Chapter Text
“Look at me when you’re talking to me.”
Toph stopped mid sentence, her mouth slightly open and her eyebrows high. She stared blankly ahead for a second, then turned to face Zuko.
The light was starting to fade from the sky above, and the rest of the group was clearing up after supper. The fire had dwindled down to embers, and wispy streams of smoke reached through the bluish light of early evening.
Toph blinked. “What?”
Uncharacteristically, there was no aggression in her question, only surprise and bewilderment. She still wasn’t accustomed to Zuko’s way of speaking, and had never met anyone quite like him. The way he spoke was direct and commanding, but without any trace of the imperiousness her father’s voice always carried. Raised as royalty with all the trappings of a palace and servants at his command, he was clearly used to asserting himself, but was seldom domineering.
Zuko crossed his arms and leaned against the tree next to him, not taking his sharp golden eyes off of her. Her head turned slightly to follow his movement.
“It’s this habit of yours. Oftentimes, you’re facing an entirely different direction to the people you’re having a conversation with. Just now, you were turned perpendicular to me.”
Toph’s eyebrows, which had shot straight up, relaxed into an expression of mild exasperation. “I know it takes some getting used to, but I don’t need to look at people to see them, Zuko. It doesn’t matter what direction I’m facing. It makes no difference.”
“It makes a difference to the people you’re talking to,” Zuko replied steadily. “You were telling me about your home life. Words are only a part of getting to know someone. I want to see your face, the expressions you make. Your eyes.”
Toph didn’t reply and shifted slightly so that her long bangs obscured her eyes. A few moments passed before Zuko spoke again.
“I didn’t look directly at anyone for a long time after my father burned me,” he said, his voice casual and calm. “The whole left side of my face was covered in bandages for months, and I only looked worse once the last of the gauze finally came off. I felt sure that the deformation was all people would see, and beyond that, the shame and dishonor it represented. I needed people to hear what I had to say without my image distracting them with feelings of disgust, or judgment, or, worst of all, pity.”
He exhaled through his nose and traced the edge of his scar absentmindedly. “You know, I would even strategically position myself in the room when I had meetings with the generals under my command, back when I was searching for the Av—for Aang. I always made sure my scar was facing an empty wall and wasn’t near a source of light. But sometimes, when I needed to intimidate, I’d give them a full view.” His hand fell away from his face.
“But now,” he continued, “I wear my scar with pride. I want people to see it, because it’s a symbol of the price I paid for standing up to tyranny, and because it’s a part of who I am.”
Toph smiled a softer smile than her usual grin, and her sightless gaze centered itself somewhere to the right of his own. “I forget you have a scar most of the time. Topical details like that don’t register in the seismic images I have of people. But I can try to imagine you with one, if it means a lot to you.”
Zuko breathed a small laugh. “Don’t worry about it. It’s novel to me, knowing someone who’s never seen my scar. There’s something - I don’t know - kind of fresh feeling about it.”
Toph shrugged. “Alright. But if you brought that up because you think I don’t want people looking at my eyes… I’ve never wanted to hide my blindness. It’s the reason I’m the best bender in the world. Without it, I wouldn’t have had to develop such a strong connection with the earth. To be fair, I probably still would have been an awesome bender if I’d been unfortunate enough to be born with sight, though,” she added with a cocky smirk.
“You didn’t know me back then, but when I was a fighting champion, my stage name was ‘The Blind Bandit.’ I wanted to throw my blindness in people’s faces; it amused me, you know, the idea that people saw it as something that was supposed to make me weak, when in reality it was the exact opposite. The more deeply they held onto that idea, the more humiliating it was when I crushed them into the ground! I made sure every opponent I faced got a good look at these eyes and knew exactly who had beaten them.”
Zuko nodded, then frowned. “So your enemies get to see you, but not your friends. You have nothing to hide from them, so what are you hiding from us?”
A trace of fear flashed across Toph’s face and she turned away again for a brief moment, before squaring her shoulders and turning back to look at him straight on.
“Okay, fine. Like I said before, I don’t see topical features, like scars or expressions. I don’t know what different expressions look like, or how people read them, or how mine are. I mean, I know I smile when I’m happy and frown when I’m mad, but it’s everything in between that’s too subtle for me to keep a handle on. I know that people read each other’s emotions through their faces, and it makes me nervous to think that people I’m talking to might be reading more into my expressions than I want to give away. I try to stay neutral looking most of the time, but sometimes it’s just easier to take the whole thing out of the equation and hide a bit. I guess it became a habit. Also…” she hesitated and her cheeks flushed red: another physical giveaway she had no way of knowing was indicative of her emotional state. “Everyone goes on and on about how pretty Katara is. I don’t understand visual attractiveness at all, but if I don’t measure up, if I look silly in comparison, it’s just nicer to not have my looks compared to hers all the time, as the only other girl. Not that I care, or anything.”
Her milky eyes were blazing under their thick black lashes, and the whiteness of her cheeks and forehead was still tinged with pink. Her thin brows furrowed as Zuko moved toward her, then shot up when he took her chin in his hand and carefully tilted her head until her pale eyes were finally looking straight into his own.
“You’re robbing us by hiding your face. These bangs you wear are a crime against the people around you. We want to have a sense of what you’re thinking, how you’re feeling; we want to experience the full you, not whatever side you choose to show us. And besides that, I like looking at you. You’re not just pretty, you’re interesting to look at. You’re a whole host of contradictions: dark and light, delicate and sturdy. Your eyes are unlike any I’ve ever seen, and, if you don’t mind, I’d rather look at them than at the side of your head when we’re talking.”
Toph’s sea foam green eyes were a shade hazier than usual when she blinked and nodded slightly. “Yeah, okay.”
Zuko smiled and stepped back. “Okay.”
She tucked her bangs behind her ears. “But that’s not fair, is it?” She pushed back suddenly, her voice bright again. “I don’t get to see your expressions. Why should people get to see mine?”
Zuko waved a dismissive hand as he walked away. “You read people’s heartbeats, Toph. I’d say the unfair advantage is on your end.”
She tapped into her bending to feel for his heartbeat. It was steady: honest. But she couldn’t see the flush on the back of his neck, or the way he blinked the ardor out of his eyes before finding Aang to resume training.