What is this? My first, actual request? Damn right, it is! Thank you, @byjuless_, for your request! I changed it up a bit, but I hope you still like it.

Set sometime after season 15, Crystalized. Enjoy!

Everyone has at least once felt like they were in a boiling pot. Not literally though, I would hope. Sometimes, heat is all we need and want, but other times, it can be a real pain. But that's not something that just we, the normal and boring people, can experience, no. Sometimes, heroes can feel like they're being grilled as well.

"Can't we just let Zane freeze this place down?" Cole whined as he fanned himself with a magazine.

"Did you forget that we've already tried that?!" Kai exclaimed. He was lying face down on one of the couches in the living room, taking up all the space. He groaned before jerking up and getting off the couch. "I can't take it anymore," he muttered before gripping the hem of his red tank top and taking it off aggressively.

Cole threw him a short glance before looking back at the TV. "If you want to give me a strip tease, then now is not the time," he jokingly said.

Kai rolled his eyes at him as he let himself fall back onto the couch. "Not the best time for jokes, Cole."

"Meh, jokes are always appropriate to make."

"You're such a Jay," Kai mumbled under his breath.

Cole stopped fanning himself and slowly turned to look at Kai who also froze and shot him a side glance to see if he heard what he had just said.

The Master of Earth went back to look at the TV. "I'll pretend you never said that."

"I'll go get some ice cubes to rub against my body," Kai said, sighing.

"Not possible," Cole answered. "You know that Lloyd has already taken every single piece of ice from the freezer and filled his kiddy pool with it for himself. Just go and take a cold shower."

Kai groaned. "I've already taken four within three hours, Cole. At this point, I'm showering in my own misery."

"Quit whining, we're all being affected by the heat," Cole told him.

"Lies!" Kai yelled out desperately. "My literal elemental power is freaking fire, I'm hot all the time as it is. And then there's Zane! O-ho-ho, Zane. I wish I could just lower my body temperature like he can," he sighed.

"What are Jay and Nya doing to avoid this hell house?" Cole asked, covering his face with the rather cold pages of the magazine.

Kai shrugged. "No idea, but they fled the monastery this morning. They wouldn't tell me where they were going, though."

"That's weird. Do you think they're hiding something from us?"

"Nah, I think they just want some couple time. But I do wonder about where they might be, they are probably doing way better than us right now," Kai admitted.

Meanwhile...

"Get back here, you little brat!"

Looking back at his fallen creation, he sighed. His laughing girlfriend wasn't any help either.

"Stop laughing at me, will you? This is serious!" he shot her a disappointed look while slowly shaking his head.

"Sorry, sorry," Nya let out, trying to calm herself down.

"Damn, right, you should be!"

"Hey! It's not my fault your sand castle was destroyed!" Nya defended herself, lightly laughing again.

Jay sighed again, knowing she was right. He looked back down at the sand castle he had been working on for the past forty-five minutes.

He was mourning his insignificant loss. His heart, his soul, and his entire being was put into building it which was then declared a waste of time when a small boy, probably around four years old, came running past his and Nya's spot on the beach and trampled down Jay's creation without a care in the world.

Jay usually loved children, he adored them to the fullest. But in that moment, when he watched as his sand castle was destroyed in front of his own eyes, he had to keep himself from jumping on the kid and shaking him furiously while asking him why he had to run over his castle when he could've just run on, you know, the entire other part of the beach that was covered in sand.

Then he looked back at his girlfriend who was lying on one of the white beach chairs that was covered in her light blue beach towel.

She had been on that chair under the shade of the huge sun umbrella ever since they had arrived at the unusually quiet and rather empty beach. There were only a handful of people at the beach, but even they were keeping distances from other families.

Jay hated to admit it, but his eyes just had to run up and down her body for like the hundredth time that day.

How could they not when she was wearing a black bikini like that?

He himself was wearing a pair of blue swim trunks with small, yellow lightning bolts decorating every part of it.

She had picked it out and he complied to wear it. He liked those trunks anyway.

"What now?" Jay asked, pouting down at the pile of sand. Then he looked at Nya and waited for an answer.

His girlfriend looked up from her cellphone and shrugged. "No idea. Maybe rebuild it?"

