A/N: I swear, I am working on this. I actually wrote it up in work a few days ago, but I didn't have time to type it all up until last night, between reading rufftoon's AU comic and chatting with Alisa and libowiekitty. Hmm... let's see... what else, what else? Ah, you can expect a oneshot in "Oneshot Shorts" soon, if all goes well.
I don't think this the best I've ever written, but I'm studying writing styles in hopes that I can take the dullness out of my own. Oh, and Sokka's perspective is a lot of fun to write!
Disclaimer: I own nothing.
Happy Reading!
Chapter Two – Recruitment
Still.
She was completely still, save for the shallow rising and falling of her chest. For the moment, he and she were totally alone, for the various medics had been told to assist the other people in the waiting room until further notice. Her skin, her hand, was cold beneath his, as if the life were slowly leaving her body. No choked sobs came from him, though; no tears, and no cries. For the moment, he was too shocked to do a thing.
The door opened, but he didn't react at all. It seemed that he could not tear his eyes away from the woman he had sworn to protect until his dying day, the woman that was his little sister.
Katara of the Water Tribe, Waterbender extraordinaire and co-hero in the war; now on her deathbed.
A choked voice from the doorway accompanied that blur of orange that had appeared in his peripheral vision. "What happened, Sokka?"
"Close the door."
Aang fumbled with the doorknob behind him until he pushed the door shut, effectively closing out the excited voices of the gossipers. He leaned against the door for a moment, rubbed his eyes, looked up at his friend.
"I only just got the message," he sighed. "They said that she was attacked or something, and that – that her condition was 'critical'."
Sokka nodded, tearing his eyes from his sister's pale face only for long enough to glance at the exhausted Avatar. "Ozai's loyalists jumped her," he replied. "The medic says her back is broken here –" he gestured with two fingers to the base of her neck, and then to the small of her back, "– and here. It's a miracle she didn't die in the alley where they found her."
The Avatar made his way across the room as slowly as if he were approaching some sort of wounded animal; the sight of his wife lying there, helpless and dying, was more than his brain could take in at the moment. Voice low, he murmured, "I don't know what would be worse."
Sokka's eyebrow arched in surprise. "What?"
"I don't know what would be worse. Her dying on the spot, out there, or having her in here, alive and possibly suffering. Like this."
"Are you crazy?" exclaimed Sokka, turning and placing one warm hand on his sister's cold one. He could feel that rising in his chest, that obsessive feeling that comes before desperation and despair. "At least she has a chance of making it, this way!" He faltered then, and looked at Katara. As if by habit, he reached out and gently straightened her collar. "Right?"
Aang shook his head and approached the bedside for the first time. One of his hands found his wife's, and he grasped it. For a moment, the room was silent. Voices of the townspeople drifted in through the door. Outside, a gust of summer wind blew and wafted the branches of the trees. Katara didn't stir, her hair splayed partially over her face.
"There's nothing they can do now," said Aang. He placed his free hand on Katara's abdomen. "Her stomach is hardened and swollen."
"So she had a big meal before she left the house today. Big deal!"
Already Aang felt a tightening in his chest. He looked up at Sokka and saw in his eyes the exact emotions that he himself was feeling. "It's not food, Sokka. It's internal bleeding."
At Sokka's blank stare, he added, "Not curable. I think it may have been what killed Jet under Lake Laogai all those years ago."
Sokka's legs seemed to give out beneath him. He fell backwards into a chair and buried his face in his gloved hands. "My little sister is dying. Dying! I – I need a miracle, Aang," he quietly gasped, though to Aang it sounded more like a plea.
He looked up from his hands and saw that Aang had not yet moved his hand from Katara's abdomen. In fact, Aang seemed to be concentrating deeply, his eyes closed, searching for a trace of life in the empty shell that was Katara's body. Sokka stared for a few seconds. Part of him wanted to interrupt and ask what exactly he was doing, but he'd been around Aang long enough to know not to bother trying to him during times like these. It was pointless to interrupt Avatar stuff. So instead, Sokka leaned his elbows on the hospital bed and watched through half-narrowed eyes, waiting for Aang's arrow to light up or something.
Then, a bright flash and a deep voice nearly gave him a heart attack. Behind Aang appeared a tall, palely glowing man dressed in Fire Nation garb. Sokka gasped.
