ninjago imagines

eat the world raw | lloyd g.

set innnn: that time where he's just AT the monastery taking care of the mergequakes? the instant i saw it i lit up its gonna be so fun to write

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It's dark now, in the city. The kind of blinding darkness, when he can throw his head back into the horizon and see nothing but black, as black as crow's eyes and ink across paper, when the Crossroads is just a few glittering lights blinking in and out, like fading stars at midnight. He looks up and sees the same, and for once the sky and the land feel like they have reverted back to the same form, before creation. Dark enough it finally feels like just him, with the occasional note of a lone car racing down the highway to remind him he hasn't floated off into the sky yet.

Yet.

The city will never be asleep, not completely, but right now it's close enough. (Lloyd thinks of walking through the streets of Ninjago, silent as a graveyard as strangers wearing his father's insignia lurk through the buildings, and hopes it never is that quiet again.)

He settles back, drawing his legs back from the edge of the rooftop, and feels the cold cement against his back, a soft ache growing in his neck. Still, he doesn't get up. (If he does, if he manages to trek home too early or too late, there'll just be the ever empty monastery for him to wander through, silence lingering in the air, thick enough for him to choke on.)

So. He stays, and he stares at the sky, and wonders if the wet trickling onto the collar of his gi is from another nosebleed. Oh. Well, he knows, technically, but it's dark enough that his vision is black and white and gray and he doesn't have to know if he doesn't want to. So he tells himself it's rainwater even though it hasn't rained in days, and ignores the way his ears feel stuffed up and his head is spinning even though he's just been lying down for the past hour. Side effects of stopping the mergequakes, his brain supplies, and Lloyd closes his eyes. His hair is damp against the ground and he reaches up to push a piece from his face, the smell of dirt and burning against his fingertips. Kai did always say energy resembled lighting the most, the sharp crack of light as it hit the ground smouldering, but Lloyd prefers to think of it as the constant of a flame, lingering through the air like light.

He clenches his fist, serrated half moons engraving on his palm, and imagines sharp streaks of light stabbing into the earth, throbbing energy spreading like spilled blood. He needs to cut his fingernails, Lloyd thinks, and then he can't stop the laugh that bursts through his chest, sharp and sudden. Cut his nails is the last thing that should be on his to-do list, right after stop this merge-fucking-quake from eating up this city and it's thousands of inhabitants. Sure, he'll go home and dig through the cabinets for the nail clipper, let him just stop this highly apocalyptic event from happening, and he can go get a fucking manicure for all the world cares.

Above him, the sky's last stars are bleaching themselves with black, dimming into needle pinpoints of white.

Lloyd closes his eyes.

 Tomorrow. Tomorrow, Kai will be back, and maybe, maybe the world will tilt back to normal. 

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