Notes: Originally written for Rosabelle for Fandom Stocking 2013.
Our footprints are guides, the voice in her head whispers wisely, the direction they point shows us where we're going.
Lin rubs at her temples, sitting at her desk during a meeting with the newly elected president of Republic City and the young Avatar. They were disagreeing, again, which shouldn't surprise her. Korra, while she had mellowed somewhat after the spirit world fiasco, was still stubborn and prone to righteous indignation when people didn't agree with her.
Instead of listening to the president outline his plans, Lin tries to figure out why that particular gem of wisdom of her mother's had chosen this moment to pop up in her head.
She's been hearing her mother's voice in her head a lot, lately, but it's never as though it's been absent. Even after he mother passed away, Lin was able to hear both her sage like advice and her furious cursing at key moments.
Which one presented at which time was anyone's guess.
Today, apparently, her mind has chosen calm tranquility instead of earth shattering fury.
"Listen, both of you," Lin says, drawing the attention of Korra and the president, "I'm sure you both have very good points, and very good plans for the current welfare of the city. You're discussing them with me because it's my job to ensure the long term wellbeing of the citizens, and from what I can tell, neither of you has thought your plans through. Go back, retrace your footsteps, and figure out which direction you really want to go. And don't come back until you do."
Lin dismisses them by simply going back to her work on her desk, and without a word, Korra and the president both get up and excuse themselves like bashful children.
Lin lets out a puff of amused air. "Thanks, mom."
"We bend like the badger's, Lin," her mother tells her, making strong punching motions with her fists, "We see with our feet, and not with our eyes. You're eyes can lie; you're feet can't."
She's just a little girl. She can't be more than four or five, but she enthusiastically raises her fists like her mother, presses them into the air and watches little mounds of dirt go flying into the air.
She's celebrating when a single swift kick from her mother sends her flying a few feet into the ground, where she hits with a dull thud. Her mother has softened the landing by turning the ground to sand, but it still stings, and she feels tears welling up in her eyes.
Her mother comes over, her distant blue eyes seeming to focus in on her even when the young Lin knows that isn't possible. "Bending isn't a toy, Lin. It's a way of life. If you're not careful, you can get hurt. Bending can hurt you as much as it can heal you."
And with that, Toph brings Lin up off the ground with a tiny shift of her hand, returning her daughter to a standing position and stepping back, into a starting pose.
Lin mimics her, her tiny jaw set and determined.
Lin opens her eyes to find herself in her bed, in her house in Republic City. She sits up, looks out the window. It had seemed like it was yesterday.
Not a day goes by she doesn't hear her mother's voice, but most of the time, she finds it more obnoxious than helpful. Of course, that could be said of a lot of things about Toph Beifong.
Tonight, she can't figure out what the mother in her head is trying to tell her, and so she gets up and puts on a robe, lights a candle, and makes her way to the garden.
She sits in the quiet, building and demolishing sand castles with a tap of her finger or toe, until the candle goes out.
"What do you think bending is? A game? You think your metal suits are toys?"
Lin finds herself quoting the memory without meaning to, barrels on before she can turn back, and scolds her newest metal bending trainees.
"We are some of the only metal benders in the world. It is an honor and a privilege. Anyone who doesn't treat it like one will be dismissed," Lin warns, turning away from her recruits.
"Know exactly who and what you are. If you wear it on the outside, like armor, no one can ever wound you with it."
The first time she witnessed someone call her mother a slur, she'd been maybe ten. She still can't figure out how her mother was able to avoid her seeing it until then. Toph Beifong was greatly respected in Republic City and elsewhere, but there were some who disapproved of her life style choices. From the fact that she never married, to raising Lin on her own, Toph hadn't been nor tried to be conventional.
That day, Toph had simply looked at the man who had called her the rude name. She gave him a smile and a nod, and when they'd turned away, she sunk him into the ground with her foot and a gleeful grin.
"What does that mean, mother?" Lin had asked, looking up at her mother, "What he called you?"
Toph had knelt down to face her, as she sometimes did when she thought the topic was particularly serious. "It's something that I am. Some people think it's a bad thing, but they're wrong. As long as I know what they think before they think it, then it's not news. Understand?"
People liked to bring things up with Lin to hurt her, and there had been a time during her teenage years where she'd gotten in trouble for slamming a bullies head too hard against a rock. She had a temper, but it was a tempered temper, thanks to her mother.
So when Korra brings up her past with Tenzin or, hell, when Tenzin brings up her past with Tenzin, or when Mako accuses her of being biased towards benders, or when her temporary young assistant wonders why she won't dye her hair or get married, Lin is able to brush it off. She knows all of those things about herself, and she wears them as her metal armor.
Her armor simply reads 'Chief Beifong', emblazoned across the inside of the chest plate in gold filing.
And as for her assistant, whom she casually transfers a few weeks later, Lin tells her with a smirk, "Don't you know? Beifong women don't marry. It's a tradition."