Chapter Text
It was during the heat of a July evening at dinnertime when Hakoda started to hear loud noises coming from outside, the slamming of van doors and the shouting of kids’ voices.
When Sokka and Katara bolted up from the dinner table to get a look, Hakoda didn’t even try to stop them. It had been a while since kids moved into the neighborhood, and at ages eight and nine respectively, Katara and Sokka were desperate for some neighborhood friends their own age.
It warmed his heart to see them so excited to meet new friends. Ever since their mother passed last year, Katara had closed herself off, and Sokka had in turn lost some friends as he spent time making sure that Katara wasn’t alone. Katara was spending so much time trying to be a little mom, always trying to make breakfast (cereal was getting old, but he truly appreciated the effort) and reminding Hakoda and Sokka to take their shoes off at the door, just like Kya always had. But he wanted them to be kids. Losing a parent and grieving so young was hard, he knew that from both his job as a social worker and from personal experience, and he wanted them to have as normal a childhood as possible.
He went to the window where Sokka and Katara were staring, their noses pressed up against the glass. “It’s not polite to stare,” Hakoda tutted.
They pulled back and Sokka whined, “But those are kids our age!”
Katara nodded excitedly. “And they’re moving into Bato’s old house, Dad, it’s like fate!”
“Can we go and say hi? Please?” Sokka begged.
Hakoda sighed. “It’s late, the sun’s almost down. I’m sure they have lots of unpacking to do.” Katara and Sokka complained, and Hakoda continued, “We can go over and say hi first thing tomorrow, alright? But it’s too late right now. Now, let’s get back to dinner so we can finish that pecan pie Gran-Gran gave us last time she was here.”
The two cheered and rushed back to the table to finish their meal. Hakoda lingered by the window. He saw two small children, around his own kids’ age, the girl was giving orders to a taller man who looked like he could be in college, telling him where to put the boxes, and the man was laughing, clearly used to her antics. (A family friend, perhaps? He mused. An eldest brother?)
Beside the van, unpacking some heavier things, was a stout man with gray hair and a long beard. He had a hearty smile on, and was talking animatedly to the two people sitting by the moving van: a woman that couldn’t be older than Hakoda himself and was assuredly the two youngest children’s mother, and a young boy with long black hair pulled into a ponytail.
When the boy turned to look at the man talking to him, Hakoda held back a gasp. Part of his hair was gone on that side of his head, due to a burn that took over the majority of the left side of his face, covering his eye completely and sneaking its way down his cheek, his ear and part of his scalp having been a victim of it as well. From the way the woman was looked around as if waiting for an attack, and how closely she was holding the boy, they were a family of abuse victims.
Hakoda made a note of it for when they came to visit tomorrow. It would be best to go visit when the family was outside at some point, to make sure they didn’t sneak up and surprise them. Give the family plenty of time to react and escape if they needed to.
He’d have to make sure Katara and Sokka waited just a bit longer to meet the new neighbors.
———
The next day, Hakoda made his two children wait until noon, and they were practically vibrating in their impatience. Katara had even asked to make cookies to bring to the neighbors to fill the time, and when he looked at those big blue eyes shining with excitement, how could he say no?
Right as they were finishing up lunch and the cookies were cooling, Hakoda saw a few members of the family next door go outside and start milling about, the young man he saw earlier going over to the car in the driveway with a toolbox. He told the kids they could go say hi as soon as they finished, and Sokka ate so quickly Hakoda had a few scares where he thought he was going to choke. They hurriedly loaded the dishwasher and put everything away, Hakoda putting together a plate of cookies to bring as well, before the kids rushing outside.
Hakoda stopped them with a firm voice. “You need to be gentler than usual,” Hakoda warned. “Remember, we never know what someone else is going through or why they moved here in the first place. Be nice and be careful not to overstep any boundaries.”
When the kids nodded, they ran across the yard. It was good that kids were so loud, it made it nearly impossible to startle someone when there were children shouting and barreling across the lawn.
Hakoda approached the mother first, the two children beating him to her. She was holding a few cleaning supplies and standing on the porch. She looked him up and down as if to assess his threat level. Hakoda gave her his friendliest smile before saying, “Hi, I’m Hakoda, this is Sokka and Katara. We’re your neighbors. Katara insisted on a housewarming gift, so we made you cookies.” Katara beamed up at him before turning to the woman with the same smile.
