XI. Would you go along with someone like me?
Aang had wanted to wait, wanted to check Omashu or Ba Sing Se, would have gone back to the Fire Nation just on the off chance that Toph might have returned there, if it hadn't been for the bone deep twinge of wrongness that had plagued him since her disappearance.
He still practically had to dip into the Avatar state to make himself land Appa outside the gate to the Bei Fong's estate.
What it really came down to wasn't Aang's worry that he would make a fool of himself, or that he might blurt out 'I'm desperate to be despoiled by your daughter' in front of the great and terrible Lao Bei Fong. It was that he didn't really like Toph's parents very much.
Zuko would have scoffed at that, and Sokka would have put a brotherly arm around his shoulders and reminded Aang that he liked everyone, but it really wasn't true. He was happy to open himself up to anyone, eager to give the whole world the opportunity to be his friend. Aang was always willing to take a chance on the good inside people.
But that didn't mean he had to like them.
The philosophy of the air nomads decried the notion of ownership. Coveting material possessions tied one to the material world, weighing down a person's body the way that struggles and grievances weighed down a soul. That was why the Nomads didn't marry the way other cultures did; there were to be no false bindings between them, each belonged to each other and could share themselves how they saw fit.
Kuzon had almost laughed at Aang's bewilderment the first time he'd seen his house, his village, his parents; not understanding that for a seven year old air nomad even the notion of privacy was incomprehensible. As he had grown into a sense of himself, and been further separated by his mastery of airbending some of that strangeness had faded away, but Aang could never quite shake his unease amongst those whose lives were defined by the act of owning.
If there was one family in the whole Earth Kingdom who embodied that, it was the Bei Fongs.
A family who held no noble title, pledged themselves in defense of no land or people, who stood for nothing but the empire they had built themselves on money and everything that it could do.
In some ways it was admirable and Aang knew enough about the wend and weft of people to understand that what worked for the insular and dedicated population of Air Nomads would not work for a country as vast and diverse as the Earth Kingdom. He understood that his own life had hardly been typical of his brethren, but it did mean that he would never be quite comfortable around Lao Bei Fong.
The feeling, Aang noted as he was ushered through the richly appointed home by bowing servants into the presence of the Bei Fong patriarch who looked as though someone had force fed him a lime, whole, appeared to be mutual.
There was the whole stealing away his daughter in the dead of night to drag her off into battle and danger thing as well, but Aang preferred to think it was simply difference brought on by disparate socioeconomic perspectives. In some small way it made him feel as though Lao was less likely to have him beheaded.
There is no way he knows you want to be despoiled by his daughter. Aang reminded himself fervently offering a nod that might actually be more deferent than the one he gives the Earth King.
"Avatar Aang," Lao smiles politely, every inch of his bearing scrupulously ceremonious. "It is an honour to have you grace my humble household."
"I was hoping to speak with your daughter," Aang said, uninterested in dancing around his purpose.
Lao's lip curled with displeasure for a split second before he could banish the expression, but the sound of a lilting laugh from the doorway interrupted the rising alpha contest Aang hadn't noticed he was contributing to until it stopped. "Have you come to steal our Toph away again Avatar?"
It might have been more than eight years since he'd last seen her, but Poppy Bei Fong hadn't changed one iota, she still looked almost too perfect and delicate to be real, like a priceless porcelain vase that might shatter if touched or breathed on to roughly. Toph looked more like her mother now, he noted, but his earthbending master's delicacy was an illusion crafted from tempered steel. He couldn't help but wonder how much iron will Poppy's fragility disguised or whether Toph just got that from her father.
"Toph is not here." Lao told him. "She left yesterday."
"In the middle of brunch," Poppy sighed.
Aang bit his lip to stop from laughing, an action that neither of Toph's parents missed, Poppy's lips quirking infinitesimally and Lao clearing his throat. "She mentioned some sort of errand for the Fire Lord. Perhaps you would have more luck asking him."
"Ah," Aang said as though he didn't know for certain that Zuko had not sent Toph anywhere. "Did she mention where she was heading?"
