A/N: So I've been in a bit of a writing slump (you've been hearing this a lot from me lately, sadly), and I've been busy. But I started this little ficlet a few days ago, forgot about it, and then realized that it had a lot of potential. So I finished it.
P.S. For those of you who are reading my AU "Parallel Lives", know that I haven't given up! I'm just struggling with the first chapter.
P.P.S. I now have a LiveJournal that I use for Ava-ranting! If you have an LJ, feel free to stop by. Here's the url; just replace the (dot) with and actual dot:
invaderk(dot)livejournal(dot)com
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Happy Reading!
Confliction
"We're very sorry, Sir…"
Yeah well, he was sorry, too. Ever since he'd heard the news that Toph was pregnant, he'd had this image in his mind, this sort of timeless fantasy that he, Sokka, soldier from the Water Tribe, would soon have his own little warrior to train, his own son or daughter with whom he could share the love of meat and the feeling of a new boomerang. A child that he, in all his love for irony, would teach the proper facial expressions to match each sarcastic comment he'd crafted over the years. All of this planning and fantasizing came down to this, this awful revelation.
"We're very sorry..."
Sokka slid the door open and crossed the room in the dark, stumbling over more than one miscellaneous item that lay strewn upon the floor. Neither he nor Toph had ever enjoyed cleaning; Katara would make a feeble attempt if she stopped over, but everything would end up on the floor again anyway. As he made his way through the dark, he began to set things, these objects he kept stumbling over, in their proper places, or at least guess as to where they belonged. Why, he wasn't quite sure, but something about the desperation in his situation made him need to do something—anything—with his hands, and so he cleaned during his journey across the room. Actually, though the thought in his mind was fleeting, he was trying to sidestep the truth of his situation, delay his confrontation with that which he could avoid no more than he could deny—
"Ouch!"
Horrified by his very sudden, very loud, outburst, Sokka clamped his hands over his mouth, his body going rigid in the dark. Toph had been sleeping in just the room over, but he realized that he had probably awoken her with his outburst. He cursed fluently under his breath at the chair that had evidently jumped out and attacked his right knee, but all cursing stopped once he reached the window side of the room.
"Sorry..."
Gosh, if the words of those medics kept running through his mind like that, he was going to take his machete to something (or, if he felt like it, someone; nobody in particular, but someone). He approached the small crib by the window as one would approach a wild animal, only to back away again, wincing.
"Come on Sokka, pull yourself together." His hands—clammy and cold, which was very unusual—ran over his face in a calming manner. "This is stupid—you're being stupid. Just stop thinking about it so much."
Still, when he turned around again, that sinking feeling rushed back into the pit of his stomach. Surely, he reasoned, this wasn't how he was supposed to feel. This awful dread and despair couldn't be normal; he couldn't recall Aang ever mentioning this particular combination of emotions when describing the feeling of having his first child. Aang's words had mostly consisted of "amazing" and "love" and "perfect".
But how could this—she, he corrected himself—be perfect when she was so flawed? So cursed by this awful plague?
A sliver of moonlight fell across the crib—How ironic, he couldn't help but think—and gave the illusion that the little tuft of hair on his baby girl's head was actually white; the sight did not help to cure his unease. Sokka dropped to his knees in order to get a better look at the sleeping infant within, the wooden bars surrounding the crib clenched in his white-knuckled grip. He rested his forehead against the bars and allowed a quiet sigh to escape from within his chest.
"She has my eyes," he breathed, then reconsidered his words. "Kind of."
True enough. While the infant slept at the moment, her little chest rising and falling in time, he knew that beneath her closed eyelids were a pair of stunning blue eyes, eyes that were clouded over with this awful disease, this blindness.
"We're very sorry..."
The apology went from his memory to the tip of his tongue, and he had said it before he could stop himself. "I'm sorry, Nikka. Spirits, I'm sorry," he choked. "I didn't know—we didn't—it wasn't transferable. We were so sure."
"Sokka?"
"…Sir and Ma'am…"
He didn't stand up or turn around at the sound of his wife's voice. His eyes were glued to the little figure just inches from his face, the figure that smelled like clean soap and, now that his eyes had adjusted to the dark, looked like a bundle of blankets with a face.
Toph made her way through the darkness much quicker than he had and rested her hands on his shoulders from behind. Under normal circumstances he would have reacted to the gesture, taking it as incentive to maybe grab her around the knees and try to knock her off her feet—it was something he'd tried to do on occasion, before she became pregnant, because catching Toph off guard was a challenge with often hilarious (though sometimes painful) results. Now he did nothing, and it was not until she addressed his very concern (or one of them, at least), that he spoke.
"It's not your fault, Sokka; there's nothing we could have done." She paused thoughtfully before adding in a low voice, "Actually, it's more my fault than yours; I—"
"No, don't say that." He shrugged her hands from his shoulders and tore his eyes from the sleeping infant long enough to climb to his feet. That prickling feeling in his eyes was no matter; the only one who would be able to see the forming tears was he. Instead of mulling over whether or not Toph would be able to tell—even if she couldn't see, it didn't matter because she'd seen him cry about a million times between the time they'd met and now—he busied himself with furthering his statement. "They told us we'd be okay, that in your case it'd just been some sort of freak accident or something. You're right; there's nothing we could have done."
Nevertheless, Toph looked unconvinced. She frowned and grasped the edge of the crib with both hands. "I don't understand. How could this happen, Sokka? After everything. And what if she's not an Earthbender? How will she manage?"
