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Sun Warrior Zuko Swampbender Katara AU?
Oh, sweetie, I can do better than that.
You guys wanted to see Katara's design in the Cycle in Reverse AU the most! Well, here's our girl 🪷
In the cycle in reverse AU, what happens when Zuko meets Katara for the first time for real (not a vision)
Also, if the last raid on the Southern Water Tribe happened sooner, does that mean Katara was younger when Kya died? Is she okay?
Katara was six years old when Kya passed away. She doesn't remember much of the Last Raid, but certain moments of her mother's death are some of her earliest memories. That leaves a different kind of mark...
As for Zuko and Katara's first (real) meeting, it's kind of a mess.
Picture this:
Zuko has just spent several hours lost in a creepy swamp with only a girl for company. An irritating, beautiful, damn interesting girl. Then, after riling him up annoying him for hours, she suddenly disappears without a trace. He looks for her even after being reunited with Aang, but it's like she just...vanished.
When Zuko and Aang are taken to the Swamp Tribe by a party of hunters who found them by coincidence, he sees her. One of the youngest hunters cringes away from her as she starts berating him in a sisterly manner. She looks just the same. Rants just the same. Enraptures him just the same.
She doesn't look at Zuko once.
So he snaps, too.
She's so confused. They all are. Nobody can understand why this stranger is tearing into a girl he's never met. But he is, and she's got the temper of a wrathful goddess, so she yells back. They keep going on and on, until a particularly loud I don't know who you are! shuts him up.
And he understands. And he stops understanding. Because she's saying the truth, but so is he. Zuko has talked to her. He has seen her. But that doesn't mean that she has ever met him.
Huu realizes what happened. He understands the Swamp better than anyone—he knows when a vision is to blame.
.
Days pass before Katara approaches the stranger. He's been avoiding her after the whispered yet heartfelt apology he handled her after the fight. She has seen him since, of course. He's always helping around in the most unnoticeable ways. He's reserved yet generous, taciturn yet kind. A dichotomy under the skin of a man.
Despite her rage and her grudge, she's curious. So she approaches him because, at the end of the day, he did see a vision of her in the Swamp. Not his family. Not his future. Not his fears. Her.
Katara finds that she doesn't want to understand why as much as she wants to understand him.
So she sits next to him, and waits for him to break the silence.
He does.
I am about to ask WAYYYYYY too many questions about the Cycle in Reverse AU but here we gooooo!!!
Are those markings on Zuko's torso bodypaint or tattoo? He seems to be wearing an awful fancy mantle on his shoulders, does that mean he had a high social position amongst the Sun Warriors? What do you MEAN he wears a shackle as a reminder???
Also what?? Are Katara and Zuko entwined in spiritual ways too? Are they another reincarnation of Oma and Shu in this one?
Does Katara ever see visions of Zuko in the Swamp? Does Zuko see a future version of Katara in his swamp visions, or a current or past version of her? Does this vision... befriend him or otherwise accompany him while he's in the swamp?
What does Katara's bending style look like? How does growing up in the Swamp affect her skills? (I don't really remember seeing any female benders in the Swamp in the show but who's to say?) Where does the Necklace come from? Did her parents somehow find their way to the Swamp? Did Kanna decide to settle in the Swamp instead of the South Pole?
How does Sokka's dynamic with Suki change? DOES Suki appear in this AU? And if so, wouldn't it be much later? What's that he's got hanging around his neck, is it a harmonica or similar to Inuit sunglasses?
*gasps and heaves for breath* I'll save Toph and Aang for a different ask, and I already apologize in advance for how crazy this one got!!! Your AU's are just so compelling and also you're the best <3
*smacks hands on the table* ALRIGHTY. LET'S DO THIS.
Zuko's design in this AU (all of the Gaang's designs, actually) was so fun to come up with and is so packed with little details it's not even funny.
The red stripes on Zuko's face and torso are war paint, and thus quickly removable. The little sun in the middle of his chest, however, is a tattoo. Perhaps it's part of an initiation ritual for the Sun Warriors—I'm not quite sure, but I'd love it if that was the case. The main motivation behind that sun tattoo is it's location (where a lightning once struck in canon).
Zuko is high in the social hierarchy of the Sun Warriors—as is reflected by the fancy mantle and the sheer amount of gold he's decked in—, though not precisely because of his royal blood. He's up there because of his dragonfire, because he's a damn fine warrior, and, most importantly, because he's the first human being to bond with a dragon in over a century.
Bonding with Druk is the reason he was told about the Avatar in the first place. Though Zuko's an important person in the Tribe, he's still a foreigner, and couldn't be fully trusted until he actually did the impossible and bonded with a dragon. So he was shown that the Sun Warriors had kept the Avatar in secret since the beginning of the war, and the rest is history.
As for the shackle, Ozai didn't feel as caritative as he did in canon. Zuko was exiled as a prisoner—not given a redeeming mission. Uncle Iroh helped fake Zuko's death and took the boy to the Sun Warriors so they could heal him and offer sanctuary. Zuko still wears the shackle as a reminder of everything Ozai did, and of the oaths he swore within that cell.
.
Now, believe it or not, the notes I started taking for this particular event (AKA ZK's first meeting and Zuko's vision in the Swamp) mutated into a sort-of-kind-of mini fic. But this reply's a bit too long as it is, so I'll share it at another time, I guess. Meanwhile, here's a summary :D.
