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Sokka’s feet are cold, and his nose is running, but he tries to not let it on, because he’s one of the big boys now, and you don’t see the big boys wiping their noses on their sleeves constantly. So, he forces his hands to hold still in their gloves, and he watches two older boys holding onto their spears with barely concealed pride while his own heart beats a mile a minute in his chest, threatening to break free and leave him all on his own.
His breath condensates in front of his face, and the toes of his right foot twitch every time he’s about to tap onto the ice impatiently while he waits anxiously for his father to get to him and tell him exactly what kind of person he’s going to be. (He’s one of the big boys now, he can’t hop from one foot to the other, but he’s very close to doing it. There’s heat pooling in his gut, sloshing nervously from left to right to left and impending to spill out of him at any given moment if he doesn’t find something else to focus on. He feels like jumping up and down or running half a mile and back, but he’s frozen to the ground, unable to move at all. His feet are made of ice, his joints are locked, and he doesn’t currently know if he’s going to remember how to move them ever again.)
The boy to his left is next, and he takes a scimitar out of Sokka’s father’s hands without any hesitation. A smile spreads over his face, and he holds the handle of the weapon close to his chest for a moment until Sokka’s father steps back.
And suddenly, it’s Sokka underneath his father’s watchful eye. (It doesn’t feel like being doused in icy water or like sunshine breaking through the clouds and warming his cold skin. His father’s gaze is weighing him down, pressing down onto his shoulders and him into the snow, but it doesn’t evoke particularly good or bad emotions, just stirs his spirit into nervousness rooted in the neither well- nor mean-intentioned valuation evident in his father’s eyes.)
He takes a look at the weapons his father presents him, seizes the possible futures awaiting him and measures the opportunities lying within the bones and teeth and tusks. And despite the fact that he knows this won’t be the only weapon he’s ever going to hunt and fight with, because he’s going to learn how to use all of the other weapons, too, and sooner or later he’s going to outgrow whatever he’s going to choose now, and it’s entirely possible that he’s going to hold onto his weapon of choice in two or three years to come and wonder how and when his hands have grown so very much. The handles look almost delicate next to his father’s hands.)
He knows his choice isn’t final, he knows he’ll get his very own weapon as soon as he’s old enough, but he also knows, it’s going to take quite some time until then, and until this is his weapon; an extension of his body that he’s going to learn how to use until he’s going to master it eventually. (He wonders how long it will take for him to consider his weapon to be part of himself, feeling naked without it at his side, unbalanced and almost ready to tip. He wonders how long it will take for him to be like his father, who sometimes seems to know instinctively where his club is even though Sokka took it to use it for one thing or another, forgetting to put it back in the same place.)
Sokka’s hand hovers over a spear, then right above a scimitar, it almost touches a machete laced with whale teeth, but it settles on a boomerang that just about dwarves his hand. One arm is longer than his hand from middle fingertip to the crease right underneath his palm, and an eerie sort of awe settles into Sokka’s bones.
“Are you sure?” his father asks, and even though Sokka can’t remember his father asking any of the other boys about their certainty, he’s too occupied with the heavy piece of weaponry in his hand to fully grasp the implications, so he just nods wordlessly, eyes never moving from the way the light reflects on the sheen bone surface.
For a moment, his father almost reaches out to pat him on the shoulder, but he doesn’t do it, and Sokka doesn’t miss it because he can’t avert his eyes from his new, very own boomerang, and he forgets of his cold feet and his running nose, because he’s one of the big boys now, and some day he’s going to be a great warrior like his father; he’s going to keep the village safe and protect them from the Fire Nation just like his father; he’s going to be the best boomerang fighter the Southern Water Tribe has ever seen – because that’s how you keep everyone alive.
Sokka’s hand always seems to slide off the handle, no matter how hard he tries. His gloves fit perfectly, and logically he knows that there’s no reason for him to lose his boomerang as often as he does.
