It was pitch black.
His heart's breaths channeled through him like embalming acid, sustaining and yet burning him, and the loathsome ringing in his ears became whirlwind screeches as he picked up the putrid odor of something he couldn't remember.
Doesn't—never will—matter.
One more out of the circle and fell into the abyss.
"Do you remember them?" Toph asked, her dust-light whisper sounding like armadillo-lion howls in the dark, "Che. Of course you do. You probably see them in your dreams every night."
Nightmares, he wanted to correct, but felt the dark was better off with just her voice.
"You're lucky, ya know that? I only remember them. They're not here anymore. All I have of them is their voices. And those get quieter after each passing day. You're lucky. You get to see them."
He wanted to light the entire room in flames proportionate to his rage at that. All he had to see of them were their smiles. Those haunting smiles. Why did all of them smiled?
He turned his head away—a useless gesture in the dark—finding his knee in the dark and gripped it in his struggle to stop himself from screaming at the now coughing earthbender.
"I want them here," she hacked heatedly, "I want to hear them, touch them. I…I want to feel them. I want to hear their heartbeats. I want to see them."
I'm here, he wanted to shout, I'm here and my heart is beating, why can't you stay?
He moved closer.
Why are all of you abandoning me?
Somehow, he felt her shiver in the dark.
"It's getting cold. I f-feel it. But I can't see it. I……I'm scared."
He spoke, in the all-encompassing darkness, for the first and last time. "We're all the same."
He marveled at how the silence could be so loud in the dark.
"Do……do you mind holding my hand?"
He did. He did very much.
But she was Toph. He never was one to deny her much of anything.
So he ignored the pain in his eyes and held her frost-pearl hand.
He heard her heart chuckle.
"Are you crying?"
He almost flinched when her other hand stroked the air before his face.
"Can I see you?"
The nauseous musk of blood on his neck that wasn't there rushed through his nose. But he let the darkness consume it and took her hand, slowly guiding it to his right cheek…………and kissed it with his left eye.
Time became a lost memory.
Darkness and silence became one.
He touched her lips.
…unseen smirking void.