V36.2

Stressed!

Toph sat still, trying to expand her hearing, trying to listen to the feelings around her. What Naomi had taught her was something she'd never thought about. How did one hear a vibration? Toph could easily tell if someone was lying, but she'd never just closed off her ears—her only sense that worked correctly besides touch—and listened.

She could hear Aang and Zuko practicing the new move Emiko had told them about off to her right. She could hear Emiko and Katara awkwardly making lunch together in the recently destroyed kitchen. Sokka was practicing with his sword somewhere off to the back of the compound.

And Toph was listening to them do all of this. It wasn't just feeling the vibrations anymore. She could have told where they were before, sure, but never what Katara was saying, or how she grumbled lowly under her breath. Emiko kept running her hand through her short hair, as if making sure she'd really cut it off.

"Are you sure it was a good idea to leave Aang and Zuko alone?" Katara was asking, rolling something out on one of the stone counters.

Emiko quirked her lips, which strangely was its own vibration, and replied with, "Zuko knows that until the comet and his father are gone, he can't do anything to the Avatar. Or at least I hope he's smart enough to know that."

Katara raised an eyebrow at her and wiped a smudge of flour from her forehead. "What exactly happened between you and Zuko anyway? You used to be all lovey-dovey, and now I see you and Sokka together all the time. Which, by the way, I'm not a fan of. You hurt my brother and I hurt you."

Toph laughed at this at the same time that Emiko snorted. She knew that it was bad to listen in on their conversation but she was just as curious. Besides, it was a training exercise. Not like she was meaning to listen to their vibrations or anything.

"We...got in a fight." Emiko's hands bitterly pounded dough, dough that Toph was looking forward to. Emiko always made the best food! "And don't worry. I like Sokka, I wouldn't hurt him."

Katara was fidgeting again. She shuffled her feet and threw her hair behind her shoulder, waiting a little too long to answer. "Well...relationships mend up in the end, right?"

Toph knew that her saying this was just a way to ward off the awkwardness of the conversation. She didn't really mean it. Emiko must have caught on, too, because of the way she stiffly replied, "Not from that kind of fight, Katara. I…I really don't feel like talking about it right now."

Katara stayed silent for a moment. She stopped rolling out her dough and sighed, rubbing the back of her neck and turning toward Emiko. "Look..." she said hesitantly, putting a hand on the girl's forearm, which Toph could tell was shaking. "I feel like I've always treated you badly. I've never trusted you, I never...I'm sorry."

Emiko smirked and shook her head, but didn't pull away from Katara. "You don't have to apologize. I've put it behind me and—"

"But you haven't." Katara made Emiko stop working and turned her to be face to face. "You haven't, Emiko. I can still see the hurt in your eyes. You tell me that you want to help Aang—"

"I do—"

"—but you don't understand how your stress will only add to his. If you really want to help him, you'll take a day to relax. Stop and breathe for a moment. We're all at our wit's end. So, come on. You and me. Girl's day."

Emiko's face was contorted. Either she'd never heard Katara talk that much, (Lucky Emiko,) or she was just really confused. "Katara...you hate me. Why would you suggest a girl's day?"

Katara's face dropped, almost as if asking, Really? "Look, Emiko...we started off on the wrong foot. Let's start over and just relax. You and me. The boys are practicing, Toph hates being pampered, and who knows where she is—"

Hey! I take that personally! I like being pampered, I just don't like my feet being touched!

"So come on. Let the boys cook for a change." Katara wrapped on arm around Emiko's and started to pull her off. The Firebender, trying to hold her ground, planted her feet but was pulled forward anyway.

"But...my dough—!"

"Poor Emiko," Toph said with a chuckle as she stood up and stretched. Her mind kind of hurt for listening so long but she didn't mind. She was getting that listening thing down good! "Never stood a chance."

Emiko

The attic was dusty and full of boxes but Katara deemed it perfectly fine to have our girls day there. It was quiet and secluded which she said we needed desperately. We'd already done some kind of seaweed wrap and were doing our nails when she noticed something off to the side.

