angels - a ninjago fanfiction [complete]

nineteen · completely alone

COLE

They're coming.

They're coming.

Cole was running. Something was chasing him. Ahead, he could see his friends on a white cloud, shouting for him to hurry.

Cole! Cole! Grab my hand! Lloyd screamed, nearly falling off the cloud that was pulling them away.

Look out! Jay shrieked.

They're coming, they're coming, they're right behind you, we are not leaving you behind! Keep running! Kai sounded terrified, which made him scared as well.

Nya was crying and kept yelling someone's name, but it wasn't his. It looked like she was yelling Aaron repeatedly. She then yelled to Cole, Please don't leave us!

Zane's metallic voice was strained with fear as he cried No!

Something came up from behind Cole and grabbed him around the waist and dragged him backwards. He shouted and clawed at the black tendrils around his chest, slowly suffocating him, but they refused to loosen.

The whole team screamed as if they had all been stabbed as was pulled into darkness.

Away from the cloud.

Away from freedom.

Away from his family.

He couldn't see anything, but he heard their cries. They echoed in his ears, resonating in his skull, driving fear into his heart until they became a growl that seemed to break the world into a thousand pieces never to be put back together.

Cole jerked awake with a yell. His hair was plastered to his forehead and he felt hot and sticky all over.

It was just a dream.

He threw off his covers and sat up, smearing stray trails of water from his eyes, and looked around the bunkroom. For a second, he panicked, not hearing Kai muttering in his sleep or Jay's soft snores or the shuffle of blankets or the quiet whirr coming from Zane, who would stay with them even though he didn't need to sleep.

Then he remembered.

They were gone.

Except for Lloyd. Lloyd was still there, sleeping peacefully in his bunk. He hadn't left yet.

This reassured Cole for a second, and then something else made his blood run cold. Not wanting to believe it, he held his breath for a second, waiting for Lloyd's quiet, steady breaths, but they never came.

No.

He nearly ripped the blinds as he tore them open, the golden morning rays starting to turn the sky blue. Light spilled onto the wooden floors and over the neatly made beds--neatly made, except for one. The green comforter was bunched up at the foot of the bed and the pillow was squished into the wall. There was nobody in it.

Lloyd wasn't there.

Painfully, Cole was reminded of what happened to Zane and Pixal- vanishing in the night only to be found in the morning. He tripped at the doorway and nearly crashed into the railing on the bridge as he ran outside. Lloyd was nowhere to be seen.

He saw something red and black smeared over the side of the ship and ran towards it, dreading what it was. The red was dried blood, causing Cole's heart to sink further. The black substance was strangely glittering purple. As he approached it, his head started spinning and he started feeling strange. Knowing this wasn't right, he backed up to inspect it from a distance, his heart racing.

There was a subconscious feeling at the back of his mind telling him that he'd seen the black slime somewhere before but he couldn't recall the name of it. He did know that it wasn't a good thing. It was definitely not a good thing.

Lloyd wasn't anywhere on the Destiny's Bounty. The water started to glitter in the sunrise as Cole looked over the railing (far from the strange substance), down at the sea below them. They were not too far from the land and were still traveling. What if Lloyd fell off?

His hands were shaking as he sprinted to the console. He lowered the anchor, the metal splashing into the sea, then rapidly tried to open up the security cameras. "Come on, come on, hurry up, please, I don't have much time," he yelled at the holographic screen.

"There!" he shouted to nobody as it loaded.

4 am.

Lloyd was leaning over the rail, staring out into the horizon.

Cole watched the whole thing through, each blow to his brother a blow to himself. It hurt to watch, but he forced himself to do it. If I was actually there, I would have stood by his side the entire time and fought with him. This is the least I can do for him.

---

Less than an hour later, he limply batted the PAUSE button and slumped down.

Lloyd is dead.

Lloyd is dead.

Lloyd is dead.

Lloyd is dead, and I did nothing about it.

He didn't know how long he sat there, drawing his knees to his chest as he pressed his back against the Bounty's console. For a good while he just silently cried into his hands-- something that he never did. He was always the strong one, the one who toughed it out and pushed through. But now, who was he putting that charade up for?

Cole didn't want to accept it was real but at the same time he knew it was. It took a lot of willpower to not wake Wu, knowing that once he got up his first question would be Where's Lloyd? He didn't know if he could give him an answer.

---

It turned out that Cole stayed on the deck for hours.

A while after watching the security tapes he had gotten up and moved to sit against the mast, away from the black Dark Matter whose identity he had discovered too late. He could see the photos of the others on the bridge so he sat against the mast, refusing to eat, sleep, or drink.

For a while Wu sat next to him, trying to get him to talk, but it was like Cole had shut down. With the others gone, he was no longer himself. Whenever he thought he managed to dodge one stone in life, the universe chucked a bigger one at his head. A person could only take so much.

He missed Jay's laugh, the way he snorted when he was trying to not giggle at his own joke. He missed Zane's innocent obliviousness and how he was glad that Cole was a party pooper. He missed how Pixal could beat the entire team in hand-to-hand combat. He missed how Nya played the best pranks on the others and got first place over everyone in video games even though she claimed they were for 'brainless animals'. He missed how Kai would swear like a sailor when the others beat him in anything. He missed how Lloyd still stole candy from the kitchens and how nobody would stop him, letting him be a child when the world didn't let him.

Most of all, he missed the team being together. Now there was no team.

The sun dipped below the horizon and already Cole could spot some stars coming out. He wondered if his friends were watching him. If they were, what would they tell him? If he could speak to them, he would tell them he was sorry. That really, it was his fault that Lloyd joined them, and that he deserved to be there. He didn't deserve to be alive.

It was back to what it used to be like-- just Wu and Cole. Only now, he had a family that had come and gone, leaving an irreplaceable hole in his heart.