Writer's Note: Okay, I promise to keep this short, but I've got two things to get out of the way. First of all, I want to give a huge-ass hug to everyone who is reading, but especially I would like to thank the reviewers. Thank you so much, dudes! ;A; (See, you made me cry, how awesome is that.) I appreciate all of the positive feedback so far! But I am not even sorry that I made you cry; in fact it makes me feel extremely happy and accomplished! As a writer, making a reader experience emotions, conflicts, and feels is my ultimate goal. So. There you go.

Secondly, I am sorry if this chapter seems strangely or awkwardly put together. I literally wrote out one half of it on the backs of 11 different sheets of paper, and the other half of it made it into my writing journal throughout the day. Hence, there are several strands that needed to be woven together. It is probably much longer than it needs to be, but there's still a lot of exposition that I need to get through. And Kya and Bumi need to be in the story, too. Though I promise - - the good stuff is coming right around the corner! There will be first kisses soon! I have this planned out to be 20 chapters plus the prologue and a really cool/fan-servicey epilogue, and in 10~11 of the chapters Lin and Tenzin are doing real relationshippy things most of the time. Like pillow talk, world travel, and being generally gross. (Also there might be some minor edits to previous chapters. I keep missing typos, and also there is some phrasing that needs to be changed. This will not actually be a big thing. I hope to get better at catching shit, too.)

When Katara would tend to the gardens kept in the greenhouse, she would round up Kya and Lin to help. Both girls were given pails and baskets for gathering fruits and vegetables, and Katara gave them each a handwritten list of what they were to pick: more or less than what was needed was never taken. Given each girl's unique capabilities, more often than not Kya helped her mother water while Lin was put in charge of planting new plants, and repotting plants that had grown.

Fortunately, Lin liked to play with dirt. Even by that time earthbending was very basic for her. Nearly an instinct. She was already working on bending amounts of metal sufficient enough to disarm five armed enemies at once.

Kya and Lin would sometimes get into fights. These were mud-slinging wars that both Katara and the defenseless flora fell into the firing range of. Either girl was as like to start a battle; like many other cycles of violence, the original instigator was unclear, thus leaving them doomed to perpetual fighting because someone always had a score she needed to settle. Katara didn't mind as long as none of the produce was damaged. Or as long as she wasn't hit in her face, on her head, on her breast. In any of those cases, they would really regret causing mischief and being such ill-behaved children. The deluge she occasionally suffered always reminded Kya that her mother really was a master waterbender, and where she had inherited her own bending prowess from.

"How does this look, Aunt Katara?" Lin asked over her shoulder. She bent the dirt off her hands, and then she wiped the damp off on her thighs.

Katara came over and inspected the row of papaya trees Lin had replanted. Bending over, she tapped on the trees' new earthen pots, checking to see how well Lin had been able to compress the soil.

"Outstanding job, Lin," Katara said. She stood back up, smiled down at Lin, touched her shoulder briefly. "You've gotten really good at crushing and controlling the earth."

Lin waved her hand at Katara, for once bating away a compliment. She had started doing that at some point in the last year, refusing to accept any praise of her bending. The better she got at bending, the less she wanted to hear about it. In fact she would almost become embarrassed, not for herself but for the person praising her, as though it was painfully obvious to her that the person was desperate to become Lin's sycophant. It wasn't exactly humbleness and it certainly wasn't timidity. Though there were exceptions whose compliments she was not above—any time Aang spoke a positive word about her progression, Lin would brighten and become as properly proud and self-assured as most eleven year olds are.

So even back then, Katara thought of that as a difference between Toph and Lin. Though the daughter and mother were so similar that sometimes Katara could swear that she herself was fourteen again and fleeing the Fire Nation, there were differences between them. That was important. Katara figured that this particular difference meant that Lin would become more mature, more early than her mother had. And there was a good reason for that.

"It's really nothing," Lin said. "But maybe if Uncle Zuko ever visits like he said he would, we could make diamonds."

Katara laughed. "Aang is a firebender too, you know. He's been a master for several decades now."

"Yeah, but Fire Lord Zuko has been a master longer! And I don't think that Uncle Aang would want to make diamonds. That's not what bending is for. Anyway, I've finished moving the trees liked you asked! I have to finish picking something…Oh, yeah, the peas." Lin made a comically horrendous face at her list. Otherwise, she picked up her basket with several vegetables in it already, and walked to the other end of the greenhouse so that she could begin her assigned harvest.

