I wasn't going to post this until tomorrow, but hey. The AC in the house is dead and all I had the energy for in this monstrous heat was writing, so here, a day early! The last chapter will likely be posted Wednesday night or Thursday.
Enjoy!
Even the Sun Must Sleep
Chapter 4
Tenzin didn't bother landing on the outskirts of Republic City as the golden roofs opened quickly below him. Instead, without a care for space or crowds, he urged Oogi into the city center toward the hospital situated near City Hall and the police precinct. It was still mid-morning, not yet ten o'clock, and many people out running errands or talking in the streets stopped and looked up as the bison came lower and lower over their heads without slowing, finally coming to a skidding stop in the cobbled courtyard just outside the fancy medical center.
"We're here, Lin," he told her, flinging himself backward into the saddle to gather her up. She was unconscious, not responding to his words even a little, but he hadn't stopped speaking to her the entire way in the hope maybe, maybe, she would be able to hear him even if she couldn't speak in return. "You're going to be fine now. Just fine."
He hadn't seen her closely since they had stopped in the clearing, and he was relieved to find her alive and breathing under his hands as he pulled her to his chest. A very thin line of blood, mostly dry by then, was staining her skin from her lip and he could see more inside her mouth, but it didn't appear to be as fresh as it had been before, when Toph put the brace on.
"All right," he murmured just before standing and jumping down as gently as he could.
The main doors of the hospital were close and he ran to them quickly, using a burst of wind to propel himself forward. "We need some help here, please," he called the moment he was inside.
Several aides glanced up from the check-in counter, expecting to see some standard illness with an unnecessary rush, but they leapt into action immediately when they saw Tenzin. A woman came toward them, reaching her hands out toward Lin in his arms, first to find her fluttering pulse and then to touch her face, chest, abdomen. She beckoned to the man following her, dragging a stretcher pulled up from behind the counter and they set it down on the floor with a clatter.
"Put her on it," the woman commanded and Tenzin complied, releasing Lin from his grasp. She turned half her attention to her companion, eyes and gentle fingers taking in everything she could from the patient now in her care right there in the waiting room. "Call ahead for the metal pliers or scissors or something to get this band off. Make sure surgery room seven is open right now and if it isn't, make it available. Get two people down here to carry this stretcher to seven whether it's ready or not."
The man scampered off to obey her instructions.
"It's been many years since Chief Beifong has been in my hospital beyond the ability to speak for herself, Master Tenzin," the woman said quietly as she continued to poke and prod, "and I have been here a very long time. What happened?"
Tenzin's gaze flicked from Lin over to her, recognizing for the first time the navy blue band around her forearm marking her as a master healer. He had been so beside himself in his effort to get her to help that he hadn't fully taken in his surroundings until that moment. But he paused over his response. Where she had been…what Kuvira was doing – it was all confidential information, even now. His stomach clenched as he stared down at Lin again and he swallowed. She would be furious if he told, and if word then got out before it should. Chaos would erupt if the city realized a war was coming.
"Master Tenzin, I need to know," the healer pushed, her voice growing agitated. "Any information you have could save Chief Beifong's life."
"She was helping her sister with a group of rogue Earthbenders near Chin Village in the Earth Kingdom," he fumbled quickly. "When Suyin arrived yesterday without Lin, I went to help her…and found her like this. It's been about – about a day and a half since she sustained the injuries, I think."
The flimsiness of his story was poor even for him, and the healer glared at him for a brief moment through his lie and away again. "Very well. Han!" she barked to the man at the desk, "where are the people to move my stretcher! We need to go before she bleeds any more into her lungs!"
"They're coming, they're coming!"
But even as he spoke, another man and woman wearing the sky blue robes of healers' aides came running down the hallway and to their master's side. "Lift her up and on directly to seven. Is it ready for me, Han, is my jade basin fully filled and have they brought in sterile bandages?"
"Yes, ma'am." Han gave her a short bow as she rushed by him, following the stretcher carrying Lin and not giving Tenzin another look.
He watched helplessly as Lin disappeared. His task was finished. She had been brought to safety and was in the care of those who would heal her back to health. He could leave the hospital without worry, return to the island and come back to see her when she was in recovery later that day. Why, then, did he still feel so bound to her? As though her fate was still his?
"Um, excuse me, Master Tenzin?"
He looked around in confusion at the address, finding the young aide who had been at the desk coming to stand in front of him to bow lowly. Tenzin didn't respond, but the man didn't wait for one before continuing.
"I pulled Chief Beifong's file while Master Unduli was doing her initial assessment and, well, she has you listed as her only next of kin. Chief Beifong does, I mean. Would you be able to fill out her admission paperwork or should I wait for her to do it herself?"
