Sokka storms through the doors with his boomerang clutched in his hand.
"Come on, it's time for training." He waves a hand at the way he came.
"It is?" Aang stuttered over his lunch.
"Yes, it is. Come on." He's out in a flash of blue before Aang has a chance to stand.
"Wait up!" He bursts outside, head whipping back and forth before setting sight on Sokka, already about to make the bend out of his sight. "Wait for me!"
He doesn't let up his pace and Aang jogs to make it besides him. Aang takes a quick glance at his face and notices the annoyed frown spread on it. He notices the grip on his boomerang as well.
"…I'm sorry I wasn't ready. I guess time got away from me today." Aang tries for a small smile to ease the situation.
Sokka glances at him, his frown turning less tense but his eyes more confused. "No, no… It's not about you." He lets a smile slip. "Sorry kid, guess I really am easy to see through."
Aang mirrors the smile. "Yeah, a little."
"Like you aren't? You almost let out Katara's surprise with that stupid smile of yours."
"Hey, that's not fair! I haven't celebrated a birthday in a hundred years! Besides, it took a long time to make that coat. I was excited."
They hit the borders of the city and Aang feels the crunch of fresh snow as he steps out onto the icefield "Yeah, the one with Appa's fur and everything." Sokka's breath makes a cloud in the air. He shoulders the bag cast over his back.
"You need any help with that? Are the swords in there?"
"No, no it's okay." Sokka's tone hints at irritation again. "We don't need them anyway."
"Oh… okay."
The snow keeps crinkling under his footsteps, louder and louder as they make it further away. The city starts fading in the light haze of the afternoon. They pass their training grounds, a section of snow packed firm from countless footsteps, with ice spikes riddling the ground. It would be hard to miss.
They keep walking.
"Sokka… aren't we going a little far?" Sokka turns around and eyes him for a second before glancing at the snow, then at the city, then back around.
"Just a little bit farther." He says with strained confidence. The way he coughs afterwards and the glance he tries to sneak behind him tell Aang that he's just trying to take the 'you're easy to see through' comment into account. All it does is make him him worry, on top of wondering where they were going.
The next time Sokka turns, he does it pointedly, gazing in the direction of the city before setting his bag down carefully. He opens the brown flap, letting old parchment poke from the inside as he rifled through.
He gives a tired laugh. "Where do I start?"
"What is all that?" Aang asks leaning over to take a look. There seemed to be dozens of paper, some crisp and white as if written just yesterday, but most were either burned, wrinkled, or yellowed by time.
"A history lesson."
Sokka picks out a rolled-up scroll with a broken, black wax seal. He glances at it before deciding to leave it be and picks up another parchment, one folded up to fit in your palm. He opens up and stares, leaving Aang to stew on his odd mix of dread and anticipation, topped with a tinge of confusion.
Why here? Why now? He'd always wanted to know about, well, everything, if only to make sure he didn't bring up bad memories by mistake again. But every time he wished to know, he wished to never have to know a few minutes later. The rebellion wasn't a storybook and Aang doesn't know if he can bear hearing it.
Sokka takes a seat and hands him the paper. "Here."
Aang takes a seat across from him. It's a map.
It's a simple thing, inked in black with ill-defined coasts and smudged lines. Mountains were marked as artless triangles, deserts a pattern of slanted lines and swamps a haze of dots. None of it impressionable, which left the map itself a blank canvas for the story it told. He looks up for a moment to find as Sokka equally entranced as he was.
He tilts the map back toward him. "What is this?"
"A map," he states, scanning the notes scrawled over the scroll, "Zuko's map."
He stops, looks up and meets Aang's gaze. "One of them at least," he tries to start another sentence but it dies in his throat. He coughs. "I… I haven't taken a good look at it in years."
Aang doesn't know how to take that, so instead hovers his fingers over a section of lines, seemingly stretching all across the Earth Kingdom in meaningless vines.
"Those are the tunnels," Sokka's voice rings in the air, "Toph made them, well, at least started them; they spread fast if you've got an army of earthbenders."
"These are all under the Earth Kingdom," Sokka gives a nod and a smirk at his amazement, "Woah."
"Well, most would've caved in by now with nobody using them, but yeah. This map was the rebellion at its peak," the smile lingers on his face, proud. "Those tunnels were one of the things that gave us an edge during the war; we'd pop in and out, just like that, and the Fire Nation had no way to follow us."
Aang took another long gaze at the paper. They lines spread everywhere, crossing each other so regularly it looked like a fisherman's net, clumping around the most important cities and fanning out in a delta towards the coast. With that reach, it was no wonder they could hold their own against such a hell-bent enemy.
"Well, they had the Dai Li," Sokka continues, "but we could usually shut them off with some metalbending."
"Metalbending…" Aang had heard a mention of it before, but even then he had told himself he'd heard wrong.
Sokka laughs, letting himself loosen up even more. "Another thing that gave us an edge."
He scoots closer to Aang and traces over a line on the map that the airbender had been following with his eyes. "That's the Pole March."
Sokka laid a finger to the south, where a red dot laid its mark and the path of the march started. "105 A.G., a few years after fighting started, Zuko made his way to the Southern Water Tribe. He'd just taken Gaoling, which was a pretty big deal. The guy decides to go on a big publicity stunt by going from pole to pole drumming up support, instead of holding down his territories, which was a pretty bad move that I still don't get to this day."
"But… isn't that how you got to be part of the rebellion?"
Sokka lifts an eyebrow at that. "How'd you know that?"
"Oh… uh, Katara told me the story of your first time meeting."
