When the Wind was Reborn
Chapter Four
"Told you she was smart," Sokka whispered, feeding Eshka a morsel of frogseal fat as reward for leading them to Fire Nation ship. She trilled happily from her perch atop his shoulder.
"Follow the smoke, it's not rocket science," Katara muttered, rolling her eyes.
"How many birds do you know that can follow smoke?" Sokka grinned at her silence. "Yeah, that's what I thought."
"Look! Look! There he is!" Katara hissed, jabbing her finger downhill.
"Get down!" Sokka chided her. They were just behind the crest of a big snowdrift, covered in snow themselves, and were invisible so long as they stayed low, but with Katara waving and pointing like a lunatic they were about as subtle as an avalanche. Sokka looked cautiously, though, and saw what she was talking about. The airbender was down at...this was the very iceberg he'd come from! Sokka's plan had been to trail the Fire Nation ship and follow them to the avatar - let them chase him down and do all the legwork, then all he had to do was walk in and take him. He hadn't expected it to be nearly this easy.
"What's he doing?" Katara whispered. Sokka squinted down at the tiny figure. He was...hitting the iceberg with a stick? For the Bridge Between the Worlds he seemed a little intellectually challenged. A scent reached Sokka's nostrils and he turned
"I don't know, but he isn't seeing the ship approach," Sokka spoke. "Seriously, how dense is this guy?"
"How can he not hear the ship?" Katara was incredulous. "You can smell it, you can even feel if through the ice!"
The pair watched, absolutely awed and mystified at the airbender's obliviousness, as the ship approached, so close it was practically touching him. The solders filed out of the ship and one mad firebender even jumped off the prow while their leader gave orders from behind the rail. All attention was focused at the front of the ship, at the airbender. The firebenders had left blind spots in their security in their haste to capture the avatar.
"Watch and learn, sis, you're about to see why they call me the Skua's Talon!" Sokka said with a smirk. Katara just laughed out loud.
"What? No one calls you that, they call you Featherfoot."
"Yeah, well...shut up!" Sokka slithered over the crest of the hill and started running. He'd always found the nickname embarrassing - or, well, not quite embarrassing, but he just wished it was something better - but he supposed he was about to demonstrate how he'd gotten it.
"Sokka, don't!" Katara hissed, but he was already gone. He flitted across the snow while all eyes were pointed away, footfalls quiet even when he was leaping across great big gaping gaps in the ice. His eye scanned the ship ahead of him and assessed it as he approached. The gangway was easier and quicker but so close to the front of the ship, to where the action and the eyes were, it was too risky but he saw no alternative - the hull was metal, his climbing picks wouldn't so much as scratch it, and he saw no other way up.
Much as it chafed, he turned to Katara for help. She was still at the top of the snowdrift, not even bothering to hide anymore, and was making obscene hand gestures at him. He pointed at the ship, then down at the snow-covered shelf of ice he was on, hoping that somehow made sense, and it did. Even from this distance he could see her bury her face in her hands and he'd have bet money that she had just rolled her eyes too. Still, the snow on the ground began to shift as Katara waterbended it silently into a huge slope.
"Yes!" Sokka hissed under his breath and set to climbing it. He scurried up the slope, quick and nimble, and once he had vaulted over the edge of the ship and onto the deck the snow slope melted back to a blanket that coated the shelf of ice, just as it had moments ago. It was as though it had never happened - Katara had even used her waterbending to erase the tracks that Sokka had left in the snow on his approach!
The deck was steel, and Sokka had to move slowly, carefully, to avoid making noise. There were plenty of things that Sokka couldn't do, but stealth wasn't one of them - he could move like a ghost's shadow when he wanted to. He prowled around the ship looking for somewhere to hide. He found a storage closet just moments before the ship's engine groaned back to life and it started moving again. He sat there cramped into a corner, buckets and broom handles jabbing into his back and legs, about as uncomfortable as it could get but he didn't care, he had made it - close one, admittedly, but he had made it.
He felt like he should be scared - after all, he was alone, aboard an enemy ship with dozens of firebenders, if not more - but he wasn't. Maybe it was that he felt his mission was bigger than him, or maybe he was just a little bit too confident, or maybe it was that he somewhat enjoyed the rush in his blood and the pounding of his heart that danger elicited, and the way it made him feel a little bit more real and alive.
