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Hakoda has been missing his children for what feels like centuries.
He’d sailed away from his home with warpaint traced carefully across his brow, watching as his children grew smaller on the shore. He’d fought, struggled, and wept his way through the War, watching as the crowd of brothers at his back became smaller with every battle. Weathered bones battered, packets of rations reduced to nothing. Blood, running in the streets, in the rivers, across fields stretching to the sun. A war that seemed to take, and take, and one that he’d never held any misconceptions about making it through.
But, against all odds, in the end, he made it home.
He made it home.
It still feels like a dream when he says it, unbelievable and amazing all in one. He’d spent years, forced at knifepoint into a war that spared none in its destructive gluttony. The impact of it will always, always be etched into his heart, into his soul and hands and scapula. But, above all, he’d managed to return home. Even if it had taken him years, even if he’d been there for much longer than he’d intended.
This privilege is not granted to all. He knows how lucky he is.
------
The boat pulls into the harbour. Slowly, excruciatingly slowly, the wind whipping around him, leashed to the sail. He wants to see his children. He wants to see his children.
He wants to hold them again, to see how Sokka has grown from the last time he saw him, small and so, so young and desperate to be more than he was. The last time Hakoda had seen him, longingly traced war paint dripping from his brow, he'd been nothing more than a bumbling, naive boy. By now, maybe Sokka has now grown to match the careful lines of the paint.
He wants to see Katara, how she has grown, and he remembers her from before he left, tiny, but fierce, already learning the strength it takes to stand her ground and refuse. He wants to see her warrior's eyes, her ferocious heart to match Sokka’s.
A sudden swaying of the deck beneath him brings him from his thoughts.
He’s home.
-------
The village is bigger. It's much bigger. Finally freed from the tyranny of the Fire Nation, their village has prospered, grown several times over. It looks like a trade port now, full of people and bustling with a coastal market. There are colourful awnings, loud and boisterous voices ringing through the dock. Small children chase balls and weasel samples from vendors. It's very different to what he remembers.
Nothing prepares him for when he sets his foot down on the land.
He knows this land. He knows it in his bones.
This is his land.
Southern Water Tribe.
He is home.
He walks through the town, in awe. There were times, during the war, when he thought he wouldn't make it home. Times when he thought he would die in that forsaken prison, before a band of Earth Kingdom warriors freed him. He’d then spent three years living in a tiny rural Earth village, almost untouched by the Fire Nation. He’d stayed for so long to get money- rural towns didn't pay well, and bigger ones could do nothing but paint a target on his back. Water Tribe blues, braiding, weaponry do not blend in well with Earth Kingdom wear. Even less so, when faced with the crawling patrols that infect the major cities. But boat trips to the Southern Water Tribe were long, and waters were swarming with Fire Nation soldiers, and Hakoda watched sailors hike their prices higher and higher to compensate for lost men.
So he had to stay. News of the Fire Nations defeat reached him three months after it happened, about a year and a half into his stay. He’d felt useless then, chained to that tiny Earth village while his people and many others had banded together to defeat the tyranny that was the Fire Nation. But he had to stay and earn the money. He had to make it home.
Now, three and a half years later, he steps back onto his land.
-------
He meets his mother closer to the centre of the village, where it looks more similar to what he remembers, full of igloos and tents and ice sculptures. She's sitting in an open tent, and god, he can feel his heart filling up.
“Mom”, he says, voice breaking. She whirls around to face him, brightening as she sees him.
“Hakoda!”, she says, leaping to her feet. Her arms are around him before he can say anything else.
He tucks his head into her neck and breathes.
------
Time slips away from him as he presses his face into the weathered skin of her neck, ancient like the rings of a tree. He aches to stay here and breathe in his relief at her safety, but there’s one thing he needs to know.
“Where are Sokka and Katara?”, he asks, peering around for them. Kanna’s face shuts down. He knows that look. The horror chills him to his bones. He feels the shaking of his hands crawl up into his arms.
“Hakoda, boy…”, she says cautiously, and takes a breath.
“About four and a half years ago, Sokka and Katara went on a fishing journey. While they were out there, they cracked open an iceberg, and…”. She steadies herself, breathing deeply and evenly.
“Inside was the Avatar”, she says, Hakoda feels his world spin on its axis. (He'd tried to keep them out of the war, he'd left to keep them out of the war, he'd tried to save them). Distantly, he can see the bone white of his mother’s hair spread in the wind, curling at the edges.
