Archive of Our Own

For somebody whose literal job is the internet, the WiFi at Sokka’s house sucks, and by house he of course means shitty one bedroom apartment in a dodgy part of town with windows that let all the cold air in and a ceiling that leaks and floorboards that creak and an elevator that has literally never worked once in the year and a half he’s been living there that, quite frankly, his landlord should be paying him to live in.  It’s for this reason that he knows every coffee shop within a distance he can justify walking like the back of his hand, specifically the ones with free WiFi and drinks that aren’t so expensive they don’t make him question why he doesn’t just accept the bump in rent a better apartment would cost him.  He films at home and writes and edits in coffee shops and tries a new order every time he does because he hates to think that there is something amazing out there that he’s missing out on because he’s too stuck in his own ways.

It’s noon which, considering Sokka is his own boss working on his own schedule and he has maybe two friends in the city (thank you Teo and Haru, for putting up with him), is basically dawn by Sokka standards.  Honestly, he’s impressed with himself and, as he walks to the tiny hole in the wall café that marks the very farthest point he is willing to consider a reasonable walking distance, he is thinking very much about the bottle of cheap rosé he is going to reward himself with and not the dirty, familiar streets he is walking.  Which is exactly how he ends up walking into the stranger going the opposite way up the street.

It’s like it happens in slow motion as he feels a hard shoulder bump up against his own, sees the pale hand peeking out of the sleeve of an overlarge brown leather jacket and the smartphone it holds go flying in a clumsy arc through the air, disconnecting the wire from the jack ( seriously?  Who still uses wired headphones? ), before it clatters onto the sidewalk.  The moment is agonising because Sokka knows he cannot afford to have to replace this stranger’s phone.

“Oh my God!” he says, the moment his brain has had a second to catch up.  He hears a familiar voice, the audio playing from the phone continuing once the headphones have been unplugged.  It’s an old thing, much smaller than Sokka’s (and it still has a headphone jack!  That’s basically the technological equivalent of a vestigial organ!), and it has landed face up, the industrial-looking case thankfully bearing the brunt of the damage.  “I’m so sorry!”

The stranger waves his pale hands frantically.  “No, no,” he says, voice warm and raspy and pleasant, “it’s okay!  It’s my fault!”  Sokka bends down to pick up the phone anyway and quickly realises that sound is beyond familiar.

“Why have I not covered the exsanguinator in Chicago yet?” the tinny, quiet voice from the phone’s speaker says.  “Good question!” Sokka knows that voice so well because it is his.  This random stranger is listening to his podcast.  Which is surreal but not necessarily stalkerish or otherwise terrifying.  The cover image on Spotify and whatever the Apple platform is called now and everywhere else he posts his podcast is a simple illustration and, even though he posts the video recordings to his YouTube channel, the numbers indicate that, even though a lot of people listen to his podcast, not many of them would actually recognise him on the street.  If he doesn’t say anything else this guy probably won’t either and his day can go exactly as he’s planned it. Still, a part of him wants the guy to recognise him, maybe because it has only ever happened to him once before and it’d be nice to feel a little bit famous on this dingy side street without any of the drawbacks of being actually famous.

So long as the stranger isn’t actually a stalker, he supposes.  Reading and writing and talking about true crime all day every day can make a person a little paranoid about these things, Sokka has discovered.

Sokka looks up at the stranger to give him back his phone and the second the two of them meet eyes, Sokka knows that this guy knows exactly who he is.  So he figures in for a penny, in for a pound.

“I haven’t talked about the Chicago exsanguinator case yet because it’s still ongoing,” he says in lieu of something along the lines of the arguably much more appropriate here you go he maybe should have opted for.  The stranger fumbles his phone as soon as it is back in his hands, almost dropping it a second time.  He looks at Sokka and seems truly starstruck for a moment before he shakes his head and pulls himself together.  Sokka watches him shake his long dark hair slightly loose from the ponytail he has it in, reaching up a hand that acts as though it is tucking a loose strand behind his ear but that lingers instead over the scar on the left side of his face as though covering it.  It’s a gnarly scar, not ugly necessarily but definitely intriguing, and Sokka has to bite back the rising urge to ask about it because he knows that would be wildly inappropriate.

“What?” the stranger says after a moment of silence.

“I know I’ve covered unsolved cases before but they’re all long-cold, y’know?  The exsanguinator is still active and I don’t want to cover them until we know who they actually are and-” he’s starting to ramble.  This is why he writes scripts for his podcast.  He doesn’t necessarily follow them word for word but they keep him more or less on track.  The stranger holds out a placating hand.  It is bony and slender and has the edges of a scar peeking up by the wrist that almost matches the big one on his face that has made one of his eyes narrow and clouded over.

“This is really weird,” the guy decides, finally pausing the podcast.  It is an old one of Sokka’s Q&As that he sometimes makes when the real episode is taking an especially long time, usually because it is shaping up to be absurdly long.  They get a fraction of the views that the regular episodes do but it is better than nothing.

Sokka is quite inclined to agree.  “I’m Sokka,” he introduces with what he hopes is a winning smile even though it is uncaffeinated which has probably distorted it into more of a grimace.  “With an -okka.”  He pauses.  “You knew that, huh?”  His podcast is literally called Sokka Tells You Things, not out of laziness but rather an extreme act of giving up that had followed Toph quite genuinely--or at least as genuinely as Toph Beifong can manage--suggesting naming it Melon Lord and him realising there were literally no good options that weren’t already taken.

“Yeah,” the stranger says,  he is sort of half smiling, closed mouth and no teeth on show.  “Zuko,” he introduces, presumably a name.  “I thought you lived in Canada?”

Sokka shakes his head.  It aches a bit.  That might mean he’s addicted to caffeine but now’s not the time to think about that.  “I’m from Canada. I started the podcast when I still lived there but I moved here for college and…” he shrugs.  He’s just never gone back.  He has his reasons but they aren’t exactly appropriate for a first conversation with a random stranger on the street.  “How long have you been listening?”

“A while,” Zuko admits.  He shoves his phone into a jacket pocket and starts counting off what Sokka can only assume are years on his fingers.  “Since I was nineteen, so five years ago,”

“Huh, cool, we’re the same age.” Sokka pauses.  “It’s actually really weird to think I’ve been doing it for almost seven years now.”

