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Cole hasn’t felt his heartbeat in a while.
Throughout the years of his life, his heartbeat had become one of the few constants, one of the few things he knew would always be there. A thrumming reminder that he was there, that despite the pain, grief, or fear, he was alive. If his heart was beating, that meant he was okay.
But Cole was here, and his heartbeat was unreachable.
Cole liked to think that he had fully embraced the power of his ghostly form. Sure, he could list off more negatives than he ever could positives, but he couldn’t dwell on what he used to be. Atleast, he tried not to dwell on what he used to be.
He could make himself invisible. He could float. He could phase through walls, possess objects, and he became an awfully silent ninja. And he was happy he could do this. It gave him abilities he never would have imagined possible, abilities that gave him a new purpose.
But he hadn’t gotten a true hug in months. He focused so hard to feel them, to let their skin brush his, but it never satisfied his need for touch. It was a pressure on his green-tinted skin at most. And it’s nights like these where he can’t help but dwell on the past. Nights where he so desperately longs for sleep, but the feeling of fatigue never quite reaches his ghostly mind. Nights where his chest throbs with a faded ache, but his heart isn’t there so he doesn’t know what’s hurting, and he reaches for it but god he can’t feel his heartbeat, and his non-existent lungs begin to panic, and ghosts don’t technically need air but he still can’t breath and-
Cole sat up with a gasp. He needed to get out of bed.
He hadn’t slept in weeks. This would have been a problem a few months ago, but he never felt tired. He never felt energized. He was stuck in a constant state of fine. He supposes it could be worse.
Cole had grown to hate the night. What used to be a time for him to rest and let his mind finally give into the sweet thought of nothing had grown into dull, thought-spiraling hours of silence. In order to combat the anxiety and boredom that crept in during the late hours of the night, Cole would wander the bounty. Some nights, he found himself turning on their game console and attempting to beat the other’s high scores, but he would often lose focus on keeping himself solid and the buttons became increasingly harder to press on queue, so he often gave up early. Other nights, he became knee deep in Wu’s scrolls, but they were all written in weird languages and alphabets, and Cole couldn’t even understand what he was reading half of the time. Then sometimes, Cole would walk around, with no intended purpose. He would do laps upon laps of the Bounty halls, often avoiding the kitchen because he couldn’t stand remembering what it felt like to eat- to taste.
It felt like he wandered aimlessly a lot, lately.
And this was exactly what Cole intended to do now.
He swung his legs off the side of his bed, purposefully trying to ignore that the blankets he sent crumbling to the ground didn’t even feel soft when he touched them. The room was bathed in darkness, save from the small nightlight Lloyd insisted they install. Well, he never really insisted. He brought it up to Kai once, and it appeared a day later. No one seemed to mind it. If anything, the soft glow came as a comfort when nightmares urged them awake.
The light shine made it easier for Cole to notice the pigsty their room had become as of late, but Cole couldn’t be bothered to do anything about it. Cleaning would lead Cole to reorganizing, and that would lead Cole to find old objects he tossed into his drawers and under his bed, and that would remind Cole of the past, and that would lead to Cole to remember who he used to be and-
God knows Cole didn’t need to remember. He just needed to get up.
He rubbed his hands over his face, wiping the exhaustion that wasn’t actually there out of his eyes because it was a human habit but Cole wasn’t human anymore and-
“Just stop!” Cole silently mumbled to himself. For someone who didn’t technically have a brain anymore, his head sure was loud.
He pulled his hands away from his face, but when he caught a glimpse of how they appeared in the faint light, he froze. Cole had been avoiding coming to terms with it. He couldn’t admit the truth because if he said it out loud that meant it really was true, and that this wasn’t a sick prank his stress induced brain had begun to play on him. But the truth was right here in front of him, and Cole hated it.
The formally bright glow he used to illuminate in the dark had dulled down to a dark, hardly visible green.
Cole was fading.
He’s been aware of his declining visibility for a while, at this point. The others have told him, concern dripping at the edges of their tone. Cole had tried to ignore them, brushing them off because he was void of a way to tell them that he didn’t know how to fix it. Eventually, the others stopped bringing it up all together. But that didn’t mean he returned to his normal hue, and he knew he hadn’t. They just didn’t want to scare him, and Cole was well aware of this. He didn’t miss the way it took the others minutes to notice he was there, or the fact that they unknowingly walked straight through him on multiple occasions. He noticed that they had begun to spend an abnormal amount of time just hanging out with him. Cole assumes it to be in an attempt to ground him, to make him feel closer to home, but it only makes him feel like he’s dying. It makes him feel as if he was sick and they knew he didn’t have much time left.
