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Sokka was beginning to grow desperate.
How long had she been in there already? Two hours? He knew nothing about how these interrogations worked but that seemed a bit excessive.
They’d had Toph inside a tiny, dark room with one dim light and a large table for way too long and he knew that she was on the very brink of sending them all to hell. The council had also interrogated Sokka in the same room before they took Toph in, but he was questioned for just over thirty minutes; he figured that Toph would’ve had the same fate. But clearly, she hadn’t.
She didn’t need this right now—what she needed was to be with her daughter after all the bullshit they’d been through. That little girl needed her mother as much as Toph needed her.
But of course, the assholes in the council took it upon themselves to investigate Toph and the resources she’d exhausted to find Lin and rescue her after she’d gone missing. They believed that she had acted questionably and unethically in the way she managed everything and were interrogating her about such things.
In all honesty, Sokka found it ridiculous.
Toph was a mother with access to everything she would possibly need to find a missing person—all the technology and officers were at her disposal because of her position as chief of police—so of course she would use what was available to her to find her kid. It was idiotic to assume that, of all people, Toph Beifong was going to be sitting around with her arms crossed, doing nothing, while her daughter had been taken in order to bait her.
As he paced Toph’s office, trying to put his energy into anything but thinking about whatever they were grilling his best friend about, he snuck a look at the five-year-old, sleeping on the couch by the window, mouth wide open, mid-drool. When they’d rescued her, Lin seemed like she hadn’t slept in days, so it was understandable for her to be taking an intense nap in the middle of the evening.
Carefully, he took a seat beside her and gently ran his fingers through her long hair. She looked so much like Toph and was clearly just as tough as she was. When Toph found Lin after kicking the asses of the dickheads who had taken her in the first place, the first thing Lin did was run straight into her mother's arms, not minding the mess of bodies around her. The five-year-old didn’t even shed a single tear until her mother was holding her.
It was already more than evident how brave and strong this little girl was and Sokka couldn’t be prouder. It was as if she was his own.
The thought brought goosebumps to his skin. He’d been there for Lin from the moment he’d found out about Toph’s pregnancy. It followed Kanto’s death, which did a number on Toph. Since he’d known her, he’d never seen Toph so destroyed after losing someone—it was a lot. But Sokka was there for her; he always would be and that was never going to change.
Having seen Toph in so much pain, so distressed, trying to hide her unadulterated fear due to not knowing the fate of her daughter while she was missing was awful. All he wanted to do was relieve her pain, her fear. He wanted to help her, he wanted Lin to be safe, he just wanted them to be okay. It was all he could focus on, all he could bring himself to think about throughout the four days Lin was missing.
Lin had been taken during recess at school about a week ago, and when Toph got the call telling her that she was nowhere to be found during her lunch hour, Sokka had been right there with her. He saw how the smile she was sporting after he’d told her some dirty joke or another dropped off her face, he saw when her expression contorted into one of pure anger, then unmistakable panic and terror take over.
Her voice sounded unlike hers when she told them off and sent them to hell, adding that she would be at the school within five minutes before she slammed the radio down and gripped her desk for a moment.
Sokka’s jaw was clenched shut, his food forgotten somewhere on her desk. He could only see her, how frightened she looked. It was rare for him to ever see that look on her face, but his instinct wasn’t to ask her the obvious question of whether she was okay or what she was thinking, but he took her into his arms and told her that she should do what she had to do.
She hadn’t responded, of course she hadn’t, her only focus was Lin, and from then on, so was his. Toph had given him a firm squeeze on his arm before rushing out of her office to get her people together and find her daughter.
He’d meant when he told her to do what she had to do. He would make sure that she got what she needed no matter what it’d cost him.
And, as he’d learned today, it had cost him.
The council informed him that because he was upfront about the resources he’d given her access to and the laws he’d knowingly overlooked, his position on the council would remain, but he would have to deal with a twenty-day suspension.
Sokka figured that he could’ve had it way worse.
