Wow, guys, I can't believe it... It's my birthday! ^^ And it's also TWO DAYS UNTIL NFAN'S FIRST BIRTHDAY! ! ! ! ! ! ! ! I'M SO EXCITED FOR IT!

25. healing the Soul

Jay tiptoed across the floor, his legs boundless and capable of anything—their broken features before were now mended by some strange calligraphy of bending nature at will, thanks to the deal he made with Catherine. He had learned to expect the unexpected when it came to these things he went through. Meeting by chance the 'original witch' who promised to fix his destroyed body was something that, six years ago, he'd have had no problem jumping on board with, but this time around he had been a little doubtful of her aims, knowing that at any rate she could be the 'Greater Evil' she was accusing of trying to take over Ninjago. The random appearance of her glowing body, apparently only sitting on his dimension and therefore making her light up like Ninjago City at night (still didn't make sense why she was like a female Lloyd in his golden ninja suit), in his sickroom obviously made him bend and twist.

Catherine had made clear that she was Anti-Greater Evil, and as the original witch—AKA, the first witch in all of Ninjago that was bestowed great power by Mother Nature, the Controller of All Living Things—it was her job to try and keep the balance in Ninjago, Naturally and spiritually. Sort of like a minion for Mother Nature or something to that effect. She did the dirty work, and the big M.N kept on creating things out of her Natural Power. She said that though her abilities were limited as to what exactly she could interfere with, explaining why she had nothing to do with the Final Battle between Lloyd and the Overlord, Catherine's powers could be stretched to a certain degree, allowing her to act as Nature's advocate and create things the way that Mother Nature might. She explained that she had the power of any other witch around, like Danielle, to do certain small things, like create protective wards or heal a broken bone.

The overload of information was hard for Jay to deny. He knew it couldn't be a hoax, and when it came to golden people, they were usually able to be trusted. (He never had been one to go against Lloyd's word, that is, after he aged.) But coming from a different angle, Jay was aware that this could've been a trap, a ploy set out for him like a starved destitute in front of a feast. Offering him what he needed and trying to shift him off course by pretending to be his friend, attempting to make Jay chase some made-up 'Greater Evil' that actually was Catherine. Well enough, he knew that it was so easy to be pushed down by the people you thought you could trust—and having known Catherine for only a few minutes, he knew not to put much faith in her. He weighed his options carefully in both palms before making his choice.

Though Catherine gave a sincere face, there was no limit to how great an actor those on the evil team could be.

Jay ended up taking the bait, but he never took down his suspicions.

"I will heal you," Catherine said, and held her hand over his body. An orange glow emanated from her palm and down onto his body, a searchlight scoping for the perpetrator that was ultimately his broken bones.

Fixing them was excruciatingly painful. It was all Jay could do to keep himself from screaming at the way it felt like she was re-breaking his bones to glue them back together. He could feel them move inside of his body when they were coming into their correct other half. Minutes passed while that orange light scanned over Jay, taking in every small problem he had and using it against itself to create the perfect solution. When the problem was fixed, he was drenched in a cold sweat, his panting rough and hard. He didn't realize he was holding onto the sheets so tightly until the cramp in his hand made it hard for him to let go of them in the joint-locked position. But, as Catherine decreed, Jay was no longer broken.

She'd managed to saw off the casts with her powers, letting him take his arm and leg out of the soggy heat-packer. "Remember, ninja," she waved a finger at him, "you have a duty to protecting the world. But, one thing I must tell you before you go…"

And that was what, now, Jay was trying to fulfill.

His bare feet padded over the cold floors, mute and silent but still lit even when black had sheened the windows at the ends of the hallways. It had never felt so good to be in motion again. He hadn't ever been so struck by how it was easy to take movement for granted, only to realize how much you needed the basic little movements when you weren't allowed to do them anymore. Legs fully working, Jay dashed across the hallway, still clear of medical personnel, although as Catherine said, the hospital was crawling with them and he'd run into one eventually. Jay made sure that his chances of that were slim, and kept to the shadows.

