ninjago imagines

hope | kai s., cole b.

Set after S10, but Cole never returns.

TW: Death, depression, crying, funerals.

Cole doesn't survive the fall, and the ninja have to find his body in the wrecks of the building left.

• • • 

They'd survived the fight. 

Barely. 

Lloyd was still recovering from using so much of his power- it sapped all of his strength, so much more worse them them. He'd been insisting on coming along the trip, but was fought down by Pixal and Wu, finally forced to stay home. He could barely stand, let alone walk.

Kai was glad. He didn't want his baby brother to see anything he didn't need too. He couldn't stop Nya from coming, though. He knew she needed to do it just as much as he did. Lloyd still caught them before they left, holding on to Kai's hand.

"Bring him back." They both pretended to ignore how his voice cracked midway though the sentence, making him sound younger than he looked. "Tell him I miss him."

He was younger than he looked, Kai realized. Sometimes it was easy to forget what the Tomorrow's Tea had done. Lloyd didn't deserve all the grief and the pain and the responsibilities, but life had just thrown it at him anyway. None of them did, really.

Lloyd was still waiting for his answer. "Y-yeah, buddy. I will. I'll tell him." Kai promised, forcing a small smile to his face. "We'll be right back, okay? Go rest." Lloyd nodded uneasily, turning to return to his room.

But when Kai took one last look at the monastery from the steps, Lloyd was still at the door. 

Waiting. Hoping. He wondered if it had been as painful waiting for them to return. Keeping hope, staying alive, just waiting one more day after the next.

• • • 

Jay was silent the whole trip. Unlike the normal lighting ninja, who talked so much he'd been nicknamed 'master of blabber.' Cole had been the one to gift him the nickname, bringing it up every chance he had. 

Cole might never call him that again. The realization struck him deep in the heart, and the hurt was different this time. Not the hurt of losing someone, the hurt of not knowing. That might be even worse. Was it what Lloyd and Nya had gone through, waiting for them to come back?

Everyone was silent this trip. Nobody had words to spare in the worry they were all going through. Inside, a part of him was telling himself it would be fine. Cole had survived much worse. They all had.

The worst part was that he'd been the closest to Cole when he fell. He was hanging onto the rope ladder right next to him, and it could have been Jay who fell. Not Cole. He might... he might have preferred that to this. 

He was the one who had to watch his face as he fell, gone into the darkness, and he was the one who would always have to remember that second the rope had broken—

But maybe Cole would appear from the building, a little banged up or bruised, but fine and probably hungry as always. Laughing, maybe, and joking about it—

Nobody survives a fall from a twenty three floor building, his brain interrupted, and Jay shook his head, as if that could clear the depression thoughts echoing in his mind. 

Jay would get him anything he wanted to eat, if he came back. 

Hope can be a cruel thing.

• • •