Chapter Text
“Hey, this is some quality rope!”
Having made his declaration, Sokka resumes inspecting said rope, its sadly cut coils now draped across his palm. They’re double-braided, strong and firm yet pleasantly smooth to the touch, with a little reddish tint that speaks to their dreadful Fire Nation origins but does make them nicer to look at it. Most remarkably, the coils have remained totally dry, despite hours of exposure to the polar elements and whatever ice water Zuko hauled them through-
Okay, so maybe Sokka’s got bigger things to think about than some very pretty rope. Things like the pitched siege thundering around them, as the full might of the Fire Nation Navy focuses on the Northern Water Tribe. Like Aang, newly rescued from the rope Zuko bound him with. Aang’s panicking because the spirits are in trouble and need their help, an absurdity that chills Sokka worse than the polar night.
Sokka clenches the rope in his fist and clambers onto Appa, besides Yue, off to rescue the spirits from what’s no doubt another dastardly Fire Nation plot. In front of him, Aang hops up to take the reins…
“Wait,” Aang says, slumping forward. “We can’t just leave him here.”
He looks to Zuko. Zuko’s half-buried in ice, right where Katara dumped him after destroying his latest devious attempt at abduction.
“Sure, we can,” Sokka says breezily. Zuko’s safely unconscious for now, but soon enough he’ll burn his way out. It’s a law of the universe, like the sun coming up every morning- he’ll be up and back at his “quest for honor,” as persistent and desperate as an otter penguin yapping for fish. “I bet you he’s working with whoever’s hunting the spirits. We bring him back to the oasis right now? It won’t be pretty.”
Aang takes a weird, longing look at Zuko. “Okay, we’ll come back for him. Yip-yip!”
/
The moon goes dark.
Sokka abandons the rope. Abandons all thoughts besides we’re doomed and Yue’s gone.
Somehow the moon rises once more.
(After the battle Aang returns to where they’d left Zuko, only to find a blanket of flat, unbroken snow. Zuko’s obviously escaped to torment them another day, but Sokka can’t bring himself to care right now.)
When the sun rises, the moon must fall once more. Sokka feels a phantom hand brushing his neck as the sunbeams creep forward.
It’s surely her farewell.
/
Except it isn’t.
He smiles again, when he climbs onto his hammock and feels a quick tickling touch in his sleep, so light he might’ve imagined it. When he wakes he gets a flick to his chin that makes him frown, because it stings a little. Maybe there’s a learning curve to becoming the moon spirit.
Hypothesis 1: Yue’s presence is still lingering, blessing him with touches from the other side.
It’s sunny though, and the moon’s nowhere in sight. So Sokka’s rational side points out, regretfully, that it might not be Yue at all.
Hypothesis 2: Sokka’s imagining all this, because he’s suffering from post-battle nerves and/or badly-managed grief.
He stays twitchy all the way to their rendezvous with General Fong of the Earth Kingdom, constantly looking over his shoulder, throwing suspicious glares at Momo whenever he comes within poking distance. But besides one awful buzzing on his cheek- which turns out to be an ordinary milli-fly, newly smeared across said cheek- he doesn’t sense anything else unusual. Once he’s safe in Fong’s garrison, the adrenaline from the North Pole slowly subsides. The twitchiness fades with it. Hypothesis 2 is validated; this is nothing a good night of sleep won’t cure.
(He feels a vague tug on his ankles that night, when he tries to convince Aang to let Fong have his way and insta-kill the Fire Lord with some sweet Avatar State action. Sokka dismisses it as a trick of his imagination. An outlier that should not be counted.)
/
General Fong works through a list of hypotheses of his own, trying to forcibly drag Aang into the Avatar State. He tries hooking Aang on chi-enhancing tea, but it seems to have no effect besides doubling his usual hyperness. A later strategy involves an Earth Kingdom sage, who dresses Aang in ceremonial clothing from all four nations and then proceeds to combine the four elements together in a bowl. Water. Earth. Fire...
