toon hell

There’s a knock on the bathroom door — the barest grazing of knuckles, as if Lloyd’s afraid he’ll knock him down, too, if he’s loud enough. 

“You okay in there?”

Kai shakes his head, blinking rapidly. The stranger still stares back him, skin reddened where he’d scrubbed hard enough to sting. 

He’s not quite sure he remembers who okay Kai even is. 

But Lloyd’s voice is hesitant in a way he hasn’t heard since Harumi, fragile in a way that could shatter, so Kai swallows. 

“Yeah. Just gotta — fix my hair, and I’ll be out.”

There’s a beat of silence, thick with suspicion. Kai winces, fighting the urge to disappear. The months — years? — spent apart may loom between them, but it’s hardly an insurmountable chasm. Kai still knows his little brother like he knows himself. Knows what the dark circles and faded bandages mean, knows what all the other broken mirrors and blast marks across the training course mean. 

He'd be stupid to pretend Lloyd won’t figure out what the slight tremor in his voice means. 

But Lloyd is also endlessly kind, even now, and he’s always had a knack for understanding when someone’s on the edge of breaking. 

“Okay,” Lloyd hums quietly. “I’ll be in the kitchen, when you’re done.”

Kai opens his mouth to reply, but his voice strangles somewhere in his throat. 

I’m not broken! he wants to scream. He’s not. Not bruised or bent or shattered, he’s Kai, he fought tooth and bloody nail to stay that way and he’s not broken.

Cracked and peeling fingernails, crusted blood still stained beneath them, bite hard enough into the faded ceramic rim of the sink that it threatens to crack.

Staring back at him from the mirror is gray and red. Endless monochrome, dull shapes that twist and skitter, gray and red and gray and red and gray and—

A sharp snap, and pain blossoms in his finger. Kai stares blankly at the sharp line of crimson that beads from his index finger before dripping down, leaving tiny splatters on the now-cracked, dingy white sink. 

Red burned into his retinas, scorching across his palms, devouring the warped faces of his family until there’s nothing left. 

Kai leans forward, bracing himself against the cracked sink, and tries not to throw up. 

If he turns the water on now, he can clean the sink before the tiny splatters of blood turn to copper stains. If he pulls the stopper, fills the whole sink with water, maybe in the warped reflection he’ll see—

Kai pulls back with a shuddering breath.

He’s not broken. 

But he thinks, maybe, he might’ve left a few pieces behind in that place. 

~

He remembers the way to the kitchen, at least. 

Remembers too much, years and years of memories in the halls, of people he’d all but killed himself to get back to, and now that he’s here—

The halls are empty, dark, and the shadows that flicker across the walls look gray and red. 

Kai swallows, and flees for the dim light ahead. 

Three of the lightbulbs in the monastery kitchen are out, leaving the two left to flicker valiantly. Lloyd is still a beaming spot of brightness where he fusses over the stove, absently tapping a wooden spoon against the countertop. His hair is longer, Kai notices, curling past his neck in neglect. He might be taller — he’s definitely thinner. 

His smile is still bright, though, still Lloyd, even if his eyes are tired, and Kai finds himself trying to burn the image into his brain, to replace the watery illusion of his brother’s flawless, watery smile with the real one. 

“Thought I might have to drag you out of there,” Lloyd says, his tone light. “Hungry?”

Kai’s stomach growls, twisting painfully in answer. Lloyd’s lips press together, concern etched across his face. 

“Guess that’s a yes,” he murmurs. “Good thing I made a lot.”

“Nah, I’m—” Kai’s tongue feels like sandpaper in his mouth. He’s what? Not hungry? Kai’s so starved he could be a hollow husk, if he wanted. Anything nice, anything soft, anything warm — he can’t remember what that feels like, he’s so starving. 

Pathetic, his brain screams at him. Lloyd shouldn’t be making him anything. Kai’s here, now — he needs to be taking care of him. What kind of useless brother lets things go the other way around? 

“I can help,” he says, lamely. 

Lloyd cuts him a look. “You can sit,” he says, and ooh, there’s a spark of the sass Kai knows. “Butt down, there. Now.”

“Bossy much?”

