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Characters: Toph and Aang, closed
Date: Before landfall
Location: Turtle head
Situation: Toph and Aang have a conversation about stuff going on, including some tension on Aang's side left over from his canon update and Toph's semi-recent conflict with Milyn.
Warnings/Rating: Probably sulking somewhere in there.

"Thought I'd find you up here."

The voice is Toph's as she picks her way upward to the turtle head, knowing full well that Aang is there -- has been there for some time -- meditating. It seems to be a frequent habit of his lately . . . to the point where aside from training and meals (and coupled with her own renewed activities on the Turtle), she hasn't seen him much.

Plopping down beside him, she tucks her legs up underneath her. "So are you living here now, or is the view actually just that good?"

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Maybe she can feel it.
Then again maybe she can't.

But when Aang hears her voice he flinches. Not because she surprised him, but because she's come here, to this place he's carved out for himself. A place where he's cobbled together as much of his past as he can in an effort to bring peace to an area now devoid of it.

And then, as if facing off against Koh, that discomfort is gone. Shielded as best he can, partially because he knows it's not her and partially because he doesn't want to get into it again regardless.

Not here.
Not on this ground he's determined to make sacred again.

So he stays exactly as he is: seated in a full-lotus, stripped bare to the waist, and with several braziers of incense burning around the edges of the clearing.

"I have to admit, it is pretty good," he says simply.
Then his head tilts.

"Were you looking for me?"

"

She does sense the flinch. It's movement . . . and it's a change in his heart rate and breath, like a hiccup, startled and blank.

But the thing about seismic sense is that although she can feel these things, although she can ascertain that there's been some kind of change, she can't always tell what the change is any better than anyone else. And in this particular hiccup, she passes it off more that she's startled him, approaching quietly while he's meditating.

Her nose wrinkles at the incense, sensitive to the smelliness of it -- why he thinks it actually helps, she'll never know.

"Came up to hang out." Her tone stays casual as she leans back, both hands bracing back on the earth. "Is that good with you?"

He blinks a few times, in genuine surprise.

"You...came up here? To hang out." Confused Aang is...well he's damn confused.

"Not to meditate, if that's what you're asking about." A dark brow shifts upward. "But to hang out, sure."

What's so weird about that?

He relaxes a bit when she reassures him it's merely a social call, and even allows himself to chuckle at mental image of Toph actually meditating.

"I kind of figured it wasn't meditation you were after." His legs unfold as he reaches for the top of his tunic.

Sacred spaces can be social spaces.

"Yeah, no." She feels him unfold next to her, that weird tension gone. "I'll let you handle the whole 'communing with the cosmos' thing."

Added, "Training still isn't until later, if that's what you're getting your underwear in a twist about."

Aang pauses in his re-robing to flinch and then sneak a quick glance at Toph through the neck hole of his shirt.

"Sorry."

Not for being tense, but for...being caught for being tense.

"Good though, because it'd be nice to have some space between being here and earthbending. How was the walk up? I've been thinking about making some improvements to the stairs and walkways."

Weird. He's just . . . a little weird. Just a little off.

"Nothing to be sorry for?"

As far as she's concerned, whatever is going on is a non-issue -- just an observation.

Her shoulders lift. "The stairs are okay. A little rough, I guess. But nothing I can't handle?"

Too much of this stair talk, though, and she's going to start feeling like an old person. Old people are always talking about improving their houses and such. She and Aang are kids.

Edited 2015-07-02 00:20 (UTC)

Kids? Come now, Toph. They haven't been kids for a good long while now. Not really. And Aang? While still a goofball of the highest order, he does have a strong tendency to get more adult by the day...especially when it comes to rebuilding.

"Hmmm," he says, as if thinking of ways to improve what he's already done...stair-wise.

"Well, okay is as good a place to start as any."
One might think he might be trying to turn this section of the turtle into an Air Temple...

Toph will be holding onto her kid-hood while she can, thankyouverymuch. You know. When it's convenient.

Truth of the matter is, while maybe never as old as he is, she's older in spirit too. You can't go through war, have the fate of the world riding on you, and not feel the weight pinch between your shoulders.

