A/N: While this is technically a sequel to "Dragon Within the Heart", this isn't a strict crossover as there aren't any Paw Patrol characters directly involved. That being said, there are a few mentions of some OCs from my Ninjago/Paw Patrol crossovers, but none of the OCs mentioned are directly involved either. Alternatively, this can be read as an AU in which Morro regains his mortality and is accepted as a Ninja and in which Lloyd has been de-aged into a fourteen-year-old.
It was the creak that woke him—the soft, hard-to-detect creak of a door with hinges direly in need of being oiled. Gotta remember to tell Zane 'bout that, he thought to himself, not opening his eyes once. He was about to roll over and drift back into his deep, peaceful slumber when his ears caught the subtle pit-pat-pit-pat of footsteps walking slowly past his doorway as the figure they belonged to tiptoed down the hallway. He gave a small shrug of his shoulders, shaking it off as simply Kai or Cole heading to the kitchen for a small snack.
In the middle of the night. Yeah, made total sense.
Not.
He wriggled deeper into the softness of his blankets, feeling the tender, warm embrace of restful sleep and wondrous dreams beckoning to him, calling him away from the waking world…and then another sound greeted his ears. A sound that made his eyes fly open instantly.
It was a voice. Soft, low, breezy, slurred with slumber, but distinct enough for him to make out the words. And they were words that chilled him to the bone.
"It's all my fault."
His fists clenched involuntarily, and he shuddered with fright. He'd heard such words before—back in that place. Words that emanated from voices crying out in fright and guilt and utter despair and remorse. And many times, those voices throbbed with hopelessness at the heart-stopping realization that what their owners had done—be it big or small—could never be taken back or reversed.
But this voice was different. It was lilting and boyish, lined with dismay and quivering with sorrow. The voice cried out again, slightly more urgently—"It's all my fault."
His curiosity was piqued instantly. He had to know who was saying those words, those nerve-jangling, spine-chilling words. Slowly and sleepily, he slid out from underneath the covers, staggering drowsily to the door of his bedroom, before leaning tiredly against the wall and blinking his eyelashes rapidly to rouse himself. His breathing slowly began to deepen drowsily, and his eyes were half-lidded, but he wrestled with his sleepiness until he was able to crack open his heavy eyelids and peer out into the hallway. His vision, blurred by sleep and the semidarkness, gradually began to clear, and he let out a loud yawn as his alertness steadily grew stronger.
There was a small thump against a wall, and a strangled yelp accompanied it. Slowly, he followed the source of the sound on tiptoe, making no more noise than a ghost. Oh, great. Now you're making jokes in the middle of the night. You are so taking a nice long nap after this, he told himself. Now, what could be prowling around the Dojo at this hour—besides me? he silently mused as he continued to follow, silent as a shy field mouse, no louder than a cat's paws as he walked.
When his quarry moved, he moved with it. When it stopped, he stopped. Then the voice came back—"It's all my fault." This time, he stopped and mulled over the tones and quality of that voice. It wasn't high-pitched enough to be one of the kids or pups, but not low enough to be any one of the adult or teen Ninja, either.
Unless…
NO! No way! It couldn't be…Lloyd?
Darkness seemed to press in all around Morro as he slowly crept after the de-aged Green Ninja on tiptoe, careful not to wake anyone in his impatience to figure out what exactly was going on here. He was itching to find out what was going on in Lloyd's mind. Since the energy-wielder's memories of being a young adult were intact but his vulnerabilities from when he was younger had come back into play, the eerily bone-chilling proclamation of guilt that had emanated from his lips in that childish, wraith-thin voice could very well mean anything. From being guilty over releasing the Serpentine when he was only ten, to when Morro had—No, no, no, don't even think about that! the wind-wielder told himself, stuffing the memories of those days back into the deepest, darkest crevices of his mind—back where they couldn't hurt him anymore. Or so he hoped.
It had hurt to control Lloyd's mind—more than the former ghost was willing to let on. The Green Ninja's constant, desperate struggle of pushing back against the power keeping his thoughts and feelings in the wind-wielder's will had caused Morro mental injury that he was never quite sure had fully scarred over. Thinking of those days opened ghastly wounds, invisible but poignantly there. Whenever the sharp, seething recollections of those days drifted unbidden and unwanted into Morro's mind, his head pounded, his stomach twisted itself into tight little knots, and his eyes watered with hot, stinging tears.
