A/N: Soooo, the idea for this story actually came about after I studied "The Beast in the Jungle" in literature class. I actually read through the story more than once, and the second time around, I substituted Vania for May Bartram, Cole for John Marcher, and Morro for the middle-aged man in the graveyard at the end of the story. When considering this prompt, however, at first, I was at a loss as to how to incorporate it into a one-shot. And then I thought, "Why don't I write a fanfic where Ninjago crosses over with 'Beast' at the very end?" So, that's how this story came about. Hope you enjoy!

Story #10: Splintered

Post-Crystallized; Ninjago crossover with "The Beast in the Jungle" (by Henry James)

writing prompt: reflection; mirrors; death

Summary: Morro has gone to visit his mother's grave in Ninjago City's cemetery. As he wanders the graveyard looking for his mother's tombstone, he can't help but notice the changes in nature (due to the seasons) and in himself (from when he was a ghost to now that he's human again). When he runs across an older man sitting all alone on a raised tombstone, he can't help but sense that the man has lived an unlived life, and casts a glance of pity in his direction. And as he's leaving the cemetery, he can't help but notice when the man, John Marcher, lets out an agonized scream as a dark shape—seen only by Marcher and Morro—takes form in the shape of a crouching panther—a physical manifestation of a splintered, darkened heart.

The air felt bitterly damp and chillingly misty as Morro trod silently through the frigid, lonesome cemetery in which was buried many of Ninjago's own. Though the other Ninja had offered to come with him and help him find the grave for which he sought—the final resting place of his Dracotaur mother—he had graciously refused, saying that he preferred to go alone. Now, however, he was wishing that he had at least asked Lloyd or Nya or Tasha or even Cole to come with him. It sure would have been a lot easier to not feel the shroud of sadness and grief that cloaked the very air of this deceptively peaceful place weighing down heavily on his own shoulders, had he not been all alone, forlorn and lost in his own thoughts, here—had he been accompanied by one of his closest friends.

The broodingly grim sky above was gray with empty, unfulfilled promises of late-autumn snow. The air was nippy and hazily foggy, as if the whole world had been cocooned in a restless cloak of gripping oblivion and perpetual slumber. It had rained last night, and Morro could feel the soggy, rain-drenched, sopping-wet ground squishing slightly under his feet, smudging his thin, ghostly-moonstone-white cloth shoes with black mud, sage-green moss, bits of fallen autumn leaves, and a chilly wetness that made him feel so sleepy and numb that he could barely keep his eyes open.

Overshadowed by the eerie quietness and deafening silence and uncanny stillness that so heavily hung suspended in the very air, the very faint light of cloudy, groggily misty day, he let out a soft, airy yawn, sat down under a red-leafed weeping cherry tree, crisscross-apple-sauced his legs in the lotus position, and leaned his head against the back of the tree, feeling the rough, scaly bark rubbing, slightly prickly and scratchy and needly, against the back of his skull as he let out a long, wistful sigh of woeful melancholy and mind-numbing weariness.

Within moments, he had sunken into a deep, healing slumber, his body sagging sluggishly downward as his Deepstone-weighted eyelids flickered closed and the warm tenderness of much-needed rest and tranquil serenity and peace beckoned him away from the waking world. Slumped there in a tight ball on the ground, he didn't even notice yet another lonely, grieving soul enter the graveyard as silent as a shadow and as sorrowful as a mewling, half-starved alley kitten, or an unwanted puppy who's been kicked and jostled more than once by mean cowards looking only to torment unsuspecting victims.

The air was hollow and echoless when Morro finally woke from his impromptu catnap. Dampness from the air and from the boggy ground had seeped into his thin, threadbare, black-and-green gi and settled in his chest, and when he sucked in a breath, he couldn't help but let out a weak, wheezily ragged cough. He was really going to have to ask Zane for some chicken rice soup when he got back to the Dojo—he could already feel the forebodings of a feverish, crippling cold coming on.

