He saw her one day, just across the asphalt, this peculiar thing that was definitely human but also part something else, what that something else was, he didn't know, nor if it was good or bad, he just knew it was something before unseen and should be treated like a known snake hidden in the grass.

But because he was Sokka, he trotted up to get a better look: skinny, almost too pale legs, green-yellow dress, black hair that somehow reminded him of bladed curtains, and blank white, vacant eyes staring at a point that was beyond him and everyone else. All in a small (breakable), unidentified package.

He stared at it curiously for about a minute and was surprisingly calm when the thing turned its head (slow motion) at his direction but its white irises didn't meet (never met) his.

And there they stood and stared (?) at each other solemnly.

"Hello," he finally managed, not expecting a response and getting none, "What's your name?"

"What business is it of yours?"

It wasn't, not even remotely. But for some bizarre reason like a man wanting to fetch the moon, he wanted it to be. "Curiosity," he answered.

The world moved in slow motion and time passed by quietly.

"Blind Bandit," it answered with a voice that was just as blank as her gaze, and returned to diligently watching that point beyond his comprehension.

"That's a weird name," he commented after what seemed like eternity fast forwarded and felt oddly satisfied when the thing snapped its neck back to the point that was somewhere in him.

"Not as much as yours," it retorted after another eternity passed.

"You don't know that."

The thing shrugged, its expression never wavering.

"I have a great name. It's awesome, like me, and maybe jerky," he insisted.

Its linear-perfect brows creased surreptitiously. "Don't you have somewhere you have to be?"

This time he shrugged. "Not really. Don't you?"

It remained silent.

He looked at the picture-perfect-should-be-drawn-on-a-canvas sky. "It's getting dark soon. You should go home."

It stared (glared?) at the ground (oblivion). "The darkness is meaningless to me."

He tilted his head, suddenly feeling like it was too cold. "Maybe. But you should be afraid of the things that lurk in it."

It walked away, steps echo-free in a suddenly too quiet world.

He suddenly got it.

Runaway……

"You really should go home (but you won't)," he stated as he matched pace with it.

"Don't follow me."

"I'm not. I'm guarding you."

"I can handle myself."

"You need the company."

It abruptly stopped. "Why should I trust yours?"

It was a good question, and he was dumbfounded. It shouldn't trust him. And he shouldn't trust it, either. He was a sheep talking up a wolf.

dangerdangerdangerdanger—

In the blink-you-missed-it-forever eternity, its head was against his chest.

He jumped, felt something boiling pass through his epidermis that burned away the sense of himself and leaving an unforgiving blizzard, and it was gone and he realized its ear was on his breast and the stare was absent.

This time, eternity slowed and time laughed at him as colors inverted.

It pulled away, its wind-caressed bangs wrapping themselves lightly to its forehead.

"Toph."

He blinked, subconsciously loathing time. "Kwa?"

"My name is Toph," she annunciated, "Make me repeat it again and I'll make you bleed."

And that was how it started.

He felt slightly ridiculous, hiding under the foliages and the shadows they cast, just beyond an arm's reach to the walls that seemed to reach the sky. But it couldn't be helped, he supposed, she was on the 

wrong side of the gate and all he can do before the universe corrected that planetary alignment error was to wait and wait, like anticipating a genie from a lamp that couldn't be touched.

"If you keep up your disappearing acts, one day they just might seal you away", he told her nonchalantly once, "with a lock that didn't have a key to begin with."

So it only made perfect sense that it did happen.

He couldn't blame them (faultthemfault) because he was guilty at the same root.

She reminded him of a porcelain doll, an inanimate treasure that came to life because of a spell that occurred only once every millennia or something equally ludicrous.

But he knew her now, or at least as much as Toph allows herself to be known, and so exempted himself.

Half the time he even forgot she was different (not the same, in a separate world?). She always managed to slip past the guards and defenses and all the bars that formed her cage. No, no.

It wasn't really a cage, a metaphoric prison to store away a priceless object, but more like a metaphoric castle under the ocean.

Because even though she didn't hate it, she eventually would need to escape and come up for air.

