"Jay?"
"I'm busy. Leave me alone."
"I just wanted to—"
"I said leave me alone."
"But—"
"Go away!"
Kai was restless. He had stopped counting the days since the Overlord had been defeated again. All he knew was wake up, eat, wander, eat, wander, eat, sleep, wake up, wander, eat, sleep, wander, wake up, eat, wander, sleep, eat, wander. Sometimes when he wandered he passed people in the halls of the tower or on the streets of the city. They tried to talk to him, and he tried to listen, but he never found himself able to comprehend what they were saying. He would nod, try to smile, and keep walking. There was never a destination, but whenever he found himself sitting or even standing in one spot for too long, he would feel jittery and on edge, and the only thing that came close to calming him down was simply wandering. Every day he ended up in the same place though. The statue that hovered just outside the city limits. No matter what time of day it was, there was a black falcon perched on the statue's shoulder without fail. It had never moved from that one day, however long ago that day was. Days, weeks, months. No one knew for sure.
There was snow on the ground when he reached the statue this time, but it had been snowing all day. There was no wind, but the snowflakes spun in wide circles all around him before landing gently on the statue or on the ground. Kai shoved his hands in his pockets, cursing under his breath for not remembering to wear a coat. It had to be winter, it hadn't snowed since the funeral. And there were actual clouds today. It had been almost completely clear that day, like the snow had just materialized in midair. But today the sky was an overcast gray, making the statue look like a metallic black silhouette against the city. The immobile falcon on its shoulder really completed the look.
Breathing a quiet sigh that emitted a little cloud of visible warm air from his mouth, Kai looked up at where the statue's face should have been. He wasn't entirely sure how he felt about that. It was a tribute to Zane, but to look up and not see that familiar expressionless face somehow took away from it. Then again, if his face had been there, looking down on that little clearing, it might not be a real tribute. It would feel like he was really there, as opposed to being a reminder of what he had done for the city, for them. Kai shook his head. Maybe he was just overthinking things. He shuffled his feet a little in the snow, making tracks and revealing a little green of the grass below. He had been here too long. His joints were starting to feel stiff and he could feel the restlessness coming back. Plus it was freezing out here. He needed to get back inside. He looked up at the statue again and whispered to himself the same words he said every time he saw that statue. "Wherever you are, Zane, you'll always be one of us."
When he stepped inside the wide entryway to the tower, he felt a lovely blast of warm air hit his face and seep through his clothes. He stomped on the floor a few times to get the packed snow out of his shoes, freed his hands from his pockets, and took a few steps into the room. It was empty except for him. At first it felt normal, since the whole tower had been mostly unoccupied since the battle, but then it felt wrong. He wasn't used to being so lonely, trapped in a giant tower of emptiness. He wasn't the only one living here, he knew. Pixal was here, Nya was here, Cole and Jay were here. Sometimes Lloyd and Sensei Wu and Sensei Garmadon and even Misako would come to visit. But it was still so empty. It was such a huge building, and with so few people living here, it was impossible to find anyone.
He was happy to bump into Nya whenever he could. With everything going on, his little sister was the only person he could listen to and understand. Not that they talked much when they did happen to see each other. Usually she would just look into his eyes, and through some weird sibling telepathy, she would just know. She would know what he was feeling, how lost and lonely he was. There were no words, she would just know, and she would just know what to do. Sometimes she would ask what he had been up to. Usually he would just shrug. It was the only answer he could give. She would nod, maybe hug him, and then they would be on their way. Sometimes she would just reach up and wrap her arms over his shoulders. He would feel stinging at the edges of his eyes and his breath would catch in his throat. She might whisper that everything was going to be alright, and he would feel hot tears running down his face. Mostly though they wouldn't talk, she would just hold him, and he would bury his face in her shoulder. She would rub his back to soothe him, and he would listen and try to match her breathing. He never knew how long that lasted, or how it ended. All he knew was wake up, wander, eat, wander, eat, sleep, wake up, meet Nya, wander, eat, wander, sleep, meet Nya, wander. Always wander.
