Chapter Text
Heat.
Heat that bore down mercilessly from the too bright sun.
Heat that rose in waves from the barren earth.
Heat that shimmered, and confused. Heat that could make far things seem close, and near things seem far.
Heat that could kill.
Oh yes, it could kill.
And it did. Often.
The woman stepping out of her old gas guzzling Satomobile (gas guzzling, but powerful, oh so powerful) didn’t need to see the bones that littered the side of the road to know that the heat could kill. But still she did see them.
Human. Animal. Some of the bones were obvious. Some less so.
There was a pile to the side of the road, just behind where she had stopped.
Perhaps a warning. Perhaps a marker.
To go further was to court death, was perhaps the message the bones were meant to convey.
But which way?
The foolish traveller would try to figure out in which direction the warning applied. Perhaps to the west, the direction in which she was going. Or perhaps to the east, the direction from which she had come.
The less foolish traveller would know that the direction didn’t matter. Every direction was death, in this land of dust and sand and sun.
The wise person, of course, wouldn’t be a traveller at all.
There had to be safety somewhere, didn’t there? Somewhere that someone wise would come across, and say to themselves and any who relied on them for protection that this was the place, and that they would need to go no further.
The woman reached back into her car and pulled out a partially full water skin. She squirted a small amount of water into her mouth, then closed the skin and put it back in her car. She had to make it last. Even when she was close to the location she presently called home, she still had to make it last.
Then she took the few steps necessary to reach the front of her car, and popped open the hood. Then she bent over so that she was at partially underneath the hood. Even with the heat of the engine, the shade was a welcome relief from the killing sun.
Even after all this time, the V8 engine and the supercharger gave her pleasure that few other things did. It made gas even more precious for her than it was for most of those few remaining people who used cars. Electric vehicles were all dead and gone, of course, as the infrastructure to keep them running just did not exist anymore.
Not that worrying about the environment was a priority for anyone anymore. It was far too late for that.
Far too late for anything, really.
A flicker of movement caught the attention of one her green eyes. Something still lived in the wasteland still. She watched, completely still, for a moment.
Eventually she saw it again.
A snake, just barely visible as its natural camouflage matched the sand and rock almost perfectly. Brown and tan and grey, it was an efficient predator, but nothing else. Nothing dangerous.
Not to her, anyway.
For a brief moment she thought about the throwing knives she had on her person. Snake could be good eating, but she had no way to keep the meat, and she had other priorities anyway. So instead she stayed still, and watched the snake slither past, as it looked for small rodents or bird eggs or whatever else it could find to eat.
There had to be something for it to eat, after all.
Somewhere.
Or why was it even here?
A smudge of dust on the horizon behind her car, in the direction she had come from, caught the woman’s eye. She waited for a few long seconds, as if she had not immediately seen the dust smudge, which was now a quickly growing dust cloud, before moving quickly, slamming the hood of her interceptor closed, then rushing back to the driver’s seat.
There was probably nobody watching to see her performance. But she had always liked to take the time to do things right, no matter what the circumstance. And extenuating circumstances such as these often made getting things done right more important than ever.
She turned the key that she had left in the car’s ignition, and listened to the engine come to life with a roar.
She smiled with satisfaction as her right foot came down on the gas and her left foot released her clutch. The car roared, and shot forward, and then her quick movements were reversed and then repeated as she shifted up.
It only took a few seconds before she was going over a hundred kilometres an hour, far faster than her usual cruising speed. She kept accelerating, and the dust rose behind her until she could no longer see her pursuers.
They were there, of course. Gaining on her, as they had the advantage of already being at speed.
Exactly as planned.
The woman’s eyes flickered from the road in front of her to the mirror and back again, over and over and over.
She had to be getting near to what she was looking for, she just needed to stay ahead of -
“Oh fuck!” she yelled as a boulder came flying out of the dust and over her car, just missing crushing her.
There was no time for her to wonder how they had managed to find an earth bender, she just had to hope that they didn’t have a metal bender, as well. She swerved around the boulder as it rolled to a stop in front of her.
