Aaah Yes I Love This Idea!

Aaah yes I love this idea!

ok listen. hear me out. A:TLA au where the Air Temple Avatar dies with the rest of his temple when the Fire Nation attacks. The next 2 Avatars don’t manage to make it to a Ripe Old Age, but possibly they both manage to keep their identity a secret for a few decades each, since everyone knows the Fire Nation would track you down and kill you if they thought they had found the Avatar.

So no one has seen the Avatar for around 100 years. Zuko gets sent on his impossible quest to find the Avatar, only to find out that he is the Avatar.

He has to pretend to be hunting for the Avatar, all while grappling with what this means for his identity, and his place within the Fire Nation, and, as always, his Honor. 

When there’s rumors that the Avatar really is back, the “chase” is on. Iroh wants him to learn water bending. Zuko hasn’t really come to terms with everything yet and really doesn’t want to find an actual teacher, so he tells Iroh fine, but they’re looking in the Southern Water Tribe first (thinking there’s no benders left there, and desperately stalling). He ends up finding a teacher who’s probably as reluctant to teach him as he is reluctant to learn from her. 

Zuko always reports that he’s “one step behind” the Avatar, to cover for the fact that he shows up wherever theres Avatar rumors/sightings, at about the same time. 

I’m not sure exactly how he would get around the whole “you look exactly like him” in this universe. Maybe the Avatar is the Blue Spirit. Maybe Zuko’s scar is in a less visible place? Maybe Katara + Avatar Powers manage to heal his scar, so no descriptions of the Avatar that make it back to Ozai and Pals matches what they Know Zuko looks like? maybe everyone he meets as “the Avatar” tells him he looks just like that Fire Nation Prince and he goes “nah, his scar is on the other side”.

How does he learn air bending? Maybe all the air temples didn’t get destroyed after all. maybe Aang wasn’t the Avatar in this AU, but he and a few others survived in hiding, until Zuko finds them - Bumi tells him where to find Aang, since they still write letters to each other (imagine “hello, zuko here!” in a whole new context).

He manages to hide all this from his father, and even from Azula. When he learns that he has to kill Ozai, his own father, its not easy. There’s a lot of turmoil, and he may or may not come to the same conclusion that Aang came to in the show. 

But also imagine the dramatique, reverse-No-Luke-I-Am-Your-Father moment, where he finally confronts Ozai, and Ozai goes “you? stand up to me? the dishonored, exiled ex-princeling? You’re pathetic. you couldn’t even find the Avatar” “Find him? I am the Avatar” and then Zuko fucks him up real good.