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The First Realm’s (it’s what the other people with the same likeness as him have been calling it, ever since he was a young child) night was humid and warm, the air tickling his nose as he stays vigil over the sand dunes, watching everything and every movement with the telescope he’s stolen when he was a child. Despite the others’ protests over him being a young teenager and needing the sleep to sustain himself against people like Iron Baron, he’d wanted to repay their kindness of having to raise him. It felt like a lifetime ago, that time of his; he knows he’d been raised by four young men who rather see him as some sort of de-aged master (a rather preposterous concept, his mind suggests) than an actual child whom they have partaken in raising.
Mostly, the Black Ninja was the one who takes most of his time to raise him. Wu is sure that he is the Elemental Master of Earth due to how the earth seems to love him, burrowing or giving him the directions they’ve asked for when they are lost. He has a certain fondness for the earth and the way it moves beneath his fingers, shaping it like some sort of clay despite the fact they are in a harsh desert in which the earth is loose and grainy. He’s been told about Elemental Masters by his father before.
(A father that coalesces into gold, brown, and everything in between.)
Wu frowns, and he peers into the telescope to evade the thoughts of his previous life. Seeing nothing but sand dunes and the stars blinkering, it is a realization that he could not keep avoiding the thoughts that have been bugging his mind for so long.
Ever since he had come to this Realm, a brutal terrain where the people closest to him have the misfortune to get captured by those called the Dragon Hunters, their skin as pale as the snow (which he has never even seen, so he wonders where he has gotten that connotation from) and their eyes hungering for a power they can never see before. While Dragons are not quite friendly with him and the Earth Ninja — and there’s a feeling he could never truly simmer down when he is so close to one of them — his heart leaks for them as they are captured and enslaved for the Dragon Hunters to be entertained with. There have been memories, incomprehensible ones, even, in which he is in a different world than the one he has grown up in as a young child in.
Because, when there are plants supple with water in this Realm, there had been a stream filled with drinkable water and unusually-shaped dragons swimming in the water, avoiding — or running towards — the fishhook that he’s lined up for them in this dream of his, too familiar and ordinary for it to be a dream.
He was in a boat, with a slightly older boy with brown hair, and an elderly man admonishing the older boy’s impatience.
The ninja tells him it was a memory. They seem quite ecstatic that he’s had a dream like this before, a certain hope shining in their eyes as they give themselves a knowing smile. Wu has never felt more left out than before.
“But how?” He tells them, confusion on his face as he furrows his brows. “I’ve grown up here, not in— in whatever place is in my dream.”
The Earth Ninja — he has never felt the disrespect to call him by his given name — steps forward, always the one to provide answers to the young teenager rather than talking about how he’d had longer legs than before. There was a slight twinge of… guilt when he thinks of how much information the young man has offered him. It was a peculiar contrast from the elderly man in his dream. “That was your first childhood, I guess. We– we’ve been trying to get to the Realm you once saw in your dream, remember?”
It was still strange— how this was, apparently, not his first childhood. How he had been, according to the ninja that insists he is their master, the child of the First Spinjitzu Master, part-Oni and Dragon, the creator of the so-called Realm of Ninjago.
It was a laughable notion, but it is concerning how plausible it truly is.
How he could feel familiar with the elderly man, and the memories that come after the first one. The way he feels dread, regret, and yearning over the older brother, brown hair shaped to a bowl cut such as his, but instead of a gentle, carefree smile that dances with the wind, his face is contorted to a frown.
And he could only feel heartbreak at the sight of it.
Why should he feel these kinds of feelings in relation to those people? He’s never met him in his entire life.
However, seeing the hopeful faces of the ninja — and, more or less, the Earth Ninja — he decides to play along with their conclusion. He will gesture to these visions as his brother and father when they have felt more like a family than these people in his dreams always have been. He will tease about how they have taken his so-called knowledge and weaponized it to the worst advice he has ever heard. He will not say they are Wu’s real family, and not what his mind, so young yet feeling so old, has conjured up for him.
If he were any less responsible, he would run away, never fulfilling whatever responsibility he has in his mind.
But he was responsible, brooding, and emotionally stoic as he can be.
Wu could not leave them to a fate worse than death, while he gains hostility from dragons who are supposed to be relatives to the heritage he presents.
