Your Mistakes Are Yours to Keep (BEING REVISED & REPUBLISHED)

CHAPTER THREE

This fic is quite OOC and not canon compliant. If anyone on this site is reading this, comments and criticism is always appreciated :D

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Jay's eyes fluttered open. The winter sun was peeking through his blinds and left a ray stranded on the curves of his pale face. The blue ninja groaned and rubbed his eye with the palm of his hand. It wasn't until he fully opened his eyes to observe his surroundings that he found Nya sprawled on top of him, fast asleep.

He bit back his surprise and lay still. If he moved he would probably wake her up. Instead, he hesitantly decided to play with a piece of her hair and process the dream he just had and ignore that the girl who he let die was snuggled up to him as if it never happened.

He had dreamt. It wasn't necessarily a nightmare. It wasn't a memory either; not one that he could remember. He pondered his dream and tried to collect his thoughts. He did dislocate his arm, he did scrub the ship while upside down and he did get pushed into a cramped cell. His thoughts were concerns he did have, but he wasn't sure if the conversation he had with Clancee actually happened. He couldn't recall the conversation he had with the serpent, either.

He frowned and tried to pinpoint exactly where that memory came from. That was his first day on the Misfortune's Keep. Those were bits and pieces of memory stitched together. That was before everything got undoubtedly worse.

Jay pinched the bride of his nose tightly. Now was not the time to think about it. He got up and made sure that Nya was still asleep. To his surprise, she was still out by the time he was able to move her off of him.

He got up and cracked his back and sighed as the pressure in his back subdued. He returned to his pattern of pacing back and forth in front of his bed in thought. He walked to the one side, turned around on his heel and walked back to the other side mindlessly just to repeat the same steps again and again. He tried to think of anything else than the damn Misfortune's Keep and Nadakhan. Fucking Nadakhan. Anything besides feeling ill because HE was why Nya died. He made a tight fist until his knuckles turned white and his nails penetrated a thin layer of skin. He felt numb and he just couldn't stop thinking about it.

The hair on his neck stood up and his stomach dropped when he heard a swishing noise behind him. He jerked and spun around to see that it was just Nya, who was fast asleep. She just moved in her sleep. He exhaled a sigh of relief. He was too on edge as of recent. He was more easily startled than his ninja self usually was.

He sneaked back to his bed to grab his phone, which was laying on his bedside table to check the time. Seven in the morning. It was seven in the morning and he actually slept for more than three hours during the night for once. This was good, he reassured himself. Everyone would be getting breakfast in an hour.

Oh right, breakfast. He promised Lloyd he would come to breakfast. Usually, Jay would lie in bed all day distracting himself with hour-long youtube documentaries containing useless information about FSM knows what. He tried catching up on the sleep he was missing. Hours blurred together and he would have no concept of time until Cole would come and see him every afternoon after training.

Cole was a good friend, Jay realised. He has to appreciate his friend more. Cole didn't ask him why exactly he stopped coming to training or why he was always tired but rather, offered conversation. They would talk and Jay would ramble on about the documentaries he would watch and Cole would listen.

Jay decided to take a shower. He convinced himself that he was coping well and that he would go back to his normal routine soon. He was just dealing with emotions. Guilt, shame, general anxiety. He was fine. However, he found himself starting to struggle to do look after himself. Showering and making himself look presentable felt more challenging. Getting out of bed was difficult. This made him second guess how fine he actually was.