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Despite the late hour the curtains in Su’s office are open, and from where Lin is sat on the couch she can see the sunset, as spectacular in its way as sunsets in the Fire Nation. The sky is a vibrant orange that reflects off the snow-capped peaks, making them look like they are on fire. The first stars have appeared, too – is that Rinchen’s sash that she can see twinkling just to the left of the highest peak, or the Raven-Eagle? She had a book about astronomy back when she was a girl, but she never found the heavens all that interesting. Not like Su, with her meteorite collection. The only constellation she can reliably identify is the Southern Fish – Iqaluk, they call it in the Southern Water Tribe. Sokka told her that, told her all sorts of legends about it too. But you won’t be able to see it in Zaofu, it isn’t far enough south.
‘You’re awfully quiet. Penny for your thoughts?’ So much for a bit of peace and quiet – but then, Su has never been one for sitting in silence.
‘I was just admiring the view. You chose well when you picked this place, it’s quite spectacular’.
Su’s smile is warm and genuine. Her love for her city runs deep; it’s one of the ways in which the two of them are quite similar, despite everything. ‘Thanks. Though the aesthetics weren’t really the main thing on my mind, at the time. I was worrying more about the practicalities: getting enough stone for building, making sure we had access to water, that sort of thing. And of course it had to be close to Gaoling, Grandfather insisted on that. Anyway, you were always the artistic one. Do you still paint?’
Lin snorts. ‘Hardly, with Republic City in the state it’s in’.
‘You should make time! Anything’s possible if you manage your time properly. I still go to dance practice two or three times a week, even with a family and a city to run. I never stopped, even when the kids were little’.
It’s tempting to retort that perhaps if Su had spent less time dancing she’d have noticed that her precious protegee was a budding tyrant and that her pathetic son was in love with her. Her bond with her sister still feels fragile, though, like too much pressure applied in the wrong place could shatter it and drive them apart for another thirty years – which at their age might as well be forever. Besides, it wouldn’t be fair. Kuvira and Baatar are both adults, perfectly capable of making their own mistakes without any help from Su. So instead, Lin holds her tongue and gives Su a pointed look, which her sister seems to understand. They’ve always been good at communicating without words, through gestures and expressions. Growing up, it was a way for them to talk – to fight, more often than not – without their mother noticing.
‘So Republic City’s still a mess? Even now?’ There’s a slight note of judgement in Su’s voice. Zaofu, of course, is basically restored to its former glory. The platinum domes and the captain of the guard have both been replaced, and new families have moved in in place of those that left with Kuvira.
‘Things are coming along, but slowly. There was a lot of damage. Not all of it Kuvira’s fault, either’. Su flinches slightly at the mention of her former protegee. ‘Korra and her messing around with the spirits hasn’t helped. Our old apartment is gone, you know. Totally consumed by vines’.
‘Opal mentioned. She wanted to visit it, to see where I grew up’.
Honestly, trust her niece to be sentimental about an unremarkable apartment she never lived in or even saw. ‘Tenzin tells me Opal’s close to earning her arrows’.
‘Yes. I told her she needs to give me plenty of warning so I can get used to the idea of her with a shaved head and tattoos’. Su takes a sip of her tea, then gives Lin a look that makes her feel like she’s a suspect under interrogation. ‘So, things are better between you and Tenzin? They must be, if the two of you are casually discussing my daughter’.
Honestly, the way Su talks, you’d think Lin was intruding on her territory by talking about Opal. Like she owns the girl. ‘They are. Better than they have been in years. Since before we broke up, if I’m completely honest. We weren’t really getting on, towards the end. We just kept going out of habit’.
‘Like a satomobile that’s just running on fumes. I know, I’ve been there. With the guy I was with before Baatar. It was over and both of us knew it, but neither of us wanted to be the one to end it’.
Lin barks with laughter. ‘What’s so funny?’ Su asks, sounding almost hurt.
‘Nothing, really. It’s just – when Tenzin and I…well…the Gazette published a cartoon. Of him going to a dealership to trade in his clapped-out old satomobile for a new model.’
Su’s eyes narrow and her mouth thins into a hard line. It’s the expression she gets when she’s on the warpath. ‘That’s awful. I hope you got back at them somehow.’ If anyone made a joke like that about Su, she’d have a blade to their throat faster than you could say Zaofu.
‘It hurt a lot, at the time. In the grand scheme of things, not so much. Water off a turtleduck’s back, as Uncle Zuko would say. Anyway’ – she pauses to take a sip of her tea. It’s white peony with rose petals, her favourite since she was little. Delicate and perfumed, but now decidedly lukewarm. ‘It was for the best, in the end. Tenzin needed to be a father, and I’m not cut out to be a mother. We started out as friends, and now we’re friends again. That’s what really matters’.
Lin half expects a lecture, either on the stupidity of forgiving a man who hurt her so deeply or on the fact that children are a blessing and she doesn’t know what she’s missing out on. But Su’s voice when she speaks is quiet and tentative. The voice of her baby sister, not of Zaofu’s imperious matriarch.
‘Speaking of fathers – did Mom ever tell you? About yours?’
