Up above her, on a thin ledge that runs along the sheer cliff face, there is someone running. Light footsteps that slam into the ground and leap, weight coming down concentrated on a hand. Gymnastic. A girl, smallish and thin.

Toph turns on the stone pathway, momentarily ignoring the sounds of battle coming from what is now behind her. They’re being ambushed by somebody.

Unlike most benders, Toph doesn’t need to reach for the connection to her element. She is always turned on. She controls the earth like a Bunraku puppet, and when she slams her foot into the face of the rock the earth does the same. A fissure, small, racing up though the layers of what was once a great ocean, fossilized beasts as big as cities shudder and separate. The weight of time is no match for Toph. The thin crack widens. Beads of sand roll down and grind thinly in the closest places of the moving rock. The thump of a foot radiates down and intersects with the growing crack. Right where it’s supposed to.

The pathway suddenly dissolves under Ty Lee’s feet. She squeaks with surprise as she tumbles down toward the battle below. She’d been sneaking up on the blind one, but she’s obviously not as sneaky as she thought.

“Well, well, what have we here?” The dark-haired girl comments.

Ty Lee takes a second to get a good look at her. She’s short, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Dark hair done up in some sort of puffy bun, and long down over her eyes to hide them. The eyes are pretty creepy, she decides. Milky white. Best not to underestimate her, though. If she’s traveling with the Avatar, she has to have some sort of merit.

She takes a split-second to long looking at her opponent. The other girl moves quickly, and Ty Lee leaps backward out of instinct. The ground crashes upward where she had been standing.

Where the hell is she? Toph radiates out, searching the ground for the nimble girl. There, a soft twitch on the earth. She swings out, spikes of shale as sharp as knives. She missed, though, but not by much.

There is a shift, a sliding movement. A tree being pulled to the side, the roots creaking in the dry ground. A thump into another tree close by.

The little twerp! She’s up in the trees! Toph knows what she’s feeling for now and she locates her fast. Pull the earth out from underneath the roots, shove a conveniently placed rock upward. A sharp crack in the air as the hardwood splits and crashes into the ground, its trunk opening into a maw filled with sharp yellow teeth.

In the impact of the leafy top of the tree, Toph momentarily looses her.

That’s when disaster strikes.

Sharp fingers, jabbing. Slamming ice cold into pressure points. And then……

The ground is hard and unyielding under her feet. Dead. Nothing. Shouting from around her, the sound of pounding feet.

There is a whoosh of air from up above her and she hears Aang shout. She doesn’t know he’s landed until his arm slams into her chest as he pushes her. She looses her footing and hits the ground hard, landing right on a rock.

Heat bursts through the air and then is gone. A blast of wind. Female voices shouting. Then they move away. The ground tremors then shakes, but it’s like listening to a friend speaking a language you have never heard, and she can’t understand until she hears it, too. Aang has dropped a huge chunk of the cliff, separating the groups. It seems he has decided its time to retreat.

“What is wrong with you!” Sokka shouts.

Toph, who is still sitting on the ground for fear that she’ll run into something and kill herself, jumps and turns her face toward the sound. This is way worse than the desert. At least there, she'd been able to feel something. Now, though...nothing. She's blind.

Katara takes a look at her friend and then smacks her younger brother in the back of the head. Sokka jumps back from his bent position. Katara glares at him. Toph is just sitting there, her cloudy eyes wide. She doesn't look like she's injured. There is something wrong with her, though.

She quickly glances at Aang, wondering if he’s noticed. His open face clearly shows concern, now.

“Toph? Are you OK?” He asks quickly. He drops to his haunches in front of her and puts one of his airy, long fingered hands on her shoulder. Toph actually jerks to the side as though she’s startled.

Aang doesn't like this one bit. He'd been up in the air when he'd seen Toph fighting, and had gone over to get a look and make sure she was OK. He'd knocked her out of the way and then gone oafter the girl, who had quickly retreated back to her group. It had not even occurred to him to check and see if the earthbender was alright, she hadn't looked hurt.

Katara starts to feel really worried. She’s never seen Toph look rattled at anything. Aang moves so quietly she and Sokka get surprised by him every once in a while, but not Toph.

“That circus freak….” Toph starts. She waves her hands in a motion that conveys anger and confusion.

“Oh….” Katara says quietly as she understands.

Aang’s gray eyes open wide, then narrow again. His expression darkens. Katara sees worry on the face of the young monk, but she also sees anger bubbling through.

