Chapter Text
Sokka Sialuk knows he’s not a good person.
He also knows he’s not a bad one. Maybe he thought he was once, in the particularly angsty phase of his teenhood that involved blue hair, eyeliner and My Chemical Romance, but sometime in between getting older and realizing his gender wasn't as clear-cut as he thought, he figured he’d better cut his losses and accept that most people are somewhere in the middle.
He’s not good; he lets his temper get the best of him more often than not, snaps at his little sister, doesn’t thank the bus driver when he’s getting off at his stop and honestly, harbors kind of a vague hatred for small children. He doesn’t feel, sometimes, not in the way people are supposed to.
He’s not bad; he tries to do nice things, tries to pay it forward. He picks up trash on the sidewalk - when he feels like it at least - donates to charity whenever the guilt reaches new highs, takes his friends out to lunch.
More than anything, he’s average. Probably the averagest guy in the whole of Wolf Cove. Yup, if you plugged everyone in their 3,862-person settlement into a general statistical analysis of averageness, Sokka would come out right on top. Straight B’s all throughout high school, never went off to college; he’s stayed in the same place his whole life, and that fact isn't changing anytime soon. He’s good with math, sure - particularly the kind he can do something with - and his teachers always felt the need to mention what a fast reader he was, how much potential he had. Overall, though, he’s the kind of guy someone would look at and think Huh, and keep on walking.
Yes; Sokka Sialuk is not a good person, but he’s sure as hell not a bad one - which is why it’s so infuriating that shit like this has to happen to him. 'Shit like this', of course, referring to the dead body.
Sokka spends the majority of his time as the sole park ranger at Wolf Cove Regional Park either slacking off or steadily killing his back dozing in his crappy office chair. Right now, he yawns as he skims an old car manual, getting lost somewhere between the insurance details and “Repairing of the Carburetor”. There's no reception up here, and he ran out of good reading material a couple of hours back. Unfortunately, the bulk of what the corner store carries are crappy romance or predictable mystery novels - Sokka reads the latter by the dozen, but the plot twists are nevertheless visible from a mile away.
He’s just flipping to the next page when—
Fzzt. The walkie-talkie on his desk buzzes to life.
“Hey, Sokka. Sheriff Jee here.”
“Yeah?” Sokka drawls out, attention still halfway on the manual. Idly, he wonders if he has the stuff in his fridge for stir fry. Noodles, sure. A couple veggies, check, tofu, check—might be expired, though. No baby corn. Grocery run it is.
“You’d better come down here." Sokka's attention sharpens. A twinge of unease plucks at his gut at the man’s tone, abnormally nervous, and he puts down the manual. "There’s—well. It’s best you see for yourself.”
Sokka hops in his aging pickup and makes his way down the dirt road to the station. The car rattles on its way through the town, a pang of nervousness ringing through him at the ominous sound. He probably needs to stop at Toph’s soon. She always makes a big show of trying to upcharge him for repairs, but every time he moves to pull out his wallet, he’s informed that his tab is already paid by a 'mysterious benefactor', as she likes to say. Him and Katara both. Gossip never dies in a town as small as theirs, and though Toph doesn't mention it, she knows the Sialuk siblings’ history with cars, and accommodates it without a second thought.
(She probably makes up for it by charging Kuei double whenever he comes in to have his convertible reserviced. Ah, oblivious rich people.)
Sokka’s musings are cut short as he pulls into the station parking lot. Sheriff Jee stands by the entrance. His uniform is rumpled, his hair disheveled like he's been running his hands through it. A deep frown is carved into his aging face, his graying brows pressed together.
“Everything alright, Sheriff?” Sokka calls as he hops out of the truck.
The older man sighs. “Just—just come inside, Sokka.”
And Sokka was expecting the cockroach infestation to have returned, maybe another tangle in the payment portal’s code that his rudimentary programming skills could help sort out. At worst, a bear raiding the station pantry again.
