That is just the start of it. Avatar Aang reaches out and puts his hand on Lin's shoulder. His bald head blocks the sun from Lin's face so that she could look at him if she wanted to, but where wants to look is over Aang's shoulder. The scene behind him is chaotic, it is confusion in motion. Several Air Acolytes are trying to unload the limp acolyte who she knows serves as the Air Nation councilman and is supposed to be at work this very moment. Several other acolytes are working with Katara. They have already unloaded Sokka; he is lying on the grey stone walkway.
What is holding them up is Lin's mother. Or—the weight of her is slowing them down. It takes the concerted effort of six puffing and heaving acolytes to get her, armour and all, down from Appa's back. Then they put her down on the ground, and she is lying very very still next to Sokka on the grey stone walkway.
All of the commotion and shouting has spooked the sky bison, but two acolytes are actively soothing them. They are patting their furry heads, whispering things to them that Lin cannot hear from where she is standing.
But Aang is trying to say things to her.
"Lin," he tries again, bringing their faces closer. "Listen to me, okay? Something's happened, but your mother is going to be all right."
Lin looks into his face. For a moment she looks nothing but blank. That is concerning because it seems as though she's shut down so much, so suddenly, she is unable to process enough of what is happening around her to be confused, let alone scared or shattered.
But then she knits her brow and steps to the side, trying to shrug away both Aang and Tenzin. "What about my dad?"
"Sokka will be okay, too," Aang adds. He leans forward and tries to block Lin, but she is intent on the scene behind him even if she can't make it past him.
Suddenly, Lin halts. She stares into Aang's face again and says slowly, softly, "I want to see them."
"Not now."
"Please."
A beat. It hurts, but Aang shakes his head and stands up. "It's not going to be easy, Lin, but be patient. Right now your mother and Sokka need you to be brave for a while. They'll be better really soon. Until then, Tenzin will stay with you, okay?" Aang prompts, and he smiles down at her and then looks to his son.
The boy and his father say nothing to each other. But Tenzin understands. He will stay with Lin. For now, he will be her strength.
When Lin says nothing else, Aang turns around on his heel, his scarlet cloak sweeping, and he walks over to join his wife. They talk for a few moments. Lin can't hear them because of the buzzing in her head, and really she can't hear anything else but the footsteps making the ground vibrate, and the vibrations are travelling up her legs and ringing achingly through her entire body. She watches as acolytes lift up her mother and Sokka. She doesn't understand how her parents' limbs could flop around so raggedly even if they are asleep.
Katara leads the acolytes and they take Toph and Sokka into the female dormitory. Aang follows behind the last acolyte, and the whole time no-one spares Lin or Tenzin a glance.
Then suddenly the earth is too quiet and the courtyard is too quiet. Lin can hear her heartbeat and it is so loud she has to crouch down, otherwise she will explode.
Lin screams, though she quickly shuts up because she is afraid that she will lose her voice. She needs to save it for talking with her mother and father when they wake up. They will be waking up in a bit.
As she cries, Tenzin is on his haunches beside her, all the while stroking her back, sometimes even travelling in circles up to her shoulders. After a while he says very softly, "Lin?"
"Mm?" She doesn't look up at him, only looks down at where her tears have slightly dampened the earth.
"I was just checking," he says, and it is obvious that he does not expect her to say anything else. That he would not force her to say anything else, or answer to the stupid question, "Are you okay?" He knows how much that makes her crazy.
Lin sits down in the dirt and Tenzin joins her.
Eventually a while has passed, and a younger female Air Acolyte comes out to get them. She gestures to Lin and says, "You may come and see your mother, now."
Lin stands up and dusts the dirt off of her bottom. She looks at Tenzin and waits until he has done the same. Then Lin nods to the acolyte and says, "Okay." She and Tenzin follow after the acolyte, and when the two of them are left alone outside of a closed door, Lin says to Tenzin, "Thanks for staying with me."
Tenzin says, "You're welcome. I'll be here until you don't need me anymore." He does not leave her yet.
She nods at him, and he takes that to mean that he can go in with her. He is worried for his uncle, too.
.
For the first few seconds, Lin isn't sure whether or not her mother is going to cry. If Toph cries then there's no way that Lin's going to be able to hold in her own tears and that would be hard on the both of them. But her mom doesn't cry, she shoots up in bed and looks directly at where the door is, though her eyes neither land nor focus on Lin. But Lin is used to that.
Katara, sitting on a chair drawn up close to Toph's bed, puts her hand on Toph's.
"Lin, is that you?" Toph asks.
"It is, mommy, it's me" Lin says, and there is no stopping her from running over the wooden floor and lunging at her mother. Mother and daughter huddle together. Toph draws Lin to her chest and cradles her there, digging her nose into the girl's black locks that she has been told are identical to her own.
"Lin. My little Lin," Toph whispers. Only Lin can hear her.
While they rock back and forth, back and forth for a while, Tenzin approaches the bed and stands by his mother. She smiles wearily at her serious son, and for a moment she is achingly proud, relieved, and worried.
"Mother?" he asks, looking up at her.