His fingers were getting over the initial numbness of walking into a warm room after being outside in the snow now. Kai closed his hands into fists and opened them again, closed, opened, closed, opened, wandered, closed, wandered, opened, wandered. The building was so empty. He heard his footsteps echo off of every metal wall, but nothing reacted. There was silence and loneliness. All he heard were his footsteps echoing down the halls, his ragged stuttering breaths. He was alone with himself here.
As he wandered, Kai tried all of the handles on all of the doors he passed, opening the ones that were unlocked and peering inside to see if anyone was there. Empty, wander, empty, wander, empty, wander. Wake up, eat, wander, eat, wander, eat, sleep, wake up, wander, eat, sleep, meet Nya, wander, check the door, wander, eat, wander, statue, wander, door, empty, wander. Always wander.
Today was different. One of the doors was locked, but he heard something happening inside. There was music. It wafted up from the space below the door, and he heard it as clearly as if he were looking through one of the pristine glass windows in the tower down at the world below. It was loud and its heavy beats echoed just a tiny bit. Techno. Jay.
Normally Kai would have kept going down the hall. The door was locked. Obviously Jay wanted to be left alone. In fact now that he thought about it, hardly anyone had seen Jay since the funeral. Kai had talked with Cole a few times, passed by Pixal all too often without a word, bumped into Nya practically every other time he wandered out of his room, and spent a good chunk of his time talking to Lloyd and Garmadon and Misako and Sensei when they came to visit. But now that he thought back, he had only seen Jay once since the funeral. And as he recalled, their conversation wasn't exactly pleasant.
The heavily artificial-sounding music was blasting from the other end of the door. Days maybe since the funeral. Everyone was living in their own space now, spread out across the tower so that none of them hardly ever saw each other anymore. It was like they had drifted apart now that he was gone. But Kai had finally found someone. And only one person he knew would listen to that kind of music. He tested the handle on the door. Unlocked.
Kai knocked on the door a few times before opening it. The music hit him hard. It was louder than he'd expected, like Jay was trying to drown himself in it.
He could see his friend leaning over a desk in the corner. The room was dark except for the white flood of light coming from the desk lamp. The bed was made neatly, the covers laid flat without a single ripple. It obviously hadn't been touched since Jay had arrived there. The floor near the desk was covered in who knows what. Boxes of all sizes, piles of misshapen metal, empty aluminum cans that had once contained energy drinks. Kai had no idea what the rest was. The waste bin, long forgotten, was overflowing with papers, some crumpled up, some still relatively flat and covered with pencil markings and scribbles, some folded in no particular pattern, some ripped to shreds.
"Jay?"
The blue-clad ninja looked up. "I'm busy," he said grumpily. "Leave me alone."
Kai shook his head. He hadn't been ready for what he was seeing. Before the battle, Jay had still been cracking jokes and trying to cheer everyone up. There had always been a smile on his face. He even joked around with Cole sometimes. And on the spaceship there had been a brightness in his eyes, the excitement that he was actually on a real spaceship righting robot ninjas with plasma blasters. It hadn't been a very fun experience for Kai, but he remembered the look on Jay's face, how happy he was. And now…it was like that boy had never existed. When he saw Jay look up from the desk, every memory of his little smirk was wiped away. He couldn't tell if Jay was pouting or angry or about to cry. His hair was dark and untidy, swept through too many times by nervous fingers, no longer shining orangey-red in the light like it always had. It looked like he'd had a worried look on his face for too long and now didn't know how to make any other expression. Though he had always had pale skin, almost as pale as Zane's, his face was white as paper and gaunt enough that Kai could see his prominent bones and the veins in his neck. He was still wearing his blue uniform, faded and dirty and stained with dirt and blood and oil, hanging loosely off his starved body. But what made Kai stop in his tracks, halfway through the doorway, was his eyes. There was no sparkle, no light, no happiness no joy. Those weren't the eyes of a teenage boy, still a child at heart, who had fulfilled his dreams by going inside a video game and mastering it within minutes and by fighting robot ninjas with plasma blasters on a spaceship. Those were the eyes of someone who hadn't seen the light of day for far too long, who hadn't had any social interaction in days at least, who had isolated himself and who hadn't slept and who had taken in too many energy drinks in a futile attempt to stay awake, who had forgotten about the existence of food, who had lost everything he'd held close.
