.
It's Only Rain
CADEL
[CHAPTER 1]
Sokka was nine when it first happened.
By accident and unintentional.
It should have been a great day, he should have been boasting to his mother and father and sister. He should have used it as an excuse to celebrate, to show-off, to make everyone see he was just as special as Katara. He was magic too.
That day should have been a lot of things.
But in the end, all thoughts of self-inflated worth came crashing down when the universe decided to play a joke on Sokka's arrogance, his childish pride.
Sokka was nine when it first happened. By accident and unintentional.
That day should have been a lot of things. And it was. It was all the things that made Sokka become the young warrior that became the Avatar's companion, the leader of a rag-tag group of idealistic children and a hero of the One-Hundred-Year-War.
Sokka was nine. It was an accident. It was unintentional.
But it didn't change that fact that it was the day he became a murderer.
III
When he looked back on it, he remembered the jealousy.
But at that age, Sokka didn't know what it was, couldn't identify with his underdeveloped mind that what he was feeling was deep, deep envy every time his little sister did 'magic'.
He supposed it was because the South Water Tribe shared everything.
Sokka remembered frequently forgetting that there was a world outside of the village. In quantity, the South Pole was so overwhelmingly weak that they were repeatedly seen as an infinitesimal part of the world – lost behind a screen of snow and ice. In quality, the Southern people were monolithic glaciers carving into earth and shaping mountains. A slow, quiet strength only noticed when they were long gone but their mark irreversible. They were small yes, but because of that, they were family.
Not a cold palace with ridged tradition like their Northern sister tribe.
Not a faceless, autonomous metropolis like the Earth kingdom.
Or the hellish, military regime the Fire people liked to call a 'nation'.
Their lack of might was paradoxically the reason for their strength. Growing up in a village with a population barely over one-hundred made them tight-knit and solid. It was harmonious and simple with very little to desire considering the people of the Southern Water Tribe shared everything.
It was because of this, Sokka didn't know what jealousy was when it hit him. All his six-year-old self knew was that it was a heavy, ugly sensation that ate away from the inside out. Worse, it was directed at his younger sister.
The look on his parents face when Katara showed them her floating water rings was equal parts pride and wonder. Like seeing sun after months of winter, that gold light blazing the ice with new life.
Hope.
Sokka didn't understand that the tightness around his father's eyes wasn't just laugh lines but signs of justified worry.
But for a six-year-old boy, his entire world narrowed down to the fact that his sister had something he didn't.
Sokka just watched on with curiosity, his bending-envy not quite manifesting yet because like all life on the South Pole, everything was shared. It was a juvenile and somewhat naïve expectation that this too would be shared. That because Katara was his sister, his family and a fellow water tribesman, her bending ability would be his as well – that surely Sokka would be bestowed the same gift. It was his right.
Bull-headed certainty.
Guileless arrogance.
III
When Sokka grew older, he would wonder how he ever had such narrow, self-directed expectations.
III
His shy wonder at Katara's water bending slowly bled into impatience as the months dragged on.
And then years.
Yet his bending that he'd so confidently knew he would have, never came. Water remained just that – water. Not a magical extension of his heart as Katara would poetically put it. Eventually envy bloomed into outright jealously and he could never quite come to terms that his sister's 'freaky' magic was something he wanted too. So like a child he stubbornly denied it and ridiculed Katara's near obsessive need to play with her element.
"It's not playing Sokka!" Katara would scold, clearly offended her brother could use such a juvenile term for something she thought sacred.
"Yes." He scowled "Yes it is."
"I'm training. This is a difficult and delicate art and–"
"And it's special, and wonderful and magical and blah blah blah. Boring."
"Sokka!"
"Come on, let go do something interesting."
With a huff she would turn away when her brother was like this. "Later, I'm not in the mood for you to lead me out into the wastelands and get us nearly killed like last time."
"First of all, we didn't die and secondly, finding those berries was worth it."
"Only 'cause you think with your stomach."
"Hey! We live in the South Pole. The South Pole. Fire Berries is a novelty round here." He gave it some thought. "Actually, any vegetation that doesn't resemble lichen or cold-snot-on-a-rock is pretty damn spectacular."
His sister would wave her hands in that ridiculous manner and ignore her brother in favour of her precious tasteless, odourless, aqueous friend.
Sokka would later insist that he wasn't bored and he wasn't missing his sister's company.
He would also insist that he didn't have the dry, acidic taste of resentment and malcontent bleeding into his heart every time he saw water loopies dance like fireflies in the arctic air.
III
He was right in the end.
He was a bender. Just like his talented sister.
That day should have been a great day. His patience had paid off and his claims of being just as special as Katara were finally justified. But it wasn't.
All he wanted to do was find more Fire Berries in the outer tundra. Instead, Sokka was curled up in a ball on the icesheet, trembling and cold, his parka ripped and a bruise blooming on his cheek. His little solo expedition to find those delicious, hot berries came to a violent end as he watched the body slowly sink through the ice hole with detached horror.
The unforgiving ultramarine blue dragging the corpse down.
He was nine when he first realised he could bend. By accident and completely unintentional.
It was also the day the unsullied, untainted and innocent part of Sokka had perished in that wasteland far from home.
When he trudged back home, shaking and missing his parka, the watertribe boy didn't say anything. He didn't tell his family about his bending. He didn't boast. He didn't ask for a celebration. He didn't tell them about the stranger he met. Didn't tell them about how he lost his gloves and why his face was bruised and why his clothes were torn. Or why his hands didn't stop shaking for days afterwards.
His family couldn't know that the boy that came home that day was no longer the boy that left that morning.
He never ate Fire Berries after that.
They looked too much like the pearls of blood that pooled on frozen snow, dripping, dripping, dripping into the icesheet along with the dead man he let sink to the bottom of the ocean.
III
"Aang…"
The monk had a pork bun halfway in his mouth while Momo circle like a vulture above his head, ready to pluck the savoury treat from his masters face.
"Oh, hey Sokka!" He gave a nervous giggle as an embarrassed flush crawled up his neck. "I suppose you caught me red-handed. I know we're not supposed to raid the royal kitchens at night…but you want to share some pork buns with me?"
The young Avatar held out the warm food, his smile bright and his offer just as sweet.
Sokka shook his head, unable to stomach the idea of food while he had cold stones rolling in his belly.
"No…" The older boy clenched his hands into tight fists as he scrambled for the right words. "Ah, can you take a walk with me? I need to talk to you about something."
Aang nodded and smiled at him with all his teeth. Honest and earnest.
And there was a flash of guilt he couldn't quite crush because Sokka knew he would be the one to take that smile away.
.
.
.
Note: A few untold and unwitnessed secret moments is Sokka's life.
(A rewrite of one of my old stories.)
Please leave a review and thank you for reading!
CADEL