Author's Note: This is crazy. I mean, it pretty much wrote itself – it was out of my hands from the first paragraph. Also, the first is postwar and the second is during the war (because I thought they'd make more sense that way). They're totally, completely different, but contain the same basic theme - separation.

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Oneshot 45: To Separate

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She hates to see him go; Fire Lord Zuko has made it so that he must leave her, and she knows – just knows, though she can provide no legitimate reason that can explain exactly why – that this could very well be her last moment with him, and it is, if he doesn't come back. He and she are not mere allies; for if this was the case, she would have let him risk his life with nothing more than a second thought, because they would both be risking their lives for the same cause.

No, they were more than allies. They were friends, best friends, and had potential for so much more. Why now, at the peak of opportunity, did such fates have to be taken into account? If he died (or even if she died, though she avoided this idea altogether), then what would happen after that?

Her questions went unanswered, and her entire expression (most people merely relied on their eyes to convey emotion, and while Toph was certainly one, she also used other facial features, used her entire body language) pleaded with him not to go. Just stay. He could hear the words perfectly, formed by her and received by him; just because her voice wasn't used didn't mean he couldn't hear her perfectly clear.

His pleading expression, in turn, was wasted; she could not see him. But she knew that he had to go, no matter how much she might need him here. There were others, there were battles to fight, triumphs to have – and yet he could see no such things in her eyes, for they saw nothing, least of all vain desires. Just stay. If only for a moment – just, please, stay.

They were both unaccustomed to this sort of communication – he was Sokka and she was Toph, and they were not supposed to rely on each other like this. In a friendly way, in an allied way, absolutely – but not this needing that gnawed within him to stay with her, and not this care for him, these questions about What or Why or How that shouldn't have come with thoughts of his death, but thoughts of the continuing of their lives. As friends. As maybe more.

He touched her hand, and the warmth made her fingers tingle and the butterflies erupt in her stomach. Then, without any warning, he kissed her – and what else could she do but kiss him back?

He pulled away (far too early) and murmured something that sounded quite like I'll see you soon, though his voice was muffled by the sound of her own intense heartbeat.

I'll see you soon.

And he did.

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The first thing she understood about the situation was the sound of his voice.

She wasn't even quite sure what he said, but that wasn't important. The only thing that made a difference was his voice and the hope that welled inside of her, the positive knowledge that everything would be okay that brimmed and quite nearly overflowed. She, in wooden chains (rope and timber had the potential to work well together, to her great dismay), had been at a loss for what to do: Cut off from human contact, kept away from everyone so that she could torment no one with her incessant rebelliousness…

And there was his voice, flowing into her. She only had a second to bask in the pleasure that it brought her, that beautiful, remarkable sound; then she realized what was going on as her mind began to decipher words, however muffled and broken. Her heart beat faster with understanding, and her body shivered and she grew nauseous.

Because he was going to surrender himself in exchange for her.

The idea was almost childlike. It was too much like a fairytale, one without a happy ending, if such a thing existed. She needed to be with him: if she couldn't be near him, then being out there was just the same as staying where she was. In fact, she would feel better if he stayed out there; that way he would be safe, and despite the aches in her muscles and the pain in her spirit she would find peace in her knowledge of his safety.

No, of course not. Nothing could ever work out the way she wanted it to. She could never find internal peace because there was always something gnawing at her – her parents' restrictions, the pressures of war, and now the sick idea that he would be suffering and she would be perfectly okay. The concept that he was saving her briefly crossed her mind, for surely that was what pounded in his; she dismissed it, however, because while he would be saving her in all sensible ways, there was the insensibility of her affection for him, and he would only hurt that all the more.

She avoided the thought that he was strong, too – much more so mentally than she. She knew that he was strong, but the mental torture of loneliness was sure to eat away at his mentality until he was nothing, nothing but a skeleton draped with skin. She hated any idea of his pain; her pain was nothing to her. He felt the same way, for his own pain was insubstantial to the point that it had stopped being important long ago. What he did was for the sakes of others; the war had taught him much, and so had the Avatar, if he ever cared to admit that.

Then she heard a door open, and she was nearly dragged out of the wooden cell. There was a clatter of voices, some she knew and some she didn't; however, her knowledge of them held little importance because they all had the same skin-crawling effect on her.

Then, for the briefest moment, there was a voice whose sound had no such dreadful quality, though her mind crawled with fear. There he was – there was her warrior, giving himself up for her safety. The safety of a girl whose future didn't matter – she didn't have a family to return to! She didn't have a sister who loved her, didn't have a father waiting at home for the safe return of his child, didn't have a close spiritual connection with the moon that lit up the night sky. There was Sokka, who had all of those things – and giving them all up for her! She, without a home; she, without a family; she, without a grandmother's love, or a single moment in time where she truly felt like she had a place where she belonged. She had nothing but her bending and the clothes on her back, and who was she? Who was she to ask so much of someone who had all of these things, who had everything to go back to?