Worse still were the memories burned deeply into Lloyd's subconscious. Of watching his father be controlled by the Overlord…of the wrenching pain in his ankle—and his ribs—after he was tossed like a projectile into the air, with Twinkle trying to break his fall but injuring herself in the process…of having to send his own father to the very realm Morro dreaded hearing even the name of in order to save Ninjago once more…of having his Golden Power sapped away from him, leached out of his core, drained from him as he slowly grew weaker and weaker…
All memories that burned like an out-of-control wildfire in Morro's mental vision, pulsing violently through his nerves, wracking every shred of sanity left in his body with excruciating, white-hot pain.
And worst of all, he realized now that he'd deserved it—without any shade of doubt. But it still hurt—it hurt a lot.
All battles leave scars, Master Wu had once said. Some cannot be seen—but they still exist.
No doubt there. He saw now that controlling Lloyd's mind like that had been one huge mistake—in more ways than one. It was horrible that it had taken years for him to see that, though.
A sudden, nerve-jolting, ear-piercing crash jerked him out of his thoughts with a jarring flinch, and he whirled around in fright, wondering what in all the Merged Realms could have made that terrible noise. There was a cloud of dust coming from the courtyard, where the horrid sound had emanated from. Swallowing back a lump in his throat, Morro ventured slowly, frightfully out of where he'd pressed himself tightly against the wall. But then, he felt his breath hitching in his throat as his ears were met with nothing but stifling, stunning silence.
What horrible thing could possibly have happened to Lloyd that he wouldn't be making a single, solitary sound? Was he ill? Had he been wounded? Was he…dead?
Alarm bells jangled loudly in Morro's mind, and his feet carried him swiftly in the direction of the foreboding silence, as he threw all concern of waking the others to the billowing breeze. He bolted into the courtyard, eyes wide with deep, raw fear, panting with exhilaration, his whole body drenched in a cold sweat. In an attempt to soothe his raging, convulsively jittering nerves, he closed his eyes for a second and crooned to himself an intriguing lyric from a song that he had long forgotten the name of or the rest of the words for. Only that line had stuck in his mind, and now it seemed appropriate in the darkness of fear and deep suffering.
"Take these broken wings, and learn to fly." he whispered to himself, tiptoeing trepidatiously towards the source of the crash as he fearfully cracked open his eyes. The full moon cast a strange, otherworldly glow on everything around him, and the pale aura of it made his skin crawl in nervousness. It was spooky out here—spookier than he would've liked. Spookier than even—he gulped—the Cursed Realm had been. His hands twitched with apprehension. His heartbeat reverberated like a shattering gong. And as his suspense grew even more the closer he edged to the Green Ninja, his shaky breathing became more and more shallow by the minute.
Slinking through the dim semidarkness, he felt a pang of sheer misery in his core as his whole body trembled with cold. It was windy out too, and strong, frigid gusts of wind whipped and howled and shrieked all around him, reminding him eerily of a panther's air-piercing cry or a specter's heart-stilling screams. He could see a white mist form in the air when he breathed, and his hands were turning icy and numb. This was no night to be out in the courtyard—that much was clear.
Then it occurred to him that Lloyd would never have come out to the courtyard on such a cold, dismally dark night—unless he was sleepwalking. The only question was…why? Why would Lloyd be in the kind of distress that would drive him to walk in his sleep? Unfortunately, there was only one way to find out.
Quietly, Morro slinked closer to the other side of the courtyard, blinking his eyes rapidly in the darkness until his vision adjusted. His gaze darted around frantically, searching for any sign of Lloyd. Then he suddenly glimpsed a prone figure lying very, very still near the porch in the corner where Master Wu's memorial and favorite rug were placed. The figure was lying on his side right up against a broken clay pot, and the shards of it were both on him and around him. Suddenly, Morro sucked in a sharp breath. That figure he saw over there was none other than Lloyd himself.
