chillin in the fridge 🪩🧊🥭

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After Team Avatar’s hard-won victory over Ba Sing Se's advancing forces, the woodlands of the great Shoren Vale burst into wild celebration. To crush the city’s deadly ambitions, the gang had to team up with unlikely allies deep within the Hujiang province whose stealth, raids, and ambush had become legendary. Formerly known as the Freedom Fighters, these mercenaries had been reforged under Azula's merciless command, earning for them the name, Shadow Serpents.

In the aftermath, Avatar Aang has drawn a firm line on Ba Sing Se’s incursion. The Team and their allies pushed back against Ba Sing Se’s advancing forces. Their onslaught will remain within their broken walls. Tonight, the forest itself celebrates. Hundreds of paper lanterns shed a glow onto the gnarled boughs of the ancient trees. Beneath the high canopy, the rhythmic pulse of festival drums mingled with bright, unrestrained bursts of laughter. The air crisp with the scent of crackling boar-q-pine and moon peach ale.

Around a massive bonfire, the strangest of families in the world huddled together.

The rest of the old gang and what was once the Freedom Fighters sprawled on logs, trading war stories that get taller with every cup of cactus cider. Around them, the children chased fireflies while young benders try to outdo each other with ridiculous bending forms.

Aang slips away from the noise for a moment. He glides onto one of the rope-and-wood bridges high above the forest floor, the same kind the Freedom Fighters once used for ambushes. From here he can see everything: the fire, the children, the impossible web of people who found common ground.

Aang watched it all from the swaying bridge above the clearing, wind tugging at the edges of his robes. He smiles, this peace is real tonight; music, warmth, laughter, the clink of cups, but it’s the kind of peace built on fresh graves and fragile truces. It wouldn’t last.

Peace never did, not really. Tomorrow the nobles would scheme, the generals would bristle. Somewhere, someone would decide the world still owed them something. Tomorrow, someone will test the boundaries Aang has drawn. But tonight, the forest was full of unlikely allies who had chosen to sit at the same fire. And for one rare moment, the Avatar allows himself to believe that it might just be enough to keep the world from burning, even for tonight.

Aang turns around to observe the vast tree village from the other side. Their settlement glows softly in the distance; wooden walkways between the trees, low hanging lanterns light the path from one hut to another. A place where bender and non-bender, soldier and rebel, actually manage to live together. Something sparked inside of him. An inspiration.

Aang inhaled the lingering scents of woodsmoke and stale ale as faint laughter drifted to him. The forest canopy was thick enough to swallow sound, but Aang still heard her long before she stepped into view.

“Hello, Azula,” he said without turning, eyes fixed on the swaying rope bridge above.

A soft laugh, low and amused. “How do you know it’s me and not your wife?”

Aang’s mouth curved. “Toph doesn’t tread lightly.“

Azula smirked and steps beside him, boots silent on the wooden platform. Moonlight caught the faint scar that ran through her left eyebrow.

In the distance came Toph’s unmistakable half-scold, half-laughter at one of their kids. A sound that made Aang smile fondly. A moment later, cutting through the mist from another area of the camp, the sharp, practiced swoosh of Jet’s hooked swords carving the air in relentless drill.

Aang glanced sideways. “So you let Jet do all the talking now?”

Azula’s voice was low, amused.

“For this treaty? Absolutely. He sounds like he actually likes people now. I sound like I’m barking orders.”

She tilted her head, the corner of her mouth curling. “Besides, look at him. Teaching your eldest how to dodge a hook-sword without losing a limb.”

Aang exhaled through his nose. A half laugh, and a half sigh. “Of course he is.”

“I’d have just demonstrated on your son myself, and called him an idiot.”

Aang snorted, half-horrified, half-charmed.

Azula’s eyes glinted gold under the lamp light.

“I guess some things never change.”

He looked back at Azula—at the woman who used to smile like a blade.

“Actually… some things change exactly as much as they’re supposed to.”

Azula’s smirk faltered for just a heartbeat. She folded her arms, studying him. “So tell me, you didn’t come all this way just to sight-see, Aang.”

“No,” he admitted. “But I figured if anyone would find me up here, alone, it’d be you. You used to chase us nonstop.”

“Flattered.” She paused, then softer, almost curious: “Do you ever miss it? When we were still trying to kill each other?”

He considered that for a long moment.

“Perhaps,” he said finally. “Life was much simpler back then, ironically.”

“So,” she said, tilting her head, “we’re good now, right? Ancient history and all that. Water under the bridge.” She gestured lazily at the actual bridge in front of them.

At twenty-six, Aang carried himself differently: taller, broader shoulders, a handful of kids’ worth of calm in his eyes.

“That depends,” he said, “on what you do next.”

Azula’s smile sharpened. “Relax, you’re a fully realized Avatar now. I’m no match.” She raises two hands. “Still, if it were up to me and I had that power? I would’ve burned Ba Sing Se to the ground, saving us all the trouble.”

