SOKKA
THERE WAS A MOMENT WHEN HE ALMOST BROKE. He had just stepped from the shadows, crouching down next to the man he had just killed to pull his boomerang from the still warm corpse's chest. He wiped the weapon clean on the man's clothes, biting down on the rage and horror that was clawing its way up his own throat. He stood, settling the boomerang back into its sheathe across his back, and then he heard the sound.
The sound of someone whimpering…
He turned. He hadn't realized, until that moment, that he was standing in front of an open door. He looked into the room, peered through the gloom, into the darkness that danced and swirled with the weak winter light that filtered in through the window. There was a sound, the loud crump of an explosion, somewhere outside, and the building shuddered like a dying beast. The tremor ran through the floor, rattled the walls, sent shivers running up and down his spine.
There were children in that room, huddled on the floor, how many he couldn't tell. They were in a heap, all tangled up with each other, faces wet with tears, and their eyes…
Their eyes were dead and blank with terror…
For a moment, he couldn't move. It came crashing down upon him, everything he had seen since he had slipped in through a window, everything he had survived, the hell of a world he had somehow battered his way through. It was all there before him, the blood, the suffering, the death, the heartbreak…
The halls of this building, splattered with blood…
The bodies in grotesque shapes and positions…
The screams, echoing down the halls…
Children, terrified of anything wearing blue…
That's when he heard the voice. It was nothing human, a wordless, strangled bellow of rage and pain and fury. He turned, just in time to catch the full force and power of a man easily as big and strong as he was, if not more so. He would never fully understand what happened. He was on his back, two impossibly strong hands wrapped around his neck. The world went red, white, stars popping and exploding in his eyes. His head swam, his vision clouded, he was reaching, reaching for something, his sword, the sword, it's somewhere, if I can just get to it, but he couldn't, it had been knocked out of his hand by the force of hitting the floor. The man was screaming, and Sokka couldn't make heads-or-tails of it, not that he cared. He couldn't afford to care, couldn't afford to think. This was it, this was everything he had been trained for since birth.
Him or me.
Him…
Or…
Me…
He struck out, wildly. His fist crashed into the man's face, hard enough to send pain slicing up Sokka's arm and lancing into his brain like a hot knife. He ignored it, pushed through the pain, hit the man again, smashed his fists into that inhuman face, over and over and over. The grip on his throat slackened, not much, but it was there. It was enough. Sokka didn't stop to consider his actions; the time for that was past. He jammed his knee into his attacker's gut, and the man bellowed like a wounded animal, his grip finally letting go. Sokka hit him again, gasping for breath as he rolled to the side. In one movement, he reached into his boot, pulled out his knife, and when the man lunged for him again, Sokka, warrior son of the Southern Water Tribes, leapt to meet him.
It ended as soon as it began. There was no glory, no pride, no elation in victory. No songs would be sung of this fight, no children would be inspired by the tale. The only children to know of it were too traumatized and frightened to notice, too young to understand what they were seeing. All there was, was Sokka, and the man, fumbling, hitting, biting, slashing, jabbing, stabbing, stabbing, stabbing…
The man was on the ground. Sokka was over him, his hand on the man's throat, his knife in his hand, the hand that drove the knife down, again and again and again.
Sokka didn't stop until the man was well and truly dead.
He didn't look back into the room, didn't look at the walls, didn't try to peer into the gloom. Someone was screaming, somewhere, begging for mercy in a language he didn't understand. He had to move quickly, move fast. He had to end this.
He wasn't going to let anyone else die.
He wiped his knife clean, sheathed it, found his sword, clutched it in his right hand, and set off. He didn't look back, only forward, as he slipped into the shadows, moving silently in the direction of the screams.
Damn. Say what you will about Sokka, but when shit gets real, so does he. That was always a very important quality of his, one that gets over-looked in a lot of stories.
He's still being a massive fucking idiot, though. Still, they do say that God has a special place in His heart for fools...
You know...the more I re-read and edit, the more I'm liking how I did this. This story always has been about the characters trapped in it, more than anything else. It's fitting that we see bits and pieces of this horrid battle through the eyes of the characters we've followed for so long.
Moving on! In the next chapter, we see the last person we want to see. Stay tuned!