Author's note: The scenes below continue from the letter in the beginning of the last chapter/section. Part 2 will follow soon.

Dear anonymous rex: I thank you greatly for the kind words and encouragement in your reviews. It really means more than you realize to me.

- Harbor City, Winter of 152 AG - 5 months before Fire Lord Aang's passing -

The Southern Water Tribe's dialect contains over 63 words for snow. Ones for dry, flakey snow. Ones for wet, packed snow. Snow driven by wind, in sleet, and compressed in glaciers. Big fat flakes of the stuff lazily dropped through the air all around Fire Lady Azula as she quietly walked along the Southern Water Tribe's Royal Palace outer courtyards. In the distance, the sun she depended upon sat weak and anemic. Its paltry rays paint the frozen landscape in hues of rose and orange. Azula pulled the auburn parka around her tighter and did her best to quell the urge to shiver. She made a solemn vow, then and there, to never take the sun's warmth for granted again. Here, in the dead of winter, her sun's zenith scarcely completely breached the horizon before leaving this land in nothing but a deep and bitter night.

Far away enough not to call attention to herself, but still in direct line of sight, Azula allowed herself the briefest of pleasures. Her husband created and launched snow higher and higher at the delighted shrieks of her grandson, Lu Ten. At 14 he was the youngest of three, a face as if chiseled from marble, and coal black hair braided down to his hips. With the speed and agility only an overconfident teenager can muster, Lu Ten packed wayward clumps of snow and ice into Aang's pile.

Three enormous spheres built with care on top of each other. The snowman, now over 19 feet tall, looked to be shaping up nicely. At the top of the snowman Kyala sculpted a titanic crown with some clever use of her kite. A smile crept onto Azula's face despite her best efforts. This moment was something she would cherish for the rest of her life. A rare moment of unbridled joy in a sea of anguish.

"It's uncanny. It is as if your family has captured the very essence of our harbor master." Azula glanced at the source and found Katara walked slowly in her direction, admiring the activities. She'd aged since last Azula saw her. More streaks of grey, wrinkles, and a look of quiet grace in accepting her best days were behind her. Then again, hadn't they all?

Azula looked up at the snowman, which had started to lean on one side. "I'm not sure I see it. He looked much smaller and more muscular in person."

Katara smirked, "Oh, I certainly do. I see a self-important hedonist with delusions of grandeur: a wanna-be king. They've even got his vacuous face just right."

Azula stifled a laugh and offered her gloved hand to Katara. "It's so good to see you again, Katara." Katara shocked Azula with a full, warm embrace. Of all of the possible outcomes Azula considered when meeting Katara again for the first time in over a decade, this was not one of them. The two parted the embrace, but before Azula could create any distance Katara clasped her hand and hurried her along a path leading around the courtyard.

"I want you to know that I'm eternally grateful for your help in dealing with the hawk-rats." Katara whispered furtively, "An infestation now would be devastating."

Azula relaxed a bit and nodded. "The Fire Nation's most capable exterminators are at your service. Merely point out the signs of the infestation and they'll do the rest." The two walked in silence for a few more steps before Azula blurted out. "You're being too obvious."

Katara stopped immediately and looked perplexed. She glanced in every direction. "I… wasn't I discrete enough?."

Azula gave a knowing smile and nodded at the snowman. "No, not you. You did well. I'm talking to Kyala."

Katara glanced again at the top of the snowman. Kyala sculpted haphazardly, her face reddened with frustration - as if a petulant child caught raiding the cookie jar. An odd expression for one who would soon be 27. "How?"

"Airbending. Something to do with directing the sound with subtle air currents. She's used it to great effect, but she always puts on this goofy face while doing it. Like she can't control the air without her tongue hanging out." Azula laughed and pulled Katara along. They passed beyond the courtyard and started down the palace steps.

"Am I correct in understanding Kyala's not taking an interest in any of her suitors?"

"Kyala? No. There is but one man who makes her heart burn so, but he spurned her advances all those years ago. I'm afraid her infatuation with him may turn fatal one of these days."

