playinginsand | [AU: Kaylee in Eden]

The corner of Sokka's roof, where he keeps his engineering material, was long ago moved so that he would always have a view of the wall. He still hopes, somewhere in the back of his mind, in a place he feels no need to reveal to the rest of Eden, that one day he'll see his nieces and nephew stumble back in.

Someday.

What it also means is that he's generally the first to notice the new-comers.

"Hey," he calls, keeping his voice even and staying in plain sight as he approaches. It's hard not to add a 'Kaylee' onto the end of his greeting, but Sokka manages with a slight smile as he waves. "Are you all right?"

Best to know if she needs physical doctoring before he breaks her mind.

Kaylee whips her head around - with light brown hair longer than Sokka would remember - and stares up at him, shading her eyes.

"Hey," she says, wary but definitely not hostile. "Actually I guess I'm kinda lost. You know where Eavesdown is?"

She's different. That's all right, so is he - not that she'd know it. He doesn't look that different at twenty-three than he did at seventeen, so if she was going to recognize him at all, she would have by now.

"I'm sorry," he begins, with that calm, quiet voice they've all perfected when talking to newcomers, "but you've gotten really, really lost. I can help you get back, though, if you wanna follow me?"

He's already gesturing down the street to a machine that sits at about the height of Sokka's hip, Kaylee's belly. Lights blink and the whole thing gives off a soft, electric humming.

She doesn't recognise him at all, and sweet as she is, strange men don't generally ask pretty women to follow them without a reason to.

"Where is this?" she asks warily, not about to follow him.

"Eden." He has to smile for her distrust. It's the ones that follow him immediately that make him worry, sending them home and not knowing what happened after. "It's-- complicated. I know it's weird and you've got no reason to trust me, but I'm not taking you anywhere you can't see already."

Turning to the side, he points, rather than gestures, straight to the machine. His back is to her and he always leaves his weapons behind when meeting someone new, not wanting to make them more nervous. "See that? You're here by accident, a-- 'dimensional anomaly' is the phrase I think everyone's using. That machine over there will take you back home."

His back's to her, so he won't be able to see her eyes widen in delight at seeing a machine that sophisicated.

"Dimensional anomaly? Húchĕ! Like somethin' out of science fiction?"

Sokka pauses before answering, and not for lack of anything to say. He just has to pause and swallow back the retort that Kaylee lives on a space ship.

"...Crazy, huh?" he settles for a moment later, turning back around to give her a tight smile. "I know it sounds totally insane - my nephew made it, to get people back home once they showed up here. We've been using it for three years."

Kaylee's wariness is quickly forgotten and she starts forward towards it.

"Well, ain't that just shiny?" she asks, glancing over her shoulder at him as if remembering he was there. "How's she work?"

His smile is more genuine within an instant, grinning at her as she starts off ahead of him. No matter how much he hated to see those he recognized from the apartments, it was still Kaylee.

Sokka follows along behind her, explaining how the machine was built, what exactly it does. He admits freely that they have no way to prove it and, just as easily, tells her his nieces and nephew have used it, his friends. It's to let her know that their facts and proof might not be great, but the trust held in the machine and its makers is great.

Kaylee's listening to him with about half an ear as she crouches down next to it, then peers under at the mechanism.

"Look at this lìngrén jingyì coil you've got here," she says. "And the flux transmission - that's inspired. How long were you working on it before you worked..." she stops and there's a squeal. "That's a home-made T.G.-riser!"

Part of the reason why Sokka had never thought to be jealous of Iroh finishing the machine before he could is that he'd taught his nephew everything he knew. There were other teachers, of course, passing in and out of Eden, but there was no question of who had been the biggest influence in Iroh's work.

Which is why he is grinning as he stands beside her, hands slipped into his pockets. "Dui, tread caps aren't exactly sitting around here so we had to make our own out of clay. This part here," he crouches down beside her and leans in, pointing to a piece just beyond a tangle of wires, "see it? That's a re-worked piston set, clay under steel. I think it works better than standard copper but I don't think anyone would've thought of it if we hadn't had to improvise."

He wonders, for about two seconds, if she'll be proud of him for the single word of Chinese, or if she'll be impressed that he understood what she called the coil. Impressing Kaylee had been right up there on Sokka's scale of importance with impressing Harper and Wash.

...actually, for the first ten minutes he'd known her, fifteen and eager to please, Kaylee had been first on that scale of importance.

