Title: A Collar of Pearls. Part 1, Chapter 2.
Author: roses_are_a_weed
Disclaimer: Avatar does not belong to me, I'm not pretending it does, and anyway I have no intention of making money from it.
Rating: Mature.
Warnings for this part: Graphic violence.
Warnings for whole story: Crossdressing. References to rape, murder, war crimes, and general unpleasantness.
Pairing(s): Zuko/Sokka.
Proper Summary: During 'The Serpent's Pass' Sokka jumped in the water to save Toph from drowning before Suki could act and from then on everything changes, beginning with them being separated from the group. Heading to Ba Sing Se in the hope of meeting their companions again Toph and especially Sokka find themselves on a strange and uncomfortable journey that leads them somewhere they least expected.
Author's Notes: For those of you who are waiting for Zuko to show up, it's going to be a while. They have to reach Ba Sing Se first and then a couple of other things are going to happen, but he will show up then. Sorry.
Furthermore: Thanks for reading and/or reviewing.

---

He awoke disoriented. Sore. It was dark but not really dark, as rays of light were filtering in cracks between the slabs of rock surrounding him. He sat up carefully, wincing as every part of him screamed in pain, and turned to face Toph, who was curled up around two of the Fire Nation packs. Gingerly he reached out and gently shook her, calling out "Toph, come on, wake up." She murmured a complaint and uncurled slowly, sitting up almost as carefully as he had. When she was upright she sighed and the earth tent disappeared back into the ground, letting proper light in.

It looked to be about noon, some abstract part of his mind thought as he stared at her in horror. There was dried blood covering her right ear, smeared across part of the right-side of her face, staining her neck and the fabric of her clothes. He lurched forward and grabbed her, ignoring her squawking, and gently turned her head to see its point of origin. There was a long gash in her scalp above her right ear, caked over with blood and sand. No wonder her head had been hurting her. He probed it carefully but didn't feel anything move, much to his relief, and it was raised and swollen and not flat or concave so he didn't think her skull was fractured. He didn't think-

"Sokka! Sokka!" she was calling him, shaking him "Sokka! Why you're crying?!" and she just sounded so incredulous it was almost funny. He laughed hoarsely, surprised when something hot and salty splashed into his mouth. Raising his hands to his face he was startled to find that his cheeks were wet with tears.

"Sorry-" he murmured, his voice a barely audible croak "Sorry Toph. I don't know what came over me."

Drying his sore and undoubtedly bruised face carefully he looked over to the packs they'd stolen the night before, grabbing the nearest one and dragging it over to him. He opened the thing carelessly and began searching its contents, removing a fat water skin with a small sound of delight. He passed it over to Toph so she could drink as he continued to search, pulling out the soldiers' rations which he dumped in the space between them. When Toph was finished with the water skin she handed it back to him, letting him take a long needed drink as she picked through the rations. She'd drunk half the thing and he finished it off all too easily; hopefully they'd be others in the other packs.

He took a piece of hard rice cake and some of the dried meat and made himself a tasteless, dry meal that he scoffed as if it was prepared by the finest chef in Ba Sing Se. Fuller and thirst quenched he finally let himself take stock of their situation. They had nothing but the clothes on their backs and whatever was in the soldiers' packs, they were a far way off course to the West- at least a day if not more from the Serpent's Pass (how they'd ended up that far he wasn't sure), they had no way of crossing it if they reached it so their best bet was a ferry from Full Moon Bay- except they had no passports- they were injured, and they'd lost their companions. Not good, not too awful, but not good.

He needed to come up with a plan. He needed to- he was going to throw up. He whirled away and lurched to the side, heaving up the food he'd just eaten, the water he'd just drunk and what felt like a lake full of bile. He was still gagging on nothing long after he'd thrown up the entire contents of his stomach, his bruised side screaming at him, his eyes watering. This was hell, it had to be. Eventually it subsided, leaving him feeling bruised inside and out. He turned back around slowly, ashamed, and almost started up again at the sight of Toph's gore covered form. "Here," she said, holding out another water skin.

He took it from her with shaky hands and lifted it to his lips to drink, using the first mouthful to swill out his mouth and spit, before taking small sips. "You alright now?" she asked him, frowning uncomfortably.

"Yeah," he coughed out, sipping more water and gesturing at the soldiers' packs that were still unopened "Yeah. I'm fine. Hand me those packs."

She directed a long, flat look at him but did as he asked; handing the packs over. He took them and then reached out tentatively for another piece of the rice cake that he nibbled on carefully as he emptied the contents of all the packs onto the ground between them, sorting things into piles of provisions, water, anything else useful. He found the scroll in the last pack he searched, and cringed when he unrolled it to find incredibly detailed, lifelike depictions of them all as well as Zuko and the old man Zuko cared for. Whoever had drawn this was worryingly talented, and the little lists of collected intel written next to the picture of each of them was even more unsettling. He looked from the scroll over to Toph, who was gnawing on a tough bit of dried meat and ignoring him "This isn't good."

"What isn't good?" she asked.

"This," he waved the scroll at her "It's got pictures and descriptions of us, and better than the usual ones."

