This choice: In Ba Sing Se, people start to treat Sokka differently (canon) • Go Back...Chapter #5In Ba Sing Se, people start to treat Sokka diff... by: EvilFuzzy9   Sokka wasn't entirely sure when it started. At first, he didn't notice the curious looks sent his way, or the whispers that seemed to die out when he entered a room, only to redouble when he left. Not at first.
Partly, this was because he had already been receiving some such treatment. When he and the rest of the team had come back to Ba Sing Se, they had been welcomed as heroes. There had even been a festival and everything, courtesy of the newly re-enthroned Earth King Kuei and the liberation forces of the Order of the White Lotus.
There had been plenty of food – cuisine of every kind, from all over the world, and even some traditional Air Nomad dishes courtesy of King Bumi (not that Sokka touched those) – and drink – ranging from plain water and fruit juice to fine tea (the brewing of which Iroh had personally supervised) and strong wine (Sokka may or may not have slipped a few drinks for himself and his girlfriend, Suki) – as well as music and dancing. Just about everyone – from the leanest shoe-shining refugee to the fattest old money noble – had partaken in the celebrations, and all had hailed Aang and his friends as conquering heroes.
Sokka had gotten no small amount of praise that night, and he and Toph and Suki were entreated to share the story of their sabotage of Ozai's airfleet so many times that, by the time the night was through, they had all but perfected the telling of their tale. Of course, Aang was still the star of the show, so to speak, and had received the lion's share of the accolades, but Sokka and the others still had plenty of admirers of their own to deal with.
Katara probably got the second most attention next to Aang, and a disconcertingly large portion of that attention had come in the form of girls asking about her love life and guys asking her for a dance. If Aang hadn't subsequently proceeded to, somewhat clumsily if not inarguably sweetly, make it very clear that he and Katara were a couple, Sokka was certain that someone would have wound up getting their ass frozen to the floor.
Similarly, Suki had also attracted no small amount of creeps (even if several of the guys flirting with her were genuinely charming and suave and respectful, the mere fact that they were hitting on his girlfriend meant that Sokka automatically categorized them as such), although she was perhaps more graceful in handling her unwanted admirers. It helped that they were much better behaved than Katara's: only one guy had been so foolish as to attempt copping a feel off of her. The fact that the creep's arm just so happened to SNAP quite suddenly and mysteriously the instant he tried to pinch the Kyoshi Warrior's butt probably had something to do with this.
Luckily for Ba Sing Se's continued existence, nobody was stupid enough to try anything on Toph. The fact that the blind earthbender had kicked off the celebrations by jumping off of Appa's back, stomping a foot on the ground to cause a tremor strong enough to flatten a whole city block, and shouting "ALRIGHT, YOU LOSERS! LET'S KNOCK SOME HEADS!" almost certainly had nothing to do with it – surely not.
Hell, even Zuko and his apparently-no-longer-quite-an-ex-girlfriend Mai got their fair share of praise and adoration from the Ba Sing Se citizenry, who were apparently just happy that there would finally be a Fire Lord in power who WASN'T visibly power-hungry or maniacal. The prince was visibly flustered by all this attention from people he clearly believed should have hated him, but his date looked as inscrutably uninterested as ever.
And Sokka? Well, he was mostly just glad that the crutch and broken leg gave him a ready-made excuse for turning down all of those invitations he was getting from his female admirers to come and dance. He'd had enough trouble as it was just trying to convince the ladies that he was already in a committed relationship with Suki. (Though he was still more than happy to entertain them with exaggerated tales of his exploits, sprinkled with plenty of bad jokes.)
So yeah, it wasn't as though Sokka hadn't already been being treated as something of a celebrity. They all were.
And they still were, even a month after the end of the war and the liberation of Ba Sing Se. Even a month later, people would still stop them in the middle of the street to thank them for what they had done, especially Aang. He was the Avatar, after all. The keeper of the balance, the great bridge between the... spiritual thingy and the material whatsit. You know: savior of the world, mortal incarnation of the planet's immortal spirit, all that jazz.
In comparison to all that – heck, in comparison to any of the Gaang – Sokka was nothing special. And now that the war was over, he was okay with that. Sure, it still smarted a little bit whenever he saw his friends doing these amazing things with magic or chi or whatever without even thinking about it while he had to work his ass off just to not look completely useless next to them, but he was okay with that. Honest, he was.
So what if even his girlfriend, who was a non-bending warrior like himself, made him look so hopelessly clumsy and inept whenever they sparred? So what if losing boomerang and space sword had been like losing a piece of himself, a piece that he still missed? He didn't need to try to be this big, strong, fearless warrior anymore – he no longer had to pretend at being something he wasn't.
The war was over. He didn't need to act like a warrior anymore, didn't need to pretend that he could possibly make any real difference in a fight. He wasn't strong or brave or anything he felt a man should be, but that was okay. Katara didn't need him to protect her anymore, the tribe no longer needed him. The former had a boyfriend to take care of her (and was also more than capable of doing so herself!), and the latter now had waterbenders from the North as well as all of the men who had finally returned from the war.
As far as Sokka was concerned, he wasn't strong or special or necessary, but whatever. The war was over. There was peace now, more or less. He was famous, kinda, and even a bit of a hero, perhaps. Hell, he had somehow even managed to catch the attention of an incredible young woman who was so strong and beautiful and completely out of his league (he pointedly ignored what his track record with women had to say on this matter), and yet had still decided to go out with him. As far as he was concerned, that alone made him just about the luckiest son of a polar bear dog on the planet.
But still. Even with as nicely and admiringly people had been treating him for the past month, there started to be noticeable – if subtle – shift in their attitudes toward him.
Before, he had generally just been seen as that guy, you know, the one who tagged along with the Avatar and did some stuff in the war. He'd gotten enough respect from the old officers and gray-haired veteran soldier types he ran into on the street, and he'd certainly had his fair share of female admirers, but honestly no special attention had been paid to him compared to the rest of the group. Even as a war hero, he had just been the meat and sarcasm guy.
But in the past week, something had changed. It was subtle at first – merchants giving him small discounts, girls flirting with him a just a little more forwardly, people more frequently nodding respectfully or saying hello when they passed him in the street. Subtle. Little things that he didn't even notice at first.
Yet as the week progressed, subtlety diminished, and soon Sokka's friends were beginning to take note of the unusual treatment he was getting. They took it in stride at first, but when they saw that Sokka wasn't even aware of the change they started to ask questions, and make comments on these things.
They noticed the discounts that became steeper, and the merchants who began occasionally adding on a free thing here or there to his purchases. They saw the numbers of flirtatious admirers grow, and heard some astonishingly shameless propositions slipped in among the compliments and pleasantries. And they perceived that the nods and greetings became more frequent, more reverent, and they even caught a few outright stopping and bowing to Sokka when he was just passing by.  indicates the next chapter needs to be written. |
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