Chapter Text
Toph was never someone who believed that she would ever want to have children. It just wasn’t in her nature.
Coupled with the fact that her parents sheltered her so much that they forgot to show her unconditional love as any parent should, she just figured that she wouldn’t be a good mother. She wouldn’t want to subject her kid to that kind of treatment or life. It was tough enough to feel the need to mask the hurt she felt when her mother and father would simply do what they had to do without a nurturing action taken or an affectionate word uttered. Not until it was too late, anyway.
She didn’t want her child to suffer through that and she wasn’t going to give herself the opportunity to be a shit mom. If she was going to do something—like be a mother, for instance—she was going to be damn sure she did it right. Toph wasn’t a half-ass, and she sure as hell wasn’t about to half-ass being a mom.
For the longest time, she told herself that she would save any kind of parental affection she could muster for her brood of nieces and nephews. It was a perfect compromise—she got all of the perks of having a kid without actually having a kid.
Katara would consistently tell her that she was great with the youngins in their overly extended family, that she would make a great mom, that the fact that she was even worried about whether she would or wouldn’t be a good mom proved as much. But Toph would simply scoff, roll her eyes, and/or say something inappropriate that would make her friend groan.
Still, though, Katara would persist. “Okay, but what if, by chance, you ended up pregnant? What then?”
“I won’t,” Toph would reply. “I’m careful.”
“But what if? Have you ever thought about that?”
At that, Toph would jokingly turn to whichever niece or nephew was in front of her—usually Kya—and she would ask, “What do you think I should do if I ended up having a you of my own?”
Usually, the answer would be along the lines of, “You can’t! You’ll like them better than me!”
“You heard the kiddo, Sugar Queen. It’s not even a possibility.”
To be frank, Toph hadn’t thought about what she would do. It was rather careless of her not to have ever considered the idea of ever ending up pregnant, especially taking the way she lived her life once upon a time. But she was careful and she did take the pertinent precautions to keep herself from getting knocked up. And if she, for some reason, ended up pregnant, she had no idea what she would do.
Many women think about their life with children, and whenever Toph did that, she couldn’t quite picture herself being the perfect mother who would be instinctive and loving. She didn’t find that it was in her nature.
The way she noticed Katara acted around her kids was admirable because Toph figured that she didn’t have that in her. Being a mother came so very naturally to Katara that it was enviable by all who came across her.
And Toph’s role as an aunt to her friends’ kids was enough for her. She couldn’t very well imagine herself doing everything Katara did on the daily along with her responsibilities as a nation’s leader. There was so much to remember, so much to do along with everything else that was on her plate.
Neglect wasn’t something Toph was going to give anyone, especially not any of her kids if she were to have any. She herself experienced it as a kid, and there was nothing she would want less than for her a kid of hers to have to go through that. It was the shittiest feeling to not feel wanted—despite what the truth might have been.
Toph was well aware that her parents loved her. She knew it. But when she was younger, the only thing she could figure to explain why her parents were the way they were with her was that they didn’t want her.
No child should ever feel that way, no matter what the circumstance.
Her resentment toward her parents had lessened after many a fight with them and many a conversation with her friends, but there was still a bit of anger there. Toph didn’t think she would be able to bare her own kid feeling that way toward her.
So she would avoid it as much as she could, having kids. And in the case she did end up pregnant… she didn’t know what she’d do and she had no rush to find out because she wasn’t bargaining on becoming a mom.
In fact, she might never be one.
And she was okay with that.
One of the things Toph looked forward to the most was fucking with the people she loved. So much of her time spent involved teasing the shit out of her friends and she would never tire of it. The thought alone brought her an indescribable amount of joy.
Fucking with her friends eventually expanded to fucking with the people in her workplace with alarming frequency. She would always have something or someone to poke fun at and everyone played along, but not everyone could keep up with her as well as her deputy chief could.
