tell it again

by spinbitchzu (octaviastareyes)

Summary:

This is the story as old as time — or at least as old as Kai can remember these days.

1. He loves Zane.
2. He will try to save that which he loves.
3. No matter what he does, Zane will always die at the end. 

Notes:

ummm this is an ode to the doomed by the narrative girlies and the time loop girlies and the silent inexpressible enormity of love girlies. I love you all.

Also no need to ask questions about silly things such as "why do they all have mechs instead of unique vehicles" or "what season is this even set in, how come zane has a bow" or "where is Lloyd". the answer is..... shhhhhh no setting just vibes. I am not selling you toys, I am selling you gay love.

Chapter 1: loop 72

Summary:

Kai lays in bed and listens to the soft pad of her slippered feet as she leaves, followed by the click of the door closing. He counts down from five, and then ten.

“Alright,” he tells the universe, struggling up to sitting, and then slowly forcing himself to stand. He scratches at the back of his neck as he squints up at the ceiling. “I’m up. Tell me how to save him today.”

The universe says nothing, because it derives great amusement from his suffering. Kai knows this by now. Today is the seventy-second loop of the day Zane dies, and nothing he has ever done has made any difference.

He sighs and goes downstairs. 

In the paltry seconds before the great purple glow at the center of the world becomes a star-killing power, before everything that Kai knows and loves will be reduced to scrap and sparking wires and bits of crumbling ash, there is a quiet. 

Nothing about that makes sense — not the sense of peace that washes over him like a foamy wave rolling up a sandy beach, or the way the hand clutching his feels so strangely, impossibly warm, or the way his heart skips enough beats in that short time to make him worry. But he cherishes this tiny pocket of time. He always does. Because no matter what, he always gets it. The end is always nigh, and he always finds himself back here, aching, numb, knowing what comes next. 

Zane’s hand squeezes Kai’s tightly as he turns back to look at him. His faceplate is slightly cracked, hairline fractures creeping up his cheek. His artificial irises burn a forceful, radiant blue, one bulb slightly dimmer than the other. Flickering. He looks scared. 

“Kai,” he says softly. “I love you.”

Kai reaches for him. His thumb brushes over Zane’s cracked cheek. 

He says, “I wish I could save you.”

The clock runs down. The world burns. The end arrives in brutal, show-stopping fashion, and Kai Hitetsu’s heart breaks just as hard as it did the first time.  

---

This is the story as old as time — or at least as old as Kai can remember these days. 

1. He loves Zane.
2. He will try to save that which he loves.
3. No matter what he does, Zane will always die at the end. 

---

“Kai? Are you okay?” 

He opens his eyes and finds Nya standing over his bed, trying to wrangle her hair into a ponytail. She’s wearing her gi, looking ready to go out and patrol, except for the big fuzzy slippers she’s still padding around in. It’s all so exhaustingly familiar.

“You were crying,” she tells him when he only blinks blearily at her. “In your sleep. Are you having nightmares again?”

He thinks dully that there’s no degree of separation anymore, that his waking and sleeping hours are more or less the same long nightmare now. But he doesn’t say that, of course. This is today’s Nya, which means she doesn’t know what yesterday’s Nya knew, which to be fair was still not much, since Kai’s pretty much given up trying to explain the whole time loop thing to anyone. It never changes anything, anyway, and they always forget by morning. 

“No,” Kai says, instead. “I wasn’t dreaming of anything at all.”

If she’s skeptical, at least she doesn’t show it. Instead, she just tosses a steamed bun at him, looking surprised as usual when his hand shoots up to catch it. 

“Nice—,”

“Reflexes, I know,” Kai mutters, rolling back over. He nibbles at the bun listlessly, watching the crumbs scatter into his sheets. At around the thirtieth loop, he’d gotten sick of eating the same pork bao every morning — had rejected the offering and gone out of his way to walk down to the kitchen and make himself cereal. On the thirty-first, he’d fried an egg and heated up leftover congee. On the thirty-third, he’d made a desperate french toast. As if any of that was ever going to matter. Somewhere around the low fifties, he’d given up and made his peace with the bao, if only for convenience. “Thanks, Nya.”

“Um. Sure, no problem, I guess.” She sounds a little more dubious now. “Uh, anyway, we’re needed for a meeting in the courtyard. Master Wu—,”

“I know,” he says. How many times has he attended this same meeting? Heard the same briefing? Been assigned the same role? “I’ll be there.”

“Jeez, you’re grumpy today,” Nya remarks. He recites all her lines in his head as she’s saying them, eyes closed, lips moving silently. “Save the sass for someone else, I’m on your side, man.”

Of course she is. It isn’t fair, that tone he’s taking — of course he knows that. But he’ll have tomorrow to correct it. And tomorrow. And tomorrow. 

“Sorry,” he says. “I’m just sick of today.”