"Only for that kid to destroy it again?!" Jay exclaimed, pointing to where the child had run off to. "No way, I'm done!"

Nya looked at him and slowly lifted her black sunglasses, revealing her brown eyes. Then she blinked. "Are you really done?"

Jay sighed, looking down at the sand and kicking it lightly. "No," he mumbled.

"Good," Nya nodded and let her sunglasses cover her eyes again before relaxing back into her chair.

After around half an hour of Jay rebuilding his sand castle and Nya enjoying the shade she was lying under, Jay became bored and looked back at his Yang.

"Nya?"

"Hm?"

"I'm bored."

"We're on the beach, Jay, you have plenty of things you can do."

"I want ice cream."

"Then go get ice cream."

"But I don't want to go alone."

Nya removed her sunglasses to stare into Jay's soul. "Jay, you are twenty years old. Are you a child?"

Her boyfriend shook his head at her.

"Do you look like a child?"

Jay looked at himself. "I better not, or else you would look like a pe-"

"Walker!" Nya hissed.

"Sorry," Jay apologized.

Nya let out a breath. "As I was saying," she said, glaring at him. "You're not a child, you're a grown man who can make his own decisions. If you want ice cream, go and get some ice cream."

The Blue Ninja gave her a grin. "Okay! Do you want something, too?" he asked as he walked over to their bag to get out some money.

Nya hummed. "Can you get me a cold lemonade?" she asked him, looking up at him.

Jay towered over her and nodded. Then he cupped her cheek with his hand and brought his lips down to her forehead, leaving a loving kiss on it. "I'll be right back," he muttered against her skin before pulling back and letting her go. As he walked away, he looked back at her from over his shoulder. "Don't miss me too much!"

"I won't!" she called back. Then she heard a gasp.

"Excuse me?!" he yelled back, still walking.

"I'm just kidding!" Nya then said, chuckling.

"I know!" Jay told her honestly. He knew she wasn't being earnest with that statement, it was supposed to start a friendly banter.

When Jay was completely out of sight, Nya relaxed back into her chair and put her phone away so that she could truly enjoy her stay at the beach. She looked up. The clear, blue sky was free of clouds. It was calming.

She liked days like those, it was a day that she didn't get to experience that often. Usually, most of the days were either cold and uneventful, or sunny and warm and spent by chasing after a criminal.

There was rarely an in-between.

She looked ahead when she heard the waves crashing down on the shore. Gulping, she kept her eyes on the water.

Ever since she had come back after a year, and lost her powers on top of that, she had sworn off being anywhere near the ocean.

And no matter how much Jay liked to try and hide the fact that he was wary about being around the ocean as well, she could clearly see through his lies.

But she could barely call them lies, really. He was concerned, and she could understand that to the fullest. She would've been the same way if Jay had left for a year to be connected with his own element.

She shuddered lightly, thinking back to how she had been gone for a whole year without even realizing it.

Nya felt horrible about the fact that her family was back at home and grieving over their loss while she had lost all of her memories and was peacefully swimming in the sea.

And that's why she refused to step into the ocean ever again.

To both save herself from relapsing, and to stop her family and friends from worrying about exactly that.

Yet when she saw how clean the water looked, how inviting the waves seemed, intrusive thoughts appeared in the back of her mind.

Maybe, just maybe, she could dip her feet in the water? You know, to test the temperature and all...

Nya quickly shook her head to try to snap out of it, to try to make those thoughts go away.

That part of her life was gone, and she was sure it wouldn't return. Her powers were sucked out of her body, she was certain they wouldn't just come back from out of the blue. So, there was no point in associating herself with water again.

She bit her lip, thinking. The water did look pretty fresh, she couldn't deny that. Turning back around to look for Jay, she couldn't see him anywhere. He was still at the small convenience store that they had seen on their way to the beach earlier.

"No," she told herself, turning back around.

She had promised Jay that she wouldn't do anything stupid while they were on the beach. She had promised that she would return back home with him at the end of the day. She had promised to behave as long as they went to the beach.

Why even had she told him to go to the beach?

She didn't know. She didn't remember.

All she could remember was the cold feeling of the ocean water against her skin which had turned warmer and warmer the longer she had stayed in it until it became her home.

