Chapter Text
“Please leave me alone.”
It didn’t matter how many times Sokka begged them, how hard he tried to make things right, the spirits wouldn’t leave. All he wanted was a few moments of peace, some space and silence to figure things out, and he couldn’t have that. He didn’t know how long he’d been awake for. Didn’t know anything except his head was pounding and every time he blinked, another person glared at him like it would be better if he were dead. Sokka kept the blade close to his wrist but he didn’t press down because he was trying to stop. He needed to stop, no matter how much better it made him feel to let the dirty blood leak free.
“I’m doing everything I can to make this right.”
Except he wasn’t, was he? Sokka was still failing at every corner, still binging after everyone went to sleep, still mutilating his arms, still standing at the edge of the cliff—he was deathly close to taking the coward’s way out and he knew that if he did that, it would only doom him to an eternity of further suffering. An eternity where he couldn’t get away from the spirits if he tried. He tugged at the edges of his hair with one hand, staring at his reflection and blinking when the tears rolled down his cheeks. He didn’t blame himself for crying anymore. It wasn’t mental weakness, it was a physical reaction to how badly he’d been treating his body the last several weeks.
“Just go away.”
Given how physically poor of a state he’d been in, Sokka’s rational mind was fully aware of the fact that the spirits he was seeing could’ve been hallucinations. They probably were hallucinations. But that didn’t stop them from hurting him. That didn’t stop them from glaring at him every time he turned around as if he could somehow bring them back from the dead. Sokka shoved another hand through his hair, his eyes wide and bloodshot as the tears escaped them. He was pathetic. Weak. Exhausted. He slid the knife across to the back of his wrist, peeling back the bandages with two fingers and pressing the blade against his skin.
“Fucking leave me alone!”
It was the fact that they didn’t react to him wanting to cut himself that made Sokka more pissed than anything else. That the shadows did nothing but stare at him, waiting, forcing an audience on him when there was nothing he wanted more than to be alone. He slowly pressed down on the blade, glaring into the mirror at the bags beneath his eyes as the painfully warm drops rolled down his cheeks. He deserved it. He deserved the sick feeling in his stomach, the burning on his skin, the throbbing on the back of his arm, he deserved all of it. Every last second of the pain.
“Sokka?”
He didn’t drop the knife but he pulled it from his wrist, his hands shaking worse as he looked up into the mirror. There was no reason to bother fixing his hair, his outfit, or the rivers on his cheeks. Toph never cared what he looked like and she never would. Not that it made it any less embarrassing to know that she’d heard him screaming to himself and probably a good deal of sobbing too. Sokka twisted the blade a little and eased it back against his skin. He wasn’t going to cut himself again, not while Toph was standing right there, but he wasn’t ready to leave the sensation entirely behind either. He needed the closeness, the reassurance that as soon as she was gone, he could finish his work.
“Sokka, please.” Her tone was bordering on terrified and it only made Sokka’s heart pound even faster. It was his fault. She was freaking out because of him. For him. He couldn’t begin to conceive of why. “I know what you’re doing.”
And that was it. By the time someone called him out on it, Sokka’s arms were covered in scabs, scars, and open wounds. He tried to ignore Toph, grabbing his blanket off the back of his chair and hiding his arm and the blade beneath it. The whole inside was brown and red, crusted with blood and stained with his tears, but he couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it. He couldn’t be bothered to do anything for himself until the war was over. Until it was done and he was safe and he knew that his family would be okay. That no one would ever have to hurt the way he hurt again.
“Don’t you dare ignore me.” It was the fear in Toph’s voice that encouraged Sokka to do exactly that. He turned his head deeper down, gripping the handle of his knife and wrapping his nearly bleeding arm around his stomach. She could see what he was doing. He knew that. He shifted his feet from the floor. It hurt to move his leg from where it was positioned, to twist it that way, but it was the only thing he could do. If he was on the wooden chair, Toph couldn’t see him as well. His movements would start to blur. “Sokka, you’re not fooling me. Please. I’m worried about you.”
Sokka didn’t know what to say. He didn’t know how to respond when the only thing he could think was, “You shouldn’t be.” He didn’t deserve her concern. He didn’t deserve a damn thing and yet, they wouldn’t stop trying to give it to him. They wouldn’t just leave him alone and let him suffer in silence like he damn well deserved to. There was a small part of him that really appreciated that and a much larger part that thought it would be a lot easier if they did leave. If they did all just walk away and let him suffer the way he needed to.
