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Korra, thank the spirits, had given Lin her bending back. Who was happier for it - Lin herself, or Tenzin's guilt ridden heart, you'd never know.
The next morning after the happy event though Lin woke up sickly exhausted, and for a second there she did think she might have caught a cold but that wasn't it.
Something in her body wasn't right. She wasn't sure if that was how it was supposed to be after what she endured, since there was no precedent for what 'normal' felt like after having one's bending forcibly removed and then returned. No one really understood how the Equalists had done it in the first place.
She tried to stand, but the room was spinning on her which led to her stumbling against the doorframe and realized this was not something she could stubborn her way through alone. When the healers of Republic City offered no and nothing answers, she finally sent word to Katara - that decision meant giving up the privacy she had fought to keep from Tenzin.
The Councilman arrived almost the same moment his mother did.
How did he even learn of everything
Katara examined her with gentle hands and gentler eyes. "I should think it'll all be fine. You feel... fine" she said softly with a look at her son with regretful confusion "But her body has been shocked. And overwhelmed. Whatever the Equalists use I don't think they're just blocking your chakras to stop you from bending. I think it's more like taking it from you and so now that your bending has returned ,your body may feel too small for it and it's trying to make space. And it's giving your life force away to do so"
It was only speculation, but it was the best they had.
Issue here: Lin had no intention of letting go of her bending to test it because quote unquote "what would I even do without it then" which made Tenzin's eyes squeeze shut in the distance. Every time he heard how important it was to her, something he already knew, and yet she was willing to risk giving it up, she did give it up, to protect his own, it hurt all over again. He loved her so much it hurt.
Another issue: they didn't know if it was going to stop because it just kept making her... worse. She technically felt no pain which was a good part of it all but her state was more frail than if she was ill and there was an unspoken, unacknowledged understanding that it might very well just suck her off until she dropped dead.
"What do you propose we do as we... wait?" Tenzin asked his mother so evidently not pleased with Lin's decision to just wait it out and see. "I mean we can't just-"
Lin on her own end wasn't too warm in her demeanor for him cause all her eyes told him when they snapped in his direction was: You think you're part of an 'us' right now?
"I'd have her rest." Katara said with her heart on her face and worry of her own. "Eat well. Rest deeply. Whatever this is, its like something is pulling the strength from her. She shouldnt waste energy on anything unnecessary." She turned to Lin with a warm smile and brushed a hand across her cheek to which Lin managed a small smile in return.
Katara and Aang had adored Lin since she was a child. When Toph had taken a little while to warm to her first baby after she gave birth to her ,Katara had understood and made sure ,if secretly, to ensure they were both okay.
She couldn't help it, especially having given birth herself recently ,all of her motherly had gotten worse.
Now, decades later she was again watching over Lin Beifongs green eyes desperate to make sure she will be alright If she left her alone.
Which was probably why after a second she said "Maybe I should stay ,see how-"
"No." Lin was shaking her head before Katara breath was even out of her lungs. "Don't even think of it. You have no reason to be here. Go home" had it been up to Lin, she wouldn't have wanted Katara here to being with - she'd have gone to her herself but flying made her nauseous just to think about. And ship... worse.
"It'll be fine for just a bit" katara started "for-" she shook her head while trying to think of a reason beyond Lin's sole comfort, cause for her that was never enough of a reason "Pema." She decided "She just had a baby. I love helping with the babies." Half true. At her age she didn't really enjoy chores, if she ever did, but she did love babies. Lin's eyes changed from insistent and stubborn to... They didn't know. Soften in a way maybe. But whatever it was, Tenzin knew it came from the fact that Lin had forgotten about the baby, because he looked right at him.
Right. He has a baby.
Tenzin was actually delighted with his mom's line of thought because he jumped right in to the agenda "Mother, Pema would be thrilled actually if you'll be there maybe Lin should come too-"
"I'm not going to air temple island" she said.
Katara may have thrown an argument or two more into the cause but Tenzin took the word and said "Fine." He looked in her eyes and said "I was always told a sick person should be able to have whatever they wanted" he smirked and his mother grinned which led Lin to believe it was something Katara had done for her babies.
