brave soldier girl comes marching home

By: Serendipity1

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Author's Note: I was always so disappointed that they never had Toph reunite with her parents, or resolved any of the issues that were certain to come with that meeting. So…here it is. For avatar_contest, week 35: Avatar Ladies.

- 1 -

It was once, when she was much younger, in that space before the badger moles, before she really knew dirt and earth and the solid feel of bedrock. She must have been small- and of course, she has no visual reference for height, but she'd been so small, (so young) she couldn't remember her age. Toph remembers wearing loose linen for comfort, because the doctor said heavy clothes would suffocate her. It was thin and light and the cool air would touch bare skin, and her father would put her on his knee with her child hands in his grown-up ones.

He'd given her a rock, smooth and wind-polished and cool in her hands, and she'd felt it stir under her fingers.

"She has your gift," her mother had said, soft and quiet and awed, and Toph remembers marveling that her Daddy had given her this- this strange and so familiar magic. This language of stone.

In a way, she thinks, she's always been toddling after her father's regard, even if earth bending is a gift he'd never meant to give her.

- 2 -

When Toph travels home, she takes no escort, no baggage, and not one offered gift that the new lord offers her. The one she asks for is not one to be carried.

Toph has asked Zuko for freedom, for refuge, for a place to live (to exist, to bend, to be free…) because she knows what will happen when her feet touch Bei Fong land. Her parents have tried to bring her back in cages: metal, wooden, so she can live a life of boredom and stale, grey misery in a place where she is forced to be blind. Her old home frightens her. She's become so used to freedom and independence that the prospect of another chain makes her shudder.

Toph doesn't want to leave at first. This is like safe harbor, a place that she has fought for. She has been wounded and bruised and burned for this, and doesn't she deserve her own freedom?

It's not that she doesn't care. It's not that she doesn't love them, or want to hear from them. It's that instead of trapping herself with a return trip, she just wants to send another letter that tells her parents the news of her health, that she is well and alive, that she still loves them. A letter keeps the distance that she craves.

Toph feels both stronger for making demands of her parents who once barred her in, and strangely small. She feels like a little child hiding from a scolding, and no matter how she angrily tries to push it away, the guilt returns as a lump in her throat. Toph isn't used to guilt. She smothers it with fists and growls.

They all tell her to go and see them herself. Aang agrees, but she always knew he would. "Your parents love you," he says simply, as if that is all that has ever mattered. He's the avatar. Perhaps for him it is. Love for her has always been smothering, suffocating, drowning in an ocean of soft feather down.

"People you love have a way of surprising you," Iroh says, and he is warm and amused with just a hint of tiredness. There's an age in it she can't touch, a lasting and long-past mourning.

Katara holds her in that unpremeditatedly maternal way she does- warm, bare arms, steady heartbeat, smelling of water and soap and dark, soft smoke. "You'll regret it if you don't," she says, and Toph remembers that Katara's mother was murdered before she was even as old as Toph is now. Katara's voices scrapes on raw emotion when she talks about her mother she lost, her father that she barely saw while they were traveling- for her, family was a thing you were torn away from. Sokka says nothing, a silently supportive strength.

She realizes then she's the only one of her friends with an intact family and home to return to. The water siblings have a dead mother, Aang's people are centuries-murdered, and Zuko has been prepared to kill his sister and father since he stepped foot in their group.

Kill is a strange word even for her, who has been to war. Kill, and death, and all that unfathomable cessation of heartbeats. She remembers the boy in Ba Sing Se, his heart quieter and quieter, and Iroh's pattern before it. Life's voice fading.

The knowledge is difficult and alien and kind of sad, and she grumbles at them all for being sentimental wusses to cover it all up. She doesn't want to think of it, but here and for the first time she is afraid for her parents. Because this had been a war, it has been war for a long time, and if her friends can lose loved ones then she is not so untouchable.

Toph doesn't cry, though. Sometimes she doesn't think she can.

Zuko's voice is quiet and even. "If you don't send news, we will come for you."

Strangely, that's the most reassuring thing anyone has said so far. But she figures Zuko knows a thing or two about fearing his own family.

- 3 -

She arrives at home after the news of the war has touched every piece of the Fire Nation, its colonies, and most of the world, after the celebration is over and the long, grueling journey from war-torn countries to peaceful harmony has begun. Aang as the avatar and Zuko as the fire lord are in the forefront now, and Toph Bei Fong, the greatest earth bender in the world, the avatar's sifu, can travel the long road home.

