Disclaimer: I don't own anything that you recognize, they all belong to Bryke, Nickelodeon, and whoever bought rights for that godforsaken movie (Paramount I believe? I don't really remember, I try to keep the thought from my mind.) Lyrics from the amazing band Red Jumpsuit Apparatus.
A/N: This came about in an interesting way. I've been wanting to write it for a while now, but just nothing would come out. And then... I don't know, it just clicked, and I knew how I wanted to write it. God... I hope that this wouldn't happen with snowy!Tokka, but I think that it's an interesting idea. It's just a theory. If you don't get it just PM me or review and I'll explain it to you best I can.
.O.
Take this hate I can't release.
Help me make the blind to see.
Misery loves its company.
It's true, we are
We are destined to fail.
.O.
Shiver
.O.
prologue
He had told her that he would always take care of her, even when she didn't need his help. She was Toph Bei Fong after all, and she didn't need help from anybody, not even the man that she loved most in the world.
She had stepped foot on that snowy tundra, knowing that things weren't going to be easy for her. Knowing that she was going to be blind for the first time in her life.
He had promised her that they would only have a year or two there. He had promised that she would get used to things. He promised that they would be happy in the South Pole, because that was were he was happy, and when he was happy she was happy.
He had never broken a promise to her yet and so she believed him.
But the years stretched out for longer than that. A year turned to five, which then turned to ten, not that the passing of time meant much to her after a while anyway. She never got used to the blindness, to the black that never fractured or cracked. She never saw again.
There was no room for happiness in the frozen South. None at all.
1
It was a blizzard, she had gathered that much from the people outside the tent. They had spoken of it for days; they said that they could see the storm gathering out in the sea that came ever nearer. She could hear them prepare for it.
She didn't know if they were right before or not, but now she was sure. She could hear the way that the wind whistled fiercely, looking for somebody to rip to pieces bit by bit. Sometimes she imagined that she could hear the drifting of each snowflake as it hit the ground; many fell around their tent, but with a blizzard she couldn't tell one flake from another.
When blizzards came the only thing that she wanted to do was to fade away.
2
She heard the crunching of the snow outside, she felt the tent shake with the force of gusts coming from the relentless spirits that called the South Pole home. She heard the low tenor of his voice, but she couldn't understand what he was shouting, and she didn't care.
Unless she listened with all of her might she couldn't comprehend what he was saying. Most of the time she didn't want to listen.
For a moment she felt the fierce arctic squall on her skin and she shivered. It seemed to be the only thing that she could feel these days, the only thing that pierced the wall that she had built with her blindness.
She pulled the skins that he had caught tighter around herself and turned around. She could feel his eyes on her, or at least she sensed them the same way that she had sensed them back when she was on solid ground. Sometimes gazes were piercing enough to get even to her. There was nothing else to look at in here anyway, she knew that much from her few days of exploration around the new tent when he had left her.
She did not want him to look at her. She wanted him to go away. She didn't care if he left her out here to die.
He might as well.
3
Toph knew that he was in the tent with her, Sokka could tell that from the way she drew the animal skins around herself and turned away from him. Even though she didn't speak anymore- except in whispers and only then it was the sharp and broken fragments of the sentences that he remembered she used to be capable of- revulsion and hatred, for him all for him, were clearly being shouted to him.
Sokka hadn't expected things to be like this. He hadn't expected Toph to go insane the way that she was. He hadn't expected her to silently hate him with as much passion as she had once loved him.
Sokka hadn't expected a lot of things. He was the plan guy, always the plan guy, but how were you supposed to plan for something that was so unexpected? This had come out from the darkness of life and had grabbed the both of them.
It was true, this affected them both.Even though Toph was the one that had lost her mind, he didn't want to lose anymore of her. He couldn't bear it.
He remembered a time when he was her best friend, her lover, her favorite person in the world. He liked to remember her as the girl who had laughed at his jokes, the girl that had made him laugh, the girl that could always tell what was a lie and what was the truth.
This was easier than picturing Toph Bei Fong, the Greatest Earthbender in The World, as the fragile and shattered bundle only ten feet from him.
4
Two days had passed, two agonizing and torturous days, and the storm had not let up. Sokka wanted to go out and see how the rest of his tribe was doing, but he knew that trying to go outside would be a futile effort. He would not get very far and would end up doing himself more harm than good. The best that he could do was hope that everyone had enough rations to last a long time, because this storm did not sound like it was going to let up anytime soon.
