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It doesn’t happen until they’re safe.
The war over. All of them safely housed in the palace in Caldera, awaiting Zuko’s coronation. Zuko healed from the Agni Kai to the point where he barely needs her healing work anymore. Sokka’s leg not quite whole, but sturdy enough that it can heal the rest of the way on its own.
It annoys Sokka at first. He has to summon Katara to dinner, and she doesn’t want to leave the garden, where she’s making the water of the turtleduck pond dance. It’s so childish, the way she rolls her eyes at him and stomps in to join them at the table.
She picks at her food with her chopsticks, barely eating any of it. Glowering at her bowl like it’s personally offended her.
“I don’t like these,” she says, picking around the spicy peppers in her bowl, even though she’s been eating them without complaint for weeks.
Zuko, of course, offers to send for something else. They’re in the palace, and he is the Fire Lord. They would prepare a ten course meal for him at the drop of a hat if he asked.
But what Katara wants is sea prunes, which is just about they only thing they actually can’t get here. So Katara rolls her eyes again and eats her peppers, glaring at the table the whole time.
She’s being petulant. A word Suki taught him. It basically means childish. Katara is suddenly acting like a child and it drives him crazy.
—
Katara doesn’t show up for their healing session, and Zuko finds her in the courtyard, building an igloo. Aang is helping her, and they both shriek with laughter as they rush to stack slippery blocks of ice before they can melt and fall down again, racing the sun and the thick press of the day’s heat.
Where on earth did they find so much ice?
But Katara is a waterbender. A damn good one. Probably the best Zuko has ever seen. She’s taken the water out of the pond bit by bit, shaped it in her hands and frozen them into bricks.
The pond is now just a hole of mud with a few scant puddles left in it. The turtleducks screech and sputter and pace the edges of their vanished home.
“Katara?” He says, approaching them slowly.
“Zuko!” She says, her smile bright and toothy. “We made an igloo!”
“Yeah come check it out!” Aang’s voice sounds from inside the hut, muffled and a little echoey.
Katara grabs Zuko’s wrist and tugs, pulling him toward the opening.
“Katara,” he says again, cautiously, freeing his hand from her grip, “…can you put the water back in the pond?”
She frowns, confused, “why?”
He looks over at the pond, where a single turtleduck is attempting to clean her feathers in one of the remaining muddy puddles. Katara follows his gaze and she gasps audibly.
“No!” She says. “No, no, no I didn’t mean to…”
She gathers up the water in the igloo and pours it back into the pond. The turtleducks scatter again, squawking and nattering indignantly, but as the water settles they reclaim their space with impressive resilience.
And Katara crumples. She breaks down in tears. Zuko reaches for her.
She throws herself into his arms, inconsolable.
“I’m…sorry!…I…didn’t…want…to hurt them!” she gasps out between sobs.
He holds her against his chest, stroking her hair gently, until she cries herself dry.
It takes a very long time.
—
There are healers in Caldera that specialize in the health of the mind, good ones, and when Zuko offers to summon one of the best, Sokka leaps at the chance to understand what’s happening to his sister.
“Regression,” the woman says, watching Katara across the room, playing dolls with an endlessly patient Suki. “Cases this drastic are uncommon, but if a child is forced to grow up too quickly, to act like an adult before they’re ready, sometimes the mind tries to get that time back, when it sees an opportunity.”
And that is so deeply true of Katara. But it’s true of Sokka too. True of all of them. But Sokka isn’t falling apart. Sokka isn’t running around the palace acting like an eight year old.
Katara was eight when their mother was killed.
Sokka thinks about the things he confessed to Toph. About how he can’t picture his mother anymore. How when he tries he just sees Katara.
He wonders how much of this is his fault.
“How do we help her?” It's Zuko that asks.
“Let it run its course,” she says. “Take care of her. Help her feel safe. She’ll come back to herself when she’s ready.”
“How long will it take?” Sokka asks.
The woman sighs, “there’s no way to know. It could be a few days. It could be weeks or months. It may come and go. Or-”
She catches herself. She doesn’t say that sometimes the regression is permanent. She doesn’t have to.
Sokka sets his teeth and swallows hard.
