I didn't know where to go with this but I decided to keep the pattern I planned and I want to add, please, please review! With constructive criticism; it makes my day.
This is a very Linzin-centric chapter, and I'm not very good with sob moments so beware. Over 4,000 words, my first time!
I own nothing that you have seen in the TLOK and corresponding material.
Chapter 4:
The next morning, Lin had a morning off of work, something that only happened once every two weeks but was mandatory. The previous Police Chief, the one directly preceding Lin named Huan, had made sure that everyone had obligatory time off of work, for personal time and a break. Lin mentally cursed him and the rule that dictated that whatever changes she made to these kinds of rules would only be enacted when the next Police Chief came to be, most likely Saikhan.
That morning, only four hours long was her official break time, she decided to spend it Air Temple Island, Tenzin greeted her as soon as she scampered off the ferry, as always ready to kiss the ground.
"Hello Lin," he greeted warmly, the words melting the part of Lin that was romantic, kissing her on the lips, but apprehensively, Lin rolled her eyes. She looked around, and saw the slim figures of Air Acolytes tending to the surrounding gardens, scarcely blooming in the lilting air. Some of them giggled, all were young, figures swaying to the wind, as was no doubt taught and instilled.
As was every time that she had the morning off, she would come to Air Temple Island, the blissful getaway opened its arms for her.
"Well?" Tenzin asked, not unkindly.
Lin stirred her eyes to the Air Acolytes, gaze sharpening when the little kid named Pema looked up at them.
"This," she whispered into his ear and kissed him smack on, passionately, lips intertwining. Lin kept her eyes open as did Tenzin, and in his eyes was confusion, confusion that ate at Linzin's heart.
When Lin looked back, Pema was staring down at the mop, and tickling the metal sole on her feet confirmed the increase in heart rate. Good.
Tenzin caught her gaze, and also stared back at her.
"It's nothing Lin," he quickly said, and something in her heart was put to rest, but she didn't check if he was lying. She laid her head on Tenzin's shoulder, just tall enough to be able to rest there, under the crisp sun. For a moment, the time crystallized, the spring leaves unusually softening Lin, before remembering that spring was her month, the month of her original element, earth.
Tenzin put his arm around her, and Lin nestled closely, as if she were a child.
"Master Tenzin?" Lin almost groaned out loud, as a result of the sickly sweet voice.
"Yes Pema?"
Deja vu.
"May we have a break?" Pema turned red at the sight of Lin staring up- only a few inches- contemptuously, but Lin could barely keep the sigh of relief from escaping.
"Isn't working hard a useful skill to have?" Lin asked innocently, and Pema turned bright red.
"Yes, Pema you may," Tenzin dismissed stiffly and looked down at Lin. Lin tensed, ready for the reprimanding.
"Must you do that?" he gently asked.
Lin bumbled about an excuse about getting back to work, heat spreading to her cheeks- in "honor" of Pema, and Tenzin rushed to say that he had a meeting with the City Council, which Lin knew he normally cancelled on her day offs. The break in the relationship was only another off an already torn mirror.
Tenzin didn't offer her a ride back on his glider, a sentiment he had shared when they were children, but stopped when Lin came toting metal.
And the ride back over the churning water was the same as ever, detestable.
Lin wished he would have offered.
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"Triad disturbance- it's the Tremblers, down at City Hall," Saikhan told her, while striding forward, desperately trying to keep up with Lin's pace.
Lin paused for a second than stopped and stared at Saikhan hardly. Tenzin. "We're taking the zeppelin."
Saikhan nodded and scurried to round up officers, Lin made her way up to the Helipad, gathering Loa, Sirah, and Song, quickly briefing them on the little detail she knew, all the while using their ropes to get them up faster.
She boarded the zeppelin, officers falling in place behind, as did arriving Saikhan with Tai, a young and new officer who preferred earthbending while on ground, and two others who Lin didn't recognize, most likely new recruits.
"Experience," was Saikhan's one worded explanation. His eyes, in the position to be rolled, dictated what would happen, he, Sirah, Loa, Song, and Lin would come in and bust the Tremblers with relative ease, while giving the newbies experience and perhaps a little action.
The zeppelin arrived before Lin had time to think out her plans, a sign of her head buzzing, not a good state to be in battle.
The metalbenders stormed in, subsequently after the cars crashed in. Lin could almost hear Tenzin yell, "Lin this is why we can't keep nice things wherever you are!"
Her eye first found the five council members, tied up in the front of the table, Lin spotted some of the members trying to use their bending off. Lin's heart filled with rage at the sight of Tenzin gagged up and hands behind his back.
Lin felt a tiny breeze along her cheek, and locked eyes with Tenzin. He nodded twice, ever so subtly, and Lin figured he was trying to force the no doubt earth handcuffs off.
