Okay so I can't actually bring myself to put this on hold, even if it isn't the Christmas season anymore, I'm still too invested in it :'D Also you all are so, so incredibly kind and encouraging - this has been a rough past week or so, but you guys have not only made it brighter but reminded me how much I love writing for these characters, and that it's actually really good for my sanity xD

So we're going ahead with it then! Here's a Jay and Nya chapter, being their Jay and Nya selves - I'm aiming for about 25 chapters total with this, in case anyone is wondering.

(I'm going to get to the Garmadon one eventually, I swear. I won't leave him in a coma forever, I promise.)

"So this brings back memories, huh?"

Nya stares fixedly at the table, determinedly ignoring Jay's eighth attempt to change the subject.

"Aw, Nya, c'mon, it's not like I'm really breaking any rules. I'm technically still signed out of the hospital."

Nya cuts him a look. "Yeah, for yesterday. I told Lloyd you weren't as bad as him. What am I gonna say now?"

Jay taps his chin with the edge of the wrench. "Just tell him that the protectiveness extended over baby brothers is naturally stronger than the boyfriend kind of protectiveness, and since he can't kiss you in the middle of workshopping, he'll just have to - ow, Nya!"

Nya rolls her eyes, giving him another whack across the knee with the handle of her screwdriver for good measure. Jay gives her a wounded look. "I need that knee, you know," he pouts.

"You also need your head together, but that doesn't seem to stop you," Nya mutters, returning to the gears in front of her. Ignoring Jay's defensive sputtering, she pushes the wheeled chair she's in back, sliding across the room to the doorway of Ronin's workshop.

"How's it goin', you two?"

Zane looks up from where he's bent over a Borg pad with Echo on Ronin's beat-up sofa, giving her a small smile. "We're alright, thank you," he says. "Just catching up."

"Zane keeps claiming that Jay once nearly unraveled the fabric of our dimension," Echo says, with narrowed eyes. "Is this another one of your pranks?"

Jay chokes, and Nya shakes her head. "Debatable," she says. "The jury's still out on whether that happened or not."

Zane gives her a betrayed look. "It did, do you not remember-"

"Ha," Echo says, looking satisfied as he uses his good leg to steady himself. He's missing the other, where it's lying in a state of half-repair on Nya and Jay's worktable. "I knew it."

Zane shakes his head, looking back at the pad darkly. "It did happen, I don't know why-"

"Tell him more about Christmas, Zane!" Jay interrupts. "Echo's gotta get in the spirit of the season too!"

Echo perks up in interest at that, his newly-repaired eyes glowing brightly. "I have done a little research of my own," he says. "But I am curious as to the purpose of chopping down trees and draping them in hazardous electric lights, as well as the tradition of allowing a strange man in red to invade your house, and-"

"Let's start with the tree," Zane says hastily, but Nya catches the happy edges of a smile on his lips as he explains the holidays to Echo. Nya can't help a grin of her own as she wheels back to the table — Zane's always had a family in them, but it's good to see him stepping into the role of brother to Echo as well. Apart from the initial awkwardness, and what had to be the stinging reminder of his late father, Zane's gotten along pretty well with Echo. Nya can't wait to introduce him properly to the rest of the team. She's sure they're gonna love him, once they get over the initial...surprise.

Nya bites her lip. If only she could've remembered sooner, she thinks, with a heavy feeling in her gut. The clouded, half-memories she has from the time with Nadakhan have cleared somewhat with Echo's presence, along with the glaring realization that they just left him there, on the island, this whole time.

Geez. Nya doesn't get how she missed that for this long. At least it's not as hard to remember, now.

It's also…somewhat unwelcome, because she doesn't really love all those memories, but it's….it's good, she guesses. Stuff she needed to face, and all. Maybe she'll even bring it up with Kai again, or broach the subject with Cole. After all, he's kind of the only other one to really remember what dying feels-

Well. She's just glad she doesn't have to add Lloyd and Jay to that number.

(She steadily ignores the fact that Lloyd technically-)

"Hey." A gentle fist raps against her knee, as if tentatively knocking. Nya looks up to meet Jay's concerned gaze, eyes worried. "You okay?"

