Unexpected Aftermath

[Since When Was I The Hero?-!]

An Avatar: the Last Airbender plotbunny

By

EvilFuzzy9


Sokka had a number of penpals.

Like the rest of Team Avatar, as he still mentally called their little group of friends, he had met many people over the course of his journeys. He had made several friends in far flung corners of the world, and he did his best to keep in touch. Of course, in a time and place before radio waves or mass communication, the only real way to do so was by writing letters.

So he wrote a LOT of letters.

Sokka's contacts ranged from people his own age, like Zuko and Suki, to family, like Gran-Gran and Dad, to various others, such as Sifu Piandao or the Mechanist. It seemed like almost every other day he was receiving a new letter from one of his contacts, and he almost always sent a new letter out in response within a day or two.

Now, out of the members of Team Avatar, Sokka probably had the third or second most penpals. Katara had the absolute most, hands down, being the social butterfly that she was. It seemed like she was getting five new letters every day, and she still managed to send out replies as promptly as anything, without fail. The others couldn't even begin to imagine how she was able to do so, but Katara had a gift, in that regard.

Aang, for his part, wrote letters only sporadically – the young Air Nomad was more inclined to hop on Appa and fly over to a friend's place if he felt like talking to them, and he wasn't the most comfortable with writing letters. Even with how much he had matured since Sokka and Katara had found him in that iceberg, Aang was still very tactile and energetic and, well, childish, to an extent. He was just much more comfortable with face to face conversation, and hadn't really mastered the art of conveying thoughts and emotions through the written word.

Toph, of course, had no real penpals: her blindness made reading and writing difficult, to say the absolute least. So when she wanted to send someone a letter – and this happened only rarely – she would just dictate the general contents to Sokka and Katara, who would send it out for her. Usually, though, she would just piggyback comments into the others' letters if she felt the need to say anything at all.

Regardless, however, the point is that Sokka had a lot of penpals. And he got a lot of letters from said penpals.

He heard some mighty curious things in these letters, too. There were a number of references to rumors about himself, for instance, and tall tales of his exploits during the war, but most of the time Sokka couldn't make heads or tails of what his penpals were saying. It made him wonder, from time to time, but for the most part Sokka just attributed it to "hero worship or whatever" and shrugged it off. Most of his correspondents seemed to assume that he already knew about the rumors, so they didn't really go into much detail about them.

Sokka figured it probably wasn't anything too important, whatever the case.

However, getting back to the main point of all this, one of Sokka's many penpals was his father, Hakoda. And the two of them exchanged many letters, keeping one another up to date on the various happenings here and there in their respective corners of the world. This included news of occurrences both political and... more domestic.


"DAD'S COMING UP HERE FOR THE HARVEST FESTIVAL!" Sokka exclaimed to the rest of the living room, looking up from the letter he had just been perusing. He had a look of barely contained excitement on his face, a wide grin spreading from ear to ear as he looked around eagerly at the others in the room.

This news garnered mixed reactions from the others.

Aang, who had been bobbing a piece of string up and down for Momo to bat at, looked immediately to his girlfriend, perhaps wondering what her response would be. Katara, for her part, simply smiled at her brother, seeing how gleeful he looked.

Suki, on the other hand, looked a little anxious. She was smiling, but it appeared just a tiny bit forced. Perhaps she was nervous about meeting her boyfriend's dad – she hadn't really had a chance to meet the man during the post-war celebrations, and she'd left for Kyoshi Island almost immediately after that. Maybe part of her felt a little guilty over that, and wondered whether Hakoda would approve of her.

Toph, in contrast, looked completely unperturbed. "So?" she said. "Your dad's coming over. Big deal."

She spun a finger in the air next to her head.

"Well, it is, isn't it?" Aang replied. "It's a long way from the South Pole to Ba Sing Se."

"A long, long way," Katara agreed.

"But the girls in the city," Suki chimed in with a scarcely suppressed giggle.

"Are ohhh sooo prettyyyyy!" Toph continued in a theatrical singsong, before breaking down in hysterical laughter.

Sokka scowled, though on closer inspection it was evident that he was fighting the urge to snicker, his lips twitching minutely and his eyes flicking between the two girls with a glint of amusement.

Katara rolled her eyes, though.

"Oh, you know what I mean," she grumbled irritably. "It isn't like Dad can just hop on a flying bison and come up here. It can take weeks to sail all the way up here from the South Pole. It's not a journey you would undertake on whim."

She then got a thoughtful expression on her face, and glanced over in her brother's direction.

"Say, Sokka, did he say why he was coming up?"