The sage takes a lit torch from off the wall and brings it closer to them all, intending to drop it into his bowl of mud, but the fire jumps. The flame leaps from the wick and arcs forward, stretching its fire-y tendrils straight towards Aang-
Who blows it out with one tremendous gust.
General Fong claps his hands in interest. “Have you already studied firebending?”
“Barely.” Aang shakes his head. “I didn’t do that. Not on purpose, at least.”
“Then it’s a sign of your subconscious skills,” the general boasts. “This must be a step on the path to the Avatar State. Bring forth another torch; come now, Avatar, show us your power!”
The sage presents a new torch. Aang huffs and puffs and mimics random firebending poses he probably stole off Zuko- the angles look wrong, but who’s Sokka to judge- and the flame does nothing. It flickers irregularly, looking perfectly, spitefully ordinary, until Aang airbends too hard and blows it right out.
/
The moon’s waning tonight. Sokka sleeps like a log, completely free from phantom touches or any other pesky supernatural-ish phenomena.
Case closed.
/
Fong turns out to be more than a little nuts, because apparently traveling with the Avatar means you can never have nice things. Sokka whacks Fong on the head with Boomerang, and then they pile onto Appa once more. Just him, Katara, and Aang, on their way to Omashu.
(Sokka jumps, feeling a finger-like poke to the small of his back. But when he turns, he only finds Momo sitting behind him, staring up with thoroughly suspicious widened eyes.)
“Secret tunnel! Secret tunnel! Through the mountains, secret, secret, secret, secret tunnel!”
They escape Fong and run right into the clutches of a troupe of non-air nomads, starring an off-key musician, Chong, who may or may not have short-term amnesia. One of the nomads gushes about a waterfall that makes a never-ending rainbow. Slightly more usefully, Chong claims there’s a secret passage to Omashu, right through the mountains.
After the non-secret route gets them nearly killed by Fire Nation cannonballs, Sokka begrudgingly follows the nomads into the passage. It’s just an underground tunnel, carved in earthbending territory. Nothing sketchy or unusual about that...
“Actually, it's not just one tunnel,” Chong says, “The lovers didn't want anyone to find out about their love, so they built a whole labyrinth.”
“Labyrinth?” Sokka snaps.
“All you need to do is trust in love,” one of the other nomads reassures him. “According to the curse.”
“Curse?” Sokka squawks. Nobody else seems to listen. Nobody ever listens to him.
According to this alleged curse, only those who “trust in love” can escape the caves. That is vague, vague phrasing, and for a second Sokka’d rather take his chances with the Fire Nation cannonballs again. Then Aang- master of balance and love and icky crushes on Sokka’s baby sister- overrules him, and then the Fire Nation closes in and pins them inside the cursed labyrinth, in with a bunch of giant draconic statues that look like they’re watching.
Not creepy in the slightest.
The Fire Nation’s blown up the entrance, trapping them all inside the gloomy darkness, and Sokka’s trusting in love less every second. Still, he doesn’t lose his cool. He is an unshakable expert explorer after all, and so he treats this as any rational man trapped in a possibly cursed labyrinth would. He takes stock of their supplies- five torches, capable of lasting two hours each. Then, he grabs a pen and some paper, and he starts drawing a map.
It’d be a foolproof plan, if the walls would just hold still for a minute.
“Sokka,” Katara complains one torch later, “this is the tenth dead-end you’ve led us to!”
He glares at the path in front of them, blocked off by a deluge of rocks. Then he glares at his map. “This doesn’t make sense, we’ve already been through this way!”
“We don’t need a map,” says Chong in singsong. “We just need love!”
Sokka keeps pacing around, totally ignoring him. Then something brushes the nape of his neck, and he drops his map with a squeak. Surprised, everyone turns to him.
“There was something behind me,” he protests.
“No?” Aang shrugs. “At least I didn’t see anything, sorry.”
