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A shot of water hits the post at Lin’s side, throwing her from where she's leaning against it and sending her sprawling onto the pavestones of the courtyard. Katara yanks her back as a boomerang whistles past her nose, and Lin watches it sweep round in a graceful curve before hitting Kya square in the back, pushing her stomach-first onto the Air Temple courtyard floor. Bumi leaps in celebration, turning to face the adoring crowd of parents and Aunts and Uncles, and Lin privately counts his first mistake.
Never lose sight of your opponent. The words had been drilled into Lin since she’d first learned to earth-bend.
“But you’re blind!” Lin had pointed out, dropping the rock she’d been suspending and calmly sidestepping the disc Toph had slid at her feet.
“Hm.” Toph had acknowledged, tucking her hands behind her back the way she always did when she was thinking.
Then she’d turned to Lin, and smiled.
“Never lose awareness of them, then,” she’d corrected, before flinging a boulder past Lin’s shoulder. “Now get back to work.”
Bumi completely ignores his sister in favour of prematurely, in Lin’s humble opinion, celebrating his win. Mistake number two, Lin counts, looking warily over at Kya. He’s yelling and whooping so loudly Lin thinks people must be able to hear him on the mainland. A movement catches the corner of her eye, and Lin smirks. Mistake number three.
Bumi doesn’t hear Kya get up. He doesn’t hear the tell-tale swoosh of water shooting through the air. Bumi doesn’t notice anything, in fact, until a tendril of water has wrapped itself around his ankle, pulling him backwards towards Kya kicking and screaming. She suspends Bumi in the air for a moment before dropping him obligingly with a plop, grinning victoriously.
When she reaches down to offer Bumi a hand up, Lin takes it as a sign that the fight is over. She races towards them, Tenzin in tow, eager to hear the whole thing from their mouths even though she’d just stood and watched it all herself.
“It ain’t over till’ it’s over,” Kya quotes as she regards Bumi with mock severity. She flashes a smile at Lin: “it was your Mum that told me that. And sorry ‘bout that misfire.”
Lin shrugs that last part off – no damage done – and feels a bubble of pride well in her chest.
Lin lays flat on her back, panting. She’s in the middle of the Air Temple courtyard, or on it, after a particularly brutal spar with Kya had left her soaked through, bruised, and exhilarated.
At nine years old, she and Tenzin are a lot of things to each other. A challenge is not one of them.
Lin’s so far from mastery of earth-bending she hasn’t even tried metal yet, and Tenzin’s too wrapped up in the defensive properties of air-bending to pose any real threat to Lin: something something Monks, something something meditation, something something all life is precious. That’s all Lin ever hears, anyway. And she wouldn’t mind, much, except it means she spends their duels bored, flinging rocks at Tenzin as he effortlessly avoids them, neither of them learning a thing. It’s child’s play.
And Lin wants a challenge.
She’d begged and begged and begged and begged, and finally Aang and Katara had conceded, and let her duel Kya. She was two years older than Lin, competitive, and more than willing to put up a fight.
“Go easy on her,” Aang had instructed, giving Kya a stern look.
“I won’t!” Kya had cheerfully replied at the same as time Toph had said: “don’t bother.”
Lin had smirked, and readied her stance.
And that was how she’d ended up on the floor in a puddle of water.
Kya ran towards her.
“Sorry ‘bout that throw! I didn’t mean to shoot the water that hard, but Bumi’s heavier than you and I forgot to adjust!”
Lin snickers, and Kya offers her a hand. She takes it gratefully.
“Don’t worry about it,” Lin brushes herself off, “I’ll getcha next time.”
Kya laughs, and wraps an arm around Lin. “Looking forward to it.”
Lin is twelve the first time she beats Kya in a duel. She wins by a landslide. Literally.
When Lin turns fourteen, Toph starts training her blindfolded. And, because Lin is stubborn and Toph thought it would be funny, Lin starts duelling blindfolded, too.
Well, some of the time.
Bumi had simply refused to duel Lin at all.
Lin and Kya had given him endless grief about not wanting fight a fourteen year-old, but Bumi had stood firm. He’d retorted that he could take Lin, if he really wanted to - she just wouldn’t be expecting it.
Over the next few years, Bumi made a habit of conducting Sneak Attacks! whenever he found the opportunity.
The first time he’d tried it, Lin was caught so off-guard he’d managed to wrestle her to the floor before she’d even known what was going on. Lin, once she’d gotten a hold of herself, had threatened to kill him. No more than ten minutes later, when Bumi managed to do it again, Lin almost did. But, by the time she was seventeen, Bumi could sneak up on Lin any time, any place, anywhere – including one memorable occasion when she was sneaking back into the Air Temple dorms after sneaking out to watch Pro-Bending with Kya – and Lin was ready and waiting for him.
Years later, when Lin’s promoted to Chief of Police and Bumi barges into her locked office without warning, declaring “Sneak Attack!” on his way in, she doesn’t even arrest him.
The good thing, about her and Bumi’s friendship, is that he knows that’s Lin’s way of saying “thanks.”
Tenzin, on the other hand, refuses battle Lin blindfolded on the grounds of it being unfair. On her.
Naturally, Lin had spent the next few days absolutely fuming.
“I’m an air-bender, Lin,” Tenzin reasons with her for the fifth time that week, “you won’t be able to see me with earth-bending because I won’t be on the ground. You’ll be literally blind.”
