Avatar: Between Two Doors

[veteranMortal]

Part 1--Prodigy

Prologue: The Cost of Boredom

It all began because Toph Beifong was bored.

The problem was that everyone and everything was boring now, or far away, or boring and far away.

Snoozles was with his honey on Kyoshi island. He could have come with her, she entertained the idea of touring the Earth Kingdom with him, but he'd said no. He and Suki were busy with other things. The way he'd said it, she'd decided that she didn't want to ask, she could hear how nervous he was. She almost asked, but. Nah. Not her business.

She still had almost asked him and Suki to both go along with her. It'd be fun, it'd be a chance to capture that feeling of taking out an entire airship fleet together. But she knew he'd refuse, because he was too busy making kissy-faces at Suki.

Twinkletoes and Katara were busy with dull Avatar duties and tedious Water Tribe politics. Zuko was busy too, with being a Fire Lord, but at least in his palace, there was rock and earth. Not just ice.

She could just go on her own, but she honestly did need company. Traveling alone was boring.

She knew that she 'should' go back to her parents and reconcile with them, but honestly, she was the Blind Bandit! Why should she be the one to make up with them, when they weren't even trying to reach out to her? Or, when she thought they were it was all a scheme to capture her. Sure, they probably didn't order the bounty hunters they sent to do what they did. But if they'd had their way she would have been returned to them in a metal box.

But she'd proven them all wrong. She couldn't be chained, she couldn't be locked in. She was free!

But there were moments where she… felt stuck. Stuck in place. Stuck waiting for her life to change. Stuck in Zuko's palace, where half the servants tensed whenever they saw her and the other half seemed confused at her presence. She practiced earthbending and metalbending, honing herself for no real purpose at all except proving that not only was she the best Eartbender alive, but that there weren't any Firebenders who could stand up to her.

She beat Zuko more often than not when they sparred, which was fun. But it wasn't enough.

One day, bored, lounging in the room that he'd made for her, she'd gotten an idea. She kicked her legs against the stone ground. Stone ground, bed low-down right on the ground so that she could just reach a hand out and feel the whole apartment if she wanted to, all the furniture equally visible to her with just a touch of the ground. There were servants too, in theory, but she'd told them all to make like a buzzard-wasp and fly away.

They were technically still there somewhere, in case she wanted them. And sometimes she needed them. She couldn't wash her own clothes, and her food came from the palace staff. But otherwise she ignored them. She hoped Zuko had them doing something else with their time.

She knew exactly what would be fun. Nobody could lie to her, unless they were also lying to themselves. But there was one exception. She wondered whether Azula could still lie to her. It'd be fun to talk to someone else kept in a cage for an actual reason. Someone who deserved it. Plus, she had some good insulting nicknames she hadn't had a chance to use on Azula. She had all sorts of reasons that all boiled down to Azula being someone new that she didn't really know.

So it'd be fun to just talk to her once, see if she could push her buttons.

---

"No," Zuko said, his tone firm. She felt the strength of his emotions. His voice was firm, seemingly unyielding. "She's suffered enough. There's already people demanding that she be tried." He was seated down at her level, kneeling across a morning snack. She was eating a little bit, able to do that and pay attention to him at the same time.

"Shouldn't she be?" Toph asked.

"She's fifteen. We're all… all so young," Zuko whispered. "She needs help more than she needs to be locked away forever or, or killed. Uncle has suggested some therapists, but…"

"Pfft, she turned them away?" Toph asked, with a snort. Iroh was great and she really missed him. Maybe she could go to Ba Sing Se and see how things are going there? Get into some fights with street gangs or something? Surely there was someone who'd be stupid enough to pick a fight with her.

"Yes. She did. Or worse. Yelled at them, tricked them…"

"Well, that's why it'd be fun talking to her. She's not going to break me," Toph pointed out, between a mouthful of rice. She knew how to be polite and ladylike, but she didn't like to be. Most of the time it was boring nonsense. "And who knows, maybe she'll get so angry she'll slip and say something that'll let you help her."

Toph wasn't lying, really. Anything could happen. But she didn't really care whether Azula spent the rest of her life in a prison. Well, she kinda hated the idea of anyone being locked away forever, a little bit.

But some people deserved it. And it wasn't as if anyone could lock her away, and that's what mattered.

She tilted her head and looked at him, widening her eyes. "Come on, Zuko."

"No, I absolutely won't do it. There is no way you're going to be allowed to meet with Azula."

---

"So when you meet with the former Princess, there's a few things you need to know," the boring guard droned. She tapped her feet. "You're not going to be able to meet her face to face or see her."

"Oh no, whatever will I do," Toph said, swooning dramatically and then turning her blind eyes right to face him.

"Oh. Uh. Right. Well there are two iron doors between her and the rest of the prison, and then the ground is both stone and there's steel far enough down, all of it thick enough that no firebender could get through. Or earthbender."

"What about a metalbender?" Toph asked, grinning.

A few of the guards shifted nervously. She felt them exchange a glance. "Well, Lady Beifong, you're the only Metalbender in the world."

"Yes, yes I am," Toph said. She'd mostly just asked so she'd have a chance to tell them. Better not to let people get too complacent about these things. Maybe they'd forget!

Oh and honestly, as awesome as she was, eventually someone else would figure it out on their own if she didn't teach them. Now that they knew it was possible, someone less amazing than her would eventually do it. Individual techniques never stayed individual forever.

Not as well as she did, but she was sure of it. There was only one Blind Bandit, and there would only ever be one. But it'd been months and months since the war ended. Getting towards a year. Things changed.

Oh well, that was enough contemplation. She was better at stillness than most people thought. Earthbending was watching and waiting, but she wasn't going to linger on anything.

That was other people's jobs.

"So, what, I'll be between the two doors?" she asked, since she would have to yell if she was going to talk to Azula through two doors.

"Yes, exactly. That way you're safe, and when anyone opens one of the doors, she still can't get out," the guard insisted. He sounded old.

"Sure, sure." She waved a hand. Yeah, she'd remember it. Two doors. Maybe this would even be fun.

VM AN: It is kind of interesting when you think about how at the end of the show, Toph is somewhat left at a loose end? She doesn't really have a lot to do once the dust settles, whereas everyone else has some sort of responsibilities to go back to?

TL AN: It was its own kind of challenge, trying to think where Toph's head would be in all of this, and of course she's blind so that means you have to think about sense details differently, and since this is all regular, boring stuff she honestly mostly wouldn't provide details. More to come!

 

[The Laurent]

Chapter 1: That Platypus-Bear Girl

Azula was bored. It wasn't as if she got a lot of guests. Sometimes Zuzu came around to give her children's books teaching her that "lying was wrong" and "being mean felt bad." Sometimes he sent mind doctors that she inevitably chewed through in a week or two. Sometimes Ty Lee or Mai showed up.

Mai hadn't shown up in months, though.

Ty Lee always told her stories and gossip, and Azula sometimes used it to construct a picture of the outside world. It'd be needed when she broke out of here and had to overthrow Zuko and set the Fire Nation back on course.

Her cell was so sparse as to border on barren - there was a cot in one corner, lightly scorched from those first few days when she had been indisposed, a bucket at the far end of the cell, a steel end-table that was entirely empty but that she could use as a table, a chest to hold her clothes and any books that Zuko gave her, and that was all. The stone was cold underfoot, no matter how much fire she threw at it, which spoke to either a cooling system or the sheer volume of rock.

The sound of her outer cell door opening with a scream of protesting steel roused her from her musings, and Azula sat up in her cot. The whole room even shuddered just a little bit with the movement of the huge metal doors, a jarring in her guts.

She didn't feel hungry enough for it to be time for another meal; the guards never fed her sooner than she expected. Zuzu had given up on sending mind doctors to "help" her. She glanced at the book beside her bed - the three brothers and the spirit of the forest - and dismissed it immediately. Zuko didn't replace her asinine books this fast.

Eliminating these possibilities, that left only-

"Ty Lee!" She feigned excitement, "What a pleasant surprise to have you crawl back so soon! I'm sure you have something to say about my aura even through these iron doors. Is it particularly cheerful today?" She would have tried harder, but it wasn't difficult to lie to Ty Lee, she so wanted to believe all sorts of nonsense about friendship and--

"Yo, Platypus-bear," a voice called out.

She.

She didn't recognize the voice at first.

"I think Ty Lee's back on Kyoshi Island with Captain Boomerang right now."

Wait. The blind earthbender? Strange for her to be here.

"Oh, it's you." Azula said, "You have me at a disadvantage! Now I'm the one that can't see you. "

The earthbender snorted. Like Azula was the one being made fun of, now. "Yep, seems like it, Azula. Zappy? Sparky?"

She was trying to give Azula a nickname.

"Zappy?" she asked, voice obviously filled with the cutting disdain that would make it clear what she thought of it.

The blind earthbender replied with another laugh. "Got a better name?"

Azula was not a fool, she realized she was being baited. She was a Firebender, she knew how to control rage. She'd simply execute this earthbender once she escaped from prison. "I am Azula, Fire Lord and Princess of the Fire Nation, Conqueror of Ba Sing Se, Slayer of the Avatar, Wielder of Blue Flame."

"Well, Princess," the blind girl said, as if trying it on for size and finding it ill-fitting. "Nah. I'll call you whatever I want."

"It's the recourse of the weak and pitiful to resort to jokes. Like that one water tribe peasant you dragged around." The one Ty Lee thought was cute. She did not like the fool. She would have had him executed upon her victory.

"You're in prison and he's… doing whatever on Kyoshi Island," the earthbender pointed out. "So I think you've missed the chance to call him weak, Ashy."

"Well, I suppose you're right," Azula pretended to concede, "You and your friends did beat me, which is why I'm in a cell, the peasant is on Kyoshi Island," with Ty Lee, who didn't even say goodbye, "the Avatar is wherever he is, Zuzu is the Fire Lord, and you're… Here?"

There was a second's pause, and that's how she knew she'd hit a nerve. The earthbender had to be here for something. Was that it? Was she bored, or looking for a way to rub it in? Azula knew that she herself had loved to taunt and torment prisoners sometimes when she was bored.
"I thought I'd come and find out what happened to you," Toph said, but her voice was defensive, just a little stiff, "Since you gave Twinkletoes more trouble than your father did, but Sweetness was able to knock you around easily enough, I mean."

"That's funny," Azula said, ignoring the taunt, trying to hone in on whatever she had stumbled upon. "I've heard of the Avatar and his two water peasants, and of course everyone knows Zuzu taught him Fire Bending, but I can't say anyone ever talked much about the Avatar's friend, the twelve year old Earthbender who couldn't even beat me when I couldn't bend. Maybe that's why they don't want to waste time with… Who even are you, again?"

"I'm Toph Beifong, the Blind Bandit, creator of Metalbending and the greatest Earthbender to ever live!" the girl boasts, "And I'm thirteen."
Really, it was too easy, and this Toph Beifong… wait. Beifong?

Ah. Azula had an idea.

The Beifongs were one of the most prominent families in the Earth Kingdom, among the Old Nobility. They were the kind of old money who married their scions to the cousins of Earth Kings and powerful nobility. They were the exact kind of people whose sons and daughters were the playmates of child Kings, for that matter. A very powerful family, yet one everyone knew had… fallen a little on harder times in the last century. For reasons no one spoke of at court, of course, for there was No War In Ba Sing Se.

And then Toph came along, a blind prodigy and… understanding of course that they were a bunch of dirtheads, she had to have been talented to be the Avatar's teacher. Maybe. Of course, between… certain people and Zuko, perhaps he'd only been able to find incompetents. But she'd beaten one of Azula's Dai Li agents and held two of them off without trying.

So she was, by the minimal standards of the Avatar's little friends, capable.

And Metalbending? She'd heard rumors of it, from that same Dai Li agent; until now, she had assumed the man had been lying, trying to excuse being bested by a child, but she sounded confident, and it certainly was an impressive achievement.

But perhaps too late to prove herself to her family. If she had proven herself a worthy heir and prodigy to the expectations of her family, why, she'd be there and not here, wouldn't she? No doubt on the sufferance of Zuzu's bleeding heart, probably ashamed at being such a useless burden.

"Oh, the first Metalbender? Your parents must surely be proud?" Azula asked, testing the waters. She allowed a smile to steal across her face, as this was the best amusement she'd had all week.

"Shut up about my parents," Toph shot back. Azula ignored her to press in the point.

"Why, Metalbending can't be very impressive if it wasn't enough for you to be able to live up to your parents' high expectations? Is that why you're here, and not there, because they see you as a failure?" Azula asked, almost having to force herself from purring to instead sound faux-concerned, as if she cared about Toph's silly little feelings. "They didn't think your bending was good enough, even after proving you could metalbend?"

Toph was silent for a long, pregnant moment, and Azula knew she'd scored a hit.

"Did I upset you?" She said, keeping the same nauseating, soft tone of voice she had before, "I didn't mean to. I'm sure you're not the least impressive of the Avatar's teachers! He had to learn Fire from Zuzu, and metalbending puts you above him, at least."

That roused the Earthbender, at least. "But you lost to Zuko. When I spar with him, I win, Zaps."

Azula swallowed back the urge to scream, or yell - she did not lose to Zuzu, she lost to the Waterbender, who shouldn't have even involved herself in the Agni Kai to begin with - and satisfied herself with just releasing a furious gout of blue fire to kiss the door with her fury again.
Not enough to melt it. No, never enough to melt it. The metal is too thick, too sturdy.

"Yes," Azula conceded instead, just for the purpose of her idea, "I did. But then, that wasn't really just a spar; it's different in a real fight. I always won my spars with Zuzu, too."

Azula began to put together a plan, sitting there in the dark staring at the door. She needed to convince Toph to break down those doors in order to attempt to fight her. Then she'd kill the earthbender, and with the doors destroyed by that fool, she could make her escape. It was a plan with… limitations, but she was starting to think about it. It was an enclosed space, and there was stone all around, so she'd have to strike hard and fast.
If the Beifong could Metalbend in some impressive way, Azula would need to know the limits and strengths of it, but the surest way to beat an Earthbender was to assume they were tougher than they looked and defeat them quickly. It was stupid to fight them as an endurance match, compared to simply killing or maiming them. Of course, this was easier said than done, but most Earthbenders she knew took a while to pull together all the stone they wanted. Meanwhile a Firebender could just reach for the fire inside of them and bring it out.

If she were the Earthbender, and if her Metalbending was powerful, what she'd do was bust down the door and send it slamming at whoever she was fighting. So to respond to that likely opening move Azula had to leap in the air, so the blind girl couldn't sense her location and then she'd hit her with a deadly shot, melt her face and then finish it in a few blows before the earthbender could recover.

It was a good plan for one that she had only begun to outline, but the question was: how to get Toph to make a mistake?

"But I suppose," Azula said generously, "He might've been going easy on me, and I'm sure he isn't going easy on you. Perhaps if you spar again before we see each other next, you can tell me how he fights, and I'll tell you how much harder he tries against you than he had to against me?"
She kept her voice steady, confident, as she always did when she lied. Lying was easy for her.

