If Zuko's exhaustion level was anything to go by, it was much later than he had originally thought. He had every intention of following Sokka's advice and going to bed. It had been a long day. Productive, and in more ways than one—but long and he was tired.

Sokka had assured him earlier that they were going to be hunting—not just trapping—in the coming few days and Zuko held no delusions as to whether he was going to be any good at it. Short of burning them to a crisp where they stood or chasing after them flailing a pair of swords, he didn't think he was going to be much help. He was also pretty sure he was going to need all of his strength and concentration to keep up with Sokka, sick or no.

So sleep sounded like a really good idea. Now all he had to do was get his mind to catch up with the rest of him and he would be good. He should have known, of course, that that wasn't going to work.

Zuko lay on his back for what felt like a very long time—though it was probably only a few minutes—listening to Sokka breathing beside him. The Water Tribe boy was lying close to him, with his back pressed along the length of Zuko's body. Zuko could feel the heat coming off him—a bit too warm, but not quite hot enough to be worrying—and he yearned to reach out and touch him. He could tell the younger boy wasn't asleep from the way he breathed, but he was unwilling to speak or move in case Sokka was actually trying to sleep. The last thing he needed was an irritable Water Tribe hunter in the morning. With sharp pointy weapons.

So he lay on his bedroll staring up at the low, dark ceiling of their tent, with his hands linked across his chest and let his thoughts roll aimlessly across his mind like the curling waves of an incoming tide. He knew there was little point in trying to stop them, so he just let them run their course.

Inevitably, they rolled right back to the boy lying next to him.

They had yet to talk about anything that had happened between them. He didn't know if that was because they both simply never thought about it, or if they were both avoiding the topic. To be sure, Zuko thought about it often enough to have the material for several hours worth of one-sided conversations.

Zuko wasn't quite sure when he started to see Sokka as something other than "that Water Tribe peasant". Certainly he had noticed him since their first encounter, which felt like so long ago, on the ice of the South Pole. But it was hard to miss a boy like Sokka. Outside of the Poles, he had very unique features. He had a distinct personality and he kept company with a talented Waterbender and the Avatar. He was hardly unnoticeable. But Zuko's interest in him at the time had been of detached curiosity.

He was pretty sure.

He had only just realized that his interest in Sokka went way beyond "detached". But when had it actually happened? Had it been after he joined their team and he had more time to get to know the young warrior? Or was it before, during their seemingly endless games of roostercat and badgermouse?

Although, he had to be honest with himself; he didn't actually know, one hundred per cent, how he felt about Sokka. Zuko admired him. He made him laugh. He made him feel wanted and needed. He made him feel like a randy teenager—which, yes, he was, but he had never actually felt like it before. But were these recent feelings associated with his loneliness and eagerness to be liked and accepted by damn near anyone? Or did he really lo… er… like Sokka?

Just as important—how, in the name of the spirits, did Sokka feel about him? There was an obvious physical attraction between both of them. But Zuko was fairly confident that he had an emotional one, as well. Did Sokka? Or was this just a convenient way for him to get some?

Zuko very, very much wanted to think there was something more to it than that but he also had to be honest with himself. He just didn't know. And he wouldn't unless he asked and he was not yet ready to do that. He liked what they had going, even if it was confusing him into knots. He wasn't ready to risk it.

Zuko really wished he could talk to Uncle Iroh right about now.

Of course, that single, simple reflection released a whole floodgate of guilt-ridden thoughts that always seemed to burst forth unbidden in the quietest moments of the night.

"Zuko, I can feel you thinking."

Zuko jumped in surprise. Despite all his swirling thoughts, he had forgotten Sokka was right beside him.

"Sorry." He murmured into the darkness. "I was trying not to keep you awake."

"Meh." Sokka shrugged as he turned to face Zuko, even though they could barely see each other through the shadows. "I wasn't really falling asleep. Too much on my mind. What about you?"

"I couldn't sleep, either." Zuko's voice sounded gruffer, even to himself. He frowned. His emotions were way too close to the surface. It was a bad time to talk.

Which, of course, meant that Sokka was more than ready to start a conversation.

"What were you thinking about?" Sokka asked. His voice was light and nonchalant, which led Zuko to suspect that Sokka's thoughts had not been anywhere near similar to Zuko's.

"Nothing." Zuko said quietly. He really didn't want to talk about it, not with Sokka this close. He could still feel the heat coming off him—he was a bit concerned, if he was being honest with himself—and if he allowed himself to get distracted, he wasn't sure he could keep a close guard on his mouth.

"Liar." Zuko felt Sokka prop himself up on his elbow. "Look, you don't have to tell me. Just keep in mind that whatever you say to me would stay with me. The last thing I need to do to make my life any more complicated is to go around blabbing someone else's secrets."

