Everyone around Toph romanticized soulmates. Fewer than a tenth of the population had any, meaning a mark was something that set you above the everyday person. The most heart-pounding romance or thrilling war story was often embellished with the fated bond, playing into the star-crossed lovers trope or the wartime comradery government officials liked to overplay in order to downplay the tragedies and horrors and increase recruits.
Toph didn't fall for a pebble of it, despite having five soul marks herself.
The moment she learned to 'see', Toph threw away everything others said about her. They said she was helpless and fragile, yet she could live on her own with the badgermoles and use earthbending like no other earthbender in the world (Toph had yet to see the whole world but she felt a little assumption was deserved here). Clearly adults were always right.
So Toph came to her own conclusions, especially about her soulmates. Despite destiny's recommendation, she decided they would have to prove themselves worthy of being her bonded when she met them. If they even considered coddling her like some kind of weak, fragile doll, she would bury them in the ground faster than they could blink. And though she would never admit it even to herself, if they somehow treated her as an equal, capable in her own right, she would hold them as those she chose. And for a girl in a cage, whose choices were taken away from her, that was priceless.
. . .
If the tribe had been ecstatic about Sokka's marks, they exploded at Katara's. Hakoda and Kya had dismissed the stray thought that Sokka's fourth mark appearing and Kya's pregnancy were connected and were similarly shocked because it just didn't happen. For a bond that led its blessed to those who were essentially family, it didn't make much sense to connect two who already were. Not even Kanna could remember such a thing ever happening. No one was sure what this meant.
One-year-old Sokka didn't care about any of that, though. He was a little busy figuring out the balance between wanting to play with his baby sister and being jealous that Mom and Dad weren't paying as much attention to him, the usual struggles of an older brother and the oldest child.
Sokka found he liked touching his little sister. Mom always sat him next to Katara when she and Gran-Gran made meals as it was easier to keep an eye on them. And being the easily bored toddler he was, Sokka used this time to play with Katara, or ignore her if he was feeling extra petty about the attention she got that day. He was gentle playing with Katara, because Mom made him promise not to hurt the baby because babies are weak, and would do small things like hold her hand or poke her tummy, or ruffle her hair or pat her shoulder like Dad did and that made Sokka feel all warm and happy. Katara often giggled or laughed or tried to touch Sokka back with her tinier, flailing limbs and that also made Sokka all warm and happy. Though he quickly learned the wrath of awakening a sleeping Katara and spent those particular pre-meal times amusing himself with the wooden boomerang Dad carved him for his first birthday or watching Mom and Gran-Gran as they worked.
Time passed too slow and too fast and soon both siblings were running around on short legs. They played in the snow with the older children, played in the hut when the sun was too low or the winds too strong, or were entrusted with and being taught the tasks they could do. The Fire Nation was the boogeyman heard around fires but no more real than the hero Kiviuk and salmon spirit Anartek. For a child only knows what he or she sees and hears.
In the same way, Sokka and Katara thought little of the marks on their skin, inked on the inner flesh of his right forearm and across her collarbone, hidden from each other as they normally were by the heavy clothing needed in the south pole. But as siblings, such obscurity was only temporary.
"I expect your sister to be clean as ice when you're done, and you as well young man." Sokka resisted the urge to shrink away from his mom's sharp gaze. He was Sokka of the southern water tribe, and men of the southern water tribe show no fear!
"Yes, mom." Men of the southern water tribe also complete missions given to them without fail.
Sokka led Katara by the hand to the bathhouse. Wood was too valuable a resource to be used to heat bath water everyday, so once a week, the fires at the bathhouse would be kept lit until the whole tribe bathed. Outside of that, it was up to each family to keep themselves clean. Before today, at least Mom had gone with Sokka and Katara each week to supervise. Now, Sokka was being trusted to watch over and help Katara by himself!
