Chapter Text
Dim moonlight shines in through the flap of the tent he shares with Gran-Gran and Katara, the soft sounds of their sleeping filling the quiet. Sokka sat up, careful not to wake them, and unwound the wrappings circling his dominant hand. Katara shifted in her sleep and he froze; This was private. Inscriptions were usually covered up since they were something to be kept private. The only ones who didn’t wear wrappings were people who had already found their soulmates or who didn’t have Inscriptions. Or weirdos.
Nearly everyone was born with an Inscription. They always looped around your dominant hand like a bracelet and were always the first words uttered to you by your soulmate, the person with the soul that perfectly complemented yours.
And apparently, the complement to Sokka’s soul is a big fat jerk.
Sokka scowls down at the harsh words he’d burned into his mind years ago.
Shut your mouth, you Water Tribe peasant!
Who went around calling other people peasants, anyway? Probably some spoiled blue-blood who’d just turned their nose up at finding out Sokka was their soulmate. Well, that’s fine with him. It wasn’t like he plans on ever finding them.
That is if he even could. Most people went their whole lives without meeting the person who would say their Inscription, and some people meet their soulmates but pass them by without realizing it.
Touching someone’s Inscription is the only way to be sure they’re your soulmate; just saying the words isn’t enough. He’d asked Gran-Gran how that worked. She’d said his spirit would just know.
Sokka wraps his Inscription and rolls over. The only thing Sokka’s spirit knows is that soulmates are more trouble than they’re worth.
***
When they’d set off to go fishing the next day, Sokka hadn't been prepared to find a boy and his giant fluffy monster encased in ice.
He really hadn’t been prepared to find that that boy was apparently Katara’s soulmate.
***
“Katara’s soulmate is the Avatar,” Sokka thinks hysterically as he runs to pick up said Avatar’s staff, “Because why not, right?”
His feet slide a little on the deck of the Fire Navy ship, the metal still slick with water from Aang’s awesome display of waterbending earlier. He bends to pick up Aang’s staff, but his heart leaps into his throat when another hand grabs the other end. Scar Guy is trying to climb back onto the deck of the ship from where Aang had knocked him off, a vicious snarl on his face. Panicking, Sokka jabs him in the head with the staff, hoping to dislodge him. It works and Sokka lets out a whoop.
“That’s from the Water Tribe!” he can’t resist crowing triumphantly down to where Scar Guy hangs onto the chain of the boat’s anchor.
Scar Guy’s mouth falls open at Sokka’s words, his good eye widening in shock. Well, serves him right for underestimating Sokka!
***
They arrive on Kyoshi Island and get a less than warm welcome. They get ambushed and are only let free when Aang drops the townspeople’s jaws by doing some airbending. Who knew traveling with the Avatar would come in handy.
***
He gets his ass handed to him by Suki, the leader of the Kyoshi Warriors. She’s tough and pretty and doesn’t take any of his shit.
Too bad she isn’t in the habit of calling people “peasants.”
***
Scar Guy shows up—whom they discover is named Zuko, actual Prince of the Fire Nation—and he attacks them a few days into their stay on Kyoshi Island. Sokka fights him in full Kyoshi Warrior regalia and can’t help but be offended that Zuko seems to be fighting him more seriously now than when he’d been in Water Tribe Warrior garb.
He wipes off the Kyoshi makeup as soon as they’re safely on Appa’s back and looks back to get one final glimpse of Kyoshi Island. He feels a thrill go up his back when his and Zuko’s eyes meet. Zuko looks stunned, and Sokka’s face flushes in embarrassment. Zuko probably hadn’t expected one of the girls he’d fought to have actually been a dude in a dress.
***
After Sokka’s short stint in the Spirit World, Aang says he needs to go into the Fire Nation because he had a vision or something. It’s a horrendously terrible idea, but Sokka insists on going with him anyway because there’s no way he’ll let Aang go alone. They make it through the fiery barrage of a Fire Navy blockade only to arrive at the temple and discover that the Fire Sages that are supposed to be loyal to the Avatar have turned traitor.
Because of course they have.
One of them, Shyu, claims to still be loyal to Aang and helps them get to where Aang can meet Roku. After a bit of brilliance on Sokka’s part, if he does say so himself, they get the Fire Sages to open the big metal door then ambush them so Aang can get through.
In another twist of rotten luck, however, Aang gets himself captured by Zuko. Seriously, this guy appears like a bad copper piece!
While he and Katara get chained to a pillar, Aang manages to escape and squeeze through the door before they can shut it.
“He’s in!” Katara says with relief and Zuko growls.
He paces like a caged tigerdillo, his eyes flicking from Shyu’s kneeling form in front of him to where Sokka and Katara are chained up. It may just be Sokka’s imagination, but it feels like Zuko’s eyes keep lingering on him specifically.
Things get really weird when a smarmy guy named Zhao shows up and calls Zuko a traitor before capturing him and tying him to a pillar next to theirs. Isn’t it against the rules or something to accuse the Crown Prince of treason?
The weirdest thing is that Zuko doesn’t even deny it.
Then Roku shows up and starts bringing the temple down around their ears, effectively turning Sokka’s thoughts away from Zuko.
