Chapter Text
Hakoda’s and Kya’s first child is born on the day before the summer solstice with the sun high in the sky. The new father enters their tent nervous and unable to stop the wide smile on his face after their baby’s first cries echoed outside. His mother sits nearby but away from his wife, and he would normally be irked at her open disdain for Kya, but right now she wasn’t important. Kya and his baby were. Aya, who had helped with the birth, was smiling at him as he came towards them, her indigo eyes gleaming. “It’s a boy, congrats, Chief!”
Hakoda almost faceplanted at her words, his heart beating even faster. A boy! He smiled at his wife, feeling so full of love he could burst with it, and she was smiling back with the same look in her eyes, cradling their baby – their son! – to her chest like he was the most precious gem in the world. Aya patted his shoulder, knowing that he wouldn’t have eyes for anyone besides his little family, and motioned Kanna outside.
“Hi, dear,” his wife preens, melting into his warm sidehug and the deep kiss he gave her, smiling brilliantly as he sweeps her sweaty bangs from her forehead. “Wanna meet our little Sokka?”
The baby’s eyes are closed, and he’s dozing in his mother’s arms without a care in the world. Hakoda smiles as he gently runs a finger over the soft tuft of dark brown hair on top of the boy’s head, and his little face scrunches up into a frown. He yawns, and blinks open eyes that are the brilliant blue of the summer ocean, and Kya lets out a soft oh.
He tears his eyes away from his son’s with enormous effort, and blinks at his wife. “Hm?”
“He’s got the spark,” Kya whispers, softly running her fingers over Sokka’s cheek, just underneath one of his eyes. “Do you see that glow?” He hums an affirmative, eyes glued to his son’s again. “Grandma said that’s how you know firebenders when they’re born.”
Hakoda pauses. “Are you sure?”
Kya nods against him, face unreadable. “His eyes glow like hers. She said it’s their inner flame, the part of them that’s Agni.” She turns to him then, and there is something like fear in her eyes. “Looks like it skipped a generation or two, huh?”
He looks at his wife for a moment, then smiles, kissing her forehead. “Looks like it.” He turns to their son, stroking his cheek. “Our little firebender, huh? Don’t melt our village, you.”
In his arms, Kya relaxes, and she rests her head on his shoulder. “Let’s hope he’s nothing like you, then.”
“Hey!”
They keep it a secret, for some time. They know, deep down, they can’t hide it forever, but they hope that by the time Sokka starts firebending the village will love him enough that they won’t react badly to it. It’s something that leaves a sour taste in their mouths, this possibility that despite Kya’s grandmother fighting alongside their waterbenders against the raiders the village might not accept their son for who he is. But what choice do they have, when the scars left by the Fire Nation have never truly healed?
They’ll come to regret it, years down the line, but they don’t know that just yet.
Kya’s eyes are focused on the little baby blanket she’s embroidering for their second child, and she almost misses Sokka moving towards the small stove fire in the middle of their tent. It’s only his excited gurgles that have her gaze snap up for a brief moment to check on him that have her throw down the embroidery and pick him up and away from the fire. Sokka makes a disappointed wail as he is pulled away from the flames, and the fire moves for a brief moment to follow his chubby, uncoordinated fingers.
“Now, now, sweety,” Kya scolds as she frowns at her one-year-old. “I know you like fire and wanna touch it, but let’s wait until you’re a bit older before you go and stick your hands in it, hm?” She emphasizes her words by grabbing his little fist between her fingers, making the toddler squeal in excitement. She sighs, bouncing him in her arms. “You’re gonna give me gray hairs, Sokka. How do they do it over there?”
“Who does what over where?”
Kya smiles at her husband as he enters their tent, handing Sokka over to his eager hands. She blows some loose strands of hair from her face and watches him play with their giggling baby. “Our son tried to touch the fire.”
“Again?” Hakoda’s voice is blasé as he shoots her a quick glance, then focuses back on their son. “Now, now, Sokka, what did we talk about? No touching fire until you can walk, buddy.” He gets a gurgle and some saliva bubbles as reply, and nods sagely. “Good, glad we agree.”
