going if the announcer has nothing good to say.
It takes him a minute, clearly considering what consequences will come from his next words, but no one has ever been happier to see the end of a Games.
“May I present: the Victors of the 84th Annual Hunger Games!”