I own nothing but the story.
Something warm runs through Jay's eyes.
It's the first thing he registers. The next is the hand in his hair, half clenched, pulling at strawberry strands from where it rests. He groans, but it doesn't move.
There's an...incredible weight against his back. He lies on his stomach against something hard, crushed, hardly able to breath. For the briefest of moments, he wonders where he is, but then the events of this horrible, rotten day come rushing back with each pound of the headache now thrumming through his skull.
He's enough strength to groan, and that's when he registers the arm pinned between his stomach and what's either the floor or the earth.
Jay's eyes snap open; he jerks his head to the right.
He can hardly breathe; there's dust everywhere, and the weight is incredible, incredible against his back. It hurts—in a way that's different than anything he's felt before, and he tries to move, but he can't—he can't.
His friend's head lies slumped over his shoulder. How long has he been out? Jay tries to call his name, but can't get the word out of his mouth, can't get air to move in and out of his lungs. Cole can't seem to hear him, anyway.
There's a horrible, awful, ugly second where Jay thinks that Cole is dead, but he feels a hot breath exit his friend's nose, and he sighs.
Or, he tries. The dust in the air, what little air he can get, makes him cough, and Cole jerks awake with the movement.
"Argh—ah!" Cole grunts, and Jay says his name again.
"C—Cole?"
"...Jay?"
Jay has one free hand he can move, just barely. "Can you…" he brushes the liquid running into his eyes and comes away with red fingers, "Can you move at all?"
He should; Jay prays he can. One of the many, many side effects of having powers is the ability to withstand some of their elements' extremes. For Kai, he's more resistant to burns. For Jay, he can walk away scot free from the effects of lightning, and Cole is remarkably durable.
But even a building might be too much.
"I...ow…" Cole is half out of it, breathing words that Jay can't distinguish, grunting again as he braces his hands—or rather, his one hand—against the concrete and lifts.
His arm shakes—unusual, but expected—and the weight against Jay's back lessens; he can breathe again. He tests his arms and legs, thankful when he finds he can move them. His chest hurts, his breath hitches when he breathes, but he can move.
Cole lifts away the rest of the rubble with a cry that almost turns into a scream, and he falls backward when he's done, trembling where he lays. Jay gets up, sore limbs protesting, and crouches into a sitting position.
For a moment, the two of them just sit, heaving.
They're in what might have once been a room, but it is more of a pocket of dead space within the rubble. There's enough room to stand, but only if one were to crouch over. Now that they're out from being trapped, Jay can hear voices somewhere above, but they're distant, and he doesn't know if he can shout loud enough for them to hear.
Jay looks around. It's small here, and he can see dust illuminated under tiny streams of light, but he can't see the sun.
He can't see the sun.
"Oh boy."
Behind him, Cole sounds breathless. He's wheezing, too, an odd sound. Normally, those words would be ones said in mirth, like when Lloyd finds a bag of candy hidden behind a box of oatmeal, but everything is wrong about the way Cole says it.
Fear slides ice cold fingers up his spine when Jay turns around.
Cole's hand is red. More so, there's red on the concrete they lay on, and red on Jay's jacket that isn't from within.
"N—oo," Jay looks his friend over.
There are small spots of the same color on the front of his shirt, a head injury like the one Jay is sporting, but behind Cole, around him, the rubble is stained with far too much red.
"Cole?"
His friend stares at him, wide eyes glazed, and he lifts his arm.
Logically, Jay knew that his friend would be injured. A building dropped down on top of them; no one walks away from that, not even someone with the natural durability of Cole. But Jay finds himself shell-shocked that day.
When Cole lifts his arm, there's a wound on his side. Sliding deep across his back and to his front, it cuts along his midriff, through his shirt and through skin that had seen far worse things than a building in some no-name town. It's big—goodness, it's huge—and blood pumps red out of it, all over the place.
The culprit seems a metal beam, a lucky spike in a mass of rock, sticking out of the rubble behind him.
A heartbeat passes, and Jay doesn't know what to do.
Then Cole speaks, "Good grief—"
Jay jerks; his breath hitches and he jerks forward, crawling on his knees towards his injured friend. He stares at the wound, feels panic spiking through his veins, and he still doesn't know what to do.