She returned it as she looked at Katara’s face, before hesitantly taking the plate. “That’s very kind, thank you. I’m sure the family will love them, they look delicious.” Katara’s smile got impossibly brighter. “I’m Ursa Sozin. Let me introduce you to everyone.” She turned back into the house’s open door, and called, “Iroh, please come out here and bring the kids, would you?”
There was a shouted response that Hakoda couldn’t make out, but then the stout man from before and the two children were at the door. “Hakoda, this is my brother-in-law, Iroh. And these are my kids, Azula and Zuko,” she said as she pointed to the young girl then boy in turn. He got a better look at the boy’s burn, but he didn’t linger there. He saw enough to know the burn was pretty fresh; not fresh enough to still get infected, but it looked like he had only just recently been allowed to take off the bandages. If he had to guess, this was the reason they had moved; unfortunately it often takes a huge misstep for even the other parent to accept what was happening, and especially for the courts to take abuse cases as seriously as they should be. From the look on Ursa’s face as her eyes rested on her son, it was a mix of both.
“Hello, Azula, Zuko. This is Sokka and Katara. How old are you?”
The girl answered for them. “I’m eight and Zuko’s ten.”
Katara grinned. “We’re the same age! Sokka’s nine.”
Azula nodded stiffly, only giving a slight smirk in return. He recognized this. The golden child and scapegoat. It was common for parental abusers to have a favorite child that they held up and put all their expectations on, and a child that they blamed all their failures on. From the burn, Zuko was clearly the scapegoat, and Azula had been touted as the golden one. He understood perfectly why Azula was behaving in this way; she hadn’t been able to protect Zuko from their father, but now that they had escaped, she could protect him from strangers. It was admirable, and he would have to explain some of this (without going into detail) to Sokka and Katara when they got home as to not make Zuko afraid or Azula angry.
“Why don’t you go play?” Iroh said encouragingly, nudging the two children forward.
“Yeah! We’ve got lots of games!” Sokka declared happily. “We can play with the sidewalk chalk, if you want to set up a hopscotch here or at our house!”
Zuko was staring at the ground, and Azula piped in, “Let’s do it here.”
As Katara and Sokka ran off to their garage to go find some chalk, Azula and Zuko walked over to the driveway to wait. Iroh shouted, “Lu Ten! Come meet the neighbors!”
The young man from earlier popped his head out from under the car, sliding out on a skateboard with a wrench clenched in between his teeth. He stood up and smiled as he jogged over, putting the wrench in one of his pockets, then catching Hakoda in a firm handshake. “Pleased to meet ya, sir.”
Hakoda grinned. “Hakoda is just fine.”
Lu Ten nodded, before he caught sight of the plate of cookies in Ursa’s hands. “Wait, are those M&M cookies?” Iroh laughed as Lu Ten grabbed one and took a large bite, Ursa scoffing but giving the boy a fond look.
“Lu Ten is starting his first year at Ba Sing Se University this fall,” Iroh said proudly.
“Mechanical engineering,” Lu Ten explained as he finished one cookie and snatched another. “Just got a job at the autobody shop down the street, figured I work on this piece of junk enough that I may as well get paid to work on other people’s.”
Iroh gasped. “Don’t talk about her like that!”
“Dad, the car’s thirty years old, it’s a wonder she can move at all.”
“Be nice to her, Lu Ten, that was the car your mother and I had our first kiss in,” Iroh said teasingly.
Lu Ten blanched. “Gross.”
“Do you not like them?”
Lu Ten looked down to where Katara now stood, looking up at him with big watery eyes and holding a huge chalk crayon. He knelt down to her level and declared, “No, no, my dad was just being icky and talking about kissing,” he said with an overdramatic shudder. “Are you the chef?” When Katara nodded as he held out the cookie, he told her, “These are the best cookies I have ever had in my life.”
Katara’s smile was so bright and large it could rival the sun. “Promise?”
Lu Ten held out his pinky. “I pinky promise.”
Katara gasped at the severity of the situation, and linked her pinky with his as he moved them up and down in a firm shake. With that, she ran back over to the other kids only a few feet away, as Azula and Sokka started to draw a hopscotch board onto the driveway beside where Lu Ten’s car was.
“Good recovery,” Hakoda said with a smirk.
Lu Ten clucked his tongue. “That could’ve been bad. If she started to cry, I never could’ve lived it down to Azula. She always says I’m just a stupid boy who makes girls cry.” When Hakoda gave him a confused look, Lu Ten continued, “You break up with one girl without knowing Azula’s in the next room over, and she never forgives you.”
Hakoda couldn’t help the laugh that escaped him, before Lu Ten stole another cookie and went back to the car.
