A/N: I know I've got three ongoing stories plus a couple more in the works, but this one just wouldn't leave me alone no matter how many times I told it that it was stupid and should go away. On the plus side, this shouldn't be nearly as slow to update as my other stuff, since it will stick sort of, well, not always close, but parallel-ish to canon.
Chapter one:
Paddle Faster, I Hear Tsungi Horns
The giant sturgeon-pike swam lethargically through the frigid sea, confident in its supremacy over the depths. Too large and swift and toothy for the tastes of penguins and zebra-seals, and dwelling too far below the surface to need fear the spears of water-tribe fishermen, it's place as an apex predator would go unchallenged until autumn, when the orca returned from the more temperate waters to the north.
Or so it thought.
Still as the iceberg whose underside it clung to, invisible as a snowflake in a blizzard, the white dragon held its breath. And waited.
Katara paddled leisurely between two ice floes, contentedly observing the beauty of the untamed sea around her. The pale light of the midnight sun had turned the frozen glass of the sea into perfect mirror of the grey - blue sky, the false abyss broken only by the jagged teeth and formless slabs of white ice, giving all the world a surreal, majestic emptiness, and a sense of vastness that-
Water crashed as a twenty foot sturgeon-pike breached, some thirty yards to starboard, an eight foot dragon cub clinging desperately to the great fish's tail by the tips of its teeth. The fish flopped furiously in and out and over the surface of the water, viciously battering itself, and its unwanted passenger, against the waves it was churning up, and Katara noted with some worry that it was moving in her general direction.
The first wave she managed to deflect entirely on instinct, however, startled by her own unexpected accomplishment, she failed to do anything about the next dozen, and thus found herself sliding across a violently rocking ice floe as her canoe rolled over and off and into the water, where it was promptly swamped, capsized, and sank.
At this point the fish had the misfortune to violently brain itself against a passing iceberg, quickly taking most of the fight out of it. Glaring murderously at the now useless paddle in her hands, she quickly found a new target for her ire as the dragon, smugly dragging one still weakly thrashing sturgeon-pike, pulled itself up onto the ice floe, nearly tipping it in the process, before shaking itself dry.
"Dammit Sokka! What were you thinking?!" Katara shouted, gesticulating furiously, paddle still in hand. "That thing is literally twice your size! One wrong twitch and you would have been the one with his head busted open against the ice! And it's not just your own idiot life you're risking when you pull stunts like this!"
Sokka, distracted by the large iceberg his sister was systematically demolishing in the background, barely managed to seize hold of the sturgeon-pike as it regained consciousness and made one final bid for freedom before he tore out its throat.
"Were you even listening to a word I said?" Katara growled.
Sokka nodded emphatically, with barely a glance at the still crumbling iceberg behind her.
Following his gaze with a Self Righteous Glare of Indignation ™ , his sister was taken aback by the sight before her, as now that it had gained the attention of its unknowing tormentor, the great edifice chose that moment to begin making the full extent of its grievances known. With a deep, creaking groan and a series of whistling, resonant cracks, the mountain of ice tore itself apart in a fountain of glittering shards and frothing water.
For several moments the siblings watched the churning sea in silence, until Katara hazarded the question;
"How are we getting home?"
Thinking for a moment, Sokka slipped one of his whip-like whiskers into her hand.
"I could try pushing the ice floe." he thought aloud.
"And you could maybe use the paddle to steer- Katara that's not funny."
"Wha-?"
Rather than subsiding, the angry churning of the water was only growing fiercer, now beginning to violently rock their small ice floe.
"Katara! Cut it out!"
"This isn't me!" Katara had to nearly shout to be heard over the waves.
"Well make it stop!" Sokka pleaded, struggling to simultaneously maintain contact with his sister and keep his fish from sliding off the wildly rocking ice.
With a mighty SPLOOSH! and accompanying shower of freezing cold water, a giant, blue glowing sphere of ice burst to the surface. The two siblings scrambled to maintain their footing as their refuge was tossed once more by the waves.
As the water calmed, Katara stood suddenly, shouted something Sokka didn't catch, and leapt, paddle in hand over to the new iceberg. Halfway through leaping after her, Sokka spun around and seized hold of the dead sturgeon-pike before it slid back into the water, nearly being dragged with it in the process. After several moments of panicked indecision, he set about the arduous task of dragging his fish over to the iceberg.
By the time he arrived, once again sopping wet, and had finished extricating his catch from the water, nearly a minute had passed, and Katara had begun violently assaulting the iceberg with her canoe paddle.
Seeking an opening to question her, Sokka instead found himself awkwardly bobbing and weaving behind her as he attempted to avoid becoming collateral damage in his possibly insane sister's apparent quest to remind an oversized lump of ice and snow who had just finished kicking the snot out of it a minute earlier.
