Their day had yet to begin. First, Bolin and his brother would attend the academy for a few classes on the law and the proper enforcement thereof. The other courses they managed to test out of, and it probably wouldn't be another week or two before they could test out of the law courses and become rookie cops. Bolin couldn't wait until that time, because their days were pretty full at the moment. When their tedious hours of class were over, they had to join up with their assigned teams as deputized officers to pay the rent. But before the long day began...breakfast. Breakfast with Asami, to be specific, who was bringing her old friend a blacklisted piece of merchandise.

"Did you bring the goods, Asami?" Bolin whispered through a crack in the door. The left side of her face disappeared behind the morning paper, with a lovely picture of Mako on the ground covered in desserts. Asami was in the picture as well, but she was good about laughing off stuff like that... unlike her moody boyfriend. He grabbed the paper and shoved it into his coat to be added to his collection of embarrassing family featured newspapers at his earliest convenience, "Right. You may enter."

"Thank you.", she crossed the threshold with her briefcase in hand, "I can't stay long, I have a meeting with the board. Now that the city's unfrozen my father's holdings and gave them to me, we have a lot paper-pushing to do."

"Don't worry about it." Mako said from the stove, "We got class anyway."

"Wow, aren't we in a good mood this morning." Not even a 'hello' for his girlfriend, and she didn't seem happy about it. Bolin decided to intervene before this became a lovers' quarrel that he didn't want to be witness to. If it were to go unchecked long enough, they'd ask him to pick sides and that was a sadistic choice, his best friend, or his big brother? No, he'd made that mistake before and he had no desire to do it again.

"He's still embarrassed because he embarrassed himself in front of the most important people and in the city and a bunch of photographers. Which means it's in the paper." Bolin proudly held up the second copy Asami brought, only to quickly drop it in the sink as Mako shot a fire dart at it, "Man! Mako! That would've looked so good in a frame." He whined at the ashes, Pabu jumped onto his shoulder and nuzzled him, "It's alright, Buddy. We'll just eat our sorrows away while Mako tries to come to terms with the fact he's a dancing dunce."

"That's not the problem!" He insisted as Asami and Bolin went to set the table. They stopped and looked his way to nonverbally call his bluff, "Well, not all of it."

"And the other part is?"

"What do you think, Bo? What was with Lin last night?"

"Oh...I don't really know." he said with complete confidence in his lie...never mind the sweat starting to form on his forehead, "She was acting really moody when I talked to her." Now it was his turn to be on the receiving end of two gazes, these were bored looks though, as if to sarcastically ask 'oh really', "Well moody-er."

"She's been moody-er for awhile now." And frankly, it was starting to worry Asami.

"All she said was Korra wasn't Aang and they shouldn't expect her to be just like him." They didn't need to know the rest. He wouldn't even know the rest had it not been for a slip of the tongue.

"...And that was it?"

"Yeah, pretty much." For some strange reason, it was getting really hot in there.

Her day hadn't officially began, but like so many other days, she found herself in her office well before the scheduled time. Unlike so many other days, her work was difficult to focus on. It was all the family pictures adorning her desk, they were capturing her attention every other minute. The old family portrait with her and the boys, took just after Mako turned himself in, reminded her that they were overdue for another one. She jotted down a note to get with Asami and the boys to get a date set aside to get it done in the near future, then she went back to her files. The older family portrait, taken just after Bolin got the Beifong name, reminded her that he was growing up too damn fast. And that wasn't a thought she could push out of her mind with a memo,

Lin woke up in the guest room of her mother's house to the pitter-patter of little feet. The boy was up and coming in her direction in quick, but restrained footsteps, like he had to force himself to move. She lifted her arm in the direction of the metal door handle, turned it down and forced inwards to move the wood along with it.

"Chief, are you awake?" A timid little voice called from the door.

"No," she grumbled with closed eyes, "the door opened all by itself."

"Then how are you talking?"

"What do you want, boy?"

"I had a scary dream." with a rush of confidence, or perhaps fear was overriding his common sense, the boy stampeded over to her bed climbed under the covers without permission. He didn't waste any time before clinging to her, along with his stuffed badgermole. Lin's first reaction was a frown, having never liked her personal space being invaded without consent,"Can I sleep with you?" he finally asked.

"A bit late to be asking, isn't it? Why are you shaking?" the dream must have been terrible by little children standards.

