shatterverse | (no subject)

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Sokka has gotten used to many things in his admittedly short life. He's gotten used to the fact that his sister can play with magic water, and also likely kill him with it should she so desire. He's gotten used to the fact that a bouncy twelve year old has more power than he can imagine and is meant to save the world he was born on. He's gotten used to the idea that nothing is as it seems and scrawny, nothing children should be looked at with as much suspicion as great hulking men with guns. Sokka has gotten used to the idea of space travel and grav thrusters and slipstream, he's gotten used to speaking the same language as everybody else but not being able to write the same one, he's gotten used to writing all of his work notes out in Chinese because pretty much everything in the last year was written in it and you couldn't depend on people to be around to take care of you. Sokka has gotten used to having a Firebender in his family, and a tiny young woman who is freakishly strong and twice as scary when she wants to be. He's gotten used to taking care of and absolutely adoring two tiny half-Fire Nation girls.

Who are, respectively, strapped to his chest and back by a cloth sling as he wanders down the Street of Eden toward his designated workshop-building, where most people assume he is hard at work trying to find a way out but he is, in actuality, carving loads of tiny toy animals for his nieces.

Sokka has also gotten used to the idea that while he isn't useless, there is a point where he has to recognize that he just doesn't know how to fix something, and needs to give it a rest for a while.

So with Hana and Loo babbling in his ears in their Baby Language, with an occasional Mama or Dada or Unca thrown in that he can actually understand, he walks on.

When the flash comes, Sokka ducks and curls his arms over the heads of the girls, because he's gotten used to sudden attacks. And when no explosion or other noise follows, he gets to his feet quickly, with a club in one hand and a boomerang in another, because Sokka's gotten used to being lulled into false security.

But when Sokka looks around and realizes he's left the Street of Eden and is in a place that isn't the Street, isn't Apocalyptica, isn't the Earth Kingdom, isn't anywhere in any of those places, he stares. Because despite doing it twice before, Sokka has not gotten used to this.

"No."

His reaction is, possibly, quite surprising.

"No! No, god damn it, no!" Glaring hatefully up at the sky, Sokka holds tight to the girls in the sling-- and then sits down abruptly, cross-legged, in the middle of a ruined road.

"I am going to sit here until you put us back! You can throw me to any world you want, but you can't make me get up!"

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Sokka considers this for a moment, something about Jack's attitude and descriptions that seems oddly familiar. He's frowning when he looks back up, but thoughtfully, like he's looking at a puzzle rather than actually upset.

"...you're a pirate, aren't you?"

Plz 2 b not having Waterbending scrolls.

Jack throws up his hands in friendly supplication.

"Caught in the act, I am. You're clever, I can see."

Sokka grins a little back, amused by the way Jack answered if not the answer itself. "Oh, I'm brilliant all right. Hey, let me know if you find an ocean here 'cause that's one thing I'd actually like to see."

Jack gives him a sideways smirk, as if about to let on his deepest secret, and looks around himself, his eyes glazing again.

Within a few moments, he's pointing.

"Not five minutes walk that way."

Sokka blinks, grin dropping away as he looks off sharply in the direction Jack pointed, stunned.

"...really?"

Now the question is: to get up or not to get up?

"As I speak truth, it is," Jack says, and he scrambles onto his feet while Sokka's still standing.

"What say you, Loo? Hana? You want Unca to show you your first ocean?"

Sokka is actually still sitting in the middle of the road he's first appeared on. Hana and Loo scream gleefully at Jack's scrambling and excitement, little arms and tiny hands waving as they agree that, yes, their unca should absolutely show them an ocean.

While Sokka frowns in the direction Jack pointed and wonders if this is some sort of trick the universe is playing to get him to move and lock him out of Eden forever.

Moderately more solemn, Jack faces Sokka, and offers a hand.

"This isn't new to you."

It's not a question.

He glances first at the hand and then up to Jack, smile friendly enough, though it's equally wry. "Not even a little bit," he confirms - and doesn't take the hand. "...honestly? I'm not sure if moving is a good idea. I'm trying to out-stubborn the universe into putting me and the girls back."

"It ever worked before?"

Somehow every question Jack ever asks sounds rhetorical.

Which is kind of weird, but since they're talking about spontaneous world-hopping, Sokka isn't thinking too much of it at the moment, preferring to shrug and lean back a little to look off in the direction Jack pointed, as if he might be able to see the ocean through the rubble. "Well, I've never tried it before. But it's getting pretty damn ridiculous, so I'm willing to try pretty much anything at this point."

"It's cold out here," Jack observes. "How long will you wait?"

"Until one of the girls starts whining and guilts me into going to find food and blankets for them," Sokka replies in a deep sigh, frowning deeply off into the distance again. "It just seems stupid to try and play nice with another place. As soon as we settle in, I'm just going to get dragged off somewhere else, and if I don't have these two strapped to me I'll be going alone and they'll be stuck here."

"Sitting down strikes me as much a defeat as playing on," Jack suggests.

"Seems to me, best chance is to find us a caster as can switch things back."

"I'm pretty much defeated any way you look at it," Sokka replies dryly, "but, this being the third time I've done this? I figure someone is in control of it and I'm done playing this game."

But back-up plans are nice.

"...what's a caster?"

"And stop swimming with the current?"

Jack drops the subject, tilting his head quizzically.

"Well, there's a thing, you not knowing that. A caster's one who can change the nature of things. You have none in your homeland?"

"...nooo," Sokka replies slowly, starting to frown. "But that's an incredibly vague description, so... I guess we might have them and just have a different word for it. You know you might not be in your world either, right?"

"Meh!" Hana agrees emphatically, squirming in her sling. Loo has since fallen asleep at Sokka's back and he's ignoring the drool pooling at his shoulder because of it.

Jack grins wider.

"Oh I know we aren't that."

Sokka smiles a little for baby commentary and shrugs. "I just mean, don't count on their being casters around. There might be and that'd be awesome-- and I'd definitely make you convince them to send us back - but there might not, too, and you'd need to plan for alternatives."

"My plan will never be to sit," Jack says. "Not when there's standing walking, running, and mayhap sailing as choices.

"Can you give up when they need you?"

Sokka's response to this is perhaps not what Jack expected.

"Is that seriously the best you can do? You're gonna have to guilt me way harder than that for my pride to take over what seems like logic at the moment."

Jack's response to that is to laugh.

"No,"he says cheerfully. "I know I amn't telling you a thing you know not already."

That gets a slight smile back to Sokka's face as he absently bounces Hana in her sling, tiny mouth open in a monstrous yawn. "I know how it looks, too, me sitting in a road and refusing to get up. But it's not the craziest thing I've seen and so far as I know, it's what's going to get me back where we came from. So until these two," he nods to the twins, "who own me completely and absolutely do know how to guilt me into whatever they want, start needing something other than a nap, I'm staying right here."

Despite, perhaps, how terribly tempting the ocean is.

Jack looks from Sokka to Hana, to tiny little Loo asleep on his back.

"All right," he says. "You need a blanket."

Sokka blinks, brows lifting slightly. "It isn't cold yet," he argues.