Here it is, chapter two for your reading pleasure. Self-destructive laptops and exams can't stop me from continuing to write, only delay me. Enjoy!

And I want to say a big "Thank you!" to everyone who's reviewed. Mevas, it's my pleasure! Kitsune, thank you and I hope you enjoy the rest of the story. Big Fan, thanks, especially for the food for thought...

Legalese: In spite of the nice letter I wrote to Santa and the liberal offerings of mince pies, I still don't own the characters.

Don't Let Go

Chapter Two

Katara listened to the twittering song of the sparrowkeets as they chased another through the branches overhead and smiled to herself. The warm sunlight spilled through the leaves and dappled her skin in patterns of gold and caramel. Spring held the Earth Kingdom in its warm embrace and for a moment or two, she could almost forget the Avatar's mission and let herself imagine that she was just a girl walking in the woods. When they had first reached the forest, she had felt her heart lift in her chest at the thought that they would soon be reunited with Toph and Sokka. She would soon be reunited with her list of chores as well, and that realisation did diminish her pleasure slightly. At this moment, she wanted nothing more than to enjoy a lazy, meandering stroll through the woods and she slowed her pace as she basked in the sunshine and the birdsong.

Aang hurtled past her on his air scooter and shot straight up the trunk of one tree and down another. He raced in a wide circle around her, grinning the entire time. The parcels tied to his back seemed to have no effect on his buoyant mood, whereas Katara's own load encouraged her to linger and take her time. She smiled back at Aang, touched by his infectious energy, and gestured for the impatient airbender to go on ahead. His grin turned cocky as the air scooter shot forwards but he continued to gaze at Katara from his backwards perch. She opened her mouth to warn him to look where he was going, but who was she to spoil his fun? Instead she watched him as he began to weave through the trees, turning effortless loops and figures of eight without ever taking his eyes off her.

The crash echoed in the still air. Aang collided with the tree so hard that the earth trembled and bucked beneath her feet. No, she realised as the forest floor lurched again and she fell to her knees, this was something else. She clawed at the ground to anchor herself as the tremors continued. The sparrowkeets flew clamouring up from the treetops and she heard Appa's deep groan in the distance as he followed them. Aang leapt to his feet and immediately slammed his fist into the ground, trying to drive back the disruption by sheer force.

"What's going on? Is it an earthquake?" Katara shouted over the deep grinding of stone and earth that echoed and shuddered in the depths of her bones. It felt as if the very heart of the planet was shifting and turning far below them, its colossal beat hammering up through the earth to them.

"I don't know, but it's not a quake," Aang yelled back as he scrambled up and helped her to her feet. "Come on!"

He grabbed her wrist and started running towards the clearing where they had made their camp, leaping over the sudden hillocks and ditches forming under their feet as the ground tore itself apart. It was all Katara could do to keep up with Aang without tripping or falling as they raced across the leaf-strewn ground, dashing towards the source of the tremors.

They burst out of the trees into a large glade and Katara immediately took stock. A large circle of flattened grass showed where Appa had been lying. A bedroll lay a few yards away, snoring gently to itself. Sokka gave whole meaning to the phrase 'dead to the world'. He hadn't yet noticed the ruckus, but as Katara watched, vast cracks began to split open the turf and raced towards him. Sokka woke with a yell as he found himself bouncing along the heaving, leaping ground. He struggled to free his arms as he went flopping along the shockwave like a landed fish, cursing all the while.

Before Katara could stop him, Aang stomped into a wide sitting stance, driving his feet into the ground up to the ankles for balance. He thrust his palms out in front of him as hard as he could. Katara saw the shockwaves change direction. The ripples in the ground rushed away from them and back towards their source as another wave ground towards them.

Katara winced at the shuddering crash of earth meeting stone and instinctively raised a hand to cover her eyes. Rocks crumbled into dust that blew harmlessly past her face and then it was all over. The silence fell so abruptly that it almost hurt her ears. Sokka slid to a halt at last on the other side of the clearing and scrambled free of his sleeping bag, turning the air blue with a string of curses. She fully understood his annoyance; she could feel the bruises rising on her knees and elbows from her own close encounters with the ground. She blinked away the dust and grit that stung her eyes as Aang relaxed his stance.

The smooth, level glade was no more. The grassy turf had split open under the force of deeply buried stones erupting through the soil, now lying at haphazard angles and jutting out from the newly created ridges and hollows. Appa groaned his displeasure as he tried to find a place to settle among the jagged, broken rocks and finally resigned himself to lying across a large sheet of stone. Aang went to the bison and rubbed his massive forehead, murmuring a few comforting words in his ear.

"What was that?" Katara asked as she joined Aang and began combing her fingers through Appa's thick white fur. The sky bison opened his eyes and gazed benevolently at the two of them, letting out a contented rumble. Under the joint attentions of his beloved master and his friend, Appa was happy to let himself forget about the disturbance.

"Earthbending," Aang replied quietly. "That was just the fallout that reached us. Someone was exerting a great deal of power."

Katara glanced around the camp again. Sokka stood by his bedroll, his shirt dropped carelessly by his feet as he examined his bare chest in the sunlight and catalogued each bruise with an indignant sound. Momo had hidden away from all the violence and noise in Sokka's bedroll and now lay chattering to himself. Katara felt her heart sink beneath the weight of realisation.

"I don't see Toph anywhere." She looked around again and only confirmed something that she already knew. An earthbender had caused those tremors and their earthbender was coincidentally missing from the camp, an earthbender whose powers were only rivalled by her quick temper. Katara met Aang's eyes and saw the same thought reflected there.

