Disclaimer: I do not own ATLA
Hair was difficult for her when she was just starting to learn seismic sense. The vibrations through her feet most clearly show her things that are close to the ground and solid, like muscle and bone. Hair sits at the top of a person's frame, can be tied up or let loose, can be shaved like Aang's or cascade down a back like Katara's. It didn't really matter in the big picture, since Toph has not once needed to know someone's hairstyle to bury them in a fight, and she could always ask if it turned out to be important.
She knows her hair is black. She can't do anything about the color, but she likes her hair the way it is. It doesn't get in the way, and she has done her hair in the same style for so long that it's muscle memory - not being able to see it doesn't matter, and she's not planning to change it any time soon.
Sokka has a "warrior's wolf tail" that Katara says should be renamed a wolf cub tail, which makes Sokka squawk in indignation. He and Katara both have dark hair, and Aang has dark brown hair too for the brief period that he actually has hair.
Suki's hair is red - Sokka calls it a dreamy auburn when he's gushing about her after crossing the Serpent's Pass, which Katara later explains is a type of red. Toph has never heard of a person with red hair. Red is the color of the Fire Nation, and fire is dangerous and burning (and another thing she can't really "see"), which she shouldn't associate with Suki.
She does though.
When Zuko burns her feet, she feels truly blind for the first time in a while. Yes, her hands can still feel vibrations as she crawls away, but it's not the same. They aren't trained for it in the same way her feet are, and she loses a lot of the details of her "vision." The world feels fuzzy until she heals. Sokka stays close to her until he leaves for his "fishing trip."
Her feet are fine by the time Sokka and Zuko return from the Boiling Rock, and maybe that's why she knows who's on the airship before she even gets off, or maybe she hears it in Sokka's voice, in the excitement and adoration he hasn't really shown since the Serpent's Pass. She remembers how broken he sounded when he learned of Suki's imprisonment during the invasion and forces herself to push her thoughts out of mind.
Suki is a constant until after Zuko's coronation. Toph thinks maybe she'll go away when Azula attacks the air temple and things can go back to the way they were, but Sokka insists on bringing her along when they escape on Appa, and Toph feels that burning red feeling cropping up inside her. Suki's there on Ember Island, at the play, mocking Sokka about the moon spirit, while Toph cracks jokes about the muscled specimen portraying her and pretends not to care about the couple's banter. Suki's there during the comet, and Toph isn't red enough to be glad when the airship breaks apart with her on the other side, but the childish part of her hears the pain in Sokka's voice when Suki tells him to leave her and wonders if he'll ever sound like that for Toph.
She gets her answer when she's dangling off the side of an airship, Sokka's hand the only thing anchoring her as her feet swing wildly through empty air, and Suki suddenly emerges to save them.
Sokka becoming Toph's anchor among the group was sort of an unspoken decision. He was just always there when they were on Appa, on a boat, hurtling through the sky on a Fire Nation airship. She tells herself it's logical because Sokka is tall and strategic, and it makes the most sense to have the nonbender with her when her "sight" is compromised so Katara and Aang can focus on any combat if need be. When the war is over, though, there are far fewer group excursions on Appa, and much more time for Sokka and Suki to be a normal teenage couple. Toph doesn't need an anchor as much these days.
He's happy. Toph can hear the smile in his voice. He gets to be with his dad and Suki, and his mind is active with plans for how to rebuild the world. Toph throws herself into metalbending. She wonders if she'll look anything like Suki once she grows a bit older, and then she shakes the thought out of her head because caring about looks cannot end well for blind girls.
Katara helps her try a different hairstyle once. Her cool hands pull half of Toph's hair back into an intricate set of braids, and allow the remaining half to fall past her shoulders after being tamed with some hair oils. Katara says it looks very pretty, and she's not lying. Toph asks her to take it out anyway. She can imagine what people would say if she suddenly went around with braids in her black hair. Toph suddenly hates the color black. She never cared about colors before.
Katara, who has eased up on her control issues but remains as caring as ever after the war, seems to notice Toph is upset about something after the hairstyle incident. She asks her about it and gets a loud, brash denial for her efforts. "If you want to talk," Katara says finally, "I'm here. I'll just say this - I promise whatever you're feeling is perfectly normal, and you might look back at it and laugh in a few years."
From how carefully the advice is phrased, Toph wonders if Katara has figured it out. Years later, Toph will finally ask about it when visiting to meet baby Tenzin. Katara will laugh and confirm she knew. Toph will tell her she was right - it is funny in hindsight, and Sokka and Suki are still an enviable warrior couple.
It is not years later right now, though, and Toph simply avoids the lovebirds where she can. She doesn't arouse suspicion from anyone but Katara, given Toph's well documented dislike for emotional things.
