Fire Siblings

"Azula, our relationship is so messed up. It's been like that as long as I can remember. And maybe it'll be like that for the rest of our lives. But one fact never changes. No matter what, you're still my sister."

- Zuko to Azula in "The Search Part Three"

Fire Siblings is the family ship between Zuko and Azula from the Avatar: The Last Airbender fandom.

Canon
Azula is Zuko's younger sister by two years. While siblings, she seemed to take great pleasure in the punishment inflicted on her brother. Zuko expressed resentment toward her, as she was a firebending prodigy and the favored sibling. Following the failed Siege of the North, Fire Lord Ozai tasked Azula with capturing Iroh and Zuko, now considered traitors to the Fire Nation. Azula attempted to capture them, luring Zuko with the lie that Fire Lord Ozai wanted him back home. He discovered this lie, however, and angrily attacked her, although he could not match her firebending abilities and skills in hand-to-hand combat. She also enjoyed tormenting her brother, calling him by disliked nicknames, including "Zuzu" and "Dum-Dum", and mentioning his inferiority in their father's eyes.

It was revealed in one of Zuko's dreams that Azula had a great deal of influence over him, arguably rivaling his uncle's influence. This was only bolstered when Azula successfully convinced Zuko to betray their uncle, aid her against Aang and Katara, and finally conquer Ba Sing Se. Azula later lied to her father and credited Zuko with Aang's supposed death, allegedly doing so out of sisterly love since he had been worried about their father's reaction to his return. Upon their return home, Azula seemed to gradually open up to Zuko, once warning him of the dangers of visiting their uncle and both sharing a nostalgic and depressing feeling after visiting their old beach home on Ember Island. She also helped him sort through his anger and conflicted feelings of betraying Iroh, although she called him pathetic for letting these feelings get to him.

This tentative sibling relationship did not withstand Zuko's decision to join Team Avatar to stop their father winning the Hundred Year War, as Azula showed no mercy for her brother during their next encounters, and neither did Zuko hesitate to battle her. With his greatly improved firebending, he could finally challenge Azula, and she was forced to take him much more seriously, with Sokka's presence only serving to give Zuko more advantage, forcing her to focus on defending and less on attacking. After the betrayal of Mai and Ty Lee, which happened due to Mai's desire to save Zuko out of love and Ty Lee's care for Mai, Azula visibly desired to kill him and openly declared that she celebrated Zuko no longer being the prince, leaving her inheritance of the Fire Lord throne unchallenged, but despite Zuko bravely and relentlessly fighting her for Aang and the rest of his friends to escape, he did not share the sentiment, as he appeared to genuinely regret that his sister was seemingly going to fall to her death after being thrown off an airship by him and even seemed to be almost relieved when she survived.

That incident and Azula's affection for Zuko during their time together does display that, deep down, although they are unlikely to acknowledge such, the two do care about one another; however, due to their upbringing, Azula through Ozai and Zuko through Ursa and later Iroh, and contrasting views on life, the deep bitterness, anger, and jealousy both sides had from the favoritism their parents showed seemingly made them incapable of peacefully coexisting. Although Zuko no longer cared for Ozai's approval and any resentment he had for Azula due to her possession of it had clearly vanished, it eventually became clearer, despite Zuko visibly still not realizing the true reason of Azula's anger toward him, that the reason behind Azula's seemingly impulsive desire to flaunt at him for her having Ozai's favor was because she was subconsciously massively jealous at him for having received Ursa's love while she was scarcely treated as such by their mother and mostly only constantly belittled for her vindictive acts.

Zuko eventually confronted Azula for the throne, at which point Azula challenged him to an Agni Kai. Despite earlier admitting he could not defeat Azula alone, Zuko was able to sense that his sister was mentally unstable, sensing something was off about her and she is "losing it", and knew he could use this to defeat her. Indeed, in their Agni Kai, Zuko proved capable of overwhelming his sister, his calmness proving to give him the advantage. He was only defeated by Azula when Azula dishonorably attacked Katara with lightning, forcing Zuko to take the hit and unable to redirect it fully, left incapacitated. This did not prevent Zuko from showing pity and sadness as his sister fell apart, looking on solemnly as Azula sobbed uncontrollably over her failure.

Taking pity on Azula due to her madness, Zuko did not put his sister in prison, as he did with Ozai but instead had her institutionalized in a mental health facility for better treatment. He also did not give up on her entirely and was willing, albeit reluctantly, to ask her for help in persuading Ozai to reveal Ursa's location and, once they had it, allow her to accompany him, unbound, on a quest to track Ursa down. However, he remained focused and alert to her every move, even inviting Team Avatar to help keep an eye on her during their trip. After hearing a lecture about family and seeing Sokka's interaction with Katara, Zuko decided to move toward better treatment of his sister. Zuko and Azula's relationship finally reached a defining point when he fought her to prevent her from killing their mother, Ursa. When she asked him why he had not killed her when he had the chance, he replied that no matter how badly messed up their relationship was and might always be, she would never stop being his sister, someone whom he cared about. Azula subsequently ran away from her brother, ignoring his pleas for her to come back so that he could help her. Zuko searched in vain for her for days in the Valley until he was forced to give up and return to the Fire Nation. He expressed concern over Azula's well-being as his mother confided on her worries of Azula and appeared to regret somewhat that he could not understand what his sister was thinking and how she could be happy.

Unfortunately for Zuko, Azula would continue to bother his reign as the Fire Lord under the belief she was destined to make him a better Fire Lord ruling through fear. Zuko was clearly far from being pleased with his sister for her actions but did not seem to show much resentment for that, even commenting he actually felt good for her restored mentality.

Fanon
On AO3, the familyship has 1207 fanfics and 163 het fics. In some role swap AUs, Zuko and Azula take Katara and Sokka's place as the ones who find and company Aang on his journey.

Fandom

 * FAN FICTION
 * Zuko/Azula (TLA) tag on FanFiction.net
 * Zuko/Azula (TLA) tag on FanFiction.net
 * Zuko/Azula (TLA) tag on FanFiction.net


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Trivia

 * Grey DeLisle, Azula's voice actress, ships them romantically.