"Then you didn't love her the way I did!"
Only halfway back to the camp from her semi-successful revenge mission does Katara realize the what she said – and, more importantly, to whom. Back then, she was out for blood, so when these damning words were said, she watched with vengeful glee as her brother recoiled and stepped out of her way.
That's gone now. Now, Katara's memory is working against her in tandem with guilty conscience. She remembers, in perfect detail, how he took a step back; how his eyes shone with pain at the accusation; how even his voice seemed to crack with hurt, and she wants to fall straight through Appa and down into the earth from shame. Like a hammer, she's brought her maelstrom of raging emotions down onto her relationship with Sokka, cracking it.
If she doesn't stop these cracks from spreading, the girl imagines, doesn't fix this right now, then there's very real possibility that Katara loses the one thing that's been a constant in her life, the one, idiotically endearing, annoyingly whiny, frighteningly stoic, but above all else loving constant that helped her hold on through the worst years in her life, and then…
Then losing Mom won't even come close.
Sensing her inner turmoil but completely misreading the reason, Zuko offers a place where she can gather her thoughts and calm down while he flies the rest of their team.
Katara refuses and yip-yips at Appa to fly faster.
Katara almost screams in relief when their camp's back in sight. Aang greets them first (and Katara feels a pang in her heart when Sokka's nowhere to be seen), and asks about their journey.
"I didn't kill him," Katara admits. Normally, she'd be happy about such admission, but right now, with more urgent matters on her mind, it brings no such relief. It does to Aang, though, who's more than happy to feel self-righteous about Katara's choice.
"Where's Sokka?" she interrupts the monk; he just shrugs, remarking that he hadn't seen the boy after she and Zuko had left. Leaving former Fire Prince to be grilled by the Avatar about the details of their "mission", Katara ascends into the camp. Sokka's still nowhere to be seen.
"Katara," a voice calls to her. It belongs to Suki, stirring a large pot over their campfire.
"Suki," the waterbender greets back, coming close, "have you seen-"
"Sokka's in his tent," Suki replies coolly. Katara frowns lightly, but nods as thanks and sets off.
"I heard what you said to him."
Katara freezes on the spot, and she's suddenly very grateful Toph's not with them, cause the Earthbender would raise a heart attack alarm, with how fast her heart has started beating.
"I understand that it might not be my place to say, you knowing each other for far longer and all," Suki continues from her place at the campfire, and her voice is not that of Suki-the-girl-next-door-her-brother-has-a-huge-crush-on but of Suki-the-Kyoshi-warrior, "but you really owe him an apology. A big one, in fact."
"I know," Katara whispers, just loud enough for the other girl to hear, then dares to ask, "Is…how is he?"
Suki humphs. "You didn't even give him a chance to prepare, but now you want to be prepared yourself?"
Katara hangs her head in shame and starts walking away. Finally, the waterbender reaches her brother's tent. Its' flappy doors seem like the impenetrable walls of Ba-Sing-Se, and, try as she might, Katara can't hear a single thing coming from the inside. As she passes those impenetrable, flappy walls, Katara expects a hundred different horrible things going on with her brother, all of them chipping away at her heart.
Katara does not expect Sokka to be simply sharpening his boomerang with the most casually bored expression she's seen him don in the last month. That expression changes the moment Sokka processes the new arrival.
"Katara! You're back!" eyes wide as saucers, Sokka flings himself at the girl, wrapping her in a bone-crunching hug. On autopilot, Katara hugs back, but her mind's reeling.
Why isn't he mad at me?
As quickly as it began, the hug's over, and Sokka steps back to look her over with a loving smile. Katara can't find it in herself to smile back, though she tries. Sokka notices this, and his smile is replaced with a concerned frown. "What's wrong?"
Feeling incredibly small, Katara pushes out the few words she's hurried home for. "I'm sorry, Sokka. I'm so, so sorry."
When Sokka replies with "What?", Katara twists her head to meet his eyes – as blue as hers, and equally filled with confusion.
"For…for what I said about you. And our mom." Did he seriously not remember. Or was he pretending?
Sokka's face is blank for a few moments, before he remembers the argument. "Oh! Oh…" he deflates.
"I-" Katara tries to find the right words, "I wasn't thinking straight. I was angry, and confused, and-and hurt and you were in my way and I-"
"Hey, hey, it's fine," Sokka puts a hand on her shoulder and tries to smile too, though it's visibly shaky. "I forgive you."
"You…forgive me?" Katara narrows her eyes as worry and suspicion worm their way into her heart. "Just like that?"
"Um, yeah?" Sokka looks confused again, but this time – this time Katara sees he's faking it, quite badly too. "You said a dumb thing to me. Now you apologized. So I accept it. Like this has never happened before between us? Please. Big deal."
