Chapter Sixteen: Family
"Oh, I'm sorry Firelord Zuko, I did not recognize—"
"Whatever, don't worry about it," mumbled Zuko. It was all he could muster as he passed the entrance to his palace in such a state for the third time that day. And if he looked as bad as he felt, this was the most humiliating one yet.
"Okay Sparky, we can't wait any longer," said Toph as they made their way across the entrance courtyard, brightly lit with dozens of roaring braziers atop stone columns. "We're here, we need a plan. What are we going to tell the generals?"
"The truth," said Zuko hopelessly, "It's the only thing we have left. We tell them everything, you two are coming with me and explaining about the juice, and we tell them all the things we've tried since this morning. Hopefully having a member of Earth Kingdom nobility there with me will make them slightly less bloodthirsty."
This prospect didn't fill anyone with much hope, and they marched across the courtyard like a group heading to the gallows. As they were approaching the other side of the courtyard, Toph suddenly stopped dead.
"Oh no."
"What is it?" asked Sokka.
"They can't be here. Not now."
"Who?"
"TOPH!" a harsh, tight voice called at them from their left, "Stop right there, young lady!" The other three turned and saw Toph's parents making their way towards them, seeming to glide with their small, deliberate strides almost invisible beneath their expensive flowing robes.
"Shit, what are they doing here!?" asked Sokka.
"We really don't need this right now," said Zuko severely.
"You guys go on, I'll take care of them," said Toph, not sounding nearly as confident as her words.
They left her waiting for her parents and kept going until they reached the ornate doors to the entrance hall of the palace. As Aang and Zuko entered, Sokka stopped and looked back. Toph was steeling herself, but her hands were trembling. It didn't feel right to him to leave her to face them alone, but at the same time he knew the kind of fury Toph could unleash if someone implied she couldn't handle something herself.
"You two go on, Toph and I will catch up," he told Zuko and Aang, and loitered in the doorway, peeking out to observe the confrontation.
"So…..you two are up late," Toph said conversationally.
"Yes, it is late!" scolded Poppy, "And we've been searching for you all day, we've been worried sick!"
"We came here hoping to speak to Firelord Zuko, but he has been indisposed all day as well," said Lao sternly, "Luckily Lady Mai welcomed us and assured us you would return to the palace, but we did not expect to be waiting here until the dead of the night!"
"Sorry…." said Toph, grimacing, "there's been….well, there was an incident this morning."
"Oh, an 'incident,' was it?" scoffed Poppy, "We suspected as much. When we met you as you were leaving your hotel last night, we suspected that you seemed to be in the early stages of partaking in an….unladylike amount of drink," she said with disdain, "And after you stormed off when we tried to discuss the details of your wedding with you, we were afraid you would do something rash."
Well, I'm certainly rash, so I guess you were right, thought Sokka.
"Right. Yes. The wedding. My wedding," Toph stammered, wringing her hands together, "I was actually thinking…..that maybe…..it wouldn't be a good idea….."
This was exactly what Sokka had been afraid of. Toph was the bravest, strongest, most confident person he had ever met, but all it took was one conversation with her parents to reduce her back down to the shy blind girl who had to hide her true life growing up.
"Oh, please, Toph," Poppy dismissed her, turning up her nose, "we've been over this, it may not be ideal for you, but like it or not, you are a Beifong, and certain things are expected of you."
Sokka couldn't leave Toph defenseless like this, and putting a stop to this sort of thing had been exactly why they had done something so insane last night. It was time to put all that conning experience to use.
"There's not going to be a wedding," Sokka announced resolutely as he stepped back out into the courtyard and approached them.
"What!?" both of Toph's parents jumped at once, not having noticed him. They looked frantically back and forth between Toph and Sokka, before settling on Toph angrily.
"And why not?" Lao demanded.
"Because she married me last night!"
Their mouths dropped open and Toph's face turned bright red.
"You — married — last night!?" Poppy stammered, terrified. She glared at her daughter, "Toph, how could you?"
Toph looked like she was contemplating burrowing into the Earth. "I —"
"We could because we love each other! So there's no point in trying to undo it, there's nothing you can do!" Sokka broke in, not letting them get her on the defensive. He figured he had to go all-in with this bit in order to convince them and get them to back off.
"I'm going to spend the rest of my life with Toph, and all the money and status in the world won't change that," he pressed on, not letting them get a word in, "I would do anything for her. I would die for her. She's fearless, strong, clever, funny, kind and beautiful. I've seen her do things people thought impossible as if it were second nature. I am hopelessly — pathetically — in love with her, and I'm not going to waste another day of my life denying that. And if you have a problem with that, then you can bend sand."
