A/N: I said I'd link a playlist at the end of this story, and picking song lyrics for chapter titles is fun for me for setting tone, but I keep having too many good songs to pick from and some of them are instrumental. 'll start listing each chapter's background writing songs in the opening author's notes. Here's this chapter's mini-playlist:

Moon Rise - Trace Bundy

Burn Fast (Koni Remix) - Bryce Fox

Sanctuary - Joji

Open Waters – Lael

This chapter's title is from Sanctuary.

Chapter 5

You Don't Have to Wait On Me

It became clear after sunset why the currents around the island were so unique. A migration was on.

Pale shapes rolled far off in the western water, luminescent even at such a far distance. They swam in such a mass that there couldn't have been any room between each of the massive bodies, sweeping flukes and fins.

Iroh watched them for a few seconds before looking at Sana to see if she found them noteworthy. She was working tangles out of her hair with her camellia oil and an ice pick, a pair of green coconuts sliced open by her feet. When she caught him looking at her, she only smiled without a word about the incredible sight at the edge of the ocean. He looked back to the glowing, blue-edged white bodies tumbling through the water in a river with no end, and she followed his gaze out to the horizon.

"What are you looking at?"

She'd watched the entire sunset with him on the white sand beach, pointing out her favorite shades of orange-pink in the clouds and deep indigo in the night sky as it advanced, fully attentive to the first stars that appeared. If such mundane beauty captivated her, she couldn't possibly see the far rarer spirits on the move that he saw. Again, Iroh marveled at what his eyes could see that so many others could not.

"Just watching for the moon to rise," he lied.

Sana laughed. "You're looking in the wrong direction. And you're going to be awake a long time if you're waiting for the moon at this phase."

"I should have asked you," he said. He left the water's edge and sat beside her, accepting the coconut she offered, kissing the hand that offered it. Sana's eyes were bright as he kissed her palm, once, twice, and kept her hand in his as he sipped the coconut water, cool with a sphere of ice floating in the center. Sana squeezed his hand before withdrawing hers to finish untangling her hair, and he let out a contented sigh, looking her up and down in the dim evening light, from her untangled hair falling in damp waves over her shoulder, down her long legs to her sandy bare feet. "I could have been looking at something lovelier and more reliable than the moon all this time."

"Oooh, you're gonna make the moon spirit mad," she declared, mouth open in mock-scandal. "I am NOT getting swept off in that tidal wave when she vents her anger. You'd better sleep on the other side of the beach tonight."

"Please no!" A mosquito landed on Sana's arm, and he reached out to brush it away. "There's only one bug net."

Sana glanced where the mosquito had landed, then spread her arms, left hand palm up at chest height, right hand at eye level, wrist soft and palm down. She brought the fingers of her right hand together suddenly, sharply pointed down, and the air around them cooled like the dead of winter. Frost fell sparkling onto the sand, dead bugs pattering down among the twinkling, fast-melting ice.

"You're right, that would be cruel and unusual," she said, sipping her coconut water through an ice straw, while Iroh ran his hand from her shoulder down her arm, where she turned her hand up to accept his again, entwining her fingers with his. The air she'd chilled had raised goosebumps on her dark skin.

"Besides," he said, stroking her palm with his thumb, "Who'd keep you warm if you were all the way on one side of the beach and I were on the other?"

Sana laughed softly. She leaned in for a kiss, but only gave him one before she stood up. "You know it'll be hot again in a moment. I'm gonna get my bending in before sleep."

Iroh had been yawning since sunset, but Sana had done the same at noon, napping in their shelter after they'd eaten their lunch. If she were a night person, well, perhaps that had something to do with why the Northern Waterbenders attacked hardest and oftenest at midnight. Iroh glanced at their shelter, a tarp arrayed in a triangle over a rope drawn between two bamboo stakes, just enough of the tarp bent over the rope to give them a roof while still covering the sand for sleeping, the bug net thrown over the whole thing. He was plenty ready to crawl in and drop into the oblivion of sleep, but even though this chance to watch a waterbender up close and peacefully would be repeated again, he simply wasn't tired of looking at Sana yet.

