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Nya’s drawn into the kitchen by the heavenly smell of freshly baked cookies. The scent of toasted flour, rich butter, and bittersweet chocolate are thick and heavy in the air, perfuming nearly the entire monastery with their alluring sweetness. Nya doesn’t have a huge sweet tooth, especially not when compared to a certain black-clad ninja that she lives with, but even she can’t resist the pull of Zane’s baked goods when they’re fresh out of the oven. Warm, gooey chocolate embedded in a vanilla dough, topped off with flaky sea salt. It’s just too amazing to pass up.
When Nya steps through the doorway, she’s honestly kind of shocked that her entire family isn't scattered about the kitchen, waiting to get their hands on some cookies as soon as they’re cool enough to touch. Nothing Zane bakes lasts long in the monastery, and she’s come to expect that. So, when, besides Zane, she finds that there’s not a single other person in the room, she’s definitely a little thrown off. She knows Cole is out buying groceries, and that he dragged Jay with him, so that accounts for a few of them, but the rest are all a mystery. Deciding not to question it, she figures she should just be glad that she won’t need to elbow Kai out of the way to get the best looking cookie to herself.
“It smells delicious in here, Zane,” Nya greets, pulling in a deep breath to savor the comforting, homey aroma. It feels almost nostalgic, despite neither herself or Kai being much of a baker. Since she was too young to remember much, she’s not sure if their mom or dad ever made cookies for them before Krux and Acronix took them away, but the smell reminds her of easier times nonetheless.
Zane turns from where he was piling dirty dishes in the sink, preparing them to be washed later, and offers a warm smile when his eyes land on her frame. “Thank you, they should be done in just a minute or two,” he says, inclining his head in a bare nod toward the oven. He wipes messy hands, dotted with dough and coated in flour, on the pink apron slung over his shoulders and tied around his waist.
The sight always makes her mood lift, and prompts a fuzzy feeling to unfurl in her chest. After the whole incident shortly after her and Kai came to live at the monastery, everyone has made sure to support Zane in his fashion choices, with Nya in particular having no tolerance for toxic masculinity or outdated and hurtful stereotypes. Jay went shopping with him and found a few more fun patterned aprons, so he’d have a couple choices to cycle through, and Cole’s helped mend any tears in the fabric that formed from years of wear. Zane always seems to brighten when he slips one on, and that never fails to make Nya’s heart fill with pride in all her boys.
“Chocolate chip?” Nya questions, not doubting her nose, but double checking all the same. She reclines back against the countertop, propping up her weight on forearms and bent elbows.
Zane hums in affirmation, throwing a quick glance at the oven timer before turning to face Nya. “They do seem to be the popular favorite around here,” he says, a smile working its way into the mechanical din of his voice.
“You can’t beat the classic,” Nya replies, a shrug of her shoulders accompanying the words. While everyone always enjoys whatever new recipe Zane decides to make—well, Lloyd isn’t always a fan of the more exotic flavor combinations—the good old standby is a surefire way to make the whole team come flocking to the kitchen. Nya’s seen them demolish an entire batch in less than five minutes. She might have helped out a bit too, but that’s not the point. The point is, you can never go wrong with a perfect chocolate chip cookie.
“I’ve found that to be true as well,” Zane says, a shrill beeping from the oven nearly cutting him off. He grabs a pair of well-worn pot holders from the counter and places one in each hand. Seeing the other ninja use towels, oven mitts, and pot holders always makes Nya let out a sigh of relief, even though it’s very much the normal thing to do. After living with the elemental master of fire her entire life, watching Kai grab scalding hot pots and pans with his bare hands, and nearly having a heart attack for the first several dozen times, she’s glad for that little bit of normalcy. Even now, every so often, it’ll catch her off guard when Kai picks up blazing metal like it’s nothing, and she’ll have to take a few breaths to keep her heart from leaping out of her chest.
Anyway, Zane pulls a pair of cookie sheets from the oven, lined with neat rows of perfectly spaced, gooey chocolate chip cookies. Nya has to fight the urge to grab one now, knowing that they’re way, way too hot to even hold, let alone eat. He sets them both on the grates of the stove to cool off and busies himself with digging through a cabinet for wire racks.
Since everyone rotates on dish duty, you can never really know where something is in the kitchen. While plates, cups, bowls, silverware, and chopsticks all have dedicated spaces, the lesser used things, like wire racks, cake pans, and the rolling pin, tend to move around quite a bit, with everyone having their own preferred spot to put them away in. It’s led to several instances of having to hunt down every single person in the monastery to ask where something ended up. It’s probably not the best system, but they make it work well enough, she supposes.