Beifong hummed. "We'll see, Scorcher."

Spoiler: Author's Notes

The Laurent: Toph is a serial nicknamer, but the interesting thing is that she only sometimes sticks to one. She seems to give them based on context, like how both Sugar Queen and Sweetness were sort of meant to be an insult, and did not come up on screen more than once. Obviously, as someone who is used to people going by absurd wrestling stagenames, she can use silly names seriously--Twinkletoes seems to have been a mainstay.

Also, while fanfiction has Zuko be "Sparky" in canon she never actually got around to giving him a nickname, probably because she didn't get to have her Life-Changing Field Trip with Zuko.

veteranmortal: Azula is pretty good at cold reading, but not, like, great? Anyway, they've met now. They're both quite spiky, its fun to put them together and see how they go.

 

[veteranMortal]

Chapter 2: Child of Great Expectations

Azula was (still) bored.

Her days were just about the same, to the point where they blurred together. Zuko finally visited her a day or two ago, to bring a few more books. The books this time were children's books recently made about appreciating people from all the kinds of backgrounds, and respecting all of the kinds of Benders. Firebenders, Earthbenders, Waterbenders and Airbenders.

When Azula pointed out that there was no point talking about respecting Airbenders because they'd been righteously wiped out by the Fire Nation more than a century ago, he'd gotten angry and frustrated and he'd stormed off with her laughter ringing in his ears. Then she'd almost burned the books. But she knew she'd at least get some amusement looking at the silly pictures. Of course Zuko would give her a book with pictures. He really was still such a child.

But even that amusement couldn't distract her for long. They were children's books, after all.

She practiced her forms - she had let them slip a little, to her shame. It had hardly seemed worthwhile; when her plan - such as it had been - was to await a coup in her favour, she would've had all the time and space in the world to return to form, but now, knowing she needed to beat an Earthbender - the Avatar's Earthbending tutor, no less - she could not suffer such a slovenly approach any longer.

She wasn't even sure whether it'd actually happen. Perhaps the earthbender would be rightfully scared of her, as the guards were. Perhaps she'd never hear from her again. Even if that was the case, it was sloppy to have let her training lapse.

When the door did its usual screaming and the room shook slightly, she was sure it was Toph this time. It'd been exactly a week, she'd counted, and that meant that it was likely the blind girl trying to set a schedule. It was how you had control over things, after all. The earthbending prodigy, the failed daughter, would want to feel like she was in control of things.

"Yo, Zappy!" That same irritating voice. Beifong really was trying to pick a fight.

"Good afternoon, Beifong," Azula said, in the most pleasant voice she could manage. "I hope you have not been bored, lurking around Zuzu's palace with nothing to do."

"Oh, of course I haven't. I get to beat 'Zuzu' once a week, and there's all sortsa other stuff to do."

Oh, was she one of those people with hobbies? It would make it easier for her to mock, but harder to get her so angry she tried to attack Azula. "Like what?"

"Practicing Earthbending, Metalbending, sparring with everyone who isn't too scared to fight me…" Toph trailed off, "And exploring, I suppose. Your brother's palace is big, Zaps."

Azula recognised these "hobbies" for what they were - each and every one was nothing more than a name to give to the constant sharpening of her skills. She relaxed.

"Well," Azula drawled. "Not with everyone who isn't scared to fight you, Beifong. But then, I suppose you probably can't get to me in this cell…"

She listened for Toph's response, half-heartedly preparing to leap back if she suddenly attacked. But she suspected that Toph wouldn't be that easy.

"Oh, it'd be easy," Toph bragged. "Honestly, I wouldn't even need Metalbending? Any half-way decent Earthbender could do it. I reckon so could a good firebender?"

"What."

"Haven't you tried just melting the doors?" Toph asked, as if that hadn't been the first thing Azula had tried. And tried and tried and tried again until she'd had to be cared for by a doctor because she'd passed out. She'd been planning on that and used the chance to try to escape, but there'd been guards in the medical station.

It had been a very frustrating, humiliating week.

Instead of any of this, Azula simply said, "Yes."

"Can't be that great at it. Aren't Firebenders all about that whole, 'my rage is hotter than the sun' thing, Sparky?" Toph asked, sounding almost bored.

"I could melt the doors. Not fast enough to keep from burning up," Azula admitted, not telling the rest of the story. It was not as if it was a real concession, and let Toph think this made her weak. Because if she did, that'd make it that much easier to beat and kill her. "Can your metalbending really do it, or is it one of those… party tricks?"
"It isn't Lightning Bending--"

"Generation," Azula corrected.

"Yeah, whatever, Princess," Toph said with a snort. "It's actually good for something."

This time Azula didn't allow herself to be baited, though she did let out a puff of fire, in case Toph was paying close attention. "Oh? Like what?"

"I could tear down the doors with metalbending, sure," Toph said, "But any Earthbender you care to mention could just smash the hinges out of the walls and push the doors over, or tunnel out through the floor, or make rock spears and just pierce the door and begin tearing through. Though that one would take a little while."

Azula never hated that she'd burned through the Dai Li more than she did now. She could have just had them help her escape from what turned out to be the worst designed prison in the history of the Fire Nation. They'd kept Earthbenders prisoner for decades, and her brother hadn't thought about that?

It was too bad she couldn't get any messages out. Surely there were Earthbenders who could be convinced… but no. She was going to have to try to drive Beifong to attack her if she wanted to get out of here. But it was nice to know that Zuko really was that incompetent.

"But you can't do it, can you?" Toph asked. "You can't get out. All that power, and you can't escape? When they put me in a metal cage because I was so good at earthbending, I invented metalbending and escaped in just a few hours!" She could imagine the boastful stance. Honestly, Toph Beifong sounded like she was trying to fill far bigger shoes than the little girl ever could. Perhaps there was some famous ancestor, or? No, she'd have to pursue that carefully, but it didn't seem quite like that.

"Oh, very impressive," Azula purred. "And yet you're scared of coming in here and fighting me?"

"Nope!" Toph Beifong declared. "If you want to prove that you have the power to be free, I'll be waiting for you, Sparky. Cause what good is all your fancy bending if all that power doesn't actually let you do whatever you want?"

"I did what I wanted," Azula said, grinning. "Everything I did, is what I would do again if given the choice for it to work out this time. Meanwhile, you? Did your parents approve of you joining the Avatar? Was it a choice they made for you, or were you just not enough of a success for them to want to keep you?"

"You shut up about my parents," Toph said, voice rising dangerously.

Azula heard the anger, and her grin got wider. "Make me, Beifong."

"Oh, I'll give you a good walloping," Toph said. "When you can make it out on your own." But she sounded uncertain, and the hurt was still there.

"What must it have been like? Living up to the Beifong legacy? Having those expectations? Were you like Zuzu, did you fail your teachers? Were you a disappointment? Unable, perhaps, to do what you needed to do to get your parents'--"

"I'm leaving. I'll be back," Toph said in a huff.

"Ah, and we were just getting to the good parts," Azula said, triumphant. She was winning, but the Beifong was at least returning fire. She'd be back.

---

She did not come back in a week. Azula frowned when the date passed, though she knew that it was probably just a power-play. But if it was one, it was a good one. She had very little to do except think through exactly how she was going to deal with Toph. Once she had dealt with Toph, it became unclear and unknowable to her; how much of the Fire Nation would flock to her banner? Enough to make the coup a forgone conclusion, or would Zuko try to make a war of it? Not that it mattered; she had conquered the Impenetrable City in weeks with no help worth mentioning, she could reconquer the Fire Nation.

So Azula planned for Toph Beifong. Not only fighting her, but for trying to poke at her name. At her pride. It was easy to imagine it. The Earthbender was excellent, and not even only for one blind. The more she heard, and the more she thought about what she knew about Beifong, the more she decided that she was at least a better Earthbender than Zuzu was a Firebender. This didn't necessarily say much, but even the most incompetent of an Avatar's teachers found themselves inevitably mentioned amongst the finest benders of their age.

But for all that, she wasn't enough for her parents. Not enough for them to respect her, still a disappointment. No amount of bending prowess was enough to stop them abandoning her. That had to sting. Had to have wormed its way into her heart like a splinter of ice.

When Beifong came back, she would needle her about it, Azula thought. She was good at that, at finding people's weaknesses and stabbing at them. She thought about Ba Sing Se. Her greatest triumph.

Beifong would come back. She was sure of it.

"Why would she come back, Zula?" She barely flinched. Her mother's footsteps clicked against the stone of her cell, and Azula studied the rough sacking of her bed. "You've been so nasty, and I know you can be better than that. I love you, I really do, but."

But if she did love her a little bit, it apparently wasn't much at all.

"She's such a nice girl," Mother said.

Azula snorted, because Toph wasn't nice.

"But when you're like this, do you make friends?" As if she needed anything so insipid. "Are you truly happy, being such a hard, strange girl? We tried, you know. We tried harder than you want to admit."

Ursa talked as if her heart was breaking. As if it would ever break for anyone but Zuko. She wasn't happy now, because she was locked away, but she'd enjoyed it, terrifying those who thought to underestimate her, training and getting better and feeling that triumph… she had been happy.

She had been.

"Iroh tried. I tried. But you were such a hard little girl, and it hurt so much to see how you drove people away, how you never had anyone to play with. How we couldn't help you, because there was something wrong…"

Azula didn't say anything. Mother was never really here. She wasn't. She couldn't… She wasn't always sure, but with Mother it was simple. Mother was never here. Not for her.

"Something that didn't work," Mother's voice had dropped into a whisper that Azula had to strain to hear. "But even so, I tried. Even so, Iroh tried, and he tried to care--"

"Why would I want him to care for me?" Azula couldn't stop herself from replying, jerking her head up, eyes bright. Fire licked around her fingers. "You always wanted me to be weak and so did Uncle Iroh. You wanted me weak, like Zuzu!"

Mother was kneeling in front of her, at eye level, and the fire whipped through her face, left it utterly untouched. Azula growled.

"We only wanted you to be happy," Azula," Mother said, uncaring of the blue flame Azula shot at her. "Normal children were happier, and I had to try so hard to love you, to make you happy, and it was never enough. Zuko was easier, Zuko was kinder, Zuko, even when he was crying, was happier, when I had him, and if only you'd been more like your brother, maybe I wouldn't have had to--"

Azula swiped a hand at her, and Mother disappeared like smoke. Fire was never enough. She had to try to touch her, that was the only thing that made Mother leave. She forgot. Every time Mother came, she forgot.

She collapsed into her bedding with a huff. Maybe it was better that Beifong didn't come this week.

---

The door screamed as it opened--couldn't they get the hinges greased?--and the room shivered slightly with the shove of the door. It was her again, Azula knew it. It had been exactly two weeks since the last time.

"Yo, Princess!"

"Beifong, so good to hear from you again. I was beginning to wonder if you'd gotten lost," Azula said, letting the sneer show in her voice.

"Nah, one of the Waterbender guys from the North Pole came here to negotiate something. I wanted to fight against him, so I had to spend all that day arguing him around," Beifong declared. "I eventually did, and then I thrashed him. He didn't stand a chance!"

Waterbenders.

Azula tensed for a moment and said, "Oh, is that so? Impressive… why was he so scared of you?"

"Oh, something about girls and not wanting to fight them," Toph said, with obvious frustration.

Ah. Right.

Now there was another angle to exploit. The Earth Kingdom and the Water Tribes both had backward, primitive beliefs about women. Had those been part of the high expectations, having to prove herself twice as capable to get half as much credit as a boy would?

Azula was not sure, but the only way to be sure was to poke her hard about it.

"And after you won, what did he say?"

Beifong laughed. She had a high, almost giggling laugh, but full of scorn. "Oh, yada yada, I'm the exception, the only girl in the world who could have possibly kicked his ass other than Katara, all that stuff."

Azula. Did. Not. Flinch.

"Pathetic little man," Azula said. "Were your Earthbending tutors as incompetent?"

"Oh, yeah," Toph agreed. "They were worthless."

"You were better than them, better than all of them," Azula suggested.

"Yep!"

"Then why wasn't it good enough?" Azula asked, tilting her head. Toph could probably see the movement of her body, the faux-curiosity that was meant to drive her batty. Azula could lie to anyone, and she was sure that Toph wasn't able to tell the truth. But she had to know that Azula was being just a bit disingenuous.

"Did you Master a form, only for your father to ask why you had not done two? Were you an only child, or were there others looking to seize your position?" Azula asked. "Or cousins, even. Relatives, surely the Beifongs, known for being so… proliferate were not so small."

"I had cousins, sure," Beifong said. "None of them were as great as me."

"And did they ever praise those cousins' bending or skills, while you, the blind prodigy, worked harder and harder?" Azula asked, smirking. "Why, you can't read, you can't write, but you sure can bend, can't you?"

"Yeah, I can," the Earthbender said, sounding like she was about to brag again.

"So, why was that not enough?" Azula asked. "Did they ever praise your bending, or was it always just… not good enough." She smirked, because she had been perfect, and she had never faced that failure the way that Toph Beifong had. She'd always met the expectations set out before her. But had Beifong been too lazy and not diligent enough? Was her blindness a weakness?

"I set my own standards," Beifong declared, "An' I'm the greatest earthbender alive."

"Even greater than the Avatar?" Azula asked.

"Oh yeah, obviously. He's strong, sure, but Aang's an Airbender," Toph said. "Even when he's also an Earthbender."

Azula noted it down carefully. She'd beaten Aang once, but she would likely have to defeat him again when she restored the Fire Nation. The thought of doing so was perhaps slightly daunting, but she was a perfect, world-class Firebender and she knew how to control people in her ways. She'd definitely need to do something better than some duel if she wanted to win.

"So, how was it, training? Did they give you enough attention? You're an only child, right?" Azula asked.

"Yes, I--"

"How lucky of you. No failure to get all the attention… but wait, that was you, wasn't it? What led you to join the Avatar, anyways? One moment he didn't have an Earthbending teacher, and the next, there you were. Though I didn't see much of you. I presume," she decided, "That you were there when the drill failed to pierce Ba Sing Se?"

It was the only thing that made sense of the attack, but.

Oh. Now she saw. "No Metalbending back then?" The drill would have been far more vulnerable to even crude Metalbending, or so she could guess, if Beifong had had it at the time.

"Nope," Toph said, sounding irritated. "So I stayed outside, slowed it down."

Even now, she clearly had wanted to get inside and take it down. To get some of the glory. To participate and triumph.

She was still sour about it, and that was a good sign.

"Do your parents know about your Metalbending? Perhaps that would finally prove something?"

"Did your little lightning trick do that?" Toph asked.

"Trick?" Azula asked, keeping her voice even but barely. It was one of the most difficult arts, one that only the royal family was allowed to learn.

"Well, I'm an Earthbender, so I can just, you know, block it. It isn't hard, really," Toph said with a snort. "Though you did get Aang good." There was a moment where the cheer and blase attitude slipped, and Azula had to guess it was something as pitiful as feelings.

