This is the first Tokka drabble I've published… actually the first drabble-drabble I've published. Most of them I think came out pretty lame, so I've been a little too embarrassed to show them. I'm going to start posting again (maybe). So here's the drabble (because who doesn't love a little Tokka fluff?)

"I've never seen Yue look so bright." Aang commented absently as he gazed into the great black expanse of space overhead.

Indeed, the moon was shining vividly against the ravenous sky. Tendrils of light caressed the sea and tinted the clouds surrounding her. Her usual creamy color was overpowered by a pure white, a bulb of warmth suspended above the small camp.

"Maybe she's happy about something." Suki tilted her head to admire the friend she had heard so much about.

"I don't know. She looks beautiful up there, though." Katara remarked dreamily. "Like she belongs up there."

"Hope you guys are enjoying the view." Toph rolled her eyes as she stomped the ground, making a small circular stool for herself. She picked up a large strip of meat with her fingers and shoved it into her mouth indifferently. Aang shuddered.

Katara lowered her eyes. "Sorry, Toph. I wasn't thinking about that—"

Toph gave Katara a look before digging back into her supper.

"My uncle always said that when the moon shines brighter than a dragon's eye, she will grant each person a wish." Zuko commented softly, a hint of sorrow in his voice. His eyes shifted back to his bowl of komodo sausages. "It's just a superstition, though."

"Why don't we try it?" Aang's eyes brightened as he smiled.

"Because I don't think turning into the moon gave Yue any special wish-granting powers." Sokka reasoned. The memory of her transformation played out in his brain and he looked back up at the moon. He could've sworn he saw her gentle smile shimmer through the beams.

"It could be fun anyway. We've all had a long day. Why don't we?" Suki smiled.

"Did Iroh say if we can say our wish out loud?" Aang asked Zuko, who shook his head.

"He didn't specify. I don't see why we can't." The firebender shrugged.

"Why don't you go first then?" Katara suggested good naturedly.

Zuko shook his head violently, a faint blush creeping to his otherwise pale cheeks. "I don't want to say mine. Someone else go."

The small group groaned in encouragement, but the firebender refused.

"Fine, I'll go." Suki leaned back on her palms. "I wish that when I get back to Kyoshi Island they'll promote me to full-time fan instructor. I'm so tired of running errands for the elders and those short lessons with the girls make my day. I want to do that all the time."

The group nodded and smiled in appreciation.

"Now that someone else has gone, it's your turn, Grumpy." Suki nudged Zuko, sending the rest of the Gaang into fit of giggles.

"Alright, alright, fine." Zuko's expression softened into a sad half smile. "I wish that, when I get back to the Fire Nation, Mai will take me back."

"Is that the moody girl who helped us escape from the Boiling Rock?" Suki asked.

"Yeah… she thinks I betrayed her and, in a way, I did. But I love her." His amber eyes pasted themselves to the fire flickering in the center of the circle. "Part of me thinks she'll never forgive me. But another part hopes that her sacrifice is proof enough that she already has. Either way, I want to apologize. And I want to be with her again."

The fire bender looked up at the faces around him illuminated by the soft flames and all of them (except for Toph) held the same dreamy, teary-eyed face. They reminded him of candle wax: soft and melting. The silence was broken by a collective "Awwwwwww!"

"See?! This is why I didn't want to say anything! Aang, you go."

The Avatar wiped his eyes and smiled sheepishly. "Well, my wish is about a girl, too." His gray eyes flickered over to Katara before turning back to his friends. "That when the war ends, we'll be together."

A sweet smile appeared on everyone's face (except, of course, for Toph, who continued to chomp on her meat) and Katara's cheeks brightened gracefully.

"Speaking of Katara, she should go." Sokka smirked at his sister, causing her already pink stained cheeks to glow red.

"How can you be so sure it's her?" Aang shot back defensively.

"Oh please, Twinkletoes, I can practically HEAR Sugar Queen blushing." Toph snorted.

The friends laughed and Aang eventually joined them.

