#yugoda

[atla-confessions]

I love Pakku. I think he's a great compelling character and I'm really interested in his relationship with Kanna; i am equally invested in Kanna and Yugoda and Hama, but I feel like saying I love Pakku is a much more contentious point lol

X

[theduckeminence]

You know I’m getting tired of most ppl portraying the Northern Water Tribe as the most devilish, demonic nation that exists — so much so that its somehow worse than the Fire Nation (aka the literal imperialist nation that is responsible for genocide??).

Like yeah yeah I get the NWT follows a heavily gender divided societal structure and therefore will lead to sexist values and misogynistic mindsets/ideas. I understand why people would hate on the NWT for that reason.

With that being said, I think its a lame/boring take to just straight up paint them as this “evil” and bad nation of people.

I would have found it more fun and interesting if people actually went about showing the NWT in a complex matter in terms of their society, culture, and etc (rather than immediately paint them as a bad nation specifically due to the sexism laced in their old fashioned traditions).

Also not to mention the Northern Water Tribe separated gender roles is most probably inspired by the fact that indigenous groups such as the Inuit often separate their work among genders (or really sexes honestly but y’all get what I mean).

And I personally feel the reason for such a strict division in gender roles is perhaps due to the 100 Year War and the NWT doing what they could to preserve their culture — leading down to canon present in ATLA.

[yellow-faerie]

Who wants to hear my thoughts on Kanna, Pakku, Yugoda and Hama? I have been having...so many thoughts and you actually can't stop me

[atla-milf-month]

ATLA MILF Month will happen in March 2025! This month will celebrate all the ATLA-verse moms and older women who... well, you know!

Click here to see the prompts! Click here to check the event rules! Do you have any questions? Do you want to be a mod? Please send us an ask.

Thank you for participating. We hope you enjoy the event!

[transformers0]

I especially hate that the White Lotus is pretty much an old men's club.

What, the writers couldn’t include Yugoda or Aunt Wu or Hama?

Heck, even Lo and Li?

Is The White Lotus a useless joke of an organization?

Do you really need to ask that question of an organization whose biggest accomplishment was abusing the first Avatar they got their hands on and raising her as a child soldier?

[cha-mij]

THE best quote from Witcher 3 will ALWAYS be "they done roasted Yagoda the WAZZOCKS"

Yontek you are the best character and don't you ever forget it.

[the-badger-mole]

What is your NUMBER ONE headcannon for each person in the Gaang (Katara, Zuko, Aang, Toph, Sokka, Suki [and Appa and Momo if you feel so inclined])

Katara: After the war, she goes back to the NWT to train with Yugoda and becomes a master healer as well as a master of the NWT fighting style. From there, she goes back to the Foggy Swamp Tribe and masters their bending style, too. With the help of Sokka, Zuko, and (in some headcanons) Hama, she also rediscovers SWT waterbending and not only masters it, but teaches it to the new benders in the SWT. By the time she leaves the SWT, there has been a school established where all bending styles are available for study. She's one of the few who actually has mastered them all, though.

Sokka: He is eager to return home after the war. He throws himself into infrastructure and policy revamps, and he almost singlehandedly staves off the soft colonization attempts of the NWT. Under his efforts, the SWT rebuilds and reestablishes parts of its culture that had been lost during the war. With the discovery of oil on SWT land, he is also instrumental in establishing eco minded extraction techniques, and in trade ties with the rest of the world (although he is very much helped by his sister's deep ties with the Fire Lord). It's a surprise to no one when he's chosen to lead the SWT after Hakoda retires.

Toph: She does not become a cop. Instead, she goes back home and takes over the Earth Rumble, taking it from an underground even to a world wide phenomenon. She eventually allows benders of other elements to join, and the Earth Rumble becomes pro bending. She does also establish a metal bending school. In the end, she is wealthier than her parents, but because she couldn't really care less about money, she keeps enough to live at the standard she wants, and gives the rest away to causes that interest her...like the guy who wanted to set the record for the biggest bao bun ever, and needed funding for an oven big enough to cook it. She also establishes a halfway house for runaway teens.

Zuko: During his tenure as Fire Lord, he establishes a robust social services program that includes subsidized healthcare, education, and housing for the lowest income families. Under his reign, the Fire Nation becomes home to some of the earliest pioneers of mental health. At his wife's advice, he also makes paid maternity leave standard across the nation, and includes several programs to help single parents stay afloat. Taking inspiration from the SWT, Zuko makes some changes to how his advisory staff is selected. Instead of choosing from among the nobility, Zuko has the different provinces elect a representative to speak on their behalf. A lot of the nobles hate this, blaming his wife's influence, but the people adore their monarchs and despite their best efforts, there's little the nobles can do except start campaigning in their home provinces. It's not a perfect system, but it does open the door for the Fire Nation to end the monarchy within a couple of generations.

