XII. Past Imperfect


It hadn't escaped Aang's notice that he occasionally did stupid things.

Not telling Katara and Sokka about their father's letter because he was being selfish; running off injured and weak to challenge the Fire Lord a few weeks after he had almost died and perhaps his best example was running off with a giant sealion turtle; but never had he done something so monumentally ridiculous as running off into a swamp after one of the most ancient and cruellest of spirits.

It hadn't taken long for Aang to find the small schoolhouse near the center of the city, the door had been locked but he'd knocked incessantly until a tall woman with silvered temples and a formidably disapproving raised eyebrow opened it for him. She opened her mouth to no doubt tell him off for arriving in such an uproar but he cut across her with, what he hoped was a disarming smile.

"Hello. I'm Aang, are you the Lady Varrin?"

Aang had gotten a lot of wildly varied reactions to his appearance over the years; confusion, fear, and snotty remarks about his ears being some of the most common. Wild, creative cursing though was new. "Ah, were you expecting me?"

The archly disapproving schoolmistress expression dropped away into familial concern. "Tell me you're here to track her down Avatar."

"You know who I am?"

Varrin crossed her arms with an expression which said she thought him mentally afflicted. "There aren't that many people running around with tattoos like those, young man. Besides my idiot former ward mentioned you. Are you the reason she wanted the burial place of the Face Stealer?"

A vigilante wearing his mask in the Fire Nation, the spirit world reaching out for him and that deep pervading insistence that he track Toph down. There was no chance that this was all coincidence. The avatar state pulled at him again, insistent enough that he was almost overwhelmed by it, panic and anger just barely managing to leash him to the waking world. "Where is she?"

Varrin's face grew tight with anxiety. "She disappeared from breakfast, left her family's house in the middle of a meal. The seneschal told us it was a summons from the Fire Lord." It was patently obvious that she hadn't believed the story for a moment. "Please Avatar I don't know what she's gotten herself into but there aren't many reasons Toph would hide something from everyone and all of them are bad."

"Where did you send her? Where was his mortal form buried?"

"No one knows for certain, I mean these are legends referencing legends, it's too far back for any proper analysis even if it could somehow be determined that there was a literal transference from mortal to spirit. The soul or face stealer as an archetype is involved in so many myths about the forming of the world-" Aang wasn't sure exactly what he looked like but it was panicked or fierce enough to stop the intimidating scholarly woman midstream. "I sent her to the proto-tribal ruins in the Foggy Swamp."

"The what in the Swamps?"

"The original waterbenders came from that part of the world; their old city was built on a place of ancient spiritual power. Where the spirits left this plane and life began." She gave him a speculative once over that made Aang feel like a specimen pinned to a card. "Some stories claim the first Avatar was created there."

"No," Aang said grimly, supressing his forced memories of that terrible rising. "It didn't happen there."

He held up a hand to forestall Varrin's questions, seeing the light of academic curiosity come over her face. "Do you know which way she went?"

"The remains of the city are close to the north western edge of the swamp, right where it meets the ocean, but I can't imagine Toph would want to trek right through."

"Along the edge of the desert then?"

"If you hurry you might catch her before she gets across the Si Wong."

"Thank you for your help." Aang dipped a bow, but Varrin simply spun him around and shoved him back out the door.

"Go!"

Aang had swung himself onto Appa's back without a second thought to provisions or planning, dread forming a hard ball in the pit of his stomach.

He had never told his friends about the malicious, arthropod face stealer. After their encounter during the Siege of the North, there had been no chance to explain what had happened to Katara or Sokka - all three of them were too caught up in mourning and the shaky relief of unexpected victory – and afterwards he found himself reluctant to speak of it. That deep rasping voice promising they would meet again had haunted his nightmares ever since.

He supposed it was too much to hope that Koh had referred only to the Avatar spirit.

What he couldn't fathom was why. Toph had given Varrin no reason and nothing to her knowledge had been able to explain where Toph had even heard the name, or why representations of the spirit would be appearing in the fire nation capital when she was there. The whole thing was like a malevolent reflection of Katara's attempts to impersonate the Painted Lady.

