Feeling Worthless

by: Jung Ho

Standard Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to Avatar: The Last Airbender. All characters and concepts are owned and distributed by Nickelodeon.

Toph was bored. Extremely bored. There wasn't much that the blind girl could do while flying on Appa. She couldn't practice bending like Katara, condensing the clouds into usable, bendable water. And she just wasn't the type of person who was able to sleep anywhere, like Sokka. She had absolutely no idea what Aang was doing, but whatever it was, it was at least keeping him amused. Unlike her companions, she was unable to do anything, something she had always despised.

She let out an indignant huff and lied down on the saddle. She hated not being able to be useful, almost as much as being pampered. It was when she felt this feeling of worthlessness that she once again felt like that little blind girl everybody pitied. She loathed that feeling with a passion.

Toph thought, without a doubt, flying was the most boring thing of traveling. Spending an undetermined amount of time just sitting there, doing nothing, being bored. Still, she preferred flying to walking since walking would have taken longer. But she also wanted to be on the nice, solid ground where she could see and act as radar. Maybe then she wouldn't feel so useless…

It was a little before sundown when they decided to make camp. They began to fly lower trying to find a decent clearing to spend the night. That's when Katara found the perfect clearing to camp out in. Aang began steering Appa into a descent. But before they could land, Sokka had spotted a dust cloud moving toward them. Fast. "Hey, what's that?" he asked in genuine curiosity.

Katara and Aang looked around to get a good look at what Sokka was staring at as Toph asked what was happening. The dust cloud began getting bigger as the object making it got closer to the flying bison. Only until they realized that it was a Fire Nation tank did they realize their mistake. "The three crazy girls are back," Katara grimly stated for Toph's sake.

Out of the tank burst three lizards mounted by three teenage girls. The one in the lead wearing Fire Nation armor suddenly shot out a stream of blue fire, narrowly missing the bison. As she continued firing attacks at the airborne animal, Aang had to continually swerve left and right to avoid them.

Quickly, Sokka yelled for the map. Katara handed the map of the area to him. After a careful sweep, he pointed to the southeast and shouted, "Xie-Ban's the closest town! That way! Aang! Make Appa go faster!"

Hoping to outrun them, Aang urged Appa faster through a whip of the reins and shouted "Appa! Yip-Yip!"

And it worked. To an extent. The one girl with the knives was outrun and the leader of the girls was trapped in a huge prison of ice that Karata was able to conjure. But the last girl, the acrobat of the group leaped from her mount onto the bison before Aang wiped out the lizard with a massive sweep of his staff. The acrobat girl landed on Appa's tail, immediately telling the bison to try to throw off his passengers. Sokka, being the closest to the intruder, unsheathed his machete and charged, yelling a battle cry. He was easily knocked back a simple kick to the chest. Sokka was sent flying into his sister incapacitating them both. Toph, who by then had a vague idea of what was happening, slid into a deep horse stance as Aang struggled to keep the bison from sending them flying from the saddle.

Toph could hardly feel any vibrations from the saddle and so was unable to see the enemy's quick movements. She was caught off guard as the acrobat moved behind the girl and hit several pressure points on her body. The combination of the speed with the force of the blows and her uneven footing caused her to fall over and start falling toward the unforgiving earth.

Aang who saw all of this went into a fit of blind rage, sending his opponent flying towards the ground with a giant whirlwind. He promptly jumped off and, using his glider, flew down to catch Toph, with Appa flying carrying Katara and Sokka at breakneck speed into the horizon.

Toph was at that point, screaming her head off as she was caught in to her was a never ending sea of the unknown. Suddenly, there was a swoop and she began to slow down as somebody caught her out of the air. Both of them were slowly gliding their way down to the ground. "You okay, Toph?" Aang's voice brought immediate comfort to the panicking girl as she tried to even out her breathing and answered with a relieved "Thanks, Twinkle Toes."

"I'm gonna go fly out a little further to see where Appa went."

Toph muttered some sort of acknowledgement as she was slowly lowered to the ground.

As soon as she touched down to the ground, Toph realized that something was wrong. She should have been able to see. She was on solid ground, and so should feel the vibrations that would give her sight. Instead, she got nothing. The only difference between falling and this was that she had footing. She was in an abyss of darkness and had no way of knowing where she was standing.