"How did that not kill him?" Azula asked, curious.

"Oh, Katara healed it with magic spirit water or something," Toph said breezily. "Some kind of miracle to save her friend or something."

Azula tried not to react, because she was pretty sure that Beifong was looking for that. "How fortunate for him." Of course the Avatar could rely on others, to shore up his many weaknesses. "He had someone there for him. When you failed to live up to their expectations, who was there for you? Or here, in fact? And don't say Zuzu, I'm sure he's busy running the Fire Nation into the ground."

"Who was there for me?" Toph asked.

"When you figured out Metalbending, was it because you loved your friends and they gave you strength?" Azula asked, because she could imagine that kind of saccharine nonsense. Ty Lee was always reading books that went like that. "Or was it because you were better than anyone else, because you could do anything?"

Because you worked hard at it, because talent wasn't enough. If she'd been lazy, she still might have wound up better than Zuko because he had no talent, but it took constant effort to strive towards greater degrees of perfection in bending. And everything she knew about Beifong's actions spoke of it, of someone who was not content with good enough.

"I--"

"Just tell me. Did you metalbend because your friends encouraged you, or because--"

"I was alone," Beifong admitted, voice heated, as she stamped on the ground audibly enough for Azula to hear. "I was locked in a cage, I told you that, and I invented metalbending in hours."

"Oh?" Azula asked. She had remembered it, but now the context was different. Toph Beifong had achieved in isolation a great feat. And now here she was, someone without the boring "hobbies" that everyone said were so important, someone who had only Zuko for company, or at least wouldn't name anyone else.

Someone Azula could easily drive to make a mistake. "And your parents don't even know? Interesting. When did you figure out Metalbending?"

"It was a little before Ba Sing Se fell," Beifong gritted out. "And you're not going to get to me. Strength's strength, friends are friends, they're not the same thing but I like having friends."

"Unlike me?" Azula asked, finishing the obvious implication.

"Yeah!"

"So if you have friends, unlike me, while still being a great bender… then why are you here, and not the family favorite? Why are you bored?" Azula asked, unable to help but smile. She was sure she'd win, but at least Beifong was making it enjoyable to destroy her. "Why are you so alone, if you say that unlike me you have tons of friends?"

"They--"

"Left you behind. Went off to do other things," Azula said, not even letting Toph talk. "They left, and here you are, hanging out with me and Zuzu and… who else?"

Toph was silent.

Toph took a breath. "And yet, here I am. I'm not that bored--"

"And yet you're scared. Scared and alone, aren't you? You want to prove yourself, you want to do something new? Wanted to show your parents you could live up to their high expectations?"

"What are you suggesting?" Toph said, and her voice was high-pitched, but the fascination and the anger were clear.

"Oh, we'll see," Azula said, settling into her seat and waiting. "I'm sure you have Zuzu to run off to, tell him I'm being mean to you."

Another pause, and she almost began preparations for the fight.

"I'm leaving. I'll prolly be back," Toph said.

And then she left.

Azula grinned slowly, halfway hunched over. She heard the anger in that voice. But she also heard the interest. Now all she had to do was force Toph to make the mistake of attacking her, and then she'd knock the Earthbender out and kill Zuko and make everything right.

It was amusing, having someone new to torment, and that was all. She'd say she'd miss it, but once she was free there would be a hundred things she could do that would be more interesting than talking to Toph Beifong.

---

veteranMortal: Azula is having a time of it. Even when she's wrong, she's able to get at Toph a bit. And hey, her mother came to visit! That's nice.

The Laurent: Azula's honestly being really savage here, though it's not like Toph isn't striking back. This was kind of the chapter where I wanted to really hone in on the conflict, and I think we did so. There's also a longer discourse to have about the ways that Toph, as opposed to other main characters, gets better at things. Toph doesn't have Aang's Earthbending moment where he manages to take the first step to save one of his friends. In fact she doesn't have any moments like that when it comes to, like, getting stronger or advancing as a Bender. She's just that good, good enough that she consistently gets better for basically the whole series from the first episode we see her. With some leaps here and there.

 

[The Laurent]

Chapter 3: Two Kinds of Sparring

Toph Beifong had fallen into a routine over the last year or so, one that had only been changed recently. Obviously she had plenty of napping or lazing around or eating, or wandering from place to place finding people to annoy. But she had a routine now.

On Mondays she sparred with Zuko. She won probably seven times out of ten, maybe eight, and they switched between training fields to vary it up. The Fire Lords had several of them, though Zuko didn't like using the ones with trees because he didn't want to light them on fire by accident. Which was why they were there! They were supposed to be constantly replaced, she'd poked at the gardener until he admitted that. Sometimes they also just sparred in confined spaces. It was about variety so it didn't get boring.

On Tuesday she went down to the forges to tinker around with metalbending. She could almost make a blade just by picking up a piece of metal and deciding to get rid of all the impurities while shaping it. She was trying for fine control, because showing off the more offensive stuff she came up with would have been annoying and half of it she didn't know how to do without really hurting someone. So she worked on that sort of small-scale, focused stuff. She liked it, honestly. But it was hot in the palace forges, and so she wound up actually bathing afterward. She didn't do that all that often, because a little bit of dirt wasn't a bad thing. But she didn't want to smell like a wet Rhino-bear.

Wednesdays, well, that was the new thing. Azula. Azula was just fun to argue with. Yes, she was mean and a bad person. But… so? It was still fun to see what she'd come up with next, what arguments or comments or all of that. So she took a half-hour out of Wednesday and even spent some time between thinking about what she'd say. She had some… ideas. It was a little like her spars with Zuko, but she knew that if she told him that he'd freak out.

Thursdays, she didn't have anything to do at all so she started bothering people, and Fridays she practiced Earthbending on her own. Again, she was trying to get finer control more than anything. Saturdays were fun, because that's when she got to terrorize the palace guards and anyone around, wandering from place to place trying to find sparring partners. By now some of them thought they could run or hide from her. They couldn't.

Sundays were the day Zuko held a bunch of the official diplomatic meetings. He held some on other days, but it seemed he often just wanted to get them all out of the way at the end of the weekend.. She crashed them, mostly just to have something to listen to, but she did actually tell Zuko after who was lying and about what. She'd met some pretty good liars, but none of them could actually fool her.

And then she did it all again.

Today was a Monday.

She and Zuko were in the training field she lost the most in. It had some rising hills that she could use to practice bending mud, but also plenty of areas where the ground was uneven, and quite a few fallen trees and logs that were kept like that because it meant that there were dimensions to it. But the most frustrating dimensions were the up and down.

The last time Zuko had won one of their matches, four weeks ago, it had been by leaping off one of the trees and coming down at her, raining fire. She'd blocked the fire and prepared a counter-attack, but he had drawn his sword and had it at her throat. She could sense his sword, even though he didn't use a metal sword - he'd had one sculpted from Ceramics, (afraid of cutting someone, or running too much heat down the blade, whilst wood wouldn't work), but he'd moved fast enough and moved it around enough that she wasn't quite able to read his movements.

She could have probably knocked him back, but she would have been 'cut', so that was Zuko's point. It was a spar, not a fight to the death. Which was also why she didn't reveal to Zuko that she'd been practicing her 'sink someone into the earth' takedowns in secret with a bunch of junk, because maybe there'd be a time she'd actually have to take things seriously and just win a fight immediately no matter what.

Of course, if he knew how fast she'd gotten with it he could have countered it, so maybe she'd use it as an actual trick.

"Toph, are you ready? I'd also like to talk about… your meetings with Azula," he cried out.

Toph considered it, and nodded. Why not? She was going to see Azula again before too long, and it wasn't like she had anything to hide.

One of the things Toph gained, the more she fought Zuko and other Firebenders, was knowledge of Firebending. She wasn't the Avatar or anything, but each time she fought one of them she learned more about what a move meant. She couldn't see fire once it was in the air, but if she knew all the moves she could be pretty sure exactly what they were doing.

A smart bender would probably find some way to trick her, though it would be hard since you'd be learning things a little wrong just to trick an enemy into guessing wrong about what you were going to do. Other than doing things with less effort than weaker benders, it wasn't as if Toph did cheap tricks with her bending either.

Zuko was smart at a lot of things, and he was a pretty good bender, but he'd never really tried to vary it up that much, beyond that weird fancy-dance style of his. Which, honestly, was harder to read than the typical Fire Nation style. But it'd been a year. Neither of them really had tricks at this point that they weren't either keeping entirely secret or had already revealed, other than refinements of what they were doing. Not when she wasn't using metalbending, because it was a training field without much metal around.

And she wasn't getting better as fast as she wanted because she was already just that good, but her wins had been creeping up, these last few months. "Yep, I'm ready." She was in a solid, neutral stance. She planned on seeing if Zuko had anything new for her.

He started out with a basic, for his own style, forward blast. The kind of thing he knew wouldn't hit her. She threw up a wall, and moved left, carefully, pushing the wall forward so that it would slam into him if he kept still. She could stand in one place the whole time and still win, but he tended to want to get her moving. So she'd move first and then, there!

She reached out and with a gesture the ground above where he was shot towards him, mud and dirt almost hitting him as he rolled out of the way and--

Toph brought up the earth wall just in time to block an actually faster than usual fire punch from a rising position. He'd been practicing that for a while, and so she'd almost been surprised.

"So Toph, what is happening with you and Azula? Is she…"

The fight became predictable for a while. She knew how he'd move from here, and while he threw in a few attempts at mixing it up, she wasn't fooled. He was just doing it to have something to do while he talked to her, between panting breaths as she drove him back.

"Oh, we're arguing and she's trying to manipulate and hurt me," Toph said breezily, feeling the way he seemed to deflate for a moment, heart beating fast with fear.

"You don't have to…"

"Nah, Zuko, you don't get it? I want to." Toph grinned and said, "It's fun arguing with her and playing around. I'm enjoying it. It's not boring, it's something new."

"I know my sister can be… abrasive," Zuko said.

"She's a jerk. She's arrogant, kinda crazy acting, a complete weirdo who thinks she's better than everyone else. But you think I can't have fun talking to jerks?" She stuck her tongue out, and swept him up in a shower of dust.

While he was coughing she said, "She's an arrogant bender who thinks she's one of the best benders in the world, and thinks nobody works as hard as she does or is as awesome as she is."

"I know, I--" Zuko said between coughs.

"The big difference between me and her is that I'm right!" Toph boasted. "Also the whole she's evil and crazy stuff, duh," Toph added absently to the end of it. "Mostly the first thing, though."

Zuko groaned. "Toph," he said, as he stumbled out of the dust. "Take this seriously."

"I am serious," Toph said at the same time that she realized she really was. She marched forward.

Every time. Every time she'd actually gotten better as a bender since she went with Aang, it was on her own. It was her own accomplishments. Strength was strength; friends were friends. She needed both, and one could not replace the other. She did believe that. But strength was also freedom.

She was free, Azula was not, so clearly she was stronger. So why did she feel trapped? She had friends: so why was she… no. She wouldn't let Azula get to her. Not when she had the upper hand and was having so much fun fooling her. Pfft, Beifong pride? Pride in what? A name? Some estate? Parents who never understood and never wanted to, uncles and aunts who positively screamed pity, cousins who thought they were better than her, then got furious if she proved they weren't.

A twist of her arms, and a spike of earth nearly caught him, tearing at his sleeve. He dodged backwards left, doing the kind of high steps that should have made him hard for her to predict because his feet were off the ground so often. But she could have predicted where he'd be going in her sleep by now, and so with a sweep of her hand she pulled up the earth and sent him rocketing upward. She heard him draw his blades.

She backed up, allowing herself to be wary, just in case someday she fought someone with a wooden blade or something. She decided he'd probably try to land on one of the trees, the better to keep her guessing.

But it didn't count as guessing when she could predict him even without bending.

"So I'm not asking about her feelings or whatever, because why would I care?" Toph asked. "It's still fun, and she's gotta be pretty bored."

She couldn't predict what Azula would say, and on that day with the stupid Waterbender she'd spent an hour or two trying to imagine what nonsense Azula would say. But nothing beat the nonsense she did say. It kept her on her toes. So yes, it was fun.

But so was this…

But it was getting just a bit--

She ducked left, pulling up an earthen rampart; Zuko landed on the rampart and tried to close the distance, only to find the mud going soft and dispersing at his feet. He sank down slightly, but Toph laughed and pulled him up, sending the muddy, sodden Fire Lord careening off balance. He spluttered, and she just laughed harder.

It was funny when people who weren't her took pratfalls. Especially if they were just fine at the end.

"So am I. So we argue. I'm going to win."

"You don't win arguments," Zuko said, sounding just like Iroh for a moment. "Not really, not in the end."

"Not between friends, sure," Toph said, and she sent another surge of earth at him, and a few stones, mostly to just get him moving again. "But we're not friends."

And besides, it's not as if she didn't argue among her friends. But with her friends, true, it wasn't about winning. Well, at least not when she was arguing just to argue.

"Toph…" Zuko sighed.

She felt like he was judging her, and so she threw herself into the attack, moving from the Reflexive Jing to the Positive Jing, as Bumi would no doubt put it.

That was her other option. Bumi had offered to let her stay in Omashu, but she'd said nah because she was still waiting to have that life-changing field trip with Zuko. Well, it'd been most of a year and that hadn't happened. Plus, a part of her had thought Bumi might be trying to recruit her to run the city after him. No thank you.

"So, Zuko," Toph said. "You gonna try a little harder than that, or am I going to win a whole month in a row?" She wasn't going to do a victory dance until she was sure she'd actually won, but she did want to do a victory dance.

Zuko surged forward, but he wasn't trying that much harder. It was as if bending wasn't his entire life. Toph would tapdance over broken glass--painful when she used her feet to see--rather than lose to someone. Anyone. Yet while Zuko was a good Bender he didn't quite seem like that. He tried harder, but he didn't have a chance, and he didn't even seem to mind anymore now that he was Fire Lord. Which was just weird. If she'd been on such a losing streak, she'd honestly have been going crazy training to try to win. She'd be pulling out every trick she ever knew and practicing five or six or seven hours a day, one way or another.

Zuko just…

Well, when he lost and Toph did a victory dance, stomping about, he just shook his head and said, "Well, Toph. I thought that a better rising fireblast would get you."

"Nope!" she said. "Good try, Zuko."

"I'll try to find a new way to win, next time," Zuko promised, but she knew he wouldn't be staying up for hours and hours practicing new moves, the way she'd gotten in the first month after she'd lost twice in a row.

He was a good person. He was even a very good Firebender. But he wasn't like her.

"Why, you can't read, you can't write, but you sure can bend, can't you?"

Toph pouted for a moment, and then nodded and grinned, "I'll hold you to it!"


veteranMortal AN: No Azula this time! Toph reflecting on some stuff, and the difference between her and some of the other characters, Zuko especially.

The Laurent: Some people wouldn't rather die than be a losing Bender, and it really does show. Also we had a few thoughts about ceramic weapons and training (wood obviously doesn't work for Firebenders) and so on.

 

[veteranMortal]

Chapter 4: The Fatal Blow?

