I was on Taang withdrawal. And I have a HUGE case of writer's block concerning 'CotS!' Arrgh! Sorry. In the meanwhile, to save you all (and myself) from AWS, here is a one-shot. And I own nothing that you may chance to recognize, so, yeah.
Hope you like it!
Brightest
The ebony-haired girl dropped the heavy burden from her arms, and it crashed to the floor with a resounding 'thud' that she felt in her molars. The object she had been carrying, some sort of hideous wooden statue by the shape of it, began to roll away down the hall.
If Mom had ever known how uneven these floors were, she would have pulled her perfumed hair out, Toph grumbled to herself as she sprinted a few steps and swooped down to catch it.
"Toph, what was that?"
The earthbender, drawing herself up to full height once again (even at sixteen, it wasn't very much), turned to shout in the direction of the voice.
"Just dropped something, Twinkletoes. Have you gotten everything together in there?"
"Almost. I've never seen so much pottery."
Toph shuffled her way down the halls of the home she had been trapped in for twelve years, hating the very aura that the walls exuded, and picked up on the light vibrations of her friend.
Ah, there he was.
Aang, on the other hand, had gotten very tall over the past four years, and his voice came from somewhere over her head. (Now mellow and deeper, his voice had finally stopped cracking, much to Toph's disappointment. She had been laughing endlessly about it prior.)
She took the pottery from him, feeling the shaped earth with a rough hand.
"My dad collects it."
"Oh."
The teenage earthbender shrugged as she placed the wooden statue and pottery among the other stuff piled at Aang's feet, mulling over the reason they were here once again.
Several months ago, a letter had reached her where she was staying as a teacher in Ba Sing Se. It had been notification: that her parents had decided to "move" to Whale Tail Island to live out their years, and had left the entire estate in her possession.
Everything, down to the cobwebs in the corners of the vast house.
Toph briefly wondered if this was their way of apologizing: a gift of several fortunes was no small peace token.
Whatever it was, she didn't want it.
But she would be dead the day she saw thieves simply break in and take their pickings from the abandoned house, and so Aang had graciously "volunteered" (been drafted, more like) to come help her clear it all off, maybe auction and give it away. Her parents would be horrified, but they had kept a considerable amount of the wealth for themselves anyway.
It was just the house that Toph didn't want to be bothered with.
"So, do you think Katara will like the paintings?" Aang asked brightly.
Toph heard a scroll being unrolled as he asked her, smelt the valuable inks.
"I dunno. Maybe. We can give it to her as an engagement present."
Aang sputtered, and Toph heard his heart rate skip in shock. "What? When did…."
The glassy green eyes rolled.
"Oh please. Hothead's bound to come to his senses sooner or later."
She heard a chuckle rumble around in the airbender's chest as he inspected the next item.
"Oh, by the way, what did you do with all of your mom's jewelry?"
Toph fiddled with the jade ring that she had decided to keep for herself, and then sat down on the lush carpet in front of a box.
"I gave it away."
"Huh?"
"Some bum out on the street. I could hear his stomach growling from twenty paces."
The gray eyed young man scratched the back of his neck and shook his head at the girl's non-chalance.
"What was his reaction?"
The girl's slightly crooked, sunburned nose wrinkled.
"He was kissing my feet for about five minutes. It took me another five to get rid of him… and convince him that I wasn't some sort of guardian spirit."
She went back to work.
The boy smiled and kept his gaze on the girl who was sitting several feet away, the rays from the mid-day sun coming through the window and dusting her frame.
The sunlight bounced off the knot of dark hair that she wore, illuminating a few strands like a frayed halo about her head. The light also seemed to favor the large championship belt that she was wearing, courtesy of a little 'detour' they had taken on their way here.
Her sturdy shoulders were slumped, and then raised. Toph yawned, forcefully cracked out a stiff spot in her back, and reached for the next object in the pile of her family's possessions.
(Now, what was she going to do with the house?)
Her fingers brushed upon a small object.
And she stopped abruptly, freezing in place with one strong hand lightly touching it.
It was familiar.
I remember you.
Toph lifted it gently, her curious fingers gliding along the smooth edges, measuring the light, hollow feel and turning it over, recalling the way she had lit up when she first encountered it.
"Toph, what…"
Aang realized that the earthbender was not listening, and looked to see what she seemed to be studying.
It was a flute.
She pursed her lips, blinked her eyes several times.
"I remember…." she said finally, slowly.
"Remember what?" he prompted.
Toph looked up at him.
