Six Lessons of Earthbending
Rating: PG
Summary: Lin goes back to her roots. After Amon takes her bending, Lin works on reforging herself into the greatest earthbender in the world.
Earth is called the element of substance. It will only obey one who is strong, persistent, enduring, and above all decisive - there cannot be a sliver of doubt left when the time to strike comes. To bend the very ground below our feet to one's will is hard, as hard as the face of the rock one is in contest with.
"I can't do it, momma! I can't!"
"Remember what the scroll Uncle Twinkletoes gave you to practice your reading said, no room for doubt left. And if there's one thing coming off of you right now it's doubt. So pull it together, face that big lump of dirt and focus!"
"But it won't budge! What if...what if I'm not really an earthbender after all, and that one time was a-an accident? I'll never get this thing to move!"
"Hey now, sure you will! You're my daughter, after all, and no daughter of mine is letting a dumb rock get her down, is she? Look at it, a big, stupid, lumpy rock, just sitting there, staring back at you- oh, what's that? Do I hear it laughing? Oh, no, rock, that is going too far, you're getting your sorry behind pounded now. Get him, Badgermole!"
Nothing yet.
Lin flexed her aching fingers, cracking her stiff and skinned knuckles, disappointment bubbling up in her after another very long, hard day. There wasn't a single muscle in her body that wasn't protesting the now almost week-long grueling mistreatment it was being put through.
When she'd first come here, Lin had allowed herself to hope. If the original earthbending masters couldn't help restore what Amon had stolen from her, who could? An unspiritual, untrained Avatar certainly couldn't, although Lin found she had a hard time holding on to any bad blood between the two of them - in fact, she mostly felt sorry for the girl. Their visit to the South Pole had been a decidedly depressing and above all disappointing experience for all involved, solidifying Lin's half-baked idea into an actual travel plan. Tenzin had protested once she'd told him, of course, his fussing worse than ever, but even he knew to give up once Lin's mind was made up.
She'd left Republic City in good hands, certain that it, along with its people, was on its way to whatever recovery was possible after all that had happened. The metropolis in all its glamour and bright lights held nothing for her now but painful reminders of what she'd lost and platitudes and sympathy, even pity, from people she'd rather not receive them from. So she'd gone off on her own, not running away from things and certainly not giving up. Those words weren't even in her vocabulary and she'd be damned if she let a coward like Amon put them there.
She'd set off mere days after their return to the city, packing what she needed for her trip into a single bag and boarding a train set for Gaoling which would be stopping at her destination, the much smaller settlement of Guang Lu. The day had been grey and cloudy, just as drab as the day she'd finally left the Equalist prison behind her - a cruel incarceration spent on a dirt floor and behind metal bars that had seemed to last weeks when in reality it had only been days. Halfway into the ride to her stop it had started raining, dredging up even more unpleasant thoughts of recent events. She'd done her best to resolutely stomp on these even as she flinched every time her hand brushed the handrest of her seat, the cold unresponsiveness of its metal burning her skin. Her hands had clenched tightly into fists in her lap as the train entered a tunnel, her knuckles white and her jaw set. She'd felt an odd stinging behind her eyes, but with some effort she'd kept it there despite being perfectly alone in a private compartment.
Soon enough after that she'd found herself setting up a small camp before the entrance of a very particular cave, a fixture of many a bedtime story from her childhood and the destination of several so-called "field trips" her mother would take her on, insisting they were a crucial part of her training. It was the cave in which her mother had first met the badgermoles that then taught her to earthbend and the cave in which Lin herself had moved her first clump of dirt - only to see her mother's eyes shining with what was certainly pride even as she scoffed and exclaimed that of course it was to be expected and only right that any spawn of hers grow into a promising earthbender.
Just as the knowledge and skill to bend fire was given to us by the dragons, so was earthbending first taught by badgermoles. Two desperate lovers, their love a forbidden one due to the long-standing feud dividing their villages, learned the art from these great creatures in order to be able to meet in secret, creating in their efforts the complex maze of tunnels near Omashu known to many as the Cave of Two Lovers.
"Mo-om! Where are we going?"
"To meet some old friends of mine."
"But why do we have to come all the way out here? It's the middle of nowhere! My feet hurt! This walking is really really boring! Couldn't they have visited us at home? Or met us somewhere in the city?"
"Hah, I don't think either of your Uncles would've been very happy with me had I invited these particular friends to a stroll around the streets. Anyway, we're here, so lose that frown, sourpuss. Not many prospective little earthbenders get an opportunity like this, you know. Having me as your crazy yet awesome mother has its definite privileges, you gotta admit."
"A-a cave? That's where they live? In the dark."
"It's a pretty cosy cave, considering. The darkness doesn't bother them, just like it doesn't bother me. And if your training goes well soon enough it won't bother you either."