The teen shrugged. "Just that he had some good news," he answered. "Something he wants to say in person, I guess."

Aang looked interested at this. "Huh. I wonder what it could be?"

"I'unno," Sokka grunted in response. "Maybe he's seeing someone and wants to introduce us to her?" he suggested.

Katara made a face at this.

Toph let out a low whistle.

"Wow, Sugar Queen," she remarked. "Are you having a heart attack or something? You must be really freaked out at the idea of getting a new mom," she said teasingly.

"No!" Katara retorted, a little too quickly. Her ears were red. "Why would you say that?!"

"I think it would be sweet," Suki supplied. "Your father must feel so lonely, with his children all the way off in Ba Sing Se, and no more war to occupy his time. It would be only natural for him to begin yearning once more for a woman's love."

"Or a man's," Toph suggested nonchalantly. "I mean, him and Bato are pretty close, aren't they?"

This caused Sokka and Katara to nearly choke, their faces turning bright red. That was not a pleasant mental image for either one of them.


A couple of days later, while Aang and Katara were out doing whatever they did when they went on dates, a letter came in for Toph.

Now even by itself, this occurrence would have been unusual and worthy of note, because Toph never got mail – for obvious reasons. But what particularly caught the attention of those present was how the letter had come.

"HAWKY!" Sokka exclaimed gleefully, jumping up to his feet at the sight of the sleek crimson plumage of his Fire Nation messenger hawk.

"What?" said Toph, her head turning as she sat up from picking her toes. "Seriously? That bird of yours is actually back?"

She sounded both astonished and anxious – why the latter was, neither of the other two could guess.

Suki, for her part, only looked lost for a moment before her eyes widened as she remembered the bird from the stories she had heard from her boyfriend. She remembered the messenger hawk he'd told her he had purchased with his share of the proceeds from Toph's spree of scams in that one Fire Nation town, back before the Day of Black Sun.

She also remembered him telling her how the hawk had vanished without a trace, shortly after he had bought it.

"Wow, I can't believe it actually managed to find you all the way in the Earth Kingdom," said Suki, impressed with the clever raptor.

The bird preened under the attention it was getting, looking as self-satisfied as physically possible with its avian features. It was roosted on the sill of the open window, head held high as its lethal talons gripped the fine plaster windowsill constructed in the fashion favored by many of the Upper Ring's wealthier residents.

That was when Sokka noticed something sticking out of the scroll case on Hawky's back.

"Huh? Do you have a letter for me, Hawky?" he asked the bird, as though expecting it to answer.

Hawky simply stared at him, as if to say Are you some kind of moron?

If Sokka understood this, he did not react. Instead, he simply held out his arm, allowing Hawky to alight upon it. The Water Tribe teen bit back a yelp at the feeling of his pet's razor sharp talons pinching holes into his skin, and he opened up the bird-sized backpack to see two scrolls sticking out.

Curious, he pulled them out and checked to see to whom they were addressed – more out of habit than anything else, consider that Hawky was his bird. The first had Toph listed as the recipient – something Sokka found strange – and Grand Duke Lao Bei Fong as the sender – something that made him suspicious, considering what had happened the last time there had been a letter supposedly sent to Toph by her parents. The second, however was addressed to him.

At least, he assumed it was. He didn't remember ever being called Prince Sokka the Brave of the White Wolf Dynasty, though. Even if he had told Yue that he was kind of a prince, himself.

Sokka's cheeks flushed faintly at the memory of that, and the memory of the verbal burn he had subsequently received courtesy of his sister.

"Well?" came Toph's voice. "Does Hawky there have a letter for you, Snoozles?"

Sokka blinked, shaken out of his reverie by this.

"Uh, yeah," he said. "One for you, too. From your parents – both of them are, actually. Odd, that."

Toph's ears turned bright pink at this, though Sokka didn't notice. "Yeah... odd."

Suki gave the young earthbender a curious look, uncaring of whether or not she could see it (and she could, as it were). She highly suspected that Toph knew more than she was letting on, but she decided not to press the issue, instead turning her attention back to her boyfriend.

"What do they say?" she asked him.

"Let's find out," Sokka replied cheerfully, unrolling the scroll addressed to himself first. Quickly, his eyes skimmed the message, looking for anything of interest. "Huh," he murmured, spotting a curious passage. "I don't really get what they're talking about, but apparently your parents think very well of me, Toph."

The blind chit quirked a thin black eyebrow at this.

"Seriously?" she asked.

"Seriously," Sokka said with a nod. "They even addressed me as Prince Sokka, and everything."

Suki stifled a giggle at this, but Toph looked more or less unsurprised.

