A/N: angst because I'm having an angsty day and it's been raining nonstop.
AU: Sokka lets go of Toph in the airship scene. 5 years later.
Haunted
He was sitting on a bench in the yard, staring at the dark of the sky again. The stars glimmered and dotted across the night, identical to the sky he had once seen, staring up from his sleeping bag some years ago. But it wasn't the same.
Then, he was a boy. He was young and stupid and careless. He had felt like he had everything under control, that everything was going to be alright. He was fearless. He knew Katara was in the next bag over, just beyond Aang's sleeping form and he knew that Toph was close by, from the proximity of her snores.
Sadly, the universe loved proving him wrong.
He matured. He began to realize his mistakes and see his flaws. He saw how vulnerable and how truly weak he was. But mostly he saw eyes.
He saw Yue's blue eyes fading to gray before closing for the last time. He saw fire reflected in the eyes of the Earth Kingdom refugees. And he saw the crazed fear in Toph's eyes as she had spiraled down into the dark ocean that night.
And now he saw the sky turn shaded every night and smiled when the moon came out. There were too many people he couldn't save in his life, and he made that up to them by spending as much time as he could with them now. He watched the moon every night. He visited his mother's grave in the South every summer. They never did find Toph's body, though, and for the first time in a long while, he took a minute to think about how truly gone she was. Her crooked grin, her curdled milk eyes, her stupid nicknames, they were nothing but stories now. Stories he might never be brave enough to tell.
"Sokka?" Suki called from inside the house. "It's getting late! Come to bed."
He took a minute to forget before standing up and heading in.