The dust from the road clings to her feet, her clothes, in the creases between her fingers, and she knows her hair is loose around her face. Her mother would brush it back and keep it tightly in place with bands and hair clips. This close to her home, the memories rush in a swell of sensation- her mother's fingertips, her palm cool against her forehead, her parents' voices cool and sedate over tea. She is almost lightheaded now; the ground tells her where the Bei Fong walls are, of the home large and still, of the steady tread of footsteps inside the grounds.

There are fewer servants than she remembers. There are fewer people here than she remembers. This city surrendered peacefully to Fire Nation rule, and thus is less damaged than most, but the war has taken its toll on her home. The citizens of Gaoling had thought the war would never reach them here.

She remembers Zuko's story about fire raining down upon the Earth Kingdom, and feels a bone deep shudder.

Toph lingers there at the gate, feeling the heartbeat, the pulse of her old home and allowing the hope to wash over her like an ocean tide. Hope that she is not abandoned, disowned, disgraced. That she is not to be caged. Hope that her parents are-

(still alive)

Doing well. She allows herself to imagine them as her earth sense finds the footsteps within the building: that person is her mother, graceful and slow-paced, selecting a blend of herbal tea to drink on some cushions outside. (Toph was five and her mother took her to the yard and sat her gently on a blanket, telling her tales of earth benders for that is what she always asked to hear.) That set of footsteps is her father, meeting a group of old people and discussing boring adult things with them. All of these things she gathers together like an ember, warm and glowing, cradled against her chest, burning into her mind and making her eyes water with the strength of her emotions.

She tells herself not to be such a big crybaby and makes her first step.

- 4-

The servants don't recognize her. That is the first sign of something wrong. It doesn't bother her too much: after all, she is dressed in clothes she never wore as the little rich girl they were supposed to protect, she is dirty and swaggering, her hair is loose over her face. She supposes, as far as visual things go, that might be enough to keep them from recognizing who she is. Toph doesn't exactly understand how the seeing thing works out. It all seems very untrustworthy.

As far as servants go, she's never actually bothered to keep track of them. There's some she thinks she would remember, but she has been gone a long time and recognition might not be immediate. As far as the help goes, she had separated the world into those who were important to her: the earth benders, her mother, her father, and those who weren't. The servants don't recognize her, but this is not something she is going to waste time worrying about. It makes for less fuss.

Of course, they don't let her in. This lasts exactly the three minutes it takes to ascertain that yes, the guards at the door really intend on keeping her out of her own home, and the following seconds it takes for her to knock them out of her way with jutting slabs of moving earth. Then she's back on her way down the halls, their angry cries behind her and their footsteps making loud sounds outside. She takes the liberty of barring the door with a stone wall, just in case. Poor guards. She'd feel sorry for them- well, no she wouldn't.

The place feels different.

That isn't sentimentally speaking, it's actual. Furniture has been replaced or moved, and when she reaches up to touch the tops, her hands come in contact with bric a brac she doesn't know. The badger mole vase is replaced with a wide, fluted bowl full of some kind of small fruit, statuettes that she doesn't remember rest on top of an entirely alien table. The amount of people here has changed- from many servants to a modest few. She supposes it could be because of the war, or because she's not here any longer to warrant so many attendants.

Angry voices at her back, and the sense of alienation closing in, she goes forward.

-5-

Her parent's favorite room was the one they would greet visitors in. The chairs, low and wide and huge for her child body, had been custom-made by some craftsman or another that Toph hadn't bothered to remember. She did remember slippery silk as her mother of father would hoist her up to sit with them at evenings, when there was no more company and her father would speak to her about his business and her mother would tell her stories in a low, sing-song voice. They were very serious parents, as parents go, she realizes now. She's seen others while traveling that would play or cuddle or run with their child. Her parents were the quiet, solemn type who read her meaningful stories and spoke to her sometimes as though she was much older than she was or much younger than she was. Typically they didn't speak at all when it wasn't polite to.

But not bad parents, on the whole.

Not at all.

-6-

It feels like it's been forever since she's been in this room.