She walked to the water's edge, spread her arms wide and swept her arms backwards, tilting her head back, stretching her neck and ribcage wide. She inhaled, drawing her arms in, bent forward to touch the ground and stretch her legs, then stood up, reached high, and bent into a full backbend, her chest as wide as she could open it.

She stretched a while longer before stepping knee deep in the sea. She stood in a waterbending form, knees bent, feet a little wider than her shoulders. She moved as slow as thick honey dripping from a comb, but the surface of the sea rippled as she bent her knees. She lifted her arms with her hands hanging soft at the wrist, and the rippling surface bulged up, seawater lifting into a bubble that hovered as her arms came level with her shoulders and she finally lifted her hands.

She held the water in place for several breaths before continuing through her forms, and Iroh recognized an incredibly slowed-down version of forms that he'd faced in battle, soft and graceful as Sana took them inch by inch. The water shifted from its perfect sphere to an elongated oval, to a length as long and thin as a whip, the surface smooth and uniform as she maintained her control over it. A bug flew suddenly into her ear and the water rippled and vibrated as her control wavered, but didn't drop. The mistake only served to demonstrate how much control she maintained in her slow motions, her strength in maintaining stillness over her element, sustaining it through the forms she bent it into for such a long length of time.

Iroh had always wondered how waterbenders didn't burn their chi out simply holding up the weight of their own element, which was always fluctuating. Fire would go in the direction it was shot, and earth, once bent, kept its shape, but water was always a moment of lapsed concentration from falling back into shapelessness. How waterbenders built the control to keep their element in form seemed to be by this - the slowest possible practice, building the greatest endurance through the longest sustained effort.

Sana bent one knee almost entirely to the ground, dipping into the sea, her right leg out straight. Her bubble of water widened to a shield like a portion of a sphere, and she swept the water shield through its arc to complete that perfect sphere around herself before shifting the bend from her left leg to her right without standing up, the water shield becoming a spear as she stood up with the downturning hand and fingers brought together that had frozen the air around them earlier. She stood again and brought her hands to her center, left over right, palms facing each other, and the ice spear she controlled became a water sphere and flowed between her hands. She shifted right, drawing the water out into a long, slow whip between her hands, then back to center and the sphere with her right hand above her left, then shifted left to repeat the slow whip. She repeated the shift again, and again, the meditative movement soothing and slow, slow, slow, like ice thawing naturally on a morning between winter and spring.

Iroh watched her for a while longer before the length of the day and the poor quality of the sleep he'd already gotten caught up to him. He crawled under the bug net and into sleep, with barely a moment of wakefulness left to watch Sana's blurred movement through the net.

He startled awake when she crawled under to join him. There was such limited space on the tarp that it didn't make sense not to put his arm around her.

"Oh, you're familiar," Sana teased, when his arm found her waist.

"I said I'd keep you warm," he said, sleepy, but paused. Perhaps he was overreaching.

But Sana wriggled back under his arm, reaching up to stroke his hand. "I think you better," she said, a smile in her voice. The air was warm, the sand giving off heat from the sun, but still she said, "I don't like to be cold."

Midnight weighed heavy on his eyelids. Iroh drifted off to sleep with his own contented smile, nose buried in his companion's sea-scented hair.

Iroh awoke at dawn, as usual. He'd shifted to his back in sleep, and Sana had rolled to face him, her forehead on his shoulder, her hand resting on his arm, cuddled up to his bicep.

He smiled again as he breathed deeply, reveling again in his luck. There was no reason to hurry out of rest, as at the Leijiang camp, and indeed, a reason not to hurry to leave it, unlike camp. He pressed his nose to Sana's forehead, kissing her soft skin.

She murmured, wordlessly pleased, as he began to stroke her cheek, rolling to face her and put his arm around her again. She shifted slightly in response to his attention and murmured out - "too early."

Iroh chuckled into the crown of her dark hair. She had been up later than him. "You're going to miss the sunrise," he warned, taking his arm from around her to squeeze her shoulder. "It's going to be beautiful."

"I can't believe it," Sana groaned, in tones of the utmost despair. "You're a morning person."

Iroh laughed. "By all means, sleep in," he said, rising up on his elbow, kissing her cheek. Why not? He had his morning practice to do. "Breakfast is on me."

