It had been two days since the man had been arrested for kidnapping, sexual assault, harassment, and attempt of murder toward me and Z/G/N. Cole had gone to take me to the police station earlier today for my testimony though I had begged not to partake. I wanted him charged, but I just didn't want to testify. I didn't want to sit in a cold and dark room with my brother in the waiting room as I explained everything that happened to me in that house.

It had taken hours for the police to write down everything and take record of it, and not even Cole knew everything we went through. I could just picture it killing him as he sat in a plastic chair for three hours while his sister sat in a separate room with her anxiety increasing. I could never imagine telling him what that man did and had over me.

I rode back with Cole silently on his dragon and as soon as we landed, I trekked up the stairs with my arms folded across my chest. I stopped at the large front door and waited for Cole to follow me up, and when he saw me waiting for him, he sighed. "You haven't said a word since we left the station," he sighed, watching me lean against the wall and shrug. "You haven't asked me anything."

He smiled softly and ruffled my hair to wish I cringed and pulled away. "You keep stealing Lloyd's shirts," he chuckled, gesturing to the large green shirt I had over my leggings. "They're comfortable and he doesn't mind," I answered quickly, then doubts filling my mind. "Does he? If he does than I can - "

"He doesn't mind, Y/N," Cole interrupted. I pursed my lips and nodded, staring at the door handle and waiting for Cole to open it, but he didn't. "Are you okay? Things haven't been the same since two days ago and we talked about some stuff and the guy is in jail now and he'll be there for life but - "

"I'm fine, Cole," I answered as fast as I could. He stared at me and I knew he could tell I was lying but I was too ashamed to tell the truth. After that man had revealed things I never wanted the ninja to know and I had heard Cole belittling his own abilities as a brother, boyfriend, and ninja, we had cried with each other for a long while before settling down in his room on the floor with a gallon of ice cream between us. I needed the talk and I enjoyed my older brother's comfort, but at the same time, there were still things I could never tell him. And I never wanted him to feel as if he wasn't enough to protect me, but right now I needed the space.

"Can we just go inside please?" I begged, lifting my hand to motion to the door. "The station really drained me and I just want to take a nap."

Cole sighed and pushed open the door, immediately halting the training of the ninja inside. I pulled at the edge of my shirt because I felt anxious and when I closed the door behind me, Lloyd appeared in front of me. "Hey," he smiled, leaning in to kiss my cheek. I allowed him to and he smiled, the largest and goofiest grin appearing on his face. It had been a week since I let him close to me.

"How did it go?"

I shrugged and walked past him, weaving my way in between the training course. "They got the information they needed and he'll be spending life in prison," Cole responded for me, already spinning into his gi and grabbing his scythe from the back wall. "That's great!" Jay cheered, hopping around me and grabbing my hand quickly to twirl me around. I smiled and when I was facing forward again, I chuckled lightly. Cole's face lit up. "Z/G/N will be happy to hear that," Zane said, already on his phone to call his girlfriend and tell her the good news. She had testified yesterday with her mother and hadn't known about the recent progress. "How are you, Y/N?" Kai asked. I glanced at him, and then back at Cole. I knew I wasn't getting away with a lie for this one. "I-I'll be okay."

"I'm almost done training if you want to watch a movie or play video games o-or anything! I just need like five minutes so Sensei doesn't get on me about ditching," Lloyd smiled.

Everything inside of me begged to let Lloyd in. Everything in me screamed for my walls to break so I could cuddle with my boyfriend and tell him how I was feeling and just let him help me. I wanted him. I needed him. I loved my brother and he was my favorite person in the whole world. But Lloyd could help me through things that Cole couldn't. I could tell him things that I wouldn't want Cole to hear because I would be afraid or ashamed.

I looked at his eyes, his hopeful eyes.

Finally, I nodded. "Five minutes?" I asked softly. Lloyd beamed with pride, his hopeful eyes britghtening and the light returning. "Yeah, five minutes."

I toyed with my fingers, "You promise?"

Lloyd looked at me. I had never asked him that before. I always just trusted him immediately. He could tell me anything and I would believe it. But now, I didn't know what to believe.

Cole sat on the training course and tied his sneaker before looking at Lloyd, "You have to promise. It's her new thing."

Lloyd nodded slowly, obviously trying to test the waters. Why was he so resilient? "I promise."

And I walked back to my room.

I had laid with Lloyd for a while. He came to my room in five minutes just like he promised. He turned on a show on my laptop and laid next to me while I slept, but I never fell asleep. The whole time he was with me I didn't want him to be. I kept thinking about that man, his sentence, what he did to me, what he could have done to me. I didn't trust anyone anymore. I wanted my life to pause for a long time and when I was finally ready I could just press play. I was tired of being treated like a doll, but I knew I couldn't handle anything else. Everything was so frustrating. I wanted to move forward but when I did I wished I could move back. Nothing was going my way but I didn't want it to. Things were too complicated and I needed something to change.