Finally and agreeing as he put a hand on his mother's shoulder had them leave the room.
Lin felt both relieved and aching as she heard her door close ,her head fell in her hands. There were few things she really hated in this life and she was currently suffocating with most of them.
She was helpless ,she didn't know why or for how long ,and she thought she could die.
And Tenzin, for the first time in her life, listened to her only when she asked him to leave her.
The rest of the day, and most of the night, Lin spent in bed doing nothing but reheating towels to lay over her body until she'd fallen asleep at some point
When she woke, she knew someone was in her home - she knew it was Tenzin. And she knew he had meant for her to know, not to startle her with surprise. She knew should Tenzin want to go unheard ,he could
"What are you doing here?" she shouted from her bed
He peeked through the doorway before stepping inside
"Good, you're awake" he said unceremoniously. "You should eat."
"What are you doing here, Tenzin?" she repeated.
"Making sure you eat?" he replied, surely purposefully calm and obtuse.
"Cut that. I don't need you here. I've got people who can bring me things. You should go."
"Are you well enough to sit up, or should I bring it to you in bed on one of those small tables?" He ignored her completely as he moved to pick up a tray with plates on it.
"Tenzin." she scolded.
"Lin." he turned back with matching her tone.
"Don't you have more important work to do? The Avatar, for one. The city, for another. And you have a-"
"I don't have anything else to do." he said calmly. His eyes were firm and determined so she didn't even bother telling him to leave again since he wasn't going to budge. That careless, happy, idle persona he had on was a farce ,right now he was worried and planted firmly on his feet.
"I'll eat in bed." she said begrudgingly. She puffed her pillow pettily and pushed herself up, resting her back against the headboard.
As she ate her breakfast, Tenzin sat at the foot of her bed and watched her
"Way to make a woman comfortable" Lin muttered, squinting at him.
He looked away with a small smirk before he asked "How are you feeling?"
"Don't talk to me that way, please" she said in something bordering disgust "I'm well."
"You're not well, Lin" he replied calmly, saddened by the fact
"I am..." She swallowed. "Tired. That's all. And chilly."
"Fever?" Tenzin stood and leaned over, pressing the back of his hand gently against her forehead. Lin turned her face away. After a moment he switched hands, checking again, then pulled back. Having him so close... and yet never close enough. It made her feel even sicker.
In this moment she wondered if this was how he tended to Pema when she was pregnant, each and every time. In the small space he had made for himself in her home, it was easy to close her eyes and imagine what being his wife must feel like. "You don't have one"
In passing, she thought that even years ago he wouldnt have kissed her forehead to check as he does his wife now.
Sometimes she had to remind herself that he had never treated her the way he treated Pema now
She wished the thought helped but It never did because she had never wanted Pema's Tenzin.
Reminding herself that their relationships were different would have been useful if she were jealous of the damn relationship - If she envied the family and the children. If all the bitterness she felt when she looked at his very beautiful , very real children came from wishing she had some of her own to give him but that was never the issue.
Comically - at times she tried to convince herself it did because jealousy was somehow, in her head ,the better shame to hold.
Trade one poison for another, envy was at least expected of her.
The truth was that she did not want those things for herself nearly as much as she wanted him not to have them.
She wnated for Tenzin not to have needed them.
She hated looking at a happy father and feeling confused and resentful toward the things that made him happy. In his mind, losing them would likely be the worst thing imaginable.
So she settled with jealousy.
It didn't hold when her pride kept insisting that should she have wanted any of this she could've had it few things could convince her Tenzin wouldn't have chosen her in a heartbeat
"You can go now" she said as her eyes went from the wall to the food but never on him
"I will" he nodded. But Lin had learned recently that when Tenzin agreed too easily it was just because he didn't mean to follow it through. "Do you need anything else?"
"Nothing." she shook her head
She wanted him gone, far away from her cause those thoughts sure drained her.
"What if you-?" he began anyway at the door
"I've been sick before, Tenzin." she raised a brow and her voice was flat. "I'll be fine."
His eyes must have shown his surprise because she narrowed hers back at him
Of course she'd been ill before, why wouldn't have she caught colds or viruses ,it just never... occured to him ,he supposed.
