Chapter Text
Kya’s touch on her arm was like a shock, a brand; Lin half expected to look down and see the imprint of slender fingers burned into her skin. It stopped her in her tracks.
“Kya, I should go. I’m not wanted here,” she said through gritted teeth. She could see her escape, see the path leading down to the ferry and back to the city. Behind her, Kya’s heart thumped a nervous beat, and Lin could not bring herself to turn and face it.
“Lin. Lin, listen to me. It’ll be alright. You’re not going to lose him again.” Kya said. Her voice was tinged with desperation, and Lin’s heart dropped into the pit of her stomach. She whirled around.
“That’s not—I’m not after him, Kya. We weren’t—” she started, but Kya only squeezed her wrist gently.
“I know.”
“Oh. Good.”
Now that they were face to face, Lin couldn’t stop herself from taking Kya in. They’d only been in the same vicinity a few times since Kya had taken up residence on Air Temple Island, and Lin had always done her best to avoid looking at Kya straight on. She had existed to Lin as flashes of silver hair and half-heard laughter. It was easier that way.
Now, she stood before Lin, her fingers still wrapped around Lin’s wrist, even more beautiful than Lin had feared she would be. Signs of her age, of the years that had passed since they were last this close, were plain on her face, but they only made the youthful sparkle of her blue eyes more captivating. The silver of her hair shone despite the heavy cloud above them, as if she carried her own light with her, and Lin was momentarily speechless.
Kya, apparently, was not.
“I um—I told Pema about… why the two of you were out there,” she said. “I’m sorry.”
Her anxiety was written on her face, and Lin wished it wasn’t warranted. On any other day, she might well have snapped, might have lashed out in anger and hurt pride. Today, though, she was already wrung out and tired of her own rage.
“Don’t be. You did the right thing. They’ve had a hard year and they don’t need—”
“I didn’t do it for them.” Kya’s hand slipped from Lin’s wrist, resting the tips of long fingers in Lin’s palm.
“Oh,” Lin said, stupidly. She looked down at their hands, almost joined, and felt her heart flutter in a way she’d forgotten it could.
“This place misses you, Lin.” It was such an odd, Kya thing to say, and Lin was at a loss to know exactly what she meant by it. Lin wouldn’t put it past Kya, who had spent her childhood asking trees for their permission before she climbed them, to really be talking about the island itself, but something in her tone told Lin that she wasn’t. Whatever—whoever—Kya meant was irrelevant.
“It shouldn’t,” Lin said. “I’ve not been good to it.”
“There’s always time to make amends,” Kya replied. It sounded like an invitation, and Lin was damned if she was going to ignore it.
“Would you—do you want to walk down to the ferry with me?” she ventured. Kya’s answering smile was blinding; she withdrew her fingers from their resting place on Lin’s palm, but Lin was only disappointed for a moment before Kya tucked her hand into the crook of Lin’s elbow.
“Certainly, Ms Beifong.”
She half expected to be questioned about her conversation with Tenzin, to be told in detail what had caused the redness in Pema’s eyes, but perhaps that was because she had been spending too much time with teenagers recently. Kya, despite her ability to talk to almost anyone, knew when to respect a silence, and when not to ask questions.
Lin felt lighter for talking to Tenzin, yet the sensation frightened her, as if the wrong world, the wrong look might unmoor her and send her floating off into nothingness. Lin was glad of Kya’s grounding touch on her arm, the soft sound of her footsteps, just slightly out of sync with Lin’s own. Her presence was as soothing as it was terrifying, and Lin couldn’t deny she was glad of it. As they made their careful way down the path towards the pier, Lin could see the ferryman unmooring the boat, preparing to leave. The sight ought to have made her hurry, but it didn’t. Beside her, Kya made no effort to quicken their pace.
By the time they reached the dock, the ferry had pulled away and was making its slow but steady way back to Republic City. Lin couldn’t pretend she was disappointed.
“Guess we’ll just have to wait for the next one,” Kya said cheerfully, leading Lin away from the pier and down onto the beach below. Lin followed dumbly, allowing Kya to drag her—scrambling down the rocks like children—onto the sand. The shifting of the earth beneath her felt disorientating to Lin, but Kya seemed made to walk on uncertain ground, the sinking of the sand beneath her feet only emphasising the fluid grace of her movements.
