Ultra Violet did not get scared. The word wasn’t in her vocabulary. When her sister screamed and cried and tattled to mom about the horror movie Ultra Violet had chosen, she was dry eyed and annoyed they couldn’t handle something as mild as SAW. She carried herself as a woman who didn’t fear anything. She was the one people were afraid of, not the other way around, and that’s how she liked it.
She’s not thinking about this as she races down the back alley, so certain in her steadfast nature that the strange barely suppressed panic that bubbled up her chest had been easily dismissed. She’d faced the ninja plenty of times before, and sure Zane may be her most annoying foe to face, there was no reason for the unease she’d felt when he stood across from her. He didn't act any different than the last time they’d battled. When she turned tail and ran, it was because she was out numbered. She wasn’t scared. She wasn’t following the warning bells ringing in the back of her head when brilliant blue eyes zeroed in on her like a hawk catching sight of a mouse. It was Zane, there was no reason to be afraid.
She turns a corner and comes to a brick wall, a dead end. Despite how calm and unafraid she definitely was, her heart rate jumped and her palms began to sweat. She whipped around, looking for another escape route- a ladder access to the fire escape, up to the roof? A sewer drain cover she could slip in? Anything, please-
Zane rounds the corner in a jog, coming to a stop when he realizes she's trapped.
She’s trapped.
Like an insect pinned to a board. He’s scrutinizing her just the same, but there’s something about his expression- about the way he carries himself that’s just- just-
Scary.
“Fine,” She tries to snarl, but her voice shakes, “You caught me. Just take me back to Kryptarium.” She’s trying to hold what little ground she has, preserving her dignity.
He takes a step forward and she immediately takes a step back, adrenaline flooding her veins. She can’t run anymore, so there goes flight. All that's left is to fight, and shes overcome with a strange certainty that she won’t win this one.
He stills, standing in the only spot the neon sign lights don't reach.
“Well, come on. Arrest me!” Are her hands shaking? Is her heartbeat loud enough that he can hear it?
The air thins, each breath harder to draw. She’s zeroed in on him, eyes so wide the whites are visible all around her iris. He takes another step forward, then another, steadily moving towards her. She’s given up any pretense of bravery, shoving herself back against the unforgiving brick wall behind her, scuttling into the corner to put any distance she can between them. His presence is massive in the back alley, a black hole that seems to swallow up all light until it is just her and him suspended in darkness.
He stops right in front of her, his eyes are pinpricks of electric blue that spear right through her head, pinning her in place. Her breath fogs in front of her, her hands are shaking from a mix of fear and cold.
“What do you want from me?” She breathes, his overwhelming presence stealing her voice.
His expression changes minutely, and she's instantly aware she’s going to die. He’s going to kill her. It’s right there, in his eyes- the way he’d been examining her before, he was trying to think of a reason to spare her. He weighed her soul and found it wanting. The decision, the choice he made to end her life, holds no weight to him. He almost looks bored as he raises his hand, fingers misting with flecks of snow and frost.
“Zane?” A voice calls, and his hand stills for a long moment before it aborts its movement completely.
“Here!” He calls, and it’s the first word she’s heard him say this whole time. His voice is light and casual, jarring in comparison to the detached cold of his eyes. Eyes that want her wiped off the face of Ninjago. “I have located Ultra Violet.”
“Is she dead?” She recognizes Lloyd's voice, coming closer. The question isn't accusatory, but it's said so casually that Ultra Violet rapidly begins to go through the roster of her Fellow Kryptarium inmates in her head, wondering if the ones who she hadn’t seen in a while had been…
Zane tips his head, eyes still fixed on her. His hand twitches. “Not yet.”
“Let’s keep it that way.” Lloyd says, rounding the corner.
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writing prompt: zane not always being comf with repairs due to repeat trauma, and how the various ninja comfort him and help him thru it
This got out of hand, not exactrly what you asked for waughkjhm. 3000 words, post s12 ;; Mountainshipping/polyninja
Warning: Panic attacks, trauma, PTSD
In the Aftermath of Unagami, the city rejoices. People gather in the streets to reunite with those they lost, children and parents embrace, tears and laughter ring out across ninjago city like bells far into the night. Pixals own friends cheer and holler, the adrenaline riding high still, and Zane throws his arm around her shoulder and draws her close. She laughs, wrapping an arm around his back as Jay chatters on and on about what happened after the others were cubed, filling them in on every detail.
Halfway through the story she realizes Zane is much heavier than he was a moment before.
