To speak honorably, one must be able to both address others with the respect due to their station, and discern if they are being addressed with the deference demanded by their own station. Such a skill was vital in maintaining filial piety and proper ritual in all aspects of life. How a son addresses his father, a younger sibling addresses their older sibling, a wife addresses her husband, how a subject addresses their ruler, and on rare occasions, how a friend addresses a fellow friend. These basic relationships form the building blocks from which society operates, and thus knowing your position within them, and your responsibilities, ensures one's ability to live honorably in all aspects of life.
Such was what he had been taught by his mother. The responsibility of educating children, as an affair of the home, fell to the wife after all, as the husband was busy with the affairs of the realm. Perhaps that's why Zuko was so inept at them; his education had been cut short. Regardless, he had learned enough to recognize what deference was owed to someone of his status.
His Royal Highness Crown Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, Son of Ozai, Grandson of Azulon, Heir to the Duchies of Kinai and Tatsuzu, and the Prefectures of Keiki, Morita, Kyumi, and Saito, and all of the diminutive titles therein, was standing in line. He sneered, glaring at the stained banner hanging above the passport counter. It was worn out and abused, clearly several years old from the faded and bled ink, but despite the heavy shadows of the Wall's vaulted ceiling, the fat characters were easy enough to read.
'Welcome to Ba Sing Se'
"So, Mr. Lee and Mr., um," The bureaucratic tyrant, sitting behind the counter of her cramped booth, squinted at the paper passports that Uncle had handed her. She was fat, doughy, squeezed into an olive green and dusty tan administrative tunic that may have fit her a decade ago. A fat wart rested above her right eye, and a single, solitary hair poked out of it. "Mushy, is it?"
Raising his finger in a flaccid attempt to get her attention, his uncle gave a polite smile. "It's pronounced Mushi."
Zuko groaned. He hated this. The ferry barge, the lines, the paperwork, the rancid food, the weeks upon weeks of unflinchingly and unnecessarily slow travel, all to get into the city. Like his time meant nothing. Like he was some common refugee.
Half out of boredom, half out of desperation, or perhaps completely out of bored desperation, his golden eyes began to scan the room. Two dozen guards, armed with spears and clubs, scattered in pairs about the neat lines of refugees. None of them were benders, hell, it seemed like most of them weren't any more than trained peasants. One of them carried himself with the balance and dignity of a true soldier, but considering his age and the plumage of his uniform, he was just an old officer, long past his prime, eking out his final years before retirement in an easy guard post. There wasn't a question in Zuko's mind that he could take them in a fight, or even just sneak past them, slipping through the outermost perimeter of the mighty Impenetrable City under the cover of night. But for reasons Zuko couldn't decern, Uncle had insisted that they enter the city via the proper channels. 'For a proper second chance,' he had said. The young man huffed, looking away from the guards and tightening the sash on his tunic, if only so that his hands had something to do.
Grimacing, the woman in the booth set the passports down. "You telling me how to do my job?" She spat out the words with the tired, halfhearted anger of someone who was very used to taking orders from everyone else already.
"Uh, no, no no no." Holding his hands up defensively, as though to show he was no threat at all, the old man approached the counter, giving a gentle, almost wistful smile. "But may I just say you're like a flower in bloom. Your beauty is intoxicating." He closed his eyes, looking far into the distance of his mind, crafting delicate poetry.
Zuko grumbled, watching his uncle grease the gears of a process they had no reason to be going through.
The immigration officer looked at his uncle for a moment, her gray-green eyes sizing him up, before weakly grinning and giving a wink. The hair in her wart shook slightly. "You're pretty easy on the eyes yourself, handsome. Welcome to Ba Sing Se." And with that, her stamp block came down twice, marking their passports before she slid them back across the counter to Uncle.
"I'm going to forget I saw that." As soon as Uncle Iron turned around, Zuko snatched his passport back, stepping around his uncle and marching past the booth. A stupid, cheerful grin spread across Uncle's face, and Zuko hated looking at it.