“And yet you’ve always got more cases to talk about,” Zuko says somewhat ruefully.  “Sometimes I like to rewatch the old episodes and see how much they’ve improved since,”

Sokka’s eyebrows shoot up.  “That’s dedication.  I think if I tried to listen back to my Zodiac episode I’d die of embarrassment,” and yet he keeps it up on the internet.  When he thinks about it he realises he isn’t sure why.  Zuko laughs, a sort of thin, reedy sound but hardly one that Sokka minds listening to.

“I like the Zodiac episode,” Zuko says and a part of Sokka wonders if it is meant to sound like reassurance because it absolutely does not, “but I tend to prefer the solved cases.  The psychology and the history behind the criminals is the most interesting thing to me, you know?”  Zuko shrugs kind of lamely but Sokka does know.

“I completely agree.  You have no idea how much time I spend researching these things,”

“It’s worth it.  At least I think so.  Sorry this is kind of really weird, isn’t it?”

“Yeah,” Sokka shrugs, “but I have a pretty high tolerance for weirdness by this point,”  Zuko makes a noise in the back of his throat, some kind of half-aborted laugh, and Sokka decides in for a penny, in for a pound: he may as well make this weirder because at least it’s kind of fun and he should probably know people who aren’t Haru and Teo after he has lived here for all the years he has.  “Don’t feel obliged to say yes but I was on my way to get coffee and do some editing if you’d want to join me.  You're probably like a real person with a real job so if you don’t want to or you can’t or you hate me now that you’ve met me live and unscripted it’s whatever-”
“I’m more of a tea person.”

“I think coffee shops usually serve tea,”

“Hmm,”

“Hmm?  What’s hmm?  Is that a yes?”

“Just know I’ll be judging your choice of coffee shop very harshly.  You could lose a loyal listener over one bad decision,”

“Ooh, stakes,” Sokka laughs.  “Please tell me you don’t have an issue with cheap drinks and free internet?”

“That’s how I survived college,”

“Did you go to college here too?” Sokka finds himself walking, continuing on as he had intended to before he crashed right into Zuko who is walking next to him now, listening to him as he talks, this time without the need for his headphones.

“No.  I lived here for a few years as a teenager, went to college in New York and moved back.”

“You chose this over New York?”

“It smells better.”

Sokka buys something iced and larger than his head and Zuko buys a hot chai latte that doesn’t look completely ridiculous when he drinks from it and they talk until Zuko really does have to leave for his real person job.

“If I give you my number you aren’t going to, like, post it on the internet or anything, right?  Because I don’t think I could survive having to explain to my friends back home why I’ve had to change it.”

Zuko laughs, just a short chuckle but one he doesn’t choke back this time.  “I give you my word that I will do no such thing,” he says, rolling his eyes.  They’re a nice colour, a not-quite brown that is almost amber.  “I kind of can’t believe I actually met you today.”

“Well I can’t believe I might have actually made a new friend.  I’m kinda shockingly bad at that,”

“I’m not sure I believe you.”

“ Believe me,” Sokka says, “It’s actually pretty tragic.”

He only gets a fraction of the work he had intended to get done that day finished but he decides that the newest addition to his meagre list of contacts is worth it.

They text a lot.  Zuko isn’t particularly good at it but it doesn’t matter, in fact it’s almost funny how many acronyms and initialisms Sokka has had to explain over the past couple of weeks.  At some point he asks Sokka if the fact that they’re becoming friends gives him access to privileged information such as what the next episode is going to be about and there is a moment where he worries that Zuko wouldn’t like him if it wasn’t for the podcast.  He convinces himself that is a stupid, insecure thing to think though, and sends back I finally decided to cover the John Wayne Gacy case and I’m just gonna say yikes.

Yikes indeed.  In more ways than one.  He has hours of footage to cut down and the more he listens to his voice the more it sounds like he is mispronouncing every other word and all of his many ( many!) hours of work are turning out completely unusable.  Part of him thinks he only told Zuko because now he can’t just delete the whole lot and start over from scratch with a different case that’s a little less massive.  There’s something that’s especially intimidating about these big cases as well, the high-profile ones that draw in people who don’t listen to him normally who might hate his voice or his sense of humour or the way he formats his content or literally anything else he does.  He prefers the smaller cases generally, likes telling stories that haven’t been told thousands of times already, learning about them for the first time when he is doing his research.  The big ones are how he grows his audience though, so he has to make them occasionally.

My uncle owns a tea shop. Zuko texts him one day, apropos of nothing.  Sokka puzzles over it for a moment.

Tell him I say congrats? He sends back.  Then after another moment he adds unless this is an invite, in which case send me an address and learn how to say things rather than hinting at them. I'm begging you.

And that’s how he ends up at the Jasmine Dragon which is a solid ten minutes outside of his usual reasonable walking range, examining trinkets and plants balanced along the windowsills from his place in a line which is slow-moving but not actually very long.  It’s homey and comfortable and the smell in the air is heavy but pleasant and his mouth is watering.  For the first time in his life he’s actually a little early but he’d been bored without enough time to do anything and he decided being early was better than doing nothing until he’d eventually be on time.

He’s just far enough away from the cash register that he can’t quite read the menu mounted above the counter.  Technically he’s a little short sighted but he has never met a pair of glasses he didn’t hate so he tends to pretend that he isn’t.  It doesn’t stop him from trying though, squinting and leaning as far forwards as he can without making the whole ordeal incredibly awkward for himself or the person in front of him.

“Are you okay?” someone behind him asks and he startles so suddenly that he almost smashes the back of his head straight into their face.

“Jesus!” he puts his hand on his heart, always one for melodrama.  “Zuko, hi.  Are you some kind of ninja or something?”

“What?”

“Do you not have footsteps?  Do you float?”

“I don’t think so.” he squints at Sokka for a moment.  “Can you not read the menu from here?”

“No and before you say anything about me needing glasses, trust me my sister has said it already, probably a hundred times over,”

Zuko looks at him unimpressed.  “I don’t have a leg to stand on.” He points at the left side of his face, expression entirely blank.  “Your vision is definitely better than mine.”

