Chapter Text
Chapter 34: Horrors of War, Part III
Toph did not make the first move.
One foot lifted and landed. She dug her heel into the ground, and the forest came to life. Every vibration, every movement, every heartbeat and every heaved breath - she saw it all with glorious clarity. In moments like these, she did not envy the seeing one bit. To her, it was they who were blind.
The Nightwolf next to her had a steady heartbeat - elevated, but otherwise still calm. He was not erratic, which was good. She was going to need him clearheaded for what was going to come next. Her foot shifted again, and she quickly surveyed her surroundings.
There were enemies to all sides - twenty-seven, to be precise. Only three were benders; she could tell by their stances and their own regulated breathing. None of them had any particular talent.
"You take the ground, I'll take the skies?" the Nightwolf said.
Toph snorted. "Did the earthquake rattle your brains, Snoozles? Did you become an Airbender when I wasn't looking?"
Sokka let out a short laugh, more a bark than anything else. "Kind of. Answer the question."
"Whatever. Just don't do anything stupid. I'm not really eager to be on Blue's bad side after you get turned into mincemeat," she bit at him.
"If it happens, sorry for leaving you to face her wrath alone," Sokka mildly. She didn't know what he looked like, but from his personality, she imagined a smile on his face right now. She could feel him pulling something from his belt, and then...
Nothing.
His feet completely disappeared off the ground. She heard something shoot impossibly fast, and then a sharp, strange noise that started from where Sokka was and shot off into the trees. Whatever he had done, it startled everyone around her, even Jet, and it gave her the opportunity she needed to strike.
Releasing her breath, she slammed two fists into the ground. Earthen spikes shot up in an expanding cone from her. The fastest of the fighters were able to dodge, though most came away with minor blows. Two were completely impaled, screaming as their bodies were punctured by jagged rock.
Toph smiled and raised her hands. More enemies advanced towards her, and she took a deep breath, feeling the thrum of the earth all about her, moving and shifting like a living being, ready to be made, unmade, molded, and shifted to her will. In that moment, Toph Beifong saw everything clearly. The first unlucky bastard who leaped at her found himself catapulted back into the tree canopy when the earth around him shot up and upended him in the air. His nearest compatriots jumped out of the way, but even they were not fully able to avoid her wrath. That same chunk of dirt and rock that she used to fling the first man split into smaller bludgeons that rained pain down on her enemies. A braver fighter who decided to test his luck while Toph was ostensibly busy found out the hard way that the blind girl saw more than the seeing, as a boulder hurtled into his stomach and sent him flying with a scream against the hard bark of a tree, where he slumped over.
Toph stuck out two fingers and beckoned more of her enemies to come and die.
Sokka stared breathlessly at the carnage below. The Earthbending girl was for real.
He had to give Jet's fighters some credit - after the initial onslaught, they were doing a fairly good job of not getting completely massacred by her. They were agile and able to defend against many of her attacks, but it had less to do with a lack of skill or deadliness on Toph's part and more to do with their discipline. The fighters were good on their feet, and after their first plan of attack was foiled, they were careful to never attack all at once. Instead, they began choosing their angles wisely to disrupt Toph's earthbending, attacking from more than just one or two directions, and feinting rather than committing to obvious attacks.
An arrow whistled past his head, reminding him to stop loafing about and join the fray. Sokka used the grapple-shooter to vault himself to a lower branch of a tree across the way, taking a different angle to the fight. His eyes trained on Jet.
The enemy had numerical superiority, but he was the unquestioned leader. Like with any of the Fire Nation squads he'd dealt with, removing the leader sowed chaos among the rank-and-file, and unless any down there were burgeoning strategists or leaders, they would break and flee without their charismatic leader holding them together.
Sokka grappled away from the fight, sparing one last look at Toph, who seemed to be holding her own against the enemy fighters. When he had cleared the main brawl, he leaped off the high branch and shot his grapple one more time. The hook landed in a thick, overhanging branch with a loud 'thunk!' and the rope snapped taut, causing Sokka to swing in a dipping arc towards Jet.
He timed his leap perfectly and retracted the rope. The momentum from the swing shot him forward, and he tucked the grapple-shooter and pulled out a knife and his club, roaring as he did so. He landed on one of the fighters next to Jet, bludgeoning him in the head with the club. The man crumpled underneath, and Sokka rolled as he went down with him, crouching near Jet.
