The Forsaken Hero

I separated from Luke with a gasp, chills racing through my soul. That hadn’t been my memory. I’d never held a sword before, not without fate itself twisting to take it from me. And yet I could still feel the soldiers’ blood giving weight to a blade I’d never touched, and slicking gauntlets I’d never worn.

Luke...I stared at the tangled, faded soul surrounding me. Was that how Luke remembered us meeting? Had he come all that way just for a glimpse?

I shuddered at the memory of the anger and pain. He was steeped in it, so much so I couldn’t believe it didn’t suffocate him. Or maybe it did. How else could you live when you couldn’t even see someone without wanting to tear their life out with your bare hands? How could anyone person carry so much hurt, darkness, and hatred?

No wonder Luke couldn’t see me. He said he did; he even claimed to love me, and I had believed him. But now, after seeing his heart, feeling it like it was in my own chest, I understood something Gayron had mentioned to Korra long, long ago. It wasn’t that Luke didn’t want to love. He couldn’t. There was no room.

More tremors ran through my soul. Sorrow, this time. For the love I wasn’t sure he could return anymore, and for him. No one deserved that fate. No one deserved to be cut off from the light like that. Even if it had once been their choice.

My head still spun with what I had witnessed, but there was no time to ponder. I returned to the memory and began to study it. It seemed a suitable place to anchor in, solid and unyielding. I briefly wondered why this one, in particular, would have held when all others disintegrated around it. Shouldn’t it have been the moment his sister was murdered? That was the single most pivotal moment in his life, right?

I had a foundation, but now the true challenge arose. How to build a bridge? The stars of fate were there, waiting for me, but what could I build?

Fate said I wouldn’t be able to bring him back. He had to come on his own. When I was lost and alone, wandering in the dark, what had called me back? I thought of the despair that gripped me in High Valley, and the darkness I’d nearly lost myself to in the underground chasms beneath Heartland. What had pulled me from the brink? Why hadn’t I let myself go?

I didn’t have a definitive answer, and maybe that was the purpose. Warmth and light, the two things I craved in the dark.

With that vague notion in mind, I mustered fate. All of my practice had been fashioning spells and things. Something real, that I could touch. As I began to work, I found there was no such constraint. My feelings poured from my heart into my soul, taking shape in the very weave itself. The warmth of a hug, the thrill of a kiss. The comfort of his tail against mine. Everything I knew of Luke, everything my body felt, came out in a river of shining threads.

There was no resistance. I wove as freely as I had in the depths of Oblivion. Enusia had laws for spells and animals. There were strict constraints on how mountains formed, and what people were like. But emotions were ephemeral, unbound. An expression of the purest of experiences.

"Come back to me," I whispered, adding my heartache and pain. Why was he always so far? How could we overcome so many flaws and challenges, learn to trust again and again, and yet still I didn’t feel comfortable in his love?

Fate began to take shape. At first, it was a messy knot of emotions, indistinguishable to all but me. I shaped them into the light of Luke’s eyes. The gentle touch of his hand. I surrounded him with every part of myself. His smile, his laughter, his strength. There was no pattern or order, and the longer I wove, the more the darkness around us began to retreat. A strand of light stretched across the darkness, attaching to a memory on the far side.

A battle in Blacksand, where he had driven his sword into the back of the arbiter. I relived it in the blink of an eye, felt the pain of his wounds, and the anger that smoldered in his heart. That hatred was familiar, the same that must still hold true in his heart today. As he struck that being down and claimed his sword for his own, it was the first time Luke had truly felt vindicated. The first real step he had taken to avenging his sister and making the heavens bleed.

Yes, this was exactly what I needed. What greater cause was there to call to Luke? I focused on that strand, building around it. The safety I felt in his arms. The confusion when he told me I was better off without him. The fear when he left me in Sylvarus alone.

It was small, at first, barely more than a flicker of light. Then the darkness rippled, and it flared, igniting into a blazing fire. Luke’s soul shifted, turning toward me, a hint of curiosity and confusion entering the despair that filled it.

I continued, spinning out everything. All of my hopes, dreams, and fears, the memories of every moment I’d spent with him. And with it, I echoed the hatred I’d taken from the times we’d entangled, and the anguish of all that he had lost.

I didn’t really understand what I was building, but I knew when it was finished. Light and darkness, entwined in a beacon that filled the void. A way home, if he took it.

But he didn’t. His soul hovered on the edge of oblivion. It felt so close, I could almost reach out and touch it. My lips moved, my mouth formed the words to call him, but only silent, impotent tears flowed down my cheeks. What was going through his mind? Could he even feel me through the darkness? Was there anything left of him to feel? Was I too late?

A few threads broke, falling into nothingness. How long had I been here, calling his name? Minutes? Hours? I didn’t know, only that my last chance was slipping away. I clenched my eyes shut, searching my soul for any fragment of memory or feeling that I’d missed. There was nothing. I’d given everything I had.

Everything, that is, except myself. Had Korra stayed in the church, with her comfort and power and status? Had Aurle remained safe in the rules of High Valley while she comforted me? Did Sorrin, Tana, and the others wait at the inn when I fought alone against the Circle?

Here I stood on the banks of Enusia, while Luke drifted in the darkness. Nothing I’d done so far had justified Fyren’s fear for me. That itself should have proved a warning.

Fate told me I needed a bridge. She hadn’t said who it was for.

I stepped across the boundary of my fate, and plunged into the darkness. The chill of oblivion was swift and eager, enveloping me in the embrace like a long-lost friend. I gasped as it lanced deep into my soul, reclaiming the chill I’d only just begun to shake, but I braved one step, and then another, walking along the tentative bridge of the heart I had laid bare.

Luke shifted again, drifting closer, and then recoiling, away from the light, away from Enusia. My heart faltered, but I continued. The stars of fate surrounding him scattered like embers in the wind.

"Luke," I pleaded, stretching my hands toward him. "Please, come back to me! There’s so much you must still do! Remember your sister. Are you going to let her die in vain?"

A current of darkness swept into me, nearly knocking me off my feet. Something tore and faded, lost into oblivion. A memory, or maybe a feeling, though which one, I didn’t know. I only felt the awful emptiness it had once occupied.

"Luke!" A sob choked my cry. Another piece of me melted away, the knowledge of a spell this time, followed by another. Closer. I had to get closer.

The bridge cracked beneath my feet. Another piece of me gone. A hole where a face had been that penetrated hundreds of memories.

"Please..." I fell to my knees, seized by relentless shivers. My vision swam, my thoughts growing incoherent. Maybe Fyren was right. Perhaps I should have waited longer, to warm after my last visit to oblivion, but then... "Please don’t leave me. I...I don’t want to be alone anymore...so come back. Come back to me."

I reached out in one last futile effort, even as more and more of me unraveled. Too dark. Too cold.

Something brushed my hand. My fingers twitched, and I forced my head up. There, grasping me with a strength I was too numb to feel, was a hand. And behind it--

"Xiviyah?" a voice asked, pulling me in. Luke’s voice.

Light blossomed in the dark, a million shining threads weaving solid ground beneath us. The tide swallowed my little beacon, enveloping me and Luke in warmth. His hand tightened, drawing me close, his arms coming around me. Soul to soul, I could feel so much more than just his strength. His sorrow, his fear, and his relief.

"You called," he whispered, clutching my head to his chest. "It was so dark, but...I heard your voice."

Luke. It was really him. He had answered my call.