The first trip into the cave had been harrowing: the dark which had been no obstacle to her senses before now enveloped her completely, leaving her blind as her mother had never been, forcing her to carry a source of light. Flashlights such as her officers used had batteries that lasted way too short for what she needed, and she'd have no way of charging them here, so she'd brought with her a simple oil lantern, dimming it as much as she could.
The badgermoles never showed that day, nor the day after that. Lin admitted it was foolish to think they would overcome their aversion to light just to see her. Worse yet, thus forced to use a lantern to be able to find her way in the maze-like shifting system of tunnels, Lin felt disconnected from the experience - something her long hours of underground meditation, drills and form and stance practice did nothing to alleviate. She realized with a sigh that she would have to trust her remaining senses and forgo the lantern and these first half-hearted attempts entirely.
Now, almost a week into her trip, she crept into the no longer welcoming darkness of the cave with nothing but the clothes on her back. The earth wasn't kind to her - tripping her, making her slip and fall, skinning her knees and elbows and cutting cruelly into her hands and bare feet. She shuddered to think what could happen to her if a cave-in occurred. It was troubling to notice how fast she was learning to fear her lifelong ally when she had once made the ground beneath her feet tremble as she walked, just because she could.
After what seemed like hours of stumbling and clinging to stone walls she finally heard the familiar longed-for rumble of her mother's friends and her own erstwhile mentors approaching. She felt an unmistakable large, warm presence beside her mere moments later and she stood respectfully still, presenting herself for the usual inspection, yet placing an almost pleading hand onto the soft fur. But this time, instead of the loving lick and almost playful nudge that had always followed, the badgermole cringed away from her and let out a keening cry the likes of which Lin had never heard them produce before.
She was roughly shoved backwards then, barely managing to break her fall with her arms in time and remaining half-sitting up. The ground shook and shifted beneath her, and before she knew what was happening she found herself sprawled outside the cave entrance, blinking painfully in the early afternoon sunlight.
Bewildered, she withdrew to the modest campsite she had set up for herself, ate some of the dried trail rations she had with her, washed herself as best as she could in what little water she had brought from a nearby stream, and slept fitfully for a few hours. Not willing to let the rejection sink in, the next day she ventured into the cave again, preferring to pretend the events of yesterday hadn't occurred at all.
The results of her trip were much the same, save for an added gash on her left forearm from where a sharp rock had snagged her. Now utterly drained, Lin remained prone on the upturned ground, attempting to calm her increasingly ragged breathing and swallowing dryly and uncomfortably around the lump in her throat. The twisting, gaping, unnatural emptiness that had settled in her gut felt more painful than when Amon had first ripped her bending from her. Could the badgermoles feel it, too? Was it this that repulsed them so and caused them to cast Lin from them so violently, as if they couldn't be rid of her presence quickly enough? If they felt a fraction of what she herself had to endure, she found she really couldn't blame them for their reaction.
By the time Lin finally opened her eyes and willed herself to move, the sun had set and an uncomfortable numbness had set in her limbs. Slowly she sat up, noticing for the first time the now-dried blood coating her arm and the layer of dirt covering her from head to toe. She forced herself to her feet and dragged herself to her tent (a crooked, small and rather shaky construction - after all, she'd never had to have much practice setting up tents before). Numbly, ignoring the occasional sting, she washed her more serious scrapes, wrapping a bandage around the one on her arm with some difficulty. The rest of the dust and grime she left alone - a healthy covering of earth, her mother would have called it, and Lin was at a point where every little bit of feeling connected to the element she was born into counted.
She forced down some food, even though it tasted like ash in her mouth, then pushed herself through several basic earthbending forms, as familiar to her as breathing. The disappointment when, yet again, not even a single pebble around her moved barely registered on top of everything else as she dejectedly curled up on top of her sleeping bag, exhaustion and barely suppressed anguish filling her limbs with lead and making any further movement or effort an intolerable, hateful thought. She'd piled up so much hope on this encounter despite her efforts to resist expecting wonders when none were likely to come.
What would she do now?
Jing represents the essence of battle strategy, independent of bending element. There exist a total of eighty-five types of jing, representing possible actions. Simplest to grasp and most commonly used are positive jing - choosing to attack, and negative jing - choosing to retreat. Earthbending relies heavily on mastering neutral jing - waiting and listening before striking at the right moment. Using the earth as a connection to their opponent, skilled earthbenders can read subtle movements and foresee attacks and even directions of strikes in time to respond to them. A great awareness of their surroundings combined with patience thus makes them difficult to defeat in combat.
"To start with you can keep holding my arm. After you get a good hang of that you'll try to do the same, but with no contact except through the earth. And if that goes well, it's blindfold time. Remember: wait..."
