Happy Looks Really Good On You

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/34233130.

Rating: General Audiences

Archive Warning: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Categories: F/F, F/M
Fandoms: Avatar: The Last Airbender, Avatar: Legend of Korra
Relationships: Azula/Sokka (Avatar), Minor or Background Relationship(s), Mai/Ty
Lee (Avatar), Baatar Sr./Suyin Beifong
Characters: Azula (Avatar), Sokka (Avatar), Baatar (Avatar), Mai (Avatar), Ty Lee
(Avatar), Yasuko Sato, Toph Beifong, Suyin Beifong
Additional Tags: Sokkla Saturdays 2021, Sokkla, Happy Family, Fluff, Happy Azula
(Avatar), Bi Azula
Language: English
Series: Part 1 of Zoey's stories for Sokkla Saturdays 2021
Stats: Published: 2021-10-02 Words: 1,592 Chapters: 1/1
 Happy Looks Really Good On You
by MomochiZoey

Summary

Sokkla Saturdays 2021, Day 1 - Happy Family:

It's the Summer Solstice, and that means a holiday dinner with Azula's family. Luckily for
her, she picked this family herself.

Notes
See the end of the work for notes
She heard the slam of a door followed by voices coming from downstairs just as she put the
finishing touches to a proposal for the Queen of Omashu. She tidied up her desk, making sure
everything was properly organized before she stood and stretched with a groan. She liked to
pretend that she was still young, but her back was always quick to remind her otherwise. As
she made her way out of their home office she could recognize the voice of her husband.

“-and you can go say hi to Baatar, but please remember to keep your voice down, Mai and Ty
Lee only just managed to get Yasuko to sleep. And tell him dinner will be ready soon!”

She turned the corner to the hallway and shot out an arm to catch the teenager-sized bullet
that nearly barreled into her. She looked down with a grin. “My my, what could you be in
such a hurry for? You must have been really excited to see me.”

The girl in her arms quickly recovered and gave her a hug and a beaming smile. “Aunty
Azula! It’s so good to see you! Uhm, you wouldn’t happen to know where Baatar is, would
you?”

With a laugh, Azula returned the hug. “It’s great to see you too, Suyin. He should be up in his
room right now. I think he was working on some sketches of a building for passenger trains,
you know how he gets when he’s focused, but if there’s anyone who can distract him from
that it’d be you.”

As the girl thanked her and made to run up the stairs she couldn’t help but call after her. “And
don’t forget, no closed doors! I'm too young to be a grandmother!”

Suyin stumbled and blushed, stammering denials as she scurried away. Azula laughed as she
entered the dining room and saw Sokka pouring Toph something to drink. He turned and
gave her that brilliant smile that still made her melt inside faster than anything her flames
could ever manage. “There you are! Look who arrived! Just in time for dinner too!”

Azula scoffed and took the lychee wine he offered her. “As if this freeloader would miss a
free meal. You would think she was raised as a starving peasant, not the sole Bei Fong
heiress.”
Toph made a rude hand gesture in her direction as she put her feet on the table. “Like you can
talk about rich childhoods, Professor Zappy. My job doesn’t leave a lot of time for fancy
cooking, and until your little metal typing machine is more widely used, cookbooks are out of
my reach. Anyway, how’s your lake battery project doing?”

With a sigh, Azula leaned into Sokka’s chest, his arms automatically reaching around her
waist to pull her close. “It’s called a hydroelectric dam, which you know, and we’re finally
getting somewhere now that the negotiations have concluded. If one more minister had asked
me why we couldn’t just ‘build a bigger lead-acid battery’ I’d have set someone on fire.
Probably myself. But the proposal is fully amended now, so it just needs Queen Yumi’s
signature, and we can start constructing the first dam near the confluence of the Fu and Zao
rivers, only a few miles north of here.”

Sokka chuckled and kissed the back of her head. “And my genius wife only had to threaten
two ministers to get them to stop bickering about who got to tax it! But enough about work,
it’s a holiday! How have you been Toph? Lin didn’t want to join us for the summer solstice
this year?”

Toph snorted and shook her head in exasperation. “She’s celebrating with her new boyfriend
on Air Temple Island this year. Honestly, what she sees in Twinkletoes Jr. I’ll never know.
Although, with the way her heartbeat keeps spiking every time your niece walks by,
Snoozles, I think I can take a guess.”

“Ahh, the age old question when you’re just discovering your attraction to women: do I really
like this guy, or is his sister just hot?” Azula added sagely. “Of course, for me the answer
turned out to be both, but Katara was already taken, so here we are.”

“Hey! No talking about the attractiveness of my sister so close to dinner!” Sokka protested, a
look of mock outrage on his face.

Azula grinned and pulled him in for a quick kiss. “Don’t worry, I find your mind much more
attractive.” Her gaze flickered downwards and back up, a gleam entering her amber eyes as
she leaned in and added, “and I do enjoy the sharpness of your-”
“Please don’t ruin my appetite, Ty and I worked hard on this smoked sea slug,” came a bored
drawl from the door to the kitchen. Mai walked into the room, followed by her wife, both
carrying various dishes to the table. Ty Lee was bouncing in excitement, nearly dropping a
plate of hotcakes, which she quickly put down before jumping up and grabbing Toph into a
hug.