“Introduce her to things that remind her of who she is,” the woman adds. “Her adult self. Do it slowly, but that often helps.”
Her adult self. As if the Katara that has gone missing isn’t just barely eighteen.
—
She has nightmares. She wakes up screaming and her cries wake the rest of them too.
Sokka sits up, rubbing his eyes, and when Katara appears in the doorway, “I had a bad dream” on her lips, he is mostly awake. He pats the bed next to him and she sits down. Her hair is coming undone from the two loose braids she wears while she sleeps, so he fixes them.
“Do you want to tell me about it?” He asks as he works.
She just shakes her head, her breathing a little shaky.
He holds her hand as he walks her back to her room. He tucks her in, tugging the light, soft blankets up to her chin.
“Tell me a story?” She asks sleepily.
“Which one?” He asks.
“The one with the polar bear dog and the sun?” She asks.
Sokka tells her fairy tales from their tribe until she falls back asleep.
—
Toph lets Katara play with her hair, twining it into braids and tucking flowers behind her ears. She remembers their spa day together in Ba Sing Se. How much fun they had together that afternoon. How happy it made Katara.
She and Katara don’t always see eye to eye on things. Toph always teased her for being motherly. Argued with her when she got bossy.
But she can’t deny that Katara did take care of them. She took such incredibly good care of all of them. Better care, kinder and truer in many ways, than Toph’s own mother ever gave.
So when Katara accidentally knocks over a bottle of perfume and it cracks against the floor, spilling into the rug, it’s Toph that soothes her. Cleans up the spill, even though Katara could bend it away in a matter of seconds.
It’s Katara’s turn to be taken care of, and Toph does it without complaint. They all do.
—
Sokka vanishes into the kitchens and attempts to make five flavor soup. Something that will remind Katara of home. It doesn’t quite taste right. He’s certain Gran Gran always used a secret ingredient. Maybe Katara knows it, but Sokka doesn’t.
But it’s close enough, so he serves it up. Zuko slices fruit, pears and apples and mangos, peeling them first in long spirals.
“My mom used to do this for me,” he says, and Sokka can see the grief behind his smile as he puts a bowl of cut fruit in front of Katara.
It doesn’t help. Katara stays young. But she’s happy, as she sips her soup and munches on her fruit, and that almost makes it worth it. Seeing her so happy. She is happier than Sokka has seen her in a very long time.
—
They try having her work on her bending forms. Aang does them with her, purposely messing up a little, so she’ll have something to correct.
“Like this?” Aang asks, teasing, bending his arms into a completely ridiculous shape.
She fixes his stances and giggles and stays small. Smaller even than he is. All she wants to do now is play. He is one trying to get her to focus. It feels entirely wrong in a way he can’t quite put his finger on.
He would give anything to help her get better.
—
The others train too, while she works with Aang. Toph does earthbending forms and Sokka and Suki spar.
Zuko squares up to begin one of his katas. He hasn’t practiced like this in a few weeks. With the time he spent recovering from the Agni Kai, with all the work he’s done securing the throne and preparing for his coronation, with so much of his spare time given to Katara lately, he hasn’t had much chance to train. He shakes out his arms and breathes deep.
He firebends and Katara screams.
She shrieks in unbridled terror and stumbles away. Aang catches her under the elbows and that’s the only thing that keeps her on her feet. She snatches up the water she’s been practicing with and hurls it at Zuko.
It splatters against his chest in a powerful wave, soaking him to the skin and throwing him to the ground. His breath flies out of his lungs and the wound in his chest aches.
It’s Suki that appears at his side, helping him sit up.
“You ok?” She asks him.
Zuko nods. He’s still trying to get his breath back and his chest throbs where the wave hit him, but he’s ok. Water runs down his face and he blinks it out of his eyes.
Katara is on the ground, her hands in her hair and her knees pulled into her chest. Sokka is at her side, his hand on her back. Toph and Aang stand by, looking helpless.
“She didn’t mean it,” Suki says softly.
“I know,” Zuko says. She’d responded exactly like a scared young bender would. One who didn’t know their own strength.