"Can't question," Sana murmured, turning over as he exited the shelter. "Too tired."

Iroh grabbed a mango from the deck of the fastboat for his own breakfast, then ran through his firebending on the beach as the sun rose over the mountain of the island behind him. The humid morning grew from warm to hot, and the air rippled with heat around him as he vented the excess. When his morning routine of practice was done, the sun angling from the east, Sana hadn't moved in her shelter, so he went picking up mangoes that had fallen overnight to add to their pile. He sorted out the ones that had finished ripening overnight and put them in a pile by the shelter for Sana, when she awoke. He considered the sea, blue and nearly flat calm.

They'd buried the remains from yesterday's seafood farther up the beach, and Iroh took the fishing tackle from the boat to go and get an entrail for bait. He had never fished before, but it wasn't as though he had anything more pressing to do with his time while Sana slept. The minutes passed and fish nibbled the bait from his hook without taking it, until, finally, one did - but when it did, the fish was such a delicate arrangement of long fins, striking in orange and white, that Iroh felt completely unwilling to kill it until someone else had gotten a look at it live.

Sana rolled over in the shelter, stretched, and he ran over to pop in under the bug net. She opened her eyes to his face, hovering upside down above her. "Oh good, you're up."

She smiled. It was so nice to start the morning with an unreserved smile from someone beautiful and happy to see him. "I am now," she agreed, yawning. "What you been up to?"

"I caught breakfast, but you should come see it first," Iroh said, eager to show her the fish.

Sana yawned again, arching her back in a stretch that was deeply appealing to watch from above. "All right," she yawned, sitting up and crawling out of the shelter.

He showed her the delicate fish, hooked and floating where he'd tied the fishing line to a rock.

"I didn't want to kill it before you woke up," he said. "Look how elegant it is. It would be a shame to only see it dead."

He brimmed with pride as Sana looked at him with a smile that was less admiring than he'd hoped.

"I'm real glad you didn't kill it," she said. "Those're poisonous."

Iroh's pride deflated. "They are?"

"'Fraid so," Sana confirmed. She bumped her shoulder into his. "Covered in poison spines. Good job hookin' it, though. I never seen a lionfish so well caught."

Iroh sat back on his heels, looking at the caught fish. "Poison spines. That will make getting the hook back hard, won't it?" he asked.

Sana stood up and dropped into a waterbending stance, sweeping the fish onto the rocks. She froze it in a case of ice, stuck fast on the limestone, then plucked the hook out safely with one hand, and thawed and swept the fish back into the water.

"Will you ever run out of good tricks?" Iroh asked, as the hook gleamed in her hand.

"Not anytime soon," Sana said, rewinding the fishing line with a toss of her hair.

She plucked a parrotfish quickly out of the water in a bubble, and Iroh followed her to the beach outside the bay, where she cut the fish's gills and left it bleed out on an ice spike in water too shallow for sharks to reach. Back at the fastboat, she pulled water out of the humid air and froze it into cups. She bent the juice out of the mangoes and into the cups and handed one to Iroh. Parched from his morning practice, he drained the drink, then smiled as Sana, conscientious, half-melted the cup so that it refilled itself in his hand. He hadn't had time to kiss her hand upon the first offer of a drink, so he caught her hand up and kissed each one of her fingers in thanks. She giggled this time as she let him thank her, blushing under her dark skin all over again. A much nicer way to begin the morning than receiving the night's brief from his soldiers.

"So," Iroh asked, as he sipped his cool drink, "How shall we entertain ourselves today?"

Sana raised her eyebrows over the edge of her cup. "I could teach you to dive."

He thought of being expected to deny himself breath even a third as long as he'd seen Sana go down the day before and felt starved for air already. He imagined being far enough underwater not to be able to reach the surface for regular breath and repressed a shudder. "Or," he suggested. "We could explore the cliffs to the south."

"Really? You feel like getting back on the boat already?" Sana was pleased. Iroh balked. He'd meant to suggest exploring inland.

