Chapter Text
“Stupid…”
Lin kicked a rock down the stone steps of the winding alleyway and watched as it hurtled against terracotta walls, ricocheting over trashcans and startling a cat napping on the half-wall of a nearby house. The cat hissed at her with its fangs barred before leaping off the wall as she stuck her tongue out at its fluffy tail. Guilt dropped like a stone in the pit of her stomach when she was left alone, listening to the bustle of people beyond the cramped alleyway. There were people in the neighboring buildings too; the earth telling her of their movements as she continued walking down the steps.
She was at least a few streets away from her house, but she wished that she could be farther. Halfway across the city, tucked into the big pillowy tea room her Aunt Katara loved to sit in when she was relaxing after a day of work. Lin could almost imagine her there; bathed in warm, orange sunlight with her favorite cup in hand while she reclined against the pillows. She never looked up when someone came in, only poured them another cup with a wave-like motion of her hand and greeted with a smile on her face.
Pigeons crooned from the wooden scaffolding overhead, and Lin tilted her head back to glimpse their grey-white wings and imagined their fluffy tips was the ends of her uncle’s beard.
It always tickled her cheek whenever he scooped her up for a hug. If she could trade the exhaust fumes, and rotting trash for fruit pies and that unnameable scent of the sky — she would a trillion times over. It wasn’t as if he would refuse her company either since he said that she was one of his favorite people to see. Although, that meant there were other favorite people, Uncle Aang was her favorite and that’s all that mattered in the end. Unless it came down to arguing with her mom, and if she left the next couple of blocks over from their home to run off to Air Temple Island — she’d be in a world of trouble.
It’s not fair, Lin thought with another ferocious kick against a loose stone. Why was she the one being punished when it was Suyin who broke her toys? She always had to be the bigger sister and the understanding one while Suyin got to get away with everything. She huffed, folded arms tucked tight against her chest as she butted her shoulder against the nearest wall. There were voices further down the alleyway where it diverged into the street, and people would likely find their way up soon if they decided to take a short cut. But the way was narrow, and uncomfortable to walk unless you were small enough to squeeze through — like her.
Which meant that her mom wouldn’t come through to get her since it would mean messing up the city she loved so much. Lin shifted around with her back to the wall and sank down, knees tucked close to her chest and chin hooked over her arm. Her eyes burned but she swallowed against the tightness in her throat, and scrubbed at the lids of them with the back of her hand. She wouldn’t cry, and she wouldn’t go back with swollen eyes just for Suyin to point at her and ask what’s wrong.
Like she didn’t know what she did. Like she didn’t understand again.
It felt like her heart was being twisted around like putty, and if she didn’t resist, then it would break. And the only thing left beating in her chest would be shards that no one thought twice about picking up. She buried her nose in her arms,. Her vision blurred, then cleared, then blurred again.
I don’t wanna cry, she thought with a sniffle. I’m not gonna cry…
“What’re you doing down there?”
The sudden voice cut through her thoughts, and Lin jerked her head up so fast that her neck twinged. She searched the empty alleyway for the sound but not even the shutters on the windows above had opened. Yet, when she tilted her head and caught the glare from the sun crested over the building’s roofs - someone stared down at her from the rafters. The stranger was half-hidden by the sun’s glare, crouched on the wooden beams like a pygmy puma.
Lin bolted up to her feet, fists clenched and stance ready when the stranger suddenly pitched forward. Panic shot through her as she prepared to lift the steps to catch them but the stranger hung from the beam by their feet, arms tucked behind their head like a human-shaped viperbat. And as her eyes adjusted, the dancing circles blinked away, she’d almost made out the color of the stranger’s eyes along with their crooked grin.
Her heart sang at the sight, though confusion quickly took its place. “Wait, what are you doing here—“
BEEEP!
Lin’s eyes snapped open with a sharp gasp. She lurched up in bed, lost in the sudden darkness surrounding her until she remembered when she was. Her hands were larger than the ones in her dream, thick calluses at the base of her fingers and dirt washed from beneath her nails with meticulous efficiency. The old ache for a toy her terror of a little sister had broken without a care because she was too young to understand what it meant. And then, there was that sun-lit person who’d come to her in the silence.
Lin trailed her fingers down her cheek. She could hardly remember the curve of that smile, or the way their eyes gleamed, the effortlessness in their acrobatics. It had all been right there in her mind but she couldn’t remember how the dream ended. What was that toy even, and what did it mean to her that she would’ve gotten into a shouting match with her mom only to storm out of the house?
Her hand fell to her lap as she leaned forward to rest her forehead against her knee, inhaling long and slow. There was no reason to be too hung up on it anyway. Whether it was a memory, or some weird spirit-induced dream from all of the stress she’d been under since the Avatar came to her city, it was in the past now. If she kept repeating those words to herself, then perhaps the unsettling tremor beneath her skin would cease to be.
When the silence dragged on for too long, and the rumbling of vehicles on the streets as well as the occasional honking horn banished any hope for sleep, Lin swung her legs over the bedside. A glass of water and the cool concrete floors beneath her feet would be enough to steady her. And if she couldn’t sleep after that, it would be nothing to head off for an early day at the precinct. Or a late night walk around the city, drinking in the sights she couldn’t experience while on the job.
