Work Text:
It starts with a cough.
“Sorry,” says Aang, with an awkward smile, his voice catching in his throat as he clears it once, twice. He blinks, refocuses, and takes a deep breath. “Let’s continue on, Counselor Kuruk, you were saying that…”
Toph, who is sitting in the corner of the room, playing bodyguard, frowns.
Huh, she thinks, and Aang muffles a cough into his sleeve while a man four times his age goes on a rant of unfair trade policies.
Huh.
It starts with a cough.
It escalates.
By the second day Aang is constantly squinting his eyes, rubbing at his temples. When Zuko- somewhere between meetings and putting down uprisings- takes the time to ask of his wellbeing, the airbender smiles wanly, waves his hands.
“I’m fine, Zuko- just a headache. I’ll drink some water, try and get some sleep tonight, and it’ll be fine. Don’t worry about it.”
The young Firelord, so easily convinced by those charming, innocent eyes- and far too used to his own tired and stress-induced headaches- believes him. He still sends some herbal tea to the Avatar’s next appointment, which Aang fumblingly cradles in one hand while trying to settle a dispute between some colonies and earth kingdom villages: a bunch of adults yelling at each other about resources and rights to the land.
Toph, however, cannot be fooled by those eyes because she cannot see them. She is also gifted with two rather convenient lie detectors in the soles of her feet, and just so happens to be standing just around the corner from where the conversation between the two leaders took place.
And Aang’s heart, when he’s telling Zuko it’ll be fine, skips a beat.
Toph and Suki find him passed out in his little “writing nook," located in some high up corner on the eastern side of the palace. He’d claimed it because of the big window- although such an exposed area made Sokka twitch- and had brought up about a half dozen pillows to strew around the tiny corner. Everyday, he vanished up there for an hour or so to get done with the busy body paperwork- asking for peace meetings between world leaders, for an exchange of resources, for revivals of the arts, and responding to whatever messages that have been sent his way.
Zuko’s given him a desk, his own little office, but Aang says he prefers the quiet of his nook. Personally, Toph believes it's just because it’s harder for people to find him and distract him when he’s tucked away in some far flung corner. He likes to get the “boring stuff” done as quickly as he can, and half a dozen people stopping by a little enclosed office to ask questions and get permissions and offer pompous boasts only draws out the process, especially because he's not polite enough to tell them to bugger off.
Today, however, it seems that Aang has fallen asleep halfway through a missive, head conked back against the window pain and writing board slipping askew. Suki immediately steps forward, concerned, shakes him awake with gentle hands.
Toph listens to his heartbeat. How it transforms from slow and steady to the pace of an avalanche, feels his body jerk away from slumber, tense and wary before relaxing at familiar faces.
“Hey, Toph. Hey, Suki. What are you guys doing up here?”
Suki frowns at the odd catch to his voice, but answers nonetheless.
“Family dinner night. We were worried when you didn’t show up: Sokka just about had a conniption.”
(And what a beautiful conniption it was. Watching the older teen go through more and more convoluted theories about the airbender’s whereabouts was incredibly entertaining.)
But Aang blinks, frowns, looks out the window as if to make sure it’s actually dark (it is), looks down at his not quite finished letter, and sighs.
“Sorry, I must have… fallen asleep? Let’s go and get some food. I haven’t eaten all day.”
Suki helps him to his feet, and they head down to the kitchens, where they all do their best to take over once a month and catch up over food with no politicians or servants breathing down their necks.
And yet, despite his claims of lack of nutrition, Aang picks at his food and hardly participates in the conversation, even when Zuko and Sokka get into an argument about the major themes in Love Amongst the Dragons and start quoting passages of the play at each other to prove their points.
Because they’re nerds.
Toph makes sure to tell them this, and gets a particular sort of satisfaction in the way Sokka squawks and Zuko sputters. Suki laughs, and Sokka points at her for the betrayal, and Toph wishes Katara was here instead of at the North Pole, putting together another group to help out the slowly rebuilding Water Tribe.
Aang, watching, smiles. Shuffles vegetables and rice around his plate.
Toph chats, and keeps track of him with her feet, feels how he almost nods off and jerks himself upright, sitting stiff and strained until almost everyone’s finished eating and then quietly excusing himself to finish his letters.
Then, because she is a kind, compassionate, wonderful friend, Toph follows his footsteps as they walk up to the stairs, falter, and proceed to turn not to his writing nook but to his desk , putting it to use for perhaps the second time since he's received it.
She frowns. Cracks her knuckles.