“They brought him back to our village, and it turned out he was a tiny little airbender, barely 12 years old, so he clicked with them.” She stops then, and takes a shuddering breath.
“Then, the Fire Nation found out,” she says and Hakoda is instantly filled with the rage and the panic that he'd carried through the entire war like a packhorse, bubbling up through his stomach, tearing at the lining of his throat.
“And their leader, barely a man as well, said that he would leave the village alone if we handed over the Avatar. The Avatar, Aang, went voluntarily. Katara and Sokka followed on his flying bison to rescue him. They never returned.”
Hakoda’s knees feel weak. His children could be dead. His children could be dead. Sokka and Katara, his children, his babies, lost in the heaping masses of fire nation savagery, the burn of too-hot blades. (He’d left to spare them this, he’d left to save them, and still failed).
He wets his lips.
“Then...are they…”. He can't even finish. It’s unfathomable.
To his surprise, Kanna laughs, the sound jutting through the haze, tearing and spilling into the tent.
“Quite the opposite! They stuck with the Avatar throughout his travels, and became part of the group responsible for the defeat of Fire Lord Ozai. They’re heroes!”, she says, and Hakoda can’t take this, his whole world being rewritten around him. (His babies)
“They fought in the War?”, he whispers. His children have seen war.
“They won the war.”, his mother corrects gently, weathered eyes looking gently up at him, and it’s then he remembers that she’d also watched her baby go off to war. “They’re ok.” Hakoda has to take a breath, shaky and desperate and gasping in the bite of the cold air. The strategist in him tells him he can work with this - his children are alive and that is all that matters. The rest, the recovery, the aftermath, he will take all of it as it comes.
“In fact,” she continues, “They are also due to arrive back today! This date is truly blessed by Tui and La!”, she exclaims happily.
They are coming home.
Shouts from the coast reach him, and he’s on his feet instantly. He makes it to the port in record time, the ground slipping away under him as his desperation urges him faster and faster. There’s a crowd gathered, blocking his view of the ships. He shoves through it, shouldering past people and earning quite a few angry looks. But he makes it to the front.
And there she is.
He barely even recognises Katara at first. She is tall and leanly muscled and carries herself like a warrior, strong and proud and self-confident. She carries a flask of water at her waist, he notices.
“Katara!”, he calls out, and her head turns to meet his eyes.
She’s flying towards him before he can even move towards her, slamming into him as he lets out an oomph. He holds her close. His daughter. God, he could still be dreaming, he thinks blurrily, and pulls her ever closer.
--------
He only snaps out of his daze when he and Katara enter an empty tent. They sit down, and it is only then that Hakoda realises that someone has come with them. It isn't Sokka, he knows that. But he wasn’t expecting the Avatar.
On some level, he knows that his children traveled, fought and struggled with the Avatar, but actually seeing them with the Avatar makes it more tangible. When they’d left with him, and eventually overthrown the Fire Lord, Katara had been fourteen, Sokka barely better at fifteen. He can't even put the image of Katara, fourteen and angry and grieving, together with Katara now, clearly a warrior, level, calm, and in control of every movement her body makes.
"Katara", he breathes again, in wonder at his little girl, back safe and in front of him.
She smiles at him, warm and bright and happy, and he can feel her joy at being back leaking from her every pore. "Dad.", she says softly, like speaking too loud would ruin the fragile space they are in. Then, she turns, gesturing to the boy sitting next to her, looking very awkward and young, playing with his fingers as he looks at him nervously.
"This is Aang", she says, smiling. "He's the Avat-"
"I'M AANG!", he blurts out, and then immediately goes very red, to the point where Hakoda thinks he might be able to feel the heat coming from his face. Then, determinately not looking anywhere near Hakoda's face, he sticks out one nervously trembling hand, like a scared puppy. Very slowly, Hakoda reaches out to shake it. Afterwards, he watches as Aang seems to fall back into his chair by nothing more than pure luck, and still refuse to meet his eyes.
"I'm...the Avatar...", he mumbles out much more calmly, and then goes right back to playing with his hands. Katara looks on very fondly, and he can see her exasperation in the lines around her eyes.
"Nice to meet you, Aang." Hakoda says, and then, more softly, "Thank you for keeping Katara safe." At this, he sees Katara go a bit red around the cheeks, and prepares himself for a lecture as he sees her shoulders puff up.
"Dad! You know I can take care of myself!", and he sees her brow furrow in frustration. "I've spent years fighting, I'm good at what I do! I don't need Aang to take care of me!", she berates, but then turns to look sweetly down at Aang and reaches a hand to pat his arm in consolation.
