Dear Alura,

I can't say I was surprised when I heard the news that you were no more. The last we had talked, it was a blaze of anger and a disconnected host of sensations that don't line up in my mind, especially not twelve years later. What stands out to me is the red glowing from your normally white eye-slits, framed with onyx black and metallic crimson as insane screams strangled your throat.

I left at your pleas for me to get away. You didn't want to be responsible for my death, didn't want my blood on your hands. I assumed you were dead after that – you were treasonous for bringing me into the Fright Zone. Not for your own purposes, but to save another one whom we both loved. It was your last good deed before you spiraled into madness.

But somehow you survived, when I thought you dead twice. Now I walk near the shattered pieces of that blank, empty mask. The pedestal no one was permitted to touch, not since your children brought back the remains of who you were.

When I heard you died to save them, to free Etheria from the clutches of a madman like yourself – I knew immediately what the real reason was. Your eldest, Catra, spoke in sorrowed screams toward her sister, Adora, telling her your death was no sacrifice. That it was no good thing. You wanted to die, Alura. And they both knew it, though Adora tried to deny it at first.

I see bits of you within them – Catra's intense emotion, Adora's mature wisdom. But why, Alura? Why did you choose to leave this world the way you did? (My fingers touch the sharp edges of your mask, drawing small pricks of blood on the pad of my thumb.) You were always the rasher of us two, the one who took the reins – sometimes literally – and send us galloping into a place unknown even to you. But I trusted you, trusted in your strength, wisdom, and kindness.

Little did I know, until it was too late for me to help you, that you had become someone no one should trust.

They said you became dangerous. Unhinged. Prior to our unhappy reunion, you killed two people, wounded another, and spared a boy. That boy became a king. My king. And you sealed your love for him in blood, saving his life by ending yours. Buying time for Catra and Adora to shut down the Heart of Etheria and end the restraint on the planet's magic.

I don't know whether to thank you, or mourn for you. You saved us all in the end. I remember the exact moment my chip disabled and I was able to look at the world without Horde Prime's sweet, dark voice oozing into my ears like machine oil. I remember the Rebellion laughing in joy as they realized they had done it. They were free from the Horde, and saved the known universe as well.

But their freedom, like everything else, was paid with blood. Your blood. Fire – your fire, like that spark in your blazing green eyes, so full of determination and confidence...yet, afraid. Afraid of everything, so afraid you wanted to become all-powerful to protect yourself from any and every threat.

Neither of us were particularly religious, though you were more of an atheist than me. But I can't help but hope that somehow, there is a force out there that shone its mercy on you in those final moments. That it picked you up and soothed your aching spirit, so terrified and weary, and told you there were better ways.

Too late. That's what you said, as retold by Catra during one of her episodes of sobbing. Do you know how much you hurt them, in the end? Do you care? I don't mean to be harsh. But repentance would have been the salve that soothes all wrongs (you must know such terminology, since you helped me study for my medical exam). You did not repent, in the end. You changed, but repentance is so much more than change. Perhaps you knew that, and believed death was a better rest for your weary soul.

You gave up the fight to remain good, to remain everything I always remembered in you. And you left so many people behind to deal with the aftermath. But I remember you not as the dark lady whose terror wracked Etheria for twenty-two long years. I remember you as my white rose, as the gentle young woman who would hold me and see me for who I was. Not a half-breed, not a disgusting half-Del, but as her best friend. As her lover, her soulmate. And you should know if I could reverse time, I would have rushed to your side to stop you by any means necessary, even if you hated me for a time.

People loved you – perhaps you were blind to that fact. I will never know. But I will also never cease to love you, and I forgive you, even if no one else does. And if, somehow, you were shown grace by a higher power in the end...may we reunite. May we heal.

Yours, even now,

Nell

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