Chapter Text
Autumn used to be Misako’s favorite time of year, when the sky grew darker and the leaves changed their colors, and the neighbors from down the road would start making their pumpkin cider.
In the city, though, it’s constant chaos.
The incessant rain certainly isn’t helping, as it pounds hard against her window, distorting the lights from the shops on the street below. She can’t help but feel somewhat disdained – too much noise, unlike the quiet of the country roads she grew up on, and in the month she’s been here for college, she hasn’t met one person she clicks with.
Tomorrow is Chizuru’s first day of high school, she thinks, but she won’t be able to see her off like she did with Satoshi.
Hearing thunder crack suddenly far overhead, she glances outside. It’s accompanied by brilliant flashes of lightning, filling up her field of vision. She drops her focus back down to the paper before her, but the storm makes it too hard to think.
“…I’ll just go for a walk,” she mutters. “We’ve had worse weather back home, this won’t kill me. Just need to clear my head a bit.”
Luckily, the library is only a block down – it’s partly why she chose this particular apartment complex, despite it being slightly more expensive – and with relief finds that the noise from the storm is greatly muted.
This late at night, most of the building is empty. She heads to the back, where the love seats are – normally, no one else is there, even at its busiest, so she’s surprised to see him. She stops almost immediately, so he doesn’t notice her.
Not that he might have anyway, given how engrossed he seems with the books piled up next to him on the table.
He’s taking notes as he reads, she observes, furiously writing down whatever it is that he sees in those pages, and she watches him for a few seconds longer. He drops the pen briefly, flexing his wrist, then picks it back up.
She eventually settles into her own seat, intending to do some writing herself, but for some reason her eyes keep drifting over to him.
They’re not too far apart that she doesn’t notice, for the first time, that his eyes are a solid red. A little confused, she wonders if they’re contacts – and why would he choose that color, of all things?
Now she’s intrigued.
But she doesn’t interrupt him, making herself be content with watching him from the corner of her eye. She’s trying to break that habit of digging into other people’s business, according to Satoshi after she outed his stash of cigarettes to their parents.
He might be seventeen now, but he’s still the little kid who liked to chase frogs along the river to her.
Looking up again, she sees he’s stopped writing, gaze turned towards her, and she instantly drops her head down. It’s an uncomfortable silence, before he speaks. “Library’s closing soon,” he says, and she dares to peek.
“Oh,” she replies, just now realizing the time.
“…You’re the first person I’ve seen back here in a while,” he continues eventually. “What’s up with that?”
She’s not sure how to respond to his tone. “I was writing a paper for a class, if you must know,” she answers. “And what are you doing here?”
“None of your business.”
“You asked me, so I can do the same,” she retorts with a faint scowl. “Do you always have conversations like this?"
“If I don’t know them,” he says, but seems to consider her point. “As for what I was doing…I was doing some research on snakes. Not the serpentine tribes, to be clear.” He rolls his wrist again, sighing.
“You like snakes?”
“No.”
“…I see.”
Silence falls back into place. Misako glances at her paper, but draws a blank in her mind as to what to write next.
Lights from deeper within the building start to turn off, section by section, so she takes that as her cue to leave. For some reason, he stays where he is, even as they’re plunged into darkness. “The doors are locked,” he tells her. “There’s no way to get them open – believe me, I’ve tried.”
She glances up. “It’s not my first time accidentally getting locked in,” she responds. “On the second floor there’s a window that never closes all the way; it leads straight down to the roof of the mattress store.”
He just stares at her.
Not checking to see if he follows, she makes her way up the stairs, climbing the shelf at the end of the row until she’s almost out the window.
“You are crazy,” she hears, and she looks over her shoulder. He’s hovering just out of range, his eyes holding a spark that wasn’t there before. “…I kinda like that, actually.”
“Compared to some of my siblings, I’m the tame one,” she replies, dropping down onto the other side. It’s silent for a second, then she hears the shelf creak under his weight as his head pops up.
“You have siblings?”
“Five of them.”
He makes a face. “Sounds rough.”