Both siblings were sent sprawling when the iceberg split open with a rush of dry wind and a long flare of blinding white light. Eyes clamped shut to block out the light, Sokka finally managed to get a whisker over his sister's shoulder.
"I think you should stop attacking this thing; You're pissing it off, and it clearly possesses power and malevolence far beyond us mere mortals."
"There's someone inside!"
"What?!"
As the blazing light faded to a more tolerable level, a dark silhouette appeared, looming atop a steep edifice of ice, it's eyes aglow with baleful blue flame. Snarling, Sokka reared up on his hind legs, wings flared to their full twenty-foot span and mane puffed wide, hot orange flames flickering between bared fangs. This left him feeling slightly foolish when the deathly light vanished, and the previously imposing figure toppled like a ragdoll from his perch. Katara immediately dashed forward to catch him.
The boy was scrawny, bald, and tattooed, dressed in a thin outfit of yellow and orange cloth. In a weak, quavering voice he spoke, scratchy and halting;
"Can- can I ask you something?"
"Of course." Katara replied solemnly, no doubt listening for what would almost certainly be the boy's final request.
"Do you wanna go penguin sledding with me?!"
Not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, Sokka found himself desperately regretting his inability to smack himself in the face.
"Shocking. The two-and-a-half-ton wingless buffalo can't actually fly."
Katara felt a flicker of guilty satisfaction when her brother visibly flinched from the force of her Reproving Glare™.
"You're one to talk. I seem to remember a certain incident-"
"I thought we agreed to never speak of that again."
Katara raised an eyebrow disbelievingly.
"Besides, we both know the whole thing was your fault."
"Excuse me? Need I remind you that the fish hooks were your idea-"
"So, just to address the elephant - boar in the room," Aang piped up, "but I wasn't aware the Water Tribes kept pet dragons. I thought that was more a Fire Nation thing."
"Trust me. Sokka is no one's pet."
"Wow! You managed to befriend a wild dragon?! That's so cool! I wanted to try that once, but Kuzon said that it was super dangerous. I wanted to try anyway but then Monk Gyatso said-"
"What? No! He's my brother!"
"..."
"You have a problem with that?"
"No! No, … but, how does that work?"
"The same as any other brother-sister relationship, except with half as many opposable thumbs."
Sokka snorted indignantly.
"No, I meant how did you end up with a dragon for a brother?"
"Well he wasn't always a dragon. That's actually a relatively recent development."
"Wait, what? Also how?"
"Ask Sokka to explain."
"Do I have to?"
"Not technically, but you really should. Gran-gran says talking about it will help."
"But he smells funny! And I really don't want to go rooting through his empty head. I might get lost in there!"
"Sokka! Don't be rude! And it's especially nasty to say things like that about someone when they can't hear you."
"Yes Mom."
" …"
"Sorry. That was uncalled for."
"Yes. Yes it was."
"Um, guys?"
"Fine. I'll tell him."
They were gathering driftwood when the shadow passed over the sun. Too swift for a cloud, to big for a bird, the then thirteen year old Sokka was immediately on edge. Carefully, he set down the basket of driftwood, readying his spear.
" Katara."
Then he saw it. The massive green shape dropping silently from the sky with all the speed of a hungry petrel-albatross. With a cry, he leapt in front of his sister and hurled his spear at the beast's face. It struck with lethal accuracy, right between the monster's eyes, and shattered against its iron hard scales.
Staggering backward, the siblings narrowly avoided the creature's grasping talons. With a yelp and a flail of her arms Katara sent a spray of snow sailing into the dragon's face, drawing its predatory amber gaze to rest squarely on her. With another cry, Sokka sent Boomerang whistling toward its eyes. A swift blink put paid to any plans of striking a gap in the monster's armor, but its pained yelp was satisfying nonetheless.
Suddenly Sokka found himself on his rear, nose brushing against the dragon's bared fangs. Crab-walking away on reflex, Sokka paused, thought long and hard for half a second, shot Katara a (hopefully) meaningfully glance, stared the gargantuan beast straight in its head sized amber eyes, and sneered defiantly as he stuck the pointy end of Boomerang right in the tip of its tongue.
The roar that followed sent him tumbling head-over-heels across the beach, smashing and scraping over rocks and branches along the way. Sokka must have blacked out at some point, because the next thing he was aware of was dangling in midair, staring at a blur that slowly resolved itself into a rapidly receding upside down beach, with a shrinking blue speck sprinting over the black and grey stone in a futile attempt at pursuit.
