There is a part of Cole that wanders when his loved ones die. It takes him thousands of miles away, up mountains, beyond seas, to places where he can meet everyone he's lost.

There, he forgets the absence they left behind in his heart, because there, it doesn't exist.


He spends most of his mother's funeral daydreaming, which gets him a stern look from his father more than once when well wishers speak to Cole and are met with distracted silence. Cole tries—tries, really—to keep his mind rooted in place, to cherish the last moments he will spend in the same place as his mother, but his daydream is so much nicer.

For one thing, in his daydream, the afternoon sun isn't shining so hot that it's making him sweat in his nicest jacket. He isn't even wearing a jacket in his daydream (the jacket was something his father picked out; he got mad when Cole complained that it itched).

In his daydream, Cole crawls under his mother's arms, just as he used to, and curls into her side. His mother puts her arms around him and squeezes all the air out of him, and she isn't coughing, she isn't weak, like in her last months. She's healthy and strong, and Cole feels safe.

Cole inhales and smells flowers. His mother always smelled of flowers.

(Cole still has a bottle of one of her perfumes somewhere, having made sure to keep it safe, always.)

They are outside because his mother loved to hike. She used to take Cole to all kinds of parks and hiking trips as a kid, showing him scenes that she would seek out in her youth, being an explorer herself. When Cole was really little, she would lift him high and rest him on her shoulders, and Cole felt like nothing would ever topple him from his perch.

It's a feeling he's strived to replicate ever since, in all his climbs.

A hand on Cole's shoulder reminds him to be in the present as the service concludes, but Cole can't escape his daydream, dissatisfied with his reality. The reality is dark, despite the bright sun shining over them, and while his mother is technically here, she is not here like she is in Cole's daydream.

In Cole's daydreams, his mother laughs. She is everything that Cole remembers, and most importantly, she's there.

So Cole wanders through his daydreams, seeking the connection he lost with her absence.

He seeks it hundreds of times. He climbs mountains, looking for his mother. He doesn't expect to see her, of course. But he looks for views that she would have enjoyed, rocks she would have pointed out.

"You see that black stuff crusted on top of those peaks there?" Cole remembers his mother saying on one trip.

He remembers this when he's climbing older, smaller mountains than he's used to, mountains older than most of Ninjago.

While not in the same place, it was on these types of mountains that his mother pointed out the xenoliths.

"What are those?" Cole asked at the time, staring at where his mother's finger landed.

"They're rocks imbedded in other rocks," his mother explained, "They were formed long ago by magma spewing up from pipes in the earth. As the lava cools, it forms what's known as igneous rock, and this sometimes encases other rocks in it."

His mother knew everything, or so Cole believed.

Cole keeps climbing. It is difficult to sit at home, where except for photos and personal items that his father keeps around, his mother starts to disappear. Cole wanders every day, almost.

Eventually, Cole climbs and forgets what he's looking for, but he reaches the top of whatever mountain he's on that day and looks over the world. Only at the top does he feel like he's conquered his grief, if just for that day.


When Zane dies, Cole wanders again. It is different from his mother.

Zane was a wanderer himself in many ways, prone to traveling alone and infamous for his dead-eyed stare as his mind raced away from the rest of the team. Cole never asked where Zane would go when his gaze clearly showed that he was thinking of something else, but he always affectionately called it, "Planet Zane."

"Hello, can you come down from Planet Zane, please?" said Cole, and Zane would blink and smile.

Cole now sits on the limb of a towering pine, chewing through a miserable sandwich and wondering what Zane thought about trees. After Zane died, Cole searched for him in places around the Bounty, but it was remarkable how fast Zane disappeared.

Zane would always be there, in some ways, but his presence was gone. The last of his laundry was cleaned and put away; the smell of the incense he burned faded with time, and with it, Zane.

The rest of the team was quick to follow, though they left one by one.

Cole took himself north, looking for Zane. He works in a forest that's not nearly as far north as where Zane once lived and traveled, but the climate is close enough that Cole thinks he can see Zane.

Not physically, but in other things.

Today, he looks carefully at the trees he's downing. He knows that Zane thought about trees, but he wonders whether Zane liked them enough to disprove of the lumber company's removal of several acres of forest.

