#helpful zuko

[the-badger-mole]

For the Days When You're Not Yourself

The day began disastrously. First Katara woke up later than normal, which meant she was scrambling to get breakfast started before Zuko and Aang finished their morning meditation and training. That task was interrupted by the frantic arrival of Sokka to tell her that Suki was sick and needed to be seen to immediately.

Fortunately, Suki wasn't in any serious danger. She would be bed ridden for a few days and the others would have to stay away from her to keep from spreading whatever she had. Excepting of couse Sokka, who had volunteered to care for her, and Katara, who would inevitably be called in to alieviate Suki's physical symptoms. Suki had also thrown up in her bed during the night, so Katara gathered the soiled sheets, adding a surprise laundry pile to her to-do list.

Once she had Suki settled and left her to the care of Sokka, put the sheets in the wash basin to soak, and gotten herself cleaned up, she returned to the kitchen to find Toph, Aang and Zuko finishing up thier breakfast. There was barely enough congee left for half a bowl. She stared at the nearly empty pot in shock.

"What happened?" she asked turning to her friends. "I made double what I normally make." Toph gave a sheepish shrug, and Katara saw that both she and Aang had taken the largest bowls they could find.

"We were hungry," Aang said apologetically. Zuko's brow drew down in consternation.

"Sokka said that you had set aside a bowl for yourself already," he told Katara. She sighed and rolled her eyes hard. She had set aside some breakfast for Sokka and Suki, having decided that congee would be gentle enough for Suki's sensitive stomach. Sokka had helped her carry the food to Suki's room in fact, but somehow had missed the fact that his sister had only made two bowls, not three. He must have spoken with the others while Katara had been busy and told them to help themselves to breakfast. Katara took a deep breath and squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden stinging. It was a misunderstanding. Her friends hadn't meant to be inconsiderate.

"You can have the rest of mine." Aang shyly held up his bowl. From where she stood, Katara could see the syrupy sheen of the sugar he'd dumped into his bowl. Katara hid a grimace. How he could stand to eat something that sweet, Katara would never understand. She sighed and shook her head.

"It's fine," she said, gesturing towards the pot. "There's enough for me until lunch." Speaking of which, she would have to make a stop in town if she was going to make sure there was actually something to make for lunch and dinner. And Suki would need medicine. And while she was out, she should see if she could find something for Momo's fleas. The lemur didn't seem to mind a readily available supply of snacks in his fur, but they were beginning to attack Appa and it wouldn't be long until they made their way into the rest of the villa.

"Hey." Katara was surprised to find Zuko standing in front of her. He frowned with a concerned look. "Are you alright?"

"Yeah," Katara nodded. "It's just been a hectic morning."

"I'll handle the dishes," Zuko offered. Katara smiled gratefully and accepted the offer. Zuko found a bowl and scraped the rest of the congee out for Katara. It was even less than she thought, but, she reminded herself philisophically, she'd gotten by with much less. Toph and Aang finished their meals and then Toph dragged Aang away for his earthbending lesson. Katara managed to get two bites of her own breakfast down before Sokka rushed in asking for a bucket or pot or something in case Suki got sick again. Her breakfast was laid aside and forgotten in her scramble to make sure that she made it to the market before she had to train Aang that afternoon.

Lunch was as big a hurry as breakfast. Katara realized she'd forgotten about Suki's sheets, and she wanted to see that them before they got mildewy. After she'd thrown together a quick lunch and saw to the sheets, Katara went to train with Aang. To her utter frustration, he was messing up on basic techniques. Techniques she had spent weeks correcting him on. Today he seemed to have forgotten everything and needed her to adjust his stance and show him how to hold his arms. She tried to be patient, but her irritation bled through anyway.

"Are you practicing on your own?" She snapped somewhere through the second hour. "The comet is less than a month away. This is not the time for you to be lazy."

"I-I am practicing," Aang stamered, his face bright red.