And, he hates to admit it, but he has gotten quite attached to the ninja. It is of no surprise; they’ve been with him since he was a baby — along with a few others whose faces are blurry and gone — and, although they believe it has only been a few weeks since they’ve started their trek on this terrain, for him, it felt like years.
It was so bizarre to think about; how he’s lost his elderly years due to a time conspiracy, and he’d been marooned to this Realm by a few others over the course of a few weeks ago.
But, it does explain how they still have not fixed the ship they’ve affectionately called Destiny’s Bounty. He also felt sadness when the ship was scrapped with parts, remembering the times in which he resided, munching the remains of the food supplies of the ship, much to the ninja’s horror and amusement. He reckons the sandstorms that spiral out of control, and the ship, battered and destroyed as it had been, continued to protect them from these storms.
(He still could not grasp how strong the Earth Ninja’s arms are, embracing him tightly while the strong winds continue to flutter against them.)
It was a horrifying realization.
How this was his second life, second childhood, with weeks instead of years passing.
(A part of him was relieved of the shortness of time, a vivid memory coming to him with watching the cherry blossoms transition into the hydrangea that only whittles in the winter. The rich pink of the petals is fragile on his palms as he flourishes.)
He’s spent all of his years melting to eternity in this abstract life of his.
And, judging from the way the others speak of his former self — old, barren, cryptic — he fears the day he will have to return to this title. He does not miss the way Jay would occasionally make him bear the brunt of his frustrations, calling his older self an old man who would never give them the information they would like to have and, rather, continue to suffer in silence as the others are forced to clean his mess up. The way Kai’s eyes would spark with something akin to irritation and toleration when he inquires something about their old life back in this place called Ninjago. How Zane is exasperated when he comes to him looking for some sort of answer, for a result in the mediocrity of all things.
Cole is the only ninja, out of all of them, to have the patience and understanding he was not — yet — the master that had failed them. He’s not stupid, he’s seen the way they speak of his older self, sometimes filled with respect, yes, but there is an underlying passive-aggressiveness that leaves him currently mixed.
Does he want to return to this so-called old form of his?
Seeing how his brooding nature contrasts with their lively and insightful behavior, he enjoys time with them without any of the young men (who are older than him, his mind supplies) mentioning his beloathed nickname.
“Young master!”
Wu grimaces at the echo of that thought inside of his head, and he distracts himself with a sudden movement in the sand dunes.
“Young Master, why are you still up?” It was not an intruder, but rather, the only person to whom he feels closest.
The blonde teen puts down the telescope, turning to look at Cole Brookstone, Elemental Master of Earth, with his usual expression. It was common knowledge he could never express his true feelings without looking impartial and stoic. Sometimes the ninja makes comparisons with his face with Zane’s, the two of which never really appreciate being seen as a joke.
Another thing that proves the concept of having been marooned on this Realm is their ages: from picturesque memories in which he was with other people (a green-eyed individual who looks at him with pain and sadness; an elder woman with eyes that have seen every crack and crevice in the world; a woman whose eyes were as blue as the sea, torrential and gentle currents mixing as one; another woman that screams of a rainy night… and another girl, whose voice was sweet but filled with knives, singing of spiders biting mice) they were all teenagers from before they have been stuck in the First Realm. Yet, they’ve never significantly aged during their duration here. They continue to look young, to look lively, and sprightly; he fears the day he will outgrow them.
His golden eyes trace over Cole’s face— there is not a single wrinkle nor white hair that signifies his old age, unlike Kai’s whose fiery hair has the aperiodic glimpse of white hair as he continues to panic about their current situation.
Cole tilts his head, and Wu remembers that he’s asked him a question. Questions are meant to be answered, no matter what the results are.
He shuffles awkwardly. “Keeping watch.” He speaks in a soft voice, his eyes downcast. A memory comes to him, in which he was being trained by the brown-haired boy, feeling a confident smile on his face.
(He hears his voice, once.
“You must stay vigil for the next strike.” He tells him as the bokken collides with his own, feeling an abnormal amount of difficulty in these strikes. It was filled with youth and forced maturity, yet something else feels wrong in this vision, red eyes flickering to purple ones, the smile turning to a thinly veiled sneer.
