we all want love/we all want honor
Part 2: we all bend and break sometimes
"All our scars are not the same."
- Anna Clendening, "Bend & Break"
It started with the bracelet.
(Even though she knew it was just another one of the stupid betrothal gifts, and that his parents had probably picked it out, there was some childish part of her that had always thought of it as a birthday present.)
The bracelet was weird. Toph had learnt to recognize different metals by a combination of weight, sound, texture, and temperature, and, if she had to guess, she'd say the thing was made of iron (although the engraved flame was probably gold)- a fairly common metal, though somewhat unusual for a piece of jewelry meant for a royal, but she hadn't considered it anything especially strange in and of itself.
And yet...
Sometimes, when she was feeling especially angry or annoyed, she thought she felt the bracelet on her arm shiver slightly. She'd always believed it was just her imagination... until she started living on a boat.
As a rule, Toph didn't like boats. Whether they were made of metal or wood, the fact was that they weren't earth. She couldn't see. Metal ships like Zuko's, at least, were steam-powered, which meant there was a decent supply of coal on board, but it wasn't the same. Also, it was kind of slippery under her bare feet. (Not cold, though- there were some benefits to traveling with a bunch of firebenders, and a constant heat source was one of them.)
Honestly, for the first few months on board, she'd spent most of her time either in the coal storage room or her bed, only emerging whenever they made port. (Apparently, Zuko hadn't even been aware that she was on board until they'd stopped at the Western Air Temple and she'd run off the ship and started making dirt angels.)
Eventually, however, she'd noticed something odd. The ship, as far as she could tell, was also made of iron. And yet, it felt different than the bracelet. She couldn't figure it out. She'd spent the next several days exploring the ship, trying to figure out if it was the thickness or shape, but had eventually come to the conclusion that the metal of the bracelet was, in fact, weird.
And that was when she realized that she could sense earth in the bracelet. That wasn't particularly weird in and of itself, most metals did contain trace amounts of earth, purified and reforged who knew how many times. The bracelet, however, seemed to have a much higher concentration than the iron of the ship did.
So much so that she started wondering if she could bend it. Which was ridiculous, everyone knew you couldn't bend metal.
...But everyone also knew that little blind girls were weak and fragile, and Toph had never let that stop her.
Nothing happened the first time she tried it, of course. Or the second. Or the tenth. She'd spend hours at a time focusing on the thing, willing it to budge, just a little. It never seemed to work.
She didn't spend all her time trying to move (figurative) mountains, of course. Once Uncle had realized that her "seasickness" (thank the spirits she didn't have to deal with actual seasickness on top of everything else, it sounded horrible) had abated enough to let her explore, he started trying to get her to do things. Things like playing pai sho (she didn't mind that), joining the crew for music night (no thanks) and actually talking to Zuko.
Zuko.
The same Zuko who spent all of his time either yelling at the crew or hanging out in his room doing who-knew-what- when he wasn't trying to convince her to leave.
"What are you doing here?" Zuko had asked, as soon as he got over the shock of her presence. She'd smiled. He'd always been so infuriatingly polite before, it was nice to know he could get angry like the rest of them.
"I heard you were going on some crazy quest and thought it sounded like more fun than hanging around the Caldera," Toph had replied.
"Lady Toph, why don't you go home?" He'd taken a deep breath, as though trying to calm his temper in front of a lady. She'd made her best attempt at rolling her eyes.
"Did you not hear me? I just said-"
"No, I meant home," he said, and she could feel tiny bits of heat flying from his fingers in frustration. "You know, your parents? Don't you want to go back to them? Because I should be able to get you there, and-"
"Back to Gaoling?" Toph had scoffed. She'd be lying if she said she didn't miss her parents, at least a little, but she'd hated Gaoling. Hated living in that prison, hated people constantly treating her like she wasn't there, hated the way her parents claimed to the whole world that she didn't exist. She'd never go back to that. "No thanks."
"Lady Toph-"
"And that's another thing," Toph had said. "We're out in the middle of nowhere, Sparky, so you don't need to act like this is one of our little tea parties. Just call me Toph."
"Sparky?!"
Needless to say, it had only gotten worse from there.
So yeah, talking to Sparky, while entertaining, wasn't something that happened very often. Usually.
The problem with coal was that it was a fuel source. Which meant it didn't hold together very well.
"Argh!" Toph groaned in frustration and flung the crumbling lump at the wall.
"Lady Toph? What are you doing?" Zuko, who'd walked into the room in time to see that, sounded confused. "Why are you destroying our fuel supply?"
"It's the only dirt on this stupid ship," she complained. "But I can't get it to- argh- hold up!" She threw her latest attempt onto the ground.
"You know, I'd be happy to take you to the Earth Kingdom, where I'm sure you could find plenty of dirt." Then he seemed to realize what she'd said. "What do you need it to hold up for?"
"I'm trying to carve my name, but the stupid dirt keeps falling apart." She threw her hands in the air. "Is it too much to ask for one little slab of rock around here?"
"This doesn't look anything like your name," Zuko said inspecting one of her less crumbled attempts.
"Of course not, I'm blind." Her first, early attempts at a legible writing system had just used carved standard characters, many of which she had been taught. She'd quickly realized that wouldn't work- they were way too complicated. It was fine for large things like signs, but on a small slate the size of a regular scroll, it was hard to discern one from another. She could do it, sensing where the stone had been cut, but she wanted to make sure this would work for blind people who weren't earthbenders, too.
