Light The Sky

Note: This story is going to be a multi-chaptered monstrosity of time-consuming goodness. Needless to say, I'm really excited about it. It's the first story I've ever made notes about, and I'm using it as an exercise in writing action sequences, which is something I've avoided up to this point out of lack of practice. Hopefully, they'll develop well as the story and plot do. This first chapter is enormous. I'm going to shoot for all my following chapters to be just as long, but I can't make any guarantees. It's important to note that this story is not an Alternate Universe, but an alternate timeline. This is my version of events, had Sozin's comet come four years later than it did, and then again ninety-six years later (once exactly every century is too convenient, and I like it this way better). All the characters will be older, and a little different on the surface of things. They are all essentially the same people, they've just had some very different experiences than they have had in the show, due to the change in the timeline (i.e.: Aang has already been ordained as a full monk by the time he is forced to leave the temple, under circumstances to be revealed later, and Sokka has had to fight a lost war against the Fire Nation.) These things have changed their view of the world, and the simple difference in their ages will have a profound effect on their behavior. Please enjoy this story as I have enjoyed writing it!

Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar: The Last Airbender. I never have, I never will, and I am A-OK with that. Please don't sue. This disclaimer extends for all chapters of this story.

Description: Alternate Timeline: Aang wakes up one hundred years after the fall of the Air Temples on his sixteenth birthday to find the world completely under the control of the Fire Nation and more desperate than ever for the return of the Avatar. AangKatara. SokkaToph. ZukoMai.

Chapter One

The twilight horizon was getting old, as far as Sokka was concerned. He had his boomerang tucked into his boot, and he tugged his parka tighter around himself, the wind picking up as the afternoon faded into evening. It had been the twilight before full night for over a week, and the sun was still sinking down the horizon. He trudged through the snow, and he stared at the sky for a moment. The sky was darkening with clouds, which meant there was going to be another snowstorm that night, and he groaned at his drafty tent and the idea of spending yet another night huddled under sparse furs and freezing as the icy winds found their way into his tent and drove sharp daggers of frozen wind at him every time he shifted.

He closed his eyes, gripping the fishing spear in his hand tighter as he strode past the guard tower without regard to the soldiers standing guard. He knew that they were freezing too, but they, at least, had fire-bending to keep them warm at night.

"Hey, you there!" The guard had decided to notice him. "What are you doing? It's almost after curfew!"

Sokka turned, keeping his head high. "I'm on official business from my father, Chief Hakoda." He responded simply, turning and continuing to stride forward. That was, of course, a lie. His father hadn't sent him on any business, and hadn't even really talked to his son in weeks, but the guards didn't know that, and were probably more afraid of the Water Tribe warriors than they cared to admit. Despite their victory, the Fire Nation soldiers had suffered heavy casualties at the hands of the Water Tribes, and they had not forgotten the ways a boomerang and a spear could cause pain and death.

The guards decided that they didn't really care what the chief's son did out in the cold night, and stepped back into the post, already shivering violently.

Sokka didn't really know what he was doing, except wandering, thinking, and perhaps looking to fish a little for dinner. There weren't really enough men left in the village to go seal hunting, and it would be ridiculous to go on his own when he could barely see in the gray that smothered his senses.

He hopped across the ice, avoiding spots he could, from experience, tell were thin and unsafe. He finally found a small iceberg bound tightly in the tundra, where he drove in his spear and perched himself, staring idly at the seemingly eternal sunset.

For as long as he, and anyone else he had ever met, had been alive, there had been the war. Four years previously, the Fire Nation ended the war once and for all, conquering the last strongholds of the free world, Ba Sing Se and the North Pole, in brilliant tactical form, with the help of a certain comet, and the South Pole fell gracelessly to yet another Fire Nation navy.

He slumped back against the iceberg. How had things gotten so bad? How had the people a century before managed to ignore the signs that the Fire Nation was becoming unbalanced, so that when the comet came, they could eliminate the air benders and spend the next hundred years attempting to do similar things to the rest of the world? Surely, someone had seen the signs. Surely… surely, the Fire Nation had not been unstoppable in the early days of their conquest.

