ninjago imagines

like the rock bears the weather | lloyd g.

Whumptober 3/31

Prompt: "Please don't cry",/Lamb to the Slaughter 

TW: Self harm tendencies/implications, Blood and injury, Depressive thoughts 

———

His head hurts.

Somewhere outside the monastery, Lloyd can hear somebody training, the sounds of the courtyard bots whirring to life ringing through the yard. His head really hurts, now, and he listens to the clang of metal against metal and wonders how it has become the most familiar sound in his life.

"Please don't cry", Harumi whispers. She leans down and swipes a thumb across his cheek. "This sacrifice is for your father, isn't it?"

Lloyd jerks away from her touch, and his wrists chafe against the chains where he tugs on it. He presses his lips together, muffling the whimper that threatens to break from his throat. Something wet runs down his hands, dripping off the tip of his fingers. He doesn't need to look to know what it is, and Harumi smiles at the look on his face.

Lloyd blinks. The ceiling fans whirs and stutters as it spins, sending lukewarm air at his face. The air in his room turns to stifling heat and every breath he draws feels like still air trickling into his lungs.

"I'm sorry, my nephew." Wu apologizes after they rescued him, back at the monastery, when everyone else was busy tending to wounds or gathering the rest of the escaped inmates. Lloyd smiles and wonders what he is apologizing for.

Now he knows. Sorry, sorry, sorry. Sorry for fucking up your life, sorry for making you the one to save us, sorry for sacrificing your future for my mistakes decades before you were ever even born. It leaves a bitter taste in his throat, and he presses against the bandages on his wrist, suddenly desperate to stop thinking. Something pounds in his head, ripping up every memory he squashes down so desperately, and he lets it wash over him.

I left you in the Darkley's to protect you, Misako promises, words sweet and caring and exactly like he dreams she'd always say, and Lloyd believes her for a while, ignoring the way she slips off after every battle, every villain they defeat, leaving behind poorly woven excuses he pretends not to see.

I have no son, Garmadon growls in his mind, advancing against him as every part of his brain is screaming run run run, and Lloyd suddenly realizes that somewhere along the line he stopped thinking of him as father.

It is the Green Ninja's destiny to defeat Lord Garmadon, Wu tells him, words spun into something noble and righteous, and they never say kill, do they? Defeat, end, battle, conquer, vanquish, every washed-out, honorable word is used—every word but kill is replaced so he doesn't have to see the truth until it's too late, that one day he'll stand with Garmadon (his dad, his father), and only one of them will leave alive.

Fuck prophecies, he thinks dully, and fate laughs at him, cold and cruel.