She stands a little straighter, hauling him into more of a standing position before turning to face him- worry freezes her joints. He’s not smiling like he was earlier, his face blank and vaguely confused, his eyes hazy and glazed as he slumps more and more, and now that she’s paying attention she can feel him trembling around her. Her mouth works but no sound comes out before she gets her feelings under control, reaching out to set a palm on his chest to steady him.
“Zane?” She asks quietly, paying no mind to how the conversation died at the fear in her tone.
He blinks sluggishly, turning towards her voice but his eyes are too distant to focus on her. He opens his mouth to say something, shaking his head as if he were trying to force himself to stay awake before his knees give out and he collapses, nearly taking her down with the sudden weight. She cries out his name in alarm and Wu jumps to take his other arm, lifting him up with Pixal. The others rush forward, hovering their hands uncertainly, worry sharp across their face.
Pixal pats his cheek a few times, “Zane? Can you hear me?” She can barely keep her voice level and she bites her lip when he doesn’t respond, his eyes closed and head lolling listlessly.
Jay leans down and presses the side of his face to Zanes chest, eyes searching empty air for a tense moment, “His mechanics are still running.” he confirms, hearing his internal parts working. He winces openly at a sound the others aren’t close enough to hear, “Something’s wrong. We need to get him back to the monastery.”
“What happened out here?” Cole asks, hands fluttering nervously at his side.
Pixal fills them in while they wait for the Bounty to make it to their location- Autopilot was a blessing. There’s no room for the Bounty to land in the crowded streets, so when it arrives Kai scrambles up the chain from the anchor and drops the gurney for them. In a scene almost too familiar to stomach Pixal helps Wu and Cole load Zanes unconscious form onto it, taking the same route Kai took to get on deck afterwards. Nya and Jay have already taken him into the back room and Pixal sheds her Samurai X armor without pause, sweeping her bangs off her forehead as she strides into the room.
They’ve already got his chest panel open, Nyas sleeves are rolled up to her elbows as she pushes aside wires and inspects the damage. Jay is running a diagnostic through their central computer, a thick cable plugged into Zanes head. Lloyd lingers at the door nervously, watching them work with worried eyes.
“What’s the problem?” Pixal asks, resting her hands along the bed and peering down at his chest.
Nya face looks grim, “His core’s been overloaded, it’s fried a majority of his main power lines to near ruin- but even with something like this, they should have been able to work. The Mechanics adapter shouldn’t have caused this much damage.”
“What do you mean?” Pixal finds her mouth is running dry, looking down at the scorch marks across his arms where the violent electricity had burned lines across his metal.
Jay leans over, pointing out several twisted wires, torn and broken and out of place, “His wires were already messed up.” his voice is grave, “The effect of the Mechanics portal combined with these damages? It made everything so much worse.”
“Already…?” She shakes her head, “The Never Realm.”
“We think so too. Something must have happened that he didn’t tell us about.” Nya pulls back and glances at the monitor, “He’s stable for now, his body forced him into low power mode to stop the spread of the damage. We have a lot of work to do when we get to the lab.”
She nods, turning to look at him. His face is slack in sleep, his lips slightly parted, and she realizes with a jolt this is the first time she’s actually seen him rest since he came back. He wont talk about it, about any of it, she didn’t realize he was hiding something so serious.
Jay sighs deeply, leaning onto the table with an exhausted slump to his shoulders, the excitement catching up to him all at once. Nya leans her back against the table and runs her hand over his shoulders soothingly, “Why don’t you go rest? Pixal and I can handle this.”
He nods his head slowly like he’s considering it but Pixal watched him still suddenly, his eyes narrowing. He sits up and leans over Zane’s chest, searching his wiring with increasing fervor, “We need Kai.” He says, looking up at Nya with wide eyes, “He’s- He’s freezing over.”
Pixal lunges forward, nearly knocking into Jay headfirst to look, and sure enough ice is crawling across Zanes' parts slowly, encasing each of his damaged wires in a protective layer of frozen water. If she had blood, it would have drained from her face. Nya practically jumps the table, calling her brother's name and Lloyd scrambles out of her way, each of them splitting up to pin down the fire user.
Frost spreads from his fingers where they are resting against the table, his lips are turning blue with ice, Pixal doesn’t know what to do.
“What is this?” Jay asks breathlessly, “It’s… conducting.”
She can see visible arcs of electricity flickering through the ice as it grows stronger, each chunk connecting broken wires and damaged pieces to make him whole. Their elements never responded like this, not normally, but something happened in the Never Realm and this- it must be second nature to him, to protect himself, to keep himself going.
Kai appears in the doorway half a second before Zane snaps awake.