"No," Katara stops him, "no, you're lying. You didn't forgive me. Sokka, what-"
In a flash, Sokka's expression changes from faked confusion to resigned annoyance. "Katara, can we- can we not do this now?"
He tries to retreat, but Katara doesn't let him. "Sokka, please! I know I messed up, okay! I know I hurt you. Please, I just want to make it better," she asks with a note of desperation, "I don't want us to drift away from each other because of this!"
When Katara sees how Sokka's expression hardens, she feels her heart stop. Did I screw up?
She tries again. "Sokka, talk to me. Please." She celebrates internally when her brother, instead of pushing her away, potentially forever, just takes a deep breath.
"Okay," he says simply. "Okay. I guess…I guess we can talk. But I'd rather do it without anyone listening in. Feel like it's gonna be one of those talks. I hate those."
Without another word, Sokka gets up, sticks his head through the tent doors and looks around, then motions for Katara to follow.
Feeling perhaps more anxious than she had in her entire life, she follows.
They walk south, to the side cliffs. Not a word is muttered. Katara doesn't dare to speak, fearing that even just a word will shatter this fragile agreement she managed to get her brother to agree to.
The air near the cliffs is thick with moisture and smell of the sea; normally, Katara would use this opportunity to practice controlling this moisture and shaping it to her whims; now, she couldn't care less. They walk until Sokka picks out a rock near the edge of the cliff large enough for both of them and sits on it, then pats empty space next to him. Wordlessly, Katara joins. Sokka's face is deep in thought, and she allows him as much time as he needs to open up.
"I spent a few hours here after you left with Zuko, mulling it all over," he finally finds his voice. "I have to admit, it was kinda low blow, what you said."
Katara winces.
"Except…the more I thought about it all…you want me to forgive you for saying that, right?"
Katara almost imperceptibly nods.
"Well, I can't."
Three words. Three words are enough for young waterbender to feel faint. She gasps as tears threaten to fall from her eyes, almost slipping off the rock, but her brother manages to pull her back in time.
"Woah, woah!" Sokka worriedly shakes Katara until she's better. "Sis, sis, look at me." He waits until Katara does. "I- I didn't mean it like that! Look, I can't forgive you for saying that, because- because there's nothing to forgive!"
"What?" Katara rasps, holding onto Sokka like a lifeline.
"There's nothing to forgive," Sokka repeats, "because what you said is right – I didn't love mom like you did."
Katara isn't sure what is actually worse – the way she felt just a few seconds ago when Sokka refused to forgive her and she imagined all the bridges, all the ties that have been binding them since birth, being ruined and burnt, or the way she feels now, hearing her own cruel words getting confirmed by their very victim.
"Sokka, I didn't mean it like that."
"But it's true!" Sokka's voice is suspiciously thick for a second, before he regains control. "Look, I loved Mom too, but there's just so many big and little things- I- ugh," unable to continue, he slumps.
"Is it because you can't remember her face?" Katara says, recalling the conversation between her brother and Toph at the hot springs.
Sokka spins to her in shock. "What?! I- how did you-?!" As quickly as it came, shock's gone and the boy narrows his eyes. "I don't believe it, how could she-"
"Toph didn't say anything to anyone, Sokka," Katara quickly defuses the situation, "I just happened to be bathing under the cliff you and Toph were on!"
"Well, that's so much better!" Sokka whines. "Because now I know you heard everything! The one time I have to rely on Toph to pick a place where we won't be disturbed – and you're there!"
Katara, despite the strained situation, rolls her eyes. "I was in the water, Sokka. You know she can't see into the water."
The boy doesn't say a word and just slumps further with a dejected look on his face. Katara barely suppresses a giggle; it feels so good to see, that, in spite of everything, Sokka can still be Sokka.
The silence stretches on for too long, before Katara finds courage to breach the subject. "What did you mean back then? When you talked about our mom?"
All the humorous energy evaporates as Sokka heaves a sigh that makes him sound so much older than he is.
"I guess it's because I spent a lot more time with Dad. I mean, I'm sure you remember those days where Dad would take me out and he'd teach me to do…manly things, and you'd stay with Moms and learn to do all those womanly things. That's…that's just how our tribe was, I guess. You ended up seeing her, talking to her, a whole lot more than I did. It just," Sokka swallows, "it felt like, no matter how much I spent time with her, I never knew Mom as well as you did."
"Just like I can't say I know Dad as well as you do," Katara continues the thought.
Sokka stares off into the sunset. "Yeah. I don't know if- if it's good to say or no, but for me, as I grew up...As I grew up, and started to go out with Dad, I started associating Mom less with personal safety and warmth that she brought us, and more with safety and warmth of our home that she kept. Smell of clean clothes. Smell of delicious food. A warm smile greeting you after a long day outside. All those things, you know?"
Katara nods, suddenly beginning to understand what her brother's trying to say.
