Give it up for chapter 20 folks, this is officially the longest fic I've ever written in my life! (Throwback to when I used to think that five chapters was a lot, ahaha).

So I'm not entirely sure how I feel about Brad here - I'm sticking him about a freshman in high school here, because that's the youngest I can go with it still working for my fic. And it kinda...makes sense? Look Ninjago's character ages are a nightmare of a mess so I'm just gonna roll with it. He's kinda in that nice little transitional phase where he's a genuine sweetheart but also a brat, so kinda like Lloyd his entire life I guess.

I'm only just now getting to replies because I'm terrible but thank you as always to everyone who's taken the time to review! It's meant a lot especially with school work picking up lately, you guys are always so kind and it gets me through :''D

Brad's not the smartest kid, not by a long shot, but he's good at learning. He picks up things fast, catches on quicker than others, and it's a talent that serves him well.

Or it should have served him well.

Brad learns a lot of things as a kid — Darkley's is full of lessons. He learns how to rewire alarms and pull pranks, how to walk so quietly teachers will never hear, how to catch a host of fire ants in a jar without getting bit once.

He learns how to run, and he learns how to fight. He learns how to twist words until they sting and stick and hurt. He learns how to be a Darkley's kid — and Darkley's kids aren't nice. Darkley's kids don't stick up for weaklings, and they don't make best friends, unless they can get something out of it.

He learns that friends in general are hard to find, and much harder to keep when they twist into versions of themselves you don't recognize sometimes. He learns that Lloyd is one of the rare exceptions — he's snarky, he's bratty, he can be as mean as the fire ants Brad stuck in his bed, but he can't be cruel. Not like Gene can, or Finn, or even Brad, maybe.

This is not to say that Brad learns Lloyd's shy, or even particularly nice. He's the kind of kid that's got fire in his eyes, who looks at everything like it's a threat and he's going to be the one to take it down. Lloyd doesn't get scared, not like Brad does. Lloyd doesn't like giving up.

But Brad doesn't need to learn that Lloyd isn't big like the other boys. Lloyd is too-small in the smallest size of Darkley's uniform — he doesn't have parents, doesn't have siblings, doesn't have anyone to teach him how to throw a punch, or how to duck, or how to fight.

But Lloyd fights anyways, because Lloyd is stupid, and Brad learns how to pick sides the hard way.

Gene pats him on the shoulder. "Like I said, Tudabone," he tells him. "You're way better off with us than Garma-loser over there."

Listening to Lloyd sniffle through a broken nose later that night, Brad learns two more things. The first is how to regret. The second is that Darkley's kids are cowards.

Fortunately, those last two are the only lessons that stick.

Ridiculous as Ninjago can get — because boy, Brad isn't the oldest kid on the block, but the stuff he's seen go down in his admittedly short lifespan thus far is insane — he's never really bought into the idea of fate and destiny and all that. Maybe it's the leftover skepticism blended with a heavy dose of scorn for anything fairy-tale related that he picked up from Darkley's, but it's just hard to for him to buy into that sort of stuff.

But heck, if Brad's spent the last year and a half trying to work up some semblance of courage to talk to his childhood friend, failed at literally every attempt to talk to him whatsoever (because Lloyd is famous now, and famous people are seriously hard to get in touch with without everyone immediately assuming you're some kind of threat), just for Rachel Lennox, decent basketball captain, sub-par lab partner, and giant nerd extraordinaire who Brad somehow managed to befriend even though he's a freshman, to just run into Lloyd the one day Brad doesn't go with her to the hospital—

It's some kind of twisted fate, that's all he can come up with.

Either way, Brad has finally, miraculously had contact with Lloyd quite literally dropped into his lap, and like heck if he's not gonna take advantage of it.

This is, of course, considering Rachel hasn't murdered him by the end of the week.

"You went to school with Lloyd Garmadon?!" she'd shrieked at him, something resembling murder in her eyes. "And you didn't tell me? Brad how could you, you know how much I love the ninja-"

Sometimes he forgets that Rachel is taller than him, and could probably slam-dunk his wimpy freshman self through their rickety school hoop like she does sometimes at home games, but there's nothing like the unholy wrath in her eyes when she realizes he's been keeping his dramatic past with Lloyd Garmadon from her all this time to remind him.

"Um…oops?"

"Oops?"

