A/N: This chapter's title is from Where I Wanna Be - b A. That, and We Rise - by San Holo, are this chapter's mini-playlist.

Warnings in this chapter for descriptions of animal violence (specifically killer whale predation on whales, bottlenose dolphin aggression against other cetaceans), seal hunting by humans, and some more racist and imperialist arguments.

Chapter 10

I Build My Life Like a Castle in the Sand

Time, not depth, turned out to be the trick.

Sana tied a line to a heavy stone and dropped it into the center of the grotto, with a float vest tied to the surface end for Iroh to hang onto while resting between dives. He dove each time to the limit of his depth, pulling himself down the line arm over arm and then hanging onto the line, upside down, waiting for Sana to tap his foot and alert him he'd hit a new time record. He found that at whatever depth he pulled himself to the point where his ears stopped clearing, hanging there in the knowledge that he still had time to wait gave him space to try his ears again, and again, until they did clear a little more, and a little more depth became possible.

Within an hour, Iroh had made it the five fathoms down. After passing the five fathom mark, deeper water was easier to reach, his ears needing smaller adjustments. He touched the sandy bottom of the grotto only five attempts later.

He had come to realize over the day that while Sana naturally floated at the surface with her face gently above the surface, he did not actually sink at the surface as he thought he did, slowly and inevitably downward. Instead, his natural flotation hovered him at an inconvenient depth which kept his nose below the surface of the water - but it held him there, unsinking, unless he exhaled, at which point he dipped below the surface - but simply hung there, suspended without dropping to the bottom of the sea.

Below the five fathoms, though, he did sink - naturally, easily, slowly, like a big leaf drifting downward. It was not the dramatic plunge he'd dreaded when first he held still in the water and let Sana see where his body suspended him. It spared him effort, once he realized that past that depth, he could simply let his hands fall to the side and glide downward, saving breath for when he tucked himself into a lotus position on the sand.

Sana, by contrast, was buoyant all the way to the sandy floor of the grotto. She hovered above him with her hand on the dive line, gently hanging in place and watching him for distress. To reach the depth she'd plunged herself down with waterbending, a wide sweep of her arms pulling water from in front of her directly behind her, bulging the surface of the sea slightly and shooting her downward as she and the water above rushed to fill the void below.

On the seafloor, with his breath held longer than he had ever expected to hold his breath at one time, Iroh sat on the sand and found himself completely weighed down by the water. Above, sunlight sparkled through the distant surface and filled the blue with shifting beams, fish glittering through the light in the forest of coral growing up the walls of the grotto. Iroh wondered if any firebender had ever sat in such a place. He wondered if any firebender would ever believe him when he said he had.

The saltwater current burned Iroh's eyes, but he'd gotten so used to the feeling after the passing of the day that he kept his eyes open, looking to the mouth of the grotto. He imagined walking across this sand out of it, and back into it too, free to leave this comfortable containment at any time, to swim the quarter mile back to a beach where he would greet the sunrise in his usual fashion - perhaps not tomorrow, but hopefully the day after. His lungs began their convulsions inward, the signal that he now knew was not the immediate need to breathe, but the signal that breath would be very welcome, very soon.

Iroh shifted into a squat and pushed up from the sand, marveling at the distance underwater that the jump took him, the way he felt suspended at the end of it instead of plunging back down as he had feared. He fisherfrog-kicked surfaceward as Sana had taught him to, picking up speed as he passed the 5 fathom mark and realized his body was buoyant again, when he had not thought of himself as buoyant until he felt what true nonbuoyancy was. He broke through the surface and threw his arms over the float vest, sucking in deep full lungfuls of air and holding onto them for a flash of a second, exhaling in puffs and inhaling deep and sharp again. Sana surfaced next to him, breathing less heavily.

"You did it!"

"I did!" Iroh panted, clinging to the floatvest.

"Are you tired enough for one day?" Sana asked. "We can keep drilling tomorrow."

"No." He gasped a few times. "I'm not tired." He'd pass out without a second thought as soon as the sun had set, but he so wanted to be ready to leave the grotto himself in the morning. "I mean to keep going."

So they did. Down, and up, and down again, until Iroh was swimming along the floor of the grotto, feeling the current out, realizing that the swim took so much less time than he'd visualized, and he burst out into the open ocean with Sana on his tail long before sunset.