The look Nya shoots at him then is equal parts perplexed and concerned, head cocked. “Today hasn’t even started, Kai.”

He has nothing to reply with that isn’t just cynical defeatism, which he’s truly tired of hearing from himself. He’s already thought of a million pithy, biting lines before, and witnessed Nya’s hurt or annoyance or confusion each time he voiced them. He’s already wasted his breath saying all those pointless things, only to have to wake up and do it all again. What he doesn’t say, what he feels tumored deep in his bones, is no longer anything very angry at all. It’s, if anything, too simple. 

Nya says, “I’ll see you down there, Kai.”

“See you.”

He lays in bed and listens to the soft pad of her slippered feet as she leaves, followed by the click of the door closing. He counts down from five, and then ten. 

“Alright,” he tells the universe, struggling up to sitting, and then slowly forcing himself to stand. He scratches at the back of his neck as he squints up at the ceiling. “I’m up. Tell me how to save him today.”

The universe says nothing, because it derives great amusement from his suffering. Kai knows this by now. Today is the seventy-second loop of the day Zane dies, and nothing he has ever done has made any difference. 

He sighs and goes downstairs. 

---

In the first version of the story, the plan goes like this:

They are ordered to fan out across the city, becoming like a pack of wolves, circling, circling the great purple death at the center of it all. Kai remembers that feeling, the buzz of adrenaline, the intimate comforts of the voices relaying information in his ear: Cole is running into trouble in the western districts; Nya is halfway down the boulevard; Zane is going to get there first, he’s closing in. And they are all converging on the great purple death, chasing down the rays leading into a singular point, heroism roaring war songs in their chests. 

It is Kai’s job to clear the way from the south, and he’s in his mech, sweating under his hood as he swats aside the sea of swarming droids, crushing them like soda cans in his avatar’s constructed hands until their heads pop off and their limbs spasm erratically, broken off joints spitting sparks. 

He’s embarrassed now to remember how he was laughing. He’s even bragging, leaving his radio channel open so the others can hear him keep count of how many of these discarded husks he’s tossing against the walls, kicking them aside where they impede his path. 

“Thirty-six,” he crows breathlessly. “Thirty-eight. Take that, Jay!”

“No fair, I haven’t been keeping count! You’ve got a head start!”

“Focus, you guys,” Cole grunts, and then lets out a string of expletives. “Can someone please give me some back up? I’m getting my ass kicked over here.” 

And Jay’s voice, sobering as he says, “Be there in three. Try to stay alive.” 

“Kai,” says Zane, coming online for the first time. 

(That’s where it always comes down to. In the times since the first, he has said innumerable things, listed innumerable situations. They always boil down to the same thing, though: Zane is alone, and he needs help. Kai will go to him. 

But this is the first story, and he ought to tell it right, because something about the first time must have led to the rest. Must have led to the noose of time around his throat, wrangling him back into this same fold, over and over and over again. Fix it, the universe demands, its nonhands fisted in his nonshirt. You didn’t do it right. Why can’t you do it right? )

“Kai,” says Zane, coming online for the first time. “I’ve reached Borg Tower, but there are too many here to fight alone. How close are you?”

In the second loop, he’d answered, I’m held up here, Zane. I can’t get to you. 

And Zane had died. 

In the eighth loop, he’d answered, Give me two minutes. I gotta finish up here. 

And Zane had died. 

In the thirty-ninth loop, he hadn’t answered Zane at all. He hadn’t been in his mech, he hadn’t even been in Ninjago City. 

(Kai isn’t very proud of what he did in the thirty-ninth loop and he doesn’t really want to mention it, except to say that he had discovered the bounds of the loop that day, discovered that it restarted when either Zane or himself died. 

He wakes up on the morning of the fortieth and says, having no idea how to do it, “I have to save us both, then.”)

But in the first story, Kai says, “I’m here, I’m right behind you. I got your back, pal.” 

And so they go forth together. 

---

“We don’t know what it is,” Master Wu says solemnly in the present day, studying each of their faces. “Only that it’s large and that it’s deadly.”

Jay asks, “Where is it now?”

“Last recorded making a beeline for Borg Tower,” Pixal tells him from the monitor, where she’s furiously swiping through blueprints of sewers and subways. The circuitry on her face is glowing a little — she must be scanning more plans in her internal processor as well. Her ability to multitask continually astounds, even 72 loops later. “It will arrive in a little less than an hour.”

“No time to lose,” Cole declares. “Let’s get over there as fast as we can. Pix, do you have a route for us?”

“Dropping it into your navigational systems now,” she replies without missing a beat. “I’m sending you all the long way around, which should help you avoid most of the horde.”

Jay chokes. “I’m sorry, the horde ?”

“The nindroid army,” Pixal amends, frowning. “I’ve got to get around to updating their firewalling, it’s starting to get embarrassing how quickly the forces of evil seize control of their command code. Zane, put that on the list of our projects.”

