XoverA

“Ah, damn,” Sora mutters to herself. She pushes her arm further into her duffel bag, rummaging around for a familiar plastic bag. “Are you telling me I forgot it?”

Arin, half-asleep on the mat beside her, murmurs an incomprehensible response. She rolls her eyes and reaches a leg over to prod at his ribs. He grumbles and half-heartedly swats at her foot. “Leamme alone,” he groans, flipping over.

“Come on, dude,” she whines, “I don’t wanna be awake any more than you do.” He waves her away, pulling the blanket Lloyd gave them over his shoulders. She prods him harder, digging her socked foot straight into his ribs.

“Can’t this wait till tomorrow?” he whines, squirming away from her.

“I don’t have antiseptic wipes.”

Arin flops back onto his back, blearily opening a single eye. “Check my bag,” he yawns, “should have something in there.” Sora shoves into his ribs one more time just to be annoying, before rolling to her feet and padding over to Arin’s threadbare backpack set against the wall.

Sora’s careful with the heavily dented zipper, gently tugging it open. “Couldn’t you have, like, pretended to fold your stuff?” she asks over her shoulder, motioning towards the mound of wrinkled shirts absolutely packed into his backpack.

“I don’t know if you were aware,” he says exasperatedly, “but we were a little short on time.”

A random sheathed knife, rusted around the hilt, falls out of the bag as Sora pulls at some of the shirts, and she turns to raise an eyebrow at him. “Enough for your stupid dagger but not enough to fold your underwear.”

Arin grabs the pillow on her sleeping mat and chucks it at her. It lands barely past her mat anyways and Sora sticks out her tongue at him. “Will you just find your stupid wipes and stop making fun of me,” he groans, flopping back and throwing an arm over his eyes.

Sora hums, pretending to think on it. “Nah,” she decides, pulling more shirts from the bag. “You should do laundry to, don’t want your big fancy ninja master thinking you smell.”

“I don’t smell!” he protests. Sora just shrugs and Arin gasps, offended. “I do not!”

“I don’t know, A,” she says passively, finding his pitiful bag of toiletries and sifting through it. “Don’t think I can’t tell when you forget your deodorant.” She sticks her hand in, rummaging around in it.

“You are so mean to me.” Sora peeks over her shoulder, catching eyes with Arin and tilting her head slightly, a silent question. Exhausted as he is, he still grins at her and she smiles back. “Worst best friend ever.”

“Please, you’re lucky you have me,” she cuts back. Her hand buried deep inside his toiletries grabs around, but she doesn’t feel the telltale slick plastic of her antiseptic bag. She frowns and looks inside the bag, tilting it this way and that. Nothing catches her eye and a knot starts forming in her chest.

“What’s up?” Arin asks, sounding startlingly more awake.

“Nothing, I just can’t find…” she trails off, shaking the contents out onto the floor. Travel size soaps spill out but not her baggie of antiseptic wipes. In the corner of her eye, she sees Arin sit up.

“It’s not there?” he asks. “You sure?”

Sora sweeps everything back into the bag, zipping it back up. “If it is, I don’t see it,” she says, giving up and tossing all of Arin’s things back into his backpack with a grunt. They both usually have back-ups upon back-ups of all her stupid supplies.

“Do you want help checking your bag again?” Sora kneels by her duffel bag, half-heatedly picking through the top layer of clothes, but she knows nothing will be there if she checks.

“I don’t know what there is to check,” she mutters frustratedly, “I looked through everything.”

“Even your syringe case?”

“First place I checked.”

Arin hrms softly, folding his legs underneath him. “Soap?”

Sora shakes her head. “Not sterile enough,” she mourns, worrying her lip between her teeth. Arin frowns and leans back on his hands.

“…we could ask Lloyd?”

Sora stares at him.  “You mean the guy we just met like…two days ago?”

Arin shrugs sheepishly. “I mean- what’s the harm?” he asks. “We don’t have to tell him why we need them.”

Sora chews on the inside of her cheek, swaying from side to side. “I don’t know, A, we don’t know him that well,” she says quietly. “What if- like-”

Arin makes a face. “You don’t think he’s like- a shitty person, do you?”

Sora sighs, flopping back onto her sleeping mat. “I didn’t wanna bring it up,” she says apologetically, “but you just never know.”

Arin lays down on his mat, curling on his side to face her. He reaches out an arm, leaving his hand in the space between them. “If it helps, I don’t think he’s like that,” he says softly. “I’ve done so much research on this guy, I’m sure I’d have heard if he was like- a cop or something.”

Sora rolls onto her side and grips Arin’s hand within her own. “Anyone can be a cop or something,” she says mimicking his tone of voice. Arin rolls her eyes but Sora’s voice remains serious. “Dude, I’m not joking it’s like- there’s tons of people you can think you know and look up to you and- and you just don’t. You don’t know what they’re like.” LaRue flashes through Sora’s eyes, images of dragons linked up to hundreds of wires and screaming in pain, and she closes her eyes shut, trying to get rid of the vision.

