Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

"I'm getting a face tattoo." Zuko declares with finality as he slams down another pitcher.

Toph immediately starts cackling from her position on the floor, throwing back her head so it hits against his thigh. It would probably bruise but both of them are drunk enough that he can't bring himself to care.

"I mean it." He continues, looking straight down at Toph. "I'm getting a face tattoo."

"That's- that's literally the worst idea you've ever had, sparky." She chokes out between wheezing breaths. "And you've had some pretty bad ideas over the years."

"No, no, you don't understand, I'm getting a face tattoo and it's the best idea I've ever had." He takes another drink and slides off his chair, letting Toph's head fall back and slam into it. She curses, punching him with her free hand as he piles daintily onto the floor next to her.

"How, literally how is that a good idea?" Toph says before immediately breaking back down into cackles.

"Let me tell you how." Zuko waves his hands, drunkenly gesturing at his face as if it would help him explain anything.

"Ok so-" He pours another drink and chugs it down in one, refilling Toph's when she pushes the mug into his cheek. "Ok. So. Right, face tattoo."

"Uh huh." Toph breaks in after a moment of dazed silence. She takes a drink, draining the mug halfway. "Face tattoo. You were telling me how awful they are and how much you hate them and-" 

Zuko kicks her. She drops her mug and it rolls across the room and under his desk. Toph punches him hard in retaliation and steals his. 

"You're cleaning that up tomorrow Zuko."

"That's literally why I have servants Toph." She makes a face in his general direction.

"Fair enough. Anyway, tattoos. Why do you think that's even remotely a good idea?"

"I'm getting a face tattoo and- and- right so- the way I see it? Right? Is that. Ozai gave me this scar as like, the world's shittiest birthday present, see?"

"Zuko. Zuko, Zuko."

"Yeah?"

"Zuko I'm blind, I by definition do not see." Toph cackles hard and drags Zuko down with her when the force of her giggles makes her overbalance. Neither of them have mugs five minutes later, when they've sat back up, so they just start to drink from the bottle, passing it back and forth between the two of them.

"Right. So. You were at, like, getting the world's worst present ever." Toph drags the conversation back on topic after a bit of time passes in drunkenly content silence.

"World's worst present. And like, it's going to be there forever right? So I might as well just. Just. Just uh-" Zuko waves his arm around, looking for the word. 

"Make it not the world's worst birthday present by vandalising it?" Zuko nods. 

"I just nodded." Toph hums.

"So. Face tattoo."

"Yeah, face tattoo." Zuko takes the bottle and drains it, letting it roll away to meet Toph's mug, before flopping his head back onto Toph's stomach. 

"I could do it?" Toph offers helpfully, confidently.

"Toph I love you so much would you really?" Zuko asks, sincere and trusting in a way only the drunk can be. He rolls his head until he's looking at her chin. It's a very pointy chin. Very poke-able. Zuko pokes it.

"I mean. I mean sure! I'd be great at it, I'm great at everything."

"You are." Zuko agrees with a nod against her stomach. Toph slams her chin down on his fingers. It hurts.

___

They spend the next ten minutes ransacking Zuko's office. Well, Zuko spends ten minutes ransacking his office, whilst Toph spends ten minutes tripping him over and stealing his things.

"Ah-hah!" Zuko shouts. He immediately slams his head into the underside of the desk he'd been searching frantically under. "Fuck!"

"You ok over there Princess?" Toph rolls over and with a flick of her wrist, moves the ground to trip him over. There's a shatter and Zuko swears again.

"I'm too old for this shit Toph." She throws something vaguely in the direction of his back in response.

"Well then just fucking don't be old, dipshit." 

"Uh huh." He snorts. "Cus that's how it works."

"It is if you try hard enough, old man." 

"Hey! I'm 52 that's like, basically nothing." Zuko defends on reflex.

"You just said." Toph hiccups. "You just said you were too old."

"Yeah well, not anymore."

"Hah!" She shrieks. "You admit it! I was right! I told you the so- su- solution was to just. Just not be old anymore. You owe me a drink for solving all your problems."

A few minutes of scrambling later, Toph leans over him with a needle and some ink. She uses her hands to feel out his face, poking his eye with drunk-clumsy fingers three times. She marks a position with one hand, using the other to poke the needle and gets one long line in over his brow before Zuko throws her off with a yelp.