"Sokka." When her brother continued to mutter and grumble to himself, Katara shouted more loudly. "Sokka!"

"What?" he snapped back. Sokka had only been awake for a few minutes, yet he already knew that it was going to be a bad day. And it had started out so well, he thought mournfully. He had been in the middle of a fabulous dream involving a bed of silken sheets and gossamer drapes, soft music playing in the background and a rose held between his teeth in wordless invitation. Suki had been about to walk through the door... and then a certain earthbender had decided to play percussion on his spine.

"Where's Toph?" Katara was beginning to feel like a broken record, skipping endlessly over the same few words, but her questions had received few answers so far.

"I don't know, but if you find her before I do..." Sokka growled as he picked up his shirt and pulled it back over his head. He didn't bother to finish his threat, because he couldn't think of anything that he could do to the younger girl that wouldn't come back to haunt him, and probably leave more bruises.

"I bet she's gone to train," Aang told the waterbender brightly. "If some idiot tried to attack Toph, we'd have heard a lot more commotion than that. There would have been screams, for a start."

"There were screams." Katara pointed at Sokka, who had crawled back into his bedroll and pulled it up to his ears.

"Those don't count," Aang chuckled, and then he sobered abruptly. "We should go find Toph. She's probably all right, but..." He didn't finish and Katara knew what he was thinking. It was unusual for Toph to be awake at this time of morning, much less to begin training this early or in a space as crowded as the woods.

"You're right." Katara laid down her packages near Appa, then turned back to Aang. "I think the tremors were coming from the north. You might be able to see something from the air. I'll head towards the river and check the banks." A guilty thought flashed into her mind: hadn't she asked Toph to meet her at the river, so very long ago? She had completely forgotten about it during the hectic day before, but she suddenly wondered if Toph had been waiting this entire time.

"All right. If we can't find her, we'll meet back here in two hours," Aang declared as he snapped open his glider. A moment later, he had disappeared over the trees. Katara knelt by her brother and shook him gently.

"Hey, Sokka, I know you're still awake. We're going to look for Toph, but you can start making breakfast if you get hungry."

She received an exaggerated snore in response. Momo crept out of the bottom of the sleeping roll and trampled circles on Sokka's stomach before he lay down. Sokka made no protest and as the lemur's enormous ears began to droop, Katara envied their easy ability to fall asleep at a moment's notice. Despite a hot meal that she hadn't cooked herself, a long hot bath and a warm bed, Katara had lain awake most of the night. The longer that they lingered in the village, the more she found herself thinking of the people they had left behind, and the more often she had to remind herself that Sokka and Toph could fend for themselves.

They would be perfectly safe, and anybody foolish enough to attack them would soon find themselves face to face with one of the world's greatest earthbenders. Sokka could probably do some damage too. Katara had reminded herself of all this, frequently, but the seed of concern had planted itself in her mind.

Now faced with Toph's absence, the seed had grown into a tall stem which grew another leaf for each anxious thought of hers, and at any moment it would begin to put out flowers of genuine fear. She had tried to appear calm and collected in front of Aang, but she had been unable to dispel this vague sense of unease and the feeling that she was needed elsewhere.

Katara strode though the trees as quickly as she could, barely able to keep from breaking into a frantic run, but she refused to cave in to the blind panic. Her most pressing concern at this moment was finding Toph. She needed to talk to her before anything else happened.

If Sokka or Aang asked, she would simply tell them that she wanted to find Toph before any more inadvertent earthbending damaged their camp further. She knew herself, however, and she knew that she needed to see Toph for more reasons than that.

She needed to see Toph's face again and know that nothing had befallen her earthbender. She needed to hear her calm voice telling Katara that everything would be all right. But above all, she needed to simply be near Toph, until she had no more cause to be distressed because they were no longer apart.

"Toph," Katara whispered to the winds, "where did you go?"

"Spirits be!" The curse tore itself from Toph's lips as she summoned the last of her strength and slammed her fist into the ground. Rocks smashed apart beneath the force of her desperate rage. She stumbled as the earth rebelled and bucked beneath her feet. She found herself kneeling in the dirt, breath sawing in her lungs, hair plastered to her face with sweat. Every muscle throbbed, every joint hurt, every part of her body protested her aggressive exertions after so long without food or sleep. Now that she was still, she realised how utterly exhausted she was in both body and mind.

It wasn't weakness to remain kneeling until she caught her breath. If she was too tired to hold up her head while she gulped down breaths of air, she wouldn't call that weakness either. But when she tried to lever herself upright and nearly toppled as her arms collapsed under her, she realised that she had become weak. After all, it was not the exertion of a battle that had placed in this position but the endless worrying over another.

On her third attempt, Toph managed to stagger to her feet and stumbled down to the water's edge. The shock of the cold water on her skin made her gasp and helped clear some of the fatigue from her brain as she scrubbed the dust from her face and hands, arms and feet. When she had cleansed herself of the dirt and her worry, she trudged her way back up the river bank until she banged into one of the large boulders scattered along the fringe of the trees. It was easier to just slump down against its rough surface instead of trying to stumble around it. Toph lowered her head into her hands and massaged tenderly at her temples as she allowed herself to admit that she was too weary and too sore to go any further.

When Katara returned to the camp, she would come to the river sooner or later. Until then, Toph could afford to curl up in the shade of the boulder and wait. The worry and the fear that had plagued her for so many hours were silenced at last and perhaps she could finally rest. She only needed to close her eyes for a moment. Just for a moment or two, until her head stopped aching so much. Just until Katara returned...

To be continued…