Despite being the Jaya shipper that I so hopelessly am, I’m thinking about how much I wish there had been more priority of Kai’s grief after Seabound. I know that they used that as his little character arc thing in Dragons Rising, but that was moreso fixing a problem, covering a plot hole. Kai lost himself after Zane died, implied to have gone off the deep end. He took it harder than everyone else, and I really think that. So the fact that Nya’s loss had less of an affect…
I’m not saying that it’s impossible, because Kai is older, and he has learned better ways of coping. There’s a whole year between Seabound and Crystalized versus the few months between Rebooted and ToE.
But still, Nya was Kai’s whole world and only family for such a long time. They mean the world to each other. So side stepping his grief was very irresponsible writing.
Actually, all of Crystalized was irresponsible writing but we don’t have time to unpack all of that.
The last thing he wanted to hear was that all of it, everything that he was feeling, was somehow normal, that the pain in his chest, the blocks in his memory, the shivering in his bones and worst of all, knowing that Nya wasn’t coming back resulting in sticky tear stains rushing down his hot cheeks was normal or even expected.
“They came to rescue me and now they’re all gone. Everyone’s gone.”
“Well, I’m not. And you heard Lloyd, he saw beyond today. It had to be like this.”
“But now he’s going to come after you! When will it be enough? When will it end? I…I can’t stand losing any more.”
“I can’t stand losing either. But Lloyd saved us for a reason. Let’s just hope by the time we see Nadhakhan again, we figure out what that reason is.”
Ninjago City General Hospital felt cold to Jay.
It could have been the fever that was still plaguing his body accompanied by shaking that wouldn’t cease, maybe it was the plain white walls with the ocean landscape on the wall that someone had expertly painted to his left, or even the chill of the fresh air being pushed into his lungs via the oxygen mask that was strapped to his face.
Regardless of the reasoning that he felt as though he couldn’t get warm, the sterile environment mixed with the picture of the waves that he could clearly his yang being a part of now made him shiver harder as another cough started to make its way out of his lungs wrapped in phlegm.
He managed to sit up, pull the mask upwards so it rested on his forehead and grab the pink medical basin that had been brought into the room for this exact purpose before nearly vomiting into it from the strength of the coughing fit that erupted from his lungs.
But the glob of phlegm released itself from the back of his throat after a strong round of coughing and after taking a few wheezing breaths, Jay set the basin back down on the metal table that had been placed near his bed, not even looking inside to see what exactly he had coughed up.
Instead, he focused his tired eyes on the city view outside, his left eye closing from the strain of the sun shining in the window; his friends were out there, assisting wherever they could in the clean-up which is why he was currently sitting alone in the cold, dim hospital room unable to even stand on his own two feet, let alone actually help.
He heard footsteps approach the door to his room and slid the mask back over his face; he knew it was foolish to believe for just a second that it was her, but whoever it was walked right past, leaving him to wallow in the silence and the murky depths of his own memories.
Jay wasn’t surprised that his mind brought him back to the events involving Nadakhan; the djinn was like a disease that would never be fully expelled from his thoughts and just when he thought he would be over the hell he had been put through by him and his crew, it came rushing back harder and faster than ever before.
But this memory wasn’t like the others. It wasn’t the hours and hours of swabbing the deck only to become the victim of the scrap ‘n’ tap ring and it wasn’t Nya’s limp weight in his arms as salty tears streamed down his cheeks and into her bobbed, raven-black hair that usually kept him awake at night.
He knew that his ribs were busted; he didn’t know when it happened, but he had a feeling of how, given that he was still struggling to see out of his left eye for seemingly the same reason.
All he knew was that his chest felt tight and painful.
When they had arrived on the shores of Ninjago with the entirety of the police force on their side, the adrenaline that had been keeping Jay on his feet aboard Misfortune’s Keep finally ebbed away.
He would have fallen face first on the pavement if Nya hadn’t been there to put a gentle hand around his waist while pulling him back to his feet, even if his feet kept slipping out from under him and he was doing everything possible to keep himself from using her as a crutch.
“We’re gonna get you taken care of,” she assured him, her free hand brushing his curls that had appeared from a mix of salt water drying in his hair and the lack of styling, “you just stay awake for a bit longer.”
“W-we need to get you s-somewhere safe,” he stuttered around his dry mouth while trying to ignore his stinging, chapped lips, “he’s g-gonna come after you and-” he was cut off by a violent burst of pain exploding from his chest accompanied by rough, dry coughing and Nya swearing loudly as she struggled to hold him upright.
