Chapter Text
Money is a buffer. Even the worst parts of you can be cleaned up if you have it. I don’t. At least not anymore. So now I am nothing. Well, I am Jingwen, but that’s nothing compared to Azula. Now that’s the name of a girl destined for greatness. But Jingwen? Penniless, orphaned, and unremarkable Jingwen? That was the name of no one. Of a person meant to be trampled over. A dot so small in a sea of finely marked strokes that no one would care whether she was dead or alive. How befitting of Ozai to give it to me as his final parting gift.
I am Jingwen He – a girl from the lower ring of the Earth kingdom barely keeping my head above water at Hung Ga University. And I am… nothing.
……………………………………
A war had been raging on for five generations without stop. No one knew the rhyme nor reason for it, but a law called into place by large figures of years ago which most of the population couldn’t name called for mandatory military service of all men. Lawmakers seemed to be toying with the idea of it for women too, but for right now, women were free to enroll at their own discretion. Such was the cause for debate in Jingwen’s current lecture.
Jingwen didn’t care to join in. Maybe if she still held the Fujiwara name, she would’ve considered it – Agni knows Zuko wouldn’t have. It would’ve been such a stain on the family name to have a generation without military honors. And wasn’t she always cleaning up after her big brother’s messes? But she couldn’t now. She’d been dishonored and exiled by her father. Just the memory of it turned her sour.
So, she instead took her time eyeing every inch of the large lecture hall. Hundreds of seats could be filled, but there were currently only a little under fifty students occupying the space today, scattered all over. Jingwen took a seat the farthest to the right side of the area because she liked looking out the windows. She liked watching people walk down the breezeway. So much could be understood in a walk. There were so many people with poor posture, awkward gaits that carried no rhythm, and feet that turned out so much they resembled a duck’s – all signs of poor backgrounds. She made sure she always walked tall, back erect, and head held high. It was a sign of confidence and power – both things she’d been lacking severely in the past several years.
“Any final thoughts?” Professor Bumi called, barely able to hold back his annoyance. “Jingwen? We haven’t heard your voice at all today.”
Jingwen was startled. She’d been working on keeping a low profile while she was here. How had the professor even come to know her name? “Nothing to add,” she shrugged. “I’ve got no dog in this fight.” And she didn’t. What the hell would she look like fighting on the side of her enemy?
A blaring alarm went off on the professor’s laptop a few moments later. Without waiting for a final word, the students filed out of the lecture hall. Jingwen had just slung her bag onto her back when the professor called out to her. “I’d like to speak with you if you can spare a moment,” he said. She resisted the urge to groan and shuffled over to him.
“Yes?”
“Have you read this course’s syllabus?”
“Yes.”
“Then you understand that participation carries a hefty weight towards your final grade, right?”
“I do.”
“Would you mind explaining to me then why you’re one of the few people whose yet to join in on class discussions?”
“I was distracted. I’ll be more focused at our next discussion.”
“Bullshit,” Professor Bumi countered, tripping up Jingwen. He smirked at her widened eyes. “You weren’t distracted this week nor the last one. You might think you don’t have an opinion, but it’s written all over your face.”
“Is that so?” she challenged, her facetious smile cracking the longer she stood there. He accepted her challenge with a phony smile of his own. “Right on.”
Jingwen watched as he rummaged through his messy desk. She turned her nose up at the crumpled sheets of paper, strewn about sticky notes, and uncapped pens. Talk about a pigsty! He managed to pull out what he was looking for – an unevenly folded flier. He smoothed it out across his desk before handing it to her.
“I won’t be there – even though I wish I could be – but you should drop by here tonight. It’s relevant to our topic today and you might even broaden your perspective.”
“But I have to- “
An embarrassing early 2000s pop song blared to life. Professor Bumi dug through his messy drawer before unearthing his prehistoric phone. He held a finger up to her as he left the hallway to take the call. Jingwen stood there, dumbfounded, wrinkled flier still in hand.
……………………………………………..
Seven years. Seven long, painful years since she’d been thrown out and cast aside by Ozai. She was twenty-one years old now and the pain of the memory cut just as deep as it did at fourteen.