Suki pulls Zuko to his feet, and they cross to the others slowly. Katara shies away as they approach, pressing herself closer to her brother.
It breaks Zuko’s heart, seeing this master waterbender, the woman who defeated Azula even while she was drawing power from Sozin’s Comet, brought low by just the tiniest bit of fire.
“It’s ok,” Sokka says. “It’s ok. It’s just Zuko.”
Zuko sits down on the ground in front of her. Katara looks up at him, wide eyed and scared.
“I’m sorry,” he says to her. “It’s ok. I won’t firebend around you again.”
Her chin shakes, but she nods at him. She hides her face in Sokka’s shoulder, who holds her tight against himself.
He won’t firebend in front of her again. He swears it to himself. Not until she’s better.
But it’s been two weeks and she isn’t getting better.
—
It’s Iroh that suggests the little getaway. They could all use it, he says. With all the stress of the last few months, the ending of the war and the solidifying of Zuko’s power and now Katara’s…struggles, they could all use a few days of rest, and of fun.
They fly to Ember Island, and Sokka watches as Katara stands in Appa’s saddle, her arms thrown wide for balance, her clothing rippling in the wind. She laughs with joyful abandon.
She’d yelled at him, once, for doing exactly this. Reminding him how high up they were. How unsafe it was.
This time, he joins her. They hold hands and she laughs and he grins and the wind tugs his hair out of its wolf tail and neither of them fall.
—
They’ve discovered that Katara does better, is happier the next day, when they make her adhere to a bedtime. Suki is the one who makes sure she gets to bed on time that first night. Just because they’re on vacation doesn’t mean she gets to sit up late.
She gets herself ready for bed, when they prompt her. Suki folds the tunic and leggings she left in a heap on the floor and lays them over the back of the chair.
“Do I have to?” Katara asks. She’s paused in running a brush through her hair and is looking back out the window at the water.
“Yes, sweetness,” Suki says. “It’s bedtime.”
They’ve all taken to using Toph’s favorite nickname for her. She responds well to it.
Katara pouts a little, but she resumes brushing her hair. Suki helps her braid it and pulls back the blankets on the bed. Katara climbs in, burrowing against the pillows. Suki blows out the candle.
“Good night,” she says.
“‘Night,” Katara mumbles back, already drifting off.
—
They sit around the fire until it’s very late, watching the sun set over the water and the stars come out, laughing and joking about nothing. But one by one, they all retreat toward the house, until the only ones left around the fire are Sokka, and Suki.
Sokka stares into the flames, elbows on his knees, a glass of the firewhiskey Toph smuggled out of the palace clutched in both hands. There isn’t much left, and he downs it in one pull.
Suki settles next to him. He doesn’t take his gaze away from the fire, but her hand starts tracing a line up and down his back. The gentle scratch of her fingernails is calming and wonderful. He tips his head against her shoulder.
“How are you doing?” She asks.
And being asked breaks him.
Suki pries the empty glass from his grip and sets it aside. She pulls him into her arms and lets him cry. Tears he hasn’t let himself release since it all began.
“It’s my fault,” Sokka says, his voice thick in his throat and muffled against Suki’s shoulder.
“No,” Suki soothes. “No, it’s not. Of course it’s not.”
“I’m the older brother,” Sokka says. “She shouldn’t have had to…I should have…”
His cries swallow his voice again. Suki’s hand is in his hair. She kisses his cheek.
“You take such good care of her,” Suki says. “You always have. You both take such good care of each other.”
“Then why is this happening to her?” Sokka demands.
Suki is quiet for a long moment.
And all she says is, “I don’t know.”
—
He got a letter from Sokka, and another from the Dragon of the West himself, explaining the situation, so Hakoda knows what he’s walking into when his boat docks in front of a huge mansion on Ember Island. But knowing and being prepared to see her are two different things.
He is not prepared to see his daughter, the brave, powerful grown woman who fought with the Avatar and who pieced him back together on the Day of the Black Sun, tear down the beach and throw herself at him like she used to when she was a child. Just the way she used to when he came home from hunting trips.
“Daddy!” She shouts and leaps into his arms.
There is more of her to hold than there once was, but he holds her anyway, his arms firm around the small of her back.