And a terrible part of Cole knew that was true.
At the thought, Cole felt his panic begin to seep in, and he felt his breathing begin to pick up. He was still staring at—through his arms, when he swung them back over his eyes in an attempt to force the panic back into the depths of his mind.
Cole could still feel emotions, which was one of the only things that kept him grounded as of recently, and he’s sure is one of the few reasons he hasn’t completely vanished by now. But emotions were all that really came. He could feel sad, but he couldn’t cry. He could crave food, and god did he ever, but he never felt the physical gnaw of hunger. And he could feel scared, but he knew it was all in his head. He was sure it was.
Because Cole was sitting here, squeezing his eyes shut and willing his breathing to even out, but his heart rate never changed. He didn’t have lungs to actually struggle. He was physically fine. There was nothing causing this other than his own mind's pathetic struggle.
He held himself there for what felt like ages, though Cole knew logically it could only have been two minutes, letting himself regain control. When he didn’t feel like he was on the verge of a full freakout, he removed his hands from his face, purposefully avoiding staring right at them, and glanced around the room.
He allowed himself to relax by listening to the not-so tranquil sleep of his friends, reminding himself that he was here, with them. Kai was tossing and turning, his blankets and pillows strewn on the floor surrounding his bunk. Lloyd was mumbling some incoherent thoughts, while Nya occasionally hacked and coughed. Zane was the only one who seemed somewhat peaceful, and even he would violently twitch every so often.
Cole knew sleep never came easy to them, it was really just the price they had to pay for being cursed by destiny, but the issue had only seemed to worsen as of the last few months.
That's when Cole remembered the mess that had been the last few months.
Since the day 2 months ago where Nya had miraculously and suddenly learned Arijitzu, and she and Jay held onto one another like they were going to lose each other, things changed. Cole and the others were constantly walking on eggshells around the couple, worried that a single misplaced word or action might be wrong. Cole thought this behaviour was an odd phase, something that would pass by and soon allow them to return to their daily routine. But it had been 2 months, and they seemed stuck.
2 weeks after that day on the rooftop, Kai pulled Nya aside. Kai’s worry regarding the duo had only been growing over those days, consuming his whole being, and he needed to know that his sister was okay. Nobody heard their conversation, but an hour afterwards, Kai walked out of the room, trying to hide the tear tracks trailing down his red-stained cheeks, and gave them 5 simple words.
“There was an alternate timeline.”
And that short, fleeting confession from Nya was all they knew about the couple's sudden change in behaviour.
Somewhere, in an alternate time, something had happened to Nya and Jay.
Nya seemed to be handling herself better than she was in the earlier weeks. She slept through the majority of nights, continued being an asset on missions, and didn’t seem so on edge anymore. But Cole could see her. He saw her unconsciously scratching her chest when she suddenly dazed out. He saw her doing double takes of her reflection in every surface, and he heard her wheezing unnaturally after basic training. He knew she wasn’t doing great, but she was doing better.
Cole couldn’t say the same about Jay.
Jay was practically a shell of who he used to be, and he wasn’t getting any better. He could rarely sleep for more than two hours without waking up screaming. He flinched violently at every small movement. He couldn’t eat because he was so scared and he couldn’t keep it down. He wasn’t allowed to train or go on missions with the others, because when he fought he would forget where he was and hurt people. They all knew he didn’t mean to. They all knew he didn’t want to. But that didn’t change the fact that he did.
Cole wanted to help Jay. He wanted to do something, but he couldn’t help if he didn’t know what was actually wrong. All he knew was that in another time, something bad happened to him.
And that wasn’t enough.
Cole, with Jay on his mind, peered over to the latter’s bunk, squinting his eyes in an attempt to make out the small boy's figure, but Cole soon realized he couldn’t see him. Standing up with a sudden rush of panic, he took a step closer to Jay’s bed, and if Cole had a heart, he’s sure it would have dropped to his stomach. If he even had that, either.
Jay’s bed was empty.
Cole then peered over to Nya’s bed. It hadn’t become rare to find Nya and Jay both missing from their shared room, but instead in the guest room, holding each other like they were afraid to let go. But Nya was there, sleeping, albeit restlessly, but sleeping nonetheless. And Jay was gone.
Cole wasn’t sure how he hadn’t noticed Jay leaving the room earlier. He was positive Jay had been in the room when they all made their way to bed. Cole knew then that he must have gotten lost in his head again, too trapped to notice Jay sneak out.
