this is a short chapter – wanted to warn & scare you. also, the character "tao" is real, he's the kid in the wheelchair from season one in the series – review me! i update faster when i'm being flattered. true story.

Toph was certain that her blindness was the sole creator of her persona. Her solid attitude, sometimes hurtful banter, and unwillingness to adapt to passivity were all traits that had stemmed from her inability to see. Always feeling she was at a disadvantage, Toph began to rebel against anything that had placed itself in an authorial position in her life. The first to feel this sting was the unfortunate couple who had birthed her, Lao and Poppy BeiFong. The next was Sokka.

In their early months together, just as the affair was brewing, Toph made it a point not to show dependence or fear around him. But in truth, she had been terrified. The entire ordeal – only some six months long, and haphazardly constructed around weekends and late nights – caused Toph deep stress, but she never showed or disclosed this fear to Sokka. It was better, Toph knew, that he didn't know. Her weakness – her blindness – could not translate to another facet of her life. She had to be strong.

Now, as Toph packed Lin's clothing for their trip to Republic City, she knew that she had predicted her and Sokka's end from day one. She had a silly schoolgirl crush on him back when they had met, but even that had given her butterflies in her stomach, big and ominous, as if he was too good to be true. But was he? Sokka was no better than the other men she'd dated and loved. He was average, and not remarkably so, either. At least some of her other exes could boast success in the face of adversity. Her first true romantic interest, a boy named Tao who was restricted to a wheelchair, had overcome every physical obstacle to not only lead a healthy, normal life, but also to follow in the path of his father and create inventions that were on the cutting edge of their modern technology. It was Tao who had given Toph the wristwatch that she wore on her left wrist every day, the first of its kind. And, sensitive to Toph's disability, the watch had no glass cover. Toph could feel the hour simply by pressing her fingers to the raised, moving wooden dials.

"Mama!" Lin called from the bed. "Where are you taking all my clothes?"

"We're moving," Toph answered simply. "Remember? We talked about it all last week."

"I thought you were joking!" Lin had lost two of her incisors, the permanent teeth now growing in jaggedly, and the result was a whimsical lisp when she talked, almost like a whistle.

"Your mama doesn't joke." After clipping the bag shut, Toph held her arms open and Lin ran to them, jumping a little off the edge of the bed. Her mother, as usual, caught her in midair and held her there, tickling the bottoms of Lin's arms with her thumbs.

The girl squealed and kicked, and Toph found herself laughing despite the morbidity of her previous thoughts – analyzing Sokka's worth against other men, deciding her predictions had been true but that she had been stupid enough to disregard them, and the like. Lin's innocence was tangible; it filled their small bedroom and spilled out of the windows. There was too much light in this girl.

"My mama does too joke," Lin said. She had dropped herself from her mother's grip and ran around their small bed, a trail of pebbles following her. These were of a very exclusive collection. Lin had gathered them from a creek the day Sokka and Toph had taken her for a picnic. The rocks had had a wondrous luster to them near the water – sleek reds, greens, and blues. Lin was disappointed when she woke up the next day to find that her collection, drying on the windowsill, had all turned gray. Oddly enough, she did not ask Toph about the change in color. She had waited until Sokka's next visit to disclose, in tears, "Sokka, they aren't colorful anymore! Look!" Her father had replied, patting her head, "It's because the moss died, sweetie. You have to keep these kinds of rocks close to the water. Otherwise, they dry out." He had bought her paints the same day, and they spent the afternoon revitalizing the twenty pebbles over newspaper on the kitchen table.

Toph, who had been listening from the kitchen while heating up a pot of tea, couldn't believe that Lin had waited this long to express her discovery. In truth, it had hurt. Somehow Lin knew that Toph couldn't see colors, although her mother had tried every venue to keep her own blindness from affecting her daughter's life.

"I do joke?"

"Yeah! All the time. You play tricks too."

"I do not!"

"Yeaaaah, you play tricks on Sokka" – she was counting on her fingers – "on the land lord, on the lady down the street, on the school principal, on those kids that come to the noodle shop, on… everybody!"

Toph sat on the edge of the mattress and patted her knee. Lin jumped up to her lap and swung her small, thin arms tightly around Toph's neck. She kissed her mother's cheek, surprised to find tears there. Lin held Toph's face with both hands – such a mature movement for hands so small, thought Toph – and wiped the remaining wetness on her fingers.

Lin asked, again with a tone that well exceeded her years, "What's wrong?"

"I'm sad to move," Toph lied quickly. "We're going to miss this place. Right?"

The girl shrugged. "Not really. We're both moving together."

Toph grinned broadly. "Hey, you're right, kiddo." She paused and pointed to the girl's chest. "The only person who is going to miss me is you. And the only person who is going to miss you is me." She laughed and shook her head. "We're in this as a pair."

"Pears and apples," agreed Lin, repeating lyrics from a song they'd learned at school. Her voice grew softer. "Lychee nuts and melon, I ain't tellin…"

"Will you sing that all for Sokka when he gets here later?"

"No!" Lin cried. "No, don't tell him I sing! No, no!" She repeated "no" as she ran out of their bedroom. Toph heard her jump on the kitchen counter, a few earthbending moves thrown in to her dance. "No, no, no! He can't know!" She sang loudly, swaying the pebbles in the air above her head, "Pears and apples! Lychee nuts and melon, I ain't tellin'!"

Toph laughed, "Alright, I won't tell him," and continued to pack their belongings. There wasn't much else to put in bags that did not belong to Lin. The entire armoire in their room – a small, shabby wooden thing – was reserved for Lin's shirts, pants, coats, and kimonos. Toph boasted a total of four outfits, which she washed daily. She realized as she was packing away Lin's small school shoes that she hadn't bought herself an outfit in two years. "What will Katara think?" Toph asked herself miserably, but the thought just made her smile. Katara probably had a lineup of new suits waiting for her and her daughter.

What was there to miss? Toph thought. Their poverty? Their secret existence? One of the greatest earthbenders – if not the greatest – was stifled to teaching primary school lessons to the snotty, sticky offspring of noblemen. Certainly Aang and Katara would have something else planned for her when she got to Republic City. This would be a new chapter, Toph decided. She was bored of living her life as a spectator when, arguably, she couldn't even see the show. As Toph listened to Lin's singing and dancing in the kitchen, she felt a sudden surge of welcome, warm peace. "Chapter two," she said to herself quietly, and those words never sounded so sweet.