“You look like you’re gonna collapse,” Lloyd says. “I’m pulling Master Lloyd on you.”

As light as his tone is, Kai catches the bitter irony in his voice, the inside joke Lloyd’s only been sharing with himself. It stirs something in his chest, a dull ache that’s been scabbed over too long.  

So he does, in fact, sit his butt down.

“Tada.” Lloyd slides a steaming bowl in front of him, fingers immediately knitting together in nervous enthusiasm. “It’s — it might not be super good? Definitely not on your level of cooking, or anything. But it’s something.”

Kai stares blankly. The soup looks like soup — not burned, not boiled half to death, and the smell leaves his ravaged stomach roaring. 

“You cooked,” he says, dumbly. 

Lloyd flushes, rubbing the back of his head. “Uh, yeah.” The duh is left unspoken, but Kai hears it all the same. 

“Like, actually cooked?”

Embarrassment gives way to exasperation. “It’s just soup, cut me some slack.”

Any memories of Lloyd’s previous disasters in the kitchen are easily forgotten by the promise of food, and Kai almost drops the spoon at the explosion of heat and spice and flavor on his tongue. Humiliation stings in his chest as his eyes burn hot. He can’t remember — the last time he would’ve had something like this, had a warm meal that someone made for him, would’ve been—

“I’sh edible,” he rasps out, before the burn in his eyes can overflow. 

“Uh-huh.” Lloyd rolls his eyes, but there’s a dim flicker of pride across his expression. “Had to finally learn how to cook something without burning it. Necessity is the best teacher, and all that.”

Lloyd’s voice trails off, and the reminder sits like a bruise on Kai’s heart. Lloyd’s been, as long as Kai has, alone. Haunting an empty monastery full of memories, nothing but echoing rooms and empty corridors. He pictures it briefly, Lloyd’s lonely figure in the place they all called home, drowning in the same hopeless despair Kai’s lived with, and the bruise feels a little more like he’s been stabbed. 

“It’s good,” he finally says, when he can speak past the lump in his throat. “Real good.”

Lloyd beams, and for a moment, he looks like the brother Kai remembers grinning at the morning the Merge swallowed them all whole. 

Then the dull light from the last two lightbulbs catches his eyes just so, turning familiar green into the lurid shade that crackled and popped from the Guardian Dragon’s mouth, and everything goes gray and red, gray and red—

Kai shoves another spoonful of soup in his mouth, and pretends he only hears the dull thrum of the monastery’s air unit instead of hundreds of legs skittering across the floor. 

~

It takes him a minute to recognize his room.

It feels like walking into a tomb, untouched and frozen in time. There’s a book he can faintly remember having left splayed open on the table, though he can’t remember what it’s about. There’s a spare gi caught on the edge of his bed, where he’d tossed it after a moment’s deliberation the morning the Merge struck. The photos on the wall all feature someone else shoved between his teammates — some person that looks like him but also doesn’t, some person with bright eyes that look so unfamiliar Kai wants to tear them all down. 

He hates that person, a little bit — that stupid, stupid Kai who doesn’t realize what he has. Who doesn’t realize what he’s about to lose. 

Swallowing back nausea, Kai turns to his bed. The covers are still pulled back, the pillows askew, and the worn red blanket he’s had for years is noticeably missing. 

He frowns. Apart from the blanket, his room looks untouched — unless Lloyd sprung for laundry, which would be extremely unlikely considering the state half the monastery is in, he doubts anyone’s done much in here. Had he done something with it, and he just forgot? 

Kai bites the inside of his cheek. Frustration sparks in his chest, itchy and useless. It’s just a blanket. In the grand scheme of things, he should be grateful he’s even got a room left, much less one that’s intact. 

But still. It’s something missing. Something amiss, and knowing that it’s absent — it makes his room a little less colorful, that’s all. More gray. Gray and red and gray and red and—

Torn fingernails bite painfully into his palm, and Kai squeezes his eyes shut.  

He likes to think he’s a pretty resilient guy. He’s gotta be, to survive the combined attempts at something that could be passingly called as breakfast from Cole, and sometimes Nya and Lloyd during their more enthusiastic younger-sibling days. On top of, you know, surviving all the other horrors. 

