#abc writes

If you know what this is pulling from: shhhhh yes it's cringe I saw the original when I was 15. I've changed it a lot I prommy. shhhh

She remembers Jay’s eyes, glinting bright and worried in a dim room, as he asks if she’s sure about this; Nya remembers her voice hardening to keep vulnerability from bleeding through as she nods. She’s well aware it’s unwise to keep a secret this heavy, thank you, but they’re both heart-wrenchingly familiar with secrets. What’s one more?

Getting angry at Jay for keeping secrets and then turning around and asking to keep this one … it’s hypocritical. She sees the recognition of the fact in his eyes, but there’s understanding mixed with it; it’s his secret, too. It’s their burden to shoulder behind closed doors, afraid to face their family. After losing Zane and getting him back, after Chen and Garmadon, after Morro, peace feels fraught, like walking a tightrope over another storm. How would the others react to knowing they’d broken again? She doesn’t want to deal with the answer to that question.

So Nya does what she does best. She squares her shoulders and marches through each day, reminding herself with each skip of her heart, each flash of her life before her eyes, each time the world blurs that it’s over now. It spits in the face of every lesson life’s beaten into her bones, reverting to stubbornness and pride and the kind of independence that would rather see her amputate an injured limb than get help for it, but it’s a twisted kind of easier to wrestle her pain in silence. The sky pirates made it clear that she needs to stop being afraid to rely on her team, and with a distant sense of guilt it occurs to her that applies to her emotions about this situation, too, but ...

But that fight’s over. And Nya honestly wants nothing more than to take the lesson to heart and put the rest behind her. Let sleeping dogs lie, and all.

Slight problem with that plan: she’s beginning to get the feeling they don’t want to stay asleep. Nya’s good at compartmentalizing, and has been ever since she was an orphan child balancing school and keeping the forge afloat, but the neat dividers are starting to give.

All she can do is watch as the cracks spider out like the Tiger Widow’s web.

~~~~

Lloyd sits on the edge of the ship’s deck at night, sometimes.

Who knows what he’s thinking. Nya knows her little brother would rather sort through his feelings behind curtains, and they’re all working on helping him open up, but sometimes there’s nothing to do but be there with someone while they watch the world turn.

Tonight, thoughts zipping through her head with manic intensity and no distraction to stop them, she joins him, letting her legs hang over the edge of the Bounty. He acknowledges her with a smile and inches closer, then turns back to face the clouds, eyes searching the scene like there’s a cosmic answer somewhere in the moonlight poking through the blanket of grey. The sky roils in dark, angry sheets, air thick enough to slice with a knife. Nya remembers another storm out at churning sea, splinters from a shipwreck, a missing friend and her bubbling fury in the aftermath, and shudders.

Lloyd doesn’t speak, but he’s gripping a photo of his father with white knuckles and a pinched face. And she understands.

Never once has Lloyd gotten to choose his path. His only crime was wanting Garmadon in his life, and the gift he received in return for it was becoming fated to finish his father off, once, then twice. It’s a painful game, to be destiny’s plaything.

Self-centered as it is, Nya wants to think she gets it. Rarely does she get to choose, either. Being folded into the fate of Ninjago via kidnapping from blacksmith shop had been exciting until she was relegated to damsel in distress and left on the wayside. Then when she’d forged her own path as Samurai X, she had to give it up and be the water ninja instead. Water ninja. Kai’s sister. Jay’s love interest. The girl. Nadakhan’s prize.

Never a thought for what Nya wants to be. Just roles and labels to live up to whether she likes it or not, forced upon her like a wedding dress sewn for someone else.

And the one choice she could make ended up …

Her chest tightens until she’s dizzy.

Once the world sharpens back into focus, Nya casts Lloyd a sympathetic glance and quietly traces the feathery outlines of the clouds with her eyes. It’s a good night for commiserating, and she’s not feeling talkative, either.

She wonders what she is now, and her throat tightens.

~~~~

Nya catches, out of the corner of her eye, the breathless headline on the tabloid lining the rack at the grocery store—“DEVASTATING FACTS ABOUT THE GIRL NINJA!!” —and bites back the urge to scream herself hoarse.

The public eye is an unforgiving one, she knows that, she’s long since resigned herself to it. But sometimes it grates, the way everyone seems to presume they can weigh in on Nya.

