Takes place after "The Firebending Masters."

After several hours of wandering, Sokka finally had to admit it, if only to himself: he was lost.

Normally, his pride wouldn't allow him to do even that. He was too used to his little sister hovering around him (or, perhaps more accurately, to himself hovering around her) to show an inch of uncertainty in his instincts, bar literally leading the Avatar himself into an encampment of Fire Nation soldiers.

But Katara was not here; the current person she had taken to breathing down the neck of was the runaway prince of said Fire Nation, who she seemed to have an intensely personal grievance with. Or, at the very least, something intensely personal was going on there.

Sokka was deliberately avoiding thinking about it too hard.

Anyway, Aang had mentioned a giant Pai Sho table while he was trying to shirk his Avataring, and Sokka's interest had been caught. Hell, in the South Pole they hadn't even had a regular Pai Sho table. Being an Air Nomad must've rocked. Before the, y'know, genocide thing.

Sokka was deliberately avoiding thinking about that too hard, as well. During the failed invasion, they had all witnessed the sheer military might of the Fire Nation, but Sokka thought that he and his dad might've been the only ones to really get it.

And now Dad was imprisoned and defenseless and at their mercy, so Sokka was kind of on his own. (Not thinking about it.)

He was a realist, or what his little sister called a pessimist, and a strategist, to boot. His homeland had been undergoing a genocide of a slower kind, and was geographically the closest to their enemies. The only reason they hadn't been wiped out completely yet was because the Fire Nation thought they had killed all their benders, with the murder of his mother, but with Katara at large and so powerful their village was a tempting target once more —

Not. Thinking. About. It.

Bottom line: he was lost in a very cool but possibly haunted temple that was largely reliant on its inhabitants being Airbenders in order for them to get around safely. Not for the first time, Sokka wondered how the nonbending nomads had been able to stand it.

At least the murals were pretty.

Wait. Back in the Northern Air Temple, Aang had mentioned something about the frescoes being the history of his people. Maybe, while he was here, he could learn something. It's not like he was leaving any time soon, or really had anywhere to be. The benders were doing their best to whip Aang into an Avatar capable of killing the Fire Lord and the others were exploring the temple, as well. He didn't have any pressing responsibilities until after dinner, which was mostly washing dishes while Katara was busy antagonizing Zuko.

Sokka hadn't really realized just how much his little sister took care of them all until she'd gotten so angry and belligerent recently. She'd never been very even-tempered before everything, before their mom, even, but seeing her blatant hostility so often alerted him to just how much she was bottling up.

Sokka didn't like to admit it, but sometimes he felt almost scared of his baby sister. He still acutely remembered what it felt like to be a puppet, still had nightmares about it, and the look in his sister's eyes when she thought no one was watching sometimes reminded him of Hama — all ocean-deep rage so hot it burned.

But Hama had run cold. She'd felt like ice coursing through his veins. In contrast, Sokka sometimes wondered if being bloodbent by Katara would boil him alive.

But he wasn't thinking about that. Not the fear, not the guilt, not the lingering resentment and envy of her power. He had promised their dad to protect her, and that was what he'd do, even if he sometimes felt like the ones who needed protection were the people he'd sworn to protect her from.

He sighed, and mouthed his mantra: Not thinking about it.

Sokka's eyes caught on the mural. Whoa, lady Airbenders shaved their heads too? He tried to imagine Toph or Katara half-bald, and snorted. Maybe Katara would keep the hair loopies. Just the hair loopies.

He followed the mural as it stretched down a long, dim hallway, grateful for the distraction. It probably wasn't the best idea to amuse himself at the expense of Aang's ancestors, but it wasn't like anyone would know. He'd be extra nice to the little guy later, maybe play that stupid airball game with him as penance. For a pacifist, Aang had had a lot of fun knocking him off the posts nine times back when they visited the Southern Air Temple; Sokka had been black and blue for weeks afterward, which had made Kyoshi Island even more tortuous than he'd initially anticipated.

