Zoya Nazyalensky Imagines

Only The Good

Good things should be allowed to stay good. That's the one piece of advice that Zoya's managed to remember ever since she was young. If you see someone good in the middle of this world, you should let them be.

That's what Zoya thinks about when she looks across the grounds of the Little Palace and sees Y/N L/N practicing with the other Etherealki: that girl should stay herself for as long as possible. Zoya has already been jaded by time and too many bad turns of luck, but Y/N? If Zoya was smart, she'd stay away from her. Misfortune seems to dog Zoya's heels, and sooner or later, it will follow Y/N as well.

It would be easiest if she could follow her own advice. Usually, Zoya is good at this sort of thing. She develops a plan, she carries it through. In the end, everyone leaves, and you have to rely on your own mind to get you through the storm. Zoya has told herself again and again that she needs to stop thinking about Y/N, yet when she drifts off to sleep each night, she still sees that familiar face just before she goes.

No, Y/N is a habit that Zoya can't seem to break. Zoya has been lost in her own feelings for a very, very long time, since she was still a young girl learning how to be a Grisha in the first place. Back then, she was still Zoya of Nowhere, the girl dropped off at the gates with no prestigious family ties that all the other students seemed to celebrate. Zoya had not needed the others' approval then, she never really had. Yet there was one student whose questions she didn't mind.

Y/N L/N had grown on her, despite Zoya's best efforts to block her out. Somewhere, in the back of her mind, there was this last ditch hope that if Zoya moved quickly through her lessons or, conversely, did something so awful she was kicked out of the school, she would be allowed to leave Os Alta and go back to Aunt Liliyana's house, go back to wandering around Novokribirsk like she had before. Making friends could only slow her down.

Yet Y/N stuck around, and after a while, Zoya realized that she rather liked having the other girl there with her. When Zoya, thirteen, had come back from Tsibeya with her newly created amplifier, still reeling from the scars of the killing of the white tiger, Y/N had stayed with her for days, asking no questions and needing no answers. Zoya didn't realize how nice it was to have a hand to hold until they went back to classes and Y/N stopped being only hers again.

Despite all this, it had taken one particularly intrusive Corporalnik student for Zoya to realize her true feelings. Zoya had been walking back to class after break, pretending that she wasn't staring at Y/N up ahead over her, when a girl named Danica Petrova had approached her. The Heartrender had the audacity to nudge Zoya in the arm as if they were childhood companions, and spoke in a voice riddled with seeming condescension.

"So, when are you going to tell Y/N how you feel?" Zoya turned to Danica frostily. "I beg your pardon?" To her credit, the junior Corporalnik didn't back down immediately. "Your feelings for Y/N. I can hear your heart rate rise whenever you look at her." Zoya issued out a cutting glare, one she's perfected since arriving at the Little Palace. It's come in handy before, and in times like now. "I have no such feelings for Y/N. Perhaps my heart rate rises because I'm glad to see that there's at least one student here other than myself who's of more use to Ravka than a dirty dishcloth."

Zoya had strode away coolly, successfully fighting the urge to use her abilities to push the girl into a nearby ditch. She was a Nazyalensky, and she did not dirty her hands with such lesser tasks. All the same, Danica's words swam around her mind for the rest of the day. Feelings for Y/N? She could never have such a thing.

She did, as it turns out. They haven't left Zoya, either, despite her best attempts to hide them. Zoya has grown up now, as has Y/N, yet the sight of her fellow Etherealki still fills Zoya with an utterly unbecoming amount of glee. No matter how hard Zoya tries to tune out her heart, to force herself to carry along with her duties just like she's cut out or left behind every other good thing in her life, she can't quite convince herself to do the same thing with Y/N.