Author's Notes: Sorry this chapter took so long. I don't quite plan where my stories go. So, really, you readers know as much as I do. I am, however, alternating between the perspectives of Asami and Iroh, as I quite like exploring him as a character. He is an interesting fellow. But, I digress. Please enjoy!

He'd met her weeks ago in the shuddering walls of a hideaway, patched and healed underneath the concern of Korra's waterbending. He'd been shirtless and hurt, half in pain, but he could still watch her through the bleary slits in his eyes. He had said very little to her, and she to him.

It had seemed that silence served them both well. She had went her separate ways, adhering herself to the caravan of the Avatar. He remembered very little and too much: spools of hair, tumbling down her back, while the smile was worn with secrecy. She had laid her hands on his waist, very briefly.

Perhaps the phenomenon was easily explained—that she was quite pretty, and that he was attracted. But Iroh did not think of Asami Sato as much as he might have, because he was too restless, too busy, overseeing the rebuilding of their city. Because he was the general, who fielded the complaints, who saw to rehabilitation, who needed to address the rest of the worries. He had no time for fancies. He had no time telling Ms. Sato that she should not feel sorry, or guilty, or any other incriminating emotion.

He had no place, because they hardly knew each other.

There were certain liberties he had taken that one night, by the frill of the water. He had laid his hand in hers, and though it was not a nestling of palms, their skin had touched. He had wanted her to be cold, for she had seemed like it. Standing ashore, perched as if she were either regretting or forgetting, she stood frigid enough to appear as crystal. There'd been an impulse to say something worthy to her, to turn her sad eyes away.

It was in his blood, really. To fix. To mend those porcelain cracks anew.

His words had been fraught with too much assumption, as if he knew the intricacies of Ms. Sato. Threading, like tree branches—both transparent and opaque. She was an open book, he thought, but he could only glean past the bloated cover. The pages that continued were stuck together, unable to be pried apart. For some reason, Iroh wanted to try. There was an unspeakable challenge somewhere, lurking beneath that exterior of hers.

All was not well. He was puzzled.

Sooner or later, they should have crossed paths, but they hadn't. He had been anticipating her, waiting for her appearance at each turn he made. It was hopeful thinking that made him blind with expectation; she would not round the bend, as if there had been fate stuck to the soles of her feet. Even so, he assumed Hiroshi Sato's daughter would not want to remain in a city that reminded her of him. The cars were everywhere—the damage from the rest of his manufactures, omnipresent.

He had conducted multiple visits to the Air Temple, thinking that she might have been there, too. Greeted only by Tenzin, his fleet of children, and a cursory nod from the Avatar, he had been disappointed by the lack of her appearance.

Curious—he was curious of her. But she was nowhere to be found.

But over the days, he had let the intrigue quell. Over time, the inkling of Asami Sato faded, left as a smudge would on a windowpane. There, but hardly noticeable, and only when he peered very closely, could he identify it. With his attentions focused elsewhere, with meetings, with negotiations, he had pushed her obsoleting memory to a further corner. There had only been one reason to see her again, he had concluded—to apologize, for saying so much, for doing too much. It was his habit, of being the hero when no had asked.

Now loomed a week or so, gone so quickly that he had hardly noticed the shift in sunlight. He had buried himself beneath the mountain of promises, suffocated by his own hand. A meager movement touched at the right edge of his lip. He had not been home in ages, but that had been his decision.

The opulent office shone of gold and other gleaming artifacts. There was a stately looking portrait of his grandfather, hung valiantly on the wall ahead. Even now, their family upheld their own code of honor—in that flinty gaze, Zuko had said so much.

A door opened, creaking, hinges gone unoiled. Someone announced the presence of Chief Saikhan, sketching a formal gesture before pulling the portal closed. Iroh looked up, hands pinioned on either side of his desk. Garbed in black and gold, the Chief of Police approached him with neither a smile nor a frown.

