Sparkle Sparkle!

Boss sent me home bc my cough sounds like a dying goose, so enjoy some Lego 🙃 takes place between seasons 3 and 4.

“So…” Lloyd said glumly, “looks like it’s just you and me…” again. He tried not to sound too disappointed, but honestly. As much as he loved Nya (she would always be one of his favorite people), the booth at Master Chen’s Noodle House felt so empty when it was just the two of them. It felt almost illegal to not at least have Kai there as well. It felt too quiet without Cole and Jay bickering. But no matter how many times he tried to convince them to meet up, they never showed. Lloyd wasn’t even sure they bothered to read his texts anymore.

“Sorry, Lloyd. I swear I tried to drag Kai with me this time, but he was in rough shape after yesterday’s match and he was in a mood when I Ieft,” Nya apologized, looking equally disappointed and a little worried.

“I really wish he wouldn’t do that.” Lloyd muttered sympathetically. Neither of them approved of the underground fighting ring the former ninja had somehow gotten suckered into. It was extremely reckless and dangerous, not to mention stupid. Which, to be fair, was probably exactly what had attracted Kai in the first place. The problem was, Kai wasn’t in the right headspace to be making reckless, dangerous, and stupid choices. According to Nya (who probably wasn’t supposed to have said anything), he still woke up screaming from nightmares about the Overlord and… Zane… at least once a week. He was desperate for something to control, for something that wouldn’t make him feel weak and powerless, but this wasn’t it.

Of course, the intervention where Lloyd and Nya had tried to tell him that hadn’t gone well. They hadn’t really expected it to, but they had still tried. He was their brother. What else could they do?

“I keep hoping he’ll get bored and move on,” Nya admitted without making eye contact, “but I don’t think that’s going to happen.”

Lloyd nodded in agreement. “Probably not. Kai’s always been pretty stubborn.”

Nya rolled her eyes and said, “That’s an understatement. He still insists on using Glair hair gel to style his hair every day even though it smells terrible and there’s, like, a billion and two better brands out there he could try,”

“Glair! Glair’s the best thing for your hair! (May cause cancer)” Lloyd quoted knowingly. They’d both seen the advertisement way, way too many times. Nya groaned. She’d been stuck dealing with Glair for even longer than he had.

“I’d burn that company to the ground if I could,” she muttered, “but fire is really more of Kai’s thing.”

“He’d never forgive you,” Lloyd told her. He was only kind of joking. Kai’s hair styling routine was not to be messed with. The red ninja had once threatened to burn Lloyd’s comic book collection after he coated Kai’s comb with extra sparkly bubblegum toothpaste.

“I know. But maybe it’d snap him out of this funk…” Nya mused thoughtfully. Lloyd hoped she wasn’t serious. As much as he was down for committing arson if it helped bring his family some semblance of mental peace, he wasn’t sure he wanted to add jail time to his list of accomplishments (aka traumatic experiences).

“I wish…” He said. He just wanted his family to be safe and whole again, for everyone to be okay. Because none of them were. Was it really too much to ask for? With the way things had been going lately, apparently it was. His life and family were messed up and there was little he could do about it. Wu was in denial and his parents were their own special type of dysfunction. It was enough to leave him feeling more than a little hopeless.

“Nya, how did you and Kai do it?” Lloyd asked after a minute of glum silence.

“Do what?” Nya fiddled absently with her chopsticks. She had barely touched her food (neither had he).

“How did you guys survive your parents disappearing without totally losing it?”

Nya didn’t respond immediately. Her gaze turned distant, as if she were lost in the memory of that long ago day. She sat there for a long time, silent. Lloyd instantly regretted his question. She had never liked talking about her parents.

“I dunno,” she finally said, “we were both so young when it happened. One day they were there and the next… I don’t think either of us really realized how wrong it was for years and years. We both just kinda treated it as an adventure at first. Like it wasn’t even a big deal-” she caught Lloyd staring at her. “We were weird kids, I know. We probably should’ve been in therapy for that. Anyway, Kai always said they would never have left us on purpose, but I don’t know if he really believes that, or if he was just trying to be strong for me. But we always had each other to lean on - we even pinkie promised to protect each other - and that was enough. And then we found a new family with the other ninja and you and Sensei Wu. Now it’s like that whole support system we built ourselves has been torn into a million pieces. Jay and Cole are still fighting and it’s my fault. Their trust was broken in so many places and I have no idea how to fix it. We all watched Zane die.” Nya’s voice broke and he felt even worse for bringing this up. “That’s a lot harder to come back from than coming home one day to an empty house and just… not having parents anymore. At least, it is for Kai and me.”

