IN THE KEY OF HANDS OR HEARTS

Summary: One-shot. Toph teaches Teo to play the piano in one hundred days time; Teo learns a lot more than that. One-sided Teoph/Tokka.

Disclaimer: I don't own ATLA or its characters. The only thing I own in this story is the words. And maybe the piano.

Teo's finished counting every door and every window on the bottom floor of the Bei Fong estate. Twenty seven windows and eleven doors. It's huge, but there's no way he can get up the massive staircase in his chair to explore it any further.

"Remember, no flying indoors."

His father's voice echoes in his head and Teo curses himself for being such a good obedient son. They should have been home over three hours ago, if his father hadn't been talking to the Bei Fongs for so long and gotten so off topic onto his inventions. So, he goes off to count the number of armchairs in the house when he hears it.

It's like a tinkling sound.

Where's it coming from?

It's coming from the great hall. He peers around the corner to see a small girl sitting at an unusual looking contraption with her shoulders back, head down, deeply focused.

He's never seen Toph this way.

She's normally so wild and full of emotion and energy. It's just her personality, the way she is – her burst of life is always so refreshing. But at this contraption she seems so at ease. Her eyes are even closed, signifying how calm she's feeling.

But it's the sound that fills the air.

That is music.

He's never heard music so pretty and gentle. The contraption makes harmonious sounds every time her hands move up and down the length of it. The higher notes are silvery and light, with the lower notes darker and rounded. The song is colorful, painting a picture for him, even if it's not entirely clear what it is.

Her fingers are making the music. They glide so effortlessly up and down the instrument, moving so quickly and elegantly. It's like they're dancing.

Teo has never heard anything so breathtaking and beautiful in his life. Intrigued, he wheels himself towards the contraption. His chair is a little short though, so he has to strain his neck to see it properly. It's black, but attached to it are white and black rectangles; planks of wood she plays to make noise?

"Teo? Are you spying on me?" he hears her says defensively, the music stopping abruptly as her fingers stop moving. He parks himself next to her.

He scratches the back of his head and assures her she wasn't.

"Well, what did you think?" she asks, crossing her arms over her chest.

"It was amazing. You can't even see and you make it look so easy. I don't even know this thing is."

Toph laughs.

"It's a piano, silly."

"A piano?"

"Yeah. Haven't you ever heard of one?"

Teo scratches his head.

"Uh, no."

Toph raises her eyebrow.

"My parents made me take lessons for years. Apparently I'm a natural. Something to do with having perfect pitch because I'm blind. Like enhanced hearing makes up for not being able to see."

Still impressive.

"Now that the war is over, apparently, I can go back to music," Toph blows her long bangs out of her face, "it sucks."

"What, you don't like it?"

"No. I don't want to be a musician! I want to keep doing what I've been doing!"

"Fighting wars?"

"No! Helping people! Saving the world!"

Toph slouches over on the stool, her forehead resting on the front of the piano.

"I want to get back out there. Teach people to defend themselves so if another war comes along, we don't have to save all their sorry selves next time."

"Defend themselves how?"

Toph's eyes light up, and she sits up straighter.

"Metal-bending."

"Like…bending metal?"

"Duh. Yes."

Teo raises an eyebrow.

"Does that even exist?"

"It does now. Thanks to me. I invented it."

Teo's eyebrows shoot up his forehead and he has to pull his jaw back off the ground.

"You invented a type of bending? I can't believe it."

"…thanks, Teo."

"No, no, no, that's not what I meant. I mean…wow. That's incredible. That's really…yeah, amazing."

"I want other people to know how amazing it is too. If my parents will let me, I'll set up a school to teach people. I wouldn't want to keep something like this to myself. I'd want to share it with the world."

"That's really brave."

Toph smiles a little bit. Sincerely this time.

"Thanks, Teo."

Even though her smile is small, it brightens up her entire face, and although she can't see it, it brightens his too.

He presses on a white space on the piano. It makes a low, resonating sound.

"A pity you don't like music though," he says, and then his voice gets quieter, "you're really talented, you know."

Toph sighs.

"It's not that I don't like it. It's just not what I want to do with my life. Maybe that's someone else's destiny, but not mine."

"What you played was really amazing. I've never heard anything like that in my life."

Toph chuckles.

"It's not really that amazing."

"It is. I wish I knew how to play."

"I'll teach you."

Teo turns to her. She seems sincere, the corners of her mouth tugged into a smile. Teo turns away from her sadly.

