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Toph and Penance are back at their campsite. Sokka has to admit he isn't quite sure where this Metropolis is any more, or if they're even driving in the right direction -- but nobody really minds. There's plenty of food and water around, they've still got heaps of spare fuel, and all four teens are having the time of their lives racketing around the countryside.

Currently Claire is teaching Sokka a few more of the finer points of driving. Or at least, that's their excuse. There's a lot of laughing and the occasional squeal -- WHICH IS TOTALLY NOT FROM SOKKA, NUH UH -- as they rattle along the road and occasionally come to a screeching halt.

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Sokka's there. Sokka's not getting out of the car, because he can't seem to move -- and then he is moving, abruptly, throwing the seat cover down over what's on the back seat before climbing out. Toph shouldn't see her.

(It does not, at this particular moment, occur to him that Toph does not actually see anything.)

And walking quickly towards the bushes to throw up the entire contents of his stomach. Don't mind him, he'll be back in a moment or so.

He left them.

Is a horrible selfish thought and Claire immediately tries to convince herself she hadn't had it.

"We found a body," she says almost immediately, forgetting as she's been prone to, that Toph is younger than Lyle.

"Are you OK? Where's..."

Penance?

Without moving her head, Toph points in the direction of a flash of red.

"We're fine. You spooked her with your arrival, though. Need a hand with the body."

Toph has never delat with a dead body before, but neither, she assumes, has Claire. On the other hand, Toph grew up in a war, and has often assumed she'd end up having to deal with bodies.

Besides, she knows what Sokka's doing, and it must be pretty bad to make the greatest warrior of the Water Tribe do that. While he's off in the bushes, she'll just ave to be the leader.

Claire hesitates, because Toph shouldn't have to deal with it, but in the end she relents, because she can't do it on her own and she has to do something.

"OK, thanks. Can you..."

But she's already in the car, pulling out the body herself. It's so light.

Toph doesn't need telling what to do, anyway. By the time Claire's navigated the car, there's a rock shelve at just the right height for the car seat, and then it's just a gentle easing back onto a small stone slab a few feet away.

Toph reaches out then to help Claire lay it out properly, and she finds the hat - drawing away quickly when Claire inhales sharply - and the long long braid coming down from underneath it.

Stomach churning, Toph touches the dead face gently, then investigates the leather clothes.

-------------------

A moment or two later, she's crouching beside Sokka and the moist puddle of vomit-and-dirt.

"You didn't tell her, did you?"

It's a statement of fact.

Back over by Claire, the flash of red has become the strange creature/girl. Penance is characterized by her curiosity more than anything else, and the body is no different. She approaches slowly but her wariness is due to Claire, and when she reaches out, it's to rub the blunt side of a finger very gently against the arm of the corpse.

She's very, very careful not to disturb it.

Sokka shakes his head in answer to Toph, swallowing down bile and getting steadily to his feet to cover his mess with leaves.

He stumbles for a moment, when he turns and the red girl is doing something -- but she's not disturbing it, she's respectful.

Okay.

He can cope with that.

"We need to go to the coast," he says, voice steady now. "We need -- a boat."

"The coast?" Claire says, looking up suddenly.

"We're in the Mid West. The coast is about two thousand miles away."

"Yeah."

He stands by Toph's rock platform, looking down at the corpse, hands hanging useless at his sides.

"How long will that take?"

Toph, meanwhile, has padded up behind Sokka, and stands silently a little to the side and back.

She knows Katara is lying on the platform Claire just laid her on. but she can't feel her.

She hangs her head further, so her bangs will hide the tears on her cheeks.

"About three days," Claire snaps.

(She has no idea: she's never been on a road trip before this one.)

"Assuming we don't get lost. Why do you want to go to the coast?"

Sokka doesn't even look at her.

"She needs a proper funeral."

"So we bury her," Claire insists, more aggressively than is absolutely necessary.

"We can't take a corpse in the car for that long."

Edited 2008-02-05 08:50 (UTC)

"We're not burying her," Sokka says quietly, grimly. He steps back from the body and puts an arm around Toph's shoulders, still not looking at Claire -- still not looking at anything except Katara.

"She's Water Tribe."

Toph puts an arm around Sokka's hips, but she turns her face away from him.

SHE'S NOT CRYING SHUT THE HECK UP.

"How do you kno..."

Claire doesn't figure it all out from that. But it does occur to her that the girl has the same colour skin and facial features as Sokka. Of course he'd recognise one of his countrymen.

"No, Sokka. We can't take a dead body in a car for that long, even if we knew which way we were going."

He shakes his head again, and looks up at Claire angry and wet-eyed. "Yes, we can. I'm not leaving her."

Claire growls in frustration, raking her hands through her hair. They go through fine where her hat had been, but then get caught in the mud.

She's stopped crying now, because the anger is in the way.

"It'll rot, Sokka. It'll decompose and smell and make us sick, and whoever she was, she deserves better than that."

"I'm not leaving her," Sokka repeats grimly, shaking his head. "You don't have to stay, Claire. You should ... you should go somewhere else, where it's safe."

He really isn't going to leave without the girl's body.

Claire freezes, and stares at him

"...you're sending me away?"

Over some dead body, whut?

Sokka can't look at her; he moves back towards the body, leaning on the side of the stone bed.

"I'm not leaving her," he says again, softer, lifting a completely steady hand to straighten Katara's collar. "I can't, Claire. She's --"

He can't say it. She'll know, then, she'll know how he didn't protect her.

"I can't."

Claire frowns in confusion, but she follows Sokka and hestitantly reaches for his other hand.

"We have to get away," she says quietly. "We're not safe."

Toph, meanwhile, moves to Sokka's other side, and places a hand on his arm.

"Will a lake do?"

Sokka doesn't even listen to Claire. He looks down at Toph's hand on his arm as if not quite sure what it's doing there, and bows his head.

"I ... don't know. I don't know how to do it properly. I ... think ... it would be okay?" It's almost a question.

Please tell him it would be okay. Because he knows Claire has a point, too.

"I bet it would," Toph says patiently. She's not facing him, thoug, head slightly inlcined as always, making her look like she's studying the slab intently.

(HAHA SHE'S GETTING HIM TO SEE REASON. HE LOVES HER. SUCK IT YOU HEALING FREAK.)

"It's water, right?"