Author's note: Hello hello! I kind off hate/love this chapter. I hate it because it contains some very emotional Lin (in my world she's The Ice Queen and just a bamf overall) and I love it because I hope it will torture you with feels. Please take note: this is PART ONE. I've been writing this and the next part for like, 3 days so they may contain some spelling mistakes. More than usual I mean. Anyway, enjoy! And pleeeeease R&R!

I do not own these characters, AtLA or LoK!

The clock in the hallway struck two, and she could finally feel her eyelids growing heavy. She was curled up on her couch, leaning on a big cushion and had her long legs folded underneath a blanket. She was reading some papers that she had brought home from work nearly a week earlier. She'd been tired when she got home, but hadn't been able to fall asleep.

Republic City had, for the past two weeks, slowly come to understand that winter was on its way. Late October... Ice-cold rain. Snow. Hail. Torturous and mind freezing winds for those who wore a metal suit. Literally. Lin sighed. Her trenchcoat and scarf was hanging in the hall, drying up from the downpour she had stomped her way home through. The triads did calm down in the winter, especially if it turned out to be a cold one, to the force's relief, but instead, all the homeless and poor became more desperate. Lin usually arrested five people a day that had stolen some food or something else, right under her nose, just so that they could sleep inside a warm building and get a hot meal for a month. It made her feel sad, and she didn't want to have to arrest them, but she couldn't let them go either, knowing that they probably didn't have anywhere to sleep or anything to eat. She remembered an incident where she had found a boy roaming the street she lives on. It was a long time ago since she thought about it.

He was looking through the trashcans when she came. A snowstorm had killed almost all activity in the entire city for a week. No one should, or wanted, to be outside, or the locals that dared to walk outside in daylight would find someone dead on their doorstep. The poor kid didn't discover her until she was standing in front of him, on the other side of the trashcan that he was digging through. When he noticed her, he looked up, recognized her as a police officer, whirled around, and started running faster than Lin could even imagine, in the opposite direction. But, nothing is faster in Republic City than Chief Lin Beifong's metalcables, and so she shot one single cable after him, caught him, and then walked up to him, not letting the cable go. He'd fallen on his rear and landed in the knee-deep snow. When Lin walked up to him he shivered of the cold. She lowered herself down to his level and asked him if he was hungry. He nodded, so Lin helped him up and directed him to the building she lived in, and helped him up the stairs. When they got in, after Lin unlocked the door with her metalbending, she went to find some dry clothes and a towel, while the boy waited in the hall, aimlessly scanning the walls for something personal. He didn't find a single thing. When Lin came back, she ordered him to take a hot bath. He was very dirty. And cold. And skinny...

"If you go down this hall, there's a living room, the door to the left leads to my bedroom, and the door to the left inside there, goes to the bathroom. Okay? You can bathe for as long as you like." she said to him in a uncharacteristic, sweet voice, and handed him the clothes and the towel.

He gulped, nodded, and snuck past her.

While in the bath, Lin made tea and a quick soup with noodles. She looked out the kitchen window. What on earth made him go outside in such horrid weather? The teakettle on the stove whistled and interrupted her thoughts. She poured the water in two cups and put some tea-leaves in. She sat down at the small table with a bowl for herself and the boy, who couldn't be more than 7 years old. When he came out from her bedroom a couple of minutes later, he wore too big sweatpants, with a too big t-shirt, too big socks and had wet hair hanging and dripping down in his eyes. She gestured towards the bowl so he slowly walked through the room and sat down on the other chair. There were only two. Lin didn't have any visitors. Only Katara, once a year, or perhaps Kya, once every third year. Saikhan had been sitting on it a couple of times, a long time ago. The boy gulped down the soup and the tea in 3 minutes, and Lin refilled his bowl 2 times. She asked him a couple of questions that he was quite reluctant to answer. What was he doing outside in the middle of a snowstorm? Where were his parents? Where did he come from? What was his name? How old was he? He answered her quietly, but in a rush. He had, as she suspected, been trying to find some food. His parents were dead, he was born in Republic City, but ran away from the orphanage because a couple of older bender boys bullied him, his name was Skoochy and he was, much to her surprise, 10 years old. After he finished, she gave him a pillow and a blanket and let him sleep on her couch. She let him stay the rest of the week, and by the end of it, the snowstorm was gone. She left for work early, but left him breakfast. When she got home she made dinner. Both he and she warmed up a little after a while. He when he realized that she was the famous Lin Beifong, but still didn't arrest him, and she when she realized that he wouldn't steel anything. When he was about to walk out her door, after living there for five days, warmly dressed, even if some of the clothing was too big, she told him that if he ever needed a place to stay for a few days, he was welcome. And she told him to at least try to stay away from working for the triads, it was dangerous.

