I watched the entire LoK series last night, and I must say, I loved it better than the original, if possible. Except Korra totally needs to dump Mako for his brother next season. First episode is most preferable.
Disclaimer: I wish I owned Avatar…
"Ms. Beifong," started the waterbending nurse as she slipped into the hospital room, before being abruptly cut off by the now slightly feeble older woman.
"Chief Beifong," she snapped at the dark haired woman who couldn't be older than twenty-three. Why were people so young and inexperienced even allowed in such a practice?
"Right, my apologies." The girl smiled politely and wrote something down on her pink and glittery clipboard, as if now they were monitoring her disposition as well. Lin scoffed, internally muttering to herself that, were she in charge, she would see to it that the airheaded employees would have better jobs to occupy their time. Like figuring out how to make the food not taste like shit.
The waterbender ignored Lin's nasty behaviour, however, and capped her pen before continuing. The woman put on a warm, fake smile and made her introduction, "My name is Idina-"
"Brilliant. Good for you."
"Chief Beifong, please." The girl said, and for the first time, Lin turned her attention to the girl's pleading eyes.
"You're not my nurse, are you, kid?" Lin asked quietly after a small pause.
"No. Well, I am a nurse here, but I'm not yours. I just… well, I happened to read your file a few minutes ago." The girl said. She then continued, after Lin raised an eyebrow. "You tried to abort this child four times."
"Yes."
"But it didn't work."
"Well, obviously."
The nurse let out a small breath, then shakily flipped through her clipboard. The Chief of Police's gaze was piercing, and quite frankly, Idina was beginning to regret coming here at all. "Um, it says here that his labor process lasted roughly thirty-six hours."
"Yeah, it's a resilient little fucker, that one. Already refusing to go down without a fight." Beifong let out another scoff and began to count the tiles on the ceiling.
It, Idina thought to herself. She tried a different approach, "Hmm. Well, perhaps he takes after his mother?" Idina asked with a shaky laugh.
The Chief of Police's eyes widened momentarily, and she was silent for a good deal of time. Finally, the older woman spoke, her voice incredibly defeated in comparison to how it was moments before. "Perhaps so."
Idina cleared her throat, hoping that this was somehow a form of breakthrough. "But now you've called to have the baby euthanized."
Any sort of defense that Idina might have broken down was immediately slammed back up tenfold. Lin spun her head back to the girl and responded with bared teeth, "I've gone to Master Tenzin about this, for your information, and he agrees that it is the right thing to do, so why don't you shut your d-"
"When I was fifteen, I was raped and consequentially impregnated."
Even though the girl's mutter was barely audible, she now had Lin's full attention. So Idina took a deep breath and continued, "When given the choice, I asked for special herbs that would kill the fetus. It's the only decision I've ever regretted in my life."
She looked to Lin, who was currently staring out the window. Idina thought she could spot a single tear dripping down the metalbender's face. "Have you seen the baby yet?" Idina asked quietly.
"No."
"Do you want to?"
This pause was much greater than the earlier one.
And then finally;
"Yes."
Idina was back within five minutes holding the swaddled newborn. "He's kind of sleeping right now," Idina whispered quietly, "But here you go, Mommy."
Lin pondered over how she felt about being called Mommy while the baby was passed to her. As she fumbled for the proper way to hold him, she stared down upon its face. Dark skin, russet brown hair, wide nose. Curious as to how exactly babies felt, she moved to stroke his cheek.
At that moment, the baby's tiny hand reached up and grasped her index finger so tightly and so quickly that Lin let out a small gasp. Then its eyes fluttered open.
Eyes of piercing blue that matched the exact shape and shade of the very eyes behind the mask that took everything from her that night, before an entire crowd.
"Get this thing the fuck away from me," Lin growled, her entire body had tensed.
"Chief Beifong…" Idina started."
"Now! That's an order!"
Idina rushed over and removed the baby from Chief Beifong's grasp before the earthbender could do anything dangerous. Idina fumbled to remove his clasp on Beifong's finger while she sputtered, "I-I'm sorry, what… what would you like us to do with him?"
"Kill it," Beifong spat, "Or give it away. I don't care. Just make sure it's far enough away that I never have to see it again. And make sure they've got a damn good task force, wherever that thing is headed."
"Right away, ma'am!" Idina called hurriedly as she rushed to get the baby out of the room before it began to cry due to its mother's distress. But the baby simply blinked, no emotion crossing its face at all. The other nurses said that this little boy was the best thing they've ever had in the nursery, it hadn't cried for the entire time it spent with them.
Idina made her way back to the nursery and settled him down in his crib. "I tried, little guy. I really did." She told the baby with a small smile, feeling her own tears begin to well up. "But at least now you're here to stay."
Eight years later, Lin Beifong strode as fiercely as ever down the halls of her precinct. Her assistant scrambled to keep up with her. "Good morning, Chief! We've got an interesting one here!"
"Debrief me," she ordered in an even tone as they approached the interrogation room.
"Well," he said, pushing up his glasses and reviewing the file, "Last night at about 2:00am, Idina Bokk (waterbender, age thirty-one) was reported missing and, well, dead we assume. Her entire house was swallowed up by a fissure. The earth then closed up around the building so neatly that we can't even tell where the building once was and, well, forgive me for saying this, but not even you could've pulled that off, Chief."
"Natural? What the hell kind of an earthquake is that?" She asked as they neared the end of the narrow hall.
Her assistant fumbled through some more papers as he spoke, "I'm not sure, but the only known witness of the account was her eight year old adoptive kid, who says he was playing outside at the time."
Beifong stopped outside the door and glared at her assistant, "An eight year old boy playing outside at two in the morning? Which one of these idiots around here let that one slide?" Beifong angrily asked, making sure she was loud enough for the whole hallway to hear her. Seismic sense told her that she'd be checking up on the nervous heartbeat in Room 57 very shortly.
Beifong hissed at her poor assistant, and then wheeled around to throw the door open on the interrogation room.
The eyes that met hers were a piercing ice blue. He smiled innocently as her own eyes widened with shock.
"Good morning, Chief Beifong."
This was supposed to be a prologue of something entirely different, but ended up becoming a ficlet itself. Meaning now I need a new prologue… Idina Bokk is named after Idina Menzel, largely due to her role in the TV show Glee. Bokk was acquired from the name Boq, a character in Wicked (also Idina related.)
Lin Beifong is one of my two favorite characters in LoK, the other one being Bolin, and I wanted to write something about one of them. But since my comfort zone in writing is primarily dark material and I don't think Bolin could take such dark material… this was born.
For right now I shall say that this story is complete, because honestly I have nowhere I particularly want to go from here. My primary issue with writing has always been my style. Because while I have to admit I am kind of fond of it, it presents two problems. The first being that I can only really present an idea to the reader, not so much a plot; and the second issue being that there aren't many genres I can do this with, besides horror and angst and fluff. Scratch that, I cannot physically write fluff. So with that being said, even if I listed this as In-progress, it probably would not be added onto unless I was suffering from an extreme bout of insomnia and imagination. Like now.
But anyway, please review your thoughts on my ficlet and/or my writing issues, if you feel so inclined! Any sort of constructive criticism or ideas are greatly appreciated!