I smell a fucking elephant rat, she thinks, and prepares to start digging.
The next day, there’s another attempted military coup. Toph is still in her pajamas, and her eyes feel grimy from being woken up mid-sleep.
Luckily, however, she doesn’t need her eyes to be a force of destruction and terror to the opposition.
So there she is, ploughing her way through a group of fifty or so, the rest of the gang- with the exception of Katara- behind her, all making quick work of the upsurgence. They could have the royal guards take care of it, of course, but Zuko’s advisors said that it might be good to put a show of force to the public every once in a while, espress that they’re a strong united front against the chaos and have the supreme right to rule or whatever, yada yada yada.
Also, it’s an excellent way of releasing some tension.
And earlier it had been annoying, when it was occurring practically every other day. But now it’s slowed down, some, so it’s more entertaining than anything. Toph shoots a man into the air and knocks three more down flat, a roving war machine of earth and metal. These guys are suckers.
As she works, she keeps track of their little motley crew, making sure nothing’s going too disastrous. And everything seems fine, except-
“Someone get on Aang!” she yells, stomps her feet and encases ten soldiers in a box of stone. Behind her, she feels Sokka not even hesitating, just spinning around and going to stand guard by the airbender.
Which is good, because Aang’s heart is out of whack, and if Toph is giving a generous estimate, he’s about four seconds from passing out.
“Get down,” Sokka yells, and Aang drops onto a piece of rubble as Sokka sends boomerang flying and his sword swinging in one smooth motion. Toph feels Suki start making her way towards the source of the commotion, but she just focuses on taking out the last of the rebellious forces.
There’s a blast of air behind her, taking out a firebender who had been trying (and failing) to pull off a sneak attack. But she can tell that the stream of wind was weak at best, which is all just being added to the bubbling concern in her gut.
But finally, finally, the insurgents have been put down. Toph storms over to the little huddle of five, where Sokka is checking Aang over and lecturing him at the same time. She plops down next to the airbender, lets Zuko take her arm and start dabbing the small burn there with cold water.
“-what the hell were you thinking? You should have told us if you weren’t feeling well, Aang, c’mon, you could have been hurt-”
“I’m sorry,” the younger boy whispers back, his voice very small.
She can feel how Sokka slumps, the way all that worried anger just collapses into itself.
“Me too. But seriously, we can’t have you passing out on us mid battle.”
“I didn’t pass out!”
Toph interjects, poking him in the shoulder.
“You were about to.”
Another wince, and the concerned lecture starts up again. Around them, the clean up crew starts going through the rubble, chaining the members of the coup for trial, brushing away debris.
“Look,” Aang finally interrupts, rubbing at his forehead, “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to worry you guys. I don’t think I drank enough water yesterday, or been sleeping enough at all, and it’s really early. I think it was just a fluke or something. So can we just- go back to bed?"
Lies, Toph thinks, you’re a lying liar who lies.
Aang grabs her hand and squeezes, as if telling her, please don’t rat me out.
Toph scowls, but squeezes back twice as hard, hoping he receives the message of , fine I guess, but you OWE me.
She’s a good friend like that.
They go back to bed, but before they enter the palace Sokka puts a hand on her shoulder, leans down to whisper in her ear.
“Can you keep an eye on Aang? I don’t trust him to be able to protect himself right now.”
Good choice, she thinks, and offers him a nod and a two fingered salute.
“Thanks, I’d do it myself but I gotta write a letter to Katara, see what she thinks of all this…”
A pat on her shoulder, and Sokka turns the corner and walks down to his office.
Toph tries to shoot daggers with her eyes at the back of Aang’s neck. She’s not sure what the overall effect looks like, but she’s pretty sure it works, because ge senses pick up how he tenses and hunches into himself.
I’ve got my feet on you, she thinks, and tails Aang all the way back to his room.
Toph follows Aang, follows him to bed and then- several hours later when it’s a more reasonable kind of day- to several meetings and exchanges and planning sessions. He seems determined to keep on top of things, to stay alert and helpful, but Toph can literally feel his body shutting down, going sluggish.
She changes shifts with Suki for the afternoon and evening, passes out in her bed for eight hours, eats some rushed dinner, and then goes to find Aang.
Aang, who happens to be in his chambers, throwing up. He is somehow in an even worse condition than before.
He finishes retching, then turns to look at her, like a small miserable ball of sweat and mucus. If rotten mangos could magically transform into human beings, they would be Aang.
“You,” she says, “are sick.”
He drops his head into his hands. She feels kind of bad for her accusing tone, but also not really. She should have told someone her suspicions days ago.
