Chapter Text
Sokka stands there for a moment, struck still by wonder and grief. Zuko’s soul ascends upwards like a second comet, a ball of pure white that leaves a trail of light in its wake.
Then it curves, like it’s going somewhere.
Sokka stares at it, and then he looks to the stars. Identifies a couple familiar constellations. Checks a couple angles.
He takes off like a comet in his own right, dashing back towards the palace.
“Katara!”
As he bursts into the medical wing, she whips her head around. So does Iroh, now awake and sitting up in his bed.
“Call Appa, we’ve got a Zuko situation.” While she scrambles for their bison whistle and blows it, he turns to Iroh. “Can I abdicate to you now?”
He nods. “Yes, but my nephew-“
“Might have just done the impossible, again.”
Iroh’s eyes go huge.
“I’ll find out. Here.” Sokka tosses the Fire Lord hairpiece to Iroh, who catches it against his injured chest with a wince. “Sorry. And good luck!”
Then he and Katara tear back out of the palace, right as Appa comes back. He growls, clearly jumpy about being back on Caldera.
“We have to follow the white light,” Sokka declares as he clambers onto Appa’s neck. “Yip-yip!”
Enthusiastically, Appa springs away again.
Ghosts don’t explode in white light when they die for good, someone would’ve mentioned it if they did. Yet Sokka’s seen this phenomenon once before, on the night this all started. Back at the North Pole, Zuko had moved Aang’s body while his soul was in the Spirit Oasis. Sokka had only been able to track them down because Aang’s soul had manifested as a white ball of light like this one. It had streaked across the sky, shooting from the Oasis back towards his physical body, and Sokka had chased it.
(Aang had woken up, after that. Sokka dares to hope.)
Appa seems to understand the urgency. Seasonal air currents are on their side as they chase down the white light, and he’s making record time. Katara heals him repeatedly, soothing his exhausted muscles and replenishing his energy. Still, the light gains on them. Sokka squints at it, tracking it as long as he can across the comet-reddened sky, but eventually it disappears from sight.
“The North Pole, right?” Katara says.
“I hope so.”
She nods off soon after that. Sokka can’t blame her, but he’s wide awake, eyes fixed on the horizon. After a few hours, Sozin’s comet disappears too, replaced by a ruddy, surprisingly smoke-free sunrise. By Sokka’s calculations, they’ve passed the Northern Air Temple latitude-wise. Green hills turn to icy waters below them, and the frost starts to bite through Sokka’s light, Fire Nation clothing. His sister wakes up soon after that.
“Hey, Katara, can you make steam?”
It takes her a second, but she can. Sokka sits in his personal steam cloud and tries not to let his heart boil over.
(Maybe it’s denial, but Zuko can’t be gone. He can’t.)
(Sokka didn’t get to say goodbye.)
“Look!”
Sokka squints where Katara’s pointing. There’s a narrow column of white light shining from the ice.
“Come on, Appa!” He steers Appa straight toward it, and the bison roars and races forward with a fresh burst of energy.
The light becomes clearer, the closer he gets. It looks white from a distance, but really there are rings of every other color whirling within it.
Then it dims, and disappears.
Wordlessly, Katara grabs Sokka’s hand.
As Appa lands, she’s the first one off, leaping onto the iceberg- the same one where they’d left Zuko buried in snow a lifetime ago. With a wave of her hands, she melts all the ice around them. Sokka spins around, searching for a sign, for anything in the water-
He dives in. It’s not his smartest plan, but he can see Zuko’s lifeless body sinking down into the water, fading from reach, and he won’t let him go now. He gets his arms around Zuko, and then Katara promptly raises them back to the surface on a new slab of ice. He kneels, cradling Zuko’s pale, frigid body as she zooms over and pulls half an ocean’s worth of water out of his lungs, as she places healing hands on his cheeks and over his heart and wills life back into him.
As his eyes flutter open, warm and golden.
