Lin is three years old when she draws Toph their first family picture; the toddler's crayons all smudged and cracked from the onslaught of bows that she giggles she had to draw in Mommy's hair, the pink clay forever staining the once-spotless rug that no one cares about. Granted, Lin knew Toph could not see her artwork, and was well aware of her mother's blindness. But when she coos at her mother to "look" at her creation, her pudgy fingers wrapping around her mother's wrist to place Toph's delicate sensors on the crinkling parchment; Toph only feels two stick-like figures resting there- and something twists in her gut.
"See!" Lin exclaims with joy as she presses Toph's hand to the paper, "This is me," and she slides her mother's hand two inches to the right, "and this is you, Mommy!"
Toph swallows; a memory of pain- or a lack of it- making her throat burn.
"That's great, sweetie," she replies warily, hearing her daughter's heart beat with hopeful admiration, "What's it for?"
"It's for you, siwwy!" Lin laughs, her "w's" being her most common pronunciation, "It's our famiwy pictwre! This is you, and this is me!"
And for one second-for one vulnerable, helpless second- Toph almost tells her the picture is missing someone.
But she stops herself in time, hearing the mirth and innocent ignorance in her daughter's voice.
That certain someone doesn't deserve to be remembered.
A family of two.
And Toph doesn't know whether she should be proud, or ashamed at her little girl's surmise of the meaning of family.
Isn't this life what she had tried so hard to create for Lin; to shield her from the truth?
Yes, Toph concludes, that the picture is perfect just the way it is.
So finally, she says, "It's beautiful, sweetie; I felt every single bow."
Lin will understand when she's older.
Toph just hopes "older" is a long time from now.
Lin is ten, and it's the first time she sees the strange man who will be a cause of many problems to come later in her life; even if it's only the first out of the only two times she will ever come in contact with him.
She cautiously emerges out of her room where she is reading a book, to hear her mother and a grisly, angered looking man, with green eyes and a greasy beard, arguing like moose-lion in the entryway. She knows her mother could sence her if she wasn't so preoccupied with screaming at this man, who looks like a giant, yet who amazingly has a nose just like hers, and the same shade of hair...
And somehow...she feels as if this man is very significant to her and her mother; yet she can't understand why, because any person who is making her mother this enraged deserves a rock to the face. It dumfounds her how her mother, in all her blunt, brash, violent, rock-slaming glory, has not kicked this dunderhead out yet.
As quietly as she can, Lin climbs on top of a kitchen counter, so her mother can not feel her watching them from just outside the hallway.
She listens.
She strains her ears, and waits; listens just like her mother taught her to.
"...How dare you!" Her mother's fiery voice, "It's been ten years, Setti! You didn't care about her then, and now you suddenly have the nerve to show up here after all this time, saying you want to see her!?"
Lin feels through the earth as the man blinks and stutters, "Toph, p-please let me explain! I-"
"-Explain? Explain what, Setti?!" Her mother fumes, the earth rumbling, "You left us! You left me all alone when you found out! I thought what we had was special, and as soon as I tell you, you run off like a coward and don't contact me for three years, and then again now you weasel your way back to me! What do you want from me? Do you want my sympathy, my forgiveness!? Because I can tell you now, you'll be getting nothing from me!"
Lin gasps. Who was this man? What in the world did he do to her mother, and who was this "she" they were referring to? Her mother was always so strong and sure and independent- never this emotional, voice wavering so much that Lin fears her mother might start crying.
Lin wishes she could go intervene and chuck a rock at the man for even making her mother feel hurt, but she knows she must stay hidden.
She continues to listen on.
"Please, Toph, I know I have hurt you, and I am truly sorry!" The man's face shows regret, remorse. He stretches out his hands as if to embrace her mother's cheek, but Toph, already predicting his actions, steps back, out of reach. The man-Setti- flinches from this cold response, "But I am a changed man-I am totally committed to you both now and I-"
"-No! I don't care what you say! We don't need you; I have taken care of Lin for ten years and I am doing a damn fine job without you! You won't have me crawling back! And guess what, Setti?"
The man visibly swallows, face blanching in pure hurt, "She has no idea you even exist," Toph retorts,"and I want to keep it that way." Lin hears her mother's voice so flat, so cold, and unlike the loving mother that she knows; she shivers.
