#1. Time
Well, damn—this Tokka Week prompt seems awfully familiar (I'm citing chapter 16, for everyone who's new to the game.) Here's a slightly different take this time, then.
Tokka Week Prompt #7: Legacy
Few people in the four kingdoms left such a legacy behind as Sokka Hadoka and Toph Bei Fong.
Separately, they were well enough. Alone Toph was the legend of Earth Rumble, the bender all others aspired to be. Alone she was the Bei Fong that wasn't so much of a Bei Fong as the world knew them; she was the fearless champion who'd helped bring the Fire Nation fearlessly to its knees; she was the Runaway and had achieved outlaw status by age thirteen. She cursed like a sailor and drank like one too, and she was the greatest diplomat the Earth Kingdom could have had through her utter refusal to utilize diplomacy.
Alone Sokka was a heartbreaker who'd been the true love of the moon spirit, a boy who'd helped plan the invasion of the Fire Nation at only age sixteen and later became the Water Tribe's beloved chief and foremost tactician. He was the teenager who was startlingly good at poetry but not so skilled at syllable-counting, the hunter who could bring down a mooselion from three hundred paces with nothing but a boomerang. He was a swordsman who grew to outmatch even his master, and without him perhaps the war would never have been won.
It was a well-known fact that the Earth Nation and Water Nation would each talk of Toph and Sokka, respectively, for generations to come.
But together, their legacy was something else entirely.
They left it buzzing on the tongues of storytellers through the ages, regardless of nation. It stung in scars on their enemies and echoed in deeper marks on their friends. Their legacy together was carved in chipped mail chutes in Omashu and the skeleton hulls of the Fire Nation air fleet, still rusting just off the Earth Kingdom's coast.
They left it on Ember Island, the ghost memory of two entwined names still a soft whisper in the sand even after the waves brushed it away, and they left it in the Jade Dragon teashop and the ruptured cracks on its balcony (don't ask.) They were remembered as indestructible, infallible, the greatest warriors ever to fight together.
They were also remembered as the two geniuses who rigged the cake at the third War's End Ball to explode as the Fire Lord and Avatar jointly lit the ceremonial candles. This is not to say anything was every proven—it wasn't—but they were remembered for it by everyone, especially the Fire Lord and the Avatar.
They left their memory scrawled in the young and vivid minds of everybody else's children as well as their own. "So then," Katara and Aang's little boy Enkai loved to say, gesticulating wildly as he narrated, "Uncle Sokka was like, 'I've got you, Toph, and I'm never gonna let you go,' and she was all, 'Okay, now let's go kill 'em!' an' then he threw his boomerang and knocked out, like, fifty firebenders—"
"And Toph bended the airship in half," their daughter Yora—spitting image of her mother—would chime in eagerly, "and then, like, threw it in the water, like, BAM—!"
"Yeah!" Enkai would agree, eyes alight with glee. "And then they totally kicked the Fire Lord's as—'"
"Enkai!"
"Sorry, mom, butt."
"Also," Aang would throw in, glancing sideways at Toph and Sokka, "I think that was me who fought Ozai, wasn't it?"
Toph would shrug innocently. "Kids," she'd reply knowingly—not that she would know yet, but that had never stopped her—and Sokka would throw in a solemn nod.
"And then," Enkai would leap in, determined not to be ignored, "they jumped on Appa and teleported to the Fire Nation and totally beat up Uncle Zuko's crazy sister…"
So in such a way the pair left traces of themselves across the Four Nations: his footprints and the trail of a beautiful white dress on the snowy ground of the South Poles, a number of bottles that disappeared inexplicably from the Fire Nation wine cellar, and even a few distinctive—and not altogether innocent—renovations to the Air Temples, not to mention a lasting influence on the boy who had once been the only airbender left. They were wanted posters and broken vases and stolen disguises. They were small letters bent into the great Wall of Ba Sing Se, painstakingly copied by a blind girl from scratches in the dirt by her feet—he'd written it out carefully with the edge of his boomerang. Sokka and Toph, the writing said. Just that.
They left remnants to show they had been there once, determined not only not to disappear but also to be captured as they were. History's ancient hands have a way of smoothing lines and blurring edges, but Sokka was not Sokka the tactician, nor Toph, Toph the fighter; they were Toph and Sokka, best friends and occasional cellmates, and knew being remembered as anything but themselves wasn't being remembered at all.
And when at last the living part of their legacy came to a close and he passed away in his sleep, she held on for another year before crossing to join him when the spirits called her to. The funeral glowed with the presence of hundreds in the falling dusk of a summer night. Present were both the Fire Lord and the Avatar, and both cried and tried to pretend they hadn't. The Avatar led the Dai Li—reformed and occasionally trained by who else than her?—to bury the casket, outside the Fire Nation palace to remind her what she'd helped win. The grave was near that of a Kyoshi warrior but directly beside Sokka's.
A couple days later, the Avatar—an old man now—and his wife made their way to the wall of Ba Sing Se on an air bison as old as both of them. They touched down just at the inner wall, and the man walked over, placing his hand just below the faded script he'd been looking for. Sokka and Toph, he recarved, precisely as a teenaged Blind Bandit had originally done, and then added, forever.
Some legacies fade.
This one wouldn't.
Ending on an introspective note. Ain't that what everyone does? Oh, come on. Yes. Of course it is ^_^
Oh, before I forget: (1) I basically made up a rule that in the Water Tribe, you inherit your father's last name. Hence, Katara and Sokka Hadoka, etc. And (2) there's no hidden meaning in "Uncle Zuko". He's just called that 'cause the Gaang all consider each other family (feel free to aww…)
So... the really important part. You guys have been awesome with the encouragement this week. Yeah, Tokka Week's a little more than I entirely bargained for, but you've all made it worth it. Another thanks to Fagan for the heads-up! And reviews are always, always appreciated—good to know you're all still with me ;)