The people out there don’t know anything about her.  All they care about is that she’s the girl, and there’s drama behind her they can gobble up like starved mutts.

She doesn’t let on about it much, because being imperfect is kind of one of her worst nightmares, but she knows she’s made mistakes in the past. She was prideful, even haughty. She strung Jay and Cole along for way too long because the attention got to her head, and the paparazzi will never let her forget it. Nya should have been the bigger person and cut it short, instead of letting Cole keep going with it because he was mad Jay didn’t trust him, or letting Jay’s jealousy fester as long as it did. Bit late for that, though.

It’s hardly like her faults stop there. Being hunted by Nadakhan and upset by Jay’s refusal to understand her “no” meant no, on top of the fact that her independence would only ever be conditional sinking in from becoming the water ninja … it was a perfect storm of stress, and it made her nasty. Jay keeping secrets and endangering them all was the last straw. She blew up, lashed out, furious that she couldn’t trust anything to go right.

She still regrets it. The bruises on his skin after his rescue are still imprinted on her eyelids when she wakes up, sometimes.

So she’s not perfect, by a long shot. But …

(Greedy eyes following her every movement, wanting her as she runs. Blinking to find another family member gone. Fighting for her life as the pirates capture her. Being wrestled into someone else’s gown. Pushing desperately against Dilara’s spirit snatching away her autonomy. Venom seeping into her gown, frigid then BURNING, the ability to think slipping—)

Nya loosens the death grip she has on her basket. Takes a deep breath in, then out.

They don’t know anything about her. Tabloids and TV hosts and publicists can gossip all they want about Nya’s mistakes; they’ll never convince her she deserved to die for them.

~~~~

Kai is many things, and stupid is definitely one of them, sometimes. But he isn’t stupid when it comes to how Nya’s doing, and she knows this. If anything, she’s the idiot for thinking she could keep herself under wraps from him for long. Kai must have noticed the tough veneer she’s painted over herself, and how secretive she’s being with them, because Kai knows she doesn’t like to be open about feeling unwell, and Nya knows that it worries him.

Ironically enough, that worry is why she knows she can’t ever tell Kai what happened. Ever since she revealed herself as Samurai X, he’d learned not to hover, and Nya’s endlessly grateful that he’s understanding enough to trust in her strength. Nowadays, Kai’s concern manifests in significant glances, questioning hands on her shoulder, hugs a little tighter and lingering longer than normal, discreetly asking if there’s anything she wants to tell him.

He’s taken to all that behavior in hyperdrive, of course, because there is no way Nya’s snippiness and constant tension and nights in the kitchen making tea after nightmares slipped his notice.

But that’s fine. Nya would rather deal with the quiet apprehension radiating off him now than the full-blown panic she’s bound to have on her hands if Kai ever found out that she’d lost her life and he’d been helpless to do anything but watch.

She has an idea what it’ll look like, too. He’d taken Lloyd’s possession hard enough—Nya had caught him pummeling punching bags in the training room until his knuckles bled, noticed the heaviness in his eyes when he looked at their little brother, or at Cole, and no matter how much she insisted that he hadn’t failed, Kai refused to let himself believe it. Uttering a word about the Sky Pirates to her older brother, Kai who had practically raised them both, Kai who had only ever become a ninja to save her, Kai who had blamed himself so ruthlessly for Zane and Lloyd and Cole?

It would break him.

She just can’t do that to him. She’ll stitch her lips shut if that’s what it takes to make sure he never finds out.

So when Kai fixes them both mugs of chamomile tea at 2 in the morning, and casually remarks on the strange amount of repairs she’s been doing on the perfectly intact Bounty, Nya just smiles tiredly at him and fires off some sarcastic retort that’s sure to rile him up.

She loves her older brother, which is why she made the decision to take this secret to her grave.

~~~~

Nya notices while brushing her hair, one day, that she’s neglected to pay attention to it; the sleek black strands are almost to her shoulder, rather than brushing against her chin like she’s used to. Once she’s teased out every last snarl, she goes to cut her hair, but hesitates right before the scissors snip.

When she looks in the mirror, sometimes it’s Dilara’s face flashing before her eyes, not her own. She has to look for the minutiae, the details that count, like the flinty sharpness in her own eyes, the scar near her chin, the odd mark forming on her cheek, obsessively contrasting them to wide, sweet eyes on a deceptively cherubic face.

