Wandering Prince

Avatar the Last Airbender, Zuko SI

19

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“Listen, Yue. I want to help. I do. But you know why I can’t.”

“We can do it safely! We’ll make them agree to leave the room and then you can heal her—”

Toph raised an eyebrow as she slowed her steps. The argument coming from inside the couple’s rented bedroom was quiet, too quiet for someone who wasn’t leaning against their door to hear, but she was kind of cheating.

Are they talking about me?

For a moment, just a second, hope stirred in her breast—and she ruthlessly crushed it under heel. She was pretty sure Yue was a good healer—apparently, that first night after she had left them in their inn, they had gone out together and Yue had begun offering free healing to anyone who needed it. There were already rumors circulating the town about the miracle healer. But other Water Tribe healers had tried with her eyes and failed before. Zuko… she had nothing to go on there. All she’d seen him do was heal his leg, then maybe heal a few bumps and bruises after their first spar, if the blast of heat from him she felt after the spar was him lighting himself on fire to heal himself.

I’ll tell them I don’t want it—

“And when she walks out of that room, someone’s going to ask the obvious question of how a girl who’s been missing part of a leg since an accident with a cart suddenly has her leg back. More people are going to come by and ask for the same thing.”

Oh. Not me then. But he can regrow a leg? That’s pretty cool.

“We can put them to sleep as one of the conditions to heal them,” Yue offered, her voice sounding a bit strained now.

Zuko sighed. “And when someone gets cute and decides to spy on us? They’re going to see what I can do and if we’re lucky, we’ll only get run out of town. I don’t want to have to fight my way out of an Earth Kingdom city. The potential collateral damage… One wrong move, one errant ember, and the entire place could go up. And then, instead of helping one, or ten, or even a hundred people best case scenario is that I destroy that many people’s livelihoods, homes, goods.”

Yeah, that sounds bad. Couldn’t even really blame him at that point, if he said he didn’t want to, did it anyway, got caught, and had to fight his way out. Shaking her head, Toph leaned against the wall outside the inn room and waited for the argument to end.

“We could do it outside of the city.”

“Why would we need to do it outside of the city unless we had something to hide?”

Yue made a quiet, annoyed noise. Toph thought it sounded kind of cute, like an angry kitten, but she didn’t think it’d go over well to tell the girl that to her face right now. She took a breath and let it out in a quiet sigh, before her tone changed. “Please? For me? We can wait until we’re ready to leave and do it on the last day. That way, we should hopefully be gone before anyone has a chance to ask inconvenient questions. It doesn’t have to be everyone. Just, just the one. It’s not fair for a girl to grow up maimed.”

Life’s not fair—

“Life’s not fair.” Toph blinked, before the corners of her mouth pulled up into a smile. Zuko sat down on the bed with a sigh of his own. “This is the pirates all over again.” His head tilted to look at Yue, who remained silent, staring back with her hands clasped in front of her waist in a gesture Toph hadn’t really seen before. The man was silent for a few moments, before flopping back on the bed. “Just the one and I reserve the right to say I told you so.”

Yue made her way over and sat down beside him, her hand coming to rest on his thigh. “Thank you, Zuko.”

Toph chose that moment to push off the wall and knock on their door. “It’s Toph. You guys in there?”

Yue stood and got the door, and Toph slipped inside. “You’re not with your servant today?”

“Eh, some things happened last night and now I don’t need one when I go out,” Toph shrugged.

Zuko sat up, his head turning towards her. He studied her for a moment before chuckling. “How’d they find out?”

Toph made a face, wondering how he figured her out so easily. “They called a guy who runs a dojo for earthbending. He’s an arrogant old asshole, but he figured it out.”

“How did your parents take it?” Yue asked, her voice soft, expecting the answer from the tone of it.

Toph shook her head. “I don’t want to talk about it. I’d rather go beat on something.”

Pushing himself off the bed, Zuko stretched briefly. “Sounds fun. Yue?”

The girl hesitated, then shook her head. “Not today. If you don’t mind, I’d like to spend more time healing.”

Zuko paused where he stood, his head turned towards Yue. After a few moments, he nodded. Despite the earlier argument, there was worry and care in his voice as he said, “Be careful.”