"I could clear a path through the jungle," he said. The vegetation was dense, the air humid, but he was confident he could burn a trail. "Not to the other side of the island in one day, but I could start -"

"There's no need to burn the jungle down," Sana said. She began braiding her hair tightly. "It will be so much easier and we'll see so much more by sailing around. It'll be fun."

Her enthusiasm was a little contagious. Iroh looked at the sea, flat calm in the bay formed by the north beach and the south cliffs. The memory of that first night's terrible sail still clung to him like a bad smell, but he couldn't stay sick at the thought of returning to sea forever. Eventually they'd have to return to it long enough to return to the Earth Kingdom.

"C'mon," Sana insisted. "We'll just sail around the bay, maybe out to the south past the cliffs." She wrapped a fiber from a brown coconut a few times around the end of her braid, dipped it in the sea, then bent all the water out of it, tightening the fiber in place. "I can teach you how to sail the sandeq," she said. "You ought to know how anyway, just in case something bad happens to me."

Iroh murmured into his ice cup. "That's too practical to argue with."

"You ain't excited," Sana observed. She smirked, and touched his shoulder. "I'll change your mind once we're out there," she said, kissing his cheek, leaving him already a little more enthusiastic.

After a breakfast of parrotfish steamed in leaves, seasoned with salt left behind when Sana evaporated seawater in her metal bowl and a squeeze of tangy calamansi juice, they prepped the fastboat for launch. Iroh draped his inner robe and jacket over a treebranch, but Sana pulled her uniform shirt over her bare shoulders, though she left it open and untied over her sarong dress.

"You oughta bring those," she said, looking at his fair skinned chest. "I ain't complaining, but you're about to get a lot of sun."

"I draw power from the sun," Iroh insisted. He stretched, certain to flex everything from his navel up, so that she'd agree it was better he stay unclothed. "I'll be fine."

She took in the show willingly. "I suppose you know the sun better than I do," she demurred.

She swept water under the boat while Iroh pushed from shore. She didn't bother to drop the sail when she jumped on, but knelt and lifted her hands in front of her, building a tall wave behind the boat and letting it break, pushing the boat so fast that Iroh lost his balance and grabbed the mast. The boat flew on the face of the wave as Sana sustained it, fast as a powerboat but silent aside from the breaking water. The wind blew the sweat and heat from Iroh's shoulders, and he fell into delight at the novelty of the silent speed over the jewel-blue sea. Shadows of reefs raced underneath them as they sped towards the open sea. The sun emerged from behind an overhead cloud, and the surface of the water seared with a million glittering diamonds. Iroh shaded his eyes, arm around the mast as they approached the mouth of the bay. Sana braced her feet, thrust her hands behind herself, and the wave they surfed rose and thrust them out of the bay's protection, onto the long, slow rolling waves of the open sea.

She was laughing, cheering as if at a victory, as she let the wave down gently behind them. The boat slid down the face of a smooth wave and rose on the next crest as Sana opened her arms wide, breathed in deep, and collapsed to her seat on the deck.

"I told you it would be fun," she said.

Behind her, the island was a gleaming mountain of black stone and green jungle, the white sand beach an inviting strip, already home away from home. The south facing cliff towered, greenery hanging off the edges, running on for miles and miles of gently crashing waves. More islands dotted the ocean southward, disappearing into blue haze in the far distance, whitewater crashing on shallow, unexposed reefs. The deep water that rolled beneath them, pushing the sandeq north, was the most vivid blue Iroh recalled ever seeing.

A vacation house would be nice, built at the top of that cliff, he thought, looking at the point at the mouth of the bay. A comfortable midpoint between the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom, where a man could occasionally get away from his responsibilities, far enough away that no one would be able to trouble peace, when he chose to seek it -

"I never doubted you for a minute," he agreed, feeling his smile match Sana's.

The swelling waves lifted and settled them so gently, compared to the memory of the torturous back and forth of the night they'd sailed for their lives. Iroh already felt a little silly for hanging on to the discomfort of that night long enough to be reluctant to take fastboat around the island. Already the thought of slogging through the jungle, firebending his way out, seemed unpleasantly like labor compared to sailing quietly over the surface of the smooth sea, fast and silent. He stood up to test his balance on the rolling waves, and as he did the surface to his left broke suddenly with vivid scarlet and yellow fins.

