It was a raw feeling.

The sound of those feather light footsteps brushing against the expensive carpets was unbearable. With every soft thud, she felt a jagged knife being plunged into her stomach; and every time she heard his feet drag slightly—as if he were reluctant to leave—the knives started twisting around inside her.

It took all of her willpower not to scream and beg someone to stop him. She wanted to look up at her father and beg for the footsteps to stop so that maybe the raw pain would dull.

But nothing would be done. They had given her an ultimatum, and that had been the end of it. No second chances. No excuses. No arguments.

She didn't know what to do. She had never felt so paralyzed—so completely incapable of doing anything. Always, she was a step ahead of everyone. She knew everything before anyone else. She could react quicker than most and she was always prepared and on her guard.

So to have something—someone—that filled her with such happiness and hope be pulled out from right under her, and then not have the ability to get it back…

…that stunned her.

Her throat closed up when she tried to call out to him. Her joints locked into place when she tried to run to him. Her fingers trembled when she tried to reach out for him. She was in absolute shock. She was at a loss. She was slowly getting weaker—slowly breaking.

That was why the unspeakable happened when she heard him say her name which he tagged at the end of a regretful apology.

She cried.

It was something that she had never done. The pressure behind her eyes was painful and she felt the hot, salty tears collect at the corners of her eyes. Her cheeks were stained and red and the small streams of water kept pouring down no matter how hard she willed them to stop.

It was the worst feeling in the world—and she could do nothing to remedy it.

She mused slightly about how strange it all was: how he infuriated her and made her seethe with anger, how he was the only one who may have understood a fraction of her true nature, how he made revealing her deepest secret to her parents completely worth it—

—and how she had only known him for one day.

One day, and it felt as if he was slowly pulling something vital out of her soul the farther and farther away he got.

Even though she was sure that it would sting her throat and that the sounds would come out hoarse and cracked, she knew he deserved a response. She felt that he was sorry. And she was also sorry. Even though it really wasn't either of their faults, it seemed as if an apology was the safest and most comforting thing they could say within the last few seconds they were allowed to see each other.

So she apologized as well.

She had also said goodbye.

And she allowed his name to gently slip off her tongue, soft enough for him to hear.

Aang.

The footsteps dulled. They no longer dragged. They no longer echoed.

They were simply gone. Just like he was simply gone.

And she knew he would never be coming back.

OOO

Incorporeal

Summary: He was simply gone. But on the first day of Spring of her fourteenth year, he came back.

A/N: So after asking the opinions of many people, I figured I'd post the darn thing. If people think it's strange and unrealistic and odd and disturbing and weird…well, I don't care. It won't do too much harm just seeing where this goes and observing the reaction I get. Besides, there aren't enough dark!fics in Avatar. That being said, I want brutal honesty. So tell me what you think and happy reading.

OOO

.

Imaginary pains are by far the most real we suffer, since we feel a constant need for them and invent them because there is no way of doing without them.

.

Solitude does funny things to a person.

When you're left alone for so long with nothing left but your thoughts and inner musings, things start to harden, things start to disappear, and things start to change—morphing, twisting, transforming, and molding into something entirely different.

Family is not so important anymore. If anything, it becomes more of a nuisance than as a source of comfort and guidance. The isolation eats away at your soul, making you forget about the things that you used to enjoy, things that used to make you smile, and things that filled your entire body and made it hum with life.

Time passes differently. There is no such thing as seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years. It simply rolls on along without any indication of whether it's dark or light, winter or summer, late or early. It's like this peculiar expanse of nothingness—space that just keeps going on and on, seemingly endless.

You start talking back to yourself because there's no one there to listen. You start imagining worlds in your mind just to give yourself something to do. You dream more often than not because your imagination seems to be more engaging and full of life than anything reality has to offer you.

When solitude runs rampant for too long, a person can totally lose themselves.

They become out of touch with reality, unresponsive to what's around them, and unwilling to try and reconnect with the world. Their only friend is themselves.

She started to feel the effects of such an existence extremely early on. Thirteen years old and already she wished that the world would just disappear and that she could close her eyes and escape into some fashioned, fake, yet achingly perfect reality that she had constructed. Had she been in her right state of mind, she would've been disgusted by her behavior. She normally wasn't one to daydream or fantasize. She used to think it a waste of time.

