alwaysroomforhope | (no subject)

Entry tags:

shatterverse

(no subject)

1. Motion
2. Cool
3. Young
4. Last
5. Wrong
6. Gentle
7. One
8. Thousand
9. King
10. Learn
11. Blur
12. Wait
13. Change
14. Command
15. Hold
16. Need
17. Vision
18. Attention
19. Soul
20. Picture
21. Fool
22. Mad
23. Child
24. Now
25. Shadow
26. Goodbye
27. Hide
28. Fortune
29. Safe
30. Ghost
31. Book
32. Eye
33. Never
34. Sing
35. Sudden
36. Stop
37. Time
38. Wash
39. Torn
40. History
41. Power
42. Bother
43. God
44. Wall
45. Naked
46. Drive
47. Harm
48. Precious
49. Hunger
50. Believe

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He ducks and weaves, she spins and flips; they dance together daily and Sokka's more comfortable dodging her kicks and throwing punches at her stomach than he is sitting in the bar with quiet conversation.

Steph gets flustered and hot, sweaty from sport and red with exertion; Sokka's skin always seems always smooth and cool to her touch, even in spar -- like water, she thinks, and spends more time thinking about it than she should.

They can't be more than a few months apart, he might even be younger than Steph, but sometimes when she laughs, when she grins, when she looks at everything so optimistically, so filled with hope, Sokka feels ages older.

Eden was dying, and this world is dead; it makes Steph think Maybe nothing was meant to last, and it makes her determined to smile all the more, laugh all the louder, while they're here.

The look on his younger self's face as he leaves is unnerving - Sokka's seen it before, but never focused on himself, and there's no time to tell the boy in red his admiration is misplaced before they're gone.

He can look after himself, better than Steph can; but nevertheless, on watch while he sleeps, Steph tucks their only blanket a little more closely around his shoulders.

Sokka has never understood some people's need to have multiple girlfriends, boyfriends, fuck buddies, whatever - he'd gladly trade one million of each for a single woman that would stay with him.

Steph's dreams are full of people: running, crying, screaming people, making noise and making danger, turning the inside of her head to chaos -- there are so many of them, terrifyingly many, and not a single familiar (dark, scarred, laughing) face to be found.

He is a boy who never led more than a small group of baby warriors, unsuccessfully, in a tiny tribe of ice and snow; it's shocking, and terrifying sometimes, when something goes wrong and she looks to him for help.

Steph never used to care what was inside a machine.

"It was called the Southern Water Tribe - but that was a few years ago, I don't remember much."

The way Mel smiles at her daughters makes Steph ache a little inside; but it isn't safe to drive at night, and the sun will be up in just a few more hours.

It's easy to adapt; not fun, but easy, after all this time - it's trying to settle down again, Sokka finds, walking the streets restlessly, that's so much harder.

Steph's better at following orders than giving them, but she knows this world and she knows what they need to do to be safe -- and if that knowledge doesn't give her the confidence she needs, at least it lets her fake it.

He isn't one to initiate physical contact with anyone outside of his sister or his nieces; but when Steph falls, he's the first to offer a hand, and when the dog they found had to be put down, he hugs her without waiting for permission and doesn't think about what that means.

She'd never killed anything in her life, she'd never seen the bleak horror that had been Apocalyptica, she was just a stupid girl playing at apocalypse in a stupid world she didn't understand, and the dog had never done anything wrong -- but he understood, and he held her, and it wasn't okay but maybe she'd sleep without screaming after all.

The sun is starting to go down but they don't trust the look of this new town and Sokka wants to figure out what's wrong with the car and get going as soon as possible; he doesn't notice he's squinting at the engine until some blonde with laughing eyes and a bright smile shines a flashlight over his shoulder.

"S'ephie!" Hana cries, and is echoed by her sister, and Steph laughs and rolls around with them and lets them tug on her hair, hoping there's still another baby girl somewhere in this dead world to demand this much love from someone else.

There's a moon in this world, too, but Sokka doesn't linger on it the way he had in Eden; what's going to happen is going to happen and he'll worry about karmic retribution after he's finished with current retribution.

"Cheese!" Steph had called, in an abandoned grocery store with a cheap polaroid camera, and Mel and Sokka had looked up from their play-wrestling to laugh; she takes the picture out of her pocket to look at it, sitting up late while they sleep, and grins.

He wakes in the middle of the night with Mel's knee in his kidney and grumbles, releasing the warmth against his chest to punch her (gently) - it's not until after he's rolled back over and halfway drifted to sleep that Sokka realizes the warmth at his chest is blonde, blue-eyed, and giggling.

There's a darkness in Sokka that he doesn't seem to think she sees; it's why she teases, why she smiles so bright, why she tries to make him laugh as often as she can ... Steph needs him to be okay.

Hana and Loo are learning to walk and with walking comes falling - kissing boo-boos is rapidly becoming second-nature and Sokka pretends he doesn't notice when Steph watches him do it, pretends he doesn't notice the sadness in her eyes.

They can't trust this world to stay solid beneath them and there's no reason to think they'll still be here tomorrow -- so Steph puts affection in her teases, and compliments in her snark, so that if they're all flung apart, at least (Sokka) her friends will have that.

He wonders sometimes whether or not Steph misses Tim; Mel's dropped hints but Sokka doesn't completely trust her judgment, and he refuses to open that door of questioning to Steph when he has a girlfriend of his own lingering in his past.