Writer's Note: Holy hell, dude, with this chapter here I am more than 1/4th of the way through the main body of this story. I don't know if I can take that.
Where is my life going.
Besides down the drain.
Ahhhhh.
Anyway, thank you so much for the reviews. They honestly make my day-it is like freaking Christmas, New Year's, and getting an A+ on an essay whenever I receive a new one. Even though I would write this story without them, they help me power through; especially since I get so sick of reading my own writing. I seriously don't understand why anyone thinks it is great, but it seriously makes me happy that you do. Style is such a personal taste, haha. I also wonder where the hell I am getting 99.9% of my characterisation. I do think about it, but I am also making it up as I go. Just-whatever feels right, I use. Okay. I should probably stop talking about this now.
As for this chapter: it's a little dry, but there's a lot of interesting stuff in it, I think. For example the soundbending junk-that's all the result of research. Perfect silence will drive you mad. There is a lot of implied Linzin below, but more no action for them as a couple just now. That'll be in the next chapter, when Tenzin and Lin meet again after two years. Plenty of time for a lot of sexual tension to boil over, no?
The first lesson Tenzin learns is about silence. No matter how they endeavour, or how clever they may be, airbenders are not able to create absolute silence. They've never been able to.
"You can create complete silence inside of yourself, but you cannot create complete silence outside of yourself. It's about controlling yourself, not the world. It's not up to us to control the world, but rather it is up to us to control ourselves so that we are able adapt. Then we can tackle whatever the world has in store for us," Aang says.
The trainee Tenzin does not open his eyes. He nods.
"Listen—these are the sounds of the world."
For a while, Tenzin does listen. They're at the Western Air Temple first. And it is quiet, but it is not silent. The world is alive and the temple is alive with sounds. Tenzin can hear the wind and the echoes that it makes through the buildings hanging over them. He can hear the wind roaring in the gorge gaping besides them. He can hear the faint rumble of the earth beneath them.
Tenzin exhales.
"Though," Aang continues, "complete silence can be created. But, as with anything else made by human hands, created silence is artificial. It's unnatural. And it was not possible until recently—as with many other things, much has been changed in recent history. There was a "Silent Room" created by an Earth Kingdom scientist at Ba Sing Se University. In this room the scientist placed a man to be his test subject. The test subject didn't last more than an hour—at first the silence hadn't been so bad, but absence of external sounds amplified his own internal sounds. His heartbeat started as a murmur, then it grew to a whisper, then it grew to a loud conversation, then it grew to a drum, and then it grew to a marching legion in his head. But he couldn't escape his body. And, on top of the cacophony of the legion, he started to hallucinate. The blood flowing in his veins became a rushing, swollen river ready to burst through his skin.
"He went mad."
Tenzin's utterly still. Then he pushes his knuckles together a little closer in his meditative stance, finding his centre over his sternum. He imagines his chi flowing, otherwise in this moment he feels that it will not move of its own accord. It would refuse to move down his arms and legs and up to his bare forehead. As Tenzin exhales, his breath blows down between his hands and chest.
"The report the scientist published with his findings hasn't been circulated." Aang pauses. On the surface his son remains as unmoved as bedrock, he has so nearly mastered his physical body. But Aang perceives that Tenzin's mind has been moved by a piquant detail of his father's story. "This artificial silence is one technology that I didn't want to see widely known and disseminated. The Earth King agreed with me." And now Aang can only hope that one day it doesn't end up as one of the many methods of persuasion in the Dai Li's arsenal.
Aang then says, "And keeping it veiled is for the greater good. There're already far too many ways for someone to steal another's life—ways that this room makes look almost compassionate. But, you must be wondering why I am teaching you this. To come back to airbenders, I have already told you that we can't create pure silence."
The sun is setting. Light has begun to hit the opposite wall of the gorge, giving it colour and making it bleed in tones of bright reds, oranges, and yellows. The light creeps down, and the colour seeps down.
"What airbenders can do is create sound. This is our ultimate technique, if you would prefer to think of it that way. It corresponds to the lightning of firebenders, the bloodbending of waterbenders, and the metalbending of earthbenders. Unlike all of the other higher bending arts, though, soundbending is achievable by any airbender—but no airbender is permitted to use it."
There have been exceptions who've gone against this prohibition of course, Aang may as well say, but instead he says, "For it's lethal to its victims when it's used to attack. Used in such a capacity, it's also always lethal to the bender who utilises it. This is the karmic price."
