Scars

by jlthdprgy

"Although their name is known by all, the full story behind these two women has been left up to nothing but imagination for all time. A scar. A father. A death. And an airbender. Most people shy away from this one, but there is something about you, something that people like. They'll like talking to you, which makes you perfect for this. Your topic: Lin and Toph Beifong."

11. Lin (text): Catching the Scent

Piece

-Lin (in text): Catching the Scent-

"She told you all this?" Lin asked.

Sokka, now in his late years, an old man, nodded slowly. "She told me enough. Enough for me to connect the dots. Enough for me to write her diary."

It had been a few days since it happened. Since the death of the great Chief Toph Beifong. That was it. That was the end of her. Toph's body lied in the bed, looking as if she was asleep, but Lin knew there was no life in it. Toph was long gone.

Lin sighed. This moment seemed overdue. She was not sad. She did not feel like crying or dumping her sorrows. She had no sorrows. She was unable to experience any kind of negative reaction. Lin did not look at her mother with regret or gloom. She just looked at her, feeling nothing, thinking about nothing except for what to do with her. What to do about a funeral, a burial. How to properly fill in the open slot of Chief of Police now that her mother no longer held that title. Soon her mind wandered back further. Thinking back on the woman Toph once was. Thinking back on their relationship, mother and daughter, what it used to be, and what it become, or rather deteriorated into.

"Well, now what?" she had asked herself. Lin had brought a tray of food for her mother that afternoon, as she usually did. She walked back to the kitchen with the soup she had made and started to eat it. Carrots were soft. Broth was hot. Tasted good. She finished quickly and washed the dishes out when she heard a loud creak, much louder than the usual sound of the house settling. Like something or someone moving in the house. Lin was unsure if that was normal and she just didn't notice it over the last few years because the house was always so busy with her taking care of Toph. Lin never felt she had the time to look through the house, but now it seemed like she had an eternity. She could saunter slowly through it without feeling rushed and actually look at everything around her.

Lin walked toward where the loud creek had sounded. It was from a hallway which seemed much longer and eerie when she was a young girl. This was where she would store her treasures. Her mother had discovered the stash of random objects that Lin had taken from the outside world: rocks, clumps of dirt, a leaf, a shell. The stash that Lin kept in the crawlspace behind the walls in this hallway. Toph was always complaining to herself that the house had wide, hollow spaces between the walls and rooms. Lin couldn't remember which stood before the empty space where she had once stored her findings.

Standing there, Lin realized how strange the hallway was. It did not lead anywhere. It really did not have a purpose. At the end of it was a window, looking out the side of the house, which used to be bright in the morning from the sunrise but now was just facing the side of a building. The strange thing was that there were no rooms at the end of it. All the bedrooms were on the other side of the house. There was a closet right at the front of the hallway, but no doors or anything toward the end. Who would make a hallway like this? Nevertheless, Lin removed her shoe and tapped her feet. She had not done this in a while, not in the house at least. She tapped her feet and saw every room as well as the open spaces between them, but the vision was rather blurry due to her indirect contact with the earth. But she saw something, a large object, and it was moving quickly away from the house. Quickly, scared. Like an animal or a big bug. Vermin underneath her mother's home.

"Dammit." Lin cursed. Having detected the right wall that led to the crawlspace with her earthbending, she knelt down and removed the floorboards beneath her and peered underneath the house, expecting to see a nest of disgusting creatures that had taken shelter there. But it was an unexpected sight. There were no animals, but she still heard the movement of something large running away. Scaring it off. Good riddance. Probably an elephant rat or something.

What she did find in the crawlspace was not her old collectibles, but rather her mother's. And they were not stones and other useless objects, it was a collection of documents. A few photographs of Toph with important people. A few case files her mother had worked on. Awards she had won. Her mother's life in a series of transcripts. Her trophy room, her memories, cases, notes, and the crown jewel of them all: her diary.

She told me these were long gone. Why would she lie to me about this?

Toph had a diary. What secrets rested within them? Everything Lin could ever want to know? The key to shining light on her mother that she was suddenly realizing she may not have known well at all? Lin lingered, staring at the pile of artifacts, wondering what to do with them. Brushing her hand over them, she found that they had accumulated no dust over the years. Like they had been in motion recently. Had Toph put them here? Impossible, the woman could barely support herself on her feet.