He comes back in a blind panic, twisting on the cot and hyperventilating, crashing to the floor in his chaotic thrashing. Pixal jumps back to avoid him bowling her over, stumbling in shock. He digs blunted fingernails into his head, scratching and clawing desperately at the cable above the back of his neck until he rips it out, scrabbling against his own skin for a few hysterical seconds before he realizes that the cable is gone.
He scrambles to his hands and knees, shoving himself back until he’s squished into a corner, “Where am i? Where am i? Where am I?” He repeats in a hysterical mantra, chest heaving, his eyes wide and unseeing. Broken ice litters the ground in little chunks, handprints from where he’d crawled away turning to slick ice across the floor, frost crawling out from where he’s huddled against the wall. He clasps his hands over his head in distress, pulling at his ears and squeezing his eyes shut tightly as if willing them to work again, whining in fear.
“Zane!” Pixal cries, hovering and unsure, “Zane, please- can you hear me?”
Jay is by her side in an instant and he puts a reassuring hand on her arm, guiding her to crouch down on his level. He turns around and waves the others off so Zane won’t be so overwhelmed, Nya herding them back, “Zane, hey, it’s Jay.” He says soothingly, “You’re in the Destiny's bounty.” He repeats this a few more times and on one of the repetitions, Zane’s eyes slowly bleed into focus.
“See? Pixal is here, you’re safe.” He tells him gently, making sure not to touch him unless Zane asks.
Zane gasps loosely, a shuddering intake of air, “What did I do?” his eyes fill with tears as he looks at Jay miserably, “What did I do?” he asks desperately, moving both hands to grasp at the cable port in his head, tugging at it hard.
Pixal connects the dots, she knew enough about the violence in the Never realm to put his fears to rest, “Nothing, Zane. You haven’t hurt anyone.” She reassured him firmly, “You were hurt, we were running a diagnostic. You’re okay.” She sneaks a glance at Jay who nods at her minutely.
“Is this the first time this has happened?” Jay prods as respectfully as he can.
Zane shakes his head, “a couple of times.” He rasps, struggling to keep his voice even, trembling all over.
“What do you need?”
It goes on like this for almost twenty minutes with Jay and Pixal talking soothingly with him, at this point the Bounty has docked at the Monastery but Zane isn’t stable enough to move without panicking. Slowly, he calms down, until he’s sitting slumped and exhausted on the infirmary floor, uncurling himself from the clenched ball he’d forced himself into. Ice still insists on clinging to his skin and crawling around the floor without his permission, but he’s not in a blind panic anymore.
The tension in Jay's shoulders has begun to relax, “Hey, you back with us?” he asks gently.
Zane looks at him through bleary, but focused, eyes, “Yes.” He says quietly, “Thank you.”
Pixal chooses to avoid the elephant in the room, glancing at Jay with an appraising eye, “You handled that well.”
He shrugs, “I get them too, Panic attacks. After Nad- after everything. Nya does the same thing for me.”
“Do you think you can get inside?” Pixal turns back to Zane.
He takes a moment to think before he nods slowly, “I-” His face pinches and he swallows roughly, “I will need help.”
He holds his hands out and she takes them, pulling him slowly to his feet. He stumbles and she finds herself catching him for the second time that day, taking his full weight as his legs refuse to hold, until he can get his feet under him again. He whines, low and almost too quiet to hear, pressing his palm against his chest and squeezing his eyes shut.
Jay takes his other arm and wraps it over his shoulder, “We just have to make it inside and you can rest again, okay?”
“Keep talking.” Zane says, opening his eyes just barely enough to see where they’re going, and Jay obliges. He runs his mouth nearly non stop as they help him get to the repair center of the garage, and with each word Zane seems to be edging back from another panic attack. He talks about nothing, but Zane nods along like he’s explaining the meaning of life.
Nya is there already, replacement wiring, tools, everything laid out in preparation for Zanes injuries. She’s got her hair pulled into a tight bun, a headband she only breaks out in emergency repairs keeping her bangs out of her face, the soldering iron warming up on the table. Jay and Pixal help Zane collapse onto the bed they have there, and Pixal helps adjust it so he’s sitting upright.
Kai appears at his side and hoists himself up to sit at his waist, the bed dipping at his presence, “Hey,” He says gently as the air is flooded with warmth, reaching over to cup Zanes cheek. He runs his thumb over Zanes cheek, ice flaking off at his gentle touch.
Zane tries to smile reassuringly, but it comes out thin and reedy, “Hello, Kai.” he leans into his boyfriend's touch, exhausted.
Jay goes to help Nya but she stops him, cupping his shaking hands, “You’ve done great, but you need to rest.” She squeezes his trembling fingers to prove her point. He wouldn’t be able to be steady.