Suki: She continues to lead the Kyoshi Warriors for a few years after the war. She also helps train troops around the world as they pivot from active war service to more local work. She helps establish something like the coast guards for several different countries. Eventually she retires from that to help her husband run the SWT. She and Sokka make a wonderful team as he handles the domestic policies and she handles foreign affairs. She often jokes with her sister in law, Fire Lady Katara that they ended up with the same job.

Aang: I'll go with my most optimistic headcanon for him. He's an okay Avatar. Not great. Not the worst. After the war, he tries to take part in rebuilding efforts around the world, but he finds his help isn't needed much. He turns his attention back to salvaging what's left of the Air Nomad legacy, and discovers that there are actually airbenders still around. A few of them are even interested in learning to live like the Air Nomads. Many of them aren't, though, and after learning how to actually use their powers, they go off and do their own thing. To Aang's shock and dismay, eating meat has no effect on the strength of their bending, He does learn to deal with it and enjoy his time with the air benders who embrace the Air Nomad culture. He does go on to have kids, and he still favors the benders over the nonbenders. Ultimately, his legacy as Avatar boils down to taking Ozai's bending, and that's it.

[gloomybadger4life]

I'm curious to see the answers.

[ecoterrorist-katara]

I really liked your meta about bloodbending, this is a big ask but how do you think that the whole bloodbending storyline could/should be rewritten? It’s clear that the writers are using bloodbending as a metaphor for slavery but it rarely comes across that way, and poor Hama was failed spectacularly by the writing

hello anon! thank you for this fabulous question & hope you don't mind that it took me ages to get to it.

TL;DR: I think making Hama into a serial killer/abductor was a terrible narrative choice. If it were up to me, Katara would have a (child-friendly) ethics discussion about bloodbending with Hama, who then joins them on the Day of the Black Sun. After the war, bloodbending becomes a lynchpin issue when the North attempts to colonize the South, but Hama and Yugoda find healing uses for bloodbending in the kerfuffle.

But first, my "ATLA bungled colonialism themes" soapbox: to me, bloodbending is a metaphor on two levels. The storyline about how Southern Waterbenders are captured and then transported to the FN certainly seems to reference the Transatlantic Slave Trade, like you said, though without the labour exploitation aspect; the storyline about Hama and bloodbending feels like an allegory for guerrilla resistance in general. Imo the narrative kind of cheapened these potential real-world connections by making The Puppetmaster a spooky Halloween special with a dash of “an eye for an eye” parable. The narrative's treatment of bloodbending, and Hama, feels like an unintentional reflection of “unacceptable” colonial resistance and "dark" knowledge of the colonized (fearmongering around Vodou etc). A common colonial narrative is that the colonized are sinister and underhanded for engaging in things like guerrilla warfare, which is either too violent or too cowardly depending on what’s more convenient for the colonizers’ narrative at a specific point in time. I think ATLA’s approach to bloodbending reflects this general sentiment, especially since Hama is drawn as this creepy Hansel & Gretel-style witch, a keeper of a sinister / untrustworthy / threatening type of knowledge. I also really don't like the part of the story where Hama became a serial abductor out of this indiscriminate thirst for revenge. While it's possible in real life for a colonized, incarcerated person to make those decisions, and good fiction can explore that effectively, a children's show is not the place. ATLA's target audience and general tone couldn't handle all the complexities around that, so they turned Hama into a cartoon witchy villain. Groundbreaking.

Anyway, I think the start of The Puppetmaster is actually very promising. Hama's story, and the children's discovery of her SWT roots, was touching. Katara's growing sense of unease at discovering the "darker" uses of waterbending (taking water out of flowers) is interesting. Katara is the perfect character to explore the intricacies of "how far is too far in colonial resistance." Because she's not a pacifist, like Aang, but she's also not a total pragmatist, like Sokka or Suki, and she cares about the fates of random people more than Toph. She's angry and compassionate in equal amounts.

