Bloodbending was an intricate art for a very simple reason: no two creatures had identical circulatory systems. To wrest control of a creature was simple enough, but in order to influence without pain there had to be a deep understanding on how each body was shaped, how that body pumped and circulated lifeblood to keep the animal whole and healthy. Pushing or pulling against that natural rhythm caused discomfort, pain, or possibly injury if wielded gracelessly. While Katara hadn't yet attempted to actually use her better practice skill on a human, she learned from her experience with animals how to listen to the gentle song of the lifeblood in any body. She learned the shapes of the veins and arteries as they flowed and, where the thought had once disgusted her, she began to take comfort in it. She could feel that her friends were alive, that they were there. It was unusual, but it was more reassuring than any simple brush of a hand had ever been.
Uisce watched with quiet trepidation as her student's hands wove elaborate patterns into the air, guiding the movement of a pheasant squirrel that was Katara's latest subject. As Katara's fingers bent and extended with careful precision, the pheasant squirrel slowly but surely walking along the forest floor with endless squeaks of fear and confusion but never pain and Uisce knew that it was time. Katara released her hold on the tiny creature, relieved but proud in equal measure to know that she had made progress.
"While it is difficult to claim mastery over bloodbending given the minute shifts and differences between any life forms, I would argue that you have indeed mastered the art, young one," Uisce murmured as Katara looked to her master for appraisal. "Learning to control without causing pain is the single hardest facet of this skill, and I'm proud of how you've progressed. Healing, after all, revolves around the easement of distress."
"Thank you, master," Katara said, bowing her head too late to hide the small smile Uisce's words had inspired. But Uisce wasn't finished. There was still more to discuss, and the topic might not be comfortable, but it had to be said.
"I've told you that, through bloodbending, injuries that are otherwise fatal can be healed. Theoretically, the practice could be taken further. Depending on the cause of the trauma, it can also be used to alleviate or eliminate years-old conditions. Conditions potentially including blindness," she concluded, studying her student carefully.
Katara went perfectly still at the mere thought. Then, mechanically, her mouth began to open and shut soundlessly. It took several long moments for the young waterbender to gather her wits well enough to speak.
"Toph could see?"
"Possibly. It depends on what exactly caused her blindness, and the precise condition her eyes are in now. If the cause of her blindness is as I suspect, I know a procedure that should return her sight to her. I have not told Toph of the possibility, and I have ensured Cruinne's silence. I tell you this because I would like your opinion on a course of action. The procedure would be very lengthy. It would be complicated, and each complication introduces risk. Most pressing of all, I cannot carry it out alone. I would need the assistance of another waterbender."
"You'd need me?" Conflicting emotions raged behind Katara's eyes. It was gratifying to have her skills recognized, but that was shadowed by the fear that gripped her heart when the weight of what Uisce was saying hit her. She could help Toph see. Toph, who always boasted about her skill and her talents, who had quietly asked for Katara's help to write a letter to her parents might be able to see. But… it could fail. Katara didn't need to ask Uisce any clarifying questions to understand that the risks involved in such a procedure were potentially devasting. Toph could see, or she could be truly crippled—powerless—for the first time in her life.
"You understand my dilemma," Uisce said, breaking the heavy silence that fell between them. "I would like your input on whether or not Toph should be given the option. I understand that you might expect Toph to answer a certain way, but please do not consider that when making this choice. I am optimistic that we would be successful, but the risk remains."
"We need to tell her." It was an immediate response. There was no alternative. Katara would not deprive Toph of the chance to make a choice regardless of how she might have felt. Toph had spent far too much of her life unable to properly make decisions for herself. She had been deprived of the opportunity—of her right—to shape her destiny by her parents until they'd crossed paths. Even if Toph said no, even if she said yes, the choice had to be hers.
Uisce didn't insult Katara by asking if she was sure. Instead, she nodded her head serenely and began leading her student back towards the lake. If they were to put the option forward, it was safest to have every outcome planned for.
Toph had long since grown used to Cruinne's moments of distraction. It was a fact of his existence, with his eyes telling him one thing and his feet telling him another, that Toph only rarely envied. She still took advantage of those rare moments, and didn't slow or stop the boulder she'd thrown from striking him in the chest. Despite his apparent inattention, the boulder still shattered piteously against him without so much of a shrug from the master. Sometime he drove Toph insane when he did things like that.