This seemed to cause more bewilderment in his mind than anything else thus far and for a moment he just stared at Han blankly, assuming he had misheard as the words parsed through again. Her next of kin. Was that some kind of inside joke she was playing, after all these years, to have kept his name on that form? It almost seemed like the kind of self-deprecating thing she would do, given how often she was in and out of this place. Spirits, it had only taken the aide a few seconds to even pull her file.
Han bowed again, a smaller one that allowed him to proffer a clipboard with a sheaf of papers attached to it.
Tenzin took them without a word, only able to see the form had been mass-produced by the city's printing press. The ink was old and stark on the parchment, not the earthy smell of the fresh ink in the well sitting on his desk at home, the scent he found so comforting. Nothing else made sense, the questions only an incomprehensible mess on the page.
"I'll do it," he finally said.
Han walked away with a pleased thanks, back to his desk to continue working, and Tenzin looked around the room for the first time. Several people were seated on benches placed along the wall, waiting to be seen by a nurse or healer, and many of them were staring at him wide-eyed after the scene that had just unfolded.
He barely had time to take it all in before Suyin ran in through the large front doors, Opal and Jinora on her heel. She found Tenzin immediately, still standing dumbly in the center of the room as he was, and rushed forward to grab at his arm.
"We saw Oogi fly in," she said breathlessly, searching his face for answers before even asking.
"Is Chief Lin all right, Dad?" Jinora asked, voice shaking as she stepped around Su to find her father. He reached out for her, opening his arm to take her into a hug. Feeling his daughter collapse against him somehow gave him a thread of hope again, the urge to keep his expression strong despite wanting to fall onto one of those benches and lower his face into his hands to cry.
He wrapped his arm tightly around her shoulders, glancing down at her head as she turned her frightened face up to him before looking back at Suyin and Opal. "A healer is working with her now," he said much more calmly than he felt. "That's all I know."
"Was she badly hurt?" Suyin pressed. She stepped closer, her fingers tight around his wrist.
"Jinora, sweetheart, would you please bring Oogi back to the island for me?" he deflected for a moment. Su glared at him, but was silent as he continued. "Put Lin's uniform in my study out of harm's way and bring me back a change of clothes. Opal might need to help you carry the armor, so if you would, ladies."
It was a dismissal, though neither girl argued as they hastened to comply. As soon as they were outside again, getting the sky bison out of the courtyard and on his way home, Tenzin gestured for Suyin to follow him to an empty bench. She did, her lips pursed in agitation at being kept waiting.
"Well?" she asked immediately once they were seated.
Tenzin lowered his eyes, seeing again the clipboard still held loosely in his hands and not having the slightest idea what to do with it. "She's not well, Su."
"Not well," she repeated dismissively. "What does that mean, not well? 'Bumps and bruises', not well? 'On her deathbed', not well? 'Spitting angry because someone tried to kill her', not well? What is it? Now is not the time to be vague, Tenzin."
He felt the bubbling anger toward her from before rising in his chest, just as irrational as it had been yesterday, and he swallowed. He was angry at himself, not at Su. This wasn't her fault. Despite his best effort, sad and furious tears burned at his eyes and he used the hand not still clutching those ridiculous forms to brush them away before they could fall. "She's still alive, if only just."
"What - ?"
"For us, Su," he interrupted, "she'd have died for us without a second thought, without any kind of regret. What kind of person is she, to do something like that? What are we, to let her? Though I suppose," he added with a mirthless laugh, "I suppose this time it really was my selfishness that led to this at all."
"I didn't mean that, I really didn't," Suyin told him gently, her eyebrows turned down in concern for both him and her sister. "What I said yesterday about all this happening differently if you had come with her to save us – we don't know that."
Tenzin just hung his head, not having heard her as the tears fell anyway. "I feel horrible, Suyin. I regretted it the moment I realized she left without me and yet – yet I still didn't follow. How will she ever forgive me, knowing I made such a trespass from friendship into politics! I didn't mean it, truly, I just…"
She shifted to put an arm over his shoulder, hoping to bring that stability he'd had for such a brief second while his daughter was here back to him again. "You were conflicted," she murmured, lowering her head to rest it against his. "I understand. Boy, do I understand. Family or politics, where the line is drawn. I could have prevented this whole thing, right, if that line were not quite so blurry, by just letting Kuvira take my home and fleeing with my husband and children. Our lives, Tenny, they're always going to be run by the public choices we make – not the private ones – whether we like it or not. Lin understands that, too."
He nodded silently and took comfort from her words, true as they were.
"Please, Tenzin, please tell me how my sister is," Suyin whispered. "At least as much as you know."
