a/n: this is my response to the prompt for the third round of the probending circuit. have some angst.
Key words: orange, black, gold, the genre tragedy, Meelo, and colorful.
Word count: 1777
Characters: Zhu Li, Varrick, Meelo.
Pairing: Zhurrick.
She's watching the golden Spirit portal glow in the distance when the boy finds her. He doesn't sneak up on her with his usual exuberance and uncontrollable flatulence and stream of babbling words: instead, he approaches her like a bomb about to go off. Like a Colossus.
"Ms. Moon?" he asks softly and she nearly bursts into tears then and there because if things had gone according to plan, he'd have called her Mrs. Varrick. He seems to realize something is wrong, and he backtracks. "Zhu Li? Are you alright?"
She hasn't spoken since it had happened because however illogical it seems, perhaps if she doesn't acknowledge what had happened then maybe Varrick, her enthusiastic, childish, adventurous Varrick with his endless conversations about luxuries beyond most people's imagining, will still be alright and alive and not—
And not—
Her hands fly to her mouth and she nearly chokes on her own impending tears but then the boy—Meelo—puts a hand on her shoulder, and it's as though he's an anchor tying her to the earth.
"It was scary out there today," he says in a voice reserved for soothing toddlers. (Varrick had always loved children, had always wanted them.) "Me and Dad and the airbenders did this thing to Kuvira's robot thing; we painted up its windows. Orange and pink and blue and—it was real colorful. Did you see?"
She wonders why he's acting like there are still colors in the world other than black, but decides to humor him. The sooner he leaves the sooner she can take more—more drastic measures to ease her loneliness.
Come to think of it, why is everyone acting like the worst hasn't happened? Avatar Korra and Asami Sato have spent the whole evening on the island making cow eyes at one another, Bolin and Opal Beifong have made up with another, Mako is rejoicing his separation from Prince Wu…even Hiroshi Sato hadn't looked the least bit guilty for the plan that had led to…to the unthinkable.
She won't think it. If she doesn't think it, it didn't happen.
"It was real brave of you and Varrick to attack the robot like you did." He pauses for a second. "You didn't have to go with him. He was just your boss—"
"My fiancé." Her voice is hoarse and raspy from disuse but Meelo beams at her like she's figured out the secrets of the universe. She shows him her finger. "He was—he is not my boss. He's my fiancé."
"I need to attach this ring to your finger." He gets down on one knee, and he's so nervous that he's actually shaking like a prepubescent kid asking out their crush, and she nearly teases him about it but doesn't want to break the moment. "Zhu Li Moon, will you do the thing for the rest of our lives?"
It takes a second for everything to register, to realize that this is really happening, and then she nods. "Yes."
"Yes!" He slides the ring on her finger and presses his lips to hers in a passionate kiss that makes the normally sharp gears of her brain short-circuit. Then he picks her up with one arm and she nearly giggles, the current situation be damned. "Now, let's go attach these barely-functional rust buckets to a giant killer smashing machine!"
"It's exactly how I always pictured our engagement," she replies giddily.
Meelo instantly backtracks. "I'm sorry," he says, and for once in this conversation he sounds like the child he is. They've all aged a few years because of this battle. She expects to find gray hairs tomorrow.
His crestfallen expression wounds her, and she sighs. "It's alright," she murmurs. "We didn't have time to announce anything anyway."
Why had the world given her the love of her life only to steal him away far too soon? How could the world be so cruel?
Meelo looks at her again like their places have been reversed, as though she's the child and he's the adult. How old is he, anyway? Seven? Eight? Too young to deal with such a horrendous battle.
"Mom says that when you're feeling bad," he begins slowly, "it helps to talk about it."
Talk? How can she talk when she wants to clamp her lips together until they bleed and her voice box to rust from disuse? She forces herself to look at this logically, and grudgingly accepts that what the boy is saying has its merits.
(Maybe she'll stop seeing it when she closes her eyes.)
"You don't have to," he says hesitantly. "I won't push it."
She shakes her head once, resolutely, and then opens her mouth to speak, the words pouring out in an influx. "Varrick and I were almost done sawing a hole in the Colossus…"
Zhu Li gasps as a chunk of ice falls on the windshield, breaking her concentration for a split second. She looks up to see more ice breaking away from the Colossus. "Varrick!" Her voice is shaky. "We have to go now!"
