The talk Lloyd promised he would have with the team later doesn't end up happening right away, at least not with everyone together. Recovery was the first stop to blame, since everyone went home at a different time, but after that, it is Lloyd who avoids facing his team.
In terms of moving on, he is at least aware that he is stepping backwards, but the fact that Nya returned to the monastery with them threw a wrench in all his half-formulated plans. Now he struggles with the fact that if he wants to finally pull his team together to sort through their grief, Nya is going to be there.
He isn't sure how to plan around that, so he avoids it.
Lloyd, Nya, and Pixal are the first to return to the monastery, with Jay and Cole remaining at the hospital a while longer, and Wu and Zane to follow later.
They fly back on the Bounty, and the trip is probably the strangest Lloyd has ever felt. The Bounty seems too crowded, despite its small occupancy. Most of their team is gone, but Nya is there, and she might as well be decked head to toe in neon lights for how much attention she calls.
Not that she's doing anything. She doesn't even drive the ship like she used to; she stands next to Pixal at the helm, leaning against the wall and conversing quietly as Pixal navigates home. She fiddles with her hands a lot, and Lloyd notices because he spots the action every time he goes near there.
He approaches many times but always turns back before he gets there. He wants to talk to her—just to say something, but each time he sees her, his chest fills with a burning sensation like it gets when he's about to yell.
He doesn't want to do that, and he isn't sure where it comes from, either. She's still his family, though the thought sparks more turmoil as he thinks over the past few months.
She tries speaking to him once, but Lloyd turns away.
He knows that he's avoiding the inevitable, and deep down, he thinks Kai would be angry at him for it. Not in a bad way, but more like a 'clap to the back of the head and a miffed, "Talk to her, dingus!"' kind of way.
Lloyd is curious about what she has to say for herself, though at the same time, he is scared of what it will be. What can she say to explain why she shut herself off from the team? And if she was able to stay away for that long, what was it about the monastery—or the rest of the ninja—that made it so?
Lloyd imagines answers and scares himself with each one.
The ninja return to the Bounty one at a time, and Lloyd squirrels himself in the base on the day that Nya's parents drive back with boxes of Nya's things—just Nya's this time—where he distracts himself with planning their next mission.
He scours Pixal's carefully sorted database on all things criminal, wasting the day away. He doesn't find anything, but the ninja wouldn't be able to tackle another mission so soon, anyway.
The day that Cole comes home, Lloyd helps him settle in. He takes Cole's many bottles of medicine to the bathroom and ends up cleaning out the entire medicine cabinet, since no one bothers to throw anything away.
He finds antacid tablets, bottles upon empty bottles of ibuprofen and other painkillers, a mysterious bottle of laxatives that no one claims ownership for, and an empty prescription for an antibiotic with Kai's name on the bottle.
Lloyd holds it in his hands when Cole walks in behind him.
"Are we going to talk?" says Cole, "About what happened?"
Lloyd blinks, staring at Kai's name. "Which part?"
Now that Lloyd is facing it, there is a lot. There is the part where Kai died, and the part where he didn't come back, even though everyone always came back. There is the part where Nya left and didn't come back, and the part where the ninja were so broken that they couldn't pull themselves together until it was almost too late.
"All of it," says Cole, "That's what we agreed, right?"
"Nya's here," says Lloyd.
He hopes it'll explain everything, but it doesn't.
"She would've had to be here," says Cole, "This is how we heal. We get through it together."
They have to, and Lloyd is aware of this because he can't see another way out of his world of grief.
But he says, "I can't talk to her right now."
So he doesn't.
As Nya settles back into the monastery, Lloyd begins seeing her everywhere, despite how much he avoids her. She's there in the boxes she unpacks in her room, making sounds and thuds that Lloyd hears down the hall. She is there in the extra dishes in the sink, and simply in the knowledge that one more person occupies these halls.
If the rest of the team has the same problems with Nya as Lloyd, they don't show it. In the rare instance where Lloyd does see Nya, she is talking with at least one of his friends, or to Wu. He assumes that she's explaining herself, and he imagines what kind of excuses she must be coming up with to justify staying away for so long.
Once, he walks in and sees Cole giving her a hug, and he realizes that maybe something else entirely is happening. Cole gives Nya one of his big hugs, the kind that takes all the breath out of someone, the kind that feels safe. It is the kind he saves for family and friends.
Lloyd does an about face and walks out of there before he is spotted, and he is left with a thought: his family is moving on without him.
