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Toph was determined to have a life-changing field trip with Zuko. Everyone else got one.
And that time they tried to find Aang didn’t count because no one’s life was changed. It was the same reason their trip to Eaglehawk Mountain didn’t count, and why that time they’d stolen all those scrolls from the Fire Sages wasn’t enough. They’d had fun but no epiphanies were had.
“Come on, hurry up,” she said, tapping her foot on the cool stone of the Fire Palace floor. The whole nation ran hot, boiled your hair and sent seat pouring down your arms, but the Palace floor was always refreshing. Cold, familiar, just like the floors in the house she’d grown up in. One day she’d have to figure out why it was so much cooler than the rest of the country. Maybe, if this trip wasn’t life changing, that could be their next try.
“I’m going as fast as I can Toph. You try packing for both of us. It’s stressful. I know you forgot something,” Zuko replied. She heard him throwing things into his suitcase, stepping away for a moment, then rearranging them.
“You know, I wasn’t expecting you to get so neurotic in your old age.”
“Toph, I am literally twenty. I’m not old.”
“An old spinster. How sad,” she muttered, throwing herself down on his bed and putting her hand over her face melodramatically.
“You know, Toph, I’m missing important things to do this. Really important things.”
“I’m so sorry to keep you away from your big important Fire Lord duties. I know how much you love them. I’ve certainly never found you hiding at the turtleduck pond.”
“It was one time,” he mumbled, “one time.” She heard his bag slam shut before he threw it over his shoulder.
“Do you want me to start listing times? Because it’s definitely happened more than once.”
Zuko grumbled as he walked towards the door. She followed him and they headed down the hallways to the back gates of the palace. Toph could sense the servants stepping into hidden alcoves and hallways barely bigger than supply closets to get out of their way. She almost wished Sokka or Aang were there. It was always funny watching them panic when trying to figure out the customs of being waited on. Of course it was funny in a rather cruel way for both them and the servants but hey, that was Toph’s favorite kind of humor.
Together they began to walk the cobbled streets towards the harbor. Toph had always loved the way Zuko’s city buzzed. The people here were so alive, bustling about like they were trying to make up for the last hundred years of war and isolation. Maybe, in a way, they were.
Zuko had already arranged a ship to take them to their first stop, a little island off the western coast of the Earth Kingdom. Both of them were pretty sure it existed, though they weren’t the most diligent researchers in their group of friends.
They wandered for a few minutes between the rushing porters and the vendors hawking voyage quality foodstuffs. Toph could smell a million seconds and a million places, could feel the patter of feet she’d never talk to.
Eventually they found their ride, right at the end of the harbor, close to where it abruptly stopped to send you flying onto a sandy beach covered in little washed-up bits of metal and dirt.
They stepped aboard the boat, a tiny thing that didn’t seem large enough to carry both of them and the captain, let alone ferry them across a body of water. It tossed as they sat down, pulling against the rope holding it in place. But Zuko seemed to trust it so she followed him in.
Toph had never liked the water. She needed the ground to feel and as soon as she crept over the water that power was gone. She couldn’t even swim, despite Katara and Aang’s continued lessons. Just like a rock she could only sink.
“You should feel the water, it’s a really pleasant temperature,” Zuko said, splashing a bit onto her arm.
“There is no way you’re getting me to touch whatever nasty harbor water we’re sitting in,” she grumbled, nestling further into the corner of the boat she’d found for herself.
“Well you’re going to be touching plenty if you’re all the way back there. That’s where all the spray hits.”
“Well I’m sorry that I’m having a hard time figuring out the layout of this wooden boat. And what makes you an expert on boats anyway?”
“I was a sailor for three years,” he said, “remember?”
“Right. Sometimes I forget that your life is really weird.”
“Says a girl who considers badgermoles to be her second parents.”
She shrugged. “I’d say more like aunts and uncles, but I don’t think you want to be the one to bring up parents.”
