The Girl With the Bread

The Games Begin

For a moment, the cameras hold Toph's downcast eyes as what she says sinks in. Then Sokka sees his own face, mouth half-open in a mix of surprise and protest, magnified on every screen he sees as he realizes, Me! She means me! He presses his lips together and starters at the floor, hoping this will conceal the emotions starting to boil up inside of him.

Bato looks even more shocked than him. "Is that why..." he trails off, but Sokka and Toph and every other person in Avatar must know what he was going to say. There can now be only one reason Toph volunteered for him.

Bato shakes his head and regains his composure. "Oh, that is a piece of bad luck." The crowd is murmuring in agreement, even giving a few agonized cries.

"It's not good," agrees Toph.

"Well, I don't think any of us can blame you, it'd be hard not to fall for that young man," Bato says. "He didn't know?"

She shakes her head. "Not until now."

He allows his eyes to flicker up to the screen long enough to see that the blush on his cheeks is unmistakable.

"Wouldn't you love to pull him back out here and get a response?" Bato asks the audience, and the crowd screams assent. "Sadly, rules are rules, and Sokka Everdeen's time has been spent. Well, best of luck to you, Toph Beifong, and I think I speak for all of the Avatar when I say our hearts go with yours."

The roar of the crowd is deafening. Toph has absolutely wiped the rest of them off the map with her little declaration of love. When the audience finally quiets down, she chokes out a small, "Thank you," and returns to her seat next to him. They stand for the anthem. He has to raise his head out of the required respect and cannot avoid seeing that every screen is now dominated by a shot of him and Toph, mere inches away from each other. Poor tragic them.

But he knows better.

After the anthem, the tributes file back into the Training Center lobby and onto the elevators. He makes sure to veer into a car that does not contain Toph, though he notices that her hands are grasping at thin air like she's waiting for him to grab her. The crowd slows their entourages of stylists and mentors and chaperones, so they only have each other for company. No one speaks. His elevator stops to deposit four tributes before he is alone and then finds the doors opening on the twelfth floor.

Toph has only just stepped from her car when he is in front of her, hands out, ready to hurt her. But he can't. He can't bring himself to touch her, in her beautiful dress with her beautiful eyes. Instead, he pours his feelings into his words.

"What did you do that for?"

She lifts her head up, and he realizes that he is nearly two heads taller than her. "What did I do what for?" she asks like she doesn't already know.

"You know what. Why would you go saying those things about me?"

She cocks her head to the side, something glinting in her eyes. He finds himself being pulled in, accepting the fact that his face is getting closer and closer to hers. His eyes are closing. Her eyes are closing.

"Why do you think?" she whispers, and their lips have just barely brushed against each other when the elevators open again and the whole crew is there. Ty Lee, Iroh, Suko, and Satoru.

"What's going on?" says Ty Lee, and they immediately jerk away. Sokka shakes his head, and Toph lowers her head again. He can't believe what he just did.

"This was your idea, wasn't it?" he says to Iroh.

He shrugs. "It was Toph's idea. I just helped her with it."