Suki finally corners her on a balcony at the Earth King's celebration for the anniversary of the war's end. Toph feels the female warrior's gait approaching once she shakes off the Earth King's persistent questions about relocating her metalbending academy to Ba Sing Se with royal funding (and creating a new guaranteed army of metalbenders for the Earth King in the process - as if Toph would let that happen after how wonderful the Dai Li were). There's no natural way to escape from the conversation without making it abundantly clear she's avoiding someone who's supposed to be one of her closest allies, so she stays.
"Toph, how are you?"
"I'm alright. Busy knocking heads at the academy. What about you?"
"Oh, guarding Zuko is a full time job. I'm just glad to have the night off." Suki pauses, taking a sip of her drink, and Toph notes she's wearing something light and flowy for the occasion. "I was just thinking it's been a while since Sokka and I have really caught up with you. I know you don't care for boats, but we'd love to have you at Kyoshi Island sometime."
Suki is so sincere even as she reminds Toph that Sokka and Suki have pretty much moved in together on Kyoshi Island when they're not traveling for their responsibilities. Toph thinks about that expression "seeing red" and wonders if it can apply to blind people, to how irrationally upset she feels in that moment.
"I'll think about it, but it's hard for me to get away from the academy." She does not extend an invitation for them to visit her, even though she knows it's the proper thing to do. They shouldn't know enough about formal etiquette to realize she's snubbing them.
"I think Sokka misses you," Suki says quietly. "He sees Katara and Aang and Zuko all the time, just not you."
"Okay, well, I'm not a world leader, am I? Katara's his sister, Aang's the Avatar and Zuko's the Firelord. Of course Sokka's seeing them all the time, he's a chieftain's son - they literally have to work together."
"But you're the founder of metalbending. You're a leader in your own right, and that has nothing to do with not seeing Sokka."
Suki is so calm, and Toph feels brittle and jagged and red. "No offense, but you don't know me, sweetheart. And if Sokka misses me or whatever, he can come talk to me about it."
"You know he's no good at talking. He'll just think it's something he did and let you go." Suki cocks her head to the side. "Is it something he did?"
Toph is grateful Suki has no seismic sense so she can lie. "No, it's just the academy. When I have time for Sokka, I'll find him."
"I hope that's soon." Suki has never lied to Toph. She leaves the balcony, and Toph is alone.
When she has time to figure out what's wrong with her and why she can't be around him or Suki for more than a few minutes without that burning feeling inside of her, she'll have time for Sokka. That's not tonight though.
It's not the next night either, or the next week, or the next month. It's over three months later, when she wakes up one morning to the sensations of him pacing outside the academy.
"Sokka?" She stumbles to her window and calls out to him, barely remembering that she's not dressed.
"Toph! Didn't mean to wake you." He laughs nervously. "I was just passing through the area and thought I'd call on my favorite metalbender." His heart rate is erratic, and Toph thinks it's too early for whatever nonsense has brought him here.
"Okay? I'll be out in a minute."
Sokka has grown in the few months since the anniversary celebration, not that she got a super close look at him there. Now that he's not on the run anymore, he's eating enough to put on muscle, and Toph thinks she can detect a layer of stubble running along his jawline.
"Dang Sokka, is using a razor that hard? You're not even the blind one."
"I'm growing it out," Sokka protests weakly, hand going up to rub his chin. "It's supposed to look like my dad's when it's done."
"How long is that going to take? Until the next comet?"
He laughs, and Toph feels his heart rate steady. "With my luck, probably."
She plants herself in front of him. The banter comes easily, but it's only surface level, given how little they've seen of each other over the past year. "So, what do you want?"
Sokka shifts his feet uncharacteristically. "I wanted to see how your metalbending academy's going. If you're open to it, I have some ideas on how your more experienced benders could help rebuilding efforts in the Earth Kingdom."
It's not a lie, Toph decides as she reads his pulse, but it's definitely not the whole truth either. She raises an eyebrow. "I guess you can watch the morning practice and we can chat over breakfast. Is that fine?"
He agrees. Toph is painfully aware of his presence during the practice, like pressure on an old wound as she goes through the motions. She's a bit more critical towards her students in an attempt to refocus herself. They all sigh with relief when the breakfast bell tolls, metal falling to the ground as they make their escape before the sifu can call them back for extra practice.
"Jeez, and I thought Aang had it bad when you were teaching him earthbending." There's a smile in Sokka's voice. Toph's face suddenly feels strangely warm.
"Yeah, that's why he doesn't have the stuff to be a metalbender." She shrugs. "Not that these lily livers are much better. I doubt they'll be doing any serious rebuilding anytime soon."
"Maybe not soon, but someday." Sokka's stomach growls. "Could we get that breakfast first though?"
The academy's breakfast is not nearly up to Sokka's standards; anything too complex or heavy would definitely interfere with that fine tuned sense for earth in metal that her students are still developing, so most meals are packed with simple proteins, carbs and greens boiled together with a hint of salt. Toph would be lying if she said she didn't regard the food as another form of toughening up her students outside of the practice field, but no one's ever accused her of it to her face.
