It started with a burning desire to learn metalbending.
That desire turned out to be terrible for her self-esteem, though – no matter how many times the city's foremost metalbender explained the principles, Korra just couldn't seem to find the earth in it. Eventually, Lin changed tactics.
"Stop," she said with a sigh, holding out one hand, "Just stop."
"No!" Korra kept her eyes and her concentration fixed on the silent lump of iron before her. Failure only made her angry, and she wasn't going to admit to it.
"Korra," came the Chief's voice again, and even the Avatar had to pause at the warning tone. Relenting, she tore her eyes from the recalcitrant metal and relaxed from her bending form.
"What now?" she asked, her voice petulant, a child pulled from a game that she just knew she could win, if only she played one more time. She scuffed one toe in the dirt, bending the resultant puff into a tiny dust devil, just to prove she could.
"Let's try something different," Lin began, gesturing the young woman towards her as she lowered herself to sit cross-legged on the ground. Korra just groaned.
"Not meditation! Come on, I already get enough of this with Ten-" Korra snapped her teeth shut around whatever she'd been about to say – the look on Lin's face brooked no arguments, and the young Avatar knew full well that the older woman could take her on. She sat.
"We're not meditating," Lin said at last, after several long moments of quiet breathing, her eyes still closed, "You need to learn to feel earth." She didn't respond to Korra's quiet snort of disbelief.
"You can't brute-force this," the metalbender added, her voice burring softly at the edges of Korra's awareness, "Metalbending requires a coolness in the head and heart, the steadiness of earth taken to a different level. You're too emotional, it gets in your way. So we have to do something a little different. Put your hands on the ground."
Without thinking, Korra obeyed.
"Feel the earth. Reach out, feel for where heavy things hold it down or growing things break it up. You'll have only vague impressions to start with."
She tried. She tried as hard as she could, pulling her earth-sense from deep in her belly and spreading it out through her hands and into the ground below her. She could, if she chose, have bent every rock in the small stone-walled arena they were occupying. And she couldn't feel a thing.
Eventually, she slammed her hands against the ground, yelling in frustration…and then in pain, as her outburst bent slivers off of the stones around her and sent them flying into her skin. The pain only drove her anger on, her face burning red and tiny puffs of smoke accompanying her exhalations.
"Korra!" The slivers fled at Lin's command, leaving weeping red holes in the Avatar's bare arms and one freely-bleeding cut across a brown cheek. She didn't care. Fists pounded the ground again and again, although she managed to refrain from throwing any actual fire or additional earth around.
"Why can't I do this?" she demanded angrily, avoiding Lin's eyes lest they reflect annoyance – or worse, pity – back at her. It was one thing to fail, it was another thing to fail over and over in the company of someone she admired as deeply as she did this woman. She liked and respected Lin with all her heart, and she wanted Lin to like her, to respect her. But all she could do was fail at yet another form of bending and throw temper tantrums. Good job acting like an adult, champ.
"I told you," Lin answered the rhetorical question calmly, kneeling to examine the cuts, "That metalbending is not a matter of raw power – it's a matter of perspective. If you can't feel the earth in the metal, you can't bend it. Now come on, we need to clean that cut on your face."
"Leave it," Korra grumbled, arms crossed over her chest, "Maybe if I have a scar the Council and the White Lotus will take me more seriously."
"Stop that," snapped the Chief of Police, grabbing her trainee ungently by the arm and dragging her inside the house, "The Council isn't going to change overnight because you hurt yourself training, and while Ms. Sato might find scars exciting-"
Lin cut herself off and tried to calm down – that needle was inappropriate and unprofessional, not to mention downright nasty – and resumed with her usual coolness.
"You're still young enough and pretty enough that you should be trying to avoid them."
With that, she pushed the young woman down onto a small round cushion in the living room, ordering her to stay put as she disappeared for a moment. Reappearing a moment later with a first aid kid and a clean cloth, she set to cleaning Korra's self-inflicted wounds, her movements brusque but her touch shockingly gentle.
It was hard to say who was more surprised by that gentleness as she dabbed at bleeding dots, her senses reaching out to check for any speck of dirt or stone she might have missed. Korra had never experienced this level of closeness with the Chief of Police before, but she had expected a much rougher treatment. Lin, for her part, found herself prey to the odd desire to alleviate Korra's pain – nevermind that the girl had brought it on herself in more ways that one.
At last, with both women still lost in their own thoughts, Lin's attention turned to the deeper, nastier slice across the Avatar's face, which bled more steadily than any of the others.
"Hold this," she murmured, pressing the blood-spotted cloth against the cut, and Korra obeyed silently – something about Lin's proximity, about her face so close to Korra's own, filled her chest with both heat and awkwardness. She couldn't help but do as she was told, afraid that if she opened her mouth to protest, she'd blurt out something utterly inappropriate to a woman she should be respecting as a teacher, not mooning over.
As Lin turned away to rummage through the first aid kit, they each took that moment – unbeknownst to the other – to calm themselves.
