I have a lot of these oneshots built up again, so I thought I'd post them in a sort of collection. I hope you enjoy! :)
When Kai was little, he once took shears to Nya's head and cut off her hair, close to the scalp. He made it halfway around her head before his mother found the pair of them and proceeded to yell.
Though she had demanded, "What are you doing?" she didn't seem to want to hear that they were playing a game where Kai was the world's busiest hairdresser, and Nya an actress who needed her hair perfect for her star role.
Kai has many memories like this, where he and his sister got up to no good. Looking back, he wonders why it never occurred to him what a bad idea it was to cut Nya's hair. Though their mother did her best to fix it, Nya had to attend school with the second worst haircut known to man (the first being Lloyd's egregious bowl cut), and Kai was forbidden from using scissors for years afterwards. Even the sitter that looked after them when their parents disappeared knew not to trust Kai with scissors, despite Nya's hair having grown back in by that time.
It was a stupid thing, and Kai's memories are full of stupid things.
"I miss the way she spoke of things," Pixal tells Kai on a dreary afternoon.
All afternoons have been dreary since Nya sacrificed herself for Ninjago and disappeared into the sea. It's strange—she isn't dead, just gone, but that hardly makes a difference. The point is that she's gone, and Kai has retreated so far inside of himself that he's surprised he hasn't shrunk.
"She was a clever one," Pixal continues, "She used to ramble, when we built and tinkered together, about circuitry or mechanics. I could listen to her talk for hours."
"That makes one of us," says Kai.
Pixal blinks but doesn't comment on the callous statement. And truthfully, it does seem callous, even to Kai's own ears. He doesn't know where it came from or why he said it.
He probably would tell Nya to shut up if she talked for hours on end about things that Kai doesn't understand, just like Nya would tell Kai to shut up for the same reasons. It's what they would do, having had to put up with one another for years upon years.
They don't mean anything by it.
And Kai does miss this fact about his sister, and he wishes he'd let her have her fun, even if Kai never understood mechanics or schematics, or whatever kind of 'ics' Nya, with all her intelligence, was able to grasp.
"How have you been doing?" Pixal asks.
Kai sighs. "I can't even explain it."
He has little to say about what he misses about his sister, and this hasn't gone unnoticed by the rest of his friends.
Cole is convinced that Kai is holding everything in and stops him once or twice to let Kai know that.
"Bottling everything inside will cause you to blow up," says Cole, before reconsidering his words, "I mean—you know what I mean. Keeping all that hurt inside isn't good for you."
Lloyd wants to give Kai space to process in his own way, but often Kai will catch Lloyd watching him with a frown on his brow.
"What?" Kai asks, when he catches Lloyd doing it over dinner.
Lloyd looks to his plate. "Just wondering what you were thinking about."
"Nothing important," Kai mutters, and this is the truth.
All Kai thinks about are stupid things.
Jay begs Kai to talk about what losing Nya did to them.
"Please, Kai," says Jay, "Please tell me what you're feeling."
What Jay wants is to know that Kai is hurting as much as Jay is. Kai thinks that he is, but he doesn't say so. He doesn't say much after listening to all his friends talk about how much they miss Nya.
"She was so protective," Zane tells Kai one day, "She put her friends first every time. It was what I admired most about her."
"Her passion was unlike any," says Cole on another day, "She was the best of us."
"She was my first friend," says Lloyd, "It was always the two of us when you guys went off on your missions. She really helped me feel at home after I first joined the team."
Kai goes to his room after he hears Lloyd say this and doesn't come out for the rest of the day.
"I miss her smile."
Months later, Jay sits and sniffs.
He and Kai sit in the living area, not doing much. They weren't talking about Nya, but Jay has a habit of bringing her up.
It's because her absence is a weight that sits in their chests, pulling them to the earth, but Kai deals with it quietly.
Not Jay, though.
"I miss her dimples," Jay continues, "I miss her hands."
He stares at the ceiling, and Kai shifts in his chair, uncomfortable.
"I miss how excited she would get over mechanical marvels," Jay says, pausing to rub at his eye, "You know the kind. Remember that clock from the Island of Darkness? She was so excited to take it apart and study it. She couldn't stop chattering—she must have stayed up all night working on it."
"Jay—" says Kai, "Can you…not?"
Jay frowns, meeting Kai's gaze. His eyes are red.
