Toph Bei-Fong returns to the court of the Fire Lord each year with a regularity that belies her normally casual approach to punctuality and manners.

From time to time, she even waits on the invitation.

Following, each year, on her dusty heels is an entourage: maids and footmen and chaperones (all of whom Toph's family insists on, and whom Toph allows on the tacit understanding that they'll kick back and leave her alone as soon as the traveling party is out of sight of the Bei-Fong estate); an ambassador or two; perhaps a few cousins, the scions of influential families out looking to make the right sort of international acquaintances. They bring with them mountains of ceremonial greetings and good-will gifts, the promise of some obscenely elaborate meals sponsored by the royal family, and, most importantly, the promise of a smile on the face of the Fire Lord's heir.

And so, each year, the court of the Fire Lord welcomes Toph Bei-Fong. Truthfully, they'd welcome her for Zuko's improved mood alone. He's not as stormy as he once was, but the fierce scowl on his face one year when he ominously forbade anyone from commenting (again) on Toph's bare feet, or trying to lead her about by the hand, reminded them that the notoriously lightning-quick temper of Zuko's family line is not strictly metaphorical. They court has grown philosophical and resigned to Toph's perpetual lapsed manners (it helps that she did, eventually, start washing and dressing for dinner, after a little encouragement on Iroh's part) and even, grudgingly, to her relaxed attitude towards her own aristocratic breeding. Zuko, though much saner than his recent forebears, is not the gentlest of lords. What's a little dirt? Life is simply easier when Toph is in residence.

This year, as always, Zuko is the first to greet her. "Welcome back," he says, with the smile she can always hear in his scratchy voice. "Why do your parents let you keep coming here? They must know by now that all you do is gamble and start fights, while your maids lie around drinking tea."

Toph shrugs easily; the playful accusations aren't far off the mark. "They're hoping I'll meet some nobleman's son here and decide to marry him."

"Marry into the Fire Nation? Aren't there enough Earth Kingdom nobles to go around?"

"Sure there are. But they know I won't marry any of them. They can't even get me to show myself at the Earth Kingdom court! But I come here all by myself, without even being yelled at. They're desperate enough to see me married off that they'd welcome a spider-bear as a son-in-law, if he came from a good family. They think this is the best chance they've got."

Zuko laughs, knowing as he does that though she's being flip as she says it, it's all perfectly true.

She usually stays at least a month, and, Zuko's schedule permitting, they'll spar more days than not. Toph likes to fight like she likes to breathe, and facing off against her always makes Zuko simultaneously nostalgic for the hectic freedom of his exiled years, and achingly grateful for the now. Until this present phase of his life began, most of the fighting Zuko did in his life was in deadly earnest: those endless practice sessions to hone his skills so his father would might bestow a word of praise, lessons to master his uncle's special skills (and weren't those for the same reason?), battles against dangerous enemies, battles for his freedom, for his life. Very few of his fights could have been said to be for the sake of fun. Very few of Toph's battles have been fought for any other reason. He likes to watch her. She's wild, and creative, and he doesn't fight much against earth-benders-lo, this peaceful age-so it's always a welcome change of pace.

Zuko can take care of himself, but it still makes his bodyguards nervous to see an earth-bender hurling rocks at the Fire Lord's only remaining heir, even in these quieter and better days, so Zuko and Toph hold their sparring sessions in a secluded canyon off of the palace grounds. The bodyguards keep well-distant from the fighting, which is safer for all involved. "I'll send up a flare if I need you," Zuko had dryly told the captain, when the bodyguards objected the first time. The captain had backed down. He might not have liked it, but the initial match had been Iroh's suggestion to begin with, and though Iroh was mellow, as Fire Lords went, Zuko himself was a blistered reminder that it was, as a rule, unwise to argue with your Fire Lord.

Toph loves being able to cut loose, and the ground is littered with the half-ton tokens of her enthusiasm over the years, charred and partially melted. The battered canyon is a monument to her idea of fun, Zuko thinks fondly, looking at them one day as he and Toph enter for a round of fighting. A monument and a memento, an oversized token warning of the force and power of her personality. It would almost be a tautology to describe earth-bending Toph as a force of nature: she shaped and reshaped her surroundings, casually, constantly; she carved her name and the memory of herself into all the ground that passed beneath her feet. She had written her very personality into the earth here. Into his home. Into his family. She was a true part of their tragically, blessedly shrunken little scrap of a family, like a cousin who just happened to live in a different country; not blood kin, but she and Iroh loved each other as if they'd known each other all their lives, and she was one of the precious few people in the world Zuko had ever felt he could confide in. She was natural to this place now. Natural to his life, as if, like the scarred stone of the canyon walls, she had always been there.

