The sound of the engine was grating.

Asami's lips pursed as she stared, unseeing, out the window of the car, teeth worrying at the inside of her mouth. It was unusual enough that the steady rumble of the engine was grinding on her nerves rather than soothing them, and the high-pitched scream of an engine belt in dire need of adjustment wasn't helping.

It also probably didn't help that she hadn't been permitted to drive the car on this particular outing. That had really made her bare her teeth. But her bodyguard had insisted, and in return for his keeping this trip from her father, she'd – very irately – agreed.

Gradually, the lush green countryside outside turned bleak and grey as they approached the recently vacated battlefield where hundreds of her countrymen had fallen only days before, the grass reduced to fields of ash from the fires of war.

Asami was jolted from her thoughts as a hand reached out in front of her, making to draw closed the curtain over the window. She promptly shoved the hand back where it had come from.

"Are you sure about this?"

She turned to look at the young man sitting beside her, his sharp features drawn into a frown that was somehow both disapproving and worried.

"They're my people too, Mako. Not just my father's."

"There could still be enemy soldiers about. We shouldn't be here."

Asami ignored his concerns, turning her gaze back out the window. She knew Mako was only doing his job – and more than that – but his constant fretting was irksome at the best of times, and today it was only serving to aggravate her further.

The whole thing was just so stupid. Her family had been at war for so long that nobody even remembered why they were fighting anymore – it was all just vendetta after vendetta, death to avenge death, as if that would ever solve anything. And her father treated her like she had no idea that the war was even happening, despite its part in her mother's death when she was a child. She wasn't stupid; she heard the mechanics talking in the garages even as she kept her head down and her eyes on her work. She saw the blood splattering the vehicles that came in for repair. And when she could, when her father was preoccupied with his war council or dreaming up new ways to kill people, she took Mako – willing or otherwise – and walked the deserted fields of fresh battles.

"Why does this mean so much to you?"

It wasn't the first time he'd asked that question, and it certainly wasn't the first time that Asami hadn't answered it. Truthfully, she couldn't quite put her finger on why she needed to do this. There was just something about sitting at home, safe behind the walls of the city and the walls of the palace, that rubbed her entirely the wrong way. She couldn't just sit idly by while her people were dying – dying for no good reason, purely because two stubborn patriarchs were too short-sighted to realise how ridiculous the entire thing had become.

Mako gave up on waiting for a response. Asami felt rather than heard his sigh as he dropped the issue, and a tiny flicker of guilt managed to briefly break through her mood. Bodyguard though he might be, Mako was also one of her oldest and dearest friends, and sometimes she treated him unfairly because of his position.

She turned to look at him, but he was turned away, looking out his window. Reaching over, she laid her hand over his; she said nothing, but some of the tension seemed to drain from his shoulders, and the corner of his lips twitched in a tiny smile, accepting the unspoken apology.

The car came to a hesitant halt. "We have to stop, your highness," the driver said, glancing at her through the rear view mirror with something like apprehension in his eyes. "The terrain is too rough to continue."

"This is fine. Thank you." Asami opened the door and stepped out, a cloud of ash puffing up from where her boots fell upon the charred earth.

Mako fell into step beside her as she started to walk, keeping a respectful distance while making his presence known. She didn't particularly mind; she'd grown so used to having him there, always at her shoulder, that she almost felt naked when he wasn't around; like she was missing her own shadow.

Neither side had come to collect their dead. Asami assumed that was part of the reason why they'd torched the field; why waste time and money on mourning their dead when they had more deaths to plan? Her hands balled into fists as this thought flitted through her head and she stuffed them into the pockets of her jacket. She didn't shy away from the charred corpses of the fallen; she resolutely watched every one as she passed by, unable to tell the bones of the enemy from the bones of her people. It grounded her, in a way; reminded her that there was really very little separating them, that enemy soldiers were only doing as they were told, as were those of her father. It still infuriated her, but somehow it helped.

"Asami."

Mako's voice jolted her from her thoughts and she stopped, turning to him. His sharp eyes were turned to their right, narrowed slightly – he was listening, and she kept quiet, waiting.

Very faintly, a desperate plea for help drifted through the deathly still air.

Asami immediately started for it, but Mako grabbed her arm. "It could be one of them," he said.

Asami's eyes flashed as she turned on him. "And what if it is? They're still a person, Mako – a person in pain, who needs help."

"It could also be a trick."

"Because anybody out here would know who I am." She tore her arm out of his grasp and made her way toward the voice.

The soldier was lying in a small gully in the field, smeared with mud and blood. The water-smoothed rocks beneath her suggested there had been a stream or a creek running through – it appeared to have been shallow, but just enough to keep the worst of the fire at bay before it was choked and thickened by the ash. As Mako had feared, she wore the uniform of the south, but Asami ignored it as she knelt by the soldier's side, mindless of the mud against her leather pants.