But to be completely honest, he didn’t care if it had turned out worse for him. All he cared about was whether Toph would be okay. As much as she complained about having so much to do, about how tired she was, he knew how much she enjoyed her job. She’d been through too much, and he wanted it all to stop—he wanted her to catch a goddamn break.
His heart clenched as he thought about how much she’d suffered this past week, especially during the four days Lin had been missing. He spent day and night making sure that he could help her as much as he could, trying desperately but failing miserably to force her to get some sleep so she would be able to function the following day. Whenever she did end up dozing off, he would watch her chest rise and fall, listen to her whimper through a nightmare, and try not to comfort her even though he wanted to do nothing more.
Toph and Sokka had been dancing around whatever it was they felt for one another forever, but other things were more important. Their friendship, Lin… other things took precedence and he disallowed himself from thinking too much into it, and that wasn’t going to stop now. He had to be there for her; he had to be her rock, and that was what he was determined to be until they could both handle more.
He could only hope that everything turned out well for her as he continued to gently brush Lin’s hair with his fingers, though he didn’t have to for much longer because he heard a slam in the distance. Within seconds, Toph was entering her office, an inscrutable look on her face, and locking the door behind her. She took a deep breath and leaned back against the door, her eyes shut.
“It’s about time,” Sokka said, trying to sound a bit light in contrast with the mood in the room. “Did they finish their book report?”
Toph exhaled sharply through her nose and the left side of her mouth just barely twitched upward. An attempt at a laugh. That was something, he figured.
She took a deep breath and stepped away from the door and toward Lin to press a gentle kiss on her forehead. She gave her head a slight shake, one that would’ve been imperceptible if he hadn’t been looking at her so closely, so intently. He couldn’t quite figure out what was going on, whether there was anything wrong, which unsettled him because he always knew when it came to her.
After giving her daughter another tender kiss, she straightened herself out, walked to the opposite side of the room, and slid the other window open, allowing the night air to rush into her office. It bothered him that her back was to him.
“You okay?” he asked her, breaking through the silence in the room and Lin’s light snoring.
Without hesitation, she replied, “Yeah, why wouldn’t I be?”
“I don’t know. What’d they ask you?”
“Just, uh, Lin, the day she was taken…Uh, you.”
Sokka was taken aback by the fact that she had so easily told him. He figured that she would use a bit of prying. “What about me? My connections to the organized crime lords of Republic City?”
This time, his attempt at a joke went ignored and he just saw her shrug. Her voice was tight when she responded to his first question. “Just what you did to help, I guess. They, uh, they didn’t—they promised they wouldn’t fire you or anything. I made them promise not to. Your suspension was rescinded.”
Sokka didn’t care about that right then, but he thanked her anyway. His chest tightened at the thought of her defending him and putting her ass on the line for him. He knew she would do it in a heartbeat, he was certain of it, in fact, but hearing from her that she did so made him feel some type of way.
She rested the heels of her hands on the window sill and peeked her head out as if to feel the wind more directly. He kept watching her, trying to see if she would fill him in even though he knew that she wouldn’t do so unprompted.
“Uh, you want to talk about the rest of it?”
“Nope.”
Sokka sucked in a breath and took a step closer to her. “You know, it always helps me to talk about things that are bothering me.”
“That’s funny,” she said with just a hint of humor in her tone. “It never seems to help when you’re bothering me.”
“That would be funny if I wasn’t being serious,” he said softly behind her. When she didn’t respond, he added, “Come on, we’re best friends, and best friends don’t keep secrets.”
Toph scoffed at that. “Best friends.”
Sokka furrowed his eyebrows at that, feeling his heart rate pick up, but not quite wanting to look into why. It wasn’t the time nor the place to examine his or her feelings—because there were feelings. He knew it, she knew it.
But, again, it wasn’t the time. It couldn’t be even if either of them wanted to, and Tui and La knew he wanted to, had things been easier this week.