The sparring is really just the same as it's always been, intense and energizing, but Zuko finds himself getting lost in these thoughts while he navigates the old sunken boulders and tries to dodge the new ones that Toph is hurtling at him through the air. It's been many years since Sozin's Comet came and went, and this year, he's feeling the weight of their long friendship pressing strangely against his chest: this awareness, not new, but suddenly fresh and strong, of how much Toph has come to mean to them. Time has not dulled her edge in the slightest, though, and Zuko ends up on the defensive more often than he should. He finds himself losing his focus, not attacking when the chances come.

She can tell. She might be blind, but she's got the keenest battle sense he's ever encountered outside of his own blood relatives. She taunts him with a shower of petty gravel at him to get his attention, but when he only diverts it around him, distracted, instead of hurling it back, red-hot, with a wave of fire, she gets annoyed.

"Hey! Hey! Are you paying attention, Prince?"

She follows up the gravel with a mighty whomp, and mud surges up from the earth in front of him. He thinks she meant to bury him up to the neck, but he manages to leap aside, and the mud only gets up to his knees. He succeeds in pulling himself loose of the sucking earth, but he's completely on the defensive now, forced to dodge one attack after another. She makes the ground uneven, to keep him from getting his footing, rocky pillars bursting out of the earth everywhere he stumbles. He finally falls, rolls, keeps on rolling till he has some momentum, and gets back on his feet. He doesn't stop moving after that; if he stops, she won't let him get up a second time. He tries to return it, sending bursts of flame not quite at her, but off to her side. There's a deep pond in the canyon, and he thinks he can maneuver her into it. If he can keep fire coming fast enough, she may not catch on until it's too late; floating in water, she won't be able to move the earth.

It almost works. It's a game, this volley of elements, earth for fire, fire for earth, but at the last minute, she brings the ground out from underneath his feet, and he comes tumbling down a newly made hill to land at her feet. She's right next to the water now, and he could reach up and push her in, probably do it before she can stop him, he's so close to her, but when he reaches to push her, he suddenly seizes up.

Heart pounding, the sound of his own blood thundering though his head, he realizes what was distracting him, and he can't touch her; it's not right to touch her. He can feel her body heat, hear her panting breath, smell her sweat. This close, so close, he can't ignore the fact that she's a woman now-how did he not see this last year? the year before? how long, now, has he not being seeing this?-a woman, and oh, shaped like it. It's not proper to touch her.

Toph feels the aborted movement, knows that he stopped, knows how close she came to a dunking, but she doesn't know why, and it irritates her. She steps back, right up to the edge of the water, then throws her weight forward onto her foot and sweeps her arms up. Stone and dirt and grass and mud come rushing up in a wave, carrying him fifteen feet towards the canyon wall and slamming him against it so hard he can't breathe for a minute. He's pinned there, and she stomps past him, not even turning her head to growl, "You had me. Don't patronize me."

Zuko's face is flushed and his head ringing as he digs himself out of the now-loose heap of rock. He's got to get out here before a guard comes to see why Toph is leaving alone, or Zuko will have to sit through an hour of I told you sos from the captain of the guard.

This sort of thing has been happening a lot, lately.

It happens several times, actually. He gets better at not being distracted by her during the fights, but without being able to bring himself lay hands on her, he keeps not winning the fights he should win, and getting slammed up against a cliffside every time this happens is giving him a constant headache. He doesn't know what to do. It's difficult to incapacitate someone with fire without maiming them. Toph has no difficulty breaking a circle of flame with earth, and he would sooner slit his belly open than deliberately burn her. She feels like she's not winning right, and he knows he's not losing right, and it sours the pleasure of her visit for both of them.

Toph begins to let her manners slide more than she should-she may be a hero and a war veteran, but she's a guest here, and she's pushing it when she snaps and snarls at old acquaintances of the court who try to make conversation with her. When Toph sulks through a picnic breakfast, even unflappable Iroh raises an eyebrow (the gesture is totally lost on her) and he asks Zuko, after Toph leaves the picnic too early, "Nephew, what have you done to make that girl so angry at you?"

Zuko doesn't know how to explain it. He says, lamely, "She thinks I'm not taking her seriously."

"When she talks, don't you listen? When she throws rocks at you, don't you dodge? How can she think you are not taking her seriously?"

"It's because she always wins. When we fight, I mean."

"Always wins! Against you? She is a very talented bender, but I think you should be able to win some of the time, Zuko. Are you not feeling well?"

"No. I mean yes, or no! I'm feeling fine. I think."

"You think?"

He flushes, even more confused by himself than Iroh must have been by that answer. "I feel fine. I'm not sick. I'm just having a hard time for some reason." He feels sixteen again, and unutterably stupid.

