Archive of Our Own

Chapter Text

The thing about Toph is that she does her best not to judge people right away. As a kid, she didn't get much practice — her maids and guards existed to look after her, not to talk to her, so she grew up pretty much closed off to anyone outside her family. Her parents were adamant about tutoring her at home, but she pushed back; she wanted to study and live like a normal person. Just because she was blind didn't mean she could live normally, she'd argued, and that rebellious streak never really went away. It's how she'd ended up meeting all kinds of people over the years.

She'd met Aang that way — she'd joined the movie club half as a joke, back when she was benched with a ligament injury after a taekwondo tournament and figured it'd be funny to sit through films she couldn't see. Prickly as she usually was with new people, Aang felt different from the start, like meeting someone who'd actually earned the word "saint" — which, being a monk from Tibet, he sort of had.

So when Aang brought someone new around, she gave him the same fair chance. She just hadn't expected to feel anything.

She couldn't name it yet. She wasn't sure she was enthusiastic about it, either.

Aang had texted her that morning about a coffee shop near campus, something about wanting her to meet a friend — a "lawyer," though he'd admitted the guy hadn't actually taken the bar exam yet. She hadn't eaten breakfast, her class project had wrung out whatever energy she'd started the day with, and it was Aang asking. Those three things together were usually enough.

Her eyes gave her light and rough shape and not much else. Stepping inside, the noise of the place folded around her — grinding espresso, the hiss of a steam wand, the low murmur under a plaster ceiling. She found her way the way she found most places: by ear, and by the tip of her cane sweeping half a step ahead, catching the seams in the concrete.

"Toph! Hey! Over here!"

Aang's voice cut through easily enough. She followed it, let her cane tap the base of a wooden table, and stopped.

"Hey, Sifu," she said, lowering herself into the booth across from a dark blur she assumed was the friend in question. The table shifted slightly as her weight settled — someone's forearm braced against it.

"Toph, this is Zuko," Aang said, sounding pleased with himself, like he'd been sitting on the introduction all morning.

She got an impression of someone sitting very still — the kind of stillness that kept a vinyl bench from creaking. She nodded in his direction.

He didn't say anything right away. She waited for the usual tell — a throat clear, a nervous shift, whatever people did once they clocked that she couldn't see them. Nothing came. Just a slight rustle as he nodded back. Probably nothing. She let it go and reached for the menu out of habit, even though she'd be ordering by ear anyway.

Aang steered the order — a croissant and black coffee for her, matcha for himself. The new guy didn't order anything; no cup settled on his side of the table, no spoon.

"I met Zuko last month at the library," Aang said, his voice warm over the clink of his mug. "We ended up talking for hours, and then yesterday he played games with me and Sokka. Wiped the floor with us."

"I didn't wipe the floor with anyone," Zuko said.

His voice was lower than she expected, a little rough at the edges, like he didn't use it more than he had to. No urgency in it. No fake modesty either — just a statement.

"Sokka nearly wrecked me on the last stage."

"Only because he was using that cheap exploit," Aang laughed. "Don't let him fool you, Toph. His Steam library's massive. Half those indie titles look ancient."

"It's not an obsession," Zuko said. "It's just good taste."

He didn't soften it. No chuckle, no attempt to loop her into the joke.

Toph set her cup down with a quiet click.

Usually people gave themselves away fast — talking louder to compensate, or going soft and careful like they were handling glass. Zuko wasn't doing either. He wasn't fidgeting, wasn't filling space. Just sat there, unbothered by her silence.

It was strange. Most people tried to perform for her a little — sound clever, or accommodating, or tough. Zuko just sounded tired. Or maybe just genuinely fine with not saying much.

She filed that away. Not smug. Not trying. That, more than anything he'd said, was what she couldn't quite name.

After that, the conversation stayed light. Zuko answered when Aang asked him something, low and short, while Toph sat at the edge of it, drinking her coffee, feeling footsteps pass the booth now and then. It wasn't hostile. It just wasn't anything yet.