But then again, he probably would have insisted on working until he got to this point anyways. She wishes Katara was here. Katara would have known immediately and bullied him into rest with no hesitations.
No one gets past Katara.
“I know. And it’s awful.”
Toph sighs, lugs her idiot friend into an upright position and then hauls him to bed. Aang’s bedroom is more like a little suite, ridiculously large for a singular thirteen year old, and for the most part he tends to avoid it and crash in one of their rooms, or otherwise goes out to sleep in the stables with Appa.
It drives Zuko crazy. There are betting pools on how long it’s going to take to get him to give into the younger boy’s blatant attempts to get a downsized avatar’s quarters the size of a broom closet, propriety be damned.
As of now, Zuko is holding strong, and in turn Aang feels tiny against the massive expanse of bed.
“You’re sick,” Toph says again, for lack of anything better to say. Then she licks her lips, flailing only a little. She doesn’t know how to take care of someone who’s ill, as she very rarely got ill herself. And if she ever was bested by germs, her parents had always had the servants tend to her.
She remembers the cold, quick caretaking of her babysitters, those brief stints of medicine and liquids and food before she was left alone again. For hours.
But Aang deserves better than that. He deserves like, proper comfort and all that junk. So she pats him awkwardly on the arm.
“You need sleep. And to not go to meetings and stuff tomorrow. Take the day off.”
Aang’s heart, already slowing down as he nodded off, picks up again.
“But Toph, I can’t. There’s so much stuff to do, letters and advisories and councils and-”
“Well they won’t miss you for one day- ”
“But they will! I’m the Avatar, it’s my duty to-”
“ Bring the world to balance, blah blah blah- I knooow.”
“Toph-”
“ Aang.”
His voice rasps terribly out of his throat. Toph should probably bring a bucket in case he throws up again. But for now, she glares at him, and he glares right back, smelling of sweat and illness.
Unfortunately for him, glaring has no effect on Toph, and she always, always wins staring contests, even if her gaze is occasionally misdirected.
It’s no surprise when he breaks and speaks first.
“I can’t take a day off, Toph. I just- I can’t. So many people are depending on me.”
They sit, quiet. Somewhere, a pair of patrolling guards quietly converse and laugh. Somewhere, a chittering animal calls out into the night.
Maybe it's Momo.
Toph thinks, fists clenching and unclenching, looking for some sort of solution. She’s not great at this, at this planning thing, because that’s what Sokka’s good at, but she’s trying.
Which is why it’s such a surprise when she stumbles upon the answer.
She is a genius.
“What if... I did it?”
Aang does a double take, blinking blearily up at her.
“What?”
The more she thinks about it, the more brilliant it seems.
“Me. I could play Avatar for the day and attend all your meetings and stuff. It shouldn’t be too hard, and I’m even off duty tomorrow so it’s perfect-”
“Toph, are you sure?”
He sounds so relieved, and not at all doubtful, as if he has perfect faith in her abilities to just fill his shoes at the drop of the hat. It’s oddly heartwarming, and brings a grin to her face.
“Yeah.” she says, keeping her voice as quiet and gentle as it will go, the tone fumbling on her unpractised tongue, “I’d do that for you, Twinkle Toes.”
Aang sighs. The silence stretches as he seemingly deliberates in his mind, frog-squirrels chirruping in the distance, the bed soft beneath them. Sometimes, Toph wishes she hadn’t schooled him so well in the art of being stubborn.
But he hasn’t surpassed her in this, not yet, and when she gently nudges his shoulder he heaves one last scratchy breath and gives in, slumping.
“Okay, if you’re sure you’re willing, I guess- I guess I could take a day off. I’m really feeling pretty terrible.”
She snorts.
“No kidding, dumbass.”
Quiet laughter in a quiet room, and Toph lets it fall silent before she runs to grab a bucket and a glass of water, putting both by Aang’s head for easy access. Then she clambers onto the other end of the mattress, flopping against the sheets.
“...What’re you doing?” he asks, and his voice really does sound terrible, like someone stuffed half a dozen angry squawking turtle ducks down his throat and they were all trying to clamber their way out.
“Keeping you company. Sleeping. If you need anything, wake me up.”
“Kay.”
Toph closes her eyes, shifts across the sheets. Sighs.
“If you throw up on me,” she warns, “I don’t care if you’re sick, I’m tossing you out the window.”
And Aang laughs, voice scratching all wrong, croaky with illness.
“Fair enough.”
