Do you remember? (A Ninjago Jaya fan fiction)

Chapter 1 - Swimming in blue

Song : The Kid Leroi - without you
Title from the Corrs - Give me a reason

(Narrator's POV)

It was the end of another scorching day in the desert and Jay reluctantly resolved to head back to the trailer where he lived with his parents, as the sun was setting and it was getting too dark to work anyway.

Twenty-two years ago, Ed and Edna Walker had found him at the gate of their junkyard when he was still a baby and Jay had always considered this forsaken spot to be home. It was the place where he had played as a little boy among the piles of spare car parts and discarded electronic devices and where he had learnt everything he knew about mechanics. From an early age, he had experimented with scraps of metal and tools, inventing his first contraptions, unsuccessful wings and unsafe vehicles. His parents had always encouraged him to develop his creativity and this was where he had been at his happiest. It had been so until one day, an old man had challenged him to keep on trying the impossible and he had trusted him. And he had met his brothers and... her.

They had been the extended friends and family he didn't have around him growing up. Through thick and thin, they had stuck together. But now everything had changed. For him it could never be the same.

Slipping out of his dirty grease-stained clothes, he stepped into the wood-slatted outdoor shower at the back of the trailer and turned on the tap. For days on end he had been working from dawn til dusk in the junkyard, helping his dad around and fiddling with his own inventions too. It gave him a purpose and emptied his brains of any interfering consideration.

The cold water poured over his head and instantly cooled down all the fatigue and the tensions in his body. He closed his eyes, wishing it would anaesthetise his mind too.

As he let the chilled liquid down his face, he wondered how long he could hold his breath under the water, maybe a little longer this time. Would it have been so bad if she had not drawn out the water from his lungs after all?

He too would have been one with water then and that was all he could wish for at the moment. Drowning.

He opened his eyes and through his blurred vision, he looked down at his left hand. Water was trickling through his fingers and it felt like life itself was being sucked out of him and swirling down the drain of the shower.

His heart tightened in his chest at the physical memory of her touch on his cheek, like a steaming wound that didn't want to heal. More water started to gather at the brim of his eyelids.

He gathered all the will he had left to shake off the feeling and block out the pain coming up at the surface.  No, he would not yield to the harrowing remembrance of that fateful day again, back on that rooftop. It had spun around in his head and played up in his heart many more times than he could recount.

He needed to stop feeling, he wanted the comfort of numbness, a warm and reassuring embrace in which he could abandon himself. It was all he needed to go on. Go on living without half of his own self. His yang. His all. Without her.  Her name started floating closer to his consciousness but he was determined to keep it at bay. Or he would drown in it. He wouldn't come to the surface this time. He wondered if it would relieve his agony.

He snapped out of this head trip and closed the tap of the shower. As he stepped out of it, he stared at his wet feet and studied the droplets falling down from his body, each one of them unique and resonating in his ears like the ticking of a doomed clock. The wood under his feet took a darker hue, then dried off and seemed untouched, water evaporating fast with the heat of the desert.

Jay grabbed the clean towel hanging out of the shower and dried himself quickly. He slipped into a pair of boxer shorts and a blue tshirt and headed back to the trailer where his parents were waiting for him around supper.

« Jay dearie, dinner's ready, come eat with us ! You must be starving ! » Edna said warmly as she noticed her son entering the trailer.

« Come on son, we were waiting for you. Your mum made all of your favourite ! » Added his father, with as much forced enthusiasm as his wife.

Without throwing a glance at them, Jay waved vaguely in their direction and headed towards his bedroom at the back of the trailer. « Uhm, I'm not hungry, just knackered, I'm off to bed, night ! » Jay said, quite shameful.

But Edna would have none of it and started pleaded with her son: « Jay dearie, you neeeeed to eat, it is no good to skip dinner again like that ! You hardly eat at all those days, remember you're still growing up ! You need your vitamins and your vegetables !" Jay was overwhelmed by a feeling of gratitude mixed with guilt.

He made a halt at the door of his bedroom and slightly turning around, still avoiding his parents' worried gaze, he added with false confidence: "Mum, I'm 22, I don't think I'll grow anymore now, don't worry, I'm tired is all. Night mum! Night dad !"

He slid the door shut behind him and leaned his back against it. He could hear his parents whispering quite loudly in the kitchen – the panels of the trailer were not very thick.

"Ed, it's been six months now ! This is not healthy ! How can we help our poor dear boy..." Edna said with unveiled alarm.

"Edna, my sugarplum we just have to be patient, be here for him, support and love him, give him some space to grieve. Time will work it out... I hope..." Ed answered, sharing his wife's parental concern.

Jay let out a deep breath and focused to keep it together. His parents were right and he knew it, but he couldn't face them and their overwhelming sweetness and care. He would break down and he didn't want to fall down this bottomless pit of despair.

Tonight, the searing wound he carried on his heart was throbbing so loudly that he needed anything to make it stop. He knew it would not be the right thing to do, but he couldn't resist the urge anymore.

He opened the drawer in the nightstand right by his bed and, at the bottom of it, among jumbled bits and bobs, he found his phone - he hadn't switched it on for weeks now - and a white glossy picture, face down. His eyes were burning and, unable to take his gaze away from it, he picked it up and cautiously flipped it over with trembling fingers, as if the image would jump up at his face and attack him.

A younger and grinning version of himself was looking straight at the photographer, in front of the rollercoaster at the Mega Monster Amusement Park. At that moment, he was beaming of happiness and also, admittedly very proud.

And there she was, at his side. She was planting a sweet peck on his cheek. He could perfectly remember that day. It felt like this moment was from another lifetime. He thought she was happy too. Was she really?

He remembered that she had never really found her place among them boys and resented it. From the start, she had needed more and being a ninja didn't fill that ambition quite enough. Her own role, her own creation, just like when she was the Samurai X. She had always regretted giving it up.

Why did she have to go to such length to save him? Did she feel it was her only way to fulfil a greater destiny, not being just the girl ninja, or the girl not fitting right in the boy's club? She chose for herself, as she always longed for. She felt trapped and now she was free. But he was trapped now, in this whirlwind of recollections that were killing him.

Just like every night before, his mind played tricks on him and he reminisced that vision of himself and of her in the ice labyrinth, both older but content together. This was a deceit. It was foolish of him to cling onto it, it didn't really mean anything... Forget it Jay, forget her ! You'd be better off... but it was impossible!

As tears started to well up, he placed the picture back at the bottom of the drawer and slammed it shut, hoping all the ghosts from his past would stay inside too.

He decided to revert to the only thought that kept him alive and even managed to draw a shy smile on his lips. Yes, she was happy now. Happier than she had been all those years. She wanted to find her greater purpose in life and who was he to keep her down?

He loved her with every cell and ever fiber of his body. He had told her so many times. But she never did. He had wanted to be wanted, like he did her. She wanted more. It was better like that.

Now he felt so drained and he yearned to shut it all out. He huddled on his bed with his hands over his heart, hugging himself.

He let the tide of his sorrow overwhelm him and floated into a dreamless, comfortless and cold slumber.