She didn't know how, but she was the last one left.

It had taken longer, much longer than she expected, but her friends had finally left her behind. For the first time since her childhood, she was alone. Toph, the mighty inventor of metal bending, teacher of multiple Avatars, and genuine badass, couldn't hold back her tears.

First, it was Aang. Her goofy, fun-loving friend was the first to go. The crafty chrome dome had known it was coming, but he still refused to warn anybody. At the very end, he said that it was meant to help everybody just enjoy his last few weeks, but it only made it hurt more. Twinkletoes, the strange man-child that he was, never even got to play with his grandkids.

Aang, the energetic, life-loving of them all, had been the first to die.

Toph thought back, to the weary advice that Iroh had given her in the Spirit World. "There comes a time when life stops giving you things and starts taking them away. The only way to move forward is to accept things as they are, and create your own happiness."

At the time, Toph had laughed at the old geezer, her gulps of spirit tea doing little to hide her obvious denial. Still, it was Iroh. Uncle Iroh. She did her best to take the advice to heart. But it wasn't the advice that finally began the healing process. It was when she first met the next Avatar. Korra. The brat was cocky and obnoxious, much closer in personality to Toph than her predecessor, but there was just something about her. Her heartbeat. Her idle actions. The way she looked in her rare moments of submission. Toph could just feel Aang in her presence. That feeling, that awareness, was enough to help her begin to move on.

But sometimes, life doesn't let you move on. Just a few short days after her realization about Korra, like threw Toph a haymaker.

How the world could take Sokka from her in such a, such a bullshit way, she would never find out. Their relationship was complex, far too complicated for Toph's liking, but she had never been closer to another person. She swore to protect him, no matter what, but she simply couldn't. She couldn't do it.

Images flooded through her head, almost like a play being acted out in front of her. Sparky Sparky Boom Lady had cut the two of them off from the rest of the group. The crazy waterbender and Zaheer were after the Avatar, and the combustion bender shifted her focus to Katara, Zuko, and the White Lotus guards. It was just Toph, Sokka, and the Lava Bender. All it took was one attack.

Toph, the greatest Earthbender in the history of the world, inventor of Metal Bending, teacher of the Avatar, could do nothing but dodge the lava bullets flying toward them. She was lucky. She could feel them coursing through the air, their earthen roots just enough to track them with her bending. Sokka was not as lucky. She felt Sokka go down, and her knees gave out on her, she collapsed to the ground, a weeping mess. The Lavabender stopped his attack, and moved in for the easy kill, but was cut off by none other than Aang's son. Turns out, Airbenders weren't done saving her quite yet. But it was too late for Sokka. His daughter's boyfriend was simply too late.

Toph could hardly remember the next few years. She sailed through, feeling like a kite in the wind, just letting life wash over her. Without her support, her daughters searched for other support. One turned to the law while the other fell right through it. She quit her job and left Republic City, planning to let the rest of her life wither away.

Like so many others, she turned to the bottle. One night, she tried to drink herself to death. She should've drunken herself to death. But, in her drunken stupor, she saw Aang and Iroh, simply shaking their heads at her. To this day, she doesn't know whether that was just her imagination or whether some spiritual shenanigans were going down, but she put down the bottle of sake. The next morning, she woke up to Katara and Zuko shaking her awake. The three sat there all day, just talking. They spoke about everything, from their kids to the deaths that had torn them apart. And although Toph would never admit it to another soul, it was Katara's guilt trip that tore her out of the funk that she was stuck in. Katara hadn't just lost Sokka and Aang. She had lost her brother and her husband, the only family she had left. She told Toph to quit it with her woe-is-me attitude, and just get up off her ass and go. So she did.

After they parted ways, Toph traveled back to the place where everything started. The Swamp. It became her home. From there, she could monitor everything that mattered to her. The combination of her earthbending and the deep spiritual powers of the Swamp, she could watch the world like she never could before. It was almost like she traded a lifetime of eyesight for a couple decades of true sight.

The Kuvira incident brought her out of the Swamp for a bit, but in the end, she always came back. It was truly her home now. And, standing in this melancholy field, she missed it more than anything.

When Zuko died a few years later, she came to a new realization. Her friends had all lived their perfect lives. No, not every moment was perfect, but as a whole there was little that any of them would change. They all died happy and content. So, any sadness on her part was purely selfish.

They were ready to move on. They truly were. She was really only sad because Toph would miss them. She would miss going on their adventures. She would miss the bickering, the jokes, the awkward moments, and their comradery. But that was all on her. And she could handle it. She was a genuine badass, after all.

So here she was, at the Royal Funeral of the former Fire Lord, the most beloved leader in the nation's tumultuous history, and she was the only one in tears. She felt the pity of the crowd around her, and an undeniable rage began to rush through her chest, but a hand on her shoulder stopped her. The hand held no weight, but she recognized it all the same.

"Thank you, Uncle."

A month later, the same hand guided into the Spirit World, helping her through the process of meditating into the Spirit World. Just like Iroh, she would abandon her body, and explore the Spirit World for eternity. She was still the same grumpy, crotchety old woman that she had been since she was 8 years old, but she was at peace. It was time for a new adventure. Just like her friends had been, she was content with her life. And she was sure as hell gonna go out on her own terms. It was finally time to move on.

(A/N) Was trying to work on my other stories, but I just couldn't come up with anything. This idea popped into my head, and I ran with it. First ever one-shot so lemme know what you guys think. It has a distinct lack of snark compared to my other writing, but I still like it. Hope you enjoyed!