Tenzin, who has stayed silent until now, says, "All life is sacred." His sixteen year old head's spinning despite his efforts to clear it. He had been meditating and mostly peaceful, doing such a good job listening and absorbing as his father taught him. But he had not been expecting this.
Soundbending.
Just the sound of it is fantastical.
"All life is sacred," Aang says. Aang stands up slowly and, with his hands held behind his back, he circles around his son once, twice. "But every airbender must learn about this technique. It is a part of airbending. To him who will become an airbending master, nothing is hidden. Do you understand this?"
"Yes," Tenzin says. The word echoes around them.
"Then we shall begin the second of your final lessons."
Aang then explains soundbending to his pupil. They go through the stances, the forms, what is the proper mindset, the history of the technique, times when it has been used, and what the technique does in disturbingly precise detail.
"And it's not theoretical," Aang says. "We know for sure this is what happens when soundbending's used." The monks and nuns who had been the first performers had all been dissected, studied, and studied again and again to try and understand the nature of the technique. For years it had been a repulsive, engrossing mystery. The victims had never shown a single external symptom, not a bump or bruise or scrap or any other bodily evidence of distress. There had only been their faces locked in a single expression of sudden, ineffable pain.
Internally, however, their bodies had always turned out to be absolutely savaged. Hearts were torn, arteries were truncated, brains were asphyxiated. So something horrifying definitely had happened.
"What was finally figured out was that force from the bent sound is so great, it shreds through the lung tissue, forcing air bubbles into the arteries," Aang says, tracing a finger along from the centre of his chest, to the side to his heart, up to the crown of his head. "And then it is a matter of seconds before death, you see, for the blood flow is simply cut off. It is a fast death, and one of the only two ways in which airbending can kill."
Before the sun completely sets, the technique has been passed on.
.
The Eastern Air Temple doesn't have as many rooms or amenities as the Western Air Temple, and its statues and views aren't as enchanting in such a breathtaking way, but as soon as Tenzin slides down on Oogi's tail, he feels lighter than he ever has before. He feels that this ground is sacred. This temple doesn't have the mystical allure of all-day echo chambers, pagodas hanging down from the roof of a cliff, or wind singing mournfully through a gulf at any hours of the day. But still—Tenzin is compelled to be here.
It's pleasing, and it tickles his fancy, and it makes his spirit buoyant.
As Aang leaves him to meditate for twenty-four hours, Tenzin becomes weightless easily and leaves his body. He passes right up through his seventh chakra to dwell in celestial places.
When a day has passed and the sun has returned back to its zenith, Aang sits down near his son and waits. Aang had gone walking through the temple's deserted stone hallways looking any signs of the wise man who'd aided him so long ago. Back then the man with the spirit of a free happy child had helped the young scared Avatar unclog his chakras, and also ascend through his seventh chakra for the first and final time. It was a long shot, Aang admits, but it could've been that Guru Pathik was still alive. Could a human live over 200 years, if she or he wasn't the Avatar? Aang doesn't know. Avatar Kyoshi, who'd achieved 230 years herself, wasn't sharing her beauty secrets with Aang, and apparently she hadn't shared with Roku either.
Aang has looked, but there was no sign that he could find. In fact, every time Aang has visited this temple since the war, he has never found anything more helpful than a cup of onion and banana juice. Perhaps that is karma.
Tenzin's still meditating six hours later. Aang can sense that his son's soul and spirit are currently not present, so he himself goes off to walk around again, and find something to eat. After one circuit Aang heads to the sky bison stables. He smiles at their two sky bison, Oogi and Appa. He then talks to them for a while, telling them about how he remembers how well Sister Iio had played airball, about how excited he had been the night before he picked out Appa, about his son who might just be able to meditate for forty-eight hours straight. The time that he tried to give up his love in this temple.
Appa yawns.
Laughing to himself, Aang jumps up onto Oogi's saddle to grab some food and rummages through one of several identical rucksacks. While Aang's thinking that his son has his spirituality down pat, but he's a mama's boy who apparently can't be bothered to pack his dirty robes into the laundry bag, Aang realises that he's looking in the wrong place for what he wants. Rather this is Tenzin's personal bag in his hands.
And it is too late—as Aang re-packs the clothing that he has pulled out, something slips out of its bundle and lands partially on his knee. Aang looks down at the betrothal necklace his son has nearly finished carving. He stares at it for a few moments, appreciating the smooth, well-cut intricate lines in the stone. Lines that are so finally wrought, they look like swirling threads of precious metal caught frozen in mid-flow. The design is definitely not Water Tribe, and it is only a little bit Air Nation.