Toph smiles, kicks vaguely into what feels like his leg, and listens as his breathing evens out.
Then she keeps guard throughout most of the long night, idly matching her breathing with the boy besides her.
In the end, Aang doesn’t wake her by throwing up on her.
He wakes her up by sneezing on her, sending both of them blasting across the room and smack into opposite walls, an explosion of air and sound. Toph is immediately awake, and almost crushes him with half a concrete wall before he groans and apologizes.
Suki comes rushing in, takes one look at them, and starts laughing.
This is…. not the best way to start her day as Avatar. But this is fine, because she sends a small piece of rubble flying to flick the older girl in the nose, and her startled yelp makes both Aang and Toph laugh, so she can call it even.
She fixes the wall, good as new, (except for all the misplaced paint, the others will later inform her), and she and Suki trade morning greetings while Aang carefully lumbers himself up to sit gingerly on the side of the bed.
Then he grabs the bucket and retches into it, putting a damper on the mood.
“Aang, you’re sick!”
Suki's explanation sounds scolding and concerned all at once, and Aang just nods miserably, slumping sideways onto the bed and closing his eyes.
“I know,” he says, “Toph’s going to be covering for me today.”
He says it so casually, almost absentminded, and Suki turns her horrified expression to face Toph.
And the earthbender grins.
She’s kidnapped some of Aang’s robes.
They’re about the same size, even if he’s a bit more willowy and infinitely lighter than she is. The fabric against her skin is very soft and loose, never making completely firm contact and fluttering easily with every gust of wind.
Toph wonders if that's the point.
Either way, Aang sounded pretty teary when giving his verdict, even as he said they looked good. She had awkwardly reached out to squeeze his hand in turn, blowing air onto his too warm head with her mouth in some mimic of bending. Then he had laughed, and Suki had sighed fondly before ushering her off to attend her meeting.
And now she’s here. Sitting at the end of a very long table. Listening to two delegates talk with mock civility about trade agreements, not quite shouting their arguments at her, laying the blame and slander thick and heavy as if she’d care about what some guy did with his pighens twenty years ago.
She wonders if they know she’s not actually the Avatar, because they certainly aren’t acting like it.
In a perfect world, she’d handle this like Aang. She’d know all the right words to bring these two people of very opposite views come together as a whole, a settling compromise that would actually leave people pretty content.
But this isn’t a perfect world. Toph imagines Aang sitting here, tired heartbeat and straight spined, easing trickles of words between the conflictive sides, weighing the scales and balancing them. She imagines him, small against this great stone chair, this tiny pebble facing off absolute boulders of people, and seethes.
From what she remembers, this particular debate has been going on for days.
She yells over the noise. Across the way, Zuko is hiding his chuckles with a poorly disguised cough.
“HEY!” she calls, and the two delegates startle, voices cutting off to a pleasant silence. Toph sort of wants to put her feet on the table, just to garner more gobsmacked reactions, but she kinda needs to keep her bearings for this, so she doesn’t.
Letting them stew for a bit, she reaches over and grabs Zuko’s tea, taking a slurping slip that echoes in the quiet room.
Then she says, casually, “You have any kids?”
They blink. Zuko takes his tea back, and Toph lets him as a reward for letting her handle this political mess without stepping in.
Zuko is good like that.
“Excuse me?” says one diplomat, his voice awash with confusion.
Toph just nods, shifts the fancy ass robes to settle nicely on her wrists, realizing that the fabric is quickly growing on her.
“Yeah,” she says, and Zuko sips some tea, “Kids. Babies. Teenagers. Children. Or siblings, cousins- whatever. I’m not picky.”
“Yes,” the delegates respond. “Of course,” the delegates respond. This is exactly as Toph expected, because she can just tell that they’re all kinda older, their bodies slowly starting to shut down.
Toph hums. Taps her feet and measures the vibrations, the way they shift and shuffle in their chairs, completely thrown off track.
“Then why,” she asks, “are you turning to a literal thirteen year old to resolve your political discourse? Are you that pathetic and immature?”
The delegates have no response for that. Toph raises her eyebrow in their direction, utterly unimpressed, and Zuko willingly leans over and presses his tea cup into her hands, his amusement clear even as he attempts to keep a straight face. She drinks it to the dregs and lets them stew in the silence. The few times either of them try to speak, she stares them down.
Katara has told her nothing is more disorienting than blank blind eyes catching on to your own with unwavering certainty.
Finally, she gets bored with letting them squirm, and sits up straight, trying to emulate Katara at her most bossy.
