Sokka had thought he understood grief. He’d lost his mother. He's lost Yue. He’d lost friends in the war. He’d spent half his life wondering if each goodbye would be the last. But none of that had prepared him for the weight of this.
The world hadn't stopped. The sun had risen. The snow had fallen. People had gathered around him with expectant eyes full of mourning and trust in him. He didn’t feel like a leader. He felt like a boy who had just had the ground melt out beneath his feet.
Which was a familiar feeling—too familiar. He hadn’t felt this specific hollow ache since he was twelve years old, standing in the snow outside their home, holding Katara close while the world collapsed around him. He remembered the sting of the wind, the muffled sobs against his shoulder, the way the village had fallen terrifyingly quiet. He had been a child then, forced suddenly to understand what it meant for something irreplaceable to simply vanish. A part of him had never stopped being that twelve year old boy trying desperately to look strong for his baby sister, even as grief threatened to swallow him whole.
Sokka stood on the crest of the ridge overlooking the village, the cold biting at his cheeks. He barely noticed. It felt wrong that the wind still carried the same scent of ocean brine and tundra moss. Wrong that the world looked the same even though something enormous had been ripped out of it. He kept replaying those final moments with @three-nations' hand in his, the rasp of his breath, the way his father had tried to smile. Sokka had held strong then, because that was what a warrior should do. What a son should do. But now the strength was cracking, splintering under the weight of his grief, the guilt for all the things he couldn't say to him now.
The tribe needed him. Already he’d felt their eyes shift toward him, an unspoken understanding falling into place with quiet, reverent inevitability. He’d always known this day would come. He’d trained for it. He’d given orders before, fought battles, and made plans that saved lives, but this wasn't that kind of battle.
How was he supposed to hold his home together when he could barely hold his own heart in one piece?
His thoughts drifted to @droplct. She wasn’t here. She didn’t know yet. She was thousands of miles away on Air Temple Island, completely unaware that her world had just changed forever. His chest tightened, breath stuttering out of him. Katara had always been strong. She kept going, even when her heart was breaking. Losing their mother had shattered something deep in both of them. Losing their father... he didn’t know if they could be strong like that again.
He wished he could be the one to tell her, to gently shield her from the moment the news reached her. But he couldn’t. And that helplessness made something inside him twist sharply, painfully.
He felt @crownshattered's presence beside him as he closed his eyes, a shaky breath leaving him. He loved her. Spirits, he loved her. He didn't know how to hold himself together right now without her near him like this. He swallowed hard, his jaw trembling once before he managed to set it.
He wasn’t ready. He would never be ready. But ready or not, people were waiting. His tribe. The young ones who still believed in heroes and the elders who looked at him now and saw his father’s son. He couldn't let them know how small and lost he felt. They couldn't know how he wanted to curl in on himself, to hide in some corner of childhood where his ataata was there with safety, warmth, and stories by the fire. But he couldn’t go back. He hadn’t been able to since the day their mother was taken from them.
He stood there a moment longer, letting the cold sting his eyes, letting grief settle inside him like frost creeping across ice. Hakoda was gone and Sokka would carry the tribe forward. Not because he was ready, but because he had to.
Because Katara would need him.
Because the tribe needed him.
Because his father believed he could.
He lifted his head, breath trembling, and let the wind take the last remnants of the boy who wished someone older, wiser, stronger would walk ahead of him.
There was no one left to do it. This was his walk to take, and Suki was there beside him as he took the first step.
Musical Inspiration: Endless Night from The Lion King on Broadway