Usually, Toph would make a quip that would render the person she was talking to speechless. This wasn’t the case with Kanto. Instead, he would come back at her with a retort that would almost render her speechless.
Almost.
She supposed that this was what made her fall in love with him; the way he could carry on with the banter she would start or the way he knew what made her tick the way no one else could.
There wasn’t much she couldn’t love about the guy, to be frank, so her personal rule of not getting involved with a coworker, especially one she worked with so closely, went to absolute shit after a only few months of getting to know him.
The council had insisted that—despite the fact that she had proven to be what was best for the RCPD after literally building it from the ground up and demonstrating the success of the department under her direction—she needed a second, someone she could rely on.
Her response to that was a very inappropriate hand gesture and an unkind “fuck you, I can handle things for myself.”
Still, they demanded she onboarded a deputy chief to give her a hand.
That’s where Kanto came in.
Toph wasn’t very fond of him when he first came on; she associated him with the mistrust the council had for her and she wasn’t about to lean on this rando when it came down to it on the field. But she slowly got to know him and grew to like him, even enjoy his company—on the field and off.
There was a moment, though, that she began to wonder what if she decided to bang him at least once for fun or to scratch an itch that curiosity caused. But she shot that idea down as quickly as she could—it would be impractical, she thought.
There was just something about Kanto that got her ticking, though, so she figured that there wouldn’t be an issue with them getting to know each other. And they did to a point where they were so comfortable with each other that nothing phased them, not even the drunken suggestion of hooking up.
In retrospect, the decision they made of going through with the suggestion was not the wisest considering the repercussions it would have on them if word got out, which it didn’t. And the fact that no one found out about their drunken sexual endeavors led them to begin sober sexual endeavors.
At least it was just sex and nothing else. She didn’t have time for anything that wasn’t casual; something serious would mean too much time commitment and expectations for things that weren’t likely to happen.
And a relationship usually came with discussions about having kids.
She wasn’t much into that, either.
But then she started having feelings, and it all went to hell because she managed to say that she loved him in a moment of what could be considered one of weakness.
She had thought that he was still unconscious when she said so. Kanto had managed to run into a simultaneously burning and collapsing building, having great difficulty saving the lives he needed to save while keeping himself unharmed. It took Toph and her whole squad to get him out in one piece—out cold and with however-many degree burns he had, according to Katara.
Toph was a hot mess when they pulled him out, yelling for Katara to be called and brought over to examine him, tears streaming down her cheeks, her hand clutching his as though that would make any difference in the state he was in… She was terrified for him.
They’d been at it for a year at that point when Toph let it slip that she loved him as she sat next to his cot at the clinic Katara owned in Republic City. She couldn’t really blame herself for telling him Those Three Words because the man was practically on his deathbed and people say stupidly sentimental things when other people are dying.
It didn’t make the declaration any less true.
“You better not die on me, Hotshot,” Toph had whispered against his hand. “I love you too much to let that happen, or Spirits help me, I will have Katara wake you up from your eternal slumber just so I can have the honor of killing you myself.”
The fucker decided to stir and squeeze her hand at that, startling Toph, much to her chagrin. “I—I’m sorry. What was— what was that, Chief?”
“You’re awake,” she breathed out, actually relieved that he was okay. His voice sounded rugged, the way it sounded when he’d just woken up after a long night. He sounded alive. “I thought— Spirits, you’re awake.”
“Mhm, have been,” he grunted as he did his best to sit up. “For quite a while, actually.”
“And you didn’t say anything while we’ve all been worried sick here? Kind of rude of you.”
He hummed at that, squeezing her hand. It wasn’t until then that she realized that she was still holding his. “Not as rude as you waiting for me to be knocked out to say that you love me.”
The ghost of a smile that was on her face dropped at a comedic speed. She cleared her throat. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. You sure you didn’t, uh, hit your head or something? Maybe I should get Katara—”
“I love you too.”
