Lloyd woke up the next afternoon.

No one had been expecting it; if they had, they would have waited with baited breath as the small monitor proudly displayed how many times his heart beat instead of going to The Crossroads to stock up on food, supplies and whatever happened to catch one of the new trainees' eye.

Instead, when his bright green eyes slowly opened with a mild, pained groan, the only person who heard it was Kai.

Kai, who was sitting alone in the medbay while Zane continued his research, with one hand around Lloyd's left hand and the other scrolling through Chirp until he nearly dropped his phone when he heard the groan escape Lloyd's lips.

"Hey, bud," He let out a breath of relief, pocketing his phone before wrapping his other hand around Lloyd's, "how're you feeling?"

Kai wasn't sure what he was expecting to happen, but it wasn't Lloyd's eyes filling with tears while he brought in a long, sniffly inhale.

"Whoa, whoa, kiddo, it's okay," He stood up to get closer, using one of his hands to run through Lloyd's thin strands of hair while keeping the other firmly grasped around his hand, "don't try and talk if it hurts, we've got you."

"I-I'm sorry," Lloyd finally choked out, his voice shuddering as he spoke, "I'm s-so sorry."

"Sorry about-" Kai started to ask, only for him to remember the mild disagreement that had upset him the day before, but had been completely forgotten after his and Nya's conversation in the bathroom, "oh, Lloyd…I'm not mad about that anymore."

"But-"

"I'm so glad you're okay," Kai cut him off, bringing his hand down from his hair to wipe the tears off of his face, "you being okay is so much more important to me than any sort of argument, you got that?"

Lloyd nodded, his eyes already starting to flutter shut again.

"Go back to sleep. We can talk more in a bit, promise."

The pain medication that was flowing through the IV in his other hand meant that he had very little pushback or protest from Lloyd, who let his eyes close and stayed close.

Kai, on the other hand, gently pulled his hand out from under Lloyd's head, because he knew that drooling was inevitable and it was the last thing he wanted on his bare hand.

…

He woke up in small increments at first, never really staying awake for more then ten minutes at a time.

Then it was fifteen, then twenty, and soon enough, a few hours.

On one hand, Kai knew that was good. Lloyd was getting stronger, he was pulling through and the pain was lessening. On the other hand, with the slow return of his strength was the rapid return of his insistence that he was completely fine.

"I can smell it from here," Lloyd sighed while pulling apart the plain toast that had been brought down to him, "and it smells really, really good."

The smell of dinner was filling the entire monastery to the point where Kai's stomach was growling, but Zane had insisted that Lloyd needed to eat gently between the painkillers and just how close the dagger had gotten to his stomach.

"Well, pretend that your toast is the same food." Kai suggested, trying not to look at Lloyd's sad, puppy dog eyes that had always been his downfall.

"Toast isn't the same thing as Zane's teriyaki beef and you know it."

"That's why I said pretend, you little snot."

"Oh, that's just so much better than you calling me "boogers"." Lloyd grumbled as he continued to pull the crust off of his toast before asking, "can I have a popsicle?"

"You really shouldn't."

"Oh, come on! It's frozen juice. Please?"

Kai looked up from his phone to get met with the "someone kicked my puppy" eyes that Lloyd had been famous for long before he had become the green ninja and groaned, "fine, but you better eat all of that toast and it better stay down."

…

"Stop yanking!" Wyldfyre shouted from where she was sitting on the floor outside of the medbay while Kai slowly ran the comb through her tangled ends.

"I'm not yanking," Kai tried to keep his voice steady as he gently worked the comb through the large tangle in the middle of her hair, "but you have a lot of tangles and it's only gonna take one too many people noticing before we have to deal with Ninjago Social Services, so just let me do this."

"Fine," Wyldfyre scowled but continued to sit still even when Kai picked up the detangler and sprayed it on her ends, adding even more to the strong scent of coconut in the air before switching to the hairbrush, "have you ever done this before? Because you are still pulling my hair."

Kai had to refrain from saying "you should have seen when Lloyd let me take a brush to his hair for the first time because if you think this is bad, brushing a tangled bowl cut is ten times worse" and settled on, "that's just what the brush feels like. But I've almost got all the knots out."

"Finally! I hate sitting still."

"Do you want me to style it?" Kai asked as he brought the brush through the sections he had separated, relieved when he felt zero knots snag on the brush.

"Style it?" Wyldfyre repeated slowly, a familiar signal that the words were unfamiliar in her mouth.

