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(I may have run out of Harumi gifs lol)

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"This isn't about numbers - this is about family."
~ Kai Smith

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Cole had never been a very angry person. Despite his broader build, extreme strength, and rather rough childhood, he could never project his emotions in tirades of fury and upset quite as naturally as Nya and Kai could. It was something he originally valued, something he was proud of. Cole was not quite as level-headed as Zane but he could always direct his emotions into something less destructive. Sadness. Joy. Annoyance. They were all simpler to mould than anger. It was so easy to hurt people with anger. So easy to bruise someone with words, just as you would a fist, and Cole was careful with both. But as Cole watched Jay sob messily over Lloyd's gi, making his shoulder wet and a little bit snotty, he couldn't help but regret the inexperience he had with feelings of anger.

To him, it was similar to learning. Like a biologist trying to do physics. They simply don't have the experience needed. It was the same with Cole. He didn't know what to do with the emotion. It seemed to latch onto him like a viper- the horrible, red-hot, fury coursing through him like venom. It controlled his thoughts and directed his words, shaping and changing them into something sharp and harmful. So Cole bit his tongue. He stayed quiet as Nya interrogated their youngest teammate, and watched carefully when Lloyd hesitated- a flash of vulnerability in his eye before it was replaced with the stone-cold walls Cole hadn't even realized had been shutting him out this whole time.

"I needed to investigate this area, there was some news of suspicious activity so I thought I'd check it out," Lloyd said with a shrug. Cole narrowed his eyes, the harsh words he was trying to keep inside pressed against his teeth- threatening to escape. Before they could, Zane stepped up with a stern expression on the quiet nindroid's face.

"Lloyd, I do not know what is going on with you. But it clearly is something much more than you are making it out to be." Zane placed a hand on Lloyd's shoulder so that he was forced to meet the ice ninja's gaze. "The world is only lonely when you don't invite people in."

"Yeah Lloyd," Kai finally stepped in. Cole was impressed with how level-headed he was, especially after how worried he'd been earlier. "Did you forget that we're a team? You don't need to do things alone! No matter what it is!" The brunette gave Lloyd a sharp look when he opened his mouth to interrupt. "No! I'm going to keep telling you this until it finally drills into your dense, jellybean brain! Because apparently, you keep forgetting!"

Lloyd scowled, looking away and taking a step back so that Zane's hand slipped off his shoulder. He pressed his lips in a thin line, arms crossing tightly over his chest in an attempt to appear standoffish but Cole could see the trembling of his fingers.

"We're worried about you," Jay whispered. His tone was cautious and pleading.

"And we need to be able to trust you." Cole chimed in, the words finally spilling out. "This isn't just a team thing- it's a friendship thing. A family thing. You need to get better at communicating. You say one thing when you mean the next, you run off without telling us, you keep secrets, you're unpredictable. You need to start talking to us or else we're all going to get screwed over!"

Nya's brow raised in surprise and they all stared at the sweet earth ninja's harsh response. Cole ignored them, eyes solely focused on the green ninja, on Lloyd- their green bean, their baby. He didn't budge, he didn't blink, just waited until Lloyd finally let out a drawn-out sigh, shaky and choked.

"I... I got a call." Lloyd confessed at last. "Everything about it... it's just so crazy. I just- I don't know. I just couldn't say anything. Maybe I didn't want it to be real. Maybe I just wanted to pretend it was a bad dream." They all glanced at each other in concern and moved closer, attentive and patient.

Lloyd took another deep breath. "This building was housing someone who must have or know a person with healing abilities. They've been able to tilt the scales away from death and sustain life somehow, in some way- I don't know how. All I know is that this person somehow brought back the dead, if she was even dead in the first place." Lloyd broke off, fists clenching in frustration.

"What are you saying, Lloyd? Who's come back?" Nya pressed. They all exchanged worried looks, the tension building when Lloyd didn't reply weigh away.

He finally looked up. His emerald eyes were glassy and sad. "Harumi." The name was so simple. Yet it all made them draw in a quick breath. "Harumi is back."

- 🌸 -

"They're pretty cozy over there," Cole nodded to where Lloyd and Harumi were talking by the stern. They both had sweet little smiles on their faces, cheeks flushed pink as they giggled and exchanged whispered words in each other's ears.

"He learned it from the best." Kai boasted, leaning against the side of the ship and puffing out his chest.

"Oh please," Nya rolled her eyes. "You've been punched by just as many women as you've seduced. You taught him nothing."

Cole snickered when Kai let out an offended squawk, only to be muffled by Nya slapping her hand over his mouth with panicked shushing. They glanced over at where the couple was, praying they weren't interrupted. Thankfully they remained completely oblivious, locked in their own little world. There was a moment of silence before Nya gave her brother a disgusted look, snatching her hand away and wiping it on her gi.

"Did you just lick me?" She growled.