"Don't touch anything, I just put the top coat on," I groaned, wondering why nails were making me anxious when everything else going on should have done that instead. Maybe that was the point of the seclusion.

"All of this stuff is really nice," she said as she burrowed through some boxes. "I can't believe that someone had enough money to just throw all of this in a room and forget about it."

I joined her, careful about my toes which were still wet with embarrassingly red paint. A new trend in the Fire Nation according to the lady who'd sold it to me. I called bull-pig shit because I felt like there were bloody scabs on my toes now. "I mean, Zuko didn't have a good family life after his mother left." I felt the need to defend him for some reason. Not that he deserved anything in my opinion but he was still a human being that I'd once cared for.

Katara's eyes shot to mine and I realized that maybe I'd shared a little too much. "He mentioned something about that down in the catacombs. She left? Why?"

As usual when I spoke to Katara, my walls dropped and I didn't feel like sharing anymore. "Nope, that's for Zuko to disclose, not me. Let's get back to our spa day. You're stressing me out."

She looked like she was ready to join me again but found something else that caught her attention. "Oh, look, a family portrait!" A woman was holding a small child in her lap. A boy, by the looks of it. She was pregnant. Ozai was standing behind her, one hand menacingly on her shoulder. "This must be Zuko's mom."

The woman was very beautiful. Long black hair. Zuko had once told me that he'd combed her hair for her. That day by the lake with Jun seemed so far away. His tender touch was so long gone. "We shouldn't dig into his personal things. This all belongs to him." The truth was that him as a small boy made my stomach ache for something that had been taken from me.

"Fine," Katara huffed, flopping down next to me again. Her nails were getting done the same color as my toes. "But we've got to hurry. Sokka has some kind of training exercise for us before dinner."

I rolled my eyes. "If we even have dinner. Did any of the boys pick up where we left off?" And did they burn it?

"Who knows. But we needed some time off."

oOo

I was really hoping for one of those seaweed wrap things that Katara had given me earlier in the day as giant rocks were thrown at me. I mean, come on, who gave Toph the idea that her boulders could be set on fire? This was in no way relaxing or helping me help Aang. "Emiko, you will take the place of Ozai's many guards. In the real deal, you'll be doing your Spirit-y, Fire-y, Sun-Momma thing."

And besides, why was I protecting "the Fire Lord" anyway? I didn't want him to be saved, nor did I want my back turned to Zuko at this point. Both of us were breathing hard and shooting out flame after flame, first at Sokka and Toph, then at Katara. I hadn't seen Aang yet.

This wasn't what it was going to feel like on the battlefield. I was going to be running around like a pig-chicken with its head cut off. My heart was going to be pounding out of my chest. That or I wouldn't feel a thing because the spirit would take over and I'd be useless and unable to do anything. At the moment, I was just feeling annoyed and unsure of myself.

What was Sokka thinking, making Zuko be his father in this run through? As if Zuko didn't have enough problems, now he was pretending to be his father! Smooth, Sokka, I thought as I turned one of Katara's blasts into pure, hot steam, real smooth. "Leave some for the real enemies!" I cried when a boulder came too close. "I'm a little too young to die by crushing death!"

She laughed maniacally, making me bend low, twist my hands, and will all the fire away from her side of the battlefield. She cried out in indignation when the fire went out on her boulders. "Hey!"

Suddenly I jumped away from two, three, four rocks, distracting me from hearing footsteps coming closer. Rocks were flying in all directions but I quickly destroyed them by aiming at their target centers. Zuko took care of flying boomerangs and water that tried to kill me.

A rather large rock hit me in the arm, making me hiss. I ignored the hot blood running down my arm and turned in the direction I knew Toph was. My anger ignited and the next rock was disintegrated in front of me. That was when Aang jumped through the smoke, the boulders, and the water and landed behind Zuko. He grabbed the Firebender from behind, bringing his staff around Zuko's neck and looking completely terrified.