Fearing the worst, Morro bolted over to him, panting frightfully in the hopes that the young energy-wielder wasn't dead, but merely sleeping. As Morro skidded to an abrupt stop in front of him, his gaze caught the gentle rising and falling motion of Lloyd's chest, and every few seconds there came a small wisp of icy-white breath from Lloyd's lips. Morro sucked in a breath and let out a shaky sigh of deep relief.
A closer look told the wind-wielder that Lloyd had somehow managed to curl up into a tiny ball on the ground even though he'd only been half-asleep before he'd crashed into the pot. But as his emerald-green irises took in the sight, he could feel his stomach suddenly recoil with queasiness as he realized that Lloyd had not gone unscathed by his crash. The broken shards of the pot had cut and scraped Lloyd's face and arms in multiple places, and the wounds were badly bleeding. Worse still, there was a prominent gash stretching sickeningly across Lloyd's forehead like a broad brushstroke of crimson paint. How exactly he'd managed to gash his head on the wall or pavers in his sleep was beyond Morro, but it was clear that something was not right here. In fact, this wasn't even the worst of it.
For in the dim moonlight, Morro could see quite clearly that Lloyd's skin was frightfully chalky, his pasty-white face flushed with fever. His hands, clenched tightly into fists, appeared to be unnaturally clammy, and when Morro just barely brushed his arm, the wind-wielder let out a strangled, pained hiss. Lloyd's skin felt like a furnace, and the heat emanating from it was all but scalding to the touch. Beads of cold, crystal-clear sweat dotted Lloyd's forehead like ladybugs on a rose branch, and he shivered and shuddered uncontrollably with swirling, stormy, numbing chills that penetrated deep into his veins like shards of corrupted ice, twisting there and freezing his nerves into little prickles of frigid frost.
Desperately, Morro flung himself to his knees and pulled Lloyd into his arms in a tight, compassionate hug. His eyes were pooling with tears, as he realized just how much torment and turmoil the Green Ninja must be going through. But then the boy softly stirred, and Morro held his breath, wondering how the energy-child was going to react when he saw who was holding him. Sure enough, when Lloyd groggily pried open his eyes a moment later, he flinched and tried to wriggle and writhe his way out of Morro's grasp, soulful pupils wide with delirious fear and panic.
Morro gently laid a hand on the top of Lloyd's head, making reassuring shushing noises under his breath, before running his fingers through the child's silky wisps of straw-blond hair. "It's okay." he soothed. "I'm not going to hurt you—I promise." Lloyd's pupils looked a little less dilated at that, and he went all but limp in Morro's arms as his bundled-up nerves, tense with sudden panic, gradually unwound and relaxed within him.
For several moments, the wind-wielder continued stroking Lloyd's hair gently in a gesture of brotherly care and compassion. Whoa, he never really realized how soft Lloyd's hair was—kind of like his own flyaway, shaggy mop, emerald-green hair streak and all. He jumped a little when he felt two small, bony knobs on the top of Lloyd's head, but the boy didn't make a single sound. Apparently, he was already aware of their existence.
"It's all my fault." Lloyd moaned again. His voice was a lot weaker and sleepier this time, but no less strained. "It's all my fault." he said again, his eyes beginning to well with tears. "It's all my fault!" he then cried out, violently wrenching himself out from Morro's frail grasp. He started rocking back and forth incessantly, head buried in his hands, whimpering to himself, "It's all my fault! It's all my fault! It's all my fault!"—as if he was completely oblivious to Morro's presence. He sobbed and shook and shivered with deep, heart-rending sorrow and grief and anguish.
Morro couldn't help himself as he burst out with, "What? What's all your fault? I don't understand!" Something in the back of his mind told him that demanding answers from the distraught, feverish Lloyd like this might come off the wrong way, but he had to do something to help out! There was something much deeper and more painful going on here than Lloyd was admitting to, and he knew he just had to get to the bottom of it.
"The Merge!" Lloyd wailed aloud, raising his head and turning his red, puffy eyes towards the wind-wielder. If he had been frightened out of his wits by Morro's presence before, he wasn't showing any fright now. Perhaps he was too heartsick and distressed to do so. "They're gone—they're all gone! Master Wu, P.I.X.A.L., Jay, Bark, my parents—THEY'RE ALL GONE—BECAUSE OF ME!"
