Chapter 7
Lin had a secret and only her mother, Toph, knew about it. A little over twenty years had passed since Tenzin had ended the relationship between Lin and himself. But that was all anyone else knew, that Tenzin broke up with Lin and that she went on a rampage across Air Temple Island after he ended things. What people didn't know was the truth; the truth that she really wasn't at all upset about Tenzin calling off the relationship, but rather she was relieved, the violent fit on Air Temple Island was just for the sake of keeping up appearances. In fact, her entire relationship with Tenzin had been for the sake of keeping up appearances. Her true and honest feelings were dedicated towards Tenzin's older sister Kya. The two were very much in love with each other but had to keep their romance hidden from the rest of the world because of Lin's career and Kya's status as the daughter of Avatar Aang. Although they hated to play out a closet relationship it was in the best interest of them both. The only reason Lin had for entering into a meaningless relationship with Tenzin was because it was expected of her. However, there were a few of her very close friends that knew about Lin and Kya and that the Chief of Police wasn't in love with the Airbender but there was something that even Kya never knew about Lin. After a night spent on Air Temple Island with Tenzin, Lin decided that she had had a few too many drinks to bother returning to Republic City before the morning and so opted to sneak into Tenzin's room with him and stay the night. She would have rather stayed in Kya's room of course but she knew that she would not be able to keep her hands off of her if she did. Unfortunately for Lin she had forgotten to take into consideration the fact the Tenzin had been drinking too and was far more intoxicated than she was because he couldn't handle the alcohol as well as she could. The young Airbender was so intoxicated that his judgement lapsed considerably and he locked the door behind them before spinning abruptly and pinning Lin against the wall and began kissing her neck. He tried to kiss her lips but she kept her head turned to the side wondering what he thought his actions would accomplish. Suddenly his hands were snaking their way up her shirt; one behind her caressing the small of her back and the other making its way up her stomach and settling on one of her breasts. Tenzin's hands were nothing like Kya's, they were rough and significantly larger. He pressed himself harder against her, pushing his left leg between her thighs in an attempt to spread them. Lin knew what Tenzin wanted the moment she felt his hardening erection pressing into her hipbone. She noted how uncomfortable it was considering he was quite a bit taller than herself. Lin clenched her fists and tried to shove Tenzin away but for some strange reason her muscles were rendered completely useless and Tenzin, who would sulk at not being able to beat Lin in a sparring match, was able to easily overpower her. This sent alarm bells ringing loudly in Lin's head but before she could do anything about her current predicament things got far worse. The young Airbender wrapped both of his arms around Lin's waist and tipped the two of them onto his bed, pinning Lin's hands above her head in the process and continuing his assault of fleeting kisses upon the skin of her neck. Lin struggled beneath the weight of the man above her but he didn't seem to notice and so began to remove the clothing that separated their skin from each other. It was clear that Tenzin desired Lin by the way his hungry hands fervently lifted her shirt away from her body and made swift work of removing her breast bindings. By the time he had removed her pants he had also removed his own clothing and Lin could now feel the full extent of his throbbing erection poking at the entrance to her deepest, most private spot. Although it was only the tip that was currently begging for entrance she could judge fairly well just how big he was and knew that she would tear.
