pagolia1905 requested Jaya, so I hope this will suffice. I do not own Ninjago.
The ocean roars in her ear as the wind whips past, loud even at this distance. The air nearly snatches her paperback with it, but with a well-placed thumb and a grip like iron, she keeps it still, leaving the pages to rattle.
Nya reaches to pull strands of black hair from where they've splayed over her face.
It isn't necessarily a cold day, but a sky of grey hangs low over the earth, hiding it from the sun's face. This, combined with the whitecaps and the promise of storm upon the breeze, makes it the perfect day for a date at the beach.
No one else is there.
Nya has her head on Jay's belly as they lie on a blue checked blanket. She's reading, he might have fallen asleep staring at the clouds. They've been here a while.
In the month since they've gotten back together, their dates have turned down a path neither of them are used to.
A simple observation is that they're quieter than they used to be. More specifically, Jay is quieter than he used to be. He's silent for long stretches of time, has been since Nadakhan.
She's suffered the same effects, but Nya thinks she's handling everything well. She's come to terms with what happened, and now she's…better. Not the best, but better.
Getting to know death as intimately as she did left behind marks, not all of them visible, but she's come to terms with it. She's fine. She's fine.
Jay is…less fine. He's quiet.
She's here reading a book of poems; he's let their conversation dangle in the air, eventually being carried off in the wind.
She turns a page to find a poem about flowers and frost and wind and chill, and it's romantic in a way that only she can appreciate, being one of those hearts that has a craving for sadness. She can't help it, but she's found that the poems help her.
She received this book back when she was eight years old. It was a gift from a kind librarian that had taken a liking towards her, and while at the time she secretly wished the book had been one of wild fantasy instead, she'll forever be grateful towards the librarian.
It's amazing, she thinks, time and time again, how poets can capture such complex concepts like love or death in a few simple lines, often comparing them to items that seemingly had nothing to do with them.
In a way, they help her understand what happened. They help her cope.
She lifts herself onto her elbows and crawls up Jay's side so that she's closer to his face. The troubled look he's giving the sky melts when he turns, instead being replaced with a smile that's smaller than it used to be.
"Jay," she says, bypassing the expression, "Look at this; read this poem," she holds out the pages and waits for him to take it.
He does so with a frown, not an unusual face he makes when reading something that doesn't include pictures, but it stays as his eyes scan the page.
"Isn't it romantic?" she says after several moments.
Jay nods, but the look in his eyes betrays his confusion. She waits again, but Jay has always had more of a technical mind, so she explains, "The wind falls in love with the window flower."
The explanation doesn't make a single dent against his confusion; if anything, it fortifies it.
"The window…what?"
Nya points, "The wind falls in love with a flower. See?" she reads, "'He marked her through the pane; he could not help but mark; and only passed her by, to come again at dark.'"
Jay doesn't understand, but he nods as if he does, letting out an appreciative, "Ahhh…I see!"
Nya snorts, lying back so that she's facing the sky again. The clouds swirl above her, almost dizzying.
"I could never understand poetry," Jay sighs, initiating conversation for the first time in twenty minutes, "Every little thing means something else."
"That's not true!" Nya smiles, "You just have to know what to look for."
Though she can't see him, Jay shakes his head. He doesn't say anything else, and just like that, the conversation is over. It's become so common now that Nya doesn't bother getting frustrated anymore.
He's just dealing, she thinks. He's dealing, just like she's been dealing. That's where the poetry comes in.
She watches the clouds, wondering what there is out there that can help Jay deal. She loves him and everything about him, but he's isn't the same boy she fell in love with, however long ago that was.
She turns her head sideways, watching the whitecaps churn. She can't expect Jay to be the same person after Nadakhan. If she's being honest with herself, she sometimes wonders if she's even the same person, if she died as one soul and came back with someone else's.
It would explain the sadness.
"Hold on—"
At the sound of Jay's voice, Nya lifts her head. He has the book gripped tight in his hands, holding it closer to his face as he frowns at something on the page.
"It says here that the breeze goes away!"
Nya blinks, "Yeah?"
The look of distress on Jay's face is almost adorable, but Nya has enough shame not to indulge in it. "But," he says, choosing his words carefully, "it fell in love with the flower."