Toph furrowed her brows and shook her head a little, even popping her finger into her ear to clear out any obstruction that might have caused her to misunderstand the words out of his mouth. “Huh?”
“I said”—he inhaled sharply as he adjusted himself on the cot, his hand coming up to her jaw—“that I love you too, Toph.”
“Well, you don’t have to be so forward about it.”
“And you didn’t have to be so casual about it.”
She scoffed. “But casual’s our thing.”
“Mm, I’m hoping it doesn’t have to be from now on, actually.”
“Hotshot.” Toph gasped dramatically, leaning into him, resting her elbows on the cot. “Are you asking me—your booty call—out? That’s so inappropriate.”
“If anything, I’m your booty call.”
A tsk. “Technicalities.”
Kanto laughed quietly, then hissed. “Don’t make me laugh.”
“Shit, sorry.”
“You’re avoiding the question.”
“I’m not—”
“You are,” he said, against her lips.
She hadn't realized how close they had gotten during their conversation. And she was about to scold him for straining himself while he’s got a few broken ribs and some not-so-urgent burns from what she was told, but he managed to kiss away her thoughts. He tasted like dirt and blood—two of her favorite things—and she didn't quite mind it.
Too soon he pulled away and rested his forehead against hers, saying, “Let’s do the couple thing. See how it works.”
“Kanto—”
“I know. The risks and the commitment and all that. I know. But this is worth it. I know it is.”
Toph kept quiet, and pulled away from him, letting his hand fall off her jaw, but not without her taking it in her own first. Her thumb subconsciously ran back and forth against his skin as she contemplated what he was asking. Not only would she be breaching the stupid conflict of interest clause in her contract with the council but she’d also break her personal rule of staying away from co-workers—which, to be fair, however, she’d been breaking that rule for far longer than she would have liked.
So what was the damage?
“Fine, Hotshot. Let’s do the couple thing.”
As it turned out, Toph and Kanto were pretty good at the couple thing.
They were becoming the type of couple that she used to despise—the kind of couple that would be attached to each other’s hip; the kind of couple that would feel breathless whenever their other half wasn’t near them; the kind of couple that would refer to their partner as their other half.
Being That couple was awful, but she did love him more than anything she knew herself capable of, so she went along with it.
Sneaking around at work made it even more worthwhile.
There was just something about knowing that they could be caught that made the endeavor of avoiding that from happening.
“Look. All I’m saying is that you could’ve been quicker, Hotshot,” Toph told Kanto after a mission. It had been a break-in nearby and the idiot driving the getaway car ran off. And Kanto managed to let him go and Toph was the one who had to stop the guy. She had been teasing him about it for over an hour.
Kanto scoffed, giving her a playful shove as they down the corridor that led to their offices. “I’m still getting a hang of these cable things, alright? Cut me some slack.”
“Not a chance.”
“Oh? And why’s that?”
She stopped and turned to him, aware that there was no one else lingering in their space. Her hands went to his chest. “If I do, people will think I’m giving my dep special treatment, and we can’t have that, can we?”
“I’m afraid you might have a point there, Chief.” He leaned in with the intention of pressing a kiss to her lips.
Toph pulled away and patted his chest before continuing her walk to her office and stopping in front of her door. “When don’t I have a point, really?”
“You minx.”
“But you love me.” She pushed open her door, walked in with Kanto behind her, and didn’t even have the opportunity to shut it and lock it before his lips were feverishly over hers.
He walked her over to her desk and lifted her up onto it. Her legs went around his waist and they reacquainted themselves with each other for a few moments. Just before anything was able to escalate, however, there was barely time for either of them to acknowledge the knock on the door before it flew open.
“Hey, Toph, I— oh !”
It was almost comedic how the two of them jumped apart at the sound of Katara’s voice. Toph huffed at the same time Kanto coughed.