"Huh," he sits on that thought for a moment, "Didn't think she'd… But anyway, it was a bad move to leave so early. Maybe, he knows something I don't…" His focus misses the map, but he snaps out it the next moment. "Or, he's a lucky idiot. You tell me."
His fingers weave through the southern islands, steadily making its way northeast. He stops on a marker in the middle of the sea. "We pass Kyoshi Island." Again, north. "We hit the Earth Kingdom mainland, manage to retake a small village and…" He seems out of breath, but follows the path again, along the coast east. "Through a bit of desert to Gaoling. We stay a while and a few of us keep on going."
He skips through the curves of the trail and lands on the North Pole. "We reach the North maybe a year later. We end up battling the Fire Nation ships that patrol the place as a show of strength and the Northern Tribe agree to help us."
Aang follows the line again. A glance at Sokka's face tells him that one ink stroke told much more than he'd ever be able to understand. He thinks of his own journey across that path; you could map it out, sure, but a black line could never tell of what he'd seen, what he'd heard, how he'd felt.
His journey had been one of fear. Sokka's would have been so much more, but right now all Aang could see was longing, and he wipes the feeling off his face a moment later.
"Right, right… Well, kid, there's a lot more." A quick look at the bag besides them stood witness. "About four more years. And two years before the march but I wasn't there and Zuko wasn't much of a story teller." Aang tries for a smile but can't make it reach his eyes. "Hey… you alright, Aang?"
"Yeah, yeah, it's just… a lot to take in." He looks up to face him, but looks away just as fast. Aang had expected to have to stomach the face of disappointment much more than this, but that didn't make it any easier when he had to.
"Sorry. I guess you had this planned for a while now and I just-"
"No. Nothing," he cuts him off, heatedly, "It's not you. It's – it's something else, okay? Don't worry about it."
The bag is placed between them with the bounty Aang now knew it must be holding. "I just want you to know about this. This information, the history of these places… it's going to be as useful as any bending you'll learn. You need to know this."
Annoyance laces his voice and whether he meant it to reach him or not, Aang couldn't help but feel he were to blame. It wouldn't be uncalled for; if it weren't for him, maybe they'd never have had to make a single mark on that map in the first place.
He hears the ice crackle as Sokka stands. "Come on, they'll wonder where we are pretty soon."
He rises, hands the map back, and turns back towards the city, bright and tall, the wind having blown the haze from his eyes. Every step back feels heavy, the snow sounding too loud and the cold, piercing.
They reach the wall. Katara's waiting for them. Sokka brushes past her, and she walks him home.
"I think we'll take a day off tomorrow, Aang." She smiles down at him, worn. He can't stand to make her upset, so he nods and darts through the doors as quickly he can.
"The Avatar's training is to be sped up, especially techniques to defend against firebending." Arnook's voice boomed, despite only addressing the small table before him. His voice was one to be listened to, just like her father's, yet so different.
He stood, ready to dismiss the abrupt meeting just as abruptly as it was called in "Lastly, no one is to know about this message - including the Avatar."
Sokka's up even before Arnook had finished the order, but they'd all been expecting it. The Chief raises his hand and her brother bites off his sentence. "Councilman, understand that I have shared this message solely because I do not believe in a leader keeping secrets from those he says he trusts.
"I trust you to, at least, try to understand me. This letter has no backing whatsoever, not even a name or signature. At best it means nothing, at worse a trick, but we have gone years unprovoked and I will not change my position based on this evidence."
The scroll rolls in front of Sokka. He sighs. "Arnook… we can't just sit here. If this thing is true that means the Fire Nation is planning on attacking us."
Fire Nation. Attack. Those words reminded her of sunless tunnels, the hiss of steam, and blood on ice.
"But if this isn't a trick – it means we still have allies."
Her brother holds up against Arnook's glare. "There's no better time to move than now. Aang can't get stuck in a war; he's the last chance we have. We need to get him to the mainland, find these allies, and hopefully get back in the underground. Word will spread, we'll get support –"
"Enough."
"If not now, soon! They're not going to –"
"Enough, Councilman. The Avatar is not ready and as long as he is safe here, this is where he'll stay."
Sokka's voice strained, like his throat was fighting back a shout. "Arnook, we'll be sitting turtleducks out here. We've talked about this for years but you can't brush me off this time."
"I'd thought your history would make you more cautious about striking unprovoked. It certainly has for me."
Her breath hitched for a moment. There was no venom in his voice, but it was a mark she'd never expected him to strike for.
"… You won't let him hear the past, won't let him know the future… You're leaving the Avatar blind. He needs to know and he needs to find his way, soon."
The Chief stepped to the side, his shadow cast by the morning sun that peeked through the window. He straightened his chair and called for the council to rise. "The Avatar is safe. We have gone years unprovoked and I will not change my position based on what I have brought to your attention today. Meeting adjourned."
Sokka turned to her as the council shuffled past them. They share a look. Sokka clutches his old boomerang and storms out the doors.
AN: If you don't remember what the first line of the chapter was, go read it again. Might help to understand a little better.
On another note, it has been about three months since I was last active on this site. Yeah…probably want to give the whole story a re-read if you've been here before. Long story short, I was kinda being like that meme where the guy sticks a rod into his bike, falls and blames it something else, that cartoon one? You know it? The rod was my ridiculous writing standards and the end blame was put on lack of time. But I have returned. And I have transcended from those unreasonable standards to a state close to 'fuck it, it's fanfiction'.
Will this mean consistent updates? I don't know, but I hope for it as much as you do.
Also, it's my birthday, so here's your present, I guess? Thanks for attending.