Chapter Text
Cloud hung low over the bay, and Lin couldn’t suppress a shiver as the chill sunk into her bones. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been sitting on the cliffside, staring out at the waves; her joints were stiff and aching from the damp and the cold, but she would sit a while longer. It had been over a decade since she’d last felt comfortable on Air Temple Island, and her new familiarity with the place and its inhabitants had unlocked something in Lin that she’d been stubbornly ignoring for longer than she cared to admit.
It wasn’t as though she hadn’t remembered in previous years—she always remembered—but there was something sharper about it now that Tenzin was back in her life. It was only once she felt that familiar grief tug at her gut, that Lin realized a small part of her had been hoping that the healing of her friendship with Tenzin might have healed other wounds along with it. Instead, the stitching holding them together seemed to snap, string by string, with every tentative smile and invitation to dinner.
“It’s cold out here.” Tenzin’s voice broke through the fog of her thoughts. “Won’t you come in? Pema’s made a little extra food in case you wanted to stay.” Lin wasn’t expecting the weight of the blanket as Tenzin draped it over her shoulders; it was still warm from the fires that must be lit inside, and Lin drew it around herself protectively. She didn’t speak, hoping that he’d leave her to it, that he had forgotten, but instead of footsteps retreating back towards the house, Lin heard Tenzin huff out a breath as he sat down beside her.
“I still think about him, too.” Tenzin said, and Lin turned to look at him for the first time, surprised. “I know we didn’t know for sure, but whenever I imagined… it was always a boy.”
Lin was taken aback. Tenzin had never mentioned that; Lin knew she would have remembered if he had. She would have remembered because whenever she had imagined the child’s future, she had always seen a girl. A girl who would hate and long for her the same way she’d hated and longed for her own mother. The thought of a boy had never crossed her mind, not even as comfort.
“I never expected you to think about it at all,” Lin said, to stop herself remembering any further. “Not now you’ve got four healthy little airbenders with a woman who actually wants them.” Her words were barbed, intended to shoo him away, make him leave her alone.
“I’m not going to let you do that this evening, Lin,” he said, his voice even and measured.
“Do what?” she spat back.
“Say something harsh that you don’t mean, just so I’ll get angry with you and leave you alone. I’d like to think we’ve moved past that part of our relationship now.”
Lin did not reply, only drew her knees up to her chest, her arms folding around them. Instinct told her to bite back that she wasn’t one of his children to be chastised; that he didn’t know her anymore; that he wasn’t better than her; but doing so would only give weight to his accusation. She didn’t know whether to be irritated or relieved that the tactics she’d employed when they were in their thirties no longer worked now that they were both on the other side of half a century.
She’d come here to be alone, but she’d been alone for enough of the last fifteen years, she supposed. As private as it felt, this was Tenzin’s grief as well, and he’d clearly come to her in the spirit of friendship. It would not not do to push him away, not again, not now.
“I suppose that all this—us being friends again—it’s reminded me why I was so devastated before,” Lin admitted, her voice small. It felt strange, wrong, to voice her fragile feelings into the air like this, but it was only Tenzin who heard them. “It’s reminded me of what I lost when I lost you. I think that when I realised it—when I realised he was gone, I knew it was the end of us, as well. In the years we were apart, it was easier to tell myself that wasn’t such a loss, but these past months, I… I think there’s a lot I’ve not allowed myself to feel until now. I don’t mean that I still—I’m not still pining after you or anything,” she corrected herself quickly, “but you… you were the only person I had, back then.”
It was more honest than Lin had been—with herself or with anyone—for a long time, but it still felt a little untrue. There had been Kya, too. Kya who had made her tea and scolded her recklessness and touched her with gentle hands. But Kya had left. Lin had always known Kya would leave.
Caught up in her memory, Lin hadn’t noticed the change in Tenzin’s expression; gone was the patient exasperation she was so used to seeing, erased by the tears in his eyes and the way the corners of his mouth tugged down.
“I’m so sorry, Lin,” he choked out. A tear rolled down his cheek, and Lin was surprised by the urge to reach up and brush it away. She didn’t move, though, frozen in place and half afraid that if she unwound her arms from where they circled her knees, that she would fall completely apart. “I was so selfish, always so selfish,” Tenzin continued, his voice cracking in a way even Lin had barely heard before. “I knew you didn’t want—but I was so afraid of failing the Air Nation. I’d chosen you over them—selfishly—for so many years already and I thought… maybe this is how I can keep her. But once you actually—it was so hard to watch, Lin, how unhappy you were. Every day I felt you slipping away from me and then Pema—” he cut himself off, as if acknowledging it all again now would reignite the fury that had burned through Lin when she’d first found out.
“I know—” Lin started to say, but Tenzin shook his head.