Nya wishes—no, not wishes, look where wishing had gotten them all—that Nadakhan had cared to see the differences. Maybe that way, she wouldn’t have felt the eyes on her back, always following her, waiting for her to fall into his grasp. Maybe she could have avoided the desperate game of cat-and-mouse. And just maybe, she wouldn’t have been grappled into a suffocating gown, or had her agency ripped from her as Dilara took her face, or died—

Right, that had happened. How Cole and Zane go about their days knowing they’ve walked through the doors of death, she can't begin to fathom. Nya wonders when she’ll stop feeling like she has to hide in her own home from eyes that are no longer watching, wonders when she’ll stop feeling the white-hot burn of venom leaching into her blood, and it’s Dilara’s face that brought it upon her.

Nya sets the scissors down, and tries not to flinch at the way they klink against the counter. She doesn’t want Dilara’s face anymore.

Maybe she’ll let it grow out.

~~~~~

It wasn’t even that rough of a touch, Nya despairs later. Cole, even in spars, always knew his strength, and he barely glanced her sternum with a ghostly hand as she knocked him off balance.

Apparently, on a bad day, that chilly touch was enough to send the phantom shock of Tiger Widow venom racing through her system; Nya forgot how to breathe for a second, and the next she broke her stance and pushed. Already off-kilter, Cole stumbled, his back hitting the ground with a heavy thud. In the instant before the others could be alarmed, they locked eyes, concerned meeting terrified. She forced her voice to stay even as she said, “I think that’s enough training for today.” Then she ran.

Now, here she is, her door slammed shut and locked, and her back’s pressed against it as she tries to remember what it feels like not to buzz like an entire hornet’s nest. She’s fine, she repeats to herself. The mantra is soothing simply in its repetitiveness; it gets her mind off of the sensation that won’t leave her alone ever since she lived it. She’s fine, she’s alive, and she’s not losing her grip on consciousness because all her organs are shutting down. Nya is fine, not actually feeling the venom seep into her skin through the coarse fabric of the wedding dress, cold for just a millisecond before erupting into white-hot pain across her skin. If her vision is off, it’s because of the tears welling up despite her stubborn efforts to blink them away, not the spots that danced across her world as Flintlocke’s fatal accident slowly claimed her life-

Her breath catches in a sob. Nya furiously muffles it behind her hand.

It didn’t even happen. She’s been through so much, she’s been in danger so many times, and this is the one that sticks? So it killed her, yeah, admittedly that’s a big step above the other times, but it hadn’t happened to anyone else except her, and Jay, and she can’t, won’t, make those words leave her lips. Every other problem in her life, she’d risen above, she’d fixed and wrestled back into her control, and then she’d gotten to square her shoulders and quip to the boys how easy it had been.

How does she fix something that’s only broken in her memories?

~~~~~

Nya remembers it all.

The entire treacherous walk home, through the rocky paths, rice sack pulling his arms out of his sockets, is spent thinking. Ruminating, fretting. If the harvest is bad this year, there won’t be much food for the market vendors to sell, let alone left over to eat. The villagers are going to be frugal this winter; the same cold spell that hurt the plants means they won’t be stepping away from their huts outside of work and necessities, and they’ll pinch pennies to save food and clothes. 

Meaning customers will be scarce this winter. 

He’s already noticed business drying up in the past days, and so has Nya, no matter how hard he tries to comfort her otherwise. But Kai’s thinking what she probably hasn’t realized yet—less customers means less money flowing into their pockets. Less money means … 

Kai thinks of the drafts that breeze through their house at night, the dwindling packets of grains and vegetables stashed into the corners of crumb-dusted cabinets, the tears on their thinning clothes, and whimpers. 

That night, he uses the rice and makes a quick stew with leftover broth, throwing in old, soft veggies. It’s barely enough for half a person; Nya eats the whole thing down to the dregs and cries for more because they haven’t eaten a filling meal in days, so he digs around until he finds some stale bread slices. He takes out two and puts the rest away; she gets one, and—his stomach growls loudly as if in desperate, groveling thanks—so does he.

Nya giggles at the sound. He playfully elbows her and it becomes squealing, loud enough that she can barely get through a bite of chewed-up bread.