Toph was on time this time, that was the first thought that went through Azula's head when the room shuddered and the door groaned. By now it was an almost familiar combination of sound and sensation.

She knew there was no 'on time' and that soon enough she'd be humiliating the Earthbender by driving her into a fight she couldn't win and leaving her knocked out while she reconquered her birthright and brought others in line, but it was still gratifying to know Toph was invested enough to be predictable. She had no idea how one would even hold someone who could apparently bend both metal and earth. A wooden cage? She did not linger on these thoughts, because it would be a problem for later. Securing the throne would be more immediately important.

That and figuring out what to do with the Avatar. He would not take this lying down, opposed as he was to the Fire Nation's glory or greatness, or anything but its abject submission to the rest of the world. No doubt Zuko was happy to collapse the Fire Nation for him, sure that it was the right thing.

But that was for later. Now was the time to win this little game she was playing with Toph Beifong.

"Yo, Zaps."

"Please tell me you have some interesting news to share with me," Azula drawled, looking at the door. "Or are you only here to bore me?"

"Well, I beat Zuko again in sparring. Fourth week in a row," Beifong boasted.

Azula couldn't help but laugh. "He lost four weeks in a row? Is he even trying?"
"Well, he tried one new thing, but he didn't seem… motivated to just keep on going," Toph said. "He's good, but if I feel like I'm kinda treading earth, I don't know how he doesn't?"

"It's because Zuzu is incompetent," Azula said with absolute confidence.

"Nah, it isn't that," the Earthbender shot back.

Well of course she'd defend him. "He doesn't have a drive, or at least didn't. He did… improve somewhat, between his exile and when I met him again." It hurt to admit it, but one had to be honest. It'd take a special level of incompetence beneath even Zuko to not get at least a little bit better with years of nothing to do but sail around and dream of capturing the Avatar, and of course training. "But that's all."

"Oh? That's all, Thought he had you really good with that fancy dance nonsense he and Aang learned on their Life Changing Field Trip."

Their what? No, it wasn't important, she'd ask about that some other time. "You talk about the Avatar so casually… because he's your friend, but I wonder. I wonder how well he understands you. It's clear you have a drive towards bending that's not just about…" she gestured, uselessly yet not because the Earthbender could surely see her even if she couldn't tell if she was lying, "Spirituality."

She was aware that there were sides to bending that were not just about excellence, but those that weren't were actually still just about excellence. Azula knew exactly who she was, and this only made her bending stronger, only made her more in tune with the sun and her fire. She didn't need to worship the spirits or ramble on like Iroh did about balance between the four kinds of bending to beat almost everyone she came across.

"What do you mean?" Toph asked.

"It's about being the best, it's about proving yourself: and what are you proving fighting Zuzu of all things? I never let myself think I was good enough just because I could beat my older brother. Yet here you are, sitting around, so bored you're talking to a better bender than Zuko."

"You lost!"

"I lost then," Azula said, and then added. "You've lost to Zuko before, but you think you're a better bender than him."

Toph didn't answer, because the answer was yes. She knew she was a better bender than Zuko, and if she really was winning as consistently as that, it was not something anyone could actually deny.

But that wasn't nice to admit. And for all she talked loudly and bragged all the time, a part of her perhaps wanted to be nice. It'd be a lot less fun running rings around Toph if the girl was actually nice, some sweet pushover. No, victory was most enjoyable when the opponent could at least fight back.

And Toph was fighting back, which would make this next part more interesting.

"So, what are you going to do? How are you going to prove it to them? Or are you afraid of the power you could seize? Or is it that you've already been passed by for some cousin? You're in the main family, aren't you?"

"Sure, sure," Toph said, her voice very quiet. Azula wasn't sure what that meant, but.

"So I wonder whether the primitive superstitions of the Earth Kingdom have led them to discount the heir in front of them? Working twice as hard and being thought half the bender… it would have been frustrating." She couldn't be sure, and she didn't care, but she had to think that beating Zuzu was at least enough to be a worthy leader of some provincial noble family, even if it said nothing for certain about whether Toph really was as capable of going toe to toe with the real benders like she seemed sure of.

"Duh, it was annoying," Toph said, so casually. But she could hear something there, or at least she thought she could.

"All that work, all that effort, and it was never enough was it? You were never enough, and you kept on pushing, because you don't get that good if you don't push," Azula said. "All of that, and you still aren't anything to them, are you?"

"Enough about your dad!" Toph said, voice raised.

"Your father… wait, is that it?" Azula asked, tilting her head. "That's your comeback? I won. I proved myself."

"Yet here you are, too weak to get out of a prison," Toph said. She kept on stubbornly returning to the same arguments.

"And here you are, too weak to live up to the family legacy," Azula shot back without even a pause. "All those expectations, all those hopes, all these… strictures. You talk like a peasant, but I know you're… you're…"

"One of those scions of society," Toph said, in a slightly higher voice with none of the slipping. It sounded utterly alien. If she heard someone who sounded like that, she wouldn't think twice before assuming they were some important noble. "Too important to actually do any real work, why, that's what the peasants are for, Princess." She said it like she was telling Azula she was a good person and didn't mean that either. Like those sailors who swore like they were writing sappy love poetry they didn't mean. She'd had them punished for it, of course.

It was all a performance, Azula realized, its own kind, as clever as the sort that Azula had done early on, when she'd had to pretend to respect this or that old fart until they'd teach her their one firebending trick and she could go back to treating them like they deserved.

"It's actually how I got us into Ba Sing Se," Toph said. "Tickets for a flying boar, three valets, and a seeing eye lemur."

Sometimes, Azula woke up from a nightmare that was simply the realization that these were the people she'd, temporarily, lost to. People who had pets. Pet lemurs. "Oh, it was very useful, then? They hadn't cut you off? Or did they do it and nobody knew in Ba Sing Se?"

"They… why does it matter?" Toph asked, and just like that she was back to her crudity. It was more interesting than the refined speech, at least. "By then I was busy training the Avatar and fighting the Fire Nation. A buncha merchants--"

"Oh, I know that's not how you were taught to look at it. Oh, everyone always pretends that they don't care about it, but they do," Azula said. "And I know you care, because I can hear the flinch every time I mention your parents. You disappointed them, you failed them. All that bending prowess, and what did it get you, Toph?" Her voice had slipped again into the fake sympathy she knew that Toph could probably parse, but which would only be worse than open derision. "Here. I keep on saying it, but are you the Fire Lord's advisor or something?"

"I'm thirteen," Toph shot back.

"Yes," Azula said, with a roll of her eyes. "But everyone in charge of things is young nowadays." She couldn't say she disliked it, really. She was Fire Lord at fourteen, and she knew she could have done better than Zuko. So sure, Toph could be an advisor on something at thirteen. "You have to wonder whether… no, I'm sure you're not interested in wondering just how much he trusts you."

"Trusts me?" Toph asked. "We're friends."

"Oh, how great, friends always stick by you," Azula said, her voice sickly sweet. She knew it wasn't the truth at all. Not that they were really friends. But she knew that's how it was. You couldn't trust anyone other than yourself. "But you're spending all this time talking to me. I'm not your friend, is it that you know there's nobody else? A failure as a Beifong, living here and beating the Fire Lord once a week, stuck like a ship beached by the tide." But she knew that sometimes you had to ignore the tides.

If she was where Toph was, she would have found a way out. Toph Beifong couldn't, because she was unable to handle it. There were similarities, but there were key differences.

"I can do anything I want," Beifong declared, sounding younger than ever. She knew that tone of voice, that pride, but also the whine. The frustration.

"Then fight me, Toph Beifong," Azula said, and now she was imagining it in detail. She'd have to be very careful. She knew she was the best, but even the most skilled Firebender knew not to try to play wall against a Earthbender. You got out of the way, or you overwhelmed them before they could get going, faster than they were ready for. But just standing there and trying to weather whatever they threw at you? Wasn't a good tactic.

She could manage it sometimes, of course, but she was not going to let her pride lose this for her. She had a single chance to defeat the Earthbender and escape. She knew that they sometimes got clumsy with not locking the second door, and even if they didn't, a hostage was a hostage. She could force Toph to bend that door, too, if she had a flame to her neck.

She had no doubt, if she could defeat Toph, she could beat a half dozen incompetent guards; even Uncle had been able to beat prison guards, and he'd done it without bending at all.

But Toph had advantages. Azula tried to practice in her cell, and kept up her forms, but she did not have the bleeding edge that any bender had from sparring and training with someone constantly. Toph was at the top of her game, no doubt even a better bender than she'd been all those months ago when she'd beaten one of Azula's Dai Li without needing to so much as catch her breath.

But Earthbenders got their skill from their grounding, their solidity. If she could rattle her, put her off guard, make her angry, Toph would try to fight like a Firebender, all offence and aggression. And Azula had a plan for that.

"The Earth Kingdom hates me, no doubt beating me up, even killing me, would just make you even more of a hero… if you can manage it," Azula said, and she stood up as she did, staring at that metal door. A metal door, behind it Toph, and behind her another door, and behind that, glory. Behind that, freedom.

"But I don't think you can, can you? All this time, and never… what? Living up to their high expectations? Proving you can be as good as anyone else? All of it could end, if you win. Defeat me, kill me - the Earth Kingdom wants me dead! If you can give them what Zuko refuses..." She grinned, and she knew what she'd do.

If Toph really could metalbend the whole door, she'd no doubt start by blasting it straight at Azula, ending the fight in a single violent burst. It was the obvious move. So Azula would get in the air, use her fire to move herself around, fill the room with heat and death. By doing that, Toph would not be able to predict her trajectory, which had to be her trick for fighting people who jumped around, other than that Avatar with his Airbending. It'd be rough, but she thought she could beat Toph quickly, in a matter of a dozen seconds. She wasn't stupid; if she failed to put Toph down that fast, she would probably lose; she'd be matching endurance with an Earthbender, who would no doubt have allies pouring in.

"What would it be like, to prove yourself to them?" Azula mused, tensing, preparing for the leap. Any second. Any second now.

What she wasn't prepared for was laughter. Toph was laughing, full-belly laughing, and she could even hear Toph's feet kicking against the floor, as if she'd started moving around while she was laughing.

Why was she laughing?!

VM AN: Azula's attempt to break Toph along this line was as inevitable as it was never-going-to-work. It's a milestone, at least.
The Laurent: It got further than it would if she was basing it on nothing, that much is clear.

 

[The Laurent]

Chapter 5: Geniuses

"Why exactly are you laughing?" Azula asked, when she had finally realized that Toph wasn't going to stop anytime soon.

"Princess, the only thing my parents expected is that I'd sit still and look pretty," Toph gasped out. She was actually breathless with laughter.

But Azula was turning it over and over in her head. She'd never gotten any actual confirmation for her guesses. "You… deceived me?" She was impressed, despite herself.

"You did it to yourself, all that talk about not being good enough at bending for them, that's you, not me," Toph gasped out. "Me? I was the blind girl, so they never gave me real training, never expected a single thing from me. And when I showed off what I could do, they demanded I stop doing it."

Azula. Stopped. She had been able to say something cutting, but now she realized that actually what she wanted to say was--

"You should destroy them, bring the entire family down. Burn it down if you have to."

It's what she would have done, if the expectation hadn't been perfection but weakness and helplessness, and no doubt since it was the Earth Kingdom, some vile marriage to some man in the future.

Her… she had been expected to be perfect and then get better. She could do that, she was a better Firebender than anyone. She was.

"But I didn't. I ran away with the Avatar, and even if I've learned how to have friends, I can do most things myself," Toph said. "Blind Badgermoles taught me to bend, and then I taught myself from there. I'm not like you, Azula." She sounded proud, arrogant even, as she rose to her feet with a stomp. Azula could hear the sounds of the movement. "I had nobody, no expectations but my own."

And her own expectations, it was clear, were sky high.

"I learned all of it on my own, I mastered it on my own. When I was locked up in a cage by idiots my parents sent to kidnap me back to them, I invented Metalbending."

"I see," Azula said, faintly, things slotting into place. Power as freedom. So of course, being confined was weakness. She wondered whether Toph realized what that meant about how she viewed those who were weak. Or did she tell herself that was different? Perhaps she bought into all of the nonsense she had no doubt the Avatar spread about weakness and vulnerability being acceptable, the meek being better… all sorts of nonsense that the Fire Nation had guarded itself against. But not well enough.

But Toph Beifong, runaway daughter, genius Earthbender, believed that those who couldn't free themselves, those who were too weak to do so…

She was wrong to think that Azula was truly weak, so much as unlucky, but it made so much sense. It was almost fascinating, because there Toph was, with the right idea about something despite all the nonsense about friendship and love she'd heard them spouting all the time. Despite all the worthless, sentimental friends she had.

Toph was not as hopeless as all of the rest.

"And if I escaped on my own you'd let me go?" Azula asked, with a bitter laugh of her own.

"I dunno. Honestly if it was some new kinda bending, I guess? At least until I could figure out how to beat it, or Twinkletoes came calling," Toph admitted, as if she wasn't admitting she'd just… let Azula get away if she was impressive enough. Not that Azula thought there was any chance of getting out of the cell through brute bending. The cell might be ineffective against Earthbenders, but she wasn't the first prodigal Firebender to be locked beneath the Palace.

"What would you do if someone put you in a wooden cage, suspended in the air, in a wooden building?"

"There's earth beneath the wood, use that."

"Would you even be able to sense it?"

"Yep, plus the guards," Toph said. "I'd figure out how to bend metal at even greater distances, and bam, sword flies out and hits the rope, cage falls."

She'd thought about this, Azula conceded. "Say they have wooden swords. For the sake of argument." She wouldn't be imprisoning Toph Beifong any time soon, she realised. She'd made an attempt and it'd failed, and a part of her wanted to scream, perhaps cry. But she knew Toph would just enjoy that.

"I dunno if I could ever bend bones, but I guess I'd have to try?" Toph said, voice sounded a little disgusted.

But she would do it, Azula realized. She was disgusted, but not unwilling, to try creating an entirely new form of bending, a gruesome form of bending, just to liberate herself. "So that bit about teachers? That convinced me that I was on the right track."

"I had a teacher. He was really bad at it, and he kept on making me do the beginner exercise, because it was just about letting me bend just enough that I wouldn't bother them about it," Toph said. "He eventually joined the effort to kidnap me. I almost convinced him to let me out of the cage by saying I had to go to the bathroom." She snorted at that, and so did Azula. If only that kind of trick would work on these guards. They were stupid, but not quite that stupid.

"So then you invented Metalbending. Alone, with nothing more than your own understanding of bending," Azula said.

"You can… feel the minerals in the steel. It all used to be earth, and I was blind so I started to think about it, and then fell it." She could imagine Toph shrugging. "I did everything myself, without even a bunch of tutors or whatever you had."

"They were almost useless," Azula said.

"Oh, probably!" Toph replied.

Toph agreed with her too easily. It wasn't quite as fun as before. "So now you're stuck. I wouldn't go home either, but I bet they all expected it."

