Yay, my first almost-blatant Tokka! I'm not so sure about this one as I've been about my others, but... hey, what can you do? Many drabbles to be written... meh. Enjoy, lovely readers, and review!

Oh, just a note: because it's not immediately apparent but very important, they're older. Don't know how much older, just... older. Whatever age you like, as long as it's older than the established canon age.

And yes, I'm being mean to poor Sokka, giving him random irrational fears. But when I saw this prompt, my immediate thought was of he and Toph, in a cave, and the cave being dark, and... just read, and tell me if I'm insane. Merci.

Sokka hated the dark for tactical reasons. It wasn't because, as a small boy with shaggy hair and a curved stick he threw at snow sculptures, he had taken to heart his father's stories of spirits and monsters; it wasn't because he remembered distant booms and bursts of fire against the black sky from just before the men of his village left. It was only because enemies were harder to see in the dark, it was because night brought with it ambush and danger and disadvantage in battle that he, as the Avatar's strategist, needed to compensate for. It was for this reason and this reason alone that he disliked wandering the caverns beneath the mountains with only Toph for company, where shadows snaked along the walls and he was forced to navigate by pools of sunlight that spilled down from uncertain cracks in the vaulted ceiling. It was for these reasons that, when there was a slight shift and groan of moving rock and a boulder toppled over to block those uncertain beams of light, Sokka was unable to contain a yelp of surprise at the pitch-darkness that fell like death.

Immediately the ground wrenched itself from under his feet with an angry roar; flailing his arms in an effort to keep his feet, Sokka yelped again, only to find himself supported by a newly grown pillar of rock.

"What is it?" Toph's voice rang out, and the cracking of stone echoed like the roaring of some beast in the confines of the cave. "Sokka, what's going on? Are you all right?" The ground trembled for the second time, and the sharp retort of stone breaking snapped out again, this time accompanied with a rush of air as something flew past Sokka's head. Boulders, he realized, through the pounding of near-panic in his skull, Toph was ripping boulders out of the surrounding cavern and tossing them past him – at enemies? She thought they were being attacked, she thought they were in danger…

"It's all right, Toph, everything's fine!" he cried, still clutching on the pillar she had torn out of the ground beside him. He kept a grip on it so that she could better sense him through its length, could better see him through his contact with the solid stone. That was why he held onto the pillar's rounded top, not because he had been startled by the darkness and the noise and needed its support. It was so Toph knew where he was, nothing more…

"What the hell is going on, Sokka?" Toph growled. In the pitch-darkness, Sokka suddenly realized that her voice was more real than usual, more textured; he could hear, in startling clarity, the tension underneath her words, the rough edge of – was it fear? Worry, at least – the sudden rock-hard determination, the teeth-clenched readiness for battle…

"Talk to me, Sokka," she growled again, and he was suddenly jolted from his contemplations (the darkness made it hard to concentrate, there was nothing to focus on in the uniform velvet black). "Your heart's racing, your vibrations are wire-tight, and now you're being quiet. You're never quiet. Is someone behind us? I can't sense anything, but…"

"It's all right, Toph," he interrupted, blinking several times just to see if it made a change in the level of darkness. It didn't. "The lights just went out, that's all. It startled me. We're not being followed; at least, not as far as I know."

"Oh." There was a moment of silence, then a crash that made the ground beneath Sokka's feet tremble; he guessed she had lowered the boulder she'd torn out of the rock a moment before. "Wait… yeah, I can see where the rock shifted. It's blocked the only crevice leading to the outside…"

Silence fell again. Sokka simply stood in the darkness deeper than unconsciousness, waiting for Toph to say something, do something, anything at all. There was a curious sense of disassociation, deprived of his eyesight, and with the great trembling silence of the cavern all around; he felt curiously as though there was nothing to anchor him to the waking world, felt as though he had been dropped prematurely into sleep, or death. Every muscle in his body locked tight, every instinct screaming at him not to twitch, not to move; deprived of senses, he was besieged by the lurking fear that the world he knew had disappeared, that he was surrounded by a depthless chasm, that the darkness hid some sort of hideous drop and without the sight of it to confirm it he couldn't be sure the earth around him really existed. Unbidden and unreal, memories were crowding back at the edges of his consciousness, memories of vast cold ice expanses and the very ground beneath him giving way and then the cold dark shock of endless water…

He was shocked from his trance by a hard touch on his elbow, ridiculously solid and real after the vague mist of (not fear he wasn't afraid he was never afraid not fear not fear) that had crept into his mind. He bit back yet another – not squeak, not squeal, what was a manly word for the noise? – bellow of surprise, as what he had identified as a hand slid down from his elbow to his wrist, sandpaper against his skin, rough with calluses and dirt.

"Toph?" he panted, beginning to grow quite annoyed with unannounced surprises. "Toph, what are you doing?"

"Getting you out of here," came the simple reply, as Toph grabbed his hand (he could feel a few granules of earth rubbing off into his palm). "You said the lights went out, right? Well, that means you can't see, but I can. Just shut up and follow me, Snoozles, and we'll be out of here in no time."

The hand in his (so small, it was almost lost in his grip) tugged him forward, and Sokka had no choice but to follow, his free hand drifting to the bone handle of his boomerang where it was tucked into his belt. They walked in silence for a while, the clanks and clatters of their footsteps resounding off the cavern walls, echoing back and overlapping, reminding him of ripples in a pool, of the intersecting currents of a waterfall.

