Lenimentus
Ignorant but learning.
This was one of my theories about the previous chapter. Interesting to learn that it's not the only example. Might go back and look at the other conversations later.
Avatar: Between Two Doors
- Thread starter veteranMortal
- Start date
DracoDracul
Transbian Communist
- Location
- Austin
- Pronouns
- She/They
Ah so that's what you were alluding to here. The points "Toph" hit were so perfectly targeted because it was Azula's own self-loathing.
Interlude 2– June
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Interlude 2– June
June inspected the gates of Pohuai Stronghold, running a finger through the layer of ash atop to reveal the scorched oak and steel beneath. An experimental shove told her the crossbar had survived the fire, and she stepped back.
"Curious." She murmured to herself, then clicked her tongue, signalling Nyla.
The Shirshu bared his teeth and reared up on hind legs to rain blows from his forelegs on the gate. There was a resounding crack that echoed in June's ears, and she reached for her whip as she stepped into the fortress.
She'd never spent a great deal of time around the Fire Nation's military - she didn't feel any shame calling herself the best bounty hunter in the world, but during the war, she'd tried to stay out of their way when she could. The sort of work they used to hire bounty hunters for wasn't the sort of work she wanted - chasing down deserters and resistance leaders lacked the sort of challenge she sought, and they tended to bore Nyla.
The courtyard inside the fortress was utterly devastated; arrows protruded from every conceivable surface, with their fletching burnt away and the ends blackened to cinder, swords and polearms lay abandoned in piles dotted here and there, and the cloying stink of rotting food emanated from the stores so strongly that Nyla was left whimpering, rubbing at his nose in distress as June steeled herself to look inside.
"They did a good job," She said, half to herself, half to Nyla. "Most hunters, they'd figure whoever disobeyed the withdrawal order fell afoul of some deserter band or vigilante mob."
Satisfied by what she saw in the stores - meat that'd gotten slick with rot, vegetables spackled with mold, fruit that had all but liquified - June stepped away, grimacing.
"But there's no bodies, and no graves, either," She continued, "All these arrows and fires, broken furniture and abandoned weapons, but they couldn't fake being dead without deaths."
She cracked her whip near Nyla, drawing his attention. "Let's go to the barracks. With luck, they'll have left some bedding."
Nyla's run was a long, smooth lollop that just eats the distance, and June settled into the saddle, shifting to get comfortable. The pursuit was Nyla's favourite part of hunting, his time to shine, but for June it was always terribly boring. She could slip into almost half a trance - she could feel Nyla's muscles under her thighs, and if he tensed, it would rouse her before there was any real danger.
June wasn't even able to feign surprise when the trail led into the ruins of lost Taku. The city had sat on the trade routes between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, once upon a time, and even once the Fire Nation burnt it to ash, they'd had to re-establish the port, just for trade with the colonies. It was, in short, the obvious place for bandits to make their home, ideal to hit the caravans on the main road.
Nyla stepped off the road, shaking sand off his paws. The road was one of the busiest in the Colonies during the war - troops and colonists travelling inland from the Fire Nation, and resources coming out from the colonies - so it'd been worked on over time; cobbles replaced with packed dirt, wooden bridges replacing stone, so Earthbenders would have it harder, trying to destroy it.
To reach the ruins from the road was a worn spur of crushed grass, a footpath beaten into the land by marching feet. Nyla's nose twitched once, then twice, and then he was on his way towards the city center.
The city wasn't walled, and as Nyla followed the scent-trail, they were soon passing between ruined buildings - a paper-mill that'd been put to the torch by firebenders more than a century ago and never rebuilt, a toll house so thoroughly picked over by bandits for decades it was a miracle it still had identifying signs at all, and a silk farm that'd been almost swallowed by the overgrowth. June gripped the handle of her whip so tightly she could hear the leather creak.
The first body hung from a tree directly over the path, and June inspected it, unflinchin g. She was pretty sure she recognised the armour - a Bounty Hunter from one of the local colonies had bought himself a full suit of Fire Nation plate armour, then painted it the colours of the Earth Kingdom. There were arrows through every joint, and he had a notice pinned to his chest - Turn Back, You Will Not Claim Our Bounty - which provoked a hum of irritation from her.
Her commission was private, and so she'd expected this to be a mission she could complete at leisure, but it appeared now that there may be more bounties against these men than her own. She rubbed Nyla's neck reassuringly - he had not reacted to the corpse, but she knew he had noted it.
The next body was much the same, though this one she did not recognise; it dangled from an arch at the base of a long and steep stair, up into the hills, and she pushed it aside with her arm as she passed.
She had been this way once before, with the Fire Lord, before he was the Fire Lord. An old herbalist lived in the crumbling institute atop this hill, doting on her cat, a tremendously spoilt beast - Miyuki or Miyaki?
She found her body at the top of the hill, perhaps fifty yards from the institute. Not strung up like the bounty hunters, which she supposed was some mercy, but murdered all the same. She had an arrow in her back, and had been dumped by the side of the path like so much carrion. June spat on the path opposite.
"That's not right," She muttered, "Not right at all."
Nyla stiffened suddenly, and June's hand flew back to her whip's handle, and she ducked reflexively, seconds before an arrow whined over her head like an angry wasp. Nyla launched himself towards the institute as another arrow buzzed out furiously.
The shirshu must've unnerved them - the Yuyuan archers were legendary, but these deserters were loosing arrows without a thought for accuracy, and Nyla was almost upon them before the first arrow sunk into his hide, provoking little more than a snarl on his part.
Nyla's leap shattered one of the institute's stone walls, bringing down that tier of the roof, and he landed in amongst the bandits, his tongue lashing out to strike one, then two, then a third of them.
June took in the situation immediately - there were a dozen of the Yuyuan here, as expected from the bounty, and she could see that four of them were still struggling to their feet - they'd been asleep, and she wondered idly if they ran their gang like the military unit they'd deserted; were these men their pickets, meant to stand watch at night?
She abandoned the thought - it scarcely mattered, with the gang mere moments from forcible dissolution. She slide from Nyla's back, lashed out with her whip as she dropped, knocking the bow from one archer's hand, and then on the return, catching the bowstring of another bow. It snapped with an audible twang, and the released force left the archer staggering, blood dripping from a line the bowstring had cut across his face once it snapped.
Nyla had paralysed another man by this point, and she saw him backswipe an archer into a wall with one paw as his tail caught another on the head.
The four who'd been off duty stood indecisive, unarmed and unarmoured, surrounded by their groaning comrades. Eyes flicked from the whip in her hand to the Shirshu that was prowling, his nostrils flaring.
"Don't try anything, boys," June said wearily, "I'm sick of running you down, but I'll do it again if I must."
They didn't, which was a relief. Securing the eight here and then chasing down four runaways would've been a tremendous waste of time, and the margin on this particular bounty was fine as it was.
"Alright. Hands together in front of you," She said, "There're shackles in Nyla's saddlebags."
"Why'd you kill her?" She asked eventually, once they were all strung along in a line she was attaching to Nyla's harness. "Little old lady like that, she can't have scared you?"
There was an edge to her voice, and she saw them hear it. None of them maintained eye contact.
"She would've told somebody we were here," One of them muttered, "So we had to stop her."
"Ah," June said, her voice as dry as the desert, "And killing her meant no one knew you were here. No bounty hunters came to take you in anyway."
Nyla rumbled a growl for emphasis, and they quailed further. June hauled herself in Nyla's saddle, satisfied.
The bandits staggered as June turned Nyla to leave, their chains pulled taut, and listened for a moment to their complaining, long enough to establish they had no allies waiting in the wings, no plan for escape, and then she ignored them.
It hadn't been a difficult job, not compared to some of them - a dozen men, not expecting anyone but the dregs of the bounty hunters a small town could afford - but it'd been dispiriting in a way that was growing increasingly commonplace in the colonies.
Deserters were rife, soldiers of all stripes tearing off their insignia and preying on the weak. Cities paid them off, gave incentives to wage quiet backroom wars on their trade rivals, and the countryside bled to sustain them - these were hardened warriors, no strangers to murder. Soldiers like this gave no thought to killing an old lady. They'd probably even killed her-
Her thought was interrupted by the impact of something heavy on the saddle behind her, startling a yelp that was unbecoming of a bounty hunter.
"The beastie comes for her, then!" She heard one of the deserters growl, and felt whatever it was let out a low, satisfied purr. It was soft and warm against her back, and June sighed.
"Her cat," She said softly, "Of course."
She wasn't going to make an effort to keep the cat with her, she decided, but if it stuck with her back to her lodgings, she wouldn't throw the poor thing out on the street.
No one spared June or her prisoners a second glance as Nyla trotted along the main road. A studied lack of interest, that was the defining mood in the colonies in the post-war, June decided.
She couldn't really blame them - the colonies were struggling, and it was getting worse with each passing week. The Fire Lord wasn't able to keep a firm grip on his people, and the colonial governors were responding to the uncertainty of their future by tightening their grips on their population - it was getting harder and harder to be Earth Kingdom in some of these cities, even for someone like June, someone so plainly useful to them.
It was worse on the cities nearer the new border with the Earth Kingdom. The Fire Nationals were sparser there, less enmeshed with the native population. There, they could rule only through boots on necks.
The older colonies - Yu Dao, Natsuo Island, East and West Heiatu, to name a few - they had whole structures. A governor from Caldera City, with senior officials mostly drawn from the Fire Nation, though high ranking officials from some of the established families in the colonies themselves were not unheard of - the families that could guarantee they were pure Fire Nation, all the way back to the days of Sozin - and East Heiatu had almost had a colony-born Governor once, before it was revealed his daughter was an Earthbender. Junior officials were all colony-born, and then below that - guards, gatekeepers and similar - could even have some earthbender heritage.
There was a place in that hierarchy for someone like her, a bounty hunter with an Earthbender for a father and a Fire Nation runaway for a mother. It wasn't perfect, but she could make a living. In cities like Ganjin, where the Fire Nation had only seized them in the last years before the comet, she was mud-filth.
She felt off balance anywhere in the colonies, truthfully - the old colonies were trying to keep their hierarchy in place even as the Fire Nation increasingly withdrew the support they needed, whilst the new colonies were scrambling to raise armies from their people and buy up whichever mercenaries they could hire, deserters they could bribe or garrisons they could subvert. None of it was stable - bandits were rife, and on both sides of the border, increasingly bold gangs were learning to retreat across it when they were pursued.
A border war was, she felt, inevitable, if the Fire Lord couldn't clamp down on the colonies. Appoint someone to run roughshod over them without having to sail all the way to Caldera City to get approval for it. It wasn't her problem, but it was a concern - bounty hunting in a warzone was never her preference.
Taku Seaport rose before them, and one of the deserters tugged on his chain, trying to get her attention.
"Hey, lady!" He called out. June didn't turn. "Which town hired you? We have a patron! He'll pay double for you to let us go!"
June snorted quietly. "I doubt that, bandit. Your patron can't pay me enough for me to break this contract."
"Are you sure?" He said, sly. "He can pay an awful lot."
"You don't even know who hired me," June said, dismissively. "I'm not going to mess around on one of my most reliable repeat hires, okay?"
He went quiet for a minute, and she spurred Nyla through the gates, towards the harbour.
"We only hit little towns and villages!" His protests grew more desperate, "We didn't take on any of the major colonies!"
"Save it for the court," June said evenly, "Perhaps the Fire Lord's justice will be sympathetic to deserters who kill defenceless old women in their homes because they didn't attack major colonies."
The man stammered for a moment, but June ignored him. "I would be surprised, though."
"But- We're going to the Fire Lord?"
"That's what I told you," June said, wishing - not for the first time - that she could simply use Nyla to paralyse them. No prisoners could bother her, then.
Now she was here, she could see the ship - a hulking cruiser of the Fire Nation navy - and its captain, waiting on the docks with a small, drab man with a clipboard, who no doubt would be processing her bounty. She raised a hand in greeting. The retainer she was on for the Fire Nation was a cushy job - as they pulled troops back to the Fire Nation, she was sent for any members of demobilised units that were missing from role-call on their ship.
It was honest work, or as close to honest work as a bounty hunter was like to ever get. There were worse ways to earn a living.
VM AN: End of part 2. The Colonies are not doing super good, actually! Messy times.
TL AN: If only some chief figure could make sure to reeve the shire.
June inspected the gates of Pohuai Stronghold, running a finger through the layer of ash atop to reveal the scorched oak and steel beneath. An experimental shove told her the crossbar had survived the fire, and she stepped back.
"Curious." She murmured to herself, then clicked her tongue, signalling Nyla.
The Shirshu bared his teeth and reared up on hind legs to rain blows from his forelegs on the gate. There was a resounding crack that echoed in June's ears, and she reached for her whip as she stepped into the fortress.
She'd never spent a great deal of time around the Fire Nation's military - she didn't feel any shame calling herself the best bounty hunter in the world, but during the war, she'd tried to stay out of their way when she could. The sort of work they used to hire bounty hunters for wasn't the sort of work she wanted - chasing down deserters and resistance leaders lacked the sort of challenge she sought, and they tended to bore Nyla.
The courtyard inside the fortress was utterly devastated; arrows protruded from every conceivable surface, with their fletching burnt away and the ends blackened to cinder, swords and polearms lay abandoned in piles dotted here and there, and the cloying stink of rotting food emanated from the stores so strongly that Nyla was left whimpering, rubbing at his nose in distress as June steeled herself to look inside.
"They did a good job," She said, half to herself, half to Nyla. "Most hunters, they'd figure whoever disobeyed the withdrawal order fell afoul of some deserter band or vigilante mob."
Satisfied by what she saw in the stores - meat that'd gotten slick with rot, vegetables spackled with mold, fruit that had all but liquified - June stepped away, grimacing.
"But there's no bodies, and no graves, either," She continued, "All these arrows and fires, broken furniture and abandoned weapons, but they couldn't fake being dead without deaths."