Sokka brushed stray hairs out of his face, and his fingers brushed the scar tissue memory of his tribe's defeat, and subsequent scrambling of his previous life. No one talked about those days anymore, and no one talked about blame anymore, either. In fact, no one talked about a lot of things anymore. There were no whispers of freedom, of rebellion, or even of just trying to break free of this world, if they couldn't get away from the Fire Nation.

He closed his eyes, and tried to imagine the world without the war. He found that he couldn't. He could barely recall his life before the Fire Nation showed up and ruthlessly conquered his people. So many died… And those who didn't die, those who were captured, were thought to be worse off than the dead. His breath shook at the thought, thinking of the sacrifice his father had to make as chief. If only it had been someone else… Sokka bemoaned in his head. Many people talked about envying the dead their freedom from the war-torn, weary, and ragged world, and no one talked about the people who were suddenly, and painfully, missing from their village.

Something caught his attention, and his eyes snapped open, instincts flaring up and warning him of something. His immediate reaction was to assume it was Fire Nation soldiers, coming to warn him that he was about to miss curfew again, and tell him that they would surely punish him this time. Sokka was sure he could handle anything they dished out, and he peered down the side of the iceberg and realized with a sinking heart that he almost wished it was a Fire Nation soldier prowling the perimeter of the block of ice. He snatched his spear from the ice and took a careful path down to the bottom, circling carefully around the walrus-bear, which had set its sights on him.

The bear growled.

Sokka tightened his grip on the spear, fairly certain for once that his weapon was going to do him no good. He slowly reached down and pulled out his boomerang. It was probably best to stay far, far away from the enormous creature. He wasn't really afraid, but adrenaline was pumping into his veins, warning him of danger and death and pleading for him to just survive. Sokka was a good survivor.

He reached back and flung the boomerang, and cursed loudly when it barely shaved off a few whiskers, gripping the spear tighter than ever. The walrus-bear charged, claws sharp and poised to rip him apart. Sokka slipped into a defensive stance and jabbed the spear forward just when the bear was near enough for it to slide into its gut. He cringed when he realized he had punctured the beast's stomach, and that it was potent acid melting the ice and the bear's other meal for the day. It roared in horrible agony, and he felt a twinge of remorse that he would have to kill a beast that would have not thought even twice about doing the same to him.

The bear charged, bleeding into its matted coat, and swiped twice, knocking Sokka backward, and then down to the ground. He closed his eyes, hoping his death would not be painful as he imagined being mauled by a walrus-bear would be. The first swipe tore his armor from his chest, and a gaping, bleeding wound opened on his abdomen. Sokka gasped in pain, his breathing coming short. He fumbled for the spear, which had skidded away from him, and rolled out of the way of another swipe at him. An involuntary moan of pain escaped from him as he tried to breathe, holding the spear and fighting the urge to gag from the smell.

There was a swishing noise of his boomerang returning to him, and he wondered what good it would do now that he could barely support himself, let alone throw the boomerang again with any accuracy. He heard a loud crunch, as the boomerang collided with the iceberg, becoming deeply embedded in the ice. He cursed again, wishing someone from the village would notice he was missing and come looking for him in the tundra. He touched his wound, staring at the walrus-bear with a challenge in his eye.

A loud cracking startled both him and the bear, and their stalemate was put aside, as the iceberg began to crack apart. Sokka backed away slowly, knowing well that icebergs didn't simply disintegrate when hit with a puny boomerang. The bear sniffed, and Sokka could see that its chest was heaving in pain. He faced the iceberg, and was stunned to discover that deep cracks had formed in the surface of the ice, from which a blinding light was emitted. Sokka shaded his eyes and fell backwards as the ice split open with a crash. A bomb, he thought. I set off a Fire Nation bomb inside the ice… He held up his hands to protect from the following burst of heat and pressure, but was caught instead in a warm gale and a storm of shattered ice, which fell, some as snow, some as deadly projectiles, to the ground around him.

The brilliant light which had flooded the horizon and blinded him, faded slowly, after extending across the area. The walrus-bear was dragging itself away from the site, and Sokka knew it would die slowly and painfully somewhere in the wilderness. The thought made him sad, and it reminded him of the people who had been taken away from the tribe. He seized his spear, his mind settling on confusion. If it hadn't been a bomb in the ice, what had caused the explosion? He pushed himself up on the spear and stumbled toward the iceberg in time to see the form of a teenager tumble forward out of the remaining ice, barely conscious.