“Here’s what’s gonna happen, you all are going to grow up, discuss this like adults, and me and Firelord Hot Pants over here are gonna moderate. Anyone who’s acting like a baby gets to sit in the hall. Understood?”
The grown men mutter despondently, and start a stilted conversation with each other. Toph watches them with a smirk.
A surprisingly good start to the day.
“How did it go?”
Aang’s fingers are idly twiddling with a spew of colourful thread, winding and overlapping the string with squinty eyes before unwinding the material and starting all over again.
Besides him, working on a much simpler project, and much more slowly, Zuko works on his own bracelet. He’s got approximately an hour before he has to be somewhere and Aang has been bored and sick and tired, looking for something to do.
Weaving, he supposes, is just as fine a project as any. Aang, at least, seemed to be happy enough to show him the steps of a simple pattern, making a show of being impressed at Zuko’s so called “skills” before breaking into his own ridiculously complex design.
He narrows his eyes at his own creation, willing the threads to start making sense.
“Toph was great. You know those two guys? The two pighen guys?”
“Uhuh.”
“Sorted them right out. Very impressive.”
Ridiculously entertaining would probably be a better word for it, but impressive would also do.
“Oh,” says Aang, and sticks out his tongue as he seems to get past the part he was struggling with. “That’s fantastic!”
The younger boy smiles small up at him, forehead clammy with illness and bags under his eyes. Zuko smiles back and starts thinking up excuses to leave so that Aang would finally let himself sleep.
“It really was.”
Blues and white and pale greens: he thinks he’ll give his bracelet to Katara as a welcome back gift. Also as a please don’t be mad at me that Aang got sick gift.
Now all that needs to happen is for the colours to work with him.
She glares at the stack of paper sitting dauntingly on the desk before her, towering high.
The scrolls continue to sit there, unimpressed.
Deftly, she picks up the missive at the top of the pile, clumsily opening it up to stare more directly at the apparent page, which stubbornly refuses to bow to her will and become suddenly decipherable to her.
Asshole.
Throwing it to the desk, she sits back in her chair, huffing hair out of her face so it would stop annoyingly tickling her nose.
There was nothing for it. She's been bested.
Allowing herself to wallow for approximately three seconds, Toph angrily grumbles, half hoping another person might come and try and talk to her so she can shout them down about being too occupied for their busybodiness.
Sadly, no one comes.
Toph sighs.
Then she stands up and stalks down the hall.
"SOKKA!"
Sokka and Toph spend a pleasant hour holed up in Aang's office, with Sokka reading the missives aloud and Toph dictating the response, feeling utterly cheery with her blunt, brief replies, especially to the particularly grating idiots who should know better.
People who try and stop by to speak with the avatar in 'his' self appointed quiet time open the door and are met by a solid wall of earth. If they somehow get past that, they are met by a solid wall of Toph, and are rapidly convinced that quite literally almost anything else would be a better use of their time.
Sokka, who continues writing in the background of these little excursions, makes absolutely no effort in hiding his smirk.
“One of the commanders in the Northern Water Tribe is complaining about including girls in bending practice again.”
“Tell him he can go fuck himself.”
“You betcha.”
“Sokka-”
“Go to sleep, Aang.”
Aang groans and rolls over, burying his face into his arms. Sokka’s sharpening his boomerang, back against a wall that smells of hay and wet fur. Aang had complained about the bed being too soft, and then the floor being too hard, and then the room being too warm.
Ridiculous. Aang is whiny when he is sick. ….Which Sokka supposes is fair enough, because the kid hardly ever puts up a fuss the rest of the time.
So Sokka dealt with it, missing his sister like a limb, and it was all fine and dandy.
And then Aang had complained about missing Appa, and had started tearing up, which obviously could not stand.
Sokka is not dealing with any crying today, thank you very much.
So he had bundled Aang up in blankets, hauled the kid up onto his back- when the fuck did Aang start actually weighing something? - and carried him down to the stables. Appa had crooned happily, the grumbly snuffing noises he does when he’s pleased, and Sokka had rolled his eyes and deposited a droopy airbender onto the snot monster’s back.
The things he did for this family. He deserves an award.
Still, this is fine. Or it would be, if Aang would go to fucking sleep, and rest like he so obviously needed to.
“ Sokkkkaaaaaa~”
He narrows his eyes at that lump of blanket on Appa’s back.
“I can’t understand you when your face is like that.”
Two grey eyes peek over a cliff of fluff.
“I’ve got work to do. Paperwork. I forgot about the paperwork-”
“Already handled.”
