#if im gonna get repeatedly assigned sokka kin then sokka can kin me for once

[jothzuko]

bipolar sokka headcanons (modern au edition), because... fuck it. zukki gc was talking about it so here we go.

kya had it. you wouldn’t have known, not by the time katara and sokka were born. it was managed, medication and therapy and all, and she gave off an image of being perpetually even-keeled. that wasn’t always the truth, but it seemed like it could be.

after she dies, even years after she dies, hakoda’s not about to tell his children about their mother’s mental disorder out of nowhere. it’s not like it changes anything. but he does watch them, because it runs in families. they’d talked about that, before they’d had sokka.

so sokka’s about fifteen and it’s... it’s hard to tell at first. sometimes he’s moody, sometimes he’s excitable but again, he’s fifteen. sometimes he’s more animated, more talkative, full of ideas, but there’s not a clear pattern to any of it

(if yue dies, god knows that makes it impossible to tell for a long time. even if she survives, really, it’s enough to knock things out of orbit for a while)

so it’s a while, but at some point sokka is explaining something about a problem he’d worked on in physics that they weren’t even supposed to be able to solve yet but he’d just combined the equations for three other problems and worked it out and he’s talking a million miles a second and there’s something a little too wild in his eyes and yes, sokka’s bad at standing still under normal circumstances, but this is more than that and hakoda’s just kind of like “oh.” because there it is. and a couple days later, it’s still there.

he doesn’t really know how to talk to sokka about this. obviously he and kya had hoped their children would end up healthy, but if they didn’t... he’s not the one who understands what it feels like. it’s not that he doesn’t wish kya was still alive every fucking day, but it’s more acute when he’s trying to figure out how to have this conversation with their son when it should’ve been her talking to him.

sokka, though, sokka is smart, and once he starts to notice a pattern in the way he feels, how sometimes things are too much and too fast and everything is racing and there’s something so big in his chest it makes it hard to breathe, but sometimes a week after that he feels so heavy it’s hard to do Anything, how things almost always Hurt one way or another... he does his research. by the time hakoda has kind of figured out how to talk to him, sokka has kind of figured out some of it for himself, and they sorta… meet in the middle

sokka may or may not start the conversation with “so dad, I think there’s something wrong with my brain” because the only way he knows to begin something like this is half-joking

hakoda’s like “can you be more specific?” in the same kind of half-joking tone, because sokka had gotten that from him, after all, and sokka… he’s out of words for this, and he wishes he could blame that on anything other than just not knowing what to say. he’s got the tab up on his phone, diagnosis criteria: bipolar disorder, type 2. he’s had it open for almost two months now. he slides it over to his dad instead of speaking

and hakoda looks at it and takes a breath and says “your mom was the same way” and sokka wasn’t prepared for that at all, isn’t sure what he was prepared for but knows it wasn’t that. and he says “she was? but she didn’t-“ and then he stops. it’s hard to say “she didn’t act like me” with any certainty, because he was too young to know. he thinks he would’ve noticed, but… he was ten when she died.

hakoda nods, and says “I wish she was here to tell you it’ll be okay. I know it would mean more coming from her, but I promise you, you’re going to be okay.” and there are therapists and psychiatrists to research, something he’ll start on tonight, but for now he hugs sokka tight. he doesn’t know how it feels, maybe, but he knows none of it’s easy.

sokka fights therapy a little and meds a lot because, yes, he knows he needs something to stabilize him, but he’s afraid of being…. less himself. it feels like maybe everything about him that burns, that’s creative and inventive and bright, will all go out. the fear goes away, but it takes a while. the spark doesn’t go out, though; it burns steadier.

every year that goes by without katara showing symptoms is a relief. and sure, sometimes sokka is jealous that katara got, in his eyes, the best of their mother and he got- it’s not fair to say the worst, that implies it was her fault, but the part that hurts- but on some level this feels like something he’s protecting katara from. it’s stupid, sure, but it feels like since he got it, she doesn’t have to.

at first he doesn’t really tell anyone, only people who really need to understand, but at a certain point… there are just too many good jokes to be made. jokes about having to come out to his dad as two separate kinds of bi. north/south pole related jokes. jokes about eating lithium-ion batteries. a whole world of opportunity.

he misses his mother differently than he ever has, misses her the most maybe when he doesn’t want to take his fucking meds and wants someone to Understand, but it’s…. it’s okay. he’s living, he’s working on healthy, he’s loved. it’s okay.