Hey y'all! Let's just say that the title of this fic gave some - several - people some heartattacks. Personally, I'm all down for playing an April Fools' on everyone near the end of July, but that's just me, lol.
Anyjay, hope y'all enjoy and PLEASE KEEP IN MIND THAT LLOYD IS NINE YEARS OLD IN THIS. Please and thank you.
On to the fic!
A deep breath.
The kind you take when you're readying yourself for a looming challenge, one you have to face, one you can't dance and sing away. He knew what his mom would say about it: it was a kind of breath heroes always take before plunging into an adventure. Cole didn't think of this as an adventure, though; more like a blind leap into a nest of sleeping snakes.
Still, dark thoughts or not, he'd been putting this off and he figured he should actually try to live up to the whole "never put off until tomorrow what can be done today" thing, especially with tomorrow….
So he took that kind of breath while standing outside the spare closet door, the one that Lloyd decided to take as his bedroom (and Cole had thought that the kid couldn't get any weirder).
Then he took another.
And then, he finally moved his hand to rap on the wooden door before opening it and going in.
"Hey!" Lloyd squawked, hugging a comic book to his chest from where he sat on the bedroll that had been stuffed into the tiny, cramped space. "Oh, I thought you were Kai." He relaxed as though saying that allowed him to confirm that it really wasn't Kai and that he could show Cole what he was hiding.
"Did you draw that?" Cole couldn't help asking. As far as he knew, he was the only one on the Bounty that had any kind of interest in art, except for Jay's dabbling in poetry.
"I've been practicing since I found Kai —" Lloyd cut himself off, saying, "I mean, I've been practicing so I can make him something for his birthday. It's next week."
Right.
Next week.
Kai's birthday.
Another thing he'd be missing.
He blinked, clearing his throat to force his train of thought elsewhere. Like on Lloyd's drawing. It was nice the kid was drawing; it made Cole feel less lonely about his own artistic ventures, though now he'd have to look into Kai in case Lloyd had caught the Fire Ninja drawing like the impression his words had given Cole.
"You're doing good," he said, managing a weak smile. He was going to miss the kid and suddenly he was thinking about it. It didn't feel right, focusing on something so relatively unimportant, though he knew to Lloyd that it was important. This was important, but so was what was on his mind.
The reminder of that poison turned his thoughts sour and made his smile slide off his face. He couldn't do it, not to someone as young as Lloyd. Was this how his mother had felt when she got the diagnosis? But he had to tell Lloyd now, just in case. It —
"Why are you here?" Lloyd scrunched his eyebrows together, making his all-too-funny (not that he knew; shush, don't tell him) serious face. "Are you spying?" he finished with a dramatic gasp before covering his picture.
"What? No, I'm not," Cole assured Lloyd. The kid gave him a skeptical look but didn't clamor to kick Cole out so that meant that he found the Earth Ninja at least somewhat credible. Then Cole added, "Besides, Kai gets all high and mighty when he knows what he's getting and he already has a big enough of a head." Cole wasn't sure if that made sense or if it was true — obviously not the big enough head part, people could tell that from a mile away — but he could certainly see the Fire Ninja using people's gift ideas against them. Before Cole could let himself imagine Kai doing that too much ("Hey, Jay. Oh, hair gel? Is that all you're getting me?"), he forced himself to say, "Actually, I wanted to tell you something."
That was when Lloyd got really serious. As serious as a nine-year-old could get, in fact. He looked Cole in the eye and said very slowly, "You're not my type."
"Well, that's good, because you aren't either. Also, what? Where the heck did that come from? Do you even know what that means?"
Lloyd shrugged, waving at Cole's face and saying, "Nya used it on Jay when he was being all — I don't know, he was acting weird — about something. I thought it was funny. He was freaking out for an hour before Kai told him that she was joking and called him that word you used when Zane dropped your cake."
"Please don't ever use that word in front of Master Wu, OK?" Cole said before shaking his head and sighing, mentally slapping himself. He got distracted again. Great. At this rate, he wouldn't have any time to break the news to the others; Lloyd was his first stop, the one he needed to get over with the soonest because if he put Lloyd off until the end, he wouldn't tell Lloyd at all. Well, there was no use in trying to get any kind of conversation with the kid to head in the direction Cole needed. He needed to just do it. Like ripping off an old bandage. So, he did. "Lloyd, I'm going."