I turned, ready to protect Zuko, when I noticed that everyone had stopped. We were all looking at Aang expectantly. "What are you waiting for, Aang?" I asked, breathing heavily. I cupped the gash on my arm with the opposite hand. "He'll shoot you full of lightening if you hesitate like that."

He suddenly dropped his staff and backed up, shaking his head and looking positively mortified. "I…I can't."

Sokka walked up irately, pointing accusingly at the Avatar. "Aang, this is life or death! It's your job to kill the Fire Lord." He made a beheading gesture against his neck, making Aang flinch.

"I'm sorry. It just didn't feel right. I…didn't feel like myself. I...I'm sorry!" The Avatar then turned and fled in a cloud of dust, running faster than I'd ever seen him.

Zuko, next to me, started rubbing his neck and looking off after the Avatar. "It's too bad you're not Ozai's personal guard," he said lowly, not turning to look at me. "We'd have him dead in an instant."

I gritted my teeth and elbowed him in the stomach. Hard.

Aang

"Hey, you want some company?"

Aang hadn't been expecting that. He jumped at her voice, as did Momo on his shoulder, but still sat in his cross-legged state, trying to calm his nerves to figure out what to do. "No, not really." Momo squawked and left him to fend for himself.

"Well too bad, Avatar." She had soft smirk in her voice, but also worry and sympathy. Emiko shimmied up the tree awkwardly and slowly until she was sitting right next to him, her short, pale legs swinging over the edge of the large branch. "Looks like you're gonna have to deal with me."

He opened one eye to look at her and saw that her face was completely somber. She even looked a little…sad? Reluctant? "I need to be alone, Emiko."

"No." She put a hand on his. "No one needs to be alone. Not ever." Then she gently poked him in the chest, right above where his heart was pounding angrily. "Because there's always gonna be this and it needs to be taken care of just like an injury."

"Since when are you the knowledgeable one?" he wanted to know, closing his eye once more to try and concentrate.

She rebuffed just as bitterly. "Since when are you the angst-filled one? I thought that was Zuko." Emiko shivered slightly. He opened his eye to see that even though her kimono was long-sleeved, it was thin and she was freezing. "Never thought that day would come."

"What do you want with me?"

"I want to help you."

When he opened his eyes and looked at her, he saw that she was sincere. Her Fire Nation eyes held no pity, only knowledge and a need to help. She hadn't taken time to fix her hair. It was sticking up every other way and had some leaves in it. She didn't look like she should be an all-knowledgeable spirit. More like a kid who needed to brush her hair.

Her hand was put back on his; she leaned forward slightly. "Let me help you."

Aang sighed and leaned his head back against the tree trunk, wanting to disappear but not able to. "Unless you have a plan that doesn't involve killing the Fire Lord then you can't help me."

"Aren't you supposed to be the upbeat one?" she asked with a bitter laugh. She pulled her warm hand away and crossed her arms over her chest. She stared out onto the ocean, looking peaceful in the face but tense in the body. Like she was ready for a fight.

He looked up and saw that he had insulted her. He sighed. "Sorry. It's just that…I can't kill him, Emiko. I can't."

"It's hard," she said in a monotone voice. Gears in his head started turning. He was confused. "You see their faces on the back of your eyelids every time you close your eyes."

"What?" She was talking as if she'd killed before! Multiple people!

She stared down at her nails. They were a bright, comical red against her pale skin. "Agni, I can't even remember some of them. My mom, I guess. I think that that was my fault. I started the fire. Although the robbers might have stabbed her first. Either way, I count it."

"You can't count that."

She ignored him. Her eyes looked up, and all he saw was a hollow form of the once cheerful girl. "There was a man when I first ran away from my father. He tried to steal my food. I hadn't eaten in so long. I stabbed him in the stomach and ran. Pretty sure he died. He had kids and a wife, nice lady. I think that he was just trying to feed them."

Aang didn't want to hear anymore. He wanted to put his hands over his ears and shut the world out completely. "I don't need to hear this, Emiko!"

