As soon as the door of their cell was closed they started yelling over each other. Zuko was very loud, but Toph had learnt a thing or two about voice projection in her fight arena days.

"Are you really a FUCKING prince?"

"Do you still think the front door was such a great option?"

"Didn't the terms say no more LYING?"

"For once I had a plan… But you just had to be the most STUBBORN...FRUSTRATING…"

"I mean that's like important information right there…"

"And I am done with your stupid terms and QUIT being your valet…"

"You were terrible at it anyways..."

"Next time just get yourself out of a wooden cage for all I care."

"I will too."

"That's not how the world works, Toph. Things don't just miraculously go your way! And now we are both SCREWED," he smashed his fist against the wall, the loud ring thundering around the chamber. Bang. Bang-bang-bang.

The sound shocked them out of their shouting match. They both fell quiet, their ragged breaths echoing in the cell. Toph slid against the wall.

"I'm as good as dead." Zuko didn't even sound scared as much as disappointed and exhausted. He was the Fire Lord's son. The spawn of the evilest person in the world. Toph shouldn't have cared, but she did. She didn't want him dead or hurt. Because maybe he came from a screwed up family, and was pretty useless as a valet, but he also had a strange sense of honor and loyalty, and was even kind in his own odd, grumpy way. And it's not like people got to choose their family. She certainly knew that .

"We'll get out." She didn't know how, but they had to. "Fire can melt metal, no?" she asked hopefully.

"Depends on the metal and the thickness. But even if I could make fire that hot, it would crisp us first."

OK, he may have had a point there. Toph didn't think about that. What a stupid element.

"So not the best plan," she acknowledged.

"Nope."

It was just a regular nope, not even an angry or sarcastic one. He sounded defeated. Toph felt like it was up to her to make it better somehow. Only because he was such a miserable company in his current state and not because she felt guilty for getting them captured in the first place.

"We did make a good team out there though. You fought well." A compliment on his fighting skills ought to do it. It had the added benefit of being true. He bent much better than he had during their sparring sessions. Making their elements work in tandem had truly interesting potential. "Xin Fu told me that before the war, there used to be arena fights with mixed bending teams."

"Xin Fu?" Zuko repeated clearly only half listening. At least he wasn't shouting anymore.

"He was the guy running Earth Rumble." Toph explained. Xin Fu knew everything about the history of fighting. "Imagine the fun with all the different benders in the mix. I'd definitely take you on my team. We could call it Blind and Blue."

"Catchy," he said without any enthusiasm.

Toph felt a bit miffed. Didn't he hear her offer him a spot on her pro-bending team? He thought she would extend such an invitation lightly? He was really down if he didn't see what an extraordinary praise that was. Toph didn't mind grumpy, but this pit of despair was just too much. She sighed and fell silent.

She replayed the fight in her head, trying to figure out where they went wrong and how they could build their different moves into supporting each other better. The events of the day all swirled in a chaos. There was one little thing that niggled at her mind. A detail Cracked Pot mentioned that seemed somehow significant.

"Zuko, do you really have a scar?"

The silence became eerier, like he stopped breathing altogether.

"Who told you that?" he sounded angry.

"Mayor Cracked Pot." Toph raised her hand reaching out towards his face. "Can I see?"

"Why?" he grabbed her wrist in an iron grip.

"Well, you saw my face. It's only fair that I see yours," Toph replied, more than a bit annoyed.

"Why now? Because I have a scar?" he snapped. There was a sharp edge to his voice.

Sheesh . So touchy. "No, because we travel together. We are even cell-mates. And I realized that I have no idea what you look like. It could be important. Why didn't you tell me?"

"I don't know. It never came up. It didn't seem important," he said defensively. He continued on a softer voice. "It was kind of nice. You were the first person I've met in three years, who didn't look at me and see a scar."

Toph could definitely understand that.

"Yeah, I know how that feels. Most people look at me, and see nothing but my blindness. But you saw beyond it."

He let go of her wrist and Toph took it as permission.

She ran her fingers over his hairline and down his right cheek. He had short, fuzzy spikes and smooth skin. She traced his thick eye-brow and his straight nose. Her fingers explored a pointy chin, which had no stubble at all. How old was he? Probably much younger than she had thought.

She continued her way up on the left side. When she reached the nose-line, she could feel the smooth skin turn into a rough, rubbery surface. She didn't have to ask what made this kind of damage; it felt exactly like the skin of a well-crisped pig-chicken. A lot of things about him fell into place. No wonder he was wary of fire.

The extent of the damage was bigger than she expected, going all the way to his crumpled ear and up to his temple where his hair didn't come in the way it did on the other side. It was bigger than her hand.

There was tenseness radiating from him and Toph realized that she should say something.

"For what it's worth, I think it makes you look badass." It wasn't an empty platitude. She really meant it. Some of the most legendary fighters had the coolest scars. Zuko was made of some tough stuff to have survived something like this and Toph respected a survivor.

-0-

It felt weird to have her - no doubt filthy - fingers run over his face, but Zuko felt too drained to fight over something like this with a 12-year-old. She examined him slowly, matter-of-factly. Starting at the ragged hairline of his freshly grown-out hair. She continued down the un-scarred side of his face, examining the arch of his brow, his nose, his chin, then up the other side. He froze as her fingers got to the edges of the scar. The last person to touch it was Uncle when he meticulously cleaned the wound every night for weeks after the Agni kai. He could have asked someone from the crew but he always did it personally. Probably to give Zuko a safe space to break down if he needed to when pushing through the pain and depression wore him thin by the end of the day. At the time, Zuko took all this for granted, but now he felt gratitude towards the old man who guarded so steadfastly the last shreds of Zuko's pride.