“Can you, now?” He says back wryly, a smirk beginning to pull at his lips. When he’d left, Katara had been hardly able to control any sort of bending at all. He knows, now, that that’s no longer the girl who sits in front of him, flask sitting comfortably at her waist, but he can’t resist the tease anyway.
She puffs up straight away, but before she can explode, and probably beat up her old man in the process, Aang, nervous, puppy, Aang cuts in.
“She can! She’s one of the best waterbenders out there! She was recognised as a Master by the Northern Water Tribe, and-and!” Hakoda watches and Aang stops, recovers, and takes a breath. Something about this changes him, and Hakoda can see the outline of the Avatar around him, something other burning in his eyes.
“The truth is, sir, that she’s saved me many times. She’s saved all of us many times, and we wouldn’t have been able to do this without her. She got me through this war, sir, and I don’t know many people better at ‘taking care of themselves’ than her.”, he says, and then all the air seems to collapse out of him in a moment, and the outline Hakoda had been seeing disappears.
“Sir.”, he mumbles, not making eye contact. Hakoda has to look him up and down, measuring him up. He’s not fond of his daughter making a choice that would carry as much of a target as the Avatar, but Aang is everything he’s wanted for his daughter. Someone who would defend her, but not overrule her. An equal, and someone who sees her that way. He’s cautiously impressed, and it makes a little more sense why Katara chose him.
His gaze flicks back to Katara, the tight cord of her muscles. The leather wrappings of her gear, that show the experienced hold of her hand. The strength in her eyes, in the bridge of her nose, in her brow. His girl has grown into a warrior.
“I can see that.” He murmurs softly, looking fondly at her. She grins back, and her smile is just as wry as his.
—----------
“Sokka’s back!” come the first cries. Hakoda shoots up, leaping to his feet. He circles round, facing the direction he can hear footsteps. They are heavier than before. Smoother. He can already tell how much Sokka has grown up.
He circles to face him. And there he is. And immediately draws back.
Sokka is wearing Fire Nation red.
Sokka is wearing Fire Nation red.
The Water Tribe blue in his outfit is obvious, but the blue is intermingled with intricate patterns of red, and long, crimson drapes that intertwine, settling over Sokka's shoulders and waist.
The words slip from him.
“Sokka...you…” Sokka’s face lights up when he sees him, breaking into a wide grin. He knows that grin, but it’s sharper now, more wolflike. More like a Fire Nation soldier, his mind whispers traitorously.
“Dad!”, he yells, and runs over to him. Just as he nears him, Hakoda stops him.
“Why are you wearing red?”, he asks viciously, and watches the warm expression on Sokka's face slide into confusion as he comes to an abrupt stop in the snow.
“What do you mean?”, he says, and Hakoda has travelled the world and fought in a war, and isn't putting up with this bullshit.
“Sokka, that's Fire Nation red. I'm sure I don't have to remind you what the Fire Nation has done to us- what they've taken from us! Why are you wearing their colors?” He asks, the words biting, spitting, from behind his teeth, and watches with shock as Sokka’s face goes cold and shuts off.
“Don’t speak about them like that!” Sokka says back, and Hakoda feels his palms grow sweaty with incredulation. His son, his son, defending the Fire Nation? What has happened to him? But Sokka isn’t done.
“They are my people as well, my people who fought and suffered at the hands of the last Fire Lord! Do not mistake them for their dictator, when they were as much at his mercy as we were!”, Sokka says, full of fury, eyes blazing. He throws his head in anger, and Hakoda feels his world stop.
Sokka has betrothal braids.
Sokka has betrothal braids.
Sokka has betrothal braids tied with red fabric.
His face goes white. “Sokka...you…your hair”, he says, and watches Sokka’s face soften very slightly at the mention of his betrothal braids.
“Ah”, he says. “Yes, dad, I’m engaged.”, and god, hasn’t Hakoda had enough world shattering news already today? He watches Sokka’s face harden. He can feel the next words preparing to hit him like a punch.
“And”, he continues, “to a Fire Nation soldier.” He declares matter-of-factly.
Sokka catches sight of his thunderous face.
“Who will be arriving shortly.”, he says, the finishing blow, and Hakoda feels the blood drain from his face (Fire Nation soldiers burning their way through towns with no care for the people, treating burns in shoddy hospitals, the crunch of his face on gravel as a Fire Nation soldier stomps him into the dirt).
He has to warn the people before they arrive. (He just got back from the war, he just got back.)
But before he can even turn around, someone yells across the market.