“Of course,” Zane says with a dubious smile as he tightens his belt. “We’ll get to it right after the other sixty three things on the list.”

“You know I also code, right? You guys can delegate to me once in a while,” Nya chimes in. She’s already walking backwards out the door to the hangar, knotting her hair into a high ponytail. “Let’s hash it out after we take care of this, yeah?”

Pixal nods, but she’s distracted, still scanning more blueprints and running more analyses too complex for Kai to discern. Ah, well. Not that it matters. As the others run off, he sighs and turns away, headed for the hallway that will bring him to the Fire Mech’s stall. May as well get this over with. 

“Hey.” A cold hand lands on his shoulder just as he’s passing through the threshold and he instinctively halts in place, eyes remaining stubbornly fixed on the ground. “Are you sure you are well, Kai? You are… quiet today.”

This is a new interaction. He’s not experienced this one before. It’s for that reason only that he lifts his chin and risks a glance at Zane, whose expression is knotted in kindly concern. 

Kai says, “How can I convince you not to go on this mission?”

“What?” Zane blinks, taken aback.

“What could I tell you about the outcome that might get you to stay?” Kai reaches up to hold Zane’s titanium wrist. The metal does not warm to his touch. “I already know how it ends. You die. I have to start again.”

The confusion in Zane’s eyes is multiplying. He gingerly pulls his hand out of Kai’s grip, the perfect, lovely picture of concern. “What do you mean? Have you been having visions?”

“No,” Kai says. “But let’s say I did. Would you stay? Would you run from this with me?”

There is a long silence. The long whooping alarm starts going off in the hallway, and a recording of Cole’s voice over the PA announces, “All ninjas, report to your vehicles. Butts in seats, people, Ninjago needs us! I repeat, all ninjas, report to your vehicles…”

“We need to go,” Zane says, hesitant. “I—still don’t really understand what you mean. Is this something we can discuss later?”

“It’s not.”

Zane looks at him for a long second. “Then…I’d say no.”

Of course you would. “No?” Kai repeats, just in case. 

“You know my purpose.” He smiles. Zane’s backing away, toward his own mech. “You, of all people, understand. I know you do.”

He does. Why else would life be putting him through this, again and again, unless he understood? His heart aches. “I wish you would be selfish for once.”

Zane looks at him for a long second, and then says, "I dreamt of you last night. Remind me to tell you about it sometime."

Then he's disappearing around the corner. The gears are being set into motion. One more time. The same story, over again. Kai will tell it again.

---

Actually, it won’t happen immediately. 

First, they’ll split up. The horde will draw them away from the tower, cause them to waste valuable time, and damage their mechs. Sometimes that means they will retreat and regroup. Sometimes, Cole will give the order to prioritize civilian lives and they will spend hours evacuating civilians before they ever go for the main event. Sometimes they fly straight into the thick of it and Kai wakes up in his bed seconds later, having not even spent six hours in that version of the  loop. 

He waits to see which one it is today as he follows after his teammates. Cole is leading the charge, and both Jay and Nya are at his right and left shoulders. That leaves him and Zane lagging behind together, with Pixal as Samurai X bringing up the rear.

“Comm check, one, two, one, two. Can everyone hear me?” Cole’s voice crackles to life in Kai’s ear as his mech slows their little brigade in the air. Below, Ninjago City sprawls out. He can see the tiny colored dots of civilians running for their lives, and the rivers of silver droids that flood the streets.

The others must see it too, because the replies come in fast.

“Jay, check.”

“Nya, check.”

“Zane, check.”

“Pixal, check.”

“Kai,” he says, croaky. “Check.”

Surely, he can’t keep doing this. Surely, the universe has not placed him back into the fold to retry all the same old tactics, over and over. Cole has started rattling off a plan, but Kai isn’t listening. 

“There has to be something different,” Kai mutters to himself, pushing his head into his hands. He’s starting to go out of his mind with it, this hopeless buzzing in the back of his skull. Nothing I do matters. Nothing I do matters. Nothing I do matters. “There’s gotta be something I’m missing.”

But what? 

On the comm, Cole clears his throat awkwardly. “Sorry, what was that, Kai?”

“Um, I was just saying,” his head is starting to spin, “—I think we should try something… different. Something we’ve never tried before.”

“Well, okay,” Cole says slowly. “But we’ve never tried… anything before.”

“Dude we just got here,” Jay says. Kai can hear the frown in his voice without even seeing him. “Are you good?”

“No, I know,” he rushes. “I just think — something about this thing is different — not…our usual caliber of fight. I don’t think it’s from this world.”

The second he says it, something locks into place. That actually….that makes sense. 

“What, you mean like it’s from one of the other realms?” Nya asks doubtfully.

