Recent ATLA Fics I’ve Read
What is says on the tin, stories that I’ve read over the last month that I loved and wanted to share. Some of them are new, some old, some popular, some not but I’ve enjoyed them all and want to recommend them. As a heads up they’re either gen or Zukka.
As the newly appointed cultural liaison to Northern Water Tribe, Zuko is the first Fire Nation Citizen to step foot inside the city’s walls in nearly a century. He’s determined to prove himself—to the Fire Lord and to his father—even if the Water Tribe’s spirit-touched prince seems to want nothing to do with him. Moon Spirit Sokka, Zukka and Katara/Yue.
“Prince Zuko,” Iroh began, but the prince wasn’t having it. He stormed away and before he knew it he was in his quarters, flinging sparks from his fingers and hissing steam. When that passed, he aggressively lit his meditation candles and tried to calm down. It was difficult because unlike combat meditation came easily, which added insult to injury. Gentle flames licked the air and formed in his palms as well. They were warm and soothing, unlike how fire was supposed to be. Instead of stinging his skin with small burns, the flames numbed the scraps on his palms and the aches in his joints. He knew that by the time his meditation ended he would feel invigorated and new.
His heart burned with shame; no wonder father had discarded him. There was no greater disgrace than having a son who was a healer.
Zuko is given a new chore to perform, which he does - to the best of his abilities. But just because he’s losing a fight with a needle doesn’t mean he’s blind (or at least, not blind-blind).
Sokka’s beautiful friendship with Zuko doesn’t start with breaking Dad out of jail. That’s just what he tells people.Sokka’s beautiful friendship with Zuko started the day he realizes that he knows how to cook.Feat. breakup cake, an attempted assassination, and eating out of the pan like dirty heathens. Zukka
Iroh insists they create a new life and identity in Ba Sing Se. Zuko wants nothing more than to bide his time until his next opportunity to return home, until he realizes ‘Lee’ can get away with things Zuko never could.
Zuko dons the mantle of the Blue Spirit again only to lose his focus when the Avatar comes to the city. This time, however, his attention is drawn to the annoying Southern Tribe warrior. Zukka.
High Sage Kenji blesses Fire Prince Zuko with the resilience of the reed, who bends in the wind and never breaks. When he is done, Fire Prince Ozai narrows his eyes, seemingly displeased by this blessing. But Kenji does not speak for himself; he is only a vessel.
The newly-crowned Fire Lord Ozai offers his firstborn son to service in the temple. This turns out to be a catastrophic mistake.
Her daughter is five years old when Ursa realises what she and Ozai have been doing to their children. By each choosing one to bestow with their approval, they’re pitting them against one another. Perhaps Ozai is doing it on purpose, but Ursa isn’t. She resolves to heal the damage she has done. In which Ursa tries to be a better parent to Azula, and it doesn’t change very much. And then, quite abruptly, it changes everything.
When Azula is nine, she becomes an only child. She hears the Fire Lord call for Zuko’s life, and in the morning, her mother and brother are gone. Azula may be young, but she isn’t naive. She knows what happened to them.
Which makes it all the more surprising when Azula tracks the Avatar down and fights his group of peasant friends, only to find herself staring into an eerily familiar face.
In which Zuko’s advisors won’t stop harassing him about suitable candidates for Fire Lady, and Zuko’s friends hatch an ingenious plan: pretend courtships.
Zuko’s soul marks have been regularly burned away since before he knew what they meant. He knows that he cannot be loyal to his father and his nation while also being loyal to a soul family, so he doesn’t look for them. Unfortunately, that means that he doesn’t know when he’s found them.
Some people are born with soulmarks. Zuko has them, but his grandfather burned them off because they “make you weak.”
Team Avatar has a few things to say about that.
(“You’re not sleeping,” Mai says softly.
“How’d you know?” Zuko asks.
To be honest, he’s kind of gotten to the point where he’s surprised that anyone can perceive him outside of his necessary functions- he exists solely to sit in council meetings and shoulder the blame for genocides and famines and the suffering of one-hundred years. Doesn’t he?)
The war is over, but the fallout is just beginning. And where lightning strikes, thunder is bound to follow.
This is his life now, here on this ship, serving tea with Uncle and the crew. Traveling the world and staying far, far away from the ongoing war.
The Jasmine Dragon is Zuko’s home.
Meeting the Avatar does not change that.
It changes absolutely nothing.
(Until, inevitably, it does.)
Ten months after Zuko is crowned at seventeen, he faces his first coup.
After the fateful Agni Kai, instead of sending him off on a ship, Fire Lord Ozai decided to remove his son’s title and relegate him to being part of the Palace staff.
Zuko’s pretty sure he’s going to go back to being Crown Prince any day now.
And then the Avatar and his companions are captured.
Started out as a “What would happen if Zuko happened to rediscover sky bison while searching for the Avatar?” and turned into something more than that