"Toph!"

"What the fuck Zuko! I was drawing!" She pokes him in the leg, through his clothes with the needle. Zuko yelps and pulls away.

"And it was amazing!" She adds as an afterthought.

"Toph you're blind!" 

"So?"

"You can't draw! Why did I think this was a good idea!" 

"Because I'm amazing and letting me do whatever I want makes you amazing by- pr- pi-" She scrunches up her nose and frowns.

"Proxy?" He provides with a hopeful look on his face.

"Proxy." She nods. "Art is subjective, whatever I put on your stupid face will be perfection."

Zuko lets her draw two more, painful, wonky lines before she caves. She rolls off him and sighs, roughly dropping the needle back into the well and getting ink splodges on her clothes.

"Ok yeah, I'm still right, as always, but just this once I'll let you be a little bit right as well." Toph nods again, resolutely, as if she had just cracked the code of the universe.

"Right. Thank you Toph." He says, a little too close to sincere tears as he sits up and wipes his face on her shoulder. She ruffles his hair roughly before jerkily undoing it from his topknot, taking the hair piece out with it.

"Wanna get shitfaced and go order some people who work for you to get a professional in here?" 

"Oh Agni yes, I trust and love you, o great and powerful master earthbender, but drawing is not your greatest talent."

"Leave the sarcasm to Sokka, dipshit." She lovingly pinches his cheek and drops him on the floor, making sure to kick him as she stumbles her way to the alcohol cabinet, grabbing the biggest bottle she can feel. Zuko turns to watch her go, sputtering when he sees what she grabs.

"Toph. Toph please, if you make us drink all that we'll die. Toph please, I'm begging you."

"Beg harder, Firelord Zuko, I have no mercy for the weak." Toph says smugly, thumping her chest with a fist and posturing for a moment, holding the bottle out at him triumphantly. 

The last coherent thought Firelord Zuko has that night as he pours himself a whole glass of the strongest alcohol he owns, is oh fuck yeah this is an excellent idea.

___

Oh fuck no, this was such a bad idea, Zuko thinks as he wakes to a throbbing everything the next morning.

A groan calls out from next to him that Zuko takes to mean oh Agni please what did we do to deserve this.

(He carefully ignores the fact that this pain was almost definitely his own fault.)

"Toph?" He warbles quietly. "Is that you?"

"Shut up, sparky." What is absolutely Toph's voice says back far too loud. Zuko winces and buries his head into his pillow. After a moment of consideration, he lifts his head long enough to flip his pillow before continuing, burying his face into the blessedly cool and soft pillow case.

___

"..." 

They aren't in his house.

"This isn't my house." Zuko states calmy. 

"Nope." Toph replies.

"Toph." Zuko says a little less calmly. "Toph, this isn't my house."

Toph hums.

"Toph I don't think we're in the fire nation any more." Zuko says a little desperately.

"Wanna go back inside and sleep?" She asks.

"Absolutely." He takes the out. They go straight back to sleep and don’t wake up till the sun starts sinking.

___

The reason they aren't in his house anymore -Zuko thinks hours later, weirdly resigned- is because somehow, whilst drunk, the three of them (because somehow they'd dragged little Druk along with them) found their way into the earth Kingdom.

From the Fire Nation capital.

He's not surprised. He doesn't know how he got here. He's not sure he wants to remember.

His face hurts.

Chapter Text

Toph tumbles metal between her fingers and hums tunelessly as she ignores Zuko’s progressively more hopeless ranting, occasionally making vaguely positive sounds in order to keep him going.

It’s not exactly hard. After all, she’s had decades to practise.

“—And before you say anything, I know we had the day off, but that doesn’t mean the Fire Lord can just up and vanish!” He throws his hands about, dragging in a desperate breath and Toph takes it as her cue. She grabs his fancy fire nation robe and tugs until he falls down to sit with her. Druk flops his head down into Zuko’s lap and hands are on him in an instant, running through his furred mane in repetitive, calming motions. “We didn’t even bring Appa. It’ll take weeks to get back without him.”

Toph snorts. He sounds so sullen about it.

“You done Sparky?” She asks, flicking her hand in a series of complicated movements that end with the metal split into balls between each of her fingers. She twists them again and the metal melts, reforming as a bracelet over her wrist.