The snarling insurgent bounded towards him, swinging his fu tao skillfully. One hook only narrowly missed his head, and the other was a half-inch away from tearing a gash in his chest. Sokka stumbled back at the quickness of the attacks. He had not expected Jet to be as formidable a warrior as he was. Like him, Jet was unrefined but graceful, quick on his feet, and ferocious.
The commonalities did not make him feel any better.
Toph had noticed their duel; her attacks became more directional, focused, as she removed Jet's men from Sokka's vicinity by walling them off, directing them towards her. He only spared her one glance, blanching at the sheer amount of opponents that were directing their attention to her.
Hold out just a little longer, Toph. Let me put Jet in the dirt and I'll help you, Sokka thought.
Jet paced around him, prowling like a predatory feline. "So, this is the legendary Nightwolf. How'd you end up following Toph around?"
Sokka knew he was stalling for time. Toph could not last forever. He leaped at Jet first, blocking a swing of the fu tao with his club. His knife flitted past Jet's throat, but the rebel was a second too fast in jerking back his head, and he was only able to draw the smallest of nicks on the man's skin.
"Toph's following me," Sokka grunted as he roughly shoved Jet back. His opponent landed lightly on his feet and took two steps in reverse for balance.
Jet laughed. "That's hard for me to believe. Even when she was with us, Toph wasn't really a follower. And boy, you should have seen the way she treated enemies. I once saw her crush a Fire Nation soldier in between four walls, only she did it real slow. Real slow. I heard that soldier cry for a whole night as he slowly compressed to death."
Sokka did not glance back, nor turn around, or do anything to say that Jet's words had reached an uncomfortable area of his heart - not because Toph had done something he would have in the past, too, but because she had not mentioned it. He tried to tell himself there was a difference - cruel or not, it was an enemy combatant, a soldier. They were fair game, even if now he thought there was no need to be cruel or overly torturous. Jet was killing innocents.
"You're scum who kills civilians," he snarled at Jet. "Don't act like we're all the same."
"You talk like you're some peace-loving monk, but you're not," Jet mused. "Everyone knows what you are. And I know what I am. We're the same, Nightwolf."
Jet approached him; two steps forward. Sokka inched back a single step.
"You know what it means to fight the Fire Nation," Jet said. There was a raw, mesmerizing honesty to his words, interlaced with a kind of charisma that made it evident why so many people flocked to fight for him against the Fire Nation, to commit atrocities in his name. "They take and take and take until you have no more to give, and then they take more anyway. What are you supposed to do in the face of that, hmm? Am I supposed to believe the only answer is cooperation?"
His voice grew louder, and more passionate. "Fuck that. I say to the Fire Nation, come and pry my swords from my cold, dead hands. I'll resist until my last breath." Jet feinted with another attack from the side before swinging the fu tao in a crossing pattern over his head. Sokka only managed to step back in time before one of the deadly hooks made contact with his skin. It was so close that he could feel the air being cut inches away from his flesh.
"And that's what you're doing by burning down villages full of innocents? Resisting?" Sokka said, regaining his balance on his back feet. He sheathed his knife and transferred the club to his left hand, his right falling to Boomerang on his waist, and advanced closer again, making sure to not let Jet get in another easy attack.
Jet shrugged. "Someone has to. Everyone talks a big game, everyone loudly proclaims what they'll do when they face the burning building, but when it comes time... none of them rush in. Let me clue you in on something. Most people's so-called moral codes are bad jokes."
"You're one to talk," Sokka grunted. He swung wildly with the club; Jet easily sidestepped and riposted with the fu tao, which forced Sokka to stumble back yet again to avoid it.
"I'm not just talking, I know. People are only brave until the first sign of trouble. When it all falls apart, people will eat each other with no regard for anything else. Collaboration isn't innocence. They don't want freedom, they just want security, and those kinds of cowards don't deserve to live. They're just as bad as the Fire Nation."
"So either they fight back and surely die, or they deserve death by your hands? You don't get to make that choice for them, and you sure as hell aren't their judge. All you are is a monster," Sokka said. Still, Jet's words reached down to his core, and he wished they wouldn't. Every rebuke that came out of his mouth felt hollow, hypocritical, tickling at his past like the punchline to a poor joke.
