Au Where Zhao Survives To See Zuko Become Fire Lord And In Their First Meeting After The Fact Zuko’s

I don’t think anyone has fully considered the potential of a feral zuko au.

Like, Ozai tries to kill him when he’s 10, but zuko escapes with a scar, Ozai claims he was killed by an assassin and Azula gets a redemption arc early.

Meanwhile zuko is off completely changing the corse of history by, in no particular order:

-Making Hama realize that not all fire benders are bad cause the child she just told about how she was in prison immediately his to instigate a jail break

-is emotionally adopted by hakoda along with most of the crew

-finds wan shi tong’s library

-befriends/is adopted by June the bounty hunter

-discovers a herd of flying bison

-joins a traveling acting troupe for a while cause he’s a theater nerd

-visits omashu and is forcibly befriended by bumi, who decides that zuko is now his grandson and no one can stop him

-discovers the white lotus, decides that they don’t do shit, and starts a hobby of breaking into their safe houses and wrecking them until they get off their asses and help with the war

-meets toph when some fire nation soldiers chase him to gaoling and she stops them, and her parents see her, but zuko does this little speech about how proud they must be of their daughter and how much they must trust and respect her since she’s such a powerful earth bender, and basically guilt trips them into letting toph continue to fight and practice bending

-gets a dragon tattoo 

-wanders into the swamp at some point

-drinks a bit more than he probably should, but he can hold it shockingly well

-figures out lightning bending in the middle of a thunderstorm 

-goes to ba sing se, gets arrested by the Dai li, breaks out, and starts a one man war with them, which basically is just zuko par core-ing around the city till he finds some Dai li, then rather beats the shit out of them, or just kill them. 

-He does it all with out fire bending though, just his swords. 

-After like a week the Dai li are basically gone, and the earth king finds out about the war, and makes zuko a part of the army, some fancy title and a medal or something, zuko is officially recognized as the dragon of the east, and proceeds to duck off to the North Pole to try and convince them to help in the war

-they don’t want to, but he befriends yue and they talk about politics and zuko helps her get out of the arranged marriage 

-zuko called Paku a sexist bitch and is surprised yet delighted to inform him that blood bending was invented by a woman

-invents lightning redirection

-the north joins the war thanks to yue 

-zuko meets the mechanist at the northern air temple at some point

-meets and joins the freedom fighters, makes out with jet, uses fire bending to save jets like, then jet tries to kill him

-the other kids understand that zuko is still good even though he’s a fire bender, but zuko leaves, even though every single kid adopted zuko as their older brother

-becomes known as the greatest swords man to ever live

-it’s actually true, and when piandao, who has Ali adopted zuko, hears that he is very proud and brags about it to everyone he meets

-basically zuko gets adopted by almost every adult he meets

-gets really good at cooking, hunting, reading maps, finding water, pick pocketing, stowing away on beats, sewing, and pretty much every other skill you would need to live on your own. 

-hears that Zhao has captured the avatar and casually breaks Aang out of prison

-refuses to be his firebending teacher and leaves

-stops at a village to tell them that the volcano next to them is about to explode, and he knows this cause he grew up in the fire nation which has a lot of volcanos

-they don’t believe him cause the fortune teller never said anything about it, zuko gets pissed and starts yelling at them

-this is the exact moment Aang Katara and sokka show up

-zuko thinks Aang is following him and tries to leave, but sokka recognizes him as the dragon of the east from a wanted poster

-they basically follow zuko around trying to convince him to help them, and he is this close to just beating them up when Katara mentions they are going to the northern water tribe to learn bending

-zuko agrees to go with them just so he can see Katara kick paku’s ass 

-obviously zuko and sokka get together at some point

-when the gaang finds joung joung zuko makes fun of him cause zuko was there when he broke up with piandao cause he was afraid of being found out (cause being gay was illegal) and piandao kicked his ass even though he’s a non bender

Meanwhile Azula thinks she could have prevented zukos death somehow, maybe helped him with his fire bending or hadn’t bullied him so much or something. 

Ozai kind of focused on her more and started to look down on her a lot more cause he couldn’t compare her to zuko. He put a lot more pressure on her and it drove her away from him, she started seeking his approval less and less, instead growing closer to her mom and uncle. Her mom was constantly worried she would screw up and Azula would die too, but she was Ali scared of making her think she was trying to replace zuko. But by being rather open with Azula about that it never really became an issue. 

Azula took up sword fighting and trained with piandao and she got a lot of character growth from that, cause she wasn’t naturally good at it and really had to work hard. Piandao was not someone she could bully or manipulate, so she had to struggle with earning someone’s approval. 

Piandao told her at some point that sword fighting was not something that came naturally to anyone, and you had to work hard your whole life to be really good. He also said zuko was the fastest learner and best student he had ever taught. Piandao believed that zuko could have easily surpassed piandao himself within a few years.

