A great clattering broke the stillness of the morning, jarring the peaceful inhabitants of Air Temple Island from their reverie of sleep.
Katara was the first out of bed, leaping with instinct, her pulse hammering in her throat.
Her hand snapped out and clutched the water skin by her bedside before she raced out of the room in preparation for battle. The adrenaline was already beginning to erode her rationale, because this was her home. This was where her husband and son slept. Whoever it was that wanted to bring them harm, she doubted she could be reasonable with them.
"Katara!" Her husband yelled somewhere far behind her now, but she could tell from his voice that he already knew it was useless. There would be no stopping her when it came to her family.
Aang didn't like claiming fierce ownership over much, but she was of a different kind.
Her tribe believed in fighting for that which was theirs; their traditions, their land, their kin.
She had always known that any morning could begin this way.
He was the avatar. It had always been like this.
Her bare feet were pounding polished stone, and her mind flashed through frantic color and sound, moments of laughter and promises, irrational words and random stills of memory.
When she got in to this, knowing who he was, what she was risking – what it meant to shape her life around that man, to build a family with him.
She knew what she was taking on; what the high cost would be when she decided upon a future with Aang.
She had always known that he was worth it.
She knew that for her there would be no one else, in spite of all the danger.
The walls about her and the floor beneath her rattled hard, and she had to pause her movements in order to maintain her balance. A tremendous impact from the outside sent the foundation quivering. It jolted her jaw shut and made her teeth clack uncomfortably.
"Where's Tenzin?" She suddenly heard Aang yell as he came about the corner to face her. His eyes glittered darkly with underlying energy as he swept toward her in a thin yellow sleeveless top and rust coloured pants. "He isn't in his chamber." He came to a full stop before her, face flushed and anxious.
"He didn't come home last night . . ." Katara revealed, and Aang's brows drew low in concern.
"What? Where is he?!"
"With Pema-"
"You son of a bitch!" The two of them stared at each other, agape and wide-eyed at the sudden bark of a voice that cut into their conversation from outside. "Come out here and face me." A woman's voice, raw and broken with emotion was ricocheting along the typically silent walls. Katara moved swiftly to the window, opening her water skin and taking on a defensive stance.
"Katara, wait-" Aang stilled her arm as they both stared in bewilderment at the figure below them, pacing like a jaguar.
"It's Lin." Katara breathed, grasping at the window sill to steady herself as the building rumbled in response to a sharply flung rock.
"Tenzin, get out here!"
"What the hell is going on?" Katara said as Aang reflexively took her arm during the impact. They met eyes intensely.
"Let me go down to her." Aang pleaded, releasing his wife's arm. "Please, let me try to talk with her." Katara delivered a stern look.
"Fine, go on, preferably before she renders us homeless . . ." Aang had a small grin on his face when he swooped in to place a quick kiss on Katara's scowling lips. A wry grin broke out despite her effort to contain it. "Don't get beaten up by Toph's kid, or I'm coming out there."
Aang raced down the hall to attain his glider when the wall behind him opened up with a burst of light, dust, and rock. He felt the energy of the impact ripple his clothing, narrowly missing the debris on his air scooter. He carried himself to the glider, snapped it open and dove through the open mouth of window without hesitation, arcing gracefully in a loop toward the ground as smoothly as a feather. He felt older now, slower, but his body was yet to truly betray him.
"Stay out of this, Aang!" Lin warned jaggedly, and the avatar was concerned by her visage: disheveled strands of ebony clung to her tear-stained face, and patches of hot-red mottling marred her pale complexion. She was in battle stance as he landed, and promptly lashed out with metal cables to snatch his glider from his grasp. She promptly fired it, and Aang grimaced as it broke into splintering pieces against his house.
"Well, you just wrecked my glider, and you're kind of destroying my house, so . . . you know that's not happening." Aang answered, always sounding so casual and naïve in Lin's ears for a man who wielded such wisdom and power. Even in her rage and despair, something about him seemed to soothe her tumultuous emotions. She tried to resist the impact that his presence carried, but she would always find that difficult. Even as the years had aged him physically, they had done nothing to inhibit his spirit.
"I need to speak with Tenzin. Where is he hiding?" She demanded, and Aang put a hand out toward her, as if willing her to calm.
"Please, Lin - I don't know where he is. What is this about?"
"I know you're hiding in there, you coward!" Lin shrieked, and Aang leapt aside to swiftly dodge the chunk of sediment that Lin wrenched from the earth. He propelled himself back toward the hurtling boulder, throwing everything he had into delivering a blow that caused the airborne rock to erupt into tiny particles. They rained down upon the roof and walls of his home with a soft tinkling.
"He's not here!" Aang stated firmly.
"Really? You send your dad out?!" She snarled at a window, seemingly speaking to no one in a blind rage.
"I came here to speak to you of my own accord. Didn't you hear me? Tenzin isn't here!"
"I don't believe you . . ." Lin hissed, another slab of rock levitating in the air before her, and Aang delivered a steely leer.
"You know better than that, Lin." He said in a no-nonsense tone. "When have I ever done anything to earn this distrust from you?"
She stared at the ground, stared past it even; a ringing of the ears as rage subsided and a sear of shame took its spot. A burning of the eyes as the shame consumed her.
Aang had always felt like the closest thing to a father that she'd ever had.
His disappointment was unbearable.
"Nothing." She managed, her voice but a rasp of whisper as she let the floating rock fall. She turned from him, shielding herself from his inevitable tenderness. Tenzin was so much like his father; patient, warm, and honest. She could not bear to witness it - could not bear to face a possible future without it in her life. She didn't know an existence without Tenzin, and now all those years were turning to dust around her. How had she let it break down this far? She had seen it, she had felt it slipping away; but so little at a time that it was hard to grasp. Why hadn't she fought for it until now?
