AN: One year anniversary of posting the first chapter of this on here! Please scream at me and let me know what you think. ;)
Zane sees and yet doesn't believe.
How can he?
Because it's him.
It's Zane.
He's Zane.
Zane is staring face-to-face with himself.
The other Zane gives a saddened smile. "Now you will understand."
Zane sputters for a moment, completely at a loss. His mind simultaneously whirls quickly with questions and freezes to a total halt. "I… I understand even less now."
The other Zane's smile becomes a little bit crooked. "That is fair. It took me quite some time to understand myself. In more ways than one."
Zane is still at a loss, but his words are coming back to him more now. "Who are you?"
"You know, that is not the first time you have asked me that," the other Zane says with a wry little chuckle.
That sound sends a strange shiver down Zane's back. It is… Odd, hearing his own laugh from another's mouth. Unsettling, maybe? No, not quite. It's almost… Comforting. Yet not quite. Familiar and not familiar at the same time.
Then he registers the words. With haste, Zane cross-references his own previous sentence through his memory databanks.
A clear answer pops up. Zane gasps. "Mr. E."
"You are not wrong," the other Zane says. "Of course, you are not right, either."
Zane blinks, then he frowns in frustration. Somewhat sarcastically, he says, "I apologize, I was unaware that names are not a black-and-white matter. Are you Mr. E? Or are you not?"
"Names are not a black-and-white matter," the other Zane says, avoiding the questions. "I would call them a matter of shades of gray. Or, perhaps more accurately, a matter of shades of titanium and rust."
"Are you Mr. E? Or are you not?" Zane simply asks again.
The other Zane answers. "I was Mr. E. For a while. For other parts of my existence, however, I have gone by other names."
Intrigued, but still frustrated, Zane presses on. "What other names?"
"First, when Dr. Julien created me," the other Zane begins.
Zane immediately interrupts. "Father created you?"
"Dr. Julien created me," the other Zane corrects, emphasizing the name. "I have no father."
Zane tries to make sense of that, but it refuses to compute.
While Zane struggles to process, the other Zane continues, saying, "When he first created me, Dr. Julien called me Zane. That was long ago, before I knew of your existence, so I had no qualms about answering to your name."
"But you would have had qualms if you knew I existed?" Zane infers. He goes further, speculating, "Do you hold a grudge against me?"
"I did in the past," the other Zane says simply. "I would say it is quite the opposite now."
Zane blinks. "I hold no grudge against you."
The other Zane shakes his head. "That is not what I meant. You will understand, though. You see, Dr. Julien and I lived in the lighthouse for a good amount of time. I cannot say how long, as that was before my internal mechanisms were fully operational, but I would say it was a while. During that time, visitors would come and go, but I never met anyone other than Dr. Julien. Each time a visitor would arrive, Dr. Julien would shut me away in the cellar. He said it was for my protection, as the Skulkin or the Leviathan would take me away if they knew I existed, but I doubt that now. Each time the visitors left, I would be allowed out. But one day, different visitors came. I was again shut away in the cellar, and when the visitors left, I was not allowed out. It took time, but eventually I realized Dr. Julien had left with the visitors, abandoning me, forgetting me, leaving me behind in this very cellar."
The other Zane waves a hand casually at their surroundings, as if that is the part that needs the explaining.
Everything is far too much to process at once. Zane's head spins.
The other Zane waits, allowing Zane to catch a few of his thoughts.
Eventually, Zane manages to speak. "I… I had no idea."
"I know," the other Zane says. "I know that now. I did not know that then, though. I did not know none of you knew I existed then until the timeline that time forgot."
Zane is at a loss for words again. "What?"
The other Zane sighs. "One day, visitors came here to the lighthouse. Their names were Jay and Nya, and they were hiding from a villain, a djinn named Nadakhan, who intended to take Nya as his bride and recreate Ninjago in the image of his home realm Djinjago."
Frowning, Zane attempts to speak and to sift through that chaotic sentence. "What… How… When did this happen?"
The other Zane thinks for a moment. "If I recall what I've heard of the misadventures of the ninja correctly, it happened after the events with the ghosts but before the incidents with the Hands of Time. Of course, the entire timeline was erased from existence, but I remember parts of it. So do Jay and Nya, I believe."
Zane seems to be at a loss for words quite often around this other version of himself who is clearly not himself.
The other Zane continues. "The point of it all is this. I discovered your existence, and the existence of your so-called friends, and they discovered my existence in turn. And so, after the timeline was rewritten, I waited for you all to come retrieve me from this lonely lighthouse. And I waited. And I waited. And I waited, and none of you ever came. It was only me. You never came."
"I did not know," Zane says quietly, a little choked up.
The other Zane nods. "And that is why you never came. And yet, someone else came. I did not know you did not know me, and I began to become bitter, and by the time that someone else came along, I held more than a small grudge, and I was more than ready to do whatever I needed to do so I could get off of this island and take some revenge. And she, of course, enjoyed the idea of revenge."
Now, Zane begins to understand. A sense of dread builds in his chest cavity as he whispers, "Harumi."
"Harumi," the other Zane agrees. "She liked my thirst for vengeance, but she did not like my tendency to… How did she put it? Fall apart on her. Both physically and emotionally. So she updated me. She trained me. She made me what she wanted me to be. Then she set me loose on you."
"And then she let Garmadon destroy you," Zane says quietly.
"She did," the other Zane says just as quietly. "I came back, of course. It can be rather hard to kill a nindroid, as I now know you also know. But as I rebuilt myself, I found out a lot more about you than I had known before. About your bravery, about your kindness, about your intelligence, about your loyalty, even to those who do not deserve it. Perhaps especially to those who do not deserve it. As I found all that, I found no evidence that you would willingly leave me behind. I found only evidence that your so-called siblings, your fellow ninja, had left you behind."
Zane opens his mouth to protest. "They have never-"
"On Chen's island. In the Never Realm. Numerous times, and most recently, with the Mechanic, suffering at his hands, and then the ninja moved on with their lives while the one responsible for your suffering at the Mechanic's hand was simply sent home free with his creator," the other Zane says, and he would seem almost bored, listing these items off, if it were not for the furious look on his face.
"You are referring to Unagami?" Zane asks, trying to separate out just one of the many confusing and concerning things the other Zane is saying.
"I am referring to one of many times you have been mistreated, undervalued, misunderstood," the other Zane says fiercely. "Those ninja do not care for you. You are not one of them. They do not deserve to be your siblings, as they act as if you are only a machine to be used, because to them, that is all you are. But I too am a machine. I too have been used, mistreated, undervalued, misunderstood. I deserve to be your brother, and you deserve to be mine."