Nonetheless, it is a pretty necklace.
Aang picks it up. Sighs, before placing it back in Tenzin's personal pack. Not for the first time since the beginning of this trip, Aang thinks to himself, And here is a change for us. Things cannot be the same for airbenders, Aang knows. The Air Nomads are gone. In a way, too, this trip has made Aang realise how true that is.
Not only are they all dead and gone save for him, but, when he himself passes away, Air Nomad culture will pass away too. For Tenzin is not a true Air Nomad. He has been raised by two exclusive parents, he has grown up with his siblings. These are not the beginnings that shaped proper Air Nomads. Not to mention that while Aang teaches his son to the best of his ability, there are just some things that refuse to filter down. So there must be adjustments and changes, even in the most pure transfusions of his culture. Air Nomad culture is Aang's culture, but it is not Tenzin's culture. With him, it has become Airbender culture.
Though there is this change and many more, Aang doesn't think they are either good or bad. They're just differences.
Aang goes back to Tenzin and waits. Then at seventy-two hours he draws the line. Standing behind his son, Aang dumps a bowl of cool clear spring water onto Tenzin's head, and then he dances back to avoid Tenzin's flailing arms.
"W-what?" Tenzin asks, alarmed. He looks around him as he breathes heavily.
"It's been three days," Aang says. "Look, you've got stubble! Besides, it's time for your next lesson. You've got your spirituality down. I am very proud of you for that, but we need to use this time for other things. There're cultural lessons for you to learn yet, and this is the only place to teach you." One day, Tenzin will have to teach an Avatar to airbend. Before that, he will have repopulate and revive a race.
After Tenzin dries off with a blast of air, they go for a walk through all of the corridors of the temple, and Aang shares his heritage with his son and pupil. For Tenzin, time becomes a prayer wheel. The days repeating ever the same. His father's words are constantly collected, and each lesson is collected, and the power in Tenzin's head grows.
.
They are somewhere over the Earth Kingdom when he remembers her.
Tenzin is dreaming. He is on Oogi and Oogi is flying beneath him, but something about this is not like the normal arrangement. It is because Tenzin is not taking Oogi somewhere but Oogi is taking him somewhere.
He tries to say something, but there's a twister in his throat. He can't quell it no matter how hard he tries to bend it away.
When he thinks to look down, an army stretches out for kilometers in all directions. What Tenzin sees his dream names as The Night Army. This here is the fabled military which rode out of the world, which was conjured by an unspoken word, which had fled from the Avatar's justice.
And now it is back.
"Isn't that something?" Lin asks him. She's suddenly there. She's attired in the robe she had worn at his father's last banquet, a fine thing that belongs more on a gourmet pastry than a sky bison's head—he himself thinks so. And there is something so puzzling about the way that the intricately stitched sleeves are forced up by the wind so as to leave her forearms bare. As if she is more naked this way than if she had worn no robe at all.
She's leaning on all fours to get a good look over Oogi's head. She's practically hanging off of the sky bison and Tenzin wants to say something, to save her, but it won't happen. Why will she not come back? Why will she not grab onto his arm and sit at his side where it is safe? And it would be safe by him, despite the hundreds of thousands of immaterial nomadic warriors charging below.
Of course, Tenzin could reach out this whole time. And then he does, and when he touches her, she says, "Do you remember me yet, Airhead? That's a start! Now what about those secret plans of yours?"
Then Lin laughs at him and Oogi dips and begins to fall, and Tenzin knows that they are going to fall through the air into a sea of horses and warriors and into earth, but he and Lin are shoulder to shoulder, hand in hand, they might make it, except that they don't. Tenzin wakes up because he has rolled off of Oogi in his sleep.
Groaning, Tenzin stands up. He's not able see what has become of the Night Army or Lin Beifong. He is warm. So—a dream.
Of course it was, Airhead.
Sighing, Tenzin climbs back up onto Oogi. Normally he would meditate on a dream so stark, but he's pretty sure he understands the meaning already. Though his secret plans aren't really secret at all. Nor are they even proper plans.
He has never thought the betrothal necklace would actually be a Betrothal Necklace. He realises this now even without thinking about it. The necklace was a present. Because it would be something nice to give to Lin; she herself has very personal ties to Water Tribe culture, and why not give her something?