Kya rolls her eyes, picking her work back up. “I honestly don’t know how the Fire Nation does it.”
“It probably helps that they don’t have to worry about their kids melting their houses into puddles.”
“Hm, I suppose,” she concedes with a chuckle. Their second child kicks, and she rubs her stomach absently.
Hakoda looks at her again. “You think that one’s another firebender?”
Kya tilts her head this way and that, humming thoughtfully as she rubs her stomach again. “I don’t think so, it feels different from Sokka.”
“Well, let’s hope it’s not a waterbender, can you imagine the sibling fights over who gets the last piece of seal jerky?” Hakoda shudders, and Sokka pats his nose with a frown.
“Hm, I mean, at least a waterbender could put out his accidental fires.”
“Fair enough.” He makes a face at their son, and Sokka giggles, throwing his hands out, creating sparks. The parents blink at each other. “Did you see that?”
Kya nods, mutely, and Hakoda sighs, mock-scowling at their giggling toddler. “Couldn’t you have waited with this until after you said your first word or started walking?”
Sokka squealed, and sent more sparks flying in reply.
Their secret doesn’t get out until after Katara is born, more specifically until she is two and Sokka is three. It likely would have stayed a secret for much longer, but Hakoda and Kya had gotten complacent with the years. Sokka had excellent control over his bending for his age, and only burnt something on accident once.
It was bound to come out, though, fate would just have it that it came out in the worst way.
Kya is sitting by the stove fire preparing dinner, the flames moving with her son’s breathing as he plays clumsy peekaboo with his little sister, who is cooing at him and making grabby hands towards him. Katara didn’t have the spark in her eyes, but seemed fascinated by Agni’s light shining in her older brother’s, glowing faintly in the low light of the tent. No one in the village had commented on the faint, unnatural sheen to Sokka’s eyes yet, those that remembered her grandmother not remembering the light of her inner flame in her amber eyes and instead choosing to believe it a trick of the light.
Katara seemed to grow bored of their game, so Sokka switched to making multicolored sparks with his fingers instead, careful to keep them away from his baby sister and anything flammable, and she started cooing again. Sokka grinned brightly, and Kya turned her attention back to the stew on the fire.
“What in La’s name?!”
Kya freezes, the ladle slipping from her fingers as she turns to the entrance of the tent, Kanna standing there with her gaze glued to Sokka. He looks at his grandmother with eyes the size of dinner plates and the sparks die at his fingertips, while Katara pouts at the sudden lack of stimulus.
“Kanna listen-,” before Kya can really begin to do damage control her mother-in-law has stormed out of the tent, and Sokka looks at her with pain in his eyes.
“Did I do something bad, mom?”
“Sweety, no, of course not,” she rushes to assure him, pulling him into a hug. “Gran-Gran was just surprised, is all. Your firebending isn’t bad.”
“Really?”
“Yes, really, you know we love your bending, sweety. We love you and I’m sure Gran-Gran will too, once she calms down, ok?” Sokka hums into her chest, sounding unconvinced. They’d drilled him on only bending in their tent until they were ready to tell the village, and now they might not get the chance.
Koh’s tits, Kya thinks, and hugs her son tighter.
“Okay,” Hakoda says, looking over the village’s food reserves. “I think one more hunt and two fishing trips should last us the winter, Bato. I say we-,”
“Hakoda, what is the meaning of this?!” The two men look up as Kanna makes her way towards them, and they frown.
“What’s the meaning of what, mom?”
“I knew that woman was bad news,” the elder goes on, ignoring her son’s question. “Did you know that that child is a damned ashmaker, Hakoda?”
Hakoda freezes, eyes wide. Next to him, Bato coughs and quickly retreats from the storage hut, opting to stand guard outside during that particular spat.
(he may be an idiot, but he was not touching that with a five foot stick if he doesn’t have to, no sir)
Quickly recomposing himself Hakoda stands up straighter, glaring down at his mother. “First of all, Kya is my wife, and we have been over your opinion of her enough already, mother. Second of all,” he goes on, steamrolling over her retort. “Sokka is my son and I will not allow you to speak about him like that. Are we clear?”