They toasted his victory with a long kiss, underwater, as when Iroh held on to Sana his lesser buoyancy dragged even her underwater. "Isn't it odd," he pointed out when they separated and burst to the surface for breaths, "how much the water wants to hold you up?" he understood now, having watched Sana require waterbending just to get herself to stop bobbing back to the surface, while he could simply glide down on a few big sweeps of his arms and a fisherfrog kick, why she'd said he'd be good at diving. "I would never never thought a firebender might have an easier time than someone born in a watertribe of getting anything accomplished in the water, but it always forces you back up."

"Give me a break!" Sana objected, moving his hands to her full hips, the softness of her belly layered over her strong core. She rested her own hands on his powerfully muscled shoulders, his arms dense from a lifetime of firebending, a career of field rations and constant activity. "Maybe if I had biceps the size of melons, I'd sink easier. You haven't exactly objected to my buoyancy."

Iroh reached around her hips to dig his fingers into said buoyancy. "I wasn't going to."

They dipped above and below the surface in kissing until the sunset was too close. Sana spun up a waterspout that lifted them to the top of the cliff, where they expended the last energy left over from the day in enjoying each other's company, with a little time left over to look for a green flash that again did not come.

The days became only more idyllic as the moon grew. Their natural rhythms complemented each other as Iroh woke before Sana each morning, with time for himself to swim to the beach, greet the sun with his firebending practice, and return to the grotto with some freshly caught or freshly gathered breakfast in time for Sana to wake up. She in her turn took care of an evening meal before sunset, and was up after he had passed contentedly into sleep, waterbending as the moon grew fuller each night, its light falling into the grotto, onto the tree and her practice.

Their shelter was comforting, secure, lovely, their food plentiful. Even the walks they had to take a little bit further each day to find fruit were pleasant. They slept well, ate well, and had nothing to do in between meals but to entertain themselves.

There was an abundance of amusement on the island, for a pair of well fed young athletes such as they were. Iroh had discovered that the cliffs, even with their sharp erosion, had hand and footholds perpetually smoothed by the water, and he made a game of trying to climb the cliffs by himself while Sana studied the macawphins that sheltered in the bay during the day. The cliffs cast long shadows out over the water all through the morning, leaving him safe to pass his time without the risk of another terrible burn, whether he clung to a cliffside or floated in the water. The climbing was invigorating and challenging, as was the inevitable constant falling into the water below as Iroh failed time and again to reach the top, occasionally cutting his hands or feet on the rough limestone, and simply returning to the practice after Sana healed his cuts. It was incredible how much caution was lifted from one's shoulders with a medic capable of instantaneous healing right nearby, and the climbing worked muscles and demanded flexibility he had never considered needed working, a placeholder for the running he didn't feel like doing on the island, and an improvement of a skill he might one day find useful in the field. Sana joined him in climbing once in a while, but her focus on the macawphins only grew more intense with exposure to them.

Iroh understood her fascination intellectually. She was trying to learn from the macawphins as he had once learned from the dragons, albeit on a much more mundane level. The macawphins would never reveal to her secrets to match the phenomenal beauty of the Masters' true fire, but they still surely held secrets that she had not been able to learn in her landlocked upbringing, wherever a landlocked waterbending tribe could possibly be found. He hung from halfway up the cliffside, eyes on Sana as she floated near to a passing crowd of macawphins. The animals leaped out of the water like darts, spread their gliding fins and soared several bodylengths distance over the surface of the water before slipping beneath the waves again. Sana struggled to swim fast enough to keep up with them.

Iroh idly considered the bodies of water he knew existed in the Earth Kingdom as he watched her struggle. The rivers and lakes near Ba Sing Se could have hosted water tribes on their banks, but not secretly. They were far too well occupied already, and Sana was so unrefined compared even to Earth Kingdom peasants that close to the outer ring of the city. Whatever body of water a whole tribe sustained themselves at, doubtless it was large, and one or several rivers lead to or from it. He wouldn't have a hard time discovering her tribe, finding her again after they parted ways, if he wanted to.

