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Lin knows it's not going to be a good day when she walks into the station and sees two kids in handcuffs.
"Xao, what in Koh's name is going on in here?" she asks wearily. She's only been off shift for six hours, and only four of those were spent sleeping, so all she wants to do is get to her office and brew the strongest cup of tea she has available. Instead, she has a station full of petty criminals to process, and two boys who look no older than twelve practically chained to their chairs.
"Got a tip-off about the Triple Threats making a move against the Monsoons," Xao tells her from behind the desk, and she curses. She's supposed to be called in for any and all gang-related work activities, especially during a turf war of this magnitude. Xao ignores her anger and continues, "Apparently they got the same tip-off we did - by the time we got there, only ones left in the place were those two." He nods at the kids, and her heart sinks.
They've got the ragged clothes and downtrodden looks of street kids, so she shouldn’t be surprised that they’re in for gang work, but… the younger one curls up a little bit tighter in his chair, and Lin can’t help but see Suyin in his bright green eyes. They’re holding hands, even cuffed to the wall as they are. Lin pinches the bridge of her nose and exhales heavily.
“Gimme the keys,” she says shortly, and catches them without looking. Then, she heads over to the two boys and kneels down in front of them slowly, making direct eye contact with the older-looking one. “I’m going to let you out of those handcuffs,” she says, in what she hopes is an at least somewhat-friendly tone. The kid stares. “You’re not gonna do anything stupid, or you’ll be right back in them. Got it?”
For a few seconds, she thinks he’s gone completely non-responsive. But then he glances over at the other kid for a fraction of a second, and nods.
She unlocks the handcuffs, and the moment she steps back he’s sliding off the chair and pulling the other boy close to his side. “Get some more officers in to process this lot,” she tells Xao shortly, gesturing for the kids to follow her. “I’m going to deal with these two.”
Judging by the terrified look on the younger one’s face, it probably wasn’t the best phrasing, but she hasn’t had nearly enough sleep to correct herself. She leads them through the winding halls of the too-small building, to the very back, where her cramped office is situated, and ushers them inside. When she sits behind her desk, they remain standing, and as long as Lin can see them clearly, she doesn’t care. “What’s your name, kid?” she asks the older one.
“Mako,” he mutters, looking so defiant that Lin almost laughs. Instead, she nods at the other kid, still half-hidden behind Mako.
“What’s his?” Mako glares and says nothing. Lin rolls her eyes. “Look, kid, I’m trying to help you out here,” she explains, impatience creeping into her voice. “I can’t do that until I know both of your names, alright?”
The younger one leans up and whispers something in Mako’s ear, and Mako scowls. “His name’s Bolin,” he says. “He’s my little brother.” Well, that explains the protectiveness; mixed heritage families aren’t exactly uncommon in Republic City, but she still wouldn’t have picked them as being so closely related. Mako peers up at her with slanted golden-brown eyes, as different as can be from his brother’s wide green ones, and says, “How are you gonna help?”
He’s shrewd, but she’d expect nothing less from a kid used to looking out for someone else on the street. “I’ve got an in at an orphange that’ll treat you kids right,” she tries, but Bolin’s face screws up before she finishes the sentence.
“No!” he wails, clutching at his brother’s arm. “Don’t!”
“I don’t need help looking after my brother,” Mako snarls, pulling at his brother until he’s completely hidden behind his back. It’s a blatant lie, and Lin snorts.
“Kid, even you don’t believe that one,” she says bluntly. “You’re what, ten?”
“Eleven,” Mako mutters. Lin makes a ‘whatever’ gesture and continues,
“How many times a day do you eat? Those clothes aren’t gonna do shit to keep you warm when winter gets here. Face it kid, if you’re working for the Triads to keep your little brother alive, then you’re not gonna be there to see him turn thirteen.”
“Worked fine so far,” Mako retorts, but she sees Bolin’s round face peeking out from behind his shoulder, sees the sad upturn of his eyebrows, and knows that it’s anything but fine. So now she’s stuck - Mako’s not going to budge, she knows. She can see an earthbender’s stubbornness in his Fire Nation eyes. But she’ll be damned if she lets two kids back out onto the street just so they can toddle back to the Triads. If she does that, then they’ll just be back, whether it’s a week or six months or three years from now, and by then they’ll be in for something much worse.
“Tell you what, kid,” she says eventually, “I’ll make you a deal. You go back out there for the day, and do whatever you do when you’re not running messages for Shady Shin. But you come back here at sunset. If you show me that you can scrounge up enough food for you and your brother to live on, I’ll accept that you can take care of him just fine. If not, then I’m filing an orphanage entry form for the both of you.”
“You can’t!” Mako cries.
“I can and I will,” Lin says, crossing her arms. “Now go. If you’re not back here at sunset, I’m sending out my officers to drag you back in here.” There’s no way she’d waste even a single officer on two flighty street kids when they’re in the middle of a turf war, but Mako doesn’t know that. He narrows his eyes and stares her down, then huffs.