“You get used to it.”
“No thanks,” he mutters. She keeps a careful eye on him, until his feet are on solid ground. “Got a name, by the way?”
“…Misako,” she answers. “Misako Imai, if you want the full thing.”
The storm’s mostly cleared up by now, she notes in relief, as they climb their way down to street level. “What about you?”
“Garmadon,” he replies slowly. “Just Garmadon.”
City people sure do have strange names.
She refrains from commenting on it, though. “Well, this has been an interesting experience,” she admits, “but I have an early shift, so I should get back.” Then she hesitates, thinking. “I do come by the library a lot, so…maybe I’ll see you again sometime?”
“Yeah,” he responds. “That might be fun.”
Misako doesn’t see him for a while, though, and she wonders if something happened – but she has no way to find out, so all she can do, when she finds the time between school and work, is to lurk in the back of the library.
Autumn gradually turns into winter, as the end of the year draws closer, and there’s still no sign of him.
“You are coming home for the holiday, aren’t you?” her mom asks during one of their weekend calls. “Even Hikaru is managing to get time off work to come, so you have no excuse.”
“Mom,” she answers plainly.
“Misako.”
“I…I don’t know if I –“
“Oh, hush,” is the response. “I’ll see that the whole family is home this year; Ayame’s bringing her fiancee, she hasn’t met us yet so I want it to be a good first impression. You have someone that you want to bring too, don’t you?”
“…No,” she says, a bit solemn. “But I will do my best to make it.” To change the subject, she asks, “Did Ayame say anything about who’d be with her?”
The town where she grew up is a two hour drive from Ninjago City, surrounded by wide forests and rivers and farmland, and despite the road off Main Street being paved now, it seems like nothing about it has changed at all, she thinks when she finally reaches her old house.
She catches sight of Shun as she walks by, crouching near the side of the porch. “What are you doing?”
“I saw a squirrel,” he answers. “I’m trying to catch it.”
“Don’t think your dad would approve of having a squirrel in the house,” she tells him. “Besides, I’m sure it has its own family to get back to, so you should leave it alone.” Her nephew glances up at her.
Even at two years old, he’s an exact clone of Hikaru in terms of temperament, so he doesn’t argue.
Inside, she finds Ayame already there, along with a woman she figures must be her fiancee, though she looks tiny standing next to her sister. Her jet black hair is pulled into a tight braid, looped over her shoulder, and her eyes drift to match Misako’s gaze.
“Hello,” she greets, her tone warm. “You must be Misako, right? I’m Bernice.” She extends a hand. “It’s nice to meet you.” When she accepts, the other’s grip is firm. “Ayame hasn’t told me much about all of you,” the woman confesses, letting go. “From what I can tell, though, it seems like you’re a pretty lively bunch.”
“Almost all of us,” Chizuru announces her presence. “Izumi isn’t coming.”
“She’s not?”
“Dad can’t get her to pick up the phone,” she explains. “My guess is that Trevor’s holding her hostage again.”
Bernice looks startled. “What?”
“Her boyfriend,” is the answer. “They’ve been on and off for like ever, I don’t get why she doesn’t just break up with him.”
“Izumi can make her own choices, she’s an adult,” their father interrupts as he comes into the room. “Even if we don’t agree with them – Misako!” He notices her, approaching quickly. “I’m glad that you could make it.”
“Me too, dad,” she replies, leaning into his embrace. “Sorry if it seemed like I was avoiding you guys, I’ve just been busy.”
She fills them in on most of the things she’s been doing when they eventually ask, though she leaves out the part on meeting Garmadon at the library – she’d like to, but she wants to get to know the man first.
If only he’d show up…
Ayame takes over the conversation at one point, talking about how she and Bernice met – “I’ve never seen anyone be so confidently wrong,” she laughs. “Of course, she did admit her mistake to the professor later, and I ended up helping her with some of the work after.”
“Not that you’ll be much help once we graduate,” her fiancee replies, amused. “I’ll just have to wing it the whole way through.”
“For your future patients’ sake, I hope not.”