"I dreamed bad men came to take me away from Mako." He told her the vague details, but it was enough to make Lin soften. She still had nightmares about Yakone and his men from time to time, more than thirty years later and she could still feel their water whips cut through her cheek, "But you can beat 'em all up."

"My mom's better at beating up bad guys." If he wanted someone who could protect him from his dream villains, it was her mom.

"I want you." and he cuddled closer, "You can scare off anybody." and then he thought about it for a second, "'cept Mako." of course, not Mako. Bolin could see her spar and beat a hundred of the best benders on the force and he'd still insist that Mako could beat her up, but he wanted her more than he wanted the great Toph Beifong. That had to be the first, and it'd probably be the last, time she ever heard that. So she cleared her throat, and put an protective arm around him.

"Go to sleep, kid."

"Could you tell me a story?" He bargained. She should have seen that coming.

"There was once a little boy who went to sleep when he was told, and his caretaker didn't feed him to the wolfbats. The end."

"That's not a story, that's me!" not quite, but he was on the right track,

"It's only you if you go to sleep right now. Unless you wanna be the boy who didn't go to sleep when he was told and got fed to the wolfbats." She regretted that threat as soon as she uttered it. The boy was scared out of his wits as it was, and she just threatened to kill him. And since he was still too young to recognize sarcasm, she braced herself for tears, but they never came. Bolin had taken her seriously, but he chose to close his eyes tight and pretend to snore. After a minute, he bought his own con and fell asleep in her arms.

Up to that moment, she'd been convinced that her decision to take in the boy was a mistake. She even thought about sending him to the island to become the world's first earthbending air acolyte...he was certainly gentle enough to be an windless airhead, and they could surely use an earthbender during planting season. But he trusted her more than anyone, except his big brother, and he wouldn't settle for anyone else. And the absolute trust and dependence one little boy had in her made Lin feel more important than her badge ever had, not that she'd ever admit it. But now the boy was becoming a man, and his blind faith in her was fading. Mistakes, big ones, were on the horizon and she felt powerless to stop it.

"Hey, Maiden!" even if the voice was unfamiliar, the nickname was enough to narrow down the list of suspects. Her old captain had decided to take it upon himself to disrupt her brooding. While not in the mood for company, she rose to open the office door, and was handed a cup of coffee and a bag that smelled like food, "Your kids made the front page." He cracked open his morning newspaper.

"I know, Xun." her boy was probably hording a copy under his bed at that very minute.

"You're in here too," he informed her as he helped himself to her chair, "bottom of the page. Elegant speech. I'd ask if you were drunk, but they don't say anything about bad singing in here."

"I barely had anything to drink." but she was starting to wish she had.

"You wanna talk about this?"

"About what?"

"Don't make me whack you with this." he held up his cane threateningly as she took a seat in front of her own desk, "Everyone around my shop says you've been snapping like a wounded catgator, then you blow up at a formal in front of the politicians. Don't blame ya for that one, but something's gotta be eatin' ya."

"How do you stop a grown kid from doing something stupid?" She leaned back in the chair, and rubbing her temples.

"You don't." he answered without a second's hesitation, "You wait for it to blow up in their faces and then say 'I told you so'." That's what Lin was afraid he'd say, "Which one of your kids is doing what?"

"The youngest, he's going to join the force." Honestly, Lin's old boss didn't know which boy was younger, he thought it was the earthbender, but he couldn't keep up with everything,

"The boy who used to help turtlesloths cross the road?" He took a guess.

"That's him."

"This job'll chew him up and spit him out." An safe prediction, if Lin knew the boy and the job.

"Try telling him that."

"Well, did ya think to put him in communications or someplace." Actually, she hadn't, not that it mattered. He'd never settle for a job like that, he was always a hands-on kind of person.

"He wants to 'help people'."And it was hard to 'help people' in the communication room. Spirits, she really wanted a drink, "What am I doing to do?"

"You don't gotta a choice, Maiden, unless you can deny his entry," she shook her head. New entries were not her department, unless they had a record. And while he did have a record, stealing bread to survive was not sufficient cause to deny him, "Then do what your mom told ya."

"Wait and listen?" Then say she warned him after her worst fears came to pass? No, there was a time to be patient and a time to act. This was the later. She was going to make the boy so miserable that he'd quit. He couldn't hold a grudge that long and if he did, well...it was a chance she had to take.