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Hakoda’s ears were ringing. A sharp reverberating noise that drowned out everything around him. He wanted to clutch his head where a piece of debris had hit him in the explosion, but couldn’t move his arms from where they were pinned under the collapsed battlement.
He could feel something wet trailing down the side of his head, underneath his broken helmet, and hoped that it was just sweat.
Underneath the high-pitched screeching, he could make out muffled shouts from outside.
“ —AD! DAD! ”
His children. They were okay.
He wanted to sigh in relief but the excruciating weight on his chest didn’t allow him. During the fight, Hakoda was able to dispatch one of the two soldiers manning the battlement with ease; they didn’t see him until it was too late, but the other had grabbed some kind of explosive and had, either accidentally or purposefully, set it off.
Now the metal structure was a heavy heap of broken metal and stone threatening to crush him if he made any sudden movements. The air was hazy with smoke and filled with the nauseous scent of gunpowder.
He knows that it would only take a stray spark before this thing blows.
As the building collapsed around him, his only thought was on his children. His babies. The only pieces remaining of his beloved wife.
What if their target collapsed as well? What if they needed help?
He’s had to stomp down the worry, the fear, the anxiety he’s felt about his children getting involved in the war since Bato informed him that they left home to travel with Avatar — another child younger than his own.
He had pushed aside his worries when they reunited in the wake of Ba Sing Se’s fall and Aang’s injury. By then they were more than just involved, they were key players who had made up their minds about bringing an end to this war, and had outgrown being vulnerable children in need of his protection.
Hakoda coughed and insistently ignored both the wet sound that accompanied it and the ominous creaks of the broken building at the movement his jolt caused.
Distantly, the calls grew more frantic.
He chose to smile instead. His warrior son. His master bender daughter. He couldn’t have been more proud of them. Or more devastated.
As grown as his children have been since he and the other warriors left home, as much as he’s had to accept that they’re actively participating in this war, they are his children and will forever be his first concern.
Judging by the pain radiating in his head, and the lack of feeling in his legs, it seemed that they would be his last concern as well.
With what little he could see under the pile of rubble was fading, and the puddle of blood he felt underneath him growing, his last worry before the darkness took him was that he couldn’t put his children through this again.