The thought brought him up so short he almost yanked Appa to a halt in midair, causing his friend to bellow in irritation. What if it was exactly like that? Katara claimed her deeds had brought the painted lady out. Aang replayed the woman he'd apprehended in his mind, remembering how small she had been, that her long dark hair had certainly been real and not a wig. Things that hadn't seemed important after making sure she wasn't any more than a flesh and blood person in a disguise, but there was no question that it could have been Toph. She hadn't used earthbending, but Toph wouldn't have been obvious enough to bend in front of him since he would have easily figured out who she was; Aang flushed hotly at the sharp recollection of the woman beneath him pliant and welcoming and gritted his teeth. It had been her, she'd been laughing at him.

Resolutely brushing away the shame he'd tried to focus on the sweeping expanse of golden sand stretched out below him, but his thoughts were a whirlwind. Koh was a spirit of vengeance, that much Aang knew. By wearing his face as a vigilante, it was theoretically possible that Toph had attracted his attention, but the question 'why' still remained. Koh couldn't outright lie but spirits were skilled and devious manipulators. It was possible that she'd struck a bargain with him, but Koh wanted only one thing and he wouldn't need to send Toph to the Foggy Swamp to get it.

Varrin had been right when she said the fens were a mystical place, Aang had scrupulously avoided returning there after the first somewhat disastrous encounter. In the Swamp, the old wise man Huu had told him, "We see visions of people we've loved, people we've lost." Katara had seen her mother, Sokka had spoken to Yue and he had chased… Toph.

The thought of losing her sent a wash of icy dread down his spine. Huu's premonition had always seemed more for effect than actual truth but the possibility that Toph might already be beyond his reach was almost paralyzing.

The image of her face transposed onto Koh's hideous segmented form made Aang lean close to Appa's ear, urging the bison on faster.


Toph ran her tongue over dry parched lips for the third time in as many seconds, longingly conscious of the waterskin against her knee and tried once more to distract herself by fruitless attempts to shift into a less agonizing position.

She wasn't sure exactly how long she had crouched here in the dark. Long enough to sleep and wake and sleep again, long enough that her stomach ached and screamed for the food that had been in her pack, barely inches from the rock dome she had created tight around her body.

It might as well have been a hundred miles.

She could very well have been leagues from where she'd first been trapped. With her tiny haven wrapped in thick foliage Toph found herself trapped in true sensory deprivation. No vibrations passed through the vines and though she had tried, her thin crust of rock could not break the layers; she'd avoided strangulation only to imprison herself.

The space was too close to move more than a little in any direction and her joints ached with the strain of remaining bent in one shape for too long. It was only luck that allowed enough air in through the fissures and fractures caused by the pressure of the vines' grip had split in the stone crust; she could breathe but the space was stifling, hot with her own gasping and suppressed panic.

Toph would have made a poor earthbender if she had been afraid of enclosed spaces, close walls of earth had always been more of a comfort then a threat, but there was a wide margin between tight and trapped and the knowledge that she could not free herself was like a splinter in her mind, making it harder and harder to stay calm.

The furious tension radiating through her from where Ummi paced the corridors of her thoughts was not helping.

I think... maybe, Even her inner voice rasped with the desire to guzzle down the last of her carefully rationed water, ...you might have to try again on the next person Twinkletoes dates.

Not a chance. I've just barely gotten to tolerate you.

Toph traced the designs she'd etched into deep grooves on the wall of her small cell with the tips of her fingers. She and Ummi had moved, eventually, past panic and screaming arguments and intense crippling crying claustrophobia, into that strange fatalistic camaraderie that Toph remembered from the last days of the war. Ummi had spoken to Toph the way she had apparently not spoken to anyone in centuries. About her family, her brothers, the way they had chased elkstag across the tundra; about the way the world had been when things were free from the specter of war. Toph couldn't share Ummi's memories, the water tribe woman's mind was closed, but she had a gift for description and the ephemeral thoughts of ice and coldness so sharp that it numbed, helped to chase away the madness that the heat engendered.

Katara said the plants attacked to stop Snoozles from damaging the swamp. Toph curled her limbs tight enough to hear the joints pop, tasting dirt as she scraped herself against the walls to shift her knees out from beneath her. The vines could crush us, there's not enough rock here for me to hold them back. Why couldn't they just kill her and be done with it?

I don't know what they're holding us for either. Ummi's voice was almost motherly, full of reassurances she did not even try to pass off as truth.

Go away for a little while, She pushed at Ummi's presence. At least one of us should.

I can stay. You don't need to be alone.

A lady needs her space.

I don't see any ladies here.

She laughed weakly, the sound falling dead in the tiny echoless space. I really wanted to help you Ummi.