"Lin." Aang came forward, a smudge of gold and maroon in her overflowing eyes. "Please, tell me what this is about. You're attacking my family when I thought that you were a part of it."
"I was." Lin snapped, head down, and a great shudder rippled her form. "It's over. Tenzin ended things between us last night."
Aang felt the weight of it barrel down through his insides, and it seemed that he stood upon a structure at sea. The world about him seemed to move, yet all remained still.
Facing a legitimate enemy would have been easier than this.
Shock was a cheap word for what he felt.
In his eyes, they were both his children.
They were raised together.
Of all the Beifongs, Lin had been the most frequent presence at Air Temple Island over the years. She had all but lived amongst them permanently; sometimes when things were rough at home, she did.
He had watched them grow together, then fall for each other.
It had been fifteen years; they had started dating as young teenagers, developed something stronger. Aang had always thought that Lin was the woman his son would marry. At thirty years old, it seemed unbelievable to him that Tenzin would decide to end it. The two of them had seemed inseparable for so long. He knew at times that things had gotten tumultuous, but this . . .
"I never thought it was going to be this way." She choked, pulling him out of his reeling state. "I didn't see this coming. I thought we were going to be like you and Katara."
"Lin . . . " He was crushed by her words, filled with grief for her – and the emotion he knew she hated most of all, pity. In his eyes, this was just as much his little girl as the rest of his children. He desperately wanted to comfort her, but he doubted she would let him; it was not the Beifong way. She was an adult, but it was hard not to see the hurt little girl he'd had his hand in raising. He tentatively reached his hands out, finding her shoulders. Her hair cast a shadow across her face as she tightened her fists against her folded legs.
"I don't want to be like my mother!" Her body heaved with a sob, trembling. "I don't want to be alone."
Aang sat back on his heels, hands still about the girls' shoulders, and stared straight into her eyes.
"Your mother has never been alone." He enforced, and when she was reluctant to meet his solid gaze he tilted her chin so that her tear-rimmed eyes were focused on his. "And neither will you. You're my family, and I will be here for you until the day I die. Do you hear me?" Her lip quivered, and her face met his shoulder, staining the golden shirt tan wherever her face rested. He felt the tense muscles of her back let go, and she crumpled into his arms in a mess of harsh breaths, chokes, and tears. He held her close, the fit familiar from doing this so many times as she had grown up. He remembered when she used to be so tiny that he'd sail her over his head while playing glider with her. It was hard to believe that time had moved so stealthily past him. Now what felt like both of his children had enough years behind them to know what it was to break each other's hearts.
"Dad? Dad!" Aang was stirred from the comfort of the moment by Tenzin's voice in the distance, and he felt the girl in his arms become like the steel she wielded, muscles clenching at the sound. She leapt to her feet, swiping a hasty arm across her scarlet-blotched cheeks and casting a panicked glance over at Aang.
"She's with him, I know it." Lin said, and her voice was a ghost of its usual self. She put a hand to her face, clenching her teeth.
"Stay." Aang pleaded. "You need to speak with him."
"I can't right now." She shook her head frantically. "I can't – I can't see them together."
"Lin!" Aang reached for her, but with the snap of her steel cable she was gone. Oogie touched down somewhere behind him, but Aang's senses felt numb. He had known grief before, but not like that. Not fifteen years of love, scrapped. He thought of his own life, the sturdiness of Katara's affection. He was sixty-two tears old. He had shared his life with Katara for fifty years. The very thought of Katara turning away from him. . . he couldn't put himself there. That was a hurt so deep it was beyond him how it could be repaired.
"Dad, what happened?! I'm so sorry!" Tenzin was rushing toward him, grasping him up from where he knelt on the ground, feeling along his arms as if to check for injuries. Pema watched the exchange worriedly, hands bawled against her chin in fists of anxiousness.
"I'm not hurt." Aang mumbled, while not quite sure if that was the complete truth. Somewhere inside, he hurt quite bitterly. He stared after the spot that Lin had just leapt from, knowing she wouldn't go home, wondering where she would go. As he had always done with Toph, he always worried where Lin was and what was happening to her when he didn't know for sure.
"I go for one night and look what happens! I'm so sorry I wasn't here. Was it-"
"Lin was here." Aang said quietly, and the heat of the moment seemed to deflate out of his young airbending son. Pema sat immediately, back straight, staring into the fog of the morning.
"This is my fault." She whispered.
Tenzin knelt beside her, taking her hand.
"No. It's mine."
Katara raced out to join them, having given Aang the space he had requested with Lin. The oldest Beifong daughter had always had a special affinity for Aang, and Katara already knew that trusted him with everything. As she always had, she knew he would set things right. She took in the expressions ghosting along the faces of her family, taking in the severity of the atmosphere.
She had seen this coming; she had always dreaded it.
The hardest part of being a parent was knowing when to stand back.
When to let your children learn.
When to let them get hurt.
This had been one of those times.
She put her arms lightly about the shoulders of her son and husband, the four of them drawing close to one another for comfort. The years went by, and yet Katara still had faith in the power of a group hug.
Some things in life may never change, and some do irreparably.
"I'm worried about her." Tenzin uttered in a strained whisper, and Aang returned his gaze to the last place that he saw Lin standing. He never realized it then, but it would be one of the last times he would ever see her – the last time she would let him. She made it a point to avoid Tenzin, and by proximity Aang, in anything but passing or business. It hurt beyond anything he might have imagined - at least when a person dies, they have no choice but to leave you. Her cognitive decision to sever him from her life was a deep hurt; it was a regret he would carry with him to the end.
"So am I."