ninjago imagines

someday, i will lose you to the stars and the moon (pt. 2) | harumi & lloyd

sequel to earlier chapter. same warnings about harumi's and lloyd's friendship as before. 
tw: hospitalization, terminal illness, malnutrition, blood (nosebleed). 

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In the end—, well, the end before the end, the one where her life doesn't officially end but to her there isn't anything else left but a year or two (if she's lucky) of wasting away in hospitals and stuffy rooms. In the end, it's Wu who gets stuck with telling her the news, and she listens to him talk endlessly about how it shouldn't hurt, how she'll fade away like her life force is being leaked back into the Departed Realm because that's exactly what's happening, isn't it?

It doesn't matter how it's happening, cause she's dying, and that's all there is to it. The Overlord may have dragged her back kicking and screaming into life again with his crystal force bullshit, but when he's gone, she'll just melt back into the place she was always meant to be.

The ninja (or Lloyd, coaxing it out of them behind the scenes as she suspects) give her a hospital room, free of charge, and she wonders if it's because they're still too moralistic to make a dying person pay or if they just don't want to see her for any reason, anymore. She'd understand.

(Whatever, it's whatever, she doesn't even want to have to deal with all that, Harumi tells herself, and ignores the pulse of hurt in her chest everytime one of them looks at her.)

Said hospital room faintly resembles more of a miniature studio apartment, if said studio apartment had sterile white walls, pill bottles lining the walls and wires snaking out of machines everywhere. Harumi likes it. Small and cosy, she tells herself. Small and cosy, definitely. Definitely not because her heart stutters when she catches a glimpse of the sky, the Departed Realm and it's expanse of nothing flashing before her eyes. The point is, she likes it well enough, and well, it's not like she can go anywhere else if she doesn't.

Lloyd comes by her room when he's doing check-ups on his arm— or, well, check ups on the arm that isn't there anymore, or is it technically the stump? (she isn't sure, when Harumi looks too long her stomach twists and turns like a gymnast on the high bars and there is a voice in her head chanting your fault, your fault, and replays the gory, bloody scene of the Overlord taking off his arm like a sick B-grade horror movie from the gas station.)

On the okay days, they talk about stupid things, like the newest rip off villain or funny cat videos, and Harumi forgets that he was the boy she spent her whole life trying to kill (for a little while, at least.) Lloyd ransacks the sad lonely vending machine on the second floor that no one ever uses, and tells her about that day's newest fan edit he's discovered online, the stupid robbery they took out recently, or the excessive amount of hair gel that lives in their bathroom.

On the better days, he convinces her to go with him to visit the children's rooms, and she picks at crappy hospital jello and watches him entrance five year olds with neon green eyes and fancy gi that she knows he only wears for public events.

There's a moment before things get too bad, before she's falling asleep every hour and tied to her feeding tube, when Lloyd's still free enough to visit her every week and Ninjago's out of danger at the moment. He throws a hoodie over his training gi and she dons a ugly hospital sweater and they sneak out to roam Ninjago's newly rebuilt streets, trekking mud across the clean brick and lined cement as Lloyd eats preztels from the (multiple) bags they stole from the vending machine, ("Hey, I'm the green ninja, they can afford to lose a dollar bag of preztels to me."), all the while igonoring all her very valid comments about how it expired two years ago, and if the Overlord couldn't take him out, food poisoning will.

They trail across rooftops and Harumi sits on a air conditioning vent and watches Lloyd dangle on the edge of a balcony, practicing his Airjitsu (although she's pretty sure he's doing it for the main point of showing off his skills). They play the latest pop music from his phone, humming along ridiculously off-key, Lloyd blares the newest rock band he's found to indulge in while she complains at the outrageous amount of screaming and electric guitar involved, and Harumi can't help wondering if this is what could've happened if only she had turned out normal.

(But it's too late to wonder, so she doesn't linger on the thought for more than a few seconds, and if she does so otherwise that's nobody's business but hers. After all, she's the one wasting away in a hospital room at sixteen, isn't she?)

Harumi is stirring tea late at night, an odd tang of what tastes like forest leaves and ginger filling the room (god, why did she trust Wu's recipes), when the taste of iron seeps into her mouth, and she reaches up to find she's having a rather intense nosebleed. And the last time she had one was when she was eight and ran into a wall, but she's pretty sure nosebleeds aren't supposed to be mixed with a suspicious glowing purple, so she does the rational thing, leans over the counter, and throws up.

She sits on the floor and watches the violet liquid drip down her shirt and dissipate into the air and seriously considers emergency dialing Lloyd's number on the phone, one of the things Kai told her not to do, ever, because fuck, who else would know about this sort of thing? (but she doesn't because he's done enough and she's. Well. She's tired, and she's going to die anyway, so this new thing doesn't really matter.)

Garmadon comes by once, late at night, and she isn't sure how exactly he got in but she's glad for any kind of company, now that Lloyd's getting too busy to come as often as he used too. They talk, light hearted conversations about the green eyed boy that wormed his way into both their hearts and how Ninjago City is doing. (Harumi finds herself lessening her pain drugs to listen to him with a clearer head and another voice into her head whispers soft, and maybe this time it's right.)

Then all too quickly, the familiar biting pain is cutting into her chest and her eyes are slipping shut, and Harumi doesn't have time to say everything else she wants to before she's dragged down into the black pooling in her vision.

"I'm sorry," he says, right before the darkness claims her again, but he doesn't say what he's sorry for and she couldn't possibly imagine what he could be sorry for. After all, she's the one who dragged him kicking out of the underworld, wasn't she?

It is weeks before the end and Harumi is floating on a cloud of pain drugs and fear when Lloyd slips through the sterile white door, worried green eyes blinking down at her. She should turn him away, save him from more needless pain, more trauma and more friends dying in front of his eyes, but she doesn't.

No, she stays silent and lets him sit down on the shitty plastic chairs and start telling her about how hard it is to put on a training gi with a metal arm, like have you ever tried, and then there's no stopping from there.

Harumi bites back the smile that threatens to show and settles into her nest of blankets a little more. Later, she tells herself, but later never comes.

"I'm scared," she confesses to him, when their conversation has dulled to a quiet moment, and she is. She's scared that she'll end up in the empty space of nothingness again, she's scared that she'll be stuck alone forever she's scared that she'll never get to see her parents again she's so so so scared, and—

"I'll call in all the stupid favors my grandfather owes me," Lloyd interrupts, and takes her hand, holding it tight enough like he'll be able to anchor her to the earth. "I will. Get you one of the best places in– in Ninjago heaven, or whatever. The best realm. Maybe he can even get you those stupid preztels you like, up there. Or down there, I don't know."

His bright gaze softens, and turns a little more serious than she's used to. "You'll see your parents again, Rumi. You will."

Harumi can't fight the smile that tugs at her lips. Stupid preztels that you like, she wants to retort, but she hasn't had the chance to reply to a lot of things recently.

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(to be continued. pt 2/3)