Toph awoke sometime later to find herself still sitting at one of the tables in Bao's inn. She did not remember passing out but figured she must have as there was no other reason why she would have slept here. Her head was throbbing and her stomach was churning as though there were two waterbenders fighting with her stomach acid. The feeling was enough to make her puke, but she somehow managed to keep her stomach contents contained. It had been nearly a year since she'd gotten this drunk and she realized then that she had broken her promise to herself never to do this again. But she supposed it was too late to worry about it now. It had happened and she couldn't change that fact, for as far as she knew it wasn't possible to bend time. If it was, she'd have found a way to do it by now so that Azula's victory would never have happened.
"Good morning Lady Toph." Bao said then, the sound of his voice tearing her from her mind. She turned in his direction and smiled, though the movement made her woozy.
"Morning Bao." she said, fighting to keep herself from vomiting.
"Would you like some breakfast?" Bao asked, offering her a menu despite the fact that she couldn't read it.
"No, thank you." Toph said, her voice somewhere between a gasp and a groan. "I'll take some water though, please."
"As you say, Lady Toph." Bao said, bowing before he shuffled off to fetch her some water.
As she waited for him to return Toph tried to remember what had happened the previous night. Her memory was fuzzy, but she vaguely recalled playing cards with Lu and Li and drinking, though everything else was shrouded in a haze and no matter how hard she tried she couldn't get the memories to come. She supposed it didn't matter, but she couldn't shake the feeling that she'd done something she would later regret.
It was then that she sensed Ming approaching and she turned to face the young barmaid. "Hey Ming." she said, her tone casual despite how she felt.
"Hey Toph." Ming replied, her tone uncharacteristically sullen.
"Something wrong?" Toph asked, unsure if she actually wanted to know.
"Uh...not really, no." Ming answered, her voice calm and steady, though Toph noticed the pause at the beginning of Ming's sentence.
"I can tell when you're lying to me Ming." Toph said, her eyes flickering in Ming's direction. "What happened last night?"
"Nothing." Ming said, her tone nervous now. "Nothing happened, aside from us playing cards and drinking."
"You're lying." Toph said, though there was no accusation in her voice. "Something else happened and I want to know what it is."
Before Ming could answer Bao returned with Toph's water. "Here you are Lady Toph." he said, setting the glass before her. "Is there anything else I can get you?"
"No, this is enough for now." Toph answered. "Thank you Bao."
"It is my pleasure Lady Toph." Bao said, bowing again before shuffling away.
Toph waited until Bao was out of earshot before turning her attention back to Ming. "Okay, so, tell me what else happened last night." she said. "Please Ming, I really would like to know."
"Okay, I'll tell you." Ming said, finally breaking beneath the pressure of Toph's questions. "Last night you...well, you kissed Lu and he seemed to like it. As did you."
Toph choked on the sip of water she'd been taking. "I did what?" she gasped, coughing as she tried to breath around the water that had slipped into her lungs.
"You kissed Lu." Ming repeated. "We were playing cards and drinking, and then you just leaned across the table and kissed him. None of us knew what to do. But he seemed to like it and I could tell you did as well."
"Oh God." Toph groaned, her stomach and her mind reeling at what Ming had just told her. "You're joking. Please tell me your joking. I can't have kissed Lu, I don't even like him."
"Well, apparently you did last night." Ming said. "Because you kissed him. You can ask my grandfather if you don't believe me."
"No, no, I don't want to hear anymore about this." Toph said, rising to her feet as she spoke.
"Where are you going?" Ming asked, her tone confused.
"Back to my cave where I don't have to deal with this madness." Toph said. As she spoke she groped around on the table for the provisions Bao had gotten her the previous night as well as her hat, which she had just realized she wasn't wearing. "Where the hell is my hat?"
"Lu has it." Ming answered, her tone slightly irritated.
"Lu is still here?" Toph asked, horrified. "What the hell is he still doing here?"
"Like you, he passed out." Ming answered. "So did Li, they're both still here."
"Where are they specifically?" Toph asked, her tone demanding.
"Over at their usual table." Ming said. "They're both still passed out."
"Good." Toph said, snatching up her provisions before stomping over to where Lu and Li lay like a pair of stupid oafs. "Get up you idiots." Toph snapped, kicking Lu in the ribs.
"Ow, what the hell?" Lu grunted, his eyes snapping open as his gaze fell on Toph. "Oh hey Toph, how's it going?"
"I've been better." Toph said shortly. "Now give me back my hat so I can go."
"What?" Lu asked. "You said I could keep it after we kissed last night. You said it would be my reminder of our love or something like that."
"Yeah, well, I changed my mind, so give it back." Toph said, visibly irritated.
"Sorry love, the hat is mine now." Lu said, grinning.
Toph sighed and stomped on the earthen floor of the bar, a large chunk of the floor rising up to smack Lu in the face. When he still refused to hand over the hat Toph stepped back and flipped over the part of the floor on which Lu and the still unconscious Li sat, sending both of them sprawling. Lu then tossed the hat back to her and she turned and headed for the door muttering, "Sorry about the floor." to Ming as she did.
"Lady Toph, don't you want some breakfast?" Bao called after her.
"I'm not hungry." she shouted back as she strode out of the bar, donning her hat before setting off down the road back to her cave.