She cracked her whip near Nyla, drawing his attention. "Let's go to the barracks. With luck, they'll have left some bedding."
Nyla's run was a long, smooth lollop that just eats the distance, and June settled into the saddle, shifting to get comfortable. The pursuit was Nyla's favourite part of hunting, his time to shine, but for June it was always terribly boring. She could slip into almost half a trance - she could feel Nyla's muscles under her thighs, and if he tensed, it would rouse her before there was any real danger.
June wasn't even able to feign surprise when the trail led into the ruins of lost Taku. The city had sat on the trade routes between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, once upon a time, and even once the Fire Nation burnt it to ash, they'd had to re-establish the port, just for trade with the colonies. It was, in short, the obvious place for bandits to make their home, ideal to hit the caravans on the main road.
Nyla stepped off the road, shaking sand off his paws. The road was one of the busiest in the Colonies during the war - troops and colonists travelling inland from the Fire Nation, and resources coming out from the colonies - so it'd been worked on over time; cobbles replaced with packed dirt, wooden bridges replacing stone, so Earthbenders would have it harder, trying to destroy it.
To reach the ruins from the road was a worn spur of crushed grass, a footpath beaten into the land by marching feet. Nyla's nose twitched once, then twice, and then he was on his way towards the city center.
The city wasn't walled, and as Nyla followed the scent-trail, they were soon passing between ruined buildings - a paper-mill that'd been put to the torch by firebenders more than a century ago and never rebuilt, a toll house so thoroughly picked over by bandits for decades it was a miracle it still had identifying signs at all, and a silk farm that'd been almost swallowed by the overgrowth. June gripped the handle of her whip so tightly she could hear the leather creak.
The first body hung from a tree directly over the path, and June inspected it, unflinchin g. She was pretty sure she recognised the armour - a Bounty Hunter from one of the local colonies had bought himself a full suit of Fire Nation plate armour, then painted it the colours of the Earth Kingdom. There were arrows through every joint, and he had a notice pinned to his chest - Turn Back, You Will Not Claim Our Bounty - which provoked a hum of irritation from her.
Her commission was private, and so she'd expected this to be a mission she could complete at leisure, but it appeared now that there may be more bounties against these men than her own. She rubbed Nyla's neck reassuringly - he had not reacted to the corpse, but she knew he had noted it.
The next body was much the same, though this one she did not recognise; it dangled from an arch at the base of a long and steep stair, up into the hills, and she pushed it aside with her arm as she passed.
She had been this way once before, with the Fire Lord, before he was the Fire Lord. An old herbalist lived in the crumbling institute atop this hill, doting on her cat, a tremendously spoilt beast - Miyuki or Miyaki?
She found her body at the top of the hill, perhaps fifty yards from the institute. Not strung up like the bounty hunters, which she supposed was some mercy, but murdered all the same. She had an arrow in her back, and had been dumped by the side of the path like so much carrion. June spat on the path opposite.
"That's not right," She muttered, "Not right at all."
Nyla stiffened suddenly, and June's hand flew back to her whip's handle, and she ducked reflexively, seconds before an arrow whined over her head like an angry wasp. Nyla launched himself towards the institute as another arrow buzzed out furiously.
The shirshu must've unnerved them - the Yuyuan archers were legendary, but these deserters were loosing arrows without a thought for accuracy, and Nyla was almost upon them before the first arrow sunk into his hide, provoking little more than a snarl on his part.
Nyla's leap shattered one of the institute's stone walls, bringing down that tier of the roof, and he landed in amongst the bandits, his tongue lashing out to strike one, then two, then a third of them.
June took in the situation immediately - there were a dozen of the Yuyuan here, as expected from the bounty, and she could see that four of them were still struggling to their feet - they'd been asleep, and she wondered idly if they ran their gang like the military unit they'd deserted; were these men their pickets, meant to stand watch at night?
She abandoned the thought - it scarcely mattered, with the gang mere moments from forcible dissolution. She slide from Nyla's back, lashed out with her whip as she dropped, knocking the bow from one archer's hand, and then on the return, catching the bowstring of another bow. It snapped with an audible twang, and the released force left the archer staggering, blood dripping from a line the bowstring had cut across his face once it snapped.
Nyla had paralysed another man by this point, and she saw him backswipe an archer into a wall with one paw as his tail caught another on the head.
The four who'd been off duty stood indecisive, unarmed and unarmoured, surrounded by their groaning comrades. Eyes flicked from the whip in her hand to the Shirshu that was prowling, his nostrils flaring.
"Don't try anything, boys," June said wearily, "I'm sick of running you down, but I'll do it again if I must."
They didn't, which was a relief. Securing the eight here and then chasing down four runaways would've been a tremendous waste of time, and the margin on this particular bounty was fine as it was.
"Alright. Hands together in front of you," She said, "There're shackles in Nyla's saddlebags."
"Why'd you kill her?" She asked eventually, once they were all strung along in a line she was attaching to Nyla's harness. "Little old lady like that, she can't have scared you?"
There was an edge to her voice, and she saw them hear it. None of them maintained eye contact.
"She would've told somebody we were here," One of them muttered, "So we had to stop her."
"Ah," June said, her voice as dry as the desert, "And killing her meant no one knew you were here. No bounty hunters came to take you in anyway."
Nyla rumbled a growl for emphasis, and they quailed further. June hauled herself in Nyla's saddle, satisfied.
The bandits staggered as June turned Nyla to leave, their chains pulled taut, and listened for a moment to their complaining, long enough to establish they had no allies waiting in the wings, no plan for escape, and then she ignored them.
It hadn't been a difficult job, not compared to some of them - a dozen men, not expecting anyone but the dregs of the bounty hunters a small town could afford - but it'd been dispiriting in a way that was growing increasingly commonplace in the colonies.
Deserters were rife, soldiers of all stripes tearing off their insignia and preying on the weak. Cities paid them off, gave incentives to wage quiet backroom wars on their trade rivals, and the countryside bled to sustain them - these were hardened warriors, no strangers to murder. Soldiers like this gave no thought to killing an old lady. They'd probably even killed her-
Her thought was interrupted by the impact of something heavy on the saddle behind her, startling a yelp that was unbecoming of a bounty hunter.
"The beastie comes for her, then!" She heard one of the deserters growl, and felt whatever it was let out a low, satisfied purr. It was soft and warm against her back, and June sighed.
"Her cat," She said softly, "Of course."
She wasn't going to make an effort to keep the cat with her, she decided, but if it stuck with her back to her lodgings, she wouldn't throw the poor thing out on the street.
No one spared June or her prisoners a second glance as Nyla trotted along the main road. A studied lack of interest, that was the defining mood in the colonies in the post-war, June decided.
She couldn't really blame them - the colonies were struggling, and it was getting worse with each passing week. The Fire Lord wasn't able to keep a firm grip on his people, and the colonial governors were responding to the uncertainty of their future by tightening their grips on their population - it was getting harder and harder to be Earth Kingdom in some of these cities, even for someone like June, someone so plainly useful to them.
It was worse on the cities nearer the new border with the Earth Kingdom. The Fire Nationals were sparser there, less enmeshed with the native population. There, they could rule only through boots on necks.
The older colonies - Yu Dao, Natsuo Island, East and West Heiatu, to name a few - they had whole structures. A governor from Caldera City, with senior officials mostly drawn from the Fire Nation, though high ranking officials from some of the established families in the colonies themselves were not unheard of - the families that could guarantee they were pure Fire Nation, all the way back to the days of Sozin - and East Heiatu had almost had a colony-born Governor once, before it was revealed his daughter was an Earthbender. Junior officials were all colony-born, and then below that - guards, gatekeepers and similar - could even have some earthbender heritage.
There was a place in that hierarchy for someone like her, a bounty hunter with an Earthbender for a father and a Fire Nation runaway for a mother. It wasn't perfect, but she could make a living. In cities like Ganjin, where the Fire Nation had only seized them in the last years before the comet, she was mud-filth.
She felt off balance anywhere in the colonies, truthfully - the old colonies were trying to keep their hierarchy in place even as the Fire Nation increasingly withdrew the support they needed, whilst the new colonies were scrambling to raise armies from their people and buy up whichever mercenaries they could hire, deserters they could bribe or garrisons they could subvert. None of it was stable - bandits were rife, and on both sides of the border, increasingly bold gangs were learning to retreat across it when they were pursued.
A border war was, she felt, inevitable, if the Fire Lord couldn't clamp down on the colonies. Appoint someone to run roughshod over them without having to sail all the way to Caldera City to get approval for it. It wasn't her problem, but it was a concern - bounty hunting in a warzone was never her preference.
Taku Seaport rose before them, and one of the deserters tugged on his chain, trying to get her attention.
"Hey, lady!" He called out. June didn't turn. "Which town hired you? We have a patron! He'll pay double for you to let us go!"
June snorted quietly. "I doubt that, bandit. Your patron can't pay me enough for me to break this contract."
"Are you sure?" He said, sly. "He can pay an awful lot."
"You don't even know who hired me," June said, dismissively. "I'm not going to mess around on one of my most reliable repeat hires, okay?"
He went quiet for a minute, and she spurred Nyla through the gates, towards the harbour.
"We only hit little towns and villages!" His protests grew more desperate, "We didn't take on any of the major colonies!"
"Save it for the court," June said evenly, "Perhaps the Fire Lord's justice will be sympathetic to deserters who kill defenceless old women in their homes because they didn't attack major colonies."
The man stammered for a moment, but June ignored him. "I would be surprised, though."
"But- We're going to the Fire Lord?"
"That's what I told you," June said, wishing - not for the first time - that she could simply use Nyla to paralyse them. No prisoners could bother her, then.
Now she was here, she could see the ship - a hulking cruiser of the Fire Nation navy - and its captain, waiting on the docks with a small, drab man with a clipboard, who no doubt would be processing her bounty. She raised a hand in greeting. The retainer she was on for the Fire Nation was a cushy job - as they pulled troops back to the Fire Nation, she was sent for any members of demobilised units that were missing from role-call on their ship.
It was honest work, or as close to honest work as a bounty hunter was like to ever get. There were worse ways to earn a living.
VM AN: End of part 2. The Colonies are not doing super good, actually! Messy times.
TL AN: If only some chief figure could make sure to reeve the shire.
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Interesting interlude, it all makes sense.
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ah, so little butterflies that in theory, Toph could have stepped up and handled?
Part 3--Madwoman
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Part 3--Madwoman
"So, Uncle, I've been thinking. It's only a matter of time before I run into Azula again. I'm going to need to know more advanced firebending if I want to stand a chance against her. I know what you're going to say, she's my sister, and I should be trying to get along with her."
"No. She's crazy, and she needs to go down."
--Zuko and Iroh, "Bitter Work."
- Location
- Somewhere!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Ah yeah, classic wise mentor Iroh who has no blindspots.
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Prodigy, Schemer, Madwoman...
DocMatoi
Theoretical Lover of Girls
- Location
- within 2 hours of the White House
- Pronouns
- They/Them
hm. is azula going to drag toph into a folie a deux? seems uncharacteristic
Lenimentus
Ignorant but learning.
Iroh is maybe my fourth or fifth favorite character, but that was not one of his finest moments, even if it did make for a good comedy beat.
Azula is absolutely someone who needed support and love from family members she didn't get.
Unfortunately canon was not offering a lot of opportunities to fix that. You could make an argument for better handling afterwards, and before, but once shit was going down, there's just never a chance for her, and afterwards... Zuko offered kindness, but he was still an idiot.
Unfortunately canon was not offering a lot of opportunities to fix that. You could make an argument for better handling afterwards, and before, but once shit was going down, there's just never a chance for her, and afterwards... Zuko offered kindness, but he was still an idiot.
- Location
- Te Ika-a-Māui
- Pronouns
- She/Her
I mean, if canon Zuko's actions count as "offering kindness", give me cruelty any day.
- Location
- Te Ika-a-Māui
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Oh well fair enough then, I misread you.
Chapter 16: Forgery
- Location
- United Kingdom
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Chapter 16: Forgery
Toph Beifong knew all about the palace's forges. Of all the places to be without shoes, they were certainly one of them. She had to be careful to avoid any loose fire or sparks from getting on her feet, though by now her feet were proof against all manner of stones and sticks and little burns. But it was still really annoying for a place she spent so much time in. She didn't talk about it with anyone, because it was here that she was working on her Metalbending. She had the broad control, the sort of big, flashy moves that showed she was better at bending than anyone else… even if it hadn't been a kind of bending that nobody else could do yet.
So instead, Toph tried to focus on the little bits of detail work. These little details were the things that she had to work on the most, though they weren't really hard for her either. There were benders who were great at spectacle and terrible at tiny little details and skilled uses of their bending, and there were benders who were perfect at the small stuff but couldn't level a mountain to save their lives.
Toph was good at both. Short of sand, where she'd… sort of used a few short-cuts and gone for an insane amount of details to make up for the fact that she still hadn't really practiced fighting on sand, she could do any particular bending task that was put in front of her and do it better than half the people who devoted their lives to doing just that. Maybe more than half, for some of it.
Well, most of it. There were bits of earthbending crafts where she needed eyes to see, like when you were making pots or doing all that fancy-art stuff. She could do the form, but most of that stuff was painted or whatever. But she could totally find someone to do the painting. That was half the idea. She needed to make the thing and then find people who would help her with part of it, because she had multiple purposes. Part of this she could easily do on her own, because she knew what she was about.
But she would need some steel, and so here she was.
If Toph Beifong, three time Earth Rumble Champion, the greatest Earthbender who had ever lived, oh and bending teacher to Twinkletoes made what she'd no doubt have to lie to Azula's face and say wasn't a friendship bracelet, she was going to make the best friendship bracelet anyone had ever made in their lives!