Not having quite completely recovered from her freefalling episode, she frantically tried to bend out a giant boulder out of the ground. The ground trembled as she attempted to bend out the rock. Instead of a mass of granite emerging, the loose dirt on the ground shifted slightly, leaving the ground intact. Not being able to believe that this was happening she stared, horrified, into the distance gasping for air.

Just then, Aang returned from his search, breathless and hunched over. " I couldn't find him, so I guess we're gonna have to walk on foot 'til we find them." Her uneven breaths got the attention of her companion. Aang straightened up to see a hyperventilating Toph, he became extremely worried. "Toph!" he shouted, praying to the spirits that she was alright. "You're okay, right?" Slowly, she shook her head from side to side with hands on covering both of her ears, still wearing a face of disbelief that made Aang flinch. "What's wrong?" The question was asked cautiously, the Avatar fearing the worst.

Toph began gapping as she raised her head to face, not Aang, but a point in space maybe a few feet away from where he was. This took the airbender's fears to whole new levels. "What's wrong?" he asked, this time a bit more urgently. Toph had finally come out of her temporary shock as she answered, her voice hollow and cracking. She looked close to tears as the replied the three words that Aang thought he would never hear from her.

"I can't see."

On Appa's saddle, Kartara and Sokka were being tossed around by the rampaging bison.

"Katara! Calm 'im down!" Sokka shouted, hanging onto the saddle for dear life. Katara climbed down to where the Aang usually sat and began soothingly stroking Appa's head. This did calm the bison enough to know that everything was alright and to fly straight again.

"Good. Now, let's go to that village, in case those crazy weirdoes come looking for us. They wouldn't risk rebellion in one of the most crucial towns in the Earth Kingdom" Sokka was very tired, despite having spent the last two and a half hours sleeping.

After Katara had finished calming the ten ton animal down, she climbed back to the saddle. She looked around and asked "Where's Aang and Toph?"

Sokka, who had until then been keeping his eyes closed opened them and found that he and his sister were the only ones on the saddle. "I don't know," he replied worriedly. "Maybe they fell off when we were fighting that girl."

Katara immediately began panicking and began steering Appa around. "We gotta look for them!" There was a note of desperation in her voice. Sokka closed his eyes as he dropped into a state of deep concentration. She turned towards the reins and began pulling Appa around when she felt a hand on her shoulder. She turned to see her brother, with a calm countenance as he took the reins from her and continued toward the town. It infuriated her slightly to see her brother when two of their best friends were out there separated. "What're you doing?" she asked in disbelieving whisper.

"Don't worry about them; they'll be fine," Sokka replied in a tone that matched his current calm demeanor. Knowing that his sister was gaping in disbelief at his words, he continued saying, "Aang and Toph would be hidden by trees, so that we would have had to fly low to the ground. If we go back to try to find them, the three scary girls will just find us again." This made sense to Katara, but she still wanted to go back, and countered. "How're we supposed to find them?"

"Aang knows where we're going: Xie-Ban. From where the fight was to the town would be a day and a half trip by foot. There's not many threats in these woods and they can make it easily. We can wait that long for them. And if they don't come by then, we'll go and look for them. Besides, Aang is really strong; there's almost nothing he can't handle."

Katara was still burning to ask her final question. "How do you know all of this?"

"We were going to Xie-Ban to restock on supplies anyway. I had asked somebody in the last town we visited how to get here and told me all about this forest." He looked back to give a comforting smile to his sister. "They'll be fine. I promise."

Katara was impressed by her brother's forward thinking. She nodded and turned to look towards the direction they had come from and where Aang and Toph were. She hoped that Sokka was right and that they wouldn't have to go searching for them.

"Toph, we have to keep moving before Zuko's sister finds us." Aang was tugging on Toph sleeve, trying to get her to start walking toward Xie-Ban. Toph just sat there, looking into space, totally catatonic and immovable. An hour had passed since they were stranded in these woods and they haven't moved at all. Aang smothered his yell of annoyance with his hands as he fell down onto the ground.