Iroh smiles with such understanding that Zuko would hit his head on the table, if it didn't already ache. "Maybe you are having difficulty fighting her now because she has turned into a woman."

"I fight women. I've fought lots of women. Lots of times."

"But you knew her when she was a girl."

Zuko toys with the idea of mentioning that he'd known Azula when she was a girl, and he'd never minded fighting her, but then abandons it, knowing that Iroh will simply point out that Azula was his sister and Toph is not. Since this is far too close to the real problem, Zuko simply says, "Maybe," and refuses to discuss it further.

He's getting tired of losing, and his bones ache from her revenges.

He finds her, after that abortive breakfast, in the palace gardens, and thinks, not for the first time, how poorly these well-groomed gardens suit her. If she'd paint her face, wear a frock with feathers, jeweled slippers, sit upright and still, this might become her, but even when she's dressed for court, she forgoes the frills and tends ruins the illusion of grace by twitching. As if she's come to share Zuko's opinion of the suitability of the gardens, Toph is currently ruining the lawn by slamming her fist into the earth, causing egg-sized stones to fly free. She's aiming them at the pond, long abandoned by its turtle-duck family, and when they hit the surface, water splashes up fifteen feet into the air. He feels the thunder and the rain long before he lays eyes on her.

Maybe's it's the manners that are getting to her. Maybe she's worried that Zuko's getting to be too uptight, that he's letting manners and formal conventions come between them, cleaving to that dry, dusty etiquette that says you shouldn't shove your guest into a weedy pond.

Well, isn't he?

He briefly considers shoving her into the pond to help reassure her. This particular pond isn't even all that weedy.

Instead, he simply sits down next to her at the edge of the water and says, in a neutral voice, "It was rude of you to leave so breakfast early. He was wondering why."

Toph snorts loudly, and the next rock is about the size of his head. The resulting kerplunk is spectacular. Zuko wipes water off his face. "You know, we don't have any earth-bender gardeners to fix what you're doing to the lawn," he tells her.

"I'll fix it myself!"

"Even if you smooth out the terrain, the grass isn't going to grow back right awa-" Zuko starts to say, right before Toph reaches over and shoves him headfirst into the pond.

It's so shallow it barely breaks his fall, but he still flounders around for a minute before he's able to turn back to look at her. She's on her feet now, hands clenched, arms pressed to her side, red-faced. "You're an idiot," she tells him.

"No, I'm not," he says, frustrated. He really doesn't think he is. He thinks he probably knows what's going on better than she does. Talking about this is hard, and he needs her to listen. As he climbs up out of the water towards her, the air around him shoots up in temperature and the water in his clothes begins to vaporize. She can feel the steam billowing out from his body and takes a nervous step back. "Don't you understand?!" He keeps on advancing towards her, and she takes another step away from him. "You're not a child anymore."

"I know that!" she snaps.

"Do you really? You don't act like it!"

"If I wanted to be lectured for not acting my age, I could just stay home, you know!"

It's on the tip of his tongue to say that maybe she should. Still, though the years have not given Zuko any particular skill with speech, he's at least learned how to think twice before saying the really stupid things.

"Toph," he says, and tries to clamp down his rising temper. "Toph, I don't mean...the lawn. I don't care about the lawn." Then again, "-although it is going to be my lawn someday, so please stop destroying it." This digression is calming. "You've grown up, and you...you've gotten very pretty."

She turns even redder and more nervous. "I have?"

"Um. Yes."

"I can't tell, you know."

"No one mentioned it?"

"Not really."

"Well, you are."

"Thank you."

"You're old enough to start thinking about getting married-"

He should have gotten away from the water. He lands on his back this time, and gets his head out of the water in plenty of time to see her running across the mangled lawn.

She's right, he's an idiot.

Zuko's not up much for company for the next few days. He doesn't dare try sparring with Toph, for fear of what it might turn into, and she's probably not talking to him. He knows he can't let this fester too long, but right now, he's at a loss for what to do, and he needs some space to think. He takes his meals in his room, catches up on all the court responsibilities he tends to neglect when Toph visits, and argues with himself. When the arguments start to make his head spin, he goes out to the training grounds and practices bending until his mind is something like clear.

The clearest thought that he thinks is that it's useless to talk to Toph until he's figured out what he wants.

Also, that when he does talk to her, he'd like to do it somewhere dry and flat.

She eventually corners him. "You know, while you've been skulking in dark rooms, I've been hanging out with your uncle."

Not that she's in any position to make fun of him about being moody, not this week, but when has that ever stopped her? It's like old times, and it actually makes him smile.

"Did you have a good time?"

"We drank a lot of tea and talked about you."

So, this is probably going somewhere.

"Basically, like I said before, you're an idiot. You think you're in charge of this, and you're not."