Kai takes a bite of his own slice, hard against his teeth and bland compared to the spicy stew, and doesn’t mention that it’s the first thing he’s eaten all day. 

He doesn’t want to skip meals, but the winter looming overhead promises hard times ahead, and … he can’t make Nya starve for him. She’s his little sister, he’s gotta look out for her. No one else will, after all. He’d rather starve himself than let them end up back with their horrible uncle. It’s a small price to pay for their freedom, their safety, Nya’s happiness. 

Lying in bed, his stomach aching and threatening to fold in on itself, he reminds himself: it’s worth it for Nya, the days of taking in nothing but crumbs and water, sweating it out in the forge, heaving heavy metals and hammering them into shape, getting himself cut up on his tools, desperately sprucing up Four Weapons to attract passerby. Anything to avoid Nya walking around with that distracted furrow to her brow because she’s too hungry to think, anything to keep them clothed and in business and afloat. 

Anything to avoid feeling so helpless at their lot in life. 

After all, Kai can't change, no matter how much he wants to, the fact their parents vanished into thin air all those years ago. For all their love and warmth, they’re gone now. It’s just him and Nya. 

This is all he can do.

—————— 

Skulkin attack their home and take Nya with them, and he drives himself wild with fear.  

His incredible, strong, stubborn sister. Gone to some far-off underworld no mortal can reach, if he believes the crazy old man that’s taken him in.Every second he’s not training, he flagellates himself for letting Nya stay in that fight. She’s the only family he’s got left in the world and Kai, model protector that he is, let her get kidnapped. A real bang-up job he’s doing, fending for them. 

His failure buzzes under his skin like the hornets that made nests in the village’s trees, louder and more frantic with each passing moment. It pushes him until Sensei and the others grow impatient with his reckless strikes alone. 

Kai stands there as they scold him, face hot, fists clenched. The other boys protest everything he does. Sensei Wu demands to know if he thinks he’s “better than the team”.

What do they know? That’s not their sister in the hands of pure evil, suffering who knows what kind of torture because they failed to protect her, while he’s stuck waiting to collect some important weapons because he’s totally useless without them. 

Nya’s gone, and he’s helpless to do a thing about it. 

—————— 

Spinjitzu is an incredible force. The entire world blurs to a whirl of blazing flames, unlocked from somewhere deep within. Skeletons and snakes alike fall to his wall of fire. 

It’s powerful, and that feeling is a heady rush of confidence. 

So obviously, when they unearth the Green Ninja prophecy from Sensei’s bag, Kai hungers. He’s never been one for believing tales and prophecies, but something from Sensei Wu, the First Spinjitzu Master’s son himself, and hidden away like this … has gotta be important, right?

The name sings sweetly in his mind, each new thing he hears about it fuel to his fire. It comes with incredible strength and a handle over more power than any being could imagine, if Zane’s to be believed. If Spinjitzu is incredible, then the power the Green Ninja must have in his veins must be like elixir. Who doesn’t want that kind of power in their hands? 

Kai fantasizes greedily when the others aren’t around, and frankly, even when they are. One after the other, Zane, then Jay, then Cole unlock True Potentials, making peace with the turmoil sealing their hearts off, and Kai is left in the dust. Far from giving up, he revels in the promised eventuality of power, of strength, of prophecy. It eats at him viciously until he’s irrevocably obsessed, boiling his blood like he’s been thrown into an iron cauldron. Just imagining the possibilities of what kind of power the Green Ninja holds sends a hot tingle through his fingers. If he’s prophesied to defeat evil incarnate himself, Lord Garmadon … he’ll be invincible. 

For so long, it’s just been him and Nya. Being a ninja is a calling he’s never realized he needed, something greater than just being a blacksmith scraping by for a living. Naturally, this is the next step, the culmination of all the work, all the training, all the blood and sweat. A ninja’s lifestyle means he’ll need the firepower to match, right? And he’s already had loss dangled in front of his nose—Nya got captured by Skulkin, now Lloyd’s in the hands of those blasted Serpentine. Kai wants nothing more than to go in, fists ablaze, and deck the noses of everyone who’s ever dared touch his family, but he’s not strong enough for that on his own. He needs the other ninja, and Sensei, and Garmadon. But with the power of the Green Ninja … 

There’ll be nothing that can stand in his way with that kinda power, if he can just prove that he’s worthy of getting it. 

He could do anything.

