Prompt: Painful Wound-Cleaning
Hurt Character: Toph
Comforting Character(s): Other/Your Choice
Characters: Toph, Zuko, Katara
Relationships: Toph & Zuko, Katara & Zuko, Toph & Katara
Warnings (Aside from the Self-Evident): Some gross descriptions of infection
Other Tags: The Western Air Temple, reverse psychology, Toph and Zuko are siblings, canon compliant if you squint

Okay, seriously?

She was Toph Beifong. The legendary Blind Bandit. The greatest earthbender of all time. The first metalbender in the history of ever. She had not just been defeated by a spirits-forsaken piece of wood.

"I promise," Zuko's voice came from next to her ear. "That assassin was not one of mine."

Katara's snort of disbelief somehow managed to convey more disdain than most people expressed in their entire lifetimes. "Oh, really? Is that why you're saying it while Toph is up on your back rather than on the ground? Or would you like to set her down so she can actually confirm it?"

"He's not lying."

"Oh, he's not, is he? And how would you—"

Toph let out an exasperated sigh. "Katara, I'm pressed right up against his back. I can feel his breathing and heartbeat just fine from here, thanks."

Katara huffed, but couldn't seem to come up with a counterargument, which was perfectly fine by Toph. While sometimes (okay, most of the time) it was absolutely hilarious to listen to Sugar Queen and Sparky constantly sniping at each other, the spike of pain that shot through her leg at every movement tended to put a damper on any form of entertainment.

"Okay," Katara said at last. "This ought to be safe. Let's rest here until we can be sure there aren't any more of them." There was the rustling sound of some sort of debris being swept aside, and then Zuko crouched down and carefully lowered her to the ground.

The moment she made contact with the floor (the stone floor, thank all the spirits), Toph could tell they'd taken shelter in a cave. Not a particularly big one, but as far as taking a rest while hiding from Fire Nation assassins, it would do.

Katara, she noticed, was on her knees as well, uncorking her waterskin. "We can try to regroup with the others soon, but I want to get a look at your leg first. That… looks really deep."

"Yeah, fine." Toph waved her hand. "The sooner I can walk again, the better."

"Knife," Katara said curtly, holding out her hand. Zuko pulled a small blade out of his boot and passed it over without comment.

"W-wait a minute, what are you d—" Toph started, her mind taking less than a second to flash through any number of horribly painful things that Katara could be planning to do with that knife… only to fall silent when Katara began cutting away the cloth of her pant leg. Then she just felt stupid.

"If I have to do anything drastic, I'll be sure to tell you first." Katara sounded amused. There was a brief pause as she pressed her fingers to the skin around the wound. "Speaking of which, though, this is going to have to come out."

Over Katara's protests, Toph reached down to feel it for herself. Whatever it was, it was made of wood, and it was… big. Not to mention pointy, and rough. Big and pointy and rough in a way that she definitely did not want sticking out of her thigh.

"Toph." Katara grasped her fingers, and moved her hand gently but firmly out of the way. "Let me do it."

Immediately, Toph bristled. "I'm not a baby!"

"No, but you're not a healer either." Though Katara's voice remained calm, her heart rate spiked in a way that said she would lose her cool if Toph pushed her much further. "I'm not saying I don't think you're tough enough, I'm saying that I'm the one who actually knows what I'm doing."

Toph gritted her teeth. Of course, she already knew what Katara was saying, and understood, logically, why it was necessary to let her do the dirty work. She just had memories, so many memories, of her time in her parents' house, when a nurse had been at their beck and call for every bruise and twinge, and even the most minor of cuts and scrapes were dressed and fussed over as if they were war wounds. She didn't remember how long it had taken for her to come to the bitter realization that her parents' real concern was the possibility of their daughter getting any scars to mar her perfect skin and ruin her marriage prospects. Even now that she'd finally gotten away from them, she still bristled over accepting necessary medical care, because there was just something about Katara's fussing that brought back far too many memories of being treated as if she were a delicate china doll.

"Fine," she snapped at last, digging her fingers into the rock of the cave floor. "Just get it over with."

She didn't have the first clue what Katara was doing. The only thing she knew was that she felt the touch of a bit of cool water, which for the first few seconds didn't seem to be doing much but prodding deep into the wound. Then, suddenly, the water went from cool to cold, and then there was a wrenching, tearing sensation as the thing was pulled out of her leg and spirits, that hurt! Katara gave a sigh of relief.