“So you knew,” Kanna spits out, eyes narrowed. “You knew that child was some ashmaker changeling and you kept it from me and the village.”
“What did I just say?” His voice is low, and he resists the urge to yell. “So Sokka inherited firebending from his great-grandmother, what’s the big deal? Kiara was a good, brave woman and we’ll be lucky if Sokka inherited half her spine.”
“He’s one of them, Hakoda, are you blind?!”
“Are you?!” He can’t help raising his voice this time, losing his temper for once. “Sokka is three, mother, and has never met another firebender in his life, let alone someone from the Fire Nation. The last raid was almost fifty years ago, for Tui’s sake! Kiara fought alongside every last one of our waterbenders, what in Koh’s Lair is your problem?”
Kanna glared at him, eyes narrowed to slits. “Their kind is evil, Hakoda, and I cannot believe you are so blind to the truth. Haven’t they done enough, already?”
“Is this about dad?”
“Leave your father out of this, Hakoda!”
“It is, isn’t it? You can’t get over his death so you are letting it out on my wife and son for daring to share the barest of similarities with the raiders. They are Water Tribe, mother, and my family. You will not speak about them like this, or I swear you won’t be my mother anymore.”
Mother and son glare at each other for a few moments before Kanna turns on her heels and storms out of the storage hut, Bato coming back inside instead. “So, that just happened, huh?”
Hakoda rubs his temples, sighing. “You gonna yell at me too?”
“Nah,” his best friend laughs, patting his back. “The kid spit sparks at me once when I was dropping something off and startled him by accident. He swore me to secrecy. I’ve known for a bit.”
He throws Bato an incredulous look, then chuckles, low. “Go figure.”
“Come on,” Bato nudges him to the door. “Let’s check up on Kya and the kids.”
That was the beginning of the end, and it quickly snowballed from there.
It started small. Kanna wouldn’t come over to their tent to help with chores or babysit, not if it involved being around Kya or Sokka, and Kya merely said good riddance and went on with life. When Hakoda asked Bato if he should be worried, his best friend shrugged and said he wouldn’t put it past Kya to slit Kanna’s throat in her sleep. Hakoda, having known Kya his entire life, couldn’t disagree.
Then the stories told around the communal campfire moved away from old legends and hunting tales to memories of the raids and the war to the point that Kya chose to stay away from them entirely and instead sit with Sokka and Katara by the shore, watching the stars reflect in the glittering waves of the ocean while Sokka improved his control to make a small flame in his hands and keep them warm.
The other villagers wouldn’t let their children play with Sokka, claiming they were worried he’d lose control and burn them. Hakoda and Kya wanted to protest – they were the only ones who knew of the burn scar on Kya’s collarbone, the size of a toddler’s hand, where Sokka had gotten excited and heated his palm too much – but it seemed an easy enough situation to fix. So they made sure to have Sokka learn to control his firebending as well as he could without a proper master to teach him, and the accidental burn on his mother’s chest remained the only accident. But the villagers would not be swayed.
When Katara was four and Sokka was five, she began bending water, and things just escalated from there, but the villagers made sure to become more subdued in their disdain for their Chief’s eldest son. It was clear that his love for his fireblooded wife and ashmaker son blinded him to the truth, and Bato was no better. So they put the changeling in his place only when his parents and their friend weren’t around. They had to, or he would poison the first waterbender born in over half a century against them like he had their Chief.
They lived in a world at war, and there was no place for forgiveness.
Sokka wasn’t sure how he felt about his firebending being out in the open quite yet. On the one hand, he didn’t have to stay inside their tent to practice now; on the other everyone was being really mean all of a sudden, and Gran-Gran didn’t look at him anymore. That really sucked, but he still had mom and dad and Katara, so it was okay, he thought.
(children are good at being honest to all but themselves)
“Sokka!” He turned around at his sister’s call, smiling as she stumbled on her chunky boots and was dwarfed by her thick coat.