Until she was engulfed in it.

Until she didn't know about anything or anyone anymore.

Until all she cared about was the water around her.

She remembered all of her friends, her whale friends. And some little fish that had their own lives underwater. Some had some pretty dramatic lives, in fact. Some had happy lives until they were forcefully torn apart.

Lives that fish-eating humans would never understand.

She remembered when she used to do some races with whales and sharks which she had usually won most of the time. Sometimes she had let her friends win so that they wouldn't feel sad.

Her heart clenched at the thought of never being able to feel that close to her sea friends again.

Maybe she could dip her feet into the water and her friends would come and greet her?

Letting out a shaky breath, Nya gave into the temptation. In that moment, she felt weak. Disgusted at herself, even. But a few minutes of her feet in the water wouldn't hurt, she was sure about that. Or at least she was hoping so.

As her feet touched the sand below her, she sighed before pushing herself off of the chair and walking away from her and Jay's spot. It felt quite good how the sand that was not protected by a shade was warm, almost tickling the underside of her feet in a comfortable way.

As she neared the ocean, she could hear the waves become louder. The water became more enticing and interesting from a closer perspective.

When the first splatter of water touched her right foot, Nya flinched. Yet she kept her feet planted on their spot for a reason she couldn't quite understand.

The bad feeling inside of her started to vanish the second another, bigger amount of water splashed against her feet.

The water was cold, like expected, and yet she wanted more. If only for a few more minutes, she needed more water against her feet. She craved the feeling of it. She had been for a long while.

She heard the giggling and laughing of little children in the background, but the ocean in front of her made it so that everything else could be blocked out if desired so.

She agreed.

She wanted to be able to block out those kids.

She didn't need to listen to them when she could just stare at the water and listen to its calming nature.

It was overwhelming.

Overwhelmingly addictive.

She needed more of it. She needed more of the feel of it. She needed to experience the type of closeness she once had with it again.

Maybe she could go a little closer to the sea and let the water get to her calves? Maybe then she would feel satisfied and get back to her beach chair. Yeah, maybe.

Only one way to find out.

Letting her feet drag her a bit further into the waves, Nya smiled when she could feel her legs being sucked into the cold feeling. It felt good.

Then she took another step forward, letting her knees get soaked as well. That felt even better.

Once a bigger wave came towards her and hit her, her thighs, as well as a part of her bikini bottom, got wet as well.

Smiling, she took up the opportunity to walk into the water until it stopped close to her bellybutton. Now her hands were inside the sea, too, as they were hanging beside her body.

The young adult laughed, looking down at the water while skimming through it with her fingers.

She felt great. She felt happy.

Why had she not done this before, after she had returned?

She scolded herself because of that. She should've done better.

Her eyes showed nothing but pure happiness and joy as they felt funny. But a good kind of funny.

A distant voice told her to relax, to feel the freedom she had once let go. It had been in her grasp, yet she chose to give it up to return back to the life she had lived before she had departed.

How stupid of her to have done that.

Freedom was a funny word, really. Not many had a chance to live a life that way, but even the people who were claiming to be free were being limited by something or someone.

No one was really free in a world like that.

It was what society told them to feel, so they made themselves think they did.

How stupid of them to believe that.

"Let me show you what real freedom looks like," the echoic voice called out to her. "Let me show you what you've once lost."

"Will you really?" Nya heard herself ask the voice with great interest. As she waited for an answer, she took a few steps forward to be able to hear it better.

"Of course. I would never lie to you, Nya."

"That is good," the former Master of Water answered, smiling hugely. "Can you show me my friends, too?"

"No."

Nya's face fell.

"You are going to meet them again, yourself."

Nya's face turned upwards again. "You think so?"

The voice took a few seconds to answer. "No, I know so. Now, come here, Nya. Show me who your heart belongs to."

"My heart?" Nya questioned as she kept walking further into the water.

"Yes, your heart. You know, the organ that is pumping blood around your-"

"I know what a heart is," Nya interrupted the voice. "But what does it have to do with this? Can't we leave it out?"

"We cannot, and you know that, too. Who does your heart belong to?" the voice asked Nya who then stopped abruptly.