It is expected, really. Lloyd tries to get over himself, but there is an ache in his chest that won't leave him be.
"She knows you're avoiding her."
A week after Nya comes back, a voice startles Lloyd from his thoughts. He glances up from his press, where he transfers the last of his flowers into a frame. He hasn't had a chance to hunt for more since their battle.
"What?"
Jay stands at the door of the workroom, and he doesn't look happy.
"Nya," says Jay, "She knows you've been avoiding her. It's hurting her feelings."
His first instinct is to deny it, but the very fact that he is in this room proves otherwise. The workroom is the one place that Nya won't go, and Lloyd spends more and more hours each day pacing inside.
He replies, "Yeah, okay."
A beat passes, and Jay steps into the room. "I think you should talk to her."
"No way," says Lloyd, "She had her chance and didn't take it. How can she expect to come back after walking out and refusing to speak to us? We needed her, and she wasn't there."
"She was there," says Jay, "Eventually."
"Not when it mattered."
"It mattered," says Jay, and his face goes soft, "Listen, I want to talk about the battle."
He steps forward, head bowed. Then he leans against the wall, shoulder bumping against it uneasily, so Lloyd inhales, wary of the tone.
"I was—" says Jay, "I'm sorry."
"It's okay."
"No," says Jay, "I was out of my head. I don't—I was just so angry, Lloyd. And I—"
He suddenly stops, biting his lip as he looks at the ceiling. Lloyd watches as Jay's eyes start to water.
"I—uh…I did think that he was stupid," says Jay.
Lloyd frowns, confused. "The Mechanic—?" he starts, then the memory strikes him, and he sits back in his chair.
"No. I thought," says Jay, "that Kai was stupid. For running into places that he didn't know how to get out of. He did that so much, and we weren't always sure if he would make it out, but somehow he always did, and I—"
Jay sniffs, loud and big.
"When I first heard about what happened, that was my first thought," says Jay, "I think I even said so. I thought he was stupid for running into that building. Then after they told us that he—he didn't make it," he takes a breath, "I've been hating myself for it ever since."
Lloyd can't respond right away, and he stares at Jay's shirt instead of Jay's face, since it is easier to look away.
"I—" he says, when he finds his words, "You can't beat yourself up for that. Not for this long, Jay."
"Can't I?" says Jay, "My last thoughts about him when I thought he was alive was that he was stupid. What kind of friend does that?"
Lloyd watches him struggle to keep from crying.
"I can't even apologize to him for it," says Jay, and he stops there to wipe at his face.
He stands like that for a while, inhaling slowly as he calms down. Lloyd just stares, saddened for his friend.
"Jay," Lloyd starts, "you shouldn't beat yourself up for that."
Jay shrugs, but Lloyd continues, "I think we all thought he was stupid from time to time whenever he pulled one of those stunts. He was smart, but our missions weren't complete without him coming up with a boneheaded scheme. That was just how he was. If he thought he could help—"
It grows too difficult for Lloyd to continue, so Lloyd stops. If Kai thought he could help, nothing could stop him. Not a wall of enemies, not an erupting volcano, not even the thought of death.
A beat of silence passes before Jay speaks again.
"I've been trying to find peace with it," says Jay, "and I wonder if he would ever forgive me."
"I don't think he'd even be mad at you," says Lloyd.
Jay huffs out a ghost of a laugh, like he doesn't believe it.
"I really don't, Jay," says Lloyd.
"Well, he isn't here to tell me that," says Jay, shaking his head, "I don't know. Everything has been awful since he died, and during the battle, I wanted those people to feel that pain. It's hurt so much, and seeing them smile about it, like they'd won already, I wanted them to hurt. I didn't care that I was out of control. I'm so sorry about that."
Lloyd turns to his flowers. They sit so bright in the gray room that they are almost painful to look at.
"I know," says Lloyd, "I'm sorry, too."
He is sorry that Jay has been sitting with this pain for months. He's sorry that his entire team is in pain, and he is sorry that now, despite knowing all that they are going through, he is still stalling.
They need closure, but Lloyd is afraid to speak up.
After a beat, he speaks, "But you must understand. I'm mad at Nya. She left and didn't come back. How were we supposed to know that she would come back on that day?"
Jay blinks as though returning to himself, and he wipes his sleeve against his eyes again.
"She's one of us," says Jay, "We always come back."
But they don't anymore. Kai didn't. Kai still isn't here.