There was no reply. Toph tucked her head against one curved dirt wall and squeezed her useless eyes shut to stop tears from dehydrating her further.


No mysterious tornado rose out of the marshland to drag Appa down this time, but Aang had a true Avatar's awareness now, and he knew that despite Sokka's scepticism there were great and ancient powers hiding underneath those spreading treetops. He could almost feel the shifting unnatural powers welling up to greet him, cautious but complacent in their small territories.

The rise of the great banyan at the center of the swamp never failed to take Aang's breath away, it's heavy branches like the pillars of an ancient temple, the trunk broad and tall enough to make him feel not just small but insignificant. As though he were standing next to time itself, embodied.

Diving, he guided Appa below the treeline into the shadowed twilight of the swamp to land them on one great spreading root, as wide as a roadway. "Huu!" He called, sliding free of the bison's back. "Huu, are you here?"

Aang kicked off the root, leaping from knot to knot on the gnarled bark of the banyan tree until he reached the lowest of the branches, calling out for the old hermit.

The banyan's power resonated against his own hard enough that he could feel it in his teeth, buzzing along his bones. The Foggy Swamp was an unsettling place, full of things he didn't really understand but the life energy inherent in the tree was sympathetic, a bridge between all living things here the way the Avatar joined the spirit world and this one. He crossed his legs, sitting neatly in lotus and reaching out to spread his awareness along the ley lines of the tree.

Aang!

Roku's presence hit him like a runaway train. Speak to me you foolish boy.

He threw himself out of the Avatar state so violently that his head cracked against the trunk behind him. Aang cried out in pain, shaking the stars from his eyes as he realized someone was laughing at him.

Huu crouched in front of him, looking older but no less ridiculous with his strange haircut and cringe inducing loincloth. Though he was chuckling at Aang's clumsiness he seemed troubled, and his face softened into deep frown lines when his smile faded.

"Avatar,"

"Hello Huu." Aang reached out to offer the man his hand, but Huu just studied his face with a calculating expression.

"It does no good to avoid your responsibilities Avatar."

"I'm not avoiding," Aang protested. "I just need to find Toph first."

"There is unrest in this world, trouble that comes from the spirit realm. You should bend your head to the source of the problem."

"I will, after I make sure she's safe."

"Then your purposes are one."

"What?"

"Everything is connected Avatar, I told you that long ago."

There was something in the older man's expression that stopped him from dismissing the platitude. "What do you know Huu?"

"Only that the earthbender is being held by the swamp for a reason."

"Held? Like the swamp tried to hold us the first time we were here?" Aang was moving before he had half a chance to remember that Toph might be anywhere under the dark trees. Visibly deflating, he folded the glider wings back into his staff and crouched against the knotted limb, considering the whorls of wood - caught between the urgent desire to find her and the knowledge that Roku and the others were circling, waiting for him to access the Avatar State. To search the swamp would take weeks, there was no other way for Aang to reach Toph fast enough. Tentatively he reached out, pressing his hand against the bark and casting his mind through the labyrinthine twists of the banyan's roots.

A feeling like a dragging hand seized him sharply and yanked him to where he could feel Toph's earthbending strike the soil and the tug of vines as someone moved to fight her off. Stop her. A thousand angry ancient voices said at once.

Aang's eyes snapped open and he launched his glider out into the air.


It was not any particular noise that jolted Toph from her delirious half daze, but the bewildering awareness of there being noise at all beyond her own harsh breathing. Scrabbling for purchase she pressed her palms to the curved walls of her prison and felt blessed earth appear beneath her, awareness washing over her like cool rain as the vines that had wrapped a stranglehold around her shifted away.

There were people approaching.

Four of them from one direction and two coming in around the opposite sides, stepping tentatively nearer; it took her an absurdly long moment to realize they were confused by her haphazard, much abused shelter cum trap. Toph took a deep slow breath in, trying to reorder her thoughts and reconcile despairing haze she'd fallen into with the pump of adrenalin that had fired through her veins at the awareness of freedom.

The space is too small for a proper gesture, but Toph roars and the earth roars with her, surging as she slams out with every ounce of power she could bring to bear.

The dome around her burst apart with explosive force.

Toph tried to rise and her legs seized; muscles spasming in protest and agony. Two of the six had been knocked senseless by her first attack but there were four more to be dealt with and even as she listened for their movements one stepped back into the fetid nothingness of the swamp and the rush of shifting liquid told Toph 'waterbender'.

