Dadriusstan - Val

Ty Lee teaches Zuko acrobatics.

It all began as simple hand-to-hand sparring - something they did from time to time whenever they had a free spot on their otherwise busy schedules. Zuko held his own well enough, but Ty Lee's agility combined with her stunts would give her the upper hand more often than not, and her moves never failed to bedazzle him. He could never bring himself to say anything about it - the only words able to escape his mouth in his awestruck state being "you're... good" or nothing more than a simple "wow" - but luckily for him, Ty Lee could see the fascination written all over his face and ended up offering to teach him.

It was hard at first. While Zuko's parkour and gymnastics skills were already pretty outstanding, he couldn't handle making any sort of mistake, and the earlier sessions would always end in him stomping off in frustration everytime he couldn't get a move quite right. However, as time went on and Ty Lee reassured him that it was absolutely okay to screw up sometimes and he realized she wasn't going to laugh at or humiliate him for it (and a couple of apologies for his mean behavior later) he began getting better and better at it until he could almost go toe-to-toe with her and the sessions turned less serious and more playful. They would chase each other around the palace grounds, somersaulting from wall to wall and leaping off the roofs until exhaustion caught up to them and they collapsed on the floor, covered in sweat and breathing shakily but laughing together like they didn't have a single care in the world.

After that, it wasn't uncommon for Zuko and Ty Lee to swing from the beams on the hallways' ceilings like trapezists whenever the floor had been recently swept.

(The cleaning staff most definitely noticed and shot odd looks at each other everytime it happened, but said nothing about it. It's not like they were complaining.)

Mai: What are you two doing out in the rain?

Ty Lee: I'm splashing in the puddles, it's so much fun!

Zuko: I'm trying to get hit by lightning

chena going from ‘i’ll break his legs’ to ‘you should have dragged him if it meant bringing him back to us’ is making me emotional and idk why

my favorite ship dynamic is betrayal. not when they betray each other but when one or both of them turn against their cause, their principles and/or loved ones for the other. bonus points if the person they're abandoning everything for didn't remotely expect it. ultimate declaration of love. "you mean more to me than everything i ever believed in. i am more loyal to you than my conscience. i love you more than the thing i would die for."

what is Herdbalist Zuko's hair like?

YES. Finally, someone asking the IMPORTANT questions!

“Well I would have brought my comb. But you kidnapped me.”

“You are just not gonna let that go, are you,” Sokka said.

“Sokka,” Katara said. “Aang did pull him into the saddle. While he was saying ‘no.’ And then we didn’t ever bring him back.”

“Because there is an evil fire-shooty admiral guy after us! ‘Us’ including him! Which I am still waiting on an explanation for, but I will at least accept a ‘thank you Team Avatar for saving me!’ ”

“Well,” Spirit said.

“Do not–”

“I would have brought my gratitude–”

“–finish that.”

“But you kidnapped me.”

He didn’t even say it accusingly. He said it while scratching the sweet spot at the base of a lemur’s tail, smiling with airy indifference, as Katara sat behind him combing out the bison-flight tangles from his ridiculously luxuriant waves of hair.

“Did you leave your dignity behind, too?” Sokka accused. “What kind of man has hair down to his butt–”

“Longer than that,” Katara reports, running her comb through just a section of that hair because they would probably both have to be standing for her to get a full swipe in.

“–and lets another man’s little sister play hair stylist? Do you not know the danger of surrendering hair control to a little sister?”

“I can think of worse things a little sister could do.” Their demure firebender kidnappee continued to smile. Sokka would have really appreciated if he’d been a surly firebending prisoner instead.

“I’m going to give you hair loops,” Katara said. “Beads or no beads?”

“No beads!” Sokka snapped.

“Just do the opposite of whatever your brother says.”

“Beads!”

“I’m so glad you agree,” his little sister said, sickly-sweet, her smile matching the firebender’s smirk.

It was stupid how good his hair looked when Katara was done. All… loopy, and beady. And every day on the flight north it got more and more complicated because there wasn’t much to do on the back of a bison, until there were tiny braidy loops and swirls intertwining everywhere and a loopy-beady high bun, and still so much hair left to cascade down his back, and it didn’t even get sufficiently ruined when the Northern waterbenders attacked even though Sokka’s hair looked like a hare-possum had died in it.

And one of their warriors offered the guy a hand down from Appa when they got to the city. What was with that?

“She’s pretty,” said warrior sighed, as all that hair went swishing after Aang and Katara.

Sokka squawked.

“Sorry,” the guy said. “Your sister?”

Additional squawking ensued.

First post!! That’s so exciting! Okay so for just a quick one here’s some headcanons I have from the time where Iroh and Zuko were at the tea shop

Lee was a….really bad employee. Like genuinely awful. He poured tea in people’s laps a lot, he was never where he was supposed to be, and his attitude was at best grumpy. In spite of all of that the regulars really liked having Lee around! They were mostly a bunch of old people who had seen their sons and grandsons all leave to go be a part of the war, so having a young man around them, even a young man who was so abrasive, was nice. Besides even under all of his anger there was clearly a good natured side to Lee.

When the shop was slow and the manager was out, Mushi would break out a Pai Sho table and challenge anyone to beat him in a game. If you did you would win free tea for a week and a generous serving of cake to go along with it. No one ever even came close to beating him

No one ever asked about Lee’s scar. It was one of those unspoken things that was just never mentioned. It was obvious what had happened, and none of them needed to know the whole gruesome story. Still most of the people who came by the tea shop and saw the boy’s face were more than a little grateful he had found his way to Ba Sing Se with his uncle

The regulars also found it a little sad that Lee couldn’t find any good buddies to pal around with. Even though there were few boys his age left in the lower rings (and those that were left were mostly thugs or low lifes) they still wished that their boy would have some friends of his own. It seemed that all Lee ever did was work. They were all happy to hear that Jin had asked him on a date. Nothing came of it, but Jin and Lee kept up a quaint but charming friendship afterward.

Even after Iroh got the Jasmine Dragon, he kept the prices pretty low, and the old regulars who came up from the lower ring drank for free They didn’t want any “charity” or anything, but Mushi simply wouldn’t take their money. He claimed that they had all beaten him in Pai Sho before, he was shocked they didn’t remember besting him. Lee just grumbled and threatened to push them out of the shop with his broom if they kept trying to give him money. They were also adamant that any customer who had anything bad to say about the customers from the lower ring would be asked to leave and not come back.

i've seen the occasional joke about bato and hakoda being suspicious of zuko dating sokka and supportive of aang dating katara, and though i understand why you might make that assumption i think it's worth noting that hakoda's first impression of zuko was "guy who helped break me out of prison" and bato's first impression of aang was "weird kid who insulted my cooking and stole my mail"

my loser boy gets his notebook back and immediately gets back to work 🌊

favorite atla fics are the ones where the gaang finds out roku is zukos great grandfather and aang’s immediate reaction is to start hollering “GREAT GRANDSON!!!” at zuko like. aang’s 12 but is canonically the embodiment of embarrassing grandpa it’s perfect