#28. Hinder
For those of you who haven't guessed, Toph doesn't particularly like being put in a tower. In which Toph ruins a perfectly well-meaning rescue attempt, and Sokka isn't sure which one of them really deserves the pity here.
Disclaimer: Dont' own A:tLA.
Tokka Week Prompt #6: Sympathy
Surely, Sokka thought weakly, there are better ways to find a bride than this.
How the hell was anyone supposed to find a tower in all this forest, anyway? Listen for the singing? Because he wasn't even particularly keen on the idea of a singing wife, to be honest—nothing against a little whistling or whatever, but not all the time. Unfortunately, for any self-respecting princess in a tower, all the time was something like the minimum requirement.
It was a paradox: if she was the kind of princess he'd be perfectly happy with, the kind who didn't belt out her heart 24/7, he'd probably missed her already, and if she was the opera-aria type, he wouldn't want to find her anyway.
With a growing sense of despair, his thoughts drifted to the last few princesses he'd tried. Even excluding the ones who definitely didn't even know what paradox meant, the list read, more than anything else, as a string of explosive disasters.
Well. There had been the Northern Water Tribe girl, who'd been perfect—until they both found out she was already engaged, and incidentally, her father was a jackass. And then there had been the warrior princess with the makeup—she'd been perfectly nice, except for (a) the makeup, (b) the fact that she was more ripped than him, and (c) oh, yes—the little detail that she'd decided to run off with her Kyoshi clique and live as warriors, dedicated to the side of good and refusing to bow to the oppression of men. And then there had been the Fire Nation princess, who he still had nightmares about. He wasn't even going to go there.
And that wasn't even getting started on those duchess sisters who liked poetry so much. Five-seven-five, Sokka, five-seven-five… surely, nowhere else in the world could you get thrown out of a home for accidentally abusing haiku form.
Yeesh. Well, if nothing else, he must deserve a little sympathy from the spirits for all that.
He paused, glancing behind him. The woods were caught somewhere no longer winter but not quite spring, the strange mid-March moment where everything held its breath, just before the world exploded into color again. In a week this path would be garlanded with green; in a month, completely overgrown; but for now the only trace of the new season about to strike were the delicate green buds on the tips of the finger-like branches, and the tiny plants poking heads up through the carpet of dead leaves.
Well, at least it was better than trying this in winter.
But not much. As the sun ducked abruptly behind the clouds, sloshed cold down onto him like ice water, Sokka pulled his cloak tighter around his shoulders. Damn, maybe it was time just to call it a day…
Then he saw it.
Suddenly, shoving aside a bush, he broke through the last edge of forest, finding himself standing at the fringe of a field. In front of him, just at the crest of a hill, rose a massive tower, entirely wood—just like the villager had said.
And how did I miss that?
He took off towards it, first at an instinctive run but then slowing cautiously. He didn't want to seem too eager or anything. But he couldn't hear even the faintest hint of an aria, which was too reassuring for words. He had been told this princess was unusual… maybe in a better way than he'd dared imagine.
He took a step closer.
With no warning, a long, thin something came flying out of the tower's single window. A moment later, a pale, dark-haired figure appeared behind it.
"Hi," he called.
She seemed to squint at him, but then said nothing, just fiddled with something outside his view. The long, thin thing, some kind of cord, pendulumed slowly beneath her.
"I'm here to rescue you," he added.
She lifted her head again, looking at him for a moment longer this time. "You're a little late," she replied.
He paused a couple yards from the tower's base. "What?"
"I don't need rescuing," she deadpanned. "Thanks but no thanks; sorry about the trip. Points for effort. Try Omashu."
It was all rattled off in a monotone, while she frowned at whatever she was holding. Sokka stared.
"But I… but I'm supposed…"
"Yuh-huh. Well. I'm also supposed to stay here and wait until someone brings me a really big ladder, but if it's all the same to you, I'm freaking bored." She lifted her hands, revealing the other end of the cord, and gave it a sharp tug, before grinning. "Better luck next time."
She took a deep breath, grabbed the edge of the window, and hopped up to stand on the ledge. It was about then that Sokka realized two very significant things. First, was the fact that she really, truly did intend to escape, and second was that the rope looked very far from secure. Sokka had grown up on ships, so he knew ropes and rigging like Katara knew waterbending, and those were neither good ropes—they appeared to be made of shredded ball gowns—nor good knots.
"You're not going to make it."
She ignored him, gripping the rope tightly in two hands. Seeming to reconsider the approach, she sat down carefully on the ledge, her feet dangling off the side. She was wearing a dress the same color as the spring buds, tight-fitted on top and full-skirted on the bottom, and Sokka wondered how she could possibly maneuver—or breathe, for that matter—with it on. Coolly, she wrapped the cord around her waist, and then once round her wrist for good measure.
"I'm not trying to stop you," he insisted. "Really. But your rope doesn't look strong at all. It's going to break."
"The intimidation tactic's not going to work," she replied tartly, and swung off the ledge.
He cringed at the snap and grating rip of the silk being pulled tight, but to his shock, the princess seemed fine. Placing her feet against the wall, she began to rappel down, the rope running easily through her fingers. "Need any… help?" he asked feebly.
"Nah, I'm good."
She was about halfway down when he heard it—the faint and unmistakable sound of tearing fabric. "Hurry!" he shouted, and she began to move faster, slipping a few feet as she lost her grip on the rope for a moment. He watched, barely daring to breath, as she scrambled down. She grabbed the next segment of silk…
…And it tore away in her hand.