“I haven’t detected any unusual out of realm signatures,” Pixal says. He can hear the clatter of her fingers as they fly over her keyboard to resurface that data. “Although, I can run tests again, I suppose?”

“Yeah, run ‘em, I don’t know!” His mind is racing as he latches onto this theory. “I just… I feel like we need to know more about this thing before we rush in there! You know? Like… its origin, weaknesses, motive, yadda yadda!”

“Statistically, we tend to ask those sorts of questions after we rush in,” Zane says wryly. “Besides, I’m not sure we can afford to wait while the citizens of Ninjago City are in direct, urgent danger from this threat.”

Jay laughs, the sound glitchy and buzzed out. “The one time Kai actually votes to look before we leap and all of a sudden Zane’s the one trying to jump in. Crazy.”

“Not funny, Jay,” Kai snaps and he hears it when Jay goes quiet and hurt, like his voice has been sucked out of the space. Fuck. “Sorry, I— I’m just… I’m really freaked out right now, you guys.”

He spits up the words viciously, violently, like bile, and hates how the comm line stays quiet for one long second, steeped in the vulnerability of the thing. Kai Hitetsu isn’t scared of a fight! Or at least, he’s not supposed to announce it if he is. It’s a morale thing, unspoken though it may be. He’s upsetting the role assigned to him, he can feel it.

“Alright,” Cole says cautiously when no one else jumps in. “That’s valid, Kai. No problem. We’re a team, we’re tackling this together. Just, just stay chill, buddy.”

He doesn’t sound like it’s valid. It sounds like Kai’s freak-out is freaking him out. Actually everyone has sounded like that today — Nya when he finished her sentence, Zane when Kai grabbed his wrist, Jay just now. They all think he’s just woken up one day and lost it. 

Ha ha. That’s great. That’s funny. Really, it’s comedic gold. 

“Sorry. I can’t do this,” he hears himself garble into his mic and then the next thing he knows, his mech is veering away from the others at close to Mach 1 and it’s his own guilty hand white-knuckled on the controls. The others are shouting in his ear and it stacks with the buzzing buzzing buzzing of that endless mantra:

Nothing I do matters. Nothing I do matters. Nothing I do matters. 

He wrenches his earpiece out of his ear and that helps a little. He says nothing — can’t say anything now that he’s noticing it, because his mouth seems to be quite occupied with producing a kind of desperate gasp that sounds like some sort of death rattle, over and over and over again. 

“Help me,” he chokes out. He can’t stop hyperventilating. “Someone, please help me. Please don’t let this be it. I can’t do this anymore. I can’t handle this anymore. Please. ”

His mech’s speaker system says, Zane Julien is inviting you to a video call. Accept?

“N–no.” He can’t breathe. Can’t manage the words. 

Call declined. And then, without even a moment of pause, Zane Julien is inviting you to a video call. Accept?

“NO!” His hands are shaking bad, real bad. He yanks at his hair, over and over, savors the burn. “Turn on dark mode and disable location tracking. Decline all further calls.”

Dark mode engaged and location disabled. Would you like to engage autopilot?

“Yes.”

The controls dim and his seat automatically glides back from the controls. He manages to pry open his hand from the controls and let it happen. Gradually, gradually, the landscape of Ninjago City gives way to grassy plains. Then, beyond that, a sparkling strip of cerulean sea widens and widens until it is all he can see in every direction. Water as vast and endless and meaningless as it ever was. Once upon a time, this would have scared him. 

“Start a descent,” he says shakily, and the mech system hums a pleasant, cool tone as they start sinking toward the water’s surface. 

---

He spends an eternity down there. 

He lingers long enough that his heart finally starts thudding on beat again and his mind clears. But when the panic and noise and desperation ebb away, there is only the big throbbing tumor of guilt, hot as lava in the center of his cheat. 

You just have to wait, he thinks numbly. By tomorrow, they won’t know. They won’t know that you betrayed them. Abandoned them. Left them for dead.

"I will know," he whispers, almost soundless, gazing into the abyssal deep. "I will know what I did."

The abyssal deep says nothing. What is there to say? 

“Fuck.” His hand closes in a fist. “ Fuck .”

---

It’s bad when he gets back. Kai can tell once the city is in eyeshot that the whole thing has gone straight to hell in his absence. 

 “Dark mode off, location on, autopilot off, link to comms,” he rattles off without taking a breath. He adjusts his in-ear and hears the soft buzz of connection. The shouting starts up without even a moment’s warning:

“—can’t fucking get to the center! Can someone please—!”

“There’s just too many of them!”

“—not seeing how! Who’s got Zane’s back right now, seriously?”

Deep breath. 

“I do.”

Jay makes a noise of surprise.“Is that—?” 

“KAI! First fucking master!” Nya yells. She sounds furious, rightly so. “Where the hell have you been?”