She had a reason for all of this, but she also just thought it'd be funny. But at the same time, if it was all just fun and games she definitely wouldn't be wanting to ask other people for help. She hated doing that. Relying on other people? It sucked! It especially sucked because there was no way to get around it. She couldn't really cook her own food unless it was just throwing stuff into a pot and then building a rough fire. She knew how to build a fire just fine blind, but none of the kindsa food she liked most could be made like that, and of course she couldn't really wash her own clothes without way too much work.
Raja Zuru was not quite the person in charge of the whole forge, but he was one step below it, and he had a big, heavy walk and a way of getting directly to things. "Toph, your usual room?"
This wasn't when she normally came, and she could sense a frisson of caution running through him, a nervous tension in his muscles she couldn't source. The smiths often felt like that as they watched her work, though, so she put it out of her mind.
"Sort of, but I need to talk to someone who can do painting stuff and art," Toph said, considering it. "I'm making a bracelet, but I think I wanna paint it. But I don't know colors and all of that."
He considered it, "I'm not an artist…"
"But I'm pretty sure your type works with the other craftspeople around here, right?" she asked, grinning in his direction as she felt his nerves. "I need to find one of 'em, because I really want to make something."
"Huh, I can go ask around," Raja said. "So it's not gonna be as scary as your usual thing?"
"Scary? How's it scary?" Toph asked. "I'm just…"
She waved her hand to indicate metalbending. "It isn't like I'm throwing boulders?"
"Scary for our jobs, at least. You can almost make a perfect sword with just a minute of metalbending," he pointed out.
"Yup. I'll get it down eventually." Toph'd been practicing things like that, and by this point she could manipulate metals in such a way as to do all the beating and folding a thousand times and all that nonsense easily, but it took time and she didn't quite have it down yet. That is what she was really working on. She wasn't ever gonna be a smith or whatever, but the ability to do all these small details and control and manipulate metal right down to its components was really cool, and it was easy to imagine tricks with it. For instance, if she wanted to make super strong metal for her metal armor, maybe she could do that? Or discover some new trick with how to control metal or make cool new metals that could be used to beat even more bad guys.
Honestly she also just… didn't have a point? She did it because she wanted to.
"I'm sure you will," Raja said. "You've only been working on it for a month or two."
That exact thing, yeah? The other stuff? She padded forward, feeling the heat. She knew enough to know when to stand away from when someone was working, but she could feel the heat all around her, closing in on all sides.
But if she couldn't stand the heat, she wouldn't be here. "Right! So I'm gonna work on a few things… are my stones still where they're supposed to be?" She'd also been trying to do things with melted stone, though it didn't really work the way she wanted it to. For one, the fires weren't really hot enough to do that to stone for the little ones, and the great big forges, it just became kinda lava and then she couldn't control it anymore. Not yet, at least.
"Yes, and all the other things too. Nobody's going to touch anything belonging to you," Raja said. Truth. "Most of it's cause they're scared of you, and I'm sure you like that, but also, why would we?"
"Right," Toph said, because really it'd be stupid. "That'd make me pretty mad."
"Most of our lives are a lot better because of the Avatar, don't let the fact that you're around a bunch of stupid nobles make you think the Fire Nation's all ungrateful people," he said, breezily. "You might put us out of a job, but without you, we'd still be building warships, you know?"
Technically she was a noble, or something close to it, but she also wasn't stupid and it's not as if she'd chosen to be one or was going to actually accept any stupid trade empire. Chaoszi, and tiger-bird's nest soup, and all the 'Water Banquets' she could bother to attend weren't worth that.
"Gotcha," she said, casually. "I'll keep that in mind and all. Thanks."
It was… interesting, really. Toph's little area was specially made for her, with these slightly annoying lips that were meant for her to be able to stand close and her feet would be protected. It was a warm, strange little gathering of stone and rock of all sorts of types and quite a few different metals. Whether it was bronze or steel, iron or brass… if it was a metal, she could basically always control it and do different things with how the different metals had different qualities, just like an Earthbender could do things with different sorts of stone.
There was something comfortable about the idea of having her own little space, but she'd not really asked for it. She'd basically demanded it, assumed she'd get it, and then it'd happened. But then how could you ever trust anything that you didn't do yourself? She smiled to herself and began picking out different stones, different metals. She'd need most of them to be round, but she wanted some square ones as well, and maybe a triangle? Just make sure that it was funky and weird.
And then she got a bag and slipped them in, to make sure none of them got lost. She'd want them painted and ready before she put them on the string. She reached out with her earthsense once more and then nodded. They were good, not likely to fall apart anytime soon, or wear away just from being handled.
So now she needed to find that expert.
Mori was a tall woman, when she wasn't scrunched down to look at the little trinkets. "These are intricately carved indeed," the woman said, her voice rumbling a little bit. "Nice patterning. I assume you just used your Bending for this?"
"If you can't do detail work then what kinda bender are you?" Toph asked. She'd wanted to do everything, the big flashy things and the tiny things that involved using earthbending to carve tiny little grooves in a very tiny bit of crystal. It was all the same thing, which is why it'd been easy to sand-bend something elaborate and cool without really being able to use sandbending in a fight against real opponents.
"An interesting idea. Plenty of benders would say that bending is for fighting, and plenty of others would think that you'd not be the sort to think that."
"Oh, I like fighting a lot, but hey," Toph said. "Can't be the greatest if you're only good at one part of it. So, I don't really know colors well, but I do have ideas."
"Ideas?"
"Some Earth Nation Colors, some Fire Nation Colors, at least a few random things, gold or… pale green, whatever that is?" If she was going to be a funny jerk and give Azula a totally not friendship bracelet… she had the vague understanding that her own eyes were 'pale green.' Which was one of those phrases that made no sense. Pale? What even was pale. She'd gathered from asking people that it was kind of a weak green, like how you might have a faint impression in earthsense of something made out of paper or so on?
But that honestly raised more questions than it answered. "Oh also, some jagged lines, some swirls, keep it weird, I guess? I don't know much about colors and sights, so sorta guessing here."
"I see."
"I don't," Toph said bluntly. Then, because she'd been thinking about it. "Would you say my eyes were a weak green, or a really strong one?" Pale being weak didn't quite make sense, because that'd make her eyes weak green, whatever that was. And she was pretty sure that 'weak' couldn't describe anything about her.
"I actually don't know how to answer that question," Mori said. "But I wouldn't say that pale is weak. It's more like shallow? Like a layer of dust, I suppose, compared to a mountain? Or, well people use light and dark as well, but I don't even know how I'd describe that bit of it. Maybe… heavy versus light? A green with a lot of green packed in as compared to a green less…"
She trailed off, and said, truthfully, "I gotta admit, I never actually thought about how I'd describe color to someone who can't see it. Now it just sounds odd."
"It does," Toph said. She was grinning, she couldn't help it. "But at least you tried! And I kind of get it. Heavy versus light?" Well she was the sort who didn't have to carry a lot with her, so maybe it worked? And she knew she was small, she didn't weigh a lot and probably never would even though she'd started to get growing this last year or so. "Okay, so can you paint all of that?"
"Yes, I think I can. Is this for someone else, or is it something you'll wear?"
"Don't worry about that," Toph said. She knew it'd be a weird thing to do, talking about Azula. So she didn't. Not this lady's business, anyhow, even if she'd been nice.
Azula looked at the box. Turned it over. Waited for a moment - strained her ears for if Toph was there - and gave the wrappings an experimental tug.
It was not exactly unusual for there to be a box in her cell when she was woken by the guards; it was how she got the books and Toph's various other eye rolling presents, but this one felt different. It was smaller than a book, and had a note pinned to it in Ty Lee's loopy, artistic calligraphy - Toph lately found it amusing to have Ty Lee pass notes to Azula.
Do not open until Toph visits today, please.
The wrapping fell open under her casual and unintentional tugging, and Azula narrowed her eyes.
"If it's already open a little," She murmured, "Then what would be the harm?"
Before she could reach for it, the door opened with a grind. The vibration shivered up her back, and she relaxed. Then, after a second, she put the box down.
"Sparks," Toph said chidingly, "I can tell you've been fiddling with it, you know?"
"Oh, Toph," Azula replied, feigning a lack of concern, "Did you want me to read to you?"
If Toph wanted to play games about the box, Azula could play.
"I have some new books now,you know," Azula continued, "So I could be convinced to read to you, I think. For a price."
"I can tell you want to open it," Toph said, "It's a gift for you, and you love when people get you things."
She did, as long as they weren't the wrong things or… it did feel like Toph was teasing her, but she could plan her revenge later. It'd only been a few days since… since she'd had an experience she did not wish to think about. She'd wound up with some new books, a replacement candle that was in the normal Fire Nation colors, though it was less satisfying than the candle clock that was green and brown, just because of how annoying it must have been for Toph to find someone willing to make that.
"So, can I? Or do you have another one of your pathetic little hoops for me to jump through?" Azula asked.
"Sure, Sparky. I had to guess on the colors. Didn't do that part of it myself."
That part of… what?
She opened the package and saw…
It was a bracelet, but it was a baffling one. There was a range of colors ranging from a soft, gentle green to strong reds, golds, greens that transitioned into dark greens… the bracelet filled with beads and pieces painted in zigs and zags in some cases and flowing colors that blurred together in others. It was a work of art, an undeniable work that must have taken hours and hours for someone to make. She had to assume that Toph had done the patterns carved in it, and someone else had painted them painstakingly, and yet when she touched it, it didn't seem as if it was liable to chip at all or fade away just from rubbing.
For a moment Azula was almost deluded enough to compare it to the finery one might have as a Princess, though of course it was so colorful that it'd stand out. Still, a part of her certainly did want to try it on, at least once…
Yet as soon as she took it in, she remembered that the Earth Kingdom had charm bracelets given to friends. If this was that… well, she'd hardly want it, that'd be too sappy for her. "Is this a… charm bracelet? Or a friendship bracelet or whatever those are?"
"No, of course not, Sparky. Do I seem like the kinda person to give someone a friendship bracelet? It's practical," Toph said.
"This? Practical?" It was an elaborate piece of artwork masquerading as a bracelet.
"Put it on, and I'll show you," Toph said.
Azula hesitated a moment, but figured she wouldn't understand it without giving it a chance, and she was sure it wasn't a trap. She slipped it around her wrist, and tied it up just right so that it'd more or less fit.
"Alright, there we go, Zaps, and then…"
It seemed to tighten around her wrist, or rather it was as if the bracelet was moving to press against her arm. It was a bizarre feeling, and Azula had no idea what it was.
It was like someone had laid a hand around her arm, and was squeezing it comfortingly. It was an odd feeling, unfamiliar and almost overwhelming. It hurt, sort of. But. In a different way.
"See?" Toph asked.
"Even less than you do," Azula grumbled.
"If you see me and I don't do that, then it ain't me. Same with hearing me," Toph said. "Whatever's messing with you can't touch or do anything physical, right? So a bracelet made of metal and stone, I can just make it clear when it's me and when it's not. And tell you if you're not seeing the right thing, cause I'd lie to you to be funny, but you know me."
Toph was quite a blunt person. The closest thing to that kind of lying was the way she hadn't let Azula know that she was on the wrong track. She also enjoyed tricking Azula, but in her experience anyone who immediately gloated if they successfully lied to someone else wasn't actually a good liar.
She looked down at it, as the strange, almost comforting, squeezing continued. "Huh," Azula said.
"So, will that work?" Toph asked.
"I suppose." She looked down at it, and touched it for a moment. It was…odd.
She trusted Toph, at least this far. Implicitly, even; she believed Toph was trying to help, that Toph meant it, Toph wouldn't use this to trick her. She wondered if Toph expected gratitude, expected thanks.
Azula felt too raw to give it. Torn open and exposed, to put this much trust in someone else - someone who she hadn't even looked in the eyes since they were actively enemies, before she'd been vanquished and become a defeated foe! She could not, would not, expose herself further.
"Okay," Azula said instead, "I'll wear it. Was that everything?"
It was spiky, defensive, and she knew that. From the low snort, almost inaudible through the door, Toph knew that too. It should've worried her, maybe, that Toph knew her well enough to leave when she was overwhelmed. It didn't, which was strange in itself.
"Yeah, Princess," Toph said, "I guess it was. Be seeing you."
Azula winced, and she felt the bracelet's pressure as Toph added, "I will be seeing you. Or not seeing you, but you know what I mean. I promise."
Somehow, Azula believed her.
veteranMortal: Love that new arc smell. This "part" is quite long, and we're still working on it, but I'm excited to see people get to it.
The Laurent: It's definitely not a Friendship Bracelet!
Toph Beifong knew all about the palace's forges. Of all the places to be without shoes, they were certainly one of them. She had to be careful to avoid any loose fire or sparks from getting on her feet, though by now her feet were proof against all manner of stones and sticks and little burns. But it was still really annoying for a place she spent so much time in. She didn't talk about it with anyone, because it was here that she was working on her Metalbending. She had the broad control, the sort of big, flashy moves that showed she was better at bending than anyone else… even if it hadn't been a kind of bending that nobody else could do yet.
So instead, Toph tried to focus on the little bits of detail work. These little details were the things that she had to work on the most, though they weren't really hard for her either. There were benders who were great at spectacle and terrible at tiny little details and skilled uses of their bending, and there were benders who were perfect at the small stuff but couldn't level a mountain to save their lives.
Toph was good at both. Short of sand, where she'd… sort of used a few short-cuts and gone for an insane amount of details to make up for the fact that she still hadn't really practiced fighting on sand, she could do any particular bending task that was put in front of her and do it better than half the people who devoted their lives to doing just that. Maybe more than half, for some of it.
Well, most of it. There were bits of earthbending crafts where she needed eyes to see, like when you were making pots or doing all that fancy-art stuff. She could do the form, but most of that stuff was painted or whatever. But she could totally find someone to do the painting. That was half the idea. She needed to make the thing and then find people who would help her with part of it, because she had multiple purposes. Part of this she could easily do on her own, because she knew what she was about.