“Hey, twerp,” he teased, catching her in a hug half to keep her from falling onto her butt. “What’s got you so excited?”
Katara’s large blue eyes shined with unshed tears, and Sokka was immediately on edge. “I was with Uki at Aya’s and, and… she said something mean about you.”
He immediately relaxed some, Katara and their parents weren’t in danger. He tilts his head, instead. “So, what did she say?”
His little sister stomped her right foot petulantly. “Uki said you were bad!”
Sokka blinked. “That it?”
“But that’s not true!” Katara looked at him like he was an idiot with all the conviction of a four years old. “You are funny and nice and make pretty fire and your eyes are, like, the prettiest and glow and stuff!”
He giggled, ruffling her hair playfully. “Well, thank you, I am very glad my little sister likes my fire and eyes.”
“That’s not the point, Sokka!” She stomped again for emphasis. “The point is that Uki is a dummy who thinks you are a bad person because you can do what I can but with fire!”
That gave Sokka pause. “She said that?” Uki was ten and the closest girl to Katara in age.
“Uhhuh! She said… that firebending is something bad and that you will go… mad? Yeah, mad, and hurt mommy and daddy and me because it’s what firebenders do.” Katara shed a few tears. “I told her that’s stupid and that you are the best brother ever and then she said I’m stupid and I left.”
Something twisted in Sokka’s chest at that. It was one thing to suspect that people didn’t like his bending and another to have them say it out loud and accuse him of being an inherently bad person. And say it to his little sister? There was a part in him who wanted to punch Uki in the face, even if she was a girl, punch her and make her take back all the mean things she said about him to Katara. But even at five he knew that wasn’t a good thing to think, so instead he hugged his sister tightly, trying to calm down the flickering fire in his stomach and keep its heat from his skin.
He’d burned their mother, once, before he could even properly walk, and he’d never burn someone again.
“Hey, twerp,” he mutters into her soft hair. “Wanna go outside the village and build a snowman?”
Katara meets his eyes, and he thinks that she recognizes his question for the distraction it is, but she only nods and grabs his hand.
They both ignore the gazes of the rest of the village with the stubbornness they inherited from their mother’s fire blood.
That night at dinner, Katara told their parents about what Uki said, and Kya and Hakoda exchanged one of those glances that spanned only seconds but were an entire conversation.
It was their father who set down his food and leveled them with a serious gaze, hands on his knees, and much later, after a lot of bitter resentment had festered, Sokka would realize the significance of his father taking over this part. It would be easy for their mother to defend the part of Sokka that came from her, but their father, who was as wholly Water Tribe as one could be and lost his father in the raids, making his position clear was a sign of deep love that passed Sokka by just then.
But he’d remember and understand, eventually.
“Sokka,” Hakoda said with the gravitas reserved for important talks, and Sokka straightened up, paying attention. “Have you ever thought of burning someone on purpose?”
“What? Of course not!” Tears sprang to his eyes. Did even his father think he was bad?
“Why not?”
“W-what?” Sokka blinked his tears from his eyes. “Well because… because fire is fun, and pretty and makes you and mom and Katara happy when I make shapes with it, and it keeps us warm when we watch the stars and skylights.” He looks down at his lap, frowning. “It feels wrong to use something that makes you guys happy to hurt someone.”
Hakoda puts his hand on his shoulder then, and he looks up to see his father smiling warmly down at him. “And that’s all that matters right there, son. You use your firebending to make others happy, not to hurt them, and your mother and Katara and I love you for how kind you are. Never forget that.”
“B-but Uki said that I’ll become bad anyways, what if she’s right?”
“You know,” his father hums, looking pained. “Some people can’t grasp that every person can make their own lot in life. What you’re born like doesn’t matter, it’s your decisions that do. No one is born evil, or destined to become an evil person. Your great-grandmother was a firebender too, and she was a great woman who was just as kind as you, Sokka. If you are half as brave and good as her when you grow up then you’ll already be a better man than half of the people in this village combined.”
The tears finally slipped from Sokka’s eyes. “You mean that?”