"Yeah, put it up so it doesn't get tangled so easily. Like Nya's and Sora's ponytails."

"I do not want my hair to look like theirs." She shook her head, merging all of the sections of her hair into one.

"Nah, I'll give you the hairstyle of a warrior." Kai insisted, which got her to stop moving so he could work his fingers through it before deciding on simply pulling back her overgrown bangs into a hair tie, letting the rest of her hair stay loose.

"Are you almost done? I've been here forever." Wyldfyre whined but stayed still as Kai finished tightening the hair tie so it wouldn't fall out before turning on his phone camera and handing it to her.

"Why don't you take a look?"

He watched as she held the camera up to her face before turning her head so she could see the side of her hair, but stayed silent the whole time she examined the bright red strands only to get the air knocked out of him as she hugged him tightly.

"I love it!"

"I'm glad you do, kid."

"Kai?" Nya's voice floated towards his ears, which made him look up from the tight hug he was still engulfed in, "I love the new look, Wyldfyre."

"Thanks!" She said, bouncing to her feet and leaving Kai to push himself up from the floor, only for his cheeks to flush red as she added, "Kai styled it for me!"

"He did a great job," She nodded, waiting until Wyldfyre left to go show the others before offering her hand out to Kai, which he gratefully took to pull himself off of the floor, "I need you to do me a favor."

"Do you want me to do your hair too?" He smiled, ruffling a hand over her head where her ponytail was coming loose, making her laugh as she pulled away, "I can give you bangs again."

"Absolutely not! You know Cole used to call it my "wack-ass bob", right?"

"How did you ever think you and him were meant to be together?"

"Like you've made better dating decisions," she retorted with a smile, her hand going to her pocket where everyone knew she kept her yang medallion, "anyway, Lloyd's hair is bad."

"Like the gremlin's hair I just brushed bad," Kai asked, already gathering up the hair care products he had just used on Wyldfyre, "or tangled bowl cut bad?"

"Bad enough that he's trying to brush it, and considering he's not even supposed to be sitting up without assistance-"

"Yeah, I'm on it," Kai assured her before he made his way inside of the automatic doors just as another failed attempt of Lloyd trying to lift his arms above his head resulted in a loud hiss of pain, "don't you know that I'm the resident hairdresser around here?"

"Nya told you?"

"Oh please, I felt those tangles days ago," Kai lied through his teeth as he adjusted the pillows behind Lloyd's back that allowed him to sit up, "now, let go of that brush and let me deal with this."

"Alright, alright, just don't yank."

"I just brushed through Wyldfyre's hair-," Kai started as he spritzed some of the coconut scented detangler on Lloyd's head, only to get cut off.

"How on earth did you manage that?"

"Because I'm her favorite, remember?" Kai retorted, slowly bringing the comb down through Lloyd's hair and gently working it through the snags, "my point is, this is a piece of cake compared to the knots that were in her hair."

"I can believe it." Lloyd's laugh sounded a bit forced to Kai which is how he found himself asking.

"How're you holding up?"

"Ready to get back on my feet."

"Baby steps, Lloyd," Kai clicked his tongue as he worked the comb through a particularly bad tangle that made Lloyd pull in a sharp breath, "how about we start with lifting your arms above your head?"

The annoyed huff of breath that escaped him was the same one he had let out all those years ago when he still wore a black hoodie with badly painted bones on it.

…

"Did you know that The Crossroads has continued with our merch sales?" Zane questioned as he walked into Lloyd's bedroom.

For everyone's sanity, Lloyd had finally been moved to his own room after days of insistence that bordered on whining, even though Kai nearly got smacked in the head for insinuating it.

"Not surprising, given just how awesome we are," Kai responded as he looked up from his phone, "we do transcend generations, after all."

"Why do you ask?" Lloyd responded, putting down the lesson book that definitely did not have a Starfarer comic resting inside of it.

'Some things never change.'

But Zane didn't get to respond because that was when Arin ran past him, holding a stuffed version of himself as well as Sora, Lloyd and Riyu in his arms with an excited squeal.

"Lloyd, we're plushies! This is the best day of my life!"

"That's awesome, Arin, but I-"

"Do you want the stuffed Riyu?" Arin cut him off, holding the plushie out to Lloyd before adding in a sing-song tone, "they're weighted."

Kai knew fully well that if Lloyd was somehow able to deny Arin's starstruck eyes, a weighted plushie would be damn near impossible for him to give up on.