"No, I couldn't. I'm not even tall enough to reach it."

Toph just grins and gets up from her chair. Now standing, she raises both hands in fists and brings them down hard. The floor below the piano is lowered and now he can reach it easily.

"Now you are. Come and sit in front of it."

Reluctantly, Teo wheels himself to the front of the piano. Toph grabs her stool and takes next to him.

"These things," she points to the white and black spaces, "are called keys. This one," she feels down the keyboard and stops at one key right in front of him, "is middle C."

She proceeds to feel her way along the keys, pointing out each note and what sound it makes, each one different.

The whole experience is just different.

And so it begins.

-On the first day, he has no idea what he's doing.-

Do.

Teo's always used to working with numbers and words, but never letters and sounds. It's all so foreign; he doesn't understand anything she's saying, he doesn't know how to differentiate note A from note Z, they all sound the same, all the keys start to look the same too.

But at least she's always going to be there to point him in the right direction.

-On the third day, he knows all the notes.-

When he finally is able to show her which key G is, and that it's different to D and A, she smiles brightly and tells him its good progress. At least it's a start, she thinks to herself, it's going to be a long process.

He, on the other hand, is so happy and proud of himself even she can see it.

-On the eighth day, he learns his first scale.-

Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do.

She feels relief when he finally plays it up and down without any mistake. It's a harmonious sound, and a welcome break after five days of nothing but jumbled sounds and stumbling over every second note.

He feels contented that he's finally learning something, but it's a whole better feeling knowing he's made her happy too.

-On the twelfth day, he learns chords, intervals and starts getting into the hard stuff.-

Do-mi-so.

When he plays the C chord, she smiles. It's not a big step to her, but it's huge for him. He looks so damn proud of himself.

When he plays the C chord, he does a little happy dance inside. Half of it is because he can play a C chord. Half of it is because she's smiling for him.

-On the twentieth day, he starts getting butterflies.-

This is the first week he's learned almost nothing. It's because he's so damn distracted by her grey green eyes and her clear skin and her smile. Whenever he gets something right she smiles. Whenever he gets something wrong she keeps smiling and tells him to try again, even if she's frustrated underneath. She's always smiling around him. It makes butterflies do somersaults in his stomach.

This is the first week he's learned almost nothing.

Wrong note – "oops, sorry, I'll try that again."

Wrong chord – " oops, sorry, my bad."

Just keep smiling, as much as its frustrating, she thinks to herself, just keep smiling and he'll keep working on it. Just make him happy.

-On the twenty-sixth day, he learns his first song.-

It's an easy song, maybe for a young child starting out. Nevertheless, it's such a good feeling to finally learn something worthwhile. Now he feels like he can really play, not just tap some keys on a piano.

It's such an easy song, written for a young child starting out. But of course, she doesn't want to tell him that.

She wouldn't want to wipe the smile off his face.

-On the thirty-fourth day, he realizes he's in even deeper than he thought he was.-

He comes to this conclusion when she's laughing.

Her laugh is music.

He feels like it could lift him through the air so he could fly. Just a laugh from a girl isn't supposed to make him feel this way. Unless he's in real deep. Maybe too deep.

-On the forty-first day, she tells him he's amazing.-

He's finally learned five songs that aren't written for children; she tells him this herself. They're decent pieces of well written music – two fire nation waltzes, one jig originally written for the tsungi horn, an Earth Kingdom classic and some nomad's tune.

When he masters the jig, she tells him it's nice. Even though she says it brings back memories of the good times, it's better than Iroh's version on the horn.

When he masters the nomad's tune, she bursts out laughing. Amused, he asks why. Between gasps of laughter, he hears the words 'secret' and 'tunnel'. He has no idea what she's talking about.

When he masters the classic, she tells him he's an amazing player.

He wants to tell her she's amazing.

When he masters the waltzes, she says the way he plays is beautiful.

He wants to tell her she's beautiful.

-On the fiftieth day, he asks her if she wants to celebrate fifty days of music together.-

She says yes.

They spend the night at a quaint little restaurant, which is near empty. Talking about their lives, exchanging stories about their adventures, all the things they've learned along the way.

She tells him all about how she learned metal-bending. In a locked up metal cage all alone, she manages to bend herself out and escape. She tells him how it all started too, with stories about Earth Rumble tournaments. Then Teo listens in awe as she tells him the story of how she joined Aang, how she gave up the lifestyle, money, everything, just to help him on his journey. Quietly, she admits how much she missed her parents while she was gone, but she'd had a duty to fulfill.

