Oh my God, an update? Well, it's more like this was mostly written for last chapter, but it became so long and tonely different, I decided to split them up into two chapters, so here is the aftermath of the fight and what I hope is a decent conversation between Sokka and Toph . . . though that may not be the case.

However, on a much bigger note, this is chapter 10! This is the first time, ever, any of my stories has reached double digits—you guys have no idea how exciting that is for me. Thank you all for sticking with me this far and I hope that this story will continue to please you for the next ten chapters too!

Disclaimer: I own nothing.

. . .

Sokka felt a warmth beginning to spread throughout his body. The pain that had knocked him out seemed to be at bay and, to be honest, he felt a bit drunk. His stomach lurched and his body felt really . . . liquidy for the lack of a better term. It felt fuller than usual. And the hands pressing down on his torso weren't helping.

After a few seconds, he cracked an eye open and winced at the glow of the light coming from his chest. He recognized the glow: waterbending healing. That would explain the sensations; Hina must've used a lot of water for his body to absorb so she could heal him. He tentatively flexed his foot and almost smiled; good as new.

Hina must've noticed the movement, but not as quick as the familiar small steps that he heard coming towards him. "Sou!" Toph. Was she okay? He didn't have long to wait, as she shoved Hina aside and gripped his shirt. "You okay?"

". . . I was, until you grabbed my skin like that, and now I think my ribs broke again . . ." he groaned, but he smiled. He opened his eyes only to see Toph look annoyed. She swiftly dropped him and he fell against the floor; she followed this up with a quick punch to his right shoulder. He winced, but the pain wasn't too bad; Hina must've been able to be more thorough than he anticipated.

"You dumbass! You had me worried sick." Did Toph sound like she was pouting? That was definitely a pouty tone, he thought, but he did well not to say it out loud. Hina got off the floor where she landed and brushed off her pants.

"How are you feeling?" She asked.

"Better, thanks." He winced a little. "Not completely up to par, but better. I can at least move my foot and shoulder without blacking out, if that's what you mean." He began to sit up. From what he could tell, they were still in the apartment. The walls had been fixed and the hole was gone as were the remains of the table and pottery, and the kitchen counter still looked damaged, but otherwise, you couldn't tell that a battle had just taken place. "How long was I out?"

"A half a day." Hina answered. She followed his gaze to the walls. "Bu was nice enough to use his earthbending to fix things up. You'd think we'd have more earthbenders, being so close to the Earth Kingdom, but what can you do?"

Toph stiffened. "Well, I didn't see Bu stay and fight, or you for that matter." She said coldly. Hina winced but didn't reply. Sokka tried to give Toph a pointed look, but she wasn't facing him; she was far too busy glaring at Hina—then Sokka realized that no matter how pointy his look, she wouldn't see it. Again? And just when he was getting better at remembering she was blind . . .

He sighed. "It's okay, Omai; I mean, it's naturally to be scared of that thing, you know? After all, it claimed to know her." He chuckled, but then allowed his voice to drop. "You don't, do you?" Toph nodded and seemed to relax while Sokka knew she was just focusing on Hina's heartbeat.

"No!" Hina denied, palms raised. Sokka glanced at Toph, who shook her head. Truth. "I mean, I don't think so . . . I don't even know anyone from the Fire Nation, much less why they would want to protect me."

"You're not dating any jealous firebending boyfriends?" Sokka joked, but Hina shook her head.

"No, I don't have anyone." She flushed a little. Sokka was about to reply when he noticed an oddly warm moisture on his lap. He glanced down and paled. Toph sniffed and drew back, her coldness forgotten at the smell—he, an almost grown man, had peed himself. Hina noticed and chuckled nervously. "Sorry, I should have warned you; I had to use a lot of water, and your body absorbed most it, so . . ." She shrugged. Sokka sighed, his pride already gone.

"It's fine, Hina . . . it's not your fault."

"But you were really brave!" She had an appreciative look on her face. "You held off that Dragon and let us get away. It was amazing. Where did you learn to fight?"

"Not well enough, apparently; did you see how beat up I was ?"

"Well, yeah, but you were fighting a spirit! You had to be amazing, otherwise you wouldn't have lived, right?" Toph glared at Hina, but Sokka shook his head.

"That was no spirit Hina—he was a bender." Hina paled a little.

"What?"

"There's nothing supernatural about that bastard; it's just some guy in a mask." Sokka groaned. "I managed to destroy his mask, but we couldn't see his face because of the darkness."

Hina gasped. "Does Mr. Fuin know?"

Sokka shook his head, "No, he doesn't; actually, why don't you go tell him and send him up here? We should probably talk about how our rent's gonna change to pay for the damages." Hina nodded and, with one more look over her shoulder, she walked out.