"Toph, darling, sweetie, please...just give me one more chance! Let me make it up to you, let me see her! It must be so hard doing this all by yourself; you must be so lonely and tired with you job and taking care of her."
A snarl comes out of her mother's mouth: "Get out."
The door slams so loud she can feel the earth beneath her tremble.
Lin freezes on top the cabinet, fear at having her mother sence her eavesdropping, threatening to consume her.
She watches Toph from the bend in the hallway, the mother heaving out a huge, exhausted sigh. Toph's mouth twitching, fighting to control her emotions, yet Lin can see her blind eyes starting to become red.
Toph scrubs her hands across her face. Then she goes still, straining her ears; waiting, listening.
"Lin?" she calls, "Lin, are you here, honey? It's okay if you are. I won't be mad at you."
Lin doesn't dare to breathe. She tenses every muscle, fighting any sound that would reach her mother's heightened ears.
Toph's face crumbles then, a pained noise escaping her mouth.
Yet, Lin can't help but notice relief- total, pure, relief that her mother doesn't think she is home to have heard the argument and seen the awful stranger- cross Toph's features.
A few, dreadful silent seconds passing is the only thing making her heartbeat sound like a drum in her chest.
She hates having to lie to her mom, but it's for the best. Whoever this man is, her mother obviously doesn't want her to know about him. So for her mother's own sake, Lin will lie this once.
Even though, she will find out who the man is. She will track him down if she has to. When she is older, though. Not now.
"Hmmmm..." her mother muses, "She must've gone to see Twinkletoes and Sugarqueen junior...Thank the Spirits..."
Lin listens as her mother goes upstairs, and then she slings out of the kitchen and out the back door before anyone has time to even know she was ever there.
Her mother doesn't go to work that night.
By the time dinner is supposed to be ready, it's dark out and her mother has yet to come out of her room.
Lin can hear muffled sobs from behind the door.
She thinks her mother should never cry for a stupid man, since Toph has practically preached to her that boys are one of the stupidest creatures the Spirits have ever created. She keeps replying every time that her ten-year old self very much so believes in cooties, and that her mother doesn't have to worry about stupid boys, because she has sent more than half of the ones in her class to the nurse this year.
Trying to make her mother feel better, she decides to make Toph her favorite dinner; steamed ostrich-horse dumpling with ginger and spinach-rice noodles. It's the least she could do. Uncle Sokka has taught her how to make it enough times when Toph has late night-shifts and comes home late; a ball of tired and grumpy and hungry.
Preparing the meal only takes about a half hour, and then she arranges it all on the plate that Toph herself sculpted. She finishes off the meal with a cold glass of leechi juice sitting beside it on a tray, and she proceeds with caution up the stairs to what very well might be an earthquake waiting to happen.
Lin finds herself gulping, knocking on the door with a tightening in her chest, fearing her mother's tears.
"Mom?"
The crying instantly silences.
She tires again. "Mommy, it's me! I-I made you dinner! Your favorite osritch-horse dumplings, just like Uncle Sokka taught me. Can I come in?"
Lin tries very hard not to count the silent seconds.
"Mommy?"
A nose sniffling: ""L-lin? Lin, baby, is that you? Oh, I'm so sorry, baby, come in!"
Pushing open the door, she finds tissues more abruptly splayed all over than sand in the Ba Sing Sa desert.
A piece of paper is crinkling in her mother's grip, as Toph repeatedly rubs her fingers over the surface: a childish doodle of two stick-figures, one having with what Lin can only guess to be pink bows in the bigger figure's hair.
"Here, Mommy. How're feeling?" She places the tray of food on her mother's lap, as Toph motions for her to sit down beside her.
"Oh, I'm fine, Rocky. Momma just has a little cold." Toph waves her hand nonchalantly, but Lin can see through her facade. "And thank you! Oh, you made this all for me? I knew there was a reason I loved you!"
Lin laughs as Toph rubs her nose against her's, leaving a big kiss.
"So you're okay? You made me worried when you didn't go to work today!" Lin's too afraid to ask about the man, so she thinks maybe trying to indirectly get her mother to tell is the better way.