But she would need some steel, and so here she was.
If Toph Beifong, three time Earth Rumble Champion, the greatest Earthbender who had ever lived, oh and bending teacher to Twinkletoes made what she'd no doubt have to lie to Azula's face and say wasn't a friendship bracelet, she was going to make the best friendship bracelet anyone had ever made in their lives!
She had a reason for all of this, but she also just thought it'd be funny. But at the same time, if it was all just fun and games she definitely wouldn't be wanting to ask other people for help. She hated doing that. Relying on other people? It sucked! It especially sucked because there was no way to get around it. She couldn't really cook her own food unless it was just throwing stuff into a pot and then building a rough fire. She knew how to build a fire just fine blind, but none of the kindsa food she liked most could be made like that, and of course she couldn't really wash her own clothes without way too much work.
Raja Zuru was not quite the person in charge of the whole forge, but he was one step below it, and he had a big, heavy walk and a way of getting directly to things. "Toph, your usual room?"
This wasn't when she normally came, and she could sense a frisson of caution running through him, a nervous tension in his muscles she couldn't source. The smiths often felt like that as they watched her work, though, so she put it out of her mind.
"Sort of, but I need to talk to someone who can do painting stuff and art," Toph said, considering it. "I'm making a bracelet, but I think I wanna paint it. But I don't know colors and all of that."
He considered it, "I'm not an artist…"
"But I'm pretty sure your type works with the other craftspeople around here, right?" she asked, grinning in his direction as she felt his nerves. "I need to find one of 'em, because I really want to make something."
"Huh, I can go ask around," Raja said. "So it's not gonna be as scary as your usual thing?"
"Scary? How's it scary?" Toph asked. "I'm just…"
She waved her hand to indicate metalbending. "It isn't like I'm throwing boulders?"
"Scary for our jobs, at least. You can almost make a perfect sword with just a minute of metalbending," he pointed out.
"Yup. I'll get it down eventually." Toph'd been practicing things like that, and by this point she could manipulate metals in such a way as to do all the beating and folding a thousand times and all that nonsense easily, but it took time and she didn't quite have it down yet. That is what she was really working on. She wasn't ever gonna be a smith or whatever, but the ability to do all these small details and control and manipulate metal right down to its components was really cool, and it was easy to imagine tricks with it. For instance, if she wanted to make super strong metal for her metal armor, maybe she could do that? Or discover some new trick with how to control metal or make cool new metals that could be used to beat even more bad guys.
Honestly she also just… didn't have a point? She did it because she wanted to.
"I'm sure you will," Raja said. "You've only been working on it for a month or two."
That exact thing, yeah? The other stuff? She padded forward, feeling the heat. She knew enough to know when to stand away from when someone was working, but she could feel the heat all around her, closing in on all sides.
But if she couldn't stand the heat, she wouldn't be here. "Right! So I'm gonna work on a few things… are my stones still where they're supposed to be?" She'd also been trying to do things with melted stone, though it didn't really work the way she wanted it to. For one, the fires weren't really hot enough to do that to stone for the little ones, and the great big forges, it just became kinda lava and then she couldn't control it anymore. Not yet, at least.
"Yes, and all the other things too. Nobody's going to touch anything belonging to you," Raja said. Truth. "Most of it's cause they're scared of you, and I'm sure you like that, but also, why would we?"
"Right," Toph said, because really it'd be stupid. "That'd make me pretty mad."
"Most of our lives are a lot better because of the Avatar, don't let the fact that you're around a bunch of stupid nobles make you think the Fire Nation's all ungrateful people," he said, breezily. "You might put us out of a job, but without you, we'd still be building warships, you know?"
Technically she was a noble, or something close to it, but she also wasn't stupid and it's not as if she'd chosen to be one or was going to actually accept any stupid trade empire. Chaoszi, and tiger-bird's nest soup, and all the 'Water Banquets' she could bother to attend weren't worth that.
"Gotcha," she said, casually. "I'll keep that in mind and all. Thanks."
It was… interesting, really. Toph's little area was specially made for her, with these slightly annoying lips that were meant for her to be able to stand close and her feet would be protected. It was a warm, strange little gathering of stone and rock of all sorts of types and quite a few different metals. Whether it was bronze or steel, iron or brass… if it was a metal, she could basically always control it and do different things with how the different metals had different qualities, just like an Earthbender could do things with different sorts of stone.
There was something comfortable about the idea of having her own little space, but she'd not really asked for it. She'd basically demanded it, assumed she'd get it, and then it'd happened. But then how could you ever trust anything that you didn't do yourself? She smiled to herself and began picking out different stones, different metals. She'd need most of them to be round, but she wanted some square ones as well, and maybe a triangle? Just make sure that it was funky and weird.
And then she got a bag and slipped them in, to make sure none of them got lost. She'd want them painted and ready before she put them on the string. She reached out with her earthsense once more and then nodded. They were good, not likely to fall apart anytime soon, or wear away just from being handled.
So now she needed to find that expert.
Mori was a tall woman, when she wasn't scrunched down to look at the little trinkets. "These are intricately carved indeed," the woman said, her voice rumbling a little bit. "Nice patterning. I assume you just used your Bending for this?"
"If you can't do detail work then what kinda bender are you?" Toph asked. She'd wanted to do everything, the big flashy things and the tiny things that involved using earthbending to carve tiny little grooves in a very tiny bit of crystal. It was all the same thing, which is why it'd been easy to sand-bend something elaborate and cool without really being able to use sandbending in a fight against real opponents.
"An interesting idea. Plenty of benders would say that bending is for fighting, and plenty of others would think that you'd not be the sort to think that."
"Oh, I like fighting a lot, but hey," Toph said. "Can't be the greatest if you're only good at one part of it. So, I don't really know colors well, but I do have ideas."
"Ideas?"
"Some Earth Nation Colors, some Fire Nation Colors, at least a few random things, gold or… pale green, whatever that is?" If she was going to be a funny jerk and give Azula a totally not friendship bracelet… she had the vague understanding that her own eyes were 'pale green.' Which was one of those phrases that made no sense. Pale? What even was pale. She'd gathered from asking people that it was kind of a weak green, like how you might have a faint impression in earthsense of something made out of paper or so on?
But that honestly raised more questions than it answered. "Oh also, some jagged lines, some swirls, keep it weird, I guess? I don't know much about colors and sights, so sorta guessing here."
"I see."
"I don't," Toph said bluntly. Then, because she'd been thinking about it. "Would you say my eyes were a weak green, or a really strong one?" Pale being weak didn't quite make sense, because that'd make her eyes weak green, whatever that was. And she was pretty sure that 'weak' couldn't describe anything about her.
"I actually don't know how to answer that question," Mori said. "But I wouldn't say that pale is weak. It's more like shallow? Like a layer of dust, I suppose, compared to a mountain? Or, well people use light and dark as well, but I don't even know how I'd describe that bit of it. Maybe… heavy versus light? A green with a lot of green packed in as compared to a green less…"
She trailed off, and said, truthfully, "I gotta admit, I never actually thought about how I'd describe color to someone who can't see it. Now it just sounds odd."
"It does," Toph said. She was grinning, she couldn't help it. "But at least you tried! And I kind of get it. Heavy versus light?" Well she was the sort who didn't have to carry a lot with her, so maybe it worked? And she knew she was small, she didn't weigh a lot and probably never would even though she'd started to get growing this last year or so. "Okay, so can you paint all of that?"
"Yes, I think I can. Is this for someone else, or is it something you'll wear?"
"Don't worry about that," Toph said. She knew it'd be a weird thing to do, talking about Azula. So she didn't. Not this lady's business, anyhow, even if she'd been nice.
Azula looked at the box. Turned it over. Waited for a moment - strained her ears for if Toph was there - and gave the wrappings an experimental tug.
It was not exactly unusual for there to be a box in her cell when she was woken by the guards; it was how she got the books and Toph's various other eye rolling presents, but this one felt different. It was smaller than a book, and had a note pinned to it in Ty Lee's loopy, artistic calligraphy - Toph lately found it amusing to have Ty Lee pass notes to Azula.
Do not open until Toph visits today, please.
The wrapping fell open under her casual and unintentional tugging, and Azula narrowed her eyes.
"If it's already open a little," She murmured, "Then what would be the harm?"
Before she could reach for it, the door opened with a grind. The vibration shivered up her back, and she relaxed. Then, after a second, she put the box down.
"Sparks," Toph said chidingly, "I can tell you've been fiddling with it, you know?"
"Oh, Toph," Azula replied, feigning a lack of concern, "Did you want me to read to you?"
If Toph wanted to play games about the box, Azula could play.
"I have some new books now,you know," Azula continued, "So I could be convinced to read to you, I think. For a price."
"I can tell you want to open it," Toph said, "It's a gift for you, and you love when people get you things."
She did, as long as they weren't the wrong things or… it did feel like Toph was teasing her, but she could plan her revenge later. It'd only been a few days since… since she'd had an experience she did not wish to think about. She'd wound up with some new books, a replacement candle that was in the normal Fire Nation colors, though it was less satisfying than the candle clock that was green and brown, just because of how annoying it must have been for Toph to find someone willing to make that.
"So, can I? Or do you have another one of your pathetic little hoops for me to jump through?" Azula asked.
"Sure, Sparky. I had to guess on the colors. Didn't do that part of it myself."
That part of… what?
She opened the package and saw…
It was a bracelet, but it was a baffling one. There was a range of colors ranging from a soft, gentle green to strong reds, golds, greens that transitioned into dark greens… the bracelet filled with beads and pieces painted in zigs and zags in some cases and flowing colors that blurred together in others. It was a work of art, an undeniable work that must have taken hours and hours for someone to make. She had to assume that Toph had done the patterns carved in it, and someone else had painted them painstakingly, and yet when she touched it, it didn't seem as if it was liable to chip at all or fade away just from rubbing.
For a moment Azula was almost deluded enough to compare it to the finery one might have as a Princess, though of course it was so colorful that it'd stand out. Still, a part of her certainly did want to try it on, at least once…
Yet as soon as she took it in, she remembered that the Earth Kingdom had charm bracelets given to friends. If this was that… well, she'd hardly want it, that'd be too sappy for her. "Is this a… charm bracelet? Or a friendship bracelet or whatever those are?"
"No, of course not, Sparky. Do I seem like the kinda person to give someone a friendship bracelet? It's practical," Toph said.
"This? Practical?" It was an elaborate piece of artwork masquerading as a bracelet.
"Put it on, and I'll show you," Toph said.
Azula hesitated a moment, but figured she wouldn't understand it without giving it a chance, and she was sure it wasn't a trap. She slipped it around her wrist, and tied it up just right so that it'd more or less fit.
"Alright, there we go, Zaps, and then…"
It seemed to tighten around her wrist, or rather it was as if the bracelet was moving to press against her arm. It was a bizarre feeling, and Azula had no idea what it was.
It was like someone had laid a hand around her arm, and was squeezing it comfortingly. It was an odd feeling, unfamiliar and almost overwhelming. It hurt, sort of. But. In a different way.
"See?" Toph asked.
"Even less than you do," Azula grumbled.
"If you see me and I don't do that, then it ain't me. Same with hearing me," Toph said. "Whatever's messing with you can't touch or do anything physical, right? So a bracelet made of metal and stone, I can just make it clear when it's me and when it's not. And tell you if you're not seeing the right thing, cause I'd lie to you to be funny, but you know me."
Toph was quite a blunt person. The closest thing to that kind of lying was the way she hadn't let Azula know that she was on the wrong track. She also enjoyed tricking Azula, but in her experience anyone who immediately gloated if they successfully lied to someone else wasn't actually a good liar.
She looked down at it, as the strange, almost comforting, squeezing continued. "Huh," Azula said.
"So, will that work?" Toph asked.
"I suppose." She looked down at it, and touched it for a moment. It was…odd.
She trusted Toph, at least this far. Implicitly, even; she believed Toph was trying to help, that Toph meant it, Toph wouldn't use this to trick her. She wondered if Toph expected gratitude, expected thanks.
Azula felt too raw to give it. Torn open and exposed, to put this much trust in someone else - someone who she hadn't even looked in the eyes since they were actively enemies, before she'd been vanquished and become a defeated foe! She could not, would not, expose herself further.
"Okay," Azula said instead, "I'll wear it. Was that everything?"
It was spiky, defensive, and she knew that. From the low snort, almost inaudible through the door, Toph knew that too. It should've worried her, maybe, that Toph knew her well enough to leave when she was overwhelmed. It didn't, which was strange in itself.
"Yeah, Princess," Toph said, "I guess it was. Be seeing you."
Azula winced, and she felt the bracelet's pressure as Toph added, "I will be seeing you. Or not seeing you, but you know what I mean. I promise."
Somehow, Azula believed her.
veteranMortal: Love that new arc smell. This "part" is quite long, and we're still working on it, but I'm excited to see people get to it.
The Laurent: It's definitely not a Friendship Bracelet!
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Definitely not friendship bracelets ho!
PrognosticHannya
Far Too Enthusiastic About Etymology
- Pronouns
- She/Her
The totally practical, not-at-all sentimental friendship bracelet.
Lenimentus
Ignorant but learning.
That was touching.
Years ago I actually spent quite a bit of time trying to find fics with a lot of Azula and Toph interacting. I was not particularly successful. Now, a decade later, one just falls into my lap. Kinda funny.
Years ago I actually spent quite a bit of time trying to find fics with a lot of Azula and Toph interacting. I was not particularly successful. Now, a decade later, one just falls into my lap. Kinda funny.
Chapter 17: Life Changing Field Trips
- Pronouns
- They/Them
Chapter 17: Life Changing Field Trips
After the bracelet, everything changed. Also nothing changed. It was just a stupid gift, even if it was perhaps… needed. It was one thing to know you saw things sometimes, but this was the first time she'd felt as if she couldn't function on her own. If she was hallucinating entire meetings without any obvious signs that she was seeing things… this was an actual problem. She wanted to ignore it, because surely she would be fine.
