"Give me a Fire Nation ship over a Water Tribe boat any day."
Sokka turned his head to look at Toph, sitting in the middle of the vessel and leaning against the mast. Southern Water Tribe boats were small, originally designed to be easily sailed by a single waterbender, but the design had been adapted over the Hundred Years War so that a few non-benders could use it just as easily. Unfortunately, Sokka did not have a few non-benders here with him.
"Zuko did give you a Fire Nation ship." Sokka replied, attempting to pull and tie down a rope.
Toph sat with her arms crossed, and her legs pulled up to her chest. "Well, he shouldn't have given me a crew of firebenders that was going to try to kill me!"
"Come on, Zuko didn't know they were loyal to Ozai. It's not like he can read the mind of every single Fire Nation soldier. Besides, he warned you that-Ahhrg!" Sokka cried out as the rope slipped from his hands and lashed upwards, striking his face.
"Sokka!" Toph lept to her feet, took a few steps forward, stumbled slightly, and stopped. She strained her ears. "Are you okay?" She could feel the boat turning suddenly.
"Yeah, I'm fine." Sokka put a hand on his forehead where the rope had hit him, and pulled it away to see blood. Then he, too, felt the boat move. "The sail!" With the roped loosed, the sail had been pulled at an angle by the wind. He ran to to grab the rope.
"What happened?!" Toph cried out. Her head turned to follow the sounds of Sokka's footsteps.
"The wind's taking the boat off course!" he responded as he jumped for the rope. As he leapt upwards, he realized that he had made a mistake. The sail had twisted in the wind, and now the jib, the small sail that controlled direction, was being torn out of place. With nothing left to control the boat, it spun out of control, pulled away by the wind. Sokka hit the water with a loud splash.
"Sokka!" Toph ran towards the sound, arms outstretched. She hit the edge of the boat and stumbled, but caught herself without going over the edge. "Sokka!" She called out again, listening for his voice.
He broke water a few feet behind the boat, and wildly looked around. The boat wasn't far away, but it was moving quickly. He swam hard.
"Sokka!" Toph yelled again to the open sea, but this time she got a response.
"Toph! Bring down the sail! Slow down the ship!" Sokka managed to cry out between waves slapping his face.
Toph turned around. She knew the boat was barely larger than Appa, but it might as well have been one hundred times that. She stepped forward, casting her arms through the air, hoping to feel something with her grasping hands. If she couldn't, Sokka would be left behind. If they were separated out here in the ocean, she would be at the mercy of the elements, and without a boat, he wouldn't even have that luxury. There was some food and water on the boat; she could last a few weeks, and maybe be rescued, but Sokka would drown within a day. And the thought of losing Sokka was far more terrifying than the idea of being completely isolated on a wooden boat in a foreign ocean. If she lost Sokka...
Suddenly, her hand felt a flapping of cloth. She grasped the fabric, gripped it tightly, and then she pulled with all her might. The sail held for a moment, then gave way, tearing at the corners. Toph pulled the sail down, then spun it in the air, wrapping it on itself. She ran back to the edge of the boat and threw one end of the makeshift rope into the water.
"Sokka, grab the sail!" Toph braced herself with a foot against the railing, but didn't feel any resistance on the cloth. "Sokka!"
"I'm here! I'm almost there! Just hold on!" Sokka swam with all his might. Toph had managed to pull down the main sail, and the boat had slowed considerably. With the current working for both the boat and for Sokka, he was able to reach the sail.
"Got it!" he yelled. He began pulling himself along the line, as Toph tried to pull it back up to her. He got to the edge of the boat and managed to haul himself over the edge. The motion left him laying on the deck, and he was panting hard from his swim through the ocean waves.
"Thank goodness!" Toph threw herself onto Sokka, hugging his cold, wet form tightly. "I was worried that you were gone for good."
Sokka regained control of his breathing. "Come on," he said, resting a hand comfortingly on Toph's back, "There's no way I would let that happen." Sokka pushed himself up, and Toph let go of him so he could move. He sat still for a moment, then looked around.
"Hey, where's the sail go?" he asked.
"I dropped it right there." Toph pointed at an empty space of the deck.
Sokka got to his feet, and tooked out behind the boat. The sail was floating away in the water, and he wasn't about the jump back in to get it.
"Looks like it's gone." Sokka said. Toph heard the defeat in his voice.
"Sorry, Sokka." She listened for the sound of his feet, or voice, or anything.
"It's all right, there should be an extra one packed away here somewhere. It'll take me a little while to rig up, and I'll probably have to repair the jib as well, but we'll be okay. I'd just like to get this boat to dry land first."
