Fandom: Legend of Korra
Rating: T (for suggested themes)
Characters/Pairings: Lin Beifong, the Krew, Pema, Tenzin, the airbabies, and mentions of Toph, Aang/past TenzinxLin|
Spoilers: I suppose up until the end of the series
Summary: Lin Beifong has decided that it is time to stop dwelling in the past.
A/N: (Not beta'd) Wow. I wrote this all in one sitting. I'm rather proud of it, all things considering. Please tell me what you think after you're done. :)

It had been hard coming back to Republic City after it had been bombed and thoroughly defiled by the Equalists. It was even harder when Chief Beifong was informed that her apartment complex, the complex she had lived in since her mother had died ten years ago, had been bombed, and she would have to find a new place to live. Tenzin offered her a room in the Air Temple, which she grudgingly took, and Pema offered the services of all four of the older kids to help her salvage what she could and move it to Air Temple Island. Lin was perfectly capable of doing it herself, but she decided the four teenager would need a distraction from the aftermath of the fight (and each other), so she accepted the help.

The morning of the move came and found Lin in the dining room, nursing a cup of tea. She had already eaten the bowl of porridge and fruit from Pema, and had somehow gotten saddled with the responsibility of watching Rohan while Pema made bagged lunches for Lin and the teenagers. Lin did not mind watching the baby as much as she pretended; it was early and Rohan was content to doze in his bassinet. Lin sipped at her tea and studied the baby, who already was showing characteristics of his parents; his mother's round face and small noise with his father's large ears.

The four teenagers tumbled in at various intervals, yawning and greeting the reinstated Chief of Police sleepily. Bolin stared when he first came in, for the cop was dressed in a simple green tunic, loose brown pants, and arm braces, not her general police uniform (which at this point he was convinced she slept in). He gathered himself quickly, though, and greeted her with a rambunctious "Mornin', Chief!" Beifong simply nodded and waited for them to acquired breakfast from Pema.

"Where are the kids?" Asami asked as she sat down with her porridge and coffee, looking around at spots that were usually populated by the three eldest of Pema and Tenzin's airbender brood.

"Meditating with Tenzin at the pavilion," Korra said sleepily, reaching for the pot of tea and pouring her own glass. "They do it every morning."

Asami hmm'd thoughtfully. Mako spoke up, "Chief Beifong, what will we be doing today?"

Lin looked at him over her teacup. "I went to survey the damage done to my apartment last night. Thankfully the bomb fell on the other side of the complex and the resident waterbenders were able to take care of the resulting fire. But the landlord is still making everyone move out while repairs are made. So we'll be packing things up and moving boxes."

"Great," Mako grimaced.

"Can't handle a little physical labor, macho man?" Korra asked, punching her boyfriend on the shoulder lightly. Mako scowled at the teasing but it eased as Korra laughed and pressed a kiss to his cheek.

Lin rolled her eyes at the interaction. "If we hustle we should be done before dinner. I don't have that many things."

After breakfast they left Pema washing the dishes and headed down to the dock, where an Air Acolyte met them with a boat and a cart full of wooden crates for the move. The Acolyte piloted the boat across the bay the docks of the main city, where he had a small conversation with Lin about when to be back to pick them up. The engine of the boat roared as the Acolyte drove the boat off, and Lin motioned for the teenagers to follow her. Bolin and Korra took turns pulling the heavy wooden cart behind them, Asami and Mako walking in stony silence ahead of them. They followed the Chief into the heart of Republic City, to a well-kept neighborhood near Police Headquarters.

Lin told them to leave the cart outside, each teen grabbing two crates apiece, and tipped a street ruffian she seemed to know by name to watch it. She led them up seven flights of stairs to her apartment. She let them in and the four eagerly looked around to see what they could learn about the Chief of Police. It was a small one-room apartment, a kitchenette, bathroom, and door to the bedroom on the left. On the right was a small sitting area with a futon pressed up against the wall, a simple wooden coffee table, and radio and lamp on a stand in the corner. The windows were covered with black curtains and the right wall of the apartment was made entirely up on metal bookcases filled with tomes upon tomes of leather-bound books and scrolls. Some of the books were on the floor and the lampshade on the lamp was crooked, no doubt from the explosion of the bomb.