But a guy’s got his limit. 

Kai just…didn’t think his was that close. Ninja don’t have limits, right? They never quit. Kai never quits — not once all through that place, he never once—

Murky waters flood his vision, laughing faces just a step beneath the water away. 

Idiot, Kai curses himself. Stupid, stupid, stupid. If the others had seen him, what would they say?

The thought haunts him as he fights to fall asleep, right up until he actually succeeds and his thoughts turn to awful flashes of gray and red, water that seeps into his lungs and eats him alive from the inside, hundreds of bugs that chew through his skin and blood and bones. 

He doesn’t wake up screaming, but it’s a close call. 

“Screw this,” Kai mutters into his hands, sweat-soaked blankets strewn across the floor. 

He’s so tired. 

But it’s not like the universe has bothered to care about that at all, and he doubts anyone else’ll start caring anytime soon, so. Trudging steps back to the kitchen it is. 

In the darkness of the monastery, the hallways warp. Kai steadies himself with a hand against the wall, nausea bubbling up in his throat. He doesn’t — this is his home, it’s not—

He knows the way to the kitchen, he thinks desperately, as frustration burns behind his eyes. He knows his home. It’s just — the hall looks gray, without any of the lights, and the shadows from the thin moonlight waver like he’s underwater, and—

Kai stumbles into the living room with little to no idea of how he’s managed to get himself there. 

Lloyd stares up at him, startled, Kai’s missing red blanket wrapped around his shoulders where he’s curled up on the couch. 

“Oh,” he says, blinking. “Um. I was gonna return it.”

Kai lets out a shaky, hopefully not hysterical laugh. 

“If you’re gonna steal it, you can share, at least.” 

Lloyd brightens, scooting over to make room on the couch beside him. Kai collapses into the cushions, tugging the edge of the blanket Lloyd’s deigned to share over his lap. 

Lloyd’s elbow nudges against his side. “Want tea?”

Kai squints at the offered teacup, then nods. His hands tremble as he takes it, and humiliation burns hot in his throat. Before he can give himself away anymore, he gulps down about half the cup, the familiar taste of peppermint threatening to bring a different kind of burn to his throat. 

He raises an eyebrow instead. “Still microwaving tea?”

Lloyd makes a face. “It’s faster.” Then, wilting a bit— “I don’t know how to steep it in the pot.”

Kai fights back a smile. 

“It’s the stupid — the leaves to water ratio, and the timing’s always wacky — and it doesn’t help that Wu’s stupid pot is from the dawn of time, so — shut up.”

“Good to know you haven’t morphed into a total stranger who knows his way around the kitchen while I was gone,” Kai snorts. 

“I make a whole soup for you, and this is the thanks I get?”

 “Surprised you didn’t try to microwave that, too.”

“You suck.”

Kai laughs as Lloyd wallops him with a pillow, scowling. There’s a crackling of paper, and Lloyd startles, grabbing for the sketchbook that’s spilled onto the floor. He glances at Kai, eyes panicked. A beat passes, then—

“No!”

“Give me—”

“Don’t look, don’t look—”

“C’mon, I wanna see your art—”

“No, it’s embarrassing — Kai!”

Lloyd’s cry strangles off as Kai stuffs a cushion against his face, snatching the sketchbook triumphantly. Lloyd wrestles himself free with an irritated snarl, but Kai’s already flipped it open, skimming the pages. 

He blinks. His own face stares back at him, again and again — sketches of his face and Nya’s and Cole and Jay and Zane’s, Sensei’s and half-abandoned drawings of Garmadon, patterned wolves and four-headed dragons and them, their team, over and over and over. 

Lloyd sinks into the couch, pulling his knees up to his chest. 

“I got bored,” he mutters. “They’re — it’s just practice sketches, they’re not…you weren’t supposed to look.”

There are some people, Kai thinks, who might glance at the near-manically repeated drawings, the heavy marks of ink and pencil smudges, and worry. 

Kai, however, feels a crushing sense of relief. It’s nice to know you’re not alone, when you’re drowning. 

“I miss them, too.”

