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“What, are you trying to get us all killed?!”
“I’m trying to get us home!”
They had been at each other’s throats all day. This seemed to be the breaking point.
“We don’t know what we’re up against, we don’t know who sent us here,” Frak argued. “And I’m not risking a fight we can’t finish just to get back to Ninjago quicker, when we don’t even know if anyone else is there!”
“The fact that we’re blindsided means we need to move quickly.” Sora pressed, her rage barely contained between gritted teeth. “Whoever did this to us knows we’re stranded and is going to be acting right now.”
“Why are we all pretending like it’s not Ras?” Wyldfyre broke in. “Like, it’s definitely Ras, right?”
“We can’t jump to conclusions!” Sora yelled back, her composure cracking again. “Yes, it’s probably Ras, but assuming we know stuff like that is how we end up in messes like this!”
Wyldfyre shrunk back as their eyes made contact, for the first time feeling herself fear her teammate, if even just for a moment.
“If it is Ras, then don’t you think I would know what we need to worry about?” Frak seemed to have no such worries about poking the bear. “I trained under him!”
“Yeah, so did I, genius.” Sora rolled her eyes. “It’s a big club nowadays.”
“Yeah, for what? Two weeks?” Frak scoffed.
“I was with him more recently than you were, all your info is outdated!” Sora shot back. “I know how fast he’s moving, and I say we need to move equally fast, even if the route is more dangerous.”
“Yeah, and what does everyone else say?” Frak turned to the rest of his team. “Wyldfyre, Riyu, you wanna weigh in on this?”
The dragon promptly turned his head avoidantly, the redhead staring blankly at her teammates, her brain stalling as she was asked to take sides.
“Uhh…”
“Why are we asking!” Sora cut her off. “They voted me leader, so obviously they’re going to agree with me.”
Frak held his arms out in desperation. “Does my opinion count for anything?”
Sora stared back, unflinching. “No, no it doesn’t.”
“Sora—” Wyldfyre butt back in, to no avail.
“I don’t even know why I’m humoring you!” Sora chuckled through her fury, moving towards him with twisted confidence. “You’re the least experienced person here, you’ve been with us, what? Two months?”
“Three and a half.” Frak crossed his arms.
“Exactly!” Sora exclaimed. “I’m not wasting any more time discussing this with someone who’s barely even a ninja.”
Frak’s chest indented at her words, even as his face remained masked. “I’ll take that as a compliment coming from the team’s biggest liar.”
Something inside Sora snapped as he mentioned her missteps, her words whipping back with a violence about them. “You know, if you were a real ninja you’d have no problem facing a little danger— but you do, because you’re not. You have no idea what you’re doing out here, we all have to pick up your slack, and with how long you’ve been around, who knows if we should even be trusting you!”
Her last words echoed through the space, a physical power coming with them which made everyone flinch. The two stared at each other, their eyes carrying out their own battle in the miniscule space between them, the air touching them hot and thick and newly teaming with energy just waiting to explode.
“Fine.” Frak belted out, his head finally hanging as he turned to leave.
“Frak—” Wyldfyre leapt forward to stop him.
Riyu stepped in front of her with a sympathetic grimace. He needs some space.
“Have fun dying without me.” He called back as he started in his new direction, leaving the rest of the team in shambles behind him.
Sora’s gaze tracked the serpentine as he disappeared behind the rocky terrain, completely missing the daggers Wyldfyre was staring into the back of her skull.
“What the heck was that?!”
Sora spun around to meet her next challenger, her expression making it clear she thought herself above whatever discussion was barreling at her this time. “I’m not debating this, okay? It’s our most direct path back home. We are going through that forest.”
Wyldfyre raised an eyebrow, unconvinced. “Not without Frak we’re not.”
Riyu nodded in agreement with a soft whimper.
“He made his decision.” Sora argued. “He wants to take the safe path home, let him!”
Wyldfyre leaned on her dragon companion, her voice increasingly disaffected. “You know, I kind of feel like a good team leader wouldn’t be trying to abandon other team members in the middle of nowhere. Maybe I should try being leader!”
“What am I supposed to do about this?!” Sora once again yelled.
“You’re the one who drove him off.” Wyldfyre asserted. “You just need to apologize."
“For what? Being right?!”
Wyldfyre and Riyu exchanged a knowing glance.
“Who knows if we can even trust him?” She parroted back.
“I wasn’t saying we don’t,” Sora groaned, her hands raising to her temples. “I was just saying at this rate he’s lucky we do.”
“Yeah. Because that's better.” Wyldfyre rolled her eyes. “And what about telling him he doesn’t matter and is barely a ninja?”
Sora grumbled at the response, her fists clenching as she struggled against words she could no longer find an avenue to argue against.
“Fine! I’ll go talk to him.” She relented. “Just don’t do anything stupid while I’m gone.”
The two smiled at each other as she left, seemingly pleased at whatever this twisted scheme was to make her as miserable as possible. Sora could feel this thick bubbling furry inside her reach its boil as she walked. It was a gleeful sort of rebellion against the insanity which surrounded her, a raging fire which felt good to bathe in despite how much it burned. It was a liberating pain, an all-consuming sinful sort of catharsis— and the worst thing was she knew it was getting the best of her.
