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Perhaps this was some kind of cosmic payback, for spending so long ignoring something the universe had so lovingly crafted. Or maybe he was just making things up, anything to convince himself that somehow, all of this could have been avoided. Maybe if just one thing had been changed, if that rope had been just a few inches longer…
Slowly turning his head to the left, Cole searched a patch of homogeneous sky, his eyes eventually catching a pale blue speck of light, a comet, leaving a trail as it slowly inched across the expanse.
Arcturus. The whole goal of this impromptu space trip. The rocket ship by the same name, the ship carrying his friends, had long since disappeared from view. He couldn’t be sure if that meant they had landed or were simply too far away to see with the naked eye. Comms had died out completely on his end; he picked up the occasional fuzzy message from Nya and Master Wu back on earth, but no matter how much he yelled and pleaded for help, for somebody to answer, it seemed nobody could hear him.
He’d heard it said before that ‘in space, no one can hear you scream.’ He believed it to be from some movie that he never got around to watching, and frankly he’d always thought it sounded somewhat stupid. But after a solid twenty minutes of screaming down a dead communications line just trying to get through to anyone, he had to admit that this was quite an ironic way to prove that saying true. Jay would love that if he were in Cole’s place.
Jay…
Cole would never get to apologize to him now.
That final moment back on the ship replayed in his mind once more. Him tumbling end over end in zero gravity, catching a glimpse of Jay clipping on a guide rope and pushing off into the darkness in rescue, his expression of bravado crumbling into sheer panic as he reached the end of his tether and Cole’s hands just barely slipped through his grasp. The guttural cry of anguish Jay had made as Cole drifted further out into the abyss. His pleas for forgiveness, to turn the ship around, to go back, to save–
Please! He’s my best friend, we can’t– we have to– first master, NO! COLE! COME BACK, PLEASE! I’M SORRY!!!
Cole had tried to respond, but between his hyperventilating and the combined shouts of his other teammates, he wasn’t sure if Jay heard him at all. The radio comms had crackled one final time, then fell completely silent, leaving Cole to watch helplessly as his only hope of ever coming home flew further and further out of reach.
He remembered the way all hope had drained from him as he realised that they couldn’t come back for him even if they wanted to. Commandeering the ship itself would be nigh impossible with how many nindroids were aboard. And even if they somehow managed that, he had no way of communicating his location, nothing to signal with; he didn’t even know how much air he had left. If they could find him, what would be left of him to be found?
All of that was almost an hour ago now, and after the initial wave of panic and despair had worn off, he’d managed to slow his breathing to a mostly normal rate, endeavouring to conserve as much oxygen as possible. Although he wasn’t entirely sure what for.
He turned his head to the right, taking in the full scope of the earth. From up here it suddenly seemed rather small. This planet, this place where everyone he had ever known, everyone to ever exist had lived and died, had now been reduced to a pale blue orb taking up barely a quarter of his field of vision. A beautiful, melancholic, utterly haunting thing to behold.
It was a strange concept, for the master of earth to experience a fate such as this. To be so far away from everything he knew, everything that made him feel whole. To be so completely out of his element; it held such a strange level of cosmic irony.
He thought this was the sort of thing that people wrote stories about. Tales of unparalleled bravery, of saving the world from the brink of destruction, of heroic sacrifices. Cole couldn’t be entirely sure – literature was far more up Zane’s alley – but he did know that he certainly didn’t feel like a hero. He’d never get to patch things up with Jay, or make up for lost time with his dad. In his mind a hero was supposed to die with no regrets, and he had far too many to consider himself anything close to heroic.
Dying was a regret in itself.
“Cole… you he… us?”
A broken voice crackled through comms, Master Wu’s voice, breaking up the deafening silence and making Cole jump. This was the first voice he’d heard other than his own in hours, it seemed that somehow his friends back on earth had managed to patch into his comms. Unexpectedly, he found himself smiling as hope blossomed in his chest.
“Yeah, I– I hear you!”
“We hear… too!” Nya’s voice this time. “We linked directly… your com… not perfect, but… working on it.”
“Man, am I glad to hear you guys!” Cole said, laughing with relief. “I-I thought I was a goner! I–”
“Cole,” comms crackled again, this time with Garmadon’s voice, much clearer than before. “We’re contacting you because… we have bad news.”
Cole felt his stomach sink, a cold sweat breaking out on his palms. He didn’t dare ask, though he knew they would tell him regardless. Tell him what he’d been subconsciously thinking for the past two hours, a thought that felt like a lump of ice in his chest.
“Pixal has run calculations for every possible scenario, and…” he heard Garmadon take a shaky breath. “We… we can’t bring you home.”
“... Y-You can’t? You really can’t?”
“No. Cole, I’m so sorry.”
Cole fell silent, his ill-gotten hope collapsing like a house of cards. There it was, that truth that had been stuck in the back of his mind all along, ripped out and dripping with blood. He’d silently known all along that it wouldn’t be possible, but to have the hope of rescue dangled in front of his face even for a brief moment, only to be torn away again hurt worse than if he’d never known at all.
Despite knowing better, he’d flown to that hope like a moth to a flame. For a fleeting moment he had seen the light of salvation; a light he wanted so badly to cling to as reality cast him back down into darkness, his wings burned to ash. This wasn’t right, this wasn’t fair; things were never supposed to turn out like this.
“I’m sorry, we didn’t want to have to tell you this–”
“Why’d you contact me then?!” Cole yelled. “You’re leaving me out here to die and all you have to say is ‘sorry’?!”
