The South Pole is beautiful.
Almost as beautiful as it is deadly.
Katara doesn't know why she thought it safe to venture out into the wastes. The tundra spans to the horizon in every direction, her village long gone somewhere behind her. At least, it's probably behind her. The wind howls around her, whipping fat snowflakes against her reddened cheeks and hair, and she wouldn't be surprised if home was in front, above, or below her.
She's lost in a snowstorm.
She knows that she's going to die.
There's no way she'll allow herself to give up. Her feet smudge the snow, ash across an icy floor. A strong gust whispers in her ear, tries to seduce her into falling to the ground. Fingers of frost curl into the hood of her parka and tickle her scalp, slither around her spine and crawl down her back. Her toes are stones in her boots, unfeeling and heavy. Lead legs do their best to drag her along, towards what, she doesn't know.
There's nothing out here for her to go to.
The ghost of hypothermia nips at her heels.
The bone-shaking shivers have ceased, her energy conserved to pump sluggish blood through frozen veins. The landscape blurs in front of her eyes, whether due to the storm or her inevitable death, she isn't sure. The shrieking zephyr calls her name, over and over and over again, sounding a little more tempting with each repetition. She barely has the energy to think, but somehow she pushes onward.
Save for the screaming wind, the silence around her is deafening.
Her lover's voice calls to her from the ether.
Logically, she knows Zuko is dead. Hallucinations aren't symptoms of hypothermia, are they? No, she doesn't remember Gran Gran teaching her about them when she learned about the dangers of their home. Then again, she doesn't remember much at all right now. Her brain is woefully tired, slow and heavy in her head. Molasses clogs her synapses and makes slugs out of her thoughts.
But she'd know his voice anywhere.
"Katara…" Zuko's voice whispers straight into her head.
It's him, this she knows. But the voice is empty, barely a voice at all. It's warm and cold in her mind, a trail of fire and ice, a contradiction in its very existence. She thinks she sees a smudge on the horizon, a spot darker than the surrounding emptiness that is slowly growing darker.
"Come home…"
"Zuko?" she says it, she knows she does, but no sound comes from her mouth.
She isn't even sure that she's opened it by the time the word is hanging in the air. It's quickly swept away with the whipping snow. The distant smudge, a blot of watery ink on a pristine white page, grows larger. It creates the illusion that Katara's getting closer, when in reality, she knows that she hasn't moved at all. She sees her legs shuffling forward beneath her. Had she been moving?
"Zuko?"
"Katara…" the voice whispers, but it doesn't sound like Zuko anymore.
A chill drips down her spine. Really, it shouldn't be able to get any colder, but a supernatural frost climbs up her cheeks, slips in between her vertebrae, clings to her lashes. She shivers. The shape of her husband is carved from the inkblot ghost— it has to be a ghost, there's no other way— and it turns towards her. Its hair floats around a blank face, tendrils waving slowly as if they're under water. The absence of eyes, a nose, a mouth… it should concern her. She knows it should. But her mind is a blur save for the swirling snow that she swears is leaking into her ears.
"Come home…"
"Home." This time she hears her voice, barely a crackle over the wild wind.
The figure raises newly formed arms, limbs much too long, fingers materializing and slithering towards her, the tips darker than the mottled grey that makes up its body. Indistinct whispering twirls around her, following the ellipse of snow as it continues to bluster dizzyingly before her. She stares into the blank slate where a face should be, but feels no fear. Warmth spreads from where the spectre's fingers graze her face down to her toes. She hasn't been warm in what feels like years. Her eyes droop closed, and just before the world goes black, her lips stumble around the words,
"I'm coming home."