Coda

Sokka rolled over, drifting out of a contented, dreamless sleep. He groped for the familiar warmth beside him in the bed, but his hand came up empty. He started awake, and stared at the pillow beside him, confused for a long moment.

The night rushed back over him, Azula's taste still clinging to his skin, his lips, in his mouth, his sheets. His sleepiness faded and he sat up with a start.

"Azula?"

But the room was empty. The dim light of a snowy dawn filtered in through the little window. The scent of her, of sex, lingered in the room, but it was a ghost.

Sharp fear stabbed at him, and he knew. He knew that she hadn't just left the room. He knew that she was running.

"NO!" Sokka growled, grabbing his discarded pants. He pulled them on, hitting the door with his shoulder and spilling out into the hallway. "AZULA!"

He heard his father call his name, but he ignored him, running flat out toward the door, barefooted, bare-chested, his hair still tangled from her hands. The cold was a shock as he rammed the door open in his haste, the snow stinging on his feet, and slapping at his face in angry little handfuls.

He ignored the cold, ignored his father calling his name, ignored everything but the panic in his chest, in his heart. He ran through the snow, slipping and sliding on ice and across frozen hummocks that bruised and bit at him as he ran in the direction of Iroh's airship.

Even as he ran, he saw it lift into the air, rising over the sleepy, snow-covered rooftops, buffeted by the winds coming in off of the sea.

"AZULA!" he screamed, stumbling in the snow. He skidded, landing face first, and felt pain in his shoulder. Cursing, he scrambled to his numb feet and ran after the airship, but still it rose higher. "AZULA! Please—NO!"

He broke into the landing field, the wind blasting at him, stinging him with hard pebbles of ice-laden snow. Shielding his face, he skidded to a halt beneath the airship.

"AZULA!"

With the sound of fire and air rushing into the balloon, it lurched forward like some lugubrious bird of prey, the balloon stark red against the sullen gray skies. It drifted higher, away from him, and toward the bay.

"AZULA! Dammit!" A sob broke his lips and he clasped his hands to his head, grinding his teeth.

He saw her then, in the back window of the carriage. Her face was pale in the gray light, and there were tears on her face. He pleaded with her, chasing after the balloon as it rose ever higher and farther away. And as he watched, she shook her head, lifting her hand and placing it on the glass, palm out.

He knew what that meant.

Sokka stopped dead in the snow, bitterness flooding his mouth. His hand drifted to his chest and he spread his palm over his heart. His breath came in great gulps, tears burning his eyes, the cold biting at his exposed flesh, but he didn't care.

"I'm real, dammit. Just come back," he said as the balloon rose over the bay, and he lost sight of her in the window. "FUCK!"

He buried his face in his hands, a million plans to chase after her, to make her see reason, to understand why, came bursting into his mind.

"Sokka!"

It was his father, who was running toward him with a coat and boots in his hands. Sokka ignored him, watching the red speck of the balloon as it drifted ever farther away. Hakoda came up beside him, his breath puffing into the air.

"Put these on. Now. I thought I raised you to have more sense than to run outside without boots," he said, shoving the shoes at Sokka, who took them and shoved them onto his numb, aching feet. Then he snatched the coat from his father and threw it on, his face contorting with anger.

"This is your fault!" he snapped at Hakoda, who stepped back a little. "You treated her like she was some...some criminal and... She never would have done this if it hadn't been for you!"

"I tried to talk her out of it, actually. She had her reasons, and she doesn't want you to follow her."

"Where is Rian's airship?" Sokka said, ignoring that last bit, but Hakoda thrust something against his chest, stopping him. Sokka took it unthinkingly. "What...?"

"She asked me to give it to you."

"There's nothing in here that will stop me from following her," he said adamantly. "Nothing!"

"I'm not trying to stop you, Sokka. You're a grown man. You can make your own decisions. Just as she can."

"You don't want me to be with her."

"I want you to be happy."