"Nothing specific."
This meant that Toph's Father hadn't asked or she hadn't told them, very probably both.
"Ah,' He repeated and then immediately felt like an utter fool. "I won't bother you any further then."
But before he could bow and make good his escape, Poppy had crossed the room and caught his elbow. "Nonsense, we could not possibly be such poor hosts as to let you leave so quickly. I am afraid that my honourable husband has business in town today but I was just about to take tea in the garden, won't you join me?"
The look Lao levelled at his wife made it fairly clear that he did not have business of any sort in Gaoling and that he knew exactly what she was doing and resented her interference, but Aang didn't see how he could refuse. Toph couldn't bear her parents and loved them in equal measure with a sort of resigned, obligatory affection that Aang had no reference for and it made him rather pathetically interested in winning their approval, so he followed her mother's gentle tug like a koalalamb to the slaughter.
The garden was bright with new growth, and the high sun chased away the last traces of winter's coolness that laced through the breeze.
"So I take it my daughter is not on a mission from the Fire Lord." It wasn't a question.
"No, I – or we were there. She disappeared from the palace in the middle of the night. I thought she'd gone back to her students," He scrubbed at the back of his neck like a gawky adolescent. "I was worried she'd been kidnapped actually."
"Spirits have mercy on anyone who tried to kidnap my Toph," Poppy laughed and Aang politely refrained from mentioning that she herself had tried that when Toph had first left with him.
"Well I'm glad she's alright for the moment. All I have to do now is find her."
"Is she needed back in the Fire Nation?" A serving girl appeared from nowhere and poured their tea elegantly and with what was likely great ceremony, which Aang was much too tense to appreciate, before vanishing with equal subtlety, leaving he and Poppy alone in the quiet garden.
"No, I think Zuko was happy for the reprieve."
"Something amiss with her students then?"
He shook his head. "No, they're well."
"But you need her." The remark was almost a query, almost innocuous enough that Aang could answer glibly without thinking and he nearly gaped at her; wondering if Lao's disapproval of her invitation was at all genuine, and exactly how many businessmen or nobles made wary by the Bei Fong patriarch's fearsome reputation were put at ease and drained of their secrets at this very table by the lovely, disingenuous, deceptive Poppy.
All Aang had heard about mothers from his friends had been tales of their sweetness and comfort, yet every time he met one properly they turned out to be quite frankly terrifying. A quick mental review had him amending the category to all women. If he had hair, Aang was sure he'd be running his fingers through it nervously.
"I like being with her," He said, echoing Toph's words the first time she'd kissed him, practically able to taste the rain on her lips with the memory.
"I hope you understand that Toph's honourable father will not look kindly on a match as one of your courtesans for the repopulation of the Air Nomads."
Aang was fairly certain his face had turned purple with mortification. "What? No – I – No!"
"It is expected," Poppy's tone was completely bland, as though they might simply have been discussing the rainy spring weather, "that you will repopulate the Air Nation in the… manner traditional to your forbearers. No doubt there are many of less discriminating taste that would find the novelty appealing,"
Aang made some garbled noise that might vaguely have been a question but Poppy simply raised an eyebrow at him. "While we are all grateful to you for your part in ending the war, our requital only extends so far."
Political astuteness might not have been Aang's strongest skill but there were very clearly currents here he was in no position to navigate. "I am afraid I cannot account your meaning Lady Bei Fong." He said, careful and polite.
There was a truly staggering amount of venom in her eyes when she fixed her gaze on him. If a servant had not been in charge of the tea service, Aang would have suspected she was about to poison him. "There is always talk Avatar. No matter how carefully such indiscretions might be kept to your people's temples. Such things can do more damage than you might expect."
At least ten separate jokes about Toph and her own unique brand of discretion flashed across his mind, but Aang's increasing wariness of the conversation's subject made him snap. "What is it – exactly – you are trying to say?"
"Toph is a strong willed girl, and she has earned the right to make her own choices, but I will not have her whored out for you like a common slattern."
