Title: Stone Deep
Author: Me
Pairing: ZukoxToph
Setting: In no particular episode at all, just a random situation in a random place at some random time.
Rating: R
Warnings: Torture, and some kissing, fun stuff. I do hate putting up warnings. -- This is really supposed to be psychological but I suck.
Summary: Sometimes we fear what we can't see.
Additionally, can anyone give me some critique as to how this relationship can possibly continue? Withoutbecoming overtly wrong in all sense of the word... and if I've already crossed that line, wtf am I doing here? I just decided to post this for the sake of seeing everyone's response to this pairing.
NO MORE BAD ZUTARA FICS PLZ. (End of PSA)
She is a short and wiry little girl. Her hair is dark, short in an out-dated page boy cut that had revealed to him that her age couldn't be any older than twelve, barely marrying age. She barely stands up to his collar bone. The little Earthbender's legs had been sturdy, solid on the ground, rooting here there on the sand dunes. Her eyes, crystal and fierce, hawk-like as they pierced the empty space in Zuko's general direction as the wind and sand, heedless and hungry, savagely jerked at their clothes, making a high-pitched hyena laugh through the holes of the wind mill walls.
She's not standing now. She was dusted in a layer of ground meal, after Zuko had unleashed nearly half a ton of the stuff on her, muffling her senses. It had been challenging to defeat her without catching the flammable stuff on fire, but in the end it was a matter of simply stepping onto the mountain of meal, silently stepping behind her before clamping his hand around her mouth, soaked in fluid that made one sleepy.
She isn't standing because she's still unconscious and her legs are bound with chicken wire, as were her hands and arms. Too tightly, he thinks. Her fingertips are turning blue.
He is just about to crouch next to her and loosen them just a little when her eyes flew open and she spat, "You breathe like a pig with the flu! Let me go!"
She bucks; she writhes; Zuko can see her fingers clench and unclench, twitching to try and Earthbend some miracle her way. But they were in a water mill, powering the great wooden machinery that ground up corn into meal. The soft kathud-thud, kathud-thud of the cogs turning, ancient things older than the house up the hill near where it was built. The scuffing of meal dust when she struggles, attempting her very best to loose herself from being tied unceremoniously to the wood pole that supported the main beam.
Zuko feels pretty good about this. Just the wood and the water for a good twenty feet before the shore. Water nearly fifty feet deep. This is a bizarre water mill.
She can't do a damn thing.
He can taste her frustration.
"You can stop making yourself tired now. I need you to stay nice and awake for me so you can tell me where your bald-headed friend is."
"I don't know any dumb bald people!" Toph hates how her voice quavers. The echoes come back to her.
Blackness. She reaches out with her hearing, her Earthbending, dipping her awareness into everything around her. She can feel his heart beating through the wood in the floor and his footsteps no matter how lightly he tried to step. There is a large object to her left, but the resounding thuds throughout the water mill and the chuckle of water over the stones confuse her. She can percieve only the vaguest of impressions.
"The Avatar." Voice like burned charcoal. It has the undercurrents of one who had breathed in smoke regularly all his life and enjoyed it.
Toph steels herself, lowering her head and feeling her hair tickle her brow. "Not a clue." That's right, you son of a bitch. Lean a little closer.
"I can give you one and I can assure you--" His weight shifts. Moves closer. "--you won't like it." Heat next to her ear. Light, calm breathing. Smelled like charred wood.
The Earthbender lunges, teeth snapping closed on empty air as he yanks his ear out of reach - just in time. With a huff of indignation, he slaps her in the face like lightning. "Bitch."
"Whoreson!" The retaliation is fast. Toph is proud of herself for the comeback. "I won't tell you nothin'!"
"Then you'll die here. I'll burn this whole mill to cinders and watch your ashes wash away down the river. Would you like that?" The calm certainty in his voice, the conviction in it, startles her. For a minute she believes he would do it. He doesn't exactly sound much like a guy who would kill little girls.
But is he that heartless? She doesn't know. She never asked her friends what kind of guy he was. Only that he was some scar-faced, scary guy.