She had rarely, if ever, let him see her weak so his head led him to believe she never was.
You wouldn't have had the right anyway. Tenzin thought.
He had given up any right to care for her like this long ago. His presence here now was already a fragile excuse hanging by a thread. He had to respect the distance he himself had created.
But spirits… it was harder than he expected.
At times, Lin wanted desperately not to be angry and spiteful with him. She wanted to understand, beyond the understanding she already did surfacely ,that what Tenzin had done was the right thing - that his need for children was a valid thing that simply didn't align with her and she should just sit with the good love they lived out.
But she had never truly gotten to live out that love. And some stupid, lovesick part of her still believed, deep in her bones, that no one would ever be to her what Tenzin had been.
Every time she saw him next to any other man she found herself finding flaws in these men that weren't objective shortcomings so much as 'things Tenzin doesn't have'.
It was a cruel cycle her heart had trapped her in: loving him, hating him, avoiding him, and wanting him all at once.
She eventually fell asleep again, because it was the only thing she knew how to do at the moment. Half the day must have slipped away, because when she woke, the sunlight was warm and dimmed and she knew it was sunset. Her mouth was painfully dry.
She pushed herself up but she still wasn't used to doing slowly so the dizziness hit her hard. She tripped two steps in again, and this time it was worse due to the sound of her shattering glasses that she'd knocked over the floor. She landed badly on them cutting her wrist and forearm.
"Fuck" she hissed and was for only a moment reluctant to try and get up because she didn't want to touch where she was sure were shards.
She didn't have to though.
In a second, Tenzin was there and on his knees next to her
Fucking liar.
He lifted her carefully and her chin rested on his shoulder, and he felt... perfect. For one moment she thought she could finally sleep well like this. Her arms barely wrapped around his neck. Poor thing she thought might get blood on his robes.
She let her head rest heavier on his shoulder anyway. He smelled the same as he always had.
"You didn't leave" she muttered. It was scolding both in intent and in tone but her position wasn't well suiting it
"I didn't leave." he confirmed unapologetically yet meekly. He sat her down on the edge of her bed and fell to his knees again to take her hand in one of his and examine the cuts
"Why didn't you leave?" The question kept echoing in her head, louder and louder. Why are you here? Why do you make this so much harder? You left me once- whats the hassle of doing it again?
"Why didn't you leave?" she repeated and she kept repeating that same thing in maybe different wording. She felt delirious. Her hands might have grabbed at him after he took or kept trying to remove glass from her, and her voice kept getting louder. Even a monk's patience had limits.
Tenzin caught her wrist as he argued with a firm "You're sick!"
"You're married!" she countered
"I don't care" he shot back perfectly confident in its quality as an argument
He hated that he had said it. He hated that he had to. Most of all, he hated that it wasn't a lie.
"I don't care," Tenzin repeated this once more in the tone of his usual calm and full of thought words. He licked his lip
"Every time I've left you, I've done so because I believed you would be better off without me. And you are. You're happy. You have everything you wanted. Being with me would've only brought you more pain and... more sacrifice, and you don't need any of that. Nothing has comforted me more than knowing my misery was at least half altruistic on your part too. You should never have to give up anything else for someone else's sake. Staying with you back then... I couldn't do it, because I knew you wouldn't have been truly happy. So I left. But right now, you're not well. And I know- I know that I can help you get better. You won't be better off without me tonight." His breath was running out and his voice broke.
"Lin... I can't leave you."
He could say such beautiful things so easily, the bastard.
"Don't talk like that" she said as she looked away "Just don't fucking talk like that."
Tenzin rested his forehead gently against the outside of her thigh , everything he said was painedly and low "I'm sorry. But you know how it's always been."
Lin pressed her lips into a thin line - she wanted to cry. She didn't want to look at him. She barely wanted to feel him there.
"...I don't know anything" she muttered. "I don't know a thing."
"You know I loved you." he started as he brought his head back up and his eyes to hers narrowed. "That I've-" loved you but she couldn't let him say that.
"But not in the right way." she cut in sharply yet in a way helpfully. Like she was supplying him with the thing to add.