“Never mind, just get to Zane for now!” Cole barks. “Nya, retreat and find another way in, alright?”

“Fine, copy!”

Kai sets a course for the white homing dot that denotes Zane’s location on the map. Of course, he’s already reached Borg Tower. Of course he’s at the center of the fucking storm. Well, Kai will play his role as well as he always has; he grits his teeth and guns the accelerator, heading straight for the worst of it. Even from a distance, he can see the titanium mech knee-deep in a swarm of nindroids as it struggles to climb the face of the tower.

“Zane! I’m here, tell me what I can do!”

“My thrusters aren’t operational,” Zane bites out. Kai lands and uses his cannon to blast the highest nindroids off Zane’s back. “Thank you. But the threat is at the top of the building, and I cannot fly up there. You should go, Kai.”

“Nah, c’mon,” Kai grins and, with the push of a lever, deploys the massive glowing machete attachment Pixal had just finished outfitting his mech with. “I’ve got your back. Together, okay?”

Zane doesn’t say anything, because he doesn’t have to. He swings his own sword in a massive arc and sends a crowd of droids flying. Kai dives into the newly cleared space and begins giving the horde the cockroach treatment, blasting his heavy duty flamethrower until the clawed feet of both their mechs are heavy with molten metal. Zane keeps slashing and cutting, causing plumes of hissing steam to billow up wherever his icy blade greets Kai’s handiwork. Together, they make short work of the whole thing, and within minutes the ground is littered with fallen soldiers.

“Let’s ditch the mechs,” Kai tells him, panting for breath as he sheathes his sword. “I think we’ll go faster on foot at this point.”

Which is true. It’s not just for selfish reasons. It’s not just because he wants to see Zane one last time before the reset.

They both pop their hoods and hop down. Zane looks a little battered, perhaps from whatever happened before Kai’s arrival. One of the bulbs in his eyes is burned out, leaving his gaze uneven. 

“Hey,” Kai says as Zane approaches, slinging his compound bow over his shoulder. “I’m sorry for running earlier. I’m sorry for going dark.”

There’s a pause and then the titanium ninja dips his chin in a nod. 

“You were frightened. You are here now. That is all that matters.” The smallest of smiles appears on his lips and he says, “I knew that you would be.”

 Kai looks over at him in surprise as they start for the lobby. It’s deserted, which is to be expected. “Yeah?”

“You are always there at the right time,” Zane says with a shrug. They reach the elevators and he presses the button. By some miracle, it lights up and the elevator hums to life. “You have never let anyone down if you could help it. I’m sorry none of us realized how today’s fight was affecting you.”

The doors part and they step into the cabin. Kai looks down at the floor and thinks about the fact that he’s so in love with this man it physically hurts him, like some knife-petaled flower blooming in the center of his chest. How sweet a suffering is love when it draws blood like this. And as he thinks about it, he thinks about how if this is to be the rest of his life, it could certainly be worse. Yes, he loses Zane every time, but he also gets him back. 

“When we get up there,” Kai says slowly. He can’t look over at him, so he keeps studying the scuff marks on the toes of his boots. “Promise you won’t do anything stupid. Don’t, like, rush in or try to be a hero, okay?”

“Don’t be a hero, he says.” Zane chuckles, his eyes crinkling into warm crescents. “I don’t know what you think we’re doing here, Kai.”

“You know what I mean.”

There’s a pause. He can feel that penetrating gaze boring into him and turns to meet it, even though it makes his heart twist. 

“You said this morning that you knew how this ended.” Zane sounds curious. Steady. “You said I died at the end.”

His mouth goes dry. “Yes.”

“It must be bad, then,” Zane says with a smile. “To have no hope of rebuilding me. A nindroid is not ordinarily an easy thing to kill.”

“Wait, you believe me? That I’m telling the truth?” Why don’t you sound more scared? 

Before Zane has a chance to answer, they reach the highest floor and the doors reopen. The room itself seems relatively fine, but just beyond the glass doors that lead onto the terrace where Cyrus throws his little parties, a violent violet storm rages on. The glass panes are rattling in their frames. Kai looks down when he feels Zane’s cold metal hand slip into his own and squeeze. It’s a fleeting thing, just that contact of molded aluminum, textured rubber touch pads, a whir of invisible hydraulics. 

“Lead the way for us, Kai,” Zane murmurs. He tugs his hood down and his mask up. “I trust you.”

So he does.

---

It’s not every loop that they get this far. Sometimes, it’s someone else assigned to go for the center and he and Zane are simply overwhelmed by the horde. But most loops, this place has marked the end of the road for the two of them. 

They are in the middle of it now. The purple smog forms long, whiplike arms which lash at them, attempting to mince them to bits. It takes Kai’s maximum attention just to keep moving, to see the arms flying at him from all directions and dodge them all. He has done this many times, which helps. But Zane, who is doing it for the first time, is not getting so lucky. Searing red-hot brand marks melt away some of the cosmetic aluminum, exposing circuitry and joints as he twirls out of the way of yet another deadly strike. 

