Author's note: I hope you all liked chapter one! Sorry I've changed the order so much but hopefully this is the final product.

WARNING: This is not a Zuko/whoever fic. As far as this fic goes, Zuko has nobody to love and no one to love him

Happy Reading: D

Oh wait, "I do not own Avatar: The Last Airbender and all the crap that comes with it including characters and …. I can't think of anything else….Anyway…All that stuff that I just mentioned is property of nickalodeon (sp?) or Viacom or whoever owns it... not me…and uh…yeah : )"

"HOWEVER—Jing-Mei is my original creation and if you take her or use her without my permission, you will not have anymore sunny days where things are all A-Ok and you will have to move to Sesame Street (123). Where you will be mauled viciously by my orchestra director, Mrs. Hankins." Mua ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha….ha.


Chapter Two

I still remember the day the dark-faced strangers had come to my house. It was a dark night and the only sounds that could be heard were the sounds of the small frogs that croaked by the pond. There was a loud knock on the door. My father opened the front door. I stayed behind the paper door wall in the next room. I could see the silhouettes of two people.

One was a man, old with age, a round stomach, and gray hair. The other looked to young to be his son but didn't show enough resemblance to be his grandson either. They both wore straw hats that cast dark shadows on their faces. There was something about the second one though. My mother got worried naturally as she always did and I could see she felt these men were 'dangerous'. They sat down on the couches of the guest room one room away from mine and mother went to get them tea and food. The second one left outside on the balcony and stared at the sky. I stayed out of sight but kept watching him.

I didn't feel they were dangerous though. But the second one. There was something about him…something. He seemed different from other fire benders. He had great skills; I could see that, I could sense it. But he had something fire benders lacked: emotion. When people look at fire benders, the most you can see is their anger, their will to kill. Some don't even have either of the two but people's hate drives them to see things that aren't there. I didn't have this hate. I looked and saw what was inside of people. I saw them in their true state and what they were trying to hide. Then I close my eyes and I see inside him. I could see what was there, buried where it could be lost. I see his woes, his anger. I see fire, rage. Then I see something else. I see a face. It is a woman. She is still young but her face is etched with fine lines like the ones on the surface of a pond frozen with the bitter winds of winter. She is tired and anxious and she has lost something very dear to her. She has left it behind.

I listened to The old man talk to my father and mother as his 'grandson' sat next to him silently. He used kind words and thanked my mother for the tea. I listened to him talk while his 'grandson' occasionally spoke to cover the old man's mistakes. I could sense most of their emotions but there were still many that I couldn't read. I said good night to the strangers and my family and went inside my room. Of course I didn't go to sleep with two strangers one wall over. I listened closely to every sound they made. From only five minutes of their conversation, I learned a lot. Their names were Iroh and Zuko and they were from the fire nation. After that I knew the rest of their story from the posters and gossiping all the village women did. I knew they weren't staying until morning.

As usual, I didn't sleep that night and when they got up to leave, I went out to the balcony and watched them walk out the front door from which they had came. Zuko felt my gaze and turned. My eyes met his and he left.

Jing-Mei woke up. It was still dark outside and luckily; all her siblings were still asleep. She rubbed her eyes and yawned and walked over to the bathhouse. As usual, the bowl filled with face washing water was emptied, probably the works of Lee, the youngest boy in their family, or the most spoiled rotten. She examined her face in the mirror. She had pale white opal skin and large Arabian eyes 'auntie gave you' in the words of Ming, the youngest of all her siblings. Her hair was as black as the ink her father sold at their ink shop. It was long, wavy and all different lengths and it seemed to tumble down her back. She slipped on her ivory robes and tied them with the silky orange waistcloth her father bought her from Ba Sing Sei on a business trip. Her eyes were still tired from waking up so early. They were the color of the pond water with a milkier sentiment, like jade.

She walked over to the small pond behind their house, glancing at its tiny red bridge and painted bars. She sat on her favorite rock and began watching the koi fish swim back and forth. She wondered if they felt the same pain she had often felt, that she was trapped and was good as dead if she tried to escape. She picked one to watch. This koi had bright scarlet scales and fins so white they were transparent. He swam to the edge of the pond, then to the bottom, then to the other edge, then back. She wondered if he remembered were he'd been and if he knew he was swimming in circles. She felt like the koi fish swimming in a circle, repeating each day over and over again. Only she was aware of it.

What did make this day separate from all the rest? Well that was simple. Today was her birthday. Today she would be fifteen and she could have felt a lot happier. She was supposed to be happy today, welcoming another year and getting another year closer to maturity and being right and proper and graceful. She was "stubborn with a hard head but quiet and peaceful at the same time" as she had heard her mother brag to the other gossipy village women in conversation. She had felt this way lately, depressed and dead. She was alive on the outside. Her eyes were open and of coarse she was breathing. On the inside though, she was dead. Her life was a play that played over and over, rewinding itself just as each scene ended. All the air she inhaled was still and suffocating. She wanted more than ever to leave. It wasn't a 'want' anymore, it was a need. Her father had taught her about things like these and many others when she was a little girl. He had taught her about how little things like wants could grow more and more urgent until they were essential. He taught her not to change for anyone and to remain her own spirit, even if it meant giving up something important. He had taught her so many things in that she had spent so much of her childhood in his lap.

Soon enough the day would start, and again she would be stuck in the constant noise leaking from every wall in her house. Five siblings would make anyone crazy and she sometimes wondered how she kept her head from exploding. She remembered how she used to imagine this happening when she was younger. She would be surrounded by noise and screaming and yelling. Then she would cover her ears but the sounds would only get louder until her head would explode like a winter melon hitting the hot brick kitchen floor. Other times it was just loneliness that made her head that winter melon getting ready to welcome it's fate on the hot brick floor. She did have her older sister, Lynn. She and Lynn had been very close. Since they were little they were always attached at the hip. They agreed on most things and liked the same animals, did the same activities, and their mother bought them the same matching robes, obsessed with her first two children. However, Lynn and Jing-Mei were very, very different.

Since their firebending training, her parents began noticing some of their differences. As Lynn had easily mastered many of the beginning techniques, Jing-Mei had to practice more and more to catch up. She struggled often and got frustrated. She needed more encouragement, as she tended to quit many times. On the outside it looked like it didn't matter to her and she had better things to worry about. But she was hurting inside, very, very badly. Just when it seemed that she was getting somewhere and she began to get better, she would look up only to find that she was a thousand years behind. She felt her insides hollow and she felt her heart harden. She felt that if she could travel inside herself to the middle of her chest, where her heart should be was a cold frozen lump. Only the warm glow of pride could bring back to life. It wasn't long after that that her will to live was smoldered. The tiny flame of hope that had once burned strongly in her chest was blown out by the chill of failure.

But she remembered now as she looked out into the shallow waters of the pond what the final blow that killed the relationship between her and her sister for good. She tried not to think about it too often and she quickly caught herself and stopped the thought from rearing its ugly head. She shoved it away and buried it in the old layers of her memory. She could hear that her family was awake and the sounds began to shape the morning.

It was an extremely hot and foggy morning and the village was busy. The merchants were shouting out at passers by coaxing them to a 'good bargain', the fish seller stood busy at his stall filled with ice and shellfish and trout, skinning over the fish's scales with his huge knife as they flew into the air like shards of glass. Then nearest according to her hearing was the old herb seller lady, Mrs. Ying yelling at the children for playing to close to her stall. She rose to her feet and walked towards the front gate to go inside.