Prompt: Doesn't Realize They've Been Injured
Hurt Character: Toph
Comforting Character(s): Not Specified
Characters: Toph, OCs
Warnings (Aside from the Self-Evident): Mentions of organized crime
Other Tags: Post-canon, Republic City Era

She'd been sent back to her parents.

Everything around her was soft. She was lying under soft sheets, on top of a soft bed, wrapped in a soft nightgown in place of her comfortably familiar metal armor. No no no, this couldn't be happening, she was the greatest earthbender of all time, not some helpless doll to spend her life being coddled and taken care of…

Immediately, she threw the covers off of her body and swung her feet off the edge of the bed. That was when the pain hit her.

All at once, a spike of agony shot through her side, causing her to double over before her feet could even touch the floor. Pressing a hand to her side purely on reflex, she was able to make out the layered texture of bandages beneath the thin fabric of the gown she was wearing, in addition to a faint pinch in the back of her hand.

Reaching up to pat the back of her hand, her fingers encountered a needle, which was held in place by yet another bandage.

Hospital. She was in a hospital.

Now she was beginning to remember. It had all started during that final raid…

Sure, founding the United Republic and bringing the nations together had been a good idea in theory. When they'd first signed the paperwork, though, there was just one thing they hadn't been counting on:

The crime syndicates.

When multiple elements and multiple nations came together, chaos tended to ensue. Though she should have learned that well enough from her time with Team Avatar, Toph had somehow managed to forget that particular law of nature, and now she was paying the price. Specifically, she now found herself tasked with breaking up a protection racket run by a crime ring consisting of earthbenders, waterbenders, and firebenders, with nothing but a handful of novice metalbenders and a few nonbending police forces to her name.

Whatever. She was Toph Beifong, the greatest earthbender who'd ever lived. She had this.

Landing on the streets of the city, she struck a foot against the Earth. This should be the right place according to her informant, and sure enough, the rabbit-frightened heartbeats of her quarry were so easy to locate that it was laughable.

"Zheng and Mao," she ordered. "Around back. Lee? You're with me. It's about time you saw how it's done."

"O-of course, Chief." Lee was going to have to shake those nerves if he ever wanted to amount to anything—which was why Toph was keeping him with her for now. After all, there was no better training than under fire—or at least, that's what she had always understood.

It was now or never. Thanks to their seismic sensing, her metalbenders were ready.

So, unfortunately, were the gangsters.

A wave of heat billowed into her face the second she stepped into the hideout, and Toph held the door she'd just busted down in front of herself as a shield. Then, the Earth was rumbling beneath her and large chunks of stone started flying up from the floor.

Oh no, they didn't. Not on her turf, and not with her own element. Ignoring both the icicles that were shattering against her chestplate and the flames that were heating up the rest of her armor, Toph flexed her fingers and shifted her stance in quick succession, and ropes of metal flew out to bind the offending earthbender.

She turned her attention to the waterbenders and firebenders next—but as it turned out, the rest of her squad had finally gotten in here and were currently in the process of binding the holdouts. Toph smiled proudly; she might make something of them yet.

"Wow, Chief." Behind her, Lee's heart was going a mile a minute; she couldn't help but smirk at his newbie hero-worship. "That was amazing!"

"'Course it was amazing." She thumped a gauntleted hand against her chest. "I'm the greatest earthbender of all time, and don't you forget it." She turned to address the thugs who were currently in various states of moaning on the floor. "And don't any of you forget it either!"

"Well." Zheng's sigh came out as a huff of breath to her side. "Looks like it's time to fill out the paperwork."

Toph groaned. She could have happily gone the rest of her life without ever learning of the existence of paperwork—but in civilized places, as it turned out, they never let you knock heads anymore without telling the Council how and when and why, and if for some reason you ended up knocking heads that the higher-ups didn't want knocked, then you could not only kiss your badge goodbye, you were liable to end up in a jail cell of your own.

There were times when Toph really missed the Earth Rumbles—those had been nice and uncivilized, and nobody cared whose head you knocked just as long as you gave the crowd plenty of entertainment.

There was nothing for it, though, so they trudged back to the station and chucked the bad guys in jail before Toph returned to her office, put her feet up on her desk, and summoned her secretary, Mei Ling.

By this point, Mei Ling already knew what to do without having to be told. She started by getting the preliminary details on the arrests they had made, then went to fetch the necessary forms—and, because she was a good secretary, made sure to get Toph a cup of tea in the process.

"Tastes like hot leaf juice," was Toph's only comment.

"Sorry, Chief Beifong." There was a rustle of paper as Mei Ling spread the forms out over the surface of the desk. "Ever since the Jasmine Dragon closed—"

"Yeah, yeah." Toph waved a hand in dismissal. Importing Iroh's custom-made blends all the way from Ba Sing Se had been expensive, but worth it. "Let's just get this over with, yeah?"

So, one by one, Mei Ling read out the questions on the forms. One by one, Toph answered them, and Mei Ling wrote down what she said, her pen sometimes scratching over the paper for much longer than Toph had actually spoken. Sure, it wasn't a fun routine, but it was familiar, and Mei Ling had a way of making things go as efficiently as possible and of only consulting Toph for the information she actually needed.

Plus, there was tea. Tea was always a bonus—even if it wasn't Iroh's.

"Right. Are we done yet?"

"I believe that we are." There was a rustling of paper as Mei Ling rolled up the last of the forms. "Would you like—woah!"

Toph had moved to stand up. Instead, she found herself toppling as she was nearly overcome by a wave of dizziness.

"Are you okay?" The scrolls that Mei Ling had just scooped up fell out of her arms to scatter all over the floor.

"Fine." Toph gritted her teeth, and pressed a hand to her forehead. "I just got up a bit too fast, that's all."

"You're not fine." Mei Ling's footsteps hastened around the side of the desk. "Chief, you're bleeding!"

"I'm what, now?" Toph ran a hand over her torso. Almost immediately, her fingers encountered a warm, sticky substance leaking out from between the plates of her armor. Bringing her fingers to her nose, she immediately recognized the familiar coppery scent.

"Huh. Guess I am."

That was the last coherent thought she had before the roaring in her ears and the feeling of the room spinning around her head overwhelmed her, and all sound faded as she pitched face-first into the floor.

Fainted. She couldn't believe she'd actually fainted. Toph lay back on the sheets with a groan. She was never going to live this down.

Well, whatever had happened after she'd passed out, it seemed like someone was taking good care of her—they'd probably taken her to that new hospital that Mei Ling had told her about only last week. As long as she was here, she reasoned, she might as well take the opportunity to relax.

…relax, and try not to think about her parents.