Until now Lin had refused to look into Tenzin's eyes but finally dared a glance; she saw the desire there burning like a fire. He wanted her and he wanted to take her then and there. Lin looked away again and took a deep breath in and released it slowly preparing herself for the pain that she knew was too come. It was then that she realised that the extra strength that the Airbender was exhibiting was a result of the overwhelming lust within him. She had given up struggling now and just lay still with her legs spread gripping the sheets, waiting for Tenzin to enter her. When she felt him begin to push inside of her she inhaled sharply as the searing pain between her thighs shook her more than she was expecting. She had known that it would be painful but not to this degree. Tears began to well in her eyes before falling freely and caressing her cheeks. The tears, however, were not from the excruciating pain of having Tenzin's huge member pounding her womanhood but instead resulted from her thinking about Kya and wishing it was her that was with her like this. Lin didn't allow the tears to remain for very long, she forced them to retreat when she could feel that Tenzin's thrusts were getting shorter and faster. She could tell that he was nearing his end but she could not have prepared herself for what happened next. Instead of pulling out of her before he finished, the young Airbender released his seed inside of her. It was hot and burned upon contact with the raw flesh between her legs and there was a lot of it. Tenzin went limp and rolled over beside her and fell asleep. All Lin could do was lie deadly still and stare at the bare ceiling. She couldn't cry, she couldn't speak and she definitely couldn't sleep. By the time Lin had regained her senses it was almost sunrise. She snuck out of the bed, found her clothes and dressed herself, snuck out of the room and down the hall towards Kya's room. She gently opened the door trying not to wake her lover as she dared a peek inside. Kya slept so peacefully, blissfully unaware that her younger brother had essentially raped the woman she loved. It was then that Lin decided she would never tell anyone what had happened because she didn't want a rift to form within their family. After a good minute or two of watching her lover sleep Lin closed the door again and snuck off the island and back to her apartment in Republic City. When Lin did return to her apartment she walked straight into the bathroom and showered immediately. She scrubbed and scrubbed until the skin all over her body was red and raw. The hot water felt calming as it flowed over the curves of her body but it couldn't mask the sickening feeling in her stomach and the back of her head. Lin felt dirty and violated and no amount of washing could make it stop. After roughly an hour of continuous scrubbing and soaking Lin emerged from the shower, dried and dressed herself and then turned to walk into her bedroom. As she closed the bathroom door and turned around she was startled by the presence of her mother whom she had forgot, along with her younger sister, was staying at her home for a few week whilst her own house was being renovated. Lin didn't even need to say anything. Toph wrapped her strong arms around her daughter's shoulders and pulled her into a firm embrace. She stroked her sopping her and shushed her with a tender, soothing voice that Lin had not heard since she was a child. Lin gave in completely and let the tears fall uncontrollably as her broken wails filled the silence. The two of them never said a word but Lin understood that her mother knew everything and that she was worried about her. Toph on the other hand was not as calm as she seemed. She was ready to straight out murder Tenzin for what he had done but for Lin's sake bit her tongue and, after Lin had calmed down enough to finally fall asleep, went to the arena's gym and busted most of the equipment in a fit of sheer rage.
Chapter 8
A few weeks had passed since the night that Tenzin had raped Lin and she had begun feeling ill. Every morning she would wake and if she didn't eat within half an hour of waking she would be leant over the toilet heaving the contents of her stomach into the bowl. She found that certain tastes and smells would trigger that same sickness and that she was far more tired than she had ever been and was left feeling completely exhausted after a day's work and training. Toph and Suyin were still staying at her apartment and whatever chance she got, Lin was sneaking off to spend time with Kya. Whenever she would sneak out though she would return to her home only to have a fourteen year old Suyin chanting some nonsense about her having snuck out to see Tenzin. After a week of having to listen to her sister's innocent pining Lin caved and ran into her room, threw herself onto her bed and began to cry. Toph told Suyin to calm down and get something ready for dinner because Lin was too tired to do so. Suyin obeyed and Toph entered her oldest daughter's bedroom and sat down on the bed beside her. Before Toph could say anything to comfort the young women Lin had lifted herself up and thrown her full weight against her mother's shoulder and began crying even more hysterically than she had been. Toph was heartbroken by the sight of her broken daughter before her and she too began to cry but was careful not to let Lin see the tears that had crept up out of nowhere. She stroked her daughter's hair just a she had the morning she returned after the incident. Lin lifted her hand and wiped the tears from her eyes before sitting up as straight as she could and slowly began to tell her mother what happened that night. She already knew that her mother had known what had happened but now she had come to wits end and needed someone to listen to how she was feeling. She couldn't go on pretending that there was nothing wrong and that she was the strong and sure Chief of Police that everyone expected her to be. Toph didn't think her heart could break anymore for her daughter but it did. She could almost feel it ripping apart within the confines of her chest. As the anger welled up within her she had to try her utmost to force it back down and not allow it to spill forth in front of Lin. Eventually Lin calmed down enough that she was able to tell her mother about the symptoms she had been experiencing lately and that she was worried because she didn't know what was wrong with her. Toph turned her head in the direction of her daughter, not able to look her in the eyes because she herself couldn't see, with a cold, expressionless look upon her face. She opened her mouth to speak a first time but the words she had to say got caught up in her throat. She closed her and cleared her throat before attempting to speak again. This time she did manage to get the words out and sat waiting as Lin's expression became dark and depressed as the words, "I think you might be with child," escaped her lips. Lin's face was clouded with fear and although Toph could not see it, she knew her daughter was terrified and that she had gone into shock. Toph stood up and made sure that Suyin hadn't set anything on fire. When she was satisfied that her youngest daughter was fine she came back into the room and locked the door behind her. She told Lin that she needed to see a physician to find out for sure whether or not she was pregnant and that after a diagnosis they would work out how to handle the situation from there; together. The next day Lin went to the physician as her mother had suggested and sat waiting nervously for the physician to return to their office with the results. The look upon his face said all there was to say; Lin was, without a doubt, pregnant. She had fallen pregnant after having been raped by Tenzin. On her walk home she wasn't worried about telling her mother, or even her younger sister for that matter, no, the one person she was the most concerned about telling was Kya because then she would have to tell her everything that had happened, everything that Tenzin had done. The thought of having to tell Kya reduced Lin to tears the moment she walked in the front door of her simple apartment. Toph, as she had done many times in the last few weeks, embraced her daughter and allowed her to cry upon her strong shoulder.
