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If there was one thing the ninja were incredibly good at was compartmentalizing. Each of them had a lovely list of things in a nice "deal with this after Ninjago is no longer being threatened" bin in their head.
Now, of course, the dam has to break sometimes. Zane is a nindroid. Lloyd is the green ninja. Stuff like that. But they're relatively good at picking up the pieces quickly enough to tape back up the box and decide to deal with it later, which did always end up (sort of) happening. It definitely wasn't the healthiest coping mechanism but it worked well enough.
And Cole was dead.
Okay, this wasn't the first time Cole thought about for more then four seconds about the fact that he was a ghost, and ghosts were dead. But it's the first time he thought about it for more then five seconds and that he had no reason to apply more flextape on his mental box so it definitely wasn't going to get taped up and now the dam was broken. Not a literal dam, at least. That would kill him. Kill him even more then he was already dead.
This thought was brought on (mostly) by the silence. Normally, silence didn't bother him, but the silence was just deafening. Sure, it wasn't totally silent, there was the sound of tinkering from down the hall. He could clearly hear Kai getting his butt kicked (by Lloyd, probably), he could hear dishes being done from the kitchen. He just was missing a few important things.
First off, his heartbeat was absent. He never thought about that before but it became painfully obvious when he was quiet. Second off, he couldn't breathe. He could move his diaphragm, sure, but no air went in or out and it honestly just felt really, really weird. Thirdly, any movement he made didn't register in his bed. There was no creaking as he turned over on his front, trying to will his brain to shut up and let him at least rest. His blankets didn't shift as they lay perfectly made under him. No, not under him. Through him.
It was a mostly ignorable feeling, having objects sticking through him. Not painful, not painless. Just ignorable and deal-with-laterable. Except now was later and he really didn't want to deal with it.
Cole stood up, wishing his feet made a sound as they touched the wooden deck of the Bounty. They didn't before, perks of being a ninja and all, and they still didn't now, but all he thought was it was because he was a ghost, not because he was a ninja.
He tried to stomp. Tried.
He didn't really know where his legs were taking him, he just knew staying with his thoughts was a bad idea. He ended up in front of Jay's miniature workshop on the other end of the Bounty.
"Jay?" Cole called out
"What? Um, come in!" Jay said. Cole reached out to the door handle and tried to grab it. His hand fell through. He stared at it harder, like that would make it easier to hold things.
It didn't work. He instead braced himself to walk through the door ("ninja never quit" this wasn't quitting! This was a strategic retreat! He could figure out how to make his hands listen to him later, but right now he needed to talk to Jay).
Jay wasn't alone. A wrench held up to Zane's windpipe as he was trying to put something in without making things worse (Zane's reconstructed body was a lot more hastily made then his old one and Jay often had to add the bit of extra love Zane forgot on the blueprints).
"Hey Cole!" Jay beamed, tactfully not mentioning how Cole walked through the door rather then opening it like any living person would.
"Hello, Cole," Zane smiled.
"Ah- stop moving!" Jay leaned forwards as he held a flashlight in Zane's neck.
"Apologies-"
"Can you just be quiet for a couple seconds?" Jay asked impatiently.
"Right."
Jay fiddled around, wrench in hand and occasionally wincing when he tightened something or other a little too much. Cole quietly sat down on the bench. Both besides Jay and far enough away that nothing would blow up in his face (did it matter? He was already dead).
"Okay. Sorry, Cole, that was just really finicky. Hi Cole!" Jay turned around, pivoting around on his one leg kneeling on the bench, "how are you?"
"I'm... Okay, I guess," Cole muttered.
"Clearly not. That's why you're here, right?" Jay leaned towards Cole, his head pointed up and catching Cole's eyes.
"What are you doing?" Cole carefully redirected the conversation.
"Fixing Zane's voice up from when it went all reverse-y then all pirate-y. It's a bunch of wires and circuit boards I'm replacing. It's just, the first fix I did was kiiinda rushed, so now that we have more time I figured to just prevent it in the future," Jay said, "Zane helped make them but it's a bit hard to insert them on your own."
"Huh. Cool," Cole said.
"That's not answering my question, though! What's wrong?" Jay sat up, facing Cole, "and don't try redirecting again! I won't fall for the same trick twice! We care about you, Cole."
"It's just... Ghost stuff, I guess. You won't get it."
"We may not get it, but I sense that if anyone would be able to emphasize with you-" Zane said
"It should be the Nindroid. Right," Cole chuckled softly.
"No. It should be the people who care about you," then Zane shrugged, "being a Nindroid may help too."
"Right, right. It's just the little things, I guess. My heart doesn't beat anymore which makes silence feel so much louder because there's nothing that breaks through and I just needed to see someone," Cole kept his gaze focused on the bench between his legs, "and- and I don't breathe and I don't even know how I'm talking and I have to be conscious about so many more things even as small as a break between sentences like a pause for breath or concentrating on holding things - there's even some thought in just staying on this bench - and there's just so much I never thought about being alive and now I'm not and there's so much-"
Cole shuttered.
