#zuko and azula agni kai!!

[in2u-4asec]

I am so happy!!!!

[demaparbat-hp]

He's never happy

[sofiialyt]

final Agni Kai !

for Vatra Artbooks Avatar book 🔥

[m-r-moth]

they are both zuzu, fight me

-it’s your turn to do the dishes today!

-no, yours! i fucking did them yesterday!

*double death stare*

AGNI KAI

[ofswordsandpens]

I fear that "fire bending didn't come easy to zuko" and "zuko isn't a prodigy" (both true) has somehow snowballed into "zuko is a bad or at best average fire bender".... which simply isn't true, especially by the end of book 3

[dyingroses]

Avatar: The Last Airbender + AO3 Tags

[wileycap]

At the intersection of crack and tragedy, I have this fic idea about Zuko getting time looped during the day of his Agni Kai.

The first few loops are painful and traumatic. (Well, they're all painful and traumatic, but after the first fifty times... even getting half your face burned off by your own father gets old.)

After a while, he manages to stay awake long enough to hear Iroh crying at his bedside, begging for Zuko to stay. Pleading with the spirits, please, not him too.

(And then it takes more time for him to realize who visits him after Iroh falls asleep. She doesn't say anything.)

Zuko makes a Plan.

In the mornings, he tracks down Iroh or any experienced firebender, and he learns. So what if he isn't good? He'll make up for it the same way he always does: with hard work. He has the time.

(One of these days, Uncle won't have to spend the evening crying to the spirits.)

He gets better. Far better than he has any right to be. Iroh is thrilled on the days when he manages to catch him and not one of the other masters. Every time, the other masters barely tolerate him until he shows them. Iroh is always patient and kind.

Middays are reserved for Azula. A sister is a sister, and maybe... maybe Azula just needed somebody after Mom left.

(Zuko got that wrong, too. He's pretty sure he died the first time, and this is the spirits punishing him for being a bad son, a bad brother, a bad prince. He'll get it right, eventually.)

And at sunset, he still tries to plead with his father. Ozai will never hear him, but he has to try.

(A few hundred burns to the face can make you hate a man.)

But no matter how hard he tries, he can't beat Ozai. His skills improve, but his body doesn't - it will always be thirteen, with undeveloped chi paths he can barely break through to, and Ozai is a man in his prime.

Until one day he fights so well that Ozai halts the battle. He has the old general (after all this time, Zuko has completely forgotten the general) brought up, and orders Zuko to give him a mark of shame. To prove himself a good son and a good prince.

He stands above the general and looks at his tears and his shaking hands and his panicked eyes and he understands.

This time, Zuko earns his scar with pride.

(And when Iroh cries at his bedside, he reaches out and squeezes his Uncle's hand: I'm here, I'm not leaving.)

(And later, when Azula comes in with her soft steps and doesn't say anything, Zuko cracks open his good eye and gives her a smile.)

(And when he and Iroh set out the next morning, it is with purpose.)

(They leave behind a princess who knows that her father is not invincible.)

[crnbrryy]

"I cant explain it but she's slipping" yea i wonder why too zuko, is it the diy bangs?

[supremechancellorrex]

I kind of find it interesting that some fans think that Zuko owes Azula anything. Even if Azula did in some part care about Zuko between throwing lightning at him or twisting the knife on Zuko's trauma, that doesn't mean Zuko himself owes her forgiveness. Azula mocked, bullied and hurt Zuko on his shortcomings nearly all his life, she goaded him into embarrassing himself in front of the Fire Lord, she mocked him over the possibility of his father killing him or locking him up, she insulted him, she smirked as he was scarred, she manipulated him constantly. Just because Azula had a raw deal in the end too and there were a couple moments here or there where she seemed half-way decent to him doesn't change that, it doesn't erase it.

[oceanview15]

Katara: We can't lose. Because we have this. *points to her chest*

Zuko: We have heart?

Katara: Heart? No, me. I'm pointing at myself. I'm going to win this for us.

[mugentakeda]

am i my brother's keeper?

[demaparbat-hp]

The Perfect Prince

[exiaax]

The Last Jujutsu Kai

This blew up on twitter. I also added it as a print in my INPRNT

[sokkastyles]

It kinda floors me that people still discourse over why Zuko goaded Azula into shooting lightning, when it's pretty obvious that he's doing to her what she used to do to him. During their fight, you can see that Azula is getting increasingly flustered and angry, and he taunts her in a way that he knows will hurt her pride and cause her do something irrational, like shoot lightning at the guy who can redirect lightning.

It's exactly the reversal of how Azula was always able to easily best Zuko previously by getting him riled up and sloppy. Now, Zuko is the one who is calm, strong in his newly won convictions, while Azula's perception of her own superiority is crumbling around her. Zuko knows this, maybe not in a way he can articulate, but he definitely figured it out.

He's also got enough of a perspective to know that he needs to end the fight quickly before things get out of hand. He stated at the beginning that he didn't want anybody else to get hurt. But he knows he can manipulate Azula here because she's done the exact same thing to him so many times. And it works. Azula's reaction is not the calculated cruelty we've seen from her before, but full of blind rage. I'll show you lightning.

What he doesn't anticipate is how far Azula will go to prevent having to face the reality of her own failure.

And, in a way, this shows that although Zuko is seeing his sister more clearly here, he still doesn't see her wholly. Because Azula has always been willing to cheat.

[ofswordsandpens]

I rewatched Zuko and Azula's Agni Kai recently and it's left me wondering – when Zuko begins to goad Azula into striking him with lightning, was he making the decision to kill her?

Because had Azula shot lightning directly at him like he planned and not at Katara, the most forthright implication to me is that he was intending to strike Azula with her own lightning. And Azula, for all her mastery, would not have been able to counter that.

On the other hand, maybe he wasn't planning to kill her at all and was simply planning to redirect it elsewhere (similar to what he did with Ozai). But given the tone of tragedy throughout the Agni Kai, the fact that they both acknowledge that this fight will be "the end" to them, I don't think it's inaccurate to read Zuko's actions as him preparing to kill Azula, even though an Agni Kai doesn't have to end with death (and in canon it didn't). Also, why goad her into striking him with lightning if he wasn't planning on doing something intentional with it? If anything, it adds another layer to the tragedy to me, because I don't believe Zuko wants to kill her. And it stands in such contrast to the way that Azula desperately wants to kill him.

I also think that there would have even been something sadly poetic in that sort of demise for Azula should the Agni Kai had gone this direction: Azula, struck down by her preferred sub-skill. Azula, struck down by the very bolt of lightning that she intended to kill her brother with. Azula, struck down by her own power.

[dyingroses]

Avatar: The Last Airbender + AO3 tags