Katara joined her daughter Kya, who was watering some plants by bending the moisture that had accumulated on the glass roof and walls, bringing back to the plants the water that the thick humidity in the building had snatched from them. Kya smiled at Katara and Katara smiled at Kya. They were watering the greenhouse's one pineapple bush when a mudball blasted towards them and exploded across Kya's back, bursting loudly upon impact. Kya, losing her stance, stumbled forward and dropped a stream of water that had been suspended mid-air. The plants the water plummeted on bounced back, though they did seem to be more limp than they had been before.

Recovering, Kya spun on her heel to parry any more incoming mudballs while unleashing her own attack. Though Kya's attacks would be weaker and less forceful than Lin's—maybe not less dirty, but she was not able to form balls of mud as solidly as Lin could, creating and launching instead brown dollops that were more water than dirt, as befit her abilities.

"It's so on, Lin!" Kya cried.

"Give me your best shot, sister!"

And they were off.

Smiling wildly at the other end of the glass structure, seeming so small standing there between rows of overgrown plants, Lin looked so much like Toph that Katara suddenly had to laugh to smother a sob that stung and burnt her throat, that threatened to close it. The older woman decided simply to take cover behind a fern, though if the fighting dragged on too long, she would step in as an adult and end it.

Just then Katara had to marvel. To be sure, she wouldn't have to worry about Toph's shade coming back to haunt the island and throw-off its serenity, as she had joked about with her husband. The spirit of Toph was indeed alive, but Katara knew just then that it surely dwelt in Lin, manifesting in the girl's more open moments. All of Toph's glee and all of her humour were evident whenever Lin smiled wide and meant it.

But it was good that Lin had inherited her mother's humour. Her spark of life. If Lin were going to end up so mature at so young an age, and still deal with all that life had dealt out to her so far, she would need all the playfulness she could get. Her mother had left well-equipped in that regard.

Kya shrieked and laughed, dodged a barrage that had been aimed at her face. She quickly countered. She struck Lin in the stomach and earned a string of curses followed by a deadly laugh, threatening because of the hurt that it promised was coming.

The two girls scampered after each other down among rows of trees. Branches brushed against them along the way, whispering over Kya's bare arms and snagging on Lin's overly large robes. The robes were some of the clothing that Lin had arrived with, and which she had almost immediately grown too lean for. The robes had ended up as set of Lin's play clothes, as disregarded by their young owner as an old fad toy. Where the trees were grown more with their branches almost touching across the walkway, Lin became too entangled to move any further. Growling, frustrated at being caught, Lin wheeled around violently. She remained stuck, though her right sleeve ripped cleanly off at the seam.

And there was nothing Lin could do to stop Kya, who was now in very close range. She was leering, ready to enjoy the final strike on ensnared prey.

"Tree got your sleeve, eh?" Kya asked. She stopped an arm's length away from the younger girl.

"Hnnngghh. You got lucky," Lin said, still trying to disengage herself from the tree.

Kya smirked at Lin for a moment. She pulled her smirk in a bit, but her expression still made it obvious how smug she was, still limned her triumph irritatingly clear. She shifted her weight onto one leg and crossed her arms and asked, "Mercy, Lin? Either beg or die."

"Never," Lin said. And then she smirked.

"What? That wasn't one of the opti—"

A thick cloud of mud and dirt and plant detritus fell upon them. It covered them, washed over them, clung to them, and when it was over the girls stared at each other, admiring the evidence of Lin's glorious sneak suicidal strike.

"Now we're both dead," Lin said.

After a short silence, they shrieked and laughed in delight. So loudly that Katara was drawn from her foxhole. She emerged to see the two girls laughing and bonding amidst the messy carnage of Lin's dramatic need to have the final say. Or, in this case, to have the final mudsling.

Katara cleared her throat. Her authority sounded through the greenhouse. Both girls started and froze, expectant, and even some of the more crooked trees seemed to stand a little straighter and come to attention.

"You girls," Katara said slowly, enunciating so that each syllable was burdened with her displeasure. "One day there will be a rule against mudslides in the greenhouse. I can't believe there isn't one already, but then I never expected that to be a problem. Now hurry up if you want dinner on time tonight. Unless you want to explain to Bumi why dinner is late. It certainly won't be my fault."

