Sokka the 75th - [Action] (Backdated to the 10th)

[markofthewise]

[Introspection]

It's an interesting thing to reflect on life in Luceti. Sokka remembered hearing it phrased as the "Luceti education". It certainly was some education. Looking back, he could scarcely believe some of the things that had happened to him. He'd fallen in love with two girls thanks to the annual love event. He'd been convinced he was a father. Not only that, but he was the father of those two very same girls. He had partial memories of living the life of an Avatar, one that granted him a unique set of memories of a mother he had barely remembered before. He had faint memories of what his entire life would be like if he had been a girl. More complicated than that, he'd spent a month as another girl in Luceti with the concern that he could be stuck like that forever. Maybe that was the oddest thing of all. He certainly tried to not ever, ever think about that horrible month.

But it wasn't all weird. Some of it was just horrible. He'd lost friends, seen people die, and watched as everyone from his world came and went with the sole exception of him and his sister. He had fought monsters in Luceti, far beyond his ability to ever stop. Some of those monsters were his friends. He'd been sent into wars, bloody wars, where he fought enemies that could not be reasoned with. He'd grown accustomed to killing his enemies. It was easy now. Too easy. He'd died, too. Not long enough to gain a death penalty, but it happened. It still haunted him. And he still couldn't bring himself to tell more than a small number of people.

He'd loved. Loved and lost. And he got her back. But it wasn't the same. Sometimes he wondered that it might never be the same. He'd grown into a man, but not in the way he ever expected. It was the Luceti education. Everyone was hurting. Everyone. The education was that you learned to pretend like it didn't hurt. You threw parties, you played games, and you spent each and every day acting like maybe one day you'd get back home and that would be a good thing. Eventually, whether it was months or years, people realized that 'going home' wasn't as good as it seemed. They weren't the lucky ones. The sum of their experiences and growth was being ripped from them, in an instant. They were sent home with a wound they didn't know they had. Everyone eventually was doomed to be returned to what they were. Lesser. Smaller. Without the things that now made them who they were.

Sometimes that didn't seem so bad anyway.

[Action]

Three years. That's how long it was now. Sokka sat outside the house, snapping his finger as he tried to summon a spark of Eferin's fire. As he expected, he'd lost it. Not for good, perhaps. But he'd stopped practicing and stopped communing with the spirits. It was little surprise. It was tapping into Tsinku's power that got him toasted. He'd spent so much time invested in other things, that he just lost his connection with the spirits. With a small bit of reluctance, he relied on his zippo lighter instead. It was sufficient to start the fire. It was nothing much, really. Just wooden scraps, paper, cardboard, and other accumulated materials that had started clogging up parts of the house. Most of it was Sokka's own junk. So rather than just throw it out and let the Malnosso deal with it, he decided to just make a fire instead. He realized, of course, he was doing it in the same fire pit that he had used when Suki went home.

Three years. Today was a normal day. Sokka spent the first half of his day at the smithy. With Hiccup on the mend after that particularly painful surgery, it left Sokka as the only one who did the maintenance on the weapons. New Feather season was, at least, gone and done with. He hadn't received any commissions in a while, so it left him with time to start on some new projects. Things he expected would be gifts later. For lunch, he put extra jalapenos on his sandwich. Just like Elisa made them. The nice thing about the smithy was that despite how cold it was, you could sit outside in front of the open door and still be warm from the radiating heat of the furnace.

Three years. Sokka spent dinner at home, as he was supposed to. Then he did some alchemy research at the library. It left the evening free, but he figured there was a particular girl who would be occupying his time. That was the nice bit. It was a long trail and a heavy education. But you could forget when you were around a person who didn't know it yet. Then it was just another day. The twist was that he didn't mind. Education or not, Sokka was happy enough.

((ooc: This post is just a typical 'day in the life of' sort of deal. This is what his schedule looks like. Mostly it's self indulgent. Sorry about that!))

Comments

[herotypical]

Buffy was right on that page with Sokka, and so was quick to reply: "For now. I guess no one really gets well and truly spooked by a scavenger hunt. Or a fancy dance."

[markofthewise]

"I dunno, the dress code was kind of intimidating."