Cole, with a sudden newfound concern, rushed over to the bedroom door. He reached his hand out for the doorknob, practically touching it, before pausing. He was afraid of waking the others. The past weeks have been so frustrating for everyone, and the last thing Cole needed was to wake them up in the first dreamless night they’ve all had in a long while. Cole then lowered his hand, huffing out a sigh of acceptance, and just walked through the wall.
If he was going to be a ghost for the rest of his life, he mine as well embrace it.
Cole made his way down the bounty hall. Moonlight illuminated his path, forcing him to keep his head up to avoid looking at himself in the lighting. He was worried about Jay, right now. He didn’t need another reminder that he was practically invisible.
Cole wasn’t sure where he expected to find Jay. When he saw Jay's empty bunk, the logical side of his brain told him that Jay was fine, most likely using the washroom or grabbing a drink after yet another futile attempt at sleep. But, a sick part of him immediately thought the worst- Jay had done something he couldn’t take back. Cole immediately swallowed that thought back down, but its remnants still lingered with a putrid aftertaste of fear.
Cole began the route he normally took when the dark hours of the night caused his mind to spiral. Except, instead of aimlessly wandering, he had a purpose this time. Find Jay. If this was like any other night as of recently, he needed to find Jay, and then give the gentle and constant recurring reminder that he was here. He wasn’t in some past existence, some time where he was hurt and scared and alone, but he was here. In Ninjago, with his family. Safe.
Cole passed by each room, ensuring not to make too much noise, but enough to alert Jay that he was coming so as to not startle him out of his mind when he eventually found him. The bathroom was dark with the door swung wide open, so Cole took it as a sign that it was vacant of any life. The kitchen was empty, save for the leftover dishes that piled up in the sink that they had decided could wait to be cleaned.
When there had been no obvious sign of Jay's whereabouts, Cole internally began to panic. He slowly, but with a slight slap in his footsteps, crossed into the dining room next door. The window at the end of the room bathed the table in an eerie moonlight, and Cole turned to face it, planning on drawing the curtains shut because he couldn’t stand how he looked in the moonlight. He approached the frame, grabbed at the curtains, and paused.
Because there, passed the window that looked out towards the deck of the Bounty, was Jay.
Cole felt a tension he didn’t realize was there drop off his shoulders.
Jay wasn’t out on the deck training like Cole assumed he would be, like they often do when nightmares draw off the possibility of reviving sleep. Wu would always scold them in the morning for not allowing their bodies to get the rest and recovery they needed, but sometimes in the moment, when it was dark and the Bounty silence smelt of old memories, it was the only solution they had to just let everything out.
Instead, Jay was off to the side of the deck, arms crossed under his head and gaze pointed upwards. He wasn’t panicking, crying, or experiencing something Cole didn’t know the cause of. He was just…lying there, looking up at the stars and letting them blink back.
It was the most peaceful he’d looked in weeks.
Cole, a newfound relief staining his nerves, forgot about the curtains and made his way towards the Bounty’s door. He was just about to phase through the wood, not wanting to be bothered on focusing on his solid form, before he stopped himself, remembered who was outside, and instead pulled the door open. The hinges squeaked, a terrible noise that made Cole cringe, but he hoped it let Jay know of his presence. His feet began walking before he told them to, and he stepped out into the cool August night.
Jay, luckily for him, hadn’t heard the high-pitched scratch of the Bounty door, and his eyes remained fixed on the clear sky above. But Cole didn’t make his way over to Jay immediately. Instead, he let himself stand there, in the doorway, allowing the summer breeze to phase through his body. For a moment, Cole forgot about the past 2 months. Cole forgot about his dulling glow. Cole forgot about his heartbeat. He was just there, flying high above the ground, existing.
Someday, it would feel like this again. For more than a passing moment.
But that wasn’t today. Right now, Cole was here, and Jay was there, and Cole couldn’t trail away from the present.
“Jay?” Jay jumped, not violently, but enough to cause his face to glow a light shade of red. He visibly began to recollect himself when he noticed it was only Cole.
“Oh, Cole.” His shoulders tensed back down, but he didn’t look half as peaceful as he did when he was unaware of Cole’s presence. “What are…what are you doing out here?”
Cole slowly began to approach Jay, who didn’t back away. “Just noticed you weren’t in bed, so I came to find you. You scared me a bit, I guess.”
Jay turned away from Cole, returning to his original position and refocusing his gaze on the stars above. Cole, slowly but surely, climbed his way down next to Jay.
“Oh, um…sorry. I didn’t think I’d wake you up.” Jay stuttered, his tone only half genuine.