Above the diary, Lin came across an old mirror. She looked at herself, trying to believe that she was only nearing her thirties as she actually was, but her face looked as if she was half a decade beyond that. Strands of gray slowly beginning to mix in with her natural black. She saw herself in the mirror, touched her face to feel the beginnings of the wrinkles, astonished that they were real. She did not really know what Toph had looked like in her younger years. In her late twenties. Did she look like her? Any resemblance? Or did she look like her father, the man she had never known. She put the sight of herself out of her mind.

No more mirrors.

As she looked away and started for the diary, Lin heard the faint sound of a siren slowly getting louder. It stopped her, wondering if it was coming for the house, then suddenly there was a knock on the door. It was loud and sounded urgent. A yell coming through it, asking for Lin to answer immediately.

"Ma'am," the man at the door said. It was a paramedic from the hospital. They had been called to the house after a frantic notification that there had been a death that day. An ambulance behind him, a product, no doubt, of one of the factories surrounding the small house. Lin was caught off guard, unaware as to how the hospital already knew of the death, and how they had arrived within the hour after it had happened. Someone would have had to call them beforehand, right after Lin had found Toph's body in order for them to be here by now, and no one else knew about Toph's death, yet. It had just happened. As the paramedics carefully transported Toph's body from her bed and into the ambulance, Lin could only stand by and wrestle with her confusion for an explanation, until her attention was completely captured by a silhouette down the street, a shadow cast from behind by the setting sun and a dimly lit streetlight. A tall figure, veiled in darkness, but Lin could tell this was a person, and he was looking right at her. To his left, there was a payphone. The stare from this mysterious figure felt ominous to Lin, and the whole situation temporarily placed her in a dream-like state which she did not snap out of until she realized she had forgotten about her mother's diary as she drove behind the ambulance, following her mother's body to the hospital, or wherever, to prepare it for the funeral. Whatever had just happened, the ambulance, the man in the distance, it had completely consumed her thoughts, and she vowed that she would have to return to the house after this ordeal had been settled to find that diary.

"Dammit, I'll go back for it tomorrow." Lin failed to do this the next day. She was busy making arrangements for the funeral. As she traversed the long hallways of the hospital and policedepartment headquarters, talking with doctors and organizers and officers and council members, Lin constantly felt watched, felt the stare, the same stare and a trace of the sensation she had experienced when she saw the shadow of the man down the street from her house. Lin asked herself why he was involved, why he was even there and if he was the one that called the ambulance to come for Toph. Although she had never seen the man's face or heard his voice, she saw him on so many people, heard his voice distinctly in the midst of loud conversation. She just knew they belonged to him. But it was never reachable. He was the man at the end of the long hallway, behind locked doors, gone by the time she got there, never sure if it was him. His voice carried itself over crowds of people and through walls to Lin's ears, and she tried to trace it back, to follow the voice to its source, but it had always evaded. The sound of the man, whoever he was, she would be completely captivated after detecting his presence near her proximity, following the scent, knowing that he had just been in the spot she had been standing. Waiting for her to try and find him.

It was a few days before Lin would feel this way again, and it was during Toph's funeral, when she felt his eyes from every window of every building in the city, heard his voice from bystanders on the street, pushing his way through to the front, getting a better view of the procession. The one man towering over everyone in the crowd, but as Lin approached him, approached the place in the crowd she was sure he had taken, he was nowhere to be found.

The day continued.

Toph wasn't shy about her wishes for a big procession in her honor, and Lin would follow those wishes exactly as her mother wanted. The entire force marched through the streets of Republic City. Everything put aside for the memorial of the woman who so fearlessly kept those streets free of the darkest forces of evil, as Toph sometimes put it. The ornate casket was carried for all to see.

Before the Police Headquarters, the memorial commenced. Lin sat with Sokka on one side and Tenzin on the other. They did not hold hands, either one. Both men looked upset, a sharp contrast to the woman between them. Lin crossed her legs and folded her arms as she watched the event. As she listened to politicians and other police officers and public officials talk about how great her mother was and how she represented all that was good. Lin had heard it all before. It bored her, but she saw the awe, the sadness, the appreciation for this woman in the eyes of everyone around her, things that should have been possessed by Lin, but she continued to feel nothing. It was for this reason that she refused to speak or say anything about her mother during the funeral. It was not hard feelings. It was not bitterness or hatred or a grudge. Lin feared she would forget the sensitivity of the event and may break whatever glass image of Toph these people believed in simply by mentioning any single thing that may be viewed as a fault in the late Chief's life. And so, she remained silent, and later on, merely observed as people cried over her mother as the casket descended six feet into the ground in the graveyards beyond the city.