"Sure," Lloyd nodded, gently taking the stuffed dragon and setting it beside him on the bed, "thank you, Arin."

Kai was glad to know some things never changed.

…

"Are you okay, Kai?" Sora's voice was quiet as she approached him in the courtyard.

"I'm working on it," Kai let himself move slowly throughout his forms, the tension in his shoulders lessening as he let his stress slowly make its way out of his system, "did you need something?"

"It's…" she started, but Kai could see her apprehension when he opened his eyes, "nothing, forget about it."

"Why don't you join me?" Kai suggested, only continuing when she raised her eyebrow but remained silent, "moving through forms, it helps with worry."

Sora didn't protest as she stood still for a moment with her eyes fixated on Kai before holding her arms out and starting to copy his movements.

"What're you worried about?" Kai asked softly after a few minutes, seeing her muscles tense from the question, "you don't have to talk about it if you don't want to, but from experience, talking about it can help more than moving through forms."

Sora stayed silent.

"I'm worried about Lloyd," Kai admitted, "I feel like I'm constantly worried about him, but this last week…it brought back some really bad memories," He kept moving as he spoke to keep his heart from racing, "how much do you know about the prophecy?"

"What prophecy?"

""One ninja will rise above the others and become the green ninja. The ninja destined to defeat the dark lord"," Kai recited from memory, "when we first started training, there were four of us. Zane, Jay, Cole and myself. Nya wasn't a ninja and Lloyd was just a bratty kid but I accidentally took Master Wu's bag instead of my own on a mission and that scroll was in it."

"We all got really excited, treating it as a "who's the best" contest and it got to everyone's head, my head especially. But we didn't realize that the golden weapons determined who the green ninja was, that it wasn't in Master Wu's hands."

"So, if Lloyd was just a kid, how did you find out?"

"It's a long story, Serpentine and kidnappings and Master Wu even going so far as to track down Lord Garmadon for his help," he could tell by Sora's face that she knew some things about the resurrected version of Lloyd's father, more than likely from Arin rather then Lloyd, "he was different back then. But I had to make a choice. Save the fangblade to keep Pythor from unleashing The Great Devourer, or save Lloyd's life. That's how I found out what my destiny was, that I wasn't supposed to become the green ninja, but that I was supposed to protect him."

"That's why you get so frazzled when something happens to Lloyd?"

"It's part of it," Kai nodded, "but after his father died, I promised him that I'd look out for him."

"That's nice."

"He got possessed by a ghost the same day."

"Damn."

"Yeah, he's got some really shitty luck," Kai agreed, noticing that Sora had stopped moving through her forms at some point during his very long explanation, "what about you?"

"It's just these stupid powers," Sora sighed, sitting down on the stone floor, "I want to use them to protect people but they flicker out and…" she sniffled, wiping her face on her sleeve, "then I can't do anything."

"Your powers are not what make you powerful, Sora. Do you know how many times the others and I have lost our powers?"

"No…"

"A lot," he stopped to sit beside her and rested his hand on her metal shoulder, "but we persevered and got through it. Sometimes by using a new technique, or going back to our weapons training rather than relying on our elemental powers. Even just knowing that true elemental power is never really lost and that it always finds its way back."

"Can you…" she trailed off, kicking at one of the stones with her foot, "can you teach me some of that?"

"Of course," Kai nodded, looking up to see an all too familiar set of green eyes staring at him from the now open doorway, "but if you'll excuse me, I need to give your master a verbal ass whooping."

Kai heard Sora laugh as he stood up, but he was just doing his best to keep himself calm so he didn't feel like he had to move in forms for the rest of the day, all while standing in Lloyd's bedroom to keep the young master in check.

When he got to the hallway, he wasn't surprised to see Lloyd leaning heavily on the wall with overexertion clear on his face despite the smile.

"What the hell are you doing?"

"I just wanted to know how training was going," Lloyd shrugged, "you're good with them, you know."

"I have experience when it comes to kids, especially kids who don't do what they're told," Kai used as his explanation while he grabbed Lloyd's wrist, "any particular names ring a bell?"

"I'm not a kid any more."

"Well, then you should know how to behave."

"Zane said I could get up today, hothead."

"With assistance, for short periods of time. You've already worked through any of that pent up energy with how much you're leaning on the wall," Kai asserted his point as he led Lloyd down the hall towards his bedroom, "and unless you got in contact with that one elemental master-"

"Mr. Pale?"