Toph waited until Hina was heading down the stairs, and then she turned to Sokka and punched him again. "Ow!"

"What the fuck were you thinking?" She snapped. "I should've stayed; I could've kicked that guy's ass, but no, you just had to be the fucking hero and nearly get yourself killed!"

"But . . . our cover?"

"I don't give a shit about the cover!" She grabbed his shirt and "looked" him in the eyes. "If there's a fight, I can take care of it!"

"We need the cover and you know it! And, for the record, I'm perfectly capable of taking care of myself!" He snapped.

"Apparently not!" She retorted and pushed him back onto the floor. "Do you have any idea of how weak your heartbeat was? Any idea of how much you were screaming?" She demanded.

"I had the guy on the ropes!"

"Had him on the ropes? Look at you!" Sokka glanced down at his bandages.

"Well, yeah, but I was kicking ass before he turned out to be a bender!" He sighed. "The thing is . . . I don't think he came there looking for a fight." Sokka trailed off as he replayed last night in his head. "No, he didn't bring a weapon or anything—I think he probably just wanted to scare us, he didn't expect that anyone would be stupid enough to fight a 'spirit'; that's Avatar crap. But he tried to keep up the pretense . . . at least until I forced him to start bending . . ."

"What do you mean," Toph demanded. "How did you 'force' him to bend?"

"What I mean is that the problem with benders is that they normally can't fight without their bending—Zuko's an exception," he added quickly before Toph could interrupt. "The thing is, benders become so dependent on their element that they don't bother learning how to fight without it, which only furthers the idea that this guy didn't know what he was doing . . . maybe his appearance was unplanned, off script and when he found himself over his head, he had to use his waterbending to compensate."

"Waterbending?" Toph paused in her tirade—though Sokka could tell there was much more there. "But he earthbended when he escaped . . ." She trailed off. "Unless his partner was helping him."

"Oh? So it's a he now?" Sokka tried to smirk, but he knew Toph was still mad at him. "But yeah, that's what I figured, given fact he definitely was the one behind the waterbending, that's for damn sure. But we didn't see him take any earthbending stances, so his partner was probably close to the action. He must have been in the building."

"I didn't sense anyone." Toph said.

"Well, yeah, but you were a bit . . . distracted." She began to look mad again. "Anyway! Then what if it was one of the guests? One of the other tenants?"

"It's likely . . . well, at the very least, we can rule out Hina."

Sokka groaned. "Yeah, I guess we can—though she may not know she's connected to the Dragon, but at the very least, the Dragon's connected to her, so we can't leave her alone yet." Toph tapped her foot. "But yeah, we can probably write her off as innocent." He paused. Something was tickling the back of his mind . . . a memory of the tenant meeting . . . . Suddenly, something clicked in Sokka's mind.

Toph's eyebrows furrowed. "You're excited; what'd you figure out?"

"I think I just figured out one of our 'Dragon' team." He smiled.

"Seriously?" Toph grinned. "That's the Snoozles I know. What about the earthbender?"

"That one, I'm slightly less sure of. I mean, you were with everyone, right? You'd have noticed if someone suddenly started earthbending."

"Well . . . not exactly; remember that the guy was earthbended out of here after I distracted the Dragon guy, remember? They could've started then."

"Well, the only earthbender we know here is Bu, but he doesn't even live here anymore, right? I mean, he checked out right when we got here."

Toph had a funny look on her face. Sokka narrowed his eyes; she must've figure something out too. "True, that normally means we could rule him out, but if he's good enough to make help his partner out without even seeing him, we could be in trouble . . . well, you'd be; he's nothing I can't handle."

"Will you just spill it already?" He groaned impatiently; Toph just cocked her eyebrow.

"Hey, you started this vague thing; suck it up. Besides, you don't' have to worry about the earthbender because I'll be the one to take him down."

"Cover?" As soon as the word left his mouth, he knew he should've just stayed quiet. The look on Toph's face was murderous.

"Oh, and just stand helplessly by like a good little girl while my partner takes care of everything? I can wipe my own ass, Sokka."

"That's not what I'm worried about and you know it!"

"I know damn well what you're worried about, and I know damn well that I'm not going to ever, EVER pretend to be helpless again. You may think you're some kind of hotshot hero, but you're not; you're just going to die fighting this guys if you do it alone." Toph yelled.

"Who said anything about fighting? We just need a plan to capture them and then give them to the police!"

"Oh, and in what dream was that? Be the cynical Sokka for a second; when has that ever worked? Face it, Sokka, if it comes down to fighting, I'm going to be right there; fuck helpless and fuck you for thinking I'm going to just do whatever you say."

"Toph, I just want to get to the bottom of this . . . !" Sokka retorted.

