It's cold, is the very first thought.
It's cold… but then it's familiar, and the next breath feels like the first.
Yesterday feels years away and though Katara is the most rested she's even been in her old age, strangely, her eyelids are heavy.
A breeze settles to her side, and it takes her no time to identify.
"Aang," the name floats off her tongue like the ending of a song, and Katara is sure that this is another dream, because Aang is gone – has been gone – and she's already lost count of each lonely morning wondering if the next Avatar will come before she passes, lost count of how many times Korra's grin looked so much like his, lost count of how many funerals began blurring together like bad dreams in the middle of the night and the realization that she is all that's left of a story already documented in history scrolls.
Light footfalls crunch in the snow beside her, and she dares to crack her eyelids open towards the sky, to the airbender stealing her view.
How strange, she thinks, as Aang stands above her, crouched with the most curious expression, that this is so familiar, more than a dream, something else from before…
"Come closer," she says softly, committing the features of his face to memory before she wakes up, yearning to cup his cheek with her hands and never let go. He listens and bends down gently, without a word, ever so close, gazing at her with a patience that makes her feel like they can stay like this forever.
"Closer," she says again, as if in trance, unaware of what her mouth even wants to say.
When Aang is as close as he can get without kissing her, Katara opens her eyes fully, and her breath catches in her throat. Aang smiles.
"Will you go penguin sledding with me?" she breathes eagerly, and the memories all come flooding back to her. The boy in the iceberg, the moment he opened his eyes for the first time in one hundred years, the way he looked at her, beckoned her closer, told her his name.
"Katara," he says naturally, bringing her up to a stand. It's been so long since she's heard him say her name and the tears sting at the corner of her eyes. He reaches up to brush them away before they fall and cranes his head.
They stare at each other in awkward distance, a familiar crooked grin spreading across his face as the love he harbors for her leaves him awkwardly rubbing at the back of his neck, even after all this time.
"You remembered."
Katara grabs onto Aang so hard he fears he might break, yet he laughs freely as ever, wrapping his arms around her to spin them momentarily off the ground. His lips are pressed with hers as their feet touch the snow again. "My forever girl," he murmurs against Katara's skin, "Let's go penguin sledding."
They walk aimlessly through quiet snowfalls of the Southern water Tribe, hand in hand, and Katara never wakes up. They disappear into the Spirit world, together, for eternity, and that is a dream all in itself.