Tears streamed from Zane's eyes and into the fabric beneath his face. Hiccups shook his body from crying for so long. He gasped for breath, his own crying making it hard but not quite impossible to hear anything around him.
"I'm so sorry," Cole said over and over, his voice rumbling out of his chest against Zane's body. "You poor kid. I'm sorry, Zane. Oh, I'm so sorry."
Zane scrunched further into himself and into Cole. Zane's whole body rocked slightly as Cole carried him back to the Destiny's Bounty pick-up point, but Zane didn't care. Zane didn't care about the rocking, or the hiccups, or the wetness of Cole's shirt from Zane's own tears. All Zane cared about was Father.
Father.
Oh, Father!
Zane had missed Father this entire time, but it wasn't until this moment that Zane realized just how much he missed Father. And Zane missed Father so bad it made his power source ache in his chest like it was cracking.
Sobbing and sobbing, Zane only noticed that they had made it back onto the Destiny's Bounty when the flying boat lifted off and shook Cole's arms around him. Zane didn't care about that either, though. He buried his face further into Cole's shoulder and kept crying. He didn't think he would ever stop crying.
Someone was speaking as Cole came to a stop. It was Lloyd's voice, Zane thought. "Cole, Zane, you're back just… Oh. Uh, what happened?"
"We ended up at the statue," Cole said quietly. "His own statue. And he read it and saw that his father… Well, you know. Yeah. The poor kid."
"Will he be okay?" Lloyd asked.
"Eventually," Cole said, sounding tired and sad and kind of like he knew exactly what Zane was going through. "But I'm not counting on it any time soon. I'm heading to our room. I'll be back out to plan for the battle in a couple minutes."
"You got it," Lloyd said.
Cole started walking again, but soon he stopped. He rubbed Zane's back. "Zane, kiddo? We're back. I'm going to set you down now, okay?"
Zane said nothing. He couldn't. He just kept crying.
"Okay, buddy," Cole sighed. "I'm going to plop you down right here."
Cole leaned over, setting Zane on a soft bed. Then Cole started pulling back.
Zane sobbed and clutched Cole tighter, keeping his face nestled into Cole's shoulder. He didn't want to be alone. He was really alone now, forever, without Father, but he didn't want to be alone then too.
"I'm sorry, Zane, but I've got to go. You can wait here, okay? You'll be all right. I'll be back as soon as I can be, I promise," Cole said. He kept pulling back, gently nudging Zane's hands off of him.
Zane whimpered, but Cole pulled all the way back and turned, leaving the room. Another sob burst from Zane's chest, and without a shoulder to cry into, Zane curled up at the edge of the bed, resting his face on his knees and continuing crying.
And crying.
And crying and crying and crying, for what felt like years, until the room rocked around him, shifting the bed beneath him so much Zane almost fell right off of it. He was so startled that he paused his crying. What was going on?
Gingerly, Zane slid off of the bed, scrubbing at his eyes. He looked around, pleading silently for someone to come comfort him, help him, tell him what was going on.
Instead of someone coming to make it all make sense, though, the room rocked again, shifting Zane back against the bed.
Zane bolted forward, out of the bedroom and through the halls, searching and searching for something, anything, someone, anyone to help.
Then he saw it.
He skidded to a stop in the doorway.
High above the deck of the Destiny's Bounty shone a strange hole in the sky, and down from the hole, a beam of strange light was shooting down onto a shaking and grunting-
"Mister Garmadon!" Zane gasped. Garmadon was being hurt by the light! He needed help! Zane took a frightened step forward, then another, then another, scared and confused and still overcome with sadness but determined to help.
Before Zane could get very far, though, Garmadon spoke, looking in front of him to Lloyd, saying, "I yearned to make the world in my image. I never realized I already had, in you."
From next to Misako and Wu and the little tiny snake-man from before in the prison, Lloyd called back to Garmadon in a voice tense with sadness, but what he said didn't make any sense. "Sono, hokido, bo-rock!"
Immediately, Garmadon lifted up off of the deck and flew up in the strange light, screaming as he rocketed through the air and into the portal. And just like that, he was gone.
…Where had he gone?
Zane gasped again.
Lloyd whirled around at the sound. "Zane!"
"Your dad!" Zane said, a little bit frantic, or, okay, a lot frantic. "Where'd he go? He was hurting! Why'd he go?"
Lloyd made a little choked sound like he was going to start crying.
"Zane, Garmadon is in the Cursed Realm now," Wu said. "He-"
Just then, a bunch of people flew out of the hole in the sky! They looked a lot like Garmadon had looked just moments before, all snake-like, but instead of looking hurt, they looked angry. They also looked… See-through!
"The Anacondrai warriors," Misako whispered. "He did it. They're here."
"What's going on?" Zane wailed, and tears started falling from his eyes again. He was confused, and he was scared, and he was sad, and he wanted his father so so so much.
Wu stepped forward and gestured at the see-through people now flying through the sky and snatching up the bad guys from before. "We were going to lose to Chen and his army. Garmadon sacrificed himself so that they would be defeated."
Zane's eyes went wide around the tears still poking out of them. "He, he what?"
"He's gone," Lloyd said quietly. "He's in the Cursed Realm. He's gone."
"He's gone," Zane echoed. "Oh. He was… He was protecting those who could not protect themselves. And now he's gone."
Lloyd nodded with a frown, looking down at the book he was holding open.
"Oh," Zane said again. He didn't know what else to say.