It would be too much to hope that one of her pursuers crashed into it, she suspected.
The turn!
Without hesitation she turned her wheel right as she geared down, then back left again as she drifted and changed her facing by ninety degrees. It was the work of moments for her to get back up to top gear. Then she accelerated cross country.
Not that there was a huge difference between the road and the cross country terrain, but the road was less likely to have a boulder sticking out of it.
She glanced at her mirror, just in time to see one of her pursuers flip and roll as it tried unsuccessfully to match her turn. The vehicle came to a stop upside down, but was then lost to view as the dust hid the accident scene. The rest seemed to make it, but far more slowly than she had.
She grinned.
Still got it.
She drove quickly up to the top of a rise in the ground, all four of her wheels briefly leaving the ground as she topped the rise. It was not much further now.
Now.
She slammed her car to a skidding stop as she reached the edge of a ravine, so that now the car was facing back the way she had come. She jumped out of her car, but instead of going to the engine as she had before, now she went to the back.
The woman popped open the trunk, and pulled out a rifle from it. Then she ran away from the car and dove to the ground. She had only a few seconds to get herself and the rifle set, but she knew that was all she needed. She had owned the rifle she was holding for a long time, and had long known how to get the best out of it, in a very short time, if necessary.
Plus, she had helped design it.
She settled into as comfortable position as she could as she lay on the rocks and dirt, and extended the rifle with its bipod in front of her, releasing the safety that was nestled in the rifle’s trigger guard as she did so.
She was just in time, as the first pursuing vehicle topped the rise in front of her.
She fired a single shot, and a bullet hole appeared in the windshield of the first vehicle, on the driver’s side.
The vehicle jerked left as it slowed down, then jerked right again, before flipping and rolling off to the side, still over a hundred metres away from her.
She then shot at the second vehicle, but the results were not as dramatic.
Fuck.
She needed to move. The rest were getting too close, and there were also survivors climbing outside the flipped truck.
She rolled to the side behind a rock as bullets and a boulder impacted the space she had just been.
Then a giant white ball of fur topped the rise behind her pursuers and crashed into the nearest jeep, flipping it over.
There was a woman riding the giant ball of fur, and she was doing just as much damage as her companion, if not more.
Claws and teeth tore into the woman’s pursuers, as doors were ripped from vehicles and bites taken out of people.
Rocks exploded from the brown haired woman, in all directions, ruining engines and perforating bodies.
Fire blew through one vehicle, and caused its occupants to scream horrifically until the vehicle’s fuel tank exploded, and mercifully ending their torment.
The woman took another shot with her rifle at the driver of a slowly moving truck.
This one she got in the head. His compatriots had already exited the truck, so that vehicle would hopefully become a useful prize.
Shots from across the ravine led to more bodies falling, as the woman’s reinforcements added their contribution to the battle.
And so it went.
Until there was no one left to fight.
Until there was no one left to kill.
With some enemies, prisoners were not an option.
With some enemies, quarter was neither asked nor given.
Were there any other kind of enemies? Asami Sato wondered. She hoped so.
But with all the things she had seen since the bombs had dropped, she doubted it.
The brown haired woman, who wore her usual tank top and loose, light pants, jumped down off of her furry companion. She ignored the fallen bodies and broken vehicles, and walked up to Asami.
She also ignored the way her animal companion grabbed one of corpses, and dragged it off so that she could have a snack.
Keeping a polar bear-dog fed and healthy was no easy task these days, and the more the animal was allowed to take her own spoils of battle, the more food was left for everyone else.
Their little band had been fortunate, and had never had to go to such desperate lengths to keep themselves fed, but Asami knew of other groups that had made that choice, before their ends had come anyway.
“Korra,” Asami said softly.
“Hey love,” Korra responded. She walked right up to Asami and wrapped her wife in a tight hug. “Mission accomplished, I guess.”
“Yes,” Asami replied as the hug ended. She kept one arm wrapped around her wife’s waist. “We keep this up, and the world might be safe again in a few centuries.”