"General," he greeted, accentuated with a single nod of his head. Business undulated beneath the swells of their dual authority; there was something afoot, and he needed to know why.

"Chief. Good to see you. I wasn't expecting a visit, but I'm sure you have news all the same." Iroh extended a hand, received by the firm and gloved grip of the man before him. Gesturing to a nearby armchair, he seated himself as he waited for the chief to elaborate on proceedings. There would be good reason for Saikhan to show on his doorstep.

"It's about the Equalists, sir."

"I'm well aware that the sentiment still remains," he responded, brow beetling. The leader of the movement may have betrayed them, but the issue was not irrelevant. The stirrings of resentment would remain in spite of the circumstances.

The chief charged onward. "It's Sato."

Fleeting, unnoticeable, something crossed on his expression. Iroh said nothing for the space of two seconds, waiting, perhaps, for more to come. But he was holding his breath, and his chest felt heavy with an unnamable reckoning. "What about him?" he inquired, nonchalant as possible. He thought not of the man, but of his daughter, dark-haired and dark-eyed, waiting by the water.

"He's unwilling to talk. He supported the cause, of course, gave Amon all that machinery. But I think there's more to him. He might have had another agenda, but it's difficult to tell. He just won't speak."

Waiting for Saikhan to continue, he took a pen, rolling the cylindrical casing between his fingers. Where was this leading to? Why was he being involved?

"We think that he might be more willing if we could persuade him. There's his daughter, you know."

He did know—and knowing had his gut twisting. He was unsure. He was unconvinced that she mattered. Lifting his gaze to the chief, he shook his head. "That won't work. She's estranged from him. She worked with the Avatar and went against him at every turn she could."

"Perhaps they won't talk to each other. But the Equalist factory—"

"Surely anything that could've been found has been by now." He'd read the extensive reports, the catalogues of names. They had found no more but the immodest inventory of Equalist objects, both machine and garment alike. Anyone who had been present in the factory had been rounded up, detained, and questioned. There should have been no reason for supplementing suspicion to be targeted at the already-searched underground factory.

Saikhan pursed his mouth—contemplating, or wondering how to refute the general. "Be that is it may, we should be prudent and check again. To make sure. Perhaps the Sato girl could be of use."

"But you read the document. She denied knowing of its existence."

"Certainly this would not be the first time a daughter has protected her father."

Iroh gave a sharp, considering glance to the chief. "I hardly think this is an appropriate plan to go through with."

"We have to exhaust all options, General. She seems the next best one."

"If you're so intent on pursuing this, then why are you asking me?" He would ask questions that he knew the answer to. Looking away, his hands rendered the pen in small fidgets.

There was careful silence, a clearing of a throat. The chair might have scraped backwards on his woodworked floors, leaving a singular crease on the boards. Infinitesimal, but merely there. "You worked with her, if I recall?"

Briefly—like her hands at his waist, butterfly-light. He steadied a breath. "If that's the only qualification, why not ask the Avatar? Or the rest of her group." With deliberation, he replaced the pen that had been twirling at his fingertips. He was distracted with the possibility, of his knuckles rapping softly on the gilt at her door.

"That is at your discretion, General, if you decide to investigate. I only thought it was wise to mention it."

"Of course. Thank you for bringing it to my attention."

Saikhan left him some minutes later, declaring his departure with the professional flourish of a man who'd done it too many times before. The door opened and closed, clicking into finality. He waited for something else, for a reappearance, a disturbance at the entrance, but there came none. He would be distracted by those words, by the unspoken invitation that had not been freely extended to him.

She would reveal nothing, because she had no information of her father's machinations. But the excuse of it could not quite halt the insistence at his chest—urging him, fanatically, to go to her.

And so he would, because he never quite mastered the art of thinking before doing.

