Chapter Text
They say you’ve drowned when you no longer see bubbles floating towards the top of the water. And there were stages of drowning, just like there were stages of grief.
When you first hit the water, it’s shock. Your body hits the cold liquid and your mind lags behind as it tries to process the sudden change of temperature.
It’s similar when you first lose someone. Shock enters your system as a way of protecting you from immediate pain.
Then follows the strong emotions - with drowning, it’s panic as you become a tangle of thrashing limbs, fighting and clawing at the water to try to get to the top. With grief, the strong emotion is usually anger - lashing out at anything and anyone to cover up the pain inside. Though not the same, anger feels desperate in the way panic does.
The next stage is bargaining…begging. When someone dies, you beg God to bring them back, you say that you’ll do anything, including forfeit your own life if it meant you didn’t have to live without that person. With drowning it happens in the moment you realize you can’t get out of this in your own strength. You’re sinking deeper and deeper, the water is burning your lungs and you can’t breathe - so you pray for God to save you, you say say that if He saves you, you’ll do anything to pay Him back.
Depression is next. In grief, it’s obvious and slow and monotonous. You’ve had enough of the pain and the brokenness and the desperation and the deep ache. You let yourself go numb. Nothing matters anymore. With drowning, it happens fast and it combines with the last stage - acceptance. It’s a dull dread as the panic subsides, there’s still fear hidden beneath but it numbs away as your mind begins to lose consciousness.
Finally, it’s acceptance. Kai never made it to that stage with grief. In fact, with drowning he didn’t feel any of the stages at all. It was hard to feel anything when you brought the water upon yourself.
There was roaring and swishing as a black-clad arm cut through the water. The hand at the end of the arm clutched at red fabric, yanking up in desperation. Legs kicked out in the cold water, carrying two persons upward towards the light above.
The swimming person let a few bubbles slip from his lips. Sun rays became nearer, until finally, a head of shaggy black hair broke the surface of the water. Its owner gasped for breath, but didn’t stop. He looped his arms around the chest of his limp companion and made a break for the shore.
After an exhausting effort, his feet finally hit rocky soil, and he used the last of his strength to drag his friend ashore.
The black-clad man was on hands and knees, coughing and gasping for air. But he didn’t waste much time. He pushed back the mop of hair from his forehead and crawled towards the figure lying on the ground next to him.
His friend was pale as snow, tinges of blue and purple around his mouth and under his eyes. The mousy brown hair that usually stuck up wildly was now matted to his forehead uncharacteristically. The worst thing was how cold the boy was to the touch as he kneeled over him and felt for a pulse.
“FSM…” he muttered under his breath. “Zane!” he called out to a distant figure in white. “I need you.”
He gritted his teeth, trying to hide the desperation in his tone. Just in case his severely unconscious (dead) friend could hear him.
He started compressions, hand over hand, pressing down in the soft part between his friend’s chest and rib cage. With each one, he whispered the number out loud.
“Come on, Kai, come on…don’t make me give you mouth to mouth dude…”
There were footsteps nearing, slipping across the gravel with graceful speed.
“I’m here, Cole.” The person in white skidded to a stop, kneeling down on Kai’s other side just as the latter began to cough.
The sound was like music to both of their ears.
“Get him on his side,” Zane commanded, already reaching to help roll him.
As soon as Kai was on his side, he was coughing wildly, hacking up water and anything left inside his stomach. Cole patted his back firmly, ensuring everything got out. Zane had a hand on the red-clad shoulder, supporting him as he shuddered violently.
Finally, the hacking stopped and Kai curled into a ball, trembling in his soaked long-sleeved t-shirt. Cole reached over to touch his brother’s shoulder, intending to help him sit up, but he jerked back when Kai flinched violently.
“Nn…don’t,” Kai rasped weakly.
Cole reached out again cautiously. “Kai, I just want to-“
“I said, don’t!” Kai somehow found the strength to roll onto his hands and knees, but the force of the yell seemed to take all the air from Kai’s lungs, and he began wheezing. Cole and Zane locked eyes in concern.
“Brother, you should really rest,” Zane said, putting a gentle hand on his in an attempt to push him back to sitting. “We need to get you further medical attention.”
Kai’s hair was over his eyes, water droplets slowly dropping down into the gravelly sand. Each breath seemed to take an extreme amount of exertion. Still, he managed to grab Zane’s wrist and shove it off him.
“I-If I wanted m-medical attention, I w-wouldn’t be here,” Kai’s voice was hard to make out as he stared at the ground.
