-Out of Eden Part 2: A New Era-
The skies above Daya's Tower opened up. The city of metal blocks around the tower cackled loudly like thunder. The auroras faded away, the energy holding the portals open now depleting. Wind congested with the black dust of the dead SPORE swept across the plains of the Spirit World.
In the sea of so many clashing identities, Asami could no longer stand. She had only enough energy to hold on to this one last feeling, this last trace of the person she had once been.
There was a name.
No name! Never a name. His name. The one who kills. The one who lies. Who brings death. My name.
No. Listen to me. It was a name. A girl's name.
Asami's alternate personalities continued to argue with her.
You've always been alone. Abandoned. Forgotten here. Worthless trying. They were so kind to me, and then, they turned on me. Pitiful.
Not pitiful. Not abandoned. I can see it. I can see her.
Asami looked up at the towering, skyscraping Spirits which had now reached her. They may have meant to take her, to hurt her, simply step on her as they went on their way to the physical world. But something stopped them. Asami was watching the skies above them, the bright light shining down, some kind of force pulling everything up. The Spirits were merely sucked upwards, into this new portal. And Asami was about to find out where it led. Back home? Or somewhere even further away. She felt her clothes and skins being tugged, stretching out as something from above pulled at it. Pulling at every microscopic component of her anatomy.
Asami wanted it to end. The voices in her head. The different motives controlling her conscience. The layers of fabric wrapping and concealing her true identity.
The light intensified from the sky, and within it, she thought she saw the silhouette of an angel. Wings outstretched. Arms open, ready to receive her. Made of nothing but light. Grabbing Asami's hand and pulling her, at last, to peace.
Just take me. Korra. Just take me.
Asami gasped. The air left her lungs so quickly, like something had hit her. But with all the air leaving her, so did all the fake memories. So did all the false identities.
All the Clasma. Gone. Drained.
I am…Asami.
The light faded. Asami was able to open her eyes to see this angel without being blinded. Its features came into view. She made out every component of the face and body. Water streaming down from the eyes. The glowing, blue eyes, abundant with compassion, with love. Behind her, the light continued to fade and materialize into the interior walls of a cave lit by the bright sunlight coming through cave's opening onto the cliff of some kind of hill.
"Asami…is it you…," Korra said, but before she even finished asking, Asami rose up and hugged her closest friend. Her true love.
"Thank you…Korra."
"I think I am the one who should be thanking you, Asami."
Asami hugged tighter, closing her eyes, her head next to Korra's.
"I didn't think I would make it. I was so ready to die, Korra."
"But you didn't. You were strong. You kept alive your love, for me, for your mother, for everything, you held onto it despite the poison within you. I felt it. I felt it so intensely. It led me back to you."
Asami opened her eyes and looked at the walls. They all had writing on them. Crude drawings of human-like figures. Languages she could not read. All mysterious, yet familiar. She looked to where the source of light was coming from and saw the cliff side where she and Korra had once spent the entire night together. Just beyond the threshold of this cliff, there was no land, no mountains, only the bright light from the Spirit World below, the dark clouds still presiding over the physical world above them, and something else. Asami felt the eyes of the massive beast watching her.
The eyes of CHAOS. Its enormous body descending before them out of the darkness in the sky, watching them, but slowly dissolving into nothing as the Spirit World drifted further away from the physical world. Loud cracks like thunder as each component of the beast came apart and disintegrated.
"Korra…" Asami said, gesturing toward the beast of a vessel being pulled apart. "It's disappearing." Asami and Korra both stood, still holding each other. The process hastened as the last of the portals to the Spirit World closed up. Chain reactions of flares across the surface of the beast's body sounding like gunfire. Asami gasped in joy in seeing the destructive force which threatened to end all humanity slowly fade away into oblivion. She ran to the edge of the cliff.
The light was so intense. She felt they had not quite reached the physical world yet. This mountain. The mountain was significant. Still connecting the two worlds. The last portal. The relic lasting throughout time. At the precipice of the cliff, Asami squinted through the brightness and watched as CHAOS exploded into thousands of shooting stars, all ascending into the sky and dissolving the darkness above them. They burst through the dark clouds too allow the light through, overpowering the darkness. The view became drastically brighter.
CHAOS was no more.
Asami rejoiced to herself. She looked into the bright abyss of the Spirit World. Soon she would be back in the physical world. Soon she would be safe. Soon she would finally be able to be with the woman she loved. She turned to Korra who was behind her and looked at her with an excited smile, but the happiness in her face began to drown in horror at what she saw.
Korra had fallen to her hands and knees. Unable to stand. Breathing heavily. Trembling in pain. In fear.
"Korra!" Asami ran to her and bent down to hold Korra in her arms. "Korra? Korra what is happening? What is wrong?"
Korra struggled to speak. "I'm just…cold. That's all."
"Korra you can't stand. You're shaking!"
Korra slowly moved her hand up to look at it, but it felt so heavy. She felt so weak. "I thought I'd be more prepared for this when it finally happened."