"A merchant, coming to our doorstep one morning. I was five, and he was selling instruments. Said he was a nomad or something, needed some money."
Aang walked over quietly and sat down next to her, the two of them now together in the rays of sunlight that dappled the floor.
"My father told him to go, but he was really stubborn, really thought that he had something that we needed. I was sitting in the back room, being quiet like Mom always told me to be, when I heard this…this…. sound."
The word sound was spoken with a reverence, as well it should be. Sound was the way that Toph experienced the world. It was her bridge out of the darkness.
Aang accepted the flute from her when she handed it to him.
Really, it was a beautiful piece of work, balanced and colorful, polished and with delicate paintings running along the sides.
"It was like nothing I had ever heard before…and I'd heard a lot, believe me, Twinkletoes. It was a free, happy sound like…like a bird singing. But for some reason it felt, I dunno, closer. Like I could actually touch it. It flitted up and down, and its vibrations were just so beautiful. After all, my parents weren't very musical people."
Aang looked over at her.
"Really?"
She nodded.
"You know, it's the funniest thing," Toph laughed. "But for a second, I could imagine what colors looked like."
There was silence, in which the Avatar observed the cranes that had been painted along the wooden flute in painstaking detail.
"So I guess you bought it then, huh?"
"After the music stopped, I ran out to the merchant and begged him to keep playing. I caused such a scene there in the dirt road that my father bought the flute just to get me back inside! Of course, the man totally scammed us on it, and I could never figure out how to play it. But… it was still fun to have. You know, as a reminder."
Toph stopped the story there, listening to Twinkletoes' quiet breathing in the slightly dusty air. His heart was beating in its normal steady rhythm as he inspected the small gift, but he was also tense, as though considering something.
She tried to imagine his expression now, wrinkled to the side in its moment of indecision, but could only picture the youthful little face of a twelve- year- old boy: after all, one did not simply touch a friend's face at this stage in life, and it had been several years since she had dared to do so.
"Would you like me to?" he suddenly asked.
She jumped slightly.
"What?"
"Would you like me to?" he asked again.
"Would I like you to what?"
"Play this flute for you. Gyatso taught me how," Aang said hesitantly.
He was not very good at it, after all. The boy was a negotiator, a peacemaker, a skillful fighter, fantastic with people; but he was no musician.
In fact, for some reason, as Toph's unseeing eyes turned upon him, there was only one tune (in his already limited collection) that he could remember. Out of all the songs he had ever heard, it just had to be that one…..
"You know how to, then?"
"Sort of," he shrugged. "If you don't want…"
Toph's gaze widened as though in a temporary panic. "No! No, that's fine…."
She cleared her throat, and settled against one of the large silk pillows from the study.
"…I would love to hear it."
Aang raised an brow, looking down into her face as he scooted back a few feet. In slow increments, he hesitantly drew the flute to his lips, eyes continually flitting to look up at Toph.
She waited and listened, the things she was better at than probably anyone else in the world.
And Aang took a breath, and began to play.
His long fingers danced over the holes of the flute, a tweak of airbending to get his breath just so, his gray eyes squeezed shut to focus. And, like a small miracle, something incredible born of air and a piece of wood, reed, earth, the song came.
It recalled, for Aang, badger moles and tunnels, a nervous first kiss and the tomb of the two earthbenders.
Two lovers,
forbidden from one another, a war divides their people…
"And a mountain divides them apart…." Toph suddenly sang out.
Like a soap bubble bursting, the song ended as Aang's eyes snapped open.
"What?"
A luminescent grin was now spread onto the earthbender's face.
"That was it! That was the song he played! He played it, and his wife sang it! Although the guy said he was better at the lyre: that was what he wanted to money for, to buy one…"
Wow, it sure is a small world, Aang thought in bewilderment.
"No way," he said needlessly. "Well, I don't know the rest of it."
"After the 'Secret Tunnel' part, or the 'And Die,' part?" Toph asked, resting an elbow on her crooked knee.
"The 'Secret Tunnel' part," Aang confirmed, disappointed that he couldn't even surprise her with anything.
But the grin remained on Toph's face.
"Oh. He couldn't remember the rest of it, either. I was upset, so he told me another one before Dad had the guards drag him back through the gates. We never figured out how he got through them in the first place…."
"What was the song?"
He may have been imagining it, but Aang thought he saw Toph's face tinge a shade rosier in a blush.
"I'm not going to sing it for you, Twinkletoes! It's your own fault for not learning the music."