“Sokka! It's good to see you!”, a merchant calls out.
“Ming!”, Sokka calls back.
They come together in a rough bear hug, the new muscle in Sokka's arms rippling as they hit the other man.
“You bastard!”, Ming calls lightheartedly, and does he not know what his son is?
Sokka just grins back, and now, more than ever, Hakoda can see the sharpness in his smile, the harsh glint in his eye that marks Sokka as other. Untrustworthy.
“So”, the merchant says again, casually, like he has no care in the world his son is apparently consorting with the enemy. “How are things in the Fire Nation?”, Ming says, eyebrows moving suggestively. And Hakoda can’t believe this – a merchant like him would’ve encountered the Fire Nation, would’ve felt their cruelty. How can he talk so casually about it, throw this around like it’s not everyone’s greatest fear, to be noticed by the Fire Nation?
To his surprise, at the question, Sokka turns a light shade of red as he turns towards the coast. “They’re good”, he says softly.
“They’re really good”, he murmurs as his look turns wistful, the longing almost seeping out of him. Ming shoves Sokka with his shoulder to break him out of his daze.
“Come on, Sokka! Give us more than that!”, Ming whines, and Sokka’s gaze snaps back, the blush high on his cheeks. His face catches the sun, and his face is suddenly between worlds, Sokka at 14, and Sokka at 18. The more Hakoda looks, the more he can see how Sokka has grown, sharpened cheek bones, light stubble, and all over he looks packed with muscle. He carries a sword slung over his back, and the easy grace that he moves with shows that he knows how to use it.
“Shut up!” Sokka says back, embarrassed. “But arriving soon”, he says happily, a smile spreading across his face. Ming smiles, and moves on to his next customer, already yelling about prices and discounts, and Sokka turns back to him, eyes going cold and sharp.
But before he can say anything, a horn sounds from the port, and Sokka’s head snaps around to follow it. His eyes dart between incoming boats, searching for something that Hakoda can't understand.
For a moment, Hakoda considers causing a scene, yelling and screaming about Fire Nation soldiers and incoming War, trying to gather together a rough defense force that might manage to keep the soldiers at bay long enough for the village to evacuate the vulnerable. For a moment, he is back in Earth Kingdom, fighting for his life against soldiers that will always be better than he is, more equipped, more trained. He is back desperately trying to defend weak, poor villages from hordes of the most brutal people he's ever seen, sharpening brooms and hoes and ladles. He's seen the desperation that comes with the understanding that against the Fire Nation Army, you will always lose, but knowing that if you do, everyone you love will die. He's seen children, covered in horrific, blistering burns, elders begging for work when all the eligible workers were shipped off to the war, fields that hold lifesaving amounts of food burnt to the ground, for no reason other than base cruelty.
But, he has to remember, he is not there now.
He has both of his leather clad feet firmly in Southern Water Tribe territory, and for a second does nothing more than breathe in the smell of fish and brine and ice. The cool wind on the back of his neck, the creak of the leather straps around his wrists.
He breathes. He breathes and he thinks.
He's known the Fire Nation to be only one way. A single organism, controlled at the top by a tyrant of historical proportions. That leaves nothing in their path.
But:
Sokka had spoken in their defense. And as much as the last time Hakoda had seen his son, he'd been naive and bumbling, he knows Sokka isn't dumb. If Sokka says otherwise, he trusts him at least enough to investigate further. And- the merchant, Ming. Sokka had mentioned the Fire Nation to him, and he hadn't batted an eye. Rather, he'd teased Sokka about it, like it was an embarrassing crush, instead of selling them out to an enemy that has decimated them. At the very least, he decides, he can hear them out and wait until he has more details. He owes that to his son.
At his side, Sokka finally finds the ship he'd been looking for, a great hulking, iron beast of a ship. It churns out smoke, but this time the wind seems to blow it back out to sea as quickly as it generates. And, as he watches stonily, it sputters and starts, before grinding to a slow stop.
Sokka, at his side, is suddenly replaced by air as he takes off towards the ship faster than Hakoda has ever seen him move, tearing through the crowd with a level of agility even he doesn't possess. Hakoda hurries to keep up with him, following the red beacon of Sokka's braid as it winds its way through the dock.
"Sorry, sorry!', he has to keep calling, as he stumbles into people on his way, tripping over stray balls and full carts.
Sokka's red beads finally come to a stop as the ramp of the boat is finally extended, but he can feel the nervous energy of his son bleed out from him as he practically vibrates in place.