Finally finding what he’s looking for, Zane grabs a pair of racks and sets them beside the stove. He makes quick work of transferring the cookies from their trays onto the racks, with Nya watching in a comfortable quiet. Since their lives have a tendency to be loud, rushed, and chaotic, she’s come to really savor the still, slow moments like this one. They’re somewhat of a rarity, and while she holds the life of ninja close to her chest, clutching onto it with a white-knuckled grip, and would never trade it for anything else in the world, the craziness of it all makes her all the more grateful for movie nights and family breakfasts, scrap shopping with Pix and helping Jay decide which model train to buy next, as well as time to tinker with whatever mech or vehicle needs her attention.
Pushing off the counter and tipping forward, Nya allows the momentum to carry her across the kitchen in a few steps. She stops beside Zane, eyeing the cookies eagerly. They’re probably cool enough to hold, so she takes a chance and grabs one off the wire rack, leaving an empty space in Zane’s neat rows. It’s soft and squishy, dents forming where her fingers sink into warm dough. Usually, they hold their shape a bit better than this, even fresh out of the oven. And, upon taking a closer look, Nya finds that they look a bit pale, edges lacking the typical deep golden brown that yields a crunchy ring around the outside and a chewy center.
A bit puzzled, Nya gently turns the cookie over, careful not to stick her fingers into still molten chocolate. The bottom is only lightly browned, just barely reaching a light caramel color. “Zane?” Nya questions, flipping the baked good back upright and casting a curious glance at the rest of the batch. They all look the same as the one in her hand, so it clearly wasn’t a result of uneven oven temperature or a poorly conducting spot on the pan.
“Yes?” he asks, turning to face Nya, glowing blue eyes casting a gentle glow across the space between them.
“I’m not much of a baker, but aren’t these barely done?” she replies, taking one more curious look before taking a bite of the cookie. As to be expected, it’s delicious: rich and buttery with the decadent addition of semi-sweet chocolate chips, all cut through with a perfect sprinkle of sea salt. But, the edge has a chew to it, and the center is still delicate and gives little resistance when bitten. They’re fantastic cookies, but they’re not Zane’s cookies.
“They are fully cooked, if that is your concern,” he says, eyes darting back toward the counter. His words are casual, as is the way he says them, but something in his body language shifts at the ask. His shoulders rise slightly, then he goes still, almost rigid.
That’s new. It’s not like him to get nervous or react negatively to feedback on his cooking. In fact, it’s usually the opposite. He’s typically eager to hear everyone’s opinions so that he can adjust the recipes to cater more to everyone’s tastes. Besides, he looks more like he’s bracing against something than it being disappointment or nerves.
“No—I mean, I’m glad they’re done, but that’s not what I meant. It’s just that you normally bake them longer than this, right? I was just wondering why this batch was different.” Her tone says light, colored by curiosity rather than critique.
At that, Zane looks down at his hands, before balling them into the fabric of his apron. A few fleeting seconds pass, and Nya is struck with the realization that she definitely hit a nerve, digging her fingers into a tender spot she wasn’t aware of. Zane isn’t usually one to clam up like this, gone all quiet and hesitant once the topic was breached. He’s always quick to answer, typically supplying a composed response to whatever the other ninja throw at him. But now, his eyes bore holes into the wood flooring beneath their feet, and she can see the tension locking his jaw.
Drawing in a steadying breath, then letting it past his lips in a just barely shaky exhale, Zane releases his grip on the pink cloth resting at his thighs. “When you were… away,” he says the word so cautiously, unsteady and unsure but chosen with care, “Maya shared something that you had told her with all of us.” His tone is measured, but there’s a distinct sadness creeping into his voice.
At first, Nya doesn’t pick up his meaning. Her mom told them something? She tries to go back through their conversations, hoping to find something relevant, since Zane’s shoulders bend under whatever weight he’s carrying, and he goes quiet again, not offering any more clarification. Then, it hits her, so hard and sharp that her chest actually aches with it.
“Crumbly cookies.” The two words fall from Nya’s lips before she can even think to say them, seeming loud in the quiet kitchen, even with the breathy, gentle way they’re forced out.
“Yes,” Zane affirms, head dipping in a short nod. And Nya’s heart just breaks.
By far the worst part of all of this, sacrificing herself to become one with the ocean in order to save Jay and defeat Wojira, is seeing the scars carved into her family from the ordeal, scars that she put there, even if she didn’t have a choice in the matter.
It was easier for her, called out to sea, identity and worries both left behind on dry land. She simply existed, doing whatever she felt called to do, following the whims of the water. But, everyone else wasn’t so lucky. They were forced to confront the overwhelming bite of loss without her, and no one made it out unscathed.
