The Girl With the Bread

The Cave

The sound of rain drumming on the roof of his house gently pulls Sokka towards consciousness. He fights to return to sleep, though, wrapped in a warm cocoon of blankets, safe at home. He's vaguely aware that his head aches. Possibly he has the flu and that's why he's been allowed to stay in bed, even though he can tell he's been asleep a long time. His father's hand strokes his cheek and he doesn't want to push it away as he would in wakefulness, never wanting him to know how he much craves that gentle touch. How much he misses him even though he still doesn't trust him. There's a voice, the wrong voice, not his father's, and he's scared.

"Sokka," it says. "Sokka, can you hear me?"

His eyes open and his sense of security vanishes. He's not home, not with his father. He's in a dim, chilly cave, his bare feet freezing despite the cover, the air tainted with the unmistakable smell of blood. The haggard, pale, face of a girl slides into view, and after an initial joint of alarm, he feels better. "Toph."

"Hey," she whispers. "Good to hear your voice again."

"How long have I been out?" he asks.

"Not sure. I woke up yesterday night and you were next to me in a very scary pool of blood," she says. "I think it's stopped, but I wouldn't try to sit up or anything."

He gingerly lifts his hand to his head and finds it bandaged. This simple gesture leaves him weak and dizzy. Toph feels the space in front of her and finally puts a bottle to his lips. He drinks thirstily.

"You seem better," he tells her.

"Much better. Whatever you shot in my leg did the trick. By this morning almost all the swelling was gone."

She doesn't seem angry about his tricking her, drugging her, and running off to the feast. Maybe he's just too beat up and he's going to hear it later. But for the moment, she's all gentleness.

"Did you eat?" he asks.

"Yeah. Sorry, not sorry, but I basically finished off that groosling before I realized it might have to last a while," she says. "So yeah, actually, I guess I'm a little sorry for that."

"No, you're good. You need to eat. I'll go hunting soon."

"Not too soon, okay? You just let me do this for a while. Let me take care of you."

He doesn't really have much of a choice. Toph feeds him bites of groosling scraps and raisins and makes him drink plenty of water. She rubs some warmth back into his feet and wraps them in her jacket before tucking the sleeping bag back up around his chin.

"Your boots and socks are still damp and the weather's not helping," she says. There's a clap of thunder as if to prove her point. Rain drips through several holes in the ceiling, but Toph has built a sort of canopy above his head by wedging the square of plastic between some rocks.

"I wonder what brought on the storm. I mean, who's the target?" Toph says thoughtfully.

"Zuko and Yaling," he says without thinking. "Azula will be her den somewhere, and Mai... she cut me and then..."

"I assumed one of them had to be dead. The anthem took longer than usual," she says. "Did you kill her?"

"No. Yaling broke her skull with a rock."

She whistles. "Lucky she didn't catch you, too."

The memory of the feast returns full-force and he feels sick. "She did. But she let me go." Then, of course, he has to tell her. About things he's kept to himself because she was too sick to ask and he wasn't ready to relive, anyway. Like the explosion and his ear and Aang's death and Jet haunting his nightmares and the bread from District 11. All of which leads to what happened with Yaling and how she was paying off a debt of sorts.