Disclaimer: I don't own Avatar but I use the characters for my own entertainment. O_0

Aang's pov

Oh man, I felt like a creeper. I mean, who shows up in front of a closed mechanic's shop in the dark of night wearing a suit and tie? Me, apparently. I looked around real fast to see if I could spot someone who looked like an older version of the younger Toph I used to know but all I saw was a dark car under a streetlight.

Forget creeper, I feel like a drug dealer.

It was a pretty warm night which only added heat to my already overheated body. While I contemplated going towards the dark car, the door on the passenger side opened.

"Twinkle Toes?" a slightly deeper version of an old friend's voice rang out.

"Toph?" I squeaked.

Oh crap it was her.

Before I could even begin hitting my forehead for sounding so stupid a loud, deep click sounded in the dark. I quickly ducked and covered but when it wasn't followed by similar sounds I stood back up and hoped Toph didn't see that in the dark.

As she walked over I couldn't help my eyes from following her every movement intensely. I had no idea why she called but the fact that I hadn't seen her for almost a decade had me on edge. What if she decided to just disappear again?

I stopped that line of thought. I could not think that right now. She wanted to meet me. She wanted to see me again after all these years. For a brief moment I felt slightly humiliated. I mean, for nine years I had overturned every stone searching for her only to have her find me so easily. Then, as she got closer, I remember how lucky I must have been to finally meet her again after all these years.

Underneath the happiness I could feel something hot flowing along like lava from deep within my belly. I disregarded it when she stopped a little too close to me.

"Um…hey, Twinkle Toes. How's…life been?" she asked nervously.

Her voice stunned me for a second. Everything about it just…made me half mad with happiness and whatever feeling that lava that was starting to bubble was.

"It's–" I coughed and cleared my throat to try and get a sound that wasn't so embarrassing out. "It's been good. Busy. You know, trying to keep the state affairs…in order…and stuff."

"Yeah, I heard you were governor. I didn't vote for you," she informed me, "If it makes you feel better I didn't vote for the other guy either. Congratulations, I guess, sorry it's a bit late."

I shook my head. "Better late than never…" I trailed off. "So are you still working at Marty's?"

She shook her head. "Not since…not anymore. I consult sometimes but they don't really need me. I actually started up my own martial arts studio."

"Oh, that's cool. You're probably a really good teacher."

"I run it with my partner, Chinese man. He's Chinese."

"Really? I would have never guessed."

Knock knock.
Who's there?
Awkward.
Awkward who?
Awkward moment reporting for duty.

I scrambled my brain to search for a different subject.

"Do you remember Iroh, our history teacher?"

She smiled. "Dude, who can forget him?"

"Well he opened up his own tea shop, The Jasmine Dragon."

She smiled fondly and even in the dark I could tell it was a breathtaking look.

"We should go visit him sometime. I can't wait to…hear him again."

I nodded. A silence followed where neither of us knew what to say. I brought my sleeves up to wipe my forehead.

"It's kind of hot out here," I commented casually. I immediately wanted to hit myself. The weather? I was talking about the weather? Talk about geeky.

"Yep," she clipped.

The sound of gravel sounded from behind her. Her car was leaving…without her.

"Um, Toph?"

"What?"

"Are you being haunted?"

She said slowly, as if entertaining me, "Not that I know of."

"Did you invent a robot that could drive?"

"It's on my to-do list."

"You do know your car is leaving without you…right?"

She laughed and punched me in the rib. "That's my driver, Gottfried. I told him to just leave to go back to sleep because I sort of woke him up."

"Oh. Okay," I said distractedly.

She punched me…and I liked it. Well, it wasn't so much that I was a masochist and liked the pain but more like I missed the way we used to be. I knew she punched and hit to show affection–well either that or she liked being sadist which, while a plausible theory, I knew wasn't true.

Everything she was feeling I felt in that punch. It came fast which meant she wasn't really thinking when she raised her fist, it was a reflex to my words. When she made contact with my skin the force was immediately pulled back and she lingered just a moment longer than necessary which, I hoped, meant that she missed "us" too. When she withdrew she seemed reluctant.

Without thinking I offered to take her back to my place. When she didn't say anything I realized what that must have sounded like and I immediately backtracked.

"NO! No, I mean, sorry I didn't mean to yell. What I meant was that it's kind of hot and since your driver drove off, because that's what he does–drive. His job description is in his title. Um, that w-we could go to m-my-my apartment and keep–keep talking. If that's okay with you, of course." This time I really did slap my forehead. So hard in fact I fell back a bit.