It's a curious feeling she tries not to think about too much -- that simultaneous duality of nature. The fact that she's made a number of decisions and discoveries that should have been beyond her scope.

Nope. Better to enjoy the play of a child still, and leave that weight only for when she's required to bear it.

"You kind of sound like you want to start now."

"Naaah, I think I've done all I can do up here for the day," he says...foolishly thinking she's talking about the stairs, and not say...training.

Aang gives himself a moment to just...bask in the progress he's made on the Turtle's head, before turning to look at Toph.

"What's your latest project? Working on anything fun?"

He's in luck; she was talking about the stairs. So for the moment, he's safe.

For now.

"Actually, a few things." Leaning back, she laid back on the ground entirely, tucking her hands up behind her head. "I don't know about fun, but. Basically I'm trying to get the idea of what the gangs are doing around here -- and then the Snakes too. For the most part, the gangs are fine -- the usual kind of stupid. Easy to con. But I'm not sure about the Snakes. I don't know about you, but the idea of some shadow group ruling the city with some mysterious guy in power? Sounds a little too familiar to be comfortable."

". . . How'd they get in power, anyway? Where did all these groups come from? --You were here for all that, right?"

"Well when you put it that way..." he mutters uneasily. Then Aang sighs and flops back more fully onto the ground.

"I was here, but not here here. We were asleep. Like, every Foreigner was in an ice burg."

"Oh." It was still weird to think about -- the fact that they'd lost a year somewhere in there too. ". . . So were they around before you guys went after the M-guy, or were they just kind of . . . there when you got back?"

"Just kind of there?" He doesn't sound entirely sure about that either. "They could have been around before, but I might have been a little too distracted to know for sure."

Seedy underbellies aren't really Aang's thing.
Unless he's making friends in prison while on trial for murder.

"Katara was kind of in love with Zuko..."

Toph, comparatively, loves the seedy underbellies. So much more interesting.

She isn't expecting his last comment, though, her face twisting in his direction abruptly.

"Wait, what?"

Aang cringes, not that Toph can really see that.
What she'll have no doubt noticing is how his voice quiets, and how the volume shifts as he sort of turns to shift his focus elsewhere...in that way he has when he's talking about something he's not strictly comfortable with.

It's less the idea of Katara loving someone other than him, though...okay, that's there too, but more that the whole time was just so fraught.

"It...things got really complicated for a while. But...she was in love with Zuko, and then the both of us kind of walked in on him and Wan kissing..."

She can feel the cringe. And yes, hears the dip in his voice as he turns his head. Though even without any of that, she would have suspected. Aang has always been far less concealed about his affection for Katara than he thinks.

And even if he were more concealed, the speed of his heart and breath whenever he talks to her would have given him away.

Everything else, though . . . way more confusing.

She blows a sharp breath out her nose and mouth. "Okay. Zuko and Wan were confusing enough -- mostly because I thought he was supposed to like that grumpy sourmouth. Ming? Meng? Whatever. But when did Katara liking Zuko happen?"

"Mai," he politely corrects under his breath without interrupting her.

"I don't know, it just kind of did. I don't know if it's this place and the things that can happen here that can't happen at home, or if it's something she's always thought. When I..."

But that thought doesn't get finished. Instead it just sort of ends in a deep calming breath.
When Aang thinks back about that night on Ember Island, when Katara said she was confused, he can't help but think about how stupid he was to kiss her that way...

. . . This isn't the beginning of teen drama, is it? She's so not prepared.

Toph indulges in a mental "rrrrrrrrrrrrrrgh" as she wraps her brain around the looming possibility, which temporarily drowns out Aang's calming breath and the pause that accompanies it.

"I guess that explains why I haven't heard of them hanging around each other," she mutters at last. "Like . . . at all."

She leaves for a little while, and everyone gets stupid.

"So how did that end up?"

She wants to know . . . and she doesn't.

He turns to look at Toph again.

"With us or them?"

Because clearly Toph hasn't noticed how Katara and Aang are now....

Her fingers gesture vaguely though the air. "Like . . . everything. What happened after the kissing?"

Aang brings his arms up, crossing them over his head in an attempt to shield himself from this question....but he answers it anyway, because this is Toph. Not only is she one of his best friends, but...arm-shields are just no match for her, and he knows this.