(He's not thinking about Suki. He does enough of that already.)

When he looked more closely, trying to distract himself further, he realized that most of the events pictured involved Airbending somehow (except for the… ahem… fertility festival), and most of the people were benders, already marked with mastery tattoos.

Damn, life as a nonbending nomad must have sucked. What did they even do in a society so wholly reliant on its element?

He turned the corner, and his question was answered.

When Sokka finally made it back to the bits of the temple that they'd claimed as a living space, Aang was nominally practicing Firebending. Zuko was trying to press him into actually working without provoking Katara, who made a point of observing their lessons, into yelling at him for being too aggressive or too bad at teaching or just being too Zuko.

"Aang," he called, voice hard. "I need to talk to you."

Aang brightened, immediately dropping his "stance" and making toward Sokka before Zuko stopped him with an exaggeratedly gentle tap on his shoulder. (Katara did not permit any grabbing.)

"Is it important? He really needs to practice," Zuko rasped, his disapproving frown almost identical to Katara's.

"Yeah," Katara said, her face twisted at having to agree with anything he said, "Now that Zuko's actually useful, he needs to make up for lost time."

Zuko shot her a look, but didn't say anything. He was surprisingly meek and conciliatory with Katara, to a far greater extent than he was with pretty much anyone else, even Aang. No matter how nasty she got, he always buried his pride and bit his tongue. It was an interesting dynamic, with some concerning implications, but Sokka wasn't thinking about it.

"It's important," Sokka growled. Aang shifted from foot to foot, gaze darting from Sokka to Katara to Zuko and back again. His sister studied him for a few moments, then gave a short, decisive nod.

Zuko ventured, "Aang really needs to work on his—"

"Make it quick, Sokka," Katara said, and the prince threw up his hands in defeat. He whirled on his heel with military precision and stomped towards his dual blades, leaning against his pack. Katara stood, uncorking her waterskins, and Sokka dragged an increasingly anxious Aang back into the temple before they could get caught in the crossfire.

Whenever Katara got frustrated she would try to bait Zuko into doing something that would justify getting rid of him, but Zuko was just as relentless in avoiding that outcome by never returning her attacks. Their "spars" were long and brutal and frustrating, to the point that the only person who ever spectated anymore was Toph. Sokka suspected that it was because she couldn't see the expressions on their faces.

He tugged the Avatar down into the bowels of the temple, his grip a little too tight and his pace a little too demanding. Aang was quiet for a time, perhaps sensing his distress, and formulating a plan to figure out what was wrong. Aang was extraordinarily sensitive to everyone's feelings but Katara's, most days.

Sokka suspected that his crush meant that he couldn't stand to see her as anything but happy and bubbly, but he couldn't really find it that cute when Katara had taken to bottling her emotions up around him instead of working through them. Aang would immediately try to defuse any situation where she showed anger, but froze up or avoided the issue when she was hurt or sad.

Aang was twelve, so Sokka knew he shouldn't expect him to be an effective emotional support, but it grated when Aang could handle situations and people he didn't care about so effortlessly. It grated because Sokka was so unequipped to deal with his little sister's emotions that he rarely had the courage to try at all. But he wasn't thinking about that.

"...Sokka? What's wrong?" Aang asked.

"There's something here that you need to see."

They reached the hall of frescoes, and Aang's face lit up. "This is amazing! It's a catalogue of all Airbenders' important ceremonies and milestones! It's even more detailed than the ones that were destroyed at the Norther—"

Sokka cut him off. "Yeah, I know. But there's one section you really need to see."

He pulled him onward, though Aang dragged his feet. Surprisingly, even the mural of the… fertility festival… didn't phase him. If he thought about it, Aang never seemed very embarrassed by that kind of thing, and was popular with girls his age. Sokka vividly remembered the stupid dance party he'd insisted on. He'd been petrified the whole time that someone would call him out for flirting with a girl (woman?) who had just been posing as his pregnant mother.