“Can’t imagine how bad that would be,” Toph comments drily.
Lin thumps her pai-sho piece onto the board with more force than truly necessary.
“Hate to break it to you Linny,” Sokka interjects, “but your Uncle Aang and Toph already had that fight. Aang won.”
Lin winces at the nickname. “He did?”
“You bet!” Sokka mumbles through a mouthful of fire-flakes. “Blew Toph right off the platform and all! But don’t worry,” he catches sight of the pout on Lin’s face, and jerks his thumb towards Tenzin, “I reckon you could take him.”
Lin grins.
“The platform?” Tenzin asks, ignoring Sokka’s jibe. “What platform?”
“In the arena,” Sokka says it slowly, as-if Tenzin’s lost his head. “Did no one ever tell you how your parents met?”
Tenzin looks over to Lin, and she shrugs – she’s never heard this one either.
“Well then, we’d better get to it!”
“Make me look good, snoozles.” Toph says through a yawn, reclining herself along the length of the sofa.
“Gather the others,” Sokka claps his hands together, and settles down on the rug, “and let Uncle Sokka tell you all about Avatar Aang, and the Blind Bandit.”
In the end, it’s Kya who indulges Lin in her quest to test her newfound seismic-sense abilities. Unlike her brothers, she has no fear of being easily beaten, or of holding an unfair advantage over Lin.
“She’s the one asking for it,” Kya shrugs in response protesting Tenzin.
Lin grins, tightening her blindfold and stamping her foot on the ground. Yep, she can see her.
“Bring it.”
Over the next few years, Lin battles everyone she can with a blindfold on. Even Tenzin, upon realising Lin isn’t a complete damsel in distress just because she can’t see in front of her, agrees to give it a go once or twice.
Lin once immobilised Bumi, mid-air, mid battle with Su, blindfolded, with a chord of metal. That had been a good day.
Kya had only asked Lin take off the blindfold once, when they were sixteen, and she’d decided she wanted a go herself. Lin had obliged, because why not, and it had been funny - Kya stumbling around blindly as Lin easily side-stepped her shots – until it hadn't. Lin had moved the earth just a little too close to Kya’s feet, and it had put Kya off-balance and toppling precariously until Lin had managed to catch her.
There’d been no damage. Kya had taken the blindfold off and immediately howled with laughter. Lin would’ve laughed too, except that cradling Kya in her arms had made Lin’s heart hammer in her chest, a staccato rise-thump-rise-thump-rise-thump that she just couldn't seem to quiet. And Lin had had a sinking feeling that if it was anyone she was holding, she wouldn’t be having this problem.
When Lin’s seventeen, she abruptly finds out that fighting Kya blind had been the easy part. And that was concerning, because Lin had absolutely not found it easy.
But being able to see Kya – having, for a rare moment, the excuse not to just sneak glances but to look, unabashed, at the woman in front of her – had turned out to be a disadvantage Lin hadn’t expected.
She should have.
Because Lin knew she'd been staring at Kya a little too much lately; had appreciated her toned body and agile movements more than she strictly had any right to. She’d caught herself wondering about the scent of Kya’s perfume and the softness of her hair, and the way the light sparkled in Kya’s eyes as she laughed. Lin was getting flustered at Kya's casual touch and tongue-tied when Kya looked at her for too long. Lin was increasingly feeling the need to be around Kya, and she wasn’t sure it was because they were just friends.
Because sure, Lin looked forward to seeing Bumi and Tenzin and even Izumi when Uncle Zuko made the trip down to Republic City. But none of them existed in the back of her mind like Kya. She was an ever-present buzz in the back of Lin’s head, like a magnet, or a tide, pulling her closer and closer and closer until Lin wasn’t sure where her life stopped, and Kya’s one began.
Lin didn’t know if that was normal. She wasn’t sure that was what best friends did.
But never for a moment had Lin thought that it would interrupt her in battle.
All Lin knew was that one moment, Kya was a few feet in front of her, taunting, and the next, well: Lin was pinned up against a tree, neck-deep in ice.
“Caught ya sleeping,” Kya gloats, a blade of ice at Lin’s throat.
Lin doesn’t reply.
“Lin? Hello?”
Kya’s voice is distant, and Lin can’t bring herself to pay attention. She’s still trying to process how the spirits she’d ended up here so quickly.
“Are you alright?”
She has no idea how she’s going to talk herself out of this one.
“Lin, seriously. Are you hurt?”
And Lin finally registers the concern in Kya’s voice.
“I’m fine, you just… took me by surprise, that’s all,” Lin mutters. The lie is better than the truth.
Not that Lin knows what that is, exactly.
Kya looks at her sceptically, and Lin doesn’t blame her. She’s not usually caught off-guard so easily. Lin swallows. Kya’s proximity is doing nothing for her composure, and the treacherous rise-thud of her heart is back, so loud Lin thinks the entire world must be able to hear it.
Then Lin notices that she’s regaining movement of her limbs, and that there’s a puddle of water pooling around her. Lin flexes a hand gently, still a little dazed. It wasn’t often Kya beat her this fast anymore.
It’s absolutely not a good sign.
Kya touches Lin’s cheek gently. “If this is some kind of trick to get me distracted, I swear…”
Her voice is a soothing murmur, and Lin wants to sink into it.
