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muertawrites · 5 years ago

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Hey! I absolutely loved your Zuko x reader one host you wrote, and I was wondering if you could do one where Zuko and the reader barely talk, but she’s part of Azula’s friend group. At the beach some stuff happens, and Zuko finds out she’s not as crazy as he thought she was. Kind of angst. I totally understand if you can’t, or don’t feel like it! I hope you’re safe and healthy, and everything is going well. Thank you!

From Eden (Zuko x Reader)

Word Count: 1,776 (FUHREEDOM MOTHERFUCKERS 🎆🦅🦅🦅 🎆 )

Author’s Note: Ok this request is P E R F E C T. I don’t think I need to tell anyone I love the psychology of this show, but I love the psychology of this show - especially with Zuko and his relationship with himself and others. And this episode??? Ohhhhhh I have some THINGS. TO. SAY. about this episode. I have been in this boy’s place and I feel 👏🏻 for 👏🏻 him 👏🏻 he 👏🏻 deserves 👏🏻 better 👏🏻👏🏻👏🏻. I went in a sliiiiiiightly different direction, but I didn’t drastically change it (it turned out cute I think). Also, I named this “From Eden” because as I was writing it reminded me of the Hozier song. I’m such a sucker for a Broken Babe™, especially when the babe in question has a lot of personal growth and learns to love because of it. Thank you so much for this, anon, you’re absolutely gorgeous and I hope you’re keeping safe and healthy as well ❤

~ Muerta

(Also, if you’d like to request something, I have a list of prompts tagged! Feel free to ask for anything from fics to headcanons to imagines - I’m also open to new character suggestions!)

“Hey.”

Zuko sat on the porch of his family’s old vacation home, his mind miles away. Your greeting made him snap his head towards you, glowering down at where you stood at the base of the front steps. You crossed your arms, responding to his gaze with a defiant glare.

“What do you want?” he growled.

“To have normal friends,” you spat in reply. “Seems I’m stuck with you instead.”

A few hours ago, Zuko almost made a crater in the beach from the campfire you, his sister Azula, and your friends Mai and Ty Lee had started a screaming match around. Insults were flung, tears were shed, and skeletons were evicted from closets, all resulting in your realization that maybe political survival wasn’t worth the dysfunction of constantly being surrounded by a sociopath and her cronies. Pretending to have a super fun sleepover with them back at the guest house was proving to be too much for your fragile sense of self-containment, and you weren’t quite friendly enough with your newfound death wish to tell Azula how you really felt about her, so you went where you knew it would be quiet. You didn’t expect to find Zuko and his anger issues there a second time, but he honestly didn’t scare you - you’d take his obvious rage over Azula’s subtle calculations any day.

“I don’t know why you’re complaining,” Zuko jeered. “You’re just as emotionally fucked as the rest of them.”

“Ty Lee’s got herself pretty much under control, despite her gullibility,” you answered cooly. “Also, if you really wanna talk about emotionally fucked, I’m not the one who almost roasted my ex-girlfriend alive earlier.”

Zuko furrowed his brow at you, leaning forward as if to challenge you. You stayed exactly as you were, regarding him with a hard, unimpressed expression that revealed just how little he intimidated you. You couldn’t bend and weren’t a trained fighter - you knew he knew this, and that he wouldn’t actually attack you, despite how convincing he tried to make his empty threat appear. After a long, intense moment of wrinkled foreheads and competitive frowning, he backed off with a sigh, leaning back against the pillar behind him.

“So, what, you want to come and make peace? Talk it out or something?”

You shook your head, climbing the steps and lowering yourself onto the second highest; just below him, with a few feet between you as a courtesy.

“The last thing I want to do is talk about that dumpster fire on the beach,” you told him. “I just needed some time alone. But, since I found you, I guess it’s a good time to ask if you’re okay.”

Zuko looked you up and down, a confused and partially concerned look on his face. You half expected him to raise the back of his hand to your forehead to check for fever.

“What do you care if I’m okay or not?” he asked bitterly. “We’re not friends.”

“Zuko, I’ve known you since I was a toddler,” you said. “I’d say we’re friends. It’s not like anyone else really is.”

“Mai is my girlfriend,” Zuko snapped at you. “She’s the best friend I have!”

“Mai dumped you for being a possessive asshole,” you deadpanned, “then she let her best friend convince you to commit arson. Friends don’t let their friends’ sisters manipulate them into felonies.”

Zuko huffed, slumping back defeatedly.

“You can’t act like Azula’s never made you do anything you didn’t want to,” he grumbled.

“I don’t,” you replied shortly. “I’ve just stopped caring about making her like me, since she really doesn’t like anyone. She doesn't get under my skin like she used to when we were kids.”

You noticed Zuko’s lips curl upwards into the ghost of a smile. You mirrored him, leaning your arms atop your upright knees.

“What?” you asked.

Zuko chuckled faintly, shaking his head.

