The first few months having moved to Republic City were nothing short of terrible. No, the frustrations had nothing to do with the unnecessarily long meetings or the countless issues that arise when constructing a city from scratch. Instead, it came in the form of absence.
For nearly half a decade Sokka had carved out his space in the Fire Nation, for almost five years he was comforted by Zuko’s presence. After all, Zuko had ben the reason Sokka went to the Fire Nation willingly as ambassador to the Southern Tribe. In the waning days of the war, he considered the shunned prince a friend, and as everyone else worked to right the world in the own ways, it only made sense for Sokka to do the same.
Friendship bubbled into knowing glances during conferences as senior advisors would wax poetic about trade routes, into the nights where Sokka sat at Zuko’s desk alongside him, double-checking his writing for any errors. It was the accidental brush of hands, Sokka waking up after having fallen asleep at Zuko’s desk with a blanket tucked around his shoulders. Five years of moments that plucked Sokka’s soul into something beyond friendship. Five years of time Sokka could have been honest about his feelings, accepted the rejection gracefully. In his mind, the escape to Republic City had been the coward’s way out.
Despite it all, he couldn’t help but write constantly to his friend—it was almost compulsive the need to sit down at his desk after every day and write a brief letter. They were never anything grandiose or eloquent, but it was at least a way for him to remind the sleep-deprived, overstressed Fire Lord that he still had someone in his corner.
And by all accounts, Zuko longed for that friendship too, piles of short notes sent every day. It was as if they were back in the meeting room, passing notes under the table like children, except now the notes traveled seas. They were largely incoherent and incomplete sentences, but Sokka treasured them all the same because of how truly ‘Zuko’ they sounded. Whether he was chiding the head of trade for his insistence on tariffs for imported goods, or poking fun at how the head of commerce’s toupee was askew, it made Sokka feel like he was beside him again.
Thumbing through the stack he received just that morning, Sokka found one that especially caught his eye. It was a barely noticeable scrap, ripped from a corner and slightly crumpled. Unfolding it, though, his heart stopped.
I should tell him I love him.
The letter Sokka had sent the next morning, expedited, was the longest he had ever written.