Iroh's hand hesitated over the clutch. The estate billowed in lavish scales before him, a monument of metal and chrome and defiant architecture. He pulled his vehicle to a stop, settling it into the quiet verbosity of the neighborhood. There weren't many neighbors to speak of, and so he could not shift his eyes left and right, to see if anybody lurked by their shaded windows.

He cast a leg by the other, hefting himself out from the car. There were no gates, but a tri-layer fortress, flanked by staircases and the temerity to ascend. He did not know if she would even be here, mistress of the castle, lady of the estate. He had so many names for her, but it was more comfortable than to say the most important one in his head.

What would he say? He had no working plan, no lines to fall back on. Perspiration beaded between his crevices, sticking to spaces as he worked his way up the marble, putting footstep over footstep. She loomed closer, the concept of her, willow's lines and raven's wing hair. He could hardly remember the exactitude of her features, only conjuring the parts that could be distinguished once, piecing her together on his canvas.

There: the back of his hand running sharply against the door before coming up to wipe at his temples. Be home, he thought. Be here. He had not ascended those uncountable steps to return empty-handed.

For a long while, he waited at her doorstep, willing for there to be a crack, a gentle switch of the port. But there were no disturbances except for the impatient scrapes of his feet, running the bottoms of his boots along the stony exterior. He felt supremely foolish, though he could not quite discern the why of it. He would commit a million mistakes before he would come to face her.

Restless, he turned, going the way he came, retracing those wasted steps. It'd been on a whim, to come here, following the pithy advice of Saikhan. The chief knew nothing of Asami, but neither did he—Iroh, the second, who needed and wanted to be something he could not yet identify. There was no explanation for the itch in him, as if he had been progressively tilting to her axis, as if the meaningless hours that had transpired between them had fell into figuration. He was sighing, sighing for the unexplained, weary of the back and the forth. Tired of trying to sort the mess of it: why Asami Sato? Why did she matter at all?

He told himself she didn't, but he could feel the lie, propagating on his tongue.

It was then that he chanced on the filmy smell, sweetened gasoline, filtering in the orchard-likeness of the Sato lands. Iroh shook himself from his coat, draping fabric over an arm as he walked the several feet to the railing, eyes trained through the heavy patch of greenery that set a distance from the manse and the rest of the property. Odd, that he hadn't heard the noises before: the rumble, the screech, and the erratic circulation of a mobile.

He ran to the source, descending the staircase that brought him to the backyard. There were no whereabouts but his own, tracking slight footprints over moss before meeting the hard planes of gravel. Here, too, was decorated with the thoughtful style of the overtly rich, with columns standing in polite formations, as if these were proving grounds for a perpetual banquet.

A tire squealed on dirt. He rushed underneath the swinging plants ahead of him, hanging like pendants on the edge of the connecting trellis, intrepid as a rickety portcullis. He was no longer running, but walking smoothly toward the destination, curious and all the more wary of his lone investigation. Who was here if no one had greeted him by the door?

Reaching the perimeter of the racetrack, he felt his jaw slacken in surprise. A tidy mobile whirled around the dry, dirt-bedecked oval, so fast and reckless that he could hardly see the individual within. Enclosed by a fence, he merely climbed over it, clambering over the links and wooden supports to thump faintly on the other side. He crept ever closer, straining to identify the driver who drove without virtue.

He saw it, then, the vehicle keening into sight, racing across the parallel of this track. There was no manner of caution, only a breathless sort of continuation, hurrying downward with an impressive smog trailing fast and free. Standing, removed, he only observed with the intrigue of one who had never been behind such an entertaining wheel. He had done stupid things before, unconscionable things—dismantling planes, setting fire to vessels, but never participating in such simple pleasures as tracing routes at high speeds.

At halfway, he thought he caught that plastic sheen of the helmet, and yet it was too dark, too opaque, to glimpse the occupant. For as long as he stood, he made no movements to cross his arms over his head, or to stand by the raceway, gesticulating for attention. He was a bystander—for once, it would seem, casting pedestrian interest in the engineering of parts and velocity.

