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It had been an exceedingly long day for Toph because she spent it listening to debriefs and responding to letters and police report completions – all banes of her existence – but she did it because she wanted to keep her badgermole safe. Toph wasn’t very fond of her pregnancy, but what would come out of it was the only thing keeping her going, the only possible thing that gave her the motivation to not throw her life away.
As soon as Toph felt the sun hide away, she slammed her headphones into one of her desk drawers, metalbent it closed and left her office without turning back. With a hand on her belly, she walked over to her favorite convenient store and bought a pack of fire flakes. Had Katara known that Toph still ate them during her pregnancy – let alone at her seventh month – she would have a fit, and she sadly chuckled at the thought. What else would she have to honor him on such a special night, she thought.
The night was cold, she noticed when she left the store and continued toward her destination, but it reminded her of the night they met — it was fitting. The cool breeze hit her face, likely making a mess of her hair as she thought about that fateful night.
She and her deputy chief decided to grab a drink after a particularly hard day of work. Toph remembered that they had set out to bust a group of bender supremacists that had been terrorizing Republic City for some weeks and that they weren’t pleased with the way the police force took a stance on the issue. Her jaw had been bruised, and she was told she had a cut on her eyebrow, but she couldn’t feel it yet. She was on her third drink when he approached her.
“Chief,” she had heard him say behind her. She recognized his voice — she never forgot a voice — but couldn’t put a finger on his name and she put the blame on the alcohol. All she remembered was that he had been an official that helped her on the case.
“Detective,” Toph said simply, throwing back a shot of something strong without so much as flinching.
Unbeknownst to her, the man raised an eyebrow at her as he chewed on the fire flakes she smelled on his breath. She felt him stick his hand out to her. “Great job on the case today.”
Toph considered leaving him hanging, but took his hand and shook it anyway. “I know. Thanks.”
He chuckled and she bit back a smile at the sound. “My name’s Kanto.”
“Didn’t ask, Hotshot, but thanks for the information,” she said grabbing a handful of his spicy snack and popping it into her mouth – one that he always said he loved to see on her. She was also silently grateful that he had thrown his name in there before she had to turn to guess work; she’d done enough of that during the day.
The rest of the night was filled with sarcasm, nicknames, and quick talk, and she couldn’t get his voice out of her head after they had parted. Had she known that they would end up together, she would have taken her chance with him that night, but she was ultimately glad that things happened the way they did. It gave them time.
The memory had Toph smiling to herself slightly and the temperature seemed to have dropped even more because she felt the goosebumps settle on her skin when she approached her destination. She took a deep breath, setting one hand on her belly and the other hand tightly gripping the bag of fire flakes as she took a seat to greet Kanto.
“Happy Anniversary, baby,” she said to the headstone. Her hand reached out to trace the words that were engraved on the rock. Sokka had told her that what was written read something about him being a loving son, brother, and father when it was unveiled the day of Kanto’s funeral, and she remembered chuckling humorlessly, saying, “He never got to be a father.” Sokka just hugged her, then.
“It’s been a while, huh?” Toph asked, and she waited for the cold wind to beat against her skin. Since he died and she began visiting him at the cemetery, she noticed how the wind would blow particularly stronger whenever she spoke, so she found comfort in the idea of him living on in the wind. “I’m sorry that I, uh, haven’t been here in a few months… I couldn’t do it.”
After she had found out about her pregnancy, Toph had a hard time accepting it. The news came less than a week after Kanto’s death, and she refused to believe the words that came out of Katara’s mouth and thought herself crazy when she began to hear a heartbeat beside her own. As her belly began to grow as the months passed, she began to accept the teas Katara gave her to keep her immune system healthy and she came to terms with the fact that she was carrying her dead boyfriend’s baby.
“It’s a way for him to live on,” Katara had told her once, and she took it to heart. So much so, that Toph couldn’t bring herself to visit him anymore. Having to sit at his grave with her swollen belly was too much for her, so she stopped visiting him for the better part of seven months… until tonight, the day of the anniversary of the day they got together.
Toph sighed shakily and felt tears forming in her eyes, but she blinked them away, determined to tell him what was on her mind. “You know how I, um, told you how I couldn’t live without you? Well, that turns out to be true,” she chuckled tearfully. “But I’m managing, I mean, uh, we’re managing… Spirits, I miss you so much.”
She let out another sad chuckle as she laid back onto the grass next to his grave, a few tears falling down her face. She said, “I hope you’re happy, by the way; you’ve made me a sap, Hotshot.” The wind blew harder for a moment, and calmed, making a smile settle on her face, but it fell just as quickly as it came. Suddenly, she sat up, tears more liberally streaming down her face. “You left me too soon. I don’t know what I’m going to do when this baby comes. And I know that everyone’s going to be there for me, I know, but you won’t be, and I can’t stand the thought of you not being here and I don’t know what I’m going to do. I just know that she’s going to remind me so much of you and that I won’t know how to handle it, and I’m just, I’m so afraid of what might happen and how good or bad of a mother I’m going to be.
“Hell,” she chuckled dryly, aggressively wiping away her tears. “I don’t even know what I’m going to name her, let alone how to raise her.”
Her hands were starting to shake, so she took a breath to calm herself down and began to pull at the grass she was sitting on. Toph had just revealed the fears that she hadn’t told anyone to the man that she loved and who also no longer walked the earth. But when the cold wind blew against her face as her tears kept flowing and she shut her eyes to concentrate on the feeling of it on her skin, pretending that he was sitting there with her, and it was almost like he had been. She imagined him telling her to cut it out and to push through because she’d be a kick-ass mom.
“You’re right. I’m sure I’ll do fine,” she mumbled.
She let out one more shaky breath and opened her eyes as the wind stopped blowing so strongly and she remembered that she brought over his favorite snack. Toph opened the sealed bag, taking a handful for herself to eat and leaning the bag onto the headstone. “Thought you might want to have some considering the fact that I don’t know what you’re eating in the Spirit World.”
Like the night they met, she popped the handful of the snack into her mouth and chewed on it. Her eyes were watering, not because of Kanto, surprisingly, but because of the spice in the flakes. Toph sniffled and let out a laugh. “I forget how spicy these are when you’re not drunk.”
There was a calm and peaceful silence for a few minutes as she munched on the flakes, then, she traced her hand on the words on the gravestone again as she got up from the ground. “I’m going to do right by our kid, Hotshot. I promise,” Toph dipped her head toward the stone and pressed a long kiss onto it as she felt the soft breeze against her skin, making tears pool up in her eyes again.
She walked away.