A/N: This chapter title is from Lord Huron's song The Stranger. I can never recommend Lord Huron enough for moody complicated adventure songs!

Chapter 4

Of All the Strangers, You're The Strangest That I've Seen

They ate dehydrated mangoes for breakfast as Sana spread the contents of her ditch kit on the deck of the fastboat.

"Well, this is what we got to survive with," she said, paring a sliver of dried mango off the pit with the knife from her kit and handing it to Iroh.

He took the mango gratefully as she laid out a set of needles and thread for sailmending, an anchor with a line, spare rope, a sharpening stone, enough medical supplies to treat small wounds and splint a broken limb, a little soap, camellia oil, and sun-protection paste, a fine net to ward off insects, two flares, a fishing kit, flint and oil-soaked tinder.

Sana looked from the firestarting kit to Iroh, who chuckled. "See? I may be useful to you yet."

Sana shrugged over the extraneous firestarting kit and went on laying out her supplies - a tarp, a wide metal bowl, her own float vest with three more flares, a whistle, a signaling mirror, and one more spare vest.

"By the way," Sana said, holding the yellow cork vest, looking at Iroh meaningfully. "Where was yours?"

His chuckle was bashful this time. "I didn't expect to be in the water, just on top of it."

"That's why we have them," Sana scolded. "No one plans to get swept overboard. AND you were the last one on the boat! What were you getting, if not your vest?"

"My sergeant," Iroh said. "He was injured."

Sana blinked, seriousness replacing her scolding expression. "Well," she said, thoughtfully, "That was brave of you." She shook her finger at him anyway. "And dangerous! Think what would have happened if you couldn't firebend! How would I have spotted you?"

"Next time I'm at sea in a typhoon, I'll put the vest on before I go running back for my men," he promised.

"You better." Sana patted her last item, a provision box of dehydrated taro and sweet potato, and Iroh was glad for the mango season as she handed him another slice. "Anyway, that's it," she said. "That's gotta get us through the month."

All Iroh had retained from the boat was the seal that confirmed his identity, hanging from a cord around his neck. He thought of the pouch of jasmine tea he'd put in the pocket of his jacket, the one he'd left floating somewhere in the open sea. "I would have liked to make you tea to thank you for saving my life," he sighed.

"You can make it up to me when we get back to the Earth Kingdom," she said, absentmindedly. Then her thoughts caught up with her mouth and her smile disappeared. "IF I were ever gonna see you again once I got you back to the Earth Kingdom," she amended, trying to sound fierce again.

"Of course. I must make it up to you some other way," Iroh agreed, only smiling at her in return. "I have a month to figure something out."

He repositioned himself on the deck, let his fingers brush hers, and let them stay there.

Sana caught his gaze. She'd put a wall around herself since the revelation that he was Fire Nation, and though she didn't pull her hand away, there was still tension in her regard for him that hadn't been there before.

"Your captain had rules for everything, did she think to give you rules for time alone in the middle of nowhere with a guest you'll never see again?" he asked.

"She didn't have rules for everything," Sana amended. "She didn't think about weeks alone on an island." She glanced from his hand touching hers up to catch his gaze again. "Otherwise she would have definitely made rules for how you don't pass the time when you're going to be all alone together."

"What was it you and the captain were arguing about, anyway?" Iroh asked. His curiosity had never abated. "Can I take a guess?"

Sana looked away. "I bet you have figured it out," she said.

"Then I guess Captain Fang was about to start doing business in the Colonies."

The waterbender sighed. "You've got it," she said. She withdrew her hand after all.

"No wonder you were upset," Iroh said. "You'd have been closer than ever to being imprisoned."

Sana looked at him again. "That's mighty understandin' of you to say," she said.

"She chose money over your freedom," Iroh went on. He'd never had to think like a waterbender who was more or less neutral in their war, but the exercise wasn't hard, when the waterbender in question so clearly valued her freedom.

"Mmhm," Sana agreed, chewing on a piece of mango. "The tropical provinces get most of their business from the colonies these days and the captain's got a lot of wages to pay." She paused. She looked angry, but said, "I can't really get angry at her."

"I thought you were, when I saw you arguing."

"What, do you want me to get angry at her?" Sana looked at him out of the corner of her eye. "Ain't you under some kinda law to turn me over to your Fire Lord if I give you half a chance?"

