ATLA: toph + zuko, one-shot

She orders him to carry her around everywhere, which is odd, because the other three people she could as easily order to do the same thing are no less willing and a lot more familiar. Still, he doesn’t question her right away. He’s the reason she has to order anyone around to carry her anywhere after all. He apologizes a few more times before she sucker punches him with a huge pillar of rock and earth, a sure and direct way of telling him she knows he’s sorry, now shut up. Her choice to ask him to carry her is looked upon less than well and more along the lines of ‘with much disdain’ and ‘the same way one might view a public hanging’ or even as simply as ‘very, very badly’.

Katara hasn’t spoken to him since her minor threat of death and the little glances she does send his way now only fluctuate between kill-yourself-in-a-ditch, and the overtly creepy and stalker-reminiscent expression of big-brother-is-watching. He hears her say to the blind earthbender at one point, “You’re just being difficult!” and he doesn’t have to guess that this is about him.

It usually is.

Sokka goes from trying to be awkwardly forthcoming to decidedly ten times as impossible as he has ever been. He asks Toph if she is okay a great deal more often than usual, something that even Zuko picks up on after enough rolled eyes and sarcastic responses. It occurs to him that Sokka is checking up on Toph because he doesn’t trust him, and while Zuko understands, he still finds himself upset.

He is trying.

Aang is the most tolerant because he wants to be, has always wanted to be. He shoots Zuko inquisitive looks as he carries around the girl in green, and if there is the slightest degree of unhappiness, he hides it quickly enough. Aang has thought of Toph as almost a best friend up until now, but what he sees happening in front of him might very well change that and it worries him…and brings him sadness. But Aang is too full of heart to say anything about something that might, somehow, not be anything, and so he acknowledges Zuko’s existence with a tentative smile that can only be described as truly and completely Aang.

When she orders him to carry her less than three feet, he quirks a brow but does not protest and when she orders him to bring her things, he gets the feeling she is doing it out of sheer amusement more than payback. Sometimes he thinks about asking her if she misses her old life, because she obviously came from one rather different from the one she leads now, running free and rampant like an untamed wind, or as she might prefer it, an unprecedented wave of rumbling earth.

Zuko lies on his back one night, staring at the ceiling of his room, and he jumps when there is a sound at his door, as it opens, half expecting Katara to bust in and take him out like a cheap light. But no. Toph stands there, a little unbalanced as she leans on the door, not unlike she once leaned on a doorframe in her own home, calling a truce between herself and her new pupil.

It seems lifetimes ago.

“Hey,” he says and she waves cheekily, tottering over to make herself at home on his bed. If he shifts very quickly to his own far end, she has the grace or good humor not to comment on it, or then again, it could be she just doesn’t care.

That does seem more like her.

“They’re going to accept you,” she says after a while, laying flat on her back, blind eyes up to the ceiling as his were not moments before.

“Maybe,” he begrudges and she kicks him. Hard.

“They will,” she insists and it is an uncomfortably long period of time before she speaks again, but when she does, she makes it worth the wait. “How’s your Uncle?”

Zuko opens his mouth to tell her and when he realizes for the millionth time that he has absolutely no idea, he closes it, turning away from her. She feels him shift on the bed and lifts her head to stare in his direction. Even this boy will find a blind girl’s unrelenting stare a bit unsettling, she figures.

She would be right too, but the thing is, he doesn’t turn back around.

Toph rubs the bridge of her nose tiredly and spits into the copper vase that decorates the near corner of his room. At that, Zuko does turn, blinking, ever surprised by this rich girl’s tendency to act more like a street brawler.

“Did you apologize?” she asks, crossing her legs, toes curling.

“No,” he says, and makes no excuses, because he is learning, however slowly, that like his honor, excuses are not necessarily the answer to all things.

He doesn’t expect what comes next. A punch to the gut, a slap in the face, perhaps even being rendered unconscious through some form of Toph going wildcard on him, but not what actually happens, not even a little.

Toph moves up to sit on one side of the bed, Zuko at her back on the other. She lays back on her side and blows her bangs out of her face only to have them fall stubbornly back where they were, and she says, “You’ll never fall asleep sitting up like that.”

He lays down, his back to her, and he’s not sure exactly why he’s listening to her. Maybe he’s just gotten too accustomed to receiving and following orders from the curious girl beside him.

“When we find him, you better say it,” she threatens and points out, as they are two very different things. She feels him nod and thinks that’s the end of it.

Then he says, “Thank you.”

And she, if no one else, knows: he’s not lying.