Sokka lifts a spoon of his gruel and watches it dribble back into the bowl sadly. "They must really want to learn metalbending."
"Or they have nowhere else to go." Toph takes her own bowl. "Come on, let's go talk somewhere private."
She leads him to the hill at the northeast corner of the academy's property, where there is enough sun and shade and wind for Toph to feel grounded in solitude. It's a good view, too, by her standards and by everyone else's - she has a strong vantage point of the entire academy and the town below them by standing here.
"Tell me about your plans," she says as she sits down with her back against a well-worn tree trunk. Sokka sits next to her and talks about Fire Nation industrialization in the Earth Kingdom, and how losing the metal infrastructure the Fire Nation brought would be a blow to the Earth Kingdom's post-war economy, and how metalbenders could allow the Earth Kingdom to reap the benefits of industrialization without remaining overly dependent on its former colonizers. It's a lot of geopolitical strategy that Toph learned about in her old life before joining Aang, but she didn't care for it back then either.
"Anyway, I know your kids are still novices and probably shouldn't be allowed near heavy machinery right now, but if you're looking for a way to promote metal bending outside of combat, there are a lot of industrialists who would pay your graduates a hefty salary to come work for them," Sokka chokes down another spoonful of gruel. "Assuming you don't just want to take the Earth King's offer and turn this into the Royal Beifong Metalbending Academy, of course."
"I didn't know you knew about that."
"Suki heard him pestering you about it at the anniversary party. You know, I didn't even realize you were there until she told me. I would've come and found you before you left - Suki and Katara did not think my jokes about the stuffed duck were funny, and Aang and Zuko were too surrounded by diplomats to be any fun."
Toph would've liked to be with her friends at that hellhole party, but she was too nervous to face Sokka. She all but fled after Suki talked to her; she figured Sokka wouldn't be far behind, and it seemed like her prediction was correct.
"You know how I feel about parties," she says simply, shrugging.
"Yeah, I do." Sokka scratches the back of his head. "Still, it feels kind of weird that you didn't even say hi to any of us before sneaking out. We used to love making fun of parties like that."
"Is this why you're actually here?" Toph says, feeling a flash of irritation. "To mope about how we're not as close as we used to be when we were flying around on Appa trying to end a war? The world's at peace now - you're busy with your plans for rebuilding, and I'm busy with mine." She gestures at the academy below them. "If you don't have anything else to discuss besides personal matters, I'm afraid I have to ask you to leave."
"Whoa, what? I'm not doing anything wrong; I had a real reason to come here, and I thought it would be nice to catch up with my friend Toph too since I haven't seen you in forever."
She ignores the strain in his voice as she stands up and dusts herself off.
"Unless you don't want us to be friends anymore," he challenges. The statement hangs heavy in the space between them, Sokka looking up at her waiting for an answer, and Toph feels a lump in her throat.
"Of course that's not what I want," she mumbles finally.
Sokka heaves a dramatic sigh of relief. "Oh, good. I don't think I could've handled it if you said yes." He gets up and stands next to her, still attempting to study her face behind her usual curtain of hair. "What's going on then? Why are you avoiding me?"
"I'm just busy."
"We were at the same party three months ago and you didn't talk to me once, and you ran off as soon as Suki invited you to come visit us."
Toph winces. "She told you about that?"
"Yeah," Sokka sounds genuinely dejected. "Come on, Toph, since when are we anything but honest with each other? Did I do something wrong?"
"No, you didn't. It's all me, okay? I'm being a bad friend, and I'm sorry."
"Please. You've pulled me out of enough holes - literally and metaphorically - that I'm never going to think of you as a bad friend." Sokka places a warm hand on her shoulder. "Whatever's going on, I really wish you would talk to me about it. And if you don't want to…we can talk about something else. Like, have you seen the almighty Fire Lord Zuko's hair lately?"
Toph smiles. "It must be a family tradition for their hair to look like a wet eel hound."
Sokka cackles and smacks her on the back. "Now, that's what I'm talking about! I'm stealing that for my next letter to him."
They laugh together, and Toph ignores the ball of nerves in her stomach to toss an arm around his shoulder like old times. It's harder to do than it used to be - they've both grown taller, but he's grown more, and his shoulders are broader - but somehow, it doesn't feel as intimidating as before.
"Seriously, you should come to Kyoshi Island sometime. I think you could do wicked things with their metal weapons. Or Suki and I can bring some to you."
"That would be cool," Toph says, and she ignores the red the statement evokes because she really wants to mean it. She hopes if she gives it enough time, she will.
"Your academy uniforms look great, by the way. The black and green is a really cool brand for metalbenders. The ultimate Beifong look."
Toph smiles.
A/N: We are not romantic Tokka stans in this house, but we loooove platonic Tokka.
~Bobbi