Lloyd wasn't enough for me right now.

I wish he was.

He looked at me different. He expected me to break under the weight of everything that's happened. He expected me to cry into his shoulder like I cried into Cole's. I knew he was upset he wasn't the one to comfort me but he knew I needed my brother at that moment. I wished I could tell him that I would talk to him when I was ready, but I didn't know how. I didn't think he would care either. Things were too different.

Even when he was laying with me tonight it seemed like he wasn't there. He either didn't want to be there or he wasn't comfortable.

As soon as he left when he was convinced I was sleeping, I pulled out my phone and called the one person I thought I could trust. I needed to be away from everything. I needed change.


Third Person

"What's up?" Kai asked as Lloyd entered the room, seating himself at the table with cold and wet hair and tired eyes. Lloyd huffed, "I just took a shower," he said in a confused tone, grabbing the pot of soup from the center of the table and pouring some into his bowl with the ladle. Nya rolled her eyes, "He meant what's up with Y/N. We thought you were hanging out with her." 

Lloyd sipped his soup and hummed, "Yeah she fell asleep pretty quickly," he answered. Cole lifted his eyebrows, "Good, she needed it."

"Hey, how did the station really go? You didn't say much at training," Jay wondered, pushing his empty bowl to the center of the table and focusing his attention on the black ninja. Cole groaned and lifted his arms above his head to stretch, then straining his neck to the side until it cracked. "It was... surreal," he told them, his elbows landing on the table as he leaned forward. "I sat in the waiting room for, what? Three hours? I wanted to go in with her but they asked me to sit outside, but they did give me a file of all the questions she was asked, and she signed a release form so I was able to get her responses."

"Were they what you were expecting?" Zane asked curiously. Cole frowned, "Yeah, unfortunately. I mean, some of her answers were worse than what I was expecting but most were right on target. She barely said anything to me when she went in the room but was completely silent when she left. It's like someone switched my sister with an exact replica appearance wise but... but she is completely different."

Nya placed a hand on Cole's shoulder to comfort him and he smiled lightly at her, "I'm sorry, Cole. I think she just needs a little time right now to herself. But hey, at least she let Lloyd around her today! Don't you think she's making a little progress?"

Lloyd shifted uncomfortably in his seat, continuing to eat his soup silently with his attention directed at the table. "Nya's right, man," Kai jumped in. "I mean, K/G/N didn't go through all that Y/N did, but it took her a few days to hang around you guys and even longer to try and go back to her normal life. She's at therapy right now, a-and things haven't been the same with us ever since she went missing, but I know it will get better with time."

Cole nodded, his head lifting when he heard a knock on the door. He stood and checked his watch, narrowing his eyebrows in confusion after seeing that it was seven and there was an unannounced visitor. "Yeah, you guys are right. I just hate seeing my sister like this," he said while approaching the door.

He pulled open the door and in front of him stood none other than Aunt Kelly. Cole froze. 

The woman kindly smiled and Cole smiled back, then giving her a slight hug before allowing her into the home where she thankfully walked in and looked around. "What are you doing here?" he finally asked to break the silence and confusion as to why she was at the monastery. She walked with him to the kitchen and sighed, "I'm here to pick up Y/N."

Cole's face dropped and the ninja stared at each other in confusion. "What do you mean?" he demanded with his arms folded across his chest defensively. "Y/N isn't going anywhere, she's staying with me. That's our agreement, Kelly. I can protect her." 

The woman smiled softly, "I know, Cole. But your sister called me and asked me to come get her. She said she doesn't feel safe here right now and needs to figure things out. I'm doing what is best for her."

Cole scoffed at the lady, "What's best for her? She stays here on the week days, Kelly. Sure we missed last weekend but I know what my sister needs and right now she needs her friends and family."

"I'm her family, too, Cole. I raised her for fifteen years."

Cole frowned, staring at her in anger. How dare she use that excuse? His sister left when she was young and he never saw her again, he never thought she wanted to. He lived with his dad while his aunt took Y/N because his mother had passed and that was the end of the story. Given the chance, Cole would have loved to be in Y/N's entire life, but that's just not what happened after the death of his mother. Both his father and Cole had no choice.

"That's not fair and you know it."

Aunt Kelly took a deep breath, "I'm not arguing with you, kiddo. I'm just trying to help your sister."

As she ended her sentence, Y/N shyly rounded the corner with a small duffel bag in her hand. She was wearing her own clothes this time with Lloyd's shirt folded neatly in her hands. She stepped forward and placed it in front of him and he looked up, shame across his face. He gave that shirt to her. "We can work this out, sis. We can talk this through, please," Cole begged, wanting nothing more than to give his sister the world and take away all her pain.

