Chapter Text
“I remember, I remember when I lost my mind,
There was something so pleasant about that place,
Even your emotions have an echo in so much space…”
~ “Crazy,” Gnarls Barkley
Jay wondered when his team would ever learn that splitting up was a very bad idea.
“You know…” he said, trying not to let every unknown creak and groan of the compound freak him out. You’re better than this. “Last time Cole and I went off in search of this psycho—by ourselves—it didn’t end well.”
Even in the semi-darkness, he could make out Kai’s smirk.
“Yeah, well, this time, I’ve got your back.”
“Oh, right. I feel so much better now. Seriously, I almost drowned.”
Kai glanced back at him, giving him a quick once-over. “But look at you now. You’re totally fine. Which means we’ll be fine. Besides,” he continued, cutting Jay off before he could say anything else, “splitting up covers more ground. She’s quick and elusive—we learned that last time. Our objective is to capture her before she gets too far in her freedom. And I don’t know about you, but the mental hospital has been missing its most interesting patient for way too long.”
“How sweet,” a familiar voice purred from within the darkness, sending a shiver down Jay’s spine. “The Master of Fire thinks I’m interesting.”
Got her. Jay lit up his nunchucks almost in perfect tandem with Kai’s flaming sword.
Kai laughed. “Too easy. For someone who’s trying to escape, you led us right to you.”
Too easy… Another chill wracked his spine and Jay stiffened into his best defensive position. Too—
“That was a little too easy,” he whispered, throwing Kai’s words back at him—all while trying not to let the gravity of their situation take the fatal shot at his chest. “Don’t listen to anything she says. She’s a psychopath who plays mind games.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Kai waved a hand. “I read the briefing from last time. And it’s not like this is her haunted house. It’s just an old, abandoned compound this time around.”
Rolling his eyes, Jay turned back in the direction of the voice. If he could only see her… That was always the problem, wasn’t it? She was like some sort of ghost, teasing them from the unknown beyond.
“Cole and I already went through all this, lady,” he called out. “So, if you think you can fool me again, you’re crazier than I thought!”
Silence. Of course, she would pick and choose when to make herself known.
Keep your eyes open and don’t fall for it… again.
“Now, I’m going to give you a chance to surrender,” Kai said, “because I’m a nice guy. But ten seconds is all you get, and that’s me being very generous.”
In the darkness, something clattered. Jay did not jump, he just… readjusted his stance.
Eyes open. Eyes open…
Kai’s reactionary fireball hit the noisy corner, lighting up the room for a precious few seconds. Out of the corner of his eye, Jay spotted the edge of her white gown as she dashed back into the darkness.
Bingo.
As Kai began his countdown from ten, taking just enough time with each number to keep his patience from wavering, Jay shot him a warning look. Giving his head a tilt toward her position, he mouthed, Over there.
“Six… Five… Four…” Kai counted, picking up on Jay’s cues. Together, they closed in on her hiding place, cornering their target with relative ease.
Too easy. The alarm bells continued to scream in Jay’s head. It’s too easy…
“Three… Two—”
“My dear little blue ninja.” If Jay didn’t already find her voice so annoying… he might have been susceptible to a light shiver down his spine. “Your mother has been talking about you.”
Caught only slightly off-guard, Jay centered himself. She’s trying to throw you off, just like last time.
“Yeah?” Jay scoffed. “News flash: she does that literally all the time.”
“Not that one.”
Not—
Jay could feel his brain begin to short-circuit, cutting in and out as he processed this new information. It was… a weird thing to say, but he couldn’t let it throw him.
She’s just tossing out whatever she can think of, trying to get you to stumble. Trying to get you to fall… Don’t let her.
Hiding behind the sarcasm in his tone, Jay tightened his grip on his weapon. “You’re gonna have to give me more than that if you want me to believe you. Geez.” He exchanged a look with Kai, who rolled his eyes.
Whatever his brother was thinking about the barbs didn’t seem to go deeper than surface level. If Jay could only get himself to do the same, he’d be set for the rest of the mission.
“Libby Gordon thinks you’ve forgotten about her.” The voice was just as silky as before, yet this time, it held an edge to it. One Jay couldn’t decipher. “Have you forgotten about her, Jay?”
When time slowed, Jay wasn’t ready for it. Mind stalling, feet stumbling, heart stopping.
Kai was looking at him, and maybe it wasn’t in any sort of way in particular, but Jay could feel the heat. The confusion.
None of that was important right now, though. All he could focus on was… her.
Throat suffocating, Jay managed to force the words out. “What did you say…?”
