#jaya week 2023 day 6: sunset

[finn-m-corvex]

Jaya Week 2023 Day 6: Sunset

It is 1:30 A.M. but I finished it! Today was busy or else I would've had it out sooner, sorry about that everyone. This one was a lot of fun to write though! I took the idea that I had for Day 4 and put it here, and I mixed it with a scene from Day 1, so if you haven't read Day 1 go to my masterpost and check it out! Not a lot of dialogue in this one, but I've noticed that most of the stuff I write from Nya's perspective lacks dialogue because I think of her as an observer more than a talker. These also just keep getting longer and longer, geez.

Words: 3.6k

No TWs!

[REUPLOAD!]

Nya exhaled, leaning on the ledge of the lighthouse to look out at the rolling sea hundreds of feet below. The breeze blew away the loose strands of her hair that she hadn’t wrangled into a short ponytail, and Nya shivered despite the heavy sweatshirt on her shoulders. She always forgot how cold the breeze was that came off of the sea.

Despite being the water ninja, Nya had never felt a large connection with the sea. Ignacia was too far away from the coast to ever visit when she and Kai were kids, and even if it were closer they still would’ve had to manage the shop. The funds most likely wouldn’t have been there either. She had gotten to visit the ocean once they had joined the other Ninja, but her experiences there had been…less than pleasant, to say the least.

Instead, Nya found most of her comforts in the sky; it was why blue was her favorite color. Every day she would look out of her window at the shop, watching as the pale sky would gradually go from blue to orange to red until night finally fell. It was a comfort to know that some things in the world would never change: the sun would never stop rising, and the moon would never stop trailing behind in an endless chase.

Part of the reason she was out here freezing her fingers off instead of staying inside was to try and take some comfort from looking at the sky, a canvas of vivid warm streaks that made her happy to look at. So much of her life had been upended by that stupid djinn, so much of her life changed. But some things were never supposed to change, right?

She would be lying if she said there wasn’t another reason. She was worried about Jay.

The blue ninja had promised her only a few days ago that he would be okay, mere hours after they had skipped town and left Ninjago. His ruined gi still lay in the corner of their shared room, waiting for her to sit down and mend it as best as she could. Nya was thankful that she had the foresight to pack him several changes of clothes in their few duffle bags; Jay had certainly been making good use out of them. The sweatshirt she had on now was his, a medium blue with little lightning bolts on the sleeves with the word ‘ZAP!’ emboldened across the front.

It was the only hoodie she had been using whenever she went outside to watch the sunset. She would grab it up from the small pile of dirty clothes she kept on her side of their one bed, slipping it out before walking up the stairs to look outside. Nya would stay out there for hours, sometimes sneaking back in to check if Jay had gone to bed or if he was staying up late trying to fix things downstairs.

Jay wasn’t okay, despite promising that he would be. 

Her first clue was how quiet he had been since they had arrived. Jay was never soft-spoken, but it was like his time on the ship had flipped a switch hidden deep inside. Nya struggled to make him say more than three words at a time, and even when he was by himself he was quiet. Usually Jay would be whistling, beatboxing or humming or even singing to himself to do anything that filled the silence that he couldn’t stand. But now it settled over the lighthouse like a dense fog, and Nya wasn’t quite sure how to navigate it.

Something wasn’t right. This wasn’t her Jay.

It pained her to remember that he wasn’t hers anymore; if she didn’t allow him to hold onto her, then she couldn’t keep him either. That would be quite hypocritical of her, and Nya hated being a hypocrite.

Part of her was worried about how little sleep both of them had been getting. Logically, they had to start establishing some sort of consistent schedule for their nighttime routines, and while Nya herself had always been plagued by issues of insomnia, she never knew Jay to have the same issues. But Jay’s problem wasn’t so much of not being able to sleep: it was the nightmares.

Nya knew he had them, but she didn’t say a word to him about it after their first night. The sun had gone down long ago, Nya retiring to find Jay fast asleep already. It had barely been a couple hours since she had fallen asleep when she was woken up by the sounds of someone sitting up, the rustle of the sheets loud in the quiet of the night.

“Jay?” Nya had said, turning over and blinking awake.

He was shaking. Nya reached out to gently lay a hand on his trembling back, rubbing in small circles while he buried his face in his hands.

