Commentary: And here's a longer chapter! Also, "reduced to factory settings" - man, Crossy, I laughed forever. Thank you! =)

POT CALLING KETTLE

Chapter Three

"What?" Sokka stared at his best friend and her proffered hand. Behind him Katara whisked into the tent—the flaps scuttered, and her fingers fell in a clench over his shoulder. "What did you say?" he persisted.

Toph frowned. Angling her face up toward him, she repeated, "Puh-leazed to meetchu." Next she drew back her hand and jerked its thumb in Sokka's general direction. Leaning closer to Aang, she stage-whispered, "Is this guy slow?"

"Sokka," Katara urged. "Sokka, we need to talk—"

Aang smiled—a sad, stretched kind of smile—and replied, "No, Toph. He's pretty smart."

"What?" Sokka tried saying it again. It came out a whisper this time, weak, thin. Toph's frown expanded like a crack in a plate; Aang winced, and Katara's fingers tightened enough that her nails bit into his shoulder through his shirt. "What—what's going on?"

"She doesn't remember us." Katara stepped around Sokka and took a seat on the tent's dirt floor on Toph's free side. She touched the Earthbender's knee. With a roll of her glazed eyes Toph permitted the attention, and Katara went on, "Toph, how old are you?"

"Are we really doing this again?" The bruised woman dug a finger into her ear resignedly.

"Yes. Answer, please."

"I'm nineteen. My birthday is soon." As Katara opened her mouth to put forth another query, Toph shook her head and continued, "My name is Toph Bei Fong. I'm from Gaoling. I'm blind but not really because my feet, hey, they're awesome. It's fall. I'm fighting some crazy Fire Nation rebels." She paused. Lips pursed, she finished, "…yeah."

Katara's hand moved in an encouraging pat and Sokka, silent, horrified, found himself taking a seat. "What's my name?" asked the tribeswoman.

Toph smirked. "You're Katara. Apparently I call you Sugar Queen. Fitting," she tacked on in a mumble. "He's Aang, or Twinkletoes"—she stabbed the air nearby the Avatar's collar—"and he's important. He saved the world, or so I've been told. And…"

She looked at Sokka, or what passed for looking. The corner of her mouth twitched and his heart leapt with it, but then she flicked a bit of ear wax at him. "…and that's Sokka," she sighed, "the guy whose ass I singlehandedly saved from getting burned to a crisp." She added, "You're welcome."

Rounding on Katara, Sokka begged, "Fix her."

"I tried!" His sister flung her hands high. "And I'll keep trying, don't think for a second I won't, but I'm not a miracle-worker here—"

"You brought Aang"—Sokka forced this through clenched teeth—"back from the dead."

"Whoa, really?" That was Toph. She prodded Aang's stomach none too gently and wondered, "So are you, what, a zombie now? Do you eat brains?"

"Uh, I'm a vegetarian."

"…wow. Wow. Man, I am so sorry," Toph said, with feeling.

"I don't have any of that special water from the Spirit Oasis anymore, remember?" Katara scowled. "I've done what I can—I mean, I put her skull back together—"

"Still hurts like hell, by the way," the Earthbender put in helpfully.

"—and I also woke her up, which for a while didn't look like it was going to happen at all, so just…" Near the end of the tirade Katara's voice wobbled and her chin followed suit. Jerking her face away from her onlookers, she swallowed and murmured hoarsely, "I'm sorry, okay? I'm so, so sorry, Toph—"

"Whoa, no, stop!" Toph swatted at the tribeswoman. "Don't cry, don't, I hate it when people cry—I remember that, see?" She forced a grin. "It's okay. It's really okay. I'm fine. …all right, I guess I'm not fine, but I feel, you know, functional, so…"

She trailed off. There was an uncomfortable quiet wherein the lantern swung and squeaked on its hook, Katara huffed half-sobs into the sleeve of her tunic, Aang bit his lip, Toph hung her head, and Sokka tried desperately not to cry. He hadn't been so tempted to shed tears for anyone or anything in almost a fistful of years, but the idea of his best friend not being aware that she was his best friend—it dug knives in him. Heat prickled at the corners of his eyes.

