A/N: Back from hiatus! Woo! Alright, what's next?

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The group slept like logs until about noon. It was another hot day; the sun blazing down on the surrounding rocks made it impossible to sleep. They were forced to wake up and seek shade. In the cool of a sheltered cave, Aang asked what would happen next. "We're safe for now, and this is a nice, rocky place. Let's start training!"

"Not so fast," Toph replied. "A single nap won't make up for a whole missed night. You need more rest. Besides, there are more important things to do."

"Like what?"

"Find out what's going on with these spirits."

"After we find food and water," Sokka said with a yawn. "My belly was awake all night, too, and it's not happy."

Sokka was completely correct. Nobody dared go to a town, so they flew along the mountains, hoping to reunite with the river somewhere distant. When they did, they discovered that they had flown upstream to the river's source among the mountains. There were no fish to be found. However, plenty of animals scattered as they approached. They drank heartily, then flew to a nearby peak and waited. The animals soon returned. Sokka unsheathed his sword. He and Katara crept down to do what had to be done. Aang turned away and closed his eyes. He was the only one to do so. Toph was blind, Iroh had seen far worse, and Zuko was determined not to look squeamish. Sokka and Katara worked very efficiently; lunch (technically, breakfast) was served half an hour later. Appa tried to graze, but the grass up on the slopes was too short for his mouth to reach, so they flew down into a valley where he found longer grass to munch on.

With all of this activity, it was hours before they sat down for serious discussion. The afternoon was well advanced, the shadows long, and soon the temperature would begin plummeting in preparation for nightfall. "Okay, here's what I've heard," Toph began. She faced Zuko. "You can talk to the elements. It's a neat talent that lets you detect firebenders and move rivers. But you don't know why you're like that, and you don't trust the super useful all-knowing spirits to tell you."

"Zuko, the last fight you had with a spirit resulted in mega huge headaches for all of us," Sokka said. "Get it together! We've got a Firelord to fight; we can't afford to deal with your business too."

Zuko tensed all over. "You can't just order me to make everything wonderful. It's not that easy."

"Then let's start with something simple," Katara said. "What did the water spirit tell you your special role was?"

Zuko sighed. It's totally meaningless, since it was all a lie. "My role is to keep this world stable while the elements prevent it from being totally destroyed."

"Destroyed by what?" Toph asked.

"Darkness."

"Really? That's lame."

"Dark is the force of not doing things, so if darkness overruns this world, everything that happens in the world will stop. People won't have hopes and dreams anymore. They won't move, build, fight. Everything will become really boring."

"That's why you have the power to generate light?" Katara asked.

"Yeah. They keep the world from being overrun, but darkness still seeps in. It takes the form of shadowy monsters. I can supposedly banish the monsters."

"Why do you think the water spirit was lying when it told you that?" Aang asked.

"Because Toph's right. That's such a lame story. Banishing monsters made of darkness? Come on. And there are too many things about it that don't add up. If the world is really invaded by soul-stealing monsters every two hundred years, wouldn't I have heard of it? There would be legends or stories somewhere. I can believe the stuff about Light and Dark, but fighting off monsters is ridiculous."

"He might be right about this one," Toph agreed.

"He's not," Iroh argued. "There are legends. But they never get very popular, and there are no permanent systems in place for twospirits like there are for Avatars, and the war has devastated much of the old knowledge."

"Whatever," Zuko grumbled. I honestly don't even care.

"Does your sister know?"

Toph's question froze Zuko's breath in his throat. His heart skipped a beat. For a moment, he felt like he was in free fall. "No. Of course not."

"He doesn't tell anybody anything," Sokka said to Toph. "Not even his own family. I get it. If my dad was the Firelord, I wouldn't tell him diddly squat either."

Zuko's heart pounded. He doesn't know the half of it.

Toph looked skeptical. "I am definitely missing something. What I'm hearing doesn't add up. What are you guys not telling me?"

