He wasn't wearing the attire of the Firelord. Simply in his comfortable traveling clothes he'd been using. His hair was a mess. Zuko silently beheld the peasant woman, who was working quietly alone in the Earth Kingdom field.
"Mother..?" he breathed, overcome with disbelief that the moment had finally come.
It would've been thought he was too far away for her to hear him. But it seemed as if some part of her did, and always would. Her eyes widened slightly as she paused and lifted her head and then looked his way.
"Zuko!" Ursa's breath shuddered as she recognized him, even though he looked so incredibly different from when she last saw him. She rose to her unsteady feet and made her way toward him.
He covered the distance much quicker, and threw his arms around her.
Katara and Aang went unnoticed behind them, even though they were standing next to a giant woolly bison. But that was as it should be. The young couple knew that there was a whole separate world of happy tears and whispered greetings between the reunited family members.
Katara's hand went to her mouth to stifle her sniffles at the tender scene. Aang turned his attention to his girlfriend, and saw something more in her tearful eyes than just happiness. There was also the twinge of envy. It was confirmed when her eyes went unfocused, recalling a memory, and her fingertips floated down to her neck, where they lightly touched her own mother's necklace.
Of course Aang had realized that she and Zuko had bonded to some extent over the loss of their mothers. The two women meant the same to each of them, neither of them were prepared for the loss, and it hit them both equally strong. So it was as though Kya and Ursa became one and the same person in their minds. But this would be forever changed for Katara now that she'd seen for herself that Ursa was still here.
Aang put a hand on her shoulder. As Katara turned to him, she knew that he was reading her heart. And she could likewise see in his eyes the sadness of knowing the pain of loved ones lost who would never return. The loss of one person compared to an entire nation of people was naturally not as easy to reconcile as being equal, but she just now realized how true it was.
He opened up his arms, and she took the invitation, quietly crying on his shoulder as he held her tightly.
Still, he smiled, and offered her, in a tender whisper, the wisdom that once helped him: "Someone once told me that love is a form of energy, and that's why those we love are never really gone. The power of their love is always around us."
Katara took this in, and with her eyes closed, she could feel it. The spirit of her mother smiling down at her. It was such a warm and comforting feeling to sense the embrace of her mother's presence again, as it was in her childhood. As though the world was innocent and fun and free again. Like the look in Aang's eyes when he awoke from the iceberg. Which is why it felt so natural for that embrace to morph itself into the present world, freed from the war. The form of Aang's arms around her.
She pulled back and looked at her new love. Her view of him had now changed too. Knowing that what she shared with her mother was still alive as well.