She's the bravest person he's ever known.

He realizes this in the quiet booth. Alone, together.

It feels so right to him.

He tells her about the air temples, his father's inventions, everything he feels when he's up in the sky. She wistfully tells him how she wishes she could join him one day, but too bad she can't see a thing from up there.

He insists that they should one day. There's room for two on his glider chair.

Heh.

Yet she's not really listening, because all she can think about is how he would have loved to see so much meat on the table.

-On the fifty-first day, they both realize this is what being in love feels like.-

He's never been in love before. It feels like falling into a black nothingness but not even caring where the landing is.

It feels so sincere when she's smiling. When she shows affection, she likes to punch him in the arm (hard) but it's affection all the same. Nobody else crosses his mind when they're together. It's just him and Toph, as it should be.

She feels like an awful person, and it's only because Teo treats her like the only girl in the world. Eyes always on her, listening to everything she says, word for word. She does like Teo, a lot. It's just that it doesn't feel right for her to be thinking about someone else through all this.

But she can't help it because now she realizes these thoughts about him are telling her she's in love. Whenever she catches herself daydreaming about him, wishing for his dry humor to break a silence, or comparing his ponytail to her mother's, she realizes; this is what being in love feels like.

-On the sixty-third day, it's her birthday.-

He surprises her that day, and it's possibly the sweetest present anyone's ever given her.

He's written her a song.

He hasn't named it, and the notes are written on the back of a handkerchief, but she doesn't care. Nobody's ever done anything like this for her before.

Not even him.

-On the seventy-fourth day, she tells him she's not going to be his teacher for much longer.-

She tells him that her parents have finally understood what she wants in her life. They're going to fund her metal-bending school. The Bei Fong Metalbending Academy, in her family's honor. She's not going to be able to see him every day when she starts teaching.

He's proud of her. So proud of her. But he can't bear the thought of not seeing her face every day.

-On the eightieth day, he's finished the songbook.-

She searches around the house for any old sheet music that might belong to her parents. Nothing.

She searches the nooks and crannies of her room, in hope of finding any angrily stashed away music from when she took lessons as a child. Nothing.

She searches for something. Anything. Nothing.

His heart jumps a little when she tells him she doesn't have any more songs to teach him.

It means she has nothing more to teach him.

-On the ninety-fifth day, he's playing at her level.-

Toph is so happy she's speechless. She says with gleaming eyes that he's made more progress than she'd ever hoped.

He receives a very, very hard punch to his shoulder as a reward.

-On the ninety-sixth day, he's playing above her level.-

The song he heard her playing on the first day?

He knows it's a love song now. He's felt it. The picture it painted for him on the first day makes complete sense now, it's illustrates the same feelings.

She's so proud of him when he finally plays the love song, only better. She's so proud that she flings both her arms around his neck.

He feels so warm when she's around him. He just wants to melt in her arms. He wants to tell her how he feels when they're together, how he's always felt about her. He wants to stay with her in this room forever, talking about metalbending and learning pieces and growing old together.

She feels nothing.

-On the ninety-seventh day, his sleep doesn't come easy.-

He's tossing and turning in his bed.

She has to know.

He has to tell her.

Tomorrow.

-On the ninety-eighth day, it's their last lesson together.-

They don't do much that day. They just sit by the piano together, taking it in turns to play a note. She sits on the right and he sits on the left. He'll play a low note; she'll play a high note.

She asks him what he wants to do.

He's perfectly happy to do whatever makes her happy. It doesn't even matter what they're doing, he just wants to be around her.

So he tells her they can just keep doing what they're doing.

They do it for the whole hour. Then she gives him another hug and is about to get up from the piano stool.

Do it.

Do it now or you'll regret it for the rest of your life.

He grabs her hand, stopping her from getting up. She doesn't resist, but her furrowed brows tell him she's confused. But then his mouth hangs slack, and the things he wants to express can't form in his mouth.

Do it now.

But he still can't say anything. The sit there, still for a good while, until her patience wears out and she tugs her arm away from him. A hint of a smile passes over her lips as she walks away. Away from him.

And he doesn't move from the piano for another hour.

-On the ninety-ninth day, he spends the whole night regretting what he hadn't done.-

He didn't do it.

She'll never know.

She has to know.

-On the hundredth day, he does what his heart tells him to do.-

On the hundredth day, she learns Teo's in love with her.

On the hundredth day, he learns Toph's in love with someone else.