Piece (continued)

-Sokka (in text) Pt. 2: The Resting Place-

Forty-nine years prior.

Lin was born.

Toph was thirty-two.

It was not long before Lin was able to show that she was truly an earthbender like her mother. The simple act of moving a rock felt like child's play to the little girl, but Toph was amazed by it. This thing, this girl, she created her, and she was so powerful.

As more years passed, Lin grew, learned to talk and began making friends, Aang's youngest son, Tenzin, being her closest one. And soon, her only one, as she felt so comfortable and safe and happy around him. And he felt the same with her. Toph was also happy whenever she was around her daughter. Her smiling daughter. Lin was always smiling. So happy and energetic. Tough and apparently, after starting school, naturally smart as well. And she loved to laugh, especially with Tenzin. It never got old to Toph, hearing her daughter laugh, hearing her have fun.

As time wore on, things began to change for the Beifongs. Lin was eight. Toph was forty. Outside the house, beyond the line marking the Beifong property, the grass turned to gravel as factories and smokestacks began to appear, indicating the beginnings of a massive industrial makeover for the area. Clad in her Police Department armor, Toph Beifong returned from the courthouse downtown, shaken after having her blood bent by the terror that was Yakone. Tired and reminded of the horrors that one can find behind the many dark corners of the young city just across the water, but relieved that the man was finally behind bars, shed of his dangerous ability thanks to the Avatar. And happy to know that her daughter was safe from yet another threat, but there were still many more out there, including that one, the one she could never let slip from her memory, the one she had long since given up her attempts to find.

"Mom! You're home! Look, I got you this by the water when I was with Aunt Katara today! It's a shell," Lin yelled.

"Oh, it's beautiful, dearest. It looks so pretty." Toph said, sitting at the kitchen table, nearly falling asleep.

"You didn't even feel it! You have no idea what it looks like."

Toph giggled to herself. It brightened her up. She never fooled her daughter with that one. She picked up the shell. "Wow. This is nice. Do you want to put it somewhere?"

"You bet I do! I'll put it next to the rock I found yesterday."

"Yeah, you might want to stop collecting so much stuff, Lin. You are running out of room to put them all. This is a small house."

"Don't worry. I found a ton of space behind this wall!" Lin said.

"Huh? What wall?"

Toph followed Lin and learned that behind one of the walls there was enough space for a closet. Maybe even bigger than that. Lin had moved the floorboards to gain access to the space by going underneath the house, and let her mother come down with her. It had a few rocks, shells, leaves…other things Lin had brought in over the last few weeks.

"This is weird," Toph said, her feet feeling the ground in the crawlspace. "I never noticed this. When did you find this?"

Lin looked at her feet, thinking she was in trouble. "Uhm, the week before last, I think?"

"Well, let's just keep the floorboards where they are supposed to be, okay, honey? No more moving them."

"Ok."

"Did you have a fun time with Aunt Katara and your cousin Kya and Tenzin today?"

"Yes! Kya did my hair. She keeps telling me how pretty and long it is."

"That is nice of her. You do have very good hair. Thanks to me, that is."

"Mom, Uncle Aang isn't my actual uncle, right? Right, mom?"

"No he isn't. He's a close family friend, but he and I aren't related. Why?"

"Hehe, that would have made me and Tenzin real cousins. Like, family. Eww." Lin said, blushing. Toph felt her daughter's heart race, reminding her of her pregnant months hearing that loud thumping noise of Lin's heart. Although she always wanted to, even the feeling of Lin's skin when Toph hugged her brought back traces of those horrible memories. Almost every time, she had to suppress it, but she was getting better at it. She hugged her daughter often when Lin was still a young girl. Toph loved it.

The world felt so quiet when Lin was gone. Empty. Toph even missed the constant sound of the heartbeat blasting in her ears. The heart that would always beat on, against every struggle and conflict and evil. Lin's heart was strong, Toph knew that. But how strong? Could she make it stronger? Could Toph be sure that her daughter would be safe as a young girl? What about as a young adult? The city was evil sometimes, Toph knew that better than anyone. She had just gone face to face with one of its darkest forces, a man who could control other humans with nothing more than his mind. What if there were more? What if they came for Toph's family?

