There was a gentle rap on the open door. The young man leaned against the frame, almost nervous. It was not what she expected from a man of his stature.
"May I come in?" Iroh asked.
"Yes." Asami did not even raise her head to greet him.
"Your mother?" It was hardly a question, more an interval in the silence that blanketed them.
"She was beautiful." He sat down beside her.
His eyes took her in too familiarly. The whole of her. The absence of joy in her smile — never shooting through her and reaching her eyes like a girl her age should smile…girls like her, what did he know of girls like her, only that they should be happy. Her poor posture. He was taught to "sit up straight", "stand up tall". Iroh missed his home far across the sea, missed the voices that built him into the man that could console a stranger, but there was still a boy in him yearning for her to slightly turn her head and look at him like he looked at her. How tightly she gripped the photograph. The photo, it was wrong. It was cut. She had cut her father out. And how strands of her black night hair stuck to her perspiring forehead; a crack to her perfection in the harsh light of day.
"She was."
And you, more so. Iroh thought as his hand brushed the soft sheets of her bed. His hand was so close to hers. He could see softness in them, not in that she had never worked or was defenseless — he had heard how strong she was from…what was his name again, oh yes Mako, Iroh remembered him saying so with his arms folded across his chest and his eyes narrowed — but that she was tender despite everything that had happened to her.
Her hand was close to his. She could see the bones, veins, a little scar that probably had some senseless story to go with it and his intention. She moved her hand to rest in the safety of her lap.
"I would have liked to meet her."
I would have liked you to.
Though she had invited him in, though he sat beside her and she felt his warmth she wondered if these were merely their bodies and his heart was really on the other side of the door, wandering that cold hallway and hers was sitting alone holding onto a mother she barely remembered.