A Man is Sufficient

[fulselden]

Series: Avatar
Characters: Master Pakku, Sokka
Rating: G
Written for prompt 'A man is sufficient' at 31_days


Pakku looks down his nose at the row of students in front of him, swirls a finger above his cup of tea as disdainfully as he can possibly manage.

Clears his throat.

They look, he thinks, suitably cowed. But of course he can feel the thrum and push of water through their bodies, pulsing and restless with warmth and yet even, far too even, and so he knows perfectly well that they aren’t nearly cowed enough.



To these Southerners, gathered together from distant villages and fishing tribes after the end of the war by his best and brightest pupil, he is nothing more than the old man who saw the error of his ways and came running after Grandmother Kanna, who spent half a century locked up behind the walls of the North before having some sense knocked into him by Master Katara.



Personally, he blames Sokka.

In general.

But most specifically for his late night fireside stories of the war, which involve much demonstrative gesturing with an actual sword, or sometimes with that boomerang of his, which is quite sharp enough, thank you. These little boys and girls – some not so little, either, but all, all desperately untrained – think he is a fool.



Pakku stands up, grounds his feet in the snow.

“I am going to tell you,” he informs them, “about what I consider, personally, to be my greatest victory.”

The children shift in front of him. One little girl shoots up her hand.

“Yes?” says Pakku, his patience glacial.

“Well,” she says, “If it’s about Grandmother Kanna, then we’ve already heard the story about the necklace and how you made a new one and you sailed on a ship and how she made you – ” she breaks off, bemittened thumbs twiddling.

“No,” says Pakku. “It has nothing whatsoever to do with that.”

Around his feet, the snow spikes up into tiny, feathery stalagmites. He’s fairly sure no-one notices.



He clears his throat again, looks out across his class.

Katara may have been a prodigy, but there was only one of her. Here, out of the dozen or so children, there are at least six little girls, and one ... personage towards the back, inside an overlarge hood, whom he has pegged as a maybe.

Master Pakku is almost without a doubt the most highly skilled and experienced waterbender in the world. He has fought bear-orcas and walrusodiles and vicious firebenders, and he has helped nurse Jeong Jeong through a hangover.

But he should never have told Katara that he was perfectly capable of taking over her teaching duties while she was in the Fire Nation.



Nevertheless.

He stretches out his arms, draws swatches and skeins of snow towards him, shapes them, with a few deft curves of his hands, into a towering, lacy ice-monster, arching body and snapping beak all hung together in sparkling white.

The children’s mouths hang open.

Pakku smirks.

“This,” he tells them, “was my adversary. The Great Spirit, Wan Shi Tong.”

They are listening now, all right.

He continues: the tale of his wanderings, youthful, in the story – they do not need to hear about his middle-age, his journeys through the fringes of the war, the way the sand got everywhere – his quest for knowledge, for secrets to aid the Water Tribe and hold in reserve against the day the Fire Nation struck. The story of his trek across the Si Wong desert, exhausted and hallucinating, forced to rely on local flora for sustenance.

His terrible realisation that he had not a drop of water left to bend.

His discovery, nevertheless, alone in modern times apart from the accursed Zhao, of the Great Library. His encounter with the Great Owl Spirit Wan Shi Tong, half-mad with curdled learning and distrust of man, bitter and vengeful against all intruders in his domain.





Pakku pauses.

The class, he sees, is hanging on his every word. His ice lance is sharp in his hands, his smirk feral.

He quirks a finger, and the vast ice-ghost of Wan Shi Tong looms over him, frozen beak clacking, body undulating across the close-packed snow.

The children’s hearts are racing.

“And so,” says Pakku, “I faced this most implacable and ruthless of world-dwelling Spirits with nothing but the sacred spear of Orluk and the amulet of Hor-shnah of the desert winds. We duelled for hours in amongst the mouldering scrolls of the Great Library, my wits and cunning and weapons against his might of ages.”

He pauses for effect, makes his ice-owl spread its wings sharp against the sky.

“And then, at night-fall, when the power of the sacred spear was at its weakest, Wan Shi Tong struck! He splintered the amulet of Hor-shnah and knocked the spear out of my hands! And he seized me, weary and bloodied, in his sharp beak – ”

“...Woah.”

Pakku knows that voice. His ice-owl droops, just a little.



