Shattered

Chapter 2

Kai had that thoughtful look again.

It had been a solid five minutes since Lloyd sat down and gave Kai the permission to dissect his brain and find out what the hell was wrong with him. But he chose to sit here and not do anything but look at the ground with scrunched up eyebrows and tightly pressed lips while Lloyd's world was left in a spinning anxious mess as he waited.

"Aren't you going to say any-"

"Why won't you wear your gi?"

"What?"

Out of all the questions Lloyd expected, that wasn't it. Really? That's how Kai wanted to start this interrogation?

"Why won't you wear your suit?" Kai asked again, and Lloyd was once again sent back into his anxiety.

Breathe. He reminded himself. Don't look at his suit, don't look at the color of it, and how when his head exploded into blood and brain matter that the room was painted the same color as his gi. Don't think about how you saw him as a living corpse, seeing and breathing but not truly there. Not really there. Don't think about that. Don't think about anything.

"I-I don't know? It just doesn't feel like mine anymore-"

"What do you mean?"

"Jesus, Kai, I don't know? I just-every time I put it on I feel like I'm an imposter almost? Like, I did almost everything against what the green ninja stands for, so can I really be the green ninja?"

Kai's eyebrows furrowed, "But that wasn't you. You can't blame yourself-"

"I don't blame myself! I...I know there was only so much I could've done in that situation. It's how I'm behaving now that I don't like."

"How are you behaving now?"

Lloyd opened his mouth to reply, but quickly shut it again and scrunched his eyebrows together in concentration. This was big. He's spent months, months, lying and deceiving and stressing over keeping all of this to himself. Keeping all of this a secret. And now he was about to spill all of it to Kai.

He huffed and ran a hand through his hair, it was too long he probably needed to have it cut. Maybe he could do that after the existential crisis/interrogation he's dealing with as of right now.

He needed to move. He did his best thinking when he moved. Not sitting, breathing, blinking, panicking under Kai's watchful gaze. Lloyd got up, stumbled back, looked into Kai's confused and concerned eyes, and started to pace.

"Lloyd?"

Okay, if he was going to do this, he needed to word it correctly. Gather and collect and sort and string his scattered thoughts together into one comprehensible sentence. Then another. Until it turned into a paragraph, an essay, a novel, of his thoughts and feelings and ideas of anything and everything. He could do that. He could absolutely do that, no problem. But he didn't have the time too, cause Kai was sitting there with that kicked puppy expression of his and waiting for him to talk. Waiting for him to explain to him what the hell was happening to him when he barely understood it himself.

Breathe, Lloyd, breathe. He could do this. He could do this. Over and over again he said that to himself. He was making such a big deal out of this. He was being a whiny, bratty, emotional child when he just needed to get over himself and not be such a liability to the team. He needed to push past this. He will push past this. Starting now.

"Lloyd."

Lloyd closed his eyes and nodded to himself, one step at a time, and turned towards Kai, not expecting him to be so close. He had moved after Lloyd had started pacing, moved up into Lloyd's space and he felt the waves of heat rolling off of him. He was so close he was breathing the same air as him, and Jesus, did they guy know anything about personal space?