The first few times, he held the boomerang pinched between his thumb and the knuckles of his second finger, but he managed to drop it while he was still trying to adjust his grip, and he threw it into the wrong direction while flicking his wrist back, and he lost the angle while letting go of the boomerang, sending it either skittering across the ice or burying itself into the ground. Breathing in deeply, he retrieved the boomerang time and time again, changing his grip from pinching to cradling, still feeling it slip out from in-between his fingers when he flicked his wrist back or chose the wrong angle to throw.
He stares at the weapon, blade stuck in the ice right in front of his feet, and he tries so very hard not to cry, succeeding only barely with the tip of his nose wet and cold and his sight blurry. His stomach fills with dread, bubbling up into his throat the longer he stays unmoved and immovable, because he can’t, for the life of him, figure out what it is that he’s doing wrong while all the other boys seem to fare so very well with their weapons of choice. Maybe he would advance and become successful if he had chosen a spear or scimitar, maybe he shouldn’t have gone with a split-second decision but thought this through more thoroughly, just like he meant to do in the first place. Maybe he chose wrongly, and now he’s the one who has to face the consequences.
He drops down onto his knees and wonders if this could be a sign, a big sign that tells him to stop wasting every body’s time and resources and just resign, a big fat sign that he should take seriously lest he hurt himself or someone else; if he should tell his father that he wants to give up, that he’s just not born to do this, and that he’s going to fall short inevitably. It would be the easy thing to do, uncomfortable, sure, and maybe even humiliating, but nonetheless easy. It wouldn’t be worse than all the times he failed combined.
Sokka doesn’t like easy, though, he realises when he reaches with both hands for his boomerang. He doesn’t want easy; he wants to be someone his father can be proud of, someone who tries and fails and tries and fails until he finally succeeds; he wants to be a part of their family, their village, their community that they can rely on, that doesn’t give up on them because of his own fickle heart and hurt feelings, that gives everything within his body and mind to give his best for them. So, he pulls with all his might, all his strength, all his spite, until the blade slips free from its icy prison.
Surrendering is not an option, giving up is not a possibility. Sokka just needs to work harder, give more, exceed his best, and everything’s going to turn out alright in the end. (If he says it often enough, it might as well come true, won’t it?)
“You need to focus, Sokka,” his father says when Sokka, once again, comes back from retrieving his boomerang because he hit an ice block instead of throwing it closely above the surface. By now, he should have figured it out. He should know the steepness of his throwing angle and whether he should throw to the right or to the left of an oncoming wind. It shouldn’t be as difficult as it is for him, shouldn’t make him anxious and his hands sweaty inside his gloves.
Sokka nods, an expression of utmost concentration distorting his face into a mask of focused earnestness. (He can’t let it show just how much it’s stressing him out to have his father watch every failed attempt and trot through the snow underneath his watchful eye to retrieve his boomerang time and time again, head hanging low and breath catching on his teeth.)
He can do this. This is not only a mantra he murmurs in an attempt to soothe his nerves and encourage himself. It’s a statement grounded on the fact that he did it three days ago and yesterday too. (He remembers watching powdery snow dusted off the ice block by his boomerang almost scraping across its surface and coming back in a beautiful curve. One time he even caught the boomerang with both hands, pride swelling in his chest and laughter bursting out of him, grin digging into his cheeks almost violently and hurtful.)
Breathing in deeply, he closes his eyes and pictures the ice block that sits a couple metres away and the way the boomerang is supposed to fly above it, barely scratching the surface. He pictures the snow kicking up and obscuring the curvature of the boomerang’s flight. He pictures the way his hands wrap around the bone when it comes back to him. The goal isn’t to attack; he’s not supposed to be part of the offence. Precision is what he needs to learn, calculating the curve of his boomerang to avoid obstacles and hit his target in the most practical way. He doesn’t attack, he sneaks up, he’s here to sabotage.
He opens his eyes and takes a last deep, steadying breath, then he throws his boomerang, watching it fly past the ice block and scrape the surface of the ice block on its way back, kicking up snow the same way he imagined it would do. (It’s not exactly what he intended to do, he wanted to let the boomerang pass by the ice block on its way away from him, not on its way back, but for the moment it has to be enough, it has to suffice.)