He had asked about Nya before Catherine left him. She had turned to him, and he'd been a little taken aback by how her eyes didn't really react to it, even if he didn't expect much coming from a woman who had no connection to his wife whatsoever. Catherine then relayed the terrible news that Nya was in an evil-induced coma and wouldn't be able to come out unless the Greater Evil keeping her under and sapping her of her energy was destroyed.

The fleeting thought that Jay could end Nya's coma immediately if he took out Catherine did cross his mind. But he didn't have sufficient evidence to prove that Catherine was anything other than what she said she was, so he kept his suspicions inactive. At least until he had proof that she was the Greater Evil.

Jay had gotten angry when Catherine said this thing was keeping Nya asleep so it could feed off of her constant nightmares. "It tried to take you and your friend as well when it inhabited your daughter's body," she'd told him. "But you had stronger will than your wife, so it lazily gave up trying to overcome you."

He was angry. Angry that he'd let it get this far. Nya was in a coma, and the only way she'd come out was if he got rid of the Greater Evil that may or may not have been Catherine. I'll take it out for you, Nya, he thought, protectively curling his thoughts around her sleeping, beautiful face, knowing that every second underneath it she was suffering. He wanted to go to her room right now, lay down beside her, and try to hold her and shove away the nightmares, but Catherine claimed the influence it had over Nya was too strong to be shaken, even by true love. "You can try, but you'd be wasting your time."

"No time is ever wasted when used on Nya," Jay had defended.

"It will be if you try to wake her. Time you could spend getting closer to the Evil…"

Jay crept down the white hallway, the floor stretching on forever in front of him, still finding no signs of any nurses or doctors patrolling the halls. It's late, he thought. They're probably all in the lounge sleeping on the couches until their next round. He turned a corner and jogged in his borrowed hospital scrubs, a teal color that didn't compliment him the way dark blue did. Even if it was hopeless to try and pull Nya out of her coma, Jay was going to see her whether Catherine liked it or not, because he knew that he'd never be able to stay away from her. Not without seeing her. Not without telling her everything he'd learned in the past half-hour. Not without trying to wake her up, no less than once. His love for her would never allow him to walk away and carry out Catherine's 'tip' without looking back, and sorely regretting it.

…

Kai was in a deep sleep when he felt somebody's hand on his forehead. For a moment he didn't know that it was anything but an illusion belonging to his vivid dream, rocking him back and forth through an utterly senseless plot. Dreams usually came bizarrely and left impressions on you with the weirdest aspects of their manifestation, like when you'd think about it later in the day during your waking, and realize some part of the dream that made total sense when you were asleep actually made no sense at all when you were awake. Kai was packed with dreams like that. Dreams that made him question his intelligence when he deliberated over them later through the day. The one he was having during that fateful night, cramped into a hospital bed after a traumatic seizure, was no exception. He couldn't quite understand it himself, locked away inside his own mind that took no mercy in punishing him, but he did know that there were penguins involved in his dream. He couldn't recite to you why.

The cool hand on his forehead did little to wake him. Expected of someone who is too busy dreaming about penguins and corn dogs. Softly it brushed aside the locks of brown hair that had fallen across his face in his slumber, parting them for way of the gentle fingers that slipped over his skin. With each trail of touch it left in its wake, a spell of release was being played like a violin throughout his body. The spell was an old one that had been around as long as the hand that generated it, used to comfort small children with night terrors, or sometimes for adults who still had a fear of the world around them, burdens that stopped a human from becoming at peace with the things they would always be in touch with. Knowing full well that Kai was a man who had things he was being held down by, a man afraid of his own friends and their ensuing shadows, it was a gift to be taking away his fears—letting them chip away and fall into the night, flaking piece by piece and drowning in the soft breeze like the leaves of the sakura. What a shame it was to see a human taken down from his deserved pedestal of triumph, thrown aside to the dirt with his own nightmares to haunt him through the evenings. The angst he had so deeply towards his brethren was reprehensible. Unaccompanied with its large keepsakes of panic attacks, seizures, anxious paroxysms, and the many doctors' appointments he took, the poor man was nothing but a time bomb. If he was let stay this way, he'd lead a life of nothing but fear itself, and eventually it would drive him mad.

