Full Summary: "The nature of being a family is that sometimes you fail each other; then you work together to fix it. Over the years, the ninja have mastered this art like an elemental power, but what's to be done when the ones you love become unrecognizable? You sacrifice, endure, and you compromise even yourself to remind them of who they are, because come literal hell or high water, you're family, and most of all: you never quit."
so...ff dot net...my old friend. i have only returned to you because there's nothing but crickets on AO3. may all the subscribers i've collected over the last decade not jump for joy because they think my invader zim fic is gonna be finished...sorry. family with IZ ended, now ninjago is my best friend, and here's the start of 1/3 fics i'm currently working on for it!
S8. Kai of all people has something to say to Lloyd about bad snap decisions.
Memories flood, distracting.
"I promised to look after Lloyd!"
A monstrous, child-devouring fish bears down on him.
Kai doesn't know where he's going because he can't see anything. Because all he can see are memories and red. A dragged trail of red in the sand. A filter of rage over every other place.
Like double vision blending red and green, a Christmas morning sapped of joy, he sees his friends locked away so he can fight a demon alone.
What kind of desperate big shot does something so stupid?
"Maybe if I stand up to Lord Garmadon, I'll find my true potential, and then everyone will see that I'm the Green Ninja!"
Oh yeah.
Defeating — saving — that villain is the sole present under the tree. It's tied with a little green — purple — bow, and he knows it contains everything he's ever wanted. He almost has it, but then he — she — gladly throws it in the fire. Kai found his place in the world and got a fourth brother out of the deal. Harumi gets to eat Lloyd alive.
And Kai sees red because he blames himself.
Cole mans the searchlight as the rest of the ninja rappel from the Destiny's Bounty to where they found Lloyd lying with his face pressed down into the sand. This time, they hadn't needed to search long for one of their fallen friends, knowing right where he'd be thanks to Harumi's sadistic broadcast. And the gaping hole in the wall.
They all call out his name before reaching him, but he gives them no answer.
Jay lands first, the others close behind. "First Zane. Now Lloyd. Who's it gonna be next?" he says, hands held at his chest in worry.
"Don't talk like that," Nya berates. She kneels and reaches to roll Lloyd over, but thinking better of it, she just takes his wrist instead. Brushing his hair over his ear with the other, she exposes the gashes and swelling bruises on his face, the ominous splotch by his open mouth. She chokes back a sob, saying, "Zane, is it safe to move him?"
Zane aims a quick scan over Lloyd's body, concluding, "No, but we cannot afford anyone up there coming down here." He gestures to the prison ahead where a few Sons of Garmadon stand mocking them. They can't risk treating Lloyd on the ground if even the lackeys attempt to finish the job, let alone Harumi and her troupe who're thankfully nowhere in sight. "My sensors indicate that we may not have a choice."
Kai taps his comm. "We're gonna need that stretcher again, Pix."
"I am already sending it down," Pixal responds.
On the gurney's arrival, Jay helps Nya lift Lloyd over onto it as Kai and Zane, fists raised and eyes vigilant, position themselves between their friends and the enemy. Merely watching with smirks plastered on their faces, the Sons make no move to approach. One chuckles.
As a blazing log snaps in two, Kai's composure cracks. "What, you wanna fight?" he shouts. Despite knowing it's foolish, he can't resist hurtling a fireball at them. They easily sidestep it and burst into guffaws. He snarls, preparing to pop off another, but Zane pushes down his wrist. The icy burn of his hand, whether elemental or titanium, forces Kai to calm.
With a restrained yell, he puts his fire out and joins the others on their ascent back to the ship. He pours his furious energy into climbing the rope faster when howled taunts from the Sons reach his ears. If he could burn them all to a crisp...If only he could get Garmadon's ugly face under his fists again.
It feels like a suspended second when Lloyd's vivid green eyes catch his — delirious eyes squinting from the brightness of the sun peaking over the horizon. The gurney then passes him up. "Why'd you do it, Lloyd?" he mutters.
Pixal meets the ninja as they pull themselves aboard, and together they rush down to the control deck where the Bounty delivered their leader.
Evidently more alert, he's trying to slide off the gurney to his feet.
"Wait, Lloyd, your leg—" Zane tries to warn, but Lloyd drops his weight on it and yells when it instantly buckles. The closest, Cole dashes over, catching him from behind, and holds him upright. The sudden movement must have been too jarring in his state because a color to match his gi shadows his face.
"Wuh-oh! He's gonna hurl," Cole exclaims, bracing his hold. The others back up; Zane, however, finds a bowl just in time.
Kai doesn't want to be sick, so he tries not to look, but he can't miss the ominous shock of red. "Is that...?"
"Yes. He is bleeding internally," Zane says, dread in his voice.
