Chapter Text
It started on a cloudy day in October, darkness threatening rain in the nearing future. But, the kids’ sports obligations had yet to be cancelled, so here Hakoda was, driving both of his children back to school. It was a pain that both of their teams didn’t meet immediately after school, and the middle school claimed they had no way for the kids to hang out for the hour between the end of day and start of their sports, but Hakoda refused to complain. He would take any time he could with his two kids, even with both of them yelling at each other in the backseat the whole ride.
“Dad! Tell Sokka that the blue one is MY water bottle!”
“Noooooo, this blue one is MINE, yours is a light blue, and this is clearly not light blue!”
“We only have one blue water bottle at the house, Dad tell him! He’s doing this on purpose!”
Hakoda sighed, glancing in the rear view just in time to see Sokka stick out his tongue and receive a punch in the arm in return.
“Owwww!! Daaaaaaaad Katara hit meeeeee!”
“Katara, Sokka definitely stole your water bottle, and he’s gonna apologize for that, but the hitting really wasn’t necessary.”
“You always told us to not be afraid to hit people who upset you!” Katara retaliated with a glare that Hakoda knows she got from him.
Another sigh found its way out of his body. “Obviously, yes, if someone is upsetting you to the point where you feel unsafe, you should defend yourself and send a message, but Sokka is just being annoying and therefore it’s not warranted.”
“Thank you dad, there wasn’t a reason to-wait did you say I was annoying?!”
“Aaaaaand we’re here,” Hakoda pulled into the circle drive of the middle school, happy to see the argument come to a forced end. He put the car in park and turned around to look at his kids properly. “Duffles? Cleats? Water bottles- Sokka give Katara hers back.” Sokka rolled his eyes but acquiesced. “Gran Gran is picking you both up later, I have night class today.” Both kids were already jumping out of the car and headed towards the building, waving him off. He honked the horn to get their attention back.
“Hey! I love you!” Sokka cringed slightly, embarrassed by parental love in front of his teammates, but at least Katara turned back to acknowledge the message.
He didn’t care much if they said it back to him, just as long as they heard it from him.
A small flood of middle schoolers had exited the front doors just as they arrived, most of them getting into cars parked around Hakoda’s minivan. A few headed towards locked bikes, and others walking towards the main road with some friends. Hakoda recognized many of them from previous drop offs, knowing that they were all headed to the nearby developments close to the school, but there was one that always made him a bit more concerned, always walking alone, and always seeming to head farther than the houses within hollering distance.
He realized that his interest could come off as a bit creepy, but as someone who had been given perhaps a little too much freedom as a child, he felt that he had the right to be concerned about a kid being left to walk home alone, especially now that the nights were coming earlier.
Now Hakoda definitely had enough brains to worry about the kinds of trouble that could happen to a middle schooler walking home alone through the dark, but apparently not enough to think through his next impulsive action on this dreary October day. He had plenty of time before his class started, it was looking like rain soon, and honestly he was just a little curious.
So once his kids had disappeared towards the sports fields behind the school, he got back on the main road, and drove until he spotted the kid walking their usual route, past the roads leading to the first two developments, and on towards more wooded areas. And because Hakoda really hadn’t thought this through enough, he pulled over towards the sidewalk, slowed to a roll, and put down his window.
“Hello there!” The kid’s head shot up, their body freezing. Big eyes staring back at him. Well, one eye actually. The other one was still pulled fairly closed, the side of their face covered in a heck of a burn scar. How does a kid get a scar like that?
“Do you live close to here? If you don’t, it looks like rain, I don’t mind giving you a ride if-“ The kid had already run off. In the opposite direction. And into the woods.
Because a strange man in a minivan had pulled up and asked where they live and offered to give them a ride, stellar work there Hakoda.
At least the kid had some survival instincts.
It was like this. Hakoda’s wife had died suddenly, when Sokka was six and Katara was four. And Hakoda realized that he didn’t know how to function without her. Forget functioning as a single parent for two small, grieving children, he just didn’t know how to live without her. So, he may have taken to some, well, unhealthy coping mechanisms.
