#forbidden!zuko

Jet and Sokka, off to the side: I don’t like it.

Everyone else: It’s fine.

Zuko, smiling and cute: Hi.

Everyone else: See?

People who actually know Zuko: ...

Jet and Sokka, who are too suspicious to admit he’s cute: don’t like it.

Zuko, in the middle of Ba Sing Se, screaming at Iroh and trying to burn the city to the ground: ;lkdghakldjfsal;

Alright, so finally getting around to this!

First off, how this would happen is the fact that Azula calls off the war as an eight year old. (With the help and backing of Zuko who’s just like “I’ll murder you” to anyone who argues).

Why would she end the war you might ask? Well in this AU, she’s just eight and her only family and caretaker is her ten year old brother. Eight years olds are fickle as all hell. If everyone else dies and she’s upset about that, her attention might fully turn onto finding and getting revenge for that. There are other things to do and eventually a young child isn’t going to be interested in war, especially with no one pushing her towards it. So she’s just sort of like “Yeah, I’m in charge now” and Zuko is behind her smiling like “Yeah, she’s in charge now” and who can argue?

So they spend years just sort of turning the Fire Nation back into being just the Fire Nation (Maybe keeping the colonies, maybe going ‘Eh, not really ours...?’ I’m undecided) and they grow up with Azula running the country and Zuko taking out anyone who opposes her. Eventually they somehow end up having political talks with other nations and eventually they question how the Fire Nation can be even mildly trusted after this.

Someone brings up a political marriage for Azula and she just goes, “Uh, no. Not happening. Zuko, you do it.” Of course Zuko is mostly distracted at the time, so he doesn’t actually know what he’s agreeing to, but when he figures it out he just sort of... shrugs it off and accepts it because it’s Azula making the demand.

Azula informs her council and the other nations that while she won’t be getting married, her brother will. Which does change the ages of potential marriage partners slightly.

Now the nations are offering different people to marry the prince of the Fire Nation which does have its own perks. It’s not becoming the Fire Lord’s partner, but it is becoming the partner of her only relative and one of the few people she likes and the absolute only person that she’ll listen to.

Except none of them know why some people in the Fire Nation are fucking horrified by the thought of Zuko being the one married off and trying to convince the siblings that it should be Azula. Eventually though, all the marriage offers come through from the different nations.

Even though Katara is too young to marry right away, both her and Sokka end up being potential partners. So does Yue from the Northern Tribe. (idk who to add from the Earth Kingdom, but no one add Toph, I’m slightly wary on adding Katara cause she’s fourteen, don’t you dare add the twelve year old.)

Now Zuko has several potential partners and while his opinion matters to Azula and the council knows going against her is the dumbest thing they could possibly do they also have to think about it from a political standpoint.

Except someone up North pisses Azula off, don’t know who or how or why (cough Hahn cough) and she decides that just to show them up... she decides on one of the Southern siblings and chooses Sokka.

So I mentioned offhanded that if Iroh were somehow still alive in the Forbidden Assassin AU that he would have been hiding in Ba Sing Se for the entirety of Azula’s reign and believed dead and upon finding him in Ba Sing Se, Zuko would be infuriated...

Except the Earth Kingdom wouldn’t know much about Zuko. Rumors wouldn’t make it that far and if they did they’d likely lose his name and most of the danger that he poses. Especially because Zuko hardly leaves Azula and when he does it’s more of an assassins work than a prince’s. So even upon meeting him, most people wouldn’t think of him as a threat even knowing his name.

So Iroh wouldn’t actually know what Zuko has become. The fact that he still smiles and comes off as friendly and sweet would make him seem no different than the child Iroh knew. So upon finding him in Ba Sing Se, Iroh would probably assume the best rather than the worst. Zuko would use being his nephew to his advantage.

So Zuko wouldn’t break that illusion immediately. He would draw it out, no matter how angry he was. He wouldn’t want any risk to his time in Ba Sing Se so he doesn’t bring up how angry he is with Iroh right away. He would bide his time right up until he couldn’t anymore.

Now imagine what that backlash would be in the end. Zuko has been holing up feelings of anger and sadness for years beyond what was happening. Now he finds out Iroh isn’t dead and rather than come and help him and his sister, he abandoned them. Zuko would lose it on Iroh and anyone in the surrounding area that was unlucky enough to get caught up in it.

This would be the first time someone truly sees the worst side of Zuko in this AU and since it’s in Ba Sing Se, which is was the last great stronghold in the Earth Kingdom... imagine dismissing Azula and Zuko as children playing war or something out of pride. Then imagine one of those children, the sweeter kinder one, completely losing it in the middle of the city and finding out that maybe you were the ones that were playing.

To make it worse, Azula was really young when she ended up taking the throne (Not sure how at the moment) and Zuko is only about two years older than her. So he became her guardian and assassin very young to make sure that she stayed happy. Then he found out his mother died, had another kid and the kid is just three at the time so he takes her with him and now he’s sixteen with a fourteen year old monarch as a sister and he finds out his Uncle, who could have legally taken the throne and avoided so much pain for his family, chose to hide in the city that he tried to take down and killed his son.

So I had a couple of people curious about how Zuko and Jet’s meeting would go in this AU and honestly, now that I’ve thought about it... it wouldn’t be what people are expecting.

In this AU there is no Iroh just off the ferry to heat his tea with firebending so Jet never has that moment of ‘Fire Nation’. So all Jet knows is ‘Li’ off the ferry who seems nice, if a little shy and has a scar on his face. So he has no qualms about asking him to join the Freedom Fighters and after Zuko refuses (for his own reasons) he mostly asks if he’d like to look over the city together. Zuko accepts that and they start to look over the city for the next few days and Jet never finds Li all that weird.

They manage to get into the Upper Ring somehow and suddenly there’s an older man calling Li ‘nephew’ and looking shocked if pleased to see him.

The thing is... Jet is extremely perceptive. He would see the split second of fury and hatred in Zuko’s eyes at the sight of Iroh. He’d see how he quickly switches back and tells his Uncle he missed him, but asks how he got there, he thought he died in the war after all.

Jet has no idea what’s going on with either side, but now he has questions to ask. He asks around about ‘Mushi’ and the people tell him he had missed his nephew for years and wondered what happened to him. Now he seems happy to have him back and the boy seems sweet.

Jet still wonders about that moment of anger that he saw and if it was real. So he watches Zuko closely for a while and eventually asks him about it.

Zuko mixes the truth with a lie and says that he was just upset because his uncle never told him he was alive and he didn’t know how to feel.

How do you think Azula became a murder child for Zuko? Then he went ‘oh, this is affection?’ and started a campaign to rule the world and she was like ‘yes, this is good’.