But now, she had nothing else better to do with her time.

Where there used to be opportunities for escape and adventure, there were now gates and locks. Where there used to be privacy, there was now constant surveillance. Where there used to be freedom and independence, there were now escorts, baby sitters, sentries, and guards. She stayed in her room more often than not, and she was forbidden to leave her house—all because everyone around her insisted that it was for her own good.

Bending became impossible. Tournaments were out of the question. The only time she really could go outside was to walk around in the garden, and even then she had to be escorted wherever she went.

It was a very mundane and pointless existence. Days and days would pass by and she wouldn't even notice. Everything melded together into a never ending cycle of quiet meals with her parents and quiet evenings in her room alone.

There was no conversation. No company. No anything.

Her parents became worried. The girl talked to herself out loud in her room, barely went outside, and said very little to them if anything at all. They expected that she was angry with them, and that this was nothing more than a continuation of her rebellious streak that they had only recently become aware of. They left her alone, thinking that they were leaving her alone to let her anger simmer down.

In reality, they were only making the situation worse by leaving her alone.

.

"I wonder if I could get away with bending in the garden tonight."

"I doubt it. The guards will definitely hear and you'll get in trouble."

"How much more trouble can I get into than this?"

"They won't let you leave the house. Period. Not even in the garden."

"I haven't practiced in months."

"But there's nothing you can do."

There was nothing she could do.

"I wonder what will happen if I run really fast."

"Your parents aren't that stupid. They've surely thought of that."

"I'll tunnel underground."

"Now you're being silly. You tried that already, remember? The guards caught you in less than a minute."

"I'll send a letter out."

"How? And to who?"

"…"

"You're trapped. You can't do anything. You're done. This is your existence now. Get used to it."

Conversations like this occurred all of the time. She would try and try to find a way out and she would fail and fail in the quest. It was painful more than anything else knowing that things may very well be like this until the day she shriveled up and finally died.

"You really wish he were here don't you?"

A pause. A sigh.

"Yeah. I do."

.

On the first day of Spring of her fourteenth year, he came back.

.

It scared her the first time that It appeared.

She was alone, or at least she thought she was. Her parents were definitely not in the room with her since she could still hear their voices reverberating through the air of the dining room and up through the floorboards of her room. Could it have been a guard? A maid? Did one of her escorts want something from her? She had weighed all of these options in her mind to see how plausible each of them sounded. But there was one fact that still remained.

The door had never opened.

She was standing next to the door when she heard It—felt It. Afraid of interacting with It, she reached for the doorknob and tested the doorknob. It was still locked. Considering the fact that perhaps the intruder thought to lock the door before after they entered, she silently fingered the space between the door and the doorframe.

The piece of parchment she had placed there was undisturbed.

No one had come in through the door. The breeze outside would have alerted her of a window opening. Plus she would have heard the footsteps, the breathing, the creaking of the floorboards, the rustle of clothing…something.

But the fact still remained that somehow, this thing had entered her room and made itself known to her. It didn't really say anything. All It did was utter a polite little cough to alert her of Its presence. If she had to take a guess, this It sounded male. But again, she wasn't sure what being could have possibly entered a room that she herself had been in for the entire day—and without her knowledge at that.

Her back remained pressed against the solid surface of the door, providing comfortable leverage in case her knees decided to buckle or her limbs began to grow weak with all of her weight to support. Her lips remained shut tight into a thin line. She was afraid to speak. She didn't know what this thing was, and she feared that saying the wrong thing would put her into an irreversibly bad situation.

So she waited. And It waited. Neither was sure how to split the thick and heavy tension that settled into the air. So they both stood silently in the echoing silence of the girl's godforsaken bedroom—the one she wasn't allowed to leave.

She contemplated going and turning in for bed, thinking that it was all just her mind playing around without her permission. Over the years, she had developed quite the overactive imagination. This was probably just the result of too much daydreaming.

That's what she thought. But then, It spoke.

"Toph?"