“Don’t worry about it, man, it’s all good. I was awake anyway.” Cole didn’t bother to tell him that he was always awake. Jay had enough on his plate, he didn’t need Cole’s portion too. A beat of partially awkward silence passed by, the only noise being the passing breeze, before Cole started up again. “Did you…have a dream?”
Jay took a deep breath through his nose, and scrunched his eyes up for a moment, as if he was cringing at a memory. Cole immediately regretted asking. He was about to take it back, apologize for asking such an inconsiderate question, before Jay squeaked out a reply. “Yeah. Yeah, sort of, I guess.”
They fell back into silence, and Cole wasn’t gonna push, but Jay was so calm and he knew this might be his only opportunity to get any sort of answers from Jay, to understand what he was going through. So, he kept pushing. “Do you want to talk about it?”
Cole took the empty sound of the breeze as his answer.
Cole didn’t immediately start back up with another question. Instead, he turned his gaze towards Jay, and just looked at him. He really looked at him. And the face he found was so far from who he knew Jay to be, it made his chest ache with an unexplainable feeling. Cole imagined it to be grief.
Jay had terribly dark bags under his eyes, and he was so much thinner than he used to be. Cole knew Jay was on some special diet planned by Wu, foods that were easy on the stomach but still gave enough to keep him going, but despite this, it looked like he hadn’t eaten in months. His normally electric blue eyes were dark, and a heavy sheet of exhaustion weighed them down. One had turned inexplicably grey, and everybody knew not to push any questions about it, or the new scar that crossed from above his eyebrow down to the top of his cheek.
It was so wrong. Everything was so wrong. Jay was never supposed to seem so…dead. Jay was the embodiment of lightning. He was energetic, fast, and he beamed with life. He should never look so defeated, so void of soul and light.
Cole tore his gaze away. Whoever he was looking at, wasn’t Jay. It wasn’t Jay and it never should be Jay.
“How have you been doing, man?” Cole wanted to punch himself in the face as soon as the words left his mouth. The one thing Cole knew about Jay as of recently was that he was doing terribly. Every part that made him Jay had been forcibly ripped from him, with no known cause other than there had been a time reversal. What led to that time reversal, Cole was desperate to know, because he was positive it was part of the reason Jay was so sick.
“Fine, Cole.” There was a small hint of frustration tracing his voice, and Cole didn't blame him. Jay didn’t even bother looking over, his gaze stayed fixated above.
But the annoyance growing in Jay's chest didn’t stop Cole. And Jay knew it wouldn’t.
Cole swallowed thickly. How he was able to do that, he didn’t know. Being a ghost was almost impossible for even him to understand. But, just because he was a ghost, that didn’t mean he lacked a soul. His voice began to shake, and he couldn’t seem to stop it. “I’m worried about you, Jay.”
“I could say the same about you.” Jay shot back, a taste of sarcasm encasing the bullet.
Cole turned his head back toward Jay, his mouth slightly agape at the calmly harsh reply. He was unsure as to whether he should appreciate Jay's worry for him, or be clipped by the cold tone. But Jay never looked over. He never removed his eyes from the sky. Cole almost didn’t know how to respond, so he took a deep breath, recollecting his thoughts. He wanted to talk about Jay. He didn’t want to think anymore about himself, because he’d been doing that far more than he needed to as of late.
“Stop deflecting, Jay.” The words came out without permission, Cole’s brain acting on his emotions. “Just…talk to me. I…I understand what you’re-”
“Oh, don’t give me that bullshit.” Jay spit, sitting up and turning towards Cole, a sudden fire lighting in his chest. Cole was sure that if he had real skin, he would have gone deathly pale. “You don’t understand what I’m going through.”
Cole was caught like a deer in the headlights at the sudden outburst. “What?”
Jay scoffed and rolled his eyes, an anger that didn’t suit him growing in his voice.
“I haven’t gotten a full night of sleep in 2 months, Cole. I can hardly eat anything without throwing it back up. I can’t control my lightning anymore. I’m not allowed to go on missions, or train with you guys, or do anything because I’m so fucking scared all the time!” Jay’s voice shook. “For FSM’s sake, Cole, my life sucks. It really fucking sucks. So don’t you dare tell me you understand what I’m going through, because you don’t, okay? You just don’t.”
Jay lied back down, running his hands over his face. Cole lay still in his place on the deck, scared that any sudden movement might produce a second reaction. His eyes were trapped on Jay and his unfamiliar form, unable to break apart. Cole opened his mouth to say something, anything, but the only words he managed to force out were fruitless. “Jay-”
“Just go away, Cole. Please.” His voice broke, and his hands remained covering his face.