“So, is there anyone else we should be expecting to meet in your family?” Iroh hinted.
“No, it’s just the three of us,” Hakoda explained. “Although you may see my mother around quite a lot, she only lives a block away. She’s been a godsend ever since my wife passed.”
“Ah, I understand,” Iroh said softly. “I apologize for bringing it up. My wife passed when Lu Ten was about your son’s age. It’s always good to remember that your children, and you, carry your wife with you wherever you go. Nothing can change that.”
Hakoda smiled. “Thank you, Iroh.” Of course, he’d heard that before a hundred times at the funeral, but no one had said it so eloquently before — or perhaps it had just been too fresh then to digest the words.
“So what do you do for work, Hakoda?” Ursa asked as she set the plate down on a small table outside the front door.
“I’m a social worker here in town.”
Ursa seemed surprised, before looking a bit heartbroken, as if she knew the jig was up and their fresh start was going to begin with someone already knowing their great tragedy. “Oh. Do you...?” She trailed off.
“I didn’t tell the children after I figured it out if that’s what you’re asking,” Hakoda said comfortingly. “Sokka and Katara won’t treat Azula and Zuko differently than any other kid.”
Ursa nodded grimly, before giving a small smile. “Thank you.”
Unfortunately, Hakoda’s words seemed to be a summoning for a bad omen, because they heard Azula’s shrill shout. “Stop looking at him like that!” She screeched.
They turned to see Azula standing over Sokka and pointing a finger in his face. Ursa and Hakoda rushed over to see what the fuss was about.
Sokka whined, “I was just looking!” He then turned back to Zuko and said, “I just was looking because I wanted to know how it happened!” He pointed at the other boy’s scar.
“Sokka!” Hakoda scolded. When Zuko flinched, he lowered his voice and said, “That is not something we ask. Now apologize to Zuko.”
“I’m sorry, Zuko,” Sokka told him. “I didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.”
“It’s okay, sir,” Zuko said quietly as his eyes flickered up to Hakoda, and Hakoda realized that this was the first time all day he’d heard the child talk. “I’m not upset, I know it’s ugly.”
“No, it’s not!” Katara defended.
“Yeah, it looks cool,” Sokka said quickly. “I thought maybe you’d have a super cool story, like you crashed a dirtbike, and — and it exploded, but you survived!”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of, Zuko,” Hakoda tacked on.
Zuko flashed a small, fragile smile, before letting out a soft, “Yeah, okay.”
Ursa beamed at him. Azula sat back down, seemingly accepting Sokka and Katara’s words and recognizing they were no threat to her brother.
“I am sorry, Zuko,” Sokka said. “I won’t bring it up again, I promise.”
Zuko nodded. “It’s okay. Thanks.”
“What are you guys doing tonight?” Katara asked. “Dad just got Monsters, Inc. on DVD and it’s my favorite!”
Azula frowned. “We’ve never seen that. Dad didn’t want us to watch childish movies.”
“That’s weird,” Sokka said admonishingly as he drew a rainbow carefully between his feet. “It’s a good movie!” He turned to Hakoda. “Dad? Is it okay if they come over tonight to watch the movie with us?”
Hakoda looked to Ursa, who nodded, and he said, “Of course, everyone is welcome.”
Zuko looked up with one widened golden eye. “Mom? Can we?”
“Yes, after dinner you can go over to Katara and Sokka’s house,” she said. “I’m afraid I’ll have to stay here and unpack, but I’m sure Hakoda will make sure everything is safe and fun.”
Hakoda noticed the way she worded her sentence, emphasis on safe, before Katara clapped. “We’re gonna have so much fun! Dad always makes popcorn, and he puts pretzels and chocolate chips in it! Mom called it ‘movie trail mix.’” After she said the words, Katara frowned slightly.
“It’s a good memory, Katara,” Hakoda supported. “You’re allowed to talk about it.”
Katara nodded slowly, and went back to making the hopscotch. He noticed she had gone to twenty lopsided squares instead of ten, and with the way Azula was outlining things deliberately and explaining why going higher was better, he assumed it was at her encouragement.
Later that night, there were four children in the basement with the lights dimmed, snuggled under two blankets and holding two bowls of movie trail mix. After he started the movie and went back upstairs, he heard Azula say that “Lu Ten wasn’t invited because he’s a jerk to girls” to which Zuko defended his cousin with “Nuh uh! Girls like Lu Ten, don’t be mean to him!”
Hakoda smiled, and left the basement door open a crack. He wanted to be able to hear these conversations as the night continued.