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“Kyaaaaaaa.”
Kya slowly opened her eyes and rolled over onto her stomach. She buried her face in her pillow and let out a deep breath. She’d been dreaming of the fog again. Luckily for her this morning, it wasn’t a terrible dream this time. Just an empty white expanse and the familiar feeling of dread that settled in her stomach when she thought about all the people she’d left behind.
But was it morning? She rolled over again and eyed the small clock that sat on her bedside table. 3 AM. Not yet morning, definitely not evening. Just as she was about to drop off again she heard the voice from her dream. Except it was real, and it was accompanied this time by a plaintive knock at her front door.
“Kya? Kya?” Lin Beifong’s voice carried through the thin walls of the one-bedroom that Kya rented when she returned to Republic City after Zaheer. While she’d done most of the early weeks of recuperation on the island, she’d moved out of the dorms as soon as she could. Air Temple Island was Tenzin’s home now, hers no longer.
Kya groaned softly and heaved herself out of the bed, shoving the furs down and reaching over to grab the thin blue robe she’d thrown at the foot of the bed the night before. She staggered a bit as she made her way across the room, forgetting to favor her right leg. The twinge in her hip made her wince and she rolled her eyes.
“Coming!” She called, attempting to scrape the tangled mass of silver hair away from her face.
Kya opened the door to find Republic City’s Chief of Police standing there, one arm leaned up against the doorframe, a dopey smile on her face, drunk as a skunk.
“Come on in you hooligan.” Kya took in Lin’s disheveled appearance as she backed up and held the door open for her. The woman’s hair was frazzled, her pants were pulled slightly out of her metal boots, bunching and flapping around her legs. “What on earth have you been doing? And you are aware it’s three in the morning?”
Lin chuckled and smiled again. “I - have been. Dancing.” She stumbled her way into the apartment and raised her arms, stripping her armor off in one fluid motion, stepping out of her boots, and then collapsing onto Kya’s sofa.
“Dancing, huh?” Kya smirked, but then the corners of her lips fell back into a slight frown as she remembered what she was doing awake at this time of night. Dancing with her demons, maybe.
She went across to the small kitchenette. Grabbing Lin a glass and pulling some water out of the sink, Kya crossed back to the sofa and sat down next to her inebriated friend. “Drink up.”
Lin took the glass without complaint and gulped it down. When she was done she stretched her arms above her head and slumped back like that against the couch, legs sprawled open and biceps on full display. “It was Saikhan’s anniversary party. He made me get up and teach them all the weird old dances that your parents used to do. What was that one - that one - something like - maybe a pigchicken? Or- or a - wait no it was a desert animal like - like -“
Kya let out a brief chuckle. “The camelephant strut? You actually did that? In front of your officers?”
That seemed to sober Lin up for a second. “Hmph. Well none of the rookies were there at least. Except Mako. But he doesn’t count. He’s a good kid.” Her briefly furrowed brow smoothed out again. “Anyway. It was fun. Reminded me of old times. So - that’s why - that’s how - that - I’m here now.”
Kya watched as a blush spread up from Lin’s chest over her cheeks. She smiled, but it felt forced and it slipped quickly away. “Except in the old times, I was the one who came knocking on your door.”
And she had. Kya could recall countless nights she had chosen to bang on the Beifongs’ door instead of return to her home on the Island. She hated her dad’s disappointed looks when she would drag her hungover self out across the bay the next morning, having missed the dawn meditation, but she dreaded her mother’s late night lectures more. It was easier to slouch back in the next day than to be caught sneaking in by Katara.
Kya reminisced on the scoffs a teenaged Lin had thrown her way, but remembered every gentle maneuver to get her comfortable on the couch. She always woke covered in blankets, her shoes off and hair in a tight braid, a glass of water and cup of painkilling herbal brew on the table beside her. Lin had taken good care of drunk Kya, and high Kya, and brokenhearted Kya, all throughout their youth.
Here was Lin now, inebriated and more relaxed than the waterbender had seen her in years, and Kya felt a familiar surge of fondness for the usually stern Chief of Police. Felt a familiar guiltiness grow and the specter of her dream again loomed large.
“Kya? Are you alright?” Lin’s voice snapped her out of her reverie, and she realized that she’d taken on a bit of a frown as she remembered the friendship of their younger years. Lin had scooted closer. “You don’t look alright.”
And then Lin’s hand was on her face, her soft fingers with their immaculately trimmed nails and smattering of scars were tracing Kya’s cheekbone and attempting to smooth out the lines formed by her unhappy brow and turned-down mouth. Kya caught her hand and pulled it gently away. She couldn’t go down that road again.
“Something’s wrong.” The earthbender insisted. Lin Beifong, stubborn as ever.