At that moment the captain stepped back onto the boat, sending it rocking deeper into the water. Toph gripped as hard as she could and inched up the bench, away from where she’d been sitting before.
The captain and Zuko talked for a moment about the propelling machine of the boat, a little metal box powered by firebending that Sokka had invented. Apparently Zuko was going to power it, letting the captain take a few days off.
Under normal circumstances Toph knew that no sane person would agree to that. But then again, Zuko’s disguises were always terrible. She didn’t even need to see to know that.
As they raced through the water, wind whipping Toph’s hair and salt spray hitting her face despite her best efforts, Toph asked Zuko what his disguise for this trip was.
“Oh, don’t worry, I’m practically unrecognizable. I have a very large hat on.”
The two of them puttered around the outer islands of the Earth Kingdom, Toph sticking her toes in a thousand different beaches and Zuko pointing out dozens of different animals before realizing Toph couldn’t see them. He kept doing it and Toph found it just as funny every time.
When they couldn’t find what they were looking for Zuko decided to take the rickety little boat down south into Fire Nation lands, a move that Toph very much did not approve of. The less time in the boat the better.
After another few days of camping in the woods and being devoured by little biting insects, an unfortunate characteristic of the Fire Nation, they finally made it to the fabled island. The trip had taken far longer than expected, but so did all of their adventures. Responsibilities and promises be damned, they needed this. Not that either of them would admit that out loud.
Toph breathed a sigh of relief when her feet hit solid ground. She took a breath to sense the terrain. Four people, three women and one man, were walking towards them. Their long robes swished against the ground and disturbed the pebbles at the edge of the beach.
“Who are you?” One of the women asked, her voice high and melodic.
“My name’s Toph, this is Zuko. We’re friends of the Avatar. You wouldn’t happen to be the Bhanti, would you?”
“We are,” the woman said. “What do you want?”
“Well,” Toph said, sticking her hand out. After a moment one of the women, short and standing to the side, shook it. “First off hello, second off we’d love to know more about your Sky Bison.”
Later that afternoon Toph and Zuko were sitting in a field, surrounded by miniature Appas. Apparently these people had been raising them since the genocide, the descendants of the ones Aang would have grown up with, though Zuko swore they were a slightly different color than Appa. More red, more Fire Nation. Toph had no way to prove or disprove this.
“Do you think Aang’s gonna be happy about this?” She asked Zuko, scratching under the neck of one of the bison.
“Katara isn’t going to see him for weeks. He’s just going to live under these piles of fur,” he said, and was that a laugh she heard? A rare but valued occurrence.
“I think the only downside of this is that Aang’s going to make us try that food he’s always talking about, the curdled one.”
“Cheese?” Zuko asked.
“Yeah, that’s it. Cheese.”
They sat together under the sun a moment longer, letting it rest on their arms.
“Being here, it makes what happened even more real. What my grandfather did,” Zuko whispered, his voice almost muffled by a nearby bison. “That’s my legacy. That’s what I have to undo.”
“Zuko, you’ll never be able to undo what your family did. All you can hope for is to create something better.”
“But I was part of it, Toph. I carried out atrocities in the name of my father.”
“So honor the dead, help the wounded, and make sure you don’t do the same thing. Build something new.” She ran her hand over one of the bison. “That sentimental enough for you?”
He laughed. “Yeah, yeah it was.”
“I guess we should go soon,” she said, stretching, “return the boat to it’s captain.”
“But the bison are cute.”
“You make a very good point Zuko, a very good point indeed.”
Later, when they were back at the palace after too many hours on the water, the two of them snuck down to the kitchen to grab the snacks Ari always left out for them. Something nice for Toph, something blazing hot for Zuko. Much to her disgust he always favored food that left no feeling in your tongue.
They sat on Zuko’s bed, avoiding the piles of work he would spend hours on the next day, and agreed that their trip hadn’t been life-changing. For that they would need another one, probably after Zuko’s next months-long trip to the newly founded Republic City.
That would be the perfect time to have their lives changed.