Father-Lloyd
*Slight GreenFlame*
*Set after Season 5. Don't read if you don't want spoilers*
After the Ninjas have defeated Master Chen and his false Anacondrai army, Ninjago regained his peace. However, because reality was not sweet like a fairy tale, the ending of "and then everybody lived happily ever after" didn't happen. Sensei Garmadon, Lloyd's father, was sacrificed to bring the peace. When he told Lloyd that everything was his karma and to send him to the Cursed Land, he looked so serene, as if giving up on life, as if just accepting the cruel fate. And Lloyd, who had chosen to send his own father to the Cursed Land, felt as if his mind was being ripped to pieces. When he was reading the letters that would send his father to the Cursed Land, his own throat seemed to tighten, fighting against him, his hands were so shaky it was almost impossible to read the letters, and his very lung seemed to refuse oxygen, making him unable to breathe. Despite all that, Lloyd read the curse to the end with a hoarse voice, and his father, Sensei Garmadon, was sent to the Cursed Land forever.
After that, even though Lloyd seemed to be coping well with his father's death, his insides always seemed to knot and burn. To be truthful, while all citizens were celebrating peace and victory, the main characters of the celebration, the Ninjas, couldn't stay very happy. To Sensei Wu, he lost a recently reunited brother, to Misako she lost a dear husband, and the Ninjas lost a precious Sensei. Even though their misery, too, was great, how could they be compared to Lloyd's? Lloyd, who had lost his father before he had even had a chance to talk to him father-to-son, felt as if he was drowning in guilt. But because all that was hidden beneath the special maturity and smiles of a hero, the Ninjas couldn't do anything but give Lloyd their sadness and sympathy.
If this façade continued, Lloyd might have actually drowned in guilt, and he would have gladly accepted it too. But maybe because similar people recognize each other, before Lloyd completely drowned inside the deep well within himself, a person reached out their hand, and because Lloyd couldn't refuse it, he managed to survive another day.
"You can cry, Lloyd."
Kai said to Lloyd one day out of blue.
"You can cry. Don't hold it back."
"Huh? What do you mean, Kai?"
Lloyd replied back with a shaky voice. He really did want to cry-just like a six-year old. However, he wasn't a six year old but an adult, so he just bottled it in.
"You know what I mean." Kai sighed, then he suddenly pulled Lloyd so that Lloyd's forehead was resting against his shoulder.
"Your father. Anacondrai army. Being a hero. You're being hard on yourself. You know that you want to cry. So don't hold back."
"Kai, I really don't understand what you're talking about. I'm really okay-"
Lloyd tried to get away from Kai, but the brunette tightened his grip on the blonde's head, trapping him.
"You know, my father, he…passed away when I was fifteen."
Lloyd looked at Kai, surprised at the sudden change of topic, but he went on, ignoring the looks of puzzlement.
"But you know what? I couldn't cry. Like, no tears came out at all. When I was going to the funeral, when I was burying his coffin, nothing came out of me. I couldn't believe that he was dead. It-It felt like when I finished the funeral and went back home, my father would be tending the fire at the stove, and that his death was some horrifying nightmare. But, that wasn't it. That wasn't true. He didn't come back. And that's when I realized-oh, I going to never see him again. That it was really a good bye for…forever."
"Kai…"
"After I realized that, I just…felt resentment toward my dad. I resented him for leaving before I did, I resented him for the fact that I won't be able to see him again, and I resented him for just…everything. For me, although it's been three years since he passed away, there are times, often, when I can't just believe that he's gone. And there have been lots of times when I wanted to cry or go back to the time to when he was alive. But you're only eleven. I lost my father when I was fifteen and it was still that hard on me, but you're only eleven. You lost your father at eleven."
"Kai, I'm eighteen, not ele-"
"Sure, your body may be eighteen, but your mind is still eleven. You're just a kid pretending to be an adult. You're just a poor kid who had their seven years of childhood robbed because you had to be a hero! You can cry, Lloyd. Maybe not to other people, but you can at least depend on me. At least, to me, you can be an eleven-year-old kid. You have the full right to be. To be an eleven-year-old and to cry."
So Lloyd did cry. He just crushed that he had lost his father even before he had the chance to know him, and he hated himself for not being able to stop that from happening, and he was thankful to Kai who told him that he could cry. The guilt that was drowning him, and the anger that was throttling him, he all sent it down in tears. As if he didn't know what shame was, he cried like a kid.
He was an eleven-year-old kid pretending to be an eighteen-year-old after all.
A/N: Hello! Thank you to those people who have read this and reviewed! And I'm also sorry that this is much shorter than the last one. It's simply that I love Kai more (...) and I just have been thinking about Kai's for much longer amount of time. And I also wanted to write about how Lloyd, who was originally 11 (In my opinion, not sure) but was turned into 18 (again, my opinion, not a fact) but he acts so much more mature than other ninjas at times. And when I finished writing, I couldn't find a way to make it longer, so I decided to update it just the way it was. Thank you for reading, and please review!