50~
For a week, Katara watched Toph make sure to never be alone with Sokka. She also tended to avoid Suki, but less strenuously. Katara's heart went out to her, but she was becoming impatient with her friend by the end of the week. She was convinced that talking to Sokka would ease Toph's mind, and she thought she had convinced Toph as well. And this constant anxiety was doing much more harm than good. Yet Toph, so like her element, maintained her stubborn silence.
Until the morning when Toph declared, "I think I'll leave this afternoon. Sugar Queen, you seem happy to stay here a while longer, right?"
Katara blinked at her. "Yeah, I was…" she said, too dismayed to tell anything but the truth. What was she doing, leaving without even talking to Sokka? She was already so miserable about it, how could telling him make it worse?
Toph nodded as though confirming something to herself. Then she took a deep breath. "Sokka, wanna walk me to the edge of the city after lunch?"
Sokka, all innocence, perked up and said, "Yeah, sounds good!"
And Katara breathed easier.
Lunch was very jolly between the four of them. Taking decisive action seemed to take a weight off Toph and she was rambunctious and impudent and told foul jokes, like nothing in the world was bothering her. Katara, relieved for her friend, laughed right along, even though the jokes were quite foul. Sokka noticed nothing unusual about anything, blessed with that male thick-headedness with Katara alternated envied and cursed. But Suki sometimes slipped Katara short glances, questions without words, full of concern. And Katara had no answer to give her.
After lunch, Toph threw all her clothes and odds and ends back into her bag and she and Sokka set out for the edge of the city, leaving Katara and Suki behind. The leftovers put away and the dishes washed, Suki looked seriously at Katara and said, "She's going to tell him she's in love with him, isn't she?"
Katara hesitated. But they were already gone. Telling Suki wouldn't affect things one way or the other. "I hope so," she sighed. Then added, "No offense or anything."
"You hope so?" Suki repeated, sounding confused but not incensed.
"I mean, she's not trying to entice him away from you or anything. But she's cared about him for years, and it's really starting to weigh on her. I think it'll just do her good to get it off her chest."
Suki ruminated on this for a while, and Katara let her. Finally, Suki said, "I like that he's handsome, obviously, but I wish fewer girls were attracted to him."
Katara pushed down the immature giggle that came from hearing Sokka called 'handsome' and instead replied, "Yeah, I bet that's tough." Though in Toph's case, Sokka's looks had nothing to do with it.
Sokka returned an hour later looking subdued, and went immediately to Suki and put his arms around her and buried his face in her shoulder. Katara decided to make herself scarce for a while and went down into the street. Choosing a direction at random, she set out to see the sights. The week she'd already spent in Republic City had been split between Sokka and Suki's apartment and the Council building, seeing all the great stuff Sokka and Suki were putting together. So she gave herself the time to wander the Water Tribe district, admiring all the varied ways the Northern and Southern cultures had imposed themselves on the existing structures of the city. She eventually ended up at Republic City Park and wandered through there for a while, but got turned around when she tried to leave, and ended up in a part of the city she didn't recognize. But since she was on a mission to give Sokka and Suki some personal time she didn't particularly care, and followed the street she found herself on. Its curve made it so she couldn't see more than a block ahead at a time, so the sudden sight of Air Temple Island way out in the middle of Yue Bay startled her so deeply she stopped walking. The Island was perfectly framed by the buildings at the end of the block, and the late afternoon sun perched at the very tip of the Temple's tower, making it look like a burning torch in the middle of the water. Its loveliness brought on a stir of nostalgia.
Her feet carried her onward till she fetched up against the railing at the edge of the quay. The Island really was beautiful with the low sun glinting off the light stone, and the glimmering water laid out all around it like a carpet of silver and aqua and gold. But the nostalgia was gone, had been gone almost as soon as she identified it. Leaning on the railing, she examined her feelings for this place where she had lived for so long without ever feeling it was 'home'. She had loved it, certainly, had helped found it, and because of that felt a degree of possessiveness over the place that she knew was unhealthy and should go on her list of feelings to expunge. But she had been truly happy there, for a while, with Aang, before the other Airbenders came back. Before Aang was truly happy.
This thought sobered her. Had it always been a trade off? If the Airbenders never came back, would she have happily stayed with him for the rest of her life? When the Airbenders came back, Aang was happier than she had ever seen him before. This hadn't phased her at the time: 'Of course he's happy,' she had thought, remembering her own premature joy at meeting Hama. 'Who wouldn't be?' But it never occurred to her that he stayed happier with the Airbenders than he ever was with her.
Perhaps, she hoped, this epiphany was enough to alleviate her residual feelings of responsibility and guilt towards him. But no. Of course not. However happy he was with the Airbenders, she had still hurt him very badly. She had to figure out how to deal with that properly, without trying wiggle out on an emotional technicality.
As she watched, a small flock of air bison flew down towards the Island from out of the east, from almost directly over her head, and landed on one of the courtyards. Katara strained to tell if Appa was among them, but they were too distant for her to tell. She had been assuming Aang was at the Eastern Air Temple, helping reestablish the old patterns of Air Nomad life, but she realized she had nothing to base that on, and was suddenly anxious over it, and regretful that she hadn't gone with Toph earlier. Nothing to be done about it now though.
The sun was almost completely down by the time she returned to Narook's Noodlery and made her way upstairs to the apartment. Suki and Sokka were on the squashy sofa, tucked up close next to each other, each reading. Sokka looked at her sort of blankly when she came in and asked, "Where've you been?" but Suki smiled at her gratefully, and Katara smiled back.
A/N
Sorry to all the Tokka shippers out there. The way it's written here, it's not ruled out for the future, but I couldn't think of a good way to break up him and Suki without making it too complicated.
No chapter tomorrow because it's Saturday, but there's only five chapters to go! Wow! If you've stuck with it this far, thank you! :)
All characters are owned by Bryke, Nick, and Viacom
E.I. signing out
