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There are many things Sokka doesn't understand.
Sometimes, when the sky is about to turn dark, right on the cusp of turning from the icy blue to black, so dark some nights he distantly frets that maybe it'll never rise again, he'll stand where the ice meets the sea, far from his home, and look out at the ocean.
Sometimes, if he stares at the ocean long enough he'll see the sails of familiar ships on the horizon, and then he'll blink the ice off his eyelashes, remember himself, and the sea goes back to being what is always is. Empty.
He's not sure if disappointed is the right word. Anger feels like a betrayal. Thinking about it any harder leaves him breathless.
So he turns around, faces the village and pulls on a face, and hope that it's something brave.
Sokka doesn't want the war to come to them again, but that doesn't mean that it won't. And at the end of the day, all he has is his club and his boomerang that he's never used against another person, no experience, and a whole village full of people that he can't protect.
When Katara's distracted, sometimes he'll disappear into the tent and pull out the paint that he keeps hidden away in his chest of belongings.
His dad showed him how to wear it only once, when he was too young to understand what it meant, and he refused to let the paint touch Sokka's skin when he did understand. He doesn't know if he remembers how to do it correctly, and he wonders if he'll ever wear it. If that's a good thing, or if it makes him a coward.
The thing is, Sokka taught himself mostly.
It's been a long time since his dad was last home, and Sokka has no one else to teach him.
Sometimes, the weapons feel too heavy in his hands. They mean something far beyond anything than Sokka can understand. Passed down from warrior to warrior to him.
He likes to think that he can fill the role, live up to the life of whoever held this weapon before him.
When night falls, and the whole village is asleep, Sokka thinks that whoever held those weapons before him would never let him even touch it. Not with his hands, not when all he has done is stand around and hope for - for something. For them to come home, for the weapons in his hands feel less like a chain. For the paint in his chest to less like a burden.
He tries to talk to Gran Gran about it only once but her expression renders him speechless, rooted to the ground where he stands, and she tells him that he is no good to her dead.
He wants to say that's not what he means, but he's not sure if that's even true.
There's a weight that leers over him, unspoken and crippling, and maybe it's going to kill him, but he doesn't know how to explain it.
He doesn't ask her again. He doesn't ask anyone about it again.
Everything changes when they find the boy. He's small, younger than him, younger than even Katara, and there's something about him, light and bright that Sokka hasn't seen before. There's a storm cloud just behind his eyes that Katara doesn't want to acknowledge and a feeling in his gut that he can't shake that something has changed.
Then: the boy and Katara sneak onto that ship, and he knows, he knows that someone will have seen it, that it's some alert, that something's going to happen.
The boy leaves, Katara won't talk to him, and Sokka sits in front of the chest that holds the paint, and tries not to cry.
He walks out a while later, his tears are hidden behind the thick swathes of paint on his face, and the weapons in his hands. He walks out of the tent, and none of the women in the village say anything when they see it.
Gran Gran looks at him for a long, long moment and Sokka can't read her expression. When he steps out into the snow, closer to the distant, ever closing-in rumble of the war walking up to their doorstep again, she turns away. It doesn't seem like a rejection, but it hurts all the same, strikes him in places he doesn't know would ever hurt. The boomerang aches at his back. His club pulls at his hand. The paint itches. He takes a breath.
Sokka's never seen a warship aside from the one that's cut deep into the snow from the raid that took most of the Waterbenders from their tribe. Seeing one up close, one that's not abandoned, not a memory of a past horror, instead one that's unfolding right in front of him is different.
The soldiers step out, in armour made of metal, faces pulled into stern apathy, hold themselves like dad and the other warriors do, like soldiers in a war that Sokka has no experience in.
There's a man that steps in front of the others, and it takes Sokka a moment to realise he's young because there's a scar, red and angry and large rippled across his face, and he demands the Avatar.
The war is on their doorstep, and all Sokka has is the distant memory of war paint, and the weight of past lives in his hands.
He takes a breath, and he charges.