#absense | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

comradekatara · 2 months

Note

what's up hakoda with in the modern au? also anything on yue would be appreciated ^·^

okay so hakoda basically disappears from their lives at the same point as he leaves in canon. and he’s like “you can’t be upset, sokka, you have to hold it together because you’re the Man of the house now and it’s your job to take care of your little sister” (which of course, sokka takes very seriously. perhaps too seriously considering he lives in a suburb) and “you can’t be upset katara, you have to soldier through this heroically and bravely because you are so strong” (which only somewhat calms her down. because she’s a child, and her mom died in front of her like a year ago). and then he’s gone. for years they have no clue where he went or whether he’s even alive.

and then. he inexplicably returns once they’re both in high school. sokka is just a few months away from graduating. and suddenly a man they barely remember is standing in their doorway. sokka is elated. it’s his dad!!! his dad came back!!! he fully thought his dad had killed himself. he wouldn’t have even resented him if he had. he also tried wanted contemplated suicide after yue died. and if hakoda loved kya even half as much as sokka loved yue, he gets it. like, he wasn’t very pleasant to be around after kya’s death anyway. he was sullen and irritable and distracted. but now he’s back! and he seems really happy to see his kids again. and sokka is equally overjoyed to see him, because he was gone, and now he’s not.

katara is less enthused. why is he back?? where even was he??? is sokka just not going to acknowledge how fucked up it was that he disappeared for years???? normally sokka is a miserable little hater, why is he acting like a fool??? they have dinner, the four of them (kanna is also there), and katara is snippy the entire time. “you know sokka got a full ride to princeton. no thanks to you.” “can you pass the beans?” “why? do you feel like the beans abandoned you????”

hakoda’s not an idiot. he certainly anticipated this possibility. so he pulls katara aside and tells her what happened. after kya was murdered, her killer went to trial. katara was technically the only eyewitness, but she was way too young and traumatized to testify, so hakoda testified for her. and then, a couple years later, he escaped from prison. and tried to kill hakoda. it was a very near miss. and then, he effectively disappeared off the face of the earth. hakoda was put in witness protection. he figured that he should take his kids with him, since they wouldn’t be safe, but since he hadn’t come for them, the authorities assured him that his kids would be safe as long as hakoda never contacted them. it took years, but eventually they caught him again. and so hakoda came home.

katara’s just like “wow…… that is…… an absolutely ridiculous story.” it’s not that she doesn’t believe him, but like. what????? WHAT??????? also. “does sokka know about this?” “no, I wasn’t allowed to tell anyone.” “then how is he just fine with this situation?????” hakoda shrugs. “you know sokka, he’s very…… easygoing.” katara just laughs in his face.

eventually, hakoda tells sokka too. he has a lot of follow up questions, but he accepts it. and so for the next couple months, they cram as many father son bonding activities in as humanly possible. hakoda goes to one of sokka’s baseball games and realizes that he’s some kind of baseball prodigy, which infuriates katara to no end (hakoda didn’t even realize that sokka wasn’t allowed to be good at sports in their house. he has a lot to catch up on). after that first game sokka just lies and says the baseball season is over. hakoda goes to all of katara’s games too, of course. he meets all their friends. he’s kind of confused about whether or not suki is dating his son?? (“we’re all confused about that,” assures katara.) sokka is happier than anyone has ever seen him. katara wonders how he can just be so…accepting of this situation.

like, yes, it’s technically not their father’s fault that he was gone from their lives for years and forced both of them to work multiple jobs while in high school and wasn’t there for them when yue died and missed so many important milestones and never contacted them to let him know where he was or whether he was even alive. but katara saw her mother murdered in front of her as a child. and then her father disappeared. and then one of her best friends died a few years later, and had to watch her brother become a hollow husk of himself who wanted nothing more than to join her. and now sokka and hakoda are just….. blithely pretending that none of this wrong???? they’re not even willing to recognize the deep injustice of this tragedy???? everything is just suddenly fine????

katara simmers for a while, but it’s never taken long for her to boil. it happens at, arguably, the worst possible time. sokka is giving a surprisingly beautiful valedictory speech (everyone had just kind of assumed that he was gonna say “fuck you you’re all idiots” or something along those lines, but he actually gets really poignant and sincere with it) and hakoda sheds a tear. katara sees this tear, and it pierces her heart. she scoffs, but remains silent.

then, graduation is over, and katara goes to hug sokka. she might find him endlessly frustrating, but after spending a not insignificant period of time his sophomore year keeping him on suicide watch and forcing him to eat and bathe regularly, she feels like she’s earned this, that this is her victory too. she wants to tell him how proud she is, and how pleasantly surprised she was that his speech didn’t quote derrida, or artaud, or even benjamin. but before she can reach him, hakoda wraps his arms around her brother and says “im so proud of you.” and naturally, katara blows up.

sokka doesn’t actually want to be here for this, so he goes to find suki…to take his mind off things. meanwhile katara is causing a veritable scene yelling with no compunctions about disturbing the other families attempting to celebrate their children’s graduations. “how can you be proud of him when you haven’t even done anything for him, when you haven’t seen how much he’s suffered, how much i’ve suffered?? you don’t have any idea of how difficult it’s been because we’re all just supposed to pretend that everything is fine now and nothing bad ever happened and we’re just a perfect happy family” and so on and so forth.

