Storyteller

Zuko makes a vain attempt to connect. Toph makes fun of him.

xxxxx

It wasn't often that Zuko slept inside the circle of light their tiny fire provided. He didn't like the feelings of familiarity such an act usually brought about. These were people he was supposed to hate; people who were supposed to be his enemies: two members of one of the decimated Water Tribes, and an Earth Kingdom girl whose country was currently being invaded by his own. Sleeping amongst them, sound as a baby, was the one the one person he should have been stopping at nothing to destroy.

Instead, he was leading them into his homeland to help them usurp and probably kill his father.

Enemies and traitors, working together… Just like Azula had said.

The stars gave him comfort. They always had. There was something in their ordered timelessness that calmed him; something in the way they kept their silent watch, ever the same from season to season, in an endless cycle, that lent him a bit a long-forgotten peace. You couldn't see them so well in the firelight, and they were better companions than his current acquaintances anyhow.

The grass was soft, if a bit wet. The day had been hot, but the night was cooling quickly and was almost bearable without boots and tunic. There was a breeze, but the wind was too warm to lend any real relief. Sleep was not coming easy.

A bit of movement by the fire caught his eye, and Zuko was almost certain he had heard thunder – but then again, he hadn't really heard it: he had felt it.

A small body, the smallest in their group, stood up on shaking, sleepy legs and stumbled the twenty yards to Zuko's side, where she sat down heavily in the grass and yawned.

"It's not your watch yet," Zuko said lowly, sitting up and glancing at Toph as she continued to yawn and rubbed the sleep from her unseeing eyes.

"I know that," she responded slowly.

"You should try to sleep."

Her brows drew down – it seemed she liked being told what to do about as much as he did, and took it about half as well – and she muttered a quick, "shut up," before yawning again and stretching her arms above her head.

"I can't sleep," she volunteered, when the silence had grown uncomfortable.

"You were just sleeping," Zuko countered irately, annoyed that his self-imposed solitary confinement had been invaded.

"Well, I'm awake now," she responded tartly, "and I can't get back to sleep."

Zuko sighed, and shot her a dirty look. He suddenly remembered why he wasn't fond of either girls or children.

"You haven't even tried."

She looked up at him with her filmy eyes – odd, because she seemed to be looking at something deeper than his face – and asked easily, "Didn't I tell you to shut up?"

Zuko, in an uncharacteristically mature gesture, decided the fight wasn't worth picking. With only minimal grumbling, he laid back and returned his gaze to the stars.

Another silence stretched on, broken only by the humming of the night insects and Toph's toes digging in the grass. From the corner of his eye, Zuko watched as she turned her head from side to side with very slow, deliberate motions. She continued this strange act for a few long moments, her toes still buried in the dirt beneath the grass, and Zuko suddenly realized she was using her ears and he used his eyes – that she turned her head to listen to something he would have looked at. He wondered if the wind in the trees made the spidery branches any clearer to her.

"What are you looking at?" she asked suddenly, her tone one of harmless curiosity.

For a moment, he feared she had somehow known he was watching her, but then realized there was no possible way she could have discovered such a thing.

"You keep… tilting your chin at something," she continued. "I was just… well, there's nothing moving around out here, so what are you watching?"

He sat up again, and sent the girl a searching look. Toph wasn't usually quite so nosy. He wondered, fleetingly, if she was trying to get her mind off of something unpleasant.

"The stars," he finally answered, and the frown that came to her face was so tiny it was barely noticeable.

She shrugged when she realized what she had given away, and flopped backwards to lie beside him. After a few tense moments spent with her face turned towards to sky, she looked at him and said, "For some reason, I'm not really enjoying this."

"They're beautiful," Zuko explained in their defense. "And peaceful. Like tiny points of light. If you draw lines, they even make pictures."

"Pictures," Toph murmured dryly, nodding. "Yeah, I totally get why you're so entranced. Who'd have thought? Pictures..."

"You asked," Zuko responded in clipped tones.

Toph snickered, and said, "You're the one who got all defensive. They're just stars. How interesting could little points of light be, anyways?"

"They're more than little points of light," Zuko retorted. "They're stars! They've got lives, and history. They've got stories."

"Any good ones?" she asked when it seemed he was done.