“I mean, that’s what we are, best friends; partners in crime.” He took another step toward her, this one more hesitant than the last. “Come on. Get over here and talk to me, T.”
His hand reluctantly went up to take hers and she surprisingly didn’t recoil, so he took it as an opportunity to turn her toward him. When he saw the tears in her eyes as soon as she turned around, however, his heart fell into his stomach. “Shit, Toph, come here.”
Her arms wrapped around his midsection immediately and he could feel her holding back her tears, the way she was shaking and breathing serving as his indicator. He embraced her tightly, one hand on her head, holding her to his chest. He knew how much comfort the sound of another heartbeat brought her, so he wanted to make sure she had that.
“I just want to forget this happened,” she practically whimpered. “I want—Lin can’t—what if this all happens again? It can’t ever—this can’t happen again, and I just want to forget it did in the first place, but those—those assholes made me recount every single minute of the time she was missing. Every miserable fucking minute.”
“I know you want to forget, I know. But she’s okay, she’s happy and healthy, and lucky as hell she has you for a mom. This is never going to happen again. Trust me.” He paused. “You want to know how I know?”
She didn’t respond—he wasn’t sure if she hadn’t because she didn’t trust her voice or because she was waiting for him to respond to his own question. Either way, he told her, “It won’t happen again because you’re you, and you’re amazing, and the fiercest protector I’ve ever known. That’s never, ever going to change. You’d kill for Lin, we all know that, especially after you found her. It won’t happen again, Toph.”
“How do you know that? I don’t even know that and she’s my kid. I don’t know if I can protect her—”
“Stop it. Stop. You can protect her and you will—you have been; those assholes that took her had some kind of death wish that you almost fulfilled for them,” he told her firmly, caressing her hair. “You’re the best mom, and I know that this won’t happen again. I know it because I know you, and you never let a shitty thing happen twice.”
Toph let out this one sigh that broke him even more than he already was as she sunk more deeply into his embrace as he let her cry. And for a long time, they stood there until she pulled away, wiping her tears quickly.
She sniffled, turning away from him again. “I’m so much tougher than this.”
“I know you are,” he said, grabbing her shoulders and making her face him. He dared to swipe a strand of her hair behind her ear. “You’re tougher than me, so that’s pretty tough.”
Toph laughed tearfully and wiped the rest of the tears from her cheeks. “That’s a pretty low bar, you know. Not sure if that’s more of a compliment or an insult.”
Sokka grinned at the joke. “Look at you—bullying me already, ruining moments.”
“Don’t worry,” she said quietly. “I’ve got more moments.”
Her words, despite her tone, made him smile slightly, but before he could think too much about it, he cleared his throat. “So, uh, I’m going to head out and update Katara at the clinic. You know her—she’s probably been pacing a hole into the floor because she hasn’t heard anything about the, uh, interrogation. So… I’ll see you around, I guess?”
“What do you mean you’ll see me around?”
“Uh, you know, the saying, I’ll see you around— ”
“Yeah, I know the one,” she said with an eye roll as she wiped her nose on her sleeve when she walked over to Lin. She ran her hand up and down her back to try to wake her. “I meant, what are you doing saying it to me?”
“Well, I assumed—”
She snorted as her daughter stirred. “No one ever told you that assuming’s a bad thing, Snoozles?”
“I—”
“Come over after you’re done with Katara, okay? I could, uh, use the company tonight. And… bring food. Two hours of interrogation makes a girl peckish.”
Lin had failed to wake up, so Toph collected her in her arms, grabbed her bag off the floor next to the couch, and slipped out of the office without another word.
He stared at the open door of her office as though she was still standing there, shaking his head at her with an incredulous smile on his face. This woman… she was something else, but he would never trade her for anything or anyone.
Shaking himself out of his daze, Sokka made for the door and locked up behind him with the key Toph had given him for emergencies, and practically sprinted toward Katara’s clinic, wanting to not keep his best friend waiting.
They had more moments to create.