It was immediately obvious that there was nothing they could do for her. She was already dead; her body just hadn't caught on to the fact. Tears brimmed in her eyes as she fixed her gaze desperately on Asami and groped for her hand.

Asami swallowed back her own tears, clasping the soldier's hand tightly as she reached over to brush a shock of dirt-and-blood-smeared hair back from her ashen face. Her heart wrenched; this girl was younger than even she was, her cool brown skin smooth beneath its layers of grime and ash.

"Mako. Water."

The flask was in her hands almost immediately even though she could feel the disapproval radiating from her friend like an aura. With agonizing care, Asami tilted the soldier's head up and lowered the flask to her dry, cracked lips, and she drank greedily. When she was done, she tried to rasp her thanks, but Asami shushed her gently, stroking her fingers through the girl's hair and moving to rest the heavy head in her lap.

There she stayed until the girl's wracking breaths ceased, her chest falling still, her eyes never once falling away from Asami's face.

Slowly, Asami moved out from beneath her, closing the girl's eyes with regretful care. She didn't rise for several moments before she felt a hand on her shoulder.

"We should head back," Mako said, his voice soft, echoing the ache in her chest.

For once she didn't argue with him, rising to her feet and following him back to the car.

The heat and bustle of the workshop didn't calm her quite as effectively as it normally did, but it helped.

In here, surrounded by gruff mechanics and the smell of hot oil and the clatter of metal against metal, she could escape her thoughts for at least a little while.

She wrestled with a particularly stubborn alternator bolt, swearing under her breath at the awkwardness of the angle. Immediately upon returning home the car's engine had stalled, and she'd had it pushed into the garage to take a look. It was good timing; she needed something to distract her, and alternators were complicated. She liked complicated. It kept her mind too busy to linger on her perpetual, helpless anger.

She had the alternator out and was dismantling it on a workbench when Bolin found her.

"Hey Asami," he said, his voice chipper as always.

Asami was familiar with this. There wasn't a lot that Mako wouldn't share with his younger brother, and Bolin was far better at cheering her up than Mako was.

"I was wondering when you'd show up," she said, not taking her attention from her work.

"I thought I'd give you a little while, you know, to avoid a wrench to the face." She could hear the grin in his voice, but his good-natured joking wasn't doing the trick today.

"You know what happened, then," Asami said.

"Yeah." His voice grew serious. "Mako didn't really seem to get it. Are you okay?"

It was a question that Mako rarely asked – not because he didn't care, but because he was terrible at showing that he did. Bolin and Asami were both used to it, but that didn't make it any nicer to deal with – so they relied on one another for the kind of comfort that Mako couldn't give.

"A girl died in my arms," she replied shortly, grunting as a particularly tight bolt finally gave way and started to turn. The rattle of the small ratchet in her hand was immensely satisfying. "What do you think?"

Bolin leaned his back against the bench beside her, arms folding over his middle. "Mako said she was southern."

"She was." Asami started to carefully pull the alternator apart. "Does it matter?"

"No, but you know how he is."

"He tried to stop me from going to her."

Bolin shrugged. "He takes his job very seriously. And he worries about you. A lot."

"I can take care of myself."

Bolin grinned. "I think that's what worries him." He watched in silence for a few moments as Asami worked. "I overheard Varrick talking to Zhu Li earlier."

"Oh?" It was the last thing Asami wanted to hear about. Her father's most trusted advisor, the left hand brandishing the shield while Hiroshi held the sword. Varrick was just as responsible for that girl's death as her father was.

"They intercepted a southern messenger not far from here."

Asami said nothing as she carefully freed the brushes from the alternator and started to meticulously clean them.

Bolin's voice was careful as he continued. "They, uh... they killed him, as they tend to do. Paranoid and all. But apparently the message he carried was for your father."

That gave Asami pause. Finally, she looked up at Bolin, and saw her own confusion reflected in his bright green eyes. "You're serious?"

"Yeah." Bolin spread his hands helplessly. "I didn't quite catch what it said, but... Asami, they're trying to talk for once. That's got to be a good sign, right?"

Almost as soon as it had risen, Asami's hope deflated. "My father would never listen to them. He's too stubborn. All he cares about is avenging my mother."

"Well, yeah," Bolin agreed, "but it's a start. Maybe they'll get through to him."

Asami shook her head. "No, they won't." She started to go back to her work, but paused, slowly placing the ratchet down. "But maybe I can."

Bolin's expression was dubious. "I mean... yeah, the only other person he'd listen to more closely is Varrick, but on this particular topic... well, it's just, you know... he's never exactly been open-minded about it with you. Or... anyone."

For the first time that day, Asami smiled. "Then I'll have to be very clever about it," she said, reaching up to tweak Bolin's nose. He was so busy staring at her that he didn't even protest.