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.
Tag: ozai
Could we have more of that combustion man au?
Continued from here: [Link] and here: [Link]
1. Zuko is not stupid. He has known for years what his father wants from him. He has known that if he goes along with it, in a decade or so, he could become head Fire Sage, and that someday, he would be the one to crown his sister Firelord. He understands this.
2. He doesn’t know what to do now. He has been captured and he knows there is no hope of rescue. He has no idea what to do with the life and the choices he has right now. It wouldn’t be so bad, he supposes, asking Chief Arnook for asylum, as Arnook has told him over and over he can. He could build a life here. It’s not like he has a life back home in the Fire Nation waiting for him. He wouldn’t have to worry about going home and trying to fight, and figure out what he should become, and if he even wants out of the trap his father has set for him. It could be so easy. But instead he’s just frozen and silent.
3. Back in the Fire Nation Ozai reacts to his brother’s disappearance with rage. He orders his brother’s apprehension and return to the Fire Nation. His brother is not well, he tells the nation through gritted teeth. He should have been in a hospital, but Ozai softheartedly tried to have him treated in the palace. Sadly his condition makes him dangerous. Fire Nation soldiers should take no risks when attempting to capture him and return him home.
4. Pakku fills Iroh in on how his nephew has been doing. He tells him that Zuko is well cared for and safe, and Iroh tells him to his shame that he is unable to ensure the same for him. But he also tells Iroh about Zuko’s total silence and blank expression, and about the way that Arnook says he just sits there. He doesn’t tell Iroh that Arnook tries to dote on the boy as a way to stave off mourning for his daughter, or the lost look the Chief has described in his eyes sometimes when he thinks no one is looking at him.
5. Pakku also tells Iroh that Zuko is not well guarded. He has made no attempts to escape, so there is no real point, especially since Arnook is reluctant to keep him prisoner at all. Iroh goes to his nephew’s room, wakes him up, takes him by the hand and leads him down to his boat, and they set a course for the open sea.
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.
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.
Cheloneuniverse 