“Nothing,” he responded. “You just… Do you remember when you were eight, and Azula teased Ty Lee about being too slow climbing the trees in our courtyard?”

Your eyes widened in realization, your mouth parting into a wide smile as you let out a gasp of hysterical laughter.

“Oh, that was awful!” you cried, though the memory only brought more fits of giggles to your gut. “I was such a little brat!”

Zuko was laughing with you too now, arms wrapped over his stomach as he tried to speak between breaths.

“It was the funniest thing I’ve ever seen!” he exclaimed. “Watching her fall out of the tree like that, the shock on her face, and then I caught you with the knife and saw where you cut the branch... She deserved it. You should give her a taste of her own medicine like that more often.”

You blushed, looking away from him as your laughter died down.

“Now she could kill me if she wanted,” you said. “I try not to say or do anything around her if I can help it.”

“... Is that why you’ve been so quiet since then?”

You nodded.

“She beat me up when she found out what I did,” you explained.

You stood, pulling down the waist of your sarong to reveal the burn scar on your right hip. Zuko’s eyes burst with shock at first, wondering exactly why you’d be disrobing in front of him, his expression softening when he saw the mark Azula left.

“I’m sorry,” he murmured. “Most brothers feel like they should protect their little sisters. I always felt like I should’ve protected all of you from her.”

“You did,” you assured him. You sat back down beside him, closer this time, so that your hips almost touched. “I remember you jumped in front of her once when she threatened us. And that time…”

Your voice faded, the memory almost bringing tears to your eyes. You couldn’t figure out why.

“You hid from her,” Zuko finished your thought.

You nodded.

“You let me hide in your room,” you recalled. “Remember? Azula punched me. I ran to the first quiet place I could find and accidentally went to your room.”

Zuko hummed.

“You were crying,” he added, “and your eye was all red and swollen.”

“You held me.”

Zuko’s eyes fixed on you. He didn’t say anything, though he remembered; you burst through his half open door, sniffling, tears and spittle running down your cheeks and chin. It was the first time Azula had actually, physically hurt you, and you were terrified and confused. He asked if you were okay, and you shook your head. Being so young, the only thing he could think to do was hug you, since that’s what his mother did to make him feel better, and you clung to him, sobbing into his shirt and using his much bigger body for protection. After that day, he let you use his bedroom as a hiding place whenever Azula got to be too much - until she found out about it and started teasing you about wedding dresses and baby names.

“We were friends,” you breathed. “I wish we still were.”

There was a long silence in which the two of you stared out at the horizon, down the steep hill leading to the vacation house and into the ocean. The moon hung in a small sliver, barely flickering across the calm waters that rocked below; you could hear the gentle rush of waves as they crawled over the sand and shrunk back into themselves, creating a calming din that echoed up to where you sat.

“... I still remember your favorite game to play with me,” Zuko said into the warm air between you. “Those times you hid in my room. You used to pretend to be a Kyoshi warrior. My mom gave you one of her old fans and we’d jump on and off my bed, trying to catch each other.”

You grinned.

“I would wrap myself around your legs to keep you from walking,” you recalled.

Zuko laughed.

“I loved that,” he admitted. “It used to make me laugh so hard when we were kids.”

He looked over to you, and you turned to face him as well. The anger in his eyes was gone completely, in its place a warm, steady sadness that made you ache.

“I miss you,” he whispered.

You reached cautiously for his hand, relieved when he slid his fingers between yours and gripped your palm tightly.

“I miss you, too,” you replied. “I’m sorry I let Azula drive me away from you.”

Zuko wrapped his arms around you, pulling you into a tender embrace. Your hands latched together on either side of his back, gripping into his shirt a little bit as you buried your face in his shoulder. He felt and smelled the same as he did when you were little; hard like the walls of a sturdy house and sweet like the last embers in a fireplace.

You didn’t know how long you held each other, but when you broke apart, you sat together for ages, existing in silence on the steps of his childhood house and beside one another. You felt small again, but in the best way - you felt like the girl who was brave enough to cut through the branches of a maple tree so your tormenter would fall out of them.

“I want to run away,” you blurted. “I could be someone totally different if I weren’t stuck here.”

“If you do, I’ll go with you,” Zuko said. “We can be different people together.”

You grinned, leaning your shoulder against his.

“We could move to Kyoshi Island,” you suggested. “I’m too old to start warrior training now, but we could start a business. Open an inn or something.”

Zuko chuckled at the thought.

“I’ll call myself Lee,” he mused, “and you can go by Izumi.”

“Maybe we could be married. And we could adopt orphan children and cats.”

“Just cats. You can’t emotionally destroy a cat like you can with a kid.”

You glanced over at him, noticing the hard gleam in his eye. You wrapped your arms around his bicep, holding him close to you.

“You’re not your father, Zuko,” you whispered. “You don’t want to be.”

Zuko nodded. He reached for one of your hands, curling his own around it.

“... I feel like I am going to leave,” he said, “at some point. When I do… will you stay? So that I have at least one friendly face to come home to someday?”

