Burnt Out - Zuko x OC

Terrible, Terrible Things

Season 2, Episodes 9 & 10

Author's Note - I'm uploading two chapters at once because these are very much filler chapters. I'm trying to get to the good stuff, I'm sorry xx

Toph sucked in her breath in the dark confines of the wet cave, "Kai, you're not like that.. you can't --"

"I am though, Toph." She snapped, "And I can. I didn't deserve what they did to me, nobody does. You have no idea what I've went through these past few years, the things I've had to do just to stay alive.."

Toph didn't want to think about it. She'd spent enough time as the Blind Bandit to know that their world wasn't all sunshine and rainbows. She realized that her denying Kai what she'd been born to do was just as useful as her parents saying that she wasn't allowed to earth bend, it was in her blood. Scraping and scratching to get out, only this time with a different target in mind.

"Don't tell them. Please. They seem nice, I don't want them to think I'm some murderous psychopath that's going to hold a blade to them while they sleep." Toph laughed at the thought and reached behind the girl's back, pulling one of her two blades out of it's sheath, "Are you not? Look at these things! Come on, you can make stone bullets, what do you even need this for?"

Kai pulled the sword away from her and stuck it back behind her, "For fun, duh!"

The girls fell back into Appa's fur, laughing like old times. Kai looked at the girl who was still a child lovingly, she'd missed her so much. Toph asked, "Did you at least have any fun when you were out there? Did you fight any bad guys??"

"A few." She contemplated what all she would tell Toph, "Some of the earth kingdom soldiers are real jerks, you know? I had a couple run-ins with them, but they learned their place pretty quick."

"What about boys?"

Kai's mind immediately flashed to the boy with the scar on his face. She knew his name, but it felt like if she said it out loud her father would know what she'd done -- or hadn't done, really. But he'd been so kind that she didn't want to keep that meeting all to herself, "I met one a few nights ago. He was nice."

"Was he.. cute?" Toph felt embarrassed saying the words. To the rest of the gang, she was tough and not to be messed with. But Kai knew her.

"Mhm," She felt blood warming her cheeks when she spoke, nausea bubbling up in her stomach at the same time, "We swam in a hot spring and fell asleep in a hay loft." Kai left out the parts that Toph didn't need to know; the parts where that boy was the prince of the fire nation and how she'd snuck off into the woods while he was in the sunflower field.

Toph and Kai stayed up that night until their torch went out. Lulled gently to sleep by claps of thunder in the distance and the echo of rain through the cavern. The relentless drops of water showered over the southern earth kingdom that night, soaking everything in their path -- including Prince Zuko.

~

While Kai had been reuniting with an old friend and making new ones, Zuko was close by. Caring for his uncle that'd been injured in the battle with Azula that Kai had narrowly missed being a part of.

While Kai was sitting on the floor of that canyon feeding Sokka nuts and berries, Zuko had been listening to Uncle Iroh teach him about each element during his quest to master lightening bending. About how the four elements all had a play in his bending abilities. He wondered if the secretive girl he'd met on the farm knew these things, maybe that was how she'd learned to bend water -- or at least the minerals that water was in love with.