Macawphins - smaller and redder than the more common foxphins - swam by, the water around the fastboat suddenly flashing with their vivid scarlet bodies. One broke the surface and soared the length of the fastboat over the surface of the water, huge red pectoral gliding fins flashing with touches of blue and yellow. Dozens of macawphins swam ahead of the fastboat, more leaping in long glides and acrobatic spins further starboard of them. Iroh pointed as Sana yelled in delight, but as soon as Iroh turned to see how she was receiving the visitation, he heard a splash and saw just the tail end of the person who actually knew how to sail the boat diving into the water.

The macawphins' gleaming red hides faded to grey only a few fathoms below the surface, but their blue and yellow flashes remained vibrant even fathoms below. The pod was dozens strong, mothers and calves swimming so close together that their bodies constantly touched, and Sana swept her hands out to swim down, equalizing the pressure in her ears with a flex of her jaw as she bent herself to three fathoms. She held herself in place as the pod assessed her.

A few rolled, showing her bright yellow and white bellies as they looked at her with their huge dark eyes, flowing past her without objecting to her presence. A few passed within two fathoms of her, and she watched them carefully, focusing on their tails as they passed.

The animals didn't avoid her, or disperse when she moved. Sana surfaced to breathe, confident they'd let her share the water. She inhaled fully and dove again to study their swimming.

They rocketed along with surprisingly small flicks of their tails. It took such wide sweeps of the arms to complete the waterbending move that helped a person dive deeper, displacing water below so that gravity pulled the bender down, but the macawphins sped easily with such conservative movement. Sana gathered energy in her abdomen to mimic their swimming with a two-legged kick that began in her core muscles and rippled all the way down to her ankles.

The energy of waterbending that she generated in her core got lost when she bent her knees, disrupting the flow, and the kick didn't work. Sana pressed her lips together in frustration - she'd been sure she'd be able to keep her legs relaxed, but not bend her knees, that time.

She couldn't stay frustrated, though, studying the macawphins. Sharing the water with them was an exercise in joy. They were so much bigger underwater than they seemed from the surface, their dark eyes looking at her too closely for her to believe there wasn't intelligence clicking away behind their sleek, beaked faces. The clicks and chirps of their language vibrated through her body as she passed under the boat with the pod, swimming fisherfrog-style, wondering if their language could be learned, if they ever got bored in the ocean, or if the bliss of life suited to the endless blue was enough to permanently content one's soul. They were so sleek and elegant, their gliding wings flattened against the sides of their long bodies, their tails so slender and yet so powerful, driving them through the water with such efficiency.

If she could arrest the urge in her knees to bend when she mimicked their swimming, without locking them, without having to tense her muscles, perhaps she would have a new waterbending move to take back to the swamp, and no one would question why she'd decided to waste years away from kin in running around a hostile world, when enlightenment was available right in the middle of the swamp for anyone to achieve –

She surfaced to breathe, dove again, braced her core and threw herself into the macawphin kick -

It almost worked, pushing her through the water in an out of control tumble of unfocused power. Again, she'd bent her knees - not as much as before, but just enough to disrupt the flow of energy. The waterbending attempt had used up all her air, and Sana surfaced to suck air down.

She would get it. She would return home with something worth sharing.

She lay face down to watch the macawphins pass underneath and spotted a cave in the side of the cliffs.

It looked about five fathoms down, not hard to reach at all. She bent at the waist to lift her legs overhead, their weight pushing her down, and she pulled her arms in a wide sweep to complete the dive, shifting water from beneath her rapidly above her so that she plunged to depth. She cracked her jaw again to equalize, gazed into the cave and saw –

- light on the other side. The cave opened to a shore.

She had to see where that light came from! But entering the cave on this unprepared breath would be dangerous. She already felt her lungs convulsing for air, with her heartrate still high from swimming. And she'd left Iroh at the surface, drifting on a boat he couldn't sail.

Sana rose on her natural buoyancy. She kept perfectly still and relaxed as she rose, her breath lasting longer as she withheld her energy from swimming. She burst to the surface with time to spare.