"What doesn't add up?" Zuko asked. Everything makes perfect sense.

Toph shot him a strange look. "Why did you decide to join the Avatar, and why did he let you, if you don't trust him and he doesn't trust you?"

"I didn't have a choice."

"You did, actually," Iroh said. "You could have easily stayed behind at the Northern Water Tribe when he left to find an earthbending teacher, but you chose to go with him instead."

Zuko glared at his uncle. "I was not going to be a coward."

"You joined the quest just to prove something?" Toph asked.

"No! I haven't joined any quest!"

Everyone looked at him. "Yeah, you have," Sokka said. "You helped us get Toph on our side. You can't stay neutral in a war if you help one side get needed training."

"I don't - I'm not -"

"Toph, it's really not a good idea to ask Zuko why he does things," Katara said. "He has a strange condition that causes him to lose control of his actions, as if he was multiple people in one body. He can't answer you."

Zuko clenched his fists so tightly they hurt. They're taking advantage of me. I can't stop other parts of me from helping them, and they know it.

Toph stood up. In her powerful arena voice, she declared, "I'm going to make something clear right now." Everybody listened. "I joined this quest so I could teach Aang earthbending and fight in the war. That's it. I am not going to get involved in weird probably-made-up conditions and nonsensical fights. I'm here to do what I'm here to do. Got it?"

Zuko couldn't believe what he was hearing. Probably made up? She thinks… I thought… I thought we were alike. I thought she understood me. His chest hurt. Losing the only living people he knew who could understand him was a danger so terrible that it made all other worries pale in comparison. He sat up straight. "It is not made up. I have states where I act and feel and think in different ways. It's exactly like Katara said it is."

"I don't care," Toph snapped. "I'm just here to teach earthbending. Which we'll do tomorrow, at sunrise, regardless of how sleepy Aang is. So I'd suggest that anyone who's still tired get to bed."

Her phrasing implied that she was not one of those people, but the bags under her eyes said otherwise. She stretched and went away to make herself a stone tent. As annoyed as everyone else was at her behavior, they had to admit she had a point. Sokka and Katara went out on another hunting trip, with Sokka grumbling under his breath and Katara trying to keep both of them patient. Aang flew on patrol to make sure the camp was safe. Zuko and Iroh set up in their absence. Once the tents were up and a fire was built, they played with Momo. The lemur was as perky as ever. Clearly he had gotten some sleep while everyone else fled from Azula. He leaped onto Zuko's shoulders and groomed Zuko's hair.

"She's just not used to the idea," Iroh said consolingly. "She'll come around."

Zuko brushed one of Momo's hands aside. "Whatever."

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Toph slept soundly and awoke when the rest of the group started moving around. She assumed the sun had risen. She blasted apart her tent and yelled, "Good morning, earthbending student!"

Aang leaped up from where he had been sitting. "Alright!" He was a lot more energetic than he had been the night before. "What move am I gonna learn first?" he asked. "The rockalanche? The temblor? Maybe I'll learn how to make a whirlpool out of land!"

Toph was secretly delighted by his enthusiasm, but she couldn't let him know that. She stuck a hand out. "Not so fast. Let's start with moving a rock."

"Right. Right." Aang laughed, embarrassed.

He followed her eagerly to an open patch of land where she set up two rocks for them to practice on. His friends and Zuko followed. They probably just didn't have anything better to do. Toph ignored them. "Earth is a stubborn element. In order to move it, you have to be like earth yourself."

"Be like earth…" Aang took some time to think about that. "Got it."

"The actual moves for this one are pretty simple." Toph demonstrated by bending her rock into a wall, making a great loud crash. "Now you."

Aang copied her stance. He took a deep breath. He raised a fist. But then, he hesitated. Toph could feel his resolve drain away. He lowered his fist. He took another deep breath, then raised his fist again. But this attempt to strengthen his resolve was no more successful than the first.