She had the companionship of the waterbender and the Avatar, which was more than she had ever been able to say; it was more than she would have ever fathomed asking. Who exactly was she to rob his family of the chance to see him again, if only for one last time? She couldn't feel the worth that she should have felt in order to believe that his absence was remotely justified; there was nothing, nothing that could ever bring the idea of his trading his fate for hers to a minutely comforting conclusion.

Then she heard his voice, and he was speaking to her. This revelation snatched her from the depths of her mind and she clung to the words that left his lips as though without their support she might fall into a bottomless hole. The guard holding her up, off of the ground, paid little attention to how she flailed, trying desperately to escape and approach him, if only to just barely allow her fingertips the slightest brush of his warrior attire –

- and there it was again. His voice, and she could make out words this time. "-off me! Not so tight!" Then she almost felt his eyes shift to her, and suddenly there were two guards holding her, one on each side. "At least take those wooden planks off her feet! Toph, are you okay?"

Her throat tightened as she prepared to respond, and she struggled against her captors with renewed vigor. "I'm fine!" she managed to assure him. "Sokka, don't do this – why did you…?"

His answer arrived at his tongue before he had a chance to think it through. "Because I couldn't take it, knowing you were in here," Sokka told her, biting his tongue almost immediately after the words passed through his lips. He hadn't wanted to say that – he'd wanted something else, something with different, less meaningful implications…

Toph inhaled sharply and felt that painful bruises would form when she was free of her captors. She struggled violently, passionately. "But you shouldn't have surrendered yourself for me," she almost scolded. "I could have – I can take care of myself, I could have escaped…"

The false statement tasted bitter on her tongue. I could have escaped. She had been scheduled for execution – it had been against Azula's wishes, for she was in charge of the whole arrangement, but her second-in-command had decided that Toph was too dangerous to keep alive for longer than absolutely necessary. She wouldn't have escaped – both because they would have killed her off too early (attempting to extract information from her was futile, and while using her as a bargaining tool was tempting, they ended up coming away with the authority of the Water Tribe warrior's life) and no matter how much time she'd had inside of that cell, she couldn't have slipped from the binding wood and rope – she had been powerless, utterly helpless.

She knew that Sokka's wise eyes would reflect his sorrowful knowledge of the falsity of her claims, and she longed to see it; she longed to see him, for the first time and last. He would be gone – forever. She also knew, with the assurance of the cold fear that iced over her heart and sent shivers throughout her entire body, that the Fire Nation wouldn't be intending a fair trade. Aang and Katara wouldn't, either – that would be stupid; that would be naïve.

Toph considered what their plan might be and decided that no matter what they did, it would fail. Toph getting captured in the first place was a mistake – that was a fatal error. Sokka had been impulsive, determined not to lose someone else, not again (he couldn't handle the weight of another person's fate on his shoulders!). He had been ready to give himself up, had been prepared for an exchange – and the quick-thinking Fire Nation had accepted, devising a plan.

He would surely be executed after only a day. They knew that as soon as they could come up with a strategy, the Avatar and his remaining companions would attempt to rescue the warrior; in order to not only decrease the Avatar's group but to also eliminate a key enemy of the Fire Nation and of the very Fire Lord Ozai, death would be a given.

Toph could no longer hear Sokka's voice. She was outside; she could feel sunshine on her face, could feel the wind.

She was thrown to the ground. Almost immediately, the Fire Nation soldiers in the compound stormed out, ready to take back their previous captive plus the other two who had come to get her. Katara and Aang, however, had planned for this and were likewise prepared. Each side began to attack one another with such force and strength that the outcome was not clear at first, could not be theorized just yet…

Toph was useless. She was severely weakened by her recent poor living conditions and, more significantly, her lack of physical contact with her element. Until she could feel it again – not with her feet because of the wooden planks, but with her hands, mostly – she had not realized how much it had affected her, but now that she was reunited… she realized how drained she truly was, how empty, how lost.

Perhaps Aang and Katara had been depending on her contributions for their small battle to be a success, but if that was the case, then they had sorely miscalculated. Almost every soldier stationed at that site was fighting them (Toph could have sworn it was thousands, though she could hardly distinguish one man from another); the Avatar and waterbender were driven back.

Suddenly, by some miracle – through the raging noise of the fight – Toph's ears perked at his voice. How she could hear him, she might never know; it was as though there was no distance between them, no fight or sound or anything – his voice reached her perfectly, and she clung to it, needing it.

She couldn't mistake the words – I'll see you soon. She could not feel his heartbeat, could not measure his breathing; she knew, however, by the wavering in his voice (utterly impossible to catch, but she did) that he had as much faith in these words as she. She fell into those words, needing their truth. They were falling back, the Avatar would save her and they would escape… all the while she would hold on to the last words she ever heard him say, by some miracle of the Spirits or some other force altogether.

I'll see you soon.

But he didn't.

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Author's Note: I'm amazed at how this turned out – it isn't remotely like what I was going for. I'm happy with it, all the same, but I'm pretty surprised, to be honest. The ending was almost a mess to me at first, but I warmed up to it because the oneshot isn't about what was happening in the background – it was about Toph and Sokka. I did my best to clean up what I could, though.

The history that precedes each part is different and is purposefully vague; they're two separate instances with two separate histories where each has a different outcome.