CHAPTER FOUR: Dark.

This is my least favorite of all the 100 Theme Challenge themes. Bah humbug.

Even after the Avatar defeated the Fire Lord, the group still couldn't quite manage to settle down. After travelling for so long and helping people, it felt weird to try and sleep in the same bed every night. It felt weird to be sleeping in a bed at all. It wasn't long before the Gaang slowly broke up, heading off in their own direction to go help people.

Katara and Aang had gone to some of the poorer Earth Kingdom towns to help them rebuild from the war. Zuko had gone back to the Fire Nation (though he promised he would write to everyone, as long as they wrote to him. Or, in Toph's case, had Sokka write out a message for her.) And that left Toph and Sokka to take their time and travel wherever they wanted to.

Usually they helped some towns recover from the Fire Nation. Today they were actually in a Fire Nation town, trying to help the towns people recover a bunch of tax money that had supposedly been hoarded away by soldiers. According to the residents, they had been forced to pay money for war supplies. Every week a soldier would stop by their house and demand money, before he would squirrel it away in an underground lair. One day, the underground storage lair had collapsed and the soldier hadn't been heard from since.

Now, originally the town folk had been happy about it. They assumed they would be getting their gold pieces back, because now the war was over and all that money could be theirs again. But as it turned out, the soldier hadn't told anyone where he was keeping the money. That's where Toph and Sokka came in.

Toph stomped her foot against the cobbled street, ignoring the stares she could tell she was getting from the merchants. She heard their whispers. Blind? How can she help us? She ignored it.

Sokka stretched in the sun, patting his sword sleepily. "Have you found it yet?"

She scowled in the sun, crouching to press her palm against the cobblestones. "I know I've told you this before, but it's not as easy as it looks." She muttered. She could feel the heat from the sun directly overhead burning her cheeks. Stupid Fire Nation. Everything was hot here.

"Sorry. Can you feel anything at all?" he spun around in a circle, idly waiting for her to finish her work. He was the cut stuff up guy. He wasn't the locate stuff underground guy.

"Always," she muttered, nodding. "I just have to separate the stuff that's supposed to be there from the stuff that's not supposed to be there."

Sokka nodded. He stood next to her, gazing around the town as he waited for her to finish. It didn't take long. She stood suddenly, pointing in a direction away from the town. "It's over there."

The Water Tribe boy sprung into action. He started running, pulling Toph along with him. "Come on, Toph!"

She scowled, dragging her heels in the dirt. She was actually dragging them in the dirt using her Earthbending. It wasn't long until Sokka stopped pulling her and gave her an exasperated look.

"What? It doesn't matter if we run or not. There was a cave in, Sokka."

He frowned as she started walking. "So? The soldier could still be alive!"

Toph scowled again, suddenly stopping in a field a couple hundred yards away from the town. "There aren't any heartbeats down there." She muttered, taking an Earthbending stance.

Sokka nodded gravely, watching her Earthbend a hole in the ground like she had during their take down of the metal drill outside of Ba Sing Se. "Alright. Could you punch some sky lights in the top of the tunnel, so I could see?"

Toph shook her head as she took his hand, pulling him into the dark hole. "Not unless you want the top to cave in."

"Alright. I guess I'll have to hold your hand, then."

There was a pause in the darkness as Toph decided whether or not she was offended. "Have to hold my hand?" she asked, deciding that she was offended by that. "I didn't realize it was such an awful thing."

Ohhhh, crap. Sokka almost smacked his forehead. Being trapped underground with an angry Earthbender wasn't a good idea. "I didn't mean it that way."

"Sure you didn't." she muttered.

"Toph, don't get mad at me." He ordered. There had been enough fights on all of their adventures; he didn't want another one!

"You sounded like you didn't want to hold my hand, like it was some sort of torture."

He scowled, squeezing her hand as they walked. "I want to hold your hand. Trust me, okay?"