"I'm not a monster," Jet said with a wide smile. "I'm just ahead of the curve." With that, he charged at Sokka, one fu tao high, the other low. Sokka flung Boomerang at Jet, who dodged it the first time; the distraction gave Sokka enough time to brandish a knife and meet Jet halfway.
He did his best to keep either very close or very far from his opponent. Those hook swords of his were deadly scythes, threatening to rip him to shreds any time they whizzed past his exposed flesh. More than once, Sokka lamented the absence of any good armor that would stop his slashing attacks, but there wasn't much time to focus on what he didn't have.
One of Jet's attacks landed; the hook blade of a sword ripped his club from his hand and tore the flesh in between his middle and ring finger down to the knuckles, causing him to scream in pain as blood sprayed from the wound. He would have been done for without the timely re-arrival of Boomerang, which hit Jet in the back of the head with a loud thunk. Grunting like an animal at the searing hot hurt radiating from his hand, Sokka clambered over the man with a knife, prepared to end the fight.
"Oi! Let him go!" a deep voice shouted from behind him. Sokka paid it no mind until it said, "Let him go or we'll string up the girl."
It felt like someone poured icy water down Sokka's back. He hoisted Jet up, holding his knife to the man's throat. In front of him, Jet's fighters had managed to subdue Toph, but that wasn't the worst of it.
They had tied a rope noose around the girl's neck, and using one of the lower branches of the trees, were hoisting her up into the air. Toph screamed and shouted as her legs kicked helplessly against air, and her fingernails instinctively dug in between her neck and the noose, just so that she could lessen the pressure to breathe, which made her unable to bend. She would not last long, he realized.
"Let him go or we kill the girl!" the same voice shouted. Sokka identified the speaker as a burly man, hairy and scowling; one of Jet's lieutenants, he supposed.
"Look... look at her kick against the air," Jet wheezed, with a warbling laugh. "She... she can't even see what's happening to her right now."
A cold pit formed in Sokka's stomach. Toph saw with her feet. Without the absence of hard ground, she had no idea where she was, where her opponents were, and what was going on. She could only hear the noises of the forest, people jeering at her, and her own wails as she tried to resist the slow death that awaited her from the tree branch.
He closed his eyes, and the abject horror of her fate sunk into him.
"Drop her first or I'll slit his throat," Sokka said, more bravely than he felt.
"Higher," the burly man rumbled. Toph was yanked another foot in the air, and this time the noose tightened enough around her neck to choke away her wails.
"Let her go or I'll kill him!" Sokka shouted, this time desperately.
"You first, Water Tribesman," the lieutenant answered with a sadistic smile. Sokka cursed and shoved Jet back towards his soldiers. Jet's fighters lowered Toph until her toes were scraping desperately at the ground, though they did not let her completely go.
Jet picked himself up off the ground and dusted off dirt from his gi absentmindedly. "I heard all the stories, but you're just another coward, aren't you? It'll be no fun to kill you. Her, on the other hand..." He gestured to Toph, and then looked at the lieutenant, drawing one finger across his throat in an unmistakable gesture.
Kill.
Sokka bellowed in rage as Jet's men hoisted Toph up once more, her feet still flailing uselessly. All immediate thoughts of Jet banished, he charged towards the men holding the noose. One fighter got in his way, thrusting a spear at him, but Sokka rolled around the side of the thrust with an effortless spin and buried his knife in the man's throat.
A large bellow broke the relative silence in the forest, and branches and trees crashed overhead as a huge body descended from the sky. Another bellow rang out to accompany the first, and Sokka smiled as he knew Appa had arrived.
Jet and his men scattered as Sokka saw blasts of blue fire and thrusts of wind shoot out from behind him, but he had only one goal - the burly lieutenant who was still holding the rope that Toph was hanging from. The man dropped the rope and Toph crumpled to the ground behind him as Sokka leaped at him, but it was too late. Sokka smashed one of his knees with the club, causing the man to scream and fall onto the ground on all fours. He yanked the halberd from the man's hand and swung around behind him, gripping the wooden handle against the man's neck tightly. He resisted mightily, almost breaking free once or twice, until his resistance lessened.