She needed to be the bigger person here. She was better than this. It was the most annoying position in the realms to be in, but Wyldfyre was right. The insults were uncalled for— even if Frak did deserve them. She knew firsthand how damaging stuff like that could be when she was on the other end of it. Years of being told she wasn’t good enough didn’t exactly help her, and intellectually she knew the last thing she wanted was to become that person. Surely Frak could take it though. After everything he’s put her through, a couple of jabs wouldn’t kill him. Sure, he was new to the team, and confirmably insecure about proving himself after having worked with Ras for so long, and what she said would be the exact thing to push all of those buttons… which is probably why she even said them in the first place…
Damn it. Maybe she really did need to apologize.
She had followed Frak’s tracks to a point where they began to wander, spiral, overlap. He had been pacing. Good news was, she could probably catch up with him quicker. Bad news was, his mental state was likely not great. She managed to spot where the tracks seemed to move forward again, leading behind a rather large rock formation a few meters ahead. She could vividly hear her footsteps crinkle in the sandy brush as she continued moving alongside Frak’s.
She was doomed to this.
Walking the same path as this most frustrating man in the world, and she couldn’t even feel sorry for herself, because she was the one who had decided to be a jerk about it.
She found it hard to pinpoint what about him drove her so looney. He was a fine fighter, a hard worker, and even had the odd useful idea in him. He was passionate and driven for all the right reasons, and always so ridiculously honest about every tiny thought inside his head. She had seen Ras’ methods firsthand now, and the fact that he managed to not only escape him with such little intervention, but land on his feet so effortlessly spoke volumes about his character. It wasn’t about anything he had done; it was just about… him. The way he spoke, the way he moved, she could feel herself notice every slight inflection of his under her skin, down to her bones. It rattled her like no one else had ever managed. This feeling where a person sticks to your mind, irremovable no matter how hard you try, was infuriating to her, especially with so little reasoning behind it. There was no one else who had ever dominated her brain so completely. All she wanted was the ability to ignore him— but I guess that sounds like pretty cruel an impulse when pointed at someone who's supposed to be your teammate.
Your friend.
Rounding the corner, she saw him. He sat at the edge of a large boulder, feet lightly dragging against the scattered grass. She was approaching him from behind, but surely he had heard her coming by now. Sora’s mouth opened, her breath frozen as she worked up the nerve to break the silence.
“Frak?”
Her call yielded no response. His body sat docile, detached from his surroundings, and vacant to any sound.
This was about to be a minefield.
“Frak, I… I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have—”
“Why did I think I could do this?”
His voice came just barely over his breath, a defeat in it which she had never heard from him before.
“Do what?”
“…be a ninja.”
She felt her stomach sink at his answer.
“Frak, I didn’t mean it—”
“But you were right.” He stressed, finally turning to look at her. “I’m sitting here, pretending like I know what’s going on, but I’ve been a disaster ever since I joined the team.”
Their eyes finally making contact, she again began moving toward him. “You’re an important part of the team.”
“Am I?” Frak’s words had grown sharp again. “Because I almost trapped us all in a cave, could barely put up a fight against dragonians, can’t keep hold of a prismatic blade, couldn’t remember the summoning song,”
“Well, I couldn’t either.” Sora countered.
Frak sighed, her words barely registering. “Even when I try and help Cole unearth the Source Dragon, I’m not strong enough to do it. Kai has to come in to pick up my slack.”
Sora thought back to her own beginnings on the team. All these feelings rang very familiar. “You know, it’s easy to get hung up on your mistakes, but we all make them.” His eyes had strayed from hers, lost in his own thoughts again. In attempt to make some sort of a connection land, Sora decided to move closer, gingerly sliding herself onto the rock next to him, her fingers slipping along the sand which had blown atop. “We’re still in training. No one’s expecting you to be as good as the guys who have been doing this for like a decade.”
His eyes rose to meet hers again. “But you are.”
Sora chuckled, instinctually. “No. No, I’m not.”
“You kidding? You’re amazing at this!” His body shifted to better face her, the two of them finally talking on the same terms. “You freed all of Imperium, won the Tournament of Sources, reached your true potential, are going to crack spinjitzu any day now, were right about everything you’ve ever told me, know exactly which move to use when, and always have a perfectly quippy line to boot!” He listed them off on his fingers, his breath straining by the end.
“I…” Sora had trouble processing the tally that had just been thrown at her, her brain now searching for a viable escape route. “Look, we all have our strengths and weaknesses. There’s lots of things you’re good at that I’m not.”
Frak jumped off the stone, standing in front of his companion, arms crossed in challenge. “Name one.”
Sora floundered for a moment at the unexpected confrontation, her mind latching to the first answer it could. “Well—”
“Besides baking pies!” Frak preemptively countered. “That’s not a ninja skill.”
“Ninja… need to eat,” Sora shrugged.
“Do you see any pie ovens out here!” Frak threw his hands out in exasperation, his voice now notably louder and a touch more fragile. “No! Because there’s nothing I can do out here to help us that you can’t do at least twelve times better! There’s nothing I can do, there’s no one I can be, there’s nothing…” he paused, choking on his words as they left him. “There’s nothing I’m giving this team it doesn’t already have. I'm just another body.”
