Chapter Text
For three weeks, Toph had not left work unless it was to grab a change of clothes, maybe a bath, just to leave right away and get back to her office. And she was barely sleeping. It wasn’t like there was anything much to do at work, but she spent all her time there anyway. It was starting to concern people, especially her family.
Sokka had stopped by her office at least once in the past twenty-one days and Katara had managed to pull herself away from fire lady duties to do the same, not-so-subtly citing their concerns for her health — mentally and physically. But she would snappily shoo them away, not wanting to give in to a talk with either of them.
She couldn’t take their pity and it was dripping off their voices and stances as they spoke to her.
It wasn’t long after those visits that someone knocked on her office door. She’d know the knock anywhere, so she squeezed her eyes shut and remained silent, her hands on her swollen tummy and her feet propped on her desk because she didn’t need her seismic sense to figure out who it was.
Without a cause to do so, the door swung open, revealing Zuko. She could smell his travels on him. Had Katara spoken to her husband about what she thinks she noticed about Toph? Or had Sokka expressed his concerns to him, too, making the fire lord think he had to check in on her too? Maybe both? She shook her head in annoyance, letting out a huff as she pulled her legs off her desk and turned her head to face the door. “Does Sugar Queen send her regards? Or does Captain Boomerang? Perhaps both of them?”
She could hear the shrug in his voice as he said, “I had some time on my hands.”
“Shouldn’t you be ruling a whole nation right now?”
“Yes,” he said. “But I could smell your musk all the way from the palace and I couldn’t stand it any longer.”
Toph rolled her eyes. “Right.”
“You need to go home.”
“No, I don’t,” Toph said, then propped her elbows on her desk, gesturing around her office. “Besides, everything I need is here. And I have gone home.”
Zuko sighed, inviting himself to sit on one of the chairs in front of her desk. “You need to go home and stay home. At least for a few days so you can get some sleep and take care of yourself. You don’t look too well, so I know you’re not feeling well, either.”
“Yeah,” she scoffed, and sarcastically said, “Thanks, friend .”
“You’re letting yourself go, Toph,” he said, his voice softer. “And we're all worried. We understand-”
“I really hope that you never do,” Toph interrupted irately, trying to keep her voice steady. She hadn’t let herself cry since it happened and she sure as Agni didn’t want to start then. But despite her efforts to not let her emotions come through, she could feel her throat tightening and her eyes welling up.
She heard her friend stammer for a moment, a rarity for the fire lord. “That’s not what I-”
“I don’t care what you meant,” she said, standing up and slamming her hands into her desk. Usually, her protruding belly would get in the way of her easily standing, but the anger she felt gave her the momentum. She could feel Zuko’s heart rate quicken a bit at her outburst. “He was my everything and he’s gone. And you don’t get to say that you understand what I’m going through because you don’t. You don’t! You have your wife and she’s lucky enough to still have you. And I don’t wish it upon my worst enemy, so shut the fuck up and get out of here, Zuko. I mean it. I can’t stand you being here right now.”
“I’m sorry,” he said softly, placing a hesitant hand over hers. His voice had an uncharacteristic tone to it, but she didn’t care to place what it was, her anger still omnipresent.
She snatched her hand out from underneath his, as if his touch burned her, and said, “You need to leave.”
“Toph-”
“I said get out, Zuko!” she shouted, the ground beneath them both of them shaking as her outburst triggered a tremor in her office.
“No.”
“Zuko, I need you to leave right-”
“I’m not leaving, Toph!”
The room became silent, save for the two of them panting after their subsequent outbursts. Toph’s mind suddenly flooded with images of the night she found out about Kanto’s death and she collapsed onto her desk chair, her knees giving out before she could lock them. Zuko walked around her desk and crouched down next to her, taking her hand and rubbing his thumb over the skin on the upside of her palm. “Let me take you home.”
She was refusing to let the tears in her eyes fall as she said, “I don’t want to go.”
“Please, Toph,” he said. Zuko never begged and she never thought she would live to hear the day that he would. “We’re all really worried about you.”
Her lip was quivering when she said, “I can’t stay there, Zuko.”
His thumb stopped moving against her hand and he inhaled sharply, as if what she said suddenly made sense. She felt him stand, and extend his free hand for her to take so he could help her out of her desk chair. “I won’t leave your side until you tell me to. But you need to go home and take care of yourself… and your baby. You have another life to think about, Toph.”
“Don’t you think I know that?” The bite she had intended for the question to have did not translate as it only came out of her mouth as a whisper. Toph’s chest felt heavy. Her baby. Kanto’s baby. If there was anything keeping her remotely sane it was their child. Had it been any other situation, Toph was sure she would have let herself waste away, but the child growing inside her was the only thing making her think about even eating. She was already seven months along and she shouldn’t even be at the precinct, but she just could not be home. She couldn’t. So she just worked on nothing, only sitting at her desk and busying herself by listening to police reports that she missed after she had been told to not work through the rest of her final trimester.
