She wonders sometimes what he sees in her.
Pale eyes, pale skin…dark hair. Tiny waist, long fingers, long nose, small mouth.
He looks at her. Sharp yellow afternoon light floods even the farthest corners of the room…it glints off her hair.
"It's been years."
She doesn't say anything back. Her eyes flicker to the window and her hands graze against the edges of her sleeves.
"Well?"
Well, what? She was gone, and she came back. It had been years, yes, but she came back. The shadows of the windowpanes on the farthest wall fall slowly as the sun sinks.
"Say something!"
What does he want her to say? She doesn't need to apologize for anything that she did. She did what she had to. She wasn't on the top of his priority list, she knew that. Was she hurt? No. There was a war going on at the time. There were choices. He…made the right choice.
He couldn't go back to the prison and save her. She had to free herself, she knew that. And so she did.
"What's the matter? You leave for five years and then you come back and you just stare out the window?"
How the years changed her. Not on the outside as much as the inside. Her heart wasn't as hard, which was strange, considering her profession in the past years. No. Everything was softer.
So why was it so hard to speak to someone she once loved?
There were things she couldn't tell him, maybe that was it. She couldn't tell him that she offered kisses for money when money ran short, that she stole a shirshu from a post in the middle of nowhere; that she sometimes aimed her knives at flesh instead of just pinning down the clothing.
And yet she was softer now. She had seen real problems. And she knew now how to deal with her own.
"Your hair looks nice."
Her hair? Oh, her hair. It was shorter now; did he like it? He said he did. Its tips just flicked the tops of her shoulders. She couldn't manage long hair in her line of work.
"Say something!"
Did he miss her? Or was he just surprised to see her, finally, after years of not knowing where she was?
The sunlight was thin now, not strong and bold like it had been minutes before. Her eyes met the floor. Hello, floor. They met the drapes. The chaise. Anywhere but his own eyes.
He shoots up his hands and throws himself into the chaise. She catches a glimpse of him.
He's still handsome.
She tells him so.
The sun ducks behind a cloud.
"Where…did you go?" he asks. (She's almost in his arms, now, just inches away.) He's scared to hug her, scared to accidentally press his arm into a hidden knife.
"…A lot of places."
"Vague."
"Earth kingdom.""Vague."
"Omashu. Ba Sing Se. Everywhere," she tells him with only a little edge in her voice. (He's surprised at that.) "I became a bounty hunter." (Not surprised.)
"Well, that took care of your boredom issues," he says. Lame attempt at humor. But for some reason she laughs anyway. She hugs him. "I missed you."
He says nothing. His eyes focus on something above her head.
"Well?"
Well, what?
He missed her too, didn't he? Her eyes skim across the edges of his face. The sun lights up only those edges. There is something he isn't telling her.
"Mai…" he says. She blinks up into his eyes.
He's sorry.
She wonders what for, and then her memories jump back to bars, threadbare uniforms, prison food and matted beds. She knows what he's sorry for.
"You don't have to be sorry," she tells him with no edge in her voice. The tips of her fingers aren't colored dark and sharp anymore, no, the weather wore all that away. They stroke his hair out of his eyes. "I kind of enjoyed taking down all those guards."
"But you don't understand! I could have come back! You could have been rotting in there for five years and I didn't ever go back!" He sent messenger hawks to the prison guards every week. He always asked if Mai was there. She never was. And so he gave up.
"…I knew you escaped and I never got up and left this place to find you," he finished, quiet.
The sun is back now, sharper than ever.
The edge is back in her voice now.
"I didn't want you to find me, Zuko. I didn't want you to save me. I needed to save myself for once. Do you know how much I wanted to just do something for myself? " She pauses for breath and pulls away from his arms, just a little bit…just so she can see straight into his face.
"I would have been angry if you came. You didn't. You knew that I could take care of myself--don't you know how important that is to me?"
He missed the edge.
He tells her so.
"I worried about you," he confesses.
"I worried about you," she says.
He doesn't understand her. But when she smiles a little bit and when he feels her fingertips around the back of his neck…when he can feel her breath on his face and when the sun fades…he just goes along with it.
It's dark now.
But they are light.