He breathes out and catches the boomerang with shaky hands. Then he lifts his gaze and looks at his father, seeking approval, and he reaps the gentlest smile that makes pride bloom in his chest and a face-splitting grin on his face. He’s going to do fine; he’s going to do alright with his father at his side.
His father is in full gear, face painted and weapon in hand. Sokka doesn’t understand. This wasn’t supposed to happen, this wasn’t the plan. His father wasn’t supposed to leave. (Especially, when Sokka is still figuring out how to do what feels like the most basic of things. Especially, when Sokka is the one who needs to stay back. Especially, when he’s the only one to stay back at all.)
“You need to take care of the village,” his father says urgently, kneeling down to be on par with Sokka. His brows are furrowed, the corners of his mouth point downwards like he’s as unhappy as Sokka but must do what’s right for the greater good. His right hand comes up to grab Sokka’s shoulder, and Sokka’s glad that there’s something other than his wobbly knees to keep him upright when the world seems to spin dizzyingly around him, yet somehow pinned into place like he’s the one who’s actually rotating in tight pirouettes. Blood rushes through his ears, and he almost misses what his father says next, “They need you.”
Sokka swallows down the anxiety bubbling in his chest at the thought of the community depending on him and him alone. When he speaks, however, his voice is shaking nonetheless, “I want to come with you.” (Want, need, where’s the difference? Isn’t desire always hollowed by despair? Sokka doesn’t know, he doesn’t know at all.)
A sigh comes over his father’s lips, and his gloved fingers dig into Sokka’s shoulder insistently. Their breaths condensate in front of their faces, and for a moment Sokka thinks that his father is going to cave in, going to let him be part of their journey, going to take him with him. But then he shakes his head compassionately, and he says, “Someone needs to stay. You have to be strong.” (It’s pipedreams like these that make Sokka unsuited for being left alone. How is he going to protect anyone – Katara or Gran Gran – when he can’t even fathom the thought of his father leaving?)
Biting his lip to keep a sob inside, Sokka nods feverishly, opening his eyes as wide as possible to hold the tears at bay, and he says, “Okay. I—I will,” because his father always knows what’s best, and if he thinks that Sokka is up for the task, then he is. (No matter what his mind and heart tell him.)
His father nods, squeezing Sokka’s shoulders once, before he stands up again, reaching for his club and carrying the few things he’s taking with him out of their tent.
Still unsteady on his wobbly knees and shaky legs, Sokka follows his father out of their tent and searches the area for his sister’s hair loopies, only to find her right next to Gran Gran, holding onto her hand with wide eyes as if she didn’t know whether to trust her eyes or question them. Stretching the fingers of his right hand and clenching them into a fist afterwards, he walks over to Gran Gran and Katara and grasps Katara’s hand when she reaches out for his. (It must be terrible for Katara, too, that their father is leaving, and here’s Sokka feeling only sorry for himself. It won’t happen again, he decides, Gran Gran, Katara and their village must be his highest priority at any given time. He won’t pity himself at their expense.)
The lights of the night sky stretch far above Sokka in every direction, and while he looks out of the corner of his eyes for the potential danger of green lights dancing, he grabs his boomerang tight between his right thumb and second finger and throws it.
Without his father present, Sokka feels the heavy weight of responsibility for the village on his shoulders, pushing his feet into the snow and making him slip on ice. The boomerang feels too big and too heavy for his hands. Maybe he shouldn’t have taken his father’s boomerang, maybe he should have held onto the one his father had given to him willingly, but just like the kuspuk his father used to wear and left behind, Sokka felt drawn to it and couldn’t hold himself back from holding onto the little things his father didn’t take with him.
He pinches the tip of the leading arm between his thumb and index finger, determined but maybe a tad too hard, and zeroes in on a tent just a few hundred metres away, wrist shaking from the weight of the boomerang, and sweat collecting above his upper lip because he needs to do it right, he needs to be prepared and well-trained, he can’t fuck up anymore.
He flicks his wrist back and concentrates so very hard on the angles for throwing it around the wind and not hitting any unsuspecting obstacles on the way, that he forgets to let go of the arm, sending the right into his upper arm.
