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Lloyd was no stranger to loneliness. He’s felt it before, allowed it to consume his being.
Sometimes it was a hug that squeezed too hard, holding you just tight enough to make your breaths come shorter. Other times, it was a weight chained around your ankle, dragging you deep beneath the surface and reminding you that there was nobody coming to save you.
Lloyd has felt both of these many times within his life.
His time spent at Darkley’s was his first taste of being alone. He never really understood why the other boys didn’t like him. He read comic books, he liked games, and he loved pulling pranks. There wasn’t any defining trait that separated him from the others, that gave reason for them to not like him.
He couldn’t answer that question back then, but he could answer another; he was lonely.
But, for FSM sake, he was the son of Garmadon! The Lord Garmadon! Evil ran through his blood, found itself intertwining through his fingerprints and tracing the lines pressed into the palm of his hand.
Loneliness wasn’t a feeling Lloyd assumed should be associated with the son of Lord Garmadon, so he pushed it down and pretended the teasing didn’t tear at his heart.
Lloyd was Evil. Lloyd wasn’t different, and Lloyd wasn’t lonely.
When he found the Ninja, though, the burdening chain of isolation finally loosened its grip around Lloyd’s neck.
It took a long time for Lloyd to finally understand that the Ninja were there to stay. He was sure they would throw him to the side when they got a chance, send him back to Darkley’s and let his existence wither into the backs of their minds, only to appear in dreams that faded once they woke up.
He was sure Kai would grab the fangblade over him.
But that never happened. And before Lloyd could come to terms with the fact he was going to die in that volcano, he was in Kai’s arms, held against his chest and clutching onto the fabric of his gi to ensure there was no possibility that Kai let go.
Then, suddenly, he was the green ninja. With the green uniform hanging off his limbs, sleeves rolled up because even destiny knew he was far too young for that role, his fear of being abandoned by the Ninja faded.
They were his family. They were there for him. They loved him.
But, instead, the choking feeling in his gut found itself being replaced by a heavy weight, hauling him down and ensuring to make itself known; Responsibility.
Lloyd had such a big roll to fill and a much too tiny body to do it.
But he wouldn’t be doing it alone. And he never did.
Life moves pretty fast as a ninja. One day, you’re fighting snakes, and the next you're 5 years older than you’re supposed to be.
But he learned to count on one thing. When the chaos of change became overwhelming, and he was sure he would never live up to the expectations of destiny, they were there. The one constant that followed him throughout his life became the ninja. His family.
When Lloyd was scared, they were there. When Lloyd was upset, they were there. When Lloyd couldn’t quite get the words out, they spoke for him. When Lloyd thought about his dad, they were there to listen. When Lloyd needed them, they were there.
The silence that had become a normal in Lloyd’s early life was replaced by a warm background of laughter and understanding.
Lloyd wouldn’t have traded it for the world.
But he learnt early on in life that you don’t always get what you want.
It was an average day in the Monastery. Jay and Cole were messing around in the living room. Zane was making lunch in the kitchen. Nya was training outside with Kai. Lloyd was helping Wu with another small task. The fall wind carried a breeze of peace.
It was so…normal.
Lloyd wishes he never took the normality for granted.
Within hours of waking up that day- that same day that had begun with the same routine as all the others had, Lloyd witnessed the sky rip open. He witnessed his world tear apart. He witnessed the last moments with his family and hadn’t even realized it.
Suddenly, Lloyd woke up in the Monastery, like he normally did. Only, he was outside. And his friends were gone.
That marked the start of something Lloyd hated. Something that was so new yet brought a feeling of vague familiarity.
For 2 months, Lloyd was alone.
He hadn’t considered himself unquestionably lonely in a long time.
Lloyd has been on long solo missions before. He’s not new to being away from the ninja for long stretches of time. Only, on solo missions, he normally knew the ninja were okay. Even if they found themselves unwillingly separated, it rarely took more than a week for them to find their way back home. Back together.
It took 7 weeks for Kai to return.
That wasn’t right.
He was injured. He was scared and he carried the same look in his eyes that Lloyd saw in his reflection.
It made him want to be sick.
But Lloyd looked past that, because instead of seeing the scrawny mess that was practically collapsing on the bounty deck, Lloyd saw Kai. He saw his brother.