“Hey, Fire Lady Katara,” he said sheepishly, sending the fire lady an awkward little wave. “Lovely to see you again…”
Toph shook her head and ran a hand down her face. “Sugar Queen. What can I do for ya?”
Katara turned to point at the door, not daring to enter Toph’s office after what she just saw. “You should— you should lock that next time.”
"Katara.”
“Right, um, yes, nothing you can do for me, no. Deputy Chief Kanto looks like he, uh, had that covered for you, actually, so I’m going to— I’ll meet you at our usual booth in Kwong’s for lunch. Fifteen minutes.” And she was gone.
The room filled with silence for a few moments just before Kanto and Toph burst out laughing, almost to the point of tears. It took them a while to recompose themselves.
Kanto snorted one last time before leaning against Toph’s desk. “I guess the cat’s out of the bag, huh?”
“We’ve hidden our relationship from everyone for longer than I’d hoped we would.” She shrugged, tucking away some yuans to cover lunch. “I was starting to wonder when Katara would find out—she always finds these things out.”
Which was unfortunately true. Every single time Toph got herself involved with someone, Katara was the first to know about it without being told. It was as though she had this seventieth sense, tailored specifically to get on Toph’s last nerve. However, since Toph started going out with Kanto officially, Katara hadn’t mentioned anything to her; hell, she had even tried to set Toph up on dates to which she impolitely declined. It was a relief, but it was also odd that she hadn’t said anything about it.
“And you’re… okay with her knowing?”
His heartbeat was insanely quick and Toph had to bite her lip to keep herself from smiling at his trepidation. The fact that he worried about whether or not she cared about her friends knowing about her relationship with him warmed her heart a little.
They had agreed on not telling anyone about their relationship to avoid word getting out, not even their closest friends. It was too risky, and for Toph, telling them made it all real. She had never been the one in her friend group to ever want a serious relationship, yet here she was, in love with the man who used to get on her last damn nerve and then ended up sleeping with before allowing herself to believe she could ever love him in the first place.
And none of this was because Toph and Kanto were being careless, they just didn’t think when they were together like that. Having to hide their relationship from the public and from their higher-ups and their friends was difficult, especially when both of them wanted to be with each other constantly despite being in the same spaces most of the day.
They couldn’t help it.
Toph walked up to him and let a hand fall on his cheek. He leaned into her touch as she asked, “What do you think?”
“I want to say that you are okay with it, but I don’t want to, you know, make any assumptions about how you— how you may or may not feel about—”
“Shut up, Hotshot. Spirits,” Toph whispered, pushing herself onto her toes and kissing him deeply. It was one of those kisses that make you feel warm, one of those kisses she only experienced once in a while but did so more frequently since she met him.
Despite knowing she should pull away because Katara was likely impatiently waiting for her at the restaurant, she couldn’t bring herself to. It was too good a kiss to just walk away from.
Kanto was the one to pull away from her, though, but he rested his forehead against hers, his thumb gently caressing her cheek, before saying, “You should go.”
“I should, but I don’t think I want to.”
“I don’t think I want you to, either, but you should because I don’t want Katara to hate me.”
Toph scoffed at that and kissed the corner of his mouth before sitting on the edge of her desk. “Katara doesn’t hate you.”
“No, no. We know that Katara doesn’t hate Deputy Chief Kanto, we don’t know if she’ll hate Boyfriend Kanto, which she probably does after… that , by the way.”
“You’re such an idiot.” She laughed giving him a playful shove before pushing off her desk and approaching the door. “But I’ll be back in an hour and we can finish what we started.”
“I’ll be sure to hold you to that, Chief.”
He gave her another kiss after that and it took her just a little longer to leave. Once she finally managed to exit her office, she made the short walk over from the station to Kwong’s and she couldn’t stop the snort she let out when she sat at her usual booth across from Katara.
“If it’ll make you happy, I will, in the future, lock my doors, Sugar Queen.”
