A/N: Content warnings for major (robot) injury, discussions of death, existential themes, and minor burns.

This fic is set during the span of time in which Pixal is mysteriously missing, but that's not because I dislike her—I love her, love her potential in the group dynamic, and need to write more about her. I've got some things in the works with her, but I'm known to not publish once I announce that, so we'll see. In any case. There's also no specific enemy outlined here, the plot isn't about who they're fighting and so I didn't bother to go back into canon and figure out who that would be. Don't worry about the show setting too much.

This is part one of a two-chapter Zane-centric fic. Characters are tagged in order of approximate screentime, but I might wind up untagging Cole and Nya since they're not focus characters. This is a Nya-loving fic.

No update schedule; part 2 incoming whenever it's done, but not particularly soon.

The hard surface of Nya's workbench rattles into Zane's skin, rattles because he's shaking—

"Zane!" Nya startles, bustling over to him. She puts a hand on his arm as if to pull him back onto his back, but snatches it away, shaking it out at her side immediately. "That's good. Keep pulling in those deep breaths, Zane, you're overheating. Oh…"

Nya's voice holds a sense of command that she's put there, deliberately, for Zane to latch onto, but also a little for herself. She stares at him for a little longer, hands hovering in the air between them as if looking for some way to help him, before she turns back to her screens, eyes scanning rapidly over line after line. This is the part where she can help him.

She presses a call button, and a much calmer version of her voice rings through the Bounty: "We could use a bit of a hand down here, asap."

"Nya," Zane gasps.

Nya winces. Oh, she doesn't know how to do this part…

She has grown close with all of the ninja, they're her family, but aside from trading quips, she and Zane have always… struggled to connect. Kai's the one who's good with other people's emotions. Nya's just good at calling Kai on his own feelings, and building things, and pulling off logistical feats—

Zane had rolled onto his side when he woke up, and now he's facing away from her. She walks around the table to him and crouches in front of him. She can't use a metal workbench with Zane, the electronics need an insulator (though sometimes she runs a cable to ground in case of emergency), but if he stays like this much longer he'll burn parts of this one dark brown.

"Hi, Zane," Nya begins, at the same moment that a voice saves her from the doorway with, "Hey, Frosty."

Nya could melt in relief. She stands to welcome Cole in, remarking, conversationally, "Not so frosty right now, watch out—"

(This conversational tone is a performance for Zane's sake, too, like the way some grown-ups can be about tragedies and disasters when a child is in the room.)

And Cole has already rested a hand on Zane's back. Nya winces, knowing how high the metal has heated, and Cole winces too, pulling his hand an inch back and sucking in a quick hiss through his teeth. He recovers quickly. "Okay, big guy, okay. You're safe. Eeeeeeasy, Frosty. You're safe. We've got you."

Nya watches from a step behind him, slightly flummoxed, amazed she once thought they were similar people. It's more of this as she turns back to her workstation to try to figure out what had even happened, Cole's voice droning on over her shoulder.

"That's right, Astroboy. Let's slow it down—Nya, should he be breathing like this?" And then Cole's voice turns severe, softer: "We will always come for you, Zane. You hear me? We're always coming for you."

"Slower is better," Nya confirms, as Kai and Jay come into the doorway. Her voice has gone softer, now, too. "He is overheating, so I thought that was his fans working on overdrive, but he's having a panic attack."

"How can we help?" Lloyd has joined our doorway crew, now, too. It seems less kind to linger in the hall, but the room is so cramped already, and Zane probably needs air.

Nya considers Jay, who looks, though he's trying not to, like he's chomping at the bit to ask to double-check her wiring work. She would ask him to if she thought it wouldn't freak Zane out right now—he tolerates being prodded at like it's nothing, but it can't actually be nothing. The part of her that's learning to be wrong really wants to ask him to anyway.

She checks herself, four times, for overconfidence. Better to stress Zane out and get a second opinion to keep his physical body safe if she has to. But her readings show a clear signal coming from Zane's CPU and everything else on her screen says there's nothing wrong.

"Just be a friend right now, I think."

Zane came into her workshop today totally trashed. She didn't feel the need to document and explain every one of them to him this time, he's grown a lot less attached to the original hardware since he rebuilt himself, but she had to put in a lot of new wiring. Welding work. Multiple circuit boards scorched, and half a motherboard she'd assigned Jay to replicate—he keeps spares.

Jay had found him on the ground torn open.

He must have held off a massive crowd at once. Thirty, fifty. He'd kept fighting long after he should have been on his knees, and most tellingly, he hadn't let any of them get behind him—the damage is on his front.

Cole has shifted to rub Zane's back again, now that the temperature's dropped enough for it to be thinkable, but there's still a little grimace on his face.

Kai steps in once he notices that it's burning him, offering— "Here, I can—"

"I got it."

And the room settles into this tense sort of quiet.

Cole knows he was a little too sharp.

"I was just letting Zane know we're always coming for him, and that he's safe right here on the Bounty. We're hundreds of miles away from the battle, isn't that right? Kai, you've been manning the bridge."