He’ll never be helpless again.

—————— 

He’s not the Green Ninja. 

It’s Lloyd. 

Kai realizes as he’s surrounded by searing-hot lava, with the kid clinging for dear life to his pant leg, and he resigns himself to it. 

It’s okay, though. He’s lost a chance for glory, but he’s gained something to protect with his life. Nya, strong, capable Samurai X, doesn’t really need him anymore, but young, vulnerable Lloyd? The runt will need all the care and protection he can get, especially now that he’s learned it’s on the books for him to fight his own father for Ninjago. He aches for Lloyd; it’s never easy to give up everything you want to do the right thing. 

Kai likes to think he knows a thing or two about that. 

Even though it’s much more unfair for Lloyd to fight Garmadon than it would be for him, who’s got no such qualms, Kai is as fine as he can be with how things turned out. He is. Which is why he lies in his bed that night, above a soundly-resting Zane, stares at the ceiling, and burns with what he could have—should have—had.   

—————— 

Time passes. Kai learns to push down the resentment burning in his core until it dies down to smoldering embers, and he walks them barefoot, out of everyone’s sight, to remind himself of his position. His purpose on the team is to function as a part of it, because these dorks are his family now, and he knows that he would give his life for them unflinchingly. When Lloyd wins out against darkness, and shines his golden light over Ninjago, Kai swells with pride for his little brother. 

They’re a team of six, imperfect and strained, but they’re still determined enough to fight the Digital Overlord. Even with Jay and Cole at each other’s throats, even with Lloyd drained of his power, he knows they’ll make it out victorious. 

He never in a billion years anticipates it’ll come at the cost of cutting them down to five. 

Zane echoes Kai’s words to the Overlord—”This isn’t about numbers! It’s about family.”—and they’re like a knife through his ribs. With a dawning sense of horror mirrored on his brothers’ faces, he realizes Zane has no intention of letting go, no matter how much Kai screams himself hoarse begging him to. It’s like watching Nya get kidnapped all over again, like realizing Lloyd was missing, like seeing his Sensei with robotic parts and blank red eyes as he raises his staff to crack down on Kai’s skull, except it’s so much worse. At least the other times he could fight, kicking and screaming, until they were safe again, but now? Now, Zane clings to the armor and implores them to go, and there isn’t a thing in the world Kai can do except get yanked back by Wu as a shard of ice shatters in front of them. 

It’s a miracle Kai’s legs don’t give out, or that he doesn’t break free and charge ahead in a burst of flames. First master, he wants to, but his Sensei’s hand pins him back, and he has no choice but to watch from the safety of a manhole cover as Zane’s heart flatlines in an explosion of ice, beautiful and frigid and deadly. 

It doesn’t register to Kai. He already feels like he’s been doused in ice water. 

When the ones left behind start to fragment, he isn’t surprised; he can’t even bring himself to care. A more hopeful Kai would have appealed to their better natures and given an impassioned speech about the need to carry on in Zane’s stead like he would’ve wanted, but that’s not him anymore. He wore that all out on the day of the funeral, pouring his heart out about brotherhood while realizing how fragile it was to a backdrop of delicate flurries. Now, he does the unspeakable. 

He quits.

The Slither Pit is a den of lowlifes and thugs, people he once wouldn’t have been caught dead fraternizing with, but their scumminess is refreshing now. No pretenses of honor necessary when he’s punching someone’s lights out, after all. It feels better than it should, to bleed and sweat and take his disgusting existence out on other people; at any rate it’s the closest thing he’s getting to ever feeling good again. 

Kind, good-hearted Zane threw himself away for them, and they don’t even slightly deserve it. It’s petulant to be upset that it’s unfair, because nothing is fair anymore, but it’s a twisted world that kills Zane so ruthlessly and keeps him alive. 

Kai stoops to making money through underground fights, trying and failing to get away from the agonizing unfairness of it, and he festers in himself until the only thing getting him awake in the mornings is the black thrill of getting to beat someone into the concrete floor of the ring. 

He’s the one that’s supposed to protect them. That was what unlocked his power, what ignited the flame of his fighting spirit. Yet when it comes down to it, he always fails. He’s not even good for that, is he? He’s consistently thrown his soul into fighting for them, but it never manifests as more than a pale shadow of usefulness in the end. Kai’s never had real power, nothing worth brandishing. He was just grasping for straws. 

