Chapter 16

Yung sat with Su-lin beside the tall, glassy green and black tower Toph had somehow pulled around her and Zuko. The volcano was quiet now. He wouldn't deny, however, that he had had been afraid. The grief on her face, the intensity of her bending to create that tower, the shaking of the ground beneath him all pointed to one thing—the young prince must be dead.

He looked over at Deizhoun in his crystal prison. Despite his attempts to remain perfectly still, rivulets of blood ran down his hands and face and the anger and resentment in his eyes was rapidly giving way to fear. Out of sheer humanness, Yung had attempted to break away the edges that most immediately threatened his life, but they proved unbreakable—at least not without using the kind of force that would likely just drive them home.

So they sat there, and the minutes passed. After nearly an hour, Yung was relieved to see the lady finally drop the wall of glass. She sat there quietly on the sand, cradling Zuko's head in her lap. From her tearstained face and weary look, he expected the worse. "Is he . . . ?" Yung couldn't finish the question.

Toph looked at him in surprise, as if she hadn't sensed his presence there. "No, he is alive," she replied softly. "But he hasn't woke up yet. We won't know anything until he does."

Su-lin moved to touch her on the arm, "My lady, let the men take him back to the house. You need rest."

Toph looked at her with her unseeing eyes, then responded distantly. "Yes, have some men take him to the house and put him to bed. Su-lin, look after him please for a while." Within moments four young men had brought a makeshift stretcher and gently lifted Zuko off the sand. Toph watched Su-lin follow them to the house.

She then rose and turned to Yung. "Come with me," she instructed. She then seemed to look around at Deizhoun and the prisoners, who were either still bound in the earth traps she'd placed around them or had been rounded up by the villagers.

With a wave of her hand, their earthen bonds broke free of the earth, allowing them to walk, but not move otherwise. Yung and some of the village men came to help the prisoners walk as she led them all to the cave she'd opened in the mountainside.

Neshi stood back as she enlarged it enough to hold all the pirates. Deizhoun came last, still encased in the bulk of his glass prison. She stopped him, and though she didn't look at him in the same way a seeing person would, he knew she was looking right at him in her own way.

"If he dies," her voice was icy calm, "you die." To reinforce her point, the shards of glass intruded a fraction of an inch closer to Deizhoun's skin.

In that moment, if she hadn't felt the shadow of terror in his heart behind his angry exterior, she might very well have closed the gap completely. As it was, she allowed the men to force him into the cave as well, then dropped the earth bonds she had placed on the men, Deizhoun's falling in a tinkle of breaking glass, as she simultaneously bended a thick wall of stone in front of the cave entrance.

Through the now seamless mountainside, Yung could hear the faint cries of the men as they realized they were completely enclosed in the darkness.

"Lady Toph," he asked gently as she began to walk away, "do you mean to bury them alive?"

With a casual backwards gesture, she opened a narrow window, just tall and wide enough to slide in a tray of food. Even knowing the criminal nature of these men, Yung found it pitiful to see the way their hands reached through the opening, clawing for freedom.

Toph never looked back. "I don't care what you do with them," she said, then began to walk toward the beach house.

Su-lin looked up to see Toph enter the bedroom. "He seems to be resting peacefully," she offered as she rose from her chair. Toph ignored the chair and sat directly on the bed next to the unconscious Zuko, taking his hand in hers and brushing back the hair that fell into his eyes.

"I will be in the common room if you need anything," Su-lin said softly, then left the room, closing the door behind her.

Yung sat on the veranda steps, looking out over the harbor where the pirates' ship floated peacefully on the waves. As she walked over to sit with him, she noticed the cut on his cheek from Deizhoun's whip. She found a clean cloth and dampened it with water, then sat next to her husband, gently cleaning the blood from his face.

They sat in silence as she worked, then Yung spoke. "What have I done?" he asked brokenly. "I kept telling myself I was doing what I had to do. I just wanted us to be safe and free. But all I've managed to do is put us in danger."

"You were only doing what you thought was right, Yung," she said softly. "I know you never meant to hurt anyone."

"But I have," he answered. "I've hurt you and the children and Zhiang." He took a deep breath. "And if that young man in there dies," he began, his voice husky with emotion, "it will be my fault just as surely as if I'd killed him myself."

