As One Fey
An Avatar: the Last Airbender plotbunny
By
EvilFuzzy9
The first thing I'm aware of is pain.
It's everywhere. I hurt in places I didn't even know I HAD. It's unimaginable, how bad the pain is. I can hardly even think. Every time I try, another stab of agony will jab into my sides, or my back, or my front, and I lose my focus.
It just hurts so bad. The pain is almost unbearable.
I can't see. I don't know if it's because my eyes are closed, it's too dark, or I've simply gone blind. But whatever the case, everything is dark and black and unseeable.
...is that a word? Unseeable? It seems like it should be, but it also sounds just a little off...
Well, whatever. The point is that I don't see anything. I hurt everywhere, I can't see, and I definitely don't have the strength to move.
Is this death? The last thing I can remember is fire, fire everywhere. Did I burn to death? Because I certainly feel like I did.
Ow.
Sheesh. I've gotta say: if this is death, then I am NOT impressed. It's so boring. The only thing I'm aware of is pain and darkness.
I don't even have anything to do, except try to make out those weird voices in the distance.
"...kka...not well...be..."
"...is burns...bad...needs med..."
"...dying...slow...an help..."
The words are really faint and kinda garbled, like I'm just barely hearing them over the noise of a blizzard, or else maybe from really far away. I can't really make sense of what they're saying, or at least not that I want to think about. Because it almost sounds like they're talking about me.
It doesn't sound good. I can't seem to put names to the voices, but they feel familiar. Like I know who they belong to, but I just can't remember the names.
It's frustrating, especially on top of all this pain. I can't even think. It just hurts too... ... ...
"...wa...up..."
Hm?
"...ake...p..."
This voice... It sounds familiar.
Very familiar.
"...wake..."
This person... I know this voice. I know whose voice this is... but the name... it's not there...
"...up..."
So familiar... so warm... I can almost name it...
"Wake up, please!"
My eyes snap open.
"Katara...?" I wheeze, and the sound of my own voice is so strange to my ears that I probably would have jumped a foot into the air out of surprise, if not for how much I still hurt.
It still hurts. I can hardly move my body, it hurts so bad.
But.
My sister.
I see her eyes all wide and puffy, and her cheeks wet. I see the tears glimmering in the corners of her warm blue pools, and I see the smile, the almost manic expression on her face as she stares down at me, all sniffling and weepy.
"Sokka? You're awake?" This voice isn't Katara's. It's a boy's voice, the pitch of a boy younger than me, but also older than the other boys in the Tribe...
It takes me a moment to remember where I've heard this voice before. And then another moment to turn my head (my neck protesting the whole way) and look at this speaker.
"I thought I banished you," I say to Aang, who I can see now is sitting in what must be some kind of meditation pose in the corner of the igloo. It hurts to talk, and my throat and lips and mouth feel really dry and scratchy, but I still manage to get the words out. I mean the statement as an honest expression of befuddlement, because I'm still pretty out of it and everything's a bit hazy, but my voice is hoarse and weak, so I guess they must have taken it as an attempt at wry sarcasm, because Aang gives me strange sort of half-smile and Katara shakes her head, muttering something inaudible under her breath as she wipes a tear away from her eyes.
"Never scare me like that again, Sokka..." I hear Katara whisper, and while I'm still trying to puzzle out precisely what happened—I can remember being really angry, and feeling only half in control of my body, but other than that it's a big fuzzy blank—I can't help but want to give her a smile and tell her that I won't.
"We almost lost you," Aang adds with a remarkable degree of grim sobriety, considering what I can recall from my limited experiences with the kid. But apart from his tone, it's the words that unnerve me the most.
"Um, mind filling me in?" I ask wryly, and while my voice is still really hoarse, it's not hurting quite as much to talk, now. Or maybe I'm just getting used to the pain. "I'm a little fuzzy on the details."
For some reason, Aang frowns a little a this, and Katara looks like she was either sad or... guilty.
"You... don't remember...?" my sister asks me, and I get the distinct feeling that I am not going to like this. "Sokka... you were firebending..."
My heart stops when I hear those words from her mouth, and all I can think is: oh, NO!
This is the absolute last thing I would ever want to hear her say. For as long as I can remember, my firebending has been a guilty secret, something I hid as much as possible. Even before that last Fire Nation raid, only a couple of people knew I could firebend. My dad knew about it, and Gran-Gran and Bato knew, too. But other than that, the news was never really passed around.