He hadn't really meant to propose marriage. The necklace had been meant as a gift—a sentimental bauble, to call it by a name more suited to its original intention behind it.
But then Tenzin had been forced to dwell on it by his father, who had found the necklace and decided it was time for a special lesson that was more father-son than master-pupil—The Ladies Talk, if Tenzin would. So Tenzin had realised that he hadn't meant to not propose to Lin, and that was something. As it were, he had never thought about his future without Lin somewhere in it. They had been in each other's lives as they'd grown older, and so Tenzin'd just assumed it would continue. What else there was—Tenzin couldn't imagine, and hasn't bothered to.
Which meant, in more ways than one, Tenzin had never thought to let Lin go.
It also meant that he loved her.
…
Every time that Lin had tried to meditate, it hadn't gone as she'd expected. Or as she would've liked it to, really. No matter if she were alone, with Aang, with Tenzin, with Tenzin and Aang, a group of Air Acolytes, or if she were with any other combination of surrounding presences, Lin simply couldn't figure it out.
She had of course been able to manage the doing nothing part of meditation well, and staying relaxed in the beginning. Waiting was what the earth did. That was the way to survive and exist over such vast epochs. Lin could imagine herself as a spread of land, waiting and waiting, existing through an entire cycle that took several centuries to change her from a lush forest to a desolate desert. The concept of waiting was negative jing, and her mother had drilled that into her head since she could stand up and sense with her own two feet.
But what came after, that was what had been impossible for her. While anyone else's spirit would soar off within moments of sitting down, Lin's would remain behind. Steady and stable and admirable, but not free. Which was the goal of meditation.
Once Bumi had found her struggling earnestly to free her spirit. He had come up to her, put his hand on her shoulder, and he had dragged her away so that he could talk to her without interrupting his father or his brother.
"Come play with Kya and me!" he'd said once they were away into the bushes. "We need someone to build a cave for the platypus bears we're gonna capture."
"That's stupid," Lin'd said with a scowl. "There're no platypus bears on this island, and anyway I don't have time to earthbend right now. I'm trying to meditate, stupidhead."
"Blah." Bumi'd shaken his head. "Why bother? You're always trying to meditate!"
"It's important. Your father said so."
"Then why don't you actually meditate?"
Lin'd paused, and then she had had to say to him, "Because I haven't gotten a hang on it yet."
"Then stop trying for a while, Lin." Bumi'd said. He had paused for a moment as someone walked by, but he had stared at her the entire time. "If you try too hard, how're you gonna let go? When you try, your eyes close so hard it looks like you have to shit. How's your spirit supposed to escape then? Through your bum?"
Of course Lin had hit him with several rocks then, but he'd had a point, no matter how juvenile he had made it sound. Rather than give up though, Lin had tried harder the harder she failed. She would remain peaceful during sessions as if she actually had been meditating, but afterwards she would always have to go out and break the swell of her temper against some rocks, lest it grow too much and lead to something she'd regret. Aang had always encouraged her when she came back bleeding and becalmed, her dirty face tear-streaked—it would come in time, surely. Lin just had to find what was the right base for her. After all, the earth chakra was the lowest of the chakras, and therefore the easiest to have blocked. Fear was what blocked it, and fear was something that everyone had to face everywhere, every day.
Then one day, Lin had simply understood why meditation wasn't working for her. She'd been sitting among a group of non-bender Air Acolytes, each robed in saffron and red and yellow and matching the colours of the sun over the bay, and Lin'd open her eyes and she'd seen for the first time that all of these people were not of her element.
Her element was earth—she was earth, through and through, and this was her mother's legacy. She could never have had too much earth in her for she was her mother's daughter.
She was Lin Beifong. They were all airheads.
And that was the biggest reason why she is here today, graduating from Republic City's Metalbending Academy a full two years early.
She will officially join the police force tomorrow.
She spends the night writing and reciting the speech she has agreed to give.
.
"—And part of our city's problem is balance. We have a rule of law that equalises us all—people from all nations, benders and non-benders alike. But the arm of the law is no longer strong enough to allow the rule of law to extend to its fullest potential. We know what our best practices are, and yet we are not implementing them to the true extent of our abilities. We are not reaching our capacity. We are not doing our best.
"I will not stand for this."
