Chapter Five

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And Back to You, Bob!

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Sokka slept through the next two days. Everyone still took shifts sitting with him and watching him, but Toph practically lived in the room with him. She had been so worried about him, but now she didn't know how she felt. It seemed stupid, she told herself, that she was actually angry at him for not being awake yet. Two whole days? It had been even more hours than that! If there were twenty-four hours in a day, she reasoned, then he had been asleep for over forty-eight hours. So he could have been unconscious for fifty hours, or sixty hours. Maybe even a billion!

"Jeez, Sokka," she complained. She had taken to talking to him while she stayed with him. It was just too weird to sit there with him and not have anything to say. "Either Gran Gran was actually trying to put you in a coma with that herbal magic voodoo drink, or you're just milking this for all its worth. You can't really be this lazy in life, can you? You're missing entire days of your life here! I'm missing entire days of my life! If you woke up, at least so we could waste entire days of our life together!"

She clamped her mouth shut in an instant, as if she'd been caught.

"That didn't come out right!" she said. "Why would I want to waste any day with you? Ah! I didn't mean that the way it sounded either!"

She turned her face away from him, even though she knew he couldn't see her red-tinged cheeks. She chided herself for acting childish.

"But, Sokka, you're so dumb," she sighed.

Her chair was turned backwards, and she sat in it, facing Sokka, laying her head along the top of the back of the chair. Holding her breath, she listened to his inhales and exhales, and then tried to match her breathing to his. It made her feel close to him, as if she were a part of him, and over the many hours she had sat with his inert body and unconscious mind, it seemed the only way to really be with him when he was otherwise not even really there.

He really was a pain…

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"Honey, why is he not awake yet? Aren't you worried? How serious is this, really? I—"

Hakoda cut Mazane's worrying off with a kiss.

"He'll be fine. He's a tough warrior, but inside he's a gentle boy. Man now, really. He has some things he needs to work through. All he needs to do that is some time." With one hand he massaged the back of her neck, and his other hand he placed on her stomach. "But thank you for worrying. You're going to be a wonderful mother."

"Do you really think so?" she smiled. "And do you know that I hope our child has your eyes."

"But your brown ones intoxicate me," he said, grinning at her and raising a suggestive eyebrow.

"Where do you get those lines? Ugh, loser!" she teased, playfully pushing his shoulder away.

"What can I say? You know you put the beast in me."

Mazane laughed. "You sound ridiculous!" she said. "I kind of love it."

"I love you," Hakoda said, seriously now. "Sokka will love you, too, and so will Katara. They don't want me to replace their mom. I know that. But I also know I never could do that. You're not a replacement for anyone, Mazane. You're the woman I fell in love with when I never thought I could love again."

Mazane took his hand in hers and put it back on her stomach. She held it there with her own and closed her eyes. Hakoda looked at her lovingly, and then he closed his eyes, too, and together they felt the place where the bond between them had taken living form.

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"Gran Gran, I think he hates me. God, I never meant to hurt him, but I had to do it! I felt, oh, I just felt frozen in the relationship. As if I were frozen in ice! I mean, I know he's told me he's love me ever since he came out of the iceberg, so I guess I was, like, his anti-freeze of love or whatever, and I really did love him, and yes, I still do, but it's different now! I am nineteen-years-old, Gran Gran, and I can't just date one guy for my entire life! How will I know Aangs 'The One' if I've only been with him? I can't! That's it! But he doesn't get that! He's so sure of himself, but sometimes—sometimes I'm not, Gran Gran!"

She quelled her whirlwind of venting, staring helplessly at her nonchalant grandmother sitting on the floor across from her and peeling potatoes for dinner.

The elderly woman lifted her head and looked to her granddaughter.

"Why don't you help me with these potatoes, dear."

"Gran Gran! I have a real, honest-to-goodness problem! I've broken a young man's heart!" Katara cried, insistently dropping forward onto her hands and knees.

"Yes, but don't break his belly now, too, dear. If you don't help me peel these potatoes, dinner's going to be late," Gran Gran said coolly.

Katara picked up a potato and used water from a puddle of melted snow near the door to cut off the skin of the tuber. She wasn't really paying attention, though, and the potato ended up in tatters.

"Why don't you try using the peeler instead for now, dear." She handed Katara another potato and passed her the peeler she had been using, opting not to hand Katara the small knife she now used to cut away the skins.