Sora instinctively stood to meet him again. “Frak—”
“Name one thing.” He cut her off, stepping back in refusal to let her advance. “One unique skill you think I have that you don’t.”
Sora took a moment in the silence to honestly think. One thing Frak was good at. She could manage that. Frak had his better qualities. There was a respect for him which she held despite the insults they would hurl at each other. She only needed to figure out how to vocalize it.
Her lips parted as the source memory came to her. “Do you remember the fight we had in the Tournament?”
Frak stood for a moment, recalling the memory. “You mean the one that you won?”
“Well—”
“Even with the deck actively stacked against you, because you are objectively the better fighter in every single way.”
“That’s not the point—”
“But it is the point!” Frak yelled. “How am I supposed to live up to that? How am I ever supposed to compete with that when we’re fighting right next to each other, and you’re over here making it look like some sort of effortless ballet, taking care of things before I can even process them. I just feel like such a useless prop in comparison.”
“You think I’m, what? A better person than you are?” Sora summarized, attempting to make his words sound as ridiculous as they were.
“I know you are.” Frak doubled down. A heavy sigh left his chest as his gaze turned to the distance. “When you left with Arin… that’s when I knew. I knew you were just leagues above me.”
Sora shifted her position, attempting to wriggle back into his sightline. “Because I made a stupid decision to walk directly into a death trap?”
“Because you were a better friend than I was,” he answered. “It should have been me. I should have gone with him. I’d worked with Ras before, I knew what to expect, I knew how to deal with it, I could warn him, I could give him leverage, see through Ras’ deceptions. I should have been with him on that trip— but I wasn’t. I wasn’t strong enough to make that decision.” His eyes finally floated back to her, now more sure and more empty than when they had left. “...but you were.”
Sora remained captured by his stare, his affect trending quieter as a melancholic acceptance underpinned his every word.
“You were strong enough. You always are.”
His statements were awed and disappointed, a confusing rush of emotions to feel together, and an even stranger one to receive. “You know, I think you see me as a lot more put together than I am.”
This sentence touched a nerve of some kind. “Oh, would you cut it out with the self-deprecating humility!” Frak once again flew off, his body choosing to retreat from the conversation all together.
Sora followed after him, annoyed that her honesty had somehow offended him. “I’m sorry, am I not allowed to have flaws?”
“It’s bad enough you’re this impossible standard,” He stopped in his exit, turning to face the pest tailing him. “Pretending you’re not just makes it worse!”
“Who? Who is applying this imaginary standard to you Frak?” Sora stood her ground, her anger gaining momentum. “Why are you so dead set on looking better than me anyway? Is putting me down the only way you can feel good about yourself?”
“No. That’s not—”
“Because that’s what it sounds like!”
Frak spun around in adrenaline, hands to his head as long repressed guttural cries of grievance escaped his chest. “How on earth am I ever supposed to get anyone’s attention if you’re always the one in the spotlight? How I am I ever supposed to impress Lloyd, or Kai, or Cole—”
“Oh, you really think I’m closer with Cole than you are?”
“Or you!”
“Me?” Sora questioned, her temper heightening with the nonsensical turn in his argument. “Why would it matter if you impress me?”
“Because I—” Frak hesitated almost out of habit, a strained groan leaving his mouth as he threw his hands down, now all consumed by his rage which seemed to somehow give him the motivation to finally push through.
“Because I like you, okay?!”
The discussion came to a halt, a true silence entering the air for the first time since their conversation began, sitting there to be absorbed by them both for the few moments before the next inevitable eruption.
The statement came at Sora like a punch to the gut, her face laboriously souring in dread, her arms raising in an emotional defense. “No… no, you did not just pull that on me right now—”
Her annoyance wasn’t necessarily surprising, but her words gave Frak a good deal of pause. “Pull? What am I pulling?”
“Would you quit it with this bit already!” The words shot out with a pent up, earnest desperation, a crack in her voice as she begged. “I’m here trying to be serious and open up to you! Why do you insist on being so cruel to me?!” At this point Sora’s words had strained to near the point of tears.
Her sudden turn in emotion threw Frak for a loop, his body freezing up in response, terrified of making a wrong move. He couldn’t recall ever seeing her this distraught before, but whatever he had done seemed to cause her some severe, genuine distress. “I’m sorry.” He quickly apologized to try and calm her, still trying to wrap his head around the situation. “I’m not sure… I didn’t mean to make you uncomfortable if this—"
“Of course you did!” Sora’s breathing had heightened, now operating in uneven fits as she tried her best to control the outrage which wrapped her pain. “You’ve been pestering me with it nonstop since you joined the team!”
Frak puzzled over her words. Non-stop pestering? About what? His feelings? But he only just shared them with her. Unless she had somehow figured it out before now…
The realization felt like he had run into a brick wall, the most embarrassing flood of recontextualized memories now barreling through his brain. “You noticed?”
“Of course I noticed!” Sora groaned. “I’m not an idiot, Frak! I know how this goes!” The opportunity to insult him seemed to give her a newfound determination. “Someone who very clearly can’t stand you suddenly starts being suspiciously nice to you, to bait you into opening up, just so they can pull the rug out from under you and laugh in your face. Well, it’s not funny!”
