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Nya thought Rogue was playing video games when she saw the light in the living room of the monastery was on. The black screen of the TV said otherwise. Maybe he finally fell asleep after clearly not doing so in the past two days, she reasoned. If the way he was hunched over told her anything…he wasn’t.
Consciously she made her footsteps louder so as to not set off the paranoid mercenary. As she lightly placed her hand on top of Rogue's shoulder, Nya could see more clearly that he was holding the left side of his face, covering his eye.
“Rogue, are you ok?” Nya asked.
He forcefully shrugged off her hand from his shoulder, “I’m…fine.”
Stubbornness was an expected reaction for the former ninja. It was the same with rejection for nearly all explicit reminders of his previous life. The ninja- Nya mostly, ultimately exacerbated the issue by pushing too hard on how Jay used to be instead of working with who he was now.
“Please be honest with me, I just want to help.” She tried.
Rogue huffed, his hand still covering the side of his face, “My eye hurts.”
With his memories before the Merge gone, it hadn't crossed Nya’s mind that the phantom pains Jay had would still happen as Rogue. She had her own scars and pains from that time, it hurt of course, the one on her chest literally killed her. Jay told her once that for him the pain would linger for days until it disappeared. Nya could guess that along with his mistrust of everything around him, his broken ankle, and now the resurgence of a forgotten injury was making the situation worse.
One aspect of Jay that didn’t seem to change was his inability to stop moving. He was always doing something even if it was just with his hands. In the moments of empty space that followed Rogue’s complaint his body remained frozen still.
Growing uneasy as the seconds ticked by and knowing that he would probably still shove her hand off again, Nya lightly shook Rogue’s shoulder, “I know you don’t like being here but you have to breathe at some point.”
A visible shudder ran through the lightning wielder’s body. Nya jerked her hand back. Did he shock her? His breathing started to pick up, like he just finished running.
“Rogue?”
His upper body would not stop shaking. Rogue mumbled something incoherent to himself before they collapsed into sobs. But his cries sounded strange to Nya’s ears. They were short and rhythmic, not the erratic and drawn out way she knew from him. Suddenly Rogue slammed back into the backrest of the couch. There was no doubt that he wasn’t crying but his cries weren’t what Nya had thought they were. Rogue was laughing. He was hysterically laughing, painfully.
Nya was suddenly glad he had kept his hair in the egregiously long hair wrap. Rogue’s hands were grasping at anything to pull on. With his hair up he struggled to get a hold making it easier for Nya to take hold of Rogue’s hands and guide them away from himself.
“Of course, of course, of course!” He squeaked out between his rapid breathing and hysterical laughs.
“It was fucking pirates.” The laughter that Jay started with stopped suddenly with a strangled gasp as he fell forward, hunching his back.
Nya dropped down to kneel where he could see her. She had to let go of holding Jay’s hands, treating him as though Nya didn’t know how he’d handle a panic attack. She was, after all, still a stranger to him, remembering what was basically Zane lecturing on how to deal with this. As soon as the ninja did let go, one of Jay’s hands grabbed his face pushing the heel of his palm against his eye.
“Jay, Jay you need to slow down.” Nya tried to get the nearly hyperventilating man to hear her.
“Can’t.” Jay gasps, “You’re dead…the p-poison-but the sea-”
He was able to hear her, which was a good thing but Jay wasn’t calming down on his own. Nya needed to help him but her attempts to keep him from spiraling came too late.
“You hate me?” Jay wondered.
“No,no, no I love you. I love you so much,” Nya pleaded.
Not wanting to be so direct but seeing no other choice, she asked Jay, “Can I touch you?”
He nodded, though he kept talking. Nya reached up and grabbed a hold of his wrist and gently prying his hand away from his eye. Small half moon shapes lined above his eyebrow and said eye itself was most likely bloodshot.
“I hurt-t you, fought Cole.” Jay continues, “I’m such an asshole.”
Nya fought the urge to tell him that they all were easily swayed teenagers at the time of what she assumed he was seeing. Even as what Jay was saying was getting increasingly disjointed from his previous words, Nya guided the hand closest to her to where the bottom of her ribcage sat. Taking slow and deliberate breaths, Nya hoped that Jay would start to follow her example.
“I need you to breathe, Jay, just copy what I’m doing.” She continued to exaggerate her breathing.
“Everyone’s gone…powers gone, trapped in a blade.” His breaths were now just shallow gasps, “Deleted.”
Jay wasn’t taking as much as he continued, but his breathing was still worryingly shallow.
