Just to make my writing job easier:
The ages in the story:
Bumi (13)
Kya (10)
Izumi (9)
Tenzin (7)
Lin (6)
oooooooooo
Chapter 2
Toph was just ready to leave for work when she sensed a familiar walk just outside her window. She pulled the door open just as Sokka raised his fist to knock.
"You know I don't like it when you do that!" he complained.
Toph just grinned and moved back so he could enter. But as soon as the front door closed, she threw her arms around him and started kissing him passionately. It wasn't unexpected, since he had to be away for a few months to help his father in the South Pole and it has been torture for the both of them.
"Slow down… Where's Lin?" Sokka looked around, remembering the little earthbender could barge in at any time.
"It's fine, she's with Mr. and Mrs. Avatar. We're alone."
"Oh. In that case, where were we?" Sokka bent to kiss her again, but he was stopped.
"I actually have something to show you." She took a step back and bended her armor off. Underneath she had just a tight, white tank top which usually highlighted her excellent figure, but now it just made her baby bump all the more noticeable.
"Toph, you… A baby!" was all Sokka managed to say.
"To be more specific… We. A baby." she chuckled, "You're the only one that knows. I waited so we'd tell them together. Doesn't seem fair I get all the questions."
"Oh, spirits, this is… What am I gonna… This is gonna be a problem." he mumbled before thinking it through. He knew what an idiot he was, the instant he said it. But before he could correct himself he saw Toph's pained expression.
He messed up. Big. She already went through one such moment with Kanto. She told him he was about to be a dad and he just left her. And now, Sokka was putting her through a replay of one of the worst nights of her life. He had to pull it together.
"No, no, I misspoke. I'm sorry." he pulled her into an embrace, "I love you and I'm gonna love this baby just the same. And I won't be disappearing for months at a time anymore, I promise."
"Then why did you-"
"Because Suki came to visit today with Zuko."
"So? She has to know, too. She had plenty of time to get used to the idea of me and you," Toph sensed his heartbeat spike, "She did have plenty of time, didn't she?"
"Well, you know how we talked about how telling her might be hard and emotional, but it had to be done? I sort of went another way and didn't tell her. Yet."
"Nice going, doofus! That was your plan! Tell Suki about the relationship first then when she's OK with it tell everyone else to show them that nothing has to change. Now she's gonna think we kept it secret because you left her for me!"
"Not if we don't go around telling everybody about us right this second. Think about it…"
"I feel like I'm the only one thinking about it! They are going to notice the baby soon, I can't keep wearing my uniform everywhere. And that won't work forever, I'm already strictly on desk work at the station, people are gonna talk."
"I get that. And don't get me wrong, I'm thrilled about this baby," Sokka put his hand on her belly, "and I promise you we will discuss in detail how exactly all this will work… But could we maybe, possibly hide our little miracle for another few days?"
"Fine. Our kid will still be right here in a week." Toph was just hit with the realization that they would need to discuss how exactly all this will work and she could think of a few things she would enjoy less. Emotional talk wasn't her thing. And frankly, even though she loved Sokka she didn't love the idea of him moving in here permanently. And she just knew he would make everything into lists and try to plan it all right away. With Lin it was different, since it was just her kid, so her word was the last, but now, they had equal say in everything and she could already feel it was going to cause tension.
"I love you! I love you and you're the best!" he started after she agreed to his plan.
"I know, but it feels nice to hear."
oooooooooo
"Kids, Uncle Zuko and Aunt Mai are here!" Katara yelled before hugging her friends, "Oh, and Suki, I didn't know you were coming."
"That's weird, I sent Sokka a letter." Suki smiled.
"Never mind, we're glad to have you here. You'll all have to excuse Aang, he had a few stops to make today, but he'll be here… Eventually. In the meantime, come in!"
At that moment Kya ran out of nowhere, her hairstyle half done. She shot one look at her mother and then spoke up after getting a reassuring nod.
"Hello, Izumi. You want to see my room?"
The Princess responded to the request by hiding further behind her father's robes.