"I wish that our family will get back together and stay together this time." Katara sighed, reflecting on her father's departure only a few days prior. "I miss just being together now more than ever."

Sokka placed his hand encouragingly on Katara's shoulder and she covered it with her own.

"I think that's a good introduction to Sokka's wish, then." Suki said, coaxing the tensing situation.

Sokka leaned back on his hands and looked up at the moon. What did he want? A new boomerang would be nice, but, then again, so would a bushel of meat. Plus, he did miss Hawkie a lot, wherever he was. Oh, and Gran-Gran. Then there were sentimental wishes like being reunited with his father and returning to the Watertribe or winning the war against Ozai. There were tons of things really.

"To be honest, I'm not sure. There are so many things that I can't really pick one."

"We'll come back to you then. Toph, what's your wish?" Katara asked.

Toph set down her now empty bowl, made a hoooork noise, and spit into it before reclining on a little pedestal she made next to her rock stool. Katara's eyebrow twitched in disgust. Pleased with her reaction, Toph continued. "Hmmm… let's see. I have friends, no responsibilities, no parents, awesome earthbending skills, rippling biceps, a perfect personality… I think I'm covered."

Chuckles filled the ring.

"There has to be something else you want." Suki pressed lightly. "A talent? An item? A job?"

"What about that metalbending academy you were telling me about?" Aang suggested.

"Oh, that's going to happen. I don't need to wish for that. But I did just think of something." Toph picked between her toes.

The friends waited patiently.

"I want to learn to draw."

The rocky cavern was filled with laughter.

"What's so funny?" Toph demanded, abandoning her toes.

"You want—" Sokka glanced up at the Earthbender and burst out once again, this time lying on his back and kicking his legs up. "You want… want to learn… how to draw?!"

"Yeah! So what?" Toph's fists dug into her hips. "Everyone else gets to if they want to."

Sokka wiped a tear away from his eye, a large grin still quivering on his face. "Toph, you might be forgetting a little detail."

Toph knew what he meant and her eyebrows furrowed crossly at the reminder. She turned her body to face him directly, closing everyone else out of the conversation. "You mean that I'm blind? Does it matter?"

Sokka laughed breathily. "How are you going to draw something that you haven't seen?"

"I've felt things, okay? I can figure out the shape of things by feeling them. Isn't that enough, Snoozles?"

"Let's say you did learn to draw, Toph. How can you tell if it came out good? Or if it looks anything like it actually does? A blind girl drawing just doesn't make sense. You don't know an apple from an orange. It's stupid, am I right?" Sokka looked at the circle of friends with a half-smile, looking for signs of agreement. Instead he viewed shocked or disappointed expressions. He looked back up at Toph, whom he just noticed had little specks of moisture on her eyelashes.

Tears.

He had made the toughest girl in the world cry and it hit him like a wall of bricks.

The Earthbender got up and ran away from the group, her feet pounding the rocks beneath her feet. Her cream colored shirt disappeared into the night and nothing was left behind except the small crackling of the fire and the faint sound of crickets chirping.

Now he had done it.

A sick, stinging pain struck his heart like an arrow and dragged it down into his stomach, arguing with the recently consumed sausages. What had just happened? He had been poking fun and it turned into an insult. How could he let himself be so stupid?

"Sokka, why did you say that?" Suki asked, sounding hurt herself.

"It was just a wish." Zuko stared off into the trail of footprints he left behind.

The look that killed him the most was Katara's. It was a look of disappointment, a look that clearly said "You should know better".

Sokka, still shaky from the rapid change in the atmosphere, stood and half-walked, half-stumbled after her, frightened by what he had done.

She had known it was a stupid thing to wish, he knew. She knew it was impractical and something she couldn't learn to do. But that was the point. It was a wish. A simple, foolish request that could've been easily overlooked as such. Something she would have liked.

A wish. A little whisper of a desire that he shot down with logic and sense. A faint cry for normality that he drowned out with a reminder of inferiority.

He had made her sound stupid in front of her friends. But worst of all, he made her cry.