The inside of their cell was quite dark, so Zuko couldn't see her face clearly, but there didn't seem to be the usual reaction of disgust and repulsion that most people had when they looked at him. He learnt to pretend not to care, to scowl at them instead with disdain, but it still hurt every single time.

Her fingers didn't falter at the edge. She explored the rough, scaly surface impassively. Zuko could barely feel her touch; the damaged skin didn't have a lot of feeling left in it.

When she finished her examination, she noted, "For what it's worth, I think it makes you look badass."

Zuko was relieved that she didn't offer pity. Pity always made things worse. But she probably knew that from personal experience.

"You got it in a fight?" she asked.

Zuko swallowed. Most people didn't dare ask him outright. Then again he always assumed that everyone in the whole world knew. Agni knew, there were plenty of spectators there. Father made sure of that.

"I got it because I didn't fight," he spat out bitterly.

"Why?"

Zuko had asked himself the question a million times. Why didn't he? Azula would have. She wouldn't have begged with tears in her eyes in front of the entire fucking court. But how could he? How could he risk hurting Father? He would have broken off his own arms first than do that. But then how could he not care that he was hurting Zuko?

The familiar angry tears gathered in his throat, threatening to come out.

"I don't want to talk about it," he hissed.

"Is this why you aren't at home?" Toph asked quietly.

"I said I don't want to talk about it." he shouted angrily. A thin flame escaped his nostrils and a single tear started travelling down his unscarred cheek. It was mortifying. He gritted his teeth and fought the emotion. He had better control than this.

She just didn't know when to stop pushing, did she?

"It's fine if you don't want to." Toph held up her hands. "I just think it's kind of weird that you can't go home because you didn't want to fight and I can't go home because I wanted to fight. Families are hard." she sighed. There was no judgement in her voice.

"No kidding."

"So this is why you are so careful with your bending - you don't want to hurt anyone." It wasn't a question.

Zuko didn't want to think about the months after the Agni kai, when seeing the smallest flame made him flinch and freeze in panic. The endless control training with Uncle before he was ready to throw his first fireball and how his hands were shaking terrified that he would hurt someone. That terror never quite left him.

"It makes me weak."

"No, it makes you decent."

"Decent gets no points where I come from." At least not since Mother disappeared into the night without an explanation. "I'd take strong over decent."

"No you wouldn't," Toph said with conviction.

She was probably right. After all she was the living lie detector. Maybe she could tell not only the lies he was telling her, but also those he was telling himself.

Lie detector...But...

"Wait… How do you know?"

"Because you are a terrible liar…" Toph shrugged, but then her loud gasp let Zuko know that she realized the same thing he did. "and yes… I can still feel your lies. Which means, that the metal responds to earthbending. I should be able to tear it apart. Yay!" she smiled confidently.

Zuko shook his head. "That's impossible. Earthbenders can't bend metal."

"Maybe they just haven't tried hard enough," Toph frowned. This was going to be one of those greatest-earthbender speeches, wasn't it? "Maybe they just accepted others telling them what their limits were. If I let what's possible to be decided by other people, I would still be a weak, little blind girl."

She was probably not talking about Zuko, but she might as well have been. He's been trying to follow the rules given to him by other people his whole life. His father, his firebending instructors… even Uncle. Maybe that was his problem. Maybe he needed to forget about these limits to grow. He envied the little blind girl who had such an unshakable confidence in who she was. Zuko wasn't sure he remembered anymore a version of himself that wasn't bent out of shape to please someone.

"Can you sense me?" he asked.

Toph didn't reply. She put both of her hands on the sides of the box. She flexed her fingers and toes. She tried different angles. She even knocked her head against the sides a few times. That was a no then. She let out a frustrated huff, and started again.

Zuko wondered how long it took her to admit defeat when faced with a hopeless task.

That's funny, coming from you, Zuzu. After three years of chasing clouds and you still won't admit that Father doesn't want you. He never has. - No. You are lying. You are always lying. - Want to ask your blind little friend to fact-check that for you?

Toph clicked her tongue. "I'll get this. Just be quiet."

"I didn't say anything," Zuko replied totally confused.

"You think too loudly."

"Sorry," he muttered. He really hoped Toph couldn't read his silent conversations with his sister in his head. Azula-in-his-mind was just as vindictive and abrasive as her real-life counterpart. She was probably not the best person to bounce ideas off of, but at least she didn't speak in indecipherable proverbs.

"I'm getting there. Do something," Toph instructed him.

Zuko shifted position. He sat on his heels and rested his hands on his knees.

"I've got it. I see you." Toph yelled triumphantly. "And I can feel the metal."

She pushed on the material and sent a rumble through the bottom of the cell. It was like a wave. A fucking metal wave.

"Unbelievable."

There was no way - yet she did it. Zuko didn't know how to feel about it, because he wanted her to succeed, yes, sure, absolutely . But it also did prove her point that limits were sometimes self-imposed and it was a dangerous path to travel down.

"You see?" Toph smirked proudly. "I told you we'd get out. Stand back. And get those fireballs ready, in case there is someone outside."

Right. They had no idea who or what was on the other side.

Zuko grabbed her wrists. "Wait!"

"Why? Are you crazy?" Toph exclaimed.

What would Uncle say? Surely, something about a plan and thinking things through.

"For now, they don't know that you can do this. It's our only advantage. We'll only get one chance at this. We have to get it right this time."

Toph pondered this for a moment.

"You mean to wait for the right moment?"

"Precisely. The neutral jing. Uncle said it was an important thing for earthbending. We need to know more before we act."

Toph nodded in agreement.

"So what's the plan?"

That was the tricky part, because Zuko didn't have one. And in their unlikely group of two, a little blind girl had the unquestionable claim to muscle, so it somehow fell on him to be the plan-guy.