"Dad!”, Sokka breathes, hand coming up to grip the wraps of Hakoda’s arm, pressing into the leather as he keeps his face fixed on the boat. His excitement seems to overrule any argument they were having, happiness curling into the air as he rocks back and forth on his heels. He's scanning the people that leave, quickly discarding them when they don't qualify as who he wants to see, and then rapidly moving on to the next one. It is the calculation of a battlefield commander. His son has grown up without him.
Before Hakoda can get too lost in reminiscing and self-deprecation, a tall, muscled figure makes its way down the ramp, and the second it's visible, Sokka takes off like a shot across the dock. He's gratified that the figure seems to do the same, moving down the ramp also with a speed Hakoda can't replicate. Sokka careens with a crash into the other figure, so hard and all encompassing that Hakoda can't see anything about them, except for the sweep of Fire Nation robes swaying around Sokka's legs.
After a while of watching them cling to each other and murmur softly at a level he can't hear, he clears his throat, hoping to inspire some movement, or an introduction, maybe. Aang had been so keen to introduce himself, he thinks peevishly. Sokka whirls apart from the person as he starts, as if he's only just remembering Hakoda is here at all. As he does, Hakoda gets his first glimpse at the other figure.
And is immediately taken aback.
When Sokka was little, he'd once had to sand down parts of the table leg after his 10 year old son had carved a crude image of a woman with voluptuous breasts onto it. When Sokka was 12, he had a phase where all he could talk about was how beautiful and smart his future wife would be, and how well he would protect her. Hakoda had been expecting a devastatingly beautiful, sharp featured Fire Nation bombshell of a soldier. Hakoda assumed it would've taken a real stunner to convince his son to jump ship.
Instead he gets a man. Sokka's hand is grasped firmly in one callused palm, the type that has clearly seen years of hard, consistent, work. That extends upwards into a muscled forearm wrapped in black fabric designed for keeping range of motion, tightly overlapping and clearly done with experience. Hakoda can see, through the lines of his draping, falling robes, the outlines of knives, strapped at his thighs, his waist, along the outlines of his arms. He follows the lines of his outline up to his face, and immediately rears back in shock.
The entirety of half of the man’s face is covered in a rippling, twisting scar. It melts down over the ridges of his face, and Hakoda can see from here that he has trouble opening his eye. It is the kind of scar that only comes from crippling, life changing pain.
It is also the kind of scar that comes with intent. There is no accidental way to get a scar like that, so deliberately placed for maximum incapacitation, and so visible, like a brand. Whoever this man is, he’s been hurt, deliberately, and almost certainly by someone from the Fire Nation.
Maybe it makes him cruel, and unforgiving, but something in him is satisfied in seeing that whoever this man is, he’s been hurt and brutalised by the Fire Nation. He knows the pain and the hurt, in a way that might make him less likely to hurt others.
As he looks, Sokka seems to muster the courage and determination to start marching the man over to him, almost dragging him behind him, and then presenting him to Hakoda like a chef might present a meal to a particularly discerning crowd. He notices the two never let go of each other’s hands.
The fire in Sokka’s eyes is bright when he says, almost challengingly. “This is my fiance, Dad. His name is Zuko.”
And now, Hakoda has spent a huge chunk of the war trapped in backwater Earth Kingdom villages. A lot of that means he was very, very cut off from information, about anything at all. Any information that came to him was always at least 2 months old, and brought entirely through gossipers, donkeys, and the odd stray messenger pigeon. He’d be on the leaderboard for the least informed person this side of Ba Sing Se.
However.
He’s heard that name before- everyone’s heard that name before. Zuko, the once glorious Prince of the Fire Nation, their crown jewels, their hope, their next generation. He’d heard too, that the Prince had been exiled, and assumed, to be exiled from the Fire Nation, he’d have had to have done something particularly grotesque.
“Zuko…like…the Prince, Zuko?” He asks, eyes fixed on Sokka.
Sokka just looks at him for a second, cool eyes trained on him, scanning from head to toe, and Hakoda abruptly feels like prey. He can feel the ice exuding from him, piercing into his skin and ripping at the muscle. His son is a soldier, now.
“Yes, like the Prince. Although…the Firelord now.” He says, like it's normal, like that’s something that Hakoda would have ever expected to have come out of his son’s mouth.
Almost unconsciously, his hand closes around the hilt of his sword, digging into the leather and hearing it creak around his hand. He feels his eyes hone in on the Prince (He has to be ready, he has to protect his son).