Still, her feet touch the cold stone of the floor and she sees even this room is no longer the same. It's the whole place, really- the scent has changed from camellia and ferns and earth to something spicy and strange. The low, flat cushioned seats her parents used to sit on are now of a different make- narrow and high, almost throne-like. She touches one and feels polished and lacquered wood.

Toph feels unfamiliar footsteps leading into the room- fast and clipped, angry, and this time she doesn't try to leave to avoid them. She can, but now she's wandered through the memories of her old home and it feels like a nightmare she wants to wake up from. The mix of familiarity and unfamiliarity is jarring enough to leave even Toph Bei Fong in a state of alienation.

The footsteps arrive and stop a few feet away. "Little girl," the voice matches the footsteps- female, strident, almost nasal, "Who are you and what are you doing intruding on my home?" A scolding tone. But not her mother's. The fact that it isn't pushes her out of fear and confusion and into rage. Stone shifts under her feet as she turn to face this voice.

"Who are you?" she asks, something rough and dangerous in her undertone. Footsteps sound behind her and she shifts the stone beneath her feet into a wave of earth, pushing bodies back and locking their heels to the ground. "This isn't your home."

"I am the governor of this city now," the woman states. "This is my home." And the a pause. "Blind," the woman says, wondering. "And a bender. The little Bei Fong girl, yes?" There is no fear in her voice, only realization and something like pity.

"I am Toph Bei Fong," she responds with every ounce of privileged arrogance she's been bred to own. Then ruins it by raising her voice and yelling: "Where are my parents? What's going on? Who are you?"

"Perhaps you should calm yourself first," the woman says, taking a step forward, "I could have the servant get some tea-"

"I don't need any tea!" Toph yells, and now there's real fear in her voice along with the anger, real fear that makes her even angrier because no stupid woman has the right to scare her, "I need my parents! I need my mom and dad! What have you people done with them?" She stomps angrily, and the stone seems to answer her anger with a shudder.

"They're elsewhere," the woman's voice quivers, "They're safe." She sounds desperate, like she is fearing for her life. Toph isn't really used to that aimed at her. Not really. It's not bad.

"Where?" she yells, stomping again. This time the whole house quivers.

"Please…"

"WHERE?"

"They- they said a country home," the woman says in a quaver. "No harm was done to them, I promise. They surrendered to the edict willingly and left this house. By their own will, I swear it!" Unbelievably, the woman reaches out her hand to try and touch her shoulder. As any adult would to placate a small, frightened, weak child.

"Don't touch me," she growls. "I'm leaving. I'm getting my parents. But I'm coming back, and so are they!"

Surrendered, she thinks in a fury. It must be a lie, she thinks, they'd never have surrendered. How could they have? How could they abandon their home to Fire Nation? She'd been fighting them.

-7-

Gaoling is still under Fire Nation rule. News takes long to travel here, in one of the deepest pockets of the Earth Kingdom. The war is over, she tells them. We've won. The avatar has won.

No one in her own city knows who she is. It makes the job easier.

-8-

A country home, she thinks. They had one?

They very seldom vacationed, when she was little. Poor health or weak constitution or fifty other ways to say that something was wrong about her that made her unable to play as hard as other children. Or travel, or swim, or breathe. Toph thinks she remembers snatches and vague feelings of the country home- remembers delicate sand from lakeshores and pebbles under her fingers and toes. She remembers the different smell of the air, the flowers and dusty sunlight, the wind carrying the scent of heavy, honey-smelling fig pears. That doesn't mean she can find her own way there.

She asks one of the townspeople to take her there, or orders them, really. The Bei Fong crest does nothing but raise contempt. It's the ground swallowing them up that makes them agree to carry her to her parents' home. Her parents sold themselves to Fire Nation, she's told. They are seen as betrayers.

Toph says she doesn't care what anyone thinks, but if she hears them say it again they're going to be a lot more familiar with good old mother earth. Apparently no one cares to take her up on that offer.

The ostrich horse is old, and the ride is bumpy. She's used to the smoothness of air flight, the leather bison saddle, and familiar bodies pressed against her. The jolting wooden cart isn't much of a substitute, but she closes her eyes and remembers it just the same. Wonders if, maybe, they couldn't have any more adventures together anymore. The world is too in need of healing for Zuko or Aang to come with her, and Sokka and Katara need their father and tribe. For the first time, she feels alone again.