His plan was to wait. Well, it wasn't really a plan, it was more like an idea that was in the shape of a plan. The firebenders would have the avatar in the ship somewhere, restrained but alive - the way Sokka figured it was that if they knew he was the avatar they wouldn't want to kill him because he would just reincarnate again, so they'd just keep him captive instead to neutralize him. Well, either that or the morons hadn't yet figured out that he was the avatar, and if that was the case they'd want to know who he was and why an Air Nomad was in the South Pole, if it meant there were more, and so on. Sokka would just wait until it was quiet, sneak out, look for the avatar's holding cell, do his business and sneak right back out.
Sokka had always had a good sense of time and it served him well. He waited, and waited, and waited, his joints and muscles growing stiff and achey from lack of movement and the cramped space, until he was sure that it would be after hours, sure that it would be evening, then he pushed himself to his feet, suppressing a groan as his stiff bones moved for what felt like the first time. Slowly, cautiously, he tiptoed over the junk in the closet and, after keeping an ear out for anyone approaching, left the closet.
The halls were foreboding, dark and dim, lit by torches on sconces on the walls that bled flickering light the colour of blood, and the air smelled of oil and iron. Carefully, his club held tight in one hand, Sokka padded down the hall, footsteps so light on the steel that he made no sound at all, straining his ears all the while to listen out for people coming and going.
Voices, down the hall. His head told him to ignore them and to continue his search - if he was spotted he was a dead man, he was under no illusions - but he found himself making his way down the hall towards them instead, and as he did the voices grew louder.
"You're lucky I don't have you disciplined, Zuko! You disobeyed me, again!" Sokka crept on, honing in on the voice and came to an open door. He peeked around the doorframe, hidden in the shadows, still invisible, and watched. Two firebenders were in the middle of an argument, faces inches apart. One was tall and lean with an imperious look to him, the other short and slight of build, with a defiant set to his jaw.
"I freed the animal so that he would come quietly, and he did! Would you rather we fought him again and lost?" The shorter of the two shot back
"That's not the point! You showed disloyalty and you showed weakness! The Fire Nation does not negotiate, and we ask no one for permission!" The elder firebender barked at him.
"Thanks to me we have him in custody, right down the hall! If I had done what you asked he'd be in the wind!" Down the hall? Sokka chose that moment to move on.
"Asked? I didn't ask, I ordered you!" Sokka heard the voices fade as he moved down the hall. The further he walked the more he heard through the doors that he passed - he heard the muffled sounds of conversation, dozens of voices overlapping in an eerie melody, then when he got closer he heard laughing and singing, stamping feet and even an instrument or two. Off-duty soldiers having a good time and unwinding. It had him on edge, all these enemies behind all these doors, someone could come out and see him at any time, and his target was one amongst them. How to tell which one, though?
When he walked a little further something was off. Sokka stopped, strained his ears and listened, hearing nothing different for a time, then it clicked - there was a gap in the noise! He wandered back and forth in the hall, playing hot and cold, and eventually he came to a door through which there was no noise. He took a deep breath, clutched his club tighter and pushed through the door, cringing as the rusty hinges screeched. Sokka shut the door behind him and looked around - a bare room lit by just a single dim lamp, a cell, really, thick with shadows, a figure strung up in the middle of the room.
"Hello?" Came a small voice. Sokka stepped forward and the figure looked up, his face coming into the flickering firelight, and Sokka looked upon the face of the Avatar for the first time. Calm and still, eyes deep with wisdom and an aura of courage, that's what Sokka had expected of the legendary Avatar, but instead he came face to face with a bald pre-teen with bright, trusting eyes, big ears that made him look a little silly and a slightly clueless expression on his face.
"You're the avatar," Sokka said dumbly.
"What? How do you know that?" The avatar asked him, wide-eyed.
"You're...you're just a kid," Sokka muttered.
"Hey! I'm twelve!" He protested. "What age are you? Hey, wait, you're not Fire Nation," he noted, looking Sokka up and down.
"I'm seventeen, and I'm Water Tribe," Sokka replied without thinking. He wasn't really sure why he answered the questions.
"Oh, neat! Hey, uh, can you get me out of here please?" The Avatar asked, flashing him a goofy smile.
"No," Sokka said quietly, and the Avatar blinked in surprise.
"You don't understand, I think they're going to kill me," the kid said, as though he was sharing a secret.
"No, they won't," Sokka told him. "They'll want to keep you locked up here until you're a hundred, so that you don't reincarnate." At that, the Avatar's face fell and he went pale.
"Then...why won't you help me? If you know that's what they'll do to me?" He was scared, confused - Sokka could practically see his mind working, trying to puzzle it out. It was like this kid just couldn't conceive of the notion that someone might do him harm.