First, it was throwing himself into his work, spending unnecessarily long days on construction sites, always offering to work an extra shift. It was sleeping in his car on site between shifts because why would he drive back home for just a few hours (where he would see her ghost at every turn). But the hard work took a toll on his body, and so it became the pain relievers, which took the edge off but just not enough. And then the alcohol, which really took the edge off for a while until it just made him sad again, unless he drank so much that he no longer had awareness and didn’t have to think anymore (didn’t have to see her dead face in his mind).
But then it wasn’t enough, and he still felt like shit so a fellow worker suggested some alternatives that would really take his mind away from his troubles, and they really did, took his mind away from everything, including the family that he still had. And he was no longer sure how long it had been since Kya was gone, not sure the last time he had seen his kids, not sure how old they were anymore, not sure what day it was, not sure how long he had been sleeping in his car parked god knows where because the company didn’t want an alcoholic junkie building for them so he couldn’t park at the sites and-
He got arrested. Shockingly, only for driving while high and possession. And shockingly, the only thing he was in possession of at the time was weed.
It would take him a while to realize just how damn lucky he was.
Lucky or not, he was still given two years. And the reality of two years didn’t sink in until he saw his kids at the back of the courtroom as he was taken out. He locked eyes with them and realized they had grown. They had grown and he had missed it. He had been so overcome with his own grief that he never stopped to see what he still had. And now it was too late.
His mother wouldn’t bring the kids to visit him for the first year. He understood that. He didn’t want them to see him like this either. Still dealing with withdrawal, facing his reality sober for the first time (in a year and half, it had been a year and a half since she had gone). But he wrote the kids letters. Tried to explain himself, help children understand why they had lost both of their parents, explain that it wasn’t their fault. He wrote so many letters, doing his best to apologize, but leaving the forgiveness up to them.
Sokka was the first to write back, six months after Hakoda had started writing. He didn’t say anything about forgiveness (what does an eight year old really know about forgiving their parents anyway) but he unlocked the door for Hakoda to enter his life. Slow at first, with just some information about what he was learning about school, and then what he did with his friends, and then about his life with his little sister and grandmother, and then some drawings of his ideas and dreams, and almost nine year olds still don’t know forgiveness but they do know how to tell their father they miss him. That it makes him upset that his father is in prison. But maybe not as upset as he was when his father wasn’t in prison and still chose not to be around. And maybe Hakoda cried the day Sokka wrote that he hoped they would get a second try together, as father and son, when Hakoda got out. If that’s what Hakoda wanted.
Katara didn’t write back until after the first time both kids were allowed to see him, a year into his sentence. It was Katara’s birthday, but she didn’t say anything the whole visit. Sokka clearly didn’t really know what to say either, even after all the letters they had exchanged.
Hakoda didn’t need to hear them say anything, he spent the visit just drinking in the sight of them. He would never take their presence for granted again.
He was granted parole after twenty months on good behavior, and he wasn’t planning on blowing the opportunity. Except that when his mother came for the last time before his release, she informed him that he couldn’t come home. It hurt like hell, but the courts had granted her full custody of his children, and until he could prove that he could support them physically and emotionally she didn’t want them living with him. He could respect that. He wouldn’t trust himself either. His childhood best friend agreed to let Hakoda live on his couch for the foreseeable future. Bato had not had any success getting through to Hakoda during his dark days, but pushed him now with a vengeance. He made sure Hakoda was attending weekly recovery group meetings, was eating real food, was continuing to send out job applications no matter how many turned him away. It was Bato who encouraged him to start night classes, begin the work towards a college degree he never bothered to pursue.
In the meantime, he was still allowed to visit his kids, and did not waste a single opportunity. He was at every birthday, every sports game, every parent-teacher conference. He worked, and worked, and worked to prove himself, and this time he didn’t let the work drive him to darkness. The love for his kids motivated him and on the day he earned his coin for three years clean and sober, his mother gave him back the key to his own home.
He hadn’t wasted a moment of fatherhood since.