She sliced through the open ocean with a cluttered mind and an empty heart, his words ringing throughout her head. "So, what? Are you breaking up with me?" she had asked, her anger replacing her common sense. "Yeah, I guess I am." he had said, his voice low. A heavy silence hung in the room. Her anger immediately diminished, exposing her shock and hurt. Tears formed in her eyes. No, she wouldn't let them see her pain. Somehow she managed to escape through the threshold without looking back. She wanted to look back, she needed to look back. But she didn't. She wondered if he did.
The speed of the boat made her feel powerful. She wasted no time in putting as much distance as possible between her and Mako, her eyes locked on the horizon. She listened to her head now, her heart was an idiot. A hopeless, broken, idiot. The emptiness she had felt turned to raw pain, beginning in her stomach and catching in her throat. Their memories, everything they had been through, seemed miles away, almost nonexistent. She could turn back and apologize, she could set everything right. She could be wrapped in his embrace, safe and warm in his strong arms as he whispered his apology in her ear. The temptation of the thought alone was almost enough to make her slow down. Almost. Something drove her onward, perhaps her own fear of rejection. She allowed herself a fleeting moment of weakness, in which a single tear escaped her eye and was taken away with the wind, long forgotten.
She was snapped out of her pain induced trance by a sudden rush of water. She turned around to see her two cousins pursuing her. Great. She couldn't deal with this now. She halfheartedly threw a beam of water in their direction. A rage-fueled Eska promptly sliced the boat in half, sending Korra straight into the ocean. Her instincts took over and she was able to pull herself high above the surface. She shot a few attacks down at her cousins, only to be knocked down by a stream of water. She was able to regain her position by airbending and forced a large wave over the two. Korra had lined up her final attack when her cousins suddenly fell back. She lowered herself back to the water, confused. Why had they fallen back?
As if on cue, a huge, black figure emerged from the water. A dark spirit. Its glowing green eye seemed to stare straight into her soul, sending a cold tremor of fear down her spine. A dark and unforgiving tentacle slashed in her direction, and then another, and then another, until she was knocked back into the water. She felt weak, defeated. But she refused to give up, it was in her nature. She felt herself slip into the avatar state and rise out of the ocean. Her instincts took over as she dexterously surrounded the spirit in a glowing stream of water like her uncle had done. The creature seemed to calm and lose its hostility. But Korra was not her uncle. With a deafening screech, the spirit broke the restraint the water gave and lurched at her.
Darkness. Dangerous, yet seductive. Korra struggled against its grasp, but she only seemed to fall further. She was fighting a losing battle. Her entire being became heavy. She felt alone, she felt empty, and she felt pain. She was being dragged, closer and closer into a dark abyss. She desperately clung to the thinning thread that was her lifeline. It was too much. The weight of the world seemed to crush her, and the pain became unbearable. She wanted to scream. She wanted to forget. Forget the pain. Forget the hurt. Forget Mako. She was numb. Her eyelids became heavy and her thoughts began to blur. Her throat ached and her chest felt as though it was being ripped apart. There was only one escape from this pain. The pain he had caused. The pain that threatened to destroy her. Korra had made her choice: she let go.
She was falling, falling, miles and miles away from the light. In that moment, her will to forget was greater than her will to remember. In that moment, she had lost.