He really didn't do it on purpose. Lloyd is…Lloyd is a whole bunch of things, but mostly he's guilt, a neatly packaged host of memories that sting even this far down the line. Lloyd is also solidly out of reach, an all-green figure on his TV screen who faces down giants and warriors and shoots bright bursts of energy from his hands. Lloyd's a hero, an idol, a good foot taller, and more often than not Brad barely recognizes his childhood friend.

But. Every now and then, though it's rare, the news camera gets close enough that Brad can see the eyes behind the mask, catch the familiar crinkling at the edge of Lloyd's right eye when he smiles, or the stubborn furrow in his brow like he used to get when he was going to fight Gene, or the discoloring as the bright green of his eyes flashes to the red Brad is used to — and then it's not the Green Ninja on the TV, it's Brad's stubborn shrimp of a friend who used to sneak into the kitchens with him in the dead of night.

And Brad misses him. He misses Lloyd, but mostly he misses that he never got the chance to really apologize, or talk it out, or say hey I really did want to be your friend and I never meant what I said that one time, but it doesn't matter because Lloyd is so far out of reach that Brad has zero idea how to even begin approaching him.

Or he hadn't, until now.

It takes him forever to get Rachel to even give him the number, because all of the sudden she's got it in her head that it's her sworn duty to protect Lloyd from anything and everything, and that includes Brad, for some stupid reason. And yeah, okay, Brad gets that she met Kai Smith, he gets that he's probably as kind of terrifying as she's saying, but Brad's known Lloyd longer than he has anyways, so just give me the number Rae I swear—

He's successful, in the end, otherwise he wouldn't be sitting on the coast-side docks with Lloyd right now, eating their admittedly ill-advised choice of treat.

"I t-told you it was a bad idea," Lloyd says, through chattering teeth. He stubbornly takes another bite of his ice cream bar nonetheless, and Brad fights back a grin. Looks like some things haven't changed.

"Don't be a w-wimp," Brad says, ignoring the way his own mouth feels like it's going numb. "It's in the good name of sweets. What happened to 'I'd burn the school down for one piece of candy right now'?"

Lloyd throws his head back, laughing. "One time," he says. "That was one time!"

Brad, who knows full well that Lloyd complained about a lack of candy at least three times on any given day, just giggles along with him. Lloyd's eyes flash with the half-emerging sun as he laughs, but they don't turn that neon-glowstick shade of green the people of Ninjago are used to seeing. They're a deep red instead, darker than the bright glow that he'd apparently grown into. It's a deep red Brad's familiar with though, and for some weird reason, it makes him feel less wrong-footed, more at ease. Brad half-wonders if it's an accident, or if Lloyd is doing it on purpose for him. That's the kind of thing Lloyd would do.

"You and your sugar fix," Brad shakes his head, as Lloyd's laughter subsides.

"Good to know sugar's still my one defining character trait," Lloyd sighs, but there's a smile still pulling at the edges of his mouth.

"Oh no," Brad says. "You're still a stubborn brat, don't worry. And you've got that squeaky voice, that's super important-"

"My voice changed!" Lloyd says indignantly, and Brad is woefully disappointed that his voice doesn't crack. His voice is still in its most traitorous phase, though he's very careful to remember the pitches he needs to avoid trying to reach.

"Besides," Lloyd sniffs. "You were the one that broke us into the kitchen every other night. And you actually set it on fire one morning!"

"Oh no, I'd forgotten about that," Brad wheezes, nearly dropping his own ice cream bar as he cackles. "I still can't believe we got away with that. The only upside about Darkley's not having fire alarms, I guess."

Lloyd snickers at the memory, and despite the lingering reminder of just how little anyone really cared about their safety at all at Darkley's, Brad remembers that it's one of the few happy memories he has from there.

But then it gets depressing, like any memory of Darkley's eventually does, because Brad also remembers that was the same day that Lloyd broke his wrist because Finn shoved him down the stairs, and Brad just stood by and laughed with the others when he couldn't take notes with the cast on.

Familiar anger sparks in Brad's chest, something that's been building for years now, barely quelled by the long talks with his mom. Because how stupid was it? That a bunch of adults decided to take kids who didn't have a clue what the world was and force them to be something they didn't understand? To try and turn a bunch of little kids who could've been friends into merciless jerks who didn't care about anyone or anything?