"Yep, totally! A little cold's nothing your Mamma can't handle!"
Feeling the love of this moment swell her heart, Lin feels maybe she can bring up the man another night.
Another night she will ask. When her mother is ready. But not tonight. Tonight she thinks all she wants is to spend time with her mom and erase any sadness she can.
"Come here, Rocky." Her mother murmurs, and Lin settles beside her in the bed, her head resting on Toph's shoulder. "Remember when you made this? You were so cute! You insisted you draw eight-not seven, not nine- but eight pink bows in my hair. I never knew you why you liked the number eight so much. But you were so excited to let me feel what you made! Oh, I love you so much, baby..."
"I love you, too, Mommy..."
Toph picks up two dumplings, handing one to her, and stuffing the other in her own mouth.
Lin listens to her mother chew and exclaim, "Emmmmmmm...You really are great at making these dumplings, kiddo. Maybe when you're older you can own a restaurant," her mother half jokes. "Beifong's Dumplings"
"Nah, they're not special if I make them for everybody!" Lin tells her with a giggle.
"True. Only I should get the honor!"
"Mommy..."
"Okay, okay...I'm just teasing, kiddo."
Toph twists some noodles around her chopsticks, letting out a delicate slurp.
"Mommy?"
"Emmmhmmmm?" Her mother chews and swallows.
Despite what she wanted to conceal for a later date, Lin finds no fault in at least making sure to erase the bud of doubt starting to form in her.
"We're the best family ever, aren't we? All we need is each other, right?"
Toph's face betrays something for a moment, and for a split-second, she looks away from her daughter, and Lin knows that her mother knows that she knows about the man.
Lin won't realize until years later what the quickened tempo of someone's heart really means.
But Toph looks back at her with a smile again and doesn't say anything; all tracings of secret pains and lingering men that she tries to hide and lie about- gone.
"You bet we are, kiddo! The best! All we need is each other!"
And Lin knows at that moment, she doesn't care what's the truth or what are the lies. Those are the only words she ever needs to hear.
Because all she ever needs is her mother.
"I wanna be just like you one day..."
Coming the arrival of her fourteenth birthday, she is watching Tenzin freak out more and more as the day that he will get his Tattoos-deeming him a Master Airbender- draws nearer. Uncle Aang will not stop talking about the honorable- although in Tenzin's words, "nerve-racking, needle prickling"- event every second of the day, to anyone who's unfortunate enough to be in range.
So her light-footed best friend practically begs her to come up with an excuse to get Aang-because Aang loves her and she has yet to do anything that would require scolding- to let him leave the Island, and go into the City with her.
She finds Tenzin's dorky anxiety a bit cute. Lately, she is finding everything about her Airbender best friend to be more and more endearing, and she doesn't at all mind the more time she spends with him...
She doesn't know what's wrong with her, because just about a year ago, hadn't she, cringing along side her mother, agreed with her that boys had brains the size of pebbles and hearts more slippery than the sand under banger-moles?
Well, becoming fourteen was shaping up to be quite... odd?
Where had these feelings come from? It wasn't as if she lifted a rock and found all these bizarre emotions hiding underneath...
But, also lately...she has been realizing and wondering things she has never known she's been missing...
Like, such as, that evening when Tenzin and she arrive home from the City-miraculously being granted freedom from the Island-why had feelings of pain, jealousy, along with a twist of nausea, formed in her at the sight of seeing Aang and Kaya siting together on the front porch outside the kitchen? She had seen Kaya and Aang sit together many times in the past- as well as with Bumi and Tenzin.
But, somehow...this time...was different...
She could not figure out why.
As she and Tenzin approach the Island, she had watched as Kaya was sitting there in her father's embrace, head resting on his shoulder like she always does with her own mother. Tears running from Kaya's eyes, and gaining kisses to her forehead from her father's lips, and kind, comforting, soft, murmurs of, "Shhhh...Shhh, baby, girl, it's alright...Daddy's here, Daddy's here...tell me what happened..."
Daddy's here...
Lin freezes in place. Pain spreading in her chest, and for some reason she feels the urge to cry.
But why, why, why...?
This is nothing new, she tries to calm herself, this is just Kaya and her dad, just like they've always been...Stop freaking out, Lin. You've seen them both all your life. Spirits, you're going crazy...