Her voice filtered across the room, crackling along with each prickle of lightning in Jay’s ears. “You know who I mean.”
“Jay,” he heard Kai hiss, saw his brother at the very edge of his swimming vision, but couldn’t… couldn’t concentrate. “Don’t listen to her. Mind games, remember?”
Ignoring him, Jay let his element flow through his veins along with his rising emotions. Anger and confusion came out as sharp crackles of lightning that danced across the tips of his fingers.
And fear showed itself in the sparks that clouded his dark orbs.
He told me she was—
After Nadakhan, after everything, he’d ask Master Wu about her. And he said… So, how can she be…?
“What did…” Jay swallowed, fixing her with a steady stare. “What did she say about me…?”
“If only I weren’t being cornered in this nasty compound,” came the witch’s airy reply, “perhaps I could remember…”
Remember… Remember! How had Wu looked when he’d talked about her, how had he seemed? What had Jay missed? What exactly had Wu said? And was all of it always just a bald-faced lie?
What did she say…?
Libby Gordon.
Gordon, as in—
“All right, that’s it!” Kai flung two fireballs at her shoulders, and one even managed to scorch her sleeve as she dodged out of the way. “Enough games! We’re taking you down, whether you come quietly or kicking and screaming is entirely up to—”
Whatdidshesay?Whatdidshesay—?
At that moment, something inside Jay burst, snapping into a million shocks of electricity. Because he had to know.
Whatdidshe—?
“Shut up, Kai!” With an energy he had only felt a small handful of times in his life, Jay summoned his element. He called it to himself with such ferocity and drive that the very air around him seemed to spark and crackle.
Two thick tendrils of lightning shot from his hands, each connecting with the far wall and blocking her in on either side. A distant part of his mind scoffed at him, wondering why he hadn’t just done that in the first place, idiot.
“What. Did. She. Say,” he pressed through clenched teeth.
“Why don’t you stop by the psych ward sometime, little ninja, and find out?” she purred.
The psych… what? With only one thought in his mind, Jay slammed the left bolt into her chest, sending her crashing to the floor.
Whatdidshe—?
“Jay!” That was Kai, he supposed, but it was getting harder to tell over the buzzing electricity in his ears, in his mind. “We were supposed to capture her! Not kill her!”
“Then she’s not… She’s not dead.” The floor was cold yet inviting as he sank to his knees, unable to keep himself upright any longer. Unable to keep from trembling as he repeated the mantra. “She’s not dead…”
Somewhere in the back of his fraying mind, he knew he wasn’t talking about the witch.
By the look on Kai's face, he knew it, too.
“She’s not—” A dry sob strangled his next words and he glanced up to find Kai kneeling beside him. “She’s not dead. He told me she was dead.”
Kai knew the second Jay’s face had paled that he was way out of his element. They both were.
Always having been more of a suck it up, you’re fine sort of guy—unless it came to his sister, of course—Kai was perfectly happy to pass Jay’s typical panic attacks over to Cole or Zane. But now, the rise and fall of his brother’s chest was becoming more erratic by the second, and that vacant stare saw something that was worlds away.
And Kai was the only one there to help.
Fine, then.
Leaping into action, he flicked through every shred of knowledge he possessed about how to treat someone trapped in Absolute Panic Mode.
Don’t touch, don’t judge, and don’t try to minimize it.
I think…?
Right. Uh…
“Jay, look at me. Uh, you’re okay. All right?” Instinct had him reaching Jay’s shoulders, and he flinched back as Jay shuddered, surrendering his hands to the air. “Jay!”
Probably don’t shout, either.
Okay, noted.
“She’s a psycho, remember?” Nothing. “You said it yourself, she lies to confuse her victims.” Not even a blink from his brother. “She was only trying to get a rise out of you.”
Just when he thought he had wasted his breath trying, Jay shook his head. He responded, albeit silently, but…
Yeah, I have no idea what that expression means…
Maybe he wasn’t as well-versed in the Art of Jay as he’d thought.
Cole could do this so much better.
“I mean, sure,” Kai pressed on, hoping his voice sounded more reassuring to Jay than it did to him, “your parents can be a little eccentric sometimes, but your mom is totally not crazy.”
“Not my mom.” Jay’s whisper was barely audible, his eyes still wide as his chest shuddered. “My birth mom…”
Kai blinked as his entire world took a sudden, sharp shift on its axis. “Your… what? Jay, what are you talking about?” When his brother didn’t reply, he gave Jay’s shoulder a little shake, hoping to scare off the vacant look that was quickly taking over Jay’s features. “Come on, this isn’t funny.”