“Me neither,” says Katara, frowning in concern. “Maybe you’re just jumpy. Would you feel better if you had a torch?”
Sokka resents that remark. He is a battle-tested warrior. He doesn’t need to personally carry a torch, even if creeping around a cursed and scientifically infuriating tunnel system gives him the heebie-jeebies.
“...Yeah, I’d like that.” Once he’s taken the torch from Chong, he rolls up his map and announces the conclusion of his extensive scientific inquiry. “There’s only one reason why the map wouldn’t get us out- the tunnels must be changing.”
That sparks a minor panic in their merry band.
“I knew we shouldn’t have come down here,” Chong cries out.
“Right,” Sokka deadpans. “If only we’d listened to you.”
There’s a huff of air on his neck like a chuckle, but Sokka grips his torch a little tighter and steadfastly ignores it.
“Everyone be quiet,” says Katara. “Listen!”
And now there’s a ghostly clamor wailing its way through the caves, and yeah, they really shouldn’t have come down here. Still, Sokka does his best to show no fear, standing tall with his torch, facing down the darkness.
Then a wolf-bat shoots out of the tunnel and dives right at him. At first Sokka ducks, but as it swoops around them all with its fangs bared, he lifts his torch and tries sweeping it through the air. He means just to scare it off. Yet the flame leaps from his torch like he’d thrown it, more effective than he was expecting. The wolf-bat’s wing catches on fire. Its smoking mass corkscrews through the air, screeching and scaring everyone else to the side before spiraling down into Appa’s leg. Thank the spirits, his wool doesn’t catch fire, but he lows in pain and starts charging wildly into the cave walls. At first Sokka stays in one place, stunned as the tunnels start to collapse, but then there’s a painful yank on his ponytail, tugging him backwards, just before a massive slab of stone falls right where he’d been standing.
He gets up, choking on the dust, one hand still clenched around the torch. Then he looks at the veritable wall of rocks separating him from everyone else, screeches just like the wolf-bat, and starts digging, limbs windmilling as he tries to burrow right through.
He burrows and he burrows, but it’s no use.
He’s alone.
Going by the soreness of his limbs, he dug for at least half an hour, yet the torch is still burning strong at close to its original length. Sokka contemplates that and then shrugs off the discrepancy- he must be over-estimating how long he worked. Blame it on leftover exhaustion from, well, everything.
He gets up and starts trudging forward. He thinks it’s forward. He keeps his map, tucking it under one arm, but frankly he’s got some doubts about that approach now. Logic may have failed. Still, intuition can get him out of this. Sokka’s instincts will kick in any second now.
So he keeps going forward, and left, and then backwards and then right and then backwards for a little while again, and bam, his instincts are on point (see, Katara?). There’s a big circular door made of stone, and clearly this is the exit. He’s saved!
It then occurs to him that it’s a big circular door made of stone, with no handle to speak of.
Frowning, he lifts his torch and examines it a little more closely. It’s not unlike that door at the Air Temple that opened to airbending, or the one that the Fire Sages opened with firebending.
“The key is earthbending,” Sokka mutters to himself. It helps, sometimes, to talk through his plans out loud and pretend someone’s listening. It’s not weird. Not even a little.
He kneels down and inspects the door more closely. It’s got an intricate pattern on it, a circular border with grooves around the edge, but the sculpture looks older and simpler than the craftsmanship at the other temples.
“Maybe fake earthbending could work here,” he remarks.
He reaches out to touch the possibly cursed ancient sculpture. After a second, he gets up close and friendly with the border, sticking his hand right into one of the lines carved deep in the stone.
There’s something in there.
Sokka brings forth his torch, and the firelight reveals a rudimentary locking mechanism. If he can just find a key, a piece of rock to jam in, maybe he’ll be able to trick the door into opening. He steps back and scans the area.
There’s another creepy draconic statue watching him. When he takes a closer look, he realizes that no, those are badgermoles, creatively reimagined with weird head spikes.