"Well, the good news is that it didn't hit any major arteries." She was now pressing a piece of cloth to the wound. "I'm still going to have to clean this out before I heal it. That piece of wood was… well, let's just say it didn't look all that sanitary."

"Katara, I roll around in the dirt for fun."

"Yes, but not with an open wound!"

"I told you, I'm not a baby!"

"Of course you're not." Zuko's voice, behind her, was accompanied by a rustling of cloth as he crossed his arms. "Seriously, Katara, why don't you just leave it? I'm sure she can handle a little infection."

It was impossible to tell whether it was due to the suggestion that she neglect her patient or simply the fact that it was Zuko speaking (probably both), but Katara's heart rate shot up so high that it felt like she was about to have an aneurysm. "You—" she spluttered. "How could you even think—"

Toph, on the other hand, mostly just felt smug. "See, Katara? I'm not—"

"After all, it's not like being bedridden with a fever is going to be a problem for you or anything. Plus, you're blind, so you're not even going to have to see the pus building up in your wound."

"Wait a minute, pus? Sparky, what are you—"

"Though, that's not going to keep you from smelling it," Zuko continued thoughtfully, ignoring her. "There's not much that smells much worse than infected pus, especially when you know it's coming out of you. You're also going to have to feel it leaking out of your wound, and then have your leg cut open so the infection can drain. But that's okay, we all know you're tough. You're not a baby, after all. I'm sure you can handle—"

"Okay, okay, I get it already!" Toph stomped her uninjured foot against the ground, causing a miniature earthquake. "Just hurry up and get it over with!"

Katara didn't answer, just uncorked her waterskin with a sigh. She started by flushing the wound out with water, and that was bad enough. Still, Toph crossed her arms, clenched her jaw, and pretended not to feel it, and if Katara and Zuko noticed her nails digging into the skin of her forearms, neither said anything. Toph was perfectly fine with that; she didn't need or want anyone else's pity.

Then, though, Katara brought out another bottle. "This is going to sting." And that was the only warning she got before the already-painful cut was suddenly on fire.

It didn't matter how strongly she'd felt the need to prove herself just a few minutes ago: this was unbearable. Completely on reflex, she found herself jerking forward, reaching down for her leg, but before she could touch it, Zuko grabbed her hands and held on tight.

He didn't offer her condescending words of pity, didn't say anything at all actually, and Toph was glad for that, at least. He only gripped her hands, just to keep her from interrupting Katara's work, of course, and Toph did her best to distract herself from the pain by concentrating instead on the feel of his hands around hers.

His hands were surprisingly warm (must be a firebender thing), his palms and fingers rough with calluses that she never would have expected to find on royalty. In all honesty, Toph was a little bit envious. Though the bottoms of her feet were as hard as the rocks she bent, when she'd been living with her parents any skin on her hands that was anything other than baby-soft had always been immediately filed away. Though she'd been working to toughen up her hands ever since she'd run away with Aang, those sorts of things took time, and it felt as if Zuko had years to her months.

It was hard to tell how long the cleaning took, but it felt like Katara was being really thorough, using her waterbending to flush out the wound with whatever nasty concoction she was using to clean it (and, incidentally, to send the burning into every crevice of torn flesh). Finally, though, she pulled back and announced that she was done.

It still took a while for the stinging to stop. By that time, however, Katara was already pressing hands coated with cool, soothing water against her leg, and Zuko was slowly letting go of her hands. Toph released his fingers a lot more reluctantly than she would ever care to admit.

"You'll still need to stay off it for a few days," Katara said as she finished up and started to wrap a bandage around the wound. "But it's probably not going to scar and you're not going to die of infection—if you do as I say and keep it clean."

"Yeah, yeah." Toph held up a hand, and snapped her fingers. "Sparky. Ride."

Zuko sighed, but knelt down in front of her so she could grab his shoulders. Her leg twinged a little when he hefted her onto his back, but the tearing pain was gone: Sugar Queen may have been overbearing, but at least she knew her work.

"Okay," said Katara, and if Toph didn't know better she'd have sworn that the waterbender sounded just the slightest bit fond. "Let's go find the others."

A/N: Zuko is most definitely not speaking from personal experience, and how dare anyone even suggest such a thing?