Spreading her palms against the marshy earth she twisted, encasing her own legs to mid thigh in earth and using her control over her element to yank herself into a standing position. She raised her hands in mantis stance and shouted.

"Back off!"

The words came out as a depressing raspy whisper.

The Swampbenders were a lot like the waterbending equivalent of the Sun Warriors Zuko and Aang had found on their quest to get Sparky's firebending groove back. They were both the oldest known practitioners of their discipline; they both guarded their secrets fiercely. But where the Sun Warriors defended their traditions by convincing the outside world they no longer existed – rebuffing every one of Zuko's attempts to bring them back to the imperial Fire Nation – the Swampbenders did it by convincing everyone that they were foolish, backward hicks.

They were in some ways very backwards and uneducated even by the most lax of standards, but their bending techniques were completely unparalleled in the wider world; they eschewed the fluid, formalized styles of the North, or Katara's techniques which were becoming known as South Pole waterbending in favour of economy of motion, more instinctive, like a child's untutored attempts honed to unexpected power.

The plantbending alone made them a force to be reckoned with, and it was an advantage that they exploited ruthlessly against enemies in their territory. It also put them at an extreme disadvantage against Toph.

Water returned no vibrations at all in her seismic sense; she was forced to rely on her keen ears and the patterns of her opponent's movements but wood and flora, those she could see.

She cast up a wall between herself and the waterbender, nearly groaning in frustration when it started to crumble under the onslaught of the torrent he blasted towards her. These benders were stronger than she expected and fresh where she was weak and exhausted. Panting, she managed to blast a slender pillar of rock at the plantbender calling up tendrils on her right, hard enough to slam him back against a tree.

The marshy ground obeyed her sluggishly and Toph realized she was expending too much effort to pull it free of the ground's water enough to make it an effective weapon. Instead she loosened the bracing restraints on her legs long enough to bend a large bladed guan dao, swinging it in a wide arc and hearing the edge whistle as it sliced through oncoming vines.

"Leave me alone!"

She reached out to pull the muddy earth beneath the waterbender's feet, encasing him in mud as he fell and bringing the stone shaft of her weapon up just in time to block the arcing blow of the fourth attacker, who wasn't bending plants or water, but wielding a wicked sounding bladed weapon. The force of the blow nearly cracked her halberd in half. Wrenching and twisting the weapon sharply down, Toph managed to redirect the strike; changing the direction of her movement, she pivoted at the waist to crack the blunt base of her guan dao across his jaw.

Her last opponent was shifting out of her awareness, cocooning himself in vines that deadened her ability to see his movements. Toph readjusted her stance, shifting the muddy earth with her, determined not to be pushed back to the defensive, when a streak of that sparking blue crossed her senses and landed before her with a rumble that shook the earth.

"Toph!"


She looked like death warmed over, her whole body trembling despite the death grip she had on her rough stone weapon, her hair matted against skin streaked with dirt and sweat.

"Aang?" Her voice was hoarse and dry.

He stepped carefully closer, keeping his feet firmly on the ground as he reached out to fold his hands over hers along the haft of the weapon. "Hey Sifu, you really did a number on these guys."

Toph sagged with relief. "They shouldn't have messed with me."

He watched the remaining tribesman warily, but he seemed to have uncoiled from his fighting stance, letting the foliage slough away. "Elders said danger," The man shrugged, moving to assist his beaten comrades. "We just came t'see what got the swamp riled."

Aang looked from him to the battered Toph. "I may not have been aware talking was an option." She shrugged.


The foggy swamp tribe made their home much deeper into the twisted marshes than outsiders usually dared venture. Since the end of the war, a trading village had been established on the fringes of the swamp as their official settlement, where letters could be delivered and contact with the world outside the dense trees could take place, but the swampbenders hadn't given up their traditional home, at the edges of the ruins which backed onto the sea.

Not that they were close to the sea yet, the forest around them was still impenetrable and dark, but Toph had stumbled at least six times in the last twenty paces and when they had stumbled on the crumbling stone shell of some ancient building she'd sat down hard on the floor and refused to get up. The waterbenders had disappeared into the swamp like mist, claiming they would report back to the village, leaving Aang to wrap one arm around a protesting, shaking Toph and bring them this far together.