She froze. She pressed her back further into the door as if she were trying to disappear—trying to blend into the wood of the door and become invisible, silent, and dead. More than anything, she wanted to shrink away from the voice. Her eyed fluttered closed and she concentrated on willing It to go away so that she could be left alone to think and wonder in peace, just as she had been doing for years.

But then there was this prick at the back of her head. It was a small little push that was poking at her brain and willing her body to do things she wouldn't have dared to do under normal circumstances. Her limbs started moving on their own accord, closer and closer to this mysterious being that had appeared into her room in such an unorthodox manner. Her bare feet shuffled timidly across the floor, her arms curled around her waist, and her head titled curiously to the side as she neared It.

The breathing became more audible. If she willed her feet to feel hard enough, she could make out a rough outline of the thing standing in front of her. And the voice—she realized suddenly that it was a voice she recognized.

Her hand reached out tentatively, hoping her fingertips would gently brush against the thing and give her a sense of security.

But as soon as she began to feel their body heat radiating on her fingertips, It disappeared as soon as it came. There was no indication that it had gone through a window or out a door. Thoughts of ghosts and ghouls walking through walls and tempting her were quickly dismissed from her mind. It wasn't a threatening visit. In fact, she knew who it had been, although she was still quite confused as to how it had been possible.

Nevertheless, his name hung off of her lips and served as the lullaby that lulled her to sleep that night.

"…Aang."

.

His second appearance three days later was far more abrupt and surprising than the first.

"That's wrong."

The girl gasped sharply and allowed the ink-tipped brush to clatter onto the table top, splattering pin pricks of ink all over the tutoring assignment and all over the stained oak desk she was working on. Her breath came out in short bursts and filled up the noiseless atmosphere of the room. At the same time, the brush rolled off of the table top and tumbled onto the carpeted floor of her study. Her ink pot must have tipped over as well, because she heard the dull thuds of ink falling onto the carpet, probably staining it forever. It reminded her or the time when she pricked her finger on a sewing needle and the blood dripped onto the shawl she had been embroidering. It was the same sound. Tap, tap, tap.

What frightened her—intrigued her?—was the fact that she could feel the breathing on her neck. The small wisps of baby hair on the back of her neck that weren't long enough to be included in her complicated up do were fluttering with each and every exhale that reached her neck.

It send shivers down her spine and caused small goose bumps to prickle on her skin and make her feel on edge—or perhaps elated. She wasn't quite sure yet. She would have to wait and find out which one.

She attempted to speak, her voice coming out shaken and tentative. "W-What do you mean?" she breathed out.

The breathing moved from the back of neck to the very top of her left shoulder. She waited for something terrifying—wonderful—to happen. Her own breathing was stuck in her throat and her lungs were filling with air at extremely odd intervals. It was a thrilling anticipation that she had been left in. Whether it was the thrill you got right before you were killed or the thrill of warm fingers tentatively brushing against a lover's body, she wasn't sure. But she waited as her body was wracked with nerves, unsure what was about to occur.

But then she felt what must have been a chin lean on her shoulder. Then a hand—a large, masculine, warm hand—a hand that she had held before—and oh if felt so nice to feel that hand again—that hand had covered her own and grasped it tightly. The thumb brushed against her bony knuckles, taking its time to carefully map out the subtle indentations and bumps along the way. The hand disconnected with hers for only a moment—an agonizingly long moment, a moment that she wished weren't so filled with anticipation—but then it returned, pressing a long, hard object into her hand. She immediately recognized the feel of it. It was her calligraphy brush that was retrieved from the floor.

Aang—for she knew by now that it must have been him…the touches were all too familiar—guided her brush into the puddle of ink that collected on the table top. He brought the brush to the parchment paper and held it there for a moment.

"You wrote a character wrong," he whispered, referring to her writing. "You write it like this."

Their hands gripped the calligraphy brush gently as they made various lines and strokes against the paper, correcting the mistake she had made.

He stayed all night and helped her write out all of the poems that she was expected to copy from memory onto the paper.

.

"Where have you been all this time?"

It was an honest question that she didn't expect would require a complicated answer.