"I've got no interest in seeing you in prison," he said, and meant it. A northern or southern waterbender, primed by the unforgiving ice to perpetually battle for survival, was oonly no threat to the Fire Nation in prison. A lone woman from some backwoods tribe that had never done any conquest worth noting, who saved his life without attacking when she found out whose life she'd saved, was no threat at all.

"Oh yeah?" she asked. "Then what are you gonna tell your friends, when I drop you off and you find 'em again?"

Any common soldier would have been guilty of treason for leaving her alive, but he was no common soldier, and these were unusual circumstances. He could argue his logic to the Fire Lord, and Azulon would agree with him - as long as he told the version of events the Fire Lord and the rest of his nation would want to hear. "I could tell them I killed you," he suggested. When she returned him to the Earth Kingdom, perhaps he could convince her to give him some token of her people to bring to his father. He could add The Last Known Southern Waterbender to his list of conquests his father was better not knowing the truth about. "No one would come looking for you then."

"I suppose that'd work," she said, but her death was what not he wanted her contemplating, and not what he wanted to contemplate.

"You saved my life," he pointed out, putting his hand over hers to squeeze gently. "The very least I can do to thank you is make sure you get to keep your freedom." He waited until she looked up to catch her eye, so she got to see his earnest smile. "There's the rule of the Fire Lord, and then there's the rule of honor." Any other Fire Nation man had to consider them the same, but he was not any Fire Nation man. "If this isn't a 'rule of honor' situation, then I don't have any."

She accepted this, smiling wordlessly and turning her hand to draw her fingertips across his palm. A soft breeze fanned the cool water still drying on Iroh's skin, and made her drying hair wave around her shoulders.

Iroh could barely contain his delight. To think, the day before he'd been juggling his men's frustration and his own, on the way to a series of stiff formality after stiff formality under his father's exacting scrutiny. Now the only thing he had to be responsible for was a beautiful woman's secret, far down the line enough to come up with the right cover story.

"If the captain had made rules to apply to our situation," Iroh asked, running a finger down the outside curve of her thumb, "Given the situation she was putting you in - would you obey them?"

A smile broke again on Sana's face. She exhaled, relaxing from her tension. "Not this time," she said, sliding in a little closer, putting her free hand on his. She tucked a strand of hair behind her ear. "You're not very upset about being lost at sea," she pointed out.

"Neither are you."

"I'm at home here." She did look it, relaxed and refreshed with the breeze on her skin and her long hair let down. "I wouldn't rather be anywhere else."

"Just now, neither would I."

Sana held out only a moment longer before leaning in to kiss him first, with all the pleasant boldness of a peasant woman who could cast off whatever rules didn't suit her whenever she felt like it.

It had been too long since he'd had a woman's company. Iroh kissed her back, sliding closer to put his hand on her soft cheek. That first kiss turned into two, three. He suspected that based on the captain's rules, it had been too long for Sana since a man had kept her in pleasant company.

"I really don't want the Fire Lord to find out about you," he said, smiling against her lips, feeling her smile back.

They made out through the morning, since there wasn't a reason to do anything else.

On the sand by the fastboat, in the shade cast by the sail with the sound of the gently waving sea and the breeze blowing fresh and cool, Iroh enjoyed in the change in his fortune. From a a night of the purest misery he'd ever felt, nearly dead again and again in the raging sea, to reclining on a beach with no obligations but to enjoy the company of the first beautiful woman he'd been left alone with in months. Every sweet sensation was the sweeter for the stark contrast, for the lack of anything to be done but pass the time until this luxurious lack of obligation was over.

Sure there were no silk sheets or fine dining or even morning tea out here, but back in the Fire Nation, there wasn't a jungle full of fresh fruit, a sea full of fresh fish, and a lovely woman who'd saved his life so that he could go on enjoying all his nation's fine luxuries once he got back to them.

She had any number of ways she could ask him to thank her for it, and all the time to ask in.

Sana leaned against him as he sat against the outrigger, her left hand caressing his neck and chest as she leaned on her right and slipped her lower lip gently between his. His left leg was falling asleep under the pressure of her thigh, but when he took his hands from her neck and moved them to her hips, she slipped her hands under his and drew them back up to her shoulders.

"Not today," she said. "We're going to be here a while, remember?"

He chuckled at the reminder. "All right, but my leg's falling asleep."

"Oh!" She let out a puff of air and repositioned. "Why didn'tcha say?"

"And interrupt this?"