"Roku!"
Having heard a familiar name, Aang snapped out of his trancelike state and spun around in his chair.
"Roku, what are you doing here?" he asked, baffled.
The past Avatar frowned. "I am here regarding your wife, Aang. She is dying as we speak."
"…I know," Aang replied, head bowed. "What can I –?"
Suddenly, the doorknob rattled on the door to the room, but the door seemed to be locked or stuck, as if the doorframe had shrunk. One of the female medics yelled through the door, "Hey, who locked me out?"
Aang shot Sokka a look, but Sokka had already leaped to his feet and darted towards the door to take care of the matter.
"Hold on, I'm getting it!" he yelled to the medic.
"This is a private conversation," said Roku. "Let nobody enter."
Aang nodded once, turned to face the door, and stomped his foot. A tremor ran through the ground until a slab of rock popped out of the wall and slid across the door, holding it firmly shut.
Sokka reached the door, pressed his hands against it, and yelled, "I'm sorry, the door is stuck!"
The doorknob rattled again and a fist pounded weakly on the door. "Are you sure? Where's Avatar Aang?"
"He's, uh –" He cast a look over his shoulder at Aang, who had begun speaking quietly to Roku. He tugged at his collar; a thin, nervous sweat had broken out over his chest. "He's busy right now. Can I take a message?"
"What?!"
Meanwhile, Aang turned back to his past reincarnation and waited for him to say something important. The look on Roku's face was grave – a bad omen; his heart plummeted further. Of course, the man never looked particularly happy (How could he? Aang asked himself, being dead and all…), but there was something in his eyes that did not bode well for the Airbender.
"As you know, you are the last of your kind." He spoke kindly, as if delivering bad news to an old friend. "Your wife is dying. As the last Airbender, it is your responsibility, your duty, to repopulate, lest the race die out completely."
Aang shifted on his uncomfortable hospital chair. This was an uncomfortable conversation to have, even with oneself. He hoped that Sokka was too busy with the medics on the other side of the room to be paying attention.
"I take it that you have little intention to marry again, given the level of dedication you showed your wife in your four married years?"
Aang raised an eyebrow, half at Roku's question and half at Sokka's attempts at distracting the medics behind him. ("Hold on, I'll get a notepad and I'll be right back!" Sokka assured the medics.) "That… is correct. No intention at all, actually."
Roku nodded. "Very well, then. As you know, the process of dying is a complicated one." When Aang nodded, he continued. "The spirit of the dying soul must traverse, often escorted, the Spirit World until it reaches the End and is 'physically deceased'. Depending on the injury and the level of consciousness, the journey may take mere moments, or entire days. The journey for your wife has already begun, but her injuries keep her from dying quickly. If you, the Avatar, can find her soul and bring it back to the physical world before she reaches the End, you may bring her back. Her body will heal and she will live once more."
"This all sounds way too easy," grunted Sokka from where he stood with his back to the door, through which a handful of medics were trying to enter. Aang started in surprise and spun around. "Things don't usually go that easily for us. Is there some sort of trick? Some sort of monstrous giant that'll eat us when we try to get to Katara?"
"No," he replied, unfazed by Sokka's harsh tone, "but you will have to face the Guardian of the Pass. He will ask you questions – questions about the person you wish to meet, or related things – and you will have to answer each question correctly in order to pass."
"Great! Just great. I knew something like that would be there. It's always something." Sokka buried his face in his hands.
Aang, however, turned to his friend and said, voice filled with hope, "I don't know, Sokka, I don't think it should be that hard. If there's a question about Katara, between the two of us I'd say we could figure out the answer. I mean, I am her husband. Who knows her better than I do?"
"Yet, you still might wish to bring a third into your party."
Turning back to Roku, he asked, "Why?"
"You would be surprised at what sheer numbers can accomplish. However, it would be unwise to take more than three, including yourself, into the Spirit World. But you must hurry. The clock is ticking. I would estimate that you have no more than tw days to accomplish this task."
Aang nodded, his jaw set.
"Good luck, Aang."
In a swirl of color, Roku disappeared and the white room was silent once more, except for the sounds of the door rattling and the medics yelling. The room seemed to breathe. Aang turned to Sokka. They shared a brief look, but they seemed to be thinking along the same lines because Sokka nodded promptly.