“Is everyone alright?” Aang’s voice pierces the moment.
Lin curses.
“Does she need a healer?” Tenzin is a pace behind, concerned. “I could get Mum…” he adds, but trails off at the look of anger on Kya’s face.
“If she needs a healer,” Kya grits out, “I’m sure I can manage it.”
She places a hand on Lin’s shoulder, and the possession in her voice makes Lin flush.
“I’m fine, honest,” Lin tries to diffuse the situation. “I’m just not with it today, that’s all.”
Aang regards her with a look of concern, then smiles kindly.
“Alright,” he places a hand on Tenzin’s shoulder and guides him back towards the main house. “Come and get ready for dinner then. But Lin,” he glances back at her, “get checked with Katara, yeah? Just to be sure.”
“Sure,” Lin mumbles as Kya huffs. “I really am ok though,” she whispers to Kya once Aang is out of earshot.
Kya’s smile isn’t as big as it normally is, and Lin doesn’t understand why, but then Kya grabs her hand and tugs her across the courtyard, and all coherent thought is lost from Lin’s mind.
On their way into the dining room, Toph stops Lin at the door.
“I was in the pavilion earlier.”
Lin sighs. She knows where this is going.
“Are you going to tell me how Kya managed to surprise you when you were looking right at her?”
Lin doesn’t answer. She’s not going to tell her Mother she lost because Kya looked pretty.
“And then you lied to Kya and Aang about it, don’t think I didn’t pick up on that.” Toph folds her arms across her chest. “Why?”
Lin keeps silent, and Tophs huffs in frustration.
She can’t lie to her Mother – she wouldn’t anyway, but there really is no getting away with it – but Lin really doesn’t feel like having girl talk right outside of the dining room. Actually, Lin reassess, she doesn’t want to have girl talk with her Mother at all.
Toph takes a deep breath.
“You’re too good for what happened out there today Lin. Are you sure you’re well?”
Lin sees red.
“I’m fine,” she snaps. She can’t stand being babied. “And I don’t know why everyone’s so worried about me. I lost. It happens. Big deal.”
And then - only because Lin’s got enough sense to realise Toph is actually concerned, which is still irritating, but also unusual, so she feels like it warrants at least an attempt at a genuine explanation – adds: “I really am fine. Not in any mortal danger, at least.”
Lin aims for humour with that last part, but it falls flat. Not least because Lin thinks Kya really might be the death of her. In more ways than one – Lin knows she was lucky not have been hurt today.
After a pause, Toph claps her on the back. “Well, you’re a tough badgermole. I’m sure you’ll figure it out.”
And Lin thinks she might have hit her head after all, because Toph actually sounds fond.
When Lin finally makes her way into the dining room, and blushes when she meets Kya’s gaze, Toph makes a clicking sound in the back of her throat, and nods to herself like she’d just solved a particularly frustrating riddle. Or won a marathon game of pai sho.
She leans over to Lin, and whispers conspiratorially: “I see. But if you’re going to fall on your feet every time she looks at you, I’d start losing to Bumi and Tenzin too. Otherwise, it’s just not subtle.”
Lin doesn’t taste a thing during dinner that night.
Lin’s nineteen, and the youngest graduate to-date from Toph’s metal-bending Academy. On Monday, she’ll be the youngest recruit ever to make it into Republic City’s Metal-Bending Police Unit.
She’s taking a breather from the party raging inside the main house, leaning against the railing of one of the many small pagodas that litters Air Temple Island. She’d wanted to keep the weekend to sleep through, because Lin knew sleep would become a rare commodity once she joined the force, but she couldn’t miss a party thrown in her own honour. Especially since Kya had delivered the invitation herself, grinning at Lin’s shocked expression as she’d opened the door.
Kya hadn’t been expected back from the South Pole for a month.
“It’s not every day you become the youngest recruit ever,” Kya had laughed as Lin had gaped at her. “Now don’t you dare say you can’t come, or Bumi and I will drag you there ourselves.”
“Not Tenzin?” Lin had teased, recovering herself and stepping aside to let Kya in.
“Nah, he’s a pacifist.” Lin had snorted. “Besides, he’s already busy distracting the adults so Su can sneak the alcohol in.”
“So Su can do what?” Lin had screeched, but Kya had shushed her, and made no further explanation.
Lin had figured she less she knew about that the better, and instead had settled for collapsing on the sofa beside Kya, eager to hear about what she’d been doing at the Southern Pole for the last couple of months.
“Busy?”
Kya’s presence pulls Lin from her thoughts.
The coloured lights strung about the temple shine onto the sea, painting it a patchwork of rainbow. The water shimmers in the moonlight, hypnotising, and the colours dance across Lin’s vision. It’s beautiful, and peaceful, and Lin has a hard time imagining anywhere she’d want to be other than here. She decides that she’s quite happy to stay, staring at nothing into the ocean with Kya beside her, enjoying the quiet, until a well-meaning Bumi or Tenzin or Su drags them back inside.
Then Kya starts talking.
“Are you happy?”
The question comes out of nowhere.
Lin whips round to look at Kya, who’s leaning stiffly against the wooden post and refusing meet Lin’s eyes.
“Shouldn’t I be?”
And almost without realising it, Lin is on the defensive, folding her arms over her chest and narrowing her eyes at Kya.
“You know I didn’t mean it like that,” Kya says gently, but she still won’t look at Lin.