Toph's mother looked like she might faint. Her father was rubbing his temples.
"Toph, Sokka," Lao said, grinding his teeth, "I am sure that when you're young a spontaneous wedding in the middle of the night sounds exciting, but these traditions that you sneer at exist for a reason. There are many important people who had expected to be in attendance for the wedding of the Beifong heiress who will never forgive this insult! I am very disappointed in you, Toph."
Toph was too confused to even feel ashamed, "What — that's what you're angry about!?"
"You just found out your daughter married a peasant from the frozen end of the world, and your main concern is that we didn't invite enough of your rich friends?" asked Sokka skeptically.
"Well we're obviously not opposed to the idea in principle," said Lao, "we were the ones who proposed the idea last night!"
Toph and Sokka stood in silence with their hearts in their throats. "What?" they squeaked at the same time.
"We thought we had finally made progress," said Poppy sadly, "we thought we finally found a match that you wouldn't object to and you would finally fulfill your duties, Toph! And you both seemed agreeable to the idea until we started discussing details of the wedding, then you were back to being unreasonable!"
"Well big shock, maybe I don't like the idea of my wedding not being about me and just being a political stunt!" Toph shot back. She couldn't resist arguing just based on the principle of the thing, even though that was not the main crux of this revelation.
Sokka's mouth felt dry. Trying to make sense of everything, he thought about what Tai had told them they had told him. The lovely lady's parents had arranged a marriage for her, to some heir to something or other.
"Well," Sokka said uneasily, "don't you think it's strange you wouldn't want her to marry someone more….I don't know….important?"
Toph's parents chuckled.
"My boy, I think there are few young men in this world more important than the heir to one of the four nations," said Lao, "with the Southern Tribe being rapidly rebuilt and trade resuming for the first time in one hundred years, such a match could provide great opportunities for our House."
"Aw, and they say romance is dead," said Toph sarcastically, her confidence returning. Sokka bit his tongue. He suspected that now wasn't the right time to explain to them that the Southern chiefdom wasn't hereditary.
"Not to mention," said Poppy, ignoring Toph, "you have close personal relationships with the Chief of the Northern Tribe, the Avatar, the Firelord, the Earth King, and the King of Omashu. We doubt there's a more well-connected available suitor in the world. We will admit now that we initially had some hesitation regarding your more….rustic upbringing, but we were reassured by your enthusiasm for your investment ideas for the dowry, which is why we were happy to give it in advance."
Dowry?
Sokka gasped and snapped his fingers. The bag of gold. The gold I put into Teo's shop.
Well, at least we didn't steal it, he told Toph with his foot.
"And I know this upset you last night, Toph, but it is relevant," Lao said sternly, "since the Water Tribe doesn't use family names, you and any of your children can remain Beifongs, which solves our problem of the lack of a male Beifong heir."
"Your 'problem!?'" Toph said in a furious tone that no doubt mirrored how she sounded the previous night, "Oh, well I'm glad you found a way around the terrible inconvenience of me being a girl!" she was shouting now.
"And I suppose it also counts," said Poppy dryly, looking sideways at her daughter's outburst, "that since you've remained close for nearly 6 years, you're apparently the only man on Earth who isn't terrified of her."
Toph turned toward Sokka, crossed her arms, and tapped her foot.
"That is not true!" Sokka said hastily, "rest assured, I absolutely am terrified of you." Toph smirked.
"But of course, we had expected members of the other great houses of the Earth Kingdom at the ceremony to bear witness," Lao said, getting back to what was, as far as he knew, the biggest ongoing crisis at the moment, "at least tell me the Earth King remained in your party long enough to attend?"
"Oh...yeah….right, yeah he was," said Toph as she and Sokka were jerked back to the reason they had come back here.
"Lord and Lady Beifong," Sokka said in his most diplomatic voice, "we'll have time to properly apologize later, but right now Firelord Zuko and Avatar Aang need our help with a matter of global importance." And before they could object, he grabbed his wife by the arm and escaped through the ornate entrance doors after Zuko and Aang.
They made their way through the maze of hallways in silence, trying to mentally sort through the absolutely barrage of bombs that had just dropped on them.
"Well…" Sokka spoke up, clearing his throat, "I guess the wedding was still a way to stick it to your parents, but in a "wish on a lemur's paw" kind of way. Give them what they want, but still in a way that would piss them off and upset all their plans."