Kai was smart enough to look a little nervous, shrugging one shoulder and shrinking a bit. Cole ignored the two, turning his attention back to the people they were spying on and the corners of his mouth curled up at how happy Lloyd looked.

"It's so weird," Cole remarked off-handedly. His curious tone was enough to make the smith siblings stop quietly mouthing threats at each other long enough to listen. "I still see Lloyd as a little twerp with his hand halfway in the cookie jar. It's kind of strange to see him with a girl. And successfully too."

"Yeah," Nya tilted her head. "I guess it is kind of weird. Especially with the whole aging-up thing."

Kai gave a very big grunt of agreement. "It is definitely weird. I still get nervous in a car with him sometimes."

"I also think..." Cole trailed off for a moment, considering his words. "Maybe it's also because he's so... recluse sometimes, you know? He's a little overly independent. Doesn't have a lot of friends other than us and the ones we've made together."

"To be fair, we don't really have a lot of those either." Nya laughed.

Kai sniffed. "Maybe you don't."

Nya gasped. "I have Skylor!

"I introduced you to Skylor!" Kai shot back.

His sister sputtered. "Well- whatever! She likes me better anyways!"

"She does not!"

"Can we get back on topic?" Cole said in exasperation. The siblings begrudgingly quieted.

"Sorry, you were talking about Lloyd being a hermit or something?" Kai recalled, reaching as subtly as he could to flick Nya in the arm.

"I'm not sure if hermit's the right word... he just- actively pushes people away sometimes. Not in the angry way you do but in a more anxious kind of way, maybe? I don't know." Cole rubbed the back of his neck in embarrassment. "Zane's a little better at the perception thing than I am."

Nya shook her head quickly. "No! I think you're right! You've got a lot more wisdom than you let on, Cole." The ravenette gave a shy grin as she continued on, thinking. "I've noticed that in Lloyd too. He's not great with people, maybe the pushing away is a result of that." She smiled at her friend, patting him lightly on the shoulder as she turned back to look at Harumi and Lloyd again. They seemed to be lightly teasing each other, knocking their shoulders and laughing.

"But she might be good for him, you know? She could help him get out of his shell around other people." Nya suggested, elbowing Kai solidly in the ribs until the fire ninja wheezed.

Cole nodded along, as they all tend to do around Nya. "Maybe." Cole agreed. Even so, the strange feeling of weirdness didn't cease. It only seemed hurt deeper and deeper.

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"You seem to have disappeared into contemplation," a calm voice broke into Cole's thoughts.

The raven-haired boy blinked, suddenly sucked back into his surroundings. He finally registered the cool, mossy earth he was sitting in, the dampness of his hair from the sprinkle of rain that had started to come down, and a stinging sensation on his knuckles. The earth ninja looked down in surprise to see them broken and a little bruised, the skin purpling around the joint and the cuts were red and raw. He usually had gloves on to help prevent this kind of injury but he'd been relaxing at the monastery when Kai had run in, saying Lloyd was off in some strange forest.

Cole remembered the panic, the guilt at not noticing anything was wrong, the fear of what he might find. Then it hadn't been the dangerous monster he'd been scared he'd see. Instead, it was just Lloyd, standing in the middle of a weird cabin in the woods, looking a lot more pale and exhausted than Cole remembered him being that morning, or perhaps had noticed. He'd watched his teammate crumble as he explained, finally sagging under all the pressure as Nya hurriedly went to hug him, cradling Lloyd as if he was a little boy again. Cole could barely recall what came after that. The anger had just come swelling back, causing him to turn on his heel and out of the cabin, the door swinging behind him. The emotion had no way out, it all just seemed to be swirling inside of him like a storm, and he needed to get it out, needed to escape, needed that overwhelming buzz to cease and the strangling fury to loosen its grasp on his throat. He needed it now. Before Cole knew it, elemental power was coursing familiarly through his arm, down his bicep to the back of his hands- glowing, pulsing, the earth pattern appearing as he swung. And swung. And swung again. Until the bark gave away. And all that was left was a splintered tree.

"This is unlike you," Zane remarked, still quietly beside him.

Cole rubbed his eyes, getting the droplets out of his eyelashes as he curled in on himself- a little embarrassed, a little ashamed. "I don't know why I'm angry," Cole admitted. "I understand why Lloyd didn't tell us. I know him. I know that he was just taking it all on himself like he always does, he tends to avoid how he's feeling, and I'm not mad at him for it. I'm not. But there's this fury inside of me. I can't shake it no matter how hard I try."

"Well," Zane said thoughtfully. The ice ninja bent down beside his friend, not looking at him but simply scanning the area with a curious look on his face. "You are a very caring person, Cole. A very protective one. You do not lash out like Kai sometimes does, you do not stew in your anxiety as Jay can, and you don't steel yourself as I do. You have an open heart- one that is caring and empathetic. I don't think you're angry at anyone. I think you're simply angry at the situation. Lloyd was facing something alone and you didn't know. You weren't there to help him."