"Okay, Katara, hands up," Sokka instructed, gripping the sleeves of his sister's parka so he could help her get it over her head. Folding up it and his nicely, he left Katara to remove to rest of her more manageable underclothes while he himself disrobed. Folding those as well (Mom always knew when he didn't fold his clothes), he helped Katara into one of the baths then gathered the necessary soaps and cloths before getting in himself.
"Okay, Katara, first let's wash our hair," he said, grabbing the correct oil.
"Sokka!" Katara interrupted, splashing about wildly (and was it just Sokka, or were those splashes a little too large?). "Sokka has my drawings!"
Sokka looked at his little sister, confused until she took his arm and pointed at the five drawings that stretched from his wrist to his elbow then pointed at the top of her chest. There laid the images that decorated his forearm, identical except where Sokka had one that looked like Mom's necklace between the fan and eye, Katara had a boomerang on a piece of parchment between the flaming swords and fan.
"Wha… how?" Sokka suddenly realized that he had never asked about the images on his arm. The entire tribe was familiar with his endless questions – about weapons, about hunting, about the weather and sea, about pretty much anything under the sun – yet it had never occurred to him to ask if they knew what these images were. Well, that was about to change.
But first, he had a mission to complete as a proud member of the southern water tribe.
"Let's ask Mom and Dad and Gran-Gran when we get back," he said. "But first we gotta clean up or Mom will make us clean again." Katara nodded, then turned around to let Sokka rub the oil in her hair; her two-year-old arms got tired too quickly to properly clean her hair. While she rinsed, Sokka quickly washed and rinsed his own, then cleaned himself with the soap and a rag of woven seaweed. Then he carefully cleaned Katara's face, making sure to keep the soap out of her eyes, and let her finish the rest herself while he got out and dried with a towel. He helped her dry with another towel – rubbing her cheeks an extra time to make her giggle – then assisted in redressing her in her parka once they both wore the clean set of clothes they had brought. They all but ran back home.
"Mom! Dad! Gran-Gran!" they both yelled in different orders and timings, making it sound like a jumbled mess that still fulfilled the purpose of begging for attention. All three adults – who had been ready to applaud the two children when they got back from their special assignment – immediately gave them that attention.
They crowded around the kids and all asked different questions – "What happened?" (Dad) "Are you injured?" (Mom) "What is it, children?" (Gran-Gran) = that ended up sounding very similar to the indecipherable mess the children had voiced only seconds ago.
Realizing his words would be loss in the mess of noise, Sokka pulled back his sleeve, exposing his drawings, and waved it around until the adults settled down into confused silence.
Given the stage, Sokka rapid-fired all the questions he had thought of in the time between Katara pointing out their matching marks and getting back to the family igloo. And since Sokka was always observing and thinking of questions (though he asked a mere portion of them), there were a lot of them: "Katara and me have matching drawings, well almost matching which is also weird, but why do they match? Why do we even have the drawings, were they always there or are they a tribe tradition you haven't told us about? What do they mean? Also, why is the eye all cracky? Why are they gray because that's a fire and fire isn't supposed to be gray?"
Sokka had more questions, so many more, but he stopped talking because Dad, Mom, and Gran-Gran looked amused but were also talking with their eyes which meant if he stopped talking, they would start. They had shared the same look when Sokka finally burst and complained about not getting as much attention, right before they explained that his feelings were normal and that another kid in the house didn't mean there was less love but more.
"Put your stuff away first, dears," Mom said. "Then we'll answer your questions." Sokka had never so willingly put his dirty clothes in the 'To Clean' basket.
"They're called soul marks," Dad started. "And each represents one of your soulmates."
"What's a soulmate?" Sokka asked, still bursting with questions.
"A soulmate is someone you are tied to through your souls," Gran-Gran explained, in her way that made anything mystical sound like it was knocking at the door or waiting under your sealskin. "Much like how family is tied through blood. It's a bond gifted from the spirits to bring together those whom fate has deemed connected."
