I own avatar. I also own The United States of America and a condo on Mars.

Heartbeats.

Toph knew what they meant the minute she felt them.

Two heartbeats.

With Lin it had been different. It was sudden and out of nowhere, and threw her completely off balance. She had been in the middle of a training session.

She loved her job, after all, and wasn't about to put work on hold for an upset stomach. Besides, even if she did feel awful, the police academy was still so new, and she had an obligation to show up every morning. So despite what may have been her better judgment, the earthbender went to work that morning as if nothing was wrong.

And for the majority of the day nothing had gone wrong.

She was facing off with three of her new recruits. She was barely breaking a sweat as she bent metal sheet after metal sheet in their direction and dodged the ones flying back at her.

At some point in their session, the three recruits took a different approach. The youngest, who was lengthy, light and nimble, lept into the air and seemingly didn't not land. He completely disappeared from her senses. She steeled herself, planted her feet and activated her seismic sense ten-fold, hoping to find him using his heartbeat.

She counted the heart beats: 1 (herself), 2, 3, 4, 5. Five? Where was this fifth one coming from?

She froze. "Everyone stop."

She heard the creaking of wood as the previously invisible bender returned to the ground. So that was how he'd evaded her.

"Sorry, I was just-."

"Shut up." She spat. She stood silent and counted again. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. Five! "There's someone else here." Yet, she could not find a body to attach the thumping to.

"Uh. No there isn't."

"There is." She insisted, abruptly bending down and placing her hands on the earth beneath her. Maybe it was someone under the ground. She concentrated hard, but felt nothing but solid earth below for miles.

"Sorry, Toph, but-." One of the trainees tried to speak up.

"Shut up!" She was getting impatient and starting to doubt herself. She stood up and began pacing back and forth, but that extra heart beat persisted. "Everyone get out."

"We're already outside."

"Then get away." She commanded. She felt the ground beneath her crack as she stamped and two out of three of them scattered.

"Toph," The final one took a step towards her and rested a hand on her shoulder.

"Get out of here, Kanto." She shouted, and he obeyed.

Once alone, she took a deep breath and tried to settle herself. But the quiet pumping reverberating from the earth into the souls of her feet didn't go away. She walked to another part of the training arena, and funneled her senses into the space directly around her, but it was still there.

She had thought there was something wrong with her earth bending. She had immediately radioed Katara in a panic.

"There's something wrong with my bending. Either that of my heart is turning crazy." She told her friend.

The healer had wasted no time in getting her on an examining table.

"I'm worried there is something wrong with your heart and..."

Her voice had trailed off as she moved water across Toph's body.

"What is it?"

"Toph, there isn't anything wrong with your heart."

"So it's my bending then."

"No. It's not that. You were right about the extra heart beat."

"That's ridiculous. Don't sugar coat it, sugar queen, I can take it."

And that was how Toph found out she was pregnant for the first time.

So, on that particular day when she swung her legs off the bed and felt two heartbeats - a solid, stationary pumping she recognized as her own heartbeat, but also a rushing, fluid, and brash thumping she had never felt before - she knew exactly what it meant.

"Shit."

I think this wants to be a one shot. BUT I am a sucker for reviews, so if I get a lot of them on this then I could be persuaded to write a few more chapters, or at least crank out a few more loosely related one shots.