A/N- This is a drabble prompt response for israelforever on tumblr, who requested Uncle Sokka babysitting. Wasn't sure whether this ought to be ATLA or LoK so I took a stab in the dark and decided that since Aang was still alive and it wasn't dealing with the Krew in any way, shape, or form, it fit ATLA better. So there.
"Do you think it's gonna be much longer, Uncle Sokka?"
He nearly jumped out of his skin at the sound of the little voice next to him. He had been so tense, so thoroughly focused on the closed door in front of him, that he hadn't noticed Kya come up to him.
The little six year old, all dark curls and big blue eyes that took up half her face (so very reminiscent of her father's, despite the color), was gazing up at him eagerly. Sokka, as usual, felt his heart melt just looking at her. His adorable niece had held his heart in her pudgy little hands from the moment he'd first laid eyes on her. When Sokka had first heard the news that Katara was pregnant, he had been inclined to go hunting for airbender, regardless of the fact that she and Aang had been married almost two years by that point, because an eighteen- and a twenty-year-old had no business being parents. But then Kya had been born, and tenderly passed from arm to arm among their close-knit makeshift family, and he had gone from being Sokka to Uncle Sokka, and his perspective had changed rather a lot.
Hoisting the little girl up to sit on his knee, he answered her question: "I dunno, Squirt. These things take awhile."
"Mommy was yelling earlier."
"Yeah, I know. She yelled a lot with you, too."
Kya bit her lip and fiddled with her fingers in a way that was entirely too much like one of her father's nervous habits.
"Something wrong?" he asked.
She let out a great sigh that seemed to big to have come from her little body, and flopped back against his chest, driving the air out of his lungs as well. "I don't want a baby," she said plaintively.
"Little late to protest now, I think," Sokka pointed out wryly.
She giggled reluctantly at that, but was quickly back to pouting.
He ruffled her hair. "I know just how you're feeling. When your mother was born I wasn't at all happy to have a sister."
"You weren't?"
"Nope."
"But… you like her now, right?"
"I sure do," Sokka replied, chuckling now at the solemn earnestness in her question. "That's the thing about getting a little sibling. Even though they drive you up the wall sometimes, you can't help but love them."
Kya was silent for a little while, pondering that. "I guess it wouldn't be so bad to have a little sister," she said eventually. "But no brothers!"
And with that, she hopped off his lap and returned to the little game she'd been playing on the floor.
Three and a half hours later, a very exhausted Katara and a beaming Aang decided that the task would fall to Uncle Sokka to disappoint his niece with the news that despite her best hopes, Kya had wound up with a brother after all.
A/N2- If you want a drabble of your very own, leave a prompt in my tumblr ask box. I accept anons, so you needn't have a tumblr. There's a link to my blog on my ffnet profile page.