His gaze comes to rest on Sokka’s face above him. For a moment, there’s no spark of recognition. Sokka stares down at that face- bruised, with a scowl burned into his left eye and a naturally sullen curve to his lip- and worries that Zuko doesn’t remember. Maybe he’ll shoot to his feet and start yelling about capturing the Avatar again.
Then the softest smile crosses his face, like a sunbeam peeking through clouds.
Zuko lifts a hand to Sokka’s cheek. Effortfully, he pushes himself up. He rises just far enough to meet Sokka’s mouth with his own.
Sokka starts sobbing just as Zuko starts laughing, silent chuckles rocking his whole body.
“You know what this means,” Katara says in the distance. “Aunt Wu was actually right.”
Sokka lets out a muffled groan. Zuko laughs harder. They don’t stop kissing.
/
Eventually Zuko collapses backwards, breathing hard and curling up into Sokka’s chest like he’s very small. He isn’t. He’s heavy, and so is his snow-white armor, even after Katara bends their clothes dry. Still, Sokka sweeps him up in his arms and carries him back onto Appa. Zuko’s eyes drift shut, but he’s still breathing.
After a minute’s deliberation, Katara and Sokka decide to re-introduce themselves to the Northern Water Tribe.
Chief Arnook’s not thrilled about taking in the Prince of the Fire Nation. Sokka maybe doesn’t make the best argument for it, half-asleep on his feet and still carrying Zuko around: “Look, he took down Ozai. Well. Technically I took down Ozai too? It was a team effort, and if we lose Zuko now, Aang’ll probably go into the Avatar State and wreck half the world-“
Katara shushes him with a gentle hand on his shoulder. Sokka shuts up on cue and just sits down, so he can pull Zuko- deep in weary slumber- a little closer.
She steps forward to address the Chief. “What my brother’s trying to say is that the war is over. Fire Lord Iroh rules the Fire Nation now, and he’s committed to peace. Fire Lord Ozai was defeated by Sokka, the ghost of Prince Zuko...and the moon spirit, Princess Yue.” As Chief Arnook gasps in shock, she lifts her hands and adds, “I’ll be happy to tell you the entire story, but first, Zuko needs medical care. I can try to heal him myself somewhere else, but he was, uh, dead for several months? And if your healers could assist with his case, we’d be truly honored.”
Sokka suspects that last sentence is what gets them in at the end. The world’s best healers can’t miss the chance to help revive the dead; the sheer novelty of Zuko’s case must grab their interest. Master Yagoda ushers him and Katara into the infirmary, and Sokka lays Zuko down on the floor. Rapidly, the healers pull him out of his freezing armor and clothes, revealing both chiseled muscles and a patchwork of mottled bruises splashed across his skin. Katara surveys them in horror.
“What happened?”
“Zhao,” he intones. “Assassination attempt.”
She sets her jaw. “I’ll make sure he gets through this. You should rest.”
“Thanks, but I can’t sleep now.”
(Five minutes later, Sokka’s snoring against the infirmary wall.)
/
“Sokka.”
He awakes with a start as Katara shakes his shoulder. “Is he okay?”
“He’ll live. But he’s basically just a pile of wounds, he had fractures and multiple concussions, and there’s an old bruise I think was from Boomerang-“
Sokka winces.
“-and honestly, I’m surprised he was still standing by the time of the siege.”
“How is he now?”
“Stable,” she assures him, “but exhausted. And Yagoda’s worried he’s still running cold, for a firebender.”
“Can I help?”
She opens her mouth to gently tell him no, but then her eyes light up. “Yes, actually! It might help if he could share some of your body heat. We’ve tried just increasing his temperature directly, but maybe he needs the help.”
“You got it.”
/
When Sokka wakes up again, he’s nestled under a warm fur blanket, with an even warmer body tucked against his. Zuko’s casually using his chest as a pillow. Sokka shifts a little, just lifting a hand to touch that ponytail and the downy stubble on the rest of Zuko’s head. That’s when Zuko shifts, and arcs his back, stretching like a cat, and rolls to look Sokka in the eyes.
This man was made for his dreams.