"You know," Korra mumbled thoughtfully as Lin's attention returned to her, the young woman flinching at the stinging touch of alcohol against her cut, "Scars aren't so bad…"
Without thinking very hard about it – her forte – Korra lifted one hand to brush the scars running at an angle over the older woman's jaw. Lin took a deep breath and gently pushed the Avatar's hand away. It felt entirely too intimate at the moment, with her eyes and nose full of the young woman already.
"Yes, well, I haven't been young in quite a few years, and I was never pretty to begin with." A self-deprecating smile curled one corner of her mouth, fading rapidly at Korra's reaction.
"Excuse me?" the young woman crowed, grabbing Lin's face in both of her hands and looking downright offended.
"Stop it," Lin muttered, pushing the hands away again, "I've got to clean this cut so we can get back to training."
"No! I won't stop it! How can you say that about yourself?"
"Korra, let it go. This is not new information – it's not age taking it out of me, I was never terribly good-looking. A few scars here and there hardly make a difference to me."
"You're crazy," Korra had jumped to her feet and was practically yelling, and Lin sat back on her heels, arms crossed and annoyance settling on her face – she couldn't tend the cut, she couldn't go back to training, and she wasn't keen to hear what the young woman had to say either. She'd heard an endless variety of opinions on her looks over the course of her life – when they thought she couldn't hear – and wasn't looking forward to another one of the 'your face has character' speeches they gave when they thought she could.
"Okay, so maybe you're not pretty like, like…Asami is pretty," Korra started pacing, still gesticulating wildly, "But pretty isn't all there is. You, you're…I don't even…you're handsome! Dashing! You're all kinds of good-looking in ways that she isn't! Better ways! And you're not even that old!"
The metalbender frowned, her irritation deepening. Her voice, when it finally cut through Korra's ramblings, was hard and cold.
"In case you've forgotten who you're talking to, I am not the firebending object of your affections."
"No," came the sharp response, and then the fight went out of Korra all at once, deflated by Lin's apparent anger and her own inability to express her feelings in any coherent fashion. She dropped to her cushion with a frustrated sigh, "You're not. Let's just finish so we can get back to work."
And then Lin's face was close to hers again, and she forgot to be angry as her would-be metalbending master gave the cut one more cursory cleaning before pressing a clean white bandage over the wound and leaning back. She didn't want to be any closer for any longer than she had to just then.
"There," she announced, getting to her feet and offering Korra a hand up – the young woman hesitated, then wrapped her hand around the proffered wrist, allowing herself to indulge in a brief moment of admiration for Lin's strength as she was hauled up off the floor in one smooth motion.
Following the older woman back out onto the arena, Korra already knew she'd be unable to reliably bend so much as a raindrop at the moment – her feelings were in utter turmoil as she continued to agonize over how to phrase it, how to make Lin understand that it wasn't Mako, it wasn't Asami, it wasn't any 'pretty' person that Korra wanted to be close to. How do I say it!?
She stomped a foot, utterly incensed, and once again the earth responded without any clear direction. This time, though, it manifested itself as a wall that sprung up just inches in front of the Chief's face, arresting her forward momentum and causing her to swing around on the girl, intent on reading her the riot act. No bender, especially the Avatar, could afford to lose control of her bending at all – twice in less than an hour was an utter disgrace.
But before she could open her mouth, Korra was speaking, the words spilling out of her in a barely-coherent flood.
"I like your scars! I like your face, even if nobody else thinks it's pretty, and I think you're wonderful, and I don't like Mako or Asami, I mean…I like them, but not like that, and I wish you would just listen to me! You're the strongest and most capable person I know, and I want to be like you, I want to be with you! I'm supposed to be the Avatar, and I'm supposed to be maintaining balance in the world, but all I want to do is impress you so you'll look at me, at Korra, some stupid girl from some stupid tribe who can't do anything useful and I can't even tell you that I like you properly and-"
Even with her eyes closed as they were, she could feel Lin moving away from her, and it hurt. Something inside of her – responding to her incoherent but impossibly strong need for Lin to just stop going away – reached out. She felt her body moving in forms she didn't even remember learning, and with a quick backwards sweep of her arms, it felt as though Lin simply flew to her. She opened her eyes to find the woman standing within arms' reach, looking both furious and…proud?
Korra gaped like a fish, terrified for one brief instant that she'd somehow bloodbent the older woman to drag her close. Lin's voice laid that fear to rest.
"Congratulations, Avatar. You bent metal."
Lin's heavy, gloved hand thumped down on Korra's shoulder and gave it a brief squeeze, while Korra just stared at blankly.
"I…I what?"
"You bent metal. You called to my armor, and it came to you…taking me along for the ride. By the way: never do that again. Ever."
The young Avatar thought her heart might burst at that moment. Not only had she stopped Lin from moving away, she'd somehow unlocked the secret of metalbending. She felt invincible.
"Now, bend the iron."
She sighed. One step at a time. First, she'd master the hell out of metalbending, and then she'd make Lin love her.