Carved In Rock || ATLA

The Rumbling

The Guru

"If I lose it all outside the wall, live to die another day, I don't want anything I'm just here to...beware." - SiM

🌊 ⛰ 🔥 🌪

The first rays of sunlight had yet to dust the horizon when Sokka finally admitted defeat. Despite how desperately he'd have liked to stay asleep even just a little longer, he had been wide awake and painfully aware of how lonely he felt in his makeshift bed for quite some time now. The sound of his dad's steady breathing from the opposite end of the tent reminded the warrior he hadn't truly been alone, but several weeks of sleeping next to his girlfriend had left him restless when he couldn't reach out and remind himself that she was right there. When he slowly drug himself out of bed he cursed himself for ever taking a single one of their nights together for granted.

Hakoda found his boy sitting alone just beyond the reach of the rolling tide, staring out into the waters of the bay while the rest of the camp gradually came to life. By the time the Avatar's bison had disappeared into the clouds the day before, Bato had already organized a makeshift celebration to welcome the son of their Chief. Sokka had been all too happy to let the men drag him out to sea to help catch their dinner and when they returned sometime later, the fires for their feast had already been lit. They laughed as they filled their bellies with food and wine and while they did, told Sokka the tale of how they got that very wine as a gift from a merchant they had protected from Fire Nation raiders. In turn, he told them some of his more exciting tales since his journey alongside the Avatar and Akira had first began, and encouraged by the wine, he only exaggerated a little on a few key points.

The Chief had sat back willingly and let his boy be the center of attention, clinging to every word out of the seventeen-year-old's mouth. Seventeen for now, but eighteen in just a few short weeks. Hakoda had missed his daughter's sixteenth birthday that had passed by in the recent months, but Sokka had assured him last night that his little girl had been thoroughly celebrated by her friends in between their travels. Katara, his baby, the waterbending master according to her brother. It seemed his little girl actually wasn't so little anymore, and as Hakoda noticed the tension in Sokka's shoulders, Hakoda realized his little boy wasn't so little either. The two men were quiet for a moment as Chief sat beside his warrior, both a mirror of another as they rested their elbows on their knees and listened to the lull of rolling waves. The day before had been such a flurry, both of them collapsing into bed not long after stumbling into their tent that this was the first they had been able to steal a moment alone.

Father and son.

"So," Hakoda mused with a soft grin on his face. "It seems like you've been busy since I was gone."

Sokka snorted. "You have no idea."

"You know when Bato first made it back to us a few months back and he told me that he had found you and your sister here in the Earth Kingdom so close to the fighting..." The Chief trailed off for a moment. "I almost dropped everything right then and there to go find you two and drag you back home myself."

"But it was your idea to aid the Earth Kingdom in the first place." Sokka pointed out, looking over his shoulder at his Dad. There was no anger in his voice, no trace of resentment, just a simple statement of fact. "So why would you come after us?"

Hakoda placed a hand on the back of his son's neck and pulled him in close enough their foreheads were now touching. "Because you and your sister are the single most important things in this world to me." He told Sokka openly before they pulled apart "Leaving you two behind was...it was one of the hardest things that I have ever done." Right next to burying their mother. "But at least when I left you at home I thought you were somewhere safe. There shouldn't have been any reason for the Fire Nation to turn their attention to the South Pole so it seemed like the safest option to leave you two there with your Grandmother and the rest of the tribe. But lone and behold, my children decided to find their own trouble." Hakoda shoved his smirking son. "You get that from your mother, not me."