Toph, the girl with skin thicker and stronger than earth itself, cry.

Guilt washed over him as he trudged after her steps. Off in the distance he saw her near the edge of a small cliff, one steep enough to hang your feet, but not quite so high as to seriously injure you if you fell. He heard faint sniffing noises and the ache in his heart worsened to a throb.

"You know I was lying." Her voice cut the darkness in half and made him jump. Sokka hid behind the bushes, even though she couldn't see him if she turned around. Who was she talking to?

"You know I don't want to draw, Yue."

Yue? She was talking to the moon?

"Sokka's right. I wouldn't be able to see it anyway. I didn't mean that wish. So can I have another one?"

The tender request melted Sokka's heart. He emerged, light-footed, from the brush. Part of this felt wrong, like he was listening in on her night-time prayers, invading her privacy, but he continued to listen.

"I wish I could see."

Sokka's steps halted. Toph never showed insecurities about her blindess. In fact, she liked to brag about it. How it made her special and heightened her want to scribble on some paper was one thing. To want some spirit to open her eyes for the first time in twelve years was another entirely.

"I want to be able to see how bright you look, too. I want to connect the stars in the sky. I want to see what colors are. I want to see what my friends look like. What I look like."

Sokka was now only a few feet away from her. He was no longer aware of how his legs moved his body forward. He was no longer in control of how lightly he walked. His eyes and ears were trained on the silhouette in front of him, her head bowed in humility and despair, her shoulders hunched in an attempt to hide the sudden exposure of her soul.

"Let me see. Just for a day."

Before Sokka could stop himself, he had sat behind her, his chest aligning with her back, his arms wrapped securely around her stomach. Her muscles tightened a little at the contact, but she showed no signs of surprise. She unleashed the tears she was trying to hold in and stopped trying to control the heaving of her shoulders.

This poor girl he was holding in his arms was just that: a girl. A girl with feelings and dreams and desires like every other girl he had met. She wasn't a rock. She was flesh and blood, unshielded by stone, encapsulated by porcelain skin that could break just as easily as anyone else's.

"I'm so sorry." Sokka murmured into her hair. "So, so, so sorry. For everything."

Toph's sobs eventually quieted, but Sokka did not loosen his hold on her. He simply sat there, letting her feel what it was like to be held.

"Teach me to draw, Sokka."

Her words echoed in his ears and resonated in his brain. How could he do that? He had no paper, no brush, and no ink. What could he do?

Improvise.

Sokka turned her around and sat her on the ground, legs crossed, across from him.

"Hold your finger out."

Toph's hand reached out in front of her, her pointer finger extended towards him. He held her wrist lightly and he felt her arm relax into his palm. He aimed her finger at the dirt.

"What do you want to draw?" He asked.

"Write my name."

Sokka lowered her arm gently until her finger pressed against the ground. He dragged her finger threw the dirt, forming the lines and serifs that formed her name.

"Draw a flower. A daisy."

Sokka uncurled Toph's other fingers and had her rub the ground, wiping her name away. With her finger back in place, he guided it as gingerly as her could, first making a circle, then the pointed arcs that made the petals. For the stem he drew a simple curved line and a sideways tear shape for the leaf branching out of the stem.

"Flower." Sokka grinned softly. He liked his, drawing figures in the dirt with her. He checked her face to see if she was bored or displeased, but instead he found an expression he had never seen on her before. It was a content, relaxed look of peace.

"Hey Sokka?"

"Yeah, Toph?"

"What do you look like?"

Sokka thought of the different ways he could answer this. He could give her a funny response, telling her about rugged, masculine features that described nothing less than a Greek god. But at the same time, the moment was too precious to taint with jocularity. There was a certain purity in the air and he didn't want to disturb it.

"Well, I have brown hair and tan skin. I normally wear blue and gray, like they were in the Watertribe. My hair is mangle most of the time, so I keep it in a ponytail. I'm really thin, but hopefully I'll get more muscle soon. I'm taller than Aang, but shorter than Zuko. Oh, and my eyes are blue. What else do you want to know?"