"Stop giving up!" she snapped. "You're not going to learn anything if you don't even try."

"But I can feel that I'm not earthy enough," Aang protested. "I look at this rock, and I think about punching it as hard as I can, and I just… I can't do it. The monks taught me to live in harmony with the world. Throwing my power around, getting my way by force, it doesn't feel right."

"You're never going to earthbend with that attitude," Toph snapped. "With earth, might does make right. If you're not strong enough to move this rock, then you're weak."

Aang gathered his resolve again and tried to bend the rock. The rock didn't move. Aang threw himself backward into Appa's side instead. The bison raised his head and lowed. Aang picked himself up and rejoined Toph. "Maybe if I try something else, it'll come to me. Maybe there's a trick I can -"

"No tricks," Toph snapped. "Just do it."

Aang tried again and again to move the rock, but lacked resolve. Toph set up a ramp and made the rock roll directly at him. She repeated this trial with Katara as the target instead. She even tried immobilizing Katara so Aang couldn't easily perform a rescue. That caused Aang's arrows to glow as he blasted apart the entire ramp. Sokka and Katara quickly informed her that triggering the Avatar State was not a good idea. Toph moved on to other, more normal training methods, but they didn't work any better. Aang couldn't force his fingers through a stony surface. He couldn't open a crack in the earth. He couldn't do anything. But that wasn't the worst part. In Toph's opinion, the worst part was that he knew exactly what he had to do and why. But he didn't do it. As the morning dragged on, she got more and more angry. He wasn't giving it his all. He wasn't trying. He was willfully settling for mediocrity. Toph could not imagine a worse student. She ended up yelling at him. Even as she berated him for being spineless, she hoped he would finally grow one. But he didn't. She walked away shaking her head. He was never going to learn earthbending.

Toph took a long walk. Being alone with the earth helped her think about the consequences of her actions. She wondered what her failure to teach Aang would result in. That was her entire purpose in joining. If she couldn't teach Aang, would she be kicked out? She circled back. She had to try again. As infuriating as he was, she couldn't just give up.

Aang greeted her with a boulder to the face. Toph was so surprised that she almost failed to block it. "Sorry!" Aang called. "About surprising you, I mean, not about moving the rock. I did it! Yes!" He jumped for joy.

Toph just stared, her mouth hanging open. "How did you…?"

"I helped," Zuko said. His heart thumped, though there was no sign that he had been exercising. He was seriously weird. "I told the Avatar some things about Light and Dark. His problem's gone. He's all yours."

Toph held out a hand. "Hold on. What did you tell him?"

"Earth is closely allied with Darkness, the force of not doing things. In order to make it do things, he has to use his own spirit to inject it with Light. He practiced some spiritbending techniques and learned to do it."

"See? There was another way. There was a trick," Aang said.

Toph's head spun. Zuko's heartbeat had gotten easier while he said that, not harder. He wasn't lying. Could Aang be right? Could there be more than one way to learn earthbending? She put on her stern face. If she was to be a teacher, she could not be seen having doubts. "I see. Thank you. I'll take it from here. Come on, Aang." She led Aang far away, farther than she really needed to. She told Aang that they needed privacy for his super intense training. Privately, she thought mean thoughts about Zuko. She was supposed to be Aang's teacher, not him. Who did he think he was? She would show him!

By the time the rocks cooled, indicating nightfall, Aang was exhausted. But he had learned enough to reduce an area of rock to soft sand, which he did before collapsing in it. "Looks like the training went well," Katara chirped. "Here. We thought you might be tired, so we saved you an extra large steak."

Zuko tried to hand Toph a steak. She glared at him. "I don't need your help."

"Sticks don't move," he snapped in reply. "How were you going to know where it was?"

He had a good point, but she couldn't just say so. "I have my ways," Toph said, turning away. She stomped on the ground, lightly shaking the earth, and felt the vibrations of something sliding. She caught it before it hit the ground. "See?"