Yue chuckled quietly. “I will.” She turned towards Toph. “Have fun~!”

Together, the two of them left the inn, heading out of the city, back towards the mountain where they had practiced the day before. Toph was content to walk in silence as they left the city and the crowds thinned. Once they stepped off the road, and she was sure no one was around, she asked, “So… trouble in paradise?”

“You heard that, huh.”

It wasn’t a question, but Toph nodded anyway. “Yeah. Sorry.”

“It’s fine.” They fell silent for a bit longer, before the man said, “Differences in opinion are normal in any relationship. They’re something you work through.”

“Sure,” Toph agreed. “But it kinda sounds to me like she wants to do something nice for someone, but doing it might cause more trouble than it’s worth.”

“That’s basically it.”

Toph shook her head. “Sometimes, you have to cut your losses. It’s like… you can’t just give handouts to beggars. Yeah, they’re beggars, but not all of them are actually poor. That was one of my favorite scams before someone tried to take me home and I had to stop using it. Then there’s the ones who could work, but don’t. Or they got there because they were stupid. They’re healthy, there’s nothing wrong with them, but they’d rather beg than work. Or they spend all their money on gambling or booze. And even if you sorted out the ones who were really poor through no fault of their own and honestly in need of help, eventually you’d make yourself poor trying to feed and clothe all of them. Or they’d come to expect it.” Frowning, she muttered, “Someone will always try to take advantage of that kind of kindness.”

Zuko hummed. “You think she’s naive?”

“Yes,” Toph didn’t hesitate.

“So do I,” Zuko sighed. “But the thing is… as much trouble as it could be, there are things I like about it. I’d much rather Yue think the best of people, find ways to help people, and generally be a good person than turn into a jaded, cynical asshole. Sure, yeah, she’s eventually going to make a mistake in trusting someone she shouldn’t, or not being able to permanently deal with a problem only to have it bite her in the ass later. But it beats the alternative. I admire her ability to see the best in people and make friends with anyone she meets. I’m just hoping that time and exposure to people will temper that a bit. I’d like her keep all the good parts but stop looking at the world like, well…”

“Like everyone is as good a person as she is, until they prove her wrong?”

“Yeah.”

“She sounds kinda… sheltered.” Deciding to ask one of the questions she’d had since Yue had first told her the story, she asked, “What’d you do, kidnap some water tribe princess?”

Zuko laughed. “Something like that.”

His heartbeat gave him away. She had hit pretty close to the truth. She knew Yue didn’t think she’d been kidnapped, which probably meant… She’s not a noble, she’s a princess. That explains some things.

His head turned to regard her for a moment before asking, “Sounds like you’ve got some personal experience.”

He didn’t ask, which Toph appreciated, but she decided to answer anyway. “My parents. It’s like… how are you this dumb? I’m blind and I can see this guy is trying to screw you over! I don’t get it. When it comes to the business, they’re fine. They have no problem spotting a bad deal and walking away. It’s just…”

Chuckling, Zuko asked, “They have a blind spot when it comes to you.”

“Ha ha,” Toph rolled her eyes, took a step closer, and punched the taller man in the arm. For just a moment, Toph winced. Wait, did I screw up?

“Ow,” came the completely flat response. “So, Yue mentioned that the tournament—”

“Earth Rumble,” Toph supplied.

“That,” he nodded. “She said it was a weekly thing. She also told me you were looking to make some money off of it and having trouble, because everyone knows you’re going to win. Or at least enough people to skew the odds.”

“Yeeeah,” Toph sighed. “It sucks. She said she might help me out though, if they’ll let a waterbender enter.”

“I have no doubt Yue will win,” Zuko nodded, sounding absolutely confident of that. “The only person that might give her trouble is you and even then, I think I’d still bet on Yue.”

“Psh please, I’d kick her butt!” Toph boasted, but there was no real heat in it. As confident as she was in herself, she also wasn’t dumb. Yue was strong and good. Like, freakishly so. The only reason she was pretty sure she would win in the Rumble was because there was no water in the arena, so Yue would be limited to whatever she brought with her. As her spar the previous day had shown, the waterbender could easily get one over on her if she wasn’t careful, and Yue had a source of water nearby.