Katara scoffed indignantly, "My nephew? Still?! They were 10! 10!"

Azula couldn't stop herself from laughing. It felt so good. "And on that day she vowed she would wed him. My daughter is surprisingly stubborn when she puts her mind to it."

The two friends had a good laugh. Friends? Such an odd word. Were they friends? They'd not spoken to each other in well over a decade. Their singular commonality was the man in the courtyard behind them crafting the finest snowman the Southern Water Tribe had ever seen. Was that enough for what Azula felt she needed.

Together, at the bottom of the palace steps, they watched the sun's inexorable march below the horizon again. In the last rays of the sun, Azula asked the one question she knew would lead to what she needed most: release.

"What made you decide not to start a family, Katara?"

Azula kept her eyes on the dwindling sun. Big fat snowflakes continued their slow descent from the mottled grey clouds that spawned them. Was now the right time to ask? Would it ever be? Azula felt she had no choice. She needed this now, before the world enacted some new cruelty on her. Azula waited with baited breath for Katara to respond. She didn't have to wait long.

"I guess it's a bit like what your daughter Kyala is going through. Someone comes into your life out of the blue. They're this great force of nature and your world seems to be right with them in it. You begin to think that this is how the world should be, how it's always been, how it'll always be. And then one day they leave," Katara sighed as darkness swallowed the world beyond the palace. "No one ever seems to measure up."

One by one the Royal Palace's outside lights flickered on and bathed the ice and falling snow with pale yellows and silvery blues. Katara adjusted her hair briefly before she turned slowly to Azula. A single tear trickled down Azula's left cheek before she wiped it away.

"No no no, it's not your fault, Azula. Aang - I mean, we were close, but I never told him. We were all in such a crazy whirlwind back then! Ba Sing Se, the Day of Black Sun, Sozin's comet," Katara said and took Azula's gloved hands in her own. "Why, after all of these years do you ask now?"

The silence stretched between them for what felt like hours. They were friends, right? And yet, she couldn't say it. As if uttering mere words would end everything she loved in the world.

"You're shaking. Azula, what's wrong?"

Azula unconsciously tried to pull away, but Katara held firm.

"What aren't you telling me?" Katara whispered soothingly, "It's ok."

"I'm losing him," Azula whispered so softly Katara almost didn't hear the words over the soft falling snow.

"What?"

"Sometimes, like today, he's fine. He's," Azula seemed to be looking for the right words, "he's my Aang. We joke. He sings while I play the gehu. He plays with the grand-children. He teaches the young airbenders. He's everything I never knew I needed when I was still under my father's thumb." Azula spat out "father" as if it were an insult. "And then there are other days. Days prefaced by night terrors."

Katara felt the breath catch in her throat and the color drain from her face. Oh no.

"He's running away from something in these dreams. I can tell because his legs are kicking so fast. The whole bed is shaking with his effort to escape something. I yell at him to stop. I try to slap him awake. Oh god, Katara, I've even burned his wrist." Azula visibly shuddered at the memory - begging and pleading lead to desperation and the odor of burnt flesh. "Always sooner rather than later he's caught by it. His body tenses up, trembles, and then he just screams. I just - I run away, Katara. Out of our bedroom. Out of the palace. I can't handle him like that."

Katara covered her mouth in shock and horror.

"He stops, eventually. And then he's in this dreamy state for days - like he can't see anything in front of him at all. He talks like he's still galavanting around the globe on Appa's back. Sometimes he tells me he thinks Sokka and Ty Lee might be getting close. Sometimes he's fighting me in his dreams. Sometimes he whispers about how beautiful he thinks you look, Katara." Azula's legs buckled underneath her and she dropped to the ground with racking sobs. Katara followed her down and held her close.

"Something is stealing my husband from me, bit by bit," Azula growled in anger, " and it gets worse each time and no one can help," Azula scoffed bitterly at the memories of every sage, cleric, or exorcist that wasted her time. "He's slipping through my fingers, Katara."

"What do you need me to do?" Katara whispered through her own tears.

"Heal him, please!" Azula whimpered, "You're the only hope I have left."