I am so, so, SO sorry. The chapter that I originally had planned for lucky number three wasn't finished by my deadline, so I decided to whip up this little baby real quick, just to keep you satisfied.
So far, this is my plan for future chapters, (subject to change as I see fit!)
4. Adventure/romance-random action filler. About 8,000 words.
5. Romance/comedy-wedding. About 10,000 words.
6. Romance/friendship-adoption. About 15,000 words.
7. Romance/hurt-comfort-final chapter, Zane's choice. (I'll tell you at the end of this chapter, okay?) About 20,000 words.
So as you can see, this will be my last short chapter (hopefully!)
This chapter is a quick story about Kai and Nya's past, and will hopefully shed some light on a few different confusing things, such as why on earth Kai was cool with the Zane/Nya platonic relationship in chapter one. And my personal take on why Kai was against Jay/Nya for so many years.
Please review, and be patient with me. Better things are soon to come, I promise.
This chapter is hurt/comfort, rated K+.
For Kai, the days had become a blur. He would sit in the TV room, legs crossed on the leather beanbag chair, and play video games. He would kick at a training dummy until its stitches burst, and he would try to comfort his sister.
He was still unable to beat that high score. The one that Jay had erected not a week before his death.
"GaMe OvER." The voice sounded out with an explosion of light.
He watched the screen turn to black, then saw his name appear in slot number four. Jay was still untouchable.
The soft moonlight illuminated a clock on the wall. It's after four, he said to himself. I should at go to bed, and at least pretend to be asleep. He looked at the TV screen, with its annoying, repetitive soundtrack and lights that seemed to encourage seizures.
The realization dawned on him then. These games were rather pointless. Sure, they were fun. But what did they do to make society better? Did they save people? Did they do anything?
He tossed the controller absentmindedly to his left and watched it slide across the floor after a few good bounces.
Six days. It had been six long, hellish days since that picnic in the woods. Since the last time he had seen Jay laugh...
...Since the last time he had seen his sister smile.
He let out a loud sigh as he stood up and flicked a switch on the game console, then turned off the TV screen. Yes, it had been six days since he'd last seen his sister smile, or even look remotely less despondent.
He had been trying for days now to at least get a ghost of a smile on her lips to no avail. Not like he blamed her at all, because he wasn't exactly feeling all that chipper either. But it still hurt, seeing her so broken.
He spent more time with her now than he ever had in his life. Except, of course, for the few days following their parents deaths. He had given her lots of fondling then, as an older brother should. But he had been so caught up in trying to get his own emotions in line at that tender age that it was usually never more than a few minutes on his lap, then he would wiggle out of her grasp with some baloney about having work to do.
Kai blinked heavily, asking himself once again if he should at least try and get some sleep before everyone else woke up. Again, he discarded the thought and slumped back into the plush seat, staring vacantly at the moon through the round window as it illuminated the floorboards near his feet.
His mind began to wander again, and he thought of those days when he was ten, and his little sister would come running to him at the most random times, crying as if something was after her.
And indeed, there was something after her. Out to get her, take her and bury her deep into hopelessness. It was a thing he had been fighting off himself at the time.
Nya. His dear little eight year old sister, who's hair had always been tied back in long braids that fell halfway down her back, and who would wear a long nightgown that exposed tiny ankles as she pattered across the floor to kiss her mommy and daddy goodnight. Indeed, it had always been their mother who had done her hair and ironed all of their clothes, until a severe case of pneumonia took her at the age of thirty-four.
From that moment on, Nya had looked up to Kai help her throughout the day with her chores, since father had always been busy with orders at the shop.
She would run into Kai's arms while he was in the middle of getting ready for bed, her long black hair in a bunch of tangled knots, and her nightgown very wrinkled. All in all, she would have a very unkempt appearance about her until Kai got about the nightly task of straightening it.
Yes, Nya would come to him at night to help her button up those impossible little pearls in the back of her nightgown, and ask him to braid her hair. He would do it, of course. Although some days he felt nothing but impatience and irritability as he ripped through the tangles, he would do it.
After he had tied the last ribbon on the end of the second braid, she would always climb onto his lap and give him a hug and a kiss on the cheek before making some witty comment about one day being able to braid his hair, which at the time had been cropped closely and always kept neat and tidy.
Then the little girl would patter off to bed, only to awaken an hour later from some nightmare or another with tears streaming down her face as she groped for her older brother and held him tightly. Kai always had a habit of staying up an hour later than her, just so he could give her a bit of comfort before going to his own bed to sleep. In a way, it was his therapy. It was his way of dealing with the loss of their dear mother, his taking care of little sis. It just felt right, and it distracted him from the pain of loss.
But when father died seven years later, all of that changed.
Nya had, for the first week or so, allowed him to do his normal routine of braiding her hair and holding her on his lap.
But Kai could still call to mind that one day when he was brushing his teeth, glancing into the mirror every few seconds to see if she would materialize soundlessly behind him with the brush in her hand, her nightgown rippling at her ankles.
But she did not come. He remembered spitting the mouthwash into the sink with a feeling that something was off. He had gone to her room and peeked inside, calling her name softly.
