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.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Penance doesn't show any sign of moving. Not now, not with Toph sitting so small and quiet beside her.

She nods, for whatever reason, and her hair clicks with the movement.

Hair clicking makes Toph smile, a little.

"She tried to take acre of everyone. No matter who they were - even Fire Nation."

There's a bigger smile now.

"She and Sokka had a massive fight over that."

A small sound is made, a shuffling that sounds almost amused. Even if all that's really happening is Penance making herself more comfortable with crouching on the ground.

"We were traveling undercover in the Fire Nation," Toph explains, "Cause we had to find the Fire Lord and defeat him before this comet comes and makes his bending really powerful. And Sokka had the whole trip planned out - even down to bathroom breaks - but then we found this village that was starving."

Her voice is natural now, though she doesn't usually talk this much, it feels comfortable.

Penance's hand slips from hers as she speaks, but it's only for further shifting. Her arm brushes Toph's as she settles.

"Katara wouldn't go without helping them, but Sokka wouldn;t stay 'cause it'd mess up our schedule, so she feed Appa purple tongue berries to make him look too sick to fly, and snuck around while we were asleep helping them. She even dressed up as a spirit so they wouldn't know it was her."

That soft clicking could be anything - animals running around the forest, a leaf falling from a tree. But it could also be taken as a response, if looked at the right way.

"Of course, we caught her. Because I can feel people moving even at night. She and Sokka had this big argument about saving the world or helping people, and she... she said she wouldn't leave while people needed her. 'Cause that's what she was like."

Penance doesn't move again, sitting quietly beside Toph, almost touching.