Frowning, Nya almost cringed away from how sweaty his sleepshirt was, before she reminded herself that she had, in fact, touched much worse. Jay’s breathing was stuttery, starting and stopping as if someone kept pressing a pause button. “Nya?”

“I’m here, Jay,” she affirmed, propping herself up on her elbow. “Everything okay?”

Everything was very clearly not okay, but Jay deserved the privacy. She watched as he started reaching back he suddenly froze, hastily retracting his hand before it could complete its journey.

Jay had been reaching for her hand.

A part of Nya wished that he had taken it.

Shuddering, Jay shrugged off her touch, standing up and running his hands through his hair in an achingly familiar pattern. She had seen him do it countless times whenever he needed to calm himself down, and now his hands were raking through his curly locks with a vengeance. They were longer than Jay normally allowed them to get, covering his ears and the nape of his neck, and Nya would be lying if she said she didn’t like the new look.

With a small sound of frustration, Jay bent down to grab one of his discarded jackets. “I need to check on the door downstairs. I’ll be back.”

“Is that a good idea?” Nya asked skeptically, and she saw Jay flinch from where he stood in the doorway. The moonlight filtered in, shrouding him in a dark silhouette and making his features barely distinguishable. His jaw tightened, illuminated by the sparse light, and the movement made the fresh scar over his eye stand out.

She hated it. Everytime she got a glimpse of it, she had the insatiable urge to run her finger across it, feeling the anger bubble up from deep inside of her on his behalf. Nya didn’t hate it because of the way it looked: Kai’s had prepared her for pretty much anything.

But this was different.

Whoever had put that scar on him had done so deliberately, trying to gouge out his eye and hurt someone that she cared about. Seeing the skin puffy and red around the wound when they had first arrived on the Misfortune’s Keep reminded her of the sun setting; it was a sign of your world going dark.

Jay wasn’t blinded by the injury, but he may as well have been. They had tested it before they had left Ninjago City, and Nya had been more than dismayed to discover that everything Jay saw through his left eye was pretty much a colored blob. Recently though, she was worried that his color vision was starting to go too; she had to stop him from cutting a red wire when he was supposed to be cutting a blue one while he was trying to repair one of the machines.

All of it made Nya’s insides twist with concern that she knew she shouldn’t have. She kept telling herself that it was over, and that eventually she was going to have to let all of her feelings go. Her independence was more important to her than anything else.

So why couldn’t she let go?

“I’ll be fine, Nya,” he said, but it was clipped. Nya recoiled internally; that had definitely been an overstep on her part.

Even though she hated the idea of him trying to make his way downstairs in the dark, she couldn’t really stop him. “Just be careful, okay? Come and get me if you need me.”

“Will do,” but Nya knew he wouldn’t come. Their door closed with a soft click, and Nya listened for the tell-tale sign of creaking wood as Jay stepped down the stairs. She stayed alert for the first sign of a fall (even though she knew that if he did fall she would never reach him in time), and Nya promised to stay awake to see him walk back into back.

Nya was out like a light not even five minutes later. When she awoke the next morning, the spot beside her was still cold and empty; it hadn’t been disturbed since the night before. Jay had never come back to bed.

That night, Nya heard him step out of the trapdoor while she had been doing her usual vigil outside. The sunset was still out but it was quickly dimming as the sun drifted further and further beneath the crest of the sea.

“Do you want to watch the sunset with me?” she asked him, turning away from the beautiful sight just to look at another one.

Jay looked apprehensive, the wind blowing his hair to the side and making his unzipped jacket flap in the breeze. His good eye was focused on her, but his bad one was quite dilated, clouded over with a film that Nya was scared of becoming permanent. Mouth twisting into an odd smile that didn’t quite fit his face, Jay shook his head. “Sorry, Nya. Gotta keep working on this stuff.”

He patted the side of an old toolbox, but it wasn’t the one that she always knew him to carry. That was still on the Bounty, wherever that had ended up at this point. Did he miss it?

“You’ve been working a lot lately,” she said softly, hesitating. Maybe she shouldn’t be saying anything. “It’s okay to take a break, you know?”

Shrugging, Jay turned away. “If I need one, then I’ll take one. For now, though, the plumbing isn’t going to fix itself.”