"Cole—!" he says again. He doesn't know what to do; he doesn't know what to do. "Oh no—"
"Jay?" Cole's hand is quivering; the one that was pinned beneath Jay just rests across his belly, unmoving. Cole starts to breathe faster, "What—what do we do?"
'Get help' is the first thing that comes to mind, but they're far from help. There's only Jay, and Jay doesn't know what to do, because he's just Jay. What he does know is that Cole shouldn't be breathing this fast. Panting increases the heart rate, and the faster the heart rate, the faster blood pumps out of the wound.
Right, the wound.
Jay presses his hand hard against it, thoughts escaping him.
Cole jerks and yells, slapping it away.
"We have to stop it!" says Jay, unable to tear his eyes from the sight.
"Not like that!" Cole blinks at him; he's blinking a lot.
That's not good, Jay thinks. No, no.
"We'll do it—" Cole's good hand flops around as it reaches for his jacket, trying to pull it off, "We'll—we'll use this."
"I got it," Jay yanks off his own and wraps it around Cole. He ties the sleeves up tight, but it's not enough. Panicking, he goes for Cole's belt, pulling it free.
In his fear, Cole releases half a laugh, somewhere between hysteria and passing out, "Woah. I know we're friends again, but this is a little forward."
"This isn't the time for jokes!" Jay doesn't mean to yell. He really doesn't. "How deep is it? How bad does it hurt?"
"I don't—" Cole grunts as Jay pulls the belt tight, and he looks as the red already begins to soak through, "Oh my."
'Oh my' is the understatement of the century, and Jay goes for Cole's jacket, using it to press against the outside. His friend is still blinking a lot.
"I shouldn't…" Cole breathes, "I shouldn't have taken it out."
"What?" Jay's voice is clipped; he's clenching his teeth.
"The beam," Cole points, "I should've left it in."
The beam is copper and dripping under the light, still stuck in the wall that crushed them, and Jay can't bear to look at it. No, no he can't.
"There's nothing we can do about it now," says Jay, "Just promise you won't die on me, alright?"
Cole doesn't answer. Jay begins to shout, hoping the voices far above will hear them. They need help, and there's only so much that Jay can do. Cole begins to sag sideways.
Jay can't believe this is happening. Surely this is some sort of sick dream, and he's going to wake up to Cole yelling at him for falling asleep in the middle of lunch.
This can't be real.
He ties the sleeves of Cole's jacket over the belt and his own. The amount of blood soaking through is obscene; he should've looked the injury over before covering it, perhaps. Maybe Cole could tell him, but Cole is fading between awareness and...something else. Would it be shock? Jay doesn't know; how could he? He does know that there's too much blood being lost too fast, and that Cole had to have been bleeding while they were unconscious.
Goodness, how long were they unconscious?
"I'm so stupid."
Cole speaks in a whisper.
"I'm sorry?" says Jay, looking for something else to apply pressure with.
"I didn't think this would happen."
"This?"
"Death, Jay, I didn't think it would happen."
"It's not going to," Jay sounds more confident than he is, but that might just be because he refuses to believe it as even a possibility. Friends don't just die—Zane didn't, not for a long time, anyway. Jay inhales, exhales faster than normal.
"You don't know that," says Cole.
"Shut up!"
"Listen," Cole puts his good hand on his shoulder, but his grip isn't as strong as it's supposed to be, "Under my bed, I've got a shoebox with sixty dollars in it. I want you to have it, Jay. And give my love to everyone at home."
"Shut up—"
"No," says Cole, "I've also got an orange scarf in there that I was going to give you for your birthday, but it's only half done. I was crocheting it, and it's easy to learn. I'm sure you could—"
"Stop talking like that!" Jay finally looks to his friend's face, vision blurring. He tells himself it's dust. "You're not going to die!"
"You don't know that!" Cole shouts, and his words slur, "I just might, and if I don't get to talk to you again, I want to say what I need to say, so don't interrupt me again!"
Jay inhales, exhales.
"Look," Cole swallows, lips—Jay looks at his lips, and they're an odd color—quivering, "I haven't always been good to you, but you're my best friend, Jay."
Jay swallows, the act difficult.
"You're my best friend—the greatest," Cole rests his head back, and Jay's hands begin to shake, "and I love you, okay? I love you so much. I'm sorry I didn't say that often enough—I'm sorry I spent so long hating you. You're my best friend, and I love you."
