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Fact #1: Toph hated air travel.
As a child, wandering around the world on Appa’s back with the weight of war on her and her friends’ too-young shoulders, Toph realized how much contempt she had for air travel. Losing contact with the ground she held so dearly for more than the half of a millisecond it took to take a step had never crossed her mind prior to her wartime travels. There had never been a reason for her to think about it. But to travel with Aang meant to travel by air bison, which while efficient, was the proper bane of her existence.
While Toph loved Appa with every fiber of her being, she really didn’t love how the furball moved around. From the moment she met the three idiots who composed Team Avatar and boarded the giant that was their mode of transportation, she knew that she was making a big mistake. Not that training the avatar of all people was a mistake or that meeting the people who would become her family was a mistake, but rather, leaving the ground voluntarily.
But she’d do it over in a heartbeat.
When she met Aang and Sokka and Katara, she knew that they were all decent people. And it was true that she, Aang, and Katara had gotten off to a rough start, but they eventually came to love each other. But it was never rough with Sokka. The boy with sarcasm that almost rivaled her own quickly became her confidant, he was someone that she knew would make her laugh when she needed it, the one person she would rely on to not make a dig at her disability – not purposely, anyhow, what with his numerous “watch-where-you’re-goings.” Toph made it a point to show him that he was someone that she depended on for security without outrightly telling him. And luckily for her, he took the hint. He would always be there to steady her when she was truly sightless, especially on Appa. Or on those efficient yet horrifying flying deathtraps that people called airships.
Like on the night of Sozin’s Comet.
Sokka had been there for her that night. The night that they both almost died; when all she had for security was flying metal and his hands and voice; when they slipped and she was literally hanging off his hand for dear life; when she could not see or feel a thing besides his clammy hand in hers, his pulse drumming against her fingertips. That was the kind of thing that bonds friends for life: near-death experiences on an airship billions of feet away from the ground. It was stuff for the record books in her mind. And in some twisted way, she was happy to share that trauma with him because he was her best friend.
Her best friend .
He had been her first and only best friend. What with the way her parents raised her, she had never been lucky enough to make a friend before, and after she ran away to train Aang, she was lucky enough to have found a family, a group of people she could depend on; people that she could wholeheartedly trust without a second thought. But Sokka. He was her best friend, her Person, and the one individual she would give her life for in an instant knowing that he would do the same for her with no reservations.
On the night of King Bumi’s funeral reception about seven or eight years after the end of the war, Toph was lying back in the large grassy area behind Aang and Katara’s home on Air Temple Island. Her arms were behind her head, her ankles were crossed, and Sokka was at her side in the same position. They had chosen to take a spot near Appa’s stable, where he was softly snoring, in an attempt to get away from the intensity of the emotions being displayed at the reception taking place inside.
Her mind was racing. Someone close to all of her friends had died. Someone she was close to and had grown to like had died. She and none of the people King Bumi was closest to were ever going to hear that obnoxiously hilarious snort again. The thought deeply unsettled her. While it was true that she had experienced death first- and second-hand throughout her life, she would never get used to it – and she didn’t want to. Who would want to?
Life continued. It always did. And it was fucked up, in her opinion.
Her surroundings pulled her out of her thoughts. The setting sun was hitting them at just the right angle, the wind wasn’t too hot or too cool for the time of year, and the sounds of the nearby waters along with the chirps and croaks of nature were as relaxing as the day itself. And Appa’s snoring – that was pretty notable, also. They were just laying there, a companionable silence between them, a silence that if shared with anyone other than him, would have severely aggravated her. But it didn’t.
Her focus turned to the heartbeat of the person accompanying her. Even after all the impossible tribulations they’d been through, he was still there, alive and breathing and being the pain in the ass he always had been. Since they had met, Sokka had always been there for her and she for him.
“You know,” Toph said without intending to. She felt Sokka’s head move to look at her within less than a second after she spoke. “I’m glad we met.”
She could somehow tell that this had taken him aback. Toph wasn’t one to spew out any affectionate niceties or be one to initiate any mushy moments, so it was understandable. It wasn’t any information that should have been new to him, but she had never spoken them aloud before, and as soon as the words slipped out of her mouth, she wanted to take them back.
But when he said, “You better have, or I will have saved your ass on that airship for nothing,” she knew that she had chosen the right person to be her best friend.
Nevertheless, she scowled at his response and haphazardly flung a mass of loose dirt toward him, followed by the sound of his grunting and coughing indicating that the dirt had landed straight into his mouth. He sat up to dramatically hack out the dirt in his windpipe, so she aggressively patted his back to help him along.
After giving a snort at his exaggerated reaction, she said, “You didn’t save me, dipshit. Your girlfriend did.”
“First of all,” he started after he cleared out the dirt from his mouth, “I am no dipshit, thank you very much. I will respond to any of your other nicknames, but I will not respond to ‘dipshit.’”
“You literally just responded to it.”
“Shut up, I wasn’t finished.” Sokka put his hand on her face and pushed her back into the ground as he laid back down, too.
She pinched his underarm in return, making him squeal and huff in mock frustration.
“And second of all, yes, my badass girlfriend might have saved us, but I was the one doing the hard work of keeping you from, you know, not plummeting to your death. Even got a knee replacement to prove it.”
Toph raised her eyebrows. “Yeah? You want to tell her that you were the real hero? I could get her out here real quick, and I guarantee you’ll be blubbering over her having left you in seconds.”
His heartbeat quickened, much to her satisfaction. “No, you wouldn’t do that because you just said you were glad you met me and you wouldn’t just put me in the saber-tooth moose lion’s den to get eaten, would you? She would actually kill me, I think, and I would like to live a few more years. So much to learn, so much to do, so much to see-”
“Hmm, come again?”
“Apologies.”