"Fair enough."

She dove back in to capture his bottom lip between hers, and Iroh heaved a sigh of contentment as the morning went on.

He noticed the sweat gathering on her skin as the sun (and temperature) rose, but didn't think anything of it until, releasing his lips, she leaned back and fanned herself with one hand, taking his hand from her back with the other. She exhaled loudly, her face flushed, pushing damp hair back from her forehead.

"I'm burning up." She looked him up and down with surprise. "You're not even sweating. HOW are you not sweating?"

He was venting excess heat, of course, and hadn't even thought to say otherwise. A woman from the Fire Nation would have expected. "Burning up never bothered me," he said, and found himself chuckling as her blank stare turned into a giggle and a little roll of her eyes.

"Of course. Well I need to cool off," she said, standing up, sand caking her legs. "I'm going swimming. Wanna join me?"

"I've had enough being wet for one lifetime," he said, stomach turning slightly at even the memory of the journey by sailboat.

"Cannot relate even a little bit," Sana said. "Suit yourself."

He hated to see her go, but didn't mind watching as she jogged to the rock that jutted out into the bay.

The limestone was rough on her bare feet as Sana picked her way along carefully to deeper water. She wished again that Captain Fang had let her not wear shoes on the Swordfish, but the captain had no consideration for whether or not someone's feet got soft in her service. Walking on the rough stone out to the drop-off into the bay would fix that in a month, surely. Her spirits were light as she leaped off the rock, a fathom down to the water.

The heat, her sweat, and gut-twisting sensation of falling disappeared so blissfully once the water caught her. Sana plunged into the moment of suspension as her momentum gave in to the water's embrace, when every part of her body was even less than weightless, entirely supported. Even the soles of her feet felt free.

She bobbed to the surface without a kick, buoyant as cork in the salt water. She floated at the surface, eyes adjusting to the sting of salt water, and took in the seabed. Layer upon layer of green and tan coral fans stacked on top of each other, rising up to her right to support the shallow, sandy bay of the beach, slanting down to her left to a sandy plain about ten fathoms down. The water was so clear that she'd mistaken the depth for half at the surface, but fish swam at all depths, giving her a scale to judge by.

Palm-sized damselfish striped in yellow and white flitted around her feet, and a school of lemon yellow, lightning-blue-striped snapper hovered in a canyon in the coral, cleaner wrasse flitting around the bigger fish in flashes of black and blue. A pair of pompanos, plate-sized and glittering silver like mirrors, swam over the blue dropoff. Damselfish in flashing from jade green to platinum-silver glinted in and out of focus at all depths, and at least ten parrotfish in as many colors as she'd ever seen in flowers crunched on the coral. In the deep blue water, fish about the length of her arm swam in schools, not quite identifiable at depth.

The variety of fish was beautiful and reassuring. The abundance of green coconuts and mango immediately near shore were promising too. If she went inland, there would likely be breadfruit, papaya, calamansi, taro - they weren't going to starve, and they weren't going to get bored with their food right away.

The reef stretching before her into blue oblivion invited Sana to swim. She took off along the ridge of coral, towards the north arm of the bay. She had so much steam to burn off before she could dive effectively that the far side barely looked far enough.

She stretched her arms and rolled from side to side, leaning leisurely into the long movements. It had been so long since she'd had time just to enjoy being in the water. Maybe it had been too long for a while now. Maybe she had been closer than ready to quit the Swordfish than she'd known.

The crew would be ashore, renegotiating their contracts, deciding whether to add their investment to the pool to buy a new boat or split up to seek different employment. Captain Fang would keep a spot open for her, until the season passed or she was confirmed dead, but maybe it had been time for her to leave the captain's employment for a while.

She kept her eyes open in the stinging salt as she pulled herself gently across the surface of the water. The sandy shelf to her left disappeared as the coral ledge became a true dropoff into blue nothing. Shelves of coral stretched up to her right, pale green fans stacked in towers, blocks of shimmering blue-purple round coral and pops of pale pink branch coral interrupting the fans. A trio of bluefin jacks jetted away from her to join the other obscured fish in the depths. A sudden school of forearm-long fish with needle-long bodies surrounded her at the surface, cerulean blue and purple darts bobbing with the waves and staring her right in the eye one after another as they circled her. A dozen squid the length of her hand rushed to the shallow right-hand reef out of the deep. A turtleray appeared out of the illuminated blue, shell a glowing blue-black, fins inky and spotted with white, passing by to the shallows behind her. The 'ray was so majestic that even she felt clumsy, sharing the water with it.

