It had taken hours, well into the afternoon, but finally she could feel the heat of the day permeate the thin layer of ice that lay right beneath her skin and seep into her bones. She felt comfortable enough, reclining mostly naked on top of a sheet on the beach under the Fire Nation sun—safe enough, with Ghazan and Ming-Hua attempting spear fishing within shouting distance, with Zaheer dozing with his head in her lap after giving up on a book about Kyoshi-era Omashu architecture that even he had found too dry—that it was actually a little difficult to not fall asleep. But she didn't dare. Things were going too well—she was too happy—for her to be entirely sure that this was real. And she couldn't bear the thought of nodding off, only to awaken back in her cell and find that this had been a dream all along.

As if he sensed the direction of her thoughts, Zaheer stirred and blinked open his eyes. In the two days since she had been rescued from the North Pole, she had not yet grown accustomed to how in the first few seconds of consciousness, her lover's eyes were empty and dead, in a way they had never been Before. How he could no longer relax enough in the dark to sleep, just as she refused to even nap without being curled around his warmth. And just like that, she knew this was no fantasy; she had never dreamed that they would ever get to him, the way they had gotten to her. But they had.

Even if none of them had broken, there had still been so much taken from them. Not everything, she thought—as Zaheer's eyes cleared as he focused in on her face, as his entire expression softened and he blindly reached out with his left hand and tangled up his fingers with hers—but enough for her to hate every time she saw the emptiness of Zaheer's eyes, unable to forget the ruin of their lives.

Zaheer noticed, of course, squinting up at her in concern. "P'Li? What is it?"

It was hard for her to articulate, so for want of words, she wound one of his strands of hair around a finger on her free hand and pulled lightly. He smiled, but she despised herself a little for how he couldn't entirely hide the pain at the corner of his mouth as he said, attempting to be teasing, "Don't like the grey?"

She shook her head. "It isn't that." Even if he wasn't greying in a particularly distinguished way—straight silver along his hairline, pure black past his ears—he somehow managed to make it work for him. (Though perhaps she was biased; Ming-Hua had accused her of such before.) So she was telling the truth. It wasn't that.

Wasn't just that. She could count his ribs now, feel them under her hands as they slept. New scars, which stood out even more now that he'd spent a day lying in the sun. New lines on his face. A life lived without her, and she didn't even have the comfort of telling herself it had been a happy one. He had been starved, just as she had. Beaten, even more severely than she. Both of them—all of them—treated like feral dogs to be chained up and locked away. Thirteen years of misery, and they had suffered it alone.

Zaheer was still looking up at her, waiting with that line of worry between his eyebrows, so she did her best to explain, "I wanted to be there, when you went grey. When you-" woke up every morning, went to sleep every night. The first and last thing you saw every day should have been me. But they left you with nothing in the dark, while I froze to death half the world away. But she couldn't figure out how to say it, her words failing her yet again; she hadn't been very talkative to begin with, and over a decade of determined silence in the face of White Lotus questioning hadn't made her any more eloquent. She could feel water prickling at the corners of her eyes. The mindless contentment that had pervaded her being for most of the day had drained away at the memory of the years they had lost—the years that had been stolen, which could never be recovered—and she could only bitterly wish for its return.

She wished for a lot of things, some more realistic than others.

She barely had time to grieve the withdrawal of Zaheer's warmth from her lap and his fingers detangling from hers before he was kneeling at her side, his hands on her face, his thumbs skimming just along her cheekbones to wipe away her tears. "You will be." He smiled again, crooked. "You just… missed the beginning. Like coming in late to a play."

She tried to return his smile, though she doubted she was entirely successful. "But I wanted to see the whole thing."

"I promise you, the opening scenes weren't very good. The lighting was terrible." He leaned forward, touching his forehead lightly to hers as his arms drifted to around her neck. "And I didn't think much of the director."

That actually startled a laugh out of her. "Good thing you fired him."

"Mhm." His gaze flickered down and away—vaguely troubled, though without the cloudiness that so worried her—before returning to her eyes. "The only problem with throwing out the old script is that I don't know how things are supposed to go." The closest he would ever get to admitting uncertainty; for thirteen years, they had been given so little say in how they would live. Thirteen years of isolation, of hopelessness, but humans were inherently adaptable, and so such things had become familiar. After that, how could choice—freedom, something they had forgotten the taste of until it was nothing but a half-remembered dream—be anything other than terrifying?

She kissed him, the best answer she could think of. Kept on kissing him as she threaded her fingers through his hair, distantly thankful he had discarded hair ties for the day. Thankful to feel him against her as they fell against the sheet, the heat of the sand pressing against her back. The weight of him, even when they parted for air, telling her with each breath he took, yes, this is real. Yes, he is here. Yes, you are free. Lying in the sun—its warmth and light she had mourned as a comrade taken and dead to her, now restored—with no one in a hundred miles besides the only people in the world she loved.