"Aw, come on!" he urged her on, stepping forward.
"No!" she refused, standing up in a fluster and then turning to leave.
"Come oooooonnnnn…." He persisted.
Toph rolled her eyes.
"Forget it, Twinkletoes."
Aang was at a loss for about two seconds, and then decided to draw out his secret weapon.
"Come on, Shortstu…"
The girl whipped around so quickly her hair fell from its pin, black strands flaring in the light, and she pointed a finger at him.
"Finish that and you'll be stuck in the ground like a fence post for a week."
She fooled with her tresses first and indignantly gathered them back up into place, jabbing the pin into the dark hair violently and frowning.
Aang was not one to give up.
"I'll stop calling you that if you sing it for me. Just a little piece: just to lead me in so I can get a feel for the rhythm."
"I…."
"Shortstuff….."
Toph inhaled sharply, drawing up to full height like a peeved sparrow-cat, and smacked herself on the forehead.
"Fine."
Victorious, Aang raised the flute to his lips once again, trying not to grin at how furiously Toph was now blushing.
She cleared her throat, stalling a few times to tug at her shirt, and finally began. Sort of. She stopped just short.
"If you laugh, you're dead."
Aang, tone serious, replied.
"I would never laugh at you, Toph. Now sing the song before I die of old age anyway."
She sighed, and began humming the tune, which Aang quickly mimicked on the flute, and soon her humming gave way to singing.
"Even if you're lost you can,
Use the love, because it's in your heart"…And then Toph hummed awkwardly for a few seconds…
"Remember when you're all alone,
Cold and scared and far from home,
That love is always brightest in the dark…." Followed by more humming.
Now Aang was playing in synch with her unsure voice, and the little melody made the sun seem brighter. The notes went a smidge higher, Toph's voice cracking some. But Aang still enjoyed it.
"Trust in love, it sees us through
Dry your eyes, it's there for you,
You just need to reach for it and say
She held the note, and then finished, "Lead the way."
The song ended there, or that was all she could remember. Aang played with the lingering notes, too caught up in the music to realize how intently the girl was 'looking' at him.
After the last of the tune faded, he returned the gaze. And something hung between them, hovering there until it became too awkward and Aang set the flute down again.
He bet that Toph would want to keep it.
He went back to work, as did Toph, shuffling about and moving things, estimating values of all the non-essentials. It was about half an hour later when the earthbender finally spoke again.
"Do you believe that, Aang?"
The sound of his real name made him snap to attention. She only ever used it when she was being very serious, when something very heavy was weighing on her mind. Heck, even in the middle of a battle, he was 'Twinkletoes.'
"…..Do I believe what?"
"That love is always brightest in the dark."
He bit his lip, which was chapped from the wind and the sun. That was how the crystals in the caves had worked, zfter all: that was how the two lovers had found each other in their labyrinth.
But he supposed that if he did the classic 'deeper reading' that Gyatso had made a habit for him, there was something more there.
Like how the poorest of the poor still smiled when their children ran to them for an embrace.
How the trials people pushed through bound them closer together; like it had done for them, their "family."
He and Toph, specifically. There were few tight corners that they could not work themselves out of, and they always finished their trials wiser, stronger, and closer.
It was the closeness that scared him the most, but the fear was more of a joyful apprehension.
Apprehension of what, though?
Because really, he had known that he loved her for quite some time.
"I don't know," he said finally. "I think so. How about you?"
Toph picked up an old dress and shook it out, measuring the arm length as she thought. It was probably too big for her.
Coming back home reminded her of how alone she really had felt, for the early years of her life: being made to sit in her room when guests came over, crying and refusing to speak to her parents for a month when she discovered that they did not want the world to know she existed.
She had pushed through it, because she was tough.
Because she was Toph.
And really, Toph had never had any idea of what 'brightest' meant anyway.
Until she had met Twinkletoes.
How odd it was, that it seemed to accompany him everywhere he set his light feet down.
It was really funny, but even as Aang spoke now, there seemed to be a lifting of the black curtain that always shadowed her vision, a piercing of the darkness.
Like a ray of sunlight peeking in.
Might have been Avatar stuff.
She couldn't be sure.
But in the mean time….
"Yes," she smiled.
"Yes I do."
………………………………………………………………………………………………
A/N; Just hope that the writer's block leaves soon. This is driving me nuts. Oh, and the beginning of the second song really was in "The Cave of Two Lovers," as the guy is walking away. Anyway, please leave a review if you can. See you later. Thank you!