"And what's...this?"

Toph doesn't bother to answer, just reaches out for his face and pulls him close and kisses him.

He should have known she would do that.

It's the weirdest kiss he's ever had. For once thing, Toph doesn't bother to close her eyes (why would she?), which is extremely unnerving; also, she never grew very tall, so he has to bend over quite a bit for his face to meet hers, and she's still hanging onto his head with both hands, while he's trying to keep his body apart from hers. At this distance, Toph's unseeing eyes seem to stare with some kind of challenge, and Zuko closes his own in self defense.

It's not a skillful kiss at all-at this point, he's had enough to have an inkling of what a good kiss entails-and he'd like to try a few variations, right now, even, but this has gone far enough. He jerks back hard enough to break Toph's steely grip. She makes a grab at his head, but he slips out of her grasp. "Look," he says, in an unsteady voice, "This is exactly what's not supposed to happen."

"Why not? I want it, and you didn't seem to mind too much. You want to tell me what the problem is?"

"The problem is I'm the Fire Prince and you're an Earth Kingdom lady, and...and everyone here knows you. Everybody knows who we are! They'll know."

"That's it? People will know? That's the only reason?"

"Isn't that enough?"

"You're not trying to tell me you don't like me that way. I mean, you meant it when you said I was pretty?"

"What I'm trying to tell you is that my thinking you're pretty isn't a good enough reason for me to ruin your reputation."

Toph's cheeks flush with rage and she steps back from Zuko. "So, this is you trying to protect me."

"Yes."

"Stuff it. I can't believe you. Protect me? Why is it that everybody makes the same stupid mistake? I don't need protecting! Haven't you got it by now? I can take care of myself."

Zuko lifts his hands to his head. Short of getting slammed into a stone wall or dunked, it's hard to imagine this conversation going any worse. Why doesn't she understand? "I know you can! There's no one I'd rather have next to me if I was fighting in a battle! I'm not, though. This is everything that isn't a battle. This is the rest of your life."

"The rest of my life..." Toph whispers, closing her useless eyes and leaning against the wall. All the anger drains out of her, and she just looks tired. "When do I get to live my life? When I was a little girl, my parents shut me away to protect me from the world. Now that I'm old enough to get married, all they want to do is marry me into some household that will shut me up just like they did-for my own safety. What's old enough for me to make decisions for myself?"

Zuko slides down against the wall next to Toph, aching indeterminably. "It's not just you, you know. I can't do all the things I want to do, either. That's what growing up means-doing things you don't want to do because they need doing. And...not doing everything you want to do."

She sighs, long and loud. "Can't you at least do some of the things you want?"

Zuko's chest hurts. "I just want to make sure you don't do anything you regret."

She says, quietly, "I won't ever regret spending time with you." She reaches out to take his hand in hers. "I can take care of myself just as well as I can take care of myself in a fight. I don't need you to protect my reputation."

"You may not care what people think about you, Toph, but I do. If I ever hear anybody making fun of you, I'll...I'll get angry. I'll do things I shouldn't do. I'm going to be Fire Lord someday, and I won't be any good at it if I'm setting fire to members of the court."

He was being serious, but she still laughs. She's so beautiful when she does that he can't help himself; he leans over and kisses her. It goes much better this time.

Epilogue

He could have sworn he'd won the argument. He distinctly remembers making a point she hadn't refuted. He's positive he got in the last word. In his head, they were clear.

But the next time they go off to the canyon to work off some energy, Toph decides to bodyslam him into the wall and steal a kiss while he's stunned. She's so much shorter than he is that she has to haul herself up holding onto his shoulders and wrap her legs around his waist to steady herself. She's getting better at the kissing thing, possibly having picked something up from that totally ill-advised kiss he gave her after he made his winning argument, and come to think of it, that's probably where he lost.

He decides to be ruthless. Her hands are still on him, not on the rock wall, so he's able to turn them both around so that he can kick off against the wall with enough force to send them both rolling along the ground...

...right into the pond. There. Now she knows how it feels. Of course, he's gotten dunked, too, but he's used to it. The water is cold today, and it shocks her into letting go. He chuckles, and swims over to the bank while she's still splashing, trying to get her bearings.

Even though she can't really feel him through the water, she can hear him laughing. She grits her teeth, takes a huge breath, and uses her arms to propel herself straight to the bottom of the pond. Zuko realizes too late that he should have stayed in the water to keep her at its surface-there's only a thin layer of mud over the rock of the pond floor. He can actually feel the force of her blow against the rock. He starts to move, but he can't outrun the miniature tsunami she's created, and it knocks him to the ground. He's still lying there when she hauls herself out of the water, soaking from head to foot, and straddles his chest.

"I win," she informs him.