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Toph had gotten used to people treating her differently because of her blindness. Well, the very few people who were allowed to interact with her, at least. Her parents never understood that she wasn’t the helpless little girl they made her out to be. They never considered the possibility that her blindness didn’t render her powerless or at a disadvantage. She was probably the most aware and advantageous person at the Beifong residence, yet nobody but her was ever aware of it.
Once, when she was younger, she figured there must have been a time when she truly had been the hapless daughter her parents assumed she was. Before she learned earthbending from the badgermoles she had been truly blind, stuck in a world of darkness. But she couldn’t recall those days—she had been so young back then, it was impossible to remember. And ever since then, she’d never felt helpless unless it was related to her inability to change her parents’ minds regarding her.
After twelve years of being sheltered and cut off from the rest of the world, she’d given up on ever living a different life.
So she was the perfect daughter around her parents, always sticking to the mannerisms she’d been taught. And when her tutors came around, she studied as requested without truly finding any interest in what she was being told. She heard murmurs of the war with the Fire Nation but nothing more than that. And she did the bare minimum when she practiced earthbending, knowing better than to show off to her lame teacher who could barely grasp the principles of the bending himself.
But under the cover of night, Toph would sneak out undetected to do the one thing she actually loved. She couldn’t even remember how she’d stumbled across Earth Rumble in the first place. But the idea of finally letting loose with her bending and proving the stigma of blind people being helpless wrong enticed her. So she started participating in the tournament every chance she got, earning money she never truly needed and gaining the respect of people twice her age and size at long last.
Not once did she lose. Not once did she falter. Her cocky grin remained on her face and her attitude only became more arrogant the more people she defeated. They weren’t even a challenge. These adult fighters all called themselves masters, but they barely lasted a minute against her. She wiped the floor with them to the rising cheers of the audience. And she loved every second of it.
She wasn’t concerned in the least when someone volunteered to challenge her one night. Her pride was bursting through the roof and she was certain beyond a shadow of a doubt that she was the best earthbender Gaoling had ever seen—maybe even the world. And when the soft vibrations of light feet reached her, her smirk and confidence only deepened. Because this was a kid and there was no way on earth he could beat her. Especially when his roots were so detached from the ground. It was a wonder he could even earthbend.
The smirk and the confidence both took a dive soon enough, though.
Toph was so used to seeing with her feet; with earthbending. She could feel insects as long as they touched the ground. She could detect the smallest of movements with ease. But faced with this stranger, Toph found herself faltering for the first time. Because while she could feel his feet when they touched the ground, there was something fuzzy about it unless he stood in place for long enough.
It was like there was some kind of layer separating him from the earth at his feet. He was touching the ground, but at the same time he wasn’t fully touching it. And it distorted her vision. Not to mention how he suddenly jumped in the air and vanished for a while there before appearing behind her out of nowhere.
People didn’t move like that. People couldn’t move like that. She was pretty sure she was fighting some kind of alien. But the referee never said anything was wrong and the audience didn’t voice any bafflement regarding the new competitor. Which made Toph wonder what the heck these guys were seeing that she was missing. Because could they not tell there was something off with this kid?
She still tried. She did her best to fight him, ignoring the boy’s pleas for her to talk to him. But somehow—inexplicably—he avoided her attack and managed to push her off the stage in one fell swoop. She felt no earthbending. In fact, her opponent’s feet were so disconnected from the ground, it would have been impossible for the move to be related to earthbending. Instead, all she felt was a gust of literal air shoving her violently before she found herself landing outside the ring, shock, anger and humiliation warring inside her.
For the first time since finding Earth Rumble, she’d lost. She had no idea how, but she did. And it infuriated her to no end because it made no sense. How could no one around her see that she was fighting some kind of ghost? This was absurd!
Fuming at the entire situation, she left, ignoring the sound of the boy calling after her desperately. What did he need to talk to her for anyway? He got his money, he got his belt, he got his respect. He beat her. Did he want the chance to gloat too?
The next day passed by in a blur. Toph listened to her tutors, she practiced the basic level earthbending she was permitted to try with her teacher, and didn’t speak unless she was forced to. Her mood was lower than it had ever been before. She couldn’t stop thinking about her failure. She couldn’t stop wondering what in the world had happened back in that ring. The more she mulled it over, the less sense it made to her and more upset she became.
Her one and only joy was snatched away from her. Because some rowdy kid decided it would be fun to beat her in front of everyone. She hated him. She hated that stupidly fuzzy boy and his strange victory. She hated the fact that he’d stolen her spotlight and made a fool out of her. She hated how weak she suddenly felt, having been knocked off her high ostrich horse so abruptly.
So it was a shock to feel him again. It took Toph a second longer than she would have liked to admit to actually notice his presence. At first, all she felt was the distinct vibrations that came from two different people. They were far more solid than the boy from the ring. They felt real and grounded and very much present. And then she also felt the hazier feet of the stupid alien kid and her fury flared.
Catching the three intruders off guard, Toph confronted them. They didn’t attack her, but they said a whole lot of nonsense. Something about a king and earthbending teacher and a magic swamp? The girl in the group intervened and tried to explain that the boy was the Avatar and needed an earthbending teacher to fight in the war. It only made Toph more utterly bemused.
