A/N: Sometimes friendships transcend lifetimes. Or generations.
TIES
He is a man of much strength and many scruples.
When he receives the call, he cups the receiver in a hand unwavering: later fastens his cloak with fingers that neither tremble nor quiver. Pema's silhouette in the stairwell gives him pause, though. He glances aside to her, drawing his hood up over his head's smooth curve, as she asks, "Tenzin? Was that—"
"Yes," he agrees. He tightens the hood. The wind outside will be cold: where he's going colder still.
His wife's face is unreadable for the darkness, but the air speaks enough of her sorrow: the hiss of it over her teeth and against her tongue; the clink of it falling like a coin down her throat, hot, wet. "Oh," she says, and it's a whisper. "Is he—" She stops herself: starts again, "Are we going now?"
The bottom stair creaks as it always has, and she reaches for him in the dark. He catches her at the elbow—draws her in against him and feels the feather of her breath in her chest. He already knew, but she's crying. He wants to cry too—to drop his face into her hair and sob, even. But he is a man of much strength and many scruples. His eyes are dry, his grasp certain. He reaches for the second cloak on its peg and drapes it over Pema's shoulder.
He says, "Hurry."
—-
Bumi is peeling thick chunks of ice off the shelf at the dock and hurling them out into the sea beyond the breakers. He is bare-chested: the cords of muscle between his shoulders bunch and clench and his face, chapped, is bright with moisture in the polar sunlight. Tenzin lands Oogi next to his brother. For a while he watches the display of grief and frustration, silent, Pema's breath making clouds in the air at his ear.
When the shorter sibling finally turns toward them, he doesn't so much see them as he stares through them. His hands are raw, seared by salt. Tears drip from the tawny hook of his cheek, those that haven't yet frozen.
"Tenzin?" he croaks. One step, two and his knees go to water.
Tenzin races across the invisible bridge between them, seizing Bumi before he can touch the slush. He closes his eyes as the older man's fists drum on his back, his bicep—as Bumi thrashes and howls.
Strength. Scruples.
He holds his brother—and then his sister, and finally his mother—as long as he must.
—-
His father's hand is smooth and cold and still.
He clutches it.
Strength, he reminds himself.
—-
Representatives from everywhere crowd his childhood home. They toast Avatar Aang's legacy of balance, peace, prosperity. Over and over. Ting sing the tines of forks on glasses, the alarum of an era's end. Wine and other spirits pass under Tenzin's nose all the while, agents that would numb the ache in him if he would only reach out and take—
Scruples, he remembers. Though his nails dig grooves in his palms, from his sleeves his hands never venture.
—-
His stay at the Pole is cruelly brief. The skin of ice over the tundra's newest grave is but thin and fresh when he takes to the sky again, bound for Republic City and the ripples of rebellion rising there.
"You should rest," Pema insists upon their touchdown in the temple's shadow. She slides down from Oogi's saddle and turns to blink back up at him, expectant, stretching her arms high as though to receive him too.
He only smiles and shakes his head, snapping the reins. "I'll see you later," he promises. It is with a great weariness that he considers the words he and his father once cried into the winds together, breathless and laughing, and he remembers—all at once, in a flood—the creak of leather and the dry-sweet smell of the robes that so often closed over him, the beard that wagged and scratched at his shaven scalp and how their elbows notched, two blue sets of arrows winding parallel toward the horizon and—
Strength. Strength. Strength.
"Yip yip," he manages.
—-
The leaders and protectors of Republic City convene over tea at a long mahogany table. Other council members palm his knuckles and provide their condolences: the mayor nearly clings to him, and the anguish in the room is not just that of indecision over the riots in the streets. His father was, after all, much beloved.
Tenzin is no Waterbender, but he does know the absence of air and his chest is tight, so tight, and even for all the hands offered to him he feels as though he is drowning.
The last to come to him does not touch him. She nevertheless pulls him from the maelstrom.
"Councilman Tenzin," she says coolly. Her pale eyes sweep him, top to toes: settle on his face once more. "Accompany me to my office." There is no please. "Recent events leave us with much to discuss."
Protests ring from the others assembled. "We have things to discuss with him too, Chief Beifong," the mayor supplies. "He's come all this way—"
"The safety of your citizens is your highest priority, is it not?" In the ensuing silence, the metalbender rolls her shoulder and looks at him. "Councilman." She departs the room.
There is no fight in him. Tenzin follows.
The walls part for their passage, and in not but a moment they are enclosed in a space reminiscent of a cell: windowless, doorless. Taking a seat behind the chamber's spartan desk, Chief Bei Fong flicks her hand, summoning up from the floor a second chair. Tenzin settles in it. He bows his head beneath the circle of harsh light from ceiling's fixture, studying his knees, awaiting her spark to start the wick of their conversation.
A drawer squeals instead. He blinks aloft and finds the policewoman pulling from her desk a small cup and a bottle of clear liquid smaller still. With the latter she fills the former partway: slides it across the desk to him. He stops it toppling to the floor, at least, fumbling it between his thumb and forefinger.
It smells of nothing. Not water. Not tea.
"A sedative," she provides, and finishes, "of sorts." And then: "Drink."
He starts, "I am a man of scrupl—"
"Cut the garbage, Tenzin," she interrupts, and in her voice there is a whisper of another reprimand gifted to the pair of them by loved ones both gone now: can it, Twinkletoes.
He looks down at the cup.
He is a man of much strength and many scruples.
Except when he isn't.
It is one mouthful, tasteless, cold. He has no more swallowed it when the cup slips from his grasp and goes clattering away. Distantly he feels himself slumping forward—feels his arm hit the desk, followed by his cheek and his shoulder last.
He feels the wet on his face, finally, and the firm pressure of her hand as she folds it over his.