Continued from here: [Link]
1. Iroh hasn’t seen his nephew since he left to lead the siege of Ba Sing Se more than eight years ago, more than half of Zuko’s life. Zuko disappeared from court to train as a combustion bender before Iroh returned. He has no idea what the boy even looks like anymore. But still when Pakku sends word to him asking if he knows who the young man captured by the Northern Water Tribe who tried to defend the moon could be, Iroh knows it has to be Zuko and he sneaks away from court to go find his nephew and rescue him.
2. Zuko is well treated in the North, kept in a pleasant room with good food and a comfortable bed, much more comfortable than his own quarters back in the Fire Temple, or on Zhao’s ship. He stood against his own people to defend the moon, and if he had succeeded, the Northern Princess would have lived. If he were to ask for asylum, he would have it without question. But he doesn’t speak. He has a vow of silence, but he knows that’s only an excuse. He can’t even begin the process of finding the words to say, or any words at all.
3. He is visited often by the Avatar and his companions. At first Arnook hopes that children his own age will draw the strange young man out of his shell and get him talking, but to no avail. He remains stubbornly silent.
4.Yet Aang continues to come. With his shaved head and third eye tattoo, he reminds the young Avatar of his own people, and even though he knows this resemblance is illusory, that the firebender is no more an Air Nomad than Katara or Sokka, or any of the other fragments of family he will gather to himself, he can’t help it. He still goes to see him every day, to talk to him, and try to make him laugh. Last week he made him smile. That’s something. A small victory. but a victory none the less.
5. A small steamboat slips past the Northern Water Tribe defenses and docks in a hidden harbor outside the fortress. The old man who enters the fortress under the cover of darkness goes straight for the home of Master Pakku, who wakes with an old friend’s hand on his shoulder, and a finger to his lips.
Tag: Avatar The Last Airbender
5 hcs for an au where zuko is a combustionbender?
Not going to lie, I read this as “Constitution bender” at first and am now terribly disappointed I don’t get to write some kind of ridiculous lawyers AU with elderly LoK era Zuko as a Supreme Court Justice.
1. So combustion bending is heavily implied to be a learned skill, and one typically associated with a certain amount of ritual. So how does a prince end up in this kind of ritualized training? He doesn’t discover a proclivity for edged weapons. Maybe Iroh sent him something other than a knife. Instead, as Zuko’s life after his mother’s sudden disappearance grew bleaker, he searched for some other useful, worthwhile skill to make up for his complete inadequacy in comparison to his sister in standard firebending. He hits on combustion bending almost by accident.
2. Ozai is overjoyed. Sending Zuko off to study a specialized form of bending is a handy way to get rid of him for a while, and with any luck, he’ll discover a vocation, or be manipulated into discovering a vocation and become a combustion monk or a Fire Sage. So this is what happens to Zuko instead of scarring and banishment.
3. Zhao holds the honor of being the first Fire Nation officer to be tasked with hunting the Avatar, and he gets all the toys. He asks for a combustion bender, and he gets one. Unfortunately, or probably very fortunately, Zuko is under a vow of silence at the time, so he spends a lot of time glaring at Zhao’s back instead of shouting exactly what he thinks of his new commander to the man’s face, and getting himself in a duel.
4. Zuko is still a prince, and at least half the reason Zhao wants him around is to have a baby royal as witness to his exploits. So he brings Zuko with him to the North Pole, and takes him on the land expedition to kill the moon. Effectively this means he takes Iroh’s place. In the lessons he has taken from the Fire Sages in the hopes that he could be persuaded become one himself, he got to hear a lot about balance and the spirits, and how doing something like destroying the moon is a terrible idea and also blasphemy, and he turns on Zhao, breaking his vow of silence to stumble his way through explaining this.
5. After Zhao kills the moon spirit and the Avatar joins with the ocean spirit, Zuko takes on Zhao and is winning when the ocean spirit hauls Zhao away. This very public fight gets Zuko captured and taken before Chief Arnook and the Avatar. They try to piece together his identity, and figure out what to do with him, but Zuko isn’t saying a word. Literally. He’s back to that whole vow of silence thing.