“It’ll only last a few hours.” Katara says reassuringly.

The hand on Toph’s shoulder has started to shake. Toph feels a sudden surge of pride. Aang is furious. Well. good, he needs to be mad more heat and hand are gone, and she hears his feet slide, she thinks he’s spinning around. She hears the swish of his glider opening.

The ground shakes, hard. Toph doesn’t need earthbending to tell what’s going on, now. The mountain is starting to fall apart.

Appa comes down and they have to help her into the saddle, but at least once she’s there it feels familiar. She’s never actually been glad to be off the ground.

The air gets cool around them. It’s getting toward night. They fly in a glum wind starts to increase, the air gets colder. It feels like a storm is brewing.

Their angle changes and they’re heading down. The humidity is higher, here, there are bugs buzzing around and when Appa lands the air is immediately filled with the scent of crushed grass. A valley that she can’t see. She can feel nothing more than the grass under her feet.

She’s not hungry. Toph is absolutely miserable. For the first time in her life, she really feels blind. This is what her parents must have seen, she realizes.

Aang walks up and stands in front of her. “Do you want me to earthbend you a tent?”

Toph shakes her head resolutely. “No. I’m fine.”

Aang is worried about his friend and teacher. He can’t imagine what it must be like to suddenly have the one thing you really depend on taken away from you. A large part of him is seething with truly righteous fury. His thin shell of diplomacy speaks back calmly, balancing the heat of emotion.

Toph is radiating the kind of aggressive stoicism that means she’s best left alone. At least for a little while. The airbender stops in the middle of their camp and looks around. Katara and Sokka have both fallen asleep. They’d both been casting worried glances at Toph, but neither of them had said anything. Aang can understand that. What is there to say? They’ve all suddenly been thrown into the very bad position of traveling with someone who is blind- something that none of them have ever really considered. Toph is almost as defenseless now as any of them would be if their sight were to be taken away.

There’s nothing to be done now, though. He just hopes it wears off soon, before the Fire Nation finds them again.

Aang disappears into his tent.

Toph sits with her forehead down on her arms. The fire glows warmly on the top of her head. The smoke has gone from acrid and thick to thin light wisps that dissipate almost immediately on the slight breeze. The fire has almost burned down to nothing. Appa grunts wetly in his sleep and rolls over with a thump.

She has no idea if anybody else is even there. She knows they are, of course, they would never abandon her. But what if something happened, what if the evil git of the fire lord were to sneak in, quiet and undetected, and slaughter her friends in their sleep. She wouldn’t know until the morning, when she would stumble through camp and put her hand into the flap of Aang’s tent and meet the cool slickness of old blood.

She feels, very clearly, the unpleasant sensation of her hand sliding into the interior of something dead, a body that had once belonged to a very good friend. Toph shudders and tries to think of something else.

It persists, though, the feeling of slippery unease. Every bug that flies past her ear becomes a fire nation sniper. She’s hearing things now, too, audio hallucinations. She knows in the thinking part of her mind that she’s just letting the situation get the better of her, and she’s mad at herself because of it. But what if she’s wrong? What if the noises she thinks she hears are actually there to be heard?

Alright, that was definitely real, she thinks as she hears the soft swish of fabric being pushed aside. She gets as still as she can and listens intently. Footfalls so soft she almost can’t hear them (or maybe she really doesn’t) the barely discernable sliding of cloth against cloth.

Then, a sharp crack and the heat of the fire explodes upward, a burst of dust that blows onto her face.

“Oop!” A surprised voice, it doesn’t sound panicked and it is definitely one she recognizes.

“Nice going, twinkle-toes.” Toph says sarcastically, but she can hear the relief clearly in her own voice. She’s actually shaking a little, she realizes with annoyance.

“Can you…” Aang starts as he flops down beside her.

Toph shakes her head.

For a few seconds there is nothing but the sound of him breathing, then he pulls air in so he can talk. “ I’m sure we can find somebody to help if it doesn’t fix itself soon.”

“That little cup of yours is always half full, isn’t it?” Toph asks bitterly.

There’s a pause, then Aang says brightly “Yep, sure is.”

Toph feels an unexpected surge of resentment. They sit in silence for a little while, though it’s hardly really silence. The night does seem less threatening with somebody with her.

“If I’m not OK by morning, I want you guys to drop me off at the next village.” Toph says quietly.

“What are you talking about?” Aang asks.

“I’m just going to slow all of you down.” Toph reasons. “There’s no reason for me to be here.” The emotion she’s been trying to keep out of her voice finally breaks though again. “I’m useless!”

