A/N: For cakercanart on tumblr.

"Ignore them," Sokka said as Aang looked over his shoulder at the fire bender siblings again; at least the earth bender had gone off…somewhere. He'd lost her quickly in the trees, though she'd picked her way through them without any trouble. "Concentrate on replicating these forms." Sokka moved his hands in the same fluid motions as before. They were still working on the simplest forms, as Aang had been too distracted to make any progress. He wasn't just sloppy; he was wrong, and Sokka didn't need the still bowl of water set between them to know that he wasn't getting it.

They hadn't been sitting cross-legged opposite each other for very long, however. Sokka's legs weren't aching for movement yet, and it was cool enough in the shade provided by the trees overhead. He could stay like this for hours if he had to.

Aang was already fidgeting, though Sokka knew perfectly well he could sit still if he had to.

The air bender would put on a show of concentrating, even going so far as to stick out his tongue between his teeth and screw up his face, but he seemed to be more focused on the faces he was making than on the forms he was supposed to be replicating.

"Bending is about more than just forms!" hollered Azula from where she sat against a tree not ten feet away.

Not that Sokka possibly had any idea why Aang couldn't concentrate.

"You need to feel it, and you can't! Which is why Aang needs a real water bending teacher!"

It certainly couldn't have anything to do with the judgemental stares and accompanying heckling.

"You might be more successful if you moved to the stream," observed Zuko. "Perhaps, if he's immersed in the element—"

"That would just make it more dangerous to the rest of us," Sokka snapped, finally acknowledging the two of them. "Besides, I highly doubt your method of teaching fire bending had you throwing him into an inferno."

"Well, they did," Aang said, sounding entirely too cheerful about that memory, "but not before they thought I was ready. Toph's the one who nearly ran me over with a boulder."

He was grinning.

Sokka had no idea how he could be grinning.

Years of searching for the Avatar had formed a solid idea in his mind of who the Avatar was—which had promptly shattered once he'd found the kid. Because Aang was a kid, younger than both Sokka and Katara. Besides, even when they'd been Aang's age, they hadn't acted it, at least not in public. It wouldn't have been proper. Aang? More often than not, Aang did act his age—unless you counted the years he'd been in stasis as part of his age. Sokka had seen him act that age, too, and it was far more disconcerting, but that was more in line with what he'd expected from the Avatar.

This Avatar, however, had quickly gotten bored of Sokka sketching out the forms in the forest detritus with a stick and had instead started drawing stick figures of all of them. Flattered as Sokka had been to be included in the group so easily, he was not impressed that Aang had apparently stopped paying attention to him almost immediately. That was the primary reason he'd emptied his waterskin into a bowl and started demonstrating the simplest forms for Aang. He seemed to learn better by doing than anything else.

Unfortunately, that was when Azula and Zuko had decided to join them, each picking a tree to recline against while offering unwanted commentary.

While Zuko's suggestion of the stream wasn't a bad idea, per se, as it was one Sokka had considered himself, it was clear enough that Zuko hadn't thought the suggestion through. Water might not be as obviously dangerous as fire, but it was still dangerous. They should know that as well as he did. He hadn't been sure if Aang would have an infinity for water, and someone with a great deal of power and very little control was not—

"Look, look, I'm doing it!"

Sokka blinked.

A tiny waterspout had formed over the bowl.

"That's air bending," he said, causing Aang to let it collapse with a huff. "Twisting your own element around the water doesn't make it water bending."

"But I know what water benders can do," Aang complained, "and they don't just—" He made a crude slicing motion with one hand.

The water in the bowl didn't react, all its ripples merely remnants from the earlier disturbance.

"Water flows," Sokka said. "Like air. You still need fluidity in your motions."

"Can't you teach me more complex forms? That's probably why I can't get this. Because it's too simple. I mean, if it is like air bending, then I should be able to get my whole body into it, right, and that'll make it work better."

Sokka let out a slow breath through his teeth and kept his voice low in a futile attempt to give the fire benders less fuel for their inevitable criticism. "Is that how you learned the other elements? By jumping right in over your head?"

"Well, no, but—"

"You can't do that here, either. There might be similarities, but you can't treat water bending like air bending. They're not the same."

"You just said they're like each other!"

"You really did," called Azula. "We all heard that, non bender boy."

"Having more similarities to air than to earth doesn't mean water isn't its own element," Sokka said with a glare in Azula's direction. He hesitated for a moment, looked at Aang's crestfallen face, and made his decision.

"What are you doing?" Aang asked as he stood and flung the contents of the bowl in the general direction of the fire benders. He was rewarded with twin squawks of surprise, but they were far enough away to just get a spray rather than anything satisfyingly substantially wet.

