Hey there! This here is what I'm going to submit to 1character, an lj community.
I'm posting this here, unfinished, because I am really hoping for some constructive criticism. So if you see something you like, don't like, whatever, or you have a preference for one sentence when I've got two for one theme, please feel free to let me know what and, most importantly, why.
I have this problem - I think I've paired him with everyone at least once. Including his sister.
I am possibly going to hell.
Also, doing this kind of thing breeds plot bunnies like no one's business.
This is what I have so far - may I be forgiven for impossibly convoluted sentences, butchered grammar, and a civil union with the semi-colon.
#01 - speak
When she was thwarted as a small child, Katara would give their parents the silent treatment for days, and it fell to Sokka to translate the fluttering gestures that communicated her will.
#02 - touch
All he can think for a second
is, "Toph?!" and then he thinks he understands how
she can see without sight; her breath thrums over his mouth and he
knows exactly where she is, even with his eyes closed.
#03
- memory
In the back of the thrift shop he finds a bit of
narwhal ivory, half carved in the beginnings of what looks like a
polar dolphinbear, and he see his father's hands as he first taught
Sokka to whittle.
#04 - vanilla
The children in town
had invented a game with the empty seed pods that involved a good
deal of throwing and kicking and falling down; the smell fills the
air and Sokka can't remember being this content in a long time.
#05
- chocolate
"Wait, this place has thirty-one
flavors?"
#06 - ways and means
Everyone
else just seemed to give up when Ty Lee took away their magic; it
made Sokka almost grateful that he'd never had the gift - he'd
learned to think from different angles.
#07 - belief
Sokka
thinks about the whole idea, of cycles and reincarnation, and wonders
if he'll ever just get a chance to rest and be with the people he
loves, the ones living and dead and the ones staring at him from the
southern sky - what happens when a soul gets tired?
#8
- linger
He couldn't help it if he still hadn't stopped
missing her; the reminder shone in the sky every night.
#9
- illuminance
In the cold night air, beneath her silvery
light, he realizes that no matter how much he plays and pretends, he
is still a one woman man.
#10 - ornament
"It-
It matches your eyes - do you like it?" he asks nervously; she
smiles at him, and he can't stop blushing.
#11 - coup
de foudre
"Her name is Katara," says his
mother, her face all tired and sweaty and glowing, "and
it will be your job to keep her safe."
#12 -
archway
earthbenders get construction done
fast
He listens avidly as the
engineer explains why the pointy doorway can bear more weight than a
square one; a week later Zuko's palace is thirty feet taller than
impossibly high with plans for stained glass patterned with leaping
flames and still all anyone can talk about is why Sokka would want to
name them "buttresses," of all things - Katara hits the
nail on the head when she accuses him of wanting to make every single
pinch-faced architect say "butt" on a regular basis.
#13
- fate
Sometimes Sokka wonders what sort of cosmic joke put
him in the position where he is always trying to protect people who
end up protecting him.
#14 - pulse
Sokka checked her
neck the way Grangran had taught him, but Mommy wasn't breathing and
she wasn't waking up and her heart wasn't beating and Katara was
crying and he had to get them somewhere somewhere safe fast because
he didn't even know how to use his knife yet and he had to hide
because that was the only way to keep her safe had to run had
torunhadtorunhadtohidehidehidehide--
#17 – need
He rolled over and started to get up; she
grabbed his arm, "Please, don't go yet," and every motion
felt like a lie, but it wasn't about him and so he stayed
anyway.
#18 - drunk
Katara does that thing where she
smiles and glares at the same time, and for just a second he thinks
that maybe he wishes that she wasn't his sister; later he blames it
on the cactus juice.
#19 – mask
Sokka had no faith
in in the art of fortune telling, but fortune tellers were
often adept judges of character; Aunt Wu looked at him sharply once
he was out of earshot of the others and all she asked him was, "Why
do you hide behind buffoonery?" and even though he affected
affront at her choice of words and left, the question followed him
for years.
#20 – rose
"I can't wear that because
it's pink and unmanly and all the other hunters will laugh at me,"
he said, but she looked at him with brimming eyes and figured he
could live with it.
