Kitchen Sink AU originally by aychaye on tumblr.

Fanfiction by me.

It has been said that destiny is like the flow of the river downstream: constant, eternal, and unwavering. But that is not entirely true. The course of destiny was never so smooth as a river's course, and never so calm. Destiny was like rainfall. How the drops would collide in air, no one could be certain. Their wind-driven dance in storms is never set in stone. Chaos abounded in the miles between cloud and ground, going off course and then realigning, scattering only to group together again… no one can say where a droplet will go once it is free of its cloud. But, of all the things in the world to be sure of, it is this:

Rain will always fall.

Slowly, a storm gathered over the land of Ninjago. And the rain began…

Wu awoke late in the night and sat up slightly from his short cot, looking around for whatever had woken him. He stood, legs balancing his weight against the wooden floors with ease. He was getting on in years, but his body was still that of a much younger man's; if not for the lines beginning to take shape on his face or the whiteness beginning to take over his hair, he could be mistaken as half his age.

He exited his rooms in the Royal Wing of the Temple Palace and stood still in the hallway, looking down the sparse passage at a room alight with the glow of a lantern, transforming the rice paper walls into glowing sheets of opalescent light.

As he stood and watched, a dark form in a cloak emerged from the room. It hovered in the doorway of the room, which Wu correctly deduced was the room of his newborn nephew's.

"Misako," Wu said quietly. The woman in the cloak looked to him briefly before lowering her hood and revealing soft brown hair, begging to show signs of gray, and gentle face. Her eyes were full of sorrow. Wu stepped forward, close enough to mark the tears hidden in her eyes.

"You're leaving." It is not a question.

"It is what's best for Lloyd." It is not an answer.

"There are other ways—" he began, and she held up a hand for silence.

"He will never be able to become what he needs to be, if I remain here and remind him of his origins," she said. "I need… I need to find some way to help him myself."

"Then stay with him," Wu urged, and a sentence hung, unspoken, in the air.

Stay with me.

She turned from him, lifting up her hood once more. "Don't tell him about me, or his father," she asked him. "Please, Wu. Promise me."

He nodded. She turned to leave, then stopped.

He took her hand.

"Don't go." His eyes were begging.

"Take care of Lloyd," was her only response, and she pulled her fingers from his, not meeting his gaze. His eyes begged and pleaded with her back as she turned around and left.

The King of Ninjago was left standing in the hallway of his palace, completely alone.

In the next room, the Destined Prince slept on, unknown to the loss of his mother. King Wu sat beside his cradle, looking in with tired but knowledgeable eyes. This small boy had a very large future ahead of him. When he had been born, the prophecy spread like wildfire, that he would one day save the world from darkness. Wearily Wu rested his hand on the sleeping child's back. Such a heavy future for such a tiny little thing…

Footsteps, outside the room.

Wu stood up quickly, hoping beyond hope that Misako had changed her mind. He fought to keep from looking too disappointed when it was his adopted son Zane, instead, managing to look perfectly rested, not at all like he had just woken up.

"Yes, Zane?" Wu asked in a tired voice, "What is it?"

Zane hesitated slightly at his tone. "I… I had a strange dream. About Lloyd."

Wu's demeanor changed immediately, a spark of interest and concern lighting in his eyes. "Tell me everything."

Hours later, Zane was still explain his dream—a dream of darkness, pain, and three other young men, armed with weapons of gold—Lloyd finally awoke. It was a very different world from the one he had fallen asleep in.

Now he had a destiny.

Now he was in danger.

Years later, darkness covered the small collection of wooden houses known as Scraptown.

Jay woke up on the floor of the Sheriff's office. Smoke was in his lungs and in his eyes. All he could see was darkness. As he climbed to his feet, slowly, shakily, he brushed bits of glass and debris from his hair, a particularly large piece dragging down his eyebrow before he could swat it away, leaving a small scar.

He walked slowly up to the window of the Sheriff's station, blown out and missing its expensive glass. Outside, darkness was absolute save for the infinite pasture of stars in the sky.

