Title: Silence is Golden
Fandom: Legend of Korra
Rating: K
Characters: Bolin, Lin Beifong, cameos of Saikhan and other metalbending officers, mentions of Pema; Bolin-centric
Pairings: None
Summary: Lin knows the silent treatment is the way to get results out of her youngest pupil-it's the reason she implements it so regularly.
A/N: Oneshot. Complete. Un-beta'd. I'm pretty sure Sifu didn't mean to give me a plot bunny, but she did anyway. Thanks, Ava. xD
It is times like these, when Lin is mad at him for messing up or acting without decorum or slipping instinctively back into a Pro-bending stance after she's told him for the enth time to save the prancing around for on the streets, that drive Bolin to try harder.
She is not speaking to him or acknowledging his existence this time. She ignores his medley of excuses that accompany a lot of gesticulation and hand wringing. She walks right on by him when he is parked outside her office, sitting cross-legged on the floor with Pabu on his lap, waiting for her to return back from her lunch break. After the second or third time she ignores him, he knows she is serious about her edict and backs off. He knows better than to stand in her way or use his bending to try to force her to listen to his side of the story—that would get him such a beating he is not sure there would be anything left of him afterwards.
So he goes and does the only thing that he know will please the Chief—he vanishes down into the Police Gym and spends hours trying to perfect his form. Shaping rocks and making columns all while staying in the correct stance. The basics. Child's play for the officers who watch him train resolutely in the corner of the gym. But for him, who grew up on the streets and learned how to chuck rocks without any formal training, it's hard.
This is what he does every time Sifu Beifong refuses to speak to him. And unbeknownst to him, it's the reason she usually implements such silent treatments. She knows that he thrives on attention and praise, and she's found that he has come to value her opinion even over the opinion of his own brother. She knows that not getting the praise he desires from the person he looks up to most is more of a punishment then any early-morning training session or grueling sparring match could be.
He trains for hours, only pausing for water when his mouth feels like a wad of cotton and he is so dizzy he can barely see straight. He'll sit on the bench by the water cooler, sipping water from a little paper cup, watching the metalbender's bend. He can't wait until he can finally learn how to bend wire around other wires and swing through the air like a curly-tailed blue nose—it looks like so much fun! But it also reminds him about how he has a lot of work to do before he can even begin metalbending, and he's back up from the bench and returns to his corner to practice his columns.
Finally, by the time Saikhan comes and shoos him out of the Gym stating something about hours and civilians, he's gotten the form down to a science. He can bring a perfect cube up from the ground five times out of six. Rigid, straight columns are easy. He has yet to have mastered the backwards flying roundhouse kick that knocks off the top of the block and sends a slab of rock flying at the opponent, but he's managed to land the kick once or twice without overbalancing so that counts for something, right?
He wants to run up to her office and show her what he's done, what he's accomplished. But halfway there he remembers his twenty-four hours are not up. He sighs and turns around to leave. He has a twenty minute walk back to the dock and a ten minute boat ride to Air Temple Island. Darkness has already fallen and Republic City is lit up by the lights of thousands of homes, businesses, and Satomobiles. By the rumbling in his stomach, Bolin is certain that dinner back on the island has been well past served. He'll have to hustle if he wants to snag the leftovers Pema will leave in the ice box.
Bolin sighs and begins to hurry home. He will just have to wait until tomorrow to show Lin what he's accomplished. (Although, naturally, she already knows.)