She felt it in the sunlight when they went to the temple. She felt it in the cheers, the applause, the praise. She didn't want to believe it. She didn't want to feel it. But she felt it and she knew. There were hints, suspicions, and a devouring emptiness that she'd refused to acknowledge because it the very idea of it filled her with a crushing shame.
Korra... was alone.
She had said it before, many times before, that she was alone, but she had always been proven wrong. She had her family in the South Pole, she had Master Katara, she had her family on Air Temple Island, she had her friends, she had her past lives, she had Wan. Every time she felt a little darker, a little less sure of herself, she thought it was loneliness. But there was a grave difference between loneliness and doubt, and it had taken Korra eighteen years to understand what both really meant.
She had never been alone. Not really.
Even as a child, playing in the snow by herself at the compound. Even when she had lost her bending, when she had lost her memory. Even when she had lost her connection to her past lives... she was not alone. Not once since birth had she been alone. Not once.
But now... she felt it now. The ceremony was beautiful, the wind chimes sang, and Jinora stood proudly tattooed. And Korra felt it, deep within.
She had woken from death two weeks ago.
She was recovering. That's what they all said. She was looking better, they said, but she was feeling worse and she didn't know why.
Bolin told her terrible jokes and Mako squeezed her hand and Asami stayed at her side. There was always someone around her, always someone there, even next to her bed, even there to bathe her, and that was why it had taken her so long to realize what had happened.
The poison had left her body, all the best healers had claimed it so. Master waterbenders and master metalbenders had all searched her thoroughly. Korra was clean. But still... the worry had crept up on her, worse every day. Something was wrong. Something was so very wrong.
And there were whispers that haunted her. They always thought she couldn't hear, but she heard their words and added their weight onto the rising guilt that pressed on her chest.
Trauma. Sickness. Depression. Weakness. Damage. Empty. Permanent, permanent, permanent.
They all worried about her, they all needed her. They wanted her to heal and they wanted her to save them all once more. But they didn't even know. There was no recovering from this, this horrifying fact that had finally revealed itself to her as the crowd turned to her, the one who was willing to sacrifice it all for the Air Nation.
They looked at her with pride and admiration because she had survived. She was weak and broken, but she was alive. She was not dead. The poison had left her body.
But it had not left her spirit.
It had worked so slowly too. So slowly and quietly that she had not noticed until it had run its course.
In that instant, she felt it. The deepest pain, clawing through her. She was sure now. The chimes silenced, the breeze stopped blowing, the attention left her, and a tear rolled down her cheek because in that single moment, she made one final plea, desperate for Zaheer to be wrong, desperate for her worries to be calmed, desperate for pain, desperate for doubt.
She pleaded, reaching for the light inside.
Raava...
There was no answer. And Korra knew that her sacrificed had been realized. And she knew what she was now, broken and weak and crying with guilt and shame and pain. She was alone now.
She was truly, deeply alone now.
She was... the Last Avatar.