The young cowboy frowned up at the sky, where he had last seen the hull of the pirate ship drifting away on the winds, laden with the entire store of gold in the town's bank. Searching around the floor, a glint of polished copper met his eyes, and he brushed glass and wood from the six-pointed Sheriff's star, abandoned. With a growing sense of purpose, he pinned it to his chest.

He would get that money back, and take in that pirate, Captain Cole, if it was the last thing he did.

Even if it means going to the Shadow World to drag his soul back… Jay swore to himself. The day dawned cold and red, the sun clinging to the stone horizon. Jay watched it with satisfaction.

Now he had a purpose.

Between this world, and the next, there lies a barrier of shadow and bone and ash, a world with a sky like clouded glass that boiled red with heat and smoke, where the dead walked aimlessly, unable to pass on to the next life, damned to wander for all eternity.

And in this world there was a throne, and on it sat a creature of incredibly cruelty, of evil incarnate. His skin was an unnatural black, flooded with shadows and burns, and from his chest the white curve of his ribs showed beneath crumbling skin. His eyes were like coals and they burned into your soul. He was called Lord Garmadon.

One day he sat on his throne of bones in this shadow afterlife and saw a smoky figure emerged, flickering in and out of view with the spirit smoke he was inhaling in order to cross his soul over.

"Is something wrong, Captain?" Garmadon mused, leaning his chin into one of his four hands.

The young man looked up sharply and flinched—although Lord Garmadon had seen worse reactions, he nevertheless took pleasure in the primal fear that stirred in the young pirate captain's eyes.

"Have you misplaced something?" Garmadon continued with a smug grin, baring fangs to the gleam of the smoldering red sun overhead.

The young man swallowed and seemed to gather his confidence. "I have come to retrieve my father's soul," he said, straightening his broad shoulders.

Garmadon chuckled. "Try again."

The Captain faltered. "I… I offer you my soul in exchange for his."

Lord Garmadon pretended to consider this, inspecting how he cleaned ashen debris from beneath one cracked black fingernail. "The soul of one of the most feared pirates in all of Ninjago," he mused, peering at the Captain once again. The family resemblance between father and son was sharp; thick black hair, olive toned skin. Defiant brown eyes and a naturally frowning mouth.

The Captain perceived this pause in contemplation and desperately tried to sell himself for his father, "I am Captain Cole. Women and children fear my name. Men all cower in fear when my airship is seen overhead. I have millions of dollars in gold and jewels hidden throughout the land. Take my soul and use it how you will; just let my father go."

Garmadon laughed like shattering glass. "Captain, you are far more valuable to me with your soul intact. No… what I want from you is something else."

"Anything," Cole begged.

"I need you to retrieve something for me. Then I will release your father's soul."

"What would you have me do?" Cole asked, chest empty of breath and defiance dying in his eyes.

"There is a Prince, in the House of Wu." Cole caught his breath and Garmandon flashed fangs in a sickening smile. "I want you to find him, and bring him to me through the gate at the World's End. I will trade you your father's soul for the Prince."

Cole didn't hesitate. "I'll do it."

Lord Garmadon laughed then in triumph, and the shadows screamed alongside.

When the smoke had cleared from his lungs, making him choke and gag on freedom and light, Cole walked on steady feet from his berth on the flying airship, the Destiny's Bounty. He gave short, barking directions to the man at the helm to take him to the Royal Palace of Wu.

His dark eyes, seeking the horizon, were cold and determined. Like an animal, he gave off an energy of waiting, of hunting. He was a coiled snake, and his crew diligently avoided him.

Now he had a target.

"You are special, Zane," his dreams had always said.

"Yes," he would nod, "but why?"

"You have an important purpose, Zane."

"What is it? Why am I here? What am I to do?" he would beg with his mind as his prophetic dreams surrounded him, dreams of birds with beating wings and a man with eyes like stone. Gold flashed, talons and weapons, mechanical transportation, eyes and teeth. Gold drowned him in his dreams as the young, lost and abandoned Prince watched his dreams for himself. He saw nothing but the bird, watching him with golden eyes.

"Protect Lloyd, Zane."

He nodded, feeling himself begin to awaken. "I will."

The bird became a man, so kind and familiar to Zane, and yet a stranger. He looked very sad. "I love you, Zane," he said.