I’m not sure if it was intentional from the start, (probably not lol) but I really like that in the beginning of the series Zuko is JACKED and after being malnourished for several months he leaned down quite a bit
Yes Nonny, and I think we can be confident that it was absolutely intentional!
I’m putting my answer under a cut, because this is a very image heavy post. All screenshots come from the wonderful Piandao.org.
Continuation on Regent Ursa AU?
Continued from here: [Link]
1. As I alluded to in the previous Regent Ursa post, Ursa is an imperialist. As kind and loving a mother as she is, she was raised in the imperial Fire Nation system and has never really had a reason to question it. She has never met a non-Fire person, and it doesn’t occur to her to wonder how the war affects the conquered. So the war continues apace. And Zuko and Azula are educated to continue the war in their turn. Many of Azula’s lessons focus on getting her to aim her cruelty at acceptable targets. This is something Iroh quietly seeks to rectify with only marginal success.
2. Iroh sneaks both Zuko and Azula into the war meeting when they are thirteen and eleven. He hopes it will be instructive for them. He intends for them to see and be horrified by the tactics used. And Zuko at least is. He still stands up for the Fire Nation soldiers. Only it’s not Zuko who is punished. Ursa has Iroh banished, while Iroh insists that the young Firelord had every right to be there anyway. In truth, it’s just an excuse to get him and his meddling away from her children.
3. This is of course a miscalculation. And Iroh not at court is an Iroh out from under her eye, and an Iroh sufficiently recovered from his crushing grief to plot, at that. He heads straight to the Order of the White Lotus with a plan to kidnap the young Firelord and his sister.
4. As Zuko reaches his fourteenth birthday, Ursa focuses more and more attention on educating him in the skills he will need soon when he takes power. He now has his own invitation to the war meetings, and she expects him to spend time with her as she conducts royal business, and as he receives lessons in governence, Ursa becomes ever more painfully aware that these are lessons she never received, and skills she as a ruler does not possess. She intends to see Azula educated in these skills as well, but Azula is younger and doesn’t have a looming deadline upon which she will have a nation to run. So Ursa doesn’t rush her ahead of Zuko as Ozai might. Go on. Guess how Azula perceives this.
5. Yeah this is when Ursa proposes that the Earth Kingdom, an exciting and exotic land, might be a fitting place for Azula to rule in her brother’s name someday. She never wants Azula to feel like she is less loved or less worthy, even if her brother is already Firelord.
Could you do some headcannons for Toph and Zuko being like brother and sister please!
Do you mean this AU where they actually are brother and sister?: [Link]
I also have this one, where Toph is the Fire Princess instead of Azula: [Link] Wow I have a lot of five headcanon AUs.
Anyway, I’m going with the one where Zuko is a Bei Fong.
1. Zuko, Iroh, and Jet all end up on the same ferry into Ba Sing Se. Zuko is completely at loose ends, because he’s supposed to be hunting his sister and bringing her home, but he just can’t bring himself to do that to her, and he can’t go home without her, and he has never been anything but the Bei Fong heir. Without a nephew to teach and keep out of trouble, he’s spiraling into a bit of a depression at the site of the place where his son died. He’s there to offer his services to the Earth King in the fight against his brother, but sometimes it’s hard to hold onto that purpose. Jet is… Jet.
Anyway, Iroh meets Zuko when he’s passing around the food he stole with the freedom fighters, and he feels it’s his duty to provide a better influence for this kid before he gets arrested. This is how Zuko comes to be standing next to him when Iroh does his heating the tea thing. Zuko freaks. Iroh clamps his hand around the boy’s mouth, tells him who he is, and his plan, and Zuko decides to follow him to keep his eyes on him, since after all he doesn’t have anything else to do except try to keep tabs on his sister.
Iroh very quickly rethinks his plan after finding out about the Dai Li, and this is how he and Zuko end up running a tea shop together while they wait for the comet and plan to help defend the city.
2. Because there is no Prince Zuko to rescue Aang after Zhao captures him, it falls to Iroh, who has been spending his time on the front for the past two years, since court was so unpleasant with Ozai as Firelord. By the way, Zhao tries to have a rivalry with him, but Iroh just finds him amusing.