“If you’re trying to choke me with silence, it’s not going to work.” Toph walked right up to him and slammed one hand down on his desk, getting in the way of his papers and preventing him from focusing on anything else. He stared at her hand in front of him. It was easier than looking to her face and it wasn’t like she cared anyway. “Sokka, listen to me. Why are you acting like this? You’re not eating anything we give you, I know you’re not, and you’re moving like you’re in so much pain. You’re doing it again. I know you are. It’s okay. Just talk to me, please. Or if you don’t want to do that, you could tell your dad or Katara, just… someone. Please.”
“There’s nothing to talk about,” snapped Sokka, wincing when he turned to glare at her. It was useless. A stupid attempt. “I’m fine, Toph. I don’t even know what you’re talking about. I’m just trying to get these damn plans done and I can’t do that when you’re on top of me all the time.”
“And we can’t do anything when you won’t even admit you’re not okay. You know what I’m talking about. Don’t act like you’re stupid.”
He didn’t respond because he did know what she was talking about. He knew that he relapsed and it was easily the worse he’d ever had. He knew that he cut himself at least once a day and he cried himself to sleep not just from the pain but from how much he hated existing. How much he hated having to sit there and fight through another war when he already spent fifteen years stuck in one. After it stole his entire life, his family, his innocence. It wasn’t fair that he made it through all that trauma, all that pain, only for the world to start crashing all around him again.
“I know it’s wrong,” Sokka started quietly, carefully pressing the edge of the blade into the back of his wrist, “but it’s the only thing keeping me sane.”
“No,” said Toph, her tone harsh but even. She placed a hand on his shoulder and he flinched, not expecting her to touch him especially when he’d intentionally put himself in a less visible place. “It’s an addiction and you’re feeding it and that’s making it worse. I know it feels like it’s helping, but it’s not. You’re hurting yourself.”
“That’s kind of the point.”
“Give me the knife, Sokka.”
There was no way she knew. There was no way she could feel the way the metal actively tore into his skin, ripping at old bandages and soaking in the liquid that warmed his wrist. All she knew was that he had a knife somewhere. That he’d started doing it again and she wanted him to stop. Sokka carefully pulled the blade from his arm brushing it against the blanket over his shoulders before he handed it to Toph. She was right. He was starting to feel faint and it was almost definitely because he hadn’t eaten and he was losing too much blood. Even if he stopped for just a little bit, just a day or so to convince her that he had, he needed to do it.
But Toph didn’t stop. Her feet shifted when she took the knife, her eyes widening and her fingers moving to feel around the blade. Sokka’s heart pounded and not because of how dangerously close Toph was to cutting herself too. He should’ve been worried about that, worried about her hands slipping and her slicing off her fingertips, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t worried about anything but the fact that she was pressing her thumb against the side of the still warm knife, sliding down it in a way that she said she knew. She knew. She knew. She knew.
“Please.” Toph’s voice was even quieter than Sokka’s own, her eyes welling with tears. “Please tell me you were just holding it.”
He couldn’t. He wet his lip, searching for a way to stretch the truth without hurting her or making things worse. Toph was blaming herself. She was blaming herself for him being in pain and it was all his fault for letting her be around him when he was in that state. Sokka resolved to keep his tent shut from that point forward. There was no reason to drag anyone else into his bullshit. To give them more to deal with when they were already in such a fucking awful place. Sokka might have been suffering but that was no reason to make them suffer too.
“I was,” said Sokka, knowing full well that his tone wasn’t convincing but hoping it was at least better than he thought. “I wasn’t— I wasn’t doing it. I— I won’t— I won’t do it again. I’m sorry.”
The hug Toph gave him was unfairly reassuring and caused him to let out an almost inhuman sob. He clung to her back for longer than he should’ve, allowing himself to indulge in something that didn’t inflict lasting pain for once. He felt guilty when it was over but the only things that truly ached were his leg and his wrist in the place he’d just cut it. The moment Toph was gone, confirming that she wouldn’t be returning his knife and that she’d be checking on him again to make sure he was okay and didn’t have any more contraband, Sokka fell forward on his desk and finally let himself go.
He buried himself in his arms and his blanket to keep anyone from hearing his sobs. It hurt. His stomach ached, his head was pounding, and he couldn’t remember the last time his heart had raced so fast; not to mention the stabbing pain in his wrist and the aching in his leg and both upper arms. Maybe Toph was right. Maybe he did need to stop before he reached a point he couldn’t come back from. A point where he lost his remaining ability to write, to move, to be conscious enough to be able to plan.
That mindset worked for three days and then he found himself standing on the edge of the cliff again.