"Can we rest here?" Toph didn't raise her head to pose the question. Aang had bent dirt and bracken from enough water to fill the skin she carried several times over on their journey, but she still seemed to be suffering the effects of mild dehydration and fighting the urge to collapse.

Aang dropped her pack from his shoulder and moved to examine their temporary refuge. "Of course." The crumbling structure's floor was angled where its foundation had begun to slip from solid ground into the water. Only the main room had survived the ravages of time, but there were half destroyed walls that mapped out where other chambers would have branched off. The architecture he could see reminded Aang strangely of buildings in the northern water tribe. At the center of the room there was a slightly raised fire pit, which had filled with rain to the point where it more closely resembled a fountain. Bending some into his cupped hands to take a sip, he then made a face at the taste and spat it back out across the stones.

"Full of bugs?" Toph's voice was weary but laughing as she peeled off the dirt encrusted layers of her clothing until she stood in just her breast wrappings and loose trousers, dropping her armbands and a strange sparkling coil of chain in a careless heap next to her pack.

Aang shrugged, "Just stale."

She moved shakily to rinse the worst of the grime from her tunic and shirt and Aang piled up the dead foliage that had collected in the corners of the ramshackle house to build a fire so she could spread the pale green fabric out to dry. "That won't do much good if you're still covered in dirt, you know."

"Thanks Sugar Queen," Toph rolled her sightless eyes at him. "A healthy coating of earth never hurt me before."

"And the sticks in your hair?" Aang teased, reaching out tentatively to run his fingers across the back of Toph's hand and down to tangle them with her own. "How do they help your bending prowess?"

She twined their fingers together just long enough to give an affectionate squeeze and pull him off balance before letting go to pick twigs out of the hopeless tangles.

"Want a hand?" He offered, but she waved him off.

"I'd rather have something to eat." He could feel her calculating scrutiny and knew that she really wanted the same answers he was ready to demand from her, but they were both unwilling, for the moment, to break their strangely comfortable peace.

Aang couldn't help making a face at the dried meat he found, but beneath that there was travel bread and a round of soft white cheese wrapped in cloth. There was no pot to heat water in but Aang held a ball of water suspended with one hand and called up a tongue of flame in his opposite palm to heat it until it could be poured over Toph's meagre supply of tea leaves; the look of gratitude and naked greed on her face when she smelled the brew was halfway between adorable and unsettling.

Toph reached for the offered cup only to find she was still caught in the rat-viper's nest of her own hair, she cursed vehemently, tears springing up in her eyes from the sharp pain. "You need to wash it out," Aang said mildly.

"It's fine," She groped through the pack for a ribbon, before he tugged the bag away. "I'll just put it up the way I used to."

"That's just going to make it worse."

"When did you become such an expert on long hair baldie?"

Aang snorted; they had all been lectured by Katara at one point or another on proper hair maintenance, despite the fact that he had barely enough hair to get a brush through. "Come on, I'll help."

"I don't need help."

"Look, whoever packed this left soap in the bottom. You'll feel better once you're clean," He wheedled. "I'll heat up the water and everything."

"You're such a girl Twinkletoes." Toph's said petulantly, but she let him prod her over to the basin and lay her head down as he used a flick of firebending to warm the water. She tensed as he dragged his hands up her neck to gather her knotted locks and he couldn't help smiling at her reticence.

"Relax," He insisted, dragging his fingernails lightly against her scalp. "I don't mind."

The soft soap smelled sharply of spice and lemongrass and something sweet he couldn't name, the scent rising into the air as it lathered easily and began to ease the snarls and dirt away. The mindlessness of the task was soothing and the assurance that Toph was safe and whole under his hands unpicked the tension that had plagued him for days. She looked almost drugged from sensation when he finally combed the last knot free, humming inaudibly in pleasure at the feeling and Aang couldn't resist brushing a wet hand across her face just to see her nose scrunch as her face twisted in disapproval.

"This was the first place I met you."

"Pretty sure it was Gaoling actually," one eyebrow quirked at the statement, her expression speculative even though her eyes were closed.

Aang shook his head emphatically. "No it was here, I had a vision of you before we'd even met. A pretty girl in a white dress with a flying boar. You were laughing at me."

"Nothing's changed there then." She teased.

"What are you doing?"

"Getting my hair washed Twinkles, aren't I the blind one?"

"Toph," He said warningly, but she just flashed him an unrepentant cheeky grin.

"So you run away from Zuko's palace in the middle of the night, you head to your parents house of all places and then you come out to the middle of the Foggy Swamp."