Men and women, previously hidden in the ravine, came out of hiding and starting combing over the bodies. Children, too. Any inclination people had once had to let the dead keep their belongings was long gone. Those who weren’t willing to take anything and everything that became available to them quickly became victims to those who were willing.
Korra turned her head and looked at Asami. “It’s happening,” she said.
Asami sighed. The ravine had an underground supply of fresh water. She had been keeping track of it, and had sounded the alarm several months back that the underground water levels were going down and were unlikely to come back up.
Part of the reason she had been out scouting was to see if there was one direction that looked more promising than any other. Unfortunately, she had found raiders, but nothing else.
And now Korra’s confirmation of the dropping water levels meant that the ravine, which they had hoped would become a permanent home (it was not like it rained often enough to worry about flash floods), was now just another way-point in their never ending quest for safety.
“We should be able to scrounge enough parts and supplies from the raiders to help us migrate,” she finally said. “But we still have no idea where we would migrate to.”
“Yeah,” Korra agreed simply.
It had taken them a long time to find this spot. Years. And they had lost a lot of good people along the way. Both in the finding of the location, and later in the protecting of it.
Mako, who had protected his brother to the end. Tenzin, who had never wanted to outlive his wife or youngest child. Ikki, who had rampaged to avenge her father, and allowed the rest of them to get clear as she did so.
And one other, though Asami would not let herself think about that loss. Not here. Not now.
And that was just those they had lost after the bombs fell.
The losses that had occurred when humanity had done its best to fulfill the conditions of the ultimate suicide pact were beyond all calculation.
The only question left, Asami knew, was whether or not the bombs had caused the near extinction of humanity, or whether it had caused the complete extinction, only slowly, and what they were doing now merely represented the last desperate thrashing of an already-dead animal.
If there was any way to gamble on that final question, she knew on which side she would put her money.
And yet...
She looked away from the carnage and the looting, and at her wife once more. She still had reasons to keep going, and the woman she was standing next to was the best of those reasons.
“The only thing more horrible than a battle won is a battle lost,” she said quietly.
Korra nodded, and forced herself to turn away from the bodies, as well. “Yeah, we did win. Now we just need to figure out a new place to go.”
There was grey in Korra’s brown hair, Asami realized, not for the first time, just as there was grey in her own. It was strange. Considering how infrequently she got to look herself in a mirror, outside of an occasional glance in a car mirror, that is, she wondered how far her internal perception of herself had drifted from the older reality.
There was still a part of her that thought that everything had stopped, all those years ago. She had held Korra’s hand and walked into the spirit portal with her, and then things had stopped, and thus they had stayed, young and perfect with nothing but hope for the future.
“You alright?” Korra asked as she looked up at Asami.
“Never better,” Asami answered with a smile.
And was she even lying? After all, she still had life and some love, even in the wasteland of the desolate present.
And how many people could say the same?
-------
It was a sombre group that gathered around central fire that evening. Like so many deserts, it was often scorching hot during the day, but near freezing cold at night.
And firewood, like everything else, was hard to find. And only getting harder.
“Come on, people!” Bolin called out. “Yes, the water situation is bad, but we were going to have to think about leaving anyway! There’s a reason this is the first big communal fire we’ve had in a month, after all.”
After Mako had died, Bolin had expanded into a greater role in the community, both for his family and for the entire group. While Korra was obviously looked to as the Avatar, and Asami was kept busy in her engineering, battle planning, and scouting roles, neither one of them was considered the leader of their little band.
That honour went to Bolin.
Asami and Korra sat down next to Opal, who had her and Bolin’s youngest child with her, as the boy was still nursing.
“How are you holding up?” Korra asked Opal as she sat between the two other women.
Young Mako cried out as if to answer, and Opal sighed. Then she pulled down her top and winced as her son latched onto one breast.
“I’m holding up,” Opal answered as she looked down at her son. “It will be tough on those of us with young kids when we have to move.”
Both Korra and Asami nodded in response, and both ignored Opal’s wince as she realized what she had said. They needed to focus on the troubles to come, and not the tragedies of the past.