She knew there was a war raging all over the world, although the details she’d been given were vague at best. And she’d heard legends of the Avatar, passed down to her by her history tutor who shrugged and said she wasn’t all that convinced such a person ever even existed. Which made the entire encounter odd to a level Toph wasn’t used to. And it made her feel even more alienated from the whole thing.
Why would she join a war? She was twelve. She was an amazing bender and she loved earthbending with all her heart. But that didn’t mean she wanted to go out there, risk her life and fight a fight she had no reason to contribute to. And teaching earthbending to a novice? Were these three kidding? What did she know about teaching others? Especially people who very clearly had a very small connection to the earth. This kid—Aang, the other two called him—was so untethered, it was a wonder he thought he could learn earthbending.
Her ire at the entire situation only worsened over dinner. Somehow she found herself sitting right across from Aang, with his two friends occupying the seats to his left. And her parents were casually keeping up a stream of polite conversation with the unexpected guests, acting like it was the greatest honor in the world, hosting three strange kids in their house.
All throughout dinner she kept on trying to prevent him from revealing the truth to her parents. She knew better than to let them know about her true abilities. She figured they wouldn’t understand even then. She was afraid they would be mad at her or disappointed or just extremely confused. And she was not about to let this kid—Avatar or not—throw all of her hard work away like it was nothing; all because he was so adamant that she was meant to be his earthbending teacher.
Only once she made it back to her bedroom after dinner did she stop to think about it. The idea of leaving this house and this city behind in favor of traveling all over the world was… appealing. And the chance to utilize her earthbending for something productive wasn’t all that appalling either. She had no fundamental reason to aid in the war efforts, no, but she could see things were bad if the Avatar was asking a blind girl to teach him out of all the other options out there.
Which was another thing that suddenly dawned on her—these three kids came to her. They knew she was blind, they knew she was young. They simply didn’t care. They saw no evidence of either of those factors inhibiting her skill. In fact, they kept on pushing for her to teach Aang—kept on insisting that it had to be her.
She’d been so upset ever since the last tournament that she’d ignored the fact that this trio had completely disregarded her disability, instead focusing on her skill. And they thought she was good. They never expressed any doubts or concerns. They were just desperate to convince her to help them; to help Aang learn something that he genuinely, truly believed she could teach him better than anyone else.
The people who came to watch Earth Rumble appreciated her skill, yes. But some of them thought it was fake, she knew. Most of them just didn’t really understand just how skilled she truly was, merely taking her victories at face value without delving any deeper into it. Yet for the first time in her life, someone was seeing her for what she was—an incredible earthbender, blindness or not.
With that appeasing realization in mind, she called a truce with Aang and led him outside so they could talk freely.
He told her that ever since meeting Katara and Sokka, the three of them had been traveling together. First, they’d made it to the North Pole to study waterbending. And now they were back in the Earth Kingdom because Aang needed to study the next element in the cycle—earth. He said that the king of Omashu—an old friend of his, apparently?—was supposed to teach him. But after he got captured by the Fire Nation and the city was conquered, he’d sent Aang to look for a different teacher, giving him vague advice.
And now here he was, requesting Toph’s help.
The awe in his voice once she explained how exactly she ‘saw’ the world made Toph internally preen. Because she could tell he was being sincere. This truly did fascinate him and he found it amazing. Nothing about him was fake. He spoke to her with utmost sincerity, in a way that lacked any degradation or arrogance. It was refreshing and pleasant and Toph found herself instantly getting addicted to the feeling of speaking to a person who viewed her as an equal.
So when things got messy and Aang’s friends asked Toph to help them free him—after she was set free—she knew she had to help. Her father’s degrading words as he protested her return to the ring egged her on as well, yes. But mostly… she just felt inclined to help the one person in the entire world who had ever been nice to her and saw her for who she was. Besides, if Aang was the Avatar, Toph was quite certain it would be a horrible idea to let the Fire Nation get their hands on him.
When after that entire spectacle her parents still refused to see her and instead decided to watch her even more closely, Toph decided that was it. She’d been reluctant to join Aang and his friends before for plenty of reasons, one of which was that she was hoping—foolishly—that maybe her parents would get better in the future. But this was the opposite of an improvement. This was a promise of her life becoming an even worse nightmare.
Which led her to pack up her things, grab some food, clothes and money for the road, and head out of the house. A small part of her had been worried the three would retract their request for her help and leave her stranded there. But Aang’s voice was so full of cheer and hope upon noticing her, and the other two—Sokka and Katara—welcomed her with ease. Hey, Toph even got her champion belt back!
Honestly, she wasn’t sure how she’d expected things to go. She never had any friends before so she wasn’t sure how to interact with three kids she didn’t know. It helped that they told her a bit about themselves so she wouldn’t feel completely out of sorts around them. But she was still unprepared for Katara’s insistence on how Toph had to help them all. And she wasn’t prepared for all of the stupid jokes Sokka threw around carelessly. And she still had a hard time keeping track of Aang because of his light brushes with the ground.
