When Tenzin turns to question her, he is already far too late. By the time that he has processed her command, she has almost gone.
But the look that she gives him is enough to tell him.
She says nothing else. He wouldn't have heard her anyway, not with the wind in his ears and the sudden overwhelming rushing in his head—things flying intangible between coherent thoughts he grips at, disbelief, a relationship that is, should've been, and wasn't as sturdy as the earth. An affection as delicious and light and right as a crisp breeze on a hot day.
She says nothing, but Lin Beifong looks at him, and he realises that she isn't just looking at him, she is looking at him and his family and what she sees is the last of the airbenders.
He understands what she means with this look. Honour and duty are both things that are profoundly important to them. Even if he and Lin have been hot-tempered, they are both moral people. She is simple, like him. (Though he has not always understood Lin, and she has not always been so simple. Like when she was a woman that he loved and was loved by, when they were younger and their responsibilities had not been quite so settled on their shoulders.) She is utterly trusted.
The intensity of this moment, stretching longer and longer, shakes loose memories he doesn't want.
He has always been able to read Lin's eyes. Such lovely lively livid eyes, he has thought in his time.
And then she is gone, yanked away from Oogi by the cables she set loose, torn definitely away by the only decision she would have made.
He can't think, but he understands. He watches the carnage she unleashes on the first ship. He holds his breath when she jumps to the second, and then he feels when the lightening burns through her body and down along her spine out to the ends of her, blue fury rages through veins and nerves to overwhelm her, a stream that courses and courses and coils until it's too much and all has to go black. His hands twitch involuntarily, and the pain burns bright in his stomach and his mind is flooded with memories overly vivid in a white-hot way. These are memories that he needs to dismiss away now.
The pain abates.
Then he turns to his family. His responsibility, his life.
His older son Meelo looks truly forlorn for the first time in his young life. "That lady is my hero," Meelo says.
"Yes," Tenzin says, looking down. "She is."
And even Pema doesn't know how true that is.
…
When Lin Beifong celebrated the tenth New Year of her life, she moved in with her 'Uncle' Avatar Aang.
One week after Lin's arrival to Air Temple Island, Tenzin was found sleeping with her. Katara discovered her youngest son in the thin dun pre-dawn light, when she had come into Lin's room to check on whether or not Lin had managed to drift to sleep. Her poor niece had been plagued by a torturous combination of night terrors and insomnia, resulting in a lack of sleep Katara suspected had something to do with the girl's waning complexion and deteriorating health.
Katara had not expected to find two small bundles huddled closely together under the blankets and covers, so close together that they almost looked like an adult drawn into a fetal position. But she easily recognised the unruly brown crown of Tenzin unshaven hair.
Katara had walked closer to the bed. She had watched the two of them closely as a mother does, noticing the synchronised tiny rises and falls of their chests, the outlines suggesting that Tenzin's arm was wrapped around Lin's torso and shoulders, while also on the lookout for any signs of faking. Eventually she found that no signs were forthcoming. She judged the two children genuinely asleep.
She had smiled to herself, resigned for this morning. Her son would not be allowed to make a habit of sneaking into the women's quarters in the dead of night; he would have to be talked to about that. In fifteen minutes, too, Tenzin would be late for meditation with his father for the first since he had contracted measelwarts at the age of seven; Aang, her husband, would have to be talked to about that.
"I can convince him this time," Katara whispered softly, bending down over the bed, settling her hand on her son's shoulder through the white blankets. "But I can't make excuses for you. I won't. Your father wouldn't want that, you know, and neither do I. Neither would you, I think."
She had kissed her son's forehead, and after a moment of gazing fondly at him she had leaned over further and had kissed Lin's forehead too. Spirits help her—Katara had seen it coming, was still seeing it coming, but actually seeing Tenzin's friendly affection for Lin developing into a crush on Lin left Katara feeling restless for many reasons.
She had sighed as she pulled away from the two sleeping children, moving quiet and easy through the still-dark room as a koi moves beneath the surface of calmed water at night. Try as she might, she could not imagine an airbender with the temperament of a Toph. Though maybe there was hope. After all, Tenzin was more serious and more mature at age eleven than his fifteen and seventeen year old siblings were put together.
But then, Toph really had gotten better as she had aged, as she had taken on responsibility after responsibility until the load on her shoulders alone was more than impressive. There had been a lot of responsibilities, from her devotion to her city, to her daughter, to the defense she kept up to keep her child safe. At one point there had been one person there to share her personal load with, but that time had passed so quickly that none of her friends really had appreciated it was a time in her life until it was over. After that there had been someone else who had finally made it into Toph's life, but then that arrangement simply hadn't worked out in time. And that hadn't been fair or easy for any of them.
"You will never be alone, at least," Katara had muttered lovingly to the room.
After Katara slid the paper-panelled doors shut, she contemplated what brazier she might move into Lin's room, and what could serve for a good wholesome breakfast. Back in the room behind her, Lin rolled in closer to Tenzin because he was a source of warmth. Lin was dreaming that her mother's shade had lingered over her, both far and close at the same time. The shade had begun to enervate her. It sucked away all of her vital heat even as it was desperate to comfort her.
.
Tenzin had woken up with a start. For a moment he had been frantic, his confusion ripping through his usual grogginess and jerking him awake faster than anything could otherwise hope to rouse him. He had twisted around in bed, then whipped back around to orientate himself.
Then his eyes settled on Lin who was lying beside him. Lin who was frowning into the palm of one of her hands, who had just been locked tightly against him, who was still immured in a dream.