"Your uncle will be all right too, Tenzin." She looks over her shoulder at her brother. "He just needs some time to rest." Frankly she is baffled that Toph is awake at this moment, let alone strong enough to sit up on her own and cling to her daughter with one hand as she is. It probably is borrowed strength: a mother's desperation to see that her child is safe. What wouldn't surprise Katara is if Toph paid for this later with a deeper sleep lasting longer than Sokka's.
For now though, Toph is clinging to her daughter until Lin pulls back and looks up at her mother. Lin snuggles up to her again, but she keeps enough room between them so that she can touch her mother's hair and face. She touches her nose, her temple, her mouth, pushes some long bangs out of her cataracted, glazed eyes. "Mom, what happened?" Lin finally asks.
Toph leans into her daughter, rests her chin on the crown of her little head. "There was a bad guy who tried to get me. He tried to get Sokka, too."
"What about the Air Nation councilman? Did he get hurt, too?"
"Yes. The bad guy got all of us, but your Uncle Aang got him and beat him up."
Lin frowns slightly, and she feels Tenzin's puzzled look behind her. "But Uncle Aang doesn't believe in beating people up. That's against his religion."
Toph laughs, once. "It's not against his religion exactly, my little princess. Aang took the bad guy's bending away."
And then Lin gasps, shuddering. To have bending taken away—Lin tries to imagine it, and the thought is so scary, the feeling so empty, she pushes herself in closer to her mother. But Lin doesn't realise that Toph has been trying to protect her right arm and the right side of her body. Lin's weight before had only made Toph clench her teeth, but the sudden, swiftly shifting of weight is too much. It increases the pressure on her wrecked body so much that the gasps and grimaces Toph has been holding back escape as a shriek.
Lin stills, horrified.
"Mommy? Are you still hurt?"
Toph smiles and moves, but when she tries to joke and alleviate her daughter's fear, she groans and this time is down for the count.
.
Having Lin stay on the island that night is not at all in question. Though Lin still asks Katara very sweetly, very subdued, if she might stay the night with them. Her mother is here, after all, and so is Sokka too, and she really would like to be able to stay with them until they wake up.
"Of course, Lin," Katara says, smiling down at the girl. "You wouldn't expect us to kick you off, I hope."
To that Lin just shrugs and asks, "May I have a sleepover with Tenzin? All the other kids I know in the city have them." She doesn't bring up Kya. Or Bumi, either.
For the sake of keeping some semblance of propriety and serenity, Katara says that, yes, they may have a sleepover, the two of them, but with a few conditions. They may set up a tent in the Air Temple as long as they are careful not to get too close to any of the relics or wall-hangings, for those being broken or damaged would be much worse than breaking the enforced female/male segregation of the sleeping quarters. Smiling then herself, Lin goes with Katara to strip some sheets and find extra bedding. Tenzin insists on helping, so Lin piles pillows in his arms until they pass his head, and she lets him carry those.
Later when they are settled down into their white pillow-and-sheet shelter, they take turns passing around a torch, holding it under their faces, and telling spooky stories. Lin tells about the great benighted nomadic armies that used to plague the Earth Kingdom, hordes able to manifest hundreds of thousands of warriors strong at a silent command from their half-crazed leader. They had raped half of the kingdom before an ancient Avatar came forth to put them down. But they never had to answer for their crimes, not truly, after they rode into the Spirit World on the back of a great black demon.
Tenzin tells the story of Hama the Witch. And he swears it is true, on his honour as an airbender, or on his mother's honour because she is the one who told it to Kya, who told it to him.
As they go down for sleep, Lin briefly wonders if it was bloodbending that got her mother, Sokka, the acolyte, and everyone else. But she frowns into her pillow, knowing that that would mean the bad guy would've needed a full moon. The moon outside tonight is only gibbous. It is not quite full enough for bloodbending.
Eventually they fall asleep together, shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand.
…
Sokka did get up before Toph. He was there, waiting, as she woke up. He smiled at her and she smiled at him, but she tilted her head down and touched her cool sheets and said, "I should've seen that coming. Some esteemed chief I am."
"We all should've seen it coming, Chief."
"Sokka…" Toph's unfocussed eyes closed for a moment. When they opened again, her milky cataracts seemed faintly luminescent in the gray light of the night. "I'm a failure," she said. "I can't protect this city. I can't protect the people I care about. How can I expect to be able to protect my daughter? There's…"
While she paused, Sokka wanted to reach out and comfort her, somehow, knowing that a small gesture would've meant a lot for such a tactile person as Toph. But he waited, patient for her.
"You don't hear the things that they say about my little Lin—about what they will do to her. They threatenmy daughter because of me. They only talk about it, but one day one of those dirtbags is actually going to hurt my daughter to get back at me."
"But she's Aang's niece. They wouldn't want to bring his wrath down on themselves."
"If they were smart, they wouldn't. Anyway, Aang is the Avatar, but he isn't omniscient. He is only human."
"But he's strong," Sokka said, and after that neither of them said anything for a while.
But Toph did eventually lower her head again and muttered, "What am I going to do?"