Still, she was determined to see this through. She had an incredibly rare opportunity here. She had three new people to try and befriend. She had the world spread out before her. She had no one to tell her she was weak or helpless or frail. And while it was terrifying to realize that they were already being chased by three girls Aang and his friends seemed to recognize, Toph did enjoy using her earthbending for something a little more productive than earning money. She was helping fight a war apparently—this had to be one of the craziest turns her life could have taken.
What pushed her over the edge and convinced her joining this team had been a bad idea was Aang snapping at her. Katara had been going down her throat from the beginning and Toph could handle her. Sokka mostly kept to himself, just yearning to sleep properly. And out of the three of them, Toph had expected Aang to be the last to lash out at her, even if he was tired.
Hearing him say that she was basically dead weight felt like a slap to the face. Because wasn’t this the same kid who’d literally invited himself into her house just so he could plead his case to her? And now he was telling her she wasn’t worth the trouble. Just because his stupid bison was shedding all over the place and she was simply the only one to point out the obvious—that it was Appa’s fault they were being successfully followed by the crazy Fire Nation ladies.
It had all been a bad idea. Joining three strangers just because they were nice to her? Because they knew just what to say to convince her that she was better off with them than with her own parents? She should have known things wouldn’t be that simple. She should have realized life wasn’t that sweet. They could find a different earthbending teacher for Aang. They could find someone who wouldn’t mind their unbearable hovering and their insistence on working together on everything and their stupid chasers who wanted to kill them or something.
She didn’t get far before a stranger—a friendly elder man who offered her tea—convinced her to give them another chance. He didn’t know the whole situation. He had no idea she’d abandoned the Avatar and his company. She figured he would have probably accused her of being selfish if he knew she’d left behind the world’s only hope—according to her tutor, at least.
Even without all of the details, though, the man seemed to believe the behavior of the three—especially Katara’s—wasn’t malicious or ill-spirited. According to him, helping others or accepting help wasn’t a show of weakness or a display of power. It was simply the nice thing to do.
So she went back to give this adventure another chance. And while she couldn’t see the expressions on their faces, she could feel Sokka and Katara perking up upon seeing her joining the fight against one of the girls that’s been chasing them all night. And she was pretty sure Aang reacted the same way—although it was still difficult to see him clearly.
They surrounded the girl together, for some reason accompanied by a teenager Toph didn’t recognize and the old man she’d encountered. She wasn’t sure what these two had to do with the situation, but she kept her mouth shut and merely focused on the Fire Nation girl. Until she attacked the old man and disappeared. And with no way to help, Toph ran away with her three companions who welcomed her back without a single complaint. Actually, they seemed to be pretty happy to have her there again.
And then it was suddenly time to actually teach Aang earthbending and… Toph was nervous, okay? She would never admit it out loud and she would never show it outwardly. But she wasn’t sure how to even approach this. Aang was so different from every other earthbender she’d ever met—not only physically but also mentally. He was so timid and quiet and peaceful and untethered. He had a freer spirit than anyone else she’d ever met, including the Water Tribe siblings he was traveling with. His entire being seemed to radiate anti-earth vibes.
How was she supposed to teach someone like him to be stable and grounded and rooted to the earth below his feet? Yes, he was excited and eager to learn from her, but that wasn’t going to cut it. Toph felt like the task ahead of her included actually reprogramming this guy so he would fit the mold of an earthbender. Which she wasn’t sure how to do.
She tried explaining it to him—telling him that he had to be as hard and unmovable as a rock. He had to approach things head on rather than look for different solutions. He had to keep both his feet on the ground and stop looking like a haze to her seismic ability. And she could tell he was uncomfortable with the mantle of it, with the different attitude she wanted him to possess. But he did his best anyway, even if his best was kind of pathetic.
When Katara tried to repeatedly tell Toph to be more encouraging, the girl internally groaned. Logically, she knew that listening to a person who’s been training Aang for a while now would be smart because she was floundering around in the dark here—pun intended. But the idea of accepting help from someone else still grated on her nerves and she hated it. She wanted to figure this out by herself, without anyone giving her tips.
That… may not have been her best decision.
Her frustration at this entire situation—the impossibility of teaching this kid earthbending, his refusal to stand his ground as he’d been told, Katara’s meddling to try and smooth things over—all came to a head at once. Toph sensed it as Aang jumped out of the way of the boulder she’d rolled downhill toward him. She was completely prepared to intervene in case he couldn’t stop it yet since it was his first day of training. But now she didn’t need to do anything because the coward just jumped over the rock.
So yes, she snapped. She told him he should have let the boulder smash him. She raised her voice, completely uncaring of the fact that she could faintly feel Aang’s heartbeats fluttering more quickly at her anger. And after he left to practice waterbending with Katara, Toph was left to fume by herself and try to figure out a way to get through to someone like Aang.
He was the Avatar. The legends all claimed he was supposed to be able to earthbend, no matter how ludicrous the idea was right now. So the promise of success was there—she just needed to figure out how to uncover this potential. She needed Aang to grow a spine somehow, to not back down every time someone confronted him. Earlier he’d literally fallen on his butt when Toph poked him in the chest. That was the opposite of what she needed him to do.