Jay looks away. He has to; it's dusty. So dusty. He wipes his eyes, notices his hands are red, and he looks for something else to apply pressure with. He must find something; he has to help.
"I'm so...so grateful to have known you…" the hand against Jay's shoulder falls away, and when Jay looks back, Cole's eyes are closing, "I'm grateful…"
No. No. No. "No!" Jay presses his hand against Cole's neck, "Stay awake! Stay with me!"
There's a pulse, but Cole's eyes remain stubbornly closed. Jay can't handle this; he's vastly unprepared for this situation. They'd just gone out for some lunch. That's all they'd wanted.
An afternoon where all they had to worry about was lunch.
Jay shouts for help, calls for someone, anyone to find them in this hellhole. There are voices above him, but he can't hear.
"Cole!" he shouts again, "C'mon, c'mon." He pats his friend's cheek, copper handprints left behind in his wake, and he tries to think of something to do. But what can he do; he's just Jay Walker, a ninja who should've stayed at the teashop, should've convinced Cole to do the same.
"Cole!" he looks up, "Help! Help us!" At this point he isn't sure if he's shouting for the townspeople or at the First Spinjitzu Master himself.
It hits him slowly, late. When he has his hand pressed against his friend's neck, feeling a pulse push through, it hits him, an awful realization of what he is about to lose. Then, the world suddenly feels incredibly small. There isn't anyone up above; there's just Cole and Jay, two friends, trapped together in a fallen building.
Friends.
Friends.
Friends.
At this point, he takes off his shirt and adds it to the layers of makeshift bandages, but something happens. He senses it more than he can see it, but Cole isn't there anymore. Jay looks up, up, into his friend's face, and Cole isn't there.
He can't help it. He screams.
He grabs his friend and yanks him down with more force than he intends, lays him down and places both hands on his chest. Nothing is there, but if there's anything that he's learned in the months they spent fighting each other, it's that they're the most stubborn people on the face of Ninjago.
And Cole isn't going to die until Jay says so.
Jay has only vague memories of Nya teaching them CPR, but he remembers enough. He huffs with each compression and he wonders, how could he have let this happen? How could he have let a fight ruin their friendship? How did it take Zane dying and the heat of another battle to finally make up?
Most importantly, though; how could he have lost so much time?
They're never going to get that back.
Never.
Never.
Never.
Jay's hands are fists. He can't see. His vision is blurry, and it's suddenly too bright; it's the sun.
The sun.
Jay looks up, and people crowd his vision, strangers, faceless and familiar all at once. They're standing around him, too, and he's no clue how they got there. Perhaps they just appeared, when fate decided it didn't want to hear him cry anymore.
And Jay's trying so hard not to.
They try to pull his hands away from Cole, and he can't—he can't lose him. He shouts and screams, but they say they can help, that they need to get him out of here before it's too late, as if it isn't already so.
Jay is a ninja, but they pull him back. He wonders if his lightning could have done something, anything, to help him and chides himself for not thinking of it.
He watches, helpless, helpless, as they try and to revive his friend with a defibrillator.
The first two tries don't work, and Jay feels each passing second hollow out a hole in his heart. He tells them to kick it up all the way.
Cole is, he prays, able to take it.
A beat passes, and there's nothing.
Another try, nothing.
Then, finally, a series of buzzes ring through the air; there's a pulse, they say, and Jay drops his head.
They lift Cole out on a red gurney, raising him up towards the sun. Jay remains in the rubble, half in shadow, certain that this is some sort of metaphor, but he's too upset to think of what it is. He's just thankful that Cole is in better hands than his own.
A woman crosses his vision, wrinkled and creased where she frowns at him.
"You need to be examined, dear. Can you walk?"
Jay can't hear past his thoughts. Frankly, he doesn't think he can even stand up.
"Mr. Walker?"
Walker? Oh. Right.
He wishes they weren't so recognizable without their masks. "Is," he starts, and the woman leans closer to hear, "Is he going to be okay?"
He's trying not to cry, but his voice betrays him with a crack.
The woman doesn't answer him. Instead, she places a gentle hand under the crook of his elbow and asks him to try and stand.
He can't. There's no way he can. He raises his hands, brings one to his brow, and says, softly, "Just—give me a minute."
He's trying so hard.
Thank you kindly for reading. Thank you as well for the lovely reviews left on the last chapter. I hope you all have a marvelous day!