You nodded, giving his hand a gentle squeeze.

“I will,” you promised. “And when you do, I’ll give you Azula’s severed head as a homecoming present.”

Zuko laughed at that.

{ epilogue }

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letterstomilen · 4 years ago

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i discuss the classification of igneous petrology as you fall asleep during my lecture (PART 1) (ASMR)

Childe/Zhongli, Alternate Universe (read part 2 here) When Childe's younger sister tells him about the volunteer at the library, he does not make the connection between that and his new favorite ASMR YouTuber, Rex Lapis.

Childe has a very effective method of getting through college. His little sister, who’s caught him making coffee at three in the morning on more than one occasion the past week alone, would beg to differ.

“You’re the best older brother,” she starts off, and he’s sure she’s trying to convince herself more than him at this point, “but you need to fix your sleeping habits.” Then, because she’s his little sister, she’d flash him a smile and pat his shoulder reassuringly.

(The comment is not lost on him though. He understands his sleeping situation will eventually wear him down if it hadn’t already, but he believes if he’ll drink a coffee every morning and a Monster every night, he’ll get through three days. By the third day, he’ll hardly be coherent but that doesn’t matter because he’ll conk out for the next twelve hours and then repeat.)

“Don’t worry, Tonia,” he says, trying to sound as reassuring as possible as he contemplates whether it’s worth it or not to swallow a pill of 5-hour energy with his morning coffee. “Once break ends, I’ll get back to normal.”

“You said that six seasons ago.”

Childe frowns, trying to remember if his sleeping schedule was this dysfunctional last year. “Huh?”

“The Walking Dead seasons,” Tonia clarifies, as if she’s not twelve years old and the show is for grown adults. He thinks. He hasn’t checked Commonsensemedia ever since La Signora labeled him as a “helicopter parent” and his Netflix tab has been playing How to Get Away with Murder as background noise for the past few weeks.

Isn’t it a show about zombies though? Tonia’s sheepish smile tells it all, because it’s the same exact guilty look he had when he got caught red-handed as a kid.

(Once he remembers later, Childe promises himself, he’ll check out The Walking Dead.)

“Oh. Well. I have a lot of shows to catch up on, you know. Not to mention a ton of my professors gave me reading for over the break.”

A half lie. They did give him a lot of reading because each professor assumed that their classes were his only one, and with seven days left, he still has a textbook worth of reading to go through. But there are no shows that Childe would sacrifice his precious sleep for. As a matter of fact, he would love to sleep. He’s spent the majority of his classes back in high school sleeping and faking attention, saving his grade at the last minute — it was quite the extreme sport really, if he says so himself.

Whenever he tries to sleep recently, his thoughts run at several hundred miles per hour, and he spends several hours staring at the ceiling before succumbing to the computer at his desk and watching trashy movies. At this point, he must have gone through the entire romance comedy list on Netflix. (Not a proud point in his life but if anybody ever wanted him to give a list of best to worst romance comedy movies, he now has one.)

Tonia, on the other hand, isn’t incredibly convinced.

Admittedly, the excuse was lame. Also, he can’t easily lie to his little sister, who’s far shrewder than he takes her for at times.

“You never start your reading in advance. You like to speed read it right before your class or watch a five-minute video on the chapters while your teachers take attendance. But that’s… uh, ‘a bad work ethic.’” Tonia looks immensely proud of herself as she says this, finishing it off with, “Zhongli told me that.”

“Zhongli?” he repeats, trying to remember if that’s one of her classmates or some stranger that’s hoping to kidnap his sister.

“The guy that volunteers at the library sometimes. He recommended me a loot of good books to read, but he talks like an old man.”

“How old?” Childe can tell she’s enjoying this — talking about her new friend at the library that he’ll probably have to run a background check on.

“Like he’s in his sixties or something. But he looks… actually, he looks your age! And he’s a student too. I told him all about you.”

Well, that doesn’t sound very reassuring coming from the mouth of a twelve-year-old. He’s not sure if that translates to his social security number, his current dilemma, or just that he’s her older brother.

“Like all of the stories you told me when I was a kid. And then when Lumine came to pick me up, she stayed to show him pictures of you too.”

“Of course she did,” he mumbles, ruffling her hair. One of these days he’s going to move without telling his classmates and the twins won’t enter his apartment unannounced. (But Tonia adores their company and the stories they tell her far too much for him to actually do it. But that doesn’t mean he’s above making threats when they tell his little sister about the bet he made about white-out and how it could dye hair. The jury is still out on this one.) “She’s just mad because I get away with it and she doesn’t. But don’t do it yourself. It’s a bad habit,” he adds, remembering that he should at least try to be a good influence on his younger sister when he can.

“Okaaay,” she says unconvincingly, before shaking her hair and running off to her room with lunch he prepared for her.

Watching her close the door and no doubt continue her binge of The Walking Dead, he takes out his phone and texts Lumine.

Childe