Keeping that in mind, Toph tried a different tactic—pushing Aang’s buttons until he snapped. She knew he could, however pathetic his anger could be. He’d yelled at her once before. He could do it again. Toph wasn’t scared of what he might do to her if she really bothered him because Aang was the least threatening person she’d ever met—which boded well for the world, she thought flatly. But she got the feeling it wouldn’t be that easy to provoke him.
She used her words to mock him, which proved to be futile. She took his nuts—ones she knew he liked snacking on from time to time—but it only earned her a mild: “I’m happy to share anything I have.” Pressing her feet more firmly against the ground, Toph searched for something else she could do. Her senses focused on the familiar staff Aang carried around with him everywhere he went.
Without too much thought, she grabbed it and used it to crack the nuts open.
This got her somewhere. She could feel Aang turning around to look at her. She could feel his heart speeding up as he kept his voice controlled but still tried to stop her. He asked her to stop, his voice growing more desperate and pained with every nut she cracked with his staff.
Finally.
“It’s a delicate instrument!” he told her urgently.
He still wasn’t getting up to actually stop her. But this was progress, nonetheless.
So she mocked him and walked away, unbothered. And because this seemed to work better than everything else, she knocked the staff against everything in her path. Behind her, Aang cringed with every smack but remained seated. Oh, well. Baby steps.
She didn’t mean to stumble upon Sokka and Aang. The older teen was trapped in a hole in the ground, incapable of moving. And Aang was trying to protect him from an angered animal—a moose lion, according to Aang. Toph was prepared to jump in and lend them a hand, but she kept to the side and watched—so to speak—without intervening.
It was totally worth it, too. The way Aang finally—finally—stood his ground against the moose lion was exactly what she’d been looking for. Apparently, all she needed to do all day was trap one of his friends in a hole and set an angry beast at them. She could have done that ages ago and save herself the trouble.
Once the boys finally noticed her sitting nearby, Toph was a little surprised by the frustration Aang voiced. She’d expected Sokka to be the one to yell at her for not helping them. Instead, Aang snapped at her, sounding genuinely upset at her lack of assistance. And since this was exactly what she needed from him, she pushed him further by going to crack open another nut with the borrowed staff.
Aang stopped her before it could make contact with the small fruit.
Complimenting him for standing his ground against the moose lion and her hadn’t been her plan, but Toph was pleasantly surprised to find it to be so effective. Yes, she told Aang to try and earthbend again because she did see improvement. But it was still his first day. She’d expected maybe a small change to follow this exchange.
Instead, Aang followed her instructions and planted himself on his feet before a nearby rock. For the first time since meeting him, Toph could feel his presence perfectly. And suddenly he performed the bending form and a large chunk of rock disconnected from the earth and was pushed back. It smacked against a wall with a loud, satisfying crack.
“You did it!” Toph cheered, pride swelling in her chest even as Aang’s figure once again grew fuzzy. “You’re an earthbender!”
She did it. She taught him this. This was more satisfying than every single one of her victories back in the ring of Earth Rumble. This was a sort of euphoria Toph had never experienced before.
Aang’s elated voice at his success reflected her own feelings. Because he just earthbended for the first time, and she just found out that it was possible to teach him. She could actually do it. And if she taught the Avatar to earthbend properly, she would truly influence this war. The world, really. No helpless person could teach someone like Aang the basics of earthbending in less than a day, after all.
Her head was spinning from her success, but she tried to contain her smile.
༄.° ༄.° ༄.°
“Did you really take Aang’s staff earlier?” asked Sokka.
Katara was lying inside her sleeping bag, dead to the world. Appa was huffing and puffing from his place nearby. On top of his head was Momo, the lemur finally silent now that he was asleep. And curled on top of Appa’s tail was Aang; as usual supporting nothing to shield him from the chill of the evening. Unlike every other day, though, he was gripping his staff with both hands even in his sleep, as if reluctant to let it go.
Toph and he were the only ones still awake. They were sitting next to each other in front of the dying fire Sokka had built so Katara could cook a lop-eared rabbit for dinner that Toph had managed to capture. And now she was feeling content and sleepy, yet not eager to leave her warm spot near the fire quite yet.
“Yeah,” she said. “Why?”
“No, no reason. Was just wondering—I mean, what’d you need it for anyway? Not like you can use it to fly or anything.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Use it to fly?”
With an amused huff, Sokka said, “I guess you wouldn’t know about it. That staff—it’s actually a glider. Aang uses it to fly. You know, with airbending. Didn’t believe it was possible until I saw it with my own two eyes. Personally, my experience with flights that don’t include Appa aren’t great, but Katara said that gliding was fun and Aang really likes it, so I’ll just take their word for it.”
“Gonna be honest with you, Sokka—flying doesn’t sound like fun to me,” she noted flatly.
The idea of separating from solid ground was less than pleasant. Flying on top of Appa was already testing her bravery since she was completely blind on top of that bison. The idea of soaring through the sky without the saddle under her feet made her shudder. No, flying was not for her, thank you very much.
