For a long moment, Zane didn't respond. He still held his hands over his face. He still leaned back into the wall. He still stayed nearly motionless, the only moves he made being seemingly-involuntary trembles.
Nya waited, her heart throbbing painfully, like it would burst out of her chest. Now the secret was out. Now it was obvious that Nya could use the element of ice too. Now Zane would need to decide what to do.
"What?" Zane said softly, so quiet that she could barely hear his voice from behind his hands.
"I froze the Postman," Nya said. She shifted awkwardly back and forth from foot to foot. "See, my elemental power is water, right? And ice is made of water. So while we were in the Never Realm, I learned how to control it a little bit. And, and I'm sorry. I didn't mean to take it from you in any way, and if I could've done it differently, then I would have, and I'm sorry for-"
"I did not… I am not responsible for freezing the Postman?" Zane asked in a tiny voice.
"No," Nya said fervently. "Not at all. That was me, just me."
Zane lowered his hands away from his face a bit. Nya could see his eyes now as he stared past her at the still-frozen Postman.
"You didn't do anything wrong," Nya said, because of course that's where he was focused, because of course Zane worried about everyone before himself.
Zane kept staring at the Postman. In a shaky, almost-inaudible voice, he said, half-stating, half-questioning, "I am not a villain?"
"You are not a villain," Nya said firmly. "In my mind, you never were."
Zane gave a choked sob. His still-trembling hands fell all the way down to his sides, revealing his stricken face.
Nya ached for him. "Could I hug you?"
Zane hesitated, looking back and forth between her and the Postman.
"You're not going to freeze me," Nya said confidently, even though she was only guessing at what Zane's hesitation was. "I'll be all right, and you will be too."
Slowly, Zane nodded and held his arms out.
Nya crashed into him, wrapping him up in her embrace, holding him so tightly that she almost felt she'd never let go. He was there. He was safe. He was home. And he would heal. She was sure of it.
The embrace didn't last forever, even though it did last a long time. When it finally ended, Nya felt better, if a bit tired. From the pure relief on Zane's face, he felt better too, although he looked far more tired than Nya felt. Together, the two of them got the Commissioner and his troops all set up with the Postman in their official custody until the Dark Island concentrated matter could wear off, then they headed out. Zane and Nya talked almost all the way home, about just about everything, topics small and medium and large and larger than large. It felt right, just right, like something that was near cracking had broken at long last or like something that was broken had been finally fixed. They kept talking when they got home, and without discussing it more than with a few thoughtful looks and a pair of nods, they started preparing supper together, still talking all the while.
"...That's when I told them what had actually happened," Nya said, waving her mixing spoon with emphasis. "Oh, the look on Kai's face! So angry still, but shocked too!"
"And how did Jay and Lloyd react?" Zane asked, carefully measuring out the next ingredients.
"Jay was angry too, absolutely ticked, of course," Nya said nonchalantly.
Zane smiled a little, pouring in the measurements and passing the bowl back to Nya. "Of course. He did not exactly sign up to be martyred for something he did not do."
"But the funny thing about it was, he was ticked at Lloyd, when I'm the one who claimed Jay was the one who stole Kai's phone and put the silly messages out on Chirp and all of Kai's other social media accounts," Nya said. She started mixing the bowl's contents, adding, "Lloyd hadn't even been in the room when Kai figured out his phone was missing. I mean, Lloyd wasn't even there until after Kai had already started wrestling with Jay."
"And what was Lloyd's reaction?" Zane asked.
Nya grinned. "He asked why Kai and Jay were acting 'so seriously stupid' that they just started wrestling over it instead of talking it out! So he just made it worse for himself!"
"And I would assume Kai and Jay did not take that lightly?" Zane asked.
Instead of an immediate answer, Nya burst out laughing. Trying to control herself, she gasped out, "They both started wrestling him instead! And Kai stole Lloyd's phone, and Jay and Kai used it to take like a thousand selfies, and Jay stored them in a bunch of different places on the phone! I bet Lloyd is still working on deleting them all!"
Zane laughed too, a quiet, stuttering, almost uncertain sound, but a happy sound that made Nya rejoice nonetheless.
Then came another happy sound, actually several happy sounds. From two different directions, footsteps came toward the kitchen, one group charging headlong, the other at a slightly more casual pace. A moment later, Kai, Pixal, and Wu strolled into the kitchen, looking deceptively calm as they talked among themselves. After a few seconds, Jay, Cole, and Lloyd charged in too, skidding to three respective stops.
"No!" Jay wailed, flinging an arm out toward Kai, Pixal, and Wu. "You didn't beat us, you couldn't've beat us! Your signals said they were still seven minutes away when we were only five minutes away!"
"The signals were accurate, however, you three entered in through the primary Monastery door," Pixal pointed out, cool and collected and only smirking a tiny bit. "We, on the other hand, entered through the vehicle bays, which meant we had a far quicker route to the kitchen despite arriving slightly later."
"So we did beat you here!" Jay said triumphantly.
"Yeah, we won, then," Lloyd said, sounding like he'd just realized it.
Pixal just smirked at them, and Kai and Wu audibly tried not to laugh.
"We beat them to the Monastery," Cole corrected, sounding hollow. "The bet was for who would beat who to the kitchen."
"No, it wasn't," Jay objected.
"Yeah, it was, read it and weep," Kai bragged, holding up his phone with a text message clearly visible on its screen.
"Awww," Jay moped.
"That's not true in the-" Lloyd began, taking the phone from Kai. Lloyd squinted down at it, then his shoulders slumped. He sighed in disappointment. "Okay, yeah, that is true."
"You'd think after the last time it happened, Kai would know better than to let Lloyd touch his phone," Nya said quickly.
Zane let out a loud chuckle.
As one, Kai, Pixal, Wu, Jay, Cole, and Lloyd all whipped around to look at Zane with various looks of disbelief and delight.
Zane gave a casual shrug. "Nya had just informed me of the incident that occurred recently regarding Lloyd making use of Kai's phone, one involving several social media mishaps. It was an amusing anecdote, if I may say so. I would agree that, had an incident of such an embarrassing nature happened to me, I would be at least a shade more cautious in how I allowed a device of mine to be handled."
Nya snorted a little at that, but otherwise, as the others crowded around with questions and exclamations, she let Zane speak, and she was quiet now.
AN: I hope you all enjoyed the wrapping up of this story. Please let me know what you thought of it (the conclusion and/or the story as a whole), and please have a great day!