Tenzin had had no idea what to do. On one hand, he wanted to smile and feel proud and tell Lin that he had helped her get some proper sleep. Finally. On the other hand, he was sure that he had overslept himself because he could discern colours in the room.
That meant that it was past dawn.
Completely forgetting his lesson, he had flushed and thought to himself, I am going to get caught in the female sleeping quarters and my mom's going to kill me and Bumi's never going to let me live it down and—
Lin had then whimpered quietly, her eyebrows had twitched in stress. She had tried to bury her face into her pillow.
Tenzin had held his breath, suddenly absolutely transfixed on her.
Then she had whimpered, again.
"Lin?" Tenzin had whispered softly, softly. He had reached out an arm tentatively, centimetre by centimetre, until he lightly touched her shoulder and shook her once.
"Lin?"
This time her eyes had crept open. He had earned a response of, "Who?"
"Me. Tenzin."
"Tenzin," Lin repeated as she sat up. It took several moments of staring at him and blinking away her sleep, her green eyes becoming clearer and clearer, until she had remembered. "Tenzin. Right. Sleeping. Thanks. You're gonna get in trouble, Airhead."
"W-what? Ssssh, you're not going to tell on me. You can't. I helped you."
"You still broke the rules, though," Lin had pointed out, yawning. "Auntie is gonna turn you into seal jerky."
"That's stupid," Tenzin had rasped, narrowing his eyes at Lin. "This is a vegetarian island."
"What about when ya guys go to the South Pole again? And if she loves ya too much to do it, there's your grandfather."
"That's not helping, Lin!"
"Fine, fine," Lin had said and had yawned again, this time yawning into her hand before waving it dismissively at Tenzin. "Don't lose your loincloth in a twister."
Tenzin had sighed most prodigiously, sounding for all the world like a world-weary, put-upon adult. Lin had rolled her eyes as she crawled over Tenzin, touched her bare feet to the wooden floorboards, shivered for a moment, and then beckoned Tenzin to get out of bed. Together they had yanked one of the sheets off of the bed. For a moment the sheet had looked like a half-full parachute lazing in its descent before it fell and covered them.
"Stay close to me, okay, Tenzin? And walk on your own feet, not mine."
Tenzin wrapped his arms around Lin's waist, and beneath the sheet they had plenty warmth between the heat radiating from their small bodies and the heat still trapped in the cotton threads. After drawing the sheet closer to themselves, Tenzin ducked his head and bent his back and they headed out like that, with Lin in front as the head and Tenzin in back as the rear-end.
They had not closed the door behind them. Together she and Tenzin had shambled down the hallway, had taken several wrong turns ("Seismic sense doesn't work on wood, idiot! It's seismic sense."), and had almost gone down to the basement before they were within sight of the entrance to the courtyard.
Then an acolyte had spotted them. Or rather, he had spotted a hunchbacked ghost in this young new temple, padding along and having hushed, clipped arguments with itself.
While the acolyte had paused and remained paralysed, trying to work out if this presence was a demon, omen, sign, ghost, a threat, shade, or brain malfunction, Lin had acted.
"You are seeing me in a dream," she announced in her deepest, gruffest voice. She had also almost laughed because she thought to herself that she sounded manlier than Tenzin ever would. "Go back to bed, and wake. You have overslept, and you have duties you must attend to. For shame."
Tenzin hadn't actually seen what had happened, but he had heard the acolyte's retreating footsteps.
After that, the rest had been easy. They didn't fight anymore, and Tenzin figured out how to follow Lin's strange, hurried pace without either falling behind or stepping on her heels. (That latter had been particularly deadly, because Lin had a Thing about her feet being touched, so sensitive and ticklish was she.)
And when they were outside and had thrown off the sheet, Lin smiled at Tenzin despite her grouching and complaining of his incompetence and worthlessness as an airbender, if he really was as heavy-footed as he seemed to be.
"Thanks, Tenzin."
"…You're welcome, Lin. Really. And thanks for helping me. It was—It was my fault for, you know, forgetting about the whole living in the girls' side. But we did okay together."
"You're kind of a chump," Lin had said, smiling still, though her smile had tightened into a smirk. And though she looked better smirking than she had looked frowning, Tenzin had thought that she looked nicest when she was simply smiling. In fact, he had thought, She looks nice when she's smiling at me, and happy.
He had flushed, but he was saved by a sudden rush of sunlight flaring across the courtyard and into their eyes. Just then the sun had burst over the peaks of the snowy mountains behind Avatar Aang's Republic City and flooded their world with light and more colour. Lin had shielded her eyes and looked to see the sunrise for a moment, while Tenzin had kept his eyes on her and thought about how goofy her bedhead looked.
"Well, I should go back," Lin said. "You know. Sleep until breakfast. Have fun with Uncle Aang."
But before Lin had turned around, Tenzin had held up his hand just as suddenly as the sunburst had come, and for the first time that Lin would ever be able to recall, Tenzin leaned in towards her in such a way that could be called properly conspiratorial.
Lin had been very happy.
"The next time you can't—when you can't sleep and you're cold, find me. I'll take you down to the sky bison caves, okay? We can sleep on Oogi or Appa. They're warm, and technically they're not on either the boys' or girls' side."
Lin had nodded, and laughed. "Hah! Fine. I'll remember that, Tenzin."
And with that, Lin had disappeared on swift feet, moving too easily for someone whose natural affinity wasn't air.