“Right, so I’m just going to go tell Suki that you think she’s irrelevant in our survival story. She’ll love that,” Toph said as she got up and dusted herself off, starting back to the main house. Aang and Katara’s home on Air Temple Island was huge and even she had trouble remembering where the hell each wing of the house was. “Good riddance. Nice knowing you, Snoozles.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“You really think I wouldn’t?”
Sokka’s breath hitched and he chased after her, which was expected. But what wasn’t expected was for him to come up behind her and scoop her over his shoulder. She let out a surprised yelp and cursed the Spirits for making her so small and carryable.
The loss of contact with the earth was causing her incredible discomfort as she hammered her fists against Sokka’s back and said, “Let me down, you moron, I can’t see!”
“Nope,” Sokka popped. She felt him running, so she flicked her wrists a couple of times, hoping with all her might that he would trip over one of the many little bumps she bent onto the ground, but he seemed to have expected that much from her as he expertly dodged them. “You and I are going on a field trip.”
Before she could question him, she felt him climb up something – much to her surprise because she wasn’t making the feat easy with the punches she was landing on his back – and throw her a few feet in the air. With a grunt, she landed in what she recognized as Appa’s saddle. Sokka hopped into it shortly after and sat on her legs to keep her from moving, despite her loud complaints and swearing.
“Yip, yip!” he commanded. “Come on, buddy, we’ve got to get out of here before she jumps ship.”
With a low growl, having been awoken from his nap, the air bison begrudgingly exited his stable and set flight in record time. Toph groaned, giving her best friend a punch on his bicep that made him fly off her lap. He let out a hiss and a laugh as she said, “You’re such- I hate you so much sometimes.”
“I resent that,” Sokka said as Appa ascended higher up into the sky. “I really do, Toph. And here I thought you were ‘glad’ you met me.”
Toph remembered thinking that this was the exact reason why she didn’t like sharing such emotional stuff with people, but then, he scooched closer to her and put his arm around her shoulders, pulling her into him. She huffed. “Unfortunately, I am.”
Even in the air and away from the earth, he kept her grounded. With him, air travel wasn’t so bad.
She still hated it, though.
Fact #2: Toph had a high pain tolerance.
When Toph first started earthbending, she got her fair share of bumps and bruises and scrapes and a plethora of other minor injuries, making her almost immune to any of the discomfort she suffered because of them. She would always get them when she snuck out to bend in her cave with her favorite badgermoles. One day, though, when she was still learning how to use her seismic sense, she didn’t realize that she stepped into a hole before pain radiated through her ankle. Toph let out a muffled groan and held back the tears that were threatening to spill. It took her longer than usual to get home because of her limp, still not allowing her tears to fall.
After making it home without alerting her parents, she limped up to her room and pretended that she had fallen on her way back downstairs. One of her parents’ servants ran over to her, picked her up, and sent for the family healer. Poppy Beifong, as soon as she was made aware of her daughter’s injury, scolded her to no end, telling her that she knew better than to walk around the house alone. And for some reason, Toph believed that her mother’s nagging was more painful than her sprain. But she managed to convince herself that it didn’t hurt – any of it.
The healer had told Toph that she was brave and that she had never seen a girl her age be as strong as she had been in the face of such a bad ankle sprain. Toph just smiled brightly at the healer, never forgetting those words.
And it was like that for the longest time. Toph could get hurt, horrible pain circulating through her body, but she would face it like she would face the element she bent: head-on. She also found that this translated to non-physical pains, eventually, and she used it to her advantage, making her capable of remaining as stoic and strong as people portrayed her to be.
Pain had nothing on Toph.
But on the day of Lin’s birth, the words that one healer told her all those years ago kind of, sort of slipped away because all she knew was pain.
And it was not stopping .
She wasn’t doing anything. She wasn’t overexerting herself or bending or doing anything remotely fun. She was just laying down in bed, listening to some big band music on the radio, and eating some kind of dessert food that Aang had brought by a few days prior. It was good, actually, the dessert. It was some kind of flaky and airy pastry and the baby seemed to like it.
Right up until it decided that it wanted to shred her insides.
And to top it all off, she was alone in her house because Kanto was working and so was Sokka and so was Katara and so was Suki and Aang was probably off doing some avatar, spirity thing somewhere, so she was groaning and moaning and in pain she thought unfathomable, trying to figure out what she was going to do by her lonesome. Eventually, she settled on sliding off her bed, grabbing the go-bag Kanto had packed up for her some weeks prior because her due date was fast-approaching, and she waddled out the door and toward the clinic that Katara worked at. It was certainly her best bet.
But then, she felt water running down her thighs and she loudly cursed everything that came to mind, especially at the sound of the sirens blaring around her. Great , she thought bitterly, another case I’m not a part of .
The worst part about being pregnant, aside from the fact that everyone coddled her, was the fact that she couldn’t work her cases but Kanto could.
It made her blood boil.
She loved her boyfriend, of course, but she hated the fact that he could work and she couldn’t. It wasn’t fair. No matter how much she told everyone that she could at least be on desk duty through the end of her pregnancy, they all insisted that she had to be on bed rest to not stress herself. Toph hated sitting still and doing nothing, overall, so it was genuine torture for her to be forced to not do anything since her belly had started showing.
“Listen here, badger-fetus,” Toph had told her belly once after Katara had scolded her for practicing her bending at some point of her final trimester. “You and I are going to have some words when you get out there.”
Another contraction wracked her body when she finally reached the clinic. She held back a groan as she slowly made her way up the steps to the entrance, and tried hard to ignore the dampness between her legs. She desperately pulled at the doors, completely forgetting that she had to be buzzed into the clinic, then loudly banged her palms against the glass.
“Sugar Queen, open up!” Toph yelled loudly as she continued to rap on the door. “Lady having a baby over here!”
A healer with a nervous heartbeat opened the door for her and Toph said, “Fucking finally. Where’s Katara?”