She understood that. People expecting weakness. Like dolls, Azula; gush about boys, Azula; show your 'vulnerable' side, Azula. Uncle, Mother, Ty Lee all too often…

And even those who hadn't expected that of her, or pretended they didn't. (Had left her.)

"Zuko understands, I think," Toph said.

There was the vulnerability, actual vulnerability. What Azula should do was attack the moment of weakness. But she had an idea. She thought that, just maybe, she could manipulate Toph. Get her to open the door for other reasons.

She had to hope she could, because if Toph did decide to just leave she'd no doubt never talk to Azula again. She'd gotten her triumph at Azula's expense, and the thought of it stung. She would find a way to get Toph back for this.

"Maybe, but Mother always loved him more," Azula said, with a shrug. "So it's not quite the same. Unless it's just one of your parents? No, I recall - it's both. Both of them wanted you to be weak and vulnerable and helpless and trapped."

She hated it. She didn't care about Toph, but it was the kind of thing that if she cared about ideals would make her want to burn down the Earth Kingdom even more than she already did.

"Yeah, they sucked. They haven't even apologized, you know?" Toph asked. "Don't think they're ever going to, so I'm not going to go back to them. I'm better than 'em."

"That would not be a particularly high bar," Azula said.

"Well, I am pretty short," Toph grumbled.

Azula snorted, surprised that Toph would let herself be the center of even a mild joke. Azula could never stand being laughed at. Or mocked, for that matter. If she had the chance she would have burned Toph badly for doing both to her.

"How exactly do you learn from Badgermoles?" Azula asked, because she was supposed to be nice and she knew that Toph was like her and cared about bending most of all, so she'd ask about that.

"Well, I've heard that Firebenders first learned from Dragons or something, not that I've ever seen one," Toph said. "So it's kinda like that. I was crawling around the gardens and just found my way into the tunnels."

Azula considered for a moment the fact that nobody had noticed. She couldn't have walked across a practice field without a half-dozen guards standing to attention or making sure she was focused on her tasks. And they just forgot her?

She really would have to make sure to personally burn down the Beifong mansion when she was Fire Lord again. Well, and many other Earth Kingdom mansions. The plan to destroy the whole Kingdom had failed, that much was clear. But… hmm.

If she was trying to trick Toph into trusting her, then she'd have to be even more careful now. Toph couldn't tell when she was lying, but she'd be able to check if Azula said anything too absurd. "And you taught yourself bending by doing what they did? I think I was right, you laughed at me because I got the details wrong about your worthless parents, but you do rely on yourself, you achieve all of your great Bending accomplishments by yourself. You even admitted it."

This was a simple trick, really. You repeat what the other person said back to them, and they mistake it for insight because it's what they want to hear.

In this case, though, Azula was pretty sure it was the truth.

"And you're here because you're bored and there's nowhere else, you're stuck." Azula settled down into her bed. "You can leave here, but you cannot leave the fact that your parents are without value and Zuko has nothing for you to do. He's too busy being boring." She knew that Toph hated boredom, the way that Azula hated incompetence.

Toph was silent, which could be another attempt to hide her laughter. That's clearly what it'd been at least half the time before. But Azula did not think she was as wrong as it seemed at first.

Toph was just a little bit like her, even if she was a mere Earthbender.

"I really can just leave, you know," Toph pointed out. But her voice sounded strained, as if she hadn't expected Azula to turn it around.

"I do think you'd have fun, truly, if you tore down the door and fought me," Azula said, and this time she meant it. She wasn't going to be able to trick Toph into opening the door for a fight, though if she did she wouldn't hesitate for a moment. But she found herself thinking that defeating Toph would be fun. And if Toph thought she'd win against Azula, she'd probably have fun doing it. Another way to get one over on her enemy, to outsmart and outfight her.

Azula was already thinking of new exercises if she did want to hone herself for that moment.

"Honestly, yeah I would," Toph admitted with a snort. "You'd be a new challenge at least. Not gonna happen, though."

"Oh, you're too clever to fall for my tricks," Azula lied. Nobody was too clever, it was just a matter of finding the right leverage.

"Ehh," Toph said. Azula settled back, and tried to picture what Toph looked like on the other side. Was she frowning? "I was 'taught' by someone stupid enough to fall for it. Some kid once pretended to be an Earthbender for a week before he noticed, and then stole a bunch of his stuff, while going through the introductory classes. Plus the whole 'bathroom' thing."

Azula considered it for a moment. If you were keeping someone like her in a cage, then you had to either make some sort of wooden toilet box, or… what? It would seem like a pretty annoying problem. But answering that problem by letting out a dangerous prisoner who was stronger than you… "I've had tutors that moronic and honestly a few that seem more foolish than that," Azula conceded.

"Who was the stupidest of your tutors, then?" Toph asked.

"Oh, that had to be Captain Tai 'Fire Whip' Tsai."

"Tai… Tsai?" Toph asked, and she sounded delighted at that.

Azula knew that she'd chosen the right moron to showcase. "He was this firebender whose claim to fame was thin jets of fire that he moved around. Even used actual whips. He would stand in the training ground, flailing his whip around, cracking it and then looking over at me, or Zuzu, or whoever he was trying to show off to. He also kept on calling himself Captain, as if I was supposed to be impressed."

"Oh, that kind of guard," Toph said. "We had them, always bragging about all the cool things they'd done in the war, but I knew they were lying. I could tell."

"He did the same thing, telling me all about the battles of the Fire Nation, though I heard him spreading the same nonsense to Zuko," Azula said. "But a little nicer. Talking about all the people they were helping over there."

Toph laughed, and Azula continued, since she was sure Toph would not be the right target for what she thought about 'helping' the Earth Kingdom. "So he'd keep on doing these stupid whips for hours. I thought maybe there was some use for them that I had missed; he must've been my tutor for a reason? So I asked him to train me with the whip."

Toph didn't laugh then, but she hummed in acknowledgement, and Azula took that as permission to continue. "And he starts trying to teach me how to make a fire whip, which I could already do if I wanted. Then Mai asked if he could teach her how to use a whip, since he's such an expert. And the colour drains from his face, his eyes start darting around like a cornered animal, he stutters a little."

Toph barked out a harsh laugh, as expected. "He didn't know how to use a whip?"

"He knew how to make it crack," Azula recalled, "But not how to aim at any particular target. Imbecile."

"How did no one notice?" Toph asked, "Weren't you meant to learn from the best?"

"I suppose they thought it was scary enough," Azula said, "That no one asked him if he could actually hit anyone with it. The colonel who had recommended him to Fire Lord Azulon was exiled to manage some miserable posting in the colonies, making prisoners repair warships or some such nonsense."

"At least you got to send him away," Toph replied, "I gave up on that when telling my parents that my Earthbending Tutor offered higher belt grades if we paid more in advance just had them asking if I wanted them to buy me a higher belt."

"Seriously?" Azula said, her voice high with disbelief, almost offence on Toph's behalf, "They would accept that? Did they not want you to learn? If he offers belt grades for money, then clearly he isn't teaching anything in those grades!"

"Obviously, Zaps," Toph replied flatly, "They only let him tutor me so I would feel better. I was already a better Earthbender than him, but I couldn't ask for my lessons to stop; they'd want me to take up something else instead! Like sewing."

That last word came out with a vitriol that made Azula smile. No one had wanted her to be that sort of girl since she burnt that doll from Uncle. Since she'd proven time and again she was better than all that nonsense. She sometimes pretended she wasn't, but she had no idea what Mai saw in Zuko or Ty Lee in that water peasant.

She'd won her freedom from all that nonsense, all that 'normalness.'

Except, she thought sourly, that was just what Zuzu was trying to make her now, wasn't it? Boring, weak, normal, demure and pathetic. And nice. Nice was the worst thing of all.

"So what did you do?" Azula asked, "If you got bored here, where you can do whatever you like, you must've been even more bored, locked in a cage and expected to turn from a bending prodigy into a helpless little girl who plays with dolls."

"Exactly! So that's why I don't really care about 'Beifong expectations," Toph said, clearly rubbing in the fact that Azula had been so wrong. But now that she saw it that way, she understood why Toph would have laughed. It would be as if someone said that Azula just needed someone to tell her to put some effort into making friends and it'd all be alright. "It's always been stupid, and it's always been my expectations."

And Azula couldn't even really judge that much, because it seemed pretty obvious that Toph's expectations of herself were adequately high and that she both put in the effort and had the talent to be a great bender. It showed in her every word, and she was sure that unlike the Captain it wasn't all talk. Toph had nobody else to set standards, so she'd set her own standards.

It was almost admirable. Almost.

"And dolls are kinda stupid," Toph said. "Why do I care what they look like?"

Iroh flashed in front of her for a moment, and she tensed thinking of it. He probably wasn't being an Earthbender about it (probably), but Azula had always hated dolls and all those little palace girls that swarmed around some of the other noble girls and chattered about inane nonsense like crushes on boys and pretty ribbons and… all of it. She'd show off her firebending tricks to some of the noble girls and they'd cry or run away and she'd laugh, first in confusion when it had happened the first time, and then in genuine mirth.

That first time, she'd thought that surely other children knew how impressive her firebending was for her age and would shower her with suitable praise. After that she'd known better and did it because it amused her.

"Why would you? Though that Captain sure cared about what he looks like. I think he wound up hanging around the palace? Not sure, but I remember--" Mai, "Someone mentioned that to me." It'd been about three years ago now.

"He's still around? Huh, interesting. I'm going to go find him and fight him," Toph said. "Bye." Just like that she left, which Azula thought was fair enough. She did not care for long goodbyes or the social idiocies of the 'likeable' either.

Azula heard the sounds and felt the act of Toph Beifong leaving, and tried to smirk. She'd be back, she'd have to be back, Azula had more half-truths and tricks to deploy. This wasn't it, was it?

To keep from screaming, she settled in and began to meditate, letting the few barely there candles in her room rise and fall with her breaths. She was fire, and if she could simply have Toph come back again and again, eventually the earthbender would get burned.

Azula had to believe that.

Spoiler: Author's Notes

VM AN: The shoe proverbially drops. Azula screwing up her manipulations was pretty important to, like, get them into having any sort of an honest interactions? Not that Azula would agree that's what she wants.

TL AN: I'm sure nothing will go wrong in Toph listening to Azula's stories about idiots she humiliated.

 

[veteranMortal]

Chapter 6: Back At A Beginning

Toph was not 'supposed' to be back this soon - it'd only been two days, but she wanted to tell Azula it while it was still fresh in her mind, and so she slipped through the first door with a, "Yo, Platypus-Bear."

She could feel Azula in her cell, and she had frozen in a Firebending stance, her whole body tense and ready for a fight. "Why, Toph, what an unexpected surprise."

She was telling the truth.

Toph had been so confident that she'd win any argument with Azula because, from the moment she'd stepped in weeks ago, she realized that Azula could no longer lie to her. It was probably something with the whole "going crazy" thing that someone mentioned, ranting and raving and being stressed and confined and locked away and trapped and--

And all of that stuff. All that stuff that had shaken her self-control just enough that Toph could figure it out.

But Toph could tell when Azula was lying and when she was telling the truth, and that meant that she could get a first-hand view of how Azula could tell the truth and lie at the same time. It was honestly pretty impressive. The whole time Azula had been doing her manipulations, Toph had wanted snacks.

Okay, okay, she'd admit to herself that Azula did get to her with all that 'you're trapped' stuff. But she wasn't really trapped! She'd gotten to go and beat up a crazy whip guy! Did that sound like trapped? No, not at all!

"Oh yeah, I didn't think I could wait until next Wednesday or whatever," Toph admitted. It was Friday, and she'd burst in without even scheduling a visit. She'd had to argue with the guards for annoying minutes, all while she felt Azula going through her fancy fire routine. A few times she left the earth, no doubt doing some sort of crazy flip or something.

She'd also noticed something that reminded her of one of the few times that she'd actually left the compound. She hadn't really left, because she'd been guarded the whole way and it was just a family meeting between all the branches that she'd managed to worm her way on. When the adults were busy, the kids had all gotten together to go hill-sledding.

She hadn't been allowed, of course. She was a helpless blind girl, but she'd managed to plead enough to be able to sit off on the sidelines with half a dozen guards there to protect her from everything. But by then, two years ago, she was good enough at it that she was able to bend without them seeing.

Just to test how they'd do she put bumps and dips in the hills, so that they'd rocket completely the wrong way! She'd had to keep from laughing the whole time. Most of the town she lived in didn't even know she existed, and the rest of the Beifong family had just spent all their time making snide comments because they thought she was deaf as well as blind about boring stuff like succession and so on.

Stuff Toph didn't care about at all.

But what she'd noticed was that the ones who were actually any good didn't panic, and once they'd adjusted started to actually go with the new way the earth was trending.

That night, she'd snuck out and made a disc of earth, like the ceramic ones they had, and then went sledding on her own. There were moments where she could feel nothing except the disc, flying through the air, having to reach out with her sense of earthbending to try to notice the earth below, and it'd felt… free in a way? She normally hated not sensing things, but it'd been fun. But there was nobody there to cheer for her.

It hadn't felt quite like she thought it would. Not alone.

And Azula reminded her of some of the smarter ones that still panicked a bit, like she wasn't used to things not going her way. She always took a few moments to adjust, and Toph thought she knew what it was. Back when she'd really been confined, when she couldn't sneak out at will, her whole life had been dictated by boring schedules and stupid lessons.

Maybe the prison did that to her? Maybe she wasn't good at being disappointed. Toph didn't know.

"What could not wait?"

"I found that TuTu guy--"

"Tai Tsai," Azula corrected, but she could feel the amusement.

"And I insulted him until he fought me, and then I beat him up so hard he was crying for his mother," Toph laughed.

"And what? You think I would be amused by hearing about something as trivial as the humiliation of that idiot?"

Toph listened to the earth and told the truth: "Yep."

"You happen to be right, but you should not assume these things," Azula said, almost primly.

"So, wanna hear about it?" Toph asked.

"Yes."

She knew Azula would like it. Zuko always frowned when she told stories about humiliating this loser or that loser, because half of them were people he had to be nice to. She could imagine Katara's tense anxiety and lecturing tone, like she was Toph's mother or something. Not that she was always that bad, but she was that bad often enough.

But for the same reasons Azula was evil or whatever, she'd like stories of people getting humiliated that nobody else would want to hear.

"So, it turns out he managed to convince Zuko he was always on his side or something. He's gotten better with the whip, I think? Anyways he trains some of the guards, Captain-of-Volunteers or something, I don't care." Toph didn't care about all those military ranks or anything. She'd never had dreams of joining the army, because people in the army were expected to obey orders.

"Zuzu fell for that?" Azula asked. "Really, he's so easy to trick. Once I told him Dad wanted him back and he just leapt in after me."

Toph decided to attack back, "Both of you believed the Loser Lord's lies, didn't you?"

"What?" Azula asked, dangerously.

"Well he told you he'd be back winning from the airship thing, and then four people destroyed his entire fleet and beat him?"

"Four?!"

