When Pigs Fly
An ATLA x LOK-ish kinda crossover sorta twenty truths-like thing
By
EvilFuzzy9
I
The best day of Toph's life was, beyond a shadow of a doubt, the day her daughter was born. The delivery was hell, of course, as were, honestly, the months leading up to it.
The sore joints, morning sickness, and strange cravings (she'd actually asked her husband to cook her stewed sea prunes!) were all bad, but the worst part of it had been how everyone had fussed over her and treated her like everything she had never wanted to be. When she felt them look at her, with her so-called "pregnant glow" and her swollen belly, she could tell that they didn't see the mean, nasty, tough-as-nails Chief Bei Fong, or the legendary earthbender and war hero Toph.
No, they saw a vulnerable, blind, pregnant young woman. Even if they never said it, she could tell just from the way they acted around her.
Her knucklehead husband was the worst of the lot, of course, never letting her do anything more strenuous than walking to the bathroom without a fight. He refused to see that she could handle herself just fine thank you very much and insisted on doing everything for her. She didn't mind the pampering at first (and the sex in those first couple of months was some of the best they'd had since their honeymoon), but as the weeks turned to months and the weight in her belly slowly grew bigger and heavier, it began to seriously grate on her nerves. By the time her water finally broke, she swore she would strangle the idiot if he didn't give her some space to breathe.
(Though that still didn't mean she wasn't glad when he put her hand in his as she began the most hellish two and a half hours of her life.)
And yet, when it was all over and she felt Katara place the small, vulnerable, living, breathing human being in her arms for her to realize with a start that this was her daughter, that she was a mother, she was prouder than she had ever been in her entire life. Prouder than when she won the Earth Rumble for the first time, prouder than when she invented metalbending, and even prouder than when the Lily Livers finally stood up for themselves against those little Firebending Academy brats and vindicated her as a teacher.
"She's beautiful," Toph heard her husband whisper. She could feel the trembling of his hands and the smile on his face, and she could hear in the tone of his voice that at that moment he felt every bit as proud as she did.
"Yeah..." she said, mirroring his tone. "I think she looks just like you."
And Sokka laughed.
II
Toph would never know it, but she was not born blind.
As a newborn, her eyes had not been the clouded, misty, unseeing pale jade her friends would see later on whenever they looked at her – no, they were a deep, rich, clear forest green. In fact, apart from being born a week and a half early and a quarter pound underweight, Toph was perfectly healthy.
For the first year of her life, Toph could see just as well as any other infant. Of course, she was every bit as lively and vocal as she would ever be. She loved to crawl all around the house, exploring every nook and cranny, much to the amusement of Lao and Poppy Bei Fong, who took their daughter's adventurous nature in stride. They loved her dearly, and were so proud of her. Back then, they could still see how strong and full of life their daughter was.
But with all the suddenness of a lightning bolt, everything changed a month after Toph's first birthday. In the middle of the night, Lao and his wife were awoken from their slumber by a frantic young servant girl. Toph was sick, the girl told them. She had a fever, a high one.
When the young parents came to their daughter's bedroom, they saw her lying motionless in her cradle. Poppy put a hand to her daughter's forehead, and felt that the girl was burning up. And even though Toph's eyes were open, she did not respond to the touch. She was not moving at all.
In a panic, Lao ordered his servants to bring him the best healers in Gaoling as he and his wife stood helplessly over their daughter and watched and waited and prayed. For three sleepless days and nights Lao and Poppy stood fearful vigil over their daughter while numerous healers and leeches did everything in their power to keep young Toph Bei Fong alive. The two did not eat or sleep even once while their daughter was still in the clutches of illness. By the end of the third night they were ghastly and haggard and noticeably paler.
But on the fourth sunrise since Toph fell ill, good news came at last: the fever had subsided, and their daughter was alive. But the joy of the occasion was marred, for the illness had not departed without taking its toll, without exacting a considerable price on their daughter.
The one year old's body had been ravaged by the disease. Toph's constitution was much frailer than it had been, and her eyes, once a window into her seemingly limitless vitality, now seemed to Lao and Poppy like those of a ghost: dead and unseeing, hidden behind a veil of cold mist.
The sight of their baby lying there, so weak and fragile and helpless, stayed with Lao and Poppy for the rest of their natural lives. And though with time Toph's body eventually recovered from the ravages of illness, she never regained the use of her eyes.
III
The first time Toph tried to run away from home, she barely made it ten steps out the door before she was spotted by one of her minders. The second time she didn't even get half as far. The third time she made it farther than the first, but only by a few paces.
It wasn't until her seventh escape attempt that Toph finally managed to give her minders the slip and make it into town. She wandered Gaoling aimlessly, taking in the sounds and the smells of the bustling marketplace.
She was amazed. It was nothing like back on the estate, where the only people around were servants who went quietly to and fro, never doing anything to make their presence known, never speaking unless spoken to.
But here it was different. Everything was so loud, so alive. The confused chatter of dozens of different conversations drifted in and out of her ears, everyone speaking with a different voice, a different opinion. The air itself seemed to thrum with a hundred different voices, each one proclaiming its individuality, its uniqueness. Never before had Toph imagined that a place could be so noisy, or so crowded. Here, nobody knew her as Mistress Toph, daughter of Lao and Poppy Bei Fong.