It was, as always, freeing without equal, strange and beautiful and utterly fantastic compared to life on land, like flying above a city of spirit creatures.

The beauty of the undersea world distracted her from the moment, as it always did, but this time all she had to do was think of the man she'd left at the surface and she felt like a pot about to boil over again. She swam harder, the coral disappearing as she pulled into deeper water. The blue, bottomless and without a border she could see, filled her eyes and her mind, so soothing when she needed to be soothed.

It was wonderful to need soothing from too many good emotions, for a change. It had been so hard to convince herself to take Iroh's hands off her body every time he'd gone wandering, when she thought of the leaves so considerately arranged for shade without waking her, the locking of his amber eyes on hers as he kissed her fingertips - all the way back to when he'd helped her help his seasick companion and she'd thought what a considerate man he seemed, and wondered if she was right.

He carried himself like nothing bad had ever happened to him and nothing bad ever would. He still did it, even with a night of nearly dying at sea behind him. That positivity he gave off hooked into her attention on the Swordfish and hadn't let go,when she'd been going quietly about her paddling shifts and boat checks on her sandeq while he socialized with classier people than her, while his laugh seemed to reach her from any corner of the deck. His confidence was so absolute that it had taken her a few days to even realize she was a full head taller than him.

When she'd woken up on the beach under a considerate shade next to him half-naked and as muscular as an oarsman, she'd wondered if he was an earthbender before realizing an earthbender would just have (presumably) made her a shade out of stone. She'd wanted to slide right over and use him as a pillow then. She wondered if he'd let her tonight, when the sun went down and the air cooled.

She paused swimming just to roll on her back and inhale fully, glee filling her from her fingertips to her toes. She stretched her whole body in delight, flipping backwards to spiral through the water. Nobody could tell her not to let him touch her. Nobody could tell her not to let his hands wander wherever she wanted them to. Captain Fang was very firm on the subject of flirting with passengers. She was equally firm on passengers not flirting with crew. Those policies were fine until a handsome man with an easy smile who laughed at her jokes and attended to his friends with enough care to risk his life for one came aboard. They were good until the months went by and she realized how many of them had passed when the only people she'd met were crew OR passengers, when there didn't seem to be time in those months for anything but work, and certainly not for a man's private company.

Captain Fang would not have been considerate of the circumstances if she heard that Sana had spent the morning nearly in the lap of a passenger whose life was in her hands. She wouldn't have accepted 'We almost died' as an excuse, she wouldn't have accepted 'but it's been so long,' she wouldn't have accepted 'but he laughs at all my jokes.' She would only see that the ship's reputation, the company's reputation, the crew's reputation was in Sana's hands and Sana was using them to run them all over a passenger's broad shoulders and down his thick chest, to feel a furnace there so hot that her skin seemed cold in comparison.

Well she had almost died. She had saved his life and now she had a while of life preserving ahead of her to do, and she wanted comfort as she did it. She wanted his arms around her while she enjoyed still being alive to swim through the soothing blue and contemplate the anger of a woman who wasn't even concerned with Sana's safety when it came down to it -

Sana's excitement cooled as her mind landed on the irony that the Captain might fire her for acting on her crush a passenger, while Sana was ready to quit because the Captain was about to do business with the nation that passenger was from.

It's different, she told herself. It was different for her to enjoy still being alive after a terrible ordeal with a specific man who'd promised not to hurt her than it was for the Captain to know that one of her crew was a waterbender, and still be making the connections to do business in the Fire Nation colonies. The Colonies were full of firebenders who weren't considerate and good humored, who stood to gain a lot of money, or status, or whatever fire nation colonialists stood to gain in selling a waterbender out to the Fire Lord.

Sana returned to her even strokes and her stare down into the endless, soothing blue, blotting her thoughts out with the sound of splashing. One man wasn't a nation. One man could shade her while she was asleep and thank her kindly with a handsome smile, even if he was from a nation that would put her in a dry jail forever. He wasn't making that choice to jail her.

She deserved to enjoy still being among the living.

She sped up, sprinting through the open sea until she reached the breaking reef, then turned around and sprinted again through the water until she had to breathe with every stroke, instead of every seventh, then fifth, then third. She alternated her sprints with leisurely strokes until she felt raced to her satisfaction.

