Chapter Text
Sure, the Caves Of Despair really brought tears to his eyes.
The scorching heat burned through his body, leaving him writhing in pain. Every inch of a muscle he moved ached throughout his limp body as his lungs struggled for oxygen until eventually he accepted and succumbed to his fate.
Sure, it was bad. That kind of stuff isn’t just shaken off like it’s a little misfortune—something to move on from.
But even after all that, he swore that when he first opened his eyes, the blazing lights could’ve compared in terms of pain. His head automatically rolled to the left as he tried to bring his hand up to rub at his eyes, only to find that he had several little tubes inside them, covered by bandages. The beeping of a monitor beside his…bed came into focus as his vision cleared. Looks like quite a hospital. His head ached as he found out he could barely move his arms, or body in general. They should really work on making hospitals more wake-up friendly.
Then it hit him. While staring at his bandaged arm, he realized his arm wasn’t green, or see-through. His neck strained as he forced his eyes to look all over his body, noting every little ache. Something that didn’t happen when he was a ghost.
Well, that’s really a way to wake a guy up.
He scanned the room to find something, anything that he could see himself in, then stared at the reflection of a window to see himself. His hair was messy, skin ash pale, and the marks on his eyes were no longer there, instead they were replaced by dark circles under his eyes, and his eyes.. they looked lifeless.
He almost wished he was lifeless.
Throughout his childhood with Sensei Wu, he had been in a hospital exactly twice. The first was during the week that Sensei had first brought him in. He was too small compared to the other boys in his age group, and his body just couldn’t keep up with the training Sensei had put him through. He woke up that day in a room at the hospital, feeling somewhere close to how he did just now, with a promise that he will always be taken care of.
The second time was an accident.
Although living with Sensei had improved his health for the better part, it was also so.. exasperating.
He listened to everything his Sensei said, did everything he asked him to do, and abided by rules to the best of his ability, or at least to a reasonable extent. As he neared his teenage years, his skills strengthened, and with the addition of his newfound elemental powers, he prided himself on becoming one of the best students. That meant that his training was becoming more gruelling, and with every failure, he felt as if he wasn’t enough.
And despite being the best on most days, the days where he didn’t perform to perfection stood out more than the days he did.
Sensei had decided to start training him to use real weapons, as the next step in his journey.
One day, a particularly bad day, he was pushed harder than he had liked. He’d fall and immediately get pushed back up. Usually, it wasn’t an issue, but he had already been training for hours to get his technique right, and the constant failure was making him grind his teeth.
He lashed out a bit harder than he was meant to, his anger presenting itself in his fighting. The end of his blade had caught itself on his opponent, a boy who wasn’t much older than Morro himself.
The boy was rushed to the hospital, Morro having to tag along. Unlike the first time he was at the hospital, this time it was louder, with people running around and yelling for a bunch of words he couldn’t decipher. This time, he didn’t feel warm in a nice way. He felt the warmth of his cheeks burning in shame from every prolonged stare he got. He especially felt one too many pairs of eyes searing their sights on the back of his head.
That day, Sensei revoked his training and started him back on what he had been doing prior to the accident.
Of course, he couldn’t remember much about his childhood. Despite his young appearance, Morro had seen what life had to offer in mortal and ghost form for a good chunk of time by now, and after all that he had seen, his age was the least of his worries.
Maybe he was focusing on the wrong thing though, because his arm wasn’t green?!
When in a panic-induced state, the logical thing someone would usually do is to do something completely illogical.
Of course, The Preeminent had recognized that fact, and it was something Morro eventually overcame as he became the general of her army, allowing him to be an exceptional leader.
Though, at times, he does happen to forget this.
That’s why his first course of action would be to, of course, logically rip the tubes connected by needles from his arm, not minding the obvious sting of pain that came along with each one. He swung his legs over the bed to stand up on his, on close inspection, or just realization because he was now standing on them, very injured feet.
Not a second after he made contact with the ground, his knees buckled and his uncoordinated arms flailed to find purchase. That’s where he found himself sitting on the edge of the hospital bed, only slightly winded.
Morro was very well versed in coordination, having been a skilled fighter of course. That changed when he woke up in the Cursed Realm, where he had to live by the physics of being a ghost, and had to relearn how to move. After getting the hang of being a ghost, he now had to do it again, but as a human.
As a human. Somehow that made him feel sick to the stomach.
Because as a human, every feeling, every sensation increased tenfold than when he was a ghost. He felt the way his head throbbed, he could feel it behind his eyes every time he blinked. He blinked. He never needed to as a ghost. He found himself manually breathing, breathing!
When he was a young ghost, he had often tried to manually breathe, an instinct when he was under pressure. Obviously, it didn’t work. Organs aren’t a thing when you're a ghost, and if you try to use something that's not there, nothing will happen. As a ghost, you’re essentially a hollow shell. After too many attempts trying to do something that isn’t meant to be done, it sticks.