Nya smiles, "Yeah. Sometimes love doesn't work out. That's the point of the poem."
Jay looks at her, aghast, "That isn't romantic!"
She can't help but snort out a giggle, "What are you talking about? It's a lovely poem."
"I can buy 'lovely,' but 'romantic'?" Jay gives his head a shake in a hard 'no'.
Nya laughs, and this time it's she that lets the conversation drop. Maybe there isn't anything romantic about unrequited love, but the poem is a favorite of hers, one of several. She can hear Jay flipping through her book, and she's pleased to let him do so, hoping that he'll find a poem that might be of some help to him, too.
She closes her eyes after a while, shifting so that she can snuggle closer to Jay, resting her head now on his shoulder. The wind has picked up, bringing a chill, and he puts his arm around her shoulders almost on instinct.
Minutes might have passed, maybe hours, but sometime later, Jay lets out a soft, "Nya?"
She glances up, smiling, "Yes?"
He holds the book over, "What's the meaning of this poem?"
She looks. It's titled 'My Butterfly,' and the spine is worn white behind this page, for all the times she's read it.
"Loss," she says, "How it feels when love dies, especially after everything you've been through together."
Jay bites at his lip. Nya watches.
"It's a sad one."
He looks at her, "You don't think that it's romantic, do you?"
She pauses, thinks, then shrugs. "I find it beautiful."
Jay looks back at the page, frowning. With a thumb, absently, he traces over the last few lines of the poem:
"I found that wing broken today!
For thou art dead, I said,
And the strange birds say.
I found it with the withered leaves
Under the eaves."
'Thou' being the butterfly, it strikes a chord with Nya, one she still isn't sure the meaning behind, and from the looks of it, it strikes something within Jay, too.
After a moment, Jay inhales, saying, with purpose, "Nya?"
She moves, and he sits up, propping his elbows onto his knees as he draws them to his chest.
"Yes?" she says again, following his movement until she rests her weight onto her palms, "What now?"
"Do you…" he looks at the poem, studying it hard, "do you remember what you said…back…back before you almost…"
Nya swallows as the memory stirs something gross down in her gut, "Yes."
Jay glances over at her, "Well, you don't—do you really believe that the best love stories end in tragedy?"
Now that's a question she must admit that she didn't quite expect. It's the first time since it happened that Jay's even brought it up.
She's thankful, of course, but she stops to think. Love is something that invites plenty of emotions, and for some reason, her heart has a craving for sadness.
All in all, though, "I guess not."
"You only guess?"
Nya shrugs, finding tension in her shoulders, "I was dying, Jay. I was probably just being overdramatic."
"Overdramatic?" Jay silently scoffs at the idea, "You've earned the right."
"Maybe."
A beat, then, "Nya," Jay scoots closer, bringing the book with him, "I might be a knucklehead, but I've always thought of you as my butterfly."
She smiles, gaze turned towards the blanket, "Do I really bring you that much joy?"
"Of course you do!" a ghost of a smile teases at Jay's face, but it's gone before she can appreciate it, "But…I don't want to lose you."
There's more weight put to these words than the times that he's said it in the past, and Nya understands.
Boy, she understands.
"I know," she says, looking out towards the sea, "but that's not something either of us can control."
She gets it, now. Before Nadakhan, she'd spent her entire life trying—trying with success that may have been no more than luck—to survive, to live to see another day. In those moments when the Tiger Widow's venom had been taking effect, she realized (with a laugh, almost), that those efforts weren't as fruitful as she thought.
They aren't worthless—she'll argue tooth and nail over that point—but, in the grand scheme of things, she is hardly larger than a butterfly.
"Do you fear death?"
Jay is toying with a loose string on the blanket now, staring at it with a furrowed brow.
"Not anymore," she turns to see him glance up, so she explains, "I can't say that it's something to look forward to, or something that I want for myself, but I'm more…comfortable with it than I used to be."
Jay looks away. "I'm uncomfortable with it."
She places a hand over his, stilling his twitching.
"I'm worried that it'll come for us again," he holds up the book, "I'm worried I'll end up like this person in here, who finds his butterfly withered and dead, whose heart dies. I'm worried I'll grow old and bitter, and that I'll look back on my life and regret it."