"...and listen. I know. Let's go!"
"Patience is key here! Your opponent isn't going to hit you when you ask. You have to be able to tell in time to put up a defense. Now stop being so twitchy, you won't feel anything that way. Relax."
"I'm perfectly relaxed! See! Ha, almost got me ther- Woah!"
"Being overconfident and rushing into things while unfocused quickly leads to being landed on your delicate behind. Get up and let's go again. Properly this time. Your Aunt Suki can do this without bending, just by keeping a light touch on a person's arm, did you know that? So compared to her we have a pretty big advantage. I'll ask her to show you next time she visits the city - she's a beast with those fans. Living proof you don't need bending to be tough. You could learn a lot from her, you know. Might get her to - ngh - help with your little problem of being knocked down every ten seconds in a simple sparring match with a blind woman."
"Hey! This one doesn't count. Distracting me with talk is cheating!"
"Nope. You're the one who's supposed to be improving her awareness of her surroundings. Now up you get, I can do this all day but I have a feeling you don't want to. Only one way to get me off your case, so let's see if you can do it before lunchtime."
Lin waited, persistent in going through her daily forms yet doing little more than killing time near the cave entrance for three full days, trying her best to think of nothing at all and refusing to allow herself to wallow in the pain of this unexpectedly cruel rejection. She needed to leave - the feeling was similar to when she'd rather hurriedly left Republic City, the sense that her surroundings were holding her back and dragging her down the moment she thought she'd made some progress in sorting herself out.
It was entirely possible that it wasn't the right time for her efforts here - perhaps she wasn't ready for this place, not yet. She wasn't quite sure if she could convincingly explain why, not even to the rational part of herself, but she understood she had to let go and leave here to try somewhere else if she was to accomplish anything. Whatever it actually was she was trying to accomplish, or prove.
Lin sighed. Of course she of all people would be forced to reinvent herself and reconsider her life at the bright young age of fifty.
There was another place she could try, similarly connected to both her heritage, her training and earthbending itself. Heading there would take her close to Republic City, into the mountains. The old, crumbling building of the original Beifong Metalbending Academy had been deserted for several decades, but the view from its porch had always been spectacular. Lin wasn't certain precisely what state of disrepair the former school was in as she hadn't seen it in years, but she could feel a flutter in her gut merely thinking about climbing the long stairs that led to its door.
Much of her early training had been done there and the place held some of her favourite memories, most of them involving her mother in some capacity. Lin had been a small child when the school had finally closed down, the Metalbending Academy effectively becoming the Republic City Police Academy and moving all facilities to the city where then-Chief Toph Beifong could, in her own words, keep an eye on things.
It wasn't far - dispensing with the bother of going to Guang Lu to rent a Satomobile and going with simply walking there would take Lin three days, at most. Still, it seemed a little too much like running away, like the last thing a true earthbender would do. It was funny, though, how running away had been her mother's response to many problems early on in her life - tracing back to the first time she'd run away from home, starting the long sequence of events that finally resulted in her inventing - or rediscovering - metalbending. A tactical retreat, cutting your losses, that wasn't always a bad thing, as Lin had come to understand well during her years on the force, sometimes at a heavy price.
She would leave tomorrow at first light.
Being blind, the badgermoles use their highly developed earthbending abilities to sense vibrations through the ground, making a mental image of their surroundings. This particular form of sight is often called seismic sensing and is a widely useful technique known to a number of highly skilled earthbending masters. Its disadvantage is that the user needs to be in direct contact with the ground while using it, preferably without any extraneous material such as shoes or clothing in between.
"Almost got me that time. You're really getting the hang of this quickly. You sure you're not peeking through that blindfold? Kidding, kidding! Try again-umph!"
"I did it! I saw your heartbeat and I could tell where you were! Just like you do!"
"Figured it out almost as fast as I did, too, and I'm blind and rely on it to survive. You're a natural if I've ever seen one, and a proper little badgermole to boot. Now I just can't wait to tell Aang when I see him at the council meeting - his little airhead still can't stop crashing into things while zipping about on that air scooter. But hey, you know what the important part is?"
"What?"
"That I'm proud of you, Lin. Real proud."
"Thanks, mom. I'm proud of you too."
She was blind. There really was no other way to put it - a whole sense was missing, her sight when her eyes were closed, carefully cultivated over decades. She felt she was nowhere near as capable or effective as she'd been even though she could still use her other senses, unusually sharpened thanks to years of training and even occasional stretches of living with a blindfold.
So when the sun set and darkness caught up with her just as she was slowly making her way down the old, disused road that led to Republic City Lin was forced to set up camp and stop for the night. She managed to collect enough dry wood for a small fire then settled down by it, enjoying the comfortable warmth as she dined on trail rations from her supplies.
