Avatar The Last Airbender Fan Fiction ❯ A New Hope ❯ Prologue

“Aang! No!”

Sokka turned from the fire nation soldier he was battling with at his sister's scream, just in time to see the Avatar fall from his glider. His eyes widened and he started to leap over a fallen body only to get pulled back by his opponent. The tribesman struggled against the hold as he watched Aang hit the ground with a sickening crunch.

Katara hastily froze her own opponent in a casing of ice and rushed over to Aang. She fell onto her knees and clutched at his body.

“Aang, no! You can't…” she trailed off, tears spilling down her face and gently set him down. She desperately started to heal any wounds, refusing to believe what she knew was true; Aang was dead. She didn't have any more of the special healing water and the Avatar was now dead. She choked back a sob, her body shaking in exhaustion as it tried to keep up with her mind.

“Katara—watch out!”

She turned at her brother's voice only to come face-to-face with a soldier. She gasped as a white hot pain seared through her body, her instincts shifting her body weight into the movements for a water whip.

Sokka watched in growing horror as he watched his only sister fall to the ground, impaled on—ironically—a Water Tribe spear after slicing open the throat of an enemy soldier.

Tears steadily ran down his face now and he thrashed in the enemy's grip. He didn't smirk in triumph as he earned a grunt from the nameless soldier as he elbowed him harshly in the gut. He broke free and stumbled over to his fallen friends, trying to hold back his sobs.

A warrior does not cry, damnit. He doesn't cry.

A sob broke free as he mimicked Katara's movements from earlier and clutched her body to his after breaking off the spearhead and taking the weapon back out.

“Katara!” he screeched, “Katara, wake up! You have to… Y-you have to heal…” A gasp broke through a new sob and he saw lights appear before his eyes, a sharp pain exploding at the base of his skull. “…y-your…self,” he whispered out before falling over unconscious onto the bodies of his two friends.

---

When Sokka awoke the first thing he was aware of was pain.

The next was cold metal digging into his body. Suddenly it was gone, then back in a vicious prod. He let out a grunt and rolled over, only to be stopped by someone grabbing his shirt and lifting him bodily.

“Get up, you miserable cur,” a voice grunted into his ear before shoving him forward. “It's time to start your first duty to your new Lord.”

Sokka pushed himself up onto his knees and craned his neck to look at the other. “New… what?” he asked, almost screaming out the last word if it hadn't been for his dry throat.

The fire nation soldier narrowed his eyes behind the white face plate. “Get up and walk,” he commanded instead of answering the question and pointed his spear down the hall.

The Water Tribe teen narrowed his eyes and stood up on shaky legs, weak from not having moved who-knows-how-long. Sokka walked down the hall, barely taking in the red colors and others dragging their feet beside him as he tried to remember what had happened. Anything he remembered flew out of his mind once his eyes adjusted to the light outside and took in the scene before him.

Patches of fire burned throughout the grounds on fallen bodies, foliage and random pieces of debris. Bodies were littered everywhere, no obvious distinctions between his comrades or his enemies. It stunk horribly of burnt flesh and hair and Sokka felt bile rise into the back of his throat. He stumbled forward when pushed by the guard.

“Time to start cleaning,” the soldier said, a sneer clearly on his face behind the mask from the tone in his voice. He pushed Sokka again before sitting down to watch their prisoners clean up the spoils of war.

Sokka's body went forward on autopilot, walking through the sea of dead bodies. His eyes misted over with tears as he recognized some of the warriors of his own tribe. He choked back a sob and started to carry a body towards the ocean for the traditional burial of his tribe.

After doing this a couple of times his face had hardened to a mask of indifference. He swatted viciously at a small flock of pigeoncrows which were trying to get a meal from one of the many fallen bodies. He turned around with a body slung over a shoulder and froze.

His eyes went wide and his knees buckled under him and sent him falling down, the cadaver sliding back to ground. Tears stung harshly at his eyes as his mask of indifference broke and he turned away, emptying his stomach onto the stone ground.

In front of him, a few paces away, lay the bodies of Katara and Aang. Old, dry blood crusted around them, the burns on Aang and the deep hole in his sister's stomach were the only evidence that they were dead instead of sleeping in the sea of corpses.

Sokka couldn't stop crying nor get up and eventually had to be hauled away by the disgruntled guard.

The war was over. They had lost, he had failed, and the Fire Nation had won.

There was no more hope.