Someone Like You (Lloyd x Reader)

Chapter 19

Hold Back The River
- James Bay

"Tried to keep you close to me
But life got in between
Tried to square not being there
But think that I should have been
Hold back the river, let me look in your eyes"

🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕

The next passing days weren't particularly kind to myself or Lloyd.

Since aging four years due to the 'Tomorrow's Tea' used to defeat the Grundal and bring back the ninja, puberty and training have hit me all at once. Anxiety was more consuming of the mind these days.

Lloyd however was smashing it out during training with the ninja and his focus was like nothing I'd ever seen before in him. Hell, he looked more determined than what we did when Sensei Wu first found us. I suppose it helped when Lloyd's destiny was confirmed that he would be the Green Ninja. The small bursts of energy that Lloyd was able to conjure proved that the prophecy was now in full motion. Lloyd was a force to be reckoned with.

Even as I sat down off to the side and away from the ninja training on the deck of the Bounty, I noticed how Lloyd was just so in the moment. So focused on one goal.

"Your new body is a fighting instrument. Listen to it." Sensei instructs, watching purposefully as Lloyd assesses the situation with nothing but his senses — excluding sight.

As of lately, it didn't even surprise me when Lloyd began to evade each of the ninja's attacks with such ease and graceful balance.

Jay had swung the opposite end of his nunchucks at Lloyd which he grabbed with ease and used to fling Jay elsewhere. Cole gripped the handle of his scythe and forced it down onto Lloyd which he narrowly escaped and knocked Cole's balance. Zane threw his shurikens with perfectly calculated precision which again, Lloyd matched and dismissed the flying weapons.

"Since he's grown, he's learning a lot faster, Sensei." Nya acknowledges as she walks along the wooden deck boards, using the watermelon as a shield from the flying shurikens Zane had used against Lloyd.

"But will it be enough to challenge Lord Garmadon?" Sensei debates, stroking the thick strands of beard hair that suited his immortal sensei attire. "Only time will tell."

A sudden groan and harsh thump on the floorboards brought my attention back to the ninja as Lloyd fell flat on his stomach, his expression momentarily dazed as Kai held his katana before Lloyd.

"... that's ninja training 101." I barely manage to catch the end of Kai's sentence.

"I would've been able to predict that if I actually listened when I was younger." Lloyd admits, scolding his child self, which still felt weird to say as that included myself as of two weeks ago.

"We cannot change the past, but we can improve for the future." Sensei offers some wisdom as Kai helps Lloyd up. "Again, and this time do not hold back."

After that I stopped paying attention as I made my way back below the deck of the Bounty and found myself following my subconsciousness to the room I had claimed my own. It still had the same photograph of all of us— including Lloyd and I when we actually looked twelve. Although saying it aloud I didn't feel like my mind held the thoughts or capacity in which twelve year old me did, so those probably weren't quite the right words to use.

Gazing at the photograph a little longer, I soon fell onto the bed I had made earlier that morning and just laid there, staring out into the thick blue sky that looked rather stark at the moment. No clouds, sun, birds, or anything you'd usually find being this high up.