She had not eaten anything. He knew that when he was away from her she ate because he would often leave her with food that would more often than not be gone when he got back home. Sokka wasn't sure why, but he knew that it probably had something to do with him being there.
"Toph." He said her name. This was the first word that had been shared between the two of them since the storm had begun.
Sometimes, when he knew for sure that she was asleep and would not be waking up anytime soon, he would talk to her. He told her about his day, about how the neighbors were doing and how the building of their ships was going. He told her about Katara and Aang and Zuko and Mai and how they were dealing with their responsibilities.
He pretended that she was listening to him, that she was saving every single word for a later date the way that she used to, the way that everyone in his village did. He pretended that she spoke back to him, that she would give him ideas and help him sort out all of the problems that had been given to him that day.
Sometimes, when he was especially lonely, he would pretend that she was joking with him. He made her tell jokes that she would never actually say in actuality, ones that he would tell her, to which she would roll her eyes and tell him to try again.
It was easier, when she was unconscious, to pretend.
"Toph," he repeated. He got no answer either time and he knew that his effort was a futile one. He had tried many times to get her to respond, but she never did. She just retreated further into herself.
But still he had to try. Sokka was never one to give up, not even on causes that seemed as lost as this one.
"If you're trying to punish me, please, don't hurt yourself in the process."
Silence.
5
Why wouldn't he leave? She kept expecting him to leave, but he never did. Why? He always left. Could he no see, with the eyes that he had taken away with her, that she did not want him with her?
She knew that there was once a time that she had never wanted him to leave her, but her memories were so mottled and broken and foggy that she didn't know what was true and what was imagined.
She was hungry, but she sensed him there and didn't want him to watch her the way that she could no long watch him. Her stomach twisted in on itself and her throat burned from thirst, but she still would not move to state her body's needs.
Her long fingers just dug themselves further into the skins that surrounded her and kept her warm in this godforsaken place. It was the only physical shield that she had.
Once, she had been able to command the earth to cover her. Once, she had been able to protect herself from things that she had seen and not seen. Once, she had been able to feel the sun on her skin and the wind in her hair without her bones freezing and her blood turning slowly to ice.
She could no longer do these things, all thanks to him.
Why? Why wouldn't he just go away?
6
Four days passed, and the storm did not let up. And still she had not eaten. She still had not moved. Sokka had gone through many a South Pole winter, but he had never been through anything like this. This must be a punishment sent down on him from the gods themselves.
He had nothing to distract him from his mad wife. He imagined what the others would be doing right now. They would be all bundled together in warmth, and the mothers might tell stories or sing to pass the time. The fathers would tell jokes, and they would all sleep one on top of the other, the warmth from the other's bodies being the main source of heat.
Sokka was the only exception. He and his wife slept on what felt like the opposite sides of the world. He had forgotten what it felt like to hold her in his arms, to feel her body pressed up against her.
He knew that it was a futile effort, but he still had to try. If she did not eat she would die. Already she was emancipated, the little weight that she had already gone. Her fingers, thickly threaded in the furs of animals, were bony and her skin was not the ivory that he was used to. She looked sickly.
"Toph." She did not responded, and he did not expect her to. "Toph, you have to eat." where he was crouching he could see the black of her hair, the color of her skin. Her eyes were open and empty, as always, and her lips were mouthing the words of songs that only she knew.
Moving towards her slowly, as though he was hunting for food instead of a woman, he gently touched her arm. As he expected, she responded, but not the way that he wanted her to. She always did now when he tried to touch her.
So fast that she blurred she got to her feet and put herself into an earthbending stance. This was a leftover reaction from when she still had earth beneath her feet. She seemed to realize after he did that she could not help herself no matter how badly she wanted to, and she collapsed again, screaming louder than even the wind outside.
The screams soon subsided to sobs, then whimpers, then silence.
Sokka wanted Toph back. Maybe it made him a horrible person, but he wanted to woman that he loved to be with him instead of this empty shell that had just screamed bloody murder because he was trying to keep her from starving herself to death just to spite him. And there was only one way to be able to do that, because he knew from experience that waterbending healing didn't work on the mind.
Even this might not work, but he was willing to try anything at this point.
7
Never had he stayed by her for so long. Back at the beginning of the building of her wall he would stay by her and he cried. But she did not care. She was the indifferent Ba Sing Se and he was just the destructive Fire Nation. She became fully blind from him and his needs.
