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“Do you ever think about what kinds of fathers we might be?”
Sokka and Zuko had been sitting on their balcony, enjoying a pot of jasmine tea in silence when Zuko turned to Sokka and said this, seemingly out of the blue. Sokka looked at Zuko in surprise. They had never spoken about this much, although Sokka supposed that with Zuko being the Fire Lord and all, children were almost guaranteed eventually, no matter how they chose to have them. Sokka knew they both wanted them, sometime in the future. But they had never really spoken about it like this.
“Not right now,” Zuko clarified. “But, someday. If we ever had a child.”
“I…guess I don’t know,” Sokka said slowly. “I’d never thought about it before. Not much. I guess I’d like to be like my dad. He did a good job with a bad situation. I’d be lucky to be as good a father as he’s been.”
“I wonder how easy it is to break old cycles,” Zuko mused. “For over a hundred years, the Fire Nation was ruled by a succession of terrible fathers. I always thought it would be so easy to avoid being like them. But on the other hand, I don’t think anyone ever has children with the express goal of being a bad parent to them. Maybe it just happens.”
“I don’t think anyone can escape making mistakes,” Sokka offered. “Not that that would really make you feel any better about it. I have a great father but even he made his fair share of missteps. We’ll make mistakes too, someday.”
“Trust me, we make mistakes everyday,” Zuko said, smirking.
“Who, me? Never,” Sokka laughed.
“I think you’ll be a great dad, Sokka,” Zuko said, smiling slightly. “You already have the humor down.”
“Does that mean you’re the mom in this relationship?” Sokka teased, trying to get a rise out of his husband.
“That’s not how that works!” Zuko shot back, his temper successfully triggered. “I’m not the mother!”
“I think you are,” Sokka pressed. “Look at you, all worried and protective about what kind of parents we’ll be. Mother Zuko, I like the sound of that. The Mother Lord, if you will.”
“Sokka, I’m not the mother!”
“Not with that attitude you won’t be! The kid’ll need some kind of mother,” Sokka crooned. “You’re the perfect ladylike role model, you even have the fancy hair. Do you gloss it? It’s looking very shiny, you should give Ty Lee some tips.”
“I thought we were having a serious conversation,” Zuko huffed, leaning back in his chair like a brooding teenager.
“Oh but we are,” Sokka said, adopting a serious tone. This was far too much fun. “I need to know exactly what kind of man is going to be the mother to my children.”
“And what kind of man is that?” Zuko leaned in, a little glint in his eye despite his evident exasperation.
“A man who is going to be a great dad someday,” Sokka said earnestly. “And the prettiest mom in the Fire Nation.”
“You’re impossible,” Zuko said, heaving a half sigh, half chuckle as he took another sip of his tea.
“Hey, it’s your fault, you’re the one who married me,” Sokka chided. “If you had wanted you could have married a more submissive man and then he could be the mother.”
“Are you suggesting I’m the submissive one here?” Zuko scoffed. “I’m the leader of an entire nation.”
“Well,” Sokka smirked, giving Zuko a knowing look. “Leading a country doesn’t mean you get to be on top in everything.”
Zuko gave Sokka a withering look. Sokka smiled innocently back at him. It was too fun, sitting here on the balcony and driving his husband half insane. It was a good part of the reason he’d married the man—Zuko was far too easy to bait, and even easier to reel in once hooked. Sokka knew he had him exactly where he wanted him.
“Look, my love, for the submissive mother figure that you are, I think you’ll be a great dad,” Sokka said. He laughed, but then he saw Zuko’s face. This worried Zuko, Sokka could see. He was truly afraid of what he would be like. Sokka bowed his head, realizing that maybe the time for play was coming to a close. “No, I mean it. Honest. You worry so much about being like your father, when avoiding being like him is so simple. You have such a good heart, Zuko. You’re kind and loving and I can’t see you being anything else towards our child. Whether we adopt that child or the spirits drop one straight from the sky into our arms, I know you will love them and never let any harm come to them. You’ll be an amazing father.”
“Is there anything you wish your father had done differently?” Zuko asked, a curious look in his eyes.
“Yes,” Sokka said reluctantly, a small pang passing through his chest. “I wish he’d been there for us. I know he felt it was his duty to go fight the Fire Nation after my mom died. But he missed so much, and he left Katara and I with only Gran-Gran. I love Gran-Gran, but she’s not the same as a father. By the time I saw him again, he had missed everything. I don’t blame him, exactly, but it’s never been the same since. I know he’s proud of me, but I feel like he doesn’t really know me anymore. Not the way he used to. But it’s not the same as any of the bad things your father did.”
“Comparing isn’t helpful,” Zuko said, squeezing Sokka’s hand. “Are you afraid of not being present enough for our own child?”
“Honestly? It’s terrifying,” Sokka admitted, letting some of the tension out of his body with the truth. “I’m so scared of being so busy with everything that I don’t even notice my kid growing up. I don’t want to wake up one day and realize I don’t even know them. I’m not really afraid of hurting them, exactly. I’m scared of not being close enough to them to ever risk making that kind of mistake.”
“I think we’ll get to make our own mistakes in the end,” Zuko said thoughtfully. “We can learn from our fathers and try to be better than they were, but nothing that we do will ever truly be perfect. Any child of ours will move on, maybe have children of their own, and inevitably our child will make different decisions than we did for the good of their children. All we can do is our very best to give our child a happy life.”
“I wonder how people make peace with that idea,” Sokka mused.
“What idea?”
“The idea that you can’t be a perfect parent,” Sokka clarified. “I mean, it’s a tough thing to swallow, isn’t it? No matter how hard you try, you’ll always do something wrong eventually. No matter how much you love your child, you will make mistakes, and those mistakes will hurt them. Maybe the impact will fade off with time, and maybe it won’t. Either way it still happened.”
For a long while, there was silence, and the two men sipped their tea while watching the sunset. Sokka smiled. Despite the worry that this conversation had brought to the surface, he couldn’t think of a better person to be having it with. Come to think of it, he couldn’t think of a better person to share a child with. After a long silence, Zuko finally spoke.
“I think people handle it by pushing it away,” he said. “They don’t accept the idea that they will make mistakes and learn from them; they just deny that those mistakes were ever made. They let their child pick up the pieces. Maybe breaking the cycle is as easy as admitting that you were wrong.”
“You think it’s really that simple?” Sokka asked.
“I hope so,” Zuko said, reaching out to kiss Sokka’s hand. “Because in the end, it’s the best we can do. And I want only the best for any child I get to share with you.”