Azula gets to go to the war meeting that zuko got banished at in the show, she also says the plan is wrong, but in a much more eloquent way that doesn’t dishonor the fire lord but does dishonor the general. She fights an Agni Kai against the general and wins.

The plan is done anyway, (zuko finds that message and is able to warn both the earth kingdom troops and the squad of fire nation soldiers that where going to die, it starts the rumor that the dragon of the east is actually prince zuko and it spreads, some solders start to rebel against their commanders in the name of the prince) Azula finds out about it much later and raises all kinds of hell over it, calling Ozai an “honorless coward who betrays his people, unworthy of the throne” to his face in front of a bunch of people.

Azula gets banished for it, Iroh comes with her and she’s now basically zuko from the show, but tasked with finding and capturing the dragon of the east to prove her loyalty instead of the avatar. At this point she does not know that it’s zuko.

She finds zuko didn’t recognize him and fights him, but he’s better than her, and then she sees the knife that Iroh have zuko just before he “died” and puts two and two together and comes up with seven. She thinks the dragon of the east is the assassin that killed her brother.  It kind of makes sense, if the assassination was his first act of rebellion, cause a string of jail breaks followed. 

I’m not really sure where the story could go after that but there’s a lot of potential for an invasion, since zuko knows so many people. Imagine them all showing up to help and they’re all like “oh hey zuko” and the gaang turns to zuko and ask how he knows them and he’s just like “that’s my mom/dad” and it just makes them more confused.

Somebody give Ellie a camera rn

ellie finds a polaroid camera

some Ty Lukos for the soul

Zhao attempts to kill the moon, but the Gaang manages to get there in time. Zuko gets in the way, attempting to push the fish out of his hands and gets hurt.

With the use of water from the spirit pond, they heal most of his injuries. The only one they couldn't fully heal is the one over his left eye. He's so scared that Yue will hate him now with such a disgraceful burn. But she loves her husband no matter what.

kratt brothers when they see an animal

Aang, surrounded by baffled councilmen, interrupted mid meeting: "ZUKO I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’D DO SOMETHING SO RECKLESS!”

Zuko, half burnt after fistfighting his latest assasin: “It’s not that bad. Besides, you’re like twelve, you don't have to worry about this”

Aang: “only tw—I was the one who—! No, you know what? I’m calling your grandpa!”

The councilmen, thinking of Azulon: “?!”

Zuko: “WAIT NO AANG I’M SORRY!”

Aang, meditating aggressively: “TOO LATE.”

Roku, taking Aang’s place: “ZUKO I CAN’T BELIEVE YOU’D DO SOMETHING SO RECKLESS!”

The councilmen, losing their fucking minds: “?!?!?!????!??!???!”

A:TLA comm for @dottie-wan-kenobi ✨

Ty Lee teaches Zuko acrobatics.

It all began as simple hand-to-hand sparring - something they did from time to time whenever they had a free spot on their otherwise busy schedules. Zuko held his own well enough, but Ty Lee's agility combined with her stunts would give her the upper hand more often than not, and her moves never failed to bedazzle him. He could never bring himself to say anything about it - the only words able to escape his mouth in his awestruck state being "you're... good" or nothing more than a simple "wow" - but luckily for him, Ty Lee could see the fascination written all over his face and ended up offering to teach him.

It was hard at first. While Zuko's parkour and gymnastics skills were already pretty outstanding, he couldn't handle making any sort of mistake, and the earlier sessions would always end in him stomping off in frustration everytime he couldn't get a move quite right. However, as time went on and Ty Lee reassured him that it was absolutely okay to screw up sometimes and he realized she wasn't going to laugh at or humiliate him for it (and a couple of apologies for his mean behavior later) he began getting better and better at it until he could almost go toe-to-toe with her and the sessions turned less serious and more playful. They would chase each other around the palace grounds, somersaulting from wall to wall and leaping off the roofs until exhaustion caught up to them and they collapsed on the floor, covered in sweat and breathing shakily but laughing together like they didn't have a single care in the world.

After that, it wasn't uncommon for Zuko and Ty Lee to swing from the beams on the hallways' ceilings like trapezists whenever the floor had been recently swept.

(The cleaning staff most definitely noticed and shot odd looks at each other everytime it happened, but said nothing about it. It's not like they were complaining.)

azula's just trying to get them to eat something that isn't noodles and this is the thanks she gets // college husbands au

Deep deep deeeeeeep down, buried under layers of "DONE" and existential crisis, I'm sure our lieutenant cares about the teen toddler. I mean tyrant. I mean---

[ID: digital sketch of zuko and jee form avatar the last Airbender. jee is lying on his bed, frowning up at a small child version of zuko that sits on his chest and holds a wet sock in jee's face.End ID.]

I know it's not… something anyone of us expected…

but I want you two anons to know that you set in my head, thoughts and ideas in motion, and now Zuko's a bit too big sock is wet and lt. jee has to fix it because uncle is sleeping!

and… jee never expected to have kids… but here we are…

sorry jee… (at least you have the bunk bed with the porthole!)