Sokka wasn't sure how long they flew. For the first hour or so he struggled desperately, and ultimately futilely, until he finally collapsed from exhaustion. He doubted the dragon even noticed. At first he tried to rationalize that even if he did escape he would simply plummet to his death, but this led to the counterpoint that the only likely alternative was staying here and presumably being fed to a bunch of baby dragons. And, well, he'd seen what a couple baby penguins could do to a fish, and a nice quick death via massive blunt force trauma seemed infinitely preferable to being torn limb from limb and eaten alive. And that wasn't even considering the possibility that dragons, being able to breath fire, might prefer their meat cooked. Sokka eventually passed out, cold, exhausted and terrified. He slept fitfully, and woke often from half-remembered nightmares of fangs and fire, thrashing hopelessly until weariness dragged him back to the horrors behind his eyes.
Eventually he woke fully, and found they were descending toward a craggy island, wreathed in fog and covered in ancient, twisted trees. In the face of the wind and waves they stood, bent and bowed, but unbroken, their bark peeled away and their leaves and needles reduced to withered tufts. Yet still they clung to life with roots and branches like grasping, skeletal hands, giving the whole island the appearance of a poorly constructed burial mound.
As they drifted down, Sokka saw they were angling toward a long vertical crevice in the basalt ridge that formed the spine of the island, a gaping maw of darkest shadow lined with teeth of jagged stone. Then they plunged in, and soon they were shrouded in near-absolute darkness. For several seconds they plunged through shadow and stone, the whistling wind their only companion, until, beneath them, Sokka spotted a faint glow. Suddenly the chasm opened into a wide cavern, and he took in their surroundings as they landed.
The cavern itself was of mottled black and brown stone, shot through with green and red. The floor and lower walls, several hundred feet below by his estimate, were in shape more akin to ice after a brief but powerful thaw; flowing and bubbling in fantastical curves and swells. The most notable features however were the dragon cubs; Sokka counted just shy of a dozen of them scattered about, in a whole rainbow of colors.
Many appeared to be dozing in various nooks and crannies about the great space, a pair were taking it in turns to puff controlled bursts of flame into a large pit filled with strawberry-cherry red stones and gravel; the source of the glow he had seen earlier, as well as the sweltering heat that permeated the cave.
A few yards away from the firepit three of what appeared to be the largest cubs were busy tearing a whale carcass into much more manageably sized chunks, before bringing them over to the pair tending the fire to begin roasting, filling the whole cavern with the mouthwatering smells and sounds of barbecue.
'Wait, if there are this many of them, and they're already cooking up an entire whale, then I would barely count as a snack for even one of them." Sokka realized gleefully.
'But it also probably means they won't have much in the way of leftover barbecue.' his stomach interjected.
'Shut up! This is one gift ostrich-horse we really can't afford to look on the mouth right now!'
'Hey, I'm not the one who went the whole day without eating!'
'That is SO not my fault! And shut up already! I'm trying to think, and having a mental argument with one's stomach is probably a sign of some kind of insanity.'
'Hunger induced insanity.'
'Shut up!'
The dragon touched down in a wide, flat area near the center of the cavern, and deposited Sokka on the floor. He quickly scrabbled back and watched it warily. He was now fairly confident he wasn't going to be eaten, but that didn't mean the dragon's intentions were even the slightest bit friendly.
"So, if I'm not dinner, why am I here?"
One of the dragon's whiskers snapped out, brushing over his forehead;
"Well aren't you a clever one? And stubborn. I'd give you better odds than most, little human-cub." her (he didn't know how, but he knew it was a she) voice echoed through his mind.
"Did you just-? Wait, better odds at what? What's going on?"
"So many questions little human-cub. If you-"
"I have a name you know! It's-"
"For now, perhaps."
"Wait, what?!"
"Names are a human idea, unnecessary for those who speak as we do, a perverse lie that can never tell the full truth of who one is."
"O-kay? But, all the dragons I've heard stories about had names too."
"Names that humans gave them! The weak and tame may have consented to use them, but a true dragon would never sink so low!"
"You really don't like humans do you?"
"Humans betrayed my kin! Humans butchered my people! Humans stole my hatchling from me! You are a clever cub, what do you think?"
"Please tell me I'm not about to be sacrificed in the name of some evil spirit or something equally horrifying and nonsensical."
The dragon gave a distinctly unfriendly sounding chuckle.
"Well, little human-cub, that depends."
"NOT a very reassuring answer. Wait! Depends on what?"
"On whether you survive. As I said, I give you better odds than most." the dragon thought to him, rivulets of fire flowing between her teeth.
"So, just out of curiosity," Sokka stalled, attempting to back away from the dragon, who paced him step for step. "You wouldn't happen to know if these are the 'subject their victims to an eternity of torment' kind of evil spirits would you?"
"Truthfully? I neither know nor care."
Sokka's last thoughts before the flames hit were roughly along the lines of 'well this is going to SUCK'.
He wasn't wrong.