For the fact of the matter was, nobody wanted to move again, no matter what their personal responsibilities were. And they all knew it would be far harder on the very young and the very old than it would be on anyone else.
The odds that they would make it to a new location, somewhere, anywhere, without burying people along the way were so low as to be non-existent.
More people, that is.
But still it had to be done.
The three of them turned their attention to Bolin again. He was reassuring people as they needed it, and seeing everyone, and making them all feel better. It was what he did.
“I’m surprised there aren’t more objections,” Asami said. It was rare to see people so agreeable to doing what they had to do, instead of what they wanted to do.
Opal shook her head. “You shouldn’t be. You warned us this was likely almost half a year ago. Anger has had lots of time to turn to acceptance since then.”
“And I knocked a few heads together,” Korra added with a laugh. “There had been the bare beginnings of a coordinated movement to oust Bolin while you were gone scouting, but between my Avatar-sized threats and Opal’s sweet reason, we managed to nip that in the bud real quick.”
“Your reputation didn’t hurt either, Asami,” Opal added. “Often, we just had to ask them when was the last time you were wrong about something important. They couldn’t answer.”
Asami only smiled softly in response.
The last time she had been wrong about something important...
She could think of a time. A time just before the missiles flew and the bombs dropped. And she had been so sure that they would win, and everything would be fine, because before that they had won and everything had been fine. Every. Single. Time.
But she had been wrong. They didn’t win.
And nothing was fine.
Not even close.
She had known that the remnants of the Red Lotus were out there, and potentially dangerous. But no intelligence she had ever seen had indicated that they had gotten their hands on spirit vines or that they intended to weaponize them.
So they had gone after the Red Lotus once the information had been acquired that the Red Lotus was involved in spirit vine weapon proliferation. Only to find out too late that the Red Lotus hadn’t created the spirit vine bombs, they had merely stolen them.
Stolen them from Zaofu and Republic City, who then got tricked into launching their missiles at one another.
And at everyone else.
It had taken Asami a long time to accept that she had been helpless to stop what happened after it had started. It had taken Korra even longer. In some ways, Asami was fairly sure that Korra had never accepted it.
Just as Opal had never completely accepted that it was her mother who was one of the people most responsible for the end of the world. She believed it, and she knew it to be true, but she had never truly accepted it.
Asami hoped, for the sake of Opal’s children, if nothing else, that Opal would eventually figure out how to live with the burden her mother had left for her. Some things did not need to be passed on.
“I’ll rest up tonight,” Asami said, “do some maintenance on Ms B tomorrow, then head out tomorrow night.”
Korra frowned, and Opal shook her head. “No,” Opal said. “You were gone for over a month. You need to debrief, we need to plan this out, and most importantly, you need to rest!”
Korra nodded in agreement. “We’re not out of water yet. We can take the time to do this right, still.”
Asaim glared at her wife, but said nothing in response. Korra knew the exact thing to say to get her to slow down. And she appreciated it.
It just aggravated her in the moment.
Korra stood up and reached down to offer Asami her hand.
Asami’s gaze softened, and she took the offered hand so that Korra could pull her up.
“Come on,” Korra said. “Let the talkers talk and Bolin shake babies and kiss hands.” She paused for a moment with a fake look of confusion. “I got that backwards, didn’t I?”
Both Opal and Asami laughed. Opal closed her top up again and burped her near sleeping baby. She looked up at Asami. “You look even more tired than I feel,” she said. “Get out of here, you two. I’ll let Bolin know he can talk to you tomorrow, but not until then, and not too early. Then I’m going to sleep as well.” She looked down once more at her son, now asleep in her arms. “For as long as he’ll let me, at least.”
Both Asami and Korra looked down at the sleeping baby, their faces sombre. They were proud to be aunts to all of Opal and Bolin’s kids, and Mako certainly deserved to have his name remembered.
But the baby was also a constant reminder of all those they had lost.
Asami blinked her eyes as memory briefly washed over her. She grabbed Korra’s hand.