So he waited by the metaphoric shore for the mermaid that couldn't breathe underwater.

"Yo," Toph greeted loudly suddenly and purposefully and Sokka nearly jumped out of his skin because—damn—she could even sneak up on him and that was probably why she was grinning like the bird that killed the cat, "I would totally make the world's greatest ninja."

It came as a relief when his sister decided she liked Toph. It wasn't surprising, though, Katara had trouble disliking anyone unless they were abundant with moral depravities. But Toph was difficult to handle unless you understood at least part of her, like having a piece of the puzzle and vaguely seeing the bigger picture.

So he felt oddly proud of his baby sister to be able to accept the part human, part alien thing.

Until she said: "I didn't know you went for younger girls, Sokka. Remind me to never introduce any of my friends to you."

She was teasing, he knew. But for the most part, he couldn't comprehend where she was going with it. Toph was Toph. A mystery that he appreciated because she enjoyed the same things he did and was different and wasn't fake (made his world brighter?).

But just because he didn't understand, didn't mean he couldn't tease back.

He clucked his tongue with a cheeky grin. "Don't be a hypocrite. You think I don't see who you sneak off with into the night?"

He left his sister surprised with streaks of red on her cheeks and hurried because he knew Toph was getting impatient and damn he was going to get a punch in the shoulder.

"What's it like?" he asked her one day, as they walked through empty streets, "Living in that world as you do."

She snorted at him, as if asked to explain the nature of time and infinity. "We both exist in the same space, weirdo. What's the point of explaining? You won't get it."

For a split second there was a feeling of standing on a lethal crossroad that led to lands of shadows, but it was gone just as instantly as it appeared and he took his damning step. "Try me."

She looked at him and away to the side, as if deciding whether or not to share a secret hidden for eons.

"It's pretty empty. Like these streets. But bloated with human sounds and not-human sounds."

Words escaped before he could stop himself. "Like a world in black and white."

And suddenly she was staring at that point again (never his eyes), the one that was somewhere in him and everyone else but at every instance he only cared about his own.

They stopped walking and the entire world was quiet (again) to the point of being painful so he had to speak again.

"How do you tell them apart? The human sounds and the not-human sounds."

He saw her lips parted and then—

She giggled. Toph never giggled.

dangerdangerdangerdanger—

"—colors like?"

He blinked and the imaginary sirens fled. "Huh?"

"Colors. Describe them to me."

It was impossible. He didn't know how, and he told her so.

"I know," she acknowledged easily, and walked ahead.

For some reason, Sokka hated himself for not even trying.

They ended up dancing, he doesn't know how. But there they were, moving to a human rhythm from not-human sounds played by people, with his sun-graced hands settled against her waist.

They twirled and swayed under the blazing chandelier light and he could not recount when he had felt more uncomfortable because the colors were just too vivid.

She was staring at that point particularly intensely, her mouth this hard straight line and the air around her seemed alive.

"Am I pretty?" she whispered amongst the swirl of human and not-human sounds but he heard because he always does.

And time swooped down to place that crossroad under his feet but the colors were too bright and he stumbled.

"You're Toph. You're whatever you want to be."

She went from calm sea to violent tempest in an instant, pulled away (angry), punched him in the center, and stormed off, leaving empty gasps and chatters and a human (pained) groan.

sokka stomped around the house for a dozen times and kept increasing the count, opening windows and shutting doors and blaring a party to wake the dead because the world was too quiet and too frustrating.

he remembered yelling about (fakeemptyfake) girls and shouting about relevancy and whispering of feelings. her feelings. he remembered uncertainty and confusion and running away but the footsteps weren't his.

he felt anger. after everything, she was just a girl. of course, what else would she be? but she was special, should've been something different that he would witness by the side.

so now he hid and continued to get angrier because the colors were fading and time mocked him as a page from the calendar was ripped off while the rain outside the windows never seemed to stop.