Jay never takes just one cup, always filling up a second just to set it on the kitchen table or leave it on a windowsill. Nya has to swallow against the tightness gripping her throat when she cleans up, echoes of Jay’s terrible desperation, his fracturing loneliness, eating at her as she collects untouched glasses from the kitchen, the living room, the Bounty. Each one carries his undying love, as well as the unfathomable depths of his pain, and never has a single glass felt so heavy in her grip.
Kai loses himself in training in ways she’s never seen before. He trains and trains and trains until his body can’t keep going, collapsing on the mats in a gasping heap with blisters littered across the scarred and calloused skin of his hands and blood oozing from split knuckles. More than once, she’s watched him reduce an entire regime of training dummies to smoldering ash with promises of being strong enough falling from chewed lips between ragged breaths. And every time, she watched with a hand clasped over her mouth, shoulders shaking and tears threatening to spill past dark lashes as her brother heaved and coughed, lungs unable to meet the unreasonable demands he made of them.
Lloyd won’t let her go on solo missions or send her off on her own when they split up to better tackle an enemy. More often than not, he keeps her paired with himself if they need to divide into teams, even if it’s not the best strategic decision. One time, she ran off alone to catch some escaping henchmen, and she’d returned to her little brother in a panic, tears gathering in his lashes as he frantically searched for her, calling her name with a shaking voice.
At first, Nya thought Cole coped better than the rest of them, that maybe he learned how to face loss with more grace due to Lily’s death. However, as time went on, she realized that he just hides it better than the others, keeping his wounds tucked into his chest, close to his bleeding heart, in order to be strong for everyone else. He may put up a sturdy front, but Nya doesn’t miss the way he flinches at a running tap, a habit long since kicked after his days as a ghost, or how he presses into her side during movie night, like he needs a reminder that her body is still solid, still skin and muscle and bone.
And Zane. Nya knows Zane just shut out the grief, switching off overwhelming emotion with the press of a button. Even the memory of the cold, monotonous, lifeless quality of his voice still makes a gnawing guilt swell in her chest, raw and stinging. But, ever since he reactivated his emotion meter, he seemed like normal Zane.
She was naive to assume she hadn’t etched lasting scars into him as well, welded into circuits and twisted into wiring.
“Oh, Zane,” she says, emotion washing over the name, coloring it with guilt and grief and all the sympathy that suddenly overtakes her. Her throat feels tight, grasped in an unforgiving grip that makes any other words stick in her chest.
Zane finally pulls his eyes away from the floor long enough to look Nya in the eye. HIs expression is pinched, brows pulled together and lips pressed into a tight line. He offers a small smile, but it doesn’t manage to reach his eyes, heavy memories and clinging, lingering sadness holding the expression at bay. “I am aware that it is not logical and that it is merely an expression, but I feel more at ease with them this way.” Zane’s voice sounds more fragile than it usually does, its timbre less assured and steady.
Heat pricks at Nya’s eyes, and she pulls in a shuddering inhale. The sheer intensity of the love she has for the nindroid in front of her, and the love she knows he holds for her, hits her all at once. It’s a consuming thing, pulling the breath from her lungs and filling her chest with a devastatingly sweet ache that slots itself between her ribs and tangles around her heart. The sensation is so overwhelming that she does the only thing she can.
Nya stumbles a few steps forward and throws her weight into Zane’s frame. She knows he can hold up to it, knows that he will always be there to catch her, so she wraps her arms around his waist and curls her fingers into the worn fabric of his t-shirt. She buries her head in his chest, the gentle sound of mechanical whirring and clicking faint beside her ear.
Zane remains still for a few moments, not rigid or unyielding, but motionless in her hold. Then, he just crumples, folding in on himself, and around Nya. A short sound sticks in the back of his throat, sounding too much like the beginnings of a pained whine for Nya’s liking, but he winds his long limbs around her, gently at first, then squeezing hard enough to feel the solid edges of muscle and bone. One hand tangles in the loose strands of her hair, ponytail forgone after training was finished for the day, while the other flattens across the planes of her back, slender fingers stretched over her shoulder blade. His chin drops to land at the crown of her head, the line of his throat pressed against the side of her skull. She feels him swallow, then he tucks her into his arms a bit more securely.
She doesn’t know what she’d do if she lost him. Well, lost him again. The images of his confrontation with the Overlord, as well as the run in with Garmadon’s stone giant, are still burned into her memory in startling clarity, as is the stinging hollowness left in their wake. And while she’d cared for him fiercely then, those tragedies were years ago. They’ve grown more and more entangled into one another's lives, to the point where they cannot be separated without permanently damaging the other. He’s family just as much as Kai is, or Jay, or Lloyd, or Cole, or Master Wu, or Pixal.
“I’m sorry,” she mumbles, voice coming out weak, lined with a slight waver. Her lips brush against his shirt, the material soft against her skin. Zane shifts slightly, head lifting off of her own. She thinks he might be casting a glance down at her, but with her head tucked into his chest, she can’t quite tell. He pulls in a long breath, and she feels it more than hears it, the shift of him against her cheek.