There were fifteen of them, a sign of overall group cohesiveness and even deployment of power, aside from the five standing in front of the ten-person line.
Seven on fifteen, eight if Tenzin forced his way out.
"Let's make a deal," the lead one suggested, the middle one of the five in front said, a lilting laughter only barely transparent through her voice.
"What kind?" Lin entertained, while slowly moving one of her ropes out, and opening one of her soles. Female earthbenders were uncommon but powerful, a statistic garnered from a recent genetic study.
"You let us keep the Council members," she pointed to the five, finger lavishly caressing air. "And we will tell you information that you want."
The ten behind wore the regular Trembler outfit, typical southern Earth Kingdom, with dark grey edges instead of the yellow Lin and many other of her officers had grown up with. They had to be strong enough, taking on City Hall with its many guards and security (compromised of streety units). Sirah, Loa, and Song would take care of those, and the newbies would be placed in the place of exits.
"What information?" Lin's ears sparked up at the offer, however typical.
There were four, the main door, two side doors, and the roof, an unlikely escape method for an earthbenders, and they had tested the Zeppelin's motion detecting weapons on the Trembler Triad nine months before.
"Of the recent attacks."
Earthbenders had flawless memories.
Lin glanced sideways at Saikhan, he shook his head "no" slightly.
"And how would this information be of any use to us?" Lin stopped herself from adding the obvious- lying caution.
"Oh it will be."
Saikhan and Lin would be against the five standing in front. Lin quickly evaluated them, four carried a supportive weapon, hooked swords, sledgehammers, nunchuks, and Dai Li style gloves. The last was probably a rogue from the Fire Nation Royal Palace. And the woman stood weaponless
"Any guarantee of that?" Lin was secretly grateful for Sokka's lessons on negotiation, but the dance of words were still a foreign ground her.
"You will find out for yourselves," the female said, and Lin felt her dig the ball of her foot into the ground as far as it would go.
"No deal," Lin said loudly enough for the entire hall to hear. The four beside the woman moved their weapons into position and as did the ten behind.
Lin signaled the instructions with her hands, subtly, and without movement of the rest of her body, the others slowly moved into position, with the exception of the newbies who strode fast to their assigned spots.
Lin stomped a chunk of the floor up, the medium sized rock at head-level and waited before three boulders came at her, she and her team dodged them expertly.
The fight began.
Lin lunged to the side, and uncurled her ropes, lashing it out strongly at the one with sledgehammers, wrapped him tightly, slung him to the side, to the direction of one of the newbies, and released the ropes. Three of the backups came after her, and Lin focused on them, her foot confirming that Saikhan had gone after those with the swords.
A boulder came fast out of the corner of her sight, although the sender was quickly neutralized by Sirah. Lin dodged the boulder, waiting until it was only two inches away, and sent a bronze-metal bullet from inside her thigh sockets whizzing in that direction, as a second one was there as backup.
Behind her, the normal sound of nunchuks came and, Lin turned around, lashing out at her rope, at the same time as Nunchuks went for her.
Lin gasped and crumpled on the ground, holding on to her arm hard. Saikhan looked to her, wild in his eyes, and Lin shook her head trying to convey for him to not stop fighting. He feinted right and went left straight for Nunchuks, who was seemingly guarding Lin, a position abandoned, digging up a section of the earth before punching it into the Nunchuk's face.
She rolled over to her side, clutching her arm, and noticing the blood streaming from her fingertips, the metal cut straight through. A figure neared her, with sledgehammers, and blood pooled in her mouth and vision. He leveled several boulders up, and Lin slammed her bloodied hand on the ground, bringing up a wall of earth up. Slamming the boulders and the man, to what Lin strained to see, the ceiling.
Lin's jaw was left hanging, and as the wall slammed itself out, the Triad's signature Tremble rang out, the source a certain metalbending cop.
The male with the hook swords stumbled backwards, near the door, and Tai slammed him to the wall, using the fullest extent of his rope. Two of the backups, as Lin had dubbed the ten that stood behind the five, went with him, an jagged earthen tears, and Lin brought herself up and hurled tiny rocks at him.
Lin hooked her non-throbbing arm's rope to the ceiling's wires and pulled herself up, suppressing the pain in her arm, and brought the earthen chunk in the wall out for Lin to jump down on. She stood up and held her palms outwards, summoning a Tenzin's head-sized rock to come whizzing from the floor as fast as she could. Two quick movements in her wrist split the rocks into a two dozen tiny bullets, screaming at high velocity at the eight coming for Loa, who was backed up in the corner, Loa caught the message and erected a barrier around her, the bullets tore up the ground, and blood replaced it next.
She took a deep breath, stilled her throbbing arm which had become painfully clear, and jumped down to the ground, the earth skidding back into place.