"How are you feeling, Lin?" Sokka asked as the grave was filled. It was a short moment when the two were alone.

"I guess I am upset, but that is only because I am not upset. About anything. I don't know why. She was sick for a while. I guess I was ready."

"Even so," Sokka said. "No one is ever really ready when it comes to death."

"Maybe I am not human then," Lin said, attempting to make a joke, but the unchanging expression on her face forced the joke in a dark direction. Sokka asked about Toph's condition over the last few months of her life, and Lin explained as briefly as she could what had happened.

"She just forgot me. All of her memories of me just wiped out and all she could do when she touched my face for the last time was utter the name of some person she had once known. 'Indra.' That was it." Sokka was the only person she had told. Tenzin returned and put his arm on Lin's shoulder but only seemed to feel the cold metal of her uniform. She did not turn to look at him.

Many had not noticed that Lin was even there that day. Few would recognize her then. That she was even related to Toph in any way. She said nothing to the other guests, but she was the first to arrive at the event, and she was the last to leave.

Sitting before the grave with her mother's name on it, Lin was surprised that her mother did not want another gigantic statue of herself raised for all to see. Even though she was alone, she still felt foolish about what she was about to do. Speaking out loud to her dead mother, talking to a piece of engraved stone.

"Look, I'm not comfortable with this either, but maybe it is what we both need. I don't know if you can hear me wherever you are, in the Spirit World, or maybe just in the ground, but... You can't deny it, our relationship did kind of fall apart, you know? You yelled at me a lot, and you were never happy with me or anything I did. I don't know if that was just you or if it was actually something I was doing wrong, but I could have gotten along fine without all that. I guess I am to blame, too, for aggravating those situations, but you know, I am starting to think that all of that was never because of something like stress. I think that, maybe, my whole life it's been like there was this mirror in front of you so that when I looked at you, it was like I was only seeing the image of my mother that I formed in my own head. As if you never told me about yourself, but rather every time I wanted to know you more, know you better, you just pushed it back at me so that it was only up to me, so that in order to figure you out I had to resort to knowing my own version of you better, the one inside my head, instead. So in the end, maybe I was just the daughter of someone who was not even real, who was completely different than the actual woman that raised me. My interpretation of who you were, at this stage in my life, I am not sure if that representation I had of you was completely true."

It was at this moment that Lin finally started to feel something about all of this, but it was not sadness, it was a realization. Realizing more and more with every passing second as she stared at the name written on the stone. 'Toph Beifong.' The mother of Lin, and the daughter of two people Lin had never met. The girl out of a past that Lin never learned much about other than the war hero stories. It occurred to her that Lin did not even really know her mother beyond the few memories she had growing up with her. Until the solution lit up before her.

The diary!

"Of course. I know you enough to know you would definitely keep something like that. How could you not keep one, mother? Of course you needed a way to chronicle all of your life's greatest achievements. Surely they would mention something before my time," Lin spoke.

Lin drove back to the house at once, almost excited even. But Lin's hopes were drained when she arrived to find that her house had been the victim of an act of arson. A small fire had been set in the living room of the house and quickly expanded to several of the other rooms before the fire department reached it. Lin stood inside the torched house afterward, angry as she looked at the pile of ash that was once the documentation of her mother's life. The house maintained its interior structure pretty well except for the holes in the walls of the hallway. Holes where she could see into the crawlspaces, now empty. Someone had found the collection of Toph's and either stole it or burned it. Lin swept the ash into the closet but didn't even bother to board up the walls after she spent so much time doing the windows. She threw the remaining boards and hammer on the ground.

"Waste of time. There is no point in ever coming back here now." However, Lin had a faint inclination that this was not true. Although nothing was here anymore, the entire house now possessed a very unsettling mien which acted as a force toward Lin, wanting to push her away, but inevitably attracting her back, as she followed the scent, back to the source where she knew that man, that shadow, that face, that voice, was resting, waiting for her. She felt him here, still here or recently here. The one she always felt watching her, around every corner, just a few steps ahead of her, closing the door a second before she arrived, fading into the darkness while Lin watched from afar.

Lin sat in her motionless car, sulking, not knowing where to turn to next. Peeved at the most recent events which blocked her from learning more about her mother. She pouted.

"What the hell could Toph had written about, she couldn't even…"

Lin's nearly gasped for air. "She couldn't write!" Toph was blind. Her mother did not know how to write. Which means that someone would have had to write the diary for her. Even if it was gone, he would still know something about it. And Lin knew the man that Toph would trust to write it, or at least certain sections of it. At least one. Enough for her to start with.