“Maybe,” Zuko shrugged. His head turned towards her again as they climbed over the hill that would block them from view of the city. “Your family’s rich. If you wanted to buy something, couldn’t they just buy it for you?”

“Normally, yeah. They would,” Toph agreed. “But it’s something only I can buy.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

Chuckling, he asked, “Well, now I’m curious. You gonna keep me in suspense? Give me a hint?”

Stopping, Toph slid into a wide ready stance, a smirk pulling at her lips. “I’ll tell you if you beat me. Ten good hits or you knock me out. If I win, you’ve got to fill in the blanks of that story Yue told me when we met.”

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“Heh. Sure. You’ve got a deal. One thing though. You mind if I use something other than fire? I need to practice it against an earthbender.”

Toph tilted her head, curious and confused. “What do you mean, ‘something other than fire?’”

“You know there are four basic elements,” he began, and she nodded. “And then you’ve got your derivative stuff, like bloodbending, lavabending, or metalbending.”

The shorter girl scoffed. “You can’t bend metal.”

“Yes, you can,” Zuko said, and something about his tone and the steady beat of his heart told her that he knew it for a fact. “Anyway. Then you’ve got lightning, which a lot of people say is advanced firebending, but it’s not, and I’m going to prove it one day. Then we have the last one. Or maybe the first. Bending energy itself.”

“That’s a thing?”

“Yep. Kind of a lost art, usually exclusive to lion turtles and avatars. But apparently, it can be passed on. I learned how to do it, but it didn’t exactly come with an instruction manual. No forms that people have been building on for hundreds or thousands of years. So I’m having to make it up as I go along. And for that, I need a sparring partner. But, and here’s the part I think you’ll like,” he said, and Toph perked up a bit in interest. “If they’re going to let Yue compete and we can take them for all they’re worth, why not do the same scam twice?”

Toph found herself grinning from ear to ear. “You can’t enter as a firebender, but if you say you’re some kind of new type of bender… They won’t be expecting the same trick twice in a row.” Bouncing lightly on her feet, she slid out of her stance and moved away, taking in the valley they were in.

“If we’re going to do this, then we should change the scenery, so you’ll know what you can expect.” Stomping a foot, she began raising a platform of stone, leveling it out and walking it off to fit the exact dimensions of the one used in the rumble. She made sure to leave Yue’s spring (and the bath she had made for them) alone as she worked, but otherwise began shaping a copy of the arena inside a bowl-shaped depression. When she was satisfied, she nodded. “Come on up!”

Zuko jumped and did something that made a small explosion, before landing lightly on the arena. “Looks good.”

“Thanks. So, Rumble rules are get knocked out of the ring, or knocked out, and you lose. You ready?” she asked, sliding back into her ready stance.

The man across from her did likewise, though there was something off about it. It took her a moment, but Toph placed it as something closer to Yue’s opening stance than the one Zuko had used for firebending the day before. “Whenever you are.”

Toph grinned and stomped her foot, raising a boulder and stepping forward to punch it and test his response. Zuko moved out of the path, sliding through a few quick motions that again, reminded her of Yue’s waterbending form. She felt no heat at all from him. Actually, the air was getting colder. Disregarding the oddity, she launched another rock, another, and— He shifted from ‘water gathering’ to ‘launching fire,’ a basic punch forward that would have sent a fireball her way.

Toph reacted on instinct, diving to the side. Something disturbed the air as it zipped past her, much faster than a fireball, and the only warning she’d had was recognizing the stance. “Okay! That’s different!”

“Right?” Zuko laughed, then Toph watched as his extended hand opened, made a grabbing motion, and he pulled back towards himself.

Toph felt a moment of confusion, before something slammed into her back and exploded, knocking her forward and onto her face. She rolled out and back to her feet, watching as Zuko made another ‘come here’ motion. “What the fuck was that?!”

“I believe that was a point.”

Toph’s eyebrow twitched at the amusement in his voice. “Jerk.”

Alright, you got me with that one. Whatever it is that energybending does, he can pull his attacks back. So, think of it like a rock. He’s throwing a rock really fast, then pulling it back. But it’s energy, not a rock. So maybe, like water or fire, it can change shape. I’ll need to be careful of that.