‘If we’re going to talk about this, I’m going to need something stronger than tea’. Su chuckles, then gets up and presses a button by her desk. A servant that Lin doesn’t think she’s seen before appears and silently clears away the teapots and cups, then disappears without ever saying a word. Meanwhile, Su rummages in a cupboard and comes back with a bottle and two glasses.
‘I take it you still like whisky?’ Lin nods. ‘This was made here in the city. A family moved here from Gaoling and started a distillery. They made really excellent spirits, until they sided with Kuvira and left with her’. Su sighs heavily, then shakes her head and pours some of the amber liquid into two glasses, one of which she passes to Lin, ‘I’m surprised I didn’t smash this, to be honest. I was so angry’.
Lin takes a generous swig of her whisky. Su wasn’t lying – it really is excellent. Rich and complex, a far cry from the stuff you get in the bars in Republic City, at least the ones Lin frequents. She drains her glass and holds it out to be refilled. Su crossly remarks that it’s supposed to be savoured, not knocked back like she’s in some dive bar full of off-duty cops, but pours her a second glass all the same, a more generous one this time.
‘That bad, huh?’
‘Mmmm, what?’ Lin is distracted by the whisky. With her second glass she’s doing as Su tells her and savouring it. It really is astonishingly good, Wherever the family from Gaoling are now, she hopes they’re still making whisky. Or that they wrote down the recipe, at least.
‘Whoever your dad was, it’s so bad that you have to down half a bottle of my best whisky before you can even talk about it’.
Good old Su, exaggerating as usual. ‘Not really. Better than it could have been, to be honest’. Lin takes another sip and smiles reassuringly at her sister, who’s looking at her with green eyes full of concern. ‘His name was Kanto and he was from Ba Sing Se. Mom and him had a thing in Republic City, but it didn’t work out and they lost touch. I tried to track him down, years ago, but no dice’.
‘Really? When was that?’
‘Oh, years ago. You were just a kid. It was the summer I went to Ba Sing Se, with Kya. I tried to find him using the telephone directory. Azula got wind of it and told me not to bother. She said that in her experience fathers weren’t all they were cracked up to be’.
‘That sounds like her’. Su smiles sadly. ‘Mom told you about him all those years ago, huh?’
‘Only because I wouldn’t shut up about it. And that’s all she told me. That is, until a couple of years ago when she let slip that he was a nice guy’. Lin takes a sip of her drink, then another. Her glass is almost empty, and Su reaches out and tops it up.
‘You know what really gets to me –‘ Lin stops and shakes her head. She’s never said any of this out loud before. Not even to Tenzin. ‘What really gets to me is that I spent years wondering where he was. Why he wasn’t in my life, why he didn’t want me. I thought I must have done something wrong – as a baby, or who knows, just by being born, by existing. Then Mom said that about him being a nice guy, and it hit me – I bet she never even gave him a chance. She didn’t want the complication, so she didn’t let him be around. Maybe never even told him about me. I lived fifty years thinking I had done something wrong, for my dad not to be around, and all the time it was her’. Lin feels tears pricking at the corners of her eyes, and shakes her head angrily. ‘We’ve patched things up and I’m trying to be fair to her, really I am, but that – I can’t get my head around that. Or forgive it’.
Lin feels Su’s hand rest on her shoulder. ‘Mom is a very complicated person. When I settled down here and started my family, I thought she’d want to be around. For her grandchildren, at least. And she did visit for a while, but then she just vanished, we didn’t see her at all until you came to rescue us from Kuvira. She missed her own grandchildren growing up’.
‘She’s no Katara, that’s for sure’.
‘Oh, Katara must just love being a grandmother. I bet her grandchildren adore her’.
Lin nods. If she’s honest, Pema still sets her teeth on edge, but she is at least grateful that the woman did what Lin couldn’t and made Katara the grandmother she was born to be. ‘They’re good kids, as kids go. Meelo’s a bit much, but the girls are fine’. She looks out of the window; it’s almost completely dark outside. She can see the stars properly now. The constellation she noticed earlier – she’s pretty sure it’s Rinchen’s sash. She remembers Tenzin pointing it out to her, once when they visited the Western Air Temple. Him standing behind her, his beard tickling her face, one hand pointing to the stars while the other caressed her waist.
‘And what about you? Did Mom ever tell you who your dad was?’
‘Nope’. Su takes a large gulp of her drink, grimacing slightly as she swallows. ‘Not a thing. Not even his name, or where he was from. I honestly wonder if she doesn’t even know. Maybe it was just some guy she didn’t know, that didn’t mean anything. Maybe I was a complete accident’.
Lin shuffles closer to her sister and puts her arm around her shoulder, pulling her close. ‘Well, I think we were both accidents’.
Su leans over and rests her head on Lin’s shoulder. ‘She did let something slip once, when I was expecting Junior. Or at least I think she did. I said I was looking forward to finding out if he’d be an earthbender or a nonbender, and Mom said “you never know, they might be a waterbender”’.