Frak studied out her words as best he could with his brain spinning so quickly, now certain of some sort of catastrophic misunderstanding which they had somehow wandered into. “I think we’re on two different pages here.”
“Yeah, you’re having fun. I’m not.” Sora rolled her eyes.
“No, like more literally...” Frak mumbled. He shrunk his awkwardly tall body to best align with her eyeline, his tone changed to as direct and serious as he could manage. “Sora, I wasn’t making fun of you.”
“You can’t pretend you weren’t!” She shot back. “You’ve been teasing me, to my face constantly.”
Despite her nonsensical claims, Frak attempted to control his demeanor as not to shatter the clearly fragile state which Sora was in at the moment. “Constantly?”
“Like…” Sora cleared the first of the tears which had managed to escape her eyes. “Like just the other morning, I had just gotten up, and you said my hair looked ‘beautiful’.” She looked at him incredulously. “My awful, tangled, messy morning hair! You were obviously poking fun at me!”
Frak stood frozen, his words only barely slipping out under his breath as he stared at the furious goddess in front of him. “It was the first time I had seen you with your hair down… I thought it looked pretty.”
This finally seemed to break through, Sora’s brain now also beginning to spiral thanks to the bombshell. Her eyes grew deeper, suddenly seeing with a fuller vision than she had in ages.
“So you weren’t…”
Her beautiful beautiful ocean blue eyes open and awestruck with an authenticity which could never be anything but magical to him.
“You always look pretty.”
The realization ran through Sora in waves, her heart beating ever faster, hands rising to rest on her head as she reframed the past months with this troubling(?) new information. She had been so certain of her initial assessment of his behavior. It had been thrust upon her all too many times as a child. The bullies she so desperately longed to be friends with would suddenly be complementing her work, her jokes, her hair with empty flattery designed to lure her close enough to dump a lunch tray on her head, or rip her papers up, or simply insult her to her face. And though Frak had never attempted any of these things, the pattern fit too closely. He criticized her constantly, took issue with her every method of doing things, obviously had a need to show her up, and wasn’t above practical jokes and petty insults. And yet every so often along he came with these hyperbolic complements which instantly set off her radar. To think that what he had been doing this whole time was in fact not to degrade her…
But to flirt with her???
It seemed obvious in hindsight. Frustratingly so. Only her brain could be so broken as to assume someone being nice to her was their way of paying her insult. Every dramatic remark about her grandeur had been sincere, every overblown worry for her safety a real concern, and every confusingly specific commendation legitimate praise. It almost seemed stranger to her that another person had genuinely thought all of these fanciful things about her than the idea that they had somehow been a joke. With this new information so very many oddities were explained to her. His constant coming to her aid was an attempt to impress her, his random bouts of jittery nervousness a reaction to presence, his non sequiturs…
His random topic changing non sequiturs. Had he been trying to confess to her?
Heat rolled through her face speedily now, the embarrassment of it all catching up to her. What an idiot she had been, how foolish she must have looked, how confusing her nonsensical reactions to compliments must have been for this poor little snake boy. There were a number of emotions which paralyzed her now: confusion, guilt, surprise, but most of all panic. She rushed to run every comment she possibly could have misinterpreted from him through her mind in order to grasp their full meaning, living through weeks in seconds of time, all jumbled together in a confusing mix of clarity and disorder. Not that she had any idea what she was going to do with all this information. If she ever finished wrapping her mind around the logical paradigm shift, she was still left with the fact that there was someone standing in front of her who had just confessed that he liked her. Like, LIKE liked her. And mentally approaching the type of response she would be expected to make after an admission of that nature only seemed to make her brain short circuit completely.
“I’ve been working up the nerve to tell you all summer.” Frak offered, attempting to fill the gap between them as she processed. “I thought I was hiding it pretty well, but I guess not.”
Her eyes narrowed at his latest sentence, an anchor of logic to pull her from her spiral. Sora may have misconstrued him, but one thing he had not been was subtle. “You told me I was the most attractive member of the team to my face and thought that was ‘hiding it pretty well’?”
“Well, I—” Frak stuttered, suddenly finding very little traction to stand on. “How did you think that was making fun of you?”
“I thought you were being sarcastic!” She protested. “Like the joke was that I was obviously the most unattractive person on the team. It was so out of the blue, what else was I supposed to think?” She chuckled, exasperated. “That you were randomly confessing your love for me on a whim?”
“I don’t know.” Frak responded, the pressure of interrogation getting to him. “I was kind of hoping you didn’t hear me!”
“Didn’t hear you?” Sora repeated, doubtful.
“Look, I thought I should tell you, and now I’ve told you!” Frak reasoned, his eyes pressed closed as he thought through his logic. “So there! That’s how I feel. How do you feel?”
As his eyes reopened to gauge her reaction, regret instantly struck him. The idiotic nature of the question was immediately apparent on her face, as if their past two months of history hadn’t made it clear enough. This was not curiosity, or bashfulness. Not disgust, or pity. Her eyes held a sort of empty, rattled terror, as if she had just been through some traumatic event from which she would never fully recover.
Of all the reactions he had mentally prepared for, this was not one of them.
“Oh Master, this was a bad idea.” Frak’s hands clutched his head, his eyes widening as Sora’s shellshock seemed to infect him. “I never should have told you. You hate me.”