He held on with one hand, then the other, shaking fatigue out of his hands, wondering if he did want to find Sana after they parted ways. He'd buy a great deal of his father's regard by locating a third water tribe. And yet, he wondered if that third water tribe was worth his father's time at all. The tribe was likely too small and too reclusive to bother with being an ally to the Earth Kingdom against the Fire Nation, therefore expending the resources to track and confine them would be a mis-allocation of force better expended against active Earth Kingdom combatants.

Iroh would never breathe a hint of it to Azulon, but his father's choice to concentrate his life against the Southern Water Tribe was like paying off one small debt to free up more funds towards a massive one. Azulon in his brilliance and his might had achieved his conquest, but left the Earth Kingdom, with its diverse and stubborn population, with its impenetrable stronghold capitol, the true bulk of the war to his son. Not because Azulon was weak or cowardly, not because Azulon wanted the easy glory of a decisive but simple win, but because Azulon understood the strategic advantage of winnowing the true enemy's support away before coming directly for them. With the south devastated, the Nothern Water Tribe was on the verge of withdrawing their support for their Earth Kingdom allies. They would, if Iroh's intelligence was correct, wall themselves off from the rest of the world in a few years in their fortresses of cold solitude, desperate to avoid the defeat that had befallen their sister tribe. When the Earth Kingdom fell, the Northern Water Tribe would stand no chance against the expanded might of the Fire Nation.

The North was still a force to keep in mind, but they were retreating slowly. An isolated, disorganized tribe such as Sana's could not pose a real threat, offer support to the north, and would likely be wiped away easily even if they allied with the Earth Kingdom. Sana herself might prove an ally in keeping her tribe from posing any hazard to the Fire Nation's campaign in the Earth Kingdom, whether she knew it or not, if she took back tales about the destruction of the south, the inhospitality of the North, and the might of the Fire Nation through her understanding of his resourcefulness and power. Whether she knew that she gave him an advantage or not, she was likely to tell her friends and her family to stay quiet, stay hidden, keep their noses down lest the Fire Nation blot them out like a man might flick a fly from the page of a scroll as he studied it.

They could be permitted to be secret, wherever they lived in their lack of influence. But he wanted to know where their secret hideout was anyway. He wanted the information, in case there were more waterbenders in Sana's tribe than he estimated, in case she were merely uniquely impoverished among her people, in case he had to find her again with an emergency need for a healer and emotional ties of a woman who was fond of him to call on.

His forearms were tight with the tension of holding his weight up. He pushed off from the wall and plunged into the sea below, startling some macawphins as they passed by. When he opened his eyes to watch them vanish underwater, Sana tumbled clumsily into view, bursting to the surface and snorting water out of her nose with unattractive noises.

"Are you all right?" Iroh called, swimming over to her as she inhaled.

"Yes! Fine!" Sana insisted, clearing her nose again. "Just turned my head the wrong way while trying my kick. Again."

"Do the macawphins not measure up as tutors?" he asked, treading water as Sana brushed her face clear.

"No, I'm the bad student," Sana insisted. "You wouldn't believe how close they let me get. I really think they understand that I'm trying to learn from them," she said, her voice full of wonder, her mouth wide with her smile. "Are you hungry? I'm starving."

They swam back into the grotto, Sana helping Iroh through the entrance hold with a countercurrent to the one that was always such a challenge not to be kept out by. Over parrotfish that had been marinating in calamansi in a bowl of ice since Sana awoke, she went on about her experience with the sea creatures, her enthusiasm boundless. "They don't avoid me at all anymore. A foxphin let me touch it this morning -"

"You got that close to a foxphin?" Iroh had seen a few of the larger creatures in amongst the macawphins, brilliantly orange and silver compared to the macawphins with their red, yellow, and blue, and so much larger than the smaller acrobats, with their wide-soaring gliding wings. The foxphins tended to travel in pairs or trios, compared to the macawphins large schools, and Iroh had seen three once from the deck of a ship tearing a leatherback porpoise apart like city panthers toying with a mousephant. The little leatherback porpoise had been so pitifully beaten that he'd nearly struck it with lightning to mercy kill it, before one of the foxphins dragged it down to its likely death and out of the reach of his mercy kill. "They're big enough to drown you if they wanted," he pointed out.

"They're more aggressive than the macawphins, but if I give them space they give me space," Sana insisted, brushing off his concern. He considered telling her about the poor porpoise - "One likes me. He let me hold onto his dorsal fin as he swam -"

She was so excited by this development that he held back on his porpoise story. Perhaps he would bring his concerns up when they weren't in the open water, when Sana was not glowing with the thrill of learning from an inhuman master.