The impact throws him back half a step, and he wonders dazedly why it doesn’t hurt as much as it should. His hand comes up to his upper arm and touches the sleeve of his parka, inspecting the cut of the material and the blood that starts to pool in the wound, furrowing his brows. He winces slightly when his fingertips touch the outer edge of the wound, and he thinks that this is just grand. Lovely even.
Sokka sighs, defeated, and picks up the boomerang to go back home to clean up his wound and go to bed, dread settling into his stomach at the thought that Gran Gran or Katara might see him when he patches himself up or the parka. (He can already picture Katara’s look of disappointment, the way she crosses her arms in front of her chest like she’s one of the adults ready to reprimand him like he’s a reckless child. He can practically hear the way her hair loopies brush against the fur on her parka when she shakes her head slowly.) Sokka decides that there’s no point in avoiding the inevitable, so he’s going to do it now in the hope of sidestepping the initial confrontation with one of them.
Cradling the boomerang to his chest, he walks towards their tent, head hanging low and teeth sunk into his lower lip to prevent him from cursing loudly and waking everyone up. Pain starts to bloom inside his arm, and every step sends a jolt through him that echoes in his bone even though the wound is superficial at most.
The fire is still alive when he enters their tent, and he spots Gran Gran sleeping. Unfortunately for him, the crown of Katara’s head peek out from behind his grandmother, and she stares at him, her eyes wide and sleep still evident on her cheeks.
She sits up, and Sokka buries every hope of coming away unscathed. If he’s lucky, she won’t wake Gran Gran just to get him in trouble, if he’s even more lucky, she’s going to go back to sleep and deal with him in the morning. (Is Sokka ever so lucky? Yeah, he didn’t think so either.)
While he sits down at the other end of the room to keep his distance from Gran Gran, Katara pushes herself upright and walks over to him, and he drops the boomerang onto the floor in front of him, hands shaking and breathing much shallower than necessary.
Katara sits down, right next to him, and folds her hands in her lap, eyes going first to the boomerang, and then onto his pale face. She furrows her forehead deeply, an expression of utmost discontentment on her face while blood seeps out of a cut on his upper arm into the Arctic camel fur of his parka.
“What did you do?” she asks, without showing any inclination of doing something about his wound. “You’re not supposed to go out in the dark.”
That’s where the wind blows, Sokka thinks. She’s not discontented because he hurt himself training for an emergency, but because their Gran Gran forbade him to go out when the sun has set, and the stars are out. (He knows the children playing in the sky can be dangerous, can hurt him unimaginably, but they’re not malicious, and how is he supposed to know when the Fire Nation attacks when he’s asleep, how is he supposed to defend them when he doesn’t use his spare time to practise and train and become the warrior his father had seen when he had looked at him.)
Sometimes, it feels like Katara would rather have him bleed out as a consequence of his own actions than let him bend the rules successfully and unblemished.
“I’ve been training,” Sokka replies spitefully, and he attempts to pull his parka over his head in one smooth motion, only to catch on the material with his elbow, causing the cut in his arms to stretch and tear his skin even further. He curses underneath his breath and pulls harder on the back of the parka to get it over his head, but he fails yet again at something incredibly easy and mundane.
When he curses again, he feels two hands swatting his own away and grabbing the parka to pull it for him. Katara’s hands make him topple over and down, but he’s free at last, and Katara seems almost delighted by his pain. (She probably thinks it serves him right. And she’s not wrong per se, but how is he supposed to explain to her the things that keep him awake at night and drive him out and away from the tent to put his mind at ease.)
“You’re not supposed to hurt yourself,” she says, as she inspects the cuts, a steep crease between her eyebrows.
“Thanks so much for your insight, Katara,” Sokka replies venomously while he reaches for his undergarment, pulling it over his head. “I’ll be sure to keep that in mind the next time I’m about to have an accident.”
She rolls her eyes and swats his hands away again before pulling his undergarment over his head for him. She snaps, “If you didn’t sneak out in the middle of the night, you wouldn’t have accidents.” It doesn’t really make any sense, does it, and Sokka searches her face for any sign that she’s lost her mind or is still half asleep, mind somewhere between here and the dreamscape, but he comes up empty-handed. The only thing he can see is the steep crease between her brows and the hard line of her mouth, the way she bites into the inside of her lower lip like she might say something she’s going to regret if she does end up spitting it out. – He sees worry in her pale cheeks and between her fingers when she doesn’t let go of his undergarment but digs her fingers into it like it’s the only thing keeping her in place.