Arin doesn’t say anything, which- he doesn’t agree with her, and that’s fine. The hero worship is a little cute. But with the tenuous peace she’s managed to build since the Merge, she doesn’t need anything being put at risk. Their whole routine in the Crosswords got torn out from under them in a matter of hours. She misses their shared mattress, as worn through as it was. She misses rummaging through the junk yard and bargaining at the markets. She misses slow mornings and figuring out how to spend their days together. Arin misses everything from before the Merge and she’s starting to get it – if what he had was anything like what she gained after everything fractured. It’s slowly slipping through her fingers and she doesn’t wanna lose her identity in the process, just because Arin is putting a little too much faith in the Green Ninja being an actual hero.

Arin continues not to speak, but he rubs his thumb over her skin gently. Her shoulders relax and she squeezes back in response.

But maybe she hasn’t lost anything. She trusts Arin, and she trusts that he won’t let her lose this part of herself for the sake of being a ninja.

“What are you gonna do now?” he asks softly, “without the antiseptic?”

Sora shrugs, not opening her eyes. The reality of it makes her throat close uncomfortably, but she swallows past it. “Skipping a dose won’t kill me.” It won’t, she tells herself again, because truly, she went so many years without the estradiol and the clinician who gave her the stockpile said that as long as she was consistent enough, it would be fine, but….

Arin’s grip on her hand tightens uncomfortably but she must make a face because he loosens it almost instantly. “Sorry,” he whispers.

She means to respond, but the mat beneath her is surprisingly comfortable and the blanket gives a soft cushion. The warmth of Arin’s hand and the rhythmic motion of his thumb gives her some comfort in the strange place they’ve ended up in. The creaking of the old monastery around her is like a lullaby, lulling her into a doze. Her brain has already started floating away from her and she can tell she’s gonna hate waking up when-

“Found some!” a voice exclaims and she bolts awake, her chest heaving.

“Was goin’ on, is it Beatrix?” Her head’s on a swivel to take in the room as she stumbles to her unsteady feet. Arin’s no longer laying on the mat next to her, but is instead at the doorway. He’s holding up something in his hand and Sora’s eyes struggle to focus on it. “What’s going on?” she asks again, more forcefully.

“I found some antiseptic!” he calls excitedly, shaking a packet of antiseptic wipes at her. Sora gaps at him.

“Did you ask Lloyd?” she seethes, stalking over and ripping the packet out of his hands. “Arin, I told you I didn’t want him to know.” Arin’s jaw drops and he looks startlingly hurt.

“Sora, I wouldn’t,” he insists and the guilt hits Sora immediately

“Sorry-” she shakes her head vigorously, “I just- if you didn’t ask Lloyd, how’d you get these?” The hurt slides off Arin’s face easily and he grins maniacally.

“Using my sweet ninja skills, obviously,” he boasts, posing dramatically and karate-chopping the air. Sora stares at the large packet of antiseptic wipes in her hands.

“Did you steal these from Lloyd?” she hisses. Arin rolls his eyes, crossing his arms.

“It’s not stealing, Sora, they were just underneath the sink in the bathroom.” Sora looks at her best friend and something on her face must spook him into seriousness because his voice softens into something more sincere. “They were in some first aid kit, Sor,” he promises, dropping his arms and reaching a hand out to squeeze at her bicep. “We can just say that we had some scrapes and wanted to clean them up.”

“I told you I could skip a dose,” she tries to insist, still clutching at the packet.

Arin shakes his head before she finishes speaking. “No,” he says firmly. “You gave up everything we had in the Crossroads to help me with this and I’m not making you give up your shots either.”

Sora’s eyes burn with tears and she ducks her head away from Arin, trying to hide it. “Aw, you big softie,” she says, well-aware that her voice, thick with affection, gives her away. Arin, with all the love in his heart, doesn’t call her out on it, just swinging an arm over her shoulder and steering her back towards the mats with a smile.

-

Sora wakes up before Arin the next morning.

This is normal for them, doubly so because of Arin’s late night excursion throughout the monastery last night looking for those stupid antiseptic wipes. Her case, filled with her vials of estradiol and clean needles, sits next to her duffel bag and the first thing she does when she wakes is stuff it back into her bag, zipping it neatly away.  They went through enough trouble of not letting Lloyd know that anything was different about Sora last night, and she wasn’t about to let a small bit of sleepy carelessness ruin it for them.

She pads out of the room, pulling her sweater tight around her, and wanders down a couple hallways. She’s not sure what she’s looking for, her goal more to do with exploring than trying to reach a certain destination. The walls are decorated with several pictures, each one filled with smiling faces and gis of several different colors, not just green. What catches her eye specifically is the one at the end of a dusty hall, seemingly long abandoned. It’s the faded photo of a young man cooing down at the face of a small baby in his arms, the glass protecting the photo cracked around the edges. Sora reaches out and runs her fingers along the cracks. Maybe she could find a new pane, fix it up.

“That’s my father,” a voice pipes up behind her. Sora jumps and whirls around. Lloyd is standing at her shoulder, his posture straight and feet positioned shoulder-width apart. It stands in stark contrast to his blond hair sticking straight up into the air and a soft fluffy robe slipping down one shoulder, revealing Titanium Ninja themed pajamas. He’s staring intently and Sora follows his gaze back to the photo.

“Is that you in the photo?” Sora asks cautiously.

“Yup. Cute kid, right?” he asks wryly, almost as if there’s a joke there that she doesn’t quite understand. She doesn’t know what to say. They stare for a while.  

