Work Text:
The night after the March of the Oni, Kai found himself unable to sleep.
He wasn’t quite sure why exactly though. Everything had ended well and no one had sustained and major injuries. The moment with Lloyd under the rubble had been scary, but he’d turned out alright as well.
So he was unsure why he found himself staring up at the ceiling with a feeling he couldn’t quite place stirring in his gut.
Maybe it was that feeling of losing Cole that he couldn’t quite shake, even though they’d recovered the Master of Earth. It had hit all of them in the gut after all.
Maybe it was the dread he’d felt when the Oni were marching on the monastery. The overwhelming fear of loss and destruction that they’d only been able to combat together.
Or maybe it was Zane. The way the nindroid had realized when Cole fell overboard that this was what it felt like to lose someone you cared about. The quiet question he’d asked Kai that Kai desperately hadn’t wanted to answer. The almost silent, “Is this what I did to you all?” that had made Kai want to cry harder than he’d already been.
Eventually, Kai couldn’t take it anymore. He threw the covers off and stepped out of bed in his red socked feet.
He padded quietly to the kitchen, silent like the ninja he was. However as he walks through the doorway into the kitchen he stifles a sound of surprise to find another person already in there.
Or more accurately, another nindroid.
Zane sits at the counter on a barstool, staring down at his hands as he fidgets with them. The only light in the room comes from his bright blue eyes and blue accents.
Kai doesn’t want to disturb by turning on the light, so he stands there awkwardly for a moment debating saying hi or just slinking back to his bed and trying to sleep again.
But before Kai can decide, Zane makes the choice for him.
Without looking up from his hands, Zane says, “Hello Kai. You may turn on a light if it is hard to see.”
Kai flips on the pantry light, so as not to blind himself or Zane, and sits down across from him at the counter.
They sit in silence for a moment, before Zane finally looks up from his hands. His eyes carry weight in them, an emotion Kai can’t read sitting deep-set within them.
“So my friend.” He begins, a forced conversational tone to his voice. “Why are you up tonight?”
Kai looks Zane straight on, trying to gauge what’s wrong with his friend, but can’t seem to place anything specific.
Eventually he answers, but not before another long stretch of silence.
“Not sure. Just got this bad feeling in my gut for some reason. It’s strange though because we won. We beat the Oni. So I don’t know what’s wrong.”
Zane seems to think for a moment, pondering Kai’s predicament. After a moment he inhales, and exhales calmly, his metal chest rising and falling.
“Could it perhaps be restlessness? That does seem to happen to us in times of peace.”
“But this soon though? It was barely hours ago.”
Zane goes quiet again, and Kai can practically hear the gears turning in his head. The silence however, gives Kai the chance to speak.
“So what’s up with you? Why are you out here so late at night?”
Zane looks up at Kai again and this time, locks eyes with him. Kai realizes that he knows what the emotion lying deep inside them is. It’s guilt. Something he’d felt many times himself.
“I guess I am simply feeling…” Zane pauses for a moment, clearly searching for a world that sums up how the nindroid is feeling. “Accountable.” He finishes.
Kai sits up straighter on his stool, looking at Zane quizzically. “Accountable? For what?”
“For not realizing that losing someone you care about causes such a deep emotional reaction.”
“Zane. What are you talking about.”
“When Cole fell overboard today, I saw how deeply it affected you, Nya, and Jay. Those same emotions hit me as well, though later on. They were much more guttural than any feeling of loss I had ever experienced. I am feeling accountable because I realize now that I put you all through those same emotions.”
And just like that, Kai understands why he feels guilty. But he allows Zane to continue, feeling that he has more to say.
“When I…” The word died hangs unsaid between the pair but Zane quickly continues before either can dwell on it. “…defeated the Overlord, I believed that everything would turn out okay. You would all go back to your happy lives and ninjago would be at peace again. I did not intend to hurt any of you.”
Finally sensing that the nindroid is finished, Kai takes a moment to absorb all the information given to him before he has a startling thought that he exclaims as,
“You didn’t think we would miss you?”
Zane doesn’t answer him at first, staring down at his hands again, that he had begun to fidget with once more.
“Zane.”
Kai says again, his tone creeping more towards worried.
“Zane please. I need you to look me in the eye and tell me that’s not true. There’s no way we wouldn’t have missed you.”
Zane looks up finally, staring at Kai with something almost akin to shame in his face.
“I did not believe you would miss me. I did not believe any of you would miss me. I was simply fulfilling the purpose I was created to do. There would be no need to mourn that. After all…”
The next five words that exit Zane’s mouth would haunt Kai for months, especially after everything that would happen in the Never-Realm.
“…I am just a machine.”
Kai finds himself stunned into silence, the feeling that’d been swirling in his gut all night finally naming itself.
Concern.
Kai is quiet for so long, that Zane looks back down at his hands, shame flooding his features, before turning slightly and motioning like he’s going to get up and walk off.
“Zane.”
Kai’s tone is harsh, but not in a rude way. In a I care about you but this seems to be the only way I can get through to you type way.
“Zane. Look at me. Please.”
Reluctantly, the nindroid turns back to look at him, his eyes sad and shameful, like he’d admitted something that he himself had just barely grasped.
“You are not just a machine. You are so much more than that. You’re the most human out of any of us. Who put that idea in your head?”
“No one ‘put this in my head’ Kai. It is simply a fact. Something I have been aware of since the day I discovered I was a nindroid. It is a fact that cannot be disputed. And that fact is why there was no thoughts in my mind that you would miss me. Machines are not missed. They are created to fulfill their purpose. Once they do that, they become obsolete. That is how machines are.”
As Zane talks, his voice slowly shifts from the tone Kai is used to, which though robotic in nature, conveyed just as much thought and emotion as anyone else, to an emotionless drone of a voice, like he was reciting he had to memorize and held no emotions towards.
It hurts Kai to hear his friend brother talk about himself this way.
Kai wasn’t usually one for big emotional talks. Really, none of the ninja were spectacular at it, which in itself should’ve shown how close they were that they tried anyway.
Kai also wasn’t one for words. Deep words anyway. He’d rather try to diffuse high emotions with a poorly timed jab at Jay specifically.
But now he takes a deep breath and tries to draw on some courage, because Zane needed to know that Kai cared about him.
“Zane.” Kai starts, putting a hand on top of the nindroids to help steady him. Zane fully turns to look at him, his eyes still sad.
“I don’t know if this is something you’ve carried with you forever or if this is something that people have made you believe one way or another but. I need you to know. You are so much more than just a machine. You are the master of ice. You are the titanium ninja. You are Sensei Wu’s student. You are Dr. Julien’s son. You are Pixal’s boyfriend. You are Lloyd’s brother. You are Nya’s brother. You are Jay’s brother. You are Cole’s brother. And most importantly. You are my brother.”
Kai swallows a lump in his throat that’d been growing since those five words left Zane’s mouth.
“And I love you. We love you. You’re our family. And that means we’re gonna worry every time you’re hurt. We’re gonna be concerned if something seems wrong. And if for some terrible horrible reason, you…”
Kai takes a deep breath, swallowing the word died instead of saying it.
“…you weren’t here anymore. We would miss you. And that’s just how it is. That’s a fact. An indisputable fact.”
Kai attempts a grin at using the nindroids own words back at him, and Zane gives him a small smile, some of the guilt and sadness that’d been lingering in his eyes gone.
Kai’s words wouldn’t make the issue simply disappear. He knew that. Unfortunately for the nindroids negative thoughts though, Kai wasn’t planning on leaving anytime soon, so he’d remind his brother as many times as it took.
He was not just a machine.
He was family