“Fine,” he says, and drags his brother out of the room. She doesn’t follow; if they get lost, they can damn well waste someone else’s time.
Honestly, by the time sunset rolls around, she’s completely forgotten about the kid who’d kicked up a fuss earlier that morning. So when a loud banging on her door interrupts her third hour of paperwork, she yells, “If that’s you, Tenzin, you can piss right off!”
Silence; then, “You told me to be back at sunset.” Lin curses and hurries to open the door, then stares down at the two boys standing there. Mako’s holding up a bundle wrapped in dirt-stained cloth for her inspection. “There’s enough food for a whole day,” he says shortly. Lin glances down the hallway to make sure no one’s watching her willingly converse with someone under the age of 25, then yanks them both into her office.
“Hand it over, then,” she says. He does, and she unwraps the cloth with distaste. In it rests an apple with two bites taken out of it, the white flesh inside turned brown, along with a few komodo-chicken bones with scraps of meat still clinging to them, and something red and squashed that might have once been a tomato. It’s a depressing sight, and Lin is the exact opposite of surprised. She hands the kid back his food and rests her face in her hand for a moment, and wonders why the hell she’s even in this job. Then, she straightens up and hardens her resolve.
“How long have you been living out there?” she asks them.
Bolin cowers a little, but Mako answers after a hesitation, “Three years.”
Cripes. “You got anyone else you care about out there?”
Mako tightens his grip on Bolin. “No,” he says. And that’s that.
“I’ll be putting your papers in to the orphanage soon, then,” she tells them, and holds her hand up at their cries of protest. “I’m not going to be responsible for you two starving on the streets when I can help. Especially when you’re already mixing it up with the Triads.”
“Please,” Bolin begs, “don’t send us back there, please!”
It’s not like she doesn’t know the trials of orphanage life - too many kids, not enough food, every one of them the same. But it’s not like anyone’s living any better by staying out of them. “I’m sorry,” she says, trying for probably the first time in years to make her voice gentle. “Look. I’m going to be here for another couple of hours. Why don’t you stay here, for now - I’ll grab you some more food.”
Mako’s looking at her with suspicion, but Bolin has an expression like she’s handing out free candy and rainbows. Spirits help her. “Mako,” he whispers loudly, tugging on his brother’s hand, “can we stay?”
Mako looks between his brother and Lin a few times, then hauls Bolin in front of him like he wants to pick him up. “We’ll stay for now,” he stresses, and that’s good enough for her.
---
They work out a system easy enough - Lin supposes she has the Triple Threats to thank for Mako’s quick uptake and obedience, but she’s not going to look a gift ostrich horse in the mouth, even if it does have rabies. The kids are allowed to drop into her office any time she’s there, whether it’s to shelter from the weather, or to stand around and look miserable until she fetches them sandwiches. She knows her subordinates are starting to snicker over her “acquired brood”, as some smart-mouthed and oblivious beat cop had said within her hearing range, but she reminds herself to be grateful for small mercies. Small mercies being that nobody’s been stupid enough to inform Tenzin of these new developments, both of which are currently crouched in the corner of her office, eagerly reading the first book Lin had thrown at them. She’s pretty sure that it’s just the Officer’s Manual, but they look fascinated - she’s also pretty sure that neither of them actually knows how to read.
The paperwork for the orphanage is still sitting on the corner of her desk. She tells herself that she’ll fill it out when she gets a spare five minutes, but spare time is hard to come by in her line of work, so before she knows it, it’s been two weeks and Xao is pulling her aside in the break room to mutter, “If you’re keeping those kids around just to fatten them up before you make them into dumplings, I’m legally obliged to stop you.”
“Ha ha.” The brothers haven’t appeared today, but she’d rather have manicures with Pema before admitting she’s even the slightest bit concerned. “I’m just keeping them out of trouble until I can get them into Huynh’s orphanage.”
“Right,” Xao drawls. “Because it’s taken you two weeks to fill out a coupla pages of paperwork.” Lin pinches the bridge of her nose and says nothing. “Look, if you’re having trouble pushing them out of the nest-”
“Shut your pastry-hole and get back to work,” she snarls. Xao holds his hands up and shrugs, then walks away.
The kids show up just as she’s about to go home, and Lin can’t even work up the energy to chew them out once she sees the developing bruise over Mako’s eye. She employs every ounce of her stealth skills into sneaking a salve from the first aid box out front without anyone noticing.
“You can sleep in here tonight,” she tells them as she fixes the gauze over the kid’s face. Mako doesn’t move, but Bolin nods silently. “Any idiots break in, you can, I don’t know, bite their ankles or something.”
Mako narrows his one visible eye and holds his hand out, and suddenly there’s a bright flame flickering over his palm. “Or you could just use that,” Lin says, and Mako gives her something that might be a smile.
When they arrive at the same time again the next night, it’s slightly less annoying. When it happens for the fourth night in a row, Lin rolls her eyes and says, “You may as well come home with me.” Mako eyes her suspiciously, but Bolin gasps and claps his pudgy little hands in delight, and Lin tries and fails to convince herself that this isn’t the beginning of a slippery slope.