“We need to get you into a room, Chief Beifong,” said the healer. Her voice was not demonstrating the nerves Toph felt from her heartbeat. “It looks like you’re in active labor.”
There were beads of sweat on her forehead as she shook her head, putting a hand on her back and letting out a huff. “I need Katara.”
The healer hesitated for a moment before saying, “Master Katara has a critical patient at the moment, so I’ll be delivering you child, Chief Beifong.”
“Nope, no you will not,” Toph said, holding back a groan from the pain she was experiencing. The pain was becoming more consecutive and Toph knew that this meant that the baby wanted out. “I won’t do this without Katara. Or without Kanto.”
“Chief Beifong,” the healer said after her heartbeat quickened. Toph’s eyebrows knitted at this. “Your baby could go into distress if we do not deliver it now, so please, come with me so we can get you prepped.”
“What are you hiding?” Toph asked, stepping closer to the small woman. “You’re hiding something from me.”
Before the healer could give her an answer, Toph hunched over. She could no longer hold back her cries of pain. She could hear the healer call out for reinforcements to sit her down in a wheelchair and push her toward a vacant room. When they managed to set her up on a bed, someone asked, “Is there anyone we can call for you?”
Stupid question , Toph thought, but nevertheless said, “Dep-Deputy Chief Kanto and Councilman Sokka.”
What they did with that information and how much time had passed since they had asked for it, she didn’t know until she heard Sokka burst into the room she was in.
“What the hell, Toph?” was the first thing he said as he sat by her head and took her sweaty hand. “You’re not due for another few days!”
She groaned. “Tell that to the baby, dipshit.”
Sokka’s hand moved the hair that was stuck to her forehead back. Then, fondly, “You’re having a baby.”
“Not without Kanto or Katara, I won’t.”
“Toph-”
“Shut up and get me them, Snoozles.”
She felt his hand reluctantly slip out of hers as he stood. “Don’t have that baby without me.”
Toph didn’t answer, but the pain she was feeling was increasing by the second. She felt heightened pressure against her opening and she was told by the healers in the room that she was crowning. Still, she snapped at them, making them shut up for a few minutes until they started trying to get her to push again.
“I’m not pushing until I have the baby’s father and my friends in the room. I can take the pain, so shut up about it already.”
Seconds later, she heard Sokka step back into the room with Katara in tow and relief momentarily overcame her before she felt more pain surge through her body. “Where the-Where have you been, Sugar Queen?”
She heard a sniffle from Katara as Sokka wordlessly took the seat he had left earlier. “I had a patient. Now, let’s get you your baby.”
“No, where’s Kanto?”
Silence.
“Where’s Kanto, Katara?”
More silence.
Her heart was beating quickly and she tried to sit up, but Sokka’s hands on her shoulders stopped her, and frankly, so did the pain in her back and lower abdomen. There was a dull tightening in the pit of her stomach and she knew she couldn’t attribute it to her current situation. She squeezed one of Sokka’s hands, some tears prickling at her eyes, and desperately asked, “Where is he?”
“Toph, he-”
“He’s on his way, Toph,” Katara said quickly, in the steadiest voice. “He said that he got caught up with an interrogation, but that he was trying to get himself out of it as soon as possible so he wouldn’t miss the birth. And he wanted me to tell you that you need to have the baby, regardless of whether he was here or not.”
Toph wished that she had contact with the ground to verify the validity of her words because Katara sounded so convincing. She wanted to believe her.
So with that, Toph nodded, laid back down, and said, “Fine. I’m ready.”
There was as much hand-squeezing as there were encouraging words while she pushed, a burning sensation in her groin. She didn’t know how long it took for her child’s cries to be heard around the room, but when they did, she couldn’t stop the tears from running down her face. A small thing wrapped in a blanket was placed in her arms and she couldn’t stop weeping as she pressed her nose into who Katara introduced as her daughter. Her hands gently traveled the baby’s face, mapping out her every little feature. She wanted to memorize her daughter.
She had never been so in love with someone before.
Toph was so involved with her new little baby — her little Lin, as she and Kanto had agreed upon if they ended up having a girl — that she almost didn’t notice Sokka and Katara’s whispering by the door. Almost . But she didn’t say anything then because she’d just had her baby and she wanted to stay fake angry at her boyfriend for not being at the birth like they had planned. It was better than believing the alternative.
The alternative, however, became a reality a few hours after she had been transferred from the clinic in Republic City to Air Temple Island to be under Katara’s care for some days as she recovered.
When she and her best friend were finally alone in the room Katara set her up in, she dared to bring it up because no one else would.
“He’s dead, isn’t he,” Toph said from where she lay, Lin’s mouth gulping from her breast. It wasn’t a question, it was a statement. She knew it, she had a feeling; she just needed to hear it. Someone needed to confirm it. She needed to justify the pain she felt.
Sokka was silent for a while. Even without her feet on the ground, she could feel the tension in his body; in the air. “Yes, on the job. I’m so sorry, Toph.”
“I loved him.”
“I know you did. He loved you, too.”
Toph expelled some air out of her nose. A humorless, soundless laugh. “And now, he’s dead.”
“Yes.”
“And Lin is fatherless.”
There was a pause. “No. No, she’s not.”
“Fuck off, Sokka.”
“I’m serious,” he said, walking over from where he was to sit by her. “You have a council of dads here for her. You’ve got Zuko, you’ve got Aang, and you’ve got me. I’m here. I’ll always be here and I won’t ever stop being here, even if you tell me to,” he dropped his voice to a whisper for Lin’s benefit, “fuck off like you just did. I’m here.”
“Sokka-”
“We’re here for you,” he said. “ I’m here for you. Kanto would have wanted you to have a village with you. And you have one.”
Her throat tightened. “I can’t ask you to do that, Sokka.”