"Oh, it's very apparent how much work you're putting in," Katara snorted sarcastically. "I can't teach you any of the advanced forms until you get the basics down. Just because you've technichally mastered waterbending, it doesn't mean you don't have to practice. This is the last time I'm going to go over stances with you. Now, put your dominant arm here, and you opposite foot here!" Katara stood behind Aang and moved him into the correct position. Aang flinched at her unusually rough handling, but he did as he was told, and by the end of their training session, Katara was nodding in approval as he went through the foundational stances. Her face was set hard, though, and Aang hurried away from her with his shoulders hunched and cheeks flushed in exertion and embarassment.

Katara's anger didn't fade after the training session. If anything, everything seemed to be conspiring to aggravate her further. Toph and Aang were laughing too loud. The sun was too bright and too hot for this late in the day. Suki had kicked Sokka out because his overly enthusiastic care was making it impossible to sleep, so he decided a better use of his time would be to pester his sister about medicine and teas. Zuko had offered to make dinner, which rubbed Katara the wrong way, as if he didn't think she couldn't handle something as simple as getting dinner on the table. The final straw, though was when she went to go gather Suki's sheets from where she'd left it to finish drying and found that Momo had decided they were there to play with. They were in a heap on the dusty ground and Momo was frolicking in them in all his flea-ridden glory. Katara startled all of her friends to the porch with her enraged shrieks and demands for Momo to stop ruining everything. Aang hurried over and gathered his frightened companion into his arms.

"He was only playing, Katara," he said, reproachfully. "You don't have to be so mean!" Her anger spiked with a frightening flash and momentarily stole all power of speech from her. She pointed to the sheets now in a heap on the ground.

"You're washing those," she hissed at Aang. Then she turned on her heels and stormed inside the villa. A moment later, her friends heard her bedroom door slam shut.

Katara could sense the others tiptoeing around. She couldn't explain how she knew with such certainty that that was what they were doing, except maybe there seemed to be less noise than normal. It didn't matter. She would spend the evening in self-imposed exile as much to give herself space to calm down as to not further subject her friends to her touchy temper. Guilt was a distant, but distinct presence in her mind. She would feel the full weight of the shame of her outburst later, but right then she was just tired. Her limbs felt heavy, and her head throbbed at her temples. She had been fighting tears for the last quarter hour, but she didn't know why. A good cry actually sounded pretty good just then. She had just decided to run a bath and let her emotions out in the priviacy of the luxurious tub when she heard a gentle knock at the door.

"Zuko." Her brows shot up in surprise. She had been expecting her brother, or maybe Aang, but Zuko stood in front of her with a sheepish smile.

"I just wanted to check on you," he said.

"Wanted to make sure I'd finished my breakdown, you mean?" Katara sagged against the door frame with a sardonic smile. A faint wash of pink colored Zuko's neck and face and he shook his head quickly.

"N-no!" he stammered. "What happened out there...listen, from where I'm sitting, it was totally warranted."

"Yeah?" Katara's brow shot up in surprise. "Even yelling at Momo?"

"He knows better than to play in clean laundry," Zuko shot her a smirk. "Aang's washing the sheets. I told him he can't have dinner until he's finished. I figure he should be done by midnight. Oh, speaking of dinner-" Zuko motioned down with his eyes and Katara noticed for the first time that he was carrying a plate of dried fruits and a couple of pieces of toffee.

"This is dinner?" Katara asked, wrinkling her nose dubiously.

"No," Zuko said. "But dinner might take a while to finish and..."

"And?" Katara prompted him.

"It's probably none of my business, but have you eaten today?" he asked. The concern in Zuko's eyes almost staggered Katara. He must have taken her silence for annoyance because he scrambled to add, "I just mean you only had a couple of bites of breakfast, and I didn't see you have lunch. And I know when I'm hungry, I can get a bit...tense." The day passed through Katara's mind, and she realized he was right. She hadn't eaten.

"Thank you." Her voice was unusually small as she accepted her pre-dinner meal. No one ever noticed when she got too busy to eat. She barely noticed. The knowledge that Zuko not only noticed, but thought to do something about it-

"If you want," Zuko started hesitantly, rubbing the back of his neck, "I can handle dinner. You know, just so you're not doing all the chores every day."

"Dinner?" Katara repeated.