The Chinese washes right over her because there's just no reason to assume anyone couldn't speak Chinese.

Besides, he speaks machines, and that's more important to Kaywinnit Lee.

"

Cái búshì

! Clay under steel would hump out the natural resonance. But that means this... is that wood? Your nephew really knew what he was doing, huh?"

She disappears a little further under the machine, poking at it in a way that can't possibly harm it.

"Hey, have you tried bypassing this wire hub?"

"My nephew's brilliant," Sokka informs her and so long as the main topic is machines, his pride isn't tainted with sadness in the least. "Puts me and all his other teachers completely to shame.

"...it probably helps that the generator he saw me build when he was little was mostly clay and wood, too.

"Yeah, I thought about that, but it seems like it'd just be a waste of materials and not for much extra help, you know? We tried a few other things before we settled on that one like..."

It's always so nice to be able to dissolve into this sort of talk without thought to anything else.

"Oh yeah, I guess if you've got this..."

She tilts her head down, and looks at him. "You built a generator from scratch? Could I see?

Serenity

- that's my boat - she needs a new compression coil but work's been a little tight. You have any ideas?"

Yes, actually, he wants to say, blinking at her for a moment. I have a lot of great ideas because I spent half a year listening to you tell me all the ideas YOU had for it. I know which one you decided on, too, and I know how to build it because you had me help you between projects.

"...what kind of materials are you working with?" he asks instead, rising to his feet with a tight smile.

"Well, we ain't, right now," she says, "work's been tight, as I said. Hopin' the passengers we're takin' on at Persephone'd help with that, otherwise we're just kinda drifting."

She pushes herself out from under the machine. "I'm Kaylee, by the way."

"Sokka," he replies easily and, while it occurs to him for a moment, he doesn't try to place this Kaylee from the one he knew. A hand is offered, and a more relaxed smile. "Nice to-- uh, hen guixing renshi ni."

This time around, in Eden, it's not about impressing her so much as it is making sure the short time she spends here isn't spent freaking out in a panic. And randomly breaking into Chinese should cover that.

He hopes.

"Uhm... if you're near any salvage yards, a new enough compression coil should get you were you need to be, at least until you can buy a real new one."

"Oh yeah, that's what I figure," Kaylee says. "But if I can make a new one, it'd save us money and maybe I could get a new gravshaft."

Tha random Chinese certainly isn't doing any harm, but the machine talk is distracting her even from the getting home.

A better man would remind her of that, force her home.

A lesser man would keep up the shop talk for as long as he could for his own benefit.

"Y'know, if you can get some clay, I bet you could patch your regular one right up, with enough left over to make a whole new one when you need it. I know the coils are usually made out of something more flexible, but-- well..." Glancing back toward his building, the small two-story with the shop at the bottom and an apartment at the top, plus his blankets on the roof, Sokka rubs at his neck, suddenly sheepish.

"Actually, I could show you the one I put in on the generator. It's not exactly the same, but it's pretty close."

Even if he really, really should be getting her home.

He's a bad man, taking advantage of her weakness.

Maybe. It's not like she wouldn't ask if she wanted to go home.

"You'd do that?" she asks sweetly. "It ain't everyday a girl gets to see a generator made completely from scratch like this beauty."

If he notices the sweetness of her tone or suspects any sort of advantage-taking on her part, Sokka doesn't show it.

Smiling slightly and nodding toward his building, Sokka starts to lead the way. "It's really not that special. If we had the materials for it, we'd get a lot more power. But it gives enough for the lights and the alarm and anything else we need, usually."

She follows, but stops at the first light, laughing as she eyes the handiwork, and catches up with his longer stride.

"Have you been here long? Looks like you really made a home."

Glancing back to grin when she laughs, Sokka shrugs and slows to let her catch up easier. "Yeah, about six years. We set up what was necessary to live here-- speaking of which, if you're hungry, let me know and I'll show you over to the store."

Once they reach the building, Sokka leans in to open the door and steps back to let Kaylee get in first. The generator is against the far wall, humming steadily and radiating warmth in the chill of Eden.

"Shiny!" Kaylee exclaims, apparently not all that hungry after all.

"She's a real beauty!"

"Thanks." Now he's filled with pride, standing off to the side to let her get as close as she likes, but his eyes are on the machine as he grins. "I check it at least once a day, but I've only really had to do upkeep twice in six years."

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject

no subject