A pregnant pause lapses between them before Lloyd exhales softly and settles a hand on Sora’s shoulder, motioning down the hall. “What do you say about breakfast?” he asks. Sora brightens up at that and he laughs. “Yeah, I thought so.”

They go through enough different hallways and corners and rooms that Sora gets dizzy trying to keep track of it all. On top of that, Lloyd speeds through the monastery as if he knows the whole thing like the back of his hand. It doesn’t matter how long you’ve lived in a place, Sora thinks to herself, there’s no way he actually knows where he’s going.

(The fact that it’s been five minutes and they still haven’t made it to anything resembling a kitchen only confirms this for Sora but she’s not gonna say anything to the guy letting her crash in his house.)

Pushing open a sliding door, Lloyd makes a soft “aha!” sound and Sora peeks around him to see a large kitchen with a low dining table on the other side of a breakfast counter. “I always get turned around in this place,” he muses, stepping into the kitchen and beelining for a large coffee maker on the counter.

Sora scrunches her face. She didn’t think she’d get proven right that fast. “Thought all the ninja lived here? How do you get lost?”

Lloyd shrugged. “I spent most of the last five years in and out of the Bounty and some random apartments.” He opens up a cabinet, reaching up onto his tiptoes to try and grab a mug a couple shelves up. He scowls and Sora tries not to laugh. “Damnit, Cole,” he mutters under his breath, when he finally snags the handles of a couple mugs.

“Is Cole one of the other ninjas?” she asks innocently, pulling herself onto a high-top situated at the breakfast bar. “Arin’s told me everyone’s names before, but I can never keep it all straight.”

Lloyd’s hands startle as he pours coffee grounds into the filter, missing the machine and spilling grounds onto the counter. He curses again. “Uh- yeah, Cole’s my older brother. Black ninja,” he says distractedly, reaching for a stray rag and sweeping the grounds into his hands. Sora notes his knuckles going white where he’s clutching the rag. “He went missing in the Merge,” Lloyd explains quietly, shaking the rag off into the sink.

Sora nods awkwardly, clicking her tongue. Grief over missing family from the Merge wasn’t exactly something she could relate to. “Got it,” she says, mostly to fill the silence.

They both stare at the coffee machine as it drips bit by bit into the coffee pot. Without Arin around, they don’t- really have much to say to each other. Sora doesn’t even know anything about the ninja, it’s just- Imperium didn’t have anything like them and when she came through the Merge, they were all long gone. Three days ago, as far as she knew, the ninja were some mass hallucination the collective of Ninjagans came up with to deal with trauma and she definitely wasn’t in a place to judge anyone what they did out of trauma so she kept her mouth shut.

Sora snaps out of her train of thought when Lloyd slides her a mug filled to the brim with coffee. She looks up at him, confused, but he is thoroughly distracted by inhaling his own mug. He tilts it back further and further with no break for air until it’s at least three-quarters empty. Only then does he straighten up, blinking blearily as the caffeine hits his system and wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his housecoat. They stare at each other for a second.

“Oh-” he says, placing his mug on the counter, “sorry, I forgot to ask if you prefer yours with creamer.”

“I don’t drink coffee,” she replies awkwardly. “Don’t super love the taste.”

Lloyd blinks at her. “How old are you again?”

“Fifteen.”

Lloyd goes pale, swiping her mug away from her as if she was about to snatch it and run away like a thief. “First Master, you’re like a baby, I should not have given you that.”

Sora puffs out her cheeks and crosses her arms. “I am not a baby, I’ve been living my own for like two years!”

Lloyd snorts, pouring the coffee in her mug into his own and taking another giant swing. “Please, I was on the streets age seven. Two years on your own is nothing.”

Sora startles. “Age seven? Jeez, where were your parents?”

Lloyd’s hand jerks mid-sip and coffee spills down his front. Sora lunges forward, as if she can stop the liquid in its tracks, but Lloyd is already tugging off his housecoat before the coffee can seep onto his sleep clothes. He pulls it in front of him, hissing in annoyance at the stain and scrubbing at it fruitlessly with the palm of his hand. Sora shrinks back, grimacing sympathetically. “Sorry,” she says.

Lloyd waves her off, sighing heavily when the stain doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. “I’m not the best in the mornings, it’s not your fault,” he responds, shooting her a tired smile.

“Aren’t ninja supposed to be- like- really alert all the time?” Sora wonders aloud and Lloyd laughs, tossing his housecoat across the counter to be dealt with later.

“I’m a really bad ninja,” Lloyd muses, wrapping his hands around his mug. “Get the drop on me and I’ll shriek like a little kid.” He gives a slight pause. “My brothers are worse though. ‘specially Kai.”

Sora wrinkles her nose. “That doesn’t sound right. Arin’s always telling me about how ninjas are stealth masters. They’re supposed to know what’s going on around them all the time.”

Lloyd hums and takes a delicate sip of coffee. “Being aware is important,” he admits, “but ninja aren’t some other species. We’re just people trying our best.” He tilts his head towards the discarded housecoat. “And some people are jumpy, like me.”

Sora gives a soft huh. The room falls silent as Lloyd nurses his second cup of coffee. She kicks her legs half-heartedly and props her chin up on her hand as she takes a look around the room. There’s a pink apron hanging on a hook near the fridge and Sora wonders who it might belong to.

Lloyd breaks the silence first. “You guys were up late last night.”