"Look at you, trying to take advantage of an old man," he joked, returning his focus to his now grumpy student. She only soured more when Cruinne reached out to tousle her hair, just like he knew she hated. To mollify her and soothe the headache he'd no doubt acquire if he didn't shift her ire, he then pointed away from him. "Four miles."
It was an increasingly familiar game they'd play as Toph extended her sense in the direction Cruinne had gestured. It wasn't surprising that his attention had been snatched by Uisce and Katara. While firebending as a form was usually pretty interesting, it seemed that most of Rhyu's lessons involved meditating or talking at Zuko—it wasn't exactly top-tier content. Toph didn't think Katara's lessons were much more interesting, especially since it looked like her current lesson involved using ice to dig out some sort of trench.
"What are they doing?" Toph found herself asking. After all, it would have been much easier if the waterbenders had just waited and asked Cruinne or Toph herself to do it. The wide-reaching nature of Cruinne's train system showed that the other spirits weren't above asking him to craft whatever they needed. Toph's first thought was that they didn't want Cruinne involved in this project, but that didn't quite fit. If they didn't want Cruinne to know about it, they would have done whatever it was in the middle of the lake where his senses failed. More than that, Cruinne had some idea what it was for, otherwise it wouldn't have stolen his attention for long a period of time. It left Toph with the uncomfortable realization that this—whatever it was—was being hidden from her or Zuko.
"Pretending to be earthbenders, it seems," Cruinne said lightly. A lie, and a bad one too. Not hiding it only from Zuko, then. Cruinne seemed to recognize how weak his own story was very suddenly and shifted the topic quickly. "Have you put any practice into using magnetism to hover?"
"Are you asking me if I've finally decided to start wearing tap shoes like you do?" Toph shot back. Her heart wasn't truly in it, though; her senses were still locked on Katara as the waterbender pulled a small amount of water from the lake into the trench. Something happened that her senses couldn't pick up, but the earth in the trench began to change, to break down and melt where it contacted the water. Heating it then, creating stone in such a roundabout way it frustrated Toph to no end. Katara finished her work quickly, filling the new pond to the brim with more cool water from the lake. All the while, Uisce adjusted Katara's work with the occasional gesture, smoothing and raising the edges of the pool or adding steps leading into the pond, all the while keeping up a steady stream of dialogue to her student. Some sort of lecture, given how Katara's only reply was the occasional nod.
Cruinne was looking at her expectantly when Toph relaxed her focus on the mystery surrounding the waterbenders, and he frowned at the no-doubt blank look on her face.
"You won't be paying any attention until you figure out what's going on over there, will you?" he asked when it became clear that Toph had truly no idea what he had asked of her. When she didn't even have the good grace to at least look somewhat ashamed at having been so thoroughly caught, Cruinne sighed in resignation. If they were building what he thought they were building… it meant that Katara had made her choice. "Fine. Dismissed. Go ahead, investigate. Just make sure you let Uisce know that I haven't actually voided the terms of our agreement. This was all on you, so leave me out of it."
"What, are you scared of her?"
"Occasionally, a little fear is healthy," Cruinne acknowledged with a solemn frown. "While you talk to Uisce and Katara, I'll be with Rhyu and Zuko. I imagine you'll find your way to the house. Find me when you're ready."
Without another moment wasted, Cruinne allowed himself to fall backwards and into the earth. Toph could track his progress away from her, filling the tunnel behind him as he moved almost snakelike through the earth, but she soon lost interest. Her senses returned towards the waterbenders and she began the trek towards the duo.
Uisce's voice filtered through the trees long before Toph was in sight of the clearing. She didn't pause or slow in her pace, the words not carrying much meaning to her as Uisce continued talking about the occipital something. The words clearly held more power for Katara, who murmured something back to her master. Toph knew the exact moment the two became aware of her presence, helped by the fact that Katara sharply inhaled and called out her name with poorly hidden anxiety shortly before Uisce, using language Toph had never heard from her, began very thoroughly cursing Cruinne's name.
"Easy there. Cruinne didn't tell me anything except something about the terms of the agreement not being voided," Toph began with a casual shrug before gesturing vague to the pool. "So what's all this, then? Because if you didn't want me to find it, you probably shouldn't have carved it into the ground."
Toph very generously ignored Katara quietly muttering she's got a point. Uisce's reaction was much more interesting, as the spirit sighed softly before nodding her head.