***
“Why did Katara think it was a good idea to steal from pirates?” Sokka thinks plaintively as he stands trussed up like a pigchicken while the pirates negotiate with Zuko. The idiots don’t even know how much of a raw deal they’re getting. An idea suddenly strikes him and he grins.
Sokka turns to the pirate captain, incredulity coloring his tone. “You’re really going to hand over the Avatar for a stupid piece of parchment?”
“Don’t listen to him,” Prince Jerkface says sharply. “He’s trying to turn us against each other!”
The pirate captain looks at Aang dubiously. “Your friend is the Avatar?”
“Sure is,” Sokka says brightly, adding a cajoling lilt to his tone, “and I’ll bet he’ll fetch a lot more on the Black Market than that fancy scroll.”
“Shut your mouth, you Water Tribe peasant!” Zuko spits at Sokka, eyes flashing dangerously.
Aang mutters something at him, but Sokka isn’t listening. He’s too busy gaping at Zuko, his jaw on the floor because no, it can’t be, the Spirits can’t hate him that much—!
Zuko freezes and stares right back, eyes wide. They hold each other's gaze for the briefest of moments before everything goes sideways. His plan to convince the pirates had worked, and there’s a mad dash to grab Aang and his sister and escape while the pirates fought with Zuko and his crew.
He doesn’t think about Zuko again until they’re on Appa and safely in the air. Once they’re out of danger, however, it’s all his brain will let him think about.
Zuko, the Crown Prince of the Fire Nation, is his soulmate.
No, it isn’t possible. That can't have been the first time Zuko addressed him directly. They’d run into Zuko a bunch of times before this and he had to have said something to Sokka before, Sokka just couldn’t remember it. Yeah, that had to be it! It’d also been a stressful day, maybe he’d misheard Zuko earlier.
He leans back against Appa’s saddle, relieved. See, there’s no need to panic! Everything’s fine!
The next morning he duly ignores how piercing golden eyes had haunted his dreams.
***
This fortune-teller is full of it.
He sits on a cushion around her fire, arms crossed and scowling. He can’t believe that Katara had talked him into this.
“Now throw the bone you chose into the fire. I’ll read your fortune in the cracks,” She serves herself tea and takes a sip. She doesn’t turn to look at him.
Sokka grumbles but does as he’s told, tossing his bone in the middle of the flames. The bone slowly forms hairline cracks so fine that he has to lean in uncomfortably close to the fire and squint to see them. Aunt Wu actually puts her teacup down and raises her eyebrows.
“Well, well,” she says, peering at the bone in the fire with interest. “What do we have here?”
“What, am I going to singlehandedly take down the Fire Lord or something?” Sokka says sarcastically. He’s not gonna fall for her theatrics.
“Not quite,” she says with an odd little smile. “You will play a role in this conflict, yes, but your acts of war will not be as monumental as your acts of love.”
“You’re saying I’m gonna stop the war with the power of love?” Sokka says, his tone dripping with incredulity.
“You, child of the moon,” she goes on, unphased, “have a fate that is inextricably intertwined with another. They, a true child of the sun, are the push to your pull, the ebb to your flow. They are lost, but you will help them find their way. It is through your love that—"
Sokka shoots to his feet. “Woah, woah, woah, back up. Are you seriously saying that I’m gonna fall for some firebender?”
“I wouldn’t say that they’re just some firebender, but essentially, yes.”
Gleaming golden eyes behind a bright red scar flash through his mind, and he shakes his head to dislodge the image. “No, absolutely not! I’m too smart to fall for the enemy!”
He hears something that sounds suspiciously like a snort, but when he turns to look at Aunt Wu, she’s serenely sipping her tea. “Believe what you must, but the bones never lie.”
Sokka bursts out of the room and plops down onto his cushion next to Aang’s, arms crossed and muttering darkly.
“So what did she say?” Aang asks.
“A bunch of nonsense. Fortune-telling is a load of hogmonkeywash!”
***
They finally make it to the North Pole and Sokka discovers that the beautiful girl he saw at the entrance is Princess Yue, daughter to the chief of the Northern Water Tribe.
The more time he spends with her, the more disappointed he is that the first words she had for him were nothing short of polite and cordial.
***
Sokka discovers that Princess Yue is one of those rare people born without an Inscription.
“I don’t mind, really,” she says quietly as they stand side by side on their favorite bridge, watching as the reflection of the moon rippled with the waves. “The Spirits have given me more than enough.”
Sokka can’t help but rage at the unfairness of it all. Not only does he get some jerk for a soulmate, but this kind, sweet, beautiful girl gets no one! How cruel is that?
He takes Yue’s hands in his, and sets his jaw in determination. “Screw the Spirits!”
“Sokka!” She gasps.
“I mean it, screw them and soulmates and Inscriptions!” Sokka says fiercely, conviction burning like a bonfire in his chest. “I’m sick and tired of being told what’ll make me happy! I say that we’re free to choose our own happiness, Spirits or no Spirits!”
She smiles at him and he hugs her close, pretending he hadn’t seen the sorrow in her deep blue eyes.
***
As he watches Yue fade away in a wash of silvery light, her last kiss cool on his lips, Sokka realizes why the Spirits didn’t give Yue an Inscription.
Not out of cruelty, but out of kindness.