Content warnings: Depression (serious depression talk, it has the potential to be cathartic or triggering, so do what's best for you), discussions of death, existential themes.

Alternatively titled What You Still Are (If I Still Am).

"Cole," Zane pipes up from the doorway, too high pitched, voice all awkward and squeaked. It's weird, the way he can do things like that, the things his dad chose to build in. The things his still less-human rebuild kept even if he didn't even consciously choose them. It was really inconvenient right now, Cole's head snapping up away from his lap like he had been caught.

Silence hangs between them for a minute.

Zane is starting to feel stupid about the reason he came down here. But Cole is watching him, expecting something, and if he doesn't say something, it'll seem like maybe he was playing some joke. Or maybe he just came here to say 'come upstairs,' and chickened out when he saw how pathetic and depressed Cole really was. "…You just have more gears."

That's not what he expected at all. Cole swallows, hard.

"I'm sorry, if it isn't-"

"No. Zane, it's fine." It's Zane's turn to gulp, if he could.

Cole doesn't use as much body language nowadays, so Zane has to guess.

Finally, when he fails to guess, Cole pats the spot on the bed next to him. Zane comes to sit. He reaches, very slowly, to place a hand on Cole's back…

"Don't."

Okay.

"…Do you really think so?" Cole continues, scared, and quiet, and small. It's terrible, but Zane can only feel terrified and small in response, because he should know better what he's doing, he should give Cole an answer.

Zane picks at the sheets on the edge of the bed. "I don't remember everything about feeling dead," he begins, and Cole cuts him off-

"Oh no, Zane, I haven't even been thinking-"

Zane shakes his head firmly, it's okay. "You're human. I think because of that, these things are, while having their similarities, fundamentally different.

"But I do remember when I stopped, as far as I was aware, being human. It was you who reminded me that the- material… that I am constructed from… means nothing about who I am." He looks up at his friend. "You're still the same Cole. You've just got more- translucence."

"What?"

"Translucence, the ability to be seen through."

"Oh."

Before he became a ghost, Cole could- even at his most stoic, early days among the ninja- be relied upon for at least some kind of body language. Implications. Something. Even before they had bonded, Zane could do something wrong around him and sense that he had failed a friendship test. Those days felt far-off, but they're relevant, because- they illustrate that there is something so definitely new and jarring, about Cole's silences being inscrutable. Zane doesn't know what this one means.

He doesn't know how to fix it, for a long while. Excruciating seconds tick by, and then Cole sighs next to him, posture deflating even worse than before. "...You really think that, Zane?"

"Do I really think that your form means nothing about who you are?"

"Do you really think I'm… still the same Cole."

That's an easier question, but Zane has to recover from the words that have just left his own mouth. Does he really believe your form means nothing about who you are? He's the Titanium Ninja.

He shakes himself out of it. "I do. One exhibiting signs of depression, for sure."

Cole would roll his shoulders or roll his eyes or something, if he was alive, but he doesn't right now. That's okay. Zane doesn't need him to; it's just a notable change and so he can't stop noticing it. "Maybe you got me. Would you call it depression, Zane? When we found you? In- in your dad's workshop, when you found out you were a nindroid."

"I think it could have been, if a good friend had not snapped me out of it very quickly," Zane answers, in the voice where all of his words sound calculated, and so Cole, who has known him this long, knows it's the opposite- that this is what Zane sounds like at his most unabashedly honest. It's the kind of honesty humans are bad at. Or maybe just people who aren't like Zane. Cole had had a classmate once who he'd laughed off for all the same reasons. But Cole knows him now, and Zane at his most honest will never stop being…. refreshing. Unpleasant slap in the face right now, but a pinch that makes him feel more alive, like the things and moments around him are real even if he still feels separated from them by some thick glass wall.

It's a hard moment to process. Like, he might be able to cry right now, but he's not fixed, and he'll go back to being depressed and distant and not knowing how to fix it before the hour is over. Wouldn't it be better to not come into vaguely living contact with the emotions right now if they'll just drift from them again? Doesn't it suck that now, everything's the same, but he knows they're there?

Zane just continues, which doesn't give Cole time to process this. It feels like a robbery. It's not like it's Zane's fault, he hasn't communicated anything to let him know to stop. "I remember that Kai and Jay didn't know how to react at the time, and you didn't either, but you stammered out the clumsiest words I have ever heard, and they worked. I didn't realize them at the time. I think it mattered to me to be human without having picked apart what human means. I won't be offended if you care about being human!" He interjects, just to make sure. But he continues, wisdom in his voice, "But I think we all care more about having Cole."

"Yeah, uh…"

Cole lets out a heavy sigh, dropping onto his back.

"I don't know, Zane. I don't know if I can just do that. I'm not here. I'm dead. I don't sleep anymore, I just lie down, and get used to the fact that I don't hear my heart beating."

"I find it helps to use the training course."

"For… that? No offense Zane, but you never had a heart."

"No, but I do now have fewer gears."

"Oh." Cole blinks at the ceiling- again, without energy for his words to be imbued with meaning one way or the other. "Huh."

"We've been trading your nights to cook," this isn't true, Zane has been taking all of them, but no one minds that in the slightest, least of all Zane, "but I am really curious about that chili recipe you used to make."

"What, as a prank?"

"Yes. As a prank."

"…"

"…"

"…Yeah, uh. Okay. Maybe I'll give it to you tomorrow. Can you ask then?" I'm really tired, sorry for not trying more, is what this means, and Zane gets that, so he stands up.

There's nothing else exchanged between them until Zane pauses at the doorway, and he knows he's ruining a perfect conclusion. "Cole-"

"Mm?"

"I haven't felt like you've gone anywhere."

The quiet from Cole's bed remains inscrutable, worse now that all Zane can see from here are his legs. "…Thanks."