#blind zuko

Zuko was born blind, Ozai uses this as an excuse to pass over him entirely as heir once he takes the throne. What Ozai doesn't know is that Zuko has learned how to 'see' with his bending. He can sense heat and thus knows where people and certain things are. Learned from necessity after one too many times getting targeted by his sister's bullying.

Zuko is not welcome in the war room. He simply goes on a trip with Uncle which Ozai endorses to get Zuko and Iroh out of the palace and out from underfoot. While traveling together for several years in the Earth kingdom, Zuko eventually encounters Toph who has recently run away from the Gaang because of her fight with Katara. They both make snarky comments at each other before realizing they're both blind so of course neither of them had been staring at the other. Wow what a world! Zuko gains a new sister. Zuko gets roped in to helping the Avatar learn firebending.

Zuko has no scar and his eyes aren't cloudy so most of the gaang don't know he's actually blind. Toph thinks it's a riot and makes him keep the ruse up to see how long it takes them to figure it out.

Basically that, yep. Sensitivity readers are a reasonably common practice in Serious Face fiction (...among writers and publishers who care about getting things right), but definitely not common in fanfiction, so it's no surprise if you haven't heard the term before--they're people from whatever group who are good at helping writers spot and correct when they're using harmful tropes related to the group(s) they're a part of (and offering suggestions to make things read more authentically).

Since people tend to spin off AUs of my fics (which is awesome and continues up be encouraged), I am putting in an effort to not totally screw up the Blind Zuko rep. Of all fandoms, Avatar should absolutely be a place blind fans can find themselves represented in and welcomed by.

Ozai burns a little too much of his son's face, which leads to an 80% loss of vision. He can't send his blind prince off on campaign into foreign waters, that's just embarrassing, but he can send him to a temple to pray for the Fire Nation and forget about him.

Please can we stop refering to Zuko's eyes as 'good' and 'bad' in fics. What he actually has is a 'seeing eye' and a 'blind eye'. There is nothing inherently bad about a blind eye.

Negative language towards disability is ridiculously common in our ableist society. I know this community is often very good at writing disabled characters, and people mean no ill intent with this language, but please consider the words you use and their connotations.

This is not a call out, nor an attack, and it is not targeted at anyone specifically. I am just someone in the disabled community asking you to please think about why you might consider a blind eye to be bad, especially in a fandom with a canon blind character.

After the agni kie the medic told him that Zuko was lucky to even have a eye after such a severe injury. But when being banished from home With a Barely healed facial scar that came with profound hearing and vision loss. It didn’t feel very lucky .

Not that it would stop him. In fact he refused to admit that there was anything wrong with his vision .

His uncle would just sigh and take that into account when training him. Giving him the skills he needed to hold his own.

Zuko would never admit it. But he noticed that uncle taken to standing on his blind side when they travelled so no one could sneak up on him. He appreciated it immensely. He hated it when people appeared out of nowhere from a point that he used to be able to see .

And with what little hearing remained he could still hear low sounds. So he could still mostly understand uncle when he stood on his deaf side. It made him feel a little less disabled . This would also subtly force people who he couldn’t hear as well to stand on his hearing side

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The only person that he openly told was toph. When he first joined the ganng They bonded over there blindness. She thought he had the bad deal. He had lost his vision . He knew what a full field of vision looked like .We’re as she was born blind . She didn’t know any difference . But she never once pitiedhim. It was one of the things he liked about her .

Zuko was fascinated by tophs ability to “see”. And she joked that if she could teatch the avatar earth banding she could teatch him to see. They laughed about it but after a lot of trial and error Zuko managed to create his own form of “ vision “ by sensing heat sources through his bending . it wasn’t as nuanced as tophs but was perfect for “seeing “ people approching from his blind side .

No one could ever sneek up on him again.

With enugh practice he even worked out that you could tell the difference between different benders and non benders. ( fire benders ran hot and water benders ran cold ) as well as sensing if people were in the next room to him.

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After the war the palaces council always descused the latest story that had emerged of what there New fire Lord had gotten up to during the war. If they asked him about the rumours Zuko would neither confirm or deny it but there is NO WAY he could have been the blue spirit ( who had been given a full pardon for there crimes ) Or had broken into the North Pole by diving in freezing tiger seal tunnels . Those things only happen in spirit tails.

But in a meeting when Zuko had calmly stood up and announced to his guards. that there was an assassination attempt happening and that there was three fire benders and two non benders on the roof about to brake in through the ceiling . Only for said men to come crashing down 10 seconds later and be quickly apprehended buy the weighting gaurd .

“...why was it Sokka who came to him when he was hallucinating? Why was it Sokka who made him feel like a better person? Why was it Sokka who he chose to live for?

Zuko stopped mid pose and dropped his arms.

‘Agni, help me.’”

It's finished! Final word count of 59,847... I am genuinely tempted to go in and write an extra 153 just to hit that 60,000 milestone... But I won't

Chapter 23:

Some really short snippets of life post engagement. Basically self indulgent fluff.

Full Summary:

Snapshots from each month of the most eventful year of Zuko's life. (and then some)

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Zuko thinks he's learnt more about himself in this year than he has in his 21 years of life. He's finally made friends (of his own, not his sister's). And he's finally seeking justice for all those years living under Ozai's thumb, even if it comes at the expense of betraying Uncle Iroh. And maybe this year he'll finally know what it means to love and be loved.

or