"You and me both." Toph replied.
Sokka stood up and wiped some blood away from his eye, adding, "And maybe stop this bleeding. Let's see what's in some of these crates."
Together they sifted through all the containers on the ship. They found a smaller replacement for the main sail, and a sewing kit to repair the jib. They found some food and fresh water, and a first aid kit with bandages and salves.
"There we go." Sokka said, opening the kit. The wound on his forehead wasn't deep, but it wouldn't stop bleeding soon without a wrap of some kind. He opened the box and started the process, but Toph stopped him.
"I'll do it." she said, trying to take the kit from Sokka.
"It's all right, I've got it." Sokka replied.
"I said I'll do it!" Toph yelled at him, and he let go of the box as she heaved it towards herself.
"Okay." Sokka held his hands up in surrender. "You can do it."
Toph unpacked the kit and set the contents out neatly, organizing them.
"Where are you hurt?" Toph asked.
"It's my forehead." Sokka pointed up at it out of reflex.
Toph leaned over and placed one hand on the side of his head, then slowly and gently moved two fingers across his forehead until she located the wound. Without a word, she opened up one of the salves, sniffed it, then closed it and tried another. She found what she was looking for and scooped a small amount of the paste with her fingers. Then she placed one hand behind Sokka's head and lightly dabbed the wound with the ointment. When she was finished that, she took a small cloth pad and placed it on the wound.
"Hold that." she ordered Sokka.
Once Sokka had his hand on the cloth, Toph took the bandage and wrapped it carefully around Sokka's head, tying it off in a neat little knot. Finally, she cut of the excess bandage.
"You're better at this than I though you would be." Sokka remarked, feeling her work with his hands.
"You can't learn earthbending from badger moles without getting a few cuts and bruises, and I figured out pretty quickly how to fix them up without my parents knowing. It's just always been easier to let Katara do it, while she was around." Toph responded. She packed away the remainder of the kit with little difficulty.
"Huh." Sokka watched her put the the first aid kit away with slow, precise movements. She remembered where she had set everything and how it all fit back into the box. From the look of concentration on her face, she might have been earthbending.
"I'll start with repairing the jib, then I'll put up the new sail." Sokka said as he stood up, then began unpacking the sewing kit. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Toph fidgeting.
"Hey, are you all right?" Sokka asked her.
"I want to help." Toph answered. "I want to do something. I'm on a wooden boat in an ocean. I feel useless."
Sokka stopped and turned to face her. "Yeah, I know that feeling."
Toph continued. "I wouldn't mind if we didn't need a second set of hands, but we do, and I feel like we wouldn't have lost the sail if I could have done something. It's my fault."
Sokka moved over to her. "Hey, don't say that! Sure, if Katara or Aang were here, this would be a picnic, but it wouldn't be nearly as much fun. If I'm going to be trapped with one other person in the middle of nowhere, there's no one else I'd rather choose than you."
Toph quickly turned away. "Hmph. That's dumb. You should pick one of the others." Her face felt warm, and she didn't want Sokka to see if she was blushing.
"Well, maybe you're right. Keep an eye out for Appa for me." Sokka said with a smile.
Toph spun around, grinning as well. "Oh, right, I'll let you know as soon as I see him."
Sokka wasn't very good at sewing, but he managed to get the jib back to working order. Then he carefully tied the replacement sail into place, and hoisted it up properly. He took extra steps to ensure there wasn't a repeat of last time. Once he got everything in place, he turned back to Toph.
"Well, where would you like to go?" he asked her.
"What? You don't even know where we're going?" Toph asked back.
"I just caught the wind earlier, it was the fastest way out of there. Now that we're free and clear, we can actually pick a destination." Sokka replied.
"I don't know where we are, but anywhere with land is fine with me." Toph said.
"We're not far from the southern water tribe, and I'd like you to see it sometime, but we should make landfall first. Even with the sails rigged, this ship wasn't meant to be sailed by one person. We're pretty close to Omashu, though." Sokka gave voice to his train of thought.
Toph was visibly excited at the prospect. "I haven't been to Omashu in a long time! Let's go there!"
"All right then." Sokka altered the sails, and the ship changed direction. He consulted a few of his precious maps, and then announced, "We should hit the coast by night, and then it's only a day or two to reach Omashu. We can send a hawk to Zuko from there, and let him know what happened, and that we're okay."
"What about Katara and Twinkle-toes?" Toph asked.