A small, starved-looking rabbitmonkey emerged from the surrounding vegetation and cautiously hopped closer to her, its eyes trained on the food in Lin's hand. She looked away from it deciding to ignore it and resumed her meal, but the animal refused to leave. Worse, it kept staring at her with a sad, pleading look until she was forced to roll her eyes at her own soft heart, reaching over to rummage quickly through her pack and throw some dried fruit at the pitiable fuzzy thing. The rabbitmonkey gobbled it all up within moments, resting on its haunches as if waiting to see if more food was forthcoming, its small ribs visible beneath thinning fur.
"Been through some tough times, buddy?" Lin mumbled around the jerky in her mouth, finding it too chewy for her taste, "Yeah, me too. See? Stuck in the middle of nowhere, chatting to mangy animals. No offense, but I'm either finally snapping or miserably lonely. Maybe both. It's funny, though - I went away because, among other things, I couldn't stand to be around some people and now I might even miss having them underfoot."
Perhaps after what she had come to feel would be an inevitable disappointment at the old Academy building she should go visit Kya at the North Pole. She hadn't seen her friend in ages and the discomfort of thick layers of snow and ice separating her from nice, solid ground hardly mattered now. Kya's particular brand of company might do her some good.
Suddenly Lin noticed rustling coming from the bushes to her right. She squinted into the darkness just outside the circle of light cast by her modest campfire but couldn't make anything out.
"Friends of yours?" She murmured under her breath, still crouched as she edged closer to her things and further away from the blinding glow of the fire. The rustling grew louder and the rabbitmonkey hopped away, disappearing from view. "Didn't think so. That would have been too easy, right?"
Just as she slipped a hand into her open pack a burst of flame shot above her, missing her but singeing a few hairs on her head. Lin rolled away, adjusting her grip on the weapon she'd barely managed to retrieve so the unmistakable threatening glint of metal could be seen in her hand.
With another short and to Lin's eyes obviously badly executed blast of fire her assailant came close enough to be visible. He was a rather young man with unremarkable, rough features, his short, dark hair unevenly cut, matching his stubbled face and tattered clothing and rounding out a ragged appearance. The wild, desperate look in his wide eyes and the way he kept throwing glances at Lin's belongings was all the warning she needed to evade another frantic flame-enveloped kick and decide the man was probably a lost leftover from a roving bandit group, left behind to fend for himself as often happened with those who disappointed whoever happened to be the current leader. Organised crime wasn't as organised outside of the larger cities these days, but this made it no less dangerous than the highly rule-bound triads Lin was used to dealing with. Still, the area wasn't generally known for bandit presence, so she hadn't really expected this kind of trouble.
"Hey, listen," she grunted as she narrowly avoided another series of blasts, "you should really stop and reconsider."
The bandit did stop, breathing heavily, obviously rapidly running out of energy. Lin seized the opportunity to take a not very practical but rather dangerous-looking stance, careful to draw attention to the fact she was armed and in much better physical condition than her opponent, suppressing the thought that not so long ago she could have had him buried in the ground up to his neck with just a flick of her wrist, no need for small talk. She fixed the man before her with one of her sternest glares.
"You want food? You could have asked. I can give you some, I've more than enough. I'm not one to let a man starve but I promise you I have a very low tolerance for thieves, especially ones who are so incompetent they need to resort to violence. I'd think my next few steps over very carefully, if I were you."
He was so obviously terrified at these unexpected difficulties encountered while attempting to rob a middle-aged woman traveling alone in the middle of the night on a deserted road, Lin could have laughed. Instead she narrowed her eyes at him some more, lifting her arm as if about to launch a counter-offensive.
The man kicked out and sent another blast of fire her way, using it as a distraction in order to escape, vanishing into the dark. He wouldn't be back. Still, Lin started to gather up her things, thinking that if she couldn't sleep thanks to being shaken out of any drowsiness by the almost-fight she could at least make some small, slow progress down the road, even in the dark - and move her campsite to where nobody had seen it. Instead of putting it back into the bag she'd pulled it from, Lin tucked the boomerang she held into her belt, keeping it assuringly within easy reach.
It was a good thing he left when he did, Lin decided, because I have no idea how to properly throw this thing so it comes back.
She regretted never having learned, now. It hadn't seemed important enough, and besides - she could always just metalbend it back, right? She winced - the final attack had caught her right shoulder as she'd dodged, leaving a not very serious but still uncomfortable burn.
That's what I get for being so damned reliant on my bending and letting my other skills get rusty. I was arrogant and now it could cost me - I got lucky this time. Next time the other guy might not be such a pushover.
