On their second day together, Uisce studied her young pupil carefully as they headed to the water. She couldn't quite put her finger on it, but there was something different about the waterbender. There had always been too much weight on the girl's shoulders, but it seemed to slow her steps as she moved closer to the water. Or, Uisce reflected after a moment of thought, it seemed to slow her as she moved away from her friends.
Uisce understood that the three teens were closely bonded. She could appreciate their closeness—if they weren't close, they likely weren't going to survive the trials ahead of them. However, codependence from any of the three young benders could present even greater dangers. Each student needed to be able to rely on their own strength as well as the strength of their comrades if this war was to be won. If Katara was to be Uisce's hands, she must trust her own abilities as well as her friends'.
Thoughts shifting, Uisce bade Katara stop before they reached the water. The master took up a seated position on the grass overlooking the water, unaware that they were very close to where Katara had joined Zuko after his nightmare the previous night. Katara's mind was still plagued with the episode, though, and she forced herself to swallow past a lump in her throat before speaking.
"What is it, master?" Katara asked, sitting across from Uisce when the spirit gestured towards the ground before her. The water would wait for them, it would seem.
"Do you know how waterbenders first discovered the ability to heal?" Uisce asked lightly, smiling wryly at the memory. Katara jerked slightly with some surprise at the direction the conversation had taken but shook her head slowly after a momentary hesitation. "According to your Northern tribe, it was discovered when a woman's lover was brought back from a hunt, grievously wounded and sure to die. The woman wept, and her tears poured into her lover's wounds and knit his flesh back together before their eyes. Her love knelt, proud and whole before her, and venerated her as a gift from the spirits. The lore of man goes on to describe the valuable and honorable position women of the tribe then took as healers of the sick, a tradition that has passed on uncompromisingly until a bender from the Southern water tribe fought for her right to be both healer and protector."
Katara looked down, a blush dusting her features as she realized what the spirit was saying. Uisce had it wrong, after all. It wasn't as if Katara had been fighting to dismantle the entire tribe's tradition. It hadn't mattered to her at the time if the other female waterbenders were kept in the healing huts, and that was something that grated on her as time and distance gave her better opportunity to think on it.
"I just wanted to fight," she admitted. Her brief match with Pakku hadn't been for a noble cause—it had been for herself. She'd had plenty of time to reflect on how her actions in those early days had affected her brother and Aang. If she hadn't stolen the water bending scroll, if she hadn't pushed Haru into earthbending, if she hadn't forced Aang to pass on Pakku's teaching to her… She made so many choices that she could hardly think of now for the shame of it. She had tried for so long to convince herself that she was good, that she was on some sort of moral high ground, but she had been naïve.
"Has that changed? Do you no longer wish to fight?" Uisce's voice was soft and gentle, but Katara still recoiled as if she'd been struck.
"Of course I do!" Voice high and taut with the justifications rushing through her mind, Katara was on her feet before she even properly realized she was moving. Some part of her felt foolish, felt just as childish and immature as she was sure she had been when she'd challenged her first master, but the rest of her balked at the accusation she sensed in Uisce's words. All the while, Uisce remained seated serenely on the grass before her pupil and it chafed against Katara's paper-thin composure. "I will always fight!"
Katara's breath was ragged, her mind desperately scrambling for purchase. She was here because she wanted to continue to fight. She was alive because she hadn't stopped fighting for one moment of the past year. Every day had been a battle of some sort. If they weren't fighting pirates or fleeing assassins, Katara had been fighting to keep their group together, keep them fed, keep them focused on whatever hope they had left for the future. She had spent every single second of her waking life consumed in battle, with nightmares her badge of office.
Uisce regarded her calmly, eyes still damnably forgiving and compassionate but not pitying. If they were human, Katara might have believed any of the masters to be maybe a scant ten years older than her—in their mid or late twenties at most. Now, with her chest heaving and her eyes burning and mind roaring in pace with her pulse and the relentless thrum of the water so close, so close, Katara couldn't look at Uisce without seeing something alien, different, ancient.
Nothing changed in the original master's gaze as she studied her young pupil cautiously. Her tone was still soft, still polite and open, and her warm eyes hadn't hardened to meet Katara's defensiveness. Still, when Uisce spoke her next words to Katara, it was as if the earth had fallen out beneath her, knees to weak to hold her upright.
"As you fought as you and Zuko fled the palace city? As you fought when Toph brought you beneath the sands?"
Shattered fragments of memories were summoned to the forefront of Katara's mind at Uisce's call. The memories were twisted in her own mind, covered by a heavy fog of inattentiveness as Katara had been lost in the grief and the pain of the war's end.