This last sentiment seemed to finally shake Sora from her stupor.
“There was never any chance of you liking me back, it was stupid to think you could like me back, because you literally can’t stand me.”
“Hold on—”
Frak began turning to once again make a retreat. “I’m going to go throw myself in a hole somewhere—”
“Listen, idiot!” Sora grabbed one of his wrists, pulling him back towards her. “Of course I don’t hate you.”
The physical contact had snapped Frak out of his own spiral, a few breaths passing between them as the question of what came next lingered in the air. “Then how do you feel?”
“I don’t know!” Sora belted, as if the question was a ridiculous one to expect her to have an answer for. “I’ve never had a guy who’s liked me before, and… it’s honestly kind of freaking me out a little bit.”
Frak looked down at her hand, still gripping his wrist, now visibly shaking.
She wasn’t kidding.
“Okay, well… don’t freak out.” Frak quickly placated her again, gently guiding Sora back to sit on the boulder behind them. His hands shifted to grip hers in order to steady her movements. Once they were seated, Sora's eyes darted down, the realization that they were holding hands hitting both of them at the same time.
Frak yanked his arms back in panic. “Sorry! I didn’t mean to…” With a loss of what else to do, he shoved both hands under his armpits, his mind and body now scrambling to keep this disaster from further developing into an apocalypse.
Sora seemed strangely unbothered by the contact, her eyes remaining locked on her now empty hand, the sensation which had left her seeming wistfully discordant.
“...your hands are cold,” she mused.
Frak paused, his attention flipping direction. “Serpentine,” he explained. “My hands are always cold.” His body shifted, uncomfortable at being so aware of itself. “So, what exactly seems to be freaking you out?” he reiterated, deflecting back the focus of the discussion.
“I just…” Sora’s hand finally retreated, her mind struggling to churn through her thoughts. “I guess I never really thought about it before.”
“About…” Frak struggled at the unclear pronoun. “Like, me? In a romantic kind of context?”
Sora’s eyes finally managed to land on his again. “Like… me in a romantic kind of context…”
Frak’s eyes quickly grew. “Oh… oh wow, okay.” His mind calmed ever so slightly as he learned the problem wasn’t solely due to his own blundering of the situation. “And when you say never you mean like—”
“I mean never!” Sora snapped. “I had a hard enough time grappling with my family relationships growing up, and an equally hard time trying to make friends. I still have a hard enough time making friends!” Sora stressed. “So I’m sorry if I haven’t exactly had time to think about my lack of romantic relationships on top of all that!”
“I didn’t mean to make you angry,” Frak quickly apologized. “If you don’t want to talk about it—”
“I’m not angry,” Sora sighed. “Maybe I am, but not at you,” she clarified, voice breathy and strained as she glanced back at him. “Maybe just a little bit, but I’m mainly just… confused, I think?”
Frak took her demeanor in, trying to weigh how best to navigate through this situation with the least amount of casualty. “Well, what do you think is confusing you?”
“I don’t know what you’re supposed to do in situations like this!” Sora’s arms tensed, her desperation starting to slip through. “What am I supposed to say, and how am I supposed to feel, and how do I know if what I’m feeling is the same as what I’m saying it is, and what are we even supposed to do once we both say how we feel—”
Frak reached forward to try and stop her from her spiral. “I think it’s kind of just whatever—”
“Whatever?!” Sora shot back quizzically.
“Just whatever feels right!” Frak finished, his voice sharpening in turn. “I don’t know!” He sighed, his lack of any kind of control on the conversation catching up to him. “I’ve never really gotten this far before…”
Sora let out a pained chuckle, her tone bordering on delirious at this point. “Great, so we both have no clue what we’re doing!”
Her attempt at levity, no matter how cynical, managed to wedge some breathing room in the space between them, the tension gaining some slack as they simply sat in each other’s presence, untainted by words for a moment.
“No clue might be overselling it.” Frak offered, clinging to whatever optimism he could muster. “I mean everyone has a bit of an idea how these things go, right? Just based on all the people around you your whole life who've done this before.”
Sora stared back at him, unconvinced. “...Like?”
Frak blinked, not expecting to be challenged on the idea that romance exists generally in the world around them. “Well, I mean, that we both know, I guess there’s Jay and Nya who…” He stopped, reconsidering his evidence as he said it. “Okay that’s not a great example.”
“No.” Sora shook her head, lightly amused.
“But Zane and Pixal for sure—”
“Were visibly miserable without each other and left immediately after getting together again.”
Frak paused at the pattern which revealed itself to him. “Yeah, I guess this team is kind of a mess when it comes to this stuff.”
“The couple I’ve spent the most time around is probably Wyldfyre and Roby,” Sora added. “And I kind of get the impression nothing they’re doing should be considered normal.”
Having given the topic a moment's more consideration, Frak relented. “Yeah, I guess I really can’t think of anyone you would know.”
“Who were you thinking of when you said it?” Sora questioned.
“I don’t know. I guess I’m mainly just taking cues from my parents,” Frak concluded. “They have a great relationship. I could always tell how much love they had for each other.” He smiled to himself at the thought.
“My parents never really got on very well.” Sora shrugged. “But that’s pretty par for the course with government paired couples.”