It felt like hours had gone by before Kai found his voice again. "I just wanted to—"
"I said leave me alone." He was still indecipherable. Anger, confusion, fear, sadness, loneliness. It could be anything.
Kai started to take another step, reaching out for his friend, his brother. "But—"
Jay stood to his full height, which wasn't much, but with the way he looked, he only got more frightening. "Go away!"
Shaking the image out of his head, Kai once again reached for the doorknob, knowing good and well that it was locked this time around. No one had seen Jay since then. No one. He hadn't even come out to eat. The thought made Kai feel sick. If Jay had looked like a skeleton then, there was no telling what he must look like now. He jiggled the knob. Still locked.
Kai took a deep breath. He held his hand up next to the door, closed into a fist and ready to knock. "Jay?" He knocked twice.
Silence.
He knocked again, a little harder, and said a little louder, "Jay? You in there?"
Silence.
"He didn't answer to me either," a voice said behind him, making Kai jump a little. He had been so used to the loneliness that he'd forgotten for a moment that there were other people living here. "Then again," Cole said, "I didn't expect him to. But the music was bugging me."
"Don't you live on the other side of the tower though?"
Cole shook his head. "I did, but I moved closer. I was worried about him. I haven't seen him open that door since he hid in there after the funeral."
"Wasn't he there when Pixal…?"
He nodded. "He hid away after that. I think he refuses to accept it. Besides, even if he does accept it, he's been too isolated to actually see or hear proof. I don't think he's in there because of that." Cole hung his head, and Kai knew at once what he meant.
"Have you talked to him?"
"Not since…maybe before the battle. I can't remember. Or maybe the funeral, but I don't remember him saying much even then. We haven't said a word about Nya to each other since we kept bugging each other about it. I can't remember when that was. Maybe the comet."
Kai looked at the closed door again. "No one else has seen him. I see Nya all the time. She hasn't even seen evidence that he still exists since the funeral. He doesn't even come out when Lloyd visits."
Cole sighed. "When did you last see him?"
"I don't like thinking about it," Kai said. "But I can't stop thinking about it. He's just a kid. He was forced to grow up too fast."
"Yeah. I hate to think of what's in there." Cole glanced at the door.
"He's not the same person anymore. I don't remember how long ago it was. Everything's just one big blur since the battle now. Hours bleed into days, days bleed into weeks, weeks bleed into months. I have no idea how much time has passed." Wake up, eat, wander, eat, wander, sleep, wake up, wander, eat, sleep, wander, Nya, wander, door, empty, wander, Nya, wander, eat, wander, sleep, Pixal, wander, wake up, sleep, eat, wander, door, locked, wander, statue, wander. Always wander. "I think it was a few days after the funeral, after he went into hiding." Kai had to stop talking when he felt a lump rise in his throat. "He's just not Jay anymore."
Cole bit his lip and looked down. Kai stared at the door. There was silence between them, but the music beyond the door played on. And on. And on.
"Will you help me?"
Cole looked back up. "What?"
"Help me open the door. It's locked."
"Are you crazy?"
"Maybe. But someone needs to talk to him."
"What if he gets mad at us?"
"Oh he will. There's no question about that. But it doesn't matter."
"Kai, you remember what happened on the beach."
"There were lots of times on the beach."
"You know which one I'm talking about. The night Nya was taken."