What if something like that happened again? Happened to Lin?

Years earlier, after Lin moved her first rock, Toph began giving her lessons in earthbending, and then soon, metalbending. To ensure her daughter would be safe in the city. To ensure that she would be able to defend herself in case anything happened. She enjoyed teaching her daughter, watching her grow and learn and smile when she did something right. But as she grew up, as time passed and Toph became more worried about Lin's safety, knowing what kind of horrible things could happen to her and wanting Lin to experience nothing like what Toph had to go through, the lessons became tougher. Toph had sworn to herself to set a line between mother and master, but now it was becoming blurry. Lin's training and her parenting were nearly indistinguishable. And as Lin struggled to keep up with her mother's demands, pushing through the pain of more difficult training regimes, her attitude began to change from the happy, carefree, adventurous girl.

Soon, Lin's respite from the daily grind of school and earthbending training came in the form of the boy named Tenzin. As they grew, the two friends developed a much stronger relationship than mere friends which instilled a desire within them to be with each other as often as possible. Toph knew that Tenzin would sneak in at night to see the girl he had developed a crush on, but the act just disgusted Toph. She had no hatred or doubt for Tenzin, but everything he did, his eyes for Lin, sneaking through her window, his light feet that were unnoticeable to Toph's heightened senses unless he goofed up, it just reminded her of that day. The day that someone had come through her window, had taken advantage of Toph while she was vulnerable, so quiet she could not hear, unable to break free of her imprisonment in her sleep while it all went down. Tenzin meant no harm, she knew that, but the acts seemed so related, and she did not want to associate the nice, loving airbender with the horrible man who had gotten past Toph's defenses. Lin reacted to her mother's disapproval by sneaking out, adding to Toph's worry. Making her think terrible thoughts about her daughter being trouble, of someone easily pretending to be Tenzin and coming through her window and taking her for himself because he knew he could.

Toph was sickened by these thoughts, and in reaction to them, intensified her training lessons, and hardened her attitude toward her growing daughter with hopes to strengthen the girl. They would train on the acres of dirt and grass owned by Toph. The area continued to undergo a change in appearance, though. Companies were purchasing nearby land and building factories on them, blocking the sunlight with a layer of smog, disrupting the beautiful natural scenery and replacing it with the view of cold metal and lifeless machines. They offered Toph a good deal of money for the property around her house, but she refused repeatedly, using that land to train Lin, who was growing stronger every day.

Lin soon learned, after days of gruesome training, to see with her feet, something Toph demanded Lin learn before she could go out on her own. She did, and she became so much stronger that she was almost matching the strength of her mother, but the fear in Toph never fled. The blind earthbender was never satisfied, her paranoia never calmed, but in Lin's mind, she believed that Toph was just not satisfied with her performance. In Lin's mind, her mother thought Lin was a failure. Lin would hint at these beliefs as a young girl to Sokka, as she brushed dirt out her hair on the front steps of her house when he would come to see the family.

Sokka knew Toph would be a harsh teacher, but he did not expect something like this would happen. That the stress and fear Toph possessed would manifest in the form of an extremely rigorous and demanding earthbending master. And that these reasons differed from the reasons that Lin held to be true in regards to this difficult training regime. Toph knew it was wrong, but she could not stop. She was more than proud of her daughter, but she could never put her fears aside, could never give positive reinforcement and potentially let her daughter become over-confident enough to let her guard down like Toph did, and get hurt. So in that way, Toph was not satisfied with her daughter's training. She would never be. Not because she thought her daughter was weak and helpless, something she definitely did not believe, but because Toph could not accept that there was still the possibility, there was still at least one person in the world, that would be able to lay a single hand on her daughter in order to hurt her.

But eventually, Toph had less control over Lin. Her daughter was growing older, more independent. In her late teens, Lin was romantically involved with Tenzin, and the young earthbender tried to believe that she was truly happy as she found her place in society with another person to love, but Toph could see the effects of her training in her daughter. Lin had become hardened, abrasive, and she had constructed more walls around herself, almost as a shock to Sokka who expected the happy, joyful little girl he had once babysat and fed and laughed with. Instead, Lin grew moody, switching between different emotions, all of them mostly negative, until they started tending toward a neutral level. Like feeling nothing. Her social life was nonexistent, also something that one would not have anticipated just from knowing the girl Lin used to be. She had only one friend, Tenzin: her boyfriend, who she loved dearly.

