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Exhausted, Toph tossed her rucksack across the hostel room, stripped down to her underclothes, and dove into the hard bed she was issued upon arrival to this dump.
She and Kanto had been following this lead across the middle ring of Ba Sing Se, trying to figure out what he was up to and whether or not he was truly connected to a Republic City case like they suspected. Their lead was staying in the nice-looking hotel across the street while Kanto and Toph had to make do with a roach- and rat-infested hostel to keep themselves concealed enough to not be made.
Traveling with Kanto hadn’t been the worst thing she’d ever encountered. In fact, it’d been better than she’d initially imagined it’d be like. They weren’t really the closest pair, despite having to work together constantly, but they enjoyed bugging out and messing with each other when they got the opportunity to. It was a comfortable partnership and Toph had to admit (to herself because she wouldn’t deign to utter the words to him aloud) that she liked him. More than she should’ve.
And that was pretty dangerous in her book. She didn’t need to be liking people more than she should, especially not someone she worked with.
But, shit, did he make it damn hard.
Toph really did try the hating thing with him. She did. But he was a funny guy, he was great to be around, he always kept up with her quips and snaps—something that too few people managed—and there was just something about him that made her want to be closer to him. And traveling with him just made what she was feeling worse and she wanted to hate him for it and for making her feel feelings that she swore she wouldn’t have for him.
She ran a hand down her face in frustration, trying to wipe her mind of any Kanto-centric thoughts so she could attempt to get a decent night’s sleep. They were supposed to be back on surveillance before the break of dawn in order to make sure they were able to follow their suspect’s every move in the morning. And if they lost the guy, Toph was sure that she could find him just as easily as she had the first time.
With a deep breath, she brought the covers up to her chin and forced herself to relax before shutting her eyes, hoping that sleep would come soon.
But it didn’t.
Instead, what came was loud hammering in the room beside her. Kanto’s room.
Toph’s brows furrowed at the sound and tried her best to tune it out and ignore it for the sake of her slumber. What the hell was he doing? From what he told her, he was going straight to sleep. Kanto was falling asleep as they surveilled their suspect earlier in the day. The man almost let his head fall into his bowl of noodles in the meantime.
She wondered what the hell he could’ve been doing.
Maybe, maybe, he had company.
The thought of him having found a girl to sneak into his room crept into her head and her heckles rose, but she dismissed her sudden annoyance and the idea immediately. He wouldn’t risk their cover or being made for a lay.
And she definitely shouldn’t have been bothered. He was a man. He was able to do what he wanted. Whatever.
The pounding coming from his room was insistent for a good ten minutes, and nothing she did helped her pay no heed to it, not even stacking the pillows on her bed over her head. It wasn’t until she heard the sound of her partner’s screams amid it all that she sat up in alarm, eyes wide.
Immediately, she pushed her blankets off and rushed to the next room. That’s it, she thought as she opened her door and walked the short distance between their quarters. What’s going on?
Without pause, she rapped against his door, hoping that he would hear the racket, wake up, and tell her what was happening. But this was all to no avail, forcing her to bend the lock and let herself in unprompted.
Desperate times and all of that.
The vibrations she was picking up from the bed indicated that he was thrashing around in distress. He was grunting and groaning as if he were in pain one moment, then shouting out for others to save themselves the next. It must have been a bad nightmare.
She had no idea how to approach him, but when she did, the first thing she thought of was to grab his face with both her hands and try to get his attention.
“Hey, Hotshot,” she started, trying to speak over his sleeping panic. “You have to wake up for me, okay? Come on.”
It took her a few more tries, but she succeeded as Kanto awoke, startled and disoriented, panting as he got his bearings. She pulled away immediately, for some reason, feeling bashful.
Kanto took a deep breath, bringing a hand up to his head. “What—what happened?”
“I heard you screaming,” she said softly, more so than she intended. “Are you okay?”
He nodded quickly, enough to make the bed bounce with the force of the movement. “Yeah. Yeah, uh, I’m sorry, I—”
“Kanto, I know I give you grief all the time, but you don’t—please don’t apologize, not about this. And don’t lie, either.” Toph hesitantly rested her hand on his knee. “I may not be able to make the pain go away, but I can hear you out. I’ve—I’ve been here before.”
For the life of her, she had no idea why she admitted this to him. Perhaps she wanted him to know that it was safe to talk to her, or maybe she was subconsciously trying to find a way to help him feel connected to her in a way. But she hadn’t wanted to give him this piece of information about herself. Only one other person knew of her nightmares; she never dared to tell anyone else for fear that she would be viewed as weak.
Somehow, however, she knew that Kanto wouldn’t judge her.
She felt him shift, likely to get a better look at her. “You’ve gotten them too?”
“I’ll skin you if you tell anyone,” she said with no bark nor bite, “but yes, I have. I still do sometimes. Happens when you’ve been through what I’ve been through; what my friends went through.
“What about you? What’s got you yelling bloody murder in the middle of the night?”
“I’m sorry,” he said with a grunt, running a hand down his face. “I can’t control it and—”
Toph interrupted him with a roll of her eyes and a groan. “Did I not just get done telling you that you shouldn’t apologize? I know what this is. I get it. Now spill. Tell your chief what’s going on or I’ll call it insubordination.”
Her lips twitched when she heard the sound of his chuckle, happy to have gotten him a little out of his head if only for a moment. Then, he released a long sigh before defeatedly laying back against the bed’s headboard.
“I was really close to my parents when I was a kid. I know a lot of kids can’t say the same, but we were—I liked spending time with them. And when they died—” He laughed dryly. “Well, let’s say it fucked me up a little more than it probably should’ve.”