I would love a conversation between Hama and Katara about bloodbending -- not in the dead of night while Katara has to protect her friends, but where Hama talks about the genuine hopelessness she felt in the Fire Nation prison. And Katara could talk about why she thinks bloodbending is wrong -- taking away someone's agency -- and Hama can ask Katara what she would've done in that scenario; maybe she can point out that she could have made the FN guards kill each other, but she only made them open her cell door, so it was the least violent escape she could have done; and I think, framed that way, Katara would have started to see bloodbending not through a lens of fear and disgust, but sheer pragmatism, and realize that all bending can be good or bad.

During the war, I think Katara and Sokka could convince Hama to join them on the Day of the Black Sun: Hama, for the first time in decades, has hope, and she gets to see some of the people who used to be just little kids when she was kidnapped from her home.

After the war, bloodbending would become a hot button issue in North-South relations. I could easily see the Northern waterbenders being horrified at bloodbending, in the same way Medieval Europe & puritan America have been horrified by witchcraft and other feminine-coded knowledge. I could envision the Northerners using bloodbending as justification for why women shouldn't be allowed to waterbend, and justification for why the South is backwards and therefore needs the North's influence (which would also tie nicely into the North and South comic). While Katara is busy with the political BS, Hama is swapping notes with Yugoda the healing master, and then they would eventually arrive at the conclusion that bloodbending could be used to heal.

(I can't take credit for the "Northerners horrified at bloodbending" idea, btw -- colourwhirled's Southern Lights has a storyline around it.)

Anyway, Hama deserved so much better. I like seeing her in AUs where she never had that stupid "kidnapping FN civilians" plot, like the aforementioned Southern Lights, or Lykegenia's The Things We Hide (which I read earlier this year and loved!). Hama and Jet's storylines are why I don’t trust ATLA’s politics, nor the politics of its creators. As much as I love Zuko and find his redemption arc to be an incredible story of a conscientious objector in the heart of the empire, Hama and Jet should have also gotten their redemptions too.

[dragonfoxandfound]

Kataang stan: zk's insinuate that zuko and katara would be perfect for each other because they like to kill people

Excuse me, what? Kataang stans are really just making shit up now aren't they? Please, show me the swaths of Zutara shippers fawning over the idea that these two love birds also love murder and that's why they're great together!!! 😍

I mean I really shouldn't have underestimated the depths of stupidty when that lovely gem was also accompanied by this:

Is it a little bit racist that people characterize one of the only dark skinned characters in the show as a violent blood bender?

First of all why are you tokenizing Katara?

What do you mean one of the only dark skinned characters? Kanna, Kya, Yue, Hama, Hakoda, Bato, Arnook, Kuruk, Ummi, Pakku, Piando, Hahn, Yugoda, Tho, Due, Huu, Sokka? Dark skinned characters make up a good chunk of the cast.

I guess you just forgot about them because the only time you ever care about brown people is when it relates to your petty ship bashing.

If it's racist to characterize a dark skinned character as a 'violent bloodbender' then by your logic Bryke is racist. They're the ones who made Hama, Yakone, Amon and Tarrlock - all dark skinned characters - into violent bloodbenders, right?

It's shortsighted and naive to decalare bloodbending as inherently violent and things like healing inherently good. It ignores the existence of medical violence and the fact that a healer is perfectly capable of weaponizing their bending by purposely healing someone in a horrificly wrong and painful way.

And it's pretty demeaning to Katara to characterize her as unable to distinguish between the right and wrong uses of bloodbending. Especially when she's perfectly capable of doing so when waterbending and healing.

[theduckeminence]

Avatar fandom stop villainizing/demonizing the NWT (impossible challenge!!)

[yellow-faerie]

Chapters: 1/1 Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Kanna/Pakku (Avatar), Pakku & Yugoda (Avatar) Characters: Pakku (Avatar), Yugoda (Avatar), Kanna (mentioned) Additional Tags: Canon Compliant, I believe, Heartbreak, Grief/Mourning, <- because both Yugoda and Pakku kinda think that Kanna will die, Childhood Friends, Implied/Referenced Suicide, really really slight, Misogyny, Northern Water Tribe (Avatar) Summary:

A conversation between Pakku and Yugoda, a week after Kanna's disappearance.

[aangarchy]

Every time i see people talk about Aang carving a necklace for Katara and it needing to replace her mother's etc etc i always feel the need to remind people that carving a bethrothal necklace is a northern watertribe tradition, not a southern one. Katara didn't even know her mother/grandmother's necklace was a bethrothal necklace until it was pointed out to her by the healer teacher Yugoda (is that her name?).

Aang being a good boyfriend would ask Sokka what the southern custom is for engagements and use that, he would never just use a tradition that isn't part of southern culture. He also knows how much Kya's necklace means to Katara, he would never do something that would require Katara to remove it forever.

