I REALLY love Hakoda y’all, he’s a dad trying his best in a world where he has to alter his priorities for what will make his children happy and what will make them safe. It makes for an interesting perspective to write becuase he’s perfectly understanding of the fact that his actions make his kids upset but he wouldn’t necessarily change them if he could, because it means they’re alive.
Nukka had always possessed a level of self-awareness that would have been unsettling in anything but a military society. As a young girl in the southern water tribe, even the daughter of their chief, she was entirely unsettling to more than a few of her village-mates.
It was simply the look of understanding that graced the girl's features, a type of old look, seen more often in the few warriors who returned home from the battles against the southern raiders war-torn and utterly disappointed in their own failures. Of course, coming from a girl who had witnessed the death of her own mother, the whispers of concern for her mental state were kept exactly that. Whispers behind tent partitions.
Nukka ignored it all, Sokka glared at those who stared too long or talked too loudly, and Katara, well, Katara was the most volatile of their trio--When Katara was upset, the whole village knew it. When her vast potential temper managed to be roused in Nukka's defense it tended to bring a small smile to her normally sullen sister's face. It was fleeting, of course, as all of her emotions were but it was there and her two siblings cherished it. Hakoda did too, just from a distance.
They didn't exactly tiptoe around her, not like he did, unsure of how to quite connect with his stoic daughter. In his quasi-absence Nukka seemed to bond more strongly with Bato, oddly enough. The more she distanced herself from Hakoda the more often she could be seen trailing after Bato, blunted practice spear in hand.
It bothered Hakoda, but with the state of the world and the decaying state of his tribe, he'd pushed his concern to the corner of his mind. It wasn't as if she ignored him completely, or was even anything but civil to him, she just held her distance. It wasn't a stretch to think that she was so scared of the pain of losing another parent that she instead chose to retreat into herself. It didn't dampen her interactions with her siblings, not that two strong personalities as Sokka and Katara would have allowed such a thing.
Still, it ached some days, when their eyes met and only the briefest glimmer of acknowledgment shined in her eyes. He could still remember how she had been before her mother's death. His little snow fox, quiet but also impossibly curious--He could recall sitting with his twins, perched carefully on one knee each as Nukka pestered him with questions for stories, history, folklore, even factual explanations for things such as weapon crafting or boat building. Yes, she'd been quiet but she'd been so full of life.
Then the Fire Nation had come and snuffed out her little spark just as surely as they'd snuffed out the moon to his tides.
In his stronger moments of grief, the ones that warped his thoughts with their anger and sorrow he told himself it wasn't good that it had been Nukka there with Kya when she died but it had been better. She had known basic first aid, her curiosity boundless in all things, not enough to save her mother by any means but enough to let her hold on long enough to say goodbye. He felt guilty for it, absolutely wretched and could barely look at Nukka when the feelings overwhelmed him. She seemed to sense it, even if she didn't seem to understand exactly, it had been the point when she'd begun clinging tighter to her siblings and drifting slowly towards Bato.
It was for the best, he told (lied to) himself more than once, for Nukka to have a father figure who wasn't so overcome with grief that he could barely to look her in the eye some days. He did his best to make sure that Sokka and Katara did not want too badly for attention as a result, even if Katara seemed to take it the wrong way as she grew older and began to realize he never quite lavished Nukka with the same attention she and her brother received.
Sokka understood better though Hakoda guessed that was only because Nukka was his twin. The young boy knew his sister didn't care for the same types of acknowledgment they did, didn't crave it in their mother's absence the way they did. He was almost entirely certain the two had discussed it at some point during one of his hunting trips. Thus, he had no fears of any slowly bubbling resentment within his eldest son even if he stood unsure on that front in regards to his daughters.
It made leaving both harder and easier, in some ways. Sokka was angry he wasn't allowed to come with them but most of his bluster stemmed more from fear than anger. Katara, well her anger was genuine but Hakoda knew he could do little to assuage it so instead he let her simmer for a bit, he'd have a long talk with her once she wasn't liable to crack a hole in the middle of the marketplace in her anger.
Nukka was...relatively close to what he'd expected.
She'd said little, wished him a safe journey and immediately took to work helping prepare for said journey, if she seemed less mechanical in her goodbye to Bato than him, he ignored it. Having helped care for them in Kya's absence he was nearly as much of a parental figure as he was, especially to his eldest daughter. Hakoda was not always a strong man, and if his pride as a father twinged at the way Nukka told Bato how he wasn't 'allowed' to die his only reaction was a sad smile and a nod of agreement.
He would miss his children so dearly but he would cope. He'd already been missing Kya and his little snow fox for years.