once she’s finally out of breath, hakoda takes her aside to somewhere more private, and those tears he shed at sokka’s speech turn into a flood. he tells katara that not being able to be there with her was the hardest thing he’s ever had to do, that he thought about her and sokka every single day, and wanted nothing more than to return to them. even tried to, at times, but was caught by the feds. and he finally apologizes to her, understanding that even if it wasn’t his fault and was never his intention to, he did nonetheless still hurt her deeply, and sokka too, even if sokka won’t acknowledge it. they’re hugging, they’re crying, they’re forgiving each other, they’re making an attempt to move forward. and for the next year, before katara herself goes off to college, katara is once again close with her dad.

they cook together, play sports in the park together, watch tv together, enjoy each other’s company. hakoda helps katara with her math homework (now that sokka is out of the house and cannot just. do it for her), and katara starts to realize where sokka got his brains from. he gets a job, and katara gets the opportunity to work fewer shifts at the claire’s at the mall and actually spend time with all her two friends (technically zuko was her third friend, but he’s not there anymore so). hakoda helps her polish her speech for student body president, and finds that katara is actually an incredible orator (even if he doesn’t think that “abolishing math” is a particularly reasonable platform). it’s just like old times. before kya died, and they stopped communicating. it’s like reconnecting with an old friend.

as for yue, she was of course sokka’s best friend in the whole wide world, his first love, and his only girlfriend (depending on who you ask), but she also one of katara’s best friends too. not her ultimate best friend, because obviously aang has always filled that role, but she’s like a sort of. big sister to her. at first, yue doesn’t really understand katara. she’s an only child, and seeing the way katara antagonizes sokka kind of horrifies her, even as sokka attempts to explain to her that this is just normal sibling behavior. but after hakoda leaves, sokka starts working more, and yue gets to talking to katara when sokka isn’t around. and it’s strange how different katara is when she isn’t around her brother. she’s actually quite pleasant. sweet, even.

yue and katara bond over different things than yue and sokka do. yue and sokka can talk science, math, even poetry, but sokka doesn’t read genre fiction, won’t watch all ten bajillion hours of the lord of the rings director’s cut with her. yue gets katara into terry pratchett, tolkien, ursula le guin (who quickly becomes one of katara’s all time favorite authors). katara gets yue into octavia butler, tamora pierce. they start an unofficial book club (aang occasionally joins in). katara actually enjoys discussing literature for the first time in her life. who knew that something so similar to english class could actually be fun? sokka thinks it’s nice that yue is making more friends, even if those friends do happen to be limited to the kids he happens to know.

it’s not that yue is unpopular, in fact, everyone likes her because she is so lovely, gentle, smart, and beautiful. it’s just that yue met sokka on the first day of school, and promptly decided that she had no need to befriend anyone else. as you can imagine, they are extremely codependent. not a day goes by that they do not spend time together. even when yue is too sick to leave her room, sokka comes over to bring her the homework, and reads to her, or just sits with her. on days where yue is doing better, they sit on the porch of aang’s backyard and eat almonds while katara and toph wrestle in the grass and aang attempts to perform tricks on a far too small trampoline. sokka and yue are just in their own little world where the only thing that matters is being together. they don’t need anyone else.

that said, aang, katara, and toph all adore yue. for someone who fancies herself a loner, she is incredibly friendly and funny and outgoing and kind. she reads sff with katara, talks disability with toph, makes up fun little games with aang. technically only sokka is getting paid to babysit aang and tutor toph, but yue just enjoys their company. they’re all devastated when she dies. especially toph. katara and aang have both experienced immense, world-shattering grief before, but this is the first real tragedy in toph’s life. and yue was a confidante, someone who could directly empathize with her experiences and problems. yue was incredibly important to all of them. she was their big sister.

but after a while, they all learn to stop mentioning yue altogether. even though they want to talk about her, because she left such an indelible mark on each of them, they can’t. it’s just an unspoken rule that any mention of yue is taboo. katara thinks it’s kind of silly that sokka has placed a moratorium on any kind of discussion of the most important person in his life, but steadfastly pretending that she never existed is the only thing that actually gets him to function, and so it’s far preferable to the alternative (breaking his leg because he “slipped and fell” off yue’s roof while drunk, for example). there’s a giant yue-shaped hole in their group dynamic. and nothing can fill it, so they just pretend not to see it.

unfortunately just because katara, aang, and toph adhere to this rule doesn’t mean that the rest of the school does. of course the fact that a student died is a hot button topic for the rest of the year. the gossip train jumps from the fact that sokka was there (true) and the paramedics found him in the middle of the street holding yue’s dead body in his arms (also true) to the notion that sokka actually killed her (insane) because he found out that she was cheating on him (also insane) and then staged it as an accident (thanks hahn). katara makes it her mission to beat up anyone she hears spreading these horrific rumors to a pulp, and spends a lot of her freshman year in detention as a result. and then she spends the next four years wondering why everyone is scared of her.

after a while, katara lets herself indulge in fantasies. she thinks about what life would be like if yue were still alive. if kya were still alive. would they have gotten along? (of course they would have.) would she and sokka still be together? (also yes, of course.) would she have gone on to be a biochemist like she’d always planned? (probably. she was brilliant.) would she have gotten along with suki and zuko and the rest of their new friends? (yes, they would have adored one another.) if sokka knew that katara thought about this, he would no doubt dismiss it as some kind of futile exercise in despair. but as a thought exercise, it actually soothes katara, gives her hope that there exists a parallel universe where her parents and friends are still alive and her brother is still happy and her knuckles aren’t bloody from beating the shit out of random asshole kids every day. sokka never quite understood that fantasies can be real too.

88 notes · View notes