Then came the whip of air, flustering by and through him, meeting him perpendicular while the Satomobile accelerated past. There was a blur of gold enamel, here and then gone, advancing down the road to ignore him completely.

It was past time for the dithering, past time for an indulgence that served no clear purpose. How clear it had been, that coming to her lands had been an error, forged by his own inability to be decisive. To him, she was another wounded one, a project that should not have been embarked on. His curse was low and blaspheming, and with a rough kick against the fence, he was prepared to leap over it, to regain his senses—to continue his duties, because this was not one of them.

But there was a churning behind him, an abatement of rotations that ebbed to a murmuring hush. He glanced backward to catch the vehicle rounding in opposite, reversing along the track, no longer so spirited, but controlled. Stopping some yards from his stationary position, the Satomobile came to a rest, cut off in the next instant. Iroh squinted, thrusting a flattened hand above his eyebrows, looking against the sun; the driver hopped from the seat, removing the helmet.

Hair cascaded. He watched, dumbstruck, as her features materialized. As her form started moving, coming to him, limbs and legs working in tandem as she floated over, her brows knit in concern. "General?" she asked, because she had not been expecting him.

He had not expected her, either.

"Ms. Sato," he said, swallowing on the rising lump that came at the end of his address. He was suddenly nervous, and each explanation that he might've prepared abandoned him, leaving him deplete and deprived of eloquence. His eyes did not know where to land and settle; they fluttered, endlessly, on the separate pieces of her. To the clinging black fabric, encircling around her wrists and arms, her hips and her legs. To her gloves, to the fingers that peeked beneath, to the white flash of her neck, exposed, and to the curious, slightly alarmed expression on her face.

"I didn't, that is, I know I'm trespassing—"

"No, it's fine, General. This is just a surprise," she responded, tucking the helmet beneath her arm. She had cocked her hip, just a bit, at an angle that carved a vee into the edge of her waist.

"Your door wasn't open. I mean, no one answered the front door—when I rang, that is. I thought, perhaps, that you and the staff had left." And he too, had begun to leave, disappointed.

Her eyes flicked nonchalantly toward the estate. "The staff is gone for the rest of the week. I needed time for myself, I suppose. And I'm not so dependent on such a fleet of people, really."

He nodded, empathizing on some level. Even at the palace, he had thought the servitude too expansive, too grandiose. "But what if your attention was needed?"

Her gaze was pointed. "Then they would have wired a message. Besides, business concerns are sent to the corporate offices—"

"I'm not here for business," he said. Had he pitched that utterance an octave too low? Had he been too brusque with its expression?

Red lips were pursed. She looked intrigued, but that'd only been his imagination. "Not business?"

"Not precisely. It's—police. Police matters. The chief tasked me, that is—" He was blundering over his sentences, unable to produce the brunt of it, the bulk of the matter. He looked away, then back, running his observations over that smooth cheek of hers. "It's about your father."

Something faded. She leaned back, nodding, holding her arms closer. He thought she had faltered, but no, it was only the shuttering of her eyes, giving way to a neutral acceptance. Her smile seemed pronounced, as if forced. She said, "I see."

"If you aren't ready to discuss—if you'd like me to leave—"

Her head shook. "It's all right. I will help you however I can."

Later, she saw to him in a sunlit room, with brocade curtains and an old settee, upholstered by damask. She had asked him for tea and he had obliged, because his tongue was dry, and because he liked tea as it was.

She handed him a cup. He thanked her graciously and bent to retrieve the porcelain, hand curling around the white skin of the body. Fingertips brushed fingertips. He looked at her, but her eyes were trained on the rim, careful not to spill. His pulse ratcheted.

He did not scald himself, but his lips were too busy playing at the bony edge of the dainty teacup to speak. It had struck him, sometime later, when she had led him through the leafy pathways back to her home, that she had not reacted to him by the raceway with alarm. She had merely tilted her head, curious, as if he did and did not belong there.