"Okay, so...when I got here I'd just been hit by Azula. So I..."
He sighs.

"When I met with Guru Pahtik and he helped me clear my chakras, and he told me that the love for my people never left the world. That...that because love is a form of energy, it doesn't get destroyed, it just changes forms. And when he explained this to me, in my mind...all of my people. My entire Nation. They...they disappeared before my eyes into a cloud of smoke that...that turned into Katara.

That's why I quit training, even though I couldn't control the Avatar State. Because...I had to save her.

And then I woke up here. And she was here. And Zuko was here. And everything was different and just out of sync."

He's quiet for a moment, before he starts speaking again.

"After we defeated Malicant, and we were all in the dreaming. I don't know how much time passed, but...I lost track of Sokka and Katara and found myself at the Southern Water Tribe. With Korra. She was going home, and after seeing the Stupa that's there in her time, I knew I had to go too.

I managed to find Katara before I went back under Ba Sing Se, and I kissed her goodbye. And then...then...life happened. And we were on Ember Island and I told her things and she said she was confused and I didn't understand then...but I do now.

She was confused because she was in love with Zuko too. Only I didn't know that then, and so I kissed her and she got angry.

Is this making any sense?"

. . . Well, she did ask for everything.

She definitely got everything. In a flood like a surging river.

". . . No," she says at last. Because in truth, it all makes about as much sense as his 'something about space' explanation. It's metaphysical, and it's Dreaming-oriented, and none of that has ever made sense because it defies all logic and concrete meaning.

But she gets the gist. And that's all she really needs.

Except one thing: "This last part . . . when you were on Ember Island and then you kissed her -- were you home? Or in the Dreaming?"

That....thaaaaaat is a good question.

"Um. I think I was home? I know that after I kissed Katara goodbye that I was walking back under Ba Sing Se. Then I woke up, and we hid from the Fire Nation in the Fire Nation. The fight with Ozai. The Harmony Restoration Movement. Yang Chen's festival...and then I was here."

He's quiet for a moment.

"I'd say it was all in the Dreaming, but...I'm taller."

Yes, he is taller. She's noticed that.

"You went home." There's a small note that can't quite be identified in her voice. Envy? Wistfulness? Wonder? Upset? Perhaps all of these. "Nobody changes here. You can't get older -- or taller -- without going home."

She's quiet after that herself . . . for a longer moment than his.

"Katara likes you," she mutters at last, head turning slightly away. "Someday she'll figure it out."

When Toph goes quiet, Aang gets concerned.
He waits and listens, exactly how Toph taught him to. Without moving he gets a seismic sense of the ground. Of one of his best friends laying beside him, and yet...feeling like she's an entire world away.

"I know," he says finally.

"We met our son in the market a few weeks back. It was weird.

He was tall. And an airbender."

The ground, unfortunately, won't give him too much insight. But if he's patient, if he listens, he still might catch it. The true nature of Toph steals out quietly, at unexpected moments . . . when it's safe enough to do so.

"Yeah?" The sound is still a little bit absent, but also genuinely pleased. There's even a faint smile there, if he can catch it.

"You did good, Twinkletoes.

Or you will, anyway.

Though the tall part . . . you're sure he's not Zuko's kid?"

There's a flash of a grin there, but it's quick -- only enough to say she's purposely messing with him and no more.

"What?" he says quickly before he can stop himself. But when his head whips around to look at her, and sees that ghost of a smile...he smiles too.

"You know...I might almost be okay with that. If for no other reason than because the idea of Zuko having an airbender for a kid would make both Azula and Ozai angrier than I ever could."

She snickers at that, and it's a release, bubbling up from her belly. Her arms and legs pull inward a bit, as though he's tickled her in the stomach. "That's the one thing I wish I could see."

Aang can't help but laugh too, because...the mental image of Tenzin being Zuko's son...for this split second musing, is far too entertaining for anyone's good.

"Really? That's the one thing?"

"Okay. Not the only thing." She's still snicker-smiling, even as her limbs come back to rest. "Maybe a couple of others. But Azula and Ozai with an airbender relative? Priceless."

"Not just a relative, but an airbender in line to be Fire Lord."

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