Interesting. ‘She didn’t say any more than that, and she didn’t bring it up with any of the others. And none of them did turn out to be waterbenders, so who knows, perhaps it was just one of her jokes. But I did used to look into the mirror, at how I looked so different from you and Mom, and wonder’. She pauses a moment. ‘I ever wondered if Uncle Sokka might be my dad. Wish he was, even’.
‘You and me both. He was the closest thing either of us had to a father, I think’. Lin pours herself another drink. Su’s glass is still half-full, but nevertheless she holds it out for a refill, and Lin obliges. ‘I assume you know him and Mom used to –‘
She feels Su nod into her shoulder. ‘I know. I even asked him about it, when he came to see Zaofu, but he said that what was between him and Mom should stay there, that if I really wanted to know I should ask her. And at his funeral – spirits, Lin, you should have seen her, the state she was in. It was like she was sleepwalking, or dead herself, none of us could get through to her. Then she walked off, right into a blizzard. Uncle Zuko had to go looking for her, and he found her on the edge of a cliff, like she was about to step off into the sea’. Su sits up and takes a sip of whisky, then snuggles back into Lin’s side. ‘I think she loved him, Lin. Really, really loved him. I asked her, a while after that, if he was my dad. Asked her upfront’.
‘And what did she say?’
Su sighs. ‘Nothing, for a long time. She just got that mutinous look on her face – you know the one – and I honestly thought she was going to walk away without saying anything. Then she said that no, he wasn’t, but perhaps it would have been better if he had been’. She takes a sip of her whisky, and sighs again. ‘I could feel her heartbeat. She wasn’t lying’.
So – a man from the Water Tribe, who wasn’t Sokka, but Toph wished he was. It adds a further layer to the complicated picture Lin already has of her mother. If it’s what she suspects, it must have been very painful. For both of them.
All of a sudden Su sits up and jabs Lin playfully in the chest, almost causing her to spill her drink. ‘Anyway, how do you know about Mom and Uncle Sokka?’
‘Oh, I figured it out years ago. Back when we were kids’.
‘I should have known. Always the detective, even then’.
Lin snorts. ‘It hardly took a lot of detecting. It was a pretty small apartment. And he was over all the time, sleeping in Mom’s bedroom with her and making us breakfast in the morning’.
‘I don’t remember that’. Su sounds sad. ‘I wish I did’.
‘It was nice. It felt like being part of a real family, like what Tenzin had with his parents. Not to mention, Uncle Sokka was a much better cook than Mom. His omelettes always had the right amount of salt, and they didn’t have eggshell still in them. Anyway, I walked in on them once’.
Su yelps. ‘You did what?’
‘I walked in on them! I must have been about eight or nine. I think it was a weekend morning – it must have been, if neither of them had to be up for work. I can’t remember what I wanted but I opened the door and there they were – completely naked, him on top of her –‘ Su lets out a shocked laugh. ‘Then they spotted me, and all hell broke loose. Sokka was so red he was almost purple, the same colour Tenzin goes when he’s embarrassed. He was desperately trying to cover himself, and it just drew my attention to the fact he was naked. Meanwhile Mom was yelling at me, accusing me of metalbending the door open. Then I reminded her I hadn’t learned to metalbend yet, and she started swearing at herself for forgetting to bend it shut’.
Su is open-mouthed and wide-eyed with shock. Lin’s not sure if it’s the memory or the whisky or Sus reaction or maybe all three, but she keeps being overtaken by waves of laughter that make her eyes water and her stomach hurt. Eventually she composes herself enough to finish the story.
‘They sent me out, and then after breakfast they sat me down. They told me that they had been sparring and had taken their clothes off because it was hot, and that I wasn’t to tell anyone. Would you believe, I actually bought it for a couple of years. Then the kids at school started talking about sex, and I realised what had actually been going on. Of course, by then Uncle Sokka was gone’. She drains her glass, and Su pours her more without asking. ‘Things were never quite the same, after he left. You wouldn’t remember, but I do’.
‘You know, I think I do, on some level. Not as well as you, of course, but – now I think about it, in my earliest memories there’s this feeling of…I dunno…warmth, that just wasn’t there later. That I always wanted back. I think that was what I was trying to replicate here, with my own family. I thought I had it all figured out, too. Right up until –‘ Su sighs heavily, puts down her glass and nestles closer into Lin’s side. It reminds Lin of evenings when they were kids, when Toph had gone out and left Lin in charge. They would cuddle up together in Lin’s bed, and Lin would read to her sister until she fell asleep.
‘Lin?’
‘Mmm?’
‘Do you think Mom was ever happy?’
It’s a complicated question. Lin thinks she probably was, at times. But were any of those times after Lin and Su were born? Given her time over again, would Toph make the same decisions? Would she erase Lin and Su from existence, given the chance? ‘I don’t know’.
There isn’t much to say after that, and they fall silent, taking comfort from each other’s presence but not feeling the need to talk. When Lin wakes up, she’s lying flat on her back on the couch with a blanket placed over her, and light is streaming in through the windows. She winces slightly and looks over to where Su is sitting at her desk, fully dressed, with her reading-glasses perches on her nose and a pen in her hand. The matriarch of Zaofu looks over at her sister and smiles.