“Yeah, no kidding, and I’m not laughing…” Jay squeezed his eyes shut, clutching at his chest. “He… He told me that she was dead… Why would he do that…?”
“I don’t know, Jay. I don’t…” Kai shook his head, wondering when everything had gone so downhill. His head spun with a dozen questions, yet all he could do was repeat a mantra of his own and hope it would do Jay some sort of good. “I don’t know…”
Backup arrived too little, too late, coming in for cleanup after Jay—Jay, not Kai, who felt absolutely useless as he tried to wrap his head around what was even happening—had already done all the heavy lifting.
Or, maybe, Kai realized as he locked eyes with Cole, they had arrived just in the nick of time. The Master of Earth wasted no time in joining them on the floor while the others went to take care of the crumpled heap of villainy. After all, someone had to, though Kai could tell by the glint in Nya’s eyes that she would be joining them on the floor the second she could.
“What happened?” Cole asked.
When Jay didn’t respond, choosing instead to wrap his arms around himself, Kai sucked in a breath and tried for a chuckle. “What didn’t?”
His recap felt rushed and way less detailed than it could’ve been, if Cole’s raised brow was anything to go by?
Hey, I’m trying to wrap my head around what’s important and what’s not, so give me a break.
“Anyway,” Kai huffed, “Jay took her out, and now I can’t get him to…” Waving a hand, he gestured at Jay, hoping his expression exuded more concern than the annoyance that pricked the back of his mind. “Well, you know, freaking breathe.”
Nodding, Cole turned to Jay, his presence the very embodiment of a calm Kai knew he himself would never be able to achieve. “Hey, Jay… It’s gonna be all right. It’s all over, so you can take a breath with me now. Come on, it’s easy. See?”
“He told me she was dead,” came Jay’s continued mutterings. “He told me she… H-He told me s-she was…”
As Jay trailed off, Kai felt the static electricity in the air seconds before he noticed the blue strands flickering on his brother’s fingers.
“Hey, whoa,” Cole began, interjecting with a cautious yet steadying hand on Jay’s shoulder. “It’s all right. She’s all right, you didn’t kill her, so just take a deep breath and—”
Right, uh, forgot the most important details, I guess…
Kai shook his head, risking a glance at the witch. “That’s… not who he’s talking about.”
“What do you mean?”
“So, like…” But how did he explain? How did one even begin to recount whatever twisted mess that witch had conjured up? And what if Cole turned out to be just as shocked as Kai had been? What if he overreacted even worse than Jay and—
You wanna explain to me why you’re so paranoid? It’s literally not a big deal. It doesn’t matter right now. All that mattered was getting Jay to breathe again before he hyperventilated and passed out. Definitely not ideal…
“Uh,” Kai tried again, feeling the oncoming ramble bubbling through his chest before he could stop it, “so, I thought she was just trying to mess with our heads, you know? But now I think she was actually telling the truth and—”
“Come on, Kai,” Cole said, and if he was a bit snappish, well, Kai couldn’t blame him. Jay was still on the verge of some sort of mental breakdown. “Get to the point.”
“He means his mom.” Clearing his throat, Kai pressed on, “His, uh, other mom.”
The understanding in Cole’s eyes shouldn’t have been that irritating—it shouldn’t have hurt like it did.
Great. Of course, Cole would have some sort of idea about all this. Does everybody here know but me?
As Cole focused back on Jay—squeezing his shoulders and whispering things that made Kai feel like he was on the outside looking in at some sort of secret club—Kai glanced back at the others. Nya was approaching fast with her usual drive, leaving Lloyd and Zane to finish things off with the witchy lady.
“Is he okay?” she asked, sliding down beside their little huddle.
Just as Kai opened his mouth, Jay heaved a long sigh.
“Yeah… I’ll be fine.” At least he was breathing now, so Kai supposed that was a plus. “I-I’m… I’m fine.”
Kai raised a brow. “You sure about that? Because you were, like, majorly freaking out a second ago.”
“I said, I’m fine,” Jay shot back, shoving himself off the floor. He let Cole help him up, which really wasn’t all that fair, in Kai’s opinion, since Cole hadn’t been the one who’d had to struggle to put the pieces together about Lizzy Gordon or whatever. And in the midst of absolute chaos, too. All by myself. The team had only shown up after the fact.
That alone should’ve earned more than a snappy retort and a glare, but it’s not like Kai was complaining. Much.
Jay left with Nya. It was a quiet, unceremonious departure, and it left Kai with an odd, lingering need for closure. Because what was even going on here?
Cole stayed behind, and Kai knew by the way he sighed and crossed his arms that whatever conversation they’d started during Jay’s panic attack wasn’t over. Not by a long shot.