Sokka cried out in surprise, hobbling faster, with his spear as a walking stick, but could do nothing more than watch the crumpled form of the younger man crunch uncomfortably on the snow. He was wearing an unseasonal robe that didn't look like anything Sokka had ever seen. The saffron fabric was tailored for him, and stained with fresh, red smears. He tossed his spear aside to check for any injuries, and was horrified to discover that not only were there long, shiny burns that were only starting to blister, but there was intricate cuts littered all over the boy's body that appeared to be fresh. Some were still bleeding and oozing blood. Rusty smears were all over his body, not only on the bloody designs on his back, but across his tattooed head, arms, and face.

With a sickening twist of his stomach, Sokka recognized the patterns to be those of human hands. He fought the urge to vomit again, with the faint notion that he knew exactly how this man had sustained injuries like these, and the idea that other Water Tribe members were being subjected to it… He swallowed some bile back into his throat, checking the man's vitals.

At this, the man began to stir. He choked, as though he had been drowning, and gasped for air, his breaths initially short and shallow, but growing until he could fill his lungs slowly and steadily. His eyes opened slowly, blinking slowly, as though he was not expecting the environment he was in. He was starting to shiver, and Sokka checked the temperature of his forehead. Even though he was shivering, his body was burning with some sort of inner fire that burned Sokka when he touched him.

"What the hell…" He muttered, pulling the man into a sitting position, carefully avoiding both wounds and bare skin. The man coughed again, blinking silently at Sokka. Sokka stared at him, feeling a little suspicious by the look of the man now he was awake. "Who are you?"

He pushed himself with great effort, but didn't seem to either notice or care about his injuries. He looked more weary, as though he had been on a long journey, than injured, and shook the snow and ice from his robes. He looked at Sokka evenly, fixing slate gray eyes onto the bright blue of the Water Tribe warrior and stumbled a little, catching himself on the icy mound next to them. "Where is this?" He asked hoarsely. "I don't know where we are." Deduction told him that he was probably near, or at, one of the poles, but there was no way to tell for sure either way.

That, Sokka decided, was strange. "You're near the Water Tribe's settlement on the South Pole. What do you mean you don't know where you are?" He heaved his spear out of the ice and held it defensively in front of him. "We're miles from anything other than my village. At least three days travel from any other settlements." He pushed the spear to the man's robe, pushing at the fabric. "Your wounds are new." Sokka paused, considering what that might mean. "Was there a Fire Nation attack? Near here? There's not supposed to be any more conflicts, unless… you stirred it up." He prodded him again.

The man pulled his sleeves down over the cuts on his arms, his eyes sharp. "No, you're right. There shouldn't have been any fighting." It was obvious to both of them that he was agitated, and he took a deep breath of arctic air before offering a short bow. "My name is Aang." He didn't seem to notice that several of his cuts had split wide open and were pouring blood again.

Sokka stared at him and lowered his spear a little. "My name is Sokka…" He gave Aang a sweeping glance, from his boots to the top of his bald head. He was starting to get the impression that Aang was younger than he was, despite his calm and mature demeanor. "Where did you get those wounds? You're not from around here, are you? Why were you fighting the Fire Nation? You could get my people killed if you revolt." Sokka's voice was cold and rang out across the snow.

Aang stared at him stonily, patiently, before responding. "No, I'm not from the Water Tribe…" He seemed to be pondering, and finally lowered himself weakly onto the ground. He finally looked up at Sokka, eyes clearing from the fog that had previously clouded them. "Why was the Fire Nation attacking the Water Tribe?" He had come to the conclusion on his own that it would take some kind of conflict to impose rule… Sokka's words: could get my people killed if you revolt. Revolt. Revolution. It meant something had happened in the span of a few days that had radically changed the world order. Last he had checked, the Southern Water Tribe was among the fiercest group of warriors and benders in the world.

"What is today?" He asked quietly. How long had he been unconscious? A few hours? A few weeks? Had the monks been more out of touch with the world than they had thought? A gut feeling inside Aang told him they would not have been.