But she wasn't in this one particular way. No doubt she was simply going stir-crazy and that as soon as she freed herself and reconquered the Fire Nation all of the problems would go away. It was simply a mark of stress, nothing more.
But if that was the case, it was not likely to end anytime soon. Her escape was seemingly no nearer, and perhaps further, than it had been a few months prior. Toph felt for her, as distasteful as this fact was to contemplate. Toph clearly pitied her, and Azula could not bear to say the things she'd said to "Toph" to drive away the real girl. It hurt too much, like there were barbs dug into her skin. Once she'd gone hiking as part of a test by her father, hunting down faux-rebels and defeating them, and she'd gotten a thorn stuck in her hand that wouldn't come out easily.
Her father had forbid any servants from helping her if she got injured, and she'd had to dig at it.
It felt just a little bit like that. She knew she could tear it out and survive, she'd eventually torn the thorn out when it got in the way of fighting the dozen expert Firebenders she'd had to lay low. It had been a…difficult test, but not beyond her, and less than a year later she'd had to do it for real. She'd been given a task worthy of her skills, and had come close to success.
If she had succeeded, of course, she never would have cared to know Toph, who would probably be dead.
She could not pretend that this wouldn't be slightly unfortunate. Nor would she pretend that she still wouldn't take that world over this, for all that she knew that it would be unfortunate in that one way.
But Toph wasn't going to help her escape, or at least she wasn't going to do that when she could instead keep on talking to her in here.
Azula wasn't going to risk thinking they were friends, but they were somewhat friendly acquaintances. They had assisted each other, with Azula giving her advice and Toph helping with the bracelet that Azula now wore all the time. She was reasonably sure that friendship as envisioned by the kinds of saps that Toph had sided with wasn't about what you could do for each other, but some ineffable bond that transcended and even defied any practical usefulness. By which standard she had never had friends and probably never would.
(She had been expanding her vocabulary somewhat in the time since she'd gotten access to books again.)
So she was left unwilling to take the dangerous step of making an assumption that might be wrong, let alone saying it.
But that left them still talking pretty regularly. It had gotten up to four or sometimes five times a week, always at least an hour, and every week there seemed to be one day where it neared two hours, Toph sometimes even leaving to go eat and then coming back. When one started to add it together, eight or nine or ten hours a week was a lot of time to devote to anything at all. Toph must really be bored, and Azula sometimes felt as if she had to stretch to have something new to talk about, or an old thing that Toph could complain that she'd already said.
The only choice in such a circumstance was for Toph to say more, and that required her to stop coddling Azula and actually talking about her friends. It was that, as much as anything, that made it clear that friendship was not what they were going to reach.
But it told her far more about Toph than the girl probably thought it did.
"Well, after his Life-Changing Field Trip, Twinkletoes was different, and not just because of the fancy-dancy bending he was doing," Toph said. "It was like he'd found a different way to be. Oh, he was never good at being angry, but… I dunno. Didn't hate it, though."
There was a lot to figure out about that statement, and so Azula decided to start from the start, "Life-Changing Field Trip?"
"Oh! Zuko was good luck or something, because every time he went along on some critical mission it turned out to be life-changing. He loses his fire so he and Aang go and when he gets back he's twice the bender he was before," Toph said, vaguely. "Katara hunts down the person who took her mother away, and she comes back finally trusting him. Sokka went to go save Suki, actually, at this big prison--"
"I am aware of that," Azula gritted out, the memory stinging. "I was there."
"Yeah, yeah," Toph said breezily. "But me and Zuko, we get along fine, I think we're… probably friends?" Toph sounded a little uncertain, and if Azula wasn't seething she would take the chance to use that bit of vulnerability to press even further. But she had to be calculated with that. "But there never was a Life-Changing Field Trip, and that's half of what I'm waiting around here for. Guess it makes sense, though," Toph said, her mood improving all at once, voice lighter, "I'm already basically the best, so it's hard to figure out how to do something different."
But of course, she understood that was the problem. Toph was at the top because she was tough, but it could get boring without a challenge. Azula had enjoyed chasing the Avatar at first, despite the annoyance of that child not knowing when to give up and die. "You are, but why are you waiting around for someone else to do something for you?" Azula asked. If she could get out on her own, she'd not be sticking around or waiting for Toph to do it to her.
"I don't have anything better to do right now," Toph said, and Azula could all but imagine the shrug, for all that she hadn't actually come face to face with Toph in a long, long time. A part of her wondered what Toph even looked like, because she'd hardly been paying attention to some mouthy blind girl before. Of course, Azula didn't exactly get to look at mirrors often… she did poorly with them, saw things in them that she knew weren't true but which hurt anyway.
"So this Life-Changing Field Trip," Azula sneered, "It left Zuzu a better bender? I suppose he must have improved, it's not hard to improve from nothing."
"I mean, he was alright even before then, or at least that's what everyone said," Toph replied. "But…"
"But mediocre is not worth either of our times," Azula said, and that was the truth. Even if she had overstated Zuko's incompetence as a bender (and she had not), alright was the kind of devastating assessment that would have had her practicing until her hands melted rather than accept it.
She knew Toph was a lot like her. She knew Toph felt it, the drive to be the best and unwillingness to accept anything else. She'd missed where it'd come from, or had she? Perhaps it did have everything to do with Toph's parents, but not in the way she'd thought. For all she knew, Toph had thrived from the idea of doing something her parents wouldn't like, in proving them all wrong and striking out at the world. It could make sense, because she did like to prove people wrong.
If Azula dared her that she couldn't raise the very ocean floors themselves, no doubt soon there would be some new island in the sea if it was even remotely possible.
That was Toph.
The thought was annoyed. The thought was fond.
"Eh, sure," Toph said, not agreeing and not disagreeing. "I don't think you're exactly gonna give him a chance, and that's fine. But he's my friend, sorta."
She felt just a little bit of jealousy. Of all of the things that rightfully belonged to her that he had instead and was no doubt misusing (sorta, really?) this was one of the more personal compared to her place in the family, the throne, and her ex-friends who had… well.
Azula did not quite snarl, but she didn't like the thought of it, she lit a fire just to see it, flicking her fingers in a well-practiced gesture. "Why, where else would you learn all you ever wanted to know, and more, about turtleducks or tea or whatever he's obsessed with nowadays."
"Governance," Toph said, and she could almost picture Toph's eyes rolling. "Though honestly, don't wanna talk to you about it but some of the ideas… nah. Don't gotta convince you. Kinda don't wanna."
She was talking even coarser now, but it felt focused, as if she was having to grit her teeth to do it, and Azula had an idea for some amusement.
"Oh, you're unwilling to be all nice and sweet and try to convince me that I should pal around with Zuzu? Scared I'll throw a fit, the crazy girl who sees things?" Azula asked, and she let the nastiness flow because she had a reason and wanted to see what happened. "Or… is it that you'd forget to actually even try to convince me because I'm more amusing than Zuzu."
"That's pretty unlikely," Toph said, and for a moment her accent was between it, between the way she always talked and the fake posh accent she slipped on like a comfortable robe.
Azula couldn't help it.
She laughed.
It wasn't even at Toph, and for some reason she could not stop laughing, "That voice… that voice… is that the real balance?"
"No," she said in her 'normal' voice and tone and word choice, "This is, cause it's the one I decide to have. The 'me' I decide to be, or however it goes."
Azula opened her mouth for a clever comeback, and she did not come up with one that didn't sound pathetic or like she was whining. She stewed and tried to change the topic to talking about one of the books she'd been reading because she had no response that wouldn't start the kind of fight she believed would be inadvisable when she still had to think of how to convince Toph to let her escape. "Right, right, you're Toph Beifong, the--"
"Toph. Toph the Greatest Earthbender alive, winner of the Earth Rumble, the Avatar's teacher, the inventor of Metalbending, yada yada yada," she said in the most irreverent voice imaginable.
Just Toph, huh?
Well, there were no good answers to that, so she changed the subject. Again.
Katara.
Katara stood for Sugar Queen, stood for Sweetness, stood for the prissy enemy and the practical partner in crime for Toph's… tomfoolery, nonsense, and shenanigans.
Azula asked how to kill her. Well, how to beat her. She asked a few other details. But she stayed away from that conversation, the humiliation of losing stinging enough that she'd been careful to think about it. She knew she could win, she'd just have to be better.
There was nothing more to think about the annoying peasant girl, except perhaps to consider that frustrating Benders could come from all walks of life.
The male Water Tribe Peasant, with that Waterbender for a sister, was called Sokka, and Azula could not help but think it was just a little bit pathetic that he was just hanging around… for all that she knew that a strong enough nonbender could overcome most benders, even if nobody was as good as her. Mai and Ty Lee had both been very strong. She didn't like thinking about her cooperation with them, but she did know that they were far from weak just because they could not bend.
Still, the peasant had seemed pathetic and loud and annoying every time she'd encountered him. According to Toph… he was pathetic, loud, annoying and also smart and funny. Even the first three were said almost with affection, and it was pretty clear to Azula that Toph had some pitiful crush on him, or something like that. There was just a little bit of that tone of voice that one could notice. But if Toph didn't know, she wasn't going to tell her. If Toph did know, Azula wasn't going to bother bringing it up.
However, this Sokka was a good source of entertainment, as Toph seemed to show whatever affection she had for him by delighting in his mishaps and making fun of him both talking to Azula and in the stories she told of the past, which often included her insults or pranks on "Snoozles."
It was illuminating in more ways than one, such as when she learned that he'd been the one to apparently use one of the airships they took over to take out the rest, and that he'd been behind the Day of Black Sun plans… though of course they had thwarted that pathetic little attempt. But it showed at least a little bit of cunning, and so she supposed that Sokka could not be entirely an idiot. Or perhaps he could be called entirely an idiot. She was not going to rule that out entirely, except that he'd already been high on the list of people who she would destroy when she was Fire Lord again and perhaps she should rate him just a little bit higher.
Or perhaps not, if her story about how he'd once been trapped in a crevice because of his love of meat was really true.
"So, all of that, and… where exactly are they?" Azula asked, and she wished her voice sounded harsher. But a part of her was actually surprised that they'd gone their separate ways. It was not as if she would have, had they left her no choice with their defiance, left Mai and Ty Lee behind. They'd deserved it for failing… failing.
She did not like to think of that. But if they'd all stayed friends, she definitely wouldn't have just gone to do something else. She'd have taken them along with her. Did this Aang, who apparently believed in nonsense like traveling light, manage to just leave her behind? She knew it wasn't like that, objectively. Toph was independent and needed nobody even if she wanted to be around her friends, and people like Azula, and presumably also people who could be of use to her.
"Oh, they have their own lives and all that. They visit sometimes," Toph said, and then added, "They'll probably all come together for my birthday," Toph said. "I… kinda don't exactly go around to theirs. Though honestly only Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation have birthdays, apparently? And only the richy-rich sorts?"
It made sense, and her own birthday had always more been an excuse for a banquet than anything more elaborate than that, let alone anything that had really mattered.
"So they visit then, so I'll prolly see all of 'em together then, and that's in a few months?" Toph seemed to actually be considering how long it was. Azula smirked, touching the bracelet as she waited. "Well, almost four months? And yours is, right…"
"Before that," Azula said snidely.
"Before that, huh?" Toph asked. "I can just figure it out. You're not that mysterious. Ty Lee's visited you, hasn't she?"
Azula did not wince, but she did tense for a moment as she wondered once again what Ty Lee had really said. It was clear she hadn't been quite as much of a sap as 'Toph' indicated, against Azula's suspicions. But what had she said in detail? What had she given away to Toph, and how might Toph use it? It was not as if Toph wouldn't use it, because that was what people did, they found ways to make use of what they knew. Toph wasn't stupid, even if she was a stubborn child.
"You know she has," Azula said, "She came and asked all sorts of asinine questions, drew her own conclusions, and skipped away again. You know Ty Lee - she's a master of avoiding topics she doesn't like, so we didn't talk about her at all. She never liked telling me about herself!"
"That's prob'ly because you'd pick at her, Zaps," Toph said, but her words were light. "You're given to picking at scabs."
"Maybe," Azula conceded, "Ty Lee never did anything to make me angry if she could help it. She knew how to keep things stable."
Toph hummed. "Not pickin' fights has always been her priority. I don't do that. Not my style, Spikes."
That was a new one, and Azula wasn't sure how she felt about it - Toph had explained it was about her armour, but she wasn't entirely sure she believed her.
"No," Azula replied, "You are certainly less diplomatic than Ty Lee is. It makes a change."
"Are we still your only visitors?" Toph asked, "I assumed Zuzu or Mai would've stopped by, but-"
"No," Azula said, her voice sharp, "Mai and Zuzu would rather forget about me, down in the dungeons. You should've realised that by now!"
There was an edge of hysteria in her voice, and she tried to tamp it down.
"They're busy," Toph said, "I suppose. Ty Lee'll visit again before too long though, so I'll be able to ask her when your birthday is."
The attempt to deflect is obvious, but Azula goes along with it all the same. "Has she not returned to wherever she ran off to? Kyoshi Island or the Circus, or some other frivolous thing?"
"Oh, no." Toph said, "Ty Lee's still here. She's taken a few months off from the Kyoshi Warriors, just to try… doing her own thing?"
She sounded dubious about that last, and Azula scoffed.
"Did she tell you that?" Azula said, "She probably just argued with that girl Suki, needs the time to cool off."
"Maybe," Toph said, "I got the impression she was just… frustrated with Kyoshi Island. Maybe she missed the Fire Nation, where it's a little more direct? I know I'd find the Earth Kingdom boring now, all the rituals and political maneuver."
"We have those here," Azula said, in a fit of generosity towards the Earth Kingdom. "Honestly, they aren't so different. There is a structure, a way of doing things, and it's stupid, but everyone has to follow it, unless they're strong enough not to."