He’s not really thinking as he says it, considering his fine sharpening skills. The next thing he knows, though, there’s a clatter as Aang unsteadily slides down Appa’s side and lands in a faceplant.
“ Shit, Aang-”
The kid’s already up, stumbling, plopping down besides Sokka in moments. An unfortunate side effect of illness, apparently, is that he loses absolutely all of his grace and all of his brain cells.
The dumbass forgot his blanket and is already shaking like a leaf.
The dumbass is also looking at him with wide, wide eyes.
“Toph learned how to read!?”
Tell him the truth, Sokka thinks to himself, you should really tell him the truth.
But-
But it would be so easy-
“Yeah,” Sokka says, absentmindedly, turning back to his boomerang. “Like, last week. Didn’t you know?”
Katara’s gonna kill me.
….Worth it.
“Hey, Appa, time to go- Sokka?”
It is, indeed, Sokka.
Sokka, looking bored out of his mind, Aang passed out and drooling on his shoulder. Appa’s maneuvered around the small space to wrap them up in a fuzzy shield of a ten ton bison. Suki will admit it’s pretty adorable, even if it makes very little sense.
“Why isn’t Aang in bed?”
Her boyfriend looks at her, exasperated.
“Because he was going to start crying if I didn’t take him to see Appa and I was weak.”
Suki blinks.
“Huh,” she says.
Aang snores.
“Do you want me too…” and it’s so awkward, why is this so awkward, is this what it’s like to be a parent? Did Suki become a parent the moment she decided that this ridiculous group of humans were her family?
“Do you want me to carry him to bed? Because Toph and I have to go deal with some angry villagers in like, ten minutes, and-”
Sokka nods, only a little desperately.
“Please.”
So she and Sokka work together and somehow manage to get Aang thrown over her shoulders. Aang forehead is very warm against her neck, clammy and gross. She feels a mixture of concern and a little grossed out.
Sokka mutters a thousand thank you’s, kisses her on the cheek, and vanishes to wash off all the germs.
“Suki?”
The kid’s voice is barely a mumble. She squeezes his calf and keeps walking deeper into the palace, up the stairs to where she knows his room is.
“Yeah, Aang, it’s me.”
“Oh, cool. Do you need anything?”
She sighs. Why the hell does she feel so fond?
This family is going to be the death of her. She can tell.
“Just go to sleep, Aang.”
Toph considers the rioting crowds before her.
They're certainly loud, and the mass of vibrations under her feet certainly attest to their sheer numbers. They are all, however, shouting incessant things that just make- no sense. Like. Mob mentality at its finest.
Ridiculous. Absolutely ridiculous.
Suki stands besides her with the Kyoshi warriors. So far, no one's gotten violent, but apparently it's usually just a matter of time, and then it becomes a matter of making sure no one's gonna actually get hurt.
Toph ponders her options.
She could be soft about this. Could do her utmost not to rile up any of the opposing groups. Could sit here for a couple of days and really work through each and every issue.
But an only earthbending avatar has stuff to do! And Toph plans on doing it, especially when a friend is counting on her.
So she relies on the tried and true from a childhood of commanding an audience's focus in the middle of a massive underground fighting club: she makes a spectacle.
Forming a massive structure of earth isn't the most creative thing she's ever done, but it certainly grabs everyone's attention.
Also, she likes feeling tall.
"I'm the avatar, and you all have to deal with it. Now! Sit down!"
A murmur from the crowd. Top stomps her foot.
"I said. Sit. Down."
Slowly, everyone sits down cross-legged in the dirt. Because she's not heartless, Toph also bends up some earthen seats for anyone who's knees feel creaky.
After several minutes of shuffling- and the Kyoshi warriors trying not to laugh, everyone sits down.
Finally.
Toph points at a random person who had been particularly loud and yelling in her recent memory.
"You!" She shouts, booming over the open space, "Why are you so angry!?"
"Me!?" The woman shouts back.
"Yeah!" Toph responds. The singular yelling call and response is oddly pleasing to her ears.
Which is why she decides to call out a bunch of individuals, put them on the spot, and make them yell out their feelings to the world. For a group of people who were all so recently so passionate about screaming their heads off in a crowd, they seem largely hesitant to do it when they're all by themselves.
It's almost a sweet sense of poetic justice. Toph forcefully encourages individuals to stand up and list complaints from both sides until they both are running out of them, which happens relatively quickly.
Funny, how a lack of other people screaming and backing you up makes it a lot harder to spew hate.