“It’s all I ask, my friend,” Katara said, patting her hand. She slid a cup over to Toph, leaned back where she sat, and asked, “So you and Kanto, huh?”
Before Toph was able to respond, a waiter came by to take their orders, which they dictated to him quickly. Then, she took a sip of the tea Katara had ordered for her. “ What about me and Kanto?”
“I was wondering when that would happen.”
“Were you? Interesting.”
“I was, in fact.” She rested her arms on the table. “It seemed kind of inevitable with how closely you two work. There was also too much chemistry there for you two not to have had something going on. I just gathered that I’d let you figure that out on your own this time. And it worked, thank you very much.”
Toph rolled her eyes. “Does the fire lady position come with the title of relationship analyst, too? Must have missed that memo.”
Katara gasped at that. “I never said anything about a relationship. You’re in a relationship with Kanto? It’s not just a— a sex thing? I mean— because I assumed you and him were up to something, but I never imagined that you— oh my— you love him, I can tell.”
“You are just jumping head first into your conclusions today, huh?” Toph asked her, trying her best to keep her expression as blank and unreadable as possible. Frankly, she thought she had been doing that since the conversation first started, but Katara was reading her like a book and Toph didn’t really love that.
Toph thought that she was good at hiding her emotions. She spent a lot of her time doing so as a kid to keep her parents from hovering—not that they would ever hover over her regarding anything emotional—and she didn’t think it was anyone’s business to ever know what was going on with her. To be able to read Toph, she had to have her layers peeled back, her walls down—she needed to want to let people see the vulnerable, emotional side of her that she tried so hard to suppress for most of her life.
And though she had managed to be more in touch with her emotions after having met her friends so many years ago, she also knew well how to control and corral her feelings in order to avoid being hurt or avoid being prodded like Katara so often liked to do.
Apparently, however, when it came to Kanto, she couldn’t help being transparent, even if it was the last thing she wanted.
It was nice to have kept things to just the two of them—have it be their little secret, in a way.
“No,” Katara told her smugly. “I’m just calling it as I see it.”
“Are you?”
“I am. And I have to say, I knew you had it in you—the whole in-a committed-relationship thing.” She nudged Toph’s leg with her foot beneath the table. “And you look… you actually look happy. Happier than I’ve seen you in years, in fact.”
It was then that the waiter came back around to slide their meals in front of them. Once he left, and Toph had a mouthwatering whiff of her food, she replied, “Is that so?”
“It is very much so, yes, and I completely understand you not telling me—or anyone, in fact.”
Toph’s eyebrow’s shot up in a questioning manner as she worked on the food in front of her. She was too hungry to continue entertaining this conversation as she pigged out.
“Of course, there’s the matter of work, but I think that you both also just wanted to, you know, keep it to yourselves for a bit,” Katara said matter-of-factly. “Zuko and I hid our relationship for the same reason, so I get it.”
“I knew about you and Zuko far before the two of you knew about each other,” Toph said with an eye roll as she put her chopsticks down and snorted. “Do you remember when we were all at the palace ages ago, and you and Zuko had been arguing all day about the ‘lack of decor’ throughout the palace?”
Katara sniffled ironically, knowing exactly what time she was referring to. “Vaguely.”
“Uh-huh. Anyway, I know about how you two just ended up in his bedroom that night. It was hard not to notice.” Toph shivered. “The least you could have done was use that huge, eighty-poster bed in there rather than take it to the ground. I’m scarred; I’ve been scarred. It wasn’t a fun time, Sugar Queen, and you’re lucky I haven’t sued you for emotional damages.”
There was a bout of bashful silence as Toph decided to continue working on her noodles. Then, Katara said, “We’re not talking about me; we’re talking about you being in love with your boyfriend.”
“Understood, but I also thought it was prudent to bring up how you didn’t do a great job at hiding your relationship, whereas I did.”
“Aha!” Katara exclaimed, smacking a hand to the table, then clearing her throat sheepishly. “So you admit that you are in a relationship with him.”