"Southern Winter, Second Moon, Fourteenth Sun." Sokka responded mechanically, hardly abandoning his position of holding Aang hostage so long as he appeared to be some sort of threat. "Three-hundred third year of the Fifth Age."

Aang took a moment to consider the Water Tribe calendar and what he knew of it, converting that time into the time of his people. After a moment, the wrinkles on his forehead deepened. "Impossible." He clenched his fists, fear and fury rising in his heart. "You're lying." He started feeling out the icy winds, and the gales around them were picking up.

Sokka felt his anticipation growing, and began to consider where the young man had really come from. He didn't seem to be Fire Nation, nor did he appear to be from the Earth Kingdom… He had already ruled himself of the Water Tribe. "I'm not lying." He lowered his spear. "When do you think it is?"

Aang brushed off his robes, coming across one of his burns. He didn't seem to notice or care about the cuts, only the burns. He frowned at them and didn't answer Sokka's question. "The South Pole, you said?" He brushed himself off, pulling a sleeve down over his burns and leaping easily onto the tip of the broken iceberg and looking down. "I suppose it'll take me a day or so to get home." He sounded desolate and fearful deep under his muttering.

"To get where? I told you, there's nothing for three day's travel!" Sokka yelled up to him.

Aang seemed to be ignoring him, leaping back into the pit of the hollow iceberg. He nudged the large, sleeping beast that was slumbering silently in the curve of the ice. "Appa… Hey, Appa, I need you to wake up… We have to get back. Something's wrong…" He was silently trying to convince himself that he had miscalculated the conversion of the Water Tribe calendar. He groaned suddenly, pain from everywhere flooding his senses, and slumped against the bison's horn.

Sokka scrambled to the top, trying not to think about the sharp pains in his abdomen. He gasped at the sight of the giant bison, waking slowly under Aang's careful eye. "What is that thing?"

Aang turned and looked at him with a cocked eyebrow. "An air bison." He responded coolly, touching the ice wall he could reach from his position. "My air bison."

The impossible truth clunked into place in Sokka's head. "You can't be an air bender. All the air benders have been dead for a hundred years."

Aang closed his eyes, praying this was all just an awful dream he was having, and when he woke, he could go back and… and… He cringed a little. "I'm not dead." He assured both Sokka and himself. If what this man was saying was true… and he was really awake… How had he slept for nearly a hundred years? A whole century of… Aang couldn't bear to think of it. Everything was so confusing, and it was all he could do to try and keep his composure. He didn't know all the facts. He didn't even really know what was going on at all.

"You're not an air bender."

Aang felt the overwhelming urge to do something to prove the warrior wrong. "Look, I'm in a hurry. I had to go at a really inopportune time. I'm sure things have happened that I need to take care of." He nudged Appa again, and the bison was awake. He began rearranging the reins around the bison's horns and leaped onto his back. "Come on, Appa."

Sokka was skeptical. This kid was either crazy, or… Well, the only explanation was that he was crazy. "Look, kid, you're covered in burns and cuts and everything else… Even if the cold's gotten to your head, you need to get some treatment. Those cuts look really nasty." He tried to stay even. "The Fire Nation did a number on you."

Aang frowned. "The Fire Nation didn't give me my markings." He looked at the bloody marks on his arm with something like pride.

Even though he wasn't sure he trusted the man or even liked him very much, Sokka was not ready to let him simply fly off in the state he was in, given that it had been fire benders who had injured him in some way. He shrugged nonchalantly, reaching over and picking up his boomerang, pretending he was about to put it away. The air bender mumbled something, and the bison appeared to be getting to his feet, the ice shell they had been protected by falling to pieces. Sokka acted swiftly, throwing his boomerang and clocking the man on the side of the head. He easily caught the boomerang and pushed it back into his boot.

He walked up to the fallen boy and, giving the great beast a cautious glance, picked him up with a heave and a grimace at his abdomen. That would have to be fixed, too. He couldn't well take him back to the village, seeing as the Fire Nation guards knew he had left alone, and any outsiders were likely to be questioned. He had to find a way to shield the young man from the elements and heal his wounds. This idea made him frown. If he were talented with water bending, as his sister was, Sokka wouldn't think twice about making some sort of ice tent for him. It would insulate him well, and could be easily hidden. But Katara wasn't at the South Pole anymore, and the few water benders left there were young children who had just begun to show signs of their skills.