“Maybe we just don’t have the spirit for it,” he muttered.
Toph shrugged. “I needed Aang to become more assertive earlier. Tried a bunch of stuff to irritate him but this guy is not easily angered, is he?”
Snorting, Sokka said, “Definitely not. No, I can only think of a handful of times when Aang got genuinely upset and usually he has a pretty good reason for it. We saw some… pretty messed up things the last few months.” He shifted a little next to her, then more seriously added, “So you took his staff for that? What’d you do with it?”
She blew a strand of hair away from her face. “I used it as a nutcracker. It was more effective than I expected it to be, honestly.”
“You—what?” Sokka’s body stilled momentarily. His heartrate picked up speed. “You took his staff and cracked open nuts with it? Wait, are you serious?”
“What’s the big deal? The nuts cracked, Aang learned earthbending—everyone wins.” She stretched her legs before her. “It’s just a fancy stick.”
Sokka audibly inhaled, held his breath and then exhaled. He brought a hand up to rub at his face, like he was already tired of this conversation. Toph could feel his head turning in the direction of Appa, probably to glance at their sleeping friend. Then he turned to face the dying fire again. Something about his body language seemed to be more serious than it usually was and Toph wasn’t sure what to make of it.
“Oh, Toph, it’s not just a fancy stick—not to Aang,” Sokka said exasperatedly.
“Right, it’s his glider thingy too,” she dismissed. “So what?”
“It’s an Air Nomad artifact.”
She waited. He didn’t say anything beyond that, though. Like this explained everything.
“So?” she pressed.
Turning to face her more properly, Sokka bemusedly said, “Toph, what do you know about the Air Nomads? Did you hear anything about them? Did you learn about that from one of your fancy tutors?”
The mention of her old tutors irked her because it made her think about her home, her parents. The life she’d led before meeting her three new friends. But she pushed away the irritation in favor of trying to recall what her history tutor had taught her regarding the fourth nation. Admittedly, there wasn’t much she could scrounge up.
“Um… they were airbenders. And they don’t exist anymore.” She gestured vaguely in Aang’s direction and muttered, “I mean, Aang’s an airbender, but he’s the Avatar. It’s kind of his thing to learn all of the elements.”
“And?”
Offering him a shrug, Toph remained quiet. That was basically the extent of her knowledge when it came to the lost nation. The moment her tutor had told her that all of the airbenders were gone, she kind of stopped paying attention to her. Because if there were no more Air Nomads left then what was the point of even learning about them? It wasn’t like she was ever going to meet one of them. They were just a piece of history for her; nothing more.
She could feel Sokka staring at her. Like—in the usual sense, not in her earthbending sense. The pressure of someone eyeing her made her just a tad bit uncomfortable and she didn’t have to use her feet to feel Sokka’s head facing her directly. She would have squirmed uneasily had he not been watching. It gave her the feeling she’d just stunned him, and she wondered what answer he’d expected from her.
“That’s it? Wow, even we heard more about the airbenders,” he mused eventually. “I grew up learning that at the beginning of the war, the Fire Nation wanted to get rid of the Avatar, so they attacked the Air Temples and killed everyone who lived there. They got rid of every single Air Nomad until none were left, but the Avatar still slipped away. Although some believed he did die back then and lost all hope when he was never reincarnated.”
“Hold on, back up,” she cut in, furrowing her brows. “Why would the Fire Nation go after the Air Nomads to get rid of the Avatar?”
“Um… because they knew it was the nation of the next Avatar in line after Roku. Avatar Roku was the last one who lived before the war. Then he died and the new Avatar was born in the next nation in the cycle—air.” Sokka paused for a moment, then incredulously said, “Toph, what do you know about the Avatar?”
She shrugged. “I know he can control all the elements. And that he hasn’t been seen in a really long time. My tutor wasn’t even sure he was real. Obviously he is because Aang is real. But before I met you guys, I just thought it really was possible there was no such thing. But if he’s real, he doesn’t belong to a single nation. If you control all of the elements, you’re basically your own person, no?”
“Well… no. The Avatar gets reborn. Every time an Avatar dies, they are soon reborn in a different nation. They’re from the Air Temples, then the Water Tribe, then the Earth Kingdom, then the Fire Nation. And the cycle repeats itself. Avatar Roku was from the Fire Nation. So once he passed away, the Fire Lord at the time knew the next Avatar would be born an Air Nomad. So he murdered all of them to try and kill the Avatar.”
Toph let the words sink in slowly. “But you said this Avatar Roku guy died before the war even started, didn’t he?”
“Yes.”
“And the next Avatar that was born is…”
“Aang.”
Her eyebrows climbed up her forehead. “But Aang is my age. The war started a century ago. It doesn’t make sense.”
A deep sigh left Sokka’s lips. For a sixteen-year-old, he sounded far older. Like this conversation was taxing on him. Which made sense, she guessed. He was trying to explain something to her—something he clearly thought was important—and he wasn’t usually the type to have deep conversations with people from what she had observed so far. If anything, this felt like something Katara would have sat Toph for had she been awake right now.