Sokka means to say something profound, but he’s too busy smiling dopily to manage anything but, “Hi.”
“Good morning,” Zuko replies, lips twitching with amusement. Then he twists around and calls, “He’s awake now!”
When he turns back, Sokka’s goggling at him.
“What?” Zuko says curiously.
Katara walks in at that instant, holding a tray with food, and Sokka shoots upright to address her. “Have you heard Zuko’s voice?”
She looks at him strangely. “Yes?”
“You’ve heard me talk too,” Zuko points out.
“Yeah, but you were always yelling or trying to destroy the world, it doesn’t count,” Sokka splutters. “Your voice is a miracle.”
It is. The tone’s husky and warm, dark yet tender. It’s gorgeous like a tsungi horn, and Sokka’s going to luxuriate in it forever.
“What?” he asks Zuko, who’s propped himself up on one elbow and is serving him a delightfully skeptical look. “You're looking at me like I’ve drunk cactus juice again!”
“Are we sure you haven’t?”
Katara rolls her eyes and drops the meal tray on Sokka’s lap. It’s covered in sizzling meats and pancakes and ice cream- a delicious cloud-blueberry akutaq, from the look of it.
He looks at Zuko. “Want some?”
“No thanks, I already ate.”
Katara drops down by the foot of their comfy snow bed, snickering. “You offered to share your food with him? It must be true love.”
Sokka’s mouth is too full for him to properly retort.
Zuko just nods. “I agree. Oh, and by the way?”
Sokka glances at him.
“I love you too.”
Sokka tackles him with a cloud-blueberry-flavored kiss. Zuko squawks in surprise; the tray definitely gets upturned in the ensuing scuffle. Though Katara clucks and shakes her head, she’s smiling too.
/
The leader of the Water Sages pays them a visit that afternoon.
“It’s an extraordinary case,” he observes after bending himself a seat from the ice, “though we have prior records of ghosts, and of people revived after several hours in ice.”
“Aang was in ice for a hundred years,” Zuko comments. “But he was alive...just hibernating, I guess.”
“Quite so. No one has ever come back from being so thoroughly dead.”
“Well,” Sokka points out, not-so-subtly wrapping an arm around Zuko’s waist, “I don’t think there’s ever been a ghost who can match my husband for sheer willpower.”
(“My husband.” According to Katara, he’s overusing that phrase. But it feels perfect in his mouth, and Zuko lights up every time he hears it, and Sokka’s going to wear those words out way more.)
“There was more to it than willpower,” Zuko offers while leaning into his arm. “Sokka has this crystal ring that’s just full of light, and I’m sure that helped.”
“Ta-da!” On cue, Sokka raises his hand, showing off his bling before dropping his hand onto Zuko’s knee.
Zuko chuckles. “Not to mention how by the night of the comet, I’d gotten so much of what I wanted in life, one way or the other. My husband had just placed my name in my family’s shrine, and he told me he loved me. I felt lighter than I ever had in my life.”
The sage tilts his head quizzically. “Light enough to return to life?”
He ponders that for a second. “For a moment, yes. But it had always seemed like an impossible jump, trying to get back to the mortal world. I barely made it.”
“Hm.” He strokes his silver beard, frowning. “We sages have always held that there is simply not enough energy in this world to bring the dead back.”
“I doubt there is,” Zuko agrees. “At least in this world. But that night, I also had the comet on my side-”
“Because the souls of firebenders are a kind of flame, right?” Sokka exclaims in sudden understanding. “So you disappeared during the eclipse, but you got super-powered during the comet!”
“My soul was overflowing with cosmic energy,” his husband says sagely, like someone who’s read too many books about the Avatar. “Still, I would’ve never tried that jump in the first place if I didn’t have so much to come back for.”
Grinning, he laces his fingers with Sokka’s.
/
News winds its way to the North Pole, slowly but surely. Ba Sing Se surrendered instantly on the night of the comet; not a single inch burned within its walls. As his first act, Fire Lord Iroh freed it. As his second act, he rescinded Zuko’s banishment.