The coral ridge rose up beneath her again, the needle-nosed blue and purple fish schooling around her again, a school of bright yellow leaf-shaped fish flashing at the edge of the reef. A reef shark swam away from her, its black-pointed fins so dark they seemed to drink sunlight, graceful and beautiful as a whisper. Sana passed the shark, and fish after fish as she swam back to the limestone dropoff.

She surfaced and breathed in time to see a stream of fire roll out over the sea - too high overhead for her to imagine it was an attack, thank goodness, otherwise her heart rate would have gone all the way back up.

She had never seen firebending before. It was astonishing to watch something she'd only seen in a cozy campfire roll through the sky like a sped-up cloud, the heat touching her face even at this distance. On the white sand beach, Iroh stood in a low stance, his movements whip-fast and forceful and very rote, as he punched roiling cloud after cloud of fire over the water with the same ease she would move through Hands-Like-Clouds when she did her evening practice. She watched for a full minute before he noticed her watching, and stood up to wave. She could imagine his smile even if she couldn't see it at this distance - she liked imagining it, and she waved back.

Iroh went back to his practice, but now he was absolutely showing off, punching shot after shot of fire like arrows far over the sea, brighter and somehow harder looking than his previous clouds. The fire dissipated so much farther from him than she'd assumed a firebender could keep a fire alight with no fuel. Firebending had always sounded like such an abstract mystery, and a hard one to take all that seriously. Water, earth, and air were always present whether they were being bent or not, but firebenders produced and sustained their own element. Without fuel or concentration, it just went away. How could firebenders sustain their element out of nothing for long enough to do the damage she'd heard over and over once she left the swamp that they were renowned for doing?

Well here a firebender was, moving fast and precise as a striking snake-o-dile, filling the sky with heat and clean, smokeless flame so forceful that there was a roar in the air when he spun into a kick that arced a fiery crescent over the bay.

He didn't make firebending look easy. He just looked powerful.

She'd never questioned whether or not she could defend herself against him, when she'd had her doubts about firebending in the back of her mind. He'd encouraged them when he knelt before her on the beach, called her too powerful to fight in the middle of the ocean, but now she truly wondered how it would pan out if they fought. If he decided to surprise her.

It was a frightening thought.

He hadn't had to tell her what he was, though. He could have lied and gone on pretending to be an Earth Kingdom merchant, waited until she brought him back to the mainland to reveal himself and compromise her while she was surprised. He'd have gotten her into a Fire Nation prison that way, and gotten himself whatever it was that made Fire Nation soldiers so determined to brave the south pole and die stealing waterbenders from their strongholds in the ice.

But he'd been honest with her. He said a lot of things that were nice to hear from a man she probably should only think of as an enemy.

One man is not a whole nation, she thought again. He must have been about to explode, all that time on the boat with no outlet for all this energy, she went on thinking, as she watched his practice. If she hadn't gotten to slip down to her hidden platform on the back of the squared off boat each night and waterbend the waves following and speeding the Swordfish on for hours, she wouldn't have stayed with the job for nearly as long as she had. So keeping his identity secret was perhaps not possible, so maybe revealing himself was not truly a gesture worthy of trust, but simply all he could stand -

This line of thought was only going to spiral into more anxiety. She had no time to be anxious just then if she was going to go fishing. If he was going to betray her . . .

Well, when she closed her eyes and lay on her back in the water, breathing deeply in, breathing long out, relaxing her body from the tips of her toes and fingers all the way to her center, until her entire body was malleable on the waves, the truth was . . . she didn't feel like he was going to betray her.

She didn't feel like he'd been lying when he said any of the nice things he'd said to her, that were so good to hear from a man she wanted to know better.

She just didn't feel like he wanted to hurt her.

She could turn out to be wrong. But turning out to be wrong was, given the time they had to wait before they could return to the Earth Kingdom, a way off.

She let that be her conclusion and chose to let her thoughts pass her by. She took the bamboo nose clamp that hung on a cord around her neck and slid it in place. She breathed through her mouth until her heart was not racing anymore. She breathed until her inhale was five counts long, her exhale ten. She breathed until her heart was slow, until not a single muscle was tense, until she was ready for her final inhale.

With her mind finally full of nothing but cool blue, she took her deepest breath, rolled over, and dove.