Sora remembers Arin bursting into the room, waving around her new antiseptic wipes, and the stern, hushed conversation they held at the doorway and her shoulders tense. “Yep,” she replies tersely, nervously pulling the sleeves of her sweater over her hands.

“Everything good?”

Sora tries for a smile. She’s not sure she’s succeeding. Her heart pounds in her throat and Sora really hopes that whatever Lloyd was saying about ninja not being aware one hundred percent of the time is still true. “Everything’s great, we were just- y’know, talking about the day. It’s uh…It’s been a lot.”

Lloyd cocks an eyebrow, but his eyes hold something close to understanding. “Did you guys have everything you needed?”

Again, Sora’s mind flashes to her case filled with vials of estradiol but void of any antiseptic wipes. She nods quickly. “Yep,” she manages to squeak out. “The- blankets and everything were great.”

“Any medical supplies you need?”

If Sora had been sipping on coffee, she might have been the one dumping it all over herself this time. “Nope,” she says, overly-cheerful. Lloyd stares at her for a beat too long and she chuckles nervously. “I, uh- might go check on Arin though. Not- not because he needs to checked-in on, just- doing a nice friendly thing, yep, okay, bye, I’m leaving now.” She slips out of her chair and dashes out of the kitchen. She scowls, smacking the side of her head as soon as she’s out of sight and speed-walking down some hallway she doesn’t find familiar with.

Idiot, now he’ll definitely be suspicious.

-

“Arin,” Lloyd’s voice calls out from the doorway into the monastery. Arin looks up from the sandbag he’s been practicing on, steadying it with his hands so that it doesn’t swing right into his face.

“Yeah?”

Lloyd motions for him to follow and then slips into the monastery without a further word. Arin looks questioningly at Sora balancing along one of the beams on the other side of the courtyard. She just shrugs at him. Shrugging back, he grabs his nearby towel and wipes the sweat off his forehead and back of his neck before jogging into the monastery.

Master Lloyd’s in the main meditation room, the one he insists they start their days off in, sitting on the floor by a low table. He’s seemingly deep in thought, staring off into the distance, but he notices Arin fairly quick and gestures for him to sit down. Arin quickly takes his usual position on one of the two pillows in the center of the room on the other side of the table. “You wanted to see me?” Arin asks, his voice small.

“I talked with Sora a couple days ago,” Lloyd starts, his voice stern. His back is straight, his shoulders pulled back with a precision and confidence that Arin both envies and is terrified of. Even his gaze is troubled, seeing something Arin just can’t quite grasp. “And I got the feeling there was something you both aren’t telling me.”

Arin gulps, thinking of the case of syringes buried deep in Sora’s bag. She would have said something if she thought Lloyd suspected anything and he certainly wasn’t gonna out her to anyone she hadn’t been explicitly okay with knowing. That wasn’t his information to tell, so- “No, sir, there’s nothing.”

Lloyd looks at him, unblinking. “Are you sure?”

Arin tries to keep eye contact, but the sparks of green always bouncing around Master Lloyd’s pupils overwhelm him and he has to look away. “Promise.”

A beat passes. Then two. And Arin is sure they’ve been found out and oh First Master, what if Sora was right, what if the ninja are just some- some assholes, and they kick Sora out? He would go with her, obviously, but where would they go now? Could they restart again?

Lloyd sighs heavily, sounding- relieved, and Arin looks up. Lloyd’s shoulders have lost some tension and he’s laughing to himself. “Man, I was worried for a second,” Lloyd huffs, tugging at the collar of his gi.

Arin blinks rapidly. “I- what?” he asks, confused. “Worried about what?”

Lloyd reaches up, tugging on a stray curl that’s escaped his headband. “I noticed one of the first aid kits had some stuff missing and it just reminded-” he cuts himself, sighing slightly frustrated. Arin isn’t sure if it’s aimed at him or not. Lloyd takes a second, obviously chewing over the right choice of words. “Me and my siblings are always off- trying to be stupid and sacrificial,” he settles on. “I don’t want that for you and Sora.”

Arin tilts his head to the side, clarity dawning. “Like- like you thought we were hiding being injured?” he asks, baffled. “Why would we do that?”

Lloyd gives him a long look that Arin can’t decipher. “I almost don’t want to tell you because I’m scared you’re gonna think it’s a great idea,” he says humorously.

Arin makes a pssh sound, waving his master off. “Nah, I wouldn’t do that. And Sora wouldn’t either,” he rushes to add. “So you definitely don’t have to worry about that.”

Lloyd smiles, small pointed fangs peaking out and poking into his bottom lip. Arin had never noticed them before. “You got it, kid. You can go back and join Sora, I’ll be out in a second.”

Arin nods eagerly, scrambling to his feet and rushing out of the room to rejoin his friend.

What he doesn’t see is a troubled expression settling on Lloyd’s face and his shoulders pulling tight. In his lap is a half-empty first aid kit, missing an entire case of antiseptic wipes but – inexplicably, nothing else.

-

It’s a close one. It’s too close. In fact, Sora’s inclined to think it’s not close at all because Lloyd is bleeding and Arin is one stray shot from spiraling straight into panic attack territory and to be honest, with her master on her back and his blood soaking into her white gi and sticking to her skin and her best friend barely holding off the attackers as it is, she’s pretty close to one herself.