The discussion’s momentum halted at her statement, a change in direction now required as Frak’s mind stuttered in response.
“Government paired couples?” he repeated. “You mean like, Imperium was determining which people got married to each other?”
Sora was taken back a bit, the idea that it would be a foreign concept to anyone else coming as somewhat of a surprise. “Yeah. It was possible to petition for your own choice of spouse of course, but they still had to determine you were a good match, and it took forever, and most applications were denied anyway.” She explained, the insanity of it all only now dawning on her. “Most family units in Imperium were completely government arranged.”
There was a strain of embarrassment that caught up with her as she finished speaking, the air now filled with a heavy dullness about the situation.
“No wonder you’re freaking out.” A lighthearted empathy entered Frak’s voice as he drew his conclusions. “Your main frame of reference for this stuff is majorly messed up.”
Sora scrunched up her knees, curling around them as she thought back. “I guess so…” Her eyes glanced back Frak’s direction, her face still buried in her arms. “Sounds like you had the exact opposite with your parents.”
Frak reluctantly grinned as he was prompted to reminisce. “I remember I was… like four, and they dragged me out to the Ninjago City clerk’s office at some unimaginably early hour so they could be first in line the day that the city started legally recognizing Serpentine marriages.” The memory seemed almost to play in front of him as he spoke. “They said they wanted as many official declarations of their love as possible.”
Sora had perked up a bit at the story, the smile infecting her as well. “That’s actually really sweet.”
“They always liked to say they had the greatest love story of all time!” Frak gestured with his hands a bit sarcastically. “The entire universe was stacked against them, but fate knew they were destined to be together! So tombs which had been closed for generations were opened, wars were ended, centuries old grudges settled, all so that they could meet.” He repeated the words like he had heard them spoken hundreds of times at least. “He was the first one out of his tomb, and she was the last one out of hers. The moment they lay eyes on each other, they knew they could never be separated.”
Sora laughed, a note of awe underpinning it. “It’s like a fairy tale.”
Frak sighed, a complexity of feelings obviously being drug up on the topic. “Yeah… it is.” There was a sadness behind his affirmation, reality swiftly bleeding through whatever fantasy might have once been there. “I’ve always wanted something like that so bad. Expected it. They make it look so effortless, inevitable even. But every time I get a crush on someone, it just ends up blowing up in my face.”
Sora finally straightened up, a smirk infecting her tone. “Like… ‘the girl thought you were making fun of her every time you tried to flirt’ level blow up, or is that just me?”
“Yeah, I think you take the cake so far.” Frak nodded along playfully, folding his legs up under him. “They just keep getting worse each time.”
“I hate to think of the fate of whoever catches your eye next.” Sora elbowed him jokingly.
“Obviously I didn’t get whatever true-love-destiny genes my parents had.” He let go of a melancholy chuckle, Sora latching onto its source instinctively.
“That’s the scary part, isn’t it?” Her voice had quieted, almost scared of the words which it carried. “If you don’t know what you’re doing, inevitably you’re going to mess it up.” She spoke with strange certainty. “This perfect feeling that’s extremely meaningful and rare and fragile and vulnerable, and I know I’m going to do something wrong.”
“All relationships have their bumps,” Frak countered.
“And what if things don’t mess up?”
His words seemed to have no effect.
“What if it’s as perfect as everyone describes it, and I’m the one experiencing it?”
Frak waited for her to elaborate, but her explanation never came. “What would be wrong with that?”
“Well, you know,” Sora turned to look at him, his not understanding again hitting her with a strange amount of surprise. “Just like, out of everyone in the world, all the people who could be in your position, there’s no way you can ever feel like you honestly deserve that kind of—”
“Okay, no.” Frak asserted, his voice raising considerably yet again. “You are not finishing that sentence.”
“You don’t even know what I was going to say!” Sora snapped back, meeting his tone.
“Whatever it was, it was going to be a dumb, stupid, self-deprecating lie.” Frak stood up, shaking his head in disappointment. “Like what were your options there? Happiness?” He teased her. “You think you don’t deserve to be happy? The basic human emotion, happiness?”
“It wasn’t happiness!” Sora relented.
“Well, whatever it was, a relationship, a turn of luck, love, my point still stands.” He now stood over her, his self-righteous attitude having never been stronger. “Look, you don’t have to like me back, I’ve been turned down by my fair share of girls, and one more isn’t the end of the world. You don’t have to like anyone back for all I care. Some people are just like that sometimes,” he shrugged. “But if the reason you've got reservations about romance is because you think you aren’t good enough to deserve it, you need to snap yourself out of that right now, because that’s legitimately the stupidest thing I’ve ever heard.”
The usual frustration in his tone hit Sora at a different angle than she was used to, with his words bypassing her defenses instantly, her emotions flaring at this unique combination of degrading advocacy.
“What is this?” Sora lamented. “You trying to insult me into liking you?”
“No, that’s not—”
“What are we even doing here? There’s no way you honestly like me. You can’t stand me!”
Frak laughed. “What made you think that?”
“Everything!” she stressed. “You’re here yelling at me right now! Why would you ever like me? I haven’t exactly been great to you, and I feel like you’re on my case all the time—”
“Just because I criticize you, that means I don’t like you?” Frak questioned, tickled by the assumption.