“Kai hates me.”
“Come on Jay, please.”
Nya wasn’t getting through to him. As much as she respected Zane as a medic, all his instructions on the ‘correct’ ways to help someone through a panic attack weren’t working. She took Jay’s hand off of her abdomen.
She lifted it up to her lips and kissed his knuckles, whispering, “I’m sorry my Yin.”
Standing up the water ninja climbed over the side of the couch sitting behind Jay. Nya wrapped her arms around her fiance hoping that the pressure of hugging him would give some sense of stability for him to latch on to.
Physically he does as Jay squeezes Nya’s arm hard. The flying sparks of lightning around him burrow into her like tiny sharp needles.
“Why can’t I die?” He mumbles.
He just needs to ride this out, Nya reasons with herself.
“Everyone else…does.”
His grip on her arm relaxed but didn’t let go. It was too sudden of a drop from such a tense and high strung situation to mean anything good. Nya leaned herself back, moving Jay’s torso back with her so that he wasn’t nearly folded in half.
Jay wasn’t too hard to move, he never was. But Rogue’s time with the Wolf Clan and being a lone mercenary made him feel even more boney than before. The gi and extra padding sure did hide a lot of this.
It didn’t take long for Rogue to come to. A few minutes at most but he was awake, she knew it.
“Rogue?” Nya asked. She received no response other than steady breathing from the mercenary, taking a risk she tried, “Jay?”
The former ninja reacted to that. His muscles tensed and relaxed in a way that was a sign that he was conscious of the world around him.
“Is this real?” Jay asked, quietly.
Taken aback for a moment by the question Nya hesitated before answering, “Yes, this is real.”
“Can I see you?”
Nya nodded as she unwrapped arms, releasing Jay from her embrace. She climbs over the arm of the couch, choosing to avoid walking around his broken ankle. Now facing him she could see it in his eyes that recognized her! Not only that but she could tell that Jay adored her. What wouldn’t Nya do to keep it.
It wasn’t what Jay didn’t say that surprised her. It was what he did. Not an ‘I love you’ (wishful thinking) or ‘I remember!’ but a mildly confused, “Your hair is longer.”
Nya bit back a laugh, “So is yours.”
Jay ducks his head and turns away from the water ninja. He touches his own ponytail, whispering to himself, ‘I knew that.’
“Nya?”
“What is it?” There was space for her to add another word but Nya chose not to. For her own heart.
Ever since the day Jay made the wish to reset time his left eye was yellow instead of the electric blue it had been before. His eyes met hers again and the unfamiliarity in them returned, “My eye, it still hurts.”
Nya knew what Jay used when the phantom pain in his eye would act up but asking about an eyepatch after the episode he had just had? No, she had to be smart and talk around what she wanted to ask, “Do you think covering it up might help?”
“Worth a shot.” Rogue gave her a look like he mildly grasped at what she was saying.
Telling him she’d be back in a minute, Nya made her way to her room. It was intended to be Jay’s and hers, being married in all but name. Everyone else thought so but, Nya knew why Jay chose the old traditional pendants over the expected ring when he proposed. His old room still existed but most of his personal belongings made the switch over before the Merge.
Nya opened the nightstand drawer pulling out a medical eyepatch. When Jay first wore it, it was a year after the ninja found Clouse in Stiix trying to find a magic teapot that didn’t exist. Nya found him curled up on himself in the darkest corner of his room. Something about Jay’s eye couldn’t handle any amount of light that day and nothing else they tried helped. A part of her was surprised at the time that they found one at a city pharmacy, even more than finding an eyepatch not in black.
Handing Rogue the eyepatch, he quickly looked down and back up at Nya.
“An eyepatch?” Some form of recognition flashed across the mercenary's expression.
“What else would it be?” Nya tapped the hardened patch, “Hold this to your eye.”
She moved to sit behind him again, waiting for Rogue to follow her instructions.
“I’ll look like a pirate.” He grumbled, as he held the cover to his eye socket.
Unsure of how to respond, Nya asked him, “Is that a bad thing?”
He didn’t say anything else as she tied the strings together. After making sure the eyepatch would stay on, Nya got up from the couch and started to make her way back to her room.
She barely took two steps before Rogue grabbed her wrist. Nya whipped around concerned about why he reached for her so suddenly.
“This doesn't mean I trust you, ninja,” Rogue said, “But thank you, Nya.”
He let go of her arm and Nya moved a few paces away from him before glancing back over her shoulder.
“You’re welcome, Rogue.”