Brad watched the closest thing he had to a best friend regularly get beat up and thought that was right. He thought it was okay. Darkley's twisted everything up and made it wrong, so wrong, and Brad hates that he still has trouble telling right from wrong even after.

But Lloyd, on the other hand…

"How'd you do it."

Brad's question breaks the easy silence they'd fallen into. Lloyd glances up at him, swinging a leg absently over the water below. "Do what?"

Brad looks away, rubbing the back of his head. "Be so different than the rest of us," he says. "You weren't mean like the others. You were…you were good."

Lloyd snorts. "I wouldn't say I was good," he says. He looks down, a shadow crossing his face. "I think I did the most damage out of anyone, in the end," he murmurs.

Brad shakes his head. "That's stupid," he scowls. "You're the best outta all of us and you know it."

"Brad, no offense, but you have literally no idea what I've done."

"Oh yeah, I'm sure you've got a whole list of people you've murdered in dark alleyways for the fun of it now," Brad drawls.

Lloyd pulls back, eyes wide. "I do not!" he yelps. "That's not - we don't do stuff like that, we try to avoid killing at all costs, if we can-"

"Wait, you've got a ninja license and you haven't even used it to murder anybody? What's the point then?" Brad says, scandalized. He breaks down at Lloyd's expression, snickering. "I'm kidding, geez."

Lloyd crosses his arms, looking put out. "Touchy subject, Brad," he says, through clenched teeth.

"Yeah, yeah, my bad," Brad says, only half-apologetically. Someone's gotta joke around with Lloyd about the morbid stuff, and he bets the other ninja are way too goody-goody still. He blows his breath out, sobering.

"And you know what I mean," he continues. "When you came back to Darkley's, when we lured you back — sorry about that, by the way — it wasn't that long after you'd left. And you were…you were already…you got it. You knew the difference between good and bad, a-and right and wrong, you — d'you get what I'm saying? You were just…you were good."

Lloyd's eyebrows furrow as he stares at the water, a brief shiver running through his shoulders. "I mean…" he chews on his lip. "I dunno. I had a lot of good role models, which helped. And um…I made some pretty big mistakes, and you learn really fast from those."

"Well — still," Brad pushes forward, not to be out-argued. "Even before then, you tried to be my friend. Like, my friend my friend, not the Darkley's excuse of one." He looks down at that, old guilt welling up his chest again.

"And I…I was a sorry excuse for friend," he says, miserably. "I sucked. And I'm really sorry about that, because I think we could've been great friends the last few years, and we weren't. And that's my fault."

"I wasn't that great a friend, either," Lloyd says, softly. "There's a lot of blame on my side too, you know. I could've stuck up for you more. Could've been like, a hundred times nicer. Could've not thrown your stuff in the lake that time."

"That's kinda funny in hindsight, to be honest," Brad says.

"Still," Lloyd says. "I…I wish I could've been better. Maybe you'd have actually wanted to be friends with me after Darkley's then."

Brad scoffs. "Are you kidding me?" he says. "Lloyd, the entire time we've been here I've been trying to tell you that I wanna be friends with you. 'Cause you're like, the realest friend I've ever had. Why'd you think I've been trying so hard to get in touch with you? 'Cause you're a big-shot celebrity now? Mr. Green Ninja, ooh-"

Lloyd elbows him. "Shut up," he mutters, his face flushing. "I'm not that famous."

Brad raises a single, skeptical eyebrow, and points to the tiny little Green Ninja on his ice cream wrapper. "Yeah, you're just on ice cream bars for kicks."

Brad snorts as Lloyd goes scarlet and swats the wrapper away from him (not out of his hands though, because then it'd land in the water and FSM forbid the Green Ninja litter, of all things). Lloyd shakes his head briefly, then suddenly looks back up, his eyes as earnest as they were the something-many years ago Brad met him on the doorsteps of Darkley's.

"Well, you've got my number now," Lloyd says. "And I really only give it out to close friends and family. So…half the battle?"

"Technically, I just stole it from Rachel," Brad mutters, rubbing the back of his head.

Lloyd grins. "I know. She told me."

"Traitor," Brad hisses. You let one friend meet another and it all goes downhill, huh.

"I would've given it to you anyways," Lloyd says, and his voice is earnest again. "D'you, um…we could maybe stay in touch, now? And uh, do this more often?"

"Yeah," Brad says, his voice thick. "Yeah, that'd be nice."