She saw his lack of enthusiasm. "Don't worry," she sighed. "Even in the north they said I was taking stupid risks, getting in the water with the wolfwhales -"

"You got in that water?" Iroh cut in. "Let alone with wolfwhales?" This tropical sea was pleasant to float in on a hot day, but Iroh could not imagine falling in the arctic water and not dying immediately without the heat of firebending to keep off the chill, and then to add wolfwhales into the equation -

"They weren't all that interested in me," Sana said, waving this off as if the wolfwhales were not five times the size of foxphins and perhaps five thousand times as aggressive with their prey. Once on their way north, their ship had passed the carcass of a mantawhale, its skin peeled off in strips, wolfwhales jostling each other to get into the dead whale's mouth to eat its tongue. "They're very smart," Sana insisted, while Iroh fought back nausea at the memory of the carnage. "They're so beautiful to see underwater. That striking white and black, and the way they howl their songs -"

Her eyes were sparkling with transcendence, but Iroh could barely keep his appetite with the memory of the peeled mantawhale.

Sana's enthusiasm dimmed as he failed to come up with any supporting question. "Well," she sighed, "Learning from the things that live in the ocean is wonderful to me, even if it's not a worthwhile way to spend my time. And if I'm the only one who cares to do it - what's wrong with doing it, anyway?" she sighed. "What's wrong with finding something wonderful in the world and following it as hard as you can?"

"Who's told you it's not worthwhile?" Iroh asked. It was probably a foolish use of her time, considering the way firebender children were expected to be done chasing salamanders and learning what little they could from the mundane creatures of their element by the time they entered formal schooling, but he was curious what water tribespeople considered worthwhile uses of time. "The northern tribe?"

"Who else? Nobody back home even knows wolfwhales except in stories," Sana said. "We didn't even have stories about the elephant whales. You wouldn't believe what it feels like to be in the water with an elephant whale," she said, her voice awed again.

An elephant whale had rammed and sunk a Gem-class vessel testing explosives offshore when Iroh was 10 years old. Only one sailor had survived to tell the tale. The rest of the sailors likely hadn't found the transcendence in being in the water with the beast that Sana described. "I can only imagine," he said, charitably.

"I mean it. When you understand how massive they truly are, when you're suspended in that blue that has no end, when you swim down deep enough that the surface is as blue as the depths and they're there looking at you - their eyes are the size of my head!" Sana exclaimed, her enthusiasm only rising. "I swear they are people in there, you can see it in the way they pause to look at you - " she paused, her mood ebbing as Iroh remained unmoved. "I sound crazy, don't I."

"Perhaps a touch," Iroh said, gently, as Sana sighed again.

"I just can't seem to get anybody else to understand how wonderful it is, to be that deep with them. I've seen things that other people aren't trying to see, been places they aren't trying to go, but maybe there's something to be discovered there. Maybe it's just the peace of blue that never ends."

She was drifting poetic, gentle joy back in her tone at the endlessness of the ocean. The thought of being that deep in endless sea made Iroh feel cold and claustrophobic.

"So in the Northern tribe, you studied healing and you swam with wolfwhales." It made sense to him for a waterbender to have or be developing techniques to stay alive in freezing cold water, if no other part of it made sense. "What else did you do?"

"Well - uh -" Sana winced. "Technically I got engaged."

The fragment of a story already promised to be hilarious. "You technically got engaged?"

"It was an accident!"

"How do you get engaged on accident?" He was engaged, of course, but that had been so absolutely not on accident, the forms already signed in triplicate before he was old enough to shave and his fiance was old enough to walk.