"Come with me," Sokka said. He tucked the bowl back into his pack and strode toward the clearing where they'd camped last night. It was near the stream but not near enough to give Zuko any gloating rights. "I want you to show me how air benders move."

"You know how I move," Aang said as he hopped up to follow. Unfortunately, Sokka saw the fire benders rise as well. "I mean. We have fought. A lot. It's not like you haven't seen me air bend."

"Humour me."

Aang shrugged but skipped ahead without protest, guessing their destination when Sokka didn't call out to correct his direction. For someone carrying so much responsibility on their shoulders, he could appear remarkably carefree. Sokka envied that, though he wasn't about to admit it. He liked joking around, but he rarely had an opportunity to do that anymore. Katara didn't mind it much in private, whatever she pretended, but it was heavily frowned upon in public. Even now, Sokka wasn't convinced the Fire siblings could take a joke from him, Azula especially, and in the years since he'd been off searching for the Avatar in an attempt to crush the threat before it came to crush them, well….

He hadn't had the opportunity to be himself for a while.

Aang, it seemed, had never stopped being himself.

Before they even got to the clearing, Aang had formed a spinning bubble of air and was bouncing off the last of the trees. As Sokka reached the edge and dropped his pack, Aang used one of Toph's stone tents like a ramp and shot off the top before letting the ball of air dissipate. Using his momentum, he spun like a leaf and sent a powerful rush of wind towards Sokka that nearly knocked him off his feet. The acrobatics continued, Aang being very careful not to disturb Appa further after the bison lowed a sleepy protest at being blasted by the wind.

Predictably, Aang finished with a flourish, alighting on the tip of Toph's tent and giving an exaggerated bow.

"Yeah, you're making great strides at teaching him water bending, aren't you?" Azula said from his left. Zuko snorted but thankfully didn't comment.

"He needs to see the differences for himself."

"And how are you going to show him those differences when you can't bend?"

"Azula—"

"Watch," Sokka said sharply, not caring that he cut off Zuko's defence. That wouldn't silence Azula. This…. This might not silence her, either, but it might at least earn him enough of her silence to give him a chance to teach Aang something.

Sokka stepped into the clearing and flowed.

He'd grown up surrounded by water in all her forms. He knew her scalding touch as well as her frigid bite. He knew how she could rage and how she could laugh. He knew what it was like to be completely at her mercy, and he knew how to steer her towards the end he wanted.

He had never danced with her like his younger sister had danced with her, but he knew the motions that the masters used to sculpt her into their weapons. What he was doing now was far less impressive than it would be if he were working with water, but his audience was made up of benders; they would have some sense of the power and intent behind his actions, even if their elements were different.

Besides, whatever Azula believed, he knew the mindset that was needed for water bending.

Too gentle a touch, and she would gleefully overwhelm and swallow you, trying to drown you in her depths. Too harsh and demanding, and she would balk and become as immovable as the ice shelf itself. Working with water required a partnership like the sea had with the moon. If you were careless, you'd exhaust yourself over something that should be simple, and any attempt to force a form would fail miserably. If you didn't trust her, didn't trust yourself, you were as likely to find your trap falling flat as you were to be caught in it.

He wasn't sure how to convey to Aang that working with water would require him to surrender himself to the current so that he could learn to guide himself along and work with it rather than fighting it every step of the way, as he seemed to be doing now. If nothing else, this demonstration of the difference in styles should drive home Sokka's point that water bending, while fluid, was hardly the same as air.

Anyway, Aang had asked to see some more advanced forms, even if Sokka wasn't moving slowly enough for him to learn any of them.

They could float leaf boats on the stream after this, and he could try to explain about the currents then.

He finally stopped opposite Aang, breathing a mite heavier than he ought to be, even though it had been years since he'd run through this entire sequence.

Once it had become clear that he wasn't a bender, his practice of the forms—even under the guise of exercise—had been frowned upon. His time was much better spent learning other things, military tactics included, and practicing moves and training muscles as he would ultimately use them in battle. He was not his sister. He didn't need to have every step of the water bending forms perfect. His talents lay elsewhere.

Katara had excelled under her tutelage, and Sokka had been kept busy enough with his own classes, so he hadn't been able to watch Katara train as often as he would have liked. He'd learned more from watching her and the other masters in action. He knew the breadth of their skills—he needed to know as much to know how best to use them—but while he knew the rain could be stilled and turned into sharpened daggers, for instance, he did not know the exact combination of forms required to do that. He could guess, based on the breakdown of the motions he knew and how the water reacted, but he could not do that for every outcome. Besides, there was far too much flexibility of the potential motions involved for him to have any certainty, as more than one combination could have the desired effect.