"I don't feel the need for more friends," Lin said to Sokka. "I don't want liabilities." To Lin, more friends were just more people who would potentially be dissatisfied with her, just like she thought her mother was. More people who would train her and point out inadequacies.

To make her mother happy and to fulfill what she said she believed she had to do, Lin joined the police force. Although Toph expected her fears to sky-rocket, she was surprised to find they did not. The danger of Lin being in the force did not scare her, it was almost calming actually. And she was proud, too. She even showed it a little, easing the tension in the relationship with her daughter. She was proud her daughter had followed her mother. Proud she had become so strong and powerful. Her heart still pounding away. Toph could always be with her daughter now.

The fear in Toph for her daughter's safety started to diminish, but it was not long until one simple act of violence, and one simple scar, brought it all back. And more. A whole lot more. Old feelings buried by Toph long ago. Sokka watched as Toph felt the scar on her daughter's face hours after the incident had occurred. It was on the face. It was only two streaks. But she was positive. She knew, absolutely, that it was the same mark.

Indra.

Now, the dread and horror and fear was sealed into Toph's life from this point onward. She could no longer eradicate the feelings of disgust for herself. The feelings of failure. And now her daughter was pulled into this. Into her mistake. Lin would have to pay for what Toph had done. He was coming for her. Was he? Where had he been hiding? Whatever the answer, Toph regretted that she had never found the man, and now Lin, the one she loved more than anything in the world, was in trouble.

The remainder of Toph's life was ruled by this fear, once again straining the relationship with her daughter. Fits of anger and arguments erupting between the two women. Toph could do no more with her life than work, work to sweep every tainted individual off the streets. Lin sunk further away from her old self, from emotion and happiness and feeling like an actual person. She felt like a machine, constantly training under her mother, constantly working under her mother's rule. Soon, her mother was not even telling her to do anything. She was no longer her master or her boss or her dictator, but her demands were tattooed inside Lin's head. Became her framework for her existence. Toph saw it, but couldn't do anything about it. She knew she was losing her daughter, but soon that didn't matter, because soon she was also losing herself.

Lin grew old in appearance quickly, as did Toph. Lin's first gray hair appeared in her mid twenties. The women tried to ignore their body's haste in aging, attributing it to their stress from work and from being around each other. Both women had long since moved out of the house Toph had built for her by now, although the Beifongs still owned the land. Lin moved into the city, near the Headquarters where she worked tirelessly, just like her mother. Work, bringing justice to the city, growing older, that was all they knew anymore. That was the only thing they could do anymore. But eventually, Toph could not even do that.

At the age of twenty-five, Lin had already been taking more and more of her mother's duties as Toph began to fall ill. Passing out during missions and feeling too sick to come to work several days of the week. Toph was fifty-seven. Although Lin had her differences with her mother, she never felt more worried than when she saw that Toph was becoming extremely sick, to the point where she had to remain bedridden days in a row. Hardly able to walk or fight. Toph looked at least fifteen years older than her actual age. She was always stressed about her job, about Lin, about her life, and this was what Lin believed to be the cause of her mother's illness.

It was at this age, fifty-seven, that Toph was convinced by her daughter to retire from the force. After her success in doing this, Lin took a short leave to transport her mother out of the city, back to the small house with all of its acres, acres of land now in the middle of arrays of loud factories constantly churning out new products. She hadn't been back to their old dwelling place in nine years. Toph could do nothing more after a few months other than eat and sleep as Lin worked part-time hours at the station carrying out Toph's old duties in order to make enough money to fulfill her other responsibility of caring for her dying mother. The factory owners nearby would stop by the house often while Lin was looking after of Toph, making generous offers for the land. Feeling strained for money, Lin agreed to sell a large portion of the land, as long as they did not build on the house.

The factories rose, ganging up on the small home, and Lin used the money wisely, keeping the house stocked with enough food to sustain her mother, who was growing sicker by the day. Additionally, she used the money to import medicine from well-known apothecaries across the world.

