Chapter Four: Broken
Toph wakes up with her head pounding and her body aching, but her limbs are tangled around his and she's already smiling.
His name is Kenji, he's a PI , a little older than her, and she thinks she might be in love with him.
He stirs awake not long after, putting roughened palms against her skin and smiling a kiss into her hair.
"Morning, Chief," he rasps (she likes the rasp. It does funny things to her stomach).
"Morning, Detective," she grins. "Ready for another day of tracking, drinking, and yelling?"
"Oh, always," he chuckles, kissing the tip of her nose. "Breakfast?"
"Please," she nods. She's at his apartment, and although it's been years since it was installed in her own place she's still not sure about this indoor plumbing junk; however, she needs to bathe and she has time to kill. The smells of tea and sweet rolls greet her when she gets out, and she contemplates getting dressed before shrugging and walking to the kitchen in one of his shirts, still soaking wet.
It's a while before they make it into work, but she's not worried—her officers are well-trained and have been tailing Mr. Xin diligently, so if he so much as twitches in the direction of out-of-town she'll have him in cuffs before he can open his mouth to squeal. Kenji comes with her, because he's consulting on this case due to his past work experience with Mr. Xin's alleged gang activities. He stands too close and she feels her mouth bruising after an impromptu break, but for whatever reason no one makes a stink about it.
The alert comes at three that afternoon, and Toph has to remember that she's not allowed to break the streets while in pursuit anymore. Luckily, she's a fast runner. So is Kenji. They beat the rest of the squad there.
Xin is like any other rat when cornered, but Toph forgets the full meaning of that statement and charges, rocks at the ready and confident this is one fight she can make close and personal (a little bit of showing off; some up-close combat looks cooler than containing the threat from a distance). She may forget she's blind, but other people don't. Kenji certainly doesn't. It's over in a flash; one minute she's preparing to put Xin in a full-body cast, the next she's on the ground and Kenji is making weird sputtering noises. Xin is borne to the ground and cuffed before he can make another move.
She leaps to Kenji's side and worriedly starts probing his torso, and feels the upright shaft of a knife.
"Hey," Kenji gurgles, "listen to me. Listen." He roughly grabs her chin, but it's gently that he draws her down. He doesn't say anything else, because she latches onto him and only breaks when he starts coughing. There's something warm and wet on his lips that doesn't taste like the tea from earlier. It's seeping into her mouth as she desperately holds on, stroking his hair. She wants to tell him that he'll be alright, but her throat won't work.
Katara's working at the hospital today, but it's too late. He's dead when they bring him in, and she can't heal that. Toph yells and says a bunch of horrible things she thinks she means and runs.
Time blurs for her, but for the outside world, she's absent for three weeks at least. She doesn't attend the funeral. She tells Katara to piss off when she comes by and listens as Katara breaks down on the other side of the door and tries to keep it quiet (there's a second tiny heartbeat fluttering alongside Katara's, and the knowledge almost makes Toph break down and open up, but she doesn't). She spends her days sitting at her table and her nights howling silently at the universe. She doesn't eat often, and after a few weeks, when she does she sits by her toilet and waits for it to inevitably come back up. Aang visits eventually, and kindly doesn't make good on his threat to break down the door because Toph asks him to please tell his wife she's sorry (he refuses her that much, but promises to tell Katara that Toph's being…civil). The kindness he shows in allowing her her privacy doesn't go over her head, either. She makes a mental note that she owes him one and hustles back to the bathroom.
It's almost a month and two puke breaks when there's a hesitant knock on her front door.
She's weak and sick and her hair is in knots, so when the door opens on its own she's considering her defenses carefully. She settles on meteor needles to the face when the quiet tap comes on her bathroom door.
"It's me," Sokka says gently.
"If the door's locked, meathead, it means go away," Toph says, her voice cracking and tears pricking at her eyes. He sits down outside of her door, and she wonders how she didn't recognize him, but her "vision" has been off lately.
"I'm sorry," he sighs. "Spirits, Toph, I'm…I'm so sorry."
He's not just talking about Kenji. She knows this to her core. She opens the door and lets him wrap her up in his arms for the first time since The Incident.
He doesn't speak as she sobs her heart out into his shirt, and holds her hair when she has to vomit again. It comes out as dry-heaving.
"Have you eaten?" he asks. "I mean…could you eat something?"
She shrugs and lets him set her on her feet and follows him into the kitchen.
He takes care of her that night, talking to her and making jokes and trying to lighten the mood, and for the first time in a very long time she feels human again. It's when he goes to leave that she panics. He grabs a blanket off her bed and promises to be on the sofa when she needs him. She takes what she can get.
They visit the grave the next day, and Toph's eyes are dry. She goes back to work, and answers Director Chang's questions politely (it's the politeness that tells Chang that she is still Very Not Okay and prompts him to spare her the lecture about how close she came to losing her job…again. If she's gone any longer it'll be chaos, anyway). She testifies at Xin's trial and doesn't smile when he's convicted of all crimes. Sokka delivers the sentence and gives it without a trace of his regular charm.
It's about the time the trial ends and Toph stands to leave that she senses a weird steady thump when she walks and sits and does anything, really. It plagues her until Katara, rounding out and heavier-stepped and also double-thumping, shows up with a pot of her favorite soup big enough to feed an army.
She keeps the knowledge to herself, enjoying the unexpectedly soothing company of her family. Little Kya and Bumi and their father show up as Toph's tucking into her second bowl, bearing tea and rice and bread, and all in all it's a glorious distraction she didn't realize how badly she missed.
She hugs Katara when she means to say Sorry and punches Aang when she means to thank him, and when all but Sokka have gone she tells him the news.
"Oh." He sits down hard. "Oh, wow."
"Yeah."
They sit in silence. Toph squirms and Sokka processes. He slaps his knees, finally.
"I'm here for you," he says firmly. "Like my own nephew, remember?"
"I think the word I used was niece," Toph smiles, and even though her heart is broken and she's extremely confused she feels oddly at peace.
"Hey." He puts his hands on her shoulders. "I'm here. Okay?"
"Aye, aye, Captain," she says weakly, falling into his chest and letting go when he kisses the top of her head quickly and awkwardly.
He leaves, and she lies awake wondering how it's possible that she loves a man who took a knife for her and a man who didn't let her fall equally fiercely. She imagines she feels a very slight stirring in her belly and spreads her hand there. The cold edge of the meteor, today in bracelet form, warms as she rubs small circles into her abdomen.
How, indeed.
A/N: Yeah. I've bungled many things in this fic. Kenji is one of them, but I could find no way to fit him in earlier, since this particular romance was seriously so quick I couldn't work it without making this chapter another thousand words long with exposition. It was over as quickly as it began, but don't let the lack of longevity fool you; sometimes, romances within the span of a few days can burn as bright and true as those that take years to build.
And I couldn't make Lin's dad some lowlife who left. He had to be a hero, someone worthy of being Lin Bei Fong's father, someone who Lin could look up to, worthy to stand with her many honorable honorary aunts and uncles.