A half hour later Toph arrived back at her cave, though she was still fuming. She had not been this humiliated in a long time and she had a very strong urge to return to the village and beat the shit out of Lu, along with anyone else who got in her way. But she knew that violence would solve nothing and would likely jeopardize her relationship with the villagers. Besides, she wasn't actually angry with anyone else. It was only Lu whom she was angry with and even he didn't draw as much of her anger as she, herself, did. How could she have been so stupid? She didn't even like Lu, could barely stand being around him, so why the hell had she kissed him? Ultimately she could find no answers and she supposed it didn't really matter. She had been drunk, it had meant nothing and it would never happen again, she would make sure of that.
Still, she wondered how her friends would have reacted. Sokka would probably have just laughed. Zuko would have been politely bemused. Aang would have encouraged it, no doubt, saying that love was essential to peace or something like that. And Katara would have definitely encouraged it, saying that love bloomed in the strangest places and that all people should embrace it. Yeah right, like I could ever love an idiot like Lu. Toph thought. But that is what the Sugar Queen would say, not that I'd listen to her.
The thought of her friends made Toph feel sad again and suddenly she found that she didn't want to be in her cave any more than she wanted to be in the village. Sighing, she grabbed her hat, a water-skin, and some of the dried meat Bao had given her and left the cave, this time making her way up into the hills that surrounded the cave. It had been a while since she'd gone exploring in the hills and she felt like getting away from her memories so a little wandering seemed to be in order. Truth be told there was nothing to find out here, but Toph liked the solitude as it gave her time to think.
The hills surrounding her cave and the village had once been green and beautiful, or so Ming had told her, but now they were nothing more than scorched earth, just like the rest of the world. Toph could not be sure of the validity of this of course, as she could not see the land and she had never seen it before, but she tended to take Ming's word on these things. She had been surprised at first when Ming and Bao had first told her what had happened after the war. Apparently Azula had instituted a scorched earth policy in which her firebenders had crossed the Earth Kingdom burning everything to a blackened crisp. The Earth Kingdom had been the most diverse of the four nations in terms of its landscape, with forests, grasslands, deserts, swamps and nearly every other landscape imaginable. But all of that was gone now, burnt to nothing by Azula's firebenders. Where great forests had once stood only ash remained, covering the earth in a black blanket that allowed nothing else to grow.
Toph had been skeptical at first, but she knew now that it was true. She could feel the ash beneath her feet as she walked. She could smell the stench of the ash on the air and taste it in the water, and she knew it was true. The earth had been scorched and now it was a mere skeleton of what it had been, just like everything else. The scorching of the earth proved there was no limit to Azula's cruelty, not that Toph had ever had a reason to doubt the limits of how cruel Azula could be. Still, the scorching of the earth made Toph hate Azula more than anything else, save for what had likely been done to her friends, as the scorched earth policy had been unnecessary. There had been no reason for Azula to do it and yet she had, simply to prove a point, while endangering the lives of thousands of Earth Kingdom residents in the process. And as Toph thought about the pointlessness of it all she felt her hatred rise with a ferocity unlike any she had ever known. She would make Azula pay for this, no matter how hard it was, no matter what it cost her, she would make Azula pay.
She stopped then on a ridge overlooking the flat expanse of former prairie that stretched out to the east, letting calm wash over her. She couldn't afford to let herself be blinded by her desire for revenge. To do so would be unwise and would likely cost her the ability to take that revenge. If she acted rashly now she could end up getting herself caught by Azula's raiders and if that happened she would lose all chance of ever finding her friends or stopping Azula. And so she allowed calm to return to her, taking a few sips of water as she waited. Once she was calm she set off again, heading east for no particular reason.
Several hours later she stopped again to give her feet a rest. The sun beat down on her unmercifully and she could feel the beads of sweat as the trickled down her back and forehead, soaking her. She took several more sips of water and munched on some dried meat as she decided what to do next. She had two primary options, either keep going and see if she could find anything or head back to the cave and sit in silence while her memories swirled around her. Ultimately she decided to keep going, at least a little farther, though she had no real expectations of finding anything out here.
A short time later she stopped again, now throughly exhausted from all the walking. She wished she still had Appa to ride on, but it had been even longer since she'd last seen the skybison than it had been since she'd seen his master. She couldn't remember exactly when she'd last seen Appa, but it had been sometime before she'd been sent to Omashu with Sokka, Suki, and her metalbending students. Shaking her head to keep the memories from lodging themselves in her mind she sat beside the skeletal remains of a tree, one of the few that hadn't been completely burned to ash, and drank some more water. She could tell the tree was a tree using her seismic sense which allowed her to see in a manner similar to how other people saw. Seismic sense was an earthbending technique and many earthbenders could use it, but Toph was more adept at it than any other earthbender in the world. The tree had once been massive, though it was now a mere shell of its former self. Still, here in the little shade it provided, would be the perfect place for a nap.
With that in mind, Toph lay down, stretching out beneath the skeleton tree with cat-like grace. She tipped her hat down over her face, set her water-skin on the ground beside her, an folded her arms behind her head before closing her eyes. The final thought that passed through her mind before she drifted off to sleep was of Ming and Bao and then she was lost in her dreams, unaware that her conversation with them that morning would be the last time she'd ever see them alive.
A/N: And there's chapter two. I don't really have a whole lot to say about this chapter, except for this: there is a reason Ming seemed to be upset by the fact the Toph kissed Lu, but you'll have to wait until next chapter to find out what that reason is (though if you're thinking you can probably figure it out on your own). Also, there is a startling lack of reviews for this fic, so I'll ask again, please leave reviews. It is integral to the continuation of good writing and I truly love reading what other people think of my work, so please give me some feedback so I know what I'm doing right and what I may need to fix. Thanks.