The fact that Sokka was bothering with this whole thing only served to put Toph on edge. Because if this was important enough to Sokka for the guy to go out of his way and have a serious conversation with her, it was bound to be more vital information than Toph had assumed. Why would this topic affect him this much otherwise, right? But she still didn’t get it. She didn’t get how any of this related to the staff Aang carried around or to… anything, really.
“Maybe we should have told you this before now,” said Sokka, “but when Katara and I met Aang, it wasn’t… normal. We were just minding our own business near our village when suddenly this iceberg surfaced and we saw that someone was trapped inside. Katara cracked it open and released Aang. I don’t know when exactly they put it together, but the two of them hung out some more and realized he must have been stuck in that thing for around a hundred years.”
Toph’s jaw dropped. “What? That’s insane!”
“Yeah, I thought so too. But you should have seen him—he was so oblivious to the dangers we knew existed in the world. He had no idea about the war with the Fire Nation. He acted like he’d never even heard of it. And when we told him no one had seen an airbender in a hundred years he… well, he refused to believe it. Because to him it’s only been a couple of days since he last saw his people.”
“His people,” she echoed. “You mean… Aang is an Air Nomad?”
“The last of his kind,” the guy confirmed grimly. “We visited the temple he grew up in together. Katara didn’t want to show him the evidence that Fire Nation soldiers had been there. He was so happy to be back home that she didn’t want to burden him with this. But he found out anyway. He stumbled across the skeleton of the teacher he had—a monk he was practically raised by—and it… it really hurt him. He nearly blew Katara and I off the mountain without meaning to. I’ll never forget the grief on his face. It was… it was horrible.”
Stomach churning uncomfortably, Toph tried to digest this information. The fact that a friend of hers was, apparently, a part of a nation that no longer existed. A nation that was now practically extinct. The fact that he’d stumbled across the dead body of someone he cared about. Toph loved her parents, no matter how upset she was with them. If she were to ever walk in on their corpses, she’d lose it. She imagined that someone like Aang, who was far more vulnerable and emotional than she was, would have had an even worse reaction to such a thing.
She pressed her palm against the ground and tried to focus more closely on the fuzzy image of Aang. He was difficult enough to see when he was in contact with the ground. But now he was resting on top of Appa as well—it was nearly impossible to feel him. Still, she did her best. Stretching her senses to their max, she could feel his steady heartbeat and the peaceful breaths he was taking. He was so small and unassuming like this; she would never have imagined he’d lost so much to this war. Or that he was apparently over a hundred years old? That was mind-boggling, too.
“Oh,” she said in a small voice. “I didn’t know that. I thought… well, I thought he didn’t belong to any one nation, I guess. Although it does explain how he knows airbending without anyone to teach him.”
With a nod, Sokka leaned back on his hands. “Yeah. But the point is—Aang doesn’t have much left from his past. He has Appa—who was frozen with him—but that’s it. It’s just the two of them who remember an entire culture the rest of the world had basically forgotten. And other than Appa, all this kid has is his memories, the clothes on his back and his staff. That’s it. That’s all that’s left of the life he knew. And he doesn’t say it explicitly, but I know—I know—if anything were to happen to any of those things, it would really hurt him.”
And Toph had taken Aang’s staff and knocked it around without a care in the world, not realizing the value it had in the boy’s eyes. To him, this was a precious piece of the past he was from. It was an item that probably couldn’t be found anywhere else nowadays; irreplaceable. Had she accidentally broken it, Toph imagined she wouldn’t have even understood the gravity of it, even if Aang did get upset over it. He might have blown a fuse over it, but all she would have interpreted it as would have been a kid lashing out because his toy was broken.
Actually, I prefer if you didn’t. That’s an antique, handcrafted by the monks. It’s a delicate instrument!
She’d dismissed the urgency in his voice earlier that day, completely blind to the true worth of this staff. But now she felt a little sick to her stomach, thinking of what could have happened. What if she really did break it? By accident of course—he would never have broken Aang’s stuff purposefully, no matter how riled up she wanted him to get. But with how negligent she’d been with the thing, she figured it was a real possibility. She could have destroyed this priceless item and Aang would have probably been furious with her.
It also explained why he’d lashed out at her at the beginning only once she accused Appa. He’d been perfectly okay with staying out of the arguments between Katara and her, but the second Toph turned on his bison, Aang instantly snapped right back at her. Because she’d offended his oldest friend in the world, apparently, and he wasn’t going to let it slide, no matter how much truth was in her words.
God, why hadn’t anyone told her this before now? This seemed like the type of important information friends were supposed to share with each other if they wanted to get along! She would have really appreciated an introduction along the lines of: “Hi, I’m Aang. I’m the only survivor of my people’s genocide, so could you please respect this and not step over the line? Thanks.” Yes, she would have felt blindsided by this, but it would have been better than discovering it all now; after she’d already gone too far.
Very dryly, she told Sokka, “If you ever let anyone else join us, you should probably lead with all of this.”