“ You’re not asking. I’m telling you ,” he said. His voice sounded tight, too. “And you’re already a great mother. You’re going to make out like a bandit, I know it.”
And she did. By her standards, she did.
Toph would talk to her baby daily about her father and how much he would have loved her. And that she would love her enough for the both of them and that she had a village of aunts and uncles to get love from. It was turning out alright and the pain she felt over Kanto’s death was there – of course , it was, and she wasn’t sure it would ever go away – but wasn’t so pungent anymore.
Because she had Lin. And Sokka.
One day, when Lin was about a year or so old, Sokka sat with her on the couch of her apartment – the same apartment she had asked him to move into after she discovered that she couldn’t be there alone after Kanto had died. One of her legs was hanging off his, her back was against the couch’s armrest, and his hands were working out the knots in her calf.
“I love you.”
Her other foot on the ground indicated that he wasn’t lying. It was simple. It was quiet. It could have meant anything. But her chest stirred. And her heart fluttered.
“Ditto.”
Toph had a high pain tolerance, it was true, but Sokka always knew how to help her through it on the rare occasion she couldn’t tolerate it. And she did love him. For that and other things.
Fact #3: Toph wasn’t a fan of the cold.
At fifteen years old, Toph made her first trip to the Southern Water Tribe as Earthen Fire’s Executive Partner. She had been eager to go, but it involved a trip on either a boat or an airship, so her excitement had been fleeting. Not only that but the fact that she arrived and had to put on boots – which in her book might as well be a foot blindfold – had her on edge.
To be fair, though, it hadn’t been all that horrible for her. She could feel the ground beneath her. Not as sharply because of both the boots and the ice she had working against her, but she still could.
Having Sokka to hold onto was nice, too, she supposed.
But then, some fifteen or so years later, he asked her to come home with him and Katara and Aang to pay Hakoda a visit, and she actually gave it some thought. Still, she sided with reason and said, “Nope. Not happening. Never happening.”
“Come on,” he had practically begged. “You owe me.”
She scoffed. “For what?”
“You- just- Well, because .”
“‘Because’ isn’t a reason, dumbass, so I’m still not going,” she said, taking a bite out of a bread roll. He had chosen to have this conversation in her office at the station during the few minutes she had of a lunch break. “Besides, I have a three-year-old to think about and I’m not about to take her to the world’s second-most glorified icebox so she can freeze her tiny little ass.”
“Aang and Katara are letting the kids stay with Suki, so I’m sure she wouldn’t mind watching-”
“No.”
“Toph, please, I’m begging you here.”
“Don’t beg. It’s unbecoming of you.”
“ Toph .”
“ Sokka .”
“You’re going.”
“I’m not going.”
She ended up going. And she wasn’t happy about it.
Realistically, however, she wasn’t absolutely hating it so far. They had taken Appa down to the South and Toph could feel the air getting gradually colder as they neared the final destination of their trip. At one point, as she was clutching Sokka’s arm for comfort, he told her that she should start bundling up because they were only a few hours out. She was about to argue, but she felt a violent shiver wrack her body when a cold breeze attacked her, and instead opted with shrugging on her coat and slipping on her mittens and boots. She had made Sokka find her some with metal soles, with fur only lining the top of her feet, ankles, and calves, so she’d be able to feel more than she had all those years ago, still staying warm in the midst of things. But it was cold and she very much preferred the warmth Republic City was offering that time of year.
When they were finally settled and Sokka had helped her to her quarters for their weeklong stay, Toph kicked off her boots and threw herself onto the low-leveled bed in the space. The blankets were fluffy and warm and she wrapped herself into one of them, only her face peeking out of it. Warmth , she thought, finally .
The reveling feeling lasted only a few seconds because she felt ice smack right the center of her forehead followed by a familiar snort. She growled – actually, audibly growled – and used the gift her attacker had given her against him, launching it straight into the middle of his neck, making him cough.
“You think you’re funny?” Toph asked as she sat up, still with the blanket around her shoulders and legs, and dusted off the snowball’s residue from her forehead with a huff. She would have gotten up to rip him a new one, but the mere thought of having to move out of her source of warmth made her reconsider. “You’re not funny.”
“Please,” Sokka threw his thirty-eight-year-old self onto the bed and tucked himself under the covers next to her. “I’m hilarious.”
She gave an eye roll and pushed him off the bed and let out a loud laugh when she heard his body thump onto the ground along with a grunt. “No, you’re not, but that was.”
“You’re a horrible, horrible person,” Sokka said, his tone teasing as he accommodated himself under the covers next to her again. This time, she let him be, feeling him fiddling with the meteorite she had used to defend herself against him seconds ago. “I should keep Space Rock just for that.”
“Don’t even think about it,” Toph said, reaching for it, but he moved it out of her reach. She groaned. “Come on, Meathead, give it back.”
He let out a low laugh and set it on her outstretched hand. “Why do you love that thing so much? It's just a rock.”
“Look at who you just said that to – wait for it: an earth bender – and ask again.”
“You know what I mean, Wise Ass,” he tsked, bumping his shoulder softly against hers. She noticed how close he was to her face and she hated that it’s what was warming her up as opposed to the blanket. “Why is it so important to you?”
Toph shrugged, shaping the rock back into a bracelet and slipping it onto its rightful place on her arm. “It’s a cool gift.”
“That’s why?”
“Yup.”
“You’ve had it for years.”
It was true. He had given it to her so many years ago and she had grown accustomed to keeping it with her at all times. “I told you. It’s a cool gift. It just means a lot, okay?”
“But why?”
“Spirits, Sokka, you sound like Lin with all the questions,” Toph said, annoyed. “It just does. You just- you gave it to me and it just- it means a lot.”
He scooted impossibly closer to her, their thighs smooshed together. “So what I’m hearing is that I mean a lot to you, you know, by proxy. Is that what you’re saying here?”