“There is nothing to apologize for,” he says, all warm assurances and easy forgiveness. The hand he has buried in her hair begins to move, stroking through the messy waves in a rhythmic pattern. It reminds her of being small, with Kai brushing a hand through her wild bedhead after she woke up from a nightmare. “You did what was necessary to save Jay, as well as the city.” Nya hears the acceptance in his tone, the clarity of it, even if his voice is tight and watery. She knows it’s not merely logic that drives his words, but a steadfast belief that her actions were the right thing to do, even if they were not ideal.
“I know,” she replies, blinking a few times to clear her blurring vision, “And I wouldn’t change anything even if I had the chance.” She turns her head to press her forehead into his ribs, his power source humming just behind fabric and metal. “But I’m still sorry,” she offers, lifting her chin and tipping her head back to let her eyes land on his face.
He’s smiling again, but this time his eyes scrunch up at the corners, their blue glow gone fuzzy around the edges. Even through the glassy shine of watering eyes, she can tell the expression is genuine.
“It is nice to have you back.”
It’s all the response he gives, but it means so much more than the simple letters could ever spell out. It’s the way he waves to her in the morning, knowing she isn’t awake enough to carry a conversation. It’s how he knows what she’s going to do in a fight as soon as her fingers start to move, and how he weaves his elemental powers into her own, making them a force to be reckoned with. It’s him making her favorite dishes for dinner when he knows she’s had a rough day.
“It’s nice to be back,” she replies, returning his smile with a grin of her own. She wraps her arms around him tighter, giving him a reassuring squeeze before easing back, gently disentangling her limbs from his. He responds in kind, extricating his fingers from her hair and loosening his grip. They stay close though, leaving only a foot or two of space between the two of them.
Nya’s eyes drift back to the cookies lined up on wire racks, then to the one she’d abandoned in order to fling her arms around Zane. She reaches out for it, the baked good now cool between her fingers. She takes another bite. It set up a bit as it cooled off, the edge giving a nice chew while the center is still soft, but not quite as delicate. It feels a bit sturdier, making for a satisfying bite.
Licking a stray bit of gooey chocolate from the corner of her lip, Nya offers Zane another smile. “I like them this way,” she says, with a little nod, making sure to leave no room for doubt. She doesn’t miss the way Zane relaxes slightly at her words, any remaining tension bleeding out of his muscles. It sets her at ease too, left to savor the sweetness coating her tongue and the cozy warmth of the kitchen, heated by the air filtering out of the oven.
“I’m glad to hear that,” he replies, grabbing a cookie for himself.
“I might have to hide a few. You know how the guys get with sweets,” Nya says, grin going sharp around the edges. Living with a bunch of boys, Nya learned pretty quickly that if she wanted to hold onto anything for later, she’d better tuck it away somewhere that’s hard to find. She’s consoled Jay enough times over stolen pudding cups to know that writing your name on it isn’t a guarantee that it’ll stick around. So, hiding things is her best bet.
Zane chuckles, the sound bright and comforting as it fills the space between them. “They can get quite… excitable,” Zane pauses a second, before settling on the right word. He put it more mildly than she would have, but she can’t imagine Zane calling them a pack of rabid wolves like she might’ve, so she supposes excitable is about right.
“That’s one way to put it,” she replies, a fond exasperation slipping into her tone.
“I think you hold your own pretty admirably though.” Zane bumps his shoulder into hers, a smile curving across his lips and making his eyes shine just a bit brighter.
It’s Nya’s turn to laugh, a short chuckle bubbling in her throat. “Thanks,” she starts, “although I’m not sure if that’s a compliment or a polite insult.” Nya doesn’t know if being able to keep up with the hooligans she lives with is a good thing or not. She supposes it is. It’s far better than not being able to full-body shove a grown man out of the way if he gets between her and the last cookie.
“It was meant as a compliment,” Zane clarifies, voice warm and rich against the quiet.
“Then I guess I’ll take it as one,” Nya says, smile widening a bit. Zane just hums a low note in response, allowing them to settle into a comfortable quiet.
Except, it doesn’t last long. She hears Jay and Cole’s voices drifting in from the entryway. There’s a short pause in their conversation before the sound of footsteps quickens and grows louder. “I smell chocolate!” Nya hears Cole exclaim as the two boys round the corner and come running into the kitchen. Cole has grocery bags lining his arms, all the way up to elbow, while Jay only has one in each hand. They’re all promptly forgotten though, as they both dump the bags on the counter, freshly baked cookies clearly taking priority.
“Excitable,” Nya says, grinning at Zane. It may be a little chaotic sometimes, but she wouldn’t have it any other way.