"Last call for train number 7 to Ba Sing Se!" A voice resonated down the stone corridor that led to the train platform, alongside the ringing of a bell. A ripple with through the lines of refugees, the realization that yet another hour of waiting in line had passed.
Letting out a huff, Zuko hurried towards the train platform. Walking past the guards, he stomped his way up the stone stairs, distinctly missing the clacking of his leather officer's boots. Instead, there was just the quiet platting of his caixie, a set of cheap shoes with straw bottoms Uncle had gotten him.
"Oh, thank you, kind sir." Zuko paused on the stairwell, turning to see his uncle still at the bottom, where a guard was helping him pick up his bag. Uncle smiled at the man, who was perhaps a year or two older than Zuko, and the guard smiled back warmly.
Groaning, the prince shuffled back down the stairs, snatching up the bag and hoisting it over his own shoulder before the guard could grab it. It was decently heavy, but no more than his own bag, with the dao swords he had stashed away in it. His uncle may have been the Dragon of the West, but he was older now. He shifted it slightly on his shoulder, making it more comfortable to carry. "Come on, Uncle. We don't want to miss the train."
He had not even finish speaking when the distinct sound of earth sliding against earth reached his ears, the train pushing off. The young man sighed, pinching his eyebrows.
"Don't worry, Nephew," The old man wheezed slightly, pushing himself up from his knees and settling his tunic before patting Zuko on the shoulder and beginning up the stairs. "Ba Sing Se will remain where it is until we get there. And I assure you, it will not reject us for missing one train!"
While the weight on his shoulders got no lighter, Zuko's urgency was instantly extinguished, a campfire doused in water. It didn't matter how quickly he ran up the stairs. Yet another hour of his life would be spent waiting to reach the city his uncle had failed to conquer.
He scowled quietly, helping his uncle up the stairs and to a squat stone bench. Uncle leaned back, seemingly content to watch the refugees around them until the next train arrived, but Zuko leaned forward, lacing his fingers together into a fist and tapping one foot.
The platform was empty when they sat down, but as time passed and passports were processed downstairs, a trickle of refugees filled the room, gathering in small groups around the room. It was dark, dilapidated, and simultaneously claustrophobic and vast. The air was damp and hot, and stunk of human filth. He could practically taste the sweat and dirt in the air. The large, vaulted ceilings of the room were left unlit, the pale green lanterns mounted in the walls too weak to puncture the veil of shadows. There were no windows, likely because walls with windows were rather ineffective, but the lack of sunlight made the place feel like a cave.
… Or perhaps a tomb, old and uncared for since a time long since forgotten. He didn't notice it at first, but the platform was decorated with ornately carved murals along the walls, and intricate patterns on nearly everything else, worn by time but still detectable. There even seemed to be several murals that had had gemstones inlaid in them, but they had long since been pried out. Zuko wasn't familiar enough with history to identify exactly what it was supposed to represent, but one mural showed a man in imperial garb leading an army, and another showed a similarly dressed man earthbending, dividing a river into irrigation channels. It reminded him of the plazas in Keiki, the Fire Nation capital, where the achievements of the various firelords were cast as statues. The difference was that the plazas in Keiki were filled with merchants and lords, and this train platform was filled with nothing but dust and refugees.
He wondered if this platform had once been like those plazas, brimming with vibrant life and unimaginable wealth. The thought was sobering.
"So, you guys got plans once you're inside the city?" Jet appeared from seemingly nowhere, slipping onto the stone bench next to Zuko and snapping the prince out of his thoughts.
Giving the Earth Kingdom man a scowl, Zuko didn't answer. Whatever he and his uncle's plans were, they were theirs alone to know.
A man with a boxy wooden cart trudged by along the platform, halfheartedly announcing his product. "Get your hot tea here! Finest tea in Ba Sing Se!"
"Ooh!" Uncle's head perked up, and he waved the man down. "Jasmine please!"
The man pushed the cart over, and Zuko watched with disinterest as his uncle traded some of their meager supply of yuan coins for leaf juice.