But the next thing he knows she is crying. She is sobbing into his shoulder and she’s trying to tell him something but he can’t catch the words around the sounds of her grief. Something… something about Kya. Something about her mother.
He’s still on the dock, sitting there with his daughter against his chest, when her cries finally fade away into little sniffles and gasps.
He thinks about how many parents, at some point or other, wish to revisit their children’s younger years, complaining about how quickly they grow up. Dreaming of turning back time and having just one more moment with their little ones when they were small.
The reality of it is something he wouldn’t wish on anyone. Something no parent would ever knowingly wish for.
He gathers Katara into his arms and carries her up to the house.
—
When they were kids at the South Pole, right after the fatal fire nation raid that took their mother away, they spent months all falling asleep under the same set of pelts. It wasn’t that unusual. Families often shared bedrolls and blankets in the darkest months of the year, sharing their warmth. But in those terrifying weeks and months after the raid, it had helped those younger versions of Sokka and Katara feel safe enough to sleep. And, with the passing of ten years and the clarity of hindsight, Sokka realizes it helped their dad too. Their dad who didn’t know how to face a cold, empty bed.
So in one of the massive, palatial beds in the fire lord’s summer house, they do the same thing. Sokka feels weird about it for a moment. He’s a grown man. Twenty years old. He doesn’t need his dad there in order to feel safe.
But they curl up under the blankets, flimsy fire nation things but all they need in the thick heat that clings to the island even as autumn sets in, and Sokka breathes a little easier. Hakoda curls on his side, Katara tucked against his chest. And Sokka falls asleep back to back with his dad, and feels safe.
He is suddenly thankful, in an odd, twisted way, that Katara feels safe enough here to feel young.
—
It doesn’t happen right away, and even when he looks back at the last few days he can’t say what caused it, but Sokka goes to wake Katara up on their second-to-last day on Ember Island and knows, before she even speaks, that he’s looking at Katara.
“Katara?” He calls softly from the doorway.
She’s sitting on the edge of her bed, already dressed, her hair brushed and braided, her hands tugging at a loose thread of her tunic in her lap. When she looks up at him, her eyes are sad. She looks exhausted. She looks…ashamed.
“Hey Sokka,” she says.
He rushes across the room and throws his arms around her. She holds him back, clinging to him tightly.
“Katara,” he says again, relief pouring through him like a wave sailing across the bay.
She lets him go and she won’t meet his eyes.
“I…” she bites her lip. “I don’t… I’m…so sorry.”
“No,” Sokka says, pulling her to him again, “It’s ok. I’m…I’m so glad you’re ok.”
His problem-solving, pattern-seeking mind already wants to ask questions. Wants to puzzle out what made her retreat. What made her feel strong enough to come back. But now is not the moment. There will be time for that later.
“Sokka, I’m…scared,” she says. “I’m so sorry that you had to-”
“Hey,” he cuts her off gently. “It’s ok. I’d do it again if I had to. We all would.”
He lets her go. Brushes a stray tear from her face.
“I’m still just so sorry,” she manages, her breath shaking.
“I know,” he says. “It’s ok.”
She bites her lip. She looks down at her lap. A few more tears fall but she catches them herself this time. At last, she nods.
“I… Thanks.”
“Of course.”
He takes her hand and squeezes it.
“Are you ready to see the gang?” He asks.
She lets out a long breath, and nods again.
—
Everyone does their best to play it cool, but the energy in the house that day is wild and jubilant. Vibrant with relief. With cautious hope.
Katara moves like she’s fragile, but like she’s herself. They all tell her to take it easy, but she wants so badly to help, for things to feel normal. So they let her help with breakfast. Sokka watches her shift around the kitchen, wrapping slices of fruit in pastry dough so Aang can tuck the pans into the woodburning stove, and thinks he might cry.
Zuko steps up beside him and hands him a cup of tea. They clink their glasses together lightly. Suki slips up behind him and puts her arms around his neck, resting her chin on top of them.
“You ok?” She asks softly.
Sokka takes a deep breath. He sips his tea. Rubs Suki’s arm with his other hand.
“Yeah,” he says. “I think we’re going to be ok.”
.