She shook her head incredulously. “Don’t say that. Of course their death would fuck you up.” Then, her curiosity piqued, she softly asked, “How did they—how did they die? Is the way they, uh, died the reason you—”
Kanto stopped her with a nod. “Yeah. So, uh, Fire Nation raids would happen a lot in our village, the kind that were made to scare people into submission, not ones that were meant to cause any harm. Even as a kid, I knew the difference.” He breathed out a humorless laugh.
“And, well,” he continued quietly, his voice in a practiced monotone, “long story short, on the night of a particular raid when I was nine, it seems like some of the blasts were actually being directed at residences, and as luck would have it, it hit ours.”
Toph closed her eyes tightly, suppressing the overwhelming urge of curling up next to him and giving him the comfort he clearly sought. She held herself together and nodded once, urging him to go on.
“As much as I try to forget about it, all I do is remember every single detail about that night. Every. Little. Detail.
“I remember that my mother was wearing her green nightgown with light yellow trim; I remember how my father had been reading a scroll on farming; I remember that the music box that they’d somehow scraped enough money up to get me for one of my birthdays had stopped working all of a sudden. Then, all I remember is red and angry flames tearing through my whole world.
“There are gaps in the memory. Like, I can’t remember what happened between the fire starting and my waking up in an Omashu clinic. I couldn’t even talk; the healers said that I had inhaled too much smoke, but not enough that was beyond my salvation.
“My parents, though, they—they, uh, never made it out. I’d overheard some of the healers and nurses talking about how they couldn’t—they weren’t able to identify—they couldn’t find my parents.”
He had to take a minute to gather himself, his voice straining with emotion. She heard him take a deep breath and release it shakily before continuing, “The nightmares started not long after that. I’d dream about what happened, about seeing them burn to death, about watching myself burn to death. My brain would also just start filling in gaps and making a horrible situation even worse for me, and when you’re a kid, lines start blurring and you don’t know what’s real and what isn’t, I guess.
“They’d stopped coming a few years back but started up again when I joined the Academy, just, uh, before I was recruited to the RCPD. I’ve noticed stress makes them worse and I know I’ve been putting a lot on my plate lately, but—but yeah. That’s the gist of it.”
Her heart was breaking for him, so she finally broke and pulled him into a rare embrace. He was tense at first, but slowly relaxed in her arms, nuzzling his face into her neck and notably breathing her in. Toph’s eyes fluttered shut at the feel of his breath and lips against her skin and she tightened her hold on him as his breathing became stuttered and the tears finally came.
Comforting people wasn't her strong suit, but it tended to come naturally when people she cared about needed comfort. She whispered what she believed were truths into his ear—that he wasn’t responsible for the fire, that he couldn’t have done anything to save them, that she knows that she wasn’t in his position and that she can’t possibly understand but that circumstances couldn’t have been changed.
After a while, they ended up collapsed on his bed, their limbs weaving between each other and Kanto’s head on her chest, her fingers raking through his hair. She could tell that her heartbeat brought him comfort, and she could relate—heartbeats did the same for her.
“Are yours about the war?” he asked her softly and suddenly. Then, quickly added, “You don’t have to answer.”
“Hm. Yes. The war, my friends dying, my very best friend dying because he was saving me from an inferno, me dying because I fell into an inferno. A number of things.”
“How do you—how do you deal with them?”
She had no clue how to respond to that. None. She was still fighting through some herself. Fifteen years after the Hundred Year War and the airships and the fall of Ozai and Sozin’s comet, she still had nightmares, terrors that kept her up at night, hating the idea of falling asleep. With time, though, they’ve gotten less and less grave, less and less realistic, though they still scared the shit out of her.
So she told Kanto, “I just deal with them.”
“You are a wiz,” he said humorously. “I’d have never thought of that on my own.”
Toph couldn’t help but laugh. She playfully tugged on a strand of his hair before saying, “I’m serious—I don’t really do anything about it. I don’t believe in that dream therapy crap, and after everything I went through, that my friends went through, I don’t think they’ll just go poof and fuck off, you know? Seems unrealistic to me.”
Kanto hummed, moving off her chest and resting against the headboard, their shoulders grazing one another in his new position. “It’s fun to think about them going poof and fucking off, though, right? To feel normal for once.”
“I’d say normal is overrated but not having to worry about these damn nightmares sounds like a fantasy.
“But, uh, I’m here,” she said, nudging him with her elbow. “If you need anyone to talk to or to—or stay with you. I’m—I’m here.”
He released a small, teasing gasp. “What is this? Chief Toph Beifong being willingly nice to me? I cannot say I can believe it.”
She snorted. “Fuck you. I take it back.”
“Nope, I’m afraid you can’t. You’re stuck with me now. And your offer goes from me to you too if you ever need, uh, if you need someone to lean on.”
“We’ll see if I take you up on that.”
“Will you? Really?”
With a roll of her eyes at the shit joke, she made to leave the bed. “You’re an ass, and I'm going to bed. We need to be up early, so I guess just—holler if you need me.”
His hand on her wrist stopped her. “Don’t—will you—can you stay?” Kanto’s grip loosened a bit but she didn’t pull away. “I mean—you don’t have to. I’m sorry I—”
“The moment you snore,” Toph said, crawling back into bed beside him, but this time slipping under the covers, “I’m out of here, got it, Hotshot?”
“I—yeah. Got it. No snoring.”
They were quiet as they got comfortable, inches away from one another, not knowing whether it was okay to make any contact or if it was something to avoid. But eventually, his hand found hers over the blanket, and she found herself resting easier than she had in years beside him, their fingers entwined and their hearts beating in sync.