Made up fic title: where the dead sleep

attackfish:

Time for the Avatar/Old Kingdom fusion literally nobody asked for!

Katara is a Clayr who has just been called by the Watch for the first time. Her brother Sokka, not only is a boy, unusual for the Clayr, but he is sixteen and still no visions. He does have an extraordinary talent for making magical things though. Meanwhile they stumble onto Hama, a Clayr who survived being dragged into death, and years later, even managed to escape, alive. She warns them of a great and terrible evil Greater Dead creature named Ozai, who is the one who made the Old Kingdom into the horrible haven for the Dead and free magic that it has been for the last hundred years. Katara and her brother set out to find the lost heir to the throne and the Abhorsen, in hopes of saving their home, but is Hama all that she seems?

Uh, ah, for the five headcanons, AU where Sokka is the waterbender and Katara the non-bender?

attackfish:

1. Sokka is the oldest child of Chief Hakoda, only boy, and a waterbender. He grows up knowing that it’s his job, no not his job, his purpose in life to protect his family and his village, especially his sister. He also grows up knowing it’s his fault his and Katara’s mother is dead.

2. To say Sokka has mixed feelings about his waterbending is a massive understatement. It lost him his mother, but someday he could use it to help his sister and grandmother. His sister envies him for it, but he can’t do much with it, and this magic water stuff often causes way more trouble than it’s worth.

3. Meanwhile Katara grows up a typical Southern Water Tribe girl, just as in canon, fiercely determined, fiercely loving, mothering her brother, and at times deeply resenting thr amount of housework she does in proportion to her brother. This resentment all comes to a head in a colossal fight after the two of them get boat-wrecked on an iceflow, in which she yells to him about washing his dirty socks, and the way he never does anything, and he yells back about being the only boy and waterbender and how he doesn’t think he can protect everybody, and he’s really scared, and uh oh, he just cracked open an iceberg with an Avatar inside.

4. Katara nearly stays with the Kyoshi Warriors. Sokka is less inclined to learn from them in this universe, because while they beat him handily and he embarrasses himself in front of Suki, they can’t help him learn to control his bending, which is his big preoccupation. He does however make Suki a very nice apology. Katara on the other hand is enthralled. Here are a band of female warriors trusted by the village to protect them. They are respected and powerful, and clearly formidable warriors. She trains with them and is reluctant to leave. But she knows if she stays, Sokka will stay, and he needs to go to the North Pole, so they journey on.

5. Sokka is a boy, which means Pakku has no problem training him. But Katara finds herself quickly demoted, from the Avatar’s companion and a warrior in her own right, to just the sister of the Avatar’s waterbender. This grates. And it grates worse when she is dismissed as a warrior and told to keep the princess company during the seige. However, when she takes on the Prince of the Fire Nation in defense of Princess Yue and the Avatar, and wins, the Northerners start treating her, and her brother very differently. If only there wasn’t that undertone of “southern barbarian freak” to it. And then there’s the problem Sokka has trying to explain that he’s a natural healer.

Could you do another 5 headcanons of the universe where Sokka and Azula swap places? I am kind of curious to see what would happen with Jet in this universe and I wonder how Ozai would react to siblings that are harder to pit against each other.

attackfish:

Continued from here: [Link] and here: [Link].

1. Ozai scorns both his children for being weak and pathetic. Much as he does in canon, he projects much of what he hates about himself onto Zuko. He also sees his hated older brother in Sozin’s attempts at cheerfulness and his flirtatiousness. While he does make some cursory attempts to set them against each other, to compete for his affection, these attempts are half-hearted at best, as he considers both his sons to be worthless.

2. Ozai instead focuses his attentions on remarrying and trying to produce an heir that way. The results are less than impressive, leading to a string of miscarriages, murders, and divorces. Yes, he is the Henry VIII of the Avatar world.

3. Meeting Jet is dicey. See Katara might be much more wary of Jet because he and Akanna’s styles of manipulation are fairly similar, or Akanna may have weakened her resistance to such manipulation. Akanna doesn’t trust him, but she also doesn’t care enough about her sister to try to protect her like Sokka does. My guess though is that Jet puts Katara’s guard up and it takes a lot more to persuade her to help. Akanna by the way doesn’t trust Jet, but she likes him, and wonders if she can use him.

4. After the fiasco at the North Pole, and with Ozai making noises about marrying again, Zuko and Sozin slip away to try their hand at capturing the Avatar themselves. They meet up with friends and make it all the way to Ba Sing Se. The four of them disguise themselves as Earth Kingdom country nobility, and run into a refugee street kid named Jet, who tries to pick their pockets. They catch him and have him arrested.

5. Look, all I’m saying is, Sozin and Zuko have a really good time conquering Ba Sing Se together with Mai and Ty Lee. It’s a bonding experience.

Five headcanons meme: everything is the same except aang sokka and katara are genderswapped

attackfish:

I’m letting Sokka and Katara keep their same names because it appears in the Southern Water Tribe at least, a endings are gender neutral.

1. Sokka is the eldest daughter of a village chief, but she is nothing special. She is one of five other teenage girls, but after her brother, the next oldest boy in the village is six. So she always has it in her mind that someday she will leave the village to find a man. It’s just the way it is. So there’s always that part of her that knows the village won’t be her home forever, but she always thought the South Pole would be. Village life is incredibly stifling for Sokka. After her mother’s death and her father’s going off to war, she has had to shoulder the moose-lion’s share of chores, and while her brother was too young to do it, the hunting as well. It’s exhausting, and neverending, and all anybody tells her is how lucky she is her brother wasn’t old enough to leave yet.

2. Katara meanwhile is the chief’s only son, and the only waterbender in the entire South Pole. He’s a catch. He also witnessed his mother’s murder, all to protect him, and responded to this and the sudden absence of his father by trying to parent his older sister. Sokka jokes that her little brother will make a good wife someday.

3. This is the world into which Aang drops. And it’s into this world that Sokka has to sneak away, because Katara is a boy, and fourteen is old enough really to leave in the eyes of the village, but why is Sokka going with him? But Katara’s glad to have him around.

4. The Kyoshi warriors are a revelation for Sokka. She has always felt miserable that she couldn’t help defend her home, that she couldn’t protect her vulnerable little brother, and here are these nonbending women warriors, who can teach her to fight, and who keep their own homes safe with or without the men. They fascinate her and thrill her, especially their leader, and if she didn’t need to keep her brother safe on the way to the North Pole, she would never leave.

5. In the North, Katara is readily trained by Pakku. It’s Sokka who is forced to come to a reckoning. It’s much easier to recognize what she had felt for Suki now that she’s feeling it for Yue too.