"I'm not telling!" she repeats out loud, turning her head this way and that. She pinpoints him again. He's somewhere behind her, rummaging around, taking his sweet time. She clenches her teeth and finds comfort in the grinding noise she makes in her ears. She can't feel her hands anymore.
He comes back. Without a doubt she realizes there's fire at her back. She stiffens all over and feels panic creep up her throat like vomit. "What are you doing? Hey, knock it off!"
The heat comes closer to her ear. His fingertip barely brushes it, but it's enough. It's scalding and hot and a bright explosion of pain fires in her brain. She jerks her head away and screams, struggling until she notices wetness around her hands. Bleeding? Coppery smell. Burning hair. She shrieks again in outrage until he hits her again.
"Tell me where he's gone. What is he planning now?" Patient and cobra-like whispers. She wishes she couldn't imagine his tongue licking his lips as he sizes her up for more.
"Dunno," she said leadenly. Flinches when she feels the heat again. "I swear to the stars I don't know--"
She screams again, kicking her tied up legs uselessly. "St... Stop it!"
"Tell me."
"Just stop it, damn you!"
"Tell me and I'll stop!"
"GO TO HELL!"
Zuko touches her other ear, and the smell of burning hair fills her nostrils. She flinches away until his other hand grabs her by the jaw and holds her still. She can't see him, but she can feel the heat from his body spreading over her. There's a twinge in her stomach, and the terror of that horrible thing that happens to slutty women on dirty streets fills her head with contorted, terrifying images. But she will not beg, and she'll never beg, because Toph was made of tougher stuff than most of those slutty girls on dirty streets. She was an Earthbender, and the Avatar himself had asked her to teach him what she knew.
She steels herself again. Her heart hammers, but she tries to stare with her crystal, sightless eyes into his face. He's not close enough for her to bite again. His hands are rough and probably dirty. She wrinkles her nose, and tastes his scent on her tongue when she tries to breathe through her nose.
Zuko watches her. Her face is making all kinds of expressions, ones that he's sure she's not doing on purpose. Eventually she levels her stare and tries to look as if she's looking right at him. Her lower lip quivers, and she parts her lip to take a breath. Her courage and stubborn stare, despite being blind, confuses him. She's blind but painfully independant. And he is holding back. Why?
Is it because he pities her?
He's not going to get anywhere by torturing her as if she were a blind person. He smiles cruelly, fixing his golden eyes on her mouth.
Impulsively, and rather surprising himself, he leans close and clamps his mouth over hers roughly. Her mouth is small and hard, full of teeth, and a surprised squeal fills his head as she suddenly wriggles, spasming violently as his tongue pushes into her mouth. Salt. Sweat, tears. Sand. Her voice dies and she melts, only the barest quiver vibrating through her body to her mouth and her tongue.
She doesn't bite.
------
She doesn't bite because her body has gone totally and suddenly numb. It's not fear, or anger. It draws her out of the hollow, deep well of panic and frees her from the shackles of confusion. His tongue feels smooth and clean, as if he still gets up every morning to brush his teeth. She can't see him, but she can taste him and feel him close to her. Her heart hammers again. The slap of water against the underside of the water mill, the kathud-thud of the cogs turning, fills her ears until she can't hear anything else, or what he says next against her mouth.
She's confused. Toph tries to ask him to repeat what he says, but her tongue feels leaden, as if his saliva had put her nerves to sleep. He shoves a cloth over her mouth again and she knows nothing else.
Zuko cuts her bindings quickly. Her hands are pale, wrists bleeding. He rubs them and her forearms to get the blood flowing back into them again while he presses bandages around her wrists. Her hair fell over her eyes, and her mouth was still open a little, her lips puffy.
He tucks her into a blanket in a boat on the river and considers what to do with her now that he obviously hasn't tortured her enough to get anything out of her. He combs a hand through his hair and stares at her, tongue working in his mouth, feeling heat spread throughout his face.
Kissing her had put some kind of fog over her. The burn on the back of her ear is still fresh and painfully red. But he lets that one alone to remind her of who she belongs to.
It's going to be an interesting afternoon.