What Lin needed was a new approach in case her efforts to regain her bending fell through. Uncle Sokka may have been a great man even without bending, but the difference between never having had it in the first place and learning to make do without it was considerable. She knew she'd never stop trying to get it back, of course - but if it took too long she would need a backup plan. Kyoshi Island came to mind - they now had something of an established tradition of chi-blockers to complement the Kyoshi Warrior fighting style. She'd be more than welcome to learn there, and although the very idea of chi-blocking now bore unpleasant connections to the Equalist movement, Lin understood just how useful a skill it could be. If even a desperate half-starved mess of a firebender could land a blow, she was in trouble. Besides, they might know something about reversing the effects of their own technique - something that could perhaps help her understand whatever had actually happened to those Amon had "equalised".
What Amon had done to her - it hadn't exactly hurt, not physically at first - the headaches that came later were an uncomfortable side-effect of the intrusive, violent bloodbending, or so Katara had surmised while working on easing them. It was more the sudden invasive violation of something no human was meant to touch in another that made Lin recoil even thinking about it, as if he'd stuck an icy needle into the deepest part of both her mind and her spirit at the same time. However hard she had braced herself the feeling was something impossible to prepare for. His mask had kept leering at her even as her eyes lost their focus with the shock of the sudden, inescapable, all-encompassing silence overcoming her tightly held resolve to give her captors no satisfaction of flinching or showing fear.
Stumbling over an inconveniently upturned bit of road made her return to the present and out of her increasingly unpleasant thoughts with a shudder. It was time to focus on what lay before her: tomorrow evening she would find herself before the gates of the Beifong Metalbending Academy.
A heavily rooted and properly assumed stance is the key to powerful earthbending. An extremely important aspect of stance training is to develop a solid root - stability and balance, correct body positioning for proper chi flow, yet all the while avoiding being too static or stiff, a mistake which often prevents beginners from performing even the simplest of earthbending techniques. Sifu Hun Lao, famed earthbending master to Avatar Kyoshi, teaches in his writings that one must be rooted at all times, regardless of position - when standing, one must be like the mountain, strong and unmovable, but when striking one has to be fast and sure, drawing strength from the ground much like a tree does, generating power using the whole body and finally letting the earth become an extension of one's self.
"Horse stance, now! Hop to it, squirt!"
"Oh, come on! We can't practice now, mom, we're supposed to be at Air Temple Island in an hour!"
"Exactly! Which is why you will spend half of that hour doing nice, solid stance work. And when we get back you'll do another hour. I'm not letting whatever Twinkletoes thinks he's doing with your bending wreck years of training."
"He's not wrecking anything!"
"Then what's with all that dancing and twirling about you were doing this morning? I've never seen such prancy, sloppy earthbending in my life!"
"It wasn't sloppy! I was just trying something new we came up with the other day. I think it could be really, really great. See, I don't have to stay restricted to being on the ground all the time, I mean, it's not like I'm you- oh, no. I didn't mean it like that."
"Didn't mean it like what? It's not like you're blind? Well, that's good. Because you are not, in fact, blind."
"Please don't be angry, mom, please. I'll tell Uncle Twinkletoes that I don't want to train silly prancing with him anymore and I'll go back to doing stances and forms, just don't be upset. I really didn't mean it. Please!"
"Hey, why the panic? And what's with the wimping out, huh? You're supposed to stick to your stuff, Badgermole, I thought I'd taught you that at least. Besides, do I look angry to you, kid? Or upset in any way? Because if I do I'll start to wonder who's supposed to be the blind one here."
"I'm sorry."
"What for? You think you hurt my feelings or something dumb like that? Hah, fat chance. Thing is, you do have things you could use to your advantage that I don't. And I wouldn't be much of a teacher, let alone mother, if I imposed my limitations on you and stopped you from doing your own thing. So you and Aang can go and invent crazy new styles of skipping around if you want, I just don't want you to forget and neglect the more traditional, basic bits, okay? Those are pretty important, too."
"So you really don't mind us trying this?"
"Naw, I don't. Have fun, go crazy with it, leave a mark. Hey, if anyone can pull off being a flying earthbender it'd be my daughter, right? Now, horse stance. I want fifteen minutes at least. And since you're so bored of traditional earthbending tomorrow we'll see what you can do with metal. You're more than half as old as I was when I invented it - that makes you old enough to learn it, in my book."
Mossy green tiles that made up what was left of the former school's roof hung over Lin's head. During the day they provided ample protection from the sometimes uncomfortable glare of the sun. They weren't quite as useful for offering shelter from the rain, however, as Lin had learned one stormy and consequently rather damp evening. The roof may have consisted of more holes than tiles and the stone covering the dirt floor hadn't fared much better but the walls of the building still held up firmly. The large wooden door of the main entrance was nowhere to be seen, leaving a significant area that had been the biggest room of the house unpleasantly exposed, so Lin had settled in one of the smaller side rooms. Most of her days she spent in the courtyard, but as the nights slowly grew colder she was grateful for the protection offered by the old ruin.