He refrains from outright throwing the book against the ground out of respect for her property, but Nya wouldn't have cared. She's had her share of outbursts over the book, herself.
She puts an arm around Jay's shoulders, swallowing around a stone in her throat, "I know you're worried," she says, "but your love won't die just because me or anyone else does. That's the great thing about love; it's strong."
Jay shakes his head, "I know that you're okay with it, but—"
"I'm not 'okay' with it," Nya pauses, purses her lips, then tries again, "Everything that Nadakhan did…I'm not okay with it. As for what happened with the venom, I'm…I don't know. Dying is…it's just something that has to happen."
"There are times it shouldn't happen."
"You're right," Nya says, "I shouldn't have died that day, and guess what? I didn't. Sort of."
She isn't exactly sure if her experience counted as death, since the last thing she remembers was looking into Jay's eyes before she was swallowed by darkness. Afterwards, some expanse of time occurred for she knows not how long, and she wound up hovering someplace where she walked all by herself.
She remembers feeling, incredibly, incredibly grateful, for reasons she did not know, and she was warm and happy, heading towards what she can only describe as 'elsewhere,' before she felt herself being pulled back by a force more powerful than any villain or creature she's ever faced.
And now she's here today, holding close a boy who wasn't able to see all that, a boy who saw a love die before wishing it all away.
"I hate him," says Jay, "I hate whatever he did to make you think that—" he cuts himself off, drawing his lips into a line, but Nya isn't so quick to let him off that easy.
"Think what?"
"That—" Jay struggles to speak through gritted teeth, "That that was the best way our story could have ended. Tragedy."
"I never said 'best'," Nya pulls back, "I just said 'greatest.'"
"I think that you need to redefine the word 'great', then."
Nya looks at her book. "Tragedy has its place in greatness."
"I don't want it to have a place in us."
She can make sense of it. After all they've been through, she knows why he feels in such a way. That being said, she thinks Jay wrong. Tragedy already has a place in them; it was carved there a month ago by Nadakhan's unforgiving hand, and it'll stay there for the rest of their lives, however long that may be.
She doesn't regret it. She's come to terms with what's happened, and the bottom line of it all is that, with as much damage as Nadakhan might have inflicted, they beat him. At the end of the day, they beat him.
She tries telling this to Jay. It's something she isn't surprised she has to remind him of.
Jay is quiet, terribly quiet, and then he nods. They beat him, and they'll beat this, whatever this may be.
"If someone ever writes a poem about us," says Jay, after awhile, "I want it to be about a flower who falls in love with a butterfly, and they stay together, living long and happy lives."
Nya chuckles; she can't help it. "It might not be remembered."
Jay shrugs, "I'll remember it. And that'll be all that matters."
That will be all. Little poems like that matter to her, too. She keeps them bookmarked with little post notes, or toilet paper, sometimes. That way, when the sadness spreads too far, she has a way of pulling herself back.
"You forget," she says, smiling at him, "That 'My Butterfly' speaks of happy moments, too."
"And so will our poem," Jay finally smiles, this time wide, "Our poem will talk of happy moments, and it will talk of sad moments, but all in all, it will be good. It'll be romantic, and it'll be great."
It sounds perfect. Truly it does.
They spend the rest of the day talking, smiling. Jay looks better than he did when they arrived, like some of the weight that he's been carrying has been laid to rest, right next to them against the sand. He demands that she point out some of the happier poems, which she's more than pleased to share. He can better appreciate them now, because who can appreciate the good moments without the occasional salt of sadness to highlight its sweetness?
That's what Nya thinks, at least. Her heart has a craving for sadness, if only to give the happiness more meaning.
Fortunately, Jay understands.
Evening comes early that day when the sky darkens and lightning flashes several miles away, and they decide that it's time to return to the world they left behind. They gather up the blanket, Nya tucks her book into the crook of her arm, and they walk off, hand in hand.
I'm not sure how I feel about this one, but I went through two other failed ideas before eventually coming up with this. If I finish the other two, I may publish them, but that'll be up in the air for a while.
The poems used in this story were My Butterfly, and The Breeze and the Window Flower, by Robert Frost. As you can tell, I own neither of them.
Anyways, I hope you enjoyed! Thank you all for reading!