Eventually, they parted, but only to shift into a more comfortable position, Zaheer moving to sit between her legs, leaning against her shoulder as she wrapped her arms around him, both of them facing the coming dusk. She could still faintly hear Ming-Hua and Ghazan in the distance, the irritated snap of Ming-Hua's voice, Ghazan's answering laugh. They would probably be having turtle crab for dinner, just as they had the previous night when they'd arrived—they were an easier catch than the elusive tropical fish, and to hear Ming-Hua tell it Ghazan had all the natural instinct for spearfishing of a cabbage slug—but she couldn't find it within herself to mind.

It was so beautiful here; despite her heritage, she had never been to the Fire Nation before, but if most of the country was like this, she couldn't think of why they had bothered to try and conquer the rest of the world. Why would they, with plants and animals in an array of colors the Earth Kingdom and Water Tribes could never hope to match? Surrounded by the bright reflection of the sand, the endless sea, and the cloudless blue of the sky, now turning a brilliant orange from the reflection of the setting sun… what could be better than this?

She felt herself absently tracing one of the scars on Zaheer's chest with a finger, which unlike some of the others was familiar to her, an old friend. She had been there when he'd gotten it, the swipe of a sword not entirely dodged. Back then it had stood out to her, that for the first time since she'd seen her parents die it twisted something inside of her to see another person in pain, even if it was a boy she barely knew, only different from the others because there had been no fear in him, that he'd been kind to her when everyone else had turned away. Her life had been hopeless then too, but worse for the lack of knowing there was anything better, that she deserved something more than to be some cruel warlord's weapon.

But she did, and Zaheer had always known that. More importantly, he never let her forget it. But what she remembered most clearly was not how he had set her free; he would have done the same for anyone, and that was just a small moment in time, besides, an hour of flames and screaming and blood late in the night. What she remembered was when he had taken her hand to help lead her out into the morning sun, he had seen how scared she was—still a child, her only family long dead, the only life she knew one of chains and misery and death—and he, little more than a child himself, hadn't let go. What she remembered was that it had taken the full fury of the White Lotus and their allies to drag him away from her.

She had feared she would never see him again, but not because she had believed he had given up on coming back to her. That he would never stop reaching out to take her hand was the only thing she had believed in, by the end. And so he had come, and Ghazan, and Ming-Hua, that half-forgotten dream made manifest at last, and again she had been freed of her chains, Zaheer at the first opportunity wrapping himself around her like he feared she would turn to smoke in his arms.

He hadn't let go since. If only he would never have to. If only life were so kind.

The sun was only a sliver on the horizon—but still so wonderfully, blissfully warm—when she finally stirred herself enough to ask, "Do we really have to leave tomorrow?" She hadn't given up on their cause—how could she, when all she desired most in the world was to pass on the most cherished gift she had ever been given?—but she wanted to hold onto this—onto him—just a little longer.

He didn't immediately answer her, and she nearly thought to reassure him of her dedication, but that would only be a waste of air. He didn't need to be told what he already knew. So instead she just tightened her grip around his shoulders and buried her face in his hair, imprinting its smell—coconut, and sweat, he had bathed in the morning but they had spent all day outside—and its texture—slightly curled, and thick, but so very soft—into her memory. The moments that had sustained her in prison had never been grand; nothing that would move the plot forward, make their way into the final cut of Zaheer's figurative play. They had just been like this. Important to no one but them.

It was why she expected him to shake his head in response to her implied request, and why she would understand. They couldn't afford to be selfish, not with the Earth Queen having ruled unopposed for so long and Unalaq's get taking up where he had left off. Every day wasted was a day where people lived under tyranny, suffered under it, died from it. They couldn't stay here forever.

No matter how much she wanted to.

It was therefore somewhat to her surprise that after a long moment of staring out to sea, Zaheer turned his head and pressed his lips softly to the side of her neck for just a moment before smiling up at her. "None of us are fully recovered. I don't think a few more days here will hurt us, do you?"

If it had entirely been a comforting lie, she would have insisted on going regardless; the last thing she wanted was to hold him back. But she could still feel his ribs under her hands, could still remember the emptiness in his eyes when he struggled to cross the line between sleep and wakefulness. If another day or two could return just a fraction of what they had lost…

For the first time that day, the smile she returned felt entirely at home on her face. "I think a few more days sound perfect." And so they sat there until night finally came and the air had cooled around them, but she didn't mind; she knew Zaheer would never let her be cold again.

And in the darkness, she would be his eternal sun.