It was as much of a relief to be firebending again as Iroh had expected it would be, when Sana left him on the shore with nothing but the white sand and the open water to occupy himself with. Even basic drills felt like a return to a privilege he'd been denying himself. The pride of billowing bright flame filling the air, extending his will beyond his body to affect the world around him, was a release and a relief.

The lifegiving strength of the sun flowed through him unhindered, and he was blessed to conduct it, blessed to express his will through the beauty and the might of fire.

He breathed through his forms and felt himself again, freed of the restraints of command and the artifice of his false earth kingdom identity, quieting his ego in the roar of the element that he was blessed to conduct.

He wasn't done with his basic drills when he noticed Sana swimming fast across the bay, and paused first to see if she were in trouble - but she seemed to simply be swimming like a soldier would run, pouring herself into the exercise as he was pouring himself into his. He ran back through his basics, but when he caught her bobbing in the water and watching, he put on more of a show, jumping into the flashier kicks that looked impressive to nonbenders, even if they weren't the most practical expressions of firebending for combat. She couldn't have seen much of it. He wanted to impress her.

She seemed impressed fine when he waved to her and she waved back, bobbing in the water at a distance. He went back into his forms until his breath heaved in and out of his lungs and every part of his body felt illuminated. The energy of his practice filled his body like sunlight filled the sky. He pictured that energy immolating every possibility of human weakness inside him, saw doubt, unhappiness, mourning, all things that were bad to feel fleeing him, like smoke flowed out of wood.

When he felt alight with the full force of the fire, only strength and purpose and determination and joy remained.

Sana was lying in the water on her back when he looked at her again, briefly disappointed that she wasn't still watching. Perhaps she was still tired from the night before. But as he watched her float, she turned over suddenly and dove straight down.

He watched the water where she dove, but she didn't come back up right away . . . or after a while. She stayed vanished beneath the surface. Iroh scanned the bay, looking for her to have come up elsewhere, but she remained out of sight, long after she should have been bursting through the surface for air.

He walked towards the limestone, picking up speed as she didn't emerge, as he couldn't spot her on the beach or anywhere in the ocean. What were the odds that a waterbender would drown their first day on the island -?

At least a minute and a half had passed by the time he reached the end of the limestone jutting into the bay. She'd dove so close to the edge where the stone disappeared into the water, and he looked down, seeing a few yellow fish swimming around the coral that vanished into the blue.

There to the left on the seafloor was Sana, her hair floating all about her face, so far down that she must have already been drowned.

He jumped into the water, fighting nausea at the fall and the memory of last night's struggle when the taste of salt water imposed itself upon him again. His eyes burned as he swooped his arms wide, pulling himself down, down, two full fathoms until his ears hurt so much that he felt something was going to pop inside them. The pain was impossibly sharp, but he struggled for one armful more of depth. His lungs already burned for air.

He burst back up to the surface for air and tried to swim down again, but the pain in his ears was insurmountable. He would never reach Sana's body this way. He burst up to the surface, thinking - he could tie a rock to their spare rope, and perhaps lasso her body that way -

He was swimming back to the limestone in a rush when a bubble of ice popped up in front of him, a live fish wriggling in the liquid water inside. He looked back to where he'd seen Sana's drowned body, where a live lobster clam bobbed to the surface, buoyed by solid ice encasing its claws, followed by another fish in an ice bubble.

He dove back underwater in time to see Sana push off from the bottom of the seabed. She kicked her legs together like a sea creature, effortless and smooth, and flowed back to the surface to exhale three minutes worth of air in a loud burst. She bobbed effortlessly, sucking in a loud, deep breath, exhaled fast and inhaled long again. She floated for a while, repeating her breaths.

Iroh splashed over to her with urgency but when she opened her eyes she only smiled at him with mild surprise.

"I thought you'd had enough of water." She barely had to move her arms at all to hold herself comfortably at the surface, while he treaded furiously to keep his chin up. She fluttered her eyelashes at him. "You miss kissin' me that much?"

"I thought you drowned," he said, in disbelief.

She burst out laughing, louder than he expected. "You're so funny," she giggled, wiping saltwater out of her eyes.

"You were down there for at least three minutes!" he objected.

She looked disappointed in herself. "Yeah, I'm out of practice."

Iroh's disbelief was slow to ebb. She had been so deep, and had been there so long. "Waterbenders breathe underwater?" Did their skulls fill with water, too, sparing them the pain he'd felt when he tried to pass the second fathom?