"I know you're mad," says Jay, "I was too, for a while. But she wanted to deal with her grief in her own way. Talking to her about it would be a lot better than sitting around being angry."
Lloyd fiddles with his calligraphy pen, taking it apart and putting it back together again. It isn't just anger he feels, but he doesn't know how else to describe his turmoil.
"She isn't leaving this time," says Jay, "and that anger you feel about all this will only get worse. Talk to her, she wants to hear from you."
"I don't know that," says Lloyd, "People always left. My mom, my dad, even you guys. Then her. How do I know that she won't leave again?"
Jay stares at him for a while, and he doesn't press the matter.
"You told me," Zane says, "That if she has something to say to you, she can say it to you herself. Why not now?"
Zane joins him in the workroom today, sitting on the floor next to Lloyd's table. Lloyd has his arm propped on the back of his chair as he rests his head on it, tired of his teammates badgering him.
"You guys act as though I'm the only one with a problem, here," says Lloyd.
"You're not," says Zane, and his eyes are sad, "but you aren't doing anything to fix it."
"Not true!" says Lloyd, turning away.
He leans over the table, but there is nothing there to keep him occupied. His flowers are all positioned and pinned, and his press is empty. Instead, he drags over his book of wildflowers and flips to a page on leaf shapes.
Maybe he can pretend to be busy until Zane goes away.
"I called her a month ago," says Lloyd, "but she wasn't there. Now she wants to talk, but she's missed her chance."
"You're being obtuse."
The choice of words give Lloyd pause, and he looks at Zane in question.
"You know that we need to address this," says Zane.
Lloyd sighs. "I know."
"So what is stopping you?"
Lloyd stares at the pages of his book, losing himself in the wall of text. "What am I supposed to say to her?" says Lloyd, "Right now I can't even think about it without getting mad, and I don't want to yell at her."
"She expects as much," says Zane.
"Aren't you mad?"
"Yes."
Lloyd glances at Zane again, and Zane stares at Kai's worktable.
"I am angry over many things," says Zane, "as I'm sure you're aware. I am angry at Kai's death, and how it happened. I am angry that Cole wasn't there to save him, and I am angry at myself for the same reasons."
He swallows, and Lloyd cocks his head.
"I am angry," says Zane, "at Nya for leaving, and I am angry at the rest of us. There are ways we could have been there for each other, and we weren't."
"What do you mean by that?" says Lloyd, "We've all been here."
"We may have been here," says Zane, "but this grief we've had regarding what happened has largely been unaddressed. I know that I did not speak to you or anyone like I should have. Grief is not a process to be taken alone, and I feel that my behaviors were isolating to myself and those around me."
Lloyd thinks over his words. They are true, but they are true for everyone on the team. Lloyd has been isolating himself from the very beginning.
"It was no wonder that we couldn't work together," says Zane.
He makes sense. Lloyd tells Zane that he will think it over, that way he'll stop talking to him about it.
He spends the quiet moments thinking.
"Did she ever apologize for hitting you?" Lloyd asks.
Cole sits at his desk, brushing ink onto cold-pressed paper. This is the closest thing to a hobby Lloyd has seen Cole partake in since Kai died, since he stopped doing much of anything afterwards. The sight of it was so surprising that Lloyd hesitated before speaking, worried that a disturbance might ruin something.
Cole startles, but he doesn't make a false brush stroke and turns with ease.
"Nya?" he questions.
"Who else?"
"It's nice to see you, too," says Cole, "Of course she did. It was one of the first things she apologized for. She's been beating herself up about it—about a lot of what she said and did before she left."
Before she left.
That sticks with Lloyd.
She left.
"So you forgave her?"
"I did," says Cole, "What she did was wrong, but I forgave her a while ago. We were in pain."
"We're still in pain."
"Yes, we are."
Lloyd hovers by the door before entering. "Can I see what you're painting?"
Cole scoots his chair back so Lloyd can approach his side.
Lloyd isn't sure what he's expecting as he looks over the paper: something abstract; a landscape, maybe. But it's a study, simply the view outside of Cole's window.
It's good. Cole took it a step further and painted the window along with the view through it, and Lloyd admires the details of the mountainside through delicately painted glass panes.
"It's really good," Lloyd says.
"Thanks," Cole smiles, pausing to crack and roll his wrists before returning to the painting, "I'm trying to get back into it. It's been a while."
"You'd never be able to tell," says Lloyd, honestly.
"Ha! You haven't seen the first few sketches I did," says Cole, and the smile hasn't left his face.