He had coughed up blood all down the front of his already stained gi, Nya had told him later.
The current feeling of tightness in his chest as his lungs struggled to expand fully was all too reminiscent of the feeling he had felt right before his broken rib had punctured his lung.
But Jay didn’t remember much else given that he had fallen unconscious from the sheer amount of blood loss he had endured on Misfortune’s Keep after his lung had punctured and he was pumped full of various medications to keep his wounds from getting infected in the brief period of time that he was in the small clinic next door to the police station before they went into hiding.
He had blocked out a lot of the events surrounding the pirates in the sky, resulting in large gaps in his memories that he couldn’t quite put the pieces into, but he didn’t want to put that puzzle together.
He didn’t want to remember what his brain had blocked out given just how horrendous the things that he could remember were from so many forced rounds of Scrap ‘n’ Tap to the Vengestone chain that never left his ankle, resulting in a permanent indent in the tender skin and he especially didn’t want to remember no longer being able to see nothing but shapes and colors on his left side.
And within all of that was Nya…he had been able to save her from Nadakhan, he had been able to save her from Unagami, but in the end, he hadn’t been able to save her from herself.
Before he could even think, the salty tears were running down his cheeks and dripping onto the thin blanket that covered his legs as he brain started to draw the similarities to the times he had failed.
“You have to make your last wish. You’re the only one who can stop him.”
“No. Not if that means losing you.”
…
“Look out!”
“Nya…no…I…I can’t do this alone. Don’t leave me. I love you.”
…
“I have to go now. I will remember you.”
“Remember? What are you talking about?” Her brother questioned but his ears were ringing and his chest hurt, his chest hurt so bad, “you’re not going anywhere.”
“Nya, stop! Wait, listen,” he rushed forward, his head pounding and his legs aching, “something is wrong with you, you have to concentrate, you have to focus, you have to turn back-” he gasped as the water phased through him, nearly making him choke and when he tried to grab her hand with a “no”, he went right through it, water soaking his glove, “don’t leave me.”
She turned back to him, holding his hand with a solid yet gentle grip before putting her other hand on his cheek for a brief moment before turning away again, towards the edge of the skyscraper.
He could hear Master Wu try to bargain with her, plead with her to stay with them, but all he could focus on was the pressure in his head and the water in his hand making him feel sick to his stomach. But her words would rattle in his mind over and over and over again.
“I am Nya. I am the sea. We are one.”
“Nya, I…” he forced himself to say it, he needed to say it, he needed her to know even though he had said it so many times before, “I love you.”
He forced himself out of reliving it. It hadn’t even been twelve hours and the last thing he wanted to do was vomit from the sheer pain of remembering everything that had transpired on the skyscraper but at the same time, he wanted to force himself to remember.
There was a lot that he couldn’t recall about Nadakhan before he made his wish but he had made the choice to keep it out, even if it was what caused the nightmares that always plagued him.
Jay couldn’t stand to forget about Nya, not after everything they had been through.
As if the sorrows in his heart weren’t enough, the physical pain was only growing worse despite the steady stream of oxygen that he was trying to pull into his lungs that didn’t want to expand fully and the fact that his fever was still making him shake harshly against the pillow he was laying on.
Jay remembered being told that there was a button somewhere near him that would send an alert to the nurse’s station if he needed anything in between the rounds that the doctors made periodically, but he couldn’t bring himself to click it.
The last thing he wanted to hear was that all of it, everything that he was feeling, was somehow normal, that the pain in his chest, the blocks in his memory, the shivering in his bones and worst of all, knowing that Nya wasn’t coming back resulting in sticky tear stains rushing down his hot cheeks was normal or even expected.
After all, what was normal about losing your Yang? The one you loved so much that you weren’t sure you could even continue to live without them?
So, he did the only thing that made sense to him; press his hot face onto the now warm pillow, shut his eyes, and hope that when sleep finally overtook him, it was blissfully dark even though he knew deep down that something would resurface in his dream like always.
…
Cole hated hospitals.
It didn’t matter if he was the patient, if he was visiting someone or even helping out with the Grant-A-Wish Foundation, hospitals still made his skin prick up in goosebumps and his stomach turn with nausea.
But, he had a reason for being here; now that the ninja had done what they could to clean up the mess that Wojira had made of their city, Kai had gone off to The Monastery to more than likely isolate himself and after Lloyd had brought up where Kai had ended up after what had happened to Zane, the two of them had left to keep an eye on him.
