It was all there, in plain sight
Summary: Zane wants something she can't have.
She notices the pit in her chest only after she’s left Birchwood forest behind. It opens up where her heart would be, a black pit of longing she mistakes only slightly for loneliness and loss. There was someone she loved, once there and now gone. There was a life she had that was hidden from her, so the pit gnawed at her until she grew numb to the ache. It made sense, of course. What little she had left- her name, her face, the white sweater and white pants and cold hands- wasn’t enough to pad out the spaces her amnesia left behind. She looked for the rest of her heart in everything, searching for identity in cold still waters ponds and sunsets and the term elemental master the elderly man gave her when he asked her if she was prepared to face her destiny.
“I’m Jay.” The red haired boy greets her with a wave when she drops her meager belongings on the floor next to her bunk bed.
“Cole.” The other boy introduces himself with a crooked smile, “Yo.” He throws a peace sign up from where he’s laying in his own bed, sketch pad propped up on his lap.
“Hello.” She says formally, clasping her hands in front of her, “My name is Zane.” She refrains from adding I think to the end of her name, “It is nice to make your acquaintance.”
The chasm in her chest is a bearable pain, something that only itches at her in the gaps between training when the monastery is quiet and the two boys are preoccupied. She tries to find things to fill her life with- cooking, mostly. There are a handful of half-finished hobbies she’d tried and failed to integrate into her interests. Granny-square knitting scraps in a box under her bed, sewing needles and threads only pulled out to mend a tear in hers or the others robes after her first project has bored her, and a journal she’d abandoned when the pages she wrote were too empty for her to stomach.
Once, she tried drawing with Cole.
He doodles a drawing of her and shows it off with a grin- the boy in the picture seems so foreign to her that she almost asks Cole to throw it away. A sharp angled jaw, thick brow ridge and broad shoulders. Deep set eyes and hollow cheeks that only seem to accentuate the width of her face. Every part of her is rough and harsh. Handsome, but that doesn’t feel like a compliment when Cole or Jay says it to her. She thanks Cole and draws a picture of him in return- crude, not as skilled, but Cole appreciates it anyway.
Kai brings something with him that makes the cavern in her chest bleed- Nya. Nya, who has soft features and gentle hands. Beautiful, Jay sighs dreamily, and Zane wants that. She wants to be beautiful the way Nya is beautiful, the way the models on magazine covers and actresses in movies are. The pit in her chest has a razor edge now, and each time she compares herself to Nya and finds herself wanting she cuts open her heart on the sides. She tries her hand at makeup once, a few products Nya left in the bathroom that she plays with once day- her attempts are like that drawing she did of Cole. Crude, unskilled, clownish. So she washes her face and goes back to training and wants something she can’t have.
And she knows she can’t have it, because the one time she’d grazed her fingers over the femininity she desired she’d been laughed out of the room. A pink apron, so small and simple- a taste of a life she wanted so, so badly.
But she was a boy, and boys didn’t do things like wear pink aprons.
When she finds out she's a robot, the ache eases. It should go away- she knows who she is, she remembers her father, there’s not this big looming mystery clinging to the nape of her neck anymore. Her shoulders aren’t weighed down by a grief she wasn’t able to remember- sure, knowing brought with it a new pain, but there wasn’t any question to who she is. Zane, son of Dr. Julien. Robot. Hero. She could accept that. She could find peace with her past now- and yet the emptiness persists. Not so harsh, not at first- but over time, the chasm spreads until it feels like her whole body is an empty husky she inhabited.
“Father, if I wanted you to make a change in me, would you?” she asks her father after she finds him again, so close to putting into words a desire she was afraid to recognize.
“But Zane, you're perfect. I could never make you any better than you already are.” He smiles, reaches out to place his hand on her elbow with a squeeze, and she loses her nerve. Redirects the conversation to another persistent issue she had wanted to address as well, and doesn’t bring up the way her body doesn’t feel like it fits her anymore.
Maybe it never had- but then the world is ending, and there’s no time to think about that anymore.
And then a year later, the world is ending again and she pays all she has to prevent it.
She meets another android right before she gives up her life to save the world, and Pixal is everything Zane wants to be. She is beautiful, and she can convince herself it might be love when the pit her body is made of floods with a longing so deep her soul aches with it. She wants to ask her what it’s like- to be a girl.
Is it as wonderful as it looks? Is it as fulfilling as she imagines it would be?
She’s dead before she can form the words.
When she rebuilds her body in the blackness of Borg towers basements, she curves her jaw. She softens the harsh lines her father had sculpted her with, blending out solid planes into gentle features that hinted femininity. Not too much, careful to make it so slight that her friends won't look twice. Just enough to slake the hunger in her chest. Just barely enough to stifle her longing.