He was not expecting the dead body, covered loosely in a bedsheet and laid out on the break room table.
"Oh," says Sokka. There’s not much else to say.
“Shen found him while hiking, near the base of the mountain. On the railyard side. It’s only been a couple of hours, and as our resident forensic analyst, um,” the Sheriff starts, clearly trying to lighten the mood and quickly giving up. “I figured you might have some thoughts?”
Shock still clutching at Sokka's throat, he says, “I’m really not, I—I just read a lot of mystery novels, Sheriff Jee. You know that.”
“Still,” says the Sheriff. “You’re the closest we’ve got, and I don’t much feel like getting the feds involved.”
Unfortunately, the man has a point. Their police presence is measly and largely untrained, and Wolf Cove's too far out to bring cops in from elsewhere without the situation becoming...complicated. And yeah, the closest thing they have to a forensic analyst is Sokka, somehow, because he has a crippling mystery novel addiction and a tendency to get lost down Wikipedia rabbit holes.
Sokka takes a deep breath in through his nose. Exhales through his mouth. “Yeah, okay. I can give it a shot. Shit.”
The man - the body that used to be a man - is not too old, in its late twenties if he had to guess. Around Sokka’s age. (He doesn’t like that thought.) The body is pale, by now dead-pale but probably a similar shade in life. It has long black hair, peppered with grays and tangled in places. A few stray strands cling to the still face, which sports a gnarled red scar on most of the left side. Most of the body is covered by the bedsheet, any clothing included, but a pair of shiny leather dress shoes poke out the end, laces tied tight.
“Took a tumble down the ravine, I thought. Maybe the fellow got drunk and felt like flying." The Sheriff pulls on the sheet covering the body - what looks like a collared dress shirt, dark red and formerly crisp, has been cut away, revealing its upper body. Sokka feels an abrupt wave of nausea, and has to resist the urge to sit down. “But then I looked closer.”
There’s a wound. There are several wounds on the body, little scrapes and scratches consistent with being battered around on its way down the mountain, not to mention an array of scarring that paints a very nasty image of the body’s early life. But this wound—this wound is different. It's distinct. Wrapped over and around the body's shoulders and down its arms are patterns, patterns like tree branches, delicate like feathers. They're reddened and inflamed, carved deep into the skin. It's almost artistic, almost beautiful if you detach yourself from reality. If you let yourself forget just what the canvas is.
Somewhere, the Sheriff is gagging. Sokka is honestly tempted to do the same.
He drags his gaze up to the face, the leathery, marred left side contrasting sharply with the nearly flawless right. The burn must be years old, to be as healed as it is; otherwise, Sokka would have assumed it to have been the deathblow. There's a nasty cut on the body's forehead, near the right-hand temple. Definitely concussed at the time of death. The scarred eye is slitted, almost shut; Sokka wonders how much vision it retained, after the initial injury. The other eye is open wide; the cornea is matte and faded, but the iris has remained a startling shade of bright gold.
The man looks shocked. Forever shocked. Something deep in Sokka’s chest twists.
And the golden eye blinks. Once, twice.
What the fuck.
“Sheriff,” Sokka says, feeling more than hearing his voice pitch embarrassingly high. “Did you see that?”
He’s barely able to take his eyes off the body, but he sees Sheriff Jee’s concerned frown in his periphery. “See what?”
“I just thought—” Sokka starts, then stops, voice caught in his throat. No. Dead bodies don’t—they don’t blink. They don’t move.
This is a traumatic experience, he can practically hear Katara say, all the weight of her associate's in psychology behind the words. It’s normal for you to be questioning things.
“Never mind,” he says, trying for wryness. “I need more coffee. And maybe also a lobotomy.”
The Sheriff laughs. Sokka doesn’t.