Instead, she'd come up with about thirty or so easily identifiable symbols and shapes, associating each with a different sound, and worked from there. It wasn't a perfect system, and she'd had trouble deciding if certain sounds should use different marks (she'd spent two weeks trying to figure out if the 'ai' sound in words like ancient and aim should use the same symbol as the 'ah' sound in apple and after), but eventually she'd come up with something that seemed to work well enough.
But none of that mattered if she didn't have anything to write on.
"So how do you- forget it," Zuko said, marching away. Toph felt a slight sting of disappointment. For a moment, she'd heard something in his voice that actually sounded like interest, but it had disappeared as quickly as it had come.
"Forget this," she grumbled, and went back to her room to practice with the bracelet.
It took months, but eventually, she managed to make the bracelet twitch on purpose!
"I did it!" Toph yelled, pumping her fist. It wasn't much, just a tiny movement, but it was something.
"Toph?" That was Uncle Iroh knocking. She let him in. "We're about to reach the port. I came to ask if you wanted to come shopping with me."
"Sure, why not?" She didn't care much for shopping, but it was hard to say no to Uncle. Besides, sweet, sweet dirt. She grabbed her bag and walked with him up to the deck.
"By the way, I thought I heard cheering coming from your room," Uncle commented. "Did something exciting happen?"
"No, nothing special," she said. She hadn't mentioned her earlier attempts for fear of sounding crazy. Now, though, she decided to wait and surprise him once she'd figured it out enough to actually do something interesting.
Once she'd gotten the hang of it, manipulating the bracelet's shape was pretty easy. Within weeks, she could form it into all kinds of crazy shapes. (She'd run her fingers over the etching often enough over the years that getting it back to its usual shape when she was done with her practice was simple enough.)
Bending other kinds of metal was a little trickier, but within another few months, she could do that, too.
The problem was actually finding metal to bend. Toph was no engineer, she didn't know what parts of the ship she could warp without sinking the whole thing. Still, there should be at least some metal lying around. But there wasn't.
"Prince Zuko asked that any available scrap metal be given to him directly," the engineers told her.
What on earth is Sparky doing with that much metal?
With little other choice, she started taking advantage of Uncle's little shopping trips as an excuse to get more metal. (If Uncle ever wondered what she was doing with so many knives, he never asked.) (And if he noticed that she walked through the metal corridors of the ship with more confidence, rather than clinging to the wall and measuring every careful step, he didn't comment.)
Sparky had nightmares. Once she'd adapted her earthbending-sense to the metal of the ship, it was fairly obvious. She could sense the erratic heartbeat said nightmares brought on from several rooms away.
It drove her nuts. She did most of her metalbending practice at night, and that crazed beating made it impossible to concentrate.
(Somehow, Toph got into the habit of checking in on him during those restless nights, soothing him back into something more peaceful. She didn't want to imagine how he'd react if he found out about that.)
And yet, she'd noticed that for the past several weeks, she hadn't sensed it. At first, she thought there was something faulty in her senses, but no, she could still feel him. There was definitely something strange there. It wasn't as slow as a resting heart rate should be, but it was steadier than in his nightmares.
Is he... awake? Oma and Shu, had he decided to stop sleeping to prevent dreaming? That was a disaster waiting to happen.
Quietly, she crept towards his room, put her hands on the door, and saw.
Zuko wasn't in his bed. He was sitting at a table, doing something. She could feel heat moving, was he practicing his firebending? But she'd heard him and Uncle training before- firebending involved a lot of swift movement. Sparky wasn't moving around, just sitting down. What is he doing?
A few hours later, she woke up and concentrated. He was sleeping.
Now, let's see what all this is about.
She carefully walked back to his room and opened the door, making as little noise as possible. He was still at the desk- he'd clearly fallen asleep in the middle of whatever he'd been doing. He held a sheet of metal in his hand. Carefully, she pried it out, noting a thick pile of similar sheets on the floor next to him.
is this what he's been using all that metal for? But what is it?
She ran her fingers over it, feeling the carvings that had been seared into the metal.
'K-ah-l m-i N-o-r-eh-n'
Was that... the writing system she'd come up with? (She really ought to come up with a name for it. Beifong, maybe?) How did he even know it?
Uncle. She'd taught Iroh about it during his visits to her in the Caldera, and he'd found the idea of a written language one could feel fascinating. But what, exactly, was Zuko 'writing'?
Toph felt the desk, noting the open scroll Zuko's head rested on. So he's copying something? But what-
Suddenly, she had a flash of memory.
"'Call me Noren,'" Zuko said, one hand on his hip. "'An honorable name, suitable for one such as myself!'"
"You guys are really big on all this 'honor' stuff, huh?" Toph said, taking another sip of her tea.
"Please don't interrupt, Lady Toph," Zuko said, lowering the scroll in his other hand. "It ruins the experience."
"We wouldn't want to do that," Toph said, smiling.
Zuko? Was he doing what she thought he was? She smiled, grabbing the blanket off of his bed and draping it over his shoulder.
When her thirteenth birthday rolled around a few months later, she pretended to be surprised to find, among the pile of gifts Uncle had gotten her, a thick pile of metal sheets engraved with the entirety of Love Amongst the Dragons.
(Uncle Iroh claimed he didn't know where it had come from. He was lying.)
"Darling, you can cry a little longer. What doesn't kill you makes you stronger."
- Anna Clendening, "Bend & Break"