He didn't understand. He was thankful for his Uncle, he was the only one who had chosen to join Zuko in his exile, and had been by his side to save him more times than he could count. He was a powerful bender, a respected general, and arguably the rightful firelord. And yet… and yet, here he was, huddled on a bench in the outer wall of Ba Sing Se, thanking a peddler for overpriced tea.
"Blaugh! Ugh, coldest tea in Ba Sing Se is more like it! What a disgrace!"
Cold, overpriced tea.
"Hey, can I talk to you for a second?" Ignoring Uncle's antics, Jet stood up and jerked his head, gesturing for him to follow.
Zuko obliged, standing to join him.
Casually walking down the platform, the young man rested his hands on the scrap metal and leather he deigned to call leg armor. "You and I have a much better chance of making it in the city if we stick together. You want to join the Freedom Fighters?"
Zuko frowned, looking towards the other two people Jet had been travelling with. Smellerbee and Longshot, he thinks they had introduced themselves. Nicknames. Or maybe the only names they had ever had. The two were leaning against the wall, a dozen paces away, but Zuko could see the young woman watching. "Thanks, but I don't think you want me in your gang"
"Come on, we made a great team looting that captain's food." The peasant seemingly didn't like Zuko's answer, and continued his pitch, a single blade of wheat poking out from his wolfish grin. "Think of all the good we could do for these refugees."
Even if Zuko did have charity in his heart for the countless Earth Kingdom peasants in the city, he somehow doubted that Jet would only be operating out of the goodness of his heart.
"I said no." Zuko's answer was flat, simple, and unchanging. Turning on his heel, he went to join Uncle back on the bench.
"Have it your way." Jet snorted, and somehow, Zuko got the feeling that this wasn't the end of the conversation. But the young man went to join his friends, and while Zuko felt Jet's eye's lingering on him occasionally, it was nothing more than that.
Settling down on the bench, his uncle turned to him and laughed, setting the cup to the side. "Ah well, Lee. I suppose what Ba Sing Se needs is a proper tea shop!"
Uncle kept talking, but frankly, Zuko didn't hear it. All that echoed in his head was that name, Lee. He had been called it countless times, by people across the Earth Kingdom to hide his identity, even by his uncle when the man was talking to others.
But that was the first time Uncle had called him that directly. Not Zuko, not Prince, not even Nephew.
Lee. The refugee.
And… that's what he was going to keep calling him, wasn't it? After all, that's what Uncle had said they would find in the city. A second chance. A new life.
Eventually, the train came in. Passengers disembarked, and he and his uncle loaded on, alongside countless other nameless faces. His uncle cooed at a baby, making small talk with people they had never met before and likely would never see again. There was a jolt as the train pushed out, the two earth benders at the back beginning the multi-hour journey from the Lizhou ferry station to the outer wall of Ba Sing Se. The earthen train pulled away from the station, and the golden light of sunset filled the cab, driving away the darkness.
His Royal Highness Crown Prince Zuko of the Fire Nation, Son of Ozai, Grandson of Azulon, Heir to the Duchies of Kinai and Tatsuzu, and the Prefectures of Keiki, Morita, Kyumi, and Saito, and all of the diminutive titles therein, was entering a world where he was unknown. Where he did not exist. Where there was no Father to please, no Azula to compete with, no Avatar to capture for his honor. Where his scar would be understood as a mark of war, not a punishment. Where he was no one but Lee, nephew of Mushi. He could be anyone, because he was no one.
Watching the fields pass by, set ablaze in the sunset's glow, the young man grimaced, steeling himself. This was not a second chance. This was merely a temporary hiding place. He would not forget who he was.
)ooOoo(
Jin had learned to think over the noise.
It hadn't been easy at first; the looms were the loudest thing she had ever heard. The squealing of spinning belts, running down from ceiling-mounted poles to countless machines, each of which jerked and thudded with sputtering speed as it sorted the threads into neat lines, all to the melodic ping-ping-ping of the shuttle bouncing back and forth, feeding new thread into the system. It was loud enough that, by the end of her shift, she couldn't hear the crowds at the evening market. Add to that the choking thread dust that filled her lungs and the constant grime of grease and sweat that covered every inch of her, and her thoughtless headaches would be more than justified.