He eventually left, coming and going at intervals of time that she did not care about. He didn't cry anymore, now he just pleaded. But never, never did she let up. Never did she let him breach her walls without causing him injury. He never got all the way across.
She hate hate hated him. She hoped he knew that.
8
It had been six days. Six days alone with only Toph and his mind for company. He knew what he had to do. He should have done this at the beginning, but he hadn't wanted to give up. He had thought that she would have gotten better eventually. He had hoped that maybe she would have gotten better.
Hope had no place with the insane.
"Toph." No response. There was never a response. There was never going to be a response. He was sure of that now. "Toph, I'm going to take you home. I, I can't watch you be like this anymore. I've been being very selfish, keeping you near me when you've just needed to go back to where you could see."
Three things happened simultaneously as he said this. The bundle that was Toph moved. Hoped flared in his heart. The wind outside died down.
Those must have been the magic words.
Toph turned toward him, her eyes as blank as always, but she smiled grotesquely at him. Sokka wasn't sure if this was a good thing or not. It didn't seem like it. Dread and fear, as cold as the snow outside, settled into his heart, nipping the spring of hope in his heart that had been threatening to bloom.
9
Just needed to go back to where you could see. I'm going to take you home.
For some reason those words pierced her armor. Those were the phrases that his voice spoke, the things that he promised her. He had promised her things like this before, but he never meant it. But this time there was something very... other in his voice.
She remembered a time when she knew what every tone in his voice meant, but she had long ago let go of that ability, had thrown it away with both hands because she had no desire to know anything about him.
He expected her to see again. For the first time in years she could feel something like laughter bubbling up in her stomach.
Didn't he know that he had taken her sight away from her, and that nothing was going to give it back to her?
10
Everything seemed to be okay around the village. One tent had caved in because of the weight of the snow, but it had been empty because the inhabitant, a single young man, had stayed with his parents and his two sisters instead of being alone, so no one was harmed.
They were going to have to have a hunting expedition soon, the storm had taken most of their rations, too.
He would have to leave with Toph at then end of the week, she wouldn't last much longer. So that meant that the hunting trip would have to be tomorrow. As Sokka walked back to their tent he began thinking and planning, the critical part of his brain going into over time.
He opened the flap of his tent, expecting to see Toph lying there as usual and he was prepared for the sight to open a fresh wound on his already mangled heart as usual.
But the only thing there was the strip of jerky that he had left for her this morning.
Toph never ever left the tent though. Heart racing he closed the flap and sat back on his heels. Where could she be? No one had mentioned to him that they had seen her, and they definitely would have told him that.
Sokka scanned the horizon, trying to find the darkest head in the village. His gaze settled on a dark dot in the distance, and as soon as he realized that this was going to be his best bet he went on, soon finding small footsteps in the freshly settled snow.
He practically ran toward her, but with every step he took she seemed to get farther and farther away, until she finally stopped and they were within ten yards of each other. "Toph." She was standing near the edge of a cliff, her back to him. His mind was not comprehending what she was planning on doing. His brain would not let him think of what she was going to do.
"Toph, step away from there. Please." His voice was soft and pleading. She seemed to hear him, and she turned toward him. Even though she was born blind and had not 'seen' in a very long time, she seemed to be looking straight at his soul. Her eyes met his, even if they didn't know where his were.
She smiled at him, her face lighting up into a look of ecstacy, and she fell.
He screamed her name and had a half mind to jump after her, but his sanity, as well as his men who had followed him over there, stopped him.
Toph had finally found the perfect way to get back at him.
epilogue
He buried her in the Earth Kingdom, and he closed his eyes as they lowered her into the ground.
The cherry blossoms were blooming all around the Bei Fong Estate, and her parents barely let him attend the services. You were supposed to protect her Toph's parents had screamed at him. We trusted you.
Aang, using his position as the All Powerful Avatar to help him, was the one that finally convinced them to allow him in on her funeral. Sokka was allowed nothing more than to watch her get covered with dirt, they did not want to mourn with him otherwise.
He watched the way that her pale body looked getting covered with the rich black soil, her pale skin contrasting starkly with the dirt that she loved so much. She looked even smaller than usual in death, and she looked happier than he had seen her in years.
The others had no idea that she had killed herself, and he couldn't bring himself to tell them that Toph Bei Fong, who at one time was the strongest of them all, had caused her own death. Nor did he tell them how big his own part was in it.
Sokka had told her that he would help her even when she didn't need his help.
He lied.
Fin.