At that moment, nothing would have made Sokka happier than the massive walls of Ba Sing Se looming over the horizon to the east.
The great walls of the Earth Kingdom City welcomed the water tribe warrior home, after two long years in the former Fire Nation. He had been helping Fire Lord Zuko with the demilitarization of the Fire Nation Capital, which had been overtaken by the Earth Kingdom armies after the defeat of Fire Lord Ozai. He had had plenty of good ideas for rebuilding the capital, and the new Fire Lord had valued his opinion greatly. But his two years in the Imperial City were up, and Sokka looked forward to seeing his old friends again. The Gaang had been separated for far too long, and it had given him time to think.
Technically, he and Suki were still together, but things had been…well, shaky between the two. The Kyoshi warrior had come to visit him once or twice in the Fire Nation, but she had been distant and cold the entire time. He sensed things were soon coming to an end between the two. He supposed it was for the best. His feelings for the young warrior were not what they used to be, and he didn't want her to get hurt. And he was developing feelings for someone else.
Anyway. As he was parting, Zuko had lent him his fastest eelhound and a battalion of Fire Nation soldiers. He had dropped the escort at the first outpost he could find. He trusted Zuko, of course, but the armored firebenders made him nervous. He had made the rest of the five hundred mile journey alone.
As the giant eelhound approached the thousand-foot high walls of Ba Sing Se, two guards in white uniforms slid their way down the wall. They were White Lotus sentries, the soldiers who had replaced the Dai Li as the guardians of the city. The two men saluted Sokka.
"Sir!" One of them said. "We are glad to have you back in our city, sir." Sokka gave the man a lazy half-salute back. Spirits, he was tired.
"It's good to be back." He said. He hopped off the eelhound and handed the reins to the sentry. The other sentry took a wary look at the massive beast before taking a horse stance and pushing his outstretched hands down. There was a grinding of rock on rock, and a large piece of the wall collapsed, leaving a space for Sokka to walk through. He gave a small nod to the sentries who snapped him a salute. Well, one of them did. The other was currently being dragged up the wall by the eelhound, screaming for his colleague's help.
The remaining sentry escorted Sokka to the inner ring of the city, the wealthy part of town. The Earth King, newly returned from his nomadic travels across the world, allowed the Gaang to stay in one of the nicest houses in the city, indefinitely. They were war heroes, after all.
The war haunted Sokka. He hated to admit it, but there it was. He had dreams every night. Dreams of the failed invasion during the eclipse, dreams of the attack on the Northern water tribe. Dreams of the first attack he remembered on his village, the one that had taken his mother from him.
But the worst were the dreams about the airship battle. They were always horrifying, and they always ended differently. But all of the endings had one thing in common; they all ended with Toph dying.
Sometimes she would slip out of his grasp as she hung from the observation platform of Ozai's ship. Sometimes she would be crushed by a falling piece of metal he had been unable to protect her from. Sometimes she would be attacked by a firebender before he could cut the soldier down. But it was always his fault. Always his fault.
The escort took him across endless streets and through countless alleyways until they finally reached the house-actually, it was more like an estate.
It was the size of Toph's family mansion back in Gaoling, Sokka remembered. He had stayed in the house with the Gaang, Ty Lee, and even Mai and Zuko for a few weeks before they left for the Fire Nation. Sokka had gotten lost more times than he could count, and never felt quite at home in the large manor house. Toph, Zuko, Mai, and even Ty Lee had no problem making their way around the place.
The White Lotus sentry left Sokka at the gate of the house, snapping him a crisp salute before departing. He opened the small iron gate and walked up the path to the door. He stepped up on the front steps, took a deep breath, and knocked.