"Great," Lloyd says, a bit awkwardly, but it's the Lloyd kind of awkward, so Brad gets the message anyways. They lapse into silence, staring out at the water, occasionally shivering from the cold.

Man, Brad's gonna owe Rachel a big fat thank you after this, isn't he, he thinks ruefully. Never mind having to give her solid proof that him and Lloyd were friends first, they're friends now. After all the lecturing she'd given him, it's about time Brad has something to throw back at—

Rachel's lecturing sparks something in his brain, and he suddenly sucks in a breath. Oh yeah. He is supposed to still give concrete proof that he's really Lloyd's friend, isn't he.

"So uh…" Brad winces, trying to find a way to bring this up that isn't horribly blunt and kinda insensitive.

….aw, Lloyd knew him at Darkley's. To heck with it.

"I saw your dad was back to his non-scary self on the news," Brad says, with all the delicateness of a wrecking ball. "How's uh, how's that going?"

Lloyd, who had started looking suspicious at the word 'so' and had slipped neatly into white-faced blankness the minute 'dad' came up, tenses. He opens his mouth, still with that blank expression on, and Brad cuts over him.

"Remember how I told you about my dad that one time?" he says. "How I came to you when I was crying about my mom, because I knew you were the one person I could trust to tell?"

Lloyd's mouth shuts, and the blank expression fractures.

Brad nudges him. "You saw me at my worst," he says, quietly. "And I saw you at yours. Are you gonna trust me too?"

You're not my leader, Brad is trying to tell him. Lloyd's not his ninja bro, or the chosen one or whatever he thinks he's gotta be to everyone else. Brad knew Lloyd before he was any of that. So if he can get it, if he can get that he doesn't have to pretend in front of him, then maybe…

Lloyd jerks his head away, staring out at the horizon. His hand goes white-knuckled as he clutches the edge of the dock, wind-bitten patches on his skin turning red. He gives a shaky, shuddering exhale.

"…I haven't talked to him yet," he says, quietly.

Brad feels something a little like victory spark in his chest. "Uh huh?"

Lloyd bites his lip, still staring fixedly out over the water. "I…did you…you didn't watch the…the broadcast that came on…a while back, did you?"

Brad wants to lie. Because he wants to forget that he did watch it. Wants to pretend that he has no idea what Lloyd's talking about, that he doesn't have a good dozen images of Lloyd getting chucked through a concrete wall seared into the back of his brain.

"…yeah, I saw it," he admits.

Lloyd makes a sound halfway between a bitter laugh and a choke. "Yeah," he echoes. "There's that."

Brad's shoulders hitch. "I mean…I don't blame you, I guess," he says, slowly. "I'd be angry too."

Lloyd's shoulders go tenser, if possible. He finally turns, meeting Brad's eyes.

"But I'm not angry," he says, his voice a hollow whisper. "I'm — I think I'm just—" Lloyd breaks away from his gaze, looking back at the water.

"Back at the hospital, when he first woke up, I was so scared," Lloyd says, and Brad's taken aback by the wave of self-loathing in his voice. "I made a big stupid scene and ran out and everything. Like a coward."

Oh, geez. Brad's in over his head, isn't he? He's not a therapist, he's not even a good listener, Rachel's told him, he's just barely reconnected with Lloyd and he doesn't even know what exactly he's scared of (though he can guess) and he doesn't know—

Well. He might not know the Lloyd sitting in front of him in his entirety. But he knows Lloyd, he knows the person underneath the title and the mask and the built-up years of perfecting it.

Brad blows his breath out, swings his leg a bit, and takes a plunge. "You know, back at school, I thought you were the bravest person I'd ever met."

Lloyd glances up at him, confusion overtaking his expression. "But I…wasn't? Not at all. I was scared to death pretty much every other day, remember? I cried over the dark my first nights there."

Brad shakes his head. "Different kind of brave," he says. "You were brave in the good way. You were brave enough to care. To care about what you did and to care about — about people."

"Oh," Lloyd mutters, looking slightly miserable about that for some reason. "I mean — yeah, I guess. But it just got me made fun of, and then they kicked me out for it."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean that they were right, or that you were wrong," Brad insists. "Everyone made it out like being cynical and mean and-and cutting everyone else out was smart," he says. "That trusting people and, uh…lo-liking…them, was just stupid, 'cause you'd only get hurt."

Lloyd looks down. Brad can't read his expression, but he's not done talking yet.