"Oh, internally. That's where it's supposed to be anyway, right?" Jay comments with his trademark anxiousness as Zane discards the bowl.
Everyone swallows their reprimands when Lloyd's coughed whimpers mutely echo through the room, the sound doing more than just sobering them. "I-I'm sorry— S-sorry. I can't—" he mumbles as he sinks, Cole controlling his collapse. They both end up sitting on the floor with Lloyd propped up against the other's chest. "M'sorry."
Surprised by the harsh thoughts flooding over him, Kai growls. His heart works itself into a dizzying race, but it has to be said. "You know what? You should be." His fist swings around of its own accord as punctuation.
"Kai!" his sister admonishes.
"Calm down," Jay pleads.
"No, listen to me." He steps into the center of their gathering. "It's crazy I have to say it, but we're a team! We work this kind of stuff out together." Listing to the side, Lloyd seems unable to pay attention, so Kai gets down level with him. He doesn't mean to, really he doesn't, but he grabs his little brother's gi, barking out, "And ninja don't leave each other behind, especially when it's all of us."
"Back off, man," Cole warns as he shoves Kai away.
Stumbling, he looks at the upset, shocked faces of his friends then back down at Lloyd. Instead of being dismayed like the others, his split lip turns up into the tiniest of pained smiles, and he extends a shaky hand towards Kai, panting, "Never...quit...either."
"We didn't ask you to," Kai starts to say but stops himself. Lloyd looks incredibly small wrapped up in Cole's bulky arms. It's so easy to forget that he isn't as old as he appears. Though Kai knows all of them had been through hell together, he's reminded of everything Lloyd had to face alone in the small amount of time that hadn't been stolen from him. How he'd done the exact same thing when he was Lloyd's age for a pathetically selfish reason rather than a noble and selfless one.
And he also remembers that not too long ago, he'd acted on his own again due to the insanity parents could cause. He'd been Lloyd's example.
All of Kai's anger wilts under the pressure of his fear — of his guilt. His stomach churns with it. He takes Lloyd's forearm, holding on with every ounce of remorse in him, and rubs the other hand over his shoulder, saying, "Ah, buddy, I'm sorry. We'll get you fixed up, okay?"
Lloyd keeps smiling like he'll be all right, but since they're keeping eye contact, Kai sees it when the green bleeds out of his irises. He moves the hand on Lloyd's shoulder to his forehead after a violent shudder draws an awful cry out of him. The fire ninja knows the telltale signs of a growing fever. He can even feel burning with every pulse of Lloyd's blood as though Garmadon's dark power had turned it into acid.
They're losing him.
"How? What do we do?" Cole says, looking to everyone and settling on Nya. He lets Lloyd lie down on his lap as Kai pulls back from them.
"I— I don't know. I'll contact Misako." She disappears out the door.
"We must do what we can here, now, or I fear he will not survive the trip back to the city," Pixal says as sensitively as she can manage.
"Water, towels, needles and thread," Zane asks for, bending to help his brothers off the floor.
Cole waves him off with, "I got it," and carries Lloyd to the observation table without the assistance.
"Do we have anything to facilitate sedation?" Zane continues.
Jay searches the storage cabinets. "Uh, morphine? That's all we got."
"It will have to suffice."
Kai wants to help, but he's frozen to the spot where he still crouches. With the others bustling around, he forces himself to stand. Lloyd's hyperventilating, pitiful elemental sparks lighting up his chest. His own power's turned against him, and Kai can't move.
Cole holds down his broken leg, ready to set it, but he's knocked back by a pulse of energy that runs across Lloyd's body. Zane takes the next hit, stunned by electric green bolts dancing off his metal skin before he can give Lloyd the morphine shot. One of the monitors on the wall blows out. Pixal yelps and cowers when the power reaches her, the water basin she carried crashing on the deck, and Jay holds up an orange towel like a shield and darts out of its range.
It latches onto Kai, bringing phantom pain to his scars. He feels Lloyd's terror and grief through the green shock. He can't do anything.
That's never stopped him from trying before.
He moves past Zane who's picking up the syringe off the floor, steeling himself against the elemental power that lashes out at him. Lloyd's clawing at the table, obviously not fully conscious of what he's doing. "Hey, they're trying to help," Kai says and catches Lloyd's wrists, crossing them over the sparks on his chest. The energy slowly fizzles out, but his panicked breathing doesn't relax. Neither does the completely freaky way his eyes flash between green and black.
Kai realizes that the colors shift with his heartbeat.
He has to talk the kid down, or his power is gonna burn right through him. He tries, "You're with us, Lloyd. We're not gonna let anything hurt you..." as he passes Lloyd's arm to Zane behind him, leaning down to pin it with his elbow. Lloyd's wide eyes follow the movement, energy sparks building back up when Zane rolls his sleeve out of the way, repositioning the needle. A tiny bolt zaps Kai in the eyeball. He shakes off the sharp twinge, saying, "No, look at me," and leans over more to block Lloyd's line of sight.
