The Girl With the Bread

Sugar Berries

Getting the broth into Toph takes an hour of coaxing, begging, threatening, and yes, kissing, but finally she empties the pot. Sokka lets her drift off to sleep and then attends to his own needs, wolfing down a supper of groosling and roots while he watches the daily report in the sky. No new casualties. Still, he and Toph have given the audience a fairly interesting day. Hopefully, the Gamemakers will allow them a peaceful night.

He automatically looks around for a good tree to nest in before he realizes that's over. At least for a while. He can't very well leave Toph unguarded on the ground. He left the scene of her last hiding place on the bank of the stream untouched - how could he conceal it? - and they're a scant fifty yards downstream. He puts on his glasses, places his weapons in readiness, and settles down to keep watch.

The temperature drops rapidly and soon he's chilled to the bone. Eventually, he gives in and slides into the sleeping bag with Toph. It's toasty warm and he snuggles down gratefully until he realizes it's more than warm, it's overly hot because the bag is reflecting Toph's body heat, which is spiked with fever. He checks her forehead and discovers it's burning and dry. He doesn't know what to do. Leave her in the bag and hope the excessive heat breaks the fever? Take her out and hope the night air cools her off? He ends up just dampening a strip of bandage and laying it across her forehead. Silly, perhaps, but he's afraid to do anything drastic.

He spends the night half-sitting, half-lying next to Toph, refreshing the bandage and trying not to dwell on the fact that by teaming up with her, he's made himself far more vulnerable than he was when he was on his own. Tethered to the ground, on guard, with a very sick person to take care of. But he knew she was injured. And still he came after her. He's just going to have to trust that whatever instinct sent him to find her was a good one.

When the sky turns rosy, he notices the sheen of Toph's lip and discovers the fever has broken. There aren't words to describe the relief he feels when realizes this. She's not back to normal, but well enough that he knows she will live. Last night, when he was gathering vines, he came upon a bush of Aang's berries. He strips off the fruit and mashes it up in the broth pot with cold water.

Toph's sitting up when he returns, her hands feeling the ground around her desperately. Her head jerks up when she hears him coming. "I woke up and you were gone," she says accusingly. "I was worried about you."

He has to stifle a laugh at that. "You were worried about me? Have you noticed yourself lately?"

"I thought Zuko and Mai might have found you. They like to hunt at night," she says, still serious.

"Mai? Who is that?"

"The girl from Two. She's still alive, right?"

"Yes," he tells her. "There's just them and us and Yaling and Azula. How do you feel?"

"Better than yesterday," she says. "This is an enormous improvement over the mud. Clean clothes and medicine and a sleeping bag..." Her milky white eyes widen slightly as she speaks. "And you."

Oh, right. The whole romance thing. He reaches out to touch her cheek and she catches his hand and presses it to her lips. He remembers his mother doing this same thing to his father and wonders where she learned it. Certainly not from her mother and the mayor.

"No more kisses for you until you've eaten," he says.

They get her propped up against the wall and she obediently swallows the spoonfuls of the berry mush he feeds her. She still refuses the groosling.

"You didn't sleep," Toph says.

"I'm all right," he says, but the truth is that he's exhausted.

"Sleep now. I'll stay on guard. I'll wake you if anything happens," she says. He hesitates, because surely she realizes that she can't actually keep watch. She must sense his reluctance. "I promise I have keen ears, and besides, you can't stay up forever, Sokka."