To his shock, Sokka reads him instantly, his stance, the hand poised on the blade, and mirrors with his own. His feet crack into the snow as he shifts them, slightly, to make for a better position. He drops the weight of his hips. Sokka is, here and now, ready to fight against him to protect the Firelord.
And that, more than anything else, is what gives Hakoda pause. His son, his baby boy, is willing to fight him, to defend this man. And he’d trusted Sokka before, with the fact that this Fire Nation boat wasn’t going to come in and burn this place to the ground, coloured awnings burnt to pieces, crushed into the mud. He’d trusted his son, put his faith, raw and bleeding, into his hands and nothing bad had come of it.
When he’d been chained to the Earth Kingdom, Hakoda had once stayed in a village that had a family built only of a father and son. The son had worn a blue sash, tied around one knee where he’d had a hole in his threadbare trousers. He’d seen the son, sometimes, stumbling his way up to the market, bruises peeking from under his shirt like ripples in the moonlight. The boy would stagger up again and again, the bruises shifting out from under his shirt and creeping up his neck, day by day. He’d fall, sometimes, and walk back home with the outline of gravel pressed into his palms.
Eventually, the boy had run. He’d taken off, a bird in flight, and run into vast swaths of Fire Nation controlled territory. He’d weighed the violence in his house, and the violence of the Fire Nation, and found the risk acceptable.
Later, Hakoda had left the village, and three weeks later he’d seen a blue sash spilling from a Fire Nation mass grave. He remembers thinking, dizzily, that the sash should’ve been red, a marker of the blood spilled there.
Anything, he thinks, is better than his son considering him a threat.
So he shifts, releases his now pale hand from the pommel of his sword, shifting his feet, minutely, against the dirt.
Takes a breath. Breathes. The cool wind on the back of his neck.
“It..seems”, he begins, slowly. “That there is…more to this story.” An olive branch, a chance, a helping hand. It is the best he can do.
Sokka monitors him, still scanning, head to toe. Eventually, he seems to come to a consensus, and shifts his own position back to neutral. He sees himself be reorganized in Sokka’s head from threat to ally.
“Yes.” He says back, firm. “There’s a lot more.”
—----
Later, Hakoda creeps out of his tent to go to the bathroom like a robber, creeping across the silent village as the moon hangs heavy and bloated in the sky. He’s just about to start his brief trip before spotting a lamp, left on and like a beacon in the dark night, sitting on the edge of an alcove on the edge of the village. It’s a space he frequented during his youth, after a particularly unbalancing nightmare, or an intense fight with his mother. It’s tucked away, a little overhang that looks inland, across great plains of little more than ice and snow, and certainly not somewhere many people would be at this hour of the night. He’s about to move along, and be on his way when he spots the corner of a Fire Nation robe, falling just around the corner of what is visible, glowing faintly in the light of the lamp.
And.
Hakoda trusts his son, believes him to be able to make good decisions. But he will always be Sokka’s dad first, and he needs to make sure that the Firelord really does harbor no ill will against his son.
He may be outstripped in many ways, by Prince Zuko and Katara and their bending, and Sokka in his newfound weapons mastery, but Hakoda is still a soldier, and one raised in the Southern Water Tribe. He knows how to quieten his steps on snow, to creep across the space in almost silence. He shuffles forwards, slowly, until he’s settled just behind where Prince Zuko, and Sokka, he can now see, are sat, overlooking the ice. He leans in.
“-wish you’d stop doing that, love”, (love?) he hears Sokka murmur, voice low and soft, like the caress of a lover. “Stronger people than you have tried to break that habit, idiot”, Prince Zuko calls back, equally soft. “This is one enemy that you might have to accept defeat against.”
He sees Sokka gather up Prince Zuko’s hands, tucking them into his own and rubbing them like he’s trying to start a fire. A sigh comes from him, soft in the night air. Hakoda has never, ever, seen Sokka like this. Tender and soft, leaning into someone for support, arm guards and hidden weapons left behind in their tent, an ultimate sort of trust.
“I just worry about you, you know, and you being here. I know how hard this must be for you.” Sokka says, and Hakoda can’t contain an eyeroll. How hard it must be for him? What a ridiculous question. When Hakoda’s people are the ones who had suffered at his hands, he has no sympathy left to spare.
“How hard it must be for me?” Prince Zuko shoots back incredulously. “I was the one who came here, who hurt the people of this village. It doesn’t matter what I feel, Sokka. It’s not allowed to be hard for me.”, He says matter-of-factly, and Hakoda can’t believe he’s agreeing more with Firelord Zuko than his own son. Even so, he is gratified to hear that Prince Zuko can take accountability for his own actions.
