ninjago imagines

what's a heart worth if it's not yours? | lloyd g.

Harumi thinks this is the end, right here. She sees it in the way the sky is swimming through the tears in her eyes, and the way the ground is swaying beneath her feet like she's five years old and dizzy on the roundabout again, and the way Lloyd's bright eyes are piercing through her chest.

Yes, Lloyd, she reminds herself, who is staring at her like he wants to leap over the rooftops all over again and drag her from the building collapsing beneath her feet, pulling her further down like a whirlpool every second. His gi glows a ghostly green against the setting sun, and Harumi glances back into the sky for a moment, ignoring the way the rays burns into her eyes.

She wishes a little bit he wouldn't look at her like that, and then she feels bad, because who's to stop him from feeling whatever is going through his mind right now? Wasn't that her goal, to gain his love and attachment and tear it all apart at the end? (She decides she has no right to think that, and then she decides she has too little time left on this earth to be thinking about that.)

The ground rocks and rocks beneath her feet and she feels like a sailor at storm, a sea of building crashing down on each other in waves after wave of crimson red bricks and glassy gravel and big clouds of dust settling against each other, and she knows her fate's been written against the caved mess of a door, against the shine of a princess crown, against the bloody metal glare of an closing elevator door.

Maybe she's been dead from the start, and she's just been putting it off over and over again, but her fate has always been intertwined with a crumbling building.

Harumi wants to laugh a little. She doesn't, choosing instead to step backward, stumbling on a falling piece of sharp wood. Lloyd mouths something, eyes shining with tears. Her name?

Turns out it really doesn't matter that much in the end, anyway.

The ground falls underneath her feet, roaring up above her head like a tidal wave, and she falls with it.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Lloyd thinks this is the end, right here. His hands ache, wrists encircled with trails of blood dripping from his nails, and he inspects it faintly for a second. The patches at his knees are torn open and stained a dark crimson where he knelt on sprinkling shards of glass and brick, but he can't really feel it anymore, so it doesn't count, right?

It shouldn't matter. It shouldn't, not when Kai and Jay and Uncle Wu and everyone is back from the First Realm or wherever the magic tea dumped them for a month and a half, and Nya and his mom aren't dead and neither is he, so basically everyone made it out alive and fine, besides a few scratches and borderline major injuries. He should be at home celebrating the miracle they just pulled off, or checking up on the shoulder that still feels weird from his last fight with Lord Garmadon, or catching up on some desperately needed sleep, but no.

No, Lloyd is out in the middle of the deconstructed, crumbling city at three in the morning, ripping off fingernails and tearing up the skin on his knees to find a corpse.

Because that's the truth, isn't it. The famed green ninja, scrabbling on his knees for hours in the dark to find the most definitely dead body of the girl who played the biggest part in destroying Ninjago city. The same one who tried to kill his family, his friends, him, over and over again, and he's put here sobbing over her death.

Death. The word echoes in his head, and Lloyd's vision blurs as he grabs at a piece of leaning concrete (cold sharp solid against his fingers) to keep from falling.

Nya is gonna be so mad. His breath catches, and his throat feels raw, like he just swallowed a cupful of powdered glass (was he screaming? he doesn't remember.)

Glass crunches under a heavy step, and Lloyd snaps up from the ground, scrabbling for a grip on the rubble.

"Lloyd?" Nya's voice is softer than he recognizes, a stark difference from the last few weeks. "Are you okay?"

He doesn't bother answering that question, ducking to swipe a ragged sleeve across the rear tracks stubbornly making its way down his cheeks.

"Lloyd, I'm— I'm sorry." Nya bites her lip, kicking aside a stray fragment of glass, sending it to shatter against a corner. "Can we— Can I take you home?"

He swallows, voice caught in the lump in his throat, and pushes himself off the ground, nodding.

Who was he kidding, anyway, searching for a dead girl's body?

Lloyd thinks this is the end, right here. His hands ache, wrists encircled with trails of blood dripping from his nails, and he inspects it faintly for a second.