I adore Lin and Kya makes me laugh so why not put my two favorite old people together?
Please enjoy.

Disclaimer: I do not own Avatar.

ON WITH THE STORY
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Lin stared at her hands - calloused, scarred, strong.

All of these descriptions have a place in the lines of her palms but now she must add a new one - useless.

Clenching her fingers so they curled tightly and pierced the skin, Lin slammed her fists into her metal desk. The dull thud did not ring through her bones as it should have. All she felt was the sting of a cold, hard object against her hands. So she lifted her fists and slammed them down again.

And again.

She did not stop until a hesitant male voice called from outside her door and knuckles politely rapped on the barrier. "Uh, Chief? There is a phone call for you."

Her hands ached as they hadn't since she was just learning to earthbend. Other than a trace of blood pooled in the grooves her nails made in her palms, her hands showed no sign of damage. But Lin idly reminded herself to put ice on them when she returned home otherwise the bruising would be glaringly apparent.

"I thought I said I was not to be disturbed for anything other than a citywide catastrophe, Officer Yang," Lin growled out loudly enough to penetrate the thick door and make the poor man outside break into a cold sweat under his uniform.

'This is the last time I owe Detective Vey a favor,' Yang promised himself. "Yes, Ma'am," he snapped to attention even as he responded. "But…"

"Not important, Officer!" Lin would not be entertaining any political nonsense or media madness today. "And if you come to my door again for any other reason today you will be staying overnight to catalog paperwork, understood?"

Officer Yang felt faint. The person on the phone was told to call another time; that the Chief was in a meeting; that she was out; that Lin Beifong would kill him if he defied her orders! But that mellow, sweet voice on the other side of the phone had turned even sweeter, like poison, and promised retribution beyond anything the Chief of Police for Republic City could possibly do to him if he did not get "that stubborn woman" on the phone.

He believed the voice and dared to pray to the Spirits his Chief would not remember her threat.

"But Chief, it's a woman named Kya from the Southern Water Tribe and she will not stop calling for you!" Yang blurted it all out as quickly as he could, eyes closed and face scrunched up as if in preparation for a blow to land. Tensely he waited then dared to peek at the door in front of him.

Silence.

'Oh Spirits,' he prayed. "Ch-Chief? Did you…?"

"I heard you, Yang. Put her through. Dismissed."

The sharp commands lit a fire under the man and he ran to Detective Vey's desk and brought the head set to his ear. "Ma'am?"

There was a crackle on the line but the woman's voice came back. "Yes, Officer Yang?"

"She'll be on the line momentarily," Yang promised. "Please hold."

"Thank you," said the now pleased voice.

Pushing a sequence of buttons rarely ever pushed, Yang transferred the call and hung up the phone. His knees finally gave out, landing him in Vey's chair just as the detective was returning from her afternoon appointment with the chi-doctor.

She took one look at him then sat on her desk and demanded, "What happened?"

Lin stared at the blinking light on her office phone. She still was not sure she wanted to answer it.

'She can't know,' Lin reassured herself. 'It hasn't been a full day yet and Tenzin is not that much a blabber-mouthed hyenafrog.'

Now she was only kidding herself. Tenzin was a momma's boy and anything he knew, Aunt Katara knew. Which means…

"She knows," the ex-earthbender whispered aloud.

Forget being hesitant about taking the call, Lin downright refused to take it. She was not in the mood for Kya's brand of spiritual, nomadic mumbo jumbo comfort. It hadn't worked before for her and it certainly wouldn't work now.

'She can just go take a swim in an ice field. I am not answering,' Lin promised herself and went back to the paperwork piled so high on her desk it was four sheets short of the ceiling. Today was the perfect day to finally slog through all of it. Lin reached for the first sheet and began reading.

Out of the corner of her eye, the light still blinked.

The woman turned her chair so the phone was out of all eyesight. But the polished nature of her desk betrayed her and she could still see that blasted blinking light out of the corner of her eye. At first she could ignore it by concentrating on the words on the page in her hands but all too soon the dry report slipped from her attention and the blinking light reasserted its dominance.

'No.' Lin firmly told herself when she felt her resolve weaken.