He hesitates, but concedes her point, stepping back but hesitant to leave. Cole and Lloyd linger in the doorway before Cole nods to himself and quietly slips inside, speaking softly to Jay until the smaller man concedes and herds Lloyd out of the garage, both of them disappearing inside.
Nya motions to Pixal and the nindroid jumps into action, rounding to the other side of the bed to give Nya a hand.
“Hand me that?” She asks, motioning to a bucket in the back corner of their work station. Pixal holds it out as Nya turns to Zane, “I’m going to open up your chest panel, is that alright?”
Zane squeezes his eyes shut and Kai takes his hand reassuringly as he summons the bravery, “Do it.” He nods, and Nya unlatches it quickly.
Kai grimaces, looking at the frozen over electronics. Pixal can’t look away. It’s smart, in a pinch- it kept him running, it kept him awake and aware and alive. It does not look like a kind way to live.
Nya’s expression matches her brothers, “In order to do the repairs, I'll need to clear out the ice, Zane. I can turn you off-”
His whole body tenses, his breathing coming fast, and she acknowledges the reaction silently, “-Or I can do my best to do it while you’re awake. can you pull your powers back?”
“I don’t know.” Zane’s hands shake, his hard-won composure cracking, “I’ve been doing it for so long.”
“It’s okay, I can help.” Kai reassures him, stroking his hand soothingly, “I’m going to melt the ice now, and Nya is going to pull out the water before anything is damaged.”
“Alright.” Zane says, bracing himself.
Kai keeps one hand intertwined with Zanes and the other he holds out over his chest, pushing heat and warmth. Pixal ends up holding the bucket as Nya carefully and delicately draws the melted dropplest from his chest. Exposed wires spark and Zane jerks, his fingers digging into the sheet over the bed, gritting his teeth loud enough for pixal to hear.
He whines and Nya glances at his face with a wince, “You’re doing really well. You’re doing great, Zane.”
Cole approaches from where he’d been trying to stay out of the way, leaning over the bed and looking down at zane, “Hey, hey,” He coaxes Zane to open his eyes, blue laser-focused on Cole's face, “You’re alright, I’m right here. I won’t let anyone hurt you.” he promises, and Zane lets out a shaky breath, blinking away tears.
“Sorry.” Zane pushes out past his teeth, “I am stronger than this.”
“You don’t need to apologize.” Cole tries to hide the heartbreak on his face, “You’ve been through a lot. You’re tired, you’re in pain, it’s okay if you take off your mask. We’ll be here to help you.”
Reaching out to cup his cheek and strategically angle him away from the others ministrations, Cole keeps his boyfriend's eyes on him, “I will keep you safe.” With each reassurance, Zane seems to relax more. He knows that the others wont hurt him, but the fear response is so engrained he can’t calm down. The words help.
Raw wiring greets Pixal when Nya finally sits back, the bucket sloshing and full, and Kai has to blink away tears at the usually neat mechanics looking so mangled.
Nya takes a fortifying breath and picks up the soldering iron and starts in on the thick of it. She explains each of her actions to Zane in perfect detail before she does them, each time she has to touch him she announces it, each time she has to unplug a ruined wire she warns him. He braces and flinches and whines each time, and there’s several moments Nya has to turn away to try and compose herself.
Hours of grueling work pass before Pixal realizes they’ve run out of repairs to make.
Nya leans back, and swallows deeply, rubbing at her tired eyes. She takes another moment to double check her work before she carefully closes Zanes chest panel. There’s a little cosmetic damage from the mechanics chains across his skin, but that can wait until another day, “Okay. I- I think we’re done.”
Zane exhales as if he’s been holding his breath the whole time, closing his eyes and sitting up fully, his shoulder slumped. Kai and Cole move back to give him space as he runs his hands over his face, exhausted, “Thank you.” His voice wavers. He swings his legs over the side and allows Cole to take his hand. His feet are firm when he stands on them, and he raises a hand to his chest automatically, his shoulders relaxing when there’s no aching pain.
“Zane?” Pixal says, and he turns to face her, “Why didn’t you tell us?” she prods gently, and Zanes face tightens.
“I…” he shakes his head, “I don’t want to talk about it. I didn’t want to talk about it. I wanted to pretend none of it ever happened.” he gathers his courage, “When I was sent to the Never Realm, it hurt. I’ve been protecting myself ever since.”
His eyes skate over the mess of broken wires and miscellaneous gear from the repair session, “I didn't realize it was so bad.”
She thinks maybe he’s talking about more than just the physical aspect, his panic attack still at the forefront of her mind. She takes a step forward, the bed a frustrating obstacle between them, “We love you, Zane. we don’t want to see you hurt. If you ever need to talk to someone, i’m always here- or we can help you find someone else together.”