By that time, the water was reaching up to her collarbones. Yet she never once showed a care about that.

Nya looked down, thinking about the correct answer. Taking a deep breath, she managed to whisper, "Jay."

"What?" the unknown voice asked Nya loudly who looked up worriedly.

She bit her lip. "Jay," she answered more confidently.

"That is not the correct response!" the voice yelled angrily which made Nya flinch.

"B-But you asked me who my heart-"

"I know that!" the voice said harshly.

"If it's not Jay... then who is it?" Nya asked hesitantly.

This wasn't like Nya. She rarely stuttered. Heck, she was rarely that scared.

What was going on?

"The ocean!"

Nya's eyes widened. Her instincts seemed to kick back in in that moment, but something was wrong. She couldn't turn around. She couldn't walk back. She couldn't move.

"But-"

"Your heart," the voice emphasized, "belongs to the ocean. It's what it was made for. You belong here, Nya," the tone of the voice got lighter with each word that was spoken.

Nya opened her mouth to disagree, yet something made her force her mouth closed and made her nod her head in agreement.

That wasn't supposed to happen!

Finally giving in to what the voice was saying, Nya started walking towards it again.

"Good, come to me," the voice encouraged her happily.

The malicious tone the voice said it in was blatantly ignored by Nya.

She had other things to worry about.

Like the water that was now invading her nostrils.

She inhaled, expecting to be able to breathe under the water without problems like she used to be able to, but this time, it was different.

It didn't work this time. The water was like water that was meant to cause harm if taken in like she was doing in that moment.

But she couldn't go back, she couldn't get out, and she couldn't swim up.

Why couldn't she control her body anymore?

"That is right, Nya. You are going to face your fate that has been awaiting you for a while now."

Nya barely heard that. The water was now ringing loudly in her ears, blocking out the sounds around her and smushing them together to the point of her not being able to make out whose voice was screaming out for her.

She tried to move her hands up to paddle to the surface, but they were glued to her body without the usage of actual glue.

"No!" Nya heard, yet the actual person who said it was unidentifiable because of the quietness of their voice.

She felt something touch her waist. However, her eyes had closed a few seconds before, so she couldn't know what it was.

Maybe it was a jellyfish? Those were known to be in the depths of the ocean near the coast, so the possibility was there.

The muffled sounds around her became a single beeping sound as her body slowly let itself fall limp.

It was exhausted without even doing anything.

Her senses of smell, hearing and sight were gone already. All that was left was taste and touch, but those were trying to disappear as well.

She did, however, feel her body form goosebumps for some reason. And it got colder, too. The water around her seemed to evaporate.

Weird.

Her eyes were still closed, but now they were burning. And quite heavily at that. She didn't know why. Around a minute ago, it didn't feel that way, so what changed?

"Nya!" she heard once again, yet this time she could make out that it wasn't the voice that had been talking to her earlier.

But she still couldn't remember who it was.

She felt herself being shaken. There was a hand on her upper arm. Then she felt something touch her cheeks.

And then, she felt something pushing down on her chest multiple times.

It felt quite painful.

Soon, she felt something against her lips.

And her nose was closed. Not that it mattered because it was clogged anyway.

Speaking of clogged, she felt something leave her chest and exit out of her mouth.

But then, it all came back to her. It was water... The water exited out of her mouth.

Slowly, the ringing in her ears subsided. Her instincts seemed to come back as she started coughing. Her body leaned to the side automatically to let gravity do its thing.

After a few seconds of painfully letting out the water she had let in willingly before, she calmed down and slowly let herself lie back down. She was exhausted to the fullest.

Nya's eyes fluttered open, yet her sight came back to her after a short while.

But when it did, she felt her heart constrict inside of her chest.

The sniffle she heard only confirmed her concerns.

Before she could say anything, she was pulled into a chest tightly.

Into his chest.

She shakily brought her arms up and tried to hug him back as well as her weak body would let her.

He was full-on sobbing in her arms. His body was shaking furiously.

"I'm so sorry," she heard herself whisper into his ear which seemed to make him cry even more.

He was holding her like his life depended on her.

Which, let's be honest, it did.

The time they spent in each other's arms seemed to last a long while, or at least it felt like that for both of them.