Then they are at her parent's doorstep, and her feet- strong, sturdy feet, won't move. They lift her off the cart and speed away, the reverberations lighting up the ground for her to study, and she takes the first tentative steps along a smooth, stone-lined path. Memories hit like little waves with each step: her feet on these stones, running and laughing and being picked up and carried in warm arms. Butterdragonflies and their tiny feet pricking across her arm, pollen on the breeze.

At the gate, she pauses, her back at the rest of the Earth Kingdom, her feet turned home.

"Here I go," she says.

And inside, she hears the shattering of china and the slap of slippered feet against marble.

"Toph! Toph!"

She runs like she is flying and for the first time in months, she is a little girl again.

-9-

Her parents arms seek her out as if they are never going to let her go, clutch her to them as if they are drowning at sea and she is the only rope to safety, and for a while that is how they stand: her encircled in her parents' arms, unable to speak, and her parents saying her name as if it is the most sacred of prayers.

Toph, we love you, Toph, precious, Toph, beloved daughter, Toph, Toph, never leave us, never leave us again.

And her mother buckles to the ground and holds her tighter, and her father traces with his fingertips the lines of her face as if he has forgotten what they look like. For a moment, she wonders if he has. Sight seems very limited sometimes.

Her parents are crying. How many times did they cry while she was gone? Had she even thought of it?

"I'm sorry," she says, "I'm not leaving. I'm sorry."

They are like three weeping willow trees, reaching for the ground to hold their tears.

-10-

They surrendered for her, they say. So that if she came back, they would be alive and not prisoner in a Fire Nation cell or executed for treason against their throne. The price: the contempt of the townspeople, the exile from their home, the life of solitude, was not too much to pay. Nothing was too much to pay when it came to their daughter.

"You paid two men to bring me back in cages," she accused. "They locked me up in a metal box." Great thing to say when reunited with your parents. She should get an award for this.

"Those men were not to harm you," Lao Bei Fong said, outraged, "They were simply to free you from the Avatar."

"Did it ever occur to you that I wanted to leave?" she asked, and her mother inhales sharply, stricken, like she might as well have slapped her across the face. How sharper than a serpent's tooth to have a thankless child.

"You never said," her father says, finally.

"I said I liked fighting!" she cries out, "I said I wanted to fight!"

"You're just a child, against grown men."

"I could take them! Why can't you just trust me?"

Silence. The kind of silence like a storm building, but Lao Bei Fong hardly raises his voice.

"Not in all the twelve years we raised you, Toph, did you tell us what you were doing. Did you really think you couldn't tell us? Did you mistrust us that much? How many times did you sneak away from us in the middle of the night into danger? I couldn't…I couldn't bear thinking of it. So I tried to clip your wings."

"And you left us," her mother says, soft and quiet. "We don't know who you are, daughter."

"I'm still me," she says, aching, frightened of rejection.

"We don't know who you are," her mother repeats, "But you're our daughter. We'd love you only for that. We'd tear down the moon for you if we could, but you've become a stranger to us and you're still only a child. What's to become of you?" She shakes her head, cradles her arms close to her body.

And it comes down to this, she thinks, they love her, but there a rift greater than any canyon between parents and child. There is, they tell her, no way to control her, no way to discipline her, no way to keep her safe. There are only nights of fear and sleeplessness and a daughter, a child, at war. There are nightmares of a child in flames. They have clung to every rumor. They have lost everything and they would do it again for her, but they know nothing of the girl that is their daughter. Where are they to go from that?

"Am I too difficult to keep?" she asks, "I could go." If you don't love me anymore.

Her mother's voice sounds like steel. "Never."

"We love you," her father tells her. "And we would never let you go."

"Not even," her mother says sadly, "Not even if you want us to."

But are you proud of me?

She doesn't ask it. It almost…almost…doesn't even matter.

-11-

Her mother sang lullabies to her, once. There was one about the moon and the sun, earth and the sky. It was old, so old that all the words for it were misplaced and strung together in different ways, and as she traveled the world she'd hear snatches of it in towns and villages at night. Katara hummed it once, when she was mending clothing, and Aang whistled to its tune in a jaunty, faster-paced version.

Earth was the only one not in the heavens, she thought. Earth is left below with the others out of reach.

"That's because it holds all the others up," her mother had said. "It is strong enough to do that."

Water bends and flows, air is free, fire burns away obstacles, but earth stands quietly and waits.

And accepts.