Chapter Text
Although it has been less than a year since he moved from Caldera City, Zuko felt that he had already gotten used to life in Ba Sing Se and the many aspects that came with it. However, judging by the cold temperature he could feel on the parts of his body that weren’t shielded by the unusually heavy comforter, it seemed that he had yet to learn a few things.
Opening his eyes, he found that the weather wasn’t the only unusual thing about this morning. Shooting upright, he turned his head from side to side in a franticly. This was not his room.
He moved his arm to take off what wasn’t his normal comforter but a heavier one.“Pelt?!” he exclaimed and immediately after doing so Zuko gasped as his hand flew to his mouth. That was not his voice.
That was a girl’s voice.
He looked down at the hand over his mouth. It was a much smaller, darker and slender hand than his.
With a lump on his throat and his heart almost beating through his chest, Zuko threw the closet doors on the other side of the room open, confirming his outlandish suspicion when he found what he was looking for inside the second door.
He stared down at the reflection in the mirror and felt paralyzed where he stood. Instead of the same face, the same body that had always stared back at him in any reflection he had ever encountered, there was a girl looking back at him. She looked a bit younger than him, maybe fifteen or sixteen. Her hair was deep brown and long, he could feel the tips of it tickling his arms. Zuko lifted a hand to his new hair and it was soft and thick.
His hand – the girl’s hand – moved then to his face. His eyes caught on the deep blue of her eyes, he had never seen an eye color so intense. He had barely seen a handful of people with eyes like those. That and the strange temperature could only mean that, definitely, Zuko wasn’t in Ba Sing Se anymore.
This is a dream, what else can it be but a dream?
Then an unnecessary but now inescapable thought stood out to him. He slowly looked down on himself, lifted the dainty hands to the front of the girl’s soft purple hoodie and pressed them down to his chest.
And then he screamed.
Zuko was so distracted by his last discovery that he didn’t hear the heavy footsteps that were approaching the door of the bedroom. Suddenly the door busted opened and brown skinned boy with tousled hair and a baseball bat in hand barreled inside. “What is it, what happened, who’s here?!”
Zuko was taken aback in surprise for a second before recovering his reflexes and jumping back in a fighting stance. The boy, who must have been the girl’s older brother since they looked so similar, was staring at him with a baffled expression.
“Katara, what are you doing? Why were you screaming, since when do you do random kung fu poses? And were you” – the boy stopped his onslaught of questions and the baffled expression morphed into horror – “were you just holding your boo – your brea – ugh you know what, I don’t want to know!” he blurted out while waving the hand that wasn’t holding the bat around in the air, as if to make the horrifying image disappear.
Zuko felt a blush spread from his neck; apparently the urges of a teenage boy were unstoppable, even in a panic attack. Thank the spirits his grabby hands had stayed over the hoodie, the other boy would have certainly died otherwise.
A second voice coming from behind the boy with the bat pulled Zuko out of his embarrassment, just to sink him in it even more. “What is all this ruckus, kids? Sokka, was Katara screaming because you found her touching herself? A teenage boy like you should know those urges are perfectly normal.” A elderly woman, maybe around the age of Uncle Iroh, with braids tied at the back of her neck and a blue robe with intricate geometric white designs was standing at the entrance of the bedroom with a mildly amused smile.
Well, the life-ending embarrassment at least confirmed it for Zuko: this was indeed a nightmare. And not just for him, seemingly, since the other boy dropped his bat in favor of covering his ears with both hands. “AHHH I CAN’T HEAR YOU, I WON’T HEAR YOU. BYE.” And with this declaration he left the room, his bat forgotten on the floor.
The older woman’s smile spread a little wider and then turned to Zuko. “Well, Katara, if you’re done with your urges, start getting ready or you’ll be late for school”
This is definitely a nightmare.