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Nya’s brother is standing in front of her, only this Kai looks considerably older than he did when she had seen him in the kitchen just an hour ago. He’s still wearing a red gi but this one has a golden dragon embroidered across it. This Kai looks so relieved to see her.
What’s going on?
“The short answer? Time-travel,” he tells her. It’s then that she realises she had said that thought out loud.
“You’re kidding, right?”
Kai shakes his head. “You probably wish I was. Look, Nya, I don’t have long-” he says. That same look is still there.
“If there’s something you want to say to me, please just say it,” Nya’s never been the one to beat around the bush, after all.
“Right, okay,” Now he’s really nervous for whatever reason that she doesn’t understand. “I’m from 2021 -”
The younger sibling cut him off. “Nine years in the future?!”
“Yeah and I…just really wanted to see you again,” There’s far more to it than just that, she’s had years of experience in reading between the lines.
Before she can say anything in response to that, Kai is crossing the room towards her to wrap his arms around her waist in a hug.
Despite the years between them, the hug doesn’t feel alien at all.
Faintly, she is reminded of a memory from a few years ago (her time; it would have been much longer ago for him), back in their childhood.
Nya wraps her own arms around him. Is he crying?
“I didn’t realise you’d grow up into such a crybaby,”
“Shut up,” It lacks the heat behind it that it could hold in any other situation. Silence befalls the siblings until Kai pulls away, wiping barely-there tears from his eyes, ending their hug.
“You can’t tell anyone that I was here, not even past-me,” the Fire Master tells her.
Nya almost laughs at that. Of course, she can’t tell anyone about this, it’s the number one rule of time travel. Time travel…that, up until a few minutes ago, she didn’t believe was real.
“Don’t worry, it’s safe with me,”
“I only have about a minute left anyways,” As he speaks, the tips of his fingers already start to fade out of existence.
“More like a few seconds,” she corrects.
The siblings spend the next minute or so just chatting as Kai’s hands and then the rest of his body follows his fingers out of existence. Despite how many questions she has about the future, such as how did he get that scar? Nya makes sure not to steer the conversation in any direction that involves the future.
Just as the last bit of the Master of Fire’s face winks out of existence, the door opens and Kai — or who's present-day Kai for her — pokes his head into the room.
“Sis? You good?” he asks. Nya is staring at where the future version of her brother had been just a moment before.
She turns away to face her brother. “Yeah, I’m good,” The samurai gets up to join the others for dinner.
All throughout the meal, as she eats the food that Zane cooked and chats with the others, a part of her still thinks about the future Kai.
How much will he and/or one of the others have to suffer through in the next nine years for it to overshadow him like that?
Abruptly, Kai is snapped back to his proper time period to find that he’s looking at the monastery’s mural wall, specifically the mural of Nya’s sacrifice.
He got to speak to her, his little sister; not the water spirit who bears her name and looks like the lady he raised but lacks all the memories that make her Nya, for one last time. Even if it was the baby version.