Meanwhile, Wu and Misako had offered to help Ray and Maya gather up Nya’s belongings from The Bounty and The Monastery but Cole knew that the two of them would probably bury themselves in research on how to turn Nya back as soon as possible.
And even though he had called Jay’s parents and given them an explanation, they had told him that they wouldn’t be able to get to the hospital till the next morning after what the flood had done to the jalopy; Cole knew that he was the only one available to comfort his best friend who had just lost the love of his life, so he did what he was good at.
Pushing down anything that brought up the scary parts of his childhood and being the rock of the team; he could always process what had happened to Nya and the memories of his mother when he returned to the Monastery. His team needed him to be strong. Jay needed him to be strong.
Cole felt a sense of relief when he arrived at Jay's room to see that he was asleep, his chest moving in sync with the mask secured over his face and his face free of any lines of agony to the point where he looked at peace.
He sat down in the chair on Jay’s left side and gently grasped his IV free hand; he knew that his vision in his left eye wasn’t that good after the events that he didn’t remember and that he preferred to keep it closed whenever possible to avoid the strain, but he also wanted to make sure that when he woke up, he knew that he was safe.
After everything Jay had been through, he deserved safety.
He still remembered the day that Nya had told him everything that had happened to her and Jay, how Jay had nightmares nearly every single night because of it, how both of them had scars from events that had been erased like the yellowish one on Nya’s chest and how she had died in Jay’s arms.
Jay had tried to fill in gaps where Nya hadn’t been able to. The insane labor demands of the crew of Misfortune’s Keep relished in him being under their command so Nadakhan could break him in order to get him to wish it all away, not to mention the Scrap ‘n’ Tap ring.
He had only been told the details that Jay remembered once and that was enough for him to know that Nadakhan was lucky that Jay had wished no one ever found the Teapot of Tyran, or otherwise he very well would have killed the Dijin with his bare hands to ensure that he could never hurt Nya or Jay again.
But Jay had gaps where Nya didn’t. She said that Jay was on the ship for two weeks, but Jay could really only remember scattered snippets that amounted to two days.
It was called selective dissociative amnesia, where his best friend’s mind had to block out the most traumatic parts of what had happened to him in order to keep him safe, and it made Cole’s blood boil whenever he thought about it.
He had been with Jay when he had taken the questionnaire while on the hunt for Master Wu and fearful that his lack of memories were a result of Wu getting stuck in a time stream, he had been there when he was being tested and screened, and he had been the one to call Nya when he outright denied any sort of treatment plan except for a refill on his anxiety medication that he had been taking on and off since the timeline reversal.
He still vividly remembered walking out of that hospital right behind Jay, the pamphlet of therapists in the Ninjago City area in his hand as he followed him to the car.
“You could have at least taken the pamphlet.”
“I don’t want to remember not being able to see, Cole!” Jay took a second to take a shuddery breath before turning back to his phone, “besides, I just wanted to know why I was missing memories, not how to get them back. Anyway, Kai sent me a news article, about an old man with amnesia going to a monastery in the mountains.”
“Why didn’t you tell anyone we were back in the city?”
“Why didn’t you?”
“I called Nya. I told her where we were,” he put his hand on Jay’s shoulder as he scowled, “why didn’t you tell her you had gaps?”
“For the same reason I’m regretting telling you.”
Cole almost dozed off while still keeping a hold on Jay’s hand, he wasn’t sure when he had last slept and the rest of the team had more than likely already gone to bed or had lied and said they had gone to bed but were actually processing things in their rooms.
‘God, I hope someone has eyes on Kai’ Cole couldn’t help but think as he ran his thumb over Jay’s lightning-scarred knuckles.
He and Nya had tag-teamed taking care of her older brother after Zane as well as seeing if there was actually any chemistry there or if they were just exploring their options, but she would track his phone, he would bring him home and take care of him for the night and when he would leave in the morning for his job as a woodcutter, she would deal with the hangover.
And now, four years later, she was gone which left him to pick up the pieces of what had been broken.
The hitch in Jay’s breathing pulled him out of his grieving thoughts and brought his mind back to the current situation; any of the others having a hitch in their breath while they slept was normal, but not for Jay.
When Cole and Jay had worked together to try and find Master Wu, he quickly learned that a sudden change in Jay’s breathing meant the start of a nightmare, regardless of any injuries he had obtained.