Anything was better than rotting away with her thoughts. Lin pushed herself up, and staggered over to her bedroom door. It was dark in the hallway when she swung open the door. Her apartment had never been much. A place to sleep, a place to work when she needed to take a case with her, but never quite home. If she thought of home, it would have been the cramped apartment she’d shared with her mother and sister. A place intermittently filled with noise and silence; laughter, tears, shouting, and whispers were practically ornaments upon its walls.
In her own home, there was mostly silence, and somehow she hated that more than the one from her childhood. She blew out a sigh, and tried to reorient herself as she turned the corner around the half-wall leading into the kitchen. The floorboards were cold beneath her feet, and soothed her heated soles as she leaned up to the cupboards to pull down a mug.
A glass of water, then bed, she reminded herself before pushing the cupboard shut. Her eyes drifted from the mug for a brief second, then hesitated, before she turned around again.
A box of cardamom cinnamon buns from Wen Bakery sat on the granite counter top. It looked to fit about a dozen of them, but from the clear window on the box’s lid, at least two were missing. Cold dripped into Lin’s stomach as her fist curled tight around the mug’s handle. She’d been busy with the recent influx of spirit-related incidents in the city, but there were reports that stuck out more than others. Wen Bakery in the Kuwai District was one of them — a shop that was temporarily closed after hooligans masquerading as spirits ransacked the place hours before the owner locked up.
Because of that, she wasn’t able to get her usual order of fire cracker buns for weeks.
“I hope you don’t mind the flavor.”
Lin whirled around, whipping the mug in the direction of the voice before her hand curled into a fist. The mug sailed through the air until it was caught within a black-gloved hand. In the dimness of her living room, it was hard to make out the silhouette now rising from the other side of her couch. They were tall, broad-shouldered, and far too calm for her liking.
“You’re plenty bold to break into my home,” she sneered, demanding, “Who are you?”
The stranger tilted their head, a barely there motion she could pick out from the way their shadow moved. “Break in?” They echoed back, raising their other hand.
Lin tensed when a flame burst to life in their palm, but her hands gradually lowered as the copper light illuminated the face of an older woman. A puzzled look lingered on her face as her golden eyes glimmered in the firelight, drifting off to one side with a wondering hum, “I used the key. It was kept in the same place, though I find that surprising…” She thumbed the mug, turning it around in her hand to grasp it by the handle with a slight smile easing the tiredness in her face. “I’m glad that it was my presence and not the dessert.”
Lin stared at her, mouth falling open as she struggled to find the proper words. How was she here? No, why was she here? There hadn’t been any word about the Fire Nation delegation, nor was there anything about a meeting between Republic City’s leaders. So, why was one of the world’s leaders — the sovereign of an entire nation — standing in her apartment as if it was normal?
“I suppose you would want this back?” Izumi asked, holding out the mug to her.
The awkward sincerity of it snapped Lin out of her thoughts entirely. “What are you doing here?!”
“I’m only stopping through, I won’t be in the city for long.”
At this, Lin squinted at her. “Is it just you?”
Izumi closed her mouth, but her slanted gaze and the way she thumbed at the mug told everything she wouldn’t.
“Why?” Lin demanded, marching around the table and toward the couch that was the only barrier between her and the Flame sovereign. She almost wanted to reach out to her and take her by the front of the traveling cloak she’d thrown around herself. By the Spirits, how had she even come to Republic City seeing as the cloak seemed as if it’d been through the worst of the elements?
Izumi was one step quicker, pushing the mug into Lin’s outstretched hand and extinguishing the flame in her grip. Doused in shadows, she moved silently as if she’d memorized the entire layout of her apartment. “I had to make this trip alone,” she said, walking around the side of the couch. Lin kept her within her periphery, watched as Izumi pulled out one of the two chairs at her dining table and sat down.
A passing car’s headlamps illuminated her from behind; the slightly sunken skin beneath her eyes, the way her shoulders trembled but her hands stayed firmly clasped together on the table top, white-knuckled as if she were holding herself together. Her hair fell in loose waves down the sides of her face, and as she leaned back in her chair, it draped over her shoulders as she flashed a tired smile.
Crooked, warm. Almost like—
“Don’t worry, the palace is aware of my absence. There is a regent in place that is trustworthy enough not to attempt a coup.”
“A co- wh-?” Lin turned around, hips pressed to the couch and want for water all but forgotten. There was a dryness in her throat. A realization that she might have stumbled across something dire, and her heart pounded at the thought of its enormity. “How long were you planning to be gone from the Fire Nation?”
“That depends,” Izumi said blithely, as if they were discussing plans for vacations rather than her unwittingly abandoning her throne. “A short while. No longer than two months, I’d assume.”
“Two mo—“ Lin stomped forward, and slammed her mug down on the table. “You can’t be serious. What has gotten into you? It isn’t like you to abandon your responsibilities like this, and showing up out of the blue? Are you running away or something?”
Izumi didn’t appear shaken from the harsh snap of her voice. Nor did she move when Lin loomed over her, one fist pressed to the table while the other held the mug in a grip tight enough to shatter. Slowly, she straightened up in her chair and faced Lin directly. It was the first time she noticed since their talk began that Izumi wasn’t wearing her glasses.
Gold eyes bore into green, then as if the sun had set within Lin’s tiny apartment, Izumi withdrew with a far-off gaze. Almost seeming to disappear into herself with a face half-reduced to shadow aside from the subtle glow of her eyes, even in the night’s dim. A distant look hollowed out her pupils as she stared past somewhere Lin wasn’t sure she could follow.
“… I suppose I am.”