Sokka still had no intention of falling. At least, he didn’t think he had any intention of falling. The rocks below him did look nice, inviting, but it wasn’t the right way to go out. There was every chance he’d be killed in battle sometime soon, so he might as well wait for that to happen instead. At least then he could go out looking like a hero, even if he felt like anything but. Even if inside, he was crumbling and cracking to the point where he felt like there was barely anything left. If there was a Sokka once who knew how to deal with war, he didn’t exist anymore. And if there was a Sokka once who could even overcome it, he was long since dead.
It was the rain that put the water on his cheeks that day. That’s what he told himself. It wasn’t because he was ages away from the camp, far from everyone who cared, thinking about how he might just fall and let himself die. It was because it was drizzling out and the cold wind was blowing in his eyes. It wasn’t because he was in pain and dreaming of the short time when he was safe, when the world wasn’t crumbling around him and every damn day didn’t ache. It was because he was tired, starving, wasting away because he couldn’t even remember how to care for himself anymore.
All he could think about was that it was his fault it kept going. That if he designed the right plans, figured out how to end the fighting, it could all be over. It could all be over but not until then. Not until he did the thing that seemed impossible because no matter how many times he tried to write the plans, no matter how many times he talked it over with the others, it never worked. The Fire Nation didn’t cooperate. The Earth Kingdom didn’t cooperate. It didn’t matter who or which side was resisting, it was always someone and that made it impossible to move forward.
“I thought I’d find you here.”
The fact that he didn’t even have to consciously stop himself from looking up made the whole thing more painful. Instead of having to resist, to keep himself from turning to face the person he almost fell in love with, he— no. The person he did fall in love with. That was the problem. Even just sending each other letters, they flirted too much, grew too close. It wasn’t meant to be. For one thing, he was fucking Fire Nation, and for another, the second they were in the same room long enough to do something about their feelings, Zuko was almost assassinated. That was a pretty damn clear-cut sign that the universe didn’t want them to happen.
“Bato is looking for you,” Zuko went on, making no move to get closer. Sokka didn’t blame him. The last few times he’d tried, all he got was rejection. Obviously, he didn’t want to put himself through it again. “Said he has some thoughts for your last strategy or something. I remembered you saying coming out here helped you think. Thought it might be a good idea to check.”
“Yeah.” Sokka nodded, reaching up to chew on his thumbnail. “Thanks.”
“No problem.” He turned to walk away but stopped suddenly, looking back to where Sokka stood. Zuko’s arm was still wrapped up, still being supported by the cloth around his shoulder, and just looking at it made Sokka want to hurl because of the guilt. “It’s a long walk over here. Did you not bring your cane?”
No, he didn’t. For just one day he wanted to pretend that he could manage without it. That he didn’t need the added support just to manage a measly little walk, even if he did. He was about to fall over and the fact that he almost wanted to was the only reason he hadn’t sat. There was every chance he might kill himself by accident just struggling to stand there and he was fine with it. Not that he was about to tell Zuko all of that because he didn’t need to be dealing with Sokka’s shit when his entire nation was at war. So, instead of elaborating, Sokka only shook his head. The truth. Simple, but effective.
“Here.” Zuko held out his good hand, but Sokka didn’t so much as look at his face. He stared at the soft fingers, aching for their touch but refusing to indulge himself. He didn’t deserve it. He knew better than to touch things that weren’t his to have. “Sokka, please. Just walk back with me, okay? I could use the company. It’s been a long day.”
Logically, Sokka knew full well that Zuko was only saying that to convince Sokka to go with him, but emotionally, it was enough of an excuse for him to accept. Sokka all but collapsed into Zuko’s arms when he took a step forward, stumbling so badly he had to wrap his whole arm around Zuko despite how much the contact hurt. He hoped he wasn’t being too obvious about it. Letting anyone see that he’d gone back to hurting himself, especially after what happened with Toph, was one of the worst plans in the world. Not that it was easy to hide with how damn far they had to walk back to the camp.
“Your leg okay?”
“Yeah.” Sokka nodded briskly, though that wasn’t true nor half of what was bothering him. It was his fault the rest of it hurt. He inflicted the wounds on himself, so there was no space for him to complain. “I’m fine, I just— I used it too much today, I think. It’s stupid. It shouldn’t even hurt anymore. It’s been five fucking years.”
“It’s chronic pain,” said Zuko dryly, his tone laced with something Sokka couldn’t explain. “You can’t blame yourself for that.”
“I’m not blaming myself, I’m just pointing out the fact that regardless, it’s pathetic and I should’ve been able to recover from it by now.”
“See, but that sounds a lot like you blaming yourself. It’s chronic, Sokka. That has nothing to do with you being weak or pathetic or anything like that. I know you want it to feel better, believe me, I do, but acting like it’s your fault isn’t going to help anything.”