Kai paused, his hand resting on the handle again. "Oh. That one." As if he hadn't already known. "Cole…"
"You know what I'm trying to get at too. Kai, what if he…what if he tries to hurt us?"
Kai closed his eyes, taking another deep breath. There was no question about it. Cole hadn't been ready, no one was expecting him to lash out like that, he'd never done anything like it before. But even then, once Cole was down, he couldn't get back up. He had super strength, he should have been able to push Jay off of him. Jay was a short, skinny kid too. But for some reason he had kept Cole pinned to the ground. And it wasn't like Cole wasn't trying. There was something about him when he got angry…. "When I saw him, it didn't look like he'd eaten in days. I hate to say it, but I doubt he could be anywhere near that strong now."
He heard Cole's breath catch. "Y-you've gotta be kidding." He sounded nauseous.
"That's exactly why we need to get in there."
Cole sighed. But a few seconds later, Kai saw his hand grip the handle. "Okay. Okay fine. Stand back."
Kai nodded and did as he was told.
Holding the handle with both hands, Cole wrenched it down, breaking the lock with his super strength. The door creaked open when he let go of it, and the music nearly deafened them. Kai rushed through the door, standing next to Cole and peering into the semi-dark room. At first he couldn't see anything it was so dark, because he'd just been in the hall, where the natural light came in through floor-to-ceiling windows and reflected off the metal walls. Then his eyes adjusted to the dim light of the burning-out desk lamp in the far corner of the room. "Jay?" There was no response anywhere. Kai glanced at Cole, who had his eyes shut. "I don't see him. Help me find him."
Cole opened his eyes slowly. "What if he's not here?"
"Where else would he be?"
They took a few cautious steps into the room. Still no reaction. Cole groaned loudly and stomped over to the speakers on Jay's desk that were hooked up to a fancy-looking music playing gizmo. It looked like he'd built it himself. Cole picked it up gently and looked all around it, then looked at Kai. "How do you shut this thing off?"
Kai shrugged, walked over, and plucked it from Cole's hands. "I think you just…unplug it?"
Cole eventually found the place where the gizmo was hooked up to the speakers and pulled them apart as gently as he could. Instantly the music stopped, and there was uncomfortable silence. Once again, Kai was able to hear his own nervous breathing, now joined by Cole's slow breaths that were relaxing now that the heavy music was shut off. And then he heard a third breathing pattern, even more ragged than his own had been, and yet slower than Cole's.
The lights turned on, and Kai looked over to the doorway to see that Cole had silently gone to the main light switch that operated the lights in the ceiling. Brightness flooded into the room and suddenly everything was visible, almost unbearably. Their eyes adjusted again, and fell on the only spot of blue in the room. Jay was asleep on the floor, curled up within his loose-fitting uniform.
"You weren't kidding," Cole said, sounding sick again. "This is my fault."
"No, it's not. This isn't anyone's fault," Kai said, unable to tear himself away from Jay's face. He still looked worried and confused and angry all at once, even in sleep. "Anyway, that's not what's important. We need to fix him now."
Cole shook his head. "I can't. Kai, I can't do it. I don't want to see him like this. I opened the damn door, I'm finished. Please don't make me stay."
Kai knelt to the ground and scooped Jay up into his arms. "Fine. Whatever. But if you leave now, he'll always be mad at you."
"I know. But I can't do this. I can't stand it." Then he was gone, and Kai was alone once more. Alone with himself and his worried breathing, and with a very cold and tiny Jay asleep in his arms. Wake up, eat, wander, eat, wander, eat, sleep, wake up, Nya, wander, eat, sleep, wander, door, empty, wake up, Pixal, wander, door, locked, wander, cold, snow, statue, falcon, wander, eat, sleep, wake up, Nya, door, wander, eat, wander, Pixal, statue, wander, snow, eat, door, locked, music, Jay. Stop. No more wandering.