“Right… So I guess it’s too much to hope that you can read it from here?  Pretty please tell me that you know the menu from memory for some reason,”

“More or less.  I worked here for a few years after I moved in with Uncle,”

“Oh thank God.  What was it like?  Working here?”

“Awful.” He smiles in a way that is so wobbly and obviously forced that it looks like it hurts.  “I’m not made for customer service.”

“No shit.”

“I think those are the exact words I said to an old lady who complained after she’d spent an hour sitting on her phone that her tea had gone cold,”

Sokka snorts.  “How polite.”

“I can be very polite.  Sometimes.  I struggle with annoying people.”

“How are you putting up with me?”

“I’m basically a saint.”

“If you’re a saint I must be Jesus Christ himself,”

“I’m pretty sure that’s blasphemy,”

“I’m pretty sure I don’t care.  Now come on, I need you to recite this menu by rote in your best customer service voice,”

“I’d rather do the whole thing in a Kermit the Frog impression,”

“Well, if you’re offering…”

“I’m not.”

“Really?  Because I’m pretty sure you just did,”

It takes a long while for either of them to ask about the other’s family.  It isn’t the sort of thing Sokka wants to bring up because, as much as he wants to learn about Zuko, talking about his family is never his favourite thing, at least not for a long while, over a decade now.  When it does happen it doesn’t go the way he expects it to, the way it usually goes.  The first difference is that Sokka is the one who cracks first and finally asks.

“I know you’re close with your uncle,” he says.  In the couple of months they’ve known each other it is far from the first time he has thought it but it is the first time he decides to ask the question.  “Do you have any other family?”

“No,” Zuko says a bit too quickly.  “Not anymore.” It isn’t an answer which lends itself to further questions so Sokka doesn’t ask them.  “What about you?  I know you have a sister.  Any other family back in Canada?”

“Just my dad,” Sokka thinks for a moment and decides he really does want to tell Zuko at least some of the truth.  It isn’t the sort of thing that lends itself to subtlety though, so he decides to forgo any attempt at it and just come right out with it.  “My mom was murdered when I was a kid.”

There are a lot of different ways that people react to that and Sokka is horribly and intimately familiar with each and every one of them.  The pitying looks and the uncomfortable silences and the empty apologies and the lacklustre attempts at relating, he knows them all inside and out and back to front.  He watches Zuko closely to see which it is he will default to first.

“Oh,” he says and Sokka keeps waiting, “mine too.”  That’s a new one.

Sokka has met plenty of members of the Dead Mom Club in his life but he has learned through a lot of very awkward experiences that the Murdered Mom Club is more exclusive.  It has always just been him and Katara but now he has finally found a third member.

“Oh,” he says back.  He’s starting to understand all those awkward responses he’s garnered over the years a little bit more because he really doesn’t know what to say.  There’s no way to fix this problem and he bites back the urge to apologise because he always hates when people do that to him.  “It’s still unsolved,” he supplements.

“My father did it,” Zuko offers in return.

“That’s rough buddy,” Sokka winces.  Zuko hums.  He looks almost strange sitting in Sokka’s apartment, too put together for a space so rundown but he makes no complaints and just sinks further into the couch.  It feels too soft suddenly, like the fabric is all wrong and the air is turning stale even though he has the windows cracked open.

“He tried to kill me too,” Zuko says after a moment that feels like an eternity that has been all stretched out and then clumsily compressed back down. It is like he has decided that today is the day where they get the uncomfortable conversations out of the way, where they talk about all the things that hurt and it will all be horrible but only for now, only until it is right again.  It’s an important day to have if they’re going to go on being as close as they have been in the months they’ve known each other but it won’t be a particularly nice one.

“Is that…?” Sokka trails off, making a vague gesture at Zuko and wondering how much he’s actually allowed to say.

“Is that what the scar is?” Sokka likes Zuko’s voice usually but right now it just sounds tired, lacking in its usual warmth.  “Yeah, that’s what it is.”

“Do you know why he killed her?” He wonders if it’s the wrong thing to say only after he has asked it.  He has spent a very long time wondering the same thing, wondering why his mother was there one day and gone the next, why someone would take her from him, from Katara, from their father who has not for one single day been the same since.

“She killed my grandfather,” Zuko tells him.  Sokka blinks so hard he goes out of focus and then continues blinking until he comes back into it.  He squints.

“How many murderers are there in your immediate family?”

And Zuko actually counts on his fingers like he is genuinely considering the question and he doesn’t know the answer right away.  Sokka isn’t sure whether what he is swallowing is the urge to laugh or the urge to cry.  “Three or four?”  Against his will, Sokka’s face shifts, his eyes widening and his eyebrows shooting upward as his jaw drops.  Zuko sighs.  “This is going to be a conversation, ” he warns.  Sokka doesn’t doubt that.

“I’m all ears.”

“My mother killed my grandfather because he wanted to kill me so my father killed her,” he recaps.  “That makes three,”

“So your grandfather would have actually killed you?”

“Undoubtedly.  I wouldn’t be his first.  My mother wasn’t a cruel woman.”

“She was protecting you,” Sokka agrees empathically.

“Sometimes I wonder what would’ve happened if she hadn’t.”  Zuko closes his eyes and shakes his head, looking at his hands like they are someone else’s.  “I went to live with my uncle after my father tried to kill me and I knew what he had done to my mother long before then but there wasn’t actually any proof so it didn’t really matter what I knew.  I was a real nightmare when I first came to Uncle.  He didn’t hold it against me.  A few years later I decided that I wanted my father to face what he had done to me and Uncle helped me.  And when they were investigating my claim, a lot of detective work and a lot more luck led them to a little more than they had been bargaining for.”

Sokka squints at him.  “What does that mean?”

“My name is Zuko Satō,”

“I know that,” Sokka nods, more than a little confused.

“It wasn’t always,” he says.  “When I decided I wanted nothing to do with my father I ditched his name and picked the most commonplace surname I could think of,”

“Zuko, who is your father?”

He smiles ruefully.  “I’d bet good money that the name Ozai Sozin means something to you,”

It does.  “Ozai Sozin?  As in that Ozai Sozin?”