Kai and Nya are supposed to be here somewhere, with Wyldfyre in tow and the backup would be incredible right about now but they’d split up for a reason. A reason Sora is sure sounded very good up until three minutes ago when Ras reared the corner and warriors started descending on them with ferocity.

Skidding around a corner and taking off as fast as she can, she can only think that thank the Master that Cinder isn’t here because she’d just give it all up right then.

Lloyd is panting heavily in her ear, grunting every harsh movement she makes (which is most of them) and desperately trying to direct her out of the building. In one terrifying moment, his body goes slack and his head lolls, knocking hard into her temple which wakes him back up. His blood seeps down further and further, dripping down into Sora’s hands and forcing her to readjust her grip on Lloyd’s legs. She hikes him further up her back and he inhales sharply. “Sorry, sorry, sorry,” she whispers fervently, “sorry, I’m going as fast as I can,” she promises.

“It’s-” he hisses as she stumbles, her elbow driving directly into his side. “You’re doing great, Sor,” he grits out. “Just focus, you’re doing great.”

“Kai!” she hears Arin’s exhausted voice exclaim before the familiar heat of twin flames brushes past her and an unprepared Shatterspin warrior screams behind them. Still running as quickly as she can down the hall, she tries to crane her neck to the side. Kai is flanking her on one side, Nya close behind him. When Sora checks the other side, Arin has caught up to her and she can only guess that Wyldfyre is watching her back.

“What happened?” Kai demands, shouting over the din of the warriors running behind them.

“I don’t know!” Sora gasps raggedly, barely able to breathe. “He just- got hit, and then I started running!”

“I’m fine, Kai,” Lloyd tries to reassure from behind her, but one glance at Kai tells Sora that the older ninja does not believe either of them at all.

“Your guts are spilling-” Kai tries to protest, but one of the warriors have caught up to them and launched themself at Kai’s legs. He leaps forward and tries to dodge, but Sora watches them just barely catch onto Kai’s foot and he can’t get his feet under him quite fast enough to avoid the next attack. She hears Nya skid to a stop beside her brother and yells at the rest of them to “move, move, move!” while she provides cover.

Another corner, another long as fuck hallway, more blood sticking to her skin, and Lloyd’s breath gets shallower and shallower in her ear, and-

“Tincan!” Wyldfyre roars, “we need some help over here!”

Sora looks up and the Bounty is overhead, with Zane at the helm. A ladder is sent hurtling down and Sora has to brace her knees and slide out of the way to avoid her and Lloyd getting conked over the head by it. Lloyd groans lowly and Sora’s legs shake under their combined weight as she forces herself to stand up straight again.

“My apologies!” Zane calls down, before launching himself from the Bounty and straight into a Spinjitzu turn to land fluidly into a gaggle of warriors descending on Nya.

Arin slides past her, grabbing onto the spinning ladder and stabilizing it, before turning and motioning rapidly to her. “Hurry!” he yells. Sora moves as fast as she can (not very), digging her hands tighter into Lloyd’s upper legs, trying to keep purchase. Getting to the base of the ladder, she cranes her head up and then looks wide-eyed at Arin.

“I don’t think I can climb all the way with Lloyd,” she says, her voice tight with panic. “I’m- I’m not strong enough.”

“Hand him over,” a voice behind her demands and she turns her neck to find Kai boasting the nastiest bruise on his right cheekbone. “Keep right behind me because it’s gonna be all hands on deck to keep him together once we get up there.”

Sora nods fervently, and then turns her head so it’s closer to Lloyd’s ear. “Didya hear that, Master? You’re gonna be just fine, we’re gonna make sure of it.”

He chuckles, breathily and pitched, and clumsily pats her shoulder, his hand slick with his own blood. “Never doubted you for a moment, kid,” he wheezes.

Kai doesn’t give them another second, reaching out for his younger brother and Sora braces her knees again, leaning forward to make the pass as smooth as possible. It’s impossible to not strain Lloyd’s wound, evident by how he gasps raggedly as Kai pulls him off Sora’s back and into a firemen’s carry, and Sora’s chest clenches. Zane and Nya and Wyldfyre are holding the rest at bay, but their disorganization and lack of practice as a team is evident. Sora can see the condensation from where Wyldfyre’s flame has decimated Zane’s strategically placed ice walls. They won’t be able to keep this up for long.

Kai’s already three rungs up, clutching Lloyd’s body tightly and using his chin to stabilize him as he reaches for the next rung up. “Sora!” he shouts, “hurry!”

Arin holds the ladder steady as she jumps for the rung right beneath Kai’s feet and keeps up step by step as they scale the length of the ladder. Kai makes it over the edge of the Bounty’s deck and Sora’s close behind. Laying Lloyd flat on the main deck, Kai doesn’t even turn to Sora before he’s barking, “Med kit! Now!” at her.

Sora dashes off, racing down the tight hallways to the cramped bathroom, where she nearly rips the blamed cabinets off their hinges trying to get to underneath the sink. The bright red box sits neatly right where it’s supposed to be and Sora can barely send thanks to the First Master for at least one thing going right before she’s booking it back down the hallway and onto the deck.