Lin pauses just briefly, and it is easy to assume that she does it for dramatic effect, but that assumption does not take into account Lin's mood, and nor does it account for her attitude in this moment. She stands tall, her shoulders are straight, her legs are a distance apart. She must of course stand straight because of the armour that is now her skin, but she stands straighter than that. She is proud and strong, and that is shown by the deliberate curve of her spine. Though her hands are behind her back, she will not allow herself to clench them, for she knows that that would give her just a bit of comfort. She will not allow herself to prove that she could possibly falter even just a little bit in this important moment.
She must speak of her mother, for this is part of her speech.
"I will not stand for this, and neither would our previous esteemed Chief of Police, Toph Beifong."
And now Lin pauses. This time it is on purpose.
"I have sworn an oath of service to Republic City. Protecting it is now my duty—and I shall do my duty to the last."
The ground rumbles from the applause and stomping and general hullabaloo that Lin has engendered. She is adored. And for a second her mind lights up with vibrations in spite of the heavy boots encasing her feet—it is nothing but a frisson, it is nothing but a spark, but for the tiniest of moments Lin can hear her mother talking to her.
She thinks her mother would've said, "Now that's my girl."
.
Many of Lin's fellow graduates take Lin's theme to heart. And they go to town with it, getting smashed to their fullest extent—a good deal of them will wake up hangovers more debilitating than migraines.
Lin attends the party too, but she does not touch more than the same single cup of rice wine the entire night. All of other graduates are older than her; Lin is not quite eighteen, and already tonight she is sizing up and categorising her fellow law enforcement agents.
She knows that they will not be her peers for long. Taking a sip of her wine, she thinks of how much work she will have to do once she makes Chief of Police. Though what did she expect of her fellows, really—they simply aren't cut from the same cloth as her. They are twenty or twenty-one and young and talented and inexperienced and callow.
She is Toph Beifong's daughter.
.
But still, there had always been times when it hurt. When Tenzin, Aang, and she would sit meditating, she had never thought of them three as being together. It had been Tenzin and Aang meditating together as father and son, as master and pupil. It had been Aang and Tenzin, and her—she would open her eyes sometimes and simply watch them and wonder where they had gone off to. And were they then together there too, wherever there was?
She had been wearing Air Acolyte robes for a while, which had let in breezes between her thighs and over her belly that her own robes had never allowed. She hadn't been allowed to don the get-up of an airbending pupil, but then she'd never been interested in trying that. By that time she'd already tired of making fun of Tenzin for his parachute pants. As if he needed when he fell from the sky.
Aang had always told her, Next time, maybe. And, spirits help her, each time there always had been hope for a next time, maybe, until Lin had one day finally left a session early on her own. When her back had been turned, she'd said, "I am earth, and I move metal."
She knew she wouldn't need meditation in the metalbending academy, at least not truly. Metal was too strong for the fickle—no lily liver would ever be manipulating it. Metalbenders are strong, not spiritual.
.
The graduates are not the only ones who attend the party. Several young officers are there, mingling. They are senior officers now that this new batch of juniors has come in. After tonight, though, they will be working side by side down at the station, on the streets, or up in the airships.
One of the oldest males at the party approaches Lin. He is considered good-looking, with his tanned skin, brown hair, grey eyes, white straight teeth. He is not the tallest there, but he is taller than Lin and she's not exactly short. She has grown to become as willowy as her aunt had predicted.
Lin sits with her upper body supported by the bar and her drink balanced in her hands. She could be drunk, or she could be sober. He is not sure. She is red in the face, though that probably has to do with the rising ambient heat in the room, the pollution of so many moving bodies in too little space.
"That was a great speech," he says to her. He is twenty-six, and he sits down next to her.
She does not look at him. "Thanks," she says.
He says, "You're beautiful."
"I'm not interested." She takes a sip of her saki, puts her cup down with one hand, and then she scowls at him.
But he laughs and points to her cup. "How many of those have you had? One? Two? That's not enough to celebrate making it to the force—the metalbending force. We're elite now, baby! Come on, loosen up. You'll have the rest of your career to keep a stiff upper lip in front of the garbage we are in charge of cleaning up in this city."
Lin has never heard her Uncle's city described in such a way before.
Shut the fuck up she could scream at his odious head, but instead she slams her foot into the bar. A section of the bar dislodges and shoves the older officer from his chair. "This seat is taken," Lin snarls, "until my boyfriend gets back."
"What a shame," the man says to her. He rolls up, spits at her, and smirks. "I doubt he realises how much of a bitch he's stuck with."
He walks away in disgust, and Lin adds another tally to her list. The list of officers who will need to be bent back into shape grows longer and longer.
