Zukka + lost in Over the garden wall's forest/shady forest AU🙌🙌
"Alright, wanna tell me again what you did, Zuko?"
"You've got eyes. I don't think I need to explain any part of this to you."
Sokka gives a loud snort and drops his bow to the ground as he makes himself comfortable on a nearby tree stump. "Yeah, and I've also got a brain, which I'm starting to think you don't, because when I'm told to..."
He trails off, deliberately allowing space for Zuko to finish his sentence. But Zuko only scoffs, then waits until he's made the rotation around to face Sokka again, and scoffs a second time just in case he wasn't heard before.
"Stop trying to lecture me, I already know what I did."
Sokka rolls his eyes and waves an impatient hand at him. "When I'm told to...?"
With a savage glare, Zuko roughly shoves his fallen shirt up down and snarls out, "'never leave the trail in this territory.' Asshole."
"Cool, so when Aang told you to not do that, I can assume that you did the smart, level-headed thing and actually listened to our spirit guide friend, yeah?"
"It's not like I did it for fun," Zuko fires back before he's forced to break eye contact again on his next rotation. "Contrary to popular belief, I don't go looking to be hung upside down from trees by my feet!"
"After the fifth time, I've started considering it one of your many, many quirky-yet-aggravating habits," Sokka breezily returns, and smiles in the face of his husband's pure aggravation as he makes a show of knocking the dirt off the bottom of his shoes, instead of doing anything to actually help.
"Whatever, I'm not the only brainless idiot. You're out here too."
Sokka stills, then finally looks back up to him.
All around them, the trees begin to groan.
"Yup," he replies.
The easiness has disappeared from his tone, to be replaced instead with a grim resoluteness, and as Zuko tracks each tiny flinch of Sokka's fingers to count the number of arrows in his quiver, he begins to quietly tally his own weapons stash.
In the distance, the singing birds sharpen their chords.
"The girl made it out." It's not a statement.
"She did," Sokka confirms. His bow is still on the ground, in the perfect angle to be easily snatched up and used. For now, it remains at the base of the tree stump. "The trail is not that far away actually, maybe a five minute walk."
"Okay." Zuko allows himself a single deep inhale, a hard exhale, before continuing. "How long is it going to take to cut me down."
Careful to avoid contact with the wooden shafts of his arrows, Sokka pulls his boomerang from its pouch and gives it a couple of small twirls.
"Four seconds to you." The leather of his glove creaks as he grips the metal weapon into a sturdier hold. It's a sound Zuko shouldn't be able to hear from this high up. It's a sound that's blaring in the sudden silence of the woods.
"Four seconds to me."
Zuko clenches his fists, then releases them. "And how long do we have before we need to start running?"
"Probably two seconds after I free you," Sokka shrugs, and the bubbling creek behind him rages against the threat of his understanding.
Zuko only sighs. "Guess it's a good thing you convinced me to wear my heavier clothes today."
For a split second, he doesn't feel like he's hanging upside down anymore. It's like he's lived his whole life with his feet planted towards the open sky, where the ground feels as far away as the clouds once—maybe, possibly, never—felt.
Suddenly, it's Sokka who looks to be the one upside down, struggling against the vine bound around his ankles and desperately searching for a way down to the sky. His mouth is open in a silent scream, his hand outstretched toward Zuko, he's terrified, he can't be saved, he's fallen too far into the earth—
Then Zuko blinks, and the world rights itself.
He chokes. Fights to keep the air in his lungs, then fights harder to release it.
"Think we'll make it out?"
"Might take a bit more than five minutes, but we will eventually," Sokka says with a small smile, and Zuko reads the love in it just as much as he reads the firm confidence, the barely-concealed fear. "I just hope the crew knows what an 'extended vacation' means until then."
"Love you, moonbeam," Zuko murmurs, because he does, because he's sorry for right now but not for what he did to save the little girl, because this isn't the first time he's said those words just in case, and it certainly won't be the last.
No, Zuko will make absolutely certain this won't be the last time he ever says it.
"Love you too, firefly," Sokka returns, knowing, accepting, agreeing. Then he takes a step back, readies himself, aims.
Waits for Zuko's nod.
And severs the vine.