"Yangchen's Grace!" Aang stood up fast enough to knock his chair over. "What are you talking about?"
"The hospitality of your people is legendary Avatar," Poppy sneered, "the way your temple elders shared their women with one another and everyone who happened by; brokering relations and treaties with bedroom games."
"Because securing allies with forced and loveless marriages is so much less disgusting." He shot back without thinking, fury pumping in his blood. "My people did not - Where did you hear this nonsense?"
"The lascivious practices of the Air Nation are as well-known as the..." Poppy stopped short, slight surprise chasing its way across her features and suddenly Aang understood. All that hatred in a hundred years of war and ignorance tempered into casually accepted racism filled with rage and despair.
"...as the barbarism of the Water Tribes? The hedonistic excesses of the Fire Nation court? Don't you ever think?" He looked down at her coldly, the part of him demanding balance and respect making his words drip scorn. She flinched at the level of his voice and Aang inwardly recoiled; the idea that he had made Toph's mother afraid of him blowing away his anger like falling leaves. "It's not true." Aang said, righting the chair he had upended and returning to sit beside her. "That's not – I would never."
"I see." There was a faint flush of colour in her cheeks that matched the mortification beginning to crawl its way up his spine, both of them shamed by their actions.
"It's true we don't get married," Aang offered after a moment, "but the nuns had their own elder council and Gyatso always said that they ran rings around the monks on their worst days. Any sharing of favours," he tried to ignore her hard look, "would have been consensual and born of affection. That's part of our laws."
Poppy took in a deep breath and managed to regain a touch of her impeccable hostess persona, though she did take an enormous unladylike bite out of one of the small iced cakes which had been left on the table. "Then your interest in Toph is platonic?"
"I'm in love with her." Aang said without hesitation, sure that it was true for all that he hadn't yet admitted it to anyone. Toph was going to kill him when she found out he'd told her mother first, but he wasn't willing to hide his feelings from anyone. Besides, she appreciated the head on approach.
"But you will not make her a respectable woman?"
"She doesn't need me for that." Poppy almost smiled at Aang's response. "I am all that is left of my people's customs and I will uphold their laws, insofar as I'm able, but Toph… she's the only thing I want. When bonds like that formed among the Nomads the couple would declare themselves to everyone and take formal leave of the temples. The actual wandering among the other nations wasn't as common when I was young," Tension had been high between the great powers of the world even then, though Aang hadn't known it at the time. "Bonded couples usually settled in the trading towns that had grown up near the temples so they could return for feast days or other special occasions."
Towns that had been utterly decimated in the first part of Sozin's purges, wiping out almost all of the airbenders not confined to the temples and providing a perfect staging ground for the sieges that followed. It was why Aang had, to this day, found no others of his kind. They were too detached, too predictable.
"They would simply leave everything behind?"
"Well, we are Nomads," He laughed. "A couple who walked the world were expected to be faithful to one another; it's a serious undertaking, treated with great respect."
"And you intend to ask Toph?"
Aang couldn't suppress his proud grin. "She's already accepted."
Poppy's mouth dropped open in shock and he realized that perhaps telling the woman who was, for all intents and purposes, to be your mother in law that you had already bonded yourself to her daughter not five minutes after she accused you of keeping her as a bedslave might not have been his wisest course of action.
"Nothing's come of it yet!" He assured her, and then realized how that sounded. "I mean I won't ask anything she's not willing to give. She could dissolve our bond and take a hundred lovers if she decided to, I wouldn't want to be with her any less." Aang clamped a hand over his own mouth in a vain attempt to avoid further embarrassing himself. His ears burned from how hard he was blushing.
"You wouldn't care?" Poppy's sceptical tone was tinged with amusement.
"Of course I would care, I'm just not supposed to," He muttered, voice turning from dark to despairing. "I'm a terrible monk."
He had been hoping to garner a laugh, but Lady Bei Fong simply sat back and focused her assessing look on him once more. "You need to have children." She said without preamble. "As many as possible in order to ensure that at least some will have the gift and the airbenders continue."
