Whumptober 2/31
Prompt: Prophecy
TW: Blood and injury, mentions of minor character death
———
"It's happening", Wu says, and Lloyd watches the world crash down around him, the words echoing in his ears.
It's not the first time, or the second, or even the third time the world has ended, but some part of him knows it won't be the last. He stands in the courtyard and stares up at the horizon caving into itself, viciously tearing into a gaping cavern of cotton candy colored hell, and the purple streaked sky of the Oni darkness flashes before his vision. Somewhere deep in the monastery someone is yelling, and he hears panels of glass split and shatter against the floor as the ground rumbles beneath their feet, shifting and breaking.
Ahead of him, Kai yanks on the engine of the Destiny's Bounty, bright sparks sputtering out of and his feet carry him mindlessly to the deck of the ship, hands painfully tight against the railing. The Bounty jerks into the air with a sharp scream, gears groaning under the sudden strain, and Cole tugs him away from the side, barely dodging the debris whistling past his head.
Beneath them, Wu vanishes into the flickering ground.
Zane disappears on his mech into the clouds that night, and Pixal follows him into the bleeding cut in the clouds later, after they've exhausted all their useless search efforts and sweeps around the new cities and realms the Bounty blinks in and out of every day, every hour. How do you search for someone when the whole universe opens up under your feet?
"I'm sorry", she mutters, eyes heavy and drawn. "I know you must stay and fulfill your duties—but I need to find Zane. He is--" her voice breaks and she meets his eyes, unable to finish the sentence. Lloyd nods and watches the monstrous gash in the skies flicker through realities like a broken TV channel as it swallows her up and wishes he could've left with her. He doesn't want—doesn't want to lead anymore, doesn't want to drag his team through world after world, to find the bodies amidst the broken towns they were too late to rescue, Serpentine bodies mixed with humans and Geckles and some he can't even recognize.
Failure, a voice in his head hisses at him, sounding suspiciously like Morro and Harumi and Garmadon and Sensei Wu, all at once, and Lloyd turns away, blinking away the wet in his eyes.
Later that day, the sky closes in on itself and explodes. Lloyd has a split second to wonder if this is finally how they all die before his head slams against the mast of the ship, hard. He wakes up back at the monastery, curled into the broken stone panels of the walls crumbling into itself, sharp edges digging bloody scratches into his back. He finds Kai in the rubble of their living room and nobody else.
He searches for Sensei Wu for hours, digging his fingers bloody in the walls of the monastery that have collapsed. He finds scraps of pictures and beloved clothing and machinery carefully collected and built over the years, but not his uncle.
Lloyd stares down at the bleeding ruins of his hands and the name Harumi rises to his lips.
Kai leaves the monastery a few weeks later, a sense of uneasiness hanging around him. Lloyd can almost feel the unrest bubbling up around the fire ninja, the need to fly into adventure and do something, fix the Merge, find their family, anything. He watches him go with dry eyes and sobs in bed later, after he calls for Zane, half-asleep in the kitchen, and realizes no one is coming.
He spends as much time as he can patrolling what's left of Ninjago City, roaming through the dead streets, and watches his home melt away to nothing.
The sky tears open again and again and again, threatening to swallow him whole. Lloyd starts sleeping whole days after stopping the Mergequakes, waking up to his pillow soaked in blood. Some days he thinks it is taking him piece by piece, draining him of his power and drowning him in what's left. Some days he feels like he might let it.
Wu's words hang over his head; ninja, protector, savior, master, and Lloyd lets them tighten on his chest like a noose around his throat.
YOU ARE READING
ninjago imagines
FanfictionA compilation of Ninjago one-shots, because only chaos can come out of the mix with the team rampaging through the city together. Or, all the lost moments throughout the series, including completely random AU's made up by yours truly in the spur of...
