Loverboy
By xannychan
Disclaimer: Avatar isn't mine.
A/N: I'm going to hell. It was just a plot bunny and it turned into an evil one-shot.
Warnings: Slight man-whoredom, extreme angst, funky grammar, bad language, and other stuff. If you don't get it, review and I'll explain as best I can... (runs away from angry flames)
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"Tell me your name, Loverboy." The man's voice is rough, as calloused as his hands, his eyes as sharp as the knife he holds. Beneath him lies a boy, not older than sixteen, shaking only slightly against the blade at his throat.
The Fire Nation soldiers are strange people, the boy thinks. He's suffered through all different styles on this strange boat full of faces that hide behind masks of painted metal and heavy armor.
But this one...he likes violence, or perhaps he likes the fear. Maybe he likes to be in total dominance tonight because everything else is determined by the quota—how many has he killed today? How many has he captured today? How many bridges, how many faces, how many cities, how many people has he set aflame yesterday, today, tomorrow, forever?
"What's your name!" The soldier pushes just a little harder, enough for just a drop of heat to slip.
He opens his mouth, takes in a deep breath like he's going in for a battle that he might just win, just maybe, just maybe, just like the last one before he landed here, on other men's beds, gasping to breathe under the shame that he, that they, bear.
Just like the one where Aang disappeared once again. Just like the one where Katara breathed her dying breath trying to save the world in his place. Just like the one where the Avatar just left, hell consuming the world, burning flesh, skin, hair, bones, lives, dreams, everything in its path.
Saving his life was one thing. Saving the world was another. It was a choice, it was a decision, and he hoped that if Aang lives on that he'll die a bloody death soon and he'll remember the people that needed him and he just left, the fucking bastard.
"My name…" the boy says,—whispers, really, because he can't speak anymore because his tongue is thick and his eyes are spilling tears and fucking god he hates it when he cries—forgetting for a moment who he was. "My name is…"
He doesn't want to lie because by now, he's really not who he used to be. But he'll say that name again, the old name that had defined who he was before this all started, before the world decided that it didn't need him and his sister and the Avatar anymore and barfed him here, where the days are as dark as night and the only thing he can think right now is What the hell is my name?
"My name…is Sokka."
And for the night, he belongs to someone, he belongs somewhere, and that's better than knowing that he couldn't save the world because he's not fucking magical and he's not some kind of world-saver. He's him, whoever him is, because for the life of the gods he can't remember the way things used to be on that flying bison, skimming the water with his sister, with his friends, the girl of his dreams as vivid in his mind as his boomerang that he used to sling around his back. And he wishes more than anything to get just a breath of that again, to remember who he was, to swallow that one last bite of laughter before it happened and he's here, his little sister dead before he is, his first love as gone as the Avatar, his best friend a traitor to the whole world.
He's crying, and he never remembered doing that when he was the real Sokka, but the real Sokka is dead. And more than anything he wants to live again.
Instead he's here, his face pressed into the wooden panels of the floor, his throat betraying sobs of pain, his eyes crying oceans, his body rocking with a soldier with a name he doesn't want to learn because he's suffering just as much as he is, his heart lost in the spark that set the world on fire.
His name is Sokka. He used to be just a man in the sea of faces, but now he is a boy that knows the face of evil and knows that innocence is better off dead.
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