They finally rounded the corner, and faced the damning fresco.

It showed the earliest years of an airbender's life, from birth to what couldn't be more than three or four years out of the womb. The paintings marked with the Air symbol — children who could bend, shown as simply as possible — were separated from their peers, and taken under the wings of Airbending masters, the boys sent to the Northern and Southern temples while the girls stayed where they were born.

In one corner, the unmarked children were handed off to surrounding Earth Kingdom families. Sokka had searched the entire hall of murals, and there was no further record of what happened to them.

"Is this what you wanted to show me?" Aang asked after a beat of silence, his tone light and curious. "Why this specific mural?"

Sokka spluttered, "What do you mean, why? Did you know about this?!"

"Of course," Aang said, puzzled. "It's the induction ceremony."

"But — but what happened to the kids?"

"Well, I'm not sure about the girls, but the boys were sent to the brother temples once we awakened our bending. I was born in the Eastern Air Temple. That's where the bison were raised! I got to go back there once to meet Appa—"

"I mean the nonbending kids," Sokka snapped. "What happened to them?"

"Y'know, I'm not sure," Aang said thoughtfully. "They got tested for the Avatar spirit with the rest of us, just in case, but after that I guess they were given away to surrounding Earth Kingdom towns." His expression cleared, and he pointed at the corner that had so disturbed his travelling companion. "There! They were placed with other nonbenders and Earthbenders, see?"

"You mean they were adopted? Why?"

"Well, I guess they were adopted." Aang looked unsure. "I never really asked. But it's not like they could live in the temples."

"Why not?" The words were as heavy as the sinking feeling in Sokka's gut.

Aang shifted on his feet, picking up on Sokka's strange mood but clearly not understanding why. "They weren't Air Nomads, after all."

"Wh— what do you mean, they weren't Air Nomads?!" Sokka spluttered.

Aang gave him a funny look, and spoke slowly, as if Sokka was a child failing to understand something obvious. "Well, they couldn't Airbend. Of course they weren't Air Nomads."

"Just because they weren't Airbenders doesn't mean they weren't Air Nomads! That's like saying I'm not Water Tribe because I can't Waterbend!"

Aang shook his head, adopting the wise, enlightened look he always got when he was about to cram some monk philosophy down everyone's throats. "That's different, Sokka. Airbending is the most spiritual of any bending ability. The reason they couldn't bend was because they weren't connected to the spirit world at all. Of course they couldn't stay with us; they wouldn't be able to become a monk or a nun. Besides, it's impossible to participate in temple life if you can't bend."

"That's because you built them that way!" Sokka said, incredulous. "What about Guru Pathik? He wasn't a bender, and he studied with the monks. He follows your philosophy and everything!"

"Yeah, but he wasn't a monk," Aang pointed out. "And he's one of the very few nonbenders even capable of achieving enlightenment, and it took him decades. Most nonbenders just can't."

"What the hell is that supposed to mean?!" Sokka yelled.

Aang stepped back, obviously confused, hands raised in a calming gesture. "Sokka, it's common knowledge. Why are you so upset? For the longest time you didn't even believe in spirituality or enlightenment."

"Just because I don't doesn't mean they didn't!" He ran a hand through his hair, shocked and hurt. "They were children sent away by their caretakers, away from everything they ever knew and loved, because of something they couldn't control. You don't know if they were spiritual or not! They were kids! Spirits, Aang, nonbenders are the majority in every other nation! You've seen that they can be just as spiritual as nonbenders."

"Airbending is granted by the spirits, Sokka!" Aang shouted, voice echoing down the hallway. "I don't appreciate you questioning the traditions of my people when you were never there to see them! You couldn't possibly understand! If those kids weren't Airbenders, then it means that they didn't belong here!"

There was a long silence.

"Is that how you really feel, Aang?" Sokka said quietly, watching the way Aang's eyes widened in realization.