So he let go of Jay’s left hand, immediately moving it up to his left shoulder and gently shook him; he didn’t want to make a fuss, he didn’t want any of the medical equipment to move or dislodge but he also knew that Jay would be embarrassed if the entirety of Ninjago City General woke up to his screams.
Sure enough, only a few gentle shakes and both of Jay’s eyes sprung open accompanied by harsh gasping as he sat up while blinking rapidly. ‘Shit.’
“Jay, hey, you have to breathe,” Cole stood up to get a gentle grip on both of Jay’s upper arms to hold him still so he didn’t hurt himself, “do you know where you are?” Jay tried to break out of his hold with a hiss of pain, he held on tighter, “don’t do that, stay still. Do you know where you are?”
Jay’s light brown and light blue eyes blinked at him for a few moments but the gasping started to slow down as his brain processed, “h-hospital.”
“Good, that’s good,” Cole assured him, loosening his grip slightly, “do you remember what happened?” He didn’t want his best friend to cry but based on how watery his eyes were, he knew that was inevitable regardless of whether or not he brought him back down to reality.
“Nya…” he trailed off as he started to lay down, rubbing at his left eye, “w-where is he?”
“Kalamarr?” Cole supplied, trying to understand just what Jay had been dreaming about in his medication infused haze.
“Nadakhan.”
‘Goddamnit.’
“Jay-”
“Where’s Nadakhan?” His breathing was growing more labored and he was starting to sit up again, pulling the oxygen mask up over his head, “Where is he?”
“Jay, he’s gone,” Cole insisted, squeezing a little harder than necessary on Jay’s upper arms and hoping that the pressure would bring Jay back to the present, “you’re safe. You’re safe with me. You reversed the timeline, he can’t hurt you ever again.”
“Oh yeah…” Jay’s eyes flickered with realization before letting out a series of hard, rapid coughs.
Cole pulled the oxygen mask back over Jay’s nose and mouth before firmly patting his back to help work out whatever was stuck in his lungs, wincing when he heard Jay mumble an “ow” in between coughs.
“I know it hurts,” Cole muttered when the coughs started to dissipate and he started to alternate between the firm patting and gently rubbing his upper back, “but you gotta cough that junk up or you’ll get worse.”
Jay lifted the mask up onto his forehead again but before Cole could protest or pull it back over his friend’s face, he watched as his best friend grabbed the pink basin off of the metal table and coughed into it with a retch.
“Don’t…look in that,” Jay spoke as he caught his breath while setting the pink basin down.
“Duly noted,” Cole nodded before gently pulling the mask back over the lower half of Jay’s face before gently pushing him back onto the pillows, feeling the heat radiate off of his skin, “but that needs to stay on as much as possible so we can get you home sooner. Why didn’t you tell me you were having nightmares again?”
The “you told me you were going to get help last time” that Jay had promised after the events in Prime Empire weren’t said and if he was being completely honest, he didn’t feel like now was a good time to bring that up; if there was one thing Cole had learned, it was that he couldn’t force Jay, or anyone, to get the help they needed.
“Nya was helping me.” Jay’s voice sounded shaky but whether it was from the coughing or his grief was to be determined, “are you mad at me?”
“What, no,” Cole stopped himself from sitting down to make sure that Jay’s brown right eye and light blue left were looking right at him, “Jay, I’m not mad at you. You’re my best friend and I want you safe from all of this bullshit. I wis-” Cole stopped, remembering to choose his words more carefully, “I’m mad that I couldn’t protect you from Nadakhan, that I couldn’t stop him from hurting you and Nya and I’m mad that I couldn’t stop Kalamarr from breaking apart my family.”
Cole made sure to grasp Jay’s hands as he assured him, even though the master of lightning was now looking at his blanket-covered knees, “I am not mad at you, Jay Walker. Okay? I can’t be mad at you, not again.”
He didn’t know what he expected him to say, but the room stayed quiet for a few beats longer then what made Cole comfortable until Jay finally looked up at Cole, the tears fully falling down his cheeks and onto the blankets as he muttered, “I’m so fucking tired, Cole.”
Cole gently pressed one of his cool palms to Jay’s feverish cheeks, trying to offer some sort of comfort to his best friend while wiping away the tear tracks with his thumb.
“I know you are, and I wish you weren’t.”
“Can you…” Jay stopped to swallow and wipe the tears from the other cheek on his bare arm, “can you stay?”
Cole couldn’t help but smile as he nodded before saying, “you can’t get rid of me, Bluebell.”