Zuko sighed. “Come on. Let me take you home.”
Reluctantly, Toph let Zuko pull her up and hold her for a moment before putting an arm over her shoulders and walking with her out of her office. It was uncharacteristic of her to let him do so, but her desires of going home were simply not there. Since his death, she couldn’t spend more than five or ten minutes in her household without bursting into tears or a raging fit over what had happened.
As Zuko helped her onto the jeep he was using while he was in Republic City during his impromptu visit, Toph began to feel her chest tighten even more than it had been. When she sat in the cushiony seat of the vehicle, the wind blowing in through the windows made her feel sleepy, though she knew that slumber would not come easy.
Already for the three weeks since his death, Toph had been unable to sleep for more than an hour without thinking about the day she got the news, or what she had been doing. She remembered that it was a decent day because she could feel the sun coming in through the glass doors that lead to the backyard, not that she would know because neither Sokka nor Katara – who would radio her every day to find out if she was still at home – would let her leave her house in her condition. Her stomach was huge, according to everyone , and she knew so, too, but it didn’t feel huge. All she knew was that her cravings were becoming ridiculous as she made Kanto and Sokka constantly buy her ingredients for jook of all things. Jook . Toph hated jook – it reminded her of her youth under the careful supervision of her governesses. Yet, her baby apparently wanted to eat bland gunk with a touch of heat from fire flakes. Already, baby Beifong was making its momma suffer, and Kanto was enjoying every minute of it.
That day, he had been preparing to go out on a mission to bust a bender supremacist gang that had been creeping up on the non-benders of Republic City just because they could. Prior to her obligatory leave, she had been working on a plan with Kanto and the rest of the task force assigned to the case to infiltrate their base and get everything they needed to arrest them. The bust had been a long time coming, but they were having a hard time getting their evidence together and it seemed that while Toph was busy getting heavier and hungrier, the case had been unraveling fairly easily. It was safe to say that she gave Kanto the silent treatment for about an hour because she was absolutely envious of the fact that he got to work the case in her absence.
Sokka and Kanto came back from their grocery trip for Toph’s dinner and helped her get the food ready. When she stood to join them in the kitchen, she felt Kanto put his hands on his hips, probably making a face of disgust. “I don’t understand how you can eat this mush.”
“Ask your child, Hotshot, because it’s certainly not my doing,” Toph said, as she leaned against the island behind her. “I’m fully aware it’s disgusting, but I can’t help it! What baby Beifong wants, baby Beifong gets.”
“It’s good that she’s learning that in utero,” Sokka chimed in as he added a sprinkle of fire flakes to the boiling jook.
“I can’t,” She could hear Kanto’s disapproval of the food in his voice. “That is absolutely disgusting. How am I married to you? Better yet, Toph, how am I in love with you to begin with?”
Toph gave her husband a shrug, a small smile playing on her lips. “I don’t know. You tell me.”
Then, Kanto’s hands were on her hips, and they were leaning in. The moment, however, was interrupted when Sokka gagged dramatically. “Get a room.”
“How about you get your own house and quit hanging out here?” Toph asked sarcastically, sending a pebble in Sokka’s direction.
“Leave him alone, babe,” Kanto pressed a kiss to her forehead as he pulled her into his chest, then he looked to Sokka. “You can come here as often as you like, but you knew that already.”
“Of course, I knew that!” Sokka said, walking over to Kanto and patting his back. “See, Toph? Kanto gets it!”
Toph raised an eyebrow in her husband’s direction, a dark smirk on her face. “Yes, he does.”
Kanto’s heartbeat quickened in embarrassment and Toph’s smirk widened as she felt that and heard Sokka’s grunt of disgust. “Toph!”
“What?” she asked innocently, still with a smile on her face. “It’s true! How do you think baby Beifong got here?”
“Okay!” Sokka said, his voice up about two octaves. “That’s my cue to run out to get you some snacks for later!”
“Good call, Snoozles,” Toph said, not taking her attention off her blushing husband. “I’ll be here, giving it to Kanto.”
“ Toph !”
“Don’t wait up!” Sokka said, the door slamming promptly behind him. Toph burst out with laughter, clutching her huge stomach as she did so and wiping a tear away from her eye.
“You’re something else,” Kanto said, leaning down to press a kiss to her lips.
“Yeah, but you love me, so…”
“I do , in fact, love you, but I have to go,” he said, some sadness laced in his tone.
Toph frowned, her voice hopeful, though she knew she would reach no avail. “No, you don’t. You could stay here and rub my feet. I cleaned them for you and everything .”