Wu doesn’t say anything else.)
“Why? We have Faith with us.” Cole presses his face to a frown, crossing his arms. “Even though I don’t trust her.”
Wu sighs. “My father told us to have Faith, remember?” He says, the word ‘father’ rolling on his tongue. He still couldn’t understand why he has to play along, labeling the man in his dreams as his father when he was right there.
(He hears other voices, too—past and present mixing together into a wild storm of visions that confuse and madden him.
You’ve disappointed me.
He screams.)
Cole lets out a sigh that sounds exasperated. Wu relishes in it. “I don’t think he meant it in a literal way, young master.”
Wu lets out a noise that is too quiet for a laugh but too humorous for a scoff. He returns to keeping watch over the sand dunes, feeling strange when he is near the Elemental Master of Earth.
It was weird— how they know who each other are, how Cole knows so much about him when he can’t remember what he used to be before becoming his sole caretaker.
He remembers the warm cup of tea in his hands; the snowy winds of the mountain; the sounds of laborious grunting below.
“Cole,” he begins, and the name feels alien in his mouth. He’s never regarded the dark-haired man with his actual name before. He was never one to speak unless he is spoken to.
The sound of Jay scoffing reaches his ears once more. “Of course, he’d be quiet.”
Wu frowns at that statement.
“What?” Cole says, vaguely surprised since Wu has never addressed him by his first name. He refuses to call them anything else but their given names, uncomfortable with calling them his students.
He… really shouldn’t be. It’s the truth that he is their master, so there is no shame in it.
There was a foreign expression on the blonde’s usually unaffected and indifferent but sincere expression on his face. His eyes were narrowed, his lips curled, and his brows furrowed as if he is conflicted with telling him something.
Was he differing a situation? Merely pondering? Cole will never know; this teenage version of his master continues to be as cryptic as his own master.
But… that is the sensei they have been fond of, is he not?
Even when he does anything but give them information, like a vault sealed with a tight lock.
Cole has a few qualms about it, but… this isn’t the Wu he knows. He was a young, confused teenager who doesn’t seem to like sharing his own feelings with anyone else.
Wow, looks like the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree.
“Master,” Cole tries again, and he is brought back to the time when he was the default leader of the team, seeking answers and advice from Wu whilst he meditates on the floor of the monastery, a memory that was so long ago he wonders if it was a dream. This statement causes Wu to return to the conscious realm, but Cole’s voice was still as gentle as ever. No matter how many complaints he’s kept from his master, his fondness and love for him will never fade. He remembers Wu’s encouraging smile, seeking for him to continue his training, even when he was feeling as if he was subpar. “Is there something bothering you?”
While the older Master Wu was good at hiding his emotions (and Cole’s heart breaks; the ninjas have never tried to hide what makes them tick, seeking one another as some sort of pillar of support, but Wu huddles to his room, consulting only the spirit smoke and his solitude), this one was not. He may have the same expression on his face every moment they interact with him, but there is a certain earnestness in it that was not tainted with old age and years’ worth of regret.
The earth cracks at the concept of having to see this young soul touched by years that have never been kind to him.
“Do you have a father?” Wu blurts out, before looking away with heat coloring his cheeks.
The wind that picks up the sand suddenly stops, and Cole only gives the young teen a ludicrous look.
“Uh,” Cole speaks eloquently, and Wu has to ground his feet to the sand so that he would refrain from bashing the telescope into his eye. “I’m pretty sure… everyone has fathers?”
The blonde takes a deep breath before his golden eyes confront his rich gold-brown ones again. Looking at Cole’s messy dark hair, he sees more similarities between them than the fuzzy images of his supposed father and brother. Their bushy eyebrows, droopy eyes, almost-similar colored irises… they were certainly matched.
“I know,” he says in a snarky tone. “I was pertaining to… whether or not you had a good relationship with your own.”
Crying as he kneels on the tatami mats, a comforting hand on his shoulder. Head hung low as the voice of the man in his dreams continue to tell him he is disappointed. The song of resignation fills his ears as he is left behind to shape himself as his father.
The young man scrunches his nose in a way he does whenever Jay does something remarkably offensive towards him. It was a sign that Wu has, for all he’s worth, stepped into sensitive territory, mud clutching at his boots.
