Commentary: Fourth snippet! Hope you enjoy it. =) Thank you so much for taking the time to leave your comments—I really appreciate it! I'm also posting this from a smartphone, so if you see any errors in this chapter, chances are I've wholly missed them. Please let me know about them if you happen to spot them.
DELIVERY
CHAPTER FOUR: BCC'd
or
Toph is the Worst Wedding Planner Ever
Sokka considered this. The flutist was out of tune, he noticed, and Toph's dress had five little smudges on the hem where she'd stepped on it coming to meet him. "Married," he said.
"Yeah." Toph's grin faded to a serious half-scowl. She lifted a finger to pick her nose, thought the better of it, and lowered the digit.
"To who?"
She used the almost-nosepicker finger to prod his chest a second time. "To you."
"Oh." Sokka considered again. "You mean people are supposed to think you're getting married to me today, right? Because—"
"What I need you to do," interrupted his friend, "is go through the ceremony with me, and then at the end of it find some reason why you can't say yes to me being your wife. I don't care what that reason is, but you're good at improvising! You're the man with the plan, right?"
"I—"
"Damn right you are!" She clutched at his wrists, a hint of desperation in the movement. "Please," she said. "Please. My parents, my… my stupid parents, they…"
She tried to smile. Sokka, horrified, watched it bloom and wilt again like a cactus flower in the desert, and then Toph continued, tone a bitter snarl, "They're lucky I love them, you know that? They're just—I mean, they are so lucky, because if anyone else was harassing me like this I'd just smash them into paste and be done with it." The ribbons on the front of her dress shivered as Toph inhaled, held the breath, and let it out again in a hiss. "They want me to get married so badly that they've started paying suitors to court me! There are hordes of men following me around—waiting to chat me up everywhere I go too! Everywhere!" She punctuated each syllable of the word with an infuriated foot-stomp. "Do you have any idea," she raged, "how hard it is to maintain a reputation as a warrior—as anything serious—when you're being trailed by a pack of swooning male idiots?"
"Can't say I've ever had that particular problem," Sokka put in, but Toph ignored him and went on.
"You can't just kill 'em either. Apparently they're important people." She mushed her lips together. Those were painted too, Sokka realized. "And locking them in rock up to their nuts is enough to get jail time because they're all stupid sissy princesses—"
"That really would hurt, you know."
Top gave him a flat, merciless glare. "They serenade me at night. Badly. They send me bouquets of peonies—I'm allergic to peonies, Sokka, but did you know that explosive snot fits are considered an expression of praise in the Makapu region?"
"That's definitely news to me," commiserated the tribesman.
"They even," spat the diminutive Earthbender, "write me poetry. Poetry." Reaching up to take hold of her eyelids, Toph peeled them away from her pewter gaze and all but roared, "I'm blind, damnit! BLIND!" She maneuvered the flaps of skin up and down like window shades.
Sokka surveyed Toph as she continued to seethe, his hands on his hips, his mind worlds away from the boiling spew pouring from his best friend's lips. Three words echoed again and again in his head: me. Toph. Marriage. Me. Toph. Marriage. Me. Toph. Marriage—
"Me," he said aloud. Toph fell quiet mid-bitchfest, mouth ajar. "You," he tried. And finally: "Marriage."
Some merciful deity—or just an irate conductor—snuffed out the horrendous wind ensemble, leaving only the breeze's low whisper and the rustle of trees around them. Toph, eyes narrowed, shook her head and provided after the briefest pause, "Nooo. You, me, not-marriage. Weren't you listening? The plan is that you're supposed to say no to the whole marrying me thing."
Sokka attempted, "I just don't—"
Fweet squealed the flutist a final time. Teeth bared, Toph stomped a foot, listened with relish to the distant resulting, "GWACK!" of pain, and hissed, "You just don't what?"
Her small chest heaved. Standing before him with her legs squared and her hands crooked into small ferocious-looking death-claws, Toph dared—silently—Sokka to offer up a challenge.
Years of suffering through diplomatic meetings between the Avatar and his sister, however, proved now to be a boon to Sokka, and the tribesman peaceably waved his hands and murmured, "Easy there, Thunderpants. I just don't understand how me leaving you at the altar is going to solve your problem. You know—men following you everywhere and stuff." Despite that the gesture was lost on Toph, Sokka wagged his fingers in the direction of the Bei Fong estate. "Won't your parents just start sending them after you again?"
"Thunderpants, heh"—a dim grin cracked Toph's granite snarl—"that's not bad." Shaking her head, she pivoted on her heel slightly away from Sokka, bent such that the yellow dress rucked up to mid-calf. The early afternoon sunlight shone down her pale legs—the tops of her feet were a thorn-story of crisscrossing scars, the edges of her toes still specked by the shining flesh of burn wounds long healed. Sokka stared at the evidence of a friendship spanning years until a muscle jumping in Toph's cheek drew his gaze aloft again.
Quiet persisted. This time no incompetent flutist thought it prudent to provide a distraction.
"If all goes according to plan, they'll stop with all this suitor nonsense because they'll have their hands and hearts full pitying me," Toph said at length. She relaxed and supplied Sokka a smile, the expression tinged with preemptive victory and a hint of what looked suspiciously like surrender. It made the tribesman's belly clench—Toph just didn't do surrender.
He queried, "Pitying you?"
"Yeah, Snoozles. Think of it—think of what people will say. 'Poor little Toph, left at the altar by the love of her life,'" sighed the Earthbender. She nibbled her lower lip. "My parents are crazy," she muttered, "and traditional, and sometimes I might want to kill them, sure, but at the end of the day they're my parents and they love me. And because of that love, they'll take one look at my heartbroken face and marrying me off will suddenly be the last thing on their minds." Blowing her bangs into their usual scatter, she finished, "I'll bet you ten silver pieces on it."
"I'll take that bet," Sokka replied immediately. "Your plan has a flaw. A big one. Hu-uuuuuge."
"Uh-huh?" Toph lifted both eyebrows. "And what's that?"
"While your acting skills are pretty sweet," admitted the warrior, thinking back with a smirk to their days swindling swindlers in the Fire Nation, "they're pretty limited too. You can pull off the helpless little blind girl bit when you want, sure—it helps that people expect it. But heartbroken?" Head cocked, Sokka persisted, "Can you really convincingly pretend to be heartbroken? I mean c'mon, Toph—"
The breeze coiled around them and Toph lifted her head. Her eyes met his. It was accidental on her part, of course, but for Sokka the effect was profound anyway: like being punched in the gut by the Boulder or something.
Not since gazing in the mirror after his breakup with Suki had Sokka seen anyone look so heartsick.
Flicking her eyes away again, Toph shrugged. "Who said anything about pretending?"