what's it called
what's it called? Fight the Blues
who's it about? zuko x toph (('cause some nameless authors got me into the pairing. plus i have a thing for au's.))
what is it? Total crazy crack!pairing thing that i did at 12:13 am
genre(s)? Some crazy romantic/humorous/general/dramatic/angsty thing. Yeah, I can never settle on more than two genres.
You'll love it, honestly.
warning- There will be run-on sentences and some swearing and some angst and stuff. There will also be awkward fluff and i'll apologize a million times if zuko or toph are ooc. It's my first avatar fic and it's been a while since I've seen the show.
Fight the Blues
By The Blearing Phoenix
Her blood drifts out into streamlets of crimson, streaking across like paint. Toph hisses quick and drawn as the flame sears her skin, shrivels it black and marred. Her skin is ugly and she hates him, smirking with a red mark of dishonor on his face. She tenses, muscles drawn, contracting and compressing and drawing together before she channels all of her weariness and frustration into her bending. 'Cause the earth is on her feet and she can control it and feel its pulsations--feel it riffling through her calloused feet. Aang whips by her a blur of sunny orange and he's on his ball of air, picking up dry brittle dead leaves, spinning them around like they're his own personal carousel. Toph's got the ex-prince on her mind though as she hurls a boulder at him, feeling the recoil, feeling the wind whip at her and smack her forearms like invisible belts.
I live for this - The girl thinks and she senses Zuko's movement, feels the steady tensing of his muscles as he arches his right leg and relaxes it. Red scorches her and heat wraps around her like a fiery ribbon, licking away and Toph hisses again. Withdrawing back to narrow her pallid eyes she pivots none too gracefully, kneels down, scraping skin--ashen & epidermal and then rises up too quick so that she barely feels the sticky red stuff sloughing off of her leg. Blood's so gooey - and so she pushes this off of her rotary mind and hurls another boulder at him.
"Damn it!" he swears and she laughs coarsely because she's an independent little brat and she doesn't care. She feels triumphant, happiness releasing itself as if it were a caged canary flitting about freely now in her heart. She swells and feels the scorching torridity sweep across her gooseflesh and for once she feels like she's on cloud nine--amazingly. (yeah he'll be gone soon) She hopes and fidgets in her too-big green shorts but then Toph is confident Toph again, sensing an opening where the wind whooshed across Zuko's back as he flipped over to the right. She spins around, twisting her wrist, hearing a faint crack of osseous and then she dismisses it because pain is good for the learning process (she's such a tomboy, yup). The boulder cracks and breaks skin and Zuko's breath tightens--controlled in his immured chest before he lets out all shakily and he smirks confidently.
"You're not gonna win that easily!" and he hurls a fireball at her, whirling with red flames, spinning with ferociousness, living with his wickedness as its very core--its very heart. Toph swings agilely and lands on a ruin, loving the feel of dirt and solidness and then she becomes a spinning little thing--blasting out rocks and dust and air. Zuko arches back, grunts as his tendons and ligaments and sinewy muscles pulls--as his very blood rushes and rages through his tanned skin. Katara's probably berating Sokka for raiding their bagged 'pantry' because Toph picks up the growing cries of the goofy Water Tribe boy and she really love them--she realizes. Aang's tending to Appa now--feeing the gentle furry beast some sort of green shrubbery. . . .Focus now though, 'cause he's got me but I know I won't lose! Still I gotta focus! - Toph feels cruel though because she hurls boulder after boulder and she hears the scraping of feet against stone. Aang and the others are coming—watching observing and chattering and making the air buzz around her with their urgent voices.
"--Come on Toph!"
"--Sokka don't encourage them--it's just a practice fight, we don't want them getting carried away."
"--They won't--whoa that was a huge fireball, did you see that I mean whoa! Hey, be careful where you're aiming that, Fireboy!"
Zuko scowls, Toph can sense the tugging of his lips--bloodless cause he's stretching his skin too tight and he ignores Sokka's sarcasm--his dry wit doesn't cut into the boy's mental armor at all. Toph slams down her hands, palms stinging on the warm ground and then she raises it up swiftly. Feeling her body tense and buckle inward, she steadies herself; Toph breathes in, hears silly Master Yu's voice in her head, and then nods conspiratorially to herself before she lets her trusty rock fly. Zuko swings his head towards her ashen-hued hair tickling his unmarred cheek but he draws in the breath too slowly, marvels at it all dumbfounded, and barely drags his body back as the rock knocks him back and the air comes out of him in a great column of invisible puffs.
Katara fusses and prattles and berates and heals with her cool fingertips brushing against their singed and bruised and mottled skin. Zuko laughs bitterly as he sips some jasmine tea and sees Iroh in his eyes and feels his warmth and he reminds himself that he'll see him soon once this crap is over. Toph sits up, winces as she bends her arm and realizes that the flames had torn and shredded and destroyed cartilage yet she still laughs--throatily and cutely all at once. What a fight . . . I bet Uncle would be impressed' - yet Zuko looks around him at Aang's laughing brown eyes and Sokka who was trying to sneak off some of the recently purchased steaming Sea Slug from the wooden birch bowl. Momo gurgled and tucked himself into Aang's warm billowing orange cloth, feeling safe from the prying curious eyes of the world.