If not Katara's tone, her indirect threat was enough to straighten up both of the girls even when they were at their most rowdy. Within fifteen seconds they cleared out the mess they'd made of the walkway, gathered each their own baskets, and scattered to resume their vegetable picking.

Then, when the girls had their backs turned and their attention wholly on their work, Katara smiled weakly to herself, smiled sadly to herself, and this was the expression of her mixed up sympathy for Lin and her own raw personal grief for the untimely loss of her brother. That was a wound that she was not yet over. Probably she would never be over either. Sometimes she was exposed to a smile or action or whatever that travelled straight to her memory of Sokka and burnt that wound right open again.

For Sokka had come to love Toph so very much. Theirs had ended up being a slow-moving, slow-burning love that hadn't been much to look at at any one time, but in a lifetime it could have melted even the thickest glaciers. And in front of Katara, Lin became Toph at certain moments, and that wasn't easy for either of them.

It was quite stressful. And ridiculous. Katara could be overwhelmed by the way that Lin refused to be bothered learning sewing with a whalebone needle when she could just bend a metal needle and sew with that, which was more efficient anyway, thank you very much. Lin's lack of some specific manners—or even her most vaguely discourteous quirks and idiosyncrasies not uncommon to pre-teens—would set Katara off. Once they had gotten into a terrible, cosmic fight over the way that Lin never completely finished her tea, but left bits of leafs and nettles and spices and flowers floating in the bottoms of fine white bone china cups. Lin had refused to drink any tea for a month afterward, still refusing even after Katara had yelled at her again, only to return not ten minutes later to apologise and hug the girl. Then Lin had cried and for the first time choked out, "I want my mommy."

In the end Katara had to figure it all was a complicated, complex, and ugly sorrow they had to work through together as a family, taking each day as it came.

There could only be the day to day. But that didn't account for all of the other stuff that came in between. The regular daily mood changes, the thousands of daily disappointments and pleasures, or the chores that were mindless most days, but then suddenly there was one day when suddenly something would trigger an overwhelmingly, irrationally emotional response. The big sorrows always seemed more manageable somehow than a stove that refused to light or a clothes snap that would not stay closed. The small things were so intimately and personally defeating when compared to the things that were so large, so incomprehensible, so sacred, that thinking about them left Lin or Katara or whoever with a numbness that was almost like a religious experience.

Lin herself had exploded when she was turned down by Republic City's metalbending academy. She was rejected unequivocally until she came of age at sixteen. At which time she invited to apply again.

As Lin had put it, she could bend better than most of the instructors who would have—and should have—tested her the day she turned in her sincere application. But rules were rules, and those were the rules that her mother had laid down for a reason. They applied to even her. Her, whose mother had invented metalbending at age twelve.

Lin had argued that her mother would've made exceptions and taken in orphans and runaways, or just any young earthbender who was for any reason at all down her luck. And Lin was right about that. They pointed her to the Beifong's Home for Young Persons, which was the interim before those children turned sixteen themselves.

But because she didn't want to stay in an orphanage, Lin had had nothing more to say to them. So her anger quelled as she accepted that her rejection was not an injustice, or even a true outrage. It was just a matter of being patient—by sixteen, she would likely be qualified to graduate two or three years early anyway.

Still, like her mother, Lin would fall into a fit and curse them. They knew that she was more than ready to take them on. "They just need to let me have a crack at them. I'd give'em a good dose of convincing then." She would bend the armour off of them, she would steal the steel spools off of them. They would pay for keeping her from realising her potential in a timely manner, in turn keeping her from following in her mother's footsteps along the road that had already been so neatly and clearly put before her. What else had her mother given her, if not this?

Even her uncle had told her, after her mother had died, that when Toph had accepted the position as Chief of Police, she had bragged that now she would become a role model for her young daughter to aim for. (It would only be many years later that Lin would correctly understand why Aang had told her this. It had been a warning of a sort, a lesson to be aware of the non-sequiturs we use to disguise difficult decisions.)

But Aang would talk with Lin, and Lin would go out to train. Tossing around a few boulders around always made her feel better. And anyway, Lin would get better about it. As she grew older, got more serious and focussed, she would internalise her temper and direct it at other things. Though she never would truly outgrow her temper, she did quickly outgrow mudslides.