"Well, you kind of are one" the Blind Bandit stated matter of factly. "It only makes sense they'd want to kiss up to the future Chief of the Southern Water Tribe, right? Especially now that it's being rebuilt and all."

Sokka blinked, taken aback by this, and Suki's jaw dropped slightly as she took in what Toph had just said. The former had known for a good while that he was basically the next in line for position of chief – because even the rank was technically granted on personal merit, the tribe generally favored the family of the previous chief when it came to choosing the next one. And the Southern Water Tribe was rebuilding, so it wasn't as though they would be irrelevant forever, right? Eventually they would be a true world power, the way they used to be.

Suki, for her part, was surprised because this was the first time she'd really considered who Sokka was. She had known, of course, that his father was the current chief of the Southern Water Tribe, but whether because of the simple, unsophisticated manner in which he comported himself or something else, she simply hadn't made the conscious connection that Sokka would of course be the next in line. For all intents and purposes, her boyfriend was essentially a prince.

Suki wasn't entirely sure sure how she should take this.

"...Was there anything else?" the Kyoshi Warrior asked at length.

"Oh, yeah!" said Sokka, and he glanced back at the high quality parchment in his hands. "They said they're looking forward to meeting me, though that doesn't really make sense. I mean, we already met once, didn't we?"

"Well, they didn't really get to talk to you at the time," Toph responded. "As I recall it, you were too busy stuffing your face to make any small talk."

Sokka at least had the decency to look embarrassed for himself.

"Hey, I was hungry," he weakly protested, still blushing a little.

Suki smiled at the sight. Her boyfriend really was cute when he got like that.

A thought struck her at that moment, however.

"Hey, what about Toph's letter?" she inquired. "I don't imagine she can read it herself." She paused, and turned to look at the younger girl a little sheepishly. "Err... No offense, of course."

"None taken," Toph said blandly. "And no, obviously I can't read it. So, Snoozles? Mind reading it out loud for me?"

Sokka nodded in understanding. "Sure," he said, before unfurling the scroll... and unfurling further. After a few seconds of that, he stared at the rather lengthy letter, not looking particularly excited at the thought of reading it all out.

"Um," he said, "You want the full version, or do you mind if I abridge it a bit?"

"Abridge away, Captain," said Toph without so much as a moment's hesitation. "I can only handle so much of their whining in a single sitting, anyways."

Sighing in relief, Sokka began to recount the gist of what the letter said.

"Well, let's see. They say hi... a lot of pleasantries and... ah, personal hygiene reminders..." he trailed on, a faint mixture of pink and green tingeing his cheeks. "Let's see, what else... what else... Oh!" he exclaimed. "Apparently they're coming up here for the Harvest Festival. Say they have some good news for you. I wonder what it could be?"

Toph groaned.

"I dunno," she muttered, "but knowing their definition of 'good'... I get the feeling that I am not going to like it."

She then sighed, before going silent and letting herself fall back down on her... well, back.

"What are the odds, though?" mumbled Suki after a moment's silence. "Both Toph's parents and your and Katara's dad coming up to Ba Sing Se for the Harvest Festival. That's some coincidence..." she said in a manner which suggested that she did not for one second believe it really was just a coincidence.

"Ehhh, not really," Toph replied. "It is a pretty big event, after all. And we're guests of honor, at that. Only natural our parents would decide to come up here." She was then quiet for a moment, before somewhat darkly adding under her breath, "I'm still suspicious of this so-called 'good news', though..."

"Yeah," said Sokka, "I'm sure it's nothing important. They probably just wanna be here with their kids." He looked unconcerned, apparently not having heard Toph's muttering. "Heck, I wouldn't be surprised if we heard from your parents next, Suki," he added with a go-lucky grin.

In spite of her boyfriend's optimism, however, Suki could not help but feel pensive.

She had a feeling that this was no coincidence.


A/N: This chapter was a little difficult to write, but it's a fairly important one, methinks. Have to set stuff up, after all.

With that said, I bet most of you by now already have a pretty good idea of what this good news might be. ;3c

Also, a challenge I thought up, in case anyone feels like tackling it: Sokka as a firebender (but still a member of the Water Tribe). Bonus points for exploring how this could affect his relationships with other characters, or his own mindset. And even further bonus points if you show an at least semi-realistic progression of growth – as in, he isn't throwing crazy firebending moves all over the place right from the beginning without any sort of formal training, if he's even willing to use it at all, starting out.

Additionally, I feel I should also mention the new poll in my profile that I set up a bit ago but kept forgetting to mention – it's about Sokka pairings, and it's even multiple selection!

TTFN and R&R!

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