Sana looked reluctant, but once she began speaking, the story tumbled out of her like a waterfall. "I knew that some of the locals were coming around to the idea of marryin' me into one of the Northern families, but I didn't know what gettin' engaged even looked like in the North. When we get married in my tribe, we just throw a party and that's good enough for everyone, but up north -" she rolled her eyes. "So there was this one fella, and he was a hunter. The aunties were convinced we'd make a good match, but I went out walkin' with him a few times and all he could talk about was clubbing seals." She set her hand on her chin. "It's an important job, but it was the only thing he could talk about, and he never stopped talking! It was amazing, really, because there's not that much different that goes on between seal hunts, right? You walk out on the ice, you find a seal hauled out, you sneak up behind it, you club it - but he had at least a hundred variations on that story! Never asked me a thing about my home, or my plans, did I want kids or not, had I been anywhere fun on the way North, but I think I could tell you every moment of his life from birth to the time I left. I just couldn't believe someone with so little to talk about could find so many words to tell it with. I told the aunties it wasn't gonna happen, but they kept on sellin' him to me. One day we're walking and he gets all serious, pulls out this necklace, all 'I made this for you,' and it was pretty, you know? So I said thanks, and he said, 'so you accept,' and I didn't know what he meant so I said 'sure, it's a nice necklace,' but he meant did I accept him to marry and nobody told me so until I'd been wearing the damn necklace for two days! Two days and I had no idea why all the aunties were so excited I had it and none of the men would talk to me at all! It was awful when I gave it back -" she dragged her hands down her face at the memory. "He was so angry and embarrassed. I was just embarrassed. The aunties stopped talking to me too. All the girls but the little ones I was learnin' in the healin' hut with stopped talking to me. When they started talking again it was to say I could apologize to him real nice and maybe if I was nice enough for a while he'd consider puttin' the engagement back on - I left the north that night." She glanced at Iroh as he chuckled. "It ain't funny! I humiliated the man and I didn't even mean to."

"Well his loss is my gain," Iroh said, chuckling. "Think if it'd taken you three days to figure it out, not two. Might we have missed each other, might I be fishfood now, instead of the other way around?"

"Well, when you put it like that." Sana looked downward, but she smiled again. "I don't think I'll ever go back," she said, but with a touch of regret in her tone. "There's so much about healing I'll never learn, but you've never been in a colder room than a Northern Water Tribe hut when you've shamed their son and been unladylike and bad at healing the whole time. I really hoped when I went north that we'd be sharing with each other, my style, our tribe's customs, and theirs, but they only wanted me to learn their way and - and that was it. We got this technique for keepin' warm submerged in cold water and I was advancing it so much, but they weren't interested -"

Iroh filed away a mental note to ask about that technique later. "You would think, with the allies in the Earth Kingdom they have to protect, that they'd be eager to have any able-bodied fighter they could get. We have no such compulsions about turning down female firebenders in our service."

"How nice for them," Sana said, but she said it so dryly, as one who could not possibly be appreciative enough of fire nation military resourcefulness and organization. "It wasn't even that they didn't want me to fight," she went on - "they didn't want me to do anything but one kind of waterbending, and if I wasn't good at it then it didn't matter what else I was good at. Not even if it meant I could hop in the freezing water and come out alive after bein' in longer than it took to get out and get dried, even if it meant I could get in the water to go down after a seal - I hoped I could go there and share and be shared with, but they were so rigid." She frowned. "Like ice. Like my tribe had nothing worth learning, like everything they needed they already knew and it was my job to earn the sliver of it they thought was for me, even if I wasn't good at it. No wonder my ancestors left." She sighed a little, as Iroh snatched up this new fragment of information. Her tribe had split from the north. Where was a tribe that split from the north likely to have gone, if not all the way to the south pole? "So what do you do when your family don't like you, and your far-off kin ain't your people, and no matter where you go there ain't nobody who cares about the things you care about?"

Put on a mask, and figure out how to accomplish what's asked of you, Iroh thought, but didn't say, thinking of every time he'd felt misunderstood, or deliberately misrepresented himself to put someone else off their guard, or to get what he needed from them. Not everyone has so few obligations that they can just run away from feeling put-upon, he thought.

The passive attitude she described would have gotten her nowhere in the Fire Nation any more than it had gotten her all but exiled from the north, but then, he could not think poorly of her for simply flowing where destiny needed her to be. She could hardly be blamed for acting like water seeking low ground, given the passiveness of her element, given that her birth obligations had been to a people deeply unworthy compared to his. "Make your own way in the world, I guess," he said, guessing that this was what she wanted to hear, given that it was what she had done.