“I hate you. I really hate you.”
“Mm, mm,” Sokka hummed, his hand coming up to cradle her jaw and her heart felt like it was somewhere in her throat at that point in time. “I think it’s just the opposite, actually.”
Her voice was barely a whisper when she stammered, “You-I don’t- Do- Have you, um, ever heard of personal space, Snoozles?”
“I’m afraid I haven’t, no,” he said as he ghosted over her lips. “Not when it comes to you, anyway.”
With that, he closed the space between them, and any coldness in her body was quickly replaced by heat. Toph’s hand went up to cover the one he had on her face as she melted into the kiss. Her twelve-year-old self would have been over the moon as he pulled her onto his lap and into him, the blanket slipping off her body as he did so. His hands pulled off the hair tie that held her bun together and tangled his fingers in it, eliciting a moan from her, allowing his tongue to slip into her mouth; it was warm, just like the rest of him.
Abruptly, he pulled away and she worried that he regretted what had just happened. But then, he rested his forehead on hers, and asked, “Is this okay?”
Toph couldn’t help but let out a little laugh at the question. She placed a hand on each of his cheeks, landed a kiss on his lips, and said, “Yes, it’s okay.”
“Good,” he said with a grin as he pulled her down onto the bed with him. “Because I’ve been wanting to do that for quite a bit.”
“Interesting,” Toph mused, her own smile widening. “And why didn’t you until now?”
Sokka let his smile falter a bit and he pursed his lips. Toph could feel his heartbeat pick up slightly beneath her fingers when she placed her hands on his chest. Finally, after a beat or three of silence, he said, “Because I was afraid to admit that I had fallen in love with you.”
Toph had been feeling warm when they kissed, but when she heard and processed the words he said, she felt as though she was tossed near the waters of the Boiling Rock. The effect he had on her amazed her sometimes. Spirits, he was making her feel like a lovestruck kid again and she hated him for it.
That was a lie. She didn’t hate him. Not in the slightest bit.
Still, she had a reputation to uphold, so she couldn’t hold back from teasingly saying, “In love with me, huh?”
“Head over heels, in fact,” he responded, relief evident in both his voice and heartbeat.
She moved a bit to brush over his lips. “ Very interesting.”
Again, he closed the space between them, laying a much softer and less urgent kiss on her lips. Something in her chest was stirring more so than it had when he had first kissed her. Their lips moved slowly as if they were becoming acquainted all over again and the sensation in her chest spread throughout her body and out through her extremities. It was a feeling she never knew she needed to experience and it made her want more.
“I love you too.”
It was the first time she had said it to him. Usually, he would tell her he loved her in a friendly way and she would respond with a punch to the shoulder or a ‘ditto,’ but she said it. And she meant it. And the words were just as warm as the way she felt.
With Sokka, the cold wasn’t so bad.
Fact #4: Toph was a very decisive person.
Toph had told herself that she would never get married because marriage was for people like Aang and Katara; not for people like her. People like her weren’t made for married life, it just complicated things, in her opinion, especially when things were fine, to begin with. Why ruin what an individual and their significant other had going on if there was nothing wrong with it? It was why she never got married to Kanto and he understood her perfectly. He never held the fact that she didn’t want to get married against her. And it was one of the reasons she loved him.
But she knew deep down that the real reason behind her not wanting to get married stemmed from her parents’ desires for her to be a proper lady. Since she was young, she had been drilled with the idea that she had been born to be someone’s wife; to satisfy a husband. And over her dead body was that all she was going to be reduced to: a housewife.
So she opted with never wanting to marry, even when she could have. Even when she had made a name for herself that wasn’t directly related to a man’s success.
But when she was pregnant again, Sokka had Lin walk up to her with a betrothal necklace she had helped him make and she couldn’t quit blubbering for long enough to accept his proposal.
Sokka had completely changed the way Toph viewed love, and despite how much she wanted this to not be true, it was, and she surprisingly embraced it. Because she loved him and she trusted him wholeheartedly.
On her wedding day, her mother was nagging at her to wear shoes and as plump and pregnant as she was, Toph was decidedly going to eject her into the next century if she kept it up. Luckily for Poppy Beifong, Katara had placated Toph before she had the chance to get into her horse stance, having told Poppy that she was needed elsewhere.
“You can’t bend your mother out of your life, Toph,” Katara said scoldingly as she continued working on Toph’s hairdo. It was loose but out of her face and probably adorned with plants or something, but it wasn’t bothering her and she trusted Katara to not make her look like an absolute prissy dingbat.
Toph snorted at that, subconsciously rubbing at her protruding belly. “I most certainly can, but I won’t for the sake of your sanity, Sugar Queen.”
“You’re a moon peach,” Katara said, giving her nose a poke. She helped Toph to her feet and walked over to the mirror near the door to put some finishing touches on her own self. “And you’re also done here, so let’s get you married.”
“Married,” she said, testing the word out in her mouth for the first time in the day. It felt different for some reason. And she couldn’t put her finger on why it felt different.
Katara stopped what she was doing when she heard Toph speak up and turned to her. “Toph…”
“I’m… getting married.”
“You are. We knew this,” Katara confirmed, walking over to her friend quickly and taking her hands in hers. “You’re going to make it down that aisle. It’s going to be okay.”
Toph’s eyes widened suddenly. “No. No. Because I’m getting married. Me . Toph Beifong. The Greatest Earthbender in the World, inventor of metalbending, and war hero. Me ! Oh my- I’m getting married.”
“It’s going to be okay, Toph, I-”
“Would you quit saying it’s going to be okay and just- can you say something that’s actually helpful to me right now?”
“Right, yes, okay, uh,” Katara fish mouthed for a few moments, trying to come up with something to say. “Um-”
Toph groaned and started pacing. “Say something I would say to you if you were me right now.”
“Huh?”
