Disclaimer: I own nothing, only a computer.
TW: Miscarriages
Losses
When Lin wakes up, she has absolutely no idea where she is. It's a dark room, with heavy curtains drawn over the windows, and there's the sound of a fan spinning overhead. When she tries to sit up, she feels a shooting pain from her lower abdomen all the way up to her neck, and collapses back onto the bed. Laboriously, she reaches up to touch her face, which is wrapped in gauze. She flinches as her fingers brush over her chin and cheek, and she can feel the unevenness of her skin beneath the bandage. She's in the hospital, and she doesn't know how she got there.
"Hello?" she says, and her voice is tiny.
She wants to squirm, to find a comfortable position, but every time she tries to move, her body spasms with pain. What happened to me?
Lin focusses on the rotating blades of the fan, trailing the circles they make with her eyes. She can't remember.
It's half an hour before anyone happens to stop by. As light on his feet as always, Tenzin enters the room. He walks over to the chair next to her bed and sits down, putting his head in his hands.
"Tenzin," she says, and he looks up, eyes wide.
He looks exhausted, like he hasn't slept in days. There's stubble on his face, bags under his eyes, and a ugly purple bruise on his cheek.
"Lin," he breathes, looking up at her, "You're awake."
He says it like he can barely believe it.
"How long was I out?" she asks, wincing with every word.
"Four days," he tells her, glancing at the wall, "You've been unconscious for four days."
His voice cracks, and Lin knows then Tenzin had thought she would never wake up. He reaches out cautiously, and traces his hand over the unmarred side of her face. Lin can feel his fingers shaking as he tucks her hair behind her ear. The look on his face is somewhere between terror and relief. In the darkness, she can make out the tears that have begun to seep from his eyes.
"Tenzin, what happened?" she asks, cringing.
He draws his hand away from her face, and grips the side of her bed.
"What's the last thing that you remember?"
"I don't know," Lin sighs, "Getting back from Ba Sing Se. You met me at the docks."
Tenzin's face darkens, and Lin holds her breath.
"That was half a year ago, Lin," he says softly, reaching out to her, "Are you sure that you don't remember anything?"
"I'm sure," she says, "Just tell me what happened."
"There was a roundup," he says, "An ordinary check up on one of the smaller triads that you and three of your officers were handling," he stops to take a shaky breath, "But the tip that you were acting on had been false, a trap. It was a bloodbender triad that you burst in on, not just a bunch of street kids trying to make a little money."
Tenzin pauses again, and stands up, walking away from her bedside. He paces around the room, eventually coming back to her.
"They bloodbent you and the others. You barely made it out alive. Your mother and I showed up just in time," he drags his fingers over his head, "I knew having you stay on to work would end badly."
He's not making eye contact with her, which isn't a good sign. Tenzin always meets her eyes, no matter if he's telling her that he loves her or if he's shouting at her. There's something that he's not telling her.
"Tenzin, what about the other officers?"
"Two of them are dead. One is in critical condition," he says quietly.
Lin feels her eyes well up. Don't cry, don't you dare cry, she orders herself. She hasn't cried since she was fourteen. She won't cry now that she's thirty-five. But those men have families-had families, she amends.
"Lin, it's not your fault," Tenzin says gently.
"I know," Lin mutters gruffly in reply.
"What happened to the bloodbenders?" she asks.
Tenzin puts his head in his hands again, sighing heavily.
"They were executed."
His lips are tight and drawn. Lin knows how much he disapproves of execution, but without Avatar Aang there to remove their bending, they posed too much of a threat to the city's safety."
Lin knows that he's quoting what someone else has told him. He's never been too much like his father, but she knows that he shares his same belief that all life is sacred. She doesn't agree, but she remains silent. Arguing would hurt too much.
Tenzin is still not making eye contact, staring at a spot on the floor. What else could it be that he's not telling her?
She's hurt, and badly, but nothing that she won't recover from, but there's something in the way that Tenzin just can't bring himself to look up and face her that tells her that something else happened. Is someone else dead? Could it be her mother? Lin's stomach drops and her vision blurs. Her mother is everything to her. For her to just be gone is unthinkable.
"Tenzin," she says, and she damns the spirits for how infinitely small she feels, "What is it? What else? Is it my mother?"
He tears his gaze away from the ground and looks up at her, shaking his head.
"No," he says, "Your mother is fine."
"Then what is it?" Lin asks again, growing frustrated, "Just tell me, Tenzin!"
Tenzin raises his eyes to the ceiling in what looks like a silent prayer. Lin wonders if he is speaking to Aang. When he drops his eyes again, he looks at her. There's something in his eyes that looks nearly broken.
"Are you sure that you don't remember anything?" he asks, and he sounds like he's pleading, for what, Lin doesn't know.
"Tenzin, I don't remember anything. Just tell me!"
"The injuries you sustained, you broke several bones and tore some muscles and received a head injury, which all seem to be healing fine. But there was-you were-you were pregnant," he chokes the word out like it's a curse, "Seven Months."
Lin is numb. She doesn't remember anything. She strains her mind in search of some warm spring day in the park, telling Tenzin that he's going to be a father, or the argument over her remaining at work that they surely would have had. There is nothing there.
"You were injured so badly," he continues, his voice barely over a whisper, "The healers said that they could have saved the baby, but you would have died."
Tears are flowing freely down Tenzin's cheeks now, his grey eyes rimmed red.
"Your mother couldn't-I couldn't," he adds, "I couldn't bear to lose you Lin."
Lin knows that she is already lost. She knows what the surgery means. The chances of her ever being able to get pregnant again are slim to none. And now she understands why Tenzin can't meet her eyes.
She knows the burden that falls on Tenzin's shoulders, the legacy that he must uphold. She had been ready to share his burden, but now... now she can't, no matter how strong she is. She just can't.
There are tears making tracks down her face now; she can't help it. Tenzin reaches forward and grasps her hands, pressing his lips to her forehead.
"We can always try again later, Lin," he says quietly, and she nods, unable to speak.
Tenzin's voice is shaky. She knows that he means it, but Lin also knows that he doesn't believe that they will succeed. She knows that they won't.
They sit there, her hands clasped in his as she stays perfectly still on the bed. This can't be happening, she thinks over and over again, there is nothing more painful than this. Her body is shattered and weak, she's lost her child and any opportunity for her to have one in the future, and there's something else that she can feel, something in the pit of her stomach. She's going to lose Tenzin soon too.
He's rubbing her hands with such tenderness, tracing the lines on her palms.
"You know, my mother used to tell me a story about a fortune teller that she and my father met once. She said that the woman used all sorts of methods, and all her predictions would come true. She said that the woman foretold my mother and father's love for each other, that she predicted that they would end up together."
He raises Lin's fingers to his lips, and kisses them.
"I'm not as skilled as the fortune teller, but what I do know is that two people who are meant for each other will find a way make a family together," he brushes his fingertips across the lines on her palm, "And I know that here, where these two lines meet means that you will always be greatly loved, Lin. I love you."
Tenzin leans over and kisses her lips gently in goodbye.
"I should go find your mother," he says, "She'll want to know that you're awake."
He gets up, and looks back at Lin, laying broken in the bed. She watches as he wipes his tears away. She will try not to be too angry with him when he leaves for good. She understands the load that has been placed upon him and the duty that he must carry out, or at least she has to try.
Soundlessly, Tenzin walks from the room, leaving Lin alone. She breathes in sharply, her eyes welling up with tears again as she listens to the dull whir of the fan chopping through the air of the dark and lonely room.