"I'd offer to take breakfast, but training Aang ends too late-"

"Zuko." He stopped mid-sentence and bit the inside of his lips. Katara set her plate aside and squeezed her eyes shut against the sudden sting of tears. Then she threw her arms around Zuko's midsection and buried her face in his chest. He stiffened in surprise, but quickly gathered himself and wrapped his arms around her. She was shaking a bit, and he tried not to notice the light sound of sniffles coming from her.

"Thank you," Katara said finally. She pulled away, wiping discreetly at her cheeks and smiled at Zuko.

"Any time," he found himself smiling back. He rocked back on his heels and cleared his throat. "I should- uh- I should go get started on dinner. I can bring you a plate."

"I can join you guys," Katara protested weakly. Zuko shook his head and waved her off.

"If you don't feel like it, it's fine," he assured her. "Besides, it's good for us to miss you every now and then. Remind everyone how much we need you and all."

"Oh..." Katara felt her cheeks heat up. The thought of spending an hour or two in that gorgeous bathtub instead of dodging her friends' awkward silences and tiptoeing sounded wonderful. "Yeah, I'll think I'll hang out in here. Thanks."

"I'll be back later with your plate." Zuko turned and started heading back towards the kitchen. Katara leaned against her doorframe and watched him leave.

"Hey, Zuko," she called when he was halfway down the hall.

"Yeah?"

"I hope you know," Katara's mouth slid into a grin. "You're stuck with me now. If you keep being this helpful, I'll never let you go." Zuko grinned back at her.

"Sounds okay to me."

[sevrinve]

Prince Zuko 🔥

[fanfic-gremlin-ft-trauma]

Zuko’s swt visits throughout their relationship :)

[pineapple-frenzy]

Book 2 au: sparring sessions and short hair katara

They like to have sparring sessions in order to keep their bending skills sharp. They allow themselves to go all out and not hold back at all cause they know if anyone got hurt, Katara could just heal them

But anyways, wouldn't it be kinda funny if Zuko accidentally burned Katara's hair tho? Aofkqldkkajfjd

The "I think we can save the hairloops" line is from @linnoya-writes thank you for that!! :>>

[chaosandstardust]

It's been 10 years and how the fuck did Zuko mess up TEA?????

[bludweave]

it doesn't make sense but it'd be funny if it happened

[maniaeofmadness]

People have pointed out that Zuko goes from grunting a lot when fire bending to then being calmer and more fluid with his bending after meeting the dragons but no one has talked about Aang's air bending

In the first couple episodes he does this thing where he scrunches up his nose to do a big move with air, but by the end of the series he's pulling off theses amazing moves with little effort shown

[muffinlance]

Edit: Yes, the original Sokka sexism arc is great and important. But we don't live in a world where the live action show runners decided to include it in the same form. So:

Unpopular opinion time: Sokka unlearning sexism isn't actually a large part of his character arc--it literally only takes the opening episodes. And removing it COULD be a sign that the live action is taking seriously the complaints I've seen from native fans about the original show runners deciding to make the Water Tribes that sort of sexist to begin with. Sokka's actual character arc is about gaining confidence and leadership skills, and they have the opportunity to focus on that MORE if they change the Kyoshi episode to focus on Suki as a fellow teenager forced into a leadership/protective role in her community and rocking it rather than using her as an object lesson on sexism for a male character to learn from. Whether they will ACTUALLY do that is on them, but it took me less than ten minutes to think up, so I sure hope someone in the writers' room actually cares about using the live action to expand on new angles of the characters. Big ask, I know.

Now the real question is: did they also remove Uncle Iroh's unwanted physical advances on a literally paralyzed Jun, and all of Zuko's snipes about girls? Because THOSE are the actually "iffy" sexism parts in AtLA, not Sokka's five minute arc.

[redrobin-detective]

I can't stop thinking about how funny it is that Aang had all this secret lore on Zuko because of the Blue Spirit that he just, didn't share with the Gaang. That boy knew that Zuko was capable of fighting extremely well without bending, was excellent with swords and unnaturally good at infiltration and espionage. And then just never brought it up.