Weird head spikes that look the same size as the grooves in the door.
Sokka weighs the pros and cons of desecrating an ancient statue of the patron animal of earthbending and decides, yeah, it’s worth it. He aims Boomerang, and a perfectly key-sized chunk of rock clatters down. He collects it from the floor and lugs it over to the door.
Yep, he nailed the size- at least on one side of the fragment. The other edge is all rough and choppy from where it broke off from the statue, but hey, he’ll just leave that side up.
He fits the smooth side into one of the grooves and feels a neat click.
“Nice thinking,” he tells himself, because a little well-deserved preening never hurt anyone’s mental health. “So now we just need one, two, three...seven more of these.”
There are eight grooves, and at first it seems like he needs to just fit eight keys in at the same time. But that’s not right; the other temples’ locks required prodigious displays of bending. Yet any earthbending kid could chop off eight rocks and stick them in holes. Surely there’s some deeper trick at play.
Also, it had better not be right, because there are only five head-spikes still left on the statues.
He removes the rock and spins around, hoping for some more clues. Maybe there’s another statue to steal spikes from, hiding down the tunnel? Yet out of the corner of his eye he spots his torch’s flame blowing sideways, like there’s a breeze, even though Sokka hasn’t felt one.
“Am I dead?” he squawks to the labyrinth. “Did I die and become immune to wind? Because don’t get me wrong, that’d be super-helpful back home in the winter, but that’s still really not what I signed up for here?”
His torch’s flame calms down again, and Sokka laughs after a second. There’s a perfectly rational reason for the flame to jump around weirdly. The Mechanist put powders in his candles so they flickered on command and let out special noises. Obviously the nomads did something to their torches too- not with any clear purpose, just because they enjoy the chaos.
Still, for no particular reason, he takes a look in the direction the flame had pointed. There are pilasters framing the door, columns set into the wall, and there’s writing on the pedestal of one. “May all things be in order.”
Sokka checks out the other pedestal and finds the same message.
“Right,” he drawls. “The creepy labyrinth with the moving walls really cares about logic and order. I totally believe that.”
He drops down on the pedestal with a huff. Takes a look at the torch that’ll burn out in under two hours, though so far it still looks it’s new.
(Which is its own little mystery, but it’s one that benefits Sokka for a change. He’s not going to question it right now.)
“May all things be in order,” he murmurs to himself. Then he leaps up and takes another look at the eight grooves. “Maybe there’s a combination. I just have to get the order right.”
He squints, doing some quick mental math. There are 40,000 possible orderings of eight grooves, rounding down. It’s infeasible for any old layman to open the door, but maybe a skilled earthbender can feel the rock falling into place. It makes perfect sense. Too bad he’s as far as you can get from a skilled earthbender.
“So there’s probably a metal locking mechanism on the inside,” he muses, ignoring the way his voice echoes creepily. “So any old earthbender can’t make it in. Just the ones who sense the right order.”
He tries shoving his ear right up against the wall and sticking the block into a random groove. There’s a click, same as before. He tries the other seven, clambering up onto the door and balancing on the carved decoration like it’s a ledge. There’s seven other clicks. They all sound totally identical.
He hops down with a grunt of frustration. His torch is still burning merrily away.
He looks down the seemingly endless tunnels, and checks the map he’d made, covered with criss-crosses and parts he’d scratched out. He hasn’t got a better plan at the moment.
So he tries it again, moving the block around, listening as carefully as he can for a click that’s not like the others. On his fourth try, there’s a weird tap against his knuckles, like the stone side of the groove had jumped up to touch him, even though it couldn’t possibly have. He’s not an earthbender.
Sokka stares at the groove and then decides to trust his instincts.
He starts drawing a new diagram on the back of his map. “So the rightmost one on the bottom goes first, which leaves seven choices for the next one.”
He tries all seven again, going clockwise. Nothing.