“Well yeah. Isn’t that… how it works?”
“No.” A surprisingly collected confidence ran beneath Frak’s tone. “I tell you what I think, because I respect you and want to be honest with you. It would be an insult to your obvious intelligence to try and pretend otherwise,” he pressed. “So, here’s the truth. I think you’re one of the most stubborn headed, self-sabotaging, stupid pity party throwing friends I’ve ever had, and I can’t stand watching you belittle yourself at every turn, because it’s beneath you, it’s wrong, and it’s an insult to everything I see in you every single day we’re together.”
Frak had now moved to kneel in front of her, seeking to meet her eyes most directly. His hands were pinned on the stone to either side of her, trapping her in his barrage of affirmations. “You have made it through so much, remained so strong, done so much good, you’re ridiculously talented, and smart, and crafty, and witty, and dedicated, and warm, and decisive, and beautiful—” Frak stopped himself, continually annoyed with the line of thought he had found himself defending. “And the fact that you randomly choose to develop this total blindness to it all is the most insufferable thing on the planet!” He spat the words out as if they left a bitter taste on his tongue.
The breadth of his words seemed to hit Frak as he slowly retreated backwards, lowering himself to the ground, a sort of consciousness about his actions sneaking into his body, the sincerity behind them fully giving way. “So there’s your answer. That’s why I like you. Because if you’re not going to do it, someone else has to.”
Sora finally managed to move enough to wipe the many tears which had tumbled down her cheeks from his forceful well wishes. Her smile had finally broken through, impossible to repress any longer, his catalogue of her qualities looping through her mind. They both sat, uniquely vulnerable, strangely aligned, and utterly unsure of how they should proceed.
“thanks.”
“...of course.”
Sora stared down at her teammate, sitting in the dust, wounded and drained at having to defend Sora from herself. This mess of a man who had taken the time to sit here and argue with her about whatever little thing she pleased all while trying to confess his feelings. This idiot who had spent the past few months trying to impress a blind suitor, and still came out the other end the supportive, optimistic, unbothered ally. This snake. This ridiculously annoying snake.
She wouldn’t trade him for the world.
For better or for worse, he was so tangibly real, and genuine, always coming from a place of heart. He was fascinating at every turn, with so much pure honor and virtue hidden under his flashy neon scales. All the happiness he had promised was meant for her, he deserved just as much. She knew that. After everything she knew he had been through, an alienating society, abusive teachers, and abrasive teammates, he deserved every good thing which could possibly be coming his way.
“You know, those girls who turned you down?” Sora started, their eyes hesitantly reuniting. “They’re complete idiots. Every last one of them.”
Frak stared back at her a moment, a smile slowly creeping over his face. “I get it.” He rolled his eyes halfheartedly. “This is more self-deprecating humor.”
A note of pain ran through Sora’s chest at his assumption, the implication feeling instinctually wrong. “No, I’m not… well, not necessarily.”
“I appreciate the gesture.” Frak nodded modestly.
“I’m serious though,” Sora insisted. “They had no idea what they were missing.”
Frak tensed as she continued to press her point. “We really don’t have to go through this whole song and dance where you try and make me feel better—”
Sora slid off the rock to join him on the ground. “Frak, I swear, just listen to me.” Her usual annoyance flared up as she took hold of arms, forcing his attention. “I know I've been bad about showing it, but I genuinely admire you. Like, a lot.” Her words finally seemed to stick. “I always have.”
“Always?” Frak raised an eyebrow, skeptically.
“I was trying to tell you earlier,” Sora gently explained. “About our fight in the Tournament.”
“The one I lost?”
Sora nodded. “You only lost it because you gave up your wolf mask.”
Frak thought back, her point clicking in his mind.
“You openly defied Ras in front of everyone, no back up plan, no fall back, you just stuck to your morals in front of an arena of people, even when you knew it would cost you everything.”
His eyes narrowed playfully. “Like you haven’t made a stand in front of a crowd before.”
“Not like that I haven’t.” Sora insisted. “Look, I’ve run toward a lot of things in my life. I’ve followed to places I thought would be good for me, but it takes me ages to cut out things I know are harming me. I just don’t have that kind of blind faith.” Sora sighed, thinking back. “I never left Imperium until I had a destination to run to, I couldn’t bring myself to apologize to Arin until my hand was forced, I couldn’t even manage to let go of my parents until I knew I had a new family to lean on.” Her eyes refocused on Frak, an impressed excitement entering her voice. “It took me nearly 10 years to work up the nerve to tell them they were being jerks, and there you are after one conversation, throwing everything out the window in front of a crowd, sacrificing your win, your support system, your dream, your life all because of the opinion of someone you trusted once years ago!”
Frak blushed at the ridiculousness of it all. “...It felt like the right thing to do.”
“Exactly!” Sora grinned, almost giddy at this point. “It’s amazing how simple it all is to you! And you’re always just so optimistic, and observant, and persistent, and you adapt so quickly to whatever gets thrown at you, I wish I could be that way.” She chuckled, her hands moving to grip his shoulders. “That’s probably why you get on my nerves so much, because you're so good at all these things I know I’m terrible at!”