"I had to get away."

"I talked to Varrin. Why are you searching for Koh?" He barely let her stutter out an attempt at an answer before he seized her shoulders. "He is dangerous Toph; you can't imagine what Koh could do to you."

Her eyes remained closed but she levered herself up and away from him, twisting the water free of her hair until it ran in rivulets across the stones. "Actually, I think maybe I can."

"Whatever he promised you isn't worth it!"

"Promised me? Twinkletoes, I've never spoken to Koh. I only know who he is because of your memories."

"Then what are you doing out here?"

"I'm helping someone."

"Who? How? Toph just tell me."

"Ummi." She said reluctantly, as though the name itself might summon its owner. It sounded familiar, but Aang couldn't place where he had heard it before.

"Who's Ummi?"

Something hopeful he hadn't noticed in Toph's expression seemed to shatter at the question. "She's kind of like a past life. She used to be alive, then she was part of other people and now she's a sort of passenger ….in my head."

"Toph," Aang kept his voice carefully measured and gentle, scrutinizing her head for any signs of unexpected trauma. If she was hearing voices, what could that mean? "People can't be contacted by their past lives like that. Are you sure-"

Her right cross caught him in the sternum, hard enough to knock the breath from his lungs. "I'm not crazy!" Toph shouted. "I can feel her in there the same way you were in my head. I can see things now. Spirit things." Her eyes narrowed. "Frankly it's awful; I don't know how you do it. But I am not crazy."

"When did you start hearing… her?"

"The equinox."

"The night you left."

Toph nodded. "She said before that she'd tried to contact me, but I couldn't hear her."

Which made a strange sort of sense if… "I think," he started hesitantly, wary of another punch. "That I might have done this to you," Her glare was enough to keep him talking. "When I entered your mind to give you firebending, you had to open up and let me in. It makes sense that you would be more open to spiritual influences now. What doesn't make sense is why Ummi would be able to contact you."

"You can talk to spirit people."

"Because they were Avatars. The Avatar Spirit keeps part of them waiting for me," He explained. "If you are her, reincarnated, there shouldn't be anything left of Ummi in the spirit world."

"I'm not her reincarnation, we're just connected. That's why she needs me," Toph said emphatically. "Part of her is imprisoned and I'm going to break her out."

"What could be keeping her stuck there?"

"She's one of Koh's faces."

Aang was rather proud of himself for his restraint in not picking Toph up and shaking her like a ragdoll. "No," He said, all too aware of how Toph would take such a command, but physically incapable of suppressing his own vehement denial.

"Ah, yes she is Twin-"

He didn't even let her finish the epithet. "No, you are not challenging Koh, or risking his wrath or even his notice. This stops right now."

"Is that the command of the Avatar?" He voice rose sharp and mocking.

"This isn't some Earth Rumble thug!" Aang yelled, his voice shocking in the quite gloom. "He's not a mercenary lord you can threaten, he's not even human."

"Don't shout at me like I'm being a reckless idiot!"

"You are the personification of 'reckless idiot' for even thinking of coming here alone. Toph you almost died today!"

"And that had absolutely nothing to do with face stealing spirits!" Her voice calmed but she began to twist at her hair in agitation. "I didn't expect the earth cursed sentient swamp to try and eat me, but I had a plan."

"You running headlong into danger is a plan now?"

"Why can't you just trust me?"

"I do trust you Toph, Yangchen help me I do, but this is madness. You can't bend in the spirit world. You wouldn't even be able to see! How could you hope to fight something even I can't kill?"

"Zhao," She choked on the name, swallowed and repeated herself. "Zhao killed the moon spirit by destroying its mortal form and Koh was mortal once so I'm going to find his remains."

Aang studied her for a long moment.

"Just his remains?"

"Yes."

"You're not planning to loose a powerful demon on the mortal world?"

Toph sputtered indignantly. "Not that I'm aware of!"

"And if it doesn't work?"

"Then we'll think of something else."

He sighed deeply, impossibly relieved that she'd been planning on telling him at least before she did anything monumentally foolish. "Okay."

"Okay?"

"I'll help you."

"Twinkletoes I don't need your help –"

"I said I was helping. I'll follow you there if I have to."

She swatted at him, a smile dancing at the corner of her lips. "You are really bossy when you're being the Avatar."

"You're bossy all the time." Aang reminded her.

"That's because I am the best Twinkles, keep up."