"She makes me happy. Dad, I love her. I want... I was going to ask her—" But he couldn't get out the words. He choked on them as he looked up at the sky. The airship was a distant red speck, born on the winds of the bay, rising high into the swirling cloud cover. Even as he watched, the clouds enveloped it, swallowing the little red dot whole.

He felt sick all of a sudden, his shoulder aching, pain in the arrow wound in his leg. He passed a hand over his face.

"Could you leave me alone?"

Hakoda gripped his shoulder and met his eyes, looking grim. "Whatever you do, son, I want you to know I'm sorry if I made difficulties between you. It wasn't my intention, but..." He drifted off, and his mouth set grimly.

Sokka didn't say anything, watching as his father walked away across the empty, snow-driven field. Sokka looked down at the letter in his hands. His fingers were shaking, and not from the cold, when he opened it.

Sokka,

I know I took the coward's way out, but it was the only way I could make myself leave. Please don't follow me. I know you might anyway, but I hope you don't. I need to do this.

I'm sick, Sokka. You have done so much to help me these past few months, but the nightmares haven't stopped. The panic attacks haven't stopped. The hallucinations won't go away. Not unless I go somewhere where they can help me, where they can figure out what's wrong with me. I'm tired of being afraid. I'm tired of getting lost inside my own fears, my own head. I need control, real control, or I'm going to hurt someone. It may be you next time. It almost was before, and I can't risk that again.

If I ever hurt you, I wouldn't be able to live with myself. You mean more to me than anything in this world. I need to protect you, the way you've protected me. So I'm leaving, before it's too late for me to leave. Before I love you too much.

And I do love you. I've wanted to tell you so many times, but I couldn't. I thought pretending that I didn't would make it easier for me to leave you, in the end. I've always known this wouldn't last, even if I wanted it to. I tried to push you away too, to make it easier, but it never worked. You were too stubborn.

That's the worst part of this. I love you and you love me, and every fairy tale tells me this should have a happy ending, but it doesn't, and it won't. Happy endings don't happen to people like me.

But, for a while, you made me believe that they could. You loved me, when I couldn't love myself, when I didn't even know how. You made me realize that I wasn't some broken toy, used up and unfixable. You made me realize I was real again, that I didn't have to be that girl from the forest. You reminded me that I'm strong. You trusted me. You made me laugh. You made me feel like a woman.

You made me love you, Sokka, and I will never forget that. You were real. We were real, even for a little while. It was real. But I need you to let me go now. Please don't follow me. If you love me, you'll me go.

Your Princess, Always

Sokka read the letter twice more, until he couldn't read it any longer. His eyes burned. He wanted to follow. He wanted to chase her across the world. He wanted to make her see reason.

He stood in the snow instead, his heart breaking as the wind pushed at his hair, drying the tears on his cheeks. He slowly folded the letter, tucked it into his pocket, and wiped at his eyes. Misery lay over him like a cloak.

"I was going to ask you to marry me," he whispered to the wind, but it snatched the words and flung them away as if they were meaningless. Sokka turned away from the bay, away from the cruel, empty skies, and walked home.

(end)

Notes:

Wow, sorry for the emotion bomb, but the bright side is that this is NOT the end of Sokka and Azula's relationship. You think I'm just going to leave it there? Pfffft. Azula may not believe in happy endings, but this Madame does.

I'm already working on a sequel (which will conclude the Smoke Demons series) called "With Or Without You." It'll focus on both Zuko/Suki and Sokka/Azula in equal measure and will be about Zuko and Suki's wedding (plus some other stuff! Angst! Drama! Sex! Treason! Katara finding out Sokka and Azula had sex in her bed!)

No idea when I'll start posting it. February-ish...hopefully. I have a couple other stories I want to work on first before I truly tackle that beast, as it's gonna be another long one and I don't want to split my focus. My brain is an unruly bag of cats, which is why it takes me forever to finish stories.

Anyway, thanks for reading and reviewing! I appreciate it so much!