It did not happen often but the only people who could make her second guess herself, especially when dealing with emotions, are the members of her family. That included Aang and Katara's only daughter.

But not today.

Today paperwork was about all Lin could handle as her world crashed down around her ears like a sandcastle before hurricane winds. Except this wasn't the wind waiting for her to pick up and speak to her - it was the ocean tide gently engulfing all of her thoughts a little bit at a time until Lin angrily gave in.

Huffing and gritting her teeth, Lin slapped down the report in hand and snatched the phone off its cradle. "What, Kya?!" I'm busy!" Lin barked into the mouthpiece.

What greeted her was exactly as she expected - a laugh. "Haha! There you are, Lin. I thought you had gotten eaten by a gator-rat on your way to the phone."

Snorting, Lin replied the only way she knew how. "There are no gator-rats in Republic City."

"How can you say that? You never know what might be lurking in those sewers," Kya teasingly baited.

Lin rolled her eyes but sat back in her chair, getting ready for a lengthy conversation no matter how she tried to cut it short. "No such thing."

"That's what people believed about the ability to take away bending." Kya was not pulling punches today. She was serious.

Lin's body stiffened and jerked as it remembered the pressure and strain building behind her eyes under the solid weight of that thumb. Gasping for air she tried to calm her heart beating like a double-time march in her chest.

From far away she heard Kya's voice calling out to her, progressively getting louder in her ear where the phone had been pressed. "Lin. Lin. LIN!"

A trickle of sweat slid down from her temple to jaw and Lin forced her muscles to release from their locked position shaking all the while.

"Breathe, Lin. I've got you. You'll be alright." Kya promised.

Anger quickly replaced the fear and Lin could not help but lash out at Kya like she had wanted to do at Amon, at the Equalists, at her mother, at the world! "NO! No, it will not be alright! There is a terrorist group on the loose threatening Republic City! The Council will not get off their asses to do anything about it! My men and women are being run ragged and more than half have been injured on the job! I am stuck with useless orders and a kid avatar who can't decide if she is an avatar or not! And! You weren't there! So don't pretend you know…" Lin bit back the rest of the words that wanted to tumble from her lips and poison the air around her, the air between them.

She couldn't let Kya know how weak and utterly helpless she had felt in that single moment when she lost hope.

"Know what, Lin? That you were hurt? Feel violated? Lost an essential part of who you are? Cannot forgive yourself for not being strong enough?" Kya knew her far too well and it was startlingly clear in every word she said, except…

"You don't know," Lin choked as her vision blurred and she hunched over protectively guarding against the truth she was finally releasing. "How much I needed you. Need you here now." Her throat stung with the force of those jagged words whispered over the vast ocean that separated them.

Silence.

Then, "I am on the next airship or boat or elephant koi to Republic City and you, Chief, had better be at home to meet me." Kya was not the type of person to be frantic or panicky but hearing her childhood friend, whose personal motto is "this rock holds no water," break and crack sent a shiver of urgency down her spine.

She would leave the Southern Water Tribe and her mother for a while. They were safe. Lin was not. "Alright, Lin?"

Nodding, Lin just hummed her affirmative.

"Alright. I am going to hang up now before you try to convince either of us otherwise." Again, Kya knew Lin all too well. Already a sharp voice in her head was telling her to toughen up and stop being a whiny baby. But Lin ignored the reprimand in favor of putting the handset down on the cradle. She never said goodbye to anyone because it felt like a curse, like she would never see that person again if she said it.

For now, she had work to do before her guest arrived to disrupt her life. Picking up the paper again Lin did not quite recognize the feeling that bubbled up from her gut to her face. 'I must be hungry,' she concluded. That reminded her, she had better get some groceries on her way home. There was barely enough for toast this morning.

With a great sigh the Chief of Police dropped the report back on her desk with the others. They would be there tomorrow but Kya was on her way today. If there is something she and the waterbender had in common it is their stubbornness. When they decide a course of action it is immediately put into effect.

Therefore, Lin was going to have company tonight and for however many nights in the future until she either kicked Kya out in a fit of exasperation or Kya decided she had had enough of Lin's surly attitude.

'What do hippies eat anyway?' Lin wondered as she got up and left her office for the day.

She had things to do after all.

THE END