Gaang soulmates AU with a twist!
So, I read this amazing gen bnha soulmates fic and it got me thinking about a Gaang version. The concept from that fic is that the place where your soulmates first touch you becomes colorful. Like a sort of colorful birth mark that only shows up when you touch each other, e.g. if you poke your soulmate, the tip of your finger gets that person’s color while they get a round-like mark with your color. It has to be skin to skin.
The thing about this AU is that soulmates in it are sort of “the people who are destined to love you”, so it includes family. But here’s the trick, because it is NOT failsafe. Which means people can actively choose to reject their soulmate and decide not to love them, and if they do, the mark disappears from both people.
SO! We’d have a young Zuko, who was taught that the Fire Nation royalty shouldn’t care about soulmate marks. They are meant to stay hidden because they’re a nuisance at best and an exploitable weakness at worst, and the royal family can’t have such blatant weak points exposed, and yes Father, he is aware of that, he wasn’t looking at his mark again, he was just... looking at a mosquito-ant, yes. Of course.
(Later, Lala would roll her eyes at him and say he’s a terrible liar as always, and Zuko would flush and push her out of his room).
Yet, Zuko can’t help but treasure his marks. Most people have a lot of soulmarks, he sees it over the servants’ hands, arms and faces, but while he only has a few, they’re still pretty and colorful, greens and red and gold and from his family, so he loves them. Sometimes, when it was just him and his mother, she’d let him press his mark against hers, and the spot with the mark would get warm. He’d grin at her and she’d smile back, and it was wonderful. How can something nice like that be bad?
He doesn’t have a mark from his father.
Zuko never stops hoping he’ll get a soulmark from his father. After all, marks can appear late; sometimes, people have to develop their relationship first before they can love each other properly, everyone knows that. So he holds his breath with a dreadful spark of hope in his chest whenever they pass by each other, no matter how more and more painful his father’s rare touches become the more times passes.
He has a mark from Azula. Zuko looks from it to his sister’s cruel smiles and doesn’t know what to think of the mark for the longest time.
Then Lu Ten’s mark disappears one day and they get the news about his death. Uncle’s remains there, a constant throughout Mother’s disappearance and Father’s coronation. His mother’s mark remains there, and Zuko holds on to it, trying to angle his face away whenever Father glanced at it with a strange look in his eyes.
Her mark disappears after a few days, and something breaks in him.
It’s not satisfaction that he sees in his father’s face, it’s not, it can’t be.
Years later, his father burns his face during an Agni Kai. The place where his mother’s mark used to be becomes marred by a burn scar.
Enter the Gaang from stage left. Neither them nor Zuko will get soulmarks from each other at first. They're enemies, after all, and even when he shows up at the Western Air Temple and they accept his help, tensions are high.
He and Aang decide to go visit the Sun Warriors temple and pack their things. They all have each other’s colors in varying places, making for a colorful canvas, and Zuko watches from the side as Aang exchanges goodbyes and hugs with his friends before they go. He doesn’t see Toph getting closer until she punches his arm and tells him to take care, “alright, Sparky?”
Someone gasps and all of a sudden they’re all staring at them and that’s when Zuko notices the skin on the back of Toph’s fingers are red. Zuko stares and stares at it, his mind not processing the buzz of questions around then, and then he rolls his sleeve up and all the air leaves him because there it is, an oval pale green mark.
Toph can’t see the mark, but when they explain to her what happened, she gives the others a smug grin, of all things.
When he returns from the trip with Aang, they have matching marks around their knuckles, left to right, red and gray. And then slowly, one by one, Zuko gains marks from each of the gaang, and something begins to build anew inside of him.
(Just a psa because what if Azula doesn’t have a mark from their father either? Imagine what it could and what it wouldn’t change)