He sees Sokka’s brow curve as he frowns gently at Prince Zuko. “I know what you were going through back then, idiot.”, Sokka murmurs softly. “I know you didn’t want to be here.” He presses a soft kiss into Prince Zuko’s hair, carefully avoiding, Hakoda notices, the burnt side of his face.
Even through his son’s startling tenderness, Hakoda can’t help but scoff. If Prince Zuko didn’t want to be here, then why was he here? He had been banished from the Fire Nation, and had no reason to be following any orders from them.
Almost in time with his thoughts, Prince Zuko scoffs too. “I was still here, Sokka. These people were still hurt by my hands”, he says, and Hakoda watches as he brings his hands up to stare into them, as if they hold some sort of great answer. Immediately, Sokka brings up his bigger palms to cover them and drag Zuko’s hands gently downwards, breaking that strange focus. Sokka presses his face closer to Prince Zuko’s hair, fitting the two of them together.
“You’re not him”, Sokka murmurs softly, almost too soft for Hakoda to hear. The words seem to be some sort of trigger, hitting the Prince right in a raw, aching sore spot, deep and painful. In the wake, Prince Zuko seems to almost collapse into him, his strings cut. He brings up his hands to clutch at the back of Sokka’s sleepwear, desperately twisting into the fabric. Not who?
“Y-you don’t know that”, Zuko seems to gasp out, suddenly short on air. “I could-I could turn into him at any time. It’s his blood in my veins, Sokka, and that’s one thing I can never outrun!”, Zuko heaves into Sokka’s neck, knuckles going white. He tilts his head down, hiding in Sokka’s shoulder, tilting his face so Hakoda can’t see. It’s his blood in my veins. His father? Zuko is this scared of becoming like his father?
“What I've done here is proof enough of that”, he continues, almost painfully. “I-I hurt the people here, I took from them, I-”, His breath hitches off, and more gasps rip their way from his throat. Every muscle in his body seems tense, painful. “I’m already like him, Sokka, and it was wrong of me to come here- wron-”, Hakoda watches as he devolves into short, gasping breaths and trembling arms again his son, clinging to him like he’s driftwood in a storm.
Sokka’s face is devastated, pale in the light of the moon. His hands come up to curl gently around Zuko, sheltering him inside himself. He lies his cheek flat against the top of Zuko’s head, as if trying to cover as much of Zuko as he can with his own skin.
“You’re not him”, Sokka says softly, gently, looking down at Zuko like he’s the most precious thing he’s ever seen. Now, Hakoda can see that gentleness is deliberate, for Zuko’s sake. “I know you, Zuko,” he murmurs, soft.
“I know why you were here. And that while you were here, you tried your best to do as little damage as possible. We were totally, totally unprepared for you, and you could’ve killed your way through this whole town and burnt it down in your wake. You and I both know a lot of soldiers who would’ve done that and lost no sleep over it.” Sokka murmurs, voice low and steady, close to Zuko’s ear. Hakoda can see the even, constant tone beginning to relax the strain of Zuko’s hands, slightly. His son has done this before.
“Your uncle knows you”, Sokka says, and Hakoda sees the words hit home. Zuko jerks a little, but stays hidden in Sokka’s clothes. “He knows the reason you were here, like I do, and we know you and we love you. The circumstances that brought you here were so far beyond your control, and totally the fault of your awful, terrible, shitstain of a father.” At that, Zuko seems to emerge, lurching back from Sokka, detangling his fingers. The gasping is still there, punching into the still night air.
“You don’t understand!”, Zuko says, desperately. “Back then, I would’ve done anything-I would’ve do-done anything for his approval! Anything, Sokka! I would’ve burned this place down, and burned you, and left you with-with scars and-!” Zuko devolves into great, heaving, anguished sobs into Zuko’s shoulder, his fingers twisting back into the fabric. Then, strangely, one leaves the safety of his son’s clothing, moving up to his face, into his hair, to grasp and twist brutally into his scar. Unthinkingly, he notices that Zuko’s hand seems to fit almost perfectly into the space, and feels his spine go cold.
His father.
Whoever had done that to Zuko, given him that brand, the clear, savage reminder stark on his face, had done it with their hands. Clasped their hand to Zuko’s face in a cruel mockery of a hold, and then burnt him until he’d passed out. It is a level of cruelty that Hakoda would not have expected to happen to someone from the Fire Nation, someone as important and high ranking as the Crown Prince.