He really wished he'd brought a flannel sweater in this frigid weather—he was starting to get dangerously shivery and shuddery and shakily chilled already. But it was too late for that now, and he still hadn't found his mother's grave. He knew that he simply could not leave until he'd found his mother's grave.

As he sluggishly, languidly scrabbled to his feet, his balance tilted off-kilter and he found himself stumbling backwards into the tree, smacking his head painfully on the trunk once again. Letting out a small, wispy ow under his breath, he regained his footing relatively quickly, as a huge stream of nerve-wracking coughs ripped themselves out his throat, followed by a light, breathy sneeze.

Morro sniffled, rubbing his bitterly cold, itchy nose with one hand as he gazed aimlessly upward at the tree's scraggly, toothed, all but bare boughs scattered with blood-red leaves, their crimson hue rather muted in the wraith-thin sunlight and chilling selkie-silver mist. His limp, water-dredged clothing, still rather bedraggled and disheveled from his excitement in the Desert of Doom back during the Crystal Endgame (which Jay kept calling the Crystacalypse), hung loosely around his scrawny frame (which, despite his best efforts, he'd never really succeeded in putting much flesh or weight on), and his emerald-green eyes were glassy, dull with a slight sage-green undertone and subtle, somber milkiness from the cold and the tiredness seeping into every vein, every joint, every bone and nerve and fiber in his listless, fatigued body…

He could already sense a fever descending upon him, as beads of sweat began breaking out on his forehead, dotting his shaggy, raven-black silky wisps, broken only by his dew-dampened emerald-green hair streak. He was feeling slightly dizzy and lightheaded, but he had to find his mother's grave before he got too sick and snoozy and disoriented to move. Black spots danced erratically in front of his eyes as he trudged onward, searching every tombstone and cross and memorial for his mother's name.

Lunia Yang Windchaser, he kept thinking dazedly to himself. Her name is Lunia Yang Windchaser. Tombstone after tombstone, memorial after memorial, cross after cross, he combed the names and dates of each lost soul—departed yet not forgotten—and vigilantly kept his eyes peeled for that wonderous, mysterious, elusive name.

At one point, he found a gravestone that read, "Child of the Wolves. Found lost in perpetual sleep while taking shelter from a blizzard with a group of feral white wolves. The pack would not leave him even as he was dying. Rest in peace with your faithful friends' loyalty forever pulsing in your heart."

Morro smiled wryly. Jay—the Lightning-Child and Mark-Bearer of the white wolves of Azuka, the one who bore the Mark of the Pack on his right shoulder and could shift into a white wolf at will—would have been more than interested in this one memorial, seeing as he always claimed that wolves were so misunderstood and should be admired rather than feared—a position Morro was always ready to defend. What could he say? He liked wolves. And whoever had written that nasty, blatantly inaccurate tale about the Big Bad Wolf blowing down the houses of the three clueless piglets had definitely needed to get his marbles found and his head put on straight.

Another stone—this one placed in the ground—read, "Evangeline Barry. Our little butterfly, a blessing to us in her short life." Scanning the engraved letters in the stone and looking at the dates, Morro found that Evangeline's little fluttering heart had stopped beating within just a few days of when she had been born—a revelation that brought tears to his eyes as he was reminded anew of how narrow the brevity of life could be.

And then he spotted another memorial just off to his left. This one was marked by a single white angel, her face streaked with wiry black lines reminiscent of tears, her frame clothed in grey lichen and sage-green-and-obsidian-black moss, a sword of pure steel raised in her right hand, glinting slightly in the pale midafternoon sunshine like a tiny kindling flame of light glowing in the darkness of the midnight gloom. The name was obscured by the moss and lichen on the white stone, but there was still an inscription that Morro could make out through the blockage. When he crouched down to read it, he recognized it as a quote from one of Tasha's favorite book series about a young catamount girl who lived in the basement of a great mansion, protecting all its inhabitants from harm with her skills and powers.

