Chapter 3 (technically chapter 1 since the other two were pre beginning of story) is now out! (It lowkey sucks, but that's okay!)
Chapters: 3/?
Fandom: Avatar: The Last Airbender (Cartoon 2005)
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Relationships: Zuko & Zuko's Crew (Avatar), Iroh & Zuko (Avatar), Aang & Zuko (Avatar), Aang & Sokka (Avatar), Aang & Katara (Avatar), Ozai & Zuko (Avatar), Ursa & Zuko (Avatar), Aang & Gyatso (Avatar), Katara & Sokka (Avatar), The Gaang & The Gaang (Avatar), Toph Beifong & Sokka, Toph Beifong & Katara, Aang & Toph Beifong, Azula & Zuko (Avatar), Aang/Zuko (Avatar)
Characters: Zuko (Avatar), Aang (Avatar), Katara (Avatar), Sokka (Avatar), Toph Beifong, The Gaang (Avatar), Iroh (Avatar), Ozai (Avatar), 41st Division Members (Avatar), Zuko's Crew (Avatar), a lot more people
Additional Tags: Avatar Zuko (Avatar), Avatar Aang (Avatar), Two Avatars (Avatar: The Last Airbender), Aang-centric (Avatar), Zuko-centric (Avatar), Mentioned Ursa (Avatar), Bad Parent Ozai (Avatar), Abusive Ozai (Avatar), Ozai Being an Asshole (Avatar), Aged-Up Aang (Avatar), Might become zukaang, My First Fanfic, hope you enjoy!, This became Zukaang, Is probably very ooc, enjoy, Or don't, i can't tell you what to do
Series: Part 1 of Avatar The Last AirBender: The Shadow Within Fire
Summary:
My name is Zuko, and I am the exiled prince of the fire nation.
After an Agni Kai against my father, I was burned and banished.
Before being cast out with nothing but a boat and a crew, my Father, the Fire Lord, told me that the only way to return home was to capture the avatar.
I haven't got the spoons for writing anything long, so I'm just throwing my ideas out here in little snippets. This little snippet turned out a bit long, but...
This is super dark. I've tagged all of the dark stuff, and if I've missed a tw, please tell me. I don't think I did. There are no graphic descriptions.
ATLA AU: Aang defeats Ozai. Aang loses everyone.
Aang has just defeated Ozai. He looks out to the horizon, and sees a number of airships crashing down. He mourns the possible loss of life (even though he can see many crews huddling on the tops of the airships, surely there were some who didn't make it) but ultimately, he's at peace with it.
He sees one particular airship go down rough. Well, he thinks. Time to go rescue people.
He secures Ozai to the rock and even though the man is a monster, he promises to come back and that the former Fire Lord will be treated humanely.
There are bodies in the wreck, and he offers some words to Agni on their behalf, because that's who he is, and he remembers that Fire folk need to be guided on their way to the Sun. He remembers the words from a hundred years ago like yesterday, because for him, it was. Well, yesterday and a year.
But when he finds three bodies, huddled close together with a burst steam pipe near them and the room slowly filling with water, Aang finds that he doesn't have any words at all.
He takes them from the wreck and lays them out on the beach. Sokka must have been holding Suki and Toph close, and from the shape of the bent metal sheets in the room, he could guess that Toph might have tried to cushion their fall with Metalbending. But he'll never know for sure.
If they'd only had a Waterbender. The boiling steam could have turned to a cool mist.
Waterbending takes his thoughts to Katara. She or Zuko weren't anywhere to be found. Were they gone, too? If they weren't, how was he going to tell Katara that her brother was dead? And Toph. And Suki.
He sits by the bodies on the beach for a long time. Eventually, some of the surviving soldiers approach him.
He gives them a short speech. He brings Ozai out to them. Ozai is still feeble, and babbling commands to kill the Avatar, but as Aang had hoped, he can't inspire fear or respect without his bending. His soldiers refuse to attack Aang.
A few of the airships can still fly. He orders a crew to fly him to the Fire Nation. He has some kind of inkling that that's where Zuko and Katara might be - he tried meditating to see if he could connect with Katara the same way he did when she was captured in Ba Sing Se, but the grief is still too near. And in any case, ending the war is most important, and to do that, he has to go to the Fire Nation.