When Lin expressed her fears of having to tell Kya, Toph lifted her head and reassured her that there were other ways that they could handle the situation. In the end Lin had decided that she would keep the child until it was born and then put it up for adoption because, in her own mind, she was not ready to be a mother. She rationalised her thinking to herself by coming up with all sorts of reasons to justify her choice. She told herself that she couldn't cope with a child and a career as a single-mother, that there was someone out there that would love the child and better care for it than she could, that she was far too young to be a mother yet because she was only twenty and that she didn't want to have a child unless she could raise it with Kya, the woman that she loved so dearly. Furthermore, she concluded that it would be best to keep her pregnancy a secret form everyone, aside from her mother, including her younger sister. She devised a plan to get Tenzin to break up with her. Her plan was to tell him that she valued her career more than she valued a relationship with him and that she never wanted to have children. As Tenzin wanted children in order to try and grow the Airbender population he ended their relationship. By the time the baby was born Lin had matured quite significantly and had actually begun to second-guess her decision to give the child up for adoption. Eventually, her logic won over had the dark-haired, pale-skinned daughter that she had carried in her womb for nine and a half months was taken from her arms and inside the orphanage. Lin never named her little girl because she felt that she would grow too attached to the child but that never stopped from dreaming about the child every single night up until now. She looked at Kuvira who had grown extremely quite whilst listening intently to Lin's story. "And although I did give up my own child, I never lost my maternal instinct. In the time that I have known Korra she has grown on me and I have come to love her as I would have loved the daughter I never knew." Kuvira's eyes had become clouded by tears, "Now I understand why she is so protective of Korra, she doesn't want her to get hurt and feels a little like Korra's mother. I guess it's like the way Suyin feels about me, given that she adopted me and all." Lin herself felt tears rising to her eyes as she thought about her daughter who, now that she thought about it, would be roughly the same age as the younger Metalbender standing in front of her. To any outside party who didn't know the Beifong family well, Kuvira could easily be mistaken for a Beifong herself. She had the same deep, emerald eyes and the same raven coloured hair. She was an Earthbender and a Metalbender and shared the same muscular, yet feminine, physique of a Beifong woman. Lin had become lost in her thoughts and so too had Kuvira who had been thinking back to them time that she had spent in an orphanage before running away when she had convinced herself that she would never be adopted. From when she was born until she was eight years old Kuvira lived in the Republic City orphanage after her mother left her there. The administrators and mistresses never told her anything about her mother but she could tell that they knew who she was. Kuvira having not yet shown any signs of being a bender of any kind was less likely to be adopted than any of the other children because they could all bend either Earth, Fire or Water. She couldn't stand the thought of not ever belonging to a family and so she ran away and began living of the streets until the day that Suyin found her and took her in. She couldn't understand why a Metalbender would want to adopt a non-bender like herself but then Suyin told her that her husband and son were both non-benders and that she just wanted to see her safe and off of the streets. Suyin taught Kuvira how to dance, fight and defend herself and by the time she was fourteen years old she finally began to show signs that she was a bender after all. What Lin didn't know about Suyin was that she knew about Lin's pregnancy but chose never to say anything because Lin and Toph never spoke about it. It was only when Kuvira was revealed to be a Metalbender that Suyin discovered something. By now the wheels in Kuvira's head had begun to turn and she and Lin went their separate ways.