The fight was as good as over, all of them were tied up near several officers. Lin counted them from her nice vantage point.
Only thirteen. There were fifteen. Lin counted the others, all eight officers, including her, and the five council members were being untied by Song. Lin saw Tenzin say "thank you."
Lin counted again, and again only fifteen.
She took a deep breath and stomped her foot on the ground, and nausea immediately overwhelmed her, she had forgotten to close her eyes. Lin steadied herself against a column, and stomped her foot back into the floor, sinking it a number of inches down, and again thirteen.
The woman and the Dai Li agent were gone.
Lin recounted and her breath was taken away, only twelve, at which Lin loudly groaned, and whipped her metal ropes out a short foot away from her, in ready position, Lin slid open the sole part of her foot.
A vibration coursed through her foot and Lin swiveled around and saw the nunchuks whizzing to her heart, her mind running at a much slower pace than her body. Her armor metalbent out into a sharp blade and it somehow found it's mark in his throat. The body crumpled down, the nunchuks sliding away. Lin stared until the evanescent heartbeat slowed to a stop.
She looked at Tenzin, and his mouth was hanging open, something Lin couldn't resist smirking at. Lin walked over to her officers asked if they were alright, to which she got "yes" as answers and informed Saikhan off the disappearance of the woman and the Dai Li agent. Tenzin walked over to her and gestured out, and said "The Island." The grittiness in his voice provided enough motivation for Lin.
/-/-/-/-/-/-/
Not a minute was spared once Lin stepped off the boat and Tenzin.
"Lin, we're done," Tenzin stated flatly, Lin gaped, heart beat rising to unreal levels.
"What do you mean we're done!" Lin caught her breath in her throat, and searched wildly for something to place her hand on. "We've been together for many years!"
"And now we are done," he continued saying.
The words tore something out of Lin's heart, to the point of something in her throat rising up.
"Lin you killed someone!" Tenzin screamed at her, face rapidly turning purple. He must have suppressed it during the ride
"Yes I did, so what?" Lin could barely mask the tremble in her voice, tears rising to her eyes, tears be damned.
This was by far not the first time she had killed someone in the process of her job. The first time she had been affected, enough to take a three-day leave off of her job, before her mother dragged her by the hair back to the station. Afterwards, it felt normal, but Tenzin never saw her do so.
"You should know that all life is sacred!" Lin's hearted beat rapidly in response.
"Their life is not sacred, they have disobeyed the laws, some many times over and I found a new use for our metalbending uniforms!"
"Just because they made several mistakes and got sucked into the Triads does not guarantee absolute death."
"As opposed to partial death?" Lin smirked and added on, "Court has determined that I will not be held accountable for this death therefore you shouldn't be lecturing me about this!"
"That man might have had a loved one and children, and a life, and you took it away!"
Lin remembered Tenzin's reaction when his brother had first wanted to join the United Forces, it mirrored this argument.
"That man, if what you are saying is in any way right, knew that he had a wife and children and he had continued doing his job which was always at high risk," Lin calmly replied.
"Lin you took something from the world on instinct! On instinct! We don't know who that man is and we never will, and we don't know how he got into the position he did! What if being part of the Triads was his only way of getting an income and you know how high the better benders are paid!"
Lin flinched, income in Triads, or Triads' dominance on the streets were a sore subject for her.
"Anyone who breaks the law and attacks the official police force is subject to either jail-time or injury or even death if caused in battle, and if the opposing force attacked first," Lin recited. "A law you made yourself."
"Lin this isn't about laws or rules or proper society," Tenzin's voice quieted to a whisper. Lin half-wished that Pema would interrupt, she had a way of replacing one kind of tension with another. "This is about that you took a man's life without hesitating and you are not thinking of who he was and what you took away without thinking."
"I don't care, I've done it before and if someone threatens my team or my friends I will do it again!" Lin shrieked into the air.
A gust of wind knocked her back onto the training pavilion, forcing the breath out of her as she landed hard on her hip and her injured arm. Lin looked to see if the trees rocking with heavy breeze but all there was, was Tenzin with his palm outstretched.
Never had Tenzin airbent at her, outside of sparring matches. Never. Lin sluggishly got up, and Tenzin's face was one with pure shock.
All that spoke was silence, and it sung a mournful song, screeching to Lin's buzzing ears. She shuddered slightly and took a deep breath, calming her already heaving breath.
"Tenzin, I'm not doing this anymore," she looked up, refusing to smash a boulder into his head. A ball rose to her throat and Lin tried to furiously swallow it down.
"No Lin, we can still work something out!" Tenzin fumbled for his words, a gesture Lin had for such a long time found adorable. "Lin don't!"