Lloyd hadn’t been held by someone in a long time. He hadn’t felt the reassuring beat of someone's heart against his own since well before The Merge. He assumes the same for Kai with the way he clutched onto Lloyd like he might lose him again.
“What the heck, Lloyd!?” Kai rips his mask off his face, appearing slightly offended at the sudden attack.
“Kai! Sorry. I haven’t seen anyone in weeks.” Lloyd reached out to Kai, pulling him up from where he had roughly tossed him onto the deck. But Kai didn’t respond. He didn't address Lloyd's apology, instead immediately reaching out and pulling Lloyd tightly into his arms as if it was all he’s ever wanted.
“So good to see you, buddy.” Kai spoke, his voice as gentle as Lloyd remembered it to be. He slightly lifted Lloyd off the ground, spinning around as Lloyd buried his head into Kai’s shoulder. It had been 7 weeks. Lloyd hadn’t heard from, let alone seen, his friends in 7 weeks.
He was sure, at one point, that his friends were gone. Taken by whatever ripped the sky open and torn permanently from Lloyd’s life.
But here he was, holding Kai’s unignorably gaunt figure under his arms.
Hardly there, but there nonetheless.
“You too.” Lloyd mumbled into Kai’s shoulder. “You too.”
Kai lowered Lloyd back down on the ground, but he didn’t dare to let go. Neither did Lloyd. Never would Lloyd.
If they loosened their grip, there was a chance they would never hold on again.
So they stood there, frozen in a moment that allowed them to remember what it felt like to be next to someone, to hold onto a human presence instead of clinging onto a fading memory.
“Lloyd.” Kai muttered into the boy's shoulder, testing the words on his tongue as if he hadn’t tasted it in weeks.
Lloyd supposes he hasn’t.
“Kai.”
His return had brought a feeling to Lloyd that he had long forgotten. Hope.
He fearfully welcomed it.
That day was now almost a week ago, and Lloyd was still living off the high of hope, letting it flow through his veins and intertwine with his thoughts. Letting himself overdose on it if it meant he could get up in the morning without as much trouble.
And it was working.
Currently, Lloyd didn’t feel so alone.
Lloyd was sitting peacefully at the dining table, a cup of tea long empty occupying table space ahead of him. His eyes were heavy, surely burdened by the recent pressure delivered unthoughtfully by the merge, but he couldn’t quite seem to doze off.
So, instead, he sat. He listened to Kai.
Kai found himself seated across from Lloyd, and the two spoke everything about nothing.
They discussed the best flavors of tea. They debated which animals they could beat in a race and argued over what the most difficult video game was.
Nothing deeper than that. Nothing about the Merge, and nothing about their friends.
It was an unspoken boundary neither ventured to cross.
Until Kai did.
“No, you’re wrong. Galamorph is absolutely harder than Fist to Face.” Kai spoke smugly. “Fist to Face is like…10x easier.”
“Have you even made it past level 25? It’s basically impossible!” Lloyd argued his position back to Kai. It was light banter. It was comforting. It was almost right.
But there was something wrong. Something forced. Like they were dancing around each other, never to touch and never to meet, acting and faking and trying to make the conversation seem normal. Like a bridge had burnt between them and neither knew how to get to the other side.
Lloyd ignored it as much as he could.
“Um, yeah, I have. Multiple times, actually. Galamorph, on the other hand…I played level 13 for 6 hours straight one day. I beat it, of course, but 6 hours!” Kai exclaimed. “Even Jay could hardly beat that game, and he’s played it since before he could speak.”
A nostalgic smile grew on both their faces at the mention of Jay.
Lloyd exhaled, holding onto Jay’s presence as much as he could before it slipped between his fingers. “Geez, I never thought I’d miss his terrible jokes so bad.”
Kai nodded, whispering a yeah that could have passed as nothing at all. His smile dropped slightly, becoming only known by the lines on his face.
“Remember when Jay tried to upgrade the fridge, but it knocked all the electricity out of the Monastery?” Kai spoke, voice uncharacteristically quiet and lost within the gap between him and Lloyd. “Cole never let him live it down.”
Lloyd welcomed a small turn of his lips, but he knew it was faint. A ghost of bittersweet remembrance flickering in his heart, but sizzling out as fast as it came. “Yeah.”