“Yeah,” He admits with a defeated sigh. “Just about.”

They’ve been through this song and dance so many times it almost feels routine and they've known each other long enough that Zuko doesn’t even bother pretending to feel embarrassed about it anymore.

“Any idea where we are?” Toph asks as he shifts, a motion slight enough that she can’t feel the nuance of it. She makes a noise in the back of her throat.

“I just nodded.” He makes an unhappy grumble and Toph can feel as he puts his chin on his folded hands. “I have some ideas.”

They decide pretty quickly that it had something to do with spirit fuckery. To be fair, it almost always is when something confusing happens to or around them and Omashu is a pretty distinctive place even from afar. There was just no other way for them to have travelled halfway across the world overnight.

It was either spirit fuckery, or Aang, and Aang was nowhere to be found.

___

They take a minute to explore the house they found themselves in, but really there's nothing to it. It’s just one floor, three rooms; a mid-sized earth kingdom home the likes of which could be found all over the countryside.

They step out into the courtyard.

“Weird.” Zuko says.

“Hah?”

“It’s so—” Zuko hesitates, running his fingers through his beard. “Old school, with none of the technology or floor layouts of newer style properties and I don’t know if you can tell but—”

“Everything is new, fresh paint, fresh floors, fresh tiling on the porch?” She can smell the paint, feel the patio tiles under her feet, the clean, uncracked stone, the smooth, sanded wood of the floorboards. Even the foundations are new, the earth around them unsettled in a very specific way.

The whole house is new. New, empty and unfashionable.

“Exactly.” She can hear the frown in his voice.

“Eugh.” She says, stretching her arms above her head, cracking her spine. “Whatever. Does it even matter?”

It’s the sort of out of style newbuild that a nostalgic old couple might retire to. The sort of building that went out of fashion decades ago, that was going out when Toph was still a —relatively— fresh faced teenager.

It’s kind of baffling.

“Could you…” He starts to ask, trailing off with a thoughtful hum.

“Yeah, yeah.” Toph says, closing her eyes —as pointless as it is— and dropping her stance, the thud of her bare foot against the dirt vibrating through her pleasantly. She puts her hands together, seeking out the familiar feel of the bones there, flexing her toes through the dirt, seeking her place within it.

Toph breathes in deep and lets her awareness spread.

At first there's nothing unusual— the feel of the ground opening up around her, bugs and rodents disturbing the dirt beneath her feet, tiny bones shifting and grinding as little creatures scurry across and through the earth. She takes a moment just to exist in that space, to breathe as one with her element.

In.

Out.

Her focus shifts and suddenly she Knows Zuko; the shifting of his weight, the way his spine creaks with old injuries, the metal on his clothing and the familiar way his wrists click when he rotates them. The feel of his breath moving through his whole body, almost as familiar as her own.

Toph takes it in.

She lets it go.

She moves on.

The house is the same as before, but there, on the edge of her senses, if she just reaches a little more—

People.

A village, small by her standards, but filled with footsteps that shake the ground, with houses that are steadily becoming one with the earth as time passes.

Toph takes a breath and re-finds her centre.

“There's nothing weird with the house, but there's a village, a little north of here, just behind the crest of the hill.”

“Well. No point waiting any longer.” And with that they’re off.

___

“Alright. So. I feel like that could have gone a little better.” Zuko says some time later, a baffled, frowning look on his face.

“You think?”

“I just don’t get it.”

“Mn?”

“Why were they screaming? ”

Toph cackles.

Omashu it is.

___

They quickly run into a few problems.

It becomes apparent, as the sun burns brighter and stronger, that Zuko is hungover. Aggressively, brutally, hungover. Toph’s headache had come strong but had left with equal veracity, leaving nothing but an upset stomach, something she delighted in.

“Toph, please, shut up.” Bullying Zuko never gets old. Toph grins, toothy and delighted, her arms stretched behind her head.

“Make me.” She takes a deep breath in before singing as loud as she can, putting on a faux deep, twangy voice. “Two loveeerrs, for- bidden from one another—”

“ Toph! ” He groans and whimpers and she savours the sound of Zuko’s pain for a moment, all but skipping out of lunging reach with a cackle. She does not stop singing the same few songs for the three hours it takes for something interesting to happen.

She’s stubborn like that.