“Then how did you mean it?”
And Lin doesn’t know how it’s come to this. She doesn’t remember the moment in time she’d stopped knowing what Kya was going to say before she said it, or when each and every expression on Kya’s face stopped being as easy and recognisable to Lin as her own reflection in the mirror. All she knew is that one day Kya had started slipping away – literally and metaphorically – and absolutely nothing Lin had tried had brought her back.
Kya had seen Lin off to her final months of training at the academy, and then disappeared for months and months with hardly a letter to Lin the entire time.
“It’s in her blood, you know,” Katara had said unprompted to Lin one evening at the dinner table. “The will to keep moving; keep going; not staying in one place… the children got it from me and Aang.”
And Lin had supposed that was true. Bumi was off travelling with the United Nations; Tenzin was always visiting some Air Temple or Sacred Grounds or something or other; and now Kya was gone too.
The idea had made Lin’s chest ache.
“I’m leaving.” Kya’s voiced pierced through the night with clarity. “Come with me.”
“What?” It takes Lin a moment to understand what Kya’s saying, and then: “how long for?”
Kya moves to speak, but Lin doesn’t let her.
“I don’t think I can, Kya. I haven’t even started at the force yet – they won’t give me holiday already.”
Kya smiles sadly, and shakes her head, and Lin’s even more confused.
“No, Lin, I’m leaving. Off travelling. For good.” She takes a step closer to Lin. “And, well, I couldn’t go without asking you to come with me.”
“Leaving?” Lin echoes, and the sound is hollow to her ears.
Kya nods.
“And you want me to…” Lin doesn’t finish her sentence. She steps back, reeling, hitting the wooden railing behind her. “I can’t. You know I can’t.”
“I do,” Kya sighs, like she’d never expected anything else.
“Then why did you ask me?” Lin doesn’t try to keep the anger out of her voice.
“Perhaps because I couldn’t bear the thought of leaving without you,” Kya retorts sharply, and that shuts Lin up.
There’s a moment of silence.
“How long have you been planning this?” Lin asks eventually, because she’d like to know that at least. Lin’s not quite sure if she means Kya’s travel plans or her plans to abandon her, but given that they’re the same thing, Lin can’t bring herself to care.
Kya scuffs her feet against the floor. “Awhile.”
Lin knows avoiding the question when she sees it. She gives Kya a hard stare.
“Aright, alright. A long time.” A deep breath. “Since before I took off to the pole.”
“You’ve known for six months? And you didn’t tell me?”
“You were at the academy, and trying to get into the force.” Kya looks at Lin desperately. “You seemed so happy… I couldn’t ask you then.”
“But you can ask me now?”
And spirits, Lin is doing her best to keep her head. But Kya looks like she’d just been slapped and Lin feels like the world is crumbling at her feet and Kya is about to leave, for good, and Lin doesn’t know which way is up and which way is down anymore.
“Why now?” Lin takes a steadying breath, trying to keep a grip on the conversation. “I made an oath, Kya. To the city. I can’t just up and leave.”
“I know,” Kya says for the second time this evening, and Lin wonders if Kya knew this is how the conversation would play out all along.
Hot tears run down Lin’s cheeks. She wipes them away angrily.
“Spirits, Kya, if you’d asked me six months ago-”
“No, you wouldn’t.” Kya interrupts, correcting her. “I don’t think there’s ever a time I could’ve asked you where you would’ve agreed to come with me.”
Lin feels something crack in her chest; her heart splintered all over the pagoda floor.
She knows it’s true.
They’re both crying now, and Lin walks over to Kya, tucking her head into Kya’s shoulder and wrapping her arms around her tightly, like she might be able to hold them both in place forever by sheer force of will alone.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do without you,” Kya mumbles into Lin’s hair, and Lin squeezes tighter.
Lin takes a moment to close her eyes; to feel the warmth of Kya’s arms around her and remember the soft glow of the lanterns and the way Kya’s hair ruffles in the wind. To feel Kya’s steady breathing against her, and her heartbeat through the ground beneath Lin’s feet.
Then Lin lifts herself up, and wipes the tears from Kya’s face.
“I have to stay,” her voice is calmer than she thought it would be, “but you’ve got to go, Kya. You need to do what you want.”
Kya cradles a hand on Lin’s cheek, offering a small smile. “So where does that leave us?”
Lin swallows, and thinks for a moment. “Crying during a party on Air Temple Island?”
It’s all she can offer. It’s not funny, but it makes Kya laugh, and that’s always been good enough for Lin.
“We can’t leave it like that,” Kya says firmly, and Lin has no idea what she means.
She wants to point out they’ve just had this conversation – what else is there left to do? But then Kya kisses her, and Lin kisses her back, and Lin thinks that this is what they should’ve been doing all along.
Lin doesn’t know it yet, but she’ll spend a number of years she’ll pretend she doesn’t keep track of thinking about this kiss.
Being a metal-bending police officer is everything Lin always wanted it to be. She likes the excitement, the exertion, and the satisfying feeling of a job well done. She’s glad to note that when she eventually gets promoted to Chief, it has nothing to do with who her Mother is.
Lin is perfectly happy to earn her own achievements.
Her relationship with Tenzin had nothing to do with Kya.
He hadn’t been compensation: Lin had loved him too much for that. And, in a way, she still does. They’d had a good run.