Lin smiled a little of the memory. It had been nice to have someone there when she came home from work. And she felt that she couldn't reject the poor boy. It was two years ago now, since she found him. She ran in to him from time to time, and always gave him the few coins she had on her. Lin then realized that she'd been stuck in her thoughts for almost half an hour, looking at the clock beside her, and was now tired enough for bed. When she was just about to get up, a hard knock could be heard at her door. She became suspicious. It was 2:30 am, and she hadn't detected anything with her seismic sense, but then again, she hadn't had her bare feet to the floor. But who could want to meet with her at this time of night? If the police needed her, they usually just called. Lin could feel a small jolt of adrenaline set in, and she was instantly wide awake. She put her papers down on the coffee table, rose from the couch and put on her black silk robe that was lying next to her. Underneath it she wore short boxers and her regular white tank top. Her long, silver hair fell down her back in waves. It was much longer than one would think when they saw her working. She always pinned it up in a way so that it wouldn't tangle in her cables, but when at home she usually just let it be. Walking down her hallway, she used her feet to detect who was standing at her door, and she came to a screeching halt when she recognized it. It was light. Too light for a grown man. Only airbenders could be so light on their feet. A sour, hard lump formed in her gut, and a flare of anger awoke in her chest. She tensed and scowled, but took a deep breath, leaned forward, and opened her door, ready to snarl something mean.

3 months after the Equalists revolution, 30 years on the police force, losing the love of her life, losing her mother and losing her bending, Lin thought it quite impossible to really take her by surprise anymore, but obviously she'd been wrong. She could feel her face showing that surprise, but it only lasted for a second before she managed to compose it back into an expressionless mask. In front of Lin's apartment Tenzin, in all his glory, stood, and held in his arms, a trembling young boy. Lin's expressionless mask cracked at the sight of it. When she could tear her gaze away from Skoochy's limp body and look up at Tenzin, he just looked at her with a tired, sad expression and she instinctively moved out of the way so that Tenzin could hurry into her apartment, without as much as a hello, and as if he'd never left it from the beginning. He walked right into the living room while Lin shut the door behind her and quickly followed. When she entered the room, Tenzin had laid Skoochy down on her couch and she opened her mouth before he even had time to turn around and face her.

"What happened?!" It came out a little too loud to be perceived as calm, but she didn't care.

Tenzin spun around, blowing up a wind that made Lin's hair whirl down in her face and headed for her bedroom. The worry hit her like lightning and with a pang in her chest and she hurried to the couch and knelt down, trying to find what was wrong with Skoochy, because something was. His eyes weren't open and his breathing heavy, wheezy and uneven. His open mouth was in threads of flesh and blood, and the red liquid ran down his chin, dripping onto her couch. With strong hands and arms, Lin tore his clothes and found the source on the boy's body. At first, she couldn't understand what her eyes told her that she saw. It didn't feel real to her, it was completely unrealistic. She felt so out-tuned from her own body, and could no longer her Tenzin dig through her bathroom, that she was afraid she was losing her bending once again. She remained frozen, just staring at the gaping hole in the boy's stomach, until Tenzin emerged from her bedroom with a sheet full of bandages, herbs and water. He stopped immediately as he laid his eyes upon Lin, kneeling beside the couch, frozen and her hands covered in blood.. But she didn't look up at him. She could only stare at the red that ran down her hands and was absorbed by her once green couch. Where the blood spread it now looked black. She could feel her heart beat angrily against her ribs, but just couldn't move. Her mind was a hurricane. What happened? How could this happen? HE'S ONLY A BOY! HE'S MINE! As she thought this, she tried to take in some sort of air, but choked. Her throat was all tangled up in chock. She could feel warm tears making their way down her cheeks, her lungs screaming for air that she couldn't give them and a headache starting to pound in her temples. She knew he wasn't hers. He never was and he would never be, but still. He was hers, in a weird way that she hadn't even understood herself yet. And she felt so guilty. So, so unbelievably guilty. She could have done more for him. Adopt him. If she'd done that, he'd never been injured. He'd been alive with a good shot at the future. The tears clouded her vision but she could focus long enough to see his chest stop moving. And that's when a sound fought its way out of her throat that made Tenzin crash down beside her, pulling her away from Skoochy into his warm embrace, that she thought she would never find herself in, again. Her body reacts as if on autopilot and she releases her grip on the dead boy that keeps bleeding on her couch, throws her bloody arms and hands around Tenzin's neck and sobs into his chest. She's doesn't know that her thoughts slips out of her mouth, her mind and body still processing the chock.

"He's…" Hiccup. "Mine..."

She's not aware of how long Tenzin holds her, just sitting there on the floor, rocking her back and forth like a baby, stroking her back and whispers comforting words in her ear. But she can feel his tears landing in her hair.

"He's mine Tenzin, and I let him down. He was mine. I was supposed to protect him and I let him down. I'm so, so sorry." Her words come out in weak whispers but Tenzin hears them perfectly.

After a while, it might have been ten minutes or four hours, her sobs die down to sniffs, her breathing becomes more regular and her heart calms down. Tenzin has stopped crying and dries her tears with his left thumb, stroking her scarred cheek. When he seems to realize what he's doing, he stops, and just holds her. A minute later he moves, and Lin gasps out loud but grips tightly to his robes when she finds herself cradled in his arms while he carries her to her bed, and slowly lays her down. That's when she feels how exhausted she is. As if someone has sucked the life out of her completely. When her head hits the pillow, her mind goes blank. She can't keep her eyes open one more moment, and sinks into darkness.