"I love you, Daddy..." She hears Kaya say, as if from outside her own body, and the inevitable response of:
"I love you, too, baby girl..."
She can't talk. Her hands have began to shake. Her throat is dry.
It comes on suddenly: so suddenly that she feels the earth beneath her feet turn to dust.
The memory hits her hard and fast with a wisp of pain.
She is a scared ten-year old girl again, trembling on the kitchen cabinet so her mother can't sence her, praying not to be found. Wanting to know who this horrible man is and what he wants with her mother.
She isn't seeing the Air Temple now...
She is seeing a man, a stupid, cold-hearted man, arguing with her mother at her front door years ago, as she tries to listen and stay hidden. A grisly, angered looking man, with green eyes and a greasy beard, and with the same nose and hair as her...
She remembers the man looking so hurt, yet manipulative and unable to redeem himself all at the same time.
"-Explain? Explain what, Setti?! You left us! It's been ten years! You left me all alone when you found out! I thought what we had was special, and as soon as I tell you, you run off like a coward and don't contact me for three years, and then again now you weasel your way back to me!"
No contact for ten years...
She was ten when the man came that day...
Ran off like a coward when her mother told him the news...
What news?
"Please, Toph, I know I have hurt you, and I am truly sorry! But I am a changed man-I am totally committed to you both now and I-"
"No! I don't care what you say! We don't need you; I have taken care of Lin for ten years and I am doing a damn fine job without you! You won't have me crawling back! And guess what, Setti?"
He had hurt her.
But how?
He said he was committed to "us" both again then?
Who were "us"?
"We don't need you; I have taken care of Lin for ten years and I am doing a damn fine job without you!"
Taken care of Lin without you.
Without you.
We don't need you.
... "Us"meaning her mother and her...
"She" meaning herself...
Oh, Spirits! Oh, Spirits, no...
It couldn't be...
Lin began feeling sick. So, so sick with a horrible truth.
How had she not realized it before when the truth had been right in her face?
Her stomach churned; she shut her eyes tight, her hand clamped over her mouth.
"Lin?" Tenzin asks with worry in his voice, a hand on her shoulder, "Lin, you look sick. Are you alright?"
She want's to respond.
But she can't.
Because she isn't with Tenzin.
She is ten and-
"And guess what, Setti? She has no idea you even exist; and I want to keep it that way."
No idea you even exist.
No idea.
I want to keep it that way.
"Lin!" Tenzin is screaming, "Snap out of it! Say Something! Are you okay?"
In an instant, she crumples in on herself, hands clenching her abdomen.
She gasps and cringes to the side, away from her friend, letting all the vomit pour out.
Everything she ate that day, all coming out, putrid and burning.
Tears; she is crying.
Tears are coming down her face.
Her mother lied to her.
Lied.
She had decided not to ask her mother that day about who the man had been; had thought that if her mother wanted her to know, she would tell her. And over time, over the years, she had simply forgotten about him.
You can't miss what you never had.
You can't miss what you don't even know exists.
Her mother's fiery rage, "Get out."
The door slamming, rattling the cabinets.
Then the exhaustion and the crying all night.
Her mother had lied.
She knew who the man was now.
She heaves as another round of puke spills out, and subsides.
She breathes heavy and wipes her tears away, finding Tenzin behind her, rubbing her back, soothing, "Shhhh...It's okay, Lin. Calm down..."
This couldn't be possible.
How had this happened and she not known about it? How had she been so oblivious?
Everyone had mothers and fathers.
Both.
Two parents.
But she only had a mother.
Why?
She hadn't realized anything wrong with it, or questioned it... untill now.
"What?" Tenzin asks, worry in his eyes, "What man, Lin? Why do you keep saying the name "Setti"? Who's this "Setti" person?"
She swallows back acid and betrayal. "D-d-daddy..." she whispers.
Tenzin's blue eyes go wide, his face paling, "What...? What did you say...? Lin, I think you're sick..."
"No." She shakes her head, "The man. He came to our house that day. Setti. "
"And who is Setti?" Tenzin asks her in a quiet voice, dripping concern.
"He's my father."
Let me know what you guys think! To be continued soon! :)
