Title: Rock Me to Sleep
Theme: The sound of waves
Word Count: 1,301
He always liked to fall asleep to the sound of the waves.
It had not always been that way. When he was young, very young, almost to the point beyond memory, he hadn't been able to hear the waves. Back then it had been the soft light of the candles and the filtered voices of his parents that had been his bedtime lullaby.
It wasn't until he was four and Katara three that he started to hear them. The voices would fade, the candle would go out, and then the waves would begin. It was a gentle paddle sound of water rushing onto the land before moving slowly back out. It reminded him of gentle whispers and gentler arms, as if he were being cradled in the hold of something holy and beautiful. It reminded him of his mother.
He was always able to sleep when he heard the waves.
-
Then there came a time when they disappeared. In the aftermath, as they huddled inside their new house beside the ashes of the old where their mother had breathed her last, they ceased to be and a cold chill held him in the palms of its hands. There were no more soft hushed voices from the other room. Occasionally there is Grangran there to check on them but she is old and her voice is like crackling paper that only keep him alert. She will go to sleep early and then there is just one lonely candle amplifying the beating drumroll of his heart in the cocoon of silence until his father, weary and so much more responsible now, blows it out.
Sokka had never known silence to be so deafening. It roars in his ears like some kind of hungry beast, eager to take what was left of their once whole family and scatter them across the barren snows that had once seemed so glorious in their brightness.
He recalls once when Grangran had told him the brightest things in life were also the things that would blind if you look too hard.
Sokka had never understood what she had meant until now.
Sleep is a faraway dream he could never reach on his own.
-
"You don't look so well."
Sokka rubs at the dark rims under his eyes. He thinks that was the understatement of the century but he is too tired to make any wisecracking jokes.
"Have you not been sleeping well?" Grangran questions. "Have you been having bad dreams?"
He wishes it were bad dreams. If it were bad dreams than that would mean he was asleep in some sort of way. He lays his head on the table. "It's the waves."
"The waves?"
Across the table Katara raises her head from the necklace she has been rubbing over and over again in her hand.
"I can't hear them."
"Can't hear them?" Grangran reaches out a gnarled hand and places it on his forehead. "Of course you can't hear them, darling," she says soothingly. "We're way too far from the shore to hear any sort of waves. You must be coming down with something."
Sokka thinks of his mother. He thinks of her grave under the shining white snow that could blind you if you looked at it for too long.
"You're right," he agrees after a moment. "I can't hear them. Not anymore."
-
And there is a night when he opens his gritty eyes and finds another pair peering at his own. They are shining so brightly he almost looks away before he realizes these cannot blind him.
"Do you really miss the waves?"
Katara's hand snakes under the covers, clasping his in her own. Her question seems so eager, so desperate it is almost enough to rouse him from his exhaustion.
"More than anything," he answers automatically.
She looks away, blinking, and across her face he can dimly see the emotions war with each other. Then suddenly she smiles, as if she has reached a decision, and she pats his hand, gives him a kiss on the cheek, and gently closes his eyes with her fingertips.
"Thank you," she says and before he can ask her why, she disappears without another word.
-
Later that night, the sound of the waves returns.
-
"You look better."
"I feel better," Sokka agrees and he takes a deep breath, puffing out his little chest vigorously.
"You on the other hand," Grangran turns her attention to Katara, who is rubbing at a sleep deprived eyeball, "look horrible. You must have caught what Sokka had. You're not hearing waves now too are you?"
"No," says Katara, all innocence. "Only if…"
She stops herself and pretends to yawn. Her eyes glitter like the snow behind her curved lashes.
Sokka watches her, eyes narrowed suspiciously, and only tears his gaze away when she turns to look at him.
-
And that night there is the sound of waves that quiets the roaring silence and instead of sleeping Sokka pushes the blankets off himself and heads for the door. His suspicions have been raised and when Sokka is suspicious nothing, not even lack of sleep, could stop him from solving the mystery.
Outside the village he wanders and down to the shore. He stops on a rise of snow overlooking the area.
Below him, her back facing him, is little Katara. Just outside the water in her little snow shoes, moving her arms in strange movements. She is not graceful or elegant. She is clumsy, inexperienced, a baby bird just starting to find its wings. Her mother's necklace gleams from around her throat.
The water obeys regardless of her lack of expertise. At her command it draws towards her and then she will release it, allowing it to slosh back into the sea.
Sokka watches her. Katara, the last waterbender, making waves.
From that day forward, whenever Sokka thought of his mother, he saw only Katara's face.
-
She hadn't been lying, Sokka thinks later, much later when he is older and wiser. She really can't hear the waves. Only if she makes them.
-
No longer is she Katara the bird learning to fly. Now she is Katara the waterbending master. She fights so beautifully it is like looking at snow and Sokka had to look away lest he be blinded by something entirely different than physical harm to his eyes.
She sits next to him as he polishes his sword and leans over to kiss him on the cheek. "Thank you."
He blinks at her. "For what?"
"For reminding me."
"Reminding you of what?"
She hugs his arm, completely disrupting his polishing, and there is a pleasant smile on her graceful face. "Mother always said my waterbending was a gift to others, not to myself. I didn't really understand what she meant until…"
She trails off, mischievous, before kissing him on the cheek again and sauntering off to find Aang. Sokka holds a hand to his face and watches her leave. He doesn't need to hear her answer because he knows why she had thanked him now and all those years ago.
He had reminded her that her waterbending was a precious gift that could help others. Maybe even the world.
It had helped him after all. Why shouldn't it be able to help the world?
-
And there are nights when the day has been too long and he reaches the end of his tether and can't take anymore of the world or Avatars, or banished Princes or world-dominating kings and just wants it all to end and be done with. Those nights when his hope shrivels like an old burned down house lost in a world of snow and the silence roars in his ear.
Those are the nights he hears the waves the loudest.