(ON HIATUS) Found My Place || ninjago fanfiction

prologue - Endings

The boarding school stood as tall and grand as the evergreen trees that surrounded the campus, the word ‘Darkley’s’ curved around a semicircle arch along its hooded walkway in purplish-gray letters. Itd wood was rich and storm proof, with windows stained in childish sketches and welcome posters taped on. Berry-filled bushes and lime grass patches lined with flowers surrounded a path flooded in stones with beautiful messages engraved inside.

But that was what negligent parents saw in brochures and registration websites.

Lloyd found out the moment he was dumped there that this wasn't the same serene, camp-like summer school his mom told him it'd be.

And it lasted far longer than the end of the season.

The school nowadays- a much darker, rain-weathered color of weak wood- was all but slumped against the neighboring dead trees and bushes. Windows were cracked and dull, much like the inside of every room of the place. The letters across the crumbling arch were covered in dead vines and almost certainly poisonous mushrooms, as were the rest of the pillars that used to make the place look so grand in photos. What was once a dirt path lined with stepping stones and delicate blades of the greenest grass now lies a yard of a similar brown color, cracked stones sunk into the ground and not a bit of green in sight.

The blonde boy noticed this, and many other small details as he held up a page ripped out of some parental magazine. In his other hand was a letter, opened and stained with tears.

He looked so small in comparison, as he always did, but now he began to feel the same way.

He never liked the place of course, it being the one and only source of brutal “pranks”, ruthless kids and the cold hand of loneliness clenching tighter around his heart with every passing day.

His heart felt as low as the oversized black coat he tied around his neck. Even with the friends he managed to make- or, the ones who pitied him enough to not poke fun at him- it never helped.

Lloyd brought the page down and ripped it up the rest of the way. He wouldn’t want to remember how it was, it would only make him miss the idea even more. Much like himself, he missed what the older version could have been like. If he had been allowed to have a normal childhood and a normal life up until now.

But sixteen years old seemed a little late to start over.

Its shredded remains fell gracefully at his feet. No wind was blowing, yet he still felt chills since he got his mother’s letter that morning.

He pulled the fake leather coat closer around himself and turned his back to what he called his home for nearly seven years. 

He hated goodbyes. Hated seeing people leave, hated having to deal with the loneliness that came after losing anyone.

It happened with his father when he was two, then his mother seven years later, and now everything else he grew to love.

Now, he would be leaving all of it behind again to restart.

Maybe this time things would be better. Maybe it’s better that his friends don’t get to see him go.

But, those friends soon found him sulking near a set of rusted train tracks at the end of the depressing dirt path.

"Lloyd?" one of them called. Brad wasn't being too loud, yet he still recoiled as soon as he said it.

Lloyd flinched, maybe from surprise, maybe from fear.

Brad’s heart twisted. Sure, the three had grown well out of their childish antics, but parts of them were still just that; children. And he knew all too well of how his dearest friend used to be treated.