Kanto let out a sad chuckle, his hands finding her belly and rubbing. The baby began to move around at her father’s touch on its mother’s belly. Toph let herself smile at the odd feeling. He said, “I wish I could, baby. I do, but you know how important this is.”
“Yeah, I know,” Toph said. “But that doesn’t mean I couldn’t try to get you to stay.”
He leaned down and brought one hand to her cheek and the other still on her belly, and pressed a long kiss on her lips. She remembers still how warm she felt all over during that kiss. It wasn’t as earth-shattering as kisses they had shared in the past, but there was so much emotion in it that she could live in it forever. After too short of a time, he pulled away and ran a thumb across her cheek once before moving away from her to find his bag.
“I should get going,” Kanto said. There was something in his voice that sounded off, suddenly, but before Toph could ask, he said, “You know I love you more than anything, right?”
“I do know that,” she said, grabbing his hand and pulling him toward her again. “I love you so much.”
Kanto leaned down and peppered some kisses on her belly, telling their baby that he loved it, then straightened up and pressed a simple kiss on her lips. A kiss that was short and sweet and out of habit, but loving all the same. And with that, he was out the door, leaving Toph to eat her spicy jook, not knowing the news that would come some hours later.
She remembered Sokka approaching her front door, his heart beating in a way she didn’t like. Before she opened the door, she knew something was wrong. Shakily, she approached the door, tears already brimming in her eyes, but not daring to fall from her cheeks, and she waited for Sokka to tell her that her husband was dead. Toph couldn’t remember much about what happened next, but she knew that she heard screaming that sounded nothing like her own yet she somehow knew it had been, then she remembers waking up on Air Temple Island.
Aang and Sokka were at her bedside when she woke, and one of the healers the avatar lived with was giving her an examination. Her two friends filled her in on what had happened and confirmed that what she hoped was a terrible nightmare was indeed not one.
She was numb. She still was numb.
The recalling of the events of that horrible night had zoned her out enough for her not to realize that the vehicle had already pulled into the driveway of her house. It was Zuko that had to pull her out of her thoughts and help her out of the car. They walked up to her door and she metalbent the lock as she always did when she got home, walking inside slowly. She heard Zuko walk in behind her and shut the door quietly, so as to not disturb her.
Every time Toph went to her house during the past three weeks, she walked in and out quickly, not giving herself time to think about anything much while there. But she knew that today wouldn’t be the case; she knew that Zuko was going to try to keep her there so she would be able to deal with her emotions about the whole thing because he knew that she hadn’t yet. She had been avoiding. It was what she was good at until she met Kanto, and now that he was no longer with her, why would she have to be confrontational about her emotions?
Her legs began to move toward the bedroom she once shared with Kanto without her permission, and she felt Zuko lingering behind her. She would have sent him straight to hell on any other day for lurking, but she didn’t have it in her suddenly, her anger from earlier long gone and replaced with something else she couldn’t yet place.
As she entered their bedroom – her bedroom – the smell of Kanto’s aftershave entered her nose, the scent making her eyes well with tears for the umpteenth time that day. She walked toward the bed that they shared and she found it the same way it had been the day Kanto died.
Toph bit her lower lip to avoid the impending sob creeping up her throat from sounding as she sat on the mattress, on his side of the bed, and pulled his pillow onto her lap. Bringing it up to her nose, she inhaled and that was when her tears finally fell. Her sobs were muffled by the pillow, but the sounds she was emitting didn’t sound human and she barely noticed when Zuko rushed to her side to rub her back and pull her into his chest. She could barely breathe as she hiccupped, the tears streaming steadily down her face.
“I love him so much,” she managed to say through her tears. She wasn’t sure if Zuko had been able to understand her, but she didn’t care. “None of it’s worth it if he’s not here.”
“I know,” he said softly, tightening his hold around her. “I know, Toph.”
Her crying continued for an indeterminable amount of time until her sobs became nothing more than random hiccups. There were still tears falling from her eyes and her voice was hoarse when she said, “I don’t know what I’m going to do.”
“About what?” he asked, though she suspected she already knew what would come out of her mouth when she answered.
“About the baby,” she said, a hand settling on her belly, and used the other to gesture at the room, anger creeping into her voice. “About all this… About not having him with me.”
Zuko adjusted himself on the bed so he could pull her further into his chest, and she appreciated it because she could hear his heartbeat more clearly. “I don’t know. But I’ll be here to help you figure it out. We all will.”
She let out a shaky breath, her hand slowly rubbing her belly; she found, suddenly, that the action soothed her. “I know.”
“He loved you, too, Toph.”
Her eyes shut, another couple of tears falling from her eyes as she nodded against his chest. “I know.”