Zane awoke before he could utter his reply, which he always forgot as his eyes opened to the dawn of a new day.

"I love you as well. Father."

Zane had had the visions as long as he could remember, which although not long, was all he knew. Whenever he slept he looking into another world that told him the secrets of the one he lived in.

"The Sixth Sense," King Wu had told him, when he first revealed his visions, in Lloyd's nursery, while the Destined Prince was a still but a baby. "It is a gift. A tool to help you protect others."

"Like Lloyd?" Zane had asked, looking over at the slumbering child.

Wu's hand was heavy on his shoulder. "Especially Lloyd. He will be King someday. You must protect him until then."

Zane had sworn to do so with all of his heart that night, and he never gave up his promise. One night he awoke in a sweat, his dreams bursting just beyond his open eyes. A man, dressed all in black, was coming for him. Coming for Lloyd.

Zane prepared himself to meet this man, and protect Lloyd however he could.

It had been raining when they first met.

Zane had been leading the young Prince through the gardens in the afternoon, taking on his duty as Elder to the Destined Prince. Any children that came into the royal family of Wu were Princes. But only those that were destined to be King ever had power and prestige. Zane was no such Prince, but he enjoyed his place in the royal family very much, tutoring his younger adoptive brother for when he would one day lead the nation.

The storm had rolled in without warning, and the white-haired Zane had herded Lloyd into a gazebo to escape the rain and loud thunder. The younger boy clung to his brother's leg.

"Zane," Lloyd said, "I'm scared."

"Do not be frightened," Zane had replied in a soothing tone. "It is only a bit of rain." Lightning flashed. Thunder roared. And in the light that temporarily illuminated the sky, Zane saw a dark shape approaching.

"Lloyd," his younger brother tensed at his tone, "Go and hide. And under no circumstances come out."

"But I can't leave you alone!" Lloyd insisted. "No matter what your sixth sense tells you, I'm going to help!"

"No, you are not," Zane insisted, kneeling down to look into his brother's eyes. "You are going to hide, Lloyd." The Destined Prince opened his mouth, defiance in his eyes.

"And that was not a request."

The ship docked on the edge of the cliff that the Royal Palace was situated on, rain dancing off of the raised sails. Once Cole hit the ground, he could feel the surety of the ground beneath his feet and the strength in the ancient stone. When he heard his crew also coming off the ship, he placed the butt of his golden scythe on the ground with a serious expression.

"I'm going alone. I won't be seen," he said, and his crew nodded uneasily. Dareth, his bumbling yet entertaining first mate, met his gaze.

"'Travel in shadows'," he quoted, and Cole had to smile at his own credo being thrown back into his face. He nodded to show that he understood and then began to sneak his way around the gardens of the palace. Such opulence made him sneer slightly.

As he rounded a blooming bush of some overly scented purple flower, Cole spotted a pillar of white standing in the middle of a walkway. The Prince that Garmadon had asked for. Rain drenched his white clothes, but Cole saw no tremors of cold in his shoulders as he made his way closer. Suddenly, through the clashing of the rain and the thunder, Cole heard something sharp move through the air.

He bent his back, having the sharpened golden shuriken only scrape away at the top layer of his rain-soaked black clothing. The Prince held out a hand and the throwing weapon returned to it without a complaint.

"I will not go without a fight," the Prince said without turning around.

Cole's hand tightened around the handle of his scythe. "I wasn't expecting you to," he said, and attacked.

The ground was slick between their feet as they battled in the rain. To the pirate, the prince was an unshakable force of nature, never missing a step and never wavering in his choice to not be removed peacefully. To the prince, the pirate was a warrior with the strength of a mountain, and the patience of a glacier. Neither saw an end to the fight coming soon. But then the lightning struck, and a young boy hiding in the bushes cried out.

As Cole began to turn his head to look for the sound, Zane purposely fell, the thought 'Lloyd must not be found' the only thing in his mind.

Cole hauled him to his feet by the front of his white robes, until he could look straight into the man's dark brown eyes.

"Wasn't much of a fight," he said. And, like he suspected, the Prince offered no response.

The rain washed away their footsteps as they made their way back to the ship.

Please join us again soon for chapter two.

Please review.