that i may walk this path again
For Tuna Salad Sonnet. May this Taangage bring you squeedom galore. xD
The world is supposed to be perfect now.
Ozai has been defeated and imprisoned. The Avatar finally has a girlfriend. Zuko is the Fire Lord. Iroh is still drinking tea. Sokka is telling bad jokes about meat and Mai hasn't stopped throwing knives at people she doesn't like and Katara is smiling and Toph is, too.
So everything should be perfect, but it isn't.
Aang isn't sure how long it took for him to realize this. Two years? Maybe three. But suddenly, the days of ignorance and bliss are long gone, and Aang is sixteen, and tired.
Tired. That is the one word that describes him these days. His shoulders sag and his eyelids droop, and once or twice he's fallen asleep in the middle of a meeting—nearly caused an international crisis, too, but for Zuko's intervention.
No one notices, though. Oh, sure, they notice, but do they notice?
Not a chance.
What's worse is that he has to do it all again. The Avatar is not Aang, but Aang is the Avatar. For him, there is no such thing as rest. There are a thousand more lifetimes to greet him when he has worn through this one, after all.
It is not only the weight of the world right now, but the weight of the world in ten thousand other cycles—in ten thousand more of his lives—that rests on his shoulders.
What's worse is that he has to do it all alone. No one else must bear this cursed: not Katara, not Zuko, not Sokka, nor Iroh…just Aang, forevermore. Alone.
The word has never felt so weighty across his lips.
His footsteps are heavier than they have ever been. His airbending has begun to suffer. Katara has no idea what is going on, and she, nor anyone else, can help him.
The Avatar's life is falling apart right in front of him, and he doesn't care.
When he sees Toph for the first time in six months, he nearly faints.
Her face is shocked as he shuffles towards her, each footstep like a new imprint in the ground. "Twinkle Toes," Toph whispers, "You…you're footsteps." She swallows, and her eyes narrow in thought. For a long time, she does not speak.
Then, Toph says, "You look tired."
Aang agrees wearily, "I am."
"Aang," she says, voice thick with determination, "We're going."
There is something akin to a spark the flings itself into the depths of his weak, sputtering heart, for they are not leaving anywhere: instead, they are going. Only Toph would think to say it like that.
But Aang simply shrugs halfheartedly; no room for disagreement here.
She drags him through the crowds of people here to see the Avatar greet the Blind Bandit (although, amazingly, not one pair of eyes strays from the stage where Aang should be giving a speech), and they are gone by nightfall.
At first, Toph tries doing the obvious things. She talks to him bluntly, tells him that acting like this—all defeated and surrendered and weak—just makes him seem like a big, blubbering baby.
When it doesn't do anything whatsoever to changed the bleak, weary expression on his face, Aang can see from the look of horror on her face that Toph has realized how truly different this man—how different he is—from the light footed boy she once knew.
So she starts taking him places—anywhere and everywhere. Places Toph shouldn't know he's visited before—places she shouldn't know existed in the first place, but somehow does. The port where Katara stole the waterbending scroll. Jet's forest. The Northern Air Temple. The herbalist's mountain shop, nestled in the crook of two sweeping mountains. The mountains themselves; tall and majestic and beautiful. (She forces him to climb every single once of them, and refuses to utter one word of encouragement or lift a single finger to help him.)
It isn't until she becomes very, very desperate (because dammit, she growls at him one night, nothing is working) that she thinks to take him to the North Pole. And oh, it almost makes what's left of Aang's heart break, because Toph is trying so, so hard, and it is no secret how much she hates the cold, but she's doing it all for him.
It is not enough to stir Aang from what feels, to him, like a century of what might as well be sleep, but it is enough to cause his eyelashes to flutter. And it is enough to bring about what happens next.
Aang leads her through the icy canals obediently, but even though Toph can no longer sense them, his footsteps are no lighter than they have been for the past four months. About a week into their stay, Toph discovers the existence of the Spirit Oasis.
"Come on," she orders, hesitantly making her way down one path after another. How amusing; the blind leading the self blinded. "It's this way."
