silence ;; a cole-centered one-shot

Silence had never before existed in Cole's world.

There was always a barrier between him and the feeling of nothing. His dad, waking him up in the middle of the night with singing; Jay, mindlessly talking and blabbering; Kai, screaming at Nya to give back his hair gel.

His world was filled with noise; noise that rattled his skull and stopped him from going insane; noise that broke past his loneliness and reminded him that he was still human, and he was still alive, and he was still existing.

The noise was continuous; constant. There was always something to be announced or villains to fight. There was always something that kept him going. Growing up in a world of laughter and tears and anger, Cole wasn't used to silence: it was never an aspect of his life.

Then, as these thoughts raced through his mind with the speed of light, a little kid running to catch a frisbee didn't see him—when standing in the sun, he was nearly invisible—and, laughing, ran right through him. Her sudden presence inside of him, though lasting only an instant, made him shiver and feel a cold, watery trickle of silence trail down his spine, encompassing him wholly and climbing into his throat and shoving itself through his heart—

Silence, even though kids around him were shouting with delight. Even though there was the deafening roar of the ocean, silence.

The type of silence that kept ticking in your brain until you broke. The type of silence that was so silent, it was too loud to bear. The type of silence that you would be so painfully aware of. A silence that would continue and pursue until your resilience snapped and you would scream and cry and thrash and shout bloody murder just to make some noise, some sound, just to hear something—

—to feel something—

that might break the silence.

Feel.

Cole gulped in a deep breath, staring down at his hands.

Feel.

Though he stood in front of the ocean, watching the waves rock back and forth like it was trying to break free of an invisible hold; though he could hear the noise it made and smell the saltiness and see his teammates swimming, it did nothing to drive away the freezing, desperate yearning buried deep in his heart to feel again; to learn how to blush and feel warmth once again and drive the silence away.

He was ... a ghost. It had happened by chance, and at first he thought it was pretty amazing, but as time progressed and he realized that this was permanent, the panic in him grew like an avalanche. Like a dangersous tsunami that couldn't wait to be released, it built up in his throat and threatened to tear apart his sanity.

He wanted to feel- he wanted to live again.

God, how he wanted to fucking live.

He couldn't feel the breeze or dip his feet in the water or cry or hug his family anymore. His nerves could no longer respond to a gentle kiss on the cheek or a calming hand running through his hair. He hadn't felt another human in what seemed like forever. He hadn't touched anything tangible in what seemed like forever.

Though he lived in the human world, he truly couldn't be called alive.

And he hated it.

He hated it to the point that he would sometimes think about taking a few more steps towards the ocean and touching that water. Actually being dead would be so much better to him than this gut-wrenching loneliness in his half-dead soul.

He just wanted to feel again, to hear something that wasn't his own panicked mind. Why was that so impossible? He wanted to break the quiet that pounded in his head like a living time-bomb, as he just waited for the moment it would detonate.

Tears began to fall as he stood on the sand in the middle of a beach, except these were the tears of a ghost who was unable to touch water, and so the tears were nothing but phantom light, turning to air as soon as they left his cheeks.

He couldn't even feel his own sadness.

And this made him break down, and he cried, and he sobbed and he prayed and begged.

He broke down on sand he couldn't feel the texture of; crying tears that were nothing but light; praying to the First Spingitzu Master he no longer believed in.

He was hopeless; lost; desperate; drifting farther and farther away from his last shreds of humanity.

Feel. Feel; would he ever feel again?

Silence.

Emotionless and senseless.

Silence.

And he simply knew he was going insane.