"Anyway," Zuko said, chair legs scraping back, "I'm gonna go wash up. Back in a sec."

His footsteps receded, even and unhurried.

The second the bathroom door shut, Aang leaned across the table.

"So?" he said. "What do you think?"

"Think about what?"

"Zuko. Come on." Like the answer was obvious, like he'd been waiting the whole conversation to ask.

Toph shrugged. "He's fine. Doesn't talk much."

"He's just quiet till he warms up to people," Aang said, earnest as ever. "I'm serious, give him five minutes."

"We're at the same table, Aang. That's already five minutes."

"You know what I mean."

She did know what he meant. She just wasn't ready to say so.

Not that it mattered either way. It wasn't like she'd be spending much time around him. Knowing Katara, she'd probably land on the same read anyway — Katara was annoyingly good at people, better than Toph had ever bothered to be, and even with how much they bickered, she was the one person Toph actually trusted to size someone up.

The rest of the meetup was a wash. Toph had to bolt halfway through her second cup for an elective across campus. Gathering her cane, she noticed Zuko didn't ask for her number or try to stop her. Fine by her. Less hassle.

She'd counted on Katara's judgment, and apparently the new guy had passed inspection there too.

After class, Toph sent Katara a voice message with her read on Zuko — dry, distant, felt like talking to a wall — and got shut down almost immediately.

Toph tapped record, talking over the scratch of her pencil against a calc worksheet.

The reply came back fast.

Three days later she got dragged to a pizzeria near the quad — Aang's doing, insisting it was the only time everyone's schedules lined up.

The place was loud: burnt crust, cheap aluminum trays, thirty conversations bouncing off brick. A draft cut through the windows; Aang mentioned it was snowing, though to Toph winter was mostly a drop in temperature and the sound of slush underfoot.

She found the corner booth by cane and slid into the inner seat, shoulder against the cold window glass.

"Toph, sit inside," Aang said, already rearranging everyone. "Sokka, take the end. Zuko, sit next to Toph so Sokka doesn't hog the middle."

The bench shifted as Zuko settled in beside her, keeping to his half without crowding her space. His jacket smelled like cold air and faint engine grease — not cologne, not detergent, just outside.

Sokka was already holding court across the table.

"I'm telling you, it was a tactical error," he declared, hand hitting the table hard enough that Toph felt it through her forearm. "You don't go left on level three. You go right, grab the shield, then face the boss."

"And yet," Zuko said, low, right next to her ear, "I survived. You died twice."

"That was a glitch," Sokka said, with zero heat behind it.

Toph leaned back against the window. Sokka's energy was loud and sprawling, but there was a warmth to it she'd always liked, even if she'd never admit that to anyone but Katara. Suki laughed across the table every time Sokka got too animated with his hands — the two of them were on the taekwondo team together, and Toph had a lot of respect for how little nonsense Suki put up with from him.

"Order time," Katara said, tapping her glass. "Two large pies. What's going on them?"

"Pepperoni, double cheese," Sokka said. "Classic. Indestructible."

"We need one veggie option," Suki said. "Mushroom, bell pepper."

Toph leaned forward. "Put pineapple on both."

Sokka groaned. "Do not ruin sacred bread with fruit."

"Sweet and salty, expand your palate," she shot back. "Pineapple and jalapeño on the second one."

"Honestly," Aang said, "that doesn't sound bad—"

"No," Zuko said.

Flat, sharp, dropped onto the table like something heavy. The banter hitched.

Toph tilted her head toward him. "Excuse me?"

"No pineapple." His tone wasn't angry, just absolute. "I can't eat it. Bad allergy. Even cross-contamination, and I'm out for the week."

A pause settled over the booth.

Great, Toph thought. Now I'm the asshole.

"Oh — okay, no pineapple then," Sokka said quickly. "We'll do plain pepperoni for the meat one."