Morro said nothing—just sat and listened, rapt with attention to every word as Lloyd kept on babbling, "I should have done something to stop it! But I wasn't strong enough! If I had known—if I had been prepared—then all those people would still be here! They'd still be alive!"
You don't know that they didn't, in fact, survive, Morro thought to himself desperately, but he held his tongue and kept his thoughts to himself, unsure whether such a response would be called for. Then Lloyd turned away from him, lifting his face upward towards the heavens as he screamed like a banshee at the top of his voice, "I DON'T UNDERSTAND! I'VE TRIED EVERYTHING TO BRING THEM BACK, BUT NOTHING'S HELPED! NOTHING!"
His screams of agonizing torture and despair grated on Morro's ears, and he winced as his teeth started to hurt without explanation. His ears were ringing furiously, and he clenched his fists to his head as starbursts of white-hot pain seemed to shoot through his skull. Lloyd continued to shriek to the sky, as if he didn't even realize that Morro was still listening. "I JUST DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING WRONG HERE! IS THIS SOME KIND OF CRUEL TRICK?! I NEED ANSWERS, AND I'M NOT GETTING ANY! WHY IS THIS HAPPENING TO ME?!"
And then Lloyd's rant broke off, his voice choked up with sobs as he buried his head in his hands and began to rock back and forth incessantly once again. "I just don't understand." he sniffled. "I just want to bring them back—to bring them all back! But they're not coming back—ever! And it's all my fault! It's—it's all my fault."
And then he slumped forward, until he was all but bent in half, sitting in a miserable heap in the hard, cold stony pavement. His whole upper body sagged limply with sorrow and guilt, his frame shaking with quiet, heartbroken sobs. And then his hands flew upward to clamp tightly over his ears, as if he was trying to drown out unheard mocking voices.
Morro's heart lurched. He felt like crying—like he could shed buckets and buckets of tears. A sniffly sob escaped his throat, and his vision grew blurry with sadness as tears formed unbidden in his eyes. He scooted a little closer to Lloyd, wrapping his arms around him once again. Either too weighed down by grief or too exhausted out of his mind to protest, the Green Ninja pulled his hands away from his ears and slumped, weakly and sleepily, fully backwards into Morro's chest, his body still shaking frantically with quiet, wet sobs.
Morro wasn't sure what to do. How should he respond? If he reacted wrongly, would he risk giving Lloyd false hope—or worse, plunge him into more grief? What should he do? More to the point, what should he say? He wasn't exactly an expert in the hurt/comfort department. He'd spent years not caring, not feeling, not sympathizing with others' trials. Yet now he felt as if his own spirit were drowning in sorrow—but not stemming from his own troubles.
Back when he'd been a ghost, he'd held back any and all feelings within him that he deemed as lowly, wretched, and undesirable. He'd eluded any outward show of emotion, believing that to be emotional was to show weakness. The only emotions he'd allowed to peek through the shroud of apathy and coldness he wore were hatred, anger, and bitterness. Those, he had once believed, didn't stem from weakness but instead made him stronger—made him more powerful than kindness and compassion ever could.
But when he'd been redeemed, he'd realized that the truth was the opposite. Showing healthy emotions such as sadness, woe, grief, and emotional pain was not a sign of weakness, but of strength. And on the other hand, lashing out in bitterness and hate was a translucent, poignant sign of being weak—too weak to own up when he made a mistake instead of shifting the blame to others and closing himself off to those who truly cared.
And now, he remembered exactly how to feel what others felt—even when what he felt wasn't good or pleasant.
So how should he try to comfort Lloyd? What should he do?
A loud cough pierced his thoughts, followed quickly by an explosive sneeze. Then Lloyd began shivering again, but his shivers were a lot weaker now, and his breaths were frail and thin. To make matters worse, Morro could feel the boy's pulse grow lethargically sluggish, slowing down at a dangerous rate as his cheeks began to turn blue and his face paled even more than before. Evidently, the combination of the cold outside, the biting wind, and Lloyd's feverish state was rapidly taking its toll on him, threatening to plunge him into hypothermia that could mean his death if Morro didn't act soon.