Ultimately, Aang would have to learn from experimentation—and, if Sokka managed to teach him anything, intuition. Water was a very intuitive element, as Aang would realize once he stopped trying to force it to move the way he wanted it to. Like a river took the path of least resistance, the simplest combination of forms was more effective and efficient than a complicated set that led to the same end. Aang would fight better if he learned to bend water even half as intuitively as he did air, and he'd need that to face Katara.

Aang grinned down at him. "That was awesome!" he said as he jumped lightly to the ground. Sokka could hear Azula muttering that she wasn't impressed, but she wasn't saying that louder, which had to mean she was, at least a little bit. "Are you going to show me how to do that now?"

Sokka picked up his pack and reached for his waterskin, only remembering it was empty once he held it. "Let's head to the stream for now."

"So you are taking my suggestion?" Zuko murmured, a smirk on his face. Sokka rolled his eyes and held up the empty waterskin.

It was snatched out of his hand a split second later by a chittering Momo, who had it halfway up a tree before Sokka could blink.

"It's empty," he said as the winged lemur uncapped it and held it over its mouth, waiting for the last drops to fall.

"What do water benders do when they run out of water?" Aang asked as Momo frowned at the waterskin and threw it down at them. Sokka ducked, but it still took him in the head. He scowled, and Momo dashed back the way they'd come, presumably to steal someone else's waterskin. "What if what they had is used up and there isn't any water nearby? If they're somewhere really dry and they had to drink the last of their water or something like that?"

Sokka rubbed the top of his head with one hand and slipped the waterskin back into his pack with the other. Any anger he might have felt towards Momo drained away at Aang's question, as it reminded him of the fact that he hadn't seen all the horrors of which the Water Tribe was capable. He must think blood bending was the worst of it, and blood bending was terrifying, but it wasn't the only thing water benders could do.

"If you're lucky," Zuko said before Sokka could decide how to answer the question, "they'll pull a weapon and fight like any other non bender."

"If you're not," Azula said tersely, "and they're skilled enough, they'll take it from you. Or another living thing, if they want to torture you first. Unless they're entirely alone in the middle of a desert, they're not without water."

"Oh. That's…." Aang trailed off and looked at Sokka, maybe hoping he'd say the Fire siblings were wrong, but he couldn't.

Chances were, they'd seen what was left behind after a water bender had done that. Sokka certainly had, and even he didn't like it.

Instead, he picked up his pace and started telling Aang about the currents, trying to relate them to the element of air and hoping that would snap Aang out of it, but Aang's troubled expression made it clear he wasn't listening.

No doubt, he was thinking about how water was the lifeblood of all the living things around them, and if Sokka couldn't distract him, he'd think too much on the sickening feeling of seeing it drained—or worse, doing the draining—and that would only make him more reluctant to learn how to wield water as a weapon.

But maybe that was the trouble.

Sokka was trying to show him how water could be used as a weapon, but it wasn't only a weapon. It could shield as easily as slice. He admittedly didn't know the intricacies of it, but it could heal as well as hurt. And it could bring delight as readily as destruction; upon learning to control multiple droplets, the youngest water benders—Katara included, when she'd first found her bending—would invariably decide to throw up a spray of water into the sunlight to create a rainbow, and peals of joy were always the result.

He missed those days.

"None of the elements are one-sided," Sokka said, touching Aang's arm briefly to make sure he had his attention. "None of them are inherently good or bad." Yes, a water bender could pull water from any living thing—but an air bender was no different. Aang could pull Sokka's breath from his body if he wanted to. He wouldn't, but he could. Sokka wasn't going to say that, though, because Aang would be horrified by the suggestion, and he wouldn't win any favours from the fire benders for thinking of the possibility. "What you intend to do when you bend will influence the outcome as much as anything. You balance them all as the Avatar, but there's a balance within each of them as well."

"I'm trying not to hurt people," Aang insisted, perhaps thinking that Sokka was implying that he was doing more harm than good with his bending. "I don't want to. I just…. I know there have been some accidents, but I've been trying."

Sokka glanced at Azula and Zuko, raising his eyebrows just a hair, as he would hardly call the amount of destruction the group had left behind accidental. It was one of the reasons they'd been relatively easy to find and follow, at least off the start. It might not happen as frequently as it once had, but it certainly still happened.

Zuko looked away, but Azula met his gaze steadily.

At least, she did until he tripped over a tree root and found himself spitting rotting leaves out of his mouth, and then she laughed at him along with the others.