"Then the Fire Nation raid happened. And you-" Sokka chokes up and turns to Katara; the raw emotion in her brother's eyes has her torn between stumbling back in shock and giving him a bone-crushing hug, "you picked yourself up and took her place. You cooked for us all. Washed and sewed up our clothes. You- you did all those things and, for me, it felt less and less like Mom was gone. And then sometimes you'd have your hair down without those stupid little hair loopies and I swear I remember thinking you looked just like her…And you never stopped. Not once did you stop, not once did you give up."
Sokka sniffs and closes his eyes. "So…yeah. I miss Moms, but not as much as you do, because for me…for me she lives on through you now."
It is a conclusion Katara arrives to herself as well; yet the raw admission makes her tear up and robs her of speech. "Is that why you're still so protective of me? Because if something happens to me-"
"Well, I would like to say it's because it's my duty as a big brother and because Dad ordered me to and - oh, who am I kidding? You're right," the boy slumps, "If I lost you, I'd lose Mom too, the way you did. And then…."
Sokka stops, the train of thought too terrifying for him. Katara uses the moment to pounce, giving him a strong, heartfelt hug. "Oh, Sokka…" her voice cracks as tears, long contained, are finally free.
"Ah- hey! Come on! Don't "Oh, Sokka" me!" her brother weakly tries to resist the hug before ceasing his struggles. Though she can't see his face, her waterbending gift allows Katara to feel water sliding down Sokka's cheeks. "Man. Projecting my dead mother onto my sister. I am messed up."
"Don't say that," Katara swats his shoulder to stop any self-deprecation at its' root.
"Okay, okay, Mom," Sokka breathes out and slowly returns the hug. Katara giggles.
They stay like that, staring into the sunset, together, for so long and not long enough.
"Did you, um," Sokka speaks up when they eventually break up the hug, "did you find him? That soldier?"
The mere memory of the encounter is enough to spoil Katara's mood. "Yes."
"And…?"
"I didn't kill him."
Sokka looks relieved. "That's good. Really good. I guess Aang got through to you?"
"No he didn't," the admission surprises her brother. "That…bastard," the word on her tongue's as bitter as the memory, "was pathetic. Can you imagine he tried to beg me to kill his mother instead of him?"
Sokka scrunches up his face. "Really? We couldn't even get a proper man as our Mom's killer? Ugh."
"Yes, Sokka, the universe hates us, I know."
"Great," her brother throws his hands up in the air, " 'cause it was only supposed to hate me!"
Katara puts a hand on his shoulder and Sokka calms down with a headshake.
"Would you have done anything differently?" Katara dares to ask. "If you had gone there with me I mean", she elaborates when Sokka looks over at her.
"Hmm…" Sokka grabs his chin and then grins, "I would…burn his house!"
Katara blinks. "House?"
"Yeah!" Sokka adopts his listen-to-this-epic-plan-of-mine voice. "Think logically. This soldier you found – he probably got paid nicely for his service of raiding us, right? Again, logically speaking, he probably bought himself a new house after retiring, or renovated his old one, because stinking Firebenders can't firebend a house out of earth or ice, right? So, by burning his house down, I take from him what he earned by taking from us! It's both revenge-without-murder and justice! It's a win-win!"
Katara has to admit, the logic is quite solid; but then again, that's always been the way with them, hasn't it? He always was the logical one, and she was the emotional one; well, up until you involved anything household-related – then all that logic went out of the window and her dear brother would flail around helplessly like a typical man.
"Anyway," Sokka's voice breaks her out of her musings, "thanks for not killing him, no matter how hard it must've been. And…thanks for everything, actually," his voice is thick, "I figured I don't say that enough."
Katara finds it similarly hard to speak. "Thank you too, Sokka. For everything."
Sokka looks like he wants to say something else, but his stomach picks the perfect opportunity to make a really loud, obnoxious noise Katara's acutely familiar with. "Aaaand that's my clue to turn back into Sokka-the-hungry-meat-and-sarcasm-guy."
Katara shakes her head incredulously.
"Sokka…Do you mean it?" she asks tentatively later, when they're walking back, "When you say I remind you so much of Mom?"
Sokka looks at her as if she'd just one-upped him on saying something stupid. "Excuse me? Yes! You are THE Mom! Supermom! Not just for me, because you're also my little sister, but for Aang? Toph? They may as well have had no moms to begin with!"
Katara smiles, but has to roll her eyes at the delivery. "A girl can never have too many compliments, thanks."
Sokka crosses his arms and looks away. "Yeah, well, guess what? Moms can also get on your nerves pretty bad. Mine especially, because you annoy me both as mom and as a sister."
Katara blows a raspberry at him. Sokka blows it back.
Their united laugh is melodic in its innocence and beauty.
So I guess I'm an Avatard now. Really, Southern Raiders did our best boy Sokka dirty, so I'm taking justice into my own hands.