He didn’t even take into consideration that she might stay up late at night when she realises that he’s gone without a word. (He didn’t think about the fact that their father disappeared too, and that their mother is gone. He didn’t realise that she might think that he’s not coming back.)
Urging himself to open his mouth, he remains wordless, without a single clue how he’s supposed to explain to her that she needn’t worry about him, that he wouldn't leave her or their village behind, that the only reason he's out there in the first place is that he can't sleep and that staring at the ceiling just makes everything worse.
He closes his mouth and watches her reach for a flask of fresh water, shakingly bending a small amount to clean his wound silently.
“It was the last time anyway,” he finally says. Not because he wants to stop training at night but because he thinks it will put her mind to rest. “You don't need to rat me out to Gran Gran.”
The water presses into his wound harder than necessary, he flinches, and the faux innocent look on Katara's face doesn't betray her anger at him. (He's able to see the relieved slumping of her shoulders nonetheless.)
Sleep, apparently, is a natural enhancer of precision and accuracy, Sokka learns when he makes true of his statement to Katara and doesn't sneak out at night anymore to train. (He doesn't tell her because he doesn't want to deal with her gloating. He probably doesn’t need to tell her, anyway.)
The Fire Nation attacks, and Sokka is unable to protect anyone. He's good, exceptionally even, years of training have shaped him into a warrior (albeit a young one) but since his father left with all the other men, he hadn’t had to fight anything more dangerous than a penguin, and it shows. (The handful of times Katara bothered to entertain him – take him seriously for once, if he’s being honest – don’t really make that much of a difference in the grand scheme of things. Coming up with strategies and training until his technique is nothing to sneer at, doesn’t prepare him for a target that fights back. Let alone that launching an offensive is much different than the defensive techniques his father always wanted him to learn.)
There are too many of them, six firebenders at least, crashing into their village with their steam-powered ship, unbothered by a single sixteen-year-old trying to defend a village of non-benders. He’s sent flying onto his arse too many times. They break his spear and throw him into the snow face first.
The snow washes away his war paint, and he’s left watching Aang surrender himself to keep all of them alive and healthy. (He watches the twelve-year-old do what had been supposed to be his duty, and he can’t do anything about it. Because years of training have not been enough. Because some paint on his face is not going to make him any more of a warrior than Katara or Gran Gran. It only hides the embarrassed and angry redness on his cheeks when he can’t do anything but watch.)
They’ve taken Aang away. Katara and Sokka were forced to stand back, hearts beating in their throats and breath hard on their tongues. Everything felt kind of surreal, far away and far too close at the same time. But they won’t keep doing nothing. Even if Sokka doesn’t necessarily like Aang, they still need to save him. It’s the right thing to do.
“And you, my brave warrior,” Gran Gran says, and warmth floods his chest because he knows he didn’t do much to deserve her gentle words, but it’s nice to hear that she believes in him anyway, “be nice to your sister.” (For a moment, he thought she would say something akin to Katara. It’s been so long since I’ve had hope. But you brought it back to life, my little waterbender. But she’s right not to coddle him. He’s not here to be praised for the minimum he could have done.)
He doesn’t say it, but he thinks that Gran Gran already knows that he’s going to try to be nice to his sister. (And that he’s definitely going to protect her. Nothing is going to happen to Katara as long as he’s by her side.)
Sokka feels in his very bones that their journey is about to begin.
Traveling with the Avatar might have made him forget some of the embarrassed shame, but let’s be honest, mostly, he's trying to cover it up with bravado. So, what if he couldn't take six grown ass firebenders (or five and a half if he's nit-picky), he's still the best warrior of his village. (Mostly, because he's the only warrior of his village. But is that a detail that everyone else needs to know?)
The Kyoshi warriors are just a bunch of girls, and if they hadn't had the advantage of surprise, they wouldn't have had a chance against him.
