Forged In Fire || ATLA

Something In The Orange

The Awakening - Continued.

"To you, I'm just a man, to me, you're all I am. Where the hell am I supposed to go? I poisoned myself again, somethin' in the orange tells me you're never comin' home." - Zach Bryan

🌊⛰️🔥🌪

Hakoda found his son alone in the room he had claimed as his, not a candle lit as he lay in the darkness staring at his ceiling.

Sokka hadn't brought himself to light a single flame since Aelita had died. He couldn't. Something in the orange glow of burning embers whispered her name.

Hakoda stepped into the silence with two bowls of still-steaming food in his hands. "I thought we could have dinner together."

Sokka didn't move from the bed, back pressed into the mattress, the Fire Nation armor he had commandeered tossed to the side. If his dad noticed the red tapestry ripped off the wall, he didn't say anything. "I'm not hungry."

"Are you sure?" The Chief tried again. "I'll give you my salted pork."

Sokka wanted to be annoyed at being coddled but he was too consumed by everything else he was feeling at the moment to care. He sighed instead, "I said no, Dad."

Hakoda was silent for a moment. Looking at the forlorn expression on his son's face, his own heart broke a little more. He could practically hear the angry words inside of Sokka's head because he had been subject to those same voices himself in the days and weeks that followed after they had lost Kya. "Punishing yourself won't bring her back."

"That's not what I'm doing," Sokka argued as he finally moved to sit up and look his dad in the eye. His words were stained. "I'm more upset with her than I am myself and I know that doesn't make sense but she promised me she'd come back." He blinked back the tears that he refused to let fall.

He wouldn't let himself shatter again.

Sokka had completely broken just once since his world went to shit. They had stopped just long enough to pick up Smellerbee and Longshot in the Upper Ring before fleeing Ba Sing Se. When they made it to Chameleon Bay, Sokka hadn't been able to explain what had happened to his Dad, Katara hadn't either. Kyojuro, spirits bless him, had held it together better than any of them despite his own turmoil, Toph and Smellerbee filling in any blanks that the Prince couldn't. Bato immediately set to take Aang from Katara, the Avatar not yet out of the woods then, the other men from the tribe tending to the rest of the teenagers. Sokka had refused the care his men had offered him, he felt he hadn't deserved it, but when his Dad had approached him later to assure him his friends would be okay, the young warrior crumpled on the deck of the boat, utterly broken in a way he could've never imagined.

And just like he had when Sokka was a boy, Hakoda had held on to his son as he sobbed, not letting go until his very first baby had cried himself to sleep.

Sokka couldn't handle falling apart like that again, but he asked his Dad, "Why didn't she come back?"

"I wish I had an answer for you," Hakoda sighed as he lay the bowls on a bedside table, crouching to sit with his son. "And I wish I could tell you that it gets easier, but it doesn't, you just slowly learn what it's like to live again after them."

"What if I don't wanna learn? I didn't plan on this. I thought..." Sokka looked for the right words but couldn't find them. "I don't know, I just thought we had more time. It's not fair."

"You're right, it's not. She deserved a long and happy life, but so do you Sokka."

"Yeah well," The young warrior did his best to ignore the tears he couldn't stop now. He hadn't realized how much hope he had been holding onto that somehow Katara and Kyojuro had been wrong until Aang confirmed the worst. Aelita was gone, right when they had finally started to be happy together, and she was never coming back. It was like a part of him was missing, the part of him she had somehow always held, and he wasn't sure how to live without it anymore. "Happy doesn't really seem realistic right now."