Our Assigned Fate: a Ninjago Jaya AU ✔️

Chapter Twelve

I push the door open with the palm of my hand. Lloyd is stood at the podium, gripping the sides with so much force that his knuckles turn white. Jay is sitting, in his wheelchair, facing him.

"Hey, Nya!" Jay calls, waving his arm at me frantically.

I giggle and slide into the seat next to him. Jay immediately grabs my hand and squeezes it gently. I rest my head on his shoulder and turn to look at Lloyd. The rustling of paper makes me realise how shaky my hands are. Lloyd raises his hand to his throat.

"Jason Walker was a self-aggrandizing bastard. But we forgive him. We forgive him not because he had a heart as figuratively good as his literal one sucked, or because he knew more about how to hold a cigarette than any nonsmoker in history, or because he got eighteen years when he should've gotten more."

"Seventeen," Jay corrects, a smile on his face.

How can he be happy about this?

"I'm assuming you've got some time, you interrupting bastard," Lloyd chuckles, his voice becoming shakier, "I'm telling you, Jason Walker talked so much that he'd interrupt you at his own funeral. And he was pretentious: Sweet Jesus Christ, that kid never took a piss without pondering the abundant metaphorical resonances of human waste production. And he was vain: I do not believe I have ever met a more physically attractive person who was more acutely aware of his own physical attractiveness.
But I will say this: When the scientists of the future show up at my house with robot eyes and they tell me to try them on, I will tell the scientists to screw off because I do not want to see a world without him."

I bury my head into Jay's shoulder and grip his upper arm gently.

"Hey, hey Nya, it's okay. It's okay."

His hand traces circles on my back as I feel Jay's shirt become wet underneath my head. I wrap my arms around his neck and nuzzle my head into the crook of his neck. Jay's hand reaches up to my hair and starts to comb through it.

"Shh, it's okay, it's gonna be okay."

"And then, having made my rhetorical point, I will put my robot eyes on, because I mean, with robot eyes you can probably see through girls' shirts and stuff. Jay, my friend, Godspeed."

Jay gives Lloyd a thumbs-up, "I would cut the bit about seeing through girls' shirts."

Lloyd is still clinging to the lectern. His shoulders shake as he starts to cry. He presses his forehead down to the podium, then he says shakily, "Goddamn it, Jay, editing your own eulogy."

"Don't swear in the Literal Heart of Jesus," Jay says, still having that stupidly adorable smile on his face.

"Goddamn it," Lloyd murmurs again. He raises his head and swallows. "Nya, can I get a hand here?"

I shakily pull myself up, place his hand on my arm, and slowly walk him back to the chair next to Jay, where I'd been sitting. For the past few days, I've been working on this eulogy for Jay and it's always ended with me crying. I just hope I can hold it together.

"My name is Nya. Jayson Walker was the great star-crossed love of my life. Ours was an epic love story, and I won't be able to get more than a sentence into it without disappearing into a puddle of tears. Jay knew. Jay knows. I will not tell you our love story, because— like all real love stories—it will die with us, as it should. I'd hoped that he'd be eulogizing me because there's no one I'd rather have . . ." I start crying again, "okay, how not to cry. How am I—okay. Okay." I force more air into my lungs and glance back to the page.

"I can't talk about our love story, so I will talk about math. I am not a mathematician, but I know this: there are infinite numbers between 0 and 1. There's .1 and .12 and .112 and an infinite collection of others. Of course, there is a bigger infinite set of numbers between 0 and 2, or between 0 and a million. Some infinities are bigger than other infinities. A writer we used to like taught us that. There are days, many of them when I resent the size of my unbounded set. I want more numbers than I'm likely to get, and God, I want more numbers for Jason Walker than he got. But, Jay, my love, I can't tell you how thankful I am for our little infinity. I wouldn't trade it for the world. You gave me a forever within the numbered days, and I'm grateful."

I glance over at Jay, who has tears in his eyes. I bite my lip, knowing if I try and say something, I will start crying.

'It'll be okay Nya.'

***
Buzz! Buzz!

I bolt up, gasping. I glance over at my bedside table to see my phone. Reaching over, I grab my phone and turn it over. Jay.

I immediately press answer and raise the phone to my ear.

"Hello?"

"Hello Nya, this is Edna," almost immediately, I hear the shakiness in her voice.

"I-I'm sorry but...but...J-Jay...J-Jay has..."

She doesn't say anything else, she doesn't need to. Jay's died.

It's only been two days since Lloyd and I read our eulogies for Jay and now he's gone. I feel my cheeks start to become wet as tears start streaming down my face. I can hear Ed and Edna sobbing on the other side of the phone.

"I-I...I'm so s-sorry."

No one replies, no one needs to, we're all grieving.

"Sis?"

I glance up. An extremely tired Kai is stood in my doorway, holding onto the frame for support with one hand.

"What's wrong?"

I draw my knees up to my chest and cry into them. A couple of seconds later, I feel the bed dip beside me. A hand rests on my back, rubbing circles as Jay had done two days ago.

Jay's adorable smile comes into my head, almost as if he's smiling down at me. I promised I wouldn't get upset, but, I can't help it. His auburn hair, his electric blue eyes that always have a mischievous glint in them, like he doesn't have a care in the world. I lean against Kai and spend the rest of the night sobbing.

***
It's been a week since Jay passed and it's been hard, especially for his family. Kai and I often find ourselves up at their house, helping to clean and cook. It's so painful to listen to them crying and mourning their son. Who was, of course, an amazing person. He always was.

After the funeral, I find myself at Jay's grave, which is close to the river near the church. I lower myself into the wet grass.

"Hey Jay," I find myself saying, "we all miss you. Your parents, Cole, Seliel, your nephew, me. It-it's so hard without you. I miss you so, so much. I-I just wish I had one more day with you. One more day. That's all I wanted. The only thing!"

I draw my knees up to my chest and sob into them, my body shaking and trembling, although I'm not sure whether it's from my crying or the cold. Maybe it's both. Placing my knees back down, I kneel in front of the tombstone.

Slowly leaning in, I place my lips against the cold stone.

"I love you, Jay."