Sokka picked a twig out of his hair and stood to brush off his clothes. Leaves and burrs and dirt and— He paused, plucked up a mostly-intact leaf, and straightened up. The others were giving him questioning looks as he tried to balance the leaf on the edge of the stick, and they erupted into the giggles and snorts when he was unsuccessful. Repeatedly. He wound up laughing too much to get manage it, and they were still chuckling when they reached the stream, but he pulled out his boomerang to make his point anyway.

He dropped his pack and sat down on the edge of the stream. They followed suit, Aang jumping to the opposite bank first while Azula and Zuko stayed on this one with him. He balanced the twig on the side of the boomerang, with much more success than he'd had with the leaf. And then, even as they were asking him what he was doing, he scrapped the edge of the twig along the boomerang just enough to scar the bark, and then snapped a bit off the end and tried to balance it again. It wouldn't balance in the same spot it had before, as he'd known it wouldn't, so he adjusted it accordingly.

"See?" he said, even though it was clear from the looks he was getting that none of them understood what he was trying to do. "It wouldn't balance where it did before. It's changed, and I needed to move it so it would balance again. People are like this twig. Everyone is different, and sometimes they change so that they're different from who they used to be. They have to find their own balance."

Azula snorted. "You couldn't think of a better way to try to explain that?"

"I don't hear you coming up with any grand suggestions here."

"You'd need to make sense before I could try."

"Or you could listen to him and let him finish explaining things before you interrupt," Zuko pointed out as Sokka tossed the twig to the current and put his boomerang away.

Azula made a face, somehow managing to look incredulous while scowling at her brother. "He did finish. He just finished poorly."

"It wasn't that bad of an explanation," Aang started, but Azula cut off the rest of his feeble defence, assuring him that it was.

"You two hanging around isn't helping either of us concentrate," Sokka retorted. "Why didn't you go with Toph?"

"Because we can't break into that new earth bent bunker she sensed and see if there are any supplies left."

"You could've helped her carry stuff!"

"What, you think I can't carry stuff by myself?"

Sokka blinked. "How long has she been standing behind me?"

"Long enough that I'm surprised you didn't notice, Twiggy."

Sokka winced, and not just because there was a heavy thud behind him. He turned to see a slab of stone heaped with a mishmash of materials sitting on the bank behind Toph. He couldn't make out much, but from what he did see, there wasn't any food, which was unfortunate but understandable. The rope might not be any good, but she'd found it, and if they looked over what else she'd found, some of it might be salvageable. Anything was better than nothing, really. They were sorely unprepared to face his sister at the moment.

"How goes the water bending?" she continued as she sat down beside him. "Swimmingly?"

"More like glacial," Sokka admitted. He cupped his hands and drank from the stream, wondering if they should try a few more forms or if they should skip straight to the leaf boats.

"Have you tried throwing Aang into the water?"

"Hey!"

"I suggested that, but he didn't like the idea," Zuko said, nodding at Sokka.

"We could really do without the audience," Sokka said, hoping Toph would take the hint.

Judging by the smirk that spread across her face as she shifted position, she knew exactly what the hint was supposed to be and deliberately ignored it. "Too bad you've got one, then."

Sokka sighed. "On your feet, Aang. I'll show you one of the first things every water bender learns."

"What, how to make an ice dagger to stick through someone's heart? I think Aang can do without learning that."

Sokka spun on Azula. "I just told you guys that none of the elements are inherently bad. That includes water and water benders!"

"She didn't mean it," Aang said. "Right?"

Azula shrugged, but when Zuko elbowed her, she muttered an apology.

Sokka ignored them and turned back to Aang, demonstrating the form and explaining how it called up the water as a simple globe to start, though it could be refined to multiple droplets with practice if so desired.

While Aang was frowning at him, Sokka demonstrated how non benders did it—and splashed him.

Judging by the way Toph had cracked up as he'd knelt to scoop up the water, she'd known exactly what he'd been about to do.

She splashed him before Aang had the chance to retaliate.

The ensuing water fight quickly involved all of them. No one was bending at first, but Toph was the first to cheat, shielding herself with the ground, and the others followed suit. It didn't take long before all of them were soaked and laughing.

At some point in the midst of it all, Aang let out a shout that had them stop in place, slowly dripping as they watched him juggle a wobbly ball of water.

Maybe immersing him in the element hadn't been a bad idea after all.

It was just a start, but a start was all Sokka had needed. He could help Aang get this. He could help the Avatar—and, ultimately, he could help the Water Tribe.

Even if it did mean going against Katara.