“Who else?”

Ozai Sozin whose name Sokka has heard many times in his True Crime circle, read in plenty of emails and comments recommending topics for his next episodes, whose case he has looked into just enough to know there isn’t enough publicly available on him to do the story justice.  Ozai Sozin: the serial killer who they caught by accident when nobody even knew there was a serial killer to catch.  “Of course,” Sokka echoes, feeling like he might be a million miles away from where his body sits on his crappy old couch.  “So who’s the maybe fourth?”

“What?”

“You said there were three or four murderers in your immediate family.  We’ve covered three.”

Zuko makes a funny sort of face at him.  “My sister.  Did she help my father?  Was he training her to kill too?  Who knows?  Not me!”  He deflates as though he has been popped.  “When our father got caught it was as though she crashed.  She’s in long-term psychiatric care right now, I don’t know if they’re going to try her or what.  I kind of don’t want to.  She’s been mean for as long as I can remember but she’s also my little sister.  I don’t know, I just don’t like to think that she’s actually the same as him.  He burned her too, just less,”

“Is it, like, completely lame and insensitive of me to say ‘that’s rough’ again?”

“It was lame and insensitive the first time,” Zuko is half-smiling as he says it.  Thank God.  “You can ask about it.  If you want.  I know it’s…” he trails off and grits his teeth.

“It is,” Sokka agrees.  “Does it help?  I know it isn’t the same, but does it help that you know what happened to your mom?”

“I don’t know.  I’ve kind of always known what happened to her but I’ve never actually understood it.  Nothing about my father makes sense to me.  I was trying to make sense of him when I got into True Crime.  There are actually other people who are a little bit like him and making sense of them might help me make a little more sense of him.  I feel like he owes me that much.”

“An explanation?  Zuko, he owes you a hell of a lot more than that,”

“Well I’m not getting it either way,”

“I did the same thing, kinda,” Sokka admits.  “With the true crime and the podcast and all of it.  If I could learn what was going through people’s heads when they did those things…”

“Then you just might be able to figure out your mother’s killer.”

“No real luck though,”

The most Zuko can offer him is an expression that is half smile and half grimace and a barely optimistic “Yet,” but it’s not exactly like Sokka has anything to offer him either so he accepts it.

“Ever since the news broke on the Ozai Sozin case there have been listeners who have asked me to cover it.  Now I’m flattered that you like my storytelling enough to want that but there has never been enough published on the case for me to put together an episode that I’d actually be happy with.  I guess the universe also kinda wanted me to make the Sozin episode though, because I quite literally ran into an inside source who has been more than helpful in putting this together.

“My source will remain anonymous but just so people don’t assume the worst, no I have not sat down with Ozai Sozin in his prison cell with a little notebook and pen; they are completely innocent in this no question about it.  Please do not ask me who they are, I will not be telling.  Cool thanks.  As always, a portion of all profits made from these episodes go to relevant charities because I’m cool like that and with all that out of the way, let’s begin!

“Most of these stories don’t have happy beginnings, or ends or middles.  It’s kind of what you sign up for when you decide to listen to a true crime pod, sorry guys.  This one is no different.  Now I’m going to preface a bunch of this with a big ol’ ‘Allegedly’, not because I don’t trust my source  because I promise you that I do, but because I generally prefer not to get sued.”

It’s Yue day.  It happens every year exactly six months after Kya day in what feels like a purposeful attempt from the universe to screw him over.  It has done an awfully good job of that.  Theirs were very different sorts of deaths but those awful days still feel much the same, like from one sunrise to the next there is only him and the grief and the shaky peace treaty he has to negotiate between them to get through to the next year’s.

Whereas his mother disappeared one day, stolen before anybody could confront the thought of losing her, Yue went slowly.  He watched her fade piece by piece until she wasn’t Yue then more and more until everybody that loved her was dressed in dreary black and huddled around a box that didn’t really have her in it at her father’s insistence despite the months she had spent telling Sokka and anybody else who would listen that she wanted them all in bright blue at her funeral.  Her hair was almost half black at her open casket and all her clothes were much too big for what was left of her.  She’d lasted longer than anybody had thought she would, had more of herself to give away than they’d thought.  It wasn’t enough.

He remembers the last time she bleached her hair because the stain is still on his bath mat and he still can’t bring himself to buy a new one.  It has been eight years and it is ragged and ugly and barely does its job anymore and it does not match a single other thing he owns but he still has to keep it because she had been given six more months and the day before her expiry period was over his first love had dyed her hair one last time in his bathroom because her parents hovered too much when she was at home and she wanted to get out one last time, wanted to die looking like herself.

He probably wouldn’t have kept the bath mat had he had anything else of her to remember her by but her parents hadn’t let him have a single thing even though she had promised him her necklace and her hair pins and anything else of hers he needed to cope with losing her.  Now all he has of her is a bleach stain on an orange bath mat that used to be fluffy and is now just sad, one terrible drawing she did of a polar bear that looks more like an especially rotund cat, and a bunch of old photos of her and a version of himself that, with every passing Yue day, becomes less and less like him. Yue died slowly and predictably and gave him more time than he’d ever thought he would have with her and still he didn’t manage to hold onto more of her than an amorphous blob on a bath mat.

He doesn’t know why he does it--maybe just because the silence is too overwhelming but when he turned on the TV for background noise it was so benign it started driving him crazy and he doesn’t want to bother Teo and Haru because he knows they’re both at work and he doesn’t want to bother Katara because she has grief of her own and he doesn’t talk to her often enough these days when he doesn’t need something from her--but he finds himself calling Zuko in the early evening.  They text and they hang out but they don’t do phone calls and he thinks, as the phone rings and rings, that Zuko might just not pick up at all.  It puts an odd hollow feeling in his stomach for the moment it lasts.

“Hello?” Zuko sounds tired.

“Shit sorry,” Sokka’s voice sounds like someone else’s.  Eight years since he last heard it he isn’t sure he remembers what Yue’s sounded like at all.  “You’re not at work are you?”