Aang survived. Toph did too. Amazingly, Azula was forced into a semi-honorable surrender, though the details of her capture sound contradictory and more than a little concerning.
“Why did she think you were on the battlefield with her?” Sokka asks.
Zuko shrugs back at him, equally lost.
The tales of Ozai’s defeat start filtering in from the Fire Nation. They’re surprisingly factual, and they confirm that Katara and Sokka are not embellishing the story, thank you very much. Iroh’s consolidated power rapidly. Peace talks are already scheduled.
And while Sokka’s brief reign as Fire Lord will obviously go down in the history books, there’s a push against entrenching him fully.
“You’re supposed to get a twenty-foot-tall tapestry in the palace like all the other Fire Lords,” Zuko informs him. “But they always mess up the faces, I don’t think they’d do you justice.”
He reaches out to brush Sokka’s cheek.
“I’m fine not being remembered as a normal Fire Lord,” Sokka remarks, smiling while he presses into the touch. “It’s got a lot of baggage as roles go. And seeing how my one official act led to your resurrection? I should have a whole other title.”
“‘Phoenix King?’”
“Obviously,” Sokka agrees. “Move over, Ozai.”
Shaking his head, Zuko chuckles. It’s Sokka’s official favorite sound ever.
/
That night, Sokka shakes Zuko awake. He shudders back to consciousness, gasping for breath, one golden eye huge in the darkness.
Then he audibly groans and collapses against Sokka. “Did I wake you?”
“I never fell asleep.” Sokka cups his face, runs his fingers down his unscarred cheek. “You okay?”
“No. You?”
“Nope.”
Zuko glances up at Sokka, at the sad half-smile settled on his face.
“We’ll get there,” Sokka whispers back.
“Denial.”
“I’ve decided to call it ‘hopeful optimism.’”
/
A couple days later, as Zuko rests and attends healing sessions and slowly, slowly regains his strength, Toph and Aang crash back into their lives. Toph’s not thrilled about visiting the North Pole- ice and bare feet don’t go well together- so she hangs out on a docked ship in the harbor. For his part, Aang bounds into the city and into Zuko and Sokka’s room the minute he arrives. Sokka’s hello gets drowned out by Aang’s squealing and Zuko’s hollered protests.
See, Prince Zuko’s been captured by the Avatar. His sentence is the most aggressive hug of all time.
/
“So,” Toph says when the old gang reconvenes in her cabin, complete with one previously dead ex-archenemy. “You’re Rainbow.”
“I am not ‘Rainbow,’” Zuko intones. “Can’t I be something else, like...I don’t know, ‘Sparky’?”
She snorts. “Let’s see. What else did Snoozles call you- ‘Translucent Boyfriend’? ‘Full of Balls’?”
“...Actually, ‘Rainbow’’s okay.”
Rubbing her hands together, she lets out a villainous cackle. “So, both of you. Spill.”
“About the duel?” Sokka chirps, even as he tucks his cold feet under Zuko’s now ever-toasty legs. “Okay, so picture Ozai storming out of the palace-“
“Boring.” Toph cuts him off with a wave of the hand. “Been there, heard that, the entire world’s talking about it.”
Zuko frowns. “Then what do you want to know?”
“How did the romance happen? I want all the gory details!”
Sokka and Zuko exchange glances.
“So Zuko definitely fell for me the first time we met, ‘cause I hit him with Boomerang and gave him catastrophic brain damage-“
“That’s not true,” Zuko says, prodding him in the side with his elbow. “I always knew that Sokka was brave. I mean, the first time we met, he went after my warship with a sword. And he had to be smart and strong, or he wouldn’t have survived traveling with the Avatar-”
“How did you first realize I was hot?” Sokka interrupts, batting his eyelashes as everyone else titters.
“Once I was haunting you, I didn’t have a choice,” Zuko answers, perfectly deadpan. “You kept making muscles at yourself in every mirror that went by.”
And now they’re all tittering at Sokka. He can’t bring himself to mind.