Sokka dropped the halberd staff and put one hand on the man's chin, the other on his head, and broke his neck with a sickening snap.
He crawled over to Toph, groping through knotted roots and broken branches in the grass and dirt littering the forest floor. Toph did not move. When he arrived at the girl's body, he tenderly lifted her up and rested her head on his lap. Two fingers flew to her neck, searching desperately for a pulse.
It was there - weak, faint, almost not, but it was there. He thanked all the spirits above and closed his eyes, brushing her hair back mindlessly. She was powerful, but still... when she wasn't awake and her usual fiery and vitriolic self, she was so tiny. Sokka felt an unexpected protectiveness rise up in him.
It grew quiet around him. Footsteps neared, causing Sokka to look up.
Azula looked down at him, before crossing her legs to sit next to him. She put a soft hand to his cheek.
"Are you alright, love?" she asked softly.
Sokka shook his head no. Katara and Aang joined them soon after. His sister knelt next to Toph, running a hand over her head and checking for her pulse.
"She's alive, but hanging on by a thread," Katara said grimly. "We have to get her back to Ursa for care."
Sokka found his voice. "Will you guys take her back? I.... I have to do something."
Katara patted his shoulder and pressed a quick kiss to his forehead. "You okay, Sokka?"
Rage bubbled over in him. No, he was not okay, not by any stretch of the imagination. "I'm fine," he bit out. "I need to find Twin Hook."
Azula nodded. "I'll go with you."
He could tell Azula was watching him carefully as they traced the tracks of Jet and his retreating men through the forest.
"He said something to you," she said. Twilight had fallen, and visibility was getting low, but the tracks were getting fresher and fresher. His muscles ached and his hand, though bandaged by Katara, was radiating pain. He felt grimy and filthy and he knew he was a bloodstained mess, but it did not matter. Jet and his men, wounded as they were, did not retreat quickly, wounded as they were, and Sokka knew he and Azula would soon be upon them.
A cool breeze stirred the leaves of the trees, making Sokka's hairs stand on end. There was a fresh smell of pinecone and tree bark in the air, mingled with a faint rot that he knew to be the smell of dying men. They followed it as it hung over the tracks of Jet's fighters. Dead branches and dried twigs snapped underfoot to join the already crunched detritus of the forest floor that bore the telltale signs of human movement.
"Nothing important," Sokka grunted.
"I can tell whatever it was, it bothered you," Azula noted. "You don't have to talk about it now, if you don't want to, Sokka, but at some point it should be discussed."
Sokka sighed, and his shoulders slumped. "I don't know. I... I feel like a hypocrite."
Azula arched an eyebrow at him, and he took that as a cue to continue. "He looked at me like we were the same, 'Zula. The way he was... it was like looking at what I could have been, what my path would have eventually led me down to."
"But it didn't," Azula said forcefully. She gripped his hand and intertwined her fingers through his. "You chose a better route."
"Pure luck," he responded with a shrug. "What if I'd killed you? What then?"
Azula scoffed. "Please, Sokka. Do give me some credit."
Despite himself, Sokka couldn't help but let out an inadvertent smile. "Alright, fine. But I nearly did. Look at us now - look at who we are to each other. It started with me wanting to end your life, and now your life is the most precious thing to me in the world." He choked on his words, and Azula squeezed her fingers around his gently. "This could have all gone so differently."
"It could have, but it didn't," Azula pressed. "You are not him. You are you, and that makes all the difference in the world."
Sokka stopped her and pulled her close. He pressed his forehead against hers, laughing a little as he stooped and she stood on her tiptoes to meet in the middle. "Thank you," he whispered. "I'm afraid of what I'll do when I see him."
"You'd be justified," she whispered back. "You said he slaughtered a whole village."
"But I wouldn't be doing it for them," he said. "I'd be doing it to satisfy myself. I want to do it, but I know it's wrong."
"I know," Azula said, pressing a gentle kiss to his lips. "That's why I offered to come with you."
They found Jet when night fell, in the abandoned dirt pathways of a village. The place looked run-down. Roofs were caved in, walls were destroyed, and wood structures that once housed families and memories were little more than blackened cinders that served as cairns to the buried bones of innocents, but none of it was recent. Not for the first time, Sokka found himself lamenting this war and all the bloody, terrible costs paid by those living in it.