“How would you know?” snapped Sokka, knowing full well that he was overstepping his boundaries. Immediately, the look on Zuko’s beautiful face dropped, but the guilt didn’t stop Sokka from finishing his thought. “You shatter your leg in seven places and never tell us about it?”
“I have a fucking burn scar covering half my face.” Zuko stopped dead in his tracks, glaring over to Sokka. They were tense because of what he’d done. It was his fault again. He was losing one of his best friends and it was all his fucking fault. “I can’t see out of that eye, I can’t hear out of that side, and the nerves are so fucked it hurts if something even brushes against it. Not to even mention my stomach and those severed nerves. So, yeah. I know.”
And just like that, Sokka felt like an ass again. Compared to Zuko’s situation, he was basically fine. He had a little limp and sometimes his leg hurt but he could just put hot towels on it and it helped ease the pain. Zuko couldn’t put anything on his face or else it made it worse. He was in a constant state of suffering because of unspeakable abuse and Sokka was complaining about damage he’d inflicted himself. It was pathetic. He was pathetic. Sokka kept his mouth shut the entire way back to the camp. Opening it only made things worse. He stopped Zuko from immediately running off regardless.
“I’m sorry,” Sokka whispered, one hand around Zuko’s forearm. The Fire Lord barely blinked, his gaze shifting to watch Sokka’s fingers. “I didn’t know.”
Zuko opened his mouth to say something, probably to shout at him or say that it didn’t matter and he shouldn’t have been so whiny about his problems in the first place, but he didn’t get the chance to finish. He went silent again when Bato walked up to them, not so much as waving to Sokka when he handed him off to the older man. Bato said something to Zuko and Zuko did say something back but Sokka didn’t register a word of it. He didn’t register anything but the way Zuko’s hands opened and closed angrily, how his face fell with disappointment and his fingers lifted to brush his long hair back as if he were anxious. It was because of Sokka. It was all because of Sokka.
He somehow managed to talk to Bato like he was meant to and they went over all his plans. They figured out that regardless of what he’d tried that time, regardless of how they twisted it, Sokka had failed again. He fucked up a critical piece in his treaty and it was written in a way that the Fire Nation would never respect. Not to mention his handwriting was so fucked up and blurred with tears that Bato couldn’t even read half of the words on his scroll. It was stupid. He was stupid. He thought he came up with at least a decent plan that time but they couldn’t even salvage what he had. He couldn’t do anything with himself.
He couldn’t do anything.
Though he knew that Bato said something to him, tried to reassure him about a matter he couldn’t remember, Sokka couldn’t hear the words over how loud the voices were behind him. He was losing his mind. Bato didn’t see anything but somehow, all Sokka could hear was the screaming from the dead soldiers that filled the rest of the tent. The glares looking down at him, the hands reaching for his skin and begging him to open it up again; it all hurt more than he could explain. It was louder than anything else and he couldn’t even speak up over it. Sokka shoved his hands over his ears, his fingers tickling the loose hairs around the back of his neck as a hand landed on his knee.
“Sokka.” He knew full well that it was Bato who was holding his knee, who was begging him to relax, but he couldn’t. People died and they were going to keep dying as long as he couldn’t get the plans right. How was he supposed to be okay with that? “Sokka, breathe. Sokka. Sokka. Koda!”
He wasn’t even crying. For once, he wasn’t even crying, he was just hyperventilating and quietly begging the spirits to leave him alone. But there were no spirits, were there? Because Bato had been there the entire time and he didn’t see them. Hakoda was there pulling Sokka into his chest and he didn’t see them. They weren’t real, they were hallucinations from Sokka’s horrible lack of self-care and he knew that but he was too far gone to fully acknowledge it. He was too far gone to do anything but wheeze when his dad’s arms wrapped around him and his fingers tried to pull Sokka’s hands from his ears. He couldn’t open his eyes. He wouldn’t.
“What happened?”
“I mentioned the casualties,” answered Bato quickly, “and he just panicked. I don’t know. It’s the same thing that happened in the woods a few weeks ago, when Aang had to come find you for us.”
“Okay.” Hakoda placed his hands on either side of Sokka’s face again, pushing away the hair that managed to fall on his cheeks. It really needed to be cut, not that he was allowed to have a knife anymore according to Toph. “Hey, Sokka, look at me. You have to breathe, okay? It’s all right. It’s just a panic attack.”