Except that Suki just needs a single movement with her arm to throw him on the floor. (It's embarrassing. It's humiliating. He doesn't stand a chance even though he's been putting so much work into training. Not having a mentor seriously fucked with his perception of what an enemy could be capable of. And maybe also with his perception of his own abilities.)
He needs to learn how she does it. He needs to know how she's been able to fend him off like a fly, so he kicks a stone in front of their training building, and he grovels in front of Suki’s feet until she agrees to mentor him. (Even if he’s got to wear a dress—a warrior’s uniform for it.)
The fan feels foreign in his hand, and the fabric of the kimono is so different from his usual trousers that he almost catches on it, time and time again, and every time he comes close to tumbling to the ground.
When he takes the initial position, Suki corrects his stance and the alignment of his shoulders, she taps at his hands and elbows until she’s satisfied with the way he carries himself. She shows him how to hold the fan, how to fend off attacks and use the opponent’s strength against them. He almost impresses her with the ease of throwing a fan like a boomerang after only one demonstration and with the fluency of translating her advice into action.
And when he sends her onto her back the first time, he can’t help but translate the unbridled joy and victorious pride into obnoxious smugness. (He fares better against the Fire Nation soldiers, but he still doesn’t really stand a chance. Even with the combined force of Suki’s team supporting him.)
(He holds onto the Kyoshi warrior’s uniform and the fans. He doesn’t think about putting it back on because it would be plain wrong, he’s not one of them, he’s a boomerang guy.)
Of course, Sokka always knew to some extent that he’s traveling with solely benders and that he himself can, in fact, not bend. Most of the time, however, he doesn’t need to. He can help in his own way, read the map (says Katara), read at all (says Toph), lighten the mood (says Aang), but when push comes to shove and there’s no map to read or something else or mood to lighten, he’s useless at best and a hindrance at worst. (They won’t say it out loud, won’t tell him that he’s taking up space during their missions and that sometimes they would fare better without him standing in their way or putting out a fire with his club while Momo puts out five. He’s even more useless than a lemur, and what the fuck does that say about him – no offence, Momo.)
Katara sitting down next to him reminds him of home, of the one time she caught him trying to patch himself up, and he can feel the same kind of barrier inside of him, trying to keep him from talking to them about his insecurities, but then he thinks that they’re friends and that he would like to know, too, what is going on in their heads if they ever feel like this, so he tells them. (I’m sorry you’re feeling down, but I hope you know none of us see you that way, Katara says, but that doesn’t change anything about the truth that lies underneath his fear. He wants to be adequate, a whole part of the team, equal footed and if he needs to be special to do just that, then he might as well just be. It’s a recurring theme in his life, isn’t it, he feels like running in circles and never going beyond.)
Piandao asks him why he wants to be taught by him, and the answer should be obvious. He doesn’t know how to fight with a sword, had only ever really used spears, his boomerang, his club and maybe a scimitar or two. Swords aren’t typically used in any of the Water Tribes, and submitting himself to the care of someone else to learn a weapon that doesn’t fit into the image he has of himself as a Water Tribe warrior, demands more mental flexibility than he’s used to.
He lowers his head and draws in a deep breath, biting his lips to focus on his rapid heartbeat in hope of calming it down enough to speak without his heart on his tongue.
Piandao waits for him to make the first move, to answer his question and tell him why Sokka – out of all the people that have come here to train under him – should be worthy of his attention.
And the truth is that Sokka doesn’t know why Piandao should bother with him. He remembers every unsuccessful attempt of his past, feels the mortifying shame of every single failure in his bones. He’s not a natural prodigy, most of the things he can do now didn’t come with a manual or intrinsic ease that allowed him to succeed at every task thrust upon him. He remembers the countless times Suki sent him onto the ground, face first or hard onto his back. He thinks of the undeserved smugness Suki chased out of his chest, the way every mistake felt twice as much and overwhelmingly discouraging when it happened after he’d been so very sure of himself.
Sokka can’t advertise himself with a good conscience. He’s not the best swordfighter of his village, he didn’t train all his life to become Piandao’s student, and he sure as underworld never thought that he’d ever be worthy of someone as great as Piandao to teach him.
