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Pain.
It flooded his senses.
Kai clutched at his eye, trying to stem the bleeding that stained his already red gi a darker, more gruesome red.
It was supposed to be a simple mission, having gotten a tip on venge-stone sellers in the city. But it was a trap. They were ambushed and Kai got separated from the group.
Three thugs had surrounded him, and he held his own pretty good, knocking out two of them. But the third thug had snuck up behind him and managed to hit him in the back of his head with a bat. Kai fell to the ground, his head spinning, he looked up to see the thug pull out a knife, horror filling him as he swung it down across the left side of his face. Going in a diagonal line from above his brow to his check, cutting into his eye along the way.
Kai screamed as red filled his vision. He managed to get up and knock out the thug despite the pain, but once he was down, Kai doubled over in pain, clutching his eye.
The world faded in and out of focus, his vision blurred from the tears coming out of his good eye. Kai could barley make out the sound of one of his teammates (was that Lloyd?) rushing in. He felt hands on his shoulders and could make out a voice speaking to him, but he didn’t know what it was saying. He couldn’t focus on anything; the pain was too much. It hurt so bad, he wanted it to stop.
Kai could hear more voices now, could feel more hands on him, but he doesn’t know what they want. The hands are pushing him to move, to stand. One hand brushed past his hand that was pressed over his eye; he flinched away.
He can’t remember much after that moment, only pain and movement when he wanted to just lie down.
Next thing Kai knew, he was waking up in the dark infirmary in the Monastery, a bandage over his left eye.
He struggled to sit up and looked around, to his left, he saw his sister Nya sitting in a chair besides his bed. Kai swung his legs over the side of the bed and stood on shaky feet. He shuffled over to the bathroom and turned on the lights, looking into the mirror. With shaky hands, Kai carefully unwrapped the bandage on his eye, gasping when he saw what was underneath. Stitches going in a diagonal line from his brow to his cheek, skipping over his closed eye. Feeling sick, Kai tried to open his eye, but finding he couldn’t, he gently lifted his eyelid using his hand.
The world slowed as Kai felt the urge to vomit. His left eye was grayed out, with stitches going across the entire thing.
Kai couldn’t think, he couldn’t move. His eye. His… eye. He couldn’t see out of it. He couldn’t… he couldn’t see out of his eye! It was nothing! He was… he was blind in his left eye! He couldn’t be blind in one eye! How was he supposed to be a ninja if he couldn’t see out of his eye! Ninja were supposed to be vigilant, always aware of their surroundings! How was he supposed to do that, IF HE WAS MISSING AN EYE?!
“Kai?” a voice called from outside the bathroom. It was his sister. It was then that Kai realized he had been hyperventilating. Calming his breath and wiping the tears he hadn’t realized had formed in his good eye, Kai turned and opened the door.
When Nya saw his eye, her face got this heartbroken look (that look shouldn’t be on her face) and it was in the light that Kai could see her eyes were red and puffy from crying. “Oh Kai,” she said softly, sadly. Nya pulled him into a tight embrace, burying her head into his shoulder and wetting it with tears.
…
It was quiet for a while after that; the others trying to comfort him, trying to give him his space. Cole would try to cheer him up with cake; Jay mostly avoided him but gave him an eyepatch with a sad look on his face (why did jay even have an eyepatch?); Zane would help him regain his balance every time he bumped into something; Lloyd would sometimes do small things to help him, but mostly tried to give him his space; and Nya, his sweet sister Nya, would sit with him, and hold him when he cried.
But when he was alone, Kai would take off his eyepatch and just look in the mirror. Look at the scar and his gray eye. It hurt. Maybe not in physical pain (anymore) but on the inside.
Kai lost his eye, and he doesn’t think he can ever recover from it.