She yelped, snatching at the previous length, and only just managed to get her free hand onto it before the torn piece of silk unraveled and dropped below her, floating to earth like a twisting, living rainbow. She swung wildly at the end of her rope, feet slipping madly as she tried to replant them on the tower. She reached up higher on the rope, trying to climb back up, but there came an ominous tearing sound from above her, and she went rigid, dangling from the end of the rope.
Below her, Sokka glanced up, looking mildly interested.
"Need any help?"
"I've got it!" she snapped, wriggling as if trying to run in midair.
"So if I said, I told yo—"
"I told you so has a brother," she interrupted, her voice broken every other moment by a grunt of effort. "His name is shut the hell up."
It didn't escape Sokka's notice that as she struggled to remain impossibly still, her arms were quivering. He almost wanted to call a truce out loud, to ask her if she could give up on the point she wanted to prove and let him help, but she'd already made it clear she wouldn't accept it if he did offer. Besides, considering many times she'd shot him down in the last few minutes, he owed her no sympathy.
Although… he could possibly return the favor.
There was a pause. The princess swore quietly.
"Having fun there?" he inquired conversationally.
"It's freaking delightful," she growled, voice oozing venom. "Why don't you come try it?"
Her arms weren't just trembling; they were shaking, violently. "Well," she said loudly, "I guess there are worse ways to die."
No drop from that height could kill her—unless she could manage to land on her head somehow—but she would break something landing on this ground. Still, he refused to give her the satisfaction of him answering. She reached up again, flinching at the snarl of breaking fabric, and then demanded, "What are you waiting for, jackass? Help me!"
"Magic word?"
"Oh, for Spirits' sake… how about before I fall—?"
Maybe it was saying it out loud; maybe the Spirits resented her abuse of their name. Just as she spat the last word, her hand slipped from the silk, and before she seemed to know what was happening, she was falling, a scream trailing behind her and the silk cord swinging innocently above. Instinct immediately overriding the resentment, Sokka lunged forward, arms outstretched to catch her. An instant later she landed, flailing madly, on top of him.
It hurt.
A lot.
Sokka lay very still, trying not to move lest every bone in his body be shattered. Calmly, the princess picked herself up. Now he saw her up close—he deemed it safe to move his eyes—she looked distinctly regal: something in the set of her chin, and the way she held herself, a swagger that was at the same time composed, dignified. "Well," she said, "that wasn't too bad."
Sokka was about to say something, but a moment later her face lit up before he could speak. She broke into the widest grin Sokka had ever seen, as though her face had been torn open to reveal a diamond mine, and before he could comment, she whirled to face the tower and jerked her hands sharply apart, stomping her foot.
The ground inches from Sokka split open, revealing a chasm that seemed to descend into the heart of the earth. With a great, splintering crash, the tower tumbled down into the gorge, swallowed whole by the blackness. The princess snapped her fists together, and the mouth of the ravine snapped shut like closing lips, a time-lapse wound healing from a gash to a scar to smooth new skin again. Sokka's jaw dropped.
"Damn," said the princess happily, "that feels good."
She set off down the hill. Sokka pulling himself weakly to his knees, stared in disbelief. "You're a bender?" he called.
She turned around, halfway down the path. "And you're a genius, I suppose." She shook her head pityingly. "Hence the tower. Wood. I haven't done that for a year." After a thoughtful pause, she mused, "Though I'm still damn good at it."
He stood carefully, taking a cautious step towards her. His back ached where she had landed on him, but nothing seemed broken. "You know," he said, "I think technically I just rescued you."
She arched an eyebrow. It was an expression that an accompanying retort wouldn't have done justice to.
"I saved you," he persisted. "From life-or-death peril. Do I get any credit for that?"
She eyed him, head tilted, and then sighed heavily. "Look," she said, "you seem nice and all, and I appreciate you breaking my fall, but I'm not really the kind of person I think you're looking for." She paused, seeming aware it was a feeble response, and then inquired, "Do you know why I was in the tower?"
He hesitated. "Help you find a husband?"
"Ha." She snorted. "Mine is a bitter laugh. Ponytail"—here, he reached self-consciously for his hair, and she gave a catlike grin—"I'm in the freaking tower because I ran away and scammed a bunch of idiots for gold. And then sort of became an outlaw. Dad wasn't so happy," she finished, rolling her eyes.
For a moment, Sokka was stuck on the motion: they were pretty eyes; he hadn't realized before: jade and grey simultaneously—a soft, misty color, but sharp with vivid intelligence. Quickly, however, as they narrowed at him, he snapped to. "That sucks," he agreed sincerly, trudging down to where she stood. "But that still doesn't make you the worst princess I've met."
She stared him down, smirking. "Too bad," she countered. "I'll just have to try harder, won't I?"
Grin widening, she reached over, punching him in the arm. He yelped, and she snickered, making no effort to hide her entertainment, before setting off downhill. If she noticed her dress dragging through the mud, she didn't seem to care. "Hey!" he called after her. "Princess?"
"Not 'princess'," she corrected over he shoulder. "Toph, Ponytail. Just Toph."
"Fine. Toph," he amended. "Do you sing?"
He heard a burst of laughter from further down the path, where she was weaving out of sight between the tall grass. "Like hell."
Laughing himself, Sokka hurried after to catch up before he could lose sight of her—something that, for an inexplicable reason, he couldn't stand to do. It might have been a hell of an unusual rescue, but success or no, he might just have gotten the right kind of princess out of it anyway.
And did you think she would be good at sitting in a tower? Hah. Just... hah. As if. Sokka's princess fails (at the start) are Yue, Suki, Azula (o_O), and those girls at the school of poetry in 'Tales of Ba Sing Se'.
Reviews are always wonderful-one more day in Tokka Week, so all your support is amazing! ^_^