"Safer that way," Katara agreed, that gentle mediating tone in her voice. "Thanks for telling us before we ordered, Zuko. We can get garlic knots instead."

"It's fine," Zuko said, arms crossing. "Plain pepperoni's fine."

Toph sat back against the cold glass, feeling the whole table's attention shift toward making sure Zuko was comfortable — a fair, reasonable shift, given the allergy — while her joke got waved off without a second thought. It wasn't unfair, exactly. It still rubbed her raw.

She picked up her water and took a sharp sip, ice against her teeth.

This is going to be a long lunch.

The lunch was close to unbearable — for her, anyway. Everyone else was too busy demolishing pizza to notice.

Sitting next to Zuko wasn't fun, mostly because he made no effort to say a word to her directly. Not that it bothered her much. She was used to being talked past. There'd been a stretch in primary school when her parents had all but forgotten she existed for a whole weekend, both of them buried in work, the maids trained to stay out of her way. Back then the people in her house were just shapes she couldn't see, and she'd never cared much either way. Somewhere along the line she'd picked up a rule: the second people started tuning her out, she tuned them out right back.

While the table argued over slice counts, Toph sat under the buzz of the restaurant lights, turning her folded cane over under the table, running through her calc practice sets in her head.

When the food came, a plate was set down cleanly in front of her before she had to reach across the hot tray herself, a napkin placed near her hand a second later. Zuko's weight shifted back into his corner of the booth.

He didn't say anything when he did it. No "here you go," no checking if she needed anything else — just done, quick and efficient, like crossing an item off a list. Whatever. At least he didn't make a thing of it.

"So, Toph," Sokka said, "what are your plans for break?"

"Nothing much. Probably helping out at my dad's shop."

Calling it a shop was an understatement — the Beifong family could've bankrolled a political campaign without blinking — but Toph preferred her own money. Her dad gave her a low-level role at one of the retail offices, and she picked up shifts when her schedule allowed, just to keep her bank account hers.

"Don't listen to her, Zuzu," Sokka snorted.

Zuzu? Toph raised an eyebrow. Sokka and his nicknames.

"You know Beifong Corp, right?" Sokka went on, waving a crust around. "That whole skyline thing? Her family owns it."

"I know," Zuko said.

Something in his voice dropped colder. She caught it in the shift beside her — shoulders tightening, breath going flat.

"Old blood," he added, a thin edge of distance in it.

Toph's jaw tightened. She didn't care about family names or corporate status, but the shift in the air was impossible to miss. He'd decided she was some spoiled heir playing at a normal life. Whatever warmth he'd shown Aang and Sokka all afternoon disappeared the moment his attention landed on her.

By the time the bill was settled, she'd made up her mind about him. If he wanted a wall, she'd build one right back.

Outside, the cold hit hard. Slush crunched underfoot while the rest of the group lingered near the door — Sokka arguing with Katara over the garlic knots, Aang dragging Suki off to look at a flyer.

Toph stood on the curb, cane against her side. Zuko was a few feet away, hands in his coat pockets, his footsteps gone quiet. Just the two of them.

She wasn't good at small talk — people usually read her bluntness as arrogance — but standing through an entire lunch of cold silence felt stupid.

"So," she said, not quite turning her head. "You taking anything on west campus next term?"

A pause that ran a beat too long.

"Yeah." A low hum, barely there.

"Law building?"

"Mm."

Nothing else. No question back, just enough sound to confirm he'd heard her.

Toph let out a short breath, fingers tightening on her cane. Message received.

When the door swung open and Aang's voice spilled out onto the sidewalk, she didn't turn around. She wasn't interested in forcing a conversation with someone who clearly wanted nothing to do with her. As far as she was concerned, Zuko was just another shape she couldn't see — and she was fine keeping it that way.

That lunch didn't age well. And to make things worse, Zuko turned out to be the TA for one of her electives — a policy and ethics class that pulled in students from every track, geodetic engineering and pre-law included.