However, he sat in the velvet arm chair silent, his breathing still as constant as it had been from the first day he appeared. She sat in the couch across from him, her feet silently tapping against the floor of her bedroom. Though the wood blurred her vision, she could still feel the faint thrumming of his heartbeat travel through her feet and up through the nerves in her limbs. Her body adjusted to the rhythm until her heart beat was in tune with his. She felt oddly at peace knowing this, and allowed herself to press further into the embroidered pillows behind her and curl further into the quilts that he wrapped around her. Even the cup of tea that he had made her warmed her body and set her whole body aflame with a comfortable hum of calm.

At this point, she would not have minded any answer he gave her. She was too taken with his presence to care.

He hesitated before answering. "It's difficult to explain."

Her face remained neutral, staring out into nothing while she whispered her response. "Try."

At first he spoke nothing. Normally, she would have been offended by the lack of an answer, but she was too deep in the warm comfort of his company and tenderness to care. She heard the slight rustling of fabric against the velvet chair. Then the soft padding sounds of his footsteps grew closer and closer until they were only inches away from her. The light fabric of his clothes brushed up against the exposed skin of her leg and alerted her of his proximity. She repeated the action she had attempted when he first appeared. She reached a hand out to touch him—any part of him really. She just liked reaching out for him and feeling something solid. It made her feel like she wasn't dreaming.

Her hand touched the edge of his sleeve, the soft, cotton fabric felt smooth against her skin. He moved his hand away and clasped her outstretched hands in between his warmer, larger ones. His words came out as a whisper, and she barely heard his words as they passed like ghost chants across her ears.

"I've been thinking about you…and when I'd get to see you again."

.

Her mother liked to knock on the door during the night to see if her daughter was alright.

The girl detested the woman's visits. She wasn't sure if it was because her lack of interaction with her mother, or the fact that her mother locked her up in this room with no hope of ever leaving. Either way, whenever the knocking started, she would bury her face into his chest and hope for her to just go away.

He would run his fingers gently through her hair and convince her that everything would be alright, and that the lady of the house would soon leave them be and let them be themselves for the rest of the night.

His presence had become the only constant thing in her life that she didn't want to smash into pieces or rip apart into shreds. He came in every night, spoke to her, spent time with her, and helped her when she needed it. Every night—ever since the second time he appeared—they would write out her lines together, lines that were filled with flowery descriptions of a poet's deepest secrets—their deepest wishes—and their most treasured dreams. Sometimes he would bring her cups of tea and sit next to her while he told her about the days that he spent slaving over the thought of her and her presence that couldn't keep him away for too long. Sometimes he stayed by the edge of her bed and helped her sleep when she couldn't find the nerve to do so. Other times, they simply sat together—like right now—and listened to the deafening silence that invaded her room at all hours of the day.

It was only natural for the girl to be upset when her mother interrupted that comfortable silence.

"I want her to go away, Aang."

He nodded and rubbed her hands together. "She will. She always does."

She always found it hard to believe it. Because the sound of her mother always brought back the memories that she wished she didn't have. She always remembered the thuds of

heavy tears

his footsteps hitting the floor and slowly walking out of the door. The feelings always came back and hammered into her skull, relentless in their mission to remind of her of everything that she had lost. She had felt the air get caught in her throat, making her feel as if she were

drowning

crying all over again and hoping for his footsteps to turn back around. The lack of air hit her full force once her mother of her father came around. She wanted to crash through the door and yell, scream, shout, and beg like she should have done that day. She should have fought harder, and she should have insisted. She should have stood up against them and forced her only request down deep into their ears and into their minds—

DON'T MAKE HIM GO! PLEASE!

But then her mother would walk away. Then there would only be the two of them. And all would be right in the world until the memories came crashing back.

.

She was often left wondering why she needed him so fiercely.

They hadn't known each other for too long in order to establish the strong bonds that constituted for a solid and loving relationship. Then again, she knew next to nothing about romance, love, lust, and desire apart from the poems that she and he copied over every night. They spoke of fanciful things—fluttering stomachs, rapid heartbeats, romantic sceneries, long walks, diamonds and jewels, lip biting due to nerves, and glazed stares filled with devotion.