"Mostly love stories," he said with a shrug. "Adultery, deception, unrequited affections and the like."

She made a sour face that melted into a smile that was just the tiniest bit too innocent, and said, "Tell me one."

Zuko's witty reply, which was supposed to deny her request and shoo her away, came out sounding something like a cross between a clearing throat and a word that rhymed with "ugh."

He coughed, she smirked, and he began.

"Off to the North – you can just see them coming up over the trees now – there's a group of stars in the shape of a handled cup."

"Like a dipper?" Toph interrupted, head turning north, though how she had known the direction he couldn't have ventured a guess.

"Yes," he continued, "like a dipper. Cups represent wisdom, so these seven stars are called the Sages. There's a single star just below them, another slightly to the left, and way off to the West," her head turned, "there's a group of six stars called the Sisters. A long time ago, there were seven sages, and each was married to one of the beautiful sisters."

"I thought there were only six sisters," she interrupted again.

Zuko ignored her, and pressed on.

"One night, the sages sent up a great offering to Agni, and the Lord of Fire was so pleased that he wanted to honor the sages by gracing them with his presence, but while he was in their midst he caught sight of their seven beautiful wives and vowed to claim each as his own."

Toph snorted, but Zuko plowed on. Iroh had shared this story with him on a dark night many years ago, and though Zuko would never admit it aloud, there wasn't much his uncle said that he had ever forgotten.

"Now living off to the West there was a sorceress who had fallen in love with the Fire God, and when she knew he desired the sisters she called to them. The younger sisters were weak, and answered, but the oldest couldn't be swayed to leave her husband's side. So the sorceress stole the faces of the six sisters, and went to the Fire Lord. Believing he had charmed the younger sisters, and counting them as more than enough even without their oldest sibling, he quickly took them into his bed."

He stopped, and glanced at her, wondering if girls her age usually knew what such euphemisms meant. The pause caught her attention, and she shifted a little, pulling her knees up against her chest and laying her arms across them.

"Why'd you stop?" she asked, resting her chin on her folded arms.

Suddenly Zuko felt very uncomfortable. He searched for a way out of the tiny corner he had backed himself into, but could find none – he knew she wouldn't let the pause pass, and he wasn't about to explain.

"I was just wondering if… if you were able to follow… did your mom ever- what I mean is…"

When he had left four consecutive sentences unfinished, he decided a new tactic was needed and began again with, "Out in the eastern sky, there's a group of stars that makes a picture of –"

"Wait a minute!" Toph protested so loudly that Zuko hushed her. The last thing he wanted was a lecture from Katara about why sex was inappropriate subject matter for a twelve year-old girl. He'd had a lecture the other day about swearing.

"What about Agni and the sorceress?" she pressed, leaning forward. "What happened to the sisters?"

A way to finish the story came to Zuko, and it was so simple that he could have kicked himself for not thinking of it sooner.

"The Fire Lord married the sisters," he said stiffly. "And from the six of them he fathered a child. Rumors spread that the sisters had been unfaithful to their husbands, so they fled their marriages. That's why there's one star left by the Sages."

After a pause, Zuko concluded, "The end."

"Hmm," Toph mused, leaning back on her hands. "You know, that story really lost steam near the end. Probably because of that part where you didn't say anything. You're an awful story teller, in case no one's told you."

Zuko grumbled, and then sat up again and asked, "Now can you go back to bed?"

Toph nodded, and lay back in the grass.

"Can you go to sleep by the fire?" Zuko asked, when she hadn't moved for some time.

She shook her head, and closed her eyes. Then she said, "Sokka snores."

And that was the end of it.

Zuko made a small noise of understanding, a slight intake of breath through the nose, and stretched out on his back, arms pillowing his head.

When he was awakened a few hours later, it was not by the sun's rays burning through his eyelids, but to Katara's annoyed tone, asking if she could have a word with him away from the others. He rubbed the sleep from his eyes, and glanced around to the campfire, where Toph sat finishing her breakfast. She shot him a sunny smile - though how she could tell her was looking was beyond him - and then gave him a thumb's up.

Zuko groaned.

xxxxx

AN: So this made me laugh. It's rather plain, but I enjoyed writing it so hopefully everyone else will enjoy reading it. I think I'm having trouble getting Zuko down in writing. How'm I doing, folks?