His eyelids were heavy and hard to move. But he was awake. He had to open his eyes. He could do it, he knew, if he just tried hard enough. But why try? Everything was gone. His best friend in the whole world, his girlfriend, the guy she chose who had once been a brother to him. Why open his eyes when he would still be alone in the dark? He had retreated so far that there was nothing now except the darkness. Wait…was this it then? Was darkness all he would ever know now? Had he retreated that far? He hadn't eaten in…it was too long ago to remember. Everything was a blur. Everything was the darkness of his room except for his lamp, but even that was dying out, only holding on because of the electricity he fed it. But as he grew weaker, so did the lamp. There was darkness now. Everything was darkness. Had the lamp finally died? Then this was it. Now everything would always be darkness, because he knew that when the lamp died out, so would he.
Everything was darkness. And he figured he was okay with that.
Then there was pain, and everything was pain. Pain so strong that the darkness no longer mattered. His empty world was filled with it, the bright red light that glowed all around him and hurt him and his eyes and his lungs and everything else. And when he sucked in an urgent breath all he felt was the redness of the pain that felt like a million knives tearing him apart from the inside.
And there was noise. Noise that surrounded him, drowned out his thoughts, that filled his head so far that he thought he might burst. Noise that called his name.
Wait.
Someone was calling his name.
The noise had a pattern, it was logical, it was melodic. It was a familiar voice calling his name. The redness and the pain and the knives in his chest were still there, but somehow the voice had captured his attention. It gave him strength. It told him that if he did try, if he did want to open his eyes, there would not be darkness, there would not be loneliness. If he tried and he woke up, there would be someone waiting for him. He would not be alone.
So he tried.
He gathered all of strength.
And he woke up.
Kai kept running his fingers through Jay's knotted hair. "Jay, come on. Please wake up. Please wake up, Jay. I can't take care of you if you don't wake up. You'll have to do it eventually. Come on."
Jay stirred. His hands tightened into fists, he took a deep breath in, and at long last he opened his eyes.
"Jay! You're awake!"
Everything was pain again. He breathed out a long sigh, but it came out as a painful cough instead. There was light everywhere, bright white light that felt like it was blinding him. It hurt to move, and his stomach felt like a black hole inside him, screaming at him in hunger. And when it screamed, so did he. Or at least it felt like it. What he heard come out of his mouth was a rasp almost like the Overlord's. With great difficulty and more pain, he cleared his throat and tried again. But by then the scream was gone. Everything was pain, but he was too tired to do anything about it. His eyes began to adjust, and he saw a shadow looming over him. As things began to come into focus and as his mind balanced out the differences between the white of the lights and the different colors all around him, he recognized a face on the shadow, framed by that unmistakable spiked up hair.
"Kai?"
He felt himself being pulled up into a tight embrace. "You're okay. You're okay," Kai whispered. "You're awake. You're okay. Everything's going to be alright."
Everything was light and everything was pain.
But…he wasn't alone anymore. Kai was here.
And Kai said everything was going to be alright.
So…everything was not always going to be light? Everything would not always be pain?
Well, at least everything would not always be darkness. Everything would not always be loneliness.
No.
Jay lifted his arms, ignoring the pain, and held tightly to Kai.
He was not alone.
And if he was not alone, everything would not be loneliness.
There was light.
And if there was light, everything would not be darkness.
But even lights eventually fade, burn out.
So there would not always be light.
But he would not die with the light. Not now. Not this day. Everything was pain now, yes. But he would carry on. He could ignore the pain. He could fight through it. And he would. He was not alone. He did not have to fight alone.
So everything would not always be pain.
"Jay, I was so worried about you."
"Kai?"
"Yeah, Jay. It's me. I'm here. Everything's going to be alright."
"Don't leave me. Please. I don't want to be alone anymore."
Kai sighed, a smile growing on his face. "I'll never leave you."
Jay nodded. He was not alone.
He would not have to fight the pain alone.
So…Kai was right?
"I promise, Jay. Everything's going to be alright."
He knew.
Everything would be alright.