The thought was almost too terrible for Sokka to fully comprehend. And either way, he presumed, even if Nikka was an Earthbender, he would lose out. If she wasn't, then everyone would be unhappy. If she was, however, then surely she would bond to her mother more than he. What could he, a non-Bender with the ability to see, offer to a daughter who would be—?
"What is it?"
Sokka jumped slightly and turned to his wife, who had evidently picked up on a leap in his heart rate. He fidgeted with his wolf's tail for a moment, ashamed that he had felt a pang of jealousy, even if it was a small one.
"Well, if she is and Earthbender, then you'll—" Sokka began, but paused to conceal a sniffle besides a rather violent cough. "What do I have to give her, Toph? What if she…" he trailed off, again feeling that bout of shame and terror.
Toph was persistent, her voice somehow still forceful even when she spoke in a whisper. "What if she what?"
"…What if she loves you more?"
There, he had said it. His primary worry, the thought that had plagued him from the moment the medics had delivered the news, was out in the open, and he wasn't sure whether he was emotionally stable enough for Toph to hear it. Even Toph seemed struck by the enormity of the idea. Her eyebrows furrowed, the frown deepening until Sokka was sure it would get stuck on her face.
"That's a terrible thing to say," she breathed. The sound of choked tears in her throat made Sokka wince. "How could you believe…? Sokka, that's the dumbest thing I've ever heard!"
For some reason, he had half expected her to burst into tears and hug him, so when her fist connected with his shoulder he was not totally prepared for it; he let out another loud exclamation of pain and grabbed his arm where her fist had made contact. In front of them, Nikka stirred in her sleep and whimpered before falling silent once more.
Sokka, in a desperate attempt to save himself from more damage, apologized. "I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I shouldn't have said that. It's just—" he sighed, defeated and returning once more to a state of dejection, "—everything seems so… I don't know. I just feel so wrong, and so scared."
This time Toph did hug him; her arms wound around his waist and squeezed lightly. "I know, I feel the same way. We'll overcome it eventually, but right now I'm just shocked. And scared. And hurt." She paused, and when he could not bring himself to respond she asked, "What does she look like? Is she as beautiful as she sounded?"
His head tilting to one side and leaning on hers, Sokka responded in a hushed tone, "She's… perfect. She's perfect."
At this, Toph laughed quietly. "How could she not be? She's the daughter of Toph, Earthbender extraordinaire!" she joked.
"Gee, thanks for the credit, Toph," Sokka deadpanned, though a small smile had risen to his face. He blinked, and the tears that had been in his eyes for the last minutes finally trickled down his face.
And although Toph couldn't see his sadness, she always had that way about her, that knowing sense of how he was feeling. He'd always admired that, though admittedly it sort of creeped him out sometimes, too. She kissed his jawline, right below the ear, then turned her unseeing eyes back in the general direction of her daughter.
"We'll find a way," she murmured, pausing to wipe a tear from her own eye. "We always do."
"I hope so."
He'd said the words with some uncertainty, but somehow in his heart he knew that she was right. They'd faced the worst times together, had they not? What was this but another hurdle to jump, another crossroads where they could either do nothing or do their best to make it work? And they would, he hoped. Although the sadness in his chest and the words of those medics told him otherwise, that little bundle that he, Sokka, had created, reassured him that he would do his best, and that his best would be enough. Sokka heaved a shuddery sigh and embraced his wife. Surely his best would be enough.
It would have to be, for it was all he had to give.
"We're very sorry, Sir, Ma'am, but your daughter is blind."
ooo
Fin.
A/n: Gosh, why can't I just write happy things? I'm not even a sad person. What the hell. I think, like I did with the whole "memory loss" theme, become engulfed in an idea. I love the thought that Sokka would feel inferior is his daughter turned out to be a blind Earthbender. It opens a door for lots of angst and character development (both of which I love). I also tried to add a side serving of fluff, though not enough to make you want to gag (I hope).
EDIT: Thanks to Isabel over on KF forums, she pointed out something that I hadn't really considered to be as important as it turned out to be. In other words, the way I portrayed Sokka at one point. She says:
"I should think that he would know by now that being blind isn't necessarily a disadvantage and even if Nikka wasn't born a bender, well, in the fic he thinks about being blind as something so awful, so horrible. A handicap that couldn't possibly be dealt with and that would keep him from enjoying his parenthood. Oh, besides...there is this bit "This awful dread and despair couldn't be normal; he couldn't recall Aang ever mentioning this particular combination of emotions when describing the feeling of having his first child." This, bit, it's practically as if he HATED the thought of being a parent to blind kid, especially because right after that the words that get OPPOSED to it, from Aang's perspective, included 'love'."
She was right, of course. Recognizing my error, I responded:
"Yes. I was afraid that the reader might think exactly what you thought, which is entirely my fault (obviously). Throughout writing the whole thing, I was like, "Hmm... this kind of sounds like he doesn't love her; NOT GOOD".
What I was trying to convey was his sense of panic, that Sokka loved her so much that he wondered why he felt so worried and stuff. You know how parents immediately jump to the worst conclusions about their kids. "Oh no, my kid has autism! He'll have such a hard time with life!" The thing is, Sokka didn't know if she was going to be an Earthbender or not, and immediately concluded that if she wasn't, then "how will she ever survive?""
And now you know what was really going on when I wrote this. Yay, and many thanks to Izzy. Now if only I could figure out a way to portray what I meant!
Thanks for reading! Criticism is always welcome.
