A/N: So, I was going to write this earlier, but I haven't really been on FF as much lately. I would blame it on finals, but it's summer break and I still just got around to writing. So that's why I am writing about Tahno's loss of bending so long after that episode.
DISCLAIMER: I own nothing originally associated with Legend of Korra.
His once-sleek black hair now blew behind him, knotted and disheveled. His clothes were wrinkled and dirty. The lean and muscled physique he'd possessed had deteriorated into a weak, bony body, and his skin seemed stretched and sallow. Instead of the arrogance he once had, he dragged himself throughout Republic City without a single ounce of confidence.
Tahno was very, very tired and so very, very broken.
He had no purpose anymore. No goal, no aspirations. He was useless. And so Tahno wandered. He hardly slept, he hardly ate, he never talked. He didn't live. He merely existed.
The good thing about being dead is that you don't have to think. Tahno's body still lived, but his soul did not. Or rather, it did not want to, and so it didn't—or at least it didn't in Tahno's mind. So, as thinking was now painful, he just didn't do it. Not thinking has its advantages, after all. You don't have to think about hunger. You don't have to think about how exhausted you are. And you, if you are Tahno, don't have to think about losing your bending. About losing such a big part of yourself.
So you don't.
The sky grew dark. Gold-white stars sparkled beautifully, stark against the sheet of black. Tahno's legs collapsed, and he let himself fall to the ground by the park river. Finally, after days of pretending he wasn't alive, he let the thoughts tumble through his mind. The first thing he thought of was how cruel everything was. Life. Even the sky mocked him, being so beautiful, still being so beautiful after Tahno's beauty was lost. He thought of how he'd had everything; he was young, successful, at the peak of his career and life—and in a matter of seconds it had all been stolen from him. He missed it. Tahno allowed himself to wonder whether he might've kept it all if he'd been a better person, if he hadn't cheated, if he hadn't hurt others for the sake of hurting them. And now he was the one who was hurt.
At first, he'd drunk. After Amon had attacked him, that is. He just drank and drank, drowning himself in the feeling of nothing, living in a daze. But then he ran out of money, and the owner of the bar wasn't so kind after he'd found out. Tahno continued to let himself think, and the more he thought, the more he wished he was again in a drunken daze, to have his vision hazy and his mind numb.
Tahno thought of what remained of the man he used to be. Just a husk, he supposed. There was really nothing left for him. His waterbending had been his life; it had been who he was. It made up his entire identity. Now, it was gone, and he was a nobody.
Tahno turned on his side, ignoring a curious dampness trailing from the corners of his eyes and down his cheeks. He told himself to slip back into nothingness, told his mind to stop thinking.
He wished he still knew who he was.
A/N: It's a pretty short drabble, but it was stuck in my head so I absolutely HAD to write it down. It's not really anything quality, but it was eating me away, the hopelessness that I thought Tahno must've felt.