Sana looked at him as if he were crazy, but the sort of crazy whose feelings she wanted to be gentle with. "No," she said. "That's silly."

"No one can hold their breath that long."

"I've held it a bit longer than that," she said, still smiling, but her eyebrows were raised at his disbelief.

"How did you get so deep?"

"It's only about ten fathoms," she said, as if that were not an impossible number.

"No." Iroh shook his head. "You couldn't have been ten fathoms down."

She was done smiling. "Yes I could. I just did."

"We've sent men to ten fathoms," Iroh said. "They're dead now."

Sana pursed her lips. "Well that's awful, but if you send 'em down when they can't hold their breath good, I'm not surprised they drowned."

"They didn't drown. They died at the surface."

Sana frowned. "Could you explain from the beginning?" she asked, trying to balance sympathy with skepticism.

Iroh, tired of the unfamiliar strain of treading water, splashed back to the limestone and grabbed a fingerhold for support. The rock was sharp, and bit into his skin as he bobbed in the slight waves, but it was better than treading forever. "Fire Sages have sensed undersea vents of incredible heat after years of meditation," Iroh explained. "My father was one of the engineers on a project to build diving chambers to study them." His father was, by definition, the head engineer on any of the projects he'd overseen, and there had been so many, but Azulon's mechanical genius had not been enough to illuminate the mysteries of the depths. "The chamber made it nine fathoms before it sprung a leak. The engineers drew it up quickly and as soon as they opened the doors, the men bled from the eyes and ears. They died within the hour. They were screaming in agony."

He'd been home when that experiment had taken place. It was the only time he had ever seen his father look stunned by the outcome of any of his actions.

Sana looked appropriately horrified.

"Well that's awful and I'm sorry for those men," she said, "but I been down more than 10 fathoms plenty of times and I'm still alive. We can measure a length of rope down to the bottom if you don't believe me."

"I will not ask you to do something I already know people have died doing."

Sana's frown was pronounced now. "Who's the expert on diving here? You really think the Fire Nation knows more about it than me?"

What the Fire Nation does not already know is only worth knowing if it can hurt us, Iroh thought, and imagined a team of Northern Waterbenders diving under the Gates of Azulon. It had to be impossible, but if it weren't, he had to know. "How do you endure the pain in your ears?"

Sana held her nose and her cheeks puffed almost imperceptibly, only across her sinuses, without reaching the sides of her face. "You clear 'em, obviously."

That meant nothing to him. "A waterbending trick," he guessed.

"It ain't waterbending," Sana said. "You ain't gotta bend to dive like that." She paused. "It helps to get past the Door to the Deep, but other than that -"

He clung to the rock and Sana bobbed gently towards him with smooth, unhurried movements. "You're waterbending right now," he pointed out.

"I am not," she said. She'd gone back to smiling bemusedly at him. "I just know how to swim."

"If I let go of this rock, I'm going to sink like one."

"Well you are pretty dense."

He started to get truly angry, but she reached out and ran her hand over his shoulder, down his arm to rest on his bicep. "A lot more than me, I'll give you that" she said, resting her other hand on his muscular chest, smiling like she wanted to go back to kissing him again.

The caress soothed his pride. "I can't believe anyone who isn't a waterbender could dive like that."

"I've got a whole month to prove to you otherwise," she said, sweeping the ice-caught fish and lobster-clam atop the limestone. Iroh's stomach growled in anticipation of more substantial food. "Maybe in that amount of time I can even teach you to swim," she teased.

He frowned. "I know how to swim!"

Sana laughed again, louder and harder than he liked, but kept her hands on his chest, which he did like. "I already knew you were funny, but you're killing me here."

A/N: Iroh doesn't know all the engineering that went into the failed diving bell project he describes, so he leaves out the detail that killed the engineers involved. To compensate for the pressure of the water increasing on the diving bell, Azulon's team filled the diving bell with pressurized air and lowered the device slowly as they monitored for leaks. The increased pressure and long time of descent lead to an extreme case of the bends when the men were removed too rapidly from their pressurized atmosphere. The history of scuba diving and deep sea exploration is full of similar unfortunate deaths. Freedivers, who dive on a single breath, are far less likely to encounter the bends, and can regularly dive to and ascend from depths that require decompression stops if a diver is breathing from a tank. Tune in next time for the possibility of more horrifying dive science facts!