The day had started off much too humid and warm for the time of year, but this meant little to Lin's resolve. She'd been standing perfectly still in the traditional earthbending horse stance for hours, as solid and unmovable as the rock whose stubbornness she hoped to beat as she had first done decades ago. The sun had gone from being high in the afternoon sky to almost having set and yet still Lin persevered, eyes tightly shut and fists clenched, hoping to finally regain that unique sense of connection with the ground beneath her firmly rooted feet.
Darkness began creeping in and with it came the cold, finally distracting her and drawing her attention to the small voice in the back of her mind telling her it was time to stop, that she wasn't getting anywhere this way and that whatever was done to her couldn't be reversed by this sheer stubborn bloody-mindedness and disregard for personal safety, health and comfort - an almost inborn disregard that was now even more pronounced than was her usual.
Lin slowly stretched, easing out of the long-held stance, feeling a chill settling all around her as she rolled her stiff shoulder. The ache from her wounds still hadn't fully abated. Some of those electrical burns she'd received from the Equalists had been quite serious and Katara had given her a stern talking-to once she'd laid eyes on them. Lin had, only at her insistence, pried her armour off without bending for the first time in years - a longer and far more painful process than it would have been had she not neglected her own well-being so, in Katara's words. Lin couldn't help but notice the scolding wasn't nearly as stern or as heartfelt as it could have been, making her want to scoff at the elderly woman's pity being on display. She thought better of it, however - Aunt Katara had always been...obvious with her emotions. And like everyone else that seemed to surround her, she meant well, something Lin had hated since she was old enough to understand the concept.
She had more recent injuries to add to her list, though thankfully nothing too serious and nothing that would require her to return to civilization in order to seek a healer's attention, disrupting her efforts.
In her whole life Lin had never felt as uprooted and out of balance; not even when her mother had died, though that came very close. If she was to accomplish anything she would have to regain some semblance of inner order and that simply wasn't coming. A bothersome buzzing had settled in the back of her mind, fading in and out of her awareness.
Not for the first time she thought of simply going back to Republic City. She could work with the police again - they were sure to welcome her back with a nice, safe, boring desk job involving a lot of paperwork and certainly not a lot of bending, a more permanent retirement awaiting her after some years of that. Moving to Air Temple Island, perhaps - Tenzin's children would be all grown up by then. Lin swallowed almost nervously when confronted with the idea of facing them again, bitterness rising at the thought of facing them as a failure. She had very pointedly not involved herself in Tenzin's private life after they had parted ways all those years ago, but after being forced back into it rather uncomfortably at first Lin found she was actually sorry she, as well as Tenzin, awkward as ever, had kept that distance. He was a good friend, after all, and they were good kids.
She would have died for them, up above the Bay - she'd honestly expected to. There had been nowhere to go from those two airships but down into the wreckage with them and the family had been just as aware of that as her. Still, she'd accepted it as a price - what was her life compared to the continuation of an entire race and the well-being of her oldest friend and his loved ones? It would have been selfish of her to do anything else.
Lin supposed she should consider herself lucky - here she was, alive. Damaged but not quite done yet. And by now very determined to prove whatever Amon had done to her was nothing she couldn't overcome. Her mother certainly hadn't raised a quitter.
Her ruminations were finally interrupted by the persistent buzzing in the back of her mind becoming too loud to ignore. Something was nagging at her, a sensation not unlike the annoying feeling that something had slipped her mind and she couldn't quite recall what it was, just that it was important. Very important.
It was maddening.
Metalbending, an art long considered impossible, relies on the fact that all metal is merely earth that has been refined and purified. As the smelting process is never perfect, in every piece of metal there are impurities - traces of earth still present. A skilled earthbender can learn to perceive these impurities and use them to bend the metal itself. The student must gather up their chi into their gut, intensely focusing their energy and exerting immense pressure, using themselves as a furnace like the one used to derive metal from ore - from earth, finally binding the material to their will.
"No, Lin."
"Please, mom! I just-"
"Yeah, yeah, I know what you'll say. Always kept apart, the Chief's daughter, treated like you're special when you just want to get the same treatment as the other students, blah blah. But you see the thing is you are special. Not because your mother is whichever public figure but because you mastered at twelve what most officers-in-training start to get a grip on at twenty. I'd send you to the Academy to get your equal treatment, but then those poor lily livers would be the ones treated unfairly and your training would undoubtedly slow down and flounder. We've had this argument before. I won, as I recall. Now stop pouting. You know I can always tell."
"Fine, then. I'll train with you. But I'm still going to take the other classes with everyone else."