Cole's fists clenched, pulling at his new injuries with a light sting and he looked away.

"It is not your fault of course. How could you have helped him when you were not told? But the very idea of your friend, your family hurting and you not being able to support them fills you with so much emotion, so much upset- and a little bit of self-hate- that it translated into anger." The nindroid said everything clean and simple. One would think it was insensitive but Zane was anything but an insensitive being. It may have been the plain, raw truth but he said it with care and he said it as someone wise, someone who knew his friends well and loved them more than they could ever know.

"Gosh, is this what Kai feels like all the time?" Cole tried to joke, sniffing a bit as the rest of the tightness in his chest loosened and came out as tears.

"I'm not sure," Zane replied with a tilt of his head, finally fully facing Cole with a slight smile. "Perhaps you can ask him sometime."

Cole pressed his lips together for a moment, thinking. "Kai doesn't really punch stuff anymore, does he?"

"No, I think he'd gotten a lot better at sorting out his emotions." The other young man answered.

"I think he has too. Maybe that's why it felt so uncontrolled for me... I'm not used to it." Cole sighed and turned so he could lean his back against the tree he'd broken. It dug a bit into his back but he couldn't bring himself to care. "Damn. I can't believe Harumi's back."

"It certainly caught me by surprise." Zane hummed. "I suppose that's what Lloyd's panic attack was about."

"Lloyd had a panic attack?" When? How had Cole not known?

Zane shrugged as if he could read Cole's mind. "I knew he wasn't ready to talk about it so I didn't ask. I just helped him through it and let him choose if he'd tell anyone. Perhaps I should've pushed more though."

"It's hard to know with him," Cole sighed. "He's all over the place sometimes."

"I believe Jay likes to say that 'The chaos is what makes our family all the more fun!'" The nindroid pitched his voice much higher so that he could mimic their friend's tone.

Cole couldn't help but snort, tired but feeling a little brighter. "Jay is the chaos! He doesn't get to have an opinion on it."

"He got his head stuck in the spokes of the handrail yesterday," Zane chuckled. "Again."

Cole rolled his eyes up to the sky. "What the heck goes through his mind before he makes the decision to put his bowling ball of a face through there?"

"Nothing smart." The ice ninja replied. The two had another laugh, a little weak but still warm. It petered off when they saw the rest of the team exiting the house. Lloyd walked slowly over first, his eyes a little bit red but looking generally okay. He eyed Cole, clearly having picked up on his anger before and trying to see if the earth ninja was still feeling that way. Cole gave him a reassuring nod with a small smile on his lips and Lloyd's shoulders visibly relaxed, relief obvious on his face.

"I want to head back to the hospital, where Harumi is," Lloyd mumbled, voice a little slurred as he was unable to keep the utter exhaustion out of his voice.

"No way, uh-uh, not happening." Nya protested firmly in a tone that allowed for no argument. She grabbed him by the shoulders and steered him toward where they'd hidden their vehicles.

Lloyd blanched, digging in his heels. "I didn't even get to look around that cabin! I should at least-"

"Tomorrow, Lloyd." Kai cut in, a stern look in his eyes.

"Yeah, dude, you look like you're going to faint." Jay piped up.

Lloyd pouted in a true green-bean fashion, helping to cement in Cole's resolve over his anger, and reluctantly let them pull him away from the cabin. Nya pulled as much of the rainwater as she could off of them before they got into their various ways of transportation. Kai shoved Lloyd into the passenger seat of the green ninja's car before he sat in the driver's spot. Cole quickly went over before the door closed, placing a blanket over Lloyd and tucking him in a little. The boy grumbled sleepily, squinting up at his friend.

"I'm sorry," Lloyd said quietly. His words were soft but sincere, the guilt obvious in his eyes. Cole smiled at him and ruffled his hair.

"I know, it's okay. We're going to figure this all out, alright? Together." Cole promised. He exchanged a glance with Kai, both of them equally burning with loyalty and protective fierceness.

"Together..." Lloyd mumbled, smacking his lips a little as he snuggled deeper into the blanket. "That's nice..." And with that he promptly fell asleep, mouth hanging open and everything. Kai snorted, only to be shushed by Cole before the earth ninja shut the door and moved to his own bike. The earth ninja shut the hatch, quickly sending Pixal a notice that they'd found Lloyd and were on their way back- even though Zane probably had already done so. The lovebirds might even video call on the ride back, Cole mused.

Despite the worry that still crept at him, he felt like a weight had been lifted. It had been a big day, a tough one, but Cole was going to stay by his promise. No matter how hard it got, they were going to fix it. Together. No matter what.

NOTE****
I was planning on fixing my sleep schedule tonight but instead, I stayed up finishing this chapter 😂. Y'all are persistent. I appreciate all the patience. I hope you enjoyed this chapter! More Harumi coming up next!

LuckyBugBooks 🐞