Title: perfectly flawed
Character: Toph
A/N: Um. Yeah. This is kinda pointless :D. I just wanted something to work on when I wasn't furiously typing on my stories, something more...drabble-ish that was constrained by shipping or a specific character. However, this is not Taang. What it is an unsual--and probably unlikely--persective on Toph's parents and Toph herself, so feel free to crit.
perfectly flawed
The Bei Fongs have no daughter. The small, pale girl sitting on their shelf at home is no more a person than the lifeless statues that guard their front gate. She is tiny and sightless and weak and all they need as a reason to live.
(she's everything the want and more)
Toph knows this. She knows that however fragile and vulnerable they say she is, in her parents eyes she is unbreakable
(imperfect)
and a china doll hung up in their living room, an empty shell with an ugly face and no feelings to hurt.
(they want it that way)
Her obsession with becoming strong has never been anything but a false truth, because, in reality, Toph's parents have never wanted anything less than perfect.
(you're too fragile, they say, and hide the pain because those who refuse to be hurt suffer worst of all)
They need her more than they'll ever admit or she'll ever care to know because she is Imperfect and they are Fake.
(the Bei Fongs needed something to fix)
Imperfect with a capital I because everything is always about her.
(she doesn't want to lose herself in the crowd)
They are Fake with an F because they are—
(—perfect)
and strong and invulnerable and unreal.
(real people break)
They needed someone like her; someone so brute and blunt and honest and truly real
(the mask keeps slipping)
so they can tear her apart without ever hurting her
(hypothetically)
and piece her back together just the way they like.
Strong is what she wants—needs—to be, because they will never think of her as anything less.
(she's smart enough to know when to lie)
It's her very own personal obsession, being strong and unreachable and aloof and distant from everyone
(from herself)
because if she reaches too far, that weak
(imperfect)
creature will come stumbling right back out.
Toph never tries to make her parents understand that she is breakable, that she can be broken, because there is no way to tell them except to go out and—
(—do it.)
She hasn't felt this alive since her first time earthbending; since her first time alive.
(she can feel him breathing)
Toph doesn't like guys like him. It's plain from the tone of his voice; the beat of his heart; that he is one of those that will always strive to be better, to be almostsortkinda perfect.
(her goal is imperfection)
From the beginning of the match, Toph can feel it in her bones that she will lose. He is different
(freersmarterstronger)
than anything she's ever faced up against.
She doesn't want to lose
(but she does)
so Toph draws back and readies the earth to fire at her will.
(the ground breathes with the rise and fall of her chest)
It's a pretty lie, like the pain her mother smears across her face, because she knows that she's not really gonna win.
(but she will)
Just for this once, though, this once in forever, Toph doesn't want to fight it, doesn't want to be indissoluble, invulnerable.
(imperfection is a beautiful thing)
So when the wind comes and his heart begins to pound
(like the wings of a hummingbird, so fragile, so breakable)
she knows that the earth will fall with the whoosh of her breath and she—Toph, the greatest, the Imperfect—will, just this once, let herself fall.
(make me break
make me real)