A:TLA Where Everything Is The Same Except Ozai Wears Crocs.

A:TLA where everything is the same except Ozai wears crocs.

The amount of sheer joy Iroh must have felt when Izumi was born

Love how literally the SECOND the Zinogre shows up on the map, Utushi leaves to go get it.

Bones

Skeletons of war aren’t in the closet, they hide in plain sight. 

The first sign of war is on display in each one of the air temples: actual skeletons of a people who were killed amidst kindness, left hollow by the passing of a century.

The Fire Lord who helped end the war will return to one of these temples, years after the war has been won. He will go alone, and he will scour the Southern Air Temple for weeks. 

When he returns, he will gift the Avatar with the record of his birth, found in a library turned to dust, dirt, unburnt. 

The Avatar will cry, and feel more connected to his new family and his old than he ever has before, but the Fire Lord knows the Air Nomads will never come back. 

The second sign of war is the soldiers through the Earth Kingdom, disciplined and barbaric alike. 

The same Fire Lord will remember a young boy with his brother stolen for the front lines, who turned on him when he knew who he (his family, his legacy) really was. He will remember a girl’s kindness, repaid in rapacity. He will remember all the the charred earth he had seen, and a boy who died beneath a lake. 

The villages will be rebuilt, the soldiers brought home, and a baby ostrich horse will find a new home. A Fire Nation village, nestled in an Earth Kingdom forest, will be instructed to leave the intricate hideouts in the trees where they are. 

The Fire Lord won’t stay in these towns long enough to hear them say thank you, feeling he would break if he ever heard such a lie as gratefulness to him.  

Third, the destruction of the Southern water benders, an entire bending discipline now resting on the shoulders of a single water bender, made terrified by the prospect of unyielding control under the light of a full moon. 

He will release the prisoner who had taught her to blood bend into the water bender’s custody, and lets her decide what she sees fit (she looks into her eyes, blue bearing into gray, and demand imprisonment for eternity, both in body and in spirit).The young Fire Lord will see the relief and gratitude in her eyes, and ignore the loud protests of his advisors, who wanted the woman executed. But looking at Katara, he feels as though the Fire Nation should get no say in the matter. 

And the fourth is the Fire Lord himself, broken by a lineage of war and deceit, and even though he tries, even though he is reassured he has done more than what anyone expected of him, gone above and beyond, he will never be able to shake the feeling of guilt for a heritage he did not choose. 

He hides this skeleton in the closet, and smiles for the other nations, for his friends, but he feels it in his bones and in his soul. Every night he takes out the skeleton he made of these bones and dances with it, in the form of pacing, shaking, the thought of rest ever so a foreign concept. The night he arrives at the Southern Water Tribe (for the second time) greeted by Sokka with an embrace (he remembers tossing him to the side before), he will lay awake and clench his jaw, trying so hard not to think about Katara, the last water bender in the south pole. He will help rebuild the villages and towns and pay reparations to the Earth Kingdom, doubting his choice only in the case of Yu Dao, and even years later, is scared to think he actually made the wrong choice. He will help the Avatar rebuild the ties to the spirit world, replanting trees into a lush forest, a statue watching them gratefully in the distance. He will grip his hands, plaster a smile on his face, when Aang’s voice hitches when he talks about the air benders, and waits until he is alone at night to sob. 

The Fire Lord is haunted by ghosts and bones alike, the balance within him forever off kilter. So the Fire Lord carves every lost water bender, every Earth Kingdom family ripped apart, and every air nomad corpse into his own bones, a promise to always be redeeming, a darkness he takes with him to the grave.

#thank you this is a wonderful addition #i meant to make this joke but forgot

A:TLA where everything is the same except Ozai wears crocs.

Modern!A:TLA AU Headcanons regarding transportation:

Aang:

-rides a bicycle

-saving up for a Nissan Leaf (refuses to get anything else)

-calls Katara if he needs to go anywhere long distance (he has a seatbelt for his Old English Sheepdog, Appa)

-has AUX cord privileges: plays pop and classic 80s rock (ex. Queen’s “Bohemian Rhapsody,” or anything by Shawn Mendes)

-rolls down all of Katara’s windows on the highway

Katara:

-Toyota RAV 4

-has 7 first aid kits in her trunk

-always goes 5 MPH below the speed limit

-is denied AUX cord privileges (too much Taylor Swift, Sokka complained)

-Bath and Body Works air freshener

-has never been pulled over

-DDS (Designated Driver Supreme)

Sokka:

-Ford F-150 (he bought it from Suki)

-award for most parking tickets

-5 months behind on his oil change

-SOMETIMES get the AUX cord: plays electronic music from YouTube channels or popular rap (ex. Eminem’s “Lose Yourself”)

Toph:

-the Queen of Uber

-the most fun on road trips

-had AUX cord privileges, but they were revoked when she made a playlist that was just 72 minutes of Toto’s “Africa”

Zuko:

-either an Audi or a Lexus

-inside and outside of car is immaculate

-regrets having leather seats in the summer

-Little Tree Black Ice air freshener

-gets pulled over the most

-occasionally gets the AUX cord: plays Panic! At the Disco, Fall Out Boy, and select Avril Lavigne songs (think “Complicated” era)

-Iroh cannot drive therefore Zuko has to drive him everywhere: he insists on paying for gas but Zuko never lets him

-maybe has a motorcycle??? IDK I feel like he and Sokka could be Motorbike Buddies