…

In the autumn of his thirteenth year, three important events occur in Tenzin's life. Two are expected, and one comes as a surprise to all of them.

Bumi finishes basic training and is off to the south to serve in the United Forces army. Katara thinks that he may be a bit young yet for service, but then Bumi comes home for what will be his last visit in three years, and with him comes a new sense of discipline that Katara notices and admires. She changes her mind. Aang does some worrying of his own. He has faith in his son to be sure, but there's this confidence that comes with new discipline, and this confidence is a kind of light and airy cockiness that makes Aang think that Bumi might be the only one who can keep Bumi in line. That would mean that Bumi's self-control is one hundred percent a conscious choice. Most likely that means that he will either soon be up and coming, rising in the rank, or be kicked out of the army all the way home.

Who could say, with Bumi?

When Bumi leaves, Tenzin becomes the oldest child living at home. He takes it very seriously because now he is the man of the house when his father is away. And because his father cannot leave Republic City for too long, Tenzin will have to serve in this capacity full time, long term, the whole time they are in the South Pole, whenever it is that they do go.

.

Two weeks after Bumi moves out, Tenzin celebrates his thirteenth birthday. He is given his first proper razor. It is a relic, a pretty blue thing that is made up of fine, delicate, and thin lines—a coloured whalebone handle, detailed with wisps of air, hugging a razor sharpened to within an inch of splitting. But even though that is just a whimsical, fanciful image he knows is not possible, when Tenzin solemnly accepts the razor he avoids touching the blade because it is so sharp that it could shatter into two shards, not because it is so sharp that it could easily slice through several layers of skin and clothing without so much as a sting. (And how clean that cut would be, how long it would take that cut to heal without his mother's healing touch.)

He then shaves his head without help for the first time.

The party is partially serious because of its import. It is the first true thirteenth year for an airbender in what is close to 150 years now. It is an historic moment and they all appreciate that. But also it is Tenzin himself who sets the mood—he is so grave now, making himself behave as a man grown.

It is so inappropriate and stuffy, so stifling and boring, Aang feels obligated to pull Lin aside for a chat. They huddle in the kitchen. After several moments they agree on a solution. Aang asks her to "nudge" Tenzin into a more festive mood, and utilise her bending to do so. Lin is glad to help.

So as Tenzin goes to cut his birthday pie, suddenly he finds that his left foot has slid out from underneath him and he stumbles face-first into the creamy, sweet pastry.

When he stands up and straightens himself out, Lin is there to taste her work. She drags one finger down his cheek, brings it to her mouth, and licks the collected pie bits clean off.

"Hah!" Looks like you fell for it. Nice work," and she wants to call him Twinkle Toes Jr, but she realises and laughs and says instead, "Well, I'd use your nickname. But it looks like I have to make a new one up. Your feet don't seem so fancy anymore."

Tenzin reddens, and Lin says, "The tops of your ears are turning pink, T."

"It's the pie!" Tenzin croaks out. They both know that isn't true. He feels stupid and awkward after saying it, but he can't take it back now even if Lin hasn't taken it and use it against him. What she does do is smile at him, she smiles that smile that brightens her face even as it draws her eyes almost closed, and her head tilts so that part of her face is in shadow. That smile scares him. It makes him uneasy, unsure—it makes Lin seem unpredictable.

And Tenzin shuffles his weight. Lin is dressed in a clean green-and-gold robe she sewed herself special for this party. Katara helped her put her hair up. Lin wouldn't do hair loopies, not ever, but there are ringlets falling on either side of her face. He is standing there dripping pie guts, and she is smiling at him.

He doesn't understand why, but the moment makes him blush so hard his entire head must be red. For the first time, he thinks of her connected to the word elegant. He has an inkling that this elegance is somehow different than the natural elegance of an airbender. It has to do with her being—being—well, her.

.

And the thing that takes them all by surprise is Tenzin inventing his own airbending technique.

The afternoon is cool wind, cool grey sky and ocean, grey broken up by patches of cool pastel colours that will become riotous once the sun sinks more. Tenzin meditates. He meditates on the concept of the illusion of the separation of things. In truth, the four elements are one. This is one lesson that his father has been wanting him to work on, a lesson he himself is a walking, talking, bending example of.

He clears his mind. He breathes, counts to seven, releases his breath.