Say it, Tenzin. Say it wasn't the right kind of love.
"You can't be the wrong way, Lin. You're you."
She hated the absolute certainty in his voice - the way she was still some kind of symbol of rightness in his mind, no matter what had happened between them. No matter how hard he tried to convince himself otherwise... for his own sake, Lin could never be the wrong thing to do. The wrong person to go to. To listen to.
All their lives ,Lin was... Perfect to him.
"This is such a mess" she breathed.
"I can't leave." he said despite that.
"Go to your wife." Lin hissed through her teeth. She knew she was one word away, one "no", from letting go and giving him everything he wanted
And he just had to go above and beyond with "I don't want to."
And she was done for it. Her mouth asked an empty spiteful question nonetheless "What about what I want?"
Tenzin looked at her only half questioning. She was sure he was still very prideful on his ability to know her. "True. What do you want?" No question whatsoever in his voice ,less than in his eyes, so her fingers going to his jaw and getting him up on her level where she kissed him, wasn't really an answer.
She was sick. She was allowed to have whatever she wanted.
It infuriated her that he kissed her back so easily. If he had startled or pulled away, she could have clung to her sense of entitlement and let him deal with the guilt she was too tired, and unwilling, to face. Instead, he kept kissing her, deeply and well, while pushing himself up and guiding her back onto the bed until she was lying beneath him
Damn him for making her say it.
"Tell me no" she murmured against his mouth.
"You don't feel good?" Tenzin asked simply.
Oh she felt good.
He was asking about her health, of course ,and in that regard too - she felt ecstatic. For the first time in days, her body felt fine, and... clear headdd, though his fingers tracing her waist and settling on her chest were quickly undoing that.
Her eyes moved over his face from his eyes to his lips and back again, searching for a reason to push him away and alas ,she couldn't find one. Tenzin was a grown man with a mind of his own, one of the few people she truly trusted to think clearly. He was smart and righteous and more than capable of choosing for himself.
She had never been able to tell him what to do anyway
So tonight, she allowed herself not to know better than him.
"Tell me no" she repeated once more for good measure just to know she did it , her hand tugging blindly at the top of his robe in the same time
Tenzin only hummed his refusal and the sound vibrated against her lips which in itself made her arch her head back
He sat up just enough to pull his robe open and shrug it off, then helped her out of the rest of her clothes with his impatient hands. The moment they were both bare, he settled between her thighs, skin against skin. Lin wrapped her legs around his hips and dragged him down, gasping at the sudden press of his cock against her.
Tenzin braced himself on one forearm, the other hand slid between them to guide himself. He rubbed the head of his cock against her, teasing her entrance until she growled in frustration and rocked her hips up.
It's like riding a bike ,you never quite forget ,huh.
But sex is ends when it ends, Tenzin brought her water before he laid back in the bed. She was grateful for the evident lack of guilty conscience on his face. She'd been preparing herself for it, as anyone who's met him would say one should, but Tenzin seemed... not unapologetic, exactly, but defeatedly calm. Like a he'd had long ago accepted that this storm was coming and had only managed to dodge it for so long.
Which was ,by all means ,not the best attitude to see on a lovers face in your bed but rather send her head somewhere else: how often had Tenzin wanted her during all those professional encounters over the years and he'd patted himself on the back for resisting, while she stood right there, none the wiser?
Not long after they pulled a blanket over themselves and tangled together again. They didn't know when they fell asleep they knew they slept well into lunch.
Lin woke up first and felt like she'd never even been scratched, and because of that magical recovery Katara was brought quickly that same day
"I don't see anything different physically," she said as confused as before "but you do seem better balanced ,maybe the rest did it. I called Kya yesterday she said you might need a strong shot of euphoria to reset your system, I was gonna suggest but appearantly no"
"Must have really needed a good rest." Lin muttered.
"Things a proper night's sleep can do for a person" Tenzin echoed
And just to tease him back ,if worse ,Lin asked "How's Pema?"
She felt Tenzin's breathing stop beside her.
"I stole him for the night without meaning to. I'm... concerned what she might think." She added
Katara's eyes narrowed warmly. "She knows his intentions. She knows your heart. Don't worry"
Good to know.