Lloyd grins back, and for several minutes, they sit in silence as Cole goes back to painting. Lloyd looks out Cole's window and eyes the distant tree line. The hardwoods have turned colors over the past few weeks, and it has almost gotten too cold for Lloyd to go on his flower hunts anymore.
It saddens him, and it is one less distraction from his grim realities.
"I've been thinking about what you said," says Lloyd, "about being mad at Kai."
Cole stops. "I wasn't—"
"I know you wouldn't be mad at him," says Lloyd, "but you talked about how upset you'd be over all the time that passed, and the pain you had because he wasn't there. I think that's what I'm mad at with Nya."
As he talks, Cole nods.
"That's what it sounds like," he says.
Lloyd stares at his shoes.
Cole says, "You should talk to her."
"Everyone keeps saying that."
"That's because it's not getting through your thick skull," says Cole, with a playful swat, "I understand what you're going through, really, but it won't get any better if you don't talk to her about it. You might be able to understand each other and work from there."
He is right. Everyone is. And Lloyd knows.
He just nods in reply. They're right.
When Lloyd typically thinks of fighting for his team, he thinks of big battles that require all his strength and fortitude. He thinks of weapons and noise, getting hit in the stomach or face, of pain and skinned knees.
He doesn't think of a conversation as fighting for his team, but that is what it feels like when he asks to speak with Nya after dinner. Thinking over it now, he wonders why he never considered it.
He sits outside the monastery's gates, zipped tight in a jacket as he watches columns of fog roll off mountains. He doesn't have his book with him, but he doesn't need it. He waits, and when Nya finally appears, he doesn't move.
He is determined to sit this out.
"Lloyd?" Nya says.
Her voice is quiet in a way that Lloyd can't really describe her voice as normally, but he chalks it up as a new development, one of many changes since Kai died. Of course, she has a lot to learn about him, as well.
He is too caught up thinking about it to give her a decent reply, but instead of leaving, Nya approaches. Lloyd keeps his gaze on the mountains, taking a deep breath. Now that Nya is here, Lloyd almost wishes that she would go away again, so he has more time to think about what he is going to say to her.
He is still scared of yelling.
Nya sits next to him, and out of the corner of his eye, Lloyd notices that she is holding something in her hands. He glances while trying not to be obvious about it, and it is a big brown book, worn at the corners.
Lloyd doesn't ask, and Nya doesn't explain. She also looks at the mountains. From this angle, she almost looks like a different person than who she was several months ago.
"I know you're angry," she starts.
Though she echoes the observations of the rest of their team, Lloyd scowls, because angry is neither a big enough word for it nor entirely accurate. There are many emotions surrounding Lloyd like a cloud, a hurricane getting worse and worse.
"That's what you think?" he says.
"It's what I know," she says, and she casts him a cautious glance.
Lloyd forces himself to keep they eye contact, searching her gaze for answers. She looks away.
"I know that it hurt you, but I had to leave—"
"No you didn't!"
Lloyd promised he'd hold his tongue until Nya said her piece, but he bursts, "You didn't have to, but you did, anyway! You left and didn't come back!"
She bristles at his tone but sets her jaw. "I did come back."
"Too late," says Lloyd, "It's been months, Nya."
"I had to leave," says Nya, "I had to."
"You did not!" says Lloyd, "We're a family, and families stick together! They don't drop everything and disappear when times get tough."
Lloyd can't stop himself if he tried, and this statement makes Nya frown, hard.
"Get tough?" she says, "He was my brother."
"And he was our friend." Lloyd's voice is rising, but he doesn't care. "He was our family, too, but you left!"
"You saw how I was," says Nya, "I couldn't have stayed here like that. I needed to sort myself out."
The levelness of her tone upon those last few sentences makes Lloyd want to scream, but considering how wrong this conversation went right away, he doesn't want it to get worse.
Instead, he says, "We're a family. We're supposed to see the worst of each other. We're supposed to see the best of each other. You could've sorted yourself out with the rest of us."
"It wasn't you guys seeing me that was the problem," says Nya, "I was a mess. I screamed at you; I hit Cole. My actions were hurting the people I cared about most, and I couldn't stay there and let that happen."
Her chin quivers, and Lloyd feels terrible—or, worse.
He glances at his feet, fiddling with his shoes. "We could've helped you. We didn't hold any of that against you."
"That isn't the point," says Nya, "I wasn't in a good place. I needed to step back, away from here."
"What was so wrong with here? This is our home."