He couldn't believe Toph. Nothing would convince her to get off her rump and move. What was she scared of? He was right there to help her in case they got into any trouble. Aang slowly got up, ready to explode at Toph. He was surprised to see that Toph was now standing up. The got up with much more zeal as he smiled and took hold of her hand. "Great! Let's go!" he started walking, only to encounter resistance from the earth bender. Toph was still unmoving. He couldn't take it anymore.

"What is wrong with you?" He yelled. "Just because you can't see anymore doesn't mean it's the end of the world! You can still walk! You have two feet! So use them! Your not helping yourself by just moping around here!" He noticed that her cloudy eyes looked dead. Instead of sympathizing with her, this infuriated him even more to see that she hadn't even been listening. He yelled in frustration and punched a nearby tree, shattering it into splinters. "Geez! Your so useless!"

That last statement seemed to have touched a nerve. Toph then let her temper flare as she screamed. "What do you know about me? You've never had to rely on people just because they saw you can't see! You've never had to ask for help for everything! You can do anything you want!" Her fury subsided and her eyes showed nothing else. "But not me. I can't see like you or Katara or Sokka. I've never been able to do anything by myself because I was blind. Earthbending was the only thing that let me feel like I wasn't a waste of space." She turned and, by mere coincidence, faced Aang, temper flaring up again. "You never had to live like me! What do you know?" she screamed at him and began running away into the undergrowth, one hand up to protect herself from trees.

Aang was stunned. What was with him when it came to girls? He sighed, feeling slightly guilty, began to slowly walk towards Toph as she jogged ahead of him. He kept his distance from her, not wanting to mess up again.

Toph couldn't believe it. Tears were streaming down her face, unable to believe Aang. Of all of the people she knew, she thought that he would have understood. She had never felt so hurt before. She had always been able to see, ever since she could remember. She's never been handicapped like this before. But, of course that was a lie. Back when she had to rely on her parents and guards for her eyes. Back when she couldn't bend. Back when she was blind…

After what seemed like fifteen minutes she slowed her jog into a walk, unable to keep her pace up. Her sobs had subsided as she slowed down. She noticed that it was a lot colder now than a few minutes ago. Then Toph deduced that the sun had probably set. Great, she thought somewhat sarcastically. I'm blind, have no idea where I'm going, and alone at night in the woods.

It was then the proud earth bender tripped protruding stick, falling head first into the ground. She began crying again, having never felt so worthless. Maybe she should just quit. She then heard a snapping twig and the soft voice of her friend. "Toph?" he asked cautiously.

She sat up and wiped her eyes, trying to get rid of the tear streaks on her face. "What do you want, Twinkle Toes?" Both knew that her attempt to sound defensive wouldn't work. She heard him getting closer and stopping a little before where she was sitting.

"I'm sorry." That simple statement made Toph's head snap up as he continued. "You're right. I don't know how life was like for you. I've never had to depend on other people for simple things. I just never realized how hard it must be to suddenly be blind." She slowly turned to face him. She looked up to where he assumed his face was. "I'm sorry." This sincere apology was too much for her. She started sniffling and tears began coming again. Without warning, Toph clung onto Aang, catching him in a tight hug.

"Uh…Toph, uhm… are you alright?" Aang asked, obviously extremely uncomfortable at the closeness. He was bewildered as he tried comforting her. She finally calmed down enough to speak again. "It's alright Aang. It's just…" Suddenly, an ice cold hand had grabbed her throat, preventing her to speak. She could feel those stupid tears coming again. Aang saw this and could see that she needed some time. "Uh… how about I start a fire and find something to eat?" She nodded and he walked off, letting her collect herself before she explained anything else.

After a silent dinner, the two preteens sat opposite each other with a crackling fire in between them. They both were wondering what the other was thinking. Finally, after the fire had died down to a few weak flames, Toph cleared her throat and started speaking.

"You know how protective my dad is right?" Aang bolted up, paying attention to the girl opposite him. "Yeah," he replied slowly, suddenly having a feeling he knew where this was going.

"He kept on seeing me as his fragile - a weak girl that couldn't do anything for herself. He would always have one of the guards on me at all times, seeing that I would always be alright." She clenched her fist, until her knuckles paled. "I hated that. I hated feeling like I was a waste of space. Like nothing. But I had no choice. Back then, I didn't know how to earthbend. I needed them to be my eyes." The resentment in her voice was less than subtle. "I tried to talk my dad into letting me do something, anything by myself. Something that I could do by myself. It took a lot of time, but he finally agreed.