Memories came only as a curse to Lloyd recently. A reminder of what used to be and might never be again. He could always remember their voices. He could always remember their faces and their touch and the way their chest rose and fell. But Lloyd noticed that he had begun to forget the little things.
The tune that Cole would hum as he worked through the Monastery. The patterned click of Zane’s gears and the cold of his fingertips. The way Nya would squint her eyes when she focused too hard.
Lloyd would rather forget them completely than be stuck grasping for fragments, stuck in an endless loop of tug-of-war against his own recollection. He hated himself for it, sometimes.
“I hope he’s okay.” Kai’s voice came out small, almost as an offer. A suggestion that he was still here.
“I don’t like thinking about it.” Lloyd admitted. He didn’t elaborate on what he meant exactly, but Kai nodded his head in understanding.
They didn’t like thinking about what could have happened to their family. They didn’t like fumbling with the idea that something terrible might have happened to them.
If they didn’t think about it, they were still alive.
The air suddenly shifted to something much less comfortable. Something suffocating. Something that didn’t welcome you with open arms like the Monastery halls were supposed to. Something that made words get trapped in your throat and forced your breath to stutter in your lungs.
“The mergequakes are getting stronger.” Kai stated it as if it was a well known fact, well beyond the conversation boundary of lighthearted topics.
“I know.” The thought had been eating at Lloyd since the first time he had to put a little extra effort into closing one. “They’re appearing more often, too.”
Kai sighed deeply, his lips pulling into a slight grimace. “We have to do something about it.”
“I know.” Lloyd repeated, his voice haunted by a tone of defeat. “I just…I don’t know what we can do. There’s only two of us, and we can only do so much to stop them.”
Lloyd lifted his elbows onto the table, allowing his head to rest in his hands. The two fell back into an odd silence. Once again, Lloyd was at a loss. That felt like his new constant, lately.
Kai ran a hand through his hair, leaning roughly against his chair with an audible squeak. “Exactly.”
To that, Lloyd’s eyebrows pushed together. “What do you mean ‘exactly’?”
Kai didn’t offer a response, instead taking a moment to bask in the silence that had become tainted with a sudden apprehension.
“Kai?” A knot began forming in his stomach, wrapping around everything vital. Lloyd lifted his head towards Kai, and for just a fleeting moment, he could almost be sick at the normalcy of it all.
If Lloyd ignored their current situation, if Lloyd squinted at just the right angle and listened just a little bit closer, he could almost convince himself everything was where it was meant to be. That this was just another late night in the Monastery. Kai was here, teasing Lloyd about something stupid. Zane was in the room next door, laying on the couch with Cole. Jay and Nya were outside, looking at the stars together.
And maybe, just maybe, they were happy. And maybe this time it would last a little bit longer.
But when Lloyd’s vision focused, the image would begin to slip from his mind, and he wasn’t there anymore. He was back with Kai, and Kai only, in a deafening silence that flooded his senses.
This entire situation was a mess.
“I have to leave, Lloyd.”
And it just got a whole lot worse.
“Wh-what!?” Lloyd’s head jerked upwards. “What are you talking about?”
Kai shook his head, his voice leaking out in an unnervingly straightforward tone that contrasted Lloyd’s. “I need to find the others.”
“I don’t…I don’t understand, Kai. How are you supposed to find them? Ninjago is all messed up right now. You won't even know where you’re going!” Lloyd’s voice rose against his liking.
“I’ll take the Bounty.” He sounded so sure about it, as if he had already been planning this out. Lloyd comes to the sinking realization that maybe he had. “I’ll fly across whatever the hell our new world is, map it out maybe, and I’ll find leads. I’ll find our friends.”
“I’m coming with you.” Lloyd stood up, pushing his chair out from under him with a sickening screech.
“No, you’re not.” Kai stated. “We need you here, to protect people.”
“I can’t do that by myself!” His voice ripped from his throat unwillingly.
“You’ve been doing it by yourself, Lloyd.”
You’ve been doing it by yourself, Lloyd.
By yourself.
Lloyd had spent 7 weeks in pure isolation, the Monastery walls taunting him with echoes of his friends' voices. And, when he finally gets someone back, someone to fill that void that had been ringing and grating and choking Lloyd, it won’t even last.
Lloyd was suddenly terribly aware that he was going to be alone once again.