"Yeah, so did I." Sana looked out over the sea, brushing her hair back over her ear. "Anyway, I think I found where I ought to be, even if there's nobody else who gets - all of this." She gestured to the ocean. "In the north they kept telling me 'you could be a passable waterbender, or you could give birth to many strong waterbending sons -'" she gagged on her words. "Don't get me wrong, I want kids, but not before I saw the world I was bringin' em into myself. I can't even think about it, watching my sons all learn to bend and go out in the world while I had to just . . . stay home and not do either of those things, not even bend with them."

Iroh thought of his mother, her return from the field to the honor and glory of life as the Fire Lady, the time she had spent joyfully teaching him their shared art, the utter waste it would have been not to permit her to master her fire in every way it could be mastered. He felt a little smug about it. He couldn't criticize Sana too much for her passive escapism. The cold north was hardly the land of plenty and culture that the Fire Nation offered women, benders and otherwise, who chose to mother sons in it, and no woman had ever been summoned out of the field to a greater honor than his mother had been. "You might find it more appealing when you've had your fill of wandering," he said, idly, thinking that one day the sea might grow lonely, the storms harsh, the ocean cold for a woman like Sana who, torn in a million directions by her yearning, nevertheless clearly yearned for human connection. She looked at him with her brows drawn in near offense. "My mother enjoyed her married homelife, after all," he said, "and she had more tales of life in the field than I think you've had time to make yet."

"Your mother traveled?"

"More than traveled, she was a captain in the army," Iroh said, proud. "We have more faith in our women than the northern tribe has in you. A woman may one day even become a general in the Fire Nation. My mother would have certainly become one."

"Would have but what?"

"But for her marriage to my father." Ilah, with her tactical wisdom, her firebending skill, her great knack for diplomacy, would have laid waste to the Earth Kingdom as a general, but still been wasted in any other position but as the Fire Lady. "Perhaps one day teaching your sons will be more rewarding than you expect now," he went on. The way his mother had never been more lit up, more alive, than when they played in their private lessons, than when he accomplished new feats and attained new mastery under her training, still filled him up with warmth to remember. Yet again he pitied his baby brother, so overflowing with talent, yet sure to suffer for not having the teacher he had. "My mother loved teaching me. I loved learning from her."

As Sana's awe over the sea had failed to impact him, his nostalgia failed to impress her. "She must've been deeply in love, to leave the field for - why are you laughing?"

"Are marriages all love matches where you come from?" Iroh asked. He contained his snickering. No wonder her tribe was so backwoods and powerless. "No. Their marriage was arranged. Her deeds in the field earned her quite a higher match than she would have had if she'd simply stayed a minor noblewoman at home."

Sana stayed confused. "Oh." She looked blankly into the water. "I suppose she must have been very tired of the soldiering by then."

"Not at all. She spoke so fondly of her time in the field. I looked forward to mine, hearing her stories. She worked hard to prove herself and get her commission and her position in the field, and it was that determination and drive that earned her the honor of a marriage proposal as high as to my father."

"Could she have refused him?"

Iroh just laughed again.

Sana covered her mouth. "That poor woman."

Sana's unexpected pity flooded Iroh's warm nostalgia like cold water.

His voice was tight as he asked, "What reason do you have to pity her?"

"Well," Sana looked at him, cautious. "She worked hard for her job, and then she had to leave it to marry someone she'd never met -"

"You are mistaken." His voice was a sharp snap. Sana had clearly matched her image of his mother's life to the dismal cold servitude of motherhood in the north, that she would have been trapped in if the Northern Water Tribe had any true power over her. The thought of matching his golden and warm memories of Ilah's teaching, and her reminiscing, threatened to leech the gold out of them, and the prospect infuriated him. "My mother was deeply honored by my father's proposal. She was honored to accept her new station."

His own heat felt very appropriate, but Sana looked surprised.

"I don't mean to insult your pa -"

"You are incapable of giving him insult," Iroh snapped.

Her surprise turned to confusion, turned to a little hurt, turned to something nearly anger.

"I'm sorry," she said, but her hands were on her hips, "but I don't think maybe you've thought about all that from your ma's perspective -"

"You don't understand. I wouldn't expect you to." He could not tell this woman how audacious her insult was, to speak of the Fire Lord as if his proposal, as if the position he'd given Ilah were merely to be a broodmare. "Your culture would turn you into a barefoot and pregnant housekeeper, but my mother -"

"Hold on," Sana cut in. "My people don't -"

"The northern tribe then. You think their way of restricting a woman to the birthing hut is the same for the women of the Fire Nation, but you are -"

"The women of the north don't -"

He did not allow himself to be interrupted. "You have no idea the status, the honor of a woman in the Fire Nation marrying as noble as my mother did. Her responsibilities and her honors were greater than any woman on the ice could ever be expected to fulfill, and that is the Fire Nation's strength and the Northern tribe's failing."