For some reason, he thinks slamming the back of his head on the table is gonna free him from Kai's hold, but it only makes him groan, screwed-shut eyes leaking tears. Kai flattens his hand on his forehead as he says, "Listen. Lloyd, stop—"
He mumbles something that sounds like, "Don't let go," but that's probably not right because he's twisting his wrist out of the grip Kai keeps on it, fingers strained, clenched, then open again. His right foot scrapes the table but trying that with the left just causes him more pain when his leg won't bend. It's all Kai can do to stop him from arching his back higher than an inch.
If he's still strong enough to fight like this after spending half the night under the stars, then maybe he has it in him to pull through.
"Please, hold him still," Zane begs.
"Listen," Kai orders as he squeezes Lloyd's wrist tighter, then stroking his hair back over his head a few times. Anything to ground him, to make him stop hurting himself. "You have to calm. Down."
He finally does, if only thanks to Zane. His crying, vacant stare hurts worse than his uncontrolled power, and the rapid eye-color shifting slows, settling on black. For a split, horrifying second, Kai thinks Lloyd's just died, but then he notices the pulse still going under his fingertips. Why— why are his eyes black? If his power's on the fritz like that, shouldn't they just be his natural red?
The others descend on him, inadvertently pushing Kai as he backs out of the way.
Zane gets him to bite down on a folded rag and holds his hand, ushering Pixal to mirror the action on the opposite side, and gives Cole a three-second countdown with his other hand while Jay secures Lloyd's good leg. Then Cole yanks his broken one straight. In spite of the painkiller, he groans again, a deep, strangled sound, his eyes rolling back as Zane takes the rag. Pixal distributes the medical supplies, the four setting to work now that he's unconscious.
And that's all Kai can take of seeing his baby brother like this.
He scrubs his eye on the way up to the bridge. It's just watering from the pain, or so he has to tell himself.
Nya's on the phone with Misako, hanging up soon after Kai joins her, leaning on his palms by the helm. She only looks away from him long enough to set a course on the navigation console but zeroes her attention back when she steps up beside him. "Kai, your eye!" She holds her hand to his face, short of touching him. It's just enough to make him look at her. "It's so red. What happened?"
"It's nothing," he says, tearing his eyes away and glowering at the red painted railing. One fist thumps on it before gripping it again.
She rubs his back and sighs as she takes the Bounty's wheel. After a moment, she shakes her head to herself, glancing at him.
"What?" he asks.
"I can't believe you said that to him."
He winces at the pang of guilt he feels for yelling at Lloyd earlier. "People grow up, ya' know."
She gives him a mock-incredulous look. "And you're 'people' all of a sudden?"
He pushes her playfully. "Hey, it's true. Yes, I may be the living embodiment of pure impulsiveness, but I do like to be one of you sometimes."
"I'm glad you are."
Her tone's harder with that, face sincere. She means him becoming a ninja, being on this team. He bites back the sting in his eyes and nods. How much longer does Lloyd have to be, too? Or the rest of them? What chance does Kai have to protect anyone if even a son can't save his own father?
Paint sizzles and wood splinters under his hands.
Zane presses his frosted hands into places on Lloyd's face, his forehead, cheeks, his neck, trying to control his skyrocketing temperature. Jay mops up the melted ice after him with a towel he brought from the ship. Kai and Cole stand frozen, silent. Mistaké holds the cup of tea and patiently looks between them all. Then Lloyd's making a heartbreaking noise.
Nya doesn't need any more time to consider. "Do it," she volunteers, no room for argument.
"Wait," Kai objects anyway. "You don't just jump into decisions like this."
Clearly still mad at him for earlier, Cole snaps at him, accusing him of selfishness. Sensing their ensuing argument, Zane leaves Lloyd to go split them up, or rather it turns out, to take Cole's side.
Nya understands why Kai doesn't like this idea. She's even a little proud that he's trying to think things through. Lloyd lies on a counter in some backstreet shop dy— suffering because he'd let his emotions take over, so it's only rational that they be careful now. But she was never attached to her powers to begin with and knows there's no other choice she'd be willing to make.
Along with the others, she lays her hand on Lloyd's head and sends her brother a pointed look that she hopes doesn't make him think she's forcing him. Still, he gives in a moment later.
Lloyd coughs out the first sip. Mistaké tsks, "Not that way, little one," and she kneads the back of his neck as she tips the cup again.
Nya's not sure how it works, but she's thankful to see him take the tea without another issue. She threads her fingers through his damp hair, as much to preemptively apologize as it is to follow Mistaké's instruction, and prays that what they may be about to sacrifice helps more than it hurts.