Returns
There's no whoosh of air before Aang's toes touch the ground. He's gotten better with time.
Toph lets him look her over - legs covered in dust to the knees, rat bites all over her hands and feet, lips dry, red flesh peeking through the cracks.
"Wind blow you off course, Twinkletoes?" Toph asks, for old times' sake. She can guess well enough why he's here. Azula, fire-mad, disappearing from her frozen, stone cell. Katara, listening to the water beckoning, going into the ocean. Now Toph, walking without rest for three years, sleeping upright so her feet never leave the ground.
They had been foolish, foolish and blind, not to think there would be a price for perfection. For all of them. The Avatar disappeared, the power found other vessels. Then Aang came back and there was no place anymore for benders like her – one of a kind, when the Avatar must be the strongest.
Toph can see to the edges of the sea, and deep within the earth, feel the pitter-patter of senseless little creatures all around her, the slow flow of rivers of fire under rock. She is earth, near enough, and more and more she feels she could just bend herself, slip into another world from one step to the next.
"I don't need you to save me. I won't let you take away my bending."
"I'm not trying to save you. I need to follow you."
Toph was wrong. It's all about Katara after all.