“Ugh… I’m so sorry Nya. For everything,” Lloyd told her. He wanted to wrap Nya in bubble wrap and make sure nothing could ever hurt her again. And then he wanted to do the same thing to himself. “I’m sorry you had to lose your parents. I’m sorry I couldn’t save Zane. I’m just… sorry.” He kept rambling because he didn’t know what else to do. The rambling soon turned to blubbering (for both of them), which was a little awkward in such a public space.

Nya slid from the opposite side of the booth and squeezed in next to him instead. He leaned his head on her shoulder, suddenly feeling the weight of keeping it together for so long. Pretending to be okay had left him drained to the point of running on empty. It felt good to finally break.

“You know none of us blame you for what happened, right?” Nya mumbled, wrapping an arm around his shoulders.

“…. You don’t?” Lloyd wasn’t sure he believed her. He was the legendary Green Ninja. Getting blamed for all of Ninjago’s problems was kind of in the job description. And besides... Lloyd blamed himself, so why wouldn’t the others?

Nya shook her head, probably thinking ‘what an idiot’.

“Pretty sure we’re all too busy blaming ourselves and self-destructing - looking at you, Kai - to even think about blaming you.” She ruffled his hair affectionately. He leaned further into her.

“Oh. That makes sense.”

“You’ve been overthinking everything and convinced yourself we all hated you, haven’t you?” Nya asked pointedly.

“Yeah…” Lloyd whispered. He was pretty sure he was going to get Nya’s shirt all wet and snotty if they kept going with this conversation.

“Lloyd, listen to me,” she punctuated each word she spoke with an aggressive poke, just to be sure he was paying attention, ”We could never hate you. Never. No matter how messed up life gets. You gotta stop thinking like that - it’s not… it’s not healthy, okay?”

“Owwww… Really feeling the love here,” he sniffled.

Nya gave a shaky laugh. Lloyd joined her, feeling markedly better than he had in a long time.

“I guess my work here is done,” she said before snatching the fortune cookie he had been saving for later.

“Hey!” He protested, “I was gonna eat that!”

“Too bad. I have big sister rights,” Nya told him nonchalantly. How was that fair?

He rolled his eyes and asked, “If you’re gonna steal my fortune cookie, can you at least tell me what my fortune is?”

“Ugh, fine,” Nya cracked the cookie open and pulled out the tiny slip of paper. “It says ‘Big sisters always know best’. That’s some pretty solid advice, there. You should totally follow it.”

“It does not!” Lloyd protested, reaching for the fortune.

“Hey, wait- ouch! How the heck is your elbow so sharp?!” Nya complained when he finally succeeded in wrestling it from her grasp.

“You are such a liar! All it says is ‘your lucky numbers are 20, 11, 15, 4, and 2’,” Lloyd read, completely ignoring her pain. He hadn’t elbowed her that hard.

“Oh, please. That isn’t even a proper fortune, anyway - neither of us are legally old enough to gamble,” Nya told him, nibbling on one half of the fortune cookie.

“When has legality ever stopped us before? I mean, we’ve done some pretty stupid stuff and none of us have been arrested yet,” he replied. He gave her a pleading look. She relented and handed back the other half of the cookie, which he promptly shoved into his mouth.

“Yet.” Nya emphasized.

“Hey, it’s a pretty big accomplishment.”

“Fair enough. You wanna know what would be an even bigger accomplishment?”

“Sure,” Lloyd said, though something told him he might not like whatever Nya was about to say.

“If you stopped moping around and ate your dinner. You have got to get some meat on those bones of yours,” she said, fixing him with a stern look.

“You sound just like my mom,” he muttered, but picked up his chopsticks. He was pretty hungry.