She’s running across the deck and skids the rest of the way to Lloyd’s side on her knees, opening the med kit as fast as she can. Lloyd’s gi has been ripped open, clearly done by someone’s hands rather than scissors, and part of it has been reconstituted as a makeshift gauze to be pressed into his wound. He’s clearly trying not to writhe on the ground and Sora realizes belatedly that the only reason he’s likely not screaming is because of years of practice. “Antiseptic, thread, needles,” Kai rattles off, straightening his arms and pressing straight down to keep pressure on the wound. His hands are steady, she notices, and his lips set into a thin, tight line, but his eyes are wide and terrified.  

Sora digs into the box, pulling out the proper suture material she’d just gone over with Arin two nights ago and grabs a spare cloth in the med kit to set them out neatly where they’ll be the most accessible to Kai. She goes back into the box for the antiseptic and it’s-

There is none.

“Sora, what is taking so long,” Kai grits out, his jaw clenching. Lloyd reaches up to tug as harshly as he can on Kai’s sleeve.

“Be nice,” he rasps.

“I’ll be nice when you’re not dying,” he bites back. “Sora!”

“There is none!” she says, her voice wild and pitched. “It’s not in here!”

“What do you mean, that was grabbed right out of the monastery, there’s no way it wasn’t stocked-”

Sora stares at Kai, horror dawning on her. “Where was it taken from?”

“The monastery, I said already!”

“No, but where?”

Kai groans, frustrated, but answers, “I don’t fucking know, the bathroom by your room!”

The pit in Sora’s stomach widens and for a second, she sees double. “No, no- fuck,” she hisses under her breath, scrabbling back up onto her feet and racing off. Kai yells after her but she’s got a one-track mind. She slides down the same hallways but takes a different turn, ending up in the bunk bed room. Her duffel bag is shoved into the corner beside Arin’s backpack and she rips the zipper open, not worrying if it breaks. Not willing to spend a second waiting, she grips the bag by its bottom and topples the whole thing over, everything spilling out onto the floor.

Sora spreads it all out into a thin layer, scanning each item frantically before her eye catches on the hot pink thick case with a bright trans pride flag delicately embroidered onto the front – a gift from Arin when she’d gotten on estradiol for the first time.

There isn’t time to open the case and hide it again so she just grabs it and is off back to the deck again.

When she’s back, there’s a crowd she has to barrel through. Arin is pacing nervously around the edges, unable to get close enough. Nya is holding back Wyldfyre, who’s desperate to both see the gore and launch herself off the boat down towards Ras and his men. Zane is by Kai’s side and she hears mention of cauterization and unsterilized sutures as she blindly fumbles at the zipper of her case, yanking at it and stumbling to Lloyd’s side.

Syringes and needles spill out, rendered unusable, and it’s only due to how carefully she has secured her vials inside that they don’t pop out and shatter onto the planks beneath them. Travel-size packages and bottles of antiseptic rattle around beside the vials and she yanks them out, tossing them across Lloyd’s body to Zane, who grabs them without even looking at her.

In a second, the bottle is broken open and spilled across the slice across Lloyd’s abdomen. It dislodges some of the dried blood on his skin, revealing how it travels further up his chest. “Get the rest of his gi off,” Kai orders in Sora’s direction and without thinking, she’s on it. She grabs the edge of the torn cloth and murmurs a quick apology before yanking it upwards as much as she can. Lloyd shouts in pain and she resists the urge to shut her eyes to avoid the sight. She tugs it up, over, and off his head and arms, leaving his upper body clear of anything and easily accessible for Kai to start threading sturdy sutures through his skin. Sora’s eyes catch the edge of wound, still steadily pumping blood, and she follows it up. It crosses against several different other scars, caused by many different other weapons. There’s healed burns, other deep cuts, several small scraps that have only scarred due to poor care, and-

Lloyd breathes sharply once, twice, before his head lolls to the side and it all spirals beyond Sora’s control. The wound’s been sutured, but the blood loss is immense, she hears. Zane and Kai grab him by the shoulders and legs and carry him off to the med bay. Sora’s left on the deck, sitting in a pool of blood, covered in it, surrounded by her freshly purchased needles scattered across the deck. Arin’s a few feet away from her, his eyes wide and shiny. He’s got a thin cut on his arm and a bruise on his jaw, but otherwise he’s unharmed.

Instinctually, they reach towards each other and Arin rushes to her as she leans forward, collapsing into each other. Arin’s chest is heaving, that panic attack having finally caught up to him, and tears drip down from his face into her hair. Sora feels like she should be crying, her top ten worst nightmares are all rolling into one, but all she can do is bury her face into Arin’s gi and hold him as tight as she can.

-

The only reason why Sora sticks around is because Arin catches her by the wrist mid-escape with tears brimming in his wide, terrified brown eyes and she didn’t have the stomach to pull away.

The urge to make a break for it doesn’t leave. They all know now – Lloyd, Zane, Kai, and Nya – and she’s never enjoyed waiting for the other shoe to drop. Arin must feels this, she knows he does, because he keeps a cold, clammy grip around her wrist through each night to make sure she doesn’t try and disappear again. She doesn’t call him out on his lack of trust in her – she doesn’t have much trust in herself either these days.