Sokka didn't reply, instead he reached for his belt and slid his jaw blade out of its sheath with a hiss. His body felt numb as he did it, like his soul had left his flesh and it wasn't really him that was moving his arm at all.
"What are you doing?" The Avatar asked shakily. Sokka started to move forward. "No, no, get away!" The Avatar struggled and writhed in his bonds but it was in vain, he couldn't move, he just watched with big, terrified eyes as Sokka advanced on him, knife in hand. Part of him, the part that felt, told him that this was madness - he was a child, he couldn't just murder a child! But another part of him, the part that thought, urged him to do it - he had to, for the Water Tribe, for his home and his people. "Why are you doing this?" He asked, tears pricking at his eyes.
"For my people," Sokka said, once again without knowing why.
"The Water Tribe!" The Avatar gasped. "Y-you just want me to reincarnate so I'll be a waterbender!"
"Bingo." Sokka flexed his fingers around the hilt of his knife, took a deep breath and raised it.
The door screeched as it opened and Sokka's eyes went wide - how could he have been stupid enough not to lock or barricade the door?
"I came to talk -" The speaker abruptly cut himself off, seeing the scene in front of him. Sokka turned and saw that the newcomer was one of the men he had seen arguing, the younger of the two. In a flash there were pair of broadswords in his hands and a snarl on his face.
"Who are you?" The firebender demanded.
"Help!" The Avatar called. "He wants to kill me because I'm the Avatar!" The firebender frowned in confusion, perhaps thinking it some kind of joke, then his face went slack when the pieces clicked together - an airbender, the iceberg. The tension in the room was so thick Sokka felt like he could have cut it with his knife, maybe even with some sharp wit. Sokka and the firebender were frozen, uncertain what to do. Think, he told himself, what did the firebender want? He'd want to keep the Avatar alive now, to prevent him from reincarnating, and that would be Sokka's leverage.
"Don't move or I kill him," Sokka said, holding his knife up to the Avatar's throat, who froze with fear. "If I kill him you lose your captive and he'll just be reincarnated elsewhere." The firebender gave him a bitter scowl. "Come on, let's take it easy."
"No." The firebender rushed him, slashing at the air with his swords and sending criss-crossing blades of fire at both Sokka and the Avatar. Adrenaline coursed through his veins and Sokka threw himself aside, evading the fire but only barely - it was close enough that he could smell his hairs singing - landed and skidded on the steel, an unfamiliar surface to him. Distantly, he was aware of the Avatar yelling in panic then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the Avatar fall to the ground, the ropes that bound him burned through by the fire.
Sokka dove at the Avatar - this was his one chance, he was still on the floor, disoriented and confused. The firebender sent a gout of flame at Sokka, so close that he felt it singe his boots as he ran from it. He leaped and brought his knife down in an arc at the clueless Avatar. The boy looked up, saw it at the last moment and rolled aside with a whoosh of air. Sokka's knife missed and screeched along the metal floor with an awful skrill. He looked around and could only see flashes of the Avatar in the gloom, here then there then gone - he was so quick!
A flash of steel, and Sokka drew his club and brought it up reflexively to block the firebender's blade, narrowly avoiding having his face split in two. The firebender came at him with a flurry of slashes and Sokka retreated, ducking and slipping some blows and checking others with his club, his ears ringing with the sounds of clashing steel, just a single mistake away from having his blood spilled. This firebender was skilled, more skilled than Sokka was, and it was all he could do to back up and stay alive for those long, difficult seconds, then he slipped up. He misjudged the distance, his lack of depth perception being his downfall, and one of those broadswords slit his side open from ribs to hip. Sokka gasped, eye wide, already feeling the blood begin to soak his clothes, and fell to one knee.
He looked up, pride gone, ready to beg for mercy, but the firebender's swords were already blazing and with a thrust of the blades sent a colossal blast of fire at him. His eye burned with the light, even closed, and he felt his chest begin to blister and char. The pain was such that he couldn't even scream. Then pain in his back as he collided with the metal wall so hard that it buckled behind him and he sailed right through it, out of the ship and into the air. The sudden daylight near blinded him and he found himself looking at the dull sky as he fell. One of the last things he saw was the Avatar shoot through the hole that he had left in the hull of the ship, fleeing on what looked like a pair of orange wings.
"No!" The firebender bellowed from inside the ship, standing right at the breach, teeth bared like a wild animal, hair whipping in the wind. That was the last thing that Sokka saw before he tumbled head over heels and hit the freezing, black water. When that happened both his vision and mind went black too.