Then the novelty of his sensitivity to sound was gone, and the clamped-tight nervousness of being in the darkness was slowly fading, as they continued walking forward and nothing happened, nothing attacked. Time passed.

"It's dark," Sokka said finally, having long grown bored with the silence and the footsteps and the insistent pressure of Toph's hand in his, tugging him forward.

"Is it?" Toph replied, rather absentmindedly. "I hadn't noticed."

"Yes," Sokka confirmed, feeling fairly sure of himself about this, if nothing else. "Yes, it is dark. It's very, very dark."

"Well, good for you," Toph replied, and lapsed off into silence again. She seemed very focused on doing whatever it was she was doing – finding their way with earth-sight, he supposed – and he was growing annoyed at being so ignored; that, and the fact that he was unwilling to face another boring interval of silence.

Then, he noticed something that distracted him quite effectively from both his annoyance and his boredom. "Toph," he said slowly, thoughtfully, "You're holding my hand."

"Well, duh," she replied, still tugging him forward, apparently not as impressed by this fact as he was. "I couldn't just leave you here. Katara would have my hide if I left her defenseless brother in the big scary cave, alone and afraid." Her voice had risen into a mocking whine, and the last few words were spoken in a sneer that he could hear in her voice.

"What --! You – I am not afraid!"

"So you say. You should have heard your heart – for a minute there I was afraid you were going to die."

"That is not true!"

"Sure it is. You just don't want to admit it, because if you did you'd have to admit that the bald little shrimp who goes by 'Twinkletoes' is manlier than you. At least he can handle a little darkness."

"You – you – you're lying! Aang is much wimpier than me!"

"Whatever you say, boomerang-boy."

"Stop it!"

"Stop what? I didn't say anything!"

"Stop that – that – smirking!"

"You couldn't possibly –"

"You know what I mean! Stop being – so – you!"

"Sure, Snoozles," she answered wryly, "I'll get right on that, okay? But for now…"

And then there was light, a vast explosive flowering of light that burst into his brain, seared his eyes with a white sun-haze and forced him to raise a hand against it. Then the pain cleared, and though there were still gray sun-streaks that shimmered across his vision, he could make out a wide rough-hewn cave mouth up ahead and, beyond that, a wide circle of brilliant blue sky.

"Here we are," Toph announced, drawing his attention away from the breathtaking scene. He glanced down at her, only to find that her face was half-illuminated by the sunlight so dazzling after such darkness; and, he found, her profile was far from dazzling in and of itself.

That, he told himself, was simply because she was the first thing he had seen since that terrible blackness which seemed much more oppressive (glancing back over his shoulder) now that he had left it.

Toph allowed herself a half-smile, head cocked to one side, listening to the earth around her. Behind stretched the great open spaces of the network of caverns; ahead, the stone dropped off in a jagged cliff, and she could feel the warm caress of sunlight on her face. More importantly, though, she could hear Sokka's heartbeat slowing down, descending from the sustained pitch of panic that had followed her all through the dark (she supposed) cavern. In fact, she was concentrating so much on listening to Sokka's heartbeat and breathing return to normal that she didn't notice the slight shifting of his weight against the earth that came from his leaning over, ever so slightly, to place his hand on her shoulder; she jumped at the sudden contact, startled.

"Thanks for getting us out of there," he said in a tone that would have been nonchalant if he hadn't been almost whispering it into her ear, as though afraid someone would overhear. When he drew away a moment later, she found herself feeling unduly cold and leaden; she shook herself out of it, scowling, as Sokka continued, "Though I don't believe it was necessary to insult me."

Toph grinned again, staring up at where she guessed his face would be. "It kept you distracted, didn't it?" she asked gleefully, wickedly. "Not to mention it was fun. Can't a girl enjoy herself every once in a while?"

Sokka snorted to express his opinion of that idea, but didn't reply. After a moment's silence, he took a step forward, sending small stones skittering down the slope, a series of small shocks that burst into Toph's consciousness like a rainstorm. She smiled; but the smile disappeared a moment later as Sokka reached out, casually and without the slightest sign of emotion, and took her hand.

Then he was walking forward, and Toph had no choice but to follow, her voice lost in a swell of shock, and then she was too preoccupied in picking her way down the jagged slope to speak. The earth leveled out further down, and in the distance she could hear the muted roar of a river, and Sokka still had not let go of her hand; shock forged itself into rock-hard courage, which failed almost immediately, leaving her grasping at words.

"Sokka," she finally managed, forgetting even to choose from her plethora of nicknames for him, "Sokka, what are you doing?"

"There's a river up ahead," he replied calmly, as though completely unaware that he was doing anything unusual. "We'll have to go over a wooden bridge to get across it." That was all he said, but the rest of the sentence hung out in the air, unfocused and unspoken, but tangible nonetheless; you won't be able to see, but I will.

As Toph allowed him to lead her over the invisible swell of the bridge, as she stepped gingerly over the wood, feeling the cracks and warped wood of the planks beneath her feet, she thought that at least, as long as they stayed together, neither one of them would ever have to walk through darkness alone.

So? Are my secret fears of inadequacy justified, or are you, my kind and lovely readers, going to grace me with your opinions? Au revoir for now!