A/N: Haha, I copy and pasted this from an email I sent to myself because I wrote this on my phone a long time ago, rediscovered it, and thought I would post it. Something went wrong in the process of copying and pasting it from the email to doc manager, and the story was unreadable, so I deleted it, fixed it, and reposted. I realize now I could have just updated the chapter, so I apologize if you are following me as an author and got two notifications for the same story.
Anyway, I know the idea of Toph and Sokka discussing colors has been done a million times before, but I was sick of it always being about how Toph was 'green'. I felt that just because it's the color of her clothes doesn't necessarily mean that color perfectly describes her. In fact I thought it more accurately described her role in the series, since green represents earth and birth/rebirth and she was the birth, or beginning of season 2. But to me it doesn't completely match her personality. I picked my favorite color at the time, purple. It's sort of embarrassing, but at least I justified my choice in the story. And looking back I think it was a good choice. Feel free to write if you agree or disagree, I'd love to hear your opinion! Hope you enjoy!
When a person was asleep, they completely receded into their neutral self. They became unaware of their current state, letting consciousness slip away from them for the few hours of darkness that held the earth.
And once they had fallen into this spell, they dreamt. Their dreams were a reflection of themselves as a whole, without common sense to bind them to any particular reality. It was their own reality, one that was unique to the individual, that disregarded the basic principles of personal life.
Yet, one only dreamt of things within the bounds of their vast memories and knowledge. Hundreds of thousands of familiar images and ideas that went through a person's mind, all while they were in a supposed state of relaxation.
For a blind person, this was no different. Images, nonetheless, never appeared in their dreams, but rather the purest experience of being alive. Of sounds, of smells, of feelings that were not distracted by the attractiveness of something other than human self.
Toph Beifong, being blind herself, was the very definition of awareness when she was awake. Stubborn as rock, she lived her life with purpose and dreamt of her own selfishness. She was bitter not at her disability but rather at the way others perceived it.
They often thought what it might be like to be blind, and rarely came to the proper conclusion despite their best ability. It was impossible to imagine such a reality that you had never been exposed to much more than the idea of; for they could close their eyes for the rest of their life and still remember what the color red looked like.
Her world was not black; it was simply the absence of color, and as horrible as it sounded to others those closest to her knew that she colored life in her own way. Perhaps one could say that certain people brought certain colors into her life, and she loved all of them just as they loved her.
But her favorite color of all was named Sokka.
And she did dream about him, although rarely in a literal sense. Of course, being who she was, she was no less than mortified at the thought of anyone discovering such a foolish and unlikely wish.
Sokka, so he claimed, was described by no single color based on its properties but whatever color happened to be what she thought may best represent a friend.
Given that she knew only the names of such colors, she picked blue, simply because it sounded funny to her, and more than anything her friends were what made her laugh.
"Good choice," he'd said, "Blue just happens to be my 2nd favorite color."
"What's the first?" She asked in response.
"Green, in fact." He replied. "Blue reminds me of my home, which I hold close to my heart... But green, it reminds me of the possibility of a new one."
Toph thought that those were very wise words, and secretly she was quite happy when Katara informed her that she'd been clad in green for nearly her entire life.
But if blue was to represent a friend, she thought, it was foolish of her to want more than friendship from a boy who called himself blue.
"If you're blue, what am I?" She'd asked him one day as they walked together to the market.
"Hmm..." He pondered, "I'd say... You're purple."
She'd stopped in her tracks right there, fully expecting that he'd have said green. "What?! Purple?" She'd never heard that one. "That sounds so stupid! I don't want to be purple."
"Too bad!" He exclaimed. "There's no re-dos. Even if I could change it, I wouldn't. It's situationally hilarious."
"Fine." She grumbled, beginning to walk again. "What's purple?"
"It's kind of like a mixture of red and blue. Not my favorite."
With this new information, Toph's fists clenched with frustration. It was bad enough that she was supposedly a color with such a dumb name, but he didn't even particularly like her!
"Not mine, either." She decided. "Why am I purple? Why can't I be green?"
"Just because you wear green doesn't mean that's what you are, Toph. Purple is supposed to represent some pretty fru-fru things, but just hear me out, okay?"
"Okay." She grudgingly agreed.
"Purple is a color very... difficult to obtain. You rarely see it. That's why, I think, a lot of people think of purple as a color that only the privileged can wear. And in a way, that's exactly what you're like. You're not the kind of person that you can find anywhere, you're unique without losing the benefit of consistency. You're annoyingly stubborn. And, I'll be honest, do you really think that the first day I met you I expected to become your best friend? There was no chance of that thought running through my head on that day, considering... Haha, never mind." He paused, smiling to himself at the memory. "My point is, yes, you are very green. And I'm always going to think of you as a green kind of person. You were a new chapter in the story. But that's over now, and it's easier to see these other parts of yourself without having the pressure of war on our shoulders."
She was silent for a moment in order to take in his words, eventually replying with a simple, "Alright. I guess that's... Mildly acceptable."
"You have no idea what I'm talking about, do you?" He asked after a short break in conversation.
"Nope." She replied flatly.
He laughed. "That's fine by me, because neither do I."