"If they're not with Zuko, they'll be checking the coast for signs of our ship. We'll leave a message for them when we reach land." Sokka answered.
"I'll be in charge of that." Toph stated triumphantly.
"Okay, then that's our plan." Sokka finished.
They spent the rest of the day sailing, Sokka running back and forth, and occasionally getting Toph to hold free ropes when he needed a second pair of hands. It was continual work, but not difficult. They reached the coast with a few hours of sunlight left. As Sokka beached the boat, Toph leapt to the sand.
"Yes! This is great! I can see again!" Toph cried joyfully as she crawled around in the sand. The she stood and ran to to some nearby earth. She immediately bent it, and re-bent repeatedly. "It's so good to be on solid ground again! If I never set foot on a boat again, it'll be too soon."
Sokka made a face as he secured their craft. "We're taking the boat again tomorrow. Sailing the bay is way faster than travelling by foot."
Toph ran back to him. "Come on, we're not in a hurry! It's not like the old days; we don't have the fate of the world resting on our shoulders. Let's stay on the ground. It'll be fun!"
Sokka rubbed his chin thoughtfully. "Hmm, I do like fun... Fine, we'll walk."
Toph smiled wide. "I didn't say we'd walk."
"What's that supposed to mean?" Sokka inquired, as he eyed her suspiciously.
"You'll find out tomorrow." Toph replied, and didn't say any more as she began earthbending a large arrow and a rough picture of her and Sokka's faces that Aang and Katara would see from above.
Although he pestered her a little more, Sokka quickly gave up on trying to get an answer out of her. Toph was as stubborn as the earth she controlled. Sokka gathered some wood for a fire, a combination of dried out drift wood and dead brush, and found on the boat some salted meat to warm over the flames. He went to set up his tent, but found that Toph had built him one out of earth, and laid out his bedroll inside.
"Uh, thanks." Sokka said, suspiciously.
"Sure, I figured you wouldn't mind." Toph shrugged. "Twinkle Toes prefers the open air and Katara always wanted to set the tents up properly, but since they're not here..."
"Cool!" Sokka remarked enthusiastically. "I've got no problem doing less work in the evening. Thanks!"
"No problem." Toph smiled back.
It wasn't long before the meat was warmed, and the pair dug in, eating voraciously. Afterward they lay around the fire, looking up at the sky as the stars began to appear. The breeze off the ocean was a cool accent to the warmth of the fire.
"We haven't really had a chance to enjoy the peace we won." Sokka mused. "My whole life, I've been at war with the Fire Nation. I knew they were the enemy, even before I was old enough to lift a weapon. It's strange to think that the fighting is over."
"Don't be so sure." Toph responded. "The war may be over, but look what happened with those Ozai worshippers. And there're still plenty of Fire Nation people living in the Earth Kingdom. There'll be someone else to fight soon, you can count on it."
Sokka's head lowered slightly. "Yeah, I guess you're right."
Toph saw the reaction her words had, and tried too late to take it back. "No, I mean, it'll probably be okay. I just... I didn't want to make it sound like we didn't do anything. The whole world was at war, and the whole Earth Kingdom was going to be turned to ashes, and now none of that is going to happen. We did that. There'll be struggles in the future, but we've basically saved the world."
Sokka smiled at her. "Yeah, we did, didn't we. We're pretty awesome."
"Darn right we are." Toph snapped back. "So we've earned some time off!"
They talked and joked a while longer, but months of habit had then asleep before it was too late into the night.
The next morning, they changed the dressing on Sokka's forehead. He struggled a little more than he had the first time, but Toph was also a little rougher. Afterwards, Sokka hauled the boat inland, took down the sails, and tied it all up. He made some effort to shelter in from the elements, but suspected that he wouldn't be using this boat again. Toph had cleaned up the campsite, and was waiting impatiently for Sokka to finish.
"For the first time in a long time, we don't have to travel on a boat or fly on a bison. I'm going to show you how we make tracks, earthbending-style." Toph said.
"I've seen you propel yourself with earth, if that's what you mean." Sokka replied.
"Something like that." Toph confirmed. "Stand on this." She bent a solid stone disk, roughly half as wide as Sokka was tall. She pushed it over so it lay flat on the ground.
Sokka stepped up onto the disk, knees bent in apprehension. "Okay, what next?"
Toph bent another disk for herself. "Just keep your balance. We'll start off slow so you can get a feel for it, then speed up."
