Chapter Text
They say she has your face.
The symbols finely spoke from their place upon the parchment, their pitch black ink contrasting heavily with the light of the singular lantern inside the dark room.
It was a message to be read in secret. The letter itself was mundane and small in size compared to the two male hands that held it at the corners.
They say she has your grim look.
Rough and mean.
It’s not my type of rough though.
It’s sombre and angered.
Like you when you were young.
Maybe because she feels abandoned.
Because her father
Who shares her face,
and her dark hair,
and that grim look.
Wouldn’t even show to look at her
and how just like him she was.
Yet here I am, someone who can’t even see.
Knowing her, feeling her, listening about her.
This is much more than her so called father
who with his so-called ‘golden eyes’ could ever hope to see.
Blind eyes. Seeing eyes. Perhaps if he was blind he would have never gotten into this bind. He wouldn’t have had a chance to see this letter nor have been put into a position to even prompt it to be written. Perhaps his father, cruelest of all, would have smothered him in the cradle- an act he himself felt he was doing to the baby the letter spoke of.
Like father like son. It was hereditary. Something to pass on like so many of the traits this letter spoke of about the mysterious infant now connected to him.
They say she has your eyes.
Narrow and long.
Not the color, though, just the eyes around.
Everything else is me.
But, they say she has a fire inside her.
It’s in her green eyes as they shine in the lamplight
while she rests in my arms.
It’s not my type of fire because I’m earth and metal.
I wonder from where the fire came from.
And one day she will too.
There were no spoken words but the bitterness was palpable. These strokes from the brush couldn’t have been hers but by the lively and forceful way they were mashed into the parchment they may as well have been done by her hand.
Now, I know she shares your voice.
The way you murmur in your sleep.
The way you sigh that weary sigh.
Just hearing it makes me wish to go deaf.
Why not take the package deal and remove everything that could make me know and feel?
I don’t need sight. I don’t need hearing.
I don’t need it. I don’t need You.
She doesn’t need You.
Just like you don’t need her.
It was at this point the Fire Lord had set down the letter and merely looked out into the vacant darkness of his personal study where countless scrolls just like this one lay.
No, not like this one.
This one was like none other in the royal collection. It wasn’t about history, or economy, or military, or diplomacy. It wasn’t a great work of learning or sagely religious wisdom. It wasn’t some grand beastiary of every creature land, sea, and air.
It was something far more simple than that.
And it was always that simple things that brought the greatest tolls.
I know one day she’ll speak like you
By the way she blurts and gurgles.
It’s nonsense but its just like you,
because everything you ever told me was nonsense.
When you held my hair between your fingers.
Or my lay your head between my breasts.
When you told me everything was going to be alright.
You heard me ask what were we
and all you did was blurb alot of nothing.
Now whenever you stand on some podium and give your grand speeches,
I’ll remember how you sound like these noises.
What could you even teach her to say?
Speeches about Honor? Words about Strength?
Better that you had taught her how to say ‘Papa’,
than make her become the hypocrite you are.
Hypocrite?
That’s a fancy word. Maybe I’ll teach it to her someday.
Spirits know You would never.
The symbols were almost exhausted as they began to slowly intensify over on the left-hand side of the parchment where all of them began to bundle up for the last parts of this message. By how dark the ink was whoever wrote it in her stead was surely making it a strong point of consideration.
You would never be able to giver her what I gave her.
Her eyes
She got that from me. The color is my mother’s and had I not been blind it would have been mine to.
Perhaps I sacrificed my part to hand to her.
Because I actually care about her.
I also gave her my charm.
And my bright smile.
And my desire to live.
She is so lively.
She reaches out to Me.
And Only Me.
Because You are not here.
You were too scared of the words of old coots
and the judgement of nobles who wouldn’t even spit in your direction.
Were you scared of the people who would laugh at you?
Or the papers that would write about you and draw their little illustrations?
Were you scared of the sages trying to keep the stupid royal code
Or were you scared what our friends would think?
Maybe you should be scared.
Of Me.
But not because of what I can tell the world.
Of how you took me into your bed and did those things that only a Lord married to his consort should do.
Of how we exchanged letters and saw each other for more and more and more until I could no longer.
Of how you put a baby in me and here I am with her in my arms and you far from it all.
No, you shouldn’t be scared of that.
You shouldn’t be scared of what I can tell the world.
You should be scared of what I can show the world.
I can show the world that I don’t need you.
I can show the world that she is My daughter.
That she has my eyes and my smile.
My liveliness and my charm.
My strength and my potential to be the greatest bender in the world.
She's Toph's daughter after all.
Not Zuko's.
They’re going to see all that I gave her
and ignore everything you left.
They’re not going to see your scowl or your grim face.
Your meanness. Your roughness.
They’re not even going to see that fire inside of her.
You’ll see that what you left
will not to compare to what I made.
You left a Bastard.
I made a Beifong.
There was a stamped seal of Family Beifong presented with green ink set upon the very end of the parchment where all that was left to see was the final signature of the sender sitting right below it.
Just as he was about to set the parchment aside another slip had revealed itself after releasing from its loose gluing so that it fell upon the dark wood desk with little sound. A cursory glance from those golden eyes of his showed a few characters, small and light, were written on there in what a much different disposition than the firm and borderline wrathful strokes that composed the symbols of the larger parchment.
At once he picked up the slip, which was not even a thumb in width and about the length of a hand, and read the only message that was on it:
Zuko, her name is Lin.
And she has your face.
And my eyes.