"My dad signed me up to take earthbending lessons with Master Yu. He reasoned that if I took earthbending lessons, maybe I wouldn't be as fragile and to keep me healthy. After my first lesson…" She paused wearing a small smile, the first time in what seemed like an eternity. "…I felt like I could do anything. This was finally something that I could do by myself, without anybody's help.

"But then, there was another problem. My dad would only let me learn the basics. 'Nothing too dangerous,'" she quoted with a snort. "By then I had enough with asking permission with everything I wanted. I decided to learn earthbending by myself. That's also how I learned to see for myself." She beamed. "I was finally able to do things by myself. I could see. That was the day I promised myself that I would never feel useless again." She hugged her knees and sighed. "I guess I really took that promise to heart. I guess that's why I yelled at you. It's just hard to be treated like nothing again. I'm…sorry, Aang."

Aang had listened to all of this in silence. At the end, he smiled at his partner, apparently having forgotten she couldn't see it. "It's okay, Toph. I understand. I guess it wouldn't be easy to go on knowing that your parents thought you were weak. It sounds really tough."

Aang's smile widened as he continued. "But your dad was wrong. Your not useless." Toph looked up. "And I know better than anybody else because you've been teaching me earthbending. You've been a great teacher. I mean, not the nicest teacher," at this, Toph smirked. "But still a really good one. Besides, I'm your friend. I could never think of you as worthless. You'll always be a huge help to me, no matter what."

Toph smiled. "Promise?" She held out her pinky.

Aang smiled back interlocking his pinky with hers, "I promise."

The next morning, Aang woke up at the crack of dawn. He yawned, stretched, and stood up. Both of them had slept under the stars; Toph couldn't bend a tent and neither trusted Aang enough to do it. The fire from last night had become a pile of ashes. Beyond that, he saw Toph, still sleeping.

He walked passed the once fire and poked the sleeping earthbender. "Toph?"

There was a slight grumble as she attempted to swat Aang away, but didn't wake up. Aang poked her a little harder and this time got a vocal response of "lemme 'lone". Not wanting to waste anymore time, Aang took his folded up glider and jabbed her. Toph got up, irritated by Aang and his staff and grumbled. "What do you want, Twinkle Toes?"

"We gotta go if we want to reach Xie-Ban today."

Toph slowly got up from her resting place. "Couldn't you have woken me up some other way?"

"At least you got a taste of your own medicine. Try waking up to a jab from a rock pillar."

"Oh suck it up, you big baby." She swatted toward the general direction from where Aang's voice was coming from.

Aang chose to ignore the irony of this statement and changed the subject. "Can you see?"

Toph tried to feel something, anything to see with and got nothing. She shrugged. "Nope."

Aang sighed. "I guess I'll just be your guide today." He took a hold of her hand. She immediately felt her cheeks get slightly warmer and asked, "What are you doing?"

"Until you can see again, I'll help you get through this forest. I'm not doing this because I think your worthless. I'm helping as a friend. After all, friends help friends, right?"

"Ye-yeah." And with that, Aang and Toph had set out for Xie-Ban, hand in hand.

It wasn't until the late afternoon until they saw the great military fortress and village that was Xie-Ban.

"There it is!" Aang shouted as they began running towards the great walls. They were about maybe half of a mile from the main gate when they felt an electric blue bolt of fire streak past them. They turned to see the three Fire Nation girls that had apparently followed them.

The exchange of words was not needed. Aang stepped foreward in front of Toph, sliding into a defensive stance. Toph didn't object to this, since both knew that she wouldn't be able to do anything. The leader shot another deadly blue flame at them. Aang swatted it away with a gust of air and swung his staff again to create a blade of air. The force of the Avatar's attack knocked everyone but the leader into a tree, knocking both of them out. The girl that was Zuko's sister showed no sign of noticing them and simply charged forward. Aang mimicked her and raced forward to meet her.

