Authors Note: This is a one shot for Kimberly T. who was sweet enough to write me some Toph/Lu Ten and demanded my own take on the pairing in return. Apparently the concept of a drabble eludes me.
Triangle
When crown prince Lu Ten almost died at the siege of Ba Sing Se, General Iroh demanded an audience with the Earth King.
They came out of seclusion five days later when the impenetrable city had agreed to become a vassal state for the Fire Nation in exchange for the lives of its citizens. The Great Dragon Gate was etched into the inner wall and when Lu Ten's eyes fluttered open for the first time in a week Iroh was able to tell his beloved son that they had succeeded.
But by that time it was too late. An overzealous messenger had reported Lu Ten's fall, Azulon had named Ozai heir to the throne and Ursa had been banished.
Father and Son discussed their options and then next morning Iroh and the troops began the long march back to the Fire Nation. Lu Ten stayed behind, to find his aunt and discover the truth about what had happened.
At barely eighteen the prospect of traveling the massive Earth Kingdom alone was as much daunting as exciting. Then one bright spring day he stumbled into a pretty town called Gaoling and found his true love.
Earth Rumble.
The rumble was unlike anything Lu Ten had ever seen. Firebending displays were awe inspiring, beautiful and dangerous, but here bending was a brawl. A type of fighting that brought forth no memories of his time on the great wall.
He scraped together enough money to open a sword fighting school – he'd trained under the great Piandao after all, even though he couldn't say so – and stayed in the charming city; venturing out to look for Ursa only in the Rumble's off season.
Lu Ten had suggested the character of Fire Nation Man. Well, really he had wanted to be Fire Nation Man, but Xin Fu had rebuffed him as too normal looking.
And then four years into his self-imposed exile, frustrated by constant news of Ozai's war and the lack of regular letters from his father, just when Lu Ten was thinking it might be time to move along she appeared.
The little girl who stepped up to challenge Landslide after Xin Fu's customary taunt is tiny and delicate looking, like a noble or a merchant's daughter who has stolen servant's clothing and snuck out for the night. She can't be more than ten years old.
And she is the best earthbender he has ever seen.
When the stupefaction of the crowd turns into a roar of approval , they call her the Blind Bandit.
He has never seen anyone grin so wide.
Lu Ten and Xin Fu have an uneasy alliance, based mostly on Xin Fu's need for new blood and Lu Ten's obsessive love of Earth Rumble. Earthbenders who come to his school too focused on glory to learn the sword are passed off to the Rumble and in exchange he gets free tickets to every match and is allowed to meet the real fighters backstage.
Talking to the Bandit is a little like talking to Zuko. They're both so prickly about what they perceive as shortcomings. So Lu Ten doesn't gush or condescend and before she goes onstage she tells him her name is Toph.
It takes him less than five minutes of questioning to discern that he is the only one who knows this.
When she is eleven, on the last day of the Earth Rumble season, he follows Toph home.
Lu Ten is worried for her. They don't exactly discuss the intimate details of their lives – though the Bandit does love stories about his dad – but she's got so little life to draw from that he can tell her parents don't know she's a Rumbler. Considering her strange stepping form and the way she carries herself they might not even know she is a bender.
Once he finds out where she's from he spends a month developing a proposal he doesn't care about to come up with an excuse to be invited to dinner.
Lu Ten leaves the palatial estate with the funding to build seven other schools for swordsmen around the Earth Kingdom that he does not want and without ever seeing Toph.
He was expecting to have to pretend he didn't know her from Earth Rumble, he was expecting that she might not earthebend, but he hadn't expected that the Bei Fong's wouldn't acknowledge that they even have a daughter.
He offers to teach her swordfighting once. Toph raises an eyebrow in his direction, a motion she developed after he wiggled them around under her questing touch when she was 'seeing' his face.
"I'm blind."
"What does that have to do with anything?"
Toph walloped him hard on the arm and disappeared into the fighter's rooms, but the smile on her face was worth the bruise.
Lu Ten saw her rise, and he is there to see her fall.
His heart breaks with her as the boy with the strange tattoos knocks the Blind Bandit from the ring. He is already formulating encouragements in his head when Lu Ten's brain catches up with his eyes and he realizes that the boy didn't touch her at all.
And the strange blue tattoos on him are arrows.
He almost trips over himself in his mad rush to get home and write to his father that the Avatar is in Gaoling.
The scroll, delivered while he was out, informs him that his father is a traitor to the crown and a fugitive from justice and that as a deserter of the Fire Nation, the fake name he has been signing his letters with now has a bounty on its head.
It is signed Crown Princess Azula.
He can't go without saying goodbye to Toph.
But when he arrives, the whole house is in an uproar and his careful plan of sneaking in is ruined. When Lao Bei Fong roars that his daughter has been kidnapped something in Lu Ten goes very still. But by the end of the story he is laughing uproariously.
"Wait," He wheezed and tried to catch his breath. "You saw her bend and you still think she was kidnapped?"
So Lu Ten tells them everything he knows about Earth Rumble. He explains that Toph is not just a fair hand under pressure; she is champion and has been since she was ten years old. Poppy and Lao clutch each other's hands as they listen in bewilderment.
"She deserves better." He says in the end, missing his own father desperately. "And I think she's gone with the Avatar to find it."
Lu Ten chases every rumour, every whisper of a boy and his uncle travelling together. He keeps their wanted posters folded up inside his tunic and every so often at night he will trace the shape of his father's well-loved face, his cousin's angry red burn and hate his uncle for this stupid war and all it is doing to keep them apart.
Then after one very long day on the road, desperate for a bath and a good meal, Lu Ten wanders into a tiny roadside inn and finds his Aunt behind the counter.