“Zane!” Kai shouts, hitting the deck to avoid being sliced into three like a magician’s girl. “We need a plan!” 

Zane groans as one of the smog snakes catches him clear across the back and sends him stumbling. He shoots three rapid arrows of ice at the others and then in a quick motion, erects a dome of ice over them both. 

“I know. I have one,” he says, panting. From outside, the storm lashes down upon them, swiping at the ice structure with brutal determination. “Kai, this isn’t going to be the right one.”

“What?” 

“You get do-overs, do you not? Resets?” Zane asks. He reaches up to press his fingertips to the ceiling and a new wave of ice seals over the cracks that are rapidly forming. “That’s how you know what will happen. You’ve done this before.”

Tears flood into Kai’s eyes at once, sharp and sweet, and he has to blink them away. Zane’s so damn clever . Of course he’s figured it out. “Yeah. You’ve never — none of the Zanes in the past have ever—”

“Kai, I have run the scenarios already." Zane's eyes are wide and serious. "There is no way we can both make it out of this alive. That means you need to learn as much as you can for next time. Do you understand?”

He nods, heart pounding something painful. 

“So in a moment, I will go out there, and I will distract whatever that thing is. But I’m detecting an out-of-realm signature in the center of the storm and you have to be the one to go see what it is. So you’ll know. So you can help us next time.” 

“Okay,” Kai says, swallowing. He doesn’t cry, even though he wants to. Now is not the time for crying. 

“What is the event that triggers the reset?” Zane asks urgently. The ice shelter is beginning to crack at its apex. Each thud that echoes through it sends shavings of frost scattering down, falling like snow between them. “I’ll try to postpone it as long as possible so you have enough time.”

“You. When you die.”

Zane looks at him. He does not seem confused or scared when he says, as if just to clarify, “The loop is to save me?”

Kai nods, throat thick.

“Alright,” Zane says. “Alright.” 

Then he reaches over and cups Kai’s jaw in his cool hand with impossible gentleness. In response, Kai feels his whole body go still like a statue — as if, just with that single touch, Zane has skimmed lightly over Kai’s whole body, smoothing down all the nervous tension until it seems to drain right out of him. He hears his breathing hitch in surprise. It is the most tenderly anyone has ever touched him in his entire life. 

“Alright,” whispers Kai. The sound is more breath than words. The way Zane is looking at him now makes him feel like he’s going to explode. 

The moment does not last as long as he would like; how could it, under the circumstances? With a quiet resignation, Zane pulls his hand back to slip his bow off his shoulder and nock an arrow. Kai’s cheek misses his touch profoundly — a bad sign. He tries to remember how to breathe as he watches Zane test the draw of his bow. Through the rip in Zane's charred gi, the plates of overlapping metal in his shoulders slip seamlessly back to accommodate the shunt of hidden mechanics beneath. They look like the neat rows of feathers on birds’ wings and somehow it's that which causes Kai to realize that he absolutely 200% cannot let this man go die for him. 

"Zane, listen," he starts.

A sudden terrible heaving noise interrupts him, and then there's a deafening cracking sound like a car collision. Kai looks up at the spiderweb of fractures in the ceiling. 

“Hm. Out of time,” Zane murmurs, smiling sidelong at him. “Good luck, Kai. I’ll see you in our next lives.” 

The ice shelter suddenly explodes to bits and Zane is ready for it. He shoves Kai out of the direct area of impact; in the same motion he looses a great starburst of ice the likes of which he has never seen Zane produce. It is like a supernova, the way it bursts uncontrollably out of him, jagged and deadly. The smoky arms rear back and Kai sees the gap it makes. Clever, clever Zane. He doesn’t even think, he just goes hurtling into the smog, desperately praying to make it through. 

He plunges in and doesn’t look back.

The air inside the storm is hot and acidic enough to burn his throat as soon as he inhales. Kai tries to breathe through his mask, but it’s no use. He begins to hack and cough, even as he forges on. Here, the shadows swirl around him like great serpents in the dark. They jostle into him and then swim away, as if toying with him. As if he is prey to them. 

Kai draws his sword and lights it in a cool, ghostly flame, holding it up in warning against the darkness. He can’t hear anything, but the shadows seem to give him a wide berth after this. Kai continues blindly onward, hoping desperately that his course has remained straight and that he is cutting to the heart of this great seething tumor. He wishes he could see Zane. The loop is still going, so he must still be alive. But how much time remains? 

He walks on. Gradually, he realizes he’s begun to break a sweat — it seems the air around him is beginning to heat up. That has to be a good sign, right? And perhaps it’s a trick of the eye, but as Kai squints into the darkness before him, he swears it’s a few degrees brighter than before. He keeps walking, his sword swinging back and forth before him like a pendulum. 