[transuncletaylor]

If Katara is the spitting image of Kanna as said by Yugoda, do you think Hama felt a little sense of home when she saw Katara's face?

[bluespiritshonour]

Fuming at the mouth again at how much women's work is looked down upon.

It's always “being a healer is nerfing Katara” and never “why isn't healing given more importance in the shows?” argh.

I mean it in Vox Machina way. Pike was a healer and everytime she wasn't with the team I was freaking the fuck out like, oh no, they're all screwed.

It's like in Zatch Bell/Konjiki no Gash Bell where the main girls Tio-Megumi have healing/shielding powers and only ONE attack spell and they were considered so essential to the team Kiyomaro would make his super genius calculation blindly relying on them. And they saved Kiyomaro-Gash’s arses several times more than the other way around.

I want Aang and other male waterbenders to heal. The need to fight is over with the war, but the need to heal never is.

I want fucking Pakku to go to Yugoda and ask her to teach him how to heal.

[erisenyo]

“Please come get me.” For Zukka

Please make this as angsty and emotional as possible I was it to hurt thank you

(Maybe self-inflicted damage? Not necessarily SH but just by being willfully reckless?)

For this prompt game!

“You don’t think this is concerning?”

“No, Sokka,” Katara says again, patient, a familiar blend of exasperation and fondness in her chest as she glances over to where he’s fiddling with his wrist wraps, frowning down at Zuko’s latest letter. “I think it’s fine.”

“You’re sure?” he presses, anxious in a way he so rarely lets himself be this openly, at least in front of the people he’s anxious about. And because she knows how much he does worry no matter how much he tries to hide it, she leans over, gently taking the letter out of his hand and indulging him in scanning it over once again.

“He says it’s not as cold as he expected,” she says, skimming over the lines as Sokka pulls a little face, “That Arnook was nice, that he misses you—” she peaks through her lashes at that bit, looking for any twitch on his face as he just continues to nod along. “—that he’s looking forward to seeing you again, that the food’s good, that tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”

She lets her hand drop to look at him, expectant, sighing when he just continues to nod, face anxious.

“Sokka,” she says gently, “He says he’s fine. And I know you miss him,” she adds when he continues to look unconvinced.

“That’s not it,” he protests immediately.

“But he’s only going to be gone for a few weeks.”

“Katara, that’s not—”

“And you’ll see him soon, okay?” she finishes, reaching out to grab his hand, giving it a little squeeze until he sighs and leans back.

“Yeah,” he says, rubbing a hand over his face. “Yeah, okay,” he repeats, grabbing back the letter and putting on a bright smile like she doesn’t know exactly how to see through that, like she can’t see the way his thumb continues to worry at the edge of it. “So what was it you needed help with again?”

“Penguin sledding,” she says, abruptly changing the plan for the day and grinning at him when he blinks, nonplussed. “We need to pick out the best hills for the new season, for the little ones,” she says. “Make some maps, maybe, plan some routes, do some schedules.” All of his favorite things she can think of, to keep his mind off his worry.

--

“I don’t know,” Aang says apologetically as he and Sokka jump across a gap where the temple floor’s fallen away. Probably no one should stay in this hallway until they fix that… “I don’t think I’m hearing it.”

“No?” Sokka says, the syllable cracking with uncertainty.

“Tell me again, though,” Aang says quickly. “What did it say?”

Sokka huffs, a faint furrow between his brows as he digs out two pieces of paper, peeling the latest letter off the top. “He greets me,” he rattles off, eyes flicking over the page, Aang keeping half an eye on the placement of his feet since Sokka isn’t anymore, “He talks a bit about the canals, he mentions Yugoda, bending, bending, bending—”

“Oh?” Aang says, perking up. “Did he—”

“Stay focused,” Sokka orders, waving a hiding hand.

Aang sighs but obediently puts on his most attentive face.

“And then he says—” Sokka clears his throat, drawing himself up, so Aang makes sure he’s actually paying attention. “—that he had an interesting afternoon of discussions, that Sei Zun is missing his office, and that everything is going fine.”

Aang nods, projecting attentive with everything he has and freezing a little when Sokka just hits him with an expectant look.

“I mean,” Aang says slowly, scratching the back of his head. “It sounds like everything is going fine?”

“Fucking—” Sokka cuts off with an aggravated noise, throwing his hands up.