Katara's yelling at Zuko on how he thinks he'd be able to find and break into the Sun Warrior Temple while Aang is fidgeting in the background. Sokka starts giving Zuko a hard time about his swords, asking if a spoiled prince would know how to use them. Aang is vibrating unsure of how to explain that Sokka Might Die if he tried to swordfight Zuko unprepared but now its been too long and it'd be super awkward to bring up.

[luriuan]

Sokka and Zuko get SO much funnier when you remember this is both of their first times talking to another teenage boy in years. Sokka had all the other boys leave the tribe when he was little and Zuko just hasn’t talked to other teenage boys. They wanna be friends but have absolutely no clue how to talk to other teenagers. I love them so much.

[demaparbat-hp]

Character design for Katara in Soundless.

[queenpiranhadon]

𖤓⎸⎸ 𝐇𝐢𝐬 𝐋𝐢𝐭𝐭𝐥𝐞 𝐖𝐚𝐭𝐞𝐫𝐛𝐞𝐧𝐝𝐞𝐫 ⎸⎸𖤓

A/N: You all voted on this poll, and this poll, and this poll, and after a LOT of voting, I present you this :) BIG thanks to @that-multi-fandom-hijabi for beta reading this go follow her writing acc rn (@novaaaaaa-writes). Here's my masterlist! Divider made by @cafekitsune

Warning(s): Enemies to lovers trope, mentions of burning, stabbing, blood, bad descriptions of both fire of water (ice, snow ?) bending, Zuko is whipped, just a little confused about it, reader is a baddie, water benders unite (not me tho), reader is GN but written with f!reader in mind, reader looks non-threatening, is underestimated a lot, this takes place at the end of season one, I think that's it

Pairing: Prince Zuko x GN!Reader

“You shouldn’t be here” you glare, your gaze sending shivers down his spine. 

But that could just be because of all the snow and ice surrounding the both of you. 

The fire prince remains unfazed though, his amber eyes sweeping over your form- assessing the threat you posed. 

He could take you down in seconds. 

Zuko doesn’t respond to your jab though, because he knew you were wrong. He had to be here, it was the only way he could finally receive his father’s favor- as the heir and as the son of Firelord Ozai. It was his duty, his honor. 

And he wasn’t going to let a non-threatening waterbender get in the way of that. 

Reaching back, he unsheathes his dual swords, the glint of the waning moonlight reflecting the dangerous glint in his eye. 

And yet you didn’t back down.  

Pooling some water from your waterskin, you assumed the stance you had trained yourself to take whenever you honed your skills. One with the water, one with the ice.  

‘Power should flow, not force itself” Master Pakku had told you once.  

People had always underestimated your skills, saying you were better suited for healing. But after showing Master Pakku how you could use your bending to control the falling snow around you, he gave you a chance.  

He had told you to let the power settle in your body before releasing, instead of forcing it out immediately. Conceal and then control. 

You met Zuko’s fiery gaze with an icy one of your own. You were going to protect your home.  

With a yell, you form flurries of snow, whipping around your form as you channel your strength to change the form of your flurry, snow turning to water, water turning to sharp daggers of pure ice.  

Zuko scowls, setting his hands ablaze and you run at each other, fire meeting ice.  

Time slows down, as the intensity of your elements picks up, until all you could hear was the steady thump – thump – thump – of your heart, and the roar of crystalline knives swirling around you. 

Flames lick the side of your leg, wincing as the raw burn of the fire sears through your skin in white-hot pain. Razor sharp icy shards cut into Zuko’s skin, finding chinks in his armor, piercing his flesh and drawing blood. 

The snow beneath the both of you was dotted red now, both of you staring at each other, panting heavily.  

“You really shouldn’t be here.” you repeat again, but this time, it was barely a whisper, swallowing down tears as the cold wind of the Northern Water Tribe stung your gaping wounds. 

Zuko growls, grunting in pain as he pulls a shard of ice out of his skin. “I don’t take orders from a little waterbender” he spat, venom dripping from his words. 

You reciprocate with a snide comment of your own. “This ‘little waterbender’ just sunk 5 icicles into your skin.” 

