greetings all! i know it's been literal years since i've updated this - i'm embarrassed at how busy school keeps me - but someone favorited it and when alerted, i started re-reading, suddenly sad that i hadn't updated. i'd like to add this to the list of things i'll eventually finish - i hope you can entertain me with a review today - i could use the love... xoxox scorpiaux

Their first two years in Republic City taught them unfortunate lessons. Lynnie, who had originally yearned for siblings with whom to share, staring at children from the primary school walking back home together hand in hand, found she deplored the act of sharing itself. Older and more argumentative – and indeed, having more vocabulary to argue – Kya could reduce Lin to tears over a doll. Bumi was tough despite his inability to bend, catching Lin in headlocks and twisting her arms behind her back until she squealed "Uncle!" He could not do the same to his own sister and found the perverse pleasure of Lin succumbing enough. Kya, at eight, was already the top of her class. She had perfected booger-bending, shoving her brother's boogers to the back of his throat so that he choked and coughed and left her alone. Lin could not do the same, her earthbending not yet strong enough to shift the ground beneath the ten-year-old's feet.

Toph faced a similar aversion to sharing. She had missed Katara and Aang dearly but often found them trite, idealistic. Aang's laws were all worded in an open, passive voice, almost apologetic, leaving ample room for gangsters and mob bosses to inject their own interpretations.

Since arriving in Republic City, Aang had told Toph of his plan to place her as head of their judicial system, a judge to rule all cases. But when asked how many cases she'd need to review, Aang found he could not answer. There were literally thousands – ranging from aggressive rapes to petty theft, big threats to property disputes. Toph needed a scribe to read and write for her, a translator for the immigrants, a whole host of resources that simply weren't provided or altogether inaccessible. Regardless, she worked hard, finding the absence of a romance freeing enough to make her productive. Katara often watched the kids as Toph worked, and she felt at ease at her desk in a way she never felt alone in her old apartment.

At two years, she had rewritten the bulk of Aang's laws, passed them, and ruled on over two thousand cases. News of her arrival made the criminals more careful, and Aang found he had fewer complaints from his citizens, who now – at last – were beginning to feel safe. It was at the end of these two years that Toph also took on the police force, interrogating officers one by one and removing the cops who had been paid off, or had clear connections with the mob bosses. She'd use the gangster's street name, or utter the code name of a drug (gleaned from previous interrogations of criminals) and look for reactions, for quicker heartbeats, for stuttering, for uncertainty.

She could detect their weaknesses, the false baritone in their voices pitching back to hoarse, teenage cracks in her presence. Accustomed to their uniform bringing them power, they did not anticipate Toph's inability to see it. Their badge – once a symbol of power and authority – now made them feel naked, scampering to cover themselves. She saw through them without seeing them at all. In a matter of months, the face of the force had changed. The system was rewritten, the keys and locks altered, the prisons downsized, the sentences more fitting to the crimes. Toph, a small blind single mother, had effectively revitalized the entire police system in a city twelve times the size of the tiny province where she was born.

In the mean time, Katara still refused to blame Toph for Lin's birth, again attacking her brother at every turn – sometimes with subtlety and politeness, other times with a hostility that startled Toph. When he offered to come visit with his family, Katara wrote back shortly that they were not welcome right now. He was now staying at the North Pole, wanting his children to experience Water Tribe native culture, learn the languages, gain some exposure to tribal traditions. None of his children were benders though he had expected as much. Suki was not directly related to any benders, and a geneticist had told Sokka years ago that his own chance of producing benders was low. He didn't mind. Unbeknown to Bumi, Katara's oldest son, he had given his uncle some hope. Watching the energetic boy fight his siblings and challenge all of his classmates made the lack of bending an honorable thing, not a disability, as Sokka had often felt as a child. Sokka and Suki stayed away the first two years. But their presence remained implied, brought up unintentionally by Katara or Aang, or the kids themselves.

This morning, Lin shook her mother awake gently. It was Toph's birthday – a date the bender frequently forgot – and Lin had stayed up all night preparing a breakfast to remember. Toph was a carnivore by choice. She told herself the association had nothing to do with Sokka, but that was untrue. Before he had infiltrated her life, Poppy and Lao would only feed her the freshest vegetables and fruits on the market, grains imported from golden fields, fresh shellfish and ocean animals that Toph could not name if she tried. Now her palate only extended as far as the farm, and Lin – knowing as much – had enlisted in Katara's help.

Toph grumbled and pulled the comforter to her chin.

"Wake up, Mama, c'mon!" Lin's hand smoothed the strands of sweaty hair from her mother's face. "Please wake up! It's a surprise."

"Is anyone being held hostage?" Toph inquired groggily, swinging her legs over the edge of the bed.

"No, Mama, of course not. It's a good surprise, not a bad one."

Toph reluctantly got dressed, Lynnie pulling at her clothes to hurry the entire time. Naked, Toph threatened, "If you keep hurrying me, I'll go out like this," which silenced the seven-year-old for another minute.

At the full table, Katara and Aang's children announced "Surprise!" and Katara offered Toph a huge mug of black coffee.

"Lynnie prepared all of this," Katara disclosed to the birthday girl. "She wanted dumplings and scallion pancakes and steaks and fried eggs for you. We made it all together."