“I can write him myself for the bending stuff,” Aang blurts, scrambling for something to get the worried tightness off of Sokka’s face and wincing when Sokka just lets out another garbled noise because…yeah. That…probably wasn’t it.

--

“Run it back at me again, Loverboy,” Toph orders, flicking a little bit of stone toward the sound of Sokka’s feet when he makes a questioning little noise. “I can hear you worrying over there,” she says, giving an exasperated look in his general direction. “Get it out.”

He pauses, heartbeat a little too quick like it’s been all day, then, cautiously, “You already said it was nothing.”  

“Maybe I was wrong,” she shrugs. Sokka is excitable and far more anxious than he tries to let on, but that excitableness has gotten them out of more than one bind.

“…Um,” he says after a moment, hair rustling as he scratches under his wolftail.

“I mean, I don’t think I am,” she allows, grinning when he snorts and making a kicking up her feet. “But maybe you explained it to my shitty.”

“Yeah, yeah,” he laughs, a good sound over the rustle of papers as he tugs out those letters again. “Okay,” he says, getting serious, her words as much on his heartbeat as his words as she tries to pick up on what exactly is worrying him about this, “So it starts with saying things are fine—” ba-DUMP. “—talks about training a bit with some of the staff fighters—” ba-dump. “—talks about a canal ride—” BA-dump, interesting. “—he had a formal dinner, the food was nice, sea prune stew reminded me of him.” Ba-dump, ba-dump, ba-dump, filling up his expectant silence as she plays back the words and weighs them and tries to pick them apart and…

“Yeah, Sokka,” she finally says, apologetic and wincing a little when he audibly slumps, heart dropping in a way she usually can’t literally sense. “I’m not hearing it.”

“You don’t—he doesn’t seem off to you?” Sokka presses, sounding like he isn’t sure whether to let the anxiety out or whether he wants to be assured.

“I mean, based on how you read it…” Toph shrugs. She always assumes Sokka puts the most dramatic read on anything that he’s able to, given the opportunity. He’s second only to Zuko, there.

“I just, I feel like I should go up there,” he says, weight shifting back and forth and back and forth.

“Do you think,” she says carefully, “That that might muddy the waters for him?” She flicks a pebble back and forth across the ground when he stays conspicuously silent. “He’s trying to build his own relationships, Sokka. Right?”

“Yeah,” he acknowledges, reluctant, beads rattling softly as he shakes his head. “I just—I just don’t think he’s okay.”

“He said he’s fine, like, multiple times in each letter.”

“Yeah,” he says again after a beat, sounding doubtful, and Toph nods, slow and serious and silently tossing aside every loose plan they had for the day. They don’t need to be talking to officials and discussing infrastructure projects when he’s in a mood like this, she decides. They need to be riding Omashu’s mail carts.

--

“And none of these are horny?” Mai checks again as she takes the offered stack of letters.

“No,” Sokka says again, openly fretting, not even exasperated, so Mai shrugs and quickly skims through the stack. She keeps her face still, her movements measured as she sips her sweet waterorange juice, her eyes skipping over bland descriptions, over details of Zuko’s day that are all about what Zuko did—

“Oh,” Mai says.

“Yeah?” Sokka pauses in his pacing, something half hopeful and half nervous on his face.

—over talk of other people and none of himself—

“Oh yeah,” Mai repeats, setting down her juice.

“Right?”

—and fine, fine, fine repeated over and over again.

“Yeah, this is not good,” Mai agrees.

“Thank you.”

“Wow,” she says, going back over that last letter again and lingering over the careful curve of Zuko’s characters. “He’s about to lose his shit.”

“Okay, yes.”

She flicks him a flat stare, incredulous. “Why are you still here?”

“He’s supposed to be building relationships with the Northern Water Tribe on his own,” Sokka says, shoving both hands through his hair and looking like he has to physically stop himself from tearing I out. “And everyone is saying I’m going to get in the way, and I don’t want to mess it up for him but I also don’t want it to be harder than it has to be, and he’s not okay I don’t care what everyone—bird."

Mai instinctively ducks beneath the table, watching from safety as a messenger hawk dives down to smack Sokka square in the back, the pair of them screaming and squawking and flailing in a mess of limbs and wings until the hawk finally manages to dump its scroll case and take off, disgruntled, leaving Sokka mussed and breathing heavily in its wake.

Mai cautiously slides back into her chair, Sokka’s eyes wide and flicking around the sky as she waits as long as she can before huffing pointed.