“What?” Sokka says. “Do I have to do it all in the right order?”
There’s no answer. Suddenly, Sokka really hopes the lock doesn’t want him to reuse grooves, because then there are infinitely many orderings and he’s never getting out of here.
With a groan, he sticks the block in the first groove and then tries going counterclockwise. When he sticks the block in his next guess, he feels the click, and then the same weird rapping sensation.
“...Huh.”
He keeps going, first punching in the grooves he’s already figured out and then continuing onwards, trying new spots until there’s another convenient tap. Obviously he’s tuned into the system of tumblers within the lock, because it’s gotten creaky with age or because his instincts are just that awesome. Standing on tip-toes to reach the top of the door, he inserts the key and feels the click and a weirdly delayed tap.
Then the whole door rumbles, throwing him to the ground, and it slowly slides away, revealing-
Not the exit.
“Are you kidding me?” Sokka whines. He can totally indulge in kiddy theatrics, not like anyone’s around to hear him.
Then he steps inside this new cursed room that’s full of dust and dark as a tomb.
Oh.
It is a tomb.
Sokka climbs down to the bottom of the hall. At the center are two sarcophagi, raised up on a giant stone circle- a pedestal, with carvings along the side. He kneels down to examine them, surely imagining the way his torch flares, illuminating them more clearly.
“So here we’ve got two lovers,” he mutters to himself. “They’re from two different villages, on opposite sides of a war. Totally normal. And they learn earthbending to meet each other, and...they made the cursed labyrinth together. Well, whatever turns you on. And then...oh.”
Out of nowhere, the guy dies.
Sokka feels like that’s not how the story was supposed to go.
Then the girl loses it and shuts down the war with a massive earthbending intervention, and she creates a new city named Omashu, because her name was Oma and her lover’s was Shu. In Sokka’s opinion, shoving a couple’s names together isn’t a good way to name anything, but then again nobody asked.
“Great origin story,” Sokka says. “Now how the heck do I get out of here?”
He raises his torch, looking for further clues. He finds them in the form of two giant statues kissing each other, plus an inscription saying “love is brightest in the dark.” Sokka takes this in and then sinks to the ground, groaning.
He is willing to admit, after a thorough review of the evidence, that this place might have some magic going on. He’s gotten lost way too many times and hit too many dead ends to believe he’ll make it out without some kind of supernatural intervention. That means he needs to play whatever game Oma here set up, all those centuries ago.
(Would it have killed her to be a bit clearer on the rules?)
“Love is brightest in the dark,” he repeats to himself. “Could be a random platitude. Could be a hint, like the thing about order. Maybe I do have to ‘trust in love.’”
He waves his torch around, hoping to uncover more useful inscriptions. No such luck.
Maybe if it’s a magic labyrinth, it’s listening. Which is creepy as anything, but Sokka sighs and resigns himself to the fact that this is his life now.
“I love my family,” he offers. “I know I give Katara a hard time, but she’s kind and so smart and I really hope she gets out of here fine, even if...if I don’t.” He takes a deep breath in. “I miss Dad every day. I get that I was too young for the war when he left, but...I still wish I could’ve gone with him. I miss Mom, too. And I do love her, even if I can’t remember her right, not after the Fire Nation…”
He trails off. Beside him, his odd little torch seems to glow a little brighter. Then it gutters, shuddering the way Sokka does.
Firmly, he pulls his breath back under control. “I love Aang too. Not like that! I mean, guys are great and gorgeous, and he’s the Avatar, but he’s also twelve. And bald. Not that baldness strictly kicks a guy out of competition-“ he has the abrupt realization that Zuko could be in that particular competition, and that’s a cursed thought that he pushes right back where it came from- “but he’s into Katara anyway. I love Appa and Momo. I...loved Yue. I’d like to believe that somehow, she still knows that.”
He gives it a few minutes before turning his head up to the kissing statues and hollering, “Is that what you wanted? You got my tragic backstory, can I get the way out?”
