200 word drabble: Frozen as Stone

Written for avatar_500 prompt #66, Regret.

Summary: Earth is the element of substance, not of change.

Frozen as Stone

When they had been kids, it had been all of them, Tenzin and his siblings, Sokka's kids, Zuko's kids... and Lin.  And never for a moment had she thought that someday that could change.

As Tenzin left with the Avatar, the paperwork on Lin's desk seemed so unimportant, and so distant from her.  They had been friends long before they had ever started dating, she remembered, and just because she wasn't sleeping with him anymore didn't mean she wasn't one of their own.  Just because he had left her for some fresh faced university student didn't mean she didn't belong.  But she had left, and that might just mean she never had belonged.

She sat at her desk and inked her brush scowling at the paperwork under her hand.  She missed it, like she didn't miss Tenzin.  She missed it like she missed being a child on her mother's knee.  But she had left, and the way it would be was set, and her ways were set, and she wasn't going to go crawling back.

So she was trapped outside, and it was always easier to leave than to go back, and it wasn't going to change again for her.