"I'll handle the medics," Aang began.
"– And I'll get a third person," finished Sokka. "Any preferences?"
"Just somebody in good health, and preferably someone who didn't come here to harass me about Katara."
On that note, Sokka nodded and unlocked the door. Aang slid his foot over to the side, moving the slab of rock back into the wall, and the door swung open. Several medics fell into the room in a flustered, shouting heap. The corners of Aang's mouth twitched upwards in a smile.
"Sorry about that; the door was jammed," He said. Out of the corner or his eye he saw Sokka slip from the room as the medics scrambled to their feet.
-
Due to his hurriedness, beforehand he hadn't noticed just how packed the waiting room really was. Children sat with mothers and fathers, while other people sat alone. How many of them are here for real help instead of information on the Avatar's wife? He wondered. He supposed that it didn't matter all that much, but his natural curiosity had always provoked such questions. Right now, though, most of him didn't really care who was here for what. He and Aang needed a third member for their journey, and fast. And somewhere in this room, he deduced, was a healthy person who hadn't come here because of Katara.
After shoving several gawking gossipers to the side and physically removing a small child from his chair (the child's mother shot Sokka a glare before scooping up her child and moving away), Sokka got up on the chair and looked around the room. All sorts of people were there – laughing people, crying people, sick people – it was a little overwhelming.
"Excuse me!" he called. The noise level dropped, but too few were paying attention. He called louder. "Hey! Everybody! Listen up now!"
An instant reaction followed. The room plunged into complete silence, leaving Sokka standing there rather awkwardly.
"Okay…" he trailed off, not sure where to begin. "I need a volunteer from the audience – I mean, the room. Somebody healthy and willing to do a potentially life-threatening job." A few hands rose into the air. Sokka finished his sentence. "You also have to do it for free."
The few hands that had risen dropped promptly back down. Sokka sighed and scratched his beard, put out by the lack of help he was getting.
Well, he mused darkly to himself, it looks like me and Aang are going alone –
"I'll do it."
Surprised by the sudden and delayed response, he looked up to see a woman dressed completely in black, eyes hidden behind a cloak, standing in the back of the room.
Sokka hesitated. "Uh… okay. Come with me."
Less than gracefully, he hopped down from the chair and waited for the cloaked woman to make her way through the sea of (now chatting once again) people. He contemplated telling the gossipers that there was nothing to see, but dismissed the thought for the reason that they probably wouldn't listen to him anyway.
At long last, the woman made it to the front room, her head bent low. It was then that Sokka's head seemed to spin a little, as if encountering déjà vu. His heart leaped, his breath caught in his throat; he knew that posture, those slightly hunched shoulders, even the nose that was only partially visible beneath her hood.
It was only after he spoke that he realized he had spoken louder than he'd meant to. "Toph?! Is that really y– agh!"
Quick as lightning, the Blind Bandit reached blindly up and grabbed him by the first thing her hand grasped, which happened to be his collar. A gasp escaped Sokka as she pulled him down to eye-level.
"Does the cloak mean nothing to you?" she hissed, incensed. "I don't need the whole hospital to know I'm here. You know how mentioning our names make people crazy!"
Sokka tried to answer, but the grip on his shirt kept him from breathing properly. Aware that his face had begun to turn purple, he reached up and gently tried to ease Toph's iron grip. Her hands were rough, he noticed, but not in a bad way. If he hadn't been suffocating, he may have smiled.
"…Ch-choking!" he managed to gasp.
Toph's eyebrows shot up (though he couldn't see them beneath the cloak). She released his collar and let her hand fall back to her side. Sokka gasped and grabbed his throat where the fabric of his shirt had rubbed his skin.
"Come on, let's go," she said. "I doubt we have much time to do… whatever it is we're doing."
Sokka nodded, forgetting that she could not see it, and followed her as she took off down the hallway in the direction of Katara's room, where Aang was probably still dealing with the medics. A flicker of a smile crossed his face for the first time since he'd heard about his sister. For some reason, though he could not put a finger on why, the very presence of the greatest Earthbender in the world comforted the worried warrior like nothing else had.
-
A/N: If there's anything that I can do to write better, anything you think I need to touch up on, let me know!