"she's suffering from pneumonia and malnutrition," the doctor explained, "and now a high fever. but she won't wake up. there's not much else we can do."

sokka stared solemnly into his hand, imagining a precious white pearl turn to ash and scatter to the dull world so that the screaming in his head can drown out his spirit.

"we're keeping her on life-support, but if the fever doesn't go down—"

he stopped hearing because of the screaming—she waited she waited she waited but i didn't go i didn't go i didn't go why why why because i always do but didn't didn't didn't failed failed failed why why why—

and he stood in ignorance of the jading colors and the glares on him because even the screaming disappeared.

he dreamt a dream where he saw her standing under the canopy above the grounds they promised to meet and she raised a dead-person face with drowned hair plastered to her skin and her mouth opened to impart air but no sounds would come.

then the image would split and he would see her through a kaleidoscope that spun forever and he couldn't ever reach her with his silent screams.

he woke with a start and realized that he was at her bedside and so slumped forward and continued to look at her face.

way too pale and thin and breakable and breath too frail.

he doesn't know how he gets to remain by her side. his sister and that boy may have helped because he remembered shouting and arguing, but only vaguely because now he only heard not-human sounds.

the nurses would look at her and him pityingly but he didn't notice because he can't hear them and their faces flushed into oblivion.

the only things left were not-human sounds and the faint tints of lavender and cyan and he knew those would be gone soon as well.

he involuntarily cursed her scathingly: YOU'RE THE BLIND BANDIT BECAUSE YOU STEAL HEARTS AND NEVER GIVE THEM BACK.

as the thought vanished from his mind so did the final tints and in a flash of whirlwind all there was left was black and white.

and so he was invariably someplace he wasn't before and everything came into light because he stopped looking at her face and was drawn to a point somewhere in her that was before beyond him.

he heard it, her human sound, the thumping that was her life that was dying but he heard it.

it was weak and light but infinitely warm like holding a pyrefly in a cave of icicles.

he heard the others as well, the other human sounds. his sister was the sound of rain and the boy next to her was of gust.

abruptly he left her side and ran into the empt streets and knew without a doubt he was in her world.

he rushed to the place where she waited and knew it was that exact spot because of the indentation and looked up to through the checkerboard-treetops to the sky that was the same as her eyes.

roar he did because the colors were drained and because a bandit who is blind would fail in theft so his heart was given.

it was he who eroded the pedestals she stood upon and her invincibility left and she became the same as he but he didn't stay to catch her and she fell.

the genie left her lamp and he broke her. those who enforced the prison for her protection were right and he was wrong but he didn't care because he wanted to be selfish and keep her in the same space as he was.

time laughed because dawn was minutes away and she was scheduled to die.

the mockery went unheard as he was already running, reaching the room where her human sound lured him and tore out the tubes like they were spider webs.

he carried her on his back and ignored the alarms as he ran towards something rising in the horizon.

he reached the summit of a hill that served as the pillar of the meadow below.

his legs gave away and he knelt in front of the monochrome world.

her human sound from his back coursed his veins and synchronized with his own.

very suddenly, he saw the teasing edges of the world he couldn't show her.

he shouted colors from memory, what they were to him and what they made him feel because describing them was still impossible but it didn't matter as long as he shouted them in hope that his human sound would reach the girl on his back.

one by one, the colors returned. the grass this magnificent green, the sky an awakening blue, the sun a radiant yellow that burned life into his eyes and her ash-white skin.

Before his very eyes, the world became beautiful.

He laid her on its ground and touched her face with the air of someone who reached the zenith of the universe only to touch back down on ground zero.

"I don't know why you ever thought my heart was good enough and I don't understand why you gave me yours……"

But please, at least once. Say my name and make it bloom.

Time was nowhere to be found as Toph opened her eyes delicately and breathed.

Her fingers curled tenderly around the grass in her palm.

Her eyes searched and eventually rested at the point he knew so well.

As if a child grasping at life, she found his face with her hands and traced it and he couldn't help but choke out a sob.

She smiled ever so softly and rested her angel face against his.

"Hello, Sokka," she whispered as their human sounds synchronized and bloomed, "hello."

Nice to see you.

Fin