Notes: Legacies is a story about families; it's centered on Toph and Lin, but deals more broadly with parents and children in the Avatar-verse. The complete cast is: Toph, Lin, Sokka, Suki, Aang, Katara, Kya, Tenzin, Azula, Ty Lee, Zuko, and Toph's parents. The primary relationship is Toph/Suki/Sokka, in a rather nebulous way, and the only non-canon secondary pairing is Azula/Ty Lee. The story sits between AtLA and Legend of Korra, although it was written well before season 2 of Legend of Korra aired.

This story was originally posted as one long piece, but with numbered sections representing different periods of time; here I'm posting each numbered section as its own chapter, although they vary considerably in length - I don't find the formating on FFN condusive to reading a 10,000 word fic in one piece, and it seemed the most natural way to split it!

1

"I'm having a baby, Katara," Toph says. "I'm not allowed to have a baby, I'm not a grownup, I'm only thirty-two. Damn it! Fuck! I'm going to drop it on its head and it's going to hate me forever." I should have just stuck to screwing around with women, she doesn't say; damn it, I hardly sleep with guys at all. Testing Katara's good humour over the details of her sex life is a project for another day.

Katara sighs, and makes tea, and does her best to be patient about explaining Toph's practical options while Toph sits at the kitchen table and fidgets and kicks her feet, feeling even more like a little kid in the face of Katara's calm. It pisses her off, even though Katara's saying all the things she needs to hear, and she wonders if everyone feels this much like an irrational twelve year old even when they're the chief of police and officially meant to be responsible adults. Probably, she decides, if only because the alternative reflects badly on her, and she's objectively pretty great, if she says so herself.

By the time the conversation is over she realises that she actually is going to have a baby. She's really going to go through with it, even though it was never actually an item on her to-do list.

Knowing that she doesn't have to if she doesn't want to kind of makes it feel more OK, weirdly enough, but maybe her friends would say that's just like her. Fuck them anyway, she thinks affectionately.

"I figure I can't fuck it up more than my parents did," she tells Sokka. "Or, you know, Zuko's."

Sokka considers this. "Well... sure. There's always that," he says doubtfully, "but you can probably safely aim a bit higher than that, you know."

"I don't know," Toph says. "That asshole ran off when I told him, you know. It's not like I told him I wanted to get married and live happily ever after in a big house by the sea with a lemur-cat or anything. I don't know what the fuck his problem is. I figured he might like to know."

"In that case the kid's probably better off without him, don't you think?" Suki says, "you're still not looking after it alone, you know. We're all here."

They're sitting close and warm on each side of her and just for a moment Toph lets herself be buoyed up on their encouragement and trust. "You saps," she says, stretches with her whole body and kicks them both lightly in the shins in the process. By this time it's more a running joke than an actual allergy to affection. At least with them.

"Yeah, whatever," Sokka says. "You like it."

She was worried sick about telling them and now she can't really remember why.

But there's still work and hell if she's going to fall behind. The city won't wait for her, will it? It's still growing and changing and taking shape, and she's got to watch over it, because Aang has the best ideals but he can't be trusted with absolutely everything. Sometimes he can just be way too soft, she tells herself, and doesn't particularly mean it. But still: she's got stuff here to look out for.

"Just don't work too hard," Aang says, amused. Aang always sounds like he's amused by her, maybe by the world in general. At least until he's really pissed off, and by the time you can hear that it's too late.

"Right," she says, "I should do like you do. Sneak out of meetings to play with your kids and claim it's for the sake of the balance of the universe."

"Yup," Aang says. "You should. Otherwise you leave them alone for five minutes and then suddenly you've got a teenager."

"Oh, yeah, and that's awful," Toph says, grins. She gets on pretty well with Kya, personally, but there's obviously a thing going on there.

"No," Aang says, quieter. "But it's different. They change fast. Don't forget that."

He leaves her sitting in her office among the piles of paperwork that've been waiting for her to harass someone else into reading for her, thinking about who this new person is going to be and what the hell they're going to think of her and whether she's going to lose focus for a moment and fuck the whole thing up. She kind of wants to apologise to them already, except whatever, they're going to have to deal with her just like she's going to have to deal with them.

She hates the waiting and she hates the physical inconvenience. She doesn't actually give a fuck about what the newly developed field of journalism has to say about her condition, although most of her friends are incandescent on her behalf.

"It's not even a good joke," Sokka spits. "If it wasn't unethical I'd get that guy fired."

"There there, councilman," Toph says. "Anyone'd think you were the one who was going to be a single mother. If they're trying to insult me they can try harder."

"I like this one, though," Suki says. The sound of paper rustling. "I think I'll frame it and put it on my wall." She strikes a pose, feet planted wide and firm on the floor - an impersonation of an earthbender, Toph figures, feeling after the stance. "'Toph Beifong earthbends baby from the rock itself! Is there anything she can't do?'"

"Wow," Toph says, "they've got me down! I should start telling people that one."

Although it makes her think of her younger self, too; Toph who takes care of herself and doesn't need a single person in the world. She says.

It wouldn't be as easy to laugh at without these people around her, who've learnt how to negotiate her need for space, who leave her alone for just long enough and then break their way in just right so that it doesn't seem like an intrusion at all. Who know that she'll show up sometimes and stay away sometimes and who let work be the plausible explanation but who probably don't buy it for a moment - and don't make an issue of it anyway, unless she's really being an arse. Which, OK, she sometimes is.

This is going to be my kid's family, she thinks, out of nowhere. And we're going to beat the crap out of anyone who has a problem with that.