“No,” Sokka can picture Zuko on the other side of the phone, sitting on his sofa in his nice neat apartment that’s barely bigger than Sokka’s but that lets in a lot less weather from outside, shaking his head, his hair long and loose and a little bit tangled around his shoulders.  “I worked the earlier shift today.  I’ve been home for about an hour.  Are you okay?”

“It’s the anniversary of Yue’s death,” Sokka swallows.  “Could you just speak to me?”

“About what?”

“Anything.”

“Anything?”

“Please,”

“I don’t have many fun stories,”

“Then tell me something that isn’t fun,”

“Like what?”

“Can you tell me about your mom?”

“Okay umm… well, the anniversary of her death is coming up soon but I think I might miss her more on the holidays.  When I was a kid I only ever knew it was Christmas because she’d be baking and the whole house would smell like burnt, barely edible gingerbread.  She was terrible at baking.  A fantastic cook though.  I think she thought recipes were stifling,” Zuko half laughs and Sokka feels like perhaps the easiest thing he could do right now is listen to him.

“Do you ever get sick of me stealing your wifi?”

“It’s not really stealing if I’m letting you use it, Sokka,”

“I think you just do it to get sneak peeks at the episodes before anybody else,”

“Obviously,”

“I don’t know how you aren’t sick of my voice,”

“Who says I’m not?”

“The fact that you still listen to my podcast implies it pretty heavily,”

“Oh I know! How dare I like my friend!” Zuko rolls his eyes and absolutely oozes sarcasm and Sokka decides to ignore the weird way his stomach flips.

“I’m sick of my voice,”

“Well it’d be pretty sad if you were your own friend,”

“The fact that I have three friends is also pretty sad,”

“Uncle would be absolutely distraught that you aren’t including him.  And you have friends back in Canada too,”

“Friends I don’t see or talk to,”  He misses them but he hardly feels lonely these days.  He spends more time with Zuko than he has maybe anybody else in his life who he didn’t quite literally live with.  And still he looks forward to every hang out like he hasn’t seen Zuko in months.

“I feel like that’s easily fixed,”

“Since when are you an expert on friendship?  Am I not literally your only friend who isn’t also your uncle?”

“Jet?”

“Have there been some serious advances in the medical field I haven’t heard about?  ‘Cos I swear I remember Jet being very dead,”

“Ugh.  Why did I agree to cook you dinner and let you use my wifi again?”

“Agree?  I’m pretty certain you offered,”

Zuko scowls at him for a moment then gets up from his space on the sofa with his legs folded compactly beneath him.  “I’m putting Carolina reaper in your food,”

“Sure you are,”

“Try me,”

“There is no way you have the world’s hottest peppers to hand,”

Zuko smiles slyly at him.  “Have you forgotten who you’re talking to?”

Sokka looks at him probingly for a moment then holds his hands up in surrender.  “Okay, man, I take it back.  Sometimes I don’t think your family murder gene actually skipped you,”

“And yet here you are, alive,”

“For now,”

“Do you think my family actually has a murder gene?”

“I have no idea dude, but if any family does, it’s yours,”

“What about the Milats?”

“Sometimes I forget that there’s finally someone in my life who knows as much about this stuff as I do.  I’m starting to see why Gran Gran was always calling me weird,”

“Hey!”

“I still can’t believe you don’t have a car,”

“I can’t believe you’ve seen my apartment and think I can afford a car,”

“I’m consistently very impressed by the amount of money that you donate to charity in spite of that,”

“Thank you.  Nothing makes me want to be a less charitable man than having to listen to your music any time you drive me anywhere,”

“My music is great,”

“Your music is either sad and angry or sad and sad.  Melancholia is unsurprisingly not all that much fun, Zuko,”

“I like the lyrics.  I also like musicals!  Those aren’t melancholy,”

“They also aren’t good,”

“You don’t believe that,”

“I very much do,”

“I’m taking you to see one.  They’re always better when you experience them properly,”

“Zuko!”

“Don’t ‘Zuko !’ me,”

“Well that’s your name, isn’t it?”

“I’m ignoring you.  As soon as we get to the minigolf place I’m seeing what shows are on locally next week.  I don’t need to ask to know that your schedule is embarrassingly open and flexible,”

Sokka sighs.  “You suck.  It’s a reluctant date,”

Zuko pauses.  “Is minigolf a date?”

Sokka narrows his eyes.  “Do you want it to be a date?”

“Do you ?”

“Are we going to go in a circle like this forever?”

“Not if you just answer my very simple yes/no question,”

“And would you prefer I did that with a yes or a no?”

“Sokka!”

“Don’t ‘ Sokka!’ me,”

“Don’t use my words against me.  Just answer my question,”

“Or you could answer mine,”

“Well one of us has a family murder gene,”

“Are you threatening me?”

“I’m incentivising you,”

“That sounds like a threat,”

“That doesn’t sound like a yes or a no,”

“Fine!  Yes!  I’d like for this to be a date!”

“Oh, thank God,” Zuko sighs in relief and looks down for just long enough that Sokka is worried he’s going to crash.

“Hey, eyes on the road!  Please don’t kill us before I get to take you out,”

“You think you’re taking me out?”

“Was I not just the one who asked you on a date?”

“Hardly.  And I’m driving you to minigolf.  I think that implies that I’m taking you out,”

“If I’d known you’d be this annoying about it I never would’ve asked you out,”

“Yes you would have,”

“Yes I would’ve,”

The thing about Zuko is that he’s smart and mostly capable and if Sokka didn’t know any better he would ask his very kind and occasionally even sweet boyfriend to help him put together content.  If he had a little help he might be able to maintain a more regular upload schedule and he knows Zuko would be willing to help.  Really the only problem is that he has technological skills in tune with those of Uncle Iroh and, as much as Sokka likes the old man, that is far, far from a compliment.  So, since he doesn’t want all of his content accidentally deleted, the most help he asks Zuko for is the use of his actually good wifi and his main room that doesn’t have the distracting multi-directional drafts that Sokka’s does.  There isn’t even a leak-containing bucket in the corner, no droplets of water splattering loudly on its metal bottom.