"'Our character is defined not in the battles we win or lose,'" he whispered hoarsely, feeling his throat beginning to grow raw and swollen as he shakily finished, "'but by the battles we dare to fight.'" He smiled again. He remembered using that quote many times before. Lloyd had too, and he had to say that it was a wonderful reminder to keep on fighting and doing the next right thing even when all seemed lost and all their efforts felt so hopeless and worthless. And he wondered what battle this person had to have fought in the past, to want this one quote engraved on his tomb. Guessing he would never know, he smiled once more at the inscription and continued on.

As he walked slowly onward, still scanning each and every tomb here, his head began to pound lightly behind his temples, thrumming incessantly in his ears, and he shook his head vigorously, trying to rid himself of the spells of dizziness that continued to batter and jostle his mind like a shabby, fragile cherry blossom being whipped about by a cataclysmic hurricane. The world was dissolving into a kaleidoscopic, warped, grotesquely distorted mass of colors and smells and sounds and haziness, and all of a sudden, he felt his knees buckle under him as he tripped over a rock, sprawling headlong to the ground.

He couldn't go on—he needed a rest. Staggering to his feet, he stumbled over to a mist-shadowed weeping willow tree and sagged downward to the ground once more. Whimpering wolfishly under his breath, he pulled his legs up to his chest, cupped his arms under his knees, and let his aching forehead fall listlessly onto his kneecaps as he felt the shadowy darkness of fever-induced slumber drawing him into its chilling, bony embrace once again.

When Morro woke again, he immediately knew something was wrong. His chest was filled with a tight, dry, white-cold ache reminiscent of when he'd been scarred in the Caves of Despair with the mark of the Cursed Realm—the mark that first drew the Preeminent to him, when she'd lured him into her grasp and dragged him, thrashing and writhing and screaming, into her bleak, desolate, lifeless domain—where all who were cursed with ghostly green never escaped, unless he who cursed them took their place. His ears were flaming white-cold and red-hot alternatingly, and his head had gone from lightly pounding to painfully throbbing like a stampede of skittish colts—like a gong of shattering reverberating in his mind over and over and over again. When he sucked in a breath, he couldn't help but let out a whole slew of ragged, nerve-wracking coughs, hacking and sputtering as he struggled to breathe deeply and evenly. His whole body was shaking with cold, trembling and convulsing and twitching and twinging with sheer, raw, wildly feverish agony and misery, as dizziness and lightheadedness swarmed his mind. He was soaked from head to toe in dampness and wetness from the earth; his vision was swimmingly blurry, his hearing growing dim, his heartbeat slowing sluggishly and listlessly as a numbing wave of deep-seated weakness rippled mercilessly through his veins and turned his nerves to little prickles of frost within him.

He knew he should have brought a hat—or a scarf—or a pair of mittens—or a coat to ward off the cold and damp wetness of the air and the ground, and he groaned deep within himself as it sunk into him how much of a chewing-out he was going to get from Tasha for his carelessness. She might be his girlfriend, but even she wouldn't let him off the hook for making himself sick from mere foolishness. She's going to yank my scruffy wolf-tail for sure! he thought to himself, pulling himself shakily upright, trying to regain his balance and footing.

As he struggled to raise himself up and get back on his feet, he thought back on all that had happened in the day, pondering once again of how different he was now that he had regained his mortality. Several times when he was preparing for the day's affairs in front of the bathroom mirror, he'd feel a slight zinging zap of surprise at seeing his reflection looking back at him. The creaminess of his almond-tone skin—the brightness of his slightly muted emerald-green eyes, no longer sunken within yellow-and-green-ringed sockets—the softness of his silky, wispy raven-black locks, often slightly wind-blown and tousled from his slumber the night before—the lustrous shine of his single emerald-green hair streak, which sometimes appeared to have a luminescence all his own in the darkness of night—the slightly bony skinniness of his fingers—the dimple in his chin—the small spattering of caramel-toned freckles running across the bridge of his nose from all his time in the sunshine and fresh air…