"You do," she said with a harsh tone to her voice. She wasn't staring at him but she bunched up the fabric on her kimono between her fists. "The world isn't black and white Aang. Take this as advice to kill Ozai or not but I'm telling you that it sucks. I don't even remember the third one, you know. I just get flashes of a woman's face in water. I think I drowned her. The fourth is similar. I think he was going to turn me over to the Fire Nation. I'm not sure what I did with him but his daughter asked me if I'd seen him the next day."

"Stop, please." Tears were forming in his eyes. He didn't understand how this woman could have killed so many people and with such little emotion. "I don't want to kill anyone."

"No, you don't. But sometimes it can't be helped. Like the fifth one. He tried to rape me and then tried to kill Zuko when he saved me." She closed her eyes and sighed, leaning her head back against the tree trunk. "What do you do then, Avatar?"

"I don't...I don't know." Aang realized that he might've been wrong about Emiko. That she was more lost than he had initially thought. Maybe she… No. Emiko was a good person, he knew it. He could feel it.

"The sixth one was undeniably my father. Just by being there, he gave up on life and he let the Ocean Spirit kill him."

Aang didn't remember anything from the time under the Ocean Spirit's control. "Wait, I killed your dad?"

"You didn't," she said with a shrug. "He killed the Moon Spirit and then the Ocean Spirit retaliated, not you. Believe me when I say that I know what it feels like when a spirit takes over your body. It's not pleasant and it sucks not being able to do anything to stop the spirit."

He tried to remember what had happened that night but most of it was blurry. He did remember Zhao killing the Moon Spirit, though. "Your dad was Zhao?"

Emiko's brow furrowed. "I thought everyone knew that by now. But anyway, he was number six. Number seven...I've never wanted to kill someone as much as I wanted to kill that man. I wanted to see him suffer." Her face was completely emotionless, almost as if she were lost in the memory from long ago. He'd never seen her like this and it kind of scared him.

"Azula came. Said that Zuko and Uncle were wanted back home. Ozai needed family or something equally unbelievable. We got to the armada and were attacked. One of them had Iroh. They tried to hurt him...the one person who cared about me, the one person who wanted to protect me in life." She put both hands to her face and shook her head hard, as if to rid herself of the memory. "I had…boiled his blood." She looked at him, haunted, and he knew that he couldn't kill Ozai. Not if it made him like this. "I understand why you don't want to kill another being. It hurts, Aang. It hurts in your chest forever and is burned on your eyelids. But..."

She closed her eyes and leaned her head back against the tree. For a moment, Aang thought that she was asleep.

Then she softly said, "Sometimes it's necessary."

Emiko

When I woke up the next morning, my back hurt and I was sore all over. I vaguely wondered why, then was poked with a piece of bark. Crap, I fell asleep in a tree again. Memories of the night before flashed back, making me almost fall out of the damned tree.

I had never told anyone about the people I'd killed, not even Zuko. Only Irohknew about it. So what was it about Aang that made me want to spill my guts about everything? If anything, I felt like he could learn from my mistakes or take some insights from all of the shit I'd been through.

Stretching to get the knot out of my back, I called out, "Aang?" When I got no answer, and no chattering Momo, I figured he had to have gone back to camp. So I slid back to the forest floor and walked back as well. But something wasn't right. Something ominous was floating around. Where could the Avatar had gone? Wouldn't have he had woken me?

Something strange was going on. Something didn't feel right. And I could tell for sure that something was wrong when I started running back to camp, my heart beating a mile a minute even before I'd started running. I was out of breath by the time I made it back, my stomach at my feet in dread. The Gaang was packed up and lounging on the steps of the old mansion. "Where's Aang?" I asked breathlessly, looking around the group frantically. I leaned down with my hands on my knees and tried to get my breath back.

"I thought he was with you!" Zuko cried angrily, giving me a glare that would've singed my eyebrows off if I had really cared.

"Well I fell asleep on a tree branch, excuse me!" I put both hands on my hips and glanced around, my heart still pounding. I wasn't sure if it was from running...or from worry. "I thought he came back here so I could sleep."