She hadn't fought. Zuko had nearly died and she hadn't fought. Azula had escaped and she hadn't fought. Appa had been killed and she hadn't fought. She ran, stole Zuko away before he could be hurt worse—before Azula could hurt him again—and hadn't looked back because it had hurt too much to contemplate. When Zuko had regained his sense of self, Katara had been content to let him take the lead despite his injuries because the easiness of the dark beckoned. She was tired.
By the time she and Zuko had made it to the landing site of the airships, she had fallen so deeply into the calm, numbing black that she had smiled when the sand first shifted at her feet. She hadn't given much thought to how she would have died, but some part of her expected fire or sword to be the likeliest cause. To be swallowed up next to the sea was almost a welcome shift: a good way to die. But she hadn't died as the earth finally rose to cover her face. The sand hadn't smothered her as it took her beneath the surface, but it had ripped open one of the scabbing wounds in her heart.
Toph. The tiny earthbender—who recently had been growing inches every time Katara had turned her back—was hidden there beneath the sand. She was badly hurt, with burns and scrapes covering her arms and hands but Katara had neither time nor energy to ask for details when Toph had pulled Katara in the tightest hug of her life with those burned arms.
Looking back, Katara realized now that Toph had been crying. The indefatigable earthbender been sobbing, hidden beneath the beach. And those tears had stopped, however slowly, as Katara stood frozen and numb in the safety of the earth. But still, Katara didn't fight. She didn't pull Toph away just far enough to ascertain the severity of the injuries. That had come later, after Zuko returned and the three of them finally returned to the surface.
There was a rising of a new emotion, one stronger than the numb and stronger than the new hope the masters had offered her: shame. It coursed through her, deep and cutting and raw as Uisce's voice and all its kindness echoed like thunder in her mind. After all these months, she hadn't fought.
Deft hands reached out, guiding Katara back to sit on the lush grass beneath her feet. Uisce's hands were cool and soothing against Katara's face, her eyes closing without any argument as a bright glow coaxed them shut. Katara could distantly feel the push, pull, and pulse of the water Uisce was manipulating, carefully tending to the damage within her mind as if it were any physical wound. And—to Katara's shock—the coolness of the water helped. It was as if water poured into the stress fractures that scored her psyche, freezing so slowly that it formed bridging connections between the broken pieces without splitting them apart entirely. It wasn't perfectly, and it would likely melt with any sort of stress, but Katara could almost imagine she was whole again, like she was before the comet.
A world before the comet. Katara's breath caught at the thought. She had known of the spirits' eventual goals—that had always been made clear to her since Uisce first stepped from the mist—but the concept rocked her perception of the world so forcibly that a soft exclamation was drawn from her lips. The world around her and her friends had fallen apart in the most dramatic and terrible fashion, but there was a way forward. There was a way to make it so that the world she knew—the world she remembered—didn't exist outside the confines of her mind. She could almost see it now: a world where she could walk through the streets of the Lower Ring of Ba Sing Se as refugees rejoiced to know the war was over. She could picture the Southern Water Tribe finally rebuilt and repopulated and thriving with the help of their sister tribe. She could see the Fire Nation reeducating its people, working to rewrite its history to be more accurate, more inclusive, and more fair even if the fight was bitter. And throughout all that beautiful world, there would be people who wouldn't even begin to dream of the terrors that could have taken place if one of a million tiny things went differently.
Could she carry that weight? Could she carry the knowledge of what would happen if they failed again?
Yes. The answer was firm and resounding and so familiar that Katara nearly flinched, eyes squeezing shut even tighter. The voice within her mind assuring her that she was strong enough, that she was good enough, wasn't exactly her own. It belonged to a younger Katara, a naïve girl so full of dreams of the future and hopes of peace and an era without war. A girl who had stared at her own hands with awe as the water healed her burns, who had decided so early on that her place was to help. Help her brother, help her tribe, help the Avatar, help her friends, help any and everyone she could influence.
She could fight this final and endless battle. And suddenly the world that she aimed to create shifted on its axis. She could see Toph storming the Upper Ring after the celebrations ended, all sarcasm and rough edges, to demand better division of resources to support the lower rings. She could see herself working alongside the other waterbending masters, teaching young girls how to protect their home and young men how to care for their wounded. She could picture the Fire Nation regaining its national pride with Zuko, scarred and honest, at the helm.