"I know how to get there." She looks surprised, and slightly annoyed.
"Well, why didn't you say so?" Toph snaps, shoves him in front of her, and directs him to let her piggy back ride all the way to the Oasis.
When they get there, Toph, in an uncharacteristic show of enjoyment, falls back into the ground with wild laughter falling from her lips. "I miss this place every time I leave it," she comments, patting the grass affectionately.
Aang finds himself with the overwhelming urge to pull her away from the water, as if she is somehow in danger. However, he resists it, and sits down to peer down into the oasis at Tui and La.
The ripples in the pool morph his reflection, and Toph's, when she comes to stand behind him. For a split second, far too short but still long enough, Aang stares down at the water and sees a thousand different faces (and one imparticular) staring back at him, flickering through the cycle as the past Avatars once did inside his own very head.
A thousand different faces; but somehow, each of them is Toph. Her hair color, the shape of her jaw, the size of her nose, her eyes: these are all that have changed.
Her laughter rings in his ears (Toph remains silent), and Aang is inexplicably reminded of another place and time.
Then, he knows what their following destination will be.
"Toph," he says quietly. The earthbender starts, because, somehow, Aang's voice at that moment contains more emotions than any ammount of words he has spoken during their travels. "I think we know where we should go next."
The swamp is the one place in the world that has not changed, Aang thinks to himself as Appa dives down towards the trees. There is no tornado to greet them, this time—only the eerie silence of the swamp.
Appa lands in the water with a splash, and Toph hops down. Her feet sink into the mud beneath the water.
"Why did you want to come here again, Twinkle Toes?" she asks curiously, as Aang leads her towards the center of the swamp.
"It…it makes me feel…hope," Aang answers quietly, because it is true. That laugh of hers made him swell up, filled with such joy and amazement and love that Aang sometimes would find himself cherishing the memory closer to his heart than anything else, even Gyatso, or his first sight of Katara.
Whatever Toph expected, it was not this, not hope. Her eyes go wide, and she falls silent.
When they reach the great tree—the center of the swamp—a chill runs down Aang's spine. It stretches towards the sky with branches outreached, and reminds him of another place and time, when perched on the neck of a giant centipede, he saw the one that he had loved and lost.
And loved again.
Aang glances towards Toph, heart pounding. He knows what he saw…and yet, there is no miraculous understanding of who it is standing in front of him, except that he has met her before.
Could it be that they will meet again as well?
"Toph," he says, voice sounding distant even to him, "You're here, aren't you?"
"Yes," Toph answers immediately. "I am."
"I…I'm so afraid of going it alone," Aang confesses, voice cracking. "There are ten thousand more lifetimes—it's just that—I mean—it's like—it's like…I saved the world once…but I have to keep it saved for the rest of my life, and then do it again for all of eternity. How can I possibly do it alone?" he asks, voice hollow.
A hand closes around his and does not let go. "Who says you'll be doing it alone?"
And all at once, Aang's head begins to spin as his heart lightens by what must be twenty hundred tons. His grey eyes dart over to rest on her face, filled with determination, and do not budge. "You…you won't leave?" he asks hesitantly.
"I won't leave." Toph squeezes his hand tighter than ever before. "I'm here with you—I'm here for you, Twinkle Toes. You already have what it takes…but either way, you're not gonna be doing it alone."
Aang nods. "Thank you," he whispers, because even though Toph has a choice, every time (then and now and forever) she chooses to walk the same path he does; somehow, Aang has the feeling that she has never, nor will she ever, regret it.
"Don't mention it," Toph shrugs. "And don't worry, either." She smiles at him. "Just know that I am most definitely not going anywhere."
"You'll be here?" Aang asks hesitantly, but a warm, safe, strong feeling budding inside of him all the same.
Toph heaves a sigh of exasperation and flicks him on the forehead (because hasn't she already told him this, after all), but assures him just the same, "I'll be here."
Ten thousand years down the line, her answer remains unchanged.
A/N: I LOVE TAANG.