Despite his best efforts to ignore what he saw—no, not what he saw, what he thought he saw—Sokka finds it hard to relax, to return to his previous state of blissful apathy and general boredom. His voice carefully doesn't waver as he makes plans with Sheriff Jee to meet up the next day to discuss the case, because it’s a case now, and heads back to work, clutching the steering wheel in a death grip all the way up the mountain. He spends the final thirty minutes of his shift staring blankly at the same car manual that was so enthralling just hours before.
And then he packs up, gets into his car, and leaves the ranger station as a man who has just seen death blink.
Sokka scales the steps to his apartment in a daze. He kicks his shoes off at the door, a small courtesy for no one but himself. He microwaves leftover red curry for dinner, chokes it down. Texts a quick good night to Katara, then follows it up with remind me to tell you about the batshit crazy day i just had. Strips his binder off and throws on a worn old t-shirt reading 'DILF: Dude I Love Frogs', before turning the television on to the sitcoms channel, stretches out on the couch, and falls asleep to the sound of canned laughter.
That night, Sokka has the first dream.
He’s traversing the halls of a massive, sprawling mansion. The house feels incredibly real; the varying shades of red and gold that everything seems to come in are vivid and stark, and each detail in the tapestries lining the walls stand out in rich Technicolor.
He’s walking, searching, his heartbeat leaping as he rounds each corner. He knows he’s looking for something—someone?—but he can’t find them, even though he knows they’re somewhere in the house. His movements grow frantic the longer his search goes on, his breathing choppy and sharp.
Nearing the end of a particularly long hallway, he hears a voice, raspy and hoarse like the speaker has been screaming:
“Hello? Can anyone hear me? Azula? Azula, please. I know you didn’t mean it. Come on, Lala. It’s really cold in here.” A sob.
Sokka rounds the corner. There’s just a door. One single door, made of cream-colored hardwood, with a golden handle on the right-hand side. For no reason Sokka can name, terror wells up in him at the idea of opening it; sharp, primal terror that eclipses every other dusty, muddled thought he's had since the dream began.
Another sob. It’s coming from inside. Sokka swallows the fear. He has always been brave. He turns the handle.
He finds himself in an opulent bathroom, everything gilded and glistening with condensation. From steam? But it’s not warm in here, like someone had just taken a hot shower; instead, it’s frigid cold. Cold as a meat locker, cold as the South Pole. A white mist seems to hang in the air, and Sokka can see his breath, each exhale coming out as soft puffs of vapor. Every inhale is like ice in his lungs.
A man sits on the edge of the bathtub, his head in his hands, black hair like ink spilling through his fingers, the pin-straight strands flecked with gray. He lets out a shuddering exhale, and his body shudders with it, like it’s coming apart at the seams. He breathes in, as if to speak, and—
“Hello?” Sokka hears himself say.
The man looks up, one gold eye blazing through the fog. And it’s—
It’s the dead man. The scar is unmistakable. His mouth—bitten red, expressive, and distinctly alive—hangs open in shock. The surprise softens his features, looks nice on him, looks pretty. Yes. The man in the bathroom is pretty, and the man in the bathroom is dead.
They stare at each other in the frozen bathroom. Sokka feels pinned by that golden gaze, helpless in the face of that piercing scrutiny. A few seconds pass, and the dead man’s expression twists into a scowl. “Who are you?” he asks.
“I’m—” Sokka starts to respond. A shiver passes through him. “I—I—” His teeth chatter. If he thought the room was freezing before, it’s nothing compared to now. Goosebumps raise on Sokka's arms; wind howls in his ears, from no source he can see. The room starts to phase out of view, the fog filling the spaces in between Sokka and everything else.
“No, no, no—” he hears, faint over the rush of wind. “Come on, don’t leave me—son of a—”
The last thing he sees before everything goes white is the dead man’s eye, golden, furious, frantic.
And Sokka wakes up on his couch, the early morning light blue and piercing through the living room window. His lower back aches. His hands and feet are numb and cold as ice.