green boy flower boy

chapter one

It was the forty fifth night in a row he'd had a nightmare.

Lloyd woke up in the middle of the night, heart racing. It was raining outside- he saw lightning flashing outside the window. The Bounty was waving back and forth, thrown by the wind. They'd been in worse storms, but Lloyd had recently come to hate them. A lot. Especially if they were windy.

If he focused, he could hear his teammates on the deck, making sure they didn't capsize. That didn't ease Lloyd's fear of the storm. He would be up there helping, but he'd injured his leg a week ago, and his mom would kill him if he exerted himself running around on a slippery wet deck in the wind.

Lloyd sighed and wrapped his blanket around him, turning on the light he kept on his night stand. He'd felt silly buying it, and he felt silly turning it on, but as long as he didn't refer to it as a night light, it served its purpose.

Some Green Ninja you are. Lloyd snorted to himself. Scared of thunder storms.

The bottle of water that kept permanent residence on his nightstand was wobbling, so Lloyd grabbed it and held it against his chest as he hugged his knees close to him. He wasn't planning to drink it- he'd kept it there since the Morro incident, and it was probably room temperature and gross by now. He felt better with water close by.

Eventually the storm let up, and the Bounty rightened itself. The wind stopped. Lloyd managed to resume his normal breathing. The team had held out fine without him. Seems about right- you're only useful when the bad guys can use you for their own purposes. Otherwise, you fall down the stairs and sprain your ankle.

Lloyd sighed and rubbed his head, trying not to think about his latest nightmare. It was a reoccuring one- his dad, trapped in the Cursed Realm, and asking Lloyd to help him, but Lloyd couldn't control his body. Then the Cursed One sank into the sea, and the Cursed Realm was destroyed, and that was always when Lloyd woke up.

I suck at my job. He thought. Well, whatever, it's a sucky job. Where do I hand in my resignation?

Even though Lloyd had thought the last part semi-sarcastically, he was part serious. There hadn't been any real trouble for months, which had given him much needed time to rest. But there was always something. Maybe it wasn't his dad, hellbent on turning Ninjago into his own image and turning into a giant dragon (he still had nightmares), or the thing with the Overlord in the digiverse (lots of nightmares there), or the tournament of elements at Chen's island (more nightmares), or Morro possessing him (definitely nightmares definitely), or the thing with the djinn and his wishes (okay, so Lloyd had a lot of nightmares), but there was always something.

Of course, that something was usually stuff like mall break ins, which wasn't exactly Lloyd's purpose. Just stuff like that- not serious enough to be traumatizing or life threatening, but enough to where he was always on edge. It sucked.

Lloyd usually didn't let himself wallow in self pity, but it was like three am, so he allowed himself a small pity party. Everyone wanted him to act like he was, he didn't know, Wu's age or something. He was just a seventeen year old kid, and he just wanted a break. He quit.

Could he do that? His destiny was to be the Green Ninja. Could he quit destiny?

Worth a shot. He thought to himself, and got out of bed and started to pack.

---

I'm a jerk. Lloyd thought as he shouldered his backpack. He wasn't telling the others where he was going- he wasn't even telling them he was leaving. He thought it was kind of rude for them to just wake up and realize he wasn't there, but he had left them a note. Then again his note just said, I'm fine, don't look for me, so there was that.