He blinks hard, staring at the floor. Kai moves closer and cups his cheek, murmuring soft words. Zane nods, “Thank you.” He says to Pixal, “I will think about it.” It’s the most promising thing they’ve gotten out of him yet. Baby steps.
The door opens, and Lloyd pops his head in cautiously. He brightens at the sight of Zane up and about, “Um,” He says, smiling, “If you guys are finished, Jay and I made dinner.”
“You did?” Zane blinks, clutching Cole's hand as they begin the trek over to the door, “I’m impressed.”
“It’s nothing fancy.” Lloyd ducks his head, and Zane assures him anything they made will be just perfect.
Pixal watches him leave and dares to hope that things will get better.
Summary: Before they leave the Never Realm, Zane is recieves an unexpected visitor.
The door opens and closes quietly, Zane doesn’t turn to face his teammate. They were leaving the Never Realm soon, the final preparations being made, Grimfax and the elders testing the Realm Tree’s properties to see how it worked in practice. Zane is sitting on the edge of a grand, ornate bed. They’d been given a few rooms to stay in after Zane had shattered the scroll and ended his reign. There were too many loose ends and stories to wrap up, his actions put on trial amongst the king and the nobles. They had decided on his innocence, but still banished him completely from the realm. He was never allowed back here on punishment of death.
It was too light a sentence, but perhaps he’d favored cruelty too much these years.
The punishment also stung in a way that was hard to form into words. This had been his home for a lifetime- to be banished… he would miss it. He had his chance to walk the palace ground once more, but he’d chosen to skip it and keep himself holed away in he and his friends room, skipping breakfast and lunch completely. The people here were afraid and scared of him, and it was the least he could do to stay out of sight and out of mind until he left this place in peace for good.
A shuffle of feet, unsure. It must be time to go.
The deadbolt locks. It’s blunt and stark in the empty and silent bedroom.
Oh, Zane thinks, I understand.
He wouldn't be making it out of this realm alive, would he? It’s almost comical, to survive all those years alone in that cave, to endure the agony of losing himself again, only to die when freedom was hours away. Maybe it’s poetic. Maybe there would be a song or an epic told about this, one day- and the climax would be his death, here in his bedchamber, and scholars would teach their students that even someone with the power of the gods was mortal in the end. It sounds interesting. It’s a good ending, if he has to have one here.
He turns and faces the assassin, hiking one leg up on the bed so he can face them.
It’s a girl, Lloyds age. He remembers her from the throne room, she’d attacked him with a knife and he’d frozen her solid. She's got red marks across her cheeks, and she's wearing a wolf cloak around her shoulders.
A formling. She has the right.
“Hello.” He says quietly. Her name is Akita, he knows. She hates him, he knows.
She reaches into the folds of her clothes, trembling, and pulls out a dagger in its sheath. She holds it out so he can see it. It’s a plain little thing, brown leather and wood handle. She yanks it from it’s sheath and throws it aside. The Blade is wickedly sharp.
It looks meticulously maintained and sharpened. She must have heard the rumors of his skin, told by spooked men who’d barely managed to flee his ice, who recalled how only the sharpest blades struck home. Who whispered how ordinary spears skidded and fell away without a scratch. He knows the stories told about him. There were people he did not freeze- there were towns that chose to cooperate.
It is sharp enough.
She holds the blade out, the shake in her hands vanishing as pure resolve pours into her eyes, “My name is Akita. You stole my childhood. You imprisoned my brother and my people. You killed countless innocents. Your reign deserves to end here, permanently.” she tells him, voice stone and steel, each word clearly practiced over and over again in anticipation for this moment.
He dips his head, and out of respect for his adversary, he rises to his feet. To face her as an equal, on even ground, is to see her as a worthy opponent.
She swallows visibly, tightening her grip on her blade.
“I won’t fight you, Akita.” He says plainly, moving around the edge of the bed so she has a clean attack, “Your revenge is yours to take.”
There’s a knock on the door, Lloyds voice filtering through hesitant and worried, “Hey, Zane? You nearly ready? It’s almost time to go.” The doorknob wiggles.
Akita tilts her head, listening to Lloyd but refusing to take her eyes off Zane. She hesitates, and he remembers that Lloyd and Akita had come to his throne room together. To get her revenge is to hurt her friend terribly. Zane could freeze her here, if he wanted to- he’s stopped better assassins than this over the years, but he won’t touch her.
“Zane?” Lloyds voice takes an edge of panic, worry bleeding into every syllable. Akita doesn’t move for a long moment, and the regret in her eyes dies. Sacrifices must be made. She had made this decision a long time before she met Lloyd.