They had none of that. They couldn't leave the confines of her room. Her stomach never fluttered, only felt sick for fear of losing him again. Her heart beat was never rapid, just constant and steady and similar to his. There were no walks, no gifts, and no staring. They just were. In that room, after he came back, they just were.

"Do you love him?"

"I'm not sure I even know what love is. That's the problem."

"Some might say that this is too premature…that it's too new."

"But what if this is what love is…something premature and new."

"No. It's too new. It hasn't grown yet. It's like staring at a rose that hasn't opened up yet. You're not getting the full picture yet. Only a part."

"But he told me that I'm all he's ever thought about…that I'm all he ever obsessed about since he was gone."

"But haven't you ever wondered why it took him so long to come back?"

The girl sighed. She was sitting in his lap now, burying her nose in his shirt, smelling the familiar sandalwood smell that had stuck to him all those years ago. His muscles were still thin and sinewy. His fingers were still thin and strong as they caressed her hair, her back, her shoulder, her arms, her hands, and everywhere he could touch. She gripped his shirt tighter, afraid to let him go and afraid for him to disappear into the air and dissipate into nothingness. She didn't want him to be a ghost—something that she was terrified of. They walked through walls and haunted corners of the rooms, speaking in whispers that she couldn't understand. She wouldn't go back to that. She wouldn't be able to stand it.

"He came. At least he came."

"Yeah. Two years later. Doesn't that strike you as odd?"

"No. He came back for me. He cares for me, I know he does. I need him here with me and he finally came. I don't care how long it took him."

"So…do you love him?"

She was slowly drifting to sleep in his arms. Her words were slurring together in her head. She had been talking to herself for too long tonight that now both sides of her were making little sense. The response she gave herself was half hearted and she wasn't even sure if she believed it.

"Yes…I think."

.

Their first kiss was…well…indescribable.

The stories she had heard about in her poetry and in the books she had been read described them as heart pounding, blood rushing, knee-buckling experiences. It was supposed to make you light headed, make you want to fly or float in the air. They were supposed to make you feel dazed, yet satisfied. They should have filled your heart with a rapid wild fire that set your soul aflame with emotions and desires that were all brand new to you.

Nothing like that had happened. It was all rather different.

His kiss felt cold and disconnected. It wasn't because he wasn't giving the passion he should have been giving her. No, his lips moved eagerly, his tongue coaxed hers out into the open and twined together. He tasted like bitter chocolate, a taste that she had always loved. She always dreamed that he would taste like that. He was eager, and loving, and tender with her—and she grasped onto the small bursts of passion that he sent jolting through her body.

But she couldn't ignore the strange way his hands roamed over her—the odd feeling of his lips against her—the way that she tried desperately to grasp on to any part of him and hang on for dear life…only to realize that no part of him was enough leverage to keep her stable and to keep her head from swimming with doubt.

When it ended, he laid her down in her bed and whispered nonsense to her—something that was probably a mixed parody of all of the poetry they had written together in the late hours of the evening when he was helping her write all of the characters that she couldn't see. She had never noticed it before, but when he started brushing his hands over her hair to help her sleep, she got the feeling again.

The feeling that he wasn't really there.

.

"Hallucination. That's a strange word," she mused.

Her tutor nodded with an amused smile on his face, his calligraphy brush still in his hand in case he needed to correct her writing again. "Yes, well the curriculum is somewhat recycled. The characters are not exactly my ideal choice, but they're good for you to practice."

The girl nodded and dipped her brush into the ink, carefully and delicately dragging the wet tip across the paper and carefully drawing out all of the markings necessary to complete the character. Her thoughts went back to Aang and the times when they wrote out lines and lines of prose. Her hands felt awkward writing here on this desk without his hands to guide her. But he wasn't here. He only came when she was alone.

The tip of her tongue poked out from between her lips, scrutinizing the next strokes she had to make which to her were the most difficult. Before she attempted to finish her assignment, she put the wooden end of the calligraphy brush in her mouth and posed a question to her tutor.

"What's a hallucination?"

The tutor clicked his tongue disapprovingly against his teeth, almost as if her were berating her for not knowing the word. "This was in your lesson yesterday," he said firmly.