“W-We tried everything!” Nya cried in response. “Every option led to unacceptable losses and–”
“And my loss is acceptable to you?!”
“Enough!” Wu snapped, his tone commanding, yet tinged with pain. “If there were any way to bring you home, we would have done everything in our power to make it happen. We are not the right ones to be angry at. This… this hurts me just as much as it hurts you.”
Cole took a few deep, shaky breaths, his eyes stinging as he tried to hold back tears. Despite how much he hated it, how truly, painfully unfair it was, Master Wu was right. He always was. This wasn’t Wu’s fault, or Jay’s, or Pixal’s, or Nya’s or anyone… except for Cole himself. Of course spinjitzu wouldn’t work in zero gravity, of course it would send him flying off into space; he should’ve known that, how could he be so stupid?
His vision slowly began to cloud over as, with no gravity to pull them down, his tears misted up his eyes and clung to his face. He’d always prided himself on his emotional resilience, on being the team’s rock, a source of comfort and a shoulder to cry on in the darkest times. He was the only one strong enough to hold up everyone else without cracking; he himself hadn’t cried in years.
But now, reality was inescapable. Here he was stranded, hundreds of thousands of miles from home, from his friends, his family, forever separated from what made him strong. Lost in the void with a dwindling oxygen supply, never able to return to his element, and he was terrified. He felt like a child who had lost his parents, his surroundings seeming impossibly huge, every obstacle insurmountable.
Here he had nobody to comfort him, to wrap him in an embrace and tell him it would all be okay, to wipe away his tears and reassure him,
“It’s not your fault.”
“I-I’m sorry,” he mumbled, barely suppressed sobs wracking his body. “I-I didn’t mean to…”
“Cole,” Wu began carefully. “I need you to listen to me. Can you see Arcturus from where you are?”’
Cole grimaced, did his best to blink away the tears, slowly turning to his left and locating the comet through bleary eyes. It had moved a significant distance since he’d last laid eyes on it, but thankfully remained visible.
“Y-Yes,” he hiccupped.
“Good. The other ninja will be leaving the comet and returning to earth in two minutes. I want you to watch and make sure they get home safely. Can you do that for me?”
Cole cleared his throat, tried to steady his breathing. He knew that Wu was trying to placate him, to give him something to think about other than himself. He wasn’t necessary at all for the others to get home, and yet despite knowing better he found himself taking the bait anyway. There was nothing else left for him, he might as well carry out this simple task for his teacher. To watch over his friends one last time, to be their rock; maybe he could still feel like a hero after all.
“O-Okay, I can do that,” he said, his voice shaky. “But… p-please stay on comms with me, I… I-I don’t want to be alone… when…”
“... of course.”
“I’m patching you into the ninja’s comms through ground control,” Nya stated. “They won’t be able to hear you, but you can hear them.”
Cole turned his attention back to the comet as a new static frequency crackled and buzzed in his ears, before voices burst forth to fill the silence.
“Boosters?” Lloyd.
“Check.” Kai.
“Electronics?”
“Check.” Jay.
“Navigation?”
“Check.” Zane.
“How are we holding together?”
“Bubblegum and a wish,” Jay again, and Cole chuckled at the feeling that, if he were there, those would be his words exactly.
“Let’s go home guys. For Cole.” Lloyd said, his final statement being followed by an echoed chorus from the other ninja.
Cole watched silently as with a flash of orange fire, an almost imperceptibly small dot took off from Arcturus and streaked across the sky, met with raucous cheers from both the rocket’s comms and ground control, and against all odds Cole found himself smiling. Even if he couldn’t make it home, his friends would, and with their return brought hope for Ninjago, for the whole world.
“Is there anything you’d like us to tell the other ninja?” Garmadon asked.
Cole sighed heavily, his eyes still locked on the spaceship, keeping close watch for fear of losing it in the black. Where to even begin…
He’s my best friend, we can’t– we have to– COLE! COME BACK, PLEASE! I’M SORRY!!!
“Tell Jay that… I forgive him, a-and I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t’ve let something so pointless drive us apart like that.”
Cole heard Nya make some stifled noise in the background, but he carried on regardless.
“Tell him that nothing is worth losing my best friend over, a-and I know that he’ll try to say it was mostly his fault but…” he paused, taking another shaky breath. “I’ve been a terrible friend, and even though I can’t do anything to make up for it, I hope he can forgive me.”
He trailed off, then chuckled as a thought struck him. “Also tell Zane that I still want an invite to his and Pixal’s wedding whenever that happens. I can’t promise I’ll show up though.”
This earned a round of staticky laughter from ground control, something that, when Cole joined in, he found it becoming increasingly difficult to catch his breath. His vision beginning to go fuzzy around the edges, he took another drawn out breath, barely finding enough air to fill his lungs.
“Master Wu,” he mumbled, not entirely sure if they could hear him. “Thank you… for everything.”
“Thank you too, Cole,” Wu replied, a noticeable tremor in his voice. “You were a better student than I ever could have asked for. We… I will miss you.”
Cole exhaled one final time, his eyes slipping closed, finding he could still see stars on the backs of his eyelids. His head and chest ached like never before, but now, finally, that oppressive fear had melted away. Finally, he could let go of regret.
Cole had never paid much attention to the stars. Maybe next time, he would. Maybe one day he would go outside, look up and see himself in the night sky. Frozen in time, a hero, forever singing the melody of the cosmos.
Or maybe not. Maybe there was no next time. That would be okay too. Either way, he would be remembered. He couldn’t ask for anything more.