After traveling through the Earth Kingdom, trying to make their way to the North, Zuko and Aang fall into a huge swamp. They are quickly separated, and are left to find their own way.
After walking alone for hours and being absolutely miserable, Zuko finds a young woman. Or she finds him. He doesn't quite figure it out. Either way, she keeps him company as he crosses the Swamp...and makes him even more miserable.
She's an infuriating, stubborn, and absolutely gorgeous girl. She doesn't give him a straight answer and refuses to tell him where they're going, why she's there, or what's her name. She banters with him and snaps at him and vents to him and he does the same.
Until she disappears.
(Zuko sees her again once the swampbenders lead him and Aang to their Tribe. She's just the same, just as spirited, but she doesn't acknowledge his existence. So he snaps, because how dare she pretend she doesn't know him.)
(As it turns out, she doesn't.)
.
Sokka likes to say that it's weird how all of them (members of the Gaang) come from minority tribes, but none were actually born there.
Zuko was taken to the Sun Warriors after his burn and imprisonment. Toph ran away from her home in Gaoling and was adopted into one of the Desert Tribes. Sokka and Katara, as well as the rest of Wolf Cove, emigrated to the Swamp after the Last Raid (which happened a couple of years earlier than in the og series).
The Southern Water Tribe merged pretty nicely with the swampbenders...after a lot of cultural clashes and more than a few disputes. Some southerners refused to leave the Pole in the first place, and either moved to different southern tribes or left with Hakoda's fleet to the warfront.
For those who merged with the Swamp Tribe, their traditions blended through the divides. The southern warriors were gone, but the men and women from the Swamp remained. Sokka and Katara had more people to share the weight with. Sokka did not have to become the man of the tribe.
Katara had teachers.
She never quite gets the swamp style. Oh, she's a master of it, but her movements are more fluid than those of her fellow benders. Slower. Smoother. The swampwater is heavy and the humidity is almost unbearable. The plants bend easily to her will, and she discovers early that, if all living things are the same, then there's water inside of everything.
Bloodbending is easy for her to figure out. It comes naturally because she understands it. She understands what it's like to reach inside of something and move it from within. She's been doing it for years, after all, bending vines and flowers and plants.
Healing isn't easy, though. Healing, she struggles with.
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Suki does appear in CiR! It's much later, though, since certain events happen at different times in this AU (for example: The Desert comes right after The Swamp, and both take place in what would be Book I, if we're following the canon timeline).
Admittedly, I haven't thought much about Suki's role in Cycle in Reverse yet. She's still going to be a Kyoshi Warrior, of course, and she's still going to kick Sokka's ass. Perhaps the Gaang meet her on Full Moon Bay, right before they go to Ba Sing Se, and once again after the fall of the city. Perhaps not. I'm open for suggestions :D
Her dynamic with Sokka would be really fun! Since he was raised at the Swamp, he doesn't have a lot of the, uh, the same troubled opinions he did in canon. At least, they're not as strong. Still, he has the particular ability to put his foot in his mouth, and Suki finds that both extremely annoying and absolutely adorable.
The little necklace he's got is bark from the Banyan Tree! Not nearly as interesting as a harmonica or ilgaak, though. I headcanon that every member of the Swamp Tribe carries with them a piece of the Banyan Tree at all times. It's a reminder that they all share the same roots, and are part of the same tree. Katara carries her pieces in a string necklace.
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I'd love to hear all your other questions! Answering these was extremely fun, and I have both a lot of ideas and a lot of stuff to figure out for Cycle in Reverse. Toph and Aang are such fun characters, and there's a lot to be said about them in this AU.
Literally just finished the months-old character design sheets for the Gaang in my Cycle in Reverse AU. It's an artwork per member, and I'll post all of them together eventually, but meanwhile...
Which Cycle in Reverse! Gaang member's design do you want to see first?
Aang
Zuko
Katara
Sokka
Toph
Not really an option, just here to let you guys know Suki will come eventually
OUuuuhhh your Cycle in Reverse AU art is sooooooo *clenches fists* good and it's like. Hm. it's like seeing a very meaty juicy steak that you know is going to be so rich and flavorful and perfectly tender the second you sink your teeth into it!
I so desperately hope to learn more about this AU, AND! being very Zutara-brianed as I am, I couldn't help but marvel and squee at how subtly entwined Zuko and Katara already are. Zuko may be standing very straight and upright, and it may look like Katara's facing (at least from the chest and above) Sokka, but as we slowly pan down over the two of them you see Zuko peeking at her out of the corner of his eye, then her hand tucked into the crook of his arm, and from then on they're practically joined at the hip. their two feet next to each other just make it look like they're two parts of a whole. And also they both bave anklets on both sides (what's the dark one on Zuko?). Your honor, I love them and I already have so many theories about their dynamic in this AU
Ah, thank you thank you thank you! I'd love to each each and every single one of your theories about Cycle in Reverse! The AU is fairly new, so there's a lot I haven't figured out about it yet, and every question and idea helps give shape to it. ZK is definitely one of the cornerstones of the AU, though. No doubts about that.
They met in the Swamp, so there's a lot of mystique surrounding their relationship right from the start. Much like Aang's vision of Toph, Zuko sees Katara in the Swamp before he actually meets her, which is...more than a little confusing. For both of them.
Still, they're entwined in more ways than one, and their physical closeness is only one of them. I'd love to explore their dynamic soon. They're so precious <3