"Oh, come on, firefly. You know Kya. You two played at the palace." Mai kneeled down to incurage her daughter.
"Bumi, don't make me come get you!" Katara yelled and a few seconds later a furious Bumi emerged from the hall, one of his hands wrapped in gauze.
"I heard you the first time!" he snapped at her.
"Mind your tone." his mother warned him.
"You're the one that started yelling for no reason."
Katara smiled at her guests awkwardly. She wanted to have a talk with Bumi right there and then, but she decided it wasn't appropriate. She thought it best to wait until Aang was there too, before discussing the boy's recent behavior, since it was driving her crazy and she wasn't good at hiding it.
"So what's the story behind the arm, Bumi?" Zuko asked just to end the uncomfortable silence.
"Kya did it!" Bumi pointed at his sister.
"Did not!"
"It's your fault!"
"Enough!" Katara decided to end the situation there and then, "Kya said she was sorry she left her bending water outside, but she didn't make you slip. Now that that's done, Bumi go set the table and Kya take Izumi to play in your room."
Both the kids sighed and grudgingly got on with what they were ordered to do. Bumi left immediately, while Izumi took a few seconds to be ready to leave her parents.
"We'll be right here in the living room if you need us." Zuko told her.
"And no bending indoors, understood?" Mai yelled after the girls closed the door.
"She's not very good yet?" Katara asked.
"Oh, no. She's strong, so any bending in small rooms with wooden furniture would go terribly wrong." Mai explained and sat down next to her husband.
oooooooooo
Tenzin planned himself a perfect afternoon of reading in the gardens, but when he imagined it he was alone. In reality while he was sitting in the grass, reading scroll after scroll, he could feel the earth shake and twitch every few minutes since Lin was practicing her bending at the same time. But he endured it, up until a bit of mud hit the paper he was currently reading.
"Stop! Just stop!" he got up and turned to Lin, "I would have you know, you're destroying a thousand year old manuscript!"
"Sorry!" she ran to him completely covered in mud and grabbed the scroll right out of his hands, "Let me fix it."
"No, no! You're making it worse, let go!" he took it right back, now even more dirty. Seeing the look on his face, Lin waved her hands and the dirt flew from the page and back to the ground.
"Sorry, I didn't realize you were so twitchy about your scrolls…" she let herself fall onto the ground and relaxed, "What are you reading anyway?"
"The Story of Guru Laghima."
"Sounds boring."
It is, he thought, but of course didn't wanna share that. His dad told him he had to read the whole thing before they went to the Northern Air Temple and he wasn't planning on disappointing him.
"It doesn't matter. My dad told me to read them."
"Did you catch the pro-bending match last night?" Lin continued trying to get a conversation going.
"No."
"Oh, boy, you should have seen it! This earthbending girl was all alone and everyone thought it was over when she knocked the entire other team out in the last few seconds!" A few rocks in the distance rose and pounded into the ground as Lin could barely hold her excitement while speaking.
"Wait, isn't pro-bending late at night? How did your mother let you listen to it?"
"My mom is blind, Tenzin! She can't use clocks. And even if she knew I stayed up late, she wouldn't care."
"Your mom's weird."
"You're weird!" she said before realizing it was kind of mean. Tenzin didn't seem all that fazed. He just looked down and continued reading his scrolls again.
"What's so special about that Lahma guy, anyway?" she started again, "Does he fight crime?"
"Lagh-ima. And no. He could fly."
"Yeah, but so can you." she inched closer to take a look at the writing with him.
"He could do it without a glider…" Tenzin started explaining when he felt Lin lose interest suddenly and look into the distance.
"How is my little mud thrower?" Toph was coming toward them, "I assume that since you have time for casual reading, you've mastered the move I showed you."
"I wouldn't say mastered, but look at this." Lin jumped up and pulled a bunch of nearby rocks to her body creating a type of armor. Then she made a few jump-kicks, while the structure remained intact. Then suddenly Toph bended a rock to hit Lin's back.
"Ow." Lin winced and all the rocks fell down.