"I know it was," she said dully, boredom quickly taking over as it often did during these monotonous lessons that she had every day. "'Illusory perception and a common symptom of a mental disability,'" she quoted, exactly as the definition had been read to her yesterday. "That's an awfully dense definition, don't you think?"

The tutor sighed and she felt him nod his head. He knew that she was asking for an example. He tapped his brush against the table top and tried to think of an adequate example.

"When someone has a hallucination, they think that the things they experience are real when they're really not. For example, someone may be thinking that they're hearing voices whispering to them at night before they go to bed, but in reality there are no voices. The person is having a hallucination. Or maybe you are seeing a person in front of you and you are having a conversation with them, but in reality you're not talking to anyone. It's thinking something is real when it is simply just a figment of your imagination—a trick of the mind. Understand?"

The girl nodded numbly, mulling carefully over the words he had fed her. She kept nibbling on the edge of her brush, creating teeth marks into the polished wooden handle. It took a few stern taps on the edge of the table with his own brush for the tutor to gain his students attention again and convince her to continue with her lesson.

.

"You're quiet today."

She laughed bitterly. Of course she was quiet. She was still thinking and mulling over everything that had happened to her every since that fateful day that he had walked out of her home two years ago. It was still a burning memory that had etched a permanent brand on her heart. Now every time he heard his voice like this…every time he asked her questions or brushed his hands against hers or even came too close to her so that she could feel his breathing near her—the brand always hurt…throbbed.

"I'm thinking."

"About what?"

Whether or not I'm crazy. Whether or not this should even be happening.

But she couldn't respond to him. Her voice was caught in her throat and she couldn't even bare to acknowledge his presence. Everything was getting muddled together and confusing all over again. It was like the early days when she was all alone. Back when things were just long expanses of emptiness and confusion—days where she couldn't decipher between anything anymore. It was all mixed together in a way that all she was left to do was sit back and let it all

destroy her

consume her until she felt numb all over again. It was a relentless cycle. Confusion and numbness. She thought that he had given her a sense of constancy when he came to visit her again and that things now made some sort of sense. The things that she was feeling could be labeled with names and feelings.

Now it was all fading away again.

She didn't know what possessed her to do it. But she did know that she needed constancy. She needed a solid answer. She needed a person who was out there in the world to tell her that wasn't crazy—that she wasn't losing herself—that she had it all under control.

She stood up from the velvet couch and crossed the room slowly. She reached the wooden door keeping her locked up in this stuffy atmosphere of muddled fragments, trying to piece themselves together into something concrete and real. But right now, she couldn't trust anything at the moment. So she needed someone to bring her back. Even if it was the one person she really didn't want to see.

"Mom!" she screamed, cupping her hands around her mouth to make the words echo. "Come, quick!"

She made her voice sound panicked, as if she were in danger. She would come faster that way. Just like she wanted her to.

She felt Aang move. "What are you doing?" he asked frantically.

She kept her back to him. "Checking something important."

Her mother came bursting through the door in an instant, the key to her room clutched tightly in the woman's hands. The woman looked frantically back and forth, afraid that something happened to her daughter. But when she walked in, all she saw was a dull eyed, hollow cheeked version of her daughter. Her mother tilted her head and brought her hands down on her daughter's shoulders.

"Toph, what's the matter?"

It was just as the girl feared. This touch from her mother felt different than Aang's touch. It felt solid. But his…oh, she didn't even know anymore.

"Mom, look on the armchair, do you see anything?" she asked quickly.

The girl tapped her foot on the floor and managed to see a dull outline of the boy sitting in the chair behind her. He was remaining silent, not bothering to intervene on the conversation. Maybe he knew that she needed to see this—to realize it. Maybe he realized that these days had been

FAKE! ALL FAKE!

hard on her, and that she really needed to have it sorted out for her and placed out on the table for her to understand. It was all too much. She needed the pressure to be relieved. Maybe then she could breathe. She brought her hands up to grasp her mother's wrists which were lying on her shoulders. She gave them a squeeze, urging her to tell her the truth.

"Sweetie…there's nothing there."

.

.

.

.

"You need to watch yourself. You're walking in unknown territory. You might get hurt once you figure it all out."

.