As Kai readied himself, Cole asked, “So, what exactly did she say?”
Shrugging, Kai shot a glance over at the far edge of the room, where Lloyd was tying up the witch and Zane was no doubt contacting law enforcement. “Eh, she said a lot of weird crap. Like I mentioned earlier, I thought she was just trying to throw us off our game, but then she said something about a Lizzy or Libby Gordon…?” Is that ringing any bells, huh, Cole? “I don’t remember. Whoever it was, Jay obviously recognized the name and went nuts on her with his element. I guess that’s about when you came in.”
Eyes clouding, Cole shook his head. There was a knowing expression on his face that Kai couldn’t read and it was driving him half-crazy. “I don’t get it. Why would that alone push him over the edge?”
Another shrug had Kai feeling lamer than ever. “She said something about this Gordon lady having a message for Jay in the psych ward, so, I don’t know, maybe that also had something to do with it.”
At the widening of Cole’s eyes, Kai decided it was time for beating around the bush to die a horrible death.
“Did you know he was adopted?” When Cole didn’t say anything, Kai forced that now familiar little prick of hurt back down into his chest. He didn’t have the energy to deal with that right now. “You did… didn’t you?”
Cole hesitated a moment before replying, though he might as well have saved his breath as far as Kai was concerned. That brief hesitation was all the confirmation he needed. “...Yeah. I did.”
“Of course, you did.” It should’ve been more surprising, Kai knew, but the only emotion poisoning his chest in that moment was the hurt he couldn’t explain. “Why don’t I ever know anything?” It shouldn’t have been this big of a deal. So, why can’t you just suck it up, huh? “I mean, why doesn’t he ever tell me anything like that?”
A shrug was all Cole offered.
“First, there was that whole thing with the missing timeline, now this?” Kai crossed his arms. Jay hadn’t even actually told him about that whole mess—he’d heard it all from Nya, with only a brief confirmation from Jay later in the Oni Realm. Scoffing, he shook his head. “I’m his brother, too, you know.”
“Yeah?” Another shrug as Cole’s brows dipped. “Well, maybe tell him that more often, then maybe he’ll be more open.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
The shrugs were starting to grate on his nerves, and this next one was only half-hearted at best as Cole glanced back toward the doorway. His mind was clearly wandering away from Kai… Even though Jay and Nya had disappeared what felt like ages ago.
So, it’s all fun and games until I’m the one asking questions? Nice, Cole. Nice.
“Enough with the shrugging already! Talk to me, Cole. That’s why we’re even having this argument! Because no one talks to me. If I wanted to go around and around in circles, I would’ve asked Jay.”
“See? That’s what I’m talking about,” Cole muttered with a shake of his head. “And you’re the only one arguing here. I’m just stating facts because you asked.”
“What facts?” If there was a touch of desperation in his voice, Kai couldn’t bring himself to care. Not when he was this close to yanking his hair out. And his hair was life, so that was saying a lot. “What do you mean, that’s what you’re talking about?”
“You tend to act like that toward Jay,” Cole clarified in that calm, matter-of-fact tone that was driving Kai crazy by now. “Moreso lately, and maybe you know why, but I just can’t figure it.”
“When? I need examples here.” Because that was nuts. He loved all his brothers. Sure, they ribbed each other now and then, but Kai couldn’t remember ever—
“You literally called him expendable.”
“When? Name me one time I ever said that.”
Cole’s answer was too quick, too confident. “That night on the way to Asphera’s pyramid. When we were trying to figure out who would be the bait for that giant sand monster thing.”
Maybe the conversation could have gone down a different road, one way less rocky, if Kai hadn’t gone on the defensive. But the frustration, the hurt… It roared like a fire within him.
Fire, he knew from experience, was hard to stop once the match was lit.
“Oh, so now you’re keeping a record? Do you have a list, Cole? Huh? ‘Everything Kai’s Ever Said That Bothered Me’? Because that’s not cool.”
“I’m just telling you,” Cole stated through a long breath, one that was clearly working to keep him steady, “because you asked. That's all, okay?”
“No, not okay,” Kai shot back. “I’m gonna need a lot more to go on than something I might have said one time in some distant desert—and totally don’t remember, by the way—before you start throwing around accusations like that.”
When Cole fixed him with a hard stare, Kai felt some of that fire flicker out, smothered by the flickers of pain and disappointment in his brother’s eyes. “Trust me, you don’t want a list.”
With that, he made his way toward Zane and Lloyd, leaving Kai to wonder when the day had taken such a horribly wrong turn…
… And whether or not it was partially, maybe, his fault.