"Mastered?" Toph laughed, "The point of armor is to keep it up even when you're being hit."
"I know." Lin suddenly sounded sad, "But I've been practicing this all morning."
"I can vouch for that." Tenzin said from the background, making Lin smile again.
"Hi, Tenzin. If you want to see your uncle he just arrived." Toph said.
"After I finish this scroll."
"I'll be back for you, Linny, after work. Just try and get it by then." Toph walked back to the house.
"I can help you practice if you want." Tenzin offered.
"No, you need to read your crazy flying guy stories. Your dad will be mad."
"I like reading at night, anyway. It's more peaceful. So how do we do this?"
"Guess you can airbend some rocks at me." Lin said.
"Come on, come on, you got this." she mumbled under her breath and made the rock armor again preparing to defend against Tenzin's attacks.
oooooooooo
Katara ran around the kitchen, since most of the food was done now. The Air Acolytes tried to help, but Katara always had a certain way she wanted everything served. Plus her waterbending made her the most efficient cook on the island.
"Can I help?" Zuko appeared at the door.
"Perfect." Katara said and turned to the acolytes, "You take those out on the table and me and the Fire Lord will finish up here."
"So what can I do?"
"You can chop that, please."
Zuko obeyed and for the next few minutes the only audible thing in the room was his chopping. He didn't even try to make small talk to seem less weird. It was almost like he wanted Katara to notice there was something wrong.
"What is it?" she finally gave in.
"Nothing, I just thought you could use a hand."
"Yeah, yeah, I've cooked every dinner we've ever eaten here and you never felt the need to help me before today… What's up?"
"I just wanted to ask you about your waterbending…"
"Yeah?" she moved her hands around the air stirring the contents of two pots at the same time.
"I know you can heal people's cuts and stuff, even lightning strikes… I wanted to ask if you can do anything for people's minds." he turned to her.
"Don't stop chopping." She scolded him, "Is there something that you need help with?"
"I've been having dreams… You know, what? Forget it." Zuko started chopping faster.
"We all have them, Zuko. That's war. Aang wakes up screaming sometimes, so do I. I suspect you have more material for yours than most people…."
"It's not like that. They're not flashbacks. I dreamt about Izumi."
"It's normal to fear for them. I do that every day."
"No, Katara. I had a dream of Izumi, with blue fire."
"Well, that's ridiculous. Izumi's nothing like… You know who." she stopped everything she was doing.
"All the dreams are all like that. Izumi turning into Azula. And I couldn't tell Mai, because how do you tell your wife you're afraid your innocent little daughter was going to hurt you?"
"Maybe that's not what they're about. Did something happen that reminded you of your sister?"
"All this time I thought it was about Izumi, because she's been doing really great in her training."
"That's good."
"No, I mean really, really great. Everyone's calling her a prodigy, saying she's the best they've ever seen at that age. And when I train with her I just keep seeing what I dreamed and she's sensing I'm treating her differently… That's why it needs to stop."
"But that's what I wanted to ask, is there any way this has more to do with your sister than your daughter?"
"I do still think about her. How I failed her."
"You didn't fail her. She didn't want to be found."
"But I stopped the search, I gave up on her. Maybe she didn't want to be found, but she wanted to be searched for. Maybe by giving up I sent her a message that I don't care anymore."
"So there you have it. You're finally happy, with your nation and your family and you simply feel guilty that you don't know if your sister was as lucky."
"You're right. It was about Azula. And the first thing I'm going to do when I come home is restart the search for her."
Katara was just preparing to start talking him out of it when Toph barged in.
"I have to split, patrol awaits." the Chief waved, "But not before saying goodbye to the girls in the kitchen."
"Ha, ha, very funny." Zuko rolled his eyes.
"Patrol? Sounds better than screaming children." Suki spoke up behind Toph, "Can I tag along? It'll be fun."
"You wanna go on patrol with Toph!" Sokka suddenly realized their plan of not telling Suki was going to be harder to execute than previously thought, "Are you sure, Su? They get pretty boring."
