Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

“You’re the Quiet One?!” Lloyd yelled out in surprise, dodging Harumi as she lunged for the mask.

“How could you even say that Lloyd?” Harumi goes to grab at the mask again, getting elbowed in the face by Lloyd.

“The greatest villain is the… you said that yourself!” Lloyd looked hurt at the very thought.

“Oh! Yes, obviously, I am a criminal mastermind and- do you even hear yourself? Why would I? Lloyd, i-I love you..” Harumi makes big and wild gestures, getting closer to Lloyd. She goes for a smooch.

“Stay back.” he pushes her away, holding the mask behind him.

“Lloyd,” Harumi took a second and really looked at Lloyd. She dropped the act and rolled her eyes. “I didn't really need you to get the mask. I would have been mine already if you and your idiotic ninja didnt take Wu. But thanks for grabbing it for me.”

“Wh-the baby-”

“Oh, yeah you didnt know. Anyway- its not like everything always goes to plan for everyone. Give me the mask.” she lunges towards Lloyd.

“No! I can let you bring my father back! Not like that.”

“Fine.” she spins and kicks Lloyd in the jaw, knocking him to the ground and sending the mask out of his hands. He acts quick though, using his power to make the mask go flying. When Harumi goes for it, he pins her down, she then flips them so Lloyd is pinned. “You’re really fucking pathetic you know?”

“Damn, what did i do to you!”

“Naive to. Did you really think no one got hurt when the great devourer? It wasnt until the great Lord Garmadon came that the day was saved! But even he couldnt save everyone.”

“If the man you idolize couldnt save them then why are you blaming me? I was, like, 10” Harumi glared at him for interrupting her monologe.

“Well- fuck you thats why.” she punts him.

Lloyd grabs the mask in one hand and uses his elemental power in the other. “Give me a reason not to bring this all to an end.”

Harumi gasps softly. “If you do, you wont get to see your dear old dad. And you’re to much of a bleeding heart to actually hurt my chances of, well, anything really.” Lloyd looks vaguely offended. “Ugh, I mean, besides, you still love me.” he switches to holding back tears. “Ha, still cant burry your emotions down far enough. Hard to think, isn't it? I used to feel that way to. I got better.” Harumi swings at him, hitting next to his left eye.

“Was everything just an act?”

“Hmm. no. sometimes it was a calculated risk!” harumi looks happy at her little ‘joke’. Lloyds therapist will be hearing about this. “All needed to get control and protect Ninjago! I had to be smarter.”

“I'm sorry, but how is forming a terrorist organization supposed to protect Ninjago?”

“We aren't terrorists! Acts of violence from an organized group of criminals who share anti government ideals to produce civil unrest and provoke a nation wide police and military response was necessary!” Harumi was very quick and steadfast in her answer.

“Is that not terrorism? And you also deliberately blew up the castle and killed the emperor and empress. That's kinda terrorism, girly pop.” he was not impressed with how confidently wrong she was. She responds by jumping on top of Lloyd and ripping the mask out of his hands. And then driving her elbow down painfully onto Lloyds already messed up shoulder. owie.

She gets off of Lloyd and turns away to put the mask on, while Lloyd slowly stands up. She wips around again and throws lloyd on the ground.

“Damn! At least give me a chance girl!” lloyd coughs up a little blood from the impact, but its not like he’ll die. He rolls out of the way before she can get another hit in, but gets graped by the back of his shirt and picked up anyway. “We can still talk about this, right, Rumi?”

He gets thrown into the pedestal that the mask had been sitting on. He hit it at the exact wrong angle and with a little to much force. His spine snapped and bone ripped through the skin on his back and through his organs. Blood quickly spurtied out and pooled under him. He fell to his knees, then onto his side, with fear and tears in his eyes. His mouth moved with words that would forever be unsaid and reached out for Harumi, or anyone really.

Harumi had never felt much empathy before. Sliding off the mask, she got a good look at Lloyd. The way he looked, those damn eyes, that same look that he father had looked at her with when he and her mother left her in that elevator. The look bought back the worst parts of that day. The fear, the loss, the all consuming empty feeling. It was like a bucket of ice was poured on her head. He truly loved her. Wanted to know her. Loved her. And she made it so no one could love her as true as that again. She was so good at pushing down her emotions when it was needed to further her plan, but all that spilled out of her as quickly as the blood spilled from him.

Her breathing quickened, like she was in danger of something. Her feelings she suposed. Hot tears fell for the first time in ages as she carefully stepped to Lloyd. He was .. still alive. She grabbed his hand and cupped his face. He looked at her with a more furrowed brow, but he soon stopped. Slowly stopped, everything he was doing. Thinking, blinking, crying, breathing, bleeding. Everything. His eyes closed.

He was gone.