"And I just want us to get out of this alive!" She snapped. "Think for a second, smart guy! How do you think Aang would feel if you got hurt or worse just because he wanted to appear neutral? Or Katara? Or, hell, Suki? They would be miserable, this case won't get solved, an-and I'll be down a best friend." The expression on her face softened as she sniffed.

Sokka's frustration began to fade. "So that's what this is about . . ."

"Do you have any idea of what it was like? Just standing down there with those wimps, all the while I could 'see' every time you stumbled? Heard every time you screamed and you asked me not to do anything about it?" She sat down next to him and fell silent. She didn't speak for a few seconds as she thought through what she was going to say next until she finally removed her scarf. Sokka looked at the black betrothal necklace that remained stuck around her neck and felt slightly more guilty. "Look, I know this thing doesn't actually mean anything, but the space earth does—we're family, Sokka, and I will do whatever I can to save you, no matter who I have to fight, who I have to kill to do it."

Sokka stared. He had had no idea . . . but he should have. He mentally smacked himself. How could he be so stupid? He sighed and actually got up and sat down next to her.

She glanced over at him, then looked away as she wiped her hand across her eyes; Sokka just looked over at the wall to his left that had suddenly become interesting. After a few seconds, he turned back to looking at his best friend and pretended not to notice the faint stream of water running down the side of her face. "Toph, I'm so sorry. The thing is, I do know how you feel."

"I highly doubt that." She said bitterly; was that a flush to her cheeks? Sokka chalked it up to her bad temper and carried on.

"Look, think about it for a second: how do you think I feel every time Katara goes to fight? Or Aang, or you? All of you have this amazing bending stuff and you fight larger than life things—my sister beat Azula, one of the craziest people on the planet. Aang defeated the Fire Lord, the baddest dude on the planet! Iroh and Bumi took over cities; yet, when we took down the Fire Nation fleet, you almost died and I couldn't do a single thing about it." He sighed. "More often than not, I just I have to trust that you guys will be okay." Pause. "At least you have the potential to kick ass and solve everything—I don't. I'm just a guy with a sword or a table leg, and dead weight."

Toph didn't reply right away. Sokka didn't break the silence; he just waited patiently. Finally, she said, "And that's enough."

Sokka blinked. "What do you mean?"

"I mean, Sokka, is that you being you is enough for us." She smiled a little. "We know you're always worrying and keeping us on schedule—you're like our dad, but much nicer than Katara."

"You will not talk about your mother in that tone of voice, young lady!" Sokka snapped in his Wang Fire Voice. The two friends stared at each other and then began to laugh. Even though his ribs hurt the whole time, it felt like the best thing in the world.

"Ex-exactly!" Toph laughed, but then calmed down a little. "That's just it; you can pull us through everything. No matter how dark things got, you can always make us laugh, come up with a plan, see the truth—we can already tell you're amazing, Sarcasm-and-Meat Guy, but it seems that sometimes you need reminding."

For the second time, Sokka found himself unable to say anything. At that moment, even when he had confided in her about his mother, Toph had never seemed more . . . . He couldn't put a word on it; what he did know was that he never wanted to lose her—never wanted to lose anyone outside of his family ever again. He didn't want them feeling helpless or hurt and he somehow managed to do both to Toph, his best friend, and he hated himself for it.

"I'm so sorry." Was all he could say.

She sniffed and nodded. "Yeah, yeah . . . I'm sorry for being such sissy."

"How so? It's not like you were crying or anything; only manly men like me can cry." He said, and she grinned.

"You'd need chest hair to be a manly man."

"They'll grow in!" He insisted.

She shook her head, "No way; you're what, eighteen? If they were coming in, they'd be here by now; face it, bud, you're as smooth as a baby's ass. Good luck keeping your man card with that."

He began to protest, but then he just shook his head and smiled again. "Thank you."

"For what?"

"For worrying. For being you." He grinned.

Toph flushed and glanced at the wall to their right. "Right back at you, I guess." A comfortable silence past between them. Finally, Toph grunted and got to her feet. "So, as nice as this therapy session was, who exactly is this Dragon?"

"I'm not completely sure what he wants," Sokka began as he slowly got to his feet. "But we're going to get this son of a bitch, Toph; here's what's going on . . . ."

. . .

And that's it for now! Granted, I'm still not at all sure about how the conversation between Sokka and Toph went, so please let me know how I could've improved it (and no, declarations of love doesn't count as an answer). So our heroes have figured out who the villains are—have you? Remember that the first person to guess correctly who the Dragon is gets an AtLA or LoK oneshot by me (though no yaoi or yuri, and you wouldn't want me to write a lemon…maybe a strawberry, but not a lemon), so feel free to review and state your guess! And what you thought of the chapter, that works too.

However, the next update may not come until the second Sunday in February, since I do have papers and stuff piling up, but it will come within the next two weeks, I promise! Thanks for reading!