Avatar: The Last Dragon Prince

Chapter Eight: Dead of Night

The Blind Bandit – or rather, Toph Bei Fong – was officially Rayla's new favourite person.

Between Earth Rumble VI and today, it had been three days. And within those three days, Toph managed to get herself and the avatar kidnapped, fight every single contestant in the tournament at the same time including Xin Fu himself and win that fight, and run away from home to travel the world with the avatar.

Even she and her friends who emerged from a portal in the sky from a realm outside this one hadn't seen so much action since they got here. And that was saying something considering their whole swamp monster-slash-visions ordeal.

Appa, in all his white shedding furry glory, had proved to be a more-than-trustworthy babysitter for Zym – Momo and Bait were also helpful. If for nothing else, the dragon crew was grateful for the fact that the onus of looking after Zym wasn't entirely on them. That was a hefty weight to carry considering that Zym was the key to peace between their warring worlds back home.

Home seemed like such a foreign concept.

For Katara and Sokka, home was at the bottom of the world, in their tiny Southern Water Tribe village. For Aang, home was with them since very little remained of his first one. Toph left her home for freedom. As for the rest of them, it was a bit more complicated than that.

They couldn't just fly back home on Appa like the bending trio. For better or worse, they were stuck here. Away from the looming war of their world and into a war that didn't belong to them. Although, they had missed the actual 'war' part. Everywhere they'd been so far was chaotic but not in a way that had to do with fighting troops of these apparent Fire Nation soldiers.

It had been a long day of flying and they were now setting up camp on a solid desert plain. Well, most of them were. One person donned in green and native to this world was notably absent. And that notable absence irked Katara.

She marched over to where Toph was seated and tried to gently nudge her into unloading their supplies. Toph was unsurprisingly uncooperative.

Seeing as it wasn't her conflict, Rayla didn't want to have to pick sides and spotted Callum perched upon a rock by himself, drawing small aspiro runes in the air and letting tiny gusts carry the dust. He looked like he was troubled, and Rayla had a good idea of what that trouble might be.

She walked over to him and sat next to him. He offered her a weak but genuine smile and sighed heavily at the sky, hoping that maybe solutions would be found in the first whispers of dusk.

"I never properly apologised for snapping at you," she said with a rueful smile. He blinked in surprise at the unexpected apology. "It really isn't your fault we're here. If we didn't get away from the soldiers, I'd probably be dead and you two would probably be back in Katolis, trapped behind the castle walls while your human kingdoms and Xadia slaughtered each other."

"Thanks Rayla," he said, "but it is my fault. I opened a portal to a world I didn't even know existed and now I can't go back. The human kingdoms and Xadia could very well be slaughtering each other right now and we would never know. All because of me. I have to fix it."

She put a comforting hand on his shoulder. "We have to fix it. You're not in this alone. Literally. We are all here together. Stop blaming yourself."

Callum didn't know when he'd stop, but at least Rayla's reassurance expedited the process.

As dusk slowly fell, they fell into a comfortable silence. Only then, under the stars and surrounded by desert, did they realise how close they were seated, and were now hyper-aware of her hand on his shoulder. They were Having A Moment, and the aura surrounding it felt more than friendship; more than they were familiar with and more than they wanted to address.