He placed his head in his hands and his shoulders began to shake. Then Su-lin realized Yung was crying. She put her arms around him and was surprised by the way he clung to her, wetting the shoulder of her dress with his tears.

In the bedroom, Toph sat dry-eyed at Zuko's side. She remembered the moment his heart began to beat again. Truly, she felt like she might have lost her mind for a while, sobbing and holding him for who knew how long. Each heartbeat felt like a reprieve—like another chance. So she held him and cried like a little girl until she was all cried out. Once she'd calmed down again and realized that he hadn't regained consciousness, the dread and fear began to return and she knew it was time to drop the walls.

He was so still, unmoving except for the beat of his heart and the slow breaths he took. When she looked at him, it was like looking at a quartz statue, beautiful and sparkling, but still.

Then she realized that she was seeing him. Not through her rings, not through the vibrations he made against earth. She was truly seeing him—the earth in him. She wrenched off her rings and bracelet and picked her feet up off the floor to cut herself off from the earth she depended on. Then she turned her bending sight on him and took a deep breath.

She could see him. Maybe she could always see him, like looking at a stone wall through metal. But maybe when she used earthbending on his body and called to the earth inside him, she made it visible to her in a new way.

A memory from her early childhood suddenly surfaced in her mind. When she was very young, each spring a lovely scent would drift through her window in little whiffs, not enough to really smell, just enough to hint and promise at something hidden just outside her door. Once her parents decided that it wouldn't hurt her to explore the gardens outside her home, she got to wander freely and discovered the source of that wonderful smell. But she didn't know what a rose was until she held it in her hand and rubbed the soft petals against her cheek, drinking in that scent freely.

Now she looked at Zuko's sleeping form and realized that she could see him. She ran her fingers lightly over the curves of his face just as she'd done with the rose. She bent down to touch her lips to his, all the time bringing together touch and the image her bending sight presented to her until they resolved into a complete whole image of this man she loved.

Her heart broke fresh when she could see the vividness of the scar over his left eye and when she saw the burns where Deizhoun's lightning had entered his body. She could see a light scratch on his right cheek and ran her finger gently over it.

She looked down at her own hand, but the earth content in her own body was still hidden to her—or at least was not nearly as visible as what she could see when she looked at Zuko. Granted the image she received of him was not nearly as intense as that of the stone floor or even the metal bowl she could see on the shelf; even gan trees showed up more intensely. But that didn't change the fact that she could see him.

It was with delight that she saw his eyes flutter open—really saw it—not just felt the vibrations transmitted through a stone floor or a metal bracelet. "Hey, baby," she said softly, rubbing his cheek with the backs of her fingers.

"What happened?" he asked, his voice hoarse.

"You intercepted a lightning bolt meant for Zhiang," she replied softly.

"Wow. It's a wonder it didn't kill me," he breathed, then gave her a little smile. "After I fought Azula, Uncle told me I'd created too open a path to my heart. No more lightning bending for me."

Toph could not believe her ears. He'd deliberately intercepted that lightning bolt knowing it would probably be the death of him. What in his mind made Zhiang's life worth his? How dare he put her through this kind of pain and misery—on purpose?!?

Her grip on his hand tightened in anger and fear and grief. "You stupid idiot!" she screamed at him. "You did die! I nearly lost my mind over you! What makes you think that Zhiang's life is worth more to him than your life is to me?!?" With some small degree of satisfaction, she realized that the look she was actually seeing on his face was shock. Good. He needed a little shock.

Then she realized that she was screaming at him. He was just barely outside death's door. Her screaming at him could kill him—again!

She took a deep breath and forced herself to loosen the deathgrip she had on his hand. Then in a much calmer tone of voice she continued, "When I got to you and your heart wasn't beating, I thought I would die too. I never want to be without you, so I hope you meant it when you said you loved me because you're never going to get rid of me." She ran her fingers through his hair and down his cheek to his jaw. Then she kissed him. "I love you, Zuko. I love you with my entire heart. I will never stop loving you," she promised. "But if you ever scare me like that again, I swear I will kill you myself."

With her newly enhanced bending sight, she watched his expression change. She guessed it went from shock to mystified to glad to shock to understanding, but she was new to reading expressions and couldn't say for certain. At any rate, Zuko pulled her down into his arms and held her. She didn't have any tears left, but she cried anyway.