There’d been Saturday morning teas and mid-week takeouts; early sunrises on Sunday mornings and debates on the most ridiculous legislature of Republic City. Late nights spent filing paperwork or attending long meetings in the council room of City Hall, with no obligation for either of them to apologise for coming home late, or for being too busy to see each other for a week. Or two. They’d had dinners at Air Temple Island and poorly cooked meals in Lin’s apartment and once, Tenzin had recreated the pies Aang had showed him how to make as a child. In a very un-Tenzin-like moment, he’d thrown it at Lin’s face. Lin had promptly thrown one right back.
Most of all, there’d been quiet, steady companionship. Lin had valued that. They really had made an excellent team.
But it took Tenzin leaving her for another woman for Lin to realise that team didn’t necessarily mean couple.
Later, years later, when the Avatar needs her help and Republic City is in danger from a cult of Equalists and Lin gets knocked-out in the pro-bending arena, she’ll remember that Tenzin is her oldest and most constant friend. And then, after all the years and baggage and relationships and mess they’ve put themselves through, they’ll make a pretty good team once again.
It doesn’t make Lin feel better, but she understands why Tenzin did it. She never takes it out on Pema, either - how could she? Pema is everything that Lin isn’t, and compliments Tenzin in all the ways she doesn’t. Even in the midst of her heartbreak, Lin can admit that Tenzin and Pema will make a better couple than she and Tenzin ever did.
That’s not to say Lin doesn’t resent Tenzin at first, because she does. And, because she’s not a Beifong for nothing, she makes sure Tenzin knows it. Lin refuses to feel guilty for the damage to Air Temple Island. What’s a few broken statues between friends?
But what Lin doesn’t tell Tenzin, is that she hates him the most for leaving her the way that Kya did all those years ago.
It isn’t a fair comparison. Nor is it strictly true.
But Lin’s long since stopped asking why she pits every bad event in her life against the day that Kya left her. No loss since has ever compared. Not even Tenzin leaving her for a woman fifteen years her junior.
Though, Lin would give credit to Aang and Katara’s children: it had been close.
When Bumi radios her at the station, days or weeks after Tenzin and Pema’s wedding, and jokingly asks if it’s his turn next, Lin laughs for the first time in a long, long while.
When he hangs up, Lin cries for the first time in a while, too.
Later, much later, so many years later, in fact, that Lin’s hair has gone grey and Tenzin has three kids and another one on the way and the Avatar is in Lin’s custody for damages to city infrastructure, Lin takes a moment to take the moment out on Tenzin.
She forgave him years ago, but Lin figures there’s nothing wrong with making him sweat.
Besides, it’s not Lin’s problem that he’s technically Korra’s legal guardian. It’s just spirits-damned convenient.
A couple of months later, when Kya returns to Air Temple Island after a number of years Lin hasn’t kept track of, Lin doesn’t visit. She’s very busy doing the things she’s been doing for the aforementioned number of years, and she’s not going to stop now just because Kya’s decided to land a mile from Lin’s apartment. She might only be around for a matter of weeks, and Lin doesn’t have the vacation days spare to get her heart broken.
Because, even as Lin picks up another stack of papers and gets back to work, she can feel the painfully familiar resurgence of rise thud in her chest, and knows that to see Kya would be to get her heart broken all over again.
Not even Bumi, barging into her office the very next day, waggling his eyebrows and teasing: “c’mon Chief, it’s got to be my turn now!” convinces Lin to pop over. She sends Bumi away with a slap on the wrist, a wide smile she’d forgotten she’d known how to make, and a threat to arrest him if he ever disturbs her at work again.
Lin finds herself glad to have kept one uncomplicated friendship from her childhood after all.
Lin escorts a new group of air-benders over to Air Temple Island only because she’d promised Korra to keep an eye any new air-bending activity in the city while she was gone. Lin’s above such footwork at this point in her career, but a promise is a promise, and Lin is a woman of her word.
She pretends like she’s not grateful for the excuse to visit the island again.
Pema meets them at the dock, and greets Lin like an old friend. The revelation that that’s because Lin is Pema’s old friend – in an odd sort of way, as friendships go - is as shocking to Lin as it shouldn’t be. She stays long enough to see all the air-benders accounted for, and declines Pema’s offer of tea. There’s paperwork to be done and petty crime to be solved, and Lin knows that staying here for too long for no good reason is bound to come back to bite her. Pema simply pulls out a bowl of neatly wrapped dumplings and hands them over to Lin, like she’d known that Lin was never going to stay, but also that she wouldn’t have spared a single thought towards her dinner.
Lin wonders when Pema got to know her so well.
She finds her gaze moving reflexively to the women’s dorms, eyes settling on a familiar room. There’s lamp-light spilling out of the windows for the first time in a number of years Lin will never admit to keeping track of, and it makes Lin’s heart seize in her chest. Pema follows her gaze, and meets Lin’s eyes knowingly.
“Sure you won’t stay?” she asks. “The kids are always excited to see you. Meelo thinks you’re really cool.”
Lin allows a small smile. “That’s sweet, Pema, but no thank you. Tell Meelo he’s pretty cool himself - he can visit the station anytime he wants.”
Pema laughs.
“And Kya-” she begins.
“Is busy, I’m sure.” Lin finishes the sentence for her, leaving no room for argument.