Their attention eventually turns to the TV, where the countdown is already underway, and Misako remembers Chizuru’s earlier words. Wherever Izumi is right now, she prays that she’s safe.
She wonders if Garmadon is watching the same broadcast, wherever he is.
∞
It’s late spring by the time she runs into him again.
This time, he’s with someone else – a younger man who bears a similar resemblance to him, but has light blond hair instead of brown. They look to be arguing about something as she approaches, retreating to an opposite table so as to not interrupt them.
Neither of their voices get loud enough to make out specifics, but it seems to come to an end when Garmadon slams his fist down, face contorting into a snarl. The brother – she’s guessing that they’re brothers – doesn’t flinch, to his credit, and his expression hardens.
He says something, moving back.
Garmadon clearly disagrees, getting up to move closer. The other holds his ground, staring defiantly; for a long, tense moment, the two are locked in a standstill.
The one word Misako can pick out is “Fine,” once Garmadon looks away.
It’s a while after the brother leaves that she dares to get close, and he notices this time. Whatever was causing him grief earlier seems to have gone away, with him speaking more casually to her.
“…Hey,” he says.
“Hey.”
“You’re…Misako, right?” He sounds unsure. “Sorry, I have a hard time remembering people.”
“Well, I’m glad that I stood out enough for you to remember my name,” she jests. “Kinda left me hanging, though.”
Garmadon looks a little sheepish. “Yeah…sorry about that.” He doesn’t offer any explanation to his absence, so it takes everything in her not to ask. Instead, she takes a seat at his table, pulling out some of her study notes.
“I think you had those the last time we saw each other,” he says, eyeing it. “What’s it for, anyway?”
“ ‘The History of Shintaro’,” Misako informs him. “They’ve been a closed off kingdom for centuries, so finding accurate records of them is difficult. But I’m looking into this supposed group that claims to have visited – it’s privately funded, and just getting in the door is a near impossible task, though if what they say is true…”
“Shintaro?” He appears surprised. “That can’t be right.”
She looks up. “What’s not?”
“I’ve been there,” he replies. “I wouldn’t call it a ‘kingdom’ by any stretch, it’s just some old mining town.”
“…What?”
True, the people there did start out mining the ore from the caves underneath them – but once they started pushing for work reform, the guy running the town went on a rampage and was ultimately sealed in the mines by another magician passing by…which was three hundred years ago.
Not much is known of what happened after that, when the town decided to become more self sufficient and walled themselves off from the rest of the world.
For Garmadon to call it ‘an old mining town’ was like calling the First Master ‘just some guy I met in the market the other day’ – it was making light of something so historically significant, and it pisses her off.
“I don’t see how you can act so trivially about this,” she snaps. “Even if you’ve really been there, as you claim, it is not –“
“Whoa, cool it,” he says, having the audacity to look confused. “It’s just a town up north, why is it so important? There are so many other places exactly like it.”
She’s not ashamed to say that she threw her notebook at him.
---
When she gets the invite to her sister in law’s baby shower, it’s a more quiet affair than she pictured, with just her family and Megumi’s parents in attendance, but she seems happy enough with the turn out.
Hikaru’s holding their son, who’s munching away on a pineapple slice and studiously watching everyone gather in.
“Thanks for coming,” his wife announces when they’re all settled. “We’ve never done this before, so we decided to host it our own way…um, first things first, we’re having a girl. I know we didn’t ask for specific items, so whatever you brought is fine with us.”
“Did you pick a name yet?” she hears Chizuru ask.
“We were thinking about Riley,” Megumi answers. “But we’re not sold on it a hundred percent.”
Shun doesn’t seem all that excited about getting a little sister, more focused on the fruit that Hikaru keeps passing him, but Misako distinctly recalls once feeling the same way when Satoshi was born.
Chizuru’s determined to make them a family portrait – her art skills are unparalleled – but they can’t get Shun to be still long enough for her to draw him. It’s the one trait he shares with his mother, unfortunately.
“How’s high school treating you so far?” she asks when she remembers. “Are your classes alright?”
