...I guess this is completely non-chronological, but I felt like writing Toph's view of the prison break. So I did.
It's just another little scenelet. Maybe that was my plan all along. As Sokka's mind is broken, so too is the flow of the fic, or something like that. XD
Next up, I might actually see if I can play with Sokka's viewpoint. Maybe. If I stop feeling lazy.
Toph frowns in concentration as she rips apart another wall in this hellhole the Fire Nation calls a prison. This is the last wall; beyond it lies Sokka, her feet tell her. Katara and Aang, behind her, deal with guards as the wall comes down.
On Toph's first step into the cell, she can tell something is wrong; there's no cheerful greeting, no jokes about how he was just about to break out from Sokka. He doesn't even move; it's almost like he's asleep, but without even the small shifts and movements that would bring. If not for the heartbeat and breathing, he could be dead. Toph has never longed more for sight, nor been more grateful she cannot see, as she walks to him and kneels by his side. He feels wrong, broken somehow, and she doesn't think she wants to know how it translates.
"Hey, you. This is no time for a cosy nap," she hisses at him, but he still doesn't respond, not even to her half shouted "HEY, wake up!"
The fighting dies behind her, and Katara also enters the tiny room. "Toph? Have you got him? It's too dark in here to see," she says.
"Yeah, he's here. Hold on," Toph replies, and the floor rises up under Sokka and carries him into the hallway. She can tell when he's reached a patch of light. Katara tenses up as she sees her brother, and in that one instinctive moment the blind girl can feel horror and anger and guilt, and she feels guilty too. He hadn't wanted to go into that town, and it was pure bad luck that found a whole legion of soldiers in the town also; soldiers with their names and pictures and the offer of a reward driving them.
She loses track of Sokka, then, and she panics in the brief moment before Aang mentions, softly, that he has Sokka and they can go now.
Toph stays at the back as they leave, and as she passes she destroys as much of the building as she can. Fire Nation soldiers call for help, trapped in tiny cells of rubble, but Toph is too angry to think of it as anything but a fitting revenge. She leaves as she arrived; carried by her rage.
It takes Katara no time at all to heal Sokka up, once they stop for the night, but even then Sokka is still. His mind is somewhere else entirely, and what should have been a triumphant rescue is instead a nightmare of hopes and lurking fears. Toph doesn't sleep at all, that first night; all of the right bodies are there, but it still feels like someone is missing and the contradiction rattles her earth sense and keeps her awake.
The week goes slowly; no-one can sleep and it shows. Toph can't lose the urge to shake Sokka until he wakes up, Katara is snappy and worried, and even Aang's patience seems to be tested. Toph takes to telling Sokka that this is all his fault, in the hopes he'll snap back and tell her she can't blame him for everything.
It's both disappointing and worrying when Sokka wakes up in the middle of a diatribe and, rather than yell back, he shifts backwards into Appa and apologises, in a mumble.
This isn't Sokka, thinks Toph. This is some Water Tribe kid who feels kinda like Sokka, but isn't.
It's surprising how much the thought hurts.