She was familiar with death, of course. But she never saw someone die. It was always away from her, whether by her being protected or hiring someone else to take care of it. She wonders if this was how the other members of the SOG felt. The shock, the fear.

She pushed it down. Her plan was so quickly unraveled. She could salvage nothing at this point. Better to give up then-NO. She worked to damn hard to give up after the bitch she wanted dead is gone. She had to keep going. She needed DNA of someone related to the person she wanted brought back, so she grabbed a small vial she had in one of her pockets and filled it with Lloyds blood. She wouldn't lose now. Never.

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Lloyd opened his eyes. It was light out and floating islands dotted the sky. His hair fell over his eyes but it was curly instead of the wavy mess it usually was.

“Get up, my dearest grandchild. Why in the world are you here so early?” a voice calls out, then lloyd gets pulled up by a man who brings him into a comforting hug. Familiar, to.

“The first spinjitzu-” he started, but was quickly cut off.

“No needs for such frivolous formality, Lloyd!” He laughed and sets lloyd down. “I didn't expect to see you dead for another 5 years at least! Id ask what happened but i'm kind of God. so how are you feeling?”

“Well, dead. Confused, wait, why am I short?” Lloyd inspects his arms and clothes. His gi was loose and the ground was closer than it was before, but it was already close since Lloyd was always on the smaller side.

His grandfather smiled and ruffled Lloyds hair. “Your soul is not directly connected to your body so they aren't often the same.

“Oh. wait im dead?”

“Yes. thats often what happens when you hit a blunt object with a large amount of force. Hmm, y’know who’d realy love to see you? Your dad, lets go visit him, c’mon kiddo!” he started walking off, gesturing for Lloyd to follow. Lloyd hurried after him. They quickly came up to a nice, small house with a big orange tree in the front yard and a stone path leading up to the door.

“Garmadon! I am respecting your privacy by knocking and announcing my arrival, but asserting my authority as your father by coming in anyway!” he knocked on the door and walked in.

“Father, what do you want?” Garmadon came out of some room with a coffee mug in hand. Hed did a spit take when he saw Lloyd. “Sh- hi lloyd, what- what are you doing here, your like 16. Why are you dead?” as he said that, he walked over and hugged lloyd, clearly confused.

“Hi dad, whats up?” he responded, not answering any of Garmadons questions. He looked around the house, and saw it had a lot of pictures on the walls, some of Garmadon, Wu and the FSM, some with Garamadon and MIsako, some of Lloyd and some of the ninja, and some group photos with everyone and others with people Lloyd didn't know. The furniture all looked well worn and very comfy.

“Oh, yes i assume an explanation is in order. Son, why don't you show us to the living room?”

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“Well, thats… hmm. When she dies im beating her ass.” Garmadon looked all too fed up with Harumi, and like he had full intention to follow through with his threat. “Anyway! Its about time a certain 16 year old ought to get to bed! Dont you think so father?”

“I suppose. Though its not like he’d really need it.”

“Shut up. Let me show you to one of the bedrooms Lloyd! Growing boys need their rest after all.” Garmadon stood up and showed lloyd to a small room with a bed that looked like it had way to many blankets on it. Perfect. Blankets are a necessity in life. “Goodnight Lloyd,” Garmadon gave lloyd a big hug. “At least try and get some rest.”

“Ok dad. Good night.”

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In the morning, Lloyd woke up to someone calling someone else a piss bitch. Lovely. He stood up and left the room, and promptly ran into a table.

“Oh! Goodmorning Lloyd! Did you sleep well?” Garmadon called out from the dining room, where he was setting the table for breakfast. “Also theres a table there.”

“I figured.” he walked over into Garm, and saw there where pancakes. Hallelujah.

“Sit, sit. Have some pancakes and fruit! So me and your grandfather have been talking today,” garmadon gave a pointed glare to the fsm, “about maybe figuring a way to bring you back to life because, well, your 16 and have a whole lot of life to live!”

“Oh, that’d be cool. More time to beat kai in every video game known to man.” lloyd said before shoving a whole pancake into his mouth.

“No lloyd, dont take his side! Your dads boring. Think of all the unimaginable chaos you could cause here!” the fsm was very excited about chaos, Lloyd could respect that but unfortunately for his grandfather, he always would listen to his dad.

“Father stop trying to corrupt him.”

“I dont know what your talking about Garm. so lloyd you actually want to, like, live again? Boring, but ok.”

“More chaos to be had there rather than here.”

“I like the way you think. But sending you back could mean you lose all of your green elemental power, so are you good with that?”

Lloyd thought for a moment. “Yeah, i dont care that much bout it.”

“Bet. you might not remember anything about your whole time here, but you’re going back now. Bye!”

“Bye! See you next time I die, I guess.”