3. It’s Sokka that Azula strikes at in the abandoned village before making her getaway, something Iroh tells Zuko all about. Zuko just wants him to get back to talking about the time he talked to his sister. More Toph, less Water Tribe dude.
4. Toph has so many mixed feelings about her brother the secret rebel who hooked up with the renegade Dragon of the West. On one hand, yay! Her brother is awesome, and she loves him, on the other hand, she already has mixed feelings about the way he used to help her, and also help their parents control her, and she doesn’t know what to do with him, and also it;s kind of her fault he had to leave home, and hey Zuko, you may be a lavabender, but I can metalbend. I invented it. So nyah. She’s feeling a lot of things about him at once.
5. There was this really cool Kyoshi Warrior with a bunch of knives who came in for tea, and Zuko served her, and he almost spilled tea on her, but she came back, and then she saw Iroh and didn’t come back after that, and it turns out she wasn’t a Kyoshi Warrior after all, and Zuko’s pissed off at that, because he’s pretty sure she was spying on him. Not because he thought she was really cool and wanted to kiss her. No.
AU where Zuko has Toph for a sister instead of Azula.
Hmm, this is a hard one, because it isn’t one I’ve actually given a whole lot of thought to. I assume you mean that Toph is the youngest child of Ozai and Ursa?
1.Toph in this verse is a prodigy firebender instead of a prodigy earthbender, but because she’s blind her father thinks she’s weak. This drives her to train harder, and to work to develop ways to “see” with her bending. This is much more limited than her earth sense, and works like Zuko’s fire sense in Quiet Shadowed Places.
2. Between Toph’s blindness and Zuko’s compassion, Ozai in this verse does not play favorites, because he is too busy believing both his children are completely useless and worthless. This right here fundamentally changes family dynamics, history, everything.
3. Ozai is constantly pressuring Ursa to have another child, meanwhile, he keeps trying to convince Azulon to let him divorce Ursa and marry a woman who won’t give him such “defective heirs.” This all comes to a head when Lu Ten dies, and Ozai ends up strangling Azulon himself after Azulon suggests that maybe it’s Ozai that’s the problem. Then, he pins the murder on Ursa and has her executed.
4. Ozai becomes Firelord, remarries, and gets with the baby making. As soon as his new wife is pregnant, he starts looking for a way to dispose of his useless older children. Meanwhile Iroh has all but adopted them. When he exiles Zuko on a pretext, he accuses Toph of plotting with her brother to dishonor the general and the Firelord, and exiles her as well.
5. Because of this changed dynamic, Zuko’s daddy issues are different from canon. He still has the intense drive to prove himself, but he does not believe daddy will ever love him, and he is extremely depressed and has low self esteem. Meanwhile, Toph’s intense need to prove herself leads to recklessness. Between the two of them, Iroh has started to go bald from pulling his hair out. Instead of looking for the Avatar, however, Iroh has convinced them to settle down in the colonies with him. This is when the Avatar finds them, or more precisely, when the Order of the White Lotus sends the Avatar to them.
5 headcanons on AU where Zuko is the Bei Fongs’ eldest child, please?
I never got an alert or a note for this, or anything. I didn’t even realize it was here until just now. I’m so sorry about that.
Anyway, I worked out a whole little thing with Zuko as the Bei Fongs’ kid, and Toph as Azula’s little sister before I realized you probably meant Zuko as Toph’s older brother with them both as Bei Fongs instead of Fire Royals.
1. This is it, this is the universe in which Zuko is the favored child. Not that the Bei Fongs don’t love Toph, far from it. It’s just that in Zuko, the Bei Fongs have the heir they want. He’s healthy, and a son, and it’s his job to someday run the estate and preserve the family’s good name, and of course, take care of his poor little blind sister. It’s so wonderful to have a son like Zuko, their parents tell each other and their children. They never have to worry about what will happen to Toph when they go, or trying to marry their poor fragile child off. She has a brother to protect her. Toph seethes with frustration and resentment.