"I don't breathe," Zane said. Cole snapped his head up.
"What?"
"I don't breathe, do you consider me dead?" Zane challenged.
"What-? No. You're just Zane," Cole shook his head.
"Why am I alive, when you are not?" Zane said.
"Well, you're a Nindroid. You can do a lot of things. You don't just fight with your excuse of a body to pick something up," Cole said.
"And you're a ghost. You can experience feelings and pain as much as the rest of us. And I may not have to fight with my body to pick things up as you stated, but evidently I have to fight with it to talk," Zane smiled. Jay nodded.
"I don't think ghosts are dead. Dead things are dead, right? They can't walk around and be a ninja. They definitely can't complain about being dead," Jay nodded sagely, "you never died, how could you be dead?"
"I... Guess that's a good point," Cole furrowed his brow. Jay blinked.
"Really? I was just saying whatever came to mind," Jay said and he rubbed the back of his head.
"Of course you were," Cole scoffed, "but it did help. It made sense. I'm just cursed, not dead. Aaand... The curse is being dead."
"Curse sounds like something we have a chance to break. Dead's just..! Dead!" Jay punctuated.
"I still don't think we have a chance, but, thanks. I think that word sounds a little nicer," Cole grinned a bit.
"We've done the impossible before, I'm sure we can pull it off again!"
"P.I.X.A.L. and I are both still searching the Library of Domu databases for anything to do with ghosts. It is a time consuming process, although, I think we're making headway," Zane paused, "yes. P.I.X.A.L is scanning a book right now."
"And I know Sensei is searching through all those ancient scrolls that aren't in the database!" Jay chirped, "I'm sure we'll find something!"
"Really?"
"Yeah, we've been hiding it a bit from you because you really don't like us talking about the ghost thing, but the rest of us have been talking to everyone we can to try to get anything. Even Lloyd's been helping! I just figured if you're okay with talking about it a bit more, I think there's a lot of cool things you can do! If we're acknowledging it."
"We can acknowledge it. I just thought it would be better for everyone if we didn't. It worked well so far," Cole shrugged.
"Everyone, or just better for yourself," Zane asked.
"... Everyone, " Cole insisted (not quite ready to say himself).
"If you wanna help, Kai and I were planning on seeing some contacts on Ronin's list he gave us after I finish here. Maybe it would help if we could actually show him why?" Jay bounced on the bench.
"Yeah, sure!" Cole said.
"Alright, just let me," Jay vaguely gestured to Zane, "fix things then."
"Zane, if we're talking about 'the ghost thing' anyways, how does it feel to have Jay play around inside you," Cole asked.
"Better then if anyone else did," Zane replied, as Jay got back to work.
"Your voice might be knocked out for a minute, but I'll fix that quickly," Jay said.
"Affirmative," Zane said, "I trust Jay enough to let him fix me. I would not extend that trust to too many others."
"Like who?"
"Nya, of course. P.I.X.A.L., if she had a physical body. Maybe Cyrus Borg. If I was able to instruct you, Kai, Lloyd or Sensei Wu for a mandatory fix in the middle of a crisis I would trust you would not purposely hurt me," Zane said, "it's a delicate thing. I know I would be able to rebuild myself indefinitely unless I stopped uploading my memories to external hard drives, but I quite like this body."
"Compared to your old one?"
Zane paused to compute Cole's question.
"I suppose I cannot compare them. That one was made by my Father and I often think about how what he considered to be his greatest achievement has been destroyed. It didn't have these voice issues-" And as if on cue, his voice cut out.
"Sorry, just replacing a few things," Jay said, "giiive me a minute."
"I'm sorry for asking that," Cole said, after thirty seconds of just Jay swearing when his screwdriver slipped out of a screw and Zane wincing as it lightly scraped his insides.
"I just feel like I threw away my body too," Cole shrugged, "I bet my mom would have considered me her best creation too..."
"Don't say stuff like that!" Jay complained, "I'm gonna start feeling bad being the token normal childhood person!"
"Token normal childhood person?" Cole raised an eyebrow.
"You know! Zane's dad and your mom's dead and Zane lost his memories and you ran away. Kai and Nya's parents left them and Lloyd's left him at a boarding school for bad boys. I'm the only one here with a normal childhood and normal parents!" Jay insisted.
"Sure," Cole said. Jay removed the screwdriver from Zane's neck.
"Okay, things should be working now," Jay said, probably way more unsurely then he should be saying it.
"Testing testing- Thank you Jay," Zane closed the compartment and stood up.
"May I be honest? Having anyone moving anything inside my body is terrifying," Zane said, "but I trust Jay. And I think you need to trust us too. We will find a solution for this."
(Some days Cole felt like it was a statement of fact. One day things will go back to normal. But other days, it seemed to be the furthest thing from the truth.)
"Okay. Now who was that contact again?"
Jay grinned, "I'm not exactly sure how much we should trust someone we got from Ronin , but let's see here..."