“Answer me one question.” She licks her lips, keeps her eyes laser-focused on his every movement, “Did it mean anything to you? When you slaughtered the Kraag, when you destroyed crops and tore apart families, did it mean a damn thing?”
He thinks about the scroll in his hands, about Vex’s words seeping into his mind. He thinks about days upon days going through the motions, empty headed and lost and broken.
“No.” he answers truthfully and draws himself up to his full hieght. he will not die cowering and small. He’s the Ice Emperor, after all.
Cole knows he’s not the only one who’s noticed, and he knows everyone is trying to do their part to coax Zane out of the husk that came back from the Never Realm, but the jarring reality is that nothing they’ve been doing is helping. At first he could barely stand to be in the same room as them all, cringing away from the cacophony of noise and sound, casual touches overwhelming after centuries in isolation. It had hurt to see him withdraw so quickly from them, but he still hung around one on one or if they were in smaller groups. They had to be patient, it’s not like he could just snap back from something so deeply traumatic. They shouldn’t have expected him to be okay.
But he just kept getting worse.
He rarely comes out of his room at all, he can’t bring himself to train- his own ice has him flinching, and he fumbles with his bow and shuriken, too out of practice to use them properly. Sensei Wu had gently suggested he try a bo staff or a podao and Zane had left training half a second after he’d touched one. He hadn’t come back for the past two weeks. He seemed out of place in the kitchen, stumbling over things he used to do with ease, unfamiliar once more with the place he’d practically lived in for years. He didn’t even cook anymore, or play chess, or read- anything he used to find fun he’d abandoned, even turning down video games and birdwatching with Pixal. He just… sat in his room, or on the roof of the monastery, or in the grass just beyond the gate and did not much else.
Pixal sat with him sometimes, trying to get him to open up, but he never did. Cole had walked out on her several times sitting in the hallway outside Zanes bedroom door talking quietly, locked out and begging him to let her in. The others tread lightly around him, trying not to spook him away when he comes out on his own, trying to avoid thinking about how tired he looks. He moves like each act is a chore, lifting his arms to get a glass of water as if his arms were weighed down with concrete, his shoulder slumped with exhaustion.
Two days ago the ninja were called out on a routine mission, some stragglers from the SOG still hanging around had gotten rowdy. Ultraviolet had escaped prison and had rallied a few into a few petty acts of crime in the street- the Ninja were barely necessary, but they were called out on every SOG round up, just in case. It should have been easy, maybe a little bit of a fight with Violet, but a refresher. Cole was almost looking forward to something to break up the monotony.
And then Zane had almost killed her, and things had gotten so so much worse.
It was like he became a different person on the battlefield, using his ice liberally and with a recklessness Cole had never seen from the nindroid before. He froze a few gang members up to their waists, ice crawling up their legs so fast they couldn’t fight it. Ultraviolet either couldn’t tell or didn’t care about the change in him, taunting them all. It wasn’t until she landed a hit on Nya that things got scary- Zane was across the battlefield in an instant, laying into her like it was the only thing he wanted to do. She dodges most of it, but the strikes that hit home were strong enough to put her to the floor. He froze her there, up to her waist, trapping her forearms in thick blocks of ice so she could only wiggle her shoulders to try and break free.
Then he raised his open palm towards her head, and she was laughing and taunting but her voice stuttered and died when she saw the look on his face. Detached and cold, empty, and deeply haunted. Frost swirled around his fingers, and Cole was struck with the awful reality that he’s about to execute her, I can’t watch this-
Cole lunges but Lloyd is faster, slamming into Zanes side a second before ice shards explode out of his palm. They miss Ultraviolet by a hair, smashing into the asphalt next to her hand hard enough to break it, big ugly cracks spreading out across the pavement, and the woman before them looked like she had never been more scared in her life. Her eyes blown wide, her face even more ashen as she looked at the place where the ice shattered the road- that could have been her head.
Zane comes back to himself, jerking away from Lloyd even as he tries to chase after him, gasping at his wrists and offering hushed comforts that Zane doesn’t seem to be able to hear. The entire street has gone eerily silent, watching with wide-eyed shock as Zane almost murders Ultraviolet. Frost starts inching out of the ground where Zane steps, patches of ice crawling across the street, and when he turns away from her and looks across the other SOG gang members- they put up their hands and surrender without any more fight, afraid of him.
Zane turned and ran, racing back to his vehicle and disappearing without a word, leaving them all to deal with the aftermath.
As Cole uses a pick he’d conjured out of earth to chip Ultraviolet out, she looks at him with those spooked eyes and tries to be cocky and uncaring again, “I thought murder wasn’t your style.” she shoots, When he doesn’t respond she asks, more subdued, “Do you think he was really going to kill me?”