She would fight, but she wouldn't be alone. She wouldn't carry this weight, because Toph and Zuko would never abandon her to it. Because Toph would awkwardly try to comfort her after she awoke from terrible nightmares. Because Zuko always offered a silent, accepting shoulder for her to lean against when words couldn't touch the turmoil of her thoughts. Because she refused to let them shoulder that burden alone either.
Uisce watched with fascination as her student's body language shifted before her eyes, watched as her student rediscovered the resolve that had drawn Uisce's attention in the first place. Katara's eyes opened, and the light shining in her blue eyes were sterner than mere sapphires and less tamable than all the seas. Katara got to her feet slowly, every movement intentional and measured, and slowly bowed to Uisce.
"Master," she began, her voice serious and even. "Shall we begin?"
And Uisce smiled. It was time to get to work.
Cruinne had taken Toph far from the home, far from the waters edge and into the mountains on the far side of the master's valley home. He had explained it on the way with a grin, talking about how the other masters had forbidden him from training his student anywhere near the others' living quarters—something about property damage and replacing personal effects, but Toph honestly hadn't been listening too closely. She was more interested in what her seismic sense was telling her about the train system Cruinne had devised for their use. She had bent metal plenty of times before, but she'd never felt metal that felt alive like the magnetized train, which was actually floating above the track because of the magnetic charge. It was baffling to her feet, which could sense the train car with perfect clarity and then nothing. The void that was created by the magnets pushing the train off of the track cut her senses off completely, and she spent most of the trip trying to extend her sense through the magnetic breach between the two parts to no avail.
Frustration was something that the young earthbender hadn't experienced often in her life, but she had learned that frustration usually comes before reward. She had been frustrated with her parents' inability to perceive her as anything but a helpless little girl, but she'd solved that issue by running away and never looking back, finding her place among her new family. She had been frustrated by Aang's refusal to learn earthbending the easy way, but kismet had delivered a solution to her without any trouble when Sokka got himself stuck. Even the possibly most frustrating moment of her life, when she was trapped in that metal cage on her way back to Gaoling, something beautiful had happened and she'd rewritten one of the tenets of earthbending.
Yes, Toph had learned that frustration was only the annoying part about delayed gratification. Whatever reward she might reap from the frustration of the magnetic train was further delayed by a new challenge and source of frustration.
She hadn't been extremely happy to hear that her first lesson from the original master of earthbending was a glorified game of hide and seek, but she decided after counting to one hundred that she would at least be a gracious winner when she inevitably found Cruinne. That had been the plan, at least, until minutes and then hours began to slip past as Toph scoured the mountains. Her senses were well developed after seeing and interacting with the world in this way for over half her life, but Cruinne eluded them all. Hunger began to nag at her, giving her a better indicator of time than the heat of the afternoon sun, and the frustration began to give way to anger.
She was the best earthbender in the world! There was no way in hell that she was going to be defeated in a simple game of hide and seek.
With a wordless cry of irritation, she attacked the task with all new energy, diving deep into the mountains and tunneling her way through, going deeper and further from the train's stop all to find her wayward master. She had ripped her way through two mountains—not being too careful to refill or support the tunnels she left in her wake—before Cruinne suddenly appeared within her senses, just a few yards ahead of her. The mounting anger snapped suddenly, and Toph slammed her fist into the ground, cratering it so deeply that Cruinne hummed softly.
"I win," he commented blithely. Toph didn't need sight to know that the man was grinning and she hefted one of the rocks broken up by her crater. She contemplated the merits of throwing the rock into Cruinne's smug face, but eventually settled to crushing it into sand between her hands. Gracious, she reminded herself bitterly, because a promise didn't mean anything unless you kept it.
"Yes. You did." The words were bitter as she spat them out, but they weren't as awful as Cruinne abruptly leaning down and patting her on the head like she was a pet poodle monkey. Toph smacked his hand away with a scowl.
"Yeah whatever," she muttered under her breath. Cruinne retreated slightly, but remained quiet for a long moment as if he were… waiting? Toph kept her grumpy silence, determined not to break the silence if he was going to be an ass, but the heavy silence was broken by her traitorous stomach growling impatiently. Cruinne laughed then, but the sound didn't feel like a victory to Toph and she scowled deeper.
"Not bad, kid. But you're a few eons too early to really take me on," he said, his voice still light with laughter, but he didn't move to ruffle her hair again so Toph allowed the scowl to slowly relax.