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Lloyd woke up. It was a slow thing, and everything felt fuzzy and not quite there. The white of the ‘med bay’ area of the bounty was very bright compared to the darkness from before. There was a faint beeping and he could here someone breathing to his right. It was hard for some reason, but he looked over and saw kai sleeping with his arms crossed on a chair next to him. Lloyd slowly reached out his hand and poked kai in the knee. He woke up after a moment and looked surprised that lloyd was awake.

“Lloyd, shit, Lloyds awake!” kai got up and shouted down the hallway for the others, and he heard a lot of running to the room before they all piled in around lloyd. They all talked over eachother, so lloyd coulnt realy make out everything that they where saying, but they all looked so happy that he was ok.

“Quiet down!” Zane hushed them all. “How are you feeling, Lloyd?”

Lloyds tongue felt heavy and he couldn't answer him. Pixal scanned him and hummed.

“While it looks like your element's accelerated healing has dealt with a lot of the damage, you still have a lot of healing to go to be in good shape. Your back is still slightly fractured, your right arm is sprained, you have a concussion and are still feeling the effects of losing a lot of blood. You're also high off of morphine, but that's not a big problem right now.” Pixal listed off her diagnosis.

“You gave us quite a scare greenbean. Don't ever do that again.” Nya pulled him into a tight hug.

“Careful, Nya. We don't want to risk him injured more heavily.” Pixal said. Nya let go and sat beside Lloyd on the bed. “Jay, can you heat up some broth for Lloyd?” Jay nodded and left.

“You look like shit.” nya joked. He really did though. His eye bags were as dark as Cole's gi and was unnaturally pale, making small scars more prominent. Kai elbowed her in the side.

“You don't look like shit! You just look a little…rough. It's fine though!” Kai quicky corrected Nya, but she wasn't very wrong.

Jay came back with warm broth in a big mug and, well lloyds memory is fuzzy after that, but the broth was good.

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3 months quickly passed and Lloyd got better, he was walking and doing almost everything he used to do, but something was wrong. He couldnt lift anything over his head with his right arm, and ran out of breath faster than before. The ninja slowly beat the SOG down and got them into jail. Harumi messed up the spell that would have brought back Garmadon and was defeated, so the rest of the higher ups had to fight more on their own without any of the Oni Masks. Some of them went on the run, but the other Elemental Masters volunteered to help them sort it out.

Pixal was stumped at Lloyds sudden weakness, because every scan of Lloyd came back that he was perfectly healthy and there showed no signs of permanent damage. He was confusing her so she kept running tests and scanning him, but everything cameback the same.

A few days ago, a old lady that little Wu recognised came in. her name was Mystakē and she was a very old oni. Mystakē was proof that old people where wise(Kais words, not Lloyds). She told everybody that if they kept calling her old she was going to start hitting them with a slipper.

“Lloyd, i think i know why you seem so pathetic.” Mystakē started right as Lloyd walked into the dining room for breakfast. Kai glared at her. “What i think it is, is that your green power bought you back to life in a way, but for the price of taking away everything it gave you.”

“How would that work though? I mean, last time Lloyd lost his powers we couldnt use ours but we still have them.” Kai punctuated his statement with lighting his hand on fire.

“Since his power saved his life, it is intertwined with his soul, insead of it enveloping the soul like yours.”

“What.”

“Insead of being a protective force that is easily used and manipulated, it is apart of him, like an organ. You dont see it unless youre knocking on deaths door.”

The ninja all went ‘ooh.’ at that, seemingly understanding.

“Will lloyd stop being so…weak, though? No offence lloyd.”

“None taken.”

“No clue. All of his strength could have been so heavily dependent on his power that he never could get it back.”

“Does this mean im technically retired?” they all stared at lloyd while Mystakē shrugged.