“And we all know Sokka’s crush started with the cactus juice,” Katara teases.
“Not quite,” he corrects. “I already knew Zuko was hot.”
Zuko eyes him skeptically. “Is that a pun?”
“Not an intentional one, but I like how you think,” he replies with a grin. “Do you remember the swamp?”
Katara and Aang groan. Sokka takes that as a yes.
“So I totally lied about seeing Yue in my vision.”
“Yep,” Zuko snorts.
“I actually saw Zuko,” he elaborates. “I thought it was a version of him who’d never exist, but now I bet it’s him in just a few years.” He reaches out to brush Zuko’s scalp, now fuzzy all around the ponytail. “He’d grown out his hair and remembered how to smile, and I thought he was the prettiest boy I’d ever seen in my life.”
As Toph and Katara coo, Zuko blushes bright-red and buries his face in his hands.
“But that’s all about things on the outside,” Aang points out. “What about his inner qualities?”
“Yeah,” Toph says. “When did you catch real mushy feelings?”
Sokka’s wondered that himself.
“It happened over time for me.” He steals a glance at Zuko. “But if I had to pick a moment...there was a thing with a baby turtleduck.”
Zuko doesn’t look up from where he’s hiding his face.
“I know exactly when and why,” he says, muffled. “It was his rant against that version of Love Amongst the Dragons.”
Katara and Aang just look confused, while Toph tosses her head back and laughs raucously. But Zuko’s slumping like he legitimately wants to hide, and Sokka decides to divert some of the fire.
“And then in Boiling Rock? He kept boiling water so I wouldn’t freeze in the cooler,” Sokka says. “So you could say things got pretty...steamy.”
Right on cue, Katara, Aang, and Toph start groaning and complaining about his pun quality, and Sokka starts reminding them that he was made Fire Lord for his pun quality, he is the official Pun Lord of the world, the Pun-ix King. Zuko laughs helplessly in the middle of it all.
/
Katara sent a message to Iroh, the minute the healers knew Zuko would live. When the reply comes, Zuko holds the scroll like it’s precious, re-reading it until he’s memorized every character.
The letter’s addressed to both Zuko and Sokka. It contains an offer of adoption, an official apology for a case of wrongful imprisonment, and an invitation to hold a second wedding ceremony of royal proportions.
“The writing feels cold,” Sokka says. “Does it feel cold? Does your uncle-slash-potential-father hate me?”
“Royal correspondence always sounds funny,” Zuko assures him. “But I would’ve died to get this warm of a letter from my father.”
“You did die for that.”
“...Yeah.”
(They write back, promising to think about another wedding ceremony.)
(“This time we can have meat!”)
/
Zuko starts practicing firebending, well-hidden for the comfort of the Northern Water Tribe. Sokka joins him though, providing encouragement and general good company. Sometimes, when Sokka gets close, Zuko’s flame starts flickering with streaks of pink and purple and green.
“What does that mean?” Sokka asks.
“Uncle will know for sure,” Zuko says with a shrug. “But it’s probably just a ghost thing.”
/
“Sokka!”
Katara calls him from the edge of the weapons training grounds- Sokka’s been brushing up his sword skills, because Zuko’s promised to train him in the mystic arts of dual-wielding as soon as he’s back to full health.
“What happened?” he hollers back.
“Dad’s coming! They just spotted his ships on the horizon, he must’ve heard we were here!”
Sokka drops everything. Katara runs straight to the harbor, but he makes a side trip to the infirmary, where Zuko’s in a private healing session. Sokka leaves a note with one of the healers outside about the news.
The ships simultaneously pull in, and by the time Sokka gets to the harbor and finds that out, Dad’s disembarked and gone to meet Chief Arnook. It’s quite the chase- more Zuko’s specialty than his- but eventually Sokka asks enough people to learn that Dad’s now catching up with Katara in a private chamber within the palace. Sokka traipses down the hall towards that room...
“-so much destruction. I hated him, Dad. I know Aang wouldn’t want that, but I really hated Zuko, and everything he stood for.”