"Not for me," says Nya, "Not if Kai wasn't here."
This makes Lloyd's blood boil. "And the rest of us?
"Look, Lloyd, I was living a nightmare," says Nya, and for a breath, her tone turns frosty, "I didn't want to leave my room, because I would've had to walk past my brother's empty room. I didn't want to see all of you and know that he wouldn't be joining us for dinner or video games."
"So you decided to go? You thought that being by yourself would be better?" says Lloyd, and his anger subsides into something else he's been feeling: hopeless confusion. "You shouldn't have had to handle all this alone."
"You don't have to understand."
"I don't think I will," says Lloyd, "And what about us, huh? Did it occur that you leaving us to grieve both you and Kai was a good idea? Did you think we were better off not knowing how you were or if you were coming back? You didn't even call, Nya!"
He gets angrier the longer he speaks and stands. He marches away, but not towards the monastery or even further down the mountain. He just walks away from her and crouches on a ledge, staring at a crack in the ground.
In summertime, there would be flowers here, but all that's left is dead vegetation.
"Why didn't you answer my call?" he asks.
Nya takes a while to answer. When Lloyd looks at her, she stares at the sky, trying not to cry.
"I was…ashamed, I guess," she says, "I know that's no excuse."
Lloyd snorts.
"But I hated that you guys saw me so low," she says, "that you saw me act that way. Even with Pixal—she didn't see much of me after it happened, but it was still hard to talk to her."
Lloyd understands at least a little bit of what she speaks about. There are sides of himself that he never meant to share that the ninja have been forced to live with for months.
He picks at the plants, prying up dead stems and tossing them down the mountainside. He thinks of the first flowers he tried to press and wonders where they landed after he let them go.
"It's not like we were doing any better," he admits.
He thinks of his behavior towards Nya, towards each of his friends for the past few months, and feels his insides crumble in shame.
"I know," says Nya, "I'm sorry I hid away from you guys. That was a mistake."
She apologizes for that, but not for leaving. Lloyd looks at the tears in her eyes and hates that he might've put them there. Guilty, he walks over and sits back next to her.
"I'm sorry," he says, "I didn't want to yell."
"You've been thinking about all that for a while, huh?"
"I didn't want anyone to leave, not like last time. I didn't think I could go through that again," says Lloyd, "It's been awful without you here, like we lost both of you."
"I think you did, for a while," says Nya, "I'm sorry if I made you think that I wasn't coming back."
Lloyd doesn't reply.
"I won't lie," Nya says, "A part of me didn't want to come back, anyway. Every time I thought about walking through those gates, knowing that he wouldn't be there to greet me, it became easier to stay home. I couldn't stand the idea."
The statement stings in a way that he feels in his eyes and nose. He sniffs to clear it up, hating Kai for making Nya feel this way, and hating himself for hating both of them.
"But being away was just as bad," says Nya, "Because no matter what, he's gone. He's not here anymore, and I couldn't face that. I'm sorry I hurt you, I really am, but—"
She sniffs and wipes at her cheek, where fresh tear tracks have appeared. She opens the book in her lap. It's a photo album, and an old one at that.
Two photos sit on the page. The first holds a cranky looking baby, sleep-mussed hair sticking straight up. The second holds a tiny Kai and a different baby—Nya—squinting under the sun.
"I needed time," says Nya, "I wanted to be strong for you, like he always was for me, but I didn't expect to hurt this badly. I never knew how much it would hurt."
The longer Lloyd listens, the more he shakes. He stares at the photo album, and the pictures start to swirl.
"He was always there, Lloyd," says Nya, "for my whole life, it was me and him. We were buddies. When Mom and Dad disappeared, he was there, and he made me strong. After we joined the ninja—" she laughs, but there is no humor in her voice, "—he still looked out for me. It was almost annoying, because sometimes it felt like he didn't think I could take care of myself."
Lloyd half-shakes his head, but Nya isn't looking at him. She stares at the photo of her and Kai, forever frozen in place.
"Mom and Dad tried so hard to help me," says Nya, "but they didn't understand."
Finally, Nya meets Lloyd's gaze. "He was my big brother," she says, "I thought he would always be there."
Whatever anger is left in Lloyd—and it isn't a lot—drains, leaving a storm behind in its wake. He turns his eyes to the sky, trying to find his words.
"I guess I thought that, too," he says.
And he starts to cry.
These chapters keep getting longer and longer as I try to end this story at a reasonable chapter count.
Thank you for reading!