All details that he never, ever wanted to take for granted, seeing as he had once been nothing more than a wraith—a ghoul—a wandering spirit—a lost soul—a husky, burned-out shell—a shadeling—a literal ghost of what he'd once been. He was delighted now that he had taken his chance at revival and rejuvenation while he still could during the Day of the Departed—even though it wasn't exactly the same thing that all the other reawakened villains would have expected from him. And though the Rift of Return had been both petrifyingly frightening and the slightest bit traumatizing (seeing as he had barely made it through at all), he was thankful that it had indeed come in his afterlife and provided a way of escape from the horrors of ghostly existence.

Suddenly, he gasped as he spotted a white graveside tablet out of the corner of his eye. Could it be? Half-running and half-stumbling through a grove of mortuary yews and clustered monuments, he skidded to a stop right underneath a small cluster of weeping willow trees, their dew-laden branches stripped clean of nearly all their white-green fall leaves. The withered grass and shriveled flowers crackled and crunched under his feet as he took two steps forward to get a better look at the inscription. A green-and-black butterfly landed lightly on the apex of the stone, its wings slightly blustery and broken as it crouched there, weak and unable to move anymore. But Morro paid no mind to this dismal motif of pathos and somber despair. He was gazing in wonder at the name inscribed on the marbled-white-and-granite stone in front of him, about waist-high.

Lunia Yang Windchaser.

But then beside it were three other gravestones. None were marked with a death date—and he knew then that no true graves were there—but they were all inscribed with names he knew well.

Kodokana Wisp Yang. His father.

Sylph Mariposa Windchaser. His sister.

And his own—an inscription with but two words. Morro Yang.

These empty graves were meant for his family.

His mother had once thought that her husband, son, and daughter were all dead—though no bodies were ever found.

And in a way, they had been.

Morro's sister Sylph was still locked in a perpetual stasis, slumbering within the folds of the Ethereal Divide.

Morro's father Yang was still a ghost.

And Morro himself had been a ghost as well.

In a zenith of emotion, he felt his lip quiver, twin waterfalls of misty crystalline tears beginning to trickle melancholily down his blanching, pasty, cold-blued cheeks as his hands shook and his body trembled with grief. Crumpling to his knees, he laid his head on his hands on top of the raised tombstone and wept his very heart out.

"Momma…" he breathed sorrowfully, looking up at the heavens with red, puffy eyes, "I don't know if you can hear me—if you can see me—if you know that I'm here—but if you can and you do know, know that I'm alive—alive and well. And don't fret or fear—as long as I have my power, and breath in my body, I'm going to find out how to free Sylph. No matter how long I have to search, no matter what may come, I will bring Sylph back. I promise."

Though the air was tainted with the odor of smoky incense and sickly-sweet sulfur and coppery acridness and earthy charcoal and black mold and rotting dirt and smoldering candle wax and a hint of cloves-and-vanilla, he thought he could just barely sense a humming thrum of energy surging through the grimy, ashen, grainy granite slab his hands were resting on—as if some supernatural force that surpassed the limits of space and time had heard his cry and transferred it to the stars above, or the brilliant shining sun, or the mesmerizing, almost hypnotic rays of full moon's light, and his mother had indeed sensed it and was now smiling sadly yet lovingly down on her long-lost wind-child—her offspring rescued from the piercing darkness of death to walk restored in glorious, penetrating light.

And then he realized something.

He wasn't just Morro Yang.

He was Morro Yang Windchaser.

"I am Morro Yang Windchaser," he whispered to himself, "son of Lunia Yang Windchaser. And from here on out, I will seek to do what I can to carry the fire of my mother's legacy with me for the rest of my life."

Morro Yang Windchaser. A new name for a new life.