"But y'know, I did all that, and I was freaking miserable," he continues, more confidently. "The only times I was really happy was when I was hanging out with you. And then I cut you out, and you got kicked out, and I…" Brad swallows. "The other kids said you'd die out there alone. I wanted to hit them for it, but I didn't, 'cause I knew that if anyone could survive, it'd be you. Because you were looking for your dad, and any time you ever mentioned him you were…" Lloyd's expression spasms, and Brad winces. "You were so happy," he finishes, weakly.

Lloyd's jaw tightens. "He…" he shakes his head. "Kai says he was too scared to reach out before now." Lloyd's voice is almost inaudible over sound of the water beneath them. "But that he…he wants to talk."

"I was scared, reaching out to you," Brad offers, hesitantly. "'Cause I know what I did back then, and I thought — I dunno what I thought. But I did it anyways, 'cause even just the chance of getting to be friends with you again was worth it."

Lloyd looks up at the overcast sky, biting his lip hard. "Was it?" he whispers.

"Obviously, dummy," Brad says, almost rolling his eyes. Ninja are so dramatic. He sighs, looking down. "So, um. I dunno, but something I learned from you is that choosing to be a giant softie who tries to love everyone is hard, but it's worth it, 'cause then you actually have people to pick you up after the bad stuff. And it also makes you like, a hundred times braver than any of the kids who weren't afraid of the dark."

Lloyd inhales at that, and his shoulders shudder again, though Brad isn't sure if it's just from the cold this time. He looks down at the water, his forehead scrunched up.

"What if…" Lloyd's voice trails off, and his fists clench up, jaw jutting out in frustration briefly.

"What if I'm still scared."

Well duh, Brad wants to say. He hasn't been trying to encourage Garmadon here for the last hour, has he?

"If it means anything," Brad says instead, quietly. "I still think you're the bravest person I know." Lloyd looks up at him, wide-eyed, and Brad gives him a lopsided kind of smile. "That part hasn't changed, at least."

Lloyd's expression does this weird little pinched thing, like he's trying to suppress some emotion, and his fingers go tight on the edge of the dock again. He takes a deep breath, and his fingers let go.

"Gene would give you so much grief if he heard that."

Brad gives a startled snort. "He would try," he shoots back, starting to grin. "Besides, I've got you to protect me, and you've got a sword now."

Lloyd groans. "Brad, we don't just murder people if they get on our nerves."

"I didn't say anything about murdering, but funny how your mind jumped to that—"

Lloyd cheap-shot elbows him in the gut, and Brad cuts off with a wheeze, glaring at Lloyd as he snickers unapologetically. He elbows him again, gentler this time, and Brad finally lets the glare up as he stops sputtering.

"Thanks, by the way."

Brad blinks at Lloyd's words, meeting his gaze. Lloyd's eyes are still red, but there's a steadiness that wasn't there when he met Brad this morning. The kind of stubbornness Brad used to see him get at Darkley's, when he was about to try and prove the world wrong again.

It's no wonder Lloyd's leading the ninja team now, Brad thinks. That's the stubborn look that used to get him in trouble, because it's the one he'd follow in a heartbeat.

Well, he thinks, fighting back a grin. He probably still would.

"So you're definitely gonna take Rachel up on her invitation, right?" he suddenly says, wrenching the subject back to important things. "Because Gene's gonna be at the dance and we've got a golden opportunity to prank him here."

"Wait, she was serious?" Lloyd says, blinking rapidly. "She really…wants me to come to your school's winter dance?"

"Duh," Brad says. "I mean, she'd probably go hiking through a swamp for you if you wanted instead, but you're coming to the dance."

"Oh," Lloyd says, looking supremely confounded by this. "Um…okay? Sure, I guess, it might be fun…"

"Oh, it's going to be fun," Brad assures him. "We've got a fog machine this year and the students won DJ rights. Plus Mrs. Ramsdell is chaperoning, and she'll totally let us get away with ruining Gene's night. Trust me, you're gonna have a blast."

Lloyd doesn't look entirely convinced, but he does look a lot more enthusiastic than he did when talking about his dad earlier, so Brad figures he's got this in the bag. Worst comes to worst, he can just ditch the dance with Lloyd and take him to egg his uncle's monastery or something.

What? He and Lloyd are friends again. That doesn't mean Brad has to be a good influence.