Arin, for as difficult as it must be for him, doesn’t make her talk about it. He wants to, she knows that much. He lets her beg out of group dinners with the pitiful excuse that she doesn’t feel well, but he frowns deeply every time when he thinks she’s not paying attention. Even when she still forces herself to go to training every morning, Arin notices the distance she keeps between herself and Lloyd with a worried crease in his forehead. Sora desperately wants to reach over and dig her fingers into his side to chase the concern away but it’s all fake – the reality sets in regardless of how well she tries to hide it.

Sora doesn’t let Arin help her with her shots anymore. Doing it alone in the middle of the night on the floor of the cold bathroom tile isn’t- it isn’t preferred, but she has to keep herself safe and if it takes ignoring Arin’s mournful gaze as she sneaks out of the room with her shot kit clutched to her chest, then- so be it.

If Arin’s poorly disguised attempts at not making her uncomfortable counts as “not making her talk about it,” then the ninja are like- pretending it never even happened. She can’t wrap her mind around it.

Lloyd doesn’t keep his distance – if anything, since she carried him bloody and stabbed back to the Bounty, it feels like he’s broken through some invisible barrier that had been holding him back the whole time. It baffles her. He’s always resting a gentle hand on her shoulder, even as she continuously shrugs it off. He beams at her every time she hits a little higher and a little harder. Every early morning after a skipped meal, he brushes past her softly, with an affectionate “missed you last night.”

Nya is pleasant as always, elbowing her gently and riffing about “girl power,” leaving Sora’s head spinning. It’s kind, as Nya has always been since her and Arin became Lloyd’s students, but surely Nya knows, right?

Zane is politely distant (like normal). Kai is impolitely distant (again, like normal) (except-) (except he had stopped Sora one night before bed, one of the few times she’d joined everyone for dinner, mostly to keep up appearances) (and for one, terrifyingly genuine moment, he looked her in the eyes and thanked her for helping save Lloyd’s life.) (She didn’t know what to make of it.) (There was no mention of her vials, of her having stolen the antiseptic, the few precious seconds that might have spelled the end of her master’s life.) (Just pure- gratitude.) (It made her feel sick.)

She’s not the kind of person to wait for the other foot to drop. Her time in Imperium, her departure in Imperium, makes that evident.

Sora doesn’t wanna stick around. Sora doesn’t want to see what this all turns into. Her time here was good but it’s obviously coming to an end and she might as well book it before it blows up in her face.

She throws another volley of punches into the weighted sand bag with a grunt, trying to chase away the train of thought. She’s desperate to blow off some steam before she explodes.

Arin’s on the other side of the courtyard with Lloyd, probably working on his Spinjitzu. She’s been relegated to grunt work – a series of repetitive exercises and katas she’s convinced Lloyd has created just to pass the time while he tries to come up with something better to do. She lands another punch solidly in the middle of the bag, her wrist bent slightly the wrong away, and a twinge runs all the way up her arm to her shoulder. “Damnit,” she mutters under her breath, shaking her hand out before changing a different position to move on to high kicks and give her hands a break.

Sora crouches, one foot in front, one foot behind, with her arms bent loosely in front of her. She breathes in and on the exhale, she sweeps her back leg to the side and then forward into the air, pushing the rest of her weight onto her other foot. Her leg swings solidly into the sand bag with a thump, and she pulls back, settling back into the starting position.

She can do better.

Inhale, exhale, kick, push, thump. Again. Inhale, exhale, kick, push, thump. Again. Inhale, exhale, kick, push, thump.  Again. Inhale, exhale, kick, push, thump-

“Sora!” Lloyd calls out from where he’s supervising Arin. “Try kicking higher, see if you can challenge yourself!”

Sora squeezes her eyes shut, chewing back the urge to snap something rude in her master’s direction. She clenches her fists, holding her breath as she kicks again. The impact is weak and she scowls. Shaking her hands out and bouncing back and forth on the balls of her feet, she inhales deeply. She bounces forward and lets the momentum pushes her front foot directly into the ground and lifts the other foot off the ground. Engaging the muscles in her abdomen and calf to keep her leg straight, she pivots hard, pitching her leg directly into the side of the sand bag with as much force as she can muster.

The impact reverberates from the base of her shin where the contact was made all the way up to her hip in a satisfying whack! Careful to keep her balance, she swings her leg back down behind her, breathing hard.

Cheering erupts behind her. She pops back up, turning behind her to see Arin clapping and whistling. Wiping the sweat off her forehead with the back of her hand, she smiles widely at him before she falters, catching Lloyd’s gaze from where he’s standing right behind her best friend. He’s grinning proudly at her, clapping quietly himself with a gleam in his eyes.

Sora’s smile drops and she turns away from Lloyd, faking a cough to cover it up. The clapping slows awkwardly and she can almost hear Arin’s confused glance in her direction.

She half-heartedly punches at the sand bag, pretending like she’s focusing back on her repetitions, but her heart’s not in it anymore. There’s some muffled whispering, but she can’t quite hear it and she grits her teeth and throws another hit, this time a little harder.

Out of the corner of her eye, she sees Arin walking back into the monastery. He throws her a concerned look over his shoulder, but he quickly disappears out of sight. It’s just her and Lloyd in the courtyard. She throws another hit, her shoulder too tight and her wrist crooked. It hurts.

“Sora.”

Another punch, the other arm this side. A little better, but it’s obviously her weak side. There’s no power behind it.

“Sora.”