But, despite the noise, the factory's saving grace was its mechanization. The sounds weren't random, but an industrial symphony, playing in time to a script Jin had heard almost daily for the past five years. It wasn't a pretty tune, mind you, but it was enough of one that Jin learned to filter it out. It didn't need to be pleasant to be lived with.
As though playing a konghou harp, Jin ran her fingers along the threads of the power looms as she walked down the line, feeling for any knots or jams on the line. One of the strings, two-thirds of the way down loom #16, plucked slightly differently than all the others, and Jin sighed. Pulling a lever, the loom's crank disconnected from the spinning belt, and the machine puttered to a stop. She grabbed her grease pencil from her pocket, marking the cloth with her worker number, 265, as well as the code number 2, to make sure those doing inventory knew why her machine had a production delay.
This was the tenth machine to jam in her shift. If they kept it up, she might not hit the quota, and she really couldn't afford to have her paycheck garnished. A bit of worry crept into her emerald eyes, but she didn't give herself time to pause, making sure her thick hair was still in its braid and that her dirty tunic was rolled up to the elbows and knees.
With practiced speed, she crawled under the power loom, popping off the bottom panel and sliding a metal rod between two of the drive gears to make sure the thing couldn't restart. Not standard practice, but she had seen enough crank disconnects fail to know that standard practice was a good way to lose her scalp. With that in place, she set to work, finding the thread and pulling it out. It took maybe twenty seconds to locate the thing, and another thirty to undo the knot in it. A small thing, but if she hadn't caught it, it would've been tangled into the weave and compromised maybe an entire meter of the cloth. With the accompanying dock in pay, of course.
With the knot undone, she slipped it back into the machine, removed the rod, replaced the panel, and slipped out from under the loom before reconnecting the crank. The machine started back up without hesitation, the shuttle pinging back and forth with its original vigor. She sighed, trying to wipe the sweat from her forehead, but all she did was smudge grease across it.
Just another 10 hours in her shift.
)ooOoo(
"Y'all hear about Wei?" Liyang, a lanky boy with matted brown hair from Shanglian province, thunked down in a stool next to Jin and Yahui at the food stall counter, waving to the cook. The cook nodded in acknowledgement, and set to making Liyang's food. There was no need to order at a food stall that only made one food.
"The new girl? 'bout yay high, has that nasty burn scar on her left hand?" Yahui spoke softly despite the thrumming noise of the night market. She was a small girl despite being a year older than Jin, with earthy black hair tied up in a bun and a tunic that had clearly been restitched and added to countless times from countless pieces of cloth. "She immigrated from the same province as you, right?"
Liyang snorted, shooting a look over his shoulder. "Well, yeah, but she's from Shanzhen, other side of the province. Folks from there are more like Quanxiers than proper Shanglianers. Far too friendly with island folk, if ya catch my drift."
Jin certainly did, nodding slightly as she counted out three copper yuan coins and pushed them to the back of the counter. Island folk was just a pleasant way of referring to the Fire Nation, a way that no one here in the lower ring would pitch a fit about. The cook came by, picking up the three copper and setting down three bowls of cabbage and onion soup, and for a brief moment the three friends were distracted by the foul tasting but filling meal. Liyang pulled out a copper of his own to hand to Jin, but she waved it away.
The boy set his half-empty bowl of soup down, wiping his lips with his sleeve. "Anyways, apparently she had a crank connect today."
Jin and Yahui winced, and Jin instinctively reached for her braid.
"Is she okay?" Poking at the steaming liquid, Jin attempted to catch a small black flake of something floating in her soup, but the thing kept slipping away. She didn't know Wei too well, the girl was new, and worked on the floor below her, but she still didn't like it happening to anyone.