"How'd you do that?" she asked finally, voice quiet and definitely not worried. If Cruinne could avoid her seismic sense—if he could beat it—then it wasn't as infallible as she had always believed it to be. If she couldn't see him, what else could have slipped by her senses? The idea was terrifying, especially because she would never know how what she saw compared to what the others could see. The gang had told ghost stories before, but none had scared Toph as much as this new possibility.
"I can see like you," Cruinne said simply, with a shrug as if it weren't important or special. The logic followed that if he taught badgermoles, he might have taught everything to badgermoles, including how to see and interact with the world. But that didn't answer her question and, without any further prompting, Cruinne suddenly jumped off the ground and didn't come back down. Toph waited with baited breath, but seconds ticked away until Cruinne's voice quietly commanded her to reach her hand out. She did, only to meet his arm. As soon as she had contact, she could see him, following the feeble guidance of her seismic sense through his body until her senses all suddenly blared at her with—
"Magnetism?" She nearly breathed the word, she was so surprised. She hadn't suspected that Cruinne was able to see as she had because he wore shoes, odd as they were. Unlike most shoes she'd seen before, which were made of silk or leather or some other textiles, the soles of Cruinne's shoes were formed with jointed pieces of metal that clicked against the hard ground when he stepped carelessly. Toph hadn't been curious enough to ask why before, but now she could nearly taste the charge of the metal in the air as the metal through his shoes suddenly pushed away from the ground with enough force to keep him suspended in the air. And now Toph was hyperaware of all the metal Cruinne wore. Metal bangles on his wrists, upper arms. Metal chains clinking at his waist, hidden just beneath his robes. Metal ties twisting into his hair, holding it back and out of his face. Nearly all of it vibrated with that same life, providing lift and support and stability as he was pushed up and off of the earth. An earthbender, free from earth but still powerful, dangerous.
The concept was intoxicating to Toph immediately. Her mind was still filled with shattered memories from the airships and the helplessness she'd felt as their situation swiftly deteriorated. It had been fine at first, when she was in command of all the metal the airship was made out of as her artillery, but she could only take and manipulate so much without damaging the craft and putting her friends at risk. Then, as the airship began to go and Sokka screamed that their only chance was to jump—
Toph's breathing was ragged as Cruinne gently returned to the earth, but she was still painfully aware of the clink his shoes made as he touched down. He reached out for her, but his hand landed squarely on her shoulder, strong and centering as Toph forced herself to breathe. She couldn't fall apart. She couldn't. She was an earthbender, strong and steady and sure. She would not fall apart.
"We'll go over magnetism and all the perks and problems with it, but not for a good while. You're a great earthbender, Toph. Between your seismic sense and metalbending, you understand a lot about the nature of earth."
"So what? I already knew that." Her tone was rough and angry, but Cruinne was patient as a stone.
"You're probably the best human earthbender I've ever seen. But you face an obstacle that Katara and Zuko do not. You face an obstacle that my first students faced, one that they were not able to overcome." His first students, the badgermoles. Clarity struck Toph like a blow to the chest, knocking her breathless for a painful moment before she recentered herself. Face it head-on.
"I'm blind." It was a fact of her life. A fact of her existence. It had been what had drawn her to earthbending, and it definitely contributed to why she was a such a great bender. She was creative, stubborn, and eternally underestimated. But for the original master to tell her that even the badgermoles hadn't truly mastered earth in the way she needed to for this war to be won by the right side… it hurt far more deeply than she was willing to admit.
"Yes," Cruinne didn't apologize, didn't attempt to comfort her or lessen the blow, but Toph respected that. Life sucked sometimes. It was their job to go past it. Her job was to stay the course. It was Katara's job to worry about hope and group morale and all that fluff.
And then Cruinne threw all of that out of the window.
"You do, however, have an advantage that the badgermoles didn't have: two master waterbenders at your disposal. Using bloodbending, it is theoretically possible to perform surgery on your eyes and give you sight."
There was a tightness in Toph's chest that fiercely reminded her why she didn't dabble in hope: the shit hurt more than anything else. She'd rather get burned, stabbed, slashed, crushed any day of the week than face disappointed hopes. She's had too many of those over the years to justify any new ones.
So she scoffed, tossing her hair over her shoulder.
"Sugar Queen using bloodbending? Why didn't you say that first?"
Cruinne changed the topic bluntly, beginning to detail a new training regime that he expected Toph to stick to, but he quietly tucked her reaction away for further prying when the time was right. He was an earthbender: he knew how to recognize a wall when he saw one. More than that, though, he knew that no one put up walls unless they had something worth protecting. He'd find it one day, whether Toph realized it or not. A stone was patient.
Published 5:19, 7.24.20