The Girl With the Bread

The Hunt

It takes a while to explain the situation to Toph. How Azula store the food from the supply pile before Sokka blew it up, how she tried to take enough to stay alive but enough that anyone would notice it, how she wouldn't question the safety of berries they were about to eat themselves.

"I wonder how she found us," Toph says. "My fault, I guess, if I'm as loud as you say."

They were about as hard to follow as a herd of cattle, but he tries to be kind. "And she's very clever, Toph. Well, she was. Until you outfoxed her."

"Not on purpose. Doesn't seem fair. I mean, we would have both been dead too, if she hadn't had her fill first."

"I actually recognized them, then," he says. "We call them nightlock."

"Even the name sounds deadly," she says. "I - I apologize. I shouldn't have - I'm sorry."

"Don't apologize. Just means we're one step closer to home, right?"

She nods. "I'll toss the rest." She gathers the berries and goes to throw them into the woods.

"Wait!" he cries. He finds the leather pouch that belonged to Jet and fills it with a few handfuls of berries. "If they fooled Azula, maybe they can fool Zuko too. If he's chasing us or something and we drop the pouch and then he eats them -"

"Then hello, District Twelve," she finishes.

"That's it." He secures the pouch to his belt.

"He'll know where we are now," she says. "If he was anywhere nearby and saw that hovercraft, he'll know we killed her and come after us."

Toph's right. This could be just the opportunity Zuko's been waiting for. But if they run now, there's the meat to cook and their fire will be another sign of their whereabouts. "Let's make a fire. Right now." He begins to gather branches and brush.

"Are you ready to face him?" she asks.

"I'm ready to eat," he tells her. "Better to cook our food while we have the chance. If he knows we're here, he knows. But also knows there are two of us and probably assumes we were hunting Azula. That means you're recovered. And the fire means we're not hiding, we're inviting him here. Would you show up?"

"Hell yeah," she says. "But I'm not Zuko."

No kidding.

In a few minutes, he has the rabbits and the squirrel roasting, wrapped in leaves, baking in the coals. They take turns gathering greens and keeping a careful watch for Zuko, but as Sokka anticipated, he doesn't make an appearance. When the food's cooked, he packs most of it up, leaving them each a rabbit's leg to eat as they walk.

He wants to move higher into the woods, climb a good tree, and make camp for the night, but Toph resists. "I can't see like you can, Bright Eyes, and I don't think I could ever fall asleep fifty feet above the ground."

"It's not safe to stay out in the open."

"Can't we just go back to the cave? It's near water and it's easy to defend."

He sighs. Several more hours of walking - or should he say crashing - through the woods to reach an area they'll just have to leave in the morning to hunt. But Toph doesn't ask for much. She's followed his instructions all day and he's sure if the roles were reversed, she wouldn't make him spend the night in a tree. It dawns on him that he hasn't been very nice to Toph today. Nagging her over how loud she was, screaming at her for disappearing. The playful romance they had sustained in the cave has disappeared out in the open, with the threat of Zuko looming over them. Iroh has probably just about had it with him. And as for the audience...