He doesn’t mean for the words to slip out — they’re weak, pathetic, and nothing like the brother he needs to be.  

Lloyd doesn’t reply, but he’s doing that thing where he stares intently at him but pretends he isn’t again. Neon green glances that are painfully obvious in the dim light, all capped off by furrowed brows and aching concern. 

He tries, very hard, not to take the bright bursts of green he knows like the back of his hand and see the lurid pops of color across that place instead, the Guardian Dragon’s strained voice as she’d lit the unending grayness up with the only other color he’d seen besides his own. 

Gray and red and gray and red and gray and green. It’s all that lives in Kai’s head, in his nightmares, and he hates it. 

He hates the concern in Lloyd’s eyes a little more, though, so—

“Something crawl under your skin, bud?”

Bad, bad, bad choice of words. Kai’s stomach churns. 

Lloyd’s nose wrinkles. “No. Was just thinking—”

He cuts off, staring at the cooling tea left on the coffee table. For a moment, Kai fears he’ll ask — fears he’ll dig his fingers into the fragile mask Kai’s wearing and tear it open, exposing all the rotting, ugly core beneath to the world, leaving the rest of him to shatter into pieces of whatever Kai is supposed to be. 

“I don’t want to go back to sleep,” he finally says. 

“Oh.” Kai blinks. That’s — that isn’t good, really. The dark circles beneath Lloyd’s eyes are starting to look as if someone’s scored two lucky hits to his face, bruising purple and black and reminding him horribly of the days after the Oni invasion. Lloyd needs sleep so badly Kai wants to roll him up in his blanket and shove him in bed for a month.

But—

“Me neither,” he admits. 

“Wanna play video games?” Lloyd says. His mouth pulls into a wry grin. “If you crank the volume up loud enough, you can’t hear yourself think.” 

Thank FSM, Kai thinks. For Lloyd.

He doesn’t know what he’d do if he’d turned up and the monastery was empty. Doesn’t know if he’d survive, if the crippling worry and terror over his four missing people was over five instead. Nya is near-killing him as it is, a bleeding wound in his chest, a screaming in his head. If he’d come back to silence, with nothing to break up the gray and red in his eyes—

The blanket rustles as Lloyd shifts, knee bumping against Kai’s own as his head slumps against his shoulder.

“You pick the game, okay?”

Kai glances at Lloyd, concern pulling at his own brow. But he isn’t about to pull at any masks, either. 

He picks the little game Lloyd likes where you build a house on an island. The music isn’t quite loud enough to drown out his thoughts, but there isn’t a hint of gray in the game’s bright colors.  

~

It takes him three days of failed attempts at sleeping to crack.   

Gray and red swims in his vision as he stumbles through the damp sand of the Ninjago coast. Lloyd’s out on patrol, so Kai won’t worry him, if he’s fast about it. 

Gray and red and gray and red and gray and red.

The waves crash, louder now that he’s mere feet away, and fear chokes him so violently Kai thinks he really will be sick this time. 

Pathetic, screams through his brain. The Kai that was afraid of water died back in the tomb of the First Spinjitzu Master, where his fear almost got Lloyd killed. 

That Kai should have died, when his sister turned to seawater and he did nothing—

His knees ache as collapses, breathing raggedly. Anger pulls tight in his chest, fear and anger and fear and anger. Gray and red and gray and red. 

What use is he if he’s afraid? What use is he, if he’s always jumping at nightmares and screaming at the slightest flicker? What use is he, if his head’s always there and never here? 

Red and gray, gray and red. 

Through bleary eyes, Kai dares to look. 

In the waves before him, faces dance beneath the water, smiles that slip through his fingers.  

Nya, he thinks. 

Just a few steps. Just a few steps, is he really that afraid? A few steps, a little water, just to prove—

“Come back,” he croaks, as the current pulls against his legs. “I need you.”

He can’t stand it anymore. Can’t see the gray and red, can’t live in fear and anger like this — he’s better than this, he’s stronger, he’s— 

Bubbles erupt around him, gentle fizzles that brush against his numbing skin. He’d hated the water so much, when the sea took Nya. Hadn’t dared set foot in it, had yelled and shouted at any of the others if they got too close. 