Her mother didn't realize that she had ignited a flame of absolute dejection in her daughter's heart.

She didn't know that now her daughter questioned the reality she lived in and whether everything around her was real or fake. She didn't know that her daughter was wondering if she herself was real or just some strange delusion that wasn't really there—wasn't really real.

Dreams of her living in the imaginings of another person's head started to plague her nights all the time. She kept thinking that she wasn't real. She kept thinking that she was a ghost—a memory—nothing but the sick delusions of another twisted, lonely, and desperate mind. She always wondered whether she would always remain this way forever. She wondered if she was incapable of changing herself because she doesn't have the power to do so. She wondered if she was nothing but another person's dream.

Her mother didn't know that she took a brush and crashed it into her mirror that night. She also didn't know that the girl had desperately reached around the bathroom floor for a shard of glass that was sharp enough to do the job that she was hoping to get over and done with. The poor girl needed answers. She needed to know. She was tired of being locked up, deceived, held back, rejected, abandoned, repressed, and….and…

She brought the shard of glass near a large lock of hair. She wanted to change herself. She wanted to know that at least she wasn't a ghost—a dream—a hallucination.

The glass helped her hack away strand after strand of her long hair. She didn't know why she did it. She was confused by what she was turning into. Maybe she was desperate. Maybe she was tired of living in this house all by herself all the time without the sweet smells and feelings of freedom and power that she had been drugged with ever since she was a little girl. She just wanted a change. She wanted someone to come and tell her that her life could change. But he wasn't real. He wasn't real. He wasn't real. And all of her hopes were dashed, just like in the beginning. She was back to square one. And she was just tired.

She sat there on the floor that night as she felt her work scattered on the floor around her in gnarled, tangled, and twisted patterns. But it was a comfort. She was real.

She was real.

She was real.

.

"It's late. You should be getting to bed soon."

She scowled. Figures that he would try to cut the conversation short to remind her that the day was closing to end.

She picked at her finger nails, annoyed that she had allowed them to grow so long, and attempted to argue with him.

"I'm not tired."

He chuckled—a rich, velvety sound. She heard him shift in the comfortable arm chair, swathed in velvet. The fire crackled loudly in the fireplace, filling her room with unnecessary noise and much needed warmth. She heard his clothed rustle slightly—he was probably crossing his legs.

"Of course you're not tired. Clearly you're dozing off on purpose as a sign of endearment towards me."

She kept on playing with her nails, trying to break through the hard, white tipped portion. She disliked the way they had been scratching her at night every time nightmares came along. She would wake with lines on her arms which were raised and felt a bit blotchy and always took a week to go away. She hated the stinging feeling from the scratches, and all she wanted was for it to stop.

"I can't go to bed yet," she muttered, her words slightly drawled and connected, showing that she was concentrating. "I'm busy."

She heard him frown, and his clothes rustled again. "They'll grow back crooked if you do it like that."

She ignored his warning as she made a crack in the long nail on her index finger. She twisted the finger so that the side of it was facing up instead of the front. She began tearing the white tip off of her finger, leaving nothing more than a pink stub for a nail. She ran her other finger along the nail. It was sloppy and uneven, but at least it was short like she had wanted it.

"I don't care. As long as they don't scratch they can look however they want." Click. Click. She made a crack in another nail.

This time he shook his head. "Cut it out, please. It's a bad habit."

"Shut up. I didn't ask for your opinion." Rip. Another nail cut short.

"At least ask for a pair of scissors instead of doing it with your fingers."

She shook her head. "This way's faster."

She kept on ripping her nails shorter and shorter until they were so dull that they wouldn't even be able to cut through tissue paper. Some of them had been made too short—two or three of them were throbbing, one was bleeding a little—but overall, she had done it right.

She heard him sigh across from her. His footsteps were very light, so light that she couldn't hear them. But she felt him walking closer to her.

"Is this going to be like that time with your hair?" he asked her curiously.

Her muscles stiffened and her jaw tightened.

Memories started flooding back. The hairbrush. The mirror. The glass scattering across the floor.