None had worked. Toph's condition was unable to be classified, and as doctors attempted, Toph continued to grow ill. First it was coughing blood, then she could no longer support herself on her feet for even a few seconds, then her arms felt heavy. She passed the time metal bending spoons from her bed and rocking chair, but soon found this to be a challenge, which sent her morale and self-esteem plummeting. Lin was flustered as she gradually stepped into the role of the new Chief with all of its responsibilities and dangers while stopping by the house everyday to care for her mother, unable to turn her back on the woman who sacrificed everything for Lin's well-being. But Toph just grew weaker, and one day, the worst of it came in a form that caught Lin so off-guard.

Toph's memory was fading. Starting with just short-term memory loss which made the woman's daily tasks much more difficult and confusing, then graduating to long-term loss, as if her mind was being wiped starting with the most recent events and stretching back through her life. Lin arrived at her mother's house to find that Toph no longer even recognized her any more.

"You are not my daughter. Who are you? I want to see my daughter. I want to see Lin."

Toph rocked back and forth in her chair as Lin sat across from her on the bed, proceeding through her daily routine of check-ups.

"Mother," Lin said, thinking nothing of it at first. "It is me. It's Lin. I'm here like I always am, every day, to see how you are doing. Do you need anything? I'm making food right now."

But Toph was confused and sad. She shook her head and refused to believe it was true. Nothing about Lin seemed familiar to the woman anymore. "No, leave my house at once, impostor. You are not Lin. Why doesn't she come see me? Does she really hate me so? Even as I am dying? I suppose…I deserve her negative feelings for what I did to her. For the way I failed to be a mother to her. I was just so scared for her. I only did the best I could, and now I see that it was not good enough. I did not think it would be this bad. I did not think I fell so low in her eyes. I did not realize she hated me this much to not even visit me in my last years."

Lin was destroyed by her mother's words. She could not even move or speak. The heart which Lin had forgotten she had for so many years was beginning to tear apart. It had been two years since Toph became ill and retired to this house, and each day of those years Lin was by her mother's side. But Toph had lost this memory, and as time passed, day by day, her mother asked to see Lin, the daughter she hadn't remembered seeing in so long, the daughter that, to Toph, despised her and wouldn't even come to say goodbye, who had been gone for years, and Lin could do nothing but try to convince Toph that she was her daughter, and that she had always been there. It proved futile, but even after another year, each time Lin visited was like a stab to that heart. It was slowly torn to bits and pieces, leaving nothing behind in the aftermath. And soon, the woman she was always trying to make proud forgot that she even had a daughter.

"I do not know what you mean. Who are you?"

"It's me, mom. It is Lin."

"I do not know anyone by that name. I do not even have a daughter."

Lin could not handle it anymore. Hearing her mother speak like this, her memory of Lin erased, it all made Lin feel as if she did not exist, never existed. Just some purposeless body travelling through space, no direction or place in this world now that the one who brought her into it refused to believe she had ever done so. Lin knew her mother would remember if she felt her. She raised Toph's hand and put it to her face. Tears in her eyes, she asked if her mother really did not remember.

"Please! Please, mother, just feel it. Just see me. I know you remember. I know you do. Please, just remember, I've always been here."

The look on Toph's face, the fear she had the day Lin received her scars, the disgust that Toph had for herself returning, the dirty feelings of that man's hands all over her, waking up to realize that it was no nightmare. All filling her, all at once. It was all she remembered now as she felt Lin's face.

"I can feel him. I can feel his hands. I can feel his face. You are him, aren't you. You are Indra."

Lin did not understand, but knew it was hopeless. The last of her emotions had been poured out in this final attempt. She did not speak to her mother during her next visit, and a few days later, Toph's time was up. Lin nearly felt nothing at the sight of her mother, lying in her bed, never to wake again. Her sadness, her emotions, they had been used up, slowly diminishing over the last few years until they were completely gone. She felt no regret, no pain, only the sense of duty, to set up the funeral, to properly bury her mother, and move on with her life as the Chief of Police.

Lin was twenty-eight. Toph was sixty at her time of death.

The only pain Lin felt was over not feeling any pain. The only thing that saddened her was that she was not sad. She could only describe it as feeling...inhuman.