“No, Lin, please let me say this. I’ve been wanting to—for so many years I’ve wanted to tell you how sorry I am for how I handled… everything. I don’t know how I ever thought a month was enough. I think I told myself that you weren’t grieving the way I was—it makes me sick just thinking about it. I told myself that you’d never wanted him and you must be so relieved.” He covered his eyes with one hand, taking a shuddering breath. This time, Lin couldn’t stop herself reaching out to lay her palm against the back of his head. She stroked the skin there with the tips of her fingers, a sensation that felt alien and familiar all at once.
Lin couldn’t count how many times she’d pictured this very scene. A hundred different versions of Tenzin had said a thousand different versions of these words, and in every one, Lin had stared coldly down at him, letting him trip over his apologies until his tears formed a puddle at her feet. She had never imagined that she would want to pull him to her chest, to soothe his pain away.
“You weren’t wrong, though,” she said. “I was relieved. I was relieved and devastated and terrified, and I hid all of it from you. Please don’t—it’s done now, and we were both at fault.” Lin wished she were better at comfort, that she was full of soft words, but such things had never come easily to her. “Those months—neither of us were at our best, were we?”
“I don’t know that I can blame you.” Tenzin said, trying to wipe the tears from his face with a corner of his robe.
It was sweet of him to forgive her, to so easily shrug off the ways that Lin’s grief had made her ugly. For all his faults, Tenzin had never wanted to hurt Lin, not the way she’d wanted to hurt him when she found out about Pema. She’d walked away from the destruction she’d wrought on his island, sickly satisfied in the knowledge that she’d proven him utterly wrong: she was never made to be a mother. She ruined everything she touched.
“You should,” Lin said, shortly. “I was angry and I was—fuck, I was so jealous. I don’t mean jealous of Pema, or at least—okay, I was jealous of Pema. I was jealous of how easy it was for her to be everything you needed, she just existed as she was, and she was better for you than I ever had been, but—”
“I don’t want you to think—you were never—you’re incredible, Lin.” It was a testament to how shocked she was that Lin allowed Tenzin to hook an arm around her waist and pull her against his side. Instinctively, she turned so she could drape her legs across his lap and lean her body sideways against his chest. It was more intimate than Lin had been with anyone in a long time, and it should have been awkward, but Lin felt oddly relaxed even as Tenzin continued to apologise. “I’m sorry that I ever made you feel lesser. I was so wrapped up in—”
“You don’t have to, Tenzin. Please.” Lin reached up to pat his shoulder gently, and Tenzin nodded as he pressed his lips together in a tight line. “What I’m trying to say is that, while part of me was jealous of Pema, more than anything I was jealous of you. You’d found someone who really understood you, someone you knew you could be happy with, and you weren’t afraid to go for it.”
“I was terrified, actually,” Tenzin muttered, and Lin couldn’t help the wry little laugh that escaped her.
“Well then, I guess you were brave enough to try, even though you knew what it would cost you.” Tenzin tightened his grip around her waist. “I’ve never been brave like that. I was always too afraid of the cost of my own happiness.”
“Do you mean…” Tenzin began, tentatively. “Was there someone you... “
Lin spared him having to finish by nodding.
“Yeah, yeah there was. I think I—I was so angry with you because I’d said no, I hadn’t taken that chance. I’d chosen to be miserable, and you’d chosen to be happy. I hated you for that, but you didn’t deserve it.” Lin gave a wry laugh. “Although maybe you did—it was sort of your fault I ever fell for her.”
If Tenzin was surprised by the pronoun, he didn’t show it.
“Oh? How so?”
“You were the one who insisted I needed a babysitter.”
It took a few moments for Tenzin to put the pieces together, but it was enough time for Lin’s heart to begin pounding. It was one thing for Lin to have caught feelings for someone else while they were still together (he could hardly fault her for that, after all) but it was quite another for that someone to be Tenzin’s sister.
“Tenzin, please say something.” Lin hated how small her voice was, how pleading.
“What? Sorry I—I’m just thinking about how many things make sense now.” Tenzin took in her worried expression, and smiled. “You didn’t think I was going to be angry, did you?”
Lin shrugged.
“I don’t know what I thought.”
He laughed quietly, as if the very idea was ludicrous, and Lin allowed herself a smile as she lay her head on his shoulder. She’d forgotten how cold she was when he found her here, but not how lonely. The clifftop was as quiet as it had been all afternoon, but the stillness was soothing, now she had someone to share it with.
“Have you spoken to her since she’s been staying?” Tenzin asked, breaking the silence. “She’ll be around for a while, and—”
“Tenzin…”
“I’m just saying. You know Mom would be thrilled.”
“Please be quiet.”
Lin heard Tenzin give a low chuckle before he pressed his lips once, twice, three times to the top of her head.
“I love you, Lin.”
She’d made it through the whole conversation dry-eyed, and she hated herself for the tears that threatened to spill now. It was pathetic to think that he had been the last person to say those words to her, over a decade ago, and it had been even longer since they hadn’t been suffixed with a tired, “but...”
Lin let a couple of tears roll unhindered down her cheek. It wouldn’t do to draw attention to them, not now when the air felt soft and peaceful.
“Yeah,” she said, through the lump in her throat. “I love you too, Airhead.”