"That's a lot of books," Bolin said in astonishment.

Lin shrugged and took two of the crates. "You four fetch the rest of the crates and start packing up in here. I'll pack up my bedroom." She flicked her wrist, causing the curtains to open. "There are towels to wrap fragile things in the bathroom linen closet."

"We got it, Lin," Korra said with a grin. "We'll get it packed up in no time!"

Lin snorted softly and carried the crates into her bedroom. It, too, was simple, just a bed, a bedside table, and a closet. She heard the radio turn on and shook her head, setting the crates on the bed.

She started in the closet, folding up her few sets of non-work related clothes and packing them away in the crate. Her two spare uniforms followed suit, although she used metalbending to fold and store them, along with her few pairs of miscellaneous footwear. Her closet, empty, she moved to the bed.

She filled the second crate with her bed sheets, carefully wrapping up the framed drawing of her mother and herself as a child from her night table in a pillowcase, nestling it in with the comforter-swaddled lamp. She opened the night table's drawer and pulled out the meteor bracelet Toph had given Lin when she had turned eighteen. After a moment's thought, Lin balanced herself on the bed with an arm and formed the meteorite rock around her ankle as an anklet.

Her bedroom empty, she picked up a crate and carried it into the main room.

~MEANWHILE~

When Lin went into the bedroom, Asami took over the packing operation; she sent Bolin down to get the remainder of the crates, and instructed Korra and Mako to begin packing up the bookcases while she worked on the kitchenette. Mako flipped on the radio before beginning; the station was playing lively jazz music and it was too that they worked. Mako and Korra carefully packing the books and scrolls into crates; Mako discovered several sets of records on the bottom of one of the shelves and flipped through them gleefully.

"She has good taste," he said as he flipped. "Some of these are classics!"

"Looks like you two might have something in common after all," Korra told him. He rolled his eyes and picked up the boxes of records and fitted them snugly into the crates. Bolin appeared with four more and paused, out of breath from the exertion of carrying them up the stairs.

"Hey, what's this?" Korra asked, pulling a leatherbound journal out from behind the tomes. It was old and dusty, the ragged edges of folded papers that had been put inside it sticking up out of the yellowing pages.

"What's what?" Bolin and Asami asked at the same time; Asami put down the tea tins she was packing and came over to investigate.

"Looks like a journal," Mako said. "Open it and see!"

"I dunno," Korra said nervously, "if it was back there all hidden Beifong probably didn't want anybody to read it…"

"Let me see it," Asami ordered, and the young Avatar passed it over. She undid the cord tie and opened it. It was, indeed, a journal, written in the Chief's neat, narrow handwriting. Instantly the other three crowded around her, throwing caution to the wind.

"These are old," Mako said, noting the date on the top of the first entry. "They're from like thirty-something years ago!"

Asami did a quick calculation in her head. "She was about our age when she wrote this one…" her hand passed over the yellowed first page.

"What does it say?" Korra asked, unable to see over Bolin's shoulder.

Asami's skimmed the page. "She's talking about her mother not being able to read or write and how it's almost a privledge to be able to do both of those things…" She flipped through the book until it stopped at a place where a folded piece of parchment had been placed.

"Hey, that's Tenzin's handwriting!" Korra exclaimed.

"Is it?" Asami asked, pulling the folded parchment out and studying it. Sure enough, on the front of the parchment in a loopy hand read 'To Lin Beifong, From Tenzin.'

"Open it!" Korra encouraged her. Asami did so, unfolding the tri-folded piece of paper. She read aloud,

'My dearest Lin,

Omashu is wonderful, but it's hard to see the night sky because of all the lights. The city is not as developed as Republic City, for there is hardly any electricity and they still use the mail-chutes of my father's day (Bumi was incessant about riding one the moment we got here—can you image? He's 23years old and he still acts like a five year old), but it is full nice people who leave us relatively alone. I found a quiet place on the citadel where I can meditate in peace; Bumi and Kya have yet to figure out where I go every morning, but Father knows, as he joins me some times.