He could not tell her the height of nobility that Ilah obtained, could not possibly explain to her EXACTLY how much more honorable being Fire Lady was than being even a captain as Ilah had been, and it boiled at him, not to be able to clarify.

Sana simply still looked irrationally indignant. "Well would you wanna leave the field forever just to marry someone you'd never met?"

"One day I will marry someone I've never met, and one day I will leave the field to take over my father's position, as is my duty as his honorable son. As my mother's duty was to become my mother. We do not have the luxury of simply roaming where we want, but we are better for it," Iroh snapped.

Sana's eyes widened. "Better than who, exactly?"

"It is something every Fire Nation citizen understands, but I cannot force you to understand it."

"I just -"

"I think this conversation should be over," Iroh said, plainly, and Sana opened her mouth to object -

But she shut it again, and took a deep breath.

"I think maybe that's so," she said, with an exhale. "Can't explain myself to someone who don't wanna listen."

She stood up and jumped into the sea. She didn't surface inside the grotto again.

Bristling with frustration, Iroh sat and eyed the water where Sana had disappeared, the grotto suddenly feeling enclosed to the point of being claustrophobic, the waves very loud in the echoing chamber. No one had ever insulted his mother or his father so to his face - no one would have dared, when the price was as high as it would have been back home. He could have challenged Sana to a duel over the slight on his mother's honor, implying she had been anything less than deeply honored and glad to serve as the Fire Lady, over the insult to his father's position as if marriage to him was a downgrade from an officer's commission.

He stalked up to the top of the rock in the center of the grotto, and inhaled deeply to unleash a breath of fire, a massive cloud that touched the back wall of the grotto, but only blackened the stone without lighting anything. The harmless release of his anger eased his tension, and he did it again, breathing between the complete exhalations as he breathed between deep dives.

The grotto was very, very quiet when he stopped, as if even the sea had laid down. Indeed it was almost still, barely flowing over the lower stones up to the sandbank, and Iroh felt as if an invisible crowd had suddenly turned all their silent eyes upon him.

He looked back to the plumeria tree, where the silvery spirit energy still flowed, though slower than he had ever seen it.

She is just a peasant from some backwater tribe, literally, Iroh thought, and the reminder that Sana lacked all context for honor settled him somewhat.

Of course no Fire Nation citizen would give such direct insult. They knew better. A woman who was attractive and helpful and fun, but nevertheless, deeply uneducated and unrefined, would stumble over such an insult. Fortunate for her that he was more patient than many of the other Fire Nationals he knew, understanding that a pretty face could not be unburned.

Iroh took another deep breath, and bowed to the tree. "That was uncouth of me," he said. This was a place where the energetic nature of water reigned supreme, and he had just filled it briefly with the element that was in its direct opposition. A threatening gesture in a gentle, recessive place. "I offer my apology."

He sat on the sand before the plumeria to meditate, offering his calm up as demonstration of his reticence.

A/N: It's noteworthy to me that in a deliberately feminist show like A:tLA, we only ever see women in uniform (aside form the Kyoshi warriors) in the Fire Nation. I don't think that's a great feminist accomplishment for the Fire Nation, the way Iroh does here, but a symptom of the Fire Nation needing endless bodies for an endless campaign of pointless violence on the rest of the world. Maybe one day I'll write a short from Ilah's perspective upon receiving a proposal in the form of unrefusable military orders, and how horrifying I imagine that being. A culture where the Fire Lord is held up as unquestionable forced her to receive those orders gracefully, but even though it didn't break her loyalty to imperialism, I see her reaction as much less enthusiastic than Iroh was content until this argument to assume. Iroh's comments and thoughts on the Northern Water Tribe are extremely racist too, and patronizing towards the women who flourish there. I wish we had gotten more perspectives from Northern Water Tribe women in the show (and heard from any Foggy Swamp women . . . clearly).