#21 – two
She was pale where
he was dark and looking at their skin together made him think of all
that mystical balance crap, and that's when he knew that they
belonged together – even the stupid yin yang agreed.
or
He
paled, and squeaked, "Twins?"
#22 -
fresh
"It was meant as a compliment," he said,
earning himself another slap.
#24 - error (this doesn't have so much to do with
Sokka's development as it does with plot! But I like
it...)
He'd somehow gotten the idea that once Aang mastered all
his jumblywhatsamabob, he'd divert the comet, defeat the Fire Nation,
save the world, and Sokka could finally go home; it turned out
keeping peace was even more difficult than making war and required
about as much travel, and between the whole Son of Hakoda of the
Southern Tribes thing and the Engineer's Liasion thing and the Hero
of the Avatar's War thing, Sokka wasn't going to be able to go home
for the rest of his life - he didn't even know where home was
anymore.
or (more Sokka, less plot-y)
When she said, "Oh,
Sokka... Kyoshi warriors can't get married," and he
felt nothing more than mild regret, he knew that he might be looking
at the whole idea for the wrong reasons.
#26 - refrain
It always came back to flying around
on Appa; Sokka was fairly sure that he'd grown three inches sitting
on the back of that bison, and it made him wonder what else a bout
him had changed over a bare summer.
#27 - family
Sokka
looks around the campfire and realizes that he would kill to protect
every single one of them.
#28 - grieve
He still
refuses to kiss his wife where the moon can see; it seems...
disrespectful, somehow.
#30 - tea
Sokka peers at the
smiling old man as he noisily slurps his tea, ignoring his sister's
glares at his apparent ill-breeding, and is reminded of banked coals
- calm and meditative, but burning perhaps even hotter than a
flame.
#31 - medicine
He never did look at frogs the
same way after that.
#32 - moth
He looks at his
pretty little sister and the way she flutters almost unwillingly
toward the burning prince, and all he can do is pray that she is not
consumed in a cloud of brightly colored steam - and promise to kick
the stuffing out of the stupid kid if he made Katara cry, of
course.
#36 - crossroads
"So, Water Tribe, will
you shake my hand or not?" And for a second, Sokka really could
not decide.
#39 - photograph
He held the portrait of
his new niece in his hands and said, "Gods above, that little
thing is supposed to be the new Aang?"
#40 - spoon
In
the weeks after their mother died, while Father was away on his long
hunting trip, Katara would climb into his sleeping furs, and he would
curl around her, pretending that he didn't need the comfort as much
as she did.
#42 - mirror
He always found it
reassuring that he and Katara were so often mistaken for twins; no
matter how far they drifted, he could always look at her and see his
own skin, his own hair, his own eyes, softer and girlier but still a
link.
or
He looks at the angry, tired, scared prince,
displaced from his home nad confronted with total upset in The Way
Things Are Supposed To Be, all wounded pride and an overly talented
sister and the way he never seems to be quite enough to do what he
feels he has to do, and thinks that maybe he can sort of begin to
understand, just a little.
#43 - smoke
He saw it
billowing in thick columns from over the hill where a town should
have been, and thought they'd maybe be doing more digging than
sleeping that night.
#45 - balloon
He saw it
floating out over the battlefield, dropping fire and naphtha on
unwitting Earth kingdom troops and thinks that for all the people
benders have managed to kill, it wasn't their idea that was
tuning the tide of the battle against them. (I need help with this
wording.)
#47 - butterfly
He looked at the girls,
all brightly colored and fluttering their fans, and knew that he
could not settle for beauty without substance; "Sorry," he
murmured to the proprietress, and walked out the door.
#49
- venom
"I'm glad that her own lightning is what killed
her," says Katara, and all Sokka can do is stare at the tone of
his sweet baby sister's voice.
#50 - remain
He looks
at his sister, grieving the loss of her best
friend-who-could-have-been-more-someday-once-he-hit-puberty, and
thinks that maybe the hardest thing to do is just stay behind and
keep on living.