"Yeah, can I, Toph? I mean, Chief?"
Toph thought about just saying it all there and then. Me and Sokka are together and are having a baby. Any questions? But she could feel his heartbeat going crazy, so she decided the time of keeping the secret wasn't over. What was a little more…
"Of course. The more, the less boring. Come on."
oooooooooo
Why did she have to say patrol? Couldn't she just say she was going to just sit around yelling out orders all day? They would have bought that! Now she was taking Suki on a tour of the most boring neighborhoods in the entire Republic City hoping they won't run into anything remotely interesting.
The doctor said she was supposed to be taking it easy with this pregnancy, but he didn't know Toph. Katara tried the same nonsense on her with Lin, but Toph still kicked around bad guys for as long as her feet would let her. But this time she really tried to stay out of danger without anyone finding out why.
"So is it always so… Peaceful on these patrols?" Suki broke the silence. The street Toph picked first was so calm the only sound you could hear were children playing in their yards.
"Most of the time. Until it isn't." Toph answered.
"Lin's really growing up fast. I saw her earthbending outside. You must be so proud."
"Most of the time. Until I'm not."
And there it was. The scary realization that the two of them really don't have anything to talk about. They worked fine within the group, but just the two of them together like this, no. Nevertheless, Suki still wasn't giving up.
"Did Sokka seem weird to you today? He barely said a word to me."
"Is that so?"
"Yeah, I know his dad was sick and that couldn't have been easy…"
"You know Sokka, he's always weird."
"No, no… I think it's still weird because we broke up." Suki sighed, "And that's actually exactly why I came today. To talk to him… Wait, does that man look suspicious to you, he has that big bag…"
"He's fine, you were saying something about Sokka I think…"
"I think we should follow him. He looks like he's up to no good."
Toph agreed the man seemed suspicious enough, so they walked a couple of blocks after him and stopped to wait him out when he entered a shop.
"So while we're waiting, you had something to say." Toph couldn't deny her curiosity.
"It's nothing, I shouldn't… You know why Sokka and I broke up, right?"
"Relationships are not really my area…"
"The long distance thing was killing us. And he wanted to be serious right away while I wasn't ready, you know? All of you are already parents and I think he just wants that."
So he really did want to have a kid? People would think that someone who has a built-in lying detector would never be afraid about someone not being sincere. But they would be wrong. Toph could be certain that this particular morning, Sokka thought he wanted to be a dad. But if he wasn't being sincere with himself, then she couldn't tell either.
"So I actually came here to tell him that I'm ready now. If he would take me back, I could move to the city, since we resolved almost all conflict back in the Fire Nation. We could have a family…"
"Why are you telling me this?" Toph asked, not really knowing if she felt sorry or jealous.
"Because you're the one mom in the group who actually still has a job, no disrespect to Katara and Mai. I just wanted to ask you about how doable that is, because the Kyoshi Warriors have been my life for so long and…"
"You haven't even asked him yet. Maybe he's not interested." There was just a tiny bit of anger detectable in Toph's voice.
"Where did that come from?"
"He has someone else. OK? So you have no choice, but to stay in the Fire Nation."
"Wait, Sokka's with someone? Who? How long has this been going on?" Suki forgot they were surveilling anything and shifted all her focus to Toph, "No one told me anything."
There it was. The point of no return. Lying now would clearly just be cruel. She had to know, but again, Toph made a promise…
"It's me. He's dating me." Toph spoke finally, but couldn't see the tears start to drip from Suki's eyes.
"I knew it! All those nights he said he was helping you take care of Lin, because you were blind and alone and hurt and fragile… And I actually felt bad for the poor dumped Toph, all the while you were screwing my boyfriend!"
"You wanna watch what you're saying, honey! We never did anything until you dumped him! I would never do that to you… Neither would he. We weren't planning for it to happen. We just realized one day that we both wanted to give it a try."
"Oh, and how long did it take for you two to realize that? I'm curious, since I spent a full week after at Zuko's palace crying my eyes out. How long?"