Shifting her foot forward, she sent a small wave of earth rushing for Zuko’s feet, hoping to knock him off balance, followed by a chop of her hand that created a series of dull spikes rushing up from the ground towards where she expected him to move. Toph frowned as he jumped into her attack, kicked off of it, and rushed her—trying to close to hand to hand range. She could hold her own in hand to hand most of the time, but after her first spar with the pair, Toph had learned that Zuko just had her outclassed when it came to throwing hands. He had a longer reach and was a bit faster, and just as strong as her. Letting him get up close and personal was a bad idea.

Raising a foot, she stomped the ground and exploded it out in a wave ahead of her, launching hundreds of rocks and throwing up dust that would leave him just as blind as her—more, even, considering she could ‘see’ through the ground. Except, Zuko didn’t do what she was expecting. She had thought he would either get hit by the explosion (and score her some points), or he would launch himself higher to evade. Instead, there was a faint sound almost too low to hear, a vibration in the air, like a drop of water hitting a still pond. The next thing Toph knew, a boot was hitting her face and she found herself spinning through the air, disconnected from the earth and truly blind. The follow-up came immediately as he kicked her in the stomach, then punched her in the back, throwing her towards the edge of the ring—and she’d consider a ring-out a full loss.

Her heart was pounding. Her face and body already hurt. She tasted blood and her head was ringing from the blow. And despite it all, Toph couldn’t help but smile. Zuko wasn’t going easy on her. He wasn’t pulling his punches. He was treating her as a threat—someone he had to take seriously if he wanted to beat. Sparring match or not, short of throwing around fire, he was going all out. She loved it, and she couldn’t help but want to answer with the same.

Her hand touched the ground, slipping into it like water and pulling her to a stop. More of those faint whistling sounds filled the air—many more, but this time there was no windup. He didn’t telegraph it with a firebending form. He just stood there and launched some sort of barrage. Crouching low, Toph slapped the ground and raised a barrier in front of her, point facing towards Zuko and sides angled to deflect whatever he was throwing at her. Not a moment too soon as, an instant later, she registered a dozen hits crashing into her barrier and exploding on contact, cracking and threatening to break it, forcing her to reinforce it.

He moved to gather up what he’d thrown at her again and Toph took the opening for what it was, launching her barrier at him in parts. At the same time, she stomped and shot a small rock from behind him, aimed at the back of his head—or the middle of his back if he moved as she expected. A solid thump sounded and Toph grinned as she heard Zuko grunt, landing on the ground with a wince.

Raising her hands, she exploded the surface of the arena again, turning it into more dust—thick enough that she could feel it faintly outlining them both. Then, she dove forward and slipped into the ground, moving through the stone like it was water as she held her breath. She felt him above her as she moved around beneath him. A bit of bending had a rough copy of herself, a Toph-shaped pile of rocks and dirt, rising up where she had been and charging—looking much like she did when she covered herself in rock armor. Zuko went after it, launching more attacks and rushing to close into hand to hand range. Toph waited and, as soon as he engaged, she popped up behind him—

A boot caught her in the face and Toph yelped as she felt her nose break. “Fuck!”

Rolling out, she went underground again and popped up off to his side, only to have to dive again as she felt the dust disturbed. How is he tracking me?! He’s supposed to be as blind as I am—

Toph’s thoughts froze on the spot as the answer became obvious. Opening a small hole to the surface of the ring, she asked, “Did you train for fighting blind?”

“Yep. I can see heat. Nice trick with the clone, by the way. Almost fooled me, because I couldn’t see through the stone around it.”

On the one hand, Toph was kind of impressed. Also, learning that someone else had gone to the effort to learn to see with their bending made her feel… something. She wasn’t sure what yet and didn’t have time to figure it out at the moment. On the other hand, she was kind of pissed. He’d landed five hits to her one and had broken her nose! Her competitive streak wouldn’t let that stand… and Zuko had just told her how to beat his little ‘seeing heat’ trick.

Toph launched herself to the surface, covered in rock armor. At the same time, she created four ‘clones’ as he called them around him. All of them attacked at once, under her direction. To keep from giving herself away within the crowd, Toph limited her bending to just controlling the copies.

