#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.)

[sokkastyles]

Let me be clear and emphasize that even if this were true, it wouldn't matter one little bit because Azula doesn't deserve empathy from either of them, since she just tried to kill them, and I find it extremely suspicious that certain people are trying to praise an indigenous girl for having empathy for a racist colonizer in order to make Azula's actions seem less bad or her victims worse than her. Katara's bleeding heart does NOT make her your good victim stereotype.

Which is also funny, because Azula stans praise Zuko in the same offensive way for being a good little victim about as much as they demonize him for not being that, as above.

And all that in a scene where Zuko and Katara's expressions are completely ambiguous. Katara looks more openly emotional than Zuko, who just looks sort of sadly resigned but determined. Whether Katara's tears are for Azula or for Zuko is unclear, though, and it's Zuko whose back she had her hand on for support, the same hand that chained Azula to that grate. The scene emphasizes, if anything, how Katara feels about Zuko, before any interpretation of how she feels about Azula. Even shutting her eyes against Azula's violent tantrum can be interpreted as sadness that Zuko's own sister tried to kill him, and relief that the terror is finally over for both of them, as she stands protectively by his side. The music and Azula's tears are meant to emphasize the tragedy of the situation, but trying to paint Zuko and Katara's reactions as in opposition to each other is a deliberate misrepresentation of the text. It would be like if I said that Zuko had more empathy for Azula than Katara because when he saved Katara, he shot the redirected lightning away from Azula, whereas Katara continued to fight Azula.

But what it really boils down to is the fact that violent people will take any opportunity to use the empathy of their victims against them. Katara shuts her eyes because she can't turn off that instict toward empathy, even for people who don't deserve it, whereas Zuko, who has been told time and time again that he should empathize with his abusers, just looks empty and tired. They both look emotionally drained by the experience but determined to stand together, nonetheless. Much has been made about Katara looking away, but as she does it, she leans towards Zuko, who removes his hand from his arm and stands with an open posture because Katara is there to support him. They are, neither of them, alone. That's what makes this moment a triumph for them both even as it's a tragedy for Azula.

[crnbrryjuicee]

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

[akiizayoi4869]

Having some thoughts about the last agni kai. Specifically about this part:

This part just gets to me every time. Why? Because Azula really was sorry for the way how things turned out between them. Deep down, she does love her brother, but the relationship between them is so fucked up thanks to the abusive environment that they grew up in makes it seem as if she doesn't, because she doesn't know how to express it in a healthy way. Zuko responding by saying "No, you're not." just makes it even worse, because thanks to their screwed up relationship and his envy towards her, he can't see that she actually means it.

[demaparbat-hp]

I had a vision in shades of sacrifice.

[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.

[luxlyric]

close-ups under the cut

Commissions 🎇

[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.

[mugentakeda]

am i my brother's keeper?

[dyingroses]

Avatar: The Last Airbender + AO3 tags