But he can’t say any of that, can he? Piandao wants him to explain why he’s worthy, he doesn’t want to hear a list of all the things making Sokka unsuited to be a student. And best warrior of his village-Sokka would have done just that. He would have listed his victories, would have bullshitted his way through every skirmish against the Fire Nation they fought, twisting the truth just enough to not be recognised as part of Aang’s entourage, and he would have gloated that he might even take Piandao himself in a fight.
That Sokka is not the same Sokka as he is now, he realises, because even though he thinks about those things, he knows he couldn’t open his mouth to actually say them out loud. It’s not the same thing that kept him from telling Katara about his insecurities when they were younger, but it’s the same wordlessness, making it almost impossible to think.
And even though Sokka knows with a certainty he feels seldomly that Piandao doesn’t want to hear it, he also knows that he needs to be truthful and real to himself, so he tells Piandao he doesn’t know if he’s worthy, and to his utter surprise, Piandao invites him to train.
He fails, and it doesn’t feel like the watchful eye of his father, even though Piandao’s gaze never wavers or strays. (The personal component is missing, Sokka realises when Piandao asks for a slice of lemon in his cold drink, and they sit down for a moment for the first time since Sokka took up training under him. He doesn't feel like he's letting down the most important person in his life, and there's no need to compare himself to anyone else, because Piandao doesn't usually take students in, and there's no one here to think that he's a failure through and through.)
His solutions to Piandao's problems don't seem to be anything Piandao reckons with, but Sokka had always prided himself on his outside of the box thinking, and everytime Piandao looks at him, almost pleased, he feels pride bloom in his chest. (It stays where it belongs, close to his heart, doesn't get to his head to weigh him down, and he can't hold back a grin whenever he feels like he's done something right.)
Katara cups his face with her hands, and his determined gaze meets hers before she presses a soft kiss to his forehead and leaves Sokka and their father to prepare for the battle. (She hugs their father on her way out, too, and he can't shake the feeling that they're exactly where they belong.)
Silently, his father and he put on their shoulder guards and the metal plates that protect their forearms and feet, and the calm before the storm settles into Sokka's chest, grounding him because he knows that they're going to change the course of history. They're paving the way to a new tomorrow. They’re making room for Aang to fight the Fire Lord. This is what every single one of them (what he) was always meant to do.
“Are you ready?” his father asks, and even though Sokka doesn't feel remotely ready, he nods because there's no time or space for his worries and insecurities. He must rely on his abilities and the desire to win that lies over an abyss of despair inside his heart.
His father steps towards him, places his hand gingerly but firmly on his shoulder and looks into his eyes, maybe searching for something that Sokka can’t name. (He’s reminded of the Are you sure? his father had directed his way when he had picked out his boomerang, but he’s so very glad that his father doesn’t say it out loud. He wouldn’t have known how to react.)
“The others are about to come,” his father says, and Sokka nods again before he replies, “I think I need another minute.”
With a last reassuring squeeze to his shoulder, his father turns and walks away, bone club in its leather pouch and head held high – the same way Sokka should hold his head high because he’s the leader of this mission. They’re executing his plan after all, and he should look like someone they can trust, whom they can rely on and entrust their life to. No one should look at him and think, That’s just a sixteen year old boy, what does he think he’s doing? He wants to be respected, and he wants to trust himself.
He sits down onto the floor, just for a moment, and breathes in and out deeply, every breath controlled and conscious. Then he reaches for his space sword slowly, both hands wrapped around the handle, and he closes his eyes. He thinks about the way his blade will cut through cords and ropes and even metal. He pictures the handle bashing against Fire Nation soldiers’ heads, rendering them unconscious. He visualises running and climbing and fighting with the rest of his team, the rest of his pack, and doing anything in his might to get Aang safely to the Fire Lord.
And finally, he opens his eyes and looks past the blade of his sword over the maps and plans scattered around him that he’s going to use to explain his plan and ignite their spirits. He can do this.
(He fails at public speaking, but like Aang said, Nobody’s good at that, and on the battlefield, he’s magnificent.)