"Autopilot right now," Kai clarifies, "before you worry, Zane. Cole's right, we're hundreds of miles away."

"And what Cole said! We are, uh." Jay fumbles, because it's not sounding as good out loud now that he's saying it. "Always coming for you."

The stillness really wasn't fixed by this.

Kai shifts uncomfortably on his feet.

"No, you know what, that's not what it's going to be," Kai asserts, already decided. "We're not going to need to keep coming for you, because it's not going to happen like this. Isn't that right, Lloyd."

Lloyd perks up, grateful for something to do. Cole's eyes are still trained on Zane's face, Jay watching anxiously over his shoulder, everyone else's eyes on Lloyd. Nya's paused in her work to listen.

"That is right." He decides, then and there. "Zane, if you are in any situation where one of us would retreat or we would die, I want you to retreat. It's the same standard for everyone. Not any more of this."

"Retreat wasn't an option." Zane croaks out. It's the second thing he's said all night. His voice, for all it's just been through, is surprisingly calm. Cole very gingerly jostles his shoulder, the same way he would ruffle someone's hair.

"…Okay. I believe that." Lloyd sounds a little chagrined, voice pulling away from its leader-y command. "I'm sorry it happened that way. We'll keep a better eye out, alright? No, I'll keep a better eye out. No one's running off and getting surrounded anymore—that goes for all of you."

There are a few very quick murmurs of assent, a quiet aye-aye Lloyd from Nya.

Kai sits on the workbench by Zane's feet. He reaches as if to touch him, to be here with him somehow, but he's unsure how to and Zane has already brought his breathing back down. Cole is keeping his hand draped behind the other's back where Zane can't see it. Kai notes that the palm's a little burned.

Zane rolls onto his back, and Cole and Kai move out of the way.

He turns his eyes up toward Nya, who stills, pausing her fidgeting. "Nya, what are my diagnostics."

Nya rattles them off, one by one, clear and moderately-paced. "You can't access those yourself, or you just wanted to hear a voice?"

"I wanted a voice." It's easier, too, not to need to think for them. If anything is wrong, anything permanently damaged or even just hurting for an extra night, he'd rather not look at it directly.

"Okay, anytime."

...

It's well past dark when Kai finally moves toward bed later that night, speeding through the hall with the kind of quiet you use when you're the only one left awake.

"Retreat was not an option."

Kai halts. That came from Zane, fully alert—when he walks back to peer through Nya's door, he half expects Zane to have sat up to face him, but he hasn't, of course, he's still curled on his side. He still catches Kai's eye from the door, all the same, and Kai's step quickens without waiting for him to ask it to as he steps inside.

"Oh, Zane, are you still-? Lloyd isn't mad at you, he wasn't saying-"

"No. Retreat wasn't an option." Kai has by now reached his side, and takes Zane's hand where Zane lies on the workbench. He debates hopping up to sit on its edge, but by the time he's finished thinking it, there's already been too much quiet, and he can tell with an uncomfortable internal squirm that Zane is as empathetic to his predicament as he is to Zane's. He opens his mouth to do something about it, just before Zane shakes his head and cuts in faster, like he's racing him to break the silence on purpose. "I was built to-" his voice chokes.

Kai's eyes lock on Zane's, and he takes a slow, comprehending kind of breath. He grips Zane's hand, Zane grips it tighter back.

"…To protect those who cannot protect themselves," Kai's mouth helpfully, carefully supplies; he says it like he's not sure Zane wants it said.

There's a little moment, somewhere in the space they share right then, when Kai grows something unreadable on his face. A hint of the Kai from years ago who might have snapped on this, who might have given the problem an immediate villain and a villain he wants to punch. He has grown either the maturity or the embarrassment to bite the anger back, and Zane is selfishly grateful for either.

Zane pulls their hands closer to his face, affirmative hum interrupted by a full-body hitch. This part has never been hard. They're brothers. Zane squeezes his hand, and Kai squeezes it back.

"We can protect ourselves. Zane. We can. Do you believe that?"

Zane shakes his head, not that he doesn't believe, but that: "Retreat wasn't-"

"Okay." Kai cuts him off before he can explain himself into the ground. "You're gonna be okay. We're gonna make sure you're safe, Zane."

...

"Sorry I'm late, Kai." Lloyd's entry, arriving at the door with posture that says 'casual' and through the door with posture that says 'leader,' turns the half-baked gathering into a Meeting. "You wanted everyone on the bridge?"

"I actually wanted everyone down in Nya's workshop, but I thought we should get there all at once. We need to talk about this."

Lloyd nods in acknowledgement; we all know what 'this' is. "You asked Zane?"

"I suggested it, but no, actually, Zane asked me."

Lloyd nods again, once up and down, and once over his shoulder at the door. Jay, craning his neck up from the back of the room, gives him a smile, Lloyd takes that smile and gives it to the room. His expression goes serious once more, with his head on straight. "Alright, everyone, Zane called a meeting. Did he say right now?"

"Sooner is probably better."

"Let's head down."