She squeezes Pema’s shoulder warmly.
Perhaps boarding the ferry is cowardice. Perhaps staying away from Air-Temple Island is childish. Perhaps running away from her problems is the most Beifong thing Lin’s ever done. But Kya coming back after all these years has resurfaced some old feelings within Lin, and she knows better than she did the last time to risk giving into them again.
Lin doesn’t particularly look for her, but she can just make out Kya’s silhouette against the warm light of the fading Air-Temple, as the ferry pulls her back to Republic City.
The first time Lin sees Kya, close enough to touch after a number of years she couldn’t help but to keep track of, Lin’s heart crawls its way to her mouth, and stays there.
Lin had thought she’d known what was coming when they travelled here today, and she’d hoped that seeing Zaheer fly was the last nasty surprise in store for them. But when they’d found the rest of the air-benders in the cave and Lin’s eyes had travelled to Kya, lying battered and broken and bruised on the floor, Lin was pretty sure she’d stopped breathing.
Even as she hauled Bumi out and watched the air-benders take-down Zaheer and breathed a sigh of relief when Korra made it back alive, all Lin could think about was Kya. She loaded everyone onto the bison, checked on Bumi and Tenzin and Korra, and gave Pema and the kids a tight smile: Kya. Lin made a point of locating Opal, of congratulating Jinora, and giving Su a hug… Kya. Lin even conducted a headcount with Su, and goes with her to thank each and every metal-bender within earshot, and still, buzzing ever-present in the back of her mind: is Kya.
So when Lin finally takes a moment to breathe – to decompress and acknowledge to herself that they were alive, that they made it out – and spots an empty seat next to Kya, well: Lin’s stubborn, but she’s not a fool. Kya bumps their shoulders together when Lin sits down, and rests her head against Lin’s.
And today has made Lin think, really, that near death experiences mean nothing – are nothing, more than afterthoughts after a moment of panic, or stories of escape told over a glass of whiskey in a smoky bar sitting at a table surrounded by all your friends – until they brush right past the person you love.
Lin takes Kya’s hand in hers, and allows herself a small smile when Kya gives it a squeeze. She tries to ignore the way her heart rises and falls like a rock in time with every stuttering breath of Kya’s body.
Lin’s heart stays in a permanent stasis of rise and thud for the three days it takes Kya to get back on her feet once they get back to the temple.
Lin stays, of course. The first thing she’d done when they’d arrived back was book an entire week off: her longest absence outside of sick leave since joining the force at nineteen.
She visits Kya in her room, like she used to do when they were children coming to spend a week with Uncle Aang and Auntie Katara. But this time, Lin sneaks in and out like it’s her best kept secret. Appropriate, given that it is. Lin waits outside of the door she used to barge into without warning at five and ten and seventeen, and feels Kya’s steady heartbeats through the wall.
Sometimes, when Lin is feeling particularly weak, she opens the door. Just a crack. Just for a moment. Just to check that Kya really is still there and that she really will be ok.
When Pema catches her at it, on the second day, she doesn’t say anything. She does, however, as she rounds the corner further up the hall, gently dissuade a concerned Jinora and Ikki from visiting their Aunt right this very second. Lin exits the dorms in other direction, and is a lot more careful after that.
She doesn’t thank Pema, not exactly. Not out loud. But when Lin helps pour the tea and carry the dishes with renewed vigour, and Pema gives her a consoling pat on the shoulder, Lin doesn’t think she has to.
And it makes Lin wonder, not for the first time, if anyone else knew back then. If that fragile, unspoken and unnamed thing that she and Kya had shared when they were teenagers, had been visible to anyone else.
If it had been worth the risk to voice out loud.
If it had ever existed outside of Lin’s own mind.
When Kya finds Lin, two days later and sitting on a steep grassy hill, as far away from the Temple as she can get without being overtly rude, Lin almost wishes she hadn’t.
“Caught ya sleeping,” Kya jests as Lin doesn’t look up from her view.
They both know Lin felt her coming from a mile away.
The silence hangs in the air around them, heavy, and Lin supresses a sigh. She’s never been cut out for this kind of conversation. What does she even say?
Glad you’re not dead? Remember that time you kissed me almost forty years back?
Lin’s no expert, but she’s not sure either of those suffice.
“Is Korra going to be ok?” she settles for eventually, partly because Lin really does care about the avatar, and partly because it’s neutral territory.
“Eventually,” Kya says with a sigh. It’s not a real answer, but none of them have any of those anymore, so Lin lets it slide.
Kya settles on the grass beside Lin, too close for Lin’s comfort but also: far too far away. Lin’s irritated with herself for thinking it.
“And you?”
Lin’s doing her best to appear unruffled, like she hasn’t spent the last three days in a state of paralysing panic, barely remembering to breathe for worrying about the woman beside her. But Lin’s never been able to hide anything from Kya, who laughs at Lin’s concern.
“Oh, I’m tougher than I look. If Korra hadn’t finished the job I’d be offering to get back out there myself - show Zaheer some real Southern hospitality.”
Lin almost smiles.
“I could get you into his cell,” she says, staring darkly into the sea.
Kya looks at Lin with an unreadable expression. Lin shrugs.
“I’m serious. But don’t tell Bumi I said that - he’ll actually take me up on the offer.”
Lin smiles as she says it, and Kya laughs, and for the first time in a number of years Lin hadn’t realised she’d been keeping track of, she feels a weight lift from her shoulders.