While Kai slept through his dream without any knowledge of the affair, the hand stole each of his insecurities and tossed them aside. If he is to rid Ninjago of the Greater Evil, he cannot be so weak. Weakness is what loses the battle. In this time, he needed to be strong, to be fit to fight. This war would not make due for weaklings.

As you can imagine it was Catherine who stilled herself upon his bedside, carefully removing his problems as if she was pulling the string of colorful, tied cloths out of a performer's mouth, the whole lot of it coming out like an endless sequence of horrors. She knew he'd been burdened heavily, but this burdened? How disappointing. He went from "hero to zero," as some say…

At bedside, in a rather ugly maroon cloth chair, a young woman curled herself in sleep in worry for Kai—this was who Catherine presumed to be his wife. She slept with her arms curled on the chair's arm and her face deepened within it, hair falling over her, striking out any more chances to view her face that Catherine might've been able to see. Never mind that, though, for she was not too concerned about seeing the wife. It really was not even on her priorities list.

And after several minutes, the line of fear was finally finished. It exited in the form of a sparky gray line, so similar to the Milky Way in appearance, that Catherine only tangled into a ball of animate inner substance between two palms, then tossed it over her shoulder; the sphere of zappy horror did not simply fall and land elsewhere, however. It hovered over her shoulder until she figured out what to do with it.

Immediately, Catherine could see that Kai's face had relaxed more, turning to ease now that his anxieties were removed from his body, and in his destination of peace was much closer now. She stepped back and admired the brunette's tranquil shoulders, undisturbed breathing now rising and falling comfortably from his lungs. I did well, she thought, holding out her hand and with great Power the ball of gray problem floated to her palm, not touching her but already connected to her wisdom. Now my work is complete. For now.

…

"Ow!"

Jay rubbed his elbow where he'd thunked it on the nearby door frame as he tried to stealthily creep past, but he wasn't exactly the most graceful creature in the world, now was he? He stroked the actually-not-funny bone that started to make him tingle ridiculously. "So much for being quiet," he growled, and continued to walk down the hall.

He found room 105 and stopped at the front of its closed door, hearing the sounds of something moving within. She wanted me to come here and do her that favor, he thought, eyeballing the door through the hallway and turning his head so he could listen to what muffled sounds were rumbling within. Really, the noise was hardly anything—it sounded like somebody was just trying to get comfortable, constantly ruffling the sheets while they tried to get used to their new hell until they healed. The Healing Hell. There. Perfect.

What's inside? Jay wondered, reaching for the door handle. He mysteriously didn't feel afraid of what would be inside, and he didn't know why—usually on missions he took as a ninja, he'd get a little worked up before they entered someplace that had contents unknown. There could be some freaky monster demon in there. This might be proof of whether or not Catherine was trustworthy.

He kept himself on his toes, and counting quickly to three, he turned the handle and shoved to open.

There was a small cry of surprise.

Jay stood in the doorway and frowned. He looked at the bed sheets, all torn and completely rumpled like he supposed, and first thing he noticed was that the bed was filled with a person—also suspected—and that person looked straight at him, dead in the eye, and stayed frozen in fear for a really long time. He took in the head of red hair, the teary hazel eyes, the pale face, and for a moment he hardly recognized the little girl lying in the bed.

But then, he did.

"Natille," Jay breathed, and ran towards her. The little girl made a sound, and when he scooped her up in his arms, Natille's outstretched fingers had never been more prized to lace into the back of his shirt and keep hold. He buried his face into her hair and listened to the sounds of her relieved cries. She whispered his fatherly title again and again. On the floor, he spotted a small, broken arm cast that had been put away when obviously she had been healed from it. Jay held onto Natille's small body in his arm, her little legs around him, and had never been more grateful to anyone at that moment than he had been to Catherine.

(Little did he know his trust was misplaced.)