But now, the pieces fall into place. The strange, wary way Zuko had approached him with, at the port. The desperation to be different from his father. The way Zuko now, breaking down over his father, reaches up to the scar, digging into the twisted flesh.
His father.
It is unthinkable. And yet, it is a level of cruelty that somehow makes sense for the leader of the Fire Nation at its most ruthless. He is not suprised to learn, that their leaders would torture their sons in this way. Still, the ice drops down his spine. Zuko, now, cannot be more than 18. The scar is old, settled on the planes of his face, and Zuko had not seen his father since before he was banished. If it has been roughly 4 years since the time of his banishment, he cannot have been more than 14 when he had- when he had.
Great Tui and La.
Almost everything Hakoda had thought he had known about the Fire Prince is scrapped in his head. There is nothing, nothing, a 14 year old boy could have done that would warrant something as severe as this. Hakoda remembers Sokka, in the port defending Fire Nation civilians. They were at his mercy as much as we were, he’d said. At the time, he’d scoffed. Now, Hakoda thinks, who would be more at his mercy than his own children?
It is unfathomable.
In front of him, bathed in moonlight, he hears Sokka murmur softly.
“He was your dad, Zuko, of course you wanted his approval. He used that against you, and despite his best efforts to make you like him, you still failed. You were kind, and you did your best to minimise the damage you left. That’s not a fault of yours, Zuko. It’s your best damn quality”, His son says, and Hakoda cannot help but agree. Before, he’d thought that Zuko had done something so terrible that somehow he’d been kicked out of the most brutal institution of their world. Now, he can see that it’s the opposite. Zuko had been merciful, and loving, and loyal, in the one place that would not encourage it. It is good that he came to the Water Tribe, Hakoda thinks, and sends a quick thank you to Tui and La for guiding him here safely.
He watches as Sokka’s wider palm comes to rest gently around Zuko’s, leading out of the tangles of his hair and scar. Once freed, his hand clenches around Sokka’s so hard his knuckles bleed white. Sokka shifts, slowly, and gently, to press a light kiss into the scarred side of Zuko’s hair. Hakoda watches and Zuko seems to jerk, and then exhale all at once, curling closer to his son, bending his neck to fit more softly under him. He sees now, that he has been a fool, to think that Zuko would ever bring harm to his son. The level of pain it brings Zuko to be considered anything like his father is well and truly enough proof that he will not be a repeat of the Firelord, and the gentleness with which he treats Sokka is proof enough he is a good man. Zuko loves him, of that Hakoda is sure.
Suddenly, in the light of his new revelation, and the desperate, grasping way Sokka and Zuko are sitting, he feels like an intruder. The moonlight spills across his son’s cheeks, and Hakoda can see the shine of soft, silent tears tracking their way down his face. He should leave them to their pain, safe in each other’s arms. Pushing away from the ledge, he slinks silently away from the two lovers, both of them too absorbed in the other to notice his movement.
The further he reaches from them, the more they blend with the gentle flickering of the lamp, bleeding into a warm blur in the distance. He spares them one last glance as he reaches back to his own sleeping quarters, but he is soft now, and sleepy, with the knowledge that his son is safe, with someone who loves him and trusts him. He thinks, briefly, of Kya. Lost.
—----------
The next morning dawns bright and clear, the sun glancing off of the ice. As Hakoda emerges, he sees Sokka and Zuko already awake, sitting wrapped in each other, rugged up in Water Tribe furs in the chill of the morning. Zuko’s nose, peaking over his scarf, is pink. As he starts his walk towards them, he sees both of their heads snap up to meet him, startled in the quiet.
After the quiet revelations of last night, the wariness with which Sokka regards him with is shameful on his behalf.
Taking care to keep his face pleasantly neutral, or even warm, he walks to join them, sitting close and sharing in the heat of the fire burning between them.
“Good night, boys?”, he asks casually, doing his best to break the hesitant silence.
Sokka, eyebrows now shifting into surprise, lets Zuko answer first. He, too, is wary, and understandably so, but his want to impress Hakoda seems to win out.
“Cold, but not unwelcomely so. I think I sleep better in the cold than the heat.” he says, somewhat awkwardly, gripping tightly on the hand intertwined with Sokka’s. He is bracing for a fight. The muscles in his leg are tensed, and Hakoda can see the strict line of his back, held rigid, even in the sleepiness of the morning.
He takes a deep breath. He will fix this.
“Then you’ll fit right in here, hmm?”, he drawls back, and watches as Sokka’s face lights up with joy.
—------------
fin.