Lin watched Kya for a few long moments, looking for things that marked her as different, but besides the silver of her hair, there was remarkably little to show that so much time had passed. Kya’s feet skimmed the very edges of the water, and Lin might have thought she was dreaming, were it not for the confusing mess of her thoughts. In her dreams, Lin always knew what to say—or no words were uttered at all—but reality left her head spinning.
“What are we doing here, Kya?” she said eventually. There were a hundred other things she wanted to say, better questions she wanted to ask, but none of them came to her tongue.
“You asked me to walk to the ferry with you.” Kya said, eyes wide and innocent. Lin had seen that look deployed far too many times to believe it.
“You know that’s not what I meant.”
“Maybe,” Kya admitted. Then, “Maybe I just missed you.”
Lin rolled her eyes.
“What, for fifteen years?”
“Yeah.” Kya didn’t pause, didn’t flinch, as she fixed Lin with a stare that was half a caress and half a challenge.
Lin couldn’t count how many times she’d gone over every touch, every look, every word shared between them, combing through the evidence that Kya had loved her. She had dismissed much of it as circumstantial—Kya had to touch her for the purpose of checking on her health, it could have been a coincidence that their eyes met just when they did—but some things, some things she had filed away and labelled.
Exhibit A: the way her heartbeat increased when she touched Lin’s bare skin.
Exhibit B: run away with me. Lin had replayed those words so many times, she had begun to wonder whether she made them up.
Exhibit C: this. Now.
“I missed you too,” Lin said. The words sounded so flimsy, so insubstantial, but Kya’s eyes sparkled as she replied,
“What, for fifteen years?” Her tone was light, teasing, and the curl of her half-smile sent a shiver of heat down Lin’s spine.
“Yeah.”
It wasn’t a confession, but it seemed to satisfy Kya, whose smile widened as she retreated from the ocean’s edge to sit with her back against a large, smooth stone. She held out a hand, beckoning for Lin to join her.
They sat together on the sand, shoulders not quite touching, and looked out across the bay as the sunset washed the grey clouds pink and purple.
“Have you ever considered retiring, Lin?” Kya asked. The question took Lin by surprise, as she shook her head.
“You really think I could just up and leave? Have you seen the state of the city, Kya? Those vines alone are—”
“Not now. Not this year, or next year. Just someday.” Someday soon, went unsaid, but Lin heard it anyway.
“I don’t know. What would be the point? What would I do if I didn’t have the job?” Lin could see it all far too clearly; a couple of decades filled with meaningless routine and loneliness. Who would even bother with her, once they weren’t obliged to because the world was ending, or the city needed saving? Korra might drop by every once in a while, if she remembered, or she needed advice; thirty minutes previously, she might have hoped for lazy games of Pai Sho with Tenzin, but she didn’t know how Pema would react to that. Something in her gut gave a nervous little flutter as she imagined the hundred awkward ways that Tenzin might find to tell her they couldn’t be friends after all, before Kya’s voice pulled her back to reality.
“You could travel.”
“I suppose so,” Lin knew the world was large, and her dedication to Republic City had meant there was much of it still unseen. Kya had told her half a hundred stories of far flung places in the months they’d spent cooped up in Lin’s office together, and Lin couldn’t deny that they’d filled her with a longing beyond the one that pushed, guilty, against her ribcage every time Kya touched her.
But Lin didn’t have Kya’s easy friendliness, or her ability to adapt and change with the wind. When Lin envisioned herself exploring the world, it was as a solitary observer, passively checking sights and experiences off a list. Depressingly, it still sounded better than leaving herself to rot in Republic City, forgotten and alone. It might even be good for her, to set out into the world like her mother had.
“You’d be willing to lend me your maps?” she asked, teasing. Kya’s maps were a thing of beauty; every one was covered in Kya’s tiny handwriting, marking out unknown trails and hidden wonders, and Kya protected them as if they were her own children.
