shatterverse | (no subject)

Team "Get-Away-From-Sylar-No-Really-This-Time" has made good progress, but even they need to sleep occasionally. Toph makes rock tents for all of them, because it's easier than looting, and even though she makes four, she knows perfectly well that right now, only two are being slept in.

It must be awfully stuffy in that one, but at least they're not doing anything other than sleeping with their hands together.

Toph - doesn't have any one to hold her hand. Not, she'll tell anyone who bothers to ask, that she needs to, it's just...

...just that she has to be there for Sokka, who's just buried his sister, and for Claire, who's terrified of this murderer, and - no one's really there for her, the little girl who just buried the closest thng she had to a sister, who had begun to take the place of a mother.

So as the others sleep, she creeps out and crouches a way away from the tents, feeling the movements of the forest around her, and silently crying. So she can be strong in the morning.

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Sokka smiles a little more, at that.

"You got better."

Toph smirks proudly.

"Yeah, now I'm a productive member of society. She'll get better, too."

"She's fine," Sokka says, looking back towards the tents. "She ... had a shock. That ... the guy. He was after her."

"Ah," says Toph.

"Is that why you didn't tell her?"

He shrugs, a little helplessly. "I don't know, Toph."

If he knew why any of this was happening, it would make so much more sense.

Toph rests her hand on his knee, and squeezes, hopefully ressuringly.

"Why was he after her?"

She can understand why bad people would want to kill Katara: she's close personal friends with the Avatar. But Claire's... not.

"She has powers. That's what he does. To get powers."

Sokka frowns slightly, obviously not having thought this through. (To be fair, he's a little bit in shock.)

"That's ... he ..."

Oh.

See the lightbulb! Well -- not, because, y'know, blind. But she could hear it, prob'ly.

She gets something, even if she doesn't know what a lightbulb is.

"Does that mean he's a waterbender, now?"

"I need to ask Claire," Sokka says uncertainly. "Yeah. Yeah, I think so."

His stomach twists again.

Katara.

Toph leans on him again, this time because she's crying again.

Soon she's hugging him properly.

Sokka's okay with that.

He pats her shoulder, awkwardly, and then gives up on that for just holding her tight. She's so small, Toph. When she's not building mountains or throwing boulders, anyway. He forgets she needs human things too.

He can be strong for her. He's only got the one sister left.