Work Text:
It happens one at a time. One at a time, he poisons her friends into trusting him.
Aang is his first target (no surprise there). He manipulates the avatar’s youth and compassion into naivety and blind trust. Soon enough, Aang’s spending as much time as possible with the Fire Prince. Whenever Katara manages to extract him from his firebending lessons, Aang just goes on and on about how great his “Sifu Hotman” is.
The poor kid had never had it in him to hate Zuko in the first place. That’s okay. Katara can hate him enough for the both of them.
Next up is Toph. Nobody in their right mind would call the young earthbender naïve, but, having been spared the trauma of being chased by him, she refuses to accept that he cannot be trusted. Sure, “his heart says he’s not lying, Katara!” but Sokka told her all about Azula’s stunt on the Day of Black Sun. It’s all too possible that Zuko shares his sister’s ability to lie with ease.
That’s not what solidifies it, though. Toph is tricked by his ‘genuine’ attempts to understand her seismic sense, and his astonishment with her metalbending. He offers to show her the footwork that goes with each firebending move, so that she’ll know how to avoid the hot blasts she usually cannot see. Toph angrily dismisses her when Katara suggests that he could be intentionally teaching her the wrong moves to trick her.
Shockingly, the next to trust him is The Duke, of all people. She hears sniffles all the way from her room— knowing when those around need her has become something of a sixth sense— but by the time she reaches the common area, they’re gone. Later, once she’s almost been run over by Zuko leaping triumphantly into the air, The Duke perched on his back giggling, with his cape billowing behind him, Sokka explains.
Apparently, The Duke wandered into the main area, crying because he lost his cape. Zuko immediately dried his tears, and took the kid on a “piggy-back quest” all over the temple to find it. If literally any other person had done that, Katara would find it incredibly sweet and adorable. Heck, she might even spend a moment considering how great of a father he'd make, someday.
But this is Zuko. Honestly, he probably hid the cape in the first place just so he could play the hero by finding it.
Then Sokka, her dear brother Sokka, who even distrusted Aang at first, falls. At first, she tells herself that their comradery is the result of Sokka’s teasing ways; he can finally use all the good insults he’s been saving for the past year, and Zuko’s indignance is the ideal reaction. But when she overhears an eager discussion about different sword fighting techniques, a discussion devoid of obscure insults, she has to face the fact that Sokka and Zuko are friends. And yes, it’s probably good for Sokka to have a friend his own age, with similar interests, but couldn’t he have chosen… Haru or something?
Speaking of Haru, he and Teo have just… accepted him. Which confuses her. Sure, they’ve never been chased or harmed by him directly, but the Fire Nation has hurt them both. Shouldn’t they be a least a bit distrustful of its literal crown prince?
When she confronts them about it, they explain that there’ve always been rumors that Ozai hated his son. That he hurt his own son. “And that doesn’t excuse anything he did,” Haru explains placatingly, “but from what I’ve heard, Zuko would have good reason to want to get out of there.”
She tells them that she doesn’t understand what Ozai could’ve possibly done that was so horrible. After all, Zuko is his son. Haru explains that not all parents are kind and loving to their children, a concept that’s unheard of in the Southern Water Tribe. She demands what he did, but Teo just rolls away, saying, “It’s not my story to tell.”
They all wake up to find Sokka and Zuko off hunting, and she’s certain that she’ll finally have her proof. But then he returns with Suki and her father (and some random dude, but that doesn’t really matter), and has their trust too!
At the very least, she tells herself, he hasn’t been presumptuous enough to think he could dupe me! But it turns out he has. Ever since they’d arrived at the Western Air Temple, her load had lightened considerably. She’d go to make dinner, and find an already lit fire, and a platter of chopped vegetables. She’d go to wash the clothes, only to find them hanging from the clotheslines, warmed by the sun. She’d muster up the strength to put the younger crowd to bed, only to find them snoring softly, already warm in their bedrolls.
For a while, she wanted to believe— in what she now knows to be self-delusion— that perhaps Haru, or Teo, or even maybe The Duke were accustomed to helping out around the house. One evening, everyone is at the giant Pai-Sho board, watching Aang and Haru face off. But she hears the constant noise of chopping in the common area. Thinking she might find her father, or literally anyone else, she sees Zuko hunched over a cutting board.
“Get out of here! Are you trying to poison us?!”
“No, I was just—”
“Leave.” She snarls. He shoots a fireball into their campfire, saving her a stunt with spark rocks, before finally scramming.
Later, once he’s earned her trust, she assumes the domestic tasks will stop. After all, he was just trying to get on her good side. Yet, he still gives Aang and Toph soothing bedtime stories on the nights when they’ve just told scary ones. He and Katara work together to wash the clothes, him heating up the water and drying the garments afterwards, leaving them warm and toasty. Instead of him chopping vegetables and lighting campfires, they work together in the kitchen, occasionally pausing to tease or throw ingredients at each other. Toph takes to calling them Mom and Dad, which they both roll their eyes at.
When electricity races towards her, she freezes entirely. As though trapped in her own brain, she watches him throw himself in front of her, watches the lightning course through his veins as he screams in agony. Agony he just put himself through for her.
And all at once, she realizes she loves him.