Author's Note: I was going to do another sad "but-soft-what-light-through-yon-window-Juliet-is- the-sun-and-they-can-never-be" angsty piece. But. I'm very very very very late in this, so you get some silliness instead. (And to think, I'm finally finishing this just in time to get started on Zutara week…. Sigh.)

Day 7- Realization

When they were sixteen years old, Aang realized something that would forever change his life.

"—then, everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked."

Aang lifted his face from his hands, his featured arranged in disbelief and red with embarrassment. "What?" he sputtered. The familiar words that Katara had so often used to artfully spin a narration of the war's happenings echoed through his obnoxiously disproportionate ears. How did that even relate to… "That doesn't even make sense, Sokka!"

The Water Tribe warrior's eyebrow rose comically as he stroked his heavily dark-stubbled chin in thought. "Doesn't it," he prodded ominously. The similarities were blatant, Sokka could see, so it should have just been obvious to Aang why he was right, even in comparing the situation in such a way. It was, in fact, genius.

Aang interrupted his musings. "No," he snipped, frustrated, "it doesn't. We weren't talking about the war or the Fire Nation."

"But, my young protégée, you never would have even known Toph if it weren't for the Fire Nation attacking." Sokka's blue eyes closed smugly. Ah, he thought, I love when others recognize my genius. Based on the look of shock on the Avatar's face, Sokka knew that in that moment the boy had done just that. "So therefore"—for dramatic effect, he cleared his throat—"I repeat: everything changed when the Fire Nation attacked."

The sixteen-year-old boy huffed. He threw the gnawed rice cake in his hand at the older man's head. "You're a dunce, Sokka. I was a kid when the attacks began and Toph wasn't even born then."

This time, Sokka's answer included first a roll of his eyes. "I'm the dunce? You're the one who just came to me in a panic because you only just realized that Toph is a girl."

If his cheeks weren't so violent red, his face would have seemed ashen and pale. "That's not—I—I knew that Toph is a girl. I've always known that." But still, his eyes skirted about anywhere but the man he'd come to see as a brother.

Sokka crossed his arms over his broad chest—he was getting so good at pretending to be un-amused by hilarious situations such as this (and it was quite the talent, if he did say so himself—which he did). At least when it benefitted the situation, anyway. "Of course you did. That would explain why you came running in here in a cold sweat chanting, 'Toph is a…girl' as though you were possessed."

"Well, I—you don't—she—" Aang's fists curled in on themselves and his entire body went stiff like a board. "You think this is funny. It's not like you're so suave, yourself."

Sokka wondered when he'd been learning these new, horribly inaccurate and unrelated words.

"I'm suave!" he shouted. The hit to his ego reflected in the way the veins in his neck strained and his eyes bulged. "I wouldn't be married now if I wasn't good with the ladies," he argued as though it was an obvious fact. At the thought of his wife, Sokka wondered why he was here having this ridiculously asinine argument with the little bald monk rather than with his pregnant-and-about-to-burst wife (because dear Yue, he was about to become a father and oh-spirits-what-if-he-missed-it?).

"There's no way Suki married you because of that." She loved him, definitely, but Suki was no stranger to Sokka's lacking 'smooth moves' when it came to wooing women.

This time, Sokka crossed his arms defensively. "I dated the moon spirit. If that's not game, then nothing is."

"I doubt she liked you because you were a charmer," Aang mumbled quietly, almost to himself, knowing all-too-well that speaking of the late Princess was a sore topic.

"I'm charming!" Sokka's face was red with indignation and as he puffed and huffed in frustration, it finally reoccurred to him why they were hiding in the storage closet of his home in the first place. "Besides, this isn't about me. We're talking about you and Toph and how much of an idiot you are."

"I'm not an idiot."

Sokka hung his head in the dim candle light. "You've been traveling with her for four years. Her being a girl shouldn't be a shock now."

"But—I didn't—she's a girl—she was kissing Haru! Toph doesn't kiss people!" He didn't even think she had a romantic notion about her. She was far too interested in training and toe picking and rock slinging and subjecting her young earthbending students to "educational renditions" of "the Melon Lord" and other things that girls just didn't like. She was brash and showed favour to almost no one and she'd rather punch people in the shoulder and risk splintering their bones than even hug— "Why was she kissing him?"

Sokka's blue eyes stared at him with a flat tone and he sighed. "She probably likes him, Aang. That is what tends to happen when a boy likes a girl and she likes him back."

"But she can't like him," the Avatar stuttered out weakly. "She's Toph. She doesn't like anyone."

This time, Sokka had had enough of Aang's backward and circular thinking. "Whether you want to believe it or not, kid," he pushed open the closet door and stepped out into the light, "Toph is a girl and now she is a girl that kisses boys. Get over it or don't, but that's not going to change."

He shut the door behind him, leaving Aang to his dimwitted musings, and he stalked off to find Suki (who he should have been with that whole time, because what if she went into labour? He had to be there to hold her hand, because she couldn't possibly face that pain without her husband to be strong for her and hold her hand...right?).

Not long after, Aang was pulled roughly from his hidden sanctuary by a rather indignant Toph, insisting that he was supposed to meet with her over-an-hour-ago to teach her to ride the elephant koi and if-he-was-planning-to-skip-out-on-her-she-was-goin g-to-put-him-through-hell-during-training. He had neither the words to retort nor the will to pull away as she dragged him towards the bay and ripped his tunic from over his shoulders ("Oh shut up, Twinkletoes, it's not like I can see you anyway. Don't be so self conscious.").

And when they were out in the water, soaring through the waves and white foam, Aang clung to the koi and Toph clung to him. He would be a liar if he had ever said he didn't run his hands along her small, smooth, female waist ("Just—eh—making sure you're not going to fall; I promise.") and he'd be a bigger liar if he'd said he didn't smile at the feel or the imagined sensation of what it might be like if Toph had been clinging to his shirt and kissing him with those pale pink lips instead of Haru.

That day, his whole view of life had altered just enough to make him look around in new wonder. Because now, he realized that Toph was really a girl and if Sokka was right, she liked boys and they liked her.

A strange emotion filled in his chest and for the months following, he would dwell on it and wonder what it meant to want to be closer to his sensei and why the engrained image of her locking lips with the taller, older, quieter earthbender made his lungs clench up and his arms feel warm and his eyes sharpen angrily.

But in that moment as the elephant koi skipped over the water and plunged through choppy waves, he was simply focused on one thing alone.

Toph was a girl. And Toph kissed boys.

He was a boy, right?