Ozai stays on the bridge with him. He thinks its good for the crew to see him, to lose their fear of the man. A voice inside him whispers that it's good for them to see that Aang could do it to them, too.
He quashes it. It's the grief and anger talking. He tries to meditate, to center himself, to let himself feel all of his grief so that he can begin the long journey to overcome it. But the meditation doesn't help, and he can't even cry.
They reach the Caldera.
He finds the Fire Lord sitting on her throne, alternating between laughter and tears and screaming and whispering. Crying for her mother, screaming for Zuko, laughing to her father that she did it, didn't I do good?
The duel is short. The Avatar State allows him to overpower Azula with ease. Her energy is bitter and twisted and wrong, but he untangles the knots and removes her bending. Curiously, Azula doesn't even fight it very much.
The screams and laughter and sounds don't stop. But some sages and ministers and a few guards come in, and he centers himself, meaning to explain to them that the war is over, when one of the sages asks him if he knows any Waterbender healing.
He's happy for a chance to help someone. He tells them that he isn't as good as Katara, but he knows the basics.
Prince Zuko has been asking for Katara, they say. (None of them knew the name of the Waterbender who came with Zuko to challenge his sister.)
Aang's hands are very cold. He tells them to take him to Zuko, immediately, and to bring pure water.
Zuko is lying on a bed. His chest is as crimson as the covers. His breathing is shallow. He keeps rasping out Katara's name until he sees Aang. Then he tries to say something else.
Aang tells him not to speak, and gets to work on his chest, but he doesn't have Katara's skill (why didn't he train more, he asked himself, and even when a fair little voice tries to tell him that he had his hands full with learning three styles of bending simultaneously as well as everything else that had happened) and the wound is severe.
Prince Zuko dies in the early hours of the morning, and Aang stands there with his hands dripping. Blood and water.
He still can't cry.
Then one of the Fire Sages in the room asks him if he knew the Waterbender who came with the Prince.
He asks them where Katara is. They show him.
His fingers are numb, but he cleans the blue necklace as best he can, even though the ribbon is almost burned to nothing.
The wind is picking up.
He asks them what happened. A sage timidly and hurriedly starts explaining. The two rode in on a sky bison, there was a duel, Zuko dove in front of Katara, and...
Wait, he says. Where is Appa? Where is the sky bison?
The beast was slain by Azula, the sage says, and continues his explanation like that was a footnote, until suddenly he can't breathe and the wind is turning into a storm.
As the sage chokes, Aang tells the others to take him to Appa, now. He needs to see.
They had dragged Appa into a stable. There's black on the white of his fur.
He stares until he can't look at Appa anymore, and then he turns around and looks at the quivering sages and ministers instead.
It was once the Fire Sages' duty to serve the Avatar, he says. You will serve me again. And together, we will remake the world.
All of them bow.
They ask him for his commands.
The reply is spoken by a thousand voices:
"Bring me Azula."
In Ba Sing Se, Iroh looks out to the city. Children are playing in the streets. Vendors are serving food at no cost (he might have indulged in a dish or two). Ba Sing Se is free, and he is happy.
And he still can't shake the feeling that something is horribly wrong.
"If you're not scared, you're not human." That, more than anything, should prove that the Avatar is human. After all, not even the Avatar is exempt from fear. Or: five fears that Aang has. Canon-compliant. Aang-centric.
(Apologies for inserting Jewish ethics onto an Asian character/ world, this would not leave my brain. As the descendant of genocide survivors, this part of Aang’s arc has always resonated with me. He gets a lot of hate for not killing Ozai ( he is 12????? Did you really want to see a child murdering someone on nickelodeon when you were 6? What), but I always applauded his refusal to truly finalize the Air Nomad genocide by giving up their views, as their sole survivor. They have just as much right to the world as the rest of the nations, and Aang did exactly the right thing to restore balance, which is his JOB as the Avatar. Balance means air, too.)
https://archiveofourown.org/works/25419808
He’s the last of his people. Why don’t the others understand that?
(He knows why. He’s always been too understanding. He refuses to view that as a flaw.)