Morro tried to pull the young fourteen-year-old boy to his feet, but Lloyd wouldn't budge. His eyelids drooped sleepily, and his breaths began to deepen, growing slower and drowsier by the minute. Frantic to get him inside before it was too late, Morro scooped Lloyd up off the ground, choosing to ignore the blood from the Green Ninja's wounds now dripping onto his own pajamas. Changing his outfit could wait—this couldn't. He rushed Lloyd inside and laid him as gently as could be managed on the small couch in the living room. Then he scrambled through the corridors in search of some antiseptic, bandages, medical tape, warm blankets, and Tylenol. After scurrying around for several moments, holding his breath and gritting his teeth to avoid waking anyone, he returned with his finds and immediately set to work.
The Green Ninja groaned and winced at the sting of the antiseptic as Morro quickly cleaned the many cuts and scrapes on his arms and face (discreetly steering away from Lloyd's eyes) and dabbed at the gash on his forehead. Fortunately, it didn't look like Lloyd would need stiches, so snagging a thick cloth bandage and taping it to Lloyd's forehead was all that was needed to finish the job. He then gently hoisted Lloyd into a reclining position and shakily dealt out a small dose of liquid Tylenol. (It was miraculous that the team still had children's Tylenol around this place, considering most of the (human) team members were adults.) He finished by draping a few warm, fuzzy blankets over Lloyd's shivering form, and the boy seemed to be a little less cold as the shuddering began to subside.
"Stay here and don't move." he whispered to Lloyd. "I'll get you some tea, okay?"
"Th-than-thanks." Lloyd stammered before Morro headed out of the room. After several minutes of bustling quietly-as-could-be-managed around the kitchen, brewing a special concoction of Night-tea and Tranquili-tea blended together (to help calm Lloyd's nerves and get him to sleep faster), Morro ventured into the living room again with a small green-patterned mug in his hands. At first, he thought Lloyd had fallen asleep already, but as the wind-wielder set the mug down on a nearby table, the small green gremlin stirred and opened his eyes. His gaze was glassy and faraway, as if he wasn't entirely present. The fever must be getting to him again, Morro mused.
"Do you think…" he croaked hoarsely. "Do you think that I could've stopped it? Th-th-the Merge?"
So now he'd gone from blaming himself for the Merge to essentially asking if Morro blamed him for it. How was the wind-wielder supposed to answer that?
When Morro didn't answer, Lloyd looked crestfallen. "I knew it!" he sniffled. "I knew I should've been able t-t-to stop it! If I'd been stronger, if I'd been more prepared…" His voice trailed off, and he let out a sudden hiss of pain, before clamping his hands over his ears so hard his knuckles were turning white. "Stop it! Leave me alone!" he moaned softly, and Morro realized that Lloyd definitely was delirious. "Shut up! Just shut up!" the energy-wielder continued to cry, twitching and thrashing and tossing underneath his billowing covers as his face suddenly went a sickly beet-red. His jade-green irises were pulsing on-and-off with a sickly purplish light, as if a wild, untamed something was trying to push its way up out of his core and he was fighting nail-tooth-and-claw to keep it contained—yet swiftly losing the battle.
Afraid that Lloyd was going to hurt himself, Morro flung himself over to the trembling, tussling Green Ninja and wrapped his arms tightly around him, desperately struggling to still the thrashing, writhing child before he put himself in harm's way. "Lloyd, stop!" he breathed. "Calm down! You have to calm down!"
"But it's all my fault!" Lloyd sobbed, the pulsing light growing brighter and flickering even faster by the moment. "It's my fault the Merge happened! It's my fault the team's divided! It's my fault they haven't come back! It's all my fault!"