"Each mark is a person?" Sokka tested, his thoughts kneading their words and something clicked into place. "So Katara and I are…!" He trailed off because saying it suddenly felt more important than his voice could say. Even if he regularly got annoyed by Katara, Sokka loved to touch his sister, to hold her tight and ruffle her hair until she pouted her lip and he knew he showed her that as her big brother he cared. Katara did too, he realized, in her own annoyingly loving way. She tugged at his wolftail or tackled him in the snow or asked for piggybacks back home even though he was just as exhausted as she was.
They were soulmates, connected through blood and bond and that was something so precious Sokka couldn't even say it because he wanted to hold it tight to his chest. His family understood and simply nodded with soft smiles. Katara shifted a little closer from where she sat next to him, just enough that their arms touched.
"Why are the marks gray?!" Sokka asked, offended. His sister wasn't gray, even if the shadows on the drawings looked cool; she was every shade of blue, from the deepest depths to the clearest ice.
"Soul marks lack color until soulmates meet," Mom answered with that twinkle in her eye that said she'd only said half of what she should.
"Sokka and I have met!" Katara protested, glaring at Mom to make her say the other half. Both of them were very familiar with Mom's brand of teasing.
Gran-Gran smacked Mom upside the head before blessedly continuing where her daughter-in-law left off. "You are soul just as you are body, and for a soul mark to recognize the soul it represents, they must touch."
Sokka had his sleeve pushed up and soul mark-lined forearm presented to his sister the instant his brain connected the dots. To Katara's quizzical face, he quickly said, "You have to touch your soul mark to get color!" Katara blinked once then gasped, a happy smile taking up her face and reached for the charm image, the only one different from hers. Sokka could feel the rest of their family lean in to watch but couldn't care, too focused on his own arm and his sister's finger on her mark.
Like soup spilled onto snow, color soaked into the mark, coloring it a greenish blue that Sokka had known since before he could remember. The shadowed mark had been beautiful with its colorless complexity but now, Sokka couldn't imagine ever losing this color. He wondered what the others would look like colored in and felt a pang in his chest that he knew was because they weren't here.
One day, Sokka thought, one day he would have all his soulmates with him.
"It looks just like Mom's necklace!" Katara near shouted in her excitement before pulling the collar of her parka down and gesturing impatiently for her brother. Sokka surrendered to her request (was it a request if the requested wanted the request too?) and placed his finger on the image with a boomerang, the only mark he had never seen before today. It filled with color, a little different from Dad's or Mom's or Bato's but obviously made by the tribe, and the background behind it tanned and yellowed, taking on the hues of well-loved parchment, the only kind found in the south pole. Faint splotches of color upon the parchment formed the nations, which Sokka only knew looked like that because he sneaked a peak at Dad's map when he was out hunting. It's okay, he rolled it up right and put it back in the seal tight box so the paper was totally fine!
"A map and a boomerang," he whispered. The weapon obviously meant he would be a great warrior, just like he knew he would, but what did the map say about Sokka? Was he going to be a traveling warrior, like that swordsman from one of Gran-Gran's stories? That sounded cool!
"How will we know when we meet our other soulmates if we can't see their marks?" Katara asked. Sokka wondered that too. Katara's were along her collarbones, and pulling down one's shirt isn't a common happening. What if one of their soulmate's marks were in an even harder to spot place?
"It's up to fate," Mom said. "Though in my opinion, meeting your soulmates seems more like a when, not an if. Deep down, you'll know. You're connected after all."
Yeah, Sokka couldn't help but agree. He'd know his soulmates when he met them, no doubt.
. . .
It looks just like Mom's necklace! Her daughter had said it with such glee. Kya wondered even as she smiled at her happy children, why had it filled her with dread?
By the way, I would like to know if any of you would like me to make a dump story for all the story ideas I'm not going to finish. There's quite a few because if I tried to finish all of them, I would probably have to be a full time fanfiction writer, and that doesn't seem like a good way to pay bills. I'll decide whether or not to based on the response I get.