"If you insist. Though I don't get why you seem so dead set on joining the force, Badgermole."
"Huh, I dunno. Someone must have been a terrible influence on me when I was a kid- ow!"
"Love you too."
It had been a month. Lin kept careful count of the days by etching marks into the still-standing half of a stone pillar in what had once been the school's courtyard. A month of trying anything and everything that occurred to her, every method of teaching she had ever seen her mother use on her more hopeless students. They had all worked it out in the end, but she still had nothing, not a single tingle or sign that she was doing anything except running herself ragged while waving her arms about and stomping her feet. A month in and she still had to use the sharp edge of a metal scrap to keep her calendar when before a mere thought and flick of her finger would have sufficed.
Not for the first time she thought of banging her head against the wall. It might do something besides bruising her forehead, like accidentally unlocking a blocked chakra and solving all her problems, and wouldn't that be a tale for the history books. Lin Beifong, daughter of the greatest earthbender in the world, overcomes adversity by bashing her stubborn, hard head against an equally hard rock. Her mother would probably have approved, though. Lin had to laugh at herself then, a not very happy, bitter, barking laugh that echoed back at her, reminding her of the large, lonely emptiness of the place.
Pressure and pain, her mother had always said about her original breakthrough in discovering metalbending, something that felt very appropriate for what Lin was feeling. Her attempts at bending earth had thus far been unsuccessful. A different, unorthodox approach was what she needed. Trying to regain her connection to the earth didn't seem likely to succeed - now that she thought about it, it made sense. After all, the connection had suffered long before she'd lost her ability to bend. She'd been spending so much time using metalbending for the simplest, everyday tasks with the occasional pedestrian fight with an attempted escapee - things basic earthbending was inappropriate for unless she wanted to wreck half the city while doing her job. Coupled with long hours in her office, endless interrogations and paperwork and then the chaos with the Equalist movement starting up, well - she'd certainly gone and done the very thing her mother had warned her not to and it had showed in both her bending and her fighting.
It was sometimes hard for earthbenders, in the city. So much rock and earth you weren't allowed to bend, everywhere. Lovely stonework on pavements, carefully cultivated parks, many-storied buildings defining the skyline - all strictly off-limits, with very harsh fees awaiting those who slipped up and decided to have fun defacing city property, no matter how artistically pleasing the intervention. On occasion the police force got potential metalbending recruits who'd only just moved to Republic City and who had to have it pounded into them that earthbending was to be the last resort in any pursuit - tearing out chunks of the street and throwing them at criminals was something most would have done instinctively.
Toph had recognized these regulations were necessary if they planned on having a city still standing by the time they were done with an average workday, but it didn't mean she had to enjoy them. In what spare time she had she'd often come to the very place Lin found herself in now, doing mostly the same things. She'd dragged Lin with her whenever she could, insisting the excursions and reconnecting with their element were necessary for a happy, healthy earthbender. After her mother's death Lin found she had and took the time to leave the city less and less frequently, until at one point the trips finally stopped. It made her wonder sometimes how Toph had managed to raise and then teach a child on top of everything else she'd done.
Just then, a flicker of awareness of something tickled the back of her mind once again. It had been going on and off since she'd arrived and it wasn't showing any signs of stopping, always popping up at the worst moment, often just when she thought she might be on the tip of a breakthrough. She pushed it away as best as she could and focused all her attention on the handful of coins laid out on the dirt floor before her, resolutely replacing thoughts of what she had once been able to do with their metal with thoughts of what she would soon be doing with it. She tried extending her awareness and locating the fine impurities in them just as she had done thousands of times before, brows knitted in effort. The only thing this accomplished was making the annoying buzzing return twice as loud. This time, however, it seemed to have direction.
Lin scrambled to her feet, a surge of hope stronger than any she'd felt in the past weeks burning in her chest. She knew this feeling. It was slightly different and much more subdued than what she was used to, but she recognised it now. Doing her best to calm herself she closed her eyes and focused on the presence in her mind, attempting to pinpoint its origin. She stumbled around awkwardly, following the sensation, feeling it grow stronger as she approached what was certainly its source. Tripping over cracked and raised floor tiles forced her to open her eyes. Lin found herself in a corner of one of the smaller south-facing rooms, standing above the remains of a formerly dark green cabinet. She dug through the pile of rotting wood until she saw the fist-sized clump of familiar dark material, posessed of a strange shine even in its filthy, half-buried state. It was a piece of meteorite, of "space earth" as her mother had called it almost affectionately when she'd used parts of it in training future metalbenders, a curious combination of earth and metal, and it was calling to Lin like nothing had ever since she'd had her bending taken away.