---
The paperwork is starting to look accusatory to her eye.
She yanks Xao off a deskwork shift and hauls him to the breakroom, which clears out when the people occupying it see her expression. In record time, too; she makes a mental note to write it down somewhere. But first… “What’s the term for when you’re brainwashed into liking someone who’s holding you prisoner?” she asks. Xao gives her his best shit-eating grin. She really needs other friends.
“The kids got to you, huh.”
"They've grown on me," Lin says reluctantly. "Like toxic mould." She puts a hand over her eyes and exhales.
“Jokes aside, Chief, you should probably figure out what to do with them soon,” Xao says. “I mean, you’re letting them stay at your house, right?”
“Which motor-mouthed button told you that?” Lin bites out.
“The button who was on desk when you got out the other night with those two following you like turtleducklings, that’s who,” Xao replies. “Not naming any names, since I’m sure you’ll find a way to get them transferred to the South Pole, somehow.”
“Nice of you,” Lin says, only somewhat sarcastically. “Doubt Binh will be grateful enough to let you take him out for dinner, though.”
Xao just gives her an unimpressed look. It’s not something that gets directed at her a lot, and she’s started shit over less, but she keeps quiet. “Winter’s almost here, Chief. Whether you get those kids into an orphanage or adopt them yourself, I don’t think you’re gonna want them on the streets when the snow kicks in. Sorry if it’s not my place to say it,” he says shortly.
“It’s not,” Lin says. Then, grudgingly, “Thanks.”
She goes back to her office, glaring at anyone who dares peek out of their cubicle, and starts on the forms for the orphanage.
Ten minutes in, she hears the first few drops of rain on the station roof, followed by the thunder of a torrential downpour. She hopes the kids have found a shelter decent enough to keep the cold out.
She stops filling out the forms for the orphanage and reluctantly dials the line for the desk.
“Send two adoption forms down to my office,” she says into the phone. “And if you breathe a word of this to anyone, you’ll be stuck on the drunk tank until the day I retire from this pit.”
One terrified rookie and two stacks of paperwork later, the door to her office creaks open to reveal two large pairs of eyes under sopping wet hair.
“You couldn’t have dried yourselves up a bit first?” Lin grumbles without looking up. “I’m not a waterbender, you know.” Bolin sneezes in response.
“Are you filling out the orphanage paperwork?” Mako asks, sounding more serious than usual. When Lin looks up, she sees that he has Bolin in a tight grip against his side, the two of the dripping a puddle on the stone floor. Mako’s shivering, and Bolin keeps sniffing, screwing up his red-tipped nose.
“No,” she says, and doesn’t think on how her voice goes gentle without her meaning it to. “What do you think about coming to stay with me on a more permanent basis?”
Bolin gasps, but Mako still looks shrewd. “You’re… adopting us?” he asks slowly. Lin supposes she should be grateful he didn’t jump straight to ‘kidnapping’, at least.
“If I turn these papers in, then yes,” she says. “I won’t be around much, but you’ll have somewhere to stay, and food twice a day at least. And you won’t have to worry about the Triads anymore,” she adds, and Mako’s eyes light up. Bingo. “You in?” she asks.
Bolin tugs on Mako’s dripping sleeve and whispers something in his ear. Mako nods, and Bolin beams. “We’re not gonna call you Mom,” Mako says, and the unexpected wave of relief that washes over Lin makes her head hurt.
“Kid, if you did that, I’d arrest you,” she replies, not allowing the slightest hint of it to cross her face. “Now for spirits’ sake, go dry yourselves off before you make a lake in here. I’m not a damn waterbender, you know.”
Bolin shoots her a wide grin that hits her like a sunbeam as his brother drags him away, like he knows exactly how she’s feeling right now. And for once, she doesn’t mind.
---
She’d warned them that she’d be late to the match if she even got there at all, but she still feels bad for missing it. A couple of pro-bender groupies skulking about the back corridors of the arena scurry out of her way as she heads for the player’s room, which is expected, yet still gratifying.
As much as she rolls her eyes at the enthusiastic play-by-plays and long-winded speeches on why pro-bending is the greatest thing to ever happen in this history of the four nations, so on and so forth, the sport has been an unexpected blessing, for both her and the kids. At the very least, it’s an activity that Lin can keep an eye on, and marginally less stressful than Mako’s habit of spontaneously taking shifts at the power plant, or Bolin’s frequent run-ins with Triad members, or the three miserably failed years of schooling Lin had forced them into.
They haven’t turned out too bad, all in all, Lin thinks, and raps her knuckles on the player room door before entering. Four familiar faces greet her.
“Hey, Mom!” Bolin says gleefully. “You’ll never guess who joined our team when Hasook no-showed!” Behind him, the Avatar does her best stunned Arctic mullet expression, and Tenzin pinches the bridge of his nose.
They’ll be the death of me, Lin thinks, and she couldn’t be happier.