Cole isn’t lying when he says yes.
Zane beats them home, obviously, and he locks himself in his room. Each of them take a crack at trying to get him to talk, or just come out for a second and let them see him. Lloyd gets him to at least talk through the door and reassure them he’s fine.
“He says he needs space.” Lloyd had reported back to them all, expression pinched.
And then it had been radio silence the past few days. He wasn’t coming out for anything, holed up in his room and hiding from them all. It was Kai that heard it, yelling for everyone else to come back to Zanes room- a crash, apparently. The sound of something breaking, and now Zane wasn’t responding. They all called through the door, worry spiking with each progressive minute, and Kai was the one who made the decision to force their way in.
It wasn’t something made lightly, but they just… needed to know he was safe.
The lock breaks out of the frame easily, and when they all pile in it’s pretty obvious that Zane left. His mirror is smashed in, a big dent right in the middle, spiderweb cracks spreading out across the rest of it. Jay walks up to it and puts his fist right in the center of it all, looking back at them with deep sorrow when it fits perfectly.
Nya motions to the window, “it’s open.” She says softly, “You think he’s out there?”
A heartbeat passes, “Let me go talk to him.” Cole says before Pixal can volunteer, “I… I’ve known him a long time. Let me try.” Before Pixal and Lloyd and Kai and Nya, before even Jay, it had just been Cole and Zane for a really long time. He knows Zane better than anyone.
Lloyds mouth twists and he doesn’t look happy about it, but he nods slowly.
Cole hoists himself up and out the window with a good deal more trouble than he’s sure Zane had, stupid skinny nindroid, who is nowhere to be seen on the other side. He sighs a little, running a hand through his hair with discontent, and turns back toward the monastery, squinting up at the roof through the darkness. He can’t tell from down here, but it’s honestly the most likely place he’d have gone to hide. He climbs up the wall with little difficulty, hauling himself up on top of the roof and flopping down on his belly. He rolls onto his back and sits up, looking around to catch a certain Nindroid smiling tiredly at him a few steps away.
“Very Graceful.” Zane offers, which is the most Cole has heard him say in nearly a week.
“I get the job done.” he comments, scooting across the roof to sit next to him, “You worried us. We heard your mirror break and then you didn't respond.”
Zane is quiet for a long time, “... How badly is my door broken?”
“Nothing a little work won’t fix.” Cole sighs, looking over at Zane.
It’s hard to explain, but he’s… lost something. Some spark of life or optimism. All he is now is tired and hurt and worn in a way Cole is familiar with on an intimate level, but his own funk had never been this ongoing. His time as a ghost had made him want to... to give up, but he’d come back. Zane wasn’t coming back.
“What do you need?” He asks and when Zane looks at him, even the blue of his eyes is dull and faded, “What will help, Zane?”
“I don’t know.” He says honestly, “I just… I don’t think I can do this anymore.” he looks up across the expanse of stars twinkling in the sky, eyes distant.
“Do what?” Zane doesn’t answer and Cole leans in, resting a hand on his shoulder to ground him, “I can’t help you if you don’t talk to me.”
It’s something they’ve all said to a certain degree a thousand times before, but maybe he needed to hear it a thousand and one, or maybe it’s gotten bad enough that he finally realizes he needs to talk before it gets any worse, but when Zane looks at Cole again he knows this is a turning point. Whatever he says next will change things.
“I don’t think I can be a ninja anymore.” Zane basically whispers it, barely managing to push it out past his teeth, a truth he’s been harboring so deeply within himself it took getting to his darkest moment to admit it, “i’m sorry.” he adds, face starting to break as the reality of what he’s just admitted catches up with him.
Cole shakes his head, “Don’t- Don’t apologize, Zane, you have nothing to apologize for.” He swallows down his own devastation, the idea of Zane not being a ninja anymore is- is heartbreaking. He doesn’t want that, to go into battle without his calm presence by his side, and almost immediately he feels his stomach roil at his own thoughts. Selfish.
“What I did in the Never Realm- I can’t forget it, it’s all I think about here, it’s all I know. Pain, death, devastation. Everytime I put on my gi I think about hurting people again.” He confesses, voice strained and hushed, “Everytime I call my ice and I feel that rush, I can't remember what I stand for. I just want to use it. On anything. And when I come down all I feel is guilt and shame, and when I look in the mirror all I see is a monster- I just can’t do it anymore. I don’t want to be here anymore.” he breaks, tears running down his face, biting his lip to stop himself from talking any more.
“Then don’t.” Cole reaches out again, taking Zanes other shoulder and turning him to face him, “Stop being a ninja- go- go out, see the world, remember what you love about life and about Ninjago. Remember what you’re fighting for.”