His eyes remained locked on hers, hopeful and curious. “You really think all that?”
The question struck Sora, the demand for sincerity pulling something from her. “...I think I do.”
As she sat on his best qualities, a sense of shame hit her— every strength of his seeming a fault of hers, ones which ironically seemed to circle back and affect him directly. There was a deep need to mend it all welling within her, and it dated back so much further than she would have liked.
“And for the record, there’s no way I’m a better friend than you,” she added, her arms again retreating. “I should've been there for you after you lost the Tournament.”
Frak’s expression crinkled in sympathy. “No, that’s not—”
“I was with you when you made the decision,” she cut him off. “I’m the one who benefited from it, I knew what Ras would think about it, and I should have made the effort to stand by you. We all should have.”
Frak attempted a halfhearted smile, moved but unswayed. “You don’t need to worry about it. We weren’t friends then.”
“But seeing you get pushed around should have been my cue to go and make one.” She asserted. “Ninja don’t leave anyone behind.”
Frak smiled, having hit logic he couldn’t fight. “Does that mean you're not gonna let me get lost wandering the desert by myself?”
Sora burst forward, surrounding her teammate in a hug. “Never threaten to leave the team again. No matter what I say, we need you around, okay?” She could feel herself let go of a long held breath, the reality of her emotions hitting her. “I need you around.”
Frak reciprocated, leaning into her embrace, and for the first time soaking in her warmth in more ways than one. “Promise.”
Sora pulled back, clearing her eyes away as she attempted to reclaim composure. “And I’m sorry for yelling at you. You didn’t deserve any of that.”
“I did my fair share of yelling back.” Frak conceded. “Besides, as per usual, you’re right. If Ras is the one who sent us here, he would have a plan for what to do with the time he’s gained with us out of the way. We need to act quick.”
“You were right too though,” Sora countered. “We don’t know if anyone is still in Ninjago, and we definitely don’t know if that’s where Ras will be. Rushing home might just be a waste of time, or worse a trap.” She thought. “What we really need is more intel on where everyone else is.”
“We need communication,” Frak concluded. “Meaning locating whatever civilization is nearest and hoping they have something that can help us.”
“Which will be both faster and smarter than blindly running home.” Sora sighed. “Maybe we should’ve tried working together sooner, huh?”
“Nah,” Frak playfully shrugged as he once again stood. “Getting on each other’s nerves was way more important.”
Sora paused as he reached a hand down to help her up, the heart of the contradiction staring back at her. She stretched to meet him, letting his grip hoist her upward. Her hand lingered on his, for the first time all evening feeling the texture of his skin, the polish of his scales, the way they pressed into her. And the heat. The heat which so effortlessly left her when their skin met, like a piece of herself being instinctively pulled away. How oddly satisfying it was to so thoughtlessly give something away like that.
Sora felt herself lost again as he broke away, the decisiveness of his movement dissonant to her. She wanted to reach for his fingers again, for what reason she couldn’t quite name. On both their minds no doubt lingered the one question yet to be resolved, the one only she could answer. Sora grasped at her feelings for any sort of insight, but they refused to yield her any certainty to stand on. The frustration at her own confusion built in her, knowing that her companion deserved the truth, if only she could figure out what it was.
Frak had certainly noticed her silence at this point, catching on to the matters on her mind, a layer of quiet concern passing over him. “You okay?”
Sora sighed, knowing she couldn’t stall any longer. “Look, I don’t know what I’m feeling right now. All this is kind of scarily new to me. I wish I could give you an answer—”
“No, I get it,” Frak stopped her. “You don’t need to. We can bury it right now, and never speak of it again—”
“But I don’t want to bury it.” She stopped him. “I want to figure this out, I want to be on the same page this time.” Sora pleaded her logic. “But I’ve had all of like five minutes to even start considering any of this. There’s no way I have any concrete thoughts yet, so I really shouldn’t say anything. But if I just don’t respond, that feels like a no, and I don’t think a no is necessarily accurate. I’m just also not sure I can honestly tell you that I…” Her sentence slowed as she approached the words. “That I—”
“Then don’t tell me.” Frak cut her off, feeling her hesitation. “There are a million different answers in between yes and no. Don’t waste time telling me what you’re not feeling, just tell me what you are.”
Sora looked back at him, staring into his wide green eyes, open and earnest and patient. What was she feeling? What was this right now? What were the words for this strange sort of respect and optimism and curiosity all bubbling together at once? What do you call that?
“I think that I…” She stalled, every word still perpetually unsure, every qualifier a necessity.
“I think I maybe like… the idea of liking you.”
Frak grinned, a gentle kindness enveloping her as he delicately reached for her hands. “You know, it sounds like we’re on the exact same page,” he assured her as their fingers met yet again. “Because wouldn’t you know it, I think I like the idea of liking you too.” His smile was giddy and childish, a purity seeping through it to his eyes, focused on her with an honest delight, perfectly present and content. Right here. Right now. Exactly where she was.
His words sent a rush through Sora she had never quite felt before. A strangely pleasant sinking feeling which pierced her chest and somehow fell upwards to her stomach. It was a paralyzing, invigorating, mess of warm, delicious nerves. She wasn’t too sure what exactly Frak had done to make her feel this way, but whatever it was,
he was good at that too.