He smiles a lot. He doesn’t always feel like smiling. He sometimes feels like destroying something in a tornado.
( He smiles because it helps him to know he always had the freedom to. Its not a given. He wonders how often Zuko or Toph smiled in their childhoods. He knows Katara and Sokka did, because they were not always at war the same ways Zuko and Toph were. He wishes he knew Suki better.)
"If I am not for myself, who will be for me? Aang. The Avatar?
It’s not about not being able to kill, or being afraid, or a coward, or too immature ( Taking a life is maturity?). He shouldn’t have to sacrifice one more thing of his people in the name of necessity. He will not shed his people as if they are a childish fixation to be outgrown.
He’s the last. He must stand for them. For himself.
No one else will. He thinks maybe they’ve forgotten how.
And being for myself, what am 'I' The Avatar. Aang?
Katara understands some. She does not laugh at him, at least. They’ve always been able to see each other’s side even when disagreeing. They are like the clouds- mixing two separate entities to form something new and always been and organic, natural. She wonders how much the world will strip from him before there is nothing left, and why it insists on doing so. She cannot fathom how much strength it takes for him to smile every day. Is in awe of it. He was her first friend. She wonders if he knows that.
Sokka understands some. Less. He is a pragmatist who has been raised in war, but he has a gentleness of spirit that shines through always. He pushes it away- it can haunt him later if it will end it now. He is smart, but he is fifteen. He is game for any genuine answer to the problem, he just doesn’t see another one. He is glad when one presents itself. He was his first friend. He wonders if he knows that.
(He does. He’s honored.)
Suki is a warrior with too much Kyoshi in her to understand his view, but enough diplomat to respect it. Why is she a warrior diplomat at fifteen? Why is he the only one of them with a childhood? She is glad that he was not forced to do more then he was willing to do. She wants him to be a child, because it is that quality which drew them all to him- his childish lightness of spirit, his happiness at the simple acts of friendship and love. He was different from Kyoshi, possessing a lightness she had never felt but wanted desperately. She learns it is the lightness of a world at peace, later.
Toph….. will bury it under sarcasm, but she can read his emotions. In some ways she knows him better then all of them. She hurts for him in equal measure to the amount she yells at him. That’s a lot. It frustrates her, sometimes, that she can read them all so well, because she is forced to sympathize with their anguish while exasperated with it. She isn’t really annoyed at him. She wishes she was, because she thinks she’s supposed to be. She can’t really ever truly be angry at him, her first friend. She wants him to do what he has to. He does.
Zuko is his mirror in many ways. He is also his opposite in many ways. They complement each other in different ways then him and Katara. Its no less crucial, just different. He was the first person aside from uncle to ever make an overture of friendship. Perhaps it struck him differently because it was an outsider who by all rights should despise him, the descendant of the man who murdered his people, and not a long-suffering family member. Even though he was never long suffering. It takes him time to see things clearly. He is glad he was not forced to murder his father, because once he sees clearly he would not have been able to withstand that. It moves him, that a child can see so much more clearly then he can. He sees him smile, laugh, overflowing love in all forms, and cries from how much he wishes he had seen the light earlier. He was the first to truly forgive him, too. Completely and without trial. He was his first friend he ever chose for himself.
It’s a common theme.
If not now, when? He does what he has to, but he does not give up himself. It was the right thing to do.( It was the only way to end it with peace).
He can be both the Avatar and Aang, Air Nomad and Judge and Jury. He can smile. He is a product of his people, and of his friends. He is the old and the new combined. He is Balance.
I am writing an Avatar: the Last Air bender fic and am torn on names. It is a Hurt/Comfort, Angst fic about Aang dealing with his sudden loss of everything after coming out of the iceberg. I need help choosing a title, what sounds better? here's a preview to help:
I know it’s not Fluidity, but this is something that my friend FrostyTrish and I talked about to a pretty fair extent, and I decided to run with it and make a fic for it. So if you could spare just a few moments to help, I would be so glad! ^_^
If you have written and/or read an Aang-centric/Katara-centric fic that you want featured in a masterpost, rb this post with the link to it along with two to three colors you would associate with it (yes, there is a purpose behind the color thing) 👀
