Avatar: Awakened Gamer

Chapter 68 - Two Sides of the Same Coin

A soft, naive, young man would be cannon fodder at best. Sokka wouldn't allow that to happen to him.

***
Katara was annoyed that she had learned to heal. While it was a useful ability to have, she needed more. 

Women here weren't allowed to fight. It annoyed her to no end, but she knew that fighting against it was useless.

Normally, she would have asked Aang to teach her what Pakku does during the day. But Katara no longer was so naive, because she knew that Pakku was a prideful guy and might stop teaching Aang altogether if she did something like that.

Instead, Katara is now waiting until they get out of here, and Aang learns what he needs to. Only after finishing all his training, she will learn waterbending from him. Even if Pakku learned about it then, it would no longer matter. There was nothing he could do about it.

She angrily dragged her feet to go and meet up with Aang and her brother. 

Suddenly, an arm was wrung around her neck, almost in a chokehold. Katara was ready to skewer her attacker with ice spikes, but looked at his arm and knew who it belonged to. "Sokka, I am not in the mood for games right now."

"What?! My cute little sister rejected her brother's attempts to cheer her up." Sokka nudged her playfully. But that atmosphere didn't stay around for long as his face turned cold. "I think we should fix this problem soon. Having my cute sister so worried makes me feel angry."

Katara recognized the look on his face, as a chill crawled down her spine. 

'So it wasn't a hallucination, yesterday, who would have thought that my brother had a side like this.'

"Dear sister," Sokka addressed her. He wasn't trying to hide anything from her. "Life sometimes is quite harsh. So you have to be a lion. I will get Pakku to teach you waterbending today."

"There is no need to rush-"

"No, there is. You know what the dark snow means. The Fire Nation is close by." Sokka clarified, reminding his sister that the Northern Water Tribe wasn't some safe sanctuary any longer. "I don't think you understand how I feel about this sister. If you die because of some stupid tradition that didn't allow you to learn waterbending… the Fire Nation won't be the only one I will blame."

Katara looked uncomfortable at this, she squirmed, but Sokka's hold on her shoulders got stronger as he whispered in her ear. "If you die, I will kill Pakku, and do everything in my power to slaughter everyone in the Northern Water Tribe for having such a tradition."

"Stop," Katara elbowed him harshly, though he didn't have any reaction, and kept looking his sister in the eye. "Stop talking about such things."

***
-Katara POV-

"Don't tell such jokes, they aren't funny."

It felt like my heart would burst out of my chest. I could immediately tell that he wasn't joking. When Sokka said he would kill everyone if something happened to me, he was serious. 

But I didn't want to hear it. I don't want to see this version of you, Sokka. 

You are my sometimes naive, but strangely smart brother, who girls seem to flock around. This cold side of you, I don't want to think of it as anything more than an act. 

Even though I knew it wasn't an act. Maybe this cold side was the true him all along? No… I can't keep thinking like that. I didn't want to feel such a cold terror from my brother. I didn't want to be scared of him.

"They were jokes, right?" Saying this was just an opportunity for him to continue our delusion. I knew that he probably planned to make me aware of this cold side of his. But please, brother, don't act like such a different person. Do I even know you anymore?

Suddenly, Sokka's cold look turned into a smile, and he chuckled. "Of course I am joking. But if something were to happen to you, I would be pretty mad. You know how older brothers are. If anyone is gonna bully you, it's gotta be me. Because someone else doing it… pisses me off."

That cold feeling disappeared as if it was never there, to begin with. But this time, I knew for sure that Sokka seemed to have a darker side to him, something that he had kept hidden for years.

"By the way, you sound like you have some grandiose plan to have me learn Waterbending." Katara changed the subject. 

"I do," Sokka nodded, which going by his words would be reassuring. But the evil laugh and comically villainous chuckle that came after that wasn't reassuring at all.

*sigh*

"What a troublesome brother, he just became a hundred times more difficult to handle," the difficult part was telling which Sokka was the real him and which was an act.

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