"-then you are on a one way trip back to bedrest in the medbay," Kai insisted, opening the door to Lloyd's room and letting go of his wrist so he could lay down, "now stay put."

"I'm gonna tell Nya how mean you're being."

"She's gonna be on my side with this one, demon spawn," Kai shrugged as he grabbed the green blanket off of the end of the bed and pulled it over Lloyd's legs before looking back up at an absolutely miserable face, "Look, I hate sitting around and doing nothing just as much as the next person, but you'll only make yourself worse if you push yourself too hard."

"I know," Lloyd sighed, laying back on the pillows, "I just feel like I should be doing something."

"Tell you what," Kai sighed as he sat on the end of Lloyd's bed, "why don't we do some light lesson planning? I can tell you how far Nya, Zane and I have gotten with the kids, and we can talk about what they need to work on."

"That sounds good."

"Good, because I didn't have a plan b," Kai grinned as he stood to go get the empty lesson books out of the library but stopped when he saw Lloyd frowning at his blanket, "and once you're up to it, we can teach them about the destructive power of rumors."

Lloyd's laugh was so infectious that it followed Kai through the hallway.

…

"After examining the components of the blade, I first thought it was a new variation of vengestone…"

Kai knew he was supposed to be listening. Knowing what kind of arsenal that Ras' army was carrying was going to be vital in their fight against them when they reemerged.

But, he couldn't take his eyes off Lloyd; he was wearing the white robes again and holding Master Wu's bo staff in his hand as he stood against the wall, a quiet observer to the team meeting around the table.

Any quick glance in his direction would be convincing that he was fully recovered, but a closer look would reveal just how much he was using the bo staff for support and the shine of sweat gathering around his temple.

"-can enhance instincts as well as natural senses- Kai?"

"Hmm?"

"Are you even paying attention?"

"Sorry, sis," Kai apologized, getting an eye roll in response, "can we take five?"

"Fine." Nya sighed as she ran a hand over her face, muttering something about Kai's inability to listen to anything other than bad pop music while walking away.

But he ignored the long string of muttering and walked over to Lloyd before saying one word.

"Busted."

"I know."

"Come on, let's get you sitting down," Kai sighed as he led Lloyd to one of the chairs before reaching over and untying the green headband around his forehead, letting his hair fall loose, "when was the last time you drank something?"

"Don't know."

"First master, it's like you want to go back to the med bay," Kai pinched the bridge of his nose and pulled in a deep breath to try and calm his pounding heart, "look, stay here. Use your earpiece if you need something. I'll go get you a water bottle."

Lloyd's nod followed by him squeezing his eyes shut, presumably to keep the world from spinning, was enough confirmation for Kai to use the elevator to get to the kitchen.

On his way back, however, planning some sort of lecture about Lloyd keeping water with him, that was when he heard a voice come through his ear.

"Hey, Kai?"

"What's up, squirt?" Kai asked, hitting the down button with his elbow since he had one hand wrapped around the cold water from the fridge and the other on his communicator.

"Thank you."

…

"You're not gonna need stitches," Zane determined at last after examining the cut on Arin's cheek from his katana, "Kai, you can relax."

"Seriously, Kai," Arin insisted from where he sat on the exam bed, "this isn't the worst I've gotten hurt by a long shot and we don't even have to bring out the needles this time!"

'But it could have been so, so much worse. I've been doing this for so long and he still got hurt under my watch.'

Riyu nuzzled against his leg to get his attention, seemingly doing his best to break through the anxious thoughts, which he could admit had ebbed away after giving the young dragon some well deserved scratches around the scales.

Only for the thoughts to come back full force when the automatic doors slid open and Lloyd rushed toward them faster than Nya could keep up behind him due to the sheer determination in his steps.

"Nya told me what happened," Lloyd insisted as he gently held Arin's chin in his hand and examined the wound, "are you okay? Do you need stitches? Pain scale, one to ten."

"Lloyd-"

"Now, Arin."

Kai always forgot just how scary Lloyd could be until he was reminded by his actions.

"It's a two and no, Zane said I don't need stitches," Arin insisted, taking both of Lloyd's hands in his own, "I'm okay, promise."

"Thank the master." Lloyd muttered under his breath as Nya finally grabbed his arm and forced him to sit down in one of the chairs.

He didn't speak again until Kai looked over at him, and given how much he was panting, he knew that it had taken all of his strength for him to get down there but when he did, it was only four words.

"I get it now."