There just hadn't been a chance. It happened so fast. They'd wanted to help me train in secret, help me learn how to control my bending before letting the Tribe know, but then everything kind of blew up in our faces.
The Fire Nation attacked. Not even a week after I learned I was a firebender, I got to see firsthand what kind of people firebenders were.
What kinds of things they did.
I was never able to tell Katara. Not after seeing what happened to Mom. The thought that I could be anything like the bastards who tore our family apart...
Mom's death affected Katara. I mean seriously affected her. It tore her up inside, wounded her on a really deep level. I couldn't possibly tell her that I was a firebender! Not after seeing what they did to our mother.
But a fat lot of good that did me. Katara saw me firebending. She knows I'm a firebender, that I'm the same as the people who killed our mom.
I can't even look at her. I feel like garbage.
"I'm sorry..." I tell Katara with a raspy voice, looking away from her.
She doesn't take that well.
"You SHOULD be!" she yells at me, grabbing my chin and forcibly turning my head to face her. "You should have told me, Sokka! I would have helped you! I could have helped you learn how to control it, instead of... whatever it is you thought you were doing out there, you ass! You almost died!"
At that word, Katara then jumps to her feet with a terrifying glare in my direction, and she starts pacing back and forth across the igloo.
"If it wasn't for Aang..." she mutters darkly. "You were burned all over your body... a miracle you've recovered at all... you and your stupid pride..." She huffs angrily. "You're just lucky Aang was able to find those waterbending scrolls at his home... Without those healing techniques, or those herbs he gathered..."
Her lips are pursed into a thin line, and it takes me a moment to realize the importance of what she just said.
"Burned?" I croak out. "All over my body?"
Katara glares at me, but I can see tears trickling down her cheeks.
Not good. I think I might have seriously screwed up, this time.
"Yes!" she snaps. "You tried to take on all of those firebenders by yourself, and then you lost control! You could have burned yourself alive! And you would have, if Aang hadn't gotten here when he did..."
Katara sighs, now, and I can't help noticing that she looks awfully tired.
"Sokka... I don't know. I just..." She shakes her head. "...you looked so powerful, at that moment, but... you also looked so frail. You almost sank that ship with your attack, and if it wasn't for that old man jumping into the fight, you might have killed their leader, too. And yet..."
"You couldn't control it." This was Aang. He looks strangely aged and melancholic, now, so different from the vibrant, playful fool of a boy I first met. "You let anger cloud your judgement, and you drew on a power bigger than yourself. You lost yourself in it, and it nearly destroyed you."
I frown at this, and in spite of myself I irritably mutter, "What do you know?"
Aang gives me a sad, sympathetic smile.
"I almost made the same mistake, when I saw what was happening..." he says, and his gaze seems distant. "I almost lost control of myself, too... And again, when I went back to my home, looking for medicine to help you..." He sighs, and gives me a Look with eyes that look far, far too old to belong to a boy. "It was my fault. All of this."
I frown, and I shake my head. Under other circumstances, I might've been glad to hear this kid admitting his culpability in what went down, but... I get a feeling he isn't just talking about this attack.
An airbender frozen inside an iceberg for who knows how long. No human could survive that. The cold would destroy the flesh, stop the heart and freeze the blood...
I shake my head again. This isn't the time to think about it.
"Don't blame yourself," I tell the kid. "The Fire Nation would have attacked us sooner or later, anyways... It's not like our Tribe is really hidden, or anything."
But Aang shakes his head, and he says, "No, not just that. I mean everything. The attack, the raids before that, all of it..." He sighs. "This war never should have happened... I should have been there to stop it."
And immediately some things are starting to make a lot more sense. It all falls into place with that last statement.
"You're the Avatar," I say, putting two and two together to get the square root of sixteen.
It makes sense. Almost too much sense. What that scarred-eye firebender prick said, a lot of Aang's own strange remarks, the fact that he was able to survive at least a hundred years in an iceberg.
Aang winces.
"Yeah," he says guiltily. "I am."
A/N: ESCHATONIAN ESCHUTEON.
...I dunno, I just really like the sound-slash-meaning of it. XP
Also, HOLY HELL, A WHOLE MONTH SINCE I LAST UPDATED THIS, WTF D:
SO SORRY, Y'ALL
And in other news, my birthday is on the twenty-ninth! :D
Chapter added: 9-10-13
TTFN and R&R!
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