"What do I look like?"

This was an entirely different question, and for a minute he wasn't sure what the answer was. What did she look like, really? Who was she, this girl who was so strong and abrasive one minute and so vulnerable the next?

"You're beautiful."

It came out before he even knew he said it.

"You have nice pale skin and your eyes are a clear green." He scrambled to calm his heart and recover his voice. "Your hair is black, which is the same color as the sky at night. You're thin and short, but well-built. Your hands and feet are small."

Any other description would sound less than indifferent and Sokka did not want that.

Toph stared at the ground and for a second Sokka grew afraid he had offended her again.

"That doesn't really help me because you just described things I've never seen. I don't know how tall Zuko or Aang are or what beautiful is. I don't even know which color is which."

Sokka mentally slapped himself in the face for being so stupid. Of course that wouldn't help! It was like telling someone who didn't know what a circle was that balls are round!

"Sorry…," he mumbled, feeling sorry for himself and Toph. She couldn't see and he couldn't help her.

A hand gently cupped his cheek and his eyes jolted back up to Toph. Her sightless eyes stared straight into his own, extracting his very soul. There was curiosity in her face and her lips twitched in uncertainty.

For a moment the world stood still. There was only Sokka and Toph, her small hand cradling his jaw. Her palm dragged slowly down the side of his face to his chin. She cupped it, feeling it between her fingers. Her other hand closed around his left forearm, her thumb skimming over the forming muscle.

Shocked by her boldness, Sokka submitted to her wandering hands. They scoped the shape of his face, tangled in his hair, and ran over his forehead. Her finger trailed down the bridge of his nose and swooped back up to his ears. She held both of them in her hands.

Everywhere she touched grew warm. Sokka felt he was being analyzed both outwardly and inwardly, every secret being felt under the pads of her calloused fingers.

Toph's thumbs smoothed down his eyebrows, an act that seemed innocently intimate. He closed his eyes, letting her roam over his eyelids. This was natural to her. This is how she saw the world. It was her only peak into the life he took for granted.

That's when her hand landed on his lips.

Sokka's eyes snapped open as her pinky traced the outline of his lips. Her thumb inspected the valley between his upper and lower lip, feeling the smooth flesh. Sokka puckered them just a little and she gratefully explored the small wet skin. Both her thumbs remained on his lips and her gaze did not waver. She retracted one of her hands and held it to her own lips.

The strange occurrence made Sokka forget about drawing and the cruel remark he had made to her earlier. All there was was her, comparing his lips to her own. Something about it made a shiver of excitement run down Sokka's spine.

"Thank you, Sokka." Toph stood and her warm hands retreated back to her sides. Sokka was alarmingly sad to see them fall back to her sides. There were no hints of sarcasm in her voice, no indications of ridicule or discontent. She was there and she was thankful.

They walked back to the camp together in silence. Sokka glanced at her every few steps and saw a look of concentration on her face. Her cheeks held no blush like his did and she showed no signs of anger. She was merely in thought. All he could think of, however, was the brief, confusing moment during her lip inspection where he wished her lips replaced her hands.

They parted in silence besides a quick glance back at the other. They retreated to their separate tents. Sokka did not enter his until he saw her go into hers. He ducked in and lied down, not bothering to undress or let his hair down. He tossed and turned on his pillow, mulling over the feeling of her curious fingers. They were so cautious and curious. Her blank gaze was enough to send his heart slamming against his chest.

Sokka squeezed his eyes shut and forced the memories out of his mind, eventually succumbing to slumber. His last thought was of how he knew what he would wish for from now on.

Meanwhile, in her own tent, Toph was lying flat on her black, staring at the nothingness she had always seen. Without thinking, her hand went to her lips and felt their shape. As she closed her eyes and surrendered herself to her dream world for the night, she sent a single prayer spiraling up to Yue:

Thank you.

And that's the fic!

In the mood for Tokka fluff tonight I guess. Please comment your thoughts!

Keep Calm, Leaf On.