"Huh." Is all he can think to say.
From the look on Ursa's face her thoughts are about the same.
When Ba Sing Se falls (again) Ursa gives him a quick hug and excuses herself from the room.
To her this means that even if both her children have become foolish and cruel they are still alive and safe, but to Lu Ten…
His father is going back to the Fire Nation in chains to await execution or face a lifetime of imprisonment and the Avatar is dead.
Lu ten is a jovial person, well liked as a general rule, but for the years of his exile he kept away from close relationships for fear of discovery.
Now the Avatar is dead and Toph has likely fallen with him.
"Well," Ursa asks when he finally rejoins her. "What's the plan?"
They plan too slowly.
In the time it takes them to cross the Earth Kingdom to the western coast the day of black sun has come and gone. The Avatar is revealed, Zuko abandons their nation to teach him and Iroh escapes prison. That night he and his Aunt buy a bottle of Fire Nation wine and drink to the victory of the ones they love.
On the day of the comet Lu Ten returns to where it all began.
He received the note stamped with the seal of the White Lotus only a week ago and left Ursa behind in his haste to make it to the rendezvous. He reaches the Dragon Gate only hours before the comet will appear, already feeling its power pulse beneath his skin.
His father is standing there, tall and proud. He is older than Lu Ten remembers and more visibly worn but there is a lightness about Iroh that he hasn't seen since his mother died.
"My son."
Lu Ten uses the very dignified offered hand to pull his father forward into an embrace.
Toph hit him with a flying tackle the second he set foot in the Jasmine Dragon.
It took a little while after that to explain how they knew one another.
She was taller - though not much - and more confident – though Lu Ten hadn't thought that was possible. Stronger, leaner, meaner, gentler and more of a woman all at the same time. Between her mischievous friendship with his father and her little sister-like relationship with his cousin she was practically part of the family.
When the group of fascinating young heroes began to pair off, he ensconced himself next to the small girl and demanded a recounting of her adventures.
She might be too young to want what her friends had but that was no reason for her to feel alone.
Zuko wanted him to be Fire Lord.
Lu Ten laughed hysterically and put his dignity conscious cousin in a headlock so he could muss up his hair. Eventually he agreed to crown prince so that Zuko didn't have to get married right away, but he refused to stay at the palace too long. He'd been away from the Fire Nation for almost seven years, and there was much work to be done in his homeland.
Toph was sixteen the first time she kissed him.
She had badgermoled everyone into coming to her triumphant return to the Earth Rumble, threatening, cajoling and promising Sokka the Water tribe warrior meat, and Lu Ten found himself back in the Earth Kingdom for the first time in four years, roaring with the crowd at the Blind Bandit's comeback fight.
She bent the stone like an earth goddess; no one else stood a chance.
The Avatar and Sokka leapt onstage as she raised the championship belt, the rest of them following with scarcely less enthusiasm. Toph submitted, grumbling to the group hug, but caught his arm when he turned to leave the platform.
Lu Ten wasn't sure quite how it happened, but suddenly he was dipped backwards – way back because Toph was still short even at sixteen – and her mouth was on his.
She dropped him when she broke the kiss, with a wicked grin and a triumphant whoop and all that Lu Ten could think for the next ten minutes was
Sweet Agni Above!
The incident didn't cross his mind as more than a joke until two years later when Toph official reached marrying age.
Her parents, in a display of the cleverness that had made the Bei Fong family rich, didn't try and drag Toph into the social whirl of Earth Kingdom nobility. Instead they threw her an enormous birthday party, introduced her to the world and let the suitors swarm, assuming that once all the young men of appropriate background were there to choose from Toph would find someone she liked.
Instead she ran away to the Fire Nation.
Zuko granted her asylum on the condition that she make herself useful, so Toph –being Toph – enlisted in the army.
Lu Ten, of course, didn't know any of this until his platoon returned to the city to find a gorgeous woman screaming obscenities at the recruits on the training field.
When she turned and threw herself at him with a delighted cry of greeting, Lu Ten was frozen; half in surprise by how much she had changed and half in narrow eyed suspicion at the smug look on his first Lieutenant's face.
Toph decided that life in the Fire Nation suited her, and opted to stay.
Lu Ten looked for more assignments away from the capital and tried not to go crazy.
She griped about his absence and stuck to his side like a burr when he returned. Toph didn't seem to think there was any difference in their relationship, and there shouldn't have been. She was twelve years his junior by Agni's fire, he had known her since she as a child.
But every painful function when he was enjoying the attention of all the lovely court butterflies, Toph would wander past with a smart remark or a cutting joke or her truly maniacal laughter and everyone else in the room would seem dull and uninteresting.
Lu Ten wanted her and it was driving him mad.
He held out.
Lu Ten watched her laugh and dance with other men, watched her flirt with the soldiers and tease the guards and tried to find someone else who might make him happy. But when she asked him to come with her to Sokka and Suki's wedding he couldn't bring himself to refuse.
It was a beautiful ceremony and a riotous party as only 'Team Avatar' could throw, but when the bride and groom said their goodnights Toph slipped away.
It took him almost an hour to find her, hidden away in the garden, slightly teary-eyed from the emotional amplification of too much wine.
"I've only ever loved one man like that," She explained eventually. "And he doesn't love me back."
Lu Ten saw red.
"Well," He said tightly. "Then Sokka's an idiot."
Her laughter was a choked hiccuping sound and for a moment she looked at Lu Ten like she might beat him senseless.
"It's not Sokka."
She seized him by the jaw and the back of his neck and pulled him down into a dizzying kiss.
Ursa was delighted at the prospect.
Zuko was bewildered.
Iroh made them promise to give him far too many grandchildren.