The island is busier than Lin’s seen it in all her adult years, and the sounds of children playing and adults bustling send Lin back to her childhood. The wind ruffles through Kya’s hair, dislodging a few strands, and Lin fights the urge to tuck them behind Kya’s ear.
“I’m going with Korra to the South,” Kya announces unprompted, and Lin nods.
“She’ll need all the friends she can get.” Lin hesitates for a moment. “Will you be back?”
And now it’s Kya’s turn to stare into the water and avoid Lin’s gaze. “Would you want me to be?”
Lin feels a breeze ruffle her jacket.
“I always have.”
And for once, Lin doesn’t immediately regret being honest.
Kya stills beside her, then takes Lin’s hand with her good one. It’s not much, after a lifetime of pushing and pulling and parting and dancing around all four corners of the globe, but Kya is alive and sitting next to Lin, and that’s enough.
Then Meelo and Ikki race over with calls of “dinner!” and “c’mon slowpokes!”, and Kya drops Lin’s hand.
Lin reclaims it when she helps Kya up, and doesn’t let go until they walk into the main house. Lin doesn’t know why, but she half expects to see Toph and Aang bickering by the doorway, or a young Suyin and Tenzin where Jinora and Kai are sitting. Lin watches as Meelo ‘sneak attacks’ his older sister, and is reminded with a smile of Bumi.
Though it could be in better circumstances, being back at the Air Temple dining room makes Lin a little nostalgic for all the time she spent here as a child. She doesn’t blush when Kya brushes her hand at the table, and she doesn’t pay Pema’s knowing glances any mind (and it’s odd, to Lin, that in this analogy Pema is playing the part of Toph; she stifles a laugh before anyone can ask her what she’s thinking).
Lin doesn’t know when she got so old, or when time started moving so quickly.
She falls asleep sleep in her old guest-dorm – the one she must’ve spent months in, if all her childhood years were combined - feeling the same way she did when she was seventeen.
Lin lets the gentle rise and thud of her heart lull her to sleep.
A month later, when a letter arrives on the desk of Lin’s office addressed to Chief Beifong but written in Kya’s ridiculous cursive handwriting, Lin hesitates only for a moment before opening it.
She laughs at the opening lines:
Don’t let the fancy title get to your head, Lin: I don’t know your address – nor does Tenzin, are you hiding from us? Spirits help you if I find out you gave it Bumi and not me – and I couldn’t very well send this to the station addressed to Linny, could I?
Lin knows very well that Kya could, and would, and she isn’t sure if she’s grateful or disappointed that Kya didn’t. The look on Mako’s face would’ve added an extra ten years to Lin’s life, at least.
The rest of the letter is standard. Updates about Korra, general tit-tat about the Southern Tribe, and a line or two from Katara saying hello. It was nothing that Lin couldn’t have gotten from Tenzin, if she’d wanted to, but Lin doesn’t want to. Or, well, she wants to keep getting letters from Kya too.
After some deliberation, Lin fires off a quick reply and, at the end, includes her home address. It wouldn’t do to receive letters of a personal nature at work, after all.
Over the next three years, Lin receives a letter from Kya every second month.
The same might be said for Kya at the South Pole. Not that Lin knows anything about that.
When Lin finds Baatar in the care of Suyin at Sato Headquarters, smack in the middle of when they’re supposed to be at war with him, Lin doesn’t have time to ask questions other than “Korra’s idea?” and “what next?”
Later, when the battle is won and there’s time to breathe and think and talk, and Su tells her the whole story, Lin can’t get her head around how Kuvira did it. How do you fire a weapon at your own fiancé – somebody you love – just to claim a city?
It didn’t make sense. Lin could never do anything like that.
Or, well, Lin doesn’t think she could, anyway, until she’s lying in her bed, alone, remembering being nineteen and choosing her job over the person she loved more than anyone else in the world. She also remembers turning own sister in to their Mother for petty crime, and the fractured relationship she’d had with Su for decades afterwards.
But it’s not the same. Lin shakes her head, and laughs to herself: of course it’s not.
Lin is nothing like Kuvira, because being young, and angry, and mad at your sister and dedicated to your job and trying to a fault to do everything right, is not the same launching a dictatorship campaign and starting a war under the banner of some false pretence of unity.
Besides, she and Su have made peace, Lin thinks fond of her Mother (mostly), and as for Kya: Lin hasn’t spent her life regretting the decision she made at nineteen that led to her fulfilling and successful career, and Chief of City Police badge. Missing someone is not the same as regret, and given the choice to go back in time and change her mind, Lin wouldn’t.
And it occurs to her, not for the first time but certainly with increasing frequency as ages, that maybe that’s the point. Lin can’t change the past. She wouldn’t if she could. But she can change now, and do things that lead to a change in the future.
So Lin thinks, that if the past choice was between Kya and her life in Republic City, then perhaps the future choice instead, is how do they make it work?
Because Lin’s been wondering for some time now: is it anyone other than herself that’s stopping her from having both?
Kya visits Republic City for Varrick and Zhu Li’s wedding. It doesn’t surprise Lin: a marriage of one of their own is a Southern Tribe affair no matter if it is being held halfway across the world, and Lin’s never known Kya to miss an excuse to party.