“Be me! Channel me! And just tell me what I’d say to me if you were me.”
“Okay, yes,” Katara said, walking up to Toph and putting her hands on both her shoulders. “You can do this. Quit being a-a lilly livered dunderhead and get your shit together. You’re getting married today even if that means I have to water whip you down the aisle, you got it? So stop whining, stop being a coward, and let’s give you a fairytale, Toph Beifong.”
Toph bit at her cheek and started nodding. “Okay.”
“Okay?”
“Yes. I’m ready.”
With that, they were off and headed to the Fire Nation Royal Palace’s garden. Toph insisted that if she was going to have a wedding, it would have to be small and outdoors, and both her wishes had been Zuko’s command. From what Katara told her, only her mother, her surrogate family, and her nieces and nephews had been invited. No one from work, no one that they knew outside of their usual group had been invited and she was content with that.
And despite her freak out, there was nothing to worry about, realistically. Aang performed the ceremony, she got to laugh at him for choking up as he spoke, and she got to listen to Sokka tell her how much he loved her, which was something she never got tired of.
Everyone cheered for them as they walked back up the aisle and toward the royal ballroom. Lively music was playing, there was a buffet of foods she and Sokka most enjoyed and she was surrounded by the people she wanted to be surrounded by.
“Ma’!” She heard Lin shout as she was looking for something to eat. “Ma’, you looked beautiful today!”
“Thank you, baby girl,” Toph said with a smile, stomping the ground to elevate Lin and make it easier to pick her up. “You don’t look too bad yourself.”
“Maaaa’,” Lin drawled comically, grabbing Toph’s face with her little hands. “You can’t see me!”
“Ah, but I can,” Sokka said, coming up behind them, placing his chin between Toph’s neck and shoulder, and wrapping his arms around Toph’s torso, hands rubbing her belly. “And you look beautiful, Linny. You’re easily the prettiest one here!”
Lin shook her head, making Toph laugh. “Nope! That’s momma. I can be the second-prettiest.”
“No, baby, you’re always the prettiest,” Toph assured.
“Really?”
“Really.”
With that, Lin gave the two of them a hug and asked to be let down because she was going to go bother her Uncle Sparky, a nickname Toph had given her permission to use and that Zuko couldn’t say no to.
“Hello, wife,” Sokka said when they were alone, pressing a kiss on her neck.
A smile crept onto her face. “Snoozles.”
“I can’t believe I roped you into marrying me.”
“I can’t believe you did either,” she admitted, covering his hands with her own. “I must really love you.”
“You really must,” he agreed, spinning her around and pressing a kiss onto her lips in a swift movement. “And I love you too.”
They spent their night laughing and eating and dancing and nothing else mattered to either of them. Toph had never been one to want to partake in events like marriage, but she did partake in anything involving Sokka without thinking twice about it.
Well, perhaps she had minor freak outs that her sister-in-law and in all but blood had to talk her down from.
But she never thought twice.
Fact #5: Toph knew grief.
In the history books and newspapers that she would never be able to read, it would always be said that Toph Beifong was one of the greats. At just twelve years old, she was already an earthbending prodigy and was sought out by the avatar himself in order for him to train under her. Not only that but she singlehandedly discovered a form of sub-bending and was graceful enough to pass her knowledge down to other capable earthbenders. She was widely regarded as an unwavering, powerful, and strong-willed individual to her friends, her family, and the rest of the world. She was a legend and she knew it. Everyone did.
But that wasn’t all she was.
With all of the turmoil that she experienced starting from a young age, Toph was lucky she was sane. She was much too young to have had the shared weight of the world on her and her friends’ shoulders. She knew too much pain, having experienced the deaths of friends and loved ones and the comings and goings of people she loved throughout the years and all of the prejudices she faced.
And Toph had suffered loss. She had suffered loss more than she liked or had ever thought she would; she still was to the day.
As they descended into the Southern Water Tribe, Toph felt her daughters clinging to either side of her, knowing she hated the sensation of being off of the earth and that the person she would usually depend on for stability was no longer with them. She hated airships because of that same reason along with the trauma she suffered upon them all those years ago with the love of her life. Toph’s jaw was clenched in discomfort as she felt her ears pop and she leaned into Lin unintentionally, finding some solace in her eldest daughter. Sometimes, it made her sad how stoic her daughter seemed – how much like her she was. But in moments like these, when she needed steadiness, Lin was there. She always was.
To her right was Suyin, her hand strongly gripping Toph’s, the sounds of her sniffles echoing around the metal aircraft. She had always been the more sentimental one. Su couldn’t even see a tiger lily drying out before she started crying over it; never mind hearing that her father had died. Toph squeezed her youngest daughter’s hand, finding a dull comfort in its soft warmth as the airship finally landed. She couldn’t move.
“Ma?” Lin said in an uncharacteristically soft tone as she pulled at her mom’s arm. “We’re here, we landed.”
Toph gave no answer as she slipped out of her daughters’ grasp.
On any other occasion, Lin would have simply told her to get off the damn airship because they weren’t getting any younger, but because it was a hard day by all standards, she forwent that language and opted with a more tenderhearted approach.
“Come on, Mom. We need to get to the temple for the service.”
It irritated Toph to no end.
“Quit treating me with kid-gloves, Lin,” Toph snapped. Without having contact with the earth, she could still feel Lin’s slight vexation and Su’s surprise at her outburst. “Just go… go get me Katara. I need- Get me your aunt.”
It was Su who spoke this time. “But Aunt Katara might not be able to-”
“Fine, then leave me alone for a minute, will you? You’re both smothering me.”
While it was true that Toph had been leaning on both of her daughters seconds prior, she felt the sudden urge to be alone for a moment. And the only way she would achieve that was if she acted like an absolute bitch and that had never been hard for her. She heard Lin let out an exasperated huff at her instruction, which was less than what she could have expected from her eldest, much to her irritation. Grabbing Su and pulling her toward the airship’s exit, she said, “We’ll try to get you Aunt Katara.”