"Almost there," is his mantra. He says it like a religion, like a lifeline, like he'd said her name in his proposal. "Almost there, Zhu Li!"
Zhu Li knows that their plasma saws are almost done cutting through, and a tiny part of her relaxes because maybe they will be able to get out of there in time and everything will be okay. Then her gaze flickers toward the Colossus' shoulder as it finally bursts free from the ice, and her heart skips a beat.
"Varrick!" Her voice escalates to a shrill shriek. "We have to go now!"
His eyes flicker between her and the controls and he drinks in the sight of her like she's the last thing he will ever see. "I love you, Zhu Li," he says matter-of-factly.
Her eyebrows furrow as he reaches for one of the controls, and then it hits her and she screams wordlessly as he flips the ejection switch.
The air is punched from her lungs and it prevents her from screaming but it doesn't stop her from staring at the Colossus' hand as it smashes the hummingbird suit in slow motion. She reaches out, feeling shocked and horrified and dismayed and a million billion trillion different other things. All she can hear is the buzzing in her ears with Varrick's last words echoing in her ears like a bullet in a metal box.
IloveyouZhuLiIloveyouZhuLiIloveyouZhuLiIloveyouZhuLiIloveyouZhuLiIloveyouZhuLi—
Her parachute whips in the wind and she floats gently down behind another building that hasn't been crushed yet, and when her feet touch the ground her knees crumple. She stays there, curled up into a ball, until the rescue teams arrive and carry her to safety.
Despite being surrounded by people, she's never felt more alone.
She doesn't realize that she's crying (sobbing, rather) until Meelo offers her a red cloth and she blows her nose into it, realizing a bit too late that he'd cut off a bit of his sleeve for her to use as a makeshift tissue.
"Spirits," she moans, "Spirits, why would he do that? Why would he leave me?" She knows there's no logic at being angry at the dead but she doesn't care, damn it. "That stupid bastard left me alone—I wanted to die with him."
"He was a hero," Meelo whispers without flinching at her vulgarity. "Varrick was a hero."
"I wish we didn't need so damn many heroes," she wails. Her breath is catching with her sobs, her chest on fire. She can't see for tears. "I was only engaged to him for five minutes."
She'd only kissed him once. She'd never gotten to choose bridesmaids, never gotten to pick out a wedding dress. She pictures Varrick crying after they say their vows and nearly smiles but then it crashes into her with the force of heartbreak that it'll never happen. Never will she find out what it's like to be tangled up in bedsheets with Varrick or whisper affections in his ear in the middle of the night.
Spirits, she'd never even called him by his first name.
That thought sends her into tears again, and this time hysterics bleed in because she thinks that Meelo must have dealt with her tears too much right now, but when she opens her eyes, he's still there with a hand on her shoulder and a shaky half frown, half smile on his pale face.
"I'm sorry," she says, sniffling. "I'm…I'm not usually this maudlin." She wonders if they've stepped into an alternate universe where she's weepy and Meelo is serious, and then brushes the thought aside.
The sky is red, there's heat and dust everywhere, ash is falling like rain, and she stumbles toward the makeshift triage. She moves past groaning airbenders and bloody Beifong twins and monks administering last rites, and then she stops in front of the crushed hummingbird suit, her feet frozen to the ground as she sees the blood and guts and brain matter smeared all over the windshield.
Varrick, she thinks. That can't be Varrick.
And for one moment of total clarity, she knows that right then she'd have done anything just to be able to trade places with him.
She'd expected him to be half buried and bleeding under a small pile of wood and brick, not…not this. Sure, she'd seen the hummingbird suit get crushed, but she'd thought—
She'd thought that—that if worst came to worst, she'd at least have a body to bury, not blood and guts and brain matter.
Flakes of ash are still falling, which will soon cover both of them. Zhu Li stretches out in the rubble beside Varrick's remains and is content to be buried with him.
"Do you feel better?" Meelo's expression of hope is almost heartbreaking.
Zhu Li sighs. "I will be," she says by way of reply, and she pulls Meelo into a quick one-armed hug. "Thank you."
Meelo grins at her, wide and uncontrollable, and he hooks her arm through his. "Can I take you back to the party, Mrs. Varrick?" He sounds exactly like Varrick for a second and she marvels at the similarities between them.
She nods.