"Fine," Zuko grumped, taking her portion for himself. "I should have let Aang waste your whole day."

"Can we not fight about who's a better teacher?" Katara asked. "You're both good teachers. Zuko's good at helping people get started, and Toph's good at taking them all the way through advanced earthbending. Toph's not great with beginners, and Zuko would be hopeless at anything more advanced than throwing rocks. You complement each other. You should work together instead of fighting."

Katara's explanation helped Toph feel better. There was no more arguing over dinner. After dinner, Toph expected to crawl away and go to sleep. But she was one of the last to eat. Before she could finish her food and leave, the others started to discuss after-dinner activities. "So, do we want to break out the Pai Sho set?" Aang asked. "It's been a while."

"I second this motion!" Iroh exclaimed.

"Eh, I'm not interested," Sokka muttered. Zuko agreed. Katara said she didn't have an opinion one way or the other. They all looked at Toph. "Toph, you're the tiebreaker vote," Sokka said. In a loud whisper, he added, "Pai Sho isn't a game a blind person can play. Please say no." Katara leaned over to smack him.

Toph felt almost insulted. Why were they asking her to decide their activities? But then she realized the answer was obvious. They expected her to participate. "I don't care either. I'm going to finish my meat and go to bed. You guys can do whatever you want."

"Toph, we really want to include you in things," Katara said. "Remember how much fun we had playing with Appa's shed fur?"

Toph did remember. It had been fun, a kind of fun that she'd never had before. She'd never had friends. Of course, she didn't need any. She was strong and tough, capable of carrying her own weight. She didn't need anyone! But it had been nice… "Why are you suggesting a game a blind person can't play then?"

"We can do something else," Aang said in a hurry. "We could tell stories."

"Storytelling sounds fun," Katara said. Sokka backed her up. Iroh lamented the lack of Pai Sho, but said he would enjoy stories as well. "Great! What kind of stories? Scary stories? Funny ones? Adventures?" After another round of voting, they agreed on scary stories, because the lonely mountaintop they sat on provided the perfect atmosphere. Toph nodded in agreement, though she wasn't sure she could participate. Her parents avoided telling her scary tales and she couldn't read books. Nothing terrifying had ever happened to her. What would she share?

Katara volunteered to go first. She told them an eerie Water Tribe tale of a little girl who froze to death from being snowed in and haunted her house afterward, always trying to get warm. It raised goosebumps on Toph's arms. She really didn't know what she could possibly share when her turn came. She couldn't make something up that quickly. What was she going to do?

"I've got one better," Sokka claimed. He told a creepy story of going out one night when he was very young, just for the thrill of doing something he wasn't supposed to. Something watched him, its footsteps crunching in the snow, its tail swishing and sometimes knocking over heaps of discarded ice. He couldn't get a clear sight of it. Sokka ended his tale with, "I don't know what would have happened to me if I hadn't been able to get back home that night. I might not be here."

Aang's teeth chattered. "I'm so glad you did, Sokka! I couldn't imagine you not being here."

"Yeah, that's a terrifying story," Katara agreed. "Except for one thing. Mom would've had your hide for sneaking out of the tribe after dark, and she slept right next to our door. She would've caught you and yelled at you."

After a very tense pause, Sokka broke. "Okay fine, I made it up. I thought this was the kind of story you people would like, with mysterious dangers that you can't clearly see. I can't tell you a story about something that really scares me, because the stuff that I worry about is too…well, real."

"You don't think anybody else worries about real things?" Katara asked. "We all do. Even me and Aang."

"The scariest stories are true ones," Iroh murmured gravely.

"I can top you all then," Zuko said.

Something strange happened. Katara's heart began to pound, as if the little ghost girl from her story was whispering in her ear. Toph kept her face flat, but she couldn't help but wonder what scared the other girl.

"...I don't know," Sokka said.

"You're the one who turned it into a contest, Sokka," Aang told him.

