AN: Writing this has renewed my love and respect for Toph, but god was it hard to write. For some reason, writing in present tense just wasn't going for me this chapter, so enjoy past tense. Maybe it's because I started re-reading Heroes of Olympus… anyone else have it happen when after you read a book you start writing like that author? Because boy do I do that.

This might be a good time to remind you that I have a "Work in Progress" archive, where you can see all the stuff that I've got in the works, including future chapters of this. So if I ever disappear, not only can you shout at me to hurry up, you can also help me write the thing. The link's on my profile, feel free to visit. Anyway, enjoy this chapter after the ridiculous month and a half wait I put you through.

"First lesson, kid: the Underground stays underground."

This was a nightmare. This was a complete, spirit-damned, nightmare. And seeing how life had been going recently, that was saying a whole lot.

Aang hadn't seen daylight in days. Some, Aang included, would say it was an overreaction, but when he sits down on his sorry-excuse for a bed and leaves his mind on idle, and the thought of Oh spirits, I'm stuck in this prison for who knows how long, appears, he can't help but choke up.

A prison. The door may be wide open but the jagged stone walls were as confining as the iron bars of a Fire Nation warship. Maybe even worse. At least he had windows on the ship. The freshest air he'd be getting was if he stuck his head into one of the ventilation holes in the ceiling. Even those curved in stray angles, so any light that made it through was eaten away miles before it reached him.

Appa kept whimpering from the room across, and there might as well be a komodo-rhino throwing itself against the wall, because all Aang can think about are his big brown eyes straining to find sunlight and his sides shivering as he tries to snort out the dust coiled in his throat.

Aang was in no better shape. His hands kept shaking, every breath felt short, and his head pulsed. He had to get out of here.

He stepped out into the hallway and the draft of the tunnels instantly hit his skin, like the breath of some pit dwelling monster. It was deserted, as always, but there had to be people around. There was always a new grain bag for Appa in the storage room, and the torches changed nightly.

Aang looked daringly down the hall, watching the torches in the distance flicker. "There has to be someone." Hearing a voice, even his own, was a comfort.

His footsteps echoed across the cavern. To his left, an archway opened to the storage room while closed doors lined the other wall. Dust glazed over the door handles and collected at his feet. Another archway led to some sort of forge, with dead furnaces spilling black coals on the floor. This was as far as he'd gone before.

In his defense, that was as far as he could go; the hall dead-ended. Aang stood before a looming hunk of metal riddled with bolts and locks and hinges as thick as his arm. But unlike last time, Aang laid his hand on the steel and pulled.

He stared up at the door. "Unlocked."

All that prowess, and it was unlocked. Aang slipped through and the room opened up before him.

The walls shone shone silver, metal, likely several feet thick if the door was anything to go by. The roof overhead made a low dome shape so that the center of the room was about a meter taller than at the edges. Crates lined the far wall and steel chairs and tables littered the room. In the center rose a large stone dais, with craggy spikes of dirt like stalagmites jutting on the surface. They were in the likeness of mountains, he realized and he quickly spotted the scattering of towns and crooked roads, and the corrugated surface of the sea. It was a replica of the world, and from what Aang knew, it was extremely accurate.

The room seemed to be a bunker or command center of sorts, and it wafted such an air of desolation he almost didn't notice the silhouette. A brazier burned in front of the dais, its tender seated with her back towards him.

"Took you long enough," she took a long swig from the tin mug in her hands, "I thought the Avatar came with a lot more 'can-do' attitude."

Toph nodded towards the tables and a metal chair flew out. "Take a seat, kid."

He considered refusing for a moment but he quickly pushed the bitterness aside. A stray breeze sighed behind him. The gloom must be getting to him.

Aang took the seat and watched the smoke curl into the vents above. He turned to Toph and got his first full look of her since she'd taken him away at Tu Zin. They hadn't gotten the chance to introduce themselves during the walk from there. She'd barely turned around at all.

He remembered her vaguely from the stories Katara used to tell him and from those few times Sokka's lessons turned away from the map: a brave, brash earthbender, the greatest there ever was, the founder of metalbending who crumbled the walls of Ba Sing Se and stitched tunnels under the Fire Nation's feet.

The one person trusted enough to hold down the home front when the rebellion struck west. The one left in the rubble.