"The children of airbenders are always benders," Aang said with an assurance he no longer really felt. When he was a boy that had been true, the heights of spiritual purity to which the Nomads dedicated themselves had ensured every child was born with the air's gifts; but teasing aside he had not always followed the precepts of his people. He had taken lives in anger, both under the influence of the avatar state and with full knowledge of what he was doing. He had lied and stolen. He possessed more than was traditionally permitted. Technically the fact that the Southern Air Temple was seen to belong to him was an offence against the traditions he had been taught. Moreover he was the Avatar, things he had taken for granted might not apply to him. "In bonded couples and those who left the temple to live as other nations do, children were always taken back to the monks for training. If Toph did not want to be bonded, but was still willing to be with me, I would take responsibility for any airbending children she might have."
"And if she cannot bear you children?" Poppy stared, unseeing across the garden. "We did try, Lao and I, to have more children after Toph. To have a son who could carry on the family name, but we were never able to conceive again. The physicians said there was nothing wrong, but it simply never happened." She took a deep breath. "You must have children Avatar Aang. It is not a choice, it is a duty. Will you trap my daughter to you anyway? Make her a second string concubine because you love her?"
Poppy Bei Fong was not the first to say such things since he had returned six months ago to the world, a number of women had been offered or offered themselves for the 'glory of the avatar'. It made Aang massively uncomfortable and for the most part he had tried to avoid considering it seriously.
"No," He said, hating himself but knowing it was the right thing. "If we cannot – I won't keep her, I won't put her through that if I cannot commit to her alone. Toph deserves someone who can make her happy, even if it isn't me."
The smile that Poppy bestowed on him was almost too small to be seen, but it seemed more genuine than any expression that had crossed her face since he had regained his seat.
"Toph visited her old nursemaid while she was in town, the Lady Varrin. She attended brunch here at the estate the following morning and there were mentions of research."
The statement was bland and conversational but it was also a lead to where Toph might have gone, a peace offering and a probationary approval. Aang grinned all too widely in return.
"Sometimes, Lady Bei Fong, you are exactly like your daughter."
Mai had appeared at his side like a wraith the day after Katara had offered her a friendly shoulder if she needed it, using the pretext of defending the Fire Lord to hide, which Zuko couldn't help but find amusing.
She didn't want a friendly shoulder and neither did he. Katara cooled his rage by taking his emotions and feeding them back, anger for sadness, sadness for joy; caritas, catharsis. Mai just let him clamp it all down where he didn't have to feel it or deal with it.
Or be hurt by it.
He was aware that this was probably not healthy.
They paced the palace halls together without speaking; Mai knew his schedule well enough that she only turned towards the golden shield's training yards when his work for the day was finished or interrupted and Zuko had no reason not to follow her.
There were more delegates every day, people who fancied themselves privy in some way to the sordid goings on in the Fire Nation descending on the capital like a swarm of locusts. Katara was dedicating all her time to wrangling them back in line. Zuko wanted to assist, but his ministers kept pushing him to continue as normal, allow the people to see that there was nothing which could shake the foundations of their government. He had to maintain his mask of detached stoicism, no matter what meddling courtiers might say cattily over dinner.
And there was no one more stoic then Mai.
Zuko didn't ask her how she felt about the impending trial; he already knew. They had both betrayed Azula once.
It took Toph four days to reach the edge of the Foggy Swamp, just as the sun was beginning to dip towards the horizon, with her rough soles still burning from the scorching desert sand.
Her earth wave technique had allowed her to quarter the time it would normally have taken to reach the Si Wong from Gaoling, but once she had reached the barren expanse Toph was obligated to choose a more conventional method of travel; the shifting sands unable to support the form.
Truthfully, immutability wasn't the real reason she hadn't wanted to advertise her presence with something so obvious. Toph had spent years working on her sandbending; her form and control were next to flawless and she made a point of dedicating a few weeks to specific practice of it in the late fall when the heat was less unbearable. But she couldn't deny that her sight on such shifting matter was inaccurate and almost dangerously unreliable. In the middle of the desert, on her own – though she was loath to admit it - Toph would be vulnerable.
