Do you have an AU where there’s at least a decade worth age gap between Zuko and Azula?

attackfish:

I do not in fact.

1. The first thing to do with an AU like this is to decide which of the Fire sibs I am going to base everybody else’s ages and certain key events on. And the answer is Zuko’s, which means the war comes to an end when Azula is only six years old.

2. Azula is a newborn when her mother is banished, and for the first six years of her life, she is fed her father’s subtle insinuations that Ursa never understood him, and she never would have understood what a prize, what a treasure Azula is. Yet in spite of Ozai’s efforts, Azula is acutely aware of the loss of her mother, and that it’s Zuko’s fault, that for the sake of her worthless brother, her mother left her as a baby. She bitterly resents him for this, even after he is banished too and she finds herself missing him with an unexpected vehemence.

3. Speaking of Zuko’s banishment, three year old Azula is in the audience that day, and she watches her father set fire to her brother’s face. She is close enough to smell the cooking flesh. She screams and buries her face in her uncle’s chest, and sobs, not even sure why she’s crying. Isn’t it just Zuko? Isn’t it just her worthless failure of a brother? Part of it is the shock of course, at the violence, and the sheer horror of it, but underneath that is the sudden instinctive knowledge that if Ozai is willing to do that to his son, then he would be willing to do it to his daughter. Any sense of safety she had before vanishes with her brother.

4. for weeks, Azula refuses to leave her room. She refuses to speak to her father, and she hides from her nannies. They have to force her into the bathtub and pin her down to brush her hair, and when they pick her up and carry her out of the room to her father, she bites the hand of one of her nannies hard enough to draw blood. Ozai snaps at her that if she wants her brother back that much, when she’s Firelord she can allow him home, but her brother will just disappoint her. Eventually though, Azula calms down. Ozai’s patience and hope is rewarded when Azula reveals herself to be a firebending protegy, and as she begins to show the first glimmers of the cunning and strategic ruthlessness her father if anything prizes more highly than simple firebending.

5. And then her world collapses around her again. Somehow Zuko sneaks into the royal palace of Ba Sing Se, and used the confusion of the Avatar’s visit to conquer the city and capture the Avatar, and he’s coming home.