The kid's face fell, but he tried to shrug it off as he said, "Oh, OK. Bye."
"No, I don't mean right now. I mean…Lloyd, do you know why we needed to be extra careful about what we spent these last few weeks?" Cole asked.
"Because grown-up money stuff?" Lloyd guessed.
"Well, yes, but that 'grown-up money stuff' was because I needed to go to the doctor's."
"Oh. Why?"
"When I was about your age, they found out that my mom was sick, really sick. Did you know that?" Cole was fairly sure Lloyd didn't; only Wu knew the whole truth, though the other knew that Cole had a falling out with his father shortly after his mother's death, and that had been part of the reason he had agreed to become a Ninja.
Lloyd shook his head, scooting over to climb on Cole's lap. He laid his head on Cole's chest as if he were listening to the beating heart underneath the fabric of the gi, underneath the skin and bones, and whatever else. He probably was because it was a few seconds before he asked, "She didn't get better, did she?"
"For a time, she did," Cole replied, crossing his arms around Lloyd in the same way that his father had done to him a lifetime ago. Cole had never thought he'd ever do the same for another, let alone for a little brother, but then again, he had never thought he'd become a Ninja. Life never took the expected path or at least, it rarely did. Once, he thought it would just be him, his father, and his mother, living like all those happy, whole families all over Ninjago. "But then it came back. It got worse. And that time, she didn't get better," he finished, taking Lloyd's hand and playing with the fingers like an imaginary piano.
Lloyd watched Cole tap his fingers to some unknown song even to Cole while he posed Cole another question: "And the doctor thinks you have it, too?"
"The doctor found something, yes, but it could be nothing." Cole took a breath, a deep one, one you take to get ready for battle, and fell silent. Lloyd seemed to copy him, pressing back as Cole continued to pretend to play piano on the kid's fingers, playing piano back on Cole's fingers. It wasn't long before Cole burst out, "I didn't want to scare you." Neither had his mom, which was why she hadn't told him until she was slipping away, hadn't told him until she couldn't pretend it away anymore. "But I didn't want to hide it from you. It…would have been lying." That was what he had thought his mom had been doing. He'd been so mad at her that he had refused to talk to her directly for a week, had been so mad that he had blinded himself to the fact that he threw away precious, precious time with her. Add that to the cursed chest of regrets in his mind.
But this, telling Lloyd, trying to help him ready himself for whatever storm that was ahead, he wouldn't regret that.
Not that.
Missing next week, Kai's birthday, spending time with Lloyd and the other, that he would regret. But he had to know, they all had to know, and missing next week was the only way to know. They had to have him checked. They had to be sure.
"You're going to try your hardest not to be sick, right?" Cole knew that Lloyd knew that it didn't work like that; Lloyd was a smart kid, after all, but Cole remembered asking his mother the same thing, and he'd been much older. He understood why Lloyd had asked it.
"My hardest," Cole promised, squeezing Lloyd tighter.
"You better," the kid sniffed, looking up and giving Cole a steely look.
Cole gave Lloyd a little salute before muttering, "I need to go, OK? You were my first stop."
Lloyd's face said, "Good" as he climbed off Cole's lap, allowing the Earth Ninja to get up and brush the creases out of his gi.
"OK." Lloyd nodded. "Bye."
"Yeah. Bye — for now." That last part needed to be emphasized because they were important. That wouldn't be the last goodbye, not yet, and hopefully not for a very long time. And Lloyd needed to know that.
One day they'd have to say a real goodbye, a permanent one, but this wouldn't be that time. Not if Cole had anything to say about that.
It's shorter, ik but this was meant to be shorter. I had actually planned for this to be five hundred words, which was the only reason I managed to finish it on paper rather than on my computer.
So there, hope you enjoyed and have a nice day! Normally I'd yap on these but I'm tired and I doubt y'all are under the impression that I'm leaving. See ya next time y'all!