Toph had done a number on Jet's men. They were in bad shape. Some dropped their weapons at the sight of them, and fled back into the forest; those, Sokka and Azula did not pursue. Others stood their ground and met their end, becoming yet more ghosts who would haunt the deserted houses that littered the clearing.
Jet was in the biggest house of the village, at the far end. They stepped past from the sliding bamboo door, up the creaky steps of the worn out house, and met him kneeling on the wooden floor. When he saw them, he staggered to his feet; he looked wobbly, but he met Azula and Sokka with his fu tao drawn nonetheless. There was a stalk of wheat between his teeth and a cocksure smile on his face.
"You came," he said, grinning at Sokka. "I knew you wouldn't be able to resist. Who's the broad?"
Sokka bared his fangs and aimed his boomerang at Jet, but Azula stepped forward between them. She gave him a moment's glance, and her eyes told him to be patient. "My name is Azula," she said. "I am the Princess of the Fire Nation."
Jet's eyes blazed with anger, and he looked at Sokka with a rage that was not present before. Throughout their extended encounter, Sokka had not seen Jet get angry; passionate, yes, but not enraged quite like this. The rage was better, he decided. It was familiar, and hatred was something he could deal with. It was the look of camaraderie, the appeal to Sokka's past by Jet that he could not stand.
"You're just like them. I thought you were different," he hissed at Sokka. "A collaborator until the end."
"A collaborator for what?" Azula challenged. "I have made it my mission to bring an end to this war, to help the Avatar establish peace in the nations. That is a worthy goal to collaborate with."
"That's what all of you say. You just want a world where we're all under your heels," Jet retorted. "You want peace on your terms."
"Once I did," Azula admitted. "But not anymore. It's a worthy goal, if you'll forgive my personal bias. But that world I want has no place for people like my father. It has no place for people like who Sokka was... or for people like you, Twin Hook. For what happened to your family, to your village, you have my sincerest apologies. But that does not excuse your crimes against the innocents of Gaipan Forest."
But it was almost as if Azula was not there, for Jet. He was focused almost entirely on Sokka, and his words were addressed to him.
"You'll see it soon, Nightwolf. You might be enchanted by this Fire Nation whore for now, but you'll see it soon enough. You tell yourself you're not like me. Tell yourself you're... more, better, devoted to some kind of higher morality," he laughed bitterly. "But in the end, fear reveals the truth, and when all your self-control and your empty moral platitudes have been eroded, you'll understand. You're a killer, like me."
"Don't call her a whore, you son of a bitch," Sokka gritted. He shook his head; Jet was trying to get under his skin, and he wasn't going to let him, not so easily. "I'm not you. I'm me, and that means something, Jet. I lost someone, too, but after I took up arms, I realized I wasn't trying to change anything. I was just trying to get even. The problem is, you can't. You kill and you kill and you kill and it's never fucking enough. Every life you take, you think you're getting closer. So you convince yourself the next one will get you closer. And the next one, and then the next, and then the one after that. But it's not right."
Jet smirked. "You know, you say these things, but how much do you really believe them? I think you're just trying to justify your cowardice to yourself. You know what did feel right? Hoisting that little Earthbending freak up into the air. It's hilarious that she sees out of her feet. Lift her up an inch in the air and she's as blind as a bat. I wonder what she was thinking with that noose tightening around her neck and her world going black - er... staying black." He twirled his fu tao comically. "All that power and it's gone when her feet can't touch the solid ground. Now that's a joke if I've ever heard one."
Sokka saw red, and suddenly his hearing was filled with the rushing of his own blood. His grip tightened around his boomerang.
"And you wanna know what's worse, Nightwolf... Sokka, is that your name? Your fire whore over here, she's got you turned so inside out that the only thing blinder than Toph is you. You think she's teaching you how to be better, or tempering your worst impulses, but she's not. She's tamed you like a circus ringmaster tames an animal. She's got you muzzled up like a good little bitch, and you're eating out of her hand. That's what these Fire Nation types want. They want you to think they're the good guys, so you'll turn tricks for 'em without a second thought."