Toph sits on her elevated tower and tries to think. She wants to get this right and make Aang proud. But also, this Avatar stuff is hard, no matter how naturally talented she is.
She sighs.
“ALRIGHT!” she yells, projecting her voice as loud as she can, which is no small amount, “HERE’S WHAT’S GONNA HAPPEN! YOU ALL ARE GONNA PARTNER UP WITH SOMEONE ON THE OPPOSITE SIDE AND TALK COMPROMISES.”
An angry murmur rises up from the crowd.
“AND IF ANYONE GETS FEISTY, I WILL BE PUTTING YOU IN TIME OUT.”
A acquiescing murmur comes up from the crowd. She knew she could get through to them!
“I’LL CHECK IN TOMORROW AND SEE WHAT YOU’VE COME UP WITH.”
She lowers herself down as people grudgingly begin to cross the boundaries unde the Kyoshi Warriors’ watchful gaze. Suki, walking steadily like she’s trying to look professional but also like she’s trying not to bend over in laughter, comes to meet her.
“So,” the older girl says, “that’s definitely the most interesting peace talk I’ve ever been a part of.”
Toph blushes and grumbles, tugging at the soft fabric again.
“Look, I know I’m not Aang, but it worked! People are talking!”
Suki does laugh then, nudging their shoulders together.
“Didn’t mean it as a criticism. You did good.”
Preening is an acceptable Avatar duty, she decides, and grins.
“Thanks, Suki. But look, I gotta go and pick up Katara, will you be okay here?”
“We’ll be fine, go get her! Will you be alright flying Appa by yourself?”
This is…. a good question. Toph’s never flown Appa alone before. But, well, what could go wrong? He’s a flying fluffy snot monster, she’s a blind earthbending child who can’t see anything in the air, they’re a match made by the spirits.
...This is going to be a disaster.
She’s not telling Suki that though.
“Pssshhhh- me and Appa are a dream team. Just you wait- we’ll be back before you know we’re gone.”
Toph really hopes Appa knows where he’s going.
He seemed to have an idea, back when Toph approached him and asked about Katara, and she knows they’re definitely over the ocean, cause she can smell the sea salt and occasionally feel the spray when the bison flies low enough to spLash against the surface, but…
But there’s a lot of ocean. And only one small entourage of Water Tribe ships.
Toph leans over, a death grip on the saddle.
"How you doing Appa? See Katara yet?"
The bison grumbles. She supposes it could be an affirmative sound.
The wind howls and Toph rolls over, her back against the soft leather of the saddle. It’s weird, being up here, all alone.
It’s a relief, then, when a couple of hours later she hears Katara’s voice, yelling at the top of her lungs, no doubt waving and grinning hugely.
Toph pats Appa’s head.
“You are the bestest boy, Appa. The bestest. Just don’t tell Momo I said it.”
Before she knows it, Appa is flying low besides one of the ships, people are waving and calling out their greetings and goodbyes. She hears Katara’s voice, cheerful and fond, and then the sound of Katara jumping off the side of the ship and onto Appa’s back.
She can’t see it, but Toph can definitely tell the moment Katara does a double take.
“Toph?”
“Greetings, Sugar Queen.”
“Why are you wearing--? Where’s Aang?”
“Sick. I’m playing Avatar for the day.”
“Huh.”
“Yup.”
“No explosions?”
“None so far, unfortunately.”
An undignified snort, and suddenly two warm arms are wrapping around her.
“Oh, I’ve missed you. They’re so stuffy up in the Northern Water Tribe.”
And Toph-
Toph laughs, hugs back, and tells Appa to start taking them home.
She’s not expecting it to be so windy, when they get back.
She’s not expecting there to be another set of insurgents, either, so there’s that.
“Again?” she groans, over the noise. The sound of shouting filters up, and she listens to Katara preparing herself, to Sokka cheering at the sight of Appa.
“Look!” says Sokka, “Here comes the Avatar now!”
Confusion spreads through her for all of three seconds until she realizes oh, right, and tries to look official.
Appa lands and croons at Zuko, who looks about three seconds from tearing his hair out. Suki is the one who comes out to meet them, calling out greetings as she goes. As soon as she’s out of the sight behind the bison’s massive frame, her forced smile drops.
“They’re a group of earthbenders. Never got the news that the war was over.”
Katara sighs.
“I assume they’ve been tracking through the wilderness for months?”
“Yes.”
“Extremely pissed off?”
“Yup.”
“Don’t believe Zuko’s a good guy and the Avatar has his back?”
“Got it in one.”