She hits a quick one-two in quick succession, having to steady the sand bag when it swings away with the impact and then directly into her.

“Sora!”

Sora’s hands clench into the taut fabric. “What?” she barks, keeping her eyes trained firmly on the ground.

“Are you okay?” his voice comes out quiet and concerned.

She scowls. “ ’m fine,” she mutters. “Didn’t sleep well.”

“Then you haven’t been sleeping well for a while,” he says, not unkindly.

Sora scuffs her foot against the packed dirt floor. “What do you care?”

Lloyd is quiet for a second. “You’re my student, Sora, and I’d like to think we’ve become friends. I’m worried about you.”

Sora’s eyes burn and she shoves at the punching bag, whirling around at him.

“Friends?” she bites out, shoving a finger in his direction. Lloyd’s eyes go wide and he takes a step back out of caution. “Friends don’t- don’t make me guess. Friends don’t ignore what’s been going on, they don’t keep me on the edge as to when you’re gonna finally make up your mind!” she yells, tears bubbling up in her eyes and spilling over.

Lloyd’s shock turns rapidly into alarm and he reaches for her. She smacks his hand away before it even gets near her and turns away, wrapping her arms tightly around her. He frowns, looking more upset at himself than at her. This is what she means, she doesn’t get it- why won’t he just get mad at her- “What do you mean, Sora? What do I need to make up my mind about?”

“About when you’re gonna kick me out,” she grits out. “Like LaRoe did, like my parents did.”

“Why, in the name of the First Master, would I do that?” he sounds baffled and hurt and- slightly panicked.

“You’re really gonna make me say it?” she scoffs, rolling her eyes. She wipes harshly at her face, pushing the tears away.

Lloyd steps closer, a hand reaching for her shoulder. “I wouldn’t make you if I knew what was going on,” he explains softly. “It’s very clearly making you upset and I’m sorry, but I can’t fix anything unless you tell me.”

Sora sniffs pathetically, her hands digging into the muscle of her upper arms. “ ‘s ‘cause I’m not a girl, isn’t it?”

“…what?”

Sora frowns, glancing up at Lloyd. “What, like you didn’t know?” Lloyd’s still staring at down at her with wide eyes. Her shoulders hike up to her ears. “The- the vials, ‘n everyone saw-”

“Sora, I have zero idea what you’re talking about,” he rushes out breathlessly, settling a hand on her upper arm. “If we’ve been misgendering you or anything, if you’d like to- to change something, that is absolutely okay, we would never kick you out over that.”

It’s Sora’s turn for her eyes to go wide. “Wait, what do you mean you don’t know what I’m talking about, you were there!” Lloyd laughs incredulously and Sora stares at him hard. “On the Bounty?” she reminds him urgently, her arms dropping from around her. “When- when you got stabbed?”

Lloyd pushes his free hand up into his loose hair, still laughing. “I was stabbed!” he exclaims. “I was a little busy!”

Sora’s jaw drops. “So you just- you didn’t know?” she whisper-yells. “You weren’t- playing some sick joke?”

“No,” Lloyd exclaims emphatically, his other hand dropping from his hair and reaching to hold Sora’s other arm gently. “I- We wouldn’t do that to you. I promise whatever you thought we knew, we do not.” His gaze softens and he squeezes her shoulders comfortingly. “And whatever you want us to know, we’re not going to kick you out over it.”

A lump builds in Sora’s throat and her eyes burn again. “…I don’t know about that,” she croaks. “I don’t have the best track record.”

“Does Arin know?” Lloyd asks.

“Yeah.”

He smiles reassuringly. “Then I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about.”

Sora stays quiet for a bit, chewing on the inside of her cheek, and his smile dims slightly. “You don’t have to tell me,” he says quietly, “but if it’s- if you’re not a girl and you don’t wanna be called that, you deserve for the people around you to respect that.”

Sora’s already shaking her head before he’s done talking. “I am a girl,” she chokes out, shutting her eyes as she tries to keep tears from leaking out a second time. “I just- I didn’t start that way.”

Lloyd makes a noise of understanding and Sora screws her eyes tighter, bracing for his reaction. Bracing for the anger, for the confusion.

She doesn’t know what to do when he pulls her into a tight hug, pressing her head affectionately into his shoulder.

“I didn’t start out as a boy either,” he whispers into her ear. Sora remains still as a statue as the words sit in her brain, processing, processing, processing, and then they click and it’s like a dam breaks.

Lloyd’s like her.

He must know what it’s all like – the shots, the fear, the instability in your own body, been through every painful, joyful, turbulent step – and everyone still loves him – he’s the fucking savior of the world and he’s like her-

Sora chokes and wraps her arms around her master, squeezing tightly. Her breath hitches once, twice, and when Lloyd sets a gentle hand on the crown of her head, paternal in a way she can’t remember ever receiving from her own father, sobs bubble up from her throat and she wails pathetically into his gi.

“I’m sorry, sorry-” she tries, pulling away to wipe at her face, but Lloyd keeps her where she is. The hold is loose enough that if she wanted to pull away, she definitely could. But she definitely doesn’t and she collapses back into the hug. Lloyd just rubs at her back, pressing his cheek into the top of her head.  “I thought you knew- I thought you were gonna be mad at me-”

“I’m not mad,” he promises, “no one’s mad. You’re good, Sora, you’re perfect.”