Lin doesn’t dance, but she does let her eyes follow Kya, unchecked, the entire time she’s on the dancefloor.
Kya definitely notices; she definitely doesn’t mind.
When Kya finds Lin later, and throws an arm around Lin’s shoulder and suggests they “fuck-off back to the island, for old times’ sake,” Lin doesn’t even pretend to be annoyed at the unwarranted physical contact. She definitely pretends not to be affected by it, though.
When they arrive and find Bumi and Su and Tenzin and Pema (“the kids are asleep inside,”) sitting in the courtyard waiting for them, Lin feels an overwhelming sense of home and family and nostalgia.
She’d spent hundreds of nights here as a child, the same people sitting on the same patio under the same sky now as back then (and Lin almost forgets that Pema hasn’t always been here; that Lin hasn’t always considered her an old friend). And it might be because Lin’s feeling slushy and it might be because she’s had a little too much to drink, but Lin thinks her entire life can be boiled down to her time spent here, on this island, surrounded by these people.
(Lin’s successful career as Chief, of course, notwithstanding).
It makes sense to Lin, in a way, that after a war and two cultist uprisings and two Avatars and a harmonic fucking convergence, that she’d be sitting on this damned patio on this damned island drinking the same damned spirit water (not that kind) that Bumi used to sneak in when they were teens, with Kya leaning against her shoulder.
And Lin’s glad she had the foresight to not drink more than she should tonight, because if she ever voiced any of that out loud, she’d have to retire to the Southern Tribe with Katara.
Or, worse, to the spirit-swamp with her Mother.
Later, as Republic City begins to rebuild and renew and Lin is finally managing to settle back to her own (mercifully undamaged) apartment, she opens her door on an unsuspecting weekday evening to find Kya on the other side of it, leaning against the doorframe for all the world like it’s a normal occurrence.
Like she was supposed to be there.
Like she hadn’t been gone without a word for almost two months.
Like she’d let Lin know she was coming back.
The rise and thud of Lin’s heart picks up in her chest again, but Lin knows it’s to be expected. She’s long since associated the sensation with Kya, and it’s not as troublesome as it was at seventeen nor as annoying as it was a few years ago. The rhythm is steady, and easy, and familiar to Lin as the ground beneath her feet.
“Figured this would make a change from the Temple,” Kya says airily as she brushes past Lin through the doorway.
Lin watches with raised eyebrows as Kya plops down onto the sofa, lifting her legs onto the steel coffee table.
“Make this yourself?” Kya jokes.
“I did, actually. Su runs a workshop sometimes.”
Lin can tell Kya doesn’t know if she’s joking, and Lin decides it’s funnier if she doesn’t elaborate. She moves to the kitchen, and raises the teapot in Kya’s direction.
“Yes please,” Kya answers. “Jasmine, if you have it.”
Lin doesn’t need to be reminded of Kya’s favourite tea, but she doesn’t mention it. She’s kept a jar of the stuff full in her cupboard her entire adult life. Lin doesn’t drink jasmine tea. She doesn’t bother to mention that either.
Lin busies herself in the kitchen – she has a sudden urge to keep herself occupied – as Kya watches her through half-lidded eyes from the sofa. Unceremoniously, Lin bowls the tin of biscuits towards her (let it never be said that Lin didnt learn the creative uses of metal-bending too), and Kya picks it up with a grin.
The kettle boils. Kya bends the tea into the cup almost without watching. Lin walks over to the sofa and places a cup in Kya’s waiting hands.
As she settles down on the arm of the chair, a comforting silence envelops them.
“Nice place,” Kya comments after a moment. “Swanky.”
Lin smiles, and breathes in the steam of the tea. It is nice. Lin’s been here for years – moved-in when she became Chief, in fact – and every nook and cranny of the space screams to her of home.
Kya sitting on the couch doesn’t hurt either.
In her own way, Lin voices that one out loud: “you staying?”
“Depends,” Kya replies, standing to place her tea on the table before turning to face Lin, “you offering?”
Lin straightens a little, and parrots: “depends – what’s in it for me?”
The softness on Kya’s face in that moment is a sight Lin will never forget.
Then she smirks, and Lin’s heart races, and Kya places her hands on Lin’s face, thumbs tracing her cheekbones. Lin sucks in a breath, and feels around blindly to put her tea on the nearby stand. Kya’s breath is ghosting Lin’s face, and Lin remembers exactly how it feels to wrap her arms around Kya’s neck. They pause.
“Been a long time since we’ve been here,” Kya says quietly.
“I figured we might try to get it right this time,” Lin agrees.
Neither of them move.
“I’m not moving to Air Temple Island with you,” Lin says suddenly, thinking aloud. “Or the Southern Tribe. Not yet, anyway.”
Kya laughs, and tucks a strand of Lin’s hair behind her ear. “I wasn’t going to ask you to. Not yet, anyway.”
The word yet bubbles through Lin, a rising warmth that fills her with hope.
“Actually,” Kya continues, “I thought I might settle myself here. For most of the year, at least.”
“Right here?” and Lin can’t help the edge of teasing that slips into her voice.
“Right. Here.” Kya confirms, resting her forehead on Lin’s.
“That’d better be a promise,” Lin mutters, as Kya pulls her into a kiss.
Lin sighs, and sinks into Kya. She’ll do her thinking later.
They have a number of years Lin won’t bother keeping track of to iron out the details.