The mingled frustration and terror of the sandbender attack on her and Appa near the sunken library of Wang Shi Tong had stayed with her a long time.
Traversing the edges of the desert had also made it easier to lose the trackers her father had set on her trail.
Toph knew he meant well, but she couldn't help feeling insulted that he thought she still needed his protection or giggling madly when the trackers turned out to be such total buffoons. She had almost given the game away with her laughter when they walked straight past her hiding place and out into the Si Wong, following her incredibly sloppy false trail.
Sensibly, she had kept to the desert's edge, cutting just inside the line of dunes and scrubland that ringed the desert's wide, flat bowl. It had added an extra day to her journey but it was worth the effort for her own peace of mind and the chance to have a fire when the chill spring weather turned frigid at midnight.
Not that she had stopped much when the sun was down, it was far less strenuous to walk when the cool of darkness descended and bury herself in a dune to sleep away the worst heat of the day.
The transition between the packed grassland at the edge of the desert and the low drooping trees of the swamp was surprisingly sharp and she almost stumbled at the unexpectedly solid ground after so long on the roiling shifting sand.
The dry earth gave way to damper soil and the grassland turned quickly to bushes and tall reeds. There was so much earth and plant life in the water Toph was honestly surprised the first time she stepped accidently into a slow moving stream. Tapping her foot against soil so muddy and marshy it barely gave back a vibration, she picked out a meandering path into the trees as far as her sensitive toes could see, hefted her rucksack higher on her shoulders and set off into the Foggy Swamp.
Something is wrong with Suki and Sokka thinks the worst part about it is that she assumes he can't tell.
After nine years together he still doesn't understand her completely and he never will because girls are bewildering and unpredictable and a law unto themselves but he knows her, inside and out.
Suki gasped a sob of breath and her muscles locked, straining, trembling in the circle of his arms for a moment before she went boneless, pressing her face into the crook of his shoulder. Slowly they unpeeled and eased their way back slowly into the soft bed. Suki made some noise of protest at the heat, but Sokka would not let her pull away, refused to relinquish his hold on whatever part of her he could still touch.
He had tried to lure her back to him with contact. Hoped that the sweetness and pleasure they can find together and the brief oblivion it brings would allow her to open up, but instead they have ended up here, in bed together, coiled up and unmoving, touching everywhere but disconnected in a way they had not been in years.
Sokka could smell himself on her skin, underneath the sweat and sweet warmth of her; he could feel the way her body pressed closer with each breath, but she won't– even with the glow of passion still sparking in their veins, she is closed to him. She might as well be in another wing of the palace or back on Kyoshi for all that he could reach.
If she would only tell him she needs space, that things are troubling her he would accept it. Sokka is ready and waiting with time to think and solitude if only Suki would ask him for it. Acknowledge that she knows Sokka and he knows her in return.
"Do you trust me?" He shaped the question open-mouthed against her scarred and freckled shoulder.
"I – Yes, Sokka."
But not enough. He made no move to challenge her lie, simply pulled her infinitesimally closer and tried to sleep.
Toph tripped again and slid on something slimy and utterly disgusting under her feet, with an incredibly girly squeal she couldn't supress. Her legs shot forward on the slick patch, jerking out from under her and depositing Toph firmly on her backside in the marshy water.
This, she decided, was the worst place in the whole world.
Catching the solid vibration of a veritable island of firm ground amidst the deceptive marshland she hauled herself up and moved towards it. The soil was damp, but blessedly solid beneath her when she finally reached her goal, collapsing to the ground and trying to scrape some of the slick, soggy plant life from her calves.
She had entered the marshland with a clear goal and a fairly sure idea of which direction she had to continue in until she reached the ocean, expecting that it would appear in her seismic sight as a vast nothingness long before a guide would have been able to see it, but the path she had been forced to take from island to island through the swamp had turned her around on herself in a matter of hours. Much to her chagrin it was sometimes difficult to discern what was earth enough to support her weight and exactly how for the earth might have been under the water. It was far worse than the Si Wong. At least in the desert she hadn't been at risk of drowning.