The only thing about Zuko’s living room is that Zuko is there and, even when he isn’t striking up conversation, Sokka finds him infinitely more distracting than any bitter draft or noisy bucket.  This isn’t a new thing that has accompanied the change in their relationship but now that Sokka can’t see a reason to be insecure or secretive about it he finds himself looking over often, paying no mind as to whether or not Zuko is looking right at him as he watches him.  He watches Zuko read the subtitles of a Korean TV show he is watching and he watches Zuko bundle his hair high up on his head into a bun that is almost shockingly neat for the minimal effort he puts into it.  He watches the way the corners of his eyes crinkle when something interesting happens in the show, watches him laugh even though Sokka can barely hear the sound through his heavy-duty headphones that are just shy of noise-cancelling, watches the way Zuko’s hands are never quite still and watches him fold and unfold his legs in various ways until he finds the most uncomfortable-looking position to settle in.

He can hear himself talking about Fritz Haarmann but he isn’t actually listening and he’s going to have to go back through all of this footage again so, at this point, he may as well just give up but when he takes the headphones off they’ll start up a conversation and he’ll have to stop watching so he hangs on for another few minutes, his own voice little more than drivel in his ears.  Sokka can only see Zuko’s right eye from here, the way his long, dark eyelashes brush over the tops of his cheeks as he looks down at the chipping nail polish on his hands Sokka had painted on a week prior.  The light in this room is too bright and too harsh and the second neither of them is trying to get anything done they will switch it off and navigate the space with only whatever light the TV, the table lamp and a single scented candle can provide for them.  Right now with his skin as pale as it is, Zuko may as well be glowing, all shiny dark hair and white light.  In the grand scheme of things he hasn’t been in Sokka’s life for very long and the more he thinks about that the more wrong it seems.

He takes his headphones off and shuts the laptop and stretches his legs across the sofa to tuck his feet under Zuko’s thigh because they are cold and that man is like a walking furnace.

“You almost done?”

“I’m giving up,” Sokka corrects.  “For now.  Can we just watch 9-1-1 and order takeout?”

“You know me so well,”

“I’m just trying to seduce you,” he wiggles his fluffy sock-clad toes against Zuko’s leg.  “Is it working?”

“Totally,” Zuko rolls his eyes but leans over to meet him halfway in a kiss anyway.  It’s sweet and pretty chaste and Sokka feels a bit like his knees have been kicked out from underneath him anyway because he hasn’t really been in a relationship since he was with Suki in college and they ended up deciding they were better off as friends and then proceed to fall more or less out of touch.  He should reconnect with her.  He should reconnect with a lot of people.

“I think I want to tell my sister about you,”

“I won’t tell mine about you,”

Sokka nods sagely.  “Thank you for that.  I could video call Katara right now and introduce you.  It’d really be that easy.  Do you want me to?”

“I’d love to meet your sister,”

Sokka squints.  “He says, like he is staring down a firing line.  You don’t have to if you don’t want to, Zuko, it’s really okay,”

“I do want to, it’s just…”

“Family,” Sokka finishes for him.

“It’s weird that you finish my sentences,”

“That’s not true.  I finished one of your sentences.  I can try to make a habit of it if you’d like,”

“I don’t think I would.  I would like to speak to your sister though.  Just maybe not the same day as she learns I exist,”

“I can do that.  But just so you know, as soon as Katara finds out so does Aang and as soon as Aang finds out everybody knows.  Including my dad,”

“Are you trying to convince me to tell you not to tell your sister?”

“Is it working?”

“ Yes!”

“I think she’ll like you,”

“Really?”

“Eventually.”

“I hate you,”

“And here I thought I was seducing you,”

“Two things can be true at once Sokka,”

“So I’m pretty sure most of the people listening to this podcast are at least a little familiar with the recent Chicago Exsanguinator case.  A while back in one of my Q&A episodes I said I wouldn’t be covering this case until it was solved and seeing as the killer was recently convicted I think this might be the right time to do it.

“Before we get into it though, I have something I’d like to say.  I’m a little sentimental about this case actually, and you might be thinking ‘ wow Sokka that’s a really strange thing to think about serial killing’ and you’d be right to but my sentimentality has nothing to do with the case itself and more to do with that old Q&A of mine.  About a year and a half ago from when I’m recording this--to be honest I don’t know when I’m going to post this, I think we all know by now that schedules and I don’t gel--I literally bumped into a stranger in the street who was listening to that episode, specifically the moment when I was explaining why I had yet to cover today’s case.

“That stranger became a friend because, big shocker, the guy who spends all day reading and talking about murder doesn’t have the most exciting social life and I was getting a little desperate, and then eventually he became more than a friend.  So, yeah I guess this is also a coming out episode.  Surprise, I’m bisexual!  I don’t think that’s exactly standard for true crime podcasts but yeah, I met my boyfriend through my podcast.  The thing about my boyfriend is you’ve never met anybody as technologically inept as he is so he’s never helped me with the podcast, but in my biassed opinion he has a pretty nice voice and he can both read and write which pretty much qualifies him to help me put scripts together.  I also figure it’s about time I have a guest on here,”

“Hi, Zuko here… Oh that was awkward, please tell me you can cut that out and I record a better introduction,”

“I can but I won’t.  That’s staying in,”

“We’re breaking up,”

“That’s fine so long as I get the cat,”

“ My cat?”

“The cat we bought together who is definitely our cat when his litter needs to be changed, Zuko,”

“Fine, maybe I’m not breaking up with you,”

“Good to know.  Now, without further ado, as always a portion of all profits made from this podcast will go to charitable causes.  Let’s begin.  Today’s story begins in Winnipeg, Canada which is coincidentally where the much nicer story of my life also begins.  Hama Autut was born in 1950 and had a childhood that was, for all intents and purposes, pretty normal until she was about fifteen.”

When they started seriously discussing moving in together Sokka was quick to suggest that they keep Zuko’s apartment and leave his own for whoever was unlucky enough to think that the cheap rent made all of the place’s numerous downfalls worth it.  Zuko, who Sokka has always known has a good head on his shoulders, didn’t try to argue.

