Still don't own ATLA, still not dead.
We are getting rather close to saving Toph! Promise! Only like, 3 more months of waiting for me to get off my ass and write. _
--
"How?! You can't be…. I mean… I'm, well… Look at me, I can't do this!... and there's a war going on! The middle of a war is not the right time… and…"
"Sokka, shut up. We'll be fine." Suki tugged on his jaw so that he faced her. "And anyways, you've been going on like this since I told you three days ago! We're already a day late because of it!"
"But, what are we going to do? We have to get you back to the Fire Nation, and I don't want to leave you, but…"
"I know. Look, I'm not exactly as famous as the rest of you guys. I'll be fine." Suki reached down and patted her still slender stomach. "We'll be fine."
"You know, we're not exactly young." Sokka flinched as he saw his wife's hand go up.
"That was a warning."
"I'm sorry! It's just, how can we be sure it will be healthy, and that we can watch after it while it grows up?"
"Can you stop calling our child 'it', please?"
"Well, if I were to say 'him', you'd just be angry."
"No, I would not. I'd be sad, though."
"Why?"
"Because I was hoping our first child could grow up to be a powerful warrior."
Sokka shook his head, knowing he was asking for that. "You need to stop hanging out with Iroh. He's a bad influence."
"You kidding? I learn these things from watching you Sokka. I fully agree, though. I do need to stop hanging out with you. Look at the situations you get me into." Suki leaned in and kissed her husband.
--
"They're only one day late, Prince Zuko. I'm sure they're fine. We're safe here, anyways, so stop pacing like a mad man and sit down." Da Shan was growing irritated with the crown prince. When he wasn't cloaked in the guise of royalty and ceremony, he was way too anxious and emotional.
"It's not Sokka and Suki I'm worried about. Katara's been a wreck since that battle. And I told you to stop calling me that. This isn't Fire Nation military service anymore, we're here to help a friend, so, just act like you're one of us for once."
Da Shan resituated himself on the couch he was reclining in. Placing both hands behind his head as an extra support, he replied, "alright, unc-"
"Do NOT call me 'Uncle Zuzu', either!"
"Da Shan, are you angering Uncle Zuzu again?" Jung walked through the door, preceded, per usual, by the sparkle coming off of her teeth.
Zuko sighed, exasperated. "Is she still in there muttering to herself about how horrible she is?" Leave it to the Fire Prince to phrase everything in the worst possible way.
"Yeah, Katara's still pretty broken up." Jung walked over to the chair by Da Shan's feet, her blind right eye pointed towards him. "You really should try and comfort her, Zuko, you know her best."
Zuko simply nodded and walked out of the room, leaving the two teenagers behind to talk about, whatever childish things teenagers talk about while not being watched. Zuko stopped for a moment, second guessing whether he should leave two hormonally charged teenagers by themselves, but shook it from his mind and kept walking.
"You seem awfully up beat for just getting back from being with Katara. I wish I knew your secret."
Leitha swooped in through a window and landed on Da Shan's belly, curling up to rest. Jung sent the lemur a bitter, dejected pout, but she staid in her spot on the earthbender.
"She'll be fine in no time. You'll see. And the secret is all in meditation."
"You meditate?" Da Shan had been camping with this girl for a week straight now and had not once seen her anywhere near a meditative state.
"Of course I do. If you didn't sleep so darn much you would know that."
"You can blame Zuko for that one. All the sleep he never allowed me on the front adds up. I'm just making up for lost time this past week."
Jung chuckled. "You finally called him Zuko."
"Of course, he's not here to annoy, why would I call him anything else?" A slow, crooked smirk appeared across the earthbender's lips.
"You know, if you weren't so stuffy and formal half the time, you'd be a pretty cool guy."
"Why thank you, ma'am. I shall continue working on those areas you've critiqued." Da Shan pulled his hands around to his chest to mock bow, then quickly moved them back behind his head. "And you know, you may talk a bit too much, but you're kinda awesome every once in a while. Plus that scar is bad ass."
"I KNOW, right?! Can you believe Katara wants to get rid of it?!"
--
"Katara, you umm… wanna talk about it?" Zuko shuffled uneasily into the room.
"Not particularly," she squeezed out between a couple sobs. It had been like this on and off since the night of the battle. Their prisoner had been left behind in the town of Ai Qiuyue to face his punishment, but only after making it clear to the group that their location would be known to Chief Hahn in no time. For the three days since they left, Katara could not seem to get the image of the battle out of her mind.
"You agreed to be a part of our deal as well, Katara. We'll break it in less than a week if we don't open up a bit, emotionally, towards each other."
The waterbender wiped her tears off on her sleeves and sniffled a bit. "Alright, but you better be willing to as well when the time comes. I don't want to hear any of your 'it's complicated' excuses any more."
"Alright, I promise, just, open up here. We're all here to help you, Katara."