Zuko believed him. Still…

"I was thinking about my uncle." He said, deciding a half-truth wouldn't hurt. "How I wish he were here to help me think a little more clearly…"

Zuko let his words fade away.

He changed his mind. He didn't want to talk about it. At all. It was too painful and too dangerous and part of him was too eager to just tell Sokka everything. That was the part that scared him the most.

Zuko heard Sokka sigh and roll onto his back.

"It's okay, you know."

"What's okay?" Zuko couldn't help himself but ask.

"To be afraid. To feel like you're in over your head. To want to be comforted."

Zuko felt like there was a weight pressing down on his chest. Sokka's words were getting disconcertingly familiar. He wanted to roll over and go to sleep and ignore anything else Sokka had to say because it was hard enough when his thoughts were his own. He didn't know if he wanted to hear them coming from someone else's lips.

The other part of him kept him still.

"The first few weeks of this whole… journey…whatever thing made me feel like that." Sokka continued softly. "I was in so way over my head. I was just some kid from a Southern Water Tribe village who had never left the South Pole and had never had any intentions of doing so. But then Dad and the other men left and suddenly I was "the man in charge." Which was a laugh, since, by local tradition, I wasn't even a man yet.

"And then along came Aang and he was the Avatar. Plus, it was me and Katara that were chosen to lead him on his quest to become the savior of the world." Sokka's voice was mocking and humorless. "It didn't hit me right away, but when it did—bam.

"Suddenly I didn't feel like just another kid. I felt special. Important." Sokka snorted. "That didn't last very long. It seemed that every other day I was reminded of the fact that I wasn't any of those things. I was top of the class back home but out in the bigger, wider world I had no idea what I was doing. I had gotten it into my head that I was going to be the tough, strong, wise leader and provider for my sister and the Avatar. It had never occurred to me that, since I didn't know the first thing about the Earth Kingdom, that I wouldn't be able to provide anything. All my skills were useless there. I didn't know how to act in trees. I didn't know what was safe and what was going to kill us dead by looking at it wrong. I didn't trust people—I had never seen a face that didn't resemble my own. And here I was in a nation full of people who looked at me weird. I was right back to where I had started—a nobody kid from a Southern Water Tribe village play-acting at being a man.

"I saw it in their faces every day I did something wrong. Katara and Aang trusted me, but every time I messed up I could see them lose a little more faith in me. I knew they didn't do it on purpose, and I can hardly blame them. I was the oldest. Everyone just assumes that the oldest can do anything—I did, too. It hits hard when what you expect falls so far short."

For a moment Sokka was quiet. Zuko lay still beside him, listening silently. It was something new—and a bit unnerving—hearing this side of Sokka. The Sokka he knew was a fierce warrior and brave hunter, intelligent strategist and loyal companion. He was confident and eager and fearless. But while this other Sokka he heard about was a stranger, he was eerily similar to a Zuko he had once known…

"I don't think any of us really noticed at first when they started to ignore me. I know it wasn't intentional. But it happened and… I wonder if either of them ever realized it, but I sure did. One day I woke up and I was the third wheel and the butt of every joke. It seemed that Katara and Aang were getting on fine without me—better, in fact—and I was just the guy they dragged around because they couldn't ask me to go away. I was more or less required to come because I was Katara's brother. I wasn't Sokka, warrior of the Water Tribe. I was Sokka, Katara's brother. I was supposed to protect them. More often than not, they were protecting me. And every time I did do something right they seemed to forget it three days later.

"Again, it wasn't their fault. I mean, they had bigger fish to fry. Aang had to become the Avatar, for spirits' sake (still does, in fact), and it seemed it was Katara's personal mission to make sure he got there—all the while becoming a Waterbender herself. She had always been eager to see what was "out there" so this was all the things she could have hoped for and more. I guess I became a little depressed that the vision I had had of myself and my actual reality were two very different things—and that Katara and Aang had noticed."

Zuko could hear the smile creep into Sokka's voice.

"And then there was this weird, creepy Firebending kid who just couldn't seem to find it in himself to leave us the fuck alone. No matter where we went, there you were. Spirits—you were half the reason I left the South Pole. And you were a 'bender, just like they were. Only, you knew how to fight—they didn't. Oh, they figured it out and did pretty well for themselves, but all of it relied pretty heavily on their ability to 'bend.

