A fire's shadow: Fading

She remembers

Play the video and listen to the song as you read or before you start.

Amy's POV

I played the audio and I recognized the song immediately. But as the voice started singing, I felt like I had heard it before. I couldn't stop listening, but the more of the song I hear, the more I started to remember some things. Shadow....he was the one singing, he was the one who had saved me from the fire, and.....I knew him.....he and I were close....very close.....

As the song faded to an end, I decided it was time I confronted my aunt about this. Standing up, I left my room, phone in hand, and ventured to the living room where my aunt was sitting reading a book. She saw me and her head lifted from the book, "Hey Amy. Is everything alright, you seem a bit upset."

"No, everything is not alright. Why haven't you told me everything?!"

Her expression changed into one of confusion, but also a little regret. "What are you talking about sweetie?"

I held out the phone to her, "I looked through my phone and found pictures of a boy I don't remember meeting, all of the pictures are from those two weeks I can't seem to remember. And I also found this recording of someone singing, the same boy and his name is Shadow. Why haven't you told me about him?!"

"Amy, I promise there's a good explanation-"

"What good explanation can you possibly have that can make me understand why you didn't tell me about Shadow!?"

"Because he made me promise to keep him from you!" She snapped and I became stunned.

"What are you talking about? Why would he want me to not know him?"

"Do you know about the ninjas?"

"Of course I do, they are heroes and have saved Ninjago a lot of times. But what do they have to do with this?"

"Well, can you name all the ninjas?" She asked, sounding a bit nervous.

"Well, there's Nya, Zane, Cole, Jay, Lloyd, Kai, and......Shadow..... Wait, he's one of the ninjas?"

She nodded, "Yes, and that partly why he didn't want you to remember him. Also, he's blaming himself for what happened to you." She started explaining everything, from the day I met Shadow for the second time, all the way to one week ago when the accident happened and also the conversation where she promised Shadow not to tell me the truth. When she was done, I was speechless, and not only because it was a lot to take in, but also because I now remembered everything.

"He....he thinks I was hurt because of him.....and that's why he didn't want me to know......he really loves me that much.....that he's willing to put his own feelings aside as long as I'm safe......"

My aunt nodded, "Yes, from what his brother told me, Shadow doesn't cry in front of anyone except his family, most of the time not even in front of them, but the day he made me promise, he cried right before my eyes. He loves you very much, more than anything else from what I know..."

I took out my phone and stared at one of the pictures of us together, and I could feel my heart cracking when thinking about never seeing him again. "I want to see him......I want to meet him again and explain to him just how much he means to me....."

She smiled at me and wrapped her arms around me, "I understand, I'll try to get in contact with him or his brother and get them to see you." I smiled back and felt confident that this would end well.

...

"What do you mean he's gone!?" I shouted at the group of heroes standing in front of me.

"We mean he's gone! We have no idea where he is!" The brunette shouted back, clearly just as frustrated as I was.

"Well, he can't just have disappeared! Was he kidnapped or something!?"

"No! He ran away thinking he's nothing else than a threat to us!"

"And you didn't try to stop him from thinking that!?"

The brunette's eyes flashed blazing red and he charged forward, grabbing me by the collar of my hoodie, "Now listen here you! I tried, over and over to get it into his head that he was no threat to anyone, but he never saw that! And it's not like you tried yourself!"

I grabbed his hands and smirked at him before throwing him over my head and onto the ground, "Just so you know, Kai, I tried and succeeded for a while, it wasn't until Matt showed up that he started thinking that again. Also, don't you think you can scare me, ever since Shadow told me about him being afraid to endanger me, I've been taking self-defense classes from him, and apparently I was a fast learner."

Kai looked at me with shock written on his face, but his face soon turned impressed. "It took me five months to master that move, but you did it in less than three weeks. Impressive."

"Two, actually. But thanks." I helped him up, "Sorry for shouting at you though, I'm just frustrated over the situation."

He smiled sadly at me, "Yeah, so am I, so I'm sorry as well."

I smiled, "Apology accepted." But then my smile faded, "So, how are we going to find this runaway male?"

The nindroid, Zane, shook his head, "So far we have nothing to go on other than Kai suspecting Shadow only moves at night in order to stay hidden, also that he's traveling by foot. We have been trying to track him using our dragons but so far we have nothing."

"Well, where have you been searching?"

"Well, in all directions he could have gone."

I facepalmed, "You clearly don't know who you're searching for. Shadow would want to travel through a forest, a cave, or tunnel of some sort. A place where it's always rather dark, that way he could be able to use his shadow abilities if he needed to. So searching a desert or a field would be pointless, because it has no shadows and it's too open, he would risk being seen, even during the night."

They stared at me as if I had a rainbow-colored wig on. "How do you know that?"

"He and I went camping one day, and he insisted one camping in a forest and when I asked him why he explained it was because of that reason. What? Did you think we just did things in the city? We went exploring caves in the forest and stuff like that a few times too."

Kai suddenly burst out laughing and we all changed our attention to him, giving him confused expressions. "How have I not figured out that sooner. He may not show it a lot, but Shadow has a high level of anxiety in certain situations which is why he's cautious about things a lot of the time, he's always on high alert and it's really no surprise he puts himself in a situation where his fight and flight reflexes can work most efficiently."

The others shared a look before turning back to Kai and nodding, "That might be useful information."

The red ninja turned to me, "So, Amy. How do you feel about helping us find my brother?"

I didn't need to be asked twice, "Count me in, hothead. I'm going to help and nothing can stop me."