How silly, his mind scolds. Nya was in the water all along. How could he fear it? How could he fear the path back to his sister? 

Sound comes muffled, quiet, watery echoes filling his ears. It’s weightless underwater, the heavy weight crushing down on his chest finally easing. There’s nothing to fear, down here. Nothing at all. 

Nya, I’m coming. 

The bubbles are thinning, far and fewer in-between. The swimming shadows before him grow fuzzy, splotchy patches of black eating away at his vision. His lungs ache again, howling dully at him.

I’m coming—

Hands fist in his collar, blazing hot and furious as Kai’s yanked up, up, breaking the water’s surface and wheezing through cramping lungs.

“—hell, Kai, breathe, c’mon, please—”

He responds in short, hacking coughs as what feels like half the Ninjago ocean pours out of his mouth. This is why he hates swimming. This is why he hates water. This is why he hates—

Pain erupts square in the middle of his shoulders as he’s struck bluntly, and the rest of the salty seawater is expelled from his suffering lungs. 

“If you make me give you mouth to mouth, I’ll kill you.”

Lloyd’s voice is as watery as the seawater Kai inhaled, trembling nearly as badly as his hands where they hold tightly to his shoulders. Guilt bursts in Kai’s chest, and he shakes his head.

“Cool.” Lloyd’s grip around his shoulders tightens, then Kai finds his head snapped back and forth once, twice, as Lloyd shakes him. “Then I’m gonna kill you.”

Even through his blurred vision, Kai can see just how pale Lloyd is, just how terrified his eyes are. 

He can also see just how incredibly pissed he is. 

Understandably so, Kai realizes, as the reality of what he just did starts to filter in. 

Oh, no. 

Oh, idiot. Idiot, idiot, idiot—

“I didn’t—” He coughs violently, throat stinging. “I didn’t mean — I was just—”

He sounds as pathetically desperate as he feels, voice nearly lost in the sound of crashing waves nearby. Lloyd is trembling, sand sticking to his hair and cheek, his lip an ugly purple where he’s bitten straight through it.  

He takes a long, shaky breath, as if bracing himself. It doesn’t seem to do much good, as he slumps over halfway through.  

“Please.” 

Kai’s chest constricts so painfully, he could be drowning again. Lloyd sounds broken, his voice horribly frail and desperate. 

“Please,” Lloyd repeats, dangerously close to a sob. “I don’t know — I don’t know how to help, if you don’t let me. I know you’re hurting, Kai, I know. Please, please, just — I know I’m bad at it and I know I’m — I know I’m not who you’d want, but—”

His voice cuts off strangled, as if Kai’s knocked the air from his lungs with the force he grabs him with. Pulls him close, clutching at his brother as if he can fix that awful brokenness just by holding tight enough. 

“Don’t say that,” he says fiercely, his voice finally steady. “You’re always who I want.”

Lloyd stiffens, shoulders painfully rigid — then collapses, fingers fisting in his soaking gi as he finally clutches back. 

“Then please,” he croaks miserably. “Let me try to help.”

 Kai’s throat constricts. That’s not his job — Lloyd doesn’t need to help him. Kai is here for him. He’s the — he’s supposed to be—

Lloyd pulls away, enough that he can meet Kai’s gaze. In the darkness, his eyes are gaping wounds in his head, the same anguished green stare the Guardian Dragon wore. 

“I can’t do this without you,” he rasps. “I won’t do it without you. I need you.”

 He swallows, brushing away the damp sand beneath his eye. “You mean the whole world to me. So please. Please, let me try.”

Kai’s breath comes out shuddering, leaving him to flounder. He swallows, choking it down. 

“I think I’m just. Just a little—”

The sob tears out of him as if it’ll rip him in half. 

He crumples over, fist stuffed over his mouth as if he can stop himself from overflowing — but Lloyd is there first, tugging his hand away before his teeth can bite down. Kai jerks away, prepared to run, to lash out, to flee, to hide from it all before it devours him whole—

Lloyd’s arms are open, but untouching. Every line in his posture screams hesitation, but he meets his gaze, eyes determined and utterly absent of pity.   