The trapdoor closed behind him, and Nya growled in frustration before reminding herself that she had to be patient. Navigating this situation was going to be tricky for both of them, with boundaries that definitely had to be reestablished and rules discussed. Yet somehow, Nya didn’t find herself as quick to draw a line in the sand as she had been before this whole mess had started. It was a weird position for her, because Jay was normally the more patient one out of the two of them, but Nya could pick up the slack every once in a while.

Both of them tiptoed around each other for the next week, with Nya making sure that she was giving Jay the proper space to figure his stuff out. She knew that trying to force him to talk about his time on the ship would lead nowhere; Jay could definitely match her strong will with his own. However, that didn’t mean Nya was going to switch up her routine. Every night she would stay outside and watch the sun wind down, smelling the salt from the sea on the breeze that blew through the open top of the lighthouse.

And every night Jay would check up on her like clockwork, making up a flimsy excuse that she could see right through. He had never been able to hide anything from here.

One time she watched as he deliberately left a wrench on the single table to give him a reason to come up the next night. The night after that he came up with a bucket filled with water, claiming that the downstairs had flooded from the high tide that day and he needed to dump it out. Nya had seen him down at the shoreline just beforehand fighting with the bucket and almost throwing it in frustration before he finally managed to fill it. The other reasons were just as faulty; she knew for a fact that Jay didn’t leave his toolbox that one time, and that he hated doing laundry when he claimed he was letting their clothes dry, and that his camera had run out of batteries on the first day they arrived when he told her he wanted a picture of the sunset.

Nya was a little skeptical of the last one, though, because she was fairly sure she heard the sound of his camera shutter when a particularly loud wave crashed against the rocks below.

Part of her was frustrated with how standoffish he was acting, but it was really her fault that he felt the need to be so far away. She had been quite abrasive before, so she couldn’t blame him for being too careful, especially if he had just acquired a brand new trauma that the rest of the team was going to have to explore.

You just need to be patient with him, Nya reminded herself, he’ll come to you eventually. He always does.

She didn’t mention the nightmares to him either, even though her chest tightened whenever she woke up to him gasping for air and clutching at his chest. Nya could feel his gaze on her every night, checking if he had woken her up, and she pretended to sleep every time. Her suspicions were soon confirmed: Jay never came back to bed after he woke up from a nightmare.

Patience is all it would take.

Finally, after around a week, Nya’s efforts paid off.

Jay crept up through the trapdoor, but something was different this time. Still adjusting the hoodie over his shoulders, Jay’s hair was out of control and coming alive with static, and his cheeks had small sheet lines from where he had been laying down. He was napping on the bed when Nya had seen him last, his lack of sleep finally catching up to him. Did he have another one?

“Hey Nya?” he asked hesitantly, and Nya’s heart clenched painfully. She turned around, pretending that she hadn’t been listening for his arrival.

“Oh, hey Jay,” she gave him a small smile that she hoped came off as inviting, “what’s up?”

Shuffling from foot to foot, she watched as Jay’s hands started twisting themselves together in a familiar nervous habit. “C-Can I watch the sunset with you?”

Here we go, Nya thought. “Sure! Come on, there’s plenty of room to watch.”

He chuckled, moving to stand next to her, mirroring her position of leaning on their elbows to look out. They stayed quiet, although Nya kept sneaking glances at the blue ninja at her side; she still had the ability to appreciate a good view when she saw one.

Despite being well-fed for the past few days, Jay’s jawline was still hollower than she remembered (and she remembered quite well), and she had to clench her hands into fists to keep herself from running her thumbs along his narrow cheekbones. All of the ugly black and blue bruises had faded into slightly less atrocious shades of green and yellow, but Nya knew they still hurt him. His scar wasn’t visible from this angle, and Nya was at least a little happy about that. She wasn’t sure how well she would’ve been able to keep it together if she had to look at it the whole time.

Jay sighed, and Nya quickly darted her gaze away to the horizon. He didn’t notice, only starting to tap his thumb on the back of his other hand. “I’ve been having nightmares.”

“I know,” Nya said quietly, and she could see Jay whip his head around to stare at her. Hopefully she had made the right choice.

“You know?” he asked, and she nodded. “Have I been waking you up?”