She touches her body the same way, adds weight to her hips and thins her waist to give the slightest impression of an hourglass figure. She considers her chest and again she wants what she can't have. She sends the blueprints to the machine before her heart breaks over a life that's not hers and she steps out of the machine in a body that's never going to be quite right.
But she's alive again, and there’s work to be done.
In the darkness of that cell in Chen's dungeon, she experiences heartbreak all over again when her memories flood back and she's reminded that she is a boy. In the spaces between memory, she knows what she isn’t. Memory brings reminder. There’s no escaping the words written down in her code. She can leave the island behind but she’s not free, not really.
Tox and Chamille and Nya and Skylor all cluster together and she wants so badly her core seems to wither with the force of it.
Pixal asks, “Is everything alright?” Because her fans stutter with physical pain at the cruelty of it all.
And she’s never been more grateful that Pixal’s abilities in her head are limited- she can’t read her mind, can’t look into her memories and see the longing living in her every breath. “I am fine.” She says, because there is no other option.
In a set of memories that are not hers to keep, she stares as a villain across a chessboard who says “Then I take it you do not want to make a wish…”
And he smiles at her like he knows. Like he can look right down directly into her heart to see a desire she would never voice, a want so so desperately shoved down and strangled because it simply wasn’t allowed. He’s giving her a golden ticket, a smoking gun to fix everything that’s ever been wrong with her life- it would be a simple, easy wish. Something that rewrote history to suit her needs.
I wish I was a girl, and that I always have been.
But she had a plan, and there was no room for this wish in the precious three she had to use.
She’s always been good at compartmentalizing. She could put her emotions away- this was harder, more insidious, but with time and effort she could make the ache a blanketing numbness instead. She fought just the same, cooked like always, and was for all intents and purposes normal- the disconnect she felt with her body was put away, and it didn't affect her duties as a ninja. That was paramount. Of course, it didn’t matter in the end- they lost. the Destiny's Bounty was crushed and it was pure luck that they had the mind to remember Mystakes tea with enough time to use it. Ninjago fell and they were trapped worlds away with no way back in sight.
Things were starting to look up now, though. The Iron baron was on their tail, but with Faith on their side they had put considerable distance between them. For the first time in a long while, things didn’t seem so bleak.
Faith had approached her while she was readying lunch, helping her prepare the meager supplies they had into a decent meal.
“I apologize,” She began quietly, breaking the lull of silence between them, “For mistaking you for a man.” she’s not sure why she brings it up, just that it feels important to say.
Faith's lips curl up ever so slightly, “Thank you.” There’s another pause, “...You didn’t.”
She glances at Faith, confused.
Faith clarifies, “You never used him in reference to me.” She sets the bowl down and studies her, searching for something. She doesn’t know what to say, so she stirs the pot of noodles while Faith comes to a realization. her mouth forms a perfect o before she schools her expression, looking away. “...I wasn’t always a woman.” She sets the words out gently between them.
She drops the spoon and has to clamber to pick it back up, “You were not?” She asks, looking over at the huntress with wide eyes.
“It is a bit of an oversimplification.” Faith admits, “But no. I was born a boy, and I realized I was a woman later in life.”
“Oh. I have… never heard of that before.” She finds herself whispering, the information overwhelming and too big to deal with in the hot desert sun so far from home. It feels like something slots into place- a reality worth pursuing suddenly just over the horizon. No more longing, no more ache-
“I apologize too.” Faith says softly, eyes sparkling with a new kind of warmth, “I didn’t know we were… family.”
She’s always been one to take someone's words at face value, but she understands Faith's words for what they are the moment they leave her mouth. We’re the same. I see you.
Her throat feels too thick to respond so she just finishes lunch and calls the other over to eat, leaving the conversation to repeat in her head over and over again.
After everything, on a day where the team is sprawled out in the living room trying to unwind after twelve hours of rebuilding work in downtown Ninjago, she blurts it out. While clearing rubble or carrying around building materials she’d been running a search program in the back of her head- pinging more and more resources that give the emptiness and desire inside her a name. She found others who felt the same, reading through post after post of personal stories that all voiced her own private thoughts openly and honestly.
Suddenly the world is alight with poetry and videos and potential, boundless possibility to remake who she pretends to me into who she is. The other women on the internet link hands with her and offer her a community she has been deprived of- and her life is her own. Transgender and transcendent and trans joy.
“I’m a girl.” She announces into the room, because now that she knows all there is to know- now that she knows it's allowed she won’t live another second in this identity that crushes her chest and chokes her spirit.
It’s the first time she’s ever said it.
As her friends surround her, she's met with unconditional support and a life worth living spread out in front of her feet.
