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When she emerged from the Spirit Portal, an arm around Kuvira, Korra was greeted by Tenzin, by the Beifongs, and by Mako and Bolin, but the person she most wanted to talk to was nowhere to be found.
“What happened to everyone who had been fighting the Colossus?” she quickly asked as Lin and Su took Kuvira away.
“There were a lot of people caught in the blast,” explained Tenzin, “so we have as many people as we can helping to find and treat the injured. Korra, what happened?”
The avatar ignored his question. “Has anyone seen Asami?”
Tenzin paused. “Not since the blast,” he admitted. Korra took off. “Wait! Korra, help us understand what happened!” She sprinted off without hesitation, darting around the corner to the site where Asami’s father had been killed. Her stomach churned at the site of the hummingbird remains. But Asami got out, she thought,she had a parachute.
A pair of Air Nomads passed by, carrying someone on a stretcher. Korra followed them for a block to a public square filled with injured citizens. She heard children crying, smelled the burning of small fires, and saw dozens of burn victims waiting for the healers to tend to them. The avatar scanned the crowd several times, her heart pounding, but the head of black curls she was looking for was nowhere in sight. She wished that she could stay, that she could do more, but first she had to search through the wreckage.
Korra ran back to the previous block, searching for any signs of a torn parachute. There! A white piece of canvas stuck out from the rubble where a chunk of a nearby building had landed. Spirits, please let her be okay, Korra pleaded internally. She moved into a squat and gently earthbent the stone and metal frame of the wall, revealing a small, unmoving figure.
The avatar fell to her knees by Asami’s head. Something must have struck her, because her dark hair was matted with blood. Korra felt like her heart had dropped out of her ribcage, forming a pit in her stomach. Please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead, please don’t be dead, she thought. She scanned the other girl’s body for other injuries, noting that her jacket had been torn and that her side seemed swollen. But she was still breathing, she wasn’t dead, there was still hope.
Looking around, Korra spotted a bridge passing over the river that ran through Republic City and bent some of the water into a sphere that she brought over to Asami. She started with the head injury, talking as she worked. “Come on, Asami! Please be okay, come back to me, I need you to be okay!” Tears dripped from her face onto the engineer’s cheeks, leaving clean tracks through the dust and ash that covered the unconscious figure. She examined the site of the injury, and although the wound had closed and it looked much smaller without the dried blood, Korra worried that there might be internal damage she couldn’t treat. The sob she had been holding back broke out, and the avatar leaned her forehead against Asami’s, shaking with fear. She suddenly felt as powerless as she had when she couldn’t walk.
Suddenly, the engineer’s eyes fluttered open. “Korra?” she croaked, her voice barely a whisper. She coughed to clear her throat. Korra bolted upright, sitting back on her legs
“Asami? Asami, you’re alive!” Korra smiled, wiping her tears on her arm.
Asami moved to sit up, then winced, gasping and clutching her left side. “Ugh, what happened?”
“Your parachute got caught on the corner of a building, and I think you got stuck.” Korra decided not to bring up Hiroshi’s death just yet - Asami was in plenty of physical pain already without being reminded of the emotional toll of the fight. “You must have gotten hit by some of the wreckage in the spirit weapon explosion, too. It looks like you might have broken a rib or two, and you have a nasty head injury. But you’re okay, and those things can heal, and I’m here for you.”
Asami weakly reached for Korra. The avatar took the other woman’s hand in both of hers and held it in her lap. “What happened… Where’s Kuvira?”
“Shhh, it’s okay,” Korra explained. “Her spirit weapon went out of control. I tried to redirect the energy so that it wouldn’t hurt anyone, but there was so much that doing so created a new spirit portal! But I talked things out with Kuvira, and Beifong has her now. When I came through the portal, nearly everyone was there, but I noticed you were missing, so I went to look for you in the wreckage.
Asami’s eyes widened. "You mean it’s all over? I’m so glad you’re okay! And you came back for me, you didn’t have to, but-” Korra cut her off.
“Asami, I was so scared that I’d lost you!” She felt the tears coming back, pooling over her lower eyelids. “I don’t know what I would have done if I didn’t find you!” The tears overflowed now, and she didn’t make an attempt to hide them or wipe them away.
Asami squeezed her hand. “Korra, you saved me! You nearly died today, but when it was all over, you went back and saved me!”
Korra looked down at their hands in her lap, her voice growing quieter. “Are you really that surprised? Asami, after I was poisoned, you saved me more times than I could count. I felt so useless, so empty…. But you never gave up on me. You stayed, and you took care of me, and you kept writing when I went away. Even after I had given up on myself completely, you never did.”
A weak smile had bloomed on Asami’s face, and she reached for Korra’s face. The avatar leaned in to her touch. “Of course I did, the engineer murmured. "Korra… I love you. I have for a long time now.”
Korra bent down, cradling Asami’s face in her hands. “I love you too,” she said. She kissed her once, slowly, half afraid the other girl would pull away, but she didn’t. Asami leaned in, pulling Korra closer, then gasped as pain shot through her side.
“Oh!” Korra jumped back, panicking. “I’m so sorry! You’re still hurt, and I shouldn’t have-”
“S'okay,” Asami said, managing a smile through her gritted teeth. “It was worth it.”
“I’ll tell you what,” said Korra. “I don’t think I can move you like that, at least without causing you a lot of pain. How about I heal your side as much as I can, and then I’ll carry you to the nearest first aid area?” She glanced back down at her lap. “And then once they make sure you’re okay, we can, um, talk.” There was so much more she needed to say to Asami - about the fight, about her father, and mostly about her - but they would have to wait. Anyways, the most important part had already been said.
“Sounds perfect,” Asami replied. “Hey, Korra?”
“Yeah?” the avatar had started walking to the stream to get water, but turned around at the sound of her name.
“Thanks again. For everything.”