“Yes, Sokka? Do you have anything of particularly vital import to contribute, or would you prefer me to leave my younger self stranded on the brink of certain death while you ... vocalize?”

Sokka ducks under the owl, flapping his hands, looking, Pakku notes with dread, close to ecstatic.

“No, no, Grandpakku!” Sokka holds up a hand against the inevitable protest, faces the class. Holds up a finger.

“What we have here,” he tells them, “is a clear case of Grandpakku-Sokka bonding material!”

He waves an arm at the ice Wan Shi Tong.

“I mean, what are the odds!”

He turns to Pakku.

“You never told me you fought scary-owl-librarian-guy!”

Pakku breathes in, out, centres himself.

Reminds himself that Kanna could be back from fishing any moment.

“You fought Wan Shi Tong?” he asks Sokka, one eyebrow nearly at his hairline.

Sokka’s chest swells visibly.

“You mean you didn’t know either? Oh, Grandpakku, we have so much to catch up on! Of course I fought him!”

He sucks in a breath.





“ ... You see we were all having mini vacations and Aang went to an ice oasis and played some music and we all had some drinks in a little bar but not alcoholic at all except I don’t know about Toph because you can never tell with her and then we met an anthropologist from Ba Sing Se and he told us about the great library so I decided that would be my vacation and we found it on Appa and then we went inside and there were pictures of owls everywhere and the big owl too of course and a foxy knowledge spirit and – ”

Sokka pauses, almost, Pakku thinks, as if he is centering himself.

“And we found out about the Day of Black Sun even though that didn’t really work out in the end except for Zuko I suppose who got to shout at his crazy dad and then Wan Shi Tong chased us and so I bopped him on the head with a book and he had a snit and closed off the Great Library forever. Oh, and the guy from the university decided to stay behind.”

Sokka spreads out his arms.

“The end!”

He turns to Pakku.

“You know, Zuko can say what he likes, but I really think my public speaking is improving.”





Pakku blinks.

“You bopped Wan Shi Tong on the head with a book?” he asks.

Sokka nods enthusiastically.

“I knew he wasn’t all that as soon as he turned his beak up at my special knot,” he explains.

“I see.”



“ Well,” says Pakku, “class dismissed!”

The children stay still.

“But, Grandpakku!”

Sokka looks, Pakku thinks, genuinely hurt.

“How did you escape?”

The children’s voices rise in agreement. They are all watching him, even the girls. Even the hood at the back, as far as he can tell.

Pakku flicks out his moustache tails, crosses his arms. Wonders if Kanna is likely to be watching this, from the village. He wouldn’t put it past her.

“Very well,” he says. He pauses. Narrows his eyes.



“Snatched up in the beak of the Owl Spirit, bruised, nearly broken, I could only move one of my arms. I was fortunate, however, that my pocket on that side happened to be stocked with dried fish – ”

Here, Sokka nods understandingly –

“ - and so, wresting it out with no small degree of difficulty, I was able to use it as a decoy. We were near enough to a high book stack that I was able to leap free and climb my way to the nearest window the very moment Wan Shi Tong released me.”

Pakku swipes his arm out, hand flat. The ice owl crumbles out into a whirl of bright soft powder.

“And that,” he concludes, “is the story of my most impressive victory. A story which, I would hope, serves to emphasize the value of discipline, hard – ”

“Whoooo!”

Sokka is, Pakku notices, punching the air and hooting. He bounds up next to Pakku, hooks his arm round his shoulders.

“Grandpakku and Sokka, Champions of the Great Library! The fearsome twosome! Spreading fear into the hearts of immortal spirits and ... people who love knowledge!”

Sokka pauses.

“Though I expect there are ways to get that library back,” he says, almost reflectively. “There usually are when it comes to spirits.”

Pakku opens his mouth, but Sokka is already leaning out over the class, face intent.

“So,” he says. “As Grandpakku was saying, if you take one thing away from this class, it should be that dried fish can be a pretty useful thing in a fight. And also dictionaries of High Court Fire Nation, if they’re thick enough. Really, any large book will do. And probably dried meat as well as fish – ”

He stops, rubs the back of his head.

“Sorry, Pakku. I guess my public speaking probably still needs some fine tuning.”

Pakku blows out at his moustache.

Hitches an eyebrow.

Crosses his arms.

“I couldn’t have put it better myself,” he says. “Class dismissed.”