Jay slowly let his death grip on her go, but he still held her close to him. He looked down at her, his eyes bloodshot and his face a mess.

Nya gulped down her guilt. She did that to him. She was the reason his beach day was now ruined.

"You promised..." Jay said meekly. "You promised you wouldn't do anything stupid."

The look on her boyfriend's face broke Nya who started sniffing as well. She tried to keep the tears inside, but they tried to come out almost desperately.

She looked down. She wasn't able to keep her eyes on his when all he did was give her the look.

"I'm sorry," she repeated.

There was no way she had anything else to say, the fault was all hers. Both of them knew that.

"You almost drowned," Jay continued, reliving the last few minutes in his head glumly.

Nya's breathing stopped.

"You didn't swim up," her Yin added.

"I couldn't," Nya told him.

Jay sniffed. "Why not?"

"It wouldn't let me."

"What wouldn't?"

Nya looked back up at him, a tear finally escaping her eye. "The ocean."

She watched as his eyes widened, she had expected that to happen already. It had been a while since she had even brought up the topic of water because she had banished it from her life herself.

"I know I should've just stayed at home," she said before gulping and sniffing. "Jay, I don't know what came over me. Really! It was like I couldn't control my body anymore and-"

"Your eyes," Jay interrupted her.

"What?" Nya asked him.

He brought his hand up to caress her cheek. "Your eyes are blue," he whispered.

Nya stiffened. "What?"

"Come on, let's get you back," Jay murmured before standing up and pulling her up bridal style.

As Jay carried her to their spot, Nya wrapped her arms around his shoulders. "You know I can still walk, right?"

"I'm not taking any chances," Jay answered, shaking his head.

Although Nya wanted to insist on walking on her own, she couldn't deny that she enjoyed being in his arms.

When they arrived, Jay gently sat his girlfriend down on the beach chair before he grabbed his own towel and wrapped her body up in it. Then he started to dry her.

"I'm so sorry," Nya apologized once again, watching as Jay halted for a second before continuing.

"It's fine," he said dismissively while looking at her arm as he was drying it to avoid looking into her eyes.

Nya sighed. "No, it's not."

"Nya-"

"No, hear me out!" she quickly said. "I... Jay, it's been so long... and-and I just wanted to..." Nya looked down, not knowing how to express herself without sounding selfish.

"I get it," Jay told her. "You wanted to be close to your powers again, I really get it. And that's completely fine, but next time, do that when someone is around, okay?" he asked, giving her a small, almost forced smile.

Nya nodded, understanding that by 'someone' he meant mostly himself.

"Your eyes are still blue," Jay then pointed out.

Raising her eyebrows, Nya leaned over to their bag and pulled out her phone. She opened her camera and looked at her own reflection on the screen, indeed seeing that her normally-brown eyes were now an aquamarine color.

"What does this mean?" she asked, looking at her Yin worriedly.

"I don't know," Jay sighed. "We should talk to Wu about it," he suggested.

"Yeah," Nya said absentmindedly.

"Hey, hey," her boyfriend said, sitting down behind her and then pulling her onto his lap. "It's probably nothing, don't worry." He rested his head on her shoulder and squeezed her into him.

"Are you sure?"

"Yeah," Jay answered. "You know, I still have your lemonade if you're interested."

"Where is it?" Nya asked him.

"Inside the cooler," he answered her.

She nodded before diving into their bag and pulling out the small cooler they had brought which had been filled with two water bottles already. When she opened it, she looked inside and found a bottle of lemonade. As she was pulling it out, she looked at another content inside the bag and sucked her teeth.

"Jay?"

"Hm?"

"Why did you throw your cone of ice cream into the cooler?"

Jay's head shot up from her shoulder. "Don't tell me-"

Before he could finish his sentence, Nya pulled out the cone which only had some brown remains of chocolate ice cream around it. Jay glanced into the bag and looked at the fallen scoop of chocolate ice cream he had purchased earlier.

"Oh, man."

How did y'all like this oneshot? I'd like to know how you felt about it because writing it felt different to how I usually feel when writing. But a good different, if you know what I mean. I liked it. My wording for all of this is so confusing, lmao.

K, that was it, bye!