Boulders

Troctolite

Just a heads up to sensitive peeps: this chapter starts out fairly dark. There's a lot of blood and stabbing. If you don't want to read it, just know that Toph had a bad nightmare and start at 'Then Kisame-sensei was there.'

You have been warned.

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That night, Toph dreamed.

She was back in the camp, stifled sobs coming from behind her, and a single small hand fisted in the silk of her kimono.

The two men she'd cut down were in front of her, dripping blood from wounds she'd caused. Her hand moved to her side, fingers grasping for her sword-

It wasn't there.

This time, she was the one stabbed, over and over, the silvery blade if her own sword burying itself in her flesh. She screamed, echoed by the kids, the children behind her as she died right in front of them.

The tip of the katana, dripping warm blood, slowly approached until it rested against her neck. She had hardly a second to realize what was about to happen when-

A gleaming red smile slashed itself across her throat and Toph couldn't breathe!

She writhed back and away and fell, just like before when Ran had taken her. She reached up, hand sticky with her own lifeblood, grasping desperately for something (someone) who wasn't there.

A strong, calloused hand caught hers and she swung, barely tethered. Toph heard the strained scream as bone broke, and the whirr of boomerang as it cut through the air. It was followed by the swish swoop of a sword, thrown end over end.

She knew where she was.

The words came, the words that had haunted her nightmares ever since Sozin's comet where she'd been closer to absolute death than ever before.

"I don't think Boomerang is coming back Toph," Sokka's achingly familiar voice rang out. Toph felt the burn of tears in her eyes, the slip of sweaty and bloody hands. "I think this is the end."

Like always, Toph opened her mouth, but no words came out.

She'd had so many things to say to him, all twisting and churning inside of her, but they'd been about to die, Sokka by angry firebenders and herself swinging, only hanging to life by the Water Tribesman's sweat slicked grip on her fingers.

The hold on her hand suddenly tightened, squeezing hard, and she found herself being hoisted slowly upwards. Another hand, this one clammy and cold, clamped around her wrist as soon as she was close enough to reach, pulling until she could feel the thin metal walkway underneath her hands.

The grip on her didn't loosen.

Toph felt a surge of desperate fear as the frigid fingers dug into her flesh hard enough to leave bruises.

This was not Sokka.

"Little girl," a gurgling, raspy voice sing-songed. More blood dripped; she was in a puddle of it now, throat bleeding heavily. This time, though, it wasn't hers.

It was from him, from his slashed neck. He shouldn't be talking with a death wound like that!

Toph finally began struggling, prising at his iron grip, wheezing helplessly, trying to do something, anything!

"Little girl," he wheezed in barely a whisper. His face was somehow close enough for her to hear the blood bubbling in the back of his throat as he talked, to feel his putridly warm breath on her face. "Why did you kill me?"