DEAR DICTATOR → zuko

╸twenty two : if you love something

❝ if you love something ❞

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     NARI'S BODY IS still. Blood runs from it, warm and crimson, filling up the cracks in the platform.

     Zuko's body is frozen, as well, but for different reasons. Not death, but dread. His blood drains, cold and white, from his face. His soul lifts from his shoulders, air from his lungs. Ryo stands far behind Nari, a proud victor. The predator bears its proud teeth at its bloodied prey, wild eyes far more erratic than his natural instinctive habit: kill. 

     And kill, Ryo has. 

     Her face is hidden by a mop of tousled black hair. Littered and matted by blood and dirt, sprawled about by winds of fire and greed, and squashed down by the cruel hand of a violent leader, there's not much of Nari that screams "Nari". If Zuko had walked in at random, if he'd walked in oblivious to the world, he would have been naive and blind. He would have assumed some stupid earthbender, clad in all the torn up and dirtied pale greens and yellows, had their ass handed to them in a drunken debacle. 

     Zuko would know Nari anywhere. Even with her bluntly short hair curtaining all her bloodied and broken features, even with her lifeless chest still and silent, even with her face smushed into the concrete platform like a squashed lychee berry, he would know her. 

     But this is not Nari. The dead girl on the platform before him is not Nari. She is a winner, she is determined, she is driven, and she is not dead. That's not Nari. 

     It can't be... can it?

     Surely he blinked and some actor jumped in. He must've looked away, a brief second in time where something distracting caught his eye, and Nari switched out with another fool. The fearless firebender he's spent years arguing with, bickering with, training with, and befriending— she would not go down so easily. Nari cannot go down so easily. 

     Zuko steals a step forward, his weight eluding the earth which his feet sunk deeply into moments prior. He has to get to her before that bastard decides to land another hit! He has to get to her before she—!

     A warm and slender hand yanks him back by the collar of his shirt, pulling him flank with her dark and tall frame. Tana, Zuko learned, with eyes cold and lifeless as they stare forward. 

     Some low-life daofei member is careless with Nari's sandbag of a body as they yank her by the armpits, her head hanging against the rock as it scrapes a bloody path. The sight burns an anger never before felt into Zuko's chest, it boils and bruises and breaks into furious sparks. His yellow eyes are as wild as ever, But Tana?

     She's calm. Complacent. At peace, as if this happened every day.

     Did it happen every day? Was losing your friends life a casual thing in this psychopathic town?

     Tana spares not a glimpse of emotion aside from her dark and taut lips, the quick breath she lets escape them becoming a violent warning. 

     But Zuko refuses to listen to the wise waterbender's warning. "Be careful with her!" This belting yell doesn't come from his chest— this is a yell from the very depths of his heart. Zuko has always had some awareness of his care for Nari. He knew it when he was a kid, when she'd flinch at a pretend strike or cower at the yell of some random guard telling Azula not to abuse the rosebushes. He knew it when they grew up, and she started to visit less and less frequently. He knew it when he left the Fire Nation on the terms of his banishment, worrying about what would become of her. He knew of it when their ship exploded, and he knew of it in the north pole. And above all else, he knows of it now.