Turned out he was kind of an asshole.

It started with her mid-term reflection paper. Bad morning — her laptop's file directory was a mess, she'd burned five minutes hunting for her final draft, and it turned out she'd saved it to her cloud drive instead of local.

When grades posted, her screen reader read out a point missing. She marched up to the podium after class, cane tapping a sharp rhythm against the floor.

"I'd like a reconsideration on my score," she said, hands on the edge of his desk. "It was one minute late because I couldn't see the file." A beat, then, with a smirk: "You know. Because I'm blind."

She thought it was a decent joke. She was legally blind — using that for a laugh whenever she wanted was one of the few perks she claimed for herself.

Zuko didn't take it that way.

"I don't think you should be using your disability as an excuse, Miss Beifong."

"Excuse me?"

Her smirk vanished.

"The deadline was 11:59," he said, calm, stiff, no malice in it — just the dry scratch of a pen closing a binder. "The portal closed at noon. Logs show your submission at 12:01. Syllabus says late work loses a point per minute, up to five."

"It was sixty seconds," she snapped. "My screen reader lagged pulling the link off the cloud. That's not poor time management, that's a glitch."

"Then you should've uploaded ten minutes early to account for that," he said. "The rule applies to everyone. If I waive it for you, I waive it for the guy whose internet dropped, or whoever's battery died."

She laughed, sharp. "Are you seriously lecturing me about fairness right now? It was a joke."

"Didn't sound like one. Sounded like you expected special treatment." He stood, chair scraping back, gathering his papers. "Your paper was well-written. Twenty-nine out of thirty. Accept the score and plan better next time."

Toph stood there, furious — not really about the point. It was the flat, rigid condescension underneath it. The assumption that she was some privileged kid coasting on her condition.

"You're really something, you know that?" Her cane hit the tile hard as she turned.

"Class is over, Miss Beifong," he called after her, unbothered. "Have a good afternoon."

Any benefit of the doubt she'd given him after meeting Aang was gone. He wasn't just quiet anymore. He was a target.

She didn't go back to her dorm. She went straight to Katara's building, cane striking the pavement the whole way, and unloaded the story the second Katara walked out — the cloud delay, the lost point, the rigid response.

"It wasn't even my fault," she said as they walked toward the courtyard. "The portal glitched, compressing the upload. I hit submit right at noon, and the server logged it a minute late. I wasn't asking for charity; I was asking him to look at the timestamp. The blind joke was just me being funny."

Katara listened, then set her bag down on a bench with that maddeningly calm look. "Toph — he kind of has a point."

"He has a what?"

"I know it's frustrating," Katara said, hand on her arm, which Toph shrugged off. "But he's the TA. If he bends the rule without proof, everyone's going to want the same thing. And you still got a twenty-nine. That's an A."

"I don't care about the A, Katara. I care about twenty-nine versus thirty."

It wasn't really about the point. She'd spent her whole life fighting to be number one — top of her classes, gold in regional taekwondo against fully sighted competitors — because being undeniably better meant nobody got to pity her. She'd fought her parents to go to a mainstream school for exactly that reason. She'd earned every spot she had.

Nobody had ever accused her of hiding behind her blindness to catch a break. Hearing Zuko reduce it to an expectation of special treatment hit somewhere she hadn't realized was still soft — that gap between how she saw herself and how everyone else insisted on seeing her.

After that, the class lost whatever appeal it had. She stopped raising her hand, stopped volunteering, sat in the back with her chin in her hand and did her best to tune Zuko out entirely.

He didn't make that easy.

Every week after class, while everyone else filed out, he'd call over the noise:

"Miss Beifong. Stay back a minute."

It became routine. She'd stand at his desk, cane planted, while he handed back annotated feedback or asked flat questions about her progress. He never brought up the submission again, and neither did she. But the tension between them just kept getting denser, week over week.