She frowned "Yeah, so?"

"So," he sighed "we're near the Western Lake that Suki said was being rigidly patrolled by the Fire Nation. The Fire Nation that now has a really good way of identifying us."

"Oh," she didn't sound too impressed "Then shouldn't we be getting out of here?"

He grabbed the two least obviously Fire Nation packs and began to stuff them each with an equal share of the rations and water skins (of which they still had four full ones and another two with some water left in them), before adding the battered map he'd taken from the first soldier's pack to the one he'd take as well as a short dagger. He handed Toph her pack and then shouldered his own, leaving the rest where they lay with the ornate sword he'd stolen the night before. For some reason he just couldn't make himself pick it up again. "Our best bet for meeting up with the others is to head to Ba Sing Se, so we'll head back towards the Serpent's Pass and from there on to Fool Moon Bay," he told her "We'll find some way to get on one of the ferries, even if we have to stow away."

"Well it's not like I have a better plan" she replied, already heading off. That didn't exactly fill him full of confidence, but what could he do.

They trudged along in silence for a while, which he found strangely peaceful. It was a nice day and the dappled sunlight filtering through the leafed canopy overhead started to lull him into a state of relaxation. They walked together through the forest without a path for a couple of hours before they suddenly broke through some underbrush onto a narrow, paved road; it went the way they wanted to go, so without a word they began to follow it, walking easier on the smooth surface. He wasn't sure how long they walked without trouble but all of a sudden Toph stopped "There are people coming from behind us; they're riding those lizards so I think they're from the Fire Nation."

"There they are!" he whirled around at the shout, hands flying to weapons that weren't there, already realising that it was too late as he struggled to get the pack off his back so he could grab the dagger. The three soldiers were already upon them before he brandished it, so all he could really do was jump out of the way as one of them attempted to run him down. Toph knocked the soldier who had rushed him off his lizard with a rock and made a deep crack down the road that unseated another one, her attention already turning to the third. He adjusted his grip on the dagger, wishing that he'd brought the sword even though he hadn't been able to stand the sight of it, and waited for one of the dazed soldiers to rush him. He wasn't exactly sure what he was going to do, he wasn't used to bladed weapons and some visceral part of him didn't like the thought of what would happen if he stabbed one of the men.

Before he was forced to make up his mind a large piece of rock was flying at the soldier, smashing into him and crushing his head. Blood- blood, bone and things he didn't even want to think about rained down around him as he stood there, staring at the headless shell that used to be a man. "Hey! What are you doing?!" he heard Toph yell, which broke him out of his stupor enough for him to register that the other two soldiers were lying on the ground in the same state, and his companion was facing down a little old lady who was just relaxing out of a battle stance.

"Feh" the old woman snarled, spitting on the ground near the corpse closest to her "nothing but a bit of pest-control."

"What-?" he mumbled as it registered that the old woman had killed the soldiers, just like that.

The woman ignored them as she stalked over to the lizards, taking anything the soldiers had left strapped to them before spitting out "Come on, shoo, get out of here" and slapping them on the rump to make them run. He watched, feeling strangely distant, as the lizards bolted and the old woman walked back over to the corpses, staring down at them as if they were nothing, just rubbish. That sick feeling from before returned, strong and undeniable, and the next thing he knew he'd dropped to his knees on the bloody stone and was retching up his guts again.

While he was throwing up he heard the woman state "better clean this up" and felt the earth shake, but even after he'd finished vomiting he couldn't bring himself to look up. After that there was a pause before the old woman spoke again "Look, you can stand down. I'm not going to do anything to you or your friend, it's obvious neither of you are Fire Nation scum. In fact you're the Avatar's companions if I'm right."

"How would you know that?" Toph asked, her voice suspicious.

"Those idiots haven't exactly been subtle about who they don't want hanging around here," the woman replied, sounding disconcertingly non-threatening "been going around flashing those pictures of you, asking questions where it'll get around." There was another pause and then "Shouldn't we do something for your friend? He doesn't look too good."

"He's been like this all day" Toph responded, sounding worried "I don't know what's wrong with him."

"Might be shock," the woman said, sounding concerned "something's obviously happened to you two, you look pretty beat up."

"Mm" Toph murmured, not giving anything away.

"Why don't I bring you back to our camp? We've got food, medicine, more than enough water that you can get cleaned up."

He finally raised his head to see the bodies of the soldiers had disappeared, presumably into the blood stained crack across the road, and Toph still staring the old woman down, but slightly more relaxed than she had been before "Why would you offer that?"

Expressionless, the old woman replied "The Fire Nation Army burned my home, destroyed my business, killed pretty much everyone I had left- and I've watched them rampage across these lands, I've seen them do things that no person with even a shred of honour would even consider. I want them gone, I want Ozai defeated, and as far as I'm concerned the Avatar is the best bet the world has for achieving that. You are companions of the Avatar, so I offer everything I can to help you."

"Okay" he rasped, surprised to hear his own voice "Okay, we'll come back with you." The way he felt right then it wasn't like things could get worse.

---