Then something happened. Toph, who was standing back away from the fight, noticed something. She slowly began seeing a continuously clearing picture of the fight. She saw that the girl had the upper hand and attacking Aang with a series of fireballs propelled by kicks and punches.

Toph acted instinctively and bended a huge snake of stone out of the ground to send the Fire Nation girl into the air. Aang, she noticed with quite a bit of satisfaction, just stood in awe and amazement as the girl was hurdled into the air by the unexpected attack.

Determined to impress her student, she then bended a huge boulder out of the ground next to her. When Zuko's sister landed in an awkward stance on the ground. Toph commanded the ball of rock to fly towards her. The girl braced herself for impact, expecting to collide with the massive threat. Toph smirked and right before the rock connected she made the rock explode, sending the girl to land in a heap at the bottom of the tree.

Aang turned, dumbstruck at the little girl. She looked back at him with obvious fake innocence. "I can see again."

When the front gate opened, Aang and Toph were hit with the force that could knock down a Saber tooth Moose-lion. Katara squealed as she hugged both of them, nearly suffocating both. Sokka merely looked on as he witnessed this reunion of friends. "Thank goodness your safe. I was worried sick."

Aang somehow managed to loosen the waterbender's hold enough to get out of the embrace. "Katara, relax. We're both okay." Toph, too managed to get out of her grip. "Yeah, Katara. We're completely fine. So get a grip of yourself."

Katara managed to hold back the salty tears as she smiled at the two of them. "I'm glad that your alright."

"Although…" Toph started, getting everyone's attention. "Why didn't you guys pick us up?"

Katara chuckled as she answered the question. "Sokka didn't think it was a good idea." This drew an intense glare from Toph. The stare was enough to unhinge even the toughest warrior.

"What?" Sokka head was then attacked by a rather large rock. He promptly stiffened up and fell down like a tree that had just been cut. Sokka then curled into the fetal position clutching his head for dear life. "That hurt!"

"Of course it hurt, Snoozles. You were just hit with a rock." Toph rolled her eyes as both Katara and Aang tried to conceal their giggles. Katara recovered from her laughing fit and said, "We should get going. We've lost too much time already."

"Yeah. We really should," Sokka agreed. "Let's go."

Both Aang and Toph, wanting to take a break, protested at this but ended up leaving on Appa in quite a hurry. Both had said something about getting supplies, when that excuse was quickly countered that Katara and Sokka had done the shopping in the day that Aang and Toph were traveling. Then they tried to say they were tired from walking all the way here when that was also answered that they could sleep while flying. Having no more excuses, they finally left the village on another adventure.

Toph found herself where she was exactly one day ago. Flying on Appa and being bored. She couldn't believe that she was in the same situation as the last time they had flown. Exasperated, she fell back on the saddle interlocking her fingers behind her head. She still thought that flying was the worst part of flying.

That's when she heard Aang saying something to Momo about being really tired. She immediately felt the flying lemur on her lap. She smiled as she began to play with the little animal. Aang muttered a thanks to Toph as he fell asleep on Appa's head. Yep, flying was still the worst, most boring part of traveling, but at least she didn't feel useless; she was helping her friends.

A/N: So there it is! Second oneshot! Yay! Anyways, time for explanations and whatnots.

Since I got a few good reviews for my first one, I thought I'd try to do a second one. That's when I brainstormed what would happen if Ty Lee hit Toph in the pressure points that prevent her from bending. That led to "How?" and "What next?" and the result is what you have just read.

The whole uselessness thing was something that was extremely tricky to write. It seemed to be the whole independent thing in "The Chase" so I felt like I had to make a difference. I don't think I did a very good job with that, but again, not an aspiring writer.

I thought that Toph out of everyone was so OOC, that it wasn't even funny. I can't see her breaking up about something like that, but then it seemed like something anybody in her position would do. Toph just seemed too cool for that kind of thing. Everybody else seemed OOC, but not as much as Toph.

Again, Toph and Aang moments were very bad. But, like I said before, they present a pretty funny as well as interesting dynamic. I realize there are errors in this. So if you catch something, please tell me so I can fix it. Thanks to Butterfree a.k.a. CupidKirby for catching one of my typos! Keep those corrections coming!

Please read and review. Anything to make my writing more enjoyable for you guys.