Toph made a few quick motions and the disks began moving on waves of earth. True to her word, they moved slowly at first, and Sokka had little difficulty staying up. When he felt more confident, he nodded to her, and she increased the speed. They followed this pattern for a while, until they were hurtling across the land so fast the Sokka couldn't keep track of landmarks. He almost asked Toph to slow down, but didn't want to be a spoilsport. They were supposed to be having fun. So he started having fun. He leaned to one side of the disk, causing that edge to catch and pull the whole thing in that direction. Then he tried the same thing on the other side. After playing around with this for a while, he decided to show off.
"Hey, Toph! Check out these sweet moves!" he called to her. He leaned the disk so he swerved away from her, then leaned back and brought his disk within a few feet of hers.
"Are you trying to challenge an earthbender to earth-surfing?" Toph smiled wide. "It's on!" She took a stance and rocketed herself into the air, the disk spinning like a coin beneath her. Then she came down, landing firmly an the disk and straightening it out again.
"Not bad, not bad. Try this on for size!" Sokka yelled. He leaned hard, causing the disk to stand up straight, as he jumped onto the top, and ran with it, causing it to roll. "I guess I'll just roll into town."
Toph laughed. "All right, snoozles, let me show you how it's done." She mimicked Sokka's manoeuvre, then bent another, larger disk in front of her, and leapt to that one. She did this several more times until she was running along a disk taller than a building. "What now?"
Sokka tipped his disk back so it was flat on the earth wave, and steered it towards a small grove of trees. As he approached, he leapt off of the disk and onto one of the younger trees, which flexed under his weight. He ran to the end of it, and used it as a spring board to propel himself into the air.
"Just so you know, I'm sailing majestically through the air right now." Sokka told her, partly to show off, and partly so she could tell where he was, and place the disk accordingly. She didn't.
"Hey, why'd you stop earthbending?! I'm gonna hit the ground! Aaaaaaghh!" Sokka wailed as he plummeted towards the earth. He landed feet first and tried to roll with the momentum, but instead of the bone-breaking impact he was expecting, he hit the softest dirt he had ever felt. He sunk into it immediately, halfway up his chest. He looked up at a grinning Toph.
"What's the big idea?" he demanded.
"I'll take that as a concession of defeat." she replied.
"What?! No way! I was going to nail that last move!" Sokka insisted.
Toph turned around and walked a few steps away. "All right then, I guess you've got everything under control. I'll leave you to your sweet moves."
Sokka scowled playfully. "What do you want from me? I'm just a natural at this stuff. No need to be jealous."
Toph rolled her eyes. "Yeah, right." With a few quick movements, she brought him up out of the dirt.
"Thanks." Sokka said, rubbing his legs.
"Anyway, we've arrived." Toph remarked, pointing to a collapsed cave.
Sokka looked at the rubble, then at the surrounding area. Then he sighed. "Aw man, I remember this place. It's the Cave of Two Lovers."
"You guys told me about this. Didn't you play music to badgermoles and they took you to the other side?" Toph questioned.
Sokka nodded. "Yeah, and Katara and Aang found out that when you put out your torch, there's a path of glowing rocks to lead the way through the mountain."
Toph raised her hands into the air palms up and shook her head, with a sad smile on her face. "Oh man. The problems you had without me around."
"No kidding. We barely scrapped by without you." Sokka agreed. "Although, once you joined up, the last safe haven of the Earth Kingdom was completely taken over by the Fire Nation. So, there is that..."
Toph punched him in the arm, grinning. "Shut up. Let's go." She moved the loose boulders out of the way and began walking towards the entrance of the cavern.
"You want to walk through?" Sokka asked.
Toph didn't turn to face him. "Yeah, so what?"
Sokka shrugged. "Why? You could just earthbend our way through the mountain."
"Are you scared?" Toph asked him.
Sokka sighed. "Well, the first time we went through here I was. We didn't have much light and we were lost and the Fire Nation was attacking us and there were wolfbats and badgermoles and Katara and Aang got separated from us."
Toph turned around, facing him, and crossed her arms. She felt the vibrations running through the ground. She could feel Sokka's calm heartbeat, his even breathing, and she knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that he was telling the truth when he spoke his next words.
"But I'm not scared of anything while you're with me." Sokka said.
Toph lowered her head, trying to disguise her blush as being in thought. She wondered how Sokka could say something so sappy with such a straight face. She'd seen him do it before, but to be on the receiving end of it was quite another thing. Abruptly she became aware that he was approaching her.
"So if you want to walk through, that's fine." he added.
Toph punched him in the arm again. Hard.
"Ow!" Sokka cried out. He made a pouty face at Toph, but she was already walking into the tunnel. Still rubbing his arm, he joined her.