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Sokka hunted for a tall stalk of grass and held it up to his face, considering if or not it was firm enough to chew on. “You still haven’t answered my question. Why did you go into the Avatar State if you knew you couldn’t control it?”
“Katara wouldn’t abandon the city. She doesn’t turn her back on anyone.” Aang hugged his knees to his chest and tucked the lower half of his face behind them. “I had to get her out of there. We were outnumbered a hundred to two.”
Sokka nodded thoughtfully. “You were trying to buy her time.” He sighed and tossed the grass stalk. It was too thin to chew on, anyways. “You should’ve known better. You’re the last person Katara would allow to be sacrificed as a distraction.”
“I wasn’t trying to be a distraction,” Aang said, his voice small. “I was trying to scare her away.”
Sokka stiffened, which did nothing but make Aang curl up more. He looked like he was preparing for a verbal lashing, which Sokka was more than ready to give. If Aang thought for one minute that Sokka, Katara, or anyone else would leave family behind just because they were scared of them, the twerp had another thing coming.
Sokka scooted in front of Aang and mirrored his position, hugging his knees, since it was the only way to get in the kid’s face without peeling him out of his shell. Steely eyes no longer looked so cold and iron-y. The grey was glossy and soft like wolf’s fur, delicate like rainclouds struggling to hold oceans inside of them.
“ You ,” Sokka said, gently flicking Aang’s stupid arrow, “are an idiot.” Aang flinched too much from such a small flick. His eyes were large and watery, distressed because he couldn’t hide the whole of him behind his knees. “But luckily for you, Katara is an idiot, too, so my idiot-tolerance is substantial.”
Fire, though weak, sparked back into Aang’s eyes. “...Katara’s not an idiot,” he mumbled.
Sokka rolled his eyes, trying not to smile as much as he wanted to. He ruffled hair that wasn’t there, and even though Aang squawked and swatted him away, Sokka didn’t stop until the moron called the Avatar was smiling again, too.
“You really thought she would be scared of you?”
“She said she was before.”
“Katara is a great liar.”
Aang’s smile was small and wounded “I know. It was stupid, anyways. I really hope she hasn’t figured it out. I don’t want her to think that I thought she would be a coward.” His smile got a little bigger. Redness bloomed in his cheeks and adoration found itself in his features. “I never thought she would actually stay.”
“Are you kidding? Of course, she’d stay. She loves you more than she fears whatever the Avatar State is.”
Aang turned so red that Sokka was mildly concerned for his health. “You think so?”
Sokka flicked him again. Hard. “You. Idiot. Very much.”