thethiefandtheairbender:

It’s the first night after Ba Sing Se has fallen—a fitful day of healing Aang, and making it to an Earth Kingdom town—when Katara finds Sokka sobbing by their dim campfire. King Kuei and Bosco are already gone, choosing to hide in obscurity as world travellers, and Katara supposes the Kuei was never much of a king to begin with. Toph is snoring and Sokka said he would take the first watch, so Katara had curled a protective arm over Aang by Appa’s fur, and done her best to sleep beside him, to no avail.

Any attempt at sleep is thrown out the window when she hears Sokka sniffling. Katara sits up and then walks forwards quietly. Sokka is crying in a way she’s only seen a handful times, a few after their mother had died and he’d been young enough to let the tears fall freely. Then, once on his first night after Yue’s passing, the moon still so bright and their little ship with Pakku out in the endless sea.

It’s only when Katara sits next to him on the log and curls an arm around his shoulders that Sokka seems to notice her, his eyes rimmed with red as he tries to bite back his mournful sounds. “Sokka, what’s—”

But then she meets his eyes, and the way he glances back at Aang, patched together with makeshift bandages of old linen, held together by day old spirit water, and understands. And Sokka must know it too, because he leans into her and sobs into her shoulder. He’s never lost a brother before.