Linzin drabble - soulmate trope
Linzin Drabble – a concept not well-thought of but I feel like I wanted to write something out.
I’m still alive; life (and death) got in the way. But whenever I feel like I need to create something, I go back to this fandom.
---
You only see color when you meet and know your soulmate. Lin saw color too early. Tenzin saw it too late.
It was a funny thing – colors.
She never understood how It was supposed to be.
Children were supposed to see the world in shades of grey until the moment they meet their soulmate – the one person whose soul resonated with theirs. A single touch, a single glance, and the world would bloom.
This usually happens post adolescence, sometimes even all the way into someone’s adulthood.
But not Lin Beifong. She has seen color since she was four.
They whispered freak behind her back.
Toph Beifong sighed, unsure how to raise a child who seems to have broken some sacred rule in the universe.
Being a child of a blind metalbender was enough to warrant attention.
What more being a child who sees colors?
The metalbender decided to send off her child to Gaoling.
With that, Lin learned to keep it to herself.
To pretend the world was muted.
To pretend that the sky was not blue, and the metal she bent did not shine as silver as her mother’s uniform.
She had learned to lie before she learned to trust.
She learned to hide before she learned what it all meant.
That seeing color early meant only one thing: your soulmate was already in your life.
---
He didn’t know any better.
Tenzin grew up waiting.
Waiting for the moment the world would shift.
Waiting for the soulmate the spirits had promised him.
Waiting for a love that encompassed all – like his parents’.
Waiting for the colors he had never seen before.
He imagined them often: what blue might look like, what red might mean, what green might smell like.
He wondered if she was alive (already born?).
If she was close.
If she was looking for him too.
He wondered if he would recognize her by the way the air changed.
---
Pema claimed she was his soulmate.
The air acolyte said she saw colors.
She said it happened when she met him.
She said it softly, hopefully, like a prayer she wanted him to believe.
And he tried. Truly, he did.
But on the day of their wedding, he asked her to pass him the ceremonial golden goblet.
She placed it in his hand.
He looked down.
The goblet shown dark pewter.
Not gold.
Not even close.
And in that moment – quiet yet devastating – he knew.
---
He wondered.
He had heard the stories, albeit rare ones.
Of people who saw color burst into existence while others remained unchanged.
Of soulmates who never aligned, of timing that was cruel.
Maybe that was what happened with Pema.
Maybe she saw him and her world bloomed. Maybe she believed it so deeply that it manifested.
But he knew better.
He had always known.
---
She knew.
Lin had known the truth long before he did.
She had seen color from her first memory – a play date on an island, although a short-lived one. She barely had time to get acquainted with the other children when a horn bellowed throughout the island and her mother hurriedly pulled her and her sister to a safe room. And, she supposed, their playmates were pulled to another.
She was not immediately aware that something has changed while they stayed in the dull greyness of the saferoom. It was only when they were back to their city house did Lin see the greenness of her sister’s eyes.
Sitting in Gaoling, she wondered which of the children they were supposed to play with was her soulmate. As months turned into years, this wonder slowly ebbed into a dull ache.
Until her mother deemed it safe for her sister and herself to return to Republic City.
The day she met Tenzin, her world sharpened.
As if everything she had seen was only a sketch and he was the ink that defined it.
She had looked at him and felt the universe settle.
She panicked.
Because she had already lived a life where she did not fit the rules. She did not want to draft him into that chaos. Not when he was already being groomed to take over his father’s mantle.
She did not want to be the reason he questioned everything he believed.
She kept quiet and stoic, waiting for him to acknowledge her.
---
Lin.
He saw her first as their family alighted into the island.
The way she stood – solid, unyielding and sharp as the metal she grew up bending.
The way her eyes turned away from him whether their paths crossed, as if looking at him hurt.
He felt the strange flicker in his chest the first time they met. The strange flicker of his view, a peek into colors that quickly faded back into grey.
He told himself it meant nothing.
He extended his hand to her. She gave a tight nod.
He told himself he was not disappointed.
He lied.
---
The aftermath brought calmness.
After the war with Kuvira, Republic City rebuilt. The Air Nation expanded. The Avatar headed to the Spirit World.
Life moved forward.
Lin's colors never changed.
--
Tenzin had been living his life in greyscale.
Literally and figuratively.
He lived with purpose, with duty, with loyalty.
But never with color.
Until the day after Kuvira's surrender.
He was walking through the rubble of the city, tired, grieving and relieved when he saw Lin across what used to be the city center, barking orders at the metalbenders.
And finally (finally) his world shifted.
Not exploded.
Shifted - like the dawn slowly creeping, lens snapping into focus.
Tenzin inhaled sharply, because, for the first time, he saw color.
And he knew.
He had always known.
But now he saw.
---
"Lin."
The way he said her name made her freeze.
She saw it then - how he blinked, how his breath hitched, the way he looked at her, like seeing her for the first time.
She knew what that meant.
She always knew what it meant.
Her chest ached, she had longed for this moment a lifetime ago.
But today, it was like a wound reopening.
Why now.
"I can see color."
He said it softly, like an apology. Like it was a truth that he should have spoken about decades ago.
She swallowed hard. "You're late," she whispered.
He closed his eyes. "I know."
---
"You let me think I was wrong."
"You weren't wrong."
She hated how fast he said it.
She hated how much she needed to hear it.
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"Because I was afraid of what it meant. To you, to me, to us, to the Air Nation," he whispered. "To everything."
She stared back at him. "You were afraid," she repeated. "And I was alone."
The words hit him harder than any metal cable ever could.
---
He will never know the feeling.
He will never know the despair she felt when her world of color flickered to grey as she battled P'li, knowing that for a brief moment she lost him to the Red Lotus.
He will never know the -.
---
A violent surge of spiritual energy suddenly rippled across the city ruins.
The world vibrated. The colors bended, twisted, and warped.
The glow of the Spirit World turned bright.
Lin felt a punch to her chest, Tenzin felt a gale push him.
"We need to go."
---
The Spirits were not gentle.
The spirits gathered around them.
"You carry a bond unspoken. A thread stretched thin by time."
Lin stiffened, frowning at the spirit.
"You came because your bond is unstable, unbalanced and unfulfilled." The spirit trilled.
"What does that mean?"
"It means," The spirit continued. "That soulmates who deny their connection disrupt the flow of color, of energy, of harmony." The spirit drifted closer.
It addressed Lin. "You saw color too early, because your soul recognized his before your mind could."
Lin swallowed hard.
"And you," it turned to Tenzin. "Saw color too late because you refused to look."
Tenzin's breath shook.
"You're two halves of a whole, but you have lived as fractions."
Lin looked at Tenzin.
Tenzin looked at Lin.
And, for the first time, neither looked away.
----
Note: this was a stream of consciousness kind of thing. unedited, un-beta'ed. So please forgive the possible incoherence but I do hope you enjoyed some part of it. Let me know what you think