"I helped!" remarked Tenzin, the youngest, as he climbed on Toph's lap to point out the various foods. "I helped make this ones and this ones."

"He did not!" cried Lin. "He's a baby!"

"Tenzin's only a year younger than you," reminded Kya.

"And you're only a year older than Lin, so shut up," said Bumi.

"Jerk face!" returned Kya, preparing to booger-bend. Bumi winced and covered his face.

"Enough!" Aang's voice, not yet subdued by coffee, silenced the bickering. "Go inside unless you're eating," he ordered, and Katara and Toph laughed to see him so annoyed, remembering what a good monk he'd been before having children.

Toph found she had an appetite fit for a birthday at twenty-four. She ate with haste. She tried some of everything. With Katara's help, Lin's dumplings had assumed a perfect crescent shaped, tapered at the edges with the flat prongs of a fork. She missed the oblong, rough dumplings Lin used to prepare, but was so proud of her daughter for her culinary mastery, for being thoughtful enough to put this together. She and Katara discussed the newest law, a domestic violence draft that was facing resistance in the council.

"It's a bunch of shitty old men," fused Katara lazily. "What do you expect?"

"I am on the council, darling," her husband reminded her.

"Oh, besides you. You know."

"How do I bypass them?" asked Toph. "I've done more for this city in two years than any of their old asses have done in a lifetime."

"The kids are inside," Aang warned, his eyes darting to the door that combined the two rooms. "Let's keep the 'asses' to a minimum."

"All we do is swear when you aren't home, Twinkle Dad," disclosed Toph, cleaning off her plate with a piece of bread.

"She's right, unfortunately." Katara ignored the mild horrified look Aang was dividing between her and Toph.

"Seriously, tell me what I'm supposed to do. Aang? You're on the council. You know most of them personally." Toph hated the dependency in her voice, but she felt strongly about this law in particular, and was irked by the sudden obstacles the council had imposed. It was as if, with her success, they had felt the need to restrain her instead of encourage her.

"They're not fans," said Aang after some hesitation. "They're good people, but they've been feeling a little… useless, I guess. You have to remember that they were all officials in the provinces we incorporated into Republic City. They want to pass a few laws of their own."

"Like what?" exclaimed Toph, slamming her mug down. "The city was in shambles when I got here. They haven't had an original idea in a million years. I always ask them what they'd like to add or remove and they never have anything to say."

Aang admitted, "You're right. I don't know what to tell you." He was grateful for Toph's work and could no longer justify backing the council – men he had appointed himself. He sighed, "People being people."

"Jealous, stupid people," Katara said. "Or are they just fans of domestic violence – don't want a law to prevent it – maybe beat their own wives?"

"Please," Toph laughed, "they couldn't beat their own di– "

"How do you like breakfast, Mama?" Lin had left the living room, running up to her mother's chair to swing her arms around her neck. She kissed Toph's cheek. "Happy birthday to the best Mama in the world."

Katara stifled a laugh under her palm; Aang pressed his hands against his eyes, shaking his head.

"It is literally the most delicious breakfast in the whole universe, ever made," assured Toph. "Thank you, Lin-Lin." She took her daughter into her arms, onto her lap, and squeezed her tight.

"What are you talking about in here?"

"Law stuff," answered Toph. She touched her daughter's nose. "What are you guys talking about in there?"

Lin reported happily, "Kya punched Bumi in the face and when he bleeded, we dared Tenzin to lick it! And he did!"

"Oh my God." Katara put down her coffee and sprinted to the next room, Aang at her heels. The scolding and questioning that ensued was muffled by Tenzin's frightened sobbing and Kya's elaborate defense.

"Turns out we were both discussing domestic violence," Toph observed aloud to her daughter.

"What's that mean?"

"It means when a man hits his wife or his kids. Or a woman hits her husband or her kids. Or someone hits someone at home. Domestic means home, and violence means hitting or hurting." Toph sipped the remainder of her coffee. "But it's mostly men who do the hitting."

"Why?"

"Because a lot of men are assholes."

"Damn asshole!" chirped Lynnie happily. She was aware that swearing was a privilege. Her mother never reprimanded her for swearing the way Aang did with his children. In primary school, Lin impressed her classmates with her repertoire of curses – many they had never heard before. And her teachers had learned, since enrolling the girl two years ago, not to call Toph at home for Lin's sailor mouth. "What the fuck do you want?" Toph would snort on the phone, Lin sitting in the headmaster's office in earshot. "Did she kill someone? She just said the word fuck. Spirits, this fucking city."

"Kya hit Bumi this time, though," observed Lynnie now.

"Yeah, but that's different. Not like the cases we see at the office."

"Is that all you do all day?" Lin had paused before asking this, perhaps trying to modulate her disappointed tone. She was worried for her mother; this didn't seem like a fun job, dealing with violence. If anyone could do it, it was Toph, but Lin felt protective of her mother – a trait she was doomed never to outgrow.

"Not all day," answered Toph, "but most days."

"You like that stuff?"

"Are you kidding?" Toph was just coming to the realization herself, but it felt good to vocalize it, bring it into being. "I live for it."