Roots of Earth ~ A Ninjago Fanfiction

Chapter 62: Return of the Sight

Jay finally found his voice to rasp faintly, "Cole?"

A weak smile played out on the mouth below the bandages. "Hi-ya, motor-mouth. It's good to hear your voice again."

"It— I—" Jay stammered. "What happened to you?"

The smile stayed on Cole's face, but it was shrinking. "I rubbed a cat's fur the wrong way. He didn't take it too well."

"You're..." Jay tried to say it.

"I'm blind." It came out as a sigh. "Yeah."

Jay was silent for a moment. Then he asked, "What does your face look like without the bandages?"

"Jay!" Nya delivered a reproachful glare.

"What? I'm just curious!"

Cole sighed. He hated Jay's reaction to all this. Everyone's reaction, really. They keep walking around him tentatively and talking carefully whenever he was around—like they had to be polite around the fact that he was now blind. It had only been a day or two, but already he was downright sick of it. Perhaps if he took off the bandages and let Jay see the wounds...

He wasn't sure what he was expecting. Some little, bitter part of him spoke up and made him say, "Just take it off. About time we changed the bandages, anyway."

Silence. He could just imagine everyone looking at one another, and at him. He could feel Liana's grasp on his arm. He barely took note of her presence. Someone stepped up to him, and he felt their hands reaching for his face.

"Fine," Matilda murmured. "I should have changed these things the other day, anyway."

She sat him down in a chair by Jay's bedside, where Cole felt him grip his hand. Slowly, gently, Matilda began unwrapping the bandages. He could fairly hear everyone holding their breath.

Cool air finally kissed the flesh and skin that had been hidden beneath the embrace of linen for so long, and he breathed a little sigh of relief. It felt good to have the upper part of his face free again. Instinct wanted him to try to open his eyes, to blink or at least move his eyeballs around beneath the lids—but he abstained. He knew there was nothing there to move.

Finally, the last of the wraps came off. Matilda stepped away—perhaps she was averting her gaze from the ravaged wounds on his face. His back was toward the audience in the room. Blindly he was facing Jay.

He expected Jay to say or do something—scream, gasp, curse, say something stupidly obvious, anything—

—But there was only silence. The dark and silence.

Somehow, silence was worse than the everlasting darkness.

Then Jay said, "Umm... what I am supposed to be looking at?"

Matilda huffed crossly. "Corpus bones, what do you mean, 'What am I supposed to be looking at'? What, you mean beside the—?" Cole heard her shift over to him to look at him.

Then she shrieked.

"AAUUUGHH! Ancestors and Merlin and bones and—!"

"What?!" Nya and Liana darted over to Cole at the same time. Cole felt Nya's hand on his shoulder. "What's the matter?! What— Aaugh!"

"Gah!" Over Nya's shriek, Cole heard Jay clap his hands over his ears. "That's so loud!" he hollered.

"You're being loud, too!" Lloyd shouted.

"So are you!" Jay retorted, still shouting at the top of his lungs.

"What? What?" Cole raised his voice above the ruckus. "What's going on?!"