Liyang gave a halfhearted shrug. "She lost a bit of hair I heard, nothing too extreme. Only a bit of bleeding."
"But she and her family, they just got here, right? Like, a month ago? Tch, lower ring curse at it again." Yahui huffed, staring into her bowl. Her tone was a bit too apathetic to be serious, but a bit too somber to be a joke. "There might be a wall, but there's still a blood tax."
Jin nodded, her gaze resting on Yahui's right hand. It only had three fingers, the other two eaten by a power loom. Liyang hid his better, but the skin on his left forearm was permanently mangled from the time the loom caught his sleeve. The young woman looked around the market, watching the throng of people socialize and haggle for daily necessities in the cool night air. The market hadn't existed when Jin and her family immigrated to the city a decade ago, but with all the new refugees from the southwest, and the textile mill being built, a settlement of rickety houses and de facto public squares sprung up before anyone realized it. She could almost count who worked at the mill by seeing who was missing body parts. There were plenty.
"Do you know where she lives? Maybe my brother can put together some baiyao paste for her." Jin was thankful she had only had to eat the stuff once, when a few of her hairs had gotten caught by the loom and torn out. It was bitter and slimy, and a bit gritty, but it stopped bleeding and prevented infection. "One of the venders got a shipment of ginseng recently, so Jiao bought a lot of it to dry."
"Only if you can convince him to make it for free." Yahui grunted. "Apparently, Wei's folks got through the wall with nothing more than the clothes on their back. The rest burned."
Destroyed by the war, she meant.
Jin scowled at her friend. "And which of us had more than that? Not my family, I'll say that. I'm sure Jiao will understand."
Yahui laughed, a dry, joyless thing, and she gave Jin a mirthless grin. "If you say so. Just remember you have to eat too. Your bro's apothecary can't be a charity. You can't afford to be that naïve."
Jin glared at her friend, but Yahui just shrugged, blinking lazily, as though to say, 'the truth is the truth.' The air between them was tense, and Jin could feel her throat tighten. She looked away, redirecting her glare at her remaining soup. Despite the bustling night market, the three were silent.
Yahui didn't understand. Ba Sing Se was a horrible place, filled with violence and fear and death. Everyone had lost someone to the lower ring curse. Everyone. The only reason people flooded into the city's walls was because they preferred the slow rot of the slums to the agonizing inferno of the Fire Nation's invasion. But Jin refused to not care. She wasn't naïve. Or, if she was, it was by choice.
She stared at the faces going past, some she knew, most she didn't. They wove through the crowd, were the crowd, a formless mass made of a hundred discreet parts. Children playing with clay dice on the dusty ground next to the makeshift tents for the homeless, elders huddled around a pot of tea exchanging stories, young men and women who had arrived in the city alone finding comfort in their mutual loneliness. They were people too, fellow refugees, and that alone was enough to make her care.
Anything Jin could do was worth it.
"Come on y'all, let's not get so heavy." Liyang broke the silence, unknowingly or intentionally oblivious to the tension. "I know! I heard Qing is having a party tonight! Her cousin's getting married or something. Let's go to that!"
"Hear that?" Yahui snickered. "Marriage party. Maybe there are some available bachelors. Your brother would be pleased."
Jin snorted, pushing her thoughts to the side. "Please, if it's Qing's party, it'll just be the guys from the mill. None of them are marriage material. Qing's probably slept with half of them."
Liyang laughed. "You'd know, you've slept with the other half!"
"Yeah, yeah, whatever." Jin rolled her eyes, pushing herself up from the food counter. "Look, tonight seems like a night to dance and drink, so let's go dance and drink."
The young man stood to join her, clapping her on the back. "You always think it's a night to drink and dance."
"That's because any night you can dance is a night to celebrate." Yahui piped up, smiling sardonically.
"Well, let's get going then." Jin led the way through the crowd, listening to her two friends chatter before their night of booze and music. It made her laugh, but the smile was never quite full.
After all, the lower ring was the same as it always was. The city of mundane cruelty.