"Take this," Sokka said, reaching over and pressing something smooth into the palm of Toph's left hand. There was a quiet moment as she ran her fingers over its surface. She felt a cold stone coin engraved with a Water Tribe symbol, felt a soft ribbon pinned to the stone, and felt that what she was holding was a necklace.
Toph laughed. "I'm too old for a betrothal, you dunderhead."
"Better late than never, isn't it?" Sokka asked. For once Toph didn't have a smart comeback for a rhetorical question of his. "But yesterday I was nearly so late as to completely miss my chance forever. It made me realise, I'm tired of being late."
"Then get up here and kiss me, you idiot."
While they did kiss, the throbbing in her arm almost went entirely away.
…
But Toph and Sokka did not announce the news. They continued to put it off, until finally the formal announcement was Sokka moving in with Toph and Lin the spring that Lin turned nine.
Lin started calling him dad, and when visiting her family she pestered Tenzin by insisting that he start calling her Cousin Lin, because they were going to have to call each other that soon, like real family. She figured they may as well start getting used to it now.
…
After a frantic flight through the house, chasing screams and choked sobs, Sokka finds Toph entangled around her daughter Lin.
The first time that Toph got up out of bed to wander after nightmares, she had gone to the study and fumbled around until she found a record and the gramophone Sokka had gotten from someone, somewhere, for her. She had put on the first thing she could find and listened to it over and over and over again until Sokka found her curled up in the blue, plush chair. She had drawn her feet up to her chest, effectively blinding herself for all those hours. It had taken several rational repetitions before Sokka could convince her that he wasn't a dream too.
But tonight Toph has come to Lin's room.
When Sokka turns on the light, he sees Lin's pupils retract. He sees her attempts to both cling to and comfort her mother. The girl is frantic, but she is also frightened.
"Toph," Sokka says, approaching the two of them. "She's all right. It's all right. We're all right, I promise."
But Toph says, "What if she's lifted by her blood, and he steals her voice? If he did that, I wouldn't be able to find her unless I stumbled and groped around and, Sokka—Sokka, he took her from me. "
Lin wants to say, but, Mommy, I'm right here and no-one has taken your Lin, but even though she grabs onto her mother's robe and forces their bodies as close as they could ever be, there is this distance between them, between mother and daughter, and she can't fathom how to cross it and it scares her young mind far too much.
.
But in the end, Toph's fears do not prove to be unfounded. Though she's right, it doesn't mean anything now.
.
The first public news story read as follows:
TRIAD'S TERRIBLE REVENGE: DOUBLE DEATH
A shockingly bold move in the dead of the night has all of Republic City wondering, Is the hated Yakone truly gone? Chief Toph Beifong was found dead her in own home early this morning by a neighbour. The neighbour, identified only as an elderly female non-bender, claims to have heard Beifong's young daughter "noisily" trying to wake her mother. When the girl's attempts to rouse her mother did not stop after a quarter of an hour, the neighbour grew concerned and went over to see what was happening. Another body was found, belonging to Councilman Sokka of the Southern Water Tribe, and Chief Beifong's husband of sixteen months. Evidence gathered so far suggests that Sokka was murdered in cold blood, while Chief Beifong died of an heart attack. It is well known that Chief Beifong has been plagued by complications after having suffered some of Yakone's most malicious bloodbending several years ago; though the coroner has noted that murder cannot be completely ruled out at this point.
An official source says that this appears to be the work of a triad still under the influence of Yakone, finishing the work that the notorious Underworld Overlord left unfinished two years after disappearing. If speculation proves correct, it is not impossible that Yakone is still...
Lin only ever kept a copy of this report. There were several reports forthcoming, but the only new information released was the location of the funeral being held for the general public.
…
The one material object Lin inherited before she reached her majority was her mother's meteorite bracelet. Or, as Sokka called it, her mother's Space Bracelet. One morning after Sokka had moved in, he had happened to see the bracelet on Toph's person. He had been delighted.
Though it was cool that it was from "outer space," Lin didn't understand why a piece of jewellry could elicit such gleeful, geeky response from a fully grown man. Especially when that grown man had a beard, and still he had exclaimed about a bracelet in an almost squeaky voice.
So Sokka had told her the tale of Space Sword—Spirits rest its good blade—and Space Bracelet. He also told her about how it helped her mother form her first metalbending academy, which was the same academy that Sokka had helped her save. Lin thought that was particularly interesting.
When Lin got on Toph's case for not telling her any of these stories before, Toph told her, "The bracelet resonated with you too, girlie, especially when you had a real fit! Though I didn't need it to know when you were mad. Once you got started, you'd scream for hours. But the bracelet was helpful in other ways. It's how I knew when you were wet."
Now when Lin holds the bracelet and forces it into patterns both new and remembered, it does not resonate. Often times she reduces it to a blob, making it look like any regular metal. When she does wear it she sometimes remembers her mother. But it is easier for her to remember her mother as she was when she and Sokka were younger, even though Lin never could have seen her mother at that age. This younger version of Toph had not yet come to love Republic City, but she had loved herself and her friends, and her space bracelet and her talents, and she had loved Sokka too. Somehow Lin knew this younger version of her mother better than the mother who had been the Chief of Police and died because of it.