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Toph is still walking out of school when she hears the sounds. Loud talking, obviously, teens be teens and most kids are dumb because most kids aren’t her, but it’s annoying. And she can see everything in the ground for as far as she looks, usually – the amounts a little fuzzy sometimes but today Toph’s been tracking Aang a good half the day.
Because, Aang, for as sweet and everything as he might be, is the one kid always getting himself in trouble. Not that it’s hard for the said tiny fourteen-year-old. The thing is, he’s a topic of a lot of scrutiny – from everyone.
Oh, the other annoying kids are with him now. Which means unpleasant disagreements, probably.
Toph sighs, shoulders her backpack and heads off in search of her always-in-trouble airbender friend.
It’d help a lot if he’d actually face it, probably.
“- or maybe it’s just that you’re too scared to,” a boy’s voice reaches her ears.
“Yeah, how can a guy like that be the Avatar?” That’s a girl.
Okay, the bully gang whose names Toph doesn’t waste mental space remembering. She walks faster.
“I’ve never run from a fight!” Aang protests, “But fighting doesn’t have to mean violence. That’s not the answer!”
“Or maybe you’re just saying that because you don’t have the guts to throw a punch,” someone scoffs, “How do you think the world’s gonna last with an Avatar like that?”
Aang takes that hard, Toph can feel it, the way his heartbeat flickers with hurt through the rapidly mounting panic. The name calling and stuff in public schools is something nobody ever warned the kid of, apparently. Doesn’t phase Toph.
Doesn’t mean she can’t be feral when she hears it happening to her best friend.
Toph stamps the kids back right as she’s picking up feeling of someone about to throw a punch to see if you can take that, you little weakling and with a few fast moves, has all of them encased entirely in rock up to their necks. “Take that, you dunderheads!” she yells. “If Aang hesitates to beat somebody up, I’m there to do the job.”
She turns away from the terrified teens to the boy now staring at her. At least his heartrate’s somewhat slowed – he’s not as afraid anymore. “Come on, Twinkletoes! You owe me dinner.” She grabs the boy by the arm and drags him away, ignoring his little yelp.
They don’t talk about what happened that morning, but Toph thinks about it hours later, and Aang’s being awfully quiet to be fine in his head.
And Toph is so bad at emotions.
She grew up half imprisoned in her house; her parents paranoid and a lot of things before she finally upped and outed, and thanks to a long string of legal nonsense, and police who tried and failed to catch her, she made a nice new home for herself. Out here. On her own. And, where she met Aang, the first friend she’s ever had, and the only kid who sticks around to tolerate how infuriating Toph knows she is.
She met him on the first day of stupid school that she wishes she could skip out on entirely, is the main reason she still goes, and he’s been here ever since, hanging around even if she bullied him, and – it scares her how much she’s taken to love this boy.
Aang might be a total pushover, but she’s found she loves that about him, too.
But, thing is, the world doesn’t. Everything in the world is about fighting. That’s what she’s been told until the day she met Aang, and she still doesn’t believe there even is another way, but at least she doesn’t try beating somebody bloody for suggesting that’s not an answer.
“You’re all broody,” Toph tells him bluntly.
“I’m okay!” Aang tries to lie.
Even his heartbeat insists ‘lie’. Toph throws a pebble at his head. “Fine. If you don’t want to dump your woes at me, I’m sure Zuko or Sokka are –”
“Do you think I’m a bad Avatar?” the kid blurts out so fast she pauses mid grumpy storm-out for the phone.
But she stops in her tracks, head tilted to the side and mind scrambling to sort through that really strange comment. Aang is a lot of things. But he’d also die on responsibility. She can’t say why she loves him so much, when he stands for everything that she doesn’t, but…
But she does, because he’s kind and stubborn enough, because he stuck around even when she told him to go, and he’s a friend she wants to spend forever with. She can’t imagine a life without Aang, and that’s something she never wants to live.
Toph never had a brother. (Her life wouldn’t have been so lonely if she did.) But if she did, it would be Aang.
And he cares. Really cares in a way her parents never would.
“Do you want the long answer to that, or the short answer?”
“Uh,” Aang squeaks. He’s afraid. Their words shook him up that badly. Toph is feral. She should’ve thrown a few punches. “How about the… short one?”
Okay. Short one. “You’re not a weakling wimp, you’re the best friend I’ve ever had, and you shouldn’t let those half-wit hog-monkeys tell you who you are.” And because Aang is a huge softie who simply won’t understand a real word she’s saying, she adds an abridged, longer. “You’re the first friend I’ve ever had. Probably the only one who wanted to hang out with the crazy blind girl. You don’t overlook anyone. But the world’s just not ready to see it.”
She finishes off her way-to-emotional speech with a punch to her best friend’s arm. Aang topples off and airbends to keep himself upright with a yelp.
The world’s clearly too violent to accept another voice yet, and Toph thinks it always will be, but Aang insists otherwise, and if he didn’t try so hard to make the impossible possible… well, Toph wouldn’t love him so much, for one.
Toph recrosses her arms with a satisfied little smirk. “And if you’re too afraid to hit somebody, I’ll do it for you.”
There’s a brief pause before Aang speaks again, still quiet but a lot more reassured. Thankfully. If she has to do another sappy thing tonight, she’ll scream. “Toph? Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” she answers with a shrug. “Now can I have that meal now? I’m starving.”