He clears his throat, trying to salvage this already drowning conversation. “I apologize. I should have known it was a sensitive subject. You can leave me to watch now.”
“What? No, I wasn’t—” Cole stops, before he rephrases his statement again. “It’s not a sensitive topic, not anymore.”
“Can I ask about it?” Wu asks, a little cautious.
Cole blinks, before nodding. He’s never hashed his feelings out to his master before; he’s never wanted to give him some more exhaustion compiled with the work he has cut for them. But, seeing his eagerness to learn something about him, he decides that, well, sharing something with the younger version of his master would not hurt a bit.
“My father and I had been close,” Cole says, and Wu senses a bit, and then a tragic fact of his life that he’s never learned about before until now. “But,” There it goes, “when my mother died… we drifted apart. I didn’t want to continue dancing since I was abysmal at it, and I thought it would make my mom disappointed. Because I thought I was crap at dancing.”
Wu frowns in sympathy, feeling the surge of memories of a time past, where they lived on top of the highest mountain, the Earth Ninja hugging teen fat on his face, as an old, grainy hand reaches for him.
“And my dad started pressuring me,” Cole continues, “he kept on telling me to dance, criticizing my footwork and moves, and told me to enroll in a school I have zero interest in. So I ran away.” His eyes meet his like he was the soil moving to come and shape the gold that lies beneath his eyes in an encasement of earth. “When I was climbing a mountain to test my limits, I found you.”
Wu frowns, and a completely foreign memory starts playing.
The cold wind sweeps throughout the mountain.
“I… see,” Wu says, completely. turning away from him this time.
“Why do you ask?”
“I have… memories,” Wu tells him, before specifying it further, afraid that those comments from Jay and Kai, who was for whatever reason affected by his taciturn nature. “Of my father, I mean.”
Cole raises a brow, but his expression and tone was still gentle and understanding, like the soft soil that lets itself soften between the palms of his fingers. “In what way?”
“My memories about him are still unclear, foggy, even,” he begins, and he wonders if he should relay this information to a young man such as Cole. heck, he isn’t even half the age he supposedly inhabits. “But I do retain a few interesting information about him.”
Interesting is not a word that he is looking for when he comes to talk about the eyes gilded with disappointment and disinterest as he stares down at Wu as if he was simply a statue. It scares him when he finds his eyes rather than the darkness that lingers in his sleep. At least the screams of those he’s supposedly wronged were much more tolerable than being confronted by the man who created life in another Realm with his own two hands. For someone who has the likeness of a gentle breeze, the way in which he treats both Wu and his brother was frightening and quite overwhelming. He could hear the voices of his own sentences brimming with disappointment and ignoble irritation. He supposes he must have done something to warrant his dissatisfaction.
The dark-haired teen gives him a look in which he is trying to hide his interest. He supposes he should indulge in this information with the young man. If he wants to find a way to relate to the person he feels the closest to, well, it would mean that they’d become closer together.
… that’s how human interaction works, correct?
Please bare with him; he has not interacted with people other than the ninja, the very hostile Dragon Hunters, and Faith.
“I find myself feeling strange as I refer to my actual father as… my father.” He frowns, now that he says it, it sounds quite outlandish and such a minor detail over their own problems. Has he always been good at sharing things with them? Because the shivers of awkwardness and his walls closing are not, in any case, a good sign.
Cole notices his body language and, despite the fact he has only raised Wu as his own son, he finds himself conflicted over what to say to him. Which is, still strange to think about, but he knows in the far future it is something both will laugh about. He flounders for a comforting sentence to tell him, before calling to him. “Hey, that’s not something to be embarrassed about!” Truth be told, Cole has no clue what led Wu to the sentence he has currently spoken of. While he only knows the current basics of the First Spinjitzu Master — how he ran away from this Realm, created Ninjago, and fathered Garmadon and Wu respectively — he’s never heard of the more intimate and worthwhile instances of his life. Either because Wu and Garmadon have their mouths sealed and refuse to talk about him, as if mentioning his name will elicit the lightning that befalls them, or simply because they could not remember their own father, those years passing in the blink of an eye.
(Which is why he was quite fearful of his memories of his mother fading away from him, disintegrating into a deep abyss as the earth shreds its whole.)