"But I could fight." Sokka was grinning fiercely now. Zuko could tell. "And even though we didn't win often—or usually—I always seemed to be that one thing no one could plan for. I wasn't a 'bender so I didn't have any basic rules to fall back on while it seemed you all did. There were only so many moves Aang or Katara knew and they were limited in that once you figured out how to get passed those moves, they didn't have much to fall back on. And while you seemed to have a wider variety up your sleeves—and more back-up—you still fought like a 'bender.

"But I could pretty much do whatever I wanted. I had weapons and I knew how to use all of them—well. I was a Kyoshi warrior for a day—I can tell you're making a face so you can stop it now—and knew a lot about hand-to-hand fighting. 'Benders seemed all about face-to-face fighting and "honor". I was taught that the only honorable way to fight is the way that won't leave you bleeding face down in the snow.

"Suddenly I wasn't so useless. I wasn't the wise leader who provided for all, but I wasn't the sidekick, either. I was finally on equal footing with Katara and Aang. It seemed every time we had to fight you, I gained a little more respect back from them. And every time I held my own, I gained back a little more confidence. They never said that I was wanted or needed, but they didn't have to now. I had proven myself to myself."

Sokka's smile faded and his voice grew thoughtful.

"You were the only thing keeping me together, Zuko. You didn't even know it—I didn't even know it—but you were. If it hadn't been for you… I don't know who I would be. Not me, that's for sure. You saved me, Zuko. You were what gave me comfort when I was afraid… though," Sokka's voice was wry once again, "looking back on it, I may be a little masochistic for taking comfort in a guy who tried to kill me once a week."

The silence that fell after Sokka stopped talking sounded like crashing waves in Zuko's ears. He didn't know what to say. What could he say? Sokka had just done what Zuko had been too afraid to think about—he had bared himself to the Firebender without shame and without fear. He knew that Sokka wouldn't expect anything for it, either. He just wanted to make Zuko feel better, and he had probably thought nothing of showing him a part of his soul that probably nobody else in the four nations had ever even suspected existed.

Zuko couldn't swallow. He felt strange. There was a lump in his throat, the pressure of tears behind his eyes, and a dizzy feeling of being weightless while he was lying firmly on the ground.

"And I sure did miss you when your psycho sister started chasing us around." Sokka added dryly.

Something inside Zuko sprang so swiftly into focus that it made him dizzy. Zuko almost choked on the laugh that burst out of him.

"What?" Sokka's voice had a frown in it, but it was half-hearted. "What's so funny? She's scary, man."

Zuko couldn't answer. He had been surprised by the laughter, but now he couldn't seem to stop. He just laughed harder until his ribs ached and the tears streamed freely down his face. Every time he tried to form words, he dissolved into another fit of laughter until he was rolling on his bedroll, clutching at his sides.

He wanted to tell Sokka why he was laughing, but he didn't really understand it himself. He just knew that suddenly he felt refreshed. It was like new spring air had been breathed into him. He felt cleaner, more alive—happy. Zuko honestly couldn't remember the last time he had actually been legitimately happy. Even in Ba Sing Se he had secretly known he was just kidding himself. And he certainly couldn't remember the last time he had laughed, let alone this hard. He felt uplifted. He felt restored. He felt like he could do anything. He felt dizzy and lightheaded and… amazing.

And it was all because of Sokka. All because Sokka told him he missed being chased around by a moody Firebending traitor-prince in lieu of his psychotic sibling. Sokka—the irritating, frustrating, wise-cracking, loyal, smart, funny peasant-warrior from the South Pole that Zuko had accidently fallen head-over-heels for without even realizing it. Who had trusted Zuko to heal him and had returned the favor without even realizing it.

In the space of a heartbeat the laughter dissolved into sobs. It was like every emotion that Zuko had shoved down as deep as he could took the opportunity to burst out of him like a river out of its banks. His joy at the new direction his life was taking—and the sorrow he had put himself and everyone else through to get here.

And, once again, there was Sokka. He didn't say anything—no words of comfort or mockery or humor. He simply pressed himself against Zuko, wrapped his arms around his shaking frame, and held him. Part of Zuko was humiliated. But that wasn't the part that turned into that embrace and buried his face into Sokka's shirt, clutching at the fabric in an attempt to keep Sokka there forever. That wasn't the part that was relieved to finally let all his feelings of disgrace and fear and anger, of despair and self-loathing and bitter loneliness burst out of him. In a way the tears were as revitalizing as the laughter had been.

It just wasn't as much fun.

Eventually Zuko exhausted himself to the point where there were no more tears. He kept his face buried against Sokka's chest and Sokka didn't seem to have any intention of letting him go. As Zuko drifted into a calmer sleep than he could ever remember having, he realized that he wasn't confused anymore. He knew exactly how he felt about Sokka. He was pretty sure he had Sokka's answer, too.

All the rest of it could wait.