Iroh was leaning over the side of the boat, looking concerned. He absolutely was not adequately experiencing the joy that this moment deserved.

"There's a cave down there!" Sana called to him. "I want to go look at it." She bent the water around her into a twister and rose up on it, landing on the surface of the sandeq. "Let's anchor," she said, spinning the boat around in a whirlpool and raising a wave to surf them back to the shallow mouth of the bay.

"A cave?" Iroh echoed, but he handed her the anchor all the same. "Isn't that dangerous?"

Sana took the anchor and tapped his lower lip playfully. "So is kissin' a firebender, and I'm gonna do that again too."

She took his smile with her when she tossed the anchor and jumped over the side of the boat again.

When she was sure the anchor had dug deep and that the sandeq was drifting north, away from crashing into the rocks, she swam back along the cliffside until she spotted the cave again.

She rolled on her back to do her breathe up, calming her mind, relaxing every part of her body from her toes to the crown of her head with breath after breath.

She ran through the Diving Song three times, when two would usually do, just to be safe before she finished her tencount breathe-up. Caves were dangerous. But five fathoms wasn't a terrible depth, even without a diving partner, and Sana felt confident when she rolled over and dove. A powerful current rushed out of the cave, slowing her progress in, but the current only strengthened her resolve to get inside the cave.

She was starting to crave air as she fisherfrog-kicked against the powerful current, timing her kicks with the flow in to the cave for maximum forward glide, and then again with the outdraft for minimum backtracking. She wished she'd run through the diving song a fourth time, but slowly, slowly she crawled through the cave, until finally an inward rush of water sent her soaring inside an open bowl of a reef. Fish flickered in and out of coral in the shaded water. Above her head, the waves knocked against a stone roof, air bubbles running along the pockmarked rock. She pushed herself farther, unimpeded by a current, until the water was clear overhead. She let her buoyancy take her, hands raised overhead in case the ceiling were low. The water was so clear around her that no part of the bowl, at least a hundred by 80 fathoms wide and ten deep, was obscured, the light bright but diffused as if by a great shade. She broke the surface into the cave.

The limestone grotto rose overhead at least another hundred fathoms high, a huge dome broken by a hole at the back top about four fathoms across, bougainvillea vines covered in dark pink blossoms pouring in around the circumference, letting in enough light to illuminate the water, but no direct sun to burn the surface of even the sand at the back of the cave. A single plumeria tree grew in the sand above high tide, covered with white blossoms, filling the air with sweetness, while waves rushed over an outcropping of rock that lifted to the sand bar.

Sana spun in the shaded sanctuary. Around the edges of the cave mouth, light turned the water as bright blue as lightning. The rush of the water in the grotto filled her ears, regular and sweet and soothing. The air was cool in the shade, flower scented and still. The motion of the sea bobbed her gently without tossing her, no current pulling her into or out of the grotto.

She was speechless with beauty. Already, her heart wanted to make a home beneath the plumeria tree, where she could fill the hole nightly with a roof of ice to block out the mosquitoes and cool the air, in the deep pool where she and Iroh could swim endlessly without her having to worry that he'd get burned and require healing again and again -

It would be hard to convince Iroh to get there. Perhaps they COULD burn a route up to the hole in the dome through the jungle, maybe collect bougainvillea vines into a rope ladder. It would be easier to get into the grotto against the current if she waterbended Iroh through, and once she mastered the macawphin kick she could get herself in and out with no problem, but Iroh again would need so much convincing to go deep even once she proved she was a good enough waterbender to easily get him in and out.

She had to convince him. The energy of the grotto was pristine, already filling her with an unreal peace and delight. She had to share this with someone, and he'd appreciate it once she saw it – she was certain. He was appreciative of too much for her to doubt it.

The current shot her out of the grotto far easier than it had allowed her entry. She waterbent herself into a twister and rose high above the surface of the sea, spotted the sandeq with its bright yellow pennant stark against the blue ocean, and dropped herself into a dive that sent her angling at the boat. She came down behind the pod of macawphins, and caught another glimpse of their perfectly smooth yet comparatively understated tailstrokes as they disappeared into the blue - she tried the kick again, but once more, lost the energy in keeping her ankle joints too loose.