Morro Yang Windchaser. An aria of sound, a pulsing note of light, a thrilling chord of joy as crystalline and constant and clarion and cadencing as the heart-song of the stars dancing in the galactic sphere of space, meshed with and woven in the very threads that held the universe together.

I am Morro Yang Windchaser.

Morro Yang Windchaser is me.

The chalice of true illuminating light and fragrant life, sweeter than a honeycomb, scented with myrrh and aloes, rich with pearl-precious spice and robust aroma, had been offered to him, and he had drunk its cordial-draught to the very last drop—and found his shattered heart healed, his broken spirit restored, his wounded core mended, his frightened mind soothed in tenderness and gentle peace.

But even as this epiphany came upon him, he couldn't help but feel a quivering pulse of fear and foreboding fluttering wildly in his heart. Something still wasn't right. He felt cold—and not just cold, but as if the very shadow of death had cast its charms and spells on him, leaving him fearful and petrified, warped and twisted, drowsy and numb, docile and submissive, ready to succumb to its paralyzing embrace and nightmarish darkness for good. His heart began to pound—his haunches raised—his shoulder blades tensed—his muscles stiffened and bulged—every hair on the back of his neck stood straight up as his wolf-keen street-smart instincts kicked into full high alert. The very air was shifting and morphing around him—he thought he heard the sound of someone crying—a banshee scream rang out in his heart, and he screamed in fright, covering his ears and shaking his head vigorously, struggling to dispel the haunting sound from his mind. A blunt, vague sense of darkness on the move cloaked him in despair and fearful panic and woe, as an urgent voice cried out in his heart, his mind, and his core, Beware, wind-child—a splintered heart is right within your midst.

He shook his head, convinced that his fever-stricken mind was playing tricks on him. Then he heard it again. Beware, wind-child—a splintered heart is right within your midst.

A splintered heart? Morro had heard of a splintered heart before, when he was still trapped within the Cursed Realm. It was said that a splintered heart was the scarring mark of a life unlived, of a life distinguished by nothing but a void of emotionless, mindless blindness of the mind. A splintered heart always resulted in a hollow existence, an empty survival of trials unknown, a spending of time within the universe's expanse that was destined to be in vain. It was a dire condition, a loathsome disease for which Morro knew no cure. And just thinking that there could be one here, in this very graveyard, was enough to make his stomach ball into twisted knots and his skin crawl with miniscule, chilly goosebumps.

Beware, wind-child. Beware. The splintered heart is near, the voice whispered again. A wolfish whimper of lingering fear emanated from Morro's lips, and a shiver curled mirthlessly up his knobby spine as his eyes darted worriedly around the garden, searching for any sign of danger or darkness obscured from sight or sound.

It was then that he was reminded of his ill condition when he suddenly let loose a huge sneeze. A gusty, blustery shockwave of pure Wind Power burst out of his chest, causing every tree within a three-mile radius to vibrate and recoil from its throes, creaking and groaning, and every bird to fly away in instinctive terror that the world was coming to a dark and gruesome end. The wind began to howl and scream and shriek and wail and caterwaul all around him, whipping and whirling cataclysmically through the greyness of the dawning evening and oncoming twilight as Morro, distraught, bewildered, and frightened, turned on his heel and fled the clearing, scurrying to the top of a tree to see what was happening.

The graveyard itself seemed to screech and recoil in horror with him, the winds beating around the tree, battering the leaves with such vortex-like force that all the branches rattled and shook. Booming bells seemed to toll and bong out of nowhere, and Morro feared the worst. But then he realized that the air was growing quiet again.

Too quiet.

Shimmying back down the tree, he glanced around hurriedly, hoping no one had seen his frantic flight from nothingness and supposed doom. To his utter mortification, however, someone had. A middle-aged man with a grey beard and short salt-and-pepper hair, sitting contemplatively and calmly on a raised gravestone, staring off into endless space, as if lost in his own thoughts and own world. Yet though he appeared calm on the outside, Morro didn't feel any calm inside.

