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(I'm jealous of the rain
that falls upon your skin.
It's closer than my hands have been.)
Zane had always known he was different.
That much was obvious. He was never a people person, even with Wu. But he always watched when others acted. Facninating, they were. He couldn't help it. And living in close proximity to said people didn't really help his case.
Cole was grounded, Jay was not, and Zane was neither.
They clashed sometimes. Words, moods, silences. Zane would sit in the aftermath and try to calculate. Find the fault. Fix it.
He... never could.
But even so, he tried.
He tried harder than anyone.
Tried to laugh when the others laughed, to nod when nodding felt expected. He tried to mimic Cole’s down-to-earth responsibility, Jay’s confident energy, to fit in the silence. He trained harder, memorized faster. He did everything he thought he should.
And yet, something always rang hollow. Almost artificial, if he were to think that far.
It was never more apparent than when Jay and Cole were together. They were natural opposites, bickering and bonding in an exhausting loop, sparks flying in ways that Zane could not replicate. He was always two steps behind their rhythm. A word too formal, a joke too literal—it exhausted him, trying to keep up with inside jokes he didn't find funny. To watch them fight and forgive and just understand that.
"Sensei," he confessed one evening, as the stars began to rise and the laughter from inside the monastery echoed like a song he didn’t know the lyrics to. "I think I am incompatible."
His Sensei, his teacher, his guardian, standing beside him in the garden, didn’t look surprised. His voice was calm, as it always was. "With what?"
"With them," Zane said, gesturing toward the sounds of celebration within. "Our personalities conflict. I do not enjoy their forms of humor. They frustrate me. I frustrate them. I do not... belong."
Wu smiled gently, thoughtfully. "Look deeper than that, Zane."
Zane did.
And for the first time, he didn’t just watch how they spoke. He watched why.
Jay was always moving—always talking, always tinkering, always making things worse before he made them better. He never stopped talking, even when he was scared, maybe especially then. When Jay was annoyed, he joked. When he was hurt, he played it off with a quip and a complaint. It was his way of coping, Zane learned. His way of saying, Please don’t look too hard at me. Please don’t see through the mask.
Cole, on the other hand, was quiet until he wasn’t. He carried his pain like he carried everything else—with the determined strength of someone used to being overlooked and dismissed. He pretended things didn’t matter to him, but Zane could see it in the way he trained, the way he pushed himself a little further on hard days. He didn’t just want to be strong, he wanted to be good.
They were striving.
They wanted to be better. Always better, always enough, because they (they. They were a they) believed they weren't. They reached for purpose like it was something just out of reach, something they had to chase and chase and chase until their faces were hot and legs were sore.
In that, Zane finally saw it.
He did belong.
Their hearts beat differently, ideals sometimes clashing, but they were the same where it counted. In that raw desire for purpose that ached and ached for purchase.
And for a time, that was enough.
Until he met Kai.
And Kai was... different.
Irrational and so full of anger, so much it led to his own detriment. Kai was rude, uncaring, downright sabotaging at times. It was weird and frustrating, how he would swat off Wu’s genuine attempts to help like a particularly irritating fly, how he would look everyone in the eye, asking for teamwork and compliance, then spit at it with that scowl he always wore.
And that was okay, because Zane was used to different.
Zane was used to frustration, used to not understanding people. He let it wash over him the way he always did, turning it over in his mind like a puzzle he tucked away for later. He waited for Kai to come to that same realization he had—to see they were all the same in the end, that they, too, were chasing purpose. Proof they were wanted. Something they knew they deserved.
But Kai didn’t.
Kai wasn’t chasing purpose. He wasn't chasing... anything. He didn’t even want to be a Ninja at first. And when Zane realized that, it was like a castle of cards fell in his head. It made the brunette impossible to read. Nearly incomprehensible. He didn’t want destiny. He didn’t want greatness.
He just wanted Nya.
He became a Ninja to find her. He stayed a Ninja to save her. She had always been his first priority, his only constant. And unlike Jay or Cole or Zane, Kai hadn’t been searching for a reason to fight at all.
It confused him, bewildered him, leaving Zane downright gawking at the newest member of their team, as if boring a hole into Kai would somehow give him answers. Why train to be a ninja in the first place? Why put yourself at such high risk? Why become something you never wanted, something you despise, for someone else? Zane could calculate probability, solve equations in seconds, but he couldn’t understand that. Not truly.
Until he did.
It was a cold evening, and they had just obtained another golden weapon. The makeshift tents surrounding the campfire echoed the sounds of sleep, but Zane had stayed awake to watch the stars.
Kai was crouched with his back facing the campfire, eyes looking up at the new moon perched above the clouds. His brows were furrowed, body still and silent, looking at the sky like it had wronged him.
And suddenly, it clicked.
Kai didn’t fight for destiny. Or purpose. Or belonging.
He fought for Nya.
She was the purpose.
She was the reason he got up in the morning. The reason he trained until his muscles tore. The reason he spat fire when the rest of them had given up.
He had never been lost.
He had just refused to lose her.
And that... Zane could never understand.
Because Zane had never been loved like that. Not fiercely. Not irrationally. Not with that kind of terrifying intensity.
He’d had friends and teachers. Companions. But never that. Never someone who looked at him and saw their whole world.
And so, in his head, he envied Nya.
But in his heart, he envied Kai so, so much more.
Because how wonderful must it feel, to be so sure of your place in someone’s life? To fight and live and die for someone else, with no shame? To know that if you took your last breath tomorrow, instead of fear or anger, you'd greet it with passion?
Gratitude?
How wonderful it must be, to love like that.
How wonderful it must be, to exist like that.
How fulfilling.
How... human.
Zane tore his eyes away from the brunette, maybe out of envy or shame or both. His eyes—blue and buzzing and unknowingly electric—landed on a star, just a tad brighter than the rest. He was never one for wishing, such ubiquity confused him, but if it meant just a sliver of a chance?
No one was here to watch, no one was here to see and stare, he could be alone with himself for once. Alone with his desires.
It was enough.
Let me love like that. Let me find someone to love like that. I don't care what it costs; I want to have a world of my own, too.
Please.
(He would get both of his wishes, but not in the way he’d hoped. He would never see how fast they all buried their grief in motion, how much they had grown to lovelovelovelove him. Zane, no matter how many times you come back, you take a few pieces of your family with you. Sacrifice will always prove your love, but love has never asked you for sacrifice.)
(Sometimes, the best thing you can do for your family is live.)