She swam the rest of the way to the sandeq arm over arm. The macawphins circled the sandeq when she reached it, relaxed and curious, a few of them starting to come closer to her in their curiosity. Iroh was sitting on the deck, contentedly watching the macawphins, as handsome as ever with his long black hair all a mess, a day's worth of not shaving filling the gaps in between his beard and his sideburns, his broad shoulders starting to go pink in the sun. Sana, overwhelmed with the urge to put her arms around those shoulders again, lifted herself to her elbows on the deck, her feet still in the water.

She was still so filled with the loveliness of the grotto that she wanted to kiss him immediately, imparting joy without even speaking of it, but she was too much enjoying the feeling of the sea on her skin to leave it. The only thing better than kissing him then would be kissing him in the sea. "Come in!" she called. "The macawphins are relaxed. They won't mind!"

He hesitated. Sana sighed. One of these days, it would be nice if a man outside the Swamp just accepted that she knew what she was doing when she said she knew she was doing it. She couldn't be too disappointed, though, could she, when no one had any experience with a woman waterbender outside the swamp. Especially not a firebender who could barely keep his head above the waves, who was supposed to be her enemy, not a friend who trusted her enough to accept the power imbalance of leaping into the sea

He surprised her by diving in anyway.

"I didn't think you'd actually do it," she laughed, as he powered over to her, splashing and inefficient. He grabbed at the surface and plunged his hands down like he could hold on to the air, or like he was trying to mix it equally with the water around him.

"I don't think they're relaxed anymore," Iroh observed, as the macawaphins gave his thrashing a wide berth.

Sana bent at the waist to dive, checking his footwork. She spiraled around him once, paused two fathoms below for a moment to get out her amusement at all the trouble he was having, grateful once again that she'd been born able to enjoy the water with the power she did.

She surfaced and put her hands under his arms, swirling her legs in the interlocked circles that kept her easiest at the surface. She had to waterbend to hold him and herself up. "Calm down. Take the deepest breath you can and hold it for a few seconds. I won't let you down."

He was so tense in the water, his usual easy smile absent, his mouth pressed tight shut as if the sea would lift up and force itself into his lungs given the opportunity. Well, he had almost drowned. It hurt her heart to think of someone carrying the nearness of death around next to the thought of the sea. Buoyed up by her hands, though, he did calm down, took the deep breath she asked, and held it.

"Arms out to the side," she instructed. "Hands wide, back and forth. That works." She stopped waterbending slowly, relaxing her arms just slightly, until he was bobbing in the waves, chin still above water, even barely, under his own power.

"See?" She said, though her hands were still under his arms. She drew them slightly away. "That's all you. When you keep your lungs full and move calmly you stay at the surface just fine."

"That's fine for a full breath," he said, in a strained voice, trying to hold his lungs full. He exhaled full, bobbed, and sucked in another huge breath to keep the buoyancy she'd shown him he could have. "But I need to take another pretty often."

"The calmer your motions, the longer your breath will last." Sana watched him tread a moment longer, noting his stiffness and the force behind each of his movements. "You're trying to treat the water like you bend fire, all forceful, but all you're doing is creating a hole in the water to fall into. Water gets out of the way of force. It lifts you up when you flow."

In demonstration, she swept her hands into a water twister, rising a few feet into the air and falling back, exulting in the full relaxation of knowing that as she fell, the softest sea would catch her.

She flipped over backwards and arched back up to the surface. Iroh had lost his rhythm in treading the water when she splashed him, but before she took pity and bent the water to an ice floe beneath him, he found it again, arms wide and fingers spread to catch the water, inhalation deep.

"Fast learner," she said. "How are you feeling?"

He still did not have a smile on his face. He chose his words carefully before speaking. "Humbled," he settled on.

Sana smiled. He'd jumped in, at least. That was a little more than she'd expected this soon after he'd nearly drowned. It was fine. She sent a wave of water over the deck of the sandeq, washing a floatvest over to them.

"You coulda grabbed one of these," she reminded him, holding it out. "I wouldn't have made too much fun of you."