“Well, shit,” Zuko muttered. He shifted, lowering his stance and sweeping first one hand forward in an arc, then spinning and sweeping the other behind him. Toph (and her clones) raised her arms instinctively to block and found herself and her copies slammed with two waves of something—as she’d thought, he could change the shape of whatever it was he was using. The attacks cut through the outer layer of rock, but didn’t do anything otherwise. Zuko moved to gather his energy back up and Toph struck.

In response, she and her copies stepped forward, each shooting off a fist made of stone—then she repeated it as she regrew the fist, sending a barrage of small, fast attacks at the man and forcing him on the defensive. Zuko ducked, dodged, and weaved through the attacks, occasionally blocking, punching, kicking, or shooting a stone as he tried to get out of the barrage. Toph felt him do something, making that ‘drawing’ gesture again, and some of the stone flying at him fell out from under her control, as though the ki she’d launched it with had been stripped out—but the stones were still moving fast enough that it didn’t matter and he had to evade anyway.

Picking up the pace, Toph added kicks to the barrage. Zuko lasted another few seconds before he took the first hit—then another, and another, as she hit him with enough force to spin him around and send him to the ground, where a volley of three more hit him at the same time before he could roll out. “That last one only counts as one,” he grunted.

“Nope! It’s seven to five!” Toph jeered, only to realize her mistake an instant later as her armor exploded around her and a barrage of blasts launched her through the air. In the moment she spent airborne, she thought back to Zuko’s movements as he dodged and nearly kicked herself for not realizing it sooner. The entire time he was dancing around, he had been gathering and preparing more of those attacks and waiting for the right moment to identify her and strike decisively—

Toph slammed into the bowl on the outside of the ring and slid down to the ground. Coughing, she groaned as something shifted uncomfortably in her chest. Reaching down, she carefully probed her ribs below her right breast. Yeah, that’s cracked. Shit.

Still, she couldn’t help but laugh as Zuko jumped out of the ring and landed in front of her, stumbling as he did. He might have won, but she’d made him fight for it every step of the way, and had given as good as she got. And now that she had seen what he could do, she could prepare for the next time. She wouldn’t lose the same way again.

“That was fun,” she chuckled, then whimpered at the pain in her rib.

“It was. Wasn’t sure I was gonna win there at the end, so I might have overdone it.” Zuko limped over and reached down, carefully lifting her up to her feet.

They leaned against each other as they made their way out of the bowl, Zuko leading them towards the bath. “If you apologize, I’m going to hit you,” Toph growled. “Don’t ruin it for me.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he laughed, and Toph felt that he meant it. “How’s your chest?”

“You hit me in the titty,” Toph grumbled, reaching up to rub her sore boob. “Cracked a rib, too.”

“I’ll take care of it.” Toph snorted as Zuko paused, then immediately added, “Healing.”

“Uh huh. Sure. That’s what you meant.”

“Shut up,” he shook his head, then sighed. “Really not gonna help my case when I tell you that you need to strip.”

Toph laughed, then immediately regretted it. “What would Yue say?”

“She’d probably laugh and enjoy someone else suffering being awkward about it, because I made her do it shortly after we met, when I healed her master. Yagoda thought it was hilarious.”

“Awkward? You, maybe.” Pushing him away, she began undoing her robe. “Out of curiosity, what happens if I don’t undress?”

“Well,” Zuko began, doing the same as he turned away from her. “I can set myself on fire and not burn my clothes, no problem. For someone else? Not so much. And as it turns out, even if you’re getting healed faster than damage can accumulate, having all your clothes burn off of you hurts like a bitch.”

“Do I need to be out of the water for this, or…?”

“I’d prefer it. Don’t want to accidentally boil you,” he chuckled, and she nodded. “You ready?”

Toph dropped the last of her clothes and kicked them to the side. “Yup.”

Zuko turned around, but she noticed his head wasn’t exactly turned towards her body. Considering him for a moment, she asked, “Did you close your eyes?”

“Yeah. So, unlike Yue, I can’t exactly tell where something’s injured. You’re going to need to direct me—”

Toph reached out and grabbed his hand, pulling it to her ribs, just below her right breast. “Here.”