“Yeah, because that’s a pleasant greeting for new members.” His tone matched her own. “But hey, nothing happened, right? Aang is probably over it because no harm was done. So you’re good. Just… maybe don’t do it again, yeah? I know he doesn’t look like it, but this kid can get seriously scary when he’s really mad. You don’t want to go there, trust me.”
Toph had a very hard time imagining this ever happening. But she also knew she wasn’t planning on destroying a piece of Aang’s past anyway. So she nodded wordlessly and listened as Sokka stretched and got up. With a mumbled good-night, he went to the space next to Katara so he could wiggle into his own sleeping bag and join their friends in the realm of dreams and obliviousness.
But Toph remained seated near the fire until the embers died down completely and the heat they offered evaporated.
༄.° ༄.° ༄.°
If Aang could tell that Toph was a little distracted the next day, he didn’t comment on it. He just focused on the exercises she was giving him, performing some of them well enough while failing others. Every time he messed up a form or couldn’t make the rocks they were working with move, Toph could feel his body tensing like he expected her to scold him or snap at him. But she only told him to try again, showing him what he was doing wrong and how to improve.
Katara was right—he responded better to encouragements rather than judgement and criticism. Besides, Toph couldn’t muster up her temper right now.
Ever since they all woke up that morning, Toph found herself paying extra attention to Aang. The way he was already seated cross-legged by the time the three of them woke up, completely still and silent. The way he didn’t touch what was left of the rabbit they’d cooked last night, instead opting to eat a bunch of berries he’d scavenged. The way he talked to them with the chirpiest, most unburdened voice in the world despite the grief he must have been carrying with him for a while now.
The way he kept one hand on his staff no matter what he did. That, especially, stood out to her. He rested it in his lap when they ate; he held it loosely while sitting quietly—meditating, according to Katara; he twirled it around casually while talking to them, likely not even noticing what he was doing. And while he couldn’t hold the staff while practicing earthbending with her, he did keep the item in his line of sight and kept on glancing in its direction every now and then, as if to make sure nobody was touching it.
It grated on Toph’s nerves. She kind of just wished Aang would be outwardly mad at her for having taken his staff without permission. But his tone was as friendly as ever when he spoke to her. He showed no sign that he was angry still.
“Okay, that’s enough for now, Twinkle Toes,” she said eventually.
Aang’s body hit the ground a moment later as he collapsed from exhaustion. He wasn’t really out of breath and she was pretty sure he wasn’t sweating, but his limbs still trembled a little from the hard work earthbending required. Still, other than a tired groan, he didn’t complain. Toph was almost positive he was just ecstatic at the fact that he was actually making progress, no matter how small it was.
Grabbing a waterskin, Toph took a gulp of water before tossing the thing over to her friend. He caught it with ease and sat up to drink properly. Absently, Toph noted the way his head momentarily turned in the direction of his staff once again.
“Can you tell me about the time… before all of this?” she asked before she could change her mind.
The boy lowered the waterskin a bit and focused on her. “Huh? Before what? Before you joined us?”
“No.” She took a seat on the ground opposite him and wrapped her arms loosely around her legs. “Before the war started.”
“Oh.” Putting the water aside, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m not really sure where to begin, honestly. A lot has changed. And I’ve been all over the world, but I don’t know how to explain what’s different because… because it feels like everything is. There’s a sort of tension in the air everywhere we go—the kind that didn’t use to be around before Fire Lord Sozin attacked the other nations.”
“You traveled around the world?” she asked, then chided herself for the stupid question.
Of course he did—that’s what the word ‘nomad’ meant. And if he was an Air Nomad, it made sense he was used to traveling a lot. This trip with Sokka, Katara and her was probably very different since they were trying to end a war, but the journey itself must have been familiar to him at least.
Chuckling, Aang said, “Yeah. The moment I was old enough to leave the Air Temple, Monk Gyatso—he was my teacher—took me with him on his journeys. That’s how I met a lot of friends from the different nations. It was much easier to fly about when there was peace. And we could see the different cultures on our travels, so we learned a lot. We listened to the stories of the locals, we participated in their tradition, we shared some of our stories. It was really fun.”
There was so much fondness and longing in his voice as he spoke about the past. And, according to Sokka, it didn’t feel like a hundred years ago to Aang. This all had happened a few months ago in his eyes. She had no idea how he was coping with so many drastic changes in his life. It wasn’t like he was showing much of this pain; even now his voice was jubilant despite the bittersweet quality it held.
“What about your parents?” she asked.
“I didn’t know them,” he said. When Toph frowned in confusion, he lightly explained, “Air Nomads didn’t live the same way the people of the other nations do. We didn’t separate to families. Instead, the monks and nun raised us. We were raised as a community rather than a family. The boys lived in the southern and northern temples, and the girls in the eastern and western ones. We met up often enough, though. Appa and I met when me and my friends went to visit the Eastern Air Temple.”
“But…” She shook her head. “But weren’t you curious?”
She could feel Aang shrugging. “Not really. Blood doesn’t matter to me. I saw all of the Air Nomads as my family. And now so are Sokka and Katara. You don’t have to see it this way—it’s your choice. We can be just a team to you. But that’s the way I see it.”