After a moment of silence she laughed that smooth cackley laugh that, for some illogical reason, I liked and punched me again, swift and hard on my chest.

"You–you," she struggled to say as she laughed, "are still a–a dork!" she kept laughing and I could not help but to laugh with her. I wasn't really offended because I knew I was but I hoped she wouldn't say it. Of course, Toph does not know the meaning of mercy.

"Yeah," I agreed. "I am."

She wiped some tears from her eyes. "But that's okay," she said. "I had my doubts about you becoming cooler after college."

"I'll have you know that I constantly get fan mail sent in from our state as well as others telling me how cool I am."

"Then they don't know you that well, huh?"

"Guess not."

She took a deep, shuddering breath to help her stop laughing. "So you wanna peel out of here Romeo?"

I turned around and helped her to the passenger seat of my car as any Romeo would do.

"After you Juliet."

She laughed. "You realize we both die in the end?"

"Don't ruin the story for me!"

She held her hands up in surrender. "There's always a sequel to look forward to."

"Unless you want to ruin that too," I fake grumbled.

The tense, awkward silence had dissipated so rapidly that it made me question if we ever really were separated. One look at her reminded me that we were, but I couldn't seem to care at the moment.

"What made you realize you wanted to be governor?" she asked. We were in the elevator leading up to my apartment on the fourth floor.

The landlord who ran the place seemed to be leaving and he gave me a curious look as I escorted Toph towards the elevators. I greeted him just as I would any other day but this time instead of a reply I got a look. I didn't bother asking Toph for a translation because her head was turned and she didn't see it. It bothered me. He looked surprised, amused, and envious all at the same time. For some reason it made me feel like I was doing something bad and maybe in his eyes I was.

I hoped he didn't think I'd be a problem. Toph was only coming over for one night and I had a pullout couch as well as a bed so we wouldn't be–

I cut off that train of thought quickly and answered her question.

"Well there wasn't a grand revelation or anything. I just thought that I'd be of more use to the world if I was allowed to make good decisions and enforce them."

"Well that's not exciting. I was expecting some pizzazz Twinkles," she joked.

I bumped my hip against hers. "Sorry. I tried really hard to book the choir of angels singing hallelujah but you have to book them in advance. The next opening is in 15 years."

She lightly crossed her arms and hit my hips harder with hers. "That sucks," she commented as we left the elevator. I heard that deep click sound again and I looked around but I couldn't see anything that would cause it so I just shrugged.

I rubbed the side of my hip and my rib. "That's life."

My apartment was a short walk from the elevator and I paid a pretty good price for that privilege. I usually woke up earlier than I had to when I left for the office but sometimes I would oversleep and having that convenience was worth the price.

I opened my apartment up and told Toph to wait a second in the doorway. I walked three doors over and pounded on the door.

"Mr. Rubisco! Time for work!" I pounded a couple more times until I heard a grumble and an "okay!" coming from inside.

I walked briskly back to Toph and led her inside.

"My neighbor. He always complained about not being able to wake up in time for his third job so I started pounding on his door to help him out."

She smirked. "And you said violence never solved anything."

"It's not like I'm hitting the guy. It's a door."

"So where's the grub?" she asked.

I ruffled her head which was almost up to my chin. I had almost forgotten that she ate like every hour of the day.

"Hey," she said sharply as she grabbed my wrist from her head and twisted it behind my back and pushed me up against the door I had just closed. "Do you realize how long it took me to stop people from ruffling my hair? All of college. It started becoming a pledge thing for freshman to ruffle my hair and be able to escape with their lives."

"Oh but it's just 'cause you are so short and cute," I mocked. She pulled my arm closer to my head.

"And you're tall and annoying."

She let me go and I head the click sound again. She walked towards the couch and sat down. I went into the kitchen and got a soda from my counter and some left over pie that Mr. Rubisco's wife made me, grabbed two forks and sat down next to her.

"It's not so bad being short," I said as I offered her some pie. She didn't seem to pay it any attention.

"How would you know? You're flipping seven feet tall!"

"5'10." I put the pie closer to see if she'd react but she didn't.

"Close enough."

"It is not! I don't see how those two measurements are close at all."

"Oh shut up.

"You brought it up!"

"And I'm bringing it down. See how that happens?"

"You've gotten crazier with age."

"And you've gotten taller."

"You do realize that was a compliment right?"

We both laughed, our hearts lightening up with our little spat.

"Toph?"