His hand felt warm on her body and Toph felt herself growing warm. It wasn’t the first time she’d been touched—Su both dressed her and helped her bathe most days. But it was the first time it was a man doing the touching—and the first time it was someone she might kind of like. As a friend! Someone who treated her like an equal, not an invalid.

Then, her whole body below the neck felt warm—like standing in a warm breeze, with the majority of the warmth centered under Zuko’s hand. She felt and perceived her rib as it healed and the pain became a distant memory. The big bruise her left tit was becoming faded as well, along with a bunch of other bruises, aches, and pains over the rest of her body. Finally, Zuko pulled his hand away from her chest and up. Toph gasped quietly as his hand slipped over her nipple.

“Sorry,” he muttered, both hands coming up and resting to either side of her nose. “This is going to hurt. On three. One—”

“Ee!” Toph yelped as he snapped her nose back into place. “Shit! You said three!”

“I lied,” he shrugged, and then the pain faded as she felt warmth on her nose. “There. All better. I’m getting in the bath. You can wait or you can—” Toph launched herself with a small rock pillar, tucked into a ball, and splashed down into the cold spring water filling the bath. She surfaced with another yelp, shivering. “Or you can just jump in, yeah. Hang on.”

Zuko stuck his arm in the tub and, a moment later, Toph sighed as the water heated around her to the perfect temperature. “Much better.”

“You’re welcome,” he said, and she felt a brief flare of heat around him before he climbed in and sat down across from her. Yawning, he leaned back and rested his head on the ledge. “So. What can’t you buy with your parents’ money that you can buy with your own?”

Toph sighed, considering the man across from her. After a few moments of thinking, she answered, “Independence.”“Hm?”

“My freedom.” He sat up a bit and tilted his head towards her. He didn’t ask more, just waiting. Giving Toph the chance to decide if she wanted to say more. Eventually, she decided to. “You have no idea what it feels like to be a prisoner in your own home.”

Zuko chuckled once, shaking his head. “You’re wrong. Yue and I are probably the two people who understand it best. Differently for each of us, but close enough.”

“My parents treat me like I’m made of glass and I’ll break if someone looks at me wrong, or says the wrong thing.”

“After our mother left, my sister and I had to learn how to act and speak around our father to avoid him lashing out.”

Toph frowned. “My parents keep trying to sell me off for marriage, like I don’t even get a say.”

Zuko shrugged. “Welcome to a day in Yue’s life. Her father tried to engage us to tie me to their tribe when they learned what I could do. The guy who thought he was going to marry her before I came along chased us across the Earth Kingdom until he got himself spirited away.”

“Yeah, well, an assassin tried to kill my parents before I was born and that’s why I’m blind and my mom can’t have any more kids!”

“It’s not a competition, Toph,” Zuko sighed, before his voice changed, filled with amusement. “But if you want to compete…”

She felt him move through the water towards her, stopping right in front of her. “What are you doing?”

“Give me your hand,” he said instead. Rising to the challenge, Toph reached out a hand towards him. Zuko took the offered hand and brought it up. “You can’t see it, so let’s do the next best thing,” he murmured, before resting her hand on his chest.

Toph nearly pulled her hand away, but Zuko held it there. She stopped as she realized what it was she was feeling. Beneath her fingers was raised tissue that stood out from the smooth skin of the rest. Zuko let her hand go and Toph slowly brought up the other hand, tentatively exploring. The right side of his chest was mostly smooth, firm pectoral, with the occasional streak of raised tissue. The left side was a mess, where all the raised parts seemed to radiate outwards from one spot in particular, just above his heart.

“What is it?” Toph asked quietly.

“That is scar tissue. I could remove it, sure, but I keep it as a reminder. My father tried to kill me, because I mouthed off to him. Not in an Agni Kai, that is an official duel, but at the dinner table. In front of my sister.” He reached up and his hand settled over the top of hers, squeezing it briefly before pulling it away. “So when I say we understand…”

“You really do,” Toph murmured as Zuko settled in beside her.

“Yeah.”

They fell silent for a while at that. Eventually however, Toph smirked. “I’m gonna make you tell me the rest of that story next time.”

“You’re welcome to try. Now, let’s talk about the Rumble. How much money could we bring in on a bet before they decided it wasn’t worth it, or that something was up?”