“Would you, now?” Aang just shook his head, a hint of laughter in his voice as he met her gaze. “And that,” he said with a disarming grin, “is precisely why the universe looked at you and said, ‘Yeah… let’s not.’

Azula threw her head back and laughed. Elbows leaning on the rope of the bridge. She finally lowered her chin, she was grinning from ear to ear.

“Careful, Avatar,” she purred. “Keep talking like that and I might start to like you.”

“But speaking of which—” She lifted her hand lazily, blue-white sparks leaping and crackling between her fingers like living lightning. “Mastered all the elements, didn’t you? Even this one.”

“Lightning?” Aang echoed. He raised his own hand; electricity crackled to life, perfectly controlled, no wasted motion. “Your uncle is a great teacher.”

Azula rolled her eyes so hard it was practically audible. “Right. That guy.”

The lightning in both their palms winked out at the same moment.

Somewhere far below, a night-bird called. The bridge creaked in the wind.

“And your fire?” she asked, voice low. “Zuko taught you that, too? Or was it the dragons?”

“A bit of both,” Aang said, hands in his sleeves. “So you heard about the dragons.”

“I did.” She tilted her head. “They say the blue one was beautiful. Deadly.”

“Reminds me of someone,” Aang said, meeting her eyes without flinching,

Azula gave a soft huff of laughter. “Maybe if I was a little nicer back then… Do you think she would’ve let me climb on her back the way she let you? “

“Not a chance.” He said without missing a beat. “She would’ve swallowed you whole.”

For a moment the old violence crackled between them like static, then they both laughed, sharp, surprised, almost honest, as if none of it had ever happened. As if she had never tried to put lightning through his heart.

“Show me your fire,” Azula said abruptly, the laughter still clinging to the edges of her voice.

Aang was taken aback, “Azula,” he said teasingly, arching his brow. “I’m a married man!” He said in feigned shock. “Toph would pummel us both.”

“Oh, shut up. You know what I mean. Show me.”

He sighed theatrically and raised his palm. A small flame bloomed in his hand, warm, steady, sunset orange. It flickered almost at once.

Azula’s smile curved, slow and knowing. “As I thought. Orange.”

She opened her own hand. Blue fire roared to life, cold and perfect, licking the air like it was tasting it.

Aang stared, genuinely curious now. “Yes, I remember. You can bend lightning, and summon blue fire.”

“Why?” she asked, stepping closer, the blue light painting sharp shadows across her cheekbones. “Can’t you?”

He tried. The flame that answered was orange again, then hotter, then suddenly wild. It flared toward violet for an instant before it scorched his own fingers. “Ah—!” He shook it out, wincing.

Azula laughed under her breath and began to pace on the cool wood. “Blue fire isn’t about power, Aang. It’s about what’s underneath. Something raw, deep. Something dark.” She snapped her fingers; perfect cobalt flame danced above them like a cruel star. “You forgave everyone after what’s been done to you and your people. You made my brother your friend. You turned the other cheek so many times I lost count. There’s nothing twisted left inside of you to feed it.”

Aang’s smile faded by slow degrees.

He looked down at his open hand as though it belonged to a stranger.

Azula watched the shift settle over him the way storm clouds slid across the moon.

Aang closed his eyes.

The breeze stilled.

When he opened his hand again, the fire that rose was blue. But not Azula’s cold, perfect blue. Something rawer, storm-colored, almost black at the edges. It trembled like it was angry to be born.

A single tear slid down his cheek and hissed into steam before it reached his jaw.

She gaped. Almost breathless. The smirk melting into something hungry and almost reverent.

“So you do have a dark side,” the words dripping with something too close to the truth. “I guess you haven’t completely forgiven the Fire Nation after all…’ she whispers to him, somewhat haunting.

In her fractured mind, the image flared unbidden: the two of them side by side, blue fire crowning them both, the world kneeling or burning, no blind earthbender ever stealing him away, no gentle forgiveness, just the two of them and an empire forged in that color.

Aang let the flame die. The tear track glistened in the moonlight.

“I have forgiven the Fire Nation,” he said in a low voice. “That darkness… is something else entirely.”

He stepped past her, shoulder brushing hers for the barest second, and started across the swaying bridge.

Behind him Azula stayed very still, fingers curled tight around the ghost of that fire, tasting the dangerous, delicious thought of what might have been if the Avatar had chosen a different kind of queen.

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I’m sorry! I’m sorry! 😭😭😭 I know! Not your typical azulaang. Please dont be mad! But I thought this would be a great oneshot for azulaang week in keeping with their canon characters huhuhu.

We got a little flirty banter going on, more like Aang has no idea he’s sort of flirting. Or maybe he does. And Azula is well, Azula.

Surprise! Jet’s alive. (Don’t @ me, I have receipts 😂… in my hc )

So why Change?

Aang had changed—quietly, irreversibly—somewhere between the final battle and this fragile peace. And just when Azula thought she was finally clawing her way out toward something better, something steadier, she felt the old rot stirring again.