"It had to be done," Misako said solemnly. She swept a hand to the sky around them, where the last of the bad guys were flying up into the air and into the portal and disappearing, just like Garmadon had just done. "The war is over."
One of the see-through snake-people came up to the deck, hovering before them.
Zane shrunk back against Lloyd. He figured the see-through guy was one of the good guys, because of the whole "getting rid of the bad guys" thing, but it didn't make the see-through guy look any less scary.
"Thank you, Pythor. You should be rewarded for your courage and bravery. You have made your ancestors proud. Finally," the see-through snake-man said, looking down at the tiny snake-man next to Wu.
"Oh, what can I say? Everyone can change," Pythor said, sounding almost bashful. That's when he started to grow, and grow, and grow, until he was taller than not just Zane but the others too. Pythor whipped his tail around excitedly with a gasp. "That's more like it. Ha ha!"
"And thank you, Master Lloyd," the see-through snake-man said, turning to Lloyd and, as a result, turning toward Zane.
Zane pressed into Lloyd just a little bit more.
"Because of your friends, you have done what we never could: united the Serpentine and your kind as one," the see-through snake-man said solemnly.
Oh. Zane was one of Lloyd's friends, wasn't he? So Zane had been part of the reason the snake-man was thanking Lloyd. Zane took a tiny step out from Lloyd's side.
"Because of you, the balance is restored," the see-through snake-man continued. "And because of your father, our spirits can be free. You will have our eternal respect as the greatest warriors to ever battle for Ninjago."
As the see-through snake-man floated back up through the sky and into the portal, Lloyd looked down at his feet. The book he had been holding dropped to his side with his hands.
Zane grabbed Lloyd's free hand. "Lloyd?"
Lloyd turned a little, looking at Zane.
"I'm sorry, Lloyd," Zane said, putting as much of his own sadness into the three words as possible. "Your father is gone now."
"Yeah," Lloyd said quietly.
"Just like mine," Zane said.
Lloyd nodded a little bit. "Yeah. I guess so. I'm sorry, Zane."
Zane held Lloyd's hand a little bit tighter, and Lloyd squeezed Zane's hand in return, and they didn't let go of each other until they were circled around a campfire with the others. Then they let go, but just because they each needed to grab the cups of tea Wu was offering around.
"To the Anacondrai, the greatest warriors of their time," Kai proclaimed as Wu poured him some tea.
"Yeah," Jay agreed. "Now it's our turn to make our ancestors proud."
Lloyd took a deep breath and let it all out. "Because we're proud of those who were here before us to show us the way. Goodbye, Father."
Zane leaned his head against Lloyd's side, and Lloyd wrapped the hand holding his tea cup around Zane's shoulders.
"His loss will affect us all," Wu said.
"Not his loss, his life," Misako corrected with a small smile. "He made us stronger, and he brought us together."
Lloyd stepped a little forward, looking out into the distance. "I am Lloyd Garmadon, son of Lord Garmadon."
"Student of Sensei Garmadon," Wu added.
"He made me who I am today. He was my father. He was my adversary. But in the end, he was my friend," Lloyd said, his voice strengthening as he spoke.
That sounded important to Zane. He wanted to say something important too, but he still couldn't remember who Garmadon really was, or who any of these friends of his were. He couldn't remember any of it. He couldn't even remember Father dying, if they'd said important things about Father too after he was gone.
Zane's friends were talking, but Zane wasn't paying them much attention. He swallowed hard, thinking about everything he seemed to be missing. His father, his memories, even most of his height…
But not his friends.
He still had his friends.
And his friends had him.
Maybe they could help.
"Lloyd?" Zane asked quietly, once everyone stopped talking for a bit. "Lloyd, what happened to me?"
Lloyd looked down at him again. "What?"
"What happened to me?" Zane asked again. "Why can't I remember?"
Lloyd looked up and around.
Zane looked up and around too. Everyone was staring at them. "What?"
"That's a really long story, Zane, buddy," Cole said slowly. "And a weird one. And a difficult one. And one that I'm not sure you're going to want to hear."
Zane thought about that for a moment. "Why not?"
"It's sad, and it's hard," Cole said. "We… For a while, we thought we'd lost you. We thought you were gone."
"Like Father is gone?" Zane said.
"Yeah," Cole said heavily. "Just like that."
"Oh," Zane said.
"We kind of split up," Lloyd said.
"Not exactly 'kind of,'" Jay said, sounding guilty. "We really split up."
"We went all over the place, because we didn't know what to do," Kai said.
"It was really difficult," Nya said softly.
Zane frowned. "But… But I'm not gone. I'm here. I mean, I'm mostly here. I would like to be all here, though."
"You're here," Cole agreed.
"And we would like you to be all here as well," Wu said.
"Is there something I can do to do that?" Zane asked.
"Maybe there's nothing you can do," Jay said slowly, emphasizing the word "you" as he started to smile.
Nya lit up with her own smile. "But there might be something someone else can do."
"Are you thinking what I'm thinking?" Jay asked.
"If you're thinking what I'm thinking," Nya said.
"How about you two stop thinking and start talking?" Kai suggested, sounding slightly annoyed but mostly eager.
Nya laughed, and instead of giving an answer, she gave a question. "How does a trip to Borg Tower sound to everyone?"
Kai, Cole, Lloyd, and even Wu and Misako started smiling too at that.
Zane didn't know what was going on, but that was nothing new. All of his friends were happy and excited and ready to do something. So Zane was ready too.
AN: Sorry about the long wait for this chapter, everybody! We're at turning point here in the story, so hopefully the next bits will be easier to write. Let me know what you thought of this one!