It’s been good since.  Zuko is a better cook than he is and now Sokka doesn’t have to pretend approximately twice in any given week that Pot Noodles or Kraft mac & cheese make for nutritious, balanced, or satisfying dinners.  He gets a little thrill every time he opens his fridge-- their fridge--and sees it stocked with vegetables and fruits and actual ingredients .  He feels like a real adult who is living a real life rather than somebody idling away days until one finally starts.  They have flowers in a vase on the side table, never lilies because they also have a cat and, though he is a generally placid, lazy little creature, they aren’t taking any risks.  They have matching cushions on their couch and a big TV and they share streaming subscriptions and Sokka falls a little more in love every time he comes home and gets to put his shoes on the rack by the door, right next to Zuko’s.

He never misses his old apartment and his crappy wifi and his fridge full of ready-made foods.  He never regrets taking the leap and deciding to live together.  That is until Katara tells him that she and Aang are coming down from Winnipeg for the weekend and he loves his sister, he really does, but she can be a lot and now that his home is also Zuko’s there is no way he can spare Zuko from it.  They’ve spoken over Sokka’s faceTime a couple of times but it will be the first time they’ll ever meet each other in person and Zuko swears that he’s okay with it if appropriately terrified but Sokka knows better.

“Any chance you can pick up an extra shift or something?”

“Seriously?  Is there something about your sister that you aren’t telling me?  Does the paediatrician-in-training have some secret dark side?”

“Not quite.  She isn’t very secretive about it,”

“ Sokka,”

“Okay, okay.  You know I love you-”

“I’d hope so by this point,”

“Me too.  So we both agree that I think you’re great but the last person I introduced her to was Suki and she always loved Yue and, trust me, those are some big shoes to fill,”

“And you don’t think I can fill them?”

“You absolutely can.  It might just take Katara a little while to realise that so she might not warm up to you right away,”

“And you want me to spend less time with her?”

“I’m trying to spare you,”

“You don’t need to worry about me,” he leans into Sokka’s space, his hand large and warm and gentle on his shoulder.  “Your sister can hate me all she wants and I’ll be just fine.  I promise.  We both know I’ve had way worse,”

Sokka makes a pointed effort not to focus on the scar on his face or the one on his wrist or any of the other faded little burns he knows litter Zuko’s skin, all proof that his father was cruel and his sister was being trained in that cruelty as he was subjected to it.  If he was saying any of this out loud Zuko would remind him that what Azula faced was a cruelty all of its own, that even though he was in the midst of it not even he knows exactly how well Ozai managed to spread it. “But I don’t want her to.  I love you and I love my family even if I’ve not been doing the best job at showing it and I want them to at least like you.  I want you to like each other,”

“We’ve liked each other just fine so far,”

“In thirty second increments,”

“Oh God, I think you’re doing a better job at freaking me out than I am at comforting you,”

“It’s a gift,”

“Return it.”

“This is so much nicer than your old apartment was last time we came to visit,” Katara appraises the space and Sokka prays Zuko gets caught in a harmless but annoying traffic jam on the way home so that he doesn’t have to meet her face to face until she is asleep on her couch.  She and Aang could afford a hotel by now but Katara refuses to get one on principle, even if Sokka and Zuko’s apartment only has one bedroom.  At the very least he can vouch that their couch is very comfortable and Zuko is like an old lady with his stash of thrifted quilts and cosy blankets.  He has a collection of teas and an affinity for floral soaps that maybe don’t do much to challenge that old lady image of him in Sokka’s head.  It’s endearing really.

“And you have a cat now!  He’s so cute!” Aang has quickly gotten himself comfortable on the couch, Druk the cat already comfortable on his lap, purring away as Aang runs his hands through his long, orange fur.  He really is cute.  Enough so that Sokka has already forgiven him for the broken glass that he swiped off of the table last night.

“Yeah you’ve really left that whole perpetual bachelor vibe behind,” Katara pats him on the back just a little too hard and swiftly glides across the room to rifle through their DVDs and CDs, starting with Sokka’s full Law and Order SVU box set.  She’s never been here before and already Sokka is starting to feel a little more like he is a guest in her home than the other way around.  “Well done,”

“ I know.” he rolls his eyes but grins at the same time, effectively ruining any and all effect it may have had.  “It’s almost like I’m not single anymore and we have both of our incomes to live off,”

“If I hadn’t seen him on our calls I’m not sure I’d believe he was real,”

“Please, I could never afford this on my own,”

Aang shakes his head slowly, mock serious.  “The housing market these days.”

Zuko texts him to say that he’s held up on the way home and for just a moment Sokka thinks the universe might actually be listening to him.  And then Zuko gets home only fifteen minutes late and the only thing he has actually missed is the start of the episode of crappy reality TV he and Aang have deemed the height of television and Katara has deemed entertaining enough to put up with.

“Hi,” he says awkwardly without moving away from the front door, waving stiffly as soon as he stands up from slipping his shoes off.

“It’s nice to finally meet the guy who fixed my brother in person!” Katara calls across the room, lifting herself from the couch and dislodging a very content Aang from his position leaning against her shoulder.  He pouts at her as she eagerly grabs the hand that Zuko holds out for her to shake, his eyes wide, and uses it to pull him into a hug he very much isn’t ready for.  He barely hugs her back and she isn’t bothered at all and Sokka can’t help but chuckle to himself as he watches.  The amusement is nice but it doesn’t last long because, fun as this may be, he knows that as far as Katara goes there were always two options.  He’d kind of been hoping she’d be slow to warm up to Zuko because the alternative was that the two of them very quickly and very effectively formed a united front against him and made his life an admittedly kind of fun but still hellish hell for the duration of her trip.

“Hey!” he yells across the room, shouting women on the TV long forgotten, the moment he sees Katara pull her phone out of her pocket.  “No baby pictures until at least an hour after you’ve met!”

“That’s a great idea Sokka!” Katara says too brightly.  Behind her Zuko’s eyes practically twinkle in their apartment's harsh lighting.  They make a pretty picture standing there together with matching grins, with matching dimples and straight teeth.  If only it wasn’t just a facade covering their combined evils.  “And to think I was just going to show him photos of Appa!”  Right.  Appa.  Aang’s giant Tibetan mastiff who, yep, in hindsight it makes complete sense for Katara to want to show his animal-loving boyfriend.  Fuck.  “Soooo, Zuko, I don’t suppose Sokka has told you about the fishhooks?”

“The fishhooks?”