"What?"
"I don't want to talk about Nya right now." The words come out of Kai's mouth in a horribly monotonous way. If he talks anymore, though, he is sure he'll start crying.
Jay doesn't see this and keeps talking, less choked up and more frustrated—something Kai has noticed directed at him a lot more in recent weeks, at least from Jay.
"You never do," says Jay, "I'm starting to wonder why."
Kai's hands clench, fingernails pricking into his palms. "I don't want to talk about it."
"But why?"
"That's none of your business."
It's happening. Tears are stinging at the corners of Kai's eyes. If he cries, Jay will never leave him alone. He stands to go, chair screeching back as he does so, but Jay stands too, shoulders rising and hands balling into fists.
"Why, though?" says Jay, "Why won't you talk about it with me? With anyone? Do you think that we wouldn't get it—or—or that it wouldn't hurt the same?"
"You're putting words in my mouth, Jay," says Kai.
He tries to be angry. He is angry, but it isn't showing in his voice. His voice is getting higher, like it always does when he cries. That can't happen—not in front of Jay.
"I know it hurts you," says Jay, "But you keep everything to yourself."
"Because it's my business, not yours," says Kai, wishing he could shut up as he skirts around Jay.
Jay follows his path as he makes for the door. "Do you have any idea how lonely it is to talk about missing her only to be met with your silence?"
Kai pauses, inhaling slowly. "I miss her, too."
"I know—but—"
"And I miss all the stuff that you guys miss," says Kai, "but I don't want to talk about it."
He storms out before Jay can reply and shuts himself in his room. He brings his arm to his eyes, pressing his face into his sleeve. He tries not to sniff or hiccup too loudly in case Jay followed him, but it's difficult to stop the tears, now.
He does miss everything that his friends talk about. He misses Nya's spirit, her passion, her smile. But Kai can't stop thinking about the stupid things.
Like cutting off Nya's hair. Belching in her ear. Walking into the room she was residing in to fart and walk away. Kai was such a stupid kid, and he did so many things to mess with his sister. He can't think of a reason why other than that she was there.
It wasn't like Kai was alone, anyways. As she got older, Nya would fight back in equally stupid ways. Like when she'd mastered her incredible powers and used them to dunk water over Kai's head when his guard was down. Or that time she found a nightcrawler, picked it up with a stick, then chased Kai across the monastery.
She was sixteen then; she was old enough to be above such things, and she often pretended she was. However, she held that stick forward like a sword pointed in battle, face split with a wicked grin.
These are things Kai misses, and they are many. He recalls all the nicknames they'd give each other, the conversations screamed to each other from opposite sides of their home because they were too lazy to leave their respective rooms.
Kai remembers a time when he, halfway through washing his hair in the shower, opened his eyes to find that Nya slid a fake snake under the shower curtain, though he hadn't known it was rubber.
He was angry at the time, but now, Kai leans against the wall and slides to the floor, arm still across his eyes. All these relatively mundane things fill his memories, and not one of the other ninja have made a similar expression when it comes to missing Nya.
Kai thinks of Jay's words and worries that he is right. Not in the sense that the ninja couldn't miss Nya as much Kai does, but in that he doesn't know how to explain his sorrow.
How can Kai explain that he misses the conversations that would randomly transform into singing contests, or making fun of the weird mole on Nya's cheek that seemingly appeared overnight? Why don't his friends speak of similar things? Would his friends understand what Kai doesn't?
Kai misses everything about his sister, and he misses all the stupid things they would do together, because Nya was there for all of them.
Now where is she?
What is Kai supposed to do now?
It's like a part of himself is missing now that Nya is gone. It aches and cries and longs to be heard, but Kai is embarrassed, almost, to talk about it. He knows, deep down, that his friends likely would understand, that they feel the same.
But he can't get past the shame, especially when he listens to everyone around him. It goes deeper than remembering stupid things, or missing the mundane. It is shame that he wasn't able to save Nya from her fate.
He's the big brother; it was his job. More than anyone else, because Kai was there first.
Everyone around him tries to help. Kai's parents keep reaching for him, but they didn't lose what Kai lost.
They didn't lose their baby sister.
Since a lot of these oneshots were written more as exercises than as true stories, they won't be as polished as some of my other works. I hope you enjoy them regardless.
Thank you for reading!