“We’re getting old,” Asami said after they had wished Opal a good night and had left the central meeting area. Earth bent into the cliff side, the area was a temperature controlled as they could make it, as were all of the individual “apartments,” for lack of a better term.
“Are we?” Korra asked as they slowly made their way back to their living quarters.
Korra’s hand felt so good in her own after so long away.
“We think more on the past than on the future,” Asami answered. “If that’s not a sign of aging, what is?”
“Our grey hair and fucked up knees,” Korra instantly responded.
Asami laughed. “Okay, those too.”
They reached their apartment and Korra opened the door for both of them. “There’s water for a shower,” she said with a shy smile. “For both of us.”
“A shower?” Asami couldn’t remember the last time she had had a shower.
“I was careful with my water ration,” Korra said. “I do have an advantage when it comes to making water go further, after all.”
Water bending, Asami thought. Was Korra the last water bender? Or did some remnant of the water tribes still exist?
“Then we should save that water for when we really need it,” she said.
“You really need it right now,” Korra replied. “And so do I.” She looked down at the floor. “I need you.”
Asami reached out with one hand and gently pushed Korra’s chin up so that Korra was looking at Asami again.
“Then heat us a shower, Avatar,” she said gently.
Korra grinned, and quickly made her way to the bathroom of their apartment. In many ways, it was a bathroom in name only. Water was far too precious to waste on indoor plumbing. Everyone got a monthly allotment for cooking, sponge baths, laundry, and any other use they could think of.
If they ran out ahead of time, then there were consequences.
Asami looked at the water level of their tank. Despite it being almost the end of the month, it was near full. She looked over at Korra, who looked down and shrugged slightly.
Asami reached over and pulled Korra into a tight hug. “Love, you don’t have to stop living just because I’m gone.”
“Don’t I?” Korra asked as if what Asami had said was ridiculous and obviously wrong.
“Arms up,” Asami said as she ignored Korra’s most recent words. They needed to have a... discussion, about a lot of things, Asami thought, but now. Definitely not now.
Korra obeyed and lifted her arms, so that Asami could pull Korra’s top over her head. Underneath was Korra’s breast wrap, the standard undergarment of any person with enough breast size to make restraint worthwhile.
Bras were a thing of the past, after all, unless an untapped cache was found of preserved, prewar clothing.
Slowly, Asami reached around Korra and removed the wrap, one layer at a time, until Korra’s breasts sprang free. Gravity and time had taken their toll on them, as well as one other thing, but they still took Asami’s breath away, every time.
As did the rest of Korra.
Every time.
Asami lifted her arms in return, and Korra returned the favour.
The light in Korra’s eyes as Asami’s smaller breasts became exposed let Asami know that Korra still felt the same about her, even after all these years, far better than words could.
They both finished undressing, then Korra water bent a hot, steamy shower for the both of them. The muscles in Korra’s back and thighs rippled as she performed the dance necessary for successful water bending.
Asami watched her wife water bend, and fell in love all over again, as she had done so many times before.
They both stepped into the shower area, and were instantly drenched in sweat. Korra earth bent a thin chunk of stone from the wall, then smoothed it out and gave it an edge. Asami stood still as Korra ran the stone over Asami’s skin.
Dirt and sweat and body hair were all removed quickly and efficiently, though Korra may have taken extra time on some spots more than others.
Breasts and buttocks were obvious places to spend more time. And certainly Korra would be spending much more time on Asami’s increasingly wet centre as the night progressed. But for now, in the shower, it was the scars that Korra spent the most time on.
Scars from a car crash. A scar from a knife. Two scars, matching, on Asami’s stomach and back, where a bullet had passed through. Korra spent more time on that one, as if to acknowledge how close Asami had come to death. Only the fact that Korra had been right there to heal her had kept her alive.
Then it was Asami’s turn to do the same for Korra. To wash, and to clean, and to shave, though there was one part of Korra’s body that Asami did not give as much attention to, as much as she wished she could. It was attentive, and worshipful, what they did for one another, any chance that they could.
And Asami knew exactly how it would end.
Not that she was complaining.