Zane looks at him with wide wet eyes, a new light flickering there, something soft and aching. It’s as if Cole has given him something, a new hope in the permission to leave.
“We’ll be here when you want to come back, be it just to visit or to stay. We’re your family, we’ll support you through whatever you need.” Cole pulls him in close and Zane accepts the hug, twisting his fingers into Coles gi desperately, “Just be sure to send postcards, alright? And- and any fancy candies that we don’t get here in Ninjago City.”
Zane laughs and it sounds watery, but Cole doesn’t mind if he cries because it’ll cover up the sound of his own tears.
In the morning, Zane quietly tells them all that he plans to leave, and they understand. It hurts, and no one’s exactly happy about it, but… they understand. If he needs to go, if space and time away from all this will help him heal, then by the first spinjitzu master they’ll be the ones to help him pack. He politely refuses Pixal and Kais offer to come with him and they take it with as much grace as they can. He sits with Lloyd the longest, breaks it to him the gentlest of them all, and Cole gives them as much space as they need to talk it out. Lloyd doesn’t have the best track record with abandonment, and this will be the hardest for him to grasp, but he does.
They will all let him go, even though it will be hard. There is no party, no celebration, just a quiet dinner that Zane makes himself, a few heartfelt goodbyes, and then Zane is gone.
The first postcard is a family event, it’s sealed up in an envelope with pictures and a letter to them all. He’s found a therapist to talk to over his Borg cell while he travels, he’s safe, he’s optimistic, and he misses them all greatly.
With it comes a little box, for Cole written on a small tag, and it’s filled with candy.
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A shadow moves across him, blotting out the sun and casting shade across his chest and hands. A long pause before Cole nudges at his head with his foot to get his attention. When Zane opens his eyes, he’s standing to the side in front of the sun, face cut in cool tones, and he’s got one hand resting in the inside of his gi like a pocket.
“You okay?” He asks, midday sunlight casting a halo around his hair.
“You tell me.”
Backlit by the sun, Zane can make out the edges of his frown by the way the light catches on his jawline. He crosses his arms across his chest, “Don’t be like that.” He says weakly.
“Sorry.” Zane means that, sorta.
Zane’s wearing a pair of sweatpants that are too big, raided from Coles laundry, and underneath his Ninjago High School robotics club hoodie he’s certain belongs to jay is a novelty t-shirt Kai won during a game of competitive beer pong, on one of the few nights they had all managed to get out on the town. He can’t stand his own clothes now, in a way that grates on the parts of him that wants everything to be fine and normal, white burning across his vision like snow storms that won’t stop. He should be hot in all this, but he doesn’t feel it anymore. He can’t feel anything other than chilled to the bone.
Cole blows out a long breath, puffing strands of hair off his forehead. He shoves his hands in his pocket and rocks back and forth on his heels, working up the courage to say something while Zane watches him silently, “...Can I sit with you?”
He nods and Cole sinks to the grass, stretching out his legs with a groan, “Lloyd’s having us run new training exercises, it’s hell.” he comments, letting his hands fall in his lap.
Zane turns his head to watch him through slitted eyes, sunlight too bright on his optics, “alright.” he says evenly.
“Will you ever stop being mad at me?”
“You won’t let me come back to training.” Zane shoots back.
“Well, sorry I care about you.” Cole snaps shortly, exhaling harshly through his nose.
There’s another long pause, a breeze shifts the air around them idly. Cole clenches and unclenches his fists several times, thinking, and Zane tries to relax again. “I was supposed to be some sort of leader for us, once. Everyone still wants me to make the hard decisions.” He leans back slowly, laying down onto the grass, “I have to protect all of you. Even if it makes you angry.”
Zane doesn’t reply, tracing shapes in the clouds with his eyes.
“You’re not ready.”
“I know.” And he does know, he’s not ready at all, and Cole made the right decision. Until he can prove to Cole he’s stable, he’ll be grounded from all missions and all training.
But he doesn’t have to be happy about it.
Cole turns to lay on his side, facing Zane, searching his face with his eyes, “Have you talked to your therapist today?”
“Not yet. We have a video chat session later.” He closes his eyes again, soaking in the warmth from the sun.
There’s another pause, Cole picks at the grass a little, “...How are you feeling?” When Zane looks at him he pins him with an earnest gaze, “Honestly?”
He can’t bear to maintain eye contact, looking up at the sky and ruminating on that question. It was a loaded gun. “Fine.” he lies.
Coles smile is a weary little thing, “Hope you're at least being honest with your therapist.” He jokes.
Zane smiles a little, strangely feeling lighter than he has all week.
