Ten years of diplomatic visits and Zuko still hated the snow. It was cold and wet, and it made his bones ache beneath his heavy parka. For the life of him, he could not understand its appeal. The white powder that glistened across the South Pole was nothing more than a nuisance to the Fire Lord. He would burn it all down if it wouldn't cause an international incident – and incur the wrath of his heavily pregnant wife. Katara was intimidating enough as she was but add to that a concoction of pregnancy hormones and unpredictable mood swings and she was terrifying. Even the Fire Sages bent to her will to avoid a confrontation with the Fire Lady. They had learned their lesson during the pregnancy of Princess Kya when they made the mistake of suggesting sea prunes might not be a wise addition to her diet. Katara had subsequently frozen them to the wall and stormed out.

As Zuko stepped down onto the snow, it crunched noisily beneath his boots. A furrow grew between his brows. How did these people hunt if the snow gave them away so easily? He remembered his own disastrous attempt to hunt a polar bear dog. He had nearly burnt down an entire glacier instead, and after, Sokka and Chief Hakoda decided he'd be better off hunting arctic hens to prove his worth as a suitable husband for Katara. That hadn't been an easy week. Not only was being away from Katara for that long excruciating, being away from her to be stuck with her brother and her father was even worse. Still, Zuko hadn't managed to kill Sokka so he had considered the whole trip a success, even if it hadn't helped endear him to the snow in any way. In fact, Zuko might say it made him hate it even more.

Katara followed down after him. He turned for a moment and watched as his wife's cheek turned pink from the cold. The setting sun framed her in its golden glow. She was five months into her pregnancy and before long she wouldn't be able to travel to the South Pole anymore. Zuko hated the snow but he loved Katara more. He'd live in an igloo if it made her happy.

But at that moment, his focus wasn't on his wife at all. It was on the three-year-old princess who broke free of her mother's grasp and ran down the ramp. She raced towards him with wobbly feet and hurled herself at his waist. Zuko groaned at the assault. "Oof! Kya..." He started to warn her but the little girl looked up at him with wide blue eyes, her cheeks and nose pinker than her mother's, and he melted. It would not do well for the Fire Lord to appear so soft in public but everyone in the Fire Nation knew that the Fire Princess had him wrapped around her little fingers.

"There's my little niece!"

With the agility of a tiger monkey, Kya let go of Zuko's waist and sprinted across the snow into Sokka's waiting arms. The man picked her up and swung her around much to her delight. Half a second later, Katara joined Zuko and slipped her hand into his. He smiled down at her, pressing a kiss to her forehead before returning his gaze back to his daughter. If her uncle dropped her, Zuko would not be opposed to using the man's own boomerang to smack him upside the head.

It was at that moment little flurries of snow began to fall from the sky. It had never snowed for Kya in her three years of visiting the South Pole and the sudden white snowflakes delighted her into fits of laughter. She twisted and turned so that Sokka would put her back down on the ground. Once her feet landed with a soft crunch, Kya twirled and twirled, her mouth opening up wide to try and catch the snowflakes on her tongue.

Her giggles rang out across the grounds, and Zuko decided that maybe he didn't hate the snow after all.