[herotypical]

"I saw. I dunno -- you didn't go too off-track, pardner." A cool smile. "I liked your get-up better than the frothy shirts and brocade-covered waist-coats and oh my God the shoes. They're ugly. That period had no sense of foot fashion."

[markofthewise]

"I liked the hat." Sokka confessed. "I think I'll keep that. I got it from the Depot."

[herotypical]

"The hat was..."

Cocking her head to the side. "The Depot? You mean, the last mission all you keeners went on?"

It wasn't said with malice. Well -- not with real malice. Just your usual sarcasm.

[markofthewise]

"Yeah. That one. The one I got shot on? The hat seemed like a nice consolation for that."

[herotypical]

...She looked as though she was genuinely weighing the merits of this exchange. Bullet wound for kick hat. Hmm.

"Depends. Do you have a scar?"

[markofthewise]

"A little one. On my leg. But I never wear shorts that short."

It was a secret to everyone.

[herotypical]

"I -- uhm -- won't ask to see it, then. I'll just have to take your word that it's very dashing and manly. Apparently that's a thing that scars are supposed to be."

[markofthewise]

"The Shift Hunter one is way better." Sokka was all heroic in that one. Suki hadn't seen it. He'd made a point of wearing some sort of shirt around the house.

[herotypical]

"Sokka--" she started, delving briefly into the realm of serious interrogation. "Have you ever considered, y'know, getting them removed? The scars. I mean, someone's bound to be able to do that here. Right?"

Magic. Technology. Hell, McCoy had claimed it as possible but she'd never wanted to give up the few marks she had. She'd grown attached to them.

[markofthewise]

"What? No way! Do you have any idea how awesome they look?"

[herotypical]

"...They're just generally the kind of thing people freak out about avoiding, back home. Especially the visible ones."

But Luceti was different. People seemed to possess more scars than she ever though possible. Jack alone was a walking tapestry of gunshots, burns, and misadventures.

Of course, she had the bite-marks on her neck that she rarely hid. Even today, once her coat was off, they were visible and pale on skin that managed a decent dose of sunbathing during the scavenger hunt.

"I don't get many," she eventually said. "Healing powers and all that jazz."

[markofthewise]

"Neither do I. Healing sister and... whatever jazz is."

It was those rare moments when he didn't have his sister to count on to patch him up. This was the second mission he'd come back from in bad shape. A smarter man might have saw it as a reason to stop going.

[herotypical]

"Just imagine how much less pretty we might've been, in another life."

[markofthewise]

"In another life, we'd probably be dead."

[herotypical]

"Nope. That's still this life -- whether it stuck or not."

It didn't matter to her that Sokka hadn't been gone for as long as she had, her second time dying. It didn't matter that he was penaltyless. She still counted his recounted death in full. One had to, really. For the day you started discriminating between levels of death was the day you really had too much time and misery on your hands.

[markofthewise]

"I meant in a more permanent sense." He followed it with a shrug. At last he couldn't hold out on the smell, so he finally took the neglected drink for himself. "S'good."

[herotypical]

"Oh, thank God. Ten more seconds and I was gonna break the first rule of any stalemate and start begging you to take a drink. It's rude not to accept the gifts you're given, Sokka. There's a Disney movie with a moral that goes something like that. Probably."

[markofthewise]

"Is it the one where you don't look at a horse's mouth?"

[herotypical]

"No, but...

That one always bugged me, actually. Don't look a gift-horse in the mouth. What is a gift-horse? Is he a horse giving you a gift? Is the horse himself a gift?"

The secret was out: Sokka wasn't the only one who had problems with Earth idioms.

[markofthewise]

"Maybe the gift is in the horse's mouth. Which begs the question: Why?"

[herotypical]

"Eugh. Seriously. Have you ever seen a horse trying to eat? It's creepy. All that horizontal jaw work." Buffy gave a slight shudder. "It is by far my least favourite part when it comes to learning...horsery. Horsemanship? Horse-play?

No, that can't be right..."

[markofthewise]

"Don't look at me. We don't even have horses in my world. We do have ostrich-horses, but that's Earth Kingdom."

[herotypical]

"Do they stick their heads in the sand? Because then I might be able to come up with a working understanding of why you might not want to look a gift-ostrich-horse in the mouth. No one likes sand-breath."