Even though her dilemma went unmentioned, Katara knew her grandmother was on her side. "Her silence is really just her confidence in me that I'll figure it out for myself," she realized. "Oh, Aang, I'm not saying 'no.' I'm just saying 'not yet.'"

In her sudden irritation with herself, she accidentally skidded the peeler off the potato and across a knuckle. Wincing, she thought, "Why didn't I say it that way earlier?"

She tied a bit of cloth around the open skin, and then had an idea. "I'll just tell him that! He needs to hear that from me, right?"

She sped through the rest of the spuds—potato tresses (and some chunks) flew everywhere—and then rushed out of the house, leaving Gran Gran behind in a startled stupor.

"Aang!" she called when she found him playing ball with the tribe's kids. "Aang, can I talk to you for a minute?"

Aang Airbended the ball back to the kids and told them he would be right back. They walked far enough away so that their conversation could be kept private.

"What do you want, Katara?" Aang asked, not unfriendly, but with a decided lack of interest.

"Aang, I know we've talked about this already, and I know you don't really understand my feelings about this and what I mean when I say I want to take a break or to break up, and that's okay, though I really do wish you would understand, so I want to put it simply, not bluntly and meanly, but just simply, so you know how I feel and where I stand, and—"

"What is it, Katara?" It disconcerted her how he seemed so detached, even though he was staring right at her.

"Aang, I never meant to tell you 'no.' I just mean 'not yet.'"

Aang continued to look at her, and she felt vulnerable under such a harsh gaze from one for whom she cared so much.

"Well?" she tried.

"What do you want me to say, Katara?" he asked. "That hearing that makes me feel better? I'm tired of you making me jump through hoops just to be with you, or even for just the promise of being with you. I'm not some poodlerabbit, Katara."—He didn't even crack a smile.—"You told me you wanted to break up, so we broke up. We're broken up."—She winced at his words.—"And that means we're done."

"Aang, I—"

"We're done," he repeated. "You take all the time you need, date all the guys you want. Date Haru for all I care. Maybe someday we can be friends again," he paused and his eyes hardened, "but not yet."

Katara's throat tightened, and the tears welling in her eyes began to fall.

"You didn't have to be a JERK about it!" she shouted and hurried off before she really broke down crying.

Aang almost called after her, but restrained himself. "You had to do what's best for you," he thought, "so now I have to do what's best for me."

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Toph's eyes blinked open. She had fallen asleep while breathing with Sokka, but something has awakened her. A grunt. Sokka?

She jumped off the chair and darted to his side. "Sokka!" she cried. "Sokka, can you hear me?"

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The fog he had been in for what seemed a lifetime was clearing.

Someone was calling him.

A voice he knew well.

A voice he had been searching for through the fog.

He opened his eyes and saw her leaning protectively over him, heard the anxious fear in her voice.

He reached up and pulled her to him in a tight hug.

"Toph."

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She had never heard him speak her name that way before. It scared her even more than the fact that he was hugging her like she was the first and last person in the world he ever wanted to hug.

It scared her because it gave her the kind of hope he had unwittingly crushed before. She had to stop this.

And then he kissed her.

Awkwardly. Somewhere next to her ear. Far upper part of her check maybe.

It startled her into action.

"Get—get off me!" she stammered, tearing herself from his tempting embrace. "And get a hold of yourself. Jeez, I know you haven't eaten in, like, three days, but that doesn't mean you can turn cannibal!"

"What? Toph, I—" But a thick wave of anger blew over him as she huffily wiped at her face and brushed herself off. "I'm just glad you're okay," he said.

Startled, she stopped her nervous tidying and turned back to face him. "Wh—why are you saying that?" she snapped, trying to hide her embarrassment.

She felt him flinch at her tone.

Then with gentleness, she said, "That's what I'm supposed to say."

She felt him relax.

"You really scared me," she admitted.

"And everyone else!"—amended.

"Me the least!"—blurted.

Now she could feel his confusion, but even more intensely, her own mortification.

"I'll go get you a sandwich," she said more loudly than she intended, and with that she fled from the room, leaving Sokka utterly baffled behind her.

She was thoroughly shaken up and a bit angry, but part of her couldn't help but crow exultantly over what had happened, "I don't know what that part of the face is called, but it deserves a name!"

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To be continued…

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A/N:

I hope this was as much of an "aaaw" chapter for you guys to read as it was for me to write! Man, I love these characters! I wish they were mine, but…

…these characters are not mine. : (

Well, except Mazane, I guess. : )

And, uh, the embryo in her belly. But who's counting? : /