(He blows up when a ref calls him the Flaming Shogun.) 

It should’ve been him, he thinks, ducking a flailing kick and hurling his body into a mean-spirited hook that sends the Fangpyre before him flying. Not that he should’ve been the Green Ninja, no, clearly he’s never deserved that. He should’ve been in Zane’s place. At least then he could claim he’d actually saved them, done something of use. 

The snake bares his fangs and lunges for his throat, but Kai just scowls deeper and hurls the scaly meatsack onto the floor, hard enough to send spidering cracks out from where he lands. It should’ve been him, but it wasn’t, so he gets to stand here in his shady little corner of society and fume about the loss, trying to beat the pain out. It doesn’t work. It never does. But he’s not about to admit that to himself. 

He doesn’t remember when he stopped refusing the suspicious green drink mix they throw his way as an offering. The sting as it slides down his throat is a welcome distraction, the buzz of his mind that was so discouraged as a ninja now taking the worst of the edge holding itself to his throat with every waking moment. He shouldn’t go down this road, he’s well aware it’s risky, but he’s already here. There’s no going back. If he’s a good-for-nothing, might as well go big or go home. 

Kai spirals deeper. 

Every night, when he lies on the tatters of a bed, fresh-forming bruises aching, he’s back under that manhole cover, screaming as Zane freezes hell over to save their lives. And clinging to Jay, skin cold from the ice crystallizing above him, he’s completely helpless to stop it. 

—————— 

Zane is alive, and the idea of it sends his heart flying before he crushes it under his heel and scolds himself for being careless. There’s caution that needs to be exercised, and Kai knows better than to entertain hope. 

His eyes catch on the reserved, secretive Skylor, and the tournament crawls by in a twisted circus with Chen as its ringmaster. Cole and Jay make up, but it costs them Cole’s participation in the coming rounds. Restrained, strategic action like this is unfamiliar after so long doing otherwise, and falling back into the habit, having a purpose to work for, reignites some of the old warmth and drive he lost for so long. Even with the wrenching betrayal roiling in his gut when he finds out who Skylor is, even when they’re all captured, he starts remembering who he is again; he’s Kai, red ninja, master of fire, and it burns bright with loyalty and the need to protect. 

The thing about fire, though, is that it is always burning, always hungry. 

And Kai, as he finds out the hard way, never really stopped starving.

His hands tighten around the staff. His face flushes with heat. 

What is he saying?! Lloyd’s eyes are wide and hurt, but entirely too resigned—he’s used to being seen as a walking ball of power in a green gi, Kai knows this, why can’t he control the words coming out of his mouth?

He does know why he shrieks at Lloyd, “I should’ve been the Green Ninja!” and he hates himself for it more violently than he has since he stepped foot on Chen’s island. 

Being the Green Ninja, if anything, has only made Lloyd’s life harder. The same undying hope and goodwill that Lloyd carries in the face of danger makes the wounds dig that much deeper every time he’s targeted for his power. Kai’s seen it, seen him grapple with his destiny pitting him against his father, and he’s still a horrible, selfish enough person that he wants the power anyway. 

He got a taste of it, in the Digiverse, what felt like eons ago, and the power is akin to being drenched in the sun after spending your life cold and lethargic. It whispered to him of glory, of strength, of power, and blast him and the whole world, Kai still wants it.

Bless Cole a million times over, he knocks through the wall with his giant new toy and snaps Kai out of his power trip. After that, they're all too caught up fighting Chen, then grieving Garmadon. 

In the end it doesn’t matter that Kai never actually hit Lloyd with the staff. The look of pained acceptance in his eyes as Kai towered over him, helpless to stop himself from traumatizing this poor kid any further, sears itself into his mind and doesn’t fade. It's proof that he's done enough to shatter that trust. 

—————— 

Kai doesn’t forgive himself for slipping up. Instead, he falls into what he knows best: promising to look after Lloyd in Garmadon’s stead, promising protection and the unforgiving singe of his brightest flames towards anything that tries to hurt him. 

Morro barges into their lives like an unpleasant shock, on par with the sensation of being knocked by a gust from a three story apartment and slamming into concrete. Just like that, Lloyd’s gone, yet again being abused by someone who sees the power in him before anything else, and Kai’s left yelling desperately and clawing for him as the other ninja hook him back onto the Bounty. 

