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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"But it will be," is the answer. "And these two aren't keeping you all warm on their own. Would you wait for needing it?"

"......maybe."

Jack is getting better at the guilting.

"A blanket's a harder thing to find than the sea," Jack's saying instead. "Less impact, it has. What say you to these buildings? Chance of luck in there?"

Sokka is already sighing deeply, before Jack even finishes the sentence, and is frowning as he looks up at the sky. But the clouds and sun have no answers for him, other than to inform him that it's going to be a beautiful day today.

Cocky bastards.

"All right, fine," Sokka grumbles, irritable as he gets to his feet, "I'll do this again, but the fourth world I get yanked to, I'm sitting down and I'm not getting up again."

"And no doubt there'll be another cocky Soothsayer to make you see the foolishness of your ways," Jack says jovially.

"Or mayhap that time the girls will tell you louder."

"If I don't find a way back to their parents by the time they're whiny, tempermental teenagers like I am, I'm gonna be really pissed off," Sokka notes, but he's smirking a little, putting a hand over Hana's hair when she stirs and then drops off back to sleep.

He starts off in the direction Jack had pointed for the ocean. First things first, after all. After a few steps, he's looking over curiously at Jack. "So you're a Soothsayer?"

"When I feel like it," Jack says cheerfully. "I say what I like. But I know if it's true or not."

Sokka nods solemnly, eyes forward as they walk.

"...I have no idea what that is, by the way."

"Means I know how things are," Jack answers.

And for example, "These nieces of yours. Not by blood. Last time you moved worlds you went ahead of them."

About to question the first statement out of confusion, the words pause in Sokka's throat when Jack clarifies and the older man is getting eyed a bit.

"...oh yeah, now I really want to walk around with you, 'cause that's not creepy at all."

"Sarcasm is never lost on me," Jack says, and grins cheerfully at him.

"I'm better to have with, than against. And as it is, I know you wish me no harm, you know I have no reason to turn against you."

Twisty reader logic for the win!

"Ah, ah, ah, ah," Sokka begins, holding up a hand to ward off any more words for the moment, giving Jack a look that's mostly teasing suspicion. "First of all, I was kind of hoping it wouldn't be lost on you. And second of all, you might know that I've got no reason to hurt you, but I'm one-hundred percent nothing-special-human, buddy, and I have no idea if you're trustworthy and no way to know for sure until you try to stab me in the back."

Jack spreads his hands innocently, and also steps back.

"You're in possession of your full wits, though. I tell you right now that 'course I amn't trustworthy, but what do you have I may want?"

There's a scuffle, a clatter and a bang, as if someone had been trying to watch the two of them by means of standing on piled up dustbins and had found out the hard way that dustbins don't pile very well.

"YAUUUGH!"

This possibly indicates that they are not alone in the street.

Sokka turns sharply at the noise, club abruptly back in his hand. He frowns and keeps his eyes on the crumpled dustbins while he answers Jack: "I don't know, maybe you're a baby-cannibal or are sexually attracted to gloves. I'm not ruling anything out!"

Jack doesn't react much to the noise.

At least not until after he's said:

"There's better eatings to be had on just babies..."

Then he's interrupted by turning his attention to the dustbins and who's there.

"Now, that's a thing I've notseen before."

Sokka waves his sword at them, from where he's flat on his back.

"...ouch."

Spying the sword, Sokka slumps with a deep sigh, replacing his club on his back beside Loo. "The bins or the idiot in them?" he asks Jack dryly, but he's approaching quickly nonetheless to peer at his-- sort-of-double.

"Are you all right?"

"You call yourself an idiot."

Once again, should be a question. Isn't.

Jack finds it all very funny, though.

The Sokka in the bins jumps to his feet and puts the sword behind his back.

"I meant to do that!"

The baby-laden Sokka gives Jack a side-glance and a smirk. "Quit reading my mind or-- whatever it is you're doing.

"What were you doing?" he asks his younger self, not accusatory, simply curious. "Did you find... whatever you were looking for?"

"Quit being so obvious," Jack returns sharply, but he hangs back to hear Sokka's answer.

"I found a whole lot of dead things," the younger Sokka says, abruptly serious. "I think we should get out of here. And, uh, you too, since you didn't look like you were trying to kill -- him. Me. Him. Me. Um. Us."

"Pbbth," Sokka replies to Jack, earning giggles from both girls. "Dead things like animals, dead things like bugs, dead things like people, or all of the above?"

A moment passes before he's giving his younger self a slight frown. "We're-- gonna have to come up with some other way to tell us apart, 'cause that's going to get really confusing."

"You can call me Sokka," the one in Fire Nation clothes says firmly, folding skinny arms. "You can be ... uh ... Weirdo Spooky Baby Boy. ... and um, you're not me too, are you?" This last to Jack, rather dubiously. Sokka's pretty sure he never looked like that.