"A few hours." Toph said, causing Suki to snicker.
Honestly, Toph was just furious Sokka wasn't here to get some of this anger taken out on him. She was his damn ex-girlfriend. He was the one that missed every opportunity for months to tell her. Why did she have to take all of this?
"Suki, you have to know we never wanted to hurt you…"
"I don't care… I'm still asking him to get back together with me."
"What? You can't-" Toph was cut off by an explosion in the building they were surveilling. The blast was pretty powerful so most of the building was already on fire.
"Come on, we have to help!" Suki pulled Toph towards the building, but the Chief didn't budge, "What's wrong with you, come on! There's people inside!"
"I can't."
"What are you talking about?"
"I just can't! OK?"
"You're their chief."
"Pregnant, is what I am! I can't breathe in that smoke, I can't get burnt, I can't even carry people out. I'm not supposed to be here!"
"Sokka and you are…" Suki phrased as a question to which Toph nodded.
"Let's just call for back up." the Chief suggested, but Suki had her own idea.
"I have to try and get them out!" Suki whipped a few fresh tears from her face and was ready to run in.
"I'm sorry we didn't tell you, Su."
After hearing that, Suki nodded and ran straight into the flaming building.
"This is stupid." Toph whispered to herself, "She'll be toast in there without my bending. I think if you were here, baby, that you'd agree we have to do something."
And with that Toph started running after her friend. She almost reached the front door when there was another blast. That was the last thing Toph remembered.
oooooooooo
At least before waking up back at Air Temple Island.
"Oh, thank the Spirits!" Katara's voice was the first thing Toph heard and it gave her a sense of safety. It was fine. They must have found her and Suki and helped all those people. She could feel the chill of Katara's healing, but other than a few sore spots she felt alright. Her armor was off, they must know…
"Is the baby alright?" she asked.
"You'll both be fine. Katara did a wonderful job." Aang walked over to touch his wife's shoulder. His voice seemed so sad, even if it was good news.
"And Lin? Where's she?"
"Mai's taking care of all the kids. They're all fine." Zuko answered her, also sounding a little off.
"Then what's with you guys? I'm sorry I didn't tell about the kid! Why are you all so glum?" Toph asked before feeling someone take her hand. Even without using her feet she somehow knew it was Sokka.
"It's Suki…"Sokka stopped and squeezed her hand tighter, "She didn't make it."
Oh.
"The blast that knocked you out also collapsed the building." Aang explained, "I flew there right after, but there were no survivors inside."
Toph thought back to the blast. She tried to stop her. She tried to tell her, but she wouldn't listen… But Suki wouldn't even have been there if it wasn't for her. After winning a war together and getting home safely, this… This is how her story ends?! A stupid freaking fire after a dumb little fight?!
They all watched as her eyes filled with tears until Katara broke the silence.
"Sokka told us everything, so we'll give you two some space." Katara's voice gave away that she was close to crying herself. The three of them left the room slowly after that and it was just Toph and Sokka.
"I was so scared I'd lost you two." he leaned in and kissed her forehead.
"I told Suki. I told her about us," she put a hand on her belly, "All three of us, before she went into that building."
"And?"
"We had a fight. And I let her go alone in there…"
"And the last thing I did was lie to her." Sokka sighed, "But I'm still thankful she managed to keep you out of there. I don't think I could have gone through that."
"Stop being selfish! She's dead! What do we even… Where do we go from here?"
"I don't know! I don't… know…" he stood up and started pacing across the room, "I guess, we forgive ourselves and… Think about the baby."
"You don't need to pretend you're OK, I know what she must have meant to you…"
"I'm not pretending. I just know we're gonna bounce back from this. For Lin and… Unnamed baby number two."
oooooooooo
I was actually asked about Suki's fate in the comments of another one of my stories set later in the timeline. I gave a vague explanation there and then I felt like doing this whole thing. Anyway, I'll probably do another Tokka short for the fun of it.
Keep in mind this was extra har to put in either the ATLA or the LOK box. I mean, it is mostly about Tokka. Mostly...