Lin latched her cable onto the metal wires ranging from the island to the mainland and tugged it a little, Tenzin opened his mouth to say more.
"Lin I love you!" he tried again desperately. Say anything else and I won't be able to stop myself.
"Pema loves you," by the look of sheer astonishment on Tenzin's face, Lin could tell that Pema had indeed told Tenzin she loved him, the bitch. The ball in her throat started boiling and Tenzin opened his mouth to try to form a response. "And you love her."
"Lin, that's not true!" he yelled after her, but the way his eyebrows slanted upwards indicated the opposite, Lin blinked back tears furiously, watching Tenzin. She longed not to go, to throw herself into his arms and sob into his arms, and pretend that nothing was wrong, she loved him and he loved her back, and that he wasn't trying to break up with her, his childhood friend, because of a little kid.
She pulled herself up on to the metal wires, briefly finding comfort in the coldness and muted heartbeat, her element, and flew across the bay. When she launched herself down to the ground, something bruises in her wrist but Lin ignored it, the first time Lin had flown was with Tenzin, on his glider, when she was still his and he was still hers.
In the middle of onlooking traffic, Lin Beifong stood, trying to swallow tears. Lin ran to the headquarters, not looking back to where her lover, not hers, Pema's, used to wait for her nearly every dinner.
The headquarters came late, after her run through the city. Lin hazily remembered knocking several people aside, black hair streaming in her peripheral vision, but the boiling tears didn't make their way down Lin's cheeks. She put a hand to her face, then slowly removed it, refusing to let the tears flow.
She walked into the headquarters, focusing on making her stride even and face blank.
Officer Song walked into the space beside her and started talking, "Aside from today's conflict at City Hall, an Agni Kai leader was found dead, their was no sign of struggle, the autopsy has said death by drowning. Also..."
Lin shook off the daze in her head, and realized with a start that Song had been talking to her, "Sorry, what?"
"He was the one to commit the raid on the Sato mansion three years ago," Song hesitated visibly and his face trembled, while Lin could barely keep confusion from spreading over her face.
"He who?" Lin asked.
"The Agni Kai leader," Lin's face remained the same, confused. "The one found dead." Song stared into Lin's eyes, and Lin trembled with the thought of him seeing tears in the glass green eyes. "I'll give a report to Saikhan."
Song scampered down the hallway and Lin watched furiously. Did I really scare him?
A sob bubbled in her mouth, and Lin scampered the other direction into her office. She metalbent the door open and slammed it back.
Lin stared for a moment at her office, the warmth of the metal comforting momentarily, she collapsed into her chair, and started looking through the pile of reports. Nothing happened. Nothing happened. Nothing happened...
Lin's weary eyes traveled along her desk, noticing a tear-filled glance stare up at her and then something not metal or paper caught her eye.
Lin drew in a quick, shuddering breath, it was a picture of her and Tenzin on Air Temple island, a day Lin strangely didn't remember. Avatar Aang's statue was in the background, and it was in an area of a secluded cliff, the place for only her and Tenzin, and Lin was smiling. Actually smiling. Lin tried mirroring the expression of Picture Lin but it didn't work. She rarely smiled, and if she did it was more out of sarcasm than anything, and she only did for the people who deserved it.
She lost Tenzin. She lost everything, she lost her love and her mother so close to each other the two people who had mattered the most to her.
Lin smashed the picture onto the floor, the glass shattering onto unyielding metal, the picture tore via intervention by Lin. Lin bowed her head into her arms and slowly massaged the area around her eyes, refusing to let
I have my job and I have Republic City, and I have my team. And whoever is creating the problems withing the Triads is going to be very, very sorry.
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Second out of my three times of saying this: please review!
Also I noticed how little Republic City was expanded, which is why it's much easier for me to write about the Triads, although it would be nice to have gotten a frame of the Triads and their interaction, I feel like TLOK focused too much on the Equalists/pro-bending/romance that Republic City itself was shoved apart. I cared more about Lin than I did about Republic City getting blown up, I was still sad about the civilians and stuff but as they were never expanded and Republic City was never made dynamic as we primarily got the POVs of the very upper class/ pro benders to make it dynamic. Gommu was an exception although he seemed a bit unrealistic and I just can't follow his personality, unlike Mako's.
By the way it occurred to me to say this, I don't hate Pema and I don't dislike her. And I don't hate or dislike Pemzin, Linzin belongs in the past, Pemzin is in the present and I think it's a very beautiful and caring relationship that goes both ways.
Oh and I always rant at the end of chapters, it's sort of a habit.
I found this gorgeous page on google with photoshopped eyes, there are some gorgeous ones like with clocks, and ice. I'm using one for my title page, what do you think of it? I edited it on Google+ so it's mine-ish
Rant over, again PLEASE REVIEW.