Bruh, Hakoda is in for a fricking ride when he finally gets five minutes to talk to his kids.
Sokka: Dated the princess of the Northern water tribe (try not to think about how Katara is the princess of the Southern Water Tribe) who promptly turned into the moon, learned the blade, blew up a small mountain, was kidnapped multiple times, stole a library book thus pissing off a spirit so badly it destroyed the greatest repository of knowledge on earth, got high on cactus juice, knowingly joined a suicide mission because of his Princess Ex-girlfriend, and is currently a committed relationship with some random earth kingdom girl who could definitely kick Hakoda’s ass in hand to hand. Oh, and Sokka’s now heavily invested in doing makeup.
And as bad as Sokka is, Katara is WORSE.
Keep in mind, when he left, Katara could barely float a fish in the air with her water bending. When Hakoda finally meets up with his kids after the end of the war, Katara…
Was so hankering for a water bending master she was literally begging Aang to let her flee home and travel thousands of miles to the northern water tribe, couldn’t wait to get to the North Pole so she stole a water bending scroll from pirates leading to them trying to kidnap her and everyone she loves, got third degree burns from Aang (unintentional) which was only prevented from being permanent by magic hands (oh yeah she can do that now), arrived at the North Pole and promptly tried to beat the shit out of the patriarchy (literally) because they wouldn’t let her kill people with water bending, found Gran-Gran’s old boy toy and immediately used Gran-Gran’s relationship to emotionally blackmail him into teaching her to murder people with water, gained a crush on an actual terrorist who she almost joined, gained another crush on entirely different emotionally distant boy who wanted to kill her friends, was used as a hostage to give one of her friends a PTSD flashback, got caught trying to fleece the fire nation justice system, pretended to be a River spirit so she could do some international eco-terrorism, found the second to last waterbender in the southern water tribe who turned out to be insane and a serial kidnapper, learned a super illegal and morally reprehensible form of water bending from said serial kidnapper, oh and she used that horrible and morally reprehensible form of bending to chase her mom’s killer to the ends of the earth before coming within inches of perforating him with a thousand razor sharp icicles.
Sokka meeting Hakoda again is like a kid who went to college and when he comes back his views are a little more feminist, and with more skills under his belt.
Meanwhile Katara meeting Hakoda again is more like that quiet kid who went to college to study intro to botany and comes back as a navy seal.
Hakoda and his kids are going sit down to have a nice, quiet family dinner in Gran-Gran’s igloo, and when he asks them about their travels, they’re going to say “oh, it was no big deal”, at which point Gran-Gran’s gonna take one look at their lying asses and say “Oh really? Well don’t you tell dad about that Fire Nation booby trap you and Aang almost died to, five minutes after meeting him?”
Gran-Gran got the scoop from Grandpa Pakku on the shit Katara pulled in the North Pole and she is under no illusions that her grandkids were any more sedate in the rest of their travels.
At which point Hakoda will grill them for details, and cross reference with Aang, Zuko, Toph, and Suki to make sure they’re not leaving anything out (because let’s be fair here, Katara and Sokka will absolutely try to downplay the sheer insanity they threw themselves into).
About midway through this collection of stories, he finally comes to the terrifying realization that his kids might have killed more people than the entire fleet of water tribe ships he commanded, and he’s not sure how to feel about that.
Luckily he’s a good dad so his chosen response is somewhere along the lines of “Hugs and Therapy”.
Also he adopts Toph and Zuko because holy crap, does NOBODY in this world know how to raise kids?!?! He left his kids alone for years and somehow he’s the best parental role model out there?!?!?