She took another swig from her mug. The cuffs of her shirt were burned and frayed and firelight danced off the dents in her armor. Her milky white eyes stared at the flames intently, but with a spark of amusement.

Blind, he remembered. She was blind.

"How are things up North," she turned to him and her offset gaze was both alleviating and disquieting, "Never though Arnook would ever let you down here."

"He didn't."

"Ah." She turned to the flames. "Sokka?"

He gave half a nod before thinking better of it. "Yes."

"And Katara?"

"She was my waterbending master." His throat welled as he recalled the state he had left them in. The smoke stung in his eyes again.

She spoke with a smile, but bitterness was weaved in her words like veins of coal in the earth. "Of course she was."

On a better day, her tone wouldn't have stung, but with ire still tracing his steps, Aang shot off. "Where have you been?"

"Where have I been? I think the better question is where the hell have you been, Avatar."

Toph's smile never left her face and Aang gritted his teeth and stayed quiet.

"Don't get testy, kid," she continued, " As for me, I've been enjoying my last few days of peace here at ground zero. I really should've expected all of this. Things never stay quiet for long. Just long enough for me to feel nice and comfy for a moment, then bam!"

The ground quivered. Toph stood up to get another drink.

"Nice place isn't it! Better be 'cuz you're stuck here!"

Aang's eye twitched at that and all he trusted himself to say was a mumble."Um…"

Toph banged her cup against the wall and the room echoed the sound like a gong. "Completely metal, bent most of it myself. The Fire Nation doesn't have many metalbenders on hand and I haven't taught many of the troops either." She swung her hands and spilled her drink as she ranted. "It's a good defense on its own, but we're also sitting right under the Si Wong and we pay a hefty price to keep the sandbenders on our side. Be pretty hard to dig down. And if they try to come from underneath…"

She pointed to a hatch in the floor that Aang hadn't noticed on the way in.

"We're floating on a nice bubble of natural gas. Would probably choke 'em on the way up. But, if they ever do get in here, we open that hatch up and hope we go out with a bang."

She sat down again and eyed the space beside Aang's head like she couldn't wait for the room to go up in flames.

"That's…"

"Pretty good, huh? Well, that's a little rundown of this place. It's the safest place you and I can be. Safest, not really safe. Just the best we can do." For a second, her smile faltered. Then she took another sip and when the mug came down, the smile had returned. "A bit of metal's not gonna stop anyone. I mean, if a kid like me could figure out how to bend metal, what's stopping anyone else from figuring it out?"

Aang blinked. Her words hung in his ears - If a kid like me could figure it out… what's stopping anyone else?

It felt wrong for her to throw that out so casually, he didn't know why. He'd never met her before three days ago, but the self-loathing and doubt and cynicism in her words seemed alien coming from her mouth.

He remembered Sokka and Katara's words, and how their faces always lit up with sadness, but also pride, when they spoke of the 'great and mighty' Toph Beifong. A warrior. A commander. A hero. When she called herself the greatest earthbender alive, no one could ever say she was wrong.

"But…" Aang stared at the battered person before him. "They said you were the greatest there ever was."

"Really." Her smile dropped. Reality seemed to zoom into her flame cast face as Toph stared straight at him. "And who told you that?"

Her lips switched between a sneer and scowl.

"A great earthbender, wasn't I?" She mocked. "Great earthbenders let a rebellion burn. Great earthbenders aren't even worth coming back for." Her words rang in his ears and it's then that Aang realized that those veins of bitterness he had heard before were just the surface layer above wells and wells of crude hate.

She turned away from him and sighed. "What's your name again, kid?"

"...Aang."

"Right. Aang. Been a long day. I've had my say, so you might as well go back now. We can… uh, we can start training… tomorrow." She spoke like those few sentences had sucked away all her strength.

He didn't dispute the order. Aang stood. He started noticing little things as he left, like the crumbled mountains and rubble scattered on the dais, crates and barrels that were broken open, armor and weapons left abandoned on the forge floor, and scorch marks littered everywhere he turned.

The tunnel heaved a great sigh, sad and tired, as if it remembered how proud its halls once were, all before it fell apart. Aang laid a hand on the stone and wondered how he'd ever be able to raise it back up one day. He entered his room, and somehow it was quieter and lonelier and more of a nightmare than it had been before.