Disclaimer: Don't own Avatar or anything related to it. So I don't own, like, three words mentioned in this fic. Those three words are owned by Michael Di Martino, Bryan Konietzko, and Nickelodeon. But anyone is welcome to Anonymous Farmer #2. Nickelodeon probably won't mind.
Random Note: The other title of this chapter was "In Knowing" and I'm still torn over what would've been the best title.
The war was won!
He drank himself under the table that night. Perhaps he should've stayed home with his family, but he knew there would be crying. And though he loved them, he knew he would cry, too.
So he celebrated the bravest way he knew, and drank with the men who had already lost their sons to the war. Tomorrow, they could face the future. Tonight, they would toast the one, resounding truth. It was over.
The next day, he didn't hug his son as he had planned. There was no need, after all. The war was done, and his son wouldn't leave. Instead, he gave his kid a smile, a rough pat on the back, and handed him the yoke. "Hitch up the team, we have fields to plow."
Those were the happiest weeks of his life. Ever since his boy was born, he'd dreaded the future. A future that had been his own past, when he was a soldier instead of a father. Now, though, his son's destiny lay open, determined only by his whim. And his son beamed at him with the eyes of a child who hadn't yet lived.
How short those weeks. How ominous the new rumors from the islands; the Avatar marched triumphant through the Capital. Azula imprisoned in New Ozai. The men gathered at the local inn once more, though there were no celebratory toasts. Instead, they stared into their cups as they waited for news – for the one traveler who would be able to tell them: when is my son coming home?
He knew it even before he walked through the door of his home that night. Something in the subdued lamplight, the shadows on the window lattice. Something in it all told him that his plans for tomorrow were done. His wife looked up at him with wet cheeks, and his son looked up at him with the eyes of a man who'd sealed his fate.
"I'm going, Dad. They need me."
A soldier thinks that when the war is done, he can lay down his sword and rest. But he knew now the truth of that. One, resounding truth. The future of an endless war is less grim than the future of a war that's already lost.
He hugged his son, gave him his old armor and words they both knew meant nothing: "Come home soon. We have fields to plow."