It was hardly dignified, but Iroh put it on anyway, and once the vest was on, even untied, Sana saw the dawning revelation of what floating with ease in the water felt like crossing his face and she held out her hands. "See?"

"You have a point," Iroh said, as the rolling, unbreaking surface of the water bobbed them up and down together. The water suddenly flashed with macawphins, swimming around them, their trilling voices filling the water.

"They are beautiful, aren't they?" Iroh said, with the amount of reverence that Sana was surprised to realize she hadn't expected.

"Ain't they a privilege to see?" she agreed.

"One of a few I'm enjoying," Iroh said, lifting a warm hand to her face.

The world could be so perilous and dreary and uncomfortable, but it was so beautiful and thrilling and comforting in that moment, the island green beside her, the ocean blue and warm and lifting her up like it would never fail her, the grotto a glowing jewel of a memory in her mind. The man touching her skin so handsome and fun, leaping into her element, giving her his trust in her complete control, when he ought not to have even been able to see her as anything but an enemy.

"You thirsty?" she asked.

"I could drink."

She gave him water, and as he'd been doing since she gave him permission, kissed her hand in thanks, his amber eyes locked on hers. She inhaled deep and slow. It would have been too much just to stare into his eyes this early, but she wanted to - she'd never met anyone with eyes that color before, because of course she hadn't, when every firebender except the one kissing her hand was out looking for women like her to hunt down, not cuddle with at night -

Back home in the Swamp, if she let any of her night-fire's cups go empty, she was inconsiderate, as the only waterbender regularly at their fire since Pa died and her sister moved to the south side with her niece. But if she kept them full, she was only doing her duty, and people barely gave thanks when a person was just doing their duty. That was still much better than the first time she'd refilled a man's cup in the Northern tribe. He' tried to throw it in her face, too offended at her flaunting her Swamp customs to care that she'd thoughtfully anticipated his needs. He hadn't expected her to bend water thrown in her face back into his, but she'd meant for that to offend him.

How did it take a man who was supposed to be her enemy to thank her every time she anticipated his needs with kisses that made her just want more, to anticipate her needs with mangoes beside her bed, shade when she was in full sun, a caught fish waiting for her when she awoke, even if it wasn't a fish she could do anything with but let it go -?

Sana flowed into his arms, and he welcomed her in with his gaze still direct, still letting her stare into his eyes without the slightest hint that he thought she was rude for doing it. She couldn't imagine he'd ever been anxious about anything in his life. It was like her own anxiety just shut up in the face of his lack of it. His arms around her waist were warm against the cool water. His hands landed right on her back where she wanted them.

She leaned in to kiss him, and his lips welcomed hers. The ocean lifted and lowered her in his arms, the cool water washing the heat of his skin away.

He could still turn out to be possessive as the Northern Tribesmen had been. He could still run out of ways to be interesting, as the boys in the Swamp had after too many years of familiarity.

But he wasn't running out of ways to hold her and kiss her and look at her like she wanted to be held and kissed and looked at. He was leaping all the way out of the safety of dry air and into her realm to do it, and she couldn't keep her arms closed against that.

They kissed in the ocean until Sana's dried dark hair burned with the direct sunlight, until kissing in the sea had rendered her so open to the idea of letting his hands wander, that she could only either ask him for more, too early, or stop -

"You know, I still have to teach you to sail," she said.

Iroh took a breath, at the halted kiss. He let his forehead rest against hers. "What do I get if I'm still a fast learner?"

Sana laughed. "Obviously, more of my free time." But her laughter faded as she looked at his shoulders, fully pink, and she began swimming back to the sandeq, tugging him by his vest. "You really ought to put something on. You're going to get badly sunburned," she warned.

"I told you, firebenders draw power from the sun," Iroh insisted, taking his floatvest off as Sana reached the boat. "I'll be fine."

A/N: The grotto Sana finds is based on a real place, and it is the most magical place on the face of the Earth. I would live there if I could.

I tried to make Sana's interactions with sea creatures respectful and believable. Most places in the world where dolphins swim close enough to shore to be swum with tend to get overexploited and too heavily tourist-trafficked, but since this is a fantasy story about someone pushing the limits of ocean magic, I still wanted to include it.