"What's the last thing you remember?" he found himself asking. "You know how old you are, but you've been with us—with all of us since you were, geez, since you were twelve, Toph. Is that all just a big… blank, uh, slate?"

Aang cracked a smile. Katara sniffled appreciatively, and Toph laughed, short and sharp, before she admitted, "No, I guess not. I remember…" Her eyes narrowed as she presumably sorted through what memory she had left. "I remember leaving my parents' house," she offered. "I remember having a good reason, and I remember being… being so happy. Because I mattered." She said this last bit with conviction and twisted her hand over her cot's edge. "I know I did something—something big. And I was busy, always busy, I was helping someone, and something happened, like, BAM, you know?" She mimed an explosion. "After that I could've left, I could've gone back to my parents, but I didn't because—"

She cut herself quiet abruptly and scratched at her cheek, pensive. Sokka scooted closer, Aang blinked hopefully, and Katara nudged, "Because?"

"Because there was someone," said Toph. She squinched her eyes shut. In the flickering shadows of the lamplight they looked like holes anyway, gouges of darkness. "Someone," she repeated.

The lamp squeaked again. "One of us should oil that," Aang suggested, but none of them moved.

"It's fuzzy," Toph provided at length. "I remember the war and I know I played a part—I know I'm still playing a part even though the war's technically over. Yeah," she clarified, mostly to herself, "I know it's over." She opened her eyes again, not that it mattered. "I know I've been happy. For a long time. And yesterday"—she was worrying the edge of the cot again—"I felt, uhm… I felt like that happiness was threatened, maybe, I don't know, so I tried to save you."

Her gaze slid to Sokka and then slightly away from him. Staring fixedly at the spot off to the right of his elbow, she finished, "I remember thinking you were heavy. After that, hey, I woke up and started chatting with you fine people and apparently I'm a few pages short of a book I couldn't read anyway, so yeah." She twiddled a finger. "Party time, baby."

She dropped her hand and folded it into the crease of her knee.

"So you sorta, kinda, not really remember fighting in the war. You just don't remember us." Sokka was half asking, half not.

"I… yeah. Yeah, that sounds about right." She granted him a thumbs up.

"Well, okay." Not by nature a pessimist, Sokka seized onto what small hope he could glean from the situation. "That's something. And where there's something, there tends to be, uhm—more of that something. If you dig for it." Looking around the tent, he spread his hands, his palms up, his fingers flattened out like sunrays. "So, yeah," he decided. "We dig."

"Dig?" Aang's brow furrowed. Katara looked similarly confused.

"I like digging. I remember that!" enthused Toph.

"It's metaphorical digging."

Toph's face fell. "…I hate metaphors."

"Do you remember that?"

"No. I'm making an educated guess, though, based on how I wanted to go to sleep the instant you said the word metaphorically."

Bristling, Sokka persevered, "Toph, you've got some memories left. It stands to reason there are more. We'll just have to dig for them."

"With what?" asked Aang. "Toph's already had enough metal stuck in her head to last her a lifetime and shovels are pretty, well, huge—"

"No, no—wait." A slow smile spreading over her features, Katara clutched at the Earthbender's knee. "I think I get what Sokka's saying. We don't need a shovel. We just need something more likely to yield results than this." She thumped her waterskin. "I mean, this already helped. Right? But there's only so much it could—or can—do."

"You said that earlier. So?" Toph cocked her head.

Comprehension dawned for Aang. "Oh! The Spirit Oasis!"

"Right." Sokka nodded fiercely. "So we head north. To get the biggest shovel there is."

"Metaphorically?" Toph hedged.

"Uhm, eheh, yeah. Sorry."

Immediately the Earthbender affected a snore. After a moment, though, she squared her shoulders and proclaimed, "No, that's great. I'm in!"

"I'll pack Appa! Here, Sokka, you help her sit up." Quickly trading places with Sokka, Aang dashed from the tent.

"I'll go tell Zuko and Iroh our plans," Katara agreed. "We'll have you back to normal in no time, Toph." Seconds later she was gone too.

Left alone with her elbow supported in Sokka's gut, Toph hummed a toneless bar of some disjointed melody. She spat into the dirt alongside the cot. At last she voiced, "So, Sokka. What's the Spirit Oasis?"