So to find himself manually breathing despite never having to, never needing to anymore, made him feel bile rise in his throat. He never felt that since he was human as well! And he found himself hyperventilating against his will, feeling anxiety well itself inside of him.
The prospect of being in Ninjago again after having died twice was a thought that he desperately wanted to prove false. Can’t a guy rest in peace after fucking his life over twice?
Maybe right now was not the time to worry about whatever was going on right now, although it is justified to think about, because he’s a human! A human!
Forget about being human for 10 minutes, step one was to get out of this place.
And after his mild, very brief period of shock, he suddenly remembers that, right, he's still sitting at the side of a hospital bed, wounded, injured, crippled? Is that blood beading out from where one of the needles was pumping whatever fluid inside him? Blood?
Forget the blood!
Pushing himself to not mind the blood! Blood! on his arm, he almost tried to concentrate to solidify his legs, before remembering he no longer needed to. He, slowly this time, stood up and tested his strength. Perhaps the shock of the pain was what made him stumble 10 minutes ago, because although the pain was very, very hard to bear, he estimated he would be able to hold out for a good amount of time, depending on how long it'd take for him to leave.
A quick glance outside the window told him there was absolutely no way he’d survive hurdling himself out there without becoming further crippled, at least not as a human. It also told him it was probably very late at night, or very early in the morning. Out of the question. What was within the question though, was the door.
———
So maybe the door wasn’t such a great idea.
The minute he stepped outside, he just so happened to run into a staff member who panicked upon seeing him out of bed with shaking limbs. She ushered him back inside while yelling for doctors, alerting them and probably everyone else on that floor.
He definitely could’ve done without all the noise, it was just adding to his headache.
He was returned to his bed rest with an iron glare, an order to stay in bed, and a glass of water. The glass of water remained untouched in his shaking hands. He really didn’t want to deal with water as of now. A nurse soon entered the room to reconnect him to the machines.
“It’ll help us keep you stable so nothing bad happens,” she had tried to reason with him.
Eventually, he had given in after a hefty fight that left him too tired to continue resisting. Once he had tubes in his arms again, a doctor entered the room holding a clipboard that damn well could’ve had the contents of about half a forest worth of papers in it.
It was probably intentional, how he just needed to build suspension, by bringing a chair over from the side and sinking down in it, slowly going over whatever documents he had while sporting a steely expression.
All the while, Morro was still sitting up in his bed. The strain of sitting up was making his back ache, but he refused to lie down while this would be happening.
The doctor made a show of slowly looking up, tucking the clipboard away, and leaning back in his chair to cross his arms. He sighed deeply before opening his mouth,
“What’s your name?” The doctor finally said. That question was unexpected. Was it not the hospital’s job to identify a patient?
Perhaps it was because Morro’s record was from 50 years ago. A record of a boy from that time would say that the same boy is now a middle-aged man. Not quite the same description Morro would give himself. So with the only record of Morro’s existence being, well, not accurate anymore, any proof of Morro’s existence, or current existence, is very well meaningless.
“Morro.” He said after a moment of pause. The doctor fixed him with a pointed look when he said that.
“You seem to be an avid cosplayer, what with your name also being that,” he mused.
What in the hell was cosplay?
———
After a long babble that honestly, he couldn’t recall half of if someone paid him to, the doctor left.
It was something about him having burns all over, something about a short coma, something this, something that. Yeah, that was almost half of what he could recall. Everything was just some medical spew. He wasn’t even told why or how he got here, only the injuries he sustained.
He was told that recovery would be a long process, months. But that time could be cut down, as he was already healing faster than most people. For some reason.
He interrogated the nurse a bit later on. The date was apparently a bit after the Day Of The Departed, which he could recall. When he had helped the ninja despite every bone in his body telling him not to. Or, every ghost bone at the time.
He also found that “cosplay” was essentially dressing up as a character? The doctor earlier had thought he was dressing up as someone. Why would he do that? Throughout his stay whoever had entered his room had their gaze fixated on him as if he was Preeminent herself. He ignored it for the most part, but now it's just an annoyance. He'd need to find a solution soon.
Seeing the green ninja again after what happened in Stixx was what made him slightly hesitate in his actions, but he had already confronted Sensei, and by that point, it was too late to turn back. Thinking about it again made his stomach do backflips, but that’s just to be expected when you’ve tried to sacrifice an entire realm to your queen, who’s also an entirely different realm.
Even after leaving on a good note with Sensei, he knew the ninja were still wary of him.
He really wasn’t keen on having a run in with any of them, especially that water one, but if he was to stay in Ninjago City, he’d need to find a way to live discretely for a while. He can mull it over before that time comes though.