Kya let out a sigh and played with the fingers she had yet to let go of. Lin’s knuckles were crisscrossed with raised white lines, but her skin was almost silky to the touch. She cared for those hands. “Just a bad dream.”
Lin’s face crinkled, deep in thought. Kya wanted to laugh at her drunken seriousness, but she couldn’t find it in herself to muster up the energy to change her facial expression now.
Suddenly the metalbender heaved herself off the sofa and made her way precariously to the kitchen. She slammed a pot down in the sink and filled it with water before transferring it to the stove. Not a little water ended up on the counter. Kya watched from her place on the sofa, endeared and overwhelmed and not a little bit afraid of the fluttering in her chest. Here was Lin, completely sloshed, and still taking care of her.
“We do have a kettle you know,” Kya chided, but her tone was flat. Lin grunted at Kya’s attempt at a joke and threw herself back down next to her.
“We could both use a cup.” Her steely green eyes, slightly heavy lidded from drink but warm nonetheless, flicked over to catch Kya’s. “Now tell me what’s wrong.”
Kya shifted in her seat, tucking her feet up under her and placing a finger at the edge of her mouth to gnaw on the skin there. “Just a dream. About the fog…” and then it all came spilling out.
She told Lin about the trip to the Spirit World with her brothers, about reliving her worst fears of confinement and obligation, and how once she found herself alone she could only weep. Weep like she once did for all of those she left behind back then when she took off from Air Temple Island to discover herself as an entity separate from “the Avatar’s (waterbending, wild child, good-for-nothing) daughter”. She relived it all for her friend, the monologue at once relieving and opening afresh old wounds.
Lin listened intently, if a tad unfocused, as Kya recounted the experience of the fog, until at last she came to the metalbender’s part in the story. “And you. I always felt bad about leaving you. About leaving it - us - the way things were.” Kya was no longer looking at Lin, and missed the metalbender’s look of incredulity. Her finger had begun to bleed but she ignored the pain.
“Us? But we weren’t - the way things were how?” Lin was confused. But when Kya looked up at Lin’s words and met her gaze, the metalbender was cast back to her life at twenty. She saw like a slideshow playing on double speed across the projector screen of her mind:
Every time Kya pulled her in for a hug and lingered with her nose in the crook of Lin’s neck a little too long, her breath stinking of alcohol and her hands just a little too low on Lin’s back.
Every time the two of them left the forced conversations and false smiles of a big-city gala honoring their parents’ most recent accomplishments and wandered through darkened gardens hand-in-hand, chatting about everything and nothing.
Every time ‘you can sleep on my couch’ turned into ‘you can sleep in my bed’ and resulted in a tangle of limbs that Lin was quick to extricate herself from in the morning.
Every time Kya’s gaze shifted away when Lin mentioned her relationship with her brother.
It was a lot of times, Lin realized now, too many to be anything but something. “Oh.” Was all her woozy mind could come up with. “Oh.”
She saw in her mind’s eye the last time, when Kya was on the dock, surrounded by friends and family and about to step onto her little boat and set sail for the horizon. When she’d clung to Lin for what felt like hours and then pressed a kiss to the corner of her mouth, whispered, “I would have stayed if you’d asked me to,” and pulled away without a look back when Lin failed to respond.
She saw Kya now, sitting across from her on the couch, gripping her hand. Lin saw the tears gathered in the waterbender’s eyes and her only thought was to alleviate this pain. She lurched forward and caught Kya’s brief look of surprise before her arms were wrapped around her and she was tugging the beautiful, miserable silver-haired woman into her lap in a firm embrace.
“Shhh. Shhhh.” She ran fingers through her hair, pulling out the ties and fanning the mass of silver across her back.
“I left you. You were always there for me and I just left you. And I never told you how I felt about you. And then Tenzin left you and you got those scars and - and I wasn’t there for you.” Kya was hiccuping now. Lin’s heart clenched in her chest.
“You had to be there for you.” Lin’s drunk mind couldn’t put it any more eloquently, but Kya seemed to understand. She nodded weakly against Lin’s chest. Lin could feel her tears dripping down her skin and soaking into the neckline of her tank.
“And now I’m back. And you’re still here for me.” Lin traced a hand across Kya’s forehead and down the curve of her face to her jaw.
“I always will be.” She placed a kiss in her hair and felt Kya go boneless against her. They lay there for who knew how long, Lin slowly sobering and Kya recovering from her emotional unburdening.
When at last Lin felt a crick in her back and Kya’s leg ached, they got up as if in tandem, clasped hands, and made their way to the bedroom. As they passed the stove, Lin flicked off the burner with her metalbending and Kya whispered a quiet thanks.
They reluctantly let go of one another for just enough time for Kya to slip off her robe and Lin to rid herself of her uniform pants, and then re-joined under the covers. Curled up together, they slept.