"Seems stupid," Toph said bluntly, "Of course I'm strong enough - so are you, Sparky - but what does our strength have to do with having to wait six weeks to see the Earth King, or having to sit on the Fire Lord's left side to indicate you want to talk to him about something non-military? It's stupid!"
"It means," Azula said, a little thoughtfully, "That if you're not rich enough to waste the time, or noble enough to know the rules, you can't. That's why. It's how it's always worked. During the war, it got easier to talk to the Fire Lord if you were a general, but it got harder if you weren't."
"That's stupid," Toph said, "You won't get anything done like that. You need to be able to talk to people to know what's wrong."
"Yeah," Azula said, "Like in Ba Sing Se. Everything got easier once the Dai Li took over, and we ran the city excellently until I had to leave and it all got gummed up with the colonial governments."
It was strange, Azula thought, to be agreeing with Toph when she was criticising the Fire Nation like this, but she was right - all sorts of people just didn't understand how to do anything. Whenever Azula had delegated beyond Ty Lee and Mai, it had always been downright farcical. The ridiculous drill was a prime example of it, but by no means the only one.
"Feh, the Dai Li," Toph said scornfully. "Buncha blowhards who think they're better than they are. I'm a better Earthbender than they are, an' I bet so're most of the people I fought in the Rumble, even!"
"I seem to recall they gave you some trouble during your invasion," Azula replied, "You beat them, but that hardly makes them incompetent, does it?"
Toph would struggle with that, Azula thought smugly. She always loved compliments to her own bending, even when they were being used to argue against her.
This was a safer topic of conversation, and the two of them settled into it with practiced ease.
VM AN: Adjusting to the new status quo. Its a lot of fun to just have the two of them spark off each other for a while. Not groundbreaking, but…
TL AN: To break the ground, you must first prepare it.
After the bracelet, everything changed. Also nothing changed. It was just a stupid gift, even if it was perhaps… needed. It was one thing to know you saw things sometimes, but this was the first time she'd felt as if she couldn't function on her own. If she was hallucinating entire meetings without any obvious signs that she was seeing things… this was an actual problem. She wanted to ignore it, because surely she would be fine.
But she wasn't in this one particular way. No doubt she was simply going stir-crazy and that as soon as she freed herself and reconquered the Fire Nation all of the problems would go away. It was simply a mark of stress, nothing more.
But if that was the case, it was not likely to end anytime soon. Her escape was seemingly no nearer, and perhaps further, than it had been a few months prior. Toph felt for her, as distasteful as this fact was to contemplate. Toph clearly pitied her, and Azula could not bear to say the things she'd said to "Toph" to drive away the real girl. It hurt too much, like there were barbs dug into her skin. Once she'd gone hiking as part of a test by her father, hunting down faux-rebels and defeating them, and she'd gotten a thorn stuck in her hand that wouldn't come out easily.
Her father had forbid any servants from helping her if she got injured, and she'd had to dig at it.
It felt just a little bit like that. She knew she could tear it out and survive, she'd eventually torn the thorn out when it got in the way of fighting the dozen expert Firebenders she'd had to lay low. It had been a…difficult test, but not beyond her, and less than a year later she'd had to do it for real. She'd been given a task worthy of her skills, and had come close to success.
If she had succeeded, of course, she never would have cared to know Toph, who would probably be dead.
She could not pretend that this wouldn't be slightly unfortunate. Nor would she pretend that she still wouldn't take that world over this, for all that she knew that it would be unfortunate in that one way.
But Toph wasn't going to help her escape, or at least she wasn't going to do that when she could instead keep on talking to her in here.
Azula wasn't going to risk thinking they were friends, but they were somewhat friendly acquaintances. They had assisted each other, with Azula giving her advice and Toph helping with the bracelet that Azula now wore all the time. She was reasonably sure that friendship as envisioned by the kinds of saps that Toph had sided with wasn't about what you could do for each other, but some ineffable bond that transcended and even defied any practical usefulness. By which standard she had never had friends and probably never would.
(She had been expanding her vocabulary somewhat in the time since she'd gotten access to books again.)
So she was left unwilling to take the dangerous step of making an assumption that might be wrong, let alone saying it.
But that left them still talking pretty regularly. It had gotten up to four or sometimes five times a week, always at least an hour, and every week there seemed to be one day where it neared two hours, Toph sometimes even leaving to go eat and then coming back. When one started to add it together, eight or nine or ten hours a week was a lot of time to devote to anything at all. Toph must really be bored, and Azula sometimes felt as if she had to stretch to have something new to talk about, or an old thing that Toph could complain that she'd already said.
The only choice in such a circumstance was for Toph to say more, and that required her to stop coddling Azula and actually talking about her friends. It was that, as much as anything, that made it clear that friendship was not what they were going to reach.
But it told her far more about Toph than the girl probably thought it did.
"Well, after his Life-Changing Field Trip, Twinkletoes was different, and not just because of the fancy-dancy bending he was doing," Toph said. "It was like he'd found a different way to be. Oh, he was never good at being angry, but… I dunno. Didn't hate it, though."
There was a lot to figure out about that statement, and so Azula decided to start from the start, "Life-Changing Field Trip?"
"Oh! Zuko was good luck or something, because every time he went along on some critical mission it turned out to be life-changing. He loses his fire so he and Aang go and when he gets back he's twice the bender he was before," Toph said, vaguely. "Katara hunts down the person who took her mother away, and she comes back finally trusting him. Sokka went to go save Suki, actually, at this big prison--"
"I am aware of that," Azula gritted out, the memory stinging. "I was there."
"Yeah, yeah," Toph said breezily. "But me and Zuko, we get along fine, I think we're… probably friends?" Toph sounded a little uncertain, and if Azula wasn't seething she would take the chance to use that bit of vulnerability to press even further. But she had to be calculated with that. "But there never was a Life-Changing Field Trip, and that's half of what I'm waiting around here for. Guess it makes sense, though," Toph said, her mood improving all at once, voice lighter, "I'm already basically the best, so it's hard to figure out how to do something different."
But of course, she understood that was the problem. Toph was at the top because she was tough, but it could get boring without a challenge. Azula had enjoyed chasing the Avatar at first, despite the annoyance of that child not knowing when to give up and die. "You are, but why are you waiting around for someone else to do something for you?" Azula asked. If she could get out on her own, she'd not be sticking around or waiting for Toph to do it to her.
"I don't have anything better to do right now," Toph said, and Azula could all but imagine the shrug, for all that she hadn't actually come face to face with Toph in a long, long time. A part of her wondered what Toph even looked like, because she'd hardly been paying attention to some mouthy blind girl before. Of course, Azula didn't exactly get to look at mirrors often… she did poorly with them, saw things in them that she knew weren't true but which hurt anyway.
"So this Life-Changing Field Trip," Azula sneered, "It left Zuzu a better bender? I suppose he must have improved, it's not hard to improve from nothing."
"I mean, he was alright even before then, or at least that's what everyone said," Toph replied. "But…"
"But mediocre is not worth either of our times," Azula said, and that was the truth. Even if she had overstated Zuko's incompetence as a bender (and she had not), alright was the kind of devastating assessment that would have had her practicing until her hands melted rather than accept it.
She knew Toph was a lot like her. She knew Toph felt it, the drive to be the best and unwillingness to accept anything else. She'd missed where it'd come from, or had she? Perhaps it did have everything to do with Toph's parents, but not in the way she'd thought. For all she knew, Toph had thrived from the idea of doing something her parents wouldn't like, in proving them all wrong and striking out at the world. It could make sense, because she did like to prove people wrong.
If Azula dared her that she couldn't raise the very ocean floors themselves, no doubt soon there would be some new island in the sea if it was even remotely possible.
That was Toph.
The thought was annoyed. The thought was fond.
"Eh, sure," Toph said, not agreeing and not disagreeing. "I don't think you're exactly gonna give him a chance, and that's fine. But he's my friend, sorta."
She felt just a little bit of jealousy. Of all of the things that rightfully belonged to her that he had instead and was no doubt misusing (sorta, really?) this was one of the more personal compared to her place in the family, the throne, and her ex-friends who had… well.
Azula did not quite snarl, but she didn't like the thought of it, she lit a fire just to see it, flicking her fingers in a well-practiced gesture. "Why, where else would you learn all you ever wanted to know, and more, about turtleducks or tea or whatever he's obsessed with nowadays."
"Governance," Toph said, and she could almost picture Toph's eyes rolling. "Though honestly, don't wanna talk to you about it but some of the ideas… nah. Don't gotta convince you. Kinda don't wanna."
She was talking even coarser now, but it felt focused, as if she was having to grit her teeth to do it, and Azula had an idea for some amusement.
"Oh, you're unwilling to be all nice and sweet and try to convince me that I should pal around with Zuzu? Scared I'll throw a fit, the crazy girl who sees things?" Azula asked, and she let the nastiness flow because she had a reason and wanted to see what happened. "Or… is it that you'd forget to actually even try to convince me because I'm more amusing than Zuzu."
"That's pretty unlikely," Toph said, and for a moment her accent was between it, between the way she always talked and the fake posh accent she slipped on like a comfortable robe.
Azula couldn't help it.
She laughed.
It wasn't even at Toph, and for some reason she could not stop laughing, "That voice… that voice… is that the real balance?"
"No," she said in her 'normal' voice and tone and word choice, "This is, cause it's the one I decide to have. The 'me' I decide to be, or however it goes."
Azula opened her mouth for a clever comeback, and she did not come up with one that didn't sound pathetic or like she was whining. She stewed and tried to change the topic to talking about one of the books she'd been reading because she had no response that wouldn't start the kind of fight she believed would be inadvisable when she still had to think of how to convince Toph to let her escape. "Right, right, you're Toph Beifong, the--"
"Toph. Toph the Greatest Earthbender alive, winner of the Earth Rumble, the Avatar's teacher, the inventor of Metalbending, yada yada yada," she said in the most irreverent voice imaginable.
Just Toph, huh?
Well, there were no good answers to that, so she changed the subject. Again.
Katara.
Katara stood for Sugar Queen, stood for Sweetness, stood for the prissy enemy and the practical partner in crime for Toph's… tomfoolery, nonsense, and shenanigans.
Azula asked how to kill her. Well, how to beat her. She asked a few other details. But she stayed away from that conversation, the humiliation of losing stinging enough that she'd been careful to think about it. She knew she could win, she'd just have to be better.
There was nothing more to think about the annoying peasant girl, except perhaps to consider that frustrating Benders could come from all walks of life.
The male Water Tribe Peasant, with that Waterbender for a sister, was called Sokka, and Azula could not help but think it was just a little bit pathetic that he was just hanging around… for all that she knew that a strong enough nonbender could overcome most benders, even if nobody was as good as her. Mai and Ty Lee had both been very strong. She didn't like thinking about her cooperation with them, but she did know that they were far from weak just because they could not bend.
Still, the peasant had seemed pathetic and loud and annoying every time she'd encountered him. According to Toph… he was pathetic, loud, annoying and also smart and funny. Even the first three were said almost with affection, and it was pretty clear to Azula that Toph had some pitiful crush on him, or something like that. There was just a little bit of that tone of voice that one could notice. But if Toph didn't know, she wasn't going to tell her. If Toph did know, Azula wasn't going to bother bringing it up.
However, this Sokka was a good source of entertainment, as Toph seemed to show whatever affection she had for him by delighting in his mishaps and making fun of him both talking to Azula and in the stories she told of the past, which often included her insults or pranks on "Snoozles."
It was illuminating in more ways than one, such as when she learned that he'd been the one to apparently use one of the airships they took over to take out the rest, and that he'd been behind the Day of Black Sun plans… though of course they had thwarted that pathetic little attempt. But it showed at least a little bit of cunning, and so she supposed that Sokka could not be entirely an idiot. Or perhaps he could be called entirely an idiot. She was not going to rule that out entirely, except that he'd already been high on the list of people who she would destroy when she was Fire Lord again and perhaps she should rate him just a little bit higher.
Or perhaps not, if her story about how he'd once been trapped in a crevice because of his love of meat was really true.
"So, all of that, and… where exactly are they?" Azula asked, and she wished her voice sounded harsher. But a part of her was actually surprised that they'd gone their separate ways. It was not as if she would have, had they left her no choice with their defiance, left Mai and Ty Lee behind. They'd deserved it for failing… failing.
She did not like to think of that. But if they'd all stayed friends, she definitely wouldn't have just gone to do something else. She'd have taken them along with her. Did this Aang, who apparently believed in nonsense like traveling light, manage to just leave her behind? She knew it wasn't like that, objectively. Toph was independent and needed nobody even if she wanted to be around her friends, and people like Azula, and presumably also people who could be of use to her.
"Oh, they have their own lives and all that. They visit sometimes," Toph said, and then added, "They'll probably all come together for my birthday," Toph said. "I… kinda don't exactly go around to theirs. Though honestly only Earth Kingdom and Fire Nation have birthdays, apparently? And only the richy-rich sorts?"
It made sense, and her own birthday had always more been an excuse for a banquet than anything more elaborate than that, let alone anything that had really mattered.
"So they visit then, so I'll prolly see all of 'em together then, and that's in a few months?" Toph seemed to actually be considering how long it was. Azula smirked, touching the bracelet as she waited. "Well, almost four months? And yours is, right…"
"Before that," Azula said snidely.
"Before that, huh?" Toph asked. "I can just figure it out. You're not that mysterious. Ty Lee's visited you, hasn't she?"
Azula did not wince, but she did tense for a moment as she wondered once again what Ty Lee had really said. It was clear she hadn't been quite as much of a sap as 'Toph' indicated, against Azula's suspicions. But what had she said in detail? What had she given away to Toph, and how might Toph use it? It was not as if Toph wouldn't use it, because that was what people did, they found ways to make use of what they knew. Toph wasn't stupid, even if she was a stubborn child.