2. Zuko isn’t an idiot. He knows how his sister feels. When she was really little, he used to teach her moves from his own earthbending lessons, but that had to stop after they got caught. (Zuko was never in that much trouble ever. Their parents were so angry. It was like they caught him holding a knife to her throat, instead of teaching her to make pebbles dance around.) After that, they got Toph her own lessons, that never went beyond the very beginning of earthbending, but he knows she’s better than that, and he knows she knows it. And there are times when he can’t find her, when she’s just completely disappeared, and he knows she has to be sneaking out.
3. Zuko feels so guilty about it. He knows he should tell somebody, because Toph could get hurt. She’s just a little kid, and she doesn’t seem to get it, because she thinks she’s so strong, and he knows she isn’t a wimp, that’s not the point, but then their parents go and treat her like she’s a glass vase, like she’s pretty and fragile, and valuable, but has no opinion of her own and they don’t expect her to ever question being shut up an hidden like this. And Zuko doesn’t know who’s right. (Maybe neither of them are right, the back of his mind whispers.)
4. When the Avatar comes, and it all comes out about Toph being a total prodigy, Zuko tells her good bye and helps her sneak out and packs her a lunch. He stays behind. Lao and Poppy are furious. How dare he? His entire job is to protect her, and instead he let her run off like that? They send him to hunt her down instead of Yu and Xin Fu. He tracks her to Ba Sing Se, gets all caught up in the fall of the city, and the Avatar almost dying, and having to flee for their lives, and also meeting up with the Firelord’s fugitive brother, and somehow along the way, he ends up joining the gaang. Their parents are not going to be happy.
5. After the war is over, Zuko, Toph, and Mai spend a lot of time comparing parents and asking if they’re really sure their parents weren’t secretly the same people.
5 headcanons Aang/Zuko role swap
Ooooh, I already have one of these AUs! I wrote a drabble about Blue Spirit Aang rescuing Avatar Zuko from the Pohuai stronghold: [link]. Yes I do have three Avatar Zuko AUs.
1. Fire Prince Aang is a lot like a young general Iroh. This is one of the reasons his father hates him so much. He projects his hated older brother who he was terribly jealous of onto Aang. Anyway, this means that he’s fairly receptive to his uncle’s less treasonous wisdom, though he’s still convinced he can win Ozai’s love if he brings him the Avatar.
2. Twelve year old Zuko is one surly little airbender. He felt all angry, lost, and alone upon finding out that he’s the Avatar, and waking up in the future with his people dead did not help at all. Sokka and Katara feel bad for him, but he can be a little trying.
3. The first time Aang captured him, Zuko very solemnly agreed to go with him and when Sokka and Katara rescued him, he agonized about breaking his word.
4. When Pakku says he won’t teach Katara, Zuko yells at him and is ready to fight until Katara’s like, “No, I got this.”
5. Aang and Zhao have a special relationship that involves cutting insults from Aang with a grin on his face.
Can you do 5 headcanons on boy Toph?
1. I once made a five headcanons post about trans girl Toph, and everything I said in there about how the Bei Fongs perceive their “son” applies here too. His blindness now is not part of how he is a delicate flower who needs to be protected. Now he is a vulnerable defective heir who needs to be protected. He does however get to have more of a public life than his counterpart. People know he exists, and girls whose families want them to marry into the Bei Fong family learn to present themselves as the kind of sweet nurturing wife who would take care of a blind husband. Toph would rather not, thanks.
2. The way he meets the gaang doesn’t really change. He is still the Blind Bandit, he still threatens to call the guards on Aang, and he still runs away to teach Aang earthbending.
3. He is significantly more bewildered by his crushes first on Sokka then on Zuko though.
4. In Ba Sing Se, Toph escorts Katara as her recent betrothed. Everybody thinks they’re adorable and adorably dutiful to their families, since it’s obviously an arranged match. They’re only children after all. Katara is seriously wigged out.
5. Katara feels even more all alone as the only girl with all these obnoxious boys. Then Zuko joins, and she’s outnumbered four to one, six to one if you count Appa and Momo. Even the animals are boys. Thank goodness Suki joins them, seriously.
Cheloneuniverse 