“They’re easy enough,” Chizuru says. “Except for historical literature; we’re covering the topic of Olive Wells right now and she is so boring! Seriously, all of her works are just poem after poem of how sad she is that she can’t find the love of her life. Plus, she wrote everything in old Metallonian slang, so I have to spend extra time deciphering it, which is annoying.”
“Believe me, it only gets harder,” Misako replies. “Thankfully, it’s not required after freshman year.”
“Satoshi won’t even help me with it,” she bemoans.
“You’ll be okay…”
The baby girl is born two months later, perfectly healthy, and she learns that they went ahead on naming her Riley after all.
∞
“Who was that guy I saw you with last time?”
Her question comes unexpectedly, making Garmadon stop over the sentence he was writing. “Guy?”
“Yeah,” she replies. “He looked a lot like you, so I figured you were brothers, but –“
His expression shifts, and he relaxes. “Oh, you’re talking about Wu…he’s my younger brother.”
She hesitates. “It…kinda seemed like you two weren’t getting along on something. Was it about your research?”
“It came up a few times.”
That doesn’t answer her question, but the look on his face suggests that pushing any further would be into dangerous territory, so she falls back. Picking up her own pencil, she scribbles out a lopsided circle at the top of the blank margin space, adding cross eyes and a tongue. “There.”
“Hm?”
Garmadon spots her little drawing almost right away, brows furrowing. “What is that?”
“It’s you.”
He’s clearly not sure what to make of it, and she revels in his expression. “I look nothing like that,” he protests, marking it over. “If anything, I’d be more like…this.” Turning the edge of the paper towards her, she can see that he sketched out a crude impression of a lion. “Fits me more, I think.”
Misako raises an eyebrow.
They keep adding drawings to the space, each more ridiculous than the last, until Garmadon finishes it with a picture of a creature she doesn’t recognize. When she asks, he just tells her, “Last time I was, uh, in Shintaro, they had a bunch of those guys roaming the mountain caves. Them and the townsfolk worked together in mining, and all of their names started with the same letter.”
“The last time being three hundred years ago?”
“Look, I know you don’t believe me –“
“No one can live that long, Garmadon,” she answers. “It’s never been done.”
He seems frustrated. “I don’t know what else to say,” he mutters.
There’s a lot about him she doesn’t understand, no matter how much she tries. “Neither do I,” she says quietly.
On better days, Misako tries inviting him to places beyond the library – the boardwalk, a local theater, even just to the grocery store when she gets desperate – but he only accepts when she offers to take him to the museum she’s doing an internship at.
“– and that’s when Hikaru showed up with a black eye,” she tells him, once they’ve been in there a while. “Had a busted lip, too, though he didn't cry. John, on the other hand, actually had three broken fingers. But he never harassed Ayame again – wouldn’t even show his face around us.”
“Did that happen a lot before?”
Misako shakes her head. “She never told us, Hikaru only found out about it by accident. She said she didn’t need him fighting her battles.”
His expression is pained, just for a brief second. “I don’t think she meant it.”
“Then you don’t know her,” she responds. “She’s always been the most stubborn, and when she puts her mind to something not even the First Master himself can stop her. If she said it, she meant it.”
“And…she’s the one studying to become a forensic pathologist?”
“Yep,” Misako says. “Our parents were on the fence about that for the longest time, but I think they’ve finally come around.”
Garmadon’s not so forthcoming on his own stories, appearing content to just hear hers. They walk through the museum a bit longer, until it’s near closing time, and he surprises her by asking if she wants to stop by a 24/7 diner.
“It’s where I go if the library kicks me out,” he explains. “They don’t have the best coffee, but their ham omelet is pretty good.”
She agrees.
Mentally, she marks this place on her ‘list of things I know about Garmadon’, which now that she thinks about it, is depressingly small. Whatever secrets he’s hiding definitely isn’t going to come easy, but she’s not going to give up.
At the beginning of her move to the city, she couldn’t stand it. Now, though, she knows that if it has someone like him here, it might be worth staying for.