From what Morro could sense with his uncanny lingering connection to the supernatural, the man had lost someone very close to him—his best friend, May Bartram—not more than a year before. Morro didn't know whether May had drowned in the catastrophic attack of Wojira upon Ninjago City, or whether she had died through other means. The wind-child could sense, though, that there was a muted despairing grief buried deep within the man's heart, way down deep inside his core. It only throbbed just now, but with the simplest touch, it could very well begin to bleed.

The wind-child wasn't sure whether the splintered heart belonged to this man or to someone else, but he wasn't about to take any chances. He'd done what he'd come to do—and now it was high time that he be getting back home. He'd have enough of a chewing-out to deal with without compounding it by being out after dark. The Ninja had a strict curfew nowadays when not on patrol, and Morro wasn't about to push the boundaries of that—not tonight, anyway.

Slowly and solemnly, stifling a cough every now and again, he trudged his way towards the gate that bordered the cemetery grounds, casting a loving glance back at the clearing where his mother lay in perpetual slumber, awaiting the day when she'd be reunited with her kin once more. But as he passed the man, something within him cried out in panic. His neck cricked as his head shot straight up, and his pupils narrowed before dilating, growing larger and larger by the moment.

He sensed the man—but more than that, he sensed the man's unlived life.

An unlived life…

A splintered heart?

How should he respond?

What should he do?

What could he do? He didn't know this man's story or background. He didn't even know the man's name. And yet…

Slowly, he turned around and gazed deeply into the man's dim, hazel-brown eyes, his own emerald-green eyes wet with lingering tears as he just stood there, looking at his inadvertent comrade with a look of sheer, unrestrained pity and despair. The man did not respond—not at first. He just stared at Morro and blinked in great confusion and dismay, as if he saw something in Morro that he didn't have in himself. Then Morro turned around again and began to leave the graveyard, not looking back once.

A beat of silence passed—a spell of stillness, and then…

A sheer, ear-splitting, mind-piercing scream of great despair and guilt as the ground began to tremble and vibrate with the rumblings of fear and pain.

Morro was outside the gate now, and he whirled around so fast his chest tightened, and he let out yet another sickening wheezy, wincing cough. Clutching the iron bars of the tall iron fence so fiercely his knuckles went a ghostly pale, Morro stopped and stared in horror as the man began to shake and convulse, screaming and crying and sobbing his very heart out. "MAY!" the man breathily shrieked. "MAY! OH, MAY! You saw it! You saw what I did not—what I was waiting for! And I MISSED IT!"

Then something even more bizarre and frightening happened. As Morro watched, too confused and distraught and frozen in fear to move, there was a stir in the air, and a shadow began to take form, as if a beast in the jungle was coming straight towards the man, still shrieking and howling in despair and grieving guilt. There was a soft tick-tick-ticking sound, a low raspy hiss, and a hot breath on the back of Morro's neck as he watched, feet rooted to the ground, hands stiff and numb as they clutched the bars, lip quivering as his whole body quaked and trembled. The shadow began to change shape, until it was in the hideous, grotesque, near-solid form of—oh, no!—a black panther.

A black panther.

It was crouched on the ground, ready to spring, ready to pounce, ready to kill. But even worse than that was the realization that this—this—was not just a black cat.

It was a physical manifestation of the man's splintered heart.

He'd lost his chance—he'd lost the light.

Not sticking around long enough to see the man, in a flurry of fright and desperate action, fling himself face down on the tomb, Morro scrambled away as fast as he could, scurrying home like a shy, scampering squirrel as swiftly as his legs could carry him. He could not bear to watch what happened next, and when he finally burst through the door to the Dojo, he was so exhausted and frightened that when Tasha was about to scold him for being so late, he too, dead tired and fearful beyond his wits, crumpled to his knees, fainting dead away into a long, dreamless sleep—a healing slumber in which the splintered heart would not dare to touch him.