“Definitely getting brighter,” he mutters to himself. 

Then, all of a sudden, without warning, he emerges from the maze of darkness and plunges straight into a bright purple glow. His retinas burn and he flinches away. 

“Who’s there?” Kai shouts desperately, holding his sword out. “Don’t come any closer!”

No reply. Gradually, his eyes adjust, and he’s able to squint into the brightness. He lowers his blade.

There is a figure after all, but it’s making no move to attack him. Actually, now that he’s getting a good look at it, he’s not sure it’s capable of moving. The figure is lying prone, floating in a ghostly haze as though suspended on an invisible plinth. 

“Hello?” Kai says, creeping cautiously around the perimeter. 

The figure shows no response, so he risks coming a little closer. Now he can see, they’re wearing a mask. It looks familiar. Something tickles in the back of his brain. 

It’s an oni mask, he realizes. It doesn’t look like any he’s ever seen before. This one is black, with swirling white designs and two sets of tusks in its open mouth. It looks like it’s…crying out. 

Without even realizing it, his hand is drifting to it. Whether to touch it or to remove it he will never know, because when he gets within a few inches of it, the mask suddenly turns to look at him, its mouth pulling in a snarl. 

“Fuck!” Kai snatches his hand back like it’s been burned and dances back several paces. His sword rasps as he whips it back out in front of him. “Don’t come any closer.”

The figure sits up now, the sculpted eyes of the mask narrowed at Kai. It says nothing, just watches him. 

“Are you the reason for the loop?” he asks through gritted teeth. “Tell me how I can end it. Tell me how to win.”

DON’T BE SO SIMPLE.

“God,” Kai hisses out, clapping his free hand over his ear at the deafening intrusion. The mask’s voice seems to echo all around this little chamber of light, resonating as though vibrating through his very skull. “Stop that! What are you doing? Who are you?”

YOU ALREADY HAVE EVERYTHING YOU NEED TO END IT YOURSELF. 

“What are you talking about?”

IT IS YOU. IT IS HIM. WHAT DO YOU THINK IT’S ALL ABOUT?

“You’re saying I have something to do with this?” Kai laughs in disbelief. “You’ve got to be kidding. First off, I think I'd remember ruining my own life. And second off, I don’t have the kind of power to even know where to start with that.”

YOU DO NOT REMEMBER. 

“What the fuck are you talking about?” Kai shouts, and yes he’s getting angry now. His heart is a glowing coal in his chest, throbbing, pulsing. He advances towards the masked figure, sword lifted. “I’m not going back! I’m not doing this again! Seventy-fucking-two times , I’m not going back, do you understand?! So tell me what’s going on or I swear to god I’ll split your fucking skull!”

HM.

The mask smiles something awful, something skin-crawling, and tilts its head.

OUT OF TIME. 

He doesn’t even have a moment to process. 

From behind him, Zane cries out. It’s a sound he’s heard a thousand times, but still he whirls across, pouring desperation. And then it’s like there is no storm, no mask, nothing separating him from Zane. They are a hundred meters apart; they are no more than inches apart.

A tendril of smoke has speared Zane through his glowing core. His face is frozen in surprise as he stares down at the wires sputtering sparks through the crater, and he grasps wordlessly at the wound with stiffening fingers. Kai knows how this goes. A guttural sob escapes him as he watches the power drain from Zane's systems, part by dying part. Joints locking, limbs freezing, lights burning out. In his last moments, Zane looks up at Kai, wide-eyed and scared.

He reaches for him. 

The world goes quiet, quiet, quiet. 

---

Please. I can’t do this again. 

THERE IS NO OTHER ROUTE OUT.

I don’t know how. I don’t know how. 

LOOK TO THE FIRST VERSION OF THE STORY. 

Will it save me?

YOU WILL SAVE YOU. ANOTHER CHANCE. ANOTHER TRY.  

Will it matter?

THERE IS NO OTHER ROUTE OUT. CHOOSE AND CHOOSE AND CHOOSE.

Notes:

on Tumblr @spinbitchzu

one or two more parts after this, depending on how I feel. see u soon :P

Chapter 2: interlude

Summary:

Zane, and the room which is not a room.

Notes:

heads up for steamy make outs + hickeys (nothing further though!)

In the dream, he is not anywhere in particular. If asked to recall any detail about the setting, he’d be unable to recount a single thing. Somewhere safe, he’d say. Somewhere warm. If under the covers was a room where he could stand and breathe deep and stretch out all his limbs, so they were loose and languid. The color he associates with it is a softly glowing peach-orange, like the friendliest of flames. 

He’s not alone in the room. There’s another figure there, tall, broad-shouldered. The man stands with his face turned slightly away, showing off the long line of his neck, and where it meets the bulk of his shoulders, and how seamlessly his torso tapers to his nipped-in waist. 