I hope your metalbending training is going well. Your idea of moving the cable housing to the back of the uniform in a more secure housing does sound reasonable, as does the sleeve modifications for freer arm movement you mention. Please let me know how you cable trials work out, for I do love to hear about your progress.

By the time this letter reaches you, we should have moved on to Ba Sing Se, so direct your messenger hawk there. I'm sure it will find us easily. I miss you terribly. Please write soon, for your letters are the only thing that keeps me sane! Five more weeks until we are reunited, when I can kiss you properly and take you out to dinner wherever your heart desires.

Love, Tenzin'

The four teenagers exchanged shocked glances. They had obviously stumbled across deeply personal letters, and it was obvious that Lin had hidden them away to forget of their existence.

"We shouldn't be reading these," Mako murmured.

"No, you shouldn't." The four jumped out of their skins to see Beifong standing behind them, a crate under her arm and a scowl on her face.

"C-Chief Beifong!" Bolin exclaimed in an attempt to lighten the situation. "Amazing seeing you here!"

"In my own apartment, yes, very shocking." Lin stepped forward, holding out her hand to Asami. "I'll take the journal, girl."

Asami nodded and folded up the letter, putting in back in it's place before shutting the journal and handing it to the Chief of Police, her head bowed in shame. "I am very sorry, Chief Beifong."

"Yeah, me too," Korra mumbled.

"Me three," Mako murmured.

"What they said," Bolin reiterated.

Beifong took the journal and stowed it in the crate under her arm. "I should have known better then to let you four pack without supervision. Thank you for your apology." She set the crate down and looked at Bolin. "Where are the rest of those crates, boy?"

"A-Ah, downstairs. I'll go get them right away!" He scampered out the door and they heard him clattering down the stairs. Asami returned to the kitchen and Mako and Korra back to the bookcases. Lin shook her head and knelt down to pull her record-player out from under the futon.

They packed in silence, Bolin joining Asami once all the crates were in. At noon, they stopped and ate the bagged lunches Pema had made for them. It was a little before three o'clock when everything was either packed into crates or disassembled and ready to be moved downstairs. It took another two hours to carry everything down the seven flights of stairs and pack it into the cart.

After everything was packed, they made their way back through the city towards the dock Bolin and Korra pulling the cart, Asami and Mako pushing, with Lin periodically giving it a shove with her earthbending or hardening the ground so it would not sink. The evening rush made it slow going, but they finally reached the dock at a little past six.

The Air Acolytes were waiting for them. They loaded the cart into the boat, letting the four teenagers lean against the railings of the ship, exhausted, more than willing to let the Acolytes deal with the cart. Chief Beifong kept an eye on the six Acolytes as they checked the cables holding the crates in place and threw sandbags on the wheels of the cart to keep it from moving.

The ride back to Air Temple Island was rather uneventful. Beifong took pity on the Acolytes halfway up the steep pathway to the temple and used her earthbending to raise the cart up on a slab and hover up the rest of the hill. The four teenagers whined, asking her why she couldn't have done that back in the city, and the Chief simply smirked.

The Acolytes took it from there and ushered the five off to dinner. They arrived just as it was being served, and they all sat down to enjoy Pema's cooking. The kids were practically overjoyed to see them and were rambunctiously loud (well, Meelo and Ikki were loud, Jinora not so much) for the beginning of dinner. Lin rubbed her temples and accepted the cup of tea Tenzin passed her with thanks.

"Did the move go alright?" He asked her.

She took a sip of her tea before nodded. "It went alright. They found the love letters you sent me when we were teenagers."

"They what?" Tenzin exclaimed, his whole head turning red. The table hushed.

"What's wrong, Daddy?" Meelo asked.

Tenzin coughed, his face still burning. "Nothing, nothing important." When the table went back to its normal conversation he turned to her and whispered in slight hysterics, "How many did they read? More importantly, why do you still have those?"

"As far as I can tell they only read one," Lin said with a sigh, setting down her tea and picking up a bowl of rice and vegetarian stir fry. "And I don't rightly know why I still have them."

Tenzin stared at his own bowl. "Which…..Which one did they read?"

Lin ate half of her bowl before responding. "It was the one of the ones you sent me when you were on the half-a-year long family trip around the world. I believe it was the last one you wrote from Omashu. You talked about—"

"About Bumi wanting to ride the chutes and the quiet meditation plate I had found… and I asked you about your metalbending." Tenzin finished her sentence for her.