Ozai had shipped her off in the dark first by boat, then by train. Jingwen carried no electronics on her – Ozai wanted to make sure that no one (not that it would’ve been a possibility) came to look for her nor did he want her to be able to track her own location. She sat at the bottom of a ship, confined to a small room for hours on end with no sunlight, and had scrap meals delivered to her. She spent most of her days nauseous from seasickness and loneliness of the heart. Jingwen had a lot of time to reflect on her life’s choices. She had no one – by Ozai’s design, she was sure.
But she knew it couldn’t just be blamed on him. She was never pleasant and made little effort to change that about herself, but it made the weight of her solitude much more unbearable when she thought of the boy who dared to like her.
When her mind wasn’t preoccupied with thoughts of vomiting, she prayed for Ruon Jian’s safety. Sometimes she toyed praying for his eternal love, but not even she was so greedy to hoard all his goodness for herself. Ruon Jian was the type of guy who was meant to spread his love and lust for life with everyone. Jingwen had already bitten off more than she could chew. How could she ever hope for someone as good as him again?
Jingwen remembered her final day on the boat. It was the first in probably months (Jingwen had lost track of time) that she’d seen the sun. Shady guys dressed in elaborately decorated green tunics and brown cloth masks escorted her to the deck. She remembered how her legs wobbled from ill use. Her eyes shut with sensitivity to the sun. Vertigo disallowed her from keeping balance. There was yelling all around her that she couldn’t make out. The scent of fresh sea air only made her stomach churn. With her legs still uncooperative and shaking like a newborn fawn, she was dragged off the ship.
Jingwen figured she was too weak to remember and probably just passed out because she woke up in the back of a car just as it stopped in front of a secluded building with no others surrounding it for miles.
‘Lake Laogai’s Correctional Academy’ the letters on the school read in bright gold.
Jingwen remembered how daunting the situation was before she’d even stepped in the building. With feeling returning to her limbs and a good bit of exposure to the sun, Jingwen had the strength to fight. As the strangely dressed men came to escort her out of the car, Jingwen thrashed against them, cursing and spitting. A hand holding a towel pressed down over her nose and mouth. She fought as best as she could, but the scent of chloroform sent her into a dreamless sleep.
Jingwen hated remembering her time at Lake Laogai. Four years of the worst moments of her life had happened there – and she’d lived with Ozai for most of her life so she could compare! As soon as she could, she took the first chance to get the hell away from the abusive Joo Dees, the snakelike Dai Li, and all the other bullshit forced onto her. She kept a low profile at Hung Ga University.
While she was aged out of Lake Laogai, rumors spread around the compound about never truly being able to escape it. Jingwen thought it better to be safe than sorry. She’d cut her hair into a bob. Added fiery red streaks for a bit of pizzazz. She’d even started sporting dark makeup to obscure her features. If she never had to deal with Lake Laogai another day in her life, she’d die happy.
………………………………………………………………….
Jingwen had to work. That wasn’t surprising. She would’ve had to at some point. But she imagined it would’ve been somewhere more dignified in Ozai’s company, not something as lowly as the service industry. She worked at a tea shop called ‘The Jasmine Palace’ about a thirty-minute bike ride away from her apartment.
She could’ve gotten a place on campus, but she couldn’t see herself with a roommate again after four years of hell. Plus, studies showed that students on campus form long lasting bonds with on-campus students at higher rates than commuters. She didn’t want to get close to anyone. She just wanted her own life back.
“Jingwen! Table nine’s requesting you.”
Jingwen glanced at the wall clock. It was eight thirty. She had another thirty minutes until her shift was over. That flier for the open debate stated the event started thirty minutes ago.
I won’t have time. I can’t go.
She didn’t know why the thought had come over her. She didn’t have to go anywhere. She could lie about attending the event. As far as her professor knew, she could’ve been there right now.
Jingwen shook off the thought and headed to the table. The tea shop doubled as a pai sho players club. Everyone here was at least forty and up, so there was no chance she’d run into anyone she knew nor went to school with. She put on a saccharine smile as she went to serve the man. He was a regular who always came straight from work to order Earl Grey tea. Jingwen thought the old man a weirdo, but she couldn’t complain because he always sang her praises to her manager.
“Good evening, Mr. Wang. Will you have your usual?”
The man spoke, but Jingwen barely registered it. For the first time, she could hear the clock tick. The sound battered her eardrums. If she could, she would’ve torn them off.
I don’t have time. I can’t go.
…………………………………..