The familiar rage built up in him, snaking from his gut into his lungs and up his throat until its fiery tendrils gripped his heart and mind and blotted out all rational thought. It was the familiar bloodlust, the comfortable one, the one he'd known for so long. He was so tired of staving it off, and it was calling to him like a siren song, tempting him to dip his toes back in the pool of violence.
But then he felt Azula's arm on his shoulder, and her golden eyes piercing into his, and it was as if he was suddenly empty. She looked at him and shook her head. "Not right now, Sokka. I can see it in your eyes. If you're the one to do it, you'll always wonder why you did it, and I won't have that for you."
He wanted to argue, to say that he was doing it for the right reasons, but when he looked at Jet, he knew it was untrue. There was a part of him that wanted it for the right reasons, to live by his new code, but there was an equal part of him that simply lusted for blood, for revenge, for the village and for Toph. He bitterly recalled the young girl's fragile body, heaving pained breaths in his arms, and the terror she must have felt in what could have been her final moments, and he knew it would be just as much to satisfy the rage as for any other reason.
He nodded at Azula, and left the house.
He didn't have to wait long. There was shouting - none of it Azula's - and the scuffle of boots against the wooden floors. He heard whooshing noises, and then lightning crackled from the sky and shot down through the roof of the building, setting it ablaze. Moments after, Azula emerged, dusting off her robes.
"It's done," she said. "Come, my love. Let's leave this place."
It was still dark when they made it back to the camp. Sokka checked in on Ursa, who was tending to Toph. The herbalist gave his shoulder a warm squeeze and told him that she would be okay, although she would likely need a few days to recover from her ordeal. Sokka looked down at Toph, feeling that same protective feeling stir in his chest, and took his leave. He wandered back towards the creek that he and Azula had bathed in, only to find her already there, slipping off the last of her clothes before wading into the water. He joined her, his muscles relaxing against the cool touch of the clear lapping river current. The water swept away the dirt and sweat from his body. Sokka crouched, letting the river come up to his chin, before he felt Azula wrap her arms around from behind him.
"Hello," she whispered quietly.
"Hi," he said back.
"A copper for your thoughts?"
"I don't know," Sokka said truthfully. "It's a bit of a mess right now, to be honest."
Azula relaxed further into him. "Good. If you weren't agonizing over it, I would have worried."
"So it's better that I am?" Sokka said with a scoff. "Great, thanks."
Azula chuckled into his shoulders. "No, moron. I'd prefer if you didn't have to, but the fact that you are so concerned is an indication that you have little to fear."
"I'm not so sure about that," Sokka said. "I felt it, Azula. You were right. I would've never known if I killed him for the right reasons or for the wrong ones."
"Once upon a time, I too believed that the ends justified the means," Azula said. "I find myself questioning that more and more as time wears on. Once I would have said, whether, for the right or the wrong reason, the outcome would have been the same. Thus, it would have been illogical to lose sleep over the motivations for it at all. But it does matter, doesn't it? Why we do things?"
"It does," Sokka answered. "The why might just matter more than anything else."
She nuzzled into his neck, and he twisted around so that she could melt into his front rather than his back. They stayed in the water, holding each other close.
"We had a saying, back in the Water Tribe... only the dead have seen the end of winter," Sokka mused. "I guess it was a fatalistic way to look at things, but sometimes I wonder if it's true across all things."
"Fate," Azula scoffed gently. "Life and death are predetermined things, I suppose. Even if the manner and time are matters of chance. But the world we live and die in is up to us to create. I want a better one, and so do you. One where the living might never see war at all."
"Thank you for what you did back there," he said, peppering her face with a thousand kisses. "You probably saved me a lifetime of sleepless nights. Doesn't it bother you?"
"No," Azula said honestly. "I didn't see what you saw. I had no personal reasons for taking his life. There isn't really much justice in this world. Perhaps that's why it's so satisfying to occasionally make some. That is a world I would want our heirs to live in."
Sokka kissed her deeply, and she wrapped her legs around his waist. "That sounds like a good world," he said, when they pulled away for air. "That sounds like a world I want to make a family with you in."
Azula looped her arms around his neck and looked up at him. Sokka marveled for the thousand time at those molten gold pools he had found himself lost in. She smiled and nibbled at his ear, before whispering wickedly, "Shall we practice, then?"