Cole ripped his eyes away and he held back a sob that sat on the edge of his throat. He swallowed thickly once more, taking his turn to avoid looking over, and instead stared above at the stars. There was an uncountable amount, and Cole knew there was an infinite amount more that he couldn’t see.
Jay desperately wanted Cole to withdraw, to let him sink deeper into the quicksand of despondency. But they weren’t like the stars. They couldn’t lose sight of one another and find a replacement. They only had one life, and one chance. There was only one Cole, and there was only one Jay. And Cole wasn’t going to lose him.
“I’m fading, Jay.” Cole, despite everything in himself shouting against it, admitted the truth he was so desperately trying to convince himself wasn’t real, barely above a whisper. But Jay didn’t look over, nor uncover his face. “I…I don’t sleep. I haven’t tasted real food since I was human, and I can’t feel anything. Even when people hug me, it’s just like…”
Jay pulled his hands down and tilted his head towards Cole, fresh tear tracks staining his hollow cheeks.
“I can't even actually feel it. And I…” Cole’s voice was interrupted by a sob. He didn’t even realize he had started crying, but his body shook, and his lip quivered, and he was waiting for the tears to come but they never do. He doesn’t know why he’s surprised. “What my point is, Jay, is…I can’t say I understand you. I really can’t. And you don’t understand me, either. But you don’t have to understand somebody to miss them.”
Cole sniffled, and Jay couldn’t help but let the tears fall, as well.
“I miss my best friend, Jay.”
Cole missed his toothy smile. He missed his squeaky laugh that was unavoidably contagious. He missed his pointless rambles at dinner, the ones that often ended in someone tossing a piece of food at him. He missed Jay's reassuring presence on missions. He missed Jay’s terrible jokes that he consistently claimed were hilarious. He missed when sleepless nights were filled with memories Cole wanted to remember.
Cole doesn’t know who he is without Jay.
Maybe that’s why he’s felt so lost.
Jay broke down, lifting his hands back over his face, but he didn’t attempt to silence himself. He allowed the stream of tears to fall freely.
“And I’m fading Jay, but I think I need...I just need a purpose.” Jay hiccuped, stifling his sobs so as to hear Cole, whose quivering voice only allowed him to speak slightly above a whisper. “Can you let my purpose be…to help you?”
Jay, shaking and trembling, nodded his head. And Cole, an unexplainable feeling of sadness and hope growing in his chest, felt his cheeks begin to sting with heat.
Cole was crying. Real, falling tears. And this just made him want to cry harder. So, he didn’t push the feeling away. He embraced it.
When the hiccupping sobs and tears stopped flowing so freely, the two returned to their original positions, staring upwards towards the sky. They bathed in the silence that was no longer tainted awkward or tense, but had a speck of hope. When the time felt right, Cole began to speak again.
“I don’t know what happened to you, Jay. But you’re safe, now. We’re all here for you. I’m here for you.” Cole turned towards Jay, a look of sympathy infecting his ghostly glow. Jay didn’t respond immediately. He just sniffled. He began to make a face, as if he was debating with himself internally.
“Then why…” Jay began to mumble, but stopped. Suddenly, Jay began to lightly cry again, and he completely turned his body away from Cole, his body noticeably shaking.
“Jay, it’s okay, man. Talk to me.” Cole offered his reassurance. After a passing beat, Jay took a deep breath, calming himself down, before beginning again.
“I know I’m safe. I really do.” Jay's voice was impossibly small, almost sounding like a lost child. Cole’s chest seized at the comparison. “So why am I still so scared?”
If Cole had a heart, it would have shattered right there. Jay was undoubtedly one of the strongest people Cole knew, and even if Jay didn’t believe it, it was undeniably true. But Jay, under the facade of strength and fearlessness he manufactured, was hurt. He was hurt and lost and angry and, god, he was terrified. And Cole, in all his ghostly wisdom, didn’t have a response.
“I don’t know, Jay.” Cole spoke with all the confidence he could muster. “But we’re gonna figure this out. You don’t have to do it on your own.”
And to that, Jay turned his entire body back towards Cole, and glanced at him with glossy eyes that were filled with so much genuine trust and uncertainty it made Cole want to wrap Jay in his arms and just hold him. “You promise?”
Cole smiled, a small grin that spoke so many words he didn’t know how to convey to Jay. “I promise, Jay.”
They didn’t speak the rest of the night, but nothing else needed to be said. They let the summer breeze carry their unspoken fears into the night, and when the sun rose the next morning, Cole was sure of one thing.
He didn’t have a heartbeat, but he had Jay.
And that was enough.