“No, you’re not.” That voice he uses when he’s trying to keep the peace. Now, be reasonable, dear…

“Yes, I will.” Toph says with finality.

“No.” She feels (feels? Or is her mind just playing tricks on her?) His fists clench on the soft grass. “We’re not leaving you anywhere. You’re part of this group and we’re staying with you.”

Toph opens her mouth to reply, but Aang cuts her off. “You can try to argue with me, if you’d like. It’s not going to do any good, though.”

Toph scowls at him, but she does feel a surge of pride that he’s actually standing up to her.

“Have you asked Sokka and Katara how they feel?” Toph asks.

There’s a slight pause. When Aang speaks again, his voice is softer. “We almost went after them, Sokka and I.” A longer pause. “We were going to kill that girl.” Insects buzz and sing in air that is starting to get warm again.

This refusal to abandon her is the straw that breaks Toph’s back. The inside of her nose starts to prickle. Then she feels hot tears well up in her worthless eyes. She keeps her head down and tries to get control of herself again, but she cannot. When she can’t breath through her nose anymore, she starts gasping shakily though her mouth.

That thin hand on her shoulder again, this time pushing her around. She fights to stand still, but does it without any real conviction. The fabric of his shirt still holds the remnants of incense that was burned when the thread was spun and the fibers woven, burners sending thick, fragrant smoke into temples and training grounds in censors that have been cold and black for a hundred years. Toph rests her forehead on the boy’s thin shoulder and cries in hopelessness.

Sokka opens his eyes to slits and looks into the thick, gray light. With the heavy cloud cover, he has no way of telling how long he’s been asleep. The sound of insects and a few birds suggests that it’s getting toward morning. He looks over to where Toph had been sitting the night before, fully expecting to see one of her earth shelters. It takes him a second to register what he sees instead.

Aang is sitting there in his shirtsleeves. He has his arms around Toph, who is halfway in his lap and turned toward him and shaking. No, not shaking. He can hear her, now. She’s crying. Oh, no. Please, please let her be OK.

He’s not sure what to do. It’s warm, and he’s sleeping on top of his bedding instead of inside it. Aang hasn’t seemed to notice him, yet, so he carefully rolls over and nudges Katara with his foot. He has to do it a few times before she swats at him.

When the kicking doesn’t stop after a few slaps, Katara grudgingly admits that she’s awake. Sokka waits until she focuses a nasty look at him, and then jerks his head over toward the other side of the camp.

There is a shuffling of heavy clothing from behind her. Just what Toph needs, the Sugar Queen over there trying to comfort her.

Katara’s hands are softer, though the nails are always a little torn up from being damp so often. She’s close; she must be kneeling or sitting on the ground. The fingers brush her neck lightly, and then the hand settles on her back. No talking. Just sitting.

Toph is surprised when another hand touches her back as well. Larger than anyone else’s in the group, warm, calloused with work, probably dirty to boot. Sokka.

There is a thump as the boy warrior sits down, his knees pressing into the ground. Aang moves a leg slightly, Sokka settles.

Hands move, both Katara and Sokka, stroking down the back of her shirt. Sokka looks around at the other two, the sharp bottoms of his hips digging deeper into the soft earth as his weight shifts.

Something walks though the new forest to their back, some sort of small predator returning to its den with the night’s kill, back to the hole under the fallen tree where its pups are playing quietly. Momo slides off of the flying bison’s back and skitters across the camp.

“You know something?” Toph says softly.

“Hhm?” Katara asks carefully.

“You guys…” Toph pauses.

She feels everybody tense a little, cautious.

“Are the mooshiest people I’ve ever met.” Toph finishes strongly. “Get offa me!”

The ground slides underneath them like a tablecloth, and everybody suddenly finds themselves seperated.

“And, its about to rain.” Toph adds. The earth shelter slams itself up around here as the sky finally breaks.

There is a pause where the other three seem to be looking at each other, then a frantic scramble as they all bolt into the opening at the same time. Sokka gets stuck between Aang and Katara, and for a second they are unable to go forward or back. Then there is a pop and they all pour into her stone tent.

“Aack! Hey! There’s not enough room in here!” Toph shouts.

“Yeah, well I think we deserve a reward for all that loyalty.” Sokka counters.

Toph sighs. Then she pushes the walls of the shelter farther apart so at least they aren’t all lying on top of each other.

The sun comes up, though the rain still falls torrentially.