Here, she was just another face in the crowd. Even the finery of her garb did little to distinguish her from any other wealthy merchant's daughter as the throng flowed this way and that in countless continually shifting eddies and currents, swirling around her like water swirled around a rock in a stream. She was anonymous, just another passerby in the busy market.
Unbidden, she felt the impulsive desire to stand tall and shout to the sky: "I'm here! I exist!", to proclaim her presence to the world. She was tired of being Mommy and Daddy's dirty little secret, their weak, helpless, blind mistake. She wasn't daughter. She wasn't mistress or young madame. She was Toph. Simple as that. She was who she was, and no one could change her. She was solid as a rock.
She could practically hear the earth singing beneath her feet, thrumming with life and energy as she breathed in deeply and laughed.
"I'm Toph," she whispered to the air, feeling the fragrant breeze tickle her cheeks as it passed over her head and tousled her hair.
That was her first real taste of freedom. Her first taste of independence. And even when the servants finally found her and dragged her back to the estate, they could not take that away from her.
IV
The day Toph first met the badger-moles, she had run away from home again after getting into another argument with her mother. She never did remember what the argument had been about, except that it had been stupid and pointless and she had just wanted to get away.
So she ran. She ran as far as she could, tears running down her face as she climbed over the tall, broad hedge that bordered the grounds, scraping her shins against twigs and branches. Her shoes fell uselessly from her feet as she scrabbled up and over the hedge, dropping down on the other side. She didn't care that her feet were naked. She didn't care that she didn't know where she was going. All that mattered to her then, at that moment in time, was getting away, as far away from her home as she possibly could.
So Toph ran.
She ran for what felt like hours, blindly tumbling through brush and bramble as hot, painful tears stung and pricked at he unseeing eyes. Branches snagged and tore at her clothes, but she didn't care. The hard, rocky ground pained her feet, her bare soles raw and ragged and throbbing with soreness, but she didn't care. She was angry and hurt and she just wanted to be alone.
When Toph finally stopped running, the air felt cool around her, and she could hear her own labored, shuddering breaths echoing faintly, farther and nearer and back farther again. She could not feel the sun on her neck or shoulders, and as she leaned to one side she could feel her small, weary body press against a hard, curving wall of natural stone.
She marveled at the feel of it against her skin, cool and rough and faintly pulsing. It felt almost alive. The memory of hurt and sorrow fading as she took in her surroundings, Toph fancied she that if she perhaps listened hard enough, she could almost hear the Earth speaking to her.
For a moment, she felt somehow aware of every twist and branch of the cave as it plunged deep into the heart of the land, far beneath the tread of human feet. But as soon as it came, it was gone, and once more she was lost. Alone.
But then she felt warm breath on her face, breath that smelt faintly of earth and petrichor and fresh garden soil, and Toph realized that perhaps she wasn't as alone as she thought.
V
Toph had actually been terrified, the first time she fought in the Earth Rumble. Not because she was afraid she would get hurt, of course.
She knew none of her prospective opponents would even be able to touch her. She could sense them duking it out in the ring one match after another, could feel every twitch of their muscles, could hear the blood rushing in their veins, and could perceive every tiny movement of the earth as it was rocked and cracked and tossed about under their half-baked bending.
As earthbenders, even the most skilled of them were only decent at best. They were all flash and posturing, with no real substance beneath. Even the reigning champion, The Boulder – apparently a former Earth Kingdom soldier who had been discharged from the army for insubordination and disorderly conduct, according to the rumors she'd heard, and probably probably one of the only genuinely good fighters in the line up – clearly cared more about bragging and putting on a show than actually fighting.
Toph knew that not one of these people were anywhere near her skill. Not a one of them could move the earth as effortlessly, as naturally, as she could. None of them bothered to listen to the ground beneath them. Not like Toph. She was the earth, and the earth was her. As immovable as a mountain, harder than bedrock.
It did not matter that she was smaller by far than any of the other competitors. The very ground beneath her feet was an extension of her body, a part of her that she could bend and move as effortlessly as an arm or a leg. She did not fear getting hurt, because she knew she wouldn't, as certainly as she knew the soles of her feet.
No, her fear was not getting injured in the contest. No, the thing she feared was that somehow her parents would find out what she was doing, and then they would never let her out of their sight again. They saw her as a helpless, fragile little girl. How badly would react if they learned she was participating in something so brutal, so barbaric, so fun?
Her only hope of remaining undiscovered, aside from the shabby commoner's outfit she wore as part of her persona, was that her parents would think something like this beneath them, and pay no attention to any stories of a little blind girl beating the asses of fully grown men in this year's Earth Rumble. It would doubtless help that this event was only established a few years ago. It wasn't even a blip on her parent's snooty, high society radar.
Toph told herself this to calm her nerves, before taking a deep breath and stepping out into the ring to jeers and taunting from the audience.
"—and this year we have a surprising newcomer! She may be tiny, but she packs a ten ton wallop! Ladies and gentlemen, the challenger! Hailing from the island of Nunya, put your hands together fooooorrr! The Bliiiiiiiind Baaaanndiiiiiiiiit!"
Toph smirked.
It was showtime.
A/N: I've been working on this for a while – since even before I got the idea for Unexpected Aftermath, and while I call it a twenty-truths-ish thing, it is actually currently only at fifteen. But I figured I might as well upload what I have so fare in installments of five truths per chapter.
Let me know what you guys think of it! If it gets a good enough reception, I might upload the rest or even finish it. ;)
TTFN and R&R!