Her fingers brushed against the tips of her hair tentatively. The thick locks that used to fall down to her lower back were now thin and only just passed her shoulders. Surely she should have cared more about what she had done, but personally it didn't affect her in the least. Her mother had been furious, but the entire memory of the conversation they had had about why she had done it was chopped and muddled.

A hand enclosed around hers. He took her hand away from her hair and slowly started running his fingers through it—slowly, gently, and lovingly.

"It never did grow back even, did it?" he said sadly.

She smiled bitterly, still picking at her ruined nails and wincing when she accidently started to make them bleed. She sank deeper into the velvet chair she was sitting in and dropped her head down. She felt the uneven bangs cover her face at an odd angle and sighed.

"Broken things never look the same again no matter how you fix them."

.

"It hurts."

"Yeah. It hurts really bad."

"He didn't come today."

"He hasn't come for the last four days."

"That's a long time."

"I know. Soon he'll stop coming altogether."

"Are you okay with that?"

"I'm not sure."

"You're not sure?"

"It was kind of nice having him around. He was sweet. Just like he was a long time ago. I really thought that it was him. I thought that everything would be okay."

"But he was fake. He wasn't real. None of that actually happened."

"I know. But it only means that he's never really coming back."

"He's got an important job. He can't be wasting time to come and save you from this. Not for a long while anyway."

"Believe me. I've spent all these four days thinking the same thing."

"You should try to make the best of it. He would have wanted you to keep that spirit alive."

"I feel dead and tired."

"You'll feel better soon…I hope."

"You hope?"

"Yeah…I hope."

.

Soon, he disappeared altogether. He stopped showing his face in her room, and she never heard his breathing, felt his touches, or listened to his voice. He was fake. He was a desire building in her for so long, that he appeared to comfort her, help her, and tell her that her days of confinement and imprisonment were no longer something that she needed to worry about.

But all of those assurances were never real. He was never here. He never said a word. Everything he said was never actually uttered.

Though, after a couple of years, her parents saw the dull shine in her eyes, the dejected posture she had taken up, and the lack of enthusiasm that she had been showing for so long. Her attitude, her spirit, and her soul were slowly being sucked away—silently and secretly. And it hurt them to see her so broken.

It was her mother who had realized it first. All of the odd behavior was so uncharacteristic of her daughter that nothing about her seemed recognizable anymore. Her daughter was turning into the one thing that her mother never wanted her to be—a lonely little girl.

So when she turned fifteen—thoughts of Aang still traveling generously through her mind—her parents opened up the garden to her, and let her Earthbend for the first time in years.

Her skills were rusty and it took her a few days to get a hand of the skills she had long forgotten, but the memories of her days in tournaments, having the time of her life, and fighting alongside the only person who ever gave her the chance at freedom, were gradually coming back.

She practiced every day. Her skills were getting sharper, more defined and more familiar to her.

She felt real…alive again. And she no longer felt that the things she was feeling were fake. In fact, for the first time in a long time, things were no longer mixed together in an incomprehensible heap of confusion. They made sense again. She made sense again.

While still longing to step out of those gates that locked her into the estate or climb over the walls that towered over her on all sides, the connection that she had lost started raveling together into thick cords that tethered her to the Earth and helped her feel like she wasn't disadvantaged. It was like when she was a little girl all over again: being disappointed in her handicap, realizing that she was special, doing things that no other person could or would be able to do, and finally coming to terms with the fact that inside her parent's house was not where she belonged.

Though she really didn't realize it until much, much, later that her parents realized this too. As they watched their fifteen year old daughter run around in the garden like she was seven years old all over again, the realization struck them that this was a girl that needed to spread out farther than the sheltered castle they raised her in. She had a goal out there in the world somewhere, and it was clear that during every moment she was stuck here, she silently wondered what it would be like to step out and be who she wanted to be.

For the first time in years, they actually started to understand their daughter.

They realized how one little mistake changed their daughter for the worst.

How one boy managed to influence their daughter so much that she could no longer imagine a life other than his.

While they desperately wanted to protect her, they couldn't deny that their only true goal was to make their daughter happy.

So when she was fifteen and a half, her parents let her leave the city.

.

.

.

"Maybe I'll find him again. Maybe this time I'll see him again for real."

.

.

.

end.