Nya had been in the middle of cutting her hair short with a pair of dull scissors that left her infuriated because they weren't doing a good job of actually severing the strands.
His heart had sunken into the deepest part of his chest as he asked her what she was doing.
She had shot back a reply about not needing him to baby her anymore, and that she was going to grow up and be the woman of the family. No more brushing her hair, no more sitting on his lap, no more anything from big brother.
'Kai' had died that day. The day that she refused to let him help her. The day his therapy treatments came to an abrupt end. The day that Nya grew a fortress around her heart, and wouldn't even let her own brother in to see what was bleeding in the dark recesses of her mind.
The 'new' Kai eventually got the shop Four Weapons back on its feet, with the help of a few of father's old buddies, who were sympathetic of the poor little orphaned kids.
But that was just it. They weren't kids anymore. Kai was seventeen at the time, and was legally able to live without a guardian. So he had taken care of his fifteen year old sister, but from a safe emotional distance.
The 'new' Kai stopped trying to reach out to his sister, and let her shout at him when he offered to carry a load of wood, or grab a pot from a high cupboard.
He had let his hair grow out a bit, though he was always a bit lack in keeping it orderly. Not like he or his sister cared in the slightest.
He remembered the day that he had met Jay. The obnoxious little terror with too-good-to-be-true good looks and a perfect smile. It had annoyed him, the fact that he had basically tried to flirt with Nya before he even knew her name.
The fact that his sister actually liked Jay had only made Kai's insides boil more. Nya had let Jay grow closer within the first week of knowing him than Kai had been in the ten years before then, right after father's death.
Yes, when he got right down to it, that had been the problem between him and Jay for all those years. The fact that Nya had chosen to let Jay hold her on his lap during the scary movie, hold his hand to help her over the last boulder before the top of the mountain, kiss his cheek before bed, while ignoring the brother who had always been there to do just that before the kook with the crooked smile changed it all.
Kai let a tear slide down his cheek as he looked away from the window. How far they had come since mother and father's deaths. How close to his heart the two still were, even after all these years.
How he wished that Jay was still here.
A scream filled the air, muffled and quiet as it filled the air for just a moment before disappearing. A feminine scream.
Kai jumped out of the chair, his pulse spiking. I'm coming, Nya. He ran from the room to go and give her comfort, feeling like a ten year old again as he ran to hold his eight year old sister, who had just woken up from a nightmare. The 'old' Kai reappeared at that moment, full of energy and life as he ran to the rescue.
He paused in the hall when he saw the silhouette. Tall, silent and moving fast, the shadow entered her room, apparently not noticing Kai, who was standing against the wall with his jaw hanging slack.
Zane?
Kai tiptoed up to the door and peeked in, his mind in a million twisted knots as he tried to make sense of the mess before him.
He watched as Nya moved from her fetal position under the blankets and crawled onto the ice ninja's lap, crying softly as he rocked her back and forth in gentle motions.
Kai gave up on trying to make sense of it, and simply watched in dazed confusion. Zane was in there?
His first impulse was to be angry and rip his precious sister from the Nindroid's arms. And he was about to, when a certain sight nearly startled him out of his skin.
Zane had whispered something into her ear, and a smile appeared on her lips, short and followed by a chuckle as she closed her eyes and dried her face on her sleeve.
A smile! Kai backed away from the door and walked back to the TV room as quietly as possible. Zane had made her smile.
Kai sat down on the bean bag and allowed a short grin to shoot across his face for just a moment as he let the image run through his head.
He did not care anymore if he wasn't the one she drowned in tears. Zane had made her smile.
"Thank you, Zane." He whispered as he curled up in the beanbag chair. "Thank you for bringing her back."
Again, I'm sorry. I have fallen short of the bar I set for myself. This has disappointed me, but I am proud that from time of conception to launch, this chapter only took about five hours total. That's gotta be some sort of record for me.
Okay...now I will tell you what I have planned for chapter seven!
All credit for this idea goes to one of my very best friends, who shall remain unnamed because she has no account here on this site. (I'll call her Bob, just to keep things easier for you.) 'Bob' has been a little bit of a Zaya hater, so she came up with an idea to fix one of her biggest problems with my pairing, and she was gracious enough to share it with me. I shall not divulge the entire plot to you, but here's the gist:
Two little words:
Zane.
Human.
Thank you so much, Bob. She gave me an idea on how to change him that, as far as I know, has NEVER been used before on this site. And it's awesome.
Huh? What do you think? I am excited. At this moment, I have 18,000 words written into it, and I think I can say with some measure of confidence that it is one of the best NJTWSIT things I have ever written. My little brother hates it, so it must be good. He hates writing that pulls at the heartstrings, so I must have struck a cord. (Pun intended.)
And yeah...you all caught that, right? I AM working on chapter seven, but I'm not even halfway through chapter four, I haven't even started on chapter five, and chapter six is almost complete. I have a major ADHD problem here.
...So if you have ideas for how the wedding should go, leave a suggestion! First person or third? Zane's POV or Nya's? Or should I switch between them at different intervals? You decide!
Please leave a review, constructive criticism appreciated!