But, there had been some instances in which Wu looks to be uncomfortable when he actually brings up his father. The most telltale of this instance is when he was telling the story of how Garmadon was bitten by the Great Devourer, an eternal regret which will seep into his own soul simply because he was unwilling to get it, afraid of his father’s wrath.
Cole frowns. No children should face their own parents’ wrath. Even when they are gods themselves.
Wu looks up, expression tentative and shy. He is definitely not their master.
“Why do you think that way?” Cole gently presses, unsure where he should dab the salt in the wound.
“I have memories of the First Spinjitzu Master,” he doesn’t know if he could bear calling him by father. He clutches his head, almost clinging to his white hair, losing its rich blonde colors as he starts to grow. A sign that he is, in fact, too old for everything that is happening. He struggles with the next thing he is about to say. He didn’t want the other young man to worry. “They are not… good.”
The Master of Earth presses his lips to a thin line, eyebrows drooping lower. He’s been given a lot of context clues over the years about Wu and Garmadon’s home life before the First Spinjitzu Master died, but hearing it directly, despite the fact that memories are quite a difficult subject to tackle, he wishes he could have told Wu sooner, that he did not have to hide his emotions.
“Can you tell me about them?” He asks, and Wu frowns, feeling quite enabled to do so.
The memories which are currently settling in his head are, in a complicated manner, a big ecosystem that inhabits roles he didn’t think he would be playing. The highest branches of trees house some clear memories. The grass that litters the ground as it settles on hiding the insects beneath the soil. The shrubs and plants creep along the trees, as more and more of his memories are being uncovered.
Such methods make Wu’s head hurt.
The idle echo of the FSM’s deep voice continues to hurt his head.
You disappoint me.
The wind rushes through his white hair, stray locks falling to his face.
“He seems to be quite hard on both my brother and me,” Wu speaks in a formal, indifferent fashion. He should never have brought this up. They have more worries than his unprecedented issues with his own memory. “Calling us disappointments, avoiding us as punishment, scolding us for doing something wrong… Cole, are you okay?” He drifts off after seeing the gobsmacked expression on Cole’s face. He shuffles awkwardly. “Oh… I apologize. I should not have—”
“What a terrible father,” Cole says with a tone of indignation. He’s never heard it from the young man before, and it sets him on edge. “How could— how could he do that to his own sons?” His voice rises higher at the last sentence, and the sand dunes move as if affected by the Master of Earth’s own temper.
The white-haired teen rubs his arms subconsciously, a more earnest look flitting through his face. “These memories of mine, perhaps, are only a few in-between. If I ever remember anything else, I shall tell you.”
Memories that act like portraits. Like abstractions of a scene. Like painting over his fingers.
“Is that the reason why you’ve never told us about your own relationship with your dad?” Cole asks, and he looks at him with a confused look. He has no recollection of such things. The dark-haired man clicks his tongue, deflating. “Right, you don’t remember that.”
“I can only remember details of my childhood, unfortunately,” Wu tells him, “but… I want to tell you something before I remember everything else.”
Cole raises a brow, “Is there something wrong?”
“No,” Wu replies suddenly, and, much to Cole’s confusion, he was once again fidgeting with his fingers, the golden tail behind him wagging proficiently. “You took care of me.”
“It’s the least I could do. You took care of us; it is fair we take care of you in return.”
Wu sighs, “There is more.”
Cole was about to speak and encourage him to talk more, but he feels arms wrapping — and a tail curling — around his shorter body, and he exhales breathily in shock.
For the first time, since he’s come into the monastery, Wu is the one to start the hug.
It was always the other ninja; Wu doesn’t seem to be quite used to or warm to the thought of embraces.
And yet, here he was, hugging him with the strength of a dragon, keeping them warm in the winter.
It felt… good.
“No matter how many memories are supplanted back into my mind,” his hug becomes tighter as if he fears losing the one thing that holds him together. “I will always see you as my father.”
“What?” Cole tries hard not to shout to the top of his lungs, but judging from Wu’s ears twitching downwards, he’s failed at that.
Him? A father? For simply doing what any decent human would do?
If he comes over to the Departed Realm, he will find the First Spinjitzu Master and beat some sense towards him.
But for now, he wraps his arms around his young master and embraces him.