Carefully, almost apprehensively, she reached for it, feeling a jolt as her fingers brushed its strangely warm surface. Sitting back on the floor and grasping it with both hands, Lin closed her eyes, took several deep, steadying breaths and made a motion as if to tear the rock in two.
It was as if something in the deepest part of her core being had finally snapped after being strained for far too long. She could swear her eyes had shot open and yet she couldn't discern anything. Her ears were filled with the loud hum of her own blood and heartbeat and however hard she tried she couldn't seem to draw a proper breath into her lungs, choking on grit that seemed to surround her in a cloud.
A flash of quick, stabbing pain brought her crashing back, feeling as if her skull was about to split in two. For a moment she was incredibly, painfully aware of the blood rushing through her limbs and heart and of every particle of dust that tickled the back of her throat as she gulped down air like a drowning woman. Everything was spinning and swaying around her, her vision doubling and making her nauseous, but a pressing weight settled just under her chest, within her ribcage, anchoring her insides to a fixed point, pinning her to the hard, trembling ground she was sitting on.
Unable to bear it anymore and fearing she would go insane, Lin let out a hoarse cry and struck blindly at the ground beneath her - and felt it crack and split under her hands, a web of fissures growing and expanding from her fingertips as warmth coursed through her entire body, flowing into the earth unstoppably, as if a great dam had finally broken.
Lin fainted.
"Mom! Mom, did you see?"
"Sure I did! You know my feet don't miss anything. And I'd have to be deaf, not blind, to be able to ignore those overexcited squeals you make. Like a proper little badgermole pup."
"Oh, no, did- did I hurt you? Are you...crying?"
"Naw, of course not. You just got some dirt in my eye, smashing up those rocks like that. Kid, you are going to be brilliant. And I'm not just saying this 'cause I know your parents. Aw, why so touchy-feely all of a sudden, are we having a cuddly family moment here?"
"You're the best ever."
"While absolutely true, I don't want to hear you saying that."
"Why not?"
"Well, don't you want to be the best ever?"
"I do, but...I could never be greater than you, 'cause nobody can do that. Not even the Avatar!"
"I'll make sure to tell your Uncle Twinkletoes you said that. Maybe one of his past lives will want to prove me wrong and we'll have ourselves a rumble, what do you think? I think it'd be great fun."
"Yeah, but you'd win. You're the greatest earthbender in the world!"
"Hey, listen to me for a second, okay? I'm being serious now - I mean it, it's something I need you to understand. It might be tomorrow or it might be in five years or it might be in fifty, but one day I won't win. Maybe I'll go out fighting an evil crime lord or maybe I'll be tripped up by a petty thief, however unlikely that sounds to you now. But no matter how great, nobody can be the best forever. Hey, now, none of that - dry those eyes and stop that miserable sniffling, it's unbecoming of a mighty earthbender. You're not getting rid of me that easily, not if I have anything to say about it. Can't let myself be blindsided by a panicked purse-snatcher if I have a little badgermole-in-training waiting at home, can I?"
"But...I thought you were blind from all sides? Aren't you?"
"Yeah, uh, figure of speech. Now let's go chuck some boulders."
When Lin woke up she was in complete darkness, causing an irrational part of her to think she'd somehow gone blind. She idly wondered if anyone would ever find her, wherever she was. When she'd told Tenzin she was going on a spiritual retreat to stop his protests at her leaving he'd hemmed and hawed in understanding and somewhat annoying sympathy - she just hadn't told him, or anyone, where exactly she was retreating to. The press of warm, damp, leathery skin against her bare shoulder made her realize where she was and who had come for her and was gently attempting to clean - or perhaps merely comfort her. She pushed back, nuzzling into the severely missed presence, feeling a semblance of calm for the first time in weeks.
"There wasn't anything you could have done for me, was there. I had to do this myself or it wouldn't have worked."
A soft grunt was her only reply, followed by a nudge helping her to sit up. Lin pressed her feet and palms against the ground, slowly and carefully extending her newly regained sense around her, easing back into the familiar feeling. The darkness helped, eliminating the disorienting interference of sight - Lin guessed this had played a big part in her earlier sensory overload and collapse and had no desire to repeat the experience. She still felt the aftershocks and the vibrations she sensed seemed much more intense than they were supposed to - an uncomfortable oversensitivity she could only hope would fade in time. It didn't matter - she'd broken through and perhaps she could help others do the same. She would most certainly try - she owed her officers - and Korra - that much.
More detailed planning she left for the future. Right now she stomped her foot on the ground somewhat more gingerly than usual, feeling the ripples and distortions this caused spread through the loose earth until she willed them to stop, satisfied. Her companion seemed as pleased as a badgermole in a pitch-black cave could ostensibly seem, giving her a final nudge before turning, bending a new tunnel and starting down it.
Lin followed.