If there had been a way to look past her, he would have accommodated himself to the method by now. Behind her, however, was a door, oak-paneled and painstakingly carved with decorative notches. Ominously, it was closed, presenting him with its face and not the open candor of the rest of the estate. He had seen more stairs, more columns, and nary a soul. It was emptier, this place, than it had ever been. He wanted to know why a family of two would ever need the overabundance of space. But he was a hypocrite in the worst way; the palace breathed the same sort of loneliness. He could bottle the atmosphere, here, and compare its likeness to the vacant species of the royal archways.

He faced her. "Your father had a personal workshop."

"Yes. It's behind the estate," she affirmed.

Iroh pressed onward. "When the Avatar and the retired chief conducted their investigation, they discovered an Equalist factory beneath the Sato lands?"

She hesitated. He examined the light curve of her eyelid. She was looking downward, palms crossed on her lap. She had eschewed her gloves some time ago. "I am sure you already know that, General."

"I do."

"Then why are you asking me what you already know?"

He took a breath, startled. The conversation dipped to a sullen trough. He did not know how to respond. "My apologies, Ms. Sato."

Hers was a sigh. "No, please continue. It's just that…" She drifted for that moment, curling her forefingers into one another. "Everything is about my father. Any time someone wants to talk to me, it's about my father. I don't—and I didn't—know anything."

"It's a formality, but insensitive. I am sorry."

"Go on, please." She had made a noise—it was soft, perhaps trembling, like uneven stands of smoke. He had not wanted her to feel put off, but now he'd done so. He should kick himself. "I'll help you, as I said I would."

He wasn't sure how he could continue from this, as if he'd spilled his tea, committed the faux pas, and would need to wait before the shame could evaporate. "Yes, the Equalist factory. That is… the chief of police, he's unsure that everything was found."

She hesitated. "But they're metalbenders."

"And the factory has walls made of pure platinum, which is ineffective to metalbenders. If your father is capable of that, then who knows what he might've hidden in there?"

He saw her pull back. An inch, a fraction of an inch. The movement, so slight, had still managed to dislodge a wisp of her hair from her ear. His hand fisted, trapping fingers that had their own ideas. Iroh bit his tongue.

"Are you sure of this?" she asked, after some time had came and gone. She had been thinking. He was unsure if this would be a good or bad indication of what came next.

He nodded. "Yes. I think it could be possible. I would have contacted the Avatar, but… I thought to come here, first."

She had poured her own tea some minutes ago. He'd noticed the two sugars she had stirred into it. The dollop of cream. She had taken one sip and set the cup down on the varnished table, edging it up against a lace doily. Her hands had been set in her lap ever since. There were so many things he could see in her—so many things, unvoiced but there. Present. He wished to look for the ones that remained clandestine.

"Right, thank you." Another pause. And then: "We… we should go look, then. I don't want your time to be wasted here."

He gaped. "Now? Ms. Sato, I was only wondering if you would permit an inspection—"

"Nonsense. You said this is important. We should go." Now she was standing, looking at him from the above. She was a geometrician's dream, of linear constructions and angular bends. He was at a loss for words; her eyes were blooming with confidence. She had arched her hip, arched her brow, and he was mesmerized with his mouth open.

Idiot. You look like an idiot, staring at her like this.

The composure returned. Regal, authoritative. "If you say so, Ms. Sato."

"We are not strangers, General."

"Then you can't call me 'General,' either."

Asami laughed, a sound that displaced him completely. He could not remove the gaze that he'd pinned her on; riveted, reverent. She did not seem so sad. She was by the door, moving away from him, opening it before peering over her shoulder. He was already straightening.

"Shall we go?"

He came to her, centimeters away. They'd been closer before, but it seemed different now. "After you, my lady."

"It's Asami."

"I know." He looked into her eyes, smiling.

They left the tea in their cups to grow cold.