“Kai,” he says, and the man turns and smiles. He is wearing a soft t-shirt, fresh out of the wash. Light blue. It smells like laundry soap, and beneath that, something smokier that clings to his skin. 

Dream-Kai walks soundlessly across the room that is not a room, and he gathers Zane up in an embrace. It’s so peculiarly vivid, how he can feel the scratch of stubble beneath his fingers as he reaches up to touch what he has never held in life — not like this anyway. The five of them speak in languages of family and sisters and brothers, but this is not how brothers hold each other. 

Looking down at himself, he sees that here, he is not metal and gear and wire, but flesh. Sensation flows through him, hot and loose, with no buffer of whirring mechanics. He wonders why that is. It has been many years since he longed for a body made of meat and bone, and though the experience is not bad, it’s alien to him. 

In the dream, Kai releases him to reach behind his head, grab the collar of his shirt, and pull it off in one smooth motion. He tosses it aside; it goes nowhere. Disappears, or dematerializes, or something — for once, Zane is too preoccupied to think about the logistics. Kai reaches forward with his gentle hands and feverishly hot skin, and Zane knows, deep in himself that that heat in his skin is of desire, and he knows it is on his skin as well. And so it is not a surprise when he finds his chin tipping upward, his lips parting in a gasp. And it is, he finds, very pleasant, when Kai meets him halfway, his hands gentle at the nape of Zane’s neck, his lips soft and slick. 

It’s a first kiss, but it melts into many, exchanged with little sucks and velvet tongues and the gentlest of bites that leave Zane feeling utterly unlike himself with want, want, want. Ordinarily, this is not a feeling he is much acquainted with — he has no need to eat or breathe or sleep, though he does most out of habit. But this want is not like those — it is not a gentle suggestion. It is an animal living inside him and it demands.

“More,” he sighs, pleads, and the room that is not a room suddenly has a free-standing wall, which he knows because Kai is crowding him up against it, nudging a firm thigh between his legs and tilting his head so he can kiss him harder, deeper. Zane lets him, and he’s going loose at the seams, falling to pieces in Kai’s steady hands. 

Are these the joys of flesh? Would he feel this way in his real body, or is this just part of the illusion of the dream? 

Or is this a dream at all? He is beginning to become unsure, even as he’s logically aware of the fact. How can he explain the vivid sting of Kai’s teeth in his neck, leaving a colony of linked bruises to his collarbone? How can he explain how utterly present he feels in the moment? 

He gasps sharply as Kai drags his tongue up across where his pulse runs like a rabbit, to the corner of his jaw, and then draws back, smug and pleased. Those burning dark eyes, that proud smile, the weight of his perfect, lovely body flush against Zane’s own. Kai wears a wolf’s grin, and that’s enough to spur Zane into action, as he pulls Kai to him to sink his teeth into his neck. Zane has never given a hickey before, but it comes without needing to think about it, and Kai’s groan in response sounds so pretty. He tests his new discovery again, again, and listens to the song of Kai’s pleasure, the pants, the moans, the soft cursing. 

He breathes once and feels a change in the atmosphere; something, somewhere goes cold. Dream Kai’s hands on his neck begins to feel insistent, angry, like he’s trying to hurt him. Zane starts to push him away, frowning, and then he catches the look on Kai’s face, all hollow black eyes and bitten-red mouth. 

“What’s wrong?” He starts to say, and then something flickers and abruptly he is not in the room-which-is-not-a-room, but somewhere different, somewhere bright and hot and frightening. He can sense Kai in his periphery, but he can’t really see him through the strange weight of some thick filter over his vision. Fear, acid and potent, surges through him and he thrashes against invisible binds. 

Kai! he calls, but the sound dissolves to nothing in the air — dream physics, or isn’t it?

“Are you the reason for the loop?” Kai’s voice. He sounds scared. “Tell me how I can end it. Tell me how I can win.”

“Kai,” Zane calls, and then he’s back in the dream, and Dream-Kai is in front of him as if no time has passed, smiling, shirtless, and Zane is shoving him away because whatever that is it’s not Kai, and there is a Kai in the other place, if he can just get back to him, and —

“You’re saying I have something to do with this?” A derisive laugh. Everything is cold and Zane is stuck again, but it’s him, the real Kai, and he’s railing against whatever invisible force holds him still. 

Kai, please can you hear me? Kai!!!

He hears a voice thundering all around him, and the bonds around his wrists, his chest, his throat are tightening like a noose. OUT OF TIME.

Zane screams a silent scream as the center of his chest explodes with pain so intense that his vision whites out. In the last seconds he has, he reaches out blindly into the darkness and his lips form a single word —

Notes:

I'm determined to finish this fic guys im so serious... this is a short interlude but a full chapter coming within the week hope