"Suki, Sokka, me, and then Aang fought Ozai," Toph said, proud of it. She really did miss Sokka and Sukki just a little bit. She could admit that much to herself. "And that's it. Bam, the whole fleet, just like that. Sokka and Suki can't even bend." She stomped her feet. "Just like that," she repeated.

Azula grumbled, clearly furious and yet also less flame-y than expected.

"It's lucky for you that there's a door between us," Azula said.

Truth. She really would probably attack. Huh. She was cool and controlled, but she would still do it anyways? Hmm.

"Anyway, so yeah. I tracked him down! He didn't want to fight me, so I started making fun of him, and I kept on doing it until he finally snapped. You know, he was actually kinda good at it?" Toph admitted. "He knew how to make his whip hit, or at least he would have against someone less awesome than me. I kinda had to guess, but I've fought Waterbenders so I used that to know how to block the whip. It wasn't too hard to beat him." She considered it. "Really the hard part was making sure the fight lasted long enough to get in some fun hits." She made sure to do the thing where the ground caved under him so he did an involuntary split. Toph thought those were really, really funny, especially when you did it to the guys.

Azula was not laughing, but she could feel the amusement. "He deserved whatever you did. But what did you do?"

"Splits. A gut shot. Also juggled him around."

"He deserved it," Azula said. Truth. Though no doubt it was for having wasted her time years and years ago. But it was a fun story, and Toph allowed herself to go into details. It wouldn't tell Azula all that much, but she spent a minute or two recounting the exact blows she used, while Azula listened with a sort of polite boredom. But she knew she'd have to have more than that.

"So that's that. Got any more idiot tutors of yours I can beat up?" Toph asked.

Now that threw Azula for a loop. "You want me to give you names of people to fight?"

"Why not?" Toph asked, considering it. "It's fun arguing with you, and it's fun hearing you rant about stupid teachers. I already got revenge on mine."

"You did?" Azula asked, eagerly. "How?"

"I was in a cage, and he was nearby. Remember?" she asked, because she had told Azula some of that. "When I figured out Metalbending, I shoved both of those idiots in the cage and then closed it behind them," Toph said.

"Oh, did they have any way to escape, or did they die there?" Azula asked.

The thought did make Toph's stomach churn for a bit. She didn't actually want to kill anyone, not really. But at the same time… she hadn't cared then. The thought that maybe they'd just stay in there forever and rot was--it served them right, she'd thought, and then she'd been too busy to consider it. "I think they got out? The metal was a little weaker, cause I'd just learned Metalbending. Give it a day and ruined hands, you could probably claw your way out. It was in the middle of nowhere, but someone also coulda found them. But I remember figuring it out, eventually."

She barely thought about them, compared to her Father. She'd sent a message to him but hadn't heard anything back.

And with the benefit of hindsight she wasn't sure what she was waiting for. She knew she wasn't going to try to go back for anything less than… then what?

Not that long ago, a 'sorry' would have been what she was looking for, and a chance to just continue to do Earthbending stuff on her own. But she wondered whether perhaps it wasn't easier to get the apology and then just visit as little as possible. She wasn't sure. She didn't want to think of it.

Maybe that's half of why she was there. She was pretty sure Azula wasn't going to talk to her about the power of forgiveness, or about what she should be doing, and she'd laugh if she told a story of humiliating some jerk.

She honestly didn't want to be the better person or a good daughter or whatever. She was pretty sure that being petty and arguing with Azula wasn't actually the best thing for her. But that's what made it so fun. If it wasn't a little bit risky, even with her ability to read Azula, then it wouldn't be fun at all.

So, she thought about how else she could banter with Azula.

"It would have served them right," Azula said, and her amusement was evident. "They tried to cage you. When I escape, whenever that is, I'm not going to let the people who cage me go easily either."

"You can try," Toph said, breezily. Though honestly if she was Azula, she'd at least get a good face-stomp on a few of the guards who talked about her behind her back. Not that Toph hesitated to do that when guards talked about her behind her back, thinking being blind made her deaf, either. But still! Azula probably could stomp them, the way she definitely couldn't stomp Toph. "That whole time you were trying to trick me into fighting you, I knew what you were doing, and I still wanted to do it because it'd be fun."

"Fun? I should have been appealing to your sense of… whimsy?" Azula asked, incredulously.

"We're both bored, right?" Toph asked, and she settled herself down on the ground, since she was going to be here a little bit, she decided. "So I bug you and argue with you, and you can give me people to beat up if you tell me a story about them. I dunno, could also give you extra Fire Flakes or whatever if you wanted."

"Extra… Fire Flakes?" Azula asked, and she couldn't imagine the look on her face but she had to assume it was priceless.

"Oh, visitors can just give you stuff, as long as it doesn't help you escape. Thought you probably wouldn't know that," Toph said. But Azula did not even flinch at the insult this time, she just gave a near-hysterical laugh.

"Of course my brother would… is that why you're here?" Azula asked, her voice suddenly rising in tone. Fear and desperation? "Is this another one of his schemes to make me nice and sorry? Of course it wouldn't be real, I bet you're just some Daddy's girl with--"

"Nope," Toph said, and she almost got up and left. "What scheme?"

"Oh, oh, you're pretending you don't know! Zuko wants me to be weak, and so he keeps on giving me stupid books to read about being nice and sharing my toys," Azula said, scorn warring with panic and fear and anger. Her heart was racing, her self-control fraying and snapping like weak rubble when you stomped on it.

"You want what they want, don't you, for me to be weak and pliant and like dolls and do what they want and," Azula said, and Toph realized there was almost no point in listening. She had to keep herself from laughing, because really?

She let Azula wind herself up a little more and said, "Nope."

Azula continued to talk, ranting about… something.

"Nope, I don't want you to be nice," Toph said.

That, now that stopped her.

"You being a jerk makes it fun to argue with you. So if you feel like you should be nice, then just don't I guess?" Toph asked, with a mental shrug. "Zuko prolly does want me to do that, but he's not the boss of me. Nobody is. I'm Toph Beifong, the Greatest--"

"Earthbender ever," Azula finished, voice sour. "I heard you say it before."

"Alive, ever, same difference," Toph said. "If those old farts want to come back from the dead to fight me… wait, actually that'd be really cool." She'd just been bragging, but all the dead Earthbending masters coming to life to fight her in some sort of Mega Earth Rumble would actually be the coolest thing she'd thought of in a while.

Azula was laughing now, and it was only almost entirely mocking. "So, what do you want to do?"

"Argue with you, it's fun. You're a jerk so I don't have to be all nice, you know?" Toph asked. "So sure, if you want, I dunno, extra rice or whatever you can have it, so long as I get to keep on arguing with a jerk like you." It was safer in a way, because if she did make Azula lash out, it wasn't like anyone would really be hurt. Azula wasn't a good person and so she probably deserved it, and everyone else would either expect Toph to be nice, or be invulnerable. But she knew if Azula saw weaknesses, she'd attack them. That's kinda who she was.

Usually a bad thing, but between everyone being scared of her or expecting her to be nice, someone who was willing to dig in and hurt her was at least interesting.

She knew it was all stupid, of course. She was pretty sure that whatever Azula was rambling about was more about her own head being messed up than Zuko being a jerk. But sure, whatever. It did feel a little bit like her and her family, but not.

"Do you really not know any better insults?" Azula asked, voice cutting.

Toph grinned. "Why don't you wait and see, Princess?"

Azula said, "I just might." Truth.

They sat there, stood there, for a few seconds. As if both were preparing for the next move. She had insults lined up, really, and she was sure Azula was thinking of some too.

"So, what do you want? Fire Flakes?"

"Something better to read than this drivel would be a good start." She was hefting a thin book of some kind.

"What is it?"

"A picture book."

Toph made a face at that. Picture books, really? She honestly didn't get the point of books in general, but picture books were the worst.

"Sure, I'll find a good book for you," Toph lied, with a grin.

"What, and a nice pillow and food?"

"Why not?"

"And freedom from this prison?" Azula asked, voice sharp. "The restoration of the Fire Nation to its former glory."

"Sorry, Sparky, fresh out," Toph said, and shook her head.

She could deal with someone like Azula's jibes, and find a way to have enough fun that she wasn't bored. Toph had to believe that.

"I suppose I can settle for that for now. If you're curious about another of my pitiful tutors, there was… Commander Lei Zakura?"

Toph settled in to listen, and wait, and see what came of it.

VM AN: I'm sure this isn't a development that should be found concerning. It's nice to have Toph visiting more often, at least. Part 1 finished.

TL AN: This is the end of Part 1: Prodigy. Next is the Interlude starring the one and only Mai Lastname! You may also call it the Mainterlude.

 

[The Laurent]

Interlude 1--And I Did It Mai Way!

The servants bustled around the girl whose title was not yet decided. There were dozens of them, because today was going to be a busy day and some brought news and information, and others simply hairbrushes. They surrounded the gloomy girl who seemed to hold the heart of the Fire Lord in her hand, and didn't think to pay her too much mind. They had work to do, and she was not the first noblewoman they had served, nor would she be the last.

The shadows under her eyes disappeared under concealer, hair oil was combed through her long black hair, her nails were filed and painted, and through it all, she might have been a statue for all the reaction she gave to it.

One of the servants came to her with a short-sleeved, cinched robe, one of the latest fashions. This sacrificial lamb was sent back, to the quiet grumbling and hissing of the more fashion-conscious maids. Mai's long-sleeved, scholar-bureaucrat style had been outdated six years ago when Ozai had shifted everyone towards the faux-military dress; dress uniforms and armour even in the palace itself. But now that there was peace, many were sure this meant the return of restrictive robes, skirts, cinched waists, and more. After all, it was peacetime, and it wasn't as if any of those court ladies dressing in stylized armor had been able to defend themselves against even a drunken cow-dog, let alone a real foe.

But Mai still insisted on those sleeves, and it made her one of the most frustrating people to be a maid for. Prospective employers always judged a maid by their lady, and so the fact that she was unwilling to follow the trends of fashion meant that they themselves would be hurt by her stubborn insistence on those sleeves, as if she, as a future Fire Lady, had to even think about defending herself or hiding knives in her sleeves. As she regularly did.

It was such a distressing thing, in a way, to have such an irregular lady. She did not hector or yell or berate as so many did, but she also did not do anything that a proper employer was expected to do. They'd not quit because they were paid quite well, even better than the new palace standard that had bought the loyalty of most of the palace servants. But this did not mean that they would not fret and worry at these things.

Other servants repeated scheduling and invitations to her, and did not care if she was actually listening or not. They had their jobs, and no doubt she had hers, and that was that. The whole assembly bustled around the noble, different for her status and her stubbornness but otherwise no different than any noble lady who had a full day of duties to do. They worked around her, and worked with her as little as they were required, and they made Mai ready to face the world and then thought no more of the world she was facing, as opposed to the ones they were facing.

And why should they? Lady Mai certainly did not demand it of them.

*​

Diplomacy in the Royal Palace was a delicate matter. Fire Lord Zuko was given to having indelicate responses to legitimate queries - more than one Minister had found himself abruptly removed from office after asking the Fire Lord about some matter of their portfolio - when they would be resuming production of battleships and airships, whether the training camps would be reopening, or how best to sculpt the young minds of the nation to understand that the madness of Ozai did not taint Sozin's Dream of the Fire Nation's duties.

No, talking to Fire Lord Zuko was far too risky. He would mature and learn with time, but for now, youthful exuberance lent him an unpredictabiity which made diplomatic overtures difficult.

This was of especial concern to men like Hanma Sato, who kept their place at court only by serving as the mouthpiece of their wealthier cousins in the colonies; the Governor of Mesose may have only been his second cousin, and a baked clay firebender to boot, but the woman paid good money to keep Hanma at the Fire Lord's elbow, so long as he spoke for her.

The path to influence was over the Fire Lord at the moment was, so went the consensus of those here to speak for their colonial families - be they the families of those who had travelled to new colonies as appointees of the Fire Lord, or the relatives of more permanent settlers in the colonial administrations - through the rather gloomy daughter of the former governor of New Ozai. Omashu. It was important to remember it was Omashu again; an admiral had made that mistake once, and no one was eager to repeat the mistake.

At any rate, she was the Fire Lord's favourite. Whether she would end up the Fire Lady or merely a concubine was anyone's guess, but she had his ear for now, and she was one of theirs. Her father had ruled Omashu, after all.

Hanma had had to fight like a starved Elephant-Rat, but he'd done it, won a seat next to Lady Mai for the entire of a formal luncheon, where he would have her almost undivided attention.

She was picking genteelly at a pickled Sea Slug, eating tiny, careful mouthfuls, when Hanma cleared his throat. Lady Mai made no move to suggest she had even noticed, and so he cleared his throat again, a little louder. She speared a small piece of Sea Slug and brought it to her mouth, and he prepared to clear his throat for a third time.
"Lord Sato, are you sick?" Lady Mai asked, her tone utterly disinterested, "Or do you have something you wanted to say to me?"

"Ah, yes, my Fire Lady-" He began, nervous, then cut himself off as she lifted one perfectly coiffed eyebrow. "Lady Mai, that is,"

Lady Mai inclined her head, absolving the error, and gestured impatiently for him to continue.

"Lady Mai, as the Fire Lord's closest ally, I've come to petition your assistance, from the family of one colonial governor to another; we both understand, I think, that the Fire Lord's decisions on the colonies lately have come, perhaps, from a lacking understanding of the rigors of colonial life?" He studied her face, but the impassive mask gave nothing away.

"Oh?" She asked.

"Since the demobilisation began," Hanma said, "Our cities have been stripped of their garrisons, lost the armies which protect them from the Mudslickers who seek to crush us again against the Mo Ce Sea."

"The war is over, Lord Sato," Lady Mai said neutrally.

"Well yes," He replied, "But you and I both know how little control the Earth King has over his generals, and they think they can drive our people from their homes, steal our lands and then turn around and apologise to the Fire Lord once the matter is over and done."

"So you have calculated," Lady Mai said, "What would you have me do, Lord Sato?"

"There are those within our armies," He said cautiously, studying her closely - he did not preach treason, of course, but there would be those who might misconstrue his words. Her eyes flickered, perhaps, but she remained otherwise inscrutable. "Who have deserted following the demobilisation orders, and now roam the colonies as bandits, battling the Mudslick armies that come to our gates."

"Then it sounds," The Lady said, "As though the issue is stable, at least for now?"

"Well," He wetted his lips, "The people of the colonial cities have taken to paying the bandit deserters - quite without the permission of the governors, I assure you; Lady Governor Sato, my dear cousin, personally arrested five nobles for funding bandit armies, but the fact remains, they are the sole line of defence, and so people will continue to fund them. Additionally, there is a question of… should we stop their funding completely, might they not turn on us?"

This was perhaps mostly true - the deserters had to be funded and organised, to protect the cities from the Mud men, and if he misrepresented the likelihood of them ever turning on the Colonies… the Lady Mai surely understood how the game was played?

"Unfortunate," Lady Mai said, "But I don't see why you're bothering me about it?"