"Yes ginormous?" she smiled.

"You do realize I've been holding a pie in your face for five minutes."

Her eyes widened in surprise, her smile faltered, and then her dark hair flowed over her face, shielding her.

Before I could ask her what was wrong she spoke gently, almost as if she was afraid of something.

"Why did you agree to meet me?"

I put everything in my hands on the coffee table and turned to look at her.

"I wanted to. I have missed you so much and when I realized it was you I just…. Didn't you want to meet me?"

She still had not shown her face. "Yeah…and no."

I felt my heart crush a little.

"I wanted to so badly but I was kind of…" she trailed off.

Toph had never been one to express her feelings verbally, so when she rested her head against my arm I just sort of…got it. There's no mistaking that it would have been nice to hear her say the words but then I wouldn't really think they were coming from her.

We stayed like that for almost an hour. The tick-tock of the clock and the air conditioning lightly blowing were the only sounds other than our breathing and my rapid heartbeat (though only I could hear that one…hopefully) around us. It was nice feeling her head on my arm. I wished I had worn short sleeves so I could feel her silky hair but this was still nice. The serenity of the moment tugged at my eyelids and I could feel the stress that I'd felt since early morning sort of break away from me and leading me deeper and deeper into sleep.

Suddenly she pulled away and turned to look at me.

"I'm blind."

Her sudden words jolted me awake. "What?" I asked to make sure I heard her right.

"Well," she elaborated a bit clumsily, "I can still sort of see but it's like…. Have you ever squinted at the traffic lights?"

"I used to. Now that I drive I try to be more careful."

"Well that's how I see things. Streaky. But it's like…dull. There are no bright colors." She held up her hand in front of her face and pointed with her other one to a point just under the nail of her middle finger. "I should be able to see my whole hand but that's about all I can see."

I felt so shocked I just had no idea what to say except, "How?"

"Cataracts."

She probably didn't want to explain any further and I wasn't going to press it. I'd just research it later.

"When?"

"For a while. But it didn't really become a problem until I was about sixteen, after the whole ransom deal. A little bit before that actually."

"Ransom?" I asked.

She opened her mouth to explain but then locked her teeth together and sighed. "Um…Melody told me that she told you I ran away."

"Yes. We went looking for you but when we arrived at this one place underneath a huge boulder you just…you weren't there. I went to your house to help your parents look for you but my face met the gravel and the police there told me I couldn't help. Since then I've been searching for you."

She swallowed hard. "Um…well, there's a reason you couldn't help. See I was underneath the boulder but after Melody left I was kidnapped. They released–"

I immediately swallowed her up into a hug. Oh gosh, all this time I thought she just didn't want to see me and it turns out she was kidnapped!

"Did they hurt you?" I pushed her away so she could answer but I never let go her arms.

"More like I hurt them. Could you not–" I pulled her back into my arms.

"Did they catch them?" I pushed her away from my chest again. Her hair looked a little messier the second time.

"After a while but–" I pulled her back in but quickly released her after she pinched me twice in the gut with the force of seventy bodybuilders.

"OW! What was that for?"

She tied back her hair into a bun and glared at me. "You were killing me; I thought it was only fair. Now would you let me explain?"

I nodded but then I remembered that she probably could not see that so I said, "Yes."

"Sheesh," she grumbled before starting in. "Let me summarize. I was kidnapped. I kicked kidnappers butt but they managed to subdue me. They released me after three days for no money. They were found about a week or so later. One is currently in Thailand working for my dad. The other is my partner for the martial arts studio. They weren't bad guys they were desperate. As you can probably guess we are all on okay terms right now. I'm Chinese man's kids' godmother."

My mouth fell open. My mind went blank. For three minutes I could not even think.

"Only you," I finally managed to say.

"That's what I've been saying," she laughed. Her hand inched along the space between us before it found a space just above my knee. "But I'm seriously okay so you don't have to freak out any more."

I nodded but a strange thought came up to my mind. "Why didn't you tell me sooner?"

She shrugged and crossed her arms. "I didn't know how to explain it and then after that I discovered the cataracts and I've spent the past years learning how to live and fight with it and then there was college…worst four years of my life. It was a hectic decade."

I nodded again. Another strange thought came to me. I looked at her left hand.

"And Jory?"

A/N:

So here it is...well part of it.

I'm getting a little tired being that it is 1:42 in the morning so I'm going to go to sleep and finish the rest tomorrow. Happy Kwanzaa!

Hope you guys liked it.

Love: Lola of the Peaches

=]