Her grin turns sly, her eyes narrowing and her head tilting down.  “The fishhooks.”

“So on a scale of one to ten how offended would you be if I asked to you bake your own birthday cake?”

“Hmm, well that depends, Sokka, are you going to be decorating it for me or do I have to do that myself too?”

“I’ll decorate it.  You know I am the greatest artist of our time, after all.  What is cake but a delicious, round canvas?”

“I feel like you’re planning on writing something weird on my cake,”

“Nope.”

“Drawing something weird then.  Or making something weird out of fondant or something.  Oh!  Another condition: I’ll bake my own cake so long as you don’t put any fondant on it.  That stuff tastes like sweet caulk,”

“Sweet what?”

“Caulk.  C-A-U-L-K.  Mind.  Gutter.  Keep the two separate please,”

“The two have never once been separate babe,”

“I feel like this is another one of your weird attempts at flirting,”

“Basically every other thing I say to you is a weird attempt at flirting.  Thank you for noticing.  Finally.”

“I don’t know why I find you so charming,”

“Is it my soulful eyes?”

“Doubt it.  It’s probably in the DSM somewhere though,”

“You’re cute when you’re in denial.  Oh!  By the way, could you pretty please pretend to be surprised when you come home from the errand I’m going to send you on on your birthday?”

“Seriously?  You’re planning me a surprise party?  Don’t we know three people?”

“It’s more of a surprise hangout, I guess.  But with cake and the fancy wine you like,”

“It’s not fancy, it’s just also not the cheapest one the grocery store carries,”

“So it’s comparatively fancy,”

“I really hate that I like you,”

“You like me?  Really?”

“Fine.  I love you.  Happy?”

“With you?  Always.”

“Sap,”

“It’s part of my charm,”

“So are your pretty eyes,”

It comes completely out of nowhere.  He’s chopping the vegetables Zuko asked him to prep for dinner and waiting for the person who lives in this apartment who doesn’t burn everything he cooks to come home when his phone starts ringing.  He’s never been very good at answering calls if they aren’t preceded by a text telling him he is about to receive a call.  If there isn’t a text he picks up when he feels like it, which is maybe 20 percent of the time, and doesn’t when he doesn’t want to, which makes the other 80.  For somebody whose job is talking into a machine he isn’t much good at talking on the phone.  Zuko is the exception, the only number he will answer every time without fail.

When Sokka picks up his phone it is Zuko’s name and face he expects to see on the screen but it isn’t.  There is no contact at all, just an anonymous call.  He would almost never answer it, not unless he got a voicemail he would never listen to but that would prompt him to call back, or a second, maybe even third call soon after.  But as it stands right now he is bored, Zuko is five minutes late and Druk is asleep at the foot of their bed rather than on any of the furniture in the apartment that is actually his.  He accepts the call.

“Hello, I’m calling for Sokka Kunuk,”

He doesn’t recognise the voice at all.  “Speaking,”

“Hi, Mr. Kunuk.  I’m Detective Carlson, I’m calling on behalf of the Winnipeg police, to inform you that we have made an arrest regarding your mother’s murder,”

For a moment he feels like his heart has stopped, like the world isn’t turning or else it is but he is not spinning with it.  The last he knew it was ice cold and there was nothing at all the police could do.  It wasn’t over but it also wasn’t going anywhere new, forever stuck in place, stuck with his mother in that horrible room where they had found her, where she didn’t belong and never should have been.

“Mr. Kunuk?”

“Sorry,” his voice feels rough in his throat, a little like sandpaper.  It must sound just as bad as it feels and he hears the policeman on the other side of the line swallow.  “I’m here.  You’ve made an arrest?  What changed?”

“Coincidence really.  A woman was assaulted in Winnipeg and when we booked the perp the system flagged a match between his DNA and what was found at the site of your mother’s death,”

Sokka decides what he really needs is water.  And a hug.  And for the world to start working again.  Zuko isn’t home yet and that last one he has no idea how to approach but he knows where they keep the cups so water he can do.  Easy.  Open cupboard, steal Zuko’s favourite glass, get Brita Filter out of fridge, pour until the glass threatens to overflow.  Sokka is overflowing right now.  Even if it is just water the mess might send him over the edge.  “What’s his name?”

“Admiral Bai Zhao.”

Zuko gets home practically the moment Sokka hangs up.  “Hey,” he says as he toes his shoes off and places them on the rack.  He squints when Sokka doesn’t return in kind.  “Is everything okay?”

Sokka has to say it, to make it real.  “They might have finally found the man who killed my mother.”

He posts the video with a stone in his throat and a rock in his stomach and Zuko’s hand between his shoulder blades holding him together.  The video versions of his podcasts are usually barely edited at all but this one’s different.  This one is a story that nobody else on Spotify or YouTube or any other platform has told before, a story that belongs to him.  That means he has to do it right, do it justice.  There are pictures in the video, nothing gruesome or gory but definitely something special.  This whole thing is something special.  And all he has to do is click upload then wait.

Wait for My Mother’s Murder: Kya’s Story to go live on his channel.  He could throw up.

“I’m sure you can all tell from the title, but this episode is going to be a bit different.  A bit more personal.  This isn’t just another Gacy video, or somebody else’s take on the Dahmer tale.  This is mine.  This is my life.  I hope you’ll listen anyway.  Now bear with me.

“I wasn’t sure if I wanted to make this video but my boyfriend and I have been talking about it since the trial and he helped me decide that this is what I wanted.  He understands more than most people how much these things can mess with you because, as some of you have guessed and as I say only with his express permission, Zuko was my inside source on the Ozai Sozin video which is, to this day, one of my best performing episodes.  Because he is the son of Ozai Sozin and Ursa Sozin.  His mother was murdered.

“So was mine.  To the rest of the world my mother’s death won’t hold quite the same interest but to me her life is and always will be a story worth telling.  A story I will never truly be able to do justice.  But I think I owe it to my mother to at least try.  This is me trying.

“For anybody who is new here, I typically donate a portion of all profits to charitable causes.  For this episode I will be donating all profits to charities which aim to protect indigenous women in Canada, who are 16 times as likely to be murdered or missing as their white counterparts.”