It was a little past two in the morning when Toph Beifong arrived at her home in Republic City. The darkness did not bother the blind woman, and she walked more confidently at night than anyone in broad daylight ever could.

A young girl sat on a chair in the front hall of her house, knees pulled up to her chest so that her feet were not on the floor. The summer night was warm, but the girl was shivering in her long nightgown.

The door at the end of the hall opened and a figure appeared, silhouetted in the moonlight. Then it closed and everything was thrown into darkness once more.

Toph heard a small sound and swiveled her head, trying to find out where it had come from. She didn't feel anyone in the room, but that told her almost nothing. They could be standing on something, or hanging from the ceiling.

"Tenzin?" she called, although somehow she knew that the avatar's son was not behind this. He was not a master airbender yet; he wouldn't have been able to keep a ball of air spinning silently for this long. Just in case, though, she snapped out, "Kid, if you're in here again and I catch you, I'm going to earthbend your scrawny butt all the way back to the southern air temple."

Without making a sound, the girl let go of her knees and placed her feet on the floor. Even though it was pitch dark, she knew that the woman would be able to see her now.

Toph's wary frown softened into one of annoyance. "Lin," she said, quietly, "What are you doing awake?"

"I had a bad dream," came the reply. "I couldn't sleep."

Toph's eyebrows twitched together into a line. Her daughter had been having nightmares more and more often, and it worried the earthbender to no end. Lin was ten years old, after all. She should have grown out of these things by now.

"Where is your father?" the woman asked. "He knows how to deal with bad dreams better than I do."

"He's out," answered the girl in a soft voice.

Toph sighed, then sat on the floor and patted a spot in front of her crossed legs. "Come here and tell me about it."

The chief of police felt her daughter slide off of the chair and sit down, and heard the girl take a deep breath.

"It was raining," Lin said. "And dark. But not dark like nighttime. It was dark like... like smoke in the air. And storm clouds." She paused momentarily, as if trying to remember the dream. "I was kneeling on the ground, and there were these people all around me."

She stopped again, and Toph felt her daughter shiver and pull her knees up to her chest.

"One of them had a mask, and he was asking me to... to do something bad. To tell him where my friends were hiding. And I said no, and he said so be it, and then he sort of walked behind me and put his hand on the side of my face."

Toph interrupted her daughter, trying not to sound as worried as she felt. "Where on your face did he put his hand?" she asked, holding out one of her own for Lin to demonstrate with. Her daughter took it and shaped her mother's fingers around her temple and jawline. Toph swallowed nervously and dropped her hand. "Tell me the rest," she said, but she thought she knew how the dream would end.

"Then he did something and..." Lin's voice broke and then became muffled, as though she had stuffed her face into the folds of her nightgown. "And it hurt, mama. And then I couldn't bend at all."

Toph listened to her daughter cry, unsure of what to do. As the chief of police, weeping children were not what she was trained to deal with.

Cautiously, the woman reached out and found Lin's hand with her own. "It's going to be okay," she said, hesitantly. "It was just a dream."

"But what if it was real?" her daughter sobbed. "What if it really happened?"

"Lin," said Toph, sharply. "Listen to me. Are you listening?" The girl sniffled, and the earthbender moved on the assumption that she had nodded as well. The woman found her daughter's shoulders with her hands and gripped them tight, saying, "If anybody ever hurt you, or caught you, or took your bending away, I would hunt them down and I wouldn't stop until I found you."

Lin sniffled again and quietly pointed out, "You won't always be here. Someday you're going to be dead."

Toph smiled slightly. "I would earthbend out of my grave if I had to," she answered. "I will always be here for you, Lin. Always."