"You know she has," Azula said, "She came and asked all sorts of asinine questions, drew her own conclusions, and skipped away again. You know Ty Lee - she's a master of avoiding topics she doesn't like, so we didn't talk about her at all. She never liked telling me about herself!"
"That's prob'ly because you'd pick at her, Zaps," Toph said, but her words were light. "You're given to picking at scabs."
"Maybe," Azula conceded, "Ty Lee never did anything to make me angry if she could help it. She knew how to keep things stable."
Toph hummed. "Not pickin' fights has always been her priority. I don't do that. Not my style, Spikes."
That was a new one, and Azula wasn't sure how she felt about it - Toph had explained it was about her armour, but she wasn't entirely sure she believed her.
"No," Azula replied, "You are certainly less diplomatic than Ty Lee is. It makes a change."
"Are we still your only visitors?" Toph asked, "I assumed Zuzu or Mai would've stopped by, but-"
"No," Azula said, her voice sharp, "Mai and Zuzu would rather forget about me, down in the dungeons. You should've realised that by now!"
There was an edge of hysteria in her voice, and she tried to tamp it down.
"They're busy," Toph said, "I suppose. Ty Lee'll visit again before too long though, so I'll be able to ask her when your birthday is."
The attempt to deflect is obvious, but Azula goes along with it all the same. "Has she not returned to wherever she ran off to? Kyoshi Island or the Circus, or some other frivolous thing?"
"Oh, no." Toph said, "Ty Lee's still here. She's taken a few months off from the Kyoshi Warriors, just to try… doing her own thing?"
She sounded dubious about that last, and Azula scoffed.
"Did she tell you that?" Azula said, "She probably just argued with that girl Suki, needs the time to cool off."
"Maybe," Toph said, "I got the impression she was just… frustrated with Kyoshi Island. Maybe she missed the Fire Nation, where it's a little more direct? I know I'd find the Earth Kingdom boring now, all the rituals and political maneuver."
"We have those here," Azula said, in a fit of generosity towards the Earth Kingdom. "Honestly, they aren't so different. There is a structure, a way of doing things, and it's stupid, but everyone has to follow it, unless they're strong enough not to."
"Seems stupid," Toph said bluntly, "Of course I'm strong enough - so are you, Sparky - but what does our strength have to do with having to wait six weeks to see the Earth King, or having to sit on the Fire Lord's left side to indicate you want to talk to him about something non-military? It's stupid!"
"It means," Azula said, a little thoughtfully, "That if you're not rich enough to waste the time, or noble enough to know the rules, you can't. That's why. It's how it's always worked. During the war, it got easier to talk to the Fire Lord if you were a general, but it got harder if you weren't."
"That's stupid," Toph said, "You won't get anything done like that. You need to be able to talk to people to know what's wrong."
"Yeah," Azula said, "Like in Ba Sing Se. Everything got easier once the Dai Li took over, and we ran the city excellently until I had to leave and it all got gummed up with the colonial governments."
It was strange, Azula thought, to be agreeing with Toph when she was criticising the Fire Nation like this, but she was right - all sorts of people just didn't understand how to do anything. Whenever Azula had delegated beyond Ty Lee and Mai, it had always been downright farcical. The ridiculous drill was a prime example of it, but by no means the only one.
"Feh, the Dai Li," Toph said scornfully. "Buncha blowhards who think they're better than they are. I'm a better Earthbender than they are, an' I bet so're most of the people I fought in the Rumble, even!"
"I seem to recall they gave you some trouble during your invasion," Azula replied, "You beat them, but that hardly makes them incompetent, does it?"
Toph would struggle with that, Azula thought smugly. She always loved compliments to her own bending, even when they were being used to argue against her.
This was a safer topic of conversation, and the two of them settled into it with practiced ease.
VM AN: Adjusting to the new status quo. Its a lot of fun to just have the two of them spark off each other for a while. Not groundbreaking, but…
TL AN: To break the ground, you must first prepare it.
Lenimentus
Ignorant but learning.
This just keeps getting better as it goes along. I need to find more friendship fics.
- Pronouns
- She/Them
question, if azula does leave that jail cell... this story isnt going to just end there is it?
Chapter 18: Versus
- Location
- United Kingdom
- Pronouns
- She/Her
Chapter 18: Versus
"So, could you beat Katara in a fight?" Azula asked after one of those awkward talks where Azula pretended not to be disgusted by her friends so badly for someone who was a master at lying that Toph had to fight not to laugh. It was almost endearing, the way that she could and would hide so many things even from herself, but spite was never one of them. She had pretended to like people she hated before, but for whatever reason she didn't really care about hiding it with Toph.
For instance, she kept on asking these obvious questions, clearly trying to root around in the dirt for information that'd help her beat up her friends if she got out. "If we're not next to a big lake, ten times out of ten, if we're on the ocean… honestly that'd be tough even if I was on one of your cool metal ships."
"Cool?" Azula asked.
"Well I can use it for bending, so that makes it cool," Toph pointed out. Duh. "Cause the ocean's otherwise kinda stupid. All that water, and fish? Okay, fish is alright, sort of. Sometimes. But all that water?"
"So, not at sea?" Azula asked.
"Probably not, she's not quite as focused on all that stuff as me, but she's a prodigy too and all, basically just kicking butt the moment she actually had a chance to really learn Waterbending instead of having to do it herself," Toph said. "But, next to a small lake, or a big one if I played smart, I could beat her. Cause, she loves these clever little water whips, this sort of big precision stuff." Toph gestured vaguely, even though neither of them could see it. "And she's fast, she can just glide on the water like whoosh. So you gotta know where all the water is. I can't see it, so I've been trying to learn her waterbending forms just so I'd know what she does when she does a motion. But, well." Toph laughed, "She's been too busy hanging around Aang trying to fix stuff. Unlike Zuko, I haven't basically mastered her every move… mostly. Sort of. So I'd have to build up some big earthen barriers, stuff that blocks the water and forces her to dance where I'm controlling things. With the overwhelming you get subtle, with the subtle you get overwhelming."
She was quoting that stupid Jing book now.
But it was true! Katara was clever with her bending, so she'd just try to overpower and overwhelm her and not give her time to be really clever and scheme her way to a surprise victory or anything like that. No, Toph wouldn't be fair and she wouldn't be fun because Katara was too good for that, if she was imagining some all out fight with, she didn't know… Katara's evil clone? Doppelganger from the spirit world? Whatever!
The best part is, none of that helped Azula. It wasn't really advice, because no doubt Azula had tried to overwhelm Katara. Katara had described the fight to her when she'd been bored and bugged her enough about it, though Katara missed half of Azula's moves because she was busy… well, not dying? Being worried for Zuko? Toph got it, but at the same time it still annoyed her just a little bit.
Honestly she'd been getting annoyed a little bit easier nowaday. Just a bit. She had a lot to think about, and only some of it was Bending… but it was more as if she ahd a lot of Bending to think about, and a lot of other things to think about.
Because Azula had kept on pressing her that meeting where she asked the question, finally, "What if she makes all your dirt wet? I know you can control mud, but have you really practiced new moves with the mud?"
Toph considered it and said, "A few." But what she meant was 'I should practice more.' Because that would be cool if she had a half-dozen mud-based moves that… wait, she could do the stupid water whip stuff, but with mud! She'd thought it before, but she'd never bothered to get around to it because hitting someone in the face with mud was funny but not useful. But, hmm.
"Not enough, eh?" Azula asked. "You're welcome."
You're welcome? That made Toph mad enough that they had a nice, fun argument about bending for the next fifteen minutes.
But, when she trained later that day, it involved having servants bring her as much water as they could, and trying to make use of an ocean of mud. It was… kind of cool, actually, because it was a little like waterbending. She could even sorta do, like, vaguely waterbending inspired nonsense with her earthbending and it'd work better for manipulating mud. She'd probably have a lot of practice to go but… but it was at that point, and after it, that she started actually answering Azula's questions about fights seriously, because every time she did she thought of new ways she could Bend better. And it became just… one of their things.
Like telling that stupid dramatic story of the Bending rivals at war. Like going over petty grievances and complaints and treating them seriously. Like all the other things that made up the increasingly solid foundation of their friendship.
"The Avatar?"
"Well, an actual all-out fight, I'd just lose, Zaps. If it was Earthbending versus Earthbending without any flying I think I could win even with the Avatar state," Toph admitted. "But the flying's rough. I've tried to hone my hearing against him and overwhelm him before he can fly… but yeah, it doesn't really work. He can bend too many things at once, and if he was actually going all out he'd win. Of course, it's Aang, he'd spend half the time trying to talk me down." She had to smile at that, because as boring as Nice could be sometimes, Aang was just really, really nice and a good person. She'd be in a much worse place if Aang hadn't come along and insisted on trying to convince her to teach him Earthbending.
She could win, maybe even easily, the kind of fight she'd actually have with Aang where he didn't treat it seriously and gave her chances to give up and inevitably fell for any trick you put in front him, rather than a fight with the Avatar Aang who had a thousand tricks and was kinda scary to even imagine facing, honestly.
"Huh," Azula said, and she clearly had an idea. "What if you just blew up a lot of dust? Or sand or dirt? You can sense things you're not touching, right?"
"Yep," Toph said, but now she was thinking about it. If she spread sand around, could she see someone flying with it? She could struggle to see sand even when she was touching it, but that was a thought. Or dirt. She could imagine clouds of dirt in the air to at least be able to tell where an Airbender was? She wasn't sure how she'd do it, but she was thinking now, and she knew what the rest of the next hour or two would be.
In-depth, annoyingly precise discussions of the exact specifics of Bending.
She kind of loved it.
"Sokka," Azula said, no doubt with a smirk on her face. Last week had been Iroh, the week before had been Bumi and boy was that one a puzzler that had given her at least a few things she needed to try. She was kind of getting to the point where she didn't have the free time left to train any other tricks besides the ones she'd thought of.
So maybe this was a way to make her laugh.
If it was, it worked. Toph started laughing and she couldn't stop for a bit.
"I meant, what would that "clever idiot" do if he was devoted to taking you down?" Azula asked.
"Oh, like, how he'd try to do it?" Toph asked. "Prolly try to mess with my feet, everyone tries that once in a while, but it won't work, I'm careful with that. Even hotfoot isn't enough, and I've fought enough people that try."
"Zuko probably wouldn't dare," Azula sneered.
"Nope, he stays out of trying hotfoot, but I punish anyone who tries so…"
Toph considered it.
"What if one of them succeeded?" Azula asked. "Do you have any skills with grappling? Or pins? Or punching? Sure, hypothetically if you couldn't see anyone you'd actually be dealing with that… but ears, maybe?" She was considering it, and added, "I myself as you know trained to be able to fight back and avoid and evade even without my Firebending."
Toph… paused at that. She'd been about to dismiss it, now she was actually thinking about it. It was odd. "Nah," Toph said. "Not right now, kinda don't have time. But you know…"
It was odd, because she'd never actually done it like this. Zuko sort of helped her become a better bender, and in a way so had Katara and Aang, but it was never so direct. It was never a sneering bit of actually good Bending advice, because Katara trusted her to know her business and so everything she'd learned from Katara had to do with just sparring. Same with Aang. Same with Zuko.
But Azula had absurd Bending standards and viewed even a tiny weakness as unforgivable, and at some point she'd clearly decided that she respected Toph enough to give her advice like this and also clearly try to sneak in information about how she'd fight the whole world if she needed to.
It was kind of pathetic and yet kind of impressive. Toph's thoughts had narrowed down moment by moment when she was imprisoned, until she'd been able to think of nothing except doing the absolutely impossible out of spite. But Azula was trying to encompass the world from a jail cell, even though she didn't get half of what the world was like now that the Fire Nation was lost, just that surely it must be bad.
She was sheltered, maybe, but she wasn't complacent.
Toph wasn't sure if she was becoming a better person, being Azula's friend. If anything, she thought about things that annoyed her or that she resented more now. But she had to say that it was interesting.
It happened entirely by accident. Okay, it probably couldn't be called an accident, but it was. Toph had a move she wanted to get right, a rather difficult, very fiddly one because she'd been thinking about different kinds of crystals and whether she could manipulate the structure of metal and all sorts of other stuff like that. But it'd been really fascinating, and so she'd sort of… stayed up past her bedtime. And then past midnight. Then, when she'd been somewhere an hour or two before dawn she'd realized that there was no point in no waiting until the sunrise and then just crawling into bed and sleeping until noon. Then she'd eat lunch-breakfast (lekfast? She'd work on the right phrase, but lekfast sounded good to her) and go and see Azula.
So she was trudging about at the break of dawn, when she usually didn't wake up for real for an hour or two later, which is why she was able to sense the concentration of people with her feet. Guards, yeah yeah whatever, two dozen of them clearly tense and watching? Whatever.
Azula, and not behind two doors? Toph turned to trudge that way, toes curling for a moment as if she was about to bend. She didn't know what she expected, but by the time she'd gotten closer she could feel it.
Chains.
Azula had chains and cuffs binding both her feet and arms, and in the former case covering her arms entirely so that she was essentially in a kind of iron cast, while a metal device of some kind covered her mouth. She was shuffling along in the early morning sunlight, her heart racing just a little bit too much. She wasn't well. She shuffled along, and the guards clearly were watching her for her escape attempt as she moved around a small corner of the palace out of the way of everyone but no doubt open to the sun.
Oh, to get whatever sunlight people needed before being dragged back downstairs to eat.
Toph stepped forward, and she realized at once that Azula would hate it. Azula would hate Toph 'seeing' her like this.
And Toph hated seeing Azula like this. Toph hated feeling Azula even more confined than in a cell, shuffling around while dozens of assholes, all of them adults much older than her, glared at her and no doubt watched her for the least sign that she was doing anything.
How dare they.
(It didn't matter that if she hadn't known Azula except as the bad guy she would have shrugged this off with an uneasy frown, a year ago.)