“Kai- you- you can’t-”
“Lloyd.”
“You can’t leave me, Kai!” The slap of his hand echoed mockingly off the table. “I just got you back, and I’m not losing you again!”
The ironic silence that followed seemed to wrap its lonely arms around Lloyd’s neck. A warning. A subtle foreshadowing of what was to come.
“It’ll just be a few weeks.” Kai attempted a slight reassurance, but he knew it fell short. “I…I need to do this, Lloyd. Our friends- my sister…they’re out there somewhere. And I can’t help but feel like I’m letting them down, somehow. Like I’m a bad person for not looking for them.”
“Then what does that make me, Kai?”
Lloyd could see Kai’s breath catch in his throat, hooked onto his previous words. “What? No, Lloyd-”
“Am I a bad person because I haven’t gone looking after them? Am I a bad person because I’ve been stuck in this…this stupid Monastery?!” Lloyd spat, unable to contain the venom that leaked in his voice.
“Lloyd, I didn’t- that’s not- you know that’s not what I mean.” Kai was unnaturally cautious, eyeing Lloyd like he was a stray animal that might bite.
Lloyd couldn’t help it if he did.
“Do I, Kai? Because all I know right now is that you’re trying to leave.” He couldn’t stop the overflow. “I’ve been alone for 2 months, Kai, and I’m not going to-”
“Well so was I, Lloyd!” Kai shot up from his chair, sending it toppling down behind him. “You’re not fucking special!”
Lloyd suddenly felt very, very small.
“Do you think I just…hung around for 2 months, Lloyd? Do you honestly think that you’re the only one who was alone?”
He had seen Kai after his return, and was seeing him as he was now.
Tired. Scared. Hurt.
Sad.
Looks that didn’t suit Kai. Words that should never describe Kai. Stark contrasts to the fire that powered his mind and fueled his heart.
Lloyd knew something had happened to Kai. He tried to pry him open the second night, take even a glance into his mind, his experience, and feel it for himself. Run his hands under the water and see if it burnt.
“Just drop it, Lloyd.”
The echoing crevice between him and Kai crumbled just a little bit further.
Maybe if Lloyd had pushed a little bit harder, held on a little tighter, or sat a little quieter, Kai would have been satisfied by his presence enough to stay. Instead, he watched his attempts sink, falling just short of the intended mark.
Always just too short.
“I don’t- you- fuck, Kai! I don’t know what I think because you won’t fucking talk to me! You never told me if you were alone, or where you were, or what happened, or- or how-” Lloyd brought his hands up to his eyes, rubbing away the emotions that threatened to expose themselves rawly. “I mean, what the hell are we doing, Kai?! We’re sitting here drinking tea and talking about- about bullshit! Talking about nothing!”
Kai leaned over the table. “What else is there to talk about?! Clearly you don’t want to talk about our friends or anything to do with, god forbid, the Merge!”
“I want to talk about you, Kai! I don’t even know you anymore!” The opposite side of the canyon faded from view.
The air seemed to pause between them, a tension stretching them apart and neither being willing enough to cut it. Both their heaving breaths took place for their voices.
Kai stared at Lloyd, and Lloyd stared at Kai. But neither really knew who stood across the table.
And, again, if Lloyd closed his eyes, he could almost imagine he was somewhere else. Sometime else.
Kai was across from him, only he knew who he was. He knew what every scar was from and why he acted the way he did. They got into an argument over the rules of a card game, and they’ll be over it soon enough.
But when Lloyd feels the table shift across from him, feels the tension in the air strangle his throat, he’s once again present.
He’s once again reminded that things are different.
“Our friends need us, Lloyd.” Kai’s voice falls back, quiet and a mere idea.
“I know.” A return. An understanding that there was no changing. An understanding that, once more, they were bound to tiptoe around the flames, to never cross further into each other's minds than just past the door.
To pretend they were what they used to be.
Kai takes a step back from the table. “I wish it were easier than this.”
There was an unknown implication surrounding his words, protecting him from hands that were desperate to reach deeper and grasp the true meaning of his voice.
He wishes it was easier to stop the mergequakes. He wishes it was easier to find his friends. He wishes it was easier to allow others in. He wishes it was easier to breathe, sometimes. He wishes it was easier to look up and see who stood ahead.
He wishes it was easier to be.
“Me too.”