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Lloyd was a complete and total stranger to doing nothing. Sure, he spent 3 months getting better, but that had an end goal of getting better. He was only 2 days into ‘retirment’ and already ran out of things to do and patience for not helping the others. He, of course, did the least logical thing and tried to train again. It was a very sad display. He tried to do a relatively simple training course, the same one Kai did when he started being a ninja. He failed spectacularly and got through the course in 10~ minutes as opposed to the others 2 or less minutes through it. He also hurt like hell and was out of breath like he fought the overlord again. Not like that would ever happen, since Zane's whole sacrifice thing and everything. But the point still stands, Lloyd was no where near where he was before. It sucked, especially because everyone was being all secretive about…. somethingsomething. Anyway, Lloyd was catching up with Skylor at Chen’s Noodle House (no more underground cults/fighting rings) but he was heading back to the bounty. It was so strange for him now to go and just be. Usually he’d be fighting a baddie or going home after bringing one to the police, he never just took the time to exist and do his own thing anywhere realy. It was strange, but it was the same feeling like when he started being a ninja. He thought he’d always feel odd about it, and like it wasn't quite right, but it would be normal eventually and it’d be stranger to be a ninja. One day, maybe. He decided to stop at a coffee shop on his way home, one had opened 2 weeks ago and wasn't too far out of his way anyway so it would be a nice experience. Besides, people didn't stop him for pictures or anything much anymore as he didn't wear his gi and walked with a cane, but every now and then someone perceptive would. The coffee shop was a small one called ‘the Daily Grind’ and had some nice coffee options. One was called ‘the oni latte you'll ever need’, Lloyd could appreciate the humor. He got one of the cheaper iced lattes though, and the barista asked for a photo with him. The coffee was good. The bounty was oddly quiet when he got back. Weird, because nothing was planned for today since all the SOG members got caught. Maybe something came up? No, they would have told him. He made his way to the living room and it was all dark. Odd. Flicking the light on, the ninja, Pixal, now teenager Wu, the Commissioner and a few police officers, the ninja’s parents, Misako, Mystakē, and all the elemental masters jumped up yelling surprise. There were balloons everywhere and a banner that said ‘Happy Retirement!!!’ and Lloyd couldn't help but laugh. There was cake, obviously, and some musical soundtracks played. After about an hour, the commissioner came up to Lloyd because apparently they started a new thing where they were paying the ninja because of what they do to save Ninjago! Yay! Money!

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Lloyd, trying his best to avoid bordem, singed up for online classes. He wanted to learn something more…fun, but since he didn't exactly go to school, he had to get a GED first. He liked learning though, and learned all the material quickly, so he got through it all and take the necessary test rather fast. He passed them all with high marks and now he could enroll in a online college and learn cooler things. Apparently, Lloyd was insane because everything was cool. He technically finished a semester in only a month (Pixal was quite confused but proud as he got 100% on nearly every assignment) and he and Pixal emailed the college counselor and now Lloyd was learning almost everything, but not medical things, they don't interest him much. the ninja are convinced he's insane and now Lloyds likely to get a doctorate in almost everything in the next year or 2.

Despite learning everything about everything, he also found time to learn lace making! It was very time consuming, because of all the details, but he loves the finished pieces of it and can sell them for quite a bit of money. This made the ninja take him in for a psych referral because they thought he was most definitely insane, but he's not. He has PTSD and anxiety though, and maybe some depression, so they're gonna give him drugs! Pixal and Nya and Kai made a therapy appointment for Lloyd and got the drugs from the pharmacy. Bupropion, or something. Maybe he should have taken medical terminology or something, then he actually understand the things doctors said. Oh well.

His favorite class was the ones he had to go on campus for, like Culinary and Horticulture and Arts. Then he got to see Brad. Bradly Tudabone, he used to go to Darklys with him. So much has changed but Brad, he was so nice and lovely and kind. It fit that Brad also studied Horticulture, he always loved plants. Brad was sweet.

Brad told him that he wanted to be a florist or a gardener, and that Gene was enrolled in the college too, studying to be a lawyer. It suited him.

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The ninja slowly rebuilt the monestery while Lloyd went to school, and no matter how much he tried, they wouldn't let him help much. But Wu, who at some point grew up into a young man with a scraggly beard that would be better off shaved helped them instead. Dareth, Ronin, Skylor and the other elemental masters showed up to help build.

They all decided to ruffle Lloyds hair when they passed him though, they had some sense of pity about him and Lloyd saw them talking in whispers to the ninja while stealing looks at him. He didn't want their pity.

It took a while to get the monestery built, and then moving in took longer. The ninja joked about how it was just like when they started out training and fighting. It was sweet. Lloyd had wanted to just stay in the Bounty, but after much convincing, they moved him in too.

It was nice, the courtyard, the space, but fundamentally Lloyd didn't belong in a place like that. He would probably, in time.

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So...even after almost 5 months, Lloyd never got used to the monestery. There was always a sense of 'you don't belong'. Really, it didn't make any sense, but it was. The monestery was too big, he had his own room but it was lonely, everything was further away, he didn't like it. You'd think he'd eventually get used to it, right? After all, he spent most of his time there. Yet, it never felt like home.

So Lloyd was moving! Not away completely, just so he could be closer to the college, Lloyd said, lying. But Lloyd never liked being alone. Probably because his parents left him. So he wanted to get a roommate!

You know who else needed another roommate? Brad and Gene, because apparently their other roommate, Arnold, was a cheep bitch and moved back in with his parents. (Genes words, not Lloyds) It was a nice space, and rent in total was only 8,000 a month, covering rent and utilities.

It was more lively than the monestery and bounty combined, with how many plants Brad owned and the weird things they all collected. It was a nice change.

Lloyd hated himself for it (and for other things, let's be honest), but he liked it way more than he liked the monestery. He called the ninja everyday and texted them constantly, but he much rather liked living with them.