Nya shakes her head, saying nothing. Instead, she slowly reaches her hand up, carefully brushing the wild edges of Jay's curly hair back. He holds still as she gently traces the edge of bandages there, as if she can feel the ridges of stitches that lie beneath.

"Nya?" Jay asks, quietly. Nya sucks in a breathe.

"I don't think you get it," she whispers. "How much I wouldn't have been okay. If you had - I'm worried for a reason, Jay."

Jay's expression crumples. "And I'm so sorry, Nya," he says, looking at her earnestly. "But we came out alright. We're fine now, okay? You just gotta let yourself believe that."

"I'm trying, Jay," Nya says, shaking her head angrily and looking down. "But you don't understa-"

"Seriously, Nya?"

Her head jerks up at his tone. Jay doesn't look upset, exactly, but there's the same long-exhausted, weary look in his eyes she's seen in the mirror so much.

"Oh," she says, feeling gutted. Of course Jay understands. If anyone could understand, could remember what it's like-

"Oh gosh, hey, don't cry, you're gonna set me off, too," Jay says quickly, and Nya lets him gently drag a calloused knuckle across her cheek, brushing away the tear that's slipped down. "You know I'm like a broken faucet if I start crying, I'll never stop."

Nya gives a shaky laugh, but she grabs for his hand anyways. "Yeah," she breathes. "Yeah, you're a real disaster."

Jay gives her a lopsided smile, then leans his head against hers, their knees bumping together as she leans forward to meet him. Nya can count every freckle on his cheek, they're so close. She lets her eyes flutter closed, taking comfort in the steady warmth of his head resting against hers.

She'd almost lost this. Forever, this time.

"I really am sorry," Jay says, his voice barely a whisper. "I didn't mean to put you through that."

Nya squeezes her eyes shut tighter, trying to banish the horrible images from her mind. Jay screaming, Jay falling, Jay bleeding-

"It sucked, Jay," she says, voice hitching. "You wouldn't wake up. I had to hold all the blood from your head in."

"That's gross," Jay says, wrinkling his nose.

"It was gross," she snorts wetly, unable to help herself. Leave it to Jay to find the humor in any situation, even the darkest ones.

That's just another part of why she loves him though, isn't it.

She finally pulls up, wiping at her eyes and giving him a small smile. Jay's eyes aren't entirely dry either, she notes, as he quickly dashes at them.

"We should probably start actually working on this thing," she says, gesturing to Echo's detached leg. "We're just making the rust problem worse at this point."

Jay snorts. "Yeah, poor Echo's gonna be stuck hopping around the whole holiday if we're not careful," he says. "What'd you wanna use to rewire this part, again?"

"Here," Nya says, handing him the screwdriver as she examines the rusted gear. "We're gonna need to strip some of this away, first."

They fall into their usual routine after that, a focused sort of camaraderie, technical suggestions and half-formed ideas punctuated by Jay's occasional jokes and Nya's teasing retorts. It's familiar in a way she's missed — there just hasn't been much time for the two of them to spend together, lately. Maybe she should give in and break Jay out entirely. Take them both, like, ice-skating or something, or whatever sappy stuff couples do together around Christmas.

Lloyd would never forgive her, though, she thinks with a pang. The only reason Jay's out with her now is because everyone's supposed to be visiting their families. Lloyd had claimed he was gonna spend the day with his mom and visit his father, but…

Nya's got a pretty strong suspicion he's still steering as far clear as he can from Garmadon's hospital room.

Nya sighs. At least Kai is finally relaxing, spending the day with her mom and helping her shop for presents. And Cole's taking it easy too, though she's pretty sure he's just been roped into helping his own dad finally beat Cliff Gordon in poker. She snorts at the image. The Brookstone's house has been temporarily transformed into the local parents-of-the-ninja-hotel, as Cole had termed it, since most of them live too far from the hospital. Cole's been trying to avoid the over-concerned adults best he can by avoiding the house entirely, but it seems like his dad finally succeeded at dragging him home for the day.

Oh well. Cole could use a bunch of adults pestering him about his well-being for once, instead of the other way around.