Toph gave them one nod in satisfaction and heard their footsteps sound farther and farther away until she could no longer. There were still some attendants inside the airship and she rudely told them to beat it and leave her alone, which they did. As the doors to the aircraft shut, she felt the chilling breeze from the outside seep in, making her shiver. If Sokka were with her, he would scold her for not already wearing her furs and boots and she would have already told him to shut up about it but will have complied anyhow. And she would have done so because he had asked, not because she wanted to, and she would have made that expressly clear. Toph shut her eyes tightly, her hand moving to her bicep to feel for her meteorite bracelet, as she felt the familiar burn of the well of her tears and tried to break her thoughts away from him, but knowing that she was in his home was making it virtually impossible.
She couldn’t quite wash away her thoughts as she desired, but the sound of scraping metal and familiar drag of feet across the floor did. Katara slowly walked into the aircraft and waited for its doors to shut behind her before joining Toph in her seat.
“You can do it.”
“I hate your brother, Sugar Queen,” Toph said, her voice watery. “I hate him for making me make that damn promise.”
She heard Katara sigh as she took her hand in her gloved one. After all these years, she was still mothering her, but she embraced it this time, though she wouldn’t vocally admit that to Katara or anyone for that matter.
Katara’s voice sounded as worn and tired and sad as they both felt when she said, “You don’t mean that. And I know you can do it.”
Of course, she didn’t mean it, but that didn’t mean she couldn’t resent her husband, even if for a fleeting moment. Still, Toph gave a dry, humorless laugh. “I can barely deal with the fact that he’s dead, Katara, how the- how will I be able to give a goddamn eulogy?”
“Then don’t,” Katara said quietly, giving Toph’s hand a reassuring squeeze. “Don’t do it. He’d understand.”
“Like hell, he would.”
“Toph…”
“What?” She asked bitterly. “You know I’m right. And you know I can’t just break a promise I made to him.”
Katara remained silent for a moment and Toph could tell that she was holding back her need to cry, too. She let out a shaky breath and said, “We need to go. We need to go or we won’t be able to do what we have to do.”
Her hand was squeezing Toph’s, she noted, the same way she had been the day he died. The day that Toph knew that her world would no longer be the same.
Since stepping down as fire lord and granting the hot seat — as Toph many times referred to it as — to Izumi, Zuko had made it a tradition some years prior to gather at the palace on the last Sunday of every month for a family dinner. And after Aang’s death, it became more of a routine than a tradition because they needed to be together. They needed to.
Even in his older age, Sokka would always get excited to prepare for the dinners and Toph couldn’t hide her fondness; she didn’t have a reason to after so many years of being together, of marriage. That day, particularly, though, his heart was beating oddly. It was faster than usual. But she didn’t think much of it because even her ticker was different from all it had beaten throughout her life. For all she knew, he could have been excited for reasons other than the dinner if she knew Sokka well.
At the palace, they all sat around the large table that had increased in size throughout the years and talked about the past month’s goings-on. The food, as always, was good and spicy in all the right ways and the company, as always, was the best it could ever be in Toph’s opinion. When they finished their dinner, Katara had dragged Toph over to the sitting room by the dining area while Sokka stepped out for some air and Zuko, to converse with the kids. Toph and Katara spent time talking about their children, who were no longer children, and what they had accomplished lately, and how much they had grown as all good mothers do over a glass of fire whiskey. Sokka and Zuko always laughed at their choice of drink for conversation because they thought it was a bit much. But Toph and Katara enjoyed it, nonetheless.
It was all going well. She could hear Zuko talking with Suyin about Zaofu and her own kids and husband and she could hear Lin and Bumi bickering over something . But suddenly, she was worried about what she couldn’t feel .
Katara had been talking about Kya and the healing clinic when Toph abruptly stood up and half-ran to where she knew Sokka had been last — the terrace some feet away. The hairs on the back of her neck stood up and for some reason, and she started shaking when she felt Sokka’s presence, but couldn’t feel his heartbeat. The man who usually felt so lively felt like a lump of dirt on a chair. A frantic voice unlike her own called for Katara, who was already some feet behind her. There was some screaming and shouting and shaking and then nothing.
Toph awoke the next afternoon – after she felt Sokka’s heart stop beating – to the sound of Katara quietly sobbing at her side. Her chest felt tight and weighted as if an elephant mandrill had been sitting on it.
“He’s really gone,” Toph heard Katara cry when the former was finally able to sit up. “He’s dead.”
Sokka was dead.
For days, Toph felt like she couldn’t move or breathe without it hurting. She knew grief, she did. She likely knew it more than anyone other than her friends. But nothing ever prepared her for the day she would feel Sokka’s heart stop beating. After so many years of having him around her, she had grown accustomed to feeling it everywhere she went, and when she didn’t feel it, she would look for it, she would try to single it out and she had no problems doing so because it would always make an appearance. That evening, it had been steady beneath her feet, it had been there one minute, but not the other. She thought herself an idiot for not questioning how he felt, but she knew he would have told her he was fine, regardless of whether he knew he was or not.
The obnoxious feeling of Katara’s gloved hands on her ankles startled her out of her woeful thoughts before she could think on them further. She was trying to slip her feet into her fur-lined boots, Toph realized. Wiping away at some of the moisture on her cheeks with her hand, Toph placed an uncharacteristically gentle hand on Katara’s shoulder as a way of letting her know that she could do it herself and put her boots on. It was then that Toph realized that her coat and gloves were already on and she sent an appreciative nod in the direction of where she felt Katara was. And with that, the two of them alighted from the airship hand in hand and directed themselves toward Avatar Temple.