And Kai—

Kai is so tired.

He’s better. He’s better than this, he’s stronger, he’s— 

He’s finally found a face that isn’t running, that isn’t shimmering beneath the waters, that’s staying, and Kai is so, so tired.

Lloyd catches him before he collapses, arms wound tight around him as Kai wails into the soaked fabric of his gi, all the anger and loneliness and pain and despair, bleeding out of him in howling gasps as hot tears stick to his eyelashes and cheeks. 

“I’m sorry,” Lloyd’s murmuring, familiar and solid where he holds back every bit as tight as Kai’s clutching at him. “I’m sorry. It’s okay now. I’m sorry.”

It’s not fair.

“It’s okay. I’ve got you.”

He’s so tired, he’s so tired, he’s so tired—

“I’m here. I’ve got you.”

 Utterly and totally defeated, Kai lets himself trust that, then himself fall apart. 

~

“It used to be easier. Didn’t it?”

Kai winces as his voice ends on a cracking cough. It’s going to take a whole lot of microwaved tea to get the taste of the ocean out of his throat. 

“It sure feels like it,” Lloyd says. He drags his finger absently in the sand, drawing tiny squiggles. “I mean — it always feels worse when you’re in it, but…”

He lets out a heavy sigh. Kai stares at his hands. 

“We’ve always had each other,” Lloyd finally says. “Even at our worst — we’ve had someone, at least. So without them…”

Gray and red, gray and red. The crushing weight of silence and loneliness. Kai swallows. 

“We never really trained for that one.”

Lloyd shakes his head. “Not like this.”

“We’re not cut out for the solo life, are we.”  

“I guess we’d have to ask Zane,” Lloyd murmurs, then winces. 

It lies unspoken between them — regardless of how many years Zane survived on his own in the Neverrealm, the state he made it through in is…

Well, it doesn’t give Kai a whole lot of optimism. 

“Okay.” Lloyd shoves himself up, standing abruptly. He turns to Kai, eyes a bright green against the night sky. He holds a hand out. “Let’s go home?”

Kai stares at his hand. Behind him, the sound of the waves is almost deafening, the call of the water sliding down his spine like ice. 

He clutches at Lloyd’s hand, letting himself be pulled up alongside him.

“Probably a good idea, before you freeze. Sitting outside in soaked clothes is bad for you, y’know.”

“You — I wasn’t the one who took a midnight swim, dumbass.”

Kai opens his mouth, then closes. He’ll let Lloyd have that one. This time.   

~

Lloyd pulls the worn red blanket up over both their shoulders, tucking the edge beneath his hands like he used to do when he was smaller. 

Sandwiched between the wall and Lloyd, and Kai lets his own fingers curl around the blanket.  

“We lost them.”

Lloyd’s eyes close briefly. Tightly. 

“Yeah. For now.”

Kai bites his lip, copper staining his tongue. 

“It should’ve been me.”

Selfish, so selfish, after all this time. 

Lloyd squeezes his hand so tightly his bones ache. 

“I’m glad it wasn’t.”

It’s quiet, whispered, but it nearly knocks the breath from his lungs all the same. Kai blinks, straining to stare at Lloyd in the lack of light. 

The warped faces of his family stare back at him, shining and blissful and flawless in the stillness of the water. 

Lloyd stares at him, busted lip purpling and sand still stuck to the edges of his hair, mouth set in stubborn selfishness of his own. 

His eyes are bright green in the darkness, but it’s not the lurid shade that colored gray skies in bursts. It’s the softer color of training and late-nights and battles in familiar places. It’s the color of his brother, of a child spared from a different kind of monstrosity Kai left behind in the simmering fires of a temple long-lost. 

He can leave this behind, too. 

“Go to sleep,” Lloyd says. “I’ve got everything else. If anyone — anything — breaks in, I’ll take care of ‘em.”

 Kai should fight it. Should insist that he’s the one that’s got it. 

But he’s so, so tired. And if Lloyd says he’ll watch, then Kai trusts him to watch. 

Sleep takes him before he can even mumble a goodnight, the soft glow of green the last color burned into his eyes.