There’s no sound. No sign anyone or anything cares.
Sokka shoots to his feet, feeling suddenly alone and maybe a little hysterical. “Okay, maybe you want me to take this literally. Is that what you want? An actual kiss?”
He kneels down and plants his lips on a picture on the stone circle, the one where Oma and Shu were kissing. Who knows, maybe it’s the key to another weird earthbending lock.
Nothing.
He wheels around and jumps onto the statues’ knees so he can reach the “love is brightest” inscription. He looks around for any locking mechanism there. Finding none, he kisses that too.
“Seriously?” he demands.
He puts his torch down- carefully hanging it off the edge of the stone pedestal and weighing it down with rocks, so it’ll stay put- and plants himself in front of the statues, hands on his hips. After a few seconds, he works out a route upwards. Then he lunges, scales the statues- and yikes, Oma probably doesn’t appreciate his grip right now- and he sticks his lips right on the spot where their lips meet. He tries that a couple times, adjusting his angle for optimum...something.
At last, he shimmies back down and considers contemplating defeat.
“Nope,” he tells the dust bunnies. “I’ve got one more plan.”
He takes his torch back up and jumps onto the pedestal, going up to the sarcophagi.
“So,” he says, approaching the nearest one, “I have no idea if you’re Oma or Shu, but I guess it’s a good thing that I’m cool either way?”
He holds his nose and brushes his lips on the box’s lid, just a little. Then he switches to the other one. Then he frantically rubs his mouth on the hem of his shirt, because there’s definitely a couple centuries’ worth of dust now caked on his mouth like the world’s worst lipstick.
Frowning when nothing happens, he circles them a couple times, inspecting them for hinges or latches or-
Cracks!
There’s a little dent at the rim of one of the sarcophagi. Not wide enough for his fingers to fit through, but Boomerang will slip in just fine.
He shrugs. “No big deal. It’s just a matter of leverage.”
Seizing a giant breath to prepare himself, he takes Boomerang out and slides it into the hole. If he jiggles it just right, he’ll be able to pop the lid off the box and boom, he’ll be out of here-
The torch’s flame gets bigger, like it’s trying to catch his attention. He ignores it. Leans down on his makeshift lever and lifts the lid a couple inches…
It falls back into place with a thunderous crash. Then Sokka reels back, screeching.
He stumbles back into the wall because something just whacked him on the mouth, and oh, spirits, it’s not letting go. A second later, he realizes that whatever’s attached itself to him feels almost like a mouth, even though by the time he lifts his hands there’s absolutely nothing there anymore, but he can’t double-check with his eyes because he dropped the torch at some point and it went out and spirits, please, make it stop-
There’s a light in the darkness.
Sokka turns, suddenly freed, and sees glowing green light from the ceiling outside the door. Torch forgotten, he grabs Boomerang and runs, following the green crystals that seem to light up in the dark- and that makes so much sense, of course there was a sensible non-magical explanation for that “love is brightest in the dark” nonsense. Same goes for the weird blow to the mouth. He must have dropped the torch first and then gotten mauled by a freakish cavern creature. It fled again once the crystals started glowing, leaving him with blood on his teeth and a fat lip.
He didn’t offend any supernatural entities by disturbing the remains of the first earthbenders. How could he? He didn’t even finish opening the box.
He definitely didn’t just kiss an angry ghost. Why would anyone even think that.
He runs into Aang and Katara on his way out.
“Spirits, Sokka, what happened to your mouth?” she exclaims.
“I won a fight with an extra-fast wolf-bat,” he declares. It’s the truth now. He’s sticking with it.
“We’ve been looking for you for hours,” says Aang. “We went through three of the torches!”
Sokka’s torch was still going strong at most half an hour ago. He chalks that up to the unreliability of all things Chong-related.
Once he makes it out to sunlight, he grins. “See? No curse. No weird, supernatural shenanigans anywhere.”