Asami wanted to ask what she was talking about, but she realized it before she did. She remembered what Korra had told her before she ascended up to Daya's lair. She remembered the pain from Korra telling her that once she had defeated Daya and this had ended, that she would cease to exist. How that moment was the last time Asami was going to see Korra's face. "But you came back…I got to see you again…How can that be?"
"You brought me here. You never let go. And I didn't…I didn't just long enough so that I could save you. Bring you back here...to the physical world. To your life. But…I can't do this any longer. I can't keep myself together. I've stolen this power. It does not belong to me. I have kept the Spirits of the Dead working long enough to preserve my existence. The last step to freeing humanity is the Avatar's extinction. It is the only way…"
"No…" Asami cried, refusing to let this happen. Refusing to let the last thing she truly loved escape as everything seemed to have done her whole life. "Please. It doesn't have to be this way. Even if the Avatar has to go, why does Korra have to go? Why do you have to leave me?"
Korra sighed, tears streaming down her face as well. But she was calm. She had accepted this, and even though it was hard, she was happy to be in the presence of the woman she cared about the most. She felt her body grow weaker. No longer able to feel her legs. The Spirits holding her in existence leaving to rest. The voices in the walls of the cave fading away as sleep and peace was finally given to the dead.
"I'm sorry, Asami. I'm sorry we couldn't be together in this life. I'm sorry I couldn't bring you away from everything, to that quiet meadow where we could just lie together and be happy. I'm sorry…"
"I don't think I can go on without you, Korra. I don't want to."
"You have to. You've seen the darkest evils of this world. They have tried to shape you, but you have resisted them…You have fought through the pain. You are strong and compassionate. You are what this world needs to survive."
Asami felt Korra becoming colder. Her skin becoming slightly more pale. Losing its life. The radiance in her eyes fading. Korra reached up to touch Asami face.
"You will never be without me, Asami. Death is just an illusion. As long as your memories live, as long as you never forget the connections you've made, we never really die. We are present in everything, everywhere.
Korra heard the teardrops hit the ground. They seemed so loud to her. They fell from the most important person in her life. They splashed louder than anything else.
"I love you, Korra."
Korra's heart beat slightly faster at this. Korra summoned the energy from the dead once more, giving her enough strength to reach Asami's face with her lips for one last kiss. They both wanted this, and they wanted it to last forever, but it could not. Korra's head fell back into Asami's lap. Her eyes felt like ice. She could not move her head. She only looked up.
So this is death…
In her last moments, Korra knew she was cold, but her soul was warm. Warm with the love of those she had met in her life. Warm with the relationships she shared with so many wonderful, friendly, caring people that had shaped her and supported her. Warm with the passion of being with the woman she loved, of having one last kiss.
Korra smiled.
Her eyes continued to stare at the ceiling of the cave, but Asami knew that the life within them was long gone. But Korra still lay there, smiling. Happy. Free.
Asami wiped her eyes and struggled to smile as well, as Korra would have wanted. Before her, beyond the cliff, something was happening. A landscape was coming into view. The light beneath the mountain faded and materialized into plains, into mountains and a horizon. The light above the mountain isolating the single point of a rising sun over the newly formed mountain. The newly formed world.
The new world. The beautiful world. Her world. And mine. All of ours…
"I promised… that I would come back with you. And we would see this beautiful world together…"
Asami realized what the scene before her had become. It stretched as a far as she could see. It was a meadow. An infinite meadow. She remembered this place, but this was different. This was new. One last gift to this planet from the one who had saved them all. Asami walked to the edge of the cliff to look.
"It's so…beautiful." Asami turned to where Korra's body was lying in the cave only to see that it had disappeared. When she quickly turned back around, she saw something on the horizon of the meadow. A silhouette of some large creature, like a bear with a wagging tail, and what looked like a person standing next to it. A girl.
Korra and Naga.
You are here. With me. Watching this together…
Even as a shadow, a silhouette, Asami could tell that Korra was no longer wearing the battered and beaten clothes she had been wearing before. She wore a dress blowing freely in the wind. Barefoot. Unarmed. Hair down. Finally free. She climbed onto the back of Naga. Asami stared for so long that she could not tell when Korra had fully disappeared.
She didn't disappear. She is here. Present in everything. Everywhere.
Asami turned to go back into the cave. The cave once burning with the lives of the past, now calm and dormant. Asleep. As she walked through corridor in the mountain top, she noticed the drawings had changed slightly. As if they had moved aside for a new one. Above the exit to the other side of the mountain, Asami saw a drawing which she was sure was new. It was a woman with long hair. She was standing before a large circle with a smaller circle inscribed within it, and she was hand-in-hand with another woman. There was no color to it, no structure, just an etching on a rock, but Asami saw it so clearly. As if it was real, right in front of her. She could even feel the hands holding hers.
It was her. It was Korra and Asami. Together. Despite their boundaries. Despite the gap between their worlds, they were still together.
Always together.