"Well, he's not here."

Suddenly everyone was looking for him. "Aang, Aang?" But somehow I knew that they wouldn't find him. I walked over and petted Appa as he nonchalantly ate his hay, like he didn't have a care in the world.

"I sure wish I was like you, big buddy." He softly growled and nuzzled my hand. "So you think he's gone too, huh?" Something along the line of a whine came from his muzzle. "I'm sorry, Appa. I'll help you find him. But I don't sense him here. They just need to keep looking."

They all came running out, Sokka holding Aang's staff. "Emiko, what are you doing standing around?" he cried, stuffing it into my hands. "We can't find Aang!"

I wanted to tell them that he wasn't there, but I wasn't really sure about that. My spirit powers didn't just appear and let me use them like a parlor trick. "Lets check the beach. And then the woods."

It didn't take very long to run to the ocean. We ended up near some kind of broken dock. Two seagulls were flying, fat and happy, in the sky, and I only wished that I could be like that too.

"Look, there're his footprints!" Katara cried. She followed them, but they were washed out by the shore. "They…end here."

Zuko looked at me accusingly. "What, did you guys go for a midnight swim?"

I glared at him. "Oh, and you think that he just never came back? Get your own life, Zuko. It doesn't matter what I do without you."

"You two quit fighting!" Katara cried, pushing us apart. She turned to me with annoyed but worried eyes. "Emiko, I know you are stressed right now, but I need you to help us. What happened when you and Aang were done talking last night?"

I scrunched up my forehead. It was as if she was accusing me of murdering him! "We fell asleep in a tree, damn it! I don't know what happened after that! When I woke up, I thought he had gone on back to camp."

"Maybe he was captured," Toph ventured, but was quickly shot down when Sokka said, "I don't think so. There's no sign of struggle."

"You're right." She bent down and checked the footprints. "I bet he ran away again."

"Yeah, but he wouldn't do that and leave without his glider and Appa," Katara mumbled, looking out onto the sea with sadness.

"This is a huge problem," Zuko mumbled bitterly, mopping his face with his hand in frustration. "Aang is nowhere to be found and the comet is only two days away!"

"What should we do, then, Zuko?" Katara asked. She sounded quite helpless, but then again I felt that way too. For some reason I felt like it was my fault that he was gone. The others probably thought it was, too.

We'd searched for hours. And hours. I'd searched through town on Appa. Aang's heat signature was unique but I could find it anywhere. I couldn't find him.

"What in Koh's name did you say to him?" Katara asked bitterly, suddenly turning her anger towards me. I held up my hands in defense of myself. "Did you pressure him into killing Ozai?"

Surprisingly it was Sokka who came to my rescue. "We were all doing that, so don't throw this on her." One of his large hands on my shoulder comforted me more than it should have. "Aang's obviously on one of his spirit journeys!"

"Wouldn't he leave behind a body though?" Zuko asked, making everyone turn their attention to him. An idea popped into my head and I narrowed my eyes slightly in contemplation. "Wait, why are you staring at me?"

"How long did you hunt down Aang?" I asked, not meaning it in a negative way but getting a glare for it. Then again, everything I did garnered a glare. "You knew that he'd need to leave a body, so..."

"Yeah," Toph agreed. "If anyone's got experience in hunting the Avatar, it's you."

Suddenly it was as if a candle was lit in my head. I instantly jumped up and climbed onto Appa's still-exhausted head. "Get on. Get on now!"

Zuko seemed to be on the same thinking train. "Emiko's right." Wow, never thought I'd hear him say that again. "Come on, let's go!"

As soon as Appa took off, Sokka seemed to become wary of my driving skills. He took the reigns from me but I kept steering us towards the Earth Kingdom. "Not to criticize you or anything, but why back to the Earth Kingdom? Wouldn't he be in the Fire Nation?"

I smiled brightly, thinking of what was to come. "Oh, just trust me." Jun was either going to accept or take us all in for our bounties. I was mostly sure that it would be the first one. Mostly.