“Yeah,” Nya said, turning to look into his eyes, a pretty blue lacking the vividness they usually held, “since the first night.”

Muttering a soft curse, Jay turned away, and Nya could see his face twist with shame. Well, that just wouldn’t do.

“Hey.” she said, moving closer to him. Nya could feel the tantilizing warmth under his sweatshirt, his skin buzzing from his element. The familiarity of it made Nya want to curl up against his side, snuggling close; the breeze had been particularly rough that evening. “Stop it. I know you’re feeling guilty, so stop it.”

Jay didn’t say anything for a minute, and then he exhaled. “I’m sorry for waking you.”

“It’s okay,” Nya told him, and she was surprised by how genuine it was. Honestly, she was a little disappointed when he would only walk away every night instead of going to her.

He looked at her with a questioning look. “You’re not mad?”

“No, I’m not mad.” Now she was the one feeling guilty, the feeling settling in her stomach like a stone. “Jay, you can talk to me about anything. Why would you think I would be mad at you for something you can’t control?”

The irony of her statement was not lost on her. Jay bit his lip, tapping his foot against the wooden floor. “I-I’ve been trying to respect your boundaries ever since we got here. I didn’t want to overstep.”

“I wish-” she paused when he flinched, and she quickly corrected her wording, “I was hoping that you would tell me, so I could help you. I-I don’t like seeing you in pain, Jay.”

“They don’t hurt anymore,” but he had said it a little too quickly, forced it out with a bit too much bite. Nya could tell he was lying.

“Stop lying to me.” she said sternly, taking the plunge and touching shoulders with him. “I don’t need you to be tough for you, I need you to be honest with me. You hiding things from me is overstepping my boundaries more than you needing help ever would be.”

He flinched, and Nya heard a tiny voice inside of her telling her that she was being unfair. Every time Jay seemed to get close to the finish line, she would move the goalposts, changing what she had expected of him at the drop of a hat. And yet, Jay adapted every single time to whatever she demanded; he may not have always gotten it right, but the effort meant more to Nya than she let on.

“Okay.” Jay said, and Nya watched him take a deep breath, steeling his nerves. “Are you sure about this?”

“Absolutely.” Nya said firmly.

The small smile on his face made her heart flutter in a way that she had missed, and for the first time in months Nya let herself bask in the feeling. She never could stop loving him, no matter how much she shoved him away or convinced herself that she was over him.

Some things never changed, just like the setting sun.

Most of the things he was telling her made Nya’s blood boil with indignant rage, and by the time night had fallen Jay was done with his story. The two sat in silence for a while, before Nya’s eyes started to close and she knew that it was time to go to bed.

“Jay?” she whispered, amused to see that he had started falling asleep as well. “I think we should head inside.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” he yawned in the middle of the sentence, his scar stretching and morphing in the dim light of the candle that Nya had lit over an hour ago. She blew it out, following behind the blue ninja as he made his way inside.

Getting ready for bed was a quiet affair; Nya kept her hoodie on and was basically done after she slipped off her socks, while Jay changed out his shirt and put his hoodie away. All of the lights were turned out, and Nya was surprised at how little time it took before she heard the lightning ninja’s soft snores on her other side.

One of the cutest sights she had ever seen greeted her when she finally turned over: a sleeping Jay with drool leaking out of the corner of his mouth onto his pillow, his face finally free from all of the worry lines that had been making their homes there recently. Even his scar looked a little smaller from this angle, like it had somehow shrunk now that he wasn’t stressing about everything under the sun.

Nya indulged herself, letting her hand drift upwards to slide between Jay’s cheek and the pillow. Jay made a soft noise, and Nya was surprised to see his eyes blink open, still hazy with sleep.

“Thanks for letting me watch the sunset with you,” he murmured, and he must’ve had a lapse in judgement as he leaned into her touch and pecked her palm. Nya’s thumb stopped from where she had started stroking his cheek, but she restarted when his eyes slid shut and his breathing truly evened out.

First Master, how could she ever let this go?

In her own lapse of judgement, Nya leaned forward to kiss the tip of his nose, moving closer and molding her body to fit with his warm one. She smiled, keeping her lips pressed against his forehead.  “Anything for you, Jay. We’ve got all the time in the world to watch as many sunsets as it takes for you to feel better.”

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