“I do,” Hakoda affirmed, drawing him in for a tight hug. “We love you, Sokka, no matter what.”
But love isn’t always enough.
Hakoda gave Uki and her mother Aya a stern talking-to the next day, and it quickly spread throughout the village.
The other children were told by their parents to be more careful around the changeling’s false family, to make sure that it was all their words against one or two, to make the ashmaker think twice about telling on them.
The children learned to hit Sokka where the bruises were covered by clothing, Sokka learned that telling his parents or Bato only made it worse, and Katara learned that she could take some of the pain from the purple stains on her brother’s skin with waterbending, turning them yellow and green instead.
Soon, Sokka learned how to avoid the beatings, and Katara learned that distracting people with her waterbending gave her brother reprieve from the village’s hatred.
The first casualties of war are always innocence and kindness.
Sometimes, when a particularly bad bruise kept him awake at night, Sokka couldn’t help the tiny voice in his head that resented Katara from getting loud.
Why was her waterbending worthy of praise and reverence but his firebending cause for beatings and slurs?
What made her better than him in the eyes of everyone else?
Sometimes, he wondered why she stopped telling their parents about the beatings.
Deep down, he knows she realized that it always got worse after he told someone.
But some tiny part of him wondered if she even cared.
Their parents don’t ask why he doesn’t have any friends in the village, and part of him screams why don’t you care?
But he knows that they do care, but don’t know what to do to change things.
He resents them for their failures, a little.
But most of all he hates himself for being too nice, too good, not enough like the monster the village claims him to be.
Sometimes he wishes he could just burn it all to the ground.
But he doesn’t, because he doesn’t want to prove them all right.
When the black snow begins falling not many still remember it by sight, but many remember it from stories.
They look at Katara and fear that their only hope for the future will be taken like all the others before her.
No one looks at Sokka.
No one pays much mind to him, and he is huddled into the large community hut with the rest of the children, less out of concern for him and more out of fear he might give Katara away.
Katara, who was huddling in their tent with their mother while their father and the rest of the men try to fight off the Fire Nation soldiers.
A man with eyes colder than ice despite his inner flame enters the large hut, and Kanna steps up and in front of the huddled women and children. “What do you want,” she demands, her voice shaking despite herself. “There are no waterbenders left, you made damn sure of that, ashmaker scum!”
It’s the first time Sokka hears the slur directed at someone other than him, and he flinches instinctively, eyes drawn to the soldier. He couldn’t understand how the villagers – his own grandmother, for La’s sake – could see that cruelly grinning man in him.
“We’re not here for waterbenders today, savage,” Yon Rha sneers, his eyes sweeping over the children. “We’re here for the firebender you’re hiding away in your midst.”
Cold washes over Sokka at those words like he’s never felt before, and he feels his inner fire flicker like candlelight in the breeze in the pit of his stomach. They were looking for him? How did they even know about him? Why were they looking for him anyways? What-
He flinches as his grandmother grabs him by the wrist so hard it hurts and will leave a nasty bruise for weeks to come and shoves him towards the soldier like just touching for such a short amount of time was already more than she could bare. “There you have the changeling, good riddance, now leave us alone.”
The enemy soldier seems to be taken aback by the venom in her voice and the ease with which she offers him up, and Sokka turns to her, too shocked for tears. “Gran-Gran?”
“You are no grandson of mine, ashmaker,” she doesn’t even look at him as she says it. “We are giving him freely, leave us alone in exchange.”
“You truly are nothing but savages,” the firebender sneers, seeming surprisingly disgusted by what was happening. He grabs Sokka’s hand gently with his own in a way he only ever knew from his family, tugging him towards the exit. Sokka looked at the villagers behind him, too stunned to struggle against the firm grip, but no one met his eyes. Absently he thinks he could probably free himself with his bending.
But he never had it in him to hurt someone with fire.
He is dragged up one of the metal ships’ gangplanks, and the last thing he hears is his father’s outraged roar of his name, and then there is the darkness of the hull.
It will be years before he sees his family again.