"Yo, Zappy," Toph called out, and felt Azula turn and see her for the first time in… a long time. Toph had no idea what Azula would see. She knew her hair was a mess and she had even more dirt on her than usual. "Was comin' back from an all-nighter and saw you. Well, I didn't see--"
"Lady Beifong, please move along," a guard said, a big guy who nonetheless was very, very scared of her. "It's for your own safety."
Lie. He was lying to her. He didn't give a pebble's care about her safety, and he didn't think she was in danger.
"Nah. Liar," Toph said. It was annoying, when people thought they could lie to her. She stomped forward. Azula's own heart rate was picking up. "So, what, you drag her around here for a little while to get her sun?"
"Y-yes, Lady Beifong, Fire Lord's orders," another man said, and she heard something in it. Disapproval.
"Orders?"
"Begging your pardon, ma'am, but she's a frustrating prisoner, I'd rather not go through this every day, but the Fire Lord insisted," that second bozo said.
So, what? This was Zuko being kind? This?
The Fire Nation sucked so much. Toph took a breath and said, "Well, now she's here. Too bad I can't talk to her."
"She burns hands. She bites," a female guard said with so much anger and contempt that you'd think Azula had personally killed someone she cared about.
…okay, that wasn't impossible, to be fair.
But Toph couldn't think like that.
Toph didn't sense an enemy who was also a friend.
She just sensed a friend, and for a moment she felt this desperate drive, this thought that perhaps she should just shatter the chains. She could do so. It wouldn't even be hard.
Toph took a breath. "I'll see you in an hour or two, Sparky."
She couldn't stand here and look at this, and be calm.
But come two hours from then, she sauntered in with a "Yo Platypus-Bear" and let Azula tell one of her by now all the way worn-through stories about humiliating and reveling in the suffering of some idiot, because she knew that after seeing Toph 'see' her, she needed to think about the times she'd won, not the ones she'd lost.
veteranMortal: Azula's take on Toph shifting, pretty inexorably, from "I'll defeat her" to "I'll have to defeat her" to "Can she defeat people with me?" Makes you wonder where it ends.
The Laurent: Face to face with the enemy.
"So, could you beat Katara in a fight?" Azula asked after one of those awkward talks where Azula pretended not to be disgusted by her friends so badly for someone who was a master at lying that Toph had to fight not to laugh. It was almost endearing, the way that she could and would hide so many things even from herself, but spite was never one of them. She had pretended to like people she hated before, but for whatever reason she didn't really care about hiding it with Toph.
For instance, she kept on asking these obvious questions, clearly trying to root around in the dirt for information that'd help her beat up her friends if she got out. "If we're not next to a big lake, ten times out of ten, if we're on the ocean… honestly that'd be tough even if I was on one of your cool metal ships."
"Cool?" Azula asked.
"Well I can use it for bending, so that makes it cool," Toph pointed out. Duh. "Cause the ocean's otherwise kinda stupid. All that water, and fish? Okay, fish is alright, sort of. Sometimes. But all that water?"
"So, not at sea?" Azula asked.
"Probably not, she's not quite as focused on all that stuff as me, but she's a prodigy too and all, basically just kicking butt the moment she actually had a chance to really learn Waterbending instead of having to do it herself," Toph said. "But, next to a small lake, or a big one if I played smart, I could beat her. Cause, she loves these clever little water whips, this sort of big precision stuff." Toph gestured vaguely, even though neither of them could see it. "And she's fast, she can just glide on the water like whoosh. So you gotta know where all the water is. I can't see it, so I've been trying to learn her waterbending forms just so I'd know what she does when she does a motion. But, well." Toph laughed, "She's been too busy hanging around Aang trying to fix stuff. Unlike Zuko, I haven't basically mastered her every move… mostly. Sort of. So I'd have to build up some big earthen barriers, stuff that blocks the water and forces her to dance where I'm controlling things. With the overwhelming you get subtle, with the subtle you get overwhelming."
She was quoting that stupid Jing book now.
But it was true! Katara was clever with her bending, so she'd just try to overpower and overwhelm her and not give her time to be really clever and scheme her way to a surprise victory or anything like that. No, Toph wouldn't be fair and she wouldn't be fun because Katara was too good for that, if she was imagining some all out fight with, she didn't know… Katara's evil clone? Doppelganger from the spirit world? Whatever!
The best part is, none of that helped Azula. It wasn't really advice, because no doubt Azula had tried to overwhelm Katara. Katara had described the fight to her when she'd been bored and bugged her enough about it, though Katara missed half of Azula's moves because she was busy… well, not dying? Being worried for Zuko? Toph got it, but at the same time it still annoyed her just a little bit.
Honestly she'd been getting annoyed a little bit easier nowaday. Just a bit. She had a lot to think about, and only some of it was Bending… but it was more as if she ahd a lot of Bending to think about, and a lot of other things to think about.
Because Azula had kept on pressing her that meeting where she asked the question, finally, "What if she makes all your dirt wet? I know you can control mud, but have you really practiced new moves with the mud?"
Toph considered it and said, "A few." But what she meant was 'I should practice more.' Because that would be cool if she had a half-dozen mud-based moves that… wait, she could do the stupid water whip stuff, but with mud! She'd thought it before, but she'd never bothered to get around to it because hitting someone in the face with mud was funny but not useful. But, hmm.
"Not enough, eh?" Azula asked. "You're welcome."
You're welcome? That made Toph mad enough that they had a nice, fun argument about bending for the next fifteen minutes.
But, when she trained later that day, it involved having servants bring her as much water as they could, and trying to make use of an ocean of mud. It was… kind of cool, actually, because it was a little like waterbending. She could even sorta do, like, vaguely waterbending inspired nonsense with her earthbending and it'd work better for manipulating mud. She'd probably have a lot of practice to go but… but it was at that point, and after it, that she started actually answering Azula's questions about fights seriously, because every time she did she thought of new ways she could Bend better. And it became just… one of their things.
Like telling that stupid dramatic story of the Bending rivals at war. Like going over petty grievances and complaints and treating them seriously. Like all the other things that made up the increasingly solid foundation of their friendship.
"The Avatar?"
"Well, an actual all-out fight, I'd just lose, Zaps. If it was Earthbending versus Earthbending without any flying I think I could win even with the Avatar state," Toph admitted. "But the flying's rough. I've tried to hone my hearing against him and overwhelm him before he can fly… but yeah, it doesn't really work. He can bend too many things at once, and if he was actually going all out he'd win. Of course, it's Aang, he'd spend half the time trying to talk me down." She had to smile at that, because as boring as Nice could be sometimes, Aang was just really, really nice and a good person. She'd be in a much worse place if Aang hadn't come along and insisted on trying to convince her to teach him Earthbending.
She could win, maybe even easily, the kind of fight she'd actually have with Aang where he didn't treat it seriously and gave her chances to give up and inevitably fell for any trick you put in front him, rather than a fight with the Avatar Aang who had a thousand tricks and was kinda scary to even imagine facing, honestly.
"Huh," Azula said, and she clearly had an idea. "What if you just blew up a lot of dust? Or sand or dirt? You can sense things you're not touching, right?"
"Yep," Toph said, but now she was thinking about it. If she spread sand around, could she see someone flying with it? She could struggle to see sand even when she was touching it, but that was a thought. Or dirt. She could imagine clouds of dirt in the air to at least be able to tell where an Airbender was? She wasn't sure how she'd do it, but she was thinking now, and she knew what the rest of the next hour or two would be.
In-depth, annoyingly precise discussions of the exact specifics of Bending.
She kind of loved it.
"Sokka," Azula said, no doubt with a smirk on her face. Last week had been Iroh, the week before had been Bumi and boy was that one a puzzler that had given her at least a few things she needed to try. She was kind of getting to the point where she didn't have the free time left to train any other tricks besides the ones she'd thought of.
So maybe this was a way to make her laugh.
If it was, it worked. Toph started laughing and she couldn't stop for a bit.
"I meant, what would that "clever idiot" do if he was devoted to taking you down?" Azula asked.
"Oh, like, how he'd try to do it?" Toph asked. "Prolly try to mess with my feet, everyone tries that once in a while, but it won't work, I'm careful with that. Even hotfoot isn't enough, and I've fought enough people that try."
"Zuko probably wouldn't dare," Azula sneered.
"Nope, he stays out of trying hotfoot, but I punish anyone who tries so…"
Toph considered it.
"What if one of them succeeded?" Azula asked. "Do you have any skills with grappling? Or pins? Or punching? Sure, hypothetically if you couldn't see anyone you'd actually be dealing with that… but ears, maybe?" She was considering it, and added, "I myself as you know trained to be able to fight back and avoid and evade even without my Firebending."
Toph… paused at that. She'd been about to dismiss it, now she was actually thinking about it. It was odd. "Nah," Toph said. "Not right now, kinda don't have time. But you know…"
It was odd, because she'd never actually done it like this. Zuko sort of helped her become a better bender, and in a way so had Katara and Aang, but it was never so direct. It was never a sneering bit of actually good Bending advice, because Katara trusted her to know her business and so everything she'd learned from Katara had to do with just sparring. Same with Aang. Same with Zuko.
But Azula had absurd Bending standards and viewed even a tiny weakness as unforgivable, and at some point she'd clearly decided that she respected Toph enough to give her advice like this and also clearly try to sneak in information about how she'd fight the whole world if she needed to.
It was kind of pathetic and yet kind of impressive. Toph's thoughts had narrowed down moment by moment when she was imprisoned, until she'd been able to think of nothing except doing the absolutely impossible out of spite. But Azula was trying to encompass the world from a jail cell, even though she didn't get half of what the world was like now that the Fire Nation was lost, just that surely it must be bad.
She was sheltered, maybe, but she wasn't complacent.
Toph wasn't sure if she was becoming a better person, being Azula's friend. If anything, she thought about things that annoyed her or that she resented more now. But she had to say that it was interesting.
It happened entirely by accident. Okay, it probably couldn't be called an accident, but it was. Toph had a move she wanted to get right, a rather difficult, very fiddly one because she'd been thinking about different kinds of crystals and whether she could manipulate the structure of metal and all sorts of other stuff like that. But it'd been really fascinating, and so she'd sort of… stayed up past her bedtime. And then past midnight. Then, when she'd been somewhere an hour or two before dawn she'd realized that there was no point in no waiting until the sunrise and then just crawling into bed and sleeping until noon. Then she'd eat lunch-breakfast (lekfast? She'd work on the right phrase, but lekfast sounded good to her) and go and see Azula.
So she was trudging about at the break of dawn, when she usually didn't wake up for real for an hour or two later, which is why she was able to sense the concentration of people with her feet. Guards, yeah yeah whatever, two dozen of them clearly tense and watching? Whatever.
Azula, and not behind two doors? Toph turned to trudge that way, toes curling for a moment as if she was about to bend. She didn't know what she expected, but by the time she'd gotten closer she could feel it.
Chains.
Azula had chains and cuffs binding both her feet and arms, and in the former case covering her arms entirely so that she was essentially in a kind of iron cast, while a metal device of some kind covered her mouth. She was shuffling along in the early morning sunlight, her heart racing just a little bit too much. She wasn't well. She shuffled along, and the guards clearly were watching her for her escape attempt as she moved around a small corner of the palace out of the way of everyone but no doubt open to the sun.
Oh, to get whatever sunlight people needed before being dragged back downstairs to eat.
Toph stepped forward, and she realized at once that Azula would hate it. Azula would hate Toph 'seeing' her like this.
And Toph hated seeing Azula like this. Toph hated feeling Azula even more confined than in a cell, shuffling around while dozens of assholes, all of them adults much older than her, glared at her and no doubt watched her for the least sign that she was doing anything.
How dare they.
(It didn't matter that if she hadn't known Azula except as the bad guy she would have shrugged this off with an uneasy frown, a year ago.)
"Yo, Zappy," Toph called out, and felt Azula turn and see her for the first time in… a long time. Toph had no idea what Azula would see. She knew her hair was a mess and she had even more dirt on her than usual. "Was comin' back from an all-nighter and saw you. Well, I didn't see--"
"Lady Beifong, please move along," a guard said, a big guy who nonetheless was very, very scared of her. "It's for your own safety."
Lie. He was lying to her. He didn't give a pebble's care about her safety, and he didn't think she was in danger.
"Nah. Liar," Toph said. It was annoying, when people thought they could lie to her. She stomped forward. Azula's own heart rate was picking up. "So, what, you drag her around here for a little while to get her sun?"
"Y-yes, Lady Beifong, Fire Lord's orders," another man said, and she heard something in it. Disapproval.
"Orders?"
"Begging your pardon, ma'am, but she's a frustrating prisoner, I'd rather not go through this every day, but the Fire Lord insisted," that second bozo said.
So, what? This was Zuko being kind? This?
The Fire Nation sucked so much. Toph took a breath and said, "Well, now she's here. Too bad I can't talk to her."
"She burns hands. She bites," a female guard said with so much anger and contempt that you'd think Azula had personally killed someone she cared about.
…okay, that wasn't impossible, to be fair.
But Toph couldn't think like that.
Toph didn't sense an enemy who was also a friend.
She just sensed a friend, and for a moment she felt this desperate drive, this thought that perhaps she should just shatter the chains. She could do so. It wouldn't even be hard.
Toph took a breath. "I'll see you in an hour or two, Sparky."
She couldn't stand here and look at this, and be calm.
But come two hours from then, she sauntered in with a "Yo Platypus-Bear" and let Azula tell one of her by now all the way worn-through stories about humiliating and reveling in the suffering of some idiot, because she knew that after seeing Toph 'see' her, she needed to think about the times she'd won, not the ones she'd lost.
veteranMortal: Azula's take on Toph shifting, pretty inexorably, from "I'll defeat her" to "I'll have to defeat her" to "Can she defeat people with me?" Makes you wonder where it ends.
The Laurent: Face to face with the enemy.