Sokka stops still outside the door.
“And yes, I felt awful about what happened to him- what we did to him- but it didn’t make it easier to see him getting close to Sokka. There’s been girls, from the Water Tribe and the Earth Kingdom, and it would’ve been so much easier if Sokka just dated one of them instead.”
“You’re using the past tense, Katara.” Dad’s voice rings through the hall, deep and warm and just like he remembered it, and Sokka’s at risk of tearbending again. “What changed your mind?”
There’s a pause.
“Zuko did. Ozai said they were well-matched in intellect, and he meant that as an insult, but...I think it’s true. Sokka took down the Fire Lord with the worst pun he’s ever made, and Zuko took down the Fire Army’s communications systems with a bunch of cavehoppers-“
“And with cuddling,” Sokka says, at last crossing the threshold. “Can’t forget the importance of the cuddling.”
“Sokka!” Dad rises from his seat and envelops him in a hug before observing, “You’ve grown.”
“And I acquired an until-recently-dead husband,” Sokka says, when he sits down. “I admit I heard part of that conversation. Don’t worry-“ he turns to Katara- “everything you said is true, and I’m glad you put it out there.”
“You married Ozai’s son,” Dad remarks. His expression’s heavily guarded.
“I did.”
“Katara tells me it started off as a matter of necessity.”
“Still is,” Sokka says, trying to keep his tone casual. “I need Zuko in my life.”
A whole tangle of expressions fits across his dad’s face- surprise, doubt, and an undeniable dose of fear. What he says though is, “Is he like his father?”
Sokka’s brain short-circuits. It’s an eminently reasonable question, and he has no idea how to answer it. Because Zuko and Ozai share so much- the firebending and the drama and the nice hair and the fact that neither of them can dodge a boomerang on its way back. Because Zuko and Ozai have nothing in common, in the ways that matter.
“Hi?”
Sokka whips his head around to see Zuko.
“Zuko,” he says. “Darling. Sweetheart. Light of my life.”
(Zuko’s face lights up when he hears his name and then morphs into utter skepticism, the more pet names Sokka so publicly throws out.)
“Yes?”
“You’ve got your robe on backwards.”
Zuko looks down and realizes, yes, in his hurry to get here he totally wrapped the right side of his robe over the left. “Right. Thanks. Give me a minute to jump off the nearest gondola.”
He backpedals out the door to fix it.
Sokka turns back to his dad. “I think you have your answer.”
Dad’s still looking at the doorway where Zuko was standing. He’s now fighting clear amusement.
“Look,” Sokka says, knowing full well that Zuko can still hear him, “you’re at least half as scared of him as he is of you. Which is a lot. But Zuko would never do anything to hurt you, and-“ he twists around to face the door- “you meeting my dad can’t go any worse than me meeting your dad!”
“Well, sure, we’re not trying to take over the Southern Water Tribe!” Zuko calls back, voice echoing in the hallway.
“The Southern Water Tribe appreciates that,” Dad says, raising his voice too.
Katara giggles.
When Zuko returns, properly dressed and properly flustered, Dad rises to clasp his arm in greeting. “I’ve heard a lot about you and my children, but I’ll wait to pass judgment until I’ve heard the real story from the three of you.”
The two of them sit on either side of Sokka.
“Go ahead,” Dad says. “Fill me in.”
Katara takes a deep breath. “Alright. So it began here, at the North Pole, on a dark and stormy night-“
“It did not,” Zuko interrupts. “We can’t erase my mistakes, and that means it began on a clear day at the South Pole-“
“Hey,” Sokka yelps. “If we’re telling the whole story, we’re doing it properly. It began about three years ago in the Fire Nation when Ozai woke up and said, ‘I want to win the award for Worst Father Ever-'"
Zuko rolls his eyes. “If you’re going back that far, you might as well go to my grandfather!”
“Great idea! So, Dad, it all began many years back in this royal Fire Nation garden with an adorable flock of baby turtleducks…”