He tries to gather an opinion on one way or the other and recalls a conversation he almost forgot that he had with Zane.

"I've got a rash on me that itches worse than anything," Cole said, scratching at his neck and face.

They were gathering firewood, and Cole trekked through particularly dense thickets to get his supply (the largest of the team, he was proud to say).

"I told you not to wander through those cedars," said Zane, with a stern expression that rivaled most teachers', including Wu's. "You must have picked up an irritant. It happens."

"Not to me," said Cole, "I've practically lived outside in the past, and this didn't happen before."

"That doesn't mean it won't happen. Lots of trees can cause rashes, but this one is a common culprit," —Zane pointed to the red cedar branches that Cole snagged for kindling— "and the reason for yours, I'd say. That is an opinion, though. Just try not to scratch."

Cole stared at him, scratching away. "How do you know so much about this stuff?"

"I know everything," was Zane's cheeky reply. Then with a smile, he said, "Did you know that red cedar was once used as the wood in pencils? The industry stopped after resources were depleted and switched to a different wood. You can imagine how nice the older pencils must have smelled."

The memory stops there, and with that, Cole gets his answer.

Zane doesn't mind when people use resources to fit their needs, but ever thoughtful, Zane would place a caveat reminding people not to take too much of the resources available to them. The land takes care of its people, but it is important for the people to take care of the land, too.

Cole smiles, relieved to have found something to connect with Zane for the day. He finishes the rest of his sandwich and goes back to work. While his heart is lighter, it grows heavy again by the time the next morning arrives.

But it is okay, because Cole goes back to work, back to the woods, and he lets himself wander.


When Wu is lost in time, Cole thinks he loses his mind in the search.

Each new lead takes Cole to all kinds of places, both which he or the rest of the team have seen before and places that he's never seen. It drives him mad, because it feels too much like wandering after grief.

And Cole isn't grieving because the person he's searching for isn't dead.

He can't grieve someone who isn't dead, right?

"Hey, Cole?"

Another difference. Cole wanders alone in his grief, but Jay decided to join Cole in his searches, making this impossible to be like Cole's grief searches. Cole looks up over the tiny campfire he put together earlier and sees Jay staring at him, narrow face pinched in concern.

"What?" asks Cole.

"You okay?"

"Yeah?" says Cole, all casual, or so he hopes, "Why?"

"You're just—" Jay waves his hand around, doing a funny little dance with his fingers that Cole doesn't care for, to put it lightly, "—I don't know."

"What?" says Cole, and he has no idea where the heat in his tone comes from.

"You seem…distant," says Jay, and he looks down, wiggling his toes in his boots.

They camp on a low foothill before the Alps, and no, Cole isn't climbing another mountain because he wanders. He climbs because he's certain Wu is at the top of this one.

Even if Wu wasn't at the top of the last one, or the one before that, or the one before that, or the—

They weren't always mountains, but they might as well have been.

"Did you say something?" says Cole.

He feels guilty, if so. Jay hates feeling ignored, and Cole tries not to ignore Jay when it matters.

"No, I didn't."

Cole's shoulders have only just started to sag in relief before Jay continues.

"But you get this look in your eyes every now and then," says Jay, "I see it so often. I wanted to ask. It's like you're all by yourself somewhere, and I'm left here."

"I'm sorry," says Cole, and he looks down at the fire.

What else can he say?

Jay shrugs. "It's alright, but I wonder…where do you go? Are you thinking about Wu?"

Cole hesitates. It's personal, his wanderings. The reasons he does it are personal, and what he finds in his wanderings are personal, too.

Except—

This can't be one of Cole's wanderings, because Jay is here, too, although Jay just said that he's left behind as Cole's traitorous mind travels elsewhere.

Cole debates it, thoughts twisting until they make his head hurt. It is but isn't the same, since Jay is here. Jay can understand at least a little of it, and Cole stops the debate with that thought.

"Not always," Cole says, "I do think about Wu, but I think about a lot of things."

Like what Wu taught him, how important Wu was in giving Cole a stable (more or less) environment to learn and grow in during the turbulent years after Cole's mother died. Cole climbs the mountains and remembers the flavor of tea Wu was drinking when Cole met him for the first time.