Wu’s ghost story sends chills running down his spine, and he’s both endlessly glad and guilty that no one draws the parallel he does. Morro is arrogant, vindictive, envious to a fault. 

Envious over the same thing Kai was. 

It’s an ugly thing, to see yourself in the villain ruining lives. Knowing how he feels makes him all too keenly aware that Morro will not stop until he raises the dead, because anyone who keeps going after being spurned by destiny itself is a force to reckon with. 

This is one mission he cannot fail. Fail and Lloyd is lost. 

But … 

Kai thinks of the look in Lloyd’s eyes as he swung a staff up, over his head, ready to throw away everything good in his life for the taste of power, just because it makes him feel strong enough to stand up to the world. Thinks of Morro, who begged and screamed and refused to accept that he wasn’t the Green Ninja. 

Even if the ninja triumph, there will be no real victory to be had. 

Whatever pieces are left of the relationship he has with his little brother, Morro is bound to smash into smithereens. Morro is angry at destiny, and Lloyd is his punching bag, and there's no telling what condition the Green Ninja will come back in.  

Since then, he’d grown so much. Even saved the world once or twice; supposedly that looked great on a resumé, though he wouldn’t know. And he knew he couldn’t have done it if the ninja hadn’t trained him, looked out for him, treated him like family. 

Were his family, the best one he could have asked for, and by this point he knew them, their presence and quirks, like the back of his hand. 

For all the pain the world wanted to throw at them, they triumphed. Lloyd’s family always found a way to patch itself together, and lean into the comfort of knowing they’d made it through, and laugh over pizzas and lame snarking. Prank wars, TV marathons, games and sparring and hanging out—even outside fighting the seasonal baddie, Lloyd never found the other ninja far, and he sunned himself on their warm energy. 

In the bright moments, he paid rapt attention to their raucous laughter, their easy smiles, the fondness they’d never admit softened their eyes, and he felt like the luckiest boy in the world. 

He’d never understood, then, why it always came crashing down the moment he split away and had to be alone with his thoughts. 

The Oni had been defeated, finally the aftermath left behind had healed, and the ninja opted to celebrate with a game night and assorted boxes of Chen’s takeout, courtesy of Skylor. Lloyd was on cloud nine the entire time he creamed everyone in Monopoly, and even by the time they’d wound down to playing poker and sleepily mocking each others’ hands, he was fine to bask in weary contentment.

“Go on,” Kai said, raising an eyebrow after Lloyd had split his face open with a yawn. “You should probably go get some rest.” 

He didn’t even get a chance to protest before the others piled onto Kai’s concern, Zane finishing it off with, “You gave us all quite the scare earlier, Lloyd. For your own sake, it would be best for you to sleep at a reasonable time.”

He would love to argue with that, but he was the one who “nearly died” or something, and Cole had enough years on him that reversing the argument onto him wouldn’t work. Meeting their expectant faces, he had nothing left to do but heave a sigh and plod towards his room, tossing a slurred “night” over his shoulder.

Beams of moonlight striped onto the floor through his blinds. Lloyd sat on his mattress and sighed again, dismayed as the quiet sucked away the cheery buzz he’d been riding from enjoying himself for once. As his mood crashed, a heaviness settled down in the void it left, and he was too tired to be alarmed at its familiarity. 

They’d won, and it was well and easy to sit around having fun, but nothing would fix the missing puzzle piece whose absence he’d tried to ignore the whole evening. Lloyd had dared to hope that maybe Garmadon would what, stick around for a nice cup of tea and an evening chat? 

Of course not. The world wasn’t that kind to his family. 

Of course he’d left. 

Lloyd didn’t even know where to begin unpacking it, and he didn’t want to tonight. The tightness of his shoulders and the ugly knot in his gut that have only just started to unravel, now that he knew Cole was alive after all, left lingering malaise as he flopped down onto his bed. The Oni, in their defeat, left a path of destruction in their wake that only time and care would heal. 

He remembered why he hated his time with the Resistance, why his heart always skipped with remnants of unease at the first whispering of tension between the team.

When the rest of the ninja were with him, sharing his burden and lightening his heart, it was easier not to think about the crushing gut feeling that he’d never be through fighting the world’s war with evil. 

Lloyd felt weird when he was separated from the others.