Zuko was just about ready to tear your head off, hands igniting with vermillion flames before you collapse, the burns along your thigh and calf were much more severe than either of you realized.  

You choke out a sob of pain but keep your control of the water left in your waterskin. You couldn’t die, not today, and not at the hands of the prince of the Fire Nation.  

Zuko’s heart throbs unexpectedly, the look on your face too familiar for comfort. The face of someone who worked so desperately hard, only for all that effort to go down the drain. But he didn’t care for you. He couldn’t- couldn’t grow attachment to a non-threatening waterbender. Yet you sat there on the snow, dotted with blood, with that raw look in your eyes. His flames extinguished, without him meaning to.  

You flinched as he threw his swords down frustrated, impaling themselves into the nearby snow mound, standing straight up. 

He stomps over to you, and you frantically move back, but your leg flares up in pain again, and you yelp, hissing in pain. 

“Stop moving, you’ll make it worse.” he says, glaring at you, but not as intensely as he had before.  

You want to scream, kick him, punch him, anything, but your body betrays you as he sweeps you up into his arms, carrying you to the nearest place he can find, where he can keep you safe. You feel his strong arms hook under your knees and under your back, holding you securely to his firm chest. Even through his armor, he radiates warmth, a gentle heat, unlike the flames he threw at you merely minutes ago.  

He hates this, with every fiber in my being, his voice screaming at him to drop you and burn your frail body to a crisp, vengeance for the blood dripping from his own body, but he keeps moving, step after painstaking step. 

You try to stay awake, you really do, yet channeling so much energy from your battle, the numb throb in your lower leg, and the comforting heat radiating off the fire prince who refuses to look at you, you slip into unconsciousness.  

Zuko feels a weight press against his chest, and he huffs, honey-colored eyes catching onto the details of your face, the curve of your nose, the apples of your cheeks, the slight pout of your lips as you nuzzle into his armor unintentionally, how pretty you were when you were at peace. 

He stops himself there, reprimanding himself for thinking such things. He can’t have feelings for the enemy. 

And yet, even as he and his troops head home, battle wearing and dejected from the loss of a major battle, Zuko can’t help but think about his little waterbender.  

*** 

When you wake up, the kind woman tending to you tells you all about the mysterious and handsome man who carried your sleeping form across the entire Northern Water Tribe because he didn’t know where the healing center was.  

[nerdpoe]

Little Zuko and little Azula love Lu Ten. They love Lu Ten so much, they successfully smuggled themselves into Lu Ten's baggage when Lu Ten left to go fight.

Lu Ten, meanwhile, finds out that his little cousins snuck along for the ride way too late.

He knows they're gonna lose the fight.

He isn't about to let a couple of little kids die like that, murdered by Ba Sing Se soldiers too hyped up by war.

He may have been prepared to put his own life on the line, but he's not sacrificing Zuko or Azula's. But he also knows that if he flees the field with them, then Ozai will absolutely use that as an excuse to "punish" his own children.

Lu Ten does not want to know what that punishment entails. He is, in fact, more terrified by whatever it may be than the literal war raging outside his tent.

So.

So.

He swallows his pride for his country, his love for his father, and his dreams of being a successful general.

He grabs the kids, fakes his death, and runs.

[chiptrillino]

62?

this fit with this one !!!

Its outfit designs for the AU.

... honestly the whole page was... listen dis said zuko is dressed to the nines and i tried to deliver!

[luzho]

"you're not gonna believe this aang: did you know lee from the tea shop likes puns too?!"

"but i thought you didn't like him:/...?" "ahh... so that's where you're off to everyday, huh...". based on this pun found in @chitsangenthusiast's puns tag (hehe thanks kath :P this is like the second time i find a pun there!)

and i realized half way, but this works like a sorta prequel to the original puns comics from over a year ago! basically at this point, all my comics happen in an alternate universe where everything stays the same but sprinkled with anachronisms, such as sneakers and einstein :3

[fanfic-gremlin-ft-trauma]

Sketches of my boys even tho I’m supposed to be doing menial tasks such as sleeping