@bisexuallsokka I had another idea I couldn't let go of for this one lol
For this prompt game! (And also this one!)
“And that,” Sokka finishes, aware of just how flimsy it all is, how few options they truly have left, “That’s the plan.”
Zuko stares a moment, face grave and dirt smudged and serious before he exhales a slow breath, nodding, a grim kind of understanding settling over him.
“Risky,” Toph grunts, restlessly tossing a pebble back and forth. “Just waiting for them to surround us?”
It is, but given their options, given that they’re down to three, given that they’re facing so many more than that…Sokka takes a deep breath. “Do you trust me?”
“Always,” Zuko says, immediate.
“Getting us this far?” Toph waves generally around what might be the little hovel they’ve gone to ground in, or maybe just this point in the fight. “You earned it.”
“Alright then,” Sokka says, forcing himself to exhale normally like it isn’t a relief to hear. “Then this is the plan.”
“Alright then,” Toph nods after a moment, squaring her shoulders. “I’m ready.”
“Are you ready?” Zuko asks, pitching his voice low as Sokka starts getting the last of their supplies ready.
Sokka watches his hands moving through the weapons check, distantly impressed by their steadiness. “You already know how this will end, Zuko.”
“I know,” Zuko agrees quietly after a beat. leaving unspoken the fact that they all do. That all they’re doing refusing to go down without a fight.
“We’re not going to make it out of this one,” Sokka whispers, closing his eyes as he lets the reality of that sweep through him.
“I know,” Zuko says again, taking a breath. “And if this is the last battle—” he touches Sokka’s hand, stilling it against their supplies. “—it has been the honor of my life,” he says steadily, “Fighting it at your side.”
“Zuko,” Sokka chokes, unprepared for the sudden rush of emotion through his battle calm, fumbling for Zuko’s hand.
“I couldn’t ask for anything more than this,” Zuko continues, squeezing back.
“I should be able to do better,” Sokka whispers, wincing at the admission. “I would be able to get us out of this. It shouldn’t just be about trying to buy time, we could have beaten them, I know it, I just—"
“Hey, hey,” Zuko interrupts, shifting to catch Sokka’s eyes. “You did the best you could,” he says, firm and serious, a welt beginning to purple into a bruise against his temple and fuck, Sokka can suddenly feel every bit of soreness of his body, every aching muscle. “We all did. You can’t think your way out of everything.”
“This, though—”
“No one could have seen this coming,” Zuko cuts in again, firm. “No one, okay?”
“We knew going into this Azula was going to be a wild card—”
“And we overprepared for her,” Zuko shrugs, brutal and blunt in his practicality. “And we can’t undo it now. But,” he adds, voice gentling, eyes searching Sokka’s face. “We can still remember what we’re here for, right?”
Sokka huffs, almost a laugh. “It’s not like I could forget, I’ve been planning it for months.”
“And it’s worth it,” Zuko says, firm, eyes cutting to Toph.
“It’s worth it,” Sokka agrees after a beat, exhaling hard, gathering his resolve back around himself and setting aside his own hopes and wants because today, this whole thing, it was never about him, not really.
“Together, okay?” Zuko says, lips quirking into a little smile. “We do this together.”
“In together, out together,” Sokka repeats back, their mantra.
“Exactly,” Zuko says, kissing him once, fierce and hard, leaning his forehead against Sokka’s as he pulls away. “Ready?”
“No,” Sokka says honestly. He doesn’t know if he’ll ever be, for this, but Zuko laughs and kisses him again, that electric, adrenaline-high intensity of his clearly starting to take over now that he has a direction to point it in, and Toph shifts, head cocking.
“I don’t think,” she says at the unmistakable sound of a footstep crunching over the dry leaves Sokka spread behind to give them the thinnest attempt at a warning, “That they’re going to wait.”
“All together, then,” Sokka says, settling his weapon into his hands. “All the way to the end.”
“Exactly,” Zuko says, gripping his own weapon and holding Sokka’s eyes, steady and even. “Count us down?”
“Toph should do it.” Since she’s the lynchpin of it all.
Toph shifts into a crouch, dirt smudged and serious as she readies herself. “Blaze of glory, right?”
Sokka lets out a breath, anticipation beginning to flutter in his chest. “That’s the idea.”
Toph nods. “For all the melons, then,” she says, Zuko huffing out a startled little laugh that she doesn’t even pause to smirk for. “On three. One, two—”
The three of them burst from their cover before three, because they all know anyone could be listening. They hurl themselves into the afternoon light, Sokka and Zuko screaming and making themselves as big as possible as they do it, relying on the element of surprise to get a few shots off and trying to draw their time out a little longer.
Sokka shrieks as loud as he can and provides as much cover fire as possible, zigging and zagging and screaming louder as he watches Zuko go down, struck in the back, the sharp burst of a paintball hitting his own back a few moments later as Toph mows through their collective ammo—
“I AM THE MELON LORD!”
--at anything in front of her.
“YOU’LL NEVER DEFEAT ME!”
“For the Melon Lord,” Sokka calls weakly back, gasping through the sting of it—fuck, but these protective jumpsuits are a joke—before rolling toward Zuko. “Think we beat Jet’s time?”
“Watch it, Melon Lord,” Zuko huffs, ducking down as a wayward scatter of shots spatter in front of him before scooting back toward Sokka, both of them huddling down to watch as Toph mows down Katara and Aang, spinning so unpredictably that Suki has to actually work to line up her shot—Suki laughing so hard she has to work even harder—just as they planned it.
“Well fuck,” Zuko says, glancing down at his watch and tilting his wrist so Sokka can see the timer ticking up as Toph finally goes down.
“IT’S MY BIRTHDAY AND I WILL HAVE MY VENGEANCE!”
“Shit,” Sokka echoes, grabbing Zuko’s wrist to double-check the counter and grinning up at him. “I think we did it.”
"NEXT ROUND IS OURS FUCKERS!"
“I think,” Zuko says, a slow, wild-edged grin growing over his face, “That we got close enough that we can say it, either way.”
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