"Cole, I can't stop thinking about what happened! I don't want to do this anymore!" 

Cole's face dropped.

"I need to be with Aunt Kelly and just sleep in my bed that I've had for fifteen years! I want to see my friends and forget about all of this!"

"I can help you!"

"I don't want your help, Cole!" 

The room fell silent and Y/N looked down in shame, her hands disappearing in her large gray hoodie. "You can't help me," she whispered, finally drawing her eyes up from the floor to see Cole staring at the ground. "You can't go back in time and stop this from happening," she softly assured him. "This isn't going to go away, Cole," she told him while slapping a hand against her thigh. "You were never supposed to find out about that. That was something that was going to die with me and Z/G/N."

"I wish you had just told me," Cole retorted, his voice slightly raising. "I didn't want to!" the girl yelled back. "That's embarrassing and shameful and you wouldn't get it! I will forever have a label now! I don't want that!"

"We will never label you, Y/N," Zane told her to try and reassure her fears. Y/N sighed, looking down at her feet and shaking her head, "I never asked for any of this when I agreed to move here," she quietly admitted, further shattering Cole's heart even more. "We moved me here because the fighting between dad and Kelly was too much over who got to keep me, like a freaking doll. I never had a choice in anything that has been given to me! This has been great, Cole, but we all knew it was a matter of time before I screwed something up and - "

"I have loved having you here, Y/N," Cole interjected, halting her in her speech. "I love having a sister and being able to help you and protect you and - "

"I know you can protect me, Cole. I know you and Lloyd and everyone can protect me and that has never been something I was unsure of. But I need to not be here. I need to be with Aunt Kelly and my friends from school and -"

"You have friends here!"

"I can't be around you!"

After the siblings had finished yelling at each other they took a minute to process what each other had said, but again it was Y/N who spoke first. "You're all looking at me like I'm going to crumble to pieces but I'm not! I'm getting sick and tired of people asking if I'm okay because no, Cole, I'm not! And I won't be for a long time and that's fine! But stop treating me like it isn't!"

"I've been trying my hardest, Y/N! I'm in uncharted territory here! I didn't even know you four months ago!"

"But you still knew of me! I knew nothing! My whole world was Aunt Kelly, and right now I need that world. I need her to help me right now."

"Are you going to go to dad's next weekend? I know he really wanted to see you," Cole said, giving up on arguing with his little sister. "No," she shortly answered. "I-I can't be around him right now. He'll sing a song and give me tea and want me to write down my feelings in a song and I need to go live in my world," she whimpered, quickly wiping away a tear from her cheek. 

Aunt Kelly smiled lightly at the girl from behind the table and grabbed the duffel off the ground, patting the girl on the shoulder, "Ready to go?"

The girl nodded. "How long will you be gone?" Lloyd finally spoke up, choosing to stay quiet through the rest of the conversation. He had grown used to living with his girlfriend aside from weekends and knew if she left it would be hard to adjust. Y/N stared at him, taking note of his silence and his strange demeanor. This was not the man she knew.

"I don't know. But I'll call when I figure it out."

Kelly walked to the front door and Y/N was about to follow when her judgement got the better of her and she raced back to the kitchen. She threw herself onto her brother and he stumbled back in surprise before wrapping his arms around her. She sniffled into his shoulder and when she pulled away, he smiled, "I love you, Cole. Thank you for everything," she softly said before beginning to walk away. "This isn't a goodbye, Y/N."

She smiled at her place in front of the large door, Kelly behind her. "Thank you for changing your entire life around for me."

And with that, she was gone.

As soon as the door closed, Lloyd sighed, "Maybe this is for the best, Cole."

The ninja turned around and glared at the green ninja in anger and disappointment. "This one is on you, Lloyd!"

His anger got the best of him and he grabbed the collar of Lloyd's shirt, shoving him into the nearest wall. Lloyd grunted in pain and Nya gasped, "Cole!" she shouted, trying to get his attention away from the blonde boy. "You won't even say her name!" Cole screamed. "You washed off any feeling of her and left her alone! You wouldn't even look up when we were talking about her getting better! You're her freaking boyfriend and don't even care about her! What - "

"I love her, Cole! But if I'm not enough for her right now than I'm not enough!"

Kai and Zane pulled Cole off of Lloyd and he threw their arms off. Lloyd dropped to his feet and rubbed his shoulder. "I don't know how to be who she needs right now."

Cole pushed past Jay and turned again to face Lloyd, "You better figure it out. I have you permission to date her, not break her," he warned. Nya narrowed her eyes at the black ninja and went to comfort Lloyd who shrugged her away. "I'll choose Y/N over you any day."

The monastery was silent.