5.

Lin is fifteen and spends more time with Tenzin than with Toph, which Toph tries not to sulk about, though she pretty much fails.

"Dating," she tells Sokka. "Our daughter is dating your nephew! They call it that! They hold hands and give each other adoring looks, and don't tell me I'm blind, I just know they do." She slouches in her chair. "In my day we just made out and then went and beat people up like usual, is all I'm saying," she adds.

Sokka laughs. "I think they're pretty cute," he says. "Most people would be happy to see their daughter making such responsible life choices."

"I don't trust it," Toph says. "It's not normal. She's trying too hard to be an adult, I promise you, she'll hit twenty and something will snap."

"Toph," Sokka says, "you were inventing metalbending and fighting a war when you were twelve. I love you but I'm disqualifying you from telling anyone what normal is."

Tenzin has started being painfully polite to her, which is pretty funny considering she can remember the day he screamed so loudly about not getting sweets that he almost knocked a tree over.

"Sure, what the hell ever," she says, when he nervously asks if it matters if Lin comes home late. "Knock yourselves out, kids."

"Wow," Kya says. "I wish I'd got to wander around like that." She's in town for a few days, passing through; she travels pretty much all the time, right now, looks into local water tribe variants, writes home to Katara about how they practice healing. But she seems relaxed. That's good.

"Oh, don't get ideas about how I'm the soft one," Toph says. "You think I'd let Lin go wandering around town however she wanted if I thought there was an risk she'd join a gang for kicks? She doesn't just say she's sensible, she actually is. You, my friend, were an Avatar public relations disaster waiting to happen."

Kya laughs. "You don't need to sound quite that proud."

"I know, right," Lin says, squeezing past them to get to the kitchen. "She's always like that."

Toph prods her affectionately and ruffles her hair. "My poor long-suffering darling."

But maybe she is the soft one. She's not actually sure she can imagine telling Lin she can't go out. It feels uncomfortable, a repetition of a pattern she hates.

Maybe that's why Lin's so sensible, out of pure self-defense.

But Lin still hugs her a lot of nights before she goes to bed, lets Toph kiss her on the forehead and call her silly names. That she's becoming intensely private about a lot of things really doesn't worry Toph, who's intensely private about pretty much everything herself; there's a reason she's never really considered living permanently with anyone, even the ones she really likes.

Some days are less great.

"Why can't you just take me seriously," Lin shouts. "I can have a real conversation with Suki! Sokka makes jokes all the time but he can still be serious! But I can never tell with you, you're just sarcastic all the time and I hate it. I keep feeling like you're laughing at us!"

"I'm not laughing at you," Toph snaps, and bites back the urge to say she's not that sarcastic either.

"Just because you're better than me at everything," Lin snarls, "that doesn't make you a better person." She slams the door behind her.

"Being a parent is basically about feeling like shit, right?" Toph says.

"Oh," Katara says, voice false, "I don't know about that. It's about magic and warm, fuzzy feelings and the beauty of a new life." She puts down a cup on the table, heavily. "No, you're right, it's about feeling like shit. I get the point of this whole thing, they're people, they've got to be all independent now. But ugh."

But she comes home to find Lin has left her a present, carefully teased out a little figurine, all textures and interesting shapes. It probably doesn't look like anything at all, but Toph sits and enjoys the contrasts and quirks of it for a good hour, alone at the kitchen table, smiling like an idiot. It's not everyone who knows her favorite textures of stone, she has to give the kid that.

"Thanks," she says, when Lin comes in later that evening. "It's the best. You're the best."

Lin just mumbles an embarrassed you're welcome, and vanishes at speed, trailing Tenzin in her wake.

But Toph still feels like they won something.

The phone rings late at night, and Toph, who is always alert, still takes a moment to process the sound. The phone hardly ever rings.

She sits up, grounds herself, and when that doesn't take enough time to make the problem of the phone go away reluctantly bends the metal casing around the cable to send the receiver flying into her hand. "Yeah?"

She expects maybe Aang, or maybe work, though they usually just come around the corner and knock on the door. "Hello," a nervous voice says. "It's me."

"Mother?"

"I've some news," her mother says, and Toph realises she already knows what it's going to be.

Her father's funeral is well-attended, and Toph forces herself to take her expected place in it instead of drawing herself to the side. She doesn't have the faintest idea what she feels about it, in honesty; grieving someone you hardly knew is difficult. Lin sticks close to her side like her awkward shadow, but she makes a good impression anyway, because she's Lin; she's so serious that adults tend to like her, and it's completely appropriate here. Toph says as little as possible herself; offers prayers and carries out the rituals. It would have helped in some ways if Sokka or Suki could have come, but she doesn't really want to inflict her parents' friends on them, and she can't think of a way of introducing them and justifying their presence that wouldn't upset her mother.

"Thank you for coming," her mother tells her quietly, after. "I know it can't be easy for you, and we haven't been the best parents..."

Her voice breaks a little, and Toph feels a completely unprecedented wave of sympathy for her.

"I haven't been the best daughter either," she mumbles, and stands awkwardly stiff while her mother sobs and throws her arms around her in an attempt at a hug.

After a few seconds, she slowly hugs her back.

Toph and Lin take the airship back together. A lot of the journey passes in silence; Lin hides her nose in a book, reads with a kind of fierce concentration.

"Hey," Toph says eventually. "Thanks for coming along."

"I probably liked him more than you," Lin says, without looking up.

"Mm..." Toph sighs. "Ok. I've been thinking. Here's the thing."

Lin closes her book carefully, puts it to one side.

"Oh?"

"I'm probably going to hate about a million of the choices you make, right?"

"Probably," Lin says, neutral. Probably Toph already hates about a million of the choices she has made, from boyfriend to reading material.

"And you'll probably think I'm an old-fashioned, embarrassing idiot basically every time I open my mouth," Toph persists.

"Mum," Lin protests. That's a bit far, even if it has some kind of truth to it. Occasionally.

"Oh, don't mum me, I know how you feel about me talking on the phone," Toph says. She's being cheeked, Lin thinks, not sure if she should be amused or annoyed.

"Fine," she says. "Have it your way."

"Don't mind if I do," Toph says. "My point is, I can have all the opinions I like, but I'm not going to tell you how to live your life, OK? If you want to get married and live happily ever after, I'm cool with that. If you want to die alone with an army of lemurcats, I'm cool with that too. Here's the rule: try hard and don't betray yourself."

Lin stares at her mother, at her determined expression. She's starting to look older, she thinks. Not old old, but older. I never really thought about that before, she was always just mum; an unstoppable force of nature.

"Whatever," she mumbles. "Sure."

"Good," Toph says, settles back comfortably into her seat. "That's all. Go on, read your book."

Lin smiles for herself, half the way back to Republic City, and doesn't even realise she's doing it.

[end]