Other than the few words she exchanged with Sokka at the funeral, Lin had not spent much time with the man in the last few years. It was a little upsetting. Lin never had a father, but when she tried to think of what the word meant, Sokka was one of the faces that would come to mind. He lived in a small apartment near the courthouse where he used to work as a council member. He retired and was growing old now. Lin arrived at his place to see an empty room except for a few packed bags and an old man sitting on a bed. He was sixty-four. His water tribe coat on, ready for the harsh weather of his homeland.

"You are leaving?" Lin asked. Sokka turned, not realizing Lin had walked in.

"Oh, Lin." He stood. "What a pleasure to see you today." Lin did not look like a pleasure to see that day. Sokka smiled, then looked around the room. "Yes, I am leaving Republic City. My time here is over, has been for a while. And soon my time on this planet will be over as well. Sorry to sound so morbid. I'm returning to the South Pole, hopefully to be with my sister for my last few years. It'll be nice to be home again."

"I see."

"It's been a few days. Are you feeling any different?"

"Not really. Just frustrated."

"With what?"

"My old house was set on fire last night. Didn't burn down, but torched the inside. Lot of stuff destroyed."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"I didn't mind too much, it's just there were documents in there that my mother wrote. Like, information about her whole life, probably. I realized recently that I don't know much about her past and I wanted to find out. Maybe it would make me feel actual sadness over all of this. But the diary was burned up I think. Just a pile of ash now."

"I think I know why you have come here."

"You knew her well, Sokka. I have so many memories of you being around, taking care of me, speaking with her. She trusted you with everything. Surely, you must have had a hand in constructing that diary."

"She did not trust me with everything. Her work, many details of that sector in her life, was in the hands of someone else. And I know that many things happened in that life which affected her more than I can understand. She trusted me with personal things."

"That is good enough for me. Whatever she tried to keep a secret or omit telling me, I want to know. Just for my own fulfillment. I deserve to know."

"Yes, you absolutely do. The story is not a pretty one, though. I warn you."

"I think I can handle it," Lin said boldly.

"I think you can, too. Tell me, what has Toph told you about your father?"

"I only remember asking once before I dismissed the topic. She said he died while she was pregnant with me, but that had he been around to meet me he would have loved me as much as she did. As I grew up, I started realizing that this was just a fantasy, but I spoke no more of it. I don't really know anything about the man, if he is actually dead, if he was good. It wouldn't surprise me if she just made it up to protect me since I was just a girl when I asked. I can understand that. I guess."

Sokka sat on his bed. "Yes. Toph was not perfect, but then, none of us were. She made her mistakes, but she made them with good intentions. She did not know how to protect you from the evils of this world. I know she loved you. I will never forget the look in her eyes when she first met you. Terrified, but amazed at how beautiful you…"

"Sokka, cut the garbage."

"Right," Sokka said, distracted for a moment. "Well, like I said. She was not perfect. She tried to protect you because, you see, a long time ago Toph was the victim of an event which tore down every sense of security and any faith in others that Toph ever had. She was attacked by a mad man, a man who gave her more than bruises and cuts and the feeling of violation, but also implanted within her a fear of this world that would eventually replace her pride, and she would go through the rest of her life with little confidence in anything. Acting, though, as if she was the same woman she had always been. It was this fear that controlled her, drove her to protect you from the same evils that had gotten to her. So, yes, she lied, but she did so in order that you would be safe. That you would not be weighed down by the truth at such a young and vulnerable age. It seems like now, however, you have matured to the point where the truth could not really affect you."

"What truth?"

"That this evil man who had breached your mother's walls, the man who implanted this fear in her was responsible for the creation of something else. It was on the same night that Toph was the victim of this disgusting and horrible act that something beautiful was conceived in the aftermath: you."

Finally a reaction in her face. She raised her eyebrow. "My father was a rapist."

Sokka took a deep breath. Talking with this woman was so difficult to him. He began to explain the whole story. Lin hardly moved. Sokka started with the incident, arriving to find Toph after she had just awoken, the day she realized she was pregnant, and the house in which Lin was born. Sokka had been a prominent figure in Toph's life, and so she opened up to him, telling him her struggles, asking him to keep something, some kind of written document of these bits of her life. Before she died or forgot them all. These events would never be known to the world. To the city, Toph was the strong, unbreakable, unstoppable force that would forever protect them, never to succumb to the force of something stronger, for if she did, the fabric of society would tear apart, or so she believed. She told only few others and hid the proof of her faults away, making sure no one would see them except those that would understand: Sokka, Aang, Lin…

Lin's face did not change in the entirety of Sokka's story. The story of, well, how Lin came to exist and be here.