Turns out the event went on until eleven that night. Jingwen had booked it to campus on her bike. The ride back to her apartment would be a little frightening, but when wasn’t it? She rode up to the large auditorium where the event was held and locked her bike up securely. Even outside she could hear how incensed the crowd was.
Jingwen checked the time on her phone now. It was 9:42. All she could think as she walked up the stairs and opened the auditorium doors was: This had better be worth it .
…………………………………………………
“Soldiers from the Fire Nation and the Earth Kingdom have for years set up military posts in the South Pole. They harass and kill locals while also purging our natural resources. The South Pole can’t develop like the North Pole because settlers have declared squatters’ rights on our land.”
“The people of the Poles were living like Stone Age cavemen until about five decades ago. We saved you from yourselves.”
“Poles people had our own languages, trade routes, writing systems, gender spectrums, and life philosophies. What you’re saying is literally a colonial myth. We don’t need you to save us. We were doing just fine.”
“The North Pole was able to pull themselves out of the rut. Only the lazy Southerners complain. There’s a military presence in the South because you guys aren’t smart enough to conduct your own government.”
“You motherfuckers literally destabilize our government every election cycle!”
“Careful, kitten! It’s a privilege for a girl from your country to be allowed to speak freely. Isn’t being here better than being forced to be a subservient wife?”
“Don’t pretend you give a damn about another country’s sexism. You guys only gave women rights because you needed more numbers for your military expeditions!”
For a weekday evening, at eleven o’clock at night at that, the auditorium was rather packed. At least the first five rows of the three-part seated sections were full and there were more people scattered out across the other aisles. Jingwen sat near the exit initially. It would be obnoxious to sit so close to the front upon arriving so late, but she managed to move somewhere in the middle range of rows the longer she stayed.
The only lights cued were those on stage for the two tables of debaters. The Southern Pole girl – Katara – was doing all the talking for her team. Jingwen thought she was overzealous in her arguments and bordered on annoying for her preachiness, but she couldn’t say the girl wasn’t brave. The crowd was not on her side. At all. Understandable being that this debate was being held on Earth Kingdom soil. But when her opposition was a bunch of Earth colony brats how could anyone not side with her?
Jingwen could tell from a single glance that the pompous bastards on the opposing side were from the Fire Nation controlled colonies by their features. They had an uneven balance of both Fire and Earth qualities that made them look uncanny.
Earth colony dwellers had a reputation for being boastful assholes that people of the Earth Kingdom accounted to their Fire Nation blood. Jingwen scoffed at that. They were only hot shit here. In the Fire Nation, they’d be cast off as lowly mongrels for daring to carry the bloodline of the enemy. The earth Kingdom transplants that stayed in the Fire Nation complained of it frequently. It made Jingwen think about how Coach Kyoshi fared once her father took matters into his own hands.
Jingwen shook the thought away and refocused on the debate. Katara was still going at it. Her braided hair loops swung with her jerking movements. The dim yellow lighting made her brown skin look red, adding a comedic touch to her angered face.
Next to her sat a boy familiar to her in looks called Sokka. He sighed and picked at his ear the whole time. Jingwen thought the fancy topknot he donned made him look like a duck.
Another girl – a little lighter than both Sokka and Katara – sat on the outside of the table nearest the stage. Her hair was elaborately styled resembling a pretzel with fancy jewelry. It was a stark shade of snow white that entranced Jingwen. Yue – the name on her notecard read – sat with her legs crossed at the ankles, back straight, chin high, and palms together in her lap – all signs of good breeding. She must have some status , Jingwen thought as Yue smiled lovingly at a heated Katara.
“Oh, because you people are so without fault,” Katara drawled sarcastically into the mic. “Tell me then. Are you all ready to come clean about what really goes down at Lake Laogai?”
Jingwen felt her stomach drop. She had the sudden urge to vomit. Nausea overcame her. She began to move as fast as she could without spewing her guts everywhere.
“That’s a conspiracy just like aliens. Don’t tell me your team has come so unprepared that this is what you’ve resorted to.”
“It’s not a conspiracy theory,” Katara countered. “More and more people are coming out about the inhumane things that went on at that facility. You can’t deny it forever.”
“Anything that is untrue can be denied ‘til the end of time.”
Jingwen forced all her body weight against the auditorium door as she ran out.