Toph tried to focus on the crunch of the snow beneath their feet and not on the sinking feeling in her stomach with each step they took. There were a lot of people around them, all of them having known Sokka at some point in their life, having been touched by him in some way. It didn’t surprise Toph in the slightest to know that so many people loved him. He was easy to love.
The first person she noticed upon her entry to the temple was Zuko. Even hunched and old as he was, he was still elegant, still regal. He pulled Katara into a tight embrace, and while he didn’t hug Toph, he pressed an impressively warm and affectionate palm to her face and it meant more than anyone knew. She leaned into his touch and let a tear slip out of her eye, which he quickly wiped.
“Knock ‘em dead,” he said softly, Katara still tucked into his chest.
Toph let out a genuine, tearful laugh. A quiet one, but a laugh, nevertheless. “Too soon, Sparky.”
People were whispering around them and she could hear their pitiful lamentations. It irritated her, but before she could send them all to hell and back again, she noticed Suyin approach her. She grabbed her mother’s wrist gently.
“For good luck,” she said, placing Sokka’s boomerang in her hand.
Toph’s throat tightened for the millionth time that day and she nodded, wrapping her hand around the treasured weapon and walking up to the podium she was meant to speak from. All the years of speaking publicly during press conferences hadn’t prepared her to have to speak in front of uncomfortably emotional people, especially when she was a closeted emotional wreck herself. Still, she wouldn’t let it show, her hand tight around the boomerang and her voice steady.
“As all of you should already know, my name is Toph Beifong and Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe was lucky enough to have been given the honor to be the love of my life,” she started confidently, then gave a shaky breath. “And I was lucky enough to be his.
“I’m not going to make this long, partially because I was essentially blackmailed into doing this by said Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe and also because I don’t know how long I’ll last before I say something inappropriate about Snoozles, but I will start by saying that he was the biggest pain in the ass I have ever met. And in all my years, no one has taken away that title that for as long as I’ve known him, and I met him at twelve years old.”
There was a round of soft laughs that gave her the push she needed to continue speaking. She clutched the boomerang tighter, careful to not bend it in any way. “I’m not going to talk about how amazing he was because you all know about that. You all know that he was a war hero, an amazing person, an amazing father figure, and uncle. You all know that and there’s no point reiterating it. Instead, I’m going to tell you about how much of a dunderhead he actually was.
“He constantly forgot I’m blind. Even after all the years of knowing me, he would always slip up and tell me that I should ‘open my eyes to the possibilities’ of something or that he had a lot to see, but the dumbass would most often ask me to see something he drew,” she said, hearing a mix of gasps at her word choice and laughs from the people who knew her. “It would take him forever to realize what he was saying, but he always came around. And it was always funny to experience him stammer out an apology.
“Snoozles also made a lot of sounds; he was really annoying. More annoying than Twinkle Toes, if you could fathom it,” Toph snorted into the microphone. “It took me years to be able to get used to his damn loud snoring. Have any of you ever had trouble starting up a Satomobile? That sound the engine makes when the station wagon’s not quite warmed up? Yeah, that was exactly how his snore sounded. It was enough to wake a stubborn sleeper like myself and eventually the little badgermoles we had running around the house. Sugar Queen and Sparky over there can probably tell you how much he snored considering how much time we all spent traveling together as kids.
“He also tooted a lot. Considering how much he ate, this shouldn’t be much of a surprise. But it got bad at night, mostly. They were so loud that they would wake him up and he’d frantically look around and ask me what that sound was and I told him that it was his ass. He would just shake his head and say that it couldn’t have been; that it had to have been the girls or some animal outside. I’d just tell him to shut it and go to sleep, and he would smile and he would kiss me and knock back out.
There were more laughs, bringing Toph some comfort to a degree. She kept ignoring the tightening in her throat as she continued eulogizing. “This is what he would have wanted. He would have wanted people laughing at his nut-brained idiocy rather than mourning him. But I would give anything to hear those sounds again. I would give anything to have him with me again, to have him with us . Sokka was… Sokka was everything . And the world just… It isn’t the same without him, and it’ll never be if I’m being completely honest. But we were all lucky enough to have known him, to have shared our space in the world with him.
“I’ve never- I’ve been through a lot,” Toph said, not letting the tears in her eyes slip. “I have. And my friends have. But I had never known love the way I have with my friends, my family, my girls. And with Sokka. So that’s how I choose to remember him. With love. And also his dumbassery.”
She slowly stepped away from the podium and was immediately met by Katara’s embrace when she took her seat. Toph buried her head in Katara’s neck and quietly wept as Zuko’s hand came up to rub her back from behind her and both Lin and Suyin took her hands. Her nieces and nephews were there, too, silently showing their support for their aunt.
If this had been any other occasion, she would have sent them all to hell for coddling her, but she needed this, or she was convinced she wouldn’t be able to move forward. They remained like that for what seemed like forever but was likely not long, then, Katara stood up to speak about her brother, but Tenzin had to take over eventually because she couldn’t get her words out without crying. Understandable, Toph thought, wiping away her own tears.
Then came the procession, which was a blur to Toph until Katara took her hand as they lowered Sokka’s coffin into a hole in the ground. Sokka had told her once that it was the only place in the Southern Water Tribe that was purposely kept warmer in order for the earth to remain diggable. When he had told her, she wished that the whole South Pole was warmer to save her from having to wear boots that made things fuzzy. But now, she was happy to be wearing the boots because she didn’t have to feel his body being lowered into the ground, never to be seen or heard from again. She had to resist the urge to lay her body across the coffin and yell for them to stop trying to bury him; her family helped keep her steady. They always did.
There were many things that were true about Toph, but the fact that she hated air travel, that she could handle pain, that she wasn’t a fan of the cold, that she was decisive, and that she knew grief reigned truer on that day than others. But what was most true, most factual was that she loved Sokka until death did them part and beyond.