"So, uh, Lloyd won't really be too mad, will he?" Jay finally asks, a little tentatively. "I feel kinda bad leaving him alone again…"

"He'll be fine," Nya reassures him, not mentioning that she's put her own dad to the task of keeping an eye on him while they're gone. "He's with his mom, anyways. Supposedly."

"Uh-huh," Jay muses. He looks away, tapping his fingers anxiously against the edge of his wrench. "It, um. Was it…was it really that bad?"

Nya's own fingers still over the gear she's got in her hand, and she exhales wearily. "It — yeah, it kinda was," she says, quietly. "It was…it was a close one."

"Oh," Jay says, softly. "I wish I could've been awake to help, but I also kinda don't, you know?"

"You don't, Nya says, firmly. "I wish I could forget it. I wish I could've stopped it, but I didn't, 'cause I'm an idiot-"

"Hey, woah, no you're not," Jay quickly says, cutting over her. "Cole told me what happened, Nya, you did everything you could. Lloyd is — he's like that, y'know?"

Nya shakes her head. "He shouldn't have been," she says, darkly. "He should learn to be selfish for once, I swear-"

"And you should learn to stop beating yourself up for something you can't change," Jay says firmly. "Geez, we're out for a day or two and everyone develops crippling guilt complexes."

"You say that like we didn't have them before."

"Well, okay," Jay sighs. "I…yeah."

They fall into a brief silence, their words echoing heavily in the room. He is right, Nya'll admit. Whether the guilt complexes already existed or not (which they totally did, Nya's not a moron) the general brood-in-guilt-ridden-silence tendencies of their team have shot up wildly since the whole Oni...thing.

"You gotta help me with Kai," she decides to speak up. "He's taking it hardest right now, I think."

"Yeah, I've noticed," Jay says, his eyebrows furrowing. "What happened there?"

"He had Lloyd….after," Nya says slowly, half-wishing she hadn't brought this up after all, if only to avoid the memories. "He, uh…he saved him, but he had to...y'know. He wasn't crazy about that."

"Wha - oh." Jay looks a little pale. "Ouch."

"Yeah," Nya murmurs.

They go quiet again for a beat again, the soft sounds of Zane and Echo's conversation filtering in from the other room.

"Welp!" Jay finally says, straightening. "Operation Cheer Everyone Up for Christmas is a go then. Lloyd and I have, what, like two or three days left in the hospital? We're gonna make it the best Christmas ever when we get out, just watch."

"Wait, just two days?" Nya suddenly jerks up, panicked. Shoot, darn, other curses, they haven't even gotten the main mast up yet on the Bounty-

"Uh, yeah?" Jay eyes her suspiciously. "Is that a problem? 'Cause I know you like taking advantage of that amazing hospital food as much as I do, but seriously-"

"No, I'm just — I've got, um…a project?"

Jay just looks five times more suspicious. And a little hurt, maybe. "A project?" he says, slowly. "Without me?"

Nya huffs. "Oh don't give me that," she flicks him on the forehead, and he makes a face. "It's a surprise," Nya says. "Y'know, no peeking at the Christmas presents, that sort of thing?"

"O-oh," Jay says, looking placated. His forehead suddenly pinches. "Wait, you aren't going all out on us again, are you? No over-the-top gifts? 'Cause I've gotta beat you out this year on presents, but this whole hospital thing has me behind, and-"

Nya stands up, leaning over and kissing him in full, neatly shutting off his rambling. She pulls back a little, smiling at the goofy look on his face.

"I'm definitely beating you out this year," she whispers, before pulling away completely and sweeping into the next room, Echo's now-repaired leg in hand. She announces cheerfully, "Okay, guys, I think we're ready to re-attach this!"

Zane and Echo look up, smiling eagerly at her and looking not a little bit relieved. Nya can't blame them — being down a leg can't be the most comfortable position ever. She'd know from all the whining her brothers have done when they've broken theirs. She's already bent over the gears in Echo's leg by the time she finally hears the sputtering as Jay's brain kicks back into gear.

"Hey, what do you mean, you're definitely — Nya! Stop looking like that!"