He looked up at the giant bison. "Well, do you have any ideas?" On top of all his other problems, it was finally beginning to snow. Given his lack of any further ideas, he resigned himself to waiting the few hours it would take to sneak the other man back into the village. Or he would have to sneak in another way, where there were no guard towers or soldiers. Then, there was the bison.

"Even if I take him with me, I can't hide you in my tent." He pointed out simply, as though the bison could understand him and needed to give him permission to take off with his owner. "And he really needs treatment."

The bison rumbled a response, and headed to lie under an ice formation.

"I guess it's okay, then?" Sokka called back. Well, if the ten-ton bison wasn't planning on stomping him, he would be on his way. He didn't know what time it was, but guessed that he had been gone long enough for the guards to be drowsy and uncaring about a rogue peasant (prince, he reminded himself half-heartedly) wandering in after curfew. They might be more interested in the man he was carrying, especially if he had stirred up trouble lately, but Sokka was curious as to what secrets he held, and wanted to see to it that he learned those secrets for his own use. He slung the teenager over his shoulder and headed back toward the village, hoping that the guards wouldn't be terribly observant of someone approaching from the side.

When he finally arrived, spending his time struggling under the weight of a grown man (who was shorter than he, but surprisingly more muscular, despite his lean appearance), the growing pain in his side, and contemplating both his dilemma concerning allowing a stranger into his village, and the evidence of a battle with Fire Nation soldiers he had obviously won, or at least managed to escape with his freedom. The intricate cuts were obviously torturous, be he had pretended they didn't exist, and claimed they didn't come from Fire Nation soldiers. There was no reason for him to have those and yet deny that they had come from the Fire Nation, unless he was somehow ashamed of them… unless he was Fire Nation. But that somehow didn't fit. For a fleeting instant, he wondered if he had been truthful in claiming he was an air nomad. But that was ridiculous; preposterous.

He slipped awkwardly between tents, ducking into his own without being spotted. He lowered his load onto his bed, and the teenager was stirring again. Sokka left the tent again with a giant earthenware bowl his sister had carved for him once. He tried to push thoughts of Katara out of his mind for the moment. Deep down, something was itching at him, telling him that this stranger was important for him. He hoped that he would be able to tell him a weakness, something, of the Fire Nation. Deep down, he hoped, though it was impossible, the teenager could help him rescue his sister.

He ducked between his tent and another and scooped snow into the bowl, heaping it full and covering it with a cloth. Just then, the patrol guard passed by him.

"Hey, you!" Sokka stood, keeping the bowl of snow close to him. "What are you doing out here?"

Sokka stared at him evenly, and then held up the bowl. "Getting snow to melt for some water." He started back to the tent, ignoring the guards mumbling as he hurried him along. Sokka opened the tent flap in time to be blown back out by a blast of air, the bowl flying out of his arms and crashing against the ground. He cursed, fumbling for the bowl, and picked it up. He stood ready for anything, and the stranger came out of the tent, looking visibly angry.

"Go back into the tent!" Sokka hissed as he came toward him.

"What were you thinking in bringing me here?" Aang rumbled, suddenly looking more frantic than angry. "I told you, I need to go somewhere. I need to look for someone." He really meant a lot of someone's, but he was desperate to know what had happened to his people, his teacher, and his friends.

Sokka clutched the bowl tightly. "And I'm telling you that you're crazy, and you need to be treated, and there's no way I'm going to let you waltz off into the night and bring all kinds of pain and suffering to my people." His eyes narrowed. "I don't know who you are, or if you really are an air bender, but either way, you can't go anywhere looking like that."

Aang raised his hands again, intending to blow Sokka back again, but was suddenly surprised when Sokka reached back and punched him, following up the blow with a crack across the side of his head with the bowl. He refilled the bowl, then reached down and dragged him back into the tent, shoving him back onto the bed. "I told you to stay here. I didn't want to have to treat any more wounds than I had to. My sister was the one who was good at that sort of thing." He took off his parka and sat down next to the younger teen, taking the bowl of snow into his lap.