“I don’t recall denying it.”
Katara sighed. “Look, it doesn’t matter. All I’m trying to say is that I’m just— I’m happy you’re happy because you deserve nothing less and I just— I have a feeling that he’s the one, okay? So don’t run away or anything like that.”
Toph made a face at that, but she was touched by her words nonetheless. Though she would never tell her as much, Katara’s approval meant the world to her, considering how much she has been there for Toph throughout the years.
Still, she told her, “First of all, I don’t run. And second of all, relax. I don’t believe in any of that crap, alright? So take it easy.”
Correction: she didn’t believe in any of that crap until Kanto.
But she wasn’t about to tell Katara that.
It had been a long week for the both of them, and on a very rare day off, Toph and Kanto found themselves laying down on the ground in the center of her living room. Their living room, more like, since he had practically moved in some months ago. Most of his belongings were comfortably tucked in her closet and drawers, there was an extra toothbrush in the holder, and his side of the bed smelled just like him.
The dynamic that they created brought her so much comfort, more than she ever thought it would. One of the main reasons why she was happy not being in a committed relationship was because she felt free to do as she pleased, to not have to answer to anyone or consider anyone’s feelings but her own. But since Kanto, it’s all been easy.
She hasn’t had to chip away parts of her, she hasn’t had to become someone she’s not. She was just her, and he was him, and it made everything she wanted to avoid desirable for once.
As they lay chatting about the most random things—rumors they heard at work about the junior officers, the pro-bending matchups for this weekend’s game, Katara’s reaction to their relationship—Kanto shifted where he was laying against her chest to look up at her.
“Would you ever want kids?”
It was a question she wasn’t expecting but had the answer to. In the months they had been together, Toph had thought about it more often than not. All of the seeds of doubt Katara had managed to plant into her head after the many, many times she had asked her what if she ended up pregnant someday had been resurfacing recently. She found herself thinking about the answer to that question since she and Kanto became serious, despite the fact that she avoided doing so as much as possible.
She’d had boyfriends before and many a one-night stand, but none of that had ever come close to what she shared with Kanto. This was the first time in her life that she had thought about what came after the sexual encounters or what came after the two-week-long relationships she found herself in. She found herself thinking about where her relationship with Kanto would go—their wedding, their wedding night, their honeymoon, what their life would be like… their kids…
That had never happened to her before, and somehow, despite how much she thought it would, none of it scared her.
“I never thought I did,” Toph finally voiced as she ran her fingers through Kanto’s hair, uncharacteristically gently combing through the knots in it. “I hadn’t thought about actually having kids until after us.”
He sat up at that. She could feel him gazing up at her as he repositioned himself. “Me either.”
“Do you want kids?”
“Want me to be honest?”
“Would be nice.”
“I would want kids, especially if you’re their mama.” He brought her hand to his lips and pressed a kiss on her palm. “Wouldn’t want it any other way.”
Toph sat up and laid back against him, not exactly knowing what to respond to that. She thought about how she had never wanted children, to begin with, how she just expected that she wouldn’t be a good mother because of the parents who raised her. It dawned upon her how her lack of desire to be a mother wasn’t that at all—it was fear. She was afraid of what would happen once she became a mom and the challenges that she would face.
She knew well that she had been a handful for her parents, especially after she came back from helping Aang save the world; the last thing she wanted was to raise someone with a similar character and fail at doing so. In no world would she forgive herself if her kid ended up resenting her the way she still slightly resented her parents as much as she loved them.
But what if she didn’t fail? What if it turned out that she was actually a kick-ass mother and she blew all her expectations out of the water?
It wasn’t something she would know unless she tried it.
Angling her face toward his, she lightly kissed him. “If it happens, it happens.”
“I like that,” Kanto said against her lips before pressing another kiss to the corner of her mouth. “If it happens, it happens.”