His labored breathing picked up, but despite that, he lurched forward, beginning to crawl on hands and knees in the direction of the sea he had just been saved from.
“Kai, stop,” Cole warned, standing to his feet and taking the few hurried steps towards his friend.
But the red-clad boy was determined. With the last of his stubborn strength, he pushed to his feet, swaying dangerously at the top. Cole’s hand lingered right behind his shoulder, while Zane watched carefully from behind.
Neither of them could see the steely brow ln eyes glaring with agony at the unforgiving sea. Those eyes should be a bright and blazing amber, burning with the fire of a passionate and courageous spirit. But those same eyes had watched the one person he could always count on, the one person that truly mattered to him, give herself to the ocean.
And nobody cared. Nobody saw his pain. They saw Jay’s sure, but they never saw his. Never cared. So why would they now?
He felt himself swaying, the strength of his adrenaline fading. He had to act quickly. And with the last of it, he was going to give himself up to the sea too. A quick glance behind him threw Cole off enough to give him a head start.
On shaky legs, he darted forward, ignoring the shouts of his friends behind him. He didn’t make it far before Cole was on top of him, tackling him from behind as they both slammed down to get a face full of gravel.
The wildfire of emotions rose in Kai’s chest and his vision whited out.
Something feral unleashed inside him, his entire body lashing out against the unwanted savior. His fingers searched for purchase in the soil as he bucked his hips, trying to free himself from the weight on top of him.
“Let me go!” he thought that was him saying that, but he couldn’t be sure. Neither could he be sure that the enraged screaming that followed belonged to him.
Somehow, though, he got free from his captor (there might have been fire involved, if the flaming fist, pained yelp, and angry red mark on Cole’s face had anything to do with it.) Then he was on his feet again, bent over and zig zagging wildly as he darted for the water.
“Brother, stop!”
There were two of them calling for him now, but it didn’t matter. It was too late. Too little too late in fact. The sea was calling him (it was calling him it was!).
His feet had almost touched the water when the captor was upon him again, looping an arm around his shoulders and dragging him backwards away from the water.
“No! No!”
The wild boy fought the arms around him, own arms flailing, shrieking and howling as if the world were ending.
“Kai, Kai, please stop-“
He ignored the voice, shoving at Cole’s chest, and kicking out his legs. He twisted around in his grasp until the only purchase Cole had was the ends of his sleeves.
“Brother, please, this isn’t what she would’ve wanted!”
The grip failed and Kai went tumbling backwards, landing in the gravel with a breathtaking thud.
And maybe it was just the wake up he needed. It was almost as sudden as a factory reset. Amber eyes blinked up at the sky slowly. There were no clouds today. The blue reminded him of her.
Kai choked on a sob. He turned and buried his face in the sand, shielding his face with one arm as the new emotion overtook him. It wasn’t anger. It wasn’t desperation. It was just pain, pure and simple, and it hurt.
His brothers watched with sad eyes, frozen to the spot for a moment, feeling achy and guilty all at once. They couldn’t lock eyes, but they both knew the other was thinking just how badly they’d failed.
It had hurt them all to lose Nya. She was a sister to them all. And the love of Jay’s life. But she was Kai’s sister first - his baby sister who he had sacrificed his whole childhood to raise. And they realized then just how much they had forgotten that.
Zane moved first, the empathetic helper in him kicking in as he kneeled down beside his broken brother. He rested a gentle hand on his back, but didn’t move him. The red ninja continued to sob until Cole finally got himself to move. He sat down, then reached forward to pull Kai up out out of the sand.
His brother went limp in his grasp, head crashing against his chest as he continued to cry. Zane scooted close, resting his hand in Kai’s hair and softly stroking.
They stayed like that for what seemed like ages until Kai’s sobs turned into gasps of air and then to concerning wheezes. Zane touched the back of his hand to his brother’s too pale cheek, finding it clammy and cold. He met Cole’s gaze worriedly.
“There may still be water in his system. And slight hypothermia, as his body is not returning to temperature on its own,” the nindroid spoke softly, as to not cause further panic to their broken brother.
Cole’s eyes reflected Zane’s worry. He was swaying back and forth gently as Kai’s eyes fluttered, losing the fight to stay open.
“Where are the others?” The earth ninja asked, tapping Kai’s cheek to keep him awake.
Zane’s eyes stayed trained on their sick brother, silently scanning him. “Pixal brought the Bounty here as soon as I arrived, but she’s been waiting for our signal. I’ll call for her now.”
Soon the Bounty was coasting into sight and settling in place above them.
Cole lifted their now eerily silent brother and hurried towards the lowered lift that would take them to the decks above.