Chosen by the Spirits | A male reader x Avatar the Last Airbender story

Chapter 17- Uncomfortable Situations

The gang, minus Toph who was nowhere to be seen, all split up around the terrain to try and locate Sokka. Although I hadn't exactly been getting along with him these last few days, that didn't stop me from worrying about where he could be. If something would happen to him, I would hate to tell Yue the next time I visited the spirit world. So with that on my mind, I searched vigorously. However, before long it was starting to get dark. The sun was beginning to set, so I just narrowed my eyes in an attempt to adjust to the dark as I searched.

Another hour flew by, and still no sign of Sokka anywhere. I was just thinking about giving up when I heard something: it was Sokka's voice! But who was he talking to? I followed the sound of his voice, and I eventually found him! I was relieved to see he was okay, but also concerned with the situation he had somehow found himself in. He had managed to fall into a crack in the earth, so that only his head was protruding from the ground. His hands were also free, but his arms weren't, meaning his hands just flapped uselessly in front of his face. His hair was dishevelled, and there was a small, strange creature that trotted around him on four legs.

"Sokka!" I shouted to get his attention, and I saw him notice me.

"Finally, someone!" he shouted, giving me the impression that he had been trapped for a quite a long time.

"How did you manage to get yourself into this?" I asked him with a chuckle as I took a step back to get a good view of his predicament.

"It's a long story," he said to me grumpily. "Now can you get me out of here?" he impatiently and ungratefully demanded. I circled around his head, looking at the fissure he was trapped in. I hated to admit it, but I wasn't sure that was anything that I could do.

"I don't really know what I can do," I confessed to him, and I saw a devasted look cross over his face.

"Great, you just had to be fire nation, didn't you?" he spat, which filled me with anger. "Why couldn't you be an earthbender. At least then you'd be useful,". I ignored his flawed logic, and tried to move past the feeling of anger that he had rooted inside of me. It seemed that he was stuck until either Aang or Toph arrived and earthbended him out, so I might as well get to the bottom of his hatred for me.

"Seriously, why do you hate me so much?" I calmly questioned Sokka, and I saw him avoid eye contact with me. He seemed focussed on watching the moon slowly rise into the darkening, orange sky. He kept his eyes on the moon, and suddenly it all clicked in my mind. Sokka hadn't been the same towards me since I was in the healing bay after the fire nation attack on the Northern Water Tribe. I recalled that, at first, he excitedly recounted the ordeals of the attack, but after he found out that I failed to defend the moon spirit, something changed in him. "Is it about Yue?" I cautiously asked him, and I saw his eyes become slightly glossy with tears.

"You could have protected the spirits from Zhao," he muttered sadly to me. "If you had, Yue wouldn't have needed to sacrifice herself. She would still be alive," he cried helplessly. I had never seen Sokka this vulnerable, and it was strange, yet I couldn't help but feel a tear roll down my cheek, too.

"I really tried, Sokka," I admitted truthfully as I sat on the floor next to him. The guilt of what had happened that day still haunted me every night in my dreams. "Yue meant a lot to me, too. She was my spirit sister,". I saw Sokka give me a confused look, so I explained to him that both Yue and myself were chosen by the spirits from birth, and so we held a deep connection to each other. There was silence between us for a moment, before Sokka broke it with his voice.

"I just wished she was still here," he said gloomily, which did upset me slightly, before I remembered something from earlier.

"She's not completely gone, you know," I told him optimistically, and I saw him give me a questioning look. "I went to the spirit world earlier, to talk to the moon and ocean spirits. She was there, and she was asking about you," I described to Sokka, and I saw a smile slowly to form on his face.