"No, it's not!" Morro suddenly shouted, almost right in Lloyd's ear. The energy-wielder winced, the Wind Ninja's outburst seeming to be splitting his skull with its sheer intensity. The sickly purple light in his eyes became slower and slower until it faded away altogether, and his irises regained their normal jade-green shade. The wind-wielder, realizing that his outburst had definitely come off the wrong way, took a shaky breath and prepared to start over, pulling Lloyd upright so that the green-bean had his head resting on Morro's shoulder. Lloyd wrapped his own arms around Morro, clinging to him like a lifeline as the wind-wielder crooned softly, "I don't know why the Merge happened, and maybe I'll never know, but if there's one thing I do know, it's that you had nothing to do with it happening or not happening."
"It's not your fault, Lloyd!" he continued, sniffling a little, rocking back and forth with Lloyd clenching tightly to the fabric of Morro's gi, his runny nose dribbling snot onto Morro's shoulder unnoticed. "It wasn't your fault the Merge happened! So don't say that it is! And I know you feel like it should be your fault, but it isn't! It just isn't! It's not your fault! It will never be your fault! Never, no matter what, it's not your fault."
Lloyd's breathing was less shaky now, his breaths growing slow and deep and even as his bunched-up muscles began to relax in Morro's grip. Feeling it was safe to let go now, Morro slowly began to pull away from Lloyd's iron-tight grip, but he was caught off-guard when Lloyd whimpered with a mewling cry, "Don't leave me. Don't leave me, please." He turned his face up at Morro once again, eyes stricken with tears.
In that moment, it seemed as if every shred of the grown-up master was gone, replaced by the ghost of the young, helpless, lonely child he'd once been. Morro just shook his head to himself, thinking that this kid was definitely going to need some therapy for his abandonment issues. But first things first, he moved to reassure Lloyd with a soft, "I won't leave you, I promise. I'm just getting you your tea, that's all."
Lloyd looked saddened for a moment as Morro slid out of his grasp and turned to pick up the mug he'd brought out earlier, but then his face lit up as the wind-wielder turned back towards him again. "That smells good." he whispered, looking calmer by the moment as he breathed in more and more of the tea's fragrance. Then he pursed his lips incredulously. "You're not trying to poison me, are you?"
Morro giggled a bit, hiding his uncontrollable snickers behind a cough. Lloyd was acting exactly like a ten-year-old again—or so the wind-wielder mused. "If I were trying to poison you, I would've done it a whole lot sooner!" he teased playfully.
Lloyd looked a little frightened at that but calmed down a second later when Morro muttered, "Just messing with you. It's not really poisoned." The Green Ninja took one look at the mug, then at Morro, and then he snatched the mug and swallowed all the tea in one gulp. Setting the mug down, he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and then let out a soft, drowsy yawn, stretching his arms up above his head before collapsing onto the couch with a contented sigh and snuggling deeply into his blankets. His eyelids drooped half-shut as the tea began to take effect.
Morro ruffled his hair a little and then bent down to rub his back in comforting circular motions as Lloyd slowly grew sleepier and sleepier. "Remember—" the wind-wielder whispered, "none of what has happened is your fault, 'kay?"
"No," Lloyd slurred, half-asleep already, "It's not my fault, after all. It's not my fault…it's not my fault…it's not…my…fault." And then his eyelids fell shut entirely, as his breaths deepened once again and the warm embrace of peaceful slumber enveloped him in hazy, tender darkness.
Morro ruffled his hair one last time, whispering half to himself, "Sweet dreams, little brother. And don't worry—no matter what happens next, I'm going to protect you. With all the power within me, and every breath in my body, I'm going to keep you safe, no matter what." Then he let out his own yawn, realizing anew just how tired he was. Taking care of a sick, delirious green-bean was absolutely exhausting.
Snagging one of the unused blankets, he curled into a ball in a corner of the room, facing his sleeping charge dreaming away on the sofa, and shut his weary eyes. As his own alertness began to fade away, he crooned to himself once more, "Take these broken wings—yawn—and learn to fly." And then, the shadows of restful sleep and wondrous dreams drew the tired wind-wielder away from the waking world once more.
But before he fell asleep all the way, he thought he could hear a tiny voice in his mind saying to him, "Well done, Morro. Well done." And it was this final comforting thought that lulled him peacefully to sleep, as the howling wind outside then died down to a gentle, warm, dreamy breeze that swept silently past the silent Dojo in joy and golden delight.