"The prevailing opinion in the colonies," Hanma said carefully, "Is that recompense from the Fire Lord for the payments the deserters are stealing from his colonies… would not go amiss?"

Lady Mai hummed noncommittally. "I'll talk to Zuko about it."

And that was that.

*​

It was one of the plainer training grounds, a patch of grass with a nearby pond, because firebenders were well aware of the power of their fire. More than one foolish noble had been forced to jump into the pond to keep from burning up. It was regarded as weak, perhaps even unmannerly, to need to use water to douse fires, but it always happened.

Plenty of the nobles were better at sparring than fighting, and better at court politics than either. It had been expected, from the moment Ozai came into power, that even the least martial person should spend some time sparring to show the strong character and power of the Fire Nation. Some had stopped doing it once they no longer were forced to. It was no surprise that Mai was one of them, even after she'd started dating Zuko. Unlike their parents, they tended to accept that right now they were just dating… though a few certainly thought that this was because Zuko would be keeping his options open. He'd want to marry at the right time and place, but most of them didn't care about that as much as they cared about the fact that Mai was scary.

She didn't have Firebending, but she lost perhaps once every dozen different sparring matches, and even when she lost, it did not feel as if she was outclassed so much as unlucky or in need of sharpening one of her edges. She wasn't even a Firebender, and actual Captains fell to her knives. She was younger than plenty of them, even if all of them were teenagers or barely in their twenties.

To them she was a strange, merciless enemy who coldly insulted them or made stoic, sarcastic comments while demolishing them.

She was Zuko's weird girlfriend, and they kind of wondered how Zuko put up with her. He was Fire Lord, right? Surely he'd want someone who was quiet and shy and… well, Mai was quiet, at least. That was about it.

That day, they talked among each other, trying to find a likely sacrifice to talk to her about something important.

Yoshiro was chosen. Yoshiro was one of those bold soldier boys, or the ones who would have been soon, seventeen and from a good family. He had been sure to get a commission in the Fire Nation army if he wanted it, but before he'd had time to decide, Zuko had stolen the Fire Nation's glory… or at least that's what a few people whispered. Most of the people here, if they were angry, were more angry about losing the chance to prove themselves. He walked forward after one of the sparring matches and said, "Hey, Mai, we were wondering something." She didn't respond, just stared at him as if telling him to get on with it.

"Did you tell Toph about Captain Tai Tsai?"

Mai looked at him for a moment and asked, "Why would I have anything to do with that washed-up never-was?" She asked it in such a quiet, deadpan way.

"Well, that Beifong girl tracked him down and beat him up, and she said that she'd been told about him."

Toph Beifong was terrifying, and even dangerous. Yoshiro's parents were not of the opinion that Zuko had stolen the Fire Nation's glory. Instead they were firm Zukoists who believed that he was being forced into his worst actions, as opposed to sane checks against the excesses of Ozai, by the fact that the Avatar's Earthbending teacher was sitting in on half the key Sunday meetings. Oh sure, she pretended to be bored and not paying attention… but she was instead bored and paying attention. She was a spy and an agent who knew when everyone was lying, and anything they could do to get rid of her would only empower the Fire Nation.
Mai frowned. "Good," she said.

"Good? He was my father's war buddy," Yoshiro protested, and then covered his mouth as she looked at him in her dry, even way. It always felt like you were being examined like an insect, when you were…

Well, far more important than that.

Mai did not say anything, but it was clear what she thought. Yoshiro would have to tell his father about this… insult. But she hadn't said anything, so what was he even supposed to say? She looked at me? I thought it meant an insult?

"Get ready," Mai said.

He blinked, as she moved over towards the starting position for a spar. Oh, right. Now he was in for it. Everyone knew Lady Mai was without mercy.

---

​

They were seated, cross-legged, in Zuko's dining room, in front of his low-slung table. It'd been an annoying, boring day and so she was trying to unwind. His rooms were at least a little less boring, he had bought a good deal of trinkets and a few mementos from the other Nations. It meant that there was an Earth Kingdom-style rug, green and brown and just a little bit tacky, instead of the thin red and black rug that was normal. It meant that here and there were signs that other Nations existed.

Everyone thought it was a symbol or something. She knew that Zuko just liked them. If there was a symbol, it was halfway an accident.

She hoped he kept on doing it. She'd seen what the throne did to everyone who even got near it. It hurt people, and she watched, cool and calm. And then it kept on hurting them.

Yet here she was. Taking her amusement where she could, looking down at her dish of rice and braised hippo-ox steak, and then to the ash banana. And then to his dumpling soup. She waited for her moment.

"Azula's telling stories to Toph," Mai said, stating the obvious as Zuko was taking a sip of his dumpling soup. As she had expected, he just barely kept from spitting it out.

"What?"

What. Indeed.

Azula was good at many things, but small talk hadn't been one of them. She often resorted to retelling stories of some fool being humiliated or some triumph of hers or, if she was feeling kind and generous, Mai's. She retold the same stories over and over, somehow taking the same vicious glee the fifth time she told the story as the first. So Mai had heard, and smiled, at the story of their humiliation of Captain Tai Tsai. She also always made sure to insult Zuko in the story, but at the time she'd been… unwilling to say anything about that.

She'd rolled her eyes if she repeated a story too often, but it was fun in a way, to know something Azula didn't know. She was pretty sure that Azula, cunning and canny and a clever schemer, would have plotted revenge if she realized she was not that different from those boring old Generals waxing about their triumphs, the ones who kept on trying to teach Azula new Firebending tricks only for her to wind up already knowing them.

It'd been fun, in a painful, I want to die kind of way, to see her fumble and blunder a lot like Zuko did over the same social niceties. She would have responded to laughter with aggression, of course. But there had been a time where the fact that she was not a very good friend hadn't mattered to Mai.

Then she'd tried to kill Mai.

Mai was not a forgiving person at the best of times, when she wasn't overcome by boredom and apathy.

She was not worried about Toph. She honestly didn't even care about Toph. She was one of Zuko's sort of, kind of friends. She'd be fun to fight, and Mai did wonder how she'd figure out how to counter flying daggers without just surrounding herself with earth all the time.

"Azula's telling stories to Toph," Mai said. "The idiots of the court asked me about it. They thought I was sending her after useless idiots like Captain Tsai."

"Captain Tsai? He seemed apologetic, and I remember Azula tormenting him before," Zuko said with a frown, empathy practically dripping from him.

"Captain Tsai deserved it," Mai said absently. "But these idiots think that Toph is your jailor."

"My what?" Zuko asked, baffled.

"They think she's making you do all of this with the threat of Aang coming around," Mai said, with a scoff.

Zuko gaped, and seemed entirely lost for a moment. He was starting to understand the stupidity she had to deal with. He rubbed his eyes, food forgotten. "Really? I can't do anything about that, yet. I just need to hope they come around and… keep on going." He had a lot of reforms, a lot of changes he was making, but as far as she could tell some of them would take decades to bear all their fruit.

Mai was able to be patient. She wondered whether Zuko was. But she was sure that they could get through it together. Mai wasn't in love with the Fire Lord. However, Mai loved Zuko.

"So, they thought you told the story to Toph to get her to go after the Captain?" Zuko asked, after a long minute in which they both ate and tried to gather their thoughts.

"Yes. Only you, Azula, and me know the story the way Toph told it. I didn't tell her. You didn't tell her. Azula told her," Mai explained.

"It's… I'd been hoping maybe she could get through to Azula," Zuko said, wincing.

Mai understood. Azula didn't change. She never changed. She'd always have tried to kill Mai if it came down to a moment like that, a betrayal like that. She was jealous, and if she'd had fun toying around with Toph, it'd last as long as it took until she got bored.

Of course, Toph, she suspected, must think the same thing.

"No," Mai said.

"What if she gets to Toph? Brings out the… worst in her?" Zuko asked, plaintively.

Mai had no solutions, because he had to force himself to talk to Azula, because it clearly hurt him that things weren't getting better there. She didn't regret anything, and Mai had never expected her to. Zuko, though, Zuko could always hope.

It was one of his more attractive features.

"You could talk to Toph about it."

"She doesn't… she's bored, and she never wants to talk about anything except sparring and bending," Zuko said.

"Duh," Mai said. Of course she was bored. This was a boring place. But at the same time, she was suddenly thinking: doesn't talk about anything except bending, is willing to go along with Azula's nonsense.

It left a sinking feeling and a sour feeling in Mai's stomach that had nothing to do with the food. "Find her something to do, or she'll keep on going to Azula out of boredom," Mai suggested.

And this, at last, seemed to hit its target. Zuko blinked and frowned. "Something for her to do…"

No doubt he'd think of something.

They lapsed into a comfortable silence for a moment, until Mai broke it.

"Oh, the colonies have started hiring deserters," She said, unfussed.

"They've… What?" Zuko's brow furrowed. "Why?"

"They're squabbling with some of the Earth King's Generals," Mai said, "If we don't give them any funding, and the Earth King calls his men back in line, it should all come to nothing."

"I… see." Zuko said uncertainly.

"It's in hand," Mai shrugged. "I can continue to stall them for now, and if the squabbles end before their patience with me ends, there's no trouble. I only mention it because these nobles were Azulon's hardliners - dreadfully boring at parties, always talking about the purity of their blood and suchlike - so talking about Azula reminded me."

"I'll think on it," Zuko furrowed his brow. "Perhaps I can think of something."

"It can wait," Mai said, "You're tired. Don't kill yourself over these people, please."

She gave him a quick kiss, and then disappeared out the door, ending another day. Really no different from any other. It was getting a little dull, truly.

VM AN: Honestly Mai and Zuko are keeping a lot of plates spinning with relatively little support here? Mai doesn't really let "people" in if she can avoid it.

TL AN: A lot of people think they know Mai, but very few do. I'll probably throw up the tiny "Part 2" banner/mini-threadmark in a day or two, but Chapter 7 will be coming the usual time: next Tuesday. But yes, this is it! Part 1 is complete

 

[veteranMortal]

Part 2--Schemer

Azula always lies.
--Zuko, "Zuko Alone."

 

[veteranMortal]

Chapter 7: Playing Games

By the second time they'd met on Friday ("Yo, prodigy" this time in a way that feels like a lazy wave as much as a barbed reference), Azula had realized that this was going to be normal. Toph was meeting her twice a week, and while no doubt that would change, it did represent a step forward in her manipulations. She'd have more time to figure out how to convince Toph to let her out of this cell. A powerful Earthbender like her would be a very, very useful ally in her schemes. She had begun, at last, to begin to think about where she went wrong with… a little more care.

Now she had someone who she might be able to manipulate, though she wasn't sure how. It gave her something real to do, something far more interesting than the dull books that Zuko gave her. The cell was no different, except for one thing. There was now a jar of fire flakes sitting on one of the counters. Toph had given it to her entirely as a joke, because Azula certainly hadn't requested them. She used them anyway because the rice porridge she was given for half her meals could use anything by this point. She always had the same two or three different meals every day.

Azula didn't even care about food, and she still decided she'd keep on using that. Toph had given it to the guards, who had then given it to her while keeping ready in case she attacked. Azula would have, if she had thought there was a chance of escape. She was not a fool, and she could wait for her moment.

"So I had to get a bunch of coins, cause I knew that they charged an entrance fee to even sign up," Toph was saying. They'd been talking for longer than their first two conversations combined, albeit mostly about droll stories of the past. She herself was settled on the bed. She almost wanted to lift her feet off the ground, because she was sure that it would annoy Toph, and at the moment that was a very powerful impulse. She would even say one that she almost acquiesced to, because Toph was leaving her in suspense.

"Yeah, I went up to the man in charge of the tryouts, and I widened my eyes, and asked about how much it'd cost to sign up, because my brother had been bragging about how strong he was, and I wanted to sign him up for it." Toph managed to shift her voice into the strangest combination of formal, childlike, and mocking imaginable. "He told me a number, cause he thought I was just trying to get one over on my brother, and then I gave him the money and said it was actually for me."

"He didn't believe you, and you beat him up?" Azula guessed, because she knew that'd make--

"I didn't interrupt you telling basically the same story you always do," Toph said, and there was almost something like a whine in her voice. It made Azula smirk, because she was pretty sure that her plan was working.

"The same story?" she asked.

"Well, basically. So actually what I did was shoot a rock right at his legs," Toph said, "And then while he was doubled over holding himself he told me that the entrance trial was fighting all the potential contestants. Cause the real fighters had basically been guaranteed by having fought last year and won at least once. If it'd been a year or two later, I'dve just beat them all before he finished talking. But I wasn't the greatest Earthbender alive, then." She sounded grumpy about that, though she would have been nine? Ten? She thought the latter.

Once again Azula was reminded of the gratifying fact that Toph set high standards for herself. It'd be what made her useful, once she'd found a way to sway Toph to her side. She was still attempting to find the way forward.

It was a game she'd enjoy winning, because despite the setback over a week ago, she was still closer to success than before.

"So it took me a minute or two to beat 'em, and one or two of them surprised me. But I beat all of them at once. The trial manager, that loser Xin Fu, set them all against me, they didn't even fight each other. About a dozen idiots, and I'd not really ever fought anyone with Earthbending before. I knew how to, but I didn't have any experience."

"Ah, I see. A pitiful display, to let a dozen merely experienced benders hold you up for that long," Azula said, "But, I suppose, adequate."

"Hey!" Toph said. "Didn't you lose the first time you fought all of 'em? I wasn't there yet, or you'd have super lost."

"I had real fights before chasing the Avatar," Azula said, with a sniff. Of course she'd been given the chance to prove that her training had not been wasted.She'd even fought Earthbenders when she had gone with Father on a brief royal visit to the Colonies. There'd been a pitiful assassination attempt that she'd fought off handily.

And of course… the thought soured. She discarded it, closing her eyes for a moment and lifting her feet off the ground, just to annoy Toph for making her think about it. Then she set her foot back down and said, "So, what were the rounds like?"

"It was kinda fun, because everyone talked before the fights. I sorta stood off to one side, mostly, but I listened in. People were characters, because they wanted to be more interesting for everyone. The weirdest one had to be Fire Nation Man."

What? Who?

"Fire Nation Man?" Azula asked, almost sure she did not want to know. But it was fascinating and enjoyable the way watching a cart crash into a wall was. Especially as she was pretty sure that this case also wound up with someone hurt in some comical way. Toph had a truly juvenile appreciation for hitting people in the privates with rocks. Azula had always thought that hotfoot was far more interesting and instructive.

"Oh, they all had characters, but Fire Nation Man was this patriot for the Fire Nation despite being an Earthbender, who spoke in this thick accent and sang the Fire Nation Anthem, or something he said was it. Badly. I dunno if it was actually the Fire Nation anthem, honestly. He was an alright guy, the accent was fake."

Azula gaped and said the first thing that came to mind, "There were actual Earthbenders who embraced civilization, was he meant to be a… parody of them?" Parody, like satire and puns, seemed to Azula truly unserious and even absurd endeavors beneath her dignity. Toph on the other hand seemed to love puns and making jokes about her blindness.