“Toph! We’re so happy you’re here! Sorry we couldn’t make it to Lin’s birthday, we wanted
to visit but little Yasuko was still a bit too young to comfortably travel up to Republic City
with. I think Mai and I were more exhausted than we’ve ever been because Yasuko still had
some trouble sleeping through the night. Did she like the knife set we sent? We had it
specially designed to fit her new uniform,” the acrobat explained as she sat down.

Toph punched Mai in the shoulder. “She loved it, she was practicing her throwing skills for
weeks afterwards. Stabby’s tips last time really helped by the way, she wanted to thank you
again for the training.”

Sokka quickly went to tell Suyin and Baatar that dinner was ready, and when he got back he
was carrying Yasuko, who appeared to have woken from her nap and was currently making
burbling laughing noises as Suyin and Baatar were making silly faces at her.

Everyone sat down to eat and as conversation flowed around her, Azula didn’t hide the soft
smile forming on her face and the warm feeling spreading through her chest, her inner fire a
gentle inferno.

She watched her husband to her left. He had helped her find a way to use her lightning for
creation, instead of destruction. Together they took the cold-blooded fire, the deadliest of all
firebending arts, and turned it into a way to bring light and life to the world the Fire Nation
had spent 100 years trying to destroy.

Sokka was teasing their son Baatar across from him about the kiss between him and Suyin he
seemed to have interrupted when he came to get them. Baatar might not have inherited her
bending, but he did inherit his parents’ interest in all things technical. And, most importantly,
he never doubted his parents loved him, even when they were embarrassing him. He
stammered, trying to get his dad to shut up, though he couldn’t hide his happiness when
Suyin held his hand under the table.
Suyin, next to Baatar, was blushing furiously as her mother laughed loudly at the story on her
other side. Su was a kindhearted girl, if a bit headstrong and rebellious, but Azula could
appreciate a kid who wasn’t afraid to question authority, parental or otherwise. Not that Toph
was any different. Despite what you’d expect with her job as Chief of the Republic City
Police, she made sure to always question herself, both as chief and as a mother. It’s why she
always made sure to have enough time for both of her daughters, delegating some of her
duties as chief if necessary to spend more time with them.

Mai sat on Azula’s other side, an unrestrained smirk on her face. Ty Lee sat next to her at the
head of the table with Yasuko, trying to get her to eat some pieces of komodo sausage, most
of which their daughter cheerfully spat out babbling at her mothers.

Her two oldest friends were the only ones to follow her when she left all those years ago, this
time not out of fear but out of a shared need for freedom from the stifling pressures of the
past and a desire to face the future together. Together they had bought the house they had
turned into a home, with Sokka officially moving in after Mai had asked them in a deadpan
voice if they intended to keep pretending he didn’t live in Azula’s room already, or if they
could use ‘his’ guest room to invite her little brother to visit.

Sokka glanced her way and smiled softly at her. He leaned towards her and whispered, “Have
I told you that happy looks really good on you?”

Her own smile widened, a soft blush spreading across her face. “I’m glad you like it,” she
whispered back, “considering it’s a look you put there.”

When Azula left the Fire Nation in voluntary exile five years after the war ended, officially
forsaking her titles, privileges and any future right to the throne, all she was hoping for was
that the distance from the palace would help her heal, and maybe allow her to work on
atoning for her actions during the war. She had thought she lost her chance at a true family
then. Now, forty years after the war, she sat back and admired the happy family she had
gained and knew she wouldn’t trade this moment for anything in the world.
End Notes

Thank you for reading my first attempt at writing fanfiction in years! I've been trying to write
some of my ideas for a while, but the Sokkla Saturday prompts were the first that managed to
keep me motivated for long enough to beat my ADHD to the finishline. For the happy family
prompt, I figured nothing said the family had to be blood-related. Sometimes a family is just
2 bisexual geniuses and their son, a goth-pink lesbian couple with their daughter, and the
greatest earthbender in the world with her two daughters. I'm going to try to write for more of
the prompts, but I can't guarantee how successful that is going to be, but we'll see!

I've had the idea of a fic where Azula uses her skill with lightningbending to become a leader
in technological innovation for a while, and I thought, that actually works really well with
Sokkla, because they are both massive nerds who are creative and determined enough to pull
off the discovery of electricity.

Yes Baatar Sr. is their son, who's just as much of a nerd as his parents. And yes, Mai and Ty
Lee are Asami's grandmothers now. It's what they deserve. Don't question the ages too much
though, I'm fudging the LOK timeline a bit but that's okay. Also, Toph is a good mom and I
Will fight the LOK writers about it. If you want an in-universe explanation for that just
assume her friendship with Azula made her understand why too distant mothers are bad. And
for those who caught it, yes I did put their house in the location where Suyin and Baatar later
build Zaofu.

Honestly while I was writing this I was getting ideas for Azula, Sokka, Mai and Ty Lee
meeting Korra and Asami and other ideas in the LOK timeline, so who knows, maybe at
some point I'll expand on this with a few related oneshots. But for now, I hope you enjoyed!
If you did, please leave a comment!

Please drop by the Archive and comment to let the creator know if you enjoyed their work!