“Fuck, no. Where my maps go, I go,” Kya said. “Besides, you’d need a tour guide.”
There was something tentative in her voice that hadn’t been there moments before. Gone was the daring, the boldness that Lin had always admired in Kya. For the first time that evening, it seemed she was afraid of Lin’s response.
Run away with me.
The words were so clear in her memory, it was as though Kya had spoken them aloud. Lin had wanted so badly to say yes; it had been physically painful to keep herself from twisting her hands into Kya’s skirts, pressing her face against the softness of Kya’s belly, and begging to be taken away from Republic City. Her body ached with the memory, and she distracted herself by saying,
“So you’re gonna babysit me all across the world, huh?” Lin was aware as she spoke that they had moved out of the subjunctive, and she wondered if Kya had noticed, too.
“I don’t know, am I?” Kya asked. Her smile was a little uncertain, but a familiar challenge was beginning to creep back into her voice.
“Where will we go?” Lin replied, dancing around the answer: please.
“Where do you want to go?”
What I want doesn’t matter. She had told Kya as much, sitting on the couch in Lin’s old apartment, with blood still colouring her thighs. She wondered what it would cost, this new, intangible happiness; would the city suffer without her? Would Korra need her in her absence? Would it even work, whatever this was between her and Kya? Perhaps they would set out, excitable and giddy, only to find that whatever spark existed between them wasn’t enough to sustain anything real.
Would it be worth it, then? Lin turned to face Kya—taking in the familiar slope of her nose, the graceful curve of her lip, the fire in her ocean blue eyes—and decided it would.
“Anywhere.” Lin said. “I’ll go anywhere you’ll take me.”
For a moment, Kya froze, and Lin feared she had ruined everything; none of what they said had been real, and she’d ruined it by trying to make it so. She scrambled for something to say, some way to take it back, but before she could, Kya’s gentle fingers were beneath her chin, holding her in place. She was so close, Lin could see the tiny lines at the corner of Kya’s eyes, and her breath caught in her throat. Kya gave the gentlest of tugs, and Lin went easily to her. Their lips met softly, but Lin felt electricity course through her as she raised her hand to brush her fingertips against Kya’s temple; her whole body trembled with the effort of not sinking her fingers into those silver waves, not pulling Kya against her, not opening her mouth to kiss and kiss and kiss her until they were both breathless. If she did, Lin knew she would be lost.
So she held herself back, keeping her touch light and her kiss impossibly gentle until Kya pulled reluctantly back. It was barely a movement, but it allowed Kya space to say,
“Write to me.” Kya’s lips brushed against Lin’s with every word. “Write to me when you’re ready, and I’ll tell you where to meet me.”
“I will.” Lin spoke without thinking. “I promise.”
Lin wondered for a moment if Kya was going to kiss her again, but she had no sooner thought it than Kya moved away. Lin watched her get to her feet, slightly dumbstruck, and Kya smiled.
“You’re gonna miss the ferry again,” she said, nodding towards where the little boat was just pulling up to the dock. Kya held out a hand to help Lin up, and Lin took it gratefully. Their hands remained clasped as they clambered back up the rocks and onto the dock, where the ferry was now waiting.
“See you soon, Lin,” Kya said, looking down at their entwined fingers. “Try to stay safe, yeah?”
Lin laughed softly.
“I’ll do my best.”
Kya raised Lin’s hand to her mouth to place a gentle kiss on the backs of Lin’s fingers, before she loosened her grip, letting Lin’s hand fall back down to her side, and walked away. As Lin watched her go, she wanted nothing more than to chase after her, to hold her close and tell her she was ready now. She would beg Kya to come back to the city, back to Lin’s apartment and Lin’s bed and Lin’s life. But Kya deserved better than that. She didn’t deserve to have to fight with the city for Lin’s attention, the way Tenzin had. They could wait a little longer.
As the ferry began its slow, rolling course back towards the city, Lin stood at the stern and watched Kya retreat up the hill towards the house, where a figure waited for her in the low orange light of the porch, and she smiled as Tenzin wrapped his sister in a tight embrace. Despite the cold sharpness of the air, Lin breathed easier than she had in years.