“Well,” she demands, flicking the scroll an expectant look. “What does it say?” Because she knows one of Azula’s overdramatic, overly trained birds when she sees one, which only two people in the entire Fire Nation use, and that one clearly wasn’t for her.

Sokka scrambles into motion, fumbling the scroll case opening, hands hasty and quick and—“Fuck.”

Mai straightens, snatching the scrap of paper out of the air when Sokka suddenly tosses it at her and takes off, staring after him a moment before carefully flattening it out along with the others he left her, knowing he’ll want them all back, and raising her eyebrows when she sees one firmly scrawled line in Zuko’s distinctly overly formal hand:

            Please come get me

“Well,” Mai purses her lips, wondering how exactly Sokka’s going to get himself there. “Fuck.”

--

Sokka leaps out of the newly streamlined transit balloon he’s been designing as soon as its close enough to the ground for him to not fuck up his knee with the landing, shouting a thanks over his shoulder and dashing over the freshly constructed landing pads, calling hellos in response to the startled exclamations he gets and scanning across the promenade for—

“Zuko!” he cries as he catches sight of that breadth of shoulders he’d recognize anywhere, that politely attentive angle of his head, the deep maroon of his robes standing out against the snow and in the cluster of periwinkle blue around him.

Zuko pivots toward him, face momentarily open, surprised and startled and relieved. “Sokka!” he calls back, immediately ignoring the others, hurrying forward, not exactly funning but intent, focused, determined, sweeping Sokka into his arms the second he’s close enough, leaning into him as Sokka leans back, sighing in relief to be surrounded by his warmth, to feel him solid and heavy against him and so, so beloved.

“Hey, love,” Sokka whispers, ignoring the uncertain crowd around them and mouthing a silent thank you when Poak catches his eye before waving everyone else back to give them space.

“Hey,” Zuko says into his shoulder, shaky, laughing a little and clutching Sokka even tighter.

“I missed you,” Sokka says, clearing his throat and feeling his eyes stinging as he presses his smile against Zuko’s hair.

“Mhm.” Zuko pushes harder into Sokka’s chest.

“I decided I couldn’t wait to see you again,” Sokka murmurs, running a hand up Zuko’s back, something in him unwinding as he feels the familiar lines of Zuko's back moving as Zuko laughs again, wet. “So I figured hey, why not take a little trip.”

“Is that your new experimental design?” Zuko asks, shifting just enough to glance over Sokka’s shoulder. “It didn’t drop you out of the air.”

“Nope,” Sokka grins, sinking his fingers into Zuko’s hair. “It did not.”

Zuko hums, turning into his neck. “I missed you,” he whispers, heartfelt.

“Yeah,” Sokka says, the words coming out thick as he pulls Zuko more firmly against him. “Me too, buddy.”  

 Zuko sighs, relaxing into him inch by inch, the two of them just breathing together, even and slowly falling into sync.

“I am going,” Zuko finally says, tone nearly abstract, distant, “To punch him in the fucking face.”

Sokka blinks a little. Wha—

“If I have to see one more smug look—”

“Ah,” Sokka says, realizing.

“—or listen to one more fucking sour, pretend offhand comment—”

“Right,” Sokka says, smoothing a hand down Zuko’s back and glancing around, making sure Pakku isn’t actually in Zuko’s line of sight right now.

“You would not believe—”

“Oh, I would,” Sokka says, with feeling. The meetings he's been in with that man...

“That man,” Zuko hisses, literally steaming with the force of his anger.

“Yup,” Sokka agrees, giving him a solid pat. Sokka knows exactly how he feels.

“If Katara gets to lay him out—”

“Katara isn’t the Fire Lord,” Sokka quickly points out. And Pakku is, for better or worse, enough of an ass not to want anyone to know he got decked by a girl.

“I’ll fucking give it up for the chance to—”

“Okay, okay,” Sokka says, giving Zuko another firm pat and glancing around for some redirection. Lighting things on fire should probably be out, Sokka didn’t bring his sword—“Want to go find a big stick?”

Zuko is still a moment, then pulls back just enough to peak at him, gold eye half-narrowed and suspicious.

“I can throw some snowballs,” Sokka offers, inviting. “You can smack them.” Zuko hesitates, openly considering, so Sokka adds, "They explode."

“Okay let’s go,” Zuko says almost before he gets the words out, grabbing his hand and interlacing their fingers together as he hauls Sokka off and away from the confused clump of Northerners, Sokka tossing a wave over his shoulder and an apologetic shrug, happy to let himself be pulled along—at least until Zuko pauses at the first intersection, uncertain, and Sokka can take over.