Sokka groaned. "I backed myself into a corner, didn't I? Fine. Scare us with your most terrifying tales of Fire Nation ruthlessness, oh master."

"Only if you take it seriously," Zuko said.

"This is me taking it seriously. I'm kinda sorta worried that it'll mess up my sleep," Sokka admitted. "A little. Just because Katara and I have some history with the Fire Nation."

"Alright." Zuko cleared his throat. As far as Toph could feel, he was exactly as terrified as usual. A new idea occurred to her. Was he trivializing the story he was about to tell, or had he been overreacting to minor things because somehow they reminded him of this story? Zuko took a deep breath to steel his nerves before speaking. "One day, when I was eight years old, my father met with my grandfather, Firelord Azulon. It was supposed to be a private meeting, but Azula snuck in to spy on it. That night, she came to my room and told me, in this horrible singsongy voice, '~Dad's gonna kill you!~ Literally!' She said that Grandfather had ordered him to. I couldn't believe it. I said no way, Dad would never do that to me. Mom overheard me and took Azula away to ask her some questions.

"The next morning, Mom was gone.

"The official story is that she ran away from the palace, but I know she loved me. She never would have left me. Not unless she had no choice."

He stopped there. Toph's bones felt like they were made of ice. Nobody spoke. Even the night insects stopped their chirping. The horror he implied - that the Firelord was a man willing to murder his own family members - was almost too much to accept. Even bad people had to have standards. Even the most horrible villains had to have lines they wouldn't cross. Didn't they?

"It doesn't get scarier than that," Sokka quietly said.

"It does, actually." Zuko was…calming down? What? How?! Toph got a horrible feeling like her new idea was correct. Not only had his father murdered his mother, but that event had been hanging over Zuko's head ever since. For about half his life, he'd lived with the constant knowledge that his own father would happily kill him. That was almost scarier than the story itself. What did such knowledge do to a person? A child?

Sokka gulped. Zuko chuckled evilly. Then he sobered. "That was the same night that Grandfather died. I might have listened to part of their meeting myself. I heard Father suggest that he be made heir to the throne in place of my uncle, because Uncle had just lost his only child in the war. This enraged Grandfather; he didn't like that suggestion at all. But at his funeral, they announced that there was a last minute change to his will, making Father heir to the throne instead of Uncle. My father was crowned Firelord on the spot."

Toph's whole body felt like it was made of ice now. The fire crackled, a sign that it was down to embers, but nobody moved to put it out or build it back up. They sat frozen in silent horror. "No wonder you've always been desperate to please him," Katara murmured. "He'll murder anyone who stands in his way, and you're next."

Sokka moaned, a low, quiet moan like an animal dying alone with no hope of rescue. "No… No dad could…"

"Didn't anyone say something?" Aang asked.

"Why would they?"

More horrified silence. Judging from the lack of heat, the fire had gone out entirely. "That's it. Storytelling night is over," Sokka declared. "Let's all try to get some sleep for another morning of earthbending training." His voice wobbled as he spoke.

His prediction turned out to be correct. Nobody got decent sleep that night except Zuko, who slept more soundly than he had in years.

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A/N: This was one of my central motivations for writing this story. The way the flashbacks are shown in Zuko Alone implies that Zuko remembers these events. Yet this part of his past is never brought up again. That makes zero sense. What does such knowledge do to a dependent, helpless child? Answer: quite a lot! And surely knowing that the Firelord really doesn't have any moral lines he won't cross would have meant something to the rest of the gang. I cannot fathom why Zuko was given such a meaningful and horrible backstory, only for the vast majority of it to go unused and unmentioned.

By the way, judging from Azula's apparent age in those flashbacks, it looks like Zuko was closer to 10. But for personal reasons, I have this thing where if I'm asked to estimate the age of an older child, I always default to 8 years old. That's a Me thing. For the purposes of this story, it hardly matters, so I didn't see a reason to go against it.