Tightening her arms around her legs, Toph hesitantly said, “Even me?”
“Sure.”
He said it with such ease, it made her head spin.
“But I nearly broke your staff,” she reminded him. “I took it even though you told me you didn’t want me to.”
“Well… yeah,” he admitted, his head once again turning toward the nearby item. “But it’s more formidable than it looks, honestly. I mean, I do use it during fights. I wouldn’t have done it if I didn’t think it could withstand some pressure. I’d rather you didn’t do it again, but even if you do… sometimes families are messy, aren’t they? Sokka initially wanted to eat Momo. And Katara yelled at me because I grasped waterbending more quickly than her. I hid a map leading to their father from them for a day. We all messed up at some point.”
Shifting on the ground, he crossed his legs and put a hesitant hand on Toph’s shoulder. Then he added, “I think what’s really important is that we know how to move on from these moments. We choose to stick together anyway. We forgive each other and offer support when we need to. Isn’t that what families are all about?”
Toph mulled over his words. The hand on her shoulder would have possibly bothered her any other day because her dad tended to do the exact same thing when he wanted to lead her somewhere, whether she wanted to go or not. But Aang wasn’t pulling her in any direction. The touch felt more like a grounding presence than a forceful tug. He wasn’t trying to control her but rather show her that he was right there, even if she could feel it with her earthbending. And in a way, it was better than her ‘sight’ because this way Aang felt more present and real.
A part of her couldn’t help but wonder, right at that moment, what he looked like. She couldn’t exactly turn her head to shoot an inconspicuous glimpse at him. Her eyes would remain as useless as ever if she tried. And while her seismic ability was incredibly useful, it didn’t help when it came to people’s appearances. So beyond his stature and pose, she had no idea what her friend looked like. Up until the night before, she hadn’t even been aware of his past or his nationality either.
She knew what her parents looked like—maybe not color-wise, but still. And they were the only family she’d ever had. But if she was going to join a new family, didn’t it make sense for her to know what the members in it looked like? As much as she could when she couldn’t use her actual sight, at least.
“Can I touch your face?” she blurted out.
It sounded weird when she said it like that.
The hand on her shoulder loosened its hold a little. “Um… what?”
“To know what you look like,” she clarified.
“Sure!” he said brightly, already shuffling a little bit closer. “I don’t mind.”
She still hesitated for a second longer before actually going through with this. Toph traced his jaw and cheeks, noting the fact that he still seemed to have some traces of baby fat left behind. She ran her fingers over the bridge of his nose, which was just a tad upturned. When she moved toward his eyes, she could feel his long lashes fluttering shut right before she made contact; and she wasn’t sure about it, but they felt like they were bigger than her own and her parents’. He chuckled a little when she found his ears, muttering about it being ticklish. Then she climbed past his eyebrows and up his forehead…
“You don’t have hair,” she realized, then she pulled her face at how rude it sounded.
Aang didn’t seem to mind. “No. My people always shaved their heads and so do I. Can you feel this?”
He took her hand in his and gently traced it over his scalp. But she wasn’t sure what she was supposed to feel. So she just shook her head, furrowing her brows in concentration. It took her a little longer to realize she could feel something—it was barely there, but there seemed to be a bit of skin that was elevated above the rest.
“When an airbenders masters airbending, they get tattoos. They look like blue lines that run all over our body. They follow the chi paths in the body. They end on my forehead and on the backs of my palms and feet. Each end looks like an arrow.” He paused for a second, then said, “Their color kind of matches the sky. I know that it doesn’t mean anything to you, though.”
“So you mastered airbending before… everything went down?”
There was a bit of forced levity mixed in with genuine pride in his voice when he said, “Yup. I was the youngest airbending master in history.”
“I mean… you still are,” she pointed out. Pressing a little more firmly, she tried to feel the shape of the arrow on his forehead, just barely managing to follow it. “Even if they aren’t around anymore, you still achieved this, didn’t you? Some benders out there—and I’m talking about you and me, Twinkle Toes—are just better than others.”
He laughed and Toph dropped her hand to feel the way his eyes crinkled near the corners. His smile didn’t feel even, instead tugging further up on the left side of his face. Toph found herself unsurprised by this. For some reason, this fit his character perfectly well.
Keeping her face impassive, she finally let her hand down and rested it on the ground instead. Aang didn’t put more space between them again, instead choosing to stay in place. And while she couldn’t really feel any physical change in the way he held himself, she thought there was a bit less tension in the air around them. And that was already good.
She punched Aang in the shoulder.
“Ow!” he whined and rubbed his arm. “What was that for?”
“I suppose I could give this ‘family’ thing a try,” she said in lieu of an answer.
In an instant, his tone cheered as he called, “Really? That’s great, Toph!”
“Yeah, yeah. Break time’s over. Let’s get back to work before Sugar Queens whisks you off to play in some kiddy pool.”
If Aang found the abrupt change strange, he didn’t show it. He merely pushed himself to his feet in an instant—with a gust of air, Toph realized—and listened as she explained their next training exercise to him, his head bobbing up and down obediently. She only allowed herself to crack a small smile once his back was turned to her.