"Yeah…." said Toph thoughtfully. Then she started laughing. "It's actually even funnier that way, if you think about it."
"Yeah….but hey!" he playfully punched her in the arm, "How great was I coming in fast with that opening monologue, right? I missed my true talent, I should join the Ember Island Players."
"It was a performance for the ages, Meathead," said Toph, turning her face away from him and trying not to smile maniacally.
It had been a performance for the ages indeed. Sokka had recited an entire dramatic, romantic declaration of love….
And his heartbeat hadn't changed a bit.
Meanwhile, Zuko and Aang made their way down the halls to the guest rooms where his guards were detaining the Earth Kingdom generals, feeling more and more hopeless with every step.
"Even if by some miracle we don't end up going to war, this is going to haunt me for the rest of my life. Every single talk with anyone from the Earth Kingdom is going to open with this," Zuko said glumly. For the first time Zuko could remember, Aang had nothing naively optimistic to say.
It didn't help when they were intercepted by Katara and Ty Lee in the hallway. Aang couldn't even work up the energy to launch into an apology about the trash necklace. It seemed inconsequential to how he had participated in throwing the world back out of balance after finally fixing it a hundred years too late.
"Thank spirits you're back!" said Katara as she and Ty Lee fell into stride beside them, "We're almost out of time, the generals are absolutely livid! Where's Kuei?"
"Absolutely no idea," mumbled Zuko, "Azula didn't have him. She never did."
"WHAT!?"
"Yeah, bad news is, Azula didn't have Kuei hostage, she had Momo," said Aang, "but good news is, we got Momo!" he enthusiastically pointed to the lemur on his shoulder. Katara sighed and pet Momo, but couldn't get too happy about it.
"So….what do we do now?" Katara said worriedly.
"We tell them the truth," said Zuko," Sokka and Toph are catching up with us, they'll tell them everything about the cactus juice, and we'll assure them that we'll continue to do everything possible to find Kuei, and that we've already spent all day retracing our steps to figure out where exactly we lost him last night."
Ty Lee frowned. "But….you didn't lose him, though."
Zuko didn't have patience for the ditzy girl right now. "Ty Lee, I'm pretty sure I would have noticed if Kuei was actually still with us this whole time."
"No, I mean," she said quickly, "we did lose him, but not during your night out. Remember I told you I ran into you guys on the way back to your hotel? He was still with your group then, he went with us back to the room. He must have left by himself while I was….busy with Toph and Sokka, or before we woke up this morning. I had assumed that was when Azula grabbed him, because I really didn't think she'd be able to fight off all four of you, even when you were drunk. She's been so out of sorts lately," she said sadly.
"'Out of sorts!?'" the other three repeated. "That's certainly one way to put it," said Zuko.
"Wait….so, we ran around the whole city like lizardrats in a maze all day for nothing!?" said Aang despairingly. He gave a long sigh, "Well I guess that's a good place to start tomorrow. But for now, the walls are still closing in, we need to see the Generals before midnight and get Mi to send that message. Good news is, if Kuei went off on his own, that makes the whole thing slightly less our fault. You should tell them what you know, Ty Lee, come meet the generals with me and Zuko — Zuko?"
He suddenly noticed the Firelord wasn't next to him. He turned around and saw that Zuko had stopped dead in tracks, breathing heavily.
….like lizardrats in a maze….
The other three walked back to him. "Zuko, are you okay?" asked Katara.
….walls are still closing in….
Her voice seemed far away to Zuko. His heart was pounding a mile a minute. It was insane, but he had to take the chance.
He quickly spun toward Katara and Ty Lee. "You two, go back and try to stall the Generals again, reassure them that all will be explained shortly," he then looked at Aang, "We need to get Sokka and Toph and go. NOW!"
He turned and sprinted back the way they came toward the entrance to the palace.
"What do you — Hey!" Aang called after him, confused. With one final look at the girls, he hurried after Zuko on an airball. "Zuko, what are you doing!?"
As they rounded a corner, they came across Sokka and Toph catching up with them.
"Yeah, yeah, we're coming," said Sokka, "don't be impatient, we can't make anything worse — guys? What's wrong?"
As he reached him, Zuko grabbed Sokka on either side of his head and full-on screamed into his face:
"I KNOW WHERE KUEI IS!"
This chapter is a bit on the short side, and the rest of the chapters in the story will be too. I could have easily consolidated them into a fewer number of chapters, but I couldn't resist stopping on all the cliffhangers.