Azula had started to figure out what it was about. It was… an interesting strategy, drawing attention to weakness to emphasize strength. If she made the blind comments and then kicked everyone's butt, then they didn't have power over her. She'd try to appeal to Toph's love of power, but the thing was she didn't seem to want power so much as freedom which only power could grant her.

But this time Azula was going to be careful before voicing her assumptions. She needed more information, one way or another.

"Yeah, it's a parody of those losers," Toph scoffed.

Azula was briefly torn. She was trying to argue Toph around to the right side of things, but it wasn't like she disagreed. If the Earth Kingdom was invading the Fire Nation in the name of, she didn't know, taking all their women out of the military or whatever barbaric nonsense they got up in arms about, Azula wouldn't help them do it even if she had to die an outlaw and outcast fighting against them.

It was weak of them to bend, and it was part of why she'd never really trusted those sorts.

Maybe those simpering court girls would fold at the first sign of pressure. Azula never would have.

It didn't matter if it was some 'good cause' she knew she'd fight back. It's how she knew she'd have support once she broke out. Patriots would rally to her rather than the Avatar-controlled Zuko.

"Right," Azula said, instead of all the things she might have. "Losers."

"Honestly, he was alright, even if he did help Xin Fu hold me hostage," Toph said, in a tone that sounded like a shrug.

"What? When was that?" Azula asked, confused.

"Oh, I've never told you about how I met Aang, right? 'Cause I thought you'd get all… twitchy."

"Twitchy?" Azula asked, perfectly calm and level.

"Yeah, just like that," Toph said. She snorted. "Twitchy. But yeah, I got kidnapped and put in a steel cage twice, and the first time nobody'd dared me to invent Metalbending so that had to wait a month or whatever. Then my parents got the guy who'd kidnapped me and held me for ransom and my incompetent teacher to chase after me."

Azula was for a moment lost in a renewed desire to burn down the Beifong estates with them inside. Everything she learned about them showed them as incompetent, and even worse than that unwilling to nurture talent. Mai's parents were pathetic, but at least they'd…

No. Not a thought to linger on.

"So, Fire Nation Man?"

"Nice guy, was saving up to help some of his relatives. Xin Fu, who was in charge of all of it, probably just told him to show up to help him or not at all. Idiots thought I was tricking them, or something? I didn't really stick around to ask. But Fire Nation Man and the Pebble, sorry, the Boulder, were interesting. The Boulder was new that year, but a lot of the others came and went." Toph sighed. "One of them, Rockalanche, was this big guy who I fought in the final of the first Earth Rumble I fought in. I wasn't as good as I am now, he actually made me work for it. But I beat him in the end, and he acknowledged me as an Earthbender. I think he was a soldier or something lame like that, so he went off to war and…"

Another verbal shrug.

Azula considered that, and knew that these things did matter to her. So she refrained, using all of her strength and cunning, from stating that he probably died against the might of the Fire Nation, as he deserved. Or anything to that effect.

"It's terrible that he left," Azula lied.

"Come on, don't get sappy on me, Sparky," Toph groused. "You either don't care or you hope he was beat up or killed. And, eh. Stuff happened. Earth Rumble was good while it lasted, and then Xin Fu ruined all of it. Though honestly, I was getting kinda bored. The Boulder was only a little better than Rockalanche, and he was easier to predict."

"Oh, how did this… Mr. Rockalanche fight?" Azula asked, letting her voice drip both boredom and disdain. Toph seemed to appreciate it, no doubt because she was laughing at Azula behind her back like a--

Azula took a calming breath.

"Honestly, kinda clever. He shot rock into the air, rock that was half-gravel, and then he sort of tugged at it, like a magnet, and it came raining down on people. He could do the usual stuff, but it was annoying to have to deal with brushing all the gravel out of my hair so nobody noticed." Toph was complaining, but she sounded oddly soft. Fond. Almost gentle. It made Azula want to tease her or exploit the weakness, just to see what she'd do.

"Hmph," Azula said. "He doesn't sound so tough."

"He wasn't, but it was annoying. Like sandbending. And Airbending."

Azula considered it for a moment and asked, "Can you not sense things when you're on sand?"

"It's all… fuzzy," Toph said readily. "And if you somehow find a way to use that against me in a stone prison, honestly you'd deserve it."

Right.

It was a theoretical advantage more than an actual one. All the same, if she had such a weakness she would work to overcome it. Nothing she'd heard about Toph struck her as lazy. So she filed it away as another interesting piece of the puzzle, that Toph wasn't out there standing on a beach five hours a day trying to get better at it. "If avoiding a weakness is good enough for you…" she drawled. "Running away from it, the Earthbender way." She vaguely knew that Earthbenders cared a lot about the idea of facing something head on.

"Hey! I face all sorts of things head on."

"Except sand," Azula said.

"Stuff's coarse and rough and annoying, and it gets between your toes and gets everything all fuzzy," Toph said, dismissively. "I sorta figured out how to do something with it, but I still can't see through it as well, especially in a fight."

"Hmph," Azula said, "So you fought in these Earth Rumbles, until something happened and the owner kidnapped you."

"And then I joined the Avatar," Toph said. "After beating him to get my belt back."

"Your belt?"

"I had this Earth Rumble championship belt I wore whenever I won. I really liked it. Then we lost it when we wound up stuck in a desert," Toph said.

Stuck in a desert? Why would they have been in a desert in the first place? There were annoying gaps in her understanding of what exactly her enemies had even been wasting their time on. She'd ask eventually, once she was closer to ready to try to push Toph to help her escape.

"How tragic," Azula said, not meaning it. Whatever 'belt' came with winning some fighting tournament was probably tacky and ugly.

"Yeah, it really is. What's even more tragic is, I tried to look for some equivalent in this city, and Zuko stopped me," Toph whined. "I'm sure I could win a Fire Rumble. Wouldn't be using Fire, but they'd be getting rumbled, so who cares?"

Azula snorted. If there was a 'Fire Rumble' it would be crude and far beneath her. She was also sure that she'd win it. "That's because Zuko is a boring loser," Azula said, with a roll of her eyes.

"Eh, he's alright, I like him," Toph said, as if this was a matter of opinions, rather than… what it was.Pure fact. "He did burn my feet once, when I tried to talk to him, on accident. But I got revenge for that already."

"He did what?" Azula asked. Of course she would try to do the same if it did come down to a fight, but- "On accident?" There was the part that disgusted her. Burning Toph's feet was just good sense, because that's how she saw and bent and you'd want to win.

"He was scared and lashed out," Toph said softly, "Bending means you're going to get hurt, sometimes."

"True, true, but not by accident," Azula sneered. "By someone like--"

"Is it?" Toph asked. "Cause I know that people get broken bones all the time learning to Earthbend. I figured it was the same with Firebending. You get burned. Waterbending's safer, if you don't just drown." Her voice was soft, and thoughtful, and Azula wanted to press on the Zuko thing, try to get her to complain about him.

But she was thinking about it, and there was a point there. Earthbending and Firebending did share that much; they both required tough people to make it through. She'd first started learning with classes and tutors a year advanced from her age, then two, then four, and each time she ratcheted upward she always got a little burned at first before she surpassed everyone else around her. A few of the older kids even beat her, humiliated her only to be on the receiving end just a few days or weeks later when she surpassed them. The Fire Nation knew how to treat burns, and it knew how to treat those who weren't willing to get burned to be great benders.

The weak were burned away, the strong fought through and struck back. "Sure, who hasn't been burned a little." Zuko, she wanted to say, would always whine about it. He'd sniffle and grumble and not just push through like he was supposed to. Eventually he learned that there was not going to be anyone who cared about a little thing like burns, and he improved some. Not enough to be adequate, but some. Then, of course, he got burnt badly.

"I had to be careful, but I made sure any bruises weren't where the parents could see them," Toph said. "Or I pretended to trip. You'd think they'd figure it out, but they really didn't. Badgermoles aren't quite like any other teacher, they're…"

She trailed off, and Azula realized she wasn't going to respond. "What?" Azula asked, scoffing. "Kinder? And what, Zuzo learned from the ghosts of the dragons how to be a gentle bender?"

"I dunno for sure, but maybe?" Toph said, and she sounded uncertain. "He went off somewhere and came back with an entirely new bending style that he was mastering in weeks. I dunno the specifics, and I don't care? Badgermoles are patient. A dozen of the Jing were made about all the different ways they can seem passive and not be. They just accept everything. I wasn't always good at that, and pushed on, and whenever I did I got bruised, and they probably didn't like that, but I was okay and I kept on learning." Toph sighed and said, "So that's how it was. You keep on going, no matter what."

"A dozen Jing?" Azula asked. "I thought there were three?"

Toph snorted and started laughing at her again, but before Azula could find one of the insults she had been very carefully rationing out, she said, "You know one more than Twinkletoes did. He apparently thought there were two, Positive and Negative."

"It was all Earth Kingdom nonsense," Azula said. "All those Jing and we were still winning the war. How many are there, then?"

"Eighty-five," Toph said.

What. How can there be eighty-five of them?

"Who told you about them?" Azula asked, because of course Toph couldn't read.

"Oh, I got bored one time and asked one of the servants to… read…" Toph said, trailing off. "Huh."

"What is it?" Azula asked, eyes narrowing.

"Nah, it's nothing," Toph said. "But I grew up thinking everyone must know the Jing. They're not hard to memorize."

Azula didn't quite scoff, but it was an amusing thought. She'd never been so deluded as to think the ways that she excelled were normal, even if she thought they were the standard by which everyone should be measured.

"I need to go get lunch, Zaps," Toph said, and then without saying goodbye she got up and the door groaned again, the room shook again, and before Azula could probe about what Toph figured out, she was gone.

---

The next day, there was more shuddering and the sound of a door opening. For a moment, Azula thought that Toph had come back, for some silly request or something. But she heard no 'Yo' followed by some absurd nickname that she really should just refuse to answer to.

"Azula," Zuko said.

"Zuzu," Azula said, because she understood exactly why Toph used nicknames she hated. It felt good to all but see that wince. She stared at the steel door, and tried to imagine the look on his face. "What an unexpected surprise? What book do you have for me today? The Littlest Firebender That Could? My Pet, Precious?" She dredged up vague memories and was about to deliver a truly devastating reference to one of the nonsensical books that he enjoyed as a child.

"No, no books this time," Zuko said, frustration slipping into his voice. "I just wanted to talk."

"Well, talk away," Azula said, bored. "But don't think I'm going to respond to your vague entreaties, brother."

"Why not? I've heard you've been talking with Toph," Zuko protested. He honestly sounded like he was about to start whining and acting like a crybaby.

"It is truly a low bar, but she is less dull and stupid than you. She must have been glad when you became the Avatar's Firebending tutor, as it'd give her another bender clearly less competent than her to compare herself to," Azula sneered.

"Really?" Zuko asked, frustration rising. He took a long, deep, no doubt calming, breath. "So you're talking with her to spite me?"

"Wouldn't you like to know?" Azula asked, though she was pretty sure that was only part of it. She was less dull than him, and she was bored. What more was there to it? "Does Toph belong to you? Am I playing with your toys again, Zuzu?" She pressed onward. There was a little bit of discomfort, a tiny bit of frustration, but she knew how to hurt him. "Going to cry to Mother, again?"

"Shut up, Azula," Zuko said. "She's not a toy."

No, she wasn't. If she was a toy then Azula would be bored of her after a week. "Then why have you left her sitting up dusty on a shelf? Bored? The so-called 'Greatest Earthbender Alive', and all she had for company was you, Zuzu? No wonder she wanted to talk to someone more interesting."

"This isn't actually about me," Zuko said.

"Ah, the Avoidance Jing," Azula said, sagely. "Toph warned me about this."

"There's no such thing," Zuko spat back.

"How would you know? I happened to be in conversation with someone who knows that there are eighty-five--"

"Jing, yes," Zuko said, frustrated.

"How did a blind thirteen year old manage to be better educated than you, Zuzu? A Fire Nation Prince, supposedly in line to be Fire Lord with, so far as I know, two mostly functioning eyes, if no functioning brain…"

"I am the Fire Lord!" Zuko stated, and for a moment Azula… was surprised.There was an edge of anger, of possessiveness, that made his desire for a toy feel like nothing at all. For just a moment, Azula believed he was telling the truth. No, that's not it. He finally sounded like the usurper he was, rather than an apologetic child. Power was about grasping it as hard as you could and never letting go for any reason, burning any that would try to take even a little bit of it from you.

Usurpers to the throne were of course unworthy, and all such pretenders had been eliminated, but at least they had a hunger for power and the will to seize it despite being born unworthy. If Zuko had graduated to pretender and usurper instead of pretending that he was so pathetic as to not desire power, then she supposed she would have to honor him with a pretender's death rather than a nobody's… revenge. She had been planning on placing Zuko in this very cell, so that he may rot for the rest of his miserable years.

But if he is truly seizing the reins of power, even for his… absurd betrayal of everything the Fire Nation believed, then he would have followers. He would have supporters for his mad adventure in enslaving the Fire Nation to the will of the Avatar. She had thought, actually, that such a spineless person would soon grow used to imprisonment, and her brother would resign himself enough that perhaps she could bring him books on the Fire Nation and taunt him and nothing would come of it. But to instead imagine someone like herself, the fury and the agony… it should make it even more tempting to imagine him in the cell.

Instead it felt… odd, for a moment. Cruelty was useful, but perhaps it would be a mercy to simply kill him. As it would have been both sense and mercy for him to have had her killed. Painlessly, if he wanted to be almost too kind. He was too weak to offer her anything but cruelty disguised as kindness. This felt odd. She felt just a little unwell for a moment, like six months ago when she had gotten sick from the food. But after a moment she flicked away the feelings like so much ash. Whatever it was, it was unimportant.

"Or so you claim," Azula said, trying to slip any errant emotions in her voice off to the side. This was a game and nothing more, and she would win. "If you are coming here to demand I not talk to… this Beifong, I will not do so. I'll do what I want, as I will. If you want to try to give her orders, feel free to."

"Give her orders?" Zuko snorted. "You couldn't do that with an army at your back."

"Deflection Jing." Azula muttered, just loud enough for him to hear.

"That is not a Jing!"

"Again, Zuzu, how would you know?" she asked, and those momentary strange feelings had passed, and things were once again as they should be. He was being humiliated, and had no idea of her schemes regarding Toph, and she would simply have to take into account his understandable lust for power, the first thing about him that had made sense to her since he seized his chance to return home in Ba Sing Se.

The rest of the conversation was easy enough. Winning arguments wasn't that hard, especially with Zuzu, and soon enough he was leaving with apologies to cover his anger like a cheap cloak.

VM AN: Does Azula actually know the Jing? Almost certainly not. And she's… dealing with the fact that Zuko does actually want to be Fire Lord.

TL AN: Well, sort of. He doesn't always like the job, but he's committed to it by now. Also it's kinda fun to imagine what sort of bits-and-pieces story of the Avatar's journey Azula would be getting from Toph.