"She told you all this?" Lin asked.

Sokka, now in his late years, an old man, nodded slowly. "She told me enough. Enough for me to connect the dots. Enough for me to write her diary."

"That was quite enlightening. I am glad I got that cleared up. She ever find the guy that did it? My real father?"

"I...I don't know. The only times I knew of her police work was when it involved the council. Then we would work together, but otherwise she never discussed her life as the Chief with me. I can only say that I know for sure she looked for him. If she ever found him and did anything to him, I can't say. I have my theories, though. That he might still be out there. I don't have much to back that up except…I have only seen your mother exceptionally scared twice in her life. The first was the morning after she was attacked. The second was when she felt the scars on your face."

Lin felt the mark. The eternal mark of her failure. "These? These were just some maniac involved in a break-in. Got me off-guard."

"Did you ever see his face?"

The face?

"I thought we got him. Everyone involved was arrested."

"Maybe he wasn't involved. Maybe he was just there. I can't be sure, but I do know that your mother changed after feeling those scars. Toph was involved with a lot of police cases that never made it public, though. It could be one of a hundred explanations."

"Does the name 'Indra' have any relation to that?"

"I don't know."

"It was the last word I heard her say, and I remember her face. It was the same face she had when she felt my scars. The same fear you are talking about."

Sokka hesitated before speaking again. Lin looked as if she was getting a little worked up, but he concluded that maybe now was the best time to show her. Before anything else happened, now that she was older and would understand. He may not be around much longer. "Lin, there is something you should see. Up until now I thought of this as being too much for you, but from talking to you I can see you can deal with just about any news right now pretty well. The world has hardened you. The day your mother was attacked, there were photographs developing on Toph's table when I arrived. She concealed them before I had a chance to look. But as I was packing and going through my stuff recently, I found that I had an envelope with one of them inside it. It had my name. I only glanced at it, I feel I didn't have the right to look. She once told me not to, and I was loyal to her. But she is gone now, and I find no better person to possess it than you. I think you can handle whatever image is on this, even if it is gruesome, which I will warn you, it might be. It was taken that night. Toph was scared that it would be seen by the world, and that she would never be trusted to keep the streets safe. That people would stop respecting her, and her city would become chaotic."

Sokka pulled out a white envelope and handed it to Lin. It was astonishing. That Toph would keep herself from her own daughter just to protect her. Lin was slightly angry but couldn't help but wonder if she would be worse off if she knew all these things her whole life. That she was a product of the darkest evil. That she was unwanted. How would a young girl deal with that?

The envelope was light. It had but a single photo in it. Toph opened it in her car, now outside of Sokka's building having said her goodbyes for perhaps the last time. A single photo. A nice camera that was most likely propped up, timer set, one person in view in a small apartment: a girl, passed out, more than just asleep, Lin could tell. Out cold.

Toph. Had to be. She looked so young, hair was luscious and long and black but it was her. A bottle next to her bed with a wet paper towel. An odd-looking bottle, most likely holding dangerous chemicals, millions of warnings on the label. Warnings of death and wooziness if inhaled for too long. What nearly made Lin jump out of her seat was when she realized that there was a second figure in the photo. It was not easy to see, but she got the feeling of being watched as she looked at her mother in her bed. Hairs standing up, watched by those glassy green eyes on that smiling face slipping through the darkness next to Toph's bed. Staring straight at her, following her movements. A face. A distinct face.

A face. A face of the man who did it. Perfect. An identity. A suspect. A case.

As technology advanced in the last few decades, forensics procedures became more feasible, more sophisticated machinery for various purposes, one purpose being matching a face with another face already on file. It was time-consuming, but Lin felt obliged to spend the whole night matching faces. Using her own eyes as well as the bulky analyzers which picked out inherent features in a photograph of a face, extracting its template and returning probabilities of correct matches when compared with every other face on file. After hours of failure, driving Lin to the point where she would breach the top secret files despite the attention it might draw to her but hoping that this man had at least been on some sort of record, she found the closest match. It was such an obscure file. The crime report over five pages, written by a familiar name: Jin Guansang. The file packed away in the depths of the station's file room, hidden unless one really looked for it in the mess of ignored reports. The face alone was hardly enough to make her certain, but then she read the name:

Indra (Devas Asura).