"Sokka, you know I didn't mean it like that. But you're not an Air Nomad. You wouldn't understand."

"No, I suppose I wouldn't," he muttered, and turned away.

He had some thinking to do.

This fic is the culmination of a lot of thoughts about the Air Nomads and their influence on Aang that have been percolating in my brain for a while, now.

Bryke's official explanation is that Air Nomads just don't produce nonbending babies. As you can tell, I think that's total BS, on both a genetic and in-universe level. So this is my take on it.

This is not to say that I think Aang is consciously prejudiced against nonbenders. I think that most benders in AtLA aren't. However, I DO think that nonbenders face a ton of unconscious bias, at least in the Earth Kingdom, from what we've seen. How many times does Sokka get teased by Toph/the narrative for not being a bender? Sure, they have a Very Special Episode explaining why that attitude is wrong, but I was surprised that none of the other characters get directly called out for some of the things they said and did to Sokka, especially in season 1 and 2. The poor guy gets a lot of shit for it, and it's typically played off as comedic.

I was super glad they at least TRIED to address this in LOK, though not very effectively imo. But why is the city that Aang poured his heart and soul into such a shitty place for nonbenders to live? Did he never address it? Why not?

I also think that this might shed some light on how Aang treated Kya and Bumi, which was completely and totally unacceptable. But I wanted a better explanation than "Aang is a shitty dad." This would explain why he doesn't consider his older children to be a part of his legacy, to the point that the Air Acolytes thought that Tenzin was his only child. It would explain why he neglected them so often and why they were still bitter and hurt well into middle age. I don't think it's a coincidence that his only nonbending child was also the one that felt the most like a disappointment to his father. (Then they MAKE HIM AN AIRBENDER RRRGH I'M SO MAD OH MY GOD. GIVE HIM THE CLOSURE HE DESERVES WITHOUT HANDWAVING HIS "INADEQUACY" JFC)

And they had the audacity to act like it was Kya and Bumi's fault for not being interested in it/being resentful "for no reason." Holy lord I am still bitter about this.

Plus this would be a plausible explanation for the "Ty Lee is an Airbender" fan theory, which I am fond of.

Well that got longer than I thought. Anyway, hope you enjoyed. Please share your take on the subject! I love a good meta.

Edit: Okay so apparently this fic is very upsetting to some people, both on here and on tumblr, and I'm sorry if I've angered anyone with it. But please remember that this is primarily about Sokka, and his worries and fragile emotional state. I AM NOT THE CHARACTERS I PORTRAY. I DO NOT AGREE WITH EVERYTHING HE EXPRESSES HERE. And, at this point, Sokka is angry and scared and helpless. All of his less-than-flattering observations are things that a teenage boy in his situation might plausibly think. Some of them, like his annoyance with Aang's wisdom, are things he has explicitly stated in canon.

I also want to say that it's very telling that people are more upset about Aang's portrayal here than Katara's, when Katara's is far and away the most negative. Sokka is SCARED of her here and y'all are mad that Aang is being naive and defensive and clinging to a way of life that he has lost. I really didn't want to come out and say this directly, but at this point Katara is trying to goad Zuko into giving her an excuse to seriously injure (or even murder) him. Sokka doesn't know that she's threatened to "end [his] destiny permanently" but we, as the audience, are. And yet the thing that upsets people the most is that Aang's wrong about something.

Also, please don't put words in my mouth, or generalize an ENTIRE part of the fandom because I wrote a oneshot you don't like. If you disagree with me, POLITELY counter the points I have explicitly raised, as I invited you to above. Several lovely people already have, through a few different avenues, and I loved hearing their take on things.

And, if you honestly are too angry or upset to do that, just don't read it all the way through. That's what I do! I and some of the people I follow have actually received death and rape threats on tumblr for our opinions on this cartoon and I'm just so tired of it.

I'm gonna keep the story up, because it's my fic and I enjoyed writing from Sokka's point of view, but I really hope that people can engage with me constructively here.