Can't you do something about this? She moaned. You're Water Tribe.
But still incorporeal and stuck in your head. Ummi reminded her irritably. Toph had discovered that Ummi was quite a bit like Zuko had been when they'd first met, all wounded ego and demands that they focus on the mission, but without any of the awkward self-deprecation that had made Sparky bearable.
Toph was having more fun than was probably healthy taunting her.
You might have some water related advice to offer.
I can tell you if you go that way you're going to have to fight a very territorial Su Shaung.
Toph stopped immediately, spreading her senses out as though she could find the mythical creature like any other water fowl. Really?
There are all kinds of things in this swamp. The whole place is dripping with spirit world energy.
And you can see it?
Sort of. Ummi said. I mean, everything in the spirit world is connected and since I'm part of that world I can sort of sense it.
That….Is actually really handy. Not that she wanted to admit it. Could you do that for everyone you've been part of?
Ummi sighed. I've never been able to contact anyone but you. Usually my connection to this world is very faint.
Could you show me how?
Would you prefer to die or have Koh take your face?
Toph ruminated on the question for a moment just to annoy Ummi. Death I think probably.
Well that's a shame. She said sharply. Because I don't know how else you'd manage it.
Well you can see what I see -
And it's been amazingly helpful so far.
Toph ignored her sneer. So can't you just make it so I can see what you see? She waved her arms a little, to illustrate and one of her wrists tangled in a low hanging vine. Walking through a swamp with her senses focused mostly inward was clearly inadvisable.
You would have to open your mind to me. Ummi sounded breathless at the thought.
You're already in my mind!
But Ummi didn't reply with words; instead there was an unsettling cold feeling at the back of her mind, which pulsed and disappeared in a strange rhythm once and then repeated the pattern.
It took her a moment to realize that it was knocking.
Toph froze in paralyzing shock, which apparently allowed Ummi to do whatever it was she'd intended because suddenly the sketched out distortion in her perception of the world around her was painted in beads of sparkling light.
"Why is it always blue?" She gasped, sagging back against the marshy ground. Memories of the first and only time she had seen the colour when Aang pushed his way into her brain allowed her to identify what was tinting her seismic senses, but did not help with wraping her mind around something that was sight and emotion and sensation all at the same time.
I think I might be sick. She shoved violently at Ummi's presence in her thoughts and when no response or further disruption was forthcoming rubbed her hands over her face as if to scrub the blue light from her awareness, cursing her own curiosity.
It would have been so much easier to just fight the mythological water bird.
Her perception was so unsettled that she managed to somehow entangle her loose hair in the twining foliage nearby. Toph sat up, yanking her hair free and wincing at the sharp pain as more than a few strands separated from her head.
She was craving that machete Snoozles had carried for so long as new vines seemed to wrap themselves around her wrists out of nowhere.
Batting the clinging tendrils away she readjusted the straps of her pack and moved to free her legs properly when she felt the vines – without intercession or assistance – shift forward and wrap tightly around her ankles.
She yanked away violently, ripping herself free and scrambling to her feet. Vibrations drew her attention as more vines slid from the water or dropped from the trees and landed on her clear patch of ground. One caught her arm, another wrapping her waist like an encircling arm and Toph panicked, tearing a protective dome out of the earth with a violent cry.
Gasping and swearing she dropped to her knees as the makeshift shelter closed over her head and pulled the vine remnants off her skin with a violence usually reserved for creatures with too many legs, rubbing her skin as she shivered with revulsion.
There was a dull thud from outside her tiny shelter, and a trickle of dirt fell from the celling onto her upturned face, followed by another and another. Toph cursed her stupidity for coming here alone and desperately wracked her brain for a way to escape before she was buried under a cocoon of living vines.
A/N: I owe my beta incredible thanks for this chapter, so much appreciation to Newtype Zeta!
