Chapter Text
For someone wearing soft leather-soled boots and who was supposed to be moving with grace and elegance (or whatever nonsense waterbenders peddled about themselves), Kya was certainly stomping around like a whole herd of camelephants outside Chief Beifong’s door.
The chief put her pen down. As if it wasn’t enough that she had a stack of reports full of the worst penmanship she’d ever seen in a bunch of new recruits—so bad she could hardly read a single word they wrote!—now she had her extended ‘family’ breaking down her door at work. She rubbed her temples. Could this day get any worse? “Are you going actually come in?” she called. “Or are you just going to hover around my door wearing grooves in my floorboards?”
The door opened slightly and Kya peeked in. “Sorry, I just wasn’t sure if you were busy.”
“I am busy.”
Kya pursed her lips, looking a little sheepish. “Right, and I totally respect that,” she said, at first seeming genuine. It faded quickly. “But I also need a favour.”
Lin exhaled audibly, feeling herself sag. “When are you going back to the South Pole again?” she muttered to herself before straightening. “Well, what is it?”
Rather than simply answering her question, Kya let herself into Lin’s office and wandered and the most infuriating leisurely pace over to the long briarwood desk where she was seated. Her fingertips trailed over one of the polished knots in the wood. “Nice setup you have here.”
Like everything, the desk had been her mother’s. The comment grated her. “What’s the favour?”
Before Kya could answer, however, she spied a picture frame in front of Lin and was reaching for it with delight. Lin’s hand darted across the table and snatched it away. It was a photo of her and her sister with Mom, taken just recently. She didn’t want to find out what Kya had to say about it, so she stowed it quickly in the drawer beside her. “Please, for the love of all things good in this world, just say what you want to say and then leave so I can finish these damn reports.”
Kya’s hand was frozen in the position it had been when she was about to take the picture frame. She relaxed it, laughing. “You know, every time I’m away for a few years I forget what you’re like! Fine, chief,” she said, mercifully about to finally arrive at her actual point, “I need your help with something tonight.”
Tonight? “I don’t like the sound of that.”
“Of course you don’t,” Kya said, waving that comment away with a hand. “It’s Tenzin’s fifteenth wedding anniversary and he’s having a—”
“No,” Lin didn’t need to hear the end of this. “Find someone else for whatever foolish stunt you’re obviously planning, I won’t be part of your little prank war with him.”
Kya ignored her, continuing. “—a small dinner with just me and Bumi since we’re both in town. Anyway, his exact words were, ‘I’d offer you to invite your partners, but—’ then did that blank face he does, with the innocent eyebrows, ‘that’s right! I’m the only one who has one’. Then he wandered away, chuckling.”
Lin’s own eyebrows were down over her eyes. “So you want to invite yet another single person along to what, exactly? Outnumber him? Hammer the point home that he’s the only one of us who’s managed a family of their own?”
Kya leant indulgently forward on Lin’s desk. “Oh, no,” she said, eyes twinkling. “I want to mess with him.”
Lin began to feel uncomfortable. “Why am I essential to that?”
Kya looked positively delighted with herself. “Because you’re going to come as my date and we’re going to—”
“WHAT?” Her voice was so loud that several people on the street outside stopped in place to peer wide-eyed through the window. Lin swallowed, lowering her voice to a whisper. “No! No. Get out.”
Unfortunately, Kya was used to her. “So you’re just going to let Tenzin get away with that comment?”
“Well, he’s right. We just have to accept that.”
Kya rolled her eyes. “Yes, but you don’t just say things like that to your dearest sister and brother.”
Lin’s lips were in a tight, thin line. Her and Su had frequently said much worse. “I’m not doing it.”
“You know he’s probably sitting in the afternoon sun with Pema right now,” she said with exaggerated wistfulness. “Still laughing to himself and thinking about how great he is with his sweet, loving wife who’s given him about a hundred sweet, loving childr—”
Lin felt her cheeks heat up. “Can you stop?”
“You know what he’s like. He thinks he’s better than us.”
And he always has, Lin found herself thinking as she sucked in air through her teeth. That mental image Kya had provided of him and Pema giggling being all cutesy with each other made her positively ill.
“I just want to knock him down a peg. Give him a bit of a shock,” Kya continued. This time, Lin let her finish. “All you have to do is dress up and arrive arm-in-arm with me. Everyone knows you’re not exactly lovey-dovey, so that will be enough.”
That— Well, that actually didn’t sound too dreadful. She watched Kya through squinted eyes, still suspicious.
“I mean, can you imagine his face if he thinks you’re happier dating his sister than you ever were with him?”
Lin could imagine it (Tenzin always had the most wonderfully expressive face), but she wasn’t completely sold on how it ended. “And when he finds out it’s all a ruse?”
“He’ll feel stupid, of course! And it will serve him right,” she said firmly. “He shouldn’t presume that he knows everything about our private lives.”
That particular message, Lin could very much get behind. She hated visiting that damn island because of how smug they all were. How dare he think he knew what she was doing with her life, anyway? “It’ll just be family? No one else?”
Kya’s victorious grin spread across her whole face. “No one else.”
Lin leant against the backrest of her chair, arms crossed. She let a period of silence stretch between them long enough not to seem too interested in Kya’s plan to trick Tenzin. Kya didn’t need to know how angry the whole affair still made her, sometimes. “I’ll come to the island alone and meet you by the pier.”
Kya smacked the table. “I knew you’d do it!” she declared. “Wear something nice. Something to remind him what he’s not getting anymore.”
Lin already had the perfect dress in mind. “Mmm,” she said non-committally, and then gestured to the stack of paperwork in front of her. “Now, if you don’t mind, I need to get back to these reports.”
Clearly not wanting to press her luck, Kya mock-saluted at her. “You got it, chief! See you tonight,” she said on her way out. Then, as if on a dare, she added coyly over her shoulder, “My sweet turtledove.”
Lin had such a visceral reaction to those words that she could have gagged. Pointing to the door, she ordered, “Out!”