Now that Toph is on solid ground again, she can feel the way Katara shrugs off her travel tiredness and focuses on the problem.
“And Aang can’t come down because?”
“He’s sick. He’s finally sleeping. Don’t want to wake him up unless we absolutely have to.”
Zuko is trying to assuage the angered crowd. He also sounds tired. He’s doing a far worse job of hiding it.
Next time, Toph decides, she’s going to be Firelord for the day.
Before she can decide how the hell she’s going to keep Zuko in bed all day- mild poison, maybe? Mai would help her- both Suki and Katara are turning on her.
“Ready to prove that you’re the Avatar?”
Toph grins.
It takes about two minutes to decide on their battle plan, the un-needed invasion force mumbling in the background all the while.
They’ve done this before, pretending to be the Avatar by borrowing other people’s bending. Sokka’s done it the most, ironically, but they’ve all had their turns. Toph’S done it the least, but only because the others say she takes a little too much joy in putting the fear of everything sacred into others.
She can’t blame them. It’s true. There’s something so magical about it.
With a grin, she pops out of her hiding place.
“Greetings! Tis I! The Avatar!”
She bends some earth, just to start off with what she really excels in. Then she pretends to bend the wind, relying on the gusty breezes and good timing to pull it off. Katara contributes to her water bending, tucked out of sight and pulling a face at Sokka, who rolls his eyes. Zuko, in full view of the crowds, probably has it hardest, bending while trying to make it look like he hasn’t moved at all.
It’s pretty tame, really, compared with some of the other stuff they’ve done, but once they finish the crowd seems appeased, if not incredibly awkward. Even more awkwardly, Zuko offers them housing for the night.
As soon as that’s all settled, they’re glomping Katara, who laughs and hugs them each in turn. Toph calls them a bunch of wimps and gets pulled into a group hug immediately after.
It’s not so bad.
They are sitting in Aang’s room, strewn about various furniture and across each other's limbs. Bowls of soup sit half eaten on their laps or the floor, the aroma strong but not overwhelming.
Katara had fussed over Aang for half an hour before finally giving into the atmosphere, sitting cross legged against the wall, her eyes bright as she talks about the progress being made up North. Zuko and Sokka are absentmindedly poking each other, the most casual war for space to have ever been. Suki is lounging across the loveseat, casually throwing a dagger up and down, catching it without fail, occasionally asking questions.
Toph sits with her supported by the bedframe, just enjoying the quiet evening with her friends. She never had this, before, not with her parents. That old house was made for cold silences and rigid structures, not this, soft and loose and gentle in all the ways she’s learning to love.
It’s good. This is good. She taps her feet together, enjoys the way the fabric around her legs moves, enjoys the way each tap sends vibrations through her toes and heels, into the floor, a reassuring string of vibrations reminding her that they’re together at last, that they’re safe.
She breathes.
Small gestures, small shifts: she’s expecting when Aang taps her shoulder. She tilts her head back against the mattress and offers a lazy grin.
“Hey, Twinkle Toes. Feeling any better?”
Katara is still talking. Zuko groans when Sokka manages to get a jab in against his side. Across the room, Suki snorts, the dagger whistling through the air before landing smoothly into the grip of her palm.
“I am, thank you. And thank you for taking over today: everyone says you did great.”
Toph ducks her head, hiding her smile.
“Uh, also, I made something for you.”
Aang’s voice is still crackly and nasal, but better than it once was. She considers making fun of him for it, but decides against it.
She’s nice like that.
“Yeah?”
Clammy hands against her shoulder, grabbing at her fingers, curling up something rough and textured into her palm. Curious, she traces it, the interwoven bands of thread and beads, the way they intertwine.
“It’s a bracelet. We used to make them,” Aang says, quietly, like it’s a secret just for her ears, “at the air temple. And I figured that you were already wearing the robes…”
Oh, she thinks, and feels fragile from the inside out. She used to think that people weren’t made to be this soft, to care this much. She used to think that something this gentle inside of her chest could only be a curse.
Not anymore, not now. Not with Katara laughing warmly and Sokka groaning about cheating firebenders, Zuko sitting smugly in his victory. Not with Suki getting off her chair to flop on top of her boyfriend with a pleased grin, making Sokka release a quiet oof.
Not with this, a piece of culture in the palm of her hand and a friend at her back.
“Thanks, Aang. I love it.”
Interlaying and interwoven. Many threads coming together to make up a whole. The idea of it makes her grin, and she asks Aang to show her how to put it on.
And quietly, gently, in a room full of laughter and friends, he does.