poppy is only here for the drama and tea

“I’m so proud of you, my nephew.” Uncle cups Zuko’s face in his lined hand. The gesture is so tender, his palm so warm, that Zuko has to take a fortifying breath against the sudden swell of emotion in his chest. “I want to be a good leader, Uncle,” Zuko says. “I want to look after my people.” “You will,” Uncle says. “You are, nephew.” In a new era of peace, Zuko works to be a very different Fire Lord than his forefathers. Based on this tumblr post.

They gravitated towards Zuko whenever the temperature dipped even slightly. At night, he often woke to someone pulling their bedroll towards him, or slipping under his arm, or turning over in their sleep and colliding with his shoulder. It alarmed him, at first. It had never been a good thing when someone woke him in the dead of the night. It was strange, then, that he was on the run without Uncle, officially a traitor to his homeland, and for the first time since his mother left, he woke in the night sandwiched between bodies, feeling safe. (Zuko becomes the group's heat-pack.)

100 years ago the air nomads were killed along with the then avatar, the only surviver was an especially gifted with the spirit realm airbender boy. Two more avatars passed without consequence and now a new avatar, Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, has arisen- But he's incredibly conflicted over his new destiny...

“It’s healing really well.” Katara tells him with a smile, before her lips quirk down into a frown. “Though it’ll still scar pretty bad.” Zuko shrugs. “It’s ok. I doubt people will really focus on it anyway… the one on my face is a bit more prominent.” Katara makes a face, like she’s not quite sure if she should laugh or frown, when Toph speaks up. “You have a scar on your face?” Toph asks, sitting up so she’s sitting by his legs rather than lying on them. Zuko blinks. He never quite forgets that Toph is blind, but the fact that she can’t see his scar never really occurred to him. “Oh, yeah.” Zuko looks down at his lap. “My father burned like, half my face off before I was banished.” He says it a little too casually, probably not bitterly enough. A crash next to him makes him look up, to see Katara's horrified expression, and a shattered bowl of water at her feet. No one says anything for a long moment. “Zuko… it- your dad?” Katara finally manages to gasp out. Zuko blinks at her, his brain moving slowly. “You didn’t know?” He asks in genuine surprise. “No.” Sokka wheezes. Zuko blinks at him. “Oh.” Is all he can manage to say.

Based on this prompt. In which Sokka and Zuko have broken up but Sokka hasn't told his family yet. So when Katara and Aang's wedding weekend rolls around and he doesn't want to break Gran-Gran's heart, he asks Zuko to pretend to be his boyfriend for one last weekend. Things don't go as planned.

“It’s a piece of history,” He argued and she was, as always, shocked at the rolling gravel that flowed quietly from his mouth, “We must preserve it.”And Mae, who’d spent hours scrubbing the ghost of bloodied fingerprints from her brushes and days willing the scratch of pen to paper to drown out the sound of the Fire Princess's wailing; had looked at the child clutching ruined parchment to his chest and suddenly understood like a punch to the jaw why Prince Iroh had to be physically restrained from murdering his brother in cold blood. Or The early days of Firelord Zuko's reign as described by his Royal Stenographer.

...and 1 thing Zuko didn't know about himself