Wisps: Recollection (Ninjago X Reader)

19. * Other Side *

A/n: start of rewrite on chapters 19-65, note at end of each chapter if there's a major change, like this one 

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Rain drizzled on the terracotta roof of the temple. Thunder crashed, its bang blasting you back to where you are. Candlelight burned, scarcely illuminating his side of the room, consequently casting you in the dark. A fly buzzed, flailing its wings, flying from one side to the other. Your heart ravaged your ribcage with the same beat as the fly's wings.

A crashing thud replaced it. You had punched the wooden gate, rasping the flesh on your knuckles. There's no way out unless you want Pixal to pay the price. You stumbled back to the wall, the ground, pulling yourself tight in that corner. Agitated buzzing repeated over and over in your ears. Watching it idle, rubbing its bulging, red lens made you want to swat it out. You wanted the noise in your heart to die out. You looked up from the ground, staring into the flame... Would he understand? Or would it all come to burn you in the end?

The gong tolled, and the candle's fire curled to the ceiling.

When the gate lifted, you didn't want to walk out there.

"The Battle of Fire vs. Spirit!!! Begin!" It didn't need to be announced; he sprinted out before they finished. You barely moved, edging to a high pillar as his fists erupt flames.

"I should've seen this coming..."

"Kai... please, believe me." Unnamed hurt flashed across his eyes when they met yours.

"I can't." He snuffed out your words, like smoke scathing your throat. It worked like tar, sealing your mouth shut and letting it burn inside of you. Like that disgusted scorn he hasn't shown you since the day at the scrapyard. "I gave you another chance. We took you in... And you threw it all away!" Fire twisted your way, eroding at the pillar you hid behind, no longer your bastion. Frustration boiled over: "Stop running, fight me!"

"I won't...! We both want the same thing." The crackling of the fire calmed, yet it still clawed at the pillar, creating embers that you held close, breathing out a hope, "I can explain."

"You can't." It was a dying hope. "You're lying."

But you tried again.

"I'm trying to help–"

"For real? Stop your bullshit!" His laugh echoed his disappointment. "You're just pulling the same shit!"

"I'm not!" And Again. "I never was!" Flames rose, blowing up to his dangerous eyes. "I want to help you!"

"Help me? Is that why you've been going behind our backs?! Hah, you've been acting desperate since we found out. That's why you're lying. Why you have been this whole time." You're backed up in a corner from running away and your words fueled his inferno.

"I didn't want to–! I didn't have a choice!"

"...You're right. Going behind our backs, switching sides—You were never on our side!" The flames ignited higher, licking at his face, showing the deadly glint in his eyes. "Being a traitor is in your nature." You weaved around the flaring fist coming for your head, feeling the raw, angry heat of the fire. "While we were chasing around looking for Zane, hoping he'd be fine" –fire caught its claws into your shoulder– "you were with us, and you knew exactly where he was!"

Were you so naive to think you could reason with him right at this moment? So stupid?

"I did, but I was trying to save him and–!" As you frantically patted down the fire burning your shoulder, hot knuckles rammed into your face, knocking you to the ground. It couldn't compare. None of it could to the devastation in his shaky tone.

"Don't you fucking dare act like you cared about Zane. You don't. You only care about yourself!" Flames devouring the pillar came to his side, lashing out into the air. "I'm not falling for that again. Nothing you say will change what just keeps on happening!" His arms are coated in fire, casting lights and shadows that paint him like a demon. The forgotten crowd railed you on from far above, demanding you get up and face him. While scheming, pecking vultures higher above waited for your corpse to hit the ground. Kai didn't even bother to think that this is what his real enemy planned. 

"Just listen to me–!"

"I am done listening to you!" He kicked you into a shelf of glass vessels, the impact sending them crashing. Your arms go up, protecting your head. Stray shards pierced and sliced open skin. A heavy, thin object landed on your leg at the end of the outpour. In your stupor, your fingertips catch a blade– the Jade Blade. Your only way out– And it's flung from your grip. Far like any hope in this reality. You don't know what else to do. You're petrified of the growing fire and the smoke smothering your quivered breaths. The crimson in his glare seemed to dim with the fires. Hurt blinked in his eyes when you stared up at him. You're scared. It's clear as the rumbling thunder in the rainfall. "I never should have saved you in the first place..."

"Kai... please, please, just give me another chance–"

 "Another one? Another chance for you to go and do this again?" His voice lashed his hell, "I'll make you feel that betrayal. To them. To me," his tone shifted into something darker. It made your blood run cold despite the heat. "You won't go until I beat out all the shit you're hiding." His knee struck your chest, backing you to the shelf and away from him. "How long were you up to this? Ever since–?"

"Clouse– it was all him, I didn't do–" You were just wasting your breath and it killed you to know. He kicked you in the stomach, cutting off your desperation. You hunched in on yourself, hands protecting yourself from scraping your face on the glass. Your hand squeezed a piece of glass with an edge so sharp, you were drawing blood. You readjust your tightening grip, the glass craving a deeper gash but you don't care as you try to breathe in cracked gasps of burning air. "I didn't... I'm not lying... not to you."

"...that's not what I'm hearing." Kai crouched a ways beside you, the fire's heat around so hot it could set you on fire–You lunged at him, and he saw it coming, expecting the worst from the start. When you still somehow held out he would stop and listen. But that's not what he expected. His eyes fully concentrated on your palm, his burning hand shooting for it, expecting you to kill him. What he didn't see was the glass in your other hand. You sliced by his flaming arms, snagging now blasting flames on your skin as you blindly, desperately, sliced in a wide arc, and cast your wisps on him. He collided with a broken pillar... with hissing azure flames. Wisps had melted into the molten maws of the beast. Blue fires licked around him, frantic as he rose, straining back in a struggle for control. Flames turned unstable as he pressed a clawed hand to his bleeding chest, to his eye. You knew you fucked up.

"Please... I don't want to do this." He didn't look surprised, expecting it... He's inflamed to an uncontrollable degree. He would lose control in his inferno of rage. You rushed to the blade; he wasn't ever going to stop. You know that now. Fire bellowed behind you and you rolled around the last standing pillar, as it violently exploded into azure, multiplying flames. You back into the wall, into the corner. Nerves are boiling and bubbling inside of you, rupturing into horror. Smoke stung your eyes and the fumes of burning flesh were all you could smell. He loomed over you... 

"...I'll make you regret being saved."

A crimson eye. A single one overflowing rancor that wanted you to endure his hell with him. To burn with him. He reached out, with his blistered, out-stretched, burning hand–and yours struck out. Flames whisked away, his blackened, blistering fingers loosening. You thought he stopped. But he choked. On blood. No– No, this isn't how it was supposed to– He collapsed to his knees with you; your bleeding palm on his cut chest. It's still. Cold. Not a breath escaped. His face is pale and full of horror shown evermore in his eye. Blood is the only color left on his face. It almost looked like tears– the bleeding gash on his eyelid. Crimson dribbled out the corner of his mouth. His mouth gaped open, but his words never reached. A speck of blood dropped to your wet cheek instead.

Kai's blank eye stared straight through you, soulless.

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Changes: They fight and Kai doesn't burn their arm to a crisp. MC still kills him because they are threatened and in danger.