That was the worst thing they always said. It was just a panic attack. It was just his entire body freaking out on him and refusing to listen to a thing he asked it to do. Saying it was just a panic attack made it feel like he should be able to stop it and he couldn’t. He couldn’t do anything but squeeze his eyes shut tighter and slide his hands back up to cover his ears when the screams reentered his head. It wasn’t real. That was what he needed to tell himself over and over again. It wasn’t real. It was him. It was all just in his head. Everything was in his head. It was his fault. He was panicking because of his own stupid overreaction. It was his fault. Everything was his fault.
He must’ve made some terrible sound trying to shake himself out of it, because that got Bato and Hakoda on some other spiel that Sokka couldn’t even focus on. Not until they started rubbing his back and saying reassuring things until he was able to stand, at which point they half carried, half walked him to get something to eat. Sokka waved a hand to shoo them away when they tried to hand him an actual plate, refusing even the water. He shook his head, pulling his arms into himself and squeezing his eyes shut again. It was stupid. They lifted his leg for him so he’d be comfortable, gave him way more hugs than he’d ever deserved, and wanted to force feed him like a child. He was an adult and he was acting like a baby.
“Sokka, come on.” He shook his head again when his dad spoke, gently nudging his chin to try and get him to look up. It didn’t work. He wasn’t willing to move. “Please just try to eat something, bud. No one’s seen you have anything in over a week.”
“Doesn’t mean I’m not eating,” Sokka mumbled. “Ate last night.”
“You weren’t at dinner.”
“Late dinner. Everyone was asleep.”
It technically wasn’t a lie. He did eat the night before and everyone else was asleep while it happened. But the reason everyone else was asleep was because he didn’t want them to see him. He didn’t want anyone to know that his only form of sustenance those days came from binging while he sobbed and purging three-fourths of it before he fell asleep. Sokka shoved the dish away when they placed it down in front of him, blinking once and brushing off the hand his dad slid on his shoulder.
“Listen, Sokka, if this is getting to be too much for you—”
“No.” He shook his head before his dad even had the chance to finish. He was going to do the same thing as Zuko and try to suggest Sokka step back. It wasn’t happening. “Fine. Tired. Not hungry. Need to work.”
“You need to eat.” Hakoda’s tone was stern but laced with concern, as if he were more worried about the consequences of Sokka not eating than anything else. “Please, bud, I’m worried about you.”
“Don’t. Not hungry.”
“I know you’re lying. I was attributing it to the changed diet we’re on but you’re not eating enough, Sokka. Just looking at you I can tell you’ve been losing weight. That’s not okay. I’m not going to make you have an entire meal but just eat something, please.”
“No.” Sokka inhaled deeply, squeezing his hands around his stomach to fight both the hunger pains he was trying to suppress and the urge to touch bandages around his arms. “Can’t.”
Bato blinked. “Can’t? Why?”
“Binge.”
“What?”
“Eat, binge. Don’t want to binge anymore.”
Neither Bato nor Hakoda said a single word as Sokka took another long breath, trying to keep himself steady. He was almost falling asleep for reasons he couldn’t explain, his head still pounding and his arms throbbing with each pitifully small movement he tried on them. Sokka didn’t even realize that his dad knelt down beside him until Hakoda’s hand was already on his shoulder, squeezing him tightly, reassuringly, and gently urging his chin to look up. Sokka only managed to open his eyes for a few seconds. It was pathetic how much the panic attack wore him out.
“Hey. Look at me.” He tried again, but his eyes wouldn’t stop fluttering open and shut regardless of how hard he pushed them. Hakoda must’ve taken it as good enough. “You’ve been binging again?”
Because of course everyone knew about that too. Sokka had been a stupid teenager and told them all about what was bothering him when he was struggling after the war. He told them all the problems when they asked, when he broke, when he thought it was okay. It wasn’t until he saw the way it affected them that he stopped. When he saw how his dad struggled at night, how Bato comforted him, how his dad comforted Katara, that he realized it caused a painful chain reaction he never wanted to be the start of again. Sokka swallowed hard before he nodded, painfully aware of what the repercussions of the answer could be, but too tired to effectively argue.
“How often have you been doing it?” He didn’t answer. Once or twice wasn’t a big deal, it was a small relapse. Just as long as he didn’t let them know more. “Sokka. You been doing it every day?”
“No.” Sokka shook his head quickly, ignoring the fact that was almost right. “Only a few times.”
Neither Hakoda nor Bato seemed fully willing to accept the answer but they didn’t fight him either. He chose that moment to finally attempt to eat something and though it burned going down his throat, he knew it was the best decision because it stopped them from asking more questions. It stopped them from freaking out more. It stopped everyone from hurting because of his own stupid mistakes.
It gave him the ability to keep going under the ruse that everything else was okay.