Her hands, which had been methodically twisting her hair into a long wet rope, relaxed and she reached instead for the now cold cup of tea, holding it out for him to heat.

"Was that you?" He blurted the question awkwardly. "In the mask that first night I arrived in the Fire Nation?"

Toph's expression changed from confused to wicked in the blink of an eye and she nodded. "Sorry about that."

"No you're not."

She grinned. "Not even a little."

Despite the lingering tension, Aang couldn't resist the urge to tug Toph close and kiss her deeply. Her mouth was far too tempting when she smiled and the past four days since he held her seemed like an age. Toph seemed frozen for half an instant, until he tried to pull away and her hand came up to clutch the back of his neck. The kiss stayed chaste and sweet and Aang reveled in the softness of her lips, the light catch of her fingers against the stubble on his jaw; then Toph's tongue, shocking and wet traced the seam of his mouth and Aang followed blindly, pulling a small noise from her throat.

He couldn't help groaning in response, angling to press closer and chase that moan again, licking at the inside of her lush lower lip and drinking in the sounds she made.

Toph seized the front of his tunic and dragged them together, tumbling forward into his lap and breaking contact to laugh for half an instant before Aang's palms slid up her legs to clutch her waist and Toph hissed, pressing her whole body close against him.

One of her hands slid up beneath his tunic to trace the tensed muscles of Aang's lower back, his hips stuttered forward instinctively and he pressed their mouths together, just breathing the mingled scent of them in. He kissed her again, wet and sucking tastes of Toph's neck, the ridge of her cheekbone, the hollow behind her ear that made her moan sweetly. Aang held the skin between his teeth, increasing the pressure, but pulling back before he left a mark, too desperate for the taste of her lips again.

Her fingers slipped inside his collar, raking up the back of his neck, just as she pulled delicately at his lower lip with her teeth and sucked hard. Aang wrenched back with a sound that was embarrassingly reminiscent of a wounded animal, head spinning as he tried desperately to get his rebellious body back under control, not at all helped by the feeling of Toph gasping against his throat.

"Sorry," She sounded wrecked and Aang squeezed his eyes shut, trying to stop himself from throwing her to the ground beneath him.

"What?"

Toph pulled herself away from his neck, but didn't look at him properly, one hand coming up to trace the lines of his face. "Aang I don't want to – I know you haven't done this before. I want you to be ready. If you need … I'll wait."

She'll wait? Aang had been waiting, desperate and wanting, because he didn't need to ask Sokka or Zuko to know that it was up to the lady, no matter how good it felt to have Toph in his lap, pressing against him everywhere, no matter how hard it was to keep his head around her drugging kisses.

"I thought…You're Toph!" He laughed helplessly, pressing his mouth to her temple. "I was waiting for your cue so I wouldn't get brained with anything!"

She pulled him down further, enough that their foreheads knocked together. "Twinkletoes you idiot."

"No fair," Aang protested. "This is at least half your fault."

"Can we now safely say this is mutual?"

"Oh dear spirits yes."

"Then argue about whose fault it is later." She tipped her head up to meet his gaze and Aang inhaled sharply. Toph's blank eyes were dark; her misted pupils blown wide, dilated with passion. The thought that she wanted him so much it marked her where not even light could touch, had Aang literally shaking with desire.

He buried one hand in her damp hair and wrapped his other arm firmly around her waist, lifting them both to stumble gracelessly over where he could lay Toph out on her mostly dry tunic, closer to the fire's warmth. Her legs wrapped tight around his waist as she scrabbled to peel away his tunic and Aang realized with a flare of impossible heat just how much she had wanted this too.

Pulling away he tugged the offending garment off, and found himself transfixed at the sight of her.

She wasn't flawless, his Toph. Her skin was a constellation of scrapes and scratches, tiny scars that were white even against her pale skin and wider ones that formed ropes of poorly mended tissue. He wanted to put his lips on every single one.

Toph rocked up against him, her mouth bruised red and wet from his kisses, trying to communicate with just her hands and her hips and Aang completely lost his head

"Mine," He growled into her neck with an almost violent surge of possessiveness. And because Toph was so contrary and it wasn't really in his nature to be so greedy and because he wanted her enough that he was going out of his mind he couldn't stop himself following it with "please, spirits Toph, please be mine."

"Yes," Toph gasped desperately and her head tipped back, her words one long exhalation. "Oh, Kuruk!"


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