"As I said to Katara earlier this evening, it is best to prepare for all of the possibilities… Let's return to the house, where we can talk more comfortably. Katara? You could continue practicing at the volcano. I know your hold isn't perfect."
"I'll join you, if it's all the same to you." Toph knew that Katara's head was turned to Uisce's, and it was moments like these that her blindness was truly inconvenient. She might have been younger than Katara, but she wasn't some little kid. Whatever Katara had to say to Uisce, she could damn-well say it aloud for the whole class to hear.
Toph had no idea why adults always wanted to get someone comfortable when they had bad news. Getting someone comfortable was only another way to try to disguise or down-play how bad the truth of something really was. It had to be bad, otherwise it wouldn't have been kept a secret. The knowledge that there was a secret kept—by one of them—stung Toph more deeply than she was willing to admit, and she set a murderous pace back to the house, throwing herself into one of the dining chairs on the patio before Uisce could kindly offer anything possibly nefarious like tea.
"So what gives?" she asked brusquely as the two waterbenders exchanged another look in front of her. Irritation was swiftly taking over as if it was physically covering her skin, driving her scratch at it until it faded away. She kept her hands still, though, and kept her attention focused on Katara. Even as Uisce began to speak, Toph kept her eyes focused on where Katara sat, her hands shifting with nervous energy.
"Katara has taken to bloodbending with an aptitude I did not anticipate." The waterbending master's words were slow, cautious. Toph could imagine the look in her eyes as she regarded Toph. Perhaps she thought Toph was some sort of wounded, wild animal. "It is my belief that, between the two of us—"
"We might be able to give you your sight!" Katara blurted all at once, the nervous energy bubbling out of her before she could redouble her efforts to keep it squashed down. Taken aback, Toph's mouth fell open as Uisce slowly raised a hand to gently cover her own eyes, breathing to herself about that-works-too.
"I'm sorry, what? You—you could—" There were very few times in her life that Toph had ever considered herself truly speechless. Now, in a valley that existed between the spiritual and physical worlds where the original bending masters had taken up residence and begun to train her and two of her last friends to go back in time and rewrite their own personal history, Toph was only able to put words to one thought: I'm glad I'm sitting.
Sensing Toph's incredulity, Katara began to chatter in her nervous, excited way. She was using more words that Toph half-recognized from her earliest memories. Words and phrases like optic nerve, cataract, retina—these were words that were bandied about by the doctors her parents had paid to diagnose her blindness. They had only been able to determine with any surety that it had been a congenital condition. Her sight had clouded over entirely before she was eight months old, far too young for her to have any memories of her father's smile or the color of her mother's eyes.
Katara was still talking when Toph wrenched herself back into the present, but now she was talking about diagnosing the true cause of her blindness. Uisce cut in then, explaining patiently that childhood blindness could be caused by any number of things. Depending on what caused her blindness, it might be possible to cure. It might not. Even if it were possible, Uisce explained, any procedure came with risks. The risks varied, again depending on the exact cause of her blindness, but Toph slowly stopped listening as Uisce carried on.
"Do it." The decision was easy, even if it terrified her. Her blindness had been one unchangeable facet of her being for her entire life. But now she had a choice. She could make a decision that would change the one thing that, after all of her adventures and mischief and fighting, she hadn't been able to affect. Concerns would bloom in her mind later in the night, when she laid in bed alone in the dark. Worries about what would happen after, when she found herself trapped again in the body of helpless little Toph Beifong who had allegedly never left her parents' property. She'd be alone and in the dark again. She wasn't alone now, but she would be.
Could she do that? The thought creeped slowly but surely, consuming her mind until the sun began to rose. Sunlight had no effect on dashing her fears—it never had, even as its light warmed her face—but her senses began to feel the slow waking of her friends in the next room over. The two had, despite many blushes and blatant over-shares, not requested another bedroom, preferring to stay together.
Her friends. She could see them. She knew that Zuko's smile was soft, that his eyes closed slightly when he was really happy, and she knew that Katara's eyes were blue, but she almost desperately wanted to see them. She wanted to see the people who she had worked and lived alongside for so long, chasing a dream past the end of the world.
There were risks associated with the procedure, Uisce had said over and over again. Toph was made of stern stuff, though. A warning like that, in the end, was little more than a challenge.
Do it.
Published 5:22, 7.24.20