Without fail, Cole thinks he catches a whiff of the brew on the breeze whenever he and Jay reach a particularly tall peak.

Maybe this time, Wu really will be at the top, waiting in the temple on the other side of this mountain.

Jay interrupts his musings, proving that Cole wandered again, when he says, "Do you think we are ever going to find him?"

That grounds Cole quickly, and he casts a sharp glare in Jay's direction. Used to it by now, Jay doesn't flinch. He stares solemnly back, and for some reason, Cole's stomach flips at the strange darkness in Jay's normally sparkling eyes.

"Of course we are going to find him," says Cole, "This is the most solid lead we've had in a while."

"What if it's another dead end?"

"We'll keep looking."

"We can't—" Jay falters momentarily when Cole's stare hardens, but he continues, "We can't keep looking forever, Cole. At some point, we'll have to accept that we might not find him."

The silence that follows this statement is colder than the mountain air creeping over them as night settles. Cole stares at Jay, unable to believe his ears.

"What brought this on?" asks Cole, then he says, "Why would you agree to come with me if you weren't prepared to look forever?"

"No one can look forever," says Jay.

Cole barks a laugh. Cole can look forever, and he will. It is what Wu deserves; what all Cole's loved ones deserve. That is a consequence of knowing Cole, he supposes. When Cole loves someone, he loves them enough to climb mountains every day for the rest of his life.

"I will search forever if I have to," says Cole, "even if it's just to find out that he's dead. I will find out what happened to him. I thought you knew that."

"I did—do," says Jay, and he brings his hands to his eyes, "I'm tired, Cole. We should have found something by now. At least something. But we've been searching and searching, and we've got nothing but dead ends and sore feet. Where does it end?"

"It never ends," says Cole, before he can think.

Jay takes his hands away, giving Cole an odd look.

Cole doesn't know what to do under the scrutiny, and shrugs nervously. "It doesn't end. Not for me."

Cole keeps looking. Cole wanders, searching for a connection that once led to another person, be it his mother, his friends, or his teacher. That connection is no longer physical, so Cole finds it in memories and other things.

Even if it's just finding something that he knows his loved one would have liked, that is something that keeps him going on, making the absence smart a little less.

"I'm tired too," Cole says, "but I have to keep looking."

Jay is quiet, a strange sadness in his eyes as he says, "Aren't you scared that you're going to lose yourself?"

Cole wants to say no, and almost does, but he thinks about it for a while.

He thinks about it all the way until he and Jay have settled into their tent, tucked in and rolled over in their sleeping bags.

He knows Jay isn't asleep, accustomed to the sound of his friend's snores, so he says, quietly, "I don't expect you to understand, but this is all I've ever known how to do."

He feels Jay roll over, but Cole stubbornly remains on his side, staring at the wall of the tent.

"I've always liked climbing," Cole says, "but—when I lost my—my mom, and then others. That was how I coped. I would go out looking for things. Sometimes I didn't even know what I was looking for, but I kept going. It's how I deal."

Jay doesn't respond right away. "I understand, Cole. But we might need to start thinking realistically about this."

"I don't want to do that right now," says Cole, voice hard.

Jay drops the subject.

Cole waits for him to pick up the conversation again, but Jay remains quiet.

So Cole says, "Is it possible to mourn someone who isn't dead?"

Jay answers immediately, "Yeah."

"How?"

"You can mourn who they were, or who they've become," says Jay, "but I think what you're mourning is Wu's absence. And now you're trying to fill it."

"But that's what we're supposed to do," says Cole, wanting to believe it, "We're supposed to look for him."

"I know," says Jay, "but I think we might be doing something as fruitless as trying to raise the dead."

Cole's fist clenches. "If you want to quit—"

"I'm going to stick with you, Cole," says Jay, and he takes a deep breath before he says, "but I want you to know that I—I'll be staying so you don't get lost."

Not because he thinks they'll find Wu. Cole respects his honesty, at the very least.

"We'll find him," says Cole, "Wait and see. When we reach that temple…"

Cole doesn't finish. He doesn't know what comes after. He'll find something, certainly. If just for that day.


Thank you for reading!