"I'm a terrible, horrible person, Zuko." Sniff. "How could I have done that?"
"You're not a horrible person, Katara. You're the most kind-hearted person I know." Zuko reached out and placed a slightly warmed hand on his friend's shoulder. "You remember, during the war, when we went and found the old leader of the Southern Raiders?"
"I was just thinking that too. I mean, that man killed my mother. She was completely defenseless and he killed her right there in our house. Somehow, though, I was able to let that man live." Sniff. Katara raised a hand to wipe more tears away with her wrist. "These men, that did nothing to me, are gone. What if they had families?"
"What do you mean they did nothing to you? They are part of the reason that the Avatar is gone. I know it might not be your mother, but still… He was like your child back when we were kids. He was like a brother to all of us for so long. That little dork was just as much family to you as Sokka."
"I guess it helps that they were still fighting, too."
Zuko nodded his head slowly. "They would've killed a lot of people if you had not taken them down first. Plus, none of us are perfect. All of us have killed before, unfortunately. It's an unavoidable consequence I guess, of being a hero in our world."
"Aang never killed anybody."
"Aang was different. That boy could see the good in anybody. Literally! He gave mercy to my father. He convinced me to just banish my sister, then he kept watch to make sure she didn't go any more insane."
"And it always worked. I was there to see it work every time. Non-violence can solve these situations, or at least non-lethal force. I shouldn't have taken the lives of those men."
"None of us are perfect, Katara. You've gotta accept that you might not be right all the time. Just, eerily close to all the time." Zuko smiled a little, but the waterbender seemed unmoved. "Ok, I guess that wasn't as funny as I thought. Or as flattering. Look, what I'm tryin– "
Katara had leaned over and kissed his cheek, and nestled her head into the Prince's shoulder. "Thank you." They sat there in silence for some time. Katara, happy to have somebody to cuddle against, and Zuko, not sure exactly as to what was going on.
"You know, if Jung saw us like this -"
"She's gonna make fun of us about it whether we do this kind of stuff or not."
"Sokka would kill me."
"The great poweful fire lord afraid of a water tribe peasant?" Katara just wanted him to stop complaining and accept the closeness, if only for a couple minutes. "He can't even bend."
A door could be heard opening and slamming shut nearby. "That's probably him now, you know?" Zuko couldn't quite tell why his body refused to move away from the waterbender. "He's gonna be insufferable if he sees us."
"Too late, get away from my sister right now." Sokka dropped his bag with a thud.
"You seem to have an impeccable knack for destroying all things sentimental, Sokka. You know that?" Katara didn't lift her head from Zuko's shoulder to say this. Zuko did, however, flinch a bit, not knowing what to do.
"What? You're actually a part of this... this... Umm… what's going on here?"
Zuko and Katara both spoke without hesitation. "It's complicated."
"Hmm, right now I think I have enough complicated. So, you guys eat dinner yet? I'm starving."
"That does sound good," Katara said finally pulling her slightly red eyes open and away from the firebender. They have a kitchen or anything in this apartment?"
"Sounds good, we'll catch up after some dinner. Who's turn is it to cook tonight, anyways?" Zuko stood up from the edge of the bed he was sitting on and helped Katara do the same.
--
"But, that can't be how it ends, Toph! I mean, I know he doesn't die! Remember? You promised there was a happy ending!"
"I know what I promised, and that's not the ending. In a strange way, actually, I have a peculiar happiness remembering that day while we left Ba Sing Se."
"Why would you be happy about that?"
Toph thought about how to answer him. She was nowhere near happy while they were on Appa the day that Aang died in the catacombs. She was a little relieved when she heard that sharp intake of breath that could only belong to Twinkle Toes, but it was a long way from joy. In fact, that moment saddened her and plagued her mind for a number of years until she realized why it had affected her so much.
"Well, it's not that it's a happy memory. It's just, that day, on the verge of losing Twinkle Toes, that was the day it first struck me that he truly was the one that saved me, and showed me what it meant to be free. I think that was the day that I realized, no matter how much of an idiot that kid was, or how much of a push-over he'd be if I wasn't there to beat it out of him, I might actually like him as more than just a friend. It's like this Earth Kingdom song I remember hearing. I think it was JoNee Maisho that sang it. I don't remember much of it, but part of the chorus was 'Don't it always seem to go, that you don't know what you got 'til it's gone?' Thankfully, for me, that little airhead was harder to kill than most people. I had plenty more time to slap him around for scaring us all like that."
"All this bending stuff sounds really cool. You think I can watch you earthbend sometime?"
"Sure thing, Soggy, as soon as we get off this ice."
--
For those that didn't catch on, the song at the end that Toph is referencing is "Big Yellow Taxi" by Jodi Mitchell.
A bit shorter than normal, but I really to move on from this particular spot in the story. This piece seems to drag to me, so I tried to make it as interesting as possible. Hope the random jokes weren't too bad for you.