At the moment Tenzin is in the sky. He is the air—he is the water drawn by the flame of the sun, he is a cloud floating free as he waits for more of his friends to gather.

For a time he lingers. He is waiting. In the meantime, he has the freedom to travel. Then he is a storm. Dark, fierce, and wild, he hurls himself from one cloud to the next as hyperheated plasma. He calms. He is the rain that is falling. He is the water that returns to the earth and is welcomed back with arms wide open. He is absorbed.

He is vast. He is eternal. He is substance, he is stable.

And then he sees.

Eyes crashing open, he inhales deeply. Stands up. On the exhale, he directs a flow of pressurised current into the eternal shape of a wheel. He mounts it, and the current is a stable vehicle that carries him all the way to the courtyard. Aang is not there; Tenzin is glad. With his head cooler now, he is able to compose himself. His initial excitement is now simmered down to a slow-burning pride. Though this pride is still troublesome and worrisome for an airbender, it is not something that Tenzin cannot control.

Breathing deeply, in and out, in and out, he sets off to find his father and ask if he might be permitted to present his progress to his master. It is important. Aang says that he may if he wishes to, but proper presentations require an audience. So Tenzin must wait until Katara and Lin have the time.

"Thank you, Sifu," Tenzin says and bows.

.

Despite her best efforts to not be a mother, Katara is so proud that she has to embrace Tenzin once his feet touch the ground and his display is over. Aang, a proud parent too, joins them and makes it a family hug.

The only one who is embarrassed by the unchecked flow of pride is Tenzin, and that makes Lin laugh.

Standing back, she laughs at him. She laughs at him a little more than she means to because it makes seeing them hurt less. Seeing his dumb mortified face makes it so that she can avoid thinking, Stupid Tenzin, at least you have someone to be proud of you. Because even Lin knows that proud parents make things matter more, even if these things are obviously stupid and pointless.

Like the scribbles that Toph praised even though she couldn't see them, as she had with Lin's laughably illegible first attempts at characters and poems. Like when Lin made her first rockangel, and that hadn't been that hard or even much of an accomplishment because the edges had been lumpy, but Toph had picked Lin up and hugged her and said, "That's my little girl."

Lin is twelve and almost thirteen, so of course she's too old for that kind of thing now, but now she is no-one's little girl. She is not Katara's, nor is she Aang's daughter. Not even if he smiles at her when he praises her during training. She is no-one's daughter, so she thinks, Tenzin, you stupidhead, you may as well just accomplish nothing. Then he wouldn't have to be so put upon, wouldn't have to suffer this discomfort.

Lin scoffs, rolls her eyes, keeps back a little bit longer.

Then Tenzin explains his move to Aang. She moves closer to listen. "—And, yes, I got the idea from the earth. It's stability. I took that, and added it to help guide the movement offered by the air."

Lin's interest is piqued. She smiles, now a part of it.

"That was really cool, Tenzin," Lin says, using his name without really thinking about it, and that's something. If Aang had been letting Tenzin progress through the thirty-six levels of airbending at a pace according to his ability—if Aang hadn't been holding Tenzin back so that he could teach Tenzin each thing so thoroughly that the boy was prepared to teach it himself—Tenzin would probably have been an airbending master by now. "Your mark of mastery."

Tenzin changes profoundly. He lightens—the cast of his brow relaxes, he flushes, he opens. He smiles and asks, "Do you really mean it?" even though he knows the answer, and he should know better because he knows that Lin hates it when he asks questions he already knows the answer to. But he can't help himself.

And she rolls her eyes, and smiles. "Duh. Come on, you're practically an airbending master now."

His heart beats heavy in his chest. It drums in his ears, in his head, louder than any roar of wind. He is giddy as he was just when he first rode his airwheel. He feels just as light and released, and really the only difference between the two times is that this time he can't seem to control himself. He can't bring himself to do breathing exercises in front of her, not with his parents here, not with Lin watching him. Somehow, it matters that she is there.

He thinks, Oh, Spirits, will I ever be able to keep calm? Please give me patience. Please give me serenity. Please give me endurance. All things that he would need, later.

Just then, Lin hugs him because of his accomplishments and because she figures she may as well be generous with praise, because no-one will ever really properly be proud of her again. And as his heart beats faster still, there is no way for him to know that there is no turning back now.

"You've got your base down, you know. You've just got a bit further to go," Lin says.

His parents, who have fallen away, agree.