Lin nodded, her shock that he remembered so well barely hidden. She knew why she knew—she had read the letters hundreds of times after their break up, as if they could have held a clue to why they had drifted so far apart. But he had only written the letter and sent it on its way. Why should he remember the contents? "Yes… Yes, that was the letter they read."

An uncomfortable silence stretched between them. "It could have been worse."

Lin remembered the detailed descriptions of what he would do to her once they had finished their dinner, the descriptions only a few letters back from the one the four had read, and nodded once. "Yes, it could have been."

After dinner Lin went to the storeroom where the Acolytes had stored the cart. After a bit of fishing she found the carton with the journal in it and took it out. She walked out to one of the cliffs on the far side of the island that overlooked the water, sat cross-legged on the edge, and read through the journal in its entirety, the glow of the full moon provided ample reading light.

She read through each journal entry slowly, each letter even slower, remembering the first time she had gotten each letter, her excitement bubbling over as she would run to her room for privacy (as if her mother could ever read what was on each piece of parchment) and tear open the wax seal and read the letter in a blur. Often, her excitement would soon fade her heartache for her currently long-distance lover, and she would fold up the letter, put it neatly into her journal, and wait until her mother had gone to work to write her reply.

It was late when she finished her last entry, the one that detailed her break up with her long-time boyfriend. She sighed and closed the book with a dull 'thwump', tying it closed with the cord. She set it to the side and looked out at the water, the horizon's inky black framed by the glow of Republic City on either side. After a time she stood and stomped her heel into the ground, encasing the journal in rock. She picked up the football-sized rock and after a moment's hesitation threw the rock into the air and sent it soaring over the bay with a well timed kick. It came down with an audible splash several hundred meters off shore and sank quickly. Lin concentrated and after a second felt the faint vibrations as it came to a rest at the bottom of the bay.

With a nod she turned on her heel and nearly jumped out of her skin at the sight on Tenzin standing several meters behind her. "T-Tenzin!"

"You threw it away," he said simply.

"Yes, I did," she replied, walking towards him. "It's time to stop dwelling in the past. You moved on with your wife and your children… it's time that I moved on, too."

"I thought you had moved on when you jumped off the back of my bison to take on two Equalist airships by yourself," he said gruffly.

Lin chuckled wryly. "This is my way of cementing it."

"It's good to talk you again," Tenzin said in a rush, "all those years without saying hardly anything…I missed our conversations."

"So did I," Lin admitted softly. Hesitantly Tenzin pulled her into a hug, and after a moment Lin hugged back. Something niggled at the back of her mind, the thought that had bothered her ever since she had begun to see the family as something to treasure and not be bitter about; she figured now was as good a time as any to apologize for it. "I'm….sorry I missed your wedding, Tenzin."

"It's alright," he assured her as they parted. "I understood the reason, especially since it was… so soon after our breakup."

"It was four year after our breakup," she said wryly, starting the walk back to the compound. "There was hardly an excuse for it. I was…being childish."

"If you want to apologize for being childish go tell Pema you're sorry for trying to arrest her."

Lin had the decency to look embarrassed. "Ah….yes…. I should….yes."

Tenzin shook his head. "You can do that in the morning."

"Right." The Chief of Police rolled her eyes and stopped; they had arrived at the back door to the woman's dormitory. "Good night, Tenzin."

"Good night, Lin. Sleep well."

"You, too, Tenzin." The metalbender slipped inside and padded as quietly as possible to her borrowed room. She sat on the bed and rotated the meteorite bracelet current latched around her ankle, just as she had done for many years after her mother had given it to her.

She had, for the most part, repaired her friendship with Tenzin. It had taken fifteen or so years, but it was on the mend. Tomorrow she would apologize to Pema, although she was fairly certain Pema had already forgiven her. It would not, of course, fix the years of bitter looks, seething remarks, and, yes, the time she had tried to arrest her. But it was a start.

Lin lay back and bed and looked at the ceiling. Aang would be proud of her, and she was certain that secretly, her mother would have been have been proud, too.