Aang shot him a dirty look, gingerly touching his sore cheek. "Then where is she?"

Sokka didn't respond immediately, tugging off his mittens. "We can talk about that in a minute. Take off your shirt." Aang grudgingly complied, pulling his robes off entirely to reveal the pants and boots underneath.

Sokka sat cross-legged behind him and pressed the handful of snow he was holding against the wounds on Aang's back. "This is supposed to help… It's no replacement for water healing, but…" He pressed it in further, but Aang didn't respond if it hurt.

"Thanks." He mumbled.

"If the Fire Nation didn't give you these wounds, what did?" Sokka moved to another section of angry red cuts.

Aang sighed, ultimately deciding exactly what he could tell this man. "It's a long story."

"Are you really an air bender?"

Sigh. "Yes." He twirled a finger, a small twister forming on the tip.

Sokka was impressed and paused his treatment for a moment to pick up more snow and stare. "That's really amazing…" He paused, contemplating. "You're the only air bender I've ever seen. I'm pretty sure no one's seen one for almost a century." He pressed some snow onto Aang's shoulder.

Aang frowned again. "Well, what happened to them all then?" There was a sickening feeling in the pit of his stomach that told him that he knew exactly what had happened to them all. Guilt washed over him and he thought for a moment he might throw up.

They were humoring one another, and Sokka was perfectly aware of that. He played along anyway. "Everyone knows they were wiped out by the Fire Nation at the beginning of the war. They started with small colonies, and then this comet came. They were unstoppable, and they wiped out the air nomads. That's where the last Avatar was known to be. He's probably dead by now…"

Aang was silent for a long time, quietly allowing Sokka to treat his wounds.

"Where did you come from?"

He looked up from the hole he was staring into the floor. "The Southern Air Temple." He told him quietly, looking back at the floor. "I don't know what's going on… I wanted to go back, and I want to believe this is just a dream, but…"

"There's no one at the Southern Air Temple. You're lying."

Aang looked up again, his forehead wrinkled. "The last time I was home, there were hundreds of monks, and lemurs, and bison… They wouldn't have died that easily." It was desperate, but he was starting to understand. "At least… A hundred years ago, I suppose, they wouldn't."

"You don't look a hundred."

"I'm not."

"Then you're lying."

"I'm not going to argue with you." Aang recalled the shock of being punched by the Water Tribe stranger, and there was a long silence while Sokka grappled with the idea of Aang being an air bender from a century before.

Granted, it was not likely he could live that long and look so young… It was also not likely he could air bend without a teacher, when all of them were dead and there were no air bender children to grow up and multiply. Sokka didn't understand a lot of things in the world, and there were a lot of supernatural things, and miracles, and divine interventions that he just didn't question.

"Did you know him?"

"Who?" He sounded surprised after another long silence.

"The Avatar. Did you know him?"

"I thought you didn't believe me."

"I don't know what I believe, okay?" Sokka sighed. "There haven't been any air benders since the war started, but you can clearly bend air. People don't live to be over a hundred and look as young as you do, but here you are. I don't know what to believe. There's not much room for hope these days, but… I can't just let go of it." He pressed the last of the snow to Aang's arms, then took some torn fabric and tied it around them as a makeshift bandage.

Aang folded his arms and sat complacently in a position of meditation. "I don't know what happened, really. I left the temple, and… something happened. Then I woke up out there."

Sokka raised an eyebrow. "Then how do you account for all these?" He prodded one of the burns.

Brushing his hand away, Aang stood up slowly. "I told you, it's a long story."

"Not like I haven't got a while." Sokka sat down next to the fire, warming his hands, then took some extra fabric and wrapped it around his abdomen. The walrus-bear gouges weren't very deep, and were probably more painful than serious. "And, if what you're saying is true, then I'm sure you want to know what's going on here." He motioned to the other side of the fire. "Sit down."

He sat down, holding out his hands for warmth, the blue of his tattoos glowing eerily in the dim light while his eyes got lost in the depths of the fire. "I was born and raised in the Southern Air Temple as an air monk, and the Fire Nation attacked us on my sixteenth birthday."

End Chapter One