I don't need to force out forgiveness from these people. I burned their homes, their dreams, their hopes . . .,' Zuko's throat burned and felt dry and scratched as if something clawed had attacked it and he felt detached. For some reason Azula's face sprang into his mind like a distorted image and her cheshire grin sprung up with her white pointed canines, glistening, and her amber eyes all flinty. I hate her, I hate dad, and I hate my sister, they're all dishonorable and I can change this. I'm not here to make friends, I'm here to help the Avatar stop this bloodshed,' and with that Zuko excused himself--a mumble because he wasn't used to being this civil and he feels himself get all dizzy. The ecru-hued walls of the room look dark and blurred and everyone's just blobs and then pain shoots up like flaming arrows burning and hot and white and searing and--crap it hurts!
Then they're all scrambling and Zuko laughs, blood spurting from his lips and Toph's eyes are all blank 'till he stupidly remembers that she's blind but she looks almost remorseful--almost. Katara's there though telling Aang to fetch blankets and Sokka's telling Toph that, ". . . your huge ass boulder just really knocked him out cold, man!". Everyone's buzzing and droning and chattering like busy harried bees and Zuko feels annoyed for some odd reason because for once he doesn't like being pampered but the pain's still white-hot shooting up into his veins where it becomes icy and then dulls like a flickering flame. Then he's laid out on a cot and Katara's hands work its magic coolness and her fingertips prod and the tendrils of liquid revive him and slowly seal up his shredded corded muscles. Toph watches for an eternity and her laughs die away in her throat until she collapses back ungracefully ((she's such a darn tomboy)) unto the thin sienna-toned blanket of a mat.
The cushions are too hard and they sort of dig into Zuko's skin and he feels feverish--with sweat beading like little transparent pearls on his waxy skin. His lips are dry and he tastes saltiness on his tongue and he laughs and laughs until he hacks because Zuko swears that this is crazy. The little Earthbender girl practically beat the snot out of him with her hands tied behind her back. Someone with a kind motherly voice shoves slug into his mouth and he mumbles out, "Mom?" and Sokka laughs and Aang says, "You've been getting that a lot Katara." Then Zuko wonders how the hell he even ended up on their side so fast anyway--five weeks ago Katara was threatening to end his destiny and here she was treating him like -- Zuko gulped feeling the foreign thought like a poisonous barb--like a brother.
"Sorry I beat the crap out of you Fireboy but I just can't lose." Toph doesn't even bother knocking as she glides in, tattered robes dragging like snakes across the floor and Zuko feels like there's something mocking in her tone yet he's too tired to trace it.
"Whatever, I'll be fine in a few days. Pfft, you need to brush up anyway, that counterattack was so sloppy," And then there they were criticizing each other's weaknesses and complimenting each other's strengths. Toph kept on picking out the threads of his mat and Zuko felt comforted knowing that the rest of the gang were slumbering in their respective tents. Toph scraped her nails against the earth and looked nowhere but he could sense a tugging and prickling sensation within his heart as if her small fingers were prodding there--urging his disgusting filthy secrets out.
"Your sister's annoying," Toph finally says and Zuko looks up almost widening his eyes before the shock registers within him and sinks back into the corners of his battered body.
"I know," he can see Toph shift in the warm sunlight and her face looks tanned in the darkness and her eyes are alight with something akin to curiosity. Zuko thinks that the Earthbender is like the annoying competitive sister he never had and he wonders if he could've ever had the heart to just beat her up five weeks ago. I never would've she's too much--to much like me - Zuko suddenly feels his tongue getting loose, he lets the water that Katara had prepared for him trickle down the parched column of his throat and he never felt so greedy for the liquid until now. Toph listens intently as he pours out how his mother, Ursa had committed all kinds of treacherous and deceitful things just to keep him alive. How Ursa had been exiled from the kingdom by his own father, Ozai--how Ozai was a power-hungry bastard that had felt that Azula was and always would be superior to Zuko.
"So basically your father's a bastard? That's lovely. I know what it's like though you know--," and Zuko sees it and feels it and breathes in the bitterness in her tone and feels as if he's stepped into her small dirt-caked shoes for fifteen times during his life.
We're like soul mates . . . how ironic and odd. - That was all that Zuko could think about until Toph peeled back the inner layers of her insecurities--how she never felt she was as beautiful as the other maidens in the world because of her blindness, how her parents thought that her severe myopia was a weakness, how she had always tried to defy them because of how strict they were . . . Zuko was shocked at the numerous similarities and he somehow ended up coiled around her, sleeping and enveloping the unloved and yet loved girl with his warmth as she sucked him in with each inhale and drew him out with her exhales. She was powerful and so was he . . .
a/n: more to come soon. yes this will be a series of drabbles. whew, i kinda like how this came out, sorry if they're ooc, suggestions to improve that would be awesome. thanks for reading, if you did!