Transgender Jay : A Ninjago Story

61 - Truth

"... wh... what?"

Jay tripped over his words, stammering as his tongue worked itself into knots.

"... a bag, Jay... we found you in a bag..." Ed repeated himself, seemingly too ashamed to make eye contact, sadly gazing down at the floor of the caravan.

It felt as if the atmosphere had dropped a few degrees, chilling Jay to the bone almost instantly.

"... y... y... you mean..."

His mouth had dried up, and his eyes forgot how to focus. It hurt. It hurt to speak, it hurt to blink, it hurt to breathe.

"... I... was... a-ab... ab-bandoned...?"

It didn't make sense. Jay had felt a strong sense of genuine emotion from the letter Cliff had left to him, he didn't know what it was, but, somehow he knew that he wasn't lying. He wanted to raise him, he wanted to have a child... so, how could this have happened? How could it be true?

Jay tried to speak again and again, to no avail at all, so Ed decided to fill the silence, and elaborate a little more.

"... one day, I was getting ready to empty the bins around the back of the junkyard, when, I noticed that there was a trail of footprints in the sand, leading from the city. I don't know how the wind hadn't blown them away completely... since it was in the middle of the day, and we would have noticed somebody passing through the desert at that time. They must have come at night, when we were asleep..."

He could tell when this was going. The plot line was clear, his parents had never been very good at gently insinuating things instead of saying them outright.

"I heard... as I got closer, I heard... crying. Or, whimpering. I didn't understand how that could be happening, as, we'd always lived alone, and the footprints came from one direction and left in the other, so it couldn't be the person who'd left them... I walked over and, there was a coat I didn't recognise shoved into one of the bins, and... the crying had stopped. I panicked, and I pulled the coat out and... there you were. A baby... couldn't have been more than a day old. You'd passed out... I was lucky enough to come outside and hear the last of your cries before you ran out of oxygen... I did CPR and managed to revive you... but... Jay... even from the very start... you've been a fighter. You spent a whole night, and half a day struggling to breathe, placed in a plastic bag, with a coat shoved on top of you... and you survived. I... I don't know what I can say to make you feel better... I know we should have told you sooner... but I-"

Jay finally found his voice, cutting through the air with a single question.

"... but... the key... you said that... you'd found me with a key...?"

He could feel the guilt and sympathy radiating off them like a heater on full blast.

"... in the bag... the key was in the bag alongside you. There was also a magazine, a half eaten packet of mints... I... Jay, I'm sorry sweetheart... I... it was... most likely an accident..."

He'd expected tears. He'd expected to be bawling at this point, panicking and losing control of his emotions due to the horrific news, though there was nothing of the sort. Jay felt, numb. Devoid of anything except existential dread, and the constant leering feeling that... he wasn't wanted.

Despite his current life, two loving parents, a set of friends who he mostly got on well with, a group he was openly accepted into, knowing that at birth, his parents had abandoned him, sliced through the last of his internal self worth in a second.

Except it wasn't just abandonment. Whoever had put him there, in that bag, in that bin, under that coat, had undeniably attempted to kill him.

The question was, who? Who'd done that? Who would do such a thing to a baby?

Something in his intuition told him that Cliff Gordon had little, or nothing to do with it. There was something about his message that felt, genuinely from the heart. The way he'd professed that he had truly wanted to raise his son, if that was a lie, then why had the estate been left to him?

Cliff hadn't lied to him. Leaving the only other option... to be the other party.

His mother.

Whoever his birth mother was. She was the only person he could think of who could be the culprit.

The previous Master of Lightning.

Sensei Wu would have known her. Maybe even known that she was pregnant, so, why had he never said anything before?

He'd always been the secretive type, constantly keeping things from the ninja that really should have been disclosed.

Surely this was different though? This was a personal matter. His own mother, had Wu not worried about the sudden disappearance of both her and her child simultaneously? Had he not ever thought to tell him about his past and true heritage?

Jay made a mental note to ask him about it as soon as he got back to the others. If he refused to answer, he'd persist until he did.

On that note... getting back to the others was probably something to work on.

... they were probably worried out of their minds. He'd disappeared without an explanation, and had been gone for hours upon hours by now.

Edna looked at her son, confused. He'd been quiet for a while now, and they'd stayed quiet in respect for the obvious turmoil he was going through at the news. She'd been preparing herself to be a shoulder to cry on, an emotional support in whatever way he needed, but the visual reaction he showed wasn't anything alike what she'd imagined.

"... Jay, sweetie... are you smiling?"

He hadn't even realised it himself, but, yes. He was.

There were the beginnings of a smile curving at the corners of his lips.

Jay looked up at the two of them, as the first lights of the morning began to shine through the curtains.

"... who cares."

"... w-what?"

"Who cares, ma... who cares if I was left like that. I have you two because of it... I wouldn't change that for anything..."

The truth of his adoption hurt him, deeply, and hit him hard in all the wrong places. Learning that your own mother had cared so little for you that she had left you to die would hurt anybody, especially an individual who already struggled with his mental health.

However, somehow, the discovery of his blank fate had clicked into an unexpected place.

If his time left was now limited, and his end was inevitable, whether in a year or next week, there was no point of wallowing in pity.

He had his parents. He had his friends.

Jay wasn't going to let his careless birth mother ruin that for him.