Black reflection- Sokka and Toph fan fiction. I do not own ATLA or their characters! REVIEW! Also let me know if you find errors!
They say she's standing in front of a mirror, but all Toph can see is a black reflection.
All her life she never really had the curiosity for her appearance, though the echo of interest always made her doubt the image she had plasmid in her head. Because how can you create an image when all her life she hadn't understood the concept of one? Hadn't seen the colors and forms and what she most wanted, others. How can she expect to draw a self-portrait of herself when she can't see those of others?
They can describe but she doesn't know how that is because she doesn't know what they're talking about. But most recently her wonder was growing, just because she was, also, growing. When she was young she promised herself that when the time came she wouldn't let them or let herself come to such low expectation. But when it came she found herself asking.
What do I look like?
She was a young-adult, she was different now and she couldn't withhold the instant pressure that grew because of that. Or how she heard other people complement each other and somehow seemed to forget about her.
Toph decided by much consideration that she was going to bring herself to ask not herself because she knew it was pointless but other even if she didn't know what they were saying, though she was going to try it in another direction. In a sense of words. Pretty and less pretty. She understood both concepts. When something was attractive, like Earthbending, she wanted more and wanted to discover and create. When something was unattractive she found herself prying away, like her parents, she wanted to run to a distance they couldn't reach or hide in places they wouldn't think to search. So, she knew very well what was coming.
But where to start…
Toph sat on a large rock hearing the small currents from the lake reach the shore. Everything was so serine and she felt everything but. This day was wasted; she knew that, wasted with something that couldn't matter to someone, especially a blind one. She was trying to understand something she didn't grasp. She was trying to comprehend the incomprehensible. Trying to see something she didn't have the capability to do. It was all senseless.
She only had the opportunity to only ask two people but even with that she knew what she was doing was brainless.
Her first witness was Katara and when Toph asked her that the only answer she gave was, "You're very pretty, Toph," But the vibrations show doubt. "I thought we were over this." (A/N: in a past episode of ATLA Toph was struggling with the same thing. So she is referring to that)
To which Toph tried to contain herself as she shrugged and said. "I thought so too."
Her second victim was Aang more or less because she found him right after. Aang just looked at her she sensed, taking in the minutes, and Toph growing anxious. Was she really that hideous? But then he said. "Well, Toph you look like Toph to me."
Toph decided not to persuade him to talk further, if she was agonizing she wouldn't want to name what Aang was feeling in that instant. And so she decided to put an end to her nonsense and retire young while she had the mind to.
Toph doesn't know how she got there or when but she was, and maybe it suited her best not to know and not to care either. It suited her the unknown.
"Toph is that you?" asked a voice.
She jumped but didn't turn or such. "If you know it's me why are you asking?"
She heard Sokka hmm. "I guess to confirm you're alive."
Toph knew that he was joking but she didn't feel like laughing, so she just shrugged. "I'm still breathing. And talking. Guess I'm alive."
She heard Sokka take steps toward her, and then felt a presence beside, meaning he had sat next to her. Great, she thought, I just wanted to be alone. "Why did you think you were dead? Why did you guessed you were alive?" there was bit of humor but Toph felt vibrations which indicated otherwise.
"How did you find me?" She answered instead.
"Well," Sokka was considering, "I mean there're so many probabilities in us stumbling in the same place and usually this is where I go to fish to feel at home. But I think… let me see…" Sokka spared some seconds. "You're like a boomerang, I throw you, then somehow in some close future you return back."
Toph pfft. "That is the most incredibly cheesiest line I'd ever heard."
"Yeah," He agreed wistfully. "But I'm just fallowing the led you left me. Though remember boomerangs always come back and that said: Why did you think you were not… alive?"
"How do I look like Sokka?" Toph knew that she had caught him by surprise because she felt him tense.
"Why do you want to know?" Sokka asked.
"Because I'm blind," Toph said bitterly, "if you haven't notice."
"Well," Sokka was considering again. "Your hair is sleek, raven black. Pale skin with pale eyes. Tall but not too tall. You're weight is normal. And what more?"
Toph swallowed as her heart hammered in her chest. "Am… am I… pretty?"
She heard Sokka sigh defeated and she felt weak and deflated. "Toph you were the least person I'd ever thought to ask me such a ridiculous question. It never crossed my mind that you be doing something like this. I mean, my father always told me that the blind always had perspective and that's what I envy about them. About you. You see the truth when most people are blinded by lies. And I wish I could see what my eyes can't. To not be fooled or misplayed. I knew you were blind but not this blind." Sokka hesitated. "But if you most know you're not pretty."
Toph felt like being punched in the stomach but then it was brusquely interrupted as she felt a hand grip her face and